THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE
_Cettelle ne vient pas de la terre; elle est envoyee du ciel._ Thus it
is that a contemporary, a great politician and satirist, Alain Chartier,
expresses his convictions regarding the Maid of Orleans. To Christine de
Pisan, too, she seemed, as we have seen, a messenger from God. It was a
time when all good patriots wept, when the fair land of France was a
prey to the spoiler, when Armagnac, Bourguignon, and hated Saxon roamed
at will over the land and laid it waste. In one of Alain Chartier's
political satires, _Le Quadriloge invectif_, the three estates of the
realm nobles, clergy, commons are in turn appealed to by La France, to
"have pity of their common mother." The commons, or _Peuple_, replies:
"It is the labor of my hands that feeds and clothes these cowardly
loafers, and they oppress me with famine and the sword.... They live
upon me, and I am slowly dying under them.... The banners of the host
are raised, they say, against our enemies, but no deeds are done except
against me." It was a complaint but too true, as was that in Chartier's
_Livre de I'Esperance_: "The nights are too short for the shameless
pleasures (of the gentlemen at court), and the days too short for
sleeping.... It would seem that noble estate means no more than license
to do wrong and yet go unpunished."
In this disregard of the moral law as well as of patriotic duties the
dauphin himself led the way. One hardly knows what verdict to pass upon
this man, for his character was a blend of qualities that might have
made greatness and that yet resulted in nothing but meanness, littleness
of soul, and ingratitude. It is not the acid meanness of Louis XI, his
son, for that had a purpose; what in Louis XI was true vinegar, sharp
and biting, had not yet gone through the full process of fermentation in
Charles VII. and was simply a fluid evil to the taste, with no useful
properties. Reared at a court where pleasure was the only law, under the
evil influence of Isabeau de Baviere--whenever she thought to trouble
herself about him--and, later, of the savage and unscrupulous Bernard
d'Armagnac, who wished to retain power for himself and hence debauched
the young prince, it is not surprising to find Charles a libertine, and
one easily controlled by any favorite who happened to be in the
ascendant. As a boy of sixteen he had been made an accomplice, whether
constructively guilty or not of the actual crime, in the murder of Duke
Jean de Bourgogne. At nineteen he was proclaimed King of France by his
handful of followers, while the victorious English were proclaiming
Henry VI. in Paris (1422). Defeat followed defeat for his armies, owing
partly to the demoralization of the troops, partly to the inability of
the leaders to maintain any sort of discipline among the bands of half
savage men at arms from Gascony, Brittany, Scotland, and even Italy and
Spain. Yet for most of the disasters, Charles himself was to blame,
since he continued to lead a life of slothful pleasure, making no
serious efforts to control himself or to take an active part in the
affairs of his ruined kingdom.
The salvation of France was to come from a woman, one as nearly a saint
as mortal can be; but some part of the preparation for the coming of
that saint was made by other women, not by any means saintly. The wife
of Charles VII. was Marie d'Anjou, who, with her husband, was under the
domination of her mother, Yolande d'Aragon, one of those active, able,
but unscrupulous women who rule by intrigue, who are content to let
others claim the glory so long as the real secret of power is theirs.
Queen Yolande, anxious to preserve the dignity of the house of Anjou for
her son Rene, needed the support of France, and she hated England. She
gained a remarkable ascendency over Charles VII., and used this most
wisely for the good of France, though some of her methods may seem of a
sort to disconcert prevailing opinions.
Seeing that Charles was by nature a libertine, she determined to make
use of that side of his character, although at the expense of her own
daughter. It was she who presented to Charles that famous and lovely
_Dame de beaute_, Agnes Sorel. The role played by this mistress of the
king is truly admirable as well as remarkable. Agnes was no vulgar
woman, but an Aspasia of her time, of noble birth, beautiful, and of a
character gentle as well as essentially good. It is no paradox to
pronounce her good, though she led a life condemned by moral laws; for
the laxity of the age must be considered, as well as the methods of the
mistress herself. Even the wife of her royal lover respected Agnes
Sorel, and there was friendship between them. So far from seeking to
surround herself with idle and vicious companions and encouraging
Charles in offending useful friends or wise counsellors, she used her
influence, in conjunction with Yolande, to establish the credit of the
Constable de Richemont, the most useful of Charles's allies at this
time.
