The next day, May 5th, was the Feast of the Ascension, and it was spent by Jeanne in rest and in prayer. But the other leaders were not so devout. They held a crowded and anxious council of war, taking care that no news of it should reach the ears of the Maid. When, however, they had decided upon the course to pursue they sent for her, and intimated to her their decision to attack only the smaller forts, which she heard with great impatience, not sitting down, but walking about the room in disappointment and anger. It is difficult[2] for the present writer to follow the plans of this council or to understand in what way Jeanne felt herself contradicted and set aside. However it was, the fact seems certain that their plan failed at first, the English having themselves abandoned one of the smaller forts on the right side of the river and concentrated their forces in the greater ones of Les Augustins and Les Tourelles on the left bank. For all this, reference to the map is necessary, which will make it quite clear. It was Classidas, as he is called, Glasdale, the most furious enemy of France, and one of the bravest of the English captains who held the former, and for a moment succeeded in repulsing the attack. The fortune of war seemed about to turn back to its former current, and the French fell back on the boats which had brought them to the scene of action, carrying the Maid with them in their retreat. But she perceived how critical the moment was, and reining up her horse from the bank, down which she was being forced by the crowd, turned back again, closely followed by La Hire, and at once, no doubt, by the stouter hearts who only wanted a leader–and charging the English, who had regained their courage as the white armour of the witch disappeared, and were in full career after the fugitives–drove them back to their fortifications, which they gained with a rush, leaving the ground strewn with the wounded and dying. Jeanne herself did not draw bridle till she had planted her standard on the edge of the moat which surrounded the tower.
Michelet is very brief concerning this first victory, and claims only that “the success was due in part to the Maid,” although the crowd of captains and men-at-arms where by themselves quite sufficient for the work, had there been any heart in them. But this was true to fact in almost every case: and it is clear that she was simply the heart, which was the only thing wanted to those often beaten Frenchmen; where she was, where they could hear her robust young voice echoing over all the din, they were as men inspired; when the impetus of their flight carried her also away, they became once more the defeated of so many battles. The effect upon the English was equally strong; when the back of Jeanne was turned, they were again the men of Agincourt; when she turned upon them, her white breastplate blazing out like a star, the sunshine striking dazzling rays from her helmet, they trembled before the sorceress; an angel to her own side, she was the very spirit of magic and witchcraft to her opponents. Classidas, or which captain soever of the English side it might happen to be, blaspheming from the battlements, hurled all the evil names of which a trooper was capable, upon her, while she from below summoned them, in different tones of appeal and menace, calling upon them to yield, to go home, to give up the struggle. Her form, her voice are always evident in the midst of the great stone bullets, the cloth-yard shafts that were flying–they were so near, the one above, the other below, that they could hear each other speak.
On the 7th of May the fort of Les Augustins on the left bank was taken. It will be seen by reference to the map, that this bastille, an ancient convent, stood at some distance from the river, in peaceful times a little way beyond the bridge, and no doubt a favourite Sunday walk from the city. The bridge was now closed up by the frowning bulk of the Tourelles built upon it, with a smaller tower or “boulevard” on the left bank communicating with it by a drawbridge. When Les Augustins was taken, the victorious French turned their arms against this boulevard, but as night had fallen by this time, they suspended the fighting, having driven back the English, who had made a sally in help of Les Augustins. Here in the dark, which suited their purpose, another council was held. The captains decided that they would now pursue their victory no further, the town being fully supplied with provisions and joyful with success, but that they would await the arrival of reinforcements before they proceeded further; probably their object was solely to get rid of Jeanne, to conclude the struggle without her, and secure the credit of it. The council was held in the camp within sight of the fort, by the light of torches; after she had been persuaded to withdraw, on account of a slight wound in her foot from a calthrop, it is said. This message was sent after her into Orleans. She heard it with quiet disdain. “You have held your council, and I have had mine,” she said calmly to the messengers; then turning to her chaplain, “Come to me to-morrow at dawn,” she said, “and do not leave me; I shall have much to do. My blood will be shed. I shall be wounded[3] to-morrow,” pointing above her right breast. Up to this time no weapon had touched her; she had stood fast among all the flying arrows, the fierce play of spear and sword, and had taken no harm.
