Dame, _loc. cit._ _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 332. _Journal d'un
bourgeois de Paris_, p. 244. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354. Martial
d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, ed. Coustelier, vol. i, p. 113. Perceval de
Cagny, p. 166. _Chronique des cordeliers_, folio, 486 verso. Le P.
Ayroles, _La vrai Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii, p. 531.]
It was a great festival and a very ancient one. Its origin is
described in the following manner. There was a certain holy man, who
passed his life in meditation. On a day he called to mind that for
many years, on the 8th of September, he had heard marvellous angelic
music in the air, and he prayed to God to reveal to him the reason for
this concert of instruments and of celestial voices. He was vouchsafed
the answer that it was the anniversary of the birth of the glorious
Virgin Mary; and he received the command to instruct the faithful in
order that they on that solemn day might join their voices to the
angelic chorus. The matter was reported to the Sovereign Pontiff and
the other heads of the Church, who, after having prayed, fasted and
consulted the witnesses and traditions of the Church, decreed that
henceforth that day, the 8th of September, should be universally
consecrated to the celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary.[1762]
[Footnote 1762: Voragine, _Legenda Aurea_. Anquetil, _La nativite,
miracle extrait de la legende doree_, in _Mem. Soc. Agr. de Bayeux_,
1883, vol. x, p. 286. Douhet, _Dictionnaire des mysteres_, 1854, p.
545.]
That day were read at mass the words of the prophet Isaiah: "And there
shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall
grow out of his roots."
The people of Paris thought that even the Armagnacs would do no work
on so high a festival and would keep the third commandment.
On this Thursday, the 8th of September, about eight o'clock in the
morning, the Maid, the Dukes of Alencon and of Bourbon, the Marshals
of Boussac and of Rais, the Count of Vendome, the Lords of Laval, of
Albret and of Gaucourt, who with their men, to the number of ten
thousand and more, had encamped in the village of La Chapelle,
half-way along the road from Saint-Denys to Paris, set out on the
march. At the hour of high mass, between eleven and twelve o'clock,
they reached the height of Les Moulins, at the foot of which the Swine
Market was held.[1763] Here there was a gibbet. Fifty-six years
earlier, a woman of saintly life according to the people, but
according to the holy inquisitors, a heretic and _a Turlupine_, had
been burned alive on that very market-place.[1764]
[Footnote 1763: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 166, 168. _Chronique de la
Pucelle_, pp. 333, 334. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 107,
109. Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 456, 458. _Journal d'un
bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 244, 245. _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol.
486 verso. P. Cochon, ed. Beaurepaire, p. 307. Morosini, vol. iii, p.
210.]
[Footnote 1764: Gaguin, _Hist. Francorum_, Frankfort, 1577, book viii,
chap. ii, p. 158. Tanon, _Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en
France_, p. 121. Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Age,
vol. ii, p. 126. (The Turlupins were a German sect who called
themselves "the Brethren of the Free Spirit." W.S.)]
Wherefore did the King's men appear first before the northern walls,
those of Charles V, which were the strongest? It is impossible to
tell. A few days earlier they had thrown a bridge across the River
above Paris,[1765] which looks as if they intended to attack the old
fortification and get into the city from the University side. Did they
mean to carry out the two attacks simultaneously? It is probable. Did
they renounce the project of their own accord or against their will?
We cannot tell.
[Footnote 1765: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161. Vallet de Viriville,
_Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 120, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis,
_Un detail du siege de Paris, par Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Bibliotheque de
l'Ecole des Chartes_, vol. xlvi, 1885, pp. 5 _et seq._]
Beneath the walls of Charles V they assembled a quantity of artillery,
cannons, culverins, mortars; and in hand-carts they brought fagots to
fill up the trenches, hurdles to bridge them over and seven hundred
ladders: very elaborate material for the siege, despite their having,
as we shall see, forgotten what was most necessary.[1766] They came not
therefore to skirmish nor to do great feats of arms. They came to
attempt in broad daylight the escalading and the storming of the
greatest, the most illustrious, and the most populous town of the
realm; an undertaking of vast importance, proposed doubtless and
decided in the royal council and with the knowledge of the King, who
can have been neither indifferent nor hostile to it.[1767] Charles of
Valois wanted to retake Paris. It remains to be seen whether for the
accomplishment of his desire he depended merely on men-at-arms and
ladders.
[Footnote 1766: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, _loc. cit._
_Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 245. Falconbridge, in _Trial_,
vol. iv, p. 457.]
[Footnote 1767: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 240, 246, 298; vol. iii, pp. 425,
427; vol. v, pp. 97, 107, 130, 140.]
It would seem that the Maid had not been told of the resolutions
taken.[1768] She was never consulted and was seldom informed of what
had been decided. But she was as sure of entering the town that day as
of going to Paradise when she died. For more than three years her
Voices had been drumming the attack on Paris in her ears.[1769] But the
astonishing point is that, saint as she was, she should have consented
to arm and fight on the day of the Nativity. It was contrary to her
action on the 5th of May, Ascension Day, and inconsistent with what
she had said on the 8th of the same month: "As ye love and honour the
Sacred Sabbath do not begin the battle."[1770]
[Footnote 1768: _Ibid._, pp. 57, 146, 168, 250.]
[Footnote 1769: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 130 (letter of the 17th of July,
1429), vol. i, p. 298. "Et hoc sciebar per revelationem." Cf. vol. i,
pp. 57, 260, 288 in contradiction.]
[Footnote 1770: _Journal du siege_, p. 89.]
True it is that afterwards, at Montepilloy, she had engaged in a
skirmish on the Day of the Assumption, and thus scandalized the
masters of the University. She acted according to the counsel of her
Voices and her decisions depended on the vaguest murmurings in her
ear. Nothing is more inconstant and more contradictory than the
inspirations of such visionaries, who are but the playthings of their
dreams. What is certain at least is that Jeanne now as always was
convinced that she was doing right and committing no sin.[1771] Arrayed
on the height of Les Moulins, in front of Paris with its grey
fortifications, the French had immediately before them the outermost
of the trenches, dry and narrow, some sixteen or seventeen feet deep,
separated by a mound from the second trench, nearly one hundred feet
broad, deep and filled with water which lapped the walls of the city.
Quite close, on their right, the road to Roule led up to the Saint
Honore Gate, also called the Gate of the Blind because it was near the
Hospital of Les Quinze Vingts.[1772] It opened beneath a castlet
flanked by turrets, and for an advanced defence it had a bulwark
surrounded by wooden barriers, like those of Orleans.[1773]
[Footnote 1771: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 147, 148.]
[Footnote 1772: In 1254 Saint Louis founded this hospital for three
hundred blind knights whose eyes had been put out by the Saracens.
(W.S.)]
[Footnote 1773: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, _Paris et ses
historiens_, pp. 205 and 231, note 4. Adolphe Berty, _Topographie
historique du vieux Paris, region du Louvre et des Tuileries_, p. 180,
and app. vi, p. ix. E. Eude, _L'attaque de Jeanne d'Arc contre Paris,
1429_, in _Cosmos_, nouv. serie, xxix (1894), pp. 241, 244.]
The Parisians did not expect to be attacked on a feast day.[1774] And
yet the ramparts were by no means deserted, and on the walls standards
could be seen waving, and especially a great white banner with a Saint
Andrew's cross in silver gilt.[1775]
[Footnote 1774: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 246.]
[Footnote 1775: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp. 332, 333. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, p. 108.]
The French arrayed themselves slightly behind the Moulin hill, which
was to protect them from the stream of lead and stones beginning to be
discharged from the artillery on the ramparts. There they ranged their
mortars, their culverins and their cannon, ready to fire on the city
walls. In this position, which commanded the widest stretch of the
fortifications, was the main body of the army. Led by Messire de
Saint-Vallier a knight of Dauphine, several captains and men-at-arms
approached the Saint Honore Gate and set fire to the barriers. As the
garrison of the gate had withdrawn within the fortification, and as
the enemy was not seen to be coming out by any other exit, the
Marechal de Rais' company advanced with fagots, bundles and ladders
right up to the ramparts. The Maid rode at the head of her company.
They halted between the Saint-Denys and the Saint-Honore Gates, but
nearer the latter, and went down into the first trench, which was not
difficult to cross. But on the mound they found themselves exposed to
bolts and arrows which rained straight down from the walls.[1776] As at
Orleans, and at Les Tourelles, Jeanne had given her banner to a man of
valour to hold.
[Footnote 1776: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167.]
When she reached the top of the mound, she cried out to the folk in
Paris: "Surrender the town to the King of France."[1777]
[Footnote 1777: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 148.]
The Burgundians heard her saying also: "In Jesus' name surrender to us
speedily. For if ye yield not before nightfall, we shall enter by
force, whether ye will or no, and ye shall all be put to death without
mercy."[1778]
[Footnote 1778: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 245.]
On the mound she remained, sounding the great dyke with her lance and
marvelling to find it so full and so deep. And yet for eleven days she
and her men-at-arms had been reconnoitring round the walls and seeking
the most favourable point of attack. That she should not have known
how to plan an attack was quite natural. But what is to be thought of
the men-at-arms, who were there on the mound, taken by surprise, as
baffled as she, and all aghast at finding so much water close to the
Seine when the River was in flood? To be able to reconnoitre the
defences of a fortress was surely the _a b c_ of the trade of war.
Captains and soldiers of fortune never risked advancing against a
fortification without knowing first whether there were water, morass
or briars, and arming themselves accordingly with siege train suitable
to the occasion. When the water of the moat was deep they launched
leather boats carried on horses' backs.[1779] The men-at-arms of the
Marechal de Rais and my Lord of Alencon were more ignorant than the
meanest adventurers. What would the doughty La Hire have thought of
them? Such gross ineptitude and ignorance appeared so incredible that
it was supposed that those fighting men knew the depth of the moat but
concealed it from the Maid, desiring her discomfiture.[1780] In such a
case, while entrapping the damsel they were themselves entrapped, for
there they stayed moving neither backwards nor forwards.
[Footnote 1779: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, p. 67.]
[Footnote 1780: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 333. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, p. 109. _Journal du siege_, p. 127. Martial
d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, ed. Coustelier, 1724, vol. i, p. 113.]
Certain among them idly threw fagots into the moat. Meanwhile the
defenders assailed by flights of arrows, disappeared one after the
other.[1781] But towards four o'clock in the afternoon, the citizens
arrived in crowds. The cannon of the Saint-Denys Gate thundered.
Arrows and abuse flew between those above and those below. The hours
passed, the sun was sinking. The Maid never ceased sounding the moat
with the staff of her lance and crying out to the Parisians to
surrender.
[Footnote 1781: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp.
355, 356. Morosini, vol. iii, note 3. E. Eude, _L'attaque de Jeanne
d'Arc contre Paris_, in _Cosmos_, 22 Sept., 1894, vol. xxix. P. Marin,
_Le genie militaire de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Grande revue de Paris et de
Saint-Petersbourg_, 2nd year, vol. i, 1889, p. 142.]
"There, wanton! There, minx!" cried a Burgundian.
And planting his cross-bow in the ground with his foot, he shot an
arrow which split one of her greaves and wounded her in the thigh.
Another Burgundian took aim at the Maid's standard-bearer and wounded
him in the foot. The wounded man raised his visor to see whence the
arrow came and straightway received another between the eyes. The Maid
and the Duke of Alencon sorely regretted the loss of this
man-at-arms.[1782]
[Footnote 1782: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 57, 246. _Journal d'un bourgeois
de Paris_, p. 245. Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, _loc.
cit._ Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 457. Perceval de Cagny,
Jean Chartier, _Journal du siege_, Monstrelet, Morosini, _loc. cit._]
After she had been wounded, Jeanne cried all the more loudly that the
walls must be reached and the city taken. She was placed out of reach
of the arrows in the shelter of a breast-work. There she urged the
men-at-arms to throw fagots into the water and make a bridge. About
ten or eleven o'clock in the evening, the Sire de la Tremouille
charged the combatants to retreat. The Maid would not leave the place.
She was doubtless listening to her Saints and beholding celestial
hosts around her. The Duke of Alencon sent for her. The aged Sire de
Gaucourt[1783] carried her off with the aid of a captain of Picardy,
one Guichard Bournel, who did not please her on that day, and who by
his treachery six months later, was to please her still less.[1784] Had
she not been wounded she would have resisted more strongly.[1785] She
yielded regretfully, saying: "In God's name! the city might have been
taken."[1786]
[Footnote 1783: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 298.]
[Footnote 1784: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 111, 273. Berry, in _Trial_, vol.
iv, p. 50. F. Brun, _Jeanne d Arc et le capitaine de Soissons_, pp. 31
_et seq._]
[Footnote 1785: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 57.]
[Footnote 1786: The oath "_Par mon martin_" (by my staff) is an
invention of the scribe who wrote the _Chronicle_ which is attributed
to Perceval de Cagny, p. 168.]
They put her on horseback; and thus she was able to follow the army.
The rumour ran that she had been shot in both thighs; in sooth her
wound was but slight.[1787]
[Footnote 1787: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 334. _Journal du siege_,
p. 128. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 109. Monstrelet, vol.
iv, pp. 355, 356.]
The French returned to La Chapelle, whence they had set out in the
morning. They carried their wounded on some of the carts which they
had used for the transport of fagots and ladders. In the hands of the
enemy they left three hundred hand-carts, six hundred and sixty
ladders, four thousand hurdles and large fagots, of which they had
used but a small number.[1788] Their retreat must have been somewhat
hurried, seeing that, when they came to the Barn of Les Mathurins,
near The Swine Market, they forsook their baggage and set fire to it.
With horror it was related that, like pagans of Rome, they had cast
their dead into the flames.[1789] Nevertheless the Parisians dared not
pursue them. In those days men-at-arms who knew their trade never
retreated without laying some snare for the enemy. Consequently the
King's men posted a considerable company in ambush by the roadside, to
lie in wait for the light troops who should come in pursuit of the
retreating army.[1790] It was precisely such an ambuscade that the
Parisians feared; wherefore they permitted the Armagnacs to regain
their camp at La Chapelle-Saint-Denys unmolested.[1791]
[Footnote 1788: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 1789: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 245.]
[Footnote 1790: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, p. 142.]
[Footnote 1791: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 245, 246.]
If we regard only the military tactics of the day, there is no doubt
that the French had blundered and had lacked energy. But it was not on
military tactics that the greatest reliance had been placed. Those who
conducted the war, the King and his council, certainly expected to
enter Paris that day. But how? As they had entered Chalons, as they
had entered Reims, as they had entered all the King's good towns from
Troyes to Compiegne. King Charles had shown himself determined to
recover his towns by means of the townsfolk; towards Paris he acted as
he had acted towards his other towns.
During the coronation march, he had entered into communication with
the bishops and burgesses of the cities of Champagne; and like
communications he had entered into in Paris.[1792] He had dealings with
the monks and notably with the Carmelites of Melun, whose Prior,
Brother Pierre d'Allee, was working in his interest.[1793] For some
time paid agents had been watching for an opportunity of throwing the
city into disorder and of bringing in the enemy in a moment of panic
and confusion. During the assault they were working for him in the
streets. In the afternoon, on both sides of the bridges, were heard
cries of "Let every man look to his own safety! The enemy has entered!
All is lost!" Such of the citizens as were listening to the sermon
hastened to shut themselves in their houses. And others who were out
of doors sought refuge in the churches. But the tumult was quelled.
Wise men, like the clerk of the Parlement, believed that it was but a
feigned attack, and that Charles of Valois looked to recover the town
not so much by force of arms as by a movement of the populace.[1794]
[Footnote 1792: For the opinions of the townsfolk of Paris, see various
acts of Henry VI of the 18th and 25th of Sept., 1429 (MS. Fontanieu,
115). Sauval, _Antiquites de Paris_, vol. iii, p. 586 and _circ._]
[Footnote 1793: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p.
302.]
[Footnote 1794: Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 456, 458.]
Certain monks who were acting in Paris as the King's spies, went out
to him at Saint-Denys and informed him that the attempt had failed.
