No longer on St. Denis will we cry,
But Joan la Pucelle shall be France’s saint.
--SHAKESPEARE.
[Sidenote: [1422-1427 A.D.]]
The king proclaimed at St. Denis was an infant of ten months, grandson,
on his mother’s side, of Charles VI. His two uncles ruled in his
name,--one the duke of Bedford in France; the other the duke of
Gloucester in England. This child was recognised as sovereign of the
kingdom of France by parliament, by the university, by the first prince
of the blood, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and by the dowager
queen, Isabella of Bavaria. Paris, Île-de-France, Picardy, Artois,
Flanders, Champagne, and Normandy--that is to say, almost all the country
north of the Loire--and Guienne, south of that river, obeyed him.
The king proclaimed in Berri, sole surviving son of Charles VI, was a
youth of nineteen years, graceful bearing, but weak in body, pale of
figure, of small courage, and ever in fear of violent death; and besides,
adds Chastelain,[d] “a good Latinist, a fine _raconteur_, and most wise
in council.” Such indeed he was later on; but for the present and for
many years to come he showed spirit only for his own pleasures and a
sort of dull apathy in matters of state and in the face of peril. His
authority was recognised only in Touraine, Orleans, Berri, Bourbonnais,
Auvergne, Languedoc, Dauphiné, and Lyonnais. Indifferent to disaster,
he was resigned to hearing himself called derisively “the king of
Bourges.” To Poitiers he transported his council, his parliament, and
his university. But Bourges and Poitiers were still great towns in his
eyes; he dragged his little court from castle to castle, completely
submissive to the sire de Giac, to Le Camus de Beaulieu, to the sire de
la Trémouille, and willingly enduring the all-powerful influence of his
mother-in-law Yolande of Anjou.[b]
The young king, brought up by the Armagnacs, found in them his chief
support, and so shared their unpopularity. These Gascons were the most
veteran soldiers in France, but the greatest and most cruel plunderers.
The hatred they inspired in the north would have been sufficient to
create there a Burgundian and English party. The brigands of the south
seemed more of foreigners than the foreigners.
Charles VII next made trial of the foreigners themselves, of those who
had gained experience in the English wars. He called the Scotch to his
aid. These were the most mortal enemies of England, and their hatred
might be relied on as much as their courage. The greatest hopes were
built on these auxiliaries. A Scotchman was made constable of France;
another, count of Touraine. Notwithstanding, however, their incontestable
bravery, they had often been beaten in England. They were not only beaten
in France, at Crevant and Verneuil (1423, 1424), but destroyed: the
English took care that none of them escaped. It was asserted that the
Gascons, out of jealousy against the Scotch, had not supported them.
The English narrowly escaped giving Charles VII an ally far more useful
and important than the Scotch--the duke of Burgundy. So little concert
was there between the two brothers, that at the selfsame time Bedford
married the duke of Burgundy’s sister, and Gloucester was commencing war
against him. A word as to this romantic story.
The duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, never thought himself secure of
his Flanders until he should have flanked it with Holland and Hainault.
These two counties had fallen into the hands of a girl, the countess
Jacqueline, widow of the dauphin John. The duke of Burgundy married her
to a cousin of his own, a sickly boy. Jacqueline, who was a handsome
young woman, did not resign herself to so irksome a fate, but left her
sorry mate, nimbly crossed the Straits, and herself proposed marriage to
the duke of Gloucester. Gloucester committed the folly of accepting the
proposal (1423). He espoused Jacqueline’s cause, thus beginning against
the duke of Burgundy, the indispensable ally of England, a war which, for
the latter, was a question of actual existence, a war without treaty, in
which the sovereign of Flanders would risk his last man. The incensed
duke of Burgundy concluded a secret alliance with the duke of Brittany,
and then he made pecuniary demands on Bedford. What could Bedford do? He
had no money; instead of it, he offered an inestimable possession worth
more than any sum of money--his whole barrier on the north (September,
1423). The bands of Charles VII came and lodged themselves in the very
heart of English France, in Normandy; a pitched battle was fought before
they could be expelled. It took place on the 17th of August, 1424, at
Verneuil. In June, Bedford had regained the good will of the duke of
Burgundy by an enormous concession, having pledged his eastern frontier
to him, Bar-sur-Seine, Auxerre, and Mâcon.
All northern France was greatly in danger of thus falling bit by bit into
the duke of Burgundy’s hand; but suddenly the wind shifted. The sapient
Gloucester, in the midst of this war begun for Jacqueline, forgets that
he has married her, forgets that at that very moment she is besieged
in Bergues, and weds another, a fair English woman. This new folly had
the effect of an act of wisdom. The duke of Burgundy consented to be
reconciled to the English, and made a show of believing all Bedford told
him; the essential thing for him was to be able to despoil Jacqueline,
and occupy Hainault, Holland, and afterwards Brabant, the succession to
which could not but soon be opened.
Charles VII, therefore, derived little advantage from this event which
seemed likely to be so profitable to him. The only benefit that accrued
to him from it was that the count de Foix, governor of Languedoc,
comprehended that the duke of Burgundy would sooner or later turn
against the English, and declared that his conscience obliged him
to recognise Charles VII as legitimate king. He placed Languedoc in
subjection to him, with the clear understanding that the king should draw
from it neither money nor troops, and should not in any wise interfere
with the little royalty which the count de Foix had contrived for himself
in that province. The friendship of the houses of Anjou and Lorraine
seemed to promise more direct advantage to the party of Charles VII. The
head of the house of Anjou was then a woman, Queen Yolande, relict of
Louis II, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and pretender to the throne
of Naples; she was the daughter of the king of Aragon, by a lady of
Lorraine, of the house of Bar. The English having committed the egregious
mistake of troubling the houses of Anjou and Aragon, as regarded their
pretensions to the throne of Naples, Yolande formed against them an
alliance of Anjou and Lorraine with Charles VII. She married her daughter
to the young king, and her son René to the only daughter of the duke of
Lorraine. Yolande was of service to her son-in-law. By her sage counsels
she removed the old Armagnacs from about him; she had the address to win
the Bretons back to him, and caused the constable’s sword to be conferred
on the count of Richemont, brother of the duke of Brittany.
Charles VII, combining together the Bretons, Gascons, and Dauphinois,
had thenceforth the real military strength of France on his side. Spain
sent him Aragonese, Italy Lombards. But the war sped feebly for all
that; money was wanting, and union still more so. The king’s favourites
frustrated Richemont’s first enterprises; not, indeed, with impunity, for
the stern Breton put to death two of them within six months, without form
of trial. Since a favourite was necessary to the king, he gave him one of
his own choosing, young La Trémouille, and the first use the latter made
of his ascendency was to dismiss Richemont. The king, strange to say,
forbade his constable to fight for him; the king’s men and Richemont’s
were on the point of drawing their swords against each other. Thus
Charles VII found his cause less advanced than ever.[c]
Meanwhile the towns were resisting the foreign domination. La
Ferté-Bernard underwent in 1422 a four months’ siege and only yielded
to the earl of Salisbury in the last extremity. In 1427 the English, in
order to get closer to the Loire, sent three thousand men-at-arms to
besiege Montargis on the Loing. The town had only a small garrison under
the brave La Faille, but the inhabitants supported him well.[b]
MONSTRELET DESCRIBES THE SIEGE OF MONTARGIS (1427 A.D.)
Shortly after their arrival the English built some bridges and passages
over the river. This being done, they began to approach the town and
fortress of Montargis, and attacked and destroyed several engines of war.
But despite this, the besieged defended themselves valiantly, and kept
the besiegers thus employed for the space of about two months. During
this time tidings were carried to King Charles of France, which informed
him that, if he did not shortly send succour to the besieged, they must
needs yield to their adversaries. This news came to the knowledge of
King Charles, and it is said that king summoned a council, where it
was concluded and determined to send help to Montargis, or, at least,
to reinforce it with men and provisions. The charge of the relief was
bestowed upon the bastard John of Orleans and Étienne de Vignolles, known
as La Hire.
[Sidenote: [1427-1428 A.D.]]
They, with about sixteen hundred fighting men and skilful soldiers, took
the road with much display, with the intention of victualling the said
town of Montargis, and raising the siege. When they had come within half
a league, as secretly as they could, they took counsel together and
determined to make an attack upon some of the camps of the English, on
both sides of the town. They had with them some of the garrison of the
said town of Montargis who would direct them. They attacked the camps of
the English with much violence (which attack the English had not guarded
against), crying, “Montjoie St. Denis!” and began to fire a number of
the camps, and killed and captured several of the English. Such was the
spirit they put into their work, that the camp of Sir John de la Pole
was overthrown in a short space of time; but the same lord and about
eight others escaped in a small boat. The water was so high at that time
that the bridges the English had made were covered, so that when they
attempted to escape they fell beside these bridges and were drowned.
[Illustration: CHARLES VII
(From an old French engraving)]
Whilst this was going on, the bastard of Orleans was on the other side
of the town, attacking on foot the camp of Henry Basset, and there being
much to do, the others, when they had overthrown the first camp, came to
his assistance. The English, perceiving that the victory was not to them,
began to retreat to the camp of the earl of Warwick, and crossed a bridge
so hastily and in such numbers that the bridge gave way beneath them, and
there perished miserably very many; for besides this the inhabitants of
Montargis, who had sallied forth boldly to the help of their own people,
slaughtered and captured many, and did not spare them.
Meanwhile, the earl of Warwick assembled his men as quickly as he could.
But when he learned the great loss and pitiable defeat of his host,
of which from a thousand to fifteen hundred men were either killed or
captured, he departed and went his way, with the remainder of his men
of which the greater number were on foot. They retreated to the castle
of Landou in Nemours, and to other places under their suzerainty.[e]
This was the first time that the bastard of Orleans was intrusted with a
command of any importance, and he did not fail to justify his brilliant
début.[f]
THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS (1428-1429 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1428-1429 A.D.]]
The following year (1428) Bedford resolved to push military operations
vigorously and to force the barrier of the Loire. In the month of June
the earl of Salisbury debarked at Calais with six thousand of the best
soldiers England ever had in France; Bedford joined him there with four
thousand men drawn from garrisons in Normandy, and their army took
Jargeau, Janville, Meung-sur-Loire, Thoury, Beaugency, Marchenoir, and La
Ferté-Hubert, thus approaching Orleans step by step.
Orleans was the gate to Berri, the Bourbonnais and Poitou. This taken,
the “king of Bourges” would become the king of Dauphiné and Languedoc.
October 12th, 1428, the English appeared before its ramparts and at
once formed around the place a series of bastilles, each of which was
commanded by one of the first lords of England--by William de la Pole,
earl of Suffolk; the “English Achilles,” Lord Talbot; and William
Glasdale, who had sworn to kill everyone in Orleans. Salisbury was
commander-in-chief. The Orléanais, who had been expecting the siege, had
fortified the heart of their town by burning the suburbs. Their captain
was the sire de Gaucourt whom the English had held captive for thirteen
years, because he had persisted in defending Harfleur against them. The
garrison did not number more than five hundred at the most, but they
were all hardened warriors. Moreover, the bourgeois were looking out for
themselves. They had formed thirty-four companies--and each undertook the
defence of one of the thirty-four towers of the wall.
