Joan of Arc Prologue

Joan of Arc by Caster Helen prologue the field of blood the 25th of October 1415 it was the Day of Victory first light dragged cold and Soden over a camp of exhausted men exhausted from unpredictable weeks of forced March parrying the enemy's Maneuvers along the banks of the river s or moving at speed to this earth rendevu exhausted from A fear-filled Day With the Enemy in sight waiting for a battle that had not come before Sundown exhausted now from a wet night bivaak in the fields or billeted nearby with the terrified villagers of train court and a zenc court exhausted but expectant this was the Feast of saints Crispen and chrispian brothers who had spread the gospel at swasan more than a millennium before Holy Martyrs they had given their lives for their part in making this land and the eldest daughter of the church ruled by Leroy trace cranne the most Christian King but their blessed sacrifice was not the only reason to be certain of Heaven's favor as aching feet sank into liquid Earth these tired men knew that the enemy was suffering more across the fields near the Hamlet of Mason cell within earshot though somehow they had been almost silent in the rain lashed Darkness stood an English army steeped in mud it had seeped into bowels as well as baggage in the two months since the Invaders had set foot on the coast of Normandy the bloody flux dissenter had been the price of the success they had found at the Port of harfler they had left an English flag flying there and an occupying Garrison and hundreds of sick and dying soldiers waiting for ships to take them home the troops Still Standing had marched here under the command of their grim and purposeful King he carried the scars of battle from an arrowhead embedded inches deep in his face when he was just 16 and scars to of a different kind from his father's sin in taking the English crown from his cousin Richard II now here in France retribution was almost upon him the weary men preparing to fight this presumptuous Intruder were not led by their own Monarch almost six decades earlier amid the chaos of another Battlefield near pias and despite the diversionary presence of 19 identically dressed doppelgangers the French King's Royal grandfather had been captured by the English four years had passed before his freedom could be secured an unhappy interlude during which his kingdom had been convulsed by political crisis it was hardly surprising that his son and successor had declined to lead France's Army in person instead preferring to direct military operations from a safe distance behind the front line but even that was not an option available to the present King Charles I 6 he had been riding with his troops on the Fateful August day day back in 1392 when under a blazing sun he had exploded into psychotic violence killing five of his attendants before he was overpowered his eyes rolling in his head and his sword broken in his hand his body soon recovered from this horrifying seizure but his mind remained fragile at times as the years went by he was calm lucid and rational but he could lapse without warning into episodes of derangement and paranoia in which he believed that his wife and children Were Strangers that he was not called Charles that he was not King even that he was made of glass and might shatter into a thousand pieces so he could not lead his people to war but this troubled man with his wide uneasy gaze and fair hair ConEd forward to disguise his baldness was still lean France's well-beloved King and luckily there were many Royal princes to lead his people for him not however his eldest son the 18-year-old dolin Lewis an overweight handsome boy with some political noose and many dazzling outfits but by no means a warrior and too precious to the Kingdom's future to be put at risk not his uncle the Duke of Barry at almost 75 the Eminence GES of the regime but too old to bear arms and not his cousin the Duke of burgundy for reasons that were painful even to articulate let alone explain at 44 John of burgundy had in abundance the military capability that the king so clearly lacked Jean sanss pure they had called him for his commanding part in an earlier battle John The Fearless the difficulty then was not personal but political his father The Old Duke had dominated the government of France until his death in 1404 with his brother of Barry Philip of burgundy had seized the responsibilities and the lavish rewards of ruled during the minority of their Royal nephew in the 1380s and his Madness thereafter when Duke philli died son of burgundy expected to inherit his place at the king's right hand but he found himself thwarted by the king's Vain and ambitious brother Lewis Duke of oron who had spent years chafing under his uncle's yoke and was determined now to snatch the Reigns of power for himself for three years the conflict between the cousins of oron and burgundy smoldered Lewis of oron chose as his badge the threatening emblem of a wooden Club John of burgundy's arch response was to adopt the device of a carp 's plane a tool with which an orl on East cudel might be smoothly whittel away he was so taken with the conceit that soon his planes were everywhere embroidered on his robes engraved on his armor and fashioned in diamond and crusted gold and silver complete with golden wood shavings to be distributed to his servants and supporters his assault on oron's control of government was equally thoroughgoing he set himself up as the champion of the people against Oran taxes and brought the kingdom to the brink of Civil War before an uneasy peace was brokered satisfying no one and settling nothing and then in 1407 John of burgundy decided that the time had come to put the blade of his plane to more than metaphorical use on the evening of the 23rd of November Lewis of Orlon was in Paris returning from a visit to the queen with whom he shared oversight of the incapacitated King along a street in the east of the city known as the Vel du Temple the torch is held by his attendants through pools of light onto the cobbles but the Shadows were deep and their asals were upon them before they knew what was happening blows rained down so fast and so hard that the Duke's left hand was severed as he sought desperately to Shield himself from the onslaught within moments his skull was gaping and his brain spilled onto the ground and when news of this terrible murder was brought to the Royal Council it was clear that to the Duke of burgundy it came as no surprise if the Duke had believed that a single act of Ruth less aggression might cut the knot of dynastic ambition and personal rivalry that restrained him from his political Destiny he had been utterly mistaken instead he found himself wounded in the coils of a blood Feud the wife and young sons of Lewis of oron demanded Vengeance on his murderer John of burgundy admitted responsibility for the killing but