I. THE ROYAL ARMY FROM SOISSONS TO COMPIEGNE--POEM AND PROPHECY…

I. THE ROYAL ARMY FROM SOISSONS TO COMPIEGNE--POEM AND PROPHECY

On the 22nd of July, King Charles, marching with his army down the valley of the Aisne, in a place called Vailly, received the keys of the town of Soissons.[1599]

[Footnote 1599: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 323, 324. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 160, 161. Journal du siege, p. 115. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 98. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 196.]

This town constituted a part of the Duchy of Valois, held jointly by the Houses of Orleans and of Bar.[1600] Of its dukes, one was a prisoner in the hands of the English; the other was connected with the French party through his brother-in-law, King Charles, and with the Burgundian party through his father-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine. No wonder the fealty of the townsfolk was somewhat vacillating; downtrodden by men-at-arms, forever taken and retaken, red caps and white caps alternately ran the danger of being cast into the river. The Burgundians set fire to the houses, pillaged the churches, chastised the most notable burgesses; then came the Armagnacs, who sacked everything, made great slaughter of men, women, and children, ravished nuns, worthy wives, and honest maids. The Saracens could not have done worse.[1601] City dames had been seen making sacks in which Burgundians were to be sewn up and thrown into the Aisne.[1602]

[Footnote 1600: Ordonnances des rois de France, vol. ix, p. 71. H. Martin and Lacroix, Histoire de la ville de Soissons, Soissons, 1837, in 8vo, ii, pp. 283 et seq.]

[Footnote 1601: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 53, passim.]

[Footnote 1602: Ibid., p. 103.]

King Charles made his entry into the city on Saturday the 23rd, in the morning.[1603] The red caps went into hiding. The bells pealed, the folk cried "Noel," and the burgesses proffered the King two barbels, six sheep and six gallons of "bon suret,"[1604] begging the King to forgive its being so little, but the war had ruined them.[1605] They, like the people of Troyes, refused to open their gates to the men-at-arms, by virtue of their privileges, and because they had not food enough for their support. The army encamped in the plain of Ambleny.[1606]

[Footnote 1603: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 323, 324. Perceval de Cagny, p. 160. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 339.]

[Footnote 1604: Suret is sour wine (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1605: C. Dormay, Histoire de la ville de Soissons, Soissons, 1664, vol. ii, pp. 382 et seq. H. Martin and Lacroix, Histoire de Soissons, vol. ii, p. 319. Pecheur, Annales du diocese de Soissons, vol. iv, p. 513. Felix Brun, Jeanne d'Arc et le capitaine de Soissons en 1430, Soissons, 1904, p. 34.]

[Footnote 1606: Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 49, 50. Le P. Daniel, Histoire de la milice francaise, vol. i, p. 356. Felix Brun, Jeanne d'Arc et le capitaine de Soissons, pp. 26, 39.]

It would seem that at that time the leaders of the royal army had the intention of marching on Compiegne. Indeed it was important to capture this town from Duke Philip, for it was the key to l'Ile-de-France and ought to be taken before the Duke had time to bring up an army. But throughout this campaign the King of France was resolved to recapture his towns rather by diplomacy and persuasion than by force. Between the 22nd and the 25th of July he three times summoned the inhabitants of Compiegne to surrender. Being desirous to gain time and to have the air of being constrained, they entered into negotiations.[1607]

[Footnote 1607: De l'Epinois, Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiegne, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xxix, p. 483. Sorel, Prise de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 101, 102.]

Having quitted Soissons, the royal army reached Chateau-Thierry on the 29th. All day it waited for the town to open its gates. In the evening the King entered.[1608] Coulommiers, Crecy-en-Brie, and Provins submitted.[1609]

[Footnote 1608: Perceval de Cagny, p. 160. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 340.]

[Footnote 1609: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 340. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 323. Felix Bourquelot, Histoire de Provins, Provins, vol. iv, pp. 79 et seq. Th. Robillard, Histoire pittoresque topographique et archeologique de Crecy-en-Brie, 1852, p. 42. L'Abbe C. Poquet, Histoire de Chateau-Thierry, 1839, vol. i, pp. 290 et seq.]

On Monday, the 1st of August, the King crossed the Marne, over the Chateau-Thierry Bridge, and that same day took up his quarters at Montmirail. On the morrow he gained Provins and came within a short distance of the passage of the Seine and the high-roads of central France.[1610] The army was sore anhungered, finding nought to eat in these ravaged fields and pillaged cities. Through lack of victuals preparations were being made for retreat into Poitou. But this design was thwarted by the English. While ungarrisoned towns were being reduced, the English Regent had been gathering an army. It was now advancing on Corbeil and Melun. On its approach the French gained La Motte-Nangis, some twelve miles from Provins, where they took up their position on ground flat and level, such as was convenient for the fighting of a battle, as battles were fought in those days. For one whole day they remained in battle array. There was no sign of the English coming to attack them.[1611]

[Footnote 1610: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 160, 161.]

[Footnote 1611: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 324, 325. Journal du siege, p. 115. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 98, 99. Perceval de Cagny, p. 161. Rymer, Foedera, June to July, 1429. Proceedings, vol. iii, pp. 322 et seq. Morosini, vol. iv, appendix xvii.]

Meanwhile the people of Reims received tidings that King Charles was leaving Chateau-Thierry and was about to cross the Seine. Believing that they had been abandoned, they were afraid lest the English and Burgundians should make them pay dearly for the coronation of the King of the Armagnacs; and in truth they stood in great danger. On the 3rd of August, they resolved to send a message to King Charles to entreat him not to forsake those cities which had submitted to him. The city's herald set out forthwith. On the morrow they sent word to their good friends of Chalons and of Laon, how they had heard that King Charles was wending towards Orleans and Bourges, and how they had sent him a message.[1612]

[Footnote 1612: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 98. Varin, Archives legislatives de la ville de Reims, Statuts, vol. i (annot. according to doc. no. xxi), p. 741. H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, original doc. no. 19, p. 118.]

On the 5th of August, while the King is still at Provins[1613] or in the neighbourhood, Jeanne addresses to the townsfolk of Reims a letter dated from the camp, on the road to Paris. Herein she promises not to desert her friends faithful and beloved. She appears to have no suspicion of the projected retreat on the Loire. Wherefore it is clear that the magistrates of Reims have not written to her and that she is not admitted to the royal counsels. She has been instructed, however, that the King has concluded a fifteen days' truce with the Duke of Burgundy, and thereof she informs the citizens of Reims. This truce is displeasing to her; and she doubts whether she will observe it. If she does observe it, it will be solely on account of the King's honour; and even then she must be persuaded that there is no trickery in it. She will therefore keep the royal army together and in readiness to march at the end of the fifteen days. She closes her letter with a recommendation to the townsfolk to keep good guard and to send her word if they have need of her.

[Footnote 1613: Perceval de Cagny, p. 160.]

Here is the letter:

"Good friends and beloved, ye good and loyal French of the city of Rains, Jehanne the Maid lets you wit of her tidings and prays and requires you not to doubt the good cause she maintains for the Blood Royal; and I promise and assure you that I will never forsake you as long as I shall live. It is true that the King has made truce with the Duke of Burgundy for the space of fifteen days, by which he is to surrender peaceably the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Notwithstanding, marvel ye not if I do not straightway enter into it, for truces thus made are not pleasing unto me, and I know not whether I shall keep them; but if I keep them it will be solely to maintain the King's honour; and further they shall not ensnare the Royal Blood, for I will keep and maintain together the King's army that it be ready at the end of fifteen days, if they make not peace. Wherefore my beloved and perfect friends, I pray ye to be in no disquietude as long as I shall live; but I require you to keep good watch and to defend well the good city of the King; and to make known unto me if there be any traitors who would do you hurt, and, as speedily as I may, I will take them out from among you; and send me of your tidings. To God I commend you. May he have you in his keeping."

Written this Friday, 5th day of August, near Provins,[1614] a camp in the country or on the Paris road. Addressed to: the loyal French of the town of Rains.[1615]

[Footnote 1614: This place name is not to be found in Rogier's copy.]

[Footnote 1615: Trial, vol. v, pp. 139, 140, and Varin, loc. cit. Statuts, vol. i, p. 603, according to Rogier's copy. H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, proofs and illustrations, vol. xiv, pp. 104, 105, and facsimile of the original copy formerly in the Reims municipal archives, now in the possession of M. le Comte de Maleissye.]

It cannot be doubted that the monk who acted as scribe wrote down faithfully what was dictated to him, and reproduced the Maid's very words, even her Lorraine dialect. She had then attained to the very highest degree of heroic saintliness. Here, in this letter, she takes to herself a supernatural power, to which the King, his Councillors and his Captains must submit. She ascribes to herself alone the right of recognising or denouncing treaties; she disposes entirely of the army. And, because she commands in the name of the King of Heaven, her commands are absolute. There is happening to her what necessarily happens to all those who believe themselves entrusted with a divine mission; they constitute themselves a spiritual and temporal power superior to the established powers and inevitably hostile to them. A dangerous illusion and productive of shocks in which the illuminated are generally the worst sufferers! Every day of her life living and holding converse with saints and angels, moving in the splendour of the Church Triumphant, this young peasant girl came to believe that in her resided all strength, all prudence, all wisdom and all counsel. This does not mean that she was lacking in intelligence; on the contrary she rightly perceived that the Duke of Burgundy, with his embassies, was but playing with the King and that Charles was being tricked by a Prince, who knew how to disguise his craft in magnificence. Not that Duke Philip was an enemy of peace; on the contrary he desired it, but he was desirous not to come to an open quarrel with the English. Jeanne knew little of the affairs of Burgundy and of France, but her judgment was none the less sound. Concerning the relative positions of the Kings of France and England, between whom there could be no agreement, since the matter in dispute was the possession of the kingdom, her ideas were very simple but very correct. Equally accurate were her views of the position of the King of France with regard to his great vassal, the Duke of Burgundy, with whom an understanding was not only possible and desirable, but necessary. She pronounced thereupon in a perfectly straightforward fashion: On the one hand there is peace with the Burgundians and on the other peace with the English; concerning the peace with the Duke of Burgundy, by letters and by ambassadors have I required him to come to terms with the King; as for the English, the only way of making peace with them is for them to go back to their country, to England.[1616]

[Footnote 1616: Trial, vol. i, pp. 233, 234.]

This truce that so highly displeased her we know not when it was concluded, whether at Soissons or Chateau-Thierry, on the 30th or 31st of July, or at Provins between the 2nd and 5th of August.[1617] It would appear that it was to last fifteen days, at the end of which time the Duke was to undertake to surrender Paris to the King of France. The Maid had good reason for her mistrust.

[Footnote 1617: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 202, 203, note 2.]

When the Regent withdrew before him, King Charles eagerly returned to his plan of retreating into Poitou. From La Motte-Nangis he sent his quartermasters to Bray-sur-Seine, which had just submitted. Situated above Montereau and ten miles south of Provins, this town had a bridge over the river, across which the royal army was to pass on the 5th of August or in the morning of the 6th; but the English came by night, overcame the quartermasters and took possession of the bridge; with its retreat cut off, the royal army had to retrace its march.[1618]

[Footnote 1618: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 325. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 99, 100. Journal du siege, pp. 119, 120. Gilles de Roye, p. 207.]

Within this army, which had not fought and which was being devoured by hunger, there existed a party of zealots, led by those whom Jeanne fondly called the Royal Blood.[1619] They were the Duke of Alencon, the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Vendome, and likewise the Duke of Bar, who had just come from the War of the Apple Baskets.[1620] Before he took to painting pictures and writing moralities in rhyme, this young son of the Lady Yolande had been a warrior. Duke of Bar and heir of Lorraine, he had been forced to join the English and Burgundians. Brother-in-law of King Charles, he must needs rejoice when the latter was victorious, because, but for that victory, he would never have been able to range himself on the side of the Queen, his sister, for which he would have been very sorry.[1621] Jeanne knew him; not long before, she had asked the Duke of Lorraine to send him with her into France.[1622] He was said to have been one of those who of their own free will followed her to Paris. Among the others were the two sons of the Lady of Laval, Gui, the eldest to whom she had offered wine at Selles-en-Berry, promising soon to give him to drink at Paris, and Andre, who afterwards became Marshal of Loheac.[1623] This was the army of the Maid: a band of youths, scarcely more than children, who ranged their banners side by side with the banner of a girl younger than they, but more innocent and better.

[Footnote 1619: Trial, vol. iii, p. 91.]

[Footnote 1620: Guerre de la Hottee de Pommes, cf. vol. i, p. 92. (W.S.)]

[Footnote 1621: Chronique du doyen de Saint-Thibaut de Metz in D. Calmet. Histoire de Lorraine, vol. v, orig. docs., cols, xli-xlvii. Villeneuve-Bargemont, Precis historique de la vie du roi Rene, Aix, 1820, in 8vo. Lecoy de la Marche, Le roi Rene, Paris, 1875, 2 vols. in 8vo. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale, 1866, xli, pp. 1009-1015.]

[Footnote 1622: Trial, vol. ii, p. 444. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. cxcix. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 156, note 3.]

[Footnote 1623: Trial, vol. v, pp. 105-111.]

On learning that the retreat had been cut off, it is said that these youthful princes were well content and glad.[1624] This was valour and zeal; but it was a curious position and a false when the knighthood wished for war while the royal council was desiring to treat, and when the knighthood actually rejoiced at the campaign being prolonged by the enemy and at the royal army being cornered by the Godons. Unhappily this war party could boast of no very able adherents; and the favourable opportunity had been lost, the Regent had been allowed time to collect his forces and to cope with the most pressing dangers.[1625]

[Footnote 1624: Chronique de la Pucelle, Jean Chartier. Journal du siege, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 1625: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 340, 344.]

Its retreat cut off, the royal army fell back on Brie. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th, it was at Coulommiers; it recrossed the Marne at Chateau-Thierry.[1626] King Charles received a message from the inhabitants of Reims, entreating him to draw nearer to them.[1627] He was at La Ferte on the 10th, on the 11th at Crepy in Valois.[1628]

[Footnote 1626: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 100. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 325.]

[Footnote 1627: Varin, Archives legislatives de la ville de Reims, Statuts, vol. i, p. 742.]

[Footnote 1628: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161.]

At one stage of the march on La Ferte and Crepy, the Maid was riding in company with the King, between the Archbishop of Reims and my Lord the Bastard. Beholding the people hastening to come before the King and crying "Noel!" she exclaimed: "Good people! Never have I seen folk so glad at the coming of the fair King...."[1629]

[Footnote 1629: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 326.]

These peasants of Valois and of l'Ile de France, who cried "Noel!" on the coming of King Charles, in like manner hailed the Regent and the Duke of Burgundy when they passed. Doubtless they were not so glad as they seemed to Jeanne, and if the little Saint had listened at the doors of their poor homes, this is about what she would have heard: "What shall we do? Let us surrender our all to the devil. It matters not what shall become of us, for, through treason and bad government, we must needs forsake our wives and children and flee into the woods, like wild beasts. And it is not one year or two but fourteen or fifteen since we have been led this unhappy dance. And most of the great nobles of France have died by the sword, or unconfessed have fallen victims to poison or to treachery, or in short have perished by some manner of violent death. Better for us would it have been to serve Saracens than Christians. Whether one lives badly or well it comes to the same thing. Let us do all the evil that lieth in our power. No worse can happen to us than to be slain or taken."[1630]

[Footnote 1630: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 164.]

It was only in the neighbourhood of towns or close to fortresses and castles, within sight of the watchman's eye as he looked from the top of tower or belfry, that land was cultivated. On the approach of men-at-arms, the watchman rang his bell or sounded his horn to warn the vine-dressers or the ploughmen to flee to a place of safety. In many districts the alarm bell was so frequent that oxen, sheep, and pigs, of their own accord went into hiding, as soon as they heard it.[1631]

[Footnote 1631: Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, chap. vi. A. Tuetey, Les ecorcheurs sous Charles VII, Montbeliard, 1874, 2 vols. in 8vo, passim. H. Lepage, Episodes de l'histoire des routiers en Lorraine (1362-1446), in Journal d'archeologie lorraine, vol. xv, pp. 161 et seq. Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises, passim. H. Martin et Lacroix, Histoire de Soissons, p. 318, passim. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Episodes de l'invasion anglaise. La guerre de partisans dans la Haute Normandie (1424-1429), in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. liv, pp. 475-521; vol. lv, pp. 258-305; vol. lvi, pp. 432-508.]

In the plains especially, which were easy of access, the Armagnacs and the English had destroyed everything. For some distance from Beauvais, from Senlis, from Soissons, from Laon, they had caused the fields to lie fallow, and here and there shrubs and underwood were springing up over land once cultivated.--"Noel! Noel!"

Throughout the duchy of Valois, the peasants were abandoning the open country and hiding in woods, rocks, and quarries.[1632]

[Footnote 1632: Pardon issued by King Henry VI to an inhabitant of Noyant, in Stevenson, Letters and Papers, vol. i, pp. 23, 31. F. Brun, Jeanne d'Arc et le capitaine de Soissons, note iii, p. 41.]

Many, in order to gain a livelihood, did like Jean de Bonval, the tailor of Noyant near Soissons, who, despite wife and children, joined a Burgundian band, which went up and down the country thieving, pillaging, and, when occasion offered, smoking out the folk who had taken refuge in churches. On one day Jean and his comrades took two hogsheads of corn, on another six or seven cows; on another a goat and a cow, on another a silver belt, a pair of gloves and a pair of shoes; on another a bale of eighteen ells of cloth to make cloaks withal. And Jean de Bonval said that within his knowledge many a man of worship did as much.[1633]--"Noel! Noel!"

[Footnote 1633: Stevenson, Letters and Papers, vol. i, pp. 23, 31.]

The Armagnacs and Burgundians had torn the coats off the peasants' backs and seized even their pots and pans. It was not far from Crepy to Meaux. Every one in that country had heard of the Tree of Vauru.

At one of the gates of the town of Meaux was a great elm, whereon the Bastard of Vauru, a Gascon noble of the Dauphin's party, used to hang the peasants he had taken, when they could not pay their ransom. When he had no executioner at hand he used to hang them himself. With him there lived a kinsman, my Lord Denis de Vauru, who was called his cousin, not that he was so in fact, but just to show that one was no better than the other.[1634] In the month of March, in the year 1420, my Lord Denis, on one of his expeditions, came across a peasant tilling the ground. He took him prisoner, held him to ransom, and, tying him to his horse's tail, dragged him back to Meaux, where, by threats and torture, he exacted from him a promise to pay three times as much as he possessed. Dragged half dead from his dungeon, the villein sent to the wife he had married that year to ask her to bring the sum demanded by the lord. She was with child, and near the time of her delivery; notwithstanding, she came because she loved her husband and hoped to soften the heart of the Lord of Vauru. She failed; and Messire Denis told her that if by a certain day he did not receive the ransom, he would hang the man from the elm-tree. The poor woman went away in tears, fondly commending her husband to God's keeping. And her husband wept for pity of her. By a great effort, she succeeded in obtaining the sum demanded, but not by the day appointed. When she returned, her husband had been hanged from the Vauru Tree without respite or mercy. With bitter sobs she asked for him, and then fell exhausted by the side of that road, which, on the point of her delivery, she had traversed on foot. Having regained consciousness, a second time she asked for her husband. She was told that she would not see him till the ransom had been paid.

[Footnote 1634: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 170, 171. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 96. Livre des trahisons, pp. 167, 168.]

While she was before the Gascon, there in sight of her were brought forth several craftsmen, held to ransom, who, unable to pay, were straightway despatched to be hanged or drowned. At this spectacle a great fear for her husband came over her; nevertheless, her love for him gave her heart of courage and she paid the ransom. As soon as the Duke's men had counted the coins, they dismissed her saying that her husband had died like the other villeins.

At those cruel words, wild with sorrow and despair, she broke forth into curses and railing. When she refused to be silent, the Bastard of Vauru had her beaten and taken to the Elm-tree.

There she was stripped to the waist and tied to the Tree, whence hung forty to fifty men, some from the higher, some from the lower branches, so that, when the wind blew, their bodies touched her head. At nightfall she uttered shrieks so piercing that they were heard in the town. But whosoever had dared to go and unloose her would have been a dead man. Fright, fatigue, and exertion brought on her delivery. The wolves, attracted by her cries, came and consumed the fruit of her womb, and then devoured alive the body of the wretched creature.

In 1422, the town of Meaux was taken by the Burgundians. Then were the Bastard of Vauru and his cousin hanged from that Tree on which they had caused so many innocent folk to die so shameful a death.[1635]

[Footnote 1635: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 170. According to Monstrelet (vol. iv, p. 96), Denis de Vauru, the Bastard's cousin, was beheaded in the Market of Paris.]

For the poor peasants of these unhappy lands, whether Armagnac or Burgundian, it was all of a piece; they had nothing to gain by changing masters. Nevertheless, it is possible that, on beholding the King, the descendant of Saint Louis and Charles the Wise, they may have taken heart of courage and of hope, so great was the fame for justice and for mercy of the illustrious house of France.

Thus, riding by the side of the Archbishop of Reims, the Maid looked with a friendly eye on the peasants crying "Noel!" After saying that she had nowhere seen folk so joyful at the coming of the fair King, she sighed: "Would to God I were so fortunate as, when I die, to find burial in this land."[1636]

[Footnote 1636: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 326.]

Peradventure the Lord Archbishop was curious to know whether from her Voices she had received any revelation concerning her approaching death. She often said that she would not last long. Doubtless he was acquainted with a prophecy widely known at that time, that the maid would die in the Holy Land, after having reconquered with King Charles the sepulchre of our Lord. There were those who attributed this prophecy to the Maid herself; for she had told her Confessor that she would die in battle with the Infidel, and that after her God would send a Maid of Rome who would take her place.[1637] And it is obvious that Messire Regnault knew what store to set on such things. At any rate, for that reason or for another, he asked: "Jeanne, in what place look you for to die?"

[Footnote 1637: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 108, 109, 188, 189.]

To which she made answer: "Where it shall please God. For I am sure neither of the time nor of the place, and I know no more thereof than you."