According to them it had very nearly succeeded.[1795]
[Footnote 1795: _Relation du greffier de La Rochelle_, p. 344.]
The Sire de la Tremouille is said to have commanded the retreat, for
fear of a massacre. Indeed, once the French had entered they were
quite capable of slaughtering the townsfolk and razing the city to the
ground.[1796]
[Footnote 1796: _Chronique de Normandie_, in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 342,
343.]
On the morrow, Friday the 9th, the Maid, rising with the dawn, despite
her wound, asked the Duke of Alencon to have the call to arms sounded;
for she was strongly determined to return to the walls of Paris,
swearing not to leave them until the city should be taken.[1797]
Meanwhile the French captains sent a herald to Paris, charged to ask
for a safe conduct for the removing of the bodies of the dead left
behind in great numbers.[1798]
[Footnote 1797: Perceval de Cagny, p. 168.]
[Footnote 1798: _Ibid._ _Chronique normande_, in _La chronique de la
Pucelle_, p. 465. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, p. 120, note 1.]
Notwithstanding that they had suffered cruel hurt, after a retreat
unmolested it is true, but none the less disastrous and involving the
loss of all their siege train, several of the leaders were, like the
Maid, inclined to attempt a new assault. Others would not hear of it.
While they were disputing, they beheld a baron coming towards them and
with him fifty nobles; it was the Sire de Montmorency, the first
Christian peer of France, that is the first among the ancient vassals
of the bishop of Paris. He was transferring his allegiance from the
Cross of St. Andrew to the Flowers-de-luce.[1799] His coming filled the
King's men with courage and a desire to return to the city. The army
was on its way back, when the Count of Clermont and the Duke of Bar
were sent to arrest the march by order of the King, and to take the
Maid back to Saint-Denys.[1800]
[Footnote 1799: Duchesne, _Histoire de la maison de Montmorency_, p.
232. Perceval de Cagny, p. 168. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de
Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 118, 119.]
[Footnote 1800: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _Un detail du siege de Paris_, in
_Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, vol. xlvi, 1885, p. 12.]
On Saturday the 10th, at daybreak, the Duke of Alencon, with a few
knights, appeared on the bank above the city, where a bridge had been
thrown over the Seine some days earlier. The Maid, always eager for
danger, accompanied the venturesome warriors. But the night before,
the King had prudently caused the bridge to be taken down, and the
little band had to retrace its steps.[1801] It was not that the King
had renounced the idea of taking Paris. He was thinking more than ever
of the recovery of his great town; but he intended to regain it
without an assault, by means of the compliance of certain burgesses.
[Footnote 1801: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 168, 169. Morosini, vol. iii, p.
219, note 4. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii,
p. 120, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _Un detail du siege de Paris_,
_loc. cit._]
At this same place of Saint-Denys there happened to Jeanne a
misadventure, which would seem to have impressed her comrades and
possibly to have lessened their faith in her good luck in war. As was
customary, women of ill-fame followed the army in great numbers; each
man had his own; they were called _amietes_.[1802] Jeanne could not
tolerate them because they caused disorder, but more especially
because their sinful lives filled her with horror. At that very time,
stories like the following were circulated far and wide, and spread
even into Germany.
[Footnote 1802: Diminutive of _amie_ (W.S.).]
There was a certain man in the camp, who had with him his _amiete_.
She rode in armour in order not to be recognised. Now the Maid said to
the nobles and captains: "There is a woman with our men." They replied
that they knew of none. Whereupon the Maid assembled the army, and,
approaching the woman said: "This is she."
Then addressing the wench: "Thou art of Gien and thou art big with
child. Were it not so I would put thee to death. Thou hast already let
one child die and thou shalt not do the same for this one."
When the Maid had thus spoken, servants took the wench and conveyed
her to her own home. There they kept her under watch and ward until
she was delivered of her child. And she confessed that what the Maid
had said was true.
After which, the Maid again said: "There are women in the camp."
Whereupon two wantons, who did not belong to the army, and had already
been dismissed from it, hearing these words, rode off on horseback.
But the Maid hastened after them crying: "Ye foolish women, I have
forbidden you to come into my company." And she drew her sword and
struck one of them on the head, so sore that she died.[1803]
[Footnote 1803: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 184, 186.]
The tale was true; Jeanne could not suffer these wenches. Every time
she met one she gave chase to her. This was precisely what she did at
Gien, when she saw women of ill-fame awaiting the King's men.[1804] At
Chateau-Thierry, she espied an _amiete_ riding behind a man-at-arms,
and, running after her, sword in hand, she came up with her, and
without striking, bade her henceforth avoid the society of
men-at-arms. "If thou wilt not," she added, "I shall do thee
hurt."[1805]
[Footnote 1804: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 90.]
[Footnote 1805: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 73.]
At Saint-Denys, being accompanied by the Duke of Alencon, Jeanne
pursued another of these wantons. This time she was not content with
remonstrances and threats. She broke her sword over her.[1806] Was it
Saint Catherine's sword? So it was believed, and doubtless not without
reason.[1807] In those days men's minds were full of the romantic
stories of Joyeuse and Durandal. It would appear that Jeanne, when she
lost her sword, lost her power. A slight variation of the story was
told afterwards, and it was related how the King, when he was
acquainted with the matter of the broken sword, was displeased and
said to the Maid: "You should have taken a stick to strike withal and
should not have risked the sword you received from divine hands."[1808]
It was told likewise how the sword had been given to an armourer for
him to join the pieces together, and that he could not, wherein lay a
proof that the sword was enchanted.[1809]
[Footnote 1806: _Ibid._, p. 99.]
[Footnote 1807: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 76.]
[Footnote 1808: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 90.]
[Footnote 1809: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 122, 123.]
Before his departure, the King appointed the Count of Clermont
commander of the district with several lieutenants: the Lords of
Culant, Boussac, Lore, and Foucault. He constituted joint
lieutenants-general the Counts of Clermont and of Vendome, the lords
Regnault de Chartres, Christophe d'Harcourt and Jean Tudert. Regnault
de Chartres established himself in the town of Senlis, the
lieutenant's headquarters. Having thus disposed, the King quitted
Saint-Denys on the 13th of September.[1810] The Maid followed him
against her will notwithstanding that she had the permission of her
Voices to do so.[1811] She offered her armour to the image of Our Lady
and to the precious body of Saint Denys.[1812] This armour was white,
that is to say devoid of armorial bearings.[1813] She was thus
following the custom of men-at-arms, who, after they had received a
wound, if they did not die of it, offered their armour to Our Lady and
the Saints as a token of thanksgiving. Wherefore, in those warlike
days, chapels, like that of Notre-Dame de Fierbois, often presented
the appearance of arsenals. To her armour the Maid added a sword which
she had won before Paris.[1814]
[Footnote 1810: Perceval de Cagny, p. 169. _Chronique de la Pucelle_,
pp. 335 _et seq._ Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 112 _et
seq._ Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 356. _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_,
p. 246. Berry in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 48. Gilles de Roye, p. 208.]
[Footnote 1811: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 260.]
[Footnote 1812: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 109. Perceval de
Cagny, p. 170. Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, vol. i, p. 114. Jacques
Doublet, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys_, pp. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 1813: La Curne, at the word _Blanc_: white armour was worn by
squires, gilded armour by knights. Bouteiller, in his _Somme Rurale_,
refers to the "_harnais dore_" (gilded armour) of the knights. Cf. Du
Tillet, _Recueil des rois de France_, ch. _Des chevaliers_, p. 431. Du
Cange, _Observations sur les etablissements de la France_, p. 373.]
[Footnote 1814: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 179.]
CHAPTER IV
THE TAKING OF SAINT-PIERRE-LE-MOUSTIER--FRIAR RICHARD'S SPIRITUAL
DAUGHTERS--THE SIEGE OF LA CHARITE
The King slept at Lagny-sur-Marne on the 14th of September, then
crossed the Seine at Bray, forded the Yonne near Sens and went on
through Courtenay, Chateaurenard and Montargis. On the 21st of
September he reached Gien. There he disbanded the army he could no
longer pay, and each man went to his own home. The Duke of Alencon
withdrew into his viscounty of Beaumont-sur-Oise.[1815]
[Footnote 1815: _Journal du siege_, p. 130. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170,
171. _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 246, 247. Berry, in
_Trial_, vol. iv, p. 79. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 219.]
Learning that the Queen was coming to meet the King, Jeanne went
before her and greeted her at Selles-en-Berry.[1816] She was afterwards
taken to Bourges, where my Lord d'Albret, half-brother of the Sire de
la Tremouille, lodged her with Messire Regnier de Bouligny. Regnier
was then Receiver General. He had been one of those whose dismissal
the University had requested in 1408, as being worse than useless,
for they held him responsible for many of the disorders in the
kingdom. He had entered the Dauphin's service, passed from the
administration of the royal domain to that of taxes and attained the
highest rank in the control of the finances.[1817] His wife, who had
accompanied the Queen to Selles, beheld the Maid and wondered. Jeanne
seemed to her a creature sent by God for the relief of the King and
those of France who were loyal to him. She remembered the days not so
very long ago when she had seen the Dauphin and her Husband not
knowing where to turn for money. Her name was Marguerite La Touroulde;
she was damiselle, not dame; a comfortable _bourgeoise_ and that was
all.[1818]
[Footnote 1816: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 86. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de
Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 265. P. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, _Jeanne
d'Arc en Berry, avec des documents et des eclaircissements inedits_,
Paris, 1892, in 12mo, chap. vi.]
[Footnote 1817: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 85, note 1. De Beaucourt,
_Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, p. 418, note 7.]
[Footnote 1818: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 85.]
Three weeks Jeanne sojourned in the Receiver General's house. She
slept there, drank there, ate there. Nearly every night, Damiselle
Marguerite La Touroulde slept with her; the etiquette of those days
required it. No night-gowns were worn; folk slept naked in those vast
beds. It would seem that Jeanne disliked sleeping with old women.[1819]
Damiselle La Touroulde, although not so very old, was of matronly
age;[1820] she had moreover a matron's experience, and further she
claimed, as we shall see directly, to know more than most matrons
knew. Several times she took Jeanne to the bath and to the
sweating-room.[1821] That also was one of the rules of etiquette; a
host was not considered to be making his guests good cheer unless he
took them to the bath. In this point of courtesy princes set an
example; when the King and Queen supped in the house of one of their
retainers or ministers, fine baths richly ornamented were prepared for
them before they came to table.[1822] Mistress Marguerite doubtless did
not possess what was necessary in her own house; wherefore she took
Jeanne out to the bath and the sweating-room. Such are her own
expressions; and they probably indicate a vapour bath[1823] not a bath
of hot water.
[Footnote 1819: _Ibid._, pp. 81, 86.]
[Footnote 1820: Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, _Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, pp.
72, 73.]
[Footnote 1821: "_In balneo et stuphis._" _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 88.]
[Footnote 1822: _L'amant rendu cordelier a l'observance d'amour_; poem
attributed to Martial d'Auvergne, A. de Montaiglon, Paris, 1881, in
8vo, lines 1761-1776 and note p. 184. A. Franklin, _La vie privee
d'autrefois_, vol. ii, _Les soins de la toilette_, Paris, 1887, in
18mo, pp. 20 _et seq._ A. Lecoy de la Marche, _Le bain au moyen age_,
in _Revue du monde catholique_, vol. xiv, pp. 870-881.]
[Footnote 1823: _Livre des metiers_, by Etienne Boileau, edited by De
Lespinasse and F. Bonnardot, Paris, 1879, pp. 154, 155, and note. G.
Bayle, _Notes pour servir a l'histoire de la prostitution au moyen
age_, in _Memoires de l'Academie de Vauctuse_, 1887, pp. 241, 242. Dr.
P. Pansier, _Histoire des pretendus statuts de la reine Jeanne_, in
_Le Janus_, 1902, p. 14.]
At Bourges the sweating-rooms were in the Auron quarter, in the lower
town, near the river.[1824] Jeanne was strictly devout, but she did not
observe conventual rule; she, like chaste Suzannah therefore, might
permit herself to bathe and she must have had great need to do so
after having slept on straw.[1825] What is more remarkable is that,
after having seen Jeanne in the bath, Mistress Marguerite judged her a
virgin according to all appearances.[1826]
[Footnote 1824: Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, _Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, pp.
76, 77.]
[Footnote 1825: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 100.]
[Footnote 1826: _Ibid._, p. 88.]
In Messire Regnier de Bouligny's house and likewise wherever she
lodged, she led the life of a _beguine_ but did not practise
excessive austerity. She confessed frequently. Many a time she asked
her hostess to come with her to matins. In the cathedral and in
collegiate churches there were matins every day, between four and six,
at the hour of sunset. The two women often talked together; the
Receiver General's wife found Jeanne very simple and very ignorant.
She was amazed to discover that the maiden knew absolutely
nothing.[1827]
[Footnote 1827: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 87. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny,
_Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, pp. 73, 74.]
Among other matters, Jeanne told of her visit to the old Duke of
Lorraine, and how she had rebuked him for his evil life; she spoke
likewise of the interrogatory to which the doctors of Poitiers had
subjected her.[1828] She was persuaded that these clerks had questioned
her with extreme severity, and she firmly believed that she had
triumphed over their ill-will. Alas! she was soon to know clerks even
less accommodating.
[Footnote 1828: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 86, 87.]
Mistress Marguerite said to her one day: "If you are not afraid when
you fight, it is because you know you will not be killed." Whereupon
Jeanne answered: "I am no surer of that than are the other
combatants."
Oftentimes women came to the Bouligny house, bringing paternosters and
other trifling objects of devotion for the Maid to touch.
Jeanne used to say laughingly to her hostess: "Touch them yourself.
Your touch will do them as much good as mine."[1829]
[Footnote 1829: _Ibid._, pp. 86, 88.]
This ready repartee must have shown Mistress Marguerite that Jeanne,
ignorant as she may have been, was none the less capable of
displaying a good grace and common sense in her conversation.
While in many matters this good woman found the Maid but a simple
creature, in military affairs she deemed her an expert. Whether, when
she judged the saintly damsel's skill in wielding arms, she was giving
her own opinion or merely speaking from hearsay, as would seem
probable, she at any rate declared later that Jeanne rode a horse and
handled a lance as well as the best of knights and so well that the
army marvelled.[1830] Indeed most captains in those days could do no
better.
[Footnote 1830: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 88.]
Probably there were dice and dice-boxes in the Bouligny house,
otherwise Jeanne would have had no opportunity of displaying that
horror of gaming which struck her hostess. On this matter Jeanne
agreed with her comrade, Friar Richard, and indeed with everyone else
of good life and good doctrine.[1831]
[Footnote 1831: _Ibid._, p. 87.]
What money she had Jeanne distributed in alms. "I am come to succour
the poor and needy," she used to say.[1832]
[Footnote 1832: _Ibid._, pp. 87, 88.]
When the multitude heard such words they were led to believe that this
Maid of God had been raised up for something more than the
glorification of the Lilies, and that she was come to dispel such ills
as murder, pillage and other sins grievous to God, from which the
realm was suffering. Mystic souls looked to her for the reform of the
Church and the reign of Jesus Christ on earth. She was invoked as a
saint, and throughout the loyal provinces were to be seen carved and
painted images of her which were worshipped by the faithful. Thus,
even during her lifetime, she enjoyed certain of the privileges of
beatification.[1833]
[Footnote 1833: Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc_,
in _Annuaire bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France_, Paris,
1907, in 8vo, pp. 8 and 18 (separate issue).]
North of the Seine meanwhile, English and Burgundians were at their
old work. The Duke of Vendome and his company fell back on Senlis, the
English descended on the town of Saint-Denys and sacked it once more.
In the Abbey Church they found and carried off the Maid's armour,
thus, according to the French clergy, committing undeniable sacrilege
and for this reason: because they gave the monks of the Abbey nothing
in exchange.
