[Illustration: 0419]
On the 6th of January, 1428, this young girl, the daughter of simple
peasants, humble tillers of the soil, of good life and repute, she
herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied in sewing and
spinning with her mother, or driving afield her father's sheep, and
sometimes even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the
whole flock of the commune, was fulfilling her sixteenth year. ("Jeanne
d'Arc," by M. Wallon, Vol. I, p. 32.) It was Joan of Arc, whom all the
neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her
companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry
bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree; but dancing
she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the
sound of the bells, she often went to confession and communion, and she
blushed when her friends taxed her with being too religious. In 1421,
when Joan was hardly nine, a band of Anglo-Burgundians penetrated into
her country and transferred thither the ravages of war. The village of
Domremy and the little town of Vaucouleurs were French and faithful
to the French kingship; and Joan wept to see the lads of her parish
returning bruised and bleeding from encounters with the enemy. Her
relatives and neighbors were one day obliged to take flight, and at
their return they found their houses burnt or devastated. Joan wondered
whether it could possibly be that God permitted such excesses and
disasters. In 1425, on a summer's day, at noon, she was in her father's
little garden. She heard a voice calling her, at her father's right
side, in the direction of the church, and a great brightness shone upon
her at the same time in the same spot.
At first she was frightened, but she recovered herself on finding that
"it was a worthy voice"; and at the second call she perceived that it
was the voice of angels. "I saw them with my bodily eyes," she said six
years later to her judges at Rouen, "as plainly as I see you; when they
departed from me I wept and would fain have had them take me with them."
The apparitions came again, and exhorted her "to go to France for to
deliver the kingdom." She became dreamy, wrapt in constant meditation.
"I could endure no longer," said she at a later period, "and the time
went heavily with me as with a woman in travail."
She ended with telling everything to her father, who listened to her
words anxiously at first, and afterwards wrathfully. He himself one
night dreamed that his daughter had followed the King's men-at-arms to
France, and from that moment he kept her under strict superintendence.
"If I knew of your sister's going," he said to his sons, "I would bid
you drown her; and, if you did not do it, I would drown her myself."
Joan submitted: there was no leaven of pride in her sublimation, and she
did not suppose that her intercourse with celestial voices relieved her
from the duty of obeying her parents..
Attempts were made to distract her mind. A young man who courted her was
induced to say that he had a promise of marriage from her and claim
the fulfillment of it. Joan went before the ecclesiastical judge, made
affirmation that she had given no promise and without difficulty gained
her cause. Everybody believed her and respected her.
In a village hard by Domremy she had an uncle whose wife was near her
confinement; she got herself invited to go and nurse her aunt, and
thereupon she opened her heart to her uncle, repeating a popular saying
which had spread indeed throughout the country:
"Is it not said that a woman shall ruin France and a young maid restore
it?"
She pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de
Baudricourt, captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the
dauphin and carry assistance to him.
Her uncle gave way, and on the 13th of May, 1428, he did take her to
Vaucouleurs.
"I come on behalf of my Lord," she said to Sire de Baudricourt, "to bid
you send word to the dauphin to keep himself well in hand and not to
give battle to his foes, for my Lord will presently give him succor."
"Who is thy Lord?" asked Baudricourt.
"The King of Heaven," answered Joan.
Baudricourt set her down and urged her uncle to take her back to her
parents "with a good slap o' the face."
In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and
redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards the report
touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more
passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vau-couleurs.
"I must go," said she to Sire de Baudricourt, "for to raise the siege of
Orleans. I will go should I have to wear, off my legs to the knee."
She returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. "Had
I possessed," said she to her judges at Rouen, "a hundred fathers and a
hundred mothers and had I been a king's daughter, I should have gone."
Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose her
remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young
girl to Charles, Duke of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according
to some chronicles, to the King's court.
Joan lodged at Vaucouleurs in the house of a wheelwright, and passed
three weeks there, spinning with her hostess and dividing her time
between work and church. There was much talk in Vaucouleurs of her
"visions" and her purpose.
John of Metz (also called John of Novelomport), a knight serving with de
Baudricourt, desired to see her, and went to the wheelwright's.
"What do you here, my dear?" he said. "Must the King be driven from his
kingdom and we become English?"
"I am come hither," answered Joan, "to speak to Robert de Baudricourt,
that he may be pleased to take me or have me taken to the King; but he
pays no heed to me or my words. However, I must be with the King before
the middle of Lent, for none in the world, nor kings, nor dukes, nor
daughter of Scottish king can recover the Kingdom of France; there is no
help but in me. Assuredly I would far rather be spinning beside my poor
mother, for this other is not my condition; but I must go and do the
work because my Lord wills that I should do it."
"Who is your Lord?"
"The Lord God."
