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THE LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY WINIFRED STEPHENS
IN TWO VOLS., VOL. I
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMIX
_Copyright in U.S.A., 1908, by_
MANZI, JOYANT ET CIE
_Copyright in U.S.A., 1908, by_
JOHN LANE COMPANY
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
[Illustration: Joan of Arc]
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
Scholars have been good enough to notice this book; and the majority
have treated it very kindly, doubtless because they have perceived
that the author has observed all the established rules of historical
research and accuracy. Their kindness has touched me. I am especially
grateful to MM. Gabriel Monod, Solomon Reinach and Germain
Lefevre-Pontalis, who have discovered in this work certain errors,
which will not be found in the present edition.
My English critics have a special claim to my gratitude. To the memory
of Joan of Arc they consecrate a pious zeal which is almost an
expiatory worship. Mr. Andrew Lang's praiseworthy scruples with regard
to my references have caused me to correct some and to add several.
The hagiographers alone are openly hostile. They reproach me, not with
my manner of explaining the facts, but with having explained them at
all. And the more my explanations are clear, natural, rational and
derived from the most authoritative sources, the more these
explanations displease them. They would wish the history of Joan of
Arc to remain mysterious and entirely supernatural. I have restored
the Maid to life and to humanity. That is my crime. And these zealous
inquisitors, so intent on condemning my work, have failed to discover
therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. Their severity has
had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few
printer's errors. What flatterers could better have gratified "the
proud weakness of my heart?"[1]
PARIS, _January, 1909_.
[Footnote 1: "_De mon coeur l'orgueilleuse faiblesse_," Racine,
_Iphigenie en Aulide_, Act i, sc. i.--(W.S.)]
INTRODUCTION
My first duty should be to make known the authorities for this
history. But L'Averdy, Buchon, J. Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville,
Simeon Luce, Boucher de Molandon, MM. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Lanery
d'Arc, Henri Jadart, Alexandre Sorel, Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, L.
Jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various
documents for the life of Joan of Arc. I refer my readers to their
works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature,[2] and
without entering on any new examination of these documents, I will
merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use I have
chosen to make of them. They are: first, the trial which resulted in
her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her
rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers.
[Footnote 2: Le P. Lelong, _Bibliotheque historique de la France_,
Paris, 1768 (5 vols. folio), II, n. 17172-17242. Potthast,
_Bibliotheca medii aevi_, Berlin, 1895, 8vo, vol. i, pp. 643 _seq._ U.
Chevalier, _Repertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age_, Paris,
8vo, 1877, pp. 1247-1255; _Jeanne d'Arc, bibliographie_, Montbeliard,
1878 [selections]; _Supplement au Repertoire_, Paris, 1883, pp.
2684-2686, 8vo. Lanery d'Arc, _Le livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc,
bibliographie raisonnee et analytique des ouvrages relatifs a Jeanne
d'Arc_, Paris, 1894, large 8vo, and supplement. A. Molinier, _Les
sources de l'histoire de France des origines aux guerres d'Italie, IV:
Les Valois, 1328-1461_, Paris, 1904, pp. 310-348.]
First, in the trial[3] which resulted in her condemnation the
historian has a mine of rich treasure. Her cross-examination cannot be
too minutely studied. It is based on information, not preserved
elsewhere, gathered from Domremy and the various parts of France
through which she passed. It is hardly necessary to say that all the
judges of 1431 sought to discover in Jeanne was idolatry, heresy,
sorcery and other crimes against the Church. Inclined as they were,
however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the
words of one whom they desired to ruin, so that they might dishonour
her king, they examined all available information concerning her life.
The high value to be set upon the Maid's replies is well known; they
are heroically sincere, and for the most part perfectly lucid.
Nevertheless they must not all be interpreted literally. Jeanne, who
never regarded either the bishop or the promoter as her judge, was not
so simple as to tell them the whole truth. It was very frank of her to
warn them that they would not know all.[4] That her memory was
curiously defective must also be admitted. I am aware that the clerk
of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember
exactly the answers she had given in her cross-examination.[5] That
may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. It is
none the less certain that after the lapse of a year she retained but
an indistinct recollection of some of the important acts of her life.
Finally, her constant hallucinations generally rendered her incapable
of distinguishing between the true and the false.
[Footnote 3: Jules Quicherat, _Proces de condamnation et de
rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 8vo, 1841, vol. i. (Called
hereafter _Trial_.--W.S.)]
[Footnote 4: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 93, _passim_.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid._, vol. iii, pp. 89, 142, 161, 176, 178, 201.]
The record of the trial is followed by an examination of Jeanne's
sayings in _articulo mortis_.[6] This examination is not signed by the
clerks of the court. Hence from a legal point of view the record is
out of order; nevertheless, regarded as a historical document, its
authenticity cannot be doubted. In my opinion the actual occurrences
cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial
report. It tells of Jeanne's second recantation, and of this
recantation there can be no question, for Jeanne received the
communion before her death. The veracity of this document was never
assailed,[7] even by those who during the rehabilitation trial pointed
out its irregularity.[8]
[Footnote 6: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 478 _et seq._]
[Footnote 7: _Cf._ J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux sur l'histoire de
Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1880, pp. 138-144.]
[Footnote 8: Evidence of G. Manchon, _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 14.]
Secondly, the chroniclers of the period, both French and Burgundian,
were paid chroniclers, one of whom was attached to every great baron.
Tringant says that his master did not expend any money in order to
obtain mention in the chronicles,[9] and that therefore he is omitted
from them. The earliest chronicle in which the Maid occurs is that of
Perceval de Cagny, who was in the service of the house of Alencon and
Duke John's master of the house.[10] It was drawn up in the year 1436,
that is, only six years after Jeanne's death. But it was not written
by him. According to his own confession he had "not half the sense,
memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of
less than half its importance, down in writing."[11] This chronicle is
the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a
chronicler in the pay of the house of Alencon representing the
differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la
Tremouille and the Duke of Alencon, in a light most unfavourable to
the King. But from a scribe, supposed to be writing at the dictation
of a retainer of Duke John, one would have expected a less inaccurate
and a less vague account of the feats of arms accomplished by the Maid
in company with him whom she called her fair duke. Although this
chronicle was written at a time when no one dreamed that the sentence
of 1431 would ever be revoked, the Maid is regarded as employing
supernatural means, and her acts are stripped of all verisimilitude by
being recorded in the manner of a hagiography. Further, that portion
of the chronicle attributed to Perceval de Cagny, which deals with the
Maid, is brief, consisting of twenty-seven chapters of a few lines
each. Quicherat is of opinion that it is the best chronicle of Jeanne
d'Arc[12] existing, and the others may indeed be even more worthless.
[Footnote 9: _Ne donnoit point d'argent pour soy faire mettre es
croniques._--Jean de Bueil, _Le Jouvencel_, ed. C. Fabre and L.
Lecestre, Paris, 1887, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 283.]
[Footnote 10: Perceval de Cagny, _Chroniques_, published by H.
Moranville, Paris, 1902, 8vo.]
[Footnote 11: _Le sens, memoire, ne l'abillite de savoir faire metre
par escript ce, ne autre chose mendre de plus de la moitie_, Perceval
de Cagny, p. 31.]
[Footnote 12: _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 1.]
Gilles le Bouvier,[13] king at arms of the province of Berry, who was
forty-three in 1429, is somewhat more judicious than Perceval de
Cagny; and, in spite of some confusion of dates, he is better
informed of military proceedings. But his story is of too summary a
nature to tell us much.
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, pp. 40-50. D. Godefroy, _Histoire de Charles
VII_, Paris, 1661, fol. pp. 369-474.]
Jean Chartier,[14] precentor of Saint-Denys, held the office of
chronicler of France in 1449. Two hundred years later he would have
been described as historiographer royal. His office may be divined
from the manner in which he relates Jeanne's death. After having said
that she had been long imprisoned by the order of John of Luxembourg,
he adds: "The said Luxembourg sold her to the English, who took her to
Rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long
delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of Rouen, without a
trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing
the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and
received the body of Our Lord, as beseemeth a good catholic."[15] When
Jean Chartier says that the English burned her without trial, he means
apparently that the Bailie of Rouen did not pronounce sentence.
Concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse
and relapse he says not a word; and it is the English whom he accuses
of having burnt a good Catholic without a trial. This example proves
how seriously the condemnation of 1431 embarrassed the government of
King Charles. But what can be thought of a historian who suppresses
Jeanne's trial because he finds it inconvenient? Jean Chartier was
extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of
Catherine's sword and in Jeanne's loss of power when she broke it;[16]
he records the most puerile of fables. Nevertheless it is interesting
to note that the official chronicler of the Kings of France, writing
about 1450, ascribes to the Maid an important share in the delivery of
Orleans, in the conquest of fortresses on the Loire and in the victory
of Patay, that he relates how the King formed the army at Gien "by the
counsel of the said maid,"[17] and that he expressly states that
Jeanne caused[18] the coronation and consecration. Such was certainly
the opinion which prevailed at the Court of Charles VII. All that we
have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or
whether the King of France may not have deemed it to his advantage to
owe his kingdom to the Maid. She was held a heretic by the heads of
the Church Universal, but in France her memory was honoured, rather,
however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the
leaders of the army. The services of the latter the King was not
desirous to extol after the revolt of 1440. During this
_Praguerie_,[19] the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Vendome, the Duke
of Alencon, whom the Maid called her fair duke, and even the cautious
Count Dunois had been seen joining hands with the plunderers and
making war on the sovereign with an ardour they had never shown in
fighting against the English.
[Footnote 14: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de Charles VII, roi de
France_, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1858, 3 vols., 18mo.
(_Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_).]
[Footnote 15: _Lequel Luxembourg la vendit aux Angloix, qui la
menerent a Rouen, ou elle fut durement traictee; et tellement que,
apres grant dillacion de temps, sans procez, maiz de leur voulente
indeue, la firent ardoir en icelle ville de Rouen publiquement ... qui
fut bien inhumainement fait, veu la vie et gouvernement dont elle
vivoit, car elle se confessoit et recepvoit par chacune sepmaine le
corps de Nostre Seigneur, comme bonne catholique._--Jean Chartier,
_Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France_, vol. i, p. 122.]
[Footnote 16: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de Charles VII, roi de
France_, vol. i, p. 122.]
[Footnote 17: _Par l'admonestement de ladite Pucelle_, Jean Chartier,
vol. i, p. 87.]
[Footnote 18: _Fut cause_, _ibid._, vol. i, p. 97.]
[Footnote 19: This revolt of the French nobles was so named because
various risings of a similar nature had taken place in the city of
Prague.--W.S.]
"Le Journal du Siege"[20] was doubtless kept in 1428 and 1429; but the
edition that has come down to us dates from 1467.[21] What relates to
Jeanne before her coming to Orleans is interpolated; and the
interpolator was so unskilful as to date Jeanne's arrival at Chinon in
the month of February, while it took place on March 6, and to assign
Thursday, March 10, as the date of the departure from Blois, which did
not occur until the end of April. The diary from April 28 to May 7 is
less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do
occur may be attributed to the copyist. But the facts to which these
dates are assigned, occasionally in disagreement with financial
records and often tinged with the miraculous, testify to an advanced
stage of Jeanne's legend. For example, one cannot possibly attribute
to a witness of the siege the error made by the scribe concerning the
fall of the Bridge of Les Tourelles.[22] What is said on page 97 of P.
Charpentier's and C. Cuissart's edition concerning the relations of
the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very
likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave
dissensions which had occurred during the last week. From the 8th of
May the diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts
borrowed from Chartier, from Berry, and from the rehabilitation
trial. The episode of the big fat Englishman slain by Messire Jean de
Montesclere at the Siege of Jargeau is obviously taken from the
evidence of Jean d'Aulon in 1446; and even this plagiarism is
inaccurate, since Jean d'Aulon expressly says he was slain at the
Battle of Les Augustins.[23]
[Footnote 20: _Journal du siege d'Orleans_ (1428-1429), ed. P.
Charpentier and C. Cuissart, Orleans, 1896, 8vo.]
[Footnote 21: The oldest copy extant is dated 1472 (MS. fr. 14665).]
[Footnote 22: _Journal du siege d'Orleans_ (1428-1429), p. 87.
_Trial_, vol. iv, p. 162, note.]
[Footnote 23: _Journal du siege_, p. 97. _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 215.]
The chronicle entitled _La Chronique de la Pucelle_,[24] as if it were
the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled
_Geste des nobles Francois_, going back as far as Priam of Troy. But
the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added
to. This was done after 1467. Even if it were proved that _La
Chronique de la Pucelle_ is the work of Cousinot, shut up in Orleans
during the siege, or even of two Cousinots, uncle and nephew according
to some, father and son according to others, it would remain none the
less true that this chronicle is largely copied from Jean Chartier,
the _Journal du Siege_ and the rehabilitation trial. Whoever the
author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no
very high praise can be given to a fabricator of tales, who, without
appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same
stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory
circumstances. _La Chronique de la Pucelle_ ends abruptly with the
King's return to Berry after his defeat before Paris.
[Footnote 24: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, or _Chronique de Cousinot_,
ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1859, 16mo. (_Bibliotheque
Gauloise_).]
_Le Mystere du siege_[25] must be classed with the chronicles. It is
in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely
interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some
have attempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and
following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify
this poem of 20,529 lines with a _certain mistaire_[26] played on the
sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their
conclusions from the following circumstances: the Marechal de Rais,
who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in
Duke Charles's city expending vast sums[27] there from September,
1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its
municipal funds "a standard and a banner, which had belonged to
Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner
of the storming of Les Tourelles and their capture from the
English."[28] From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in
1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for
its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take "the
manner of the storming of Les Tourelles" to mean a mystery rather than
a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the
_certain mistaire_ of 1435 as indicating a representation of that
siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus
arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even then we must examine
whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us.
[Footnote 25: _Mystere du Siege d'Orleans_, first published by MM. F.
Guessard and E. de Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to, according to the only
manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican Library.--_Cf._ _Etude
sur le mystere du siege d'Orleans_, by H. Tivier, Paris, 1868, 8vo.]
[Footnote 26: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 309.]
[Footnote 27: The Abbe E. Bossard and de Maulde, _Gilles de Rais,
Marechal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue_ (1404-1440), 2nd edition, Paris,
1886, 8vo, pp. 94-113.]
[Footnote 28: _Un estandart et banniere qui furent a Monseigneur de
Reys pour faire la maniere de l'assault comment les Tourelles furent
prinses sur les Anglois Mistere du siege_, p. viii.]
Among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is
the Marechal de Rais. Hence it has been concluded that the mystery was
written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which
effect was given above the Nantes Bridge, on October 20, 1440. How,
indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death could the
vampire of Machecoul have been represented to the people of Orleans as
fighting for their deliverance? How could the Maid and Blue Beard be
associated in a heroic action? It is hard to answer such a question,
because we cannot possibly tell how much of that kind of thing could
be tolerated by the barbarism of those rude old times. Perhaps our
text itself, if properly examined, will be found to contain internal
evidence as to whether it is of an earlier or later date than 1440.
The bastard of Orleans was created Count of Dunois on July 14,
1439.[29] The lines of the mystery, in which he is called by this
title, cannot therefore be anterior to that date. They are numerous,
and, by a singularity which has never been explained, are all in the
first third of the book. When Dunois reappears later he is the Bastard
again. From this fact the editors of 1862 concluded that five thousand
lines were prefixed to the primitive text subsequently, although they
in no way differ from the rest, either in language, style, or prosody.
But may the rest of the poem be assigned to 1435 or 1439?
[Footnote 29: _Mistere du siege_, preface, p. x.]
That is not my opinion. In the lines 12093 and 12094 the Maid tells
Talbot he will die by the hand of the King's men. This prophecy must
have been made after the event: it is an obvious allusion to the
noble captain's end, and these lines must have been written after
1453.
Six years after the siege no clerk of Orleans would have thought of
travestying Jeanne as a lady of noble birth.
In line 10199 and the following of the "_Mistere du Siege_" the Maid
replies to the first President of the Parlement of Poitiers when he
questions her concerning her family:
"As for my father's mansion, it is in the Bar country; and
he is of gentle birth and rank right noble, a good Frenchman
and a loyal."[30]
[Footnote 30:
Quant est de l'ostel de mon pere,
Il est en pays de Barois;
Gentilhomme et de noble afaire
Honneste et loyal Francois.
_Mistere du siege_, pp. 397-398.]
Before a clerk would write thus, Jeanne's family must have been long
ennobled and the first generation must have died out, which happened
in 1469; there must have come into existence that numerous family of
the Du Lys, whose ridiculous pretensions had to be humoured. Not
content with deriving their descent from their aunt, the Du Lys
insisted on connecting the good peasant Jacquot d'Arc with the old
nobility of Bar.
Notwithstanding that Jeanne's reference to "her father's mansion"
conflicts with other scenes in the same mystery, this lengthy work
would appear to be all of a piece.
