In the year 1424, the year in which, after the battle of Agincourt,
France was delivered over to Henry V., an extraordinary event occurred
in the life of this little French peasant. We have not the same horror
of that treaty, naturally, as have the French. Henry V. is a favourite
of our history, probably not so much for his own merit as because of
that master-magician, Shakespeare, who of his supreme good pleasure, in
the exercise of that voluntary preference, which even God himself seems
to show to some men, has made of that monarch one of the best beloved of
our hearts. Dear to us as he is, in Eastcheap as at Agincourt, and
more in the former than the latter, even our sense of the disgraceful
character of that bargain, _le traité infâme_ of Troyes, by which Queen
Isabeau betrayed her son, and gave her daughter and her country to the
invader, is softened a little by our high estimation of the hero. But
this is simple national prejudice; regarded from the French side, or
even by the impartial judgment of general humanity, it was an infamous
treaty, and one which might well make the blood boil in French veins.
We look at it at present, however, through the atmosphere of the
nineteenth century, when France is all French, and when the royal house
of England has no longer any French connection. If George III., much
more George II., on the basis of his kingdom of Hanover, had attempted
to make himself master of a large portion of Germany, the situation
would have been more like that of Henry V. in France than anything we
can think of now. It is true the kings of England were no longer dukes
of Normandy--but they had been so within the memory of man: and that
noble duchy was a hereditary appanage of the family of the Conqueror;
while to other portions of France they had the link of temporary
possession and inheritance through French wives and mothers; added to
which is the fact that Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, thirsting to avenge
his father's blood upon the Dauphin, would have been probably a more
dangerous usurper than Henry, and that the actual sovereign, the
unfortunate, mad Charles VI., was in no condition to maintain his own
rights.
There is little evidence, however, that this treaty, or anything so
distinct in detail, had made much impression on the outlying borders of
France. What was known there, was only that the English were victorious,
that the rightful King of France was still uncrowned and unacknowledged,
and that the country was oppressed and humiliated under the foot of the
invader. The fact that the new King was not yet the Lord's anointed, and
had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was
a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more
importance than many greater things--being at once more visible and
matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any
other circumstance in the dreadful tale.
Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in Scotland,
at "her seam," not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence of
infancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with those
impulses and wonderings--impatient of trouble, yearning to give
help--which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the first
lightening of dawn upon the earth. It was summer, and afternoon, the
time of dreams. It would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancy
to heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene--the little girl
with her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brown
bread at her feet. She was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vague
suspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, as
yet come to little definite in her child's heart--looking up from her
work to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the air
which was new to her. All at once between her and the church there shone
a light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; and
out of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful. What did the voice
say? Only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandate
above her faculties--"_Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent
à l'église._" Jeanne, be good! What more could an archangel, what
less could the peasant mother within doors, say? The little girl was
frightened, but soon composed herself. The voice could be nothing
but sacred and blessed which spoke thus. It would not appear that she
mentioned it to anyone. It is such a secret as a child, in that wavering
between the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, would
keep, in mingled shyness and awe, uncertain, rapt in the atmosphere of
vision, within her own heart.
It is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated in
France, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing the
same circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature of
the woman-child. The little Bernadette of Lourdes is almost of our own
day; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence. What her visions
and her voices were, who can say? The last historian of them is not
a man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent,
except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before the
little Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid
results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected
miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something
breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account
for except in ways more incredible than miracle--so is the rest of the
world. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to
quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the
finest vision--become the special sphere and birthplace of these
spotless infant-saints? This is one of the wonders which nobody attempts
to account for. Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more than
four hundred years between.
After what intervals the vision returned we are not told, nor in what
circumstances. It seems to have come chiefly out-of-doors, in the
silence and freedom of the fields or garden. Presently the heavenly
radiance shaped itself into some semblance of forms and figures, one
of which, clearer than the others, was like a man, but with wings and
a crown on his head and the air "_d'un vrai prud' homme_"; a noble
apparition before whom at first the little maid trembled, but whose
majestic, honest regard soon gave her confidence. He bade her once more
to be good, and that God would help her; then he told her the sad
story of her own suffering country, _la pitié qui estoit au royaume de
France_. Was it the pity of heaven that the archangel reported to the
little trembling girl, or only that which woke with the word in her own
childish soul? He has chosen the small things of this world to confound
the great. Jeanne's young heart was full of pity already, and of
yearning over the helpless mother-country which had no champion to stand
for her. "She had great doubts at first whether it was St. Michael, but
afterwards when he had instructed her and shown her many things, she
believed firmly that it was he."
