oin 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 at Orléans -- and after the arrow was pulled out, returned to the forefront of the fight with redoubled ardor. Hundreds of men saw her take that arrow and hundreds of men saw her come back, a bloodstain at her shoulder, her good arm waving her banner, her voice carrying over the din, shouting for one more assault. At that sublime moment she became forever their Maid and they became forever her soldiers. There is a still extant chronicle called The Life of Guillaume de Gamaches. De Gamaches was a French knight who served in the defense of Orléans. According to The Life, when Joan first arrived in the city, de Gamaches called her "a little saucebox of low birth" in her presence and threatened to furl his banner rather than follow her. Mere days later, at the moment Joan was wounded, de Gamaches was one of the first to rush to her and stand over her to protect her. Speaking a deep apology, he offered his horse to carry her to safety.92 Joan had what it took to make the most haughty warrior nobleman accept and then admire her.
After a military female has displayed the strength and courage to win the acceptance and respect of her male peers, the fact that she is a female may become an asset rather than a liability to her. When a military female has shown herself good enough to be "one of the guys," and, if she retains a spirited, cheery, yet compassionate, sort of feminine charm, the "guys" may find the juxtaposition of her masculine and feminine traits all the more endearing. Multiple pieces of evidence demonstrate that Joan had precisely that kind of charm.
A French government official named Perceval de Boulainvilliers, who met Joan, wrote a letter describing her to the Duke of Milan. The letter described the mixture of masculine and feminine traits that fascinated and charmed de Boulainvilliers and innumerable other men who knew Joan:
This Maid has a certain elegance. She has a virile bearing, speaks little, shows an admirable prudence in all her words. She has a pretty, woman’s voice, eats little, drinks very lit