THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC
By Andrew Lang
Pictures By J. Jellicoe
1906
[Illustration: 0004]
[Illustration: 0006]
TO
ANGELA COTTRELL-DORMER
Dear Angela,
May I dedicate this little book to you, who are already a friend of the
Maid?
As you grow up you will meet certain wise people who will tell you that
there was never any such person as Joan of Arc, or that, if she ever
lived, she was mad, or an impostor. If you ask them how they know
that, they will probably reply that Science is the source of their
information. You can then answer that you prefer to begin with History,
and ask these wise people if they have read even so much as Monsieur
Quicherat’s five volumes containing the Trial of Joan, and the evidence
of her friends and enemies who knew her in her lifetime? As the
books are in Latin and Old French, the people who speak about Joan
disrespectfully have not read them, and do not know what they are
talking about.
“_They say: What say they? Let them say!_”
Affectionately yours,
A. LANG.
THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC
CHAPTER I. THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC
|JOAN OF ARC was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the
world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe
it to be true, if ali that happened to her had not been told by people
in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was
still alive. She was burned to deach when she was only nineteen: she was
not seventeen when she first led the armies of France to victory, and
delivered her country from the English.
Joan was the daughter of a poor man, in a little country village. She
had never learned to read, or write, or mount a horse. Yet she was so
wise that many learned men could not puzzle her by questions: she was
one of the best riders in France; one of the most skilled in aiming
cannons, and so great a general that she defeated the English again and
again, and her army was never beaten till her King deserted her. She
was so brave that severe wounds could not stop her from leading on
her soldiers, and so tender-hearted that she would comfort the wounded
English on the field of battle, and protect them from cruelty. She was
so good that her enemies could not find one true story to tell against
her in the least thing; and she was so modest that in the height of her
glory she was wishing to be at home in her father’s cottage, sewing or
spinning beside her mother.
Joan, who was born at Domremy, in the east of France, on January 6,
1412, lived in a very unhappy time. For nearly a hundred years the kings
of England had been trying to make themselves kings of France, just as
they had been trying to make themselves kings of Scotland. Perhaps they
might have succeeded, if they had confined themselves to one conquest at
a time. But they left Scotland alone while they were attacking France,
and then Scotland sent armies to help the French, as at other times the
French sent armies to help Scotland.
Eight years before Joan was born a sad thing happened to her country.
Henry V. of England had married the Princess Katherine of France, and
the French, or some of them, tired of being beaten in war, consented to
let the child of Henry and the Princess Katherine be their King,
instead of the son of their old King. The old King’s son was called “the
Dauphin”; that was the title of the eldest son of the French kings. This
Dauphin was named Charles. His friends went on fighting the English for
his sake, but he was not crowned King. The coronations of French Kings
were always done in the Cathedral at Rheims, where they were anointed
with sacred oil. The oil was kept in a very old flask, which was said to
have been brought from heaven, to a Saint, by an Angel. No eldest sen
of the King was thought really King of France, after his father’s death,
till he had been anointed with this heavenly oil at Rheims by the
Archbishop. It is important to remember this; you will see the reason
afterwards. Now, Rheims was in the power of the English, so the Dauphin,
Charles, could not go there and be made King in earnest. The English
said that he was not the son of his father, the late King, which made
him very unhappy. We shall hear how Joan comforted him and made him King
for good and all. What Scots and Frenchmen could not do, she did.
In the meantime the French were divided into two parties. Some sided
with the Dauphin, Prince Charles; more, and especially all the people
of Burgundy, and the Duke of Burgundy, a great and rich country, were on
the side of the English. So they fought very cruelly, for the land was
full of companies of ill-paid soldiers, who plundered the poor, so that
towns fell into decay, many fields were empty of sheep and cows, and the
roads became covered with grass. In the villages a boy used to watch
all day, from the spire of the church, to see whether any soldiers were
riding up. If they came, the cattle were driven into the woods, and men,
women, and children ran to hide themselves, carrying such things away as
they could. The soldiers of all sorts robbed equally, for they had often
no regular pay, and the Scots were not behindhand in helping themselves
wherever they went. Even gentlemen and knights became chiefs of troops
of robbers, so that, whoever won in the wars, the country people were
always being plundered.
