the regent for the child Henry VI, expected to see Joan under the
walls of Paris. He was waiting for the troops which the Cardinal
of Winchester had collected in England. Bedford induced Winchester
to bring his men to France, but they had not arrived. The Duke of
Burgundy, the head of the great French party which opposed Charles,
had been invited by the Maid to Reims. Again she wrote to him:
"Make a firm, good peace with the King of France," she said; "forgive
each other with kind hearts"; "I pray and implore you, with joined
hands, fight not against France."
The Duke of Burgundy, far from listening to Joan's prayer, left
Paris and went to raise men for the English. Meanwhile, Charles
was going from town to town, and all received him gladly. But Joan
soon began to see that instead of marching west from Reims to Paris,
the army was being led southwest toward the Loire. There the king
would be safe among his dear castles, where he could live indoors,
and take his ease. Thus Bedford was able to throw 5,000 men of
Winchester's into Paris, and even dared to come out and hunt for
the French king. The French should have struck at Paris at once, as
Joan desired. The delays were excused because the Duke of Burgundy
had promised to surrender Paris in a fortnight. But this he did
merely to gain time. Joan knew this, and said there would be no
peace but at the lance-point.
The French and English armies kept watching each other, and there
were skirmishes near Senlis. On August 15, the Maid and d'Alençon
hoped for a battle. But the English had fortified their position
in the night. Come out they would not, so Joan rode up to their
fortification, standard in hand, struck the palisade and challenged
them to sally forth. She even offered to let them march out and
draw themselves up in line of battle. The Maid stayed on the field
all night and next day made a retreat, hoping to draw the English
out of their fort. But they were too wary and went back to Paris.
Now the fortnight was over, after which the Duke of Burgundy was
to surrender Paris, but he did nothing of the kind. The Maid was
weary of words. She called the Duc d'Alençon and said: "My fair
duke, array your men, for, by my staff, I would fain see Paris
more closely than I have seen it yet." On August 23, the Maid and
d'Alençon left the king at Compiègne and rode to St. Denis, where
were the tombs of the kings of France. "And when the king heard
that they were at St. Denis, he came, very sore against his will,
as far as Senlis, and it seems that his advisers were contrary to
the will of the Maid, of the Duc d'Alencon, and of their company."
The king was afraid to go near Paris, but Bedford was afraid to
stay in the town. He went to Rouen, the strongest English hold in
Normandy, leaving the Burgundian army and 2,000 English in Paris.
Every day, the Maid and d'Alençon rode from St. Denis to the gates
of Paris, to observe the best places for an attack. And still
Charles dallied and delayed, still the main army did not come up.
Thus the delay of the king gave the English time to make Paris
almost impregnable and to frighten the people who, had Charles
marched straight from Reims, would have yielded as Reims did.
D'Alençon kept going to Senlis urging Charles to come up with the
main army. He went on September 1--the king promised to start next
day. D'Alençon returned to the Maid, the king still loitered. At
last d'Alençon brought him to St. Denis on September 7, and there
was a skirmish that day.
In the book of Perceval de Cagny, who was with his lord, the Duc
d'Alençon, he says: "The assault was long and fierce, and it was
marvel to hear the noise of the cannons and culverins from the
walls, and to see the clouds of arrows. Few of those in the fosse
with the Maid were struck, though many others on horse and foot
were wounded with arrows and stone cannon-balls, but by God's grace
and the Maid's good fortune, there was none of them but could return
to camp unhelped. The assault lasted from noon till dusk--say eight
in the evening. After sunset, the Maid was struck by a crossbow
bolt in the thigh; and, after she was hurt, she cried but the louder
that all should attack, and that the place was taken. But as night
had now fallen and she was wounded, and the men-at-arms were weary
with the long attack, De Gaucourt and others came and found her,
and, against her will, brought her forth from the fosse. And so
ended that onslaught. But right sad she was to leave and said,
'By my bâton, the place would have been taken.' They put her on
horseback, and led her to her quarters, and all the rest of the
king's company who that day had come from St. Denis."
