found Peter,--the curse of God confound him!--who had long since thrice
falsely murdered his noble queen, who was of the royal blood of France
and your own cousin. I stopped to take revenge for her, and to help
Henry, whom I believe to be the rightful king of Spain. But you, through
pride and covetousness of gold and silver, came to Spain, thinking to
have the throne after the death of Peter. In this you injured your own
blood and troubled me and my people, ruined your friends and famished
your army, and for what? After all this, Peter has deceived you by
cheating and trickery, for he has not kept faith nor covenant with you.
But for this, by my soul and faith, I thank him heartily."
These bold words were listened to by the prince with a changeful face.
Seldom had he heard the truth spoken so bluntly, or with such firm
composure in the speaker. When he had ceased, the prince rose, and with
a somewhat bitter laugh declared that, on his soul, Bertrand had spoken
but the truth. The barons around repeated the same among themselves,
and, fixing their eyes on Bertrand, said,--"A brave fellow, the
Breton."
"Whether this be truth or no, Bertrand," continued the prince, "you have
rejected my offer, and shall not escape without a good ransom. It vexes
me to let you go at all, for your king has none like you; but as men say
that I keep you prisoner because I fear you, you shall go free on
payment of sufficient ransom. Men shall learn that I neither fear nor
care for you."
"Sir, I thank you," said Bertrand. "But I am a poor knight of little
name and small means. What estate I have is deeply mortgaged for the
purchase of war-horses, and I owe besides in this town full ten thousand
florins. I pray you, therefore, to be moderate, and deliver me."
"Where will you go, fair sir?" asked the prince.
"Where I may regain my loss," answered Bertrand. "More than that, I say
not."
"Consider, then," said the prince, "what ransom you will give me. What
sum you name shall be enough for me."
"I trust you will not stoop to retract your meaning," rejoined Bertrand.
"And since you are content to refer it to my pleasure, I ought not to
value myself too low. So I will give and engage for my freedom one
hundred thousand double golden florins."
These words roused the greatest surprise and excitement in the room.
Many of those present started, and the prince changed color, as he
looked around at his knights.
"Does he mean to make game of me, that he offers such a sum?" asked the
prince. "I would gladly free him for the quarter."
Then, turning again to Bertrand, who stood with impassive countenance,
he said,--
"Bertrand, neither can you pay, nor do I wish such a sum. So consider
again."
"Sir," answered Bertrand, with grave composure, "since you wish not so
much, I place myself at sixty thousand double florins; you shall not
have less, if you but discharge me."
"Be it so," said the prince. "I agree to it."
Then Bertrand looked round him with glad eyes, and drew up his form with
proud assurance.
"Sir," he said, "Prince Henry may truly vaunt that he will die king of
Spain, cost him what it may, if he but lend me half my ransom, and the
king of France the other. If I can neither go nor send to these two, I
will get all the spinstresses in France to spin it, rather than that I
should remain longer in your hands."
"What sort of man is this?" said the prince, aside to his lords. "He is
startled by nothing, either in act or thought; no more than if he had
all the gold in the world. He has set himself at sixty thousand double
florins, when I would have willingly accepted ten thousand."
The barons talked among one another, lost in astonishment. Bertrand
stood aside, his eyes fixed quietly upon the prince.
"Am I then at liberty?" he asked.
"Whence shall the money come?" queried Chandos.
"Trust me to find it," said Bertrand. "I have good friends."
"By my faith," answered Chandos, heartily, "you have one of them here.
If you need my help, thus much I say: I will lend you ten thousand."
"You have my thanks," answered Bertrand. "But before accepting your
offer, I will try the people of my own country."
The confidence of the gallant soldier was not misplaced. Part of the sum
was raised among his Breton friends, and King Charles V. of France lent
him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons. In the beginning of 1368 the
Prince of Wales set him at liberty.