Artillery was beginning to play a great rôle in battles and sieges. That
of the besiegers was badly handled, and the bourgeois laughed at the
unskilful English cannoneers who threw eighty-pound balls into the town
and killed no one.[39] The Orléanais artillery was very different. It was
composed of seventy pieces, aimed by twelve master cannoneers, expert at
firing. Each cannon had its name and its own particular duty. The good
cannon _Riflard_ (Clean Sweep) killed its man at every shot.[b] Another
one, too, was the celebrated culverin of a skilful Lorrainian cannoneer,
Maître Jean; the two, man and culverin, made the finest hits. The English
came at last to know this Maître Jean; he never ceased killing them
except to make game of them: from time to time he would drop down and
pretend to be dead; his body was carried off into the town; the English
were in ecstasy when--behold! back he would come, alive and merry, and
fire upon them worse than ever.[c]
But the luckiest shot of all was fired by a child [according to Grafton,
the son of a gunner who had gone to dinner]. This schoolboy came across a
fully loaded piece on the rampart. He lit the fuse and ran away. The ball
went straight into the face of the earl of Salisbury, who was standing on
one of the bastilles and to whom, at that very instant, William Glasdale
was saying, “My lord, behold your town.”
The English commander was dead; and the next day the bastard of Orleans,
the handsome, brave Dunois, entered the town with the best knights of
the time--La Hire, Saintrailles, Marshal de Broussac, and six or seven
hundred soldiers. Others followed until little by little seven thousand
were gathered in Orleans.[b]
_The “Battle of the Herrings” (1429 A.D.)_
The siege continued with various success to the 12th of February, 1429,
with sundry episodes in the way of sorties, feigned attacks, conflicts
about provision entering the town, and even duels, to amuse the two
parties and try their respective mettle. They went on slowly completing
their fortifications, and it was to be foreseen that the town would be at
last almost entirely shut in.
However careless the king might appear about saving the appenage of
the duke of Orleans, it was clear that, once that city had fallen,
the English would advance unhindered into Poitou, Berri, and the
Bourbonnais, would live at the expense of those provinces, and ruin
the south after having ruined the north. The duke de Bourbon sent his
eldest son, the count de Clermont, under whom some Scotch forces and
some lords of Touraine, Poitou, and Auvergne were to succour Orleans,
cast provisions into it, and even hinder the arrival of provisions in
the English camp. The duke of Bedford sent a supply from Paris under
the conduct of the brave Sir John Fastolf; and he had availed himself
of the old Cabochian enmity of Paris to Orleans, to add to his English
detachment a considerable number of Parisian arblast men, and the
provost of Paris himself. They took with them three hundred wagon-loads
of provisions, particularly herrings, an article indispensable in Lent.
Troops and wagons all marched in narrow file, and nothing could have been
easier than to break their line and destroy them. The Gascon La Hire,
who was in advance of the French, burned with impatience to fall upon
them, but received express orders not to do so, from the prince, who was
advancing slowly with the main body of his force.
Meanwhile, the English had taken the alarm, and Fastolf had drawn his
men together under cover of the wagons and a line of sharp stakes which
these provident English always carried with them. The English archers
were posted on the right, the Parisian arblast men on the left. In spite
of all the count de Clermont could say, his men were carried away by
their impetuous rancour; the Scotch leaped from their saddles to fight
the English on foot, and the Armagnac Gascons rushed upon their old
enemies the Parisians; but the latter stood their ground. The Scotch and
Gascons having thus broken their ranks, the English issued from behind
their temporary ramparts, pursued them, and killed three or four hundred.
The count de Clermont remained immovable. La Hire was so furious that he
turned back upon the English who dispersed in the pursuit, and killed
some of them. The count’s party had to return to Orleans after this
unlucky engagement, to which the Orléanais, always satirical, gave the
name of the “battle of the Herrings”; in fact, the balls had burst the
barrels; and the field was strewn with herrings more than with the slain.
Slight as was this check, it discouraged everyone. The most knowing
hastened to quit a town that seemed lost. The young count de Clermont had
the weakness to withdraw with his two thousand men; the admiral and the
chancellor of France thought it would be a sad thing if the king’s great
officers should be taken by the English, and they too departed. As the
men-at-arms no longer hoped for human aid, and the priests did not reckon
very confidently on divine succour, the archbishop of Rheims took himself
off, and even the bishop of Orleans left his flock to defend themselves
as they could.
They all went away on the 18th of February, assuring the citizens that
they would soon return in strength. Nothing could stay them. The bastard
of Orleans, who with equal skill and valour defended the appenage of his
house, had in vain been telling them since the 12th that a miraculous
succour should be looked for, that a daughter of God, who promised to
save the town, was coming from the marches of Lorraine. The archbishop,
an ex-secretary of the pope, and an old diplomatist, paid little heed to
this talk about miracles. Dunois himself did not reckon so exclusively on
aid from on high as to neglect employing a very human and very politic
means against the English. He sent Saintrailles to the duke of Burgundy,
to beg him, as a relative of the duke of Orleans, to take the latter’s
town into his keeping. He was now asked to accept the grand and important
possession of the centre of France, and he did not refuse the offer. He
went straight to Paris, and told the affair to Bedford, who answered
dryly that he had not toiled for the duke of Burgundy’s behoof. The
latter, much offended, recalled all the troops he had at the siege of
Orleans.
Supplies arriving with difficulty, discontent began in the town; many
no doubt were of opinion that the town had made quite enough sacrifices
for the sake of its lord, and that it was better Orleans should become
English than cease to be. Things did not stop there. It was discovered
that a hole had been made in the wall of the town; treachery was
manifestly at work. Besides all this, Dunois could expect no help from
Charles VII. The estates, assembled in 1428, had voted money and summoned
the tenants of fiefs to fulfil their feudal duties. Neither money nor men
had arrived.
We are not well acquainted with the intrigues that divided the little
court of Charles. The divisions in it had naturally augmented in this
its extreme distress. The old Armagnac advisers, whom Richemont and the
king’s mother-in-law had for a while removed, were in the way to regain
their credit. That southern party would have been well pleased to have a
king of the south holding his court at Grenoble. The duchess of Anjou,
the king’s mother-in-law, on the contrary, could not preserve Anjou if
the English definitively passed the Loire. So far there was a community
of interests between her and the house of Orleans. But the house of
Anjou had so many other interests, so various and divergent, that she
thought it expedient always to keep on fair terms with the English, and
to negotiate perpetually. When the defence of Orleans appeared to be
desperate (May, 1429), the old cardinal De Bar hastened to treat with
Bedford, in the name of his nephew, René of Anjou, lest he should lose
the inheritance of Lorraine, calculating that René could disavow his
proceedings, should the affairs of Charles VII at any future time assume
another aspect.
The impending ruin of Orleans had frightened the other towns of the
Loire. The nearest, Angers, Tours, and Bourges, sent provisions to
the besieged; Poitiers and La Rochelle, money; then, when the alarm
increased, the Bourbonnais, Auvergne, and even Languedoc sent the
Orléanais saltpetre, sulphur, and steel. Gradually all France became
interested in the fate of one town, and moved with sympathy for the
brave resistance of the men of Orleans and their fidelity to their lord.
Orleans was pitied; so too was its duke. The captive Charles of Orleans
could not defend his town.[40]
The English had one thing in their favour, namely, that their young king,
Henry VI, was certainly a Frenchman by the mother’s side, and grandson
of Charles VI, whom he resembled but too much as regarded the weakness
of his mind. The legitimacy of Charles VII, on the other hand, was very
doubtful; he was born in 1403, in the high tide of his mother’s intimacy
with the duke of Orleans; and she herself had acquiesced in the acts
in which he was called _soi-disant_ dauphin. Henry VI had not yet been
crowned at Rheims, but neither had Charles VII. The people in those days
recognised a king but by two things, royal birth and the crown placed
on his head with the church’s solemn sanction. Charles VII was not king
according to religion, nor was he sure that he was so according to
nature. This question, of no moment for politicians of that class who
decide after their own interests, was everything for the people, who are
willing to obey only the right. A woman had obscured this great question
of right, and by a woman it was cleared up. This second woman bore the
name Jeanne Darc. She was soon to be famous as the Maid of Orleans.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS (_LA PUCELLE_) (1429 A.D.)
The originality of the Maid of Orleans, and what determined her success,
was not so much her valour or her visions as her good sense. Through all
her enthusiasm, this daughter of the people saw the question clearly, and
was able to solve it. She cut the knot which the politic and the men of
little faith could not untie. She declared, in God’s name, that Charles
VII was the true heir, and she set him at ease as to his legitimacy, of
which he himself had doubts. That legitimacy she sanctified, taking her
king straight to Rheims, and gaining over the English, by the celerity of
her movements, the decisive advantage of the coronation.
It was at Domrémy, just between Lorraine of the Vosges and that of the
plain, between Lorraine and Champagne, that the beautiful and brave girl
was born, who was to wield the sword of France so well.
Joan or Jeanne was the third daughter of a peasant, Jacques Darc,[41]
and of Isabella of Romée. She had two godmothers, one of whom was named
Jeanne, the other Sibylle. The eldest son having been named James
(Jacques), another Peter (Pierre), the pious parents gave one of their
daughters the more exalted name of St. John (Jean). Whilst the other
children accompanied their father in his field work or tended cattle,
the mother kept Joan at home for sewing or spinning. She did not learn
to read or write, but she knew all her mother could teach her of sacred
things. She acquired religion, not as a lesson or a ceremony, but in the
homely popular form of a winter night’s tale, as the simple faith of a
mother.
Everybody knew her charity and her piety. They saw clearly she was the
best girl in the village. What they did not know was that in her the life
from above always absorbed the other life, and suppressed all vulgar
development. Hers was the divine gift to remain a child in soul and
body. She grew up, became strong and comely, but never knew the physical
miseries of her sex. They were spared her, to the advantage of her mental
growth and religious inspiration.
Joan had her share in the romantic adventures of those restless times.
She saw poor fugitives arrive in the hamlet, and the kind-hearted girl
assisted towards their reception, gave up her bed to them, and lay down
in the hayloft. Her kindred, too, were once obliged to save themselves
by flight. Then, when the inundation of brigands had passed off, the
family returned and found the village sacked, the house devastated, and
the church burned down. Thus she knew what war meant. She understood that
anti-Christian state of things, and abhorred that reign of the devil, in
which every man died in mortal sin. If, as everyone said, the ruin of the
kingdom was the work of a woman, an unnatural mother, it might be that
its salvation should proceed from a girl. This very fact was foretold
in one of Merlin’s prophecies, a prophecy which, variously enriched and
modified in the several provinces, had become thoroughly Lorrainian in
the country of Joan of Arc. It was a girl of the marches of Lorraine
that was to save the realm. The prophecy had probably received this
embellishment, in consequence of the recent marriage of René of Anjou
with the heiress of the duchy of Lorraine, which was in reality a very
fortunate event for France.
One summer’s day, a fast day, Joan, being in the garden at noon with her
father, close by the church, saw a dazzling light in that direction, and
heard a voice saying, “Be a good child, Joan, and go often to church.”
The poor girl was greatly frightened. Another time she again heard the
voice and saw the light; but now she discerned it in noble figures,
one of which had wings and seemed a sage counsellor. He said to her,
“Joan, go to the aid of the king of France, and thou wilt restore him
to his kingdom.” She answered, trembling all over, “My Lord, I am but a
poor girl; I cannot ride the war-horse, or lead men-at-arms.” The voice
replied: “Thou shalt go to M. de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and
he will take thee before the king. St. Catherine and St. Margaret will be
with thee to help thee.” She remained stupefied and in tears, as if she
had already beheld her whole future destiny.
