The Shepherd's Staff
May 8, 1429 — 08:00 AMThe Cathedral Square, Orléans
The smoke from the burning English forts still hung over the Loire, but the streets of Orléans were already choking with a different kind of fog: Incense.
The dust of battle had barely settled when a magnificent procession rolled through the Burgundy Gate. It wasn't reinforcements. It wasn't a supply train.
It was Regnault de Chartres, the Archbishop of Reims.
He had ridden all night from Blois, driving his horses to exhaustion. He wasn't running from the war; he was racing to sanctify the victory.
Regnault knew the rules of power better than anyone. If the King won without the Church, the King became dangerous. If the Maid won without the Church, she became a heretic.
He had to be there. He had to shepherd the truth. He had to ensure that the victory was recorded not as a triumph of gunpowder, but as a Miracle of the Faith.
He stepped out of his carriage, his violet robes spotless amidst the mud-stained soldiers. He waved to the cheering crowd with the benevolent grace of a man who had personally guided the cannonballs with his prayers.
"Te Deum!" Regnault announced to the gathering mob, his voice projecting authority. "We shall hold a Grand Mass! Let it be known that God has smiled upon the Faithful!"
He swept up the cathedral steps, effectively hijacking the celebration.
Napoleon watched him from his horse. He saw the Archbishop positioning himself center stage, pushing the dirty, exhausted captains to the side.
"Look at him," Napoleon whispered to Lucas de Cousinot. "The farmer plants, the soldier bleeds... and the priest arrives just in time to collect the harvest."
Lucas, riding a step behind the King, kept his head bowed over his ledger, his face a mask of professional indifference. He was the pen; the King was the hand.
"Shall we intervene, Sire?" Lucas asked softly.
"No," Napoleon smiled, dismounting. "Let him have his parade. He wants to claim the credit? Fine. But credit has a price."
He threw his reins to a groom.
"Come, Lucas. Let's go see the Archbishop in the vestry. I think it's time we discussed his... promotion."
The Sacristy09:00 AM
The roar of the victory celebration was muffled here, hidden behind heavy velvet curtains and stone walls. The air smelled of expensive incense and polished gold.
Regnault de Chartres stood before a tall mirror. He was adjusting his mitre—the tall, pointed headdress of his office.
Napoleon stood behind him, leaning against a table covered in holy chalices. Lucas stood silently in the corner, blending into the shadows.
"A magnificent ceremony, Your Grace," Napoleon said quietly. "The people need to see the Church embracing the Army."
"The people need guidance," Regnault sighed, touching the silk of his vestments. "They are confused, Sire. They see a peasant girl commanding armies. They see stone walls melting like wax."
Regnault turned to face Napoleon. His expression was not hostile, but deeply troubled.
"I do not deny the power she wields," Regnault admitted, his voice dropping. "When she speaks, I feel... something. A vibration in the air. But is it God? Or is it chaos? The line is thin, Sire. And the Church fears chaos above all else."
"Chaos defeats the English," Napoleon replied. "That should be enough for now."
"For now," Regnault agreed. "But Rome is watching. They are asking if the Crown of France has lost its way."
"The Crown has found its way," Napoleon said. "But Rome is far away."
Regnault took off his mitre and held it in his hands. He looked at it with a strange expression of dissatisfaction.
"It is heavy," Regnault murmured. "This mitre. It weighs upon the neck. Sometimes, I feel the shape of it is... restrictive. It limits the vision."
He looked at Napoleon. The hint was dropped.
Napoleon smiled. He understood the language perfectly.
"Perhaps it is not the shape, Regnault," Napoleon said softly. "Perhaps it is the color."
Regnault's eyes flickered.
"Purple is a noble color," Napoleon continued, walking closer. "But it blends into the shadows. Red, however... Red is visible from Rome. It commands respect."
The Red Hat. The Cardinal's Hat.
Regnault remained silent for a long moment. Then, a slow, elegant smile spread across his face.
"Red," Regnault mused. "Yes. It is a color that suits the architecture of a new Empire."
"Rome listens to winners," Napoleon said. "I can provide the victory. But I need the Church in France to speak with my voice."
"I cannot be everywhere, Sire," Regnault spread his hands. "I must return to Chinon to manage the state. Who will guide the flock on the battlefield? Who will keep the chaplains from preaching heresy?"
"You have an admirer," Napoleon pointed to the corner. "Young Lucas. You knew his father in the Parlement of Paris."