"Next day," says Cagny, "in spite of her wound, she was first in
the field. She went to d'Alençon and bade him sound the trumpet
for the charge. D'Alençon and the other captains were of the same
mind as the Maid, and Montmorency with sixty gentlemen and many
lances came in, though he had been on the English side before. So
they began to march on Paris, but the king sent messengers, and
compelled the Maid and the captains to return to St. Denis. Right
sorry were they, yet they must obey the king. When she saw that
they would go, she dedicated her armor, and hung it up before the
statue of Our Lady at St. Denis, and so right sadly went away in
company with the king. And thus were broken the will of the Maid
and the army of the king."
The courtiers had triumphed. They had thwarted the Maid, they had
made her promise to take Paris of no avail. They had destroyed the
confidence of men in the banner that had never gone back.
The king now went from one pleasant tower on the Loire to another,
taking the Maid with him. Meanwhile, the English took and plundered
some of the cities which had yielded to Charles, and they carried
off the Maid's armor from the chapel in St. Denis. Her Voices had
bidden her stay at St. Denis, but this she was not permitted to
do, and now she must hear daily how the loyal towns that she had
won were plundered by the English, and all her work seemed wasted.
The Duc d'Alençon offered to lead an army against the English in
Normandy, if the Maid might march with him, for the people had not
wholly lost faith, but the courtiers and the Archbishop of Reims,
who managed the king and the war, would not consent, nor would they
allow the Maid and the duke to even see each other.
Joan wanted to return to Paris, but the council sent her to take
La Charité and Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier from the English. This town
she attacked first. Her squire, a gentleman named d'Aulon, was with
her, and described what he saw. "When they had besieged the place
for some time, an assault was commanded, but for the great strength
of the forts and the numbers of the enemy the French were forced
to give way. At that hour I who speak was wounded by an arrow in
the heel, and could not stand or walk without crutches. But I saw
the Maid holding her ground with a handful of men, and, fearing ill
might come of it, I mounted a horse and rode to her, asking what
she was doing there alone, and why she did not retreat like the
others. She took the _salade_ from her head, and answered that
she was not alone, but had in her company fifty thousand of her
people; and that go she would not till she had taken that town,
"But, whatever she said, I saw that she had with her but four men
or five, as others also saw, wherefore I bade her retreat. Then she
commanded me to have fagots brought, and planks to bridge fosses.
And as she spoke to me, she cried in a loud voice, 'All of you, bring
fagots to fill the fosse.' And this was done, whereat I greatly
marvelled, and instantly that town was taken by assault with no
great resistance. And all that the Maid did seemed to me rather
deeds divine than natural, and it was impossible that so young
a maid should do such deeds without the will and guidance of Our
Lord."
DEATH OF JOAN THE MAID
Anonymous
From there the Maid rode to attack La Charité. But, though the
towns helped her as well as they might with money and food, her
force was too small and was too ill provided with everything, for
the king did not send supplies. She abandoned the siege and departed
in great displeasure. The court now moved from place to place,
with Joan following in its train; for three weeks she stayed with
a lady who describes her as very devout and constantly in church.
Thinking her already a saint, people brought her things to touch.
"Touch them yourselves," she said; "your touch is as good as mine."
Winter was over and spring came on, but still the king did nothing.
The Maid could be idle no longer. Without a word to the king,
she rode to Lagny, "for there they had fought bravely against the
English." These men were Scots, under Sir Hugh Kennedy. In mid-April
she was at Melun. There "she heard her Voices almost every day,
and many a time they told her that she would presently be taken
prisoner." Her year was over. She prayed that she might die as soon
as she was taken, without the long sorrow of imprisonment. Then her
Voices told her to bear graciously whatever befell her, for so it
must be. But they told her not the hour of her captivity. "If she
had known the hour she would not then have gone to war. And often
she prayed them to tell her of that hour, but they did not answer."
These words are Joan's. She spoke them to her judges at Rouen.