It was this warrior-angel who opened the matter to her, and disclosed
her mission. "Jeanne," he said, "you must go to the help of the King of
France; and it is you who shall give him back his kingdom." Like a still
greater Maid, trembling, casting in her mind what this might mean, she
replied, confused, as if that simple detail were all: "Messire, I am
only a poor girl; I cannot ride or lead armed men." The vision took
no notice of this plea. He became minute in his directions, indicating
exactly what she was to do. "Go to Messire de Baudricourt, captain of
Vaucouleurs, and he will take you to the King. St. Catherine and
St. Margaret will come and help you." Jeanne was overwhelmed by this
exactness, by the sensation of receiving direct orders. She cried,
weeping and helpless, terrified to the bottom of her soul--What was she
that she should do this? a little girl, able to guide nothing but her
needle or her distaff, to lend her simple aid in nursing a sick child.
But behind all her fright and hesitation, her heart was filled with the
emotion thus suggested to her--the immeasurable _pitié que estoit au
royaume de France_. Her heart became heavy with this burden. By degrees
it came about that she could think of nothing else; and her little
life was confused by expectations and recollections of the celestial
visitant, who might arrive upon her at any moment, in the midst perhaps
of some innocent play, or when she sat sewing in the garden before her
father's humble door.
After a while the _vrai prud' homme_ came seldom; other figures more
like herself, soft forms of women, white and shining, with golden
circlets and ornaments, appeared to her in the great halo of the light;
they bowed their heads, naming themselves, as to a sister spirit,
Catherine, and the other Margaret. Their voices were sweet and soft
with a sound that made you weep. They were both martyrs, encouraging and
strengthening the little martyr that was to be. "A lady is there in the
heavens who loves thee": Virgil could not say more to rouse the flagging
strength of Dante. When these gentle figures disappeared, the little
maid wept in an anguish of tenderness, longing if only they would take
her with them. It is curious that though she describes in this vague
rapture the appearance of her visitors, it is always as "_mes voix_"
that she names them--the sight must always have been more imperfect than
the message. Their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertain
in the excess of light; but the words were always plain. The pity for
France that was in their hearts spread itself into the silent rural
atmosphere, touching every sensitive chord in the nature of little
Jeanne. It was as if her mother lay dying there before her eyes.
Curious to think how little anyone could have suspected such meetings as
these, in the cottage hard by, where the weary ploughmen from the fields
would come clamping in for their meal, and Dame Isabeau would call
to the child, even sharply perhaps now and then, to leave that
all-absorbing needlework and come in and help, as Martha called Mary
fourteen hundred years before; and where the priest, mumbling his mass
of a cold morning in the little church, would smile indulgent on the
faithful little worshipper when it was done, sure of seeing Jeanne there
whoever might be absent. She was a shy girl, blushing and drooping her
head when a stranger spoke to her, red and shame-faced when they laughed
at her in the village as a _dévote_ before her time; but with nothing
else to blush about in all her simple record.
Neither to her parents, nor to the curé when she made her confession,
does she seem to have communicated these strange experiences, though
they had lasted for some time before she felt impelled to act upon
them, and could keep silence no longer. She was but thirteen when the
revelations began and she was seventeen when at last she set forth to
fulfil her mission. She had no guidance from her voices, she herself
says, as to whether she should tell or not tell what had been
communicated to her; and no doubt was kept back by her shyness, and by
the dreamy confusion of childhood between the real and unreal. One
would have thought that a life in which these visions were of constant
recurrence would have been rapt altogether out of wholesome use and
wont, and all practical service. But this does not seem for a moment to
have been the case. Jeanne was no hysterical girl, living with her head
in a mist, abstracted from the world. She had all the enthusiasms even
of youthful friendship, other girls surrounding her with the intimacy of
the village, paying her visits, staying all night, sharing her room and
her bed. She was ready to be sent for by any poor woman that needed help
or nursing, she was always industrious at her needle; one would love
to know if perhaps in the _Trésor_ at Rheims there was some stole or
maniple with flowers on it, wrought by her hands. But the _Trésor_ at
Rheims is nowadays rather vulgar if truth must be told, and the bottles
and vases for the consecration of Charles X., that _pauvre sire_, are
more thought of than relics of an earlier age.