The sage counsellor was none other than St. Michael, the stern archangel
of judgment and battle. He returned again, cheered her courage, “and
related to her the pity there was in the realm of France.” Then came the
white figures of female saints, surrounded with innumerable lights, their
heads adorned with rich crowns, their voices sweet and melting even to
tears. But Joan wept above all when the saints and angels left her. “I
should have been very glad,” she said, “if the angels had taken me away
with them.” Joan has told us nothing of the first inward conflict she
sustained; but it is evident it took place, and endured a long while,
since five years elapsed between her first vision and her departure from
the home of her parents.
She encountered not only resistance but temptation in her own family.
They tried to marry her, in the hope of bringing her back to a more
rational way of thinking. A young man of the village alleged that she
had promised him marriage when she was still a child; and as she denied
the fact, he cited her before the ecclesiastical judge at Toul. It was
supposed she would make no defence, but would submit to be cast by the
court and married; but to everyone’s great astonishment, she went to
Toul, appeared in court, and spoke--she who had always held her peace.
To enable her to escape from the control of her family, it was necessary
she should find in her family itself someone to believe her; this was
a most difficult problem. Failing to persuade her father, she made a
convert of her uncle, who took her away with him, under the pretext of
her nursing his wife in her lying-in. She prevailed on him to go to the
sire de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and ask his support for
her; but the man of war gave the peasant a very bad reception, and told
him the only thing to be done was “to slap her well,” and take her home
to her father. She was not cast down by the rebuff, but determined to
depart, and her uncle was constrained to accompany her. The decisive
moment was come; she quitted her family and her native village forever;
she embraced her friends, especially her dear little friend Mengette,
whom she commended to God’s keeping; but as for Haumette, the friend she
loved above all others, she preferred to depart without seeing her.
She arrived then in the town of Vaucouleurs, dressed in her clumsy red
peasant garments, and went along with her uncle to lodge with the wife
of a wheelwright who took a liking to her. She had herself taken into
Baudricourt’s presence, and said to him boldly that “she came to him
on the part of our Lord to bid him tell the dauphin to keep his ground
steadily, and not give battle to his enemies; for our Lord would grant
him succour in mid-Lent. The kingdom did not belong to the dauphin but to
our Lord; nevertheless, it was our Lord’s will that the dauphin should
become king, and that he should hold the kingdom in trust.” She went on
to say that, in spite of the dauphin’s enemies, he would be king, and
she would take him to be crowned. The captain was amazed, and suspecting
there was some deviltry at work, he consulted the parish priest, who
apparently entertained the same doubts. Joan had not spoken of her
visions to any churchman. The priest, therefore, accompanied the captain
to the wheelwright’s house with his stole on, and adjured Joan to depart
if she was sent by the evil spirit.
But the people did not doubt; their admiration was extreme; persons
flocked from all parts to see her. It appears that Baudricourt sent
to ask leave of the king. Meanwhile, he conducted Joan to the duke of
Lorraine, who was ill and wished to consult her. He got nothing from her
but advice to appease God’s anger by becoming reconciled with his wife.
He gave her encouragement notwithstanding. On her return to Vaucouleurs,
she found a messenger from the king, who brought the permission she
desired. The disaster of the battle of the Herrings disposed the king to
accept every means of which he could avail himself. Joan had predicted
the battle on the very day when it took place. The people of Vaucouleurs,
entertaining no doubt of her mission, clubbed together to buy her a
horse. The captain gave her only a sword.
It was a rough and very perilous journey she was about to make. The whole
country was overrun by armed bands belonging to either party. There was
now neither road nor bridge; the rivers were swollen; it was the month of
February, 1429.
_Joan at the Court_
The court of Charles VII was far from being unanimous in the Maid’s
favour. That inspired girl, just come from Lorraine, and patronised by
the duke of Lorraine, could not fail to strengthen with the king the
party of the queen and her mother, the Lorraine and Anjou party. An
ambush was laid for Joan at some distance from Chinon, and she escaped
from it only by miracle.
So strong was the opposition against her that, after she was actually
arrived, the council continued for two days to discuss the question
whether or not the king should see her. Her enemies thought to postpone
the matter indefinitely, by having it decided that inquiries should be
made respecting her in her native place. Fortunately, she had friends
also--the two queens, no doubt, and above all, the duke of Alençon, who,
having recently come out of the hands of the English, was very impatient
to carry the war into the north, and recover his duchy. The inhabitants
of Orleans, to whom Dunois had been promising this marvellous aid since
the 12th of February, sent to the king and claimed the Maid’s presence.
The king received her at last, surrounded with the greatest pomp; which,
in all probability, was adopted with the hope of disconcerting her.
She presented herself humbly “as a poor shepherd wench,” distinguished
the king at the first glance from the crowd of lords among whom he had
purposely mingled; and though he insisted, at first, he was not the king,
she embraced his knees. But as he was not yet crowned, she styled him
only dauphin: “Gentle dauphin,” she said, “my name is Jehanne la Pucelle.
The King of heaven sends you word by me that you shall be anointed and
crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the King of
heaven, who is King of France.”
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS]
The archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France, and president of the
king’s council, summoned doctors and professors of theology, some of them
priests, others monks, and ordered them to examine the Maid. The doctors
being introduced and seated in a hall, Joan sat down on the end of the
bench, and replied to their questions. She recounted the apparitions and
the words of the angels, with dignified simplicity. A Dominican met her
with a single objection, but it was one of weight: “Jehanne, thou sayest
it is God’s will to deliver the people of France; if such is his will he
has no need of men-at-arms.” The observation did not confound her. “Ah!
_mon Dieu_,” said she, “the men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give
the victory.” Another person was not so easily satisfied. This was Friar
Séguin, a Limousin, professor of theology in the university of Poitiers,
“a very sour man,” says the chronicle. He asked her, in his Limousin
French, “What language did the celestial voice speak?” Joan answered with
rather too much sharpness, “A better one than yours.” “Dost thou believe
in God?” said the enraged doctor; “well then, God will not have us put
faith in thy words unless thou show a sign.” She answered, “I am not come
to Poitiers to perform signs or miracles; my sign shall be to raise the
siege of Orleans. Let me have men-at-arms, few or many, and I will go.”
The question of her inspiration was made to depend on the test of her
virginity. The duchess of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law, accomplished
the ridiculous examination, with the aid of some ladies, to the honour
of the Maid. Some Franciscans who had been sent to her native place to
collect information, brought back the most satisfactory accounts. There
was no more time to be lost. Orleans was crying out for help; Dunois
was sending message upon message. The Maid was equipped, and a sort of
establishment was formed for her. First of all they gave her for squire
John Daulon, a brave knight of mature years, who belonged to the count
de Dunois, and was the most respectable among his followers. She had
also a noble page, two heralds-at-arms, a seneschal, and two valets; her
brother, Pierre Darc, had also joined her suite. John Pasquerel, a friar,
hermit of the order of St. Augustin, was assigned her for confessor.
_The Deliverance of Orleans (1429 A.D.)_
[Sidenote: [1429 A.D.]]
When we read the list of the captains who threw themselves into Orleans
with Joan of Arc--La Hire, Saintrailles, Gaucourt, Culan, Coaraze,
Armagnac; when we see that, independently of the Bretons under Marshal de
Retz, and Marshal de St. Sévère’s Gascons, Florent d’Illiers, captain of
Châteaudun, had brought all the nobles of the vicinity to take part in
this short expedition, the deliverance of Orleans seems less miraculous.
One thing, however, was by all means wanting to enable these great
forces to act with advantage, an essential, indispensable thing--unity
of action. Dunois might have created this, had no more been requisite
to that end than address and intelligence; but this was not enough. An
authority was requisite, one surpassing that of the crown; the king’s
captains were not habituated to obey the king.
War had changed men into wild beasts, and these beasts required to be
turned again to men, Christians, docile subjects. A great and difficult
change! Some of these Armagnac captains were perhaps the most furious
men that ever existed. It was a ludicrous and touching thing to see the
sudden conversion of the old Armagnac brigands. They did not stop short
halfway in their amendment. La Hire no longer ventured to utter an oath;
but the Maid, compassionating the violence he did himself, allowed him to
swear, “by his staff.” The devils had all at once been transformed into
little saints.
She had begun by insisting that they should renounce their wanton women,
and should confess. Then in the course of her march along the Loire, she
had an altar erected in the open air, at which she took the communion,
and so did they. The first night they bivouacked, she lay down in full
armour, as there were no women about her; but she was not yet habituated
to such hardships, and she was ill in consequence. As for danger, she
knew not what it meant. She wanted to cross over to the north side of
the river, and march along the English bank and between the bastilles of
the invaders, who, she asserted, would not stir. Her followers would not
listen to her advice, but marched along the left bank, so as to pass two
leagues above Orleans. Dunois came out to meet her: “I bring you,” she
said, “the best succour ever sent to anyone, the succour of the King of
heaven. It comes not from me, but from God himself, who, at the entreaty
of St. Louis and St. Charlemagne, has had pity on the town of Orleans,
and will not suffer that the enemy should have both the duke’s body and
his town at once.”
She entered the city slowly at eight in the evening (April 29th), the
crowd scarcely allowing her to advance. Everyone strove eagerly to touch
at least her horse. They gazed on her “as if they saw God.” Talking
gently to the people all the while, she proceeded to the church, and then
to the houses of the duke of Orleans’ treasurer, an honourable man, whose
wife and daughter gave her welcome. She slept with Charlotte, one of the
daughters.
She had entered the town along with the provisions, but the army marched
down-stream again, to cross at Blois. She would, nevertheless, have had
an immediate attack made on the English bastilles; but as she could not
effect this, she sent a second peremptory message to those on the north
side, and then proceeded to repeat her summons to those on the south.
Glasdale, the captain, abused her in the coarsest terms, calling her
cow-girl and ribald. In their hearts they believed her to be a witch, and
were greatly afraid of her. They kept her herald, and were thinking of
burning him, in hopes that this would, perhaps, break the charm.
The army not arriving, Dunois ventured forth in search of it. The
archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of Charles VII, had detained the little
army at Blois. The old politician was far from conceiving the existence
of such an irresistible enthusiasm, or perhaps he feared it. It was,
therefore, much against his will that he came to Orleans. The maid went
out to meet him, with the people and the priests singing hymns. The
procession passed and repassed before the English bastilles; and the army
entered the town, protected by some priests and a girl (May 4th, 1429).
Joan, who, in the midst of her enthusiasm and her inspiration, had much
shrewdness of apprehension, very clearly discerned the hostile temper of
the new comers. She was right in surmising that there was a design to act
without her. As she lay by Charlotte’s side, she suddenly started up,
exclaiming, “My God! the blood of our people is running on the ground.
It was ill done! Why was I not wakened? Quick! my arms, my horse!” She
was armed in a moment, galloped off at full speed, and met men already
wounded, whom they were carrying back from the field. The fugitives faced
round on her arrival. Dunois, who had also not been called, arrived on
the ground at the same time. The bastille (one of those on the north
side) was attacked again. Talbot strove to succour it; but fresh forces
issued from Orleans; the Maid put herself at their head, and Talbot
withdrew his men. The bastille was carried. This was her first victory,
the first time she looked on a field of slaughter. She sought confession
for herself and her followers; and declared that she would take the
communion on the morrow, being the feast of the Ascension, and pass the
day in prayer.
