THE TRIUMPH AND MARTYRDOM OF JEANNE D'ARC
WHILE the army of Jeanne d'Arc, starting with but four or five thousand
men and gathering numbers from every side as it goes, is marching toward
Orleans, let us look at the military situation of that town and of the
English cause in France. To begin with, the force of the besiegers had
never been large; during the long siege it had been reduced by disease,
by loss in battle, by defections, till the English army itself was
almost in as great straits as the garrison. Moreover, in order to secure
themselves, the English had constructed a dozen or more small forts, or
_bastilles_, on both sides of the Loire, and the garrisons of these
places had no sure means of intercommunication. It is true that plans
were on foot for reinforcing the besiegers, but the political conditions
in France and England were such as very seriously to handicap Bedford.
There was never hearty cooperation between him and the all-powerful
Cardinal Winchester; the Duke of Gloucester was wrangling with
Winchester, and had not long ago seriously offended Bedford's most
important ally, Philippe de Bourgogne, by marrying Jacqueline of
Flanders and espousing her cause against the Burgundians. Though
Gloucester had since married another lady--bigamy was but a small
matter--and had patched up matters with Philippe de Bourgogne, the
latter was showing distinct signs of estrangement from the English. Much
depended therefore on the successful termination of the siege of
Orleans, and the English power, apparently at its climax, needed but a
slight check to start it on the decline.
All this must lead us to ponder upon the achievements of that force now
collected under the white banner of Jeanne, and to ask ourselves, were
those achievements indeed so marvellous, from a military point of view?
When the chemist has evaporated his solution of a salt almost to the
point of crystallization, and yet it will not crystallize, a mere
splinter cast into the dish will suddenly gather to itself the
hesitating particles, and the crystals form as if by magic. The figure
will help us to understand the condition of the dauphin's cause and the
kind of influence exerted by Jeanne d'Arc. She was the nucleus, lacking
which the French forces might have continued mere floating and helpless
bands, without a leader, without a common cause; above all, without hope
or enthusiasm. There was no lack of valiant soldiers on the side of the
dauphin, the Constable de Richemont, Dunois, Xaintrailles, Lahire,
Gilles de Retz, Armagnac; all these were either in Jeanne's army or in
Orleans. It was her presence, her influence, that enabled them to
combine successfully. She was essential to them, no doubt; but had she
herself not said wisely and well: "The men-at-arms will fight, and God
will give the victory "?
The captains of the dauphin's army thoroughly appreciated the value, the
inestimable value, of the enthusiasm aroused by the Maid, and they made
shrewd use of it; but they had no intention of trusting the whole
campaign to spiritual direction, whether of saints or devils; and some
of them were not a little inclined to view Jeanne as hardly better than
a witch. It might have been better for France had they trusted to the
guidance of the heroine. She would have marched up to Orleans on the
side of the river held most strongly by the English and have defied
them, be the risk what it might. By a deception she was led to cross the
Loire, and was indignant when, on reaching Orleans, she discovered that
the river lay between her and the town.
Dunois, commander-in-chief in Orleans, seeing her from the ramparts,
crossed the river at once and came to give her reverent and joyful
greeting. After reproaching him and the other captains for placing more
reliance upon human prudence than upon Divine behests, she said: "I
bring you the best succor that ever knight or city had; it is the succor
of the King of Heaven, and comes not from me, but from God." It was the
29th of April, and that same evening, at eight o'clock, Jeanne entered
Orleans with provisions and an escort, the main body of the army
retiring to Blois to cross the Loire.
Orleans went mad with joy at the advent of its heaven-sent deliverer. As
she rode through the streets the crowds blocked her way, and eager
admirers rudely jostled each other in the struggle but to touch the
horse that bore her. With sweet kindliness, she thanked them, losing
none of her humility, and exhorting them to thank not her, but God and
the dauphin. For that night and the rest of her stay in Orleans she was
lodged with the wife of the treasurer of Charles d'Orleans, and slept
with one of the daughters of the house. Sturdy and healthy as she was,
the unaccustomed rough life of the camp, sleeping with her armor on and
none but men about her, had occasioned her great fatigue.
The operations of the siege had been suspended by the English, who
sullenly kept to their _bastilles_. Jeanne insisted upon an immediate
attack, and during the week that followed she was with difficulty
restrained from rash enterprises. Indeed, she could not always be
restrained, and her rashness was not infrequently rewarded with
unexpected success. Warned of the approach of English reinforcements
under Sir John Fastolf, she conjured Dunois to let her know without
delay of his coming. She suspected Dunois of intending to engage Fastolf
without her, and in her nervous eagerness to be up and doing for France
she precipitated a successful attack upon the bastilles. She had retired
to rest for a few hours in the middle of the day when the noise of a
tumult in the streets aroused her; the cry was that the French were
being slaughtered at one of the gates. Leaping from her couch, and
hardly taking time to have half of her armor buckled on, she mounted her
horse and, seizing her banner as it was reached to her from a window,
galloped toward the gates. On the way, she met the wounded and her heart
was moved at the sight of blood. Without the authority of Dunois the
garrison had undertaken an assault upon the _bastille_ of Saint-Loup,
which stood most directly across the path of those who would bring
supplies into Orleans. The French had been beaten back, but with the
arrival of Jeanne hope and courage returned. Jeanne in person led a
fresh assault, while Talbot, the English commander, vainly strove to
rally his men and dissipate their fears of "the witch." The English were
forced to retire, and the fort fell into the hands of Jeanne, who,
lapsing at once from warrior into woman after this first experience of
an actual battle, wept over the slain, cared for the wounded, and did
her best to protect the English prisoners from her own savage followers.
