Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans

Front matter

JOAN OF ARC

THE MAID OF ORLEANS

By JULES MICHELET

Preface

Our prosy American homes need to be illuminated by the presence of heroines and of heroes. Long enough have the shadows of the bloodless personages of mere fiction rested upon the hearthstone. Life and history are always stranger than the day-dreams of fancy; they can satisfy the cravings of imagination, while they feed the heart and instruct the mind. We hunger for the real, and our souls grow strong when nourished with "deeds sublime."

The life of Joan of Are, the Maid of Orleans, is the most brilliant chapter in Michelet's brilliant History of France. You have it here, reader, in large, clear type, and can easily peruse it, while sitting at home or riding along the dusty highway. If the true story of that child of France does not make your heart strangely beat, then go your way,—hoe your corn or wash your dishes, count your cash or return Mrs. Grundy’s call, cut a coat or sew a shirt, write a brief or give the finishing touch of educational death to a beautiful young soul,—there is no latent heroism, no latent romance, in you; it is impossible to awaken in you—not what sleeps, but what exists not, for it is not given to mortal to create something out of nothing.

Accept, then, all you that are worthy,—and we take comfort in believing that you are the majority,—this picture of feminine heroism. The life of Joan of Arc reveals to us the heart of France, and prophesies to us, more clearly than the philosophic words of any statesman, the future of that great people. America, too, in due time, shall have her Maid of Orleans, to represent the noblest, purest womanhood that history has yet developed. The cry of protest, raised here and there with more or less wisdom, or folly, points to a future that is not without hope.

Everybody in this country has heard of M. Michelet, but very few know anything about him. A brief sketch of his life, we think, will be interesting to many.

Jules Michelet was born at Paris, August 21, 1798. In 1821, he entered upon a career of instruction, under the happiest auspices. From that period to the year 1826, he was successively employed at the Collége Rollin as teacher of history, of ancient languages, and of philosophy. In 1827 he was appointed Mâitre des Conferences at the École Normale. Shortly after the revolution of July he was placed at the head of the historical department of the National Archives. In 1838 he succeeded Daunau in the chair of history and moral philosophy in the Collége de France. He was elected the same year a Member of the Institute, in the class of Moral Sciences.

The following are M. Michelet's principal works:—"Chronological Tableau of Modern History" (1825), "Synchronical Tableau of Modern History" (1826), and a "Summary of Modern History," "Introduction to Universal History" (1831), "Roman History" (same year), "Summary of the History of France before the Revolution" (1833), "Œuvres Choisies" from Vico, and "Mémoires of Luther," written by himself (1835), "Origin of French law (droit) sought in the symbols and formulas of universal law" (1837), "Jesuites" (1843), "The Priest, Woman, and the Family" (1844), "The People" (1846), the first volume of his "History of the Revolution" (1847). M. Michelet's great work is his "History of France." A recent production, entitled "L'Oiseau," is full of poetry and melancholy, and perhaps reveals the heart of a man who has toiled and suffered much.

Gladly would we trace the celebrated historian through the struggles of his youth and the labors of his manhood; gladly would we endeavor to portray him as he has lived and worked in the midst of his cotemporaries, but limits are imposed upon us here, and we must content ourselves with the merest outlines. He was too liberal for even the government of Louis Philippe, which deprived him of his professor's chair. After the revolution of February, he returned to his chair, but the government silenced him again, in 1850. He lost his place in the Archives when, after the Coup d'État of December, 1851, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the perjured usurper of the throne of France. His country, on whose fair bosom rests for a period a frightful military incubus, must be deprived of the services of her noblest sons. Vain, however, are the despot's proscriptions. Others, as well as M. Guizot, can repeat the significant language of M. de Châteaubriand: "When, in the silence of abject submission, we hear only the chains of the slave and the voice of the informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and it is as dangerous to incur favor as to merit disgrace, the historian appears to be charged with the vengeance of nations. It is in vain that Nero triumphs. Tacitus has been born in the Empire; he grows up near the ashes of Germanicus, and already uncompromising Providence has handed over to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world."

This Life of Joan of Arc is a fair specimen of M. Michelet's fervid, poetical style. May the history of the real deeds of an inspired heroine bring some hours of elevated pleasure to many a home.