It was apparently compiled during the reign of Louis XI, by a citizen
of Orleans who was a fair master of his subject. It would be
interesting to make a more detailed study of his authorities than has
been done hitherto. This poet seems to have known a _Journal du siege_
very different from the one we possess.
Was his mystery acted during the last thirty years of the century at
the festival instituted to commemorate the taking of Les Tourelles?
The subject, the style, and the spirit are all in harmony with such an
occasion. But it is curious that a poem composed to celebrate the
deliverance of Orleans on May 8 should assign that deliverance to May
9. And yet this is what the author of the mystery does when he puts
the following lines into the mouth of the Maid:
"Remember how Orleans was delivered in the year one thousand
four hundred and twenty-nine, and forget not also that of
May it was the ninth day."[31]
[Footnote 31:
... Ayez en souvenance....
Comment Orleans eult delivrance....
L'an mil iiijc xxix;
Faites en memoire tous dis;
Des jours de may ce fut le neuf.
_Mistere du siege_, lines 14375-14381, p. 559.]
Such are the chief chroniclers on the French side who have written of
the Maid. Others who came later or who have only dealt with certain
episodes in her life, need not be quoted here; their testimony will be
best examined when we come to that of the facts in detail. Placing on
one side any information to be obtained from _La Chronique de
l'etablissement de la fete_,[32] from _La Relation_[33] of the Clerk
of La Rochelle and other contemporary documents, we are now in a
position to realise that if we depended on the French chroniclers for
our knowledge of Jeanne d'Arc we should know just as much about her as
we know of Sakya Muni.
[Footnote 32: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 285 _et seq._]
[Footnote 33: _Relation inedite sur Jeanne d'Arc, extraite du livre
noir de l'hotel de ville de La Rochelle_, ed. J. Quicherat, Orleans,
1879, 8vo, and _La Revue Historique_, vol. iv, 1877, pp. 329-344.]
We shall certainly not find her explained by the Burgundian
chroniclers. They, however, furnish certain useful information. The
earliest of these Burgundian chroniclers is a clerk of Picardy, the
author of an anonymous chronicle, called _La Chronique des
Cordeliers_,[34] because the only copy of it comes from a house of the
Cordeliers at Paris. It is a history of the world from the creation to
the year 1431. M. Pierre Champion[35] has proved that Monstrelet made
use of it. This clerk of Picardy knew divers matters, and was
acquainted with sundry state documents. But facts and dates he
curiously confuses. His knowledge of the Maid's military career is
derived from a French and a popular source. A certain credence has
been attached to his story of the leap from Beaurevoir; but his
account if accurate destroys the idea that Jeanne threw herself from
the top of the keep in a fit of frenzy or despair.[36] And it does not
agree with what Jeanne said herself.
[Footnote 34: Bibl. Nat. fr. 23018: J. Quicherat, _Supplement aux
temoignages contemporains sur Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue Historique_,
vol. xix, May-June, 1882, pp. 72-83.]
[Footnote 35: Pierre Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, Paris, 1906, in
8vo, pp. xi, xii.]
[Footnote 36: _Chronique d'Antonio Morosini_, introduction and
commentary by Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, text established by Leon
Dorez, vol. iii, 1901, p. 302, and vol. iv, supplement xxi.]
Monstrelet,[37] "more drivelling at the mouth than a
mustard-pot,"[38] is a fountain of wisdom in comparison with Jean
Chartier. When he makes use of _La Chronique des Cordeliers_ he
rearranges it and presents its facts in order. What he knew of Jeanne
amounts to very little. He believed that she was an inn servant. He
has but a word to say of her indecision at Montepilloy, but that word,
to be found nowhere else, is extremely significant. He saw her in the
camp at Compiegne; but unfortunately he either did not realise or did
not wish to say what impression she made upon him.
[Footnote 37: Enguerrand de Monstrelet, _Chronique_, ed. Doueet-d'Arcq,
Paris, 1857-1861, 6 vols. in 8vo.]
[Footnote 38: Rabelais, Urquhart's Trans., ii-49, in Bohn's edition,
1849 (W.S.). _Plus baveux que ung pot de moutarde._--Rabelais,
_Pantagruel_, bk. iii, chap. xxiv.]
Wavrin du Forestel,[39] who edited additions to Froissart, Monstrelet,
and Mathieu d'Escouchy, was at Patay; he never saw Jeanne there. He
knows her only by hearsay and that but vaguely. We do not therefore
attach great importance to what he relates concerning Robert de
Baudricourt, who, according to him, indoctrinated the Maid and taught
her how to appear "inspired by Divine Providence."[40] On the other
hand, he gives valuable information concerning the war immediately
after the deliverance of Orleans.
[Footnote 39: Jehan de Wavrin, _Anchiennes croniques d'Engleterre_,
ed. Mademoiselle Dupont, Paris, 1858-1863, 3 vols., 8vo.]
[Footnote 40: Wavrin's additions to Monstrelet in _Trial_, vol. iv, p.
407.]
Le Fevre de Saint-Remy, Counsellor to the Duke of Burgundy and
King-at-arms of the Golden Fleece,[41] was possibly at Compiegne when
Jeanne was taken; and he speaks of her as a brave girl.
[Footnote 41: _Chronique de Jean le Fevre, seigneur de Saint-Remy_,
ed. Francois Morand, Paris, 1876-1881, 2 vols. in 8vo.]
Georges Chastellain copies Le Fevre de Saint Remy.[42]
[Footnote 42: _Chroniques des ducs de Bourgogne_, Paris, 1827, 2 vols.
in 8vo; vols. xlii and xliii of the _Collection des Chroniques
francaises_, by Buchon. _Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain_, ed. Kervyn
de Lettenhove, Brussels, 1863, 8 vols. in 8vo.]
The author of _Le Journal_ ascribed to _un Bourgeois de Paris_,[43]
whom we identify as a Cabochien clerk, had only heard Jeanne spoken of
by the doctors and masters of the University of Paris. Moreover he was
very ill-informed, which is regrettable. For the man stands alone in
his day for energy of feeling and language, for passion of wrath and
of pity, and for intense sympathy with the people.
[Footnote 43: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_ (1405-1449), ed. A.
Tuetey, Paris, 1881, in 8vo.]
I must mention a document which is neither French nor Burgundian, but
Italian. I refer to the _Chronique d'Antonio Morosini_, published and
annotated with admirable erudition by M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis.
This chronicle, or to be more precise, the letters it contains, are
very valuable to the historian, but not on account of the veracity of
the deeds here attributed to the Maid, which on the contrary are all
imaginary and fabulous. In the _Chronique de Morosini_,[44] every
single fact concerning Jeanne is presented in a wrong character and in
a false light. And yet Morosini's correspondents are men of business,
thoughtful, subtle Venetians. These letters reveal how there were
being circulated throughout Christendom a whole multitude of
fictitious stories, imitated some from the Romances of Chivalry,
others from the Golden Legend, concerning that _Demoiselle_ as she is
called, at once famous and unknown.
[Footnote 44: _Chronique d'Antonio Morosini_, ed. Leon Dorez and
Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, Paris, 1900-1902, 4 vols. in 8vo.]
Another document, the diary of a German merchant, one Eberhard de
Windecke,[45] a conscientious and clever edition of which has also
been published by M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, presents the same
phenomenon. Nothing here related of the Maid is even probable. As soon
as she appears a whole cycle of popular stories grow up round her
name. Eberhard obviously delights to relate them. Thus we learn from
these good foreign merchants that at no period of her existence was
Jeanne known otherwise than by fables, and that if she moved
multitudes it was by the spreading abroad of countless legends which
sprang up wherever she passed and made way before her. And indeed,
there is much food for thought in that dazzling obscurity, which from
the very first enwrapped the Maid, in those radiant clouds of myth,
which, while concealing her, rendered her all the more imposing.
[Footnote 45: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _Les sources allemandes de
l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, Eberhard Windecke, Paris, 1903, in 8vo.]
Thirdly, with its memoranda, its consultations, and its one hundred
and forty depositions, furnished by one hundred and twenty-three
deponents, the rehabilitation trial forms a very valuable collection
of documents.[46] M. Lanery d'Arc has done well to publish in their
entirety the memoranda of the doctors as well as the treatise of the
Archbishop of Embrun, the propositions of Master Heinrich von Gorcum
and the _Sibylla Francica_.[47] From the trial of 1431 we learn what
theologians on the English side thought of the Maid. But were it not
for the consultations of Theodore de Leliis and of Paul Pontanus and
the opinions included in the later trial we should not know how she
was regarded by the doctors of Italy and France. It is important to
ascertain what were the views held by the whole Church concerning a
damsel condemned during her lifetime, when the English were in power,
and rehabilitated after her death when the French were victorious.
[Footnote 46: _Trial_, vols. ii to iii, 1844-1845 (vols. v and vi,
1846-1847, contain the evidence).]
[Footnote 47: Lanery d'Arc, _Memoires et consultations en faveur de
Jeanne d'Arc_, 1889, in 8vo. _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 411-468.]
Doubtless many matters were elucidated by the one hundred and
twenty-three witnesses heard at Domremy, at Vaucouleurs, at Toul, at
Orleans, at Paris, at Rouen, at Lyon, witnesses drawn from all ranks
of life--churchmen, princes, captains, burghers, peasants, artisans.
But we are bound to admit that they come far short of satisfying our
curiosity, and for several reasons. First, because they replied to a
list of questions drawn up with the object of establishing a certain
number of facts within the scope of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The
Holy Inquisitor who conducted the trial was curious, but his curiosity
was not ours. This is the first reason for the insufficiency of the
evidence from our point of view.[48]
[Footnote 48: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 378-463.]
But there are other reasons. Most of the witnesses appear excessively
simple and lacking in discernment. In so large a number of men of all
ages and of all ranks it is sad to find how few were equipped with
lucid and judicial minds. It would seem as if the human intellect of
those days was enwrapped in twilight and incapable of seeing anything
distinctly. Thought as well as speech was curiously puerile. Only a
slight acquaintance with this dark age is enough to make one feel as
if among children. Want and ignorance and wars interminable had
impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. The scanty,
slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an
absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect.[49] One of the most
striking characteristics of these small minds is their triviality;
they are incapable of attention; they retain nothing. No one who reads
the writings of the period can fail to be struck by this almost
universal weakness.
[Footnote 49: J. Quicherat, _Histoire du costume_, Paris, 1875, large
8vo, _passim_. G. Demay, _Le costume au moyen age d'apres les sceaux_,
Paris, 1880, p. 121, figs. 76 and 77.]
By no means all the evidence given in these one hundred and forty
depositions can be treated seriously. The daughter of Jacques Boucher,
steward to the Duke of Orleans, depones in the following terms: "At
night I slept alone with Jeanne. Neither in her words or her acts did
I ever observe anything wrong. She was perfectly simple, humble, and
chaste."[50]
[Footnote 50: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 34.]
This young lady was nine years old when she perceived with a
discernment somewhat precocious that her sleeping companion was
simple, humble, and chaste.
That is unimportant. But to show how one may sometimes be deceived by
the witnesses whom one would expect to be the most reliable, I will
quote Brother Pasquerel.[51] Brother Pasquerel is Jeanne's chaplain.
He may be expected to speak as one who has seen and as one who knows.
Brother Pasquerel places the examination at Poitiers before the
audience granted by the King to the Maid in the chateau of
Chinon.[52]
[Footnote 51: _Ibid._, p. 100.]
[Footnote 52: We must notice, however, that Brother Pasquerel, who was
not present either at Chinon or at Poitiers, is careful to say that he
knows nothing of Jeanne's sojourn in these two towns save what she
herself has told him. Now we are surprised to find that she herself
placed the examination at Poitiers before the audience at Chinon,
since she says in her trial that at Chinon, when she gave her King a
sign, the clerks ceased to contend with her.--_Trial_, vol. i, p.
145.]
Forgetting that the whole relieving army had been in Orleans since May
4, he supposes that, on the evening of Friday the 6th, it was still
expected.[53] From such blunders we may judge of the muddled condition
of this poor priest's brain. His most serious shortcoming, however, is
the invention of miracles. He tries to make out that when the convoy
of victuals reached Orleans, there occurred, by the Maid's special
intervention, and in order to carry the barges up the river, a sudden
flood of the Loire which no one but himself saw.[54]
[Footnote 53: _Expectando succursum regis_, _Trial_, vol. iii, p.
109.]
[Footnote 54: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 105.]
The evidence of Dunois[55] is also somewhat deceptive. We know that
Dunois was one of the most intelligent and prudent men of his day, and
that he was considered a good speaker. In the defence of Orleans and
in the coronation campaign he had displayed considerable ability.
Either his evidence must have seriously suffered at the hands of the
translator and the scribes, or he must have caused it to be given by
his chaplain. He speaks of the "great number of the enemy" in terms
more appropriate to a canon of a cathedral or a woollen draper than to
a captain entrusted with the defence of a city and expected to know
the actual force of the besiegers. All his evidence dealing with the
transport of victuals on April 28 is well-nigh unintelligible. And
Dunois is unable to state that Troyes was the first stage in the
army's march from Gien.[56] Relating a conversation he held with the
Maid after the coronation, he makes her speak as if her brothers were
awaiting her at Domremy, whereas they were with her in France.[57]
Curiously blundering, he attempts to prove that Jeanne had visions by
relating a story much more calculated to give the impression that the
young peasant girl was an apt feigner and that at the request of the
nobles she reproduced one of her ecstasies, like the Esther of the
lamented Doctor Luys.[58]
[Footnote 55: _Ibid._, pp. 2 _et seq._]
[Footnote 56: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 13.]
[Footnote 57: _Ibid._, p. 15.]
[Footnote 58: _Ibid._, p. 12.]
In that portion of this work which deals with the rehabilitation trial
I have given my opinion of the evidence of the clerks of the court, of
the usher Massieu, of the Brothers Isambard de la Pierre and Martin
Ladvenu.[59] All these burners of witches and avengers of God worked
as heartily at Jeanne's rehabilitation as they had at her
condemnation.
[Footnote 59: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 15, 161, 329; vol. iii, pp. 41 and
_passim_.]
In many cases and often on events of importance, the evidence of
witnesses is in direct conflict with the truth. A woollen draper of
Orleans, one Jean Luillier, comes before the commissioners and as bold
as brass maintains that the garrison could not hold out against so
great a besieging force.[60] Now this statement is proved to be false
by the most authentic documents, which show that the English round
Orleans were very weak and that their resources were greatly
reduced.[61]
[Footnote 60: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 23.]
[Footnote 61: L. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise au siege
d'Orleans_ (1428-1429), Orleans, 1892, in 8vo.]
When the evidence given at the second trial has obviously been dressed
up to suit the occasion, or even when it is absolutely contrary to the
truth, we must blame not only those who gave it, but those who
received it. In its elicitation the latter were too artful. This
evidence has about as much value as the evidence in a trial by the
Inquisition. In certain matters it may represent the ideas of the
judges as much as those of the witnesses.
What the judges in this instance were most desirous to establish was
that Jeanne had not understood when she was spoken to of the Church
and the Pope, that she had refused to obey the Church Militant because
she believed the Church Militant to be Messire Cauchon and his
assessors. In short, it was necessary to represent her as almost an
imbecile. In ecclesiastical procedure this expedient was frequently
adopted. And there was yet another reason, a very strong one, for
passing her off as an innocent, a damsel devoid of intelligence. This
second trial, like the first, had been instituted with a political
motive; its object was to make known that Jeanne had come to the aid
of the King of France not by devilish incitement, but by celestial
inspiration. Consequently in order that divine wisdom might be made
manifest in her she must be shown to have had no wisdom of her own. On
this string the examiners were constantly harping. On every occasion
they drew from the witnesses the statement that she was simple, very
simple. _Una simplex bergereta_,[62] says one. _Erat multum simplex et
ignorans_,[63] says another.
[Footnote 62: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 20.]
[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 87.]
But since, despite her ignorance, this innocent damsel had been sent
of God to deliver or to capture towns and to lead men at arms, there
must needs be innate in her a knowledge of the art of war, and in
battle she must needs manifest the strength and the counsel she had
received from above. Wherefore it was necessary to obtain evidence to
establish that she was more skilled in warfare than any man.
Damoiselle Marguerite la Touroulde makes this affirmation.[64] The
Duke of Alencon declares that the Maid was apt alike at wielding the
lance, ranging an army, ordering a battle, preparing artillery, and
that old captains marvelled at her skill in placing cannon.[65] The
Duke quite understands that all these gifts were miraculous and that
to God alone was the glory. For if the merit of the victories had been
Jeanne's he would not have said so much about them.
[Footnote 64: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 85.]