"By my faith," said the Knight, seizing Joan's hands, "I will take you
to the King, God helping. When will you set out?"
"Rather now than to-morrow; rather to-morrow than later." Vaucouleurs was
full of the fame and sayings of Joan.
Another knight, Bertrand de Poulengy, offered, as John of Metz had, to
be her escort. Duke Charles of Lorraine wished to see her, and sent
for her to Nancy. Old and ill as he was, he had deserted his duchess,
a virtuous lady, and was leading anything but a regular life. He asked
Joan's advice about his health.
"I have no power to cure you," she said, "but go back to your wife and
help me in that for which God ordains me."
The Duke ordered her the sum of four golden crowns, and she returned to
Vaucouleurs, thinking of nothing but her departure.
There was no want of confidence and good will on the part of the
inhabitants of Vaucouleurs in forwarding her preparations. John of Metz,
the knight charged to accompany her, asked her if she intended to make
the journey in her poor red rustic petticoats.
"I should like to don man's clothes," answered Joan. Subscriptions were
made to give her a suitable costume. She was supplied with a horse,
a coat of mail, a lance, a sword, the complete equipment indeed of a
man-at-arms; and a king's messenger and an archer formed her train.
Baudricourt made them swear to escort her safely, and on the 25th of
February, 1429, he bade her farewell, and all he said was:
"Away then, Joan, and come what may."
Charles VII was at that time at Chinon, in Touraine. In order to reach
him Joan had nearly a hundred and fifty leagues to go, in a country
occupied here and there by English and Burgundians and everywhere a
theater of war. She took eleven days to do this journey, often marching
by night, and never giving up man's dress, disquieted by no difficulty
and no danger, and testifying no desire for a halt save to worship God.
"Could we hear mass daily," said she to her companions, "we should do
well."
They consented only twice, first at the Abbey of St. Urban, and again in
the principal church of Auxerre. As they were full of respect though at
the same time also of doubt toward Joan, she never had to defend
herself against familiarities, but she had constantly to dissipate their
disquietude touching the reality or the character of her mission.
"Fear nothing," she said to them; "God shows me the way I should go; for
thereto I was born."
On arriving at the village of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, near Chinon,
she heard three masses on the same day and had a letter written thence
to the King to announce her coming and to ask to see him; she had gone,
she said, a hundred and fifty leagues to come and tell him things which
would be most useful to him.
Charles VII and his councilors hesitated. The men of war did not like to
believe that a little peasant girl of Lorraine was coming to bring the
King a more effectual support than their own.
Nevertheless, some, and the most heroic amongst them, Dunuois, La Hire,
and Xaintrailles, were moved by what was told of this young girl. The
letters of Sire de Bau-dricourt, though full of doubt, suffered a gleam
of something like a serious impression to peep out; and why should not
the King receive this young girl whom the Captain of Vaucouleurs had
thought it a duty to send? It would soon be seen what she was and what
she would do. The politicians and courtiers, especially the most trusted
of them, George de la Tremoille, the King's favorite, shrugged their
shoulders. What could be expected from the dreams of a young peasant
girl of nineteen? Influences of a more private character and more
disposed toward sympathy--Yolande of Arragon, for instance, Queen of
Sicily, and mother-in-law of Charles VII, and perhaps also her daughter,
the young queen, Mary of Anjou, were urgent for the King to reply to
Joan that she might go to Chinon. She was authorized to do so, and on
6th March, 1429, she, with her comrades, arrived at the royal residence.
At the very first moment two incidents occurred (says M. Wallon) still
further to increase the curiosity of which she was the object.
Quite close to Chinon some vagabonds had prepared an ambuscade for
the purpose of despoiling her and her train. She passed close by them
without the least obstacle. The rumor went that at her approach they
were struck motionless, and had been unable to attempt their wicked
purpose. Joan was rather tall, well shaped, dark, with a look of
composure, animation and gentleness. A man-at-arms, who met her on the
way, thought her pretty, and with an impious oath, expressed a coarse
compliment. "Alas," said Joan, "thou blasphemest thy God, and thou art
so near thy death!" He drowned himself, it is said, shortly after.
Already popular feeling was surrounding her marvelous mission with the
halo of instantaneous miracles.
On her arrival at Chinon she first lodged with an honest family near the
castle. For three days longer there was a deliberation in the council
as to whether the King ought to receive her. But there was bad news from
Orleans. There were no more troops to send thither, and there was no
money forthcoming; the King's treasurer, it is said, had but four crowns
in the chest. If Orleans was taken, the King would be perhaps reduced
to seeking refuge in Spain or in Scotland. Joan promised to set Orleans
free.
The Orleanese themselves were clamorous for her; Dunois kept up their
spirits with the expectation of this marvelous assistance. It was
decided that the King should receive her. She had assigned to her
for residence an apartment in the tower of the "Coudray," a block of
quarters adjoining the royal mansion, and she was committed to the
charge of William Bellier, an officer of the King's household, whose
wife was a woman of great piety and excellent fame.
