_Jeanne d'Arc and the English Occupation_
"Je sçay bien que les Angloys me feront mourir, croyant qu'
après ma mort ils gagneront le royaume de France; mais quand
même ils seraient cent mille godons de plus qu'ils ne sont
présentement, ils n'auraient pas ce royaume."
Of the many interesting processions which must have taken place in the
fifteenth century on the occasion of the great ceremony of the Fierte
St. Romain, surely few can have been more impressive than that in
which the Duke of Bedford, in his capacity as Canon of the Cathedral,
walked among the ecclesiastics towards the little chapel in the Place
de la Haute Vieille Tour where the freedom of the prisoner was
declared before the assembled people. For in him all might see the
outward and visible proof of an English occupation in its most
intimate connection with the ancient traditions begun under his
ancestors the Dukes of Normandy. But his presence is not the only sign
that can be clearly traced of the interest which the English
inevitably felt in the most extraordinary privilege of their new
possession. As usual on every occasion when a new set of officials
came in touch with this astonishing and deeply-rooted custom, their
contact is marked by fresh expressions of dissent. So, just as
Philip-Augustus had to uphold, against his own officials, the custom
which every prince before him had sanctioned, in exactly the same way
we find Henry V. affirming that the Privilege of St. Romain was of
right to be exercised by the canons of the Cathedral according to
their ancient precedents. And it is instructive that though his
verdict was first pronounced in a case by which a native prisoner
benefited, it was only in the next year, and again on some other
occasions, that an Englishman was chosen to bear the holy shrine and
win pardon for his sins. So strangely, indeed, and so strongly was the
privilege exercised during these years of foreign dominion, that I
cannot avoid the reflection--humiliating to Rouen as it is--that an
attempt at least might have been made to exercise it in the case of
the most famous prisoner ever in the donjons of the city, of the woman
who would have been most worthy of those upon the roll of mercy to
benefit by the protection of the Church. But if any attempt was made
in favour of Jeanne d'Arc, it has not been recorded, and this is one
of the strongest reasons for my regret that, full as they are, these
records of the Privilege are often only too obviously imperfect.
The case in which objection was first raised was very naturally the
first which occurred after the English flag had been unfurled above
the city. In great surprise at the confidence shown by the good
canons, the new bailli, Gauthier de Beauchamp, demanded an enquiry
which was promptly held in his presence before the Cardinal Bishop of
Winchester. On learning of the dispute Henry V. at once wrote to
declare his reverence for the privilege established "En l'onneur et
révérence du dict glorieux confesseur monsieur sainct Rommaing"; so
Jehan Anquetil was duly delivered to mercy, after a crime to which
modern civilisation is very rightly and unswervingly severe, and his
accomplice was claimed by the Chapterhouse and delivered also. I
confess it is beyond my powers to suggest the reason for so solemn a
prerogative having been exercised by the highest dignitaries of the
city's Cathedral in favour of a prisoner convicted of rape.[47] If a
privilege that can only have resisted official competition for so long
because it was based on deeply-rooted popular support, could survive a
choice of this kind, it is one of the strongest proofs of the changes
in society and in public opinion which have fortunately appeared in
civilised communities since the fifteenth century.
[Footnote 47: In 1431 another prisoner, Souplis Lemire, of Yvetôt, was
pardoned for exactly the same crime. By a lie he induced Jehanne
Corvière to mount behind his horse, rode with her into a country lane,
where in the words of the manuscript, "il la féry et frapa de
plusieurs orbes coups, plus de l'espace de quatre heures, et lui fist
la char toute noire et meudrie en plusieurs parties de son corps, et
tant fist que il oult violemment et oultre le gré d'elle sa compaignie
par grant force et à plusieurs clameurs de haro." In this case it was
evidently the influence of the offender's family which procured him
the Fierte, and his victim raised the "clameur de haro" during the
ceremony itself. For this she was obliged to apologise to the canons,
but Lemire's conduct throughout had been so disgraceful that, though
the Fierte had absolved him definitely of all criminal penalty, after
eight years of discussion he was condemned in the civil courts to pay
damages of 250 livres tournois to Jehanne. In 1540 the same principle
was upheld, and it generally seems to have been the custom that any
prisoner chosen should give surety for the payment of his civil
penalties before he was released by the Fierte from his criminal
sentence.]
In 1420 a still more interesting case arose, which is the first that
suggests to my mind the possibility of the canons' choice being
occasionally influenced by those in authority, and if by them, then it
is only too probable that other suggestions (not strictly religious in
their nature) may have been made in other years when "equity,"
according to our notions, does not explain their triumph over "law."
For in this year the manuscript records, "Pierre Lamequin, de la
paroisse de Vize, en Angleterre, diocèse de Salisbéry;" an entry which
inevitably suggests to English ears that Peter Lambkin of Devizes was
the lucky prisoner. He killed a merchant at an outlying village, with
a French friend to help him. Other instances occur in which the
foreign army profited by the native privilege. In 1429 the entry
reads: "Thomas Grandon, anglais, de la paroisse de Hanniquem, diocèse
d'York," who killed two Scotchmen at Chambroix. In 1434 we find:
"Guillaume Banc, anglais, de la paroisse de Saint-Bin, diocèse de
Carlisle," who slew one Saunders in a brawl, helped by a friend named
William Peters. In 1437, "Jehan Hotot, laïque, de la paroisse de
Sainte-Marie de Helnyngan, diocèse de Norfolk," who killed a pair of
Englishmen in the country. In 1438, "Jennequin Benc ou Bent, anglais,
de la paroisse de Bosc-Châtel, diocèse d'Héréford, dans le pays de
Galles," who killed an Englishman. In 1439, "Jehan Helys, anglais, de
la paroisse de Hest-Monceaulz, diocèse de Cantorbéry," who had stolen
goods in Rouen, in company with one John Johnson and Thomas
"Kneet."[48] In 1447, "Jean Houcton, anglais, de la paroisse de
Langthon, en Clindal, diocèse de Dublin," who was charged with
stealing a horse, alleging, in defence, that foraging was a common
privilege of soldiers, and was subsequently convicted of robbing an
innkeeper near the bridge of a silver cup six ounces in weight. Now
that these names are brought to the knowledge of English antiquaries
with more science and leisure at their disposal than are mine, I await
with interest to hear whether any traces of these freebooters exist
in the parish records of their native towns.[49]
[Footnote 48: This Ellis was particularly lucky, for the first
prisoner chosen had been Denisot le Charretier, who was claimed as an
ecclesiastic by the Archbishop, Louis of Luxembourg, who was also
Chancellor of France for the English King. They tried to secure his
deliverance, but the Chancellor was too strong for them, and the
dispute was settled by the intervention of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,
who came in person to the Chapterhouse and persuaded the canons to
renounce their right and choose another prisoner.]