The remaining story of the life of Du Guesclin is a stirring and
interesting one. War was the only trade he knew, and he plunged boldly
into it. First he joined the Duke of Anjou, who was warring in Provence
against Queen Joan of Naples. Then he put his sword again at the service
of Henry of Transtamare, who was at war once more with Pedro the Cruel,
and whom he was soon to dethrone and slay with his own hand. But shortly
afterwards war broke out again between France and England, and Charles
V. summoned Du Guesclin to Paris.
The king's purpose was to do the greatest honor to the poor but proud
soldier. He offered him the high office of Constable of
France,--commander-in-chief of the army and the first dignitary under
the crown. Du Guesclin prayed earnestly to be excused, but the king
insisted, and he in the end felt obliged to yield. The poor Breton had
now indeed risen to high estate. The king set him beside himself at
table, showed him the deepest affection, and showered on him gifts and
estates. His new wealth the free-handed soldier dispensed lavishly,
giving numerous and sumptuous dinners, where, says his poet
chronicler,--
"At Bertrand's plate gazed every eye,
So massive, chased so gloriously."
This plate proved a slippery possession. More than once he pledged it,
and in the end sold great part of it, to pay "without fail the knights
and honorable fighting-men of whom he was the leader."
The war roused a strong spirit of nationality through France. Towns,
strongholds, and castles were everywhere occupied and fortified. The
English marched through the country, but found no army in the field, no
stronghold that was to be had without a hard siege. Du Guesclin adopted
the waiting policy, and kept to it firmly against all opposition of lord
or prince. It was his purpose to let the English scatter and waste
themselves in a host of small operations and petty skirmishes. For eight
years the war continued, with much suffering to France, with no gain to
England. In 1373 an English army landed at Calais, which overran nearly
the whole of France without meeting a French army or mastering a French
fortress, while incessantly harassed by detached parties of soldiers. On
returning, of the thirty thousand horses with which they had landed,
"they could not muster more than six thousand at Bordeaux, and had lost
full a third of their men and more. There were seen noble knights who
had great possessions in their own country, toiling along afoot, without
armor, and begging their bread from door to door without getting any."
Such were the happy results for France of the Fabian policy of the
Constable Du Guesclin.
A truce was at length signed, that both parties might have time to
breathe. Soon afterwards, on June 8, 1376, the Black Prince died, and in
June of the following year his father, Edward III., followed him to the
tomb, and France was freed from its greatest foes. During his service as
constable, Bertrand had recovered from English hands the provinces of
Poitou, Guienne, and Auvergne, and thus done much towards the
establishment of a united France.
Du Guesclin was not long to survive his great English enemies. The king
treated him unjustly, and he threw up his office of constable, declaring
that he would seek Spain and enter the service of Henry of Castile. This
threat brought the king to his senses. He sent the Dukes of Anjou and
Bourbon to beg Du Guesclin to retain his office. The indignant soldier
yielded to their persuasions, accepted again the title of Constable of
France, and died four days afterwards, on July 13, 1380. He had been
sent into Languedoc to suppress disturbances and brigandage, provoked by
the harsh government of the Duke of Anjou, and in this service fell
sick while besieging Châteauneuf-Randon, in the Gévandan, a fortress
then held by the English. He died at sixty-six years of age, with his
last words exhorting the captains around him "never to forget that, in
whatsoever country they might be making war, churchmen, women, children,
and the poor people were not their enemies."
He won victory even after his death, so say the chronicles of that day.
It is related that an agreement had been made for the surrender of the
besieged fortress, and that the date fixed was July 14, the day after Du
Guesclin died. The new commander of the army summoned the governor to
surrender, but he declared that he had given his word to Du Guesclin,
and would yield the place to no other. He was told that the constable
was dead.
"Very well;" he replied, "I will carry the keys of the town to his
tomb."
And so he did. He marched out of the place at the head of his garrison,
passed through the lines of the besieging army, knelt before Du
Guesclin's corpse, and laid the keys of Châteauneuf-Randon on his bier.
And thus passed away one of the greatest and noblest warriors France had
ever known, honored in life and triumphant in death.
