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JOAN OF ARC
Books By Laura E. Richards
Joan of Arc
A Daughter of Jehu
Abigail Adams and Her Times
Pippin
Elizabeth Fry
Florence Nightingale
Mrs. Tree
Mrs. Tree's Will
Miss Jimmy
The Wooing of Calvin Parks
Journal and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe
Two Noble Lives
Captain January
A Happy Little Time
When I Was Your Age
Five Minute Stories
In My Nursery
The Golden Windows
The Silver Crown
The Joyous Story of Toto
The Life of Julia Ward Howe
_With Maud Howe Elliott_, Etc., etc.
[Illustration: JOAN OF ARC]
JOAN OF ARC
BY
LAURA E. RICHARDS
AUTHOR OF "FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE," "ABIGAIL ADAMS
AND HER TIMES," "ELIZABETH FRY," ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
THE MEMORY OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"ALSO A SOLDIER"
The extracts from "Joan of Arc," by Francis C. Lowell, are used by
permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Selections from "The Maid of France," by Andrew Lang, are used by
permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.
Theodosia Garrison's poem, "The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc," is reproduced by
permission of Chas. Scribner's Sons.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FRANCE IMPERISHABLE 1
II. THE LION AND THE LILIES 19
III. DOMRÉMY 32
IV. GRAPES OF WRATH 46
V. THE VOICES 57
VI. THE EMPTY THRONE 69
VII. VAUCOULEURS AND CHINON 83
VIII. RECOGNITION 100
IX. ORLEANS 117
X. THE RELIEF 132
XI. THE DELIVERANCE 142
XII. THE WEEK OF VICTORIES 163
XIII. RHEIMS 181
XIV. PARIS 197
XV. COMPIÈGNE 214
XVI. ROUEN 239
CHAPTER I
FRANCE IMPERISHABLE
THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC
She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come,
Crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence dumb--
She stood as a straight young soldier, confident, gallant, strong,
Who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the drum.
She said: "Now have I stayed too long in this my place of bliss,
With these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sorrow is
Upon that world whose stony stair they climbed to come to this.
"But lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long I stayed,
Like a trumpet's call at Heaven's wall from a herald unafraid,--
A million voices in one cry, '_Where is the Maid, the Maid?_'
"I had forgot from too much joy that olden task of mine,
But I have heard a certain word shatter the chant divine,
Have watched a banner glow and grow before mine eyes for sign.
"I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war,
I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more,
And don the armor that I knew, the valiant sword I bore.
"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven wide,
And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's red tide
Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we ride.
"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of the sword,
And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord,
And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure reward.
"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be
The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony;
I would go singing down that road where fagots wait for me.
"Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head;
So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread;
_My Captain! Oh, my Captain, let me go back!_" she said.
--_Theodosia Garrison._
In the fourth year of the Great War (1918), the sufferings of France,
the immemorial battlefield of nations, were in all our hearts. We heard
from time to time that France was "bled white"; that she had been
injured past recovery; that she was dying. Students of History know
better than this. France does not die. She bleeds; yes! she has bled,
and stanched her wounds and gone gloriously on, and bled again, since
the days when Gaul and Iberian, Kymrian and Phoenician, Hun and Goth,
raged and fought to and fro over the patient fields of the "pleasant
land." Ask Caesar and Vercingetorix, Attila and Theodoric, Clovis and
Charles the Hammer, if France can die, and hear their shadowy laughter!
Wave after wave, sea upon sea, of blood and carnage, sweep over her; she
remains imperishable. The sun of her day of glory never sets.
Her darkest day, perhaps, was that against which her brightest flower
shines white. In telling, however briefly, the story of Joan the Maid,
it is necessary to call back that day, in some ways so like our own; to
see what was the soil from which that flower sprang in all its radiant
purity.
The Hundred Years' War prepared the soil; ploughed and harrowed, burned
and pulverized: that war which began in 1340 with Edward III. of
England's assuming the title of King of France and quartering the French
arms with those of England; which ended in 1453 with the departure of
the English from France, which they had meantime (in some part) ruled
and harried. Their departure was due chiefly to the genius of a peasant
girl of eighteen years.
France in the fifteenth century: what was it like?
King Charles VI. of France (to go back no further) whose reign Sully,
"our own good Maximilian," calls "the grave of good laws and good morals
in France," was not yet twelve years old when (in 1380) his father,
Charles V., died. His majority had been fixed at fourteen, and for two
years he was to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the
Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon. With the fourth, his
mother's brother, we have no concern, for he made little trouble; the
other three were instantly in dispute as to which should rule during the
two years.