Legend has gilded her portrait for us, and much that is told of her is
not susceptible of proof, but the tendency of her influence is shown by
one little incident. Charles, unable to win back his kingdom, unable to
maintain himself in it north of the Loire, unable to find money to pay
his troops, was yet able to build a chateau at Loches for Agnes Sorel.
Here he was basking in her smiles and heedless of the distress of
France, when accident gave Agnes a chance to rouse his nobler feelings.
Charles had, to amuse the passing hour, called a fortune teller to the
chateau, and stood by while the man told the fortune of his well-beloved
Agnes. The mountebank, with the cunning of his kind, thought to flatter
this vain and lovely lady by prophesying: "Some day thou shalt be the
wife of the greatest king on earth." Agnes, with ready wit, rose at once
to her occasion. "If that be my true fortune," said she to the dauphin,
"I must leave you this instant and go marry the King of England; for I
see that, in the sloth that confines you here, you will not long be King
of France." The shot told, and Charles was stung into momentary
activity. Throughout her life Agnes continued to exert a salutary
influence upon him; and when she died,--poisoned, it was said, by the
then dauphin, afterward Louis XI,--evil favorites soon replaced the wise
counsellors at the king's board, and his last years were as full of
misery as had been those before Jeanne came mysteriously out of the east
and gave him his crown.
It was not Charles, the miserable, ungrateful voluptuary whose character
we have attempted to show, that was loved and saved by Jeanne d'Arc; it
was France, represented to her in the person of the dauphin. For her,
Charles was a symbol, a mere incarnate _patrie_ for whose salvation she
was commissioned by the Lord of Hosts; the man himself was nothing; in
her simple peasant's heart, she hardly thought of him as a man, rather
as a sort of divinity that could do no wrong, that must be worshipped,
that must first of all be saved and set up safely in its tabernacle of
Rouen. Unworthier idol never was created than this insensible thing
called the dauphin, with as little care for the victims crushed beneath
him as if he had been in very truth a mere wooden Juggernaut or Mumbo
Jumbo; but all of us worship unworthy idols and are quite unconscious of
their unworthiness. And, as in the case of Jeanne, if worship and
worshipper be pure, what matter if the idol be a little unsteady on the
pedestal to which our blind devotion has raised it?
The worship of Jeanne for the dauphin had begun in very childhood, when
this dream-guided little maid of Lorraine hardly knew what "king" or
"kingdom" meant. Writers have remarked, as De Quincey and Michelet, upon
the fact that Jeanne was born in a border land, on the marches of
Lorraine and Champagne, in the debatable land between the great parties
of Orleans and Burgundy; but the mere situation of this little village
of Domremy upon the great Franco-German highway is a geographical fact
that could be conned over and over, and then forgotten, without our
being one whit the better or the worse. The dead fact is nevertheless a
fruitful seed of thought, if we but allow it to come to germination. We
may recall that in the present day the most enthusiastic of those
patriots of France who are ever clamoring misguidedly for war are the
people of this one-time border of France. However misguided may be the
demonstrations of the crowds who annually drape in mourning the statue
of Strasbourg on the Place de la Concorde, an enthusiastic patriotism is
their inspiration. "The outposts of France, as one may call the great
frontier provinces," De Quincey says, "were of all localities the most
devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the
generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin (Lorraine)
that in gentler weather was forever tilting at the breast of France,
could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; whilst to
occupy a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy
of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial
pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always
smouldering.... The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet
from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of
wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to centres so
remote, into a manual of patriotic duty."
Nursed in an atmosphere of patriotism, therefore, the little Jeanne had
the horrors of war brought vividly before her when a band of brigands,
nominally English or Burgundian partisans, rushed down upon Domremy,
sacked the town, burned the church, and drove many of the inhabitants,
including Jeanne's family, into temporary exile. The family came back
again, and the immediate ravages of the soldiers were repaired, but
Jeanne never forgot, and told in after years how she would shiver with
horror and then weep from sheer pity at seeing her village friends come
back wounded and bleeding from some affray with the English.