No answer could have been more devout. My Lord the Bastard, who was present at this conversation, many years later thought he remembered that Jeanne had added: "But I would it were now God's pleasure for me to retire, leaving my arms, and to go and serve my father and mother, keeping sheep with my brethren and sister."[1638]

[Footnote 1638: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. It is Dunois who is giving evidence, and the text runs: In custodiendo oves ipsorum, cum sorore et fratribus meis, qui multum gauderent videre me. But there is reason to believe she had only one sister, whom she had lost before coming into France. As for her brothers, two of them were with her. Dunois' evidence appears to have been written down by a clerk unacquainted with events. The hagiographical character of the passage is obvious.]

If she really spoke thus, it was doubtless because she was haunted by dark forebodings. For some time she had believed herself betrayed.[1639] Possibly she suspected the Lord Archbishop of Reims of wishing her ill. But it is hard to believe that he can have thought of getting rid of her now when he had employed her with such signal success; rather his intention was to make further use of her. Nevertheless he did not like her, and she felt it. He never consulted her and never told her what had been decided in council. And she suffered cruelly from the small account made of the revelations she was always receiving so abundantly. May we not interpret as a subtle and delicate reproach the utterance in his presence of this wish, this complaint? Doubtless she longed for her absent mother. And yet she was mistaken when she thought that henceforth she could endure the tranquil life of a village maiden. In her childhood at Domremy she seldom went to tend the flocks in the field; she preferred to occupy herself in household affairs;[1640] but if, after having waged war beside the King and the nobles, she had had to return to her country and keep sheep, she would not have stayed there six months. Henceforth it was impossible for her to live save with that knighthood, to whose company she believed God had called her. All her heart was there, and she had finished with the distaff.

[Footnote 1639: Trial, vol. ii, p. 423.]

[Footnote 1640: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 51, 66.]

During the march on La Ferte and Crepy, King Charles received a challenge from the Regent, then at Montereau with his baronage, calling upon him to fix a meeting at whatsoever place he should appoint.[1641] "We, who with all our hearts," said the Duke of Bedford, "desire the end of the war, summon and require you, if you have pity and compassion on the poor folk, who in your cause have so long time been cruelly treated, downtrodden, and oppressed, to appoint a place suitable either in this land of Brie, where we both are, or in l'Ile-de-France. There will we meet. And if you have any proposal of peace to make unto us, we will listen to it and as beseemeth a good Catholic prince we will take counsel thereon."[1642]

[Footnote 1641: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 340, 344.]

[Footnote 1642: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 342.]

This arrogant and insulting letter had not been penned by the Regent in any desire or hope of peace, but rather, against all reason, to throw on King Charles's shoulders the responsibility for the miseries and suffering the war was causing the commonalty.

Writing to the King crowned in Reims Cathedral, from the beginning he addresses him in this disdainful manner: "You who were accustomed to call yourself Dauphin of Viennois and who now without reason take unto yourself the title of King." He declares that he wants peace and then adds forthwith: "Not a peace hollow, corrupt, feigned, violated, perjured, like that of Montereau, on which, by your fault and your consent, there followed that terrible and detestable murder, committed contrary to all law and honour of knighthood, on the person of our late dear and greatly loved Father, Jean, Duke of Burgundy."[1643]

[Footnote 1643: Ibid., pp. 342, 343.]

My Lord of Bedford had married one of the daughters of that Duke Jean, who had been treacherously murdered in revenge for the assassination of the Duke of Orleans. But indeed it was not wisely to prepare the way of peace to cast the crime of Montereau in the face of Charles of Valois, who had been dragged there as a child and with whom there had remained ever after a physical trembling and a haunting fear of crossing bridges.[1644]

[Footnote 1644: Georges Chastellain, fragments published by J. Quicherat in La Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1st series, vol. iv, p. 78.]

For the moment the Duke of Bedford's most serious grievance against Charles was that he was accompanied by the Maid and Friar Richard. "You cause the ignorant folk to be seduced and deceived," he said, "for you are supported by superstitious and reprobate persons, such as this woman of ill fame and disorderly life, wearing man's attire and dissolute in manners, and likewise by that apostate and seditious mendicant friar, they both alike being, according to Holy Scripture, abominable in the sight of God."

To strike still greater shame into the heart of the enemy, the Duke of Bedford proceeds to a second attack on the maiden and the monk. And in the most eloquent passage of the letter, when he is citing Charles of Valois to appear before him, he says ironically that he expects to see him come led by this woman of ill fame and this apostate monk.[1645]

[Footnote 1645: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 341, 342.]

Thus wrote the Regent of England; albeit he had a mind, subtle, moderate, and graceful, he was moreover a good Catholic and a believer in all manner of devilry and witchcraft.

His horror at the army of Charles of Valois being commanded by a witch and a heretic monk was certainly sincere, and he deemed it wise to publish the scandal. There were doubtless only too many, who, like him, were ready to believe that the Maid of the Armagnacs was a heretic, a worshipper of idols and given to the practice of magic. In the opinion of many worthy and wise Burgundians a prince must forfeit his honour by keeping such company. And if Jeanne were in very deed a witch, what a disgrace! What an abomination! The Flowers de Luce reinstated by the devil! The Dauphin's whole camp was tainted by it. And yet when my Lord of Bedford spread abroad those ideas he was not so adroit as he thought.

Jeanne, as we know, was good-hearted and in energy untiring. By inspiring the men of her party with the idea that she brought them good luck, she gave them courage.[1646] Nevertheless King Charles's counsellors knew what she could do for them and avoided consulting her. She herself felt that she would not last long.[1647] Then who represented her as a great war leader? Who exalted her as a supernatural power? The enemy.

[Footnote 1646: Trial, vol. ii, p. 324; vol. iii, p. 130. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388.]

[Footnote 1647: Trial, vol. iii, p. 99.]

This letter shows how the English had transformed an innocent child into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of hell causing the bravest to grow pale. In a voice of lamentation the Regent cries: The devil! the witch! And then he marvels that his fighting men tremble before the Maid, and desert rather than face her.[1648]

[Footnote 1648: Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 206, 406, 444, 470, 472. Rymer, Foedera, vol. iv, p. 141. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise.]

From Montereau, the English army had fallen back on Paris. Now it once again came forth to meet the French. On Saturday, the 13th of August, King Charles held the country between Crepy and Paris. Now the Maid from the heights of Dammartin could espy the summit of Montmartre with its windmills, and the light mists from the Seine veiling that great city of Paris, promised to her by those Voices which alas! she had heeded too well.[1649] On the morrow, Sunday, the King and his army encamped in a village, by name Barron, on the River Nonnette on which, five miles lower down, stands Senlis.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: Trial, vol. i, pp. 246, 298. Letter from Alain Chartier in Trial, vol. v, pp. 131 et seq.]

[Footnote 1650: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 344, 345. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 161, 162.]

Senlis was subject to the English.[1651] It was said that the Regent was approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot and the Bastard Saint Pol. With him were the crusaders of the Cardinal of Winchester, the late King's uncle, between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with the Pope's money to go and fight against the Hussites in Bohemia. The Cardinal judged it well to use them against the King of France, a very Christian King forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: "Ores, vienne la Belle!"[1653] By these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the Maid of the Armagnacs she would find her work cut out.

[Footnote 1651: Flammermont, Histoire de Senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans (1405-1441), in Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris.]

[Footnote 1652: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 101, 102. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 328. Journal du siege, p. 118. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 188, 189; vol. iv, appendix xvii. Rymer, Foedera, July, 1429. Raynaldi, Annales ecclesiastici, pp. 77, 88. S. Bougenot, Notices et extraits de manuscrits interessant l'histoire de France conserves a la Bibliotheque imperial de Vienne, p. 62.]

[Footnote 1653: Now, come forth Beauty (W.S.). Le Livre des trahisons de France, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, in La collection des chroniques belges, 1873, p. 198.]

Captain Jean de Saintrailles, the Brother of Poton, observed the English first when, marching towards Senlis, they were crossing La Nonnette by a ford so narrow that two horses could barely pass abreast. But King Charles's army, which was coming down the Nonnette valley, did not arrive in time to surprise them.[1654] It passed the night opposite them, near Montepilloy.

[Footnote 1654: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 102. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 329. Journal du siege, pp. 119, 120.]

On the morrow, Monday, the 15th of August, at daybreak, the men-at-arms heard mass in camp and, as far as might be, cleared their consciences; for great plunderers and whoremongers as they were, they had not given up hope of winning Paradise when this life should be over. That day was a solemn feast, when the Church, on the authority of St. Gregoire de Tours, commemorates the physical and spiritual exaltation to heaven of the Virgin Mary. Churchmen taught that it behoves men to keep the feasts of Our Lord and the Holy Virgin, and that to wage battle on days consecrated to them is to sin grievously against the glorious Mother of God. No one in King Charles's camp could maintain a contrary opinion, since all were Christians as they were in the camp of the Regent. And yet, immediately after the Deo Gratias, every man took up his post ready for battle.[1655]

[Footnote 1655: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161.]

According to the established rule, the army was in several divisions: the van-guard, the archers, the main body, the rear-guard and the three wings.[1656] Further, and according to the same rule, there had been formed a skirmishing company, destined if need were to succour and reinforce the other divisions. It was commanded by Captain La Hire, my Lord the Bastard, and the Sire d'Albret, La Tremouille's half-brother. With this company was the Maid. At the Battle of Patay, despite her entreaties, she had been forced to keep with the rear-guard; now she rode with the bravest and ablest, with those skirmishers or scouts, whose duty it was, says Jean de Bueil,[1657] to repulse the scouts of the opposite party and to observe the number and the ordering of the enemy.[1658] At length justice was done her; at length she was assigned the place which her skill in horsemanship and her courage in battle merited; and yet she hesitated to follow her comrades. According to the report of a Burgundian knight chronicler, there she was, "swayed to and fro, at one moment wishing to fight, at another not."[1659]

[Footnote 1656: Le Jouvencel, passim.]

[Footnote 1657: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 329. Journal du siege, p. 121.]

[Footnote 1658: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 35.]

[Footnote 1659: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 346.]

Her perplexity is easily comprehensible. The little Saint could not bring herself to decide whether to ride forth to battle on the day of our Lady's Feast or to fold her arms while fighting was going on around her. Her Voices intensified her indecision. They never instructed her what to do save when she knew herself. In the end she went with the men-at-arms, not one of whom appears to have shared her scruples. The two armies were but the space of a culverin shot apart.[1660] She, with certain of her company, went right up to the dykes and to the carts, behind which the English were entrenched. Sundry Godons and men of Picardy came forth from their camp and fought, some on foot, others on horseback against an equal number of French. On both sides there were wounded, and prisoners were taken. This hand to hand fighting continued the whole day; at sunset the most serious skirmish happened, and so much dust was raised that it was impossible to see anything.[1661] On that day there befell what had happened on the 17th of June, between Beaugency and Meung. With the armaments and the customs of warfare of those days, it was very difficult to force an army to come out of its entrenched camp. Generally, if a battle was to be fought, it was necessary for the two sides to be in accord, and, after the pledge of battle had been sent and accepted, for each to level his own half of the field where the engagement was to take place.

[Footnote 1660: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162.]

[Footnote 1661: Jean Chartier, Chronique de la Pucelle. Journal du siege. Monstrelet, loc. cit.]

At nightfall the skirmishing ceased, and the two armies slept at a crossbow-shot from each other. Then King Charles went off to Crepy, leaving the English free to go and relieve the town of Evreux, which had agreed to surrender on the 27th of August. With this town the Regent made sure of Normandy.[1662]

[Footnote 1662: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Cochon, p. 457. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise, Paris, 1894, in 8vo, pp. 10, 11. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 215, note 3. Ch. de Beaurepaire, De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination anglaise aux annees 1424, 1425, 1429, p. 62 (Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. xxiv).]

Their loss of the opportunity of conquering Normandy was the price the French had to pay for the royal coronation procession, for that march to Reims, which was at once military, civil and religious. If, after the victory of Patay, they had hastened at once to Rouen, Normandy would have been reconquered and the English cast into the sea; if, from Patay they had pushed on to Paris they would have entered the city without resistance. Yet we must not too hastily condemn that ceremonious promenading of the Lilies through Champagne. By the march to Reims the French party, those Armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little King of Bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of Maine and the duchy of Normandy and than a victorious assault on the first city of the realm. By retaking his towns of Champagne and of France without bloodshed, King Charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities. In short, by concluding that campaign of honest and successful negotiations and by the august ceremonial of the coronation, he came forth at once as the lawful and very holy King of France.

An illustrious lady, a descendant of Bolognese nobles and the widow of a knight of Picardy, well versed in the liberal arts, was the author of a number of lays, virelays,[1663] and ballads. Christine de Pisan, noble and high-minded, wrote with distinction in prose and verse. Loyal to France and a champion of her sex, there was nothing she more fervently desired than to see the French prosperous and their ladies honoured. In her old age she was cloistered in the Abbey of Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. There, on the 31st of July, 1429, she completed a poem of sixty-one stanzas, each containing eight lines of eight syllables, in praise of the Maid. In halting measures and affected language, these verses expressed the thoughts of the finest, the most cultured and the most pious souls touching the angel of war sent of God to the Dauphin Charles.[1664]

[Footnote 1663: A virelay was a later variation of the lay, differing from it chiefly in the arrangement of the rhymes (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1664: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 426 et seq.]

In this work she begins by saying that for eleven years she has spent her cloistered life in weeping. And in very truth, this noble-hearted woman wept over the misfortunes of the realm, into which she had been born, wherein she had grown up, where kings and princes had received her and learned poets had done her honour, and the language of which she spoke with the precision of a purist. After eleven years of mourning, the victories of the Dauphin were her first joy.

"At length," she says, "the sun begins to shine once more and the fine days to bloom again. That royal child so long despised and offended, behold him coming, wearing on his head a crown and accoutred with spurs of gold. Let us cry: 'Noel! Charles, the seventh of that great name, King of the French, thou hast recovered thy kingdom, with the help of a Maid.'"

Christine recalls a prophecy concerning a King, Charles, son of Charles, surnamed The Flying Hart,[1665] who was to be emperor. Of this prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of King Charles VII was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an Italian merchant, written in 1429, contains an obscure announcement of the coronation of the Dauphin at Rome.[1666]

[Footnote 1665: A winged stag (le cerf-volant) is the symbol of a king. Froissart thus explains its origin. Before setting out for Flanders, in 1382, Charles VI dreamed that his falcon had flown away. "Th[=e] [Transcriber's Note: e with macron] apered sodenly before hym a great hart with wynges whereof he had great joye." And the hart bore him to his lost bird. Froissart, Bk. II, ch. clxiv. [The Chronycle of Syr John Froissart translated by Lord Berners, vol. iii, p. 339, Tudor Translation, 1901.] (W.S.) According to Juvenal des Ursins, Charles VI, in 1380, met in the Forest of Senlis a stag with a golden collar bearing this inscription: Hoc me Caesar donavit (Paillot, Parfaite science des armoiries, Paris, 1660, in fo., p. 595). In the works of Eustache Deschamps this same allegory is frequently employed to designate the king. (Eustache Deschamps, OEuvres, ed. G. Raynaud, vol. ii, p. 57.)]

[Footnote 1666: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 66, 67.]

"I pray God," continued Christine, "that thou mayest be that one, that God will grant thee life to see thy children grow up, that through thee and through them, France may have joy, that serving God, thou wage not war to the utterance. My hope is that thou shalt be good, upright, a friend of justice, greater than any other, that pride sully not thy prowess, that thou be gentle, favourable to thy people and fearing God who hath chosen thee to serve him.

"And thou, Maid most happy, most honoured of God, thou hast loosened the cord with which France was bound. Canst thou be praised enough, thou who hast brought peace to this land laid low by war?

"Jeanne, born in a propitious hour, blessed be thy creator! Maid, sent of God, in whom the Holy Ghost shed abroad a ray of his grace, who hast from him received and dost keep gifts in abundance; never did he refuse thy request. Who can ever be thankful enough unto thee?"

The Maid, saviour of the realm, Dame Christine compares to Moses who delivered Israel out of the Land of Egypt.

"That a Maid should proffer her breast, whence France may suck the sweet milk of peace, behold a matter which is above nature!

"Joshua was a mighty conqueror. What is there strange in that, since he was a strong man? But now behold, a woman, a shepherdess doth appear, of greater worship than any man. But with God all things are easy.

"By Esther, Judith and Deborah, women of high esteem, he delivered his oppressed people. And well I know there have been women of great worship. But Jeanne is above all. Through her God hath worked many miracles.

"By a miracle was she sent; the angel of the Lord led her to the King."

"Before she could be believed, to clerks and to scholars was she taken and thoroughly examined. She said she was come from God, and history proved her saying to be true, for Merlin, the Sibyl and Bede had seen her in the spirit. In their books they point to her as the saviour of France, and in their prophecies they let wit of her, saying: 'In the French wars she shall bear the banner.' And indeed they relate all the manner of her history."

We are not astonished that Dame Christine should have been acquainted with the Sibylline poems; for it is known that she was well versed in the writings of the ancients. But we perceive that the obviously mutilated prophecy of Merlin the Magician and the apocryphal chronogram of the Venerable Bede had come under her notice. The predictions and verses of the Armagnac ecclesiastics were spread abroad everywhere with amazing rapidity.[1667]

[Footnote 1667: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 133, 338, 340 et seq.; vol. iv, pp. 305, 480; vol. v, p. 12.]

Dame Christine's views concerning the Maid accord with those of the doctors of the French party; and the poem she wrote in her convent in many passages bears resemblance to the treatise of the Archbishop of Embrun.

There it is said:

"The goodness of her life proves that Jeanne possesses the grace of God.

"It was made manifest, when at the siege of Orleans her might revealed itself. Never was miracle plainer. God did so succour his own people, that the strength of the enemy was but as that of a dead dog. They were taken or slain.

"Honour to the feminine sex, God loves it. A damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? The enemy flees before her. Many eyes behold it.

"She goeth forth capturing towns and castles. She is the first captain of our host. Such power had not Hector or Achilles. But God, who leads her, does all.

"And you, ye men-at-arms, who suffer durance vile and risk your lives for the right, be ye faithful: in heaven shall ye have reward and glory, for whosoever fighteth for the just cause, winneth Paradise.

"Know ye that by her the English shall be cast down, for it is the will of God, who inclineth his ear to the voice of the good folk, whom they desired to overthrow. The blood of the slain crieth against them."

In the shadow of her convent Dame Christine shares the hope common to every noble soul; from the Maid she expects all the good things she longs for. She believes that Jeanne will restore concord to the Christian Church. The gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that Christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. Wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the Maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words the Turk and the Hussite.

"In her conquest of the Holy Land, she will tear up the Saracens like weeds. Thither will she lead King Charles, whom God defend! Before he dies he shall make that journey. He it is who shall conquer the land. There shall she end her life. There shall the thing come to pass."

The good Christine would appear to have brought her poem to this conclusion when she received tidings of the King's coronation. She then added thirteen stanzas to celebrate the mystery of Reims and to foretell the taking of Paris.[1668]

[Footnote 1668: Trial, vol. v, pp. 3 et seq. R. Thomassy, Essai sur les ecrits politiques de Christine de Pisan, suivi d'une notice litteraire et de pieces inedites, Paris, 1838, in 8vo.]

Thus in the gloom and silence of one of those convents where even the hushed noises of the world penetrated but seldom, this virtuous lady collected and expressed in rhyme all those dreams of church and state which centred round a child.

In a fairly good ballad written at the time of the coronation, in love and honour "of the beautiful garden of the noble flowers de luce,"[1669] and for the elevation of the white cross, King Charles VII is described by that mysterious name "the noble stag," which we have first discovered in Christine's poem. The unknown author of the ballad says that the Sibyl, daughter of King Priam, prophesied the misfortunes of this royal stag; but such a prediction need not surprise us, when we remember that Charles of Valois was of Priam's royal line, wherefore Cassandra, when she revealed the destiny of the Flying Hart, did but prolong down the centuries the vicissitudes of her own family.[1670]

[Footnote 1669: Du beau jardin des nobles fleurs de lis.]

[Footnote 1670: M. Pierre Champion has kindly communicated to me the text of this unpublished ballad, which he discovered in a French MS. at Stockholm, LIII, fol. 238. This is the title which the copyist affixed to it about 1472: Ballade faicte quant le Roy Charles VII'eme fut couronne a Rains du temps de Jehanne daiz dicte la Pucelle.]

Rhymers on the French side celebrated the unexpected victories of Charles and the Maid as best they knew how, in a commonplace fashion, by some stiff poem but scantily clothing a thin and meagre muse.

Nevertheless there is a ballad,[1671] by a Dauphinois poet, beginning with this line; "Back, English coues, back!"[1672] which is powerful through the genuine religious spirit which prevails throughout. The author, some poor ecclesiastic, points piously to the English banner cast down, "by the will of King Jesus and of Jeanne the sweet Maid."[1673]

[Footnote 1671: P. Meyer, Ballade contre les Anglais (1429), in Romania, xxi (1892), pp. 50, 52.]

[Footnote 1672: Arriere, Englois coues, arriere! For Coues see vol. i, p. 22, note 2.]

[Footnote 1673:

_Par le vouloir dou roy Jesus Et Jeanne la douce Pucelle._]

The Maid had derived her influence over the common folk from the prophecies of Merlin the Magician and the Venerable Bede.[1674] As Jeanne's deeds became known, predictions foretelling them came to be discovered. For example it was found that Engelide, daughter of an old King of Hungary,[1675] had known long before of the coronation at Reims. Indeed to this royal virgin was attributed a prophecy recorded in Latin, of which the following is a literal translation:

[Footnote 1674: For the legend cf. Merlin, roman en prose du XIII'e siecle, ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich, 1886, 2 vols. in 8vo, introduction. Premier volume de Merlin, Paris, Verard, 1498, in fol. Hersart de la Villemarque, Myrdhin ou l'enchanteur Merlin, son histoire, ses oeuvres, son influence, Paris, 1862, in 12mo. La Borderie, Les veritables propheties de Merlin; examen des poemes bretons attribues a ce barde, in Revue de Bretagne, vol. liii (1883). D'Arbois de Jubainville, Merlin est il un personnage reel ou les origines de la legende de Merlin, in Revue des questions historiques, vol. v (1868), pp. 559, 568.]

[Footnote 1675: Trial, vol. iii, p. 340. Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations, p. 402.]

