The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to WaterlooCreasy, Edward Shepherd, Sir
History
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo
Creasy, Edward Shepherd, Sir
Battles
In the meanwhile, the English in the bulwark of the Tourelles, had
repulsed the oft-renewed efforts of the French to scale the wall.
Dunois, who commanded the assailants, was at first discouraged, and
gave orders for a retreat to be sounded, Joan sent for him and the other
generals, and implored them not to despair. "By my God" she said to
them, "you shall soon enter in there. Do not doubt it. When you see my
banner wave again up to the wall, to your arms again! the fort is yours.
For the present rest a little, and take some food and drink. They did
so," says the old chronicler of the siege, [Journal du Siege d'Orleans,
p. 87.] "for they obeyed her marvellously." The faintness caused by
her wound had now passed off, and she headed the French in another
rush against the bulwark. The English, who had thought her slain, were
alarmed at her reappearance; while the French pressed furiously and
fanatically forward. A Biscayan soldier was carrying Joan's banner.
She had told the troops that directly the banner touched the wall they
should enter. The Biscayan waved the banner forward from the edge of
the fosse, and touched the wall with it; and then all the French host
swarmed madly up the ladders that now were raised in all directions
against the English fort. At this crisis, the efforts of the English
garrison were distracted by an attach from another quarter. The French
troops who had been left in Orleans, had placed some planks over the
broken part of the bridge, and advanced across them to the assault of
the Tourelles on the northern side. Gladsdale resolved to withdraw his
men from the landward bulwark, and concentrate his whole force in
the Tourelles themselves. He was passing for this purpose across the
drawbridge that connected the Tourelles and the tete-du-pont, when Joan,
who by this time had scaled the wall of the bulwark, called out to him,
"Surrender, surrender to the King of Heaven. Ah, Glacidas, you have
foully wronged me with your words, but I have great pity on your soul
and the souls of your men." The Englishman, disdainful of her summons,
was striding on across the drawbridge, when a cannon-shot from the town
carried it away, and Gladsdale perished in the water that ran beneath.
After his fall, the remnant of the English abandoned all further
resistance. Three hundred of them had been killed in the battle, and two
hundred were made prisoners.
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