We have not, however, sufficiently described the horror of the prison,
and the treatment to which Jeanne was exposed, though the picture is
already dark enough. It throws a horrible yet also a grotesque light
upon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in which
she was confined, had secret provision for an _espionnage_ of the most
base kind, openings made in the walls through which everything that took
place in the room, every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner, could
be spied upon and every word heard. The idea of such a secret watch
has always been attractive to the vulgar mind, and no doubt it has been
believed to exist many times when there was little or no justification
for such an infernal thought. From the "ear" of Dionysius, down to the
_Trou Judas_, which early tourists on the Continent were taught to fear
in every chamber door, the idea has descended to our own times. It would
seem, however, to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiring
information was in full operation during the trial of Jeanne, and
various spies were permitted to peep at her, and to watch for any
unadvised word she might say in her most private moments. We are told
that the Duke of Bedford made use of the opportunity in a still more
revolting way, and was present, a secret spectator, at the fantastic
scene when Jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examined
her person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations which
were made about her. The imagination, however, refuses to conceive that
a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself
to the level of a Peeping Tom in this way; all the French historians,
nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence.
And they also relate, with more apparent truth, how a double treachery
was committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing two
secretaries at these openings, to take down her conversation with a spy
who had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own; and
that not only Cauchon but Warwick also was present on this occasion,
listening, while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside.
The clerks, we are glad to say, are credited with a refusal to act: but
Warwick did not shrink from the ignominy. The Englishmen indeed shrank
from no ignominy; nor did the great French savants assembled under the
presidency of the Bishop. It is necessary to grant to begin with that
they were neither ignorant nor base men, yet from the beginning of the
trial almost every step taken by them appears base, as well as marked,
in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning, by the
profoundest ignorance of human nature. The spy of whom we have spoken,
L'Oyseleur (bird-snarer, a significant name), was sent, and consented to
be sent, to Jeanne in her prison, as a fellow prisoner, a _pays_,
like herself from Lorraine, to invite her confidence: but his long
conversations with the Maid, which were heard behind their backs by
the secretaries, elicited nothing from her that she did not say in the
public examination. She had no secret devices to betray to a traitor.
She would not seem, indeed, to have suspected the man at all, not
even when she saw him among her judges taking part against her. Jeanne
herself suspected no falsehood, but made her confession to him, when she
found that he was a priest, and trusted him fully. The bewildering
and confusing fact, turning all the contrivances of her judges into
foolishness, was, that she had nothing to confess that she was not ready
to tell in the eye of day.
The adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from the
candid soul which had none, was justified, it appears, by the manner of
her trial, which was after the rules of the Inquisition--by which even
more than by those which regulate an ordinary French trial the guilt of
the accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought, not a
fair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice. The first
thing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictment
against Jeanne; was she to be tried for magical arts, for sorcery and
witchcraft? It is very probable that the mission of L'Oyseleur was to
obtain evidence that would clear up this question by means of recalling
to her the stories of her childhood, of the enchanted tree, and the
Fairies' Well; from which sources, her accusers anxiously hoped to prove
that she derived her inspiration. But it is very clear that no such
evidence was forthcoming, and that it seemed to them hopeless to
attribute sorcery to her; therefore the accusation was changed to that
of heresy alone. The following mandate from the University authorising
her prosecution will show what the charge was; and the reader will note
that one of its darkest items is the costume, which for so many good
and sufficient reasons she wore. Here is the official description of the
accused:
"A woman, calling herself the Maid, leaving the dress and habit of her
sex against the divine law, a thing abominable to God, clothed and armed
in the habit and condition of a man, has done cruel deeds of homicide,
and as is said has made the simple people believe, in order to abuse
and lead them astray, that she was sent by God, and had knowledge of His
divine secrets; along with several other doctrines (_dogmatisations_),
very dangerous, prejudicial, and scandalous to our holy Catholic faith,
in pursuing which abuses, and exercising hostility against us and our
people, she has been taken in arms, before Compiègne, and brought as a
prisoner before us."
According to French law the indictment ought to have been founded upon a
preliminary examination into the previous life of the accused, which, as
it does not appear in the formal accusations, it was supposed had never
been made. Recent researches, however, have proved that it was made, but
was not of a nature to strengthen or justify any accusation. All that
the examiners could discover was that Jeanne d'Arc was a good and honest
maid who left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village,
and that not a suspicion of _dogmatisations_, nor worship of fairies,
nor any other unseemly thing was associated with her name. Other things
less favourable, we are told, were reported of her: the statement,
for instance, made in apparent good faith by Monstrelet the Burgundian
chronicler, that she had been for some time a servant in an _auberge_,
and there had learned to ride, and to consort with men--a statement
totally without foundation, which was scarcely referred to in the trial.