[Footnote 49: These queerly distorted names are not the only ones that
recall the English occupation. A still more vivid memory of it may be
found in their old bowling green, which is still the "Boulingrin" of
the Boulevard St. Hilaire (see Map B), a word with which Brachet
compares "flibustier," "poulie," and others. The "redingote" for our
riding-coat is at once a more familiar and more modern instance.]
But, after all, the privilege was not always exercised in one
direction. Occasionally the feelings of the conquered population had
evidently to be consulted, as in 1425, when Geoffroy Cordeboeuf was
chosen to bear the shrine, who had murdered an Englishman at
Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. There was a lengthy discussion over this, during
which it is recorded that the year before, the disputing canons in
their ecclesiastical costume had gone to the tavern of the Lion d'Or
to drink with Lieutenant Poolin, their opponent, in flat disobedience
to the Cathedral statute of 1361. It came out in the evidence
presented that the canons were actually allowed to keep the keys of
the prisons during Ascension Day and the three Rogation Days before
it, and that they questioned the prisoners alone, without the jailers
being present. In 1448 the same cause evidently suggested the
liberation of no less than eighteen prisoners at once, who had banded
together in the village of St. Trinité-de-Tankerville, and killed four
Englishmen. The soldiers thoroughly deserved their fate, for they had
brutally ill-treated two women, and killed one of their husbands,
before the villagers took vengeance into their own hands.
There is but space to notice very briefly the other more interesting
cases in this period. In 1428 a woman, named Estiennote Présart, who
had stolen a silver cup from a priest, was pardoned. In 1441 some
workmen on the Palace of the English King near "Mal s'y Frotte," who
had thrown some troublesome brawlers into the Seine, bore the shrine.
The next year the privilege was enjoyed by a husband who had several
times discovered his wife's infidelity with a neighbouring knight, and
had killed her on finding that she also extended her favours to a
priest. This is one of the most intelligible instances of all; and in
1454 its circumstances are almost exactly repeated in the case of
Michel Manant, who also slew his unfaithful wife. Indeed, a French
jury even of to-day is never very hard upon the "crime passionel,"
with which that nation has always had so much sympathy. A similar case
of the "equity" I have sometimes fancied I could trace occurs in 1446,
when Nicolas Hébert stole four cups of silver, two belts studded with
silver, twelve silver and ten gold spoons, having been unable to get
any wages paid him after nine years of service with an advocate of
Falaise. He was condemned to death and pardoned by the canons.
I have already mentioned the famous Talbot (see p. 203) in connection
with the Fierte. He appears again in its records (as the Comte de
Sursbérik) in 1444 with a refusal to allow the canons to visit the
prisons of the castle, because they contained Armagnacs and other
treasonable enemies to the King's Majesty. But the usual processions
and popular enthusiasm with which the canons replied soon made him
change his mind, and the prisoners were duly visited both in "La
Grosse Tour" or donjon, and in every other jail. His refusal had been
particularly ill-advised, because in May of 1430 the canons had
appealed from an obstinate jailer to the Duke of Bedford, and had
obtained his permission to visit the donjon according to their ancient
custom. That very winter the castle of Philip Augustus in the Place
Bouvreuil was to hold its most famous prisoner. For when Jeanne d'Arc
was brought to Rouen in December 1430, the prison of the Baillage
(called "les prisons ou la geôle du roi"), whose archways you may
still see near the stairway of the Rue du Baillage, had been destroyed
by fire in 1425; and it is particularly mentioned that she was not
placed either in the cells of the Hôtel de Ville, where I have already
recorded that an English jailer had been placed, or in the
"Ecclesiastical Prisons" of the Rue St. Romain near the Cathedral,
although her whole trial was conducted by ecclesiastics, but in the
"Château de Rouen," where (in Talbot's words) "prisoners of war and
treasonable felons" were especially guarded.
[Illustration: HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. ROMAIN CALLED THE MAISON JEANNE
D'ARC (IN THE DISTANCE THE DOOR OF THE COUR DES COMPTES IN THE RUE DES
QUATRE VENTS)]
At the siege of Compiègne, on May 24, 1430, Jeanne d'Arc had been
taken prisoner by one of the men of John of Luxemburg, and from the
English camp at Margny she was sent further off to the Château of
Beaulieu. Within two days the Vicar-General of the Inquisition, and
the University of Paris, had demanded that she should be delivered
over to the "Justice of the Church." And behind both was a power
stronger than either, the hatred of the English. They soon found a
ready instrument in Pierre Cauchon, who had been made Bishop of
Beauvais by the Duke of Burgundy, was chased out of it by the party
of Charles VII., and now expected to get the Archbishopric of Rouen by
the help of the English. It was he who bore the King of England's
request to John of Luxemburg that he would give up Jeanne d'Arc for
ten thousand pieces of gold to the Church to be judged. Neither
Charles VII. nor any French ecclesiastic (save the Archbishop of
Reims) made any movement, so she was surrendered at the price of an
army. After being taken to Beaurevoir, to Arras, and to Crotoy, she
was moved by way of St. Valery, Eu, and Dieppe to Rouen. She entered
the town by the valley of Bihorel, past the spot where the Gare du
Havre now stands, and by way of the Rue Verte was led to the castle of
Philip Augustus and placed in an iron cage, so that the smirched
authority of English rule might be re-established by proving her, in
the formal processes of law, a witch.
Of the castle itself the only tower that now stands still bears her
name. Almost the last scene of her imprisonment took place within the
walls that you may visit here, though originally she was not placed in
this donjon itself. For the original castle, built by Philip Augustus
in 1205 to consolidate his rule over John Lackland's fresh-won
province, had consisted of an almost circular building, with six
towers, a demi-tower, and this donjon which was built upon two thick
curtain-walls and entirely interrupted the guards' "chemin de ronde,"
on to which no door opened from its massive circular walls. The Castle
of Arques (1038), and of Château Guillard (1195), are indeed older
than this of Rouen, but the ruins of their donjon-keeps do not show
anything like the character of the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, which is itself
earlier in date than either Coucy (1228) or Pierrefonds (1390). More
than this, a document of 1202 preserves the most interesting fact that
this tower was planned after the dimensions and shape of the famous
Tour du Louvre, of which Paris now possesses only a circle of white
marble to mark the site of the royal tower that once stood where the
south-west corner of the Louvre courtyard is now.