_JOAN OF ARC, THE MAID OF ORLEANS._
At the hour of noon, on a sunny summer's day in the year of our Lord
1425, a young girl of the little village of Domremy, France, stood with
bent head and thoughtful eyes in the small garden attached to her
father's humble home. There was nothing in her appearance to attract a
second glance. Her parents were peasants, her occupation was one of
constant toil, her attire was of the humblest, her life had been
hitherto spent in aiding her mother at home or in driving her father's
few sheep afield. None who saw her on that day could have dreamed that
this simple peasant maiden was destined to become one of the most famous
women whose name history records, and that this day, was that of the
beginning of her career.
She had been born at a critical period in history. Her country was in
extremity. For the greater part of a century the dreadful "Hundred
Years' War" had been waged, desolating France, destroying its people by
the thousands, bringing it more and more under the dominion of a foreign
foe. The realm of France had now reached its lowest depth of disaster,
its king uncrowned, its fairest regions overrun,--here by the English,
there by the Burgundians,--the whole kingdom in peril of being taken and
reduced to vassalage. Never before nor since had the need of a
deliverer been so vitally felt. The deliverer chosen of heaven was the
young peasant girl who walked that summer noon in her father's humble
garden at Domremy.
Young as she was, she had seen the horrors of war. Four years before the
village had been plundered and burnt, its defenders slain or wounded,
the surrounding country devastated. The story of the suffering and peril
of France was in all French ears. Doubtless little Joan's soul burned
with sympathy for her beloved land as she moved thoughtfully up and down
the garden paths, asking herself if God could longer permit such wrongs
and disasters to continue.
Suddenly, to her right, in the direction of the small village church,
Joan heard a voice calling her, and, looking thither, she was surprised
and frightened at seeing a great light. The voice, continued; her
courage returned; "it was a worthy voice," she tells us, one that could
come only from angels. "I saw them with my bodily eyes," she afterwards
said. "When they departed from me I wept and would fain have had them
take me with them." Again and again came to her the voices and the
forms; they haunted her; and still the burden of their exhortation was
the same, that she should "go to France to deliver the kingdom." The
girl grew dreamy. She became lost in meditation, full of deep thoughts
and budding purposes, wrought by the celestial voices into high hopes
and noble aspirations, possessed with the belief that she had been
chosen by heaven to deliver France from its woes and to disconcert its
enemies.
The times were fitting for such a conception. Two forces ruled mens'
minds,--ambition and trust in the supernatural. The powerful
depended upon their own arms for aid; the weak and miserable turned to
Christ and the Virgin for support; there were those who looked to see
God in bodily person; His angels and ministers were thought to deal
directly with man; it was an age in which force and fraud alike were
dominant, in which men were governed in their bodies by the sword, in
their souls by their belief in and dread of the supernatural, and in
which enthusiasm had higher sway than thought. It was enthusiastic
belief in her divine mission that moved Joan of Arc. It was trust in her
as God's agent of deliverance that filled the soul of France with new
spirit, and unnerved her foes with enfeebling fears. Joan's mission and
her age were well associated. In the nineteenth century she would have
been covered with ridicule; in the fifteenth she led France to victory.
Three years passed away. Joan's faith in her mission had grown with the
years. Some ridiculed, many believed her. The story of her angelic
voices was spreading. At length came the event that moved her to action.
The English laid siege to Orleans, the most important city in the
kingdom after Paris and Rouen. If this were lost, all might be lost.
Some of the bravest warriors of France fought in its defence; but the
garrison was weak, the English were strong, their works surrounded the
walls; daily the city was more closely pressed; unless relieved it must
fall.
"I must go to raise the siege of Orleans," said Joan to Robert de
Baudricourt, commander of Vaucouleurs, with whom she had gained speech.
"I will go, should I have to wear off my legs to the knee."
"I must be with the king before the middle of Lent," she said later to
John of Metz, a knight serving with Baudricourt; "for none in the world,
nor kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of the 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 my work because my Lord wills that I
should do it."
"Who is your Lord?" asked John of Metz.
"The Lord God."
"By my faith," cried the knight, as he seized her 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," said Joan.