The struggle was a brief one; Philip of Burgundy, surnamed the Bold, was
by far the ablest of the three. When the young king was crowned at
Rheims (October 4th, 1380), Philip, without a word to anyone, sat him
down at his nephew's side, thus asserting himself premier peer of
France, a place which was to be held by him and his house for many a
long day.
At seventeen, Charles was married (in the Cathedral of Amiens, the
second jewel of France, where that of Rheims was the first) to Isabel of
Bavaria, of infamous memory; and the first shadows began to darken
around him.
The war with England was going on in a desultory fashion. Forty years
had passed since Créçy. The Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester, uncles
and regents of Richard II., the young English king, were not the men to
press matters, and Charles V. of France was wise enough to let well
alone. The young king, however, and his Uncle Philip of Burgundy,
thought it would be a fine thing to land in England with a powerful
army, and return the bitter compliments paid by Edward III. "Across the
Channel!" was the cry, and preparations were made on a grand scale. In
September, 1386, thirteen hundred and eighty-seven vessels, large and
small, were collected for the voyage; and Olivier de Clisson, Constable
of France, built a wooden town which was to be transported to England
and rebuilt after landing, "in such sort," says Froissart, "that the
lords might lodge therein and retire at night, so as to be in safety
from sudden awakenings, and sleep in security." Along the Flemish and
Dutch coasts, vessels were loaded by torchlight with "hay in casks,
biscuits in sacks, onions, peas, beans, barley, oats, candles, gaiters,
shoes, boots, spurs, iron, nails, culinary utensils, and all things that
can be used for the service of man."[1] The Flemings and Hollanders
demanded instant payment and good prices. "If you want us and our
service," they said, "pay us on the nail; otherwise we will be
neutral."[2]
The king was all impatience to embark, and hung about his ship all day.
"I am very eager to be off!" he would say. "I think I shall be a good
sailor, for the sea does me no harm." One would have thought he was
sailing round the world, instead of across the British Channel.
Unfortunately for the would-be navigator, the Duke of Berry, for whom he
was waiting, was not eager to be off: did not want to go at all, in
fact; answered Charles's urgent letters with advice "not to take any
trouble, but to amuse himself, for the matter would probably terminate
otherwise than was imagined."[3] In mid-October, when the autumn storms
were due, Uncle Berry appeared, and was met by reproaches. "But for you,
uncle," exclaimed Charles, "I should have been in England by this time.
If anyone goes," he added, "I will."
But no one went.
"'One day when it was calm,' says the monk of St. Denis, 'the king,
completely armed, went with his uncles aboard of the royal vessel; but
the wind did not permit them to get more than two miles out to sea, but
drove them back to the shore they had just left in spite of the sailors'
efforts. The king, who saw with deep displeasure his hopes thus
frustrated, had orders given to his troops to go back, and at his
departure, left, by the advice of his barons, some men-of-war to unload
the fleet, and place it in a place of safety as soon as possible. But
the enemy gave them no time to execute the order. As soon as the calm
allowed the English to set sail, they bore down on the French, burned or
took in tow to their own ports the most part of the fleet, carried off
the supplies, and found two thousands casks full of wine, which sufficed
a long while for the wants of England.'"[3]
Charles decided to let England alone for a while, and turned his
thoughts elsewhere. He would visit Paris; he would make a Royal Progress
through his dominions, would show himself king indeed, free from
avuncular trammels. So said, so done. Paris received him with open arms;
the king was good and gentle; people liked to see him passing along the
street. He abated certain taxes, restored certain liberties; hopes and
gratulations were in the air. He lodged in his palace at St. Paul, that
home of luxury and tragedy, with "its great ordered library, its carved
reading-desks, its carefully painted books, and the perfumed silence
that turns reading into a feast of all the senses,"[4] that palace "made
for a time in which arms had passed from a game to a kind of cruel
pageantry, and in which the search for beauty had ended in excess, and
had made the decoration of life no longer ancillary to the main purpose
of living, but an unconnected and insufficient end of itself."[4]
In this palace of his own building, Charles V. had died. Here his son
grew up, handsome, amiable, flighty; here he brought his bride in the
splendor of her then unsullied youth; here was born the prince for whom
the Maid of France was to recover a lost kingdom.
After frolicking awhile with his good people of Paris, Charles started
once more on his travels, and for six months wandered happily and
expensively through his kingdom.