In the middle of these miseries Joan was born, in a village where almost
everybody was on the side of the Dauphin: the right side. In the village
nearest to hers, Maxey, the people took the English side, and the boys
of the two places had pitched battles with sticks and stones. It is true
that they would have found some other reason for fighting, even if the
English had not been in France. Joan used to see her brothers, Peter and
John, come home from these battles with their noses bleeding, and with
black eyes, but she did not take part herself in these wars.
Her village was near a strong-walled town called Vaucouleurs, which was
on the side of the Dauphin. When Joan was a little girl she did not see
very much of the cruelty of the soldiers; the village was only visited
once or twice by enemies. But she heard of what was going on in the rest
of France: “there was great pity in France,” she said. She did, once
or twice, see some of the “pity.” There was a man called Henry d’Orly,
living in a castle named Doulevant, who, like many other gentlemen in
these days, was a captain of robbers.
One day several spearmen of his rode into Domremy, Joan’s village, and
seized Joan’s father’s cows, with all the other cows that they could
find, just as the Scotts, Elliots, and Armstrongs used to ride across
the Border and drive the cattle of the English farmers. But a lady lived
in a strong castle rear Domremy, and when she heard how the village
people had been plundered she sent the news to a gentleman in the
neighbourhood, who gathered his spearmen and rode after the robbers.
The thieves, of course, could not ride faster than the stolen cows could
trot; they pricked the poor beasts with their spears, and made them
lumber along, but a cow is slow at best. The pursuers galloped and came
on the cattle in a little town, while the thieves were drinking in the
wine shops. When they heard the horses of the pursuers gallop down the
street, they mounted their horses and spurred for their lives; but now
came their master, Henry d’Orly, with more spearmen, who followed after
the cattle and the gentlemen who were driving them home. They turned and
charged Henry d’Orly, and cleared the road, and the cows came home to
Domremy, all safe.
Another time all the people in Domremy had to fly from home, and go to a
town called Neufchâteau, where they were safe behind strong walls. They
only stayed there for a few days, but, later, the English said that
Joan had been a servant in an inn at this town, and had learned to ride
there, which was quite untrue.
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There were beautiful woods near the village, and in one oak wood an oak
called the Fairy Tree. There was a story that a beautiful fairy used to
meet her lover at that tree, just as under the Eildon Hill, the Queen
of Fairyland met Thomas the Rhymer. The children used to take cakes, and
make feasts, and hang garlands of flowers on the boughs of that oak;
but Joan did not care much about fairies, and preferred to lay her wild
flowers beneath the statues of Saints in the village Church, especially
St. Catharine and St. Margaret. Of course, all this was long before the
Reformation in which the Protestants broke the images of Saints in the
churches, and smashed their pictures on the glass windows with stones,
and destroyed a beautiful statue of Joan on the bridge at Orleans.
These things were done more than a hundred years after Joan was dead.
Though Joan could run faster than the other girls and boys, and beat
them when they ran races, she liked to be quiet. Nobody could sew and
spin better than she did, and she was very fond of praying alone in
church. She would even go away from the other children into lonely
places, and implore God to have pity on France. The services in church,
the singing and music, made her very happy, and when she heard the
church bells across the fields, she would say her prayer. She was very
kind, and would give up her bed to any poor traveller whom her father
took in for a night, and would sleep beside the hearth She took care of
the sick, and, if ever she had any money, she would spend it on Masses
to be said in honour of God, and for the sake of men’s souls.
So Joan lived till she was thirteen. She was a strong, handsome girl,
beautifully made, with black hair. We do not know the colour of her
eyes, probably brown or dark grey. A young knight wrote to his mother,
when he first saw Joan, that she was “a creature all divine.” Jean
never sat to a painter for her portrait, though once she saw a kind of
fancy picture of herself in the hands of a Scottish archer.
Young men do not say so much about a girl who is not beautiful, and
indeed, armies do not rush together to follow a maiden with no good
looks. But though Jean, when she came to command armies, liked to be
well dressed, and to have fine armour, that was partly because she was
a natural, healthy girl, and partly because she was a kind of banner for
men to follow into fight, and banners ought to be splendid.
She took, no thought of her own beauty, and the young knights and
squires who fought, later, under her flag, said that they looked on her
as a sacred thing, and never dreamed of making love to her She let it be
known that she would never marry any one, while the English were still
in France. She was not a nun, and had not made a vow never to marry at
all, but while her country was in danger she never thought of marriage;
she had other things to do.