Joan’s most faithful friends among the nobility were the Bastard of Orleans and the duke of Alengon, both cousins of the king. Her most implacable enemy in the French camp was Georges de la Tremoille, the king’s chamberlain. Tre-moille had strong ties to Burgundy and wanted to make peace with Philip by means of diplomacy, not warfare. Immediately following the coronation, Tremoille advised Charles to arrange a truce with the duke of Burgundy. Reg-nault de Chartres was sent to negotiate and returned with Philip’s promise to turn Paris over to the French at the end of 15 days.
Joan had written letters to Philip of Burgundy, asking him to participate in the coronation, but she wasn’t so naive as to believe in his sudden willingness to give up Paris, especially as the English and not the Burgundians were in control of Paris. Joan’s instincts were better than those of Charles and Reg-nault. Duke Philip used the 15 days to help his English allies strengthen the walls of Paris and lay in additional food and ammunition. Meanwhile, the new king and his army made a leisurely progression from Reims toward Paris. More English-held towns opened their gates to him. English troops under the command of the duke of Bedford followed at a distance but did not offer to fight until the French army reached the village of Montepilloy. There both sides drew up in battle formations, but the English refused to come out from behind their usual defensive line of stakes. The enemies stared at each other all day, until finally the English marched away toward Paris. Charles and the army went to Compiegne to accept its surrender. By then it was August, and the fraudulent 15-day truce with Philip of Burgundy had run out. Joan urged an attack on Paris. Charles permitted Joan and the other captains to take troops to Paris, but he told them to wait until he joined them before mounting any attack. As Joan, Alengon, La Hire, and the captains marched toward Paris, Regnault was on his way to make further concessions to the perfidious duke of Burgundy.
This time Philip agreed to a four-month truce. According to its terms, Charles gave back four of the towns that had just surrendered to him, including the town of Compiegne. At the same time that Philip was negotiating with the French, he was agreeing to supply the English with additional Burgundian troops for the defense of Paris.
On August 26, Joan and her troops set up headquarters at Saint-Denis, near Paris. She went out daily to test the strength of the gates. Alengon had a bridge built across the Seine to facilitate their attack. All was ready, but despite promises to come sooner, Charles did not join Joan until September 7. On September 8 Joan and the other captains led an assault on one of the gates.
They fought from early morning until after sunset, when Joan was wounded in the thigh. Gaucourt carried her forcibly from the field. The next day, as Joan and the other captains prepared to renew the assault, Charles called it off.
On September 10, the king ordered the army to return south of the Loire. Back at Gien, on September 21, Charles disbanded the army. Later, the duke of Alengon asked the king to permit Joan to assist him in Normandy, where he was fighting to recover family estates confiscated by the English. The request was refused. Joan and her “beau duc” never saw each other again.
Joan’s military career did not end after Paris. Tremoille had been Joan’s greatest adversary in the king’s councils, but he must have believed at least a little in her military ability. When Joan’s wounded leg had healed, Tremoille decided to employ her against a renegade mercenary who had once forced him to pay a huge ransom.
Perrinet Gressart controlled several small towns and a section of the Loire. He was an outlaw, independent of both the English and the Burgundians. Tremoille put Joan under the supervision of his half-brother Charles d’Albret and sent them with a small, undersupplied army to put a stop to Gressart’s freebooting.
In late October 1429, Joan attacked one of Gressart’s fortified towns called Saint-Pierre-Moutier. Because she lacked the gunpowder weapons she had relied on for her other victories, the operation was costly and drawn out, but she did succeed in taking the town. She and Albret then wrote letters to nearby French towns begging for supplies for their next operation, an attack on Gressart’s headquarters, La-Charite-sur-Loire. By now it was November, and the weather was harsh. They found La Charite-sur-Loire better fortified than their first target. Joan’s cold, undersupplied force besieged the town for a month but finally gave up. Leaving their weapons by the walls, they returned to Charles’s territories. There Joan learned that her family had been ennobled. Her brothers embraced their new status with enthusiasm, taking the name “du Lys” and adorning their possessions with their new coat of arms. Joan herself never made use of the du Lys arms, preferring the religious symbolism of her banners.
Set on a course of diplomacy, Tremoille and Charles no longer saw a need for Joan, but they could not allow her to leave the court. In those days, troops of mercenaries called “free companies” abounded. Such was Joan’s popularity and ability to lead, there was the danger that she might gather her own army and spoil efforts at diplomacy by resuming her efforts to push the invaders out of France. Joan was effectively under house arrest at Tremoille’s palatial home at Sully from the time she returned from La Charite in December 1429 until the end of March 1430.
Joan must have enjoyed much of what her life among the nobility had brought her in the way of horses, attention, and fine clothing, but the forced inactivity of a lady of leisure was not something she could tolerate. Her brother Pierre was still with her, as were her steward Jean d’Aulon and her chaplain Jean Pasquerel. She passed the time praying, hearing Mass, riding, and dictating letters. In one of her letters she considers waging war on heretics, but the only enemies she really wanted to fight were the English and their Burgundian allies. She was aware of the decisions being made by Charles and his advisers and could feel only fury as he made one concession after another to Philip of Burgundy. The last straw for Joan was the news that Compiegne, refusing to be returned to the duke of Burgundy, had been besieged. In March 1430, Philip put his vassal John of Luxembourg in charge of the siege. When the news reached Joan, she acted.
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