At length, however, one does not know how, the secret of her double life
came out. No doubt long brooding over these voices, long intercourse
with such celestial visitors, and the mission continually pressed upon
her--meaningless to the child at first, a thing only to shed terrified
tears over and wonder at--ripened her intelligence so that she came at
last to perceive that it was practicable, a thing to be done, a
charge to be obeyed. She had this before her, as a girl in ordinary
circumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and how
to be a wife and mother. And the news brought by every passer-by would
prove doubly interesting, doubly important to Jeanne, in her daily
growing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. As she felt the
current more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming all
resistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious to
know what was going on in the distracted world, more and more touched by
that great pity which had awakened her soul. And all these reports were
of a nature to increase that pity till it became overwhelming. The
tales she would hear of the English must have been tales of cruelty
and horror; not so many years ago what tales did not we hear of German
ferocity in the French villages, perhaps not true at all, yet making
their impression always; and it was more probable in that age that every
such story should be true. Then the compassion which no one can help
feeling for a young man deprived of his rights, his inheritance taken
from him, his very life in danger, threatened by the stranger and
usurper, was deepened in every particular by the fact that it was the
King, the very impersonation of France, appointed by God as the head of
the country, who was in danger. Everything that Jeanne heard would help
to swell the stream.
Thus she must have come step by step--this extraordinary, impossible
suggestion once sown in her dreaming soul--to perceive a kind of
miraculous reasonableness in it, to see its necessity, and how
everything pointed towards such a deliverance. It would have seemed
natural to believe that the prophecies of the countryside which promised
a virgin from an oak grove, a maiden from Lorraine, to deliver France,
might have affected her mind, did we not have it from her own voice
that she had never heard that prophecy(1); but the word of the blessed
Michael, so often repeated, was more than an old wife's tale; and the
child's alarm would seem to have died away as she came to her full
growth. And Jeanne was no ethereal spirit lost in visions, but a
robust and capable peasant girl, fearing little, and full of sense and
determination, as well as of an inspiration so far above the level of
the crowd. We hear with wonder afterwards that she had the making of a
great general in her untutored female soul,--which is perhaps the most
wonderful thing in her career,--and saw with the eye of an experienced
and able soldier, as even Dunois did not always see it, the fit order
of an attack, the best arrangement of the forces at her command. This I
honestly avow is to me the most incredible point in the story. I am not
disturbed by the apparition of the saints; there is in them an ineffable
appropriateness and fitness against which the imagination, at least,
has not a word to say. The wonder is not, to the natural mind, that such
interpositions of heaven come, but that they come so seldom. But that
Jacques d'Arc's daughter, the little girl over her sewing, whose only
fault was that she went to church too often, should have the genius of a
soldier, is too bewildering for words to say. A poet, yes, an inspiring
influence leading on to miraculous victory; but a general, skilful
with the rude artillery of the time, divining the better way in
strategy,--this is a wonder beyond the reach of our faculties; yet
according to Alençon, Dunois, and other military authorities, it was
true.
We have little means of finding out how it was that Jeanne's long
musings came at last to a point at which they could be hidden no longer,
nor what it was which induced her at last to select the confidant she
did. No doubt she must have been considering and weighing the matter for
a long time before she fixed upon the man who was her relation, yet
did not belong to Domremy, and was safer than a townsman for the
extraordinary revelations she had to make. One of her neighbours, her
gossip, Gerard of Epinal, to whose child she was godmother, had perhaps
at one moment seemed to her a likely helper. But he belonged to the
opposite party. "If you were not a Burgundian," she said to him once,
"there is something I might tell you." The honest fellow took this to
mean that she had some thought of marriage, the most likely and natural
supposition. It was at this moment, when her heart was burning with
her great secret, the voices urging her on day by day, and her power of
self-constraint almost at an end, that Providence sent Durand Laxart,
her uncle by marriage, to Domremy on some family visit. She would seem
to have taken advantage of the opportunity with eagerness, asking him
privately to take her home with him, and to explain to her father and
mother that he wanted her to take care of his wife. No doubt the girl,
devoured with so many thoughts, would have the air of requiring "a
change" as we say, and that the mother would be very ready to accept for
her an invitation which might bring back the brightness to her child.
Laxart was a peasant like the rest, a _prud' homme_ well thought of
among his people. He lived in Burey le Petit, near to Vaucouleurs, the
chief place of the district, and Jeanne already knew that it was to the
captain of Vaucouleurs that she was to address herself. Thus she secured
her object in the simplest and most natural way.
