The judges said that they visited Joan again on the morning of her
death, and that she withdrew her belief in her Voices; or, at least,
left it to the Church to decide whether they were good or bad, while she
still maintained that they were _real_. She had expected release, and,
for the first time, had been disappointed. At the stake she understood
her Voices: they had foretold her martyrdom, 'great victory' over
herself, and her entry into rest. But the document of the judges is not
signed by the clerks, as all such documents must be. One of them,
Manchon, who had not been present, was asked to sign it; he refused.
Another, Taquel, is said to have been present, but he did not sign. The
story is, therefore, worth nothing.
Enough. They burned Joan the Maid. She did not suffer long. Her eyes
were fixed on a cross which a priest, Martin L'Advenu, held up before
her. She maintained, he says, to her dying moment, the truth of her
Voices. With a great cry of JESUS! she gave up her breath, and her pure
soul was with God.
Even the English wept, even a secretary of the English king said that
they had burned a Saint. One of the three great crimes of the world's
history had been committed, and, of the three, this was the most
cowardly and cruel. It profited the English not at all. 'Though they
ceased not to be brave,' says Patrick Abercromby, a Scot,[26] 'yet they
were almost on all occasions defeated, and within the short space of
twenty-two years, lost not only all the conquests made by them in little
less than a hundred, but also the inheritances which they had enjoyed
for above three centuries bypast. It is not my part to follow them, as
the French and my countrymen did, from town to town, and from province
to province; I take much more pleasure in relating the glories than the
disgraces of England.'
This disgrace the English must, and do, most sorrowfully confess, and,
that it may never be forgotten while the civilised world stands, there
lives, among the plays of Shakspeare, whether he wrote or did not write
it, that first part of 'Henry VI.,' which may pair with the yet more
abominable poem of the Frenchman, Voltaire.
Twenty years after her death, as we saw, Charles VII., in his own
interest, induced the Pope and the Inquisition, to try the case of Joan
over again. It was as certain that the clergy would find her innocent,
now, as that they would find her guilty before. But, happily, they
collected the evidence of most of the living people who had known her.
Thus we have heard from the Domremy peasants how good she was as a
child, from Dunois, d'Alencon, d'Aulon, how she was beautiful,
courteous, and brave, from Isambart and L'Advenu, how nobly she died,
and how she never made one complaint, but forgave all her enemies
freely. All these old Latin documents were collected, edited, and
printed, in 1849, by Monsieur Jules Quicherat, a long and noble labour.
After the publication of this book, there has been, and can be, no doubt
about the perfect goodness of Joan of Arc. The English long believed
silly stories against her, as a bad woman, stories which were not even
mentioned by her judges. The very French, at different times, have
mocked at her memory, in ignorance and disbelief. They said she was a
tool of politicians, who, on the other hand, never wanted her, or that
she was crazy. Men mixed up with her glorious history the adventures of
the false Maid, who pretended to be Joan come again, and people doubted
as to whether she really died at Rouen. In modern times, some wiseacres
have called the strongest and healthiest of women 'hysterical,' which is
their way of accounting for her Voices. But now, thanks mainly to
Monsieur Quicherat, and other learned Frenchmen, the world, if it
chooses, may know Joan as she was; the stainless Maid, the bravest,
gentlest, kindest, and wisest woman who ever lived. Her country people,
in her lifetime, called her 'the greatest of Saints, after the Blessed
Virgin,' and, at least, she is the greatest concerning whose deeds and
noble sufferings history preserves a record. And her Voices we leave to
Him who alone knows all truth.