_The Maid of Orleans._
LXXX. The famous Joan d’Arc, commonly called the Maid of Orleans, makes
a great figure in the history of France as a celestial heroine, to whom
that kingdom confessedly, in the reign of Henry the Sixth of England,
owed its restoration, and being preserved from the total destruction,
which was nearly brought on it by the success of the English arms.
LXXXI. The history of this wonderful damsel, reduced to a compendium,
is as follows: The French nation, and above all their king, finding
themselves dejected and dispirited by the repeated defeats they had
suffered; and also without the necessary resolution, to concert and
determine upon measures for opposing and averting the new dangers with
which they were threatened by the siege of Orleans, that was pushed
on by the English with great vigour: I say, at this crisis, a poor
Shepherdess, that is, Joan d’Arc, at the age of about eighteen or twenty
years, who was born in a little village on the Maze, felt in herself an
occult inspiration, or express commission from God, to succour Orleans,
and cause Charles the Fifth to be consecrated and anointed king at
Rheims; and, in order to execute this commission, after having first
opened herself to a nobleman of the kingdom, she was introduced to the
king, whom she knew the instant she saw him, although she had never set
eyes on him before, and he, to prevent her discovering him, had mixed
with the croud in a common dress. They put many questions to her, to
which she gave excellent and satisfactory answers; and informed them
of some things, which they thought were impossible to be known to her
but by revelation. Finally, upon the strength of these proofs, they
confided to her conduct the relief of the city of Orleans, in which
enterprize, the French, animated and led on by her, obliged the English
to raise the siege, and, in consequence of her influence and example,
gained afterwards many considerable advantages over them. She removed
the obstructions that were in her way, and conducted the king to Rheims,
where the ceremony of his consecration was performed and compleated: but
being afterwards taken prisoner by the English, they carried her to Roan,
where they iniquitously accused her of sorcery, tried her in the ordinary
form, and condemned her to be burnt for a witch.
LXXXII. I gave some account of this extraordinary woman in the Sixteenth
Discourse of my first volume, where I hinted it merely as a conjecture
of my own, that, in all probability, the divine impulse the French
attributed to her, and still persist in attributing, and the witchcraft
imputed to her by the English, were both equally false. But now I find
my conjecture is supported and confirmed by a celebrated historian, in
consequence of which, what I advanced as a supposition, wears the face
of an authentic information. This historian, is Monsieur Du Haillan,
who affirms, that all the feats of Joan d’Arc, which have been so much
admired, were the effects of political artifice; without the least
intervention, either of divine inspiration or diabolical compact.
According to this author, three French noblemen, whom he names, were the
contrivers and managers of the whole business. These (after disclosing to
her the most private secrets of the court, and instructing her largely
in all she had to do and say, in order to make it appear as if she knew
things by divine inspiration; and that all her actions were effected by
divine impulse) made use of her, thus instructed, as the most effectual
means to animate the dejected king and his dispirited troops. He adds,
that some people affirmed, that although they called her a maid, she was
no such thing, but the concubine of one of the three lords; but whether
this was so or not, I presume, they pitched upon her preferable to any
other woman, from having observed her to be endowed with an excellent
capacity, a clear and penetrating head, and a heart proportioned to the
dangers of so great an undertaking. Gabriel Naudé, in his book intitled
_Strokes of Policy_, adopts the sentiment of Du Haillan, and quotes
Justus Lipsius, and Monsieur Langei, as being of the same opinion; and
adds, that other authors, both French and strangers, adopt it. By this
development, the famous Joan d’Arc is divested of any pretensions to
being miraculously inspired, but not degraded from the rank of a heroine.