[Footnote 65: _Ibid._, p. 100. On the other hand see the evidence of
Dunois (vol. iii, p. 16), "licet dicta Johanna aliquotiens _jocose_
loqueretur de facto armorum, pro animando armatos ... tamen quando
loquebatur seriose de guerra ... nunquam affirmative asserebat nisi
quod erat missa ad levandum obsidionem Aurelianensem."]
And if God had chosen the Maid to perform so great a task, it must
have been because in her he beheld the virtue which he preferred above
all others in his virgins. Henceforth it sufficed not for her to have
been chaste; her chastity must become miraculous, her chastity and her
moderation in eating and drinking must be exalted into sanctity.
Wherefore the witnesses are never tired of stating: _Erat casta, erat
castissima. Ille loquens non credit aliquam mulierem plus esse castam
quam ista Puella erat. Erat sobria in potu et cibo. Erat sobria in
cibo et potu._[66]
[Footnote 66: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 438, 457; vol. iii, pp. 100,
219.]
The heavenly source of such purity must needs have been made manifest
by Jeanne's possessing singular immunities. And on this point there is
a mass of evidence. Rough men at arms, Jean de Novelompont, Bertrand
de Poulengy, Jean d'Aulon; great nobles, the Count of Dunois and the
Duke of Alencon, come forward and affirm on oath that in them Jeanne
never provoked any carnal desires. Such a circumstance fills these old
captains with astonishment; they boast of their past vigour and wonder
that for once their youthful ardour should have been damped by a maid.
It seems to them most unnatural and humanly impossible. Their
description of the effect Jeanne produced upon them recalls Saint
Martha's binding of the Tarascon beast. Dunois in his evidence is very
much occupied with miracles. He points to this one as, to human
reason, the most incomprehensible of all. If he neither desired nor
solicited this damsel, of this unique fact he can find but one
explanation, it is that Jeanne was holy, _res divina_. When Jean de
Novelompont and Bertrand de Poulengy describe their sudden continence,
they employ identical forms of speech, affected and involved. And then
there comes a king's equerry, Gobert Thibaut, who declares that in the
army there was much talk of this divine grace, vouchsafed to the
Armagnacs[67] and denied to English and Burgundians, at least, so the
behaviour of a certain knight of Picardy, and of one Jeannotin, a
tailor of Rouen, would lead us to believe.[68]
[Footnote 67: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 438; vol. iii, pp. 15, 76, 100,
219, and 457.]
[Footnote 68: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 89 and 121.]
Such evidence obviously answers to the ideas of the judges, and turns,
so to speak, on theological rather than on natural facts.
In inquisitorial inquiries there abound such depositions as those of
Jean de Novelompont and of Bertrand de Poulengy, containing passages
drawn up in identical terms. But I must admit that in the
rehabilitation trial they are rare, partly because the witnesses were
heard at long intervals of time and in different countries, and partly
because in the Maid's case no elaborate proceedings were necessary
owing to her adversaries not being represented.
It is to be regretted that all the evidence given at this trial, with
the exception of that of Jean d'Aulon, should have been translated
into Latin. This process has obscured fine shades of thought and
deprived the evidence of its original flavour.
Sometimes the clerk contents himself with saying that the depositions
of a witness were like those of his predecessor. Thus on the raising
of the siege of Orleans all the burgesses depone like the woollen
draper, who himself was not thoroughly conversant with the
circumstances in which his town had been delivered. Thus the Sire de
Gaucourt, after a brief declaration, gives the same evidence as
Dunois, although the Count had related matters so strikingly
individual that it seems strange they should have been common to two
witnesses.[69]
[Footnote 69: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 2 and 35.]
Certain evidence would appear to have been cut short. Brother
Pasquerel's abruptly comes to an end at Paris. This circumstance, if
we did not possess his signature at the conclusion of the Latin letter
to the Hussites, would lead us to believe that the good Brother left
the Maid immediately after the attack on La Porte Saint-Honore. It
surely cannot have chanced that in so long a series of questions and
answers not one word was said of the departure from Sully or of the
campaign which began at Lagny and ended at Compiegne.[70]
[Footnote 70: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 100 _et seq._]
We conclude, therefore, that in the study of this voluminous evidence
we must exercise great judgment and that we must not expect it to
enlighten us on all the circumstances of Jeanne's life.
Fourthly. On certain points of the Maid's history the only exact
information is to be obtained from account-books, letters, deeds, and
other authentic documents of the period. The records published by
Simeon Luce and the lease of the Chateau de l'Ile inform us of the
circumstances among which Jeanne grew up.[71] Neither the two trials
nor the chronicles had revealed the terrible conditions prevailing in
the village of Domremy from 1412 to 1425.
[Footnote 71: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, recherches
critiques sur les origines de la mission de la Pucelle_, Paris, 1886,
in 8vo; _La France pendant la guerre de cent ans: episodes historiques
et vie privee aux xiv'e et xv'e siecles_, Paris, 1890, in 12mo.]
The fortress accounts kept at Orleans[72] and the documents of the
English administration[73] enable us to estimate approximately the
respective forces of defenders and besiegers of the city. On this
point also they enable us to correct the statements of chroniclers and
witnesses in the rehabilitation trial.
[Footnote 72: D. Lottin, _Recherches sur la ville d'Orleans_, Orleans,
7 vols. in 8vo; Boucher de Molandon, _Les comptes de ville d'Orleans
des xiv'e et xv'e siecles_, 1880, in 8vo; Jules Loiseleur, _Compte
des depenses faites par Charles VII pour secourir Orleans pendant le
siege de 1428_, Orleans, 1868, in 8vo; Louis Jarry, _Le compte de
l'armee anglaise au siege d'Orleans_, Orleans, 1892, in 8vo; Couret,
_Un fragment inedit des anciens registres de la prevote d'Orleans,
relatif au reglement des frais du siege de 1428-1429_, Orleans, 1697,
in 8vo (extract from the _Memoires de l'Academie de Sainte Croix_).]
[Footnote 73: Rymer, _Foedera, conventiones...._, ed. tercia, Hagae
Comitis, 1739-1745, 10 vols. in folio; Delpit, _Collection de
documents francais qui se trouvent en Angleterre_, Paris, 1847, in
4to; J. Stevenson, _Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the
English in France during the reign of Henry VI_, 1861-1864, 3 parts,
in 2 vols. in 8vo; Charles Gross, _The Sources and Literature of
English History_, 1900, in 8vo.]
From the letters in the archives at Reims, copied by Rogier in the
seventeenth century, we learn how Troyes, Chalons, and Reims
surrendered to the King. From these letters also we see how very far
from accurate is Jean Chartier's account of the capitulation of the
city and how insufficient, especially considering the character of the
witness, is the evidence of Dunois on this subject.[74]
[Footnote 74: Varin, _Archives legislatives de la ville de Reims_, 2nd
part; _Statuts_, vol. i, p. 596; _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 284 _et seq._]
Four or five records throw a faint light here and there on the
obscurity which shrouds the unfortunate campaign on the Aisne and the
Oise.
The registers of the chapter of Rouen, the wills of canons and sundry
other documents, discovered by M. Robillard de Beaurepaire in the
archives of Seine-Inferieure, serve to correct certain errors in the
two trials.[75]
[Footnote 75: E. Robillard de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces
de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc_, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo [_Precis des
travaux de l'Academie de Rouen, 1867-1868_, pp. 321-448]; _Notes sur
les juges et les assesseurs du proces de condamnation de Jeanne
d'Arc_, Rouen, 1890, in 8vo [_Precis des travaux de l'Academie de
Rouen, 1888-1889_, pp. 375-504].]
How many other detached papers, all valuable to the historian, might I
not enumerate! Surely this is another reason for mistrusting records
false or falsified, as, for example, the patent of nobility of Guy de
Cailly.[76]
[Footnote 76: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 342 _et seq._]
Rapid as this examination of authorities has been, I think nothing
essential has been omitted. To sum up, even in her lifetime the Maid
was scarce known save by fables. Her oldest chroniclers were devoid of
any critical sense, for the early legends concerning her they relate
as facts.
The Rouen trial, certain accounts, a few letters, sundry deeds, public
and private, are the most trustworthy documents. The rehabilitation
trial is also useful to the historian, provided always that we
remember how and why that trial was conducted.
By means of such records we may attain to a pretty accurate knowledge
of Jeanne d'Arc's life and character.
The salient fact which results from a study of all these authorities
is that she was a saint. She was a saint with all the attributes of
fifteenth-century sanctity. She had visions, and these visions were
neither feigned nor counterfeited. She really believed that she heard
the voices which spoke to her and came from no human lips. These
voices generally addressed her clearly and in words she could
understand. She heard them best in the woods and when the bells were
ringing. She saw forms, she said, like myriads of tiny shapes, like
sparks on a dazzling background. There is no doubt she had visions of
another nature, since she tells us how she beheld Saint Michael in the
guise of a _prud'homme_, that is as a good knight, and Saint Catherine
and Saint Margaret, wearing crowns. She saw them saluting her; she
kissed their feet and inhaled their sweet perfume.
What does this mean if not that she was subject to hallucinations of
hearing, sight, touch, and smell? But the most strongly affected of
her senses was her hearing. She says that her voices appear to her;
she sometimes calls them her council. She hears them very plainly
unless there is a noise around her. Generally she obeys them; but
sometimes she resists. We may doubt whether her visions were really so
distinct as she makes out. Because she either could not, or would not,
she never gave her judges at Rouen any very clear or precise
description of them. The angel she described most in detail was the
one which brought the crown, and which she afterwards confessed to
have seen only in imagination.
At what age did she become subject to these trances? We cannot say
exactly. But it was probably towards the end of her childhood,
notwithstanding that according to Jean d'Aulon, childhood was a state
out of which she never completely developed.[77]
[Footnote 77: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 19.]
Although it is always hazardous to found a medical diagnosis on
documents purely historical, several men of science have attempted to
define the pathological conditions which rendered the young girl
subject to false perceptions of sight and hearing.[78] Owing to the
rapid strides made by psychiatry during recent years, I have consulted
an eminent man of science, who is thoroughly conversant with the
present stage attained by this branch of pathology, to which he has
himself rendered important service. I asked Doctor Georges Dumas,
Professor at the Sorbonne, whether sufficient material exists for
science to make a retrospective diagnosis of Jeanne's case. He replied
to my inquiry in a letter which appears as the first Appendix to this
work.[79]
[Footnote 78: Briere de Boismont, _De l'hallucination historique, ou
etude medico-psychique sur les voix et les revelations de Jeanne
d'Arc_, 1861, in 8vo. Le Vicomte de Mouchy, _Jeanne d'Arc, etude
historique et psychologique_, Montpellier, 1868, in 8vo, 67 pp.]
[Footnote 79: Vol. ii, Appendix i.]
With such a subject I am not qualified to deal. But it does lie within
my province to make an observation concerning the hallucinations of
Jeanne d'Arc, which has been suggested to me by a study of the
documents. This observation is of infinite significance. I shall be
careful to restrict it to the limits prescribed by the object and the
nature of this work.
Those visionaries, who believe they are entrusted with a divine
mission, are distinguished by certain characteristics from other
inspired persons. When mystics of this class are studied and compared
with one another, resemblances are found to exist which may extend to
very slight details: certain of their words and acts are identical.
Indeed as we come to recognise how vigorous is the determinism
controlling the actions of these visionaries, we are astonished to
find the human machine, when impelled by the same mysterious agent,
performing its functions with inevitable uniformity. To this group of
the religious Jeanne belongs. In this connection it is interesting to
compare her with Saint Catherine of Sienna,[80] Saint Colette of
Corbie,[81] Yves Nicolazic, the peasant of Kernanna,[82] Suzette
Labrousse, the inspired woman of the Revolution Church,[83] and with
many other seers and seeresses of this order, who all bear a family
likeness to one another.
[Footnote 80: _Acta Sanctorum_, 1675, April, iii, 851.]
[Footnote 81: _Ibid._, March 1, 1532.]
[Footnote 82: Le Pere Hugues de Saint-Francois, _Les grandeurs de Sainte
Anne_, Rennes, 1657, in 8vo; L'abbe Max Nicol, _Sainte-Anne-d'Auray_,
Paris, Brussels, s.d., in 8vo, pp. 37 _et seq._ M. le Docteur G. de
Closmadeuc has kindly lent me his valuable work, as yet unpublished,
on Yves Nicolazic, which is characterised by the same exactness of
information and of criticism as are to be found in his studies of
local history.]
[Footnote 83: _Recueil des ouvrages de la celebre Mademoiselle
Labrousse, du Bourg de Vauxains, en Perigord, canton de Ribeirac de la
Dordogne, actuellement prisonniere au chateau Saint-Ange, a Rome_,
Bordeaux, 1797, in 8vo; E. Lairtullier, _Les femmes celebres de 1789 a
1795_, Paris, 1842, in 8vo, vol. i, pp. 212 _et seq._; Abbe Chr.
Moreau, _Une mystique revolutionnaire Suzette Labrousse_, Paris, 1886,
in 8vo; A. France, _Susette Labrousse_, Paris, 1907, in 12mo.]
Three visionaries especially are closely related to Jeanne. The
earliest in date is a vavasour of Champagne, who had a mission to speak
to King John; of this holy man I have written sufficiently in the
present work. The second is a farrier of Salon, who had a mission to
speak to Louis XIV; the third, a peasant of Gallardon, named Martin,
who had a mission to speak to Louis XVIII. Articles on the farrier and
the farmer, who both saw apparitions and showed signs to their
respective kings, will be found in the appendices at the end of this
work.[84] In spite of difference in sex, the points of similarity
between Jeanne d'Arc and these three men are very close and very
significant; they are inherent in the very nature of Jeanne and her
fellow visionaries; and the variations, which at a first glance might
seem to separate widely the latter from Jeanne, are aesthetic, social,
historical, and consequently external and contingent. Between them and
her there are of course striking contrasts in appearance and in
fortune. They were entirely wanting in that charm which she never
failed to exercise; and it is a fact that while they failed miserably
she grew in strength and flowered in legend. But it is the duty of the
scientific mind to recognise common characteristics, proving identity
of origin alike in the noblest individual and in the most wretched
abortion of the same species.
[Footnote 84: Vol. ii, Appendices ii and iii.]
The free-thinkers of our day, imbued as they are, for the most part,
with transcendentalism, refuse to recognise in Jeanne not merely that
automatism which determines the acts of such a seeress, not only the
influence of constant hallucination, but even the suggestions of the
religious spirit. What she achieved through saintliness and
devoutness, they make her out to have accomplished by intelligent
enthusiasm. Such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and
erudite Quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of
the Maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy. This point was not
without its drawbacks. It led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous
exaggeration of Jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of
attributing military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind
of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel.
The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of
the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. Unfortunately the
Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of
Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations
of the Catholic Church down the ages. In their hands therefore she
becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. So much so that in a search for the
most curiously travestied of all the Jeannes d'Arc we should have been
driven to choose between their miraculous protectress of Christian
France, the patroness of officers, the inimitable model of the pupils
of Saint-Cyr, and the romantic Druidess, the inspired woman-soldier of
the national guard, the patriot gunneress of the Republicans, had
there not arisen a Jesuit Father to create an ultramontane Jeanne
d'Arc.[85]
[Footnote 85: Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, 5 vols. in large
8vo, Paris, 1894-1902. Writing of this book in a study of
_L'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, 1902, pp. 7 and 8, note), Canon
Ulysse Chevalier, author of a valuable _Repertoire des sources du
moyen age_, displays boldness and sound sense. "From the dimensions of
these five volumes," he says, "one might expect this work to be the
fullest history of Jeanne d'Arc; it is nothing of the sort. It is a
chaos of memoranda translated or rendered into modern French,
reflections and arguments against free-thought as represented by
Michelet, H. Martin, Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, and
Joseph Fabre. Two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's
tone: _The Pseudo-theologians, executioners of Jeanne d'Arc,
executioners of the Papacy_ (vol. i, p. 87); _The University of Paris
and the Brigandage of Rouen_ (p. 149). The author too often judges the
fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. Is he quite sure
that if he had been a member of the University of Paris in 1431 he
would have thought and pronounced in favour of Jeanne, and in
opposition to his colleagues?"]
On the subject of Jeanne's sincerity I have raised no doubts. It is
impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she
received her mission from her voices. But whether she were not
unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. What we know of
her before her arrival at Chinon comes to very little. One is inclined
to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so
with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must
have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the
Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (_en commende_).[86] Such a term she
had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy
which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for
her.
[Footnote 86: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 456.]
She must have associated with priests who were faithful to the cause
of the Dauphin Charles, and who desired above all things the end of
the war. Abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service
discontinued.[87] Those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that
they saw the Treaty of Troyes failing to establish it, looked for the
realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the English. And the
wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point
suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself
called to ride forth and fight, but that in "her great pity" she
announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and
coronation of the King, at a time when the nobles of the two
countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected
nor desired the war ever to come to an end.
[Footnote 87: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres
hopitaux en France vers le milieu du xv'ieme siecle_, Macon, 1897,
in 8vo.]
The mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and
to which she consecrated her life, was doubtless extraordinary,
marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than
saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in
human affairs. Jeanne d'Arc arose in the decline of the great Catholic
age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities,
manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of
men. And of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to
the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? From the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries God's servants perform wondrous
works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy
with fire and sword; Saint Francis of Assisi for the nonce founds
poverty as an institution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends
merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and
bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it
impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with God's aid, to
re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power
instituted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new
Joash snatched from death for the salvation of the holy people?
Thus did pious French folk, in the year 1428, regard the mission of
the Maid. She represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by God.
There was nothing incredible in that. When she announced that she had
received revelations touching the war from my Lord Saint Michael, she
inspired the men-at-arms of the Armagnac party and the burghers of the
city of Orleans with a confidence as great as could have been
communicated to the troops, marching along the Loire in the winter of
1871, by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or
an improved form of cannon. What was expected from science in 1871 was
expected from religion in 1428, so that the Bastard of Orleans would
as naturally employ Jeanne as Gambetta would resort to the technical
knowledge of M. de Freycinet.
What has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party
made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring
at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into
evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world;
they constituted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the
banished members of the University, men deeply involved in political
affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very
impatient to regain possession of their property. They were directed
by the cleverest man in the King's Council, the Duke Archbishop of
Reims, the Chancellor of the kingdom. By the ceremoniousness and the
deliberation of their inquiries, they drew upon Jeanne the curiosity,
the interest, and the hopes of minds lost in amazement.[88]
[Footnote 88: O. Raguenet, _Les juges de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers,
membres du Parlement ou gens d'Eglise?_ in _Lettres et memoires de
l'Academie de Sainte-Croix d'Orleans VII_, 1894, pp. 339-442; D.
Lacombe, _L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, maitre Jean Rabateau,
President au Parlement de Poitiers in Revue du Bas-Poitou_, 1891, pp.
46-66.]
The defences of the city of Orleans consisted in its walls, its
trenches, its cannon, its men-at-arms, and its money. The English had
failed both to surround it and to take it by assault. Convoys and
companies passed between their bastions. Jeanne was introduced into
the town with a strong relieving army. She brought flocks of oxen,
sheep, and pigs. The townsfolk believed her to be an angel of the
Lord. Meanwhile the men and the money of the besiegers were waxing
scant. They had lost all their horses. Far from being in a position to
attempt a new attack, they were not likely to be able to hold out long
in their bastions. At the end of April there were four thousand
English before Orleans and perhaps less, for, as it was said, soldiers
were deserting every day; and companies of these deserters went
plundering through the villages. At the same time the city was
defended by six thousand men-at-arms and archers, and by more than
three thousand men of the town bands. At Saint Loup, there were
fifteen hundred French against four hundred English; at Les Tourelles,
there were five thousand French against four or five hundred English.
By their retreat from Orleans the _Godons_ abandoned to their fate the
small garrisons of Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency.[89] The Battle of
Patay gives us some idea of the condition of the English army. It was
no battle but a massacre, and one which Jeanne only reached in time to
mourn over the cruelty of the conquerors. And yet the King, in his
letters to his good towns, attributed to her a share in the victory.
Evidently the Royal Council made a point of glorifying its Holy Maid.
[Footnote 89: Mr. Andrew Lang (_La Jeanne d'Arc de M. Anatole France_,
p. 60) misreads this passage when he takes it to mean that the English
withdrew their garrisons from these places. That their ultimate
surrender became inevitable after the English retreat from Orleans is
what the writer intends to convey.--W.S.]
But at heart what did they really think, those who employed her, those
Regnaults de Chartres, those Roberts le Macon, those Gerards Machet?
They were certainly in no position to discuss the origin of the
illusions which enveloped her. And, albeit there were atheists even
among churchmen, to the majority there would be nothing to cause
astonishment in the appearance of Saint Michael, the Archangel. In
those days nothing appeared more natural than a miracle. But a miracle
vanishes when closely observed. And they had the damsel before their
very eyes. They perceived that good and saintly as she was, she
wielded no supernatural power.
While the men-at-arms and all the common folk welcomed her as the maid
of God and an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of the realm,
these good lords thought only of profiting from the sentiments of
confidence which she inspired and in which they had little share.
Finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less
intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked
with her. They must soon have discovered that it was not always easy.
She was a saint, saints are intractable. What were the true relations
between the Royal Council and the Maid? We do not know; and it is a
mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they
knew that she received letters from Saint Michael.[90] It is possible
that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason
for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in
France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom,
Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his
restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of
his benefices.
[Footnote 90: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 146.]
The coronation campaign was really nothing but a series of
negotiations, backed by an army. Its object was to show the good towns
a king saintly and pacific. Had there been any idea of fighting, the
campaign would have been directed against Paris or against Normandy.
At the inquiry of 1456, five or six witnesses, captains, magistrates,
ecclesiastics, and an honest widow, gave evidence that Jeanne was well
versed in the art of war. They agreed in saying that she rode a horse
and wielded a lance better than any one. A master of requests stated
that she amazed the army by the length of time she could remain in the
saddle. Such qualities we are not entitled to deny her, neither can we
dispute the diligence and the ardour which Dunois praised in her, on
the occasion of a demonstration by night before Troyes.[91] As to the
opinion that this damsel was clever in arraying and leading an army
and especially skilled in the management of artillery, that is more
difficult to credit and would require to be vouched for by some one
more trustworthy than the poor Duke of Alencon, who was never
considered a very rational person.[92] What we have said about the
rehabilitation trial sufficiently explains this curious glorification
of the Maid. It was understood that Jeanne's military inspiration came
from God. Henceforth there was no danger of its being too much admired
and it came to be praised somewhat at random.
[Footnote 91: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 13.]
[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, p. 100. See _ante_, p. xxvi (note 4).]
After all the Duke of Alencon was quite moderate when he represented
her as a distinguished artillery-woman. As early as 1429, a humanist
on the side of Charles VII asserted in Ciceronian language that in
military glory she equalled and surpassed Hector, Alexander, Hannibal
and Caesar: "Non Hectore reminiscat et gaudeat Troja, exultet Graecia
Alexandro, Annibale Africa, Italia Caesare et Romanis ducibus omnibus
glorietur, Gallia etsi ex pristinis multos habeat, hac tamen una
Puella contenta, audebit se gloriari et laude bellica caeteris
nationibus se comparare, verum quoque, si expediet, se anteponere."[93]
[Footnote 93: Letter from Alain Chartier in the _Trial_, vol. v, pp.
135, 136; Capitaine P. Marin, _Jeanne d'Arc tacticien et strategiste_,
Paris, 1889, 4 vols. in 12mo; Le General Canonge, _Jeanne d'Arc
guerriere_, Paris, 1907, in 8vo.]
For ever praying and for ever wrapped in ecstasy, Jeanne never
observed the enemy; she did not know the roads; she paid no heed to
the number of troops engaged; she did not take into account either the
height of walls or the breadth of trenches. Even to-day officers are
to be heard discussing the Maid's military tactics.[94] Those tactics
were simple; they consisted in preventing men from blaspheming against
God and consorting with light women. She believed that for their sins
they would be destroyed, but that if they fought in a state of grace
they would win the victory. Therein lay all her military science, save
that she never feared danger.[95] She displayed a courage which was at
once proud and gentle; she was more valiant, more constant, more noble
than the men and in that worthy to lead them. And is it not admirable
and rare to find such heroism united to such innocence?
[Footnote 94: _Rossel et la legende de Jeanne d'Arc_ in _la Petite
Republique_ of July 15, 1896; _Jeanne d'Arc soldat_ by Art Roe, in _le
Temps_ of May 8, 1907. See also the works of Captain Marin, always so
praiseworthy for their carefulness and good faith.]
[Footnote 95: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 16.]
Certain of the leaders indeed, and notably the princes of the blood
royal, knew no more than she. The art of war in those days resolved
itself into the art of riding. Any idea of marching along converging
lines, of concentrated movements, of a campaign methodically planned,
of a prolonged effort with a view to some great result was unknown.
Military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants'
stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. The freebooters, captains, and
soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade,
but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was
pillage. The nobles affected great concern for honour and praise; in
reality they thought of nothing but gain. Alain Chartier said of them:
"They cry 'to arms,' but they fight for money."[96]
[Footnote 96: Alain Chartier, _Oeuvres_, ed. Andre du Chesne, p.
412.]
Seeing that war was to last as long as life, it was waged with
deliberation. Men-at-arms, horse-soldiers and foot, archers,
cross-bowmen, Armagnacs as well as English and Burgundians, fought
with no great ardour. Of course they were brave: but they were
cautious too and were not ashamed to confess it. Jean Chartier,
precentor of Saint-Denys, chronicler of the Kings of France, relating
how on a day the French met the English near Lagny, adds: "And there
the battle was hard and fierce, for the French were barely more than
the English."[97] These simple folk, seeing that one man is as good as
another, admitted the risk of fighting one to one. Their minds had not
fed on Plutarch as had those of the Revolution and the Empire. And for
their encouragement they had neither the _carmagnoles_ of Barrere, nor
the songs of Marie-Joseph Chenier, nor the bulletins of _la grande
armee_. Why did these captains, these men-at-arms go and fight in one
place rather than in another seems to be a natural question....
Because they wanted goods.
[Footnote 97: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de Charles VII_, vol. i, p.
121.]
This perpetual warfare was not sanguinary. During what was described
as Jeanne d'Arc's mission, that is from Orleans to Compiegne, the
French lost barely a few hundred men. The English suffered much more
heavily, because they were the fugitives, and in a rout it was the
custom for the conquerors to kill all those who were not worth holding
to ransom. But battles were rare, and so consequently were defeats,
and the number of the combatants was small. There were but a handful
of English in France. And they may be said to have fought only for
plunder. Those who suffered from the war were those who did not fight,
burghers, priests, and peasants. The peasants endured terrible
hardships, and it is quite conceivable that a peasant girl should have
displayed a firmness in war, a persistence and an ardour unknown
throughout the whole of chivalry.
It was not Jeanne who drove the English from France. If she
contributed to the deliverance of Orleans, she retarded the ultimate
salvation of France by causing the opportunity of conquering Normandy
to be lost through the coronation campaign. The misfortunes of the
English after 1428 are easily explained. While in peaceful Guyenne
they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the
finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous
was strongly attached to them. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire
it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers
they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the
country. Shut up in fortresses and chateaux, they did not cultivate
the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one
would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to
the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their
garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had
conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an
ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been
plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil,
during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord,
lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries
of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better?
In 1428, they were but a handful in France, and to maintain themselves
there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who
henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.
They lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the
pacification of those they had already conquered. The very character
of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights
they asserted, which were founded on institutions common to the two
countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult
without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal
concurrence and friendship of the conquered. The Treaty of Troyes did
not subject France to England, it united one country to the other.
Such a union occasioned much anxiety in London. The Commons did not
conceal their fear that Old England might become a mere isolated
province of the new kingdom.[98] France for her part did not concur in
the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been
making war on these _Coues_[99] they had grown to hate them. And
possibly there already existed an English character and a French
character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the
Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the _Godons_[100] met
with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English
should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened
so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part
whatever in the work of deliverance? By no means. Hers was the nobler,
the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the
highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and
charming. The King's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she
served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her
party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by
striking fear into the English, who imagined her to be the devil.
[Footnote 98: See the deliberations of the Commons on December 2,
1421, in Brequigny, _Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des
cours de France et d'Angleterre_, Paris, 1847 (2 vols. in 4to), vol.
ii, pp. 393 _et seq._]
[Footnote 99: For the origin of this term see _post_, vol. i, p. 22
and note 2.--W.S.]
[Footnote 100: For the origin of this term see _ibid._ and note
1.--W.S.]
Our best historians cannot forgive the ministers and captains of 1428
for not having blindly obeyed the Maid. But that was not at all the
advice given at the time by the Archbishop of Embrun to King Charles;
he, on the contrary, recommended him not to abandon the means inspired
by human reason.[101]
[Footnote 101: The Reverend Father M. Fornier, _Histoire des
Alpes-Maritimes_, Paris, 1890, in 8vo, vol. ii, p. 324; Lanery d'Arc,
_Memoires et consultations_, pp. 565 _et seq._]
It has frequently been repeated that the lords and captains were
jealous of her, especially old Gaucourt.[102] But such a statement
shows an absolute ignorance of human nature. They were envious one of
another; this and no other sentiment was the jealousy that made them
tolerate the Maid's assuming the title of commander in war.[103]
[Footnote 102: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 117; _Perceval de Cagny_, p. 168;
Marquis de Gaucourt, _Le sire de Gaucourt_, Orleans, 1855, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 103: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 168, 170, 171; _Cronicques de
Normendie_, ed. Hellot, pp. 77, 78.]
Those secret intrigues on the part of the King and his captains, who
are said to have plotted together the destruction of the saint, I
admit having found it impossible to discover. To certain historians
they appear very obvious: for my part, do what I may, I cannot discern
them. The Chamberlain, the Sire de la Tremouille, had no pretensions
to nobility of character; and the Chancellor Regnault de Chartres was
hard-hearted, but what strikes me is that the Sire de la Tremouille
refused to give up this valuable damsel to the Duke of Alencon when he
asked for her, and that the Chancellor retained her in order to make
use of her.[104] I am not of the opinion that Jeanne was a prisoner at
Sully. I believe that when she went to join the Chancellor, who
employed her until her capture by the Burgundians, she quitted the
castle in estate, with trumpeters, and banners flying. After the girl
saint he employed a boy saint, a shepherd who had stigmata; which
proves that he did not regret having made use of a devout person to
fight against the King's enemies and to recover his own archbishopric.
[Footnote 104: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 170, 171; _Chronique de la
Pucelle_, p. 313; Heraut Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 48.]
The excellent Quicherat and the magnanimous Henri Martin are very hard
on the Government of 1428. According to them it was a treacherous
Government. Yet the only reproach they bring against Charles VII and
his councillors is that they did not understand the Maid as they
themselves understood her. But such an understanding has required the
lapse of four hundred years. To arrive at the illuminated ideas of a
Quicherat and a Henri Martin concerning Jeanne d'Arc, three centuries
of absolute monarchy, the Reformation, the Revolution, the wars of the
Republic and of the Empire, and the sentimental Neo-Catholicism of
'48, have all been necessary. Through all these brilliant prisms,
through all these succeeding lights do romantic historians and
broad-minded paleographers view the figure of Jeanne d'Arc; and we ask
too much from the poor Dauphin Charles, from La Tremouille, from
Regnault de Chartres, from the Lord of Treves, from old Gaucourt, when
we require them to have seen Jeanne as centuries have made and moulded
her.[105]
[Footnote 105: H. Martin, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1856, in 12mo; J.
Quicherat, _Nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyees par la Pucelle_
in _Revue de Normandie_, vol. vi (1866), pp. 396-401.]
This, however, remains: after having made so much use of her, the
Royal Council did nothing to save her.
Must the disgrace of such neglect fall upon the whole Council and upon
the Council alone? Who ought really to have interfered? And how? What
ought King Charles to have done? Should he have offered to ransom the
Maid? She would not have been surrendered to him at any price. As for
capturing her by force, that is a mere child's dream. Had they entered
Rouen, the French would not have found her there; Warwick would always
have had time to put her in a place of safety, or to drown her in the
river. Neither money nor arms would have availed to recapture her.
But this was no reason for standing with folded arms. Influence could
have been brought to bear on those who were conducting the trial.
Doubtless they were all on the side of the _Godons_; that old
_Cabochien_ of a Pierre Cauchon was very much committed to them; he
detested the French; the clerks, who owed allegiance to Henry VI,
were naturally inclined to please the Great Council of England which
disposed of patronage; the doctors and masters of the University of
France greatly hated and feared the Armagnacs. And yet the judges of
the trial were not all infamous prevaricators; the chapter of Rouen
lacked neither courage nor independence.[106] Among those members of
the University who were so bitter against Jeanne, there were men
highly esteemed for doctrine and character. They for the most part
believed this trial to be a purely religious one. By dint of seeking
for witches, they had come to find them everywhere. These females, as
they called them, they were sending to the stake every day, and
receiving nothing but thanks for it. They believed as firmly as Jeanne
in the possibility of the apparitions which she said had been
vouchsafed to her, only they were persuaded either that she lied or
that she saw devils. The Bishop, the Vice-Inquisitor and the
assessors, to the number of forty and upwards, were unanimous in
declaring her heretical and devilish. There were doubtless many who
imagined that by passing sentence against her they were maintaining
Catholic orthodoxy and unity of obedience against the abettors of
schism and heresy; they wished to judge wisely. And even the boldest
and the most unscrupulous, the Bishop and the Promoter, would not have
dared too openly to infringe the rules of ecclesiastical justice in
order to please the English. They were priests, and they preserved
priestly pride and respect for formality. Here was their weak point;
in this respect for formality they might have been struck. Had the
other side instituted vigorous legal proceedings, theirs might
possibly have been thwarted, arrested, and the fatal sentence
prevented. If the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, the
Archbishop of Reims, had intervened in the trial, if he had suspended
his suffragan for abuse of authority, or some other reason, Pierre
Cauchon would have been greatly embarrassed; if, as he decided to do
later, King Charles VII had brought about the intervention of the
mother and brothers of the Maid; if Jacques d'Arc and la Romee had
protested in due form against an action so manifestly one-sided; if
the register of Poitiers[107] had been sent for inclusion among the
documents of the trial; if the high prelates subject to King Charles
VII had asked for a safe conduct in order to come and give evidence in
Jeanne's favour at Rouen; finally, if the King, his Council, and the
whole Church of France had demanded an appeal to the Pope, as they
were legally entitled to do, then the trial might have had a different
issue.
