i
*
º
i
º
* * * * * *
** a º
i
ºº
:

|0|0.
(
A
A
|
'• }
/
* *
~~~~
(CI
(ſ
z






THE LIFE
ÖF
J 0 A N 0 F A R C.
BY
JULES MICHELET,
AUTHOR OF “THE HISTORY OF FRANCE,” ETC.
NEW YORK:
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER.
1887.
JOAN OF ARC.
tºmºmº ºsº
THE originality of the Pucelle, the secret of

her strecess, was Hot her courage or her visions,
butt her good sense. Amidst all her enthusiasm
the gil Té people clearly saw the question,
and knew how to resolve it. The knot which
politician and doubter could not º She
cut. She pronounced, in God’s name, Charles
VII. to be the heir; she reassur inn a nºis
Tegitimacy, of which he had doubts himself, and
she sanctified this legitimacy by taking him
straight to Reims, and by her quickness gaining
over the English the decisive advantage of the
Coronation. -
It was by no means rare to see Women take
up arms. They often fought in sieges: witness
the eighty women wounded at Amiens: Witness
Jeanne Hachette. In the Pucelle’s day, and in
the Self-same years as she, the Bohemian
women fought like men in the wars of the
Hussites.
No more, I repeat, did the originality of the
Pucelle consist in her visions. Who but had
visions in the middle-age 2 Even in this prosaic
fifteenth century excess of suffering had singu-
larily exalted men's imaginations. We find at
Paris one brother Richard so exciting the pop-
ulace by his sermons that at last the English
banished him the city. Assemblies of from
fifteen to twenty thousand souls were collected
by the preaching of the Breton Carmelite friar,
Conecta, at Courtrai and at Arras. In the
Space of a few years, before and after the Pu-
celle, every province had its saint—either a
Pierrette, a Breton peasant girl who holds con-
Verse with Jesus Christ; or a Marie of Avignon,
a Catherine of Rochelle; or a poor shepherd,
such as Saintrailles, brings up from his own
Country, Who has the stigmata on his feet and
hands and who sweats blood on holy days like
the present holy woman of the Tyrol. -



234335
6 JOAN OF ARC.
Lorraine, apparently, was one of the last pro-
vinces to expect such a phenomenon from. The
Lorrainers are brave and apt to blows, but
most delight in stratagem and craft. If the
great Guise saved France before disturbing her,
it was not by visions. Two Lorrainers make
themselves conspicuous at the siege of Orléans,
and both display the natural humor of their
Witty Countryman, Callot; one of these is the
cannonier, master Jean, who used to counterfeit
death. So Well; the other is a knight who, being
taken by the English and loaded with chains,
When they withdrew, returned riding on the
back of an English monk.
The character of the Lorraine of the Vosges,
it is true, is of graver kind. This lofty district,
from whose mountain sides rivers run sea-ward
through France in every direction, was covered
with forests of such vast size as to be esteemed
by the Carlowingians the most Worthy of their
imperial hunting parties. In glades of these
forests rose the Venerable abbeys of Luxeuil
and Remiremont; the latter, as is well known
under the rule of an abbess who was ever a
princess of the Holy Empire, who had her great
officers, in fine, a Whole feudal court, and used
to be preceded by her seneschal, bearing the
naked sword. The dukes of Lorraine had been
vassals, and for a long period, of this female
sovereignty. N.
It was precisely between the Lorraine of the
Vosges and that of the plains, between Lorraine
and Champagne, at Dom-Remy, that the brave
and beautiful girl destined to bear So Well the
sword of France first saw the light.
Along the Meuse, and within a circuit of ten
leagues, there are four Dom-Remys; three in
the diocese of Toul, one in that of Langres. It
is probable that these four villages were in an-
cient times dependencies of the abbey of Saints
Temy at Reims. In the Carlovingian period,
our great abbeys are known to have held much
more distant possessions; as far, indeed, as
in Provence, in Germany, and even in Eng-
land. -
This line of the Meuse is the march of Lor:
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, º
raine and of Champagne, so long an object of
contention betwixt monarch and duke. Jean-
ne's father, Jacques Darc, was a Worthy Cham-
penois. Jeanne, no doubt, inherited her dis-
position from this º had none of the
Lorraine ruggedness, N bitt much rather the
Champenois º simplicity, blended
with sense and shrewdſless, which is observable
in Joinville.
A few centuries earlier Jeanne Would have
been born the serf of the abbey of Saint-
Remy; a century earlier, the serf of the sire de
Joinville, who was lord of Vaucouleurs, on which
city the village of Dom-Remy depended. But
in 1335 the king obliged the Joinvilles to cede
Waucouleurs to him. It formed at that time the
grand channel of communication between Cham-
pagne and Lorraine, and was the high road to
Germany, as well as that of the bank of the
Meuse—the cross or intersecting point of the
two routes. It was too, We may say, the front-
ier between the two great parties; near Dom-
Remy was one of the last villages that held to
the Burgundians; all the rest was for Charles
VII,
In all ages this march of Lorraine and of
Champagne had suffered cruelly from War; first
a long war between the east and the west, be-
tween the king and the duke, for the possession
of Neufchâteau and the adjoining places; then
War between the north and South, between the
Burgundians and the Armagnacs. The remem-
brance of these pitiless wars has never been
effaced. Not long since was seen near Neufchâ-
teau an antique tree with sinister name, whose
branches had no doubt often born human fruit
—Chene des Partisans (the Partisans' Oak).
The poor people of the march had the honor
of being directly subject to the king; that is,
in reality, they belonged to no one, were
neither supported nor managed by any one,
and had no lord or protector but God. People
so situated are of a serious cast. They know
that they can count upon nothing; neither on
-their goods nor on their lives. They sow, the
soldier reaps. Nowhere does the husbandman
'8 JOAN OF AR0.
feel greater anxiety about the affairs of his
country, none have a directer interest in them;
the least reverse shakes him so roughly He
inquires, he strives, to know and to foresee;
above ail, he is resigned: whatever happells,
he is prepared for it; he is patient and brave.
Women even become so; they must become SO
among all these soldiers, if not for the sake of
life, for that of honor, like Goethe's beautiful
and hardy Dorothea.
Jeanne was the third daughter of a laborer,”
Jacques :c. and of Isabella Romeº! Her two
godmothers were called, the one, Jeanne, the
other, Sibylle.
Their eldest son had been named Jacques,
and another, Pierre. The pious parents gave
one of their daughters the loftier name Saint-
Jean.
While the other children were taken by their
father to work in the fields or set to Watch
cattle, the mother kept Jeanne at home Sewing
or spinning. She was taught neither reading
nor writing; but she learned all her mother
knew of sacred things. She imbibed her re-
ligion, not as a lesson or a ceremony, but in the
popular and simple form of an evening fireside
story, as a truth of a mother's telling. . . .
What we imbibe thus with our blood and milk
is a living thing, is life itself. º
As regards Jeanne's piety, we have the af.
fecting testimony of the friend of her infancy,
.#. friend, Haumeißwho Was younger
than she by three OTfGüFTyears. “Over and
over again,” she said, “I have been at her
father's and have slept with her, in all love
(de bonne amitie). . . . She was a Very good

*There may be seen at this day, above the door of the
hut where Jeanne Darc lived, three scutcheons carved on
stone—that of Louis XI., who beautified the hut; that
which was undoubtedly given to one of her brothers,
along with the surname of Du Lis; and a third, charged
with a star and three ploughshares, to imagine the mis-
Sion of the Pucelle and the humble condition of her
parents. Vallet, Mémoire adressé à l’Institut Historique,
sur le nom de famille de la Pucelle. -
#The name of Romée was often assumed in the middle
age by those who had made the pilgrimage to Rome,
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 9
girl, simple and gentle. She was fond of going
to church and to holy places. She spun and
attended to the house like other girls. . . .
She confessed frequently. She blushed when
told that she was too devout, and went too
often to church.” A laborer, also summoned to
give evidence, adds, that she nursed the sick
and was charitable to the poor. “I know it
well,” were his words; “I was then a child,
and it was she who nursed me.”
Her charity, her piety, Were known to all.
All saw that she was the best girl in the vil-
lage. What they did not see and know was,
that in her celestial ever absorbed worldly
feelings, and suppressed their development.

She had the divine gift to remain, soul and
body, a GTITT.TSile grew TD St.TOIlg and beau-
tiful; Touſ never knew the physical sufferings
entaile ** * They were spared her,
that she might be the more devoted to re-
ligious thought and inspiration. Born under
TITU-vary WäITS OFTEINE CITTCT, lulled in her
cradle by the chimes of the bells, and nourished
by legends, she was herself a legend, a quickly
passing and pure legend, from birth to death.
She was a living legend, . . . but her
vital spirits, exalted and concentrated, did not
become the less creative. The young girl
created, so to speak, unconsciously, and realized
lier own ideas, endowing them with being and
imparting to them out of the strength of her
original vitality such splendid and all-power-
ful existence, that they threw into the shade
the Wretched realities of this world.
If poetry mean creation, this undoubtedly is
the highest poetry. Let us trace the steps
by which she soared thus high from so lowly a
starting-point.
Lowly in truth, but already poetic. Her
village was close to the vast forests of Vosges.
From the door of her father's house she could
see the old oak wood, the wood haunted by
fairies; whose favorite spot was a fountain
near a large beech, called the fairies' or the
ladies’ tree. On this the children used to hang
garlands, and would sing around it. These

~! #
* ** *
r : -, *e tº & • * r
& :, ... * * tº. 3
* * *
10 JOAN OF ARC.
antique ladies and mistresses of the woods
Were, it was said, no longer permitted to
assemble round the fountain, barred by their
sins. However, the Church was always mis-
trustful of the old local divinities; and to
ensure their complete expulsion the cure annu-
ally said a mass at the fountain.
Amidst these legends and popular dreams,
eanne Was born. But, along With these, the
land presented a poetry of a far different char-
acter, savage, fierce, and, alas! but too real–
the poetry of War.) War! all passions and
emotions are inclided in this single word. It
is not that every day brings with it assault
and plunder, but it brings the fear of them—
the tocsin, the awaking with a start, and, in
the distant horizon, the lurid light of con-
flagration, - - - a fearful but poetic state
of things. The most prosaic of men, the low-
land Scots, amidst the hazards of the border,
have become poets; in this sinister desert,
which even yet looks as if it were a region
accursed, ballads, wild but long-lived flowers,
have germed and flourished.
Jeanne had her share in these romantic ad-
ventures. She would see poor fugitives seek
refuge in her Village, would assist in shelter-
ing them, give them up her bed, and sleep her-
self in the loft. Once, too, her parents had
been obliged to turn ſugitives; and then when
the flood of brigands had swept by, the family
returned and found the village sacked, the
house devastated, the church burnt.
Thus she knew what war was. Thoroughly
did she understand this anti-Christian state,
and unfeigned was her horror of this reign of
the devil, in which every man died in mortal
sin. She asked herself whether God would
always allow this, whether he would not pre
Scribe a term to such miseries, whether he
Would not send a liberator as he had so often
She knew that Woman had more than once
Saved God’s own people, and that from the
beginning it had been foretold that woman
should bruise the serpent. No doubt she had
ta *... & #
* g. * * * * * * ,
* > . • * > ... " *
* . ... * * • *
a. **
:
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 11
seen over the portal of the churches St. Marga-
ret, together with St. Michael, trampling under
foot the dragon. . . . . If, as all the World said,
the ruin of the kingdom was a woman’s work,
an unnatural mother's, its redemption might
well be a virgin's ; and this, moreover, had
been foretold in a prophecy of Merlin’s ; a
prophecy which, embellished and modified by
the habits af each province, had become alto-
gether Lorraine in Jeanne Dare's country.[Ac-
Cortling to the prophecy current here, it was
a Pucelle of the marches /orraine who was to
save the realm 57 and the prophecy had probably
assumed this form through the recent marriage
of Réné of Anjou with the heiress of the duchy
of Lorraine, a marriage Which, in truth, turned
out very happily for the kingdom of France.
One summer's day, a fast-day, Jeanne being
at noontide in her father's garden, close to the
church, saw a dazzling light on that side, and
heard a voice say, “Jeanne, be a good and
obedient child, go often to church.” The poor
girl was exceedingly alarmed.
Another time she again heard the voice and
saw the radiance ; and, in the midst of the
effulgence, noble figures, one of which had
wings, and seemed a wise prud'homme. “Jeanne,”
said this figure to her, “go to the succor of the
King of France, and thou shalf restore his
kingdom to him.” She replied, all trembling,
“Messire, I am only a poor girl ; I know not
how to ride or lead men-at-arms.” The voice
replied, “Go to M. de Baudricourt, captain of
Vaucouleurs, snd he will conduct thee to the
king. St. Catherine and St. Marguerite will be
thy aids.” She remained stupified and in tears,
as if her Whole destiny had been revealed to her.
The prud’homme was no less than St. Michael,
the Severe archangel of judgments and of bat-
tles. He reappeared to her, inspired her with
courage, and told her “the pity for the king.
dom of France. “ Then appeared sainted
Women, all in white, with countless lights
around, rich crowns on their heads, and their
Yoices soft and moving unto tears; but Jeanne
shed them much more copiously when saints
12 JOAN OF ARC.
and angels left her. “I longed,” she said, “for
the angels to take me away too.” t
If in the midst of happiness like this she
Wept, her tears Were not causeless. Bright and
glorious as these visions were, a change had
from that moment come over her life. She who
had hitherto heard but one voice, that of her
mother, of which her own was the echo, now
heard the powerful voice of angels—and what
sought the heavenly voice P That she should
Quit that mother, quit her dear home. She,
whom but a Word put out of countenance, was
required to mix with men, to address soldiers.
She was obliged to quit for the world and for
War her little garden under the shadow of the
church, where she heard no ruder sounds than
those of its bells, and where the birds ate out of
her hand : for Such was the attractive sweet-
Iness of the young Saint, that animals and the
fowls of the air came to her, as formerly to the
fathers of the desert, in all the trust of God’s
peace.
Jeanne has told us nothing of this º
º she had to undergo : but it is clear
- t it did take place, and that it was of long
ye years elapsed between her
first vision and her fina
OIll (16) Ill OT | Elſe I'
*—
home.
The two authorities, the paternal and the
Celestial, enjoined her two opposite commands.
[The one ordered her to remain obscure, modest,
and laboring ; the other to set out and save the
kingdom.) The angel bade her arm herself.
Her father, rough and honest peasant as he was,
swore that, rather than his daughter should go
away with men-at arms, he would drown her
with his own hands. One or other, disobey she
must. Beyond a doubt this was the greatest
battle she was called upon to fight; those
against the English were play in comparison.
In her family, she encountered not only re-
sistance but temptation ; for they attempted to
marry her, in the hope of winning her back to
more rational notions, as they considered. A
young villager pretended that in her childhood
she had promised to marry him ; and on her
duration, since five


THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 13
denying this, he cited her before the ecclesi-
astical Judge of Toul. It was imagined that,
rather than undertake the effort of speaking in
her own defence, she would submit to marriage.
To the great astonishment of all who knew her,
she went to Toul, appeared in court, and spoke
—She who had been noted for her modest
silence.
In order to escape from the authority of her
family, it behooved her to find in the bosom of
that family some one who would believe in
her; this was the most difficult part of all. In
default of her father, she made her uncle a
convertite to }r missi He took
Ter home with him, as if to attend her aunt,
who was lying-in. She persuaded him to
appeal in her behalf to the sire de Baudricourt,
captain of Waucouleurs. The soldier gave a
cool reception to the peasant, and told him that
the best thing to be done was “to give her a
good Whipping,” and take her back to her
father. She was not discouraged; she would
go to him, and forced her uncle to accompany
her. This was the decisive moment; she quit-
ted forever her village and family, and em-
braced her friends, above all, her good little
friend, Mengette, whom she recommended to
God’s keeping; as to her elder friend and com-
panion, Haumette, her whom she loved most of
all, she preferred quitting without leave-taking.
At length she reached this city of Vaucou-
leurs, attired in her coarse red peasant’s dress,
and took up her lodging with her uncle at the
house of a wheelwright, whose wife conceived a
friendship for her. She got herself taken to
_Baudricourt, and said to him in a firm tone,
“That she came to him from her Lord, to the
d that he might send the dauphin Word to
keep firm and to fix no day of battle with the
enemy, for his Lord would send him Succor in
Mid-Lent. . . . The realm was not the
dauphin's, but her Lord's; nevertheless her
Lord willed the dauphin to be king; and to
hold the realm in trust.”) She added, that de-
spite the dauphin's enemies, he would be king,
and that she would take him to be crowned,
*

14 JOAN OF ARC.
The captain was much astonished; he sus.
pected that the devil must have a hand in the
matter. Thereupon, he constilted the cure, who
apparently partook his doubts. She had not
spoken of her visions to any priest or church-
man. So the curé accompanied the captain to
the wheelwright's house, showed his stole,
and adjured Jeanne to depart if sent by the evil
spirit.
But the people had no doubts; they were
struck With admiration. From all sides crowds
flocked to see her. A gentleman, to try her,
said to her, “Well, sweetheart; after all, the
king Will be driven out of the kingdom and we
must turn English.” She complained to him
of Baudricourt's refusal to take her to the
dauphin; “And yet,” she said, “before Mid
Lent, I must be with the king, even were I to
Wear out my legs to the knees; for no one in the
World, nor kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of
the King of Scotland, can recover the kingdom
of France, and he has no other who can suc-
cor him save myself, albeit I would prefer stay-
ing and spinning with my poor mother, but
this is no work of my own; I must go and do it,
for it is my Lord’s will.”—“And who is your
Lord?”—“God ' " . . . The gentleman was
touched. He pledged her “his faith, his hand
placed in hers, that with God’s guiding he
Would conduct her to the king.” A young
man of gentle birth felt himself touched like-
Wise; and declared that he would follow this
holy maid.
It appears that Baudricourt sent to ask the
king’s pleasure; and that in the interim he took ...
Jeanne to see the duke of Lorraine, who was
ill, and desired to consult her. All that the
duke got from her was advice to appease God
by reconciling himself with his wife. Never-
theless, he gave her encouragement.
On returning to Vaucouleurs she found there
a messenger from the king, who authorized her
to repair to court. The reverse of the battle of
herrings had determined his counsellors to try
any and every means. Jeanne had proclaimed
the battle and its result on the very day it was
THE MALD OF ORLEANS. 15
fought; and the people of Vaucouleurs, no
longer doubting her mission, subscribed to
equip her and buy her a horse. Baudricourt
only gave her a sword.
At this moment an obstacle arose. Her par-
ents, informed of her approaching departure,
nearly lost their senses, and made the strongest
efforts to retain her, commanding, threatening.
She withstood this last trial; and got a letter
written to them, beseeching them to forgive
her.
The journey she was about to undertake was
a rough and a most dangerous one. The Whole
country was overrun by the men-at-arms of
both parties. There was neither road nor
bridge, and the rivers were swollen; it was the
month of February, 1429.
To travel at such a time with five or six men-
at-arms was enough to alarm a young girl.
An English woman or a German would never
have risked such a step; the indelicacy of the
proceeding would have horrified her. Jeanne
was nothing moved by it; she was too pure to
entertain any fears of the kind. She wore a
man’s dress, a dress she wore to the last; this
close and closely fastened dress was her best
safeguard. Yet was she young and beautiful.
T}ut there was around her, even to those Who
were most with her, a barrier raised by relig-
ion and fear. The youngest of the gentlemen
who formed her escort deposes that though
sleeping near her, the shadow of an impure
thought never crossed his mind.
She traversed with heroic serenity these dis-
tricts, either desert or infested with soldiers.
Her companions regretted having set out with
her, some of them thinking that she might be
perhaps a witch; and they felt a strong desire
to abandon her. For herself, she was so tran-
quil that she would stop at every town to hear
mass. “Fear nothing,” she said. “God
guides me my way; 'tis for this I was born.”
