In The Retrial of Joan
of Arc, we read about how Joan had to quickly get dressed for war when, she
found out that an attack was being carried out without her knowledge. Joan had her hostess and her hostess’
daughter arm her while she sent her page to get her horse. But we know that plate armor came in many
pieces so this may have been difficult for those who were not accustomed to war
to prepare. Either Joan was a good at
instructing her hostess on how to dress in armor, God was helping Joan in
another instance guiding the hostess’ hands.
For when her page returned Joan almost left without her standard, or it
took the page a while to harness the horse.
No doubt Joan did not like being helpless to the French
while precious time was wasted preparing her for war but nevertheless Joan
waited until she was armed. She even reprimanded her page before "suiting up," "Oh, wicked boy, why did you not tell me French blood is being spilled?" (176, Pernoud). The Joan sent him to fetch her horse while Joan had her hostess help with her armor. Which raises
the question how long did it take to put on armor? It surely couldn’t take too long for even
inexperienced peasants could equip her in full armor within the same time it
took her page to fetch her horse and harness it. Of course we do not hear if the horse was
easy to fetch and how far away the horse was either. The horse was probably close but sometimes,
especially in the morning and when frightened, horses are not easy to
handle. So it could be possible that it
took the page a while to catch the horse which could also explain why Joan had
the page hand her the standard through a window before she galloped off.
It would be nice to know the minute by minute report on what
was happening at this point. Arming Joan
would have taken awhile but if the horse was frightened it could have taken a
while for the page to harness the horse.
Knowing all these things could help historians understand why Joan did
not even want to waste time for her standard.
Works Cited:
Pernoud, Régine. The Retrial of Joan of Arc. N.p.: Harcourt, Brace, 1955. Print.
Interesting post and a mind boggler.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of unanswered questions from the experience of her help to the time frame this all took place. Maybe if the retrial started a few years sooner, we may have gotten a more clear answer. Not just for this situation but for other areas in Joan's life that are not too clear.