[Footnote 106: Even when the canons who took part in the trial are
severally considered. _Cf._ Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le
proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc_, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 107: Or at least the conclusions of the doctors which have
been preserved. As for the register itself it could not have contained
anything of great importance. From their evidence at the
rehabilitation trial we see that the Poitiers clerks were not desirous
for much to be said of their inquiry.]
But they were afraid of the University of Paris. They feared lest
Jeanne might be after all what so many learned doctors maintained her
to be, a heretic, a miscreant seduced by the prince of darkness. Satan
transforms himself into an angel of light, and it is difficult to
distinguish the true prophets from the false. The hapless Maid was
deserted by the very clergy whose croziers had so recently been
carried before her; of all the Poitiers masters not one was found to
testify in the chateau of Rouen to that innocence which they had
officially recognised eighteen months before.
It would be very interesting to trace the reputation of the Maid down
the ages. But to do so would require a whole book. I shall merely
indicate the most striking revolutions of public opinion concerning
her. The humanists of the Renaissance display no great interest in
her: she was too Gothic for them. The Reformers, for whom she was
tainted with idolatry, could not tolerate her picture.[108] It seems
strange to us to-day, but it is none the less certain, and in
conformity with all we know of French feeling for royalty, that whilst
the monarchy endured it was the memory of Charles VII that kept alive
the memory of Jeanne d'Arc and saved her from oblivion.[109] Respect
due to the Prince generally hindered his faithful subjects from too
closely inquiring into the legends of Jeanne as well as into those of
the Holy Ampulla, the cures for King's evil, the _oriflamme_ and all
other popular traditions relating to the antiquity and celebrity of
the royal throne of France. In 1609, when in a college of Paris, the
Maid was the subject of sundry literary themes in which she was
unfavourably treated,[110] a certain lawyer, Jean Hordal, who boasted
that he came of the same race as the heroine, complained of these
academic disputes as being derogatory to royal majesty--"I am greatly
astonished," he said, "that ... public declamations against the honour
of France, of King Charles VII and his Council,[111] should be
suffered in France." Had Jeanne not been so closely associated with
royalty, her memory would have been very much neglected by the wits of
the seventeenth century. In the minds of scholars, Catholics and
Protestants alike, who considered the life of St. Margaret as mere
superstition,[112] her apparitions did her harm. In those days even
the _Sorbonagres_ themselves were expurgating the martyrology and the
legends of saints. One of them, Edmond Richer, like Jeanne a native of
Champagne, the censor of the university in 1600, and a zealous
Gallican, wrote an apology for the Maid who had defended the Crown of
Charles VII[113] with her sword. Albeit a firm upholder of the
liberties of the French Church, Edmond Richer was a good Catholic. He
was pious and of sound doctrine; he firmly believed in angels, but he
did not believe either in Saint Catherine or Saint Margaret, and their
appearing to the Maid greatly embarrassed him. He solved the
difficulty by supposing that the angels had represented themselves to
the Maid as the two saints, whom in her ignorance she devoutly
worshipped. The hypothesis seemed to him satisfactory, "all the more
so," he said, "because the Spirit of God, which governs the Church,
accommodates himself to our infirmity." Thirty or forty years later,
another doctor of the Sorbonne, Jean de Launoy, who was always
ferreting after saints, completed the discrediting of Saint
Catherine's legend.[114] The voices of Domremy were falling into
disrepute.
[Footnote 108: Aug. Vallet, _Observation sur l'ancien monument erige a
Orleans_, Paris, 1858, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 109: See a curious project for the decoration of the
platform of the Pont-Neuf addressed to Louis XIV (B.N.V., p. zz'338,
in fol.). A Sieur Dupuis, Aide des Ceremonies, proposes that thereon
shall be erected statues to "those great and illustrious captains who
from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the
crown.... Artus of Bretagne, Constable, Jean, Count of Dunois, Jeanne
Dark, Maid of Orleans, Roger de Gramont, Count of Guiche, Guillaume,
Count of Chaumont, Amaury de Severac, Vignoles, called La Hire...."
(Communications of M. Paul Lacombe, _Bulletin de la Societe de
l'Histoire de Paris_, 1894, p. 115, June 11, 1907. _Ibid._)]
[Footnote 110: _Puellae Aureliensis causa adversariis orationibus
disceptata auctore Jacobo Jolio_, Parisiis apud Julianum Bertant,
1609.]
[Footnote 111: Jean Hordal, _Heroinae nobilissimae Ioannae Darc
Lotharingae vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia_, Ponti-Mussi, 1612, in
8vo.]
[Footnote 112: Rabelais, _Gargantua_, chap. vi; Abbe Thiers, _Traite
des superstitions selon l'Ecriture sainte_, Paris, 1697, vol. i, p.
109.]
[Footnote 113: Edmond Richer, _Histoire de la Pucelle d'Orleans en 4
livres_, MS. Biblioth. Nat. f. Fr. 10448, fol. 12mo.]
[Footnote 114: "The Life of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, is
fabulous throughout from beginning to end," _Valesiana_, p. 48. "M. de
Launoy, doctor of theology, had cut Saint Catherine, virgin and
martyr, out of his calendar. He said that her life was a myth, and to
show that he placed no faith in it, every year when the feast of the
saint came round, he said a Requiem mass. This curious circumstance I
learn from his own telling," _Ibid._, p. 36.]
Take Chapelain, for example, whose poem was first published in 1656.
Chapelain is unconsciously burlesque; he is a Scarron without knowing
it. It is none the less interesting to learn from him that he merely
treated his subject as an occasion for glorifying the Bastard of
Orleans. He expressly says in his preface: "I did not so much regard
her (the Maid) as the chief character of the poem, who, strictly
speaking, is the Comte de Dunois." Chapelain was in the pay of the Duc
de Longueville, a descendant of Dunois.[115] It is of Dunois that he
sings; "the illustrious shepherdess" contributes the marvellous
element to his poem, and, according to the good man's own expression,
furnishes _les machines necessaires_ for an epic. Saint Catherine and
Saint Margaret are too commonplace to be included among _ces
machines_. Chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to
arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour
might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to
the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." Herein we
discern the dawn of the modern spirit.
[Footnote 115: Jean Chapelain, _La Pucelle ou la France delivree_,
Paris, 1656, in fol.]
Bossuet also is careful not to mention Saint Catherine and Saint
Margaret. The four or five quarto pages which he devotes to Jeanne
d'Arc in his "Abrege de l'Histoire de France pour l'instruction du
Dauphin"[116] are very interesting, not for his statement of facts,
which is confused and inexact,[117] but for the care the author takes
to represent the miraculous deeds attributed to Jeanne in an
incidental and dubious manner. In Bossuet's opinion, as in Gerson's,
these things are matters of edification, not of faith. Writing for the
instruction of a prince, Bossuet was bound to abridge; but his
abridgment goes too far when, representing Jeanne's condemnation to be
the work of the Bishop of Beauvais, he omits to say that the Bishop of
Beauvais pronounced this sentence with the unanimous concurrence of
the University of Paris, and in conjunction with the Vice-Inquisitor.[118]
[Footnote 116: _Oeuvres de messire Jacques-Benigne Bossuet_, Paris,
in 4to, vol. xi, 1749, numbered pages; vol. xii, pp. 234 _et seq._ Cf.
what he says of inspired persons in _l'Instruction sur les etats
d'oraison_, Paris, 1697, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 117: "This girl called Jeanne d'Arq ... had been a servant
in an inn," _loc. cit._, p. 233.]
[Footnote 118: We must not be too severe on a tutor's note-books. But
Bossuet, who places the rehabilitation under the date 1431, does not
tell us that it was only pronounced twenty-five years later. On the
contrary, as far as he is concerned, we might conclude that it
occurred before the deliverance of Compiegne. The following are his
words: "In execution of this sentence, she was burned alive at Rouen
in 1431. The English spread the rumour that at the last she had
admitted the revelations which she had so loudly boasted to be false.
But some time afterwards the Pope appointed commissioners. Her trial
was solemnly revised and her conduct approved of by a final sentence
which the Pope himself confirmed. The Burgundians were forced to raise
the siege of Compiegne," _loc. cit._ p. 236. Mezeray is more credulous
than Bossuet; he mentions "the Saints Catherine and Margaret, who
purified her soul with heavenly conversations, wherefore she venerated
them with a particular devotion." In relating the trial, he like
Bossuet, ignores the Vice-Inquisitor (_Histoire de France_, vol. ii,
1746, in folio, pp. 11 _et seq._)]
The eighteenth-century philosophers did not descend on France like a
cloud of locusts; they were the result of two centuries of the
critical spirit. If the story of Jeanne d'Arc contained too much
monkish superstition for their taste, it was because they had learned
their ecclesiastical history from the Baillets and the Tillemonts, who
were pious indeed, but very critical of legends. Voltaire, writing of
Jeanne, jeered at the rascally monks and their dupes. But if we quote
the lines of _La Pucelle_, why not also the article[119] in the
_Dictionnaire Philosophique_, which contains three pages of profounder
truth and nobler thought than certain voluminous modern works in which
Voltaire is insulted in clerical jargon?
[Footnote 119: Voltaire ed. Beuchot, vol. xxvi. _Cf._ also _Essai sur
les moeurs_, chap. lxxx. "Finally, being accused of having once
resumed man's dress, which had been left near her on purpose to tempt
her, her judges ... declared her a relapsed heretic and caused to be
burnt at the stake one who in heroic ages, when men erected altars to
their liberators, would have had an altar raised to her for having
served her King. Afterwards Charles VII rehabilitated her memory,
which her death itself had sufficiently honoured."]
It was precisely at the end of the eighteenth century that Jeanne
began to be better known and more justly appreciated, first through a
little book, which the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy derived almost wholly
from the unpublished history of old Richer,[120] then by l'Averdy's
erudite researches into the two trials.[121]
[Footnote 120: L'Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc,
vierge, heroine et martyre d'Etat suscitee par la Providence pour
retablir la monarchie francaise, tiree des proces et pieces originales
du temps_, Paris, 1753-1754, 3 vols. in 12mo.]
[Footnote 121: F. de L'Averdy, _Memorial lu au comite des manuscrits
concernant la recherche a faire des minutes originales des differentes
affaires qui ont eu lieu par rapport a Jeanne d'Arc, appelee
communement la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1787, in
4to; _Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du roi,
lus au comite etabli par sa Majeste dans l'Academie royale des
Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, Paris, Imp. Royale, 1790, vol. iii.]
Nevertheless humanism, and after humanism the Reformation, and after
the Reformation Cartesianism, and after Cartesianism experimental
philosophy had banished the old credulity from thoughtful minds. When
the Revolution came, the bloom had already long faded from the flower
of Gothic legend. It seemed as if the glory of Jeanne d'Arc, so
intimately related to the traditions of the royal house of France,
could not survive the monarchy, and as if the tempest which scattered
the royal ashes of Saint Denys and the treasure of Reims, would also
bear away the frail relics and the venerated images of the saint of
the Valois. The new _regime_ did indeed refuse to honour a memory so
inseparable from royalty and from religion. The festival of Jeanne
d'Arc at Orleans, shorn of ecclesiastical pomp in 1791, was
discontinued in 1793. Later the Maid's history appeared somewhat too
Gothic even to the _emigres_; Chateaubriand did not dare to introduce
her into his "Genie du Christianisme."[122]
[Footnote 122: "Modern times present but two fine subjects for an epic
poem, the Crusades and the Discovery of the New World" (ed. 1802,
Paris, vol. ii, p. 7).]
But in the year XI the First Consul, who had just concluded the
Concordat and was meditating the restoration of all the pageantry of
the coronation, reinstituted the festival of the Maid with its incense
and its crosses. Glorified of old in Charles VII's letters to his good
towns, Jeanne was now exalted in _Le Moniteur_ by Bonaparte.[123]
[Footnote 123: "The illustrious Jeanne d'Arc has proved that there is
no miracle which the French genius is incapable of working when
national independence is at stake" (_Moniteur_ of 10 Pluviose, year
XI, January 30, 1803). For the approval of the First Consul: facsimile
in A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie_, p. 600. [Original
taken from the Reiset collection.]]
Only by constant transformation do the figures of poetry and history
live in the minds of nations. Humanity cannot be interested in a
personage of old time unless it clothe it in its own sentiments and in
its own passions. After having been associated with the monarchy of
divine right, the memory of Jeanne d'Arc came to be connected with
the national unity which that monarchy had rendered possible; in
Imperial and Republican France she became the symbol of _la patrie_.
Certainly the daughter of Isabelle Romee had no more idea of _la
patrie_ as it is conceived to-day than she had of the idea of landed
property which lies at its base. She never imagined anything like what
we call the nation. That is something quite modern; but she did
conceive of the heritage of kings and of the domain of the House of
France. And it was there, in that domain and in that heritage, that
the French gathered together before forming themselves into _la
patrie_.
Under influences which it is impossible for us exactly to discover,
the idea came to her of re-establishing the Dauphin in his
inheritance; and this idea appeared to her so grand and so beautiful
that in the fulness of her very ingenuous pride, she believed it to
have been suggested to her by angels and saints from Paradise. For
this idea she gave her life. That is why she has survived the cause
for which she suffered. The very highest enterprises perish in their
defeat and even more surely in their victory. The devotion, which
inspired them, remains as an immortal example. And if the illusion,
under which her senses laboured, helped her to this act of
self-consecration, was not that illusion the unconscious outcome of
her own heart? Her foolishness was wiser than wisdom, for it was that
foolishness of martyrdom, without which men have never yet founded
anything great or useful. Cities, empires, republics rest on
sacrifice. It is not without reason therefore, not without justice
that, transformed by enthusiastic imagination, she became the symbol
of _la patrie_ in arms.
In 1817, Le Brun de Charmettes,[124] a royalist jealous of imperial
glory, wrote the first patriotic history of Jeanne d'Arc. The history
is an able work. It has been followed by many others, conceived in the
same spirit, composed on the same plan, written in the same style.
From 1841 to 1849, Jules Quicherat, by his publication of the two
trials and the evidence, worthily opened an incomparable period of
research and discovery. At the same time, Michelet in the fifth volume
of his "Histoire de France," wrote pages of high colour and rapid
movement, which will doubtless remain the highest expression of the
romantic art as applied to the Maid.[125]
[Footnote 124: Le Brun de Charmettes, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc
surnommee la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, 1817, 4 vols. in 8vo.]
[Footnote 125: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, vol. v.]
But of all the histories written between 1817 and 1870, or at least of
all those with which I have made acquaintance, for I have not
attempted to read them all, the most discerning in my opinion is the
fourth book of Vallet de Viriville's "Histoire de Charles VII" in
which his chief preoccupation is to place the Maid in that group of
visionaries to which she really belongs.[126]
[Footnote 126: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, Paris, 1863, in 8vo.]
Wallon's book has been widely circulated if not widely read. A
monotonous, conscientious work moderately enthusiastic, it owes its
success to its unimpeachable exactitude.[127] If there must be an
orthodox Jeanne d'Arc to suit fashionable persons, then for such a
purpose, M. Marius Sepet's representation of the Maid would be equally
exact and more graceful.[128]
[Footnote 127: H. Wallon, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1860, 2 vols. in
8vo.]
[Footnote 128: M. Sepet, _Jeanne d'Arc_, with an introduction by Leon
Gautier, Tours, 1869, in 8vo.]
After the war of 1871, the twofold influence of the patriotic spirit,
exalted by defeat, and the revival of Catholicism among the middle
class gave a new impetus to admiration of the Maid. Arts and letters
completed the transfiguration of Jeanne.
Catholics, like the learned Canon Dunand,[129] vie in zeal and
enthusiasm with free-thinking idealists like M. Joseph Fabre.[130] By
reproducing the two trials in a very artistic manner, in modern French
and in a direct form of speech, M. Fabre has popularised the most
ancient and the most touching impression of the Maid.[131]
[Footnote 129: Chanoine Dunand, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, Toulouse,
1898-1899, 3 vols. in 8vo.]
