anybody before. And indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first
time a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud of and call its
own. And it is strange and beautiful how they try to give your name to
every creature that has a sex that is convenient. It is but half a year
since you began to be spoken of and left us, and so it is surprising to
see how many babies there are already in that region that are named for
you. First it was just Joan; then it was Joan-Orleans; then
Joan-Orleans-Beaugency-Patay; and now the next ones will have a lot of
towns and the Coronation added, of course. Yes, and the animals the same.
They know how you love animals, and so they try to do you honor and show
their love for you by naming all those creatures after you; insomuch that
if a body should step out and call "Joan of Arc--come!" there would be a
landslide of cats and all such things, each supposing it was the one
wanted, and all willing to take the benefit of the doubt, anyway, for the
sake of the food that might be on delivery. The kitten you left
behind--the last stray you fetched home--bears you name, now, and belongs
to Pere Fronte, and is the pet and pride of the village; and people have
come miles to look at it and pet it and stare at it and wonder over it
because it was Joan of Arc's cat. Everybody will tell you that; and one
day when a stranger threw a stone at it, not knowing it was your cat, the
village rose against him as one man and hanged him! And but for Pere
Fronte--"
There was an interruption. It was a messenger from the King, bearing a
note for Joan, which I read to her, saying he had reflected, and had
consulted his other generals, and was obliged to ask her to remain at the
head of the army and withdraw her resignation. Also, would she come
immediately and attend a council of war? Straightway, at a little
distance, military commands and the rumble of drums broke on the still
night, and we knew that her guard was approaching.
Deep disappointment clouded her face for just one moment and no more--it
passed, and with it the homesick girl, and she was Joan of Arc,
Commander-in-Chief again, and ready for duty.
38 The King Cries "Forward!"
IN MY double quality of page and secretary I followed Joan to the
council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess.
What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a
ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish
peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One
may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved
straight to the council-table, and stood. Her glance swept from face to
face there, and where it fell, these lit it as with a torch, those it
scorched as with a brand. She knew where to strike. She indicated the
generals with a nod, and said:
"My business is not with you. You have not craved a council of war." Then
she turned toward the King's privy council, and continued: "No; it is
with you. A council of war! It is amazing. There is but one thing to do,
and only one, and lo, ye call a council of war! Councils of war have no
value but to decide between two or several doubtful courses. But a
council of war when there is only one course? Conceive of a man in a boat
and his family in the water, and he goes out among his friends to ask
what he would better do? A council of war, name of God! To determine
what?"
She stopped, and turned till her eyes rested upon the face of La
Tremouille; and so she stood, silent, measuring him, the excitement in
all faces burning steadily higher and higher, and all pulses beating
faster and faster; then she said, with deliberation:
"Every sane man--whose loyalty is to his King and not a show and a
pretense--knows that there is but one rational thing before us--the march
upon Paris!"
Down came the fist of La Hire with an approving crash upon the table. La
Tremouille turned white with anger, but he pulled himself firmly together
and held his peace. The King's lazy blood was stirred and his eye kindled
finely, for the spirit of war was away down in him somewhere, and a
frank, bold speech always found it and made it tingle gladsomely. Joan
waited to see if the chief minister might wish to defend his position;
but he was experienced and wise, and not a man to waste his forces where
the current was against him. He would wait; the King's private ear would
be at his disposal by and by.
That pious fox the Chancellor of France took the word now. He washed his
soft hands together, smiling persuasively, and said to Joan:
"Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to move abruptly from here
without waiting for an answer from the Duke of Burgundy? You may not know
that we are negotiating with his Highness, and that there is likely to be
a fortnight's truce between us; and on his part a pledge to deliver Paris
into our hands without the cost of a blow or the fatigue of a march
thither."
Joan turned to him and said, gravely:
"This is not a confessional, my lord. You were not obliged to expose that
shame here."
The Chancellor's face reddened, and he retorted:
"Shame? What is there shameful about it?"
Joan answered in level, passionless tones:
"One may describe it without hunting far for words. I knew of this poor
comedy, my lord, although it was not intended that I should know. It is
to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to conceal it--this
comedy whose text and impulse are describable in two words."
The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his manner:
"Indeed? And will your Excellency be good enough to utter them?"
"Cowardice and treachery!"
The fists of all the generals came down this time, and again the King's
eye sparkled with pleasure. The Chancellor sprang to his feet and
appealed to his Majesty:
"Sire, I claim your protection."
But the King waved him to his seat again, saying:
"Peace. She had a right to be consulted before that thing was undertaken,
since it concerned war as well as politics. It is but just that she be
heard upon it now."
The Chancellor sat down trembling with indignation, and remarked to Joan:
"Out of charity I will consider that you did not know who devised this
measure which you condemn in so candid language."
"Save your charity for another occasion, my lord," said Joan, as calmly
as before. "Whenever anything is done to injure the interests and degrade
the honor of France, all but the dead know how to name the two
conspirators-in-chief--"
"Sir, sire! this insinuation--"
"It is not an insinuation, my lord," said Joan, placidly, "it is a
charge. I bring it against the King's chief minister and his Chancellor."
Both men were on their feet now, insisting that the King modify Joan's
frankness; but he was not minded to do it. His ordinary councils were
stale water--his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the taste of it was
good. He said:
"Sit--and be patient. What is fair for one must in fairness be allowed
the other. Consider--and be just. When have you two spared her? What dark
charges and harsh names have you withheld when you spoke of her?" Then he
added, with a veiled twinkle in his eyes, "If these are offenses I see no
particular difference between them, except that she says her hard things
to your faces, whereas you say yours behind her back."
He was pleased with that neat shot and the way it shriveled those two
people up, and made La Hire laugh out loud and the other generals softly
quake and chuckle. Joan tranquilly resumed:
"From the first, we have been hindered by this policy of shilly-shally;
this fashion of counseling and counseling and counseling where no
counseling is needed, but only fighting. We took Orleans on the 8th of
May, and could have cleared the region round about in three days and
saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks ago,
and in Paris now; and would see the last Englishman pass out of France in
half a year. But we struck no blow after Orleans, but went off into the
country--what for? Ostensibly to hold councils; really to give Bedford
time to send reinforcements to Talbot--which he did; and Patay had to be
fought. After Patay, more counseling, more waste of precious time. Oh, my
King, I would that you would be persuaded!" She began to warm up, now.
"Once more we have our opportunity. If we rise and strike, all is well.
Bid me march upon Paris. In twenty days it shall be yours, and in six
months all France! Here is half a year's work before us; if this chance
be wasted, I give you twenty years to do it in. Speak the word, O gentle
King--speak but the one--"
"I cry you mercy!" interrupted the Chancellor, who saw a dangerous
enthusiasm rising in the King's face. "March upon Paris? Does your
Excellency forget that the way bristles with English strongholds?"
"That for your English strongholds!" and Joan snapped her fingers
scornfully. "Whence have we marched in these last days? From Gien. And
whither? To Rheims. What bristled between? English strongholds. What are
they now? French ones--and they never cost a blow!" Here applause broke
out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it
subside. "Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French ones
bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it. The
strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of
English, but by the same breed as those others--with the same fears, the
same questionings, the same weaknesses, the same disposition to see the
heavy hand of God descending upon them. We have but to march!--on the
instant--and they are ours, Paris is ours, France is ours! Give the word,
O my King, command your servant to--"
"Stay!" cried the Chancellor. "It would be madness to put our affront
upon his Highness the Duke of Burgundy. By the treaty which we have every
hope to make with him--"
"Oh, the treaty which we hope to make with him! He has scorned you for
years, and defied you. Is it your subtle persuasions that have softened
his manners and beguiled him to listen to proposals? No; it was
blows!--the blows which we gave him! That is the only teaching that that
sturdy rebel can understand. What does he care for wind? The treaty which
we hope to make with him--alack! He deliver Paris! There is no pauper in
the land that is less able to do it. He deliver Paris! Ah, but that would
make great Bedford smile! Oh, the pitiful pretext! the blind can see that
this thin pour-parler with its fifteen-day truce has no purpose but to
give Bedford time to hurry forward his forces against us. More
treachery--always treachery! We call a council of war--with nothing to
council about; but Bedford calls no council to teach him what our course
is. He knows what he would do in our place. He would hang his traitors
and march upon Paris! O gentle King, rouse! The way is open, Paris
beckons, France implores, Speak and we--"
"Sire, it is madness, sheer madness! Your Excellency, we cannot, we must
not go back from what we have done; we have proposed to treat, we must
treat with the Duke of Burgundy."
"And we will!" said Joan.
"Ah? How?"
"At the point of the lance!"
The house rose, to a man--all that had French hearts--and let go a crack
of applause--and kept it up; and in the midst of it one heard La Hire
growl out: "At the point of the lance! By God, that is music!" The King
was up, too, and drew his sword, and took it by the blade and strode to
Joan and delivered the hilt of it into her hand, saying:
"There, the King surrenders. Carry it to Paris."
And so the applause burst out again, and the historical council of war
that has bred so many legends was over.