In the morning early, at sunrise, she dashed forth from the town again, though the generals, her hosts, and all the authorities who were in the plot endeavoured to detain her. “Stay with us, Jeanne,” said the people with whom she lodged–official people, much above the rank of the Maid–“stay and help us to eat this fish fresh out of the river.” “Keep it for this evening,” she said, “and I shall return by the bridge and bring you some Goddens to have their share.” She had already brought in a party of the Goddens on the night before to protect them from the fury of the crowd. The peculiarity of this promise lay in the fact that the bridge was broken, and could not be passed, even without that difficulty, without passing through the Tourelles and the boulevard which blocked it at the other end. At the closed gates another great official stood by, to prevent her passing, but he was soon swept away by the flood of enthusiasts who followed the white horse and its white rider. The crowd flung themselves into the boats to cross the river with her, horse and man. Les Tourelles stood alone, black and frowning across the shining river in its early touch of golden sunshine, on the south side of the Loire, the lower tower of the boulevard on the bank blackened with the fire of last night’s attack, and the smoking ruins of Les Augustins beyond. The French army, whom Orleans had been busy all night feeding and encouraging, lay below, not yet apparently moving either for action or retreat. Jeanne plunged among them like a ray of light, D’Aulon carrying her banner; and passing through the ranks, she took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard. Her followers rushed after with that /�lan/ of desperate and uncalculating valour which was the great power of the French arms. In the midst of the fray the girl’s clear voice, /assez voix de femme/, kept shouting encouragements, /de la part de Dieu/ always her war-cry. “/Bon c�ur, bonne esp�rance/,” she cried–“the hour is at hand.” But after hours of desperate fighting the spirit of the assailants began to flag. Jeanne, who apparently did not at any time take any active part in the struggle, though she exposed herself to all its dangers, seized a ladder, placed it against the wall, and was about to mount, when an arrow struck her full in the breast. The Maid fell, the crowd closed round; for a moment it seemed as if all were lost.
Here we have over again in the fable our friend Gamache. It is a pretty story, and though we ask no one to take it for absolute fact, there is no reason why some such incident might not have occurred. Gamache, the angry captain who rather than follow a /p�ronnelle/ to the field was prepared to fold his banner round its staff, and give up his rank, is supposed to have been the nearest to her when she fell. It was he who cleared the crowd from about her and raised her up. “Take my horse,” he said, “brave creature. Bear no malice. I confess that I was in the wrong.” “It is I that should be wrong if I bore malice,” cried Jeanne, “for never was a knight so courteous” (/chevalier si bien apprins/). She was surrounded immediately by her people, the chaplain whom she had bidden to keep near her, her page, all her special attendants, who would have conveyed her out of the fight had she consented. Jeanne had the courage to pull the arrow out of the wound with her own hand,–“it stood a hand breadth out” behind her shoulder–but then, being but a girl and this her first experience of the sort, notwithstanding her armour and her rank as General-in- Chief, she cried with the pain, this commander of seventeen. Somebody then proposed to charm the wound with an incantation, but the Maid indignant, cried out, “I would rather die.” Finally a compress soaked in oil was placed upon it, and Jeanne withdrew a little with her chaplain, and made her confession to him, as one who might be about to die.
