She was seventeen, and the king sent her army home

GIEN, France, September 21, 1429 AD — Saint Joan of Arc is seventeen. She had ridden at the head of the king’s army since April. Today at Gien, Charles VII broke that army up and sent the soldiers home. Some captains rode back to the land they owned, and some to the place each of them commanded. St. Joan was left with no men at all.

Those men had broken the English siege of Orleans in May. In June they had beaten the English army at Patay.

Five months ago St. Joan had ridden out of Blois for Orleans. Soon after Orleans, at Loches, she walked into the king’s private room. She knelt down in front of him and took hold of his knees. “Noble Dauphin! hold no longer these many and long councils, but come quickly to Reims to take the crown for which you are worthy!” she told him. On July 17 he was crowned king at Reims, and she stood beside him holding her standard.

The ditch under the wall of Paris

What St. Joan wanted next was Paris, and after Paris the English out of France. On August 23 she left Compiègne with soldiers and rode for Paris. With her went Jean, Duke of Alençon, who had commanded beside her at Patay. The king had not ordered it, and he stayed behind.

They attacked the gate of Saint-Honoré on September 8. St. Joan climbed down into the deep dry ditch outside the wall. Then she scrambled up the bank on the far side. She pushed her lance into the water of the inner moat to find out how deep it was. She was under fire the whole time, looking for a place her men could cross. An archer shot her through the thigh, and a second arrow killed the soldier carrying her standard. She could not walk after that.

They put her under cover beside the moat. From there she went on calling her men to the charge long after dark. In the end soldiers were sent who carried her out of the shooting.

She was up very early the next morning. She begged the Duke of Alençon to sound the trumpets and get on his horse. “For I will never retreat till I have the town,” she said. Then the king’s order arrived: St. Joan was to come back to Saint-Denis. Charles VII spent three days with his council, and then decided to pull out. After dinner on September 13 he left Saint-Denis for good. Before she went, St. Joan laid a suit of armour and a sword on the altar of the abbey church. She had wanted to stay.

The deal signed in August

In late August her army was still winning ground. Then men the king had sent to speak for him agreed a truce with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Both sides would stop fighting for four months. The whole point of it was to stop St. Joan’s army from going any further. Several towns were to be handed over to the duke.

The Duke of Burgundy is on England’s side. Knights he sent stood with the Parisians at the gate of Saint-Honoré against St. Joan thirteen days ago. The men around Charles VII wanted to break the duke away from England by giving him things he wanted, not by beating him in a battle.

The march back to the river Loire started that same day. Today it ended at Gien.

Charles VII had dinner there, and that same day he gave the order. The Duke of Alençon rode off to his wife and to his own lands at Beaumont. St. Joan stayed behind with the king. She took it hard when the captains rode away. It was hardest of all when Alençon left, because he was the captain she loved best.

Perceval de Cagny is a squire in the Duke of Alençon’s household, and he keeps a chronicle of the war. He thought the king’s counsellors had thrown away what St. Joan won. He wrote a single line about the day at Gien: “And thus was broken the will of the Maiden and the King’s army.”