And again, “My brothers in paradise tell me
What'I am to do.”
Charles VII.'s court was far from being unan-
imous in favor of the Pucelle. This inspired.
16 JOAN OF ARC.
maid, coming from Lorraine, and encouraged
by the duke of Lorraine, could not fail to
strengthen the queen's and her mother's party,
the party of Lorraine and of Anjou, with the
king. An ambuscade was laid for the Pucelle
some distance from Chinon, and it was a miracle
she escaped. . .
So strong was the opposition to her, that
when she arrived, the question of her being ad-
mitted to the king’s presence was debated for
two days in the council. Her enemies hoped to
adjourn the matter indefinitely, by proposing
that an inquiry should be instituted concerning
her in her native place. Fortunately, she had
friends as well; the two queens, we may be as
sured, and, , especially, the duke of Alençon,
who, having recently left English keeping, was
impatient to carry the war into the north in
order to recover his duchy. The men of Or-
léans, to whom Dunois had been promising this
heavenly aid ever since the 12th of February,
sent to the king and claimed the Pucelle.
At last the king received her, and surrounded
by all the splendor of his court, in the hope,
apparently, of disconcerting her. It was even-
ing; the light of fifty torches illumed the
hall, and a brilliant array of nobles and above
three hundred knights were assembled round
the monarch. Every one was curious to see
the sorceress, or, as it might be, the inspired
maid.
The sorceress was eighteen years of age; she
was a beautiful and most desirable girl, of good
height, and with a sweet and heart-touching
voice.
She entered the splendid circle with all hu-
mility, “like a poor little shepherdess,” dis.
tinguished at the first glance the king, who had
purposely kept himself amidst the crowd of
courtiers, and, although at first he maintained
that he was not the king, she fell down and
embraced his knees. But as he had not been
crowned, she only styled him dauphin :-" Gen-
tle dauphin,” she addressed him, “my name is
Jehanne la Pucelle. The King of Heaven sends
you word by me that you shall be consecrated
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 17
and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be
lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King
of France.” The king then took her aside, and,
after a moment's consideration, both changed
countenance. She told him, as she subsequently
acknowledged to her confessors: “I am com-
missioned by my Lord to tell you that you
are the true heir to the French throne, and the
king's son.” + -
A circumstance which awoke still greater as-
tonishment and a sort of fear is, that the first
prediction which fell from her lips was accom-
plished the instant it was made. A soldier
who was struck by her beauty, and who ex-
pressed his desires aloud with the coarseness
of the camp, and swearing by his God: “Alas!”
she exclaimed, “ thou deniest him, and art. So
near thy death !” A moment after, he fell into
the river and was drowned. - -
Her enemies started the objection, that if she
knew the future it must be through the devil.
Four or five bishops were got together to exam.
ine her; but through fear, no doubt, of com:
promising themselves with either of the parties
which divided the court, they referred the ex-
amination of the University of Poitiers, in which
great city was both university, parliament, and
a number of able men. *
The Archbishop of Reims, Chancellor of
France, President of the Royal Council, issued
his mandate to the doctors and to the profess
ors of theology—the one priests, the others
monks—and charged them to examine the
Pucelle.
The doctors introduced and placed in a hall,
the young maid seated herself at the end of the
bench, and replied to their questionings. She
related with a simplicity that rose to grandeur
: / * According to a somewhat later, but still very prob-
| able account, she reminded him of a circumstance known
ſº
t
to himself alone; namely, that one morning in his oratory
he had prayed to God to restore his kingdom to him
i) if he were the lawful heir, but that if he were not, that
- T2He would grant him the mercy not to be killed or thrown
into prison, but to be able to take refuge in Spain or in
Scotland.—Sala, Exemples de Hardiesse MS. Français, de
la Bibl. Royale, No. 180, '. -
18 JOAN OF ARC.
|
the apparitions of angels with which she had
been visited, and their words. A single objec-
tion was raised by a Dominican, but it was a
serious one—“Jehanne thou sayest that God
"wishes to deliver the people of France; if such
be his will, he has no need of men-at-arms.”
She was not disconcerted:—“Ah ! my God,”
was her reply," the men-at-arms will fight,
and God will give the victory.”
Another was more difficult to be satisfied——a
Limousin, brother Seguin, professor of theology
at the University of Poitiers, a “very sour
man,” says the chronicle. He asked her, in his
Limousin French, what tongue that pretended
celestial voice spoke 2 Jehanne answered, a
little too hastily, “A better than yours.”—
“Dost thou believe in God 2", said the doctor,
in a rage: “Now, God Wills us not to have faith
in thy words, except thou showest a sign.”
She replied, “I have not come to Poitiers to
show signs or work miracles; my sign will be
the raising of the siege of Orléans. Give me
men-at-arms, few or many, and I will go.”
Meanwhile, it happened at Poitiers as at
Waucouleurs, her sanctity seized the hearts of
the people. In a moment all were for her.
Women, ladies, citizens' wives, all flocked to
see her at the house where she was staying,
with the wife of an advocate to the parliament,
and all returned full of emotion. Men went
there too; and counsellors, advocates, old hard-
ened judges, who had suffered themselves to be
taken thither incredulously, when they had
heard her, wept even as the women did, and
said, “The maid is of God."
The examiners themselves went to see her,
with the king's equerry; and on their recom-
mencing their never-ending examination,
Quoting learnedly to her, and proving to her
from the Writings of all the doctors that she
ought not to be believed, “Hearken,” she said
to them, “there is more in God's book than in
yours. . . . I know neither A nor B; but I come
commissioned by God to raise the siege of Or.
léans, and to have the dauphin crowned at
Reims. . . . First, however, I must write
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 19
to the English, and summon them to depart;
God will have it so. Have you paper and ink?
Write as I dictate. . . . To you ! Suffort,
Classidas, and La Poule, Isummon you, on the
part of the King of Heaven, to depart to Eng-
land.” . . . They wrote as she dictated;
she had won over her very judges.
They pronounced as their opinion, that it
was lawful to have recourse to the young
maiden. The Archbishop of Embrun, who had
been consulted, pronounced similarly; support-
ing his opinion by showing how God had fre-
Quently revealed to virgins, for instance, to the
Sibyls, what he concealed from men; how the
demon could not make a covenant With a virgin;
and recommending it to be ascertained whether
Jehanne were a virgin. Thus, being pushed
to extremity, and either not being able or being
unwilling to explain the delicate distinction be-
twixt good and evil revelations, knowledge
humbly referred a ghostly matter to a corporeal
test, and made this grave question of the spirit
depend on woman’s mystery.
As the doctors could not decide, the ladies
did; and the honor of the Pucelle was vindi-
cated by a jury, with the good Queen of Sicily,
the king’s mother-in-law, at their head. This
farce over and some Franciscans who had been
deputed to inquire into Jehanne's character
in her own country bringing the most favorable
report, there was no time to lose. Orléans
was crying out for succor, and Dunois sent en-
treaty upon entreaty. The Pucelle was equip-
ped and a kind of establishment arranged for
her. For squire she had a brave knight, of
mature years, Jean Daulon, one of Dunois’s
household, and one of its best Conducted and
most discreet members. She had also a noble
page, tWO heralds-at-arms, a maître d’hotel, and
two valets; her brother, Pierre Darc, too, was
One of her attendants. Jean Pasquerel, a
brother eremite of the order of St. Augustin,
was given her for confessor. Generally speak-
ing, the monks, particularly the mendicants,
were staunch supporters of this marvel of in-
spiration.
20 JOAN OF ARC,
And it was in truth, for those who beheld
the sight, a marvel to see for the first time
Jehanne Darc in her white armor and on her
beautiful black horse, at her side a small axe,
and the sword of St. Catherine, which sword
had been discovered on her intimation behind
the altar of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois. In her
hand she bore a White standard embroidered
with fleur-de-lis, and on which God was re.
presented with the World in his hands, having
on his right and left two angels, each holding a
fleur-de-iis, “I will not,” she said, “use my
sword to slay any one;” and she added, that
although she loved her sword, she loved “forty
times more” her standard. Let us contrast the
two parties at the moment of her departure for
Orléans.
The English had been much reduced by
their long winter siege. After Salisbury’s
death, many men-at-arms whom he had en-
gaged thought themselves relieved from their
engagements and departed. The Burgundians,
too, had been recalled by their duke. When
the most important of the English bastilles was
forced, into which the defenders of some other
bastilles had thrown themselves, only five
hundred men were found in it. In all, the
English force may have amounted to two or
three thousand men; and of this small number
part were French, and no doubt not to be much
depended upon by the English.
Collected together, they would have consti-
tuted a respectable force; but they were dis-
tributed among a dozen bastilles or boulevards,
between which there was, for the most part, no
Communication; a disposition of their forces,
which proves that Talbot and the other Eng-
lish leaders had hitherto been rather brave and
lucky than intelligent and skilful. It was evi-
dent that each of these small isolated forts
Would be weak against the large city which
they pretended to hold in check; that its
numerous population, rendered warlike by a
Siege, would at last besiege the besiegers.
()n reading the formidable list of the cap-
tains who threw themselves into Orléans, La
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 21
Hire, Saintrailles, Gaucourt, Culan, Coaraze,
Armagnac; and remembering that independ-
ently of the Bretons under Marshal de Retz,
and the Gascons under Marshal de St. Sévere —
the captain of Châteaudun, Florent d’Illiers,
had brought all the nobility of the neighbor
hood with him to this short expedition, the de-
liverance of Orléans seems less miraculous.
It must, however, be acknowledged that for
this great force to act with efficiency, the one
essential and indispensable requisite, unity of
action, Was Wanting. Had skill and intelli-
gence sufficed to impart it, the want would
have been supplied by Dunois; but there was
something more required—authority, and more
than royal authority too, for the king's cap-
tains were little in the habit of obeying the
king; to subject these Savage, untamable
spirits, God’s authority was called for. Now
the God of this age was the Virgin much
more than Christ; and it behooved that the
Virgin should descend upon earth, be a popu-
lar Virgin, young, beauteous, gentle, bold.
War had changed men into wild beasts;
these beasts had to be restored to human
shape, and be converted into docile Christian
men—a great and a hard change. Some of
these Armagnac captains were, perhaps, the
most ferocious mortals that ever existed; as
may be inferred from the name of but one of
them, a name that strikes terror, Gilles de Retz,
the original of Blue Beard.
One hold, however, was left upon their
souls ; they had cast off humanity and
nature, without having been able wholly to
disengage themselves from religion. These
brigands, it is true, hit upon strange means of
reconciling religion and robbery. One of them,
the Gascon La Hire, gave vent to the original
remark, “Were God to turn man-atarms, he
would be a plunderer:” and when he went on
a foray he offered up his little Gascon prayer
Without entering too minutely into his wants,
conceiving that God would take a hint—“Sire
God, I pray thee to do for La Hire what La Hire


22 JOAN OF ARC,
would do for thee wert thou a captain and
Wert, La Ełire God.” ”
It was at once a risible and a touching sight
to see the sudden conversion of the old Armag-
nac brigands. They did not reform by halves.
La Hire durst no longer swear; and the Pu-
celle took compassion on the violence he did
himself, and allowed him to swear “by his
baton.” The devils found themselves all of a
Sudden turned into little saints.
The Pucelle had begun by requiring them to
give up their mistresses, and attend to con-
fession. Next, on their march along the Loire,
She had an altar raised in the open air, at
Which she partook of the communion, and they
as well. The beauty of the season, the charm
of a spring in Touraine must have added singu-
larly to the religious supremacy of the young
maid. They themselves had grown young
again, had utterly forgotten what they were
and felt, as in the spring-time of life, full of
good-will and of hope, all young like her, all
children. - . . With her they commenced,
and unreservedly, a new life. Where was she
leading them 2 Little did it matter to them.
They would have followed her not to Orléans
only, but just as readily to Jerusalem. And
the English were welcome to go thither too: in
a letter she addressed to them she graciously
proposed that they all, French and English,
should unite, and proceed conjointly to deliver
the Holy Sepulchre.
The first night of encamping she lay down all
armed, having no females with her ; and, not
being yet accustomed to the hardships of such
a mode of life, felt indisposed the next day. As
to danger, she knew not what it meant. She
wanted to cross whe river and advance on the
northern or English side, right among their
bastilles, asserting that the enemy would not
budge ; but the captains would not listen to
Ther, and they followed the other bank, crossing
* “Sire Dieu, je te prie de faire pour La Hire ce que La
Hire ferait pour toi, si tu ètais capitaine et si La Hire
état Dieu.” T Mémoires concernant la Pucelle, Collection
|Petitot, viii. 127.
THE HAID OF OR LEANG. 23
two leagues below Orléans. Dunois came to
meet her : “I bring you,” she said, “the best
succor mortal ever received, that of the King
of Heaven. It is no succor of mine, but from
God himself, who, at the prayer of St. Louis
and St. Charlemagne, has taken pity on the
town of Orléans and will not allow the enemy
to have at one and the same time the duke's
body and this city.”
She entered the city at eight o'clock of the
evening of April 29th, and So great and so
eager was the crowd, striving to touch her
horse at least, that her progress through the
streets was exceedingly slow ; they gazed at
her “ as if they were beholding God.” She
rode along, speaking kindly to the people, and,
after offering up prayers in the church, re-
paired to the house of the Duke of Orléans's
treasurer ; an honorable man, whose wife and
daughter gladly welcomed her; she slept with
Charlotte, one of the daughters.
She had entered the city with the supplies ;
but the main body of the relieving force fell
down as far as Blois, where it crossed the river.
Nevertheless, she was eager for an immediate
attack on the English bastilles, and would sum-
mon the northern bastilles to surrender, a sum-
mons which she repeated, and then proceeded
to summon the southern bastilles. Here Glas-
dale overwhelmed her with abuse, calling her
cowherd and prostitute (vachere et ribaude). In
reality they believed her to be a sorceress, and
felt great terror of her. They detained her
herald-at-arms and were minded to burn him,
in the hope that it would break the charm; but
first they considered it advisable to consult the
doctors of the University of Paris. Besides,
Dunois threatened to retaliate on their herald,
whom he had in his power. As to the Pucelle,
* She seemed, at the least, an angel, a creature above
all physical wants. At times she would continue a
whole day on horseback without alighting, eating, or
drinking and would only take in the evening some sippets
of bread in wine and water. See the evidence of the
various witnesses, and the Chronique de la Pucelle, éd.
|Buchon (1827), p. 309.
24 JOAN OF AR0.
she had no fears for her herald, but sent
another, saying, “Go tell Talbot if he will ap-
pear in arms, so will I. . . . If he can take me,
let him burn me.” w
The army delaying, Dunois ventured to sally
forth in search of it, and the Pucelle, left be-
hind, found herself absolute mistress of the
city, where all authority but hers seemed to be
at an end. She caracolled round the walls, and
the people followed her fearlessly. The next
day she rode out to reconnoitre the English
bastilles, and young Women and children went
too, to look at these famous bastilles, where all
remained still and betrayed no sign of move-
ment. She led back the crowd with her to
attend vespers at the church of Saint-Croix;
and as she wept at prayers, they all Wept like-
wise. The citizens were beside themselves ;
they were raised above all fears, were drunk
with religion and with War—seized by one of
those formidable accesses of fanaticism in which
men can do all and believe all, and in which
they are scarcely less terrible to friends than
to enemies,
Charles VII.'s chancellor, the Archbishop of
Reims, had detained the small army at Blois.
The old politician was far from imagining such
resistless enthusiasm, or, perhaps, he dreaded
it. So he repaired to Orléans with great un-
willingness. The Pucelle, followed by the
citizens and priests singing hymns, Went to
meet him, and the whole procession passed and
repassed the English bastilles. The army en-
tered protected by priests and a girl.
This girl, who, with all her enthusiasm and
inspiration, had great penetration, was quickly
aware of the cold malevolence of the new-comers
and perceived that they wanted to do without
her at the risk of ruining all. Dunois having
owned to her that he feared the enemy's being
reinforced by the arrival of fresh troops under
Sir John Falstoff, “Bastard, bastard,” she said
to him, “in God’s name I command thee as
soon as you know of his coming to apprize me
of it, for if he passes without my knowledge, I
promise you that I will take off your head."
THE MIAID OF OR LEA.N.S. 25
She was right in supposing that they wished
to do without her. As she was Snatching a
moment's rest with her young bedfellow, Char-
lotte, she suddenly starts up and exclaims,
“Great God, the blood of our countrymen is
running on the ground. . . . 'Tis ill done ! Why
did they not awake me 2 Quick, my arms, my
horse !” She was armed in a moment, and find-
ing her young page playing below, “Cruel
boy,” she said to him, “not to tell me that the
blood of France was spilling.” She set off at
a gallop, and coming upon the Wounded who
were being brought in, “Never,” she exclaimed,
“ have I seen a Frenchman’s blood without my
hair rising up !”
On her arrival the flying rallied. Dunois
who had not been apprized any more than she,
came up at the same time. The bastille (one of
the northern bastilles) was once more attacked.
Talbot endeavored to cover it, but fresh troops
sallying out of Orléans, the Pucelle put her-
self at their head, Talbot drew off his men, and
the fort was carried.
Many of the English who had put on the
priestly habit by Way of protection were
brought in by the Pucelle, and placed in her
own house to ensure their safety ; she knew
the ferocity of her followers. It was her first
victory, the first time she had ever seen a field
of carnage. She wept on Seeing so many human
beings who had perished unconfessed. She
desired the benefit of confession for herself
and retainers, and as the next day was Ascen-
sion Day, declared her intention of communi-
cating and of passing the day in prayer.
They took advantage of this to hold a coun-
cil without her, at which it was determined to
cross the Loire and attack St. Jean-le-Blanc,
the bastille which most obstructed the intro-
duction of supplies making at the same time a
false attack on the side of La Beauce. The
Pucelle's enviers told her of the false attack
only ; but Dunois apprized her of the truth.
The English then did what they ought to have
done before ; they concentrated their strength.
Burning down the bastille, which was the ob-
26 JOAN OF ARC.
ject of the intended attack; they fell back on
the two other bastilles on the South—the Au-
gustins' and the Tournelles; but the Augus.
tins' was at once attacked and carried. This
success again was partly due to the Pucelle ;
for the French being seized with a panic ter.
ror, and retreating precipitately towards the
floating bridge which had been thrown over
the river, the Pucelle and La Hire disengaged
themselves from the crowd, and, crossing in
boats, took the English in flank.
There remained the Tournelles, before which
bastille the conquerers passed the night ; but
they constrained the Pucelle, who lºad not
broken her fast the whole day (it was Friday),
to recross the Loire. Meanwhile the Council
assembled : and in the evening it was an-
nounced to the Pucelle that they had unani-
mously determined, as the city was now Well
Victualled, to wait for reinforcements before
attacking the Tournelles. It is difficult to sup-
pose such to have been the serious intention of
the chiefs; the English momentarily expecting
the arrival of Sir John Falstoff with fresh
troops, all delay was dangerous. Probably the
object was to deceive the Pucelle, and to de-
prive her of the honor of the success to which
she had largely prepared the way. But she
was not to be caught in the snare.
“You have been at your council,” she said,
“I have been at mine ;” then, turning to her
chaplain, “Come to-morrow at break of day
and quit me not; I shall have much to do—
blood will go out of my body; I shall be
wounded below my bosom.”
In the morning her host endeavored to detain
her. Stay, Jeanne,” he said, “let us partake
together of this fish which is just fresh
Caught.” “Keep it,” she answered gaily,
“keep it till night, when I shal' come back
Over the bridge, after having take., the Tour-
nelles, and I will bring you a godden to eat of
it. With us.” &
-:
* “The witness Colette deposed that Godon [Godden Fl
was a nickname for the English, taken from their com-
lmon exclamation of ‘God damn it,” So that this Vulgar-
TIME MAID OF OR LEAN.S. 2?