But soon her mood changed. She saw the assailants waver and fall back; the attack grew languid, and Dunois talked of sounding the retreat. Upon this she got to her feet, and scrambled somehow on her horse. “Rest a little,” she implored the generals about her, “eat something, refresh yourselves: and when you see my standard floating against the wall, forward, the place is yours.” They seem to have done as she suggested, making a pause, while Jeanne withdrew a little into a vineyard close by, where there must have been a tuft of trees, to afford her a little shelter. There she said her prayers, and tasted that meat to eat that men wot not of, which restores the devout soul. Turning back she took her standard from her squire’s hand, and planted it again on the edge of the moat. “Let me know,” she said, “when the pennon touches the wall.” The folds of white and gold with the benign countenance of the Saviour, now visible, now lost in the changes of movement, floated over their heads on the breeze of the May day. “Jeanne,” said the squire, “it touches!” “On!” cried the Maid, her voice ringing through the momentary quiet. “On! All is yours!” The troops rose as one man; they flung themselves against the wall, at the foot of which that white figure stood, the staff of her banner in her hand, shouting, “All is yours.” Never had the French /�lan/ been so wildly inspired, so irresistible; they swarmed up the wall “as if it had been a stair.” “Do they think themselves immortal?” the panic- stricken English cried among themselves–panic-stricken not by their old enemies, but by the white figure at the foot of the wall. Was she a witch, as had been thought? was not she indeed the messenger of God? The dazzling rays that shot from her armour seemed like butterflies, like doves, like angels floating about her head. They had thought her dead, yet here she stood again without a sign of injury; or was it Michael himself, the great archangel whom she resembled do much? Arrows flew round her on every side but never touched her. She struck no blow, but the folds of her standard blew against the wall, and her voice rose through all the tumult. “On! Enter! /de la part de Dieu!/ for all is yours.”
The Maid had other words to say, “/Renty, renty/, Classidas!” she cried, “you called me vile names, but I have a great pity for your soul.” He on his side showered down blasphemies. He was at the last gasp; one desperate last effort he made with a handful of men to escape from the boulevard by the drawbridge to Les Tourelles, which crossed a narrow strip of the river. But the bridge had been fired by a fire-ship from Orleans and gave way under the rush of the heavily- armed men; and the fierce Classidas and his companions were plunged into the river, where a knight in armour, like a tower falling, went to the bottom in a moment. Nearly thirty of them, it is said, plunged thus into the great Loire and were seen no more.
It was the end of the struggle. The French flag swung forth on the parapet, the French shout rose to heaven. Meanwhile a strange sight was to be seen–the St. Michael in shining armour, who had led that assault, shedding tears for the ferocious Classidas, who had cursed her with his last breath. “/J’ai grande piti� de ton �me./” Had he but had time to clear his soul and reconcile himself with God!
This was virtually the end of the siege of Orleans. The broken bridge on the Loire had been rudely mended, with a great /goutti�re/ and planks, and the people of Orleans had poured out over it to take the Tourelles in flank–the English being thus taken between Jeanne’s army on the one side and the citizens on the other. The whole south bank of the river was cleared, not an Englishman left to threaten the richest part of France, the land flowing with milk and honey. And though there still remained several great generals on the other side with strong fortifications to fall back upon, they seem to have been paralysed, and did not strike a blow. Jeanne was not afraid of them, but her ardour to continue the fight dropped all at once; enough had been done. She awaited the conclusion with confidence. Needless to say that Orleans was half mad with joy, every church sounding its bells, singing its song of triumph and praise, the streets so crowded that it was with difficulty that the Maid could make her progress through them, with throngs of people pressing round to kiss her hand, if might be, her greaves, her mailed shoes, her charger, the floating folds of her banner. She had said she would be wounded and so she was, as might be seen, the envious rent of the arrow showing through the white plates of metal on her shoulder. She had said all should be theirs /de par Dieu:/ and all was theirs, thanks to our Lord and also to St. Aignan and St. Euvert, patrons of Orleans, and to St. Louis and St. Charlemagne in heaven who had so great pity of the kingdom of France: and to the Maid on earth, the Heaven-sent deliverer, the spotless virgin, the celestial warrior–happy he who could reach to kiss it, the point of her mailed shoe.
Someone says that she rode through all this half-delirious joy like a creature in a dream,–fatigue, pain, the happy languor of the end attained, and also the profound pity that was the very inspiration of her spirit, for all those souls of men gone to their account without help of Church or comfort of priest–overwhelming her. But next day, which was Sunday, she was up again and eagerly watching all that went on. A strange sight was Orleans on that Sunday of May. On the south side of the Loire, all those half-ruined bastilles smoking and silenced, which once had threatened not the city only but all the south of France; on the north the remaining bands of English drawn up in order of battle. The excitement of the town and of the generals in it, was intense; worn as they were with three days of continuous fighting, should they sally forth again and meet that compact, silent, doubly defiant army, which was more or less fresh and unexhausted? Jeanne’s opinion was, No; there had been enough of fighting, and it was Sunday, the holy day; but apparently the French did go out though keeping at a distance, watching the enemy. By orders of the Maid an altar was raised between the two armies in full sight of both sides, and there mass was celebrated, under the sunshine, by the side of the river which had swallowed Classidas and all his men. French and English together devoutly turned towards and responded to that Mass in the pause of bewildering uncertainty. “Which way are their heads turned?” Jeanne asked when it was over. “They are turned away from us, they are turned to Meung,” was the reply. “Then let them go, /de par Dieu/,” the Maid replied.
