 Guy de Laval gushed in his adoring descriptions of Joan. He wrote, "I went to her lodging to see her; she sent for wine and told me that she would soon have me drinking in Paris. This seems a thing divine by her deeds, and also from seeing and hearing her."97 Clearly, Joan was no somber, otherworldly little waif of a mystic. She had a bravado, a charm, a winning manner, that, combined with her proven strength and courage, made hardened fighting men adore her at the same time they respected her.
Joan’s female sexuality inevitably became part of the chemistry that drew men to her -- but in a way that was the opposite of the norm. Her squire d’Aulon helped her into her armor every day that she was in the field and it was he who dressed her wounds. He testified that he often saw her naked legs and breasts and that". . . she was a young girl, beautiful and shapely. ..’ D’Alençon said ". .. I slept with Joan and the soldiers ‘on the straw,’ and sometimes I saw Joan get ready for the night, and sometimes I looked at her breasts, which were beautiful." Yet -- all of Joan’s men -- Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, d’Alençon, d’Aulon, Thibault; the men who slept on the ground beside her and saw her in her lovely nakedness, were adamant that they never felt carnal lust for her. Thibault elaborated that while they sometimes felt a carnal urge for Joan, they "never dared give way to it.." They saw a saintly goodness in her and it was shame that prevented them from making advances on her. They felt an exalted pure love for her that they could not bear to sully with carnal words much less deeds.98
De Metz testified that though he slept on the ground right next to Joan he "was in such awe of her that I would not have dared go near her; and I tell you on my oath that I never had any desire or carnal feelings for her." Yet, only a little bit later in his testimony, he proclaimed "... I was on fire with what she said, and with a love for her which was, as I believe, a divine love." Jean Barbin testified that "The soldiers considered her a saint, "99 It is no great stretch to suggest that: When young men encounter a beautiful woman who has won their respect to an extraordinary degree, their usual sexual lust may become sublimated into a devotion and loyalty that is passionate but chaste. Joan had the power to make thousands of armed men love her, not as an object of romantic desire but as the living focus of their hunger to serve a higher cause. Whenever Joan rose in her stirrups to shout "Let all who love me -- follow me!"100 over all the din, she was exploiting a special relationship between leader and led that is unique in all history. Ultimately, it was this astonishing ability of Joan’s to make an army of soldiers chastely love her-- to the point that they would willingly face death in battle for her -- that empowered her to bodily shove history into a new path.
Finally, it must be admitted, there were more prosaic reasons for Joan winning her ascendancy over people and events. It was a simple matter of the cliché about being in the right place at the right time coming true. Joan was lucky in that the conditions of her time and place gave her the opening to do what she did.
After years of one humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the Dauphin Charles granted Joan’s urgent request to be equipped for war and placed at the head of his army, his decision must have been based in large part on the knowledge that every orthodox, every rational, option had been tried and had failed. Only a regime in the final straits of desperation would pay any heed to an illiterate farm girl who claimed that voices from God were instructing her to take charge of her country’s army and lead it to victory.
Many French people of the time believed that the legendary Merlin had prophesied that a maiden from Lorraine would one day save France in its most desperate hour. This belief, sincerely held by the masses of people Joan was coming to help, strengthened her cause.101
Joan wa