1429, Preaching, 238-239

It was undoubtedly true that the grey friar who preached at the Innocents and drew together such crowds to hear him, as is said above, was riding with them. As soon as the people of Paris were certain that this was so and that it was he who by his words was persuading the cities which had sworn faith to the Regent or to his representatives to abandon their allegiance, they cursed him by God and his saints. What is worse, they took up again in contempt of him all those games which he had forbidden them, such as backgammon, bowls, dicing, and so on. They even left off wearing a tin medallion which he had got them to wear bearing the name of Jesus and they all wore a St. Andrew's cross instead.

1429, Joan of Arc, pp. 240-242

On the eve of Lady Day in September the Armagnacs approached to attack the walls of Paris. They hoped to take the city by assault, but little did they gain there except sorrow, suffering, and disgrace. Many of them were maimed for the rest of their lives, men who before the attack had been strong and healthy - but a fool will never believe anything till he's tried it. I say this because of these men who were so unfortunate, so full of foolish trust, that they relied upon the advice of a creature in the form of a woman, whom they called the Maid - what it was, God only knows - and unanimously agreed to attack Paris on the actual day of Our Lady's holy nativity. They assembled, a good twelve thousand or more of them, and came up, their Maid with them, at about the time of high mass, between eleven and twelve, with a large number of carts, wagons, and horses, all laden with huge trebly-roped faggots of wood with which to fill up the moats. They mounted a fierce assault between the Portes St. Honoré and St. Denis and as they fought they shouted abuse and hard words at the city's defenders. Their Maid was there with her standard on the bank above the moat, and she said to the Parisians, 'Surrender to us quickly, in Jesus' name! If you don't surrender before nightfall we shall come in by force whether you like it or not and you will all be killed.' 'Shall we, you bloody tart?' said a crossbowman, and shot at her. The bolt went right through her leg; she ran for safety; another transfixed her standard-bearer's foot. When he felt the wound, he lifted his vizor to see to take it out and another man shot at him, hit him between the eyes and killed him. The Maid and the Duke of Alençon swore afterwards that they would rather have lost forty of their best men-at-arms. The fighting was very fierce on both sides and went on till at least four in the afternoon and still no one could say which were getting the best of it. Shortly after four o'clock the defenders took fresh heart and shot so fast at them, with cannon and other weapons, that they had to withdraw and abandon the assault and get away. Then it was a question of who could get away quickest, for Paris had big guns which could shoot from the Porte St. Denis to well beyond St. Lazare; these threw cannonballs at their backs, which alarmed them very much. Thus they were put to flight, but no one left Paris to pursue them, for fear of ambushes. As they retreated they set fire to the Mathurins' barn near Les Porcherons, and they put their dead, whom they had loaded on to their horses, into this fire, great numbers of them, as the pagans used to do long ago in Rome. They cursed their Maid bitterly, for she had promised them that Paris would certainly fall to their assault, that she would sleep there that night and so would they all, that they would all be made rich with the city's wealth, and anyone who resisted would be cut down or burned in his house. But God, who through a woman called Judith thwarted Holofernes' great enterprise, in his mercy disappointed their hopes. For they came next day under safe-conduct to get their dead, and the herald who came with them stated on oath to the Captain of Paris that they had suffered at least fifteen hundred casualties, of which a good five hundred or more were dead or mortally wounded. There were hardly any men-at-arms in this battle except some forty or fifty Englishmen, who did their duty very well. The Parisians captured most of the carts they had used to bring up faggots in. No good ought to have come to them, planning such a slaughter on Our Lady's holy nativity.

1430, Criminals, p. 245

...there was no ruler in Paris nor anyone to withstand the enemy, so that nothing came into Paris without paying two or three ransoms on the way, and thus when it came it had to be sold so dear that no poor people could buy any. Very many poor householders, some of whom had wives and children, others not, left Paris as if they were going out to work or to amuse themselves; driven desperate by their dreadful poverty, they joined with others whom they met and began, through the temptation of the devil, to commit all the crimes that Christians can, so that an expedition had to go and apprehend them. On the first occasion, four score and seventeen were taken. A few days later, January 2nd, twelve of these were hanged on the Paris gallows and on the 10th eleven of them were taken to the Halles, where ten of them were beheaded. The eleventh was a very handsome young man about twenty-four years old - he was stripped and about to be blindfolded when a young girl born in the Halles district boldly came forward and asked for him. She managed to get them to take him back to the Châtelet; they were later married.

1430, Joan of Arc, p. 249

On 23rd May my lady Jeanne, the Armagnacs' Maid, was captured before Compiègne by messire Jean de Luxembourg and his men and by a good thousand Englishmen who were on their way to Paris. At least four hundred of the Maid's men were killed or drowned

1430, Notre Dame, pp. 250-251

On Monday, July 17th, St. Arnulf's eve, the bell at Notre Dame was cast and named Jacqueline. It was made by a bell-founder called Guillaume Sifflet and weighed about fifteen thousand.

1430, Joan of Arc, pp. 253-254

On 3rd September, a Sunday, a sermon was preached upon two women in the Paris Notre Dame. They had been taken about six months earlier at Corbeil and brought to Paris. The elder, Pieronne, came from Breton speaking Brittany; she maintained - and truthfully - that my lady Jeanne, who fought alongside the Armagnacs, was good and that what she did was well done and was God's will. She admitted that she had received the precious body of Our Lord twice in one day. She affirmed and swore that God often appeared to her in human form and talked to her as one friend does to another; that the last time she had seen him he was wearing a long white robe and a red tunic underneath, which is blasphemous. She would not take back her assertion that she frequently saw God dressed like this and so was this day condemned to be burned, which she was, and died this Sunday maintaining her belief. The other girl was set free for the time being.

1431, Marriage, p. 256

People said that the Duke of Burgundy in weather like that would bring stuff downstream, from the districts up river, 'since he is the Regent of France. We shall see how well he will set to work, but not until after Easter 1431; he is too busy just now with his wife, who has recently born him a fine son, christened on St. Anthony's day in January but born on the  of  .¹ They do say that in the first year of marriage one must please one's wife, it is all honeymoon; that is why he could not hang about long enough to take Compiègne.

1431, Criminals, p. 258

Next Monday about a hundred men-at-arms left Paris for Chevreuse. They went to an old stronghold called Damiette where there were some forty robbers who committed all the crimes there are - they were all captured and taken to Paris next Thursday, coupled together, twenty-nine of them, all young men, the oldest not more than thirty-six. On the Saturday thirteen of them were hanged on the Paris gallows; two when they were captured before their stronghold; nine were clever enough to escape. On 22nd April 1431 the Regent's troops that had been to Damiette went to La Motte and captured a hundred murderers whose base it was. Six were hanged on the spot; the rest, four score and fourteen, were bound together two and two as described above and taken to Paris on the 26th of the month. Next Monday, the last day of April, thirty-two of the robbers taken at La Motte were hanged on the Paris gallows. May 4th, Friday, thirty of the robbers taken at La Motte were hanged on the Paris gallows; so that this Monday and Friday sixty-two of these thieves were hanged.

¹Antoine, b. 30 September, 1430; d. 5 February, 1431.