The skill of M. Quicherat discovered the substance of those inquiries
among the many secondary papers, but they were not made use of in the
formal proceedings. This also we are told, though contrary to the habit
of French law, was justified by the methods of the Inquisition, which
were followed throughout the trial. One breach of law and justice,
however, is permitted by no code. It is expressly forbidden by French,
and even by inquisitorial law, that a prisoner should be tried by
his enemies--that is by judges avowedly hostile to him: an initial
difficulty which it would have been impossible to get over and which
had therefore to be ignored. One brave and honest man, Nicolas de
Houppeville, had the courage to make this observation in one of the
earliest sittings of the assembly:
"Neither the Bishop of Beauvais" (he said) "nor the other members of the
tribunal ought to be judges in the matter; and it did not seem to him a
good mode of procedure that those who were of the opposite party to
the accused should be her judges--considering also that she had been
examined already by the clergy of Poitiers, and by the Archbishop of
Rheims, who was the metropolitan of the said Bishop of Beauvais."
Nicolas de Houppeville was a lawyer and had a right to be heard on such
a point; but the reply of the judges was to throw him into prison, not
without threats on the part of the civil authorities to carry the point
further by throwing him into the Seine. This was the method by which
every honest objection was silenced. That the examination at Poitiers,
where the judges, as has been seen, were by no means too favourable to
Jeanne, should never have been referred to by her present examiners,
though there was no doubt it ought to have been one of the most
important sources of the preliminary information--is also very
remarkable. It was suggested indeed to Jeanne at a late period of the
trial, that she might appeal to the Archbishop; but he was, as she well
knew, one of her most cruel enemies.
Still more important was the breach of all justice apparent in the fact
that she had no advocate, no counsel on her side, no one to speak to
her and conduct her defence. It was suggested to her near the end of the
proceedings that she might choose one of her judges to fill this office;
but even if the proposal had been a genuine one or at all likely to
be to her advantage, it was then too late to be of any use. These
particulars, we believe, were enough to invalidate any process in strict
law; but the name of law seems ridiculous altogether as applied to this
rambling and cruel cross-examination in which was neither sense nor
decorum. The reader will understand that there were no witnesses either
for or against her, the answers of the accused herself forming the
entire evidence.
One or two particulars may still be added to make the background at
least more clear. The prison of Jeanne, as we have seen, was not left
in the usual silence of such a place; the constant noise with which
the English troopers filled the air, jesting, gossiping, and
carrying on their noisy conversation, if nothing worse and more
offensive--sometimes, as Jeanne complains, preventing her from hearing
(her sole solace) the soft voices of her saintly visitors--was not her
only disturbance. Her solitude was broken by curious and inquisitive
visitors of various kinds. L'Oyseleur, the abominable detective, who
professed to be her countryman and who beguiled her into talk of her
childhood and native place, was the first of these; and it is possible
that at first his presence was a pleasure to her. One other visitor of
whom we hear accidentally, a citizen of Rouen, Pierre Casquel, seems to
have got in private interest and with a more or less good motive and no
evil meaning. He warned her to answer with prudence the questions put
to her, since it was a matter of life and death. She seemed to him to
be "very simple" and still to believe that she might be ransomed. Earl
Warwick, the commander of the town, appears on various occasions. He
probably had his headquarters in the Castle, and thus heard her cry for
help in her danger, executing, let us hope, summary vengeance on her
brutal assailant; but he also evidently took advantage of his power to
show his interesting prisoner to his friends on occasion. And it was he
who took her original captor, Jean de Luxembourg, now Comte de Ligny,
by whom she had been given up, to see her, along with an English lord,
sometimes named as Lord Sheffield. The Belgian who had put so many good
crowns in his pocket for her ransom, thought it good taste to enter with
a jesting suggestion that he had come to buy her back.
"Jeanne, I will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear arms
against us again," he said. The Maid was not deceived by this mocking
suggestion. "It is well for you to jest," she said, "but I know you have
no such power. I know that the English will kill me, believing, after I
am dead, that they will be able to win all the kingdom of France: but
if there were a hundred thousand more Goddens than there are, they shall
never win the kingdom of France." The English lord drew his dagger to
strike the helpless girl, all the stories say, but was prevented by
Warwick. Warwick, however, we are told, though he had thus saved her
twice, "recovered his barbarous instincts" as soon as he got outside,
and indignantly lamented the possibility of Jeanne's escape from the
stake.