The name of Joan was now such a terror to the English that men
deserted rather than face her in arms. At this time the truce with
Burgundy ended, and the duke openly set out to besiege the strong
town of Compiègne, held by De Flavy for France. Burgundy had
invested Compiègne, when Joan, with four hundred men, rode into
the town secretly at dawn. That day Joan led a sally against the
Burgundians. Her Voices told her nothing, good or bad, she says.
The Burgundians were encamped at Margny and at Clairoix, the English
at Venette, villages on a plain near the walls. Joan crossed the
bridge on a gray charger, in a surcoat of crimson silk, rode through
the redoubt beyond the bridge, and attacked the Burgundians. De
Flavy in the town was to prevent the English from attacking her in
the rear. He had boats on the river to secure Joan's retreat, if
necessary.
Joan swept through Margny driving the Burgundians before her; the
garrison of Clairoix came to their help; the battle was doubtful.
Meanwhile the English came up; they could not have reached
the Burgundians, to aid them, but some of the Maid's men, seeing
the English standards, fled. The English followed them under the
walls of Compiègne; the gate of the redoubt was closed to prevent
the English from entering with the runaways. Like Hector under
Troy, the Maid was shut out from the town which she came to save.
Joan was with her own foremost line when the rear fled. They told
her of her danger; she heeded not. Her men seized her bridle and
turned her horse's head about. The English held the entrance from
the causeway; Joan and a few men were driven into a corner of the
outer wall. A rush was made at Joan. "Yield! yield to me!" each
man cried.
"I have given my faith to Another," she said, "and I will keep my
oath."
Her enemies confess that on this day Joan did great feats of arms,
covering the rear of her force when they had to fly. Some French
historians hold that the gates were closed, by treason, that the
Maid might be taken.
The Maid, as a prisoner, was led to Margny, where the Burgundian
and English captains rejoiced over her. They had her at last, the
girl who had driven them from fort and field. Not a French lance
was raised to rescue her; not a sou did the king send to ransom
her.
Within two days of her capture, the Vicar-General of the Inquisition
in France claimed her as a heretic and a witch. The English knights
let the doctors of the University of Paris judge and burn the girl
whom they seldom dared to face in war. She was the enemy of the
English, and the English believed in witchcraft. Joan was now kept
in a high tower and was allowed to walk on the leads. She knew
she was sold to England, she had heard that the people of Compiègne
were to be massacred. She would rather die than fall into English
hands, but she hoped to escape and relieve Compiègne. She therefore
prayed for counsel to her Saints; might she leap from the top of
the tower? Would they not bear her up in their hands? St. Catherine
bade her not to leap; God would help her and the people of Compiègne.
Then, for the first time, as far as we know, the Maid wilfully
disobeyed her Voices. She leaped from the tower. They found her,
not wounded, not a limb broken, but stunned. She knew not what
had happened; they told her she had leaped down For three days she
could not eat, "yet was she comforted by St. Catherine, who bade
her confess and seek pardon of God, and told her that, without
fail, they of Compiègne should be relieved before Martinmas." This
prophecy was fulfilled. Joan was more troubled about Compiègne than
about her own coming doom.
She was now locked up in an iron cage at Rouen. The person who
conducted the trial was her deadly enemy, the Bishop of Beauvais,
Cauchon, whom she and her men had turned out of his bishopric.
Next, Joan was kept in strong irons day and night, always guarded
by five English soldiers. Weakened by long captivity and ill usage,
she, an untaught girl, was questioned repeatedly for three months
by the most cunning and learned doctors of law of the Paris
University. Often many spoke at once, to perplex her mind. But
Joan always showed a wisdom which confounded them, and which is at
least as extraordinary as her skill in war. She would never swear
an oath to answer _all_ their questions. About herself, and all
matters bearing on her own conduct, she would answer. About the
king, and the secrets of the king, she would not answer. If they
forced her to reply about these things, she frankly said, she would
not tell them the truth. The whole object of the trial was to prove
that she dealt with powers of evil, and that her king had been
crowned and aided by the devil. Her examiners, therefore, attacked
her day by day, in public and in her dungeon, with questions about
these visions which she held sacred and could only speak of with
a blush among her friends. She maintained that she certainly did
see and hear her Saints, and that they came to her by the will of
God. This was called blasphemy and witchcraft.