Jeanne, the daughter of one who is described as a _simple laboureur_
(which may mean that he was an independent farmer in a small way, not a
mere laborer), was born in 1412, and was therefore old enough to see and
to appreciate the worst of the miseries of France and to understand the
tales of war and of English outrages brought to her father's door by
many a traveller on the great highway that passed through Domremy; and
her heart was filled with pity for the poor dauphin, repudiated by his
own mother, exiled from his kingdom by the English, wandering aimlessly
from province to province where the arms of his enemies made it safe for
him to pass. The child's mind could but be stirred and filled with those
vague, generous dreams of sacrifice, of heroism, of impossible
achievements, which, like other visions, fade "into the light of common
day" with most of us. Not so with Jeanne, in whom from the start there
was something mystical, something that set her apart from other
children.
With her work-a-day life we are not concerned, nor with those members of
her family who stand for none of the things of the spirit for which she
was to serve. Her father, of whom even tradition has been able to make
neither a monster nor a hero, was merely a commonplace peasant,
apparently amiable and kindly, but manifestly incapable of sympathy with
things ethereal and supernatural; we need not go so far as De Quincey
and deny him patriotism: "He would greatly have preferred... the saving
of a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France." And so
with her brothers, Jean and Pierre; though ennobled by the king, and
though doubtless very good fellows, they were certainly very far from
being noble in spirit, or in any way comparable to their sister. For
Jeanne's nobility was based upon no accident of birth or favor of a
prince: it was the gift of God.
The life of Jeanne d'Arc was probably not essentially different from
that of other girls of her class, at least up to her fourteenth or
fifteenth year. From the testimony of those who recalled the childhood
of the heroine long after she had become a heroine we must turn with
some distrust; for motives the most diverse may have induced, and
doubtless did induce, them to conceal or even to misrepresent many
things in this simple story. But there seems to be no doubt that Jeanne
tended sheep, like her sister and other children of the neighborhood,
that she learned all the simple little domestic arts, and "was a good
girl, diligent at her work"; she herself refers with pride to her skill
as a needlewoman: "My mother taught me so well that I could sew as well
as any woman in Rouen," and Rouen was one of the centres of fine work;
but of reading and writing, even the rudiments of education, she knew
nothing. Of one other thing, too, there is no doubt, though the
legend-mongers have doubtless colored the picture a little here also;
this is that the child was pious, manifesting greater devoutness than
was common among her class. And in this devoutness, too, a thing more
significant still, she manifested a diffidence, a desire to withdraw
herself and her prayers from the profanation of vulgar and inquisitive
eyes.
Much has been made of the mysterious associations of forests
fairy-haunted, of trees where the children danced and hung garlands in
honor of some fairy queen, whom the good _cure_ of the village devoutly
exorcised every spring. What community in a land neighbored by mountains
but has its "little people," whether fairies, hobgoblins, or gnomes? The
learned doctors at Jeanne's trial were trying to fasten upon her some
preposterous charge of witchcraft and association with the powers of
evil; it was their business to drag in the fairies and to show that
Jeanne knew more of such things than was good for the glory of God; and
ever since, the biographers have seized upon what scanty ravellings of
childish legend Jeanne could recall upon her trial, and have woven of
them fine cobwebs of filmy pattern, to show how the whole soil of
Domremy, more than any other particular spot in France, produced
mushroom crops of fairies, and that a very miasma of enchantment was in
the air. The mass of fanciful and sometimes exquisite rhetoric on this
theme in the lives of Jeanne would surely have convicted her of
witchcraft in the fifteenth century. In good truth, Jeanne probably had
as firm belief in fairies as you and I once had in Hop-o'-my-Thumb and
Red Ridinghood; but those were childish things, in no way connected with
her mission.
That which is of importance to note is that she was always a gentle and
tender-hearted girl, ready to nurse the sick or to play with the
children. "Well do I know it," says an aged peasant who testified for
her memory years after she was dead, "I was then but a child, and she
nursed me." But most important of all is the knowledge that her enemies
could not find in Domremy one witness to testify against her; there was
in her native village no envious wretch, no Ascalaphus, who could
concoct a probable tale of any sort to the injury of one who had as a
child led a life so pure, so good, but likewise so uneventful.