The King was then at Mehun-sur-Yevre, quite close to Bourges, in one
of the finest chateaux in the world, rising on a rock and overlooking
the town. The late Duke Jean of Berry, a great builder, had erected
this chateau with the care that he never failed to exercise in matters
of art. Mehun was King Charles's favourite abode.[1834]
[Footnote 1834: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 217. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de
Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 265. A. Buhot de Kersers, _Histoire et
statistique du departement du Cher, canton de Mehun_, Bourges, 1891,
in 4to, pp. 261 _et seq._ A. de Champeaux and P. Gauchery, _Les
travaux d'art executes pour Jean de France, duc de Berry_, Paris,
1894, in 4to, pp. 7, 9, and the miniature in _Les grandes heures_ of
Duke Jean of Berry at Chantilly.]
The Duke of Alencon, eager to reconquer his duchy, was waiting for
troops to accompany him into Normandy, across the marches of Brittany
and Maine. He sent to the King to know if it were his good pleasure to
grant him the Maid. "Many there be," said the Duke, "who would
willingly come with her, while without her they will not stir from
their homes." Her discomfiture before Paris had not, therefore,
entirely ruined her prestige. The Sire de la Tremouille opposed her
being sent to the Duke of Alencon, whom he mistrusted, and not without
cause. He gave her into the care of his half-brother, the Sire
d'Albret, Lieutenant of the King in his own country of Berry.[1835]
[Footnote 1835: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170, 171. Berry, in _Trial_,
vol. iv, p. 48. Letter from the Sire d'Albret to the people of Riom,
in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 148, 149. Martin Le Franc, _Champion des
dames_, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 71.]
The Royal Council deemed it necessary to recover La Charite, left in
the hands of Perrinet Gressart at the time of the coronation campaign;[1836]
but it was decided first to attack Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier, which
commanded the approaches to Bec-d'Allier.[1837] The garrison of this
little town was composed of English and Burgundians, who were
constantly plundering the villages and laying waste the fields of
Berry and Bourbonnais. The army for this expedition assembled at
Bourges. It was commanded by my Lord d'Albret,[1838] but popular report
attributed the command to Jeanne. The common folk, the burgesses of
the towns, especially the citizens of Orleans knew no other commander.
[Footnote 1836: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 310. _Journal du siege_,
p. 107. Morosini, vol. ii, p. 229, note 4. Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]
[Footnote 1837: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 217. Jaladon de la Barre, _Jeanne
d'Arc a Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier et deux juges nivernais a Rouen_,
Nevers, 1868, in 8vo, chaps. ix _et seq._]
[Footnote 1838: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 356. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny,
_Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, p. 89.]
After two or three days' siege, the King's men stormed the town. But
they were repulsed. Squire Jean d'Aulon, the Maid's steward, who some
time before had been wounded in the heel and consequently walked on
crutches, had retreated with the rest.[1839] He went back and found
Jeanne who had stayed almost alone by the side of the moat. Fearing
lest harm should come to her, he leapt on to his horse, spurred
towards her and cried: "What are you doing, all alone? Wherefore do
you not retreat like the others?"
[Footnote 1839: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 217.]
Jeanne doffed her sallet and replied: "I am not alone. With me are
fifty thousand of my folk. I will not quit this spot till I have taken
the town."
Casting his eyes around, Messire Jean d'Aulon saw the Maid surrounded
by but four or five men.
More loudly he cried out to her: "Depart hence and retreat like the
others."
Her only reply was a request for fagots and hurdles to fill up the
moat. And straightway in a loud voice she called: "To the fagots and
the hurdles all of ye, and make a bridge!"
The men-at-arms rushed to the spot, the bridge was constructed
forthwith and the town taken by storm with no great difficulty. At any
rate that is how the good Squire, Jean d'Aulon, told the story.[1840]
He was almost persuaded that the Maid's fifty thousand shadows had
taken Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier.
[Footnote 1840: _Ibid._, p. 218.]
With the little army on the Loire at that time were certain holy women
who like Jeanne led a singular life and held communion with the Church
Triumphant. They constituted, so to speak, a kind of flying squadron
of _beguines_, which followed the men-at-arms. One of these women was
called Catherine de La Rochelle; two others came from Lower
Brittany.[1841]
[Footnote 1841: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 106. _Journal d'un bourgeois de
Paris_, pp. 259, 260, 271, 272. Nider, _Formicarium_, in _Trial_, vol.
iv, pp. 503, 504. J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, pp. 74 _et seq._
N. Quellien, _Perrinaic, une compagne de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1891,
in 8vo. Mme. Pascal-Estienne, _Perrinaik_, Paris, 1893, in 8vo. J.
Trevedy, _Histoire du roman de Perrinaic_, Saint-Brieuc, 1894, in 8vo.
_Le roman de Perrinaic_, Vannes, 1894, in 8vo. A. de la Borderie,
_Pierronne et Perrinaic_, Paris, 1894, in 8vo.]
They all had miraculous visions; Jeanne saw my Lord Saint Michael in
arms and Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret wearing crowns;[1842]
Pierronne beheld God in a long white robe and a purple cloak;[1843]
Catherine de La Rochelle saw a white lady, clothed in cloth of gold;
and, at the moment of the consecration of the host all manner of
marvels of the high mystery of Our Lord were revealed unto her.[1844]
[Footnote 1842: _Trial_, vol. v, index at the words _Catherine_,
_Michel_, _Marguerite_.]
[Footnote 1843: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 106.]
[Footnote 1844: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 271, 272.]
Jean Pasquerel was still with Jeanne in the capacity of chaplain.[1845]
He hoped to take his penitent to fight in the Crusade against the
Hussites, for it was against these heretics that he felt most
bitterly. But he had been entirely supplanted by the Franciscan, Friar
Richard, who, after Troyes, had joined the mendicants of Jeanne's
earlier days. Friar Richard dominated this little band of the
illuminated. He was called their good Father. He it was who instructed
them.[1846] His designs for these women did not greatly differ from
those of Jean Pasquerel: he intended to conduct them to those wars of
the Cross, which he thought were bound to precede the impending end of
the world.[1847]
[Footnote 1845: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 104 _et seq._]
[Footnote 1846: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 450. _Journal d'un bourgeois de
Paris_, pp. 271, 272.]
[Footnote 1847: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 235.]
Meanwhile, it was his endeavour to foster a good understanding
between them, which, eloquent preacher though he was, he found very
difficult. Within the sisterhood there were constant suspicions and
disputes. Jeanne had been on friendly terms with Catherine de la
Rochelle at Montfaucon in Brie and at Jargeau; but now she began to
suspect her of being a rival, and immediately she assumed an attitude
of mistrust.[1848] Possibly she was right. At any moment either
Catherine or the Breton women might be made use of as she had
been.[1849] In those days a prophetess was useful in so many ways: in
the edification of the people, the reformation of the Church, the
leading of men-at-arms, the circulation of money, in war, in peace; no
sooner did one appear than each party tried to get hold of her. It
seems as if, after having employed the Maid Jeanne to deliver Orleans,
the King's Councillors were now thinking of employing Dame Catherine
to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy. Such a task was deemed
fitting for a saint less chivalrous than Jeanne. Catherine was married
and the mother of a family. In this circumstance there need be no
cause for astonishment; for if the gift of prophecy be more especially
reserved for virgins, the example of Judith proves that the Lord may
raise up strong matrons for the serving of his people.
[Footnote 1848: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 106.]
[Footnote 1849: _Ibid._, p. 107.]
If we believe that, as her surname indicates, she came from La
Rochelle, her origin must have inspired the Armagnacs with confidence.
The inhabitants of La Rochelle, all pirates more or less, were too
profitably engaged in preying upon English vessels to forsake the
Dauphin's party. Moreover, he rewarded their loyalty by granting them
valuable commercial privileges.[1850] They had sent gifts of money to
the people of Orleans; and when, in the month of May, they learned the
deliverance of Duke Charles's city, they instituted a public festival
to commemorate so happy an event.
[Footnote 1850: Arcere, _Histoire de La Rochelle_, 1756, in 4to, vol.
i, p. 271. _Trial_, vol. v, p. 104, note. Vallet de Viriville,
_Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 24, 75 _et seq._, 219, 279.]
The first duty of a saint in the army, it would appear, was to collect
money. Jeanne was always sending letters asking the good towns for
money or for munitions of war; the burgesses always promised to grant
her request and sometimes they kept their promise. Catherine de la
Rochelle appears to have had special revelations concerning the funds
of the party; her mission, therefore, was financial, while Jeanne's
was martial. She announced that she was going to the Duke of Burgundy
to conclude peace.[1851] If one may judge from the little that is known
of her, the inspirations of this holy dame were not very elevated, not
very orderly, not very profound.
[Footnote 1851: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 107, 108.]
Meeting Jeanne at Montfaucon in Berry (or at Jargeau) she addressed
her thus:
"There came unto me a white lady, attired in cloth of gold, who said
to me: 'Go thou through the good towns and let the King give unto thee
heralds and trumpets to cry: "Whosoever has gold, silver or hidden
treasure, let him bring it forth instantly."'"
Dame Catherine added: "Such as have hidden treasure and do not thus, I
shall know their treasure, and I shall go and find it."
She deemed it necessary to fight against the English and seemed to
believe that Jeanne's mission was to drive them out of the land, since
she obligingly offered her the whole of her miraculous takings.
"Wherewithal to pay your men-at-arms," she said. But the Maid answered
disdainfully:
"Go back to your husband, look after your household, and feed your
children."[1852]
[Footnote 1852: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 107.]
Disputes between saints are usually bitter. In her rival's missions
Jeanne refused to see anything but folly and futility. Nevertheless it
was not for her to deny the possibility of the white lady's
visitations; for to Jeanne herself did there not descend every day as
many saints, angels and archangels as were ever painted on the pages
of books or the walls of monasteries? In order to make up her mind on
the subject, she adopted the most effectual measures. A learned doctor
may reason concerning matter and substance, the origin and the form of
ideas, the dawn of impressions in the intellect, but a shepherdess
will resort to a surer method; she will appeal to her own eyesight.
Jeanne asked Catherine if the white lady came every night, and
learning that she did: "I will sleep with you," she said.
When night came, she went to bed with Catherine, watched till
midnight, saw nothing and fell asleep, for she was young, and she had
great need of sleep. In the morning, when she awoke, she asked: "Did
she come?"
"She did," replied Catherine; "you were asleep, so I did not like to
wake you."
"Will she not come to-morrow?"
Catherine assured her that she would come without fail.
This time Jeanne slept in the day in order that she might keep awake
at night; so she lay down at night in the bed with Catherine and kept
her eyes open. Often she asked: "Will she not come?"
And Catherine replied: "Yes, directly."
But Jeanne saw nothing.[1853] She held the test to be a good one.
Nevertheless she could not get the white lady attired in cloth of gold
out of her head. When Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret came to her,
as they delayed not to do, she spoke to them concerning this white
lady and asked them what she was to think of her. The reply was such
as Jeanne expected:
"This Catherine," they said, "is naught but futility and folly."[1854]
[Footnote 1853: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 108, 109.]
[Footnote 1854: _Ibid._, p. 107.]
Then was Jeanne constrained to cry: "That is just what I thought."
The strife between these two prophetesses was brief but bitter. Jeanne
always maintained the opposite of what Catherine said. When the latter
was going to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne said to her:
"Me seemeth that you will never find peace save at the lance's
point."[1855]
[Footnote 1855: _Ibid._, p. 108.]
There was one matter at any rate wherein the White Lady proved a
better prophetess than the Maid's Council, to wit, the siege of La
Charite. When Jeanne wished to go and deliver that town, Catherine
tried to dissuade her.
"It is too cold," she said; "I would not go."[1856]
[Footnote 1856: _Ibid._]
Catherine's reason was not a high one; and yet it is true Jeanne would
have done better not to go to the siege of La Charite.
Taken from the Duke of Burgundy by the Dauphin in 1422, La Charite had
been retaken in 1424, by Perrinet Gressart,[1857] a successful
captain, who had risen from the rank of mason's apprentice to that of
pantler to the Duke of Burgundy and had been created Lord of Laigny by
the King of England.[1858] On the 30th of December, 1425, Perrinet's
men arrested the Sire de La Tremouille, when he was on his way to the
Duke of Burgundy, having been appointed ambassador in one of those
eternal negotiations, forever in process between the King and the
Duke. He was for several months kept a prisoner in the fortress which
his captor commanded. He must needs pay a ransom of fourteen thousand
golden crowns; and, albeit he took this sum from the royal
treasury,[1859] he never ceased to bear Perrinet a grudge. Wherefore it
may be concluded that when he sent men-at-arms to La Charite it was in
good sooth to capture the town and not with any evil design against
the Maid.
[Footnote 1857: "Perrinet Crasset, mason and captain of men-at-arms."
_Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 446 verso. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, p. 117. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 174. Vallet de
Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, p. 328.]
[Footnote 1858: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. cclxxviii. A. de
Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais_, p. 109. Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie
Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii, pp. 20, 21, 373 _et seq._ J. de Freminville,
_Les ecorcheurs en Bourgogne_ (1435-1445); _Etude sur les compagnies
franches au XV'e siecle_, Dijon, 1888, in 8vo. P. Champion,
_Guillaume de Flavy_. Proofs and illustrations, xxx.]
[Footnote 1859: Sainte-Marthe, _Histoire genealogique de la maison de
la Tremoille_, 1668, in 12mo, pp. 149 _et seq._ L. de La Tremoille,
_Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles_, Nantes, 1890, vol. i, p.
165.]
The army despatched against this Burgundian captain and this great
plunder of pilgrims was composed of no mean folk. Its leaders were
Louis of Bourbon, Count of Montpensier, and Charles II, Sire d'Albret,
La Tremouille's half-brother and Jeanne's companion in arms during the
coronation campaign. The army was doubtless but scantily supplied
with stores and with money.[1860] That was the normal condition of
armies in those days. When the King wanted to attack a stronghold of
the enemy, he must needs apply to his good towns for the necessary
material. The Maid, at once saint and warrior, could beg for arms with
a good grace; but possibly she overrated the resources of the towns
which had already given so much.
[Footnote 1860: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 149. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_,
vol. iii. _Journal du siege_, p. 129. Monstrelet, vol. v, chap, lxxii.
A. de Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais_, p. 108.]
On the 7th of November, she and my Lord d'Alencon signed a letter
asking the folk of Clermont in Auvergne for powder, arrows and
artillery. Churchmen, magistrates, and townsfolk sent two
hundredweight of saltpetre, one hundredweight of sulphur, two cases of
arrows; to these they added a sword, two poniards and a battle-axe for
the Maid; and they charged Messire Robert Andrieu to present this
contribution to Jeanne and to my Lord d'Albret.[1861]
[Footnote 1861: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 146. F. Perot, _Un document inedit
sur Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Bulletin de la Societe archeologique de
l'Orleanais_, vol. xii, 1898-1901, p. 231.]
On the 9th of November, the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862]
What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the
town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was
Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the
grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare.
Colette lived in the convent of the Sisters of Saint Clare, which she
had recently founded in this town. It has been thought that the Maid
went to Moulins on purpose to meet her.[1863] But we ought first to
ascertain whether these two saints had any liking for each other. They
both worked miracles and miracles which were occasionally somewhat
similar;[1864] but that was no reason why they should take the
slightest pleasure in each other's society. One was called _La
Pucelle_,[1865] the other _La Petite Ancelle_.[1866] But these names,
both equally humble, described persons widely different in fashion of
attire and in manner of life. _La Petite Ancelle_ wended her way on
foot, clothed in rags like a beggar-woman; _La Pucelle_, wrapped in
cloth of gold, rode forth with lords on horseback. That Jeanne,
surrounded by Franciscans who observed no rule, felt any veneration
for the reformer of the Sisters of Saint Clare, there is no reason to
believe; neither is there anything to indicate that the pacific
Colette, strongly attached to the Burgundian house,[1867] had any
desire to hold converse with one whom the English regarded as a
destroying angel.[1868]
[Footnote 1862: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 147-150. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny,
_Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, ch. viii.]
[Footnote 1863: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. cclxxix.]
[Footnote 1864: Acta Sanctorum, March, i, 554, col. 2, no. 61. Abbe
Bizouard, _Histoire de sainte Colette_, pp. 35, 37. S[ilvere],
_Histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse Colette_, Paris, 1628, in
8vo.]
