 that a teenage peasant girl was the true commander of the royal army of France.
The march to Rheims continued and on July 17, 1429, Charles felt the crown come to rest on his head while the warrior girl who put it there stood behind him, magnificent in her shining armor.
In one of the bitterest tragedies of history, the day Charles received the crown, he started to knock the legs out from underneath the people whose courage had brought him to the crown.65 The moment was perfect for an immediate march on Paris to take back France’s capital. The English and Burgundians were in panicked disarray and the city was weakly defended. Instead, Charles immobilized the army and Joan while he entered into negotiations with the enemies of his people and his country. Weeks dragged by while the English and Burgundians used the negotiations as a cover to massively reinforce the garrison of Paris and to refurbish the city walls. Joan and d’Alençon could only seethe in fury. On August 14, they led the French in an inconclusive confrontation with a large Anglo-Burgundian army at Montepilloy. At last, on September 8, weeks after the moment had passed, Charles allowed his champions to attack Paris. Joan suffered her first repulse, made even more bitter by the arrow shot through her thigh. Now, Charles’ conduct descended to treason. Joan and d’Alençon had hoped to renew the attack from a different direction by crossing a timber bridge over the Seine that d’Alençon had ordered built for just that purpose. Their rage and disgust must have been total when they found that the bridge had been secretly demolished on Charles’ orders. Charles ordered a retreat back to the territory that had always been his and on September 21, he disbanded the great army with which Joan, Dunois, d’Alençon and the rest had saved France.66 Joan and her loving circle of co-commanders went their ways, never to see each other again.
Charles conferring titles of nobility on Joan and her family did little to make her feel better.67 She continued to carry on the war -- only now, she was just one independent captain among many, commanding a little army of mostly non-French mercenaries. Her influence on grand strategy had sunk to nil, but her tactical autonomy increased.68 She continued to manifest the skills of a true military commander. For example, just before she laid siege to the town of La Cherité that November, she dictated a letter to the citizens of the town of Riom that contained thoroughly practical requests for various kinds of supplies. (The authentic original letter is still held in an archive in France.)69 But the old magic was gone for Joan. Her mercenary band could not give her the same loving loyalty that her great army, drawn from the best of all France, once had. Ahead of Joan lay the ever-darkening road to capture, torment, and martyrdom.
The cumulative testimony of her comrades-in-arms shows that Joan was no mere inspirational figurehead. She was repeatedly present when key decisions were being made in councils of war and she repeatedly forced those decisions to reflect her expressed will. To what extent her strategic and tactical opinions were the product of her own rational military calculations or were the product of her belief in otherworldly inspiration can never be known. Still... One may attempt to draw the organizational chart of the French high command however one chooses but the fact is that Joan was the ultimate driving power behind every aggressive move the French army made.
Given that so much of our understanding of Joan is based on the testimony given at her retrial, it is necessary to address the question of just how truthful the testimony was. Charles VII had a vested interest in the Church clearing the name of the girl to whom, in the prevailing view, he owed his crown. Thus, there would have been pressure on those testifying at Joan’s retrial to remember her in a favorable light. However, it probably was beyond the means of a king to forcibly yet covertly orchestrate the testimony of 115 witnesses who represented all social classes and 