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He had boats on the river to secure Joan's retreat if necessary. Joan swept through Margny, driving the Burgundians before her; the garrison of Clairoix came to their help; the battle was doubtful. Meanwhile the English came up; they could not have reached the Burgundians, to aid them, but some of the Maid's men, seeing the English standards, fled.
"The plan of the Maid was to make a sortie towards the evening, to attack Margny and afterwards Clairoix, and then at the opening of the Aronde valley to meet the Duke of Burgundy and his forces who were lodged there, and who would naturally come to the aid of his other troops when attacked.
On the other side extends a great meadow, nearly a mile broad, at the end of which the rising ground of Picardy rises suddenly like a wall, shutting in the horizon. The meadow is so low and so subject to floods that it is crossed by an ancient foot of the low hills. The Burgundians had one camp at Margny, another at Clairoix; the headquarters of the English were at Venette.
On the left, a mile and a half away, Father Francois showed me the church tower of Venette, where the English camped; to the right, a league off, was the tower of Clairoix; and at the end of a long raised causeway that ran from the bridge across the plain, because of the winter floods, I saw the tower and the village of Margny.
Then she turned at once to the right and plunged into the plan and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving; then there was heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each other backward turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the one, then to the other. Now all of a sudden there was a panic on our side. Some say one thing caused it, some another.
A force of Burgundians occupied Marguy; another was camped at Clairoix, a couple of miles above the raised road; and a body of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half below it. A kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement, you see; the causeway the arrow, the boulevard at the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette at one end of the bow, Clairoix at the other.
Her Voices told her nothing, good or bad, she says. The Burgundians were encamped at Margny and at Clairoix, the English at Venette, villages on a plain near the walls. Joan crossed the bridge on a grey charger, in a surcoat of crimson silk, rode through the redoubt beyond the bridge, and attacked the Burgundians. Flavy in the town was to prevent the English from attacking her in the rear.
Now as the night was not far off, then at nightfall would the English be in sore straits, as not knowing the country and the country roads, and not having the power to join them of Burgundy at Clairoix. This, one told me afterwards, was the device of the Maid.
"The action began well: the garrison of Margny yielded in the twinkling of an eye. That of Clairoix rushing to the support of their brothers in arms was repulsed, then in its turn repulsed the French; and three times this alternative of advance and retreat took place on the flat ground of the meadow without serious injury to either party.
Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway against Marguy, carry it by assault, then turn swiftly upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture that camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be ready for heavy work, for the Duke of Burgundy lay behind Clairoix with a reserve.
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