[Footnote 1865: _The Maid_ (W.S.).]
[Footnote 1866: _Servant._ Cf. Godefroy, _Lexique de l'ancien Francais_
(W.S.).]
[Footnote 1867: _Histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse Colette_,
pp. 168-200.]
[Footnote 1868: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc et les ordres mendiants_, in
_Revue des deux mondes_, 1881, vol. xlv, p. 90. L. de Kerval, _Jeanne
d'Arc et les Franciscains_, Vanves, 1893, pp. 49, 51. S. Luce, _Jeanne
d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. cclxxviii _et seq._ F. Perot, _Jeanne d'Arc en
Bourbonnais_, Orleans, in 8vo, 26 pp., 1889. F. Andre, _La verite sur
Jeanne d'Arc_, in 8vo, 1895, pp. 308 _et seq._]
From this town of Moulins, Jeanne dictated a letter by which she
informed the inhabitants of Riom that Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier was
taken, and asked them for materials of war as she had asked the folk
of Clermont.[1869]
[Footnote 1869: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 146-148.]
Here is the letter:
Good friends and beloved, ye wit how that the town of Saint
Pere le Moustier hath been taken by storm; and with God's
help it is our intention to cause to be evacuated the other
places contrary to the King; but for this there hath been
great expending of powder, arrows and other munition of war
before the said town, and the lords who are in this town are
but scantily provided for to go and lay siege to La Charite,
whither we wend presently; I pray you as ye love the welfare
and honour of the King and likewise of all others here, that
ye will straightway help and send for the said siege powder,
saltpetre, sulphur, arrows, strong cross-bows and other
munition of war. And do this lest by failure of the said
powder and other habiliments of war, the siege should be
long and ye should be called in this matter negligent or
unwilling. Good friends and beloved, may our Lord keep you.
Written at Molins, the ninth day of November.
Jehanne.
Addressed to: My good friends and beloved, the churchmen,
burgesses and townsfolk of the town of Rion.[1870]
[Footnote 1870: _Ibid._, pp. 146, 148. Facsimile in _Le Musee des
archives departementales_, p. 124.]
The magistrates of Riom, in letters sealed with their own seal,
undertook to give Jeanne the Maid and my Lord d'Albret the sum of
sixty crowns; but when the masters of the siege-artillery came to
demand this sum, the magistrates would not give a farthing.[1871]
[Footnote 1871: F. Perot (_Bulletin de la Societe archeologique de
l'Orleanais_, vol. xii, p. 231).]
The folk of Orleans, on the other hand, once more appeared both
zealous and munificent; for they eagerly desired the reduction of a
town commanding the Loire for seventy-five miles above their own city.
They deserve to be considered the true deliverers of the kingdom; had
it not been for them neither Jargeau nor Beaugency would have been
taken in June. Quite in the beginning of July, when they thought the
Loire campaign was to be continued, they had sent their great mortar,
La Bougue, to Gien. With it they had despatched ammunition and
victuals; and now, in the early days of December, at the request of
the King addressed to the magistrates, they sent to La Charite all the
artillery brought back from Gien; likewise eighty-nine soldiers of the
municipal troops, wearing the cloak with the Duke of Orleans' colours,
the white cross on the breast; with their trumpeter at their head and
commanded by Captain Boiau; craftsmen of all conditions, master-masons
and journeymen, carpenters, smiths; the cannoneers Fauveau, Gervaise
Lefevre and Brother Jacques, monk of the Gray friars monastery, at
Orleans.[1872] What became of all this artillery and of these brave
folk?
[Footnote 1872: A. de Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais_, p. 107, proofs
and illustrations, xvii, pp. 159, 168. _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 268, 270,
according to the original documents in the Orleans Library.]
On the 24th of November, the Sire d'Albret and the Maid, being hard
put to it before the walls of La Charite, likewise solicited the town
of Bourges. On receipt of their letter, the burgesses decided to
contribute thirteen hundred golden crowns. To raise this sum they had
recourse to a measure by no means unusual; it had been employed
notably by the townsfolk of Orleans when, some time previously, to
furnish forth Jeanne with munition of war, they had bought from a
certain citizen a quantity of salt which they had put up to auction
in the city barn. The townsfolk of Bourges sold by auction the annual
revenue of a thirteenth part of the wine sold retail in the town. But
the money thus raised never reached its destination.[1873]
[Footnote 1873: La Thaumassiere, _Histoire du Berry_, p. 161. _Trial_,
vol. v, pp. 356, 357. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, _Jeanne d'Arc en
Berry_, pp. 105 _et seq._ A. de Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais_, pp.
111, 112.]
A right goodly knighthood was gathered beneath the walls of La
Charite; besides Louis de Bourbon and the Sire d'Albret, there was the
Marechal de Broussac, Jean de Bouray, Seneschal of Toulouse, and
Raymon de Montremur, a Baron of Dauphine, who was slain there.[1874] It
was bitterly cold and the besiegers succeeded in nothing. At the end
of a month Perrinet Gressart, who was full of craft, caused them to
fall into an ambush. They raised the siege, abandoning the artillery
furnished by the good towns, those fine cannon bought with the savings
of thrifty citizens.[1875] Their action was the less excusable because
the town which had not been relieved and could not well expect to be,
must have surrendered sooner or later. They pleaded that the King had
sent them no victuals and no money;[1876] but that was not considered
an excuse and their action was deemed dishonourable. According to a
knight well acquainted with points of honour in war: "One ought never
to besiege a place without being sure of victuals and of pay
beforehand. For to besiege a stronghold and then to withdraw is great
disgrace for an army, especially when there is present with it a king
or a king's lieutenant."[1877]
[Footnote 1874: _Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires du Centre_,
vol. iv, 1870-1872, pp. 211, 239.]
[Footnote 1875: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, p. 126. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, _Jeanne d'Arc en Berry_, p. 89.]
[Footnote 1876: Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]
[Footnote 1877: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. ii, pp. 216, 217.]
On the 13th of December there preached to the people of Perigueux a
Dominican friar, Brother Helie Boudant, Pope Martin's Penitentiary in
that town. He took as his text the great miracles worked in France by
the intervention of a Maid, whom God had sent to the King. On this
occasion the Mayor and the magistrates heard mass sung and presented
two candles. Now for two months Brother Helie had been under order to
appear before the Parlement of Poitiers.[1878] On what charge we do not
know. Mendicant monks of those days were for the most part irregular
in faith and in morals. The doctrine of Friar Richard himself was not
altogether beyond suspicion.
[Footnote 1878: Extract from the Book of Accounts of the town of
Perigueux, in _Bulletin de la Societe historique et archeologique du
Perigord_, vol. xiv, January to February, 1887. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc
a Domremy_, proofs and illustrations, ccxvii, p. 252. Le P. Chapotin,
_La guerre de cent ans et les dominicains_, pp. 74 _et seq._]
At Christmas, in the year 1429, the flying squadron of _beguines_
being assembled at Jargeau,[1879] this good Brother said mass and
administered the communion thrice to Jeanne the Maid and twice to that
Pierronne of Lower Brittany, with whom our Lord conversed as friend
with friend. Such an action might well be regarded, if not as a formal
violation of the Church's laws, at any rate as an unjustifiable abuse
of the sacrament.[1880] A menacing theological tempest was then
gathering and was about to break over the heads of Friar Richard's
daughters in the spirit. A few days after the attack on Paris, the
venerable University had had composed or rather transcribed a
treatise, _De bono et maligno spiritu_, with a view probably to
finding therein arguments against Friar Richard and his prophetess
Jeanne, who had both appeared before the city with the Armagnacs.[1881]
[Footnote 1879: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 106.]
[Footnote 1880: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 271.]
[Footnote 1881: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 232, 233. Le P. Denifle and
Chatelain, _Cartularium Univ. Paris_, vol. iv, p. 515.]
About the same time, a clerk of the faculty of law had published a
summary reply to Chancellor Gerson's memorial concerning the Maid. "It
sufficeth not," he wrote, "that one simply affirm that he is sent of
God; every heretic maketh such a claim; but he must prove the truth of
that mysterious mission by some miraculous work or by some special
testimony in the Bible." This Paris clerk denies that the Maid has
presented any such proof, and to judge her by her acts, he believes
her rather to have been sent by the Devil than by God. He reproaches
her with wearing a dress forbidden to women under penalty of anathema,
and he refutes the excuses for her conduct in this matter urged by
Gerson. He accuses her of having excited between princes and Christian
people a greater war than there had ever been before. He holds her to
be an idolatress using enchantments and making false prophecies. He
charges her with having induced men to slay their fellows on the two
high festivals of the Holy Virgin, the Assumption and the Nativity.
"Sins committed by the Enemy of Mankind, through this woman, against
the Creator and his most glorious Mother. And albeit there ensued
certain murders, thanks be to God they were not so many as the Enemy
had intended."
"All these things do manifestly prove error and heresy," adds this
devout son of the University. Whence he concludes that the Maid
should be taken before the Bishop and the Inquisitor; and he ends by
quoting this text from Saint Jerome: "The unhealthy flesh must be cut
off; the diseased sheep must be driven from the fold."[1882]
[Footnote 1882: Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc_,
Paris, 1907, in 8vo, 19 pages.]
Such was the unanimous opinion of the University of Paris concerning
her in whom the French clerks beheld an Angel of the Lord. At Bruges,
in November, a rumour ran and was eagerly welcomed by ecclesiastics
that the University of Paris had sent an embassy to the Pope at Rome
to denounce the Maid as a false prophetess and a deceiver, and
likewise those who believed in her. We do not know the veritable
object of this mission.[1883] But there is no doubt whatever that the
doctors and masters of Paris were henceforward firmly resolved that if
ever they obtained possession of the damsel they would not let her go
out of their hands, and certainly would not send her to be tried at
Rome, where she might escape with a mere penance, and even be enlisted
as one of the Pope's mercenaries.[1884]
[Footnote 1883: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 232.]
[Footnote 1884: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 354, 355.]
In English and Burgundian lands, not only by clerks but by folk of all
conditions, she was regarded as a heretic; in those countries the few
who thought well of her had to conceal their opinions carefully. After
the retreat from Saint-Denys, there may have remained some in Picardy,
and notably at Abbeville, who were favourable to the prophetess of the
French; but such persons must not be spoken of in public.
Colin Gouye, surnamed Le Sourd, and Jehannin Daix, surnamed Le Petit,
a man of Abbeville, learned this to their cost. In this town about
the middle of September, Le Sourd and Le Petit were near the
blacksmith's forge with divers of the burgesses and other townsfolk,
among whom was a herald. They fell to talking of the Maid who was
making so great a stir throughout Christendom. To certain words the
herald uttered concerning her, Le Petit replied eagerly:
"Well! well! Everything that woman does and says is nought but
deception."
Le Sourd spoke likewise: "That woman," he said, "is not to be trusted.
Those who believe in her are mad, and there is a smell of burning
about them."[1885]
[Footnote 1885: _Sentent la persinee_: literally, smell of roast
parsley. Cf. Godefroy, _Lexique de l'ancien francais_ at the word
_persinee_. _Sentir la persinee_: to be suspected of heresy (W.S.).]
By that he meant that their destiny was obvious, and that they were
sure to be burned at the stake as heretics.
Then he had the misfortune to add: "In this town there be many with a
smell of burning about them."
Such words were for the dwellers in Abbeville a slander and a cause of
suspicion. When the Mayor and the aldermen heard of this speech they
ordered Le Sourd to be thrown into prison. Le Petit must have said
something similar, for he too was imprisoned.[1886]
[Footnote 1886: Pardon granted to Le Sourd and Jehannin Daix, in
_Trial_, vol. v, pp. 142-145.]
By saying that divers of his fellow-citizens were suspect of heresy,
Le Sourd put them in danger of being sought out by the Bishop and the
Inquisitor as heretics and sorcerers of notoriously evil repute. As
for the Maid, she must have been suspect indeed, for a smell of
burning to be caused by the mere fact of being her partisan.
While Friar Richard and his spiritual daughters were thus threatened
with a bad end should they fall into the hands of the English or
Burgundians, serious troubles were agitating the sisterhood. On the
subject of Catherine, Jeanne entered into an open dispute with her
spiritual father. Friar Richard wanted the holy dame of La Rochelle to
be set to work. Fearing lest his advice should be adopted, Jeanne
wrote to her King to tell him what to do with the woman, to wit that
he should send her home to her husband and children.
When she came to the King the first thing she had to say to him was:
"Catherine's doings are nought but folly and futility."
Friar Richard made no attempt to hide from the Maid his profound
displeasure.[1887] He was thought much of at court, and it was
doubtless with the consent of the Royal Council that he was
endeavouring to compass the employment of Dame Catherine. The Maid had
succeeded. Why should not another of the illuminated succeed?
[Footnote 1887: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 107.]
Meanwhile the Council had by no means renounced the services Jeanne
was rendering to the French cause. Even after the misfortunes of Paris
and of La Charite, there were many who now as before held her power to
be supernatural; and there is reason to believe that there was a party
at Court intending still to employ her.[1888] And even if they had
wished to discard her she was now too intimately associated with the
royal lilies for her rejection not to involve them too in dishonour.
On the 29th of December, 1429, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, the King gave her a
charter of nobility sealed with the great seal in green wax, with a
double pendant, on a strip of red and green silk.[1889]
[Footnote 1888: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 84; vol. iv, pp. 312 _et passim_.
A. de Villaret, _loc. cit._ Proofs and illustrations.]
[Footnote 1889: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 150-153. J. Hordal, _Heroinae
nobilissimae Joannae Darc, lotharingae, vulgo aurelianensis puellae
historia...._ Ponti-Mussi, 1612, small 4to. C. du Lys, _Traite
sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la
Pucelle, justifie par plusieurs patentes et arrets, enquetes et
informations...._ Paris, 1633, in 4to. De la Roque, _Traite de la
noblesse_, Paris, 1678, in 4to, ch. xliii. Lanery d'Arc, _Jeanne d'Arc
en Berry_, ch. x.]
The grant of nobility was to Jeanne, her father, mother, brothers even
if they were not free, and to all their posterity, male and female. It
was a singular grant corresponding to the singular services rendered
by a woman.
In the title she is described as Johanna d'Ay, doubtless because her
father's name was given to the King's scribes by Lorrainers who would
speak with a soft drawl; but whether her name were Ay or Arc, she was
seldom called by it, and was commonly spoken of as Jeanne the
Maid.[1890]
[Footnote 1890: See analytical index, in _Trial_, vol. v, at the word
_Pucelle_.]
CHAPTER V
LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF REIMS--LETTER TO THE HUSSITES--DEPARTURE
FROM SULLY
The folk of Orleans were grateful to the Maid for what she had done
for them. Far from reproaching her with the unfortunate conclusion of
the siege of La Charite, they welcomed her into their city with the
same rejoicing and with as good cheer as before. On the 19th of
January, 1430, they honoured her and likewise Maitre Jean de Velly and
Maitre Jean Rabateau with a banquet, at which there was abundance of
capons, partridges, hares, and even a pheasant.[1891] Who that Jean de
Velly was, who was feasted with her, we do not know. As for Jean
Rabateau, he was none other than the King's Councillor, who had been
Attorney-General at the Parlement of Poitiers since 1427.[1892] He had
been the Maid's host at Orleans. His wife had often seen Jeanne
kneeling in her private oratory.[1893] The citizens of Orleans offered
wine to the Attorney-General, to Jean de Velly, and to the Maid. In
good sooth, 'twas a fine feast and a ceremonious. The burgesses loved
and honoured Jeanne, but they cannot have observed her very closely
during the repast or they would not eight years later, when an
adventuress gave herself out to be the Maid, have mistaken her for
Jeanne, and offered her wine in the same manner and at the hands of
the same city servant, Jacques Leprestre, as now presented it.[1894]
[Footnote 1891: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 270.]
[Footnote 1892: _Ibid._, vol. iii, pp. 19, 74, 203. H. Daniel Lacombe,
_L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Maitre Jean Rabateau, president du
parlement de Paris_, in _Revue du Bas-Poitou_, 1891, pp. 48, 66.]