"O Lily illustrious, watered by princes, by the sower planted in the open, in an orchard delectable, by flowers and sweet-smelling roses surrounded. But, alas! dismay of the Lily, terror of the orchard! Sundry beasts, some coming from without, others nourished within the orchard, hurtling horns against horns, have well nigh crushed the Lily, which fades for lack of water. Long do they trample upon it, destroying nearly all its roots and assaying to wither it with their poisoned breath.

"But the beasts shall be driven forth in shame from the orchard, by a virgin coming from the land whence flows the cruel venom. Behind her right ear the Virgin bears a little scarlet sign; she speaks softly, and her neck is short. To the Lily shall she give fountains of living water, and shall drive out the serpent, to all men revealing its venom. With a laurel wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she at Reims engarland happily the gardener of the Lily, named Charles, son of Charles. All around the turbulent neighbours shall submit, the waters shall surge, the folk shall cry: 'Long live the Lily! Away with the beast! Let the orchard flower!' He shall approach the fields of the Island, adding fleet to fleet, and there a multitude of beasts shall perish in the rout. Peace for many shall be established. The keys of a great number shall recognise the hand that had forged them. The citizens of a noble city shall be punished for perjury by defeat, groaning with many groans, and at the entrance [of Charles?] high walls shall fall low. Then the orchard of the Lily shall be ... (?) and long shall it flower."[1676]

[Footnote 1676: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 344, 345.]

This prophecy attributed to the unknown daughter of a distant king would seem to us to proceed from a French ecclesiastic and an Armagnac. French royalty is portrayed in the figure of the delectable orchard, around which contend beasts nourished in the orchard as well as foreign beasts, that is Burgundians and English. King Charles of Valois is mentioned by his own name and that of his father, and the name of the coronation town occurs in full.

The reduction of certain towns by their liege lord is stated most clearly. Doubtless the prediction was made at the very time of the coronation. It explicitly mentions deeds already accomplished and dimly hints at events looked for, fulfilment of which was delayed, or happened in a manner other than what was expected, or never happened at all, such as the taking of Paris after a terrible assault, the invasion of England by the French, the conclusion of peace.

It is highly probable that when announcing that the deliverer of the orchard might be recognised by her short neck, her sweet voice and a little scarlet mark, the pseudo Engelide was carefully depicting characteristics noticeable in Jeanne herself. Moreover we know that Isabelle Romee's daughter had a sweet woman's voice.[1677] That her neck was broad and firmly set on her shoulders accords with what is known concerning her robust appearance.[1678] And doubtless the so-called daughter of the King of Hungary did not imagine the birth-mark behind her right ear.[1679]

[Footnote 1677: Philippe de Bergame, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 523; vol. v, pp. 108, 120.]

[Footnote 1678: Trial, vol. iii, p. 100. Philippe de Bergame, De claris mulieribus, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 323. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 271. Perceval de Boulainvilliers, Lettre au duc de Milan, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 119, 120.]

[Footnote 1679: J. Brehal, in Trial, vol. iii, p. 345.]

Chapter II

THE MAID'S FIRST VISIT TO COMPIEGNE--THE THREE POPES--SAINT DENYS--TRUCES

After the English army had departed for Normandy, King Charles sent from Crepy to Senlis the Count of Vendome, the Marechal de Rais and the Marechal de Boussac with their men-at-arms. The inhabitants gave them to wit that they inclined to favour the Flowers de Luce.[1680] Henceforth the submission of Compiegne was sure. The King summoned the citizens to receive him; on Wednesday the 18th, the keys of the town were brought to him; on the next day he entered.[1681] The Attorneys[1682] (for by that name the aldermen of the town were called) presented to him Messire Guillaume de Flavy, whom they had elected governor of their town, as being their most experienced and most faithful citizen. On his being presented they asked the King, according to their privilege, to confirm and ratify his appointment. But the sire de la Tremouille took for himself the governorship of Compiegne and appointed as his lieutenant Messire Guillaume de Flavy, whom, notwithstanding, the inhabitants regarded as their captain.[1683]

[Footnote 1680: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 328. Journal du siege, p. 18. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 163, 164. Morosini, pp. 212, 213. Flammermont, Senlis pendant la seconde periode de la guerre cent ans, in Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris, vol. v, 1878, p. 241.]

[Footnote 1681: Perceval de Cagny, p. 164. Monstrelet, p. 352. De l'Epinois, Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiegne, pp. 483, 484. A. Sorel, Sejours de Jeanne d'Arc a Compiegne, maisons ou elle a loge en 1429 et 1430, Paris, 1889, in 8vo, 20 pages.]

[Footnote 1682: French attournes, cf. La Curne, attournes, Godefroi, atornes, magistrates at Compiegne, elected on St. John the Baptist's Day for three years (W.S.). Proces, vol. v, p. 174.]

[Footnote 1683: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 331. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. A. Sorel, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc devant Compiegne, Paris, 1889, in 8vo, pp. 117, 118. Duc de la Tremoille, Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles, Nantes, 1890, in 4to, vol. i, pp. 185, 212. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, capitaine de Compiegne, Paris, 1906, in 8vo, proofs and illustrations, vol. xiii, p. 137.]

One by one, the King was recovering his good towns. He charged the folk of Beauvais to acknowledge him as their lord. When they saw the flowers-de-luce borne by the heralds, the citizens cried: "Long live Charles of France!" The clergy chanted a Te Deum and there was great rejoicing. Those who refused fealty to King Charles were put out of the town with permission to take away their possessions.[1684] The Bishop and Vidame of Beauvais, Messire Pierre Cauchon, who was Grand Almoner of France to King Henry, and a negotiator of important ecclesiastical business, grieved to see his city returning to the French;[1685] it was to the city's hurt, but he could not help it. He failed not to realise that part of this disgrace he owed to the Maid of the Armagnacs, who was influential with her party and had the reputation of being all powerful. As he was a good theologian he must have suspected that the devil was leading her and he wished her all possible harm.

[Footnote 1684: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 327. Journal du siege, p. 118. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 353, 354. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 214, 215.]

[Footnote 1685: A. Sarrazin, Pierre Cauchon, juge de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, pp. 49 et seq.]

At this time Artois, Picardy, all the Burgundian territory in the north, was slipping away from Burgundy. Had King Charles gone there the majority of the dwellers in the strong towers and castles of Picardy would have received him as their sovereign.[1686] But meanwhile his enemies would have recaptured what he had just won in Valois and the Ile de France.

[Footnote 1686: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354.]

Having entered Compiegne with the King, Jeanne lodged at the Hotel du Boeuf, the house of the King's proctor. She slept with the proctor's wife, Marie Le Boucher, who was a kinswoman of Jacques Boucher, Treasurer of Orleans.[1687]

[Footnote 1687: A. Sorel, Sejours de Jeanne d'Arc a Compiegne, p. 6.]

She longed to march on Paris, which she was sure of taking since her Voices had promised it to her. It is related that at the end of two or three days she grew impatient, and, calling the Duke of Alencon, said to him: "My fair Duke, command your men and likewise those of the other captains to equip themselves," then she is said to have cried: "By my staff! I must to Paris."[1688] But this could not have happened: the Maid never gave orders to the men-at-arms. The truth of the matter is that the Duke of Alencon, with a goodly company of fighting men, took his leave of the King and that Jeanne was to accompany him. She was ready to mount her horse when on Monday the 22nd of August, a messenger from the Count of Armagnac brought her a letter which she caused to be read to her.[1689] The following are the contents of the missive:

[Footnote 1688: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 164, 165. Chronique de Tournai, vol. iii, in the Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, ed. Smedt, p. 414.]

[Footnote 1689: Trial, vol. i, pp. 82, 83.]

"My very dear Lady, I commend myself humbly to you, and I entreat you, for God's sake, that seeing the divisions which are at present in the holy Church Universal, concerning the question of the popes (for there are three contending for the papacy: one dwells at Rome and calls himself Martin V, whom all Christian kings obey: the other dwells at Peniscola, in the kingdom of Valentia, and calls himself Clement VIII; the third dwells no man knows where, unless it be the Cardinal de Saint-Estienne and a few folk with him, and calls himself Pope Benedict XIV; the first, who is called Pope Martin, was elected at Constance by consent of all Christian nations; he who is called Clement was elected at Peniscola, after the death of Pope Benedict XIII, by three of his cardinals; the third who is called Pope Benedict XIV was elected secretly at Peniscola, by that same Cardinal Saint-Estienne himself): I pray you beseech Our Lord Jesus Christ that in his infinite mercy, he declare unto us through you, which of the three aforesaid is the true pope and whom it shall be his pleasure that henceforth we obey, him who is called Martin, or him who is called Clement or him who is called Benedict; and in whom we should believe, either in secret or under reservation or by public pronouncement: for we shall all be ready to work the will and the pleasure of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yours in all things,

COUNT D'ARMAGNAC."[1690]

[Footnote 1690: Ibid., pp. 245, 246.]

He who wrote thus, calling Jeanne his very dear lady, recommending himself humbly to her, not in self-abasement, but merely, as we should say to-day, out of courtesy, was one of the greater vassals of the crown.

She had never seen this baron, and doubtless she had never heard of him. Jean IV, son of that Constable of France who had been killed in 1418, was the cruellest man in the kingdom. At that time he was between thirty-three and thirty-four years of age. He held both Armagnacs, the Black and the White, the country of the Four Valleys, the counties of Pardiac, of Fesenzac, Astarac, La Lomagne, and l'Ile-Jourdain. After the Count of Foix he was the most powerful noble of Gascony.[1691]

[Footnote 1691: A. Longnon, Les limites de la France et l'etendue de la domination anglaise a l'epoque de la mission de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1875, in 8vo. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale, iii, col. 255, 257.]

While his name was among those of the adherents of the King and while it was used to designate those who were hostile to the English and Burgundians, Jean IV himself was neither French nor English, but simply Gascon. He called himself count by the grace of God, but he was ever ready to acknowledge himself the King's vassal when it was a question of receiving gifts from that suzerain, who might not always be able to afford himself new gaiters, but who must perforce spend large sums on his great vassals. Meanwhile Jean IV showed consideration to the English, protected an adventurer in the Regent's pay, and gave appointments in his household to men wearing the red cross. He was as violent and treacherous as any of his retainers. Having unlawfully seized the Marshal de Severac, he exacted from him the cession of all his goods and then had him strangled.[1692]

[Footnote 1692: Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, vol. i, p. 68, and proofs and illustrations, pp. 126, 128, 139, 140. Dom Vaissette, Histoire generale du Languedoc, vol. iv, pp. 469, 470. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 151. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale, 1861, vol. iii, pp. 255-257. Le P. Ayroles, La vierge guerriere, p. 66.]

This murder was quite recent. And now we have the docile son of Holy Church appearing eager to discover who is his true spiritual father. It would seem, however, that his mind was already made up on the subject and that he already knew the answer to his question. In verity the long schism, which had rent Christendom asunder, had terminated twelve years earlier. It had ended when the Conclave, which had assembled at Constance in the House of the Merchants on the 8th of November, 1417, on the 11th of that month, Saint Martin's Day, proclaimed Pope, the Cardinal Deacon Otto Colonna, who assumed the title of Martin V. In the Eternal City Martin V wore that tiara which Lorenzo Ghiberti had adorned with eight figures in gold;[1693] and the wily Roman had contrived to obtain his recognition by England and even by France, who thenceforward renounced all hope of a French pontiff. While Charles VII's advisers may not have agreed with Martin V on the question of a General Council, all the rights of the Pope of Rome in the Kingdom of France had been restored to him by an edict, in 1425. Martin V was the one and only pope. Nevertheless, Alphonso of Aragon, highly incensed because Martin V supported against him the rights of Louis d'Anjou to the Kingdom of Naples, determined to oppose to the Pope of Rome a pontiff of his own making. And just ready to hand he had a canon who called himself pope, and on the following grounds: the Anti-pope, Benedict XIII, having fled to Peniscola, had on his death-bed nominated four cardinals, three of whom appointed to succeed him a canon of Barcelona, one Gil Munoz, who assumed the title of Clement VIII. Imprisoned in the chateau of Peniscola on a barren neck of land on three sides washed by the sea, this was the Clement whom the King of Aragon had chosen to be the rival of Martin V.[1694]

[Footnote 1693: Annales juris pontificis (1872-1875), vii, 385. E. Muntz, La tiare pontificale du VIII'e au XVI'e siecle in _Mem. Acad. Inscript. et Belles Lettres_, vol. xxvi, I, pp. 235-324, fig. Les arts a la cour des papes pendant les XV'e et XVI'e siecles, in Bibl. des Ecoles francaises d'Athenes et Rome, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 1694: Baluze, Vitae paparum Avenionensium, 1693, I, pp. 1182 et seq. Fabricius, Bibliotheca medii aevi, 1734, I, p. 1109.]

The Pope excommunicated the King of Aragon and then opened negotiations with him. The Count of Armagnac joined the King's party. For the baptism of his children the Count had holy water blessed by Benedict XIII brought from Peniscola. He likewise was excommunicated. The blow had fallen upon him in this very year, 1429. Thus for some months he had been deprived of the sacraments and excluded from public worship. Hence arose all manner of secular difficulties, in addition to which he was probably afraid of the devil.

Moreover his position was becoming impossible. His powerful ally, King Alfonso, gave in, and himself called upon Clement VIII to resign. When he addressed his inquiry to the Maid of France, the Armagnac was evidently meditating the withdrawal of his allegiance from an unfortunate anti-pope, who was himself renouncing or about to renounce the tiara; for Clement VIII abdicated at Peniscola on the 26th of July. The dictation of the Count's letter cannot have occurred long before that date and may have been after. At any rate whenever he dictated it he must have been aware of the position of the Sovereign Pontiff Clement VIII.

As for the third Pope mentioned in his missive, Benedict XIV, he had no tidings of him, and indeed he was keeping very quiet. His election to the Holy See had been singular in that it had been made by one cardinal alone. Benedict XIV's right to the papacy had been communicated to him by a cardinal created by the Anti-pope, Benedict XIII, at the time of his promotion in 1409. That Cardinal was Jean Barrere, a Frenchman, Bachelor of laws, priest and Cardinal of Saint-Etienne in Coelio monte. It was not to Benedict XIV that the Armagnac was thinking of giving his allegiance; obviously he was eager to submit to Martin V.

It is not easy therefore to discover why he should have asked Jeanne to indicate the true pope. Doubtless it was customary in those days to consult on all manner of questions those holy maids to whom God vouchsafed illumination. Such an one the Maid appeared, and her fame as a prophetess had been spread abroad in a very short time. She revealed hidden things, she drew the curtain from the future. We are reminded of that capitoul[1695] of Toulouse, who about three weeks after the deliverance of Orleans, advised her being consulted as to a remedy for the corruption of the coinage. Bona of Milan, married to a poor gentleman in the train of her cousin, Queen Ysabeau, besought the Maid's help in her endeavour to regain the duchy which she claimed through her descent from the Visconti.[1696] It was just as appropriate to question the Maid concerning the Pope and the Anti-pope. But the most difficult point in this question is to discover what were the Count of Armagnac's reasons for consulting the Holy Maid on a matter concerning which he appears to have been sufficiently informed. The following seems the most probable.

[Footnote 1695: Cf. vol. i, p. 337 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1696: According to Le Maire, Histoire et antiquites de la ville et duche d'Orleans, p. 197, this request is addressed to "Jeanne the Maid, greatly to be honoured and most devout, sent by the King of Heaven for the restoration, and for the extirpation of the English who tyrannize over France." Trial, vol. v, p. 253. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 131.]

Jean IV was prepared to recognise Martin V as Pope; but he desired his submission to appear honourable and reasonable. Wherefore he conceived the idea of ascribing his conduct to the command of Jesus Christ, speaking through the Holy Maid. But it was necessary for the command to be in accordance with his wishes. The letter provides for that. He is careful to indicate to Jeanne, and consequently to God, what reply would be suitable. He lays stress on the fact that Martin V, who had recently excommunicated him, was elected at Constance by the consent of all Christian nations, that he dwells at Rome and that he is obeyed by all Christian kings. He points out on the other hand the circumstances which invalidate the election of Clement VIII by only three cardinals, and the still more ridiculous election of that Benedict, who was chosen by a conclave consisting of only one cardinal.[1697]

[Footnote 1697: Noel Valois, La France et le grand schisme d'Occident, vol. iv (1902), in 8vo, passim.]

After such a setting forth could there possibly remain a single doubt as to whether Pope Martin was the true pope? But such guile was lost on Jeanne; it escaped her entirely. The Count of Armagnac's letter, which she had read to her as she was mounting her horse, must have struck her as very obscure.[1698] The names of Benedict, of Clement and of Martin she had never heard. The Saints, Catherine and Margaret, with whom she was constantly holding converse, revealed to her nothing concerning the Pope. They spoke to her of nought save of the realm of France; and Jeanne's prudence generally led her to confine her prophecies to the subject of the war. This circumstance was pointed out by a German clerk as a matter extraordinary and worthy of note.[1699] But for this once she consented to reply to Jean IV, in order to maintain her reputation as a prophet and because the title of Armagnac strongly appealed to her. She told him that at that moment she was unable to instruct him concerning the true pope, but that later she would inform him in which of the three he must believe, according as God should reveal it unto her. In short, she in a measure followed the example of such soothsayers as postpone the announcement of the oracle to a future day.

[Footnote 1698: Trial, vol. i, p. 82.]

[Footnote 1699: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 466, 467.]

Jhesus [cross symbol] Maria

Count of Armagnac, my good friend and beloved, Jehanne the Maid lets you to wit that your message hath come before me, the which hath told me that you have sent from where you are to know from me in which of the three popes, whom you mention in your memorial, you ought to believe. This thing in sooth I cannot tell you truly for the present, until I be in Paris or at rest elsewhere, because for the present I am too much hindered by affairs of war; but when you hear that I am in Paris send a message to me, and I will give you to understand what you shall rightfully believe, and what I shall know by the counsel of my Righteous and Sovereign Lord, the King of all the world, and what you should do, as far as I may. To God I commend you; God keep you. Written at Compiengne, the 22nd day of August.[1700]

[Footnote 1700: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 245, 246.]

Jeanne before she made this reply can have consulted neither the good Brother Pasquerel nor the good Friar Richard nor indeed any of the churchmen of her company. They would have told her that the true pope was the Pope of Rome, Martin V. They might also have represented to her that she was belittling the authority of the Church by appealing to a revelation from God concerning popes and anti-popes. Sometimes, they would have told her, God confides the secrets of his Church to holy persons. But it would be rash to count upon so rare a privilege.

Jeanne exchanged a few words with the messenger who had brought her the missive; but the interview was brief. The messenger was not safe in the town, not that the soldiers would have made him pay for his master's crimes and treasons; but the Sire de la Tremouille was at Compiegne; and he knew that Count Jean, who for the nonce was in alliance with the Constable De Richemont, was meditating something against him. La Tremouille was not so malevolent as the Count of Armagnac: and yet the poor messenger only narrowly escaped being thrown into the Oise.[1701]

[Footnote 1701: Trial, vol. i, p. 83.]

On the morrow, Tuesday the 23rd of August, the Maid and the Duke of Alencon took leave of the King and set out from Compiegne with a goodly company of fighting men. Before marching on Saint-Denys in France, they went to Senlis to collect a company of men-at-arms whom the King had sent there.[1702] As was her custom, the Maid rode surrounded by monks. Friar Richard, who predicted the approaching end of the world, had joined the procession. It would seem that he had superseded the others, even Brother Pasquerel, the chaplain. It was to him that the Maid confessed beneath the walls of Senlis. In that same spot, with the Dukes of Clermont and Alencon,[1703] she took the communion on two consecutive days. She must have been in the hands of monks who were in the habit of making a very frequent use of the Eucharist.

[Footnote 1702: Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 331. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 212, 213. The accounts of Hemon Raguier, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 24.]

[Footnote 1703: Trial, vol. ii, p. 450.]

The Lord Bishop of Senlis was Jean Fouquerel. Hitherto, he had been on the side of the English and entirely devoted to the Lord Bishop of Beauvais. On the approach of the royal army, Jean Fouquerel, who was a cautious person, had gone off to Paris to hide a large sum of money. He was careful of his possessions. Some one in the army took his nag and gave it to the Maid. By means of a draft on the receiver of taxes and the gabelle officer of the town, two hundred golden saluts[1704] were paid for it. The Lord Bishop did not approve of this transaction and demanded his hackney. Hearing of his displeasure, the Maid caused a letter to be written to him, saying that he might have back his nag if he liked; she did not want it for she found it not sufficiently hardy for men-at-arms. The horse was sent to the Sire de La Tremouille with a request that he would deliver it to the Lord Bishop, who never received it.[1705]

[Footnote 1704: So called because stamped with the picture of the Annunciation and bearing the inscription: Salus populi suprema lex est; the coin was worth about L1 of our money (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1705: Trial, vol. i, p. 104. Extracts from the 13th account of Hemon Raguier, in Trial, vol. v, p. 267. E. Dupuis, Jean Fouquerel, eveque de Senlis, in Memoires du comite archeologique de Senlis, 1875, vol. i, p. 93. Vatin, Combat sous Senlis entre Charles VII et les Anglais, in Comite archeologique de Senlis, Comptes rendus et memoires, 1866, pp. 41, 54.]

As for the bill on the tax receiver and gabelle officer, it may have been worthless; and probably the Reverend Father in God, Jean Fouquerel, never had either horse or money. Jeanne was not at fault, and yet the Lord Bishop of Beauvais and the clerks of the university were shortly to bring home to her the gravity of the sacrilege of laying hands on an ecclesiastical hackney.[1706]

[Footnote 1706: Trial, vol. i, p. 264.]

To the north of Paris, about five miles distant from the great city, there rose the towers of Saint-Denys. On the 26th of August, the army of the Duke of Alencon arrived there, and entered without resistance, albeit the town was strongly fortified.[1707] The place was famous for its illustrious abbey very rich and very ancient. The following is the story of its foundation.

