VI. THE MAID AT CHINON--PROPHECIES…

VI. THE MAID AT CHINON--PROPHECIES

From the village of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, Jeanne dictated a letter to the King, for she did not know how to write. In this letter she asked permission to come to him, and told him that to bring him aid she had travelled over one hundred and fifty leagues, and that she knew of many things for his good. She was said to have added that were he hidden amidst many others she would recognise him;[572] but later, when she was questioned on this matter, she replied that she had no recollection of it.

[Footnote 572: Trial, vol. i, pp. 56, 75.]

Towards noon, when the letter had been sealed, Jeanne and her escort set out for Chinon.[573] She went to the King, just as in those days there went to him the sons of poor widows of Azincourt and Verneuil riding lame horses found in some meadow,--fifteen-year-old lads coming forth from their ruined towers to mend their own fortunes and those of France; just as Loyalty, Desire, and Famine went to him.[574] Charles VII was France, the image and symbol of France. Yet he was but a poor creature withal, the eleventh of the miserable children born to the mad Charles VI and his prolific Bavarian Queen.[575] He had grown up among disasters, and had survived his four elder brethren. But he himself was badly bred, knock-kneed, and bandy-legged;[576] a veritable king's son, if his looks only were considered, and yet it was impossible to swear to his descent.[577] Through his presence on the bridge at Montereau on that day, when, according to a wise man, it were better to have died than to have been there,[578] he had grown pale and trembling, looking dully at everything going to wrack and ruin around him. After their victory of Verneuil and their partial conquest of Maine, the English had left him four years' respite. But his friends, his defenders, his deliverers had alike been terrible. Pious and humble, well content with his plain wife, he led a sad, anxious life in his chateaux on the Loire. He was timid. And well might he be so, for no sooner did he show friendship towards or confidence in one of the nobility than that noble was killed. The Constable de Richemont and the Sire de la Tremouille had drowned the Lord de Giac after a mock trial.[579] The Marshal de Boussac, by order of the Constable, had slain Lecamus de Beaulieu with even less ceremony. Lecamus was riding his mule in a meadow on the bank of the Clain, when he was set upon, thrown down, his head split open, and his hand cut off. The favourite's mule was taken back to the King.[580] The Constable de Richemont had given Charles in his stead La Tremouille, a very barrel of a man, a toper, a kind of Gargantua who devoured the country. La Tremouille having driven away Richemont, the King kept La Tremouille until the Constable, of whom he was greatly in dread, should return. And indeed so meek and fearful a prince had reason to dread this Breton, always defeated, always furious, bitter, ferocious, whose awkwardness and violence created an impression of rude frankness.[581]

[Footnote 573: Ibid., p. 56.]

[Footnote 574: Bueil, Le jouvencel, vol. i, p. 32, and Tringant, xv; Jean Chartier, Chronique, ch. cxxxviii.]

[Footnote 575: Vallet de Viriville, Isabeau de Baviere, 1859, in 8vo, and Notes sur l'etat civil des princes et princesses nes d'Isabeau de Baviere in the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xix, pp. 473-482.]

[Footnote 576: Th. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, vol. i, p. 312. Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. ii, p. 178.]

[Footnote 577: Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis, vol. i, pp. 28, 43. Docteur A. Chevreau, De la maladie de Charles VI, roi de France, et des medecins qui ont soigne ce prince, in l'Union Medicale, February, March, 1862. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 4, note.]

[Footnote 578: Monstrelet, vol. iii, p. 347.]

[Footnote 579: Gruel, ed. Le Vavasseur, pp. 46 et seq. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 239. Berry, p. 374. Pierre de Fenin, Memoires, ed. Mademoiselle Dupont, pp. 222, 223. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 453. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 432.]

[Footnote 580: Gruel, pp. 53, 193. Geste des nobles, p. 200. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 23, 24, 54. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 132. E. Cosneau, Le connetable de Richemont, Paris, 1886, in 8vo, p. 131.]

[Footnote 581: Gruel, p. 231. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 200, 248. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 54; vol. iii, p. 189. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 142. E. Cosneau, Le connetable de Richemont, p. 140.]

In 1428 Richemont wanted to resume his influence over the King. The Counts of Clermont and of Pardiac united to aid him. The King's mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, the kingdomless Queen of Sicily and Jerusalem, and the Duchess of Anjou, took the part of the discontented barons.[582] The Count of Clermont took prisoner the Chancellor of France, the first minister of the crown, and held him to ransom. The King had to pay for the restoration of his Chancellor.[583] In Poitou the Constable was warring against the King's men, while the provinces which remained loyal were being wasted by free lances in the King's pay, while the English were advancing towards the Loire.

[Footnote 582: De Beaucourt, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 143, 144 et seq. E. Cosneau, op. cit., pp. 142 et seq.]

[Footnote 583: Dom Morice, Preuves de l'histoire de Bretagne, vol. ii, col. 1199. De Beaucourt, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 150. E. Cosneau, op. cit., p. 144.]

In the midst of such miseries, King Charles, thin, dwarfed in mind and body, cowering, timorous, suspicious, cut a sorry figure. Yet he was as good as another; and perhaps at that time he was just the king that was needed. A Philippe of Valois or a Jean le Bon would have amused himself by losing his provinces at the point of the sword. Poor King Charles had neither their means nor their desire to perform deeds of prowess, or to press to the front of the battle by riding down the common herd. He had one good point: he did not love feats of prowess and it was impossible for him to be one of those chivalrous knights who make war for the love of it. His grandfather before him, who had been equally lacking in chivalrous graces, had greatly damaged the English. The grandson had not Charles V's wisdom, but he also was not free from guile and was inclined to believe that more may be gained by the signing of a treaty than at the point of the lance.[584]

[Footnote 584: P. de Fenin, Memoires, p. 222. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, Introduction. E. Charles, Le caractere de Charles VII, in Revue contemporaine, vol. xxii, pp. 300-328.]

Concerning his poverty ridiculous stories were in circulation. It was said that a shoemaker, to whom he could not pay ready money, had torn from his leg the new gaiter he had just put on, and gone off, leaving the King with his old ones.[585] It was related how one day La Hire and Saintrailles, coming to see him, had found him dining with the Queen, with two chickens and a sheep's tail as their only entertainment.[586] But these were merely good stories. The King still possessed domains wide and rich; Auvergne, Lyonnais, Dauphine, Touraine, Anjou, all the provinces south of the Loire, except Guyenne and Gascony.[587]

[Footnote 585: Le doyen de Saint-Thibaud, Tableau des rois de France, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 325.]

[Footnote 586: Martial d'Auvergne, Les vigiles de Charles VII, ed. Coustelier, 1724 (2 vols. in 12mo), vol. i, p. 56.]

[Footnote 587: L. Drapeyron, Jeanne d'Arc et Philippe le Bon, in Revue de geographie, November, 1886, p. 331.]

His great resource was to convoke the States General. The nobility gave nothing, alleging that it was beneath their dignity to pay money. When, notwithstanding their poverty, the clergy did contribute something, it was still, always the third estate that bore more than its share of the financial burden. That extraordinary tax, the taille,[588] became annual. The King summoned the Estates every year, sometimes twice a year. They met not without difficulty.[589] The roads were dangerous. At every corner travellers might be robbed or murdered. The officers, who journeyed from town to town collecting the taxes, had an armed escort for fear of the Scots and other men-at-arms in the King's service.[590]

[Footnote 588: Taille, so called from a notched stick (Eng. tally), used by the tax-collector, the number of notches indicating the amount of the tax due. There were two tailles: la taille seigneuriale, a contribution paid by serfs to their lord; and la taille royale, paid by the third estate to the King. The latter was first levied by Philippe le Bel (1285-1314), but was only an occasional tax until the reign of Charles VII, who converted it into a regular impost. But although collected at stated intervals its amount varied from reign to reign, becoming intolerably burdensome under the spendthrift kings, while wise rulers, like Henri IV, considerably reduced it. It was not abolished until the Revolution (W.S.).]

[Footnote 589: Recueil des ordonnances, vol. xiii, p. xcix, and the index of this volume under the word Impots. Loiseleur, Compte des depenses, pp. 51 et seq. A. Thomas, Les etats generaux sous Charles VII in the Cabinet historique, vol. xxiv, 1878. Les etats provinciaux de la France centrale sous Charles VII, Paris, 1879, 2 vols. in 8vo, passim.]

[Footnote 590: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. iii, p. 318. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 390. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 428; vol. ii, pp. 646 et seq.]

In 1427 a free lance, Sabbat by name, in garrison at Langeais, was the terror of Touraine and Anjou. Thus the representatives of the towns were in no hurry to present themselves at the meeting of the Estates. It might have been different had they believed that their money would be employed for the good of the realm. But they knew that the King would first use it to make gifts to his barons. The deputies were invited to come and devise means for the repression of the pillage and plunder from which they were suffering;[591] and, when at the risk of their lives they did come to the royal presence, they were forced to consent to the taille in silence. The King's officers threatened to have them drowned if they opened their mouths. At the meeting of the Estates held at Mehun-sur-Yevre in 1425 the men from the good towns said they would be glad to help the King, but first they desired that an end be put to pillage, and my Lord Bishop of Poitiers, Hugues de Comberel, said likewise. On hearing his words the Sire de Giac said to the King: "If my advice were taken, Comberel would be thrown into the river with the others of his opinion." Whereupon the men from the good towns voted two hundred and sixty thousand livres.[592] In September, 1427, assembled at Chinon, they granted five hundred thousand livres for the war.[593] By writs issued on the 8th of January, 1428, the King summoned the States General to meet six months hence, on the following 18th of July, at Tours.[594] On the 18th of July no one attended. On the 22nd of July came a new summons from the King, commanding the Estates to meet at Tours on the 10th of September.[595] But the meeting did not take place until October, at Chinon, just when the Earl of Salisbury was marching on the Loire. The States granted five hundred thousand livres.[596]

[Footnote 591: Le jouvencel, vol. i, Introduction, pp. xix, xx.]

[Footnote 592: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 237. Loiseleur, Compte des depenses, p. 61. Vallet de Viriville, Memoire sur les institutions de Charles VII, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xxxiii, p. 37.]

[Footnote 593: Dom Vaissette, Histoire du Languedoc, vol. iv, p. 471.]

[Footnote 594: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 167.]

[Footnote 595: Dom Vaissette, Histoire du Languedoc, vol. iv, p. 471. A. Thomas, Les etats generaux sous Charles VII, pp. 49, 50.]

[Footnote 596: Dom Vaissette, Histoire du Languedoc, vol. iv, p. 472. Raynal, Histoire du Berry, vol. iii, p. 20. Loiseleur, Comptes des depenses, pp. 63 et seq. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 170 et seq.]

But the time could not be far off when the good people would be unable to pay any longer. In those days of war and pillage many a field was lying fallow, many a shop was closed, and few were the merchants ambling on their nags from town to town.[597]

[Footnote 597: Th. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, Bk. II, ch. vi. Antoine Loysel, Memoires des pays, villes, comtes et comtes de Beauvais et Beauvoisis, Paris, 1618, p. 229. P. Mantellier, Histoire de la communaute des marchands frequentant la riviere de Loire, vol. i, p. 195.]

The tax came in badly, and the King was actually suffering from want of money. To extricate himself from this embarrassment he employed three devices, of which the best was useless. First, as he owed every one money,--the Queen of Sicily,[598] La Tremouille,[599] his Chancellor,[600] his butcher,[601] the chapter of Bourges, which provided him with fresh fish,[602] his cooks,[603] his footmen,[604]--he made over the proceeds of the tax to his creditors.[605] Secondly, he alienated the royal domain: his towns and his lands belonged to every one save himself.[606] Thirdly, he coined false money. It was not with evil intent, but through necessity, and the practice was quite usual.[607]

[Footnote 598: Dom Morice, Preuves de l'histoire de Bretagne, vol. ii, cols. 1145, 1194. Ordonnances, vol. xv, p. 147.]

[Footnote 599: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 373. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 175. Duc de la Tremoille, Chartier de Thouars, Documents historiques et genealogiques, p. 17. Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles, vol. i, p. 175.]

[Footnote 600: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 632.]

[Footnote 601: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. iii. Accounts, p. 316. Cabinet historique, June, 1858, p. 176.]

[Footnote 602: Cabinet historique, September and October, 1858, p. 263.]

[Footnote 603: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 374.]

[Footnote 604: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 632.]

[Footnote 605: Loiseleur, Compte des depenses, p. 57.]

[Footnote 606: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 634.]

[Footnote 607: Vuitry, Les monnaies sous les trois premiers Valois, Paris, 1881, in 8vo, pp. 29 et seq. Loiseleur, Compte des depenses, p. 47. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 243. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 620 et seq.]

The only title borne by La Tremouille was that of Conseiller-Chambellan, but he was also the Grand Usurer of the kingdom. His debtors were the King and a multitude of nobles high and low.[608] He was therefore a powerful personage. In those difficult days he rendered the crown services self-interested, but none the less valuable. From January to August, 1428, he advanced sums amounting to about twenty-seven thousand livres for which he received lands and castles as security.[609] Fortunately the Royal Council included a number of Jurists and Churchmen who were good business men. One of them, an Angevin, Robert Le Macon, Lord of Treves, of plebeian birth, had entered the Council during the Regency. He was the first among those of lowly origin who served Charles VII so ably that he came to be called The Well Served (Le Bien Servi).[610] Another, the Sire de Gaucourt, had aided his King in war.[611]

[Footnote 608: Clairambault, Titres, Scelles, vol. 205, pp. 8769, 8771, 8773, passim. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 293.]

[Footnote 609: Archives nationales, J. 183, no. 142. Duc de La Tremoille, Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles, vol. i, p. 177. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 198.]

[Footnote 610: Le P. Anselme, Histoire genealogique et chronologique de la maison de France, vol. vi, p. 399. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 63.]

[Footnote 611: Marquis de Gaucourt, Le Sire de Gaucourt, Orleans, 1855, in 8vo.]

There is yet a third whom we must learn to know as well as possible. For he will play an important part in this story; and his part would appear greater still if it were laid bare in its entirety. This is Regnault de Chartres, whom we have already seen promoted to be minister of finance.[612] Son of Hector de Chartres, master of Woods and Waters in Normandy, he took orders, became archdeacon of Beauvais, then chamberlain of Pope John XXIII, and in 1414, at about thirty-four, was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Reims.[613] The following year three of his brothers fell on the gory field of Azincourt. In 1418 Hector de Chartres perished at Paris, assassinated by the Butchers.[614] Regnault himself, cast into prison by the Cabochiens, expected to be put to death. He vowed that if he escaped he would fast every Wednesday, and drink water for breakfast every Friday and Saturday, for the rest of his life.[615] One must not judge a man by an act prompted by fear. Nevertheless we may well hesitate to rank the author of this vow with those Epicureans who did not believe in God, of whom there were said to be many among the clerks. We may conclude rather that his intelligence submitted to the common beliefs.

[Footnote 612: Le P. Anselme, Histoire genealogique et chronologique de la maison de France, vol. vi, p. 339. Gallia Christiana, vol. ix, col. 135. Hermant, Histoire ecclesiastique de Beauvais (Bibl. nat. fr. 8581), fol. 15 et seq. Article by Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale and Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 160 et seq.]

[Footnote 613: Le P. Denifle, Cartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iv, p. 275.]

[Footnote 614: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 109. In 1411 the Butchers of Paris, led by Jean-Simonnet Caboche, rose in favour of the Duke of Burgundy (W.S.).]

[Footnote 615: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, vol. i, pp. 594, 595. Garnier, Documents relatifs a la surprise de Paris par les Bourguignons en Mai, 1418, in Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris, 1877, p. 51.]

A tragic fidelity, an inherited loyalty to the Armagnacs recommended my Lord Regnault to the Dauphin, who entrusted him with important missions to various parts of Christendom, Languedoc, Scotland, Brittany, and Burgundy.[616] The Archbishop of Reims acquitted himself with rare skill and indefatigable zeal. In December he prayed the Holy Father to dispense him from the fulfilment of the vow taken in the Butchers' prison,[617] on the grounds of his feeble health and his services rendered to the Dauphin, who required him to undertake frequent journeys and arduous embassies.

[Footnote 616: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, pp. 268, 276, 339. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, p. 4, and proofs and illustrations, lxxj.]

[Footnote 617: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, loc. cit. According to a "legitimist" fiction he pleads the service he had rendered to King Charles VI, and his son the Dauphin "... tam propter sue persone debililitatem, quam etiam propter assidua viagia et ambassiatas, que ipse serviendo Carolo Francorum regi et Carolo, ejusdem regis unigenito filio, dalphino Viennensi...."]

In 1425, when the King and the kingdom were governed by President Louvet,[618] a learned lawyer, who may well have been a rogue, my Lord Regnault was appointed Chancellor of France in the place of my Lord Martin Gouges of Charpaigne, Bishop of Clermont.[619] But shortly afterwards, when the Constable of France, Arthur of Brittany, had dismissed Louvet, Regnault sold his appointment to Martin Gouges for a pension of two thousand five hundred livres tournois.[620]

[Footnote 618: Vallet de Viriville, Nouvelle biographie generale. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, pp. 64 et seq.]

[Footnote 619: F. Duchesne, Histoire des chanceliers et gardes des sceaux de France, 1680, in fol., p. 483.]

[Footnote 620: The livre of Tours was worth ten pence, while that of Paris was worth one shilling (W.S.). National Archives, p. 2298.]

The Reverend Father in God, my Lord the Archbishop of Reims, was not as rich, far from it, as my Lord de la Tremouille; but he made the best of what he had. Like the Sire de la Tremouille he lent money to the King.[621] But in those days who did not lend the King money? Charles VII gave him the town and castle of Vierzon in payment of a debt of sixteen thousand livres tournois.[622] When La Tremouille had treated the Constable as the Constable had treated Louvet, Regnault de Chartres became Chancellor again. He entered into his office on the 8th of November, 1428. By this time the Council had sent men-at-arms and cannon to Orleans. No sooner was my Lord of Reims appointed than he threw himself into the city and spared no trouble.[623] He was keenly attached to the goods of this world and might pass for a miser.[624] But there can be no doubt of his devotion to the royal cause, nor of his hatred of those who fought under the Leopard and the Red Cross.[625]

[Footnote 621: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 632.]

[Footnote 622: Le P. Anselme, Histoire genealogique de la maison de France, vol. i, p. 407.]

[Footnote 623: Journal du siege, p. 51.]

[Footnote 624: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, introduction. Cf. the collection of official receipts in the National Library, fr. 20,887, original documents 693, Clairambault, deeds, seals, vol. 29.]

[Footnote 625: F. Duchesne, Histoire des chanceliers et garde des sceaux de France, p. 487.]

After eleven days' journey, Jeanne reached Chinon on the 6th of March.[626] It was the fourth Sunday in Lent, that very Sunday on which the lads and lasses of Domremy went forth in bands, into the country still grey and leafless, to eat their nuts and hard-boiled eggs, with the rolls their mothers had kneaded. That was what they called their well-dressing. But Jeanne was not to recollect past well-dressings nor the home she had left without a word of farewell.[627] Ignoring those rustic, well-nigh pagan festivals which poor Christians introduced into the penance of the holy forty days, the Church had named this Sunday Laetare Sunday, from the first word in the introit for the day: Laetare, Jerusalem. On that Sunday the priest, ascending the altar steps, says low mass; and at high mass the choir sings the following words from Scripture: "Laetare, Jerusalem; et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam ...: Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her all ye that mourn for her: That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; ..."[628] That day priests, monks, and clerks versed in holy Scripture, as in the churches with the people assembled they sang Laetare, Jerusalem, had present before their minds the virgin announced by prophecy, raised up for the deliverance of the kingdom, marked with a sign, who was then making her humble entrance into the town. Perhaps more than one applied what that passage of Scripture says of the Holy Nation to the realm of France, and in the coincidence of that liturgical text and the happy coming of the Maid found occasion for hope. Laetare, Jerusalem! Rejoice ye, O people, in your true King and your rightful sovereign. Et conventum facite: and come together. Unite all your strength against the enemy. Gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis: after your long mourning, rejoice. The Lord sends you succour and consolation.

[Footnote 626: Trial, vol. i, p. 56.]

[Footnote 627: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 394, 462.]

[Footnote 628: Isaiah, ch. 66, verse 10 (W.S.).]

By the intercession of Saint Julien, and probably with the aid of Collet de Vienne, the King's messenger, Jeanne found a lodging in the town, near the castle, in an inn kept by a woman of good repute.[629] The spits were idle. And the guests, deep in the chimney-corner, were watching the grilling of Saint Herring, who was suffering worse torments than Saint Lawrence.[630] In those times no one in Christendom neglected the Church's injunctions concerning the fasts and abstinences of Holy Lent. Following the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ who fasted forty days in the desert, the faithful observed the fast from Quadragesima Sunday until Easter Sunday, making forty days after abstracting the Sundays when the fast was broken but not the abstinence. Thus fasting and with her soul comforted, Jeanne listened to the soft whisper of her Voices.[631] The two days she spent in the inn were passed in retirement, on her knees.[632] The banks of the Vienne and the broad meadows, still in their black wintry garb, the hill-slopes over which light mists floated, did not tempt her. But when, on her way to church, climbing up a steep street, or merely grooming her horse in the inn yard, she raised her eyes to the north, there on a mountain close at hand, just about the distance that would be traversed by one of those stone cannon-balls which had been in use for the last fifty or sixty years, she saw the towers of the finest castle of the realm. Behind its proud walls there breathed that King to whom she had journeyed, impelled by a miraculous love.

[Footnote 629: Trial, vol. i, p. 143.]

[Footnote 630: La vie de saint Harenc glorieux martir et comment il fut pesche en la mer et porte a Dieppe, in Recueil des poesies francaises des XV'e et XVI'e siecles, by A. de Montaiglon, vol. ii, pp. 325-332.]

[Footnote 631: Still if Jeanne were the age she is said to have been, about eighteen, she was under no obligation to fast, but only to be abstinent. Nevertheless, when imprisoned at Rouen, she fasted during Lent; but we do not know how old her judges considered her to be.]

[Footnote 632: Trial, vol. i, p. 143.]

There were three castles merging before her into one long mass of embattled walls, of keeps, towers, turrets, curtains, barbicans, ramparts, and watch-towers; three castles separated one from the other by dykes, barriers, posterns, and portcullis. On her left, towards sunset, crowded, one behind the other, the eight towers of Coudray, one of which had been built for a king of England, while the newest were more than two hundred years old. On the right could be plainly seen the middle castle, with its ancient walls and its towers crowned with machicolated battlements. There was the chamber of Saint Louis, the King's chamber, the apartment of him whom Jeanne called the Gentle Dauphin. And there also, close to the rush-strewn room, was the great hall in which she was to be received. Towards the town the site of the hall was indicated by an adjoining tower, square and very old. On the right extended a vast bailey or stronghold, intended as a lodging for the garrison, and a defence of the middle part of the castle. Near by a large chapel raised its roof, in the form of an inverted keel, above the ramparts. This chapel, built by Henry II of England, was under the patronage of Saint George, and from it the bailey received its name of Fort Saint George.[633] In those days every one knew the story of Saint George the valiant knight, who with his lance transfixed a dragon and delivered a King's daughter, and then suffered martyrdom confessing his faith. Like Saint Catherine he had been bound to a wheel with sharp spikes, and the wheel had been miraculously broken like that on which the executioners had bound the Virgin of Alexandria. And like her Saint George had suffered death by means of an axe, thus proving that he was a great saint.[634] In one thing, however, he was wrong; he was of the party of the Godons, who for more than three hundred years had kept his feast as that of all the English. They held him to be their patron saint and invoked him before all other saints. Thus his name was pronounced as constantly by the vilest Welsh archer as by a knight of the Garter. In truth no one knew what he thought and whether he did not condemn all these marauders who were fighting for a bad cause; but there was reason to fear that such great honours would affect him. The saints of Paradise are generally ready to take the side of those who invoke them most devoutly. And Saint George, after all, was just as English as Saint Michael was French. That glorious archangel had appeared as the most vigilant protector of the Lilies ever since my Lord Saint Denys, the patron saint of the kingdom, had permitted his abbey to be taken. And Jeanne knew it.

[Footnote 633: G. de Cougny, Notice archeologique et historique sur le chateau de Chinon, Chinon, 1860, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 634: La legende doree, translated by Gustave Brunet, 1846, pp. 259, 264. Douhet, Dictionnaire des legendes, pp. 426, 436.]

Meanwhile the despatches brought from the Commander of Vaucouleurs by Colet de Vienne were presented to the King.[635] These despatches instructed him concerning the deeds and sayings of the damsel. This was one of those countless matters to be examined by the Council, one which, it appears, the King must himself investigate, as pertaining to his royal office and as interesting him especially, since it might be a question of a damsel of remarkable piety, and he was himself the highest ecclesiastical personage in France.[636] His grandfather, wise prince that he was, would have been far from scorning the counsel of devout women in whom was the voice of God. About the year 1380 he had summoned to Paris Guillemette de la Rochelle, who led a solitary and contemplative life, and acquired such great power therefrom, so it was said, that during her transports she raised herself more than two feet from the ground. In many a church King Charles V had beautiful oratories built, where she might pray for him.[637] The grandson should do no less, for his need was still greater. There were still more recent examples in his family of dealings between kings and saints. His father, the poor King Charles VI, when he was passing through Tours, had caused Louis, Duke of Orleans, to present to him Dame Marie de Maille. She had taken a vow of virginity and had transformed the spouse, who approached her like a devouring lion, into a timorous lamb. She revealed secrets to the King, and he was pleased with her, for three years later he wanted to see her again at Paris. This time they talked long together in private, and she revealed more secrets to the King, so that he sent her away with gifts.[638] This same Prince had granted an audience to a poor knight of Caux, one Robert le Mennot, to whom, when he was in danger of shipwreck near the coast of Syria, had been vouchsafed a vision. He proclaimed that God had sent him to restore peace.[639] Still more favourably had the King received a woman, Marie Robine, who was commonly called la Gasque of Avignon.[640] In 1429, there were those at court who remembered the prophetess sent to Charles VI to confirm him in his subjection to Pope Benedict XIII. This pope was held to be an antipope; nevertheless, La Gasque was regarded as a prophetess. Like Jeanne she had had many visions concerning the desolation of the realm of France; and she had seen weapons in the sky.[641] The kings of England were no less ready than the kings of France to heed the words of those saintly men and women, multitudes of whom were at that time uttering prophecies. Henry V consulted the hermit of Sainte-Claude, Jean de Gand, who foretold the King's approaching death; and on his death-bed he again had the stern prophet summoned.[642] It was the custom of saints to speak to kings and of kings to listen to them. How could a pious prince disdain so miraculous a source of counsel? Had he done so he would have incurred the censure of the wisest.

[Footnote 635: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Journal du siege, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 636: Epitre de Jouvenel des Ursins, in De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII vol. v, p. 206, note 1.]

[Footnote 637: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. x.]

[Footnote 638: Acta sanctorum, vol. iii, March, p. 742. Abbe Petin, Dictionnaire hagiographique, 1850, vol. ii, p. 1516.]

[Footnote 639: Froissart, Chroniques, Bk. IV, ch. xliii et seq.]

[Footnote 640: Trial, vol. iii, p. 83, note 2. Vallet de Viriville, Proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1867, in 8vo, pp. xxxi et seq.]

[Footnote 641: Le songe du vieil Pelerin, by Philippe de Maizieres (Bibl. Nat. French collection, no. 22,542).]

[Footnote 642: Chastellain, ed. Buchon, pp. 114, 116. Acta Sanctorum Junii, vol. 1, p. 648. Le P. De Buck, Le bienheureux Jean de Gand, Brussels, 1862, in 8vo, 40 pages. Le P. Chapotin, La guerre de cent ans; Jeanne d'Arc et les Dominicains, Evreux, 1888, in 8vo, p. 89.]

King Charles read the Commander of Vaucouleur's letters, and had the damsel's escort examined before him. Of her mission and her miracles they could say nothing. But they spoke of the good they had seen in her during the journey, and affirmed that there was no evil in her.[643]

[Footnote 643: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Journal du siege, p. 46.]

Of a truth, God speaketh through the mouths of virgins. But in such matters it is necessary to act with extreme caution, to distinguish carefully between the true prophetesses and the false, not to take for messengers from heaven the heralds of the devil. The latter sometimes create illusions. Following the example of Simon the Magician, who worked wonders vying with the miracles of St. Peter, these creatures have recourse to diabolical arts for the seduction of men. Twelve years before, there had prophesied a woman, likewise from the Lorraine Marches, Catherine Suave, a native of Thons near Neufchateau, who lived as a recluse at Port de Lates, yet most certainly did the Bishop of Maguelonne know her to be a liar and a sorceress, wherefore she was burned alive at Montpellier in 1417.[644] Multitudes of women, or rather of females, mulierculae,[645] lived like this Catherine and ended like her.

[Footnote 644: Parvus Thalamus, ed. Archaeological Society of Montpellier, p. 464. Th. de Beze, Histoire ecclesiastique, 1580, vol. i, p. 217. A. Germain, Catherine Suave, Montpellier, 1853, in 4to, 16 pages. H.C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages (1906), vol. ii, p. 157. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. x.]

[Footnote 645: Jean Nider, Formicarium, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 502.]

Certain ecclesiastics briefly interrogated Jeanne and asked her wherefore she had come. At first she replied that she would say nothing save to the King. But when the clerks represented to her that they were questioning her in the King's name, she told them that the King of Heaven had bidden her do two things: one was to raise the siege of Orleans, the other to lead the King to Reims for his anointing and his coronation.[646] Just as at Vaucouleurs before Sire Robert, so before these Churchmen she repeated very much what the vavasour of Champagne had said formerly, when he had been sent to Jean le Bon, as she was now sent to the Dauphin Charles.

[Footnote 646: Trial, vol. iii, p. 22. These facts were known at Lyons on the 22nd of April, 1429. (Clerk of the Chambre des Comptes of Brabant, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 426.)]

Having journeyed as far as the Plain of Beauce, where King John, impatient for battle, was encamped with his army, the vavasour of Champagne entered the camp and asked to see the wisest and best of the King's liegemen at court. The nobles, to whom this request was carried, began to laugh. But one among them, who had with his own eyes seen the vavasour, recognised at once that he was a good, simple man and without guile. He said to him: "If thou hast any advice to give, go to the King's chaplain." The vavasour therefore went to King John's chaplain and said to him: "Obtain for me an audience of the King; I have something to tell that I will say to no one but to him." "What is it?" asked the chaplain. "Tell me what is in your heart." But the good man would not reveal his secret. The chaplain went to King John and said to him: "Sire, there is a worthy man here who seems to me wise in his way. He desires to say to you something that he will tell to you alone." King John refused to see the good man. He summoned his confessor, and, accompanied by the chaplain, sent him to learn the vavasour's secret. The two priests went to the man and told him that the King had appointed them to hear him. At this announcement, despairing of ever seeing King John, and trusting to the Confessor and the chaplain not to reveal his secret to any but the King, he uttered these words: "While I was alone in the fields, a voice spake unto me three times, saying: 'Go unto King John of France and warn him that he fight not with any of his enemies.' Obedient to that voice am I come to bring the tidings to King John." Having heard the vavasour's secret the confessor and the chaplain took him to the King, who laughed at him. With his comrades-in-arms he advanced to Poitiers, where he met the Black Prince. He lost his whole army in battle, and, twice wounded in the face, was taken prisoner by the English.[647]

[Footnote 647: S. Luce, Chronique des quatre premiers Valois, Paris, 1861, in 8vo, pp. 46, 48.]

The ecclesiastics, who had examined Jeanne, held various opinions concerning her. Some declared that her mission was a hoax, and that the King ought to beware of her.[648] Others on the contrary held that, since she said she was sent of God, and that she had something to tell the King, the King should at least hear her.

[Footnote 648: Trial, vol. iii, p. 115. Thomassin, Registre Delphinal, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 304. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Journal du siege, p. 47.]

Two priests who were then with the King, Jean Girard, President of the Parlement of Grenoble, and Pierre l'Hermite, later subdean of Saint-Martin-de-Tours, judged the case difficult and interesting enough to be submitted to Messire Jacques Gelu, that Armagnac prelate who had long served the house of Orleans and the Dauphin of France both in council and in diplomacy. When he was nearly sixty, Gelu had withdrawn from the Council, and exchanged the archiepiscopal see of Tours for the bishopric of Embrun, which was less exalted and more retired. He was illustrious and venerable.[649] Jean Girard and Pierre l'Hermite informed him of the coming of the damsel in a letter, wherein they told him also that, having been questioned in turn by three professors of theology, she had been found devout, sober, temperate, and in the habit of participating once a week in the sacraments of confession and communion. Jean Girard thought she might have been sent by the God who raised up Judith and Deborah, and who spoke through the mouths of the Sibyls.[650]

[Footnote 649: Gallia Christiana, vol. iii, col. 1089.]

[Footnote 650: Le R.P. Marcellin Fornier, Histoire generale des Alpes Maritimes ou Cottiennes, ed. by the Abbe Paul Guillaume, Paris, 1890-1892 (3 vols. in 8vo), vol. ii, pp. 313 et seq.]

Charles was pious, and on his knees devoutly heard three masses a day. Regularly at the canonical hours he repeated the customary prayers in addition to prayers for the dead and other orisons. Daily he confessed, and communicated on every feast day.[651] But he believed in foretelling events by means of the stars, in which he did not differ from other princes of his time. Each one of them had an astrologer in his service.[652]

[Footnote 651: The Monk of Dunfermline, in the Trial, vol. v, p. 340. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, pp. 265 et seq. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 243.]

[Footnote 652: Simon de Phares, Recueil des plus celebres astrologues, fr. ms. 1357. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 306; vol. ii, p. 345, note. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. vi, p. 399.]

The late Duke of Burgundy had been constantly accompanied by a Jewish soothsayer, Maitre Mousque. On that day, the end of which he was never to see, as he was going to the Bridge of Montereau, Maitre Mousque counselled him not to advance any further, prophesying that he would not return. The Duke continued on his way and was killed.[653] The Dauphin Charles confided in Jean des Builhons, in Germain de Thibonville and in all others of the peaked cap.[654]

[Footnote 653: Chastellain, vol. iii, p. 446.]

[Footnote 654: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 173.]

He always had two or three astrologers at court. These almanac makers drew up schemes of nativity, cast horoscopes and read in the sky the approach of wars and revolutions. One of them, Maitre Rolland the Scrivener, a fellow of the University of Paris, was one night, at a certain hour, observing the heavens from his roof, when he saw the apex of Virgo in the ascendant, Venus, Mercury, and the sun half way up the sky.[655] This his colleague, Guillaume Barbin of Geneva, interpreted to mean that the English would be driven from France and the King restored by the hand of a mere maid.[656] If we may believe the Inquisitor Brehal, some time before Jeanne's coming into France, a clever astronomer of Seville, Jean de Montalcin by name, had written to the King among other things the following words: "By a virgin's counsel thou shalt be victorious. Continue in triumph to the gates of Paris."[657]

[Footnote 655: I here correct the text of Simon de Phares (Trial, vol. iv, p. 536) according to the written opinion of M. Camille Flammarion.]

[Footnote 656: Trial, vol. iv, p. 536.]

[Footnote 657: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 341.]

At that very time the Dauphin Charles had with him at Chinon an old Norman astrologer, one Pierre, who may have been Pierre de Saint-Valerien, canon of Paris. The latter had recently returned from Scotland, whither, accompanied by certain nobles, he had gone to fetch the Lady Margaret, betrothed to the Dauphin Louis. Not long afterwards this Maitre Pierre was, rightly or wrongly, believed to have read in the sky that the shepherdess from the Meuse valley was appointed to drive out the English.[658]

[Footnote 658: Recueil de Simon de Phares, in the Trial, vol. v, p. 32, note.]

Jeanne had not long to wait in her inn. Two days after her arrival, what she had so ardently desired came to pass: she was taken to the King.[659] In the last century near the Grand-Carroy, opposite a wooden-fronted house, there was shown a well on the edge of which, according to tradition, Jeanne set foot when she alighted from her horse, before climbing the steep ascent leading to the Castle. Through La Vieille Porte,[660] she was already crossing the moat when the King was still hesitating as to whether he would receive her. Many of his familiar advisers, and those not the least important, counselled him to beware of a strange woman whose designs might be evil. There were others who put it before him that this shepherdess was introduced by letters from Robert de Baudricourt carried through hostile provinces; that in journeying to the King she had forded many rivers in a manner almost miraculous. On these considerations the King consented to receive her.[661]

[Footnote 659: Ibid., vol. i, p. 143.]

[Footnote 660: The kerb was removed during the Second Empire. Moreover it is admitted that no faith should be put in such traditions. G. de Cougny, Charles VII et Jeanne d'Arc a Chinon, Tours, 1877, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 661: Trial, vol. i, p. 75; vol. iii, p. 115. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Journal du siege, pp. 46, 47. Th. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, vol. i, p. 68.]

The great hall was crowded. As at every audience given by the King the room was close with the breath of the assembled multitude. The vast chamber presented that aspect of a market-house or of a rout which was so familiar to courtiers. It was evening; fifty torches flamed beneath the painted beams of the roof.[662] Men of middle age in robes and furs, young, smooth-faced nobles, thin and narrow shouldered, of slender build, their lean legs in tight hose, their feet in long, pointed shoes; barons fully armed to the number of three hundred, according to Aulic custom, pushed, crowded and elbowed each other while the usher was here and there striking the courtiers on the head with his rod.[663]

[Footnote 662: Trial, vol. i, pp. 75, 141.]

[Footnote 663: Le Curial, in _Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier_, ed. Du Chesne, Paris, 1642, in 4to, p. 398.]

Besides the two ambassadors from Orleans, Messire Jamet du Tillay and the old baron Archambaud de Villars, governor of Montargis, there were present Simon Charles, Master of Requests, as well as certain great nobles, the Count of Clermont, the Sire de Gaucourt, and probably the Sire de La Tremouille and my Lord the Archbishop of Reims, Chancellor of the kingdom.[664] On hearing of Jeanne's approach, King Charles buried himself among his retainers, either because he was still mistrustful and hesitating, or because he had other persons to speak to, or for some other reason.[665] Jeanne was presented by the Count of Vendome.[666] Robust, with a firm, short neck, her figure appeared full, although confined by her man's jerkin. She wore breeches like a man,[667] but still more surprising than her hose was her head-gear and the cut of her hair. Beneath a woollen hood, her dark hair hung cut round in soup-plate fashion like a page's.[668] Women of all ranks and all ages were careful to hide their hair so that not one lock of it should escape from beneath the coif, the veil, or the high head-dress which was then the mode. Jeanne's flowing locks looked strange to the folk of those days.[669] She went straight to the King, took off her cap, curtsied, and said: "God send you long life, gentle Dauphin."[670]

[Footnote 664: According to Jeanne there were present La Tremoille and the Archbishop of Reims, but she also mentions the Duke of Alencon, who was certainly not there.]

[Footnote 665: Trial, vol. iii, p. 115.]

[Footnote 666: Ibid., pp. 102-103.]

[Footnote 667: Ibid., p. 219. Chronique de la Pucelle, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 205. Mathieu Thomassin, ibid., p. 304. Chronique de Lorraine, ibid., p. 330. Philippe de Bergame, ibid., p. 523.]

[Footnote 668: Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, in the Revue historique, vol. iv, p. 336.]

[Footnote 669: St. Paul, Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Labbe, Collection des conciles, vol. vii, p. 978. Saumaise, Epistola ad Andream Colvium super cap. xi, I ad Corynth. de caesarie virorum et mulierum coma. Lugd-Batavor ex off. Elz. 1644, in 12mo. Quelques notes d'archeologie sur la chevelure feminine, in Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1888, vol. xvi, pp. 419, 425.]

[Footnote 670: Trial, vol. i, p. 75; vol. iii, pp. 17, 92, 115. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 67. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Journal du siege, p. 46.]

Afterwards there were those who marvelled that she should have recognised him in the midst of nobles more magnificently dressed than he. It is possible that on that day he may have been poorly attired. We know that it was his custom to have new sleeves put to his old doublets.[671] And in any case he did not show off his clothes. Very ugly, knock-kneed, with emaciated thighs, small, odd, blinking eyes, and a large bulbous nose, on his bony, bandy legs tottered and trembled this prince of twenty-six.[672]

[Footnote 671: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 195.]

[Footnote 672: Th. Basin, vol. i, p. 312. Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 178. Portrait historique du roi Charles VII, by Henri Baude, published by Vallet de Viriville in Nouvelles recherches sur Henri Baude, p. 6. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, p. 83.]

That Jeanne should have seen his picture already and recognised him by it is hardly likely. Portraits of princes were rare in those days. Jeanne had never handled one of those precious books in which King Charles may have been painted in miniature as one of the Magi offering gifts to the Child Jesus.[673] It was not likely that she had ever seen one of those figures painted on wood in the semblance of her King, with hands clasped, beneath the curtains of his oratory.[674] And if by chance some one had shown her one of these portraits her untrained eyes could have discerned but little therein. Neither need we inquire whether the people of Chinon had described to her the costume the King usually wore and the shape of his hat: for like every one else he kept his hat on indoors even at dinner. What is most probable is that those who were kindly disposed towards her pointed out the King. At any rate he was not difficult to distinguish, since those who saw her go up to him were in no wise astonished.

[Footnote 673: As in the miniature painted by Jean Fouquet, more than ten years later. Gruyer, Les Quarante Fouquet de Chantilly, Paris, 1897, in 4to.]

[Footnote 674: Note sur un ancien portrait de Charles VII, conserve au Louvre, in the Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de France, 1862, pp. 67 et seq.]

When she had made her rustic curtsey, the King asked her name and what she wanted. She replied: "Fair Dauphin, my name is Jeanne the Maid; and the King of Heaven speaks unto you by me and says that you shall be anointed and crowned at Reims, and be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France." She asked to be set about her work, promising to raise the siege of Orleans.[675]

[Footnote 675: Trial, vol. ii, p. 103. Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, p. 337. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 273. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 67, 68.]

The King took her apart and questioned her for some time. By nature he was gentle, kind to the poor and lowly, but not devoid of mistrust and suspicion.

It is said that during this private conversation, addressing him with the familiarity of an angel, she made him this strange announcement: "My Lord bids me say unto thee that thou art indeed the heir of France and the son of a King; he has sent me to thee to lead thee to Reims to be crowned there and anointed if thou wilt."[676] Afterwards the Maid's chaplain reported these words, saying he had received them from the Maid herself. All that is certain is that the Armagnacs were not slow to turn them into a miracle in favour of the Line of the Lilies. It was asserted that these words spoken by God himself, by the mouth of an innocent girl, were a reply to the carking, secret anxiety of the King. Madame Ysabeau's son, it was said, distracted and saddened by the thought that perhaps the royal blood did not flow in his veins, was ready to renounce his kingdom and declare himself a usurper, unless by some heavenly light his doubts concerning his birth should be dispelled.[677] Men told how his face shone with joy[678] when it was revealed to him that he was the true heir of France.

[Footnote 676: Trial, vol. iii, p. 103 (evidence of Brother Pasquerel).]

[Footnote 677: The Abridger of the Trial, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 258, 259. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, vol. i, p. 67. Journal du siege, p. 48.]

[Footnote 678: Trial, vol. iii, p. 116 (evidence of S. Charles). S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lxi.]

Doubtless the Armagnac preachers were in the habit of speaking of Queen Ysabeau as "une grande gorre" and a Herodias of licentiousness; but one would like to know whence her son derived his curious misgiving. He had not manifested it on entering into his inheritance; and, had occasion required, the jurists of his party would have proved to him by reasons derived from laws and customs that he was by birth the true heir and the lawful successor of the late King; for filiation must be proved not by what is hidden, but by what is manifest, otherwise it would be impossible to assign the legal heir to a kingdom or to an acre of land. Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that the King was very unfortunate at this time. Now misfortune agitates the conscience and raises scruples; and he might well doubt the justice of his cause since God was forsaking him. But if he were indeed assailed by painful doubts, how can he have been relieved from them by the words of a damsel who, as far as he then knew, might be mad or sent to him by his enemies? It is hard to reconcile such credulity with what we know of his suspicious nature. The first thought that occurred to him must have been that ecclesiastics had instructed the damsel.

A few moments after he had dismissed her, he assembled the Sire de Gaucourt and certain other members of his Council and repeated to them what he had just heard: "She told me that God had sent her to aid me to recover my kingdom."[679] He did not add that she had revealed to him a secret known to himself alone.[680]

[Footnote 679: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 17, 209. As early as April the promised deliverance of Orleans and coronation at Reims had been heard of at Lyons (Trial, vol. iv, p. 426).]

[Footnote 680: Pasquerel alone of the witnesses mentions this (Trial, vol. iii, p. 103). Cf. the anecdote of the Sire de Boissy related by P. Sala in his collection, Les hardiesses des grands rois et empereurs (Trial, vol. iv, p. 278).]

The King's Counsellors, knowing little of the damsel, decided that they must have her before them to examine her concerning her life and her belief.[681]

[Footnote 681: Trial, vol. iii, p. 209.]

The Sire de Gaucourt took her from the inn and lodged her in a tower of that Castle of Coudray, which for the last three days she had seen dominating the town.[682] One of the three castles, Le Coudray was only separated from the middle chateau in which the King dwelt by a moat and fortifications.[683] The Sire de Gaucourt confided her to the care of the lieutenant of the Town of Chinon, Guillaume Bellier, the King's Major Domo.[684] He gave her for her servant one of his own pages, a child of fifteen, Immerguet, sometimes called Minguet, and sometimes Mugot. His real name was Louis de Coutes, and he came of an old warrior family which had been in the service of the house of Orleans for a century. His father, Jean, called Minguet, Lord of Fresnay-le-Gelmert, of la Gadeliere and of Mitry, Chamberlain to the Duke of Orleans, had died in great poverty the year before. He had left a widow and five children, three boys and two girls, one of whom, Jeanne by name, had since 1421 been the wife of Messire Florentin d'Illiers, Governor of Chateaudun. Thus the little page, Louis de Coutes, and his mother, Catherine le Mercier, Dame de Noviant, who came of a noble Scottish family, were both in a state of penury, albeit the Duke of Orleans in acknowledgment of his Chamberlain's faithful services had from his purse granted aid to the Lady of Noviant.[685] Jeanne kept Minguet with her all day, but at night she slept with the women.

[Footnote 682: Ibid., p. 66.]

[Footnote 683: G. de Cougny, Charles VII et Jeanne d'Arc a Chinon, Tours, 1877, p. 40.]

[Footnote 684: Trial, vol. iii, p. 17.]

[Footnote 685: Ibid., pp. 65, 73. Mademoiselle A. de Villaret, Louis de Coutes, page de Jeanne d'Arc, Orleans, 1890, in 8vo.]

The wife of Guillaume Bellier, who was good and pious, at least so it was said, watched over her.[686] At Coudray the page saw her many a time on her knees. She prayed and often wept many tears.[687] For several days persons of high estate came to speak with her. They found her dressed as a boy.[688]

[Footnote 686: Trial, vol. iii, p. 17.]

[Footnote 687: Ibid., p. 66.]

[Footnote 688: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 274 et seq. Jean Chartier, Chronique, p. 68.]

Since she had been with the King, divers persons asked her whether there were not in her country a wood called "Le Bois-Chenu."[689] This question was put to her because a prophecy of Merlin concerning a maid who should come from "Le Bois-Chenu" was then in circulation. And folk were impressed by it; for in those days every one gave heed to prophecies and especially to those of Merlin the Magician.[690]

[Footnote 689: Trial, vol. i, p. 68.]

[Footnote 690: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 133, 340. Thomassin, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 395. Walter Bower, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 489. Christine de Pisan, in Trial, vol. v, p. 12. La Borderie, Les veritables propheties de Merlin, examen des poemes bretons attribues a ce barde, in the Revue de Bretagne, 1883, vol. liii.]

Begotten of a woman by the Devil, it was from him that Merlin derived his profound wisdom. To the science of numbers, which is the key to the future, he added a knowledge of physics, by means of which he worked his enchantments. Thus it was easy for him to transform rocks into giants. And yet he was conquered by a woman; the fairy Vivien enchanted the enchanter and kept him in a hawthorn bush under a spell. This is only one of many examples of the power of women.

Famous doctors and illustrious masters held that Merlin had laid bare many future events and prophesied many things which had not yet happened. To such as were amazed that the son of the Devil should have received the gift of prophecy they replied that the Holy Ghost is able to reveal his secrets to whomsoever he pleases, for had he not caused the Sibyls to speak, and opened the mouth of Balaam's ass?

Merlin had seen in a vision Sire Bertrand du Guesclin in the guise of a warrior bearing an eagle on his shield. This was remembered after the Constable had wrought his great deeds.[691]

[Footnote 691: Cuvelier, Le poeme de Du Guesclin, l. 3285. Francisque-Michel and Th. Wright, Vie de Merlin attribuee a Geoffroy de Monmouth, suivie des propheties de ce barde tirees de l'histoire des Bretons, Paris, 1837, in 8vo, pp. 67 et seq. La Villemarque, Myrdhin ou Merlin l'Enchanteur, son histoire, ses oeuvres, son influence, n. ed., Paris, 1862, in 12mo. D'Arbois de Jubainville, Merlin est-il un personnage reel? in the Revue des questions historiques, 1868, pp. 559-568. Lefevre-Pontalis, Morosini, vol. iv, supplement xvi. "[Geoffrey of Monmouth] represented Merlin as having prophesied all the events of the history of Britain until the year 1135 in which he wrote. The Historia Regum was very popular in the ecclesiastical world. Its legends were held to be facts. The exactness with which its prognostications had been fulfilled down to 1135 was marvelled at, and an attempt was made to interpret the prophecies relating to subsequent times." Gaston Paris, La litterature francaise au moyen age, 1890, pp. 86-104.]

In the prophecies of this Wise Man the English believed no less firmly than the French. When Arthur of Brittany, Count of Richemont, was taken prisoner, held to ransom, and brought before King Henry, the latter, when he perceived a boar on the arms of the Duke, broke forth into rejoicing; for he called to mind the words of Merlin who had said, "A Prince of Armorica, called Arthur, with a boar for his crest, shall conquer England, and when he shall have made an end of the English folk he shall re-people the land with a Breton race."[692]

[Footnote 692: Le Baud, Histoire de Bretagne, Paris, 1638, in fol., p. 451.]

Now during the Lent of 1429 there was circulated among the Armagnacs this prophecy, taken from a book of the prophecies of Merlin: "From the town of the Bois-Chenu there shall come forth a maid for the healing of the nation. When she hath stormed every citadel, with her breath she shall dry up all the springs. Bitter tears shall she shed and fill the Island with a terrible noise. Then shall she be slain by the stag with ten antlers, of which six branches shall bear crowns of gold, and the other six shall be changed into the horns of oxen; and with a horrible sound they shall shake the Isles of Britain. The forest of Denmark shall rise up and with a human voice say: 'Come, Cambria, and take Cornwall unto thyself.'"[693]

[Footnote 693: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 340-342.]

In these mysterious words Merlin dimly foretells that a virgin shall perform great and wonderful deeds before perishing by the hand of the enemy. On one point only is he clear, or so it seems; that is, when he says that this virgin shall come from the town of the Bois-Chenu.

If this prophecy had been traced back to its original source and read in the fourth book of the Historia Britonum, where it is to be found under the title of Guyntonia Vaticinium, it would have been seen to refer to the English city of Winchester, and it would have appeared that in the version then in circulation in France, the original meaning had been garbled, distorted, and completely metamorphosed. But no one thought of verifying the text. Books were rare and minds uncritical. This deliberately falsified prophecy was accepted as the pure word of Merlin and numerous copies of it were spread abroad.

Whence came these copies? Their origin doubtless will remain a mystery for ever; but one point is certain: they referred to La Romee's daughter, to the damsel who, from her father's house, could see the edge of "Le Bois-Chenu." Thus they came from close at hand and were of recent circulation.[694] If this amended prophecy of Merlin be not the one that reached Jeanne in her village, forecasting that a Maid should come from the Lorraine Marches for the saving of the kingdom, then it was closely related to it. The two prognostications have a family likeness.[695] They were uttered in the same spirit and with the same intention; and they indicate that the ecclesiastics of the Meuse valley and those of the Loire had agreed to draw attention to the inspired damsel of Domremy.

[Footnote 694: Morosini, vol. iv, p. 324.]

[Footnote 695: Pierre Migiet weaves the two prophecies into one, which he says he has read in a book, Trial, vol. iii, p. 133.]

As Merlin had foretold the works of Jeanne, so Bede must also have predicted them, for Bede and Merlin were always together in matters of prophecy.

The Monk of Wearmouth, the Venerable Bede, who had been dead six centuries, had been a veritable mine of knowledge in his lifetime. He had written on theology and chronology; he had discoursed of night and day, of weeks and months, of the signs of the zodiac, of epacts, of the lunar cycle, and of the movable feasts of the Church. In his book De temporum ratione he had treated of the seventh and eighth ages of the world, which were to follow the age in which he lived. He had prophesied. During the siege of Orleans, churchmen were circulating these obscure lines attributed to him, and foretelling the coming of the Maid:

_Bis sex cuculli, bis septem se sociabunt,[696] Gallorum pulli Tauro nova bella parabunt Ecce beant bella, tunc fert vexilla Puella._

[Footnote 696: Adopting the emendation made by M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis in his Chronique d'Antonio Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 126, 127; vol. iv, pp. 316 et seq.]

The first of these lines is a chronogram, that is, it contains a date. To decipher it you take the numeral letters of the line and add them together; the total gives the date.

bIs seX CVCVLLI, bIs septeM se soCIabVnt.

1 + 10 + 100 + 5 + 100 + 5 + 50 + 50 + 1 + 1 + 1000 + 100 + 1 + 5 = 1429.

Had any one sought these lines in the works of the Venerable Bede they would not have found them, because they are not there; but no one thought of looking for them any more than they thought of looking for the Foret Chenue in Merlin.[697] And it was understood that both Bede and Merlin had foretold the coming of the Maid. In those days prophecies, chronograms, and charms flew like pigeons from the banks of the Loire and spread abroad throughout the realm. Not later than the May or June of this year the pseudo Bede will reach Burgundy. Earlier still he will be heard of in Paris. The aged Christine de Pisan, living in retirement in a French abbey, before the last day of July, 1429, will write that Bede and Merlin had beheld the Maid in a vision.[698]

[Footnote 697: The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede, ed. Giles, London, 1843-1844, 12 vols., in 8vo, in Patres Ecclesiae Anglicanae.]

[Footnote 698: Christine de Pisan, in Trial, vol. v, p. 12. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 126. The Dean of Saint Thibaud, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 423. Herman Korner, in Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 279 et seq. Walter Bower, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 481.]

The clerks, who were busy forging prophecies for the Maid's benefit, did not stop at a pseudo Bede and a garbled Merlin. They were truly indefatigable, and by a stroke of good luck we possess a piece of their workmanship which has escaped the ravages of time. It is a short Latin poem written in the obscure prophetic style, of which the following is a translation through the old French.

"A virgin clothed in man's attire, with the body of a maid, at God's behest goes forth to raise the downcast King, who bears the lilies, and to drive out his accursed enemies, even those who now beleaguer the city of Orleans and strike terror into the hearts of its inhabitants. And if the people will take heart and go out to battle, the treacherous English shall be struck down by death, at the hand of the God of battles who fights for the Maid, and the French shall cause them to fall, and then shall there be an end of the war; and the old covenants and the old friendship shall return. Pity and righteousness shall be restored. There shall be a treaty of peace, and all men shall of their own accord return to the King, which King shall weigh justice and administer it unto all men and preserve his subjects in beautiful peace. Henceforth no English foe with the sign of the leopard shall dare to call himself King of France [added by the translator] and adopt the arms of France, which arms are borne by the holy Maid."[699]

[Footnote 699: Buchon, Math. d'Escouchy, etc., p. 537. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Eberhard Windecke, pp. 21-31. A Latin text of this prophecy is to be found on the fly-leaf of the Cartulary of Therouanne.]

These false prophecies give some idea of the means employed for the setting to work of the inspired damsel. Such methods may be somewhat too crafty for our liking. These clerks had but one object,--the peace of the realm and of the church. The miraculous deliverance of the people had to be prepared. We must not be too hasty to condemn those pious frauds without which the Maid could not have worked her miracles. Much art and some guile are necessary to contrive for innocence a hearing.

Meanwhile, on a steep rock, on the bank of the Durance, in the remote see of Saint-Marcellin, Jacques Gelu remained faithful to the King he had served and careful for the interests of the house of Orleans and of France. To the two churchmen, Jean Girard and Pierre l'Hermite, he replied that, for the sake of the orphan and the oppressed, God would doubtless manifest himself, and would frustrate the evil designs of the English; yet one should not easily and lightly believe the words of a peasant girl bred in solitude, for the female sex was frail and easily deceived, and France must not be made ridiculous in the eyes of the foreigner. "The French," he added, "are already famous for the ease with which they are duped." He ended by advising Pierre l'Hermite that it would be well for the King to fast and do penance so that Heaven might enlighten him and preserve him from error.[700]

[Footnote 700: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 393-407; vol. v, p. 473. Marcellin Fornier, Histoire des Alpes-Maritimes ou Cottiennes, vol. ii, pp. 313, 314.]

But the mind of the oracle and ex-councillor could not rest. He wrote direct to King Charles and Queen Marie to warn them of the danger. To him it seemed that there could be no good in the damsel. He mistrusted her for three reasons: first, because she came from a country in the possession of the King's enemies, Burgundians and Lorrainers; secondly, she was a shepherdess and easily deceived; thirdly, she was a maid. He cited as an example Alexander of Macedon, whom a Queen endeavoured to poison. She had been fed on venom by the King's enemies and then sent to him in the hope that he would fall a victim to the wench's[701] wiles. But Aristotle dismissed the seductress and thus delivered his prince from death. The Archbishop of Embrun, as wise as Aristotle, warned the King against conversing with the damsel in private. He advised that she should be kept at a distance and examined, but not repulsed.

[Footnote 701: [In the original French garce.] The text has grace, which is not possible. I have conjectured that the word should be garce.]

A prudent answer to those letters reassured Gelu. In a new epistle he testified to the King his satisfaction at hearing that the damsel was regarded with suspicion and left in uncertainty as to whether she would or would not be believed. Then, with a return to his former misgivings, he added: "It behoves not that she should have frequent access to the King until such time as certainty be established concerning her manner of life and her morals."[702]

[Footnote 702: M. Fornier, Histoire des Alpes-Maritimes ou Cottiennes, vol. ii, pp. 313, 314.]

King Charles did indeed keep Jeanne in uncertainty as to what was believed of her. But he did not suspect her of craftiness and he received her willingly. She talked to him with the simplest familiarity. She called him gentle Dauphin, and by that term she implied nobility and royal magnificence.[703] She also called him her oriflamme, because he was her oriflamme, or, as in modern language she would have expressed it, her standard.[704] The oriflamme was the royal banner. No one at Chinon had seen it, but marvellous things were told of it. The oriflamme was in the form of a gonfanon with two wings, made of a costly silk, fine and light, called sandal,[705] and it was edged with tassels of green silk. It had come down from heaven; it was the banner of Clovis and of Saint Charlemagne. When the King went to war it was carried before him. So great was its virtue that the enemy at its approach became powerless and fled in terror. It was remembered how, when in 1304 Philippe le Bel defeated the Flemings, the knight who bore it was slain. The next day he was found dead, but still clasping the standard in his arms.[706] It had floated in front of King Charles VI before his misfortunes, and since then it had never been unfurled.

[Footnote 703: Clerk of the Town Hall of Albi, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 300.]

[Footnote 704: Thomassin, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 304.]

[Footnote 705: Sandal or cendal, a silk bearing some resemblance to taffetas. Cf. Godefroy, Lexique de l'ancien francais (W.S.).]

[Footnote 706: Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word auriflamma. Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 150, 251, 257, 259. [Histoire generale de Paris.]]

One day when the Maid and the King were talking together, the Duke of Alencon entered the hall. When he was a child, the English had taken him prisoner at Verneuil and kept him five years in the Crotoy Tower.[707] Only recently set at liberty, he had been shooting quails near Saint-Florent-les-Saumur, when a messenger had brought the tidings that God had sent a damsel to the King to turn the English out of France.[708] This news interested him as much as any one because he had married the Duke of Orleans' daughter; and straightway he had come to Chinon to see for himself. In the days of his graceful youth the Duke of Alencon appeared to advantage, but he was never renowned for his wisdom. He was weak-minded, violent, vain, jealous, and extremely credulous. He believed that ladies find favour by means of a certain herb, the mountain-heath; and later he thought himself bewitched. He had a disagreeable, harsh voice; he knew it, and the knowledge annoyed him.[709] As soon as she saw him approaching, Jeanne asked who this noble was. When the King replied that it was his cousin Alencon, she curtsied to the Duke and said: "Be welcome. The more representatives of the blood royal are here the better."[710] In this she was completely mistaken. The Dauphin smiled bitterly at her words. Not much of the royal blood of France ran in the Duke's veins.

[Footnote 707: Perceval de Cagny, p. 136. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 224, 249.]

[Footnote 708: Trial, vol. iii, p. 91.]

[Footnote 709: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. iii, pp. 408, 409. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. vi, pp. 43, 44.]

[Footnote 710: Trial, vol. iii, p. 91.]

On the next day Jeanne went to the King's mass. When she approached her Dauphin she bowed before him. The King took her into a room and sent every one away except the Sire de la Tremouille and the Duke of Alencon.

Then Jeanne addressed to him several requests. More especially did she ask him to give his kingdom to the King of Heaven. "And afterwards," she added, "the King of Heaven will do for you what he has done for your predecessors and will restore you to the condition of your fathers."[711]

[Footnote 711: Ibid., pp. 91, 92. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 152 et seq.]

In discoursing thus of things spiritual, in giving utterance to those precepts of reformation and of a new life, she was repeating what the clerks had taught her. Nevertheless she was by no means imbued with this doctrine. It was too subtle for her, and it was shortly to fade from her mind and give place to an ardour less monastic but more chivalrous.

That same day she rode out with the King and threw a lance in the meadow with so fine a grace that the Duke of Alencon, marvelling, made her a present of a horse.[712]

[Footnote 712: Trial, vol. iii, p. 92.]

A few days later this young noble took her to the Abbey of Saint-Florent-les-Saumur,[713] the church of which was so greatly admired that it was called La Belle d'Anjou. Here in this abbey there dwelt at that time his mother and his wife. It is said that they were glad to see Jeanne. But they had no great faith in the issue of the war. The young Dame of Alencon said to her: "Jeannette, I am full of fear for my husband. He has just come out of prison, and we have had to give so much money for his ransom that gladly would I entreat him to stay at home." To which Jeanne replied: "Madame, have no fear. I will bring him back to you in safety, and either such as he is now or better."[714]

[Footnote 713: Perceval de Cagny, p. 148.]

[Footnote 714: Trial, vol. iii, p. 96.]

She called the Duke of Alencon her fair Duke,[715] and loved him for the sake of the Duke of Orleans, whose daughter he had married. She loved him also because he believed in her when all others doubted or denied, and because the English had done him wrong. She loved him too because she saw he had a good will to fight. It was told how when he was a captive in the hands of the English at Verneuil, and they proposed to give him back his liberty and his goods if he would join their party, he had rejected their offer.[716] He was young like her; she thought that he like her must be sincere and noble. And perhaps in those days he was, for doubtless he was not then seeking to discover powders with which to dry up the King.[717]

[Footnote 715: Perceval de Cagny, p. 151, passim.]

[Footnote 716: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 240.]

[Footnote 717: Cf. 1 Kings xiii, 4 (W.S.). P. Dupuy, Proces de Jean II, duc d'Alencon, 1458-1474, 1658, in 4to. Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. v, p. 382. Docteur Chereau, Medecins du quinzieme siecle, in l'Union Medicale, vol. xiv, August, 1862. Joseph Guibert, Jean II duc d'Alencon, in Les positions de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1893.]

It was decided that Jeanne should be taken to Poitiers to be examined by the doctors there.[718] In this town the Parlement met. Here also were gathered together many famous clerks learned in theology, secular as well as regular,[719] and grave doctors and masters were summoned to join them. Jeanne set out under escort. At first she thought she was being taken to Orleans. Her faith was like that of the ignorant but believing folk, who, having taken the cross, went forth and thought every town they approached was Jerusalem. Half way she inquired of her guides where they were taking her. When she heard that it was to Poitiers: "In God's name!" she said, "much ado will be there, I know. But my Lord will help me. Now let us go on in God's strength!"[720]

[Footnote 718: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 116, 209.]

[Footnote 719: Belisaire Ledain, Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Saint-Maixent, 1891, in 8vo, 15 pages. Neuville, Le Parlement royal a Poitiers, in the Revue historique, vol. vi, p. 284.]

[Footnote 720: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 275. Journal du siege, p. 48. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 316.]

VII. THE MAID AT POITIERS

For fourteen years the town of Poitiers had been the capital of that part of France which belonged to the French. The Dauphin Charles had transferred his Parlement there, or rather had assembled there those few members who had escaped from the Parlement of Paris. The Parlement of Poitiers consisted of two chambers only. It would have judged as wisely as King Solomon had there been any questions on which to pronounce judgment, but no litigants presented themselves--they were afraid of being captured on the way by freebooters and captains in the King's pay; besides, in the disturbed state of the kingdom justice had little to do with the settlement of disputes. The councillors, who for the most part had lands near Paris, were hard put to it for food and clothing. They were rarely paid and there were no perquisites. In vain they had inscribed their registers with the formula: Non deliberetur donec solvantur species; no payments were forthcoming from the suitors.[721] The Attorney General, Messire Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, who owned rich lands and houses in Ile-de-France, Brie, and Champagne, was filled with pity at the sight of that good and honourable lady his wife, his eleven children, and his three sons-in-law going barefoot and poorly clad through the streets of the town.[722] As for the doctors and professors who had followed the King's fortunes, in vain were they wells of knowledge and springs of clerkly learning, since, for lack of a University to teach in, they reaped no advantage from their eloquence and their erudition. The town of Poitiers, having become the first city in the realm, had a Parlement but no University, like a lady highly born but one-eyed withal, for the Parlement and the University are the two eyes of a great city. Thus in their doleful leisure they were consumed with a desire, if it were God's will, to restore the King's fortunes as well as their own. Meanwhile, shivering with cold and emaciated with hunger, they groaned and lamented. Like Israel in the desert they sighed for the day when the Lord, inclining his ear to their supplications, should say: "At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God." Vespere comedetis carnes et mane saturabimini panibus: scietisque quod ego sum Dominus deus vester. (Exodus xvi, 12.) It was from among these poor and faithful servants of a poverty-stricken King that were chosen for the most part the doctors and clerks charged with the examination of the Maid. They were: the Lord Bishop of Poitiers;[723] the Lord Bishop of Maguelonne;[724] Maitre Jean Lombard, doctor in theology, sometime professor of theology at the University of Paris;[725] Maitre Guillaume le Maire, bachelor of theology, canon of Poitiers;[726] Maitre Gerard Machet, the King's Confessor;[727] Maitre Jourdain Morin;[728] Maitre Jean Erault, professor of theology;[729] Maitre Mathieu Mesnage, bachelor of theology;[730] Maitre Jacques Meledon;[731] Maitre Jean Macon, a very famous doctor of civil law and of canon law;[732] Brother Pierre de Versailles, a monk of Saint-Denys in France, of the order of Saint Benedict, professor of theology, Prior of the Priory of Saint-Pierre de Chaumont, Abbot of Talmont in the diocese of Laon, Ambassador of his most Christian Majesty the King of France;[733] Brother Pierre Turelure, of the Order of Saint Dominic, Inquisitor at Toulouse;[734] Maitre Simon Bonnet;[735] Brother Guillaume Aimery, of the Order of Saint-Dominic, doctor and professor of theology;[736] Brother Seguin of Seguin of the Order of Saint Dominic, doctor and professor of theology;[737] Brother Pierre Seguin, Carmelite;[738] several of the King's Councillors, licentiates of civil as well as of canon law.

[Footnote 721: Neuville, Le Parlement royal a Poitiers, in the Revue historique, vol. vi, p. 18. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 571 et seq.]

[Footnote 722: Louis Battifol, Jean Jouvenel, prevot des marchands de la ville de Paris, Paris, 1894, in 8vo. Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, pp. 359, 360.]

[Footnote 723: Trial, vol. iii, p. 92. Gallia Christiana, vol. ii, col. 1198.]

[Footnote 724: Trial, vol. iii, p. 92. Le P. Ayroles, La Pucelle devant l'Eglise de son temps, p. 6.]

[Footnote 725: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 203, 204.]

[Footnote 726: Ibid., pp. 19, 203.]

[Footnote 727: Ibid., pp. 74, 75. Launoy, Historia Collegii Navarrici, lib. ii, passim.]

[Footnote 728: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 92, 102.]

[Footnote 729: Ibid., pp. 74, 75.]

[Footnote 730: Ibid., pp. 74, 92, 102.]

[Footnote 731: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 203.]

[Footnote 732: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 27, 28.]

[Footnote 733: Ibid., pp. 19, 74, 92, 203. Gallia Christiana, vol. iii, col. 1128.]

[Footnote 734: Trial, vol. iii, p. 203. Gallia Christiana, vol. iii, col. 1129.]

[Footnote 735: Trial, vol. iii, p. 92.]

[Footnote 736: Ibid., pp. 19, 83, 203.]

[Footnote 737: Ibid., pp. 19, 203. Le P. Chapotin, La guerre de cent ans; Jeanne d'Arc et les Dominicains, p. 132.]

[Footnote 738: Canon Dunand, La legende anglaise de Jeanne, Paris, 1903, in 8vo, p. 118.]

Here was a large assembly of doctors for the cross-examination of one shepherdess. But we must remember that in those days theology subtle and inflexible dominated all human knowledge and forced the secular arm to give effect to its judgment. Therefore, as soon as an ignorant girl caused it to be believed that she had seen God, the Virgin, the saints, and the angels, she must either pass from miracle to miracle, through an edifying death to beatification, or from heresy to heresy through an ecclesiastical prison, to be burnt as a witch. And, as the holy inquisitors were fully persuaded that the Devil easily entered into a woman, the unhappy creature was more likely to be burnt alive than to die in an odour of sanctity. But Jeanne before the doctors at Poitiers was an exception; she ran no risk of being suspected in matters of faith. Even Brother Pierre Turelure himself had no desire to find in her one of those heretics he zealously sought to discover at Toulouse. In her presence the illustrious masters drew in their theological claws. They were churchmen, but they were Armagnacs, for the most part business men, diplomatists, old councillors of the Dauphin.[739] As priests, doubtless they were possessed of a certain body of dogma and morality, and of a code of rules for judging matters of faith. But now it was a question not of curing the disease of heresy, but of driving out the English. Jeanne was in favour with my Lord the Duke of Alencon and with my Lord the Bastard; the inhabitants of Orleans were looking to her for their deliverance. She promised to take the King to Reims; and it happened that the cleverest and the most powerful man in France, the Chancellor of the kingdom, my Lord Regnault de Chartres, was Archbishop and Count of Reims; and that had great weight.[740]

[Footnote 739: O. Raguenet de Saint-Albin, Les juges de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, membres du Parlement ou gens d'Eglise, Orleans, 1894, in 8vo, 46 pages.]

[Footnote 740: See ante, pp. 153, 154.]

If it should be as she said, if God had verily sent her to the aid of the Lilies, to the mind of whomsoever possessed sense and learning it appeared marvellous but not incredible. No one denied that God could directly intervene in the affairs of kingdoms, for he himself had said: Per me reges regnant.

In this Church holy and indivisible, there were the doctors of Poitiers who deliberately pronounced God to be on the side of the Dauphin, while the University of Paris as deliberately pronounced God to be on the side of the Burgundians and the English. His messenger need not necessarily be an angel. He might employ a creature human or not human, like the raven that fed Elijah. And that a woman should engage in war accorded with what was written in books concerning Camilla, the Amazons, and Queen Penthesilea, and with what the Bible says of the strong women, Deborah, Jahel, Judith of Bethulia, raised up by God for the salvation of Israel. For it is written: "The mighty one did not fall by the young men, neither did the sons of Titans smite him, nor high giants set upon him; but Judith the daughter of Merari weakened him with the beauty of her countenance."[741]

[Footnote 741: Judith, xvi, 7 (W.S.).]

Jeanne was taken to the mansion where dwelt Maitre Jean Rabateau, not far from the law-courts, in the heart of the town.[742] Maitre Jean Rabateau was Lay Attorney General; all criminal cases went to him, while civil cases went to the ecclesiastical Attorney General, Jean Jouvenel. Alike King's advocates, in the King's service, they both represented him in cases wherein he was concerned. The King was an unprofitable client. For representing him in criminal trials Maitre Jean Rabateau received four hundred livres a year. He was forbidden to appear in any but crown cases; and no one suspected him of receiving many bribes. If in addition he held the office of Councillor to the Duke of Orleans he gained little by it. Like most Parlement officials he was for the moment very poor. A stranger in Poitiers, he had no house there, but lodged in a mansion, which, because it belonged to a family named Rosier, was called the Hotel de la Rose. It was a large dwelling. Witnesses whom it was necessary to keep securely and deal with honourably were entertained there. Jeanne was taken there although the Parlement had nothing to do with her cross-examination.[743] Once again she was placed in charge of a man who served both the Duke of Orleans and the King of France.

[Footnote 742: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 19, 74, 82, 203. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 275. B. Ledain, Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Saint-Maixent, 1891, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 743: Nevertheless see Le mistere du siege, pp. 397-406.]

Jean Rabateau's wife, in common with the wives of all lawyers, was a woman of good reputation.[744] While she was at La Rose, Jeanne would stay long on her knees every day after dinner. At night she would rise from her bed to pray, and pass long hours in the little oratory of the mansion. It was in this house that the doctors conducted her examination. When their coming was announced she was seized with cruel anxiety. The Blessed Saint Catherine was careful to reassure her.[745] She likewise had disputed with doctors and confounded them. True, those doctors were heathen, but they were learned and their minds were subtle; for in the life of the Saint it is written: "The Emperor summoned fifty doctors versed in the lore of the Egyptians and the liberal arts. And when she heard that she was to dispute with the wise men, Catherine feared lest she should not worthily defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But an angel appeared unto her and said: 'I am the Archangel Saint Michael, and I am come to tell thee that thou shalt come forth from the strife victorious and worthy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the hope and crown of those who strive for him.' And the Virgin disputed with the doctors."[746]

[Footnote 744: There can be no reason for suspecting this lady of not living up to her reputation, for nothing is known of her, not even whether she were Maitre Jean Rabateau's first or second wife, for he had two. The first was the daughter of Benoit Pidelet. Cf. B. Ledain, La maison de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Maitre Jean Rabateau (Revue du Bas-Poitou, April, 1891, pp. 48, 66). A. Barbier, Jeanne d'Arc et l'hotellerie de la Rose, Poitiers, 1892, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 745: Trial, vol. iii, p. 82.]

[Footnote 746: Voragine, La legende doree (Vie de Sainte Catherine).]

The grave doctors and masters and the principal clerks of the Parlement of Poitiers, in companies of two and three, repaired to the house of Jean Rabateau, and each one of them in turn questioned Jeanne. The first to come were Jean Lombard, Guillaume le Maire, Guillaume Aimery, Pierre Turelure, and Jacques Meledon. Brother Jean Lombard asked: "Wherefore have you come? The King desires to know what led you to come to him."

Jeanne's reply greatly impressed these clerks: "As I kept my flocks a Voice appeared to me. The Voice said: 'God has great pity on the people of France. Jeanne, thou must go into France.' On hearing these words I began to weep. Then the Voice said unto me: 'Go to Vaucouleurs. There shalt thou find a captain, who will take thee safely into France, to the King. Fear not.' I did as I was bidden, and I came to the King without hindrance."[747]

[Footnote 747: Trial, vol. iii, p. 204 (evidence of Brother Seguin).]

Then the word fell to Brother Guillaume Aimery: "According to what you have said, the Voice told you that God will deliver the people of France from their distress; but if God will deliver them he has no need of men-at-arms."

"In God's name," replied the Maid, "the men-at-arms will fight, and God will give the victory."

Maitre Guillaume declared himself satisfied.[748]

[Footnote 748: Ibid., pp. 203, 204.]

On the 22nd of March, Maitre Pierre de Versailles and Maitre Jean Erault went together to Jean Rabateau's lodging. The squire, Gobert Thibault, whom Jeanne had already seen at Chinon, came with them. He was a young man and very simple, one who believed without asking for a sign. As they came in Jeanne went to meet them, and, striking the squire on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, she said: "I wish I had many men as willing as you."[749]

[Footnote 749: Ibid., p. 74.]

With men-at-arms she felt at her ease. But the doctors she could not tolerate, and she suffered torture when they came to argue with her. Although these theologians showed her great consideration, their eternal questions wearied her; their slowness and heaviness exasperated her. She bore them a grudge for not believing in her straightway, without proof, and for asking her for a sign, which she could not give them, since neither Saint Michael nor Saint Catherine nor Saint Margaret appeared during the examination. In retirement, in the oratory, and in the lonely fields the heavenly visitants came to her in crowds; angels and saints, descending from heaven, flocked around her. But when the doctors came, immediately the Jacob's ladder was drawn up. Besides, the clerks were theologians, and she was a saint. Relations are always strained between the heads of the Church Militant and those devout women who communicate directly with the Church Triumphant. She realised that the revelations granted to her so abundantly inspired her most favourable judges with doubts, suspicion, and even mistrust. She dared not confide to them much of the mystery of her Voices, and when the Churchmen were not present she told Alencon, her fair Duke, that she knew more and could do more than she had ever told all those clerks.[750] It was not to them she had been sent; it was not for them that she had come. She felt awkward in their presence, and their manners were the occasion of that irritation which is discernible in more than one of her replies.[751] Sometimes when they questioned her she retreated to the end of her bench and sulked.

[Footnote 750: Trial, vol. iii, p. 92.]

[Footnote 751: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 275.]

"We come to you from the King," said Maitre Pierre de Versailles.

She replied with a bad grace: "I am quite aware that you are come to question me again. I don't know A from B."[752] But to the question: "Wherefore do you come?" she made answer eagerly: "I come from the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans, and take the King to be crowned and anointed at Reims. Maitre Jean Erault, have you ink and paper? Write what I shall tell you." And she dictated a brief manifesto to the English captains: "You, Suffort, Clasdas, and La Poule, in the name of the King of Heaven I call upon you to return to England."[753]

[Footnote 752: Trial, vol. iii, p. 74 (evidence of Gobert Thibault).]

[Footnote 753: Trial, vol. iii, p. 74. Boucher de Molandon and A. de Beaucorps, L'armee anglaise, p. 111. La Poule, as he is called here, is identical with Suffort, and is none other than William Pole, Earl of Suffolk, unless John Pole, William's brother, be intended, but he was not one of the three organisers of the siege. As for Clasdas or Glasdale, as the French called him, he served under the orders of the Commander of Les Tourelles. These errors may have been Jeanne's, or possibly they were made by the witness. They do not recur in the letter to the English.]

Maitre Jean Erault, who wrote at her dictation, was, like most of the clerks, favourably disposed towards her. Further, he had his own ideas. He recollected that Marie of Avignon, surnamed La Gasque, had uttered true and memorable prophecies to King Charles VI. Now La Gasque had told the King that the realm was to suffer many sorrows; and she had seen weapons in the sky. Her story of her vision had concluded with these words: "While I was afeard, believing myself called upon to take these weapons, a voice comforted me, saying: 'They are not for thee, but for a Virgin, who shall come and with these weapons deliver the realm of France.'" Maitre Jean Erault meditated on these marvellous revelations and came to believe that Jeanne was the Virgin announced by Marie of Avignon.[754]

[Footnote 754: Trial, vol. iii, p. 83.]

Maitre Gerard Machet, the King's Confessor, had found it written that a Maid should come to the help of the King of France. He remarked on it to Gobert Thibault, the Squire, who was no very great personage;[755] and he certainly spoke of it to several others. Gerard Machet, Doctor of Theology, sometime Vice Chancellor of the University, from which he was now excluded, was regarded as one of the lights of the Church. He loved the court,[756] although he would not admit it, and enjoyed the favour of the King, who had just rewarded his services by giving him money with which to purchase a mule.[757] All doubts concerning the disposition of these doctors are removed by the discovery that the King's Confessor himself put into circulation those prophecies which had been distorted in favour of the Maid from the Bois-Chenu.

[Footnote 755: Ibid., p. 75.]

[Footnote 756: Lettres de Gerard Machet, Bibl. nat. Latin documents, no. 8577. Launoy, Regii Navarrae Gymnasii Parisiensis historia, Paris, 1682 (2 vols. in 4to), vol. ii, pp. 533, 557. Du Boulay, Hist. Univ. Parisiensis, vol. v, p. 875. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale.]

[Footnote 757: De Beaucourt, Extrait du catalogue des actes de Charles VII, p. 18.]

The damsel was interrogated concerning her Voices, which she called her Council, and her saints, whom she imagined in the semblance of those sculptured or painted figures peopling the churches.[758] The doctors objected to her having cast off woman's clothing and had her hair cut round in the manner of a page. Now it is written: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deuteronomy xxii, 5). The Council of Gangres, held in the reign of the Emperor Valens, had anathematised women who dressed as men and cut short their hair.[759] Many saintly women, impelled by a strange inspiration of the Holy Ghost, had concealed their sex by masculine garb. At Saint-Jean-des-Bois, near Compiegne, was preserved the reliquary of Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria, who lived for thirty-eight years in man's attire in the monastery of the Abbot Theodosius.[760] For these reasons, and because of these precedents, the doctors argued: since Jeanne had put on this clothing not to offend another's modesty but to preserve her own, we will put no evil interpretation on an act performed with good intent, and we will forbear to condemn a deed justified by purity of motive.

[Footnote 758: Trial, vol. i, pp. 71, 72, 73, 171.]

[Footnote 759: Labbe, Sacro-Sancta Consilia (1671), vol. ii, pp. 413, 434.]

[Footnote 760: Surius, Vitae S.S. (1618), vol. i, pp. 21-24. Gabriel Brosse, Histoire abregee de la vie et de la translation de Sainte Euphrosine, Vierge d'Alexandrie, patronne de l'abbaye de Beaulieu-les-Compiegne, Paris, 1649, in 8vo.]

Certain of her questioners inquired why she called Charles Dauphin instead of giving him his title of King. This title had been his by right since the 30th of October, 1422; for on that day, the ninth since the death of the King his father, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, in the chapel royal, he had put off his black gown and assumed the purple robe, while the heralds, raising aloft the banner of France, cried: "Long live the King!"

She answered: "I will not call him King until he shall have been anointed and crowned at Reims. To that city I intend to take him."[761]

[Footnote 761: Trial, vol. iii, p. 20.]

Without this anointing there was no king of France for her. Of the miracles which had followed that anointing she had heard every year from the mouth of her priest as he recited the glorious deeds of the Blessed Saint Remi, the patron saint of her parish. This reply was such as to satisfy the interrogators because, both for things spiritual and temporal, it was important that the King should be anointed at Reims.[762] And Messire Regnault de Chartres must have ardently desired it.

[Footnote 762: It may be noticed that during the consultation of the doctors, according to the report of it given by Thomassin in Le registre Delphinal, Charles of Valois is designated alike by the title of King and by that of Dauphin (Trial, vol. iv, p. 303).]

Contradicted by the clerks, she opposed the Church's doctrine by the inspiration of her own heart, and said to them: "There is more in the Book of Our Lord than in all yours."[763]

[Footnote 763: Trial, vol. iii, p. 86.]

This was a bold and biting reply, which would have been dangerous had the theologians been less favourably inclined to her. Otherwise they might have held it to be trespassing on the rights of the Church, who, as the guardian of the Holy Books, is their jealous interpreter, and does not suffer the authority of Scripture to be set up against the decisions of Councils.[764] What were those books, which without having read she judged to be contrary to those of Our Lord, wherein with mind and spirit she seemed to read plainly? They would seem to be the Sacred Canons and the Sacred Decretals. This child's utterance sapped the very foundations of the Church. Had the doctors of Poitiers been less zealously Armagnac they would henceforth have mistrusted Jeanne and suspected her of heresy. But they were loyal servants of the houses of Orleans and of France. Their cassocks were ragged and their larders empty;[765] their only hope was in God, and they feared lest in rejecting this damsel they might be denying the Holy Ghost. Besides, everything went to prove that these words of Jeanne were uttered without guile and in all ignorance and simplicity. No doubt that is why the doctors were not shocked by them.

[Footnote 764: Le Pere Didon, Vie de Jesus, vol. i, Preface.]

[Footnote 765: Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, p. 359.]

Brother Seguin of Seguin in his turn questioned the damsel. He was from Limousin, and his speech betrayed his origin. He spoke with a drawl and used expressions unknown in Lorraine and Champagne. Perhaps he had that dull, heavy air, which rendered the folk of his province somewhat ridiculous in the eyes of dwellers on the Loire, the Seine, and the Meuse. To the question: "What language do your Voices speak?" Jeanne replied: "A better one than yours."[766]

[Footnote 766: Trial, vol. iii, p. 204.]

Even saints may lose patience. If Brother Seguin did not know it before, he learnt it that day. And what business had he to doubt that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who were on the side of the French, spoke French? Such a doubt Jeanne could not bear, and she gave her questioner to understand that when one comes from Limousin one does not inquire concerning the speech of heavenly ladies. Notwithstanding he pursued his interrogation: "Do you believe in God?" "Yes, more than you do," said the Maid, who, knowing nothing of the good Brother, was somewhat hasty in esteeming herself better grounded in the faith than he.

But she was vexed that there should be any question of her belief in God, who had sent her. Her reply, if favourably interpreted, would testify to the ardour of her faith. Did Brother Seguin so understand it? His contemporaries represented him as being of a somewhat bitter disposition. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that he was good-natured.[767]

[Footnote 767: It seems to have been the fate of the inhabitants of Limousin to be jeered at by the French of Champagne and of l'Ile de France. After Brother Seguin we have the student from Limousin to whom Pantagruel says: "Thou art Limousin to the bone and yet here thou wilt pass thyself off as a Parisian." It is the lot of M. de Pourceaugnac. La Fontaine, in 1663, writes from Limoges to his wife that the people of Limousin are by no means afflicted; neither do they labour under Heaven's displeasure "as the folk of our provinces imagine." But he adds that he does not like their habits. It would seem that at first Brother Seguin was annoyed by Jeanne's mocking vivacious repartees. But he cherished no ill-will against her. "The Limousin's good nature does not permit the endurance of any unfriendly feeling," says Abel Hugo in La France pittoresque: Haute-Vienne. Cf. A. Precicou, Rabelais et les Limousins, Limoges, 1906, in 8vo.]

"But after all," he said, "it cannot be God's will that you should be believed unless some sign appear to make us believe in you. On your word alone we cannot counsel the King to run the risk of granting you men-at-arms."

"In God's name," she answered, "it was not to give a sign that I came to Poitiers. But take me to Orleans and I will show you the signs wherefore I am sent. Let me be given men, it matters not how many, and I will go to Orleans."

And she repeated what she was continually saying: "The English shall all be driven out and destroyed. The siege of Orleans shall be raised and the city delivered from its enemies, after I shall have summoned it to surrender in the name of the King of Heaven. The Dauphin shall be anointed at Reims, the town of Paris shall return to its allegiance to the King, and the Duke of Orleans shall come back from England."[768]

[Footnote 768: Trial, vol. iii, p. 205.]

Long did the doctors and masters, following the example of Brother Seguin of Seguin, urge her to show a sign of her mission. They thought that if God had chosen her to deliver the French nation he would not fail to make his choice manifest by a sign, as he had done for Gideon, the son of Joash. When Israel was sore pressed by the Midianites, and when God's chosen people hid from their enemies in the caves of the mountains, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon under an oak, and said unto him: "Surely I will be with thee and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man." To which Gideon made answer: "If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me." And Gideon made ready a kid and kneaded unleavened cakes; the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot and brought the pot and the basket beneath the oak. Then the Angel of God said unto him: "Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth." And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. When Gideon perceived that he had seen an angel of the Lord, he cried out: "Alas, O Lord God! for because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face."[769] With three hundred men Gideon subdued the Midianites. This example the doctors had before their minds.[770]

[Footnote 769: Judges, ch. vi. (W.S.).]

[Footnote 770: Trial, vol. iii, p. 20.]

But for the Maid the sign of victory was victory itself. She said without ceasing: "The sign that I will show you shall be Orleans relieved and the siege raised."[771]

[Footnote 771: Ibid., pp. 20, 205. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 278. Journal du siege, p. 49.]

Such persistency made an impression on most of her interrogators. They determined to make of it, not a stone of stumbling, but rather an example of zeal and a subject of edification. Since she promised them a sign it behoved them in all humility to ask God to send it, and, filled with a like hope, joining with the King and all the people, to pray to the God, who delivered Israel, to grant them the banner of victory. Thus were overcome the arguments of Brother Seguin and of those who, led away by the precepts of human wisdom, desired a sign before they believed.

After an examination which had lasted six weeks, the doctors declared themselves satisfied.[772]

[Footnote 772: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 19, 20.]

There was one point it was necessary to ascertain; they must know whether Jeanne was, as she said, a virgin. Matrons had indeed already examined her on her arrival at Chinon. Then there was a doubt as to whether she were man or maid; and it was even feared that she might be an illusion in woman's semblance, produced by the art of demons, which scholars considered by no means impossible.[773] It was not long since the death of that canon who held that now and again knights are changed into bears and spirits travel a hundred leagues in one night, then suddenly become sows or wisps of straw.[774] Suitable measures had therefore been taken. But they must be carried out exactly, wisely, and cautiously, for the matter was of great importance.

[Footnote 773: Ibid., vol. i, p. 95; vol. iii, p. 209.]

[Footnote 774: Mary Darmesteter, Froissart, Paris, 1894, in 12mo, p. 96.]

VIII. THE MAID AT POITIERS (continued)

A belief, common to learned and ignorant alike, ascribed special virtues to the state of virginity. Such ideas had been handed down from a remote antiquity; their origin was pre-Christian; they were an immemorial inheritance, one part of which came from the Gauls and Germans, the other from the Romans and Greeks. In the land of Gaul there still lingered a memory of the sacred beauty of the white priestesses of the forest; and sometimes in the Island of Sein, along the misty shores of the Ocean, there wandered the shades of those nine sisters at whose bidding, in days of yore, the tempest raged and was stilled.

According to these beliefs, which had dawned in the childhood of races, the gift of prophecy is bestowed on virgins alone. It is the heritage of a Cassandra or a Velleda. It was said that Sibyls had prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ. In the Church they were considered the first witnesses of Christ among the Gentiles, and they were venerated as the august sisters of the prophets of Israel. The Dies Irae mentions one of them in the same breath with King David himself. By what pious frauds their fame for prophecy was established, we cannot tell any more than Jean Gerson or Gerard Machet. With the doctors of the fifteenth century we must look upon these virgins as speaking the word of truth to the nations, who venerated but did not understand them. Such was the ancient tradition of the Christian Church. The most ancient fathers of the Church, Justin, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, frequently made use of the Sibylline oracles; and the heathen were at a loss for a reply when Lactantius confronted them with these prophetesses of the nations. Trusting in the word of Varro, Saint Jerome firmly believed in their existence. Into The City of God Saint Augustine introduces the Erythrean Sibyl, who, he says, faithfully foretold the Life of the Saviour. As early as the thirteenth century, these virgins of old had their places in cathedrals by the side of patriarchs and prophets. But it was not until the fifteenth century that multitudes of them were represented; sculptured on church porches, carved on choir stalls, painted on chapel walls or glass windows. Each one has her distinctive attribute. The Persian holds the lantern and the Libyan the torch, which illuminated the darkness of the Gentiles. The Agrippine, the European, and Erythrean are armed with the sword; the Phrygian bears the Paschal cross; the Hellespontine presents a rose tree in flower; the others display the visible signs of the mystery they foretell: the Cumaean a manger; the Delphian, the Samian, the Tiburtine, the Cimmerian a crown of thorns, a sceptre of reeds, scourges, a cross.[775]

[Footnote 775: Jean Philippe de Lignan, Rome, 1481 (not paginated), leaf 10 and the following. For the comparison of Jeanne d'Arc to the ancient Sibyl, see the Clerk of Spire, Sibylla Francica, in the Trial, vol. iii, p. 422. Christine de Pisano in the Trial, vol. v, p. 12. Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 8-10. Barbier de Montault, Iconographie des Sibylles, in the Revue de l'art chretien, xiii-xiv (1869-1870). Barraud, Notice sur les attributs avec lesquelles on represente les Sibylles aux XV'e et XVI'e siecles, in the Bulletin archeologique de la Commission historique des arts mon., vol. iv (1848). Cf. Morosini, vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 319.]

The very economy of the Christian religion--the ordering of its mysteries, wherein humanity is represented as ruined by a woman and saved by a virgin, and all flesh is involved in Eve's curse--led to the triumph of virginity and the exaltation of a condition which, in the words of a Father of the Church, is in the flesh, yet not of the flesh.

"It is because of virginity," says Saint Gregory of Nyssa, "that God vouchsafes to dwell with men. It is virginity which gives men wings to soar towards heaven." Celibacy raises the Apostle John above the Prince of the Apostles himself. At the funeral of the Virgin Mary, Peter gave John a palm branch, saying: "It becometh one who is celibate to bear the Virgin's palm."[776]

[Footnote 776: Voragine, La legende doree (Assomption de la Vierge).]

Throughout western Christendom the Virgin Mary--the Virgin par excellence--had been the object of zealous devout worship[777] ever since the twelfth century. The great cathedrals of northern France, dedicated to Our Lady, celebrated the feast of their patron saint on the day of the Assumption. On the sculptured pillar of the central porch was the Virgin, with her divine Child and the Virgin's lily. Sometimes Eve figured beneath, in order to represent at once sin and its redemption: the second Eve redeeming the first, the Virgin exalted the woman humbled. Marvellous scenes are portrayed on the tympanums of porches. The Virgin is kneeling; at her side is a flowering lily in a vase. The Angel, book in hand, greets her with an AVE, thus transposing the name EVA, mutans Evae nomen. Or again, with her feet resting on the crescent moon, she rises to the highest heaven: Exaltata est super choros angelorum. Further, from Jesus Christ she receives the precious crown: Posuit in capite ejus coronam de lapide pretioso. In gems of painted glass, church windows portrayed the figures of Mary's virginity; the stone which Daniel saw dug from the mountain by no human hand, Gideon's fleece, Moses' burning bush, and Aaron's budding rod.

[Footnote 777: Le Cure de Saint-Sulpice, Notre Dame de France ou histoire du culte de la Sainte Vierge en France, Paris, 1862, 7 vols. in 8vo. Abbe Mignard, La Sainte Vierge, Paris, 1877, in 8vo, pp. 382 et seq.]

In an inexhaustible flow of images, expressed in hymns, sequences, and litanies, she was the Mystic Rose, the Ivory Tower, the Ark of the Covenant, the Gate of Heaven, the Morning Star. She was the Well of Living Water, the Fountain of the Garden, the Walled Orchard, the Bright and Shining Stone, the Flower of Virtue, the Palm of Sweetness, the Myrtle of Temperance, the Sweet Ointment.

In the Golden Legend, images rich and charming clothed the idea that grace and power resided in virginity. The hagiographers burst forth in loving praise of the brides of Jesus Christ; of those especially who put on the white robe of virginity and the red roses of martyrdom. It was during the passion of virgins that miracles of the most abounding grace were worked. Angels bring down to Dorothea celestial roses, which she scatters over her executioners. Virgin martyrs exercise their power over beasts. The lions of the amphitheatre lick the feet of Saint Thecla. The wild beasts of the circus gather together, and with tails interlaced, prepare a throne for Saint Euphemia; in the pit, aspics form a pleasing necklace for Saint Christina. It is not the will of the divine Spouse for whom they endure anguish that they should suffer in their modesty. When the executioner tears off Saint Agnes's garments, her hair grows thicker and clothes her in a miraculous garment. When Saint Barbara is to be taken naked through the streets, an angel brings her a white tunic. These Agneses and these Dorotheas, these Catherines and these Margarets, this legion of innocent conquerors prepared men's minds to believe in the miracle of a virgin stronger than armed men. Had not Saint Genevieve turned away Attila and his barbarian warriors from Paris?

The fable of the Maid and the Unicorn, so widely known in those days, is a lively expression of this belief in a special virtue residing in the state of virginity.

The unicorn was half goat and half horse, of immaculate whiteness; it bore a marvellous sword upon its forehead. Hunters, when they saw it pass in the thicket, had never been able to reach it, so rapid was its course. But if a virgin in the forest called the unicorn, the creature obeyed, came and laid its head on her lap, and allowed such feeble hands to take and bind it. If however a damsel corrupt and no longer a maid approached it, the unicorn slew her immediately.[778]

[Footnote 778: De l'unicorne qu'une jeune fille seduit, in the Bestiaire of R. de Fournival (Paulin Paris, Manuscrits francais, vol. iv, p. 25). Berger de Xivrey, Traditions teratologiques, p. 559. J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, vol. i, p. 320. Vallet de Viriville, Nouvelles recherches sur Agnes Sorel, in Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de Picardie, vol. vi, p. 621. A. Maury, Croyances et legendes du moyen age, pp. 262 et seq.]

It was even said that a virgin had the power to cure king's evil, by reciting, fasting and naked, certain magic words; but they were not words from the Gospel.[779]

[Footnote 779: Leber, Des ceremonies du sacre, Paris, 1825, in 8vo, p. 459.]

While mystics and visionaries were glorifying virginity, the Church, bent on governing the body as well as the soul, condemned opinions denying the lawfulness of marriage, which she had constituted a sacrament. Those who would anathematise all works of the flesh she held to be abominable and impious. A maid deserved praise for preserving her virginity, provided always that her motives were praiseworthy. Two hundred years before the reign of Charles VII, a young girl of Reims realised that a grave sin may be committed against the Church of God by refusing the solicitations of a clerk in a vineyard. Here is the damsel's story as related by the canon Gervais.

"On a day, Guillaume with the White Hands, Uncle of King Philippe of France, for his pleasure rode forth from his town. A clerk of his following, Gervais by name, who was in the heat of youth, saw a maiden walking alone in a vineyard. He went to her, greeted her and asked: 'What are you doing in such great haste?' And with fitting words he courteously solicited her.

"Without even looking at him, calmly and gravely she replied: 'God forbid, youth, that I should ever be yours or any man's, for if I were to lose my virginity and my body its purity, I should inevitably fall into eternal damnation.'

"Such words caused the clerk to suspect that the maiden belonged to the impious sect of the Cathari, whom the Church was in those days pursuing relentlessly and punishing severely. One of the errors of these heretics was indeed to condemn all carnal intercourse. Impatient to resolve his doubts, Gervais straightway provoked the damsel to a discussion on the Church's teaching in this matter. Meanwhile, the Archbishop, Guillaume with the White Hands, turned his steed, and, followed by his monks, came to the vineyard where the clerk and the maiden were disputing together. When he learnt the cause of their disagreement he ordered the maiden to be seized and brought into the town. There he exhorted her, and, in charity, endeavoured to convert her to the Catholic Faith.

"She would not submit, however. 'I am not well enough grounded in doctrine to defend myself,' she said to him. 'But in the town I have a mistress, who, with good reasons, will easily refute all your arguments. She it is who lodges in that house.'

"The Archbishop Guillaume straightway sent to inquire after this woman; and, having questioned her, perceived that what the maiden had said concerning her was true. The very next day he convoked an assembly of clerks and nobles to judge the two women. Both of them were condemned to be burnt. The mistress contrived to escape, but promises and persuasions having failed to turn the maiden from the pernicious error of her ways, she was delivered up to the executioner. She died without shedding a tear, without uttering a complaint."[780]

[Footnote 780: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en France, Paris, 1893, in 8vo, p. 293.]

In the year 1416 there was a certain woman, a native of the Duchy of Bar, Catherine Sauve by name. She was then a solitary, living at Montpellier, on the road to Lattes. Having been publicly accused, she was examined by the Inquisitor's Vicar, Maitre Raymond Cabasse, and found to be infected with the heresy of the Cathari. Among other errors she maintained that all carnal intercourse is sinful, even in wedlock. Wherefore she was delivered to the secular arm and burned at the stake on the 2nd of November in that year.[781]

[Footnote 781: Germain, Catherine Sauve, in Academie des sciences et lettres de Montpellier, Lettres, vol. i, 1854, in 4to, pp. 539-552.]

It was then commonly believed that such maidens as gave themselves to the devil were straightway stripped of their virginity; and that thus he obtained power over these unhappy creatures.[782] Such ways accorded with what was known of his libidinous disposition. These pleasures were tempered to his woeful state. And thereby he gained a further advantage,--that of unarming his victim,--for virginity is as a coat of mail against which the darts of hell are but blades of straw. Hence it was all but certain that a soul vowed to the devil could not reside within a maid.[783] Wherefore, there was one infallible way of proving that the peasant girl from Vaucouleurs was not given up to magic or to sorcery, and had made no pact with the Evil One. Recourse was had to it.

[Footnote 782: Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Matrimonium.]

[Footnote 783: Pierre Le Loyer, Livre des spectres, 1586, in 4to, pp. 527, 551.]

Jeanne was seen, visited, privately inspected, and thoroughly examined by wise women, mulieres doctas; by knowing virgins, peritas virgines; by widows and wives, viduas et conjugates. First among these matrons were: the Queen of Sicily and of Jerusalem, Duchess of Anjou; Dame Jeanne de Preuilly, wife of the Sire de Gaucourt, Governor of Orleans, who was about fifty-seven years of age; and Dame Jeanne de Mortemer, wife of Messire Robert le Macon, Lord of Treves, a man full of years.[784] The last was only eighteen, and one would have expected her to be better acquainted with the Calendrier des Vieillards than with the formulary of matrons. It is strange with what assurance the good wives of those days undertook the solution of a problem which had appeared difficult to King Solomon in all his wisdom.

[Footnote 784: Trial, vol. iii, p. 102. Vallet de Viriville, article Le Macon, in Nouvelle biographie generale.]

Jeanne of Domremy was found to be a maid pure and intact.[785]

[Footnote 785: Trial, vol. iii, p. 210. Eberhard Windecke, p. 157. Morosini, p. 99.]

While she herself was being subjected to the interrogatories of doctors and the examination of matrons, certain clerics who had been despatched to her native province were there prosecuting an inquiry concerning her birth, her life, and her morals.[786] The ecclesiastics had been chosen from those mendicant Friars[787] who could pass freely along the highways and byways of the enemy's country without exciting the suspicion of English and Burgundians. And, indeed, they were in no way molested. From Domremy and from Vaucouleurs they brought back sure testimony to the humility, the devotion, the honesty, and the simplicity of Jeanne. But, most important, they had found no difficulty in gleaning certain pious tales, such as commonly adorned the childhood of saints. To these monks we must attribute an important share in the development of those legends of Jeanne's early years, which were so soon to become popular. From this time, apparently, dates the story that when Jeanne was in her seventh year, wolves spared her sheep, and birds of the woods came at her call and ate crumbs from her lap.[788] Such saintly flowers suggest a Franciscan origin; among them are the wolf of Gubbio and the birds preached to by Saint Francis. These mendicants may also have furnished examples of the Maid's prophetic gift. They may have spread abroad the story that, when she was at Vaucouleurs, on the day of the Battle of the Herrings, she knew of the great hurt inflicted on the French at Rouvray.[789] The success of such little stories was immediate and complete.

[Footnote 786: Trial, vol. iii, p. 82.]

[Footnote 787: Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. cxliii. Trial, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 788: Letter from Perceval de Boulainvilliers to the Duke of Milan, in the Trial, vol. v, pp. 115, 121. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 237.]

[Footnote 789: Journal du siege, p. 48. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 275.]

After this examination and inquiry, the doctors came to the following conclusions: "The King, beholding his own need and that of his realm, and considering the constant prayers to God of his poor subjects and all others who love peace and justice, ought not to repulse or reject the Maid who says that God has sent her to bring him succour, albeit these promises may be nothing[790] but the works of man; neither ought he lightly or hastily to believe in her. But, according to Holy Scripture he must try her in two ways: to wit, with human wisdom, by inquiring of her life, her morals, and her motive, as saith Saint Paul the Apostle: Probate spiritus, si ex Deo sunt; and by earnest prayer to ask for a sign of her work and her divine hope, by which to tell whether it is by God's will that she is come. Thus God commanded Ahaz that he should ask for a sign when God promised him victory, saying unto him: Pete signum a Domino; and Gideon did likewise when he asked for a sign and many others, etc. Since the coming of the said Maid, the King hath observed her in the two manners aforesaid: to wit, by trial of human wisdom and by prayer, asking God for a sign. As for the first, which is trial by human wisdom, he has tested the said Maid in her life, her origin, her morals, her intention; and has kept her near him for the space of six weeks to show her to all people, whether clerks, ecclesiastics, monks, men-at-arms, wives, widows or others. In public and in private she hath conversed with persons of all conditions. But there hath been found no evil in her, nothing but good, humility, virginity, devoutness, honesty, simplicity. Of her birth, as well as of her life, many marvellous things are related."

[Footnote 790: The word seules in the text is doubtful.]

"As for the second ordeal, the King asked her for a sign, to which she replied that before Orleans she would give it, but neither earlier nor elsewhere, for thus it is ordained of God.

"Now, seeing that the King hath made trial of the aforesaid Maid as far as it was in his power to do, that he findeth no evil in her, and that her reply is that she will give a divine sign before Orleans; seeing her persistency, and the consistency of her words, and her urgent request that she be sent to Orleans to show there that the aid she brings is divine, the King should not hinder her from going to Orleans with men-at-arms, but should send her there in due state trusting in God. For to fear her or reject her when there is no appearance of evil in her would be to rebel against the Holy Ghost, and to render oneself unworthy of divine succour, as Gamaliel said of the Apostles in the Council of the Jews."[791]

[Footnote 791: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 391, 392.]

In short, the doctors' conclusion was that as yet nothing divine appeared in the Maid's promises, but that she had been examined and been found humble, a virgin, devout, honest, simple, and wholly good; and that, since she had promised to give a sign from God before Orleans, she must be taken there, for fear that in her the gift of the Holy Ghost should be rejected.

Of these conclusions a great number of copies were made and sent to the towns of the realm as well as to the princes of Christendom. The Emperor Sigismond, for example, received a copy.[792]

[Footnote 792: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 32, 41.]

If the doctors of Poitiers had intended this six weeks inquiry, culminating in a favourable and solemn conclusion, to bring about the glorification of the Maid and the heartening of the French people by the preparation and announcement of the marvel they had before them, then they succeeded perfectly.[793]

[Footnote 793: The conclusions of the Poitiers commission were circulated everywhere. Traces of them are to be found in Brittany (Buchon and Chronique de Morosini), in Flanders (Chronique de Tournai and Chronique de Morosini), in Germany (Eb. Windecke), in Dauphine (Buchon).]

That prolonged investigation, that minute examination reassured those doubting minds among the French, who suspected a woman dressed as a man of being a devil; they flattered men's imaginations with the hope of a miracle; they appealed to all hearts to judge favourably of the damsel who came forth radiant from the fire of ordeal and appeared as if glorified with a celestial halo. Her vanquishing the doctors in argument made her seem like another Saint Catherine.[794] But that she should have met difficult questions with wise answers was not enough for a multitude eager for marvels. It was imagined that she had been subjected to a strange probation from which she had come forth by nothing short of a miracle. Thus a few weeks after the inquiry, the following wonderful story was related in Brittany and in Flanders: when at Poitiers she was preparing to receive the communion, the priest had one wafer that was consecrated and another that was not. He wanted to give her the unconsecrated wafer. She took it in her hand and told the priest that it was not the body of Christ her Redeemer, but that the body was in the wafer which the priest had covered with the corporal.[795] After that there could be no doubt that Jeanne was a great saint.

[Footnote 794: "Altra santa Catarina" (Morosini, vol. iii, p. 52). There is no doubt that here she is compared to Saint Catherine of Alexandria and not to Saint Catherine of Sienna.]

[Footnote 795: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 101.]

At the termination of the inquiries, a favourable opportunity for introducing the Maid into Orleans arrived in the beginning of April. For her arming and her accoutring she was sent first to Tours.[796]

[Footnote 796: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 66, 210.]

Sixty-six years later, an inhabitant of Poitiers, almost a hundred years old, told a young fellow-citizen that he had seen the Maid set out for Orleans on horseback, in white armour.[797] He pointed to the very stone from which she had mounted her horse in the corner of the Rue Saint-Etienne. Now, when Jeanne was at Poitiers, she was not in armour. But the people of Poitou had named the stone "the Maid's mounting stone." With what a glad eager step the Saint must have leapt from that stone on to the horse which was to carry her away from those furred cats to the afflicted and oppressed whom she was longing to succour.[798]

[Footnote 797: Jean Bouchet, Annales d'Aquitaine, in the Trial, vol. iv, pp. 536, 537.]

[Footnote 798: Guilbert, Histoire des villes de France, vol. iv, Poitiers. Cf. B. Ledain, La Maison de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Saint-Maixent, 1892, in 8vo. According to M. Ledain the Hotel de la Rose was on the spot now occupied by a house, number 13 in La Rue Notre-Dame-la-Petite.]

IX. THE MAID AT TOURS

At Tours the Maid lodged in the house of a dame commonly called Lapau.[799] She was Eleonore de Paul, a woman of Anjou, who had been lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie of Anjou. Married to Jean du Puy, Lord of La Roche-Saint-Quentin, Councillor of the Queen of Sicily, she had remained in the service of the Queen of France.[800]

[Footnote 799: Trial, vol. iii, p. 66.]

[Footnote 800: Vallet de Viriville, Notices et extraits de chartes et de manuscrits appartenant au British Museum de Londres, in the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. viii, pp. 139, 140.]

The town of Tours belonged to the Queen of Sicily, who grew richer and richer as her son-in-law grew poorer and poorer. She aided him with money and with lands. In 1424, the duchy of Touraine with all its dependencies, except the castellany of Chinon, had come into her possession.[801] The burgesses and commonalty of Tours earnestly desired peace. Meanwhile they made every effort to escape from pillage at the hands of men-at-arms. Neither King Charles nor Queen Yolande was able to defend them, so they must needs defend themselves.[802] When the town watchmen announced the approach of one of those marauding chiefs who were ravaging Touraine and Anjou, the citizens shut their gates and saw to it that the culverins were in their places. Then there was a parley: the captain from the brink of the moat maintained that he was in the King's service and on his way to fight the English; he asked for a night's rest in the town for himself and his men. From the heights of the ramparts he was politely requested to pass on; and, in case he should be tempted to force an entry, a sum of money was offered him.[803] Thus the citizens fleeced themselves for fear of being robbed. In like manner, only a few days before Jeanne's coming, they had given the Scot, Kennedy, who was ravaging the district, two hundred livres to go on. When they had got rid of their defenders, their next care was to fortify themselves against the English. On the 29th of February of this same year, 1429, these citizens lent one hundred crowns to Captain La Hire, who was then doing his best for Orleans. And even on the approach of the English they consented to receive forty archers belonging to the company of the Sire de Bueil, only on condition that Bueil should lodge in the castle with twenty men, and that the others should be quartered in the inns, where they were to have nothing without paying for it. Thus it was or was not; and the Sire de Bueil went off to defend Orleans.[804]

[Footnote 801: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 77.]

[Footnote 802: Vallet de Viriville, Analyse et fragments tires des Archives municipales de Tours in Cabinet historique, vol. v, pp. 102-121.]

[Footnote 803: Quicherat, Rodrigue de Villandrando, Paris, 1879, in 8vo, pp. 14 et seq.]

[Footnote 804: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, Introduction, p. xxii, note 1.]

In Jean du Puy's house, Jeanne was visited by an Augustinian monk, one Jean Pasquerel. He was returning from the town of Puy-en-Velay where he had met Isabelle Romee and certain of those who had conducted Jeanne to the King.[805]

[Footnote 805: Trial, vol. iii, p. 101.]

In this town, in the sanctuary of Anis, was preserved an image of the Mother of God, brought from Egypt by Saint Louis. It was of great antiquity and highly venerated, for the prophet Jeremiah had with his own hands carved it out of sycamore wood in the semblance of the virgin yet to be born, whom he had seen in a vision.[806] In holy week, pilgrims flocked from all parts of France and of Europe,--nobles, clerks, men-at-arms, citizens and peasants; and many, for penance or through poverty, came on foot, staff in hand, begging their bread from door to door. Merchants of all kinds betook themselves thither; and it was at once the most popular of pilgrimages and one of the richest fairs in the world. All round the town the stream of travellers overflowed from the road on to vineyards, meadows, and gardens. On the day of the Festival, in the year 1407, two hundred persons perished, crushed to death in the throng.[807]

[Footnote 806: Francisque Mandet, Histoire du Velay, Le Puy, 1860-1862 (7 vols. in 12mo), vol. i, pp. 590 et seq. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. xii.]

[Footnote 807: Jean Juvenal des Ursins, 1407.]

In certain years the feast of the conception of Our Lord fell on the same day as that of his death; and thus there coincided the promise and the fulfilment of the promise of the greatest of mysteries. Then Holy Friday became still holier. It was called Great Friday, and on that day such as entered the sanctuary of Anis received plenary indulgence. On that day the crowd of pilgrims was greater than usual. Now, in the year 1429, Good Friday fell on the 25th of March, the day of the Annunciation.[808]

[Footnote 808: Nicole de Savigni, Notes sur les exploits de Jeanne d'Arc et sur divers evenements de son temps, in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris, 1, 1874, p. 43. Chanoine Lucot, Jeanne d'Arc en Champagne, Chalons, 1880, pp. 12, 13.]

There is, therefore, nothing extraordinary in Brother Pasquerel's meeting Jeanne's relatives at Puy during Holy Week. That a peasant woman should travel two hundred and fifty miles on foot, through a country infested with soldiers and other robbers, in a season of snows and mist, to obtain an indulgence, was an every-day matter if we remember the surname which had for long been hers.[809] This was not La Romee's first pilgrimage. As we do not know which members of the Maid's escort the good Brother met, we are at liberty to conjecture that Bertrand de Poulengy was among them. We know little about him, but his speech would suggest that he was a devout person.[810]

[Footnote 809: Trial, vol. i, p. 191; vol. ii, p. 74, note. La Romee may have received her surname for an entirely different reason. Most of our knowledge of Jeanne's mother is derived from documents of very doubtful authenticity.]

[Footnote 810: Francis C. Lowell considers the idea of La Romee's pilgrimage to Puy as a "characteristic example of the madness" of Simeon Luce (Joan of Arc, Boston, 1896, in 8vo, p. 72, note). Nevertheless, after considerable hesitation, I, like Luce, have rejected the corrections proposed by Lebrun de Charmettes and Quicherat, and adopted unamended the text of the Trial.]

Jeanne's comrades, having made friends with Pasquerel, said to him: "You must go with us to Jeanne. We will not leave you until you have taken us to her." They travelled together. Brother Pasquerel went with them to Chinon, which Jeanne had left; then he went on to Tours, where his convent was.

The Augustinians, who claimed to have received their rule from St. Francis himself, wore the grey habit of the Franciscans. It was from their order that in the previous year the King had chosen a chaplain for his young son, the Dauphin Louis. Brother Pasquerel held the office of reader (lector) in his monastery.[811] He was in priest's orders. Quite young doubtless and of a wandering disposition, like many mendicant monks of those days, he had a taste for the miraculous, and was excessively credulous.

[Footnote 811: Trial, vol. iii, p. 101. For the meaning of Lector, professor of theology, cf. Du Cange.]

Jeanne's comrades said to her: "Jeanne, we have brought you this good father. You will like him well when you know him."

She replied: "The good father pleases me. I have already heard tell of him, and even to-morrow will I confess to him." The next day the good father heard her in confession, and chanted mass before her. He became her chaplain, and never left her.[812]

[Footnote 812: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 101 et seq.]

In the fifteenth century Tours was one of the chief manufacturing towns of the kingdom. The inhabitants excelled in all kinds of trades. They wove tissues of silk, of gold, and of silver. They manufactured coats of mail; and, while not competing with the armourers of Milan, of Nuremberg, and of Augsburg, they were skilled in the forging and hammering of steel.[813] Here it was that, by the King's command, the master armourer made Jeanne a suit of mail.[814] The suit he furnished was of wrought iron; and, according to the custom of that time, consisted of a helmet, a cuirass in four parts, with epaulets, armlets, elbow-pieces, fore-armlets, gauntlets, cuisses, knee-pieces, greaves and shoes.[815] The maker had doubtless no thought of accentuating the feminine figure. But the armour of that period, full in the bust, slight in the waist, with broad skirts beneath the corselet, in its slender grace and curious slimness, always has the air of a woman's armour, and seems made for Queen Penthesilea or for the Roman Camilla. The Maid's armour was white and unadorned, if one may judge from its modest price of one hundred livres tournois. The two suits of mail, made at the same time by the same armourer for Jean de Metz and his comrade, were together worth one hundred and twenty-five livres tournois.[816] Possibly one of the skilful and renowned drapers of Tours took the Maid's measure for a houppelande or loose coat in silk or cloth of gold or silver, such as captains wore over the cuirass. To look well, the coat, which was open in front, must be cut in scallops that would float round the horseman as he rode. Jeanne loved fine clothes but still more fine horses.[817]

[Footnote 813: E. Giraudet, Histoire de la ville de Tours, Tours, 1874, 2 vols. in 8vo, passim.]

[Footnote 814: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 67, 94, 210; vol. iv, pp. 3, 301, 363.]

[Footnote 815: J. Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, Paris, 1875, large 8vo, pp. 270, 271.]

[Footnote 816: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 67, 94, 210. Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, p. 60. "The white armour of fifteenth century soldiers, simple as it was, was expensive; it cost about ten thousand francs of our present money. But the complete horse's armour was included in this" (Maurice Maindron, Pour l'histoire de l'armure, in Le monde moderne, 1896). According to the calculation of P. Clement (Jacques Coeur et Charles VII, 1873, p. lxvi), 100 livres would be equal to 4000 francs of present money.]

[Footnote 817: Trial, vol. i, p. 76. Letter from Perceval de Boulainvilliers, ibid., vol. v, p. 120. Greffier de la Chambre des comptes of Brabant, ibid., vol. iv, p. 428. Le Fevre de Saint-Remy, ibid., p. 439.]

The King invited her to choose a horse from his stables. If we may believe a certain Latin poet, she selected an animal of illustrious origin, but very old. It was a war horse, which Pierre de Beauvau, Governor of Maine and Anjou, had given to one of the King's two brothers; who had both been dead, the one thirteen years, the other twelve.[818] This steed, or another, was brought to Lapau's house and the Duke of Alencon went to see it. The horse must likewise be accoutred, it must be furnished with a chanfrin to protect its head and one of those wooden saddles with broad pommels which seemed to encase the rider.[819] A shield was out of the question. Since chain-armour, which was not proof against blows, had been succeeded by that plate-armour, on which nothing could make an impression, they had ceased to be used save in pageants. As for the sword,--the noblest part of her accoutrement and the bright symbol of strength joined to loyalty,--Jeanne refused to take that from the royal armourer; she was resolved to receive it from the hand of Saint Catherine herself.

[Footnote 818: Anonymous poem in the Trial, vol. v, p. 38 and note.]

[Footnote 819: Capitaine Champion, Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere, pp. 146 et seq.]

We know that on her coming into France she had stopped at Fierbois and heard three masses in Saint Catherine's chapel.[820] Therein the Virgin of Alexandria had many swords, without counting the one Charles Martel was said to have given her, and which it would not have been easy to find again. A good Touranian in Touraine, Saint Catherine was an Armagnac ever on the side of those who fought for the Dauphin Charles. When captains and soldiers of fortune stood in danger of death, or were prisoners in the hands of their enemies, she was the saint they most willingly invoked; for they knew she wished them well. She did not save them all, but she aided many. They came to render her thanks; and as a sign of gratitude they offered her their armour, so that her chapel looked like an armoury.[821] The walls bristled with swords; and, as gifts had been flowing in for half a century, ever since the days of King Charles V, the sacristans were probably in the habit of taking down the old weapons to make room for the new, hoarding the old steel in some store-house until an opportunity arrived for selling it.[822] Saint Catherine could not refuse a sword to the damsel, whom she loved so dearly that every day and every hour she came down from Paradise to see and talk with her on earth,--a maiden who in return had shown her devotion by travelling to Fierbois to do the Saint reverence. For we must not omit to state that Saint Catherine in company with Saint Margaret had never ceased to appear to Jeanne both at Chinon and at Tours. She was present at all those secret assemblies, which the Maid called sometimes her Council but oftener her Voices, doubtless because they appealed more to her ears and her mind than to her eyes, despite the burst of light which sometimes dazzled her, and notwithstanding the crowns she was able to discern on the heads of the saints. The Voices indicated one sword among the multitude of those in the Chapel at Fierbois. Messire Richard Kyrthrizian and Brother Gille Lecourt, both of them priests, were then custodians of the chapel. Such is the title they assumed when they signed the accounts of miracles worked by their saint. Jeanne in a letter caused them to be asked for the sword, which had been revealed to her. In the letter she said that it would be found underground, not very deep down, and behind the altar. At least these were all the directions she was able to give afterwards, and then she could not quite remember whether it was behind the altar or in front. Was she able to give the custodians of the chapel any signs by which to recognise the sword? She never explained this point, and her letter is lost.[823]

[Footnote 820: Trial, vol. i, pp. 56, 75, 76, 77.]

[Footnote 821: Abbe Bourasse, Les miracles de madame sainte Katerine de Fierboys en Touraine (1375-1446), Tours, 1858, in 8vo, passim.]

[Footnote 822: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 277. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 69.]

[Footnote 823: Trial, vol. i, p. 77. Les miracles de madame sainte Katerine, passim.]

It is certain, however, that she believed the sword had been shown to her in a vision and in no other manner. An armourer of Touraine, whom she did not know (afterwards she maintained that she had never seen him), was appointed to carry the letter to Fierbois. The custodians of the chapel gave him a sword marked with five crosses, or with five little swords on the blade, not far from the hilt. In what part of the chapel had they found it? No one knows. A contemporary says it was in a coffer with some old iron. If it had been buried and hidden it was not very long before, because the rust could easily be removed by rubbing. The priests were careful to offer it to the Maid with great ceremony[824] before giving it to the armourer who had come for it. They enclosed it in a sheath of red velvet, embroidered with the royal flowers de luce. When Jeanne received it she recognised it to be the one revealed to her in a celestial vision and promised her by her Voices, and she failed not to let the little company of monks and soldiers who surrounded her know that it was so. This they took to be a good omen and a sign of victory.[825] To protect Saint Catherine's sword the priests of the town gave her a second sheath; this one was of black cloth. Jeanne had a third made of very tough leather.[826]

[Footnote 824: Trial, vol. i, pp. 76, 234, 236. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 277. Journal du siege, p. 49. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 69, 70. Guerneri Berni, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 519. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 267. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 109. Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, pp. 337, 338. Chronique Messine, edition Bouteiller, 1878, Orleans, in 8vo, 26 pages.]

[Footnote 825: Trial, vol. i, pp. 75, 235.]

[Footnote 826: Ibid., p. 76.]

The story of the sword spread far and wide and was elaborated by many a curious fable. It was said to be the sword of the great Charles Martel, long buried and forgotten. Many believed it had belonged to Alexander and the knights of those ancient days. Every one thought well of it and esteemed it likely to bring good fortune. When the English and the Burgundians heard tell of the matter, there soon occurred to them the idea that the Maid had discovered what was hidden beneath the earth by taking counsel of demons; or they suspected her of having herself craftily hidden the sword in the place she had indicated in order to deceive princes, clergy, and people. They wondered anxiously whether those five crosses were not signs of the devil.[827] Thus there began to arise conflicting illusions, according to which Jeanne appeared either saint or sorceress.[828]

[Footnote 827: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 108, 109. Chronique de Lorraine, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 332. Eberhard Windecke, p. 101. Cf. Journal du siege, p. 49.]

[Footnote 828: Jean Chartier, vol. i, p. 122.]

The King had given her no command. Acting according to the counsel of the doctors, he did not hinder her from going to Orleans with men-at-arms. He even had her taken there in state in order that she might give the promised sign. He granted her men to conduct her, not for her to conduct. How could she have conducted them since she did not know the way? Meanwhile she had a standard made according to the command of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who had said: "Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven!" It was of a coarse white cloth, or buckram, edged with silk fringe. At the bidding of her Voices, Jeanne caused a painter of the town to represent on it what she called "the World,"[829] that is, Our Lord seated upon his throne, blessing with his right hand, and in his left holding the globe of the world. On his right and on his left were angels, both painted as they were in churches, and presenting Our Lord with flowers de luce. Above or on one side were the names Jhesus--Maria, and the background was strewn with the royal lilies in gold.[830] She also had a coat-of-arms painted: on an azure shield a silver dove, holding in its beak a scroll on which was written: "De par le Roi du Ciel."[831] This coat-of-arms she had painted on the reverse of the standard bearing on the front the picture of Our Lord. A servant of the Duke of Alencon, Perceval de Cagny, says that she ordered to be made another and a smaller standard, a banner, on which was the picture of Our Lady receiving the angel's salutation. The Tours painter Jeanne employed came from Scotland and was called Hamish Power. He provided the material and executed the paintings of the two escutcheons, of the small one as well as of the large. For this he received from the keeper of the war treasury twenty-five livres tournois.[832] Hamish Power had a daughter, Heliote by name, who was about to be married and to whom Jeanne afterwards showed kindness.[833]

[Footnote 829: Trial, vol. i, pp. 77, 179, 236; vol. iii, p. 103.]

[Footnote 830: Ibid., pp. 78, 117.]

[Footnote 831: Ibid., pp. 78, 117, 181, 300. Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, p. 338. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 110; vol. iv, supplement, xv, pp. 313, 315.]

[Footnote 832: Perceval de Cagny, p. 150. Journal du siege, p. 76. Relation du greffier d'Albi, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 301. Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, p. 338. Chronique du doyen de Saint-Thibaud de Metz, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 322. Extract from the thirteenth account of Hemon Raguier, in the Trial, vol. v, p. 258.]

[Footnote 833: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 65; Un episode de la vie de Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. iv, first series, p. 488.]

The standard was the signal for rallying. For long only kings, emperors, and leaders in war had had the right of raising it. The feudal suzerain had it carried before him; vassals ranged themselves beneath their lord's banners. But in 1429 banners had ceased to be used save in corporations, guilds, and parishes, borne only before the armies of peace. In war they were no longer needed. The meanest captain, the poorest knight had his own standard. When fifty French men-at-arms went forth from Orleans against a handful of English marauders, a crowd of banners like a swarm of butterflies waved over the fields. "To raise one's standard" came to be a figure of speech for "to be puffed up."[834] So indeed it was permissible for a freebooter to raise his standard when he commanded scarce a score of men-at-arms and half-naked bowmen. Even if Jeanne, as she may have done, held her standard to be a sign of sovereign command, and if, having received it from the King of Heaven, she thought to raise it above all others, was there a soul in the realm to say her nay? What had become of all those feudal banners which for eighty years had been in the vanguard of defeat; sown over the fields of Crecy; collected beneath bushes and hedges by Welsh and Cornish swordsmen; lost in the vineyards of Maupertuis, trampled underfoot by English archers on the soft earth into which sank the corpses of Azincourt; gathered in handfuls under the walls of Verneuil by Bedford's marauders? It was because all these banners had miserably fallen, it was because at Rouvray a prince of the blood royal had shamefully trailed his nobles' banners in flight, that the peasant now raised her banner.

[Footnote 834: In Beaudouin de Sebourg (xx, 249) is the passage:

_Il est cousin au conte Il en fait estandart_

quoted by Godefroy. Cf. La Curne and Littre.]

Chapter X

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

Since the terrible and ridiculous discomfiture of the King's men in the Battle of the Herrings, the citizens of Orleans had lost all faith in their defenders.[835] Their minds agitated, suspicious and credulous were possessed by phantoms of fear and wrath. Suddenly and without reason they believe themselves betrayed. One day it is announced that a hole big enough for a man to pass through has been made in the town wall just where it skirts the outbuildings of the Aumone.[836] A crowd of people hasten to the spot; they see the hole and a piece of the wall which had been restored, with two loop-holes; they fail to understand, and think themselves sold and betrayed into the enemy's hands; they rave and break forth into howls, and seek the priest in charge of the hospital to tear him to pieces.[837] A few days after, on Holy Thursday, a similar rumour is spread abroad: traitors are about to deliver up the town into the hands of the English. The folk seize their weapons; soldiers, burgesses, villeins mount guard on the outworks, on the walls and in the streets. On the morrow, the day after that on which the panic had originated, fear still possesses them.[838]

[Footnote 835: "Pourquoy la Hire, Poton et plusieurs autres vaillants hommes qui moult enviz s'en alloient ainsi honteusement," Journal du siege, p. 42.]

[Footnote 836: The hospital of Orleans, close to the cathedral.]

[Footnote 837: 9 March. Journal du siege, pp. 56, 57.]

[Footnote 838: Journal du siege, p. 64.]

In the beginning of March the besiegers saw approaching the Norman vassals, summoned by the Regent. But they were only six hundred and twenty-nine lances all told, and they were only bound to serve for twenty-six days. Under the leadership of Scales, Pole, and Talbot, the English continued the investment works as best they could.[839] On the 10th of March, two and a half miles east of the city, they occupied without opposition the steep slope of Saint-Loup and began to erect a bastion there, which should command the upper river and the two roads from Gien and Pithiviers, at the point where they meet near the Burgundian gate.[840] On the 20th of March they completed the bastion named London, on the road to Mans. Between the 9th and 15th of April two new bastions were erected towards the west, Rouen nine hundred feet east of London, Paris nine hundred feet from Rouen. About the 20th they fortified Saint-Jean-le-Blanc across the Loire and established a watch to guard the crossing of the river.[841] This was but little in comparison with what remained to be done, and they were short of men; for they had less than three thousand round the town. Wherefore they fell upon the peasants. Now that the season for tending the vines was drawing near, the country folk went forth into the fields thinking only of the land; but the English lay in wait for them, and when they had taken them prisoners, set them to work.[842]

[Footnote 839: Boucher de Molandon, L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc, ch. ii. Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise, pp. 60, 107, 110, 112.]

[Footnote 840: Journal du siege, pp. 57, 58. Abbe Dubois, Histoire du siege, dissertation vi.]

[Footnote 841: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 265, 267. Morosini, vol. iv, supplement xiii.]

[Footnote 842: Journal du siege, p. 58.]

In the opinion of those most skilled in the arts of war, these bastions were worthless. They were furnished with no stabling for horses. They could not be built near enough to render assistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. In short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the English reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. The Sire de Bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[843] In fact it was so easy to pass through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking cattle to the besieged. There entered into the town, on the 7th of March, six horses loaded with herrings; on the 15th, six horses with powder; on the 29th, cattle and victuals; on the 2nd of April, nine fat oxen and horses; on the 5th, one hundred and one pigs and six fat oxen; on the 9th, seventeen pigs, horses, sucking-pigs, and corn; on the 13th, coins with which to pay the garrison; on the 16th, cattle and victuals; on the 23rd, powder and victuals. And more than once the besieged had carried off, in the very faces of the English, victuals and ammunition destined for the besiegers and including casks of wine, game, horses, bows, forage, and even twenty-six head of large cattle.[844]

[Footnote 843: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. xxii; vol. ii, p. 44.]

[Footnote 844: Journal du siege, pp. 56, 62.]

The siege was costing the English dear,--forty thousand livres tournois a month.[845] They were short of money; they were obliged to resort to the most irritating expedients. By a decree of the 3rd of March King Henry had recently ordered all his officers in Normandy to lend him one quarter of their pay.[846] In their huts of wood and earth, the men-at-arms, who had endured much from the cold, now began to suffer hunger.

[Footnote 845: Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise, pp. 50, 58.]

[Footnote 846: Pierre Sureau's account in Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise, proofs and illustrations, no. vi, pp. 45, 46.]

The wasted fields of La Beauce, of l'Ile-de-France, and of Normandy could furnish them with no great store of sheep or oxen. Their food was bad, their drink worse. The vintage of 1427 had been bad, that of the following year was poor and weak--more like sour grapes than wine.[847] Now an old English author has written of the soldiers of his country:

"They want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves: Either they must be dieted like mules And have their provender tied to their mouths Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice."[848]

[Footnote 847: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 221, 222 et seq.]

[Footnote 848: Shakespeare, Henry VI, part i, act i, scene ii. According to M. G. Duval the first part of this play was adapted from one of Shakespeare's predecessors.]

A sudden humiliation still further weakened the English. Captain Poton de Saintrailles and the two magistrates, Guyon du Fosse and Jean de Saint-Avy, who had gone on an embassy to the Duke of Burgundy, returned to Orleans on the 17th of April. The Duke had granted their request and consented to take the town under his protection. But the Regent, to whom the offer had been made, would not have it thus.

He replied that he would be very sorry if after he had beaten the bush another should go off with the nestlings.[849] Therefore the offer was rejected. Nevertheless the embassy had been by no means useless, and it was something to have raised a new cause of quarrel between the Duke and the Regent. The ambassadors returned accompanied by a Burgundian herald who blew his trumpet in the English camp, and, in the name of his master, commanded all combatants who owed allegiance to the Duke to raise the siege. Some hundreds of archers and men-at-arms, Burgundians, men of Picardy and of Champagne, departed forthwith.[850]

[Footnote 849: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 65.]

[Footnote 850: Journal du siege, pp. 69, 70. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 270. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 317 et seq. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 19, 20, 21; vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 311. Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise, pp. 68 et seq. Boucher de Molandon, L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc, p. 145.]

On the next day, at four o'clock in the morning, the citizens emboldened and deeming the opportunity a good one, attacked the camp of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils. They slew the watch and entered the camp, where they found piles of money, robes of martin, and a goodly store of weapons. Absorbed in pillage, they paid no heed to defending themselves and were surprised by the enemy, who in great force had hastened to the place. They fled pursued by the English who slew many. On that day the town resounded with the lamentations of women weeping for a father, a husband, a brother, kinsmen.[851]

[Footnote 851: Journal du siege, p. 70.]

Within those walls, in a space where there was room for not more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, forty thousand[852] were huddled together, one vast multitude agonised by all manner of suffering; depressed by domestic sorrow; racked with anxiety; maddened by constant danger and perpetual panic. Although the wars of those days were not so sanguinary as they became later, the sallies of the inhabitants of Orleans were the occasion of constant and considerable loss of life. Since the middle of March the English bullets had fallen more into the centre of the town; and they were not always harmless. On the eve of Palm Sunday one stone, fired from a mortar, killed or wounded five persons; another, seven.[853] Many of the inhabitants, like the provost, Alain Du Bey, died of fatigue or of the infected air.[854]

[Footnote 852: Jollois, Histoire du siege, part vi, ch. i. Abbe Dubois, Histoire du siege, dissertation ix. Loiseleur, Compte des depenses de Charles VII, ch. v. Lottin, Recherches historiques sur la ville d'Orleans, vol. ii, p. 205. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 25, note 2.]

[Footnote 853: Journal du siege, p. 64.]

[Footnote 854: Ibid., p. 59.]

In the Christendom of those days all men were taught to believe that earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence are punishments for wrong-doing. Charles, the Fair Duke of Orleans, good Christian that he was, held that great sorrows had come upon France as chastisement for her sins, to wit: swelling pride, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust, and neglect of justice, which were rife in the realm; and in a ballad he discoursed of the evil and its remedy.[855] The people of Orleans firmly believed that this war was sent to them of God to punish sinners, who had worn out his patience. They were aware both of the cause of their sorrows and of the means of remedying them. Such was the teaching of the good friars preachers; and, as Duke Charles put it in his ballad, the remedy was to live well, to amend one's life, to have masses said and sung for the souls of those who had suffered death in the service of the realm, to renounce the sinful life, and to ask forgiveness of Our Lady and the saints.[856] This remedy had been adopted by the people of Orleans. They had had masses said in the Church of Sainte-Croix for the souls of nobles, captains, and men-at-arms killed in their service, and especially for those who had died a piteous death in the Battle of the Herrings. They had offered candles to Our Lady and to the patron saints of the town, and had carried the shrine of Saint-Aignan round the walls.[857]

[Footnote 855: Charles d'Orleans, Poesies, edited by A. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1842, in 8vo, p. 176.]

[Footnote 856: Miniature in the MS. of the poems of Charles d'Orleans, in the British Museum, Royal 16 F. ii, fol. 73 v'o.]

[Footnote 857: Journal du siege, p. 43. Symphorien Guyon, Histoire de la ville d'Orleans, vol. ii, p. 43.]

Every time they felt themselves in great danger, they brought it forth from the Church of Sainte-Croix, carried it in grand procession round the town and over the ramparts,[858] then, having brought it back to the cathedral, they listened to a sermon preached in the porch by a good monk chosen by the magistrates.[859] They said prayers in public and resolved to amend their lives. Wherefore they believed that in Paradise Saint Euverte and Saint-Aignan, touched by their piety, must be interceding for them with Our Lord; and they thought they could hear the voices of the two pontiffs. Saint Euverte was saying, "All-powerful Father, I pray and entreat thee to save the city of Orleans. It is mine. I was its bishop. I am its patron saint. Deliver it not up to its enemies."

[Footnote 858: Chronique de la fete, in the Trial, vol. v, p. 297.]

[Footnote 859: Accounts of the Commune, passim, in Journal du siege, pp. 210 et seq.]

Then afterwards spoke Saint-Aignan: "Give peace to the people of Orleans. Father, thou who by the mouth of a child didst appoint me their shepherd, grant that they fall not into the hands of the enemy."

The inhabitants of Orleans expected that the Lord would not at once answer the prayers of the two confessors. Knowing the sternness of his judgments they feared lest he would reply: "For their sins are the French people justly chastised. They suffer because of their disobedience to Holy Church. From the least to the greatest in the realm each vies with the other in evil-doing. The husbandmen, citizens, lawyers and priests are hard and avaricious; the princes, dukes and noble lords are proud, vain, cursers, swearers, and traitors. The corruptness of their lives infects the air. It is just that they suffer chastisement."

That the Lord should speak thus must be expected, because he was angry and because the people of Orleans had greatly sinned. But now, behold, Our Lady, she who loves the King of the Lilies, prays for him and for the Duke of Orleans to the Son, whose pleasure it is to do her will in all things: "My Son, with all my heart I entreat thee to drive the English from the land of France; they have no right to it. If they take Orleans, then they will take the rest at their pleasure. Suffer it not, O my Son, I beseech thee." And Our Lord, at the prayer of his holy Mother, forgives the French and consents to save them.[860]

[Footnote 860: Mistere du siege, lines 6964 et seq.]

Thus in those days, according to their ideas of the spiritual world, did men represent even the councils of Paradise. There were folk not a few, and those not unlearned, who believed that as the result of these councils Our Lord had sent his Archangel to the shepherdess. And it might even be possible that he would save the kingdom by the hand of a woman. Is it not in the weak things of the world that he maketh his power manifest?

Did he not allow the child David to overthrow the giant Goliath, and did he not deliver into the hands of Judith the head of Holophernes? In Orleans itself was it not by the mouth of a babe that he had caused to be named that shepherd who was to deliver the besieged town from Attila?[861]

[Footnote 861: Aug. Theiner, Saint Aignan ou le siege d'Orleans par Attila, notice historique suivie de la vie de ce saint, tiree des MSS. de la Bibliotheque du Roi, Paris, 1832, in 8vo.]

The Lord of Villars and Messire Jamet du Tillay, having returned from Chinon, reported that they had with their own eyes seen the Maid; and they told of the marvels of her coming. They related how she had travelled far, fording rivers, passing by many towns and villages held by the English, as well as through those French lands wherein were rife pillage and all manner of evils. Then they went on to tell how, when she was taken to the King, she had spoken fair words to him as she curtsied, saying: "Gentle Dauphin, God sends me to help and succour you. Give me soldiers, for by grace divine and by force of arms, I will raise the siege of Orleans and then lead you to your anointing at Reims, according as God hath commanded me, for it is his will that the English return to their country and leave in peace your kingdom which shall remain unto you. Or, if they do not quit the land, then will God cause them to perish." Further, they told how, interrogated by certain prelates, knights, squires, and doctors in law, her bearing had been found honest and her words wise. They extolled her piety, her candour, that simplicity which testified that God dwelt with her, and that skill in managing a horse and wielding weapons which caused all men to marvel.[862]

[Footnote 862: Journal du siege, p. 46. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 278. Jean Chartier, Chronique, p. 66.]

At the end of March, tidings came, that, taken to Poitiers, she had there been examined by doctors and famous masters, and had replied to them with an assurance equal to that of Saint Catherine before the doctors at Alexandria. Because her words were good and her promises sure, it was said that the King, trusting in her, had caused her to be armed in order that she might go to Orleans, where she would soon appear, riding on a white horse, wearing at her side the sword of Saint Catherine and holding in her hand the standard she had received from the King of Heaven.[863]

[Footnote 863: Journal du siege, pp. 47, 48. P. Mantellier, Histoire du siege, pp. 61 et seq.]

To the ecclesiastics what was told of Jeanne seemed marvellous but not incredible, since parallel instances were to be found in sacred history, which was all the history they knew. To those who were lettered among them their erudition furnished fewer reasons for denial than for doubt or belief. Those who were simple frankly wondered at these things.

Certain of the captains, and certain even of the people, treated them with derision. But by so doing they ran the risk of ill usage. The inhabitants of the city believed in the Maid as firmly as in Our Lord. From her they expected help and deliverance. They summoned her in a kind of mystic ecstasy and religious frenzy. The fever of the siege had become the fever of the Maid.[864]

[Footnote 864: Journal du siege, p. 77.]

Nevertheless, the use made of her by the King's men proved that, following the counsel of the theologians, they were determined to adopt only such methods as were prompted by human prudence. She was to enter the town with a convoy of victuals, then being prepared at Blois by order of the King assisted by the Queen of Sicily.[865] In all the loyal provinces a new effort was being made for the relief and deliverance of the brave city. Gien, Bourges, Blois, Chateaudun, Tours sent men and victuals; Angers, Poitiers, La Rochelle, Albi, Moulins, Montpellier, Clermont sulphur, saltpetre, steel, and arms.[866] And if the citizens of Toulouse gave nothing it was because their city, as the notables consulted by the capitouls[867] ingenuously declared, had nothing to give--non habebat de quibus.[868]

[Footnote 865: Trial, vol. iii, p. 93. Geste des nobles, in La chronique de la Pucelle, p. 250. The Accounts of fortresses (1428-1430), in Boucher de Molandon, Premiere expedition de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 30 et seq.]

[Footnote 866: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 287. Journal du siege, p. 81. Boucher de Molandon, Premiere expedition de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 28, 29. P. Mantellier, Histoire du siege, p. 230.]

[Footnote 867: The name by which the town councillors of Toulouse were called.]

[Footnote 868: Le siege d'Orleans, Jeanne d'Arc et les capitouls de Toulouse, by A. Thomas, in Annales du Midi, 1889, p. 232. It would appear that Saint-Flour, although solicited, did not contribute: it had enough to do to defend itself from the freebooters who were constantly hovering round. Cf. Villandrando et les ecorcheurs a Saint-Flour by M. Boudet, Clermont-Ferrand, 1895, in 8vo, pp. 18 et seq.]

The King's councillors, notably my Lord Regnault de Chartres, Chancellor of the Realm, were forming a new army. What they had failed to accomplish, by means of the men of Auvergne, they would now attempt with troops from Anjou and Le Mans. The Queen of Sicily, Duchess of Touraine and Anjou, willingly lent her aid. Were Orleans taken she would be in danger of losing lands by which she set great store. Therefore she spared neither men, money, nor victuals. After the middle of April, a citizen of Angers, one Jean Langlois, brought letters informing the magistrates of the imminent arrival of the corn she had contributed. The town gave Jean Langlois a present, and the magistrates entertained him at dinner at the Ecu Saint-Georges. This corn was a part of that large convoy which the Maid was to accompany.[869]

[Footnote 869: Receipts of the town of Orleans in 1429, in Boucher de Molandon, Premiere expedition de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 36.]

Towards the end of the month, by order of my Lord the Bastard, the captains of the French garrisons of La Beauce and Gatinais, betook themselves to the town to reinforce the army of Blois, the arrival of which was announced. On the 28th, there entered my Lord Florent d'Illiers,[870] Governor of Chateaudun, with four hundred fighting men.[871]

[Footnote 870: Florent d'Illiers, descended from an old family of the Chartres country, had married Jeanne, daughter of Jean de Coutes and sister of the little page whom the Sire de Gaucourt had given the Maid (A. de Villaret).]

[Footnote 871: Journal du siege, p. 73. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 278.]

What was to become of Orleans? The siege, badly conducted, was causing the English the most grievous disappointments. Further, their captains perceived they would never succeed in taking the town by means of those bastions, between which anything, either men, victuals, or ammunition, could pass, and with an army miserably quartered in mud hovels, ravaged by disease, and reduced by desertions to three thousand, or at the most to three thousand two hundred men. They had lost nearly all their horses. Far from being able to continue the attack it was hard for them to maintain the defensive and to hold out in those miserable wooden towers, which, as Le Jouvencel said, were more profitable to the besieged than to the besiegers.[872]

[Footnote 872: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 44.]

Their only hope, and that an uncertain and distant one, lay in the reinforcements, which the Regent was gathering with great difficulty.[873] Meanwhile, time seemed to drag in the besieged town. The warriors who defended it were brave, but they had come to the end of their resources and knew not what more to do. The citizens were good at keeping guard, but they would not face fire. They did not suspect the miserable condition to which the besiegers had been reduced. Hardship, anxiety, and an infected atmosphere depressed their spirits. Already they seemed to see Les Coues taking the town by storm, killing, pillaging, and ravaging. At every moment they believed themselves betrayed. They were not calm and self-possessed enough to recognise the enormous advantages of their situation. The town's means of communication, whereby it could be indefinitely reinforced and revictualled, were still open. Besides, a relieving army, well in advance of that of the English, was on the point of arriving. It was bringing a goodly drove of cattle, as well as men and ammunition enough to capture the English fortresses in a few days.

[Footnote 873: Jarry, Le compte de l'armee anglaise, pp. 75 et seq.]

With this army the King was sending the Maid who had been promised.

Chapter XI

THE MAID AT BLOIS--THE LETTER TO THE ENGLISH--THE DEPARTURE FOR ORLEANS

With an escort of soldiers of fortune the Maid reached Blois at the same time as my Lord Regnault de Chartres, Chancellor of France, and the Sire de Gaucourt, Governor of Orleans.[874] She was in the domain of the Prince, whom it was her great desire to deliver: the people of Blois owed allegiance to Duke Charles, a prisoner in the hands of the English. Merchants were bringing cows, rams, ewes, herds of swine, grain, powder and arms into the town.[875] The Admiral, De Culant, and the Lord Ambroise de Lore had come from Orleans to superintend the preparations. The Queen of Sicily herself had gone to Blois. Notwithstanding that at this time the King consulted her but seldom, he now sent to her the Duke of Alencon, commissioned to concert with her measures for the relief of the city of Orleans.[876] There came also the Sire de Rais, of the house of Laval and of the line of the Dukes of Brittany, a noble scarce twenty-four, generous and magnificent, bringing in his train, with a goodly company from Maine and Anjou, organs for his chapel, choristers, and little singing-boys from the choir school.[877] The Marshal de Boussac, the Captains La Hire and Poton came from Orleans.[878] An army of seven thousand men assembled beneath the walls of the town.[879] All that was now waited for was the money necessary to pay the cost of the victuals and the hire of the soldiers. Captains and men-at-arms did not give their services on credit. As for the merchants, if they risked the loss of their victuals and their life, it was only for ready money.[880] No cash, no cattle--and the wagons stayed where they were.

[Footnote 874: Trial, vol. iii, p. 4.]

[Footnote 875: Journal du siege, passim. Chronique de Tournai, ed. Smedt (vol. iii, in the Recueil des chroniques de Flandre), p. 409.]

[Footnote 876: Trial, vol. iii, p. 93.]

[Footnote 877: Wavrin, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 407. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 316. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 278. Jean Chartier, Chronique, p. 68. Mistere du siege, lines 11,431 et seq. Abbe Bossard, Gilles de Rais, Marechal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue (1404-1440), Paris, 1886, 8vo, pp. 31, 106.]

[Footnote 878: Trial, vol. iii, p. 74.]

[Footnote 879: Jeanne says (in her Trial) from 10,000 to 12,000 men; Monstrelet says, 7000; Eberhard Windecke, 3000; Morosini, 12,000.]

[Footnote 880: "Car vous ne trouverez nulz marchans qu'ils se mettent en ceste peine ne en ce danger, s'ilz n'ont l'argent contant." ("For you will find no merchants who will take that trouble, and run that risk, unless they are paid ready money.") Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. 184.]

In the month of March, Jeanne had dictated to one of the doctors at Poitiers a brief manifesto intended for the English.[881] She expanded it into a letter, which she showed to certain of her companions and afterwards sent by a Herald from Blois to the camp of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils. This letter was addressed to King Henry, to the Regent and to the three chiefs, who, since Salisbury's death, had been conducting the siege, Scales, Suffolk, and Talbot. The following is the text of it:[882]

[Footnote 881: Trial, vol. iii, p. 74.]

[Footnote 882: There are eight ancient texts of this letter: (1) the text used in the Rouen trial (Trial, i, p. 240); (2) a text probably written by a Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem; the original document has been lost, but there are two copies dating from the 18th century (Ibid., v, p. 95); (3) the text contained in Le journal du siege (Ibid., iv, p. 139); (4) the text in La chronique de la Pucelle (Ibid., iv, p. 215); (5) the text in Thomassin's Registre Delphinal (Ibid., iv, p. 306); (6) the text of the Greffier de La Rochelle (Revue historique, vol. iv); (7) the text of the Tournai Chronicle (Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, vol. iii, p. 407); (8) the text in Le mistere du siege. There may be mentioned also a German contemporary translation by Eberhard Windecke.

The text from the Trial is the one quoted here. It is a reproduction of the original. The others differ from it and from original too widely for it to be possible to indicate the differences except by giving the whole of each text. And after all these variations are of no great importance.]

[cross symbol] JHESUS MARIA [cross symbol]

King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the realm of France,--you, Guillaume de la Poule, Earl of Sulford; Jehan, Sire de Talebot, and you Thomas, Sire d'Escales, who call yourselves Lieutenants of the said Duke of Bedfort, do right in the sight of the King of Heaven. Surrender to the Maid sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good[883] towns in France that you have taken and ravaged.[884] She is come here in God's name to claim the Blood Royal.[885] She is ready to make peace if so be you will do her satisfaction by giving and paying back to France what you have taken from her.[886] And you, archers, comrades-in-arms, gentle and otherwise,[887] who are before the town of Orleans, go ye hence into your own land, in God's name. And if you will not, then hear the wondrous works[888] of the Maid who will shortly come upon you to your very great hurt. And you, King of England, if you do not thus, I am a Chieftain of war,--and in whatsoever place in France I meet with your men, I will force them to depart willy nilly; and if they will not, then I will have them all slain. I am sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to drive them all out of the whole of France. And if they obey, then will I show them mercy. And think not in your heart that you will hold the kingdom of France [from] God, the King of Heaven, Son of the Blessed Mary, for it is King Charles, the true heir, who shall so hold it. God, the King of Heaven, so wills it, and he hath revealed it unto King Charles by the Maid. With a goodly company the King shall enter Paris. If ye will not believe these wondrous works wrought by God and the Maid, then, in whatsoever place ye shall be, there shall we fight. And if ye do me not right, there shall be so great a noise as hath not been in France for a thousand years. And know ye that the King of Heaven will send such great power to the Maid, to her and to her good soldiers, that ye will not be able to overcome her in any battle; and in the end the God of Heaven will reveal who has the better right. You, Duke of Bedfort, the Maid prays and beseeches you that you bring not destruction upon yourself. If you do her right, you may come in her company where the French will do the fairest deed ever done for Christendom. And if ye will have peace in the city of Orleans, then make ye answer; and, if not, then remember it will be to your great hurt and that shortly. Written this Tuesday of Holy Week.

[Footnote 883: The King of France himself designated as good such of his towns as he wished to honour.]

[Footnote 884: Compare: "Et ardirent la ville et violerent l'abbaye." ("And burnt the town and violated the abbey.") Froissart, quoted by Littre. As early as Le chanson de Roland we find: "Les castels pris, les cites violees." ("The castles taken, the cities violated.")]

[Footnote 885: The deliverance of the Duke of Orleans. Reclamer in the French. M. S. Reinach proposes to substitute relever, which is plausible (cf. Trial, vol. ii, p. 421).]

[Footnote 886: Le journal du siege omits the word France and thus renders the phrase unintelligible. This omission proceeds from a text of great antiquity on which are based notably La chronique de la Pucelle and the account of the Greffier de La Rochelle whom this mangled phrase visibly embarrassed.]

[Footnote 887: Gentle is here in opposition to villein. Gentle and otherwise: nobles and villeins. Here we must interpret the terms comrades and gentle according to their true meaning and not consider them as used ironically, as in the following passage from Froissart: "Il (le duc de Lancastre) entendit comme il pourroit estre saisy de quatre gentils compaignons qui estrangle avoyent son oncle, le duc de Glocestre, au chasteau de Calais." "He (the Duke of Lancaster) realised how he might be seized by the four gentle comrades who had strangled his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, in the Castle of Calais." (Froissart in La Curne.)]

[Footnote 888: French. Attendez les nouvelles de la Pucelle and further on: Si vous ne voules croire lez nouvelles de par Dieu de la Pucelle.... This word Nouvelles then as now meant tidings, but it also had a sense of marvels as in the following phrase: "En celle annee apparurent maintes nouvelles a Rosay en Brie; le vin fut mue en sang et le pain en chair sensiblement ou (au) sacrement de l'autel." ("In that year many marvels were wrought at Rosay in Brie; the wine was turned to blood and the bread to flesh visibly at the sacrament of the altar.") (Chroniques de Saint Denys, in La Curne.)]

Such is the letter. It was written in a new spirit; for it proclaimed the kingship of Jesus Christ and declared a holy war. It is hard to tell whether it proceeded from Jeanne's own inspiration or was dictated to her by the council of ecclesiastics. On first thoughts one might be inclined to attribute to the priests the idea of a summons, which is a literal application of the precepts of Deuteronomy:

"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

"And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

"And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

"And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

"But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself." (Deuteronomy xx, 10-14.)

But at least it is certain that on this occasion the Maid is expressing her own sentiments. Afterwards we shall find her saying: "I asked for peace, and when I was refused I was ready to fight."[889] But, as she dictated the letter and was unable to read it, we may ask whether the clerks who held the pen did not add to it.

[Footnote 889: Trial, vol. i, pp. 55, 84, 240.]

Two or three passages suggest the ecclesiastical touch. Afterwards the Maid did not remember having dictated "body for body," which is quite unimportant. But she declared that she had not said: "I am chief in war" and that she had dictated: "Surrender to the King" and not "Surrender to the Maid."[890] Possibly her memory failed her; it was not always faithful. Nevertheless she appeared very certain of what she said, and twice she repeated that "chief in war" and "surrender to the Maid" were not in the letter. It may have been that the monks who were with her used these expressions. To these wandering priests a dispute over fiefs mattered little, and it was not their first concern to bring King Charles into the possession of his inheritance. Doubtless they desired the good of the kingdom of France; but certainly they desired much more the good of Christendom; and we shall see that, if those mendicant monks, Brother Pasquerel and later Friar Richard, follow the Maid, it will be in the hope of employing her to the Church's advantage. Thus it would be but natural that they should declare her at the outset commander in war, and even invest her with a spiritual power superior to the temporal power of the King, and implied in the phrase: "Surrender to the Maid ... the keys of the good towns."

[Footnote 890: Ibid., pp. 55, 56, 84.]

This very letter indicates one of those hopes which among others she inspired. They expected that after she had fulfilled her mission in France, she would take the cross and go forth to conquer Jerusalem, bringing all the armies of Christian Europe in her train.[891] At this very time a disciple of Bernardino of Siena, Friar Richard, a Franciscan lately come from Syria,[892] and who was shortly to meet the Maid, was preaching at Paris, announcing the approach of the end of the world, and exhorting the faithful to fight against Antichrist.[893] It must be remembered that the Turks, who had conquered the Christian knights at Nicopolis and at Semendria, were threatening Constantinople and spreading terror throughout Europe. Popes, emperors, kings felt the necessity of making one great effort against them.

[Footnote 891: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 64, 82 et seq. Christine de Pisan, in the Trial, vol. v, p. 16. Concerning the subject of the Crusade, cf. N. Jorga, Philippe de Mezieres, 1896, in 8vo: Notes et extraits pour servir a l'histoire des Croisades au XV'e siecle, Paris, 1899-1902, 3 vols. in 8vo (taken from La revue de l'Orient Latin).]

[Footnote 892: Pii Secundi commentarii, 1614 edition, p. 440. Wadding, Annales Minorum, vol. v, pp. 130 et seq.]

[Footnote 893: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 233. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xv, ccxxxvii. See the pictures in the numerous fifteenth century little popular books concerning Antichrist. (Brunet, Manuel du libraire, vol. i, col. 316.)]

In England it was said that between Saint-Denys and Saint-George there had been born to King Henry V and Madame Catherine of France a boy, half English and half French, who would go to Egypt and pluck the Grand Turk's beard.[894] On his death-bed the conqueror Henry V was listening to the priests repeating the penitential psalms. When he heard the verse: Benigne fac Domine in bona voluntate tua ut aedificentur muri Jerusalem, he murmured with his dying breath: "I have always intended to go to Syria and deliver the holy city out of the hand of the infidel."[895] These were his last words. Wise men counselled Christian princes to unite against the Crescent. In France, the Archbishop of Embrun, who had sat in the Dauphin's Council, cursed the insatiable cruelty of the English nation and those wars among Christians which were an occasion of rejoicing to the enemies of the Cross of Christ.[896]

[Footnote 894: Felix Rabbe, Jeanne d'Arc en Angleterre, Paris, 1891, p. 12.]

[Footnote 895: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 112. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 340.]

[Footnote 896: Le P. Marcellin Fornier, Histoire des Alpes, Maritimes ou Cottiennes, vol. ii, pp. 315 et seq.]

To summon the English and French to take the cross together, was to proclaim that after ninety-one years of violence and crime the cycle of secular warfare had come to an end. It was to bid Christendom return to the days when Philippe de Valois and Edward Plantagenet promised the Pope to join together against the infidel.

But when the Maid invited the English to unite with the French in a holy and warlike enterprise, it is not difficult to imagine with what kind of a reception the Godons would greet such an angelic summons. And at the time of the siege of Orleans, the French on their side had good reasons for not taking the cross with the Coues.[897]

[Footnote 897: In all extant copies of the Letter to the English, except that of the Trial, at the passage "you may come" [Encore que pourrez venir] the text is completely illegible.]

The learned did not greatly appreciate the style of this letter. The Bastard of Orleans thought the words very simple; and a few years later a good French jurist pronounced it coarse, heavy, and badly arranged.[898] We cannot aspire to judge better than the jurist and the Bastard, both men of erudition. Nevertheless, we wonder whether it were not that her manner of expression seemed bad to them, merely because it differed from the style of legal documents. True it is that the letter from Blois indicates the poverty of the French prose of that time when not enriched by an Alain Chartier; but it contains neither term nor expression which is not to be met with in the good authors of the day. The words may not be correctly ordered, but the style is none the less vivacious. There is nothing to suggest that the writer came from the banks of the Meuse; no trace is there of the speech of Lorraine or Champagne.[899] It is clerkly French.

[Footnote 898: Per unam litteram suo materno idiomate confectam, verbis bene simplicibus, Trial, vol. iv, p. 7, evidence of the Bastard of Orleans. Mathieu Thomassin, Registre Delphinal, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 306.]

[Footnote 899: On the contrary it contains forms which would never have been penned by a native of Picardy, Burgundy, Lorraine, or Champagne, such as the participle envoyee. Both the grammar and the writing are those of a French clerk. (Contributed by M. E. Langlois.)]

While Isabelle de Vouthon had gone on a pilgrimage to Puy, her two youngest children, Jean and Pierre, had set out for France to join their sister, with the intention of making their fortunes through her or the King. Likewise, Brother Nicolas of Vouthon, Jeanne's cousin german, a monk in priest's orders in the Abbey of Cheminon, joined the young saint.[900] To have thus attracted her kinsfolk before giving any sign of her power, Jeanne must have had witnesses on the banks of the Meuse; and certain venerable ecclesiastical personages, as well as noble lords of Lorraine, must have answered for her reputation in France. Such guarantors of the truth of her mission were doubtless those who had instructed her in and accredited her by prophecy. Perhaps Brother Nicolas of Vouthon was himself of the number.

[Footnote 900: Trial, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. xx, 9, 10. [Document of very doubtful authenticity.]]

In the army she was regarded as a holy maiden. Her company consisted of a chaplain, Brother Jean Pasquerel;[901] two pages, Louis de Coutes and Raymond;[902] her two brethren, Pierre and Jean; two heralds, Ambleville and Guyenne;[903] two squires, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy.

[Footnote 901: Trial, vol. iii, p. 101.]

[Footnote 902: Ibid., pp. 65, 67, 124. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 277. A. de Villaret, Louis de Coutes, page de Jeanne d'Arc, Orleans, 1890, 8vo.]

[Footnote 903: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 26, 27.]

Jean de Metz kept the purse which was filled by the crown.[904] She had also certain valets in her service. A squire, one Jean d'Aulon, whom the King gave her for a steward, joined her at Blois.[905] He was the poorest squire of the realm. He was entirely dependent on the Sire de La Tremouille, who lent him money; but he was well known for his honour and his wisdom.[906] Jeanne attributed the defeats of the French to their riding forth accompanied by bad women and to their taking God's holy name in vain. And this opinion, far from being held by her alone, prevailed among persons of learning and religion; according to whom the disaster of Nicopolis was occasioned by the presence of prostitutes in the army, and by the cruelty and dissoluteness of the knights.[907]

[Footnote 904: Extracts from the Accounts of Hemon Raguier, Trial, vol. v, pp. 257, 258.]

[Footnote 905: Trial, vol. iii, p. 211. D'Aulon had seen her at Poitiers.]

[Footnote 906: Ibid., p. 15. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 292, note 3. The loans mentioned occurred later, but there is no reason to believe that they were the first. Duc de La Tremoille, Les La Tremouille pendant cinq siecles, Guy VI et Georges (1346-1446), Nantes, 1890, pp. 196, 201.]

[Footnote 907: Juvenal des Ursins, year 1396.]

On several occasions, between 1420 and 1425, the Dauphin had forbidden cursing and denying and blaspheming the name of God, of the Virgin Mary and of the saints under penalty of a fine and of corporal punishment in certain cases. The decrees embodying this prohibition asserted that wars, pestilence, and famine were caused by blasphemy and that the blasphemers were in part responsible for the sufferings of the realm.[908] Wherefore the Maid went among the men-at-arms, exhorting them to turn away the women who followed the army, and to cease taking the Lord's name in vain. She besought them to confess their sins and receive divine grace into their souls, maintaining that their God would aid them and give them the victory if their souls were right.[909]

[Footnote 908: Ordonnances des rois de France, vol. xi, p. 105; vol. xiii, p. 247. S. de Bouillerie, La repression du blaspheme dans l'ancienne legislation, in the Revue historique et archeologique du Maine, 1884, pp. 369 et seq. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 370; vol. ii, p. 189. A. Longnon, Paris pendant la domination anglaise, Paris, 1878, in 8vo, pp. 11, 56.]

[Footnote 909: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 78, 104, 105. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 283. Very early she was mentioned in connection with La Hire, the most valiant of the French, and it was imagined that she taught him to confess and to cease swearing. These are pretty stories (Trial, vol. iii, p. 32; vol. iv, p. 327).]

Jeanne took her standard to the Church of Saint-Sauveur and gave it to the priests to bless.[910] The little company formed at Tours was joined at Blois by ecclesiastics and monks, who, on the approach of the English, had fled in crowds from the neighbouring abbeys, and were now suffering from cold and hunger. It was generally thus. Monks were for ever flocking to the armies. Many churches and most abbeys had been reduced to ruin. Those of the mendicants, built outside the towns, had all perished,--plundered and burnt by the English or pulled down by the townsfolk; for, when threatened with siege, the inhabitants always dealt thus with the outlying portions of their town. The homeless monks found no welcome in the cities, which were sparing of their goods; they must needs take the field with the soldiers and follow the army. From such a course their rule suffered and piety gained nothing. Among mercenaries, sumpters and camp followers, these hungry nomad monks lived an edifying life. Those who accompanied the Maid were doubtless neither worse nor better than the rest, and as they were very hungry their first care was to eat.[911]

[Footnote 910: Trial, vol. iii, p. 103. Boucher de Molandon, Premiere expedition de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 47. L.A. Bosseboeuf, Jeanne d'Arc en Touraine, Tours, 1899, pp. 34 et seq.]

[Footnote 911: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, monasteres, hopitaux, en France, vers le milieu du XV'e siecle, Macon, 1897, in 8vo, introduction.]

The men-at-arms were much too accustomed to seeing monks and nuns mingling side by side in the army to feel any surprise at the sight of the holy damsel in the midst of a band so disreputable. It is true that the damsel was said to work wonders. Many believed in them; others mocked and said aloud: "Behold the brave champion and captain who comes to deliver the realm of France."[912]

[Footnote 912: Trial, vol. iv, p. 327. Tringant, Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 277, merely says that few soldiers went willingly to the relief of Orleans, which is not strictly accurate.]

The Maid had a banner made for the monks to assemble beneath and summon the men-at-arms to prayer. This banner was white, and on it were represented Jesus on the Cross between Our Lady and Saint John.[913] The Duke of Alencon went back to the King to make known to him the needs of the company at Blois. The King sent the necessary funds; and at length they were ready to set out.[914] At the start there were two roads open, one leading to Orleans along the right bank of the Loire, the other along the left bank. At the end of twelve or fourteen miles the road along the right bank came out on the edge of the Plain of La Beauce, occupied by the English who had garrisons at Marchenoir, Beaugency, Meung, Montpipeau, Saint-Sigismond, and Janville. In that direction lay the risk of meeting the army, which was coming to the aid of the English round Orleans. After the experience of the Battle of the Herrings such a meeting was to be feared. If the road along the left bank were taken, the march would lie through the district of La Sologne, which still belonged to King Charles; and if the river were left well on one side, the army would be out of sight of the English garrisons of Beaugency and of Meung. True, it would involve crossing the Loire, but by going up the river five miles east of the besieged city a crossing could conveniently be effected between Orleans and Jargeau. On due deliberation it was decided that they should go by the left bank through La Sologne. It was decided to take in the victuals in two separate lots for fear the unloading near the enemy's bastions should take too long.[915] On Wednesday, the 27th of April, they started.[916] The priests in procession, with a banner at their head, led the march, singing the Veni creator Spiritus.[917] The Maid rode with them in white armour, bearing her standard. The men-at-arms and the archers followed, escorting six hundred wagons of victuals and ammunition and four hundred head of cattle.[918] The long line of lances, wagons, and herds defiled over the Blois bridge into the vast plain beyond. The first day the army covered twenty miles of rutty road. Then at curfew, when the setting sun, reflected in the Loire, made the river look like a sheet of copper between lines of dark reeds, it halted,[919] and the priests sang Gabriel angelus.

[Footnote 913: Trial, vol. iii, p. 104 (Brother Pasquerel's evidence). Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 281. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 110, 111; vol. iv, pp. 313-315. G. Martin, L'etendard de Jeanne d'Arc, in Notes d'art et d'arch., 1834, pp. 65-71, 81-88, illustrated.]

[Footnote 914: Trial, vol. iii, p. 93. Chronique du doyen de Saint-Thibaud, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 327.]

[Footnote 915: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 5, 67, 78, 105, 212. Martial d'Auvergne, ibid., vol. v, p. 53. Chronique de la fete, ibid., p. 290. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 281. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 71. Boucher de Molandon, Premiere expedition de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 38 et seq.]

[Footnote 916: The 28th of April, according to Eberhard Windecke, p. 165. The 27th, if, as Pasquerel says, the army spent two nights on the march.]

[Footnote 917: Trial, vol. iii, p. 105.]

[Footnote 918: Eberhard Windecke, p. 167.]

[Footnote 919: Trial, vol. iii, p. 104 (Brother Pasquerel's evidence).]

That night they encamped in the fields. Jeanne, who had not been willing to take off her armour, awoke aching in every limb.[920] She heard mass and received communion from her chaplain, and exhorted the men-at-arms always to confess their sins.[921] Then the army resumed its march towards Orleans.

[Footnote 920: Ibid., p. 67 (evidence of Louis de Coutes).]

[Footnote 921: Ibid., p. 67. Pasquerel says (vol. iii, p. 105) that the soldiers of fortune were permitted to join the congregation if they had confessed.]