claimed through his mouthpiece Jean ptite a theologian at the University of Paris who took four doged hours to read his formal defense of his Patron in the presence of the Royal Court that the assassination was not only Justified but meritorious because Orlon had been a tyrant and a traitor this piece of breathtaking casuistry combined with the armed troops at burgundy's side in the support of the Parisian populus was enough to win the Duke a pardon from the tattered and brittle remains of the regime and by the end of 1409 he had succeeded in enforcing a pantomime of reconciliation and in establishing his hold on king queen and government in Paris but in 1410 the opposition to his rule took threatening shape once more in a League formed at Gan on the lair 15-year-old Charles the new Duke of oron won the promise of military support from the Aging Duke of Barry and a powerful Alliance of other noblemen including Young oron's new father-in-law the forceful count of armanac who gave his name to this anti- Burgundian Confederacy by now John of burgundy who had once been named The Fearless lived so much in fear of the same bloody end he had devised for his rival that he built a magnificent new tower at his residence in Paris unblazed of course with his badge of the plane at the very top of which he slept each night under the careful watch of his personal bodyguard sides had been chosen and by the summer of 1411 armies were in the field Burgundian and armanac were terms now fraught with fear and loathing each called the other traitor trading lured accusations of Injustice corruption and brutality campaign followed truce and Truce followed campaign until in the summer of 1413 John of burgundy was finally unseated from the capital and the armeniac Lords took control of government without however bringing an end to the fighting one despondent Parisian keeping a journal to record each violent turn of Fortune's wheel concluded weily that the great all hated each other it might have seemed then in the summer of 14 15 that Henry V of England had picked a fine moment to invade the fractured Kingdom he claimed as his but that was to underestimate the proud Defiance of the princes of France both the Duke of burgundy and the armeniac Lords had been willing to solicit English help against their fellow countrymen for as long as England's King remained safely on the right side of the sea once he had dared to set sail for France however the blood Royal would unite in the Kingdom's defense though the port of harfler could not be relieved quickly enough to prevent its fall to the English Siege ult arms had been sounded across northern France as soon as Henry's Army had landed in Normandy by the 12th of October both the dolin Lewis and King Charles himself a compromised but still iconic figure had reached normandy's Capital Ruan there they stayed as Royal figureheads while their troops moved into the theater of war some shadowing the English army as it moved along the river s others mustering for the battle ahead the Lords in command of these men included Dukes of bourbon bar and alanh con counts among them Rich amont Vendome vont blant Marl rusi and euu and the Kingdom's foremost Military Officers the constable and Marshall of France the renowned soldiers Charles D Albret and Jee lre known as busot the Duke of burgundy had sent forces to join this imposing rendevu but had been requested not to come in person reassuringly wise decision by the Royal Council given his role in The Vicious conflict of the previous years his younger brothers though were ready to fight the count of never already in attendance and the Duke of Brent on his way the same policy of absence had originally been applied to burgundy sworn enemy Charles of oron but once it was clear that neither the king nor his son would be at or even near the battle a summon had belatedly been sent to the young Duke as their nearest male relative and rep representative so now in the watery light of early morning exhausted men prepared themselves confident in God's purpose they knew they numbered many more than the bedraggled English and they knew that honor and Glory were Theirs to win as battle lines were drawn some Lords and others seized the moment to embrace and exchange the kiss of Peace putting aside past division in the face of a present and greater enemy the Duke of burgundy was not there to join this rap Rosman but the regret would be all his the flower of French chivalry waited impatiently men and horses jostling into the great mass of the front ranks a steel clad host ready to Humble the English few time slowed as the pale sun rose higher suddenly an English cry went up and their banners began to move this would be the hour the French lines launched themselves across the land they had assembled to defend then the air shifted with a thrum and all at once the sky was dark Razer tipped arrows un leashed in a numberless roiling storm plunged through breastplates and visors muscle and bone violent death was falling from the clouds and in response Spurs kicked screaming horses to charge down the archers from whose bows this Slaughter flew they found only death of a different kind impaling themselves on the sharpened Stakes that they saw too late bristled from the ground on which the Archer stood were wheeling in panic and stumbling under the pounding Hooves of those who pressed behind dead and living fell together crushed into suffocating Earth one on top of another in heaped piles from which none would rise for more than two hours French soldiers labored onward heavy feet struggling in sucking mud are Tangled in the Twisted limbs of the fallen and all the while English blades hacked and stabbed and gouged the sound of reinforcements faint amid the cacophony of killing brought a lurching hope of rescue but the Duke of Brent racing to reach the battle had galloped too far too fast out tried to his troops and Equipment he was cut down within minutes of hurling himself into the melee his wound staining the banner he had rested from his Trumpeter to wear with a raggedly improvised hole for his head as a makeshift coat of arms when the fighting gave way at last to the Dreadful work of Excavating the Mounds of the Dead Brent's disfigured corpse was counted alongside those of his brother the count of never and the Dukes of alanh con and bar of constable dbrt and the counts of vont blem Marl and rusi it was a noble roll call rivaled only by the names of those who had lost their freedom rather than their lives the Duke of bourbon the counts of richmont vendom and euu the veteran Marshall busot and young Charles Duke of oron as these eminent prisoners white-faced and numb with shock began the long journey North to cala and then London Messengers turned their horses South to Ruan to bring unwelcome news to their anxious King it was The Wretched Day of Victory and France lay broken on a field of blood