Advantage was taken of this resolution to hold a council without her,
wherein it was determined that this time the besiegers should cross the
Loire and attack St. Jean le Blanc, the bastille which most impeded the
introduction of provisions into the town, and that a false attack should
be made at the same time on the other side. The English then did what
they ought to have done before. They concentrated their strength. With
their own hands burning the bastille which was to have been attacked,
they retired upon the other two on the south side, the Augustins and the
Tournelles. The former was instantly attacked and carried, the success in
this instance again being partly due to the Maid. The French were seized
for a while with a panic, and rushed back towards the floating bridge;
but the Maid and La Hire disentangled themselves from the throng, threw
themselves into boats, and took the English in flank.
There remained the Tournelles. The victors passed the night before it;
but they obliged the Maid, who had eaten nothing all day (it was Friday),
to recross the Loire. Meanwhile the council had assembled. The Maid was
told in the evening that it had been unanimously resolved that, since the
town was now fully victualled, they should wait for a fresh reinforcement
to attack the Tournelles. It is difficult to believe that such could
have been the real intention of the leaders, for delay was extremely
dangerous, since the English might at any moment be succoured by Fastolf.
Probably the intention was to deceive the Maid and deprive her of the
honour of the triumph she had so powerfully contributed towards securing.
She disappointed them.
In the morning she rode to the Burgundy gate with a multitude of
men-at-arms and citizens; but the sire de Gaucourt, grand-master of
the king’s household, kept it shut. The crowd opened the gate, and
forced another near it. The sun was rising on the Loire when the whole
concourse threw themselves into the boats. On arriving, however, at the
Tournelles, they felt that they wanted artillery, and they sent for some
to the town. At last they attacked the outward rampart which protected
the bastille. The English defended themselves valiantly. The Maid,
perceiving that the assailants were beginning to show signs of weakness,
jumped into the ditch, seized a ladder, and was in the act of applying it
to the wall, when an arrow struck her between the neck and the shoulder.
The English sallied out to seize her, but she was carried off by her
own party. She only allowed a little oil to be poured on the wound, and
confessed.
Meanwhile no progress was made, and night was at hand. Dunois himself
gave orders to sound a retreat. A Basque had taken out of the hands of
the Maid’s squire that standard of hers which struck such dismay into the
enemy. “When the standard touches the wall,” said she, “you will be able
to enter.” “It is touching it.” “In then! all is your own.” And just as
she had predicted, the assailants in a frenzy of enthusiasm climbed the
wall “as though by one step.” The English were at this moment attacked on
two sides at once.
Meanwhile the men of Orleans, who watched the fight from the other side
of the Loire, could contain themselves no longer. They threw open their
gates and rushed to the bridge, but there was an arch broken; they pushed
a rickety plank across the opening, and a knight of St. John ventured
to pass over the frail spar in full armour. The bridge was hastily
repaired, and the whole multitude hurried to the other side. The English,
seeing such a human sea rushing upon them, thought the whole world had
come together against them. Their senses grew bewildered; some of them
beheld St. Aignan, the patron of the town, others the archangel Michael.
Glasdale endeavoured to retreat from the rampart to the bastille, across
a small bridge; but it was shattered by a shot, and the Englishman fell
into the water and was drowned, before the eyes of the maid he had so
vilified. There were five hundred men in the bastille, all of whom were
put to the sword.
Not one Englishman remained south of the Loire. Next day, Sunday,
the besiegers on the northern side abandoned their bastilles, their
artillery, their prisoners, and their wounded comrades. Talbot and
Suffolk conducted the retreat steadily and in good order. The Maid would
not allow them to be pursued, since they retired of their own accord; but
before they withdrew out of sight of the town, she had an altar erected
on a plain, at which mass was celebrated, and the people returned thanks
to God in the presence of the enemy (Sunday, May 8th). The effect of the
deliverance of Orleans was prodigious; everyone beheld in it the agency
of supernatural power. Many attributed it to the devil, but the majority
to God; it began to be generally believed that Charles had right on his
side.[c]
_Joan of Arc leads the King to Rheims_
However discomfited and paralysed by the panic of their soldiers, as
well as by the great diminution of their numbers in the siege, the
English generals would not retreat from the Loire, but withdrew, Suffolk
to Jargeau, up the stream of the river, Talbot to Meung, lower down
its current. They were unmolested for a month. The French were lost in
jubilation. Joan left Orleans on the 13th of May, and hurried back to the
court at Tours to press the king for an army to proceed to Rheims.[g]
To be crowned at Rheims would have been a decisive victory for Charles
over his young competitor Henry VI. It would have made him a real king
of France. But once again the politicians believed themselves the wiser,
and the coronation was not to be thought of until the English were driven
from the Loire.[b]
Early in June, however, Joan was able to muster eight thousand
combatants, of whom twelve hundred were knights, most of them townsmen of
Orleans.[g] Suffolk, who had thrown himself into Jargeau, was besieged
and the place stormed. Beaugency, too, was taken before Lord Talbot could
receive the succours which Sir John Fastolf was bringing him from the
regent. The constable De Richemont, who had long kept aloof within his
own estates, came, in spite of the king and the Maid, to lend his aid to
the victorious army.
A battle was imminent; Richemont came to share the honour it might
afford. Talbot and Fastolf had formed a junction of their forces; but
it is a curious fact, illustrative both of the condition of the country
and of the fortuitous character of the war, that no one knew where to
find the English army in the wilderness of La Beauce, which was then
covered with coppices and thickets, until they were discovered by a stag,
which, being pursued by the French vanguard, rushed into the ranks of the
English.
The latter were on their march, and had not set up their defensive line
of stakes as usual. Talbot alone was for fighting, furious as he was,
since the defeat at Orleans, at having shown his back to the French.
Fastolf, on the contrary, who had gained the battle of the Herrings,
had no need of an engagement to retrieve his reputation, and said, like
a sensible man, that with a disheartened army it was better to remain
on the defensive. The French men-at-arms did not wait for the end of
the discussion, but charged headlong, and met with no great resistance.
Talbot fought with desperate obstinacy, hoping perhaps to be killed,
and succeeded only in getting himself made prisoner. The pursuit was
murderous; the bodies of two thousand English were strewed over the plain.
After this battle of Patay (28th or 29th of June), it was now or never
the time to venture on the expedition to Rheims. The politicians wanted
to remain still on the Loire, and make sure of Cosne and La Charité. This
time they talked in vain; no timid counsels could now be listened to.
Every day brought people flocking in from all the provinces, attracted by
the fame of the Maid’s miracles, and believing only in her, and in her
purpose forthwith to convey the king to Rheims. There was an irresistible
outburst of the pilgrim and crusading spirit. The indolent young king
himself at last yielded to the popular flood, and suffered himself to
be borne along by that vast tide that set in towards the north; and off
they started all together, willingly or perforce--the king, courtiers,
the politic and the enthusiastic, the madmen and the sages. They were
twelve thousand when they began their march, but their numbers augmented
continually as they advanced; every hour brought them additional
strength; and those who had no armour followed the holy expedition in
plain doublets, as archers or sword-and-buckler men, even though they
were of gentle blood.
The army marched from Gien on the 28th of June without attempting to
enter it, that town being in the hands of the duke of Burgundy, whom
there were reasons for treating with favour. Troyes had a mixed garrison
of Burgundians and English, who ventured to make a sortie on the first
appearance of the royal army. There seemed small chance of storming a
large town so well guarded, and that too without artillery. There was
only one old Armagnac councillor, the president Mâcon, who was of a
contrary opinion, well knowing that in such an enterprise prudence was
on the side of enthusiasm, and that men must not reason in a popular
crusade. “When the king undertook this march,” said he, “he did so not by
reason of the great armed force or the abundance of money he possessed,
nor because the achievement seemed to him possible; he undertook it
because Joan told him to advance and be crowned at Rheims, and that
he would encounter little resistance by the way, such being the good
pleasure of God.” The Maid then presented herself at the door of the
council-room, and assured them they would be able to enter the town in
three days. “We would willingly wait six,” said the chancellor, “if we
were sure what you say is true.” “Six? You shall enter to-morrow!”
[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
She seized her standard; the whole army followed her to the ditch, and
they threw into it all they could lay their hands on, fagots, doors,
tables, rafters, with such rapidity that the townspeople thought the
ditches would very soon disappear altogether. The English began to be
dazzled and bewildered as at Orleans, and fancied they saw a cloud of
white butterflies fluttering round the magic standard. The citizens on
their part were in great dread, recollecting that it was in Troyes the
treaty had been concluded which disinherited Charles VII, and fearing
that an example would be made of their town. Already they were taking
refuge in the churches, and crying out that the town must surrender. The
fighting men, who desired nothing better, parleyed and obtained leave to
depart with what they had.
What they had was chiefly prisoners, Frenchmen. Charles VII’s
councillors, who had drawn up the capitulation, had stipulated nothing
with respect to those unfortunate persons. The Maid alone thought of
them. When the English marched out with their prisoners in irons, she
stood at the gates and cried out, “In God’s name, they shall not carry
them off!” She stopped them, in fact, and the king paid their ransom.[c]
Charles simply passed through Troyes, neither did he stop at Châlons,
which opened its gates with alacrity; and, on July 13th, he arrived
before Rheims. Two Burgundian nobles, the sires of Châtillon and of
Saveuse, were in command, but they had no men. They assembled the
townsmen, and asked them to hold out for six weeks only; at the end of
that time they guaranteed that the dukes of Burgundy and of Bedford would
arrive with so powerful an army that it would easily raise the siege.
The townsfolk refused to run the risk, persuaded the two captains to
retire, and sent a deputation to the chancellor of France who was at the
same time archbishop of Rheims, begging him to enter his episcopal town.
On July 17th Charles was at last crowned in accordance with the usual
ritual, anointed with oil from the holy ampulla of Saint-Rémy and lifted
up to his seat by the ecclesiastical peers.
_Joan defeated at Paris (1429 A.D.)_
Joan had done the two great things which her ‘voices’ told her to do:
she had delivered Orleans, and had caused the king to be crowned; she
now wished to return to her village. “On her entrance into Rheims,” says
the _Chronique de la Pucelle_[h] “seeing how all the poor people of the
country cried ‘Noel!’ and wept from joy and gladness, and how they came
to the king singing _Te Deum laudamus_ without response or anthem, she
said to the chancellor of France and to Dunois: ‘In God’s name this is a
good and pious people, and when it shall be my time to die, I should like
it to be in this country.’
“Then the said count Dunois asked her: ‘Joan, do you know when you will
die and in what place?’ She answered that that was as God willed; and
said moreover to the said lord: ‘I have fulfilled what my Lord commanded
me, and I wish that he would send me back to my father and mother to keep
their sheep and cattle.’”
But her rôle was not ended, for the English still held a large part
of the kingdom. Joan, with the same firmness which had made her go to
Orleans and to Rheims, asked to be allowed to march to Paris. The king’s
counsellors could not accustom themselves to these heroic deeds of daring
which, at certain moments, are more estimable than prudence; they decided
first to take the small towns on the road to Paris. These opened their
gates of their own free will. The royal army entered Laon, Soissons,
Coulommiers, Provins, Senlis, and St. Denis without trouble. But when
they came to Paris the opportunity had passed.[b] Bedford had sent for
the duke of Burgundy to secure Paris, and he came at the invitation,
but almost alone; all the use the regent could make of him was to have
him figure in an assembly of notables, where he harangued, and repeated
once more the lamentable history of his father’s death. This being done,
he took himself off, leaving Bedford, by way of aid, only some Picard
men-at-arms; and even for this slight assistance, he required to have the
town of Meux given to him in pledge.