At what time Jeanne began to see visions we cannot tell exactly; it is
probable that the dreams of childhood, long indulged, merged at first
unconsciously into visions that seemed to her as real as things seen
with the bodily eye. By her own account, it was some six or seven years
after she first felt called by the heavenly voices before she found
courage to attempt the apparently impossible things they commanded. One
vision she remembered all her life long, because it was kept constantly
before her mind by the great passion of her life. She herself tells of
this one, and neither persuasions nor ridicule nor the terrors of the
prison could shake her absolute faith in its reality. "Long had she
heard celestial voices, sometimes counselling her to be a good girl,
sometimes specially recommending to her the practice of piety and the
careful guarding of her virginity, sometimes echoing in unison with her
own thoughts as they told her of the woes of France and the groans of
the people. One day as she sat working and musing in the garden next to
the church wall, there came a bright and blinding light, a heavenly
effulgence stronger than the midday sun; then out of this glory came the
voice, soft, yet commanding, of a man, whose glorious winged figure she
could see dimly, saying: 'Jeanne, arise! go to the succor of the
Dauphin, and thou shalt restore his kingdom to him.' The poor girl, all
abashed, fell upon her knees: 'Messire, how can I do this, since I am
but a poor girl, and know not how to ride or to lead men-at-arms?' But
the voice insisted: 'Thou shalt go to the Sire de Baudricourt,
commanding for the King at Vaucouleurs, and he will conduct thee to the
Dauphin. Fear not; Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine will aid thee.'"
Jeanne was in tears, for the fear of the thing, not daring as yet to
confide in anyone. But the voices continued to importune her, and again
she saw the angel, him whom in her simple fashion she described as
_moult prudhomme_ (a very noble man), and whom she now recognized to be
the very Saint Michael whose image she had seen in her church,
triumphing over the dragon. And with him came fair women, all in white,
with lights and troops of angels all about them, the holy and brave
virgins Margaret and Catherine. They had come, as Saint Michael the
Archangel had promised, to be her spiritual guides and comforters; and
their blessed forms were never far from her, and their voices whispered
to her to be of good cheer, for that through her and her alone France
would be saved.
Tortured by doubts and fears, she revealed these visions to her mother,
from whom she had learned her _Ave, Pater, Credo_, the sweet and simple
faith that meant so much to her. Her mother was half inclined to believe
in Jeanne, and was at least sympathetic; but her father could see in
these visions but childish nonsense that would lead his daughter astray.
For him there was no faith in such things; can one blame him if he
thought them but the silly moonings of a child, and dealt with that
child sternly in the hope of saving her? He declared that he would drown
Jeanne with his own hands rather than see her ride off with men-at-arms
into that France of which he and she knew nothing but that it was from
end to end given over to war and pillage. Thinking that marriage might
dispel her illusions about saving France,--as indeed it would,--they
persecuted her to marry a young villager who had fallen desperately in
love with her and claimed that she had promised to marry him. With a
courage that must have surprised even herself, she went before the
ecclesiastical court of Toul and told her story so frankly that the
judge dismissed the desperate lover. Not for her were the joys and
sorrows of a wife and mother.
With all her determination and masculine contempt for those things that
are terrors to most women, Jeanne loved her home. In after years she was
ever sighing for the quiet life of her father's cottage, where she might
sit and spin with her mother, or wander forth over the fields with her
sister to tend the sheep. What a piteous struggle must there have been
in her breast! On the one hand, an angry father, whom she loved, a
mother whom she loved better, a safe home, and in it all that her simple
heart desired; on the other, the great and terrible world, the armies of
rough men, the dissolute courtiers, the long journeys over an unknown
country, for one who had hardly stirred out of sight of Domremy church
tower. Love of home, so strong in the hearts of all women, so precious
to the peasant woman of France above all others, must be renounced for
love of country. There have been no better or more determined patriots
than women, as Caesar found when the women of Gaul cheered their husbands
on to the contest with his legions; but these women were fighting at
home, as it were upon the threshold; they did not go forth to lead
armies in offensive warfare; theirs was the steady courage of
desperation, not the active courage which must sustain itself, keep its
own fires alive, instead of relying upon the stimulus of impulse and a
desperate crisis. All the fears and heartbreakings of the struggle in
Jeanne's mind have been hidden from us, for she speaks not of them;
having fought out this battle with herself and decided that France needs
her more than does her mother, she does not allow herself to turn back,
and we get but a plaintive reminiscence here and there, since she has
locked up this grief in her heart.