On the 6th of March, 1429, the devoted girl arrived at Chinon, in
Touraine, where the king then was. She had journeyed nearly a hundred
and fifty leagues, through a country that was everywhere a theatre of
war, without harm or insult. She was dressed in a coat of mail, bore
lance and sword, and had a king's messenger and an archer as her train.
This had been deemed necessary to her safety in those distracted times.
Interest and curiosity went before her. Baudricourt's letters to the
king had prepared him for something remarkable. Certain incidents which
happened during Joan's journey, and which were magnified by report into
miracles, added to the feeling in her favor. The king and his council
doubted if it were wise to give her an audience. That a peasant girl
could succor a kingdom in extremity seemed the height of absurdity. But
something must be done. Orleans was in imminent danger. If it were
taken, the king might have to fly to Spain or Scotland. He had no money.
His treasury, it is said, held only four crowns. He had no troops to
send to the besieged city. Drowning men catch at straws. The people of
Orleans had heard of Joan and clamored for her; with her, they felt
sure, would come superhuman aid. The king consented to receive her.
It was the 9th of March, 1429. The hour was evening. Candles dimly
lighted the great hall of the king's palace at Chinon, in which nearly
three hundred knights were gathered. Charles VII., the king, was among
them, distinguished by no mark or sign, more plainly dressed than most
of those around him, standing retired in the throng.
Joan was introduced. The story--in which we cannot put too much
faith--says that she walked straight to the king through the crowd of
showily-dressed lords and knights, though she had never seen him
before, and said, in quiet and humble tones,--
"Gentle dauphin" (she did not think it right to call him king until he
had 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."
What followed is shrouded in doubt. Some say that Joan told Charles
things that none but himself had known. However this be, the king
determined to go to Poitiers and have this seeming messenger from Heaven
questioned strictly as to her mission, by learned theologians of the
University of Paris there present.
"In the name of God," said Joan, "I know that I shall have rough work
there, but my Lord will help me. Let us go, then, for God's sake."
They went. It was an august and learned assembly into which the
unlettered girl was introduced, yet for two hours she answered all their
questions with simple earnestness and shrewd wit.
"In what language do the voices speak to you?" asked Father Seguin, the
Dominican, "a very sour man," says the chronicle.
"Better than yours," answered Joan. The doctor spoke a provincial
dialect.
"Do you believe in God?" he asked, sharply.
"More than you do," answered Joan, with equal sharpness.
"Well," he answered, "God forbids belief in you without some sign
tending thereto; I shall not give the king advice to trust men-at-arms
to you and put them in peril on your simple word."
"In the name of God," replied Joan, "I am not come to Poitiers to show
signs. Take me to Orleans and I will give you signs of what I am sent
for. Let me have ever so few men-at-arms given me and I will go to
Orleans."
For a fortnight the questioning was continued. In the end the doctors
pronounced in Joan's favor. Two of them were convinced of her divine
mission. They declared that she was the virgin foretold in ancient
prophecies, notably in those of Merlin. All united in saying that "there
had been discovered in her naught but goodness, humility, devotion,
honesty, and simplicity."
Charles decided. The Maid should go to Orleans. A suit of armor was made
to fit her. She was given the following of a war-chief. She had a white
banner made, which was studded with lilies, and bore on it a figure of
God seated on clouds and bearing a globe, while below were two kneeling
angels, above were the words "Jesu Maria." Her sword she required the
king to provide. One would be found, she said, marked with five crosses,
behind the altar in the chapel of St. Catharine de Fierbois, where she
had stopped on her arrival in Chinon. Search was made, and the sword was
found.
And now five weeks were passed in weary preliminaries, despite the fact
that Orleans pleaded earnestly for succor. Joan had friends at court,
but she had powerful enemies, whose designs her coming had thwarted, and
it was they who secretly opposed her plans. At length, on the 27th of
April, the march to Orleans began.
On the 29th the army of relief arrived before the city. There were ten
or twelve thousand men in the train, guarding a heavy convoy of food.
The English covered the approach to the walls, the only unguarded
passage being beyond the Loire, which ran by the town. To the surprise
and vexation of Joan her escort determined to cross the stream.
