|AS Joan was a woman, and a prisoner of the Church, when the English had
handed her over to the priests, she ought to have been kept in gentle
prison, and with only women about her. But the English were very cruel.
They had a kind of cage made, called a _huche_, and put in a strong room
in the Castle of Rouen. In this cage they kept Joan, with chains on.
her legs, which were fastened to a strong post or beam of the bed. Five
common soldiers kept watch in the room, day and night; the eyes of men
were always on the most modest of girls. We see how much they feared
her. They wished to have her proved a witch, and one who dealt with
devils, to take away the shame of having been defeated by a girl, and
also to disgrace the French King by making the world believe that he had
been helped by a sorceress and her evil spirits. In truth, if you read
_Henry VI_., Part L, by Shakespeare, you will see just what the English
thought about the Maid. Shakespeare, of course, did not know the true
story of Joan, and he makes her say abominable things, which not even
her enemies brought up against her at her Trial. If Shakespeare wrote
the play, he did not care a penny for the truth of the story. He sends
Joan to Bordeaux, where she never was in her life, and makes “Fiends”
(that is, her Saints) appear to her, and show that they will help her
no longer. So she offers her very soul as a sacrifice for the sake of
France:
“Then take my soul, my body, soul and all,
Before that England give the French the foil.”
Later she turns on the English, and says what she might have said with
truth:
“I never had to do with wicked spirits:
But you, that are polluted with your lusts,
Stained with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders but by help of devils.”
The English had devils on their own side, the cruel priests and Bishop
Cauchon, whom they had promised to make Archbishop of Rouen. But he
never got it.
For three months these people examined Joan every day, sometimes all
shouting at her at once, so that she said, “Gentlemen, if you please,
one at a time.” She had no advocate, who knew the law, to help her to
defend herself. But once, when she appealed to the Council of Basle, a
Council cf the Church which was then sitting, they bade her be silent,
and told the clerk who took down everything in writing, in French, not
to write down her appeal. There is nothing about this in the Latin book
of the Trial, translated from the French, but in the French copy, mode
in court, you see the place where the clerk’s pen has stepped at the
words, “and she appeals” (_Et requiert_, in French). He was going to
write the rest. Now she had a right to appeal, and as the clergy at the
Council of Basle were of many countries, they would not have taken the
English side, but pronounced Joan innocent. The Bishops and clergy of
the loyal French party at Poitiers, before she went to the war, had
declared her innocent and a thing of God, after a long examination of
her life up till April 1429. Joan often asked her judges to send for
“the Poitiers book,” where they would find answers to their questions
about her early days; but they vexed her about everything, even about
the fairy tree, on which the children used to hang their garlands. Their
notion seems to have been that the fairies were her helpers, not the
Saints, and that the fairies were evil spirits.
Joan had shown that, in war and politics, she was wiser than the
soldiers and statesmen. She went straight at the work to be done--to
beat the English, and to keep attacking them before they got back their
confidence. At her Trial she showed that she was far wiser than the
learned priests. They tried to prove that she was helped by fairies. She
said that she did not believe there were any fairies: and though I would
not say that there are _none_, there certainly are not so many, or so
busy and powerful, as the priests supposed. They kept asking her about
the prophecies of Merlin the Wizard: she thought nothing of Merlin the
Wizard.
She vowed to speak truth in answer to questions, but she would not
answer questions about her Saints and Voices, except when they gave her
permission. The judges troubled her most about the secret of the King,
and what she told him about that, before she went to the wars. You
remember that the King had secretly prayed to know whether he really was
the son of the late King or not, and that Joan told him of his prayer,
and told him that he was the son of the late King, and had the right to
be King himself. But she would tell the Judges nothing about all this
matter. If she had, the English would have cried everywhere, “You see he
is not certain himself that he is what he pretends to be. _Our_ King of
England is the only King of France.”
[Illustration: 0127]
Joan would not betray her King’s doubts. She never would tell what
happened. At last she cold a simple parable: an Angel came with a rich
crown for the King. But, later, she explained that by the Angel she
meant herself, and that by the Crown, she meant her having him crowned
at Rheims. They never could get the King’s secret out of her. At last
they said they would put her to the torture. They took her to a horrible
vault, full of abominable instruments for pinching, and tearing, and
roasting, and screwing the bodies of men. There stood the executioner,
with his arms bare, and his fire lit, and all his pincers, and ropes,
and pulleys ready.
“Now will you tell us?” they said. Brave men had turned faint with
terror in that vault, and had said anything that they were asked to
say, rather than face the pain. There was a Marshal of France, Gilles de
Rais, a nobleman who fought beside Joan at Orleans, at Les Tourelles,
at Jargeau, at Pathay, and at Paris, and who carried the sacred
vessel which the Angel brought, long ago, with holy oil, at the King’s
coronation. Later this man was accused by the Inquisition of the most
horrible crimes. Among other things, he was said to have sacrificed
children to the devil, and to have killed hundreds of little boys for
his own amusement. But hundreds of little boys were not proved to be
missing, and none of their remains were ever found. Gilles de Rais
denied these horrible charges; he said he was innocent, and, for all
that we know, he was. But they took him to the torture vault, and showed
him the engines of torment, and he confessed everything, so that he
might be put to death without torture, which was done.
Joan did not fear and turn faint. She said, “Torture me if you please.
Tear my body to pieces. Whatever I say in my pains will not be true, and
as soon as I am released I will deny that it was true. Now, go on!” Many
priests wished to go on, but more, even of these cruel enemies, said,
“No!” they would not torture the girl.
“What a brave lass. Pity she is not English!” one of the English lords
said, when he saw Joan standing up against the crowd of priests and
lawyers.
Remember that, for six weeks, during Lent, Joan took no food all day.
There she stood, starving, and answering everybody, always bravely,
always courteously, always wisely, and sometimes even merrily. They kept
asking her the same questions on different days, to try to make her vary
in her answers. All the answers were written down. Once they said she
had answered differently before, and, when the book was examined, it
proved that there was some mistake in the thing, and that Jean was in
the right. She was much pleased, and said to the clerk, “If you make
mistakes again, I will pull your ears.”
They troubled her very much about wearing boy’s dress. She said that,
when among men in war, it was better and more proper. She was still
among men, with soldiers in her room, day and night, which was quite
unlawful; she should have had only women about her. She would not put on
women’s dress while she was among men, and was quite in the right.
She could hear her Voices in Court, but not clearly on account of the
noise. Once, I suppose, she heard them, for she suddenly said, in the
middle of an answer to a question about the letters which were written
for her when she was in the wars:
“Before seven years are passed the English will lose a greater stake
than they have lost at Orleans; they will lose everything in France.”
Before the seven years were out they lost Paris, a much greater stake
than Orleans, as Paris was the chief town and the largest They went on
losing till they lost everything in France, even all that they had held
for hundreds of years.
The Judges insisted that she should submit to the Church. Joan asked
nothing better. “Take me to the Pope, and I will answer him, for I know
and believe that we should obey our Holy Father, the Pope, who is in
Rome.” Or she would answer the Council of the whole Church at Basle,
but, as I said, the Bishop Cauchon stopped the clerk when he was writing
down the words. The Judges said “_We_ are the Church; answer us and obey
us.” But, of course, they were not the Church; they were only a set of
disloyal French priests who sided against their own country, and helped
the English.