Autobiography of Mark Twain (41 page)

3. And now, aged seventeen, she was made Commander-in-Chief, with a royal prince and the veteran generals of France
for
_^
as
_^
subordinates
;and a
t the head of the first army she had ever seen, she marched
to
_^
against
_^
Orleans, carried the commanding fortresses of the enemy by storm in three desperate assaults, and in ten days raised a siege which had defied the might of France for seven months.

Rather unkind to French feelings
—
referring to Moscow
.

4. After a tedious and insane delay caused by the King’s instability of character and the treacherous counsels of his ministers, she got permission to take the field again. She took Jargeau by storm; then Meung; she forced Beaugency to surrender; then—in the open field—she won the memorable victory of Patay against Talbot the English lion,
and broke
_^
so breaking
_^
the back of the Hundred Years’ War. It was a campaign
which
_^
that
_^
cost but seven weeks of
time
_^
effort
_^
; yet the political results would have been cheap if the time expended had been fifty years. Patay, that unsung and long-forgotten battle,
was the Moscow
_^
led directly to the downfall
_^
of the English power in France; from the blow struck that day it was destined never to recover. It was the beginning of the end of an alien
dominion
_^
domination
_^
which had ridden France intermittently for three hundred years.

5. Then followed the great campaign of the Loire, the capture of Troyes by assault,
_^
the surrendering of towns and fortresses
_^
and the triumphal march
past
surrendering towns and fortresses,
to Rheims, where
Joan
_^
in the Cathedral, Jeanne, put the crown upon
her King’s head in the Cathedral,
_^
the head of her King
_^
amid wild public rejoicings, and with her old peasant father
_^
and brother
_^
there to see these things and believe
his
_^
their
_^
eyes if
he
_^
they
_^
could. She had restored the crown and the lost sovereignty: the King was grateful for once in his shabby
poor
life, and asked her to name her
_^
own
_^
reward and
have
_^
take
_^
it. She asked
for
nothing for herself, but begged that the taxes of her native village might be remitted forever
T
he prayer was granted, and the promise kept for three hundred and sixty years.
Then it
_^
It
_^
was
_^
then
_^
broken, and
_^
it
_^
remains broken to-day. France was very poor
then
_^
at that time
_^
, she is very rich now; but she has been collecting those taxes for more than a hundred years.

6.
Joan
_^
Jeanne
_^
asked one other favour:
that now that
_^
Now
_^
her mission
was
_^
being
_^
fulfilled she
might
_^
begged to
_^
be allowed to
go back
_^
return
_^
to her village and take up her humble life again with her mother and the friends of her childhood; for she had no pleasure in the cruelties of war,
and
_^
whereas
_^
the sight of blood and suffering wrung her heart. Sometimes in battle she did not draw her sword, lest in the splendid madness of the onset she might forget herself and take an enemy’s life
with it.
In the Rouen Trials, one of her quaintest speeches
coming from the gentle and girlish source it did
was her naive remark that she had “never killed any one.” Her prayer for leave to
go back
_^
return
_^
to the rest and peace of her village home was
_^
, however,
_^
not granted.