Most was made of her refusal to wear woman's dress. For this she
seems to have had two reasons: first, that to give up her old dress
would have been to acknowledge that her mission was ended; next,
for reasons of modesty, she being alone in prison among ruffianly
men. She would wear woman's dress if they would let her take the
Holy Communion, but this they refused. To these points she was
constant: she would not deny her visions; she would not say one word
against her king, "the noblest Christian in the world" she called
him, who had deserted her. She would not wear woman's dress in
prison. They took her to the torture-chamber, and threatened her
with torture. Finally, they put her up in public, opposite a pile
of wood ready for burning, where she was solemnly preached to for
the last time. All through her trial, her Voices bade her answer
boldly, in three months she would give her last answer, in three
months "she would be free with great victory, and come into the
Kingdom of Paradise."
At last, in fear of the fire and the stake before her, and on promise
of being taken to a kindlier prison among women, and released from
chains, she promised to renounce her visions, and submit to Cauchon
and her other enemies. Some little note on paper she now signed
with a cross, and repeated a short form of words. By some trick
this signature was changed for a long document, in which she was
made to confess all her visions false.
Cauchon had triumphed. The blame of heresy and witchcraft was cast
on Joan, and on her king as an accomplice. But the English were
not satisfied; they made an uproar, they threatened Cauchon, for
Joan's life was to be spared. She was to be in prison all her days,
on bread and water, but while she lived they dared scarcely stir
against the French. They were soon satisfied.
Joan's prison was not changed. There soon came news that she had
put on man's dress again. The judges went to her. She told them
(they say) that she put on this dress of her own free will. In
confession, later, she told her priest that she had been refused
any other dress, and had been brutally treated both by the soldiers
and by an English lord.
In any case, the promises made to her had been broken. The judge
asked her if her Voices had been with her again.
"Yes."
"What did they say?"
"God told me by the Voices of the great sorrow of my treason, when
I abjured to save my life."
"Do you believe the Voices came from St. Margaret and St. Catherine?"
"Yes, and that they are from God."
She added that she had never meant to deny this, had not understood
that she had denied it.
All was over now; she was a "relapsed heretic."
Enough. They burned Joan the Maid. She did not suffer long. Her
eyes were fixed on a cross which a priest, Martin l'Advenu, held
up before her. She maintained, he says, to her dying moment, the
truth of her Voices. With a great cry of JESUS! she gave up her
life. Even the English wept, even a secretary of the English king
said that they had burned a Saint.
Twenty years after her death Charles VII, in his own interest,
induced the Pope to try the case of Joan over again. They collected
the evidence of most of the living people who had known her, the
Domremy peasants, from Dunois, d'Alençon, d'Aulon, from Isambart
and l'Advenu, they learned how nobly she died, and how she never
made one complaint, but forgave all her enemies freely. All these
old Latin documents were collected, edited, and printed, in 1849,
by Monsieur Jules Quicherat, a long and noble labor.
HOW CATHERINE DOUGLAS TRIED TO SAVE KING JAMES OF SCOTLAND
By Charlotte M. Yonge
It was bedtime, and the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery
at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a
home of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered
it the habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that
they themselves might benefit by the "peace of the Church," which
was in general accorded to all sacred spots.
Thus it was that Christmas and Carnival time of 1435-6 had been
spent by the court in the cloisters of Perth, and the dance, the
song, and the tourney had strangely contrasted with the grave and
self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their
neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for
it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than
usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or
backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King
James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was
the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished
man in his dominions; for though he had been basely kept a prisoner
at Windsor throughout his boyhood by Henry IV of England, an
education had been bestowed on him far above what he would have
otherwise obtained; and he was naturally a man of great ability,
refinement, and strength of character. Not only was he a perfect
knight on horseback, but in wrestling and running, throwing
the hammer, and "putting the stane," he had scarcely a rival, and
he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry,
composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel,
able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen,
the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy
in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking
on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are
still preserved. They had now been eleven years married, and their
court was one bright spot of civilization, refinement, and grace,
amid the savagery of Scotland. And now, after the pleasant social
evening, the queen, with her long fair hair unbound, was sitting
under the hands of her tirewomen, who were preparing her for the
night's rest; and the king, in his furred nightgown, was standing
before the bright fire on the hearth of the wide chimney, laughing
and talking with the attendant ladies.