O. W. Wight.

Introductory Sketch

The accompanying story of the life of Joan of Arc is a portrait, beautifully drawn and delicately colored. To understand it fully, however,—indeed, to understand it at all—requires a certain knowledge of the history of those times, especially of the condition of affairs in France. To supply this in some slight measure is the purpose of this introductory sketch.

The cause of many of the troubles which fell upon both England and France may, with tolerable accuracy, be put into a single sentence: namely, For many centuries England thought that her prosperity depended upon holding at least one fortified city in France, while France similarly thought it necessary to her welfare to hold at least one city in England. This idea, firmly held by both parties, cost six centuries of time, inestimable treasures, and the sacrifice of innumerable human lives. It is now apparent to all that the English Channel is there by divine appointment, and that both England and France prosper best by keeping on their own sides of the dividing line. The relations of England to France in the fifteenth century were emphatically trying.

The first noticeable feature of the times of Joan of Arc is the low state of morality in general. It was an age of oppression, debauchery, and all the attendant vices and crimes. Judicial murder was common, and murder that was not judicial was common. Assassination was not unusual, and the crime was condoned if convenience required condonement. These butcheries were practised by and upon the highest nobility of the realm. The withering indictment of Mark Twain contains not one word too much:—

"Her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the dark ages… Lying was the common speech of men … honesty was become a lost virtue … the keeping of a promise was expected of no one … great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions … a merciless cruelty was the rule … [it was] an age which had forgotten what honor was … men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things … [it was] an age that was false to the core … hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation … [she found] a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage and oppression, their king cowed, resigned to his fate, and preparing to fly the country."

Paris has always been the heart and the brain of France. It is so to-day, it was so at the time of Joan of Arc. At that period Paris came into the control of the butchers, Cabochiens, who were a sort of guild or corporation, and, having secured the dom- ination of the city, became in a way a political party. Their foes were the Armagnacs. Much violence was done to harmless rich folks; "it was only needful to call such an one an Armagnac, then all fell on him, killed him, and took his goods." As for the poor, they had apparently neither rights nor consideration. Kitchin declares that at Paris the Dauphin reigned supreme and gave himself up to his debaucheries. This being the state of affairs in Paris, one is left to imagine the general situation of the country. Two special facts should also be kept in mind: one was that the church was rent with the bitterest schism and there were two popes; the other was that it was in the midst of what is known as The Hundred Years' War.

The jealousies, rivalries, and strifes grad- ually arranged themselves, with more or less definiteness, into the two chief factions, known as Burgundians and Armagnacs. Both parties sought the alliance of the English, while the English in turn naturally wished to be allied to the stronger party. At the time of Joan of Arc the Burgundians were allied to the English, while the Dauphin was with the Armagnacs. We may then roughly divide them into patriots and tories: the Armagnacs being the patriots and the Burgundians being the tories, At this period the Burgundians had decidedly the advantage,—in numbers, wealth, position, and alliance. The real France, as distinguished from the English domination, was in desperate straits, and to them came Joan of Arc as a last hope. But it should be added that there was a general awakening of patriotism, which, however, would have come to nothing had it not been for her marvelous leadership. It is always true in history that the raising up of a leader implies the raising up of people for that leader to lead. It is true in this case; but rarely or never has the leader been required to do so much in the way of putting heart—and sense!—into the people to be led.

The next factor in this complicated situation was the insanity of the king, Charles VI. Like the other men of noble station he was profligate in the extreme. It is not improbable that his madness was the direct result of his vices. At all events he went mad in 1392, or twenty years before Joan was born, and he died a maniac in 1422, when she was ten years old. He was put in charge of his brother, the Duke of Orléans, who served as regent. Orléans was soon assassinated by order of Burgundy, and Burgundy was later assassinated in revenge. The mad king was tossed helpless from one party to another.

Charles VI. had lucid intervals, usually lasting several months in the spring of the year. This kept the nervous tension of the people under a severe strain, for they never abandoned the hope of his recovery, and this hope deferred made their hearts sick. His good intentions, formed during the lucid intervals, could not be carried out.