[Footnote 1893: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 88 _et seq._]
[Footnote 1894: Extract from the Accounts of the town of Orleans, in
_Trial_, vol. v, p. 331.]
The standard that Jeanne loved even more than her Saint Catherine's
sword had been painted at Tours by one Hamish Power. He was now
marrying his daughter Heliote; and when Jeanne heard of it, she sent a
letter to the magistrates of Tours, asking them to give a sum of one
hundred crowns for the bride's trousseau. The nuptials were fixed for
the 9th of February, 1430. The magistrates assembled twice to
deliberate on Jeanne's request. They described her honourably and yet
not without a certain caution as "the Maid who hath come into this
realm to the King, concerning the matter of the war, announcing that
she is sent by the King of Heaven against the English." In the end
they refused to pay anything, because, they said, it behoved them to
expend municipal funds on municipal matters and not otherwise; but
they decided that for the affection and honour they bore the Maid, the
churchmen, burgesses, and other townsfolk should be present in the
church at the wedding, and should offer prayers for the bride and
present her with bread and wine. This cost them four _livres_, ten
_sous_.[1895]
[Footnote 1895: Vallet de Viriville, _Un episode de la vie de Jeanne
d'Arc_, in _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, vol. iv (1st
series), p. 488. _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 154-156.]
At a time which it is impossible to fix exactly the Maid bought a
house at Orleans. To be more precise she took it on lease.[1896] A
lease (_bail a vente_) was an agreement by which the proprietor of a
house or other property transferred the ownership to the lessee in
return for an annual payment in kind or in money. The duration of such
leases was usually fifty-nine years. The house that Jeanne acquired in
this manner belonged to the Chapter of the Cathedral. It was in the
centre of the town, in the parish of Saint-Malo, close to the
Saint-Maclou Chapel, next door to the shop of an oil-seller, one Jean
Feu, in the Rue des Petits-Souliers. It was in this street that,
during the siege, there had fallen into the midst of five guests
seated at table a stone cannon-ball weighing one hundred and
sixty-four pounds, which had done no one any harm.[1897] What price did
the Maid give for this house? Apparently six crowns of fine gold (at
sixty crowns to the mark), due half-yearly at Midsummer and Christmas,
for fifty-nine years. In addition, she must according to custom have
undertaken to keep the house in good condition and to pay out of her
own purse the ecclesiastical dues as well as rates for wells and
paving and all other taxes. Being obliged to have some one as surety,
she chose as her guarantor a certain Guillot de Guyenne, of whom we
know nothing further.[1898]
[Footnote 1896: Jules Doinel, _Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc_, in
_Memoires de la Societe archeologique et historique de l'Orleanais_,
vol. xv, pp. 491-500.]
[Footnote 1897: _Journal du siege_, pp. 15, 16.]
[Footnote 1898: Jules Doinel, _Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc_,
_loc. cit._]
There is no reason to believe that the Maid did not herself negotiate
this agreement. Saint as she was, she knew well what it was to possess
property. Such knowledge ran in her family; her father was the best
business man in his village.[1899] She herself was domesticated and
thrifty; for she kept her old clothes, and even in the field she knew
where to find them when she wanted to make presents of them to her
friends. She counted up her possessions in arms and horses, valued
them at twelve thousand crowns, and, apparently made a pretty accurate
reckoning.[1900] But what was her idea in taking this house? Did she
think of living in it? Did she intend when the war was over to return
to Orleans and pass a peaceful old age in a house of her own? Or was
she planning for her parents to dwell there, or some Vouthon uncle, or
her brothers, one of whom was in great poverty and had got a doublet
out of the citizens of Orleans?[1901]
[Footnote 1899: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. 360.]
[Footnote 1900: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 295.]
[Footnote 1901: Accounts of the fortress, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 259,
260.]
On the third of March she followed King Charles to Sully.[1902] The
chateau, in which she lodged near the King, belonged to the Sire de la
Tremouille, who had inherited it from his mother, Marie de Sully, the
daughter of Louis I of Bourbon. It had been recaptured from the
English after the deliverance of Orleans.[1903] A stronghold on the
Loire, on the highroad from Paris to Autun, and commanding the plain
between Orleans and Briare and the ancient bridge with twenty arches,
the chateau of Sully linked together central France and those northern
provinces which Jeanne had so regretfully quitted, and whither with
all her heart she longed to return to engage in fresh expeditions and
fresh sieges.
[Footnote 1902: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 159.]
[Footnote 1903: Perceval de Cagny, p. 173. _Chronique de la Pucelle_,
p. 258. _Berry_, in Godefroy, p. 376. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 294,
notes 4, 5. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i,
pp. 139, 163. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p.
144.]
During the first fortnight of March, from the townsfolk of Reims she
received a message in which they confided to her fears only too well
grounded.[1904] On the 8th of March the Regent had granted to the Duke
of Burgundy the counties of Champagne and of Brie on condition of his
reconquering them.[1905] Armagnacs and English vied with each other in
offering the biggest and most tempting morsels to this Gargantuan
Duke. Not being able to keep their promise and deliver to him
Compiegne which refused to be delivered, the French offered him in its
place Pont-Sainte-Maxence.[1906] But it was Compiegne that he wanted.
The truces, which had been very imperfectly kept, were to have expired
at Christmas, but first they had been prolonged till the 15th of March
and then till Easter. In the year 1430 Easter fell on the 16th of
April; and Duke Philip was only waiting for that date to put an army
in the field.[1907]
[Footnote 1904: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 378. D. Plancher, _Histoire de
Bourgogne_, vol. iv, p. 137. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 268.]
[Footnote 1905: Du Tillet, _Recueil des rois de France_, vol. ii, p. 39
(ed. 1601-1602). Rymer, _Foedera_, March, 1430.]
[Footnote 1906: P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, pp. 35, 152.]
[Footnote 1907: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp.
351, 389.]
In a manner concise and vivacious the Maid replied to the townsfolk of
Reims:
"Dear friends and beloved and mightily desired. Jehenne the
Maid hath received your letters making mention that ye fear
a siege. Know ye that it shall not so betide, and I may but
encounter them shortly. And if I do not encounter them and
they do not come to you, if you shut your gates firmly, I
shall shortly be with you: and if they be there, I shall
make them put on their spurs so hastily that they will not
know where to take them and so quickly that it shall be very
soon. Other things I will not write unto you now, save that
ye be always good and loyal. I pray God to have you in his
keeping. Written at Sully, the 16th day of March.
I would announce unto you other tidings at which ye would
mightily rejoice; but I fear lest the letters be taken on
the road, and the said tidings be seen.
Signed. Jehanne.
_Addressed_ to my dear friends and beloved, churchmen,
burgesses and other citizens of the town of Rains."[1908]
[Footnote 1908: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 160, according to Rogier's copy. H.
Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc a Reims_, proofs and illustrations xv. Facsimile
in Wallon, 1876 edition, p. 200. The original of this letter exists,
likewise the original of the letter addressed on the 9th of November,
1429, to the citizens of Riom. These two letters, about one hundred
and twenty-six days apart, are not written by the same scribe. The
signature of neither one nor the other can be attributed to the hand
which indited the rest of the letter. The seven letters of the name
_Jehanne_ seem to have been written by some one whose hand was being
held, which is not surprising, seeing that the Maid did not know how
to write. But a comparison of the two signatures reveals their close
similarity. In both the stem of the J slopes in the same direction and
is of identical length; the first _n_ through one letter being written
on the top of another has three pothooks instead of two; the second
pothook of the second _n_ obviously written in two strokes is too
long, in short the two signatures correspond exactly. We must conclude
therefore that having once obtained the Maid's signature by guiding
her hand, an impression was taken to serve as a model for all her
other letters. To judge from the two missives of the 9th of November,
1429 and the 16th of March, 1430, this impression was most faithfully
reproduced. Cf. _post_, p. 117, note 2.]
There can be no doubt that the scribe wrote this letter faithfully as
it was dictated by the Maid, and that he wrote her words as they fell
from her lips. In her haste she now and again forgot words and
sometimes whole phrases; but the sense is clear all the same. And what
confidence! "You will have no siege if I encounter the enemy." How
completely is this the language of chivalry! On the eve of Patay she
had asked: "Have you good spurs?"[1909] Here she cries: "I will make
them put on their spurs." She says that soon she will be in Champagne,
that she is about to start. Surely we can no longer think of her shut
up in the Castle of La Tremouille as in a kind of gilded cage.[1910] In
conclusion, she tells her friends at Reims that she does not write
unto them all that she would like for fear lest her letter should be
captured on the road. She knew what it was to be cautious. Sometimes
she affixed a cross to her letters to warn her followers to pay no
heed to what she wrote, in the hope that the missive would be
intercepted and the enemy deceived.[1911]
[Footnote 1909: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 11.]
[Footnote 1910: Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]
[Footnote 1911: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 83.]
It was from Sully that on the 23rd of March Brother Pasquerel sent the
Emperor Sigismund a letter intended for the Hussites of Bohemia.[1912]
[Footnote 1912: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 156.]
The Hussites of those days were abhorred and execrated throughout
Christendom. They demanded the free preaching of God's word, communion
in both kinds, and the return of the Church to that evangelical life
which allowed neither the wealth of priests nor the temporal power of
popes. They desired the punishment of sin by the civil magistrates, a
custom which could prevail only in very holy society. They were saints
indeed and heretics too on every possible point. Pope Martin held the
destruction of these wicked persons to be salutary, and such was the
opinion of every good Catholic. But how could this armed heresy be
dealt with when it routed all the forces of the Empire and the Holy
See? The Hussites were too much for that worn-out ancient chivalry of
Christendom, for the knighthood of France and of Germany, which was
good for nothing but to be thrown on to the refuse heaps like so much
old iron. And this was precisely what the towns of the realm of France
did when over these knights of chivalry they placed a peasant
girl.[1913]
[Footnote 1913: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 24, 86, 87. J. Zeller,
_Histoire d'Allemagne_, vol. vii, _La reforme_, Paris, 1891, pp. 78
_et seq._ E. Denis, _Jean Hus et la guerre des Hussites_ (1879); _Les
origines de l'Unite des Freres Bohemes_, Angers, 1885, in 8vo, pp. 5
_et seq._]
At Tachov, in 1427, the Crusaders, blessed by the Holy Father, had
fled at the mere sound of the chariot wheels of the Procops.[1914] Pope
Martin knew not where to turn for defenders of Holy Church, one and
indivisible. He had paid for the armament of five thousand English
crusaders, which the Cardinal of Winchester was to lead against these
accursed Bohemians; but in this force the Holy Father was cruelly
disappointed; hardly had his five thousand crusaders landed in France,
than the Regent of England diverted them from their route and sent
them to Brie to occupy the attention of the Maid of the
Armagnacs.[1915]
[Footnote 1914: Two of the great leaders of the Hussites who held large
parts of central Germany in terror from 1419-1434 (W.S.).]
[Footnote 1915: L. Paris, _Cabinet historique_, vol. i, 1855, pp. 74,
76. Rogier, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 294. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 132,
133, 136, 137, 168, 169, 188, 189; vol. iv, supplement, xvii.]
Since her coming into France Jeanne had spoken of the crusade as a
work good and meritorious. In the letter dictated before the
expedition to Orleans, she summoned the English to join the French and
go together to fight against the Church's foe. And later, writing to
the Duke of Burgundy, she invited the son of the Duke vanquished at
Nicopolis to make war against the Turks.[1916] Who but the mendicants
directing her can have put these crusading ideas into Jeanne's head?
Immediately after the deliverance of Orleans it was said that she
would lead King Charles to the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre and that
she would die in the Holy Land.[1917] At the same time it was rumoured
that she would make war on the Hussites. In the month of July, 1429,
when the coronation campaign had barely begun, it was proclaimed in
Germany, on the faith of a prophetess of Rome, that by a prophetess of
France the Bohemian kingdom should be recovered.[1918]
[Footnote 1916: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 240; vol. v, p. 126.]
[Footnote 1917: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 82-85. Christine de Pisan, in
_Trial_, vol. v, p. 416. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 60-63.]
[Footnote 1918: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 108, 115, 188.]
Already zealous for the Crusade against the Turks, the Maid was now
equally eager for the Crusade against the Hussites. Turks or
Bohemians, it was all alike to her. Of one and the other her only
knowledge lay in the stories full of witchcraft related to her by the
mendicants of her company. Touching the Hussites, stories were told,
not all true, but which Jeanne must have believed; and they cannot
have pleased her. It was said that they worshipped the devil, and that
they called him "the wronged one." It was told that as works of piety
they committed all manner of fornication. Every Bohemian was said to
be possessed by a hundred demons. They were accused of killing
thousands of churchmen. Again, and this time with truth, they were
charged with burning churches and monasteries. The Maid believed in
the God who commanded Israel to wipe out the Philistines from the face
of the earth. But recently there had arisen Cathari who held the God
of the Old Testament to be none other than Lucifer or Luciabelus,
author of evil, liar and murderer. The Cathari abhorred war; they
refused to shed blood; they were heretics; they had been massacred,
and none remained. The Maid believed in good faith that the
extirpation of the Hussites was a work pleasing to God. Men more
learned than she, not like her addicted to chivalry, but of gentle
life, clerks like the Chancellor Jean Gerson, believed it
likewise.[1919] Of these Bohemian heretics she thought what every one
thought: her opinions were those of the multitude; her views were
modelled on public opinion. Wherefore in all the simplicity of her
heart she hated the Hussites, but she feared them not, because she
feared nothing and because she believed, God helping her, that she was
able to overcome all the English, all the Turks, and all the Bohemians
in the world. At the first trumpet call she was ready to sally forth
against them. On the 23rd of March, 1430, Brother Pasquerel sent the
Emperor Sigismund a letter written in the name of the Maid and
intended for the Hussites of Bohemia. This letter was indited in
Latin. The following is the purport of it:
[Footnote 1919: Lea, _A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages_,
vol. ii, p. 481 (1906).]
JESUS [cross symbol] MARIE
Long ago there reached me the tidings that ye from the true
Christians that ye once were have become heretics, like unto
the Saracens, that ye have abolished true religion and
worship and have turned to a superstition corrupt and fatal,
the which in your zeal to maintain and to spread abroad
there be no shame nor cruelty ye do not dare to perpetrate.
You defile the sacraments of the Church, tear to pieces the
articles of her faith, overthrow her temples. The images
which were made for similitudes you break and throw into the
fire. Finally such Christians as embrace not your faith you
massacre. What fury, what folly, what rage possesses you?
That religion which God the All Powerful, which the Son,
which the Holy Ghost raised up, instituted, exalted and
revealed in a thousand manners, by a thousand miracles, ye
persecute, ye employ all arts to overturn and to
exterminate.
It is you, you who are blind and not those who have not eyes
nor sight. Think ye that ye will go unpunished? Do ye not
know that if God prevent not your impious violence, if he
suffer you to grope on in darkness and in error, it is that
he is preparing for you a greater sorrow and a greater
punishment? As for me, in good sooth, were I not occupied
with the English wars, I would have already come against
you. But in very deed if I learn not that ye have turned
from your wicked ways, I will peradventure leave the English
and hasten against you, in order that I may destroy by the
sword your vain and violent superstition, if I can do so in
no other manner, and that I may rid you either of heresy or
of life. Notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the
Catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto
me your ambassadors and I will tell them what ye must do. If
on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against
the pricks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye
have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with
all strength divine and human to render unto you again all
the evil ye have done unto others.
Given at Sully, on the 23rd of March, to the Bohemian
heretics.
Signed. Pasquerel.[1920]
[Footnote 1920: Th. de Sickel, _Lettre de Jeanne d'Arc aux Hussites_,
in _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, 3rd series, vol. ii, p. 81.
A wrong date is given in the German translation used by Quicherat,
_Trial_, vol. v, pp. 156-159.]
