my had arrived at the city on the side of the Loire River that was away from the main English forces. Joan had been hot to launch an immediate attack on the English and she felt that Dunois had deceived her by having her army approach from the direction it did. Dunois recalled that Joan immediately burst out at him "In God’s name, the counsel of the Lord God is wiser and surer than yours. You thought you had deceived me but it is you who have deceived yourselves, for I am bringing you better help than ever you got from any soldier or any city. It is the help of the King of Heaven."38 As was to become commonplace, Joan ascribed the source of her strategic and tactical insights to divine guidance. Whether Joan was sincere in this or merely used the claim of divine guidance as a means to win the credibility that an illiterate peasant girl could never command on her own is something that must forever remain unknown.
After this rough beginning Joan accompanied Dunois back into Orléans on April 29. The people of the city gave her the rapturous welcome previously described. Over the next few days, she and Dunois quickly overcame any ill-feeling between them and established a close relationship that would last for as long as they made war together.
Dunois continued his testimony saying that as eager as Joan was to get into the fight, she still insisted on sending a letter of ultimatum to the English, demanding that they lift their siege or suffer the consequences.39 Joan sent the English another ultimatum on May 5 which Pasquerel quoted in his testimony for the retrial. She declared that "the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Maid, to leave your fortresses and return to your country, and if you do not so I shall make an uproar that will be perpetually remembered" (emphasis mine).40 Joan took this tone in many of the pieces of correspondence that she dictated to scribes and had sent to the powerful, both friends and enemies. Obviously, she had no doubts about the power of her own authority, even if, early in the game at Orléans, her friends and enemies were still trying to figure out what to make of her.
Joan’s activities over the next few days at Orléans can be gleaned from various pieces of retrial testimony and the chronicles. She spent May 2, 1429, riding her horse around the city to make a personal survey of the English positions -- just as any responsible commander would.41 As described by d’Aulon and de Coutes in their testimony, Joan participated in her first battle on May 4. Astride her horse, banner in hand, she rallied the French troops in their successful attack to capture the English fort at Saint Loup, just to the east of Orléans. That Joan had not yet been fully integrated into the command system is clear from the fact that this attack was initiated without her knowledge. She had to hasten from her living quarters, where she had been taking a nap, to join the attack after it had already started.42 Pasquerel testified that Joan commanded that there be no fighting on May 5 because it was the Feast of the Ascension and that she was obeyed.43
The chronicler Jean Chartier claimed that also on May 5, the French military leadership in Orléans, headed by Dunois, held a council of war without inviting Joan. They decided to launch a diversionary attack on one side of the Loire River and a main attack on the other. They agreed that Joan would go with the diversionary attack but not be told of the main attack. Then they sent for Joan to tell her only as much of the plan as they wanted her to know. According to Chartier, Joan heard them out and then, intuitively figuring out that she was being used, went into one of her classic rages. Dunois pacified her by revealing the whole plan to her44 From that moment, it became standard procedure that Joan would always be at the forefront of whatever was the main attack on any given day of battle. The day after this stormy war council, May 6, Joan and Captain La Hire had the leading parts in the French assault that took the English fort of the Augustins. 45
May 