The Duke of Alencon, hardly twenty years of age, was the only one amongst the princes of the house of Valois who had given Joan a kind reception on her arrival, and who, together with the brave La Hire, said that he would follow her whithersoever she pleased to lead him.

Joan, in her gratitude, called him the handsome duke, and exhibited towards him amity and confidence.
But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the king's favorite, George de la Tremoille, an ambitious courtier, jealous of any one who seemed within the range of the king's favor, and opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war, since it hampered him in the policy he wished to keep up towards the Duke of Burgundy.

To the ill will of La Tremoille was added that of the majority of courtiers enlisted in the following of the powerful favorite, and that of warriors irritated at the importance acquired at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little adventuress.

Here was the source of the enmities and intrigues which stood in the way of all Joan's demands, rendered her successes more tardy, difficult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more dearly still.
At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness.

It was a heavy convoy of revictualment, protected by a body of ten or twelve thousand men, commanded by Marshal de Boussac, and numbering amongst them Xaintrailles and La Hire.