There was no hope save in Beaufort. That priest was king in England. His
nephew, Gloucester, the protector, had ruined himself by his own follies.
In order to uplift the cardinal’s power to the highest pitch, it was
necessary that Bedford should be brought as low in France as Gloucester
was in England; that he should be reduced to such exigency as to call for
Beaufort’s presence, and that the latter should come at the head of an
army to crown Henry VI. That army Beaufort had in readiness. With it he
was to secure Paris, convey young Henry thither, and crown him.
It was not until July 25th, nine days after Charles VII had been duly
anointed and crowned, that the cardinal entered Paris with his army.
Bedford did not lose a moment, but set out with these troops to observe
Charles VII. Twice they were in presence of each other, and some
skirmishes took place. Bedford, fearing for Normandy, kept watch over it,
and during this time the king marched against Paris (August). This was
contrary to the wish of the Maid, whose voices told her not to advance
beyond St. Denis.
It was an imprudent enterprise; the French nevertheless carried a
rampart. The Maid went down into the first ditch, and crossed the
shelving bank between it and the second, and found the latter full of
water, up to the foot of the wall. Heedless of the arrows, that fell like
hail about her, she shouted to her men to bring fascines, and meanwhile
sounded the depth of the water with her lance. She was almost alone,
a mark for every arrow, and one passed through her thigh. She strove
to bear up against the pain, and remained on the spot to encourage the
troops to mount to the assault. At last, having lost much blood, she
retired to the cover of the outer ditch, and it was not until ten or
eleven at night she could be prevailed on to return to her quarters. She
seemed to feel that this decisive check under the very walls of Paris
would ruin her beyond recovery.
[Sidenote: [1429-1430 A.D.]]
Fifteen hundred men were wounded in this attack, which she was wrongfully
accused of having advised. She was now vilified by her own party as well
as by the enemy. She had not scrupled to make the attack on the day of
our Lady’s Nativity (September 8th), to the great scandal of the pious
town of Paris. The court of Charles VII was still more shocked at this
irreverent deed. The libertines, the politic ones, the blind worshippers
of the letter and sworn foes to the spirit, all declared bravely against
the spirit the moment it showed signs of weakness. Negotiations were
resolved on, contrary to the Maid’s advice, at the instigation of the
archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France, who had never been cordially
in her favour. He proceeded to St. Denis, to ask for a truce; perhaps he
had secret hopes of prevailing with the duke of Burgundy, who was then in
Paris.
Regarded with ill will, and badly supported, the Maid carried on the
sieges of St. Pierre le Moûtier and La Charité during the winter. Though
almost abandoned before the former, she nevertheless stormed and took it.
The siege of La Charité proceeded slowly and languidly; a panic broke out
among the besiegers, and they dispersed.
_Capture of Joan of Arc (1430 A.D.)_
Meanwhile the English had induced the duke of Burgundy to give them
effectual aid. The weaker they were, the more hope he had of being able
to retain the strongholds he might take in Picardy. The English, who
had just lost Louviers, offered him his own terms, and he, the richest
prince in Christendom, no longer hesitated to stake men and money in a
war, the profit of which he hoped to appropriate. A bribe to the governor
put him in possession of Soissons. Then he laid siege to Compiègne, the
governor of which was also a man of very questionable integrity; but
the inhabitants were too strongly committed to the cause of Charles
VII to let their town be given up. The Maid threw herself into it, and
on the very same day made a sortie in which she nearly surprised the
besiegers. But the latter rallied in a moment, and pressed hotly upon the
besieged, up to the rampart and the bridge. The Maid, having remained
in the rear to cover the retreat, was not able to get within the walls
in time--whether it was that the bridge was blocked up by the crowd, or
that the gates were already closed. Being identified by her costume, she
was soon surrounded, seized, and dragged from her horse. Her capturer,
a Picard archer, brought her to his master, the bastard of Wandomme,
who sold her to John of Ligny, who belonged to the illustrious house of
Luxemburg and was the duke of Burgundy’s vassal.[c]
Now this John of Luxemburg had need of the duke of Burgundy in order to
inherit peacefully the domains of Ligny and St. Pol, to the detriment of
his elder brother. The duke of Burgundy, in order not to be disturbed
when seizing Brabant, Brussels, and Louvain, in spite of the rights of
his aunt Margaret, needed the assistance of the English. The English
were inclined to allow anything provided Joan of Arc was given up to
them.[b] It was absolutely necessary to get her out of the hands of the
Burgundians. She had been taken on the 23rd of May; on the 26th a message
was sent from Rouen in the name of the vicar of the Inquisition summoning
John of Ligny to give up the woman, she being suspected of witchcraft.[c]
A violent tempered man, a Burgundian, who was willing to do anything in
the hope of obtaining the archbishopric of Rouen, Pierre Cauchon, bishop
of Beauvais, undertook to prove it by a trial in due form.[b]
[Sidenote: [1430-1431 A.D.]]
The university stepped forward, and wrote to the duke of Burgundy and to
John of Ligny (July 14th). Cauchon, in his exceeding zeal making himself
the agent and courier of the English, carried the letter with his own
hands to the two dukes. At the same time he summoned them as a bishop to
deliver over to him a prisoner over whom he had jurisdiction. In this
strange proceeding, we find him pass from the part of a judge to that
of a negotiator, and make offers of money; though the woman in question
cannot be considered a prisoner of war, the king of England will give
John of Ligny and the bastard of Wandomme 200 or 300 livres’ yearly rent,
and a sum of 6,000 livres to those in whose keeping she is. Towards the
end of the letter he advances as far as 10,000 livres, “as much,” he
says, “as would be given for a king or a prince according to the custom
of France.”
Thus on all sides that world of interest and covetousness was opposed
to the Maid, or at least indifferent as to her fate. The good Charles
VII did nothing for her, the good Duke Philip gave her up to her mortal
foes. It was in vain John of Ligny’s wife threw herself at his feet,
and implored him not to dishonour himself.[42] He was not free; he had
already received English money, and he gave up Joan, not directly indeed
to the English, but to the duke of Burgundy, who took her to Arras, and
then to the keep of Crotoy.
Compiègne was delivered on the 1st of November. The duke of Burgundy had
advanced as far as Noyon, as though it were to meet the disgraceful blow
more nearly and in person. He was again defeated shortly afterwards at
Germigny (November 20th). At Péronne Saintrailles offered him battle, but
he durst not accept it. These humiliations no doubt confirmed the duke in
his alliance with the English, and fixed his determination to give up the
Maid to them.
At the moment when the English had the Maid at last in their hands,[43]
and could begin her trial, their affairs were in a very bad condition.
Far from having recovered Louviers, they had lost Château Gaillard; La
Hire, who took it by escalade, found Barbazan a prisoner there, and let
loose that redoubtable captain. The towns were going over of their own
accord to the side of Charles VII, and the citizens were driving out the
English. The men of Melun, so close to Paris, ejected their garrison.
The rapid downhill course of English affairs was only to be checked by
some strong machinery, and such had Beaufort ready in the trial and the
coronation of Henry VI. The latter entered Paris on the 2nd of December.
The university had been made to write on the 21st of November to Cauchon,
accusing him of tardiness, and requesting the king to begin the trial.
Cauchon was in no hurry, thinking it hard, apparently, to begin the
work, whilst the payment was as yet uncertain. It was not until a month
later that he obtained authority from the chapter of Rouen to proceed in
that diocese. He opened the proceedings at Rouen, on the 9th of January,
1431.[c]
_Trial of Joan of Arc_
[Sidenote: [1431 A.D.]]
He based the accusation on the four following points: infringement of
the laws of the church, by making use of magic practices; by taking up
arms, contrary to her parents’ wishes; by wearing clothes which were not
those of her sex; and lastly, by announcing revelations which were not
sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority. Thus a poor girl of nineteen was
alone, without protection against judges who were sold to her enemies,
who arbitrarily suppressed every proof of her innocence, who prevented
her appealing to the pope or to the council, who sought to embarrass her
by absurd and misleading questions or by extremely delicate ones, and who
were often disconcerted by her heroic replies.
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A FRENCH PEASANT, AT THE TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
The maid was finally brought before her judges on the 21st of February.
“Joan,” they asked her, “do you believe you have found salvation?” “If
I have not, may God grant it me; if I have, may God preserve me in it!”
“Did you not say that standards made by the soldiers in imitation of
yours would bring them good luck?” “No; I only said, ‘advance boldly
among the English,’ and I advanced also.” But she declared that she had
never killed anyone. “Why was her standard carried to the church at
Rheims at the coronation, more than those of the other captains?” “It had
borne the burden, it was only just that it should receive the honour.”
“What was the idea of those people who kissed your hands, your feet,
your clothes?” “The poor people came to me gladly, because I did them no
ill; I supported them and defended them to the best of my power.” “Do
you think you were right to leave without permission from your mother
and father? Ought one not to honour one’s father and mother?” “They have
forgiven me.” “Did you not think you were sinning in acting in this
manner?” “God commanded it; if I had had one hundred fathers and one
hundred mothers I should have gone.” “Do you think your king did right
in killing or having killed Monseigneur of Burgundy?” “It was a great
pity for the kingdom of France. But, whatever may have been between
them, God sent me to help the king of France.” “Do St. Catherine and St.
Margaret hate the English?” “They love what our Lord loves, and hate what
he hates.” “Does God hate the English?” “I know nothing of the love or
hatred which God has for the English; but I know well that they will be
driven from France, except those who perish here.” “Is it not a mortal
sin to admit a man to ransom and then put him to death?” “I have not done
so.”
The judges laid stress on the man’s clothing which Joan had assumed
contrary to the laws of the church, which she was still wearing, and
which she would not relinquish. The wretches affected not to understand
what the poor girl did not dare to tell them--that in camp, even in
prison, this dress had been, and still was, her protection.[b]
_The Twelve Articles_
Between the 2nd and 4th of April the judges, on the advice of the members
of the university, caused the seventy points of accusation brought
forward by the prosecutor to be summed up in twelve articles. There
were two doctors of Paris, Nicholas Midi and Jacques de Touraine, who
worked on this--one on the plan, the other on the final form. The twelve
articles reviewed the trial in a spirit very hostile to Joan, while it
eliminated the prosecutor’s accusation of impostures and brutalities. On
the 12th of April twenty-two doctors and licentiates deliberated together
on the twelve articles. They left the question hanging between a matter
of human invention and an inspiration of Satan.[f]
We give herewith these twelve articles and follow them with the findings
of the faculty, as they are given in the report of the trial, edited by
M. Quicherat.[i]
I. And in the first place, a certain woman states and affirms that,
when she was thirteen years of age or thereabouts, she herself saw,
with her own corporeal eyes, St. Michael consoling her, and sometimes
St. Gabriel appearing in bodily form; sometimes, also, she saw a great
multitude of angels: and afterwards, SS. Catherine and Margaret showed
themselves visible in bodily form to the same woman, and she also sees
them daily and hears their voices, and has embraced them at times, and
kissed them, touching them sensibly and corporeally. She truly saw the
heads of the said angels and saints, but concerning their other parts or
their garments she was unwilling to say anything. And that the aforesaid
SS. Catherine and Margaret sometimes spoke to her at a certain spring
near a large tree, commonly called “the fairies’ tree,”[44] concerning
which spring and tree there was a common report that the “fates of the
ladies” frequent there, and that many fever-stricken persons go to the
said spring and tree for the sake of recovering health, although they are
situated in a profane place. These she frequently worshipped there and
elsewhere and paid them reverence.
