United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A stronger wind rising out of the west now blew towards us with a sweet burden of scent from flowers and grass, fragrant upon our faces. So we waited, our hearts beating with hope and fear. Then I, whose eyes were keen, saw, blown usward from Margny, a cloud of flying dust, that in Scotland we call stour.
"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.
Like most younger sons, John de Ligny was badly off, and the temptation of the English reward in exchange for his prisoner, whose escape he greatly feared, overtopped any scruples he may have felt in receiving this blood-money. The historian Monstrelet tells us he was present when Joan of Arc was brought into the Burgundian camp, at Margny, and before the Duke of Burgundy.
On the next day, being May the twentieth, he came to me again, with a wan face. "Burgundians are in Claroix," said he, "across the river, and yet others, with Jean de Luxembourg, at Margny, scarce a mile away, at the end of the causeway through the water meadows, beyond the bridge.
"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.
She waved her hand to Guillaume de Flavy, who sat on his horse by the gate of the boulevard, and so, having arrayed her men, she cried, "Tirez avant!" and made towards Margny, the foot-soldiers following with what speed they might, while I and Father Francois, and others in the chamber, strained our eyes after them.
Certain of these men also bore spades and picks and other tools; for the Maid, as I deem, intended no more than to take and hold Margny, that so she might cut the Burgundians in twain, and sunder from them the English at Venette.
There is no word nor deed of the Maid's, in captivity as in victory, that is not to her immortal honour. But the sight of the wickedness of men, their cowardice, cruelty, greed, ingratitude, is not a thing to linger over. The Maid, as a prisoner of the Bastard of Wandomme, himself a man of Jean de Luxembourg, was led to Margny, where the Burgundian and English captains rejoiced over her.
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.
But though the foremost runaways thus won their lives, we saw others roll over and fall as they ran, tumbling down the sides of the causeway, and why they fell I knew not. But now, in the midst of the causeway, between us and Margny, our flying horsemen rallied under the Maiden's banner, and for the last time of all, I heard that clear girl's voice crying, "Tirez en avant! en avant!"
Word Of The Day