The opportunity to attempt the execution of the commands imposed by her
voices was long in coming; she had become a subject of common talk in
her village; everywhere she met discouraging incredulity, if not
ridicule. It was not that there was lack of belief in marvels, for the
land was filled with stories of portents and wonders in which the people
did not hesitate to believe. There was the holy peasant whom the great
captain, Xaintrailles, brought before the court to display upon his
hands and feet the very marks of the cross, the stigmata, and who was
said to sweat blood upon the day of the Passion. There was Catherine de
la Rochelle, who saw visions of angels and who proclaimed herself
commissioned to discover treasures for the dauphin. In these and the
like the people of Domremy may have believed; but not in their own
little peasant girl; for had they not known her when she was but like
the rest, a simple shepherdess?
In one member of her family Jeanne found faith, and to him she turned
for help. This was her uncle, whose wife she was sent to nurse and whose
spark of faith she kindled during this stay till, what with her urging
and that of his wife, the good man' went to Vaucouleurs and carried
Jeanne's message to Baudricourt. Is it any wonder that the seigneur
smiled derisively at this foolish peasant who came to him with a message
from a girl declaring that he must give her soldiers to accomplish that
which the best captains of France could not accomplish? He was not
unduly harsh, merely contemptuous in his rebuff: "Whip the girl well,
and send her home to her father." There are so many with "missions" in
this world, missions that are but vain imaginings, profiting naught; the
more experience one has had in the world the more one learns to distrust
these missions; and beyond a doubt the chastisement suggested by the
Sire de Baudricourt would, in nine cases out of ten, have ended the
mission and cured the hysterical enthusiast.
We say nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, or any
further multiples you please, with careless assurance that there is no
tenth case, and that fate will not take our wager and prove us fools, no
matter what the odds we offer. But there is that tenth case, and the
world is caught, the wise world, as here in the case of the peasant lass
of Lorraine, at whom all in Domremy smiled indulgently, whom all in
France were soon to worship.
It was the month of February, 1429, when the eyes of all France were
fixed upon one city, Orleans. To the shattered French party it was the
last hope of their dauphin; to the English it was the barrier which shut
them off from the south of France. Since October the siege had been in
progress, and England had given the command of her besieging forces to
the best captains, while Dunois held out for France and for his
half-brother, that Charles d'Orleans who had been a prisoner in England
ever since Agincourt. But neither the skill of Dunois nor the gay
courage of the citizens could cope with famine; it looked as if Orleans
must fall, and all France mourned in advance the fate of the gallant
city. Charles, the dauphin, wept at Chinon, and was without hope or
counsel. In the heart of the daughter of Domremy one fervent prayer
replaced all others: that Orleans might be saved! Her voices grew more
and more importunate, crying to her ceaselessly that it was for her to
save Orleans. With this more definite and immediate aim in mind she
found courage to make another appeal to Baudricourt. She persuaded her
uncle to accompany her, and the two trudged on foot to Vaucouleurs,
where Jeanne was lodged with a wheelwright, her mother's cousin.