Yet dark hints had already been whispered, which might have cast
a shadow over that careless mirth. Always fierce and vindictive,
the Scots had been growing more and more lawless and savage ever
since the disputed succession of Bruce and Balliol had unsettled all
royal authority, and led to one perpetual war with the English. The
twenty years of James's captivity had been the worst of all--almost
every noble was a robber chief, Scottish borderer preyed upon
English borderer, Highlander upon Lowlander, knight upon traveler,
every one who had armor upon him who had not; each clan was at deadly
feud with its neighbor; blood was shed like water from end to end
of the miserable land, and the higher the birth of the offender
the greater the impunity he claimed.
Indeed, James himself had been brought next to the throne by one of
the most savage and horrible murders ever perpetrated--that of his
elder brother, David, by his own uncle; and he himself had probably
been only saved from sharing the like fate by being sent out of the
kingdom. His earnest words on his return to take the rule of this
unhappy realm were these: "Let God but grant me life, and there
shall not be a spot in my realm where the key shall not keep the
castle, and the bracken bush the cow, though I should lead the life
of a dog to accomplish it."
This great purpose had been before James through the eleven years
of his reign, and he had worked it out resolutely. The lawless
nobles would not brook his ruling hand, and strong and bitter was
the hatred that had arisen against him. In many of his transactions
he was far from blameless: he was sometimes tempted to craft,
sometimes to tyranny; but his object was always a high and kingly
one, though he was led by the horrible wickedness of the men he
had to deal with more than once to forget that evil is not to be
overcome with evil, but with good. In the main, it was his high
and uncompromising resolution to enforce the laws upon high and low
alike that led to the nobles' conspiracies against him; though, if
he had always been true to his purpose of swerving neither to the
right nor to the left, he might have avoided the last fatal offense
that armed the murderer against his life.
The chief misdoers in the long period of anarchy had been his uncles
and cousins; nor was it till after his eldest uncle's death that
his return home had been possible. With a strong hand had he avenged
upon the princes and their followers the many miseries they had
inflicted upon his people; and in carrying out these measures he
had seized upon the great earldom of Strathern, which had descended
to one of their party in right of his wife, declaring that it could
not be inherited by a female. In this he appears to have acted
unjustly, from the strong desire to avail himself by any pretext
of an opportunity of breaking the overweening power of the great
turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the loss, he created the new
earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise Graham, the son of the
dispossessed earl. But the proud and vindictive Grahams were not
thus to be pacified. Sir Robert Graham, the uncle of the young
earl, drew off into the Highlands, and there formed a conspiracy
among other discontented men who hated the resolute government that
repressed their violence. Men of princely blood joined in the plot,
and 300 Highland catherans were ready to accompany the expedition
that promised the delights of war and plunder.
Even when the hard-worked king was setting forth to enjoy his holiday
at Perth, the traitors had fixed upon that spot as the place of
his doom; but the scheme was known to so many, that it could not
be kept entirely secret, and warnings began to gather round the
king. When, on his way to Perth, he was about to cross the Firth of
Forth, the wild figure of a Highland woman appeared at his bridle
rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he
would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and
bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the
knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king
that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice was taken of
her warning.
There was likewise a saying abroad in Scotland, that the new year,
1436, should see the death of a king; and this same carnival night,
James, while playing at chess with a young friend, whom he was wont
to call the king of love, laughingly observed that "it must be you
or I, since there are but two kings in Scotland--therefore, look
well to yourself."