hey would eliminate the remaining English forces along the Loire River and then drive on Rheims with the Dauphin in tow. This time, d’Alençon would hold the ultimate responsibility of command in the field. However, the Journal of the Siege of Orléans asserts that the Dauphin "placed the Maid in [d’Alençon’s] company, commanding him expressly to behave and act entirely at her advice."54 Regardless of how true this statement is, d’Alençon and Joan made a happy and brilliantly successful team. From June 12 to June 18, 1429, they stormed the English positions at Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency and annihilated a large English army at the open-field Battle of Patay.55
D’Alençon testified that at Jargeau, Joan continued in her usual role of being out front, waving her banner and shouting encouragement to the soldiers -- unfazed by a thrown stone that glanced off her helmet.56 At Patay, however, Joan was angry that the captains compelled her to march with the rearguard.57 She did not arrive on the battlefield until the fight was almost over.
There is no way to gauge to what extent, if any, Joan was involved in the tactical details of arranging the troops on the ground in these struggles -- but her influence over general strategy was paramount. Perceval de Cagny, d’Alençon’s personal chronicler and a witness to many of these events, recorded that on June 14, Joan called d’Alençon to her side. She then told him ‘Tomorrow after dinner I want to go to Meung. Have the company ready to leave at that hour."58 D’Alençon did as he was told, and cheerfully, so far as can be determined. As the crisis at Patay approached, the French high command, as usual, was in a dither about what to do. As usual, they consulted Joan, and as usual she carried them along with her judgment to take the most aggressive course and seek battle. Also as usual, she expressed her opinion in rhetorical flights. D’Alençon testified that she cried out "In God’s name, we must fight them. If they were hanging in the clouds we should get them. For God has sent them to us for us to punish them."59 Dunois recalled that she loudly said "See that you all have good spurs!" When she was asked if this meant that they should retreat, she hotly replied no, they would need good spurs to chase after a fleeing enemy.60 Their spines thus stiffened, the French went on to win their greatest victory to that point in the war.
After the decisive triumph at Patay, it was time to get Charles to Rheims.61 Joan and her co-commanders set out at the head of the army. The Dauphin Charles became a prisoner of the success of his own subjects. The crisis of the march on Rheims came when the city of Troyes closed its gates in the faces of Joan, the Dauphin, and the army. Troyes became the apogee of Joan’s career as a true battle commander. Troyes was strongly defended and the supply situation of the army was tenuous. After several days of dithering by Charles, Joan once more had to burst into a royal war council to demand immediate aggressive action. "For in God’s name, within three days I will lead you into the city of Troyes by love, force, courage,... "was how Dunois recalled her exhortation to battle. ‘Then," continued Dunois,
the Maid immediately went over with the King’s army, and pitched her camp alongside the moat. The positions she took up were so admirable that even the two or three most famous and experienced captains would not have made as good a plan of battle. Indeed, the work that she did that night was so effective that the next day the bishop and citizens of the city offered their allegiance to the King, in fear and trembling.62
Jean Chartier claimed in his chronicle that Joan took charge of placing the big cannons to aim them at the walls.63 Simon Charles, that observant royal court bureaucrat, was present at these events. He testified that it was Joan who gave the orders to make bundles of tree branches with which to fill in the moat and Joan who gave the order to commence the attack -- then the city surrendered in terror without a fight.64 This is the clearest case we have to show