The walls of Rouen's donjon are 4 metres 20 thick, 46 metres in
circumference at the base, and 30 metres high. These last two
measurements show a difference of only two metres from those of the
vanished Tour du Louvre. Before this chapter closes I shall be able to
explain how it is that you are able to see in Rouen the most perfect
presentment of a thirteenth-century donjon in France, with two-thirds
of the present building in its original masonry. Within it took place
most of the stirring events of history after a change in dynasty had
left the castle of the Norman dukes to develop gradually into a
commercial instead of a royal or military centre. One of these, the
arrest of Charles le Mauvais, and the execution of his four friends by
King Jean le Bon, I have spoken of in earlier chapters. This, too, was
the fortress that held out longest for the King when the Révolte de la
Harelle was at its height in 1382. Before its walls Sir Gilbert Talbot
and Sir William Hanington sat down to besiege Guy le Bouteiller, who
as captain of the garrison had it in his especial charge. Within it
the eighty hostages for the ransom of the city, and the thirty
burgesses especially punished with high fines, were imprisoned when
King Henry V. took the town. It was still held by the English garrison
when Jeanne d'Arc was brought to Rouen as a prisoner. It is the last
visible relic of the royal homes of Rouen, for every other one has
disappeared, from the first keep of Rollo to the Haute et Basse
Vieilles Tours of his descendants, to the Palace of Philip Augustus
and of the English kings, even to the fortresses of St. Catherine's
Hill and of the barbacan beside the bridge.
[Illustration: MAP F.
PLAN OF THE VIEUX-MARCHÉ AND OF THE MARCHÉ AUX VEAUX, FROM THE "LIVRE
DES FONTAINES DE ROUEN," DRAWN BY JACQUES LELIEUR IN 1525]
Once his prisoner was safe within the castle, the Bishop of Beauvais
proceeded to "pack his jury," and choose his companions for the trial.
His right hand man was Jean d'Estivet (or "Benedicite"). From Paris
arrived Jean Beaupère, who took Gerson's place as Chancellor, with
Jacques de Touraine, Nicole Midi, and Thomas de Courcelles, all
brilliant and authoritative theologians. From Normandy itself came the
Prior of Longueville, the Abbé of Jumièges, Gilles, Abbé of Fécamp and
councillor to the English King, Nicolas Loyseleur, a canon of Rouen,
and others. One alone of those invited, Nicolas de Houppeville,
objected to serving, because his direct superior, the Archbishop of
Reims, had already disapproved. He was only just saved from being
murdered. No one else dared to differ with Pierre Cauchon, and several
affirmed later on that they had voted in fear of their lives. Both the
clerk of the court, Manchon, and Massieu, the doorkeeper, found their
sympathies too perilous to express. This was because, though scarcely
an Englishman was actually a member of the Court, the English kept the
whole proceeding directly under their thumb, and to every appeal the
same answer was returned--"The King (of England) has ordered it." The
King's two uncles, of Bedford and of Winchester, watched that the
orders were carried out; and the price of every one is still recorded
in the exact account-books of the time. The English never let her
leave their castle till the end, so that any slight "judicial error"
might always be corrected if need were.
They kept her first in an iron cage, then in one of the castle towers,
with irons upon her feet, chained to a log of wood, and guarded night
and day by four common soldiers. On the 9th of January 1431 the Bishop
of Beauvais summoned in Rouen the council chosen for the trial, and
appointed its officials. On the 20th, Jeanne, being summoned to make
her appearance before the court at eight next morning, begged that her
judges might be more fairly chosen, and that she might hear Mass. She
was refused both, and appeared on the 21st, in the chapel of the
castle. Asked to answer truly upon oath all the questions put to her,
Jeanne replied--"I do not know on what points you wish to question
me. You might perhaps ask me things which I will not tell you." After
this she told how she was called "Jeannette" at home, and Jeanne "in
France," and knew no surname; how she was baptised and born at
Domrémy, of Jacques d'Arc and his wife Isabel about nineteen years
ago; she refused to promise not to escape if she could; and would only
recite the Lord's Prayer in confession to a priest. After Cauchon had
begun, the next day's questioning was more gently taken by Jean
Beaupère, to whom she told of her care of the house at home, and of
her skill in needlework, "as good as any in Rouen." The inquirers then
went on to reveal the story of her "voices," and she firmly repeated
her refusal to bind herself by a general oath as to every answer,
saying that she had more fear of God and of her "voices," than of her
conduct in that trial. Asked whether she was sure of the favour of God
(a double-edged question at which some even of her judges murmured)
she passed the danger by saying, "If I am not, may God help me to it;
and if I am, may God preserve me in it."
Baffled at this point by the innocent faith of this country girl, the
university professor changed the attack, and approached questions of a
more political importance, cleverly interwoven with the first
appearance of her "voices" when she was a girl of thirteen at Domrémy.
But neither of treasonable partisanship nor of local superstitions
could he convict her. She gave the names of her heavenly councillors
as St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael, the same saint whose
fortress held out inviolable against every English attack among the
quicksands and the rushing tides of the north coast. Unable to find
anything heretic or infidel in her replies on religious subjects, and
only getting candid common sense in return for their suspicions, her
judges turned to the idea of satanic inspiration and support. But it
proved equally useless. Her patriotism shone clear above every trivial
element in her long examination.
The last public hearing of her evidence before all her judges was on
the 3rd of March. The result of the inquiry was then collected to form
the basis of a fresh interrogation in her prison, which was conducted
on the 10th by Jean de la Fontaine for a whole week. At the end of it
Jean Lemaître himself arrived by order of the Chief Inquisitor.
Nothing was added to the information already gathered, and nothing
shook the firmness of the girl's replies. For only explanation she
repeated, "It pleased God to do this by means of a simple maid, in
order to rebuff the enemies of the King." Throughout, her negligence
of trifles, her insistence upon the important points, her swift common
sense, were the more conspicuous, because her judges persisted in
reading their own meaning into all she answered to their subtle
questions. Did they ask her, for instance, "Does God hate the
English?" she would reply, "I know nothing of the hatred or the love
of God for Englishmen, but this I know, that they will soon be all
thrust out of France, save those of them who leave their bodies here."
On the much-disputed question of her masculine attire, she said she
would wear woman's dress only when she heard Mass, and woman's
clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were
perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason
for her dress, but they persisted--without result--in trying to trap
her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be
caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an act of simple prudence.
