if, early in the game at Orléans, her friends and enemies were still trying to figure out what to make of her.
Joan’s activities over the next few days at Orléans can be gleaned from various pieces of retrial testimony and the chronicles. She spent May 2, 1429, riding her horse around the city to make a personal survey of the English positions -- just as any responsible commander would.41 As described by d’Aulon and de Coutes in their testimony, Joan participated in her first battle on May 4. Astride her horse, banner in hand, she rallied the French troops in their successful attack to capture the English fort at Saint Loup, just to the east of Orléans. That Joan had not yet been fully integrated into the command system is clear from the fact that this attack was initiated without her knowledge. She had to hasten from her living quarters, where she had been taking a nap, to join the attack after it had already started.42 Pasquerel testified that Joan commanded that there be no fighting on May 5 because it was the Feast of the Ascension and that she was obeyed.43
The chronicler Jean Chartier claimed that also on May 5, the French military leadership in Orléans, headed by Dunois, held a council of war without inviting Joan. They decided to launch a diversionary attack on one side of the Loire River and a main attack on the other. They agreed that Joan would go with the diversionary attack but not be told of the main attack. Then they sent for Joan to tell her only as much of the plan as they wanted her to know. According to Chartier, Joan heard them out and then, intuitively figuring out that she was being used, went into one of her classic rages. Dunois pacified her by revealing the whole plan to her44 From that moment, it became standard procedure that Joan would always be at the forefront of whatever was the main attack on any given day of battle. The day after this stormy war council, May 6, Joan and Captain La Hire had the leading parts in the French assault that took the English fort of the Augustins. 45
May 7 was Joan’s great day of destiny, it was on this day that she played the decisive role in capturing the most important of the English forts that encircled Orléans --the Tourelles. According to the testimony of Simon Charles, the official French commanders in Orléans had decided against launching any attack that day. Joan achieved her ascendancy over them by forcing events to unfold her way. In his testimony. Simon Charles repeated the story that had been told to him by Raoul de Gaucourt, one of the highest ranking warrior nobles serving France. De Gaucourt had positioned himself at one of the gates of the city to prevent any French troops from going out to make an unauthorized attack. Then Joan showed up, cased in her armor, astride her horse, and with a throng of soldiers, both noble and common, behind her. By de Gaucourt’s own account, Joan upbraided him as "a wicked man" and angrily told him "Whether you like it or not, the soldiers will charge, and they will win as they have done in other places." In the modem idiom, an armed peasant girl with the people behind her told a mighty noble of the realm to lead, follow, or get out of the way. Fearing for his life, de Gaucourt stood aside and Joan led the army out of the city.46
D’Aulon testified that once she was outside the city, she summoned the French leadership to come to her for a war council .47 The decision of this council was to attack the Tourelles immediately. It was during this attack that Joan famously took an English arrow through her shoulder -- and after the arrow was pulled out, returned to the fight to lead the final frenzied assault that stormed the Tourelles. (Dunois related that he had wanted to break off the attack, but that Joan persuaded him to make one more supreme effort.48) Joan returned in triumph to Orléans with an army that was truly on its way to becoming her army.
Dunois testified about what happened the next day. His testimony is amplified by the accounts in the Journal of the Siege of Orléans and in the Chronicle of the Maid.49 The