[Footnote 1707: Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. The 25th according to Le journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

Dagobert, King of the French, had from childhood been a devout worshipper of Saint Denys. And whenever he trembled before the ire of King Clotaire his father, he would take refuge in the church of the holy martyr. When he died, a pious man dreamed that he saw Dagobert summoned before the tribunal of God; a great number of saints accused him of having despoiled their churches; and the demons were about to drag him into hell when Saint Denys appeared; and by his intercession, the soul of the King was delivered and escaped punishment. The story was held to be true, and it was thought that the King's soul returned to animate his body and that he did penance.[1708]

[Footnote 1708: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys en France, contenant les antiquites d'icelle, les fondations, prerogatives et privileges, Paris, 1625, 2 vol. in 4to, vol. i, ch. xx and xxiv. Des Rues, Les antiquites, fondations et singularites des plus celebres villes, pp. 84, 85.]

When the Maid with the army occupied Saint-Denys, the three porches, the embattled parapets, the tower of the Abbey Church, erected by the Abbot Suger, were already three centuries old. There were buried the kings of France; and thither they came to take the oriflamme. Fourteen years earlier the late King Charles had fetched it forth, but since then none had borne it.[1709]

[Footnote 1709: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, vol. i, ch. xxxi, xxxiv.]

Many were the wonders told touching this royal standard. And with some of those marvels the Maid must needs have been acquainted, since on her coming into France, she was said to have given the Dauphin Charles the surname of oriflamme,[1710] as a pledge and promise of victory.[1711] At Saint-Denys was preserved the heart of the Constable Du Guesclin.[1712] Jeanne had heard of his high renown; she had proffered wine to Madame de Laval's eldest son; and to his grandmother, who had been Sire Bertrand's second wife, she had sent a little ring of gold, out of respect for the widow of so valiant a man,[1713] asking her to forgive the poverty of the gift.

[Footnote 1710: Cf. vol. i, p. 182 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1711: Thomassin, Registre Delphinal, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 304. See Du Cange, Glossaire under the word Auriflamme.]

[Footnote 1712: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, vol. i, ch. xxii. D. Michel Felibien, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France, Paris, in folio, 1706, pp. 229, 320. Vallet de Viriville, Notice du manuscrit de P. Cochon, at the end of La chronique de la Pucelle, p. 360. Chronique de Du Guesclin, ed. Francisque-Michel, pp. 452 et seq.]

[Footnote 1713: Trial, vol. v, pp. 107, 109.]

The monks of Saint-Denys preserved precious relics, notably a piece of the wood of the true cross, the linen in which the Child Jesus had been wrapped, a fragment of the pitcher wherein the water had been changed to wine at the Cana marriage feast, a bar of Saint Lawrence's gridiron, the chin of Saint Mary Magdalen, a cup of tamarisk wood used by Saint Louis as a charm against the spleen. There likewise was to be seen the head of Saint Denys. True, at the same time one was being shown in the Cathedral church of Paris. The Chancellor, Jean Gerson, treating of Jeanne the Maid, a few days before his death, wrote that of her it might be said as of the head of Saint Denys, that belief in her was a matter of edification and not of faith, albeit in both places alike the head ought to be worshipped in order that edification should not be turned into scandal.[1714]

[Footnote 1714: D. M. Felibien, op. cit., ch. ii, pp. 528 et seq. Illustrations. J. Doublet, op. cit., vol. i, ch. xliii, xlvi. Trial, vol. iii, p. 301. Gallia Christiana, vol. vii, col. 142.]

In this abbey everything proclaimed the dignity, the prerogatives and the high worship of the house of France. Jeanne must joyously have wondered at the insignia, the symbols and signs of the royalty of the Lilies gathered together in this spot,[1715] if indeed those eyes, occupied with celestial visions, had leisure to perceive the things of earth, and if her Voices, endlessly whispering in her ear, left her one moment's respite.

[Footnote 1715: Religieux de Saint-Denis, pp. 154, 156, 226.]

Saint Denys was a great saint, since there was no doubt of his being in very deed the Areopagite himself.[1716] But since he had permitted his abbey to be taken he was no longer invoked as the patron saint of the Kings of France. The Dauphin's followers had replaced him by the Blessed Archangel Michael, whose abbey, near the city of Avranches, had victoriously held out against the English. It was Saint Michael not Saint Denys who had appeared to Jeanne in the garden at Domremy; but she knew that Saint Denys was the war cry of France.[1717]

[Footnote 1716: Estienne Binet, La vie apostolique de saint Denys l'Areopagite, patron et apostre de la France, Paris, 1624, in 12mo. J. Doublet, Histoire chronologique pour la verite de Saint Denys l'Areopagite, apotre de France et premier eveque de Paris, Paris, 1646, in 4to, and Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys en France, p. 95. J. Havet, Les origines de Saint-Denis, in Les Questions merovingiennes.]

[Footnote 1717: Trial, vol. i, p. 179.]

The monks of that rich abbey wasted by war lived there in poverty and in disorder.[1718] Armagnacs and Burgundians in turn descended upon the neighbouring fields and villages, plundering and ravaging, leaving nought that it was possible to carry off. At Saint-Denys was held the Fair of Le Lendit, one of the greatest in Christendom. But now Merchants had ceased to attend it. At the Lendit of 1418, there were but three booths, and those for the selling of shoes from Brabant, in the high street of Saint-Denys, near the Convent of Les Filles-Dieu. Since 1426, there had been no fair at all.[1719]

[Footnote 1718: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 179, note 5.]

[Footnote 1719: Ibid., pp. 101, 209, note 1.]

At the tidings that the Armagnacs were approaching Troyes, the peasants had cut their corn before it was ripe and brought it into Paris. On entering Saint-Denys, the Duke of Alencon's men-at-arms found the town deserted. The chief burgesses had taken refuge in Paris.[1720] Only a few of the poorer families were left. The Maid held two newly born infants over the baptismal font.[1721]

[Footnote 1720: Ibid., pp. 241, 242. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354.]

[Footnote 1721: Trial, vol. i, p. 103.]

Hearing of these Saint-Denys baptisms, her enemies accused her of having lit candles and held them inclined over the infant's heads, in order that she might read their destinies in the melted wax. It was not the first time, it appeared, that she indulged in such practices. When she entered a town, little children were said to offer her candles kneeling, and she received them as an agreeable sacrifice. Then upon the heads of these innocents she would let fall three drops of burning wax, proclaiming that by virtue of this ceremony they could not fail to be good. In such acts Burgundian ecclesiastics discerned idolatry and witchcraft, in which was likewise involved heresy.[1722]

[Footnote 1722: Ibid., p. 304. Noel Valois, Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc, in Annuaire-bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France, Paris, 1907, in 8vo, separate issue, pp. 17, 18.]

Here again, at Saint-Denys, she distributed banners to the men-at-arms. Churchmen on the English side strongly suspected her of charming those banners. And as everyone in those days believed in magic, such a suspicion was not without its danger.[1723]

[Footnote 1723: Trial, vol. i, p. 236.]

The Maid and the Duke of Alencon lost no time. Immediately after their arrival at Saint-Denys they went forth to skirmish before the gates of Paris. Two or three times a day they engaged in this desultory warfare, notably by the wind-mill at the Saint-Denys Gate and in the village of La Chapelle. "Every day there was booty taken," says Messire Jean de Bueil.[1724] It seems hardly credible that in a country which had been plundered and ravaged over and over again, there should have been anything left to be taken; and yet the statement is made and attested by one of the nobles in the army.

[Footnote 1724: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 281.]

Out of respect for the seventh commandment, the Maid forbade the men of her company to commit any theft whatsoever. And she always refused victuals offered her when she knew they had been stolen. In reality she, like the others, lived on pillage, but she did not know it. One day when a Scotsman gave her to wit that she had just partaken of some stolen veal, she flew into a fury and would have beaten him: saintly women are subject to such fits of passion.[1725]

[Footnote 1725: Trial, vol. iii, p. 81.]

Jeanne is said to have observed the walls of Paris carefully, seeking the spot most favourable for attack.[1726] The truth is that in this matter as in all others she depended on her Voices. For the rest she was far superior to all the men-at-arms in courage and in good will. From Saint-Denys she sent the King message after message, urging him to come and take Paris.[1727] But at Compiegne the King and his Council were negotiating with the ambassadors of the Duke of Burgundy, to wit: Jean de Luxembourg, Lord of Beaurevoir, Hugues de Cayeux, Bishop of Arras, David de Brimeu and my Lord of Charny.[1728]

[Footnote 1726: Perceval de Cagny, p. 166.]

[Footnote 1727: Ibid., p. 166.]

[Footnote 1728: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 112. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 404, 408. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 192; vol. iv, appendix xviii.]

The fifteen days' truce had expired. Our only information concerning it is contained in Jeanne's letter to the citizens of Reims. According to Jeanne, the Duke of Burgundy had undertaken to surrender the city to the King of France on the fifteenth day.[1729] If he had so agreed it was on conditions of which we know nothing; we are not therefore in a position to say whether or no those conditions had been carried out. The Maid placed no trust in this promise, and she was quite right; but she did not know everything; and on the very day when she was complaining of the truce to the citizens of Reims, Duke Philip was receiving the command of Paris at the hands of the Regent, and was henceforth in a position to dispose of the city as he liked.[1730] Duke Philip could not bear the sight of Charles of Valois, who had been present at the murder on the Bridge of Montereau, but he detested the English and wished they would go to the devil or return to their island. The vineyards and the cloth looms of his dominions were too numerous and too important for him not to wish for peace. He had no desire to be King of France; therefore he could be treated with, despite his avarice and dissimulation. Nevertheless the fifteenth day had gone by and the city of Paris remained in the hands of the English and the Burgundians, who were not friends but allies.

[Footnote 1729: Trial, vol. v, p. 140.]

[Footnote 1730: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. P. Cochon, p. 457. Perceval de Cagny, p. 165.]

On the 28th of August a truce was concluded. It was to last till Christmas and was to extend over the whole country north of the Seine, from Nogent to Harfleur, with the exception of such towns as were situated where there was a passage over the river. Concerning the city of Paris it was expressly stated that "Our Cousin of Burgundy, he and his men, may engage in the defence of the town and in resisting such as shall make war upon it or do it hurt."[1731] The Chancellor Regnault de Chartres, the Sire de la Tremouille, Christophe d'Harcourt, the Bastard of Orleans, the Bishop of Seez, and likewise certain young nobles very eager for war, such as the Counts of Clermont and of Vendome and the Duke of Bar, in short all the Counsellors of the King and the Princes of the Blood who signed this article, were apparently giving the enemy a weapon against them and renouncing any attempt upon Paris. But they were not all fools; the Bastard of Orleans was keen witted and the Lord Archbishop of Reims was anything but an Olibrius.[1732] They doubtless knew what they were about when they recognised the Duke of Burgundy's rights over Paris. Duke Philip, as we know, had been governor of the great town since the 13th of August. The Regent had ceded it with the idea that Burgundy would keep the Parisians in order better than England, for the English were few in number and were disliked as foreigners. What did it profit King Charles to recognise his cousin's rights over Paris? We fail to see precisely; but after all this truce was no better and no worse than others. In sooth it did not give Paris to the King, but neither did it prevent the King from taking it. Did truces ever hinder Armagnacs and Burgundians from fighting when they had a mind to fight? Was one of those frequent truces ever kept?[1733] After having signed this one, the King advanced to Senlis. The Duke of Alencon came to him there twice. Charles reached Saint-Denys on Wednesday the 7th of September.[1734]

[Footnote 1731: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 352, 353. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 247, 248. D. Felibien, Histoire de Paris, vol. ii, p. 813, and proofs and illustrations, vol. iv, p. 591. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 208, 209, 224, note 2; vol. iv, appendix xviii, pp. 343, 344.]

[Footnote 1732: Cf. vol. i, p. 34, note 3 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1733: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, ch. vii. La diplomatie de Charles VII jusqu'au traite d'Arras.]

[Footnote 1734: Perceval de Cagny, p. 166.]

III. THE ATTACK ON PARIS

In the days when King John was a prisoner in the hands of the English, the townsfolk of Paris, beholding the enemy in the heart of the land, feared lest their city should be besieged. In all haste therefore they proceeded to put it in a state of defence; they surrounded it with trenches and counter trenches. On the side of the University the suburbs were left defenceless; small and remote, they were burned down. But on the right bank the more extensive suburbs well nigh touched the city. One part of them was enclosed by the trenches. When peace was concluded, Charles, Regent of the Realm, undertook to surround the town on the north with an embattled wall, flanked with square towers, with terraces and parapets, with a road round and steps leading up to the ramparts.

In certain places the trench was single, in others double. The work was superintended by Hugues Aubriot, Provost of Paris, to whom was entrusted also the building of the Saint-Antoine bastion, completed under King Charles VI.[1735] This new fortification began on the east, near the river, on the rising ground of Les Celestins. Within its circle it enclosed the district of Saint Paul, the Culture Sainte-Catherine, the Temple, Saint-Martin, Les Filles-Dieu, Saint Sauveur, Saint Honore, Les Quinze Vingts, which hitherto had been in the suburbs and undefended; and it reached the river below the Louvre, which was thus united to the town. There were six gates in the circumvallation, to wit: beginning on the east, the Baudet Gate or Saint-Antoine Gate, the Saint-Avoye or Temple Gate, the Gate of the Painters or of Saint-Denis, the Saint-Martin or Montmartre Gate, the Saint-Honore Gate and the Gate of the Seine.[1736]

[Footnote 1735: Le Roux de Lincy, Hugues Aubriot, prevot de Paris sous Charles V, Paris, 1862, in 8vo, passim. Paris et ses historiens au XIV'e et XV'e siecle by Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris, in fol. [Histoire generale de Paris.]]

[Footnote 1736: Delamare, Traite de la police, Paris, 1710, in folio, vol. i, p. 79. A. Bonnardot, Dissertation archeologique sur les enceintes de Paris, suivie de recherches sur les portes fortifiees qui dependaient des enceintes de Paris, 1851, in 4to, with plan. Etudes archeologiques sur les anciens plans de Paris, 1853, in 4to. Appendice aux etudes archeologiques sur les anciens plans de Paris et aux dissertations sur les enceintes de Paris, Paris, 1877, in 4to. Etude sur Gilles Corrozet, suivie d'une notice sur un manuscrit de la Bibliotheque des ducs de Bourgogne, contenant une description de Paris, en 1432, par Guillebert de Metz, Paris, 1846, in 8vo, 56 pages. Kausler, Atlas des plus memorables batailles, Carlsruhe, 1831, pl. 34. H. Legrand, Paris en 1380, with plan conjecturally reconstructed, Paris in fol. 1868, p. 58. A. Guilaumot, Les Portes de l'enceinte de Paris sous Charles V, Paris, 1879. Rigaud, Chronique de la Pucelle, campagne de Paris, cartes et plans, Bergerac, 1886, in 8vo.]

The Parisians did not like the English and were sorely grieved by their occupation of the city. The folk murmured when, after the funeral of the late King, Charles VI, the Duke of Bedford had the sword of the King of France borne before him.[1737] But what cannot be helped must be endured. The Parisians may have disliked the English; they admired Duke Philip, a prince of comely countenance and the richest potentate of Christendom. As for the little King of Bourges, mean-looking and sad-faced, strongly suspected of treason at Montereau, there was nothing pleasing in him; he was despised and his followers were regarded with fear and horror. For ten years they had been ranging round the town, pillaging, taking prisoners and holding them to ransom. The English and Burgundians indeed did likewise. When, in the August of 1423, Duke Philip came to Paris, his men ravaged all the neighbouring fields, albeit they belonged to friends and allies. But they were only passing through,[1738] while the Armagnacs were for ever raiding, eternally stealing all they could lay hands on, setting fire to barns and churches, killing women and children, ravishing maids and nuns, hanging men by the thumbs. In 1420, like devils let loose, they descended upon the village of Champigny and burned at once oats, wheat, sheep, cows, oxen, women and children. Likewise did they and worse still at Croissy.[1739] One ecclesiastic said they had caused more Christians to suffer martyrdom than Maximian and Diocletian.[1740]

[Footnote 1737: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 180.]

[Footnote 1738: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 189.]

[Footnote 1739: Ibid., pp. 136, 137.]

[Footnote 1740: Ibid., p. 107. Document inedit relatif a l'etat de Paris en 1430, in Revue des societes savantes, 1863, p. 203.]

And yet, in the year 1429, there might have been discovered in the city of Paris not a few followers of the Dauphin. Christine de Pisan, who was very loyal to the House of Valois, said: "In Paris there are many wicked. Good are there also and faithful to their King. But they dare not lift up their voices."[1741]

[Footnote 1741: Christine de Pisan, in Trial, vol. v, stanza 56, p. 20. Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, p. 426.]

It was common knowledge that in the Parlement and even in the Chapter of Notre-Dame were to be found those who had dealings with the Armagnacs.[1742]

[Footnote 1742: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 251. A. Longnon, Paris pendant la domination anglaise (1420-1436), documents extraits des registres de la chancellerie de France, Paris, 1877, in 8vo, introduction, p. xiij. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 116, note 1.]

On the morrow of their victory at Patay, those terrible Armagnacs had only to march straight on the town to take it. They were expected to enter it one day or the other. In the mind of the Regent it was as if they had already taken it. He went off and shut himself in the Castle of Vincennes with the few men who remained to him.[1743] Three days after the discomfiture of the English there was a panic in the town. "The Armagnacs are coming to-night," they said. Meanwhile the Armagnacs were at Orleans awaiting orders to assemble at Gien and to march on Auxerre. At these tidings the Duke of Bedford must have sighed a deep sigh of relief; and straightway he set to work to provide for the defence of Paris and the safety of Normandy.[1744]

[Footnote 1743: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 248. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 297. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 79, note.]

[Footnote 1744: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 257. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 198.]

When the panic was past, the heart of the great town returned to its allegiance, not to the English cause--it had never been English--but to the Burgundian. Its Provost, Messire Simon Morhier, who had made great slaughter of the French at the Battle of the Herrings, remained loyal to the Leopard.[1745] The aldermen on the contrary were suspected of inclining a favourable ear to King Charles's proposals. On the 12th of July, the Parisians elected a new town council composed of the most zealous Burgundians they could find in commerce and on change. To be provost of the merchants they appointed the treasurer, Guillaume Sanguin, to whom the Duke of Burgundy owed more then seven thousand livres tournois[1746] and who had the Regent's jewels in his keeping.[1747] Such an alteration was greatly to the detriment of King Charles, who preferred to win back his good towns by peaceful means rather than by force, and who relied more on negotiations with the citizens than on cannon balls and stones.

[Footnote 1745: Journal du siege, p. 38. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 106, 107. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 454.]

[Footnote 1746: See vol. i, p. 222, note 2 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1747: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 239, note 2. Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 340 et seq.]

Just in the nick of time the Regent surrendered the town to Duke Philip, not, we may be sure, without many regrets for having recently refused him Orleans. He realised that thus, by returning to its French allegiance, the chief city of the realm would make a more energetic defense against the Dauphin's men. The Parisians' old liking for the magnificent Duke would revive, and so would their old hatred of the disinherited son of Madame Ysabeau. In the Palais de Justice the Duke read the story of his father's death, punctuated with complaints of Armagnac treason and violated treaties; he caused the blood of Montereau[1748] to cry to heaven; those who were present swore to be right loyal to him and to the Regent. On the following days the same oath was taken by the regular and secular clergy.[1749]

[Footnote 1748: 14th July, 1429, Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 240, 241. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 240. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 186.]

[Footnote 1749: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 241.]

But the citizens were strengthened in their resistance more by their remembrance of Armagnac cruelty than by their affection for the fair Duke. A rumour ran and was believed by them that Messire Charles of Valois had abandoned to his mercenaries the city and the citizens of all ranks, high and low, men and women, and that he intended to plough up the very ground on which Paris stood. Such a rumour represented him very falsely; on all occasions he was pitiful and debonair; his Council had prudently converted the coronation campaign into an armed and peaceful procession. But the Parisians were incapable of judging sanely when the intentions of the King of France were concerned; and they knew only too well that once their town was taken there would be nothing to prevent the Armagnacs from laying it waste with fire and sword.[1750]

[Footnote 1750: Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 356.]

One other circumstance intensified their fear and their dislike. When they heard that Friar Richard, to whose sermons they had once listened so devoutly, was riding with the Dauphin's men and with his nimble tongue winning such good towns as Troyes in Champagne, they called down upon him the malediction of God and his Saints. They tore from their caps the pewter medals engraved with the holy name of Jesus, which the good Brother had given them, and in their bitter hatred towards him they returned straightway to the dice, bowls and draughts which they had renounced at his exhortation. With no less horror did the Maid inspire them. It was said that she was acting the prophetess and uttering such words as: "In very deed this or that shall come to pass." "With the Armagnacs is a creature in woman's form. What it is God only knows," they cried. They spoke of her as a woman of ill fame.[1751] Among these enemies, there were those who filled them with even greater horror than pagans and Saracens--to wit: a monk and a maid. They all took the cross of Saint Andrew.[1752]

[Footnote 1751: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 242.]

[Footnote 1752: Ibid., p. 243.]

While the Dauphin had been away at his coronation an army had come from England into France. The Regent intended it to overrun Normandy. In its march on Rouen he commanded it in person. The defence and ward of Paris he left to Louis of Luxembourg, Bishop of Therouanne, Chancellor of France for the English, to the Sire de l'Isle-Adam, Marshal of France, Captain of Paris, to two thousand men-at-arms and to the Parisian train-bands. To the last were entrusted the defence of the ramparts and the management of the artillery. They were commanded by twenty-four burgesses, called quarteniers because they represented the twenty-four quarters of the city. From the end of July all danger of a surprise had been guarded against.[1753]

[Footnote 1753: Rymer, Foedera, May. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 355. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 106, 107. Wallon, Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i, p. 290, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise, p. 9. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 216, note 5; vol. iv, appendix xviii.]

On the 10th of August, on Saint-Laurence's Eve, while the Armagnacs were encamped at La Ferte-Milon, the Saint-Martin Gate, flanked by four towers and a double drawbridge, was closed; and all men were forbidden to go to Saint-Laurent, either to the procession or to the fair, as in previous years.[1754]

[Footnote 1754: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

On the 28th of the same month, the royal army occupied Saint-Denys. Henceforth no one dared leave the city, neither for the vintage nor for the gathering of anything in the kitchen gardens, which covered the plain north of the town. Prices immediately went up.[1755]

[Footnote 1755: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243. Perceval de Cagny, p. 166. Chronique des cordeliers, folio, 486 verso.]

