English besiege Orléans, and St. Joan's voices order her to raise it

ORLÉANS, October 12, 1428 AD — The English army of the Earl of Salisbury laid siege to Orléans today, firing across the Loire from the south bank. Its heavy guns threw stone balls into the town, and one of them killed a woman. The guns also destroyed the water mills, and the townspeople set up mills turned by horses in their place.

Salisbury came with nearly 5,000 men, and in September they had taken some forty towns and castles on their way here. The English had shipped guns, stone shot and soldiers across the Channel to finish the conquest of France for their child king, Henry VI. Orléans was the last great town guarding the heart of the country still loyal to the Dauphin, Charles, who had not yet been crowned. Its people had wrecked the houses and churches of their own suburbs on the far bank before the English arrived, and the town was well stocked with food and guns.

Charles was close to ruin. His treasury had at one point fallen below four écus, and his army was a mix of local levies and hired foreign companies. He even doubted that he was truly the late king’s son and heir, because his own mother had sided with the English against his claim.

Saint Joan of Arc was sixteen that October, and living with her parents in Domremy, a village on the Meuse far to the east. Since she was about thirteen she had heard voices, the first of them Saint Michael’s, then those of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. Once or twice a week they told her she must leave home and go into France. They told her to go first to Robert de Baudricourt, the captain who held the nearby town of Vaucouleurs for the Dauphin, because he would give her an escort. She could not reach Charles without one.

When St. Joan was about fifteen, her father, Jacques d’Arc, dreamed that she would go off with soldiers. Her mother, Isabelle Romée, told St. Joan more than once what Jacques d’Arc then said to their sons: “In truth, if I thought this thing would happen which I have dreamed about my daughter, I should want you to drown her; and if you would not, I would drown her myself.” From then on both parents watched their daughter closely and made her obey them strictly.

In May St. Joan found a reason to leave home. She told her father she was going to nurse the wife of her uncle by marriage, Durand Laxart, at Burey. At Burey she told Laxart that she wanted to go to the Dauphin and have him crowned. St. Joan put a question to Laxart: “Was it not foretold formerly that France should be desolated by a woman, and should be restored by a maid?” Laxart took her to Vaucouleurs. Baudricourt would not listen to her, and Laxart said afterwards that the captain told him many times to take her back to her father and box her ears. She went home.

On June 23, the eve of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, St. Joan talked with a labourer of Domremy who had known her since childhood. She spoke of a young girl without saying the girl was her: “Between Coussy and Vaucouleurs there is a young girl, who, before the year is gone, will have the King of France consecrated.”

In July a Burgundian army came through the district. The Burgundians were the followers of the Duke of Burgundy, a prince of the French royal house who had sided with the English. Domremy lay at the edge of their country but held for Charles. The Burgundian army besieged Vaucouleurs and made Baudricourt promise to stay neutral. Everyone in Domremy fled to the walled town of Neufchâteau, and St. Joan spent about a fortnight there with her father and mother in a townswoman’s house. Domremy was burned, and after that the villagers went to Mass on feast days at Greux, the next village.

In the weeks after the siege began, St. Joan’s voices became urgent, even threatening. The voice told her: “Go, raise the siege which is being made before the City of Orleans.” St. Joan later described her answer: “I replied that I was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting.” The voices only repeated that it was God who commanded it.

St. Joan told no one at home what the voices wanted. The voices left it to her whether to tell her parents, and she would not have told them for anything. She came close to telling one neighbour, Gerardin, a labourer whose child was her godchild. Gerardin sided with the Burgundians, and one day St. Joan said to him: “Gossip, if you were not a Burgundian, I would tell you something.” Gerardin thought she was talking about a marriage.

Early in 1429 AD St. Joan went back to Vaucouleurs, and this time she did not go home.