On the 9th of March, 1429, Joan was at last introduced into the King's
presence by the Count of Vendôme, high steward, in the great hall on the
first story, a portion of the wall and fireplace being still visible in
the present day.
It was evening, candle light; and nearly three hundred knights were
present. Charles kept himself a little aloof amidst a group of warriors
and courtiers more richly dressed than he.
According to some chroniclers, Joan demanded that "she should not be
deceived, and should have pointed out to her him to whom she was to
speak." Others affirm that she went straight to the King, whom she had
never seen, "accosting him humbly and simply, like a poor shepherdess,"
says an eye-witness, and according to another account, "making the usual
bends and reverences, as if she had been brought up at court."
Whatever may have been her outward behavior, "Gentle dauphin," she said
to the King (for she did not think it right to call him king, so long as
he had not been crowned), "my name is Joan the maid; the King of Heaven
sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the
city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is
King of France. It is God's pleasure that our enemies, the English,
should depart to their own country; if they depart not, evil will come
to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours."
Charles was impressed without being convinced, as so many others had
been before, or were as he was on that very day. He saw Joan again
several times. She did not delude herself as to the doubts he still
entertained.
Gentle dauphin, she said one day, "why do you not believe me? I say unto
you that God hath compassion on you, your kingdom and your people; St.
Louis and Charlemagne are kneeling before Him making prayer for you, a
thing which will give you to understand that you ought to believe me."
Charles gave her audience on this occasion in the presence of four
witnesses, the most trusted of his intimates, who swore to reveal
nothing, and according to others, completely alone. "What she said to
him there is none who knows," wrote Allan Chartier a short time after
(in July, 1429) "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with
joy thereat, as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit."
M. Wallon continues this fascinating and intimate account of the Maid's
mission with most minute detail through her early triumphs and ordeal,
down to the days of her capture, confinement at Rouen, the capital of
the English in France, and her trial and execution in that town.
She arrived (in Rouen) on the 23rd of December, 1430. On the 3rd of
January the following year, an order from Henry VI, King of England,
placed her in the hands of the bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon.
Some days afterwards, Count John of Luxembourg accompanied by his
brother, the English Chancellor, and his Esquire, the Earl of Warwick,
and Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, the King of England's constable in
France, entered the prison where Joan was confined.
Had John of Luxembourg come out of sheer curiosity, or to relieve
himself of certain scruples by offering Joan a chance for her life?
"Joan," said he, "I am come hither to put you to ransom, and treat for
the price of your deliverance; only give us your promise here no more to
bear arms against us."
"In God's name," answered Joan, "are you making a mock of me, Captain?
Ransom me? You have neither the will nor the power; no, you have
neither."
The Count persisted.
"I know well," said Joan, "that these English will put me to death; but,
were they a hundred thousand more 'Goddams' than have already been in
France, they shall never have the kingdom."
"What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor
shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that like the
Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly
out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration,
rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies,
and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings?
"The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a
victorious _act_, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of
Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her
nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so
they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them
_from a station of good will_, both were found true and loyal to any
promises involved in their first acts.
"Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent
fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noon-day prosperity, both
personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and
became a byword amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the
scepter was departing from Judah.
"The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that
cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together
with the songs that rose in her native Domremy, as echoes to the
departing steps of the invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances
at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France.
No! for her voice was then silent; no! for her feet were dust. Pure,
innocent, noble-hearted girl! Whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed
in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest
pledges of thy truth, that never once--no, not for a moment of
weakness--didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honor from man.
Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honors if they come when all is over, are for
those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of
thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead.
Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the
apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found
'_en Contumace_.' When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may
happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave
up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been
deaf for centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this
life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from
thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the
grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of
those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is long!
"This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self
interest; even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once did
this holy child, as she regarded herself, relax from her belief in the
darkness that was traveling to meet her. She might not prefigure the
very manner of her death; she saw not in vision the aerial altitude of
the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring
into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames,
the hostile faces all around her, the pitying eye that lurked here and
there until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial
restraints--these might not be apparent through the mists of the
hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard
forever.
"Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he
that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne nor he that
sat upon it was for her; but on the contrary, that she was for them; not
she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust.
"Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had they
privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until in another
century the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well
Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, that the
lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell
nor blossom, would ever bloom for her." (Thomas De Quincey.)
And now comes in this, which is perhaps the final year of the great war,
a strange story from a small town in the Loire region near Cholet, of
another illiterate peasant girl named Clotilde Perchaud, seemingly the
reincarnation of Jeanne, who likewise sees visions and hears voices.
Brought up on one of the small farms on the edge of the hamlet of
Puy-Saint-Bonnet, this girl, now about twenty years old, since the age
of fourteen has been of a strange personality. Instead of following the
fairs and dancing at the village festivals like the other young girls of
the neighborhood, Clotilde has always kept aloof, avoiding the young
men who would offer her attentions, and devoting herself to devotions at
church, and prayers in her squalid room in the farmhouse granary, where
she had constructed an altar. So strange were her actions at the village
school that the good priest advised her parents to keep her at home,
as she would not study her lessons, but preferred to sit with clasped
hands, and her eyes fixed in a wrapt gaze at the ceiling, to the
demoralization of the scholars, who at length came to believe her half
witted, and ceased to consider her. Not so, however, the elders. Soon
it became known that this strange girl was a clairvoyant, and the
more credulous consulted her as to future events, but these became
dissatisfied because all of the girl's prophecies had to do with events
beyond the ken of the simple folk of the neighborhood; with kings and
heavenly hosts, with saints in armor waving banners and leading armies
on to victory. Thus passed the life of this young peasant girl during
the peaceful years between fourteen and twenty, until the great war
broke out and armed hosts led by princes indeed invaded her unhappy
land.
So in the field below the red tiled roofs of her village of
Puy-St.-Bonnet, Clotilde Perchaud erected to the Virgin a rude altar of
field stones, which she trimmed with green boughs, and here she passed
all her spare time, praying and seeing visions in the sky, while upon
the horizon mighty guns boomed, and at night the flashes could plainly
be seen.
Soon this altar became a rendezvous for the neighbors, and even for
those of the more remote villages from which the young men had gone
forth to fight for France, and to this young girl were brought pictures
of the absent soldiers at the front in the trenches and written prayers
for their safety. That she possessed some strange power was admitted by
even the most skeptical, for her responses to those who had loved ones
missing led to their being found in distant camps as prisoners, or
wounded in hospitals in distant parts of the country. In some instances,
it is reported, this strange girl was able to give the names in full of
those long missing, and information so detailed and circumstantial as
to be marvelous. These matters were brought to the attention of the
priests, and were in turn reported by them to the heads of the church,
finally reaching the ears of the Bishop of Angers, who had her brought
to his palace. Here she confronted unabashed a conclave of priests. The
Bishop is said to have dressed himself in the ordinary black cassock
of a priest, in order to test the young girl's power of divination;
an ordinary priest wearing the Bishop's robes, and being seated on the
throne; but to the amazement of all in the room, the girl turned from
him, and kneeling before the real Bishop, asked his blessing upon her
and her mission.
To him she announced, then, that a white robed angel had appeared to
her above her altar in the fields, and to the strains of heavenly music
charged that she had, as a pure and blameless maid, been selected to
deliver their beloved France from the hands of the invader.
She presented to the Bishop the book in which she had written the words
spoken to her on many occasions by the "shining angel in white." This
book, says the account from which this is taken, "is partly illegible
and almost entirely illiterate; rudely illustrated in a sort of futurist
style." Its contents are said to be most perplexing and wonderful.
"Savants and students of religion who have examined the book assert
that it shows a knowledge of the primal principles of theology, which
indicates that the author has the clearest insight into the fundamentals
of Roman Catholicism, but is apparently not gifted with the power
to translate those ideas into fluent French. Throughout the work are
passages in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, yet she apparently had less than
the usual schooling of a French child."
The Bishop of Angers was so impressed with her attitude and her
evident earnestness that he sent her under escort by nuns, to the
Archbishop-Cardinal Amette at Paris. To him she demanded that she be at
once taken to the heights of Montmartre, so that she might see the sun
rise there over Paris. In this she was humored, and standing with the
nuns and priests before the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre,
at sunrise, as the first beam shone upon the great gilded cross on
the tower, she recited in a loud voice the vow which she had taken to
deliver France from the invader.
Since this, it is said no one has been allowed to talk to Clotilde, and
she is said to be at the convent in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Here she is
under observation of the nuns, who each send reports of her prayers and
prophecies to the Cardinal. A correspondent who was permitted to see her
from a distance in the convent garden, where she walked, followed at a
distance of several paces by the nuns, describes her as a rather tall
girl, clad in somber baggy black robes, very light of step and walking
with her head thrown back and her eyes directed heavenward. Her carriage
reminded him of "Genee, Pavlowa, or some other dancer," and he speaks
of her as having "a wealth of filmy hair, which because of its fineness,
seemed to float about her like a cloud, and only partly covered by a
religious headgear," and he could see, too, "her hands, which are lily
white and tiny, and tender, as those of the most pampered lady, despite
the fact that the girl has done chores which in peace times would belong
to men even on the French farms where the women are accustomed to labor
long and hard."
A strange story; but then these are strange times, and who shall say
that this is unworthy of credence?