Regnault turned. He looked at Lucas.
"The Cousinot family," Regnault nodded slowly. "Good stock. Legal minds. They understand that Order is godliness."
"He is your voice," Napoleon said. "Give him the authority. Let him manage the message. And I will ensure that the next ship from Rome brings a hat that fits you better."
Regnault put his mitre back on. He stood tall.
"Let us go to the altar, Sire. The people are waiting for a blessing."
The High Altar
The Cathedral was packed. The Mass was solemn. The choir sang Te Deum.
At the end of the service, Regnault de Chartres stepped forward to the pulpit.
"Children of France!" his voice boomed. "Today we give thanks. But the crusade is not over. The army marches on!"
He paused, looking down at the front row where Lucas de Cousinot stood.
"As Chancellor," Regnault announced, "my duties call me to the Council. But the spirit of the Church must walk with the soldiers."
He beckoned Lucas.
"Lucas de Cousinot. Step forward."
Lucas walked up the marble steps and knelt. He kept his head bowed, the perfect picture of humility.
"Your father was a Magistrate of the King," Regnault said, his voice softening with genuine respect. "He died defending the laws of this realm. You carry his blood and his mind. There is no better vessel for the truth."
Regnault reached into his vestments and produced a heavy silver ring—not his Episcopal ring, but his Traveling Seal.
"I appoint you Vicar General of the Army," Regnault declared, handing the ring to Lucas. "Use this seal to bind the chaplains to the Cause. What you write, it is as if I wrote it."
Lucas kissed the ring. He stood up and bowed.
"I will be the Shepherd's voice," Lucas said clearly.
The Church Door
Ten minutes later, the great oak doors swung open.
Lucas walked out. He walked straight to the massive wooden notice board. He held a parchment in his hand—the first "Pastoral Letter".
He nailed it to the wood. Thud. Thud. Thud.
A crowd gathered instantly. A priest stepped forward and read aloud:
"To the Faithful of France:The Fortress of Les Tourelles has fallen. Not by the hand of man, but by the Thunder of God.His Majesty decrees: All who provide grain to the Army of Liberation shall receive the Archbishop's blessing.Next stop: Patay. Where the wicked shall be punished.Signed, Lucas de Cousinot, Vicar General of the Army."
The crowd cheered. The news wasn't just a rumor anymore. It was Scripture.
Napoleon watched from the shadow.
One controls the structure, he thought. The other controls the narrative. And I control them both.
The Merchant's Battlefield
May 8, 1429 — 11:00 AM
Outside the Walls of Orléans
While the priests chanted in the cathedral, a different kind of worship was taking place outside the city walls.
Here, amidst the ruins of the English siege camps, the air smelled not of incense, but of rust, sweat, and opportunity.
Napoleon rode through the chaos, flanked by Jacques Cœur. The merchant was in his element. He wore no armor, only a dark wool doublet cut too well for a common man, and carried a leather-bound ledger like a shield.
Around them, the King's new army was not training. It was trading.
Dozens of wagons flying the badge of Royal Supply stood in a semicircle. Soldiers swarmed around them like ants on a dropped sweet.
Napoleon watched as a Gascon mercenary dragged a heavy English breastplate to one of the wagons. A clerk weighed the steel, scratched a figure in his book, and handed the soldier a flask of wine and a few coins.
"Jacques," Napoleon said, raising an eyebrow. "I made you my Quartermaster, not a rag-picker. Why are you collecting garbage?"
"Garbage, Sire?" Jacques smiled. It was the smile of a man genuinely offended in his professional pride. "This is the best iron England can make. Forged in their northern works, finished in London guilds."
He pointed to the wagon, now piled high with dented helmets, broken swords, and arrowheads.
"The army marches forward. My wagons would return to Tours half-empty. That is a sin against profit and common sense. So I buy their 'garbage' here for pennies."
Jacques leaned closer, lowering his voice as if revealing a magician's trick.
"I send it back to Jean Bureau's foundry for free—the horses are going anyway. He melts it down. Next month, this English breastplate comes back across the Channel as a French cannonball. They brought us the metal. We send it home at higher speed."
Napoleon looked at the heap of twisted steel. He didn't have to work hard to see it: an Englishman killed at Orléans, his armor reborn as shot, killing his cousin at Patay.
"Efficient," Napoleon said. "Cruel. I approve."
He nudged his horse forward.