Impatient at the persistence of this mad girl, Baudricourt nevertheless
consented to see her, probably thinking that he would thus more easily
rid himself of her. In her simple peasant's dress of red cloth the young
mystic stood before him. She was not tall, but was well proportioned and
sturdy; in her features there was nothing remarkable, merely a
regularity that failed of absolute beauty by being commonplace; still,
it was a comely face, and even the sceptic Baudricourt could not fail to
note the honesty and gentleness of the expression, or the deep and
dreamy eyes, the sole feature that revealed some gleams of the great
spirit within. Without hesitation or embarrassment and yet without
effrontery she answered his questions, and uttered her message to the
dauphin: "My lord, I come to you in the name of God, bidding you enjoin
the dauphin to hold firm and to set no day of battle with the enemy at
this time, for God will send him aid about Mid-Lent. The kingdom is not
his alone, but God's. Nevertheless, the Lord meaneth that he shall be
King, despite his enemies; and it is I who shall lead him to be crowned
at Rheims."
Baudricourt could not surrender at once to the faint belief aroused in
him by Jeanne's earnestness, but the faint belief was already there, and
he dismissed her kindly to reflect upon what she had said. The _cure_ of
the parish was called into consultation, and the knight and the priest
agreed that it was quite possible that Satan might have a hand in all
this, and the two visited Jeanne, the priest exorcising the evil spirit,
whereat Jeanne did not fly away or disappear with a flash and a bad
smell of powder and brimstone. Her simple piety satisfied and touched
the priest.
Meanwhile, rumors of her wonderful visions and of her sanctity began to
be current among the people and to find credence. Had it not been
prophesied by the mighty Merlin that France should be lost through a
wicked woman and saved by a pure virgin? Who could the wicked woman be
other than Isabeau de Baviere, who had sold France and disinherited and
denied her own son? And here was Jeanne, a pure child, come to redeem
France. It was criminal in Baudricourt to doubt, to reject the
assistance thus sent by God himself. Crowds of people, gentles and mere
laborers, visited Jeanne, and all were sure of one thing at least, that
she was a good girl, while many went away firm believers in her mission.
A gentleman, Jean de Metz, thinking to jest with her, said: "Well,
sweetheart, then we must all turn English, since the King will be driven
out of France." But there was no thought of jest in her, as she
complained of Baudricourt's refusal to send her to the dauphin: "And yet
they must get me to the Dauphin before Mid-Lent, were I to wear out my
legs to the knees walking there. For no one in this world, kings, nor
dukes, nor daughter of the king of Scotland, can win back the kingdom of
France; and there is for him no other help save in me, albeit I should
far rather stay beside my poor mother and spin.... For this is not my
work, fighting battles; but I needs must go to do that which is
commanded, for my Lord so wills it."
Baudricourt hesitated to assume the responsibility of any action in the
matter. He took Jeanne to see the old Duke de Lorraine, his feudal
superior. Duke Charles, at that time under the domination of a mistress,
Alison du May, of great wit and beauty, was ill, and thought the
miraculous maiden of Domremy might restore him to health and the arms of
Alison. Jeanne, very wisely and frankly, told him to put away his
paramour and take back his wife and lead a decent life. She was no
worker of vulgar miracles to profit a worn-out old roue.
Coming back to Vaucouleurs, she found the authorities more ready to give
her a hearing, for the situation in Orleans had become desperate, and
the gallant citizens, who had entered into the siege with as much
eagerness as if it had been but play, found enthusiasm very exhausting
and food supplies very scant. Jeanne had predicted the date and the
disastrous result of the battle of Rouvray, "the battle of the Herrings"
(February 12, 1429), and the people of Vaucouleurs believed in her.
Grudgingly and half-heartedly, the Sire de Baudricourt was compelled to
yield to her request and to despatch her to the dauphin. Some citizens
of the town subscribed a sum to equip her with horse and armor, and the
Sire de Baudricourt himself gave her a sword. For the long journey
through a rough country the poor girl, with no woman companion, could
not retain her simple gown, but must be dressed as a man-at-arms. On the
very eve of her departure, she was subjected to another severe trial to
her feelings: her parents, hearing of her determination, sent to
implore, to command, her not to go; and Jeanne, unable to write, had to
dictate a letter asking their forgiveness for her disobedience.
Her little troop, consisting of two gentlemen and a few men of their
following, had to traverse part of the country where the Burgundian
interest was strong, for the dauphin was then holding his court at
Chinon, near Tours. And the dangers of the road infested by hostile
troops were not the only dangers, for among her own companions there
were many misgivings: they knew not whether to reverence her as a saint
or to destroy her as a witch. The latter course, indeed, they were very
near pursuing; but the innocence and the harmless, hopeful, confident
demeanor of the girl moved their hearts to pity.