The siege had lasted for seven months, but eight days of the Maid were enough to bring it to an end. The people of Orleans still, every year, on the 8th of May, make a procession round the town and give thanks to God for its deliverance. Henceforth, the Maid was known no longer as Jeanne d’Arc, the peasant of Domremy, but as /La Pucelle d’Orl�ans/, in the same manner in which one might speak of the Prince of Waterloo, or the Duc de Malakoff. ———- [1] Their special mission seems to have been a demand for the return of a herald previously sent who had never come back. As Dunois accompanied the demand by a threat to kill the English prisoners in Orleans if the herald was not sent back, the request was at once accorded, with fierce defiances to the Maid, the dairy-maid as she is called, bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her if they caught her.
[2] I avail myself here as elsewhere of Mr. Lang’s lucid description. “It is really perfectly intelligible. The Council wanted a feint on the left bank, Jeanne an attack on the right. She knew their scheme, untold, but entered into it. There was, however, no feint. She deliberately forced the fighting. There was grand fighting, well worth telling,” adds my martial critic, who understands it so much better than I do, and who I am happy to think is himself telling the tale in another way.
[3] She had made this prophecy a month before, and it was recorded three weeks before the event in the Town Book of Brabant.–A. L.
CHAPTER V
THE CAMPAIGN OF THE LOIRE. JUNE, JULY, 1429.
The rescue of Orleans and the defeat of the invincible English were news to move France from one end to the other, and especially to raise the spirits and restore the courage of that part of France which had no sympathy with the invaders and to which the English yoke was unaccustomed and disgraceful. The news flew up and down the Loire from point to point, arousing every village, and breathing new heart and encouragement everywhere; while in the meantime Jeanne, partially healed of her wound (on May 9th she rode out in a /maillet/, a light coat of chain-mail), after a few days’ rest in the joyful city which she had saved with all its treasures, set out on her return to Chinon. She found the King at Loches, another of the strong places on the Loire where there was room for a Court, and means of defence for a siege should such be necessary, as is the case with so many of these wonderful castles upon the great French river. Hot with eagerness to follow up her first great success and accomplish her mission, Jeanne’s object was to march on at once with the young Prince, with or without his immense retinue, to Rheims where he should be crowned and anointed King as she had promised. Her instinctive sense of the necessities of the position, if we use that language–more justly, her boundless faith in the orders which she believed had been give her from Heaven, to accomplish this great act without delay, urged her on. She was straitened, if we may quote the most divine of words, till it should be accomplished.
But the Maid, flushed with victory, with the shouts of Orleans still ringing in her ears, the applause of her fellow-soldiers, the sound of the triumphant bells, was plunged all at once into the indolence, the intrigues, the busy nothingness of the Court, in which whispering favourites surrounded a foolish young prince, beguiling him into foolish amusements, alarming him with coward fears. Wise men and buffoons alike dragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counselling caution, the other inventing amusements. “Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.” Was it worth while to lose everything that was enjoyable in the present moment, to subject a young sovereign to toils and excitement, and probable loss, for the uncertain advantage of a vain ceremony, when he might be enjoying himself safely and at his ease, throughout the summer months, on the cheerful banks of the Loire? On the other hand, the Chancellor, the Chamberlains, the Church, all his graver advisers (with the exception of Gerson, the great theologian to whom has been ascribed the authorship of the /Imitation of Christ/, who is reported to have said, “If France deserts her, and she fails, she is none the less inspired”) shook their hands and advised that the way should be quite safe and free of danger before the King risked himself upon it. It was thus that Jeanne was received when, newly alighted from her charger, her shoulder still but half healed, her eyes scarcely clear of the dust and smoke, she found herself once more in the ante-chamber, wasting the days, waiting in vain behind closed doors, tormented by the lutes and madrigals, the light women and lighter men, useless and contemptible, of a foolish Court. The Maid, in all the energy and impulse of a success which had proved all her claims, had also a premonition that her own time was short, if not a direct intimation, as some believe, to that effect: and mingled her remonstrances and appeals with the cry of warning: “I shall only last a year: take the good of me as long as it is possible.”