She says, moreover, that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret appear
and show themselves to her crowned with very beautiful and costly crowns,
and from the aforesaid time and ofttimes subsequently spoke to the
same woman concerning the command of God, that it behoved her to go to
a certain secular prince promising that by the help of the same woman
and by her labours the said prince would recover by force of arms great
temporal dominion and worldly honour, would obtain victory over his
enemies, and that the same prince would receive the said woman and would
bestow on her arms together with an army of soldiers for the carrying out
of what was promised. Furthermore, the said SS. Catherine and Margaret
instructed the same woman concerning the command of God, that she should
assume and wear male attire, which she has worn and still wears in
persevering obedience to this kind of command insomuch that the woman
herself has said that she would rather die than abandon this kind of
dress, saying this simply at different times, and occasionally “unless it
were the command of God.” She even chose rather not to be present at the
offices of mass and to go without the holy communion of the Eucharist at
times ordained by the church for receiving the sacrament, than to resume
female and put off male attire. They were also protectors of the said
woman in this matter that, without the knowledge and against the will of
her parents, when she was seventeen years of age or thereabouts, she left
her father’s house and associated with a number of soldiers, frequenting
with them by day and by night, never or rarely having another woman with
her. And many other things did the said saints tell and teach the same
woman, by reason of which she says that she has been sent by the God of
heaven and by the victorious church of the saints now enjoying beatitude
to whom she commits all her good deeds.
She declines, however, and refuses to submit her deeds and words to the
church militant, having been ofttimes required and admonished concerning
this; saying that it is impossible for the same woman to act contrary to
those things which she affirmed in her process, that she had acted by the
command of God, nor would she render account concerning these things to
the conclusion or judgment of anyone living, but only to the judgment of
God; and that they revealed to the same woman that she herself will be
saved in the glory of the blessed ones and she would attain the salvation
of her soul if she should keep her virginity, which she vowed to them on
the first occasion when she saw and heard them. By the occasion of which
revelation she asserts that she is as certain of her own salvation in the
kingdom of heaven as if it were already a present fact.
II. Further, the said woman declares that the sign which the prince
had to whom she was sent, and by which he was influenced to believe
her concerning her revelations and to receive her for the purpose
of carrying on war, was that St. Michael came to the same prince
accompanied by a multitude of angels of whom some had crowns and others
had wings, with whom were SS. Catherine and Margaret. This angel and
the woman were walking above the earth along a way like unto steps and
an arch stretching a great way, other angels and the aforesaid saints
accompanying them; and a certain angel delivered to the same prince a
very costly crown of purest gold and the said angel bowed himself before
the said prince showing him reverence. On one occasion she said that,
when her prince had the sign given him, she herself thought that he was
then alone although several others were near enough at hand; and on
another occasion that, as she believes, one archbishop received that sign
of a crown and delivered it to the aforesaid prince, several temporal
lords being present, witnessing it.
III. Further, the aforesaid woman knew and was assured that he who visits
her is St. Michael, by the good advice, comfort, and good doctrine which
the aforesaid St. Michael gave and made for the same woman; and in that
he named himself, saying that he himself was Michael. And similarly she
knows St. Catherine and St. Margaret distinctly from each other through
this--that they name themselves and salute her. On account of which
things, concerning the appearance of St. Michael to her, she believes
that he is St. Michael himself, and she believes that the words and deeds
of that Michael are true and good as firmly as she believes that our Lord
Jesus suffered and died for our redemption.
IV. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she herself is
certain concerning certain future things that are wholly coming to
pass, and will happen, just as she is certain about those things which
she indeed sees done before her; and boasts that she has and has had
information concerning certain hidden things by means of revelations
as far as the meaning of the word extends through the voices of St.
Catherine and St. Margaret--namely, that she will be liberated from
prison and that the French will do a fairer deed in her company than
was ever done for the whole of Christianity; that, furthermore, she has
recognised by means of revelation, as she says, some men whom she had
never seen before without anyone pointing them out to her, and that she
has revealed and discovered a certain sword which was hidden in the earth.
V. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that according to the
command of God and that which is well pleasing to him she has assumed
and worn and continually wears and clothes herself with a dress after
the fashion of a man. And further, she declares that from the time that
she held it to be the command of God to take male dress, it behoved her
to get a short tunic, a hood, a jerkin, breeches, and boots with many
tags, the hair of her head being cut off round over the tops of her
ears, leaving nothing upon her body which represented or pointed out
the feminine sex beyond those things which nature conferred on the same
woman for the distinction of the feminine sex. And that she ofttimes
received the Eucharist when wearing the aforesaid dress. She neither has
wished nor does she wish to resume feminine attire. Having been ofttimes
lovingly questioned and admonished about this, she has said that she
would rather die than leave off male attire, sometimes simply saying so,
and sometimes, “unless it were by God’s command.” And that if she were in
male attire among those for whose sake she at other times armed herself
and did as she used to do before her capture and detention, this would
be one of the greatest benefits which could happen for the whole kingdom
of France; adding that for nothing in the world would she take an oath
of not wearing male attire and not arming herself, and in all aforesaid
she declares that she has done and does do well in obeying God and his
commands.
VI. Further, the said woman confesses and asserts that she has caused to
be written many letters in some of which on the one hand these names,
Jesus Maria, were added together with the sign of the cross, and at times
she superadded a cross, and then she was unwilling that that should be
done which she ordered to be done in her letters. In other letters, on
the other hand, she caused to be written that she herself would have
those put to death who were not obedient to her letters or her counsels
and that “it will immediately be seen who has the greater authority from
the God of heaven”; and she frequently declares that she has done nothing
except by the revelation and commandment of God.
VII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that when she was
seventeen years of age or thereabouts, she went of her own accord and
by revelation according as she says to a certain esquire whom she had
never seen, before leaving her father’s house against the wish of her
parents; who, as soon as they were aware of her departure, were almost
out of their mind. The said woman requested indeed this esquire that
he should lead her or cause her to be led to the prince of whom it has
been before spoken. And then the said gentleman, a captain, delivered
to the said woman a man’s dress together with a sword at the request of
the woman herself, and deputed and ordered one soldier, one esquire, and
four serving men to conduct her; who when they had come to the aforesaid
prince the said woman said to the same prince that she herself wished to
head the war against his enemies, promising that she would place him in
great power and would overcome his enemies; and that she had been sent
for this purpose by the God of heaven, saying that in the aforesaid she
did well by the command of God and by revelation.
VIII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that she, no one
forcing or compelling her, threw herself down from a certain very lofty
tower, preferring rather to die than to be delivered into the hands
of her enemies, or than to live after the destruction of the city of
Compendium (Compiègne); she declares too that she could not avoid this
kind of fall and yet that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret
prevented her from casting herself down, to offend whom she declares is
a great sin. Yet she knows well that this kind of sin has been forgiven
her after she has made confession of it. And concerning this she declares
that she has had a revelation.
IX. Further, the said woman declares that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and
Margaret promised her that they themselves would lead her into paradise
if she kept well the virginity which she vowed to them both in body and
in soul. And concerning this she declares she is as certain as if she
were already in the glory of the blessed ones. Nor does she think she has
committed works of mortal sin; for if she were in mortal sin, it seems to
her that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret would not visit her as
they daily do visit her.
X. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that God loves certain
men determined and named hitherto travellers, and loves them more than
he does the same woman. And she knows this through the revelation of
the SS. Catherine and Margaret who speak to her frequently in French,
and not in English, since they are not on their side. And since she has
known by revelation that their voices were on behalf of the prince above
mentioned, she has not loved the Burgundians.
XI. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she has ofttimes
shown reverence to the aforesaid voices and spirits whom she calls
Michael, Gabriel, Catherine, and Margaret, by uncovering the head,
bending her knee, kissing the earth over which they walked, and by
vowing to them virginity and at times by embracing and kissing the same
Catherine and Margaret; and that she has touched them corporeally and
sensibly, and has besought of them counsel and help by invoking them
at times, although they frequently visit her when not invoked, and she
acquiesces in and obeys their counsels and commands and has acquiesced
from the beginning without seeking advice from anyone, for example, from
father or mother, curate, or prelate, or any other ecclesiastic. And
nevertheless she firmly believes that the voices and revelations which
she has had through male and female saints of this sort come from God
and by his ordering, and she believes this as firmly as she believes the
Christian faith and that our Lord Jesus Christ suffered death for us;
adding that if an evil spirit appeared to her, who pretended that he was
St. Michael, she would know well how to distinguish whether he were St.
Michael or not. The same woman also declares that at her own request, no
other person compelling or requiring it of her, she swore to the SS.
Catherine and Margaret, who appeared to her, that she would not reveal
the sign of the crown which was to be given to the prince to whom she was
sent. And in conclusion she said that “unless she had license to reveal
it.”
XII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that if the church
should wish that she should do anything contrary to the command which she
declares has been given her by God she would not do that for anything,
affirming that she knows well that those things which are contained in
her process come by the commandment of God, and that it were impossible
for her to do anything contrary to them. Nor was she willing to refer,
concerning these things, to the judgment of the church militant or to
any man in the world, but to one Lord God alone, whose commands she
will always do; especially as to the subject-matter of the revelations
and those things which she declares she has done by revelation. And she
declares that she has not made this answer and other answers of herself
alone, but she has made and given these answers by command of the voices
and revelations made to her; although the article of faith, “one holy
Catholic church,” was ofttimes explained to the said woman by judges and
others there present, explaining to her that every faithful pilgrim is
bound to obey and to submit his deeds and words to the church militant,
especially in the matter of faith and that which touches holy doctrine
and ecclesiastical sanctions.
_The Findings of the Faculty_
I. And in the first place as to the first article, the faculty declares
by means of doctrine that the manner and matter of the revelations, the
quality of the person and place, together with other circumstances,
having been finally considered, they are either fictitious lies,
seductive and pernicious, or the aforesaid apparitions and revelations
are superstitions, proceeding from malignant and diabolical spirits,
Belial, Satan, and Behemoth.
II. Further, as to the second article, that that which it contains
does not seem true; yea, the latter is a presumptuous lie, seductive,
pernicious, fictitious, and derogatory to the dignity of angels.
III. Further, as to the third article, that the signs contained in it are
not sufficient and the said woman believes lightly and asserts easily.
Furthermore in the statement which she makes she believes wrongly, and
errs in the faith.
IV. Further, as to the fourth article, that in it is contained a
superstition, a soothsaying and presumptuous assertion, together with
empty boasting.
V. Further, as to the fifth article, that the said woman is blasphemous
towards God and a despiser of God in his sacraments; a prevaricator of
divine law and holy doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; of evil
wisdom, she errs from the faith and is an empty boaster, and is to be
held suspected of idolatry and the curse of herself and of her garments
by imitating the custom of the Gentiles.
VI. Further, as to the sixth article, that the said woman is a traitress,
crafty, cruel, and thirsting after the shedding of human blood, seditious
and provoking to tyranny; a blasphemer of God in his commands and
revelations.
VII. Further, as to the seventh article, that the said woman is undutiful
to her parents, a prevaricator of the precept concerning honouring
parents; scandalous, blasphemous towards God, and errs in the faith and
makes a rash and presumptuous promise.
