Joan visits the new recruits: the blacksmiths, the glaziers, the carpenters, the butchers, the weavers, the cobblers, and the grocers who have left their positions or closed up their businesses to fight behind her. She asks them their names and sits with them. She gives them the choice to turn back, for once they have set off for Reims she does not want them to desert. “You are skilled men,” she tells them, “and soldiering is hard business.” It isn’t rare for even a strong man to faint from exhaustion on the battlefield. She has seen it happen. She shows these new recruits her sword, which, she explains, is not the actual sword of Charles Martel, just a copy. Why should she deceive them? She tells them the story of the Battle of Tours, which the Prince of the Franks led against the Saracen army, and they listen as she explains how it is not always numbers that matter but the mettle of one’s spirit and, of course, good strategy. “My father said”—and every time she makes this speech, which is now at least two times a day, she can’t believe she is repeating anything that has come out of the mouth of Jacques d’Arc—“that though we shouldn’t compare ourselves with those of true greatness, like the Prince of the Franks, Charlemagne, or Saint Louis, it is possible we are walking on the same patch of the kingdom as they did hundreds of years before us. This kingdom called France.” And these men nod. They look to each other; they think, There is some sense in this. None of them wish to become subjects of an English king, and she tells them to be proud of their land, that God loves the humblest among them more than any English pretender to the throne, that He is ashamed of the power-hungry Duke of Burgundy, however full his coffers are with gold.