No doubt she was a very great entertainment to the idle seigneurs and ladies who would try to persuade her to tell them what was to happen to them, she who had prophesied the death of Glasdale and her own wound and so many other things. The Duke of Lorraine on her first setting out had attempted to discover from Jeanne what course his illness would take, and whether he should get better; and all the demoiselles and demoiseaux, the flutterers of the ante-chamber, would be still more likely to surround with their foolish questions the stout-hearted, impatient girl who had acquired a little of the roughness of her soldier comrades, and had never been slow at any time in answering a fool according to his folly; for Jeanne was no meek or sentimental maiden, but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, as well as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use any inappropriate freedom. At last, one day while she waited vainly outside the cabinet in which the King was retired with a few of his councillors, Jeanne’s patience failed her altogether. She knocked at the door, and being admitted threw herself at the feet of the King. To Jeanne he was no king till he had received the consecration necessary for every sovereign of France. “Noble Dauphin,” she cried, “why should you hold such long and tedious councils? Rather come to Rheims and receive your worthy crown.”
The Bishop of Castres, Christopher de Harcourt, who was present, asked her if she would not now in the presence of the King describe to them the manner in which her council instructed her, when they talked with her. Jeanne reddened and replied: “I understand that you would like to know, and I would gladly satisfy you.” “Jeanne,” said the King in his turn, “it would be very good if you could do what they ask, in the presence of those here.” She answered at once and with great feeling: “When I am vexed to find myself disbelieved in the things I say from God, I retire by myself and pray to God, complaining and asking of Him why I am not listened to. And when I have prayed I hear a voice which says, ‘Daughter of God, go, go, go! I will help thee, go!’ And when I hear that voice I feel a great joy.” Her face shone as she spoke, “lifting her eyes to heaven,” like the face of Moses while still it bore the reflection of the glory of God, so that the men were dazzled who sat, speechless, looking on.
The result was that Charles kindly promised to set out as soon as the road between him and Rheims should be free of the English, especially the towns on the Loire in which a great part of the army dispersed from Orleans had taken refuge, with the addition of the auxiliary forces of Sir John Fastolfe, a name so much feared by the French, but at which the English reader can scarcely forbear a smile. That the young King did not think of putting himself at the head of the troops or of taking part in the campaign shows sufficiently that he was indeed a /pauvre sire/, unworthy his gallant people. Jeanne, however, nothing better being possible, seems to have accepted this mission with readiness, and instantly began her preparations to carry it out. It is here that the young Seigneur Guy de Laval comes in with his description of her already quoted. He was no humble squire but a great personage to whom the King was civil and pleased to show courtesy. The young man writes to /ses m�res/, that is, it seems, his mother and grandmother, to whom, in their distant ch�teau, anxiously awaiting news of the two youths gone to the wars, their faithful son makes his report of himself and his brother. The King, he says, sent for the Maid, in order, Sir Guy believes, that he might see her. And afterwards the young man went to Selles where she was just setting out on the campaign.
