Time: August 25, 1429 (Dawn) Location: The Hills of Senlis
"Charge!"
The guttural English command tore through the chilling dawn mist, immediately followed by the thunderous roar of a thousand iron-shod hooves. The wall of English steel, which had stood silently on the ridge just moments before, cascaded down the slope like a terrifying avalanche of death, aimed directly at the exhausted, blood-soaked French vanguard.
"Form the line!" La Hire roared, his voice cracking with desperation and fury.
The battle-crazed Gascon warlord, usually the first to recklessly charge the enemy, suddenly found the grueling, repetitive drills of the King's new military academy taking over his instincts. He knew they could not outrun an organized cavalry charge in the mud. They had to break its momentum.
"Shields to the front! Spears brace behind!" La Hire bellowed, riding his massive destrier up and down the chaotic French line.
Around him, French soldiers, too exhausted to even wipe the blood from their eyes, moved with muscle memory. Heavy infantrymen slammed their splintered, battered pavise shields into the muddy earth, locking them together to form a desperate wall. Spearmen, many leaning on each other for support, drove the butts of their ash-wood pikes into the ground, angling the steel tips upward through the gaps in the shields. The surviving French cavalry split to the flanks, pulling their reins tight to steady their nervous mounts.
A small, ragged group of archers scrambled to form a tight block behind La Hire and Joan.
"They are in range, Commander!" the captain of the archers yelled over the deafening drumbeat of approaching hooves.
"Hold!" La Hire barked.
He waited agonizingly long. The ground shook violently. Just as the heavy vanguard closed the gap, La Hire saw the lighter, leather-clad sergeants and unarmored hobilars following close behind.
"Loose!"
A black cloud of arrows snapped upward into the grey sky, raining down upon the English second line.
The effect was immediate and brutal. An unarmored English rider took three broadhead arrows simultaneously to the chest and throat, pitching backward off his horse like a broken doll. Another shaft buried itself deep into the belly of a light cavalry mount. The horse shrieked in agony, front legs collapsing, sending its rider tumbling violently into the mud.
But the English discipline was terrifying. The thrown rider did not stay down. Wearing only a padded gambeson, he rolled through the mud to avoid being trampled by his own comrades, drew his broadsword in one fluid motion, and sprinted toward the French lines on foot, screaming a battle cry.
Then, the heavy plate-armored knights hit the French shield wall.
The impact sounded like a collapsing cathedral. Oak shields splintered into a thousand pieces. Dozens of French infantrymen were instantly crushed beneath the massive warhorses, their bones snapping audibly over the din of battle. But the French spearmen held their ground, thrusting their pikes desperately upward, finding the weak points in the English horses' armor or sliding blades into the joints of the knights' visors.
Despite the valiant defense, the sheer momentum of the English charge tore the French line open. Dozens of heavily armed English riders breached the wall, aiming their lances directly for the center command where Joan's white banner fluttered.
"Break formation! Six-man squares! Isolate them!" La Hire screamed.
It was the King's new tactical doctrine—the infantry square adapted for melee chaos. Without hesitation, the French infantry broke their linear formation, automatically clustering into tight, hedgehog-like squads of six. They used their bodies and spears to create narrow, lethal corridors, forcing the breached English horses to separate and lose their momentum.
An English captain realized the trap instantly. "Close ranks! Rally to me!" he shouted, trying to force his horse sideways to join his comrades.
A French pikeman, his face caked in mud, threw his entire body weight against the flank of the English warhorse to stop its movement. From a few yards away, a fellow villager saw another English knight charging up behind him. "Mathieu! Behind you! Move!"
But Mathieu did not turn. With a final, agonizing thrust, he drove his spear upward, seeking the gap under the English captain's armpit.
He never saw if the blow landed. The hooves of the charging warhorse behind him came down like thunder, crushing his spine and splashing a tragic crimson blossom across the yellow mud. Instantly, another French soldier stepped forward over Mathieu's broken body, leveling his spear to maintain the isolation ring.
They were using human lives as mortar to build a wall against the cavalry.
Seeing the infantry being ground into meat, Joan and La Hire led the remaining French cavalry from the flanks, crashing into the English rearguard to relieve the pressure.
It was a desperate, suffocating struggle. Joan fought like an avenging angel, her sword deflecting blows that should have killed her. But the toll of a forty-minute skirmish followed by a massive cavalry charge was too much.
With a sickening groan, Joan's exhausted destrier finally gave out, foaming blood at the mouth. The massive horse collapsed sideways into the mud.
Joan managed to kick her feet free from the stirrups, rolling gracefully to her feet. Instantly, three French men-at-arms rushed to her side, forming a tight triangle around the dismounted Maid.
