 the French military high command worked to Joan’s advantage. In a system such as that, forceful eloquence and strong character counted for more in councils of war than formal factors of rank and position.85 Joan’s era was a time when people of all social classes, even high-ranking military leaders sitting in war councils, were marked by intense religious faith. Joan’s apparent direct connection to God, seemingly confirmed by her unexpected yet repeated victories, must have added immensely to her power to persuade.86 Her gift for simple but powerful rhetoric only magnified what her cohorts wanted to believe was her divine authority. Even those few members of Joan’s war councils who lacked faith themselves must have known that it was the religious faith that the masses of soldiers had in her mission that empowered the army to fight so well. Such non-believers as existed in French councils of war would still have feared to tamper with a proven formula for victory. Time after time, Joan took full advantage of all these factors to alternately plead, cajole, argue, exhort -- and inspire --her nominal superiors to adopt her preferred course of action.
Beyond her intellect that enabled her to quickly acquire rudimentary skills of command, beyond her incredible force of will that empowered her to surmount all obstacles, Joan had innate qualities about her that made thousands of armed men want to follow her. The military has always been a man’s subculture regardless of the era and locale in question. Yet Joan, a young woman, was able to force her way into the boys-only club of the French military of her day and then to make that club her own. How did she manage to overturn the established order of military culture?
Men in military elites are jealously protective of their own elite status. They construct a daunting series of tests, both formal and informal, that anyone wishing to join their number must pass. In this, the warrior nobility of medieval France was a military elite like any other in history. Joan’s ability to join this elite should have been crippled three times over -- she was hardly more than a child, she was a peasant, and she was female. It is one of the miracles of her career that she was able to transcend these handicaps to become not only accepted but admired by the French warrior nobility of her day.87
The qualities that the members of a warrior elite demand in a new member are physical prowess, a willingness to cheerfully endure harsh living conditions, and above all, physical courage of a sublime degree, which entails, among other things, carrying on in one’s duties heedless of one’s own wounds. All these qualities must be conspicuously displayed. Given Joan’s triple handicap of her youth, social class, and sex, she had to display these qualities in awesome measure to win acceptance. As her various warrior comrades testified, she passed all these tests in grand fashion.
D’Alençon testified that the day after he first met Joan, he saw her astride a borrowed horse, practicing jousting with a lance at a target. He was so impressed by her natural ability that he gave her a fine horse as a gift.88 The young knight Guy de Laval wrote glowingly about Joan’s equestrian skills in a letter he wrote home to his mother.89 Marguerite La Touroulde was, obviously, not a warrior herself, but she was keenly observant of the impression Joan made on military men. She testified "I have seen her ride a horse and wield a lance as well as the finest soldier, and the soldiers themselves were most astonished by this."90 Throughout her military career, Joan displayed amazing stamina in wearing a heavy suit of armor and keeping the saddle all day, day after day, sometimes even sleeping through the night in her armor. D’Alençon noted with approval that through the long weeks of her campaigns she "slept on the straw" as any soldier would without the least complaint.91
If there was a single event that clinched Joan’s place as an admired equal member of the warrior elite of France, it was when she took an English arrow through her shoulder