VIII. Further, that in the eighth article is contained weakness of mind
tending to despair, that is to say, to suicide and to presumptuous and
rash assertion concerning the pardon of sin held out; and that the said
woman has an evil opinion of the freedom of human judgment.
IX. Further, that in the ninth article is contained a presumptuous and
rash assertion and a pernicious lie, and she contradicts herself in the
preceding article and has an ill knowledge of the faith.
X. Further, that in the tenth article is contained a presumptuous and
rash assertion, superstitious divination, blasphemy against SS. Catherine
and Margaret, and transgression of the precept concerning the love of
your neighbour.
XI. Further, as to the eleventh article, that the said woman, supposing
that she had the revelations and apparitions of which she boasts with
certain beings according to the first article, is an idolatress, an
invoker of demons, and errs in the faith, asserts rashly, and has made an
unlawful oath.
XII. Further, as to the twelfth article, that the said woman is a
schismatic, having an evil opinion of the unity and authority of the
church; an apostate and hitherto errs obstinately in the faith.
Here follows a deliberation and determination by manner of doctrine
of the Venerable Faculty of degrees in the University of Paris upon
the twelve articles concerning the words and deeds of Joan, commonly
called La Pucelle, above annotated and described; which deliberation and
determination the said faculty submits to the order and judgment of the
great pontiff of the holy apostolic seat and of the holy general council.
If the said woman being of right mind obstinately affirm the propositions
declared in the above written twelve articles and in performance abide
by the deeds contained in the same, it seems to the faculty of degrees,
having diligently examined the aforesaid propositions, speaking in love
by manner of council or doctrine:
I. That the said woman has become schismatic, since schism is unlawful
division, through her disobedience from the unity of the church, and
separates herself from the obedience of the church militant, in that she
says, etc.
II. Further, that the woman herself errs in the faith: contradicts the
article of faith contained in the lesser symbol “one holy Catholic
church”; and, as says St. Jerome, by contradicting this article she
acknowledges herself not only unskilful, malevolent, and uncatholic, but
heretical.
III. Further, that the woman herself is also even apostate, both because
with an evil purpose she caused to be cut off from her the hair which God
gave her for a covering; and also because, for the same purpose having
given up female dress, she imitated the dress of men.
IV. Further, that the woman herself is a liar and a soothsayer when she
says that she was sent by God and spoke with the angels and saints and
did not make it known by the operation of a miracle or special witness
of Scripture; as when the Lord wished to send Moses into Egypt to the
children of Israel, in order that they might believe that he was sent
by him he gave them a sign that he should turn his rod into a serpent
and the serpent into a rod again; that John the Baptist also should
reform them, he brought forward a special testimony of his mission from
Scripture, saying: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness; make
straight the way of the Lord, as saith the prophet Esaias.”
V. Further, that the same woman, by her presumption of authority, and
concerning right, errs in the faith both firstly, since she herself is
anathema by canonical authority and has continued in the same state for
a long time; and secondly, because she says she would rather not receive
the body of Christ and not make her confession at the time appointed by
the church than put off her male attire and resume the dress of women;
she is therefore most vehemently suspected of heresy, and is to be
diligently examined concerning the articles of faith.
VI. Further, the same woman also errs in that she says that she is as
certain that she will be led into paradise as if she were already in the
glory of the blessed ones; since, in this journey, whether the traveller
be worthy of praise or tribulation is unknown but is recognised by the
supreme Judge alone. Wherefore, if the aforesaid woman be charitably
exhorted and duly admonished by a competent judge to return of her own
will to the unity of the Catholic faith and publicly to abjure her errors
at the will of the aforesaid judge, and be unwilling to show suitable
satisfaction, she is to be abandoned to the power of the secular judge
under obligation to receive vengeance in proportion to the quality of her
crime.[i]
_The Sentence and its Execution_
Her condemnation was decided beforehand; but they wanted to obtain from
her some words implicating Charles VII, and they employed all means for
this purpose; they sent for the executioner to come to the prison; then
they said that all was ready for the torture. She was very ill during
holy week. Threats had little effect on this heroic mind; they resorted
to promises, to the most pernicious for her--that of being taken from the
hands of her English gaolers and given over to men of the church. She
yielded, and signed the recantation which was presented to her, without
even knowing what it contained: and then, out of mercy and moderation,
she was only condemned to spend the rest of her days in prison, on the
bread of affliction and water of sorrow, to weep over her sins.[b]
She was admitted by the ecclesiastical judge to do penance, nowhere else
of course than in the church prisons. The ecclesiastical _in pace_, hard
as it was, would at least take her out of the hands of the English,
protect her from their insults, and save her honour. What were her
surprise and horror when the bishop said coldly, “Take her back to the
place whence you brought her!”
Nothing was done; thus deceived, she could not fail to retract her
retraction. But even had she been willing to persist in it, the rage of
the English would not have allowed her. They had come to St. Ouen, where
the sentence had been delivered, in hopes at last to burn the witch;
they waited in breathless expectation; and were they now to be sent off
in this way, with nothing for their pains but a scrap of parchment, a
signature, and a grimace? At the moment when the bishop suspended the
reading of the sentence, stones flew about the platforms without respect
for the cardinal. The doctors were in danger of their lives when they set
foot on the ground; bare swords were everywhere pointed at their throats;
the most moderate of the English confined themselves to insulting words:
“Priest, you do not earn the king’s money.” The trembling doctors,
shuffling away as fast as they could, said, “Be not uneasy, we shall
surely catch her again.” It was not merely the common soldiers, the
English mob, that showed this thirst for blood. The respectable people
and the lords were not less rancorous. The king’s man and his tutor, Lord
Warwick, said, like the soldiers, “The king fares badly; the girl will
not be burned” (May 23rd, 1431).
The poor girl, exposed to such danger, had hitherto possessed no other
defence than her male attire; but strange to say, no one had ever chosen
to understand why she wore it. Her friends and her enemies were alike
shocked at her doing so. In the beginning she had been obliged to explain
herself to the women of Poitiers. After her capture, when she was in the
custody of the ladies of Luxemburg,[45] those good dames begged her to
dress as became a decent girl. If the women understood nothing of this
female question, how much less did the priests! They quoted the text of
a council of the fourth century, which anathematises this exchange of
garments. They did not perceive that this prohibition applied especially
to an epoch which had scarcely emerged from pagan impurity.
[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
On Friday and Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, deprived of her male
attire, had much to fear. According to the statement of her confessor,
to whom she revealed the fact, an Englishman, not a soldier, but a
gentleman, a lord, bravely undertook to violate a chained girl and,
failing in the attempt, loaded her with blows.
“When the morning of Trinity Sunday was come, and it was time for her to
rise (as she has related to him who speaks) she said to the English, her
guards, ‘Un-iron me that I may rise.’ One of them took off the woman’s
garments that were on her, emptied the bag in which was the male dress,
and said to her, ‘Get up.’ ‘Sirs,’ said she, ‘you know it is forbidden
me; certainly I will not take it.’ This dispute lasted until noon, and
at last, by reason of bodily necessity, she was obliged to go out and
take that dress. On her return, they would not give her any other,
notwithstanding all her supplications.”
In reality, it was not for the interest of the English that she should
resume the garb of a man, and thus annul the retractation so laboriously
obtained; but at that moment their rage knew no bounds. Saintrailles had
just made a bold attempt on Rouen. It would have been a fine exploit
to seize the judges on their bench, and carry off Beaufort and Bedford
to Poitiers. The latter had another narrow escape of being captured on
his return between Rouen and Paris. There was no safety for the English
so long as that infernal girl lived, who was doubtless continuing her
diabolical arts in prison. It was necessary she should die.
The assessors being instantly sent for to the castle to see the change
of dress, found in the courtyard some hundred English, who stopped their
way. Thinking that if these doctors entered, they might spoil all, they
brandished axes and swords in their faces, and drove them out, calling
them Armagnac traitors. Cauchon, getting in with great difficulty,
assumed a gay air to please Warwick, and said, laughing, “She is
caught.” On Monday he returned with the inquisitor and eight assessors
to interrogate the Maid, and ask her why she had resumed that garb. She
offered no excuse, but bravely accepting her danger said that this dress
suited her better so long as she should be guarded by men; that moreover,
word had not been kept with her. Her saints had said to her that it was
great pity to have abjured to save her life. At the same time she did not
refuse to put on female garments again. “Let me be consigned to a mild
and safe prison,” she said, “I will be good and do all the church shall
desire.”
On Tuesday the judges got together, at the archiepiscopal palace, some
sort of an assemblage of assessors, some of whom had been present only
at the first sittings, and the rest at none; they were men of every
kind--priests, lawyers, and three were even physicians. The judges
reported to them what had taken place, and asked their opinions. The
opinion they gave, very different from what was expected, was that
the prisoner ought to be brought again into court and have her act
of abjuration read again to her. It is doubtful that this was within
the power of the judges. Judge or judgment was in fact no longer a
thing possible amidst naked swords and raging soldiers. Bloodshed was
inevitable; the judges perhaps were not far from seeing their own spilt.
They drew up a hasty citation to be served the next morning at eight; her
next appearance was only to be for the purpose of being burned.
In the morning, Cauchon sent her a confessor, Brother Martin l’Advenu,
“to announce death to her and induce her to penitence. And when he
announced to the poor girl the death she was to die that day, she began
to cry out woefully, sinking with faintness, and tearing her hair. ‘Alas!
am I to be treated so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, whole and
entire, which was never corrupted, be now consumed and reduced to ashes?
Oh! oh! I would rather be beheaded seven times than be thus burned! Oh! I
appeal to God, the great Judge of the wrongs and grievances they do me!’”
At nine she was dressed in women’s clothes and placed on a car, with
Friar Martin l’Advenu on one side of her, and the _huissier_ Massieu
on the other. Isambart, the Augustine monk, who had already displayed
so much charity and courage, would not quit her. The Maid had never
despaired until now. Even whilst saying, as she did at times, “the
English will put me to death,” she did not in reality believe it. She
did not imagine she could ever be forsaken. She had faith in her king,
and in the good people of France. She had said expressly, “There will
be in the prison or at the condemnation some tumult by which I shall
be delivered--delivered with great victory!” But though the king and
the people should fail her, she had another aid, far more potent and
sure--that of her friends on high, the good and precious saints. What
then were her thoughts when she saw that she was really to die--when,
mounted on the cart, she passed along through the trembling crowd,
guarded by eight hundred Englishmen armed with lances and swords? She
wept and bewailed her fate, but never accused either her king or her
saints. But one phrase escaped her lips, “O Rouen, Rouen, must I die
here!”
The end of this dismal journey was the Vieux Marché, the fish market.
Three platforms had been erected there. On one was the episcopal and
royal chair, the throne of the cardinal of England, surrounded by the
seats of his prelates; the other was destined for the performers in
this melancholy drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and
lastly the culprit. Some way off from these was seen a great platform in
plaster filled and heaped with wood; materials had not been spared upon
the pile: it struck terror by its height. This was done not merely for
the purpose of rendering the execution more solemn; there was another
intention--namely, that the great height of the pile should make it
inaccessible to the executioner except from below, where he was to
light it, and thus prevent him from abridging the sufferer’s agony and
despatching her, as usual, before the flames reached her. There was no
thought here of defrauding justice and giving a dead body to the fire; it
was meant that she should be literally and truly burned alive, and that
placed on the summit of that mound of wood she should be visible above
the circle of lances and swords to every spectator on the ground. Burning
slowly before the eyes of a gaping multitude there was reason to expect
that she would at last yield to some weakness, and utter something that
might be given out as a recantation; at the very least it was probable
that some incoherent words would escape her, which might be interpreted
as her judges desired; perhaps that in womanly terror and despair she
would descend to ignoble prayers and cries for mercy.