Her judges, strong and clever men as most of them were, themselves
were tired out by the closeness and the duration of the trial. Yet
this young girl, fasting even from her prison-fare, was resolute
enough to keep her head, and reply steadily through it all. But she
refused to be troubled with unnecessary or merely reiterated
questions, and claimed her right to feel as tired as were her judges
when she felt it necessary. She was in fact perfectly natural and
frank throughout, even when the open expression of her thoughts was
hardly politic for one in her position. Without the help of counsel,
or of any to assist her, French or English, layman or ecclesiastic,
she was even deprived of the friendly countenance or signs of anyone
whose sympathy overcame for the moment his very justifiable fear of
her persecutors. Even the consolations of her religion were denied
her. The only semblance of advice she got was in the base and
hypocritical attempts of a scoundrelly canon of Rouen Cathedral to
teach her certain answers which might afterwards be used against her
by her accusers.[50] It is a shameful thing to have to record that the
Earl of Warwick helped the Bishop of Beauvais to complete this
villainy, and took clerks with him to listen at the door, but they
refused to lend themselves to such dishonourable methods.
[Footnote 50: There is a quaint suggestion of repentance for all this
in the cathedral of to-day. If you enter by the Portail des Libraires
and stand beside the north-east pillar of the great lantern, at your
feet is the tombstone of one of these unjust judges, Denis Gastinel,
and beneath it is the great Calorifère that warms the building, a
suggestively gruesome foretaste of the punishment which the modern
canons evidently think his conduct towards Jeanne d'Arc deserves.]
Early in the week of Palm Sunday she was formally summoned to the
great hall of the castle to hear the seventy articles of the Act of
Accusation against her. The web of calumny that had been spun out of
her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though
silent for the most part, she quickly contradicted some statements,
and pointed out the fallacy of others. Reproached for her unwomanly
behaviour, she replied at once, "As for woman's work, there are plenty
of other women who can do that"; and asserted that before fighting at
all, she had made every effort to obtain her wishes peacefully. She
even recited the short prayer it was her custom to make when she
needed the counsel of her heavenly visitors.
After this the seventy articles were reduced to twelve, which resumed
the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They
were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her
visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her attitude towards the
Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the
Archbishop of Reims, instead of to Pierre Cauchon, his subordinate.
On Thursday the 6th of April Érard Émengard held a meeting in the
chapel of the Archbishop's Palace at Rouen to deliberate over the
twelve articles. You may still see the place where this went on. As
you enter the gateway of the Screen to the Portail des Libraires from
the Rue St. Romain, on the left of the forecourt before the great
carved door, you will see an old building which in the August of 1897
was being repaired and reconstructed to provide a school for the
children of the Cathedral choir. This house forms itself the western
side of a courtyard into which a door has no doubt by this time
(December 1898) been opened from the Rue St. Romain, between the large
turret that projects on the left of the old screened entrance in the
street and the next octagonal turret with a sharply pointed roof that
is built on the wall of the Cathedral buildings. By whatever entrance
practicable, you must go into this courtyard and see the private
chapel of the Archbishop, the old "Chapelle des Ordres" which touches
the north wall of the Cathedral choir. Within this chapel the council
was held, that by its approval of the Twelve Articles of Accusation
pronounced the death-warrant of Jeanne d'Arc.[51]
[Footnote 51: The actual death-sentence, pronounced on the 29th of May
by the forty-two judges in full council ran as follows:--
"Mandons ... que vous citiez ladite Jeanne à comparaitre en personne
devant nous demain, heure de huit heures du matin, au lieu dit Le
Vieux Marché, pour se voir par nous déclarée relapse, excommuniée,
hérétique, avec l'intimation à lui faire en pareil cas--Donné en la
Chapelle du Manoir archiépiscopal de Rouen, le mardi 29 mai, l'an du
Seigneur 1431, après la fête de la Trinité de notre Seigneur."
Yet there is not a single mark or inscription to record the fact of
which this lonely and neglected chapel was the scene.]
In the midst of all these machinations the prisoner herself fell ill.
Doctors were hurried to her cell to save her for the vengeance of her
judges, and the "processes of law" were pushed forward more hastily
than ever. On the 2nd of May she was once more confronted with the
accusations made against her, in a long speech by the Archdeacon. She
would add nothing to what had been already said. "Even if I saw the
flames before me I should say what I have already told you, and do
what I have done;" and the clerk writes "Superba Responsio" opposite
the entry.
Determined to leave no means untried to overcome this resistance, her
judges summoned her on Wednesday the 9th of May into the "Grosse Tour
du château de Rouen," the donjon which you can visit in the Rouen of
to-day, by turning to the left as you go northward up the Rue
Bouvreuil (see Map D). The room in which Jeanne stood to answer her
accusers has been carefully restored, but it is obscured by the huge
plaster cast of a statue by Mercié. The vaulting is the original work
intact, and on the keystone is carved the oldest existing shield of
the arms of France, the six truncated Fleurs de Lys of Philip
Augustus, which are reproduced more clearly on the huge and lofty cowl
above the chimney. Beneath the floor there is still the old well that
supplied the garrison, a little to the left of the entrance, and
rather further round is the small spiral staircase leading to the
upper rooms, which are not so large.
She was brought here because there was no room in her former prison
for the instruments of torture, and the executioners' gear with which
her courage was finally to be tested. Pierre Cauchon directed the
proceedings, with Lemaître and nine others, of whom three were members
of the Chapterhouse of Rouen, and one was Massieu the clerk. Besides
these, the ushers and the guard of English soldiers lined the walls.
Here it is recorded how she was threatened with torture "if she did
not avow the truth," and shown the instruments and the officials who
were ready to administer it. I will not attempt to translate the few
words Jeanne d'Arc ever uttered whose echoes we may still imagine
beneath the very roof that heard them. There is hardly a single
other[52] place of which the same thing can be said.
[Footnote 52: With all that happened before Jeanne came to Rouen I
have no concern here, and I must take it for granted that you know at
least the outlines. But to confirm the sentence to which this note
refers, I may add that they still point out to you at Chinon the well
where she alighted off her horse, and the house of the "bonne femme"
who sheltered her. Of the Tour du Coudray in the Castle of Chinon, as
of the great hall on the first floor where she met the King, little
save ruined stones remain. And it is not often that even so much as
that is left of other places in which she is known to have stayed,
such as the chamber in the Castle of Crotoy, the tower at Beaurevoir,
the gate-tower of Compiègne, or any of the cells in which she was
confined within the Castle of Rouen itself.]
In answer to the first threatening question the manuscript gives her
reply as follows:--
"Vraiement, se vous me deviez faire détraire les membres et faire
partir l'âme hors du corps, si ne vous diray-je autre chose; et se
aucune chose vous en disoye-je, après si diroye-je tousjours que vous
le me auriés fait dire par force.