[Footnote 130: Joseph Fabre, _Jeanne d'Arc liberatrice de la France_,
new edition, Paris, 1894, in 12mo.]
[Footnote 131: _Proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc...._,
translated with commentary by J. Fabre, new edition, Paris, 1895, in
18mo.]
From this period date almost innumerable works of erudition, among
which must be noted those of Simeon Luce, which henceforth no one who
would treat of Jeanne's early years can afford to neglect.[132]
[Footnote 132: _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, _op. cit._; _La France
pendant la guerre de Cent Ans_, _op. cit._]
We are equally indebted to M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis for his fine
editions and his discerning studies so eruditely graceful and exact.
Throughout this period of romantic and Neo-Catholic enthusiasm the
arts of painting and sculpture produced numerous representations of
Jeanne, which had hitherto been very rare. Now everywhere were to be
found Jeanne in armour and on horseback, Jeanne in prayer, Jeanne in
captivity, Jeanne suffering martyrdom. Of all these images expressing
in different manners and with varying merit the taste and the
sentiment of the period, one work only appears great and true, and of
striking beauty: Rude's Jeanne d'Arc beholding a vision.[133]
[Footnote 133: Lanery d'Arc, _Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc_, Nos.
2080 to 2112.]
The word _patrie_ did not exist in the days of the Maid. People spoke
of the kingdom of France.[134] No one, not even jurists, knew exactly
what were its limits, which were constantly changing. The diversity of
laws and customs was infinite, and quarrels between nobles were
constantly arising. Nevertheless, men felt in their hearts that they
loved their native land and hated the foreigner. If the Hundred Years'
War did not create the sentiment of nationality in France, it fostered
it. In his "Quadrilogue Invectif" Alain Chartier represents France,
indicated by her robe sumptuously adorned with the emblems of the
nobility, of the clergy and of the _tiers etat_, but lamentably soiled
and torn, adjuring the three orders not to permit her to perish.
"After the bond of the Catholic faith," she says to them, "Nature has
called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native
land, and for the defence of that lordship under which God has caused
you to be born and to live."[135] And these are not the mere maxims of
a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. On the hearts of
humble Frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth.
"Must the King be driven from his kingdom, and must we become
English?" cried a man-at-arms of Lorraine in 1428.[136] The subjects
of the Lilies, as well as those of the Leopard, felt it incumbent
upon them to be loyal to their liege lord. But if any change for the
worse occurred in the lordships to which they belonged, they were
quite ready to make the best of it, because a lordship must increase
or decrease, according to power and fortune, according to the good
right or the good pleasure of the holder; it may be dismembered by
marriages, or gifts, or inheritance, or alienated by various
contracts. On the occasion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which seriously
narrowed the dominions of King John, the folk of Paris strewed the
streets with grass and flowers as a sign of rejoicing.[137] As a
matter of fact, nobles changed their allegiance as often as it was
necessary. Juvenal des Ursins relates in his Journal[138] how at the
time of the English conquest of Normandy, a young widow was known to
quit her domain with her three children in order to escape doing
homage to the King from beyond the seas. But how many Norman nobles
were like her in refusing to swear fealty to the former enemies of the
kingdom? The example of fidelity to the king was not always set by
those of his own family. The Duke of Bourbon, in the name of all the
princes of the blood royal, prisoners with him in the hands of the
English, proposed to Henry V that they should go and negotiate in
France for the cession of Harfleur, promising that if the Royal
Council met them with refusal they would acknowledge Henry V to be
King of France.[139]
[Footnote 134: A. Thomas, _Le mot "Patrie" et Jeanne d'Arc_ in _Revue
des Idees_, July 15, 1906.]
[Footnote 135: _Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier_, published by
Andre Duchesne, Paris, 1642, in 4to, p. 410.]
[Footnote 136: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 436. See _post_, vol. i, p. 82.]
[Footnote 137: Froissart, _Chroniques_, book i, chap. 128.]
[Footnote 138: Jean Juvenal des Ursins in Buchon, _Choix des
Chroniques_, iv.]
[Footnote 139: Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. ix, p. 427.]
Every one thought first of himself. Whoever possessed land owed
himself to his land; his neighbour was his enemy. The burgher thought
only of his town. The peasant changed his master without knowing it.
The three orders were not yet united closely enough to form, in the
modern sense of the word, a state.
Little by little the royal power united the French. This union became
stronger in proportion as royalty grew more powerful. In the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, that desire to think and act in common,
which creates great nations, became very strong among us--at least in
those families which furnished officers to the Crown--and it even
spread among the lower orders of society. Rabelais introduces Francois
Villon and the King of England into a tale so inflamed with military
bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost
identical manner by one of Napoleon's grenadiers.[140] In his preface
to the poem we have just quoted, Chapelain writes of the occasions
when "_la patrie_ who is our common mother, has need of all her
children." Already the old poet expresses himself like the author of
the _Marseillaise_.[141]
[Footnote 140: _Pantagruel_, book iv, chap. lxvii.]
[Footnote 141: _La Pucelle_, Preface.]
It cannot be denied that the feeling for _la patrie_ did exist under
the old _regime_. The impulse imparted to this sentiment by the
Revolution was none the less immense. It added to it the idea of
national unity and national territorial integrity. It extended to all
the right of property hitherto reserved to a small number, and thus,
so to speak, divided _la patrie_ among the citizens. While rendering
the peasant capable of possessing, the new _regime_ imposed upon him
the obligations of defending his actual or potential possessions.
Recourse to arms is a necessity alike for whomsoever acquires or
wishes to acquire territory. Hardly had the Frenchman come to enjoy
the rights of a man and of a citizen, hardly had he entered into
possession or thought he might enter into possession of a home and
lands of his own, when the armies of the Coalition arrived "to drive
him back to ancient slavery." Then the patriot became a soldier.
Twenty-three years of warfare, with the inevitable alternations of
victories and defeats, built up our fathers in their love of _la
patrie_ and their hatred of the foreigner.
Since then, as the result of industrial progress, there have arisen in
one country and another, rivalries which are every day growing more
bitter. The present methods of production by multiplying antagonism
among nations, have given rise to imperialism, to colonial expansion
and to armed peace.
But how many contrary forces are at work in this formidable creation
of a new order of things! In all countries the great development of
trade and manufactures has given birth to a new class. This class,
possessing nothing, having no hope of ever possessing anything,
enjoying none of the good things of life, not even the light of day,
does not share the fear which haunted the peasant and burgher of the
Revolution, of being despoiled by an enemy coming from abroad; the
members of this new class, having no wealth to defend, regard foreign
nations with neither terror nor hatred. At the same time over all the
markets of the world there have arisen financial powers, which,
although they often affect respect for old traditions, are by their
very functions essentially destructive of the national and patriotic
spirit. The universal capitalist system has created in France, as
everywhere else, the internationalism of the workers and the
cosmopolitanism of the financiers.
To-day, just as two thousand years ago, in order to discern the
future, we must regard not the enterprises of the great but the
confused movements of the working classes. The nations will not
indefinitely endure this armed peace which weighs so heavily upon
them. Every day we behold the organising of an universal community of
workers.
I believe in the future union of nations, and I long for it with that
ardent charity for the human race, which, formed in the Latin
conscience in the days of Epictetus and Seneca, and through so many
centuries extinguished by European barbarism, has been revived in the
noblest breasts of modern times. And in vain will it be argued against
me that these are the mere dream-illusions of desire: it is desire
that creates life and the future is careful to realise the dreams of
philosophers. Nevertheless, that we to-day are assured of a peace that
nothing will disturb, none but a madman would maintain. On the
contrary, the terrible industrial and commercial rivalries growing up
around us indicate future conflicts, and there is nothing to assure us
that France will not one day find herself involved in a great European
or world conflagration. Her obligation to provide for her defence
increases not a little those difficulties which arise from a social
order profoundly agitated by competition in production and antagonism
between classes.
An absolute empire obtains its defenders by inspiring fear; democracy
only by bestowing benefits. Fear or interest lies at the root of all
devotion. If the French proletariat is to defend the Republic
heroically in the hour of peril, then it must either be happy or have
the hope of becoming so. And what use is it to deceive ourselves? The
lot of the workman to-day is no better in France than in Germany, and
not so good as in England or America.
On these important subjects I have not been able to forbear expressing
the truth as it appears to me; there is a great satisfaction in saying
what one believes useful and just.
It now only remains for me to submit to my readers a few reflections
on the difficult art of writing history, and to explain certain
peculiarities of form and language which will be found in this work.
To enter into the spirit of a period that has passed away, to make
oneself the contemporary of men of former days, deliberate study and
loving care are necessary. The difficulty lies not so much in what one
must know as in what one must not know. If we would really live in the
fifteenth century, how many things we must forget: knowledge, methods,
all those acquisitions which make moderns of us. We must forget that
the earth is round, and that the stars are suns, and not lamps
suspended from a crystal vault; we must forget the cosmogony of
Laplace, and believe in the science of Saint Thomas, of Dante, and of
those cosmographers of the Middle Age who teach the Creation in seven
days and the foundation of kingdoms by the sons of Priam, after the
destruction of Great Troy. Such and such a historian or paleographer
is powerless to make us understand the contemporaries of the Maid. It
is not knowledge he lacks, but ignorance--ignorance of modern warfare,
of modern politics, of modern religion.
But when we have forgotten, as far as possible, all that has happened
since the youth of Charles VII, in order to think like a clerk in
exile at Poitiers, or a burgher at Orleans serving on the ramparts of
his city, we must recover all our intellectual resources in order to
embrace the entirety of events, and discover that sequence between
cause and effect which escape the clerk or the burgher. "I have
contracted my horizon," says the Chatterton of Alfred de Vigny, when
he explains how he is conscious of nothing that has happened since the
days of the old Saxons. But Chatterton wrote poems, pseudo chronicles,
and not history. The historian must alternately contract his horizon
and widen it. If he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs
successively--or sometimes at one and the same moment--assume the
credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the
most accomplished critic. By a strange process, he must divide his
personality. He must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he
must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a
story by Mr. H.G. Wells, who lives and moves in a little English town,
and all the time sees herself at the bottom of the ocean.
I have carefully visited cities and countries in which the events I
propose to relate took place. I have seen the valley of the Meuse
amidst the flowers and perfumes of spring, and I have seen it again
beneath a mass of mist and cloud. I have travelled along the smiling
banks of the Loire, so full of renown; through La Beauce, with its
vast horizons bordered with snow-topped mountains; through
l'Ile-de-France, where the sky is serene; through La Champagne, with
its stony hills covered with those low vines which, trampled upon by
the coronation army, bloomed again into leaves and fruit, says the
legend, and by St. Martin's Day yielded a late but rich vintage.[142]
I have lingered in barren Picardy, along the Bay of the Somme so sad
and bare beneath the flight of its birds of passage. I have wandered
through the fat meadows of Normandy to Rouen with its steeples and
towers, its ancient charnel houses, its damp streets, its last
remaining timbered houses with high gables. I have imagined these
rivers, these lands, these chateaux and these towns as they were five
hundred years ago.
[Footnote 142: Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, _Les sources allemandes de
l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 93.]
I have accustomed my gaze to the forms assumed by the beings and the
objects of those days. I have examined all that remains of stone, of
iron, or of wood worked by the hands of those old artisans, who were
freer and consequently more ingenious than ours, and whose handicraft
reveals a desire to animate and adorn everything. To the best of my
ability I have studied figures carved and painted, not exactly in
France--for there, in those days of misery and death, art was little
practised--but in Flanders, in Burgundy, in Provence, where the
workmanship is often in a style at once affected and _naif_, and
frequently beautiful. As I gazed at the old miniatures, they seemed to
live before me, and I saw the nobles in the absurd magnificence of
their _etoffes a tripes_,[143] the dames and the damoiselles somewhat
devilish with their horned caps and their pointed shoes; clerks seated
at the desk, men-at-arms riding their chargers and merchants their
mules, husbandmen performing from April till March all the tasks of
the rural calendar; peasant women, whose broad coifs are still worn by
nuns. I drew near to these folk, who were our fellows, and who yet
differed from us by a thousand shades of sentiment and of thought; I
lived their lives; I read their hearts.
[Footnote 143: Imitation velvet.]
It is hardly necessary to say that there exists no authentic
representation of Jeanne. In the art of the fifteenth century all that
relates to her amounts to very little: hardly anything remains--a
small piece of _bestion_ tapestry, a slight pen-and-ink figure on a
register, a few illuminations in manuscripts of the reigns of Charles
VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII, that is all. I have found it
necessary to contribute to this very meagre iconography of Jeanne
d'Arc, not because I had anything to add to it, but in order to
expunge the contributions of the forgers of that period. In Appendix
IV, at the end of this work, will be found the short article in which
I point out the forgeries which, for the most part, are already old,
but had not been previously denounced. I have limited my researches to
the fifteenth century, leaving to others the task of studying those
pictures of the Renaissance in which the Maid appears decked out in
the German fashion, with the plumed hat and slashed doubtlet of a
Saxon ritter or a Swiss mercenary.[144] I cannot say who served as a
prototype for these portraits, but they closely resemble the woman
accompanying the mercenaries in _La Danse des morts_, which Nicholas
Manuel painted at Berne, on the wall of the Dominican Monastery,
between 1515 and 1521.[145] In _le Grand Siecle_ Jeanne d'Arc becomes
Clorinda, Minerva, Bellona in ballet costume.[146]
[Footnote 144: See the picture of 1581, preserved in the Orleans
Museum and reproduced in Wallon's _Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 466.]
[Footnote 145: _La Danse des Morts_, painted at Berne between 1515 and
1520 by Nicolas Manuel, lithographed by Guillaume Stettler, s.d. in
folio oblong, engraving xx. M. Salomon Reinach believes this prototype
may be found in the Judiths of Cranach.]
[Footnote 146: Lanery d'Arc, _Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc_,
Iconography, Nos. 2080-2112.]
To my mind a continuous story is more likely than any controversy or
discussion to make my subject live, and bring home its verities to my
readers. It is true that the documents relating to the Maid do not
lend themselves very easily to this kind of treatment. As I have just
shown, they may nearly all be regarded as doubtful from several points
of view, and objections to them arise at every moment. Nevertheless, I
think that by making a cautious and judicious use of these documents
one may obtain material sufficient for a truthful history of
considerable extent. Besides, I have always indicated the sources of
my facts, so that every one may judge for himself of the
trustworthiness of my authorities.
In the course of my story I have related many incidents which, without
having a direct relation to Jeanne, reveal the spirit, the morals, and
the beliefs of her time. These incidents are usually of a religious
order. They must necessarily be so, for Jeanne's story--and I cannot
repeat it too often--is the story of a saint, just like that of
Colette of Corbie, or of Catherine of Sienna.
I have yielded frequently, perhaps too frequently, to the desire to
make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth
century. And in order not to distract him suddenly from them, I have
avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although many
such occurred to me.
My history is founded on the form and substance of ancient documents;
but I have hardly ever introduced into it literal quotations; I
believe that unless it possesses a certain unity of language a book
is unreadable, and I want to be read.
It is neither affectation of style nor artistic taste that has led me
to adhere as far as possible to the tone of the period and to prefer
archaic forms of language whenever I thought they would be
intelligible, it is because ideas are changed when words are changed
and because one cannot substitute modern for ancient expressions
without altering sentiments and characters.
I have endeavoured to make my style simple and familiar. History is
too often written in a high-flown manner that renders it wearisome and
false. Why should we imagine historical facts to be out of the
ordinary run of things and on a scale different from every-day
humanity?
The writer of a history such as this is terribly tempted to throw
himself into the battle. There is hardly a modern account of these old
contests, in which the author, be he ecclesiastic or professor, does
not with pen behind ear, rush into the _melee_ by the side of the
Maid. Even at the risk of missing the revelation of some of the
beauties of her nature, I deem it better to keep one's own personality
out of the action.
I have written this history with a zeal ardent and tranquil; I have
sought truth strenuously, I have met her fearlessly. Even when she
assumed an unexpected aspect, I have not turned from her. I shall be
reproached for audacity, until I am reproached for timidity.
I have pleasure in expressing my gratitude to my illustrious
_confreres_, MM. Paul Meyer and Ernest Lavisse, who have given me
valuable advice. I owe much to M. Petit Dutaillis for certain kindly
observations which I have taken into consideration. I am also greatly
indebted to M. Henri Jadart, Secretary of the Reims Academy; M. E.
Langlois, Professor at the Faculte des Lettres of Lille; M. Camille
Bloch, some time archivist of Loiret, M. Noel Charavay, autographic
expert, and M. Raoul Bonnet.
M. Pierre Champion, who albeit still young is already known as the
author of valuable historical works, has placed the result of his
researches at my disposal with a disinterestedness I shall never be
able adequately to acknowledge. He has also carefully read the whole
of my work. M. Jean Brousson has given me the advantage of his
perspicacity which far surpasses what one is entitled to expect from
one's secretary.