"When the king stopped anywhere, there were wanted for his own table,
and for the maintenance of his following, six oxen, eighty sheep, thirty
calves, seven hundred chickens, two hundred pigeons, and many other
things besides. The expenses for the king were set down at two hundred
and thirty livres a day, without counting the presents which the large
towns felt bound to make him."[5]
Wherever he went, he heard tales of the bad government of his uncles;
listened, promised amendment; those uncles remaining the while at home
in much disquiet of mind. As the event turned out, their anxiety was
needless. Charles's tragic fate was even then closing about him, and the
power was soon to be in their hands again. In June, 1392, Olivier de
Clisson was waylaid after banqueting with the king at St. Paul, stabbed
by Peter de Craon, a cousin of the Duke of Brittany, and left for dead.
The news coming suddenly to the king threw him into great agitation; the
sight of his servant and friend, bathed in blood, added to his
discomposure. He vowed revenge and declared instant war on the Duke of
Brittany. In vain the other uncles sought to quiet his fury; his only
reply was to summon them and his troops to Le Mans, and start with them
on the fatal march to Brittany. It was in the great forest of Le Mans
that the curse of the Valois, long foreshadowed, if men had had eyes to
see, came upon the unhappy king. The heat was excessive; he was clad in
heavy, clinging velvets and satins. He was twice startled, first by the
appearance of a white-clad madman, who, springing out of the woods,
grasped his horse by the bridle, crying, "Go no further! Thou art
betrayed!" then by a sudden clash of steel, lance on helmet of a page
overcome by the heat. At this harsh sound, the king was seen to shudder
and crouch for an instant; then, drawing his sword and rising in his
stirrups, he set spurs to his horse, crying, "Forward upon these
traitors! They would deliver me up to the enemy!" He charged upon his
terrified followers, who scattered in all directions. Several were
wounded, and more than one actually killed by the king in his frenzy.
None dared approach him; he rode furiously hither and thither, shouting
and slashing, till when utterly exhausted, his chamberlain, William de
Martel, was able to come up behind and throw his arms round the panting
body. Charles was disarmed, lifted from his horse, laid on the ground.
His brother and uncles hastened to him, but he did not recognize them;
his eyes were set, and he spoke no word.
"'We must go back to Le Mans,' said the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy;
'here is an end of the trip to Brittany.'
"On the way they fell in with a wagon drawn by oxen: in this they laid
the King of France, having bound him for fear of a renewal of his
frenzy, and so took him back, motionless and speechless, to the
town."[6]
Thus began the agony which was to endure for thirty long years. There
were lucid intervals, in which the poor king would beg pardon of all he
might have injured in his frenzy: would ask to have his hunting-knife
taken away, and cry to those about him, "If any of you, by I know not
what witchcraft, be guilty of my sufferings, I adjure him in the name of
Jesus Christ, to torment me no more, and to put an end to me forthwith
without making me linger so."[7]
He did not know his false, beautiful wife, but was in terror of her.
"What woman is this?" he would say. "What does she want? Save me from
her!"[7]
At first every care was given him; but in 1405, we find the poor soul
being "fed like a dog, and allowed to fall ravenously upon his food. For
five whole months he had not a change of clothes."[8] Finally someone
was roused to shame and remorse at the piteous sight; he was washed,
shaved, and decently clothed. It took twelve men to accomplish the task,
but directly it was done, the poor soul became quiet, and even
recognized some of those about him. Seeing Juvenal des Ursins, the
Provost of Paris, he said, "Juvenal, let us not waste our time!"--surely
one of the most piteous of recorded utterances.
The gleams of reason were few and feeble. In one of them, the king (in
1402) put the government of the realm into the hands of his brother,
Louis, Duke of Orleans: Burgundy took fire at once, and the fight was
on, a fight which only our own day can parallel.
We can but glance briefly at some of its principal features. In 1404
Philip the Bold of Burgundy (to whom we might apply Philip de Comines'
verdict on Louis XI: "in fine, for a prince, not so bad!") died, and his
son John the Fearless ruled in his stead. His reign began auspiciously.
He inclined to push the war with England; he went out of his way to
visit his cousin of Orleans. The two princes dined together with the
Duke of Berry; took the holy communion together, parted with mutual vows
of friendship. Paris was edified, and hoped for days of joyful peace. A
few nights after, as Orleans was returning from dining with Queen
Isabel, about eight in the evening, singing and playing with his glove,
he was set upon by a band of armed men, emissaries of Burgundy, and
literally hacked to pieces. Now all was confusion. The poor king was
told to be angry, and was furious: sentenced Burgundy to all manner of
penances, and banished him for twenty years. Unfortunately, Burgundy was
at the moment preparing to enter Paris as a conqueror. Learning this,
King, Queen, Dauphin and Court fled to Tours, and Burgundy found no one
in Paris to conquer. This was awkward; the king's suffering person was
still a necessary adjunct toward ruling the kingdom. Burgundy made
overtures; begged pardon; prayed "my lord of Orleans and my lords his
brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance." The
king was bidden to forgive my lord of Burgundy, and obeyed. A treaty was
made; peace was declared; the king returned, and all Paris went out to
meet him, shouting, "_Noël_!"
