We know not what pressure, apart from Joan's own burning words (for she never ceased her appeals), was brought to bear on Robert de Baudricourt. At last, and most reluctantly, he yielded; gave consent that Joan should seek the Dauphin at Chinon; gave her even, it would seem, a letter to the prince, testifying some belief in her supernatural powers. The good people of Vaucouleurs put together their pennies and bought a suit of clothes for her; man's clothes, befitting one who was undertaking a man's work. Thus equipped, on the twelfth of February, 1429, Joan of Arc rode out of Vaucouleurs to save France. Beside her, on either side, rode her two faithful squires, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulangy, with their servants; two more men, "Richard the Archer," and Colet de Vienne, a king's messenger, joined the little band; in all six rode out of the Gate of France. At the gate, Robert de Baudricourt, moved for once, we may hope, out of his boisterous sardonic humor, gave the Maid a sword; and as the adventurers passed on, he cried after them: "_Allez! et vienne que pourra!_" ("Go! and come what come may!") What awaited the Maid in "white Chinon by the blue Vienne?" Let us see! Pantagruel suggests that the city of the Plantagenets was founded by Cain, and named for him, but this theory is more literary than accurate. A strong little city, Chinon, from the days when Fulk Nerra, the Black Falcon, rode on his wild raids and built his crescent line of fortresses from Anjou to Amboise, cutting the "monstrous cantle" of Touraine from the domains of Blois. A fierce little city, looking down on furious quarrels of Angevin princes, French and so-called English. Here died Henry II. of England, men said of a broken heart, muttering, "Shame, shame, on a conquered king!" Here came Richard Yea-and-Nay to look on his father's body, which men said streamed blood as he approached it. Here John Lackland lived for a while with his French wife, no more beloved than he was elsewhere. Here, on Midsummer Eve, 1305, Philip Augustus entered victorious, and soon after English rule in France came to an end for the time. Here, in 1309, Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was tried by a council of cardinals, set on by Charles of Valois, first of the name, who was in sore need of money and coveted the rich possessions of the great order. Master and many knights were burned (in Paris, not in the place of their trial) and the Order was dissolved. More important, it may be, in the long sequence of human events, than any of these matters, here in 1483, was born _Maître_ François Rabelais, whose statue still looks kindly down on the city of his love. "_Ville insigne, ville noble, ville antique, voire première du monde_,"[27] he calls it. He remains king of it, however many crowned or uncrowned puppets may have flaunted it there by the blue Vienne.