In the early days of September, the quarteniers, each one in his own district, had the trenches set in order and the cannons mounted on walls, gates, and towers. At the command of the aldermen, the hewers of stone for the cannon made thousands of balls.[1756]

[Footnote 1756: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

From My Lord, the Duke of Alencon, the magistrates received letters beginning thus: "To you, Provost of Paris and Provost of the Merchants and Aldermen...." He named them by name and greeted them in eloquent language. These letters were regarded as an artifice intended to render the townsfolk suspicious of the aldermen and to incite one class of the populace against the other. The only answer sent to the Duke was a request that he would not spoil any more paper with such malicious endeavours.[1757]

[Footnote 1757: Ibid., pp. 243, 244.]

The chapter of Notre-Dame ordered masses to be said for the salvation of the people. On the 5th of September, three canons were authorised to make arrangements for the defence of the monastery. Those in charge of the sacristy took measures to hide the relics and the treasure of the cathedral from the Armagnac soldiers. For two hundred golden saluts[1758] they sold the body of Saint Denys; but they kept the foot, which was of silver, the head and the crown.[1759]

[Footnote 1758: Cf. ante, p. 45, note 2 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1759: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame (Arch. Nat., LL, 716, pp. 173, 174), in Le journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, loc. cit. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, pp. 530, 531, proofs and illustrations, J, p. 639. Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Le proces de Jeanne d'Arc et l'universite de Paris, Nogent-le-Rotrou, 1898, in 8vo.]

On Wednesday, the 7th of September, the Eve of the Virgin's Nativity, there was a procession to Sainte-Genevieve-du-Mont with the object of counteracting the evil of the times and allaying the animosity of the enemy. In it walked the canons of the Palace, bearing the True Cross.[1760]

[Footnote 1760: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, in Tuetey, notes to Le Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 241, note 1. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 456. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, proofs and illustrations, p. 640.]

That very day the army of the Duke of Alencon and of the Maid was skirmishing beneath the walls. It retreated in the evening; and on that night the townsfolk slept in peace, for on the morrow Christians celebrated the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.[1761]

[Footnote 1761: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 244. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustelier, vol. i, p. 113. Perceval de Cagny, p. 166. Chronique des cordeliers, folio, 486 verso. Le P. Ayroles, La vrai Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, p. 531.]

It was a great festival and a very ancient one. Its origin is described in the following manner. There was a certain holy man, who passed his life in meditation. On a day he called to mind that for many years, on the 8th of September, he had heard marvellous angelic music in the air, and he prayed to God to reveal to him the reason for this concert of instruments and of celestial voices. He was vouchsafed the answer that it was the anniversary of the birth of the glorious Virgin Mary; and he received the command to instruct the faithful in order that they on that solemn day might join their voices to the angelic chorus. The matter was reported to the Sovereign Pontiff and the other heads of the Church, who, after having prayed, fasted and consulted the witnesses and traditions of the Church, decreed that henceforth that day, the 8th of September, should be universally consecrated to the celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary.[1762]

[Footnote 1762: Voragine, Legenda Aurea. Anquetil, La nativite, miracle extrait de la legende doree, in Mem. Soc. Agr. de Bayeux, 1883, vol. x, p. 286. Douhet, Dictionnaire des mysteres, 1854, p. 545.]

That day were read at mass the words of the prophet Isaiah: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots."

The people of Paris thought that even the Armagnacs would do no work on so high a festival and would keep the third commandment.

On this Thursday, the 8th of September, about eight o'clock in the morning, the Maid, the Dukes of Alencon and of Bourbon, the Marshals of Boussac and of Rais, the Count of Vendome, the Lords of Laval, of Albret and of Gaucourt, who with their men, to the number of ten thousand and more, had encamped in the village of La Chapelle, half-way along the road from Saint-Denys to Paris, set out on the march. At the hour of high mass, between eleven and twelve o'clock, they reached the height of Les Moulins, at the foot of which the Swine Market was held.[1763] Here there was a gibbet. Fifty-six years earlier, a woman of saintly life according to the people, but according to the holy inquisitors, a heretic and a Turlupine, had been burned alive on that very market-place.[1764]

[Footnote 1763: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 166, 168. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 333, 334. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 107, 109. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 456, 458. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 244, 245. Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 486 verso. P. Cochon, ed. Beaurepaire, p. 307. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 210.]

[Footnote 1764: Gaguin, Hist. Francorum, Frankfort, 1577, book viii, chap. ii, p. 158. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en France, p. 121. Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Age, vol. ii, p. 126. (The Turlupins were a German sect who called themselves "the Brethren of the Free Spirit." W.S.)]

Wherefore did the King's men appear first before the northern walls, those of Charles V, which were the strongest? It is impossible to tell. A few days earlier they had thrown a bridge across the River above Paris,[1765] which looks as if they intended to attack the old fortification and get into the city from the University side. Did they mean to carry out the two attacks simultaneously? It is probable. Did they renounce the project of their own accord or against their will? We cannot tell.

[Footnote 1765: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 120, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Un detail du siege de Paris, par Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xlvi, 1885, pp. 5 et seq.]

Beneath the walls of Charles V they assembled a quantity of artillery, cannons, culverins, mortars; and in hand-carts they brought fagots to fill up the trenches, hurdles to bridge them over and seven hundred ladders: very elaborate material for the siege, despite their having, as we shall see, forgotten what was most necessary.[1766] They came not therefore to skirmish nor to do great feats of arms. They came to attempt in broad daylight the escalading and the storming of the greatest, the most illustrious, and the most populous town of the realm; an undertaking of vast importance, proposed doubtless and decided in the royal council and with the knowledge of the King, who can have been neither indifferent nor hostile to it.[1767] Charles of Valois wanted to retake Paris. It remains to be seen whether for the accomplishment of his desire he depended merely on men-at-arms and ladders.

[Footnote 1766: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 457.]

[Footnote 1767: Trial, vol. i, pp. 240, 246, 298; vol. iii, pp. 425, 427; vol. v, pp. 97, 107, 130, 140.]

It would seem that the Maid had not been told of the resolutions taken.[1768] She was never consulted and was seldom informed of what had been decided. But she was as sure of entering the town that day as of going to Paradise when she died. For more than three years her Voices had been drumming the attack on Paris in her ears.[1769] But the astonishing point is that, saint as she was, she should have consented to arm and fight on the day of the Nativity. It was contrary to her action on the 5th of May, Ascension Day, and inconsistent with what she had said on the 8th of the same month: "As ye love and honour the Sacred Sabbath do not begin the battle."[1770]

[Footnote 1768: Ibid., pp. 57, 146, 168, 250.]

[Footnote 1769: Ibid., vol. v, p. 130 (letter of the 17th of July, 1429), vol. i, p. 298. "Et hoc sciebar per revelationem." Cf. vol. i, pp. 57, 260, 288 in contradiction.]

[Footnote 1770: Journal du siege, p. 89.]

True it is that afterwards, at Montepilloy, she had engaged in a skirmish on the Day of the Assumption, and thus scandalized the masters of the University. She acted according to the counsel of her Voices and her decisions depended on the vaguest murmurings in her ear. Nothing is more inconstant and more contradictory than the inspirations of such visionaries, who are but the playthings of their dreams. What is certain at least is that Jeanne now as always was convinced that she was doing right and committing no sin.[1771] Arrayed on the height of Les Moulins, in front of Paris with its grey fortifications, the French had immediately before them the outermost of the trenches, dry and narrow, some sixteen or seventeen feet deep, separated by a mound from the second trench, nearly one hundred feet broad, deep and filled with water which lapped the walls of the city. Quite close, on their right, the road to Roule led up to the Saint Honore Gate, also called the Gate of the Blind because it was near the Hospital of Les Quinze Vingts.[1772] It opened beneath a castlet flanked by turrets, and for an advanced defence it had a bulwark surrounded by wooden barriers, like those of Orleans.[1773]

[Footnote 1771: Trial, vol. i, pp. 147, 148.]

[Footnote 1772: In 1254 Saint Louis founded this hospital for three hundred blind knights whose eyes had been put out by the Saracens. (W.S.)]

[Footnote 1773: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 205 and 231, note 4. Adolphe Berty, Topographie historique du vieux Paris, region du Louvre et des Tuileries, p. 180, and app. vi, p. ix. E. Eude, L'attaque de Jeanne d'Arc contre Paris, 1429, in Cosmos, nouv. serie, xxix (1894), pp. 241, 244.]

The Parisians did not expect to be attacked on a feast day.[1774] And yet the ramparts were by no means deserted, and on the walls standards could be seen waving, and especially a great white banner with a Saint Andrew's cross in silver gilt.[1775]

[Footnote 1774: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 246.]

[Footnote 1775: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 332, 333. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 108.]

The French arrayed themselves slightly behind the Moulin hill, which was to protect them from the stream of lead and stones beginning to be discharged from the artillery on the ramparts. There they ranged their mortars, their culverins and their cannon, ready to fire on the city walls. In this position, which commanded the widest stretch of the fortifications, was the main body of the army. Led by Messire de Saint-Vallier a knight of Dauphine, several captains and men-at-arms approached the Saint Honore Gate and set fire to the barriers. As the garrison of the gate had withdrawn within the fortification, and as the enemy was not seen to be coming out by any other exit, the Marechal de Rais' company advanced with fagots, bundles and ladders right up to the ramparts. The Maid rode at the head of her company. They halted between the Saint-Denys and the Saint-Honore Gates, but nearer the latter, and went down into the first trench, which was not difficult to cross. But on the mound they found themselves exposed to bolts and arrows which rained straight down from the walls.[1776] As at Orleans, and at Les Tourelles, Jeanne had given her banner to a man of valour to hold.

[Footnote 1776: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167.]

When she reached the top of the mound, she cried out to the folk in Paris: "Surrender the town to the King of France."[1777]

[Footnote 1777: Trial, vol. i, p. 148.]

The Burgundians heard her saying also: "In Jesus' name surrender to us speedily. For if ye yield not before nightfall, we shall enter by force, whether ye will or no, and ye shall all be put to death without mercy."[1778]

[Footnote 1778: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245.]

On the mound she remained, sounding the great dyke with her lance and marvelling to find it so full and so deep. And yet for eleven days she and her men-at-arms had been reconnoitring round the walls and seeking the most favourable point of attack. That she should not have known how to plan an attack was quite natural. But what is to be thought of the men-at-arms, who were there on the mound, taken by surprise, as baffled as she, and all aghast at finding so much water close to the Seine when the River was in flood? To be able to reconnoitre the defences of a fortress was surely the a b c of the trade of war. Captains and soldiers of fortune never risked advancing against a fortification without knowing first whether there were water, morass or briars, and arming themselves accordingly with siege train suitable to the occasion. When the water of the moat was deep they launched leather boats carried on horses' backs.[1779] The men-at-arms of the Marechal de Rais and my Lord of Alencon were more ignorant than the meanest adventurers. What would the doughty La Hire have thought of them? Such gross ineptitude and ignorance appeared so incredible that it was supposed that those fighting men knew the depth of the moat but concealed it from the Maid, desiring her discomfiture.[1780] In such a case, while entrapping the damsel they were themselves entrapped, for there they stayed moving neither backwards nor forwards.

[Footnote 1779: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. 67.]

[Footnote 1780: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 333. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 109. Journal du siege, p. 127. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustelier, 1724, vol. i, p. 113.]

Certain among them idly threw fagots into the moat. Meanwhile the defenders assailed by flights of arrows, disappeared one after the other.[1781] But towards four o'clock in the afternoon, the citizens arrived in crowds. The cannon of the Saint-Denys Gate thundered. Arrows and abuse flew between those above and those below. The hours passed, the sun was sinking. The Maid never ceased sounding the moat with the staff of her lance and crying out to the Parisians to surrender.

[Footnote 1781: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 355, 356. Morosini, vol. iii, note 3. E. Eude, L'attaque de Jeanne d'Arc contre Paris, in Cosmos, 22 Sept., 1894, vol. xxix. P. Marin, Le genie militaire de Jeanne d'Arc, in Grande revue de Paris et de Saint-Petersbourg, 2nd year, vol. i, 1889, p. 142.]

"There, wanton! There, minx!" cried a Burgundian.

And planting his cross-bow in the ground with his foot, he shot an arrow which split one of her greaves and wounded her in the thigh. Another Burgundian took aim at the Maid's standard-bearer and wounded him in the foot. The wounded man raised his visor to see whence the arrow came and straightway received another between the eyes. The Maid and the Duke of Alencon sorely regretted the loss of this man-at-arms.[1782]

[Footnote 1782: Trial, vol. i, pp. 57, 246. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245. Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 457. Perceval de Cagny, Jean Chartier, Journal du siege, Monstrelet, Morosini, loc. cit.]

After she had been wounded, Jeanne cried all the more loudly that the walls must be reached and the city taken. She was placed out of reach of the arrows in the shelter of a breast-work. There she urged the men-at-arms to throw fagots into the water and make a bridge. About ten or eleven o'clock in the evening, the Sire de la Tremouille charged the combatants to retreat. The Maid would not leave the place. She was doubtless listening to her Saints and beholding celestial hosts around her. The Duke of Alencon sent for her. The aged Sire de Gaucourt[1783] carried her off with the aid of a captain of Picardy, one Guichard Bournel, who did not please her on that day, and who by his treachery six months later, was to please her still less.[1784] Had she not been wounded she would have resisted more strongly.[1785] She yielded regretfully, saying: "In God's name! the city might have been taken."[1786]

[Footnote 1783: Trial, vol. i, p. 298.]

[Footnote 1784: Trial, vol. i, p. 111, 273. Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 50. F. Brun, Jeanne d Arc et le capitaine de Soissons, pp. 31 et seq.]

[Footnote 1785: Trial, vol. i, p. 57.]

[Footnote 1786: The oath "Par mon martin" (by my staff) is an invention of the scribe who wrote the Chronicle which is attributed to Perceval de Cagny, p. 168.]

They put her on horseback; and thus she was able to follow the army. The rumour ran that she had been shot in both thighs; in sooth her wound was but slight.[1787]

[Footnote 1787: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 334. Journal du siege, p. 128. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 109. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 355, 356.]

The French returned to La Chapelle, whence they had set out in the morning. They carried their wounded on some of the carts which they had used for the transport of fagots and ladders. In the hands of the enemy they left three hundred hand-carts, six hundred and sixty ladders, four thousand hurdles and large fagots, of which they had used but a small number.[1788] Their retreat must have been somewhat hurried, seeing that, when they came to the Barn of Les Mathurins, near The Swine Market, they forsook their baggage and set fire to it. With horror it was related that, like pagans of Rome, they had cast their dead into the flames.[1789] Nevertheless the Parisians dared not pursue them. In those days men-at-arms who knew their trade never retreated without laying some snare for the enemy. Consequently the King's men posted a considerable company in ambush by the roadside, to lie in wait for the light troops who should come in pursuit of the retreating army.[1790] It was precisely such an ambuscade that the Parisians feared; wherefore they permitted the Armagnacs to regain their camp at La Chapelle-Saint-Denys unmolested.[1791]

[Footnote 1788: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 1789: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245.]

[Footnote 1790: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. 142.]

[Footnote 1791: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 245, 246.]

If we regard only the military tactics of the day, there is no doubt that the French had blundered and had lacked energy. But it was not on military tactics that the greatest reliance had been placed. Those who conducted the war, the King and his council, certainly expected to enter Paris that day. But how? As they had entered Chalons, as they had entered Reims, as they had entered all the King's good towns from Troyes to Compiegne. King Charles had shown himself determined to recover his towns by means of the townsfolk; towards Paris he acted as he had acted towards his other towns.

During the coronation march, he had entered into communication with the bishops and burgesses of the cities of Champagne; and like communications he had entered into in Paris.[1792] He had dealings with the monks and notably with the Carmelites of Melun, whose Prior, Brother Pierre d'Allee, was working in his interest.[1793] For some time paid agents had been watching for an opportunity of throwing the city into disorder and of bringing in the enemy in a moment of panic and confusion. During the assault they were working for him in the streets. In the afternoon, on both sides of the bridges, were heard cries of "Let every man look to his own safety! The enemy has entered! All is lost!" Such of the citizens as were listening to the sermon hastened to shut themselves in their houses. And others who were out of doors sought refuge in the churches. But the tumult was quelled. Wise men, like the clerk of the Parlement, believed that it was but a feigned attack, and that Charles of Valois looked to recover the town not so much by force of arms as by a movement of the populace.[1794]

[Footnote 1792: For the opinions of the townsfolk of Paris, see various acts of Henry VI of the 18th and 25th of Sept., 1429 (MS. Fontanieu, 115). Sauval, Antiquites de Paris, vol. iii, p. 586 and circ.]

[Footnote 1793: A. Longnon, Paris pendant la domination anglaise, p. 302.]

[Footnote 1794: Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 456, 458.]

Certain monks who were acting in Paris as the King's spies, went out to him at Saint-Denys and informed him that the attempt had failed. According to them it had very nearly succeeded.[1795]

[Footnote 1795: Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, p. 344.]

The Sire de la Tremouille is said to have commanded the retreat, for fear of a massacre. Indeed, once the French had entered they were quite capable of slaughtering the townsfolk and razing the city to the ground.[1796]

[Footnote 1796: Chronique de Normandie, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 342, 343.]

On the morrow, Friday the 9th, the Maid, rising with the dawn, despite her wound, asked the Duke of Alencon to have the call to arms sounded; for she was strongly determined to return to the walls of Paris, swearing not to leave them until the city should be taken.[1797] Meanwhile the French captains sent a herald to Paris, charged to ask for a safe conduct for the removing of the bodies of the dead left behind in great numbers.[1798]

[Footnote 1797: Perceval de Cagny, p. 168.]

[Footnote 1798: Ibid. Chronique normande, in La chronique de la Pucelle, p. 465. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 120, note 1.]

Notwithstanding that they had suffered cruel hurt, after a retreat unmolested it is true, but none the less disastrous and involving the loss of all their siege train, several of the leaders were, like the Maid, inclined to attempt a new assault. Others would not hear of it. While they were disputing, they beheld a baron coming towards them and with him fifty nobles; it was the Sire de Montmorency, the first Christian peer of France, that is the first among the ancient vassals of the bishop of Paris. He was transferring his allegiance from the Cross of St. Andrew to the Flowers-de-luce.[1799] His coming filled the King's men with courage and a desire to return to the city. The army was on its way back, when the Count of Clermont and the Duke of Bar were sent to arrest the march by order of the King, and to take the Maid back to Saint-Denys.[1800]

[Footnote 1799: Duchesne, Histoire de la maison de Montmorency, p. 232. Perceval de Cagny, p. 168. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 118, 119.]

[Footnote 1800: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Un detail du siege de Paris, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xlvi, 1885, p. 12.]

On Saturday the 10th, at daybreak, the Duke of Alencon, with a few knights, appeared on the bank above the city, where a bridge had been thrown over the Seine some days earlier. The Maid, always eager for danger, accompanied the venturesome warriors. But the night before, the King had prudently caused the bridge to be taken down, and the little band had to retrace its steps.[1801] It was not that the King had renounced the idea of taking Paris. He was thinking more than ever of the recovery of his great town; but he intended to regain it without an assault, by means of the compliance of certain burgesses.

[Footnote 1801: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 168, 169. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 219, note 4. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 120, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Un detail du siege de Paris, loc. cit.]

At this same place of Saint-Denys there happened to Jeanne a misadventure, which would seem to have impressed her comrades and possibly to have lessened their faith in her good luck in war. As was customary, women of ill-fame followed the army in great numbers; each man had his own; they were called amietes.[1802] Jeanne could not tolerate them because they caused disorder, but more especially because their sinful lives filled her with horror. At that very time, stories like the following were circulated far and wide, and spread even into Germany.

[Footnote 1802: Diminutive of amie (W.S.).]

There was a certain man in the camp, who had with him his amiete. She rode in armour in order not to be recognised. Now the Maid said to the nobles and captains: "There is a woman with our men." They replied that they knew of none. Whereupon the Maid assembled the army, and, approaching the woman said: "This is she."

Then addressing the wench: "Thou art of Gien and thou art big with child. Were it not so I would put thee to death. Thou hast already let one child die and thou shalt not do the same for this one."

When the Maid had thus spoken, servants took the wench and conveyed her to her own home. There they kept her under watch and ward until she was delivered of her child. And she confessed that what the Maid had said was true.

After which, the Maid again said: "There are women in the camp." Whereupon two wantons, who did not belong to the army, and had already been dismissed from it, hearing these words, rode off on horseback. But the Maid hastened after them crying: "Ye foolish women, I have forbidden you to come into my company." And she drew her sword and struck one of them on the head, so sore that she died.[1803]

[Footnote 1803: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 184, 186.]

The tale was true; Jeanne could not suffer these wenches. Every time she met one she gave chase to her. This was precisely what she did at Gien, when she saw women of ill-fame awaiting the King's men.[1804] At Chateau-Thierry, she espied an amiete riding behind a man-at-arms, and, running after her, sword in hand, she came up with her, and without striking, bade her henceforth avoid the society of men-at-arms. "If thou wilt not," she added, "I shall do thee hurt."[1805]

[Footnote 1804: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 90.]

[Footnote 1805: Trial, vol. iii, p. 73.]

At Saint-Denys, being accompanied by the Duke of Alencon, Jeanne pursued another of these wantons. This time she was not content with remonstrances and threats. She broke her sword over her.[1806] Was it Saint Catherine's sword? So it was believed, and doubtless not without reason.[1807] In those days men's minds were full of the romantic stories of Joyeuse and Durandal. It would appear that Jeanne, when she lost her sword, lost her power. A slight variation of the story was told afterwards, and it was related how the King, when he was acquainted with the matter of the broken sword, was displeased and said to the Maid: "You should have taken a stick to strike withal and should not have risked the sword you received from divine hands."[1808] It was told likewise how the sword had been given to an armourer for him to join the pieces together, and that he could not, wherein lay a proof that the sword was enchanted.[1809]

[Footnote 1806: Ibid., p. 99.]

[Footnote 1807: Ibid., vol. i, p. 76.]

[Footnote 1808: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 90.]

[Footnote 1809: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 122, 123.]