In the century which I have endeavoured to represent in this work,
there was a fiend, by name Titivillus. Every evening this fiend put
into a sack all the letters omitted or altered by the copyists during
the day. He carried them to hell, in order that, when Saint Michael
weighed the souls of these negligent scribes, the share of each one
might be put in the scale of his iniquities. Should he have survived
the invention of printing, surely this most properly meticulous fiend
must to-day be assuming the heavy task of collecting the misprints
scattered throughout the books which aspire to exactitude; it would be
very foolish of him to trouble about others. As occasion requires he
will place those misprints to the account of reader or author. I am
infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Levy and
to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have
employed in lightening the burden, which Titivillus will place on my
back on the Day of Judgment.
PARIS, February, 1908.
CONTENTS
VOL. I
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION vii
I. CHILDHOOD 1
II. VOICES 29
III. FIRST VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS. FLIGHT TO NEUFCHATEAU.
JOURNEY TO TOUL. SECOND VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS 61
IV. JOURNEY TO NANCY. ITINERARY FROM VAUCOULEURS
TO SAINTE-CATHERINE-DE-FIERBOIS 91
V. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 12TH OF OCTOBER,
1428, TO THE 6TH OF MARCH, 1429 106
VI. THE MAID AT CHINON--PROPHECIES 145
VII. THE MAID AT POITIERS 187
VIII. THE MAID AT POITIERS (_continued_) 204
IX. THE MAID AT TOURS 217
X. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 7TH OF MARCH
TO THE 28TH OF APRIL, 1429 230
XI. THE MAID AT BLOIS. LETTER TO THE ENGLISH.
DEPARTURE FOR ORLEANS 243
XII. THE MAID AT ORLEANS 258
XIII. THE TAKING OF LES TOURELLES AND THE DELIVERANCE
OF ORLEANS 296
XIV. THE MAID AT TOURS AND SELLES-EN-BERRY.
TREATISES OF JACQUES GELU AND JEAN GERSON 318
XV. TAKING OF JARGEAU. THE MEUNG BRIDGE.
BEAUGENCY 345
XVI. THE BATTLE OF PATAY. OPINIONS OF ITALIAN AND
GERMAN CLERKS. THE GIEN ARMY 368
XVII. THE AUXERRE CONVENTION. FRIAR RICHARD.
THE SURRENDER OF TROYES 403
XVIII. THE SURRENDER OF CHALONS AND OF REIMS.
THE CORONATION 435
XIX. RISE OF THE LEGEND 461
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
JOAN OF ARC _Frontispiece_
From a painting by Deruet.
_To face page_
HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC AT DOMREMY IN 1419 12
VIEW OF ORLEANS, 1428-1429 106
PLAN OF ORLEANS 258
CHARLES VII 444
From an old engraving.
JOAN OF ARC
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
From Neufchateau to Vaucouleurs the clear waters of the Meuse flow
freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes
of alder and willow. Now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual
curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads
of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are
suddenly lost to sight underground. In the summer the river is a lazy
stream, barely bending in its course the reeds which grow upon its
shallow bed; and from the bank one may watch its lapping waters kept
back by clumps of rushes scarcely covering a little sand and moss. But
in the season of heavy rains, swollen by sudden torrents, deeper and
more rapid, as it rushes along, it leaves behind it on the banks a
kind of dew, which rises in pools of clear water on a level with the
grass of the valley.
This valley, two or three miles broad, stretches unbroken between low
hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples, and birches.
Although strewn with wild-flowers in the spring, it looks severe,
grave, and sometimes even sad. The green grass imparts to it a
monotony like that of stagnant water. Even on fine days one is
conscious of a hard, cold climate. The sky seems more genial than the
earth. It beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the
movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil
landscape. Then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a
kind of chaos. Fogs come down thick and clinging. The white light
mists, which in summer veil the bottom of the valley, give place to
thick clouds and dark moving mountains, but slowly scattered by a red,
cold sun. Wanderers ranging the uplands in the early morning might
dream with the mystics in their ecstasy that they are walking on
clouds.
Thus, after having passed on the left the wooded plateau, from the
height of which the chateau of Bourlemont dominates the valley of the
Saonelle, and on the right Coussey with its old church, the winding
river flows between le Bois Chesnu on the west and the hill of Julien
on the east. Then on it goes, passing the adjacent villages of Domremy
and Greux on the west bank and separating Greux from Maxey-sur-Meuse.
Among other hamlets nestling in the hollows of the hills or rising on
the high ground, it passes Burey-la-Cote, Maxey-sur-Vaise, and
Burey-en-Vaux, and flows on to water the beautiful meadows of
Vaucouleurs.[147]
[Footnote 147: J. Ch. Chappellier, _Etude historique et geographique
sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc_, Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo. E.
Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1894, in 18mo.]
In this little village of Domremy, situated at least seven and a half
miles further down the river than Neufchateau and twelve and a half
above Vaucouleurs, there was born, about the year 1410 or 1412,[148]
a girl who was destined to live a remarkable life. She was born poor.
Her father,[149] Jacques or Jacquot d'Arc, a native of the village of
Ceffonds in Champagne,[150] was a small farmer and himself drove his
horses at the plough.[151] His neighbours, men and women alike, held
him to be a good Christian and an industrious workman.[152] His wife
came from Vouthon, a village nearly four miles northwest of Domremy,
beyond the woods of Greux. Her name being Isabelle or Zabillet, she
received at some time, exactly when is uncertain, the surname of
Romee.[153] That name was given to those who had been to Rome or on
some other important pilgrimage;[154] and it is possible that Isabelle
may have acquired her name of Romee by assuming the pilgrim's shell
and staff.[155] One of her brothers was a parish priest, another a
tiler; she had a nephew who was a carpenter.[156] She had already
borne her husband three children: Jacques or Jacquemin, Catherine, and
Jean.[157]
[Footnote 148: This may be inferred from vol. i, p. 46, of the
_Trial_. But Jeanne did not know how old she was when she left her
father's house (_Trial_, vol. i, p. 51). I have ignored the letter of
Perceval de Boulainvilliers, p. 116, vol. v, of the _Trial_. It is
quite unauthentic and is too much in the manner of a hagiologist. See
post, p. 468, note 1.]
[Footnote 149: Darc (_Trial_, vol. i, p. 191; vol. ii, p. 82). Dars
(Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. 360). Day (_Trial_, vol. v,
p. 150). Daiz (furnished by M. Pierre Champion). This document appears
to justify the pronunciation _Jeanne d'Arc_. Concerning the
orthography of the name d'Arc, cf. Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or de Jeanne
d'Arc_, notes 647-657.]
[Footnote 150: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 46, 208. E. de Bouteiller and G.
de Braux, _La famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1878, in 8vo, p. 185;
_Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, Orleans,
1879, in 12mo, p. x, _passim_. Boucher de Molandon, _Jacques d'Arc,
pere de la Pucelle_, Orleans, 1885, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 151: See post, pp. 57, 451, 452.]
[Footnote 152: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 378 _et seq._]
[Footnote 153: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 191, 208; vol. ii, p. 74, note 1.
Armand Boucher de Crevecoeur, _Les Romee et les de Perthes, famille
maternelle de Jeanne d'Arc_, Abbeville, 1891, in 8vo. Lanery d'Arc,
_Livre d'or_, notes 1278-1308.]
[Footnote 154: Du Cange, _Glossaire_, under the word _Romeus_. G. de
Braux, _Jeanne d'Arc a Saint-Nicolas_, Nancy, 1889, p. 8. _Revue
catholique des institutions et du droit_, August, 1886. E. de
Bouteiller, _Nouvelles recherches_, p. xii. Vallet de Viriville,
_Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 43.]
[Footnote 155: Probably before Jeanne's birth. "My surname is d'Arc or
Romee," said Jeanne (_Trial_, vol. i, p. 191). Thus she
indiscriminately assumes either her father's or her mother's surname,
although she says (_Trial_, vol. i, p. 191) that in her country girls
are called by their mother's surname.]
[Footnote 156: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de
Braux, _Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris,
1879, pp. 3-20. Ch. du Lys, _Traite sommaire tant du nom et des armes
que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle d'Orleans et de ses
freres_, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1857, p. 28. E. Georges,
_Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois_, Troyes,
1893, in 8vo, p. 101.]
[Footnote 157: The order of the births of Jacques d'Arc's children is
extremely doubtful (_Trial_, index, under the word _Arc_).]
Jacques d'Arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish
church, dedicated to Saint Remi, the apostle of Gaul.[158] There was
only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. It
is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism
pronounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer
for girls than for boys.[159] We do not know whether Messire Jean
Minet,[160] the parish priest, pronounced it over the child in all its
literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs
of the Church's invincible mistrust of woman.
[Footnote 158: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 393, _passim_. S. Luce, _Jeanne
d'Arc a Domremy_, vol. xvi, p. 357.]
[Footnote 159: A. Monteil, _Histoire des Francais_, 1853, in 18mo,
vol. ii, p. 194.]
[Footnote 160: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 46. Jean Minet was a native of
Neufchateau.]
According to the custom then prevailing the child had several
godfathers and godmothers.[161] The men-gossips were Jean Morel, of
Greux,[162] husbandman; Jean Barrey, of Neufchateau; Jean Le Langart
or Lingui, and Jean Rainguesson; the women, Jeannette, wife of
Thevenin le Royer, called Roze, of Domremy; Beatrix, wife of
Estellin,[163] husbandman in the same village; Edite, wife of Jean
Barrey; Jeanne, wife of Aubrit, called Jannet and described as Maire
Aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of Bourlemont;
Jeannette, wife of Thiesselin de Vittel, a scholar of Neufchateau. She
was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of
books. Among the godmothers there are mentioned also the wife of
Nicolas d'Arc, Jacques' brother, and two obscure Christians, one
called Agnes, the other Sibylle.[164] Here, as in every group of good
Catholics, we have a number of Jeans, Jeannes, and Jeannettes. St.
John the Baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the
24th of June, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and
religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and
contracts of all kinds. In the opinion of certain ecclesiastics,
especially of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose
head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth
when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in
Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour
or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name
Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these
holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the
humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive
forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants
had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious
and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette,
Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child
was named Jeannette. That was the name by which she was known in the
village. Later, in France, she was called Jeanne.[167]
[Footnote 161: J. Corblet, _Parrains et marraines_, in _Revue de l'art
chretien_, 1881, vol. xiv, pp. 336 _et seq._]
[Footnote 162: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, proofs and
illustrations, li, p. 98.]
[Footnote 163: _Ibid._, p. clxxix, note.]
[Footnote 164: Cf. _Trial_, index, under _parrains_ and _marraines_.
It is not always possible to assign to these personages the names they
bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are
introduced.]
[Footnote 165: _Relation du greffier de La Rochelle_, in the _Revue
Historique_, vol. iv, p. 342. Cf. Eustache Deschamps, ballad 354, vol.
iii, p. 83, ed. Queux de Saint Hilaire.]
[Footnote 166: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 74-388; vol. v, pp. 151, 220,
_passim_.]
[Footnote 167: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 46. Henri Lepage, _Jeanne d'Arc
est-elle Lorraine?_ Nancy, 1852, pp. 57-79.]
She was brought up in her father's house, in Jacques' poor
dwelling.[168] In the front there were two windows admitting but a
scanty light. The stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden
side sloped almost to the ground. Close by the door, as was usual in
that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm
tools covered with rust and mud. But the humble enclosure, which
served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a
wealth of pink and white flowers.[169]
[Footnote 168: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 244 _et seq._ Jacques d'Arc's
house doubtless looked on to the road; the Du Lys, or rather the
Thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer
existing. The shields which ornamented its facade have been placed
upon the door of the building now shown as Jeanne's house. What is
represented as Jeanne's room is the bakehouse (E. Hinzelin, _Chez
Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 74). See an article by Henri Arsac in _L'echo de
l'Est_, 26 July, 1890. A whole literature has been written on this
subject (Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, pp. 330 _et seq._).]
[Footnote 169: Emile Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, _passim_.]
These good Christians had one more child, the youngest, Pierre, who
was called Pierrelot.[170]
[Footnote 170: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 151, 220.]
Fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, Jeanne
grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober.
She lived in perfect liberty. Among hard-working peasants the children
are left to themselves. Isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well
with the village children.
A little neighbour, Hauviette, three or four years younger than she,
was her daily companion. They liked to sleep together in the same
bed.[171] Mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and
spin at Jacques d'Arc's house. She helped Jeanne with her household
duties.[172] Taking her distaff with her, Jeanne used often to go and
pass the evening at Saint-Amance, at the house of a husbandman
Jacquier, who had a young daughter.[173] Boys and girls grew up as a
matter of course side by side. Being neighbours, Jeanne and Simonin
Musnier's son were brought up together. When Musnier's son was still a
child he fell ill, and Jeanne nursed him.[174]
[Footnote 171: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 417: "_Jacuit amorose in domo
patris sui._"]
[Footnote 172: _Ibid._, p. 429.]
[Footnote 173: _Ibid._, p. 408.]
[Footnote 174: _Ibid._, p. 423.]
In those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know
their letters. A few years earlier Maitre Jean Gerson had counselled
his sisters, peasants of Champagne, to learn to read, and had
promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[175] Albeit
the niece of a parish priest, Jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus
resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at Maxey
there was a school attended by boys from Domremy.[176]
[Footnote 175: E. Georges, _Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue
Franco-Champenois_, p. 115. De La Fons-Melicocq, _Documents inedits
pour servir a l'histoire de l'instruction publique en France et a
l'histoire des moeurs au XV'ieme siecle_, in the _Bulletin de la
Societe des Antiquaires de la Morinie_, vol. iii, pp. 460 _et seq._]
[Footnote 176: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 65-66. (_Item: je donne a Oudinot,
a Richard et a Gerard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de Marcey
dessoubz Brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept
psaulmes._) (Item: I give to the boys, Oudinot, Richard, and Gerard,
scholars of the school-master at Marcey below Brixey, twelve crowns to
pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) The will of Jean de
Bourlemont, 23 October, 1399, in S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_,
document in facsimile xiii.]
From her mother she learnt the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and the
credo.[177] She heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. That was
her whole education. On holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath
the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of
the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's
sermon.[178]
[Footnote 177: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]
[Footnote 178: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's
_Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise_, vol. iii, the second miniature,
the "Douze perils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).]
As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding,
digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a
man.[179]
[Footnote 179: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]
The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on
the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to
his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right
to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each
family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows.
Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out
his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch
them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into
the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]
[Footnote 180: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. lij.]
But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She
swore neither by God nor his saints; and to assert the truth of
anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the
bells rang for the _Angelus_, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On
Saturday, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with
grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at
its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the
east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill,
barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of
murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth
the clear waters of the Saint-Thiebault spring, which cure fevers and
heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de
Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and
woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and
silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown,
with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the
prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. She worked
miracles. Jeanne used to visit her with her sister Catherine and the
boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. And as often as
she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[183]
[Footnote 181: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 404.]
[Footnote 182: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 423.]
[Footnote 183: _Trial_, index, at the word _Bermont_. Du Haldat,
_Notice sur la chapelle de Belmont_, in the _Memoires de l'Academie
Stanislas de Nancy_, 1833-1834, p. 96. E. Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne
d'Arc_, p. 95. Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, p. 330.]
A mile and a quarter west of Domremy was a hill covered with a dense
wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. Wolves were
the terror of the countryside. The village mayors gave rewards for
every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which
Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of
oaks, or possibly the hoary [_chenu_] wood, the old forest.[185] We
shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of
Merlin the Magician.
[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, _Histoire des Francois_, vol. i, p.
91.]
[Footnote 185: _Trial_, index, under the words _Bois Chesnu_.]
At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the
margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish
green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187]
If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne
described it as _La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur_, it must
have been because the village people called it by that name. By making
use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying
to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain
teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as
goddesses.[189] It was quite true. Goddesses as much feared and
venerated as the Parcae had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them
had been attributed power over the destinies of men. But, fallen long
since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had
grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. They were invited
to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next
the mother's. At these festivals they ate alone and came and went
without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements
for fear of displeasing them. It is the custom of divine personages to
go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were
very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared
irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even
unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their
feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one
found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to
a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained
the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]
[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Fontaine des
Groseilliers_.]
[Footnote 187: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 _et
seq._]
[Footnote 188: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]
[Footnote 189: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]
[Footnote 190: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390,
404, 450.]
[Footnote 191: Wolf, _Mythologie des fees et des elfes_, 1828, in 8vo.
A. Maury, _Les fees au moyen age_, 1843, in 18mo, and _Croyances et
legendes du moyen age_, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]
Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the
highroad to Neufchateau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was
venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred
in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand
dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not
more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many
names. It was called _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_,
_l'Arbre-des-Fees_, _l'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-de-Bourlemont_, _le
Beau-Mai_.[195]
[Footnote 192: Richer, _Histoire manuscrite de Jeanne d'Arc_, ms. fr.
