Next the Loire Valley #T

June 12, 1429 the assault on the fortress at Jargeau by Joan of Arc was accomplished. Its many lulls and "treaties" notwithstanding the Hundred Years War in its ninety-third year.  The House of Plantagenet ruling England is occupying a major portion of France. The House of Valois, royal line of France, has for several decades been averse to pushing back to reclaim the country.  Comes a seventeen-year-old girl from a country village, sparks the should-be-king to action, raises an army and proceeds to undertake the task of ridding France of England's boot on its neck.

Joan of Arc has lifted the Seige of Orleans and is now in attack mode to drive the English from the Loire valley.  Jargeau is the first of four campaigns which ultimately ended the Hundred Years' War.  Joan, of course, did not live to see the final victory over the despised English, but she is nevertheless credited with having stirred France to action and making great strides toward freeing her beloved country.

I acquired my history largely from Mark Twain's Joan of Arc.  If he is short on any aspect of the story,  he is certainly long on interest.  The man could write.

See my earlier post about Joan here.

To Vet a Leader

Tomorrow is the 586th anniversary of the assault on the fortress at Jargeau by Joan of Arc.  Consider an earlier travail this seventeen-year-old leader endured in her pursuit of her Generalship.

"So we traveled to Poitiers, to endure three weeks of tedious delay while this poor child [Joan of Arc] was being daily questioned and badgered before a great bench of--what?  Military experts?--since what she had come to apply for was an army and the privilege of leading it to battle against the enemies of France.  Oh, no.  It was a great bench of priests and monks--profoundly learned and astute casuists--renowned professors of theology!  Instead  of setting a military commission to find out if this valorous little soldier could win victories, they set a company of holy hair-splitters and phrase-mongers to work to find out if the soldier was sound in her piety and had no doctrinal leaks.  The cats were devouring the house, but instead of examining the cat's teeth and claws, they only concerned themselves to find out if it was a holy cat.  If it was a pious cat, a moral cat, all right, never mind about the other capacities, they were of no consequence."

-- Mark Twain: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by The Sieur Louis de Conte (Her Page and Secretary) Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France by Jean Francois Alden, vol. 1, p. 160