The military success was not great, but the mere fact of success in this
first active enterprise enhanced Jeanne's credit in the eyes of her own
party. Nevertheless, the military chiefs hesitated to trust her, perhaps
because they were jealous of her; and while she was spending Ascension
day in fasting and prayer they held a council at which it was determined
to attack the principal English fort under cover of a feint upon one on
the other side of Orleans. She was told only of the feigned attack, but
Dunois later confessed the truth, refusing, however, to allow her to
proceed to the assault in person. As she watched the battle from afar,
saw the French carry and burn one fort, and then saw them repulsed from
before another, her impatience could no longer be restrained. Crossing
the river with a few followers, she rallied her people, who followed her
charmed standard and captured the fort, which Jeanne fired with her own
hand.
Once more the wisdom or the expediency of her seemingly rash counsels
had been vindicated; but still the leaders hesitated, and determined to
await reinforcements before attacking the fort of Les Tournelles, in
which the English had now concentrated a considerable part of their
forces. "Nay," said Jeanne, "you have been at your councils, but I have
been at mine. Know that the counsel of my King and Lord shall prevail
over yours." She ordered her chaplain to be ready to attend her at break
of day: "For I shall have much to do, more than I have done any day yet.
Blood shall issue from my body, for I shall be wounded." With the
English daily awaiting reinforcements, it is difficult to comprehend
what could have induced experienced military leaders to meditate delay
instead of pursuing the advantage already gained; yet they shut the
gates next morning to keep Jeanne in, and her host, Milet, begged her to
remain quietly to sup with him. "Keep your supper," she said; "I shall
bring back some _Goddems_ to eat it with us." The national oath, which
Figaro was to consider sufficient for all conversation in English, was
manifestly familiar and characteristic three centuries before his time.
In spite of the orders of their chiefs the men-at-arms followed their
idol, forced the gates, and charged upon the English fort. As the sun
rose over the Loire the desperate struggle began, the English defending
themselves with determination and driving back column after column till
the dead and wounded lay in heaps beneath the walls of Les Tournelles.
Sword in hand, La Pucelle placed a ladder against the wall, and as she
mounted an arrow pierced her shoulder. As she fell fainting to the earth
the English sallied forth to capture her, but she was rescued by the
Sire de Gamaches, who had been one of those who refused to serve as a
captain in an army dominated by "a mere girl, who may have been God
knows what." Though sceptical of her mission, he was a gallant soldier,
and succeeded in removing the wounded heroine to a place of safety.
If the pain of the wound and the sight of her own blood had unnerved
Jeanne, the spectacle of their wounded deliverer completely demoralized
her soldiers. They pressed about her offering to dress the wound, to
remove the arrow, to charm away the pain by magic incantations. She
would have none of the works of Satan for her healing. Praying to her
saints for strength, she rallied her courage, pulled the arrow out with
her own hands, and had the wound dressed with oil. It was nearly dark,
and the captains were for retiring, but Jeanne's spirits inspired her to
continue the fight. The Sire de Daulon, her knight, rushed back to the
fosse of the fort to recover the sacred banner, dropped there in the
confusion of the fray. As he raised it to the breeze its folds were
opened, and the disheartened French soldiers charged again. "If my
banner but touch the walls," said Jeanne, "the fort will fall." Wounded
as she was, she mounted her horse and rode toward the fort. Panic seized
the English at what seemed to them a miraculous restoration to life of
one whom they thought dead, and their excited imaginations saw the
heavenly hosts, led by Michael, fighting on the French side. Attempting
a hurried evacuation, the English captain, Glasdale, was precipitated
into the Loire from a frail bridge on which he was crossing; the fort
was taken, and the remnant of its defenders put to the sword.
[Illustration 6:
JEANNE D'ARC.
After the painting by Jean J. Scherrer.
Orleans went mad with joy at the advent of its heaven-sent deliverer. As
she rode through the streets the crowds blocked her way, and eager
admirers rudely jostled each other in the struggle but to touch the
horse that bore her. With sweet kindliness, she thanked them, losing
none of her humility, and exhorting them to thank not her, but God and
the dauphin. For that night and the rest of her stay in Orleans she was
lodged with the wife of the treasurer of Charles d'Orleans, and slept
with one of the daughters of the house. Sturdy and healthy as she was,
the unaccustomed rough life of the camp, sleeping with her armor on and
none but men about her, had occasioned her great fatigue.]
The last of the English defences south of the Loire was destroyed, and
the next day, May 8, 1429, Talbot and Suffolk led their army in retreat.
As it was Sunday, Jeanne let them depart unmolested, but ere the last of
the English columns had disappeared an altar was raised in the plain and
the holy maid was joined by her army and by the people of Orleans in a
Mass to celebrate their deliverance.
It had taken nine days only for this courageous and resolute girl to
undo months of work on the part of the English. Her steadfast faith in
herself, her refusal to be turned aside from her duty, had worked the
miracle; and for it all she thanked God, and prayed for support in what
yet remained to do. To France, indeed, she seemed a miracle herself; and
learned doctors of the Church undertook to prove, forsooth, that what
she had done was of God, not of the devil, while Frenchmen who had held
aloof from the despised and discredited heir of France began to ask
themselves whether, after all, he were not the lawful ruler of France,
since God had sent this inspired leader of his armies.
Sweet is the savor of triumph; to all who are touched with ambition the
mere joy of victory, with the homage of men and the flattery that follow
in the train of victory, is so sweet that in vainglory they forget what
yet remains to be done. But in Jeanne there was no ambition; she
rejoiced and gave thanks to God that through her he had saved Orleans;
but the glory was God's, not hers. Orleans, too, was but the first stage
in her career, of whose brief duration she warned her friends, and of
whose tragic end her earnest heart may already have had some
forebodings. "You must use me quickly," she said, "for I shall last but
one year." In that brief year there was much to be accomplished: yet for
long she was compelled to rest, or to fret, while timid or selfish
advisers held back the dauphin from granting her prayer to be allowed to
march at once to Rheims. With practically all the intervening country in
the hands of the English, such a march seemed the extreme of folly. It
would be risking too much for the empty ceremony of consecrating the
dauphin at Rheims. But to Jeanne that consecration was the one thing
needed to complete her share in the rehabilitation of France, the one
thing which her celestial guardians now insisted on her undertaking, and
for which they promised her their support. Moreover, the English were
already demoralized, filled with fear of this "witch," for whom they had
nothing but words of contempt that only veneered their hearty dread of
her. Whether witch or mere woman, they feared the influence of this
Jeanne upon French imagination; and as aliens in the land, they
exaggerated the danger of a sudden wave of national feeling that would
sweep them from France, while they saw disaffection on all sides. All
this the French captains could not, of course, have known; but they
should have appreciated the importance of following up the advantage won
at Orleans and of using the enthusiasm kindled by La Pucelle before
there should be time for it to cool. It was only after much wrangling,
and fresh ecclesiastical debate as to the sources of her inspiration,
that Jeanne's counsel at length prevailed and she was allowed to set out
for Rheims.
Before this decision was reached, however, other victories had come to
crown Jeanne's banner and to make the approach to Rheims less of a
military hazard. Suffolk had retired to Jargeau, on the Loire, and this
place must be reduced before the French could venture northward. Jeanne
led in the assault, and narrowly missed death from a huge stone that
crushed her helmet. Nevertheless, Jargeau fell, and Suffolk himself was
among the prisoners. De Richemont and his Bretons came to join the
forces of the dauphin, and they went in search of the second English
army, under Talbot and Fastolf, encamped no one knew where in that
Beauce which the war had rendered almost a desert. As the French army
moved cautiously forward in the wilderness, the vanguard started a deer,
which ran straight into the English lines. Warned of their presence by
the cries of the English soldiers, the French were enabled to come upon
them suddenly, and the bloody victory of Patay (June 18th) was won: two
thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the field and Talbot was carried
off a prisoner.
No longer could the enthusiasm of her followers be quelled; and though
old captains shook their heads, the dauphin and the court were forced to
yield to the popular clamor for an immediate attempt to reach Rheims.
Marching around Paris by way of Auxerre, only Troyes blocked the way,
and its garrison, panic-struck, evacuated the town after a show of
resistance. On July 9th Charles entered Troyes, where, with
characteristic selfishness, he would have let the English march away
with their prisoners but for the intervention of Jeanne. Less than a
week later he entered Rheims in triumph, with Jeanne beside him. She it
was, we would fain think, whom the people welcomed with transports of
joy, not the dauphin whom she was to make a king. Well might the people
crowd about her, hold up their infants for her to bless, and beg but to
touch the hem of her garment; for kings in plenty shall the earth know,
while there may be but one Jeanne d'Arc. On July 17th Jeanne stood in
the cathedral, with her blessed banner, while the ancient ceremonies of
the consecration were performed, and the dauphin, now anointed from the
sacred ampulla, was King of France in name and in right, let the English
proclaim Henry VI. as they would.
In that gathering of the nobles and chief priests of France what one was
there who considered the ceremony with such unselfish purity of heart as
this peasant girl of Lorraine! To some it was merely an idle spectacle,
a court function like another; to some it was a political event full of
promise, from which they themselves might hope for advantages more or
less selfish; to Jeanne d'Arc it was the sacred fulfilment of that which
God had promised her. Her task was completed now; how gladly would she
have left the scene, without a thought of worldly advancement, content
to have been Jeanne la Pucelle, through whom France was to be saved,
content to be once more merely Jeanne the shepherdess.
When the crown was placed on the dauphin's head Jeanne knelt before him,
and wept as she embraced his knees. "O gentle king," she said, "now is
fulfilled the will of God, who was pleased that I should raise the siege
of Orleans and should bring you to your city of Rheims to be crowned and
anointed, in proof that you are true king and rightful possessor of the
realm of France." She herself felt that her mission was accomplished,
and besought the king to allow her to return to her home, "to my father
and mother, to keep their sheep for them, as was my wont." But Jeanne
was too useful to be allowed to retire, and though she no longer heard
the call of her divine monitors Charles insisted on her remaining to
help him to win back his kingdom; but "all that was to be done she had
now accomplished; what remained was--to suffer."
As she rode through the streets of Rheims she exclaimed: "O why can I
not die here!" "And where, then, will you die?" asked the archbishop. "I
know not; it will be where God pleases. I have done what my Lord
commanded me to do. Now I would that it might please Him to send me back
to keep my sheep with my sister and my mother." Her courage was as high
as ever, the brave heart faltered not, but it was no longer inspired.
"She began to hear those voices, no longer from heaven, but from the
hearth, those voices that vainly call disheartened man, sick of ambition
and glory, to the home of his earliest affections, to the humble
occupations of his childhood, to the obscurity of his early days."
Hearken to those voices, Jeanne, and strive no longer to awaken faint
echoes of thy heavenly voices:
"The oracles are dumb,...
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."
This portion of Jeanne's life has always seemed to me the most pitiful,
the period when "her God had forsaken her," when her heart warned her
that her divine task was done, and when yet that heart yearned to do
more for France. In the hour of supreme trial strength came to her with
the thought that her suffering was the will of God; but now what was the
will of God? In vain she prayed for guidance; there was nothing but the
timidity and the yearning for rest of this girlish heart on the one
hand, and the pleading of the king and the courtiers on the other. It
was not to be expected that Jeanne, always willing to sacrifice herself,
should do anything else than consent still to be, as she had been for
three glorious months, the leader of France, the bodily representative
of national feeling. With or without inspiration, she could serve.
Disaster followed upon disaster in her brief subsequent career; but
always she was the same honest, hopeful, pure girl, striving her utmost
to discipline her army, to restrain the cruelty of her soldiers, to win
for the dauphin a reconciliation with his cousin of Burgundy. Some of
her biographers have noted, or pretended to note, a lamentable change in
her character at this time. It is said that she became less scrupulous
of shedding blood, less careful in enforcing moral and religious
discipline among her followers, above all, less gentle and patient in
temper. But Jeanne had never been able to compel absolute obedience from
soldiers little better than banditti, and when the notion of her
sanctity began to fade away as the men saw her in the daily life of the
camp, and saw her a mere human creature, fallible like themselves, her
strongest hold on them was loosened. She had never been, since her
mission was assumed, a mere dainty, meek, unresisting heroine of
romance, a paragon of grace and beauty for whom knights risked their
lives while she sat by and smiled and dressed the wounds of the victor
after the fight. She had definitely and from the first taken an active
part in the real business of fighting, had on more than one occasion
displayed her prowess in the field. A generation after her death, when
all France had come to regard her as a martyr, a priest testified that
"she would not use her sword, nor would she slay anyone"; but this
testimony is certainly at variance with all that we know of the actual
behavior of Jeanne in battle, and seems sufficiently contradicted by her
own statement that the sword she used at Compiegne was "excellent,
either for cutting or thrusting." She made the statement frankly,
without any suspicion of its apparent inconsistency with her professions
of a divine mission. We have no doubt that Jeanne delivered many a good
stroke in deadly earnest, and we do not respect her the less for it. We
need not even sorrow, but rather rejoice, at that display of honest
indignation against the unruly and immoral in her camp, when she broke
her sword of Saint Catherine over one rascal's head.
Town after town had thrown open its gates at sight of the white banner
and the Maid of Orleans; but Paris still remained in the hands of the
English. Jeanne was averse to making any attack upon Paris; her heart
misgave her, but she yielded to the will of the king. The assault that
followed (September 8, 1429), in which she behaved with desperate but
hopeless courage, fighting on in spite of a severe wound, resulted in a
disastrous repulse, the French losing heavily. Jeanne, who had opposed
making the attack, was nevertheless held responsible for the result.
Faith in her was rudely shaken, and even those courtiers who had fawned
upon her now said that her impiety--they, of course, were qualified to
pronounce upon such a point--had been fitly rebuked in this defeat: had
she not ventured to deliver the assault upon the anniversary of the
Nativity of Our Lady? "The Armagnacs," says the journal of a pious
citizen of Paris, "were so filled with wickedness and unbelief, that, on
the word of a creature in the shape of a woman with them, called La
Pucelle (what it might be God alone knows!), they conspired on the
anniversary of the Nativity of Our Lady... to attack Paris."
Jeanne, utterly disheartened by her defeat, and half believing that she
had merited this rebuke from heaven, humbled herself before God and
before the king, and renounced her arms, laying her sword upon the altar
of Saint-Denis. But though willing to shift the blame for failures upon
her, Charles was not willing to dispense with her services if there was
anything more to be hoped from them. She was induced to take up arms
again; but we will pass over in silence the details of her later valiant
but hopeless service and speak only of her last feat of arms.
The Burgundians, though their duke was already in secret correspondence
with Charles, had laid siege to Compiegne. Jeanne, with a small body of
troops succeeded in forcing her way into the town, and that same day
(May 23, 1430) led a sortie that at first drove back the besiegers. The
Burgundians rallied, however, and Jeanne's troops were beaten back into
the town. As she herself, bringing up the rear in the retreat, turned to
drive back a band of the pursuers that her troops might reach the gates
in safety, she was left alone; and the drawbridge of Compiegne rose,
cutting her off from rescue or from escape. Surrender, Jeanne, there is
no hope for thee; France is weary of thee; for hast thou not done all
that France could hope from thee? Jeanne herself had said that she
feared nothing but treachery. Whatever the immediate motive of those who
raised the drawbridge at Compiegne, whether they were bribed by the
Burgundians or merely exasperated because the heroine had not performed
miracles, the act was clear treachery, and the pitiful little moat of
this town was the impassable barrier that shut Jeanne d'Arc out of that
France she had saved.
An archer of Picardy was her immediate captor, and he delivered her, for
a price, to his commander, Jean de Luxembourg. A great prize was this
witch who had all but ruined the English cause in France, and proud must
have been her captor: his prisoner was a girl of eighteen. But had she
not fallen into good hands? Jean de Luxembourg was not only a member of
one of the most distinguished families of Europe, but he was a knight, a
leader in that grand organization of chivalry whose first object and
proudest boast was protection of the weak, and gentleness and courtesy
toward women. As Michelet remarks: "It was a hard trial for the chivalry
of the day." The age of chivalry was already gone, though the name was
on the lips of all: chivalry, even if it could have withstood the
phenomenal progress in the condition of the lower orders of
society,--have we not said that the peasant brothers of Jeanne were
ennobled by royal letters patent?--and the invention of firearms, which
tended to equalize all men on the field of battle, could not have
withstood the debasing influence of years of guerrilla warfare. The
knight had not only lost his physical superiority on the battlefield,
but he had lost something infinitely more precious--his lofty ideals.
Knightly orders continued to be founded, but they were the amusements of
dilettanti in honor and ancient custom. Furthermore, even had chivalry
not faded from its theoretic brilliancy, it is entirely possible that
Jeanne would have been deemed beyond the pale of its protection. As the
leper was shunned, as the Jewish usurer was persecuted by mediaeval
society, so was the witch outlawed by public sentiment; and it was as a
witch that the English were resolved to treat the deliverer of Orleans.
Confined at first in the camp at Margny, near Compiegne, Jeanne was
subsequently removed to the Chateau de Beaulieu, near Loches, the very
place from which Agnes Sorel took her title of Dame de Beaulieu. The
Maid was removed again to Beaurevoir, and it is pleasant to record the
kindly sympathy displayed by the ladies of Jean de Luxembourg's family,
who ministered to her comfort, provided her with women's clothes, and
did whatever charity suggested to calm her distressed mind. But nothing
could reconcile Jeanne to captivity; she felt that she was in danger of
falling into the hands of the English, and she yearned for an
opportunity to succor Compiegne. In one of her attempted escapes she
threw herself from a high tower, though her conscience warned her
against the sin of self-destruction. Hurt in the fall, she was unable to
make good her escape, and was taken and nursed back to health by the
ladies of Luxembourg.
Meanwhile, the great ones of the earth were haggling over the price
which should be paid for their victim, and Charles VII. made no effort
to save her. Jean de Luxembourg sold her to Philippe de Bourgogne, and
he treated with the English representative. This representative has had
heaped upon his head the contemptuous anathemas of historians, both
French and English; nor is he undeserving of the most severe phrases yet
coined to express reprobation. Pierre Cauchon--it is a wonder so few
have thought of the swinish suggestiveness of the very name--was merely
a time-serving priest whose shameless policy of intrigue had already got
him made Bishop of Beauvais, and would soon, he fondly hoped, give him
the archbishopric of Rouen. In furtherance of his ambitious projects he
had become thoroughly English, and fawned upon the rich Cardinal
Winchester; but though Winchester nominated him to the archbishopric,
neither the Pope nor the cathedral chapter of Rouen would consent to
receive him as archbishop. Cauchon, as Bishop of Beauvais, claimed the
right to try the heretical sorceress who had been captured on the
borders of the diocese. In the same document in which he preferred this
claim he made offers, on behalf of the English, to buy his victim. A
king's ransom, ten thousand livres in gold, was offered for Jeanne, and
as refusal would have involved not only the loss of this sum, but the
loss of English friendship, the Duke of Burgundy sold his captive, who
was delivered up to the ecclesiastical authorities and the English party
in November, 1430.
Under the barbarous customs then in vogue it would not have been
impossible for the English to put her to death under military law; the
inviolability of prisoners of war was by no means an established
principle among the nations. But La Pucelle's death alone would not
suffice; she must first be discredited in the eyes of the world; it must
be shown that the consecration of Charles VII. had been effected with
the aid of one condemned by the laws of God and of the Church, that the
consecration was, in fact, but an impious mockery of religious rites,
because a sorceress had led him to the altar. For this reason it was
determined to deliver Jeanne to the mercies of the ecclesiastical
courts. Cauchon was rector of the University of Paris, and could command
the assent of that body to whatever seemed to him expedient; the
representative of the Inquisition, who seemed decidedly averse to having
anything to do with the proceedings, was likewise overawed by Cauchon
and by the English cardinal. All that remained to do was to constitute
the court and to bring the accused before it for trial.
Rouen was to be the scene of the trial, and here Cauchon began his
proceedings early in January, 1431. The charge against Jeanne was to be
the working of magic; but the acute and punctilious Norman lawyers
picked so many flaws in the paltry charges and in the documents
presented in their support, that Cauchon was compelled to change his
intention, and substituted the charge of heresy. It was under this
preposterous indictment that the pious Jeanne was brought face to face
with her judges on February 21st. For months she had been kept in close
confinement, loaded with fetters, and kept under the guardianship of
men. The sturdy girl had lost much of her vigor, as, indeed, had been
the intention of her captors. But though the body was weakened, the
spirit was yet unbroken; and Jeanne met the accusing judges, whom she
knew to be already resolved upon her destruction, with the same firmness
and untutored practical sagacity that had marked her bearing in the
first encounter with those who sought to entangle her in the subtleties
of metaphysics and theology. Of metaphysics and theology she knew not so
much as the names, but she had a clear head and a thorough understanding
of the fundamental principles of justice and of faith. So long as her
physical strength lasted, the most adroit and insinuating queries of the
prosecution could not trap her into compromising answers. Counsel for
the defendant there was none; her own wit must defend her in the contest
with judges who were at the same time prosecutors.
Being admonished by the insidious Cauchon to answer truly and without
evasion or subterfuge whatever should be asked, she checkmated this move
at once: "I do not know what you mean to question me about; you might
ask me things which I would not tell you." She would speak the truth on
all things, she said, and the whole truth, except on those things
concerning her king or concerning her visions. Not till she had been
brought before them for the third time, worn out by their persistence
and by the increasing horrors of imprisonment, did she modify this so
far as to consent to tell what she knew, but not all that she knew, and
to answer unreservedly on points of faith. Never would she consent to
testify against herself on the points which she saw that they wished to
establish: "It is a common saying, even in the mouths of children, that
people are often hanged for telling the truth." Complaining of the
hardship of being kept in irons, she was told it was because she had
attempted to escape. "It is true, and it is allowable for any prisoner."
Asked to repeat those divinely sincere and simple prayers which
constituted the main part of the faith she had learned as a little
child, she pronounced herself quite willing to repeat the Lord's Prayer
and the Hail Mary, if Bishop Cauchon would first hear her in confession,
an office which he declined.
Throughout the tedious, soul-racking trial, lasting, in various
forms,--now before the whole court, now in her prison, now in private
inquests,--from the end of February till the end of May, the same
steadfastness and caution prevailed in her answers. She told them freely
of her visions, for now her saints had come back to her and inspired
her, as she said, to answer boldly. If she came from God, they asked,
did she think herself in a state of grace, incapable of committing a
mortal sin? "If I am not in a state of grace," she replied, "may God be
pleased to receive me into it; if I am, may God be pleased to keep me in
it." Not one of the theologians present could have devised an answer
more truly orthodox, more truly Christian in spirit, or more
discomfiting to the casuists. On this occasion the judges were struck
dumb, and very prudently adjourned the court for that day. Not
hesitating at any meanness, one of her persecutors asked whether Saint
Michael appeared to her naked? She answered him in the very spirit and
almost in the very words of the Scriptures, as we learn from the record:
"Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested
to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ of suitable robes
which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the
flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants." Again
and again, questions were put to her, in answering which, if she had
been tainted with the least suspicion of imposture, she would have been
tempted to pretend to powers greater than she had: "Do Saint Catherine
and Saint Margaret hate the English?" "They love what our Lord loves,
and hate what He hates."
Proof of her guilt, in the legal sense, there was none, and so much even
the lawyers of Rouen recognized; but out of her own answers the
ministers of the God of Justice were enabled, after months of juggling,
to torture proof sufficient to convict her in their own eyes. When the
wolf in AEsop's fable, seeks a pretext for devouring the lamb, we know
from the beginning that that pretext will be found: "You have muddied
the stream," cries the wolf, as he raises his head from drinking. "Nay,
good sir, I am lower down the stream than you are." "If it was not you,
it was one of your family." There was no hope for this lamb of France.
"Never from the foundations of the earth," says De Quincey, "was there
such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence
and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess,
peasant girl! Trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy
flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's
lightning to its mark,... confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and
making dumb the oracles of falsehood!... 'Would you examine me as a
witness against myself?' was the question by which many times she defied
their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were
irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the
ridiculous charges against her."
In the midst of the proceedings, about Palm Sunday, the poor girl fell
ill, and there was some fear that through death she might escape the
exemplary punishment they were preparing for her against the anticipated
conviction. Her illness may have been chiefly mental and nervous
exhaustion, helped on by what would have been to her one of the most
severe trials, homesickness. This is the impression left upon our minds
by Lamartine and by Michelet as well as by De Quincey: "A country girl,
born on the skirts of a forest, and having ever lived in the open air of
heaven, she was compelled to pass this fine Palm Sunday hi the depths of
a dungeon." In the general rejoicing of Easter, while the bells of Rouen
steeples rang forth the glad tidings of salvation for all, of relief
from pain and sorrow, there lay in the castle dungeon a peasant girl,
sick in body, sick in mind, dreaming of the fresh green fields, and the
forests just now beginning to put forth their tender leaves, hearing the
bells of her own far-away church in Domremy, and the homely talk of old
friends as they plodded by on their way to that church. She woke in the
morning with the sound of the bells in her ears, and on that holy
morning, as oh many another for many weary weeks, there were the double
chains upon her limbs padlocked to a transverse beam at the foot of her
rough bed. And in the room, watching every move and torturing her with
coarse jests or terrifying her with yet more cruel threats, were four or
five soldiers, no woman near to minister to her wants or to shield her
modesty. With such torture, with the added mental torture of almost
daily cross-questioning whose object was to force her into the jaws of
death, is it any wonder that Jeanne was ill, well-nigh reduced to the
frenzy of despair? Yet this forlorn creature, even when confronted with
the threat of actual torture, never made an admission that would
seriously conflict with the simple statement of her faith and of her
mission which she had volunteered at the very beginning. Refusing to
retract anything, she yet signified her willingness to submit to the
authority of the Church. This was all that Cauchon had been able to
accomplish after more than two months' labor. A highly theatrical
ceremony was arranged to dignify what they called her formal abjuration.
Two scaffolds were erected in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen. On one sat
Cardinal Winchester, Cauchon, and the other dignitaries. On the other,
chained hand and foot and fastened at the waist to a post, surrounded by
clerks who might take down any chance words and by the ministers of
torture with their dread instruments, stood the poor child whom they had
dragged from the prison. After a tedious and impious harangue by a
famous preacher, whose false statements she would not listen to in
silence, Jeanne consented to sign an abjuration which did not affect the
validity of her claim. When the notary presented the pen to her
unpractised fingers she smiled and blushed a little at her ignorance and
awkwardness. She drew a circle upon the parchment at the place
indicated, and then, the notary guiding her hand, made a cross within
the circle. Then the Church admitted her to its _grace_, and the
sentence was read to her: imprisonment for the rest of her life, "on the
bread of grief and the water of anguish."
And so, being now received into the mercy of the Church, she was
conducted back to her prison. It is a relief, in the midst of this cruel
scene, to hear some expressing compassion and imploring her to sign the
abjuration to save herself, though some there are who clamor loudly:
"Let her be burnt!" The test of her sincerity in the new penitence was
to be her willingness to wear garments befitting her sex. She had clung
to her man's attire as the best, and indeed the only, safeguard to her
honor, constantly threatened by her keepers and even attempted, we are
told, by one brutal knight. Relying upon the good faith of her
ecclesiastical custodians, now that she had done what they asked, Jeanne
consented to put on the women's clothes they gave her. But Cauchon had
no intention of allowing her to escape the last punishment. His judges
had assured the English, who complained that Jeanne would not be burned
after all: "Do not fear, we shall soon have her again."
On May 24th she had signed her act of submission and had put aside the
costume forbidden by the Church. On the morning of the 27th, when she
wished to rise and dress herself, the guard had taken away her robes and
left but the old forbidden garments. She expostulated, and at first
refused to get up; but being at length constrained to do so, she put on
the man's apparel. The wolf had made good and sufficient pretext for
devouring the lamb; technically, Jeanne might be considered to have
relapsed, and with the old dress to have resumed the old faults
reprobated by Holy Church.
The judges were at once notified of Jeanne's disobedience, and Cauchon
rejoiced that "she was caught." The next day, being Monday after
Trinity, he returned to interrogate the prisoner upon the matter of the
change of dress. Her courage had returned with the realization that they
had not dealt fairly with her and meant to find pretexts for her
destruction. She would neither excuse herself for again assuming her
warrior garments nor consent to return to those prescribed by custom for
her sex. As long as she was guarded by men, she said, it was more seemly
and more safe that she should be dressed as a man; if they would put her
in a safe and proper prison, she would submit to whatever the Church
decreed. But Cauchon knew that her death was deemed requisite by his
English friends, and he was determined to give her no such fair
opportunity. On Tuesday a fresh tribunal was hastily constituted to pass
upon the deplorable relapse into error of one for whom, to shield her
from death, the Church had done all that in it lay. Needless to say,
this tribunal, a mere mockery of a court, decided on the evidence
submitted that Jeanne was guilty of fatal disobedience to the Church and
that she must suffer death as a heretic. It was to be but a step from
passing sentence to the execution of that sentence, for Cauchon's
masters were already impatient at the long delay.
The next morning a priest was sent to Jeanne to notify her of the
sentence. One sudden burst of feeling, half fear, half indignation, for
a moment overwhelmed the courage of the girl. She wept bitterly when
told that she must prepare herself to die by fire that very day: "Alas!
will they treat me so cruelly and horribly! Must my body, pure as from
birth, never corrupted or soiled in sin, be this day consumed and
reduced to ashes! Oh, oh! I had rather be beheaded seven times over than
burnt on this wise.... Oh! I appeal to God, the great Judge of all, for
the wrongs and injuries done me!" And then this heretic, this sorceress,
asked that she be allowed to confess and to receive the Communion, that
holy symbol of the universal brotherhood of the followers of Christ.
Cauchon did not, perhaps dared not, deny her this; but he wished to
divest the ceremony of part of its pomp. When the Eucharist was brought
to him without stole and without lights, the courageous monk Martin
l'Advenu refused to administer it thus, and sent a complaint to the
cathedral; whereupon the chapter, always ready to spite Cauchon, sent an
escort of priests and acolytes, who chanted litanies as they passed
through the streets and conjured the kneeling people to pray for Jeanne.
By nine o'clock the victim had received the Communion, and was dressed
in female attire and placed on a cart, ready to start for the place of
execution. Brother Martin and the merciful Austin friar Isambart
accompanied her on that dreadful journey of the cart through the streets
of Rouen to the old fish market. If there had been any tendency to
sympathetic manifestations on the part of the crowd, the guard of eight
hundred English soldiers would have sufficed to suppress them; and
Jeanne, who had now given up hope of deliverance, of succor from her
king, from her divine guardians, was heard only to ejaculate: "Rouen,
Rouen! must I then die here?" In the market place had been erected two
platforms, one for the cardinal and dignitaries, the other for the
prisoner, the bailli, the judges, and the preacher who was to enhance
the bitterness of death by rehearsing the particulars of her guilt. But
what is that lofty scaffolding of wood and plaster standing apart? It is
the altar upon which the sacrifice is to be offered, built high that all
may see the tortures of an innocent maid as the flames mount rapidly up
its flimsy mass. A sermon began the proceedings, the eloquent Master
Nicholas Mildy outdoing himself upon the text: "When one limb of the
Church is sick, the whole Church is sick." After him came that pitiful
tool, the Bishop of Beauvais, who exhorted Jeanne to repentance and to
forgiveness of her enemies. There was small need of this, for Jeanne
knelt and prayed so humbly, so earnestly, so pitifully, that all were
moved to tears, while she asked the priests to pray for her soul and to
say a Mass for her. Then Cauchon, in spite of his tears, read to her the
act of condemnation, concluding: "Therefore, we pronounce you to be a
rotten limb, and as such to be lopped off from the Church. We deliver
you over to the secular power, _praying it at the same time to mitigate
its sentence, and to spare you death_, and the mutilation of your
members." The unblushing hypocrisy of this recommendation to mercy, with
the pyre already reared in full sight of all, could only be surpassed by
that of the diabolical fiction of ecclesiastical law as administered by
the Inquisition; viz., that Holy Church executed no capital sentence,
merely handed its victim over to the "secular arm."
So now Jeanne, no longer under the merciful protection of the Church,
was delivered over to the civil authorities and conducted to the top of
the pyre. She asked for a cross; a tender-hearted Englishman handed her
two sticks which he had hastily fashioned into a rude cross, and Jeanne
kissed the simple emblem and put it in her bosom. But Isambart fetched a
crucifix for her from the very altar of the neighboring church of
Saint-Sauveur, and this she kissed passionately, desiring him to hold it
aloft where she might see it to the last as the smoke and flame mounted.
Isambart ascended the pile with her, and the executioner fastened her
body to the post in the centre. With her eyes fixed upon the image of
Him who died for the world, mayhap she did not note the lying placard
above her head: "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater." In this hour of
supreme trial no moment of fatal weakness came to deprive her of our
absolute admiration. She spoke no word of deserved reproach against her
rude executioners, against the soldiers who had hustled her across the
market place, against the miserable Charles for whom she suffered all
these tortures and who had abandoned her. "Whether I have done well, or
whether I have done ill, my King is not to blame; it was not he who
counselled me." Even the miserable Cauchon was greeted, as he hovered
about the foot of the pile to catch her last words, with nothing more
bitter than: "Bishop! Bishop! I die through you!... Had you confined me
in the prisons of the Church, this would not have happened."
While the good monk lingers by her side, pouring into that saintly ear
such words of comfort and hope as faith may suggest, the executioner
applies his torch and Jeanne sees the flames rush upward. "Jesus!" she
cries, then exhorts the monk, "Fly, father! and when the flame shall
cover me hold aloft the crucifix, that I may see it as I die, and repeat
for me your holy words until the end." She thought of others, not of
herself, even in this hour: who shall impugn her courage, or say she
knew not how to die as nobly as she had lived? In the first spasm of
pain, as the flames touched her body, she shrieked. After this but a few
broken sentences came to the ears of those at the foot of the pile,
sometimes appeals to the saints who had guided her, sometimes a
despairing cry of anguish not to be suppressed. And then in the midst of
the gathering flames they saw her head fall forward on her breast as she
moaned, "Jesus!"
The voice that had aroused France from her lethargy was hushed forever;
the great spirit of Jeanne d'Arc had gone to God, whence it came. Shall
we stand by the smoking pyre till the last embers turn gray and cold,
till Winchester orders the handful of ashes that remained to be swept
into the Seine? Or shall we turn away, sick with horror, filled already
with vain regret of the deed done, as did many in that dense crowd of
her enemies? "We have burnt a saint!" cries one. "I saw a dove fly from
her mouth and wing its way to heaven!" avers another.
Those who are actors in what the world learns to designate as great
historical crises seldom realize the magnitude of the events of which
they are immediate witnesses. In spite of the superstitious terror of a
few and the pity of many, it is probable that not one in the great crowd
hurrying away from the scene of Jeanne d'Arc's martyrdom realized that
she was a martyr or that the cause for which she had died was near its
hour of triumph. Their fear was but of one whom they deemed a favored
ally of the powers of evil; their pity was but for one whom they deemed
a simple girl, and for whose anguish they grieved as they would have
grieved for that of their own daughters or sisters. The pity of it, that
one so young, so gentle, so innocent of worldly taint should suffer this
cruel death! After all, 'this is the truest compassion, dispensed with
even justice, without regard to person or rank, without thought as to
whether the sufferer be the repentant thief or the Divine Master upon
the Cross, the nameless woman taken in adultery or this girl of Lorraine
who was to be acknowledged as the greatest woman in French history. Yet
for us the knowledge that heartless political schemers had tortured to
the death a woman becomes knowledge of far more moment when we know that
Jeanne d'Arc was the woman, and our indignation against her persecutors
is enhanced in proportion to our estimate of the greatness and the
goodness of the heroine.
In the course of our narrative we have taken occasion, from time to
time, to present estimates of the character of Jeanne d'Arc; perhaps it
may be well, now that her meteoric career has ended in the flames of the
market place of Rouen, to consider once more the character of this
heroine in its main features. The results of her activity in French
history, though not in all cases immediately apparent, were so
marvellous that our judgment may well be unduly influenced. On the one
hand, in our desire to emphasize the extraordinary nature of her deeds,
we may tend to depreciate the actual abilities of Jeanne; on the other,
the glory of the deeds may blind us to the shortcomings of the woman.
In her own day, and especially after her death, her contemporaries in
France had begun to regard her as a saint, and a veritable cult of
Jeanne d'Arc soon grew up, encrusting the simple facts of her story with
endless and fantastic arabesques of legend. Charles VII., who had
abandoned the woman in her hour of need, who had made no earnest effort
to succor the leader to whom he owed his crown, entered with
considerable energy and enthusiasm into the cult of the saint. It was
due to his initiative that, in 1455, Pope Calixtus III. gave order that
Jeanne's trial be revised. It was at best but cold and tardy gratitude
on Charles's part, this rehabilitation of the memory of the girl whom he
had used and then dropped when she was no longer serviceable; but we
must in justice say that he in every way furthered the investigation
into the facts of an episode in his life which he must have now regarded
with poignant regret and shame, more poignant as the glory of the lost
heroine was brought into full light. In this exhaustive inquiry into the
career of Jeanne d'Arc witnesses from far and near were examined and
documents rescued from oblivion, and at the end of the eight months'
proceedings the new court, with a mass of testimony before it which
fills volumes, reversed the partisan decision of the court of Rouen,
acquitted the heroine of the false charges brought against her, and not
only vindicated her honor, but pronounced favorably upon her claims to
sanctity. Jeanne was already canonized in popular imagination, and
though the official sanction of Rome was long in the granting, in the
hearts of all France she had a veneration far more precious than any
ever vouchsafed to a saint.
Jeanne d'Arc did not regard herself as a saint, nor was she free from
human faults of temper and of conduct that accord but ill with sanctity.
Her outbursts of wholesome wrath, some one or two of which we have
noted, mark her as that which she was, no patient martyr, but a strong,
healthy woman, normal in many things, and blessed with much practical
sense, in spite of her visions. It was this very fact in Jeanne's life
that enabled her enemies to seize upon the manifestations of her
likeness to other women of her class and time and to draw Jeanne as but
a common, coarse, immodest woman. In the disgusting Joan of
Shakespeare's _Henry VI._ (if it be his), and in the shameless wanton of
Voltaire's _Pucelle d'Orleans_ there is just this much of truth to life,
that the true Jeanne was a peasant lass and, in all things not directly
connected with her great deeds, spoke and acted as one of her class
would have acted and spoken, with far greater freedom than would be
consistent with modesty in a more cultured society. We do not mean to
say that there is the least justification or excuse for these attempts
to defame Jeanne d'Arc; to condemn her as a common virago because she
sometimes uttered her commands with too little regard for propriety in
speech would be like condemning Washington because he could and did, on
occasion, swear a good round oath. But the proper defence of Jeanne
d'Arc against Shakespeare and Voltaire is neither to vilify them nor to
obscure the human side of her character and exalt her to something
altogether faultless and divine, something altogether "too bright and
good for human nature's daily food."
With or without the poetic praises of biographers, Jeanne d'Arc deserves
her place as, all things considered, one of the most remarkable figures
in the world's history. In spite of human defects, she is "the one pure
figure which rises out of the greed, the lust, the selfishness and
unbelief of the time." How can we draw our sketch to a conclusion better
than in the words of a great Englishman, himself in some things the
arch-prophet of divine enthusiasm? In his comment upon Schiller's
_Jungfrau von Orleans_, Carlyle says: "Feelings so deep and earnest as
hers can never be an object of ridicule: whoever pursues a purpose of
any sort with such fervid devotedness is entitled to awaken emotions, at
least of a serious kind, in the hearts of others. Enthusiasm puts on a
different shape in every different age: always in some degree sublime,
often it is dangerous; its very essence is a tendency to error and
exaggeration; yet it is the fundamental quality of strong souls; the
true nobility of blood, in which all greatness of thought or action has
its rise. Quicquid vult valde vult is ever the first and surest test of
mental capability. This peasant girl, who felt within her such fiery
vehemence of resolution that she could subdue the minds of kings and
captains to her will and lead armies on to battle, conquering, till her
country was cleared of its invaders, must evidently have possessed the
elements of a majestic character.... Jeanne d'Arc must have been a
creature of shadowy yet far-glancing dreams, of unutterable feelings, of
'thoughts that wandered through eternity.' Who can tell the trials and
the triumphs, the splendors and the terrors, of which her simple spirit
was the scene!... Hers were errors, but errors which a generous soul
alone could have committed, and which generous souls would have done
more than pardon. Her darkness and delusions were of the understanding
only; but they make the radiance of her heart more touching and
apparent; as clouds are gilded by the orient light into something more
beautiful than azure itself."
Great and pure and noble was thy faith, Maid of Orleans! And of a truth
it wrought miracles, for thy brave and steadfast heart divined what was
to be done and faltered not by the wayside. And yet, adoring thee as a
saint, let us love thee as a simple girl, "Jehanne la bonne Lorraine"!
"Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys
Harembourges, qui tint le Mayne,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen:
Ou sont-ilz, Vierge Souveraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?"