"_Item_, dit que, à la Sainte-Croix, oult le confort de Saint Gabriel:
'Et croiez que ce fust sainct Gabriel;' et l'a sceu par les voix que
c'estoit Saint Gabriel.
"_Item_, dit qu'elle (a) demandé conseil à ses voix s'elle se
submectroit à l'Église, pour ce que les gens d'église la pressoient
fort de se submectre à l'Eglise, et ils lui ont dit que s'elle veult
que nostre Seigneur luy aide, qu'elle s'actende à luy de tous ses
fais.
"_Item_, dit qu'elle sçait bien que nostre Seigneur a esté toujours
maistre de ses fais, et que l'ennemy n'avait oncques eu puissance sur
ses faits.
"_Item_, dit qu'elle a demandé à ses voix s'elle sera arse, et que les
dictes voix luy ont répondu que elle se actende à nostre sire, et il
luy aidera.
"_Item_, du signe de la couronne qu'elle dit avoir esté baillé à
l'arcevesque de Reims, interoguée s'elle s'en veult rapporter à luy,
respond; 'Faictes le y venir, et que je l'oe parler, et puis je vous
respondray; ne il ne oseroit dire le contraire de ce que je vous en ay
dit.'"
In 1455 the "Procès de réhabilitation" recorded the testimony of
Mauger Separmentier, the executioner, who saw her during this scene in
the donjon, whither he had been summoned, with his assistant, to
administer the torture, if necessary. "She showed great prudence in
her replies," he affirmed, "so that those who heard were astonished;
and this deponent retired with his assistant without touching her"
(see Quicherat, "Procès," vols. i., ii., iii.). It is evident that if
she had given them the least excuse, by any mistake in her replies,
her judges would not have allowed the executioner to depart idle.
There are very few other places to which I can point you as witnesses
of her tragedy. But, besides that chapel you have already visited,
there is in the same district, between the north side of the Cathedral
and the Rue de la Chaine, a whole labyrinth of twisting streets
wherein lived the ecclesiastics who plotted her death.[53]
[Footnote 53: See Map C.]
In the Rue St. Nicolas (which turns eastward after the Cathedral
Parvis from the Rue des Carmes) there is a small open square just
opposite the opening of the Rue Croix de Fer; within the walls of a
house there are still preserved a few ruined stones of the Church of
St. Nicolas le Paincteur, at the end of a courtyard. If you go round
into the Place des Carmes, it is still possible to trace (at Nos. 27
and 31) some old vaults beneath the soil, by the ventilation holes
just above the pavement. Close to this Church of St. Nicolas was the
house of Jean Rubé, Canon of Rouen, with whom lodged Pierre Cauchon
when he came to preside over the trial. It was there that, with
Nicolas Loyseleur and others, those sinister discussions went on
between every public examination of the prisoner. And in the house
that rose above those vaults lived Loyseleur himself. The present
façade has been so altered since 1818 that only in the interior
courtyard (if M. Laurent, Mayor of Rouen in 1897, and M. Sarrasin, the
historian of Jeanne d'Arc, are kind enough to allow it) can you
realise the age of the building. The thick walls and deep-set windows
leave no doubt of the age of their construction. The vaults beneath
are still more extraordinary relics of antiquity, with their massive
round arches and double sets of substructures. The house itself was
most probably given to the Cathedral in those days by the Duke of
Bedford, who had already done much in the same direction; and it was
therefore very appropriately allotted as a lodging to that one of the
canons who was helping the English most effectually in their
iniquitous task.
[Illustration: THE COUR D'ALBANE, ROUEN CATHEDRAL]
After the canons left the main block of Cathedral-buildings to go into
lodgings in this quarter so near at hand, they still kept their oven,
their granary, and their common cellar in the Cour d'Albane. This
quiet little quadrangle is one of the prettiest nooks of old Rouen,
and I am fortunate enough to be able to show in the drawing on p. 218
how well worth while it is to find the entrance to it just north of
the Tour St. Romain in the angle of the Rue des Quatre Vents. It was
probably first built for cloisters and a cemetery, and afterwards used
merely as a "deambulatorium." But the bakery of the chapterhouse,
which remained here for so long, was always renowned for the purity
and goodness of its bread, and loaves from it were often presented to
distinguished visitors on occasions when the civic authorities were
obliged either to rise to jewellery or to descend to nuts. The "Salle
Capitulaire," now being restored from M. Sauvageot's designs, used
also to open on the cloister, and in it the canons transacted their
temporal and spiritual business, including their famous choice for the
Fierte St. Romain, and their trials of ecclesiastical prisoners.
Crimes of "outsiders" committed within the Cathedral limits were tried
by a special tribunal in the Porter's Lodge, and he guarded the
prisoners in the dungeon beneath the Tour St. Romain. Another more
interesting duty of the same official was to care, during daytime, for
the dogs who were loosed in the Cathedral at night to keep out
sacrilegious robbers, a custom which lasted down to 1760. But the Cour
d'Albane took its name from the founder of that school for choir-boys
with which it is most intimately associated now. Pierre de Colmieu,
the Archbishop from 1236 to 1245, was also Cardinal d'Albano, and from
him was named the institution he endowed to educate three priests,
three deacons, and four subdeacons. Paid singers were unknown at that
time; the services were long and pompous, and it took some time to
learn them, so these men, all over twenty-one, were chosen as much for
their ability to read and sing as for their good conduct. They
benefited again in 1401 by the bequests of Jacques Cavé, who is buried
beneath the Tour de Beurre. There were seven of these singers in 1440,
and it was one of Jeanne d'Arc's judges, Gilles Deschamps, who left
money to provide the little choir-boys with the red caps they wear to
this day to keep their little shaved heads from the cold. In 1459
painters and sculptors were allowed to exhibit some of their work in
this beautiful courtyard, "if it was decent"; and every year the
canons and the clerks lit in this open space the "Feu de la St. Jean,"
and even planted their pious Maypole.
But the memories of this quarter are not exhausted yet. Turn down into
the Rue St. Romain. From No. 8 to No. 14 are the old canons' lodgings,
where more of Jeanne's judges lived, and especially Canon Guillaume
le Désert, who survived the trial longer than any of his companions.