Then she hurried forward With a number of
men-at-arms and of citizens to the porte de
JBourgoyne, which she found kept closed by
the sire de Gaucourt, grand master of the
king’s household. “You are a wicked man,”
said Jeanne to him; “ but whether you will or
not, the men-at-arms shall pass.” Gaucourt
felt that with this excited multitude his life
hung by a thread; and besides his own follow.
ers would not obey him. The crowd opened a
gate and forced another which was close to it.
The sun was rising upon the Loire at the
very moment this multitude were throwing
themselves into boats. However, when they
reached the Tournelles, they found their Want
of artillery, and sent for it into the town. At
last they attacked the redoubt which covered
the bastile. The English made a brave de-
fence. Perceiving that the assailants began
to slacken in their efforts, the Pucelle threw
herself into the fosse, seized a ladder, and was
rearing it against the Wall when she was struck
by an arrow betwixt her neck and shoulder.
The English rushed out to make her prisoner,
but she was borne off. Removed from the
scene of conflict, laid on the grass and dis-
armed, when she saw how (leep the wound was
—the arrow's point came out behind——she was
terrified and burst into tears. Suddenly she
rises; her holy ones had appeared to her; she
repels the men-at-arms who were for charming
the wound by words, protesting that she
would not be cured contrary to the Divine
will. She only allowed a dressing of oil to be
applied to the wound, and then confessed her-
Self.
Meanwhile no progress was made and it was
near nightfall. Dunois himself ordered the
retreat to be sounded. “Rest awhile,” she
said, “ eat and drink;” and she betook herself
to prayers in a vineyard. A Basque soldier
had taken from the hands of the Pucelle’s
Squire her banner, that banner so dreaded by
the enemy. “As soon as the standard shall
ity was a national characteristic in the reign of Henry
VI.”—Note, p. 78, vol. iii., Turner's Hist, of England.
28 JOAN OF ARC.
touch the wall,” she exclaimed, “you can
enter.”—“It touches it.”—“Then enter, all is
yours.” And in fact the assailants, trans.
ported beyond themselves, mounted “as if at
a bound.” The English were at this moment
attacked on both sides at once.
For the citizens of Orléans, who had eagerly
watched the struggle from the other side of
the Loire, could no longer contain themselves,
but opened their gates and rushed upon the
bridge. One of the arches being broken,
they threw over it a sorry plank; and a knight
of St. John, completely armed, Was the first to
venture across. At last the bridge was re-
paired after a fashion, and the crowd flowed
over. The English, seeing this sea of people
rushing on, thought that the whole World was
got together. Their imaginations grew ex-
cited; some saw St. Aignan, the patron of the
city; others the Archangel Michael, fighting
on the French side. As Glasdale was about to
retreat from the redoubt into the bastille,
across a small bridge which connected the two,
the bridge was shivered by a cannon-ball, and
he was precipitated into the water below and
drowned before the eyes of the Pucelle, whom
he had so coarsely abused. “Ah!” she exclaimed
“how I pity thy soul.” There were five hun-
dred men in the bastille: they were all put to
the sword.
Not an Englishman remained to the South of
the Loire. On the next day, Sunday, those
who were on the north side abandoned their
bastilles, their artillery, their prisoners, their
sick. Talbot and Suffolk directed the retreat,
which was made in good order and With a bold
front. The Pucelle forbade pursuit, as they
retired of their own accord. But before they
had lost sight of the city, she ordered an altar
to be raised on the plain, had mass sung, and
the Orléanois returned thanks to God in the
presence of the enemy (Sunday, May 8).
The effect produced by the deliverance of
Orléans was beyond calculation. All recog-
nized it to be the work of a Supernatural
power; which, though some ascribed to the
--~~~~
.* *~.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. \ 29/
devil’s agency, most referred to God, and it be-
gan to be the general impression that Charles
VII. had right on his side.
Six days after the raising of the siege, Ger-
son published a discourse to prove that this
marvellous event might be reasonably con-
sidered God’s own doing. The good Christine (le
Pisan also wrote to congratulate her sex; and
many treatises were published, more favorable
than hostile to the Pucelle, and even by Sub-
jects of the Duke of Burgundy, the ally of the
English. .
CORONATION OF CHARLES WIJ.
Charles VII,’s policy was to seize the oppor-
tunity, march boldly from Orléans to Reims,
and lay hand on the crown —seemingly a rash
but in reality a safe step—before the English
had recovered from their panic. Since they
had committed the capital blunder of not hav-
ing yet crowned their young Henry VI., it
behooved to be beforehand with them. He
who was first annointed king would remain
king. It would also be a great thing for Charles
VII. to make his royal progress through Eng-
lish France, to take possession, to show that
in every part of France the king was at home.
Such was the counsel of the Pucelle alone,
and this heroic folly was consummate wisdom.
The politic and shrewd among the royal coun-
sellors, those whose judgment was held in most
esteem, Smiled at the idea, and recommended
proceeding slowly and surely: in other words,
giving the Hônglish time to recover their spirits.
They all, too, had an interest of their own in
the advice they gave. The Duke of Alençon,
recommended marching into Normandy—with a
View to the recovery of Alençon. Others, and
they were listened to, counselled staying
upon the Loire and reducing the smaller towns.
This was the most timid counsel of all; but it
Was to the interest of the louses of Orléans and
of Anjou, and of Poitevin, La Trémouille,
Charles VII.’s favorite.
Suffolk had thrown himself into Jargeau: it
30 JOAN OF ARC.
was attacked, and carried by assault. Beau-
gency was next taken, before Talbot could re-
ceive reinforcements sent him by the regent,
under the command of Sir John Falstoff. The
constable, Richemont, who had long remained
secluded in his own domains, came with his
Bretons, contrary to the wishes of either the
king or the Pucelle, to the aid of the victorious
army,
A battle was imminent and Richemont was
come to carry off its honors. Talbot and Fals-
toff had effected a junction; but, strange to tell,
though the circumstance paints to the life the
state of the country and the fortuitous nature
of the war, no one knew where to find the Eng-
lish army lost in the desert of La Beauce, the
which district was then overrun with thickets
and brambles. A stag led to the discovery:
chased by the French Vanguard, the scared
rushed into the English ranks.
The English happened to be on their march,
and had not as usual entrenched themselves
behind their stakes. Talbot alone wished to
give battle, maddened as he was at having
shown his back to the French at Orléans. Sir
John Falstoff, on the contrary, who had gained
the battle of herrings, did not require to fight
to recover his reputation, but with much pru-
dence advised, as the troops were discouraged,
remaining on the defensive. The French men-
at-arms did not wait for the English leaders to
make up their minds, but, coming up at a gal-
lop, encountered but slight resistance. Talbot
would fight, seeking, perhaps, to fall; but he
only succeeded in getting made prisoner. The
pursuit was murderous; and the bodies of two
thousand of the English strewed the plain. At
the sight of such numbers of dead La Pucelle
shed tears; but she wept much more bitterly
when she saw the brutality of the soldiery, and
how they treated prisoners who had no ransom
to give. Perceiving one of them felled dying
to the ground, she was no longer mistress of
herself, but threw herself from her horse,
raised the poor man's head, sent for a priest,
comforted him, and smoothed his way to death.
THE MALD OF ORÉEANS, 31
After this battle of Patay (June 28 or 29),
the hour was come, or never, to hazard the ex-
pedition to Reims. The politic still advised
remaining on the Loire; and the securing pos.
session of Cosne and La Charité. This time
they spoke in vain; timid Voices could no
longer gain a hearing. Every day there flocked
to the camp men from all the provinces, at-
tracted by the reports of the Pucelle's miracles,
believing in her only, and, like her, longing to
lead the king to Reims. There was an ir-
resistible impulse abroad to push forward and
drive out the English—the spirit both of pil-
grimage and of crusade. The indolent young
monarch himself was at last hurried away by
this popular tide, which swelled and rolled in
north Wards. King, courtiers, politicians, en-
thusiasts, fools, and wise, were off together,
either Voluntarily or compulsorily. At start-
ing they were twelve thousand; but the mass
gathered bulk as it rolled along, fresh comers
following fresh comers. They who had no
armor joined the holy expedition with no other
than a leathern jack, as archers or courtiliers
(dagsmen), although, may be, of gentle blood.
The army marched from Gien on the 28th of
June, and passed before Auxerre without at-
tempting to enter; this city being in the hands
of the Duke of Burgundy, whom it was advis-
able to observe terms with. Troyes was garri-
soned partly by Burgundians, partly by Eng-
lish ; and they ventured on a sally at the first
approach of the royal army. There seemed
little hope of forcing so large and Well garri-
soned a city, and especially without artillery.
And how delay, in order to invest it regularly P
On the other hand, how advance and leave SO
strong a place in their rear 2 Already, too, the
army was suffering from want of provisions.
Would it not be better to return ? The politic
were full of triumph at the verification of their
forebodings.
There was but one old Armagnac councellor,
the president Maçon, who held the contrary
opinion, and who understood that in an enter-
prise of the kind the wise part was the enthus-
32 JOAN OF AIRC.
iastic one, that in a popular crusade reasoning
was beside the mark. “When the king under-
took this expedition,” he argued, “it was not
because he had all overwhelming force, or be-
cause he had full coffers, or because it was his
opinion that the attempt was practicable, but
because Jeanne told him to march forward and "
be crowned at Reims, and that he would en-
counter but little opposition, such being God’s
good pleasure. &
Here the Pucelle, coming and knocking at
the door of the room in which the council was
held, assured them that they should enter
Troyes in three days. “We would willingly
wait six,” said the chancellor, “were we cer-
tain that you spoke sooth.”—“Six you shall
enter to-morrow.”
She snatches up her standard; all the troops
follow her to the fosse, and they throw into it
fagots, doors, tables, rafters, Whatever they
can lay their hands upon. So quickly was the
whole done, that the citizens thought there
would soon be no fosses. The English began
to lose their head as at Orléans, and fancied
tiley saw a cloud of white butterflies hovering
around the magic standard. The citizens for
their part were filled with alarm, remembering
that it was in their city the treaty had been
concluded which disinherited Charles VII.
They feared being made an example of, took
refuge in the two churches, and cried out to
Surrender. The garrison asked no better,
Opened a conference, and capitulated on con-
dition of being allowed to march out with what
they had. -
What they had was principally prisoners,
Frenchmen. No stipulation on behalf of these
unhappy men had been made by Charles's
Counsellors, who had drawn up the terms
of surrender. The Pucelle alone thought of
them; and when the English were about to
march forth with their manacled prisoners, she
Stationed herself at the gates, exclaiming, “O
my God they shall not bear them away !”
Six B detained them and the king paid their
I'àIłSOI/l.
THE MAID OF OR LEANS. 33
Master of Troyes on the 9th of July, on the
15th he made his entry into Reims; and on
the 17th (Sunday) he was crowned. That very
morning the Pucelle, fulfilling the gospel com-
mand to seek reconciliation before offering
sacrifice, dictated a beautiful letter to the Duke
of Burgundy ; without recalling anything pain-
ful, without irritating, without humiliating
any one, she said to him with infinite tact and
3.
nobleness—“ Forgive one another heartily, as
good Christians ought to do.” -
Charles VII. was anointed by the archbishop
with oil out of the holy ampulla, brought from
Saint-Remy’s. Conformably with the antique
ritual, he was installed on his throne by the
spiritual peers, and served by Jay peers both
during the ceremony of the coronation and the
banquet which followed. Then he went to St.
Marculph's to touch for the king's evil. All
ceremonies thus duly observed, without the
omission of a singular particular, Charles was
at length, according to the belief of the time,
the true and the only king. The English might
now crown Henry; but in the estimation of the
people this new coronation Would only be a
parody of the other.
At the moment the crown was placed on
Charles's head, the Pucelle threw herself on
her knees and embraced his legs with a flood of
tears. All present melted into tears as well.
She is reported to have addressed him as
follows: “O gentle king, now is fulfilled the
will of God, who was pleased that I should
raise the siege of Orléans, and should bring you
to your city of Reims to be crowned and
anointed, showing you to be true king and
rightful possessor of the realm of France.”
The Pucelle was in the right: she had done
and finished what she had to do; and so amidst
the joy of this triumphant solemnity, she enter-
tained the idea, the presentiment, perhaps, of
her approaching end. When on entering Reims
With the king the citizens came out to meet
them singing hymns, “Oh, the worthy, devout
people !” she exclaimed . . . “If I must
die, happy should I feel to be buried here.”—
34 - JOAN OF ARC.
“Jehanne,” said the archbishop to her, “where
then do you think you will die?”—“I have no
idea; where it shall please God. . . . I wish
it would please Him that I should go and tend
sheep with my sister and my brothers. - e
They would be so happy to see me! . . . At
least I have done what our Lord commanded
me to do.” And raising her eyes to heaven, she
returned thanks. All who saw her at that mo-
ment, says the old chronicle, “believed more
firmly than ever that she was sent of God.”
CARDINAL WINCHESTER.
Such was the virtue of the coronation, and its
all-powerful effect in northern France, that from
this moment the expedition seemed but to be a
peaceable taking of possession, a triumph, a
following up of the Reims festivities. The
roads became smooth before the king; the cities
opened their gates and lowered their draw-
bridges. The march was as of a royal pilgrimage
from the Cathedral of Reims to St. Medard's,
Soissons, and Notre-Dame, Laon. Stopping for
a few days in each city, and then riding on at
his pleasure, he made his entry into Château-
Thierii, Provins, whence, rested and refreshed,
he resumed his triumphal progress towards
Picardy.
Were there any English left in France 2–It
might be doubted. Since the battle of Patay,
not a word had been heard about Bedford; not
that he lacked activity or courage, but that he
had exhausted his last resources. One fact
alone will serve to show the extent of his dis-
tress—he could no longer pay his parliament:
the courts were therefore closed, and even the
entry of the young King Henry could not be
circumstantially recorded, according to Custom,
in the registers, “for want of parchment.”
So situated, Bedford could not choose his
means; and he was obliged to have recourse to
the man whom of all the world he least loved,
his uncle, the rich and all-powerful Cardinal
Winchester, who, not less a varicious than am-
bitious, began haggling about terms, and Spec-
-
THE MAID OF ORIEANS, 35
tilated upon delay. The agreement with him
was not concluded until the 1st of July, two
days after the defeat of Patay, Charles VII.
then entered Troyes, Reims—Paris was in
alarm, and Winchester was still in England.
To make Paris safe, Bedford Summoned the
Duke of Burgundy, who came indeed, but
almost alone; and the only advantage which
the regent derived from his presence was get-
ting him to figure in an assembly of notables,
to speak therein, and again to recapitulate the
lamentable story of his father’s death. This
done, he took his departure: leaving With Bed-
ford, as all the aid he could spare, some Picard
men-at-arms, and even exacting in return pos-
session of the city of Meaux.
There was no hope but in Winchester. This
priest reigned in England. His nephew, the
Protector, Gloucester, the leader of the party
of the nobles, had ruined himself by his im-
prudence and follies. From year to year his
influence at the council table had diminished,
and Winchester’s had increased. He reduced
the protector to a cipher, and even managed
yearly to pare down the income assigned to the
protectorate; this, in a land where each man
is strictly valued according to his rental, was
murdering him. Winchester, on the contrary,
was the wealthiest of the English princes, and
one of the great pluralists of the world. Power
follows as wealth grows. The cardinal and the
rich bishops of Canterbury, of York, of London,
of Ely, and Batlı, constituted the council, and
if they allowed laymen to sit there, it was only
on condition that they should not open their
lips; to important sittings, they were not even
summoned. The English government, as might
have been foreseen from the monaent the house
of Lancaster ascended the throne, had become
entirely episcopal; a fact evident on the face
of the acts passed at this period. . In 1429 the
chancellor opens the parliament. With a tremen-
dous denunciation of heresy; and the council
prepares articles against the nobles, whom he
accuses of brigandage, and of Surrounding
themselves with armies of retainers, &c.
36 JOAN OF ARC.
In order to raise the cardinal's power to the
highest pitch, it required Bedford to be sunk
as low in France as Gloucester was in England,
that lie should be reduced to summon Win-
chester to his aid, and that the latter, at the
head of an army, should come over and crown
the young Henry VI. Winchester had the army
ready. Having been charged by the pope with
a crusade against the Hussites of Bohemia, he
had raised, under this pretext, several thousand
men. The pope had assigned him for this Ob-
ject the money arising from the sale of indul-
gences; the council of England gave him more
money still to detain his levies in France. To
the great astonishment of the crusaders they
found themselves sold by the Cardinal, Who
was paid twice over for them, paid for an army
which served him to make himself king.
With this army Winchester was to make sure
of Paris, and to bring and crown young Henry
there. But this coronation could only secure
the cardinal's power in proportion as he should
succeed in decrying that of Charles VII., in
dishonoring his victories and ruining him in the
minds of the people. Now he had recourse, as
we shall see, to one and the same means (a very
efficacious means in that day) against Charles
VII. in France, and against Gloucester in Eng-
land—a charge of sorcery.
It was not till the 25th of July, nine days
after Charles VII. had been well and duly
crowned, that the cardinal entered with his
army into Paris. Bedford lost not a moment,
but put himself in motion with these troops to
watch Charles VII. Twice they were in pres-
ence, and some skirmishing occurred. Bedford
feared for Normandy and covered it; mean-
while the king marched upon Paris (August).
This was contrary to the advice of the
Pucelle; her voices warned her to go no further
than St. Denys. The city of royal burials, like
the city of coronations, was a holy city; be-
yond, she had a presentiment, lay something
over which she would have no power. Charles
VII. must have thought so likewise. Was
there not danger in bringing this inspiration of
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 37
warlike Sanctity, this poesy of crusade which
had so deeply moved the rural districts, face to
face with this reasoning prosaic city, with its
sarcastic population, with pedants and Cabo-
Chiens’ -
It was an imprudent step. A city of the kind
is not to be carried by a coup de main; it is only
to be carried by starving it out. But this was
out of the question, for the English held the
Seine both above and below. They were in
force, and were besides supported by a consid-
erable number of citizens who had compro-
mised themselves for them. A report, too, was
spread that the Armagnacs were coming to de-
stroy the city and raze it to the ground.
Nevertheless, the French carried one of the
outposts. The Pucelle crossed the first fosse,
and even cleared the mound which separated it
from the second. Arrived at the brink of the
latter she found it full of water; when, regard-
less of a shower of arrows poured upon her
from the city walls, she called for fascines, and
began sounding the depth of the water with
her lance. Here slie stood, almost alone, a
mark to all; and at last an arrow pierced her
thigh. Still she strove to overcome the pain,
and to remain to cheer on the troops to the
assault. But loss of blood compelled her to
seek the shelter of the first fosse; and it was
ten or eleven o’clock at night before she could
be persuaded to withdraw to the camp. She
seemed to be conscious that this stern check
before the walls of Paris must ruin her beyond
all hope.
Fifteen hundred men were wounded in this
attack, which she was wrongfully accused of
having advised. She withdrew, cursed by her
own side, by the French, as well as by the Eng-
lish. She had not scrupled to give the assault
on the anniversary of the Nativity of Our Lady
(September 8th), and the pious city of Paris was
exceedingly scandalized thereat.
Still more scandalized was the court of Char-
les VII. Libertines, the politic, the blind
devotees of the letter—sworn enemies of the
spirit—all declared stoutly against the spirit
38 JOAN OF ABC.
the instant it seemed to fail. The Archbishop
of Reims, Chancellor of France, who had ever
looked but coldly on the Pucelle, insisted, in
opposition to her advice, on commencing a nego-
tiation. He himself came to Saint-Denys to
propose terms of truce, with perhaps a secret
hope of gaining over the Duke of Burgundy, at
the time at Paris.
Evil regarded and badly supported, the Pu.
celle laid siege during the winter to Saint Pierre-
le-Moustiers and La Charité. At the siege of
the first, though almost deserted by her men,
she persevered in delivering the assault, and
carried the town. The siege of the second
dargged on, languished, and a panic terror dis-
persed the besiegers. -
CAPTURE OF THE PUCELLE,
Meanwhile the English had persuaded the
Duke of Burgundy to aid them in good earnest.