"But what is that?"
Off to the side, a second line of wagons had formed. The clients here were different. Pale, hollow-eyed nobles of Orléans stood in mud-stained velvet, handing over bundles of silk, tapestries, silverware. In return, Jacques' clerks passed them sacks of salt and barrels of hard, ugly salted beef.
"Ah," Jacques said smoothly. "That, Sire, is the other half of war. The Siege Market."
"Orléans has been sealed for six months," he went on. "They have silver, but they cannot eat silver. So the price of a family tapestry has fallen to the price of a ham."
He gestured to a clerk carefully wrapping a magnificent silver candelabrum in straw.
"I bring them salt from the south, bought by the cartload. I trade it for heirlooms at siege prices. Then I send the heirlooms south, where there is no hunger, and sell them for peace prices."
He clapped his hands. A servant stepped forward with a velvet-wrapped bundle. Jacques opened it to reveal an exquisite silver dining set, engraved with the crest of a Duke.
"For you, Sire," Jacques bowed. "The finest piece. You will need a proper table at Reims, when you dine as crowned King."
Napoleon laughed once.
"You are a vampire, Jacques. You drink the blood of the desperate."
"I give blood to a frozen limb, Sire," Jacques replied. "Without me, they starve with their silver. With me, they lose a candelabrum and keep their children."
They rode on.
Near the center of the camp a long table had been set up beneath a canvas awning. A painted board above it read:
HOUSE OF CŒUR — ARMY OFFICE
Here the queue was different. The men were not carrying armor or silver. They carried coin.
Napoleon watched as a sergeant dumped a pouch of looted English gold onto the boards. A clerk counted it, weighed it, then wrote an entry in a fat ledger and handed the man a narrow strip of parchment, stamped with a complicated wax seal.
"What is this?" Napoleon asked.
"A letter of exchange," Jacques said. "Gold on campaign is a curse. It weighs you down. If you die, the enemy takes it. If you sleep, your comrade takes it."
"So they give it to me. I give them paper. They can redeem it in any of my houses at Bourges, at Tours, or..." His mouth twitched. "In the new counting-house I opened in Orléans this morning."
"You opened a branch already?"
"The moment the gates swung inward, Sire. I took the best corner opposite the cathedral. Where the banners go, my shutters follow."
Napoleon watched the sergeant tuck the parchment into his tunic as carefully as he would have hidden the gold.
"And if he dies?" Napoleon asked quietly.
Jacques did not look away.
"Then no one comes with the paper. No widow. No son. The entry in the ledger fades to ink on a page."
He spread his hands.
"In such cases the deposit returns to the war. Seventy parts in a hundred go to Your Majesty's treasury, to pay powder and pay. Thirty parts remain with my House, to keep the wheels turning and the clerks fed."
Jacques smiled, a flicker of dark humor in his eyes.
"And perhaps a small prayer is said for their souls, free of charge."
Napoleon studied him for a moment.
"So you profit if they live," he said, "and still profit if they die."
"I profit, Sire, if France wins," Jacques answered smoothly. "That is why I can afford to be so generous with my rates."
Napoleon looked out over the bustling camp—the scrap heaps, the salt barrels, the line of men handing over their plunder for slips of stamped parchment.
He could almost see it: an invisible web of numbers and promises binding every soldier's purse to the fate of the Crown.
"You are using my sword to clear the roads for your shops, Jacques."
"And I am using my gold to sharpen your sword, Sire," Jacques replied. "You swing; I count. We both sleep better."
Napoleon nodded slowly.
"Keep doing it," he said. "But remember—your bank only lives as long as my army wins."
Jacques bowed his head, his voice low and serious.
"I have wagered my fortune on that, Sire. If the sword breaks, the gold melts. We fall together."
The Viral Truth
May 8, 1429 — Noon
Words travel faster than armies.
In the hours following the victory at Les Tourelles, Lucas de Cousinot's Pastoral Letter did not stay on the church door.
It grew legs. And then wings.
The CampfireFrench Army Encampment
A chaplain stood on a crate of salted fish. He held up the parchment with the Archbishop's seal, reading to a circle of illiterate infantrymen.
"'The English are not conquerors,'" the chaplain's voice rose over the crackle of the fire. "'They are tenants whose lease has expired. God Himself has signed the eviction order.'"
The soldiers cheered. That they understood. Throwing out a bad tenant felt less like murder, more like housework.