Near No. 28 is the Rue des Chanoines. Close by, at the "Écu de
France," lived Jehan Salvart, the architect who built the palace for
Henry V. near Mal s'y Frotte. Within his house a workman saw, it is
recorded, the iron cage made by Étienne Castille, in which Jeanne was
chained by hands and feet and neck. At the tavern called "Maison de
Pierre"[54] Manchon, the clerk of the court, used to take his wine of
an afternoon. On the side next the Cathedral were the ecclesiastical
prisons, whose deepest dungeon was beneath the Tour St. Romain. Just
opposite the screen of the Portail des Libraires is No. 74, a strange
old house, carved with two bishops on the beams of the first floor,
and three more upon the brackets above. The door may well be original,
and the whole house is as old as the fifteenth century. On the other
side again, and just in face of the opening of the Rue Croix de Fer,
is the "Maison Jeanne d'Arc," which has no right to that name beyond
the possibility of her having seen it. For this strange remnant of
Gothic woodwork that juts out above the pavement is no doubt
contemporaneous with the trial that we are following out now. In
August 1897 the Municipal Council announced its determination to pull
it down. The _Journal de Rouen_, which deserves well of every honest
lover of antiquity, at once published a letter from M. Paul Dubosc, in
which that zealous writer pointed out the unnecessary vandalism of the
proposal; Englishmen in Rouen at the time were not afraid to add their
protests even in an alien tongue; when I left it last year it had, at
least, been standing long enough for Miss James to draw it (see p.
206) on the left hand side of an illustration that gives a very good
idea of the Rouen of the fifteenth century. The little Renaissance
doorway in the distance, at the angle of the Rue des Quatre Vents, is
an entrance to the Cour des Comptes, which at the same date had just
been freed from ruined encumbrances, and its lovely courtyard opened
to the Rue des Carmes on the other side (see p. 288).
[Footnote 54: Most of the dwelling-houses were of wood, which explains
why so few are left.]
This same old house was a canon's residence, and the property of the
Chapter of the Cathedral before the Revolution. Some furniture-dealers
bought it at the general sale of ecclesiastical effects. In 1893 it
was sold to the State for 36,000 francs by Mr Dumont, to whom the
Civil Tribunal had awarded it. The loss to the Rue St. Romain would be
a serious one, if the house were finally pulled down. A fatal passion
for "alignement" has Haussmannised Rouen quite enough already, and to
strip the Cathedral bare of all appendages would be to forget the main
object of mediæval architecture in France. I have pointed out
elsewhere that it was owing to a more settled state of society that
the English Cathedral rose from the turf of a broad quiet close, as at
Salisbury. In France the houses of the Cathedral towns crowded close
round the walls that were their temporal safety as well as their
spiritual salvation. The Parvis of Notre Dame is a creation of modern
Paris. Many a church in Provence still shows by the machicolations and
loopholes on its walls and towers that it could have played the
fortress with a good grace whenever necessary. And it was no doubt
because a French cathedral rose above the clustered houses round its
base that its lines of architecture spring so boldly to the sky, and
that its detailed carving within easy vision was so close and
excellent.
This old Rue St. Romain may have received its name from the Hôtel St.
Romain mentioned in it in 1466. In any case the name of the city's
patron saint could hardly have been given to a more characteristic
thoroughfare. By 1423 it seems to have been called the Rue
Féronnerie, which is interesting, because the workers in metal (whose
trade is preserved in their old quarter of the Rue Dinanderie) were
not natives of Rouen, but all came from Lorraine, and especially from
Urville, a town within a few leagues of Domrémy. So that Jean Moreau,
a maker of copper flagons in the Rue Écuyère, was especially chosen by
Pierre Cauchon to go to his native place and make inquiries as to the
truth of Jeanne d'Arc's statement about her birth and upbringing.
[Illustration: CENTRAL TOWER OF ST. OUEN FROM THE SOUTH-EAST]
The next place in Rouen that actually saw Jeanne herself was the open
space round the rising nave of St. Ouen, then called the Cemetery,
where we have already watched the farcical royalty of the Révolte de
la Harelle (p. 152). In thus tracing her footsteps, where we may still
find them, I shall be showing you what little is left of the Rouen of
the English occupation. Few of the towers and spires that rise now
above the roofs of Rouen were standing then. "Rouvel" indeed was in
the Town-Belfry, but uttered never a sound in his captivity. Of the
Cathedral the Tour de Beurre did not exist, the Tour St. Romain was
scarce two-thirds its present height, the western façade was far
simpler and smaller. St. Maclou was not completed when Jeanne d'Arc
died, nor the Palais de Justice begun. Of St. Ouen only the eastern
end of the nave, the apse and the choir, with the far older Tour aux
Clercs beside them, were being built; neither its central crown nor
its rose windows yet existed. The French architect chosen by the
English was at this time Alexander de Berneval, who had carried on the
work of Jean de Bayeux and his son, the architects from 1378 to 1421.
And you may still see where Jacques Theroulde (for Antoine Bohier)
carried on the work which Berneval's son left unfinished in 1441.
From their scaffolding round the uncompleted arches the architect and
his apprentices must have had a good view, on the Thursday after
Pentecost in 1431, of those other scaffoldings erected in the Cemetery
below them, on one of which sat Pierre Cauchon with the Cardinal of
Winchester, while on the other stood Jeanne d'Arc. The ceremony,
called the Abjuration, was a last attempt to frighten Jeanne into
confessing that her "Voices" had deceived her, and her mission was
untrue. It succeeded only because of her physical weakness, and in
forty-eight hours her moral courage repudiated it entirely.
Proceedings began by a long sermon from Guillaume Erard, a celebrated
preacher. When he called the King of France "heretic and schismatic"
she interrupted him at once to contradict. When he commanded her own
submission to the Church, she replied that she was ready to answer to
God and to the Pope for all, and that for all she was herself alone
responsible. This was a confusing reply for her judges, when made
before the great concourse of people who had assembled to witness this
young girl's examination. They could only retort that the
ecclesiastics there present were the representatives both of God and
of the Pope, and that she must submit to them. They then ordered her
"to abjure" publicly the various things of which she was accused. She
did not understand what was required of her. Erard exclaimed that she
must "abjure" or be burnt at once. At last he began to read her
sentence of condemnation. Then, though she was conscious of no evil,
she at last said, "I submit myself to the Church." They hastened to
read over the twelve articles of accusation already given, and the
poor girl agreed to them, promising never to sin again and to submit
herself to the justice of the Church. Massieu read to her a formula
"of some eight lines," according to his testimony afterwards.
