an soldiers. It is remarkable that the chronicler of her foes would accord her such honor in his account of her last battle.
Even if Joan’s military role was nothing more than that of a "cheerleader" she was a cheerleader of superb tenacity and fortitude. As overlapping testimonies by Dunois, d’Aulon, de Coutes, and Pasquerel relate, she was shot through her shoulder by an English arrow at the Tourelles outside Orléans.18 D’Alençon described how she was hit on her helmet by a thrown stone at Jargeau.19 D’Alençon’s personal chronicler, Perceval de Cagny, recorded that she was shot through her thigh by another arrow at Paris.20 In every case, she had her wounds treated in rudimentary fashion and returned to battle with greater ardor than ever, within a few hours if not immediately. At the Tourelles the French became disheartened and the English emboldened when they saw Joan, conspicuous with her plain but shining armor and large banner, hit with the arrow and evacuated from the field. But when both sides saw Joan return to the front ranks a short time later with her wound stanched, waving her banner with her good arm and shouting for one more effort, the morale of the French soared while that of the English plummeted. Dunois testified that the moment she returned to the fight "the English trembled with terror; and the King’s men regained their courage."21 De Coutes said that the English "were terrified... In that last attack there was no defense put up by the English side."22
Intangible moral factors are of consummate importance on the field of battle. The soldiers’ will to fight, or the lack of it, often means more than numbers, weapons technology, or tactics in determining the outcome. Joan’s moral impact in favor of the French and against the English was immediate and blatant. Her effect on the soldiers who could see her or hear her was obvious.
Equally obvious and equally important was Joan’s moral impact on the French people of all social classes and both sexes. Wittingly or unwittingly, she helped to create a French national consciousness that had never existed before. To her own discomfort, during her lifetime and at the same time as her military victories, she became the center of a personality cult that embraced all France.
Joan was a low-born peasant who rose, apparently with God’s help, to the heights of power and prestige in the space of a few weeks, thereby making a mockery of centuries of ingrained notions of feudal privilege. As such, she instantly became the focus of frenzied adoration by the masses of her fellow peasants. The chronicle known as the Journal of the Siege of Orléans, written within a generation of Joan’s death, asserts that when she first entered the city of Orléans to begin her campaign to break the English siege, the people were "making such rejoicing as if they had seen God descend in their midst;. And there was marvelous crowd and press to touch her or the horse upon which she was."23 At Joan’s retrial, Jean Barbin, a Doctor in Law serving the French Parliament, quoted a Master Pierre de Versailles who said that when Joan visited the town of Loches "the people seized her horse by the legs and kissed her hands and feet."24 A noblewoman named Marguerite La Touroulde testified that when Joan had been her house guest for a period of several days, "women came to my house.. . bringing holy objects for her to touch."25
Joan, commendably, was made uncomfortable by this sort of adulation as these same pieces of testimony make clear. De Versailles said that Joan told him that she was counting on God to help her protect herself from being made into an idol.26 La Touroulde gave an indication of Joan’s sharp wit when she said that Joan had told her with a laugh, referring to the holy objects brought by the women, "You touch them! They will be as good from your touch as from mine."27 Joan’s displeasure at her own personality cult notwithstanding, it was a fact that during her public career of a year and a month, ordinary people all over France revered her as a living saint and priests said masses in he