This was the letter sent to the Emperor. How had Jeanne really
expressed herself in her dialect savouring alike of the speech of
Champagne and of that of l'Ile de France? There can be no doubt but
that her letter had been sadly embellished by the good Brother. Such
Ciceronian language cannot have proceeded from the Maid. It is all
very well to say that a saint of those days could do everything, could
prophesy on any subject and in any tongue, so fine an epistle remains
far too rhetorical to have been composed by a damsel whom even the
Armagnac captains considered simple. Nevertheless, a careful
examination will reveal in this missive, at any rate in the second
half of it, certain of those bluntly naive passages and some of that
childish assurance which are noticeable in Jeanne's genuine letters,
especially in her reply to the Count of Armagnac;[1921] and more than
once there occurs an expression characteristic of a village sibyl. The
following, for example, is quite in Jeanne's own manner: "If you will
return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, send me your ambassadors;
I will tell you what you have to do." And her usual threat: "Expect me
with all strength human and divine."[1922] As for the phrase: "If I
hear not shortly of your conversion, of your return to the bosom of
the Church, I will peradventure leave the English and come against
you," here we may suspect the mendicant friar, less interested in the
affairs of Charles VII than in those of the Church, of having ascribed
to the Maid greater eagerness to set forth on the Crusade than she
really felt. Good and salutary as she deemed the taking of the Cross,
as far as we know her, she would never have consented to take it until
she had driven the English out of the realm of France. She believed
this to be her mission, and the persistence, the consistency, the
strength of will she evinced in its fulfilment, are truly admirable.
It is quite probable that she dictated to the good Brother some phrase
like: "When I have put the English out of the kingdom, I will turn
against you." This would explain and excuse Brother Pasquerel's error.
It is very likely that Jeanne believed she would dispose of the
English in a trice and that she already saw herself distributing good
buffets and sound clouts to the renegade and infidel Bohemians. The
Maid's simplicity makes itself felt through the clerk's Latin. This
epistle to the Bohemians recalls, alas! that fagot placed upon the
stake whereon John Huss was burning, by the pious zeal of the good
wife whose saintly simplicity John Huss himself teaches us to admire.
[Footnote 1921: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 246.]
[Footnote 1922: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 95.]
One cannot help reflecting that Jeanne and those very men against whom
she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were
impelled by faith, chastity, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation
to God's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of
devotion. Zizka[1923] had established in his camp that purity of morals
which the Maid was endeavouring to introduce among the Armagnacs. The
peasant soldiers of Bohemia and the peasant Maid of France bearing her
sword amidst mendicant monks had much in common. On the one hand and
on the other, we have the religious spirit in the place of the
political spirit, the fear of sin in the place of obedience to the
civil law, the spiritual introduced into the temporal. Here is indeed
a woeful sight and a piteous; the devout set one against the other,
the innocent against the innocent, the simple against the simple, the
heretic against heretics; and it is painful to think that when she is
threatening with extermination the disciples of that John Huss, who
had been treacherously taken and burned as a heretic, she herself is
on the point of being sold to her enemies and condemned to suffer as a
witch. It would have been different if this letter, at which the
accomplished wits and humorists of the day looked askance, had won the
approval of theologians. But they also found fault with it, an
illustrious canonist, a zealous inquisitor deemed highly presumptuous
this threatening of a multitude of men by a Maid.[1924]
[Footnote 1923: Another of the Hussite leaders (W.S.).]
[Footnote 1924: J. Nider, _Formicarium_ in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp.
502-504.]
We were right in saying that she was not prepared to leave the English
immediately and hasten against the Bohemians. Five days after her
appeal to the Hussites she wrote to her friends at Reims and in
mysterious words gave them to understand that she would come to them
shortly.[1925]
[Footnote 1925: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 161, 162.]
The partisans of Duke Philip were at that time hatching plots in the
towns of Champagne, notably at Troyes and at Reims. On the 22nd of
February, 1430, a canon and a chaplain were arrested and brought
before the chapter for having conspired to deliver the city to the
English. It was well for them that they belonged to the Church, for
having been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, they obtained from
the King a mitigation of their sentence, and the canon a complete
remittance.[1926] The aldermen and ecclesiastics of the city, fearing
they would be thought badly of on the other side of the Loire, wrote
to the Maid entreating her to speak well of them to the King. The
following is her reply to their request:[1927]
[Footnote 1926: _Ibid._, vol. iv, p. 299, and H. Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc
a Reims_, pp. 60 _et seq._ Memoires de Pierre Coquault, _ibid._, pp.
109 _et seq._]
[Footnote 1927: This letter was published by J. Quicherat, in _Trial_,
vol. v, pp. 161, 162, and by M. H. Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc a Reims_, pp.
106, 107 and document XVI, according to Rogier's inaccurate copy. The
original which had disappeared from the municipal archives at Reims
was considered to be lost; but it has been found in the possession of
the Count de Maleissye. Cf. the reproduction by A. Marty and M. Lepet,
_L'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc.... Cent facsimiles de manuscrits, de
miniatures_, Paris, 1907, in large 4to. Here for the first time is to
be found a text correct according to the original document.]
"Very good friends and beloved, may it please you to wit
that I have received your letters, the which make mention
how it hath been reported to the King that within the city
of Reims there be many wicked persons. Therefore I give you
to wit that it is indeed true that even such things have
been reported to him and that he grieves much that there be
folk in alliance with the Burgundians; that they would
betray the town and bring the Burgundians into it. But since
then the King has known the contrary by means of the
assurance ye have sent him, and he is well pleased with you.
And ye may believe that ye stand well in his favour; and if
ye have need, he would help you with regard to the siege;
and he knows well that ye have much to suffer from the
hardness of those treacherous Burgundians, your adversaries:
thus may God in his pleasure deliver you shortly, that is as
soon as may be. So I pray and entreat you my friends dearly
beloved that ye hold well the said city for the King and
that ye keep good watch. Ye will soon have good tidings of
me at greater length. Other things for the present I write
not unto you save that the whole of Brittany is French and
that the Duke is to send to the King three thousand
combatants paid for two months. To God I commend you, may he
keep you.
Written at Sully, the 28th of March.
Jehanne.[1928]
Addressed to: My good friends and dearly beloved, the
churchmen, aldermen, burgesses and inhabitants and masters
of the good town of Reyms."[1929]
[Footnote 1928: The signature appears to be autograph. It differs from
the two identical signatures of the letters from Riom and Reims (see
_ante_, p. 108, note 1); and it bears trace of the resistance of a
hand which was being guided.]
[Footnote 1929: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 161, 162. Varin, _Archives
legislatives de la ville de Reims_, vol. i, p. 596. H. Jadart, _Jeanne
d'Arc a Reims_, pp. 106, 107.]
Touching the succour to be expected from the Duke of Brittany, the
Maid was labouring under a delusion. Like all other prophetesses she
was ignorant of what was passing around her. Despite her failures, she
believed in her good fortune; she doubted herself no more than she
doubted God; and she was eager to pursue the fulfilment of her
mission. "Ye shall soon have tidings of me," she said to the townsfolk
of Reims. A few days after, and she left Sully to go into France and
fight, on the expiration of the truces.
It has been said that she feigned an expedition of pleasure and set
out without taking leave of the King, that it was a kind of innocent
stratagem, an honourable flight.[1930] But it was nothing of the
sort.[1931] The Maid gathered a company of some hundred horse,
sixty-eight archers and cross-bowmen, and two trumpeters, commanded by
a Lombard captain, Bartolomeo Baretta.[1932] In this company were
Italian men-at-arms, bearing broad shields, like some who had come to
Orleans at the time of the siege; possibly they were the same.[1933]
She set out at the head of this company, with her brothers and her
steward, the Sire Jean d'Aulon. She was in the hands of Jean d'Aulon,
and Jean d'Aulon was in the hands of the Sire de la Tremouille, to
whom he owed money.[1934] The good squire would not have followed the
Maid against the King's will.
[Footnote 1930: Perceval de Cagny, who was in the pay of the Duke of
Alencon, is the only chronicler to suggest it, p. 173.]
[Footnote 1931: "In the year 1430, Jeanne the Maid started from the
country of Berry accompanied by divers fighting men...." Jean
Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 120.]
[Footnote 1932: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 120. Martial
d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, ed. Coustellier, vol. i, p. 117. Note
concerning G. de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 177. P. Champion,
_Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 36, note 2.]
[Footnote 1933: _Journal du siege_, p. 12.]
[Footnote 1934: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p.
293, note 3. True, the loan was made later; none the less the
dependence of Jean d'Aulon on the Sire de la Tremouille existed at
this time.]
The flying squadron of _beguines_ had recently been divided by a
schism. Friar Richard, who was then in high favour with Queen Marie,
and who had preached the Lenten sermons of 1430[1935] at Orleans,
stayed behind, on the Loire, with Catherine de la Rochelle. Jeanne
took with her Pierronne and the younger Breton prophetess.[1936] If she
went into France, it was not without the knowledge or against the will
of the King and his Council. Very probably the Chancellor of the
kingdom had asked La Tremouille to send her in order that he might
employ her in the approaching campaign against the Burgundians, who
were threatening his government of Beauvais and his city of
Reims.[1937] He was not very kindly disposed towards her, but already
he had made use of her and he intended to do so again. Possibly his
intention was to employ her in a fresh attack on Paris.
[Footnote 1935: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 99, note. _Journal du siege_, pp.
235, 238.]
[Footnote 1936: This comes from the _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_,
p. 271.]
[Footnote 1937: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 159, 160.]
The King had not abandoned the idea of taking his great city by the
peaceful methods he always preferred. Throughout Lent, between Sully
and Paris, there had been a constant passing to and fro of certain
Carmelite monks of Melun, disguised as artisans. These were the
churchmen who, during the attack on the Porte Saint Honore, on the Day
of the Festival of Our Lady, had stirred up the popular rising which
had spread from one bank of the Seine to the other. Now they were
negotiating with certain influential citizens the entrance of the
King's men into the rebel city. The Prior of the Melun Carmelites was
directing the conspiracy.[1938] There is reason to believe that Jeanne
had herself seen him or one of his monks. True it is that since the
22nd or the 23rd of March it was known at Sully that the conspiracy
had been discovered;[1939] but perhaps the hope of success still
lingered. It was to Melun that Jeanne went with her company; and it is
difficult to believe that there was no connection between the
conspiracy of the Carmelites and the expedition of the Maid.
[Footnote 1938: The Pardon of Jean de Calais in A. Longnon, _Paris sous
la domination anglaise_, pp. 301-309. Stevenson, _Letters and Papers_,
vol. i, pp. 34-50.]
[Footnote 1939: So it appears from Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 274-275.]
Why should Charles VII's Councillors have ceased to employ her? It
cannot be said that she appeared less divine to the French or less
evil to the English. Her failures, either unknown, or partially known,
rendered unimportant by the fame of her victories, had not dispelled
the idea that within her resided invincible power. At the time when
the hapless damsel with the flower of French knighthood was receiving
sore treatment under the walls of La Charite at the hands of an
ex-mason's apprentice, in Burgundian lands it was rumoured that she
was carrying by storm a castle twelve miles from Paris.[1940] She was
still considered miraculous; the burgesses, the men-at-arms of her
party still believed in her. And as for the _Godons_, from the Regent
to the humblest swordsman of the army, they all regarded her with a
terror as great as that which had possessed them at Orleans and Patay.
At this time so many English soldiers and captains refused to go to
France, that a special edict was issued obliging them to do so.[1941]
But they doubtless discovered reasons enough for not going into a
country where henceforth they could hope only for hard knocks and
nothing tempting; so that many declined, terrified by the enchantments
of the Maid.[1942]
[Footnote 1940: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 228-231. Concerning Perrinet
Gressart see vol. i, p. 389.]
[Footnote 1941: May 3, 1430.]
[Footnote 1942: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique anglaise_. Le P.
Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii, pp. 572-574.]
CHAPTER VI
THE MAID IN THE TRENCHES OF MELUN--LE SEIGNEUR DE L'OURS--THE CHILD OF
LAGNY
In Easter week, Jeanne, at the head of a band of mercenaries, is
before the walls of Melun.[1943] She arrives just in time to fight. The
truces have expired.[1944] Is it possible that the town which was
subject to King Charles[1945] can have refused to admit the Maid with
her company when she came to it so generously? Apparently it was so.
Was Jeanne able to communicate with the Carmelites of Melun? Probably.
What misfortune befell her at the gates of the town? Did she suffer
ill treatment at the hands of a Burgundian band? We know not. But when
she was in the trenches she heard Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret
saying unto her: "Thou wilt be taken before Saint John's Day."
[Footnote 1943: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 115, 253, April 17-23. Perceval de
Cagny, p. 173. _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 502 recto. P.
Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 158, note 2.]
[Footnote 1944: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 363 (April 16).]
[Footnote 1945: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 125. Monstrelet,
vol. iv, p. 378. Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 28. Melun certainly belonged
to the French on the 23rd of April, 1430.]
And she entreated them: "When I am taken, let me die immediately
without suffering long." And the Voices repeated that she would be
taken and thus it must be.
And they added gently: "Be not troubled, be resigned. God will help
thee."[1946]
[Footnote 1946: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 114-116. G. Leroy, _Histoire de
Melun_, Melun, 1887, in 8vo, ch. xvi ... x ... [Transcriber's Note:
ellipses in original] _Jeanne d'Arc a Melun, mi-avril_, 1430, Melun,
1896, 32 pp.]
Saint John's Day was the 24th of June, in less than ten weeks. Many a
time after that, Jeanne asked her saints at what hour she would be
taken; but they did not tell her; and thus doubting she ceased to
follow her own ideas and consulted the captains.[1947]
[Footnote 1947: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 147.]
On her way from Melun to Lagny-sur-Marne, in the month of May, she had
to pass Corbeil. It was probably then, and in her company, that the
two devout women from Lower Brittany, Pierronne and her younger sister
in the spirit, were taken at Corbeil by the English.[1948]
[Footnote 1948: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 259.]
For eight months the town of Lagny had been subject to King Charles
and governed by Messire Ambroise de Lore, who was energetically waging
war against the English of Paris and elsewhere.[1949] For the nonce
Messire Ambroise de Lore was absent; but his lieutenant, Messire Jean
Foucault, commanded the garrison. Shortly after Jeanne's coming to
this town, tidings were brought that a company of between three and
four hundred men of Picardy and of Champagne, fighting for the Duke of
Burgundy, after having ranged through l'Ile de France, were now on
their way back to Picardy with much booty. Their captain was a valiant
man-at-arms, one Franquet d'Arras.[1950] The French determined to cut
off their retreat. Under the command of Messire Jean Foucault, Messire
Geoffroy de Saint-Bellin, Lord Hugh Kennedy, a Scotchman, and Captain
Baretta, they sallied forth from the town.[1951]
[Footnote 1949: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp. 334, 335. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 110, 111. F.A. Denis, _Le sejour de Jeanne
d'Arc a Lagny_, Lagny, 1894, in 8vo, pp. 3 _et seq._]
[Footnote 1950: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 384. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 120, 121. Perceval de Cagny, p. 173.]
[Footnote 1951: Jean Chartier, _loc. cit._ Martial d'Auvergne,
_Vigiles_, vol. i, p. 117. P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 38,
note.]
The Maid went with them. They encountered the Burgundians near Lagny,
but failed to surprise them. Messire Franquet's archers had had time
to take up their position with their backs to a hedge, in the English
manner. King Charles's men barely outnumbered the enemy. A certain
clerk of that time, a Frenchman, writes of the engagement. His innate
ingeniousness was invincible. With candid common sense he states that
this very slight numerical superiority rendered the enterprise very
arduous and difficult for his party.[1952] And the battle was strong
indeed. The Burgundians were mightily afraid of the Maid because they
believed her to be a witch and in command of armies of devils;
notwithstanding, they fought right valiantly. Twice the French were
repulsed; but they returned to the attack, and finally the Burgundians
were all slain or taken.[1953]
[Footnote 1952: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 121.]
[Footnote 1953: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 384.]