She arrived at Chinon on February 24th, and sent word to Charles that
she had much to tell him that would comfort his heart, and that she had
come one hundred and fifty leagues to see him; but Charles had no will
of his own, and his councillors wrangled about what should be done.
There was a strong party opposed to Jeanne, but her friends, headed by
Queen Yolande, carried the day, and she was admitted to see the king,
or, as she continued to call him until after the consecration at Rheims,
the dauphin. The story of how this country maiden was introduced into
the throng of dazzling courtiers and left to divine which was the chosen
of the Lord has been too often told, and too generally credited, to need
either retelling or defence; the whole story of Jeanne d'Arc is so
little short of what we would call miraculous that it seems a petty
thing to balk at this one detail. Whether by divine inspiration, or by
mere luck, or by the friendly and secret guidance of her followers,
Jeanne did discover Charles, and spoke without fear as she knelt at the
feet of this unworthy prince whom she had come so far to save: "Gentle
Dauphin, I am called Jeanne la Pucelle; the King of Heaven sends you
word by me that you shall be consecrated and crowned in the city of
Rheims, and that you shall be his lieutenant in France. Give me,
therefore, soldiers, that I may raise the siege of Orleans and take you
to Rheims to be consecrated. It is God's will that your enemies, the
English, shall go back to their own land; and woe be unto them if they
do not go; for the kingdom shall be and remain your own."
The dauphin could but be struck by these words, uttered with such
directness and earnestness; but he still doubted of the divine mission
of the peasant girl. Might she not be an impostor, hired by his enemies?
Might she not be, if nothing worse, merely a poor demented creature? His
mind had been much tormented by doubts of his own legitimacy. The
English openly proclaimed him no son of Charles VI.; his mother's
intimacy with Orleans was too notorious and too recent a scandal to be
concealed, and he had been born at the very moment when that intimacy
was at its height, while she who was his mother had acted as if there
were good reason why he should not inherit the crown; is it any wonder
that the wretched young prince himself half believed the allegations of
his foes? He desired reassurance on this point, and it was doubtless to
ask some question of the kind that he now led Jeanne d'Arc aside and
seemed to converse with her in low tones. All that passed between them
has never been told, since Jeanne refused to reveal it; but the
courtiers saw his countenance light up, and it was known that she had
told him good news, and this much she confessed to having said: "I am
sent from God to assure you that you are the true heir of France, the
son of the King."
The dauphin may have been momentarily converted to faith in Jeanne la
Pucelle; but he was vacillating, and some of his wisest councillors,
including the chancellor, would not believe in her. She must first be
proved no witch and a pure virgin. To both these tests Jeanne submitted
willingly and courageously, and from both she came out vindicated. As
they prepared to take her to Poitiers, where some half dozen learned
doctors of the church were to focus their wisdom upon this poor child,
she said: "Well do I see that many a hard trial awaits me in Poitiers;
but God will aid me. Let us go, then, with stout hearts." During the
interrogation to which she was subjected by the theologians, the one
dominant characteristic of the girl--not of the saint--was strongly
brought out: her common sense. Her answers, though naive and utterly
unsophisticated, by their frankness and good sense frequently
discomfited the most adroit catechists. One of the doctors objected: "If
God wishes to deliver the people of France he has no need of
men-at-arms." With readiness and rational, half-humorous shrewdness,
Jeanne replied: "Ah! my God! the men-at-arms will fight, and God will
give the victory." Then Brother Seguin, "a very sour man," with a strong
twang of his native Limoges, would fain know "what tongue these Heavenly
visitors spoke?" "A better than thine," replied Jeanne. "I did not come
to show signs or work miracles in Poitiers; the sign I shall give you
will be to raise the siege of Orleans. Give me soldiers, few or many,
and I will go."