Yet the reader cannot but hold his breath at the thought of what that
amazing revelation must have been to the homely, rustic soul, her
companion, communicated as they went along the common road in the common
daylight. "She said to the witness that she must go to France to the
Dauphin, to make him to be crowned King." It must have been as if a
thunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known in
every development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him her
secret purpose and determination. All her simple excellence the good
man knew, and that she was no fantastic chatterer, but truly _une bonne
douce fille_, bold in nothing but kindness, with nothing to blush for
but the fault of going too often to church. "Did you never hear that
France should be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" she
said; and this would seem to have been an unanswerable argument. He had,
henceforth, nothing to do but to promote her purpose as best he could in
every way.
It would not seem at all unlikely to this good man that the Archangel
Michael, if Jeanne's revelation to him went so far, should have named
Robert de Baudricourt, the chief of the district, captain of the town
and its forces, the principal personage in all the neighbourhood, as
the person to whom Jeanne's purpose was to be revealed, but rather a
guarantee of St. Michael himself, familiar with good society; and the
Seigneur must have been more or less in good intelligence with his
people, not too alarming to be referred to, even on so insignificant
a subject as the vagaries of a country girl--though these by this
time must have begun to seem something more than vagaries to the
half-convinced peasant. And it was no doubt a great relief to his mind
thus to put the decision of the question into the hands of a man better
informed than himself. Laxart proceeded to Vaucouleurs upon his mission,
shyly yet with confidence. He would seem to have had a preliminary
interview with Baudricourt before introducing Jeanne. The stammering
countryman, the bluff, rustic noble and soldier, cheerfully
contemptuous, receiving, with a loud laugh into all the echoes, the
extraordinary demand that he should send a little girl from Domremy
to the King, to deliver France, come before us like a picture in the
countryman's simple words. Robert de Baudricourt would scarcely hear the
story out. "Box her ears," he said, "and send her home to her mother."
The little fool! What did she know of the English, those brutal,
downright fighters, against whom no _élan_ was sufficient, who stood
their ground and set up vulgar posts around their lines, instead
of trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of the
tournament! She deliver France! On a much smaller argument and to put
down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden
a young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion,
and has often been justified in so doing. There would be a half hour of
gaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. The
good man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him in
courtyard or antechamber, with a heavy heart. No boxing of ears was
possible to him. The mere thought of it was blasphemy. This was on
Ascension Day the 13 May, 1428.
Jeanne, however, was not discouraged by M. de Baudricourt's joke, and
her interview with him changed his views completely. She appears indeed
from the moment of setting out from her father's house to have taken a
new attitude. These great personages of the country before whom all the
peasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps,
instruments in the hand of God to speed her on her way if they could see
their privileges--if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind.
It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but after
that disruption what did anything matter? And she had gone through five
years of gradual training of which no one knew. The tears and terror,
the plea, "I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride," of her first childlike
alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and
their meaning. They were now her familiar friends guiding her at every
step; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar of
laughter, to Jeanne? She went to her audience with none of the alarm
of the peasant. A certain young man of Baudricourt's suite, Bertrand de
Poulengy, another young D'Artagnan seeking his fortune, was present
in the hall and witnessed the scene. The joke would seem to have been
exhausted by the time Jeanne appeared, or her perfect gravity and
simplicity, and beautiful manners--so unlike her rustic dress and
village coif--imposed upon the Seigneur and his little court. This is
how the story is told, twenty-five years after, by the witness, then an
elderly knight, recalling the story of his youth.
"She said that she came to Robert on the part of her Lord, that he
should send to the Dauphin, and tell him to hold out, and have no fear,
for the Lord would send him succour before the middle of Lent. She also
said that France did not belong to the Dauphin but to her Lord; but her
Lord willed that the Dauphin should be its King, and hold it in command,
and that in spite of his enemies she herself would conduct him to be
consecrated. Robert then asked her who was this Lord? She answered, 'The
King of Heaven.' This being done (the witness adds) she returned to her
father's house with her uncle, Durand Laxart of Burey le Petit."
This brief and sudden preface to her career passed over and had no
immediate effect; indeed but for Bertrand we should have been unable
to separate it from the confused narrative to which all these witnesses
brought what recollection they had, often without sequence or order,
Durand himself taking no notice of any interval between this first
visit to Vaucouleurs and the final one.(2) The episode of Ascension Day
appears like the formal _sommation_ of French law, made as a matter of
form before the appellant takes action on his own responsibility; but
Baudricourt had probably more to do with it than appears to be at all
certain from the after evidence. One of the persons present, at all
events, young Poulengy above mentioned, bore it in mind and pondered it
in his heart.