The Dauphin was in a situation not much less difficult. His mother, married at fourteen, was the beautiful Isabelle of Bavaria, In that age of shameless profligacy no one surpassed her. She made little or no con- cealment of her vices. The Dauphin saw her dissolute life, and it is not surprising that he had serious doubts as to his own legitimacy. These doubts were removed only by the earnest assurances of Joan of Arc.

After the death of Charles VI. the Dauphin was promptly proclaimed king, but he was not crowned. For a period of seven years he hesitated and dallied. One reason of this hesitancy was certainly the doubt of his own legitimacy, above mentioned. It is probable that his inherent lack of force and courage also contributed to the result. But, whatever the cause or causes, it is plain that this long-continued delay and indecision worked disastrously upon his career. He was sometimes called the Dauphin, sometimes Charles VII. What was most needed in order to unite his own followers and recruit them from the ranks of the indifferent, was to insist upon his rights and have the ceremony of coronation performed at once with due pomp and solemnity. Joan of Arc saw that this was the specific need of the crisis. Though others called him Charles VII. she refused to call him anything but Dauphin, until he should be duly crowned. This is the significance of her reassurance of his legitimacy, and of her conducting him to Rheims for coronation. When this was achieved she considered her work done.

It is not possible in a brief sketch to go into the details of the tangled web of French-English complication, but one more fact must be mentioned. The mad king, Charles VI., had, in 1420, given his daughter Cath- erine in marriage to Henry V. with the agreement that Henry's heirs should forever after rule France. But two years later both Charles VI. and Henry V. died, the prince, afterwards Henry VI., being at that time only a few months old. This threw France into an English regency which could not be other than galling to every real Frenchman. It was impossible to avoid the question whether the agreement between the dead kings could bind the French nation in view of the fact that the Dauphin, the rightful heir to the French throne, was nineteen years old. The Burgundians had joined the English for purposes of their own, and surely the prosperity of France was not one of these purposes. The Armagnacs may not have been more intelligent or more moral than their opponents; but, in their urgency to further the rights of the Dauphin, they did certainly represent the patriotism of France. Certainly, also, Joan's devotion to the Dauphin was, in concrete form, a representation of her devotion to France.

The moral character of the Dauphin—Charles VII.—is a factor in the development of these events. It is not needful to say much of him, but it must be kept in mind that Joan served him as the only means of serving France. Born of a mad father and a dissolute mother, reared in the midst of the very refinement of luxurious vice, he became what might naturally be expected. It is here sufficient to point out his colossal ingratitude to Joan. After she had effectually broken the power of the English—dealt them a blow "from which they should not recover in a thousand years"—and placed him firmly on the throne, he refused her earnest request that she might be permitted to return home, he allowed her to be sold to the English, by whom she was turned over to the Inquisition, by whom she was tortured and "tried" at the same time, and ultimately she was burned alive. In all this, Charles manifested no interest in his marvelous champion and saviour. He afterwards became insane—the result of heredity plus his own vices—and so died.

Such, in barest outline, were the times of Joan of Arc. "The sixteenth century," says Guizot, "with its St. Bartholomew and The League, the eighteenth with its Reign of Terror, and the nineteenth with its Commune of Paris, contain scarcely any events so sinister as those of which France was, in the reign of Charles VI., from 1380 to 1422, the theater and the victim." Into these times was born this pure, true, high-spirited girl. It is impossible to account for her on any theory of heredity or of evolution. She was not the product of the times; she was the gift of God. Tracing the spotless lily to its root, one finds it growing from mud and slime. But the foulness of the soil did not produce the beauty of the lily, though its home is there. This contrast is not greater than that of this beautiful girl to the foulness of her environment.

She touched others with the spark of her enthusiasm and they felt a thrill of the divine life. To the Dauphin, Charles VII., she communicated the only energy of manli- ness he ever showed. She changed armies from drunken, debauched, plundering mobs to well-disciplined and efficient soldiers. She taught the fearless but profane and coarse La Hire to pray and not swear. She deepened the piety of sincere dignitaries of the church, and mercilessly unmasked the hypocrisy of the Judases and Caiaphases. She may be said to have raised France from the dead, for it was her enthusiasm, her teaching, her example that taught patriotism to a people who had hopelessly—but for her—lost the word and its meaning.

The story of the tragedy of Rouen is told with sufficient fulness in the accompanying narrative of Michelet. In all the painful narratives of suffering innocence, few are more painful than this. But her soul was marching on. Her life left the air of France sweeter and the sky clearer. Her influence was not consumed in that fire which turned her body into ashes. For four centuries and a half she has been an object of admiration, not to say adoration, not to the French people alone, but to the entire civilized world.

HENRY KETCHAM.

Joan of Arc

JOAN OF ARC.

The originality of the Pucelle, the secret of her success, was not her courage or her visions, but her good sense. Amidst all her enthusiasm, the girl of the people clearly saw the question, and knew how to resolve it. The knot which politician and doubter could not unloose, she cut. She pronounced, in God's name, the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., to be the heir: she reassured him as to his legitimacy, of whihc 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? Even in this prosaic fifteenth century, excess of suffering had singularly exalted men's imaginations. We find at Paris, one brother Richard, so exciting the populace 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 Pucelle, every province had its saint—either a Pierrette, a Breton peasant girl who holds converse 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.

Lorraine, apparently, was one of the last provinces 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 Orleans, 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 seaward through France in every direction, was covered with forests of such vast size as to be esteemed by the Carlovingians 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.

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 ancient times, dependencies of the abbey of Saint-Remy, 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 England.

This line of the Meuse is the border of Lorraine and of Champagne, so long an object of contention betwixt monarch and duke. Jeanne's father, Jacques Darc, was a worthy Champenois. Jeanne, no doubt, inherited her disposition from this parent; she had none of the Lorraine ruggedness, but much rather the Champenois mildness; that simplicity, blended with sense and shrewdness, 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 Vaucouleurs to him. It formed at that time the grand channel of communication between Champagne 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 frontier 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 border of Lorraine and of Champagne had suffered cruelly from war; first, a long war between the east and the west, between 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 remembrance of these pitiless wars has never been effaced. Not long since was seen, near Neufchâteau, an antique tree with sinister name, whose branches had no doubt often borne human fruit—Chêne des Partisans (the Partisans' Oak).

The poor people of the border 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 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 all, he is resigned; whatever happens, he is prepared for it; he is patient and brave. Women even become 80; they must become so, among all these soldiers, if not for the sake of life, for that of honor, like Goëthe's beautiful and hardy Dorothea.

Jeanne was the third daughter of a laborer, Jacques Darc, and of Isabella Romée. 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 of 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 religion, 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…

As regards Jeanne's piety, we have the affecting testimony of the friend of her infancy, of her bosom friend, Haumette, who was younger than she by three or four years. "Over and over again," she said, "I have been at her father's, and have slept with her, in all love (de bonne amitié)… She was a very good 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 village. What they did not see and know was that in her, celestial aspirations ever absorbed worldly feelings, and suppressed their development. She had the divine gift to remain, soul and body, a child. She grew up strong and beautiful; but never knew the physical sufferings entailed on woman. They were spared her, that she might be the more devoted to religious thought and inspiration. Born under the very walls of the church, 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 her own ideas, endowing them with being, and imparting to them, out of the strength of her original vitality, such splendid and all-powerful existence, that they threw into the shade the wretched realities of this world.

If poetry mean creation, this undoubt- edly 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 the 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 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 mistrustful of the old local divinities; and to insure their complete expulsion, the curé annually said a mass at the fountain.

Amidst these legends and popular dreams, Jeanne was born. But, along with these, the land presented a poetry of a far different character, savage, fierce, and, alas! but too real,—the poetry of war. War! All passions and emotions are included 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 conflagration, … a fearful but poetic state of things. The most prosaic of men, the lowland 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 adventures. She would see poor fugitives seek refuge in her village, would assist in sheltering them, give them up her bed, and sleep herself in the loft. Once, too, her parents had been obliged to turn fugitives; 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 prescribe a term to such miseries, whether he would not send a liberator as he had so often done for Israel—a Gideon, a Judith? … 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 seen over the portal of the churches St. Margaret, 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 of each province, had become altogether Lorraine in Jeanne Darc's country. According to the prophecy current here, it was a Pucelle of the borders of Lorraine who was to save the realm; and the prophecy had probably assumed this form through the recent marriage of Rénè of Anjou with the heiress of the duchy of Lorraine, a marriage which, in truth, turned, out very happily for the kingdom of France.