Such incidents as these alone lightened or darkened her weary days in
prison. A traitor or spy, a prophet of evil shaking his head over her
danger, a contemptuous party of jeering nobles; afterwards inquisitors,
for ever repeating in private their tedious questions: these all visited
her--but never a friend. Jeanne was not afraid of the English lord's
dagger, or of the watchful eye of Warwick over her. Even when spying
through a hole, if the English earl and knight, indeed permitted himself
that strange indulgence, his presence and inspection must have been
almost the only defence of the prisoner. Our historians all quote,
with an admiration almost as misplaced as their horror of Warwick's
"barbarous instincts," the _vrai galant homme_ of an Englishman who in
the midst of the trial cried out "_Brave femme_!" (it is difficult to
translate the words, for _brave_ means more than brave)--"why was she
not English?" However we are not concerned to defend the English share
of the crime. The worst feature of all is that she never seems to
have been visited by any one favourable and friendly to her, except
afterwards, the two or three pitying priests whose hearts were touched
by her great sufferings, though they remained among her judges, and gave
sentence against her. No woman seems ever to have entered that dreadful
prison except those "matrons" who came officially as has been already
said. The ladies de Ligny had cheered her in her first confinement,
the kind women of Abbeville had not been shut out even from the gloomy
fortress of Le Crotoy. But here no woman ever seems to have been
permitted to enter, a fact which must either be taken to prove the
hostility of the population, or the very vigorous regulations of the
prison. Perhaps the barbarous watch set upon her, the soldiers ever
present, may have been a reason for the absence of any female visitor.
At all events it is a very distinct fact that during the whole period
of her trial, five months of misery, except on the one occasion already
referred to, no woman came to console the unfortunate Maid. She had
never before during all her vicissitudes been without their constant
ministrations.
One woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan and
lover of the Maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid the
crowd. Catherine of La Rochelle--the woman who had laid claim to saintly
visitors and voices like those of Jeanne, and who had been for a time
received and fêted at the Court of Charles with vile satisfaction, as
making the loss of the Maid no such great thing--had by this time been
dropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by the
Archbishop of Rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the English: was
not she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to the
other witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? Catherine
was ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "Take
care of her," she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, the
devil will carry her away." Perhaps this was the cause of the guard
in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The
vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony.
She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights
that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again
with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have
been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians.
Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. It
is profane to associate Jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that of
a mountebank. This is the only woman in all her generation, so far
as appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of the
spotless Maid.
The aspect of that old-world city of Rouen, still so old and picturesque
to the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except the
churches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. It must have
hummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with the
English troops, and many a Burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about,
swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud voices,--but with all
the polished bands of the doctors, men first in fame and learning of
the famous University, and beneficed priests of all classes, canons
and deans and bishops, with the countless array that followed them, the
cardinal's tonsured Court in addition, standing by and taking no share
in the business: but all French and English alike, occupied with one
subject, talking of the trial, of the new points brought out, of the
opinions of this doctor and that, of Maître Nicolas who had presumed on
his lawyership to correct the bishop, and had suffered for it: of the
bold canon who ventured to whisper a suggestion to the prisoner, and who
ever since had had the eye of the governor upon him: of Warwick, keeping
a rough shield of protection around the Maid but himself fiercely
impatient of the law's delay, anxious to burn the witch and be done with
her. And Jeanne herself, the one strange figure that nobody understood;
was she a witch? Was she an angelic messenger? Her answers so simple,
so bold, so full of the spirit and sentiment of truth, must have been
reported from one to another. This is what she said; does that look like
a deceiver? could the devils inspire that steadfastness, that constancy
and quiet? or was it not rather the angels, the saints as she said?
Never, we may be sure, had there been in Rouen a time of so much
interest, such a theme for conversations, such a subject for all
thoughts. The eager court sat with their tonsured heads together, keen
to seize every weak point. Did you observe how she hesitated on this?
Let us push that, we'll get an admission on that point to-morrow. It is
impossible to believe that in such an assembly every man was a partisan,
much less that each one of them was thinking of the fee of the English,
the daily allowance which it was the English habit to make. That were to
imagine a France, base indeed beyond the limits of human baseness. All
the Norman dignitaries of the Church, all the most learned doctors
of the University--no! that is too great a stretch of our faith. The
greater part no doubt believed as an indisputable fact, that Jeanne was
either a witch or an impostor, as we should all probably do now. And
the vertigo of Inquisition gained upon them; they became day by day more
exasperated with her seeming innocence, with what must have seemed to
them the cunning and cleverness, impossible to her age and sex, of
her replies. Who could have kept the girl so cool, so dauntless, so
embarrassing in her straight-forwardness and sincerity? The saints? the
saints were not dialecticians; far more likely the evil one himself, in
whom the Church has always such faith. "He hath a devil and by Beelzebub
casteth out devils." It was all like a play, only more exciting than
any play, and going on endlessly, the excitement always getting stronger
till it became the chief stimulus and occupation of life.