The conquerers returned to Lagny, loaded with booty and taking with
them their prisoners, among whom was Messire Franquet d'Arras. Of
noble birth and the lord of a manor, he was entitled to expect that he
would be held to ransom, according to custom. Both Jean de Troissy,
Bailie of Senlis,[1954] and the Maid demanded him from the soldier who
was his captor. It was to the Maid that he was finally delivered.[1955]
Did she obtain him in return for money? Probably, for soldiers were
not accustomed to give up noble and profitable prisoners for nothing.
Nevertheless, the Maid, when questioned on this subject, replied, that
being neither mistress nor steward of France, it was not for her to
give out money. We must suppose, therefore, that some one paid for
her. However that may be, Captain Franquet d'Arras was given up to
her, and she endeavoured to exchange him for a prisoner in the hands
of the English. The man whom she thus desired to deliver was a
Parisian who was called Le Seigneur de l'Ours.[1956]
[Footnote 1954: H. Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc a Reims_, p. 61.]
[Footnote 1955: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 158.]
[Footnote 1956: _Ibid._, pp. 158, 159.]
He was not of gentle birth and his arms were the sign of his hostelry.
It was the custom in those days to give the title of Seigneur to the
masters of the great Paris inns. Thus Colin, who kept the inn at the
Temple Gate, was known as Seigneur du Boisseau. The hotel de l'Ours
stood in the Rue Saint-Antoine, near the Gate properly called La Porte
Baudoyer, but commonly known as Porte Baudet, Baudet possessing the
double advantage over Baudoyer of being shorter and more
comprehensible.[1957] It was an ancient and famous inn, equal in renown
to the most famous, to the inn of L'Arbre Sec, in the street of that
name, to the Fleur de Lis near the Pont Neuf, to the Epee in the Rue
Saint-Denis, and to the Chapeau Fetu of the Rue Croix-du-Tirouer. As
early as King Charles V's reign the inn was much frequented. Before
huge fires the spits were turning all day long, and there were hot
bread, fresh herrings, and wine of Auxerre in plenty. But since then
the plunderings of men-at-arms had laid waste the countryside, and
travellers no longer ventured forth for fear of being robbed and
slain. Knights and pilgrims had ceased coming into the town. Only
wolves came by night and devoured little children in the streets.
There were no fagots in the grate, no dough in the kneading-trough.
Armagnacs and Burgundians had drunk all the wine, laid waste all the
vineyards, and nought was left in the cellar save a poor piquette of
apples and of plums.[1958]
[Footnote 1957: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 71, 72. Sauval,
_Antiquites de Paris_, vol. i, p. 104. A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la
domination anglaise_, p. 118. H. Legrand, _Paris en 1380_, Paris,
1868, in 4to, p. 65.]
[Footnote 1958: _Piquette_, a sour wine or cider, made from the residue
of grapes or apples. A kind of second brewing (W.S.). _Journal d'un
bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 150, 154, 156, 187. Francisque-Michel and
Edouard Fournier, _Histoire des hotelleries, cabarets, hotels garnis_,
Paris, 1851 (2 vols. in 8vo), vol. ii, p. 5.]
The Seigneur de l'Ours, whom the Maid demanded, was called Jaquet
Guillaume.[1959] Although Jeanne, like other folk, called him Seigneur,
it is not certain that he personally directed his inn, nor even that
the inn was open through these years of disaster and desolation. The
only ascertainable fact is that he was the proprietor of the house
with the sign of the Bear (_l'Ours_). He held it by right of his wife
Jeannette, and had come into possession of it in the following manner.
[Footnote 1959: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p.
117.]
Fourteen years before, when King Henry with his knighthood had not yet
landed in France, the host of the Bear Inn had been the King's
sergeant-at-arms, one Jean Roche, a man of wealth and fair fame. He
was a devoted follower of the Duke of Burgundy, and that was what
ruined him. Paris was then occupied by the Armagnacs. In the year
1416, in order to turn them out of the city, Jean Roche concerted with
divers burgesses. The plot was to be carried out on Easter Day, which
that year fell on the 29th of April. But the Armagnacs discovered it.
They threw the conspirators into prison and brought them to trial. On
the first Saturday in May the Seigneur de l'Ours was carried to the
market place in a tumbrel with Durand de Brie, a dyer, master of the
sixty cross-bowmen of Paris, and Jean Perquin, pin-maker and brasier.
All three were beheaded, and the body of the Seigneur de l'Ours was
hanged at Montfaucon where it remained until the entrance of the
Burgundians. Six weeks after their coming, in July, 1418, his body was
taken down from gibbet and buried in consecrated ground.[1960]
[Footnote 1960: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 71, 72. A.
Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. 118, note 1.]
Now the widow of Jean Roche had a daughter by a first marriage. Her
name was Jeannette; she took for her first husband a certain Bernard
le Breton; for her second, Jaquet Guillaume, who was not rich. He owed
money to Maitre Jean Fleury, a clerk at law and the King's secretary.
His wife's affairs were not more prosperous; her father's goods had
been confiscated and she had been obliged to redeem a part of her
maternal inheritance. In 1424, the couple were short of money, and
they sold a house, concealing the fact that it was mortgaged. Being
charged by the purchaser, they were thrown into prison, where they
aggravated their offence by suborning two witnesses, one a priest, the
other a chambermaid. Fortunately for them, they procured a
pardon.[1961]
[Footnote 1961: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, pp.
119-123.]
The Jaquet Guillaume couple, therefore, were in a sorry plight. There
remained to them, however, the inheritance of Jean Roche, the inn near
the Place Baudet, at the sign of the Bear, the title of which Jaquet
Guillaume bore. This second Seigneur de l'Ours was to be as strongly
Armagnac as the other had been Burgundian, and was to pay the same
price for his opinions.
Six years had passed since his release from prison, when, in the March
of 1430, there was plotted by the Carmelites of Melun and certain
burgesses of Paris that conspiracy which we mentioned on the occasion
of Jeanne's departure for l'Ile de France. It was not the first plot
into which the Carmelites had entered; they had plotted that rising
which had been on the point of breaking out on the Day of the
Nativity, when the Maid was leading the attack near La Porte
Saint-Honore; but never before had so many burgesses and so many
notables entered into a conspiracy. A clerk of the Treasury, Maitre
Jean de la Chapelle, two magistrates of the Chatelet, Maitre Renaud
Savin and Maitre Pierre Morant, a very wealthy man, named Jean de
Calais, burgesses, merchants, artisans, more than one hundred and
fifty persons, held the threads of this vast web, and among them,
Jaquet Guillaume, Seigneur de l'Ours.
The Carmelites of Melun directed the whole. Clad as artisans, they
went from King to burgesses, from burgesses to King; they kept up the
communications between those within and those without, and regulated
all the details of the enterprise. One of them asked the conspirators
for a written undertaking to bring the King's men into the city. Such
a demand looks as if the majority of the conspirators were in the pay
of the Royal Council.
In exchange for this undertaking these monks brought acts of oblivion
signed by the King. For the people of Paris to be induced to receive
the Prince, whom they still called Dauphin, they must needs be assured
of a full and complete amnesty. For more than ten years, while the
English and Burgundians had been holding the town, no one had felt
altogether free from the reproach of their lawful sovereign and the
men of his party. And all the more desirous were they for Charles of
Valois to forget the past when they recalled the cruel vengeance taken
by the Armagnacs after the suppression of the Butchers.
One of the conspirators, Jaquet Perdriel, advocated the sounding of a
trumpet and the reading of the acts of oblivion on Sunday at the Porte
Baudet.
"I have no doubt," he said, "but that we shall be joined by the
craftsmen, who, in great numbers will flock to hear the reading."
He intended leading them to the Saint Antoine Gate and opening it to
the King's men who were lying in ambush close by.
Some eighty or a hundred Scotchmen, dressed as Englishmen, wearing the
Saint Andrew's cross, were then to enter the town, bringing in fish
and cattle.
"They will enter boldly by the Saint-Denys Gate," said Perdriel, "and
take possession of it. Whereupon the King's men will enter in force by
the Porte Saint Antoine."
The plan was deemed good, except that it was considered better for the
King's men to come in by the Saint-Denys Gate.
On Sunday, the 12th of March, the second Sunday in Lent, Maitre Jean
de la Chapelle invited the magistrate Renaud Savin to come to the
tavern of _La Pomme de Pin_ and meet divers other conspirators in
order to arrive at an understanding touching what was best to be done.
They decided that on a certain day, under pretext of going to see his
vines at Chapelle-Saint-Denys, Jean de Calais should join the King's
men outside the walls, make himself known to them by unfurling a white
standard and bring them into the town. It was further determined that
Maitre Morant and a goodly company of citizens with him, should hold
themselves in readiness in the taverns of the Rue Saint-Denys to
support the French when they came in. In one of the taverns of this
street must have been the Seigneur de l'Ours, who, dwelling near by,
had undertaken to bring together divers folk of the neighbourhood.
The conspirators were acting in perfect agreement. All they now
awaited was to be informed of the day chosen by the Royal Council; and
they believed the attempt was to be made on the following Sunday. But
on the 21st of March Brother Pierre d'Allee, Prior of the Carmelites
of Melun, was taken by the English. Put to the torture, he confessed
the plot and named his accomplices. On the information he gave, more
than one hundred and fifty persons were arrested and tried. On the 8th
of April, the Eve of Palm Sunday, seven of the most important were
taken to the market-place on a tumbrel. They were: Jean de la
Chapelle, clerk of the Treasury; Renaud Savin and Pierre Morant,
magistrates at the Chatelet; Guillaume Perdriau; Jean le Francois,
called Baudrin; Jean le Rigueur, baker, and Jaquet Guillaume, Seigneur
de l'Ours. All seven were beheaded by the executioner, who afterwards
quartered the bodies of Jean de la Chapelle and of Baudrin.
Jaquet Perdriel was merely deprived of his possessions. Jean de Calais
soon procured a pardon. Jeannette, the wife of Jaquet Guillaume, was
banished from the kingdom and her goods confiscated.[1962]
[Footnote 1962: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 251, 253.
Falconbridge, in A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_,
p. 302, note 1. Sauval, _Antiquites de Paris_, vol. iii, p. 536.
Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 140.
Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 274 _et seq._]
How can the Maid have known the Seigneur de l'Ours? Possibly the
Carmelites of Melun had recommended him to her, and perhaps it was on
their advice that she demanded his surrender. She may have seen him in
the September of 1429, at Saint-Denys or before the walls of Paris,
and he may have then undertaken to work for the Dauphin and his party.
Why were attempts made at Lagny to save this man alone of the one
hundred and fifty Parisians arrested on the information of Brother
Pierre d'Allee? Rather than Renaud Savin and Pierre Morant,
magistrates at the Chatelet, rather than Jean de la Chapelle, clerk of
the Treasury, why choose the meanest of the band? And how could they
look to exchange a man accused of treachery for a prisoner of war? All
this seems to us mysterious and inexplicable.
In the early days of May, Jeanne did not know what had become of
Jaquet Guillaume. When she heard that he had been tried and put to
death she was sore grieved and vexed. None the less, she looked upon
Franquet as a captive held to ransom. But the Bailie of Senlis, who
for some unknown reason was determined on the captain's ruin, took
advantage of the Maid's vexation at Jaquet Guillaume's execution, and
persuaded her to give up her prisoner.
He represented to her that this man had committed many a murder, many
a theft, that he was a traitor, and that consequently he ought to be
brought to trial.
"You will be neglecting to execute justice," he said, "if you set this
Franquet free."
These reasons decided her, or rather she yielded to the Bailie's
entreaty.
"Since the man I wished to have is dead," she said, "do with Franquet
as justice shall require you."[1963]
[Footnote 1963: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 158, 159.]
Thus she surrendered her prisoner. Was she right or wrong? Before
deciding we must ask whether it were possible for her to do otherwise
than she did. She was the Maid of God, the angel of the Lord of Hosts,
that is clear. But the leaders of war, the captains, paid no great
heed to what she said. As for the Bailie, he was the King's man, of
noble birth and passing powerful.
Assisted by the judges of Lagny, he himself conducted the trial. The
accused confessed that he was a murderer, a thief, and a traitor. We
must believe him; and yet we cannot forbear a doubt as to whether he
really was, any more than the majority of Armagnac or Burgundian
men-at-arms, any more than a Damoiseau de Commercy or a Guillaume de
Flavy, for example. He was condemned to death.
Jeanne consented that he should die, if he had deserved death, and
seeing that he had confessed his crimes[1964] he was beheaded.
[Footnote 1964: _Ibid._, p. 159.]
When they heard of the scandalous treatment of Messire Franquet, the
Burgundians were loud in their sorrow and indignation.[1965] It would
seem that in this matter the Bailie of Senlis and the judges of Lagny
did not act according to custom. We, however, are not sufficiently
acquainted with the circumstances to form an opinion. There may have
been some reason, of which we are ignorant, why the King of France
should have demanded this prisoner. He had a right to do so on
condition that he paid the Maid the amount of the ransom. A soldier of
those days, well informed in all things touching honour in war, was
the author of _Le Jouvencel_. In his chivalrous romances he writes
approvingly of the wise Amydas, King of Amydoine, who, learning that
one of his enemies, the Sire de Morcellet, has been taken in battle
and held to ransom, cries out that he is the vilest of traitors,
ransoms him with good coins of the realm, and hands him over to the
provost of the town and the officers of his council that they may
execute justice upon him.[1966] Such was the royal prerogative.
[Footnote 1965: _Ibid._, p. 254. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 385. E.
Richer, _Histoire manuscrite de la Pucelle_, book i, folio 82.]
[Footnote 1966: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. ii, pp. 210, 211.]
Whether it was that camp life was hardening her, or whether, like all
mystics, she was subject to violent changes of mood, Jeanne showed at
Lagny none of that gentleness she had displayed on the evening of
Patay. The virgin who once had no other arm in battle than her
standard, now wielded a sword found there, at Lagny, a Burgundian
sword and a trusty. Those who regarded her as an angel of the Lord,
good Brother Pasquerel, for example, might justify her by saying that
the Archangel Saint Michael, the standard-bearer of celestial hosts,
bore a flaming sword. And indeed Jeanne remained a saint.
While she was at Lagny, folk came and told her that a child had died
at birth, unbaptized.[1967] Having entered into the mother at the time
of her conception, the devil held the soul of this child, who, for
lack of water, had died the enemy of its Creator. The greatest anxiety
was felt concerning the fate of this soul. Some thought it was in
limbo, banished forever from God's sight, but the more general and
better founded opinion was that it was seething in hell; for has not
Saint Augustine demonstrated that souls, little as well as great, are
damned because of original sin. And how could it be otherwise, seeing
that Eve's fall had effaced the divine likeness in this child? He was
destined to eternal death. And to think that with a few drops of water
this death might have been avoided! So terrible a disaster afflicted
not only the poor creature's kinsfolk, but likewise the neighbours and
all good Christians in the town of Lagny. The body was carried to the
Church of Saint-Pierre and placed before the image of Our Lady, which
had been highly venerated ever since the plague of 1128. It was called
Notre-Dame-des-Ardents because it cured burns, and when there were no
burns to be cured it was called Notre-Dame-des-Aidants, or rather Des
Aidances, that is, Our Lady the Helper, because she granted succour to
those in dire necessity.[1968]
[Footnote 1967: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 105.]
[Footnote 1968: A. Denis, _Jeanne d'Arc a Lagny_, Lagny, 1896, in 8vo,
pp. 4 _et seq._ J.A. Lepaire, _Jeanne d'Arc a Lagny_, Lagny, 1880, in
8vo, 38 pages.]
The maidens of the town knelt before her, the little body in their
midst, beseeching her to intercede with her divine Son so that this
little child might have his share in the Redemption brought by our
Saviour.[1969] In such cases the Holy Virgin did not always deny her
powerful intervention. Here it may not be inappropriate to relate a
miracle she had worked thirty-seven years before.
[Footnote 1969: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 105.]