Before his departure, the King appointed the Count of Clermont commander of the district with several lieutenants: the Lords of Culant, Boussac, Lore, and Foucault. He constituted joint lieutenants-general the Counts of Clermont and of Vendome, the lords Regnault de Chartres, Christophe d'Harcourt and Jean Tudert. Regnault de Chartres established himself in the town of Senlis, the lieutenant's headquarters. Having thus disposed, the King quitted Saint-Denys on the 13th of September.[1810] The Maid followed him against her will notwithstanding that she had the permission of her Voices to do so.[1811] She offered her armour to the image of Our Lady and to the precious body of Saint Denys.[1812] This armour was white, that is to say devoid of armorial bearings.[1813] She was thus following the custom of men-at-arms, who, after they had received a wound, if they did not die of it, offered their armour to Our Lady and the Saints as a token of thanksgiving. Wherefore, in those warlike days, chapels, like that of Notre-Dame de Fierbois, often presented the appearance of arsenals. To her armour the Maid added a sword which she had won before Paris.[1814]

[Footnote 1810: Perceval de Cagny, p. 169. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 335 et seq. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 112 et seq. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 356. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 246. Berry in Trial, vol. iv, p. 48. Gilles de Roye, p. 208.]

[Footnote 1811: Trial, vol. i, p. 260.]

[Footnote 1812: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 109. Perceval de Cagny, p. 170. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, vol. i, p. 114. Jacques Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, pp. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 1813: La Curne, at the word Blanc: white armour was worn by squires, gilded armour by knights. Bouteiller, in his Somme Rurale, refers to the "harnais dore" (gilded armour) of the knights. Cf. Du Tillet, Recueil des rois de France, ch. Des chevaliers, p. 431. Du Cange, Observations sur les etablissements de la France, p. 373.]

[Footnote 1814: Trial, vol. i, p. 179.]

Chapter IV

THE TAKING OF SAINT-PIERRE-LE-MOUSTIER--FRIAR RICHARD'S SPIRITUAL DAUGHTERS--THE SIEGE OF LA CHARITE

The King slept at Lagny-sur-Marne on the 14th of September, then crossed the Seine at Bray, forded the Yonne near Sens and went on through Courtenay, Chateaurenard and Montargis. On the 21st of September he reached Gien. There he disbanded the army he could no longer pay, and each man went to his own home. The Duke of Alencon withdrew into his viscounty of Beaumont-sur-Oise.[1815]

[Footnote 1815: Journal du siege, p. 130. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170, 171. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 246, 247. Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 79. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 219.]

Learning that the Queen was coming to meet the King, Jeanne went before her and greeted her at Selles-en-Berry.[1816] She was afterwards taken to Bourges, where my Lord d'Albret, half-brother of the Sire de la Tremouille, lodged her with Messire Regnier de Bouligny. Regnier was then Receiver General. He had been one of those whose dismissal the University had requested in 1408, as being worse than useless, for they held him responsible for many of the disorders in the kingdom. He had entered the Dauphin's service, passed from the administration of the royal domain to that of taxes and attained the highest rank in the control of the finances.[1817] His wife, who had accompanied the Queen to Selles, beheld the Maid and wondered. Jeanne seemed to her a creature sent by God for the relief of the King and those of France who were loyal to him. She remembered the days not so very long ago when she had seen the Dauphin and her Husband not knowing where to turn for money. Her name was Marguerite La Touroulde; she was damiselle, not dame; a comfortable bourgeoise and that was all.[1818]

[Footnote 1816: Trial, vol. iii, p. 86. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 265. P. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, avec des documents et des eclaircissements inedits, Paris, 1892, in 12mo, chap. vi.]

[Footnote 1817: Trial, vol. iii, p. 85, note 1. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 418, note 7.]

[Footnote 1818: Trial, vol. iii, p. 85.]

Three weeks Jeanne sojourned in the Receiver General's house. She slept there, drank there, ate there. Nearly every night, Damiselle Marguerite La Touroulde slept with her; the etiquette of those days required it. No night-gowns were worn; folk slept naked in those vast beds. It would seem that Jeanne disliked sleeping with old women.[1819] Damiselle La Touroulde, although not so very old, was of matronly age;[1820] she had moreover a matron's experience, and further she claimed, as we shall see directly, to know more than most matrons knew. Several times she took Jeanne to the bath and to the sweating-room.[1821] That also was one of the rules of etiquette; a host was not considered to be making his guests good cheer unless he took them to the bath. In this point of courtesy princes set an example; when the King and Queen supped in the house of one of their retainers or ministers, fine baths richly ornamented were prepared for them before they came to table.[1822] Mistress Marguerite doubtless did not possess what was necessary in her own house; wherefore she took Jeanne out to the bath and the sweating-room. Such are her own expressions; and they probably indicate a vapour bath[1823] not a bath of hot water.

[Footnote 1819: Ibid., pp. 81, 86.]

[Footnote 1820: Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, pp. 72, 73.]

[Footnote 1821: "In balneo et stuphis." Trial, vol. iii, p. 88.]

[Footnote 1822: L'amant rendu cordelier a l'observance d'amour; poem attributed to Martial d'Auvergne, A. de Montaiglon, Paris, 1881, in 8vo, lines 1761-1776 and note p. 184. A. Franklin, La vie privee d'autrefois, vol. ii, Les soins de la toilette, Paris, 1887, in 18mo, pp. 20 et seq. A. Lecoy de la Marche, Le bain au moyen age, in Revue du monde catholique, vol. xiv, pp. 870-881.]

[Footnote 1823: Livre des metiers, by Etienne Boileau, edited by De Lespinasse and F. Bonnardot, Paris, 1879, pp. 154, 155, and note. G. Bayle, Notes pour servir a l'histoire de la prostitution au moyen age, in Memoires de l'Academie de Vauctuse, 1887, pp. 241, 242. Dr. P. Pansier, Histoire des pretendus statuts de la reine Jeanne, in Le Janus, 1902, p. 14.]

At Bourges the sweating-rooms were in the Auron quarter, in the lower town, near the river.[1824] Jeanne was strictly devout, but she did not observe conventual rule; she, like chaste Suzannah therefore, might permit herself to bathe and she must have had great need to do so after having slept on straw.[1825] What is more remarkable is that, after having seen Jeanne in the bath, Mistress Marguerite judged her a virgin according to all appearances.[1826]

[Footnote 1824: Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, pp. 76, 77.]

[Footnote 1825: Trial, vol. iii, p. 100.]

[Footnote 1826: Ibid., p. 88.]

In Messire Regnier de Bouligny's house and likewise wherever she lodged, she led the life of a beguine but did not practise excessive austerity. She confessed frequently. Many a time she asked her hostess to come with her to matins. In the cathedral and in collegiate churches there were matins every day, between four and six, at the hour of sunset. The two women often talked together; the Receiver General's wife found Jeanne very simple and very ignorant. She was amazed to discover that the maiden knew absolutely nothing.[1827]

[Footnote 1827: Trial, vol. iii, p. 87. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, pp. 73, 74.]

Among other matters, Jeanne told of her visit to the old Duke of Lorraine, and how she had rebuked him for his evil life; she spoke likewise of the interrogatory to which the doctors of Poitiers had subjected her.[1828] She was persuaded that these clerks had questioned her with extreme severity, and she firmly believed that she had triumphed over their ill-will. Alas! she was soon to know clerks even less accommodating.

[Footnote 1828: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 86, 87.]

Mistress Marguerite said to her one day: "If you are not afraid when you fight, it is because you know you will not be killed." Whereupon Jeanne answered: "I am no surer of that than are the other combatants."

Oftentimes women came to the Bouligny house, bringing paternosters and other trifling objects of devotion for the Maid to touch.

Jeanne used to say laughingly to her hostess: "Touch them yourself. Your touch will do them as much good as mine."[1829]

[Footnote 1829: Ibid., pp. 86, 88.]

This ready repartee must have shown Mistress Marguerite that Jeanne, ignorant as she may have been, was none the less capable of displaying a good grace and common sense in her conversation.

While in many matters this good woman found the Maid but a simple creature, in military affairs she deemed her an expert. Whether, when she judged the saintly damsel's skill in wielding arms, she was giving her own opinion or merely speaking from hearsay, as would seem probable, she at any rate declared later that Jeanne rode a horse and handled a lance as well as the best of knights and so well that the army marvelled.[1830] Indeed most captains in those days could do no better.

[Footnote 1830: Trial, vol. iii, p. 88.]

Probably there were dice and dice-boxes in the Bouligny house, otherwise Jeanne would have had no opportunity of displaying that horror of gaming which struck her hostess. On this matter Jeanne agreed with her comrade, Friar Richard, and indeed with everyone else of good life and good doctrine.[1831]

[Footnote 1831: Ibid., p. 87.]

What money she had Jeanne distributed in alms. "I am come to succour the poor and needy," she used to say.[1832]

[Footnote 1832: Ibid., pp. 87, 88.]

When the multitude heard such words they were led to believe that this Maid of God had been raised up for something more than the glorification of the Lilies, and that she was come to dispel such ills as murder, pillage and other sins grievous to God, from which the realm was suffering. Mystic souls looked to her for the reform of the Church and the reign of Jesus Christ on earth. She was invoked as a saint, and throughout the loyal provinces were to be seen carved and painted images of her which were worshipped by the faithful. Thus, even during her lifetime, she enjoyed certain of the privileges of beatification.[1833]

[Footnote 1833: Noel Valois, Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc, in Annuaire bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France, Paris, 1907, in 8vo, pp. 8 and 18 (separate issue).]

North of the Seine meanwhile, English and Burgundians were at their old work. The Duke of Vendome and his company fell back on Senlis, the English descended on the town of Saint-Denys and sacked it once more. In the Abbey Church they found and carried off the Maid's armour, thus, according to the French clergy, committing undeniable sacrilege and for this reason: because they gave the monks of the Abbey nothing in exchange.

The King was then at Mehun-sur-Yevre, quite close to Bourges, in one of the finest chateaux in the world, rising on a rock and overlooking the town. The late Duke Jean of Berry, a great builder, had erected this chateau with the care that he never failed to exercise in matters of art. Mehun was King Charles's favourite abode.[1834]

[Footnote 1834: Trial, vol. iii, p. 217. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 265. A. Buhot de Kersers, Histoire et statistique du departement du Cher, canton de Mehun, Bourges, 1891, in 4to, pp. 261 et seq. A. de Champeaux and P. Gauchery, Les travaux d'art executes pour Jean de France, duc de Berry, Paris, 1894, in 4to, pp. 7, 9, and the miniature in Les grandes heures of Duke Jean of Berry at Chantilly.]

The Duke of Alencon, eager to reconquer his duchy, was waiting for troops to accompany him into Normandy, across the marches of Brittany and Maine. He sent to the King to know if it were his good pleasure to grant him the Maid. "Many there be," said the Duke, "who would willingly come with her, while without her they will not stir from their homes." Her discomfiture before Paris had not, therefore, entirely ruined her prestige. The Sire de la Tremouille opposed her being sent to the Duke of Alencon, whom he mistrusted, and not without cause. He gave her into the care of his half-brother, the Sire d'Albret, Lieutenant of the King in his own country of Berry.[1835]

[Footnote 1835: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170, 171. Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 48. Letter from the Sire d'Albret to the people of Riom, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 148, 149. Martin Le Franc, Champion des dames, in Trial, vol. v, p. 71.]

The Royal Council deemed it necessary to recover La Charite, left in the hands of Perrinet Gressart at the time of the coronation campaign;[1836] but it was decided first to attack Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier, which commanded the approaches to Bec-d'Allier.[1837] The garrison of this little town was composed of English and Burgundians, who were constantly plundering the villages and laying waste the fields of Berry and Bourbonnais. The army for this expedition assembled at Bourges. It was commanded by my Lord d'Albret,[1838] but popular report attributed the command to Jeanne. The common folk, the burgesses of the towns, especially the citizens of Orleans knew no other commander.

[Footnote 1836: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 310. Journal du siege, p. 107. Morosini, vol. ii, p. 229, note 4. Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]

[Footnote 1837: Trial, vol. iii, p. 217. Jaladon de la Barre, Jeanne d'Arc a Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier et deux juges nivernais a Rouen, Nevers, 1868, in 8vo, chaps. ix et seq.]

[Footnote 1838: Trial, vol. v, p. 356. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, p. 89.]

After two or three days' siege, the King's men stormed the town. But they were repulsed. Squire Jean d'Aulon, the Maid's steward, who some time before had been wounded in the heel and consequently walked on crutches, had retreated with the rest.[1839] He went back and found Jeanne who had stayed almost alone by the side of the moat. Fearing lest harm should come to her, he leapt on to his horse, spurred towards her and cried: "What are you doing, all alone? Wherefore do you not retreat like the others?"

[Footnote 1839: Trial, vol. iii, p. 217.]

Jeanne doffed her sallet and replied: "I am not alone. With me are fifty thousand of my folk. I will not quit this spot till I have taken the town."

Casting his eyes around, Messire Jean d'Aulon saw the Maid surrounded by but four or five men.

More loudly he cried out to her: "Depart hence and retreat like the others."

Her only reply was a request for fagots and hurdles to fill up the moat. And straightway in a loud voice she called: "To the fagots and the hurdles all of ye, and make a bridge!"

The men-at-arms rushed to the spot, the bridge was constructed forthwith and the town taken by storm with no great difficulty. At any rate that is how the good Squire, Jean d'Aulon, told the story.[1840] He was almost persuaded that the Maid's fifty thousand shadows had taken Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier.

[Footnote 1840: Ibid., p. 218.]

With the little army on the Loire at that time were certain holy women who like Jeanne led a singular life and held communion with the Church Triumphant. They constituted, so to speak, a kind of flying squadron of beguines, which followed the men-at-arms. One of these women was called Catherine de La Rochelle; two others came from Lower Brittany.[1841]

[Footnote 1841: Ibid., vol. i, p. 106. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 259, 260, 271, 272. Nider, Formicarium, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 503, 504. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 74 et seq. N. Quellien, Perrinaic, une compagne de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1891, in 8vo. Mme. Pascal-Estienne, Perrinaik, Paris, 1893, in 8vo. J. Trevedy, Histoire du roman de Perrinaic, Saint-Brieuc, 1894, in 8vo. Le roman de Perrinaic, Vannes, 1894, in 8vo. A. de la Borderie, Pierronne et Perrinaic, Paris, 1894, in 8vo.]

They all had miraculous visions; Jeanne saw my Lord Saint Michael in arms and Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret wearing crowns;[1842] Pierronne beheld God in a long white robe and a purple cloak;[1843] Catherine de La Rochelle saw a white lady, clothed in cloth of gold; and, at the moment of the consecration of the host all manner of marvels of the high mystery of Our Lord were revealed unto her.[1844]

[Footnote 1842: Trial, vol. v, index at the words Catherine, Michel, Marguerite.]

[Footnote 1843: Ibid., vol. i, p. 106.]

[Footnote 1844: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 271, 272.]

Jean Pasquerel was still with Jeanne in the capacity of chaplain.[1845] He hoped to take his penitent to fight in the Crusade against the Hussites, for it was against these heretics that he felt most bitterly. But he had been entirely supplanted by the Franciscan, Friar Richard, who, after Troyes, had joined the mendicants of Jeanne's earlier days. Friar Richard dominated this little band of the illuminated. He was called their good Father. He it was who instructed them.[1846] His designs for these women did not greatly differ from those of Jean Pasquerel: he intended to conduct them to those wars of the Cross, which he thought were bound to precede the impending end of the world.[1847]

[Footnote 1845: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 104 et seq.]

[Footnote 1846: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 450. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 271, 272.]

[Footnote 1847: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 235.]

Meanwhile, it was his endeavour to foster a good understanding between them, which, eloquent preacher though he was, he found very difficult. Within the sisterhood there were constant suspicions and disputes. Jeanne had been on friendly terms with Catherine de la Rochelle at Montfaucon in Brie and at Jargeau; but now she began to suspect her of being a rival, and immediately she assumed an attitude of mistrust.[1848] Possibly she was right. At any moment either Catherine or the Breton women might be made use of as she had been.[1849] In those days a prophetess was useful in so many ways: in the edification of the people, the reformation of the Church, the leading of men-at-arms, the circulation of money, in war, in peace; no sooner did one appear than each party tried to get hold of her. It seems as if, after having employed the Maid Jeanne to deliver Orleans, the King's Councillors were now thinking of employing Dame Catherine to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy. Such a task was deemed fitting for a saint less chivalrous than Jeanne. Catherine was married and the mother of a family. In this circumstance there need be no cause for astonishment; for if the gift of prophecy be more especially reserved for virgins, the example of Judith proves that the Lord may raise up strong matrons for the serving of his people.

[Footnote 1848: Trial, vol. i, p. 106.]

[Footnote 1849: Ibid., p. 107.]

If we believe that, as her surname indicates, she came from La Rochelle, her origin must have inspired the Armagnacs with confidence. The inhabitants of La Rochelle, all pirates more or less, were too profitably engaged in preying upon English vessels to forsake the Dauphin's party. Moreover, he rewarded their loyalty by granting them valuable commercial privileges.[1850] They had sent gifts of money to the people of Orleans; and when, in the month of May, they learned the deliverance of Duke Charles's city, they instituted a public festival to commemorate so happy an event.

[Footnote 1850: Arcere, Histoire de La Rochelle, 1756, in 4to, vol. i, p. 271. Trial, vol. v, p. 104, note. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 24, 75 et seq., 219, 279.]

The first duty of a saint in the army, it would appear, was to collect money. Jeanne was always sending letters asking the good towns for money or for munitions of war; the burgesses always promised to grant her request and sometimes they kept their promise. Catherine de la Rochelle appears to have had special revelations concerning the funds of the party; her mission, therefore, was financial, while Jeanne's was martial. She announced that she was going to the Duke of Burgundy to conclude peace.[1851] If one may judge from the little that is known of her, the inspirations of this holy dame were not very elevated, not very orderly, not very profound.

[Footnote 1851: Trial, vol. i, pp. 107, 108.]

Meeting Jeanne at Montfaucon in Berry (or at Jargeau) she addressed her thus:

"There came unto me a white lady, attired in cloth of gold, who said to me: 'Go thou through the good towns and let the King give unto thee heralds and trumpets to cry: "Whosoever has gold, silver or hidden treasure, let him bring it forth instantly."'"

Dame Catherine added: "Such as have hidden treasure and do not thus, I shall know their treasure, and I shall go and find it."

She deemed it necessary to fight against the English and seemed to believe that Jeanne's mission was to drive them out of the land, since she obligingly offered her the whole of her miraculous takings.

"Wherewithal to pay your men-at-arms," she said. But the Maid answered disdainfully:

"Go back to your husband, look after your household, and feed your children."[1852]

[Footnote 1852: Trial, vol. i, p. 107.]

Disputes between saints are usually bitter. In her rival's missions Jeanne refused to see anything but folly and futility. Nevertheless it was not for her to deny the possibility of the white lady's visitations; for to Jeanne herself did there not descend every day as many saints, angels and archangels as were ever painted on the pages of books or the walls of monasteries? In order to make up her mind on the subject, she adopted the most effectual measures. A learned doctor may reason concerning matter and substance, the origin and the form of ideas, the dawn of impressions in the intellect, but a shepherdess will resort to a surer method; she will appeal to her own eyesight.

Jeanne asked Catherine if the white lady came every night, and learning that she did: "I will sleep with you," she said.

When night came, she went to bed with Catherine, watched till midnight, saw nothing and fell asleep, for she was young, and she had great need of sleep. In the morning, when she awoke, she asked: "Did she come?"

"She did," replied Catherine; "you were asleep, so I did not like to wake you."

"Will she not come to-morrow?"

Catherine assured her that she would come without fail.

This time Jeanne slept in the day in order that she might keep awake at night; so she lay down at night in the bed with Catherine and kept her eyes open. Often she asked: "Will she not come?"

And Catherine replied: "Yes, directly."

But Jeanne saw nothing.[1853] She held the test to be a good one. Nevertheless she could not get the white lady attired in cloth of gold out of her head. When Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret came to her, as they delayed not to do, she spoke to them concerning this white lady and asked them what she was to think of her. The reply was such as Jeanne expected:

"This Catherine," they said, "is naught but futility and folly."[1854]

[Footnote 1853: Trial, vol. i, pp. 108, 109.]

[Footnote 1854: Ibid., p. 107.]

Then was Jeanne constrained to cry: "That is just what I thought."

The strife between these two prophetesses was brief but bitter. Jeanne always maintained the opposite of what Catherine said. When the latter was going to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne said to her:

"Me seemeth that you will never find peace save at the lance's point."[1855]

[Footnote 1855: Ibid., p. 108.]

There was one matter at any rate wherein the White Lady proved a better prophetess than the Maid's Council, to wit, the siege of La Charite. When Jeanne wished to go and deliver that town, Catherine tried to dissuade her.

"It is too cold," she said; "I would not go."[1856]

[Footnote 1856: Ibid.]

Catherine's reason was not a high one; and yet it is true Jeanne would have done better not to go to the siege of La Charite.

Taken from the Duke of Burgundy by the Dauphin in 1422, La Charite had been retaken in 1424, by Perrinet Gressart,[1857] a successful captain, who had risen from the rank of mason's apprentice to that of pantler to the Duke of Burgundy and had been created Lord of Laigny by the King of England.[1858] On the 30th of December, 1425, Perrinet's men arrested the Sire de La Tremouille, when he was on his way to the Duke of Burgundy, having been appointed ambassador in one of those eternal negotiations, forever in process between the King and the Duke. He was for several months kept a prisoner in the fortress which his captor commanded. He must needs pay a ransom of fourteen thousand golden crowns; and, albeit he took this sum from the royal treasury,[1859] he never ceased to bear Perrinet a grudge. Wherefore it may be concluded that when he sent men-at-arms to La Charite it was in good sooth to capture the town and not with any evil design against the Maid.

[Footnote 1857: "Perrinet Crasset, mason and captain of men-at-arms." Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 446 verso. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 117. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 174. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, p. 328.]

[Footnote 1858: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. cclxxviii. A. de Villaret, Campagne des Anglais, p. 109. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, pp. 20, 21, 373 et seq. J. de Freminville, Les ecorcheurs en Bourgogne (1435-1445); Etude sur les compagnies franches au XV'e siecle, Dijon, 1888, in 8vo. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy. Proofs and illustrations, xxx.]

