tle wine; she enjoys riding a horse and takes pleasure in fine arms, greatly likes the company of noble fighting men, detests numerous assemblies and meetings, readily sheds copious tears, has a cheerful face; she bears the weight and burden of armor incredibly well, to such a point that she has remained fully armed during six days and nights.93
Before battle, Joan was ferocious in councils of war as she constantly demanded that the army attack. During battle, she was ferocious as she placed herself at the head of every assault, heedless of danger and her own wounds. But after battle, the little girl in her came out as she spent as much time weeping over the English dead as the French. In the aftermath of the Battle of Patay, she even held a dying English soldier’s head in her lap to hear his confession and comfort him as he died.94 To the warrior men of her inner circle, the cycle of her conflicting moods must have been exhausting -- and endearing. She was strong and fierce when her men wanted a warrior comrade who was strong and fierce. She was gentle and kind when they most needed to be near a woman who was gentle and kind.
Frances Gies, in her Joan of Arc: The Legend and the Reality, further describes the natural charm that drew fighting men to the Maid. Gies asserts that low-born peasant girl Joan had the cheerful boldness to address the great noble d’Alençon with the familiar "tu" form rather than the formal "vous" form as would have been appropriate. Joan also, says Gies, kept up a "playful" rapport with d’Alençon, calling him her "gentle duke" and "pretty duke."95 D’Alençon, by his own testimony, was enraptured by Joan from the moment he met her and her informal playfulness must have been part of what charmed him. The squire Gobert Thibault testified that when he first met Joan, "she tapped me on the shoulder, saying that she would like to have a few men of my sort with her."96 It is easy to visualize Thibault blushing crimson -- and being charmed out of his boots. In his often-cited letter to his mother, Guy de Laval gushed in his adoring descriptions of Joan. He wrote, "I went to her lodging to see her; she sent for wine and told me that she would soon have me drinking in Paris. This seems a thing divine by her deeds, and also from seeing and hearing her."97 Clearly, Joan was no somber, otherworldly little waif of a mystic. She had a bravado, a charm, a winning manner, that, combined with her proven strength and courage, made hardened fighting men adore her at the same time they respected her.
Joan’s female sexuality inevitably became part of the chemistry that drew men to her -- but in a way that was the opposite of the norm. Her squire d’Aulon helped her into her armor every day that she was in the field and it was he who dressed her wounds. He testified that he often saw her naked legs and breasts and that". . . she was a young girl, beautiful and shapely. ..’ D’Alençon said ". .. I slept with Joan and the soldiers ‘on the straw,’ and sometimes I saw Joan get ready for the night, and sometimes I looked at her breasts, which were beautiful." Yet -- all of Joan’s men -- Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, d’Alençon, d’Aulon, Thibault; the men who slept on the ground beside her and saw her in her lovely nakedness, were adamant that they never felt carnal lust for her. Thibault elaborated that while they sometimes felt a carnal urge for Joan, they "never dared give way to it.." They saw a saintly goodness in her and it was shame that prevented them from making advances on her. They felt an exalted pure love for her that they could not bear to sully with carnal words much less deeds.98
De Metz testified that though he slept on the ground right next to Joan he "was in such awe of her that I would not have dared go near her; and I tell you on my oath that I never had any desire or carnal feelings for her." Yet, only a little bit later in his testimony, he proclaimed "... I was on fire with what she said, and with a love for her which was, as I believe, a divine love." Jean Barbin testified that "The soldiers consid