Then into every part of the camp this girl of seventeen penetrated. Armies of the time were full of brutal license, and gambling, blasphemy, and other vices were prevalent. Wickedness of all kinds was the rule. But rude, rough, and lawless though the soldiers were they had their adorations, and reverenced holy things. To them the fair young girl was a saint. They adored her, and talked freely among themselves about her habits of life. She was good to the poor, she confessed daily, oftentimes she heard mass three times a day; there was too a grace of purity about her such as one might bear who descended from Heaven. So when Jeanne declared that the war was a Holy War, and that all who followed her must go clean of sin, gambling and dicing ceased, and men went to be shrived daily. La Hire, too, fierce ruffian though he was, gave up swearing, though he begged so hard to leave him something to swear by that she, having a sense of humor, left him his baton. All now being in readiness on the morning of the twenty-eighth of April the army started on its march to Orléans. The day was bright and beautiful, ideal for the beginning of such an enterprise. The brilliant sunlight flooded the fields and meadows gay with wild flowers. At the head of the army marched a long procession of priests bearing crosses, swinging censers, with holy banners as on a pilgrimage, and chanting the "Veni Creator"; the grave and solemn music of the church accompanied strangely by the fanfares and bugle notes of the army. Following these came Jeanne on a great white horse that the King had given her. She was clad in white armour inlaid with silver--all shining like her own Saint Michael himself. A radiance of whiteness and glory under the sun--her uncovered head rising in full relief from the dazzling breastplate and gorget. With her rode D'Aulon, her squire, following immediately after were her own faithful knights, her brothers, confessor, and pages; while behind them stretched the main body of the army, a forest of glittering spears, the divisions commanded by the respective generals. Then came the long train of carts and cattle to which the army formed an escort. God's Maid indeed seemed Jeanne as she rode, and with hearts beating high with hope the citizens of the town blessed her as she passed up the road on the way to Orléans. Blois was thirty miles from the besieged city, on the right bank of the River Loire, on which side Orléans was also situated. It was Jeanne's plan, in accordance with directions from Her Voices, which told her to go forward boldly, nothing doubting, to go direct to Orléans by the road on the right bank, entering the city by its western gate, past the English fortifications. But, knowing nothing of the country, she left the guidance of the army to her captains, who deceived her.