There was some murmuring among the crowd during this long ceremony;
for while Jeanne was alive the English soldiery dared attempt nothing
fresh; and they only saw in her refusals to "abjure" an immediate
reason for handing her over from the ecclesiastical justice to the
secular, whose ways were swifter. But merely burning Jeanne would not
have been enough. She had to confess her sins, to disavow her mission,
to be received into the bosom of the Church and pardoned, and
then--_to be discovered in fresh crime_. One of the consequences of
her "abjuration" was that she was wearing woman's dress that very
afternoon. Two days afterwards (on Sunday) the ecclesiastics heard
that she had changed to masculine attire again. They rushed to the
castle to verify the "relapse" they were so ardently expecting, but
the English soldiers drove them out again, being very tired by this
time of their unintelligible delays. On May 28th Pierre Cauchon
questioned her, and she said that if they kept their word, to free her
and let her hear mass, she would keep hers and change her dress, but
that among men a man's dress suited her best.[55] Asked if she had
heard her "voices" again--a deliberate trap to secure the certainty of
proved "relapse"--she replied, "God has told me by Saint Catherine and
Saint Margaret of the pity and the betrayal that I have wrought in
making abjuration to save my life, and that I lost my soul to save my
life." To this the clerk added the fatal comment, "RESPONSIO
MORTIFERA." Jeanne realised now what her "abjuration" had really
meant. The fear that had inspired it had passed, and she boldly
reaffirmed her mission and her faith. It was all her judges needed.
"Farewell," cried Pierre Cauchon to Warwick and his English who waited
in the castle-yard, "be of good cheer, for it is done."
[Footnote 55: The "Procès de Réhabilitation" reveals, on the testimony
of Manchon the clerk, that her reply as recorded in the "Procès de
condemnation" was not correctly set down with reference to her change
of attire. She resumed her male dress, though it meant her
death-sentence, because, as both Massieu and Ladvenu swore, several
gross attempts had been made upon her honour since the scene in the
Cemetery of St. Ouen; and Pierre Cauchon cannot have been unaware that
this would certainly occur.]
By orders of the meeting of the 29th of May, already mentioned as held
in the Chapelle des Ordres, Martin Ladvenu and Jean Toutmouillé came
to her cell early in the morning of the next day, and announced that
she was to be handed over to the Secular Justice and burnt. "Hélas!"
she cried, with all the natural terror of a woman, "me traite-t-on si
horriblement et cruellement, qu'il faille que mon corps net et entier,
qui ne fut jamais corrompu, soit aujourd'hui consumé et rendu en
cendres!" She then confessed to Ladvenu, and after some discussion the
sacred elements were brought to her, without any of the usual
ceremonial accompaniments, and she received them with deep devotion.
The last scene in her life now drew near. That you may understand it,
you must realise that the present Place du Vieux Marché has little
except its name in common with the Vieux Marché where Jeanne was
burnt. The map I have reproduced from Jacques Lelieur's plan of 1525
will show you very much what it was like in the fifteenth century (see
map F), and will prove not only that it was far smaller in extent, but
that many buildings round it then have now disappeared without a trace
of them remaining. In this old map the "Rue Massacre" must be
understood as representing that part of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge
which extended from the Porte Massacre (see p. 135) to the Place du
Vieux Marché. When you stand in the Vieux Marché now, if you imagine
that the houses of the Rue Cauchoise extended across the open square
to the beginning of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, you may realise how
much less space there was in the fifteenth century. In those days,
too, it must be remembered that what is now the Place Verdrel was
called the Marché Neuf, and that the old Marché aux Veaux has now
become quite wrongly the Place de la Pucelle. How this mistake arose
will soon be clear.
M. Charles de Beaurepaire's untiring researches have established from
recorded documents every house that stood round the Vieux Marché. The
map shows that the Church of St. Sauveur (now vanished) stood near the
Rue du Vieux Palais and the Rue de la Pie, with its apse turned
towards the Grosse Horloge. Within its cemetery was erected the
scaffolding beyond the east end of the church on which Jeanne's judges
stood at her execution. Near it was another stage at the end of the
Market-Hall, and in sight of both was the place where she was burnt,
marked by the "Escharfaut," recorded by Lelieur, and known to have
been in the same place since 1233. It was well within the view not
only of the judges but of a crowd in the Vieux Marché and the Rue
Cauchoise, and its place is commemorated by the tablet you can now
read at the corner of the new Market-Hall.
The mistake of the "Place de la Pucelle" arose because a monumental
fountain was erected there for the first time, when Cardinal Georges
d'Amboise, who really started the waterworks of Rouen on a proper
basis, used the Fontaine St. Filleul for the benefit of the Quartier
Cauchoise. The pipe was brought into the Marché aux Veaux because the
level of the ground permitted a better fall for the water, and the
town took advantage of the opportunity to turn the new fountain into a
memorial of Jeanne d'Arc. The actual spot where she was burnt was
never marked at all, until the tablet of to-day was set up; for
although the "Procès de Réhabilitation" decreed that the scene of her
execution should be consecrated with a cross, that cross was placed on
the point of the wall of the Cemetery of St. Sauveur, which was
nearest to her scaffold; and this for the very good reason that the
English (if for no other motive) would not allow another "sanctuary"
(as all crosses were in the fifteenth century) to be erected so near
to the cemetery which was already holy ground itself. It was this
commemorative cross which was replaced by the Fountain of St. Sauveur
just before the larger monumental fountain was erected in the more
convenient (though less appropriate) situation of the Marché aux
Veaux, now the Place de la Pucelle.
Over the hideous tragedy of the Vieux Marché I have neither space nor
inclination to linger. At nine o'clock on the 30th of May 1431 she
left the château of Philip Augustus in woman's dress, wearing a mitre
on which was written, "Hérétique, Relapse, Apostate, Idolatre," with
Ladvenu and Massieu beside her, and seven or eight hundred men-at-arms
accompanying them. She wept bitterly as she went, and the people wept
to see her sobbing in the cart. Even Loyseleur was overcome by his
remorse, and was bidden to leave Rouen. In the Vieux Marché she had
first to listen to the sermon of Nicole Midi, who formally delivered
her to the Secular Justice. The Bishop of Beauvais then pronounced her
sentence of excommunication. When Jeanne rose to implore the pardon of
the people and the prayers of the Church, insisting to the end on the
sincerity of her cause and of her King, there was hardly even an
English soldier who was not touched with some compassion after the six
hours of her suspense. Massieu handed her a roughly-fashioned cross
which she placed in her bosom. She begged Isambard de la Pierre to
hold another before her eyes until the end. The delay of the
ecclesiastics had been long, but the civil powers were short. "Do your
duty" was the only sentence she heard in the short command[56] to the
executioner. Then she wept again, crying, "Rouen, Rouen, mourrai-je
ici, seras-tu ma maison? Ah Rouen, j'ai grand peur que tu n'aies à
souffrir de ma mort." The slow flames mounted from the scaffold which
had been built to burn her slowly, and with the last word, "Jesus," on
her lips, she died.
