“Bon coeur, bonne esperance, mes enfants, the hour of victory is at hand!  De la part de Dieu!  De la part de Dieu!”

That was her favourite battle cry!  It was God who should give the victory.

But it was no easy victory we were to win that day.  The English fought with the energy of despair.  They knew as well as we that when Les Tourelles fell the siege would be raised.  True they had their bastilles upon the north side of the river to fall back upon, since the Maid’s counsel of destruction had not been followed.  But once dislodged from the south bank, and Orleans would lie open to the support of her friends in the south, and the position of the English army would be one of dire peril.  For now the French were no more cowed by craven fear of the power of their enemies.  They had found them capable of defeat and overthrow; the spell was broken.  And it was the Maid who had done it!

Oh, how we fought around her that day!  She was on foot now, for the banks of the moat were slippery, and the press around the walls was too great to admit easily of the tactics of horsemen.  I never saw her strike at any foe.  It was her pennon rather than her sword in which she trusted.  Here was the rallying point for the bravest and most desperate of the assailants, ever in the thickest of the strife, ever pointing the way to victory.

It was the tower of the Boulevard against which we were directing our attack.  If that fell, Les Tourelles itself must needs follow, isolated as it would then be in the midst of the river.  We did not know it then, but we were to learn later, that La Hire in the city with a great band of citizens and soldiers to help him, was already hard at work constructing a bridge which should carry him and his men across to Les Tourelles, to take the English in the rear, whilst their attention was concentrated upon our work on the other side.

No wonder that the clash and din was something deafening, that the boom of the great cannon ceased not; smoke and fire seemed to envelop the walls of the towers; the air was darkened by clouds of arrows; great stones came crashing into our midst.  Men fell on every side; we had much ado to press on without treading under foot the dead and dying; but the white pennon fluttered before us, and foot by foot we crept up towards the base of the tower.

Victory!  Victory! was the cry of our hearts.  We were close to the walls now—­the Maid had seized a ladder, and with her own hands was setting it in position, when—­O woe! woe!—­a great cloth-yard shaft from an English bow, tipped with iron and winged with an eagle’s plume, struck upon that white armour with such crashing force that a rent was made in its shining surface, and the Maid was borne to the ground.

Oh, the terrible fear of that moment!  The yell of triumph and joy which arose from the walls of the fortress seemed to turn my blood into liquid fire.

The English had seen the fall of our champion.  They shouted like men drunk with victory!  They knew well enough that were she dead, they would drive back the French as sheep are driven by wolves.