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Preface

TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Scholars have been good enough to notice this book; and the majority have treated it very kindly, doubtless because they have perceived that the author has observed all the established rules of historical research and accuracy. Their kindness has touched me. I am especially grateful to MM. Gabriel Monod, Solomon Reinach and Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, who have discovered in this work certain errors, which will not be found in the present edition.

My English critics have a special claim to my gratitude. To the memory of Joan of Arc they consecrate a pious zeal which is almost an expiatory worship. Mr. Andrew Lang's praiseworthy scruples with regard to my references have caused me to correct some and to add several.

The hagiographers alone are openly hostile. They reproach me, not with my manner of explaining the facts, but with having explained them at all. And the more my explanations are clear, natural, rational and derived from the most authoritative sources, the more these explanations displease them. They would wish the history of Joan of Arc to remain mysterious and entirely supernatural. I have restored the Maid to life and to humanity. That is my crime. And these zealous inquisitors, so intent on condemning my work, have failed to discover therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. Their severity has had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few printer's errors. What flatterers could better have gratified "the proud weakness of my heart?"[1]

PARIS, January, 1909.

[Footnote 1: "De mon coeur l'orgueilleuse faiblesse," Racine, Iphigenie en Aulide, Act i, sc. i.--(W.S.)]

Introduction

My first duty should be to make known the authorities for this history. But L'Averdy, Buchon, J. Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, Boucher de Molandon, MM. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Lanery d'Arc, Henri Jadart, Alexandre Sorel, Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, L. Jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various documents for the life of Joan of Arc. I refer my readers to their works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature,[2] and without entering on any new examination of these documents, I will merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use I have chosen to make of them. They are: first, the trial which resulted in her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers.

[Footnote 2: Le P. Lelong, Bibliotheque historique de la France, Paris, 1768 (5 vols. folio), II, n. 17172-17242. Potthast, Bibliotheca medii aevi, Berlin, 1895, 8vo, vol. i, pp. 643 seq. U. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age, Paris, 8vo, 1877, pp. 1247-1255; Jeanne d'Arc, bibliographie, Montbeliard, 1878 [selections]; Supplement au Repertoire, Paris, 1883, pp. 2684-2686, 8vo. Lanery d'Arc, Le livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc, bibliographie raisonnee et analytique des ouvrages relatifs a Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1894, large 8vo, and supplement. A. Molinier, Les sources de l'histoire de France des origines aux guerres d'Italie, IV: Les Valois, 1328-1461, Paris, 1904, pp. 310-348.]

First, in the trial[3] which resulted in her condemnation the historian has a mine of rich treasure. Her cross-examination cannot be too minutely studied. It is based on information, not preserved elsewhere, gathered from Domremy and the various parts of France through which she passed. It is hardly necessary to say that all the judges of 1431 sought to discover in Jeanne was idolatry, heresy, sorcery and other crimes against the Church. Inclined as they were, however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the words of one whom they desired to ruin, so that they might dishonour her king, they examined all available information concerning her life. The high value to be set upon the Maid's replies is well known; they are heroically sincere, and for the most part perfectly lucid. Nevertheless they must not all be interpreted literally. Jeanne, who never regarded either the bishop or the promoter as her judge, was not so simple as to tell them the whole truth. It was very frank of her to warn them that they would not know all.[4] That her memory was curiously defective must also be admitted. I am aware that the clerk of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember exactly the answers she had given in her cross-examination.[5] That may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. It is none the less certain that after the lapse of a year she retained but an indistinct recollection of some of the important acts of her life. Finally, her constant hallucinations generally rendered her incapable of distinguishing between the true and the false.

[Footnote 3: Jules Quicherat, Proces de condamnation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 8vo, 1841, vol. i. (Called hereafter Trial.--W.S.)]

[Footnote 4: Trial, vol. i, p. 93, passim.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 89, 142, 161, 176, 178, 201.]

The record of the trial is followed by an examination of Jeanne's sayings in articulo mortis.[6] This examination is not signed by the clerks of the court. Hence from a legal point of view the record is out of order; nevertheless, regarded as a historical document, its authenticity cannot be doubted. In my opinion the actual occurrences cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial report. It tells of Jeanne's second recantation, and of this recantation there can be no question, for Jeanne received the communion before her death. The veracity of this document was never assailed,[7] even by those who during the rehabilitation trial pointed out its irregularity.[8]

[Footnote 6: Trial, vol. i, pp. 478 et seq.]

[Footnote 7: Cf. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux sur l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1880, pp. 138-144.]

[Footnote 8: Evidence of G. Manchon, Trial, vol. ii, p. 14.]

Secondly, the chroniclers of the period, both French and Burgundian, were paid chroniclers, one of whom was attached to every great baron. Tringant says that his master did not expend any money in order to obtain mention in the chronicles,[9] and that therefore he is omitted from them. The earliest chronicle in which the Maid occurs is that of Perceval de Cagny, who was in the service of the house of Alencon and Duke John's master of the house.[10] It was drawn up in the year 1436, that is, only six years after Jeanne's death. But it was not written by him. According to his own confession he had "not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importance, down in writing."[11] This chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of Alencon representing the differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la Tremouille and the Duke of Alencon, in a light most unfavourable to the King. But from a scribe, supposed to be writing at the dictation of a retainer of Duke John, one would have expected a less inaccurate and a less vague account of the feats of arms accomplished by the Maid in company with him whom she called her fair duke. Although this chronicle was written at a time when no one dreamed that the sentence of 1431 would ever be revoked, the Maid is regarded as employing supernatural means, and her acts are stripped of all verisimilitude by being recorded in the manner of a hagiography. Further, that portion of the chronicle attributed to Perceval de Cagny, which deals with the Maid, is brief, consisting of twenty-seven chapters of a few lines each. Quicherat is of opinion that it is the best chronicle of Jeanne d'Arc[12] existing, and the others may indeed be even more worthless.

[Footnote 9: Ne donnoit point d'argent pour soy faire mettre es croniques.--Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, ed. C. Fabre and L. Lecestre, Paris, 1887, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 283.]

[Footnote 10: Perceval de Cagny, Chroniques, published by H. Moranville, Paris, 1902, 8vo.]

[Footnote 11: Le sens, memoire, ne l'abillite de savoir faire metre par escript ce, ne autre chose mendre de plus de la moitie, Perceval de Cagny, p. 31.]

[Footnote 12: Trial, vol. iv, p. 1.]

Gilles le Bouvier,[13] king at arms of the province of Berry, who was forty-three in 1429, is somewhat more judicious than Perceval de Cagny; and, in spite of some confusion of dates, he is better informed of military proceedings. But his story is of too summary a nature to tell us much.

[Footnote 13: Ibid., pp. 40-50. D. Godefroy, Histoire de Charles VII, Paris, 1661, fol. pp. 369-474.]

Jean Chartier,[14] precentor of Saint-Denys, held the office of chronicler of France in 1449. Two hundred years later he would have been described as historiographer royal. His office may be divined from the manner in which he relates Jeanne's death. After having said that she had been long imprisoned by the order of John of Luxembourg, he adds: "The said Luxembourg sold her to the English, who took her to Rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of Rouen, without a trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and received the body of Our Lord, as beseemeth a good catholic."[15] When Jean Chartier says that the English burned her without trial, he means apparently that the Bailie of Rouen did not pronounce sentence. Concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse and relapse he says not a word; and it is the English whom he accuses of having burnt a good Catholic without a trial. This example proves how seriously the condemnation of 1431 embarrassed the government of King Charles. But what can be thought of a historian who suppresses Jeanne's trial because he finds it inconvenient? Jean Chartier was extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of Catherine's sword and in Jeanne's loss of power when she broke it;[16] he records the most puerile of fables. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that the official chronicler of the Kings of France, writing about 1450, ascribes to the Maid an important share in the delivery of Orleans, in the conquest of fortresses on the Loire and in the victory of Patay, that he relates how the King formed the army at Gien "by the counsel of the said maid,"[17] and that he expressly states that Jeanne caused[18] the coronation and consecration. Such was certainly the opinion which prevailed at the Court of Charles VII. All that we have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or whether the King of France may not have deemed it to his advantage to owe his kingdom to the Maid. She was held a heretic by the heads of the Church Universal, but in France her memory was honoured, rather, however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the leaders of the army. The services of the latter the King was not desirous to extol after the revolt of 1440. During this Praguerie,[19] the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Vendome, the Duke of Alencon, whom the Maid called her fair duke, and even the cautious Count Dunois had been seen joining hands with the plunderers and making war on the sovereign with an ardour they had never shown in fighting against the English.

[Footnote 14: Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1858, 3 vols., 18mo. (Bibliotheque Elzevirienne).]

[Footnote 15: Lequel Luxembourg la vendit aux Angloix, qui la menerent a Rouen, ou elle fut durement traictee; et tellement que, apres grant dillacion de temps, sans procez, maiz de leur voulente indeue, la firent ardoir en icelle ville de Rouen publiquement ... qui fut bien inhumainement fait, veu la vie et gouvernement dont elle vivoit, car elle se confessoit et recepvoit par chacune sepmaine le corps de Nostre Seigneur, comme bonne catholique.--Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France, vol. i, p. 122.]

[Footnote 16: Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France, vol. i, p. 122.]

[Footnote 17: Par l'admonestement de ladite Pucelle, Jean Chartier, vol. i, p. 87.]

[Footnote 18: Fut cause, ibid., vol. i, p. 97.]

[Footnote 19: This revolt of the French nobles was so named because various risings of a similar nature had taken place in the city of Prague.--W.S.]

"Le Journal du Siege"[20] was doubtless kept in 1428 and 1429; but the edition that has come down to us dates from 1467.[21] What relates to Jeanne before her coming to Orleans is interpolated; and the interpolator was so unskilful as to date Jeanne's arrival at Chinon in the month of February, while it took place on March 6, and to assign Thursday, March 10, as the date of the departure from Blois, which did not occur until the end of April. The diary from April 28 to May 7 is less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do occur may be attributed to the copyist. But the facts to which these dates are assigned, occasionally in disagreement with financial records and often tinged with the miraculous, testify to an advanced stage of Jeanne's legend. For example, one cannot possibly attribute to a witness of the siege the error made by the scribe concerning the fall of the Bridge of Les Tourelles.[22] What is said on page 97 of P. Charpentier's and C. Cuissart's edition concerning the relations of the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave dissensions which had occurred during the last week. From the 8th of May the diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts borrowed from Chartier, from Berry, and from the rehabilitation trial. The episode of the big fat Englishman slain by Messire Jean de Montesclere at the Siege of Jargeau is obviously taken from the evidence of Jean d'Aulon in 1446; and even this plagiarism is inaccurate, since Jean d'Aulon expressly says he was slain at the Battle of Les Augustins.[23]

[Footnote 20: Journal du siege d'Orleans (1428-1429), ed. P. Charpentier and C. Cuissart, Orleans, 1896, 8vo.]

[Footnote 21: The oldest copy extant is dated 1472 (MS. fr. 14665).]

[Footnote 22: Journal du siege d'Orleans (1428-1429), p. 87. Trial, vol. iv, p. 162, note.]

[Footnote 23: Journal du siege, p. 97. Trial, vol. iii, p. 215.]

The chronicle entitled La Chronique de la Pucelle,[24] as if it were the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled Geste des nobles Francois, going back as far as Priam of Troy. But the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added to. This was done after 1467. Even if it were proved that La Chronique de la Pucelle is the work of Cousinot, shut up in Orleans during the siege, or even of two Cousinots, uncle and nephew according to some, father and son according to others, it would remain none the less true that this chronicle is largely copied from Jean Chartier, the Journal du Siege and the rehabilitation trial. Whoever the author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no very high praise can be given to a fabricator of tales, who, without appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory circumstances. La Chronique de la Pucelle ends abruptly with the King's return to Berry after his defeat before Paris.

[Footnote 24: Chronique de la Pucelle, or Chronique de Cousinot, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1859, 16mo. (Bibliotheque Gauloise).]

Le Mystere du siege[25] must be classed with the chronicles. It is in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some have attempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify this poem of 20,529 lines with a certain mistaire[26] played on the sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their conclusions from the following circumstances: the Marechal de Rais, who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in Duke Charles's city expending vast sums[27] there from September, 1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its municipal funds "a standard and a banner, which had belonged to Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles and their capture from the English."[28] From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in 1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take "the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles" to mean a mystery rather than a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the certain mistaire of 1435 as indicating a representation of that siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even then we must examine whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us.

[Footnote 25: Mystere du Siege d'Orleans, first published by MM. F. Guessard and E. de Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to, according to the only manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican Library.--Cf. Etude sur le mystere du siege d'Orleans, by H. Tivier, Paris, 1868, 8vo.]

[Footnote 26: Trial, vol. v, p. 309.]

[Footnote 27: The Abbe E. Bossard and de Maulde, _Gilles de Rais, Marechal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue_ (1404-1440), 2nd edition, Paris, 1886, 8vo, pp. 94-113.]

[Footnote 28: Un estandart et banniere qui furent a Monseigneur de Reys pour faire la maniere de l'assault comment les Tourelles furent prinses sur les Anglois Mistere du siege, p. viii.]

Among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is the Marechal de Rais. Hence it has been concluded that the mystery was written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which effect was given above the Nantes Bridge, on October 20, 1440. How, indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death could the vampire of Machecoul have been represented to the people of Orleans as fighting for their deliverance? How could the Maid and Blue Beard be associated in a heroic action? It is hard to answer such a question, because we cannot possibly tell how much of that kind of thing could be tolerated by the barbarism of those rude old times. Perhaps our text itself, if properly examined, will be found to contain internal evidence as to whether it is of an earlier or later date than 1440.

The bastard of Orleans was created Count of Dunois on July 14, 1439.[29] The lines of the mystery, in which he is called by this title, cannot therefore be anterior to that date. They are numerous, and, by a singularity which has never been explained, are all in the first third of the book. When Dunois reappears later he is the Bastard again. From this fact the editors of 1862 concluded that five thousand lines were prefixed to the primitive text subsequently, although they in no way differ from the rest, either in language, style, or prosody. But may the rest of the poem be assigned to 1435 or 1439?

[Footnote 29: Mistere du siege, preface, p. x.]

That is not my opinion. In the lines 12093 and 12094 the Maid tells Talbot he will die by the hand of the King's men. This prophecy must have been made after the event: it is an obvious allusion to the noble captain's end, and these lines must have been written after 1453.

Six years after the siege no clerk of Orleans would have thought of travestying Jeanne as a lady of noble birth.

In line 10199 and the following of the "Mistere du Siege" the Maid replies to the first President of the Parlement of Poitiers when he questions her concerning her family:

"As for my father's mansion, it is in the Bar country; and he is of gentle birth and rank right noble, a good Frenchman and a loyal."[30]

[Footnote 30:

Quant est de l'ostel de mon pere, Il est en pays de Barois; Gentilhomme et de noble afaire Honneste et loyal Francois.

Mistere du siege, pp. 397-398.]

Before a clerk would write thus, Jeanne's family must have been long ennobled and the first generation must have died out, which happened in 1469; there must have come into existence that numerous family of the Du Lys, whose ridiculous pretensions had to be humoured. Not content with deriving their descent from their aunt, the Du Lys insisted on connecting the good peasant Jacquot d'Arc with the old nobility of Bar.

Notwithstanding that Jeanne's reference to "her father's mansion" conflicts with other scenes in the same mystery, this lengthy work would appear to be all of a piece.

It was apparently compiled during the reign of Louis XI, by a citizen of Orleans who was a fair master of his subject. It would be interesting to make a more detailed study of his authorities than has been done hitherto. This poet seems to have known a Journal du siege very different from the one we possess.

Was his mystery acted during the last thirty years of the century at the festival instituted to commemorate the taking of Les Tourelles? The subject, the style, and the spirit are all in harmony with such an occasion. But it is curious that a poem composed to celebrate the deliverance of Orleans on May 8 should assign that deliverance to May 9. And yet this is what the author of the mystery does when he puts the following lines into the mouth of the Maid:

"Remember how Orleans was delivered in the year one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine, and forget not also that of May it was the ninth day."[31]

[Footnote 31:

... Ayez en souvenance.... Comment Orleans eult delivrance.... L'an mil iiijc xxix; Faites en memoire tous dis; Des jours de may ce fut le neuf.

Mistere du siege, lines 14375-14381, p. 559.]

Such are the chief chroniclers on the French side who have written of the Maid. Others who came later or who have only dealt with certain episodes in her life, need not be quoted here; their testimony will be best examined when we come to that of the facts in detail. Placing on one side any information to be obtained from La Chronique de l'etablissement de la fete,[32] from La Relation[33] of the Clerk of La Rochelle and other contemporary documents, we are now in a position to realise that if we depended on the French chroniclers for our knowledge of Jeanne d'Arc we should know just as much about her as we know of Sakya Muni.

[Footnote 32: Trial, vol. v, pp. 285 et seq.]

[Footnote 33: Relation inedite sur Jeanne d'Arc, extraite du livre noir de l'hotel de ville de La Rochelle, ed. J. Quicherat, Orleans, 1879, 8vo, and La Revue Historique, vol. iv, 1877, pp. 329-344.]

We shall certainly not find her explained by the Burgundian chroniclers. They, however, furnish certain useful information. The earliest of these Burgundian chroniclers is a clerk of Picardy, the author of an anonymous chronicle, called La Chronique des Cordeliers,[34] because the only copy of it comes from a house of the Cordeliers at Paris. It is a history of the world from the creation to the year 1431. M. Pierre Champion[35] has proved that Monstrelet made use of it. This clerk of Picardy knew divers matters, and was acquainted with sundry state documents. But facts and dates he curiously confuses. His knowledge of the Maid's military career is derived from a French and a popular source. A certain credence has been attached to his story of the leap from Beaurevoir; but his account if accurate destroys the idea that Jeanne threw herself from the top of the keep in a fit of frenzy or despair.[36] And it does not agree with what Jeanne said herself.

[Footnote 34: Bibl. Nat. fr. 23018: J. Quicherat, Supplement aux temoignages contemporains sur Jeanne d'Arc, in Revue Historique, vol. xix, May-June, 1882, pp. 72-83.]

[Footnote 35: Pierre Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, Paris, 1906, in 8vo, pp. xi, xii.]

[Footnote 36: Chronique d'Antonio Morosini, introduction and commentary by Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, text established by Leon Dorez, vol. iii, 1901, p. 302, and vol. iv, supplement xxi.]

Monstrelet,[37] "more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard-pot,"[38] is a fountain of wisdom in comparison with Jean Chartier. When he makes use of La Chronique des Cordeliers he rearranges it and presents its facts in order. What he knew of Jeanne amounts to very little. He believed that she was an inn servant. He has but a word to say of her indecision at Montepilloy, but that word, to be found nowhere else, is extremely significant. He saw her in the camp at Compiegne; but unfortunately he either did not realise or did not wish to say what impression she made upon him.

[Footnote 37: Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Chronique, ed. Doueet-d'Arcq, Paris, 1857-1861, 6 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 38: Rabelais, Urquhart's Trans., ii-49, in Bohn's edition, 1849 (W.S.). Plus baveux que ung pot de moutarde.--Rabelais, Pantagruel, bk. iii, chap. xxiv.]

Wavrin du Forestel,[39] who edited additions to Froissart, Monstrelet, and Mathieu d'Escouchy, was at Patay; he never saw Jeanne there. He knows her only by hearsay and that but vaguely. We do not therefore attach great importance to what he relates concerning Robert de Baudricourt, who, according to him, indoctrinated the Maid and taught her how to appear "inspired by Divine Providence."[40] On the other hand, he gives valuable information concerning the war immediately after the deliverance of Orleans.

[Footnote 39: Jehan de Wavrin, Anchiennes croniques d'Engleterre, ed. Mademoiselle Dupont, Paris, 1858-1863, 3 vols., 8vo.]

[Footnote 40: Wavrin's additions to Monstrelet in Trial, vol. iv, p. 407.]

Le Fevre de Saint-Remy, Counsellor to the Duke of Burgundy and King-at-arms of the Golden Fleece,[41] was possibly at Compiegne when Jeanne was taken; and he speaks of her as a brave girl.

[Footnote 41: Chronique de Jean le Fevre, seigneur de Saint-Remy, ed. Francois Morand, Paris, 1876-1881, 2 vols. in 8vo.]

Georges Chastellain copies Le Fevre de Saint Remy.[42]

[Footnote 42: Chroniques des ducs de Bourgogne, Paris, 1827, 2 vols. in 8vo; vols. xlii and xliii of the Collection des Chroniques francaises, by Buchon. Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels, 1863, 8 vols. in 8vo.]

The author of Le Journal ascribed to un Bourgeois de Paris,[43] whom we identify as a Cabochien clerk, had only heard Jeanne spoken of by the doctors and masters of the University of Paris. Moreover he was very ill-informed, which is regrettable. For the man stands alone in his day for energy of feeling and language, for passion of wrath and of pity, and for intense sympathy with the people.

[Footnote 43: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (1405-1449), ed. A. Tuetey, Paris, 1881, in 8vo.]

I must mention a document which is neither French nor Burgundian, but Italian. I refer to the Chronique d'Antonio Morosini, published and annotated with admirable erudition by M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis. This chronicle, or to be more precise, the letters it contains, are very valuable to the historian, but not on account of the veracity of the deeds here attributed to the Maid, which on the contrary are all imaginary and fabulous. In the Chronique de Morosini,[44] every single fact concerning Jeanne is presented in a wrong character and in a false light. And yet Morosini's correspondents are men of business, thoughtful, subtle Venetians. These letters reveal how there were being circulated throughout Christendom a whole multitude of fictitious stories, imitated some from the Romances of Chivalry, others from the Golden Legend, concerning that Demoiselle as she is called, at once famous and unknown.

[Footnote 44: Chronique d'Antonio Morosini, ed. Leon Dorez and Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, Paris, 1900-1902, 4 vols. in 8vo.]

Another document, the diary of a German merchant, one Eberhard de Windecke,[45] a conscientious and clever edition of which has also been published by M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, presents the same phenomenon. Nothing here related of the Maid is even probable. As soon as she appears a whole cycle of popular stories grow up round her name. Eberhard obviously delights to relate them. Thus we learn from these good foreign merchants that at no period of her existence was Jeanne known otherwise than by fables, and that if she moved multitudes it was by the spreading abroad of countless legends which sprang up wherever she passed and made way before her. And indeed, there is much food for thought in that dazzling obscurity, which from the very first enwrapped the Maid, in those radiant clouds of myth, which, while concealing her, rendered her all the more imposing.

[Footnote 45: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Les sources allemandes de l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, Eberhard Windecke, Paris, 1903, in 8vo.]

Thirdly, with its memoranda, its consultations, and its one hundred and forty depositions, furnished by one hundred and twenty-three deponents, the rehabilitation trial forms a very valuable collection of documents.[46] M. Lanery d'Arc has done well to publish in their entirety the memoranda of the doctors as well as the treatise of the Archbishop of Embrun, the propositions of Master Heinrich von Gorcum and the Sibylla Francica.[47] From the trial of 1431 we learn what theologians on the English side thought of the Maid. But were it not for the consultations of Theodore de Leliis and of Paul Pontanus and the opinions included in the later trial we should not know how she was regarded by the doctors of Italy and France. It is important to ascertain what were the views held by the whole Church concerning a damsel condemned during her lifetime, when the English were in power, and rehabilitated after her death when the French were victorious.

[Footnote 46: Trial, vols. ii to iii, 1844-1845 (vols. v and vi, 1846-1847, contain the evidence).]

[Footnote 47: Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc, 1889, in 8vo. Trial, vol. iii, pp. 411-468.]

Doubtless many matters were elucidated by the one hundred and twenty-three witnesses heard at Domremy, at Vaucouleurs, at Toul, at Orleans, at Paris, at Rouen, at Lyon, witnesses drawn from all ranks of life--churchmen, princes, captains, burghers, peasants, artisans. But we are bound to admit that they come far short of satisfying our curiosity, and for several reasons. First, because they replied to a list of questions drawn up with the object of establishing a certain number of facts within the scope of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Holy Inquisitor who conducted the trial was curious, but his curiosity was not ours. This is the first reason for the insufficiency of the evidence from our point of view.[48]

[Footnote 48: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 378-463.]

But there are other reasons. Most of the witnesses appear excessively simple and lacking in discernment. In so large a number of men of all ages and of all ranks it is sad to find how few were equipped with lucid and judicial minds. It would seem as if the human intellect of those days was enwrapped in twilight and incapable of seeing anything distinctly. Thought as well as speech was curiously puerile. Only a slight acquaintance with this dark age is enough to make one feel as if among children. Want and ignorance and wars interminable had impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. The scanty, slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect.[49] One of the most striking characteristics of these small minds is their triviality; they are incapable of attention; they retain nothing. No one who reads the writings of the period can fail to be struck by this almost universal weakness.

[Footnote 49: J. Quicherat, Histoire du costume, Paris, 1875, large 8vo, passim. G. Demay, Le costume au moyen age d'apres les sceaux, Paris, 1880, p. 121, figs. 76 and 77.]

By no means all the evidence given in these one hundred and forty depositions can be treated seriously. The daughter of Jacques Boucher, steward to the Duke of Orleans, depones in the following terms: "At night I slept alone with Jeanne. Neither in her words or her acts did I ever observe anything wrong. She was perfectly simple, humble, and chaste."[50]

[Footnote 50: Trial, vol. iii, p. 34.]

This young lady was nine years old when she perceived with a discernment somewhat precocious that her sleeping companion was simple, humble, and chaste.

That is unimportant. But to show how one may sometimes be deceived by the witnesses whom one would expect to be the most reliable, I will quote Brother Pasquerel.[51] Brother Pasquerel is Jeanne's chaplain. He may be expected to speak as one who has seen and as one who knows. Brother Pasquerel places the examination at Poitiers before the audience granted by the King to the Maid in the chateau of Chinon.[52]

[Footnote 51: Ibid., p. 100.]

[Footnote 52: We must notice, however, that Brother Pasquerel, who was not present either at Chinon or at Poitiers, is careful to say that he knows nothing of Jeanne's sojourn in these two towns save what she herself has told him. Now we are surprised to find that she herself placed the examination at Poitiers before the audience at Chinon, since she says in her trial that at Chinon, when she gave her King a sign, the clerks ceased to contend with her.--Trial, vol. i, p. 145.]

Forgetting that the whole relieving army had been in Orleans since May 4, he supposes that, on the evening of Friday the 6th, it was still expected.[53] From such blunders we may judge of the muddled condition of this poor priest's brain. His most serious shortcoming, however, is the invention of miracles. He tries to make out that when the convoy of victuals reached Orleans, there occurred, by the Maid's special intervention, and in order to carry the barges up the river, a sudden flood of the Loire which no one but himself saw.[54]

[Footnote 53: Expectando succursum regis, Trial, vol. iii, p. 109.]

[Footnote 54: Trial, vol. iii, p. 105.]

The evidence of Dunois[55] is also somewhat deceptive. We know that Dunois was one of the most intelligent and prudent men of his day, and that he was considered a good speaker. In the defence of Orleans and in the coronation campaign he had displayed considerable ability. Either his evidence must have seriously suffered at the hands of the translator and the scribes, or he must have caused it to be given by his chaplain. He speaks of the "great number of the enemy" in terms more appropriate to a canon of a cathedral or a woollen draper than to a captain entrusted with the defence of a city and expected to know the actual force of the besiegers. All his evidence dealing with the transport of victuals on April 28 is well-nigh unintelligible. And Dunois is unable to state that Troyes was the first stage in the army's march from Gien.[56] Relating a conversation he held with the Maid after the coronation, he makes her speak as if her brothers were awaiting her at Domremy, whereas they were with her in France.[57] Curiously blundering, he attempts to prove that Jeanne had visions by relating a story much more calculated to give the impression that the young peasant girl was an apt feigner and that at the request of the nobles she reproduced one of her ecstasies, like the Esther of the lamented Doctor Luys.[58]

[Footnote 55: Ibid., pp. 2 et seq.]

[Footnote 56: Trial, vol. iii, p. 13.]

[Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 15.]

[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 12.]

In that portion of this work which deals with the rehabilitation trial I have given my opinion of the evidence of the clerks of the court, of the usher Massieu, of the Brothers Isambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenu.[59] All these burners of witches and avengers of God worked as heartily at Jeanne's rehabilitation as they had at her condemnation.

[Footnote 59: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 15, 161, 329; vol. iii, pp. 41 and passim.]

In many cases and often on events of importance, the evidence of witnesses is in direct conflict with the truth. A woollen draper of Orleans, one Jean Luillier, comes before the commissioners and as bold as brass maintains that the garrison could not hold out against so great a besieging force.[60] Now this statement is proved to be false by the most authentic documents, which show that the English round Orleans were very weak and that their resources were greatly reduced.[61]

[Footnote 60: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 23.]

[Footnote 61: L. Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise au siege d'Orleans (1428-1429), Orleans, 1892, in 8vo.]

When the evidence given at the second trial has obviously been dressed up to suit the occasion, or even when it is absolutely contrary to the truth, we must blame not only those who gave it, but those who received it. In its elicitation the latter were too artful. This evidence has about as much value as the evidence in a trial by the Inquisition. In certain matters it may represent the ideas of the judges as much as those of the witnesses.

What the judges in this instance were most desirous to establish was that Jeanne had not understood when she was spoken to of the Church and the Pope, that she had refused to obey the Church Militant because she believed the Church Militant to be Messire Cauchon and his assessors. In short, it was necessary to represent her as almost an imbecile. In ecclesiastical procedure this expedient was frequently adopted. And there was yet another reason, a very strong one, for passing her off as an innocent, a damsel devoid of intelligence. This second trial, like the first, had been instituted with a political motive; its object was to make known that Jeanne had come to the aid of the King of France not by devilish incitement, but by celestial inspiration. Consequently in order that divine wisdom might be made manifest in her she must be shown to have had no wisdom of her own. On this string the examiners were constantly harping. On every occasion they drew from the witnesses the statement that she was simple, very simple. Una simplex bergereta,[62] says one. Erat multum simplex et ignorans,[63] says another.

[Footnote 62: Trial, vol. iii, p. 20.]

[Footnote 63: Ibid., p. 87.]

But since, despite her ignorance, this innocent damsel had been sent of God to deliver or to capture towns and to lead men at arms, there must needs be innate in her a knowledge of the art of war, and in battle she must needs manifest the strength and the counsel she had received from above. Wherefore it was necessary to obtain evidence to establish that she was more skilled in warfare than any man.

Damoiselle Marguerite la Touroulde makes this affirmation.[64] The Duke of Alencon declares that the Maid was apt alike at wielding the lance, ranging an army, ordering a battle, preparing artillery, and that old captains marvelled at her skill in placing cannon.[65] The Duke quite understands that all these gifts were miraculous and that to God alone was the glory. For if the merit of the victories had been Jeanne's he would not have said so much about them.

[Footnote 64: Trial, vol. iii, p. 85.]

[Footnote 65: Ibid., p. 100. On the other hand see the evidence of Dunois (vol. iii, p. 16), "licet dicta Johanna aliquotiens jocose loqueretur de facto armorum, pro animando armatos ... tamen quando loquebatur seriose de guerra ... nunquam affirmative asserebat nisi quod erat missa ad levandum obsidionem Aurelianensem."]

And if God had chosen the Maid to perform so great a task, it must have been because in her he beheld the virtue which he preferred above all others in his virgins. Henceforth it sufficed not for her to have been chaste; her chastity must become miraculous, her chastity and her moderation in eating and drinking must be exalted into sanctity. Wherefore the witnesses are never tired of stating: Erat casta, erat castissima. Ille loquens non credit aliquam mulierem plus esse castam quam ista Puella erat. Erat sobria in potu et cibo. Erat sobria in cibo et potu.[66]

[Footnote 66: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 438, 457; vol. iii, pp. 100, 219.]

The heavenly source of such purity must needs have been made manifest by Jeanne's possessing singular immunities. And on this point there is a mass of evidence. Rough men at arms, Jean de Novelompont, Bertrand de Poulengy, Jean d'Aulon; great nobles, the Count of Dunois and the Duke of Alencon, come forward and affirm on oath that in them Jeanne never provoked any carnal desires. Such a circumstance fills these old captains with astonishment; they boast of their past vigour and wonder that for once their youthful ardour should have been damped by a maid. It seems to them most unnatural and humanly impossible. Their description of the effect Jeanne produced upon them recalls Saint Martha's binding of the Tarascon beast. Dunois in his evidence is very much occupied with miracles. He points to this one as, to human reason, the most incomprehensible of all. If he neither desired nor solicited this damsel, of this unique fact he can find but one explanation, it is that Jeanne was holy, res divina. When Jean de Novelompont and Bertrand de Poulengy describe their sudden continence, they employ identical forms of speech, affected and involved. And then there comes a king's equerry, Gobert Thibaut, who declares that in the army there was much talk of this divine grace, vouchsafed to the Armagnacs[67] and denied to English and Burgundians, at least, so the behaviour of a certain knight of Picardy, and of one Jeannotin, a tailor of Rouen, would lead us to believe.[68]

[Footnote 67: Trial, vol. ii, p. 438; vol. iii, pp. 15, 76, 100, 219, and 457.]

[Footnote 68: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 89 and 121.]

Such evidence obviously answers to the ideas of the judges, and turns, so to speak, on theological rather than on natural facts.

In inquisitorial inquiries there abound such depositions as those of Jean de Novelompont and of Bertrand de Poulengy, containing passages drawn up in identical terms. But I must admit that in the rehabilitation trial they are rare, partly because the witnesses were heard at long intervals of time and in different countries, and partly because in the Maid's case no elaborate proceedings were necessary owing to her adversaries not being represented.

It is to be regretted that all the evidence given at this trial, with the exception of that of Jean d'Aulon, should have been translated into Latin. This process has obscured fine shades of thought and deprived the evidence of its original flavour.

Sometimes the clerk contents himself with saying that the depositions of a witness were like those of his predecessor. Thus on the raising of the siege of Orleans all the burgesses depone like the woollen draper, who himself was not thoroughly conversant with the circumstances in which his town had been delivered. Thus the Sire de Gaucourt, after a brief declaration, gives the same evidence as Dunois, although the Count had related matters so strikingly individual that it seems strange they should have been common to two witnesses.[69]

[Footnote 69: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 2 and 35.]

Certain evidence would appear to have been cut short. Brother Pasquerel's abruptly comes to an end at Paris. This circumstance, if we did not possess his signature at the conclusion of the Latin letter to the Hussites, would lead us to believe that the good Brother left the Maid immediately after the attack on La Porte Saint-Honore. It surely cannot have chanced that in so long a series of questions and answers not one word was said of the departure from Sully or of the campaign which began at Lagny and ended at Compiegne.[70]

[Footnote 70: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 100 et seq.]

We conclude, therefore, that in the study of this voluminous evidence we must exercise great judgment and that we must not expect it to enlighten us on all the circumstances of Jeanne's life.

Fourthly. On certain points of the Maid's history the only exact information is to be obtained from account-books, letters, deeds, and other authentic documents of the period. The records published by Simeon Luce and the lease of the Chateau de l'Ile inform us of the circumstances among which Jeanne grew up.[71] Neither the two trials nor the chronicles had revealed the terrible conditions prevailing in the village of Domremy from 1412 to 1425.

[Footnote 71: Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, recherches critiques sur les origines de la mission de la Pucelle, Paris, 1886, in 8vo; La France pendant la guerre de cent ans: episodes historiques et vie privee aux xiv'e et xv'e siecles, Paris, 1890, in 12mo.]

The fortress accounts kept at Orleans[72] and the documents of the English administration[73] enable us to estimate approximately the respective forces of defenders and besiegers of the city. On this point also they enable us to correct the statements of chroniclers and witnesses in the rehabilitation trial.

[Footnote 72: D. Lottin, Recherches sur la ville d'Orleans, Orleans, 7 vols. in 8vo; Boucher de Molandon, Les comptes de ville d'Orleans des xiv'e et xv'e siecles, 1880, in 8vo; Jules Loiseleur, Compte des depenses faites par Charles VII pour secourir Orleans pendant le siege de 1428, Orleans, 1868, in 8vo; Louis Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise au siege d'Orleans, Orleans, 1892, in 8vo; Couret, Un fragment inedit des anciens registres de la prevote d'Orleans, relatif au reglement des frais du siege de 1428-1429, Orleans, 1697, in 8vo (extract from the Memoires de l'Academie de Sainte Croix).]

[Footnote 73: Rymer, Foedera, conventiones...., ed. tercia, Hagae Comitis, 1739-1745, 10 vols. in folio; Delpit, Collection de documents francais qui se trouvent en Angleterre, Paris, 1847, in 4to; J. Stevenson, Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the reign of Henry VI, 1861-1864, 3 parts, in 2 vols. in 8vo; Charles Gross, The Sources and Literature of English History, 1900, in 8vo.]

From the letters in the archives at Reims, copied by Rogier in the seventeenth century, we learn how Troyes, Chalons, and Reims surrendered to the King. From these letters also we see how very far from accurate is Jean Chartier's account of the capitulation of the city and how insufficient, especially considering the character of the witness, is the evidence of Dunois on this subject.[74]

[Footnote 74: Varin, Archives legislatives de la ville de Reims, 2nd part; Statuts, vol. i, p. 596; Trial, vol. iv, pp. 284 et seq.]

Four or five records throw a faint light here and there on the obscurity which shrouds the unfortunate campaign on the Aisne and the Oise.

The registers of the chapter of Rouen, the wills of canons and sundry other documents, discovered by M. Robillard de Beaurepaire in the archives of Seine-Inferieure, serve to correct certain errors in the two trials.[75]

[Footnote 75: E. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo [Precis des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen, 1867-1868, pp. 321-448]; Notes sur les juges et les assesseurs du proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 1890, in 8vo [Precis des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen, 1888-1889, pp. 375-504].]

How many other detached papers, all valuable to the historian, might I not enumerate! Surely this is another reason for mistrusting records false or falsified, as, for example, the patent of nobility of Guy de Cailly.[76]

[Footnote 76: Trial, vol. v, pp. 342 et seq.]

Rapid as this examination of authorities has been, I think nothing essential has been omitted. To sum up, even in her lifetime the Maid was scarce known save by fables. Her oldest chroniclers were devoid of any critical sense, for the early legends concerning her they relate as facts.

The Rouen trial, certain accounts, a few letters, sundry deeds, public and private, are the most trustworthy documents. The rehabilitation trial is also useful to the historian, provided always that we remember how and why that trial was conducted.

By means of such records we may attain to a pretty accurate knowledge of Jeanne d'Arc's life and character.

The salient fact which results from a study of all these authorities is that she was a saint. She was a saint with all the attributes of fifteenth-century sanctity. She had visions, and these visions were neither feigned nor counterfeited. She really believed that she heard the voices which spoke to her and came from no human lips. These voices generally addressed her clearly and in words she could understand. She heard them best in the woods and when the bells were ringing. She saw forms, she said, like myriads of tiny shapes, like sparks on a dazzling background. There is no doubt she had visions of another nature, since she tells us how she beheld Saint Michael in the guise of a prud'homme, that is as a good knight, and Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, wearing crowns. She saw them saluting her; she kissed their feet and inhaled their sweet perfume.

What does this mean if not that she was subject to hallucinations of hearing, sight, touch, and smell? But the most strongly affected of her senses was her hearing. She says that her voices appear to her; she sometimes calls them her council. She hears them very plainly unless there is a noise around her. Generally she obeys them; but sometimes she resists. We may doubt whether her visions were really so distinct as she makes out. Because she either could not, or would not, she never gave her judges at Rouen any very clear or precise description of them. The angel she described most in detail was the one which brought the crown, and which she afterwards confessed to have seen only in imagination.

At what age did she become subject to these trances? We cannot say exactly. But it was probably towards the end of her childhood, notwithstanding that according to Jean d'Aulon, childhood was a state out of which she never completely developed.[77]

[Footnote 77: Trial, vol. iii, p. 19.]

Although it is always hazardous to found a medical diagnosis on documents purely historical, several men of science have attempted to define the pathological conditions which rendered the young girl subject to false perceptions of sight and hearing.[78] Owing to the rapid strides made by psychiatry during recent years, I have consulted an eminent man of science, who is thoroughly conversant with the present stage attained by this branch of pathology, to which he has himself rendered important service. I asked Doctor Georges Dumas, Professor at the Sorbonne, whether sufficient material exists for science to make a retrospective diagnosis of Jeanne's case. He replied to my inquiry in a letter which appears as the first Appendix to this work.[79]

[Footnote 78: Briere de Boismont, De l'hallucination historique, ou etude medico-psychique sur les voix et les revelations de Jeanne d'Arc, 1861, in 8vo. Le Vicomte de Mouchy, Jeanne d'Arc, etude historique et psychologique, Montpellier, 1868, in 8vo, 67 pp.]

[Footnote 79: Vol. ii, Appendix i.]

With such a subject I am not qualified to deal. But it does lie within my province to make an observation concerning the hallucinations of Jeanne d'Arc, which has been suggested to me by a study of the documents. This observation is of infinite significance. I shall be careful to restrict it to the limits prescribed by the object and the nature of this work.

Those visionaries, who believe they are entrusted with a divine mission, are distinguished by certain characteristics from other inspired persons. When mystics of this class are studied and compared with one another, resemblances are found to exist which may extend to very slight details: certain of their words and acts are identical. Indeed as we come to recognise how vigorous is the determinism controlling the actions of these visionaries, we are astonished to find the human machine, when impelled by the same mysterious agent, performing its functions with inevitable uniformity. To this group of the religious Jeanne belongs. In this connection it is interesting to compare her with Saint Catherine of Sienna,[80] Saint Colette of Corbie,[81] Yves Nicolazic, the peasant of Kernanna,[82] Suzette Labrousse, the inspired woman of the Revolution Church,[83] and with many other seers and seeresses of this order, who all bear a family likeness to one another.

[Footnote 80: Acta Sanctorum, 1675, April, iii, 851.]

[Footnote 81: Ibid., March 1, 1532.]

[Footnote 82: Le Pere Hugues de Saint-Francois, Les grandeurs de Sainte Anne, Rennes, 1657, in 8vo; L'abbe Max Nicol, Sainte-Anne-d'Auray, Paris, Brussels, s.d., in 8vo, pp. 37 et seq. M. le Docteur G. de Closmadeuc has kindly lent me his valuable work, as yet unpublished, on Yves Nicolazic, which is characterised by the same exactness of information and of criticism as are to be found in his studies of local history.]

[Footnote 83: Recueil des ouvrages de la celebre Mademoiselle Labrousse, du Bourg de Vauxains, en Perigord, canton de Ribeirac de la Dordogne, actuellement prisonniere au chateau Saint-Ange, a Rome, Bordeaux, 1797, in 8vo; E. Lairtullier, Les femmes celebres de 1789 a 1795, Paris, 1842, in 8vo, vol. i, pp. 212 et seq.; Abbe Chr. Moreau, Une mystique revolutionnaire Suzette Labrousse, Paris, 1886, in 8vo; A. France, Susette Labrousse, Paris, 1907, in 12mo.]

Three visionaries especially are closely related to Jeanne. The earliest in date is a vavasour of Champagne, who had a mission to speak to King John; of this holy man I have written sufficiently in the present work. The second is a farrier of Salon, who had a mission to speak to Louis XIV; the third, a peasant of Gallardon, named Martin, who had a mission to speak to Louis XVIII. Articles on the farrier and the farmer, who both saw apparitions and showed signs to their respective kings, will be found in the appendices at the end of this work.[84] In spite of difference in sex, the points of similarity between Jeanne d'Arc and these three men are very close and very significant; they are inherent in the very nature of Jeanne and her fellow visionaries; and the variations, which at a first glance might seem to separate widely the latter from Jeanne, are aesthetic, social, historical, and consequently external and contingent. Between them and her there are of course striking contrasts in appearance and in fortune. They were entirely wanting in that charm which she never failed to exercise; and it is a fact that while they failed miserably she grew in strength and flowered in legend. But it is the duty of the scientific mind to recognise common characteristics, proving identity of origin alike in the noblest individual and in the most wretched abortion of the same species.

[Footnote 84: Vol. ii, Appendices ii and iii.]

The free-thinkers of our day, imbued as they are, for the most part, with transcendentalism, refuse to recognise in Jeanne not merely that automatism which determines the acts of such a seeress, not only the influence of constant hallucination, but even the suggestions of the religious spirit. What she achieved through saintliness and devoutness, they make her out to have accomplished by intelligent enthusiasm. Such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and erudite Quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of the Maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy. This point was not without its drawbacks. It led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous exaggeration of Jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of attributing military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel. The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. Unfortunately the Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the Catholic Church down the ages. In their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. So much so that in a search for the most curiously travestied of all the Jeannes d'Arc we should have been driven to choose between their miraculous protectress of Christian France, the patroness of officers, the inimitable model of the pupils of Saint-Cyr, and the romantic Druidess, the inspired woman-soldier of the national guard, the patriot gunneress of the Republicans, had there not arisen a Jesuit Father to create an ultramontane Jeanne d'Arc.[85]

[Footnote 85: Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, 5 vols. in large 8vo, Paris, 1894-1902. Writing of this book in a study of L'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc (Paris, 1902, pp. 7 and 8, note), Canon Ulysse Chevalier, author of a valuable Repertoire des sources du moyen age, displays boldness and sound sense. "From the dimensions of these five volumes," he says, "one might expect this work to be the fullest history of Jeanne d'Arc; it is nothing of the sort. It is a chaos of memoranda translated or rendered into modern French, reflections and arguments against free-thought as represented by Michelet, H. Martin, Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, and Joseph Fabre. Two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's tone: The Pseudo-theologians, executioners of Jeanne d'Arc, executioners of the Papacy (vol. i, p. 87); The University of Paris and the Brigandage of Rouen (p. 149). The author too often judges the fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. Is he quite sure that if he had been a member of the University of Paris in 1431 he would have thought and pronounced in favour of Jeanne, and in opposition to his colleagues?"]

On the subject of Jeanne's sincerity I have raised no doubts. It is impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she received her mission from her voices. But whether she were not unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. What we know of her before her arrival at Chinon comes to very little. One is inclined to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (en commende).[86] Such a term she had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for her.

[Footnote 86: Trial, vol. ii, p. 456.]

She must have associated with priests who were faithful to the cause of the Dauphin Charles, and who desired above all things the end of the war. Abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service discontinued.[87] Those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that they saw the Treaty of Troyes failing to establish it, looked for the realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the English. And the wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself called to ride forth and fight, but that in "her great pity" she announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and coronation of the King, at a time when the nobles of the two countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected nor desired the war ever to come to an end.

[Footnote 87: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, monasteres hopitaux en France vers le milieu du xv'ieme siecle, Macon, 1897, in 8vo.]

The mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and to which she consecrated her life, was doubtless extraordinary, marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in human affairs. Jeanne d'Arc arose in the decline of the great Catholic age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities, manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of men. And of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries God's servants perform wondrous works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy with fire and sword; Saint Francis of Assisi for the nonce founds poverty as an institution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with God's aid, to re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power instituted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new Joash snatched from death for the salvation of the holy people?

Thus did pious French folk, in the year 1428, regard the mission of the Maid. She represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by God. There was nothing incredible in that. When she announced that she had received revelations touching the war from my Lord Saint Michael, she inspired the men-at-arms of the Armagnac party and the burghers of the city of Orleans with a confidence as great as could have been communicated to the troops, marching along the Loire in the winter of 1871, by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or an improved form of cannon. What was expected from science in 1871 was expected from religion in 1428, so that the Bastard of Orleans would as naturally employ Jeanne as Gambetta would resort to the technical knowledge of M. de Freycinet.

What has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they constituted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the banished members of the University, men deeply involved in political affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very impatient to regain possession of their property. They were directed by the cleverest man in the King's Council, the Duke Archbishop of Reims, the Chancellor of the kingdom. By the ceremoniousness and the deliberation of their inquiries, they drew upon Jeanne the curiosity, the interest, and the hopes of minds lost in amazement.[88]

[Footnote 88: O. Raguenet, Les juges de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, membres du Parlement ou gens d'Eglise? in Lettres et memoires de l'Academie de Sainte-Croix d'Orleans VII, 1894, pp. 339-442; D. Lacombe, L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, maitre Jean Rabateau, President au Parlement de Poitiers in Revue du Bas-Poitou, 1891, pp. 46-66.]

The defences of the city of Orleans consisted in its walls, its trenches, its cannon, its men-at-arms, and its money. The English had failed both to surround it and to take it by assault. Convoys and companies passed between their bastions. Jeanne was introduced into the town with a strong relieving army. She brought flocks of oxen, sheep, and pigs. The townsfolk believed her to be an angel of the Lord. Meanwhile the men and the money of the besiegers were waxing scant. They had lost all their horses. Far from being in a position to attempt a new attack, they were not likely to be able to hold out long in their bastions. At the end of April there were four thousand English before Orleans and perhaps less, for, as it was said, soldiers were deserting every day; and companies of these deserters went plundering through the villages. At the same time the city was defended by six thousand men-at-arms and archers, and by more than three thousand men of the town bands. At Saint Loup, there were fifteen hundred French against four hundred English; at Les Tourelles, there were five thousand French against four or five hundred English. By their retreat from Orleans the Godons abandoned to their fate the small garrisons of Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency.[89] The Battle of Patay gives us some idea of the condition of the English army. It was no battle but a massacre, and one which Jeanne only reached in time to mourn over the cruelty of the conquerors. And yet the King, in his letters to his good towns, attributed to her a share in the victory. Evidently the Royal Council made a point of glorifying its Holy Maid.

[Footnote 89: Mr. Andrew Lang (La Jeanne d'Arc de M. Anatole France, p. 60) misreads this passage when he takes it to mean that the English withdrew their garrisons from these places. That their ultimate surrender became inevitable after the English retreat from Orleans is what the writer intends to convey.--W.S.]

But at heart what did they really think, those who employed her, those Regnaults de Chartres, those Roberts le Macon, those Gerards Machet? They were certainly in no position to discuss the origin of the illusions which enveloped her. And, albeit there were atheists even among churchmen, to the majority there would be nothing to cause astonishment in the appearance of Saint Michael, the Archangel. In those days nothing appeared more natural than a miracle. But a miracle vanishes when closely observed. And they had the damsel before their very eyes. They perceived that good and saintly as she was, she wielded no supernatural power.

While the men-at-arms and all the common folk welcomed her as the maid of God and an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of the realm, these good lords thought only of profiting from the sentiments of confidence which she inspired and in which they had little share. Finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked with her. They must soon have discovered that it was not always easy. She was a saint, saints are intractable. What were the true relations between the Royal Council and the Maid? We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael.[90] It is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of his benefices.

[Footnote 90: Trial, vol. i, p. 146.]

The coronation campaign was really nothing but a series of negotiations, backed by an army. Its object was to show the good towns a king saintly and pacific. Had there been any idea of fighting, the campaign would have been directed against Paris or against Normandy.

At the inquiry of 1456, five or six witnesses, captains, magistrates, ecclesiastics, and an honest widow, gave evidence that Jeanne was well versed in the art of war. They agreed in saying that she rode a horse and wielded a lance better than any one. A master of requests stated that she amazed the army by the length of time she could remain in the saddle. Such qualities we are not entitled to deny her, neither can we dispute the diligence and the ardour which Dunois praised in her, on the occasion of a demonstration by night before Troyes.[91] As to the opinion that this damsel was clever in arraying and leading an army and especially skilled in the management of artillery, that is more difficult to credit and would require to be vouched for by some one more trustworthy than the poor Duke of Alencon, who was never considered a very rational person.[92] What we have said about the rehabilitation trial sufficiently explains this curious glorification of the Maid. It was understood that Jeanne's military inspiration came from God. Henceforth there was no danger of its being too much admired and it came to be praised somewhat at random.

[Footnote 91: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 13.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid., p. 100. See ante, p. xxvi (note 4).]

After all the Duke of Alencon was quite moderate when he represented her as a distinguished artillery-woman. As early as 1429, a humanist on the side of Charles VII asserted in Ciceronian language that in military glory she equalled and surpassed Hector, Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar: "Non Hectore reminiscat et gaudeat Troja, exultet Graecia Alexandro, Annibale Africa, Italia Caesare et Romanis ducibus omnibus glorietur, Gallia etsi ex pristinis multos habeat, hac tamen una Puella contenta, audebit se gloriari et laude bellica caeteris nationibus se comparare, verum quoque, si expediet, se anteponere."[93]

[Footnote 93: Letter from Alain Chartier in the Trial, vol. v, pp. 135, 136; Capitaine P. Marin, Jeanne d'Arc tacticien et strategiste, Paris, 1889, 4 vols. in 12mo; Le General Canonge, Jeanne d'Arc guerriere, Paris, 1907, in 8vo.]

For ever praying and for ever wrapped in ecstasy, Jeanne never observed the enemy; she did not know the roads; she paid no heed to the number of troops engaged; she did not take into account either the height of walls or the breadth of trenches. Even to-day officers are to be heard discussing the Maid's military tactics.[94] Those tactics were simple; they consisted in preventing men from blaspheming against God and consorting with light women. She believed that for their sins they would be destroyed, but that if they fought in a state of grace they would win the victory. Therein lay all her military science, save that she never feared danger.[95] She displayed a courage which was at once proud and gentle; she was more valiant, more constant, more noble than the men and in that worthy to lead them. And is it not admirable and rare to find such heroism united to such innocence?

[Footnote 94: Rossel et la legende de Jeanne d'Arc in la Petite Republique of July 15, 1896; Jeanne d'Arc soldat by Art Roe, in le Temps of May 8, 1907. See also the works of Captain Marin, always so praiseworthy for their carefulness and good faith.]

[Footnote 95: Trial, vol. iii, p. 16.]

Certain of the leaders indeed, and notably the princes of the blood royal, knew no more than she. The art of war in those days resolved itself into the art of riding. Any idea of marching along converging lines, of concentrated movements, of a campaign methodically planned, of a prolonged effort with a view to some great result was unknown. Military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants' stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. The freebooters, captains, and soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade, but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was pillage. The nobles affected great concern for honour and praise; in reality they thought of nothing but gain. Alain Chartier said of them: "They cry 'to arms,' but they fight for money."[96]

[Footnote 96: Alain Chartier, Oeuvres, ed. Andre du Chesne, p. 412.]

Seeing that war was to last as long as life, it was waged with deliberation. Men-at-arms, horse-soldiers and foot, archers, cross-bowmen, Armagnacs as well as English and Burgundians, fought with no great ardour. Of course they were brave: but they were cautious too and were not ashamed to confess it. Jean Chartier, precentor of Saint-Denys, chronicler of the Kings of France, relating how on a day the French met the English near Lagny, adds: "And there the battle was hard and fierce, for the French were barely more than the English."[97] These simple folk, seeing that one man is as good as another, admitted the risk of fighting one to one. Their minds had not fed on Plutarch as had those of the Revolution and the Empire. And for their encouragement they had neither the carmagnoles of Barrere, nor the songs of Marie-Joseph Chenier, nor the bulletins of la grande armee. Why did these captains, these men-at-arms go and fight in one place rather than in another seems to be a natural question.... Because they wanted goods.

[Footnote 97: Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 121.]

This perpetual warfare was not sanguinary. During what was described as Jeanne d'Arc's mission, that is from Orleans to Compiegne, the French lost barely a few hundred men. The English suffered much more heavily, because they were the fugitives, and in a rout it was the custom for the conquerors to kill all those who were not worth holding to ransom. But battles were rare, and so consequently were defeats, and the number of the combatants was small. There were but a handful of English in France. And they may be said to have fought only for plunder. Those who suffered from the war were those who did not fight, burghers, priests, and peasants. The peasants endured terrible hardships, and it is quite conceivable that a peasant girl should have displayed a firmness in war, a persistence and an ardour unknown throughout the whole of chivalry.

It was not Jeanne who drove the English from France. If she contributed to the deliverance of Orleans, she retarded the ultimate salvation of France by causing the opportunity of conquering Normandy to be lost through the coronation campaign. The misfortunes of the English after 1428 are easily explained. While in peaceful Guyenne they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous was strongly attached to them. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the country. Shut up in fortresses and chateaux, they did not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better? In 1428, they were but a handful in France, and to maintain themselves there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.

They lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the pacification of those they had already conquered. The very character of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights they asserted, which were founded on institutions common to the two countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal concurrence and friendship of the conquered. The Treaty of Troyes did not subject France to England, it united one country to the other. Such a union occasioned much anxiety in London. The Commons did not conceal their fear that Old England might become a mere isolated province of the new kingdom.[98] France for her part did not concur in the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been making war on these Coues[99] they had grown to hate them. And possibly there already existed an English character and a French character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the Godons[100] met with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part whatever in the work of deliverance? By no means. Hers was the nobler, the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and charming. The King's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by striking fear into the English, who imagined her to be the devil.

[Footnote 98: See the deliberations of the Commons on December 2, 1421, in Brequigny, Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des cours de France et d'Angleterre, Paris, 1847 (2 vols. in 4to), vol. ii, pp. 393 et seq.]

[Footnote 99: For the origin of this term see post, vol. i, p. 22 and note 2.--W.S.]

[Footnote 100: For the origin of this term see ibid. and note 1.--W.S.]

Our best historians cannot forgive the ministers and captains of 1428 for not having blindly obeyed the Maid. But that was not at all the advice given at the time by the Archbishop of Embrun to King Charles; he, on the contrary, recommended him not to abandon the means inspired by human reason.[101]

[Footnote 101: The Reverend Father M. Fornier, Histoire des Alpes-Maritimes, Paris, 1890, in 8vo, vol. ii, p. 324; Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations, pp. 565 et seq.]

It has frequently been repeated that the lords and captains were jealous of her, especially old Gaucourt.[102] But such a statement shows an absolute ignorance of human nature. They were envious one of another; this and no other sentiment was the jealousy that made them tolerate the Maid's assuming the title of commander in war.[103]

[Footnote 102: Trial, vol. iii, p. 117; Perceval de Cagny, p. 168; Marquis de Gaucourt, Le sire de Gaucourt, Orleans, 1855, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 103: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 168, 170, 171; Cronicques de Normendie, ed. Hellot, pp. 77, 78.]

Those secret intrigues on the part of the King and his captains, who are said to have plotted together the destruction of the saint, I admit having found it impossible to discover. To certain historians they appear very obvious: for my part, do what I may, I cannot discern them. The Chamberlain, the Sire de la Tremouille, had no pretensions to nobility of character; and the Chancellor Regnault de Chartres was hard-hearted, but what strikes me is that the Sire de la Tremouille refused to give up this valuable damsel to the Duke of Alencon when he asked for her, and that the Chancellor retained her in order to make use of her.[104] I am not of the opinion that Jeanne was a prisoner at Sully. I believe that when she went to join the Chancellor, who employed her until her capture by the Burgundians, she quitted the castle in estate, with trumpeters, and banners flying. After the girl saint he employed a boy saint, a shepherd who had stigmata; which proves that he did not regret having made use of a devout person to fight against the King's enemies and to recover his own archbishopric.

[Footnote 104: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170, 171; Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 313; Heraut Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 48.]

The excellent Quicherat and the magnanimous Henri Martin are very hard on the Government of 1428. According to them it was a treacherous Government. Yet the only reproach they bring against Charles VII and his councillors is that they did not understand the Maid as they themselves understood her. But such an understanding has required the lapse of four hundred years. To arrive at the illuminated ideas of a Quicherat and a Henri Martin concerning Jeanne d'Arc, three centuries of absolute monarchy, the Reformation, the Revolution, the wars of the Republic and of the Empire, and the sentimental Neo-Catholicism of '48, have all been necessary. Through all these brilliant prisms, through all these succeeding lights do romantic historians and broad-minded paleographers view the figure of Jeanne d'Arc; and we ask too much from the poor Dauphin Charles, from La Tremouille, from Regnault de Chartres, from the Lord of Treves, from old Gaucourt, when we require them to have seen Jeanne as centuries have made and moulded her.[105]

[Footnote 105: H. Martin, Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1856, in 12mo; J. Quicherat, Nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyees par la Pucelle in Revue de Normandie, vol. vi (1866), pp. 396-401.]

This, however, remains: after having made so much use of her, the Royal Council did nothing to save her.

Must the disgrace of such neglect fall upon the whole Council and upon the Council alone? Who ought really to have interfered? And how? What ought King Charles to have done? Should he have offered to ransom the Maid? She would not have been surrendered to him at any price. As for capturing her by force, that is a mere child's dream. Had they entered Rouen, the French would not have found her there; Warwick would always have had time to put her in a place of safety, or to drown her in the river. Neither money nor arms would have availed to recapture her.

But this was no reason for standing with folded arms. Influence could have been brought to bear on those who were conducting the trial. Doubtless they were all on the side of the Godons; that old Cabochien of a Pierre Cauchon was very much committed to them; he detested the French; the clerks, who owed allegiance to Henry VI, were naturally inclined to please the Great Council of England which disposed of patronage; the doctors and masters of the University of France greatly hated and feared the Armagnacs. And yet the judges of the trial were not all infamous prevaricators; the chapter of Rouen lacked neither courage nor independence.[106] Among those members of the University who were so bitter against Jeanne, there were men highly esteemed for doctrine and character. They for the most part believed this trial to be a purely religious one. By dint of seeking for witches, they had come to find them everywhere. These females, as they called them, they were sending to the stake every day, and receiving nothing but thanks for it. They believed as firmly as Jeanne in the possibility of the apparitions which she said had been vouchsafed to her, only they were persuaded either that she lied or that she saw devils. The Bishop, the Vice-Inquisitor and the assessors, to the number of forty and upwards, were unanimous in declaring her heretical and devilish. There were doubtless many who imagined that by passing sentence against her they were maintaining Catholic orthodoxy and unity of obedience against the abettors of schism and heresy; they wished to judge wisely. And even the boldest and the most unscrupulous, the Bishop and the Promoter, would not have dared too openly to infringe the rules of ecclesiastical justice in order to please the English. They were priests, and they preserved priestly pride and respect for formality. Here was their weak point; in this respect for formality they might have been struck. Had the other side instituted vigorous legal proceedings, theirs might possibly have been thwarted, arrested, and the fatal sentence prevented. If the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, the Archbishop of Reims, had intervened in the trial, if he had suspended his suffragan for abuse of authority, or some other reason, Pierre Cauchon would have been greatly embarrassed; if, as he decided to do later, King Charles VII had brought about the intervention of the mother and brothers of the Maid; if Jacques d'Arc and la Romee had protested in due form against an action so manifestly one-sided; if the register of Poitiers[107] had been sent for inclusion among the documents of the trial; if the high prelates subject to King Charles VII had asked for a safe conduct in order to come and give evidence in Jeanne's favour at Rouen; finally, if the King, his Council, and the whole Church of France had demanded an appeal to the Pope, as they were legally entitled to do, then the trial might have had a different issue.

[Footnote 106: Even when the canons who took part in the trial are severally considered. Cf. Ch. de Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 107: Or at least the conclusions of the doctors which have been preserved. As for the register itself it could not have contained anything of great importance. From their evidence at the rehabilitation trial we see that the Poitiers clerks were not desirous for much to be said of their inquiry.]

But they were afraid of the University of Paris. They feared lest Jeanne might be after all what so many learned doctors maintained her to be, a heretic, a miscreant seduced by the prince of darkness. Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and it is difficult to distinguish the true prophets from the false. The hapless Maid was deserted by the very clergy whose croziers had so recently been carried before her; of all the Poitiers masters not one was found to testify in the chateau of Rouen to that innocence which they had officially recognised eighteen months before.

It would be very interesting to trace the reputation of the Maid down the ages. But to do so would require a whole book. I shall merely indicate the most striking revolutions of public opinion concerning her. The humanists of the Renaissance display no great interest in her: she was too Gothic for them. The Reformers, for whom she was tainted with idolatry, could not tolerate her picture.[108] It seems strange to us to-day, but it is none the less certain, and in conformity with all we know of French feeling for royalty, that whilst the monarchy endured it was the memory of Charles VII that kept alive the memory of Jeanne d'Arc and saved her from oblivion.[109] Respect due to the Prince generally hindered his faithful subjects from too closely inquiring into the legends of Jeanne as well as into those of the Holy Ampulla, the cures for King's evil, the oriflamme and all other popular traditions relating to the antiquity and celebrity of the royal throne of France. In 1609, when in a college of Paris, the Maid was the subject of sundry literary themes in which she was unfavourably treated,[110] a certain lawyer, Jean Hordal, who boasted that he came of the same race as the heroine, complained of these academic disputes as being derogatory to royal majesty--"I am greatly astonished," he said, "that ... public declamations against the honour of France, of King Charles VII and his Council,[111] should be suffered in France." Had Jeanne not been so closely associated with royalty, her memory would have been very much neglected by the wits of the seventeenth century. In the minds of scholars, Catholics and Protestants alike, who considered the life of St. Margaret as mere superstition,[112] her apparitions did her harm. In those days even the Sorbonagres themselves were expurgating the martyrology and the legends of saints. One of them, Edmond Richer, like Jeanne a native of Champagne, the censor of the university in 1600, and a zealous Gallican, wrote an apology for the Maid who had defended the Crown of Charles VII[113] with her sword. Albeit a firm upholder of the liberties of the French Church, Edmond Richer was a good Catholic. He was pious and of sound doctrine; he firmly believed in angels, but he did not believe either in Saint Catherine or Saint Margaret, and their appearing to the Maid greatly embarrassed him. He solved the difficulty by supposing that the angels had represented themselves to the Maid as the two saints, whom in her ignorance she devoutly worshipped. The hypothesis seemed to him satisfactory, "all the more so," he said, "because the Spirit of God, which governs the Church, accommodates himself to our infirmity." Thirty or forty years later, another doctor of the Sorbonne, Jean de Launoy, who was always ferreting after saints, completed the discrediting of Saint Catherine's legend.[114] The voices of Domremy were falling into disrepute.

[Footnote 108: Aug. Vallet, Observation sur l'ancien monument erige a Orleans, Paris, 1858, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 109: See a curious project for the decoration of the platform of the Pont-Neuf addressed to Louis XIV (B.N.V., p. zz'338, in fol.). A Sieur Dupuis, Aide des Ceremonies, proposes that thereon shall be erected statues to "those great and illustrious captains who from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the crown.... Artus of Bretagne, Constable, Jean, Count of Dunois, Jeanne Dark, Maid of Orleans, Roger de Gramont, Count of Guiche, Guillaume, Count of Chaumont, Amaury de Severac, Vignoles, called La Hire...." (Communications of M. Paul Lacombe, Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris, 1894, p. 115, June 11, 1907. Ibid.)]

[Footnote 110: Puellae Aureliensis causa adversariis orationibus disceptata auctore Jacobo Jolio, Parisiis apud Julianum Bertant, 1609.]

[Footnote 111: Jean Hordal, Heroinae nobilissimae Ioannae Darc Lotharingae vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia, Ponti-Mussi, 1612, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 112: Rabelais, Gargantua, chap. vi; Abbe Thiers, Traite des superstitions selon l'Ecriture sainte, Paris, 1697, vol. i, p. 109.]

[Footnote 113: Edmond Richer, Histoire de la Pucelle d'Orleans en 4 livres, MS. Biblioth. Nat. f. Fr. 10448, fol. 12mo.]

[Footnote 114: "The Life of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, is fabulous throughout from beginning to end," Valesiana, p. 48. "M. de Launoy, doctor of theology, had cut Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, out of his calendar. He said that her life was a myth, and to show that he placed no faith in it, every year when the feast of the saint came round, he said a Requiem mass. This curious circumstance I learn from his own telling," Ibid., p. 36.]

Take Chapelain, for example, whose poem was first published in 1656. Chapelain is unconsciously burlesque; he is a Scarron without knowing it. It is none the less interesting to learn from him that he merely treated his subject as an occasion for glorifying the Bastard of Orleans. He expressly says in his preface: "I did not so much regard her (the Maid) as the chief character of the poem, who, strictly speaking, is the Comte de Dunois." Chapelain was in the pay of the Duc de Longueville, a descendant of Dunois.[115] It is of Dunois that he sings; "the illustrious shepherdess" contributes the marvellous element to his poem, and, according to the good man's own expression, furnishes les machines necessaires for an epic. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret are too commonplace to be included among ces machines. Chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." Herein we discern the dawn of the modern spirit.

[Footnote 115: Jean Chapelain, La Pucelle ou la France delivree, Paris, 1656, in fol.]

Bossuet also is careful not to mention Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. The four or five quarto pages which he devotes to Jeanne d'Arc in his "Abrege de l'Histoire de France pour l'instruction du Dauphin"[116] are very interesting, not for his statement of facts, which is confused and inexact,[117] but for the care the author takes to represent the miraculous deeds attributed to Jeanne in an incidental and dubious manner. In Bossuet's opinion, as in Gerson's, these things are matters of edification, not of faith. Writing for the instruction of a prince, Bossuet was bound to abridge; but his abridgment goes too far when, representing Jeanne's condemnation to be the work of the Bishop of Beauvais, he omits to say that the Bishop of Beauvais pronounced this sentence with the unanimous concurrence of the University of Paris, and in conjunction with the Vice-Inquisitor.[118]

[Footnote 116: Oeuvres de messire Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Paris, in 4to, vol. xi, 1749, numbered pages; vol. xii, pp. 234 et seq. Cf. what he says of inspired persons in l'Instruction sur les etats d'oraison, Paris, 1697, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 117: "This girl called Jeanne d'Arq ... had been a servant in an inn," loc. cit., p. 233.]

[Footnote 118: We must not be too severe on a tutor's note-books. But Bossuet, who places the rehabilitation under the date 1431, does not tell us that it was only pronounced twenty-five years later. On the contrary, as far as he is concerned, we might conclude that it occurred before the deliverance of Compiegne. The following are his words: "In execution of this sentence, she was burned alive at Rouen in 1431. The English spread the rumour that at the last she had admitted the revelations which she had so loudly boasted to be false. But some time afterwards the Pope appointed commissioners. Her trial was solemnly revised and her conduct approved of by a final sentence which the Pope himself confirmed. The Burgundians were forced to raise the siege of Compiegne," loc. cit. p. 236. Mezeray is more credulous than Bossuet; he mentions "the Saints Catherine and Margaret, who purified her soul with heavenly conversations, wherefore she venerated them with a particular devotion." In relating the trial, he like Bossuet, ignores the Vice-Inquisitor (Histoire de France, vol. ii, 1746, in folio, pp. 11 et seq.)]

The eighteenth-century philosophers did not descend on France like a cloud of locusts; they were the result of two centuries of the critical spirit. If the story of Jeanne d'Arc contained too much monkish superstition for their taste, it was because they had learned their ecclesiastical history from the Baillets and the Tillemonts, who were pious indeed, but very critical of legends. Voltaire, writing of Jeanne, jeered at the rascally monks and their dupes. But if we quote the lines of La Pucelle, why not also the article[119] in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, which contains three pages of profounder truth and nobler thought than certain voluminous modern works in which Voltaire is insulted in clerical jargon?

[Footnote 119: Voltaire ed. Beuchot, vol. xxvi. Cf. also Essai sur les moeurs, chap. lxxx. "Finally, being accused of having once resumed man's dress, which had been left near her on purpose to tempt her, her judges ... declared her a relapsed heretic and caused to be burnt at the stake one who in heroic ages, when men erected altars to their liberators, would have had an altar raised to her for having served her King. Afterwards Charles VII rehabilitated her memory, which her death itself had sufficiently honoured."]

It was precisely at the end of the eighteenth century that Jeanne began to be better known and more justly appreciated, first through a little book, which the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy derived almost wholly from the unpublished history of old Richer,[120] then by l'Averdy's erudite researches into the two trials.[121]

[Footnote 120: L'Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vierge, heroine et martyre d'Etat suscitee par la Providence pour retablir la monarchie francaise, tiree des proces et pieces originales du temps, Paris, 1753-1754, 3 vols. in 12mo.]

[Footnote 121: F. de L'Averdy, Memorial lu au comite des manuscrits concernant la recherche a faire des minutes originales des differentes affaires qui ont eu lieu par rapport a Jeanne d'Arc, appelee communement la Pucelle d'Orleans, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1787, in 4to; Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du roi, lus au comite etabli par sa Majeste dans l'Academie royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imp. Royale, 1790, vol. iii.]

Nevertheless humanism, and after humanism the Reformation, and after the Reformation Cartesianism, and after Cartesianism experimental philosophy had banished the old credulity from thoughtful minds. When the Revolution came, the bloom had already long faded from the flower of Gothic legend. It seemed as if the glory of Jeanne d'Arc, so intimately related to the traditions of the royal house of France, could not survive the monarchy, and as if the tempest which scattered the royal ashes of Saint Denys and the treasure of Reims, would also bear away the frail relics and the venerated images of the saint of the Valois. The new regime did indeed refuse to honour a memory so inseparable from royalty and from religion. The festival of Jeanne d'Arc at Orleans, shorn of ecclesiastical pomp in 1791, was discontinued in 1793. Later the Maid's history appeared somewhat too Gothic even to the emigres; Chateaubriand did not dare to introduce her into his "Genie du Christianisme."[122]

[Footnote 122: "Modern times present but two fine subjects for an epic poem, the Crusades and the Discovery of the New World" (ed. 1802, Paris, vol. ii, p. 7).]

But in the year XI the First Consul, who had just concluded the Concordat and was meditating the restoration of all the pageantry of the coronation, reinstituted the festival of the Maid with its incense and its crosses. Glorified of old in Charles VII's letters to his good towns, Jeanne was now exalted in Le Moniteur by Bonaparte.[123]

[Footnote 123: "The illustrious Jeanne d'Arc has proved that there is no miracle which the French genius is incapable of working when national independence is at stake" (Moniteur of 10 Pluviose, year XI, January 30, 1803). For the approval of the First Consul: facsimile in A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 600. [Original taken from the Reiset collection.]]

Only by constant transformation do the figures of poetry and history live in the minds of nations. Humanity cannot be interested in a personage of old time unless it clothe it in its own sentiments and in its own passions. After having been associated with the monarchy of divine right, the memory of Jeanne d'Arc came to be connected with the national unity which that monarchy had rendered possible; in Imperial and Republican France she became the symbol of la patrie. Certainly the daughter of Isabelle Romee had no more idea of la patrie as it is conceived to-day than she had of the idea of landed property which lies at its base. She never imagined anything like what we call the nation. That is something quite modern; but she did conceive of the heritage of kings and of the domain of the House of France. And it was there, in that domain and in that heritage, that the French gathered together before forming themselves into la patrie.

Under influences which it is impossible for us exactly to discover, the idea came to her of re-establishing the Dauphin in his inheritance; and this idea appeared to her so grand and so beautiful that in the fulness of her very ingenuous pride, she believed it to have been suggested to her by angels and saints from Paradise. For this idea she gave her life. That is why she has survived the cause for which she suffered. The very highest enterprises perish in their defeat and even more surely in their victory. The devotion, which inspired them, remains as an immortal example. And if the illusion, under which her senses laboured, helped her to this act of self-consecration, was not that illusion the unconscious outcome of her own heart? Her foolishness was wiser than wisdom, for it was that foolishness of martyrdom, without which men have never yet founded anything great or useful. Cities, empires, republics rest on sacrifice. It is not without reason therefore, not without justice that, transformed by enthusiastic imagination, she became the symbol of la patrie in arms.

In 1817, Le Brun de Charmettes,[124] a royalist jealous of imperial glory, wrote the first patriotic history of Jeanne d'Arc. The history is an able work. It has been followed by many others, conceived in the same spirit, composed on the same plan, written in the same style. From 1841 to 1849, Jules Quicherat, by his publication of the two trials and the evidence, worthily opened an incomparable period of research and discovery. At the same time, Michelet in the fifth volume of his "Histoire de France," wrote pages of high colour and rapid movement, which will doubtless remain the highest expression of the romantic art as applied to the Maid.[125]

[Footnote 124: Le Brun de Charmettes, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc surnommee la Pucelle d'Orleans, Paris, 1817, 4 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 125: Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. v.]

But of all the histories written between 1817 and 1870, or at least of all those with which I have made acquaintance, for I have not attempted to read them all, the most discerning in my opinion is the fourth book of Vallet de Viriville's "Histoire de Charles VII" in which his chief preoccupation is to place the Maid in that group of visionaries to which she really belongs.[126]

[Footnote 126: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, Paris, 1863, in 8vo.]

Wallon's book has been widely circulated if not widely read. A monotonous, conscientious work moderately enthusiastic, it owes its success to its unimpeachable exactitude.[127] If there must be an orthodox Jeanne d'Arc to suit fashionable persons, then for such a purpose, M. Marius Sepet's representation of the Maid would be equally exact and more graceful.[128]

[Footnote 127: H. Wallon, Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1860, 2 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 128: M. Sepet, Jeanne d'Arc, with an introduction by Leon Gautier, Tours, 1869, in 8vo.]

After the war of 1871, the twofold influence of the patriotic spirit, exalted by defeat, and the revival of Catholicism among the middle class gave a new impetus to admiration of the Maid. Arts and letters completed the transfiguration of Jeanne.

Catholics, like the learned Canon Dunand,[129] vie in zeal and enthusiasm with free-thinking idealists like M. Joseph Fabre.[130] By reproducing the two trials in a very artistic manner, in modern French and in a direct form of speech, M. Fabre has popularised the most ancient and the most touching impression of the Maid.[131]

[Footnote 129: Chanoine Dunand, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, Toulouse, 1898-1899, 3 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 130: Joseph Fabre, Jeanne d'Arc liberatrice de la France, new edition, Paris, 1894, in 12mo.]

[Footnote 131: Proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc...., translated with commentary by J. Fabre, new edition, Paris, 1895, in 18mo.]

From this period date almost innumerable works of erudition, among which must be noted those of Simeon Luce, which henceforth no one who would treat of Jeanne's early years can afford to neglect.[132]

[Footnote 132: Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, op. cit.; La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans, op. cit.]

We are equally indebted to M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis for his fine editions and his discerning studies so eruditely graceful and exact.

Throughout this period of romantic and Neo-Catholic enthusiasm the arts of painting and sculpture produced numerous representations of Jeanne, which had hitherto been very rare. Now everywhere were to be found Jeanne in armour and on horseback, Jeanne in prayer, Jeanne in captivity, Jeanne suffering martyrdom. Of all these images expressing in different manners and with varying merit the taste and the sentiment of the period, one work only appears great and true, and of striking beauty: Rude's Jeanne d'Arc beholding a vision.[133]

[Footnote 133: Lanery d'Arc, Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc, Nos. 2080 to 2112.]

The word patrie did not exist in the days of the Maid. People spoke of the kingdom of France.[134] No one, not even jurists, knew exactly what were its limits, which were constantly changing. The diversity of laws and customs was infinite, and quarrels between nobles were constantly arising. Nevertheless, men felt in their hearts that they loved their native land and hated the foreigner. If the Hundred Years' War did not create the sentiment of nationality in France, it fostered it. In his "Quadrilogue Invectif" Alain Chartier represents France, indicated by her robe sumptuously adorned with the emblems of the nobility, of the clergy and of the tiers etat, but lamentably soiled and torn, adjuring the three orders not to permit her to perish. "After the bond of the Catholic faith," she says to them, "Nature has called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native land, and for the defence of that lordship under which God has caused you to be born and to live."[135] And these are not the mere maxims of a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. On the hearts of humble Frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth. "Must the King be driven from his kingdom, and must we become English?" cried a man-at-arms of Lorraine in 1428.[136] The subjects of the Lilies, as well as those of the Leopard, felt it incumbent upon them to be loyal to their liege lord. But if any change for the worse occurred in the lordships to which they belonged, they were quite ready to make the best of it, because a lordship must increase or decrease, according to power and fortune, according to the good right or the good pleasure of the holder; it may be dismembered by marriages, or gifts, or inheritance, or alienated by various contracts. On the occasion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which seriously narrowed the dominions of King John, the folk of Paris strewed the streets with grass and flowers as a sign of rejoicing.[137] As a matter of fact, nobles changed their allegiance as often as it was necessary. Juvenal des Ursins relates in his Journal[138] how at the time of the English conquest of Normandy, a young widow was known to quit her domain with her three children in order to escape doing homage to the King from beyond the seas. But how many Norman nobles were like her in refusing to swear fealty to the former enemies of the kingdom? The example of fidelity to the king was not always set by those of his own family. The Duke of Bourbon, in the name of all the princes of the blood royal, prisoners with him in the hands of the English, proposed to Henry V that they should go and negotiate in France for the cession of Harfleur, promising that if the Royal Council met them with refusal they would acknowledge Henry V to be King of France.[139]

[Footnote 134: A. Thomas, Le mot "Patrie" et Jeanne d'Arc in Revue des Idees, July 15, 1906.]

[Footnote 135: Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier, published by Andre Duchesne, Paris, 1642, in 4to, p. 410.]

[Footnote 136: Trial, vol. ii, p. 436. See post, vol. i, p. 82.]

[Footnote 137: Froissart, Chroniques, book i, chap. 128.]

[Footnote 138: Jean Juvenal des Ursins in Buchon, Choix des Chroniques, iv.]

[Footnote 139: Rymer, Foedera, vol. ix, p. 427.]

Every one thought first of himself. Whoever possessed land owed himself to his land; his neighbour was his enemy. The burgher thought only of his town. The peasant changed his master without knowing it. The three orders were not yet united closely enough to form, in the modern sense of the word, a state.

Little by little the royal power united the French. This union became stronger in proportion as royalty grew more powerful. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that desire to think and act in common, which creates great nations, became very strong among us--at least in those families which furnished officers to the Crown--and it even spread among the lower orders of society. Rabelais introduces Francois Villon and the King of England into a tale so inflamed with military bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost identical manner by one of Napoleon's grenadiers.[140] In his preface to the poem we have just quoted, Chapelain writes of the occasions when "la patrie who is our common mother, has need of all her children." Already the old poet expresses himself like the author of the Marseillaise.[141]

[Footnote 140: Pantagruel, book iv, chap. lxvii.]

[Footnote 141: La Pucelle, Preface.]

It cannot be denied that the feeling for la patrie did exist under the old regime. The impulse imparted to this sentiment by the Revolution was none the less immense. It added to it the idea of national unity and national territorial integrity. It extended to all the right of property hitherto reserved to a small number, and thus, so to speak, divided la patrie among the citizens. While rendering the peasant capable of possessing, the new regime imposed upon him the obligations of defending his actual or potential possessions. Recourse to arms is a necessity alike for whomsoever acquires or wishes to acquire territory. Hardly had the Frenchman come to enjoy the rights of a man and of a citizen, hardly had he entered into possession or thought he might enter into possession of a home and lands of his own, when the armies of the Coalition arrived "to drive him back to ancient slavery." Then the patriot became a soldier. Twenty-three years of warfare, with the inevitable alternations of victories and defeats, built up our fathers in their love of la patrie and their hatred of the foreigner.

Since then, as the result of industrial progress, there have arisen in one country and another, rivalries which are every day growing more bitter. The present methods of production by multiplying antagonism among nations, have given rise to imperialism, to colonial expansion and to armed peace.

But how many contrary forces are at work in this formidable creation of a new order of things! In all countries the great development of trade and manufactures has given birth to a new class. This class, possessing nothing, having no hope of ever possessing anything, enjoying none of the good things of life, not even the light of day, does not share the fear which haunted the peasant and burgher of the Revolution, of being despoiled by an enemy coming from abroad; the members of this new class, having no wealth to defend, regard foreign nations with neither terror nor hatred. At the same time over all the markets of the world there have arisen financial powers, which, although they often affect respect for old traditions, are by their very functions essentially destructive of the national and patriotic spirit. The universal capitalist system has created in France, as everywhere else, the internationalism of the workers and the cosmopolitanism of the financiers.

To-day, just as two thousand years ago, in order to discern the future, we must regard not the enterprises of the great but the confused movements of the working classes. The nations will not indefinitely endure this armed peace which weighs so heavily upon them. Every day we behold the organising of an universal community of workers.

I believe in the future union of nations, and I long for it with that ardent charity for the human race, which, formed in the Latin conscience in the days of Epictetus and Seneca, and through so many centuries extinguished by European barbarism, has been revived in the noblest breasts of modern times. And in vain will it be argued against me that these are the mere dream-illusions of desire: it is desire that creates life and the future is careful to realise the dreams of philosophers. Nevertheless, that we to-day are assured of a peace that nothing will disturb, none but a madman would maintain. On the contrary, the terrible industrial and commercial rivalries growing up around us indicate future conflicts, and there is nothing to assure us that France will not one day find herself involved in a great European or world conflagration. Her obligation to provide for her defence increases not a little those difficulties which arise from a social order profoundly agitated by competition in production and antagonism between classes.

An absolute empire obtains its defenders by inspiring fear; democracy only by bestowing benefits. Fear or interest lies at the root of all devotion. If the French proletariat is to defend the Republic heroically in the hour of peril, then it must either be happy or have the hope of becoming so. And what use is it to deceive ourselves? The lot of the workman to-day is no better in France than in Germany, and not so good as in England or America.

On these important subjects I have not been able to forbear expressing the truth as it appears to me; there is a great satisfaction in saying what one believes useful and just.

It now only remains for me to submit to my readers a few reflections on the difficult art of writing history, and to explain certain peculiarities of form and language which will be found in this work.

To enter into the spirit of a period that has passed away, to make oneself the contemporary of men of former days, deliberate study and loving care are necessary. The difficulty lies not so much in what one must know as in what one must not know. If we would really live in the fifteenth century, how many things we must forget: knowledge, methods, all those acquisitions which make moderns of us. We must forget that the earth is round, and that the stars are suns, and not lamps suspended from a crystal vault; we must forget the cosmogony of Laplace, and believe in the science of Saint Thomas, of Dante, and of those cosmographers of the Middle Age who teach the Creation in seven days and the foundation of kingdoms by the sons of Priam, after the destruction of Great Troy. Such and such a historian or paleographer is powerless to make us understand the contemporaries of the Maid. It is not knowledge he lacks, but ignorance--ignorance of modern warfare, of modern politics, of modern religion.

But when we have forgotten, as far as possible, all that has happened since the youth of Charles VII, in order to think like a clerk in exile at Poitiers, or a burgher at Orleans serving on the ramparts of his city, we must recover all our intellectual resources in order to embrace the entirety of events, and discover that sequence between cause and effect which escape the clerk or the burgher. "I have contracted my horizon," says the Chatterton of Alfred de Vigny, when he explains how he is conscious of nothing that has happened since the days of the old Saxons. But Chatterton wrote poems, pseudo chronicles, and not history. The historian must alternately contract his horizon and widen it. If he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs successively--or sometimes at one and the same moment--assume the credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the most accomplished critic. By a strange process, he must divide his personality. He must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a story by Mr. H.G. Wells, who lives and moves in a little English town, and all the time sees herself at the bottom of the ocean.

I have carefully visited cities and countries in which the events I propose to relate took place. I have seen the valley of the Meuse amidst the flowers and perfumes of spring, and I have seen it again beneath a mass of mist and cloud. I have travelled along the smiling banks of the Loire, so full of renown; through La Beauce, with its vast horizons bordered with snow-topped mountains; through l'Ile-de-France, where the sky is serene; through La Champagne, with its stony hills covered with those low vines which, trampled upon by the coronation army, bloomed again into leaves and fruit, says the legend, and by St. Martin's Day yielded a late but rich vintage.[142] I have lingered in barren Picardy, along the Bay of the Somme so sad and bare beneath the flight of its birds of passage. I have wandered through the fat meadows of Normandy to Rouen with its steeples and towers, its ancient charnel houses, its damp streets, its last remaining timbered houses with high gables. I have imagined these rivers, these lands, these chateaux and these towns as they were five hundred years ago.

[Footnote 142: Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, Les sources allemandes de l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 93.]

I have accustomed my gaze to the forms assumed by the beings and the objects of those days. I have examined all that remains of stone, of iron, or of wood worked by the hands of those old artisans, who were freer and consequently more ingenious than ours, and whose handicraft reveals a desire to animate and adorn everything. To the best of my ability I have studied figures carved and painted, not exactly in France--for there, in those days of misery and death, art was little practised--but in Flanders, in Burgundy, in Provence, where the workmanship is often in a style at once affected and naif, and frequently beautiful. As I gazed at the old miniatures, they seemed to live before me, and I saw the nobles in the absurd magnificence of their etoffes a tripes,[143] the dames and the damoiselles somewhat devilish with their horned caps and their pointed shoes; clerks seated at the desk, men-at-arms riding their chargers and merchants their mules, husbandmen performing from April till March all the tasks of the rural calendar; peasant women, whose broad coifs are still worn by nuns. I drew near to these folk, who were our fellows, and who yet differed from us by a thousand shades of sentiment and of thought; I lived their lives; I read their hearts.

[Footnote 143: Imitation velvet.]

It is hardly necessary to say that there exists no authentic representation of Jeanne. In the art of the fifteenth century all that relates to her amounts to very little: hardly anything remains--a small piece of bestion tapestry, a slight pen-and-ink figure on a register, a few illuminations in manuscripts of the reigns of Charles VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII, that is all. I have found it necessary to contribute to this very meagre iconography of Jeanne d'Arc, not because I had anything to add to it, but in order to expunge the contributions of the forgers of that period. In Appendix IV, at the end of this work, will be found the short article in which I point out the forgeries which, for the most part, are already old, but had not been previously denounced. I have limited my researches to the fifteenth century, leaving to others the task of studying those pictures of the Renaissance in which the Maid appears decked out in the German fashion, with the plumed hat and slashed doubtlet of a Saxon ritter or a Swiss mercenary.[144] I cannot say who served as a prototype for these portraits, but they closely resemble the woman accompanying the mercenaries in La Danse des morts, which Nicholas Manuel painted at Berne, on the wall of the Dominican Monastery, between 1515 and 1521.[145] In le Grand Siecle Jeanne d'Arc becomes Clorinda, Minerva, Bellona in ballet costume.[146]

[Footnote 144: See the picture of 1581, preserved in the Orleans Museum and reproduced in Wallon's Jeanne d'Arc, p. 466.]

[Footnote 145: La Danse des Morts, painted at Berne between 1515 and 1520 by Nicolas Manuel, lithographed by Guillaume Stettler, s.d. in folio oblong, engraving xx. M. Salomon Reinach believes this prototype may be found in the Judiths of Cranach.]

[Footnote 146: Lanery d'Arc, Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc, Iconography, Nos. 2080-2112.]

To my mind a continuous story is more likely than any controversy or discussion to make my subject live, and bring home its verities to my readers. It is true that the documents relating to the Maid do not lend themselves very easily to this kind of treatment. As I have just shown, they may nearly all be regarded as doubtful from several points of view, and objections to them arise at every moment. Nevertheless, I think that by making a cautious and judicious use of these documents one may obtain material sufficient for a truthful history of considerable extent. Besides, I have always indicated the sources of my facts, so that every one may judge for himself of the trustworthiness of my authorities.

In the course of my story I have related many incidents which, without having a direct relation to Jeanne, reveal the spirit, the morals, and the beliefs of her time. These incidents are usually of a religious order. They must necessarily be so, for Jeanne's story--and I cannot repeat it too often--is the story of a saint, just like that of Colette of Corbie, or of Catherine of Sienna.

I have yielded frequently, perhaps too frequently, to the desire to make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth century. And in order not to distract him suddenly from them, I have avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although many such occurred to me.

My history is founded on the form and substance of ancient documents; but I have hardly ever introduced into it literal quotations; I believe that unless it possesses a certain unity of language a book is unreadable, and I want to be read.

It is neither affectation of style nor artistic taste that has led me to adhere as far as possible to the tone of the period and to prefer archaic forms of language whenever I thought they would be intelligible, it is because ideas are changed when words are changed and because one cannot substitute modern for ancient expressions without altering sentiments and characters.

I have endeavoured to make my style simple and familiar. History is too often written in a high-flown manner that renders it wearisome and false. Why should we imagine historical facts to be out of the ordinary run of things and on a scale different from every-day humanity?

The writer of a history such as this is terribly tempted to throw himself into the battle. There is hardly a modern account of these old contests, in which the author, be he ecclesiastic or professor, does not with pen behind ear, rush into the melee by the side of the Maid. Even at the risk of missing the revelation of some of the beauties of her nature, I deem it better to keep one's own personality out of the action.

I have written this history with a zeal ardent and tranquil; I have sought truth strenuously, I have met her fearlessly. Even when she assumed an unexpected aspect, I have not turned from her. I shall be reproached for audacity, until I am reproached for timidity.

I have pleasure in expressing my gratitude to my illustrious confreres, MM. Paul Meyer and Ernest Lavisse, who have given me valuable advice. I owe much to M. Petit Dutaillis for certain kindly observations which I have taken into consideration. I am also greatly indebted to M. Henri Jadart, Secretary of the Reims Academy; M. E. Langlois, Professor at the Faculte des Lettres of Lille; M. Camille Bloch, some time archivist of Loiret, M. Noel Charavay, autographic expert, and M. Raoul Bonnet.

M. Pierre Champion, who albeit still young is already known as the author of valuable historical works, has placed the result of his researches at my disposal with a disinterestedness I shall never be able adequately to acknowledge. He has also carefully read the whole of my work. M. Jean Brousson has given me the advantage of his perspicacity which far surpasses what one is entitled to expect from one's secretary.

In the century which I have endeavoured to represent in this work, there was a fiend, by name Titivillus. Every evening this fiend put into a sack all the letters omitted or altered by the copyists during the day. He carried them to hell, in order that, when Saint Michael weighed the souls of these negligent scribes, the share of each one might be put in the scale of his iniquities. Should he have survived the invention of printing, surely this most properly meticulous fiend must to-day be assuming the heavy task of collecting the misprints scattered throughout the books which aspire to exactitude; it would be very foolish of him to trouble about others. As occasion requires he will place those misprints to the account of reader or author. I am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Levy and to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have employed in lightening the burden, which Titivillus will place on my back on the Day of Judgment.

PARIS, February, 1908.

CONTENTS

VOL. I

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE v

INTRODUCTION vii

I. CHILDHOOD 1

II. VOICES 29

III. FIRST VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS. FLIGHT TO NEUFCHATEAU. JOURNEY TO TOUL. SECOND VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS 61

IV. JOURNEY TO NANCY. ITINERARY FROM VAUCOULEURS TO SAINTE-CATHERINE-DE-FIERBOIS 91

V. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 12TH OF OCTOBER, 1428, TO THE 6TH OF MARCH, 1429 106

VI. THE MAID AT CHINON--PROPHECIES 145

VII. THE MAID AT POITIERS 187

VIII. THE MAID AT POITIERS (continued) 204

IX. THE MAID AT TOURS 217

X. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 7TH OF MARCH TO THE 28TH OF APRIL, 1429 230

XI. THE MAID AT BLOIS. LETTER TO THE ENGLISH. DEPARTURE FOR ORLEANS 243

XII. THE MAID AT ORLEANS 258

XIII. THE TAKING OF LES TOURELLES AND THE DELIVERANCE OF ORLEANS 296

XIV. THE MAID AT TOURS AND SELLES-EN-BERRY. TREATISES OF JACQUES GELU AND JEAN GERSON 318

XV. TAKING OF JARGEAU. THE MEUNG BRIDGE. BEAUGENCY 345

XVI. THE BATTLE OF PATAY. OPINIONS OF ITALIAN AND GERMAN CLERKS. THE GIEN ARMY 368

XVII. THE AUXERRE CONVENTION. FRIAR RICHARD. THE SURRENDER OF TROYES 403

XVIII. THE SURRENDER OF CHALONS AND OF REIMS. THE CORONATION 435

XIX. RISE OF THE LEGEND 461

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

JOAN OF ARC Frontispiece From a painting by Deruet.

To face page

HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC AT DOMREMY IN 1419 12

VIEW OF ORLEANS, 1428-1429 106

PLAN OF ORLEANS 258

CHARLES VII 444 From an old engraving.

JOAN OF ARC

I. CHILDHOOD

From Neufchateau to Vaucouleurs the clear waters of the Meuse flow freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes of alder and willow. Now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are suddenly lost to sight underground. In the summer the river is a lazy stream, barely bending in its course the reeds which grow upon its shallow bed; and from the bank one may watch its lapping waters kept back by clumps of rushes scarcely covering a little sand and moss. But in the season of heavy rains, swollen by sudden torrents, deeper and more rapid, as it rushes along, it leaves behind it on the banks a kind of dew, which rises in pools of clear water on a level with the grass of the valley.

This valley, two or three miles broad, stretches unbroken between low hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples, and birches. Although strewn with wild-flowers in the spring, it looks severe, grave, and sometimes even sad. The green grass imparts to it a monotony like that of stagnant water. Even on fine days one is conscious of a hard, cold climate. The sky seems more genial than the earth. It beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil landscape. Then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a kind of chaos. Fogs come down thick and clinging. The white light mists, which in summer veil the bottom of the valley, give place to thick clouds and dark moving mountains, but slowly scattered by a red, cold sun. Wanderers ranging the uplands in the early morning might dream with the mystics in their ecstasy that they are walking on clouds.

Thus, after having passed on the left the wooded plateau, from the height of which the chateau of Bourlemont dominates the valley of the Saonelle, and on the right Coussey with its old church, the winding river flows between le Bois Chesnu on the west and the hill of Julien on the east. Then on it goes, passing the adjacent villages of Domremy and Greux on the west bank and separating Greux from Maxey-sur-Meuse. Among other hamlets nestling in the hollows of the hills or rising on the high ground, it passes Burey-la-Cote, Maxey-sur-Vaise, and Burey-en-Vaux, and flows on to water the beautiful meadows of Vaucouleurs.[147]

[Footnote 147: J. Ch. Chappellier, Etude historique et geographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo. E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1894, in 18mo.]

In this little village of Domremy, situated at least seven and a half miles further down the river than Neufchateau and twelve and a half above Vaucouleurs, there was born, about the year 1410 or 1412,[148] a girl who was destined to live a remarkable life. She was born poor. Her father,[149] Jacques or Jacquot d'Arc, a native of the village of Ceffonds in Champagne,[150] was a small farmer and himself drove his horses at the plough.[151] His neighbours, men and women alike, held him to be a good Christian and an industrious workman.[152] His wife came from Vouthon, a village nearly four miles northwest of Domremy, beyond the woods of Greux. Her name being Isabelle or Zabillet, she received at some time, exactly when is uncertain, the surname of Romee.[153] That name was given to those who had been to Rome or on some other important pilgrimage;[154] and it is possible that Isabelle may have acquired her name of Romee by assuming the pilgrim's shell and staff.[155] One of her brothers was a parish priest, another a tiler; she had a nephew who was a carpenter.[156] She had already borne her husband three children: Jacques or Jacquemin, Catherine, and Jean.[157]

[Footnote 148: This may be inferred from vol. i, p. 46, of the Trial. But Jeanne did not know how old she was when she left her father's house (Trial, vol. i, p. 51). I have ignored the letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, p. 116, vol. v, of the Trial. It is quite unauthentic and is too much in the manner of a hagiologist. See post, p. 468, note 1.]

[Footnote 149: Darc (Trial, vol. i, p. 191; vol. ii, p. 82). Dars (Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. 360). Day (Trial, vol. v, p. 150). Daiz (furnished by M. Pierre Champion). This document appears to justify the pronunciation Jeanne d'Arc. Concerning the orthography of the name d'Arc, cf. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc, notes 647-657.]

[Footnote 150: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 208. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1878, in 8vo, p. 185; Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, Orleans, 1879, in 12mo, p. x, passim. Boucher de Molandon, Jacques d'Arc, pere de la Pucelle, Orleans, 1885, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 151: See post, pp. 57, 451, 452.]

[Footnote 152: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 378 et seq.]

[Footnote 153: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 191, 208; vol. ii, p. 74, note 1. Armand Boucher de Crevecoeur, Les Romee et les de Perthes, famille maternelle de Jeanne d'Arc, Abbeville, 1891, in 8vo. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, notes 1278-1308.]

[Footnote 154: Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Romeus. G. de Braux, Jeanne d'Arc a Saint-Nicolas, Nancy, 1889, p. 8. Revue catholique des institutions et du droit, August, 1886. E. de Bouteiller, Nouvelles recherches, p. xii. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 43.]

[Footnote 155: Probably before Jeanne's birth. "My surname is d'Arc or Romee," said Jeanne (Trial, vol. i, p. 191). Thus she indiscriminately assumes either her father's or her mother's surname, although she says (Trial, vol. i, p. 191) that in her country girls are called by their mother's surname.]

[Footnote 156: Trial, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1879, pp. 3-20. Ch. du Lys, Traite sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle d'Orleans et de ses freres, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1857, p. 28. E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois, Troyes, 1893, in 8vo, p. 101.]

[Footnote 157: The order of the births of Jacques d'Arc's children is extremely doubtful (Trial, index, under the word Arc).]

Jacques d'Arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish church, dedicated to Saint Remi, the apostle of Gaul.[158] There was only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. It is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism pronounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer for girls than for boys.[159] We do not know whether Messire Jean Minet,[160] the parish priest, pronounced it over the child in all its literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs of the Church's invincible mistrust of woman.

[Footnote 158: Trial, vol. ii, p. 393, passim. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, vol. xvi, p. 357.]

[Footnote 159: A. Monteil, Histoire des Francais, 1853, in 18mo, vol. ii, p. 194.]

[Footnote 160: Trial, vol. i, p. 46. Jean Minet was a native of Neufchateau.]

According to the custom then prevailing the child had several godfathers and godmothers.[161] The men-gossips were Jean Morel, of Greux,[162] husbandman; Jean Barrey, of Neufchateau; Jean Le Langart or Lingui, and Jean Rainguesson; the women, Jeannette, wife of Thevenin le Royer, called Roze, of Domremy; Beatrix, wife of Estellin,[163] husbandman in the same village; Edite, wife of Jean Barrey; Jeanne, wife of Aubrit, called Jannet and described as Maire Aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of Bourlemont; Jeannette, wife of Thiesselin de Vittel, a scholar of Neufchateau. She was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of books. Among the godmothers there are mentioned also the wife of Nicolas d'Arc, Jacques' brother, and two obscure Christians, one called Agnes, the other Sibylle.[164] Here, as in every group of good Catholics, we have a number of Jeans, Jeannes, and Jeannettes. St. John the Baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the 24th of June, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and contracts of all kinds. In the opinion of certain ecclesiastics, especially of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette, Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child was named Jeannette. That was the name by which she was known in the village. Later, in France, she was called Jeanne.[167]

[Footnote 161: J. Corblet, Parrains et marraines, in Revue de l'art chretien, 1881, vol. xiv, pp. 336 et seq.]

[Footnote 162: Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, proofs and illustrations, li, p. 98.]

[Footnote 163: Ibid., p. clxxix, note.]

[Footnote 164: Cf. Trial, index, under parrains and marraines. It is not always possible to assign to these personages the names they bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are introduced.]

[Footnote 165: Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, in the Revue Historique, vol. iv, p. 342. Cf. Eustache Deschamps, ballad 354, vol. iii, p. 83, ed. Queux de Saint Hilaire.]

[Footnote 166: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74-388; vol. v, pp. 151, 220, passim.]

[Footnote 167: Ibid., vol. i, p. 46. Henri Lepage, Jeanne d'Arc est-elle Lorraine? Nancy, 1852, pp. 57-79.]

She was brought up in her father's house, in Jacques' poor dwelling.[168] In the front there were two windows admitting but a scanty light. The stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden side sloped almost to the ground. Close by the door, as was usual in that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm tools covered with rust and mud. But the humble enclosure, which served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a wealth of pink and white flowers.[169]

[Footnote 168: Trial, vol. v, pp. 244 et seq. Jacques d'Arc's house doubtless looked on to the road; the Du Lys, or rather the Thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer existing. The shields which ornamented its facade have been placed upon the door of the building now shown as Jeanne's house. What is represented as Jeanne's room is the bakehouse (E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 74). See an article by Henri Arsac in L'echo de l'Est, 26 July, 1890. A whole literature has been written on this subject (Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 330 et seq.).]

[Footnote 169: Emile Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, passim.]

These good Christians had one more child, the youngest, Pierre, who was called Pierrelot.[170]

[Footnote 170: Trial, vol. v, pp. 151, 220.]

Fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, Jeanne grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober. She lived in perfect liberty. Among hard-working peasants the children are left to themselves. Isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well with the village children.

A little neighbour, Hauviette, three or four years younger than she, was her daily companion. They liked to sleep together in the same bed.[171] Mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and spin at Jacques d'Arc's house. She helped Jeanne with her household duties.[172] Taking her distaff with her, Jeanne used often to go and pass the evening at Saint-Amance, at the house of a husbandman Jacquier, who had a young daughter.[173] Boys and girls grew up as a matter of course side by side. Being neighbours, Jeanne and Simonin Musnier's son were brought up together. When Musnier's son was still a child he fell ill, and Jeanne nursed him.[174]

[Footnote 171: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 417: "Jacuit amorose in domo patris sui."]

[Footnote 172: Ibid., p. 429.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid., p. 408.]

[Footnote 174: Ibid., p. 423.]

In those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know their letters. A few years earlier Maitre Jean Gerson had counselled his sisters, peasants of Champagne, to learn to read, and had promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[175] Albeit the niece of a parish priest, Jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at Maxey there was a school attended by boys from Domremy.[176]

[Footnote 175: E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois, p. 115. De La Fons-Melicocq, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de l'instruction publique en France et a l'histoire des moeurs au XV'ieme siecle, in the Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Morinie, vol. iii, pp. 460 et seq.]

[Footnote 176: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65-66. (Item: je donne a Oudinot, a Richard et a Gerard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de Marcey dessoubz Brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept psaulmes.) (Item: I give to the boys, Oudinot, Richard, and Gerard, scholars of the school-master at Marcey below Brixey, twelve crowns to pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) The will of Jean de Bourlemont, 23 October, 1399, in S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, document in facsimile xiii.]

From her mother she learnt the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and the credo.[177] She heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. That was her whole education. On holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's sermon.[178]

[Footnote 177: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise, vol. iii, the second miniature, the "Douze perils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).]

As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a man.[179]

[Footnote 179: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]

The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows. Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]

[Footnote 180: Trial, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lij.]

But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She swore neither by God nor his saints; and to assert the truth of anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the bells rang for the Angelus, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On Saturday, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill, barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth the clear waters of the Saint-Thiebault spring, which cure fevers and heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown, with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. She worked miracles. Jeanne used to visit her with her sister Catherine and the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. And as often as she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[183]

[Footnote 181: Trial, vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 182: Ibid., vol. i, p. 423.]

[Footnote 183: Trial, index, at the word Bermont. Du Haldat, Notice sur la chapelle de Belmont, in the Memoires de l'Academie Stanislas de Nancy, 1833-1834, p. 96. E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 95. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, p. 330.]

A mile and a quarter west of Domremy was a hill covered with a dense wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. Wolves were the terror of the countryside. The village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [chenu] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician.

[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, Histoire des Francois, vol. i, p. 91.]

[Footnote 185: Trial, index, under the words Bois Chesnu.]

At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187] If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. By making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as goddesses.[189] It was quite true. Goddesses as much feared and venerated as the Parcae had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men. But, fallen long since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. They were invited to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next the mother's. At these festivals they ate alone and came and went without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements for fear of displeasing them. It is the custom of divine personages to go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]

[Footnote 186: Ibid., index, under the words Fontaine des Groseilliers.]

[Footnote 187: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 et seq.]

[Footnote 188: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]

[Footnote 189: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

[Footnote 190: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390, 404, 450.]

[Footnote 191: Wolf, Mythologie des fees et des elfes, 1828, in 8vo. A. Maury, Les fees au moyen age, 1843, in 18mo, and Croyances et legendes du moyen age, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]

Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the highroad to Neufchateau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many names. It was called l'Arbre-des-Dames, l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames, l'Arbre-des-Fees, l'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-de-Bourlemont, le Beau-Mai.[195]

[Footnote 192: Richer, Histoire manuscrite de Jeanne d'Arc, ms. fr. 10,448, fols. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 193: For tree worship, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in La tradition, 15 March, 1889.]

[Footnote 194: Trial, vol. ii, p. 422.]

[Footnote 195: Ibid., index, under the words Arbre des Fees.]

Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been seen under l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames. In the old days, when Berthe was spinning, a lord of Bourlemont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's godmothers, who was a scholar at Neufchateau, had heard this story, which closely resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree. Some believed they did, others thought they did not. Beatrix, another of Jeanne's godmothers, used to say: "I have heard tell that fairies came to the tree in the old days. But for their sins they come there no longer."[198]

[Footnote 196: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 197: Ibid., p. 404, passim. Simple Crayon de la noblesse des ducs de Lorraine et de Bar, in Le Brun des Charmettes' Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i, p. 266. Jules Baudot, Les princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar de la famille des Valois, first part. Melusine, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, p. 121.]

[Footnote 198: Propter eorum peccata, in the Trial, vol. ii, p. 396. There is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.]

This simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of God and that the priest had driven them away. Jean Morel, Jeanne's godfather, believed the same.[199]

[Footnote 199: Trial, vol. ii, p. 390.]

Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to l'Arbre-des-Fees and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.[200] For the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St. John.[201]

[Footnote 200: Trial, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 201: Ibid., p. 390. Bergier, Dictionnaire de theologie, under the word Conjuration.]

My Lord Aubert d'Ourches held that there had been no fairies at Domremy for twenty or thirty years.[202] On the other hand there were those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.

[Footnote 202: Trial, vol. i, p. 187.]

Yet another of Jeanne's godmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her goddaughter. And Aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circumspect.[203]

[Footnote 203: Ibid., pp. 67, 209.]

In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[204] Fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.[205]

[Footnote 204: Ibid., pp. 178, 209 et seq.]

[Footnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for Jeanne's opinion of them, see Trial, index, under the word Fees.]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church "Laetare Sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning Laetare Jerusalem,--the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at l'Arbre-des-Fees.[206] They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the Well-Dressing at Domremy, see Trial, index, under the word Fontaine.]

[Footnote 207: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 et seq. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and l'Arbre-des-Fees.[209]

[Footnote 209: Ibid., pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of l'Arbre-des-Fees. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder. One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]

[Footnote 210: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]

To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[211]

[Footnote 211: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 434.]

Close by l'Arbre-des-Dames, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.

[Footnote 212: Atropa Mandragor, female mandragora, main de gloire, herbe aux magiciens. Trial, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 236.]

The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]

[Footnote 213: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.[214]

[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. xviii et seq.; 7, 8, 10, passim. C. Gilardoni, Sermaize et son eglise, published at Vitry-le-Francois, 1893, 8vo.]

Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[215]

[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere, Paris, 1901, 12mo, p. 28.]

At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's house.[216]

[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 9 and 10. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xlv et seq.]

With regard to feudal overlordship the village of Domremy was divided into two distinct parts. The southern part, with the chateau on the Meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of Bourlemont and was in the domain of the castellany of Grondrecourt, held in fief from the crown of France. It was a part of Lorraine and of Bar. The northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was subject to the provost of Monteclaire and Andelot and was in the bailiwick of Chaumont in Champagne.[217] It was sometimes called Domremy de Greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of Greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of Vaucouleurs.[218] The serfs of Bourlemont were separated from the king's men by a brook, close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence called, so it is said, the Brook of the Three Springs. Modestly the stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then rushed down a rapid incline into the Meuse, opposite Jacques d'Arc's house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of Champagne and of France.[219] So far we may be fairly certain; but we must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. In 1429 King Charles' council was uncertain as to whether Jacques d'Arc was a freeman or a serf.[220] And Jacques d'Arc himself doubtless was no better informed. On both banks of the brook, the men of Lorraine and Champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship. Although they were subject to different masters they formed none the less one community closely united, one single rural family. They shared interests, necessities, feelings--everything. Threatened by the same dangers, they had the same anxieties.

[Footnote 217: E. Misset, Jeanne d'Arc champenoise, Paris, s.d. (1894), 8vo. Concerning the nationality of Joan of Arc there is a whole literature extremely rich, the bibliography of which it is impossible to give here. Cf. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 295 et seq.]

[Footnote 218: Trial, vol. i, p. 208.]

[Footnote 219: P. Jollois, Histoire abregee de la vie et des exploits de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1821, engraving I, p. 190. A. Renard, La patrie de Jeanne d'Arc, Langres, 1880, in 18mo, p. 6. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, supplement with proofs and illustrations, pp. 281, 282.]

[Footnote 220: Trial, vol. v, p. 152.]

Lying at the extreme south of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, the village of Domremy was between Bar and Champagne on the east, and Lorraine on the west.[221] They were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that Count of Vaudemont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the whole of Christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the Lorraine Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. Unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who, subsisting on plunder, was especially given to the Lorraine custom of marauding. He was of the same way of thinking as that English king who said that warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings without mustard.[222] One day, when he was besieging a little stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the Damoiseau set fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.[223]

[Footnote 221: Colonel de Boureulle, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo, 28 small engravings. J. Ch. Chappellier, Etude historique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, 2 plans; C. Niobe, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Memoires de la Societe academique de l'Aube, 1894, 3d series, vol. xxxi, pp. 307 et seq.]

[Footnote 222: Juvenal des Ursins, in the Collection Michaud et Poujoulat, col. 561.]

[Footnote 223: A. Tuetey, Les ecorcheurs sous Charles VII, Montbeliard, 1874, vol. i, p. 87.]

In 1419 this baron was making war on the brothers Didier and Durand of Saint-Die. It matters not for what reason. For this war as for every war the villagers had to pay. As the men-at-arms were fighting throughout the whole castellany of Vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of Domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. At Domremy there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.[224] Belonging to this castle was a chapel of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the dwelling of the Lords of Bourlemont, was commonly called the Fortress of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. But soon after Jeanne d'Arc's birth she married a Lorraine baron, Henri d'Ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of Ogiviller and at the ducal court of Nancy. Since her departure the fortress of the island had remained uninhabited. The village folk decided to rent it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the plunderers. The renting was put up to auction. A certain Jean Biget of Domremy and Jacques d'Arc, Jeanne's father, being the highest bidders, and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between them and the representatives of Dame d'Ogiviller. The fortress, the garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain, were let to Jean Biget and Jacques d'Arc for a term of nine years beginning on St. John the Baptist's Day, 1419, and in consideration of a yearly rent of fourteen livres tournois[225] and three imaux of wheat.[226] Besides the two tenants in chief there were five sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was Jacquemin, the eldest of Jacques d'Arc's sons.[227]

[Footnote 224: Trial, vol. i, pp. 66, 215.]

[Footnote 225: In 1390 one livre tournois was worth L7 5_s_ of present money; in 1488, L5. Cf. Avenel, Histoire economique, 1894 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 226: "Imal," says Le Trevoux, "is a measure of corn used at Nancy." There are two imaux in a quarter, and four quarters in a real, which contains fifteen bushels, according to the Paris measure.]

[Footnote 227: The Archives of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, collection Ruppes II, No. 28. The farm lease, dated 2nd of April, 1420, was first published by M. J. Ch. Chappellier in Le Journal de la Societe d'Archeologie Lorraine, Jan.-Feb., 1889; and Deux actes inedits du XV siecle sur Domremy, Nancy, 1889, 8vo, 16 pages. S. Luce, La France pendant la guerre de cent ans, 1890, 18mo, pp. 274 et seq. Lefevre-Pontalis, Etude historique et geographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. lvi, pp. 154-168.]

The precaution proved to be useful. In that very year, 1419, Robert de Saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers Didier and Durand at the village of Maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be seen opposite Greux, on the other bank of the Meuse, along the foot of wooded hills. The two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the victorious Damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. Among these prisoners was the Squire Thiesselin de Vittel, whose wife had held Jacques d'Arc's second daughter over the baptismal font. From one of the hills of her village, Jeanne, who was then seven or a little older, could see the battle in which her godmother's husband was taken prisoner.[228]

[Footnote 228: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 420-426. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lxiv.]

Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[229] Thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge at Montereau, when the Dauphin's Councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,[230] sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l'Ile-de-France, and Paris the great city.[231] Now in France the English were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[232] In Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath Goddam[233] was so often on their lips that they were called Godons. They were devils. They were said to be coues, that is, to have tails behind.[234] There was mourning in many a French household when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the coues,[235] making of the noble French lilies a litter for the leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.[236] Dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the side of the Burgundians?

[Footnote 229: Lienard, Dictionnaire topographique de la Meuse, introduction, p. x.]

[Footnote 230: Dom Devienne, Histoire de Bordeaux, pp. 98, 103. L. Bachelier, Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 1862, in 8vo, p. 45. D. Brissaud, Les Anglais en Guyenne, Paris, 1875, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 231: Ch. de Beaurepaire, De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, Caen, 1859, in 4to; and Etats de Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, Evreux, 1859, in 8vo. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. v, pp. 40-56, 261-286.]

[Footnote 232: Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, ed. Quicherat, vol. i, p. 27.]

[Footnote 233: La Curne, under the words Anglois and Goddons.]

[Footnote 234: Voragine, La legende de Saint-Gregoire. Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Caudatus. Le Roux de Lincy, Recueil de chants historiques francais, Paris, 1851, vol. i, pp. 300, 301. This oath is to be found current as early as Eustache Deschamps; it was still in use in the seventeenth century (Sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle, ed. Vallet de Viriville).]

[Footnote 235: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii. Carlier, Histoire du Valois, vol. ii, pp. 441 et seq.]

[Footnote 236: Dom Calmet, Histoire de Lorraine, vol. ii, col. 631. Bonnabelle, Notice sur la ville de Vaucouleurs, Bar-le-Duc, 1879, in 8vo, 75 pages.]

Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.[237] It is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[238] Insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux, and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies.

[Footnote 237: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65, 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. 18 et seq.]

[Footnote 238: N. Villiaume, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, 1864, in 8vo, p. 52, note 1.]

In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt and Blaise, son of the late Messire Liebault de Baudricourt, was then captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles. He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of English and Burgundians.[239]

[Footnote 239: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii.]

In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one Etienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of La Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages.

[Footnote 240: Pierre d'Alheim, Le jargon Jobelin, Paris, 1892, in 18mo: glossary, under the word Hirenalle, p. 61, and the verbal communication of M. Marcel Schwob. Cronique Martiniane, ed. P. Champion, p. 8, note 3; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 270; De Montlezun, Histoire de Gascogne, 1847, in 8vo, p. 143; A. Castaing, La patrie du valet de coeur, in Revue de Gascogne, 1869, vol. x, pp. 29-33.]

While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar.

[Footnote 241: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. lxxiii, 87, note 1. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]

Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (doyen) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242]

[Footnote 242: Bonvalot, Le tiers etat d'apres la charte de Beaumont et ses filiales, Paris, 1886, p. 412.]

Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two gros from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.[244]

[Footnote 243: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. lxxi et seq.]

[Footnote 244: Ibid., proofs and illustrations, li, p. 97.]

The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, Rene d'Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246]

[Footnote 245: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 16, 17.]

[Footnote 246: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, appendix, lxii.]

At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248]

[Footnote 247: Du Chesne, Genealogie de la maison de Vergy, Paris, 1625, folio. Nouvelle biographie generale, vol. xlv, p. 1125.]

[Footnote 248: S. Luce, Domremy and Vaucouleurs, from 1412 to 1425, in Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii.]

Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250]

[Footnote 249: Trial, vol. i, p. 66.]

[Footnote 250: Trial, vol. i, p. 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. 20.]

One day in the summer of 1425, there fell upon the villages of Greux and Domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name Henri d'Orly, known as Henri de Savoie. This time the island fortress was of no use to the villagers. Lord Henri took all the cattle from the two villages and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues[251] away to his chateau of Doulevant. He had also captured much furniture and other property; and the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one place; wherefore he had part of it carried to Dommartin-le-Franc, a neighbouring village, where there was a chateau with so large a court in front that the place was called Dommartin-la-Cour. The peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. Happily for them, at the news of this pillage, Dame d'Ogiviller sent to the Count of Vaudemont in his chateau of Joinville, complaining to him, as her kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of Greux and Domremy. The chateau of Doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty of the Count of Vaudemont. As soon as he received his kinswoman's message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to recapture the cattle. This man-at-arms, by name Barthelemy de Clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of war. He found the stolen beasts in the chateau of Dommartin-le-Franc, took them and drove them to Joinville. On the way he was pursued and attacked by Lord d'Orly's men and stood in great danger of death. But so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at Joinville, bringing the cattle, which the Count of Vaudemont caused to be driven back to the pastures of Greux and Domremy.[252]

[Footnote 251: A league is two and a half English miles (W.S.).]

[Footnote 252: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. 275 et seq.]

Unexpected good fortune! With tears the husbandman welcomed his restored flocks and herds. But was he not likely to lose them for ever on the morrow?

At that time Jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. War everywhere around her, even in the children's play; the husband of one of her godmothers taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german Mengette killed by a mortar;[253] her native land overrun by marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off; nights of terror, dreams of horror,--such were the surroundings of her childhood.

[Footnote 253: E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]