From Selles, he writes on the 8th June, exactly a month after the deliverance of Orleans:
“I went to her lodging to see her, and she sent for wine and told me we should soon drink wine in Paris. It was a miraculous thing (/toute divine/) to see her and hear her. She left Selles on Monday at the hour of vespers for Romorantin, the Marshal de Boussac and a great many armed men with her. I saw her mount her horse, all in white armour excepting the head, a little axe in her hand. The great black charger was very restive at her door and would not let her mount. ‘Lead him,’ she said, ‘to the cross which is in front of the church,’ and there she mounted, the horse standing still as if he had been bound. Then turning towards the church which was close by she said in a womanly voice (/assez voix de femme/), ‘You priests and people of the Church, make processions and prayers to God for us’; then turning to the road, ‘Forward,’ she said. Her unfolded standard was carried by a page; she had her little axe in her hand, and by her side rode a brother who had joined her eight days before. The Maid told me in her lodging that she had sent you, grandmother, a small gold ring, which was indeed a very small affair, and that she would fain have sent you something better, considering your recommendation. To-day M. d’Alen�on, the Bastard of Orleans, and Gaucourt were to leave Selles, following the Maid. And men are arriving from all parts every day, all with good hope in God who I believe will help us. But money there is none at the Court, so that for the present I have no hope of any help or assistance. Therefore I desire you, /Madame ma m�re/, who have my seal, spare not the land neither in sale nor mortgage . . . . My much honoured ladies and mothers, I pray the blessed Son of God that you have a good life and long; and both of us recommend ourselves to our brother Louis. And we send our greetings to the reader of this letter. Written from Selles, Wednesday, 8th June, 1429. This afternoon are arrived M. de Vend�me, M. de Boussac, and others, and La Hire has joined the army, and we shall soon be at work (/on besognera bient�t/)–May God grant that it should be according to your desire.”
It was with difficulty that the Duc d’Alen�on had been got to start, his wife consenting with great reluctance. He had been long a prisoner in England, and had lately been ransomed for a great sum of money; “Was not that a sufficient sacrifice?” the Duchess asked indignantly. To risk once more a husband so costly was naturally a painful thing to do, and why could not Jeanne be content and stay where she was? Jeanne comforted the lady, perhaps with a little good-humoured contempt. “Fear nothing, Madame,” she said; “I will bring him back to you safe and sound.” Probably Alen�on himself had no great desire to be second in command to this country lass, even though she had delivered Orleans; and if he set out at all he would have preferred to take another direction and to protect his own property and province. The gathering of the army thus becomes visible to us; parties are continually coming in; and no doubt, as they marched along, many a little ch�teau–and they abound through the country each with its attendant hamlet–gave forth its master or heir, poor but noble, followed by as many men-at-arms, perhaps only two or three, as the little property could raise, to swell the forces with the best and surest of material, the trained gentlemen with hearts full of chivalry and pride, but with the same hardy, self-denying habits as the sturdy peasants who followed them, ready for any privation; with a proud delight to hear that /on besognera bient�t/–with that St. Michael at their head, and no longer any fear of the English in their hearts.
The first /besogne/ on which this army entered was the siege of Jargeau, June 11th, into which town Suffolk had thrown himself and his troops when the siege of Orleans was raised. The town was strong and so was the garrison, experienced too in all the arts of war, and already aware of the wild enthusiasm by which Jeanne was surrounded. She passed through Orleans on the 10th of June, and had there been joined by various new detachments. The number of her army was now raised, we are told, to twelve hundred lances, which means, as each “lance” was a separate party, about three thousand six hundred men, though the /Journal du Si�ge/ gives a much larger number; at all events it was a small army with which to decide a quarrel between the two greatest nations of Christendom. Her associates in command were here once more seized by the prevailing sin of hesitation, and many arguments were used to induce her to postpone the assault. It would seem that this hesitation continued until the very moment of attack, and was only put an end to when Jeanne herself impatiently seized her banner from the hand of her squire, and planting herself at the foot of the walls let loose the fervour of the troops and cheered them on to the irresistible rush in which lay their strength. For it was with the commanders, not with the followers, that the weakness lay. The Maid herself was struck on the head by a stone from the battlements which threw her down; but she sprang up again in a moment unhurt. “/Sus! Sus!/ Our Lord has condemned the English–all is yours!” she cried. She would seem to have stood there in her place with her banner, a rallying-point and centre in the midst of all the confusion of the fight, taking this for her part in it, and though she is always in the thick of the combat, never, so far as we are told, striking a blow, exposed to all the instruments of war, but injured by none. The effect of her mere attitude, the steadiness of her stand, under the terrible rain of stone bullets and dreadful arrows, must of itself have been indescribable.