Confident of coming out scathless from the examination of the doctors,
Jeanne grew weary of the long delay and dictated a letter to the English
regent, Bedford, announcing to him that "the Maid has come from God to
drive you out of France." Finally, the representatives of the Church
gave it as their opinion that it would be lawful to employ this maid, if
in very truth she were a maid, "for the hand of God works in mysterious
ways!" Her purity of life and of body were more easily established than
her orthodoxy, and now there remained nothing but to grant her prayer
and let her march on to Orleans. For Orleans, too, had heard of its
advocate, and the gallant Dunois sent entreaty after entreaty that they
would send the maid to him.
A little retinue was provided as her personal escort, under command of a
staunch and staid old knight, Jean Daulon, with a page, two heralds, a
steward, two valets, and Jeanne's brother, Pierre d'Arc. Clothed in pure
white armor--white as symbolizing the purity of the heroine--and mounted
upon her black horse, glorious must have been the sight of the sweet
maid, a very _sursum corda_ to every loyal heart in France. One can see
through the mists of years the seraphic smile of tender triumph with
which she looked up at her banner, the holy banner that was of white
with _fleurs-de-lis_ upon it, and on one side the Lord of Hosts Himself,
with angels by His side, holding the world in His hands. And then she
waved aloft the sacred sword of Saint Catherine with its five crosses,
which she had discovered hid behind the altar of Saint Catherine de
Fierbois; the word was at last: "On to Orleans!"
No greater contrast could have been than that here set before the eyes
of wondering France: on the one hand, the chaste, kindly, simple-hearted
Jeanne; on the other, leaders and soldiers brutalized by long years of
desultory civil war. Think of a Sire de Giac, who gave poison to his
wife and then, setting her astride a horse, made her gallop till she
died. When he was brought to justice he prayed that his right hand,
vowed to the service of the devil, might be cut off before his
execution, lest the astute ruler of Hades seize the said hand and drag
the whole body along with it. Or think, again, of Gilles de Retz, the
Marquis de Laval, whose murders of children (to the number of one
hundred and sixty, some say) were so atrocious that he was at last
seized, tried, condemned to death at the stake and to eternal, if
mistaken, association with that nursery horror, Bluebeard. Think of him
riding beside Jeanne la Pucelle, nay, standing beside her at the
coronation in Rheims and fetching the sacred ampulla! What an associate
for her was even that brave and loyal friend Etienne Vignoles, nicknamed
Lahire (the Barker), who was wont to say, in extenuation of the
universal practice of plundering and brigandage among the so-called
soldiers, "Were God to turn man-at-arms, He too would pillage!" It was
he who prayed before a battle, with less reverence but surely not with
less fervency than some other pious soldiers: _Sire Dieu, je te prie de
faire pour Lahire ce que Lahire ferait pour toi, si tu etais capitaine
et si Lahire etait Dieu_ (Sir God, I pray thee to do for Lahire what
Lahire would do for thee, if thou were a soldier and Lahire were God).
It is a most excellent and comprehensive prayer, good to prefer when one
has not time to remind the Deity of each little thing He should do.
With an army composed of such men, Jeanne d'Arc set out for Orleans; but
she sadly doubted if her saints would be coadjutors to such unrepentant
sinners. Accordingly, she insisted that the morals of the camp be
reformed. Lahire must swear no more dreadful, soul-blasting oaths; he
obeyed, but the good-hearted girl, seeing him at a loss for unseasoned
speech, relented so far as to permit him to swear "by his baton." But
the reform did not end with puerile matters; the Pucelle would have no
loose women about the camp; all her soldiers must go humbly and confess
their sins before they dared to follow her sacred banner; in the open
air upon the banks of the Loire she raised an altar, and all must take
communion with her. No need of the dauphin's order to Dunois,
Xaintrailles, Lahire, Boussac, and the other captains to respect the
person and obey the commands of Jeanne la Pucelle; the enthusiasm
inspired by her innocent face, the patriotism of her unselfish heart,
that mysterious power which, sometimes and only sometimes, the good and
pure and utterly defenseless exert upon evil natures these were far
stronger motives than the commands of a prince so weak that he could not
maintain his own in half of France. It was a crusade upon which this
fair young saint was leading them; and something of the old ardor of the
crusaders inspired her followers.