[Footnote 56: As a matter of recorded fact no sentence was then
pronounced on her save by the impatient soldiers. The Bailli of Rouen,
Messire Raoul le Bouteiller, only said the words I have given above,
as his lieutenant swore in the second Procès, and this is why the
sentence is not recorded in the minutes of the Baillage.]
Her ashes were cast into the Seine. They were scarcely cold before the
rumour of her saintliness, and the miracles of her passing spread
through Rouen and through France. Soon afterwards Pierre Cauchon,
Bishop of Beauvais, died of apoplexy. Nicole Midi was struck with
leprosy within a few days of her death. Loyseleur died suddenly at
Bâle. The corpse of d'Estivet was found in a gutter outside the gates
of Rouen.
Not a single attempt was made to rescue her in Rouen at the last, not
a solitary effort had been made before to save her by the French.
Judged by the Church, and appealing for fair hearing, Jeanne was not
supported in her trial by a single French ecclesiastic. Not a single
reference to her death occurs on subsequent occasions, when the Court
of France had official opportunity to make it. An age still so
strongly imbued with the principles of feudalism could not believe in
that intense patriotism and worship of nationality which was as
foreign to their instincts as was the doctrine of liberty of
conscience. This peasant-girl personified them both. "Il y a ès livres
de nostre Seigneur plus que ès vostres," she had said in her first
questioning at Chinon; and laymen and ecclesiastics alike were unable
to reconcile her with any scheme of philosophy they knew. In English
writings there is no contemporary mention of her except a line in
William of Worcester. Caxton's English Chronicles only give the lie
that Shakespeare has preserved against her tainted purity. Thomas
Fuller classed her with the Witch of Endor. It was not for twenty-four
years that the very town which saw her martyrdom was moved to declare
judicially her innocence. In the "Procès de Réhabilitation," begun on
the first of June 1456, everyone who had known her came forward--too
late--to testify to her innocence. On the seventh of July, in the
presence of her brother and her mother's representative in the great
hall of the palace of the Archbishop of Rouen, it was ordered that her
memory should be publicly reinstated both in the Cemetery of St. Ouen
and in the Vieux Marché.
The most astonishing thing in the whole story is, not that the
prophecies were fulfilled, not what she did before her death, not even
the memory of how she died, but the woman herself, and that is why I
have reproduced as far as was possible, from the text of Quicherat's
volumes, all that she is known certainly to have said and done in
Rouen, as is recorded in the contemporary manuscripts which he has
reproduced from the minutes of her "Trials." The donjon of the castle,
where she stood before her judges, is for this reason the best memory
of her that could possibly have been preserved. No other monument will
ever be so appropriate, and in their patriotic and successful efforts
to preserve this building, the citizens of modern Rouen have done much
to wipe out the shame of other days. It preserves not merely the
heroism of Jeanne. She had scarcely left it when the brave
Xaintrailles was imprisoned within its walls, but he must have escaped
or been exchanged very soon, for at the end of December in the same
year he was fighting the English again at Lagny. In February of the
following year, 1432, another famous name is connected with the
donjon, for in that month Ricarville with scarcely a hundred men
behind him was let in by Pierre Audeboeuf, and killed every one of
the English garrison except the Earl of Arundel, who was governor,
with his immediate bodyguard.
[Illustration: THE DONJON OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, KNOWN AS THE TOUR
JEANNE D'ARC]
This remnant barricaded themselves in the Tour Carrée, which Henry the
Fifth had built to the north-west of the old fort, after the siege of
Rouen. Ricarville hastily retired for help to Marshal de Boussac, and
during his absence his companions, attacked by reinforcements of the
English, were obliged to take refuge in the donjon, where they were
hotly besieged by artillery which seriously damaged the second storey
of the tower. Forced to surrender after three weeks of heroic
resistance, the whole hundred were beheaded in the Vieux Marché. For
fifty days this handful of men had held the entire English garrison in
check, and yet not a man had thought of rescuing Jeanne d'Arc scarcely
a year ago.
Jacques Lelieur's map shows that by 1525 a new roof had been put on
the donjon, in the shape of a platform with embrasures. By 1591
Valdory, whose account of the siege by Henri Quatre I shall mention
later, records that it was almost ruined. In 1610 its remnants were
spared, when the rest of the castle was demolished to make a
practice-ground for the arquebusiers of the town. After passing into
private hands, the tower became the property of a convent in the
eighteenth century. In 1796 it was sold to another private owner, who
was warned to be careful of the well within the walls that was
supplied by the spring Gaalor. By 1809 some nuns bought it again, and
for long the old donjon decorated incongruously a portion of the
garden in the Ursuline Convent. In 1842 M. Deville, Inspecteur des
Monuments Historiques, drew public attention to its value, and was
supported by M. Barthélemy the municipal architect. The publication of
M. Quicherat's five volumes of the "Trials," in 1849, renewed the
interest in all that had to do with Jeanne d'Arc. After a long and
most creditable agitation, a committee, on which M. F. Bouquet served
as secretary, was formed under the presidency of the mayor, M.
Verdrel. The ground was bought from the Ursuline nuns, the trained
advice of M. Viollet le Duc was solicited, and by the active
assistance of MM. Desmarest and Durand the tower was finally restored
as you may see it now.
Though the filling up of the moat makes it look shorter than it really
is, a great deal of the old masonry remains intact, and so carefully
has the restoring work been done that in the embrasures and recesses
on both first and second floors you may still see the scratches and
inscriptions of prisoners or sentinels, much as they are preserved in
our own Tower of London. On Wednesday, the 18th of February 1874, the
work of reconstruction was finished by the placing of the iron vane
with its great fleur-de-lys upon the summit of the conical roof. It is
the fourth floor, just beneath this vane, that is the most interesting
of all the new work, as it presents a complete and accurate picture of
mediæval defences, showing both the wooden hoarding which projected
beyond the walls in order to give space to hurl down stones and
boiling lead, and the guard's chemin-de-ronde cut in the solid wall
with its openings that communicate with each side. Its walls conjure
up a flood of memories of the men and women who saw those solid cliffs
of masonry before they fell into ruin and restoration:--
"Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys
Harembourges, qui tint le Mayne,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Anglois bruslèrent à Rouen:
Où sont-ilz, Vierge Souveraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?"
On the 10th of November 1449 Charles the Seventh of France was riding
through his own good town of Rouen; by his side were Jacques Coeur,
René d'Anjou, King of Sicily, and Pierre de Brézé. The English had
surrendered Rouen, and all of them were on their way home again who
had not left their bones in France.