In the midst of the fiery struggle, there is almost a comic point in her watch over Alen�on, for whose safety she had pledged herself, now dragging him from a dangerous spot with a cry of warning, now pushing him forward with an encouraging word. On the first of these occasions a gentleman of Anjou, M. de Lude, who took his place in the front was killed, which seems hard upon the poor gentleman, who was probably quite as well worth caring for as Alen�on. “/Avant, gentil duc/,” she cried at another moment, “forward! Are you afraid? you know I promised your wife to bring you safe home.” Thus her voice keeps ringing through the din, her white armour gleams. “/Sus! Sus!/” the bold cry is almost audible, sibilant, whistling amid the whistling of the arrows.
Suffolk, the English Bayard, the most chivalrous of knights, was at last forced to yield. One story tells us that he would give up his sword only to Jeanne herself,[1] but there is a more authentic description of his selection of one youth among his assailants whom the quick perceptions of the leader had singled out. “Are you noble?” Suffolk asks in the brevity of such a crisis. “Yes; Guillame Regnault, gentleman of Auvergne.” “Are you a knight?” “Not yet.” The victor put a knee to the ground before his captive, the vanquished touched him lightly on the shoulder with the sword which he then gave over to him. Suffolk was always the finest gentleman, the most perfect gentle knight of his time.
“Now let us go and see the English of Meung,” cried Jeanne, unwearying, as soon as this victory was assured. That place fell easily; it is called the bridge of Meung, in the Chronicle, without further description, therefore presumably the fortress was not attacked–and they proceeded onward to Beaugency. These towns still shine over the plain, along the line of the Loire, visible as far as the eye will carry over the long levels, the great stream linking one to another like pearls on a thread. There is nothing in the landscape now to give even a moment’s shelter to the progress of a marching army which must have been seen from afar, wherever it moved; or to veil the shining battlements, and piled up citadels rising here and there, concentrated points and centres of life. The great white Castle of Blois, the darker tower of Beaugency, still stand where they stood when Jeanne and her men drew near, as conspicuous in their elevation of walls and towers as if they had been planted on a mountain top. On more than one occasion during this wonderful progress from victory to victory, the triumphant leaders returned for a day or two to Orleans to tell their good tidings, and to celebrate their success.
And there is but one voice as to the military skill which she displayed in these repeated operations. The reader sees her, with her banner, posted in the middle of the fight, guiding her men with a sort of infallible instinct which adds force to her absolute quick perception of every difficulty and advantage, the unhesitating promptitude, attending like so many servants upon the inspiration which is the soul of all. These are things to which a writer ignorant of war is quite unable to do justice. What was almost more wonderful still was the manner in which the Maid held her place among the captains, most of whom would have thwarted her if they could, with a consciousness of her own superior place, in which there is never the slightest token of presumption or self-esteem. She guarded and guided Alen�on with a good-natured and affectionate disdain; and when there was risk of a great quarrel and a splitting of forces she held the balance like an old and experienced guide of men.
This latter crisis occurred before Beaugency on the 15th of June, when the Comte de Richemont, Constable of France, the brother of the Duc de Bretagne, a great nobleman and famous leader, but in disgrace with the King and exiled from the Court, suddenly appeared with a considerable army to join himself to the royalist forces, probably with the hope of securing the leading place. Richemont was no friend to Jeanne; though he apparently asked her help and influence to reconcile him with the King. He seems indeed to have thought it a disgrace to France that her troops should be led, and victories gained by no properly appointed general, but by a woman, probably a witch, a creature unworthy to stand before armed men. It must not be forgotten that even now this was the general opinion of her out of the range of her immediate influence. The English held it like a religion. Bedford, in his description of the siege of Orleans and its total failure, reports to England that the discomfiture of the hitherto always triumphant army was “caused in great part by the fatal faith and vain fear that the French had, of a disciple and servant of the enemy of man, called the Maid, who uses many false enchantments, and witchcraft, by which not only is the number of our soldiers diminished but their courage marvellously beaten down, and the boldness of our enemies increased.” Richemont was a sworn enemy of all such. “Never man hated more, all heresies, sorcerers, and sorceresses, than he; for he burned more in France, in Poitou, and Bretagne, than any other of his time.” The French generals were divided as to the merits of Richemont and the advantages to be derived from his support. Alen�on, the nominal commander, declared that he would leave the army if Richemont were permitted to join it. The letters of the King were equally hostile to him; but on the other hand there were some who held that the accession of the Constable was of more importance than all the Maids in France. It was a moment which demanded very wary guidance. Jeanne, it would seem, did not regard his arrival with much pleasure; probably even the increase of her forces did not please her as it would have pleased most commanders, holding so strongly as she did, to the miraculous character of her own mission and that it was not so much the strength of her troops as the help of God that got her the victory. But it was not her part to reject or alienate any champion of France. We have an account of their meeting given by a retainer of Richemont, which is picturesque enough. “The Maid alighted from her horse, and the Constable also. ‘Jeanne,’ he said, ‘they tell me that you are against me. I know not if you are from God (/de la part de Dieu/) or not. If you are from God I do not fear you; if you are of the devil, I fear you still less.’ ‘Brave Constable,’ said Jeanne, ‘you have not come here by any will of mine; but since you are here you are welcome.'”
