in your own opinion, for you do not hold the kingdom from God the Son of the Holy Mary, but it is held by Charles the true heir, for God, the King of Heaven so wills, and it is revealed by the Maid who shall enter Paris in good company.  If you will not believe this news on the part of God and the Maid, in whatever place you may find yourselves we shall make our way there, and make so great a commotion as has not been in France for a thousand years, if you will not hear reason.  And believe this, that the King of Heaven will send more strength to the Maid than you can bring against her in all your assaults, to her and to her good men-at-arms.  You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and requires you to destroy no more.  If you act according to reason you may still come in her company where the French shall do the greatest work that has ever been done for Christianity.  Answer then if you will still continue against the city of Orleans.  If you do so you will soon recall it to yourself by great misfortunes.  Written the Saturday of Holy Week (22 March, 1429).(1)

Jeanne had by this time made a wonderful moral revolution in her little army; most likely she had not been in the least aware what an army was, until this moment; but frank and fearless, she had penetrated into every corner, and it was not in her to permit those abuses at which an ordinary captain has to smile.  The pernicious and shameful crowd of camp followers fled before her like shadows before the day.  She stopped the big oaths and unthinking blasphemies which were so common, so that La Hire, one of the chief captains, a rough and ready Gascon, was reduced to swear by his baton, no more sacred name being permitted to him.  Perhaps this was the origin of the harmless swearing which abounds in France, meaning probably just as much and as little as bigger oaths in careless mouths; but no doubt the soldiers’ language was very unfit for gentle ears.  Jeanne moved among the wondering ranks, all radiant in her silver armour and with her virginal undaunted countenance, exhorting all those rude and noisy brothers to take thought of their duties here, and of the other life that awaited them.  She would stop the march of the army that a conscience-stricken soldier might make his confession, and desired the priests to hear it if necessary without ceremony, or church, under the first tree.  Her tender heart was such that she shrank from any man’s death, and her hair rose up on her head, as she said, at the sight of French blood shed—­although her mission was to shed it on all sides for a great end.  But the one thing she could not bear was that either Frenchmen or Englishmen should die unconfessed, “unhouseled, disappointed, unannealed.”  The army went along attended by songs of choristers and masses of priests, the grave and solemn music of the Church accompanied strangely by the fanfares and bugle notes.  What a strange procession to pass along the great Loire in its spring fulness, the raised banners and crosses, and that dazzling white figure, all effulgence, reflected in the wayward, quick flowing stream!