This was in 1409; that same year, Charles of Orleans, son of the
murdered duke, lost his wife, Isabel of France, daughter of the king. A
year later he married Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of Bernard of that
name, a Count of Southern France, bold, ambitious, unscrupulous. Count
Bernard instantly took command of the Orleanist party, in the name of
his son-in-law. He vowed revenge on Burgundy for the murder of Duke
Louis, and called upon all good and true men to join his standard;
thenceforward the party took his name, and Burgundian and Armagnac
arrayed themselves against each other.
Now indeed, the evil time came upon France. She was cut literally in
twain by the opposing factions. The hatred between them was not only
traditional, but racial. Burgundy gathered under his banner all the
northern people, those who spoke the _langue d'oil_; in the south, where
the _langue d'oc_ was spoken, Gascon and Provençal flocked to the
standard of Armagnac. Backward and forward over terrified France raged
the ferocious soldiery. Count Bernard was a brutal savage, but he was a
great captain. The Albrets and many another proud clan were ready to
fight under his banner; the cause did not specially matter, so long as
fighting and plunder were to be had. Among them, they formed the first
infantry of France. Wherever they marched, terror ran before them. They
summoned the peasantry to bind on the white cross of Armagnac; he who
refused lost arm, leg, or life itself, on the spot. This method of
recruiting proved eminently successful, and the Count soon had a goodly
army.
John the Fearless of Burgundy ("who," says a French writer, "might
better have been called John the Pitiless, since the only fear he was
without was that of God") was hardly less ferocious than his enemy. In
one battle he slew some thousands of unarmed citizens: in another he
massacred twenty-five thousand Armagnacs at one stroke. One would really
think it had been the twentieth century instead of the fifteenth.
Burgundy, cunning as well as ferocious, won over to his side first
Queen Isabel, false as she was fair and frail; then the Kings of Sicily
and Spain. Still seeking popularity, he besieged Calais, but was driven
off by the English; finally he took possession of Paris and the king,
and ruled both for a time with success and satisfaction.
Both parties did homage to Henry IV. of England (1399-1413), who took
the provinces they offered and kept his own counsel.
By and by there was trouble in Paris; the Butchers, a devout body, who
carried axe or cleaver in one hand and rosary in the other, were
scandalized by the dissolute habits of Louis the Dauphin and his
followers; took it upon themselves to mend matters. They turned axe and
cleaver upon the young courtiers; slew, tortured, imprisoned, at their
will, with psalms and canticles on their lips. Moreover, encouraged by
Burgundy, their friend and patron, they preached daily to the Dauphin,
and a Carmelite monk of their following reproved him by the hour
together. Bored and enraged, young Louis wrote to the Armagnacs, begging
them to deliver him. They rushed with joyous ferocity to the rescue.
The Butchers were dispersed; Burgundy was forced to flee from Paris,
leaving the jealously guarded person of the king in the hands of the
enemy. The Orleanist princes entered Paris in triumph; everybody,
everything, from the Dauphin himself to the images of Virgin and saints,
was draped in the white scarf of the Armagnacs.
In 1414 a peace was patched up: it was agreed that neither the white
scarf nor Burgundy's cross should be worn. Nothing special was said
about the murdering, which seems to have gone on none the less, albeit
less openly.
In 1413 Henry (IV.) of Lancaster died, and Henry (V.) of Monmouth
reigned in his stead. The day of desultory warfare was over. Unhappy
France, bleeding at every pore from the blows of her own children, must
now face the might of England, led by one of the world's greatest
captains. Torn by factions, weakened by loss of blood, ridden first by
one furious free-booter and then another, what chance had she?
Trembling, her people asked the question: the answer was Agincourt.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Guizot, "Popular History of France," III, p. 20.
[2] Guizot, "Popular History of France," III, p. 21.
[3] Guizot, "Popular History of France," III, p. 21.
[4] Belloc, "Paris," p. 248.
[5] Guizot, III, p. 22.
[6] Guizot, III, p. 27.
[7] Guizot, III, p. 28.
[8] Guizot, III, p. 29.