The weaker he saw them to be the stronger was
his hope of retaining the places which he might.
take in Picardy. The English, who had just
lost Louviers, placed themselves at his disposal;
and the duke, the richest prince in Christendom,
no longer hesitated to embark men and money
in a war of which he hoped to reap all the profit.
He bribed the Governor of Soissons to surren-
der that city; and then laid siege to Compiegne,
the governor of which was likewise obnoxious
to suspicion. The citizens, however, had com-
promised themselves too much in the cause of
Charles VII. to allow of their town's being be-
trayed. The Pucelle threw herself into it. On
the very same day she headed a sortie, and had
nearly surprised the besiegers; but they quickly
recovered, and vigorously drove back their
assailants as far as the city bridge. The Pu-
celle, who had remained in the rear to cover the
retreat, was too late to enter the gates, either
hindered by the crowd that thronged the bridge
or by the sudden shutting of the barriers. She
was conspicuous by her dress, and was soon
surrounded, seized, and dragged from her horse.
Her captor, a Picard arch er—according to others,
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 39
the bastard of Vendome—sold her to John of
Luxembourg. All English and Burgundians
saw with astonishment that this object of terror,
this monster, this devil, Was after all only a girl
of eighteen.
That it would end so, she knew beforehand;
her cruel fate was inevitable, and—We must say
the word—necessary. It was necessary that
she should suffer. If she had not gone through
her last trial and purification, doubtful shadows
would have interposed amidst the rays of glory
which rest on that holy figure: she would not
have lived in men's minds the MAID OF OR-
I.F.A.N.S.
When speaking of raising the siege of Orléans,
and of the coronation at Reims, she had said,
“'Tis for this that I was born.” These two
things accomplished, her Sanctity Was in peril.
War, sanctity—two contradictory words !
Seemingly, sanctity is the direct opposite of
war: it is rather love and peace. What young,
courageous heart can mingle in battle without
participating in the sanguinary intoxication of
the struggle and of the victory 2 . . . On
setting out, she had said that she would not
use her sword to kill any one. At a later mo-
ment slie expiates with pleasure on the sword
which she wore at Compiegne, “excellent,”
as she said, “either for thrusting or cutting.”
Is not this proof of a change 2 The saint has
become a captain. The Duke of Alençon de-
posed that she displayed a singular aptitude
for the modern arm, the murderous arm—artil-
lery. The leader of indisciplinable soldiers,
and incessantly hurt and aggrieved by their
disorders, she became rude and choleric, at
least when bent on restraining their excesses.
In particular she was relentless towards the
dissolute women who accompanied the camp.
One day she struck one of these wretched beings
With St. Catharine's sword, with the flat of the
sword only; but the Virginal weapon, unable to
endure the contact, broke, and it could never be
reunited.
A short time before her capture she had her-
self made prisoner a Burgundian partisan,
40 JOAN OF AR0.
Franquet d’Arras, a brigand held in execration
throughoat the whole north of France. The
king's bailli claimed him in order to hang him.
At first she refused, thinking to exchange him;
but at last consented to give him up to justice.
He had deserved hanging a hundred times over.
Nevertheless, the having given up a prisoner,
the having consented to the death of a human
being, must have lowered, even in the eyes of
her own party, ller character for sanctity.
Unhappy condition of such a-setH-fałłen
upon IIIe Tealities of this World ! Each day she
must have Iost something of herself. One does
not suddenly become rich, noble, honored, the
equal of lords and princes, With impunity.
Rich dress, letters of nobility, royal favor—all
this could not fail at the last to have altered
her heroic simplicity. She had obtained for her
native village exemption from taxes, and the
king had bestowed on one of her brothers her
provostship of Vaucouleurs. -
But the greatest peril for the saint was from
her own sanctity—from the respect and adora-
tion of the people. At Lagny, she was be-
sought to restore a child to life. The count
(l'Armagnac Wrote, begging her to decide which
of the two popes was to be followed. Accord-
ing to the reply she is said to have given
(falsified perhaps), she promised to deliver her
decision at the close of the war, confiding in
her internal voices to enable her to pass judg-
ment on the very head of authority.
And yet there was no pride in her. She
never gave hel'Self out for a saint: often she
confessed that she knew not the future. The
evening before a battle she was asked whether
the king Would conquer, and replied that she
knew not. At Bourges, when the women
prayed her to touch crosses and chaplets, she
began laughing, and said to dame Marguerite,
at whose house she was staying, “Touch them
yourself, they will be just as good.”
The Singular originality of this girl was, as
We have said, good sense in the midst of ex-
altation; and this, as We shall see, was What
rendered her judges implacable. The pedants,

THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 41
the reasoners who hated her as an inspired
being, were so much the more cruel to her from
the impossibility of despising her as a mad
woman, and from the frequency with which her
loftier reason silenced their arguments.
It was not difficult to foresee her fate. She
mistrusted it herself. From the outset she had
said—“Employ me, I shall last but the year or
little longer.” Often addressing her chaplain,
brother Pasquerel, she repeated, “If I must die
Soon, tell the king our lord, from me, to found
chapels for the offering up of prayers for the
salvation of such as have died in defence of the
kingdom.” - -
Her parents asking her when they saw her
again at Reims, whether she had no fear of
anything, her answer was, “Nothing, except
treason.” º
Often on the approach of evening, if there
lı appened to be any church near the place
where the army encamped, and particularly if
it belonged to the Mendicant orders, she gladly
repaired to it, and would join the children who
were being prepared to receive the sacrament.
According to an ancient chronicle, the very
day on which she was fated to be made pris.
oner, she communicated in the church of
St. Jacques, Compiègne, where, leaning sadly
against a pillar, she said to the good people
and children who crowded the church: “My
good friends and my dear children, I tell you
of a surety there is a man who has sold me; I
am betrayed, and shall soon be given up to
death. Pray to God for me, I beseech you; for I
shall no longer be able to serve my king or
the noble realm Of France.”
The probability is that the Pucelle was bar-
gained for and bought, even as Soissons had
just been bought. At so critical a moment,
and when their young king was landing on
French ground, the English would be ready to
give any sum for her. But the Burgundians
longed to have her in their grasp, and they
succeeded; it was to the interest not of the
duke only and of the Burgundian party in
general, but it was besides the direct interest
42 • JoAN or ARC.
of John of Ligny, who eagerly bought. the
priSOmer.
For the Pucelle to fall into the hands of a
noble lord of the house of Luxemburg, of a
Vassal of the chivalrous Duke of Burgundy, of
the good duke, as he was called, was a hard
trial for the cliivalry of the day. A prisoner
of War, a girl, so young a girl, and above all a
maid, what had she to fear amidst loyal knights?
Chivalry was in every one's mouth as the pro.
tection of afflicted dames and damsels. Marshal
Boucicaut had just founded an order which
had no other object. Besides the worship of
the Virgin, constantly extending in the middle
age, having become the dominant religion, it
seemed as if Virginity must be an inviolable
safeguard.
To explain what is to follow, we must point
out the singular want of harmony which then
existed between ideas and morals, and, how-
ever shocking the contrast, bring face to face
with the too sublime ideal, with the Imitation,
with the Pucelle, the low realities of the time;
we must (beseeching pardon of the chaste girl
who forms the subject of this narrative) fathom
the depths of this world of covetousness and of
concupiscence. Without Seeing it as it existed,
it would be impossible to understand how
knights could give up her who seemed the
living embodiment of chivalry, how while the
Virgin reigned the Virgin should show herself,
and be so cruelly mistaken.
The religion of this epoch was less the adora-
tion of the Virgin than of woman; its chivalry
was that portrayed in the Petit Jehan de
Saintré—but with the advantage of chastity,
in favor of the romance Over the truth.
Princes set the example. Charles VII. re-
ceived Agnes Sorel as a present from his wife’s
mother, the old Queen of Sicily; and mother,
wife, and mistress, he takes them all with him
as he marches along the Loire, the happiest
understanding subsisting between the three.
The English, more serious, seek love in mar-
riage only. Gloucester marries Jacqueline;
among Jacqueline's ladies his regards fall on
THE MALD OF ORLEANS, 43
one equally lovely and witty, and he marries
her too.
But in this respect, as in all others, France
and England are far outstripped by Flanders,
by the Count of Flanders, by the great Duke
of Burgundy. The legend expressive of the
Low Countries is that of the famous countess
who brought into the world three hundred and
sixty-five children. The princes of the land,
Without going quite So far, seem at the least
to endeavor to approach her. A count of
Cléves has sixty-three bastards. John of Bur-
gundy, Bishop of Cambrai, officiates pontific-
ally with his thirty-six bastards and sons of
bastards ministering with him at the altar.
Philippe-le-Bon had only sixteen bastards,
but he had no fewer than twenty-seven wives,
three lawful ones and twenty-four mistresses.
In these sad years of 1429 and 1430, and during
the enactment of this tragedy of the Pucelle's,
he was Wholly absorbed in the joyous affair of
his third marriage. This time his wife was an
Infanta of Portugal, English by her mother’s
side, her mother having been Philippa of Lan-
caster; SO that the English missed their point
in giving him the command of Paris, as detain
him they could not; he was in a hurry to quit
this land of famine and to return to Flanders to
Welcome his young bride. Ordinances, cere-
monies, festivals, concluded, or interrupted and
resumed, consumed whole months. At Bruges
in particular, unleard-of galas took place, re
joicings fabulous to tell of, insensate prodigali-
ties which ruined the nobility—and the bur-
gesses eclipsed them. The Seventeen nations
which had their warehouses at Burges dis-
played the riches of the universe. The streets
were hung with the rich and soft carpets of
Flanders. For eight days and eight nights the
choicest wines ran in torrents; a stone lion
boured forth Rhenish, a Stag Beaune wine; and
at meal-times a unicorn spouted out rose-Water
and malvoise.
But the splendor of the Flemish feast lay in
the Flemish women, in the triumphant beauties
of Bruges, such as Rubens has painted them
44 JOAN OF ARC.
in his Magdalen, in his Descent from the Cross.
The Portuguese could not have delighted in
Seeing her new subjects: already had the Span.
iard, Joan of Navarre, been filled with spite at
the sight, exclaiming, against her will, “I see
Only queens here.”
On his wedding day (January 10th, 1430),
Philippe-le-Bon instituted the order of the
Golden Fleece, “won by Jason,” taking for de-
Vice the conjugal and reassuring Words, “Autre
n'auray ” (No other will I have).
Did the young bride believe in this? It is
dubious. This Jason's, or Gideon's fleece (as
the Church soon baptized it), was after all the
golden fleece, reminding one of the gilded
waves, of the streaming yellow tresses which
Van Dyck, Philippe le-Bon’s great painter,
flings amorously round the shoulders of his
Saints. All saw in the new order the triumph
of the fair, young, flourishing beauty of the
north over the sombre beauties of the south.
It seemed as the Flemish prince, to console the
I'lemish (lames, addressed this device of double
meaning, “Autre n'auray,” to them.
Under these forms of chivalry, awkwardly
imitated from romances, the history of Flanders
at this period is nevertheless one fiery, joyous,
brutal, bacchanalian revel. Under color of
tournays, feats of arms, and feasts of the Round
Table, there is one Wild Whirl of light and com-
mon gallantries, low intrigues, and intermina-
ble junketings. The true device of the epoch
is that presumptuously taken by the sire de
Ternant at the lists of Arras: “Que j'aie de mes
desirs assouvissance, et jamais d'autre bien.” (Let
my desires be satisfied, I wish no other good.)
The surprising part of all this is that, amidst
these mad festivals and this ruinous magnifi-
cence, the affairs of the Count of Flanders
seemed to go on all the better. The more he
gave, lost, and squandered, the more flowed in
to him. He fattened and was enriched by the
general ruin. In Holland alone he met with
any obstacle; but without much trouble he
acquired the positions commanding the Somme
and the Meuse—Namur and Péronne, Besides
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 45
the latter town the English placed in his hands
Bar-sur-Seine, Auxerre, Meaux, the approaches
to Paris, and lastly, Paris itself.
Advantage after advantage, Fortune piled
her favors upon him without leaving him time
to draw breath between her gifts. She threw
into the power of one of his vassals the Pucelle,
that precious gage for which the English would
have given any sum. And at this very moment
his situation became complicated by another of
Fortune's favors, for the duchy of Brabant de-
volved to him; but he could not take posses-
sion of it without securing the friendship of the
English. &
The death of the Duke of Brabant, who had
talked of marrying again and of raising up heirs
to himself, happened just in the nick of time
for the Duke of Burgundy. He had acquired
almost all the provinces which bound Brabant
—Flanders, Hainault, Holland, Namur, and
Luxemburg—and only lacked the central pro
vince, that is, rich Louvain, with the key to the
Whole, Brussels. Here was a strong tempta-
tion; so passing over the rights of his aunt,
from whom, however, he derived his own, he
also sacrificed the rights of his wards and his
honor and probity as a guardian, and seized
Brabant. Therefore, to finish matters with
Holland and Luxemburg, and to repulse the
Liégeois, who had just laid siege to Namur, he
Was necessitated to remain on good terms with
the English: in other words, to deliver up the
Pucelle. *
Philippe-le-Bon (good) was a good man, ac-
cording to the vulgar idea of goodness, tender
of heart, especially to women, a good son, a
good father, and with tears at will. He wept
OVer the slain at Azincourt; but his league
With the English cost more lives than Azin.
Court. He shed torrents of tears at his father’s
death; and then, to avenge him, torrents of
blood. Sensibility and sensuality often go to-
gether; but sensuality and concupiscence are
Inot the less cruel when aroused. Let the de-
sired object draw back, let concupiscence see
her fly and conceal herself from its pursuit, then
46 JOAN OF ARC.
it turns to blind rage. . . . Woe to what-
ever opposes it ! . . . The school of Rubens,
in its pagan bacchanalia, rejoices in bringing
together tigers and satyrs, “lust hard by hate.”
He who held the Pucelle in his hands, John
of Ligny, the Duke of Burgundy’s vassal,
found himself precisely in the same situation
as his suzerain; like him, it was his hour of
cupidity, of extreme temptation. He belonged
to the glorious house of Luxemburg, and to be
of kin to the Emperor Henry VII., and to King
John of Bohemia, was an honor well worth pre-
serving unsullied; but John of Ligny was poor,
the youngest Son of a youngest son. He had
contrived to get his aunt, the rich Countess of
Ligny and of Saint-Pol, to name him her sole
heir, and this legacy, which lay exceedingly
open to question, was about to be disputed by
his eldest brother. In dread of this, John be-
came the docile and trembling servant of the
Duke of Burgundy, of the English, and of every
one. The English pressed him to deliver up
lis prisoner to them; and indeed they could
easily have seized her in the tower of Beaulieu,
in Picardy, where he had placed her. But if he
gave her up to them, he would ruin himself
with the Duke of Burgundy, his suzerain, and
the judge in the question of his inheritance,
who, consequently, could ruin him by a single
word. So he sent her, provisorily, to his castle
of Beaurevoir, which lay within the territory
of the empire.
The English, wild with liate and humiliation,
urged and threatened. So great was their rage
against the Pucelle that they burned a woman
alive for speaking well of her. If the Pucelle
herself were not tried, condemned, and burned
as a sorceress—if her victories Were not Set
|lown as due to the devil, they would remain in
|the eyes of the people miracles, God's own
works. The inference would be that God was
ſh gainst the English, that they had been right-
fully and loyally defeated, and that their
| cause was the devil's. According to the no-
|tions of the time, there was no medium. A
| conclusion like this, intolerable to English





THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 4?
pride, was infinitely more so to a government
of bishops like that of England, and to the
cardinal, its head.
Matters were in a desperate state when Win-
chester took them in hand. Gloucester being
reduced to a cipher in England, and Bedford
in France, he found himself uncontrolled. He
had fancied that on bringing the young king
to Calais (April 23), all would flock to him: not
an Englishman budged. He tried to pique
their honor by fulminating an ordinance
“ against those who fear the enchantments of
the Pucelle:” it had not the slightest effect.
The king remained at Calais, like a stranded
vessel. Winchester became eminently ridicu-
lous. After the crusade for the recovery of
the Holy Land had dwindled down in his hands
to a crusade against Bohemia, he had cut down
the latter to a crusade against Paris. This
bellicose prelate, who had flattered himself
that he should officiate as a conquerer in
Notre-Dame, and crown his charge there, found
all the roads blocked up. Holding Compiègne,
the enemy barred the route through Picardy,
and holding Louviers, that through Normandy.
Meanwhile the war dragged slowly on, his
- money wasted away, and the Crusade dis-
solved in smoke. Apparently the Devil had to
do with the matter; for the cardinal could
only get out of the scrape by bringing the de.
ceiver to his trial—by burning him in the per-
Son of the Pucelle. -
He felt that he must have her, must force her
out of the hands of the Burgundians. She had
been made prisoner May 23d ; by the 26th a
message is despatched from Rouen, in the name
it the vicar of the Inquisition, summoning the
Duke of Burgundy and John of Ligny to de-
liver up this Woman suspected of sorcery. The
Inquisition had not much power in France; its
Vicar was a poor and very timorous monk, a
Dominican, and, undoubtedly, like all the other
Mendicants, favorable to the Pucelle. But he
was here, at Rouen, overawed by the all-power-
ful cardinal, who held the sword to his breast,
and Who had just appointed captain of Rouen a
48 JOAN OF ARC.
man of action, and a man devoted to himself,
the Earl of Warwick, Henry's tutor, Warwick
held two posts, assuredly widely different from
one another, but both of great trust; the tube-
lage of the king, and the care of the king's
enemy; the education of the one, the Superin.
tendence of the trial of the other.
The monk’s letter was a document of little
weight, and the University was made to write
at the same time. It was hardly possible that
the heads of the University should lend any
hearty aid to expediting a process instituted by
the Papal Inquisition, at the very moment they
were going to declare War on the people at
Băle on behalf of the episcopacy. Winchester
himself, at the head of the English episcopacy,
must have preferred a trial by bishops, or, if he
could, to bring bishops and inquisitors to act in
concert together. Now he had in his train and
among his adherents a bishop just fitted for
the business, a beggared bishop, who lived at
his table, and who assuredly would sentence or
would swear just as was wanted.
Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, was not
a man without merit. Born at Reims, near
Gerson’s place of birth, he was a very influen-
tial doctor of the University, and a friend of
Clemengis, who asserts that he was both “good
and beneficent.” This goodness did not hinder
him from being one of the most violent of the
violent Cabochien party; and as such he was
driven from Paris in 1413. He re-entered the
:apital with the Duke of Burgundy, became
Bishop of Beauvais, and, under the English
rule, was elected by the University conservator
of its privileges. But the invasion of northern
France by Charles VII., in 1429, was fatal to
Cauchon, who sought to keep Beauvais in the
Pnglish interests, and was thrust out by the
citizens. He did not enjoy himself at Paris
with the dull Bedford, who had no means of
rewarding zeal; and repaired to the font of
wealth and power in England, to Cardinal Win-
chester. He became English, he spoke Eng.
lish. Winchester perceived the use to which
such a man might be put, and attached him to
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 49
himself by doing for him even more than he
could have hoped for . The Archbishop of
Rouen having been translated elsewhere, he
recommended him to the Pope to fill that great
see. But neither the Pope nor the chapter
would have anything to do with Cauchon; and
Rouen, at war at the time with the University
of Paris, could not well receive as its arch-
bishop a member of that University. Here
Was a complete stop; and Cauchon stood with
gaping mouth in sight of the magnificent prey,
ever in hopes that all obstacles would disap.
pear before the invincible cardinal, full of de-
Votion to him, and having no other God.