Chapter 39 We Win, But the King Balks
IT WAS away past midnight, and had been a tremendous day in the matter of
excitement and fatigue, but that was no matter to Joan when there was
business on hand. She did not think of bed. The generals followed her to
her official quarters, and she delivered her orders to them as fast as
she could talk, and they sent them off to their different commands as
fast as delivered; wherefore the messengers galloping hither and thither
raised a world of clatter and racket in the still streets; and soon were
added to this the music of distant bugles and the roll of drums--notes of
preparation; for the vanguard would break camp at dawn.
The generals were soon dismissed, but I wasn't; nor Joan; for it was my
turn to work, now. Joan walked the floor and dictated a summons to the
Duke of Burgundy to lay down his arms and make peace and exchange pardons
with the King; or, if he must fight, go fight the Saracens.
"Pardonnez-vous l'un ... l'autre de bon coeligeur, entierement, ainsi que
doivent faire loyaux chretiens, et, s'il vous plait de guerroyer, allez
contre les Sarrasins." It was long, but it was good, and had the sterling
ring to it. It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and
straightforward and eloquent a state paper as she ever uttered.
It was delivered into the hands of a courier, and he galloped away with
it. The Joan dismissed me, and told me to go to the inn and stay, and in
the morning give to her father the parcel which she had left there. It
contained presents for the Domremy relatives and friends and a peasant
dress which she had bought for herself. She said she would say good-by to
her father and uncle in the morning if it should still be their purpose
to go, instead of tarrying awhile to see the city.
I didn't say anything, of course, but I could have said that wild horses
couldn't keep those men in that town half a day. They waste the glory of
being the first to carry the great news to Domremy--the taxes remitted
forever!--and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and
shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events
which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were
colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality!
When I got there, do you suppose they were abed! Quite the reverse. They
and the rest were as mellow as mellow could be; and the Paladin was doing
his battles in great style, and the old peasants were endangering the
building with their applause. He was doing Patay now; and was bending his
big frame forward and laying out the positions and movements with a rake
here and a rake there of his formidable sword on the floor, and the
peasants were stooped over with their hands on their spread knees
observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejaculations of wonder and
admiration all along:
"Yes, here we were, waiting--waiting for the word; our horses fidgeting
and snorting and dancing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till
our bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out at last--'Go!'
and we went!
"Went? There was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of
scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in piles
and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic
battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of
the dead stretching far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but on!
on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our prey--Talbot and his host
looming vast and dark like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we
swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a quivering pall of dead
leaves flung up by the whirlwind of our flight. In another moment we
should have struck them as world strikes world when disorbited
constellations crash into the Milky way, but by misfortune and the
inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white,
and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of
Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's
entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back! I
could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach in
the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused what
seemed an irreparable disaster. Another might have gone aside to grieve,
as not seeing any way to mend it; but I thank God I am not of those.
Great occasions only summon as with a trumpet-call the slumbering
reserves of my intellect. I saw my opportunity in an instant--in the next
I was away! Through the woods I vanished--fst!--like an extinguished
light! Away around through the curtaining forest I sped, as if on wings,
none knowing what was become of me, none suspecting my design. Minute
after minute passed, on and on I flew; on, and still on; and at last with
a great cheer I flung my Banner to the breeze and burst out in front of
Talbot! Oh, it was a mighty thought! That weltering chaos of distracted
men whirled and surged backward like a tidal wave which has struck a
continent, and the day was ours! Poor helpless creatures, they were in a
trap; they were surrounded; they could not escape to the rear, for there
was our army; they could not escape to the front, for there was I. Their
hearts shriveled in their bodies, their hands fell listless at their
sides. They stood still, and at our leisure we slaughtered them to a man;
all except Talbot and Fastolfe, whom I saved and brought away, one under
each arm."
Well, there is no denying it, the Paladin was in great form that night.
Such style! such noble grace of gesture, such grandeur of attitude, such
energy when he got going! such steady rise, on such sure wing, such
nicely graduated expenditures of voice according to the weight of the
matter, such skilfully calculated approaches to his surprises and
explosions, such belief-compelling sincerity of tone and manner, such a
climaxing peal from his brazen lungs, and such a lightning-vivid picture
of his mailed form and flaunting banner when he burst out before that
despairing army! And oh, the gentle art of the last half of his last
sentence--delivered in the careless and indolent tone of one who has
finished his real story, and only adds a colorless and inconsequential
detail because it has happened to occur to him in a lazy way.
It was a marvel to see those innocent peasants. Why, they went all to
pieces with enthusiasm, and roared out applauses fit to raise the roof
and wake the dead. When they had cooled down at last and there was
silence but for the heaving and panting, old Laxart said, admiringly:
"As it seems to me, you are an army in your single person."
"Yes, that is what he is," said Noel Rainguesson, convincingly. "He is a
terror; and not just in this vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder
with it to distant lands--just he mere name; and when he frowns, the
shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and the chickens go to roost an hour
before schedule time. Yes; and some say--"
"Noel Rainguesson, you are preparing yourself for trouble. I will say
just one word to you, and it will be to your advantage to--"
I saw that the usual thing had got a start. No man could prophesy when it
would end. So I delivered Joan's message and went off to bed.
Joan made her good-byes to those old fellows in the morning, with loving
embraces and many tears, and with a packed multitude for sympathizers,
and they rode proudly away on their precious horses to carry their great
news home. I had seen better riders, some will say that; for horsemanship
was a new art to them.
The vanguard moved out at dawn and took the road, with bands braying and
banners flying; the second division followed at eight. Then came the
Burgundian ambassadors, and lost us the rest of that day and the whole of
the next. But Joan was on hand, and so they had their journey for their
pains. The rest of us took the road at dawn, next morning, July 20th. And
got how far? Six leagues. Tremouille was getting in his sly work with the
vacillating King, you see. The King stopped at St. Marcoul and prayed
three days. Precious time lost--for us; precious time gained for Bedford.
He would know how to use it.
We could not go on without the King; that would be to leave him in the
conspirators' camp. Joan argued, reasoned, implored; and at last we got
under way again.
Joan's prediction was verified. It was not a campaign, it was only
another holiday excursion. English strongholds lined our route; they
surrendered without a blow; we garrisoned them with Frenchmen and passed
on. Bedford was on the march against us with his new army by this time,
and on the 25th of July the hostile forces faced each other and made
preparation for battle; but Bedford's good judgment prevailed, and he
turned and retreated toward Paris. Now was our chance. Our men were in
great spirits.
Will you believe it? Our poor stick of a King allowed his worthless
advisers to persuade him to start back for Gien, whence he had set out
when we first marched for Rheims and the Coronation! And we actually did
start back. The fifteen-day truce had just been concluded with the Duke
of Burgundy, and we would go and tarry at Gien until he should deliver
Paris to us without a fight.
We marched to Bray; then the King changed his mind once more, and with it
his face toward Paris. Joan dictated a letter to the citizens of Rheims
to encourage them to keep heart in spite of the truce, and promising to
stand by them. She furnished them the news herself that the Kin had made
this truce; and in speaking of it she was her usual frank self. She said
she was not satisfied with it, and didn't know whether she would keep it
or not; that if she kept it, it would be solely out of tenderness for the
King's honor. All French children know those famous words. How naive they
are! "De cette treve qui a ete faite, je ne suis pas contente, et je ne
sais si je la tiendrai. Si je la tiens, ce sera seulement pour garder
l'honneur du roi." But in any case, she said, she would not allow the
blood royal to be abused, and would keep the army in good order and ready
for work at the end of the truce.
Poor child, to have to fight England, Burgundy, and a French conspiracy
all at the same time--it was too bad. She was a match for the others, but
a conspiracy--ah, nobody is a match for that, when the victim that is to
be injured is weak and willing. It grieved her, these troubled days, to
be so hindered and delayed and baffled, and at times she was sad and the
tears lay near the surface. Once, talking with her good old faithful
friend and servant, the Bastard of Orleans, she said:
"Ah, if it might but please God to let me put off this steel raiment and
go back to my father and my mother, and tend my sheep again with my
sister and my brothers, who would be so glad to see me!"
By the 12th of August we were camped near Dampmartin. Later we had a
brush with Bedford's rear-guard, and had hopes of a big battle on the
morrow, but Bedford and all his force got away in the night and went on
toward Paris.
Charles sent heralds and received the submission of Beauvais. The Bishop
Pierre Cauchon, that faithful friend and slave of the English, was not
able to prevent it, though he did his best. He was obscure then, but his
name was to travel round the globe presently, and live forever in the
curses of France! Bear with me now, while I spit in fancy upon his grave.
Compiegne surrendered, and hauled down the English flag. On the 14th we
camped two leagues from Senlis. Bedford turned and approached, and took
up a strong position. We went against him, but all our efforts to beguile
him out from his intrenchments failed, though he had promised us a duel
in the open field. Night shut down. Let him look our for the morning! But
in the morning he was gone again.
We entered Compiegne the 18th of August, turning out the English garrison
and hoisting our own flag.
On the 23d Joan gave command to move upon Paris. The King and the clique
were not satisfied with this, and retired sulking to Senlis, which had
just surrendered. Within a few days many strong places submitted--Creil,
Pont-Saint-Maxence, Choisy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Remy, Le
Neufville-en-Hez, Moguay, Chantilly, Saintines. The English power was
tumbling, crash after crash! And still the King sulked and disapproved,
and was afraid of our movement against the capital.
On the 26th of August, 1429, Joan camped at St. Denis; in effect, under
the walls of Paris.
And still the King hung back and was afraid. If we could but have had him
there to back us with his authority! Bedford had lost heart and decided
to waive resistance and go an concentrate his strength in the best and
loyalest province remaining to him--Normandy. Ah, if we could only have
persuaded the King to come and countenance us with his presence and
approval at this supreme moment!
40 Treachery Conquers Joan
COURIER after courier was despatched to the King, and he promised to
come, but didn't. The Duke d'Alencon went to him and got his promise
again, which he broke again. Nine days were lost thus; then he came,
arriving at St. Denis September 7th.
Meantime the enemy had begun to take heart: the spiritless conduct of the
King could have no other result. Preparations had now been made to defend
the city. Joan's chances had been diminished, but she and her generals
considered them plenty good enough yet. Joan ordered the attack for eight
o'clock next morning, and at that hour it began.
Joan placed her artillery and began to pound a strong work which
protected the gate St. Honor,. When it was sufficiently crippled the
assault was sounded at noon, and it was carried by storm. Then we moved
forward to storm the gate itself, and hurled ourselves against it again
and again, Joan in the lead with her standard at her side, the smoke
enveloping us in choking clouds, and the missiles flying over us and
through us as thick as hail.
In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate sure
and given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by a
crossbow bolt, and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic--for
what were they without her? She was the army, herself.
Although disabled, she refused to retire, and begged that a new assault
be made, saying it must win; and adding, with the battle-light rising in
her eyes, "I will take Paris now or die!" She had to be carried away by
force, and this was done by Gaucourt and the Duke d'Alencon.
But her spirits were at the very top notch, now. She was brimming with
enthusiasm. She said she would be carried before the gate in the morning,
and in half an hour Paris would be ours without any question. She could
have kept her word. About this there was no doubt. But she forgot one
factor--the King, shadow of that substance named La Tremouille. The King
forbade the attempt!
You see, a new Embassy had just come from the Duke of Burgundy, and
another sham private trade of some sort was on foot.
You would know, without my telling you, that Joan's heart was nearly
broken. Because of the pain of her wound and the pain at her heart she
slept little that night. Several times the watchers heard muffled sobs
from the dark room where she lay at St. Denis, and many times the
grieving words, "It could have been taken!--it could have been taken!"
which were the only ones she said.
She dragged herself out of bed a day later with a new hope. D'Alencon had
thrown a bridge across the Seine near St. Denis. Might she not cross by
that and assault Paris at another point? But the King got wind of it and
broke the bridge down! And more--he declared the campaign ended! And more
still--he had made a new truce and a long one, in which he had agreed to
leave Paris unthreatened and unmolested, and go back to the Loire whence
he had come!
Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by
her own King. She had said once that all she feared for her cause was
treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She hung up her white armor
in the royal basilica of St. Denis, and went and asked the King to
relieve her of her functions and let her go home. As usual, she was wise.
Grand combinations, far-reaching great military moves were at an end,
now; for the future, when the truce should end, the war would be merely a
war of random and idle skirmishes, apparently; work suitable for
subalterns, and not requiring the supervision of a sublime military
genius. But the King would not let her go. The truce did not embrace all
France; there were French strongholds to be watched and preserved; he
would need her. Really, you see, Tremouille wanted to keep her where he
could balk and hinder her.
Now came her Voices again. They said, "Remain at St. Denis." There was no
explanation. They did not say why. That was the voice of God; it took
precedence of the command of the King; Joan resolved to stay. But that
filled La Tremouille with dread. She was too tremendous a force to be
left to herself; she would surely defeat all his plans. He beguiled the
King to use compulsion. Joan had to submit--because she was wounded and
helpless. In the Great Trial she said she was carried away against her
will; and that if she had not been wounded it could not have been
accomplished. Ah, she had a spirit, that slender girl! a spirit to brave
all earthly powers and defy them. We shall never know why the Voices
ordered her to stay. We only know this; that if she could have obeyed,
the history of France would not be as it now stands written in the books.
Yes, well we know that.
On the 13th of September the army, sad and spiritless, turned its face
toward the Loire, and marched--without music! Yes, one noted that detail.
It was a funeral march; that is what it was. A long, dreary funeral
march, with never a shout or a cheer; friends looking on in tears, all
the way, enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last--that place whence we
had set out on our splendid march toward Rheims less than three months
before, with flags flying, bands playing, the victory-flush of Patay
glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes shouting and praising and
giving us godspeed. There was a dull rain falling now, the day was dark,
the heavens mourned, the spectators were few, we had no welcome but the
welcome of silence, and pity, and tears.
Then the King disbanded that noble army of heroes; it furled its flags,
it stored its arms: the disgrace of France was complete. La Tremouille
wore the victor's crown; Joan of Arc, the unconquerable, was conquered.
41 The Maid Will March No More
YES, IT was as I have said: Joan had Paris and France in her grip, and
the Hundred Years' War under her heel, and the King made her open her
fist and take away her foot.
Now followed about eight months of drifting about with the King and his
council, and his gay and showy and dancing and flirting and hawking and
frolicking and serenading and dissipating court--drifting from town to
town and from castle to castle--a life which was pleasant to us of the
personal staff, but not to Joan. However, she only saw it, she didn't
live it. The King did his sincerest best to make her happy, and showed a
most kind and constant anxiety in this matter.
All others had to go loaded with the chains of an exacting court
etiquette, but she was free, she was privileged. So that she paid her
duty to the King once a day and passed the pleasant word, nothing further
was required of her. Naturally, then, she made herself a hermit, and
grieved the weary days through in her own apartments, with her thoughts
and devotions for company, and the planning of now forever unrealizable
military combinations for entertainment. In fancy she moved bodies of men
from this and that and the other point, so calculating the distances to
be covered, the time required for each body, and the nature of the
country to be traversed, as to have them appear in sight of each other on
a given day or at a given hour and concentrate for battle. It was her
only game, her only relief from her burden of sorrow and inaction. She
played it hour after hour, as others play chess; and lost herself in it,
and so got repose for her mind and healing for her heart.
She never complained, of course. It was not her way. She was the sort
that endure in silence.
But--she was a caged eagle just the same, and pined for the free air and
the alpine heights and the fierce joys of the storm.
France was full of rovers--disbanded soldiers ready for anything that
might turn up. Several times, at intervals, when Joan's dull captivity
grew too heavy to bear, she was allowed to gather a troop of cavalry and
make a health-restoring dash against the enemy. These things were a bath
to her spirits.
It was like old times, there at Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, to see her lead
assault after assault, be driven back again and again, but always rally
and charge anew, all in a blaze of eagerness and delight; till at last
the tempest of missiles rained so intolerably thick that old D'Aulon, who
was wounded, sounded the retreat (for the King had charged him on his
head to let no harm come to Joan); and away everybody rushed after
him--as he supposed; but when he turned and looked, there were we of the
staff still hammering away; wherefore he rode back and urged her to come,
saying she was mad to stay there with only a dozen men. Her eye danced
merrily, and she turned upon him crying out:
"A dozen men! name of God, I have fifty-thousand, and will never budge
till this place is taken!
"Sound the charge!"
Which he did, and over the walls we went, and the fortress was ours. Old
D'Aulon thought her mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that she
felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in her heart. It was a
fanciful expression; but, to my thinking, truer word was never said.
Then there was the affair near Lagny, where we charged the intrenched
Burgundians through the open field four times, the last time
victoriously; the best prize of it Franquet d'Arras, the free-booter and
pitiless scourge of the region roundabout.
Now and then other such affairs; and at last, away toward the end of May,
1430, we were in the neighborhood of Compiegne, and Joan resolved to go
to the help of that place, which was being besieged by the Duke of
Burgundy.
I had been wounded lately, and was not able to ride without help; but the
good Dwarf took me on behind him, and I held on to him and was safe
enough. We started at midnight, in a sullen downpour of warm rain, and
went slowly and softly and in dead silence, for we had to slip through
the enemy's lines. We were challenged only once; we made no answer, but
held our breath and crept steadily and stealthily along, and got through
without any accident. About three or half past we reached Compiegne, just
as the gray dawn was breaking in the east.
Joan set to work at once, and concerted a plan with Guillaume de Flavy,
captain of the city--a plan for a sortie toward evening against the
enemy, who was posted in three bodies on the other side of the Oise, in
the level plain. From our side one of the city gates communicated with a
bridge. The end of this bridge was defended on the other side of the
river by one of those fortresses called a boulevard; and this boulevard
also commanded a raised road, which stretched from its front across the
plain to the village of Marguy. A force of Burgundians occupied Marguy;
another was camped at Clairoix, a couple of miles above the raised road;
and a body of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half below it. A
kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement, you see; the causeway the arrow, the
boulevard at the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette at one
end of the bow, Clairoix at the other.
Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway against Marguy, carry it by
assault, then turn swiftly upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture
that camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be ready for heavy
work, for the Duke of Burgundy lay behind Clairoix with a reserve.
Flavy's lieutenant, with archers and the artillery of the boulevard, was
to keep the English troops from coming up from below and seizing the
causeway and cutting off Joan's retreat in case she should have to make
one. Also, a fleet of covered boats was to be stationed near the
boulevard as an additional help in case a retreat should become
necessary.
It was the 24th of May. At four in the afternoon Joan moved out at the
head of six hundred cavalry--on her last march in this life!
It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up onto the walls, and from
there I saw much that happened, the rest was told me long afterward by
our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan crossed the bridge, and
soon left the boulevard behind her and went skimming away over the raised
road with her horsemen clattering at her heels. She had on a brilliant
silver-gilt cape over her armor, and I could see it flap and flare and
rise and fall like a little patch of white flame.
It was a bright day, and one could see far and wide over that plain. Soon
we saw the English force advancing, swiftly and in handsome order, the
sunlight flashing from its arms.
Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and was repulsed. Then she
saw the other Burgundians moving down from Clairoix. Joan rallied her men
and charged again, and was again rolled back. Two assaults occupy a good
deal of time--and time was precious here. The English were approaching
the road now from Venette, but the boulevard opened fire on them and they
were checked. Joan heartened her men with inspiring words and led them to
the charge again in great style. This time she carried Marguy with a
hurrah. Then she turned at once to the right and plunged into the plan
and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving; then there was
heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each other backward
turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the one, then to the
other. Now all of a sudden thee was a panic on our side. Some say one
thing caused it, some another. Some say the cannonade made our front
ranks think retreat was being cut off by the English, some say the rear
ranks got the idea that Joan was killed. Anyway our men broke, and went
flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried to rally them and face
them around, crying to them that victory was sure, but it did no good,
they divided and swept by her like a wave. Old D'Aulon begged her to
retreat while there was yet a chance for safety, but she refused; so he
seized her horse's bridle and bore her along with the wreck and ruin in
spite of herself. And so along the causeway they came swarming, that wild
confusion of frenzied men and horses--and the artillery had to stop
firing, of course; consequently the English and Burgundians closed in in
safety, the former in front, the latter behind their prey. Clear to the
boulevard the French were washed in this enveloping inundation; and
there, cornered in an angle formed by the flank of the boulevard and the
slope of the causeway, they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank
down one by one.
Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the gate to be closed and the
drawbridge raised. This shut Joan out.
The little personal guard around her thinned swiftly. Both of our good
knights went down disabled; Joan's two brothers fell wounded; then Noel
Rainguesson--all wounded while loyally sheltering Joan from blows aimed
at her. When only the Dwarf and the Paladin were left, they would not
give up, but stood their ground stoutly, a pair of steel towers streaked
and splashed with blood; and where the ax of one fell, and the sword of
the other, an enemy gasped and died.
And so fighting, and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple souls,
they came to their honorable end. Peace to their memories! they were very
dear to me.
Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still defiant, still laying
about her with her sword, was seized by her cape and dragged from her
horse. She was borne away a prisoner to the Duke of Burgundy's camp, and
after her followed the victorious army roaring its joy.
The awful news started instantly on its round; from lip to lip it flew;
and wherever it came it struck the people as with a sort of paralysis;
and they murmured over and over again, as if they were talking to
themselves, or in their sleep, "The Maid of Orleans taken! . . . Joan of
Arc a prisoner! . . . the savior of France lost to us!"--and would keep
saying that over, as if they couldn't understand how it could be, or how
God could permit it, poor creatures!
You know what a city is like when it is hung from eaves to pavement with
rustling black? Then you know what Rouse was like, and some other cities.
But can any man tell you what the mourning in the hearts of the peasantry
of France was like? No, nobody can tell you that, and, poor dumb things,
they could not have told you themselves, but it was there--indeed, yes.
Why, it was the spirit of a whole nation hung with crape!
The 24th of May. We will draw down the curtain now upon the most strange,
and pathetic, and wonderful military drama that has been played upon the
stage of the world. Joan of Arc will march no more.
BOOK III TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM
1 The Maid in Chains
I CANNOT bear to dwell at great length upon the shameful history of the
summer and winter following the capture. For a while I was not much
troubled, for I was expecting every day to hear that Joan had been put to
ransom, and that the King--no, not the King, but grateful France--had
come eagerly forward to pay it. By the laws of war she could not be
denied the privilege of ransom. She was not a rebel; she was a
legitimately constituted soldier, head of the armies of France by her
King's appointment, and guilty of no crime known to military law;
therefore she could not be detained upon any pretext, if ransom were
proffered.
But day after day dragged by and no ransom was offered! It seems
incredible, but it is true. Was that reptile Tremouille busy at the
King's ear? All we know is, that the King was silent, and made no offer
and no effort in behalf of this poor girl who had done so much for him.
But, unhappily, there was alacrity enough in another quarter. The news of
the capture reached Paris the day after it happened, and the glad English
and Burgundians deafened the world all the day and all the night with the
clamor of their joy-bells and the thankful thunder of their artillery,
and the next day the Vicar-General of the Inquisition sent a message to
the Duke of Burgundy requiring the delivery of the prisoner into the
hands of the Church to be tried as an idolater.
The English had seen their opportunity, and it was the English power that
was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a blind,
a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only able to
take the life of Joan of Arc, but to blight her influence and the
valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English power could
but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the influence of
her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the
only power in France that the English did not despise, the only power in
France that they considered formidable. If the Church could be brought to
take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a witch, sent
from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that the English supremacy
could be at once reinstated.
The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the
French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a
higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong
fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French prince,
and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with all his
waiting no offer came to him from the French side.
One day Joan played a cunning truck on her jailer, and not only slipped
out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was
seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.
Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in
August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she
was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her
heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half. And
she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the
English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would
dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King
silent, all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful.
And yet when she heard at last that Compiegne was being closely besieged
and likely to be captured, and that the enemy had declared that no
inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even children of seven years
of age, she was in a fever at once to fly to our rescue. So she tore her
bedclothes to strips and tied them together and descended this frail rope
in the night, and it broke, and she fell and was badly bruised, and
remained three days insensible, meantime neither eating nor drinking.
And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vend"me, and Compiegne was
saved and the siege raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of Burgundy.
He had to save money now. It was a good time for a new bid to be made for
Joan of Arc. The English at once sent a French bishop--that forever
infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais. He was partly promised the
Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed. He
claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesiastical trial because the
battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese. By the military
usage of the time the ransom of a royal prince was 10,000 livres of gold,
which is 61,125 francs--a fixed sum, you see. It must be accepted when
offered; it could not be refused.
Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from the English--a royal
prince's ransom for the poor little peasant-girl of Domremy. It shows in
a striking way the English idea of her formidable importance. It was
accepted. For that sum Joan of Arc, the Savior of France, was sold; sold
to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed and
thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made holiday
sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago, what a
Frenchman's face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing but his
back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she had
taught to respect French valor, new-born in her nation by the breath of
her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance
able to stand between English triumph and French degradation. Sold to a
French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French
nation standing thankless by and saying nothing.
And she--what did she say? Nothing. Not a reproach passed her lips. She
was too great for that--she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all
is said.
As a soldier, her record was spotless. She could not be called to account
for anything under that head. A subterfuge must be found, and, as we have
seen, was found. She must be tried by priests for crimes against
religion. If none could be discovered, some must be invented. Let the
miscreant Cauchon alone to contrive those.
Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial. It was in the heart of the
English power; its population had been under English dominion so many
generations that they were hardly French now, save in language. The place
was strongly garrisoned. Joan was taken there near the end of December,
1430, and flung into a dungeon. Yes, and clothed in chains, that free
spirit!
Still France made no move. How do I account for this? I think there is
only one way. You will remember that whenever Joan was not at the front,
the French held back and ventured nothing; that whenever she led, they
swept everything before them, so long as they could see her white armor
or her banner; that every time she fell wounded or was reported
killed--as at Compiegne--they broke in panic and fled like sheep. I argue
from this that they had undergone no real transformation as yet; that at
bottom they were still under the spell of a timorousness born of
generations of unsuccess, and a lack of confidence in each other and in
their leaders born of old and bitter experience in the way of treacheries
of all sorts--for their kings had been treacherous to their great vassals
and to their generals, and these in turn were treacherous to the head of
the state and to each other. The soldiery found that they could depend
utterly on Joan, and upon her alone. With her gone, everything was gone.
She was the sun that melted the frozen torrents and set them boiling;
with that sun removed, they froze again, and the army and all France
became what they had been before, mere dead corpses--that and nothing
more; incapable of thought, hope, ambition, or motion.
2 Joan Sold to the English
MY WOUND gave me a great deal of trouble clear into the first part of
October; then the fresher weather renewed my life and strength. All this
time there were reports drifting about that the King was going to ransom
Joan. I believed these, for I was young and had not yet found out the
littleness and meanness of our poor human race, which brags about itself
so much, and thinks it is better and higher than the other animals.
In October I was well enough to go out with two sorties, and in the
second one, on the 23d, I was wounded again. My luck had turned, you see.
On the night of the 25th the besiegers decamped, and in the disorder and
confusion one of their prisoners escaped and got safe into Compiegne, and
hobble into my room as pallid and pathetic an object as you would wish to
see.
"What? Alive? Noel Rainguesson!"
It was indeed he. It was a most joyful meeting, that you will easily
know; and also as sad as it was joyful. We could not speak Joan's name.
One's voice would have broken down. We knew who was meant when she was
mentioned; we could say "she" and "her," but we could not speak the name.
We talked of the personal staff. Old D'Aulon, wounded and a prisoner, was
still with Joan and serving her, by permission of the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan was being treated with respect due to her rank and to her character
as a prisoner of war taken in honorable conflict. And this was
continued--as we learned later--until she fell into the hands of that
bastard of Satan, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais.
Noel was full of noble and affectionate praises and appreciations of our
old boastful big Standard-Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and
imaginary battles all fought, his work done, his life honorably closed
and completed.
"And think of his luck!" burst out Noel, with his eyes full of tears.
"Always the pet child of luck!
"See how it followed him and stayed by him, from his first step all
through, in the field or out of it; always a splendid figure in the
public eye, courted and envied everywhere; always having a chance to do
fine things and always doing them; in the beginning called the Paladin in
joke, and called it afterward in earnest because he magnificently made
the title good; and at last--supremest luck of all--died in the field!
died with his harness on; died faithful to his charge the Standard in his
hand; died--oh, think of it--with the approving eye of Joan of Arc upon
him!
"He drained the cup of glory to the last drop, and went jubilant to his
peace, blessedly spared all part in the disaster which was to follow.
What luck, what luck! And we? What was our sin that we are still here, we
who have also earned our place with the happy dead?"
And presently he said:
"They tore the sacred Standard from his dead hand and carried it away,
their most precious prize after its captured owner. But they haven't it
now. A month ago we put our lives upon the risk--our two good knights, my
fellow-prisoners, and I--and stole it, and got it smuggled by trusty
hands to Orleans, and there it is now, safe for all time in the
Treasury."
I was glad and grateful to learn that. I have seen it often since, when I
have gone to Orleans on the 8th of May to be the petted old guest of the
city and hold the first place of honor at the banquets and in the
processions--I mean since Joan's brothers passed from this life. It will
still be there, sacredly guarded by French love, a thousand years from
now--yes, as long as any shred of it hangs together. [1] Two or three
weeks after this talk came the tremendous news like a thunder-clap, and
we were aghast--Joan of Arc sold to the English!
Not for a moment had we ever dreamed of such a thing. We were young, you
see, and did not know the human race, as I have said before. We had been
so proud of our country, so sure of her nobleness, her magnanimity, her
gratitude. We had expected little of the King, but of France we had
expected everything. Everybody knew that in various towns patriot priests
had been marching in procession urging the people to sacrifice money,
property, everything, and buy the freedom of their heaven-sent deliverer.
That the money would be raised we had not thought of doubting.
But it was all over now, all over. It was a bitter time for us. The
heavens seemed hung with black; all cheer went out from our hearts. Was
this comrade here at my bedside really Noel Rainguesson, that
light-hearted creature whose whole life was but one long joke, and who
used up more breath in laughter than in keeping his body alive? No, no;
that Noel I was to see no more. This one's heart was broken. He moved
grieving about, and absently, like one in a dream; the stream of his
laughter was dried at its source.
Well, that was best. It was my own mood. We were company for each other.
He nursed me patiently through the dull long weeks, and at last, in
January, I was strong enough to go about again. Then he said:
"Shall we go now?"
"Yes."
There was no need to explain. Our hearts were in Rouen; we would carry
our bodies there. All that we cared for in this life was shut up in that
fortress. We could not help her, but it would be some solace to us to be
near her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and look daily upon the
stone walls that hid her. What if we should be made prisoners there?
Well, we could but do our best, and let luck and fate decide what should
happen.
And so we started. We could not realize the change which had come upon
the country. We seemed able to choose our own route and go whenever we
pleased, unchallenged and unmolested. When Joan of Arc was in the field
there was a sort of panic of fear everywhere; but now that she was out of
the way, fear had vanished. Nobody was troubled about you or afraid of
you, nobody was curious about you or your business, everybody was
indifferent.
We presently saw that we could take to the Seine, and not weary ourselves
out with land travel.
So we did it, and were carried in a boat to within a league of Rouen.
Then we got ashore; not on the hilly side, but on the other, where it is
as level as a floor. Nobody could enter or leave the city without
explaining himself. It was because they feared attempts at a rescue of
Joan.
We had no trouble. We stopped in the plain with a family of peasants and
stayed a week, helping them with their work for board and lodging, and
making friends of them. We got clothes like theirs, and wore them. When
we had worked our way through their reserves and gotten their confidence,
we found that they secretly harbored French hearts in their bodies. Then
we came out frankly and told them everything, and found them ready to do
anything they could to help us.
Our plan was soon made, and was quite simple. It was to help them drive a
flock of sheep to the market of the city. One morning early we made the
venture in a melancholy drizzle of rain, and passed through the frowning
gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living over a humble wine shop
in a quaint tall building situated in one of the narrow lanes that run
down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they bestowed us;
and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and other
belongings to us. The family that lodged us--the Pieroons--were French in
sympathy, and we needed to have no secrets from them.
[1] It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was
destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap,
several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in
the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is
known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously
guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided
by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which
she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out upon
a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single hair from
her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of a seal
attached to the parchment of a state document. It was surreptitiously
snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter, and carried off.
Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows where. -- TRANSLATOR.
3 Weaving the Net About Her
IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and
myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied
to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good
priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial
of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me--clerk
to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment
should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom
friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I
had discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a person of
low degree.
I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into
February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very fortress
where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was
confined, and so did not see her, of course.
Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my coming. Ever
since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his jury for
the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks he had spent in this bad
industry. The University of Paris had sent him a number of learned and
able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he wanted; and he had scraped
together a clergyman of like stripe and great fame here and there and
yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable court numbering half
a hundred distinguished names. French names they were, but their
interests and sympathies were English.
A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the
accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was a
brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had no
power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same honest
talk was uttered by two or three others.
The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan had
already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes,
and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it was an
Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan. So here, you see, a
lower court was impudently preparing to try and redecide a cause which
had already been decided by its superior, a court of higher authority.
Imagine it! No, the case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon could
not properly preside in this new court, for more than one reason:
Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her domicile,
which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed judge was the
prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was incompetent to try her.
Yet all these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The territorial
Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial letters to Cauchon--though
only after a struggle and under compulsion. Force was also applied to the
Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit.
So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this reservation: if
the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her back again! Ah,
dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and friendless child?
Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she was in a black dungeon,
with half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard night and day in
the room where her cage was--for she was in a cage; an iron cage, and
chained to her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a person near her
whom she had ever seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was,
indeed, friendlessness.
Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan and
Compiegne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet this
very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and show his face to Joan
in her cage. He came with two English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was
a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set free if she would
promise not to fight the English any more. She had been in that cage a
long time now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted
scornfully:
"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the power nor
the will to do it."
He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan, and
she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash, saying:
"See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I know that
the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead they
can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
"Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never get it."
This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a free,
strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his dagger and flung
himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back.
Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless
and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole
nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the
inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than
that.
Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than two
months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and
ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be usable against
Joan, and carefully suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her
favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers at his disposal for
preparing and strengthening the case for the prosecution, and he used
them all.
But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut up in
those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help. And as for
witnesses, she could not call a single one in her defense; they were all
far away, under the French flag, and this was an English court; they
would have been seized and hanged if they had shown their faces at the
gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole witness--witness for
the prosecution, witness for the defense; and with a verdict of death
resolved upon before the doors were opened for the court's first sitting.
When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in the
interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal number of
priests of the French party should be added to these.
Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to answer it.
By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it was her
right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how to answer when
questioned, and protect her from falling into traps set by cunning
devices of the prosecution. She probably did not know that this was her
right, and that she could demand it and require it, for there was none to
tell her that; but she begged for this help, at any rate. Cauchon refused
it. She urged and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance of the
complexities and intricacies of the law and of legal procedure. Cauchon
refused again, and said she must get along with her case as best she
might by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.
Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it
the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against
her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was merely
charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of heresies,
witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion.
Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be begun
until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and character of
the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be
added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that
was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it
again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the
neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and
character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The
searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what
he "would like his own sister's character to be." Just about the same
report that was brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a character
which could endure the minutest examination.
This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it would
have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it
disappeared from the proces verbal before the trial. People were prudent
enough not to inquire what became of it.
One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by this time.
But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's destruction, and it
promised to be a deadly one.
One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the University of
Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall, handsome,
grave, of smooth, soft speech and courteous and winning manners. There
was no seeming of treachery or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of
both. He was admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised as a cobbler;
he pretended to be from her own country; he professed to be secretly a
patriot; he revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was filled with
gladness to see one from the hills and plains that were so dear to her;
happier still to look upon a priest and disburden her heart in
confession, for the offices of the Church were the bread of life, the
breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been long forced to pine for
them in vain. She opened her whole innocent heart to this creature, and
in return he gave her advice concerning her trial which could have
destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not protected her against
following it.
You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of the
confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but suppose another
person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep the secret.
Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole to be
bored through the wall; and he stood with his ear to that hole and heard
all. It is pitiful to think of these things. One wonders how they could
treat that poor child so. She had not done them any harm.
4 All Ready to Condemn
ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master's work in the
evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin
the trial at eight o'clock the next morning, and I must get ready to
assist him.
Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no
matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining
that at the last moment something would happen, something that would stop
this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates with his
hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and stretch forth
His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope.
The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be public.
So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be there early
and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again upon the
face which we so revered and which was so precious to us. All the way,
both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing
multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French citizens. There
was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard the remark,
accompanied by a pitiless laugh:
"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he will
lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one."
But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and it
was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they
admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.
In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the vast
fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others gathering.
The chapel was already full and the way barred against further admissions
of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places. Throned on high sat
the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and
before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty distinguished
ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut
intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and
casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet.
When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered
here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan must
fight for her good name and her life single-handed against them, I asked
myself what chance an ignorant poor country-girl of nineteen could have
in such an unequal conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I
looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his
great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three
chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple
and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold
and malignant eyes--a brute, every detail of him--my heart sank lower
still. And when I noted that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and
fidgeted in their seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of
hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared.
There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over
against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench
without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall
men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as
their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature was
near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it was
for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at
Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning
fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and rose
from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the world
with the glory of her name.
What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how
winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those
were grand days. And so recent--for she was just nineteen now--and how
much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished!
But now--oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons,
away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly
three-quarters of a year--she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of
the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and
worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps,
as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed.
All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling
of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises
which filled all the place. Suddenly:
"Produce the accused!"
It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But
there was silence now--silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it
was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew
oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward
the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people
there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual
flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a
word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.
The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one
heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank . . . clink . . . clank--Joan
of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!
My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing,
too.
5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice
I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the
facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly,
detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the
official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the
printed histories.
There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you
shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as I
go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw in
trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you and
me, but were not important enough to go into the official record. [1] To
take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of Joan's
chains down the corridors; she was approaching.
Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep
breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the
rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak
and her irons heavy. She had on men's attire--all black; a soft woolen
stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color
in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black
stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves
of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her
manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains
on her ankles.
Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell
slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!--it
was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in
vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It
was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely sad
and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell
upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and it straightened
up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well,
all is well--they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she
is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one
spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make afraid.
She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her
bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white
hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there
who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier,
standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did
now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her
the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned
it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the
judge sternly silence.
Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began.
Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!
The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports
and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel
and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all
questions asked her.
Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities
might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand. She
answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy's best-laid
plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said:
"No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me
things which I would not tell you."
This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry
exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began
to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could
hardly get his words out. He said:
"With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these
proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands
upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall
be asked you!" and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his
official table.
Joan said, with composure:
"As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I
have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as
regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have
forbidden me to confide them to any save my King--"
Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much
movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to
subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and
fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had
the old ring to it:
--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!"
Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The
judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking
their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once,
so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several
minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder
and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the
old-time mischief in her eye and manner:
"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you."
At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath, the
situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an
unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any
except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical
change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they were
hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of haggard
look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and
reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.
The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments'
duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness
in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion. Joan sunk
at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that
big English soldier set free his mind:
"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another half
a second!"
It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what a
stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and
French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase in
the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring
city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched
upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble him--burn
themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is burned into
mine.
After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was
born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.
"I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the
Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother."
Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time.
Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to
rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison,
upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy--singular logic!
She answered simply:
"I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not
reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not."
Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they
might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there
was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she
had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to
insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard:
"It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape." Then she
added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, "It is the
right of every prisoner."
And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness,
which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those
pathetic chains.
What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it.
She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench, and
we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face
showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that
day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in
them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then--why, then
there could have been trouble for us, of course.
We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying
not a word.
[1] He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be
in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history.
--TRANSLATOR.
6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors
THAT NIGHT Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings Cauchon
had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to
make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them from
their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most
shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed. Those
clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted them, and
they turned to and boldly made a straight report, whereupon Cauchon curse
them and ordered them out of his presence with a threat of drowning,
which was his favorite and most frequent menace. The matter had gotten
abroad and was making great and unpleasant talk, and Cauchon would not
try to repeat this shabby game right away. It comforted me to hear that.
When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we found that a change had
been made. The chapel had been found too small. The court had now removed
to a noble chamber situated at the end of the great hall of the castle.
The number of judges was increased to sixty-two--one ignorant girl
against such odds, and none to help her.
The prisoner was brought in. She was as white as ever, but she was
looking no whit worse than she looked when she had first appeared the day
before. Isn't it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five hours on
that backless bench with her chains in her lap, baited, badgered,
persecuted by that unholy crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of
water--for she was never offered anything, and if I have made you know
her by this time you will know without my telling you that she was not a
person likely to ask favors of those people. And she had spent the night
caged in her wintry dungeon with her chains upon her; yet here she was,
as I say, collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes, and the
only person there who showed no signs of the wear and worry of yesterday.
And her eyes--ah, you should have seen them and broken your hearts. Have
you seen that veiled deep glow, that pathetic hurt dignity, that
unsubdued and unsubduable spirit that burns and smolders in the eye of a
caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby under the burden of its
mute reproach? Her eyes were like that. How capable they were, and how
wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances they could express
as by print every shade of the wide range of her moods. In them were
hidden floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest twilights, and
devastating storms and lightnings. Not in this world have there been
others that were comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and none that
had the privilege to see them would say otherwise than this which I have
said concerning them.
The seance began. And how did it begin, should you think? Exactly as it
began before--with that same tedious thing which had been settled once,
after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened thus:
"You are required now, to take the oath pure and simple, to answer truly
all questions asked you."
Joan replied placidly:
"I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that suffice."
The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising temper; Joan but shook her
head and remained silent. At last she said:
"I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient." Then she sighed and said, "Of
a truth, you do burden me too much."
The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her. At
last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an old
hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities--Beaupere, a doctor
of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first
remark--flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any
unwatchful person off his guard:
"Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just speak up and frankly and
truly answer the questions which I am going to ask you, as you have sworn
to do."
It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw the artifice. She said:
"No. You could ask me things which I could not tell you--and would not."
Then, reflecting upon how profane and out of character it was for these
ministers of God to be prying into matters which had proceeded from His
hands under the awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning note
in her tone, "If you were well informed concerning me you would wish me
out of your hands. I have done nothing but by revelation."
Beaupere changed his attack, and began an approach from another quarter.
He would slip upon her, you see, under cover of innocent and unimportant
questions.
"Did you learn any trade at home?"
"Yes, to sew and to spin." Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay,
conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's
crown, commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straightened herself
proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive complacency,
"And when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against any
woman in Rouen!"
The crowd of spectators broke out with applause--which pleased Joan--and
there was many a friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon
stormed at the people and warned them to keep still and mind their
manners.
Beaupere asked other questions. Then:
"Had you other occupations at home?"
"Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures
with the sheep and the cattle."
Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly notice it. As for me,
it brought those old enchanted days flooding back to me, and I could not
see what I was writing for a little while.
Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other questions toward the
forbidden ground, and finally repeated a question which she had refused
to answer a little while back--as to whether she had received the
Eucharist in those days at other festivals than that of Easter. Joan
merely said:
"Passez outre." Or, as one might say, "Pass on to matters which you are
privileged to pry into."
I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor:
"As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and an easy prey--yes, and
easily embarrassed, easily frightened--but truly one can neither scare
this child nor find her dozing."
Presently the house pricked up its ears and began to listen eagerly, for
Beaupere began to touch upon Joan's Voices, a matter of consuming
interest and curiosity to everybody. His purpose was to trick her into
heedless sayings that could indicate that the Voices had sometimes given
her evil advice--hence that they had come from Satan, you see. To have
dealing with the devil--well, that would send her to the stake in brief
order, and that was the deliberate end and aim of this trial.
"When did you first hear these Voices?"
"I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to
live well. I was frightened. It came at midday, in my father's garden in
the summer."
"Had you been fasting?"
"Yes."
"The day before?"
"No."
"From what direction did it come?"
"From the right--from toward the church."
"Did it come with a bright light?"
"Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I came into France I often heard
the Voices very loud."
"What did the Voice sound like?"
"It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The
third time I heard it I recognized it as being an angel's."
"You could understand it?"