[Footnote 1859: Sainte-Marthe, Histoire genealogique de la maison de la Tremoille, 1668, in 12mo, pp. 149 et seq. L. de La Tremoille, Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles, Nantes, 1890, vol. i, p. 165.]

The army despatched against this Burgundian captain and this great plunder of pilgrims was composed of no mean folk. Its leaders were Louis of Bourbon, Count of Montpensier, and Charles II, Sire d'Albret, La Tremouille's half-brother and Jeanne's companion in arms during the coronation campaign. The army was doubtless but scantily supplied with stores and with money.[1860] That was the normal condition of armies in those days. When the King wanted to attack a stronghold of the enemy, he must needs apply to his good towns for the necessary material. The Maid, at once saint and warrior, could beg for arms with a good grace; but possibly she overrated the resources of the towns which had already given so much.

[Footnote 1860: Trial, vol. v, p. 149. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. iii. Journal du siege, p. 129. Monstrelet, vol. v, chap, lxxii. A. de Villaret, Campagne des Anglais, p. 108.]

On the 7th of November, she and my Lord d'Alencon signed a letter asking the folk of Clermont in Auvergne for powder, arrows and artillery. Churchmen, magistrates, and townsfolk sent two hundredweight of saltpetre, one hundredweight of sulphur, two cases of arrows; to these they added a sword, two poniards and a battle-axe for the Maid; and they charged Messire Robert Andrieu to present this contribution to Jeanne and to my Lord d'Albret.[1861]

[Footnote 1861: Trial, vol. v, p. 146. F. Perot, Un document inedit sur Jeanne d'Arc, in Bulletin de la Societe archeologique de l'Orleanais, vol. xii, 1898-1901, p. 231.]

On the 9th of November, the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862] What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare. Colette lived in the convent of the Sisters of Saint Clare, which she had recently founded in this town. It has been thought that the Maid went to Moulins on purpose to meet her.[1863] But we ought first to ascertain whether these two saints had any liking for each other. They both worked miracles and miracles which were occasionally somewhat similar;[1864] but that was no reason why they should take the slightest pleasure in each other's society. One was called La Pucelle,[1865] the other La Petite Ancelle.[1866] But these names, both equally humble, described persons widely different in fashion of attire and in manner of life. La Petite Ancelle wended her way on foot, clothed in rags like a beggar-woman; La Pucelle, wrapped in cloth of gold, rode forth with lords on horseback. That Jeanne, surrounded by Franciscans who observed no rule, felt any veneration for the reformer of the Sisters of Saint Clare, there is no reason to believe; neither is there anything to indicate that the pacific Colette, strongly attached to the Burgundian house,[1867] had any desire to hold converse with one whom the English regarded as a destroying angel.[1868]

[Footnote 1862: Trial, vol. v, pp. 147-150. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, ch. viii.]

[Footnote 1863: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. cclxxix.]

[Footnote 1864: Acta Sanctorum, March, i, 554, col. 2, no. 61. Abbe Bizouard, Histoire de sainte Colette, pp. 35, 37. S[ilvere], Histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse Colette, Paris, 1628, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 1865: The Maid (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1866: Servant. Cf. Godefroy, Lexique de l'ancien Francais (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1867: Histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse Colette, pp. 168-200.]

[Footnote 1868: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc et les ordres mendiants, in Revue des deux mondes, 1881, vol. xlv, p. 90. L. de Kerval, Jeanne d'Arc et les Franciscains, Vanves, 1893, pp. 49, 51. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. cclxxviii et seq. F. Perot, Jeanne d'Arc en Bourbonnais, Orleans, in 8vo, 26 pp., 1889. F. Andre, La verite sur Jeanne d'Arc, in 8vo, 1895, pp. 308 et seq.]

From this town of Moulins, Jeanne dictated a letter by which she informed the inhabitants of Riom that Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier was taken, and asked them for materials of war as she had asked the folk of Clermont.[1869]

[Footnote 1869: Trial, vol. v, pp. 146-148.]

Here is the letter:

Good friends and beloved, ye wit how that the town of Saint Pere le Moustier hath been taken by storm; and with God's help it is our intention to cause to be evacuated the other places contrary to the King; but for this there hath been great expending of powder, arrows and other munition of war before the said town, and the lords who are in this town are but scantily provided for to go and lay siege to La Charite, whither we wend presently; I pray you as ye love the welfare and honour of the King and likewise of all others here, that ye will straightway help and send for the said siege powder, saltpetre, sulphur, arrows, strong cross-bows and other munition of war. And do this lest by failure of the said powder and other habiliments of war, the siege should be long and ye should be called in this matter negligent or unwilling. Good friends and beloved, may our Lord keep you. Written at Molins, the ninth day of November.

Jehanne.

Addressed to: My good friends and beloved, the churchmen, burgesses and townsfolk of the town of Rion.[1870]

[Footnote 1870: Ibid., pp. 146, 148. Facsimile in Le Musee des archives departementales, p. 124.]

The magistrates of Riom, in letters sealed with their own seal, undertook to give Jeanne the Maid and my Lord d'Albret the sum of sixty crowns; but when the masters of the siege-artillery came to demand this sum, the magistrates would not give a farthing.[1871]

[Footnote 1871: F. Perot (Bulletin de la Societe archeologique de l'Orleanais, vol. xii, p. 231).]

The folk of Orleans, on the other hand, once more appeared both zealous and munificent; for they eagerly desired the reduction of a town commanding the Loire for seventy-five miles above their own city. They deserve to be considered the true deliverers of the kingdom; had it not been for them neither Jargeau nor Beaugency would have been taken in June. Quite in the beginning of July, when they thought the Loire campaign was to be continued, they had sent their great mortar, La Bougue, to Gien. With it they had despatched ammunition and victuals; and now, in the early days of December, at the request of the King addressed to the magistrates, they sent to La Charite all the artillery brought back from Gien; likewise eighty-nine soldiers of the municipal troops, wearing the cloak with the Duke of Orleans' colours, the white cross on the breast; with their trumpeter at their head and commanded by Captain Boiau; craftsmen of all conditions, master-masons and journeymen, carpenters, smiths; the cannoneers Fauveau, Gervaise Lefevre and Brother Jacques, monk of the Gray friars monastery, at Orleans.[1872] What became of all this artillery and of these brave folk?

[Footnote 1872: A. de Villaret, Campagne des Anglais, p. 107, proofs and illustrations, xvii, pp. 159, 168. Trial, vol. v, pp. 268, 270, according to the original documents in the Orleans Library.]

On the 24th of November, the Sire d'Albret and the Maid, being hard put to it before the walls of La Charite, likewise solicited the town of Bourges. On receipt of their letter, the burgesses decided to contribute thirteen hundred golden crowns. To raise this sum they had recourse to a measure by no means unusual; it had been employed notably by the townsfolk of Orleans when, some time previously, to furnish forth Jeanne with munition of war, they had bought from a certain citizen a quantity of salt which they had put up to auction in the city barn. The townsfolk of Bourges sold by auction the annual revenue of a thirteenth part of the wine sold retail in the town. But the money thus raised never reached its destination.[1873]

[Footnote 1873: La Thaumassiere, Histoire du Berry, p. 161. Trial, vol. v, pp. 356, 357. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, pp. 105 et seq. A. de Villaret, Campagne des Anglais, pp. 111, 112.]

A right goodly knighthood was gathered beneath the walls of La Charite; besides Louis de Bourbon and the Sire d'Albret, there was the Marechal de Broussac, Jean de Bouray, Seneschal of Toulouse, and Raymon de Montremur, a Baron of Dauphine, who was slain there.[1874] It was bitterly cold and the besiegers succeeded in nothing. At the end of a month Perrinet Gressart, who was full of craft, caused them to fall into an ambush. They raised the siege, abandoning the artillery furnished by the good towns, those fine cannon bought with the savings of thrifty citizens.[1875] Their action was the less excusable because the town which had not been relieved and could not well expect to be, must have surrendered sooner or later. They pleaded that the King had sent them no victuals and no money;[1876] but that was not considered an excuse and their action was deemed dishonourable. According to a knight well acquainted with points of honour in war: "One ought never to besiege a place without being sure of victuals and of pay beforehand. For to besiege a stronghold and then to withdraw is great disgrace for an army, especially when there is present with it a king or a king's lieutenant."[1877]

[Footnote 1874: Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires du Centre, vol. iv, 1870-1872, pp. 211, 239.]

[Footnote 1875: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 126. Lanery d'Arc and L. Jeny, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, p. 89.]

[Footnote 1876: Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]

[Footnote 1877: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, pp. 216, 217.]

On the 13th of December there preached to the people of Perigueux a Dominican friar, Brother Helie Boudant, Pope Martin's Penitentiary in that town. He took as his text the great miracles worked in France by the intervention of a Maid, whom God had sent to the King. On this occasion the Mayor and the magistrates heard mass sung and presented two candles. Now for two months Brother Helie had been under order to appear before the Parlement of Poitiers.[1878] On what charge we do not know. Mendicant monks of those days were for the most part irregular in faith and in morals. The doctrine of Friar Richard himself was not altogether beyond suspicion.

[Footnote 1878: Extract from the Book of Accounts of the town of Perigueux, in Bulletin de la Societe historique et archeologique du Perigord, vol. xiv, January to February, 1887. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, proofs and illustrations, ccxvii, p. 252. Le P. Chapotin, La guerre de cent ans et les dominicains, pp. 74 et seq.]

At Christmas, in the year 1429, the flying squadron of beguines being assembled at Jargeau,[1879] this good Brother said mass and administered the communion thrice to Jeanne the Maid and twice to that Pierronne of Lower Brittany, with whom our Lord conversed as friend with friend. Such an action might well be regarded, if not as a formal violation of the Church's laws, at any rate as an unjustifiable abuse of the sacrament.[1880] A menacing theological tempest was then gathering and was about to break over the heads of Friar Richard's daughters in the spirit. A few days after the attack on Paris, the venerable University had had composed or rather transcribed a treatise, De bono et maligno spiritu, with a view probably to finding therein arguments against Friar Richard and his prophetess Jeanne, who had both appeared before the city with the Armagnacs.[1881]

[Footnote 1879: Trial, vol. i, p. 106.]

[Footnote 1880: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 271.]

[Footnote 1881: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 232, 233. Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Cartularium Univ. Paris, vol. iv, p. 515.]

About the same time, a clerk of the faculty of law had published a summary reply to Chancellor Gerson's memorial concerning the Maid. "It sufficeth not," he wrote, "that one simply affirm that he is sent of God; every heretic maketh such a claim; but he must prove the truth of that mysterious mission by some miraculous work or by some special testimony in the Bible." This Paris clerk denies that the Maid has presented any such proof, and to judge her by her acts, he believes her rather to have been sent by the Devil than by God. He reproaches her with wearing a dress forbidden to women under penalty of anathema, and he refutes the excuses for her conduct in this matter urged by Gerson. He accuses her of having excited between princes and Christian people a greater war than there had ever been before. He holds her to be an idolatress using enchantments and making false prophecies. He charges her with having induced men to slay their fellows on the two high festivals of the Holy Virgin, the Assumption and the Nativity. "Sins committed by the Enemy of Mankind, through this woman, against the Creator and his most glorious Mother. And albeit there ensued certain murders, thanks be to God they were not so many as the Enemy had intended."

"All these things do manifestly prove error and heresy," adds this devout son of the University. Whence he concludes that the Maid should be taken before the Bishop and the Inquisitor; and he ends by quoting this text from Saint Jerome: "The unhealthy flesh must be cut off; the diseased sheep must be driven from the fold."[1882]

[Footnote 1882: Noel Valois, Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1907, in 8vo, 19 pages.]

Such was the unanimous opinion of the University of Paris concerning her in whom the French clerks beheld an Angel of the Lord. At Bruges, in November, a rumour ran and was eagerly welcomed by ecclesiastics that the University of Paris had sent an embassy to the Pope at Rome to denounce the Maid as a false prophetess and a deceiver, and likewise those who believed in her. We do not know the veritable object of this mission.[1883] But there is no doubt whatever that the doctors and masters of Paris were henceforward firmly resolved that if ever they obtained possession of the damsel they would not let her go out of their hands, and certainly would not send her to be tried at Rome, where she might escape with a mere penance, and even be enlisted as one of the Pope's mercenaries.[1884]

[Footnote 1883: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 232.]

[Footnote 1884: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 354, 355.]

In English and Burgundian lands, not only by clerks but by folk of all conditions, she was regarded as a heretic; in those countries the few who thought well of her had to conceal their opinions carefully. After the retreat from Saint-Denys, there may have remained some in Picardy, and notably at Abbeville, who were favourable to the prophetess of the French; but such persons must not be spoken of in public.

Colin Gouye, surnamed Le Sourd, and Jehannin Daix, surnamed Le Petit, a man of Abbeville, learned this to their cost. In this town about the middle of September, Le Sourd and Le Petit were near the blacksmith's forge with divers of the burgesses and other townsfolk, among whom was a herald. They fell to talking of the Maid who was making so great a stir throughout Christendom. To certain words the herald uttered concerning her, Le Petit replied eagerly:

"Well! well! Everything that woman does and says is nought but deception."

Le Sourd spoke likewise: "That woman," he said, "is not to be trusted. Those who believe in her are mad, and there is a smell of burning about them."[1885]

[Footnote 1885: Sentent la persinee: literally, smell of roast parsley. Cf. Godefroy, Lexique de l'ancien francais at the word persinee. Sentir la persinee: to be suspected of heresy (W.S.).]

By that he meant that their destiny was obvious, and that they were sure to be burned at the stake as heretics.

Then he had the misfortune to add: "In this town there be many with a smell of burning about them."

Such words were for the dwellers in Abbeville a slander and a cause of suspicion. When the Mayor and the aldermen heard of this speech they ordered Le Sourd to be thrown into prison. Le Petit must have said something similar, for he too was imprisoned.[1886]

[Footnote 1886: Pardon granted to Le Sourd and Jehannin Daix, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 142-145.]

By saying that divers of his fellow-citizens were suspect of heresy, Le Sourd put them in danger of being sought out by the Bishop and the Inquisitor as heretics and sorcerers of notoriously evil repute. As for the Maid, she must have been suspect indeed, for a smell of burning to be caused by the mere fact of being her partisan.

While Friar Richard and his spiritual daughters were thus threatened with a bad end should they fall into the hands of the English or Burgundians, serious troubles were agitating the sisterhood. On the subject of Catherine, Jeanne entered into an open dispute with her spiritual father. Friar Richard wanted the holy dame of La Rochelle to be set to work. Fearing lest his advice should be adopted, Jeanne wrote to her King to tell him what to do with the woman, to wit that he should send her home to her husband and children.

When she came to the King the first thing she had to say to him was: "Catherine's doings are nought but folly and futility."

Friar Richard made no attempt to hide from the Maid his profound displeasure.[1887] He was thought much of at court, and it was doubtless with the consent of the Royal Council that he was endeavouring to compass the employment of Dame Catherine. The Maid had succeeded. Why should not another of the illuminated succeed?

[Footnote 1887: Trial, vol. i, p. 107.]

Meanwhile the Council had by no means renounced the services Jeanne was rendering to the French cause. Even after the misfortunes of Paris and of La Charite, there were many who now as before held her power to be supernatural; and there is reason to believe that there was a party at Court intending still to employ her.[1888] And even if they had wished to discard her she was now too intimately associated with the royal lilies for her rejection not to involve them too in dishonour. On the 29th of December, 1429, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, the King gave her a charter of nobility sealed with the great seal in green wax, with a double pendant, on a strip of red and green silk.[1889]

[Footnote 1888: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 84; vol. iv, pp. 312 et passim. A. de Villaret, loc. cit. Proofs and illustrations.]

[Footnote 1889: Trial, vol. v, pp. 150-153. J. Hordal, Heroinae nobilissimae Joannae Darc, lotharingae, vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia.... Ponti-Mussi, 1612, small 4to. C. du Lys, Traite sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle, justifie par plusieurs patentes et arrets, enquetes et informations.... Paris, 1633, in 4to. De la Roque, Traite de la noblesse, Paris, 1678, in 4to, ch. xliii. Lanery d'Arc, Jeanne d'Arc en Berry, ch. x.]

The grant of nobility was to Jeanne, her father, mother, brothers even if they were not free, and to all their posterity, male and female. It was a singular grant corresponding to the singular services rendered by a woman.

In the title she is described as Johanna d'Ay, doubtless because her father's name was given to the King's scribes by Lorrainers who would speak with a soft drawl; but whether her name were Ay or Arc, she was seldom called by it, and was commonly spoken of as Jeanne the Maid.[1890]

[Footnote 1890: See analytical index, in Trial, vol. v, at the word Pucelle.]

Chapter V

LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF REIMS--LETTER TO THE HUSSITES--DEPARTURE FROM SULLY

The folk of Orleans were grateful to the Maid for what she had done for them. Far from reproaching her with the unfortunate conclusion of the siege of La Charite, they welcomed her into their city with the same rejoicing and with as good cheer as before. On the 19th of January, 1430, they honoured her and likewise Maitre Jean de Velly and Maitre Jean Rabateau with a banquet, at which there was abundance of capons, partridges, hares, and even a pheasant.[1891] Who that Jean de Velly was, who was feasted with her, we do not know. As for Jean Rabateau, he was none other than the King's Councillor, who had been Attorney-General at the Parlement of Poitiers since 1427.[1892] He had been the Maid's host at Orleans. His wife had often seen Jeanne kneeling in her private oratory.[1893] The citizens of Orleans offered wine to the Attorney-General, to Jean de Velly, and to the Maid. In good sooth, 'twas a fine feast and a ceremonious. The burgesses loved and honoured Jeanne, but they cannot have observed her very closely during the repast or they would not eight years later, when an adventuress gave herself out to be the Maid, have mistaken her for Jeanne, and offered her wine in the same manner and at the hands of the same city servant, Jacques Leprestre, as now presented it.[1894]

[Footnote 1891: Trial, vol. v, p. 270.]

[Footnote 1892: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 19, 74, 203. H. Daniel Lacombe, L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, Maitre Jean Rabateau, president du parlement de Paris, in Revue du Bas-Poitou, 1891, pp. 48, 66.]

[Footnote 1893: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 88 et seq.]

[Footnote 1894: Extract from the Accounts of the town of Orleans, in Trial, vol. v, p. 331.]

The standard that Jeanne loved even more than her Saint Catherine's sword had been painted at Tours by one Hamish Power. He was now marrying his daughter Heliote; and when Jeanne heard of it, she sent a letter to the magistrates of Tours, asking them to give a sum of one hundred crowns for the bride's trousseau. The nuptials were fixed for the 9th of February, 1430. The magistrates assembled twice to deliberate on Jeanne's request. They described her honourably and yet not without a certain caution as "the Maid who hath come into this realm to the King, concerning the matter of the war, announcing that she is sent by the King of Heaven against the English." In the end they refused to pay anything, because, they said, it behoved them to expend municipal funds on municipal matters and not otherwise; but they decided that for the affection and honour they bore the Maid, the churchmen, burgesses, and other townsfolk should be present in the church at the wedding, and should offer prayers for the bride and present her with bread and wine. This cost them four livres, ten sous.[1895]

[Footnote 1895: Vallet de Viriville, Un episode de la vie de Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. iv (1st series), p. 488. Trial, vol. v, pp. 154-156.]

At a time which it is impossible to fix exactly the Maid bought a house at Orleans. To be more precise she took it on lease.[1896] A lease (bail a vente) was an agreement by which the proprietor of a house or other property transferred the ownership to the lessee in return for an annual payment in kind or in money. The duration of such leases was usually fifty-nine years. The house that Jeanne acquired in this manner belonged to the Chapter of the Cathedral. It was in the centre of the town, in the parish of Saint-Malo, close to the Saint-Maclou Chapel, next door to the shop of an oil-seller, one Jean Feu, in the Rue des Petits-Souliers. It was in this street that, during the siege, there had fallen into the midst of five guests seated at table a stone cannon-ball weighing one hundred and sixty-four pounds, which had done no one any harm.[1897] What price did the Maid give for this house? Apparently six crowns of fine gold (at sixty crowns to the mark), due half-yearly at Midsummer and Christmas, for fifty-nine years. In addition, she must according to custom have undertaken to keep the house in good condition and to pay out of her own purse the ecclesiastical dues as well as rates for wells and paving and all other taxes. Being obliged to have some one as surety, she chose as her guarantor a certain Guillot de Guyenne, of whom we know nothing further.[1898]

[Footnote 1896: Jules Doinel, Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc, in Memoires de la Societe archeologique et historique de l'Orleanais, vol. xv, pp. 491-500.]

[Footnote 1897: Journal du siege, pp. 15, 16.]

[Footnote 1898: Jules Doinel, Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc, loc. cit.]

There is no reason to believe that the Maid did not herself negotiate this agreement. Saint as she was, she knew well what it was to possess property. Such knowledge ran in her family; her father was the best business man in his village.[1899] She herself was domesticated and thrifty; for she kept her old clothes, and even in the field she knew where to find them when she wanted to make presents of them to her friends. She counted up her possessions in arms and horses, valued them at twelve thousand crowns, and, apparently made a pretty accurate reckoning.[1900] But what was her idea in taking this house? Did she think of living in it? Did she intend when the war was over to return to Orleans and pass a peaceful old age in a house of her own? Or was she planning for her parents to dwell there, or some Vouthon uncle, or her brothers, one of whom was in great poverty and had got a doublet out of the citizens of Orleans?[1901]

[Footnote 1899: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. 360.]

[Footnote 1900: Trial, vol. i, p. 295.]

[Footnote 1901: Accounts of the fortress, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 259, 260.]

On the third of March she followed King Charles to Sully.[1902] The chateau, in which she lodged near the King, belonged to the Sire de la Tremouille, who had inherited it from his mother, Marie de Sully, the daughter of Louis I of Bourbon. It had been recaptured from the English after the deliverance of Orleans.[1903] A stronghold on the Loire, on the highroad from Paris to Autun, and commanding the plain between Orleans and Briare and the ancient bridge with twenty arches, the chateau of Sully linked together central France and those northern provinces which Jeanne had so regretfully quitted, and whither with all her heart she longed to return to engage in fresh expeditions and fresh sieges.