"We have her!" an English knight roared, spotting the white armor in the mud. A fresh wedge of English heavy cavalry spurred their horses, crashing through the chaotic melee directly toward Joan.
The three French guards braced themselves, locking their shields. "For the Maid!" they screamed.
The collision was brutal. The first guard was impaled on a fifteen-foot lance. The second was crushed under a horse's chest. "Look out!" the third guard yelled, throwing himself in front of a descending English broadsword aimed at Joan's neck. The blade cleaved through the guard's collarbone, dropping him instantly.
"No!" Joan screamed, her eyes blazing with holy, tearful fury. She lunged forward, thrusting her sword upward at the knight. But the English rider was seasoned and strong. He parried her exhausted strike with the flat of his blade, leaned down from his saddle, and grabbed the thick leather strap of her breastplate.
With a massive heave, he hauled the struggling Maid of Orléans off the ground and threw her face-down across the pommel of his saddle.
"The witch is taken!" the English captain bellowed, a terrifying, victorious grin spreading across his face. "Push them into the dirt, boys! Eat them whole! Drinks are on the Earl tonight!"
Seeing the white banner fall and their Saint captured, a profound shock rippled through the French vanguard. The disciplined six-man squads wavered violently, the rhythm of their pikes faltering as men instinctively looked back in horror. They did not instantly break—the grueling muscle memory of the King's drills kept their boots planted in the mud—but the line stretched to its absolute breaking point. Every man fought with a frantic, ragged desperation, the entire formation shuddering on the bleeding edge of total collapse.
Then, the ground began to vibrate with a new rhythm.
From the crest of the northern ridge, out of the dispersing fog, a new army appeared. They did not pause to align. Driven by the frantic, relentless beat of snare drums, row upon row of cavalry surged downward. Magnus had pushed them through the night, abandoning the baggage train, the heavy infantry, and most of their supplies just to reach the vanguard in time. The horses were foaming, their chests heaving with brutal exhaustion, the men running on the last fumes of adrenaline. Magnus knew the cruel arithmetic of forced marches; if he allowed them to halt, or even slow their pace to catch their breath, their muscles would seize. He could never organize a proper charge again. He had to ride the momentum of their desperation straight into the valley.
The English captain squinted through the mist, laughing. "Look at this! More Valois meat marching to the slaughter!"
The new French cavalry crashed into the optimal range—barely thirty yards from the melee.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The dawn was violently shattered by a synchronized, deafening roar of thunder. Thick, acrid white smoke instantly billowed across the line.
The heavy lead balls tore through the English ranks with a force no armor could stop. Leather, chainmail, and plate steel buckled and shattered. The English warhorses, utterly untrained for the concussive blasts of massed early handguns, panicked violently. They reared up, bucked, and screamed in terror, throwing their riders and trampling their own infantry.
Through the thick, sulfurous smoke, the English captain fought to control his terrified horse. He watched in horror as the first rank of French cavalry tossed their smoking iron tubes into the mud, immediately drawing their broadswords and parting to the flanks. Through the gap, a second rank of exhausted but determined cavalry surged forward, already leveling a fresh line of burning slow-matches and thunder-tubes.
It was a relentless, rolling wave of concussive pressure, offering no time to breathe or reform.
"Sound the retreat!" the captain screamed. "Fall back! We have what we came for! Fall back!"
The English cavalry wheeled around, spurring their panicked horses toward the safety of the northern forests, dragging Joan of Arc with them into the mist.
"No!" La Hire roared, his face masked in mud and blood. He spurred his horse toward the retreating English. "Attack! They have the Maid! Attack, you bastards!"
A massive armored horse blocked his path.
Magnus looked down at the raving Gascon general. His face was a mask of cold, exhausted stone. He reached out and grabbed the reins of La Hire's horse.
"Let me go!" La Hire screamed, raising his battle-axe. "We can save her!"
Magnus's grip tightened like a vice, his own warhorse trembling beneath him from the sheer physical toll of the march. "Look at my men, Gascon," Magnus hissed through his teeth, his chest heaving. "Look at the horses. We left everything behind. We are running on fumes and shadows."
La Hire stared wildly at the newly arrived the first company. Their weapons were drawn, but the men were slouched in their saddles, their mounts foaming and shuddering violently, completely spent.
"We broke them with shock, not strength," Magnus said grimly, his eyes fixed on the disappearing English banners.
"But they are taking her!" La Hire roared, his voice cracking with agony.
Magnus's grip on the reins tightened, but his voice dropped from a harsh command to a cold, exhausted truth.
"She must be saved, Gascon. But not today." Magnus locked his unyielding eyes onto the furious general. "If we ride blindly into that mist and fall with her, we lose the entire vanguard. And dead men cannot rescue a Saint."