At Paris, in 1393, a sinful creature, finding herself with child,
concealed her pregnancy, and, when her time was come, was without aid
delivered. Then, having stuffed linen into the throat of the girl she
had brought forth, she went and threw her on to the dust-heap outside
La Porte Saint-Martin-des-Champs. But a dog scented the body, and
scratching away the other refuse, discovered it. A devout woman, who
happened to be passing by, took this poor little lifeless creature,
and, followed by more than four hundred people, bore it to the Church
of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, there placed it on the altar of Our Lady,
and kneeling down with the multitude of folk and the monks of the
Abbey, with all her heart prayed the Holy Virgin not to suffer this
innocent babe to be condemned eternally. The child stirred a little,
opened her eyes, loosened the linen, which gagged her, and cried
aloud. A priest baptized her on the altar of Our Lady, and gave her
the name of Marie. A nurse was found, and she was fed from the breast.
She lived three hours, then died and was carried to consecrated
ground.[1970]
[Footnote 1970: _Religieux de Saint-Denis_, vol. ii, p. 82. Jean
Juvenal des Ursins, in _Coll. Michaud et Poujoulat_, p. 395, col. 2.]
In those days resurrections of unbaptized children were frequent. That
saintly Abbess, Colette of Corbie, who, when Jeanne was at Lagny,
dwelt at Moulins with the reformed Sisters of Saint Clare, had brought
back to life two of these poor creatures: a girl, who received the
name of Colette at the font and afterwards became nun, then abbess at
Pont-a-Mousson; a boy, who was said to have been two days buried and
whom the servant of the poor declared to be one of the elect. He died
at six months, thus fulfilling the prophecy made by the saint.[1971]
[Footnote 1971: _Acta Sanctorum_, 6th of March, pp. 381 and 617. Abbe
Bizouard, _Histoire de Sainte Colette_, pp. 35, 37. Abbe Douillet,
_Sainte Colette, sa vie, ses oeuvres_, 1884, pp. 150-154.]
With this kind of miracle Jeanne was doubtless acquainted. About
twenty-five miles from Domremy, in the duchy of Lorraine, near
Luneville, was the sanctuary of Notre-Dame-des-Aviots, of which she
had probably heard. Notre-Dame-des-Aviots, or Our Lady of those
brought back to life, was famed for restoring life to unbaptized
children. By means of her intervention they lived again long enough to
be made Christians.[1972]
[Footnote 1972: Le Cure de Saint-Sulpice, _Notre-Dame de France_,
Paris, in 8vo, vol. vi, 1860, p. 57.]
In the duchy of Luxembourg, near Montmedy, on the hill of Avioth,[1973]
multitudes of pilgrims worshipped an image of Our Lady brought there
by angels. On this hill a church had been built for her, with slim
pillars and elaborate stonework in trefoils, roses and light foliage.
This statue worked all manner of miracles. At its feet were placed
children born dead; they were restored to life and straightway
baptized.[1974]
[Footnote 1973: For the etymology of Avioth see C. Bonnabelle, _Petite
etude sur Avioth et son eglise_, in _Annuaire de la Meuse_, 1883, in
18mo, p. 14.]
[Footnote 1974: Le Cure de Saint-Sulpice, _loc. cit._, vol. v, pp. 107
_et seq._ Bonnabelle, _loc. cit._, pp. 13 _et seq._ Jacquemain,
_Notre-Dame d'Avioth et son eglise monumentale_, Sedan, 1876, in 8vo.]
The folk, gathered in the Church of Saint-Pierre de Lagny, around the
statue of Notre-Dame-des-Aidances, hoped for a like grace. The damsels
of the town prayed round the child's lifeless body. The Maid was asked
to come and join them in praying to Our Lord and Our Lady. She went to
the church, and knelt down with the maidens and prayed. The child was
black, "as black as my coat," said Jeanne. When the Maid and the
damsels had prayed, it yawned three times and its colour came back. It
was baptized and straightway it died; it was buried in consecrated
ground. Throughout the town this resurrection was said to be the work
of the Maid. According to the tales in circulation, during the three
days since its birth the child had given no sign of life;[1975] but the
gossips of Lagny had doubtless extended the period of its comatose
condition, like those good wives who of a single egg laid by the
husband of one of them, made a hundred before the day was out.
[Footnote 1975: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 105, 106.]
CHAPTER VII
SOISSONS AND COMPIEGNE--CAPTURE OF THE MAID
Leaving Lagny, the Maid presented herself before Senlis, with her own
company and with the fighting men of the French nobles whom she had
joined, in all some thousand horse. And for this force she demanded
entrance into the town. No misfortune was more feared by burgesses
than that of receiving men-at-arms, and no privilege more jealously
guarded than that of keeping them outside the walls. King Charles had
experienced it during the peaceful coronation campaign. The folk of
Senlis made answer to the Maid that, seeing the poverty of the town in
forage, corn, oats, victuals and wine, they offered her an entrance
with thirty or forty of the most notable of her company and no
more.[1976]
[Footnote 1976: Arch. mun. of Senlis in _Muse des archives
departementales_, pp. 304, 305. J. Flammermont, _Histoire de Senlis
pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans_, p. 245. Perceval
de Cagny, p. 173. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 294, note 5.]
It is said that from Senlis Jeanne went to the Castle of Borenglise in
the parish of Elincourt, between Compiegne and Ressons; and, in
ignorance as to what can have taken her there, it is supposed that she
made a pilgrimage to the Church of Elincourt, which was dedicated to
Saint Margaret; and it is possible that she wished to worship Saint
Margaret there as she had worshipped Saint Catherine at Fierbois, in
order to do honour to one of those heavenly ladies who visited her
every day and every hour.[1977]
[Footnote 1977: Manuscript History of Beauvais by Hermant, in _Trial_, vol.
v, p. 165. G. Lecocq, _Etude historique sur le sejour de Jeanne d'Arc a
Elincourt-Sainte-Marguerite_, Amiens, 1879, in 8vo, 13 pages. A. Peyrecave,
_Notes sur le sejour de Jeanne d'Arc a Elincourt-Sainte-Marguerite_,
Paris, 1875, in 8vo. _Elincourt-Sainte-Marguerite, notice historique et
archeologique_, Compiegne, 1888. Ch. vii, pp. 113, 123.]
In those days, in the town of Angers, was a licentiate of laws, canon
of the churches of Tours and Angers and Dean of Saint-Jean d'Angers.
Less than ten days before Jeanne's coming to Sainte-Marguerite
d'Elincourt, on April 18, about nine o'clock in the evening, he felt a
pain in the head, which lasted until four o'clock in the morning, and
was so severe that he thought he must die. He prayed to Saint
Catherine, for whom he professed a special devotion, and straightway
was cured. In thankfulness for so great a grace, he wended on foot to
the sanctuary of Saint Catherine of Fierbois; and there, on Friday,
the 5th of May, in a loud voice, said a mass for the King, for "the
Maid divinely worthy," and for the peace and prosperity of the
realm.[1978]
[Footnote 1978: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 164, 165. _Les miracles de Madame
Sainte Katerine de Fierboys_, pp. 16, 62, 63.]
The Council of King Charles had made over Pont-Sainte-Maxence to the
Duke of Burgundy, in lieu of Compiegne, which they were unable to
deliver to him since that town absolutely refused to be delivered, and
remained the King's despite the King. The Duke of Burgundy kept
Pont-Sainte-Maxence which had been granted him and resolved to take
Compiegne.[1979]
[Footnote 1979: P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_. Proofs and
illustrations, pp. 150, 154. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 276, note 3. Note
concerning G. de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 176.]
On the 17th of April, when the truce had expired, he took the field
with a goodly knighthood and a powerful army, four thousand
Burgundians, Picards and Flemings, and fifteen hundred English,
commanded by Jean de Luxembourg, Count of Ligny.[1980]
[Footnote 1980: Monstrelet, ch. xxx. Note concerning G. de Flavy, in
_Trial_, vol. v, p. 175. P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_. Proofs and
illustrations, xliv, xlv.]
Noble pieces of artillery did the Duke bring to that siege; notably,
Remeswelle, Rouge Bombarde and Houppembiere, from all three of which
were fired stone balls of enormous size. Mortars, which the Duke had
brought and paid ready money for to Messire Jean de Luxembourg, were
brought likewise; Beaurevoir and Bourgogne, also a great "_coullard_"
and a movable engine of war. The vast states of Burgundy sent their
archers and cross-bowmen to Compiegne. The Duke provided himself with
bows from Prussia and from Caffa in Georgia,[1981] and with arrows
barbed and unbarbed. He engaged sappers and miners to lay powder mines
round the town and to throw Greek fire into it. In short my Lord
Philip, richer than a king, the most magnificent lord in Christendom
and skilled in all the arts of knighthood, was resolved to make a
gallant siege.[1982]
[Footnote 1981: "In this country the Emperor [of Constantinople] has a
city called Capha, which is a seaport belonging to the Genoese and
whence is obtained wood for the making of bows and cross-bows,
likewise wine called Rommenie." _Le Livre de description des pays de
Gilles le Bouvier._ Ed. E.T. Hamy, Paris, 1908, p. 90.]
[Footnote 1982: De La Fons-Melicocq, _Documents inedits sur le siege de
Compiegne de 1430_ in _La Picardie_, vol. iii, 1857, pp. 22, 23. P.
Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_. Proofs and illustrations, p. 176.]
[Illustration: PHILIP, DUKE OF BURGUNDY]
The town, then one of the largest and strongest in France, was
defended by a garrison of between four and five hundred men,[1983]
commanded by Guillaume de Flavy. Scion of a noble house of that
province, forever in dispute with the nobles his neighbours, and
perpetually picking quarrels with the poor folk, he was as wicked and
cruel as any Armagnac baron.[1984] The citizens would have no other
captain, and in that office they maintained him in defiance of King
Charles and his chamberlains. They did wisely, for none was better
able to defend the town than my Lord Guillaume, none was more set on
doing his duty. When the King of France had commanded him to deliver
the place he had refused point-blank; and when later the Duke promised
him a good round sum and a rich inheritance in exchange for Compiegne,
he made answer that the town was not his, but the King's.[1985]
[Footnote 1983: Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 178. H. de Lepinois,
_Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiegne_, in
_Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, 1863, vol. xxiv, p. 486. A.
Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc devant Compiegne et l'histoire des
sieges de la meme ville sous Charles VI et Charles VII, d'apres des
documents inedits avec vues et plans_, Paris, 1889, in 8vo, p. 268.]
[Footnote 1984: Jacques Duclercq, _Memoires_, ed. Reiffenberg, vol. i,
p. 419. _Le Temple de Bocace_ in _Les oeuvres de Georges
Chastellain_, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. vii, p. 95. P. Champion,
_Guillaume de Flavy, capitaine de Compiegne, contribution a l'histoire
de Jeanne d'Arc et a l'etude de la vie militaire et privee au
XV'ieme siecle_, Paris, 1906, in 8vo, _passim_.]
[Footnote 1985: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 125. _Chronique
des cordeliers_, fol. 495 recto. Rogier, in Varin, _Arch. de la ville
de Reims_, 11th part, Statuts, vol. i, p. 604. A. Sorel, _loc. cit._,
p. 167. P. Champion, _loc. cit._, p. 33.]
The Duke of Burgundy easily took Gournay-sur-Aronde, and then laid
siege to Choisy-sur-Aisne, also called Choisy-au-Bac, at the junction
of the Aisne and the Oise.[1986]
[Footnote 1986: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 379, 381. _Chronique des
cordeliers_, fol. 495 recto. _Livre des trahisons_, p. 202.]
The Gascon squire, Poton de Saintrailles and the men of his company
crossed the Aisne between Soissons and Choisy, surprised the
besiegers, and retired immediately, taking with them sundry
prisoners.[1987]
[Footnote 1987: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 382, 383. Berry, in _Trial_,
vol. iv, p. 49.]
On the 13th of May, the Maid entered Compiegne, where she lodged in
the Rue de l'Etoile.[1988] On the morrow, the Attorneys[1989] offered
her four pots of wine.[1990] They thereby intended to do her great
honour, for they did no more for the Lord Archbishop of Reims,
Chancellor of the realm, who was then in the town with the Count of
Vendome, the King's lieutenant and divers other leaders of war. These
noble lords resolved to send artillery and other munitions to the
Castle of Choisy, which could not hold out much longer;[1991] and now,
as before, the Maid was made use of.
[Footnote 1988: According to a note by Dom Bertheau, in A. Sorel,
_Sejours de Jeanne d'Arc a Compiegne, maisons ou elle a loge en 1429
et 1430_, with view and plans, Paris, 1888, in 8vo, pp. 11, 12.]
[Footnote 1989: Magistrates of the town. Cf. _ante_, p. 34, note 3.]
[Footnote 1990: _Accounts of the town of Compiegne_, CC 13, folio 291.
Dom Gillesson, _Antiquites de Compiegne_, vol. v, p. 95. A. Sorel, _La
prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 145, note 3.]
[Footnote 1991: Choisy surrendered on the 16th of May. _Chronique des
cordeliers_, fol. 497, verso. _Livre des trahisons_, p. 201.
Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 382. Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 49. A.
Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. 145, 146. P. Champion,
_Guillaume de Flavy_, pp. 40-41, 162-163.]
The army marched towards Soissons in order to cross the Aisne.[1992]
The captain of the town was a squire of Picardy, called by the French
Guichard Bournel, by the Burgundians Guichard de Thiembronne; he had
served on both sides. Jeanne knew him well; he reminded her of a
painful incident. He had been one of those, who finding her wounded in
the trenches before Paris, had insisted on putting her on her horse
against her will. On the approach of King Charles's barons and
men-at-arms, Captain Guichard made the folk of Soissons believe that
the whole army was coming to encamp in their town. Wherefore they
resolved not to receive them. Then happened what had already befallen
at Senlis: Captain Bournel received the Lord Archbishop of Reims, the
Count of Vendome and the Maid, with a small company, and the rest of
the army abode that night outside the walls.[1993] On the morrow,
failing to obtain command of the bridge, they endeavoured to ford the
river, but without success; for it was spring and the waters were
high. The army had to turn back. When it was gone, Captain Bournel
sold to the Duke of Burgundy the city he was charged to hold for the
King of France; and he delivered it into the hand of Messire Jean de
Luxembourg for four thousand golden _saluts_.[1994]
[Footnote 1992: Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 49, 50.]
[Footnote 1993: F. Brun, _Jeanne d'Arc et le capitaine de Soissons en
1430_, Soissons, 1904, p. 5 (extract from _l'Argus Soissonnais_). P.
Champion, _loc. cit._, p. 41.]
[Footnote 1994: Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 50. P. Champion, _loc.
cit._, p. 168. Proofs and illustrations, xxxv, p. 168. F. Brun,
_Nouvelles recherches sur le fait de Soissons (Jeanne d'Arc et Bournel
en 1430) a propos d'un livre recent_, Meulan, 1907, in 8vo.]
At the tidings of this treacherous and dishonourable action on the
part of the Captain of Soissons, Jeanne cried out that if she had him,
she would cut his body into four pieces, which was no empty imagining
of her wrath. As the penalty of certain crimes it was the custom for
the executioner, after he had beheaded the condemned, to cut his body
in four pieces, which was called quartering. So that it was as if
Jeanne had said that the traitor deserved quartering. The words
sounded hard to Burgundian ears; certain even believed that they heard
Jeanne in her wrath taking God's name in vain. They did not hear
correctly. Never had Jeanne taken the name of God or of any of his
saints in vain. Far from swearing when she was angered, she used to
exclaim: "God's good will!" or "Saint John!" or "By Our Lady!"[1995]
[Footnote 1995: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 273.]
Before Soissons, Jeanne and the generals separated. The latter with
their men-at-arms went to Senlis and the banks of the Marne. The
country between the Aisne and the Oise was no longer capable of
supporting so large a number of men or such important personages.
Jeanne and her company wended their way back to Compiegne.[1996]
Scarcely had she entered the town when she sallied forth to ravage the
neighbourhood.
[Footnote 1996: I have rejected the story told by Alain Bouchard of
Jeanne's meeting with the little children in the Church of Saint
Jacques. (_Les grandes croniques de Bretaigne_, Paris, Galliot Du Pre,
1514, fol. cclxxxi.) M. Pierre Champion (_Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 283)
has irrefutably demonstrated its unauthenticity.]