"And," the chaplain added, lowering the paper and raising his voice, "by writ of His Majesty's treasurer, Master Jacques Cœur—blessed by the Archbishop's hand—any plunder taken at Patay can be exchanged for letters of credit. Safe paper. Ninety parts of a hundred paid, no questions asked."
The mood shifted instantly. A moment ago, they were tired men rubbing sore feet. Now, they were hunters scenting blood.
"It is a holy war!" a pikeman shouted, checking the edge of his blade. "God wants us to be rich!"
"Sanctity and silver," another laughed, tucking a flask of wine into his belt. "I like this new religion."
The Parish PriestA Village Church near Orléans
The small stone church was packed. Peasants stood shoulder to shoulder, smelling of wet wool and damp soil. They were tired, hungry, and afraid of English raiding parties.
Father Thomas, who usually preached about tithes and adultery, stood at the pulpit. His hands shook as he held the copy of the letter brought by a royal courier.
"Children," he said, his voice trembling with a strange energy. "I have news from the city. The Thunder of God has spoken."
He read Lucas's words. He read about the English judged by fire. He read about the indulgence—one hundred days less in Purgatory for any man or woman who fed the King's army.
"God is not sleeping!" Father Thomas shouted, slamming his hand on the wood. "God has sent a sword! And His name is Charles!"
In the pews, an old farmer wept. A blacksmith clenched his fist. They did not understand politics. But they understood miracles. The King was winning. And God was paying.
The Itinerant PreacherThe Market Square of Blois
A friar stood on a wine barrel, surrounded by a crowd of hundreds—merchants, refugees, beggars. He was one of the wandering mendicants, the rumor engines of the fifteenth century.
"They say the Maid knelt in the mud and called down fire from Heaven!" the friar bellowed, eyes wild, arms flailing. "But who placed the sword in her hand? Who gave her the banner? The King! The Anointed One!"
He jabbed a finger at the crowd.
"The English are demons! They eat children, they burn churches, they mock the saints. But our King has found the Hammer to crush them! Will you hide in your cellars while the Devil is beaten back? Or will you march to Patay and see the Judgment with your own eyes?"
"To Patay!" the crowd roared back. "To the King!"
In the back, the merchants looked at one another. They heard one word amid the shouting:
Crusade.
Not a Papal bull. Not an official decree. But in the mouths of preachers, the war was already wearing the old clothes of holy war—and holy wars, they knew, were good for business.
The Church DoorTours Cathedral
A massive wooden notice board stood by the iron gates. A clerk was nailing up a fresh copy of the letter.
A crowd gathered instantly. Those who could read shouted the words to those who could not.
"The lease is expired!" "The English are running!" "The King's paper pays out in silver!"
Information rippled through the crowd like a virus. Fear turned to excitement. Excitement turned to movement.
The Lesson
Orléans — The King's Solar
Napoleon stood by the window. Church bells rang across the city. He could feel the energy shifting in the streets below like a tide changing.
Behind him, Joan of Arc sat in a chair, hands clasped around her banner-pole. Her face was troubled.
"They twist it," Joan whispered. "The priests, the merchants… they speak of God and gold in one breath. They make the crusade sound like a fair."
She looked up at Napoleon.
"This is not pure, Charles. It is… worldly. Efficient, but ugly."
Napoleon turned and walked over. He did not mock her. He looked at her with the patience of a man explaining why stones fall down and not up.
"Joan," he said softly. "Look."
He nodded toward the window.
"Faith gives them the reason to fight. It tells them why they may have to die."
He picked up a gold coin from the table and let it fall back. Clink.
"Money gives them the means to fight. It tells them how they will live—before and after the battle."
"You want a pure war?" Napoleon asked. "Pure wars are fought by martyrs. Martyrs end up dead."
He held her gaze.
"I don't want martyrs, General. I want victors. This is what war is made of: muscle and spirit. Gold and prayer. You cannot have one without the other."
Joan stared at him. She saw no joy in his eyes. Only a hard, terrifying logic.
"You use everything," she said at last. "God, money, fear, hope. You pour it all into the guns."
"Yes," Napoleon admitted.
He picked up a copy of Lucas's letter, the ink still faintly shining.
"We spend so much effort forging steel," he murmured. "We forget the most dangerous weapon of all."
He tapped the parchment.
"The sword can kill a man, Joan. Words…" He let the paper fall back to the desk. "Words can kill an idea."