10,448, fols. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 193: For tree worship, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in
_La tradition_, 15 March, 1889.]
[Footnote 194: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 422.]
[Footnote 195: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Arbre des Fees_.]
Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been
seen under _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_. In the old days, when Berthe
was spinning, a lord of Bourlemont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became
a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the
beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's godmothers,
who was a scholar at Neufchateau, had heard this story, which closely
resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a
doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree.
Some believed they did, others thought they did not. Beatrix, another
of Jeanne's godmothers, used to say: "I have heard tell that fairies
came to the tree in the old days. But for their sins they come there
no longer."[198]
[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 404.]
[Footnote 197: _Ibid._, p. 404, _passim_. _Simple Crayon de la
noblesse des ducs de Lorraine et de Bar_, in Le Brun des Charmettes'
_Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. i, p. 266. Jules Baudot, _Les
princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar de la famille des Valois_, first
part. _Melusine_, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, p. 121.]
[Footnote 198: _Propter eorum peccata_, in the _Trial_, vol. ii, p.
396. There is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.]
This simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of
God and that the priest had driven them away. Jean Morel, Jeanne's
godfather, believed the same.[199]
[Footnote 199: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 390.]
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC AT DOMREMY IN 1419]
Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were
carried through the fields and the priest went to _l'Arbre-des-Fees_
and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the
Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.[200] For the
exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St.
John.[201]
[Footnote 200: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 397.]
[Footnote 201: _Ibid._, p. 390. Bergier, _Dictionnaire de theologie_,
under the word _Conjuration_.]
My Lord Aubert d'Ourches held that there had been no fairies at
Domremy for twenty or thirty years.[202] On the other hand there were
those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse
with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.
[Footnote 202: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 187.]
Yet another of Jeanne's godmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had
with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her
goddaughter. And Aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer
but a good woman and a circumspect.[203]
[Footnote 203: _Ibid._, pp. 67, 209.]
In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had
never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that
she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[204] Fairies are not like angels;
they do not always appear what they really are.[205]
[Footnote 204: _Ibid._, pp. 178, 209 _et seq._]
[Footnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for
Jeanne's opinion of them, see _Trial_, index, under the word _Fees_.]
Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church
"_Laetare_ Sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the
passage beginning _Laetare Jerusalem_,--the peasants of Bar held a
rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together
to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of
Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont;
those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[206]
They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont
themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a
babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux,
died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville,
who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of
Lorraine.[207]
[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the
Well-Dressing at Domremy, see _Trial_, index, under the word
_Fontaine_.]
[Footnote 207: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 _et seq._ S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xx-xxii.]
At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the
old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of
flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts,
hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the
housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the
Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes
at nightfall.
[Footnote 208: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]
Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part
in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy
nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but
at the Gooseberry Spring and _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[209]
[Footnote 209: _Ibid._, pp. 391-462.]
In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions.
She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose
chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang
garlands on the branches of _l'Arbre-des-Fees_. Jeanne, like the
others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others,
sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them
away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their
disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder.
One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring
were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]
[Footnote 210: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]
To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of
flowers and foliage.[211]
[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 434.]
Close by _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a
mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and
according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212]
not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human
body and his forked feet.
[Footnote 212: _Atropa Mandragor_, female mandragora, _main de
gloire_, _herbe aux magiciens_. _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. _Journal
d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 236.]
The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of
Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A
learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number
of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]
[Footnote 213: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]
When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize
in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest,
Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had
a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son
Henri.[214]
[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. _Trial_, vol. ii, pp.
74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles
recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._; 7, 8,
10, _passim_. C. Gilardoni, _Sermaize et son eglise_, published at
Vitry-le-Francois, 1893, 8vo.]
Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between
Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback,
riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the
farm.[215]
[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, _Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere_, Paris,
1901, 12mo, p. 28.]
At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's
house.[216]
[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, _La famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, p.
627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, pp. 9
and 10. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xlv _et seq._]
With regard to feudal overlordship the village of Domremy was divided
into two distinct parts. The southern part, with the chateau on the
Meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of Bourlemont
and was in the domain of the castellany of Grondrecourt, held in fief
from the crown of France. It was a part of Lorraine and of Bar. The
northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was
subject to the provost of Monteclaire and Andelot and was in the
bailiwick of Chaumont in Champagne.[217] It was sometimes called
Domremy de Greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of
Greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of Vaucouleurs.[218]
The serfs of Bourlemont were separated from the king's men by a brook,
close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence
called, so it is said, the Brook of the Three Springs. Modestly the
stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then
rushed down a rapid incline into the Meuse, opposite Jacques d'Arc's
house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of
Champagne and of France.[219] So far we may be fairly certain; but we
must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. In 1429 King
Charles' council was uncertain as to whether Jacques d'Arc was a
freeman or a serf.[220] And Jacques d'Arc himself doubtless was no
better informed. On both banks of the brook, the men of Lorraine and
Champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship.
Although they were subject to different masters they formed none the
less one community closely united, one single rural family. They
shared interests, necessities, feelings--everything. Threatened by the
same dangers, they had the same anxieties.
[Footnote 217: E. Misset, _Jeanne d'Arc champenoise_, Paris, s.d.
(1894), 8vo. Concerning the nationality of Joan of Arc there is a
whole literature extremely rich, the bibliography of which it is
impossible to give here. Cf. Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, pp. 295 _et
seq._]
[Footnote 218: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 208.]
[Footnote 219: P. Jollois, _Histoire abregee de la vie et des exploits
de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1821, engraving I, p. 190. A. Renard, _La
patrie de Jeanne d'Arc_, Langres, 1880, in 18mo, p. 6. S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, supplement with proofs and illustrations,
pp. 281, 282.]
[Footnote 220: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 152.]
Lying at the extreme south of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, the
village of Domremy was between Bar and Champagne on the east, and
Lorraine on the west.[221] They were terrible neighbours, always
warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that
Count of Vaudemont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of
Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The
villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at
the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw
himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the
whole of Christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the
Lorraine Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the
world. Unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of
Vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived
Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who, subsisting on
plunder, was especially given to the Lorraine custom of marauding. He
was of the same way of thinking as that English king who said that
warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings
without mustard.[222] One day, when he was besieging a little
stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the Damoiseau set
fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night
long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.[223]
[Footnote 221: Colonel de Boureulle, _Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc_,
Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo, 28 small engravings. J. Ch. Chappellier,
_Etude historique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc_, 2 plans; C.
Niobe, _Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Memoires de la Societe
academique de l'Aube_, 1894, 3d series, vol. xxxi, pp. 307 _et seq._]
[Footnote 222: Juvenal des Ursins, in the _Collection Michaud et
Poujoulat_, col. 561.]
[Footnote 223: A. Tuetey, _Les ecorcheurs sous Charles VII_,
Montbeliard, 1874, vol. i, p. 87.]
In 1419 this baron was making war on the brothers Didier and Durand of
Saint-Die. It matters not for what reason. For this war as for every
war the villagers had to pay. As the men-at-arms were fighting
throughout the whole castellany of Vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of
Domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. At Domremy
there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island
formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has
long since been filled up.[224] Belonging to this castle was a chapel
of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large
garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the
dwelling of the Lords of Bourlemont, was commonly called the Fortress
of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his
property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. But soon
after Jeanne d'Arc's birth she married a Lorraine baron, Henri
d'Ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of Ogiviller
and at the ducal court of Nancy. Since her departure the fortress of
the island had remained uninhabited. The village folk decided to rent
it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the
plunderers. The renting was put up to auction. A certain Jean Biget of
Domremy and Jacques d'Arc, Jeanne's father, being the highest bidders,
and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between
them and the representatives of Dame d'Ogiviller. The fortress, the
garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain,
were let to Jean Biget and Jacques d'Arc for a term of nine years
beginning on St. John the Baptist's Day, 1419, and in consideration of
a yearly rent of fourteen _livres tournois_[225] and three _imaux_ of
wheat.[226] Besides the two tenants in chief there were five
sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was Jacquemin, the eldest of
Jacques d'Arc's sons.[227]
[Footnote 224: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 66, 215.]
[Footnote 225: In 1390 one _livre tournois_ was worth L7 5_s_ of
present money; in 1488, L5. Cf. Avenel, _Histoire economique_, 1894
(W.S.).]
[Footnote 226: "_Imal_," says Le Trevoux, "is a measure of corn used
at Nancy." There are two _imaux_ in a quarter, and four quarters in a
_real_, which contains fifteen bushels, according to the Paris
measure.]
[Footnote 227: The Archives of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle,
collection Ruppes II, No. 28. The farm lease, dated 2nd of April,
1420, was first published by M. J. Ch. Chappellier in _Le Journal de
la Societe d'Archeologie Lorraine_, Jan.-Feb., 1889; and _Deux actes
inedits du XV siecle sur Domremy_, Nancy, 1889, 8vo, 16 pages. S.
Luce, _La France pendant la guerre de cent ans_, 1890, 18mo, pp. 274
_et seq._ Lefevre-Pontalis, _Etude historique et geographique sur
Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des
Chartes_, vol. lvi, pp. 154-168.]
The precaution proved to be useful. In that very year, 1419, Robert de
Saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers Didier and
Durand at the village of Maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be
seen opposite Greux, on the other bank of the Meuse, along the foot of
wooded hills. The two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the
victorious Damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards
liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. Among
these prisoners was the Squire Thiesselin de Vittel, whose wife had
held Jacques d'Arc's second daughter over the baptismal font. From one
of the hills of her village, Jeanne, who was then seven or a little
older, could see the battle in which her godmother's husband was taken
prisoner.[228]
[Footnote 228: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 420-426. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a
Domremy_, p. lxiv.]
Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This
was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and
hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[229] Thus it was that the
villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge
at Montereau, when the Dauphin's Councillors made him pay the price of
the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however,
struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young
Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the
Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the
kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a
prosperous trade there,[230] sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne
was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been
a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every
one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed
the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke
John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l'Ile-de-France, and
Paris the great city.[231] Now in France the English were bitterly
hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty.
Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[232] In
Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be
respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself
cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the
people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and
not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They
were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and
in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were
assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath
_Goddam_[233] was so often on their lips that they were called
_Godons_. They were devils. They were said to be _coues_, that is, to
have tails behind.[234] There was mourning in many a French household
when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the
_coues_,[235] making of the noble French lilies a litter for the
leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster
and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king,
had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good
and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The
castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.[236] Dwelling there were clerks
and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in
childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope
of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had
leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the
peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful
lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the
side of the Burgundians?
[Footnote 229: Lienard, _Dictionnaire topographique de la Meuse_,
introduction, p. x.]
[Footnote 230: Dom Devienne, _Histoire de Bordeaux_, pp. 98, 103. L.
Bachelier, _Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux_, Bordeaux, 1862, in 8vo,
p. 45. D. Brissaud, _Les Anglais en Guyenne_, Paris, 1875, in 8vo.]
[Footnote 231: Ch. de Beaurepaire, _De l'administration de la
Normandie sous la domination Anglaise_, Caen, 1859, in 4to; and _Etats
de Normandie sous la domination Anglaise_, Evreux, 1859, in 8vo. De
Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. v, pp. 40-56, 261-286.]
[Footnote 232: Thomas Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_,
ed. Quicherat, vol. i, p. 27.]
[Footnote 233: La Curne, under the words _Anglois_ and _Goddons_.]
[Footnote 234: Voragine, _La legende de Saint-Gregoire_. Du Cange,
_Glossaire_, under the word _Caudatus_. Le Roux de Lincy, _Recueil de
chants historiques francais_, Paris, 1851, vol. i, pp. 300, 301. This
oath is to be found current as early as Eustache Deschamps; it was
still in use in the seventeenth century (_Sommaire tant du nom et des
armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle_, ed. Vallet de
Viriville).]
[Footnote 235: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, ch. iii. Carlier,
_Histoire du Valois_, vol. ii, pp. 441 _et seq._]
[Footnote 236: Dom Calmet, _Histoire de Lorraine_, vol. ii, col. 631.
Bonnabelle, _Notice sur la ville de Vaucouleurs_, Bar-le-Duc, 1879, in
8vo, 75 pages.]
Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The
Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels
between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles
with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the
Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning
covered with blood.[237] It is quite possible that, passionate as she
was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived
therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must
beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish
games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these
two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[238] Insults and
stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those
of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux,
and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs
of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the
captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party,
and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their
friends and those who were their enemies.
[Footnote 237: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 65, 66. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a
Domremy_, pp. 18 _et seq._]
[Footnote 238: N. Villiaume, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, 1864, in 8vo,
p. 52, note 1.]
In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned
several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt
and Blaise, son of the late Messire Liebault de Baudricourt, was then
captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles.
He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the
spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy
to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they
were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of
Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on
the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of
English and Burgundians.[239]
[Footnote 239: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, ch. iii.]
In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one
Etienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under
the dreaded name of La Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his
death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the
greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side
of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own
account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning
churches and laying waste villages.
[Footnote 240: Pierre d'Alheim, _Le jargon Jobelin_, Paris, 1892, in
18mo: glossary, under the word _Hirenalle_, p. 61, and the verbal
communication of M. Marcel Schwob. _Cronique Martiniane_, ed. P.
Champion, p. 8, note 3; _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 270; De
Montlezun, _Histoire de Gascogne_, 1847, in 8vo, p. 143; A. Castaing,
_La patrie du valet de coeur_, in _Revue de Gascogne_, 1869, vol. x,
pp. 29-33.]
While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified,
Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke
of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut,
who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de
Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb
fired from a Lorraine mortar.
[Footnote 241: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. lxxiii, 87, note
1. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, pp.
4-15.]
Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (_doyen_) of the community. Many
duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled
times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the
council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and
night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes,
rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242]
[Footnote 242: Bonvalot, _Le tiers etat d'apres la charte de Beaumont
et ses filiales_, Paris, 1886, p. 412.]
Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de
Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was
plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left
bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as
elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire
extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two _gros_ from
each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax
which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns,
which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of
Saint-Martin.[244]
[Footnote 243: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. lxxi _et seq._]
[Footnote 244: _Ibid._, proofs and illustrations, li, p. 97.]
The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and
Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment
at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and
was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was
still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame
Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, Rene d'Anjou, who had
lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the
point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money
that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246]
[Footnote 245: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp.
16, 17.]
[Footnote 246: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, appendix, lxii.]
At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean
de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a
fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine,
money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could
not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to
ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended,
nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248]
[Footnote 247: Du Chesne, _Genealogie de la maison de Vergy_, Paris,
1625, folio. _Nouvelle biographie generale_, vol. xlv, p. 1125.]
[Footnote 248: S. Luce, Domremy and Vaucouleurs, from 1412 to 1425, in
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, ch. iii.]
Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany
of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid
their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At
Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there
was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every
villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the
priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances
through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road,
searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see
the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of
men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which
in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people
to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of
danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to
cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle
between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250]
[Footnote 249: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 66.]
[Footnote 250: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 66. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a
Domremy_, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. 20.]
One day in the summer of 1425, there fell upon the villages of Greux
and Domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was
murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name Henri d'Orly,
known as Henri de Savoie. This time the island fortress was of no use
to the villagers. Lord Henri took all the cattle from the two villages
and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues[251] away to his _chateau_ of
Doulevant. He had also captured much furniture and other property; and
the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one
place; wherefore he had part of it carried to Dommartin-le-Franc, a
neighbouring village, where there was a _chateau_ with so large a
court in front that the place was called Dommartin-la-Cour. The
peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. Happily for them, at
the news of this pillage, Dame d'Ogiviller sent to the Count of
Vaudemont in his _chateau_ of Joinville, complaining to him, as her
kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of Greux and
Domremy. The _chateau_ of Doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty
of the Count of Vaudemont. As soon as he received his kinswoman's
message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to
recapture the cattle. This man-at-arms, by name Barthelemy de
Clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of
war. He found the stolen beasts in the _chateau_ of Dommartin-le-Franc,
took them and drove them to Joinville. On the way he was pursued and
attacked by Lord d'Orly's men and stood in great danger of death. But
so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at
Joinville, bringing the cattle, which the Count of Vaudemont caused to
be driven back to the pastures of Greux and Domremy.[252]
[Footnote 251: A league is two and a half English miles (W.S.).]
[Footnote 252: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. 275 _et seq._]
Unexpected good fortune! With tears the husbandman welcomed his
restored flocks and herds. But was he not likely to lose them for ever
on the morrow?
At that time Jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. War everywhere around
her, even in the children's play; the husband of one of her godmothers
taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german
Mengette killed by a mortar;[253] her native land overrun by
marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off;
nights of terror, dreams of horror,--such were the surroundings of her
childhood.
[Footnote 253: E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles
recherches_, pp. 4-15.]