[Footnote 1902: Trial, vol. v, p. 159.]

[Footnote 1903: Perceval de Cagny, p. 173. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 258. Berry, in Godefroy, p. 376. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 294, notes 4, 5. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. i, pp. 139, 163. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 144.]

During the first fortnight of March, from the townsfolk of Reims she received a message in which they confided to her fears only too well grounded.[1904] On the 8th of March the Regent had granted to the Duke of Burgundy the counties of Champagne and of Brie on condition of his reconquering them.[1905] Armagnacs and English vied with each other in offering the biggest and most tempting morsels to this Gargantuan Duke. Not being able to keep their promise and deliver to him Compiegne which refused to be delivered, the French offered him in its place Pont-Sainte-Maxence.[1906] But it was Compiegne that he wanted. The truces, which had been very imperfectly kept, were to have expired at Christmas, but first they had been prolonged till the 15th of March and then till Easter. In the year 1430 Easter fell on the 16th of April; and Duke Philip was only waiting for that date to put an army in the field.[1907]

[Footnote 1904: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 378. D. Plancher, Histoire de Bourgogne, vol. iv, p. 137. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 268.]

[Footnote 1905: Du Tillet, Recueil des rois de France, vol. ii, p. 39 (ed. 1601-1602). Rymer, Foedera, March, 1430.]

[Footnote 1906: P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, pp. 35, 152.]

[Footnote 1907: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 351, 389.]

In a manner concise and vivacious the Maid replied to the townsfolk of Reims:

"Dear friends and beloved and mightily desired. Jehenne the Maid hath received your letters making mention that ye fear a siege. Know ye that it shall not so betide, and I may but encounter them shortly. And if I do not encounter them and they do not come to you, if you shut your gates firmly, I shall shortly be with you: and if they be there, I shall make them put on their spurs so hastily that they will not know where to take them and so quickly that it shall be very soon. Other things I will not write unto you now, save that ye be always good and loyal. I pray God to have you in his keeping. Written at Sully, the 16th day of March.

I would announce unto you other tidings at which ye would mightily rejoice; but I fear lest the letters be taken on the road, and the said tidings be seen.

Signed. Jehanne.

Addressed to my dear friends and beloved, churchmen, burgesses and other citizens of the town of Rains."[1908]

[Footnote 1908: Trial, vol. v, p. 160, according to Rogier's copy. H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, proofs and illustrations xv. Facsimile in Wallon, 1876 edition, p. 200. The original of this letter exists, likewise the original of the letter addressed on the 9th of November, 1429, to the citizens of Riom. These two letters, about one hundred and twenty-six days apart, are not written by the same scribe. The signature of neither one nor the other can be attributed to the hand which indited the rest of the letter. The seven letters of the name Jehanne seem to have been written by some one whose hand was being held, which is not surprising, seeing that the Maid did not know how to write. But a comparison of the two signatures reveals their close similarity. In both the stem of the J slopes in the same direction and is of identical length; the first n through one letter being written on the top of another has three pothooks instead of two; the second pothook of the second n obviously written in two strokes is too long, in short the two signatures correspond exactly. We must conclude therefore that having once obtained the Maid's signature by guiding her hand, an impression was taken to serve as a model for all her other letters. To judge from the two missives of the 9th of November, 1429 and the 16th of March, 1430, this impression was most faithfully reproduced. Cf. post, p. 117, note 2.]

There can be no doubt that the scribe wrote this letter faithfully as it was dictated by the Maid, and that he wrote her words as they fell from her lips. In her haste she now and again forgot words and sometimes whole phrases; but the sense is clear all the same. And what confidence! "You will have no siege if I encounter the enemy." How completely is this the language of chivalry! On the eve of Patay she had asked: "Have you good spurs?"[1909] Here she cries: "I will make them put on their spurs." She says that soon she will be in Champagne, that she is about to start. Surely we can no longer think of her shut up in the Castle of La Tremouille as in a kind of gilded cage.[1910] In conclusion, she tells her friends at Reims that she does not write unto them all that she would like for fear lest her letter should be captured on the road. She knew what it was to be cautious. Sometimes she affixed a cross to her letters to warn her followers to pay no heed to what she wrote, in the hope that the missive would be intercepted and the enemy deceived.[1911]

[Footnote 1909: Trial, vol. iii, p. 11.]

[Footnote 1910: Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]

[Footnote 1911: Trial, vol. i, p. 83.]

It was from Sully that on the 23rd of March Brother Pasquerel sent the Emperor Sigismund a letter intended for the Hussites of Bohemia.[1912]

[Footnote 1912: Ibid., vol. v, p. 156.]

The Hussites of those days were abhorred and execrated throughout Christendom. They demanded the free preaching of God's word, communion in both kinds, and the return of the Church to that evangelical life which allowed neither the wealth of priests nor the temporal power of popes. They desired the punishment of sin by the civil magistrates, a custom which could prevail only in very holy society. They were saints indeed and heretics too on every possible point. Pope Martin held the destruction of these wicked persons to be salutary, and such was the opinion of every good Catholic. But how could this armed heresy be dealt with when it routed all the forces of the Empire and the Holy See? The Hussites were too much for that worn-out ancient chivalry of Christendom, for the knighthood of France and of Germany, which was good for nothing but to be thrown on to the refuse heaps like so much old iron. And this was precisely what the towns of the realm of France did when over these knights of chivalry they placed a peasant girl.[1913]

[Footnote 1913: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 24, 86, 87. J. Zeller, Histoire d'Allemagne, vol. vii, La reforme, Paris, 1891, pp. 78 et seq. E. Denis, Jean Hus et la guerre des Hussites (1879); Les origines de l'Unite des Freres Bohemes, Angers, 1885, in 8vo, pp. 5 et seq.]

At Tachov, in 1427, the Crusaders, blessed by the Holy Father, had fled at the mere sound of the chariot wheels of the Procops.[1914] Pope Martin knew not where to turn for defenders of Holy Church, one and indivisible. He had paid for the armament of five thousand English crusaders, which the Cardinal of Winchester was to lead against these accursed Bohemians; but in this force the Holy Father was cruelly disappointed; hardly had his five thousand crusaders landed in France, than the Regent of England diverted them from their route and sent them to Brie to occupy the attention of the Maid of the Armagnacs.[1915]

[Footnote 1914: Two of the great leaders of the Hussites who held large parts of central Germany in terror from 1419-1434 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1915: L. Paris, Cabinet historique, vol. i, 1855, pp. 74, 76. Rogier, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 294. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 132, 133, 136, 137, 168, 169, 188, 189; vol. iv, supplement, xvii.]

Since her coming into France Jeanne had spoken of the crusade as a work good and meritorious. In the letter dictated before the expedition to Orleans, she summoned the English to join the French and go together to fight against the Church's foe. And later, writing to the Duke of Burgundy, she invited the son of the Duke vanquished at Nicopolis to make war against the Turks.[1916] Who but the mendicants directing her can have put these crusading ideas into Jeanne's head? Immediately after the deliverance of Orleans it was said that she would lead King Charles to the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre and that she would die in the Holy Land.[1917] At the same time it was rumoured that she would make war on the Hussites. In the month of July, 1429, when the coronation campaign had barely begun, it was proclaimed in Germany, on the faith of a prophetess of Rome, that by a prophetess of France the Bohemian kingdom should be recovered.[1918]

[Footnote 1916: Trial, vol. i, p. 240; vol. v, p. 126.]

[Footnote 1917: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 82-85. Christine de Pisan, in Trial, vol. v, p. 416. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 60-63.]

[Footnote 1918: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 108, 115, 188.]

Already zealous for the Crusade against the Turks, the Maid was now equally eager for the Crusade against the Hussites. Turks or Bohemians, it was all alike to her. Of one and the other her only knowledge lay in the stories full of witchcraft related to her by the mendicants of her company. Touching the Hussites, stories were told, not all true, but which Jeanne must have believed; and they cannot have pleased her. It was said that they worshipped the devil, and that they called him "the wronged one." It was told that as works of piety they committed all manner of fornication. Every Bohemian was said to be possessed by a hundred demons. They were accused of killing thousands of churchmen. Again, and this time with truth, they were charged with burning churches and monasteries. The Maid believed in the God who commanded Israel to wipe out the Philistines from the face of the earth. But recently there had arisen Cathari who held the God of the Old Testament to be none other than Lucifer or Luciabelus, author of evil, liar and murderer. The Cathari abhorred war; they refused to shed blood; they were heretics; they had been massacred, and none remained. The Maid believed in good faith that the extirpation of the Hussites was a work pleasing to God. Men more learned than she, not like her addicted to chivalry, but of gentle life, clerks like the Chancellor Jean Gerson, believed it likewise.[1919] Of these Bohemian heretics she thought what every one thought: her opinions were those of the multitude; her views were modelled on public opinion. Wherefore in all the simplicity of her heart she hated the Hussites, but she feared them not, because she feared nothing and because she believed, God helping her, that she was able to overcome all the English, all the Turks, and all the Bohemians in the world. At the first trumpet call she was ready to sally forth against them. On the 23rd of March, 1430, Brother Pasquerel sent the Emperor Sigismund a letter written in the name of the Maid and intended for the Hussites of Bohemia. This letter was indited in Latin. The following is the purport of it:

[Footnote 1919: Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, vol. ii, p. 481 (1906).]

JESUS [cross symbol] MARIE

Long ago there reached me the tidings that ye from the true Christians that ye once were have become heretics, like unto the Saracens, that ye have abolished true religion and worship and have turned to a superstition corrupt and fatal, the which in your zeal to maintain and to spread abroad there be no shame nor cruelty ye do not dare to perpetrate. You defile the sacraments of the Church, tear to pieces the articles of her faith, overthrow her temples. The images which were made for similitudes you break and throw into the fire. Finally such Christians as embrace not your faith you massacre. What fury, what folly, what rage possesses you? That religion which God the All Powerful, which the Son, which the Holy Ghost raised up, instituted, exalted and revealed in a thousand manners, by a thousand miracles, ye persecute, ye employ all arts to overturn and to exterminate.

It is you, you who are blind and not those who have not eyes nor sight. Think ye that ye will go unpunished? Do ye not know that if God prevent not your impious violence, if he suffer you to grope on in darkness and in error, it is that he is preparing for you a greater sorrow and a greater punishment? As for me, in good sooth, were I not occupied with the English wars, I would have already come against you. But in very deed if I learn not that ye have turned from your wicked ways, I will peradventure leave the English and hasten against you, in order that I may destroy by the sword your vain and violent superstition, if I can do so in no other manner, and that I may rid you either of heresy or of life. Notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the Catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto me your ambassadors and I will tell them what ye must do. If on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against the pricks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with all strength divine and human to render unto you again all the evil ye have done unto others.

Given at Sully, on the 23rd of March, to the Bohemian heretics.

Signed. Pasquerel.[1920]

[Footnote 1920: Th. de Sickel, Lettre de Jeanne d'Arc aux Hussites, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 3rd series, vol. ii, p. 81. A wrong date is given in the German translation used by Quicherat, Trial, vol. v, pp. 156-159.]

This was the letter sent to the Emperor. How had Jeanne really expressed herself in her dialect savouring alike of the speech of Champagne and of that of l'Ile de France? There can be no doubt but that her letter had been sadly embellished by the good Brother. Such Ciceronian language cannot have proceeded from the Maid. It is all very well to say that a saint of those days could do everything, could prophesy on any subject and in any tongue, so fine an epistle remains far too rhetorical to have been composed by a damsel whom even the Armagnac captains considered simple. Nevertheless, a careful examination will reveal in this missive, at any rate in the second half of it, certain of those bluntly naive passages and some of that childish assurance which are noticeable in Jeanne's genuine letters, especially in her reply to the Count of Armagnac;[1921] and more than once there occurs an expression characteristic of a village sibyl. The following, for example, is quite in Jeanne's own manner: "If you will return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, send me your ambassadors; I will tell you what you have to do." And her usual threat: "Expect me with all strength human and divine."[1922] As for the phrase: "If I hear not shortly of your conversion, of your return to the bosom of the Church, I will peradventure leave the English and come against you," here we may suspect the mendicant friar, less interested in the affairs of Charles VII than in those of the Church, of having ascribed to the Maid greater eagerness to set forth on the Crusade than she really felt. Good and salutary as she deemed the taking of the Cross, as far as we know her, she would never have consented to take it until she had driven the English out of the realm of France. She believed this to be her mission, and the persistence, the consistency, the strength of will she evinced in its fulfilment, are truly admirable. It is quite probable that she dictated to the good Brother some phrase like: "When I have put the English out of the kingdom, I will turn against you." This would explain and excuse Brother Pasquerel's error. It is very likely that Jeanne believed she would dispose of the English in a trice and that she already saw herself distributing good buffets and sound clouts to the renegade and infidel Bohemians. The Maid's simplicity makes itself felt through the clerk's Latin. This epistle to the Bohemians recalls, alas! that fagot placed upon the stake whereon John Huss was burning, by the pious zeal of the good wife whose saintly simplicity John Huss himself teaches us to admire.

[Footnote 1921: Trial, vol. i, p. 246.]

[Footnote 1922: Ibid., vol. v, p. 95.]

One cannot help reflecting that Jeanne and those very men against whom she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were impelled by faith, chastity, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation to God's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of devotion. Zizka[1923] had established in his camp that purity of morals which the Maid was endeavouring to introduce among the Armagnacs. The peasant soldiers of Bohemia and the peasant Maid of France bearing her sword amidst mendicant monks had much in common. On the one hand and on the other, we have the religious spirit in the place of the political spirit, the fear of sin in the place of obedience to the civil law, the spiritual introduced into the temporal. Here is indeed a woeful sight and a piteous; the devout set one against the other, the innocent against the innocent, the simple against the simple, the heretic against heretics; and it is painful to think that when she is threatening with extermination the disciples of that John Huss, who had been treacherously taken and burned as a heretic, she herself is on the point of being sold to her enemies and condemned to suffer as a witch. It would have been different if this letter, at which the accomplished wits and humorists of the day looked askance, had won the approval of theologians. But they also found fault with it, an illustrious canonist, a zealous inquisitor deemed highly presumptuous this threatening of a multitude of men by a Maid.[1924]

[Footnote 1923: Another of the Hussite leaders (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1924: J. Nider, Formicarium in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 502-504.]

We were right in saying that she was not prepared to leave the English immediately and hasten against the Bohemians. Five days after her appeal to the Hussites she wrote to her friends at Reims and in mysterious words gave them to understand that she would come to them shortly.[1925]

[Footnote 1925: Trial, vol. v, pp. 161, 162.]

The partisans of Duke Philip were at that time hatching plots in the towns of Champagne, notably at Troyes and at Reims. On the 22nd of February, 1430, a canon and a chaplain were arrested and brought before the chapter for having conspired to deliver the city to the English. It was well for them that they belonged to the Church, for having been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, they obtained from the King a mitigation of their sentence, and the canon a complete remittance.[1926] The aldermen and ecclesiastics of the city, fearing they would be thought badly of on the other side of the Loire, wrote to the Maid entreating her to speak well of them to the King. The following is her reply to their request:[1927]

[Footnote 1926: Ibid., vol. iv, p. 299, and H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, pp. 60 et seq. Memoires de Pierre Coquault, ibid., pp. 109 et seq.]

[Footnote 1927: This letter was published by J. Quicherat, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 161, 162, and by M. H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, pp. 106, 107 and document XVI, according to Rogier's inaccurate copy. The original which had disappeared from the municipal archives at Reims was considered to be lost; but it has been found in the possession of the Count de Maleissye. Cf. the reproduction by A. Marty and M. Lepet, L'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc.... Cent facsimiles de manuscrits, de miniatures, Paris, 1907, in large 4to. Here for the first time is to be found a text correct according to the original document.]

"Very good friends and beloved, may it please you to wit that I have received your letters, the which make mention how it hath been reported to the King that within the city of Reims there be many wicked persons. Therefore I give you to wit that it is indeed true that even such things have been reported to him and that he grieves much that there be folk in alliance with the Burgundians; that they would betray the town and bring the Burgundians into it. But since then the King has known the contrary by means of the assurance ye have sent him, and he is well pleased with you. And ye may believe that ye stand well in his favour; and if ye have need, he would help you with regard to the siege; and he knows well that ye have much to suffer from the hardness of those treacherous Burgundians, your adversaries: thus may God in his pleasure deliver you shortly, that is as soon as may be. So I pray and entreat you my friends dearly beloved that ye hold well the said city for the King and that ye keep good watch. Ye will soon have good tidings of me at greater length. Other things for the present I write not unto you save that the whole of Brittany is French and that the Duke is to send to the King three thousand combatants paid for two months. To God I commend you, may he keep you.

Written at Sully, the 28th of March.

Jehanne.[1928]

Addressed to: My good friends and dearly beloved, the churchmen, aldermen, burgesses and inhabitants and masters of the good town of Reyms."[1929]

[Footnote 1928: The signature appears to be autograph. It differs from the two identical signatures of the letters from Riom and Reims (see ante, p. 108, note 1); and it bears trace of the resistance of a hand which was being guided.]

[Footnote 1929: Trial, vol. v, pp. 161, 162. Varin, Archives legislatives de la ville de Reims, vol. i, p. 596. H. Jadart, Jeanne d'Arc a Reims, pp. 106, 107.]

Touching the succour to be expected from the Duke of Brittany, the Maid was labouring under a delusion. Like all other prophetesses she was ignorant of what was passing around her. Despite her failures, she believed in her good fortune; she doubted herself no more than she doubted God; and she was eager to pursue the fulfilment of her mission. "Ye shall soon have tidings of me," she said to the townsfolk of Reims. A few days after, and she left Sully to go into France and fight, on the expiration of the truces.

It has been said that she feigned an expedition of pleasure and set out without taking leave of the King, that it was a kind of innocent stratagem, an honourable flight.[1930] But it was nothing of the sort.[1931] The Maid gathered a company of some hundred horse, sixty-eight archers and cross-bowmen, and two trumpeters, commanded by a Lombard captain, Bartolomeo Baretta.[1932] In this company were Italian men-at-arms, bearing broad shields, like some who had come to Orleans at the time of the siege; possibly they were the same.[1933] She set out at the head of this company, with her brothers and her steward, the Sire Jean d'Aulon. She was in the hands of Jean d'Aulon, and Jean d'Aulon was in the hands of the Sire de la Tremouille, to whom he owed money.[1934] The good squire would not have followed the Maid against the King's will.

[Footnote 1930: Perceval de Cagny, who was in the pay of the Duke of Alencon, is the only chronicler to suggest it, p. 173.]

[Footnote 1931: "In the year 1430, Jeanne the Maid started from the country of Berry accompanied by divers fighting men...." Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 120.]

[Footnote 1932: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 120. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustellier, vol. i, p. 117. Note concerning G. de Flavy, in Trial, vol. v, p. 177. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, p. 36, note 2.]

[Footnote 1933: Journal du siege, p. 12.]

[Footnote 1934: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 293, note 3. True, the loan was made later; none the less the dependence of Jean d'Aulon on the Sire de la Tremouille existed at this time.]

The flying squadron of beguines had recently been divided by a schism. Friar Richard, who was then in high favour with Queen Marie, and who had preached the Lenten sermons of 1430[1935] at Orleans, stayed behind, on the Loire, with Catherine de la Rochelle. Jeanne took with her Pierronne and the younger Breton prophetess.[1936] If she went into France, it was not without the knowledge or against the will of the King and his Council. Very probably the Chancellor of the kingdom had asked La Tremouille to send her in order that he might employ her in the approaching campaign against the Burgundians, who were threatening his government of Beauvais and his city of Reims.[1937] He was not very kindly disposed towards her, but already he had made use of her and he intended to do so again. Possibly his intention was to employ her in a fresh attack on Paris.

[Footnote 1935: Trial, vol. i, p. 99, note. Journal du siege, pp. 235, 238.]

[Footnote 1936: This comes from the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 271.]

[Footnote 1937: Trial, vol. v, pp. 159, 160.]

The King had not abandoned the idea of taking his great city by the peaceful methods he always preferred. Throughout Lent, between Sully and Paris, there had been a constant passing to and fro of certain Carmelite monks of Melun, disguised as artisans. These were the churchmen who, during the attack on the Porte Saint Honore, on the Day of the Festival of Our Lady, had stirred up the popular rising which had spread from one bank of the Seine to the other. Now they were negotiating with certain influential citizens the entrance of the King's men into the rebel city. The Prior of the Melun Carmelites was directing the conspiracy.[1938] There is reason to believe that Jeanne had herself seen him or one of his monks. True it is that since the 22nd or the 23rd of March it was known at Sully that the conspiracy had been discovered;[1939] but perhaps the hope of success still lingered. It was to Melun that Jeanne went with her company; and it is difficult to believe that there was no connection between the conspiracy of the Carmelites and the expedition of the Maid.

[Footnote 1938: The Pardon of Jean de Calais in A. Longnon, Paris sous la domination anglaise, pp. 301-309. Stevenson, Letters and Papers, vol. i, pp. 34-50.]

[Footnote 1939: So it appears from Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 274-275.]

Why should Charles VII's Councillors have ceased to employ her? It cannot be said that she appeared less divine to the French or less evil to the English. Her failures, either unknown, or partially known, rendered unimportant by the fame of her victories, had not dispelled the idea that within her resided invincible power. At the time when the hapless damsel with the flower of French knighthood was receiving sore treatment under the walls of La Charite at the hands of an ex-mason's apprentice, in Burgundian lands it was rumoured that she was carrying by storm a castle twelve miles from Paris.[1940] She was still considered miraculous; the burgesses, the men-at-arms of her party still believed in her. And as for the Godons, from the Regent to the humblest swordsman of the army, they all regarded her with a terror as great as that which had possessed them at Orleans and Patay. At this time so many English soldiers and captains refused to go to France, that a special edict was issued obliging them to do so.[1941] But they doubtless discovered reasons enough for not going into a country where henceforth they could hope only for hard knocks and nothing tempting; so that many declined, terrified by the enchantments of the Maid.[1942]

[Footnote 1940: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 228-231. Concerning Perrinet Gressart see vol. i, p. 389.]

[Footnote 1941: May 3, 1430.]

[Footnote 1942: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, pp. 572-574.]