Meantime, Jeanne returned home--the strangest home-going,--for by this
time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour
must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph,
to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any
difference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness
to which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reached
Jacques d'Arc's cottage even before she came back with the kind Durand,
a changed creature, already the consecrated Maid of France, La Pucelle,
apart from all others. The French peasant is a hard man, more fierce in
his terror of the unconventional, of having his domestic affairs exposed
to the public eye, or his family disgraced by an exhibition of anything
unusual either in act or feeling, than almost any other class of beings.
And it is evident that he took his daughter's intention according to the
coarsest interpretation, as a wild desire for adventure and intention
of joining herself to the roving troopers, the soldiers always hated and
dreaded in rural life. He suddenly appears in the narrative in a fever
of apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl,
but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. We do
not know what passed when she returned, further than that her father had
a dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purpose
that had so long been ripening in her mind. He dreamed that he saw her
surrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evident
and natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could divine that
she meant to be their leader and general, on a level not with the common
men-at-arms, but of princes and nobles? In the morning he told his dream
to his wife and also to his sons. "If I could think that the thing would
happen that I dreamed, I would wish that she should be drowned; and
if you would not do it, I should do it with my own hands." The reader
remembers with a shudder the Meuse flowing at the foot of the garden,
while the fierce peasant, mad with fear lest shame should be coming to
his family, clenched his strong fist and made this outcry of dismay.
No doubt his wife smoothed the matter over as well as she could, and,
whatever alarms were in her own mind, hastily thought of a feminine
expedient to mend matters, and persuaded the angry father that to
substitute other dreams for these would be an easier way. Isabeau most
probably knew the village lad who would fain have had her child, so good
a housewife, so industrious a workwoman, and always so friendly and so
helpful, for his wife. At all events there was such a one, too willing
to exert himself, not discouraged by any refusal, who could be egged
up to the very strong point of appearing before the bishop at Toul and
swearing that Jeanne had been promised to him from her childhood. So
timid a girl, they all thought, so devout a Catholic, would simply obey
the bishop's decision and would not be bold enough even to remonstrate,
though it is curious that with the spectacle of her grave determination
before them, and sorrowful sense of that necessity of her mission
which had steeled her to dispense with their consent, they should have
expected such an expedient to arrest her steps. The affair, we must
suppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on the
lover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such an
attempt was finally made. But the shy Jeanne had by this time attained
that courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the most
gentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went to
Toul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from the
pretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her very
different destination we are not told.(3)
These proceedings, however, and the father's dreams and the
remonstrances of the mother, must have made troubled days in the
cottage, and scenes of wrath and contradiction, hard to bear. The winter
passed distracted by these contentions, and it is difficult to imagine
how Jeanne could have borne this had it not been that the period of her
outset had already been indicated, and that it was only in the middle of
Lent that her succour was to reach the King. The village, no doubt, was
almost as much distracted as her father's house to hear of these strange
discussions and of the incredible purpose of the _bonne douce fille_,
whose qualities everybody knew and about whom there was nothing
eccentric, nothing unnatural, but only simple goodness, to distinguish
her above her neighbours. In the meantime her voices called her
continually to her work. They set her free from the ordinary yoke of
obedience, always so strong in the mind of a French girl. The dreadful
step of abandoning her home, not to be thought of under any other
circumstances, was more and more urgently pressed upon her. Could it
indeed be saints and angels who ordained a step which was outside of all
the habits and first duties of nature? But we have no reason to believe
that this nineteenth-century doubt of her visitors, and of whether their
mandates were right, entered into the mind of a girl who was of her own
period and not of ours. She went on steadfastly, certain of her mission
now, and inaccessible either to remonstrance or appeal.
It was towards the beginning of Lent, as Poulengy tells us, that the
decision was made, and she left home finally, to go "to France" as is
always said. But it seems to have been in January that she set out once
more for Vaucouleurs, accompanied by her uncle, who took her to the
house of some humble folk they knew, a carter and his wife, where they
lodged. Jeanne wore her peasant dress of heavy red homespun, her rude
heavy shoes, her village coif. She never made any pretence of ladyhood
or superiority to her class, but was always equal to the finest society
in which she found herself, by dint of that simple good faith, sense,
and seriousness, without excitement or exaggeration, and radiant purity
and straightforwardness which were apparent to all seeing eyes. By
this time all the little world about knew something of her purpose and
followed her every step with wonder and quickly rising curiosity: and no
doubt the whole town was astir, women gazing at their doors, all on her
side from the first moment, the men half interested, half insolent, as
she went once more to the chateau to make her personal appeal. Simple as
she was, the _bonne douce fille_ was not intimidated by the guard at the
gates, the lounging soldiers, the no doubt impudent glances flung at
her by these rude companions. She was inaccessible to alarms of that
kind--which, perhaps, is one of the greatest safeguards against them
even in more ordinary cases. We find little record of her second
interview with Baudricourt. The _Journal du Siège d'Orleans_ and the
_Chronique de la Pucelle_ both mention it as if it had been one of
several, which may well have been the case, as she was for three weeks
in Vaucouleurs. It is almost impossible to arrange the incidents of this
interval between her arrival there and her final departure for Chinon on
the 23d February, during which time she made a pilgrimage to a shrine
of St. Nicolas and also a visit to the Duke of Lorraine. It is clear,
however, that she must have repeated her demand with such stress and
urgency that the Captain of Vaucouleurs was a much perplexed man. It was
a very natural idea then, and in accordance with every sentiment of
the time that he should suspect this wonderful girl, who would not be
daunted, of being a witch and capable of bringing an evil fate on all
who crossed her. All thought of boxing her ears must ere this have
departed from his mind. He hastened to consult the curé, which was
the most reasonable thing to do. The curé was as much puzzled as the
Captain. The Church, it must be said, if always ready to take advantage
afterwards of such revelations, has always been timid, even sceptical
about them at first. The wisdom of the rulers, secular and ecclesiastic,
suggested only one thing to do, which was to exorcise, and perhaps to
overawe and frighten, the young visionary. They paid a joint and solemn
visit to the carter's house, where no doubt their entrance together was
spied by many eager eyes; and there the priest solemnly taking out his
stole invested himself in his priestly robes and exorcised the evil
spirits, bidding them come out of the girl if they were her inspiration.
There seems a certain absurdity in this sudden assault upon the evil
one, taking him as it were by surprise: but it was not ridiculous to
any of the performers, though Jeanne no doubt looked on with serene and
smiling eyes. She remarked afterwards to her hostess, that the curé had
done wrong, as he had already heard her in confession.
Outside, the populace were in no uncertainty at all as to her mission.
A little mob hung about the door to see her come and go, chiefly to
church, with her good hostess in attendance, as was right and seemly,
and a crowd streaming after them who perhaps of their own accord might
have neglected mass, but who would not, if they could help it, lose a
look at the new wonder. One day a young gentleman of the neighbourhood
was passing by, and amused by the commotion, came through the crowd to
have a word with the peasant lass. "What are you doing here, _ma mie_?"
the young man said. "Is the King to be driven out of the kingdom, and
are we all to be made English?" There is a tone of banter in the speech,
but he had already heard of the Maid from his friend, Bertrand, and had
been affected by the other's enthusiasm. "Robert de Baudricourt will
have none of me or my words," she replied, "nevertheless before Mid-Lent
I must be with the King, if I should wear my feet up to my knees;
for nobody in the world, be it king, duke, or the King of Scotland's
daughter, can save the kingdom of France except me alone: though I would
rather spin beside my poor mother, and this is not my work: but I must
go and do it, because my Lord so wills it." "And who is your Seigneur?"
he asked. "God," said the girl. The young man was moved, he too, by that
wind which bloweth where it listeth. He stretched out his hands through
the gaping crowd and took hers, holding them between his own, to give
her his pledge: and so swore by his faith, her hands in his hands, that
he himself would conduct her to the King. "When will you go?" he said.
"Rather to-day than to-morrow," answered the messenger of God.
This was the second convert of La Pucelle. The peasant _bonhomme_ first,
the noble gentleman after him; not to say all the women wherever she
went, the gazing, weeping, admiring crowd which now followed her steps,
and watched every opening of the door which concealed her from their
eyes. The young gentleman was Jean de Novelonpont, "surnamed Jean de
Metz": and so moved was he by the fervour of the girl, and by her strong
sense of the necessity of immediate operations, that he proceeded at
once to make preparations for the journey. They would seem to have
discussed the dress she ought to wear, and Jeanne decided for many
obvious reasons to adopt the costume of a man--or rather boy. She must,
one would imagine have been tall, for no remark is ever made on this
subject, as if her dress had dwarfed her, which is generally the case
when a woman assumes the habit of a man: and probably with her peasant
birth and training, she was, though slim, strongly made and well knit,
besides being at the age when the difference between boy and girl is
sometimes but little noticeable.
