. Would they obey the Maid? In the first place they
wouldn't know how to obey her or anybody else, and in the second place
it was of course not possible for them to take her military character
seriously--that country-girl of seventeen who had been trained for the
complex and terrible business of war--how? By tending sheep.

They had no idea of obeying her except in cases where their veteran
military knowledge and experience showed them that the thing she
required was sound and right when gauged by the regular military
standards. Were they to blame for this attitude? I should think not.
Old war-worn captains are hard-headed, practical men. They do not
easily believe in the ability of ignorant children to plan campaigns
and command armies. No general that ever lived could have taken Joan
seriously (militarily) before she raised the siege of Orleans and
followed it with the great campaign of the Loire.

Did they consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as the
fruitful earth values the sun--they fully believed she could produce the
crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers, to take
it off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her as being
endowed with a mysterious supernatural something that was able to do a
mighty thing which they were powerless to do--blow the breath of life and
valor into the dead corpses of cowed armies and turn them into heroes.

To their minds they were everything with her, but nothing without her.
She could inspire the soldiers and fit them for battle--but fight
the battle herself? Oh, nonsense--that was their function. They, the
generals, would fight the battles, Joan would give the victory. That was
their idea--an unconscious paraphrase of Joan's reply to the Dominican.

So they began by playing a deception upon her. She had a clear idea
of how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march boldly upon
Orleans by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that order to her
generals. They said to themselves, "The idea is insane--it is blunder No.
1; it is what might have been expected of this child who is ignorant of
war." They privately sent the word to the Bastard of Orleans. He also
recognized the insanity of it--at least he thought he did--and privately
advised the generals to get around the order in some way.

They did it by deceiving Joan. She trusted those people, she was not
expecting this sort of treatment, and was not on the lookout for it. It
was