"Was it you," she asked Dunois, who had left the town to meet her, "who
gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the river, and
not the direct way, over there where Talbot and the English are?"
"Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest captains," he replied.
"In the name of God, the counsel of my Lord is wiser than yours. You
thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves, for I am
bringing you the best succor that ever had knight, or town, or city, and
that is, the good-will of God and succor from the King of Heaven; not,
assuredly, for love of me; it is from God only that it proceeds."
She wished to remain with the troops until they could enter the city,
but Dunois urged her to cross the stream at once, with such portion of
the convoy as the boats might convey immediately.
"Orleans would count it for naught," he said, "if they received the
victuals without the Maid."
She decided to go, and crossed the stream with two hundred men-at-arms
and part of the supplies. At eight o'clock that evening she entered the
city, on horseback, in full armor, her banner preceding her, beside her
Dunois, behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most
distinguished citizens. The population hailed her coming with shouts of
joy, crowding on the procession, torch in hand, so closely that her
banner was set on fire. Joan made her horse leap forward with the skill
of a practised horseman, and herself extinguished the flame.
It was a remarkable change in her life. Three years before, a simple
peasant child, she had been listening to the "voices" in her father's
garden at Domremy. Now, the associate of princes and nobles, and the
last hope of the kingdom, she was entering a beleaguered city at the
head of an army, amid the plaudits of the population, and followed by
the prayers of France. She was but seventeen years old, still a mere
girl, yet her coming had filled her countrymen with hope and depressed
their foes with dread. Such was the power of religious belief in that
good mediæval age.
The arrival of the Maid was announced to the besiegers by a herald, who
bore a summons from her to the English, bidding them to leave the land
and give up the keys of the cities which they had wrongfully taken,
under peril of being visited by God's judgment. They detained and
threatened to burn the herald, as a warning to Joan, the sorceress, as
they deemed her. Yet such was their terror that they allowed the armed
force still outside the city to enter unmolested, through their
intrenchments.
The warning Joan had sent them by herald she now repeated in person,
mounting a bastion and bidding the English, in a loud voice, to begone,
else woe and shame would come upon them.
The commandant of the bastille opposite, Sir William Gladesdale,
answered with insults, bidding her to go back and mind her cows, and
saying that the French were miscreants.
"You speak falsely!" cried Joan; "and in spite of yourselves shall soon
depart hence; many of your people shall be slain; but as for you, you
shall not see it."
Nor did he; he was drowned a few days afterwards, a shot from Orleans
destroying a drawbridge on which he stood, with many companions.
What succeeded we may tell briefly. Inspired by the intrepid Maid, the
besieged boldly attacked the British forts, and took them one after
another. The first captured was that of St. Loup, which was carried by
Joan and her troops, despite the brave defence of the English. The next
day, the 6th of May, other forts were assailed and taken, the men of
Orleans, led by Joan, proving irresistible. The English would not face
her in the open field, and under her leadership the French intrepidly
stormed their ramparts.
A memorable incident occurred during the assault on the works south of
the city. Here Joan seized a scaling ladder, and was mounting it herself
when an arrow struck and wounded her. She was taken aside, her armor
removed, and she herself pulled out the arrow, though with some tears
and signs of faintness. Her wound being dressed, she retired into a
vineyard to rest and pray. Discouraged by her absence, the French began
to give way. The captains ordered the retreat to be sounded.
"My God, we shall soon be inside," cried Joan to Dunois. "Give your
people a little rest; eat and drink."
In a short time she resumed her arms, mounted her horse, ordered her
banner to be displayed, and put herself at the head of the storming
party. New courage inspired the French; the English, who had seen her
fall, and were much encouraged thereby, beheld her again in arms with
superstitious dread. Joan pressed on; the English retreated; the fort
was taken without another blow. Back to Orleans marched the triumphant
Maid, the people wild with joy. All through the night the bells rang out
glad peals, and the _Te Deum_ was chanted. Much reason had they for joy:
Orleans was saved.