n that the English inadvertently helped Joan at Orléans by the faulty way in which they deployed their forces. The English grouped their men at Orléans in small packets in forts -- the Augustins, the Tourelles, and others -- that were spread around the city out of supporting distance of each other. This left the English vulnerable to a French counteroffensive. The English took up such a deployment simply because they did not have enough men to set up a continuous line of troops completely encircling the city. They were willing to employ this less than ideal method because of their confidence in their own invincibility and their confidence that the French lacked the will to come out of the walls of Orléans to fight them.103 The French high command and soldiers at Orléans could have done what Joan did at any time before she arrived but, as the English knew, they lacked the will to do so. Joan had to give the French the will to fight before they did make the attacks that they always could have made.
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Genius, force of will, the ability to make thousands of soldiers follow her out of love, fortuitous circumstances -- all these things enabled Joan to do what she did. And yet. .. Every analysis of Joan must end with the admission that there is something about her that will be forever beyond our grasp. The facts of what she did seem beyond dispute. The how of what she did can never quite be adequately explained in purely rational terms. It is insurmountably true that there are some things about her that we can contemplate in awe, but that we cannot fully comprehend. She is the greatest "go figure" case in all of history. As Katherine Anne Porter wrote in her foreword to Régine Pernoud’s The Retrial of loan of Arc, "She is unique, and a mystery, and as you read about her and think about her life, you are led up to a threshold beyond which she eludes you, you cannot cross it"104 Whether Joan’s leadership role was that of an inspirational mascot or a true battle commander or something in between, whether she was propelled by her own will and genius or was in fact guided by some force beyond material explanation, one thing will always be clear. Joan was exactly what she needed to be to bring her people victory.
1. It is a useful device to begin an essay on Joan by listing all the various ways that different people with different agendas have chosen to view her over the centuries. Though our lists are different, Kelly DeVries uses this technique to good effect to open his essay "A Woman as Leader of Men: Joan of Arc’s Military Career," in Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Charles T. Wood (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1996), 3.
2. A summary of Joan’s career can be distilled from any of the dozensof available biographies of her. Three of the best are: Frances Gies, Joan of Arc: The Legend and theReality (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), Edward A. Lucie-Smith, Joan of Arc (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), and V. Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc, revised edition(London: Michael Joseph LTD, 1948).
3. Edouard Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans. W. B. Wells (New York: Capricorn Books, 1%5), 283.
4. Gies, 83-88.
5. Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin, Joan of Arc: Her Story trans. and revised by Jeremy duQuesnay Adams (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), (hereafter cited as "Pernoud and Clin"), 139 and 157.
6. Régine Pernoud, The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence at the Trial For Her Rehabilitation, 1450-1456, trans. J. M. Cohen, with a foreword by Katherine Anne Porter (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), (hereafter cited as "Pernoud, Retrial"), 85, 90, 118-119, 134-135, 142-143, 154, and 159-160.
7. Ibid., 123.
8. Nadia Margolis, Joan of Arc in History, Literature, and Film (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990), 69-70.
9. Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc By Herself and Her Witnesses trans. Edward Hyams (New York: Scarborough House, 1982), (hereafter cited as "Pernoud, Witnesses"), 112.
10. Ibid., 100; and Pernoud, Retrial, 118.
11. Pernoud, Retrial, 107, 132, 142, 158-159, and 163-164; Sackvi