an guilty and condemned her to her death at the stake, The complete original transcript of her trial, including her own account of her life, still exists, in good condition, at French archives in our own time. In 1455, twenty-four years after Joan’s death, the Church reopened her case by giving her a posthumous retrial. In various inquiries preceding and during the retrial, 115 witnesses who had known Joan answered questions about her.5 The court recorded their testimonies in hundreds of pages of writing that we have in our possession, fully intact, today. The witnesses included people from all backgrounds including peasants who were childhood friends of Joan, lords and ladies who had known her at the royal court, and, most importantly for the present purpose, soldiers who had gone into battle at Joan’s side. The retrial, besides nullifying Joan’s conviction for heresy and opening the way for her eventual canonization, provided scholars of subsequent generations with more firsthand source material about Joan than exists for almost any other historical figure who lived prior to her time. Perhaps less reliable than the transcripts of the retrial, but still valuable, are the various chronicles that were penned during or shortly after Joan’s lifetime and which are still in existence in various archives.
The military men who dealt intimately with Joan on a daily basis during her campaigns and whose reminiscences were recorded in the documents of the retrial were several. The two highest-ranking of them were Jean, Count of Dunois, (the illegitimate half-brother of the Duke of Orléans, hence titled "Bastard of Orléans") and Jean, Duke of Alençon, a kinsman of the Dauphin and eventual (thanks to Joan) King of France, Charles VII. In the vague and imprecise military organization of late medieval France, Dunois and d’Alençon may be understood as Joan’s co-commanders of the army at war. Other witnesses were members of Joan’s personal entourage. Jean d’Aulon was her squire while young Louis de Coutes was her page. Jean Pasquerel was her personal priest and confessor. Two other soldiers who testified about Joan were close companions of hers from the very beginning of her quest. They were the knight Jean de Metz (also known as Jean de Novelonpont) and the squire Bertrand de Poulengy.6
The firsthand sources make clear that the most obvious and stunning impact of Joan’s leadership was the way in which her charismatic personality hauled the morale of the often-defeated French army up from the pit of cynicism and despair to a fevered high of renewed enthusiasm and collective ardor for battle. Conversely, once her reputation for bringing victory to the French became established, her presence infected the heretofore invincible English with doubt and fear. Dunois testified as follows about Joan’s impact from the moment she delivered her ultimatum to the English army besieging Orleans:
... and I swear that the English, two hundred of whom had previously been sufficient to rout eight hundred or a thousand of the royal army, from that moment became so powerless that four or five hundred soldiers and men at arms could fight against what seemed to be the whole force of England.7
Jean de Wavrin was a Burgundian officer who fought against Joan as an ally of the English. He wrote a chronicle titled Recueil de chroniques et anchiennes istoires de Ia Grant Bretaigne a present nominee Engleterre.8 He stated that "By renown of Joan the Maid, the courage of the English was much impaired and fallen off. They saw... their fortune turn its wheel sharply against them. . by the undertakings of the Maid..."9 Two high-ranking English military leaders, the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Gloucester, felt compelled to issue written orders disciplining English soldiers who had deserted out of terror of Joan’s apparent -— to them —— use of sorcery.’10
Joan had to start with the little things and work up to the big things in her drive to restore the fighting spirit of the French. When she first joined the army, she did not have any official rank or authority. Though