Scott Alexander (author/host)

He managed to dodge the blame, and in fact, from the Siege of Orleans up to, what, the mid-15th century or so, he's one of the leading French generals.

He's still around at the start of Europa Universalis IV and has great stats.

Back to the text.

So he and D'Alencon can be considered expert testimony, and the expert testimony is that she is unfairly good.

This is where a lot of the conspiracy theory stories about Joan really get started, because her riding a horse and wielding a lance as well as the finest soldier skills are patently ridiculous if they have ten years of training and she has one month, to say nothing of her command skills.

So they claim she must have had advanced training.

But we're recounting the evidence here and saving our desperate attempts to come up with an explanation for a later section, so we can just recount the consensus and move on to what her leadership looked like.

2.3.

A maid sent by God to drive out the English.

It looked like charisma-enforced Puritanism.

D'Alencon, who is one of my favourite sources, recounts in the tone of a man missing a dear departed friend that Joan kept upbraiding him for his blasphemous swearing and he kept guiltily stopping whenever he noticed her in earshot.

She made sure the soldiers all went to mass regularly, drove those of the camp followers who wouldn't marry their men from camp with the flat of her sword, and absolutely forbade looting and cruelty towards prisoners.

Footnote, quote, Once, near the town of Chateau-Thierry, having seen the mistress of one of the soldiers, a knight, she pursued her with drawn sword.

She did not, however, strike the woman, but warned her gently and charitably that she no longer be found in the company of the soldiers, otherwise she would do something to her which would not please her.

End quote.

We have another eyewitness to another event, but I'm not going to quote him here because this essay is much too long.

That's the end of footnote 43.

Back to the text.

She was not actually in charge of the army, but only of one company of troops.

She was given arms and a banner, God upheld by Angel's blessing of Fleur de Lis, and a couple of squires and a few hundred men to escort supplies into the city.