What Was the Compagnie d'Orléans?
The “Compagnie d’Orléans” is the conventional French and English name for the relief force assembled by Charles, the disinherited Dauphin, to break the English siege of Orléans in the winter of 1428–1429. The force was not a single standing unit but a coalition: the garrison of Orléans under Jean, Count of Dunois (the Bastard of Orléans), reinforced in early 1429 by contingents from the Bourbonnais, the Auvergne, and the lesser nobility of the Loire, and joined in April by the small force that Joan of Arc had brought from the Dauphin’s court at Chinon. The Compagnie d’Orléans, in this loose sense, lifted the siege in May 1429, won the Loire campaign in June, and made possible the coronation of Charles VII at Reims on 17 July 1429.
The conventional term is a historian’s convenience, not a contemporary one. The French sources speak of l’armée de secours (the relief army) or les gens du Dauphin (the Dauphin’s men); the Procès de Jeanne d’Arc records the names of the captains but not the formal name of a unit. The “Compagnie” of the older historiography is a useful way of distinguishing the relief force from the standing French field army, which Charles VII would not assemble until the compagnies d’ordonnance of 1445.
The garrison of Orléans
The effective core of the relief force was the garrison of Orléans itself, commanded by Jean, Count of Dunois, the illegitimate son of Louis, Duke of Orléans, murdered by the Burgundians in 1407. Dunois had been the natural commander of the defence since the death in November 1428 of the count of Salisbury, the English commander of the siege. He was young — twenty-six in 1429 — and politically experienced; he had been brought up in the household of his half-brother, the duke of Orléans, and had inherited the loyalty of the Orléanais party at the death of his father.
The garrison of Orléans in early 1429 was substantial, perhaps 2,000–3,000 men, drawn from the household troops of the Orléanais, the town militia, and a small number of Scottish archers in the French service. The town was well-supplied and well-fortified, and the English siege had made little progress since Salisbury’s death. The English positions, the bastides, ringed the city on the left bank of the Loire; the English had not succeeded in bridging the river, and the relief forces from the south could approach the town from across the bridge of Orléans or by the bridges to the east.
The relief forces from the south
The Dauphin’s government at Bourges had been trying to raise a relief force since the autumn of 1428. The force that eventually gathered at Blois in late April 1429 was a coalition:
- The Orléanais themselves, under Dunois, with the town militia.
- The Bourbonnais, under John, Duke of Bourbon, and Charles, Duke of Bourbon, his son, with a substantial retinue.
- The Auvergnat and Limousin nobility, under the seigneur de Gaucourt and the seigneur de Culant.
- A small Scottish contingent, including John Stewart of Darnley, the veteran of Verneuil.
- The Bastard of Orléans’s household troops, drawn from the Orléanais.
The army that assembled at Blois was perhaps 4,000–5,000 men, mostly mounted men-at-arms with a substantial force of crossbowmen. The English chroniclers of the time, including the Gesta Henrici Quinti continuator and Thomas Basin, give higher figures; the modern consensus is closer to 4,000–5,000.
The arrival of Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc arrived at Chinon in early March 1429, persuaded the Dauphin to send her to Orléans, and on 29 April 1429 entered the city with a small force, perhaps 200–300 men. The relief force that had gathered at Blois joined her at Orléans on 4 May, having been persuaded to cross to the south bank of the Loire and approach the city from the east. Joan’s presence transformed the situation. The Procès de Jeanne d’Arc records that she was received by Dunois as the lieutenant of the Dauphin and the effective commander of the relief force, though Dunois remained the senior captain.
The Compagnie d’Orléans, in the form in which it is remembered, is the conjunction of the Orléanais garrison and the Blois relief, joined by Joan’s contingent and acting under Joan’s political and tactical direction. The force that lifted the siege of Orléans, captured the bastides, won the Loire campaign, and escorted the Dauphin to Reims was this coalition.
The Loire campaign and the coronation
The Compagnie d’Orléans fought the Loire campaign of June 1429 in its expanded form, reinforced by additional contingents from the centre and south of France. The major engagements — Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency, Patay — are treated in the Loire campaign long-tail article. After Patay the force escorted the Dauphin to Reims, where Charles VII was crowned on 17 July 1429. The coronation made Charles the legitimate King of France in the eyes of his own party and laid the political foundation for the long reconquest that would culminate at Castillon in 1453.
The legacy of the force
The Compagnie d’Orléans was the first effective French field force of the Lancastrian phase. Its success in 1429 was the immediate precedent for the larger standing armies of Charles VII’s later reign: the compagnies d’ordonnance established by the ordinance of 1445, which were the first permanent professional field army in Western Europe. The argument of the 19th-century historian Joseph Quicherat, the editor of the Procès, that the Loire campaign was the political and military foundation of the Valois monarchy, has been broadly accepted by modern scholarship.
Anne Curry’s Agincourt: A New History (2005) treats the siege of Orléans in the larger context of the Lancastrian war effort. Régine Pernoud’s Joan of Arc: Her Story (1998, trans. 1999) treats the relief force from the French side. The standard modern account in English is Jonathan Sumption’s Cursed Kings (2015), the fourth volume of The Hundred Years’ War. The site treats the siege of Orléans, the Loire campaign, and the Joan of Arc cluster at length.