avert. Dunois, himself an unlikely person, one would have thought, to
yield the honour of the fight to a woman, seems to have perceived
that without a strong counter-motive, not within the range of ordinary
methods, the situation was beyond hope.

Accordingly, on the 27th or 28th of April, Jeanne set out at the head of
her little army, accompanied by a great number of generals and captains.
She had been equipped by the Queen of Sicily (with a touch of that keen
sense of decorative effect which belonged to the age) in white armour
inlaid with silver--all shining like her own St. Michael himself, a
radiance of whiteness and glory under the sun--armed _de toutes pièces
sauve la teste_, her uncovered head rising in full relief from the
dazzling breastplate and gorget. This is the description given of her by
an eye-witness a little later. The country is flat as the palm of one's
hand. The white armour must have flashed back the sun for miles and
miles of the level road, to the eyes which from the height of any
neighbouring tower watched the party setting out. It is all fertile now,
the richest plain, and even then, corn and wine must have been in full
bourgeon, the great fresh greenness of the big leaves coming out upon
such low stumps of vine as were left in the soil; but the devastated
country was in those days covered with a wild growth like the _macchia_
of Italian wilds, which half hid the movements of the expedition. They
went by the Loire to Tours, where Jeanne had been assigned a dwelling of
her own, with the estate of a general; and from thence to Blois, where
they had to wait for some days while the convoy of provisions, which
they were to convey to Orleans, was being prepared. And there Jeanne
fulfilled one of the preliminary duties of her mission. She had informed
her examiners at Poitiers that she had been commanded to write to the
English generals before attacking them, appealing to them _de la part de
Dieu_, to give up their conquests, and leave France to the French.