"Quite easily. It was always clear."
"What advice did it give you as to the salvation of your soul?"
"It told me to live rightly, and be regular in attendance upon the
services of the Church. And it told me that I must go to France."
"In what species of form did the Voice appear?"
Joan looked suspiciously at he priest a moment, then said, tranquilly:
"As to that, I will not tell you."
"Did the Voice seek you often?"
"Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying, 'Leave your village and go to
France.'"
"Did you father know about your departure?"
"No. The Voice said, 'Go to France'; therefore I could not abide at home
any longer."
"What else did it say?"
"That I should raise the siege of Orleans."
"Was that all?"
"No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de Baudricourt would give me
soldiers to go with me to France; and I answered, saying that I was a
poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight."
Then she told how she was balked and interrupted at Vaucouleurs, but
finally got her soldiers, and began her march.
"How were you dressed?"
The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and decreed that as God had
appointed her to do a man's work, it was meet and no scandal to religion
that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this court was ready to
use any and all weapons against Joan, even broken and discredited ones,
and much was going to be made of this one before this trial should end.
"I wore a man's dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me,
but no other weapon."
"Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?"
Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.
The question was repeated.
She refused again.
"Answer. It is a command!"
"Passez outre," was all she said.
So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.
"What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?"
"He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of me, and
to me he said, 'Go, and let happen what may!'" (Advienne que pourra!)
After a good deal of questioning upon other matters she was asked again
about her attire. She said it was necessary for her to dress as a man.
"Did your Voice advise it?"
Joan merely answered placidly:
"I believe my Voice gave me good advice."
It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to
other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at Chinon.
She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her, by the
revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was gone over.
Finally:
"Do you still hear those Voices?"
"They come to me every day."
"What do you ask of them?"
"I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of my soul."
"Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?"
He is creeping upon her again. She answered:
"It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed if I
had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights carried me
away by force."
"When were you wounded?"
"I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault."
The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:
"Was it a feast-day?"
You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise
or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.
Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.
"Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on
such a day?"
This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had
suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court and
intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the house.
She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one brushes
away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference:
"Passez outre."
Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there, and
several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and laboriously
prepared; it fell, and was empty.
The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most of
the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless inquiries
about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan's first
proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff had really
been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately escaped them
all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon ignorance and
innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of her best and
surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of her
extraordinary mind.
Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a
captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time--dignified sport, a
kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!--and I may as well
tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first day to
the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a century,
the Pope called together that great court which was to re-examine her
history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious name from every
spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of our Rouen
tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon and several
of the judges who had been members of our court were among the witnesses
who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation. Recalling these
miserable proceedings which I have been telling you about, Manchon
testified thus:--here you have it, all in fair print in the unofficial
history:
When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every
word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon all
sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning
lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they
extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served
as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three
hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in
spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory.
She often corrected the judges, saying, "But I have already answered that
once before--ask the recorder," referring them to me.
And here is the testimony of one of Joan's judges. Remember, these
witnesses are not talking about two or three days, they are talking about
a tedious long procession of days:
They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite well.
Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed on to another
subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They burdened her
with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which the judges
themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which she was beset
the expertest man in the world could not have extricated himself but with
difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence; indeed to such a
degree that during three weeks I believed she was inspired.
Ah, had she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests
say under oath--picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible
court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and
practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They
make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of
the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of
Paris, she from the sheepfold and the cow-stable!
Ah, yes, she was great, she was wonderful. It took six thousand years to
produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty
thousand. Such is my opinion.
7 Craft That Was in Vain
THE THIRD meeting of the court was in that same spacious chamber, next
day, 24th of February.
How did it begin? In just the same old way. When the preparations were
ended, the robed sixty-two massed in their chairs and the guards and
order-keepers distributed to their stations, Cauchon spoke from his
throne and commanded Joan to lay her hands upon the Gospels and swear to
tell the truth concerning everything asked her!
Joan's eyes kindled, and she rose; rose and stood, fine and noble, and
faced toward the Bishop and said:
"Take care what you do, my lord, you who are my judge, for you take a
terrible responsibility on yourself and you presume too far."
It made a great stir, and Cauchon burst out upon her with an awful
threat--the threat of instant condemnation unless she obeyed. That made
the very bones of my body turn cold, and I saw cheeks about me
blanch--for it meant fire and the stake! But Joan, still standing,
answered him back, proud and undismayed:
"Not all the clergy in Paris and Rouen could condemn me, lacking the
right!"
This made a great tumult, and part of it was applause from the
spectators. Joan resumed her seat.
The Bishop still insisted. Joan said:
"I have already made oath. It is enough."
The Bishop shouted:
"In refusing to swear, you place yourself under suspicion!"
"Let be. I have sword already. It is enough."
The Bishop continued to insist. Joan answered that "she would tell what
she knew--but not all that she knew."
The Bishop plagued her straight along, till at last she said, in a weary
tone:
"I came from God; I have nothing more to do here. Return me to God, from
whom I came."
It was piteous to hear; it was the same as saying, "You only want my
life; take it and let me be at peace."
The Bishop stormed out again:
"Once more I command you to--"
Joan cut in with a nonchalant "Passez outre," and Cauchon retired from
the struggle; but he retired with some credit this time, for he offered a
compromise, and Joan, always clear-headed, saw protection for herself in
it and promptly and willingly accepted it. She was to swear to tell the
truth "as touching the matters et down in the proces verbal." They could
not sail her outside of definite limits, now; her course was over a
charted sea, henceforth. The Bishop had granted more than he had
intended, and more than he would honestly try to abide by.
By command, Beaupere resumed his examination of the accused. It being
Lent, there might be a chance to catch her neglecting some detail of her
religious duties. I could have told him he would fail there. Why,
religion was her life!
"Since when have you eaten or drunk?"
If the least thing had passed her lips in the nature of sustenance,
neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her
prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the
commandments of the Church.
"I have done neither since yesterday at noon."
The priest shifted to the Voices again.
"When have you heard your Voice?"
"Yesterday and to-day."
"At what time?"
"Yesterday it was in the morning."
"What were you doing then?"
"I was asleep and it woke me."
"By touching your arm?"
"No, without touching me."
"Did you thank it? Did you kneel?"
He had Satan in his mind, you see; and was hoping, perhaps, that by and
by it could be shown that she had rendered homage to the arch enemy of
God and man.
"Yes, I thanked it; and knelt in my bed where I was chained, and joined
my hands and begged it to implore God's help for me so that I might have
light and instruction as touching the answers I should give here."
"Then what did the Voice say?"
"It told me to answer boldly, and God would help me." Then she turned
toward Cauchon and said, "You say that you are my judge; now I tell you
again, take care what you do, for in truth I am sent of God and you are
putting yourself in great danger."
Beaupere asked her if the Voice's counsels were not fickle and variable.
"No. It never contradicts itself. This very day it has told me again to
answer boldly."
"Has it forbidden you to answer only part of what is asked you?"
"I will tell you nothing as to that. I have revelations touching the King
my master, and those I will not tell you." Then she was stirred by a
great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke out as with
strong conviction, saying:
"I believe wholly--as wholly as I believe the Christian faith and that
God has redeemed us from the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that
Voice!"
Being questioned further concerning the Voice, she said she was not at
liberty to tell all she knew.
"Do you think God would be displeased at your telling the whole truth?"
"The Voice has commanded me to tell the King certain things, and not
you--and some very lately--even last night; things which I would he knew.
He would be more easy at his dinner."
"Why doesn't the Voice speak to the King itself, as it did when you were
with him? Would it not if you asked it?"
"I do not know if it be the wish of God." She was pensive a moment or
two, busy with her thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a
remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always alert, detected a
possible opening--a chance to set a trap. Do you think he jumped at it
instantly, betraying the joy he had in his mind, as a young hand at craft
and artifice would do?
No, oh, no, you could not tell that he had noticed the remark at all. He
slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to ask idle questions
about other things, so as to slip around and spring on it from behind, so
to speak: tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice had told
her she would escape from this prison; and if it had furnished answers to
be used by her in to-day's seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of
light; if it had eyes, etc. That risky remark of Joan's was this:
"Without the Grace of God I could do nothing."
The court saw the priest's game, and watched his play with a cruel
eagerness. Poor Joan was grown dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired.
Her life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect it. The time was
ripe now, and Beaupere quietly and stealthily sprang his trap:
"Are you in a state of Grace?"
Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in that pack of judges; and
Jean Lefevre was one of them. He sprang to his feet and cried out:
"It is a terrible question! The accused is not obliged to answer it!"
Cauchon's face flushed black with anger to see this plank flung to the
perishing child, and he shouted:
"Silence! and take your seat. The accused will answer the question!"
There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma; for whether she said yes or
whether she said no, it would be all the same--a disastrous answer, for
the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing. Think what hard
hearts they were to set this fatal snare for that ignorant young girl and
be proud of such work and happy in it. It was a miserable moment for me
while we waited; it seemed a year. All the house showed excitement; and
mainly it was glad excitement. Joan looked out upon these hungering faces
with innocent, untroubled eyes, and then humbly and gently she brought
out that immortal answer which brushed the formidable snare away as it
had been but a cobweb:
"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in
it, I pray God keep me so."
Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not while you live. For a
space there was the silence of the grave. Men looked wondering into each
other's faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves; and I heard
Lefevre mutter:
"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer. Whence comes this
child's amazing inspirations?"
Beaupere presently took up his work again, but the humiliation of his
defeat weighed upon him, and he made but a rambling and dreary business
of it, he not being able to put any heart in it.
He asked Joan a thousand questions about her childhood and about the oak
wood, and the fairies, and the children's games and romps under our dear
Arbre Fee Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old memories broke her
voice and made her cry a little, but she bore up as well as she could,
and answered everything.
Then the priest finished by touching again upon the matter of her
apparel--a matter which was never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt
for this innocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over her, a
menace charged with mournful possibilities:
"Would you like a woman's dress?"
"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison--but here, no."
8 Joan Tells of Her Visions
THE COURT met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop
ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the
proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath without
reservations. She said:
"You should be content I have sworn enough."
She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield.
The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's Voices.
"You have said that you recognized them as being the voices of angels the
third time that you heard them. What angels were they?"
"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite."
"How did you know that it was those two saints? How could you tell the
one from the other?"
"I know it was they; and I know how to distinguish them."
"By what sign?"
"By their manner of saluting me. I have been these seven years under
their direction, and I knew who they were because they told me."
"Whose was the first Voice that came to you when you were thirteen years
old?"
"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes; and he was
not alone, but attended by a cloud of angels."
"Did you see the archangel and the attendant angels in the body, or in
the spirit?"
"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I see you; and when they
went away I cried because they did not take me with them."
It made me see that awful shadow again that fell dazzling white upon her
that day under l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again,
though it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone by, but it
seemed so, because so much had happened since.
"In what shape and form did St. Michael appear?"
"As to that, I have not received permission to speak."
"What did the archangel say to you that first time?"
"I cannot answer you to-day."
Meaning, I think, that she would have to get permission of her Voices
first.
Presently, after some more questions as to the revelations which had been
conveyed through her to the King, she complained of the unnecessity of
all this, and said:
"I will say again, as I have said before many times in these sittings,
that I answered all questions of this sort before the court at Poitiers,
and I would hat you wold bring here the record of that court and read
from that. Prithee, send for that book."
There was no answer. It was a subject that had to be got around and put
aside. That book had wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained
things which would be very awkward here.
Among them was a decision that Joan's mission was from God, whereas it
was the intention of this inferior court to show that it was from the
devil; also a decision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it
was the purpose of this court to make the male attire do hurtful work
against her.
"How was it that you were moved to come into France--by your own desire?"
"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was His will I would note have
come. I would sooner have had my body torn in sunder by horses than come,
lacking that."
Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the male attire, now, and
proceeded to make a solemn talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and
presently she interrupted and said:
"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence. And I did not put it on by
counsel of any man, but by command of God."
"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to wear it?"
"No."
"Did you think you did well in taking the dress of a man?"
"I did well to do whatsoever thing God commanded me to do."
"But in this particular case do you think you did well in taking the
dress of a man?"
"I have done nothing but by command of God."
Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into contradictions of
herself; also to put her words and acts in disaccord with the Scriptures.
But it was lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to her visions, the
light which shone about them, her relations with the King, and so on.
"Was there an angel above the King's head the first time you saw him?"
"By the Blessed Mary!--"
She forced her impatience down, and finished her sentence with
tranquillity: "If there was one I did not see it."
"Was there light?"
"There were more than three thousand soldiers there, and five hundred
torches, without taking account of spiritual light."
"What made the King believe in the revelations which you brought him?"
"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy."
"What revelations were made to the King?"
"You will not get that out of me this year."
Presently she added: "During three weeks I was questioned by the clergy
at Chinon and Poitiers. The King had a sign before he would believe; and
the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good and not evil."
The subject was dropped now for a while, and Beaupere took up the matter
of the miraculous sword of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance
there to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan.
"How did you know that there was an ancient sword buried in the ground
under the rear of the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?"
Joan had no concealments to make as to this:
"I knew the sword was there because my Voices told me so; and I sent to
ask that it be given to me to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it
was not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the church caused it to be
sought for and dug up; and they polished it, and the rust fell easily off
from it."
"Were you wearing it when you were taken in battle at Compiegne?"
"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St. Denis after the attack
upon Paris."
This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so long and so constantly
victorious, was suspected of being under the protection of enchantment.
"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been invoked upon it?"
"None. I loved it because it was found in the church of St. Catherine,
for I loved that church very dearly."
She loved it because it had been built in honor of one of her angels.
"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that it might be lucky?"
(The altar of St. Denis.) "No."
"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?"
"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness might be fortunate."
"Then it was not that sword which you wore in the field of Compiegne?
What sword did you wear there?"
"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras, whom I took prisoner in
the engagement at Lagny. I kept it because it was a good war-sword--good
to lay on stout thumps and blows with."
She said that quite simply; and the contrast between her delicate little
self and the grim soldier words which she dropped with such easy
familiarity from her lips made many spectators smile.
"What is become of the other sword? Where is it now?"
"Is that in the proces verbal?"
Beaupere did not answer.
"Which do you love best, your banner or your sword?"
Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her banner, and she cried out:
"I love my banner best--oh, forty times more than the sword! Sometimes I
carried it myself when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any one."
Then she added, naively, and with again that curious contrast between her
girlish little personality and her subject, "I have never killed anyone."
It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when you consider what a
gentle and innocent little thing she looked. One could hardly believe she
had ever even seen men slaughtered, she look so little fitted for such
things.
"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your soldiers that the
arrows shot by the enemy and the stones discharged from their catapults
would not strike any one but you?"
"No. And the proof its, that more than a hundred of my men were struck. I
told them to have no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the
siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in the assault upon the
bastille that commanded the bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I
was cured in fifteen days without having to quit the saddle and leave my
work."
"Did you know that you were going to be wounded?"
"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand. I had it from my Voices."
"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put its commandant to ransom?"
"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the place, with all his
garrison; and if he would not I would take it by storm."
"And you did, I believe."
"Yes."
"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by storm?"
"As to that, I do not remember."
Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result. Every device that could
be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty
to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been
tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had come unscathed through the
ordeal.
Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very
much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of
simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold,
fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array
nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other
surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the
thousand traps set for her.
And had the court made no progress during these seemingly resultless
sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there,
and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and
lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and
Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings
and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that
by supernatural help miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing out
the King in a crowd when she had never seen him before, and her discovery
of the sword buried under the altar. It would have been foolish to doubt
these things, for we all know that the air is full of devils and angels
that are visible to traffickers in magic on the one hand and to the
stainlessly holy on the other; but what many and perhaps most did doubt
was, that Joan's visions, Voices, and miracles came from God. It was
hoped that in time they could be proven to have been of satanic origin.
Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion of coming back to
that subject every little while and spooking around it and prying into it
was not to pass the time--it had a strictly business end in view.
9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold
THE NEXT sitting opened on Thursday the first of March. Fifty-eight
judges present--the others resting.
As usual, Joan was required to take an oath without reservations. She
showed no temper this time. She considered herself well buttressed by the
proces verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious to repudiate and
creep out of; so she merely refused, distinctly and decidedly; and added,
in a spirit of fairness and candor:
"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal, I will freely tell the
whole truth--yes, as freely and fully as if I were before the Pope."
Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes, then; only one of them
could be the true Pope, of course. Everybody judiciously shirked the
question of which was the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it
being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was
an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into
peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He
asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way:
"Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?"
The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the
answer and see the prey walk into the trap. But when the answer came it
covered the judge with confusion, and you could see many people covertly
chuckling. For Joan asked in a voice and manner which almost deceived
even me, so innocent it seemed:
"Are there two?"
One of the ablest priests in that body and one of the best swearers
there, spoke right out so that half the house heard him, and said:
"By God, it was a master stroke!"
As soon as the judge was better of his embarrassment he came back to the
charge, but was prudent and passed by Joan's question:
"Is it true that you received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking
you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?"
"Yes, and answered it."
Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers had
not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the Count's
letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added:
"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer him
from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest."
She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one.
"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one he
ought to obey"; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded
fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers, "but as for
me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord the Pope who is at Rome."
The matter was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first
effort at dictating--her proclamation summoning the English to retire
from the siege of Orleans and vacate France--truly a great and fine
production for an unpractised girl of seventeen.
"Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just been read?"
"Yes, except that there are errors in it--words which make me give myself
too much importance." I saw what was coming; I was troubled and ashamed.
"For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up to the Maid' (rendez au la
Pucelle); I said 'Deliver up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not
call myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre). All those are words
which my secretary substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I
said."
She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I
changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and
entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who
was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick, a
cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of
Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck a
blow.
Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there,
if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that
piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and not only
present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at
a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into
it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy!
"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?"
"I do."
"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"
Ah, then she was indignant!