Scott Alexander (author/host)

And everyone was astonished that she acted with such prudence and clear-sightedness in military matters, as cleverly as some great captain with twenty or thirty years' experience, and especially in the placing of artillery, for in that she acquitted herself magnificently.

Marguerite Latour-Dould, Joanne's landlady at Chinon, said, End quote.

Dunois, bastard of Orleans, gives up and flatly says that she's so good that, quote, I believe that Joan was sent by God and that her deeds in the war were the fruit of divine inspiration rather than of human agency.

And this is why, end quote.

And then he gives one actual miracle as evidence.

We'll get to that.

And everything else is cases of her being so good at war that, quote,

I swear that the English, 200 of whom had previously been sufficient to rout 800 or 1,000 of the Royal Army, from that moment became so powerless that 400 or 500 soldiers and men-at-arms could fight against what seemed to be the whole force of England.

End quote.

Dunois here is speaking from experience.

The last time French and English forces had clashed in any serious way was about a year before Jones showed up at court, when the pride of the French army was defeated by a convoy of pickled herrings.

Footnote, the details of the Battle of the Herrings are plot irrelevant but hilarious.

The troops besieging Orleans needed regular resupply.

Since Lent was approaching, they'd want preserved fish to eat on all these long meatless days.

So the wagons were loaded up with pickled herring and sent with 1,600 troops or so as escort and reinforcement.

The French, under the Count of Clermont, tried to hit the supply lines with 4,000 of their own, complete with heavy cavalry and artillery and Scotsmen, but the English commander, the oft-maligned Sir John Falstaff, drew up his wagons in a ring and had all his troops fight from the shelter of the wagons, and that threw the French into confusion.

You can't lance a wagon.

They tried an artillery bombardment, which was basically sensible, but their troops got bored partway through, charged, and were decisively defeated, to the ruin of the French interception, the morale of the Armagnacs, and of course, the career of the Count of Clermont.

Back to the text.

Dunois was present at that debacle.