The hideous ceremony began with a sermon. Master Nicholas Midi, one of
the lights of the University of Paris, preached from this edifying text:
“When a member of the church is sick the whole church is sick.” That poor
church could only be cured by cutting off a limb. He concluded with the
formal phrase: “Joan, go in peace; the church can no longer defend thee.”
Then the ecclesiastical judge, the bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted
her to think of her soul and to recollect all her misdeeds, that she
might be moved to contrition. The assessors had decided that it was
incumbent in law to read her abjuration to her again; but the bishop did
not do so, fearing that she would contradict and remonstrate. But the
poor girl had no thought of thus battling with lawyers’ subtleties for
her life; her mind was far differently engaged. Before even she had been
exhorted to contrition she was on her knees invoking God, the Virgin, St.
Michael, and St. Catherine, pardoning all and asking pardon, and saying
to the by-standers, “Pray for me.” She particularly requested each of the
priests to say a mass for her soul; and all this she did in a manner so
pious, humble, and affecting, that the emotion spread from man to man,
and none present could restrain their feelings; the bishop of Beauvais
wept, the bishop of Boulogne sobbed, and at last the English themselves
shed tears, and Beaufort as well as the rest.
The judges soon recovered from their momentary fit of humanity, and the
bishop of Beauvais, wiping his eyes, began to read the sentence. He
recapitulated to the culprit all her crimes, schism, idolatry, invocation
of fiends, and set forth how she had been admitted to repentance, and
how, “seduced by the prince of lies, she had relapsed, O grief! as a dog
returns to his vomit. Therefore we pronounce you a rotten member, and
as such cut off from the church. We give you over to the secular power,
entreating it at the same time to moderate its sentence, and to spare you
the pain of death and mutilation of your limbs.”[46]
Thus abandoned by the church she cast herself in full confidence on
God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman handed her a wooden cross
which he had made out of a stick; she received it not the less piously,
kissed it, and put that rough emblem of salvation under her clothes next
her skin. But she would rather have had the church cross to keep before
her eyes until death. The good _huissier_ Massieu and Brother Isambart
exerted themselves to fulfil her wishes, and the cross was brought her
from the parish of St. Sauveur. While she was embracing it, and Isambart
was exhorting her, the English began to think the business very tedious;
it was noon at least; the soldiers grumbled, and the captains called out,
“Holla, priest! are you going to keep us here to dinner?” Then losing
patience and not waiting for the order of the bailiff, though he alone
had authority to send her to death, they sent up two sergeants to take
her out of the hands of the priests. She was seized at the foot of the
tribunal by the soldiers, who dragged her to the executioner, and said to
him, “Do thy office.” This fury of the soldiery excited horror; many of
the by-standers, and even of the judges, rushed from the ground to avoid
seeing any more of it.
When she was on the ground among those English who laid hands on her,
nature gave way and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried, “O Rouen,
thou art then to be my last abode!” She said no more and sinned not with
her lips, even in that awful moment. She accused not her king or her
saints. But when she was on the top of the pile, and saw that great town
and that motionless and silent multitude, she could not help saying, “Ah,
Rouen, Rouen, I fear me much thou wilt have to suffer for my death!”
Wonderful gentleness of soul! she who had saved the people, and whom the
people forsook, expressed but compassion for them in her dying moments.
She was bound beneath the infamous inscription, and on her head was
placed a mitre, on which was written: “Heretic, relapsed, apostate,
idolator.” Then the executioner applied the fire. She saw it from above
and shrieked. The monk who was exhorting her did not pay attention to the
flames; and she, forgetting herself, became alarmed for him and made him
go down. What plainly proves that until then she had retracted nothing
expressly is that the wretched Cauchon was obliged (doubtless by the
imperious Satanic will of him that presided) to approach the foot of the
pile, obliged to look his victim in the face, and try to elicit something
from her. She repeated to him mildly what she had already said: “Bishop,
I die by you. Had you placed me in the church prisons this would not
have happened.” Of course it had been expected that, thinking herself
abandoned by her king, she would at last accuse him and speak against
him; but she defended him still: “Whether I have done well or done ill,
my king is in no wise implicated therein: it was not he who advised me.”
Meanwhile, the flames were ascending. At the moment they reached her the
poor creature started and called out for holy water; this apparently was
a cry of terror. But immediately collecting herself she uttered no names
but those of God, her angels, and her saints. She testified her faith in
them: “Yes, my voices were of God; my voices have not deceived me!” That
grand expression of hers is attested by the compulsory and sworn witness
of her death, the Dominican who ascended the pile with her, whom she sent
down from that dangerous post, but who continued speaking with her from
below, listened to her words, and held up the cross to her sight.
We have yet another witness of this holy death, a witness of very grave
character, who was himself doubtless a saint. This man, whose name
history ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned,
Brother Isambart de la Pierre. He was near perishing in the course of
the prosecution for having given counsel to the Maid, and yet though so
conspicuously obnoxious to the English, he voluntarily ascended the cart
with her, procured her the parish cross, and stood by her in the midst of
the furious crowd, both on the platform and at the stake. Twenty years
after the event the two venerable men, humble monks, devoted to poverty
and with nothing to gain or to fear in this world, depose as follows: “We
heard her in the fire invoking her saints and her archangel; she repeated
the Saviour’s name. At last, dropping her head, she cried aloud, ‘Jesus.’”
“Ten thousand men wept.” Some English alone laughed or tried to laugh.
One of the most violent among them had sworn to fling a fagot on the
pile; she was expiring at the moment he deposited it, and he was taken
ill. His comrades carried him off to a tavern to revive his spirits
with drink, but he could not recover his equanimity. “I saw,” he cried
distractedly, “I saw a dove escape from her mouth with her last sigh.”
Others had read in the flames the word Jesus which she repeated. The
executioner went that evening in utter dismay to Brother Isambart, and
confessed, but could not believe that God would ever forgive him. One of
the king of England’s secretaries said openly as he returned from the
horrid scene, “We are undone; we have burned a saint!”[c]
THE REHABILITATION OF JOAN OF ARC (1456 A.D.)
For a long time the people refused to believe in Joan’s death.[47] The
memory of her who had been both the heroine and victim of patriotic and
national sentiment became more and more popular, and several years after
the English had been driven from France and her predictions accomplished,
there arose a desire that her memory should be avenged.
When Charles VII entered Rouen in 1450 he had ordered the revision of
the trial. Cardinal Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen and papal legate,
began investigation in the name of the church. But for political reasons,
and so as not to irritate the English, it was judged better to have the
request for rehabilitation come from Joan’s own family, as a private
matter. Two doctors designated by the court of Rome examined the request,
declared it founded on the most serious motives, and concluded if the
church must hesitate to pronounce on Joan’s visions, it could not charge
them with crime. Upon these conclusions Pope Calixtus III appointed three
prelates and an inquisitor to form a court of revision over which the
archbishop of Rheims presided.
The new judges began their labour. All the witnesses still living who
had known Joan appeared before them. Military leaders who had fought
with her--as Alençon and Dunois--gave testimony to her memory. Three
clerks who had exercised their office at the trial in Rouen furnished
proof of irregularities that had been committed. No defender of the
former proceedings appeared. Thereupon the court, giving the most
simple explanation of all that had determined the former judges, found
a hundred and one reasons for nullity. In consequence the new judges
quashed, in 1456, the decree of their predecessors--as stained with
illegality, fraud, violence, and manifest partiality. They declared
the twelve articles of the condemnation false, calumnious, and full of
fraud--while recognising that the manner in which they had been drawn up
might easily have deceived the good faith of those that acted upon them.
They declared the trial iniquitous--that Joan had been judged by her
enemies. The church thus restored that which an ecclesiastical tribunal
had struck down. The sentence of rehabilitation was published in every
town of France; Orleans raised on a bridge over the Loire a statue to her
liberator. Rouen held expiation processions in honour of her victim.[k]
A BRITISH ESTIMATE OF JOAN’S SERVICES
Those writers who consider Joan of Arc not merely as a female Mohammed,
but as a heaven-sent saviour, do not enhance the virtue or the beauty of
her own natural character, whilst they exaggerate the depression, and
derogate from the martial spirit of the French, by representing them as
only to be saved at the time by an avatar. It does not appear that France
was in such imminent danger, or was likely to be conquered, even had
Orleans fallen by a handful of English, very unequal to the subjugation
of the country.
If the starting up a great prince or warrior, like Henry V, on the
throne of England had brought disaster upon France, his premature death,
with the consequent abstraction of English aid and English vigour from
the duke of Bedford, was a greater blow to English ascendency than any
supposed mission of Joan of Arc. If the French were defeated at Agincourt
and Verneuil, this was mainly owing to the yeoman middle classes, which
formed the strength of the English army, whilst a similar class in France
was kept out of the ranks of the national defence. But the sieges of
Rouen and of Orleans had restored to the French peasant and the French
townsman the right and the habit of wielding a sword by the side of the
gentleman. What Joan of Arc did was to restore their confidence; this was
her good fortune or her mission. The disinherited and degraded middle
and lower classes rose to defend and save the monarchy, which counts and
barons had allowed to fall with themselves into the mire. This was the
revolution, this the new spirit that saved France from the English, and
not the trumped-up miracle of La Pucelle. It was the red right arm of
French manhood which did that act, and not the prophecies of Merlin, the
visions of saints, or the embroidered banner of the virgin of Domrémy.[g]
FOOTNOTES
[39] [It was positively asserted that a ball had taken off a man’s shoe
without hurting his foot.]
[40] [The duke of Orleans had been a captive in England since the battle
of Agincourt.]
[41] [The family name was Darc, and the name of the Maid of Orleans was
therefore, properly, Jeanne Darc, not Jeanne d’Arc as commonly written;
but the latter has the sanction of general usage.]
[42] [His aunt, the saintly Joan of Luxemburg, was also most energetic in
her efforts to have Joan released.]
[43] [The count of Ligny received the money before October. The duke of
Burgundy handed Joan over to the English on the 21st of November.]
[44] [From the door of her father’s dwelling she looked on an old oak
wood. The fairies haunted that wood; their favourite spot was a certain
spring near a great ash called the “fairies’ tree.” The children used to
hang garlands on it and sing to it. These somewhile ladies and mistresses
of the forest could no longer, it was said, assemble at the spring; they
had been excluded from it for their sins. The church, however, always
retained a jealous fear of the old local divinities, and the curé used to
go once every year, and read a mass at the spring, in order to drive them
away.[c]]
[45] [The mother and aunt of the count of Ligny, who took a tender
interest in the Maid while she was in his keeping.]
[46] [The regular formula for the sentence of giving over a heretic to
the secular arm.]
[47] [In 1436 rumour spread through France that it was not La Pucelle
that the English had burned at Rouen. In fact, a woman whose resemblance
to Joan was astonishing had presented herself to her two brothers and was
acknowledged by them. In 1438 and 1439 this “false Joan” headed a body
of armed men and was enthusiastically received by the people of Orleans.
Brought before the king, she admitted the imposture, was imprisoned,
afterwards released and came, according to report, to a bad and shameful
end.]
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