With Dunois (Bastard of Orleans) Alencon is one of the most prominent of the French leaders who appear in Shakespeare’s play, in the first part of Henry VI.  Duke John, like his illustrious forebears, had also fought and bled for his country.  His first campaign was made when he was but eighteen.  Alencon first saw Joan of Arc in 1429.  A strong mutual regard sprang up between the prince and the Maid of Domremy.  Alencon had wedded the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, and it was to her that the heroine, when she left with the Duke for their expedition against Paris, promised to bring back her husband in safety.

No one had seen more of Joan of Arc during those days of fighting than had Alencon, and no one bore a higher testimony than did the Duke to her purity, her courage, and the sublime simplicity of her character.  It was the Duke of Alencon who was especially struck with the skill shown by the heroine in warlike matters; particularly in her science in the management of artillery—­ridiculously rude as that branch of the service appears to us.

‘Everybody,’ Alencon says, ’was amazed to see that in all that appertained to warfare she acted with as much knowledge and capacity as if she had been twenty or thirty years trained in the art of war.’

Next to Alencon’s evidence came that of the famous Bastard of Orleans, the Count de Dunois, one of the most engaging and sympathetic figures of the whole age of chivalry.  John of Orleans was the natural son of the Duke of Orleans, and, as Fabre says of him, he ’glorified the appellation of Bastard.’  Indeed, the Bastard’s name deserves to be handed down in his country’s annals with as much glory as that of his great English rival and foe, Talbot, in those of the English.  He was a consummate soldier, who even at the early age of twenty-three had brilliantly distinguished himself, and he lived to liberate Normandy and Guyenne from the English.

Well may M. Fabre, in his book on the rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, express his regret that Dunois’ evidence was not set forth in the language in which it was delivered, and that it has come down to us weakened by translation into Latin.  What is worse is that we have only the translation of a translation.

Dunois had, besides his high military reputation, that of being skilled in oratory.  There is, however, in the translation more than a trace of the enthusiasm with which Dunois speaks of the deeds of the heroic maiden.  Dunois, Bastard of Orleans as he is always called, bore the following titles, as recited by the chronicler:  ’l’illustrieuse prince Jean Comte de Dunois et de Longueville, lieutenant-general de notre seigneur le roi.’  He was fifty-one years old in the month of February, 1456.  His deposition extends over the entire period of the life of Joan of Arc between the time of her arrival before Orleans and the period of the King’s coronation.