In the meantime Baudricourt had not been idle. He must have been moved
by the sight of Jeanne, at least to perceive a certain gravity in the
business for which he was not prepared; and her composure under the
curé's exorcism would naturally deepen the effect which her own manners
and aspect had upon all who were free of prejudice. Another singular
event, too, added weight to her character and demand. One day after
her return from Lorraine, February 12th, 1429, she intimated to all her
surroundings and specially to Baudricourt, that the King had suffered a
defeat near Orleans, which made it still more necessary that she should
be at once conducted to him. It was found when there was time for the
news to come, that this defeat, the Battle of the Herrings, so-called,
had happened as she said, at the exact time; and such a strange fact
added much to the growing enthusiasm and excitement. Baudricourt is said
by Michelet to have sent off a secret express to the Court to ask what
he should do; but of this there seems to be no direct evidence, though
likelihood enough. The Court at Chinon contained a strong feminine
element, behind the scenes. And it might be found that there were uses
for the enthusiast, even if she did not turn out to be inspired. No
doubt there were many comings and goings at this period which can only
be traced confusedly through the depositions of Jeanne's companions
twenty-five years after. She had at least two interviews with
Baudricourt before the exorcism of the curé and his consequent change
of procedure towards her. Then, escorted by her uncle Laxart, and
apparently by Jean de Metz, she had made a pilgrimage to a shrine of St.
Nicolas, as already mentioned, on which occasion, being near Nancy, she
was sent for by the Duke of Lorraine, then lying ill at his castle
in that city, who had a fancy to consult the young prophetess,
sorceress--who could tell what she was?--on the subject apparently
of his illness. He was the son of Queen Yolande of Anjou, who was
mother-in-law to Charles VII., and it would no doubt be thought of some
importance to secure his good opinion. Jeanne gave the exalted
patient no light on the subject of his health, but only the (probably
unpleasing) advice to flee from the wrath of God and to be reconciled
with his wife, from whom he was separated. He too, however, was moved by
the sight of her and her straightforward, undeviating purpose. He gave
her four francs, Durand tells us,--not much of a present,--which she
gave to her uncle, and which helped to buy her outfit. Probably he made
a good report of her to his mother, for shortly after her return to
Vaucouleurs (I again follow Michelet who ought to be well informed)
a messenger from Chinon arrived to take her to the King.(4) In the
councils of that troubled Court, perhaps, the idea of a prodigy and
miraculous leader, though she was nothing but a peasant girl, would
be not without attraction, a thing to conjure withal, so far as the
multitude were concerned.
Anyhow from any point of view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, it
was expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real or
visionary, should lightly be rejected. There was much anxiety no
doubt in the careless Court still dancing and singing in the midst
of calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form an
exciting incident at least, if nothing more important and notable.
Thus the whole anxious world of France stirred round that youthful
figure in the little frontier town, repeating with many an alteration
and exaggeration the sayings of Jeanne, and those popular superstitions
about the Maid from Lorraine which might be so naturally applied to her.
It would seem, indeed, that she had herself attached some importance to
this prophecy, for both her uncle Laxart and her hostess at Vaucouleurs
report that she asked them if they had heard it: which question
"stupefied" the latter, whose mind evidently jumped at once to the
conviction that the prophecy was fulfilled. Not in Domremy itself,
however, were these things considered with the same awe-stricken and
admiring faith. Nothing had softened the mood of Jacques d'Arc. It was
a shame to the village _prud' homme_ to think of his daughter away from
all the protection of home, living among men, encountering the young
Seigneurs who cared for no maiden's reputation, hearing the soldiers'
rude talk, exposed to their insults, or worse still to their kindness.
Probably even now he thought of her as surrounded by troopers and
men-at-arms, instead of the princes and peers with whom henceforth
Jeanne's lot was to be cast; but in the former case there would
have perhaps been less to fear than in the latter. Anyhow, Jeanne's
communications with her family were more painful to her than had been
the jeers of Baudricourt or the exorcism of the curé. They sent her
angry orders to come back, threats of parental curses and abandonment.