Armed neutrality but suspicion on one side, dignified indifference but acceptance on the other, could not be better shown.
These successes, however, had been attended by various /escarmouches/ going on behind. The English, who had been driven out of one town after another, had now drawn together under the command of Talbot, and a party of troops under Fastolfe, who came to relieve them, had turned back as Jeanne proceeded, making various unsuccessful attempts to recover what had been lost. Failing in all their efforts they returned across the country to Genville, and were continuing their retreat to Paris when the two enemies came within reach of each other. An encounter in open field was a new experience of which Jeanne as yet had known nothing. She had been successful in assault, in the operations of the siege, but to meet the enemy hand to hand in battle was what she had never been required to do; and every tradition, every experience, was in favour of the English. From Agincourt to the Battle of the Herrings at Rouvray near Orleans, which had taken place in the beginning of the year (a fight so named because the field of battle had been covered with herrings, the conquerors in this case being merely the convoy in charge of provisions for the English, which Fastolfe commanded), such a thing had not been known as that the French should hold their own, much less attain any victory over the invaders. In these circumstances there was much talk of falling back upon the camp near Beaugency and of retreating or avoiding an engagement; anything rather than hazard one of those encounters which had infallibly ended in disaster. But Jeanne was of the same mind as always, to go forward and fear nothing. “Fall upon them! Go at them boldly,” she cried. “If they were in the clouds we should have them. The gentle King will now gain the greatest victory he has ever had.”
It is curious to hear that in that great plain of the Beauce, so flat, so fertile, with nothing but vines and cornfields now against the horizon, the two armies at last almost stumbled upon each other by accident, in the midst of the brushwood by which the country was wildly overgrown. The story is that a stag roused by the French scouts rushed into the midst of the English, who were advantageously placed among the brushwood to arrest the enemy on their march; the wild creature terrified and flying before an army blundered into the midst of the others, was fired at and thus betrayed the vicinity of the foe. The English had no time to form or set up their usual defences. They were so taken by surprise that the rush of the French came without warning, with a suddenness which gave it double force. La Hire made the first attack as leader of the van, and there was thus emulation between the two parties, which should be first upon the enemy. When Alen�on asked Jeanne what was to be the issue of the fight, she said calmly, “Have you good spurs?” “What! You mean we shall turn our backs on our enemies?” cried her questioner. “Not so,” she replied. “The English will not fight, they will fly, and you will want good spurs to pursue them.” Even this somewhat fantastic prophecy put heart into the men, who up to this time had been wont to fly and not to fight.
And this was what happened, strange as it may seem. Talbot himself was with the English forces, and many a gallant captain beside: but the men and their leaders were alike broken in spirit and filled with superstitious terrors. Whether these were the forces of hell or those of heaven that came against them no one could be sure; but it was a power beyond that of earth. The dazzled eyes which seemed to see flights of white butterflies fluttering about the standard of the Maid, could scarcely belong to one who thought her a servant of the enemy of men. But she was a pernicious witch to Talbot, and strangely enough to Richemont also, who was on her own side. The English force was thrown into confusion, partly, we may suppose, from the broken ground on which they were discovered, the undergrowth of the wood which hid both armies from each other. But soon that disorder turned into the wildest panic and flight. It would