_Jeanne d'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_
The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her
story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of
Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast _moult
noblement_, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered
Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to
Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noel, noel!_"
The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North
France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to
the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of
Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the
English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of
Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal
banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name,
by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of
national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were
now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent,
licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of
Bourges."
The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored
village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which
may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty,
ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her
destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek
safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans,
the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English
hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of
a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn
coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the
royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd
August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her
voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her
attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was
foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his
counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon
Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was
wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when
she was carried away to St. Denis at whose shrine she hung up her
arms--her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her
banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure
of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria."
[Footnote 94: An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end
of the Rue des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the
Maid fell before the Porte St Honore.]
Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the chateau of
Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of
Compiegne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The
university of Paris and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but
English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a
martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her
trial may do so in the pages of Mr. Douglas Murray's translation of
the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the
eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but
nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the
subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by
the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors.
"The English burnt her," says a Venetian merchant, "thinking that
fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord
that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster
after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died,
Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled, and Queen Isabella
went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and
in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the
cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little
strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English
crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic
Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of
intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the
atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te
Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris for her capture, another, a very
different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her
rehabilitation," says Mr. Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the
mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their
humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the
triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some
emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the
Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many
joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one
great cry for justice broke from the multitude."
The story of Paris under the English is a melancholy one. Despite the
coronation of the young king at Notre Dame and the rigid justice and
enlightened policy of Bedford's regency, they failed to win the
affection of the Parisians. Rewards to political friends, punishments
and confiscations inflicted on the disaffected, the riotous and
homicidal conduct of some of the English garrison, the depression in
commerce and depreciation of property brought their inevitable
consequences--a growing hatred of the English name.[95] The chapter of
Notre Dame was compelled to sell the gold vessels from the treasury.
Hundred of houses were abandoned by their owners, who were unable to
meet the charges upon them. In 1427 by a royal instrument the rent of
the Maison des Singes was reduced from twenty-six livres to fourteen,
"seeing the extreme diminution of rents."
[Footnote 95: In 1421 and 1422 the people of Paris had seen Henry V.
and his French consort sitting in state at the Louvre, surrounded by a
brilliant throng of princes, prelates and barons. Hungry crowds
watched the sumptuous banquet and then went away fasting, for nothing
was offered them. "It was not so in the former times under our kings,"
they murmured, "then was open table kept, and servants distributed the
meats and wine even of the king himself."]
Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down
to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d'Eguiller, we learn that he
and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our "late very
dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon,"
were drinking one night at ten o'clock in a tavern where hangs the
sign of _L'Homme Arme_.[2] Hot words arose between them and some other
tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter, and William of the Blancs
Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar
Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked
sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience
in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of
hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the
servants--Robin the Englishman, Guiot d'Eguiller and one Guillaume.
The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du
Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their
pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and
snatching Guiot's sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the
house. He only gave one "_cop_," but it was enough, and there was an
end of Friar Robert.
A certain Gilles, a _povre homme laboureur_, went to amuse himself at
a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the
Porte St. Honore, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel's wife concerning
some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore
out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her
coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, "and in his anger cursed
God our Creator." This came to the bishop's ears, and Gilles was cast
for blasphemy into the bishop's oven, as the episcopal prison was
called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on
promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds' weight before the image
of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame.
The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446.
Three years before that date, a goldsmith was at _dejeuner_ with a
baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade,
of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The
goldsmith[96] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest
of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to
employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times
would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the
university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times.
Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last
in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men
who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands
leagued with them. Jean Trolet's loose tongue cost him dear, but the
general unrest which this incident illustrates burst forth in plot
after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened
by some citizens to the Duke of Richemont, Constable of France, who,
with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of
_Ville gagnee!_ the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of
Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves
in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and
baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and
embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did
an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo
in 1815.
[Footnote 96: The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the
Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.]