De Brusac argued that the situation was very grave; that Jargeau, the first point of attack, was formidably strong; its imposing walls bristling with artillery; with seven thousand picked English veterans behind them, and at their head the great Earl of Suffolk and his two redoubtable brothers, the De la Poles.  It seemed to him that the proposal of Joan of Arc to try to take such a place by storm was a most rash and over-daring idea, and she ought to be persuaded to relinquish it in favor of the soberer and safer procedure of investment by regular siege.  It seemed to him that this fiery and furious new fashion of hurling masses of men against impregnable walls of stone, in defiance of the established laws and usages of war, was—­

But he got no further.  La Hire gave his plumed helm an impatient toss and burst out with: 

“By God, she knows her trade, and none can teach it her!”

And before he could get out anything more, D’Alencon was on his feet, and the Bastard of Orleans, and a half a dozen others, all thundering at once, and pouring out their indignant displeasure upon any and all that mid hold, secretly or publicly, distrust of the wisdom of the Commander-in-Chief.  And when they had said their say, La Hire took a chance again, and said: 

“There are some that never know how to change.  Circumstances may change, but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too, to meet those circumstances.  All that they know is the one beaten track that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they themselves have followed in their turn.  If an earthquake come and rip the land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and into morasses, those people can’t learn that they must strike out a new road—­no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one, to death and perdition.  Men, there’s a new state of things; and a surpassing military genius has perceived it with her clear eye.  And a new road is required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has marked it out for us.  The man does not live, never has lived, never will live, that can improve upon it!  The old state of things was defeat, defeat, defeat—­and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart, no hope.  Would you assault stone walls with such?  No—­there was but one way with that kind:  sit down before a place and wait, wait—­starve it out, if you could.  The new case is the very opposite; it is this:  men all on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy—­a restrained conflagration!  What would you do with it?  Hold it down and let it smolder and perish and go out?  What would Joan of Arc do with it?  Turn it loose, by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the foe in the whirlwind of its fires!  Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom of her military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only right