We may hope that the mother, grieved and helpless, had little to do with
this persecution. The woman who had nourished her children upon saintly
legend and Scripture story could scarcely have been hard upon the child,
of whom she, better than any, knew the perfect purity and steadfast
resolution. One of the little household at least, revolted by the stern
father's fury, perhaps secretly encouraged by the mother, broke away and
joined his sister at a later period. But we hear, during her lifetime,
little or nothing of Pierre.
Much time, however, was passed in these preliminaries. The final
start was not made till the 23d February, 1429, when the permission
is supposed to have come by the hands of Colet de Vienne, the King's
messenger, who attended by a single archer, was to be her escort. It
is possible that he had no mission to this effect, but he certainly
did escort her to Chinon. The whole town gathered before the house of
Baudricourt to see her depart. Baudricourt, however, does not seem to
have provided any guard for her. Jean de Metz, who had so chivalrously
pledged himself to her service, with his friend De Poulengy,
equally ready for adventure, each with his servant, formed her sole
protectors.(5) Jean de Metz had already sent her the clothes of one of
his retainers, with the light breastplate and partial armour that suited
it; and the townspeople had subscribed to buy her a further outfit, and
a horse which seems to have cost sixteen francs--not so small a sum in
those days as now. Laxart declares himself to have been responsible for
this outlay, though the money was afterwards paid by Baudricourt, who
gave Jeanne a sword, which some of her historians consider a very poor
gift: none, however, of her equipments would seem to have been costly.
The little party set out thus, with a sanction of authority, from the
Captain's gate, the two gentlemen and the King's messenger at the head
of the party with their attendants, and the Maid in the midst. "Go: and
let what will happen," was the parting salutation of Baudricourt. The
gazers outside set up a cry when the decisive moment came, and someone,
struck with the feeble force which was all the safeguard she had for her
long journey through an agitated country--perhaps a woman in the sudden
passion of misgiving which often follows enthusiasm,--called out to
Jeanne with an astonished outcry to ask how she could dare to go by such
a dangerous road. "It was for that I was born," answered the fearless
Maid. The last thing she had done had been to write a letter to her
parents, asking their pardon if she obeyed a higher command than theirs,
and bidding them farewell.
The French historians, with that amazement which they always show when
they find a man behaving like a gentleman towards a woman confided to
his honour, all pause with deep-drawn breath to note that the awe of
Jeanne's absolute purity preserved her from any unseemly overture, or
even evil thought, on the part of her companions. We need not take
up even the shadow of so grave a censure upon Frenchmen in general,
although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. The two young
men, thus starting upon a dangerous adventure, pledged by their honour
to protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble and
generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. They
were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when
once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild
errand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of
Burgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to
avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. Sometimes, too,
they had many doubts, Bertrand says, perhaps as to their reception at
Chinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to the
ridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contact
with the Evil One, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspired
virgin but a pretender or sorceress. Jean de Metz informs us that she
bade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was now
doing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and that
for the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her God had
told her that she must go to the war to save the kingdom of France. This
phrase must have struck his ear, as he thus repeats it. Her brothers in
paradise! She had not apparently talked of them to anyone as yet, but
now no one could hinder her more, and she felt herself free to speak.
A great calm seems to have been in her soul. She had at last begun her
work. How it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked;
she knew only what she had to do. When they ventured into a town she
insisted on stopping to hear mass, bidding them fear nothing. "God
clears the way for me," she said; "I was born for this," and so
proceeded safe, though threatened with many dangers. There is something
that breathes of supreme satisfaction and content in her repetition of
those words.
(1) She was, however, acquainted with the simpler byword,
that France should be destroyed by a woman and afterwards
redeemed by a virgin, which she quoted to several persons on
her first setting out.
(2) I have to thank Mr. Andrew Lang for making the course of
these events quite clear to myself.
(3) Mr. Andrew Lang thinks that this appearance at Toul was
made after she had finally left Domremy, and when she was
already accompanied by the escort which was to attend her to
Chinon.
(4) Mr. Andrew Lang will not hear of this. He thinks the man
was a mere King's messenger with news, probably charged with
the melancholy tidings of the loss at Rouvray (Battle of the
Herrings): and that the fact he did accompany Jeanne and her
little part was entirely accidental.
(5) Her brother Pierre is said by some to have been of the
party. _La Chronique de la Pucelle_ says two of her
brothers. Mr. Andrew Lang, however, tells us that Pierre did
not join his sister's party till much later--in the
beginning of June: and this is the statement of Jean de
Metz. But Quicherat is also of opinion that they both fought
in the relief of Orleans.