It Was exceedingly opportune that the Pu-
celle should have been taken close to the lim-
its of Cauchon's diocese; not, it is true, within
the diocese itself; but there was a hope of
making it believed to be so. So Cauchon wrote,
as judge ordinary, to the King of England, to
claim the right of trying her; and, on the 12th
of June, the University received the king's let.
ters to the effect that the bishop and the in-
Quisitor were to proceed to try her with con-
current powers. Though the proceedings of
the Inquisition were not the same as those of
the ordinary tribunals of the Church, no objec-
tion was raised. The two jurisdictions choos-
ing thus to Connive at each other, one diffi-
culty alone remained; the accused was still in
the hands of the Burgundians.
The University put herself forward, and
wrote anew to the Duke of Burgundy and John
of Ligny. Cauchon, in his zeal, uudertook to
be the agent of the English, their courier,
to carry the letter himself, and deliver it to the
two dukes; at the same time, as bishop, he
handed them a summons, calling upon them to
deliver up to him a prisoner over whom he
claimed jurisdiction. In the course of this
Strange document of his, he quits the character
of judge for that of negotiator, and makes offers
of money, stating that although this woman
cannot be considered a prisoner of war, the
King of England is ready to settle a pension of
tWO Or three hundred livres on the bastard of
50 JOAN OF ARC,
Vendôme, and to give the sum of six thousand
livres to those who have her in her keeping:
then, towards the close of this missive of his,
he raises his offer to ten thousand, but point-
ing out emphatically the magnitude of the
offer—“ as much,” he says, “as the French are
accustomed to give for a king or a prince. “
The English did not rely so implicitly on the
steps taken by the University, and on Cauch-
on's negotiations, as to neglect the more ener-
getic means. On the same day that the latter
presented his summons, or the day after, the
council in England placed an embargo on all
traffic with the markets of the Low Countries,
and, above all, with Antwerp (July 19), pro-
hibiting the English merchants from purchas.
ing linens there, and the other goods for which
they were in the habit of exchanging their
wool. This was inflicting on the Duke of Bur-
gundy, Count of Flanders, a blow in the most
sensible part, through the medium of the great
Flemish manufacturers, linens and cloth: the
English discontinued purchasing the one, and
supplying the material for the other.
While the English were thus strenuously
urging OTTTTe-TE OT-Uf-fiſt PTIcelle, did
GirartBS Vºff tºmkºmmy Stºps f:0 SaVE IIETP-N one,
appears; yet he had pri a c : i c l, ºn tº ſle,
&l. We l) l'Opé43 * | * * * âte Hing
FETTISãIs. A short time before, h9 had set
iègotiations on foot through the medium of his
chancellor, the Archbishop of Reims; but
neither he 'nor the other politicians of the
council had ever regarded the Pucelle with
much favor. The Anjou Lorraine party, with
the old Queen of Sicily, who had taken her by
the hand from the first, could not, at this pre-
cise juncture, interfere on her behalf with the
Duke of Burgundy. The Duke of Lorraine was
on his death-bed, the succession to the duchy
disputed before the breath was out of his body,
and Philippe-le-Bon was giving his support to
a rival of René of Anjou’s—son-in-law and
heir to the Duke of Lorraine. -
Thus, on every side, interest and covetous.
ness declared against the Pucelle, or produced
t






THE MALD OF ORIEANS. 51
indifference to her. The good Charles VII. did
nothing for her, the good Duke Philippe deliv-
ered her up. The house of Anjou coveted Lor-
raine, the Duke of Burgundy coveted Brabant:
and, most of all, he desiderated the keeping
open the trade between Flanders and England.
The little had their interests to attend to as
well. John of Ligny looked to inherit Saint-
Pol, and Cauchon was grasping at the Arch-
bishopric of Rouen.
In vain did John of Ligny's wife throw her.
self at his feet, in vain did she supplicate him
not to dishonor himself. He was no longer a
free man, already had he touched English
gold ; though he gave her up, not, it is true,
directly to the English, but to the Duke of
Burgundy. This house of Ligny and of Saint-
Pol, with its recollections of greatness and its
unbridled aspirations, was fated to pursue for.
tune to the end—to the Greve. The surren-
derer of the Pucelle seems to have felt all his
misery; he had painted on his arms a camel
succumbing under its burden, with the sad
device, unknown to men of heart, “ Nul n'est
tenu a l’impossible " (No one is held to impos-
sibilities).
What was the prisoner doing the while?
Her body was at Beaurevoir, her soul at Com-
piègne; she was fighting, soul and spirit, for
the king who had deserted her. Without her,
she felt that the faithful city of Compiègne
would fall, and with it the royal cause through
out the North. She had previously tried to
effect her escape from the towers of Beaulieu;
and at Beaurevoir she was still more strongly
tempted to fly: she knew that the English
demanded that she should be given up to them,
and dreaded falling into their hands. She
Consulted her Saints, and could obtain no other
answer than that it behooved to be patient,
“ that her delivery would not be until she
had seen the King of the English.” “But,”
she said within herself “can it be that God
will suffer these poor people of Compiègne to
die, who have been and who are so loyal to
their lord P’’ Presented under this form of
52 JóAN OF ARC.
lively compassion, the temptation prevailed.
For the first time she turned a deaf ear to her
Saints : she threw herself from the tower, and
fell at its foot half dead. Borne in again and
nursed by the ladies of Ligny, she longed for
(leath, and persisted in remaining two days
without eating.
Delivered up to the Duke of Burgundy, she
was taken to Arras, and then to the donjon-
keep of Crotoy, which has long been covered
by the sands of the Somme. From this place
Of confinement she looked out upon the sea,
and could sometimes descry the English
downs—that hostile land into which she had
hoped to carry War for the deliverance of the
Duke of Orléans. Mass was daily performed
here by a priest who was also a prisoner, and
Jeanne prayed ardently ; she asked, and it was
given unto her. Though confined in prison,
she displayed her power all the same ; as long
as she lived, her prayers broke through the
Walls and scattered the enemy.
On the very day that she had predicted, fore-
Warned by the archangel, the siege of Compiègne
was raised—that is, on the 1st of November.
The Duke of Burgundy had advanced as far as
Noyon, as if to meet and experience the insult-
ing reverse personally. He sustained another
defeat shortly afterwards at Germigny (Novem-
ber 20). Saintrailles then offered him battle at
Péronne, which he declined.
These humiliations undoubtedly confirmed the
duke in his alliance with the English, and deter.
mined him to deliver up the Pucelle to them.
Dut the mere threat of interrupting all Commer-
cial relations would have been enough. Chiv-
alrous as he believed himself to be, and the
restorer of chivalry, the Count of Flanders was
at bottom the servant of the manufacturers and
the merchants. The manufacturing cities and
the flax-spinning districts would not have al-
lowed commerce to be long interrupted, or their
works brought to a stand-still, but would have
burst forth into insurrection.
At the very moment the English had got pos-
session of the Pucelle, and were free to proceed
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 53
to her trial, their affairs were going on very
badly. Far from retaking Louviers, they had
lost Château-Galliard. La Hire took it by es-
calade, and finding Barbazan a prisoner there,
set that formidable captain at liberty. The
towns voluntarily went over to Charles VII., the
inhabitants expelling the English: those of
Melun, close as the town is to Paris, thrust the
g arrison out of the gates. *
To put on the drag, if it were possible, while
the affairs of England were thus going rapidly
down hill, some great and powerful engine was
necessary, and Winchester had one at hand—
tlie trial and the coronation. These two things
were to be brought into play together, or rather,
they were one and the same thing. To dishonor
Charles VII., to prove that he had been led to
be crowned by a witch, was bestowing so much
additional sanctity on the Coronation of Henry
VI. ; if the one were avowedly the anointed of
the Devil, the other must be recognized as the
anointed of God.
Henry made his entry into Paris on the 2d of
December. On the 21st of the preceding month,
the University had been made to write to Cau-
chon, complaining of his delays, and beseeching
the king to order the trial to be begun. Cau-
chon Was in no haste, perhaps, thinking it hard
to begin the work before the wage was assured;
and it was not till a month afterwards that he
procured from the chapter of Rouen authority
to proceed in that diocese. On the instant (Jan-
uary 3, 1431), Winchester isstied an ordinance,
in which the king was made to say, “that on
the requisition of the Bishop of Beauvais, and
exhorted thereto by his dear daughter, the
University of Paris, he commanded ber keepers
to conduct the accused to the bishop,” The
Word was chosen to show that the prisoner was
1105 given up to the ecclesiastical judge, but
Only lent, “ to be taken back again if not con-
Victed.” The English ran no risk, she could
Inot escape death; if fire failed, the sword re-
mained.
Cauchon opened the proceedings at Rotten on
the 9th of January, 1431. He seated the Vicar
54 JOAN OF AIRC.
of the Inquisition near himself, and began by
liol (ling a sort of consultation with eight doc-
tors, licentiates or masters of arts of Rouen, and
by laying before them the inquiries which he
had instituted touching the Pucelle, but which,
having been conducted by her enemies, ap-
peared insufficient to these legists of Rouen.
In fact, they were so utterly insufficient, that
the prosecution, which on these Worthless data
Was about to have been commenced against her
On the charge of magic, Was instituted on the
charge of heresy.
With the view of conciliating these recalci-
trating Normans, and lessening their supersti-
tious reverence for the forms of procedure,
Cauchon nominated one of their number, Jean
de la Fontaine, examining counsellor (conseiller
ea'aminateur). But he reserved the most active
part, that of promoter of the prosecution (pro-
noteur du proces), for a certain Estivet, one of
his Beauvais canons by whom he was accom-
loanied. He managed to consume a month in
these preparations; but the young king having
been at length taken back to London (February
9), Winchester, tranquil on this head, applied
himself earnestly to the business of the trial,
and would trust no one to superintend it. He
thought, and justly, that the master’s eye is
the best, and took up his residence at Rouen in
order to watch Cauchon at work.
His first step was to make sure of the monk
who represented the Inquisition. Cauchon,
having assembled his assessors, Norman priests
and doctors of Paris, in the house of a canon,
sent for the Dominican, and called upon him to
act as his coadjutor in the proceedings. The
shaveling timidly replied, that “if his powers
were judged sufficient, he would act as his duty
required.” The bishop did not fail to declare
that his powers were amply sufficient; on which
the monk further objected, “that he was anxi-
ious not to act as yet, both from scruples of
conscience and for legality of the trial,” and
begged the bishop to substitute some one in his
place, until he should ascertain that his powers
were really sufficient. -
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 5
5
His objections were useless ; he was not
allowed so to escape, and had to sit in judg.
ment, Whether he would or not. There was
another motive besides fear, which undoubtedly
assisted in keeping him to his post: Winches.
ter assigned him twenty gold sous for his pains.
Perhaps the Mendicant monk had never seen
such a quantity of gold in his life.
TRIAL OF THE PUCELLE.
On February 21, the Pucelle was brought
before her judges. The Bishop of Beauvais
admonished her “with mildness and charity,”
playing her to answer truly to whatever she
should be asked, without evasion or subter-
fuge, both to shorten her trial and ease her
conscience. Answer: “I do not know what you
mean to question me about; you might ask me
things which I would not tell you.” She con-
Sented to swear to speak the truth upon all
matters, except those which related to her
Visions; “but with respect to these,” she said,
“you shall cut off my head first.” Neverthe-
less, she was induced to swear that she would
answer all questions “on points affecting faith.”
She was again urged on the following day,
the 22d, and again on the 24th, but held firm.
“It is a common remark even in children’s
mouths,” was her observation, “that people are
often hung for telling the truth.” At last, worn
out, and for quietness sake, she consented to
swear “to tell what she knew upon her trial, but
not all she knew.”
Interrogated as to her age, name, and sur-
name, she said that she was about nineteen
years old. “In the place where I was born,”
they called me Jehanette, and in Trance,
Jehanne. . . .” But with regard to her sur-
name (the Pucelle, the maid), it seems that
through some caprice of feminine modesty She
could not bring herself to utter it, and that
she eluded the direct answer by a chaste false-
* Dolnremy in Champagne, on the frontiers of Bur-
gundy, would be distinguished in Joan’s time from
France proper.—TRAN SLATOR.
56 JOAN OF ARC,
hood—“As to surname, I know nothing of it.”
She complained of the fetters on her limbs;
and the bishop told her that as she had made
several attempts to escape, they had been
obliged to put them on. “It is true,” she said,
“I have done so, and it is allowable for any
prisoner. If I escaped, I could not be re-
proached with having broken my word, for I
had given no promise.”
She was ordered to repeat the Pater and the
Ave, perhaps in the Superstitious idea that if
she were vowed to the devil she durst not. “I
will Willingly repeat them if my lord of Beau-
Vais Will hear me confess.” Adroit and touch-
ing demand! by thus reposing her confidence
in her judge, her enemy, she would have made
him both her Spiritual father and the witness
of her innocence.
Cauchon declined the request; but I can well
believe that he was moved by it. He broke up
the sitting for that day, and on the day follow-
ing did not continue the interrogatory himself,
but deputed the office to one of his assessors.
At the fourth sitting she displayed unwonted
animation. She did not conceal her having
heard her voices. “They awakened me,”
she said, “I clasped my hands in prayer,
and besought them to give me counsel; they
said to me, “Ask of our Lord.”—“And what
more did they say ?”—“To answer you boldly.”
“ . . I cannot tell ail; I am much more
fearful of saying anything which may displease
them than I am of answering you. . . . For
to-day I beg you to question me no further.”
The bishop perceiving her emotion persisted:
“But, Jehanne, God is offended then if one
tells true things?”—“My voices have told me
certain things, not for you, but for the king.”
Then she added with fervor, “Ah! if he knew
them, he would eat his dinner with greater
relish. . . . Would that he did know them;
and would drink no wine from this to Easter.”
She gave utterance to some sublime things,
while prattling in this simple strain: “I come
from God, I have naught to do here; dismiss
me to God, from whom I come. . . .”
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 57
**
“You say that you are my judge; think well
what you are about, for of a truth I am sent of
God, and you are putting yourself in great
danger.” *-
There can be no doubt such language irri.
tated the judges, and they put to her an in-
sidious and base question, a question which it
is a crime to put to any man alive: “Jehanne,
do you believe yourself to be in a state of
grace 2" -
They thought they had bound her with an
indissoluble knot. To say no was to confess
herself unworthy of having been God’s chosen
instrument: but, on the other hand, how say
yes? Which of us, frail beings as we are, is sure
here below of being truly in God’s grace Not
one, except the proud, presumptuous man, Who
of all is precisely the farthest from it.
She cut the knot with heroic and Christian
simplicity:
“If I am not, may God be pleased to receive
me into it: if I am, may God be pleased to keep
me in it.”
The Pharisees were struck speechless.
But with all her heroism, she was neverthe-
less a woman. . . . After giving utterance
to this Sublime sentiment, she sank from the
high-Wrought mood, and relapsed into the
softness of her sex, doubting of her state,
as is natural to a Christian Soul, interro-
gating herself and trying to gain confidence:
“Ah! if I knew that I were not in God’s grace,
I should be the most wretched being in the
World. . . . But if I Were in a state of sin,
no doubt the voice would not come. . . . .
* that every one could hear it like my-
Self.”
Thrése words gave a hold to her judges. After
a long pause they returned to the charge With
redoubled hate, and pressed upon her question
after question designed to ruin her. , “Had not
the voices told her to hate Burgundians?” .
“Did she not go when a child to the Fairies'
tree ?” etc. . . . They now longed to burn
her as a Witch.
At the fifth sitting she was attacked on deli-
58 JOAN OF ARC.
cate and dangerous ground, namely, with re-
gard to the appearances she had seen. The
bishop became all of a sudden compassionate
and honied, addressed her with, “Jehanne, how
have you been since Saturday ?”—“You see,”
said the poor prisoner, loaded with chains, “as
well as I might.”
“Jehanne, do you fast every day this Lent 2"
—“Is the question a necessary one º’”—“Yes,
truly.”—“Well then, yes, I have always
fasted.”
She was then pressed on the subject of her
visions, and with regard to a sign shown the
(lauphin, and concerning St. Catherine and St.
Michael. Among other insidious and indeli-
cate questions, she was asked whether, When
St. Michael appeared to her, he was naked. . . .
To this shameful question she replied, without
understanding its drift, and with heavenly
purity, “Do you think then that our Lord has
not where with to clothe him P” - -
On March 3, other out-of-the-Way questions .
were put to her in order to entrap her into con-
fessing some diabolical agency, some evil cor-
respondence with the devil. “Has this St.
Michael of yours, have these holy women, a
body and limbs 2 Are you sure the figures you
see are those of angels?”—“Yes, I believe so,
as firmly as I believe in God.” This answer
was carefully noted down.
They then turn to the subject of her wearing
male attire and of her standard. “Did not the
soldiery make standards in imitation of yours?
Did they not replace them with others ?”—
“Yes, when the lance (staff) happened to
break.”—“Did you not say that those stan-
dards would bring them luck?”—“No, I-only
said, ‘Fall boldly upon the English,” and I fell
upon them myself.” * . . . ;
“But why was this standard borne at the
coronation, in the church of Reims, rather
than those of the other captains 2 . . . .”
“It had seen all the danger, and it was onl
fair that it should share the honor.” . .
“What was the impression of the people who
kissed your feet, hands, and garments **—
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 59
“The poor came to me of their own free will,
because I never did them any harm, and as-
sisted and protected them as far as was in my
power.”
“It was impossible for heart of man not to be
touched with such answers. Cauchon thought
it prudent to proceed henceforward with only
a few assessors on whom he could rely, and
quite quietly. We find the number of assessors
varying at each sitting from the very beginning
of the trial: some leave and their places are
taken by others. The place of trial is simi-
larly changed. The accused, who at first is in-
terrogated in the hall of the castle of Rouen,
is now questioned in prison. “In order not to
fatigue the rest,” Cauchon took there only two
assessors and two witnesses (from the 10th to
the 17th of March). He was, perhaps, embold-
ened thus to proceed with shut doors, from be-
ing sure of the support of the Inquisition; the
vicar having at length received from the In-
Quisitor-General of France full powers to pre-
side at the trial along with the bishop (March
12).
In these fresh examinations, she is pressed
only on a few points indicated beforehand by
Cauchon.
“Did the voices command her to make that
Sally out of Compiègne in which she was
taken P’’ To this she does not give a direct re-
ply: “The saints had told me that I should be
taken before midsummer; that it behooved so
to be, that I must not be astonished, but suffer
all cheerfully, and God would aid me. . . .
Since it has so pleased God, it is for the best
that I should have been taken.”
“Do you think you did well in setting out
Without the leave of your father and mother ?
Ought we not to honor our parents?” “They
have forgiven me.”—“And did you think you
were not sinning in doing so?”—“It was by
God’s command; and if I had had a hundred
fathers and mothers, I should have set out.”
“Did not the voices call you daughter of God.
daughter of the Church, the maid of the great
heart P”—“Before the siege of Orléans was
60 JOAN OF ARC.
raised, and since then, the voices have called
me, and they call me every day, “Jellanne the
Pucelle, daughter of God.’”
“Was it right to attack Paris the day of the
Nativity of Our Lady ?”—“It is fitting to keep
the festivals of Our Lady; and it would be so,
I truly think, to keep them every day.”
“Why did you leap from the tower of Beau-
revoir 2" (The drift of this question was to in-
duce her to say that she had wished to kill
herself.)—“I heard that the poor people of
Compiègne would all be slain, down to children
seven years of age, and I knew, too, that I was
sold to the English; I would rather have died
than fall into the hands of the English.”
“Do St. Catherine and St. Margaret hate the
English **—“They love what our Lord loves,
and hate what he hates.”—“Does God hate the
English P”—“Of the love or hate God may
bear the English, and what he does with their
souls, I know nothing; but I know that they
will be put forth out of France, with the ex-
ception of such as shall perish in it.”
“Is it not a mortal sin to hold a man to ran-
som, and then put him to death P”—“I have
not done that.”—“Was not Franquet d’Arras
put to death º' —“I consented to it, having
been unable to exchange him for one of my
men; he owned to being a brigand and a
traitor. His trial lasted a fortnight, before
the bailli of Senlis. ”—“Did you not give money
to the man who took him P’—I am not treasurer
of France, to give money.”
“Do you think that your king did well in
killing, or causing to be killed, my lord of
Burgundy ?”—“It was a great pity for the
realm of France; but whatever might have been
between them, God sent me to the aid of the
King of France.” -
“Jehanne, has it been revealed to you
whether you will escape P”—“That does not
bear upon your trial. Do you want me to de-
pone against myself P’”—“Have the voices said
nothing to you about it 2 ”—“That does not con-
cern your trial; I put myself in our Lord's
hands, who will do as it pleaseth him.” .
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 61
And, after a pause, “By my troth, I know
neither the hour nor the day. God’s Will
be done.”—“Have not your voices told you any-
thing about the result, generally P”—“Well,
then, yes; they have told me that I shall be
delivered, and have bade me be of good cheer
and courage.”
Another day she added : The saints tell me
that I shall be victoriously delivered, and they
say to me besides, ‘Take all in good part ; care
not for thy martyrdom ; thou shalt at the last
enter the kingdom of Paradise.’ ”—“And since
they have told you so, do you feel sure of being
saved, and of not going to hell ?”—“Yes, I
believe what they have told me as firmly as if
I Were already saved.”—“This assurance is a
very weighty one.”—“Yes, it is a great treas-
ure to me.”—“And so you believe you can no
longer commit a mortal sin P’”—“I know noth-
ing of that ; I rely altogether on our Lord.”
At last the judges had made out the true
ground on which to bring the accusation ; at
last they had found a spot on which to lay
stronghold. There was not a chance of getting
this chaste and holy girl to be taken for a
witch, for a familiar of the devil’s ; lyut in her
very sanctity, as is invariably the case with all
mystics, there was a side left open to attack :
the secret voice considered equal, or preferred
to, the instruction of the Church, the prescrip-
tions of authority—inspiration, but free and
independent inspiration—revelation, but a per-
sonal revelation—submission to God; what
God? the God within. ~
These preliminary examinations were con-
cluded by a formal demand, whether she would
submit her actions and opinions to the judg-
ment of the Church ; to which she replied, “I
love the Church, and would support it to the
best of my power. As to the good works which
I have wrought, I must refer them to the King
of Heaven, who sent me.”
The question being repeated, she gave no
other answer, but added, “Our Lord and the
Church, it is all one.”
She was then told that there was a distinc-
63 JOAN OF ARC.
tion; that there was the Church triumphant,
God, the saints, and those who had been admit-
ted to salvation; and the Church militant, or,
in other words, the Pope, the cardinals, the
clergy, and all good Christians—the which
Church, “properly assembled,” cannot err, and
is guided by the Holy Ghost. “Will you not
then submit yourself to the Church militant 3"
—“I am come to the King of France from God,
from the Virgin Mary, the saints, and the
Church victorious there above ; to that Church
I submit myself, my works, all that I have done
or have to do.”—“And to the Church mili-
tant # * –“I will give no other answer.”
According to one of the assessors she said
that, on certain points, she trusted to neither
bishop, pope, nor any one ; but held her belief
of God alone. -
The question on which the trial was to turn
was thus laid down in all its simplicity and
grandeur, and the true debate commenced ; on
the one hand, the visible Church and authority,
On the other, inspiration attesting the invisible
Church; . . . . invisible to vulgar eyes, but
clearly seen by the pious girl, who was forever
Contemplating it, forever hearing it within her-
Self, forever carrying in her heart these saints
and angels. . . . There was her Church, there
God shone in His brightness ; every where else,
how shadowy He was
Such being the case at issue, the accused
was doomed to irremediable destruction. She
could not give Way; she could not, save falsly,
disavow, deny What she saw and heard so
distinctly. On the other hand, could authority
remain authority if it abdicated its jurisdiction ;
if it did not punish 2 The Church militant is
an armed Church, armed with a two-edged
Sword; against whom 2 Apparently, against
the refractory.
Terrible was this Church in the person of the
reasoners, the scholastics, the enemies of inspi-
ration ; terrible and implacable, if represented
by the Bishop of Beauvais. But were there,
then, no judges superior to this bishop 2 How
could the episcopal party, the party of the
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 63
University, fail, in this peculiar case, to recog-
nize as supreme judge its Council of Bâle,
which was on the eve of being opened ?. On
the other hand, the papal Inquisition, and the
Dominican who was its Vicar, Would undoubt-
edly be far from disputing the superiority of
the Pope’s jurisdiction to its own, which ema-
nated from it.
A legist of Rouen, that very Jean de la Fon.
taine who was Cauchon’s friend and the enemy
of the Pucelle, could not feel his conscience at
ease in leaving an accused girl Without counsel,
ignorant that there Were judges of appeal, on
whom she could call without any sacrifice of
the ground on which she took up her defence.
Two monks likewise thought that a reservation
should be made in favor of the Supreme right
of the Pope. However irregular it might be
for assessors to Visit and counsel the accused,
apart from their coadjutors, these three worthy
men, who saw Cauchon violate every legal form
for the triumph of iniquity, did not hesitate to
violate all forms themselves for justice's sake,
intrepidly repaired to the prison, forced their
way in, and advised her to appeal. The next
day she appealed to the Pope and to the coun-
cil. Cauchou, in his rage, sent for the guards
and inquired who had visited the Pucelle. The
legist and the two monks were in great danger
of death. From that day they disappeared
from among the assessors, and \with them the
last Semblance of justice disappears from the
tria
Cauchon, at first, had hoped to have on his
side the authority of the lawyers, which carried
great Weight at Rouen. But he had soon found
out that he must do without them. When he
showed the minutes of the opening proceedings
of the trial to one of these grave legists, mas.
ter Johan Lollier, the latter plainly told him
that the trial amounted to nothing; that it was
all informal; that the assessors were not free
to judge; that the proceedings were carried on
with closed doors ; that the accused, a simple
country girl, was not capable of answering on
such grave subjects and to learned doctors;
64 JOAN OF ARC.
and, finally, the lawyer had the boldness to say
to the churchman : “The proceedings are, in
point of fact, instituted to impugn the honor of
the prince, whose side this girl espouses ; you
shall cite him to appear as well, and assign him
an advocate.” This intrepid gravity, which
recalls Papinian’s bearing towards Caracalla,
would have cost Lohier dear; but the Norman
Papinian did not, like the other, calmly wait
the death stroke on his curule chair ; he set off
at once for Rome, where the Pope eagerly
attached such a man to himself, and appointed
him one of the judges of the Holy See ; he died
dean of the Rota.
Apparently, Cauchon ought to have been
better supported by the theologians. After
the first examinations, armed with the answers
which she had given against herself, he shut
himself up with his intimates, and availing
himself, especially, of the pen of an able mem-
ber of the University of Paris, he drew from
these answers a few counts, on which the opin-
ion of the leading doctors and of the ecclesias.
tical bodies was to be taken. This was the de-
testable custom, but in reality (whatever has
been said to the contrary) the "common and
regular way of proceeding in inquisitorial
trials. These propositions, extracted from the
answers given by the Pucelle, and drawn up in
general terms, bore a false show of impartial-
ity; although in point of fact they were a car-
icature of those answers, and the doctors con-
sulted could not fail to pass an opinion upon
them, in accordance with the hostile intention
of their iniquitious framers. -
But however the counts might be framed,
however great the terror which hung over the
doctors consulted, they were far from being
unanimous in their judgments. Among these
doctors, the true theologians, and sincere be-
lievers, those who had preserved the firm faith
of the middle age, could not easily reject this
tale of celestial appearances, of Visions; for
then they might have doubted all the marvels
of the lives of the saints, and discussed all
their legends. The venerable Bishop of AV-
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 65
ranches replied, on being consulted, that, ac-
cording to the teaching of St. Thomas, there
was nothing impossible in what this girl affirm-
ed, nothing to be lightly rejected.
The Bishop of Lisieux, while acknowledging
that Jeanne's revelations might be the work of
the devil, humanely added that they might also
be simple lies, and that if she did not submit
herself to the Church, she must be adjudged
schismatic, and be vehemently suspected in re-
gard to faith.
Many legists answered like true Normans, by
finding her guilty and most guilty, eaccept She
acted by God's command. One bachelor at law
went further than this; while condemning her,
he demanded, in consideration of the Weakness
of her sex, that the twelve propositions should be
read over to her (he suspected, and with reason,
that they had not been communicated to her),
and that they should then be laid before the
Pope—this would have been adjourning the
matter indefinitely.
The assessors, assembled in the chapel of the
archbishopric, had decided against her on the
showing of these propositions. The chapter of
Rouen, likewise consulted, Was in no haste to
come to a decision and to give the victory to
the man it detested and trembled at having for
its archbishop, but chose to wait for the reply
from the University of Paris, which had been
applied to on the subject. There could be no
doubt what this reply would be; the Gallican
party, that is, the University and scholastic
party, could not be favorable to the Pucelle:
an individual of this party, the Bishop of Cout-
ances, went beyond all others in the harshness
and singularity of his answer. He wrote to the
Bishop of Beauvais that he considered the ac-
cused to be wholly the devil’s, “because she
was without two qualities required by St.
Gregory—Virtue and humanity,” and that her
assertions were so heretical, that though she
Should revoke them, she must nevertheless be
held in strict keeping.
It was a strange spectacle to see these theo-
ogians, these doctors, laboring with all their

66 JOAN OF ARC,
|/might to ruin the very faith which was the
ºfoundation of their doctrine, and which con-
! stituted the religious principles of the middle
age in general—belief in revelations; in the
intervention of supernatural beings. tº
They might have their doubts as the inter-
vention of angels; but their belief in the devil's
agencies was implicit.
And was not the important question whether
internal revelations ought to be hushed, and to
disavow themselves to the Church's bidding,
was not this question, so loudly debated in the
outer world, silently discussed in the inner
world, in the soul of her who affirmed and who
believed in their existence the most firmly of
all? TWas not this battle of faith fought in
the very sanctuary of faith—fought in this
loyal and simple heart 2 . . . I have reason
to believe º
At one time she expressed her readiness to
submit herself to the Pope, and asked to be
sent to him. At another she drew a distinc-
tion, maintaining that as regarded faith she
acknowledged the authority of the Pope, the
bishops, and the Church, but as regarded what
she had done, she could own no other judge
than God. Sometimes, making no distinction,
and offering no explanation, she appealed “to
her King, to the judge of heaven and of earth.”
Whatever Care has been taken to throw these
things into the shade, and to conceal this, the
human side, in a being who has been fondly
painted as all divine, her fluctuations are visi-
ble, and it is wrong to charge her judges with
having misled her so as to make her prevaricate
on those questions. “She was very subtle,”
says one of the witnesses, and truly; “of a
woman's subtlety.” I incline to attribute to
these internal struggies the sickness which
attacked her, and which brought her to the
point of death; nor did she recover, as she here
Self informs us, until the period that the angel
Michael, the angel of battles, ceased to support
her, and gave place to Gabriel, the angel of
grace and of divine love. >
She fell sick in Passion week. Her tempta.
THE MA.ii) OF ORIFA WS. 6%
tion began, no doubt, on Palm Sunday.* 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 Sun-
day in the depths of a dungeon. The great
succor which the Church invokes + came not for
her; the doors did not open.
They were opened on the Tuesday; but it
was to lead the accused to the great hall of the
castle before her judges. They read to her the
articles which had been founded on her an-
swers, and the bishop previously represented
to her “that these doctors were all churchmen,
clerks, and well read in law, divine and human;
that they were all tender and pitiful, and de-
sired to proceed mildly, seeking neither ven-
geance nor corporeal punishment, but solely wish-
ing to enlighten her, and to put her in the way
of truth and of Salvation; and that, as she was
not sufficiently informed on such high mat-
ters, the bishop and the inquisitor offered her
the choice of one or more of the assesors to act
as her counsel.” The accused, in presence of
this assembly, in which she did not descry a
single friendly face, mildly answered, “For
what you admonish me as to my good, and con-
cerning our faith, I thank you; as to the coun-
sel you offer me, I have no intention to forsake
the counsel of our Lord.” -
The first article touched the capital point,
submission. She replied as before: “Well do
I believe that our Holy Father, the bishops,
and others of the Church are to guard the
Christian faith, and punish those who are found
*
* “I know not why,” says a great spiritual teacher,
“God chooses the most solemn festivals to try and to
purify his elect. . . . It is above only, in the festival of
heaven, that we shall be delivered from all our troubles.”
—Saint Cyran, in the Mémoires de Lancelot, i. 6.
# The office for prime, on this day, runs: “Deus, ad-
jutorium meum intende. . .” (Come, O God, to my aid.)
† Every one knows that the service for this festival is
One of those in which the beautiful dramatic forms of
the middle age have been preserved. The procession
finds the door of the church shut, the minister knocks.
“Attollite portas. . . .” And the door is Opened to
the Lord, -
68 JOAN OF ARC.
wanting. As to my deeds (faits), I submit my.
self only to the Church in heaven, to God and
the Virgin, to the sainted men and women in
Paradise. I have not been wanting in regard
i. the Christian faith, and trust I never shall
€. º
And, shortly afterwards: “I would rather
die than recall what I have done by our Lord's
Command.” *
What illustrates the time, the uniformed
mind of these doctors, and their blind attach-
ment to the letter without regard to the spirit,
i • g
HS, that no point seemed graver to them than
the sin of having assumed male attire. They
represented to her that according to the canons,
those Who thus change the habit of their sex
are abominable in the sight of God. At first
She would not give a direct answer, and begged
for a respite till the next day; but her judges
insisting on her discarding the dress, she re-
plied, “that she was not empowered to say
when she could quit it.”—“But if you should be
deprived of the privilege of hearing mass 2"
—“Well, our Lord can grant me to hear it with-
out you.”—“Will you put on a woman’s dress
in order to receive your Saviour at Easter P”
—“No, I cannot quit this dress; it matters not
to me in what dress I receive my Saviour.”
—After this she seems shaken, asks to be at
least allowed to hear mass, adding, “I won’t say
but if you were to give me a gown such as the
daughters of the burghers wear, a very long
gown. . . .”
It is clear she shrank, through modesty, from
explaining herself. The poor girl durst not ex-
plain her position in prison, or the constant
danger she was in. The truth is, that three
soldiers slept in her room,” three of the brigand
ruffians called houspilleurs; that she was chained
to a beam by a large iron chain, f almost
* Five Englishmen; three of whom stayed at night in
her room. (Houspilla) is to worry like a dog—hence the
name Howspilleur.) Notices des MSS., iii. 506.
+ “She slept with double chains round her limbs, and
closely fastened to a chain traversing the foot of her
bed, attached to a large piece of wood five or six feet
THE MAID OF OR LEANS. 69
wholly at their mercy; the man's dress they
wished to compel her to discontinue was all
her safeguard. . . . What are we to think
of the imbecility of the judge, or of his horri-
ble connivance 2
Besides being kept under the eyes of these
wretches, and exposed to their insults and
mockery, she was subjected to espial from
without. Winchester, the inquisitor, and Cau-
chon $ had each a key to the tower, and watched
her hourly through a hole in the Wall. Each
stone of this infernal dungeon had eyes.
Her only consolation Was that she was at
first allowed interviews with a priest, who told
lier that he was a prisoner, and attached to
Charles VII.'s cause. Loyseleur, so he was
named, was a tool of the English. He had
won Jeanne's confidence, Who used to confess
herself to him; and at Such times her con-
fessions were taken down by notaries con-
cealed on purpose to overhear her. . . . It
is said that Loyseleur encouraged her to hold
out, in order to insure her destruction. On
the question of her being put to the torture
being discussed (a very useless proceeding,
since she neither denied nor concealed any-
thing), there were only two or three of her
judges who counselled the atrocious deed, and
the confessor was one of these.
long, and padlocked, so that she could not stir from the
place.”—Ibidem. Another witness States: “There was
an iron beam, to keep her straight (erectam).” Proces
MS., Evidence of Pierre Cusquel.
f The Count de Ligny went to see her with an English
lord, and said to her, “Jeanne, I come to hold you to
ransom, provided you promise never again to bear arms
against us.” She replied: “Ah ! my God, you are laugh-
ing at me; I know you have neither the will nor the
power.” And when he repeated the words, she added,
“I am convinced these Engllsh will put me to death, in
the hope of winning the kingdom of France. But though
the Godons (Goddens) should be a hundred thousand
more than they are to-day, they would not win the king-
dom.” The English lord was so enraged that he drew
his dagger to plunge it into her, but was hindered by the
Earl of Warwick. Notices des MSS., iii. 371.
§ Not precisely Cauchon, but his man, Estivet, pro-
moter of the prosecution. Ibid., iii. 473, -
70 JOAN OF ARC.
The deplorable state of the prisoner's health
was aggravated by her being deprived of the
consolations of religion during Passion Week.
On the Thursday the Sacrament was with held
from her: on that self-same day on which
Christ is universal host, on which He invites
the poor and all those who suffer, she seemed
to be forgotten.*
On Good Friday, that day of deep silence, on
which We all hear no other sound than the beat-
ing of one’s own heart, it seems as if the hearts
of the judges smote them, and that some feel-
ing of humanity and of religion had been
awakened in their aged scholastic souls: at
least it is certain, that whereas thirty-five of
them took their seats on the Wednesday, no
more than nine Were present at the examination
on Saturday: the rest, no doubt, alleged the
devotions of the day as their excuse.
On the contrary, her courage had revived.
Likening her own sufferings to those of Christ,
the thought had roused her from her despond-
ency. She answered, when the question was
again put to her, “ that she would defer to the
church militant, provided it commanded nothing
impossible.”—“Do you think, then, that you are
not subject to the Church which is upon earth,
to our holy father the Pope, to the cardinals,
archbishops, bishops, and prelates ?”—“Yes,
certainly, our Zord served.”—“Do your voices
forbid your submitting to the Church militant 2"
—“They do not forbid it, our Lord being served
*Sł.”
This firmness did not desert her once on the
Saturday: but on the next day, the Sunday
(Easter Sunday!) what must her feelings have
been P What must have passed in that poor
heart, when, the sounds of the universal holiday
enlivening the city, Rouen's five hundred bells
ringing out with their joyous peals on the air,
and the Whole Christian world coming to life
*“Usque quo oblivisceres me in finem?” ... (How long
wilt thou forget me?) Servicefor Holy Thursday, Lauds.
+ Compare the Statement, given above, as to the deep
impression made on her by the sound of bells, -
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 71
with the Saviour, she remained with death !
Summon up our pride as much as we may,
philosophers and reasoners as We boast ourselves
to be in this present age, but which of us—
amidst the agitations of modern bustle and
excitement, or in the Voluntary captivity of
study, plunged in its toilSome and solitary re-
searches—which of us hears without emotion
the sounds of these beautiful Christian festivals,
the touching voice of the bells, and, as it were,
their mild maternal reproach 2 . . . Who
can see, without envying them, those crowds of
believers issuing from the Church, made young
again and revived by the divine table 2 " . º
The mind remains firm, but the soul is sad and
heavy. . . . He who believes in the future,
and whose heart is not the less linked to the
past, at such moments lays down the pen,
closes the book, and cannot refrain from ex-
claiming “Ah! Why am I not with them, one of
them, and the simplest, the least of these little
Children P”
What must have been one’s feelings at that
time, when the Christian World was still one,
still undivided ? What must have been the
throes of that young Soul Which had lived but
on faith ? . . . Could she who, with all her
inner life of visions and revelations, had not
the less docilely obeyed the commands of the
Church; could she who till now had believed
herself in her simplicity “a good girl,” as she
said, a girl altogether Submissive to the Church
—could she without terror see the Church
against her? Alone, when all are united with
God—alone excepted from the World’s gladness
and universal communion, on the day on which
the gates of heaven are opened to mankind—
alone to be excluded !
And was this exclusion unjust 2 . . . The
Christian’s soul is too humble ever to pretend
that it has a right to receive its God. e
After all, what, Who Was she, to undertake to
gainsay these prelates, these doctors? How
dared she speak before so many able men—men
who had studied ? Was their not presumption
and damnable pride in an ignorant girl’s oppo-
72 JOAN OF ARC.
sing herself to the learned—a poor simple girl to
men in authority ? . . . Undoubtedly fears
of the kind agitated her mind.
On the other hand, this opposition is not
Jeanne's, but that of the Saints and angels who
had dictated her answers to her, and, up to this
time, sustained her. . . . Wherefore, alas !
do they come no more in this pressing need of
hers? Wherefore do those consoling Counten-
ances of the Saints appear no more, except in a
doubtful light, and growing paler daily P
Wherefore is the so long-promised deliverance
delayed ? . . . Doubtless the prisoner has
put these questions to herself over and over
again; doubtless, silently, gently, she has over
and over again quarrelled with her Saints and
angels. But angels who do not keep their
word, can they be angels of light 2 . . . Let
us hope that this horrible thought did not occur
to her mind.
There was one means of escaping; this was,
without expressly disavowing, to forbear affirm-
ing, and to say, “It seems to me.” The lawyers
thought it easy for her to pronounce these few
simple words; but in her mind to use so doubt-
ful an expression was in reality equivalent to a
denial: it was abjuring her beautiful dream of
heavenly friendships, betraying her sweet sis-
ters on high. . . . Better to die. . . .
And, indeed, the unfortunate, rejected by the
visible, abandoned by the invisible Church, by
the world, and by her own heart, was sinking.
e And the body was following the sink-
ing Soul.
It so happened that on that very day she had
eaten part of a fish which the charitable Bishop
of Beauvais had sent her, and might have
imagined herself poisoned. The bishop had an
interest in her death; it would have put an end
to this embarrassing trial, would have got the
judge out of the scrape; but this was not what
the English reckoned upon. The Earl of War.
wick in his alarm said, “The king would not
have her by any means die a natural death.
The king has bought her dear. . . . She
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 73
must die by justice and be burnt. . . . See
and cure her.”
All attention, indeed, was paid her; she was
visited and bled, but was none the better for it,
remaining weak and nearly dying. Whether
through fear that she should escape thus and
die without retracting, or that her bodily weak-
ness inspired hopes that her mind would be
more easily dealt with, the judges made an
attempt while she was lying in this state
(April 18). They visited her in her chamber,
and represented to her that she would be in
great danger if she did not reconsider and fol-
low the advice of the Church. “It seems to
me, indeed,” she said, “seeing my sickness,
that I am in great danger of death. If so,
God’s will be done; I should like to confess,
receive my Saviour, and be laid in holy
ground.”—“If you desire the sacraments of
the Church, you must do as good Catholics do,
and submit yourself to it.” She made no
reply. But on the judge’s repeating his words,
she said: “If the body die in prison, I hope
that you will lay it in holy ground; if you do
not, I appeal to our Lord.”
Already in the course of these examinations
she had expressed one of her last wishes.
Question. “You say that you wear a man's
dress by God’s Command, and yet, in case you
die, you want a woman’s shift 2 ”—Answer.
“All I want is to have a long one.” This touch-
ing answer was ample proof that, in this extrem-
ity, she was much less occupied with care
about life than with the fears of modesty.
The doctors preached to their patient for a
long time; and he who had taken on himself
the especial care of exhorting her. Master
Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the
scene by saying bitterly to her: “If you don’t
obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a
Saracen.” “I am a good Christian,” she
replied meekly, “I was properly baptized, and
will die like a good Christian.”
The slowness of these proceedings drove the
English wild with impatience. Winchester
had hoped to have been able to bring the trial
*4. JOAN OF AIRC.
to an end before the campaign; to have forced
a confession from the prisoner, and have dis-
honored King Charles. This blow struck,
he would recover Louviers, secure Normandy
and the Seine, and then repair to Bâle to
begin another War—a theological War—to sit
there as arbiter of Christendom, and make and
unmake popes. At the Very moment he had
these high designs in View, he was compelled
to cool his heels, Waiting upon What it might
please this girl to Say.
The unlucky Cauchon happened at this pre-
cise juncture to have offended the Chapter of
Rouen, from which he was soliciting a decision
against the Pucelle: he had allowed himself
to be addressed beforehand as “My lord, the
archbishop.” Winchester determined to dis-
regard the delays of these Normans, and to
refer at once to the great theological tribunal,
the University of Paris.
While waiting for the answer, new attempts
were made to overcome the resistance of the
accused; and both stratagem and terror were
brought into play. In the course of a second
admonition (May 2), the preacher, Master Chât-
illon, proposed to her to submit the question
of the truth of her visions to persons of her
own party. She did not give in to the Snare.
“As to this,” she said, “I depend on my
Judge, the King of heaven and earth.” She
did not say this time, as before, “On God and
the Pope.” “Well, the Church will give you
up, and you will be in danger of fire, both soul
and body. You will not do what we tell you
until you suffer body and soul.”
They did not stop at vague threats. On the
third admonition, which took place in her
chamber (May 11), the executioner was sent for
and she was told that the torture was ready.
. . . But the manoeuvre failed. On the con-
trary, it was found that she had resumed all,
and more than all her courage. Raised up
after temptation, she seemed to have mounted
a step nearer the source of grace. “The angel
Gabriel,” she said, “has appeared to strengthen
{- ?
THE MAID OF OR LEANS, 75
me; it was he, my Saints have assured me S0.
God has been ever my master in what I
have done; the devil has never had power over
me. . . . Though you should tear off my
limbs and pluck my soul from my body, I would
say nothing else.” The spirit was so visibly
manifested in her that her last adversary, the
preacher Châtillon, was touched and became
her defender, declaring that a trial So Con-
ducted seemed to him null. Cauchon, beside
himself with rage, compelled him to silence.
The reply of the University arrived at last.
The decision to which it came on the twelve
articles was, that this girl Was Wholly the
devil's; was impious in regard to her parents;
thirsted for Christian blood, &c. This was the
opinion given by the faculty of theology. That
of law was more moderate, declaring her to be
deserving of punishment, but with two reser-
Vations—1st, in case she persisted in her non-
Submission; 2d, if she were in her right senses.
At the same time, the University wrote to
the Pope, to the cardinals, and to the King of
England, lauding the Bishop of Beauvais, and
setting forth, “ that there seemed to it to have
been great gravity observed, and a holy and
just way of proceeding, which ought to be most
satisfactory to all.”
Armed with this response, some of the asses-
sors were for burning her without further
delay; which would have been sufficient satis-
faction for the doctors, whose authority she
rejected, but not for the English, who required
a retraction that should defame (infamat) King
Charles. They had recourse to a new admon-
ition and a new preacher, Master Pierre Morice,
which was attended by no better result. It was
in vain that he dwelt upon the authority of the
University of Paris, “ which is the light of all
science.”—“Though T should see the execu-
tioner and the fire there,” she exclaimed,
“ though I were in the fire, I could only say
What I have said.”
It was by this time the 23d of May, the day
after Pentecost; Winchester could remain no
76. JOAN OF ARC.
longer at Rouen, and it behooved to make an
end of the business. Therefore, it was re.
solved to get up a great and terrible public
scene, which should either terrify the recu-
sant into submission, or, at the least, blind
the people. Loy Seleur, Châtillon, and Morice,
Were sent to visit her the evening before, to.
promise her that if she would submit and quit
her man’s dress, she should be delivered out of
the hands of the English, and placed in those
of the Church.
This fearful farce was enacted in the ceme-
tery of Saint-Ouen, behind the beautifully se-
Vere monastic church so called; and which had
by that day assumed its present appearance.
On a scaffolding raised for the purpose sat
Cardinal Winchester, the two judges, and thirty-
three assessors, of whom many had their scribes
seated at their feet. On another scaffold, in
the midst of huissiers and tortures, was Jeanne,
in male attire, and also notaries to take down
her Confessions, and a preacher to admonish
her; and, at its foot, among the crowd, was re-
marked a strange auditor, the executioner upon
his cart, ready to bear her off as soon as she
should be adjudged his.
The preacher on this day, a famous doctor,
Guillaume Erard, conceived himself bound, on
so fine an opportunity, to give the reins to his
eloquence; and by his zeal he spoiled all. “O,
noble house of France,” he exclaimed, “which
wast ever wont to be protectress of the faith,
how hast thou been abused to ally thyself with
a heretic and schismatic. . . . .” So far
the accused had listened patiently, but when
the preacher, turning towards her, said to her,
raising his finger, “It is to thee, Jehanne, that
I address myself, and I tell thee that thy king
is a heretic and schismatic,” the admirable girl,
forgetting all her danger, burst forth with,
“On my faith, sir, with all due respect, I under-
take to tell you, and to swear, on pain of my
life, that he is the noblest Christian of all
THE MAID OF ORLEANS. ;
of the Church, and not what you call him.”
—“Silence her,” called out Cauchon.
Thus all these efforts, pains, and expense,
had been thrown away. The accused adhered
to what she had said. All they could obtain
from her was her consent to submit herself to
the Pope. Cauchon replied, “The Pope is too
far off.” He then began to read the sentence
of condemnation, which had been drawn up
beforehand, and in which, among other things,
it was specified: “And furthermore, you have
obstinately persisted in refusing to Submit
yourself to the Holy Father and to the Council,”
&c. Meanwhile Loyseleur and Erard conjured
her to have pity on herself; on which the
bishop, catching at a shadow of hope, discon-
tinued his reading. This drove the English
mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told
Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—
a charge repeated by the Cardinal’s chaplain.
“Thou art a liar,” exclaimed the bishop. “And
thou,” was the retort, “art a traitor to the king.”
These grave personages seemed to be on the
point of going to cuffs on the judgment-seat.
Erard, not discouraged, threatened, prayed.
One while he said, “Jehanne, we pity you so
tº ” and another, “Abjure or be burnt 1.”
All present evinced an interest in the matter,
down even to a worthy catchpole (huissier),
Who, touched with compassion, besought her
to give way, assuring her that she should be
taken out of the hands of the English and
placed in those of the Church. “Well, then,”
she said, “I will sign.” On this, Cauchon,
turning to the cardinal, respectfully inquired
What was to be done next. “Admit her to do
penance,” replied the ecclesiastical prince.
Winchester's secretary drew out of his sleeve
a brief revocation, only six lines long (that
which was given to the World took up six
pages), and put a pen in her hand, but she
could not sign. She smiled and drew a circle:
the secretary took her hand, and guided it to
make a Cross.
The sentence of grace was a most severe one:
—“Jehanne, We condemn you, out of our grace
78 JOAN OF ARC,
and moderation, to pass. the rest of your days
in prison, on the bread of grief and water of
anguish, and so to mourn your sins.”
She was admitted by the ecclesiastical judge
to do penance no doubt, nowhere save in the
prisons of the Church. The eccelesiastic in
pace, however severe it might be, would at the
least withdraw her from the hands of the Eng-
lish, place her under shelter from their insults,
save her honor. Judge of her surprise and
despair when the bishop coldly said: “Take her
back whence you brought her.”
Nothing was done; deceived on this wise, she
could not fail to retract her retraction. Yet,
though she had abided by it, the English, in
their fury, would not have allowed her so to
escape. They had come to Saint Ouen in the
hope of at last burning the sorceress, had wait-
ed panting and breathless to this end; and now
they were to be dismissed on this fashion, paid
with a slip of parchment, a signature, a grim-
ace. . . . At the very moment the bishop
discontinued reading the sentence of condem-
nation, stones flew upon the scaffolding With-
out any respect for the cardinal. . . . The
doctors were in peril of their lives as they came
down from their seats into the public place;
swords were in all directions pointed at their
throats. The more moderate among the Eng-
lish confined themselves to insulting language:
“Priests, you are not earning the king's
money.” The doctors, making off in all haste,
said tremblingly: “Do not be uneasy, we shall
soon have her again.”
And it was not the soldiery alone, not the
English mob, always so ferocious, which dis-
played this thirst for blood. The better born,
the great, the lords, were no less sanguinary.
The king's man, his tutor, the Earl of War-
wick, said like the soldiers: “The king's busi-
ness goes on badly: the girl will not be burnt.”
According to English notions, Warwick was
the mirror of worthiness, the accomplished
Englishman, the perfect gentleman. Brave and
devout, like his master, Henry W., and the
Zealous champion of the established Church, he
THE MAID OF OR7.F.A.W.S. #9
had performed the pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, as well as many other chivalrous expe-
ditions, not failing to give tournays on his
route: one of the most brilliant and celebrated
of which took place at the gates of Calais,
where he defied the whole chivalry of France.
This tournay was long remembered; and the
bravery and magnificence of this Warwick
served not a little to prepare the way for the
famous Warwick, the king-maker.
With all his chivalry, Warwick was not the
less Savagely eager for the death of a woman,
and one who was, too, a prisoner of war. The
best, and the most looked-up-to of the English,
was as little deterred by honorable scruples as
the rest of his countrymen from putting to
death on the award of priests, and by fire, her
who had humbled them by the sword.
This great English people, with so many
good and Solid qualities, is infected by one
vice, which corrupts these very qualities them-
selves. This rooted, all-poisoning vice is pride:
a cruel disease, but which is nevertheless the
principle of English life, the explanation of its
contradictions, the Secret of its acts. With
them, virtue or crime is almost ever the result
of pride; even their follies have no other
source. This pride is sensitive, and easily
pained in the extreme; they are great sufferers
from it, and again make it a point of pride to
conceal these sufferings. Nevertheless, they
will have vent. The two expressive words,
disappointment and mortification, are peculiar to
the English language. ge
This self-adoration, this internal worship of
the creature for its own sake, is the sin by
which Satan fell; the height of impiety. This
is the reason that with so many of the virtues
of humanity, with their seriousness and sobriety
of demeanor, and with their Biblical turn of
mind, no nation is further off from grace. They
are the only people who have been unable to
claim the authorship of the Imitation of Jesus;
a Frenchman might write it, a German, an
Italian, never an Englishman. From Shake-
speare to Milton, from Milton to Byron, their
Š() JOAN OF ARC.
beautiful and sombre literature is skeptical,
Judaical, Satanic, in a Word, antichristian.
“As regards law,” as a legist well says, “the
Ringlish are Jews, the French Christians.” A
theologian might express himself in the same
manner as regards faith. The American Indi.
ans, with that penetration and originality they
so often exhibit, expressed this distinction in
their fashion. “Christ,” said one of them, “was
a Frenchman whom the English crucified in
London; Pontius Pilate was an officer in the
fºsservice of Great Britain.”
The Jews never exhibited the rage against
Jesus which the English did against Pucelle.
It must be owned that she had wounded them
cruelly in the most sensible part—in the simple
but deep esteem they have for themselves.
At Orléans, the invincible men-at-arms, the
famous archers, Talbot at their head, had shown
their backs; at Jargeau, sheltered by the good
walls of a fortified town, they had suffered
themselves to be taken; at Patay, they had
fled as fast as their legs would carry them, fled
before a girl. . . . This was hard to be
borne, and these taciturn English were forever
pondering over the disgrace. . . . They had
been afraid of a girl, and it was not very cer-
tain but that, chained as she was, they felt
fear of her still, . . . though, Seemingly,
not of her, but of the Devil, whose agent she
was. At least, they endeavored both to be
ieve and to have it believed so.
But there was an obstacle in the Way of this,
|for she was said to be a virgin; and it was a
|notorious and well-ascertained fact, that the
evil could not make a compact with a virgin.
The coolest head among the English, Bedford,
the regent, resolved to have the point cleared
up; and his wife, the duchess, intrusted the
matter to some matrons, who declared Jehanne
to be a maid:” a favorable declaration which
...9
~...~.4
4
i
* Must it be said that the Duke of Bedford, so generally
esteemed as an honorable and well-regulated man, “ saw
what took place on this occasion, concealed ” (erat in
Quodam loco secreto ubi videbat Joannam visitari). No-
tices des MSS., iii. 372. -


THE MALD OF ORLEANS. 81
turned against her, by giving rise to another
superstitious notion; to wit, that her Virginity
constituted her strength, her power, and that
to deprive her of it was to disarm her, was
to break the charm, and lower her to the level
of other women.
The poor girl's only defence against such a
danger had been wearing male attire; though,
strange to say, no one had ever seemed-able to
understand her motive for wearing it. (All,
both friends and enemies, were scandalized by
it. At the outset, she had been obliged to ex-
plain her reasons to the women of Poitiers;
and When made prisoner, and under the care of
the ladies of Luxemburg, those excellent per-
sons prayed her to clothe herself as honest
girls were wont to do. Above all, the English
ladies, who have always made a parade of
chastity and modesty, must have considered
her so disguising herself monstrous, and insuf.
ferably indecent. The Duchess of Bedford
sent her female attire; but by whom ? by a man,
a tailor. The fellow, with impudent familiarity,
was about to pass it over her head, and, when
she pushed him away, laid his unmannerly hand
upon her; his tailor's hand on that hand which
had borne the flag of France—she boxed his
€3b1".
If women could not understand this feminine
Question, how much less could priests | & ©
They quoted the text of a council held in the
fourth century, which anathematized such
changes of dress; not seeing that the prohibi-
tion specially applied to a period when man-
ners had been barely retrieved from pagan im-
purities. The doctors belonging to the party
of Charles VIII., the apologists of the Pucelle,
find exceeding difficulty in justifying her on
this head. One of them (thought to be Gerson)
makes the gratuitous supposition that the mo-
ment she dismounted from her horse, she was
in the habit of resuming woman’s apparel; con-
fessing that Esther and Judith had had recourse
to more natural and feminine means for their
triumphs over the enemies of God’s people.
Entirely preoccupied with the soul, these theo-
82 JOAN OF ARC.
logians seem to have held the body cheap; pro
vided the Written law be followed, the soul will
be saved; the flesh may take its chance. . . .
A poor and simple girl may be pardoned her
inability to distinguish so clearly.
It is Our hard condition here below, that soul
and body are so closely bound one with the
other, that the Soul takes the flesh along with
it, undergoes the same hazards, and is answer-
able for it. . . . This has ever been a heavy
fatality; but how much more so does it become
under a religious law, which ordains the en-
durance of insult, and which does not allow
imperilled honor to escape by flinging away
the body and taking refuge in the world of
spirits
On the Friday and the Saturday, the unfor-
tunate prisoner, despoiled of her man’s dress,
had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, ven-
geance, might severally incite the cowards to
degrade her before she perished, to sully what
they were about to burn. . . . Besides,
they might be tempted to warnish their infamy
by a reason of State, according to the notions of
- the day—by depriving her of her virginity,
they would undoubtedly destroy that secret
power of which the English entertained such
great dread, who, perhaps, might recover their
courage when they knew that, after all, she
was but a woman. According to her confessor,
to whom she divulged the fact, an Englishman,
not a common Soldier, but a gentleman, a lord,
patriotically devoted himself to this execution,
bravely undertook to violate a girl laden with
fetters, and, being unable to effect his wishes,
rained blows upon her.
“On the Sunday morning, Trinity Sunday,
when it was time for her to rise (as she told
him who speaks), she said to her English
guards, ‘Leave me, that I may get up.” One of
them took off her Woman’s dress, emptied the
bag in which was the man’s apparel, and Said
to her, “Get up.”—“Gentlemen,” she said, ‘you
know that dress is forbidden me; excuse me,
I will not put it on.’ The point was contested
till noon; when, being compelled to go out for
THE MALD OF ORLEANS, 83
some bodily want, she put it on. When she
came back, they would give her no other de-
spite her entreaties.”
. In reality, it was not to the interest of the
English that she should resume her man's
dress, and so make null and Void a retraction
obtained with such difficulty. But at this mo-
ment, their rage no longer knew any bounds.
Saintrailles had just made a bold attempt upon
Rouen. It would have been a lucky hit to
have swept off the judges from the judgment-
Seat, and have carried Winchester and Bedford
to Poitiers; the latter was, Subsequently, all
but taken on his return, between Rouen and
Paris. As long as this accursed girl lived,
who, beyond a doubt, continued in prison to
practice her sorceries, there was no safety for
the English: perish, she must.
The assessors, who had notice instantly given
them of her change of dress, found some hun-
dred English in the court to obstruct their
passage; who, thinking that if these doctors
entered, they might spoil all, threatened them
with their axes and swords, and chased them
out, calling them traitors of Armagnacs. Cau-
chon, introduced with much difficulty, assumed
an air of gayety to pay his court to Warwick,
and said with a laugh, “She is caught.”
On the Monday, he returned along with the
inquisitor and eight assessors, to question the
Pucelle, and ask her why she had resumed that
dress, She made no excuse, but bravely facing
the danger, said that the dress was fitter for
her as long as she was guarded by men,
and that faith had not been kept with her.
Eſer saints, too, had told her, “that it was
great pity she had abjured to save her life.”
Still, she did not refuse to resume woman’s
dress. “Put me in a seemly and safe prison,”
she said, “I will be good, and do whatever the
Church shall Wish.”
—a
*Is it not surprising to find Lingard and Turner sup-
pressing these essential circumstances, and concealing
the true cause of the Pucelle's resuming male attire?' In
this, both the Catholic and the Protestant historian sink
into the mere Englishman.
84 JOAN OF ARC.
On leaving her, the bishop encountered War-
wick and a crowd of English; and to show him-
self a good Englishman, he said in their tongue:
“Farewell, farewell.” This joyous adieu was .
about synonymous with “Good evening, good
evening; all's over.”
On the Tuesday, the judges got up at the
archbishop’s palace a court of assessors as
they best might; some of them had assisted at
the first sittings only, others at none, in fact,
Composed of men of all sorts, priests, legists,
and even three physicians. The judges re-
capitulated to them what had taken place, and
asked their opinion. This opinion, quite dif-
ferent from what was expected, was that the
prisoner should be summoned, and her act of
abjuration be read over to her Whether this
was in the power of the judges is doubtful. In
the midst of the fury and swords of a raging
soldiery, there was in reality no judge, and no
possibility of judgment. Blood was the one
thing Wanted; and that of the judges was, per-
haps, not far from flowing. They hastily drew
up a summons, to be served next morning at
eight o’clock; she was not to appear, Save to
be burnt.
Cauchon sent her a confessor in the morning,
brother Martin l’Advenu, “to prepare her for
her death, and persuade her to repentance.”
. . . . And when he apprized her of the
death she was to die that day, she began to cry
out grievously, to give way, and tear her hair:
‘Alas! am I to be treated so liorribly and cruel-
ly ? must my body, pure as from birth, and
which was never contaminated, be this day
consumed and reduced to ashes? Ha! haſ I
would rather be beheaded seven times Over
than be burnt on this wise. . . . Oh! I
make my appeal to God, the great judge of the
Wrongs and grievances done me!’”
After this burst of grief, she recovered her-
self and confessed; she then asked to communi-
cate. The brother was embarrassed; but Con-
sulting the bishop, the latter told him to
administer the sacrament, “and whatever else
she might ask.” Thus, at the very moment he
THE MAID OF ORLFA WS. 85
...”
condemned her as a relapsed heretic, and cut
her off from the Church, he gave her all that
the Church gives to her faithful. Perhaps a
last sentiment of humanity awoke in the heart
of the wicked judge: he considered it enough
to burn the poor creature, without driving her
to despair and damning her. Perhaps, also,
the Wicked priest, through freethinking levity,
allowed her to receive the sacraments as a
thing of no consequence, Which, after all, might
serve to calm and silence the sufferer. tº
Besides, it was attempted to do it privately, and
the eucharist was brought without stole and
light. But the monk complained, and the
Church of Rouen, duly warned, was delighted
to show what it thought of the judgment pro-
nounced by Cauchon; it sent along with the
body of Christ numerous torches and a large
escort of priests, who sang litanies, and as they
passed through the Streets, told the kneeling
people, “Pray for her.”
After partaking of the communion, which she
received with abundance of tears, she perceived
the bishop, and addressed him with the words,
“Bishop, I die through you. . . .” And,
again, “Had you put me in the prisons of the
Church and given me ghostly keepers, this
would not have happened. . . . And for
this I summon you to answer before God.”
Then seeing among the bystanders Pierre
Morice, one of the preachers by whom she had
been addressed, she said to him, “Ah, Master
Pierre, where shall I be this evening?”—“Have
you not good hope in the Lord?”—“Oh, yes;
God to aid, I shall be in Paradise.”
It was nine o'clock; she was dressed in fe-
male attire, and placed on a cart. On one side
of her was brother Martin l’Advenu; the con-
stable, Massieu, was on the other. The Augus-
time monk, brother Isambart, who had already
displayed such charity and courage, would not
quit her. It is stated that the wretched Loyse-
leur also ascended the cart to ask her pardon:
86 JOAN OF A.R.C.
but for the Earl of Warwick, the English would
have killed him.”
Up to this moment the Pucelle had never
despaired, with the exception, perhaps, of her
temptation in the Passion Week. While saying,
as she at times would say, “These English will
kill me,” she in reality did not think so. She
did not imagine that she could ever be deserted.
She had faith in her king, in the good people
of France. She had said expressly, “There
will be some disturbance either in prison or at
the trial, by which I shall be delivered, . . .
greatly, victoriously delivered.” , But
though king and people deserted her, she had
another source of aid, and a far more powerful
and certain one, from her friends above, her
kind and dear saints. . . . When she was
assaulting Saint-Pierre, and deserted by her
followers, her Saints sent an invisible army to
her aid. How could they abandon their obedient
girl, they who had so often promised her Safety
and deliverance 2 . . .
What then must her thoughts have been
when she saw that she must die; when, carried
in a cart, she passed through a trembling growd,
under the guard of eight hundred Englishmen,
armed with sword and lance? She wept and
bemoaned herself, yet reproached neither her
king nor her saints. . . . She was only
heard to utter, “O Rouen, Rouen must I then
(lie here ?”
The term of her sad journey was the old
market-place, the fishmarket. Three scaffolds
had been raised; on one was the Episcopal and
royal chair, the throne of the Cardinal of Eng-
land, Surrounded by the stalls of his prelates;
On another were to figure the principal person-
ages of the mournful drama, the preacher, the
judges, and the bailli, and lastly, the condemned .
One; apart was a large scaffolding of plaster,
groaning under a weight of wood—nothing had
been grudged the stake, which struck terror by
its height alone. This was not only to add to
* This, however, is only a rumor (Audivit dici. . .),
a dramatic incident, with which popular tradition has,
perhaps, gratuitously adorned the tale.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 87
the solemnity of the execution, but was done
with the intent that from the height to which
it was reared, the executioner might not get at
it save at the base, and that to light it only,
so that he would be unable to cut short the
torments and relieve the sufferer as he did with
others, sparing them the flames. On this occa-
sion, the important point was that justice should
not be defrauded of her due, or a dead body be
committed to the flames; they desired that she
should be really burnt alive, and that, placed
on the summit of this mountain of Wood, and
commanding the circle of lances and of Swords,
she might be seen from every part of the market-
place. There was reason to suppose that being
slowly, tediously burnt before the eyes of a
curious crowd, she might at least be surprised
into some Weakness, that Something might es-
cape her which could be set down as a disavowal,
at the least Some confused Words which might
be interpreted at pleasure, perhaps, low prayers,
humiliating cries for mercy, such as proceed
from a woman in despair. . . .
A chronicler, friendly to the English, brings
a heavy charge against them at this moment.
According to him, they wanted her gown to be
burnt first so that she might remain naked, “ in
order to remove all the doubts of the people;”.
that the fagots should then be removed so that
all might draw nigh to see her, “and all the
secrets which can or should be in a woman:”
and that after this immodest, ferocious exhibi-
tion, “the executioners should replace the
great fire on her poor carrion. . . .” -
The frightful ceremony began with a sermon.
Master Nicolas Midy, one of the lights of the
University of Paris, preached upon the edifying
text: “When one limb of the Church is sick,
the whole Church is sick.” This poor Church
could only be cured by cutting off a limb. He
Wound up with the formula: “Jeanne, go in
peace, the Church can no longer defend thee.”
The ecclesiastical judge, the Bishop of Beau-
Vais, then benignly exhorted her to take care of
her soul and to regall all her misdeeds, in order
that She might awaken to true repentance. The
88 JOAN OF ARC.
assessors had ruled that it was the law to read
over her abjuration to her; the bishop did noth-
ing of the sort. He feared her denials, her
disclaimers. But the poor girl had no thought
of so chicaning away life: her mind was fixed
on far other subjects. Even before she was
exhorted to repentance, she had knelt down
and invoked God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and
St. Catherine, pardoning all and asking pardon,
saying to the bystanders, “Pray for me!”
In particular, she besought the priests to say
each a mass for her soul. - . . And all this
so devoutly, humbly, and touchingly, that sym-
pathy becoming contagious, no one could any
longer contain himself; the Bishop of Beauvais
melted into tears, the Bishop of Boulogne
sobbed, and the very English cried and wept
as well, Winchester with the rest.
Might it be in this moment of universal ten-
derness, of tears, of contagious weakness, that
the unhappy girl softened, and relapsing into
the mere Woman, confessed that she saw clear-
ly she had erred, and that apparently she had
been deceived when promised deliverance.
This is a point on which we cannot implicitly
rely on the interested testimony of the En-
glish. Nevertheless, it would betray scant
knowledge of human nature to doubt, with her
hopes so frustrated, her having wavered in her
faith. . . . Whether she confessed to this
effect in words is uncertain; but I will confi-
dently affirm that she owned it in thought.
Meanwhile the judges, for a moment put out
of countenance, had recovered their usual bear-
ing, and the Bishop of Beauvais, drying his
eyes, began to read the act of condemnation.
He reminded the guilty one of all her crimes,
of her schism, idolatry, invocation of demons,
how she had been admitted to repentance, and
How, “seduced by the prince of lies, she had
fallen, O grief like the dog which returns to his
vomit. . . . 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 āt the Same time to
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, 89
relax its sentence, and to spare you death and
the mutilation of your members.”
Deserted thus by the Church, she put her
whole trust in God. She asked for the cross.
An Englishman handed her a cross which he
made out of a stick; she took it, rudely fash-
ioned as it was, with not less devotion, kissed
it, and placed it under her garments next to
her skin. . . . But what she desired was
the crucifix belonging to the Church, to have it
before her eyes till she breathed her last. The
good hussier Massieu and brother Isambart, in-
terfered with such effect that it was brought
her from St. Sauveur's. While she was embrac-
ing this crucifix, and brother Isambart was en-
couraging her, the English began to think all
this exceedingly tedious; it was now noon at
least; the soldiers grumbled and the captains
called out, “What's this, priest; do you mean
us to dine here ?” . . . Then, losing pa-
tience, and without waiting for the order from
the bailli, who alone had authority to dismiss
her to death, they sent two constables to take
her out of the hands of the priests. She was
seized at the foot of the tribunal by the men-at-
arms, who dragged her to the executioner with
the words, “Do thy office. . . .” The fury
of the soldiery filled all present with horror;
and many there, even of the judges, fled the
spot that they might see no more.
When she found herself brought down to the
market-place, surrounded by English, laying
rude hands on her, nature asserted her rights,
and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried
out, “O Rouen, thou art then to be my last
abode 2 . . .” She said no more, and, in
this hour of fear and trouble, did not sin with her
!?ps. ge e
She accused neither her king nor her holy
ones. But when she set foot on the top of the
pile, on viewing this great city, this motionless
and silent crowd, she could not refrain from ex-
claiming, “Ah! Rouen, Rouen, much do I fear
you will suffer from my death!” She who had
saved the people, and whom that people de-
serted, gave voice to no other sentiment when
90' JOAN OF ARC.
dying (admirable sweetness of soul!) than that
of compassion for it.
She was made fast under the infamous pla-
card, mitred with a mitre on which was read—
“Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater. . . .”
And then the executioner set fire to the pile.
She saw this from above and uttered
a cry. . . . Then as the brother who was
exhorting her paid no attention to the fire, for-
getting herself in her fear for him, she insisted
on his descending. .
The proof that up to this period she had
made no express recantation is, that the un-
happy Cauchon was obliged (no doubt by the
high Satanic will which presided over the
whole) to proceed to the foot of the pile,
obliged to face his victim, to endeavor to ex-
tract some admission from her. All that he ob-
tained was a few words, enough to rack his
soul. She said to him mildly what she had
already said: “Bishop, I die through you.
tº º If you had put me into the church
prisons this would not have happened.” No
doubt hopes had been entertained that on find-
ing herself abandoned by her king, she would
at last accuse and defame him. To the last she
defended him: “Whether I have done well or
ill, my king is faultless; it was not he who
counselled me.
Meanwhile the flames rose. . . . When
they first seized her, the unhappy girl shrieked
for holy water—this must have been the cry of
fear. . . . But soon recovering, she called
only on God, on her angels and her saints. She
bore witness to them: “Yes, my voices were
from God, my voices have not deceived me.”
The fact that all her doubts vanished at this
trying moment must be taken as a proof that
she accepted death as the promised deliverance;
that she no longer understood her Salvation in
the Judaic and material sense, as until now she
had done, that at length she saw clearly; and
that rising above all shadows, her gifts of
illumination and of sanctity were at the final
hour made perfect unto her.
The great testimony She thus bore is attested
THE MAID OF ORIFA WS. 91
by the sworn and compelled witness of her
death, by the Dominican who mounted the pile
with her, whom she forced to descend, but who
spoke to her from its foot, listened to her, and
held out to her the Crucifix.
There is yet another witness of this sainted
death, a most grave witness, who must himself
have been a saint. This witness, whose name
history ought to preserve, was the Augustine
monk already mentioned, brother Isambart (le
la Pierre. During the trial, he had hazarded
his life by counselling the Pucelle, and yet,
though so clearly pointed out to the hate of
the English, he persisted in accompanying her
in the cart, procured the parish crucifix for
her, and comforted her in the midst of the
raging multitude, both on the scaffold where
she was interrogated and at the stake.
Twenty years afterwards, the two venerable
friars, simple monks, vowed to poverty, and
having nothing to hope or fear in this world,
bear witness to the scene we have just described
“We heard her,” they say, “ in the midst of
the flames invoke her saints, her archange, ;
several times she called on her Saviour . . .
At the last, as her head sunk on her bosom; she
shrieked, “Jesus !’”
“Ten thousand men wept. . . .” A few
of the English alone laughed, or endeavored
to laugh. One of the most furious among
them had sworn that he would throw a fagot
on the pile. Just as he brought it, she breathed
her last. Eſe was taken ill. His comrades led
him to a tavern to recruit his spirits by drink,
but he was beyond recovery. “I saw,” he ex.
claimed, in his frantic despair, “I saw a dove
fly out of her mouth with her last sigh.” Others
had read in the flames the word “Jesus,” which
she so often repeated. The executioner repair-
ed in the evening to brother Isambart, full of
consternation, and confessed himself; but felt
pursuaded that God would never pardon him.
One of the English King's secretaries
said aloud, on returning from the dismal scene,
“We are lost; we have burnt a saint.” *
Though these words fell from an enemy’s
92 JOAN OF ARC.
mouth, they are not the less important and will
live, uncontradicted by the future. Yes,
Whether considered religiously or patriotically,
Jeanne Darc was a saint.
Where find a finer legend than this true his-
tory? Still, let us beware of converting it into a
legend; let us piously preserve its every trait,
even such as are most akin to human nature,
and respect its terrible and touching real-
ity. . . .
Let the spirit of romance profane it by its
touch, if it dare; poetry will ever abstain. For
what could it add 2 . . . The idea which,
throughout the middle age, it had pursued from
legend to legend, Was found at the last to be a
living being—the dream was a reality. The
Virgin, succorer in battle, invoked by knights,
and looked for from above, Was here below.
. . . and in whom 2 Here is the marvel. In
What was despised, in what was lowliest of all,
in a cliild, in a simple country girl, one of the
poor, of the people of France. . . . . For there
was a people, there was a France. This last
impersonation of the past was also the first of
the period that was commencing.—In her there
at once appeared the Virgin. . . . and, already,
Country.
Such is the poetry of this grand fact, such
its plailosophy, its lofty truth. But the his-
toric reality is not fille less certain; it was but
too positive, and too cruelly Verified. . . . This
living enigma, this mysterious creature, whom
all concluded to be Supernatural, this angel or
demon, who, according to Some, was to fly away
some morning, was found to be a woman, a
young girl; was found to be without wings, and,
linked as We Ourselves to a mortal body, was
to suffer, to die—and how frightful a death!
But it is precisely in this apparently degrad-
ing reality, in this sad trial of nature, that the
ideal is discoverable, and Shines brightly. Her
contemporaries recognized in the scene Christ
among the Pharisees. . . . Still we must see
in it something else—the Passion of the Virgin,
the martyrdom of purity.
There have been many martyrs: history shows
THE MAID OF OREA.N.S. 93
us numberless ones, more or less pure, more Or
less glorious. Pride has had its martyrs; SO
have hate and the spirit of controversy. No
age has been without martyrs militant, who no
doubt died with a good grace when they could
no longer kill. . . . Such fanatics are irrele-
vant to our subject. The sainted girl is not of
them; she had a sign of her own—goodness,
charity, sweetness of Soul.
She had the sweetness of the ancient martyrs,
but with a difference. The first Christians
remained gentle and pure only by shunning
action, by sparing themselves the struggles
and the trials of the World. Jehanne was gentle
in the roughest struggle, good amongst the
bad, pacific in war itself; she bore into War
(that triumph of the devil's) the spirit of God.
She took up arms, when she knew “the pity
for the kingdom of Francé.” She could not
bear to see “French blood flow.” This tender-
ness of heart she showed towards all men.
After a victory she would weep, and would
attend to the wounded English.
Purity, sweetness, heroic goodness—that this
Supreme beauty of the Soul should have cen-
tred in a daughter of France may surprise for-
eigners who choose to judge of our nation by
the levity of its manners alone. We may tell
them (and without partiality, as we speak of
circumstances so long since past) that under
this levity, and in the midst of its follies and
its very vices, old France was not styled with-
out reason the most Christian people. They
were certainly the people of love and of grace;
and whether we understand this humanly or
Christianly, in either sense it will ever hold
good.
The deliverer of France could be no other
than a woman. France herself was Woman ;
having her nobility, but her amiable sweetness
likewise, her prompt and charming pity; at the
least, possessing the virtue of quickly-excited
Sympathies. And though she might take
pleasure in vain elegances and external refine-
Iments, she remained at bottom closer to nature.
The Frenchman, even when vicious, preserved,
94 JOAN OF ARC, -
beyond the man of every other nation, good
Sense and goodness of heart.
May new France never forget the saying of
Old France: “Great hearts alone understand
how much glory there is in being good / .” To
be and to keep so, amidst the injuries of man
and the severity of Providence, is not the gift
of a happy nature alone, but it is strength and
heroism. . . . To preserve sweetness and
benevolence in the midst of so many bitter dis-
putes, to pass through a life's experiences
without suffering them to touch this internal
treasure—is divine. They who perserve, and
so go on to the end, are the true elect. And
though they may even at times have stumbled
in the difficult path of the world, amidst their
falls, their weaknesses and their infancies, they
will not the less remain children of God |
FINIS.
C
C
T
7
}
{}
j
5
t |NMHijº'ſ Qi. Mºlſº
|| : |||||||||||||| ||| i
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
IIIHIIIllllllllllllllllll || || ||
3 9015 03739 61
|
||||||||
|||||||
92

.
g
º t
. lº
s":
º
. . . . . . .
* † - - -ºº º
* * *
;
:
;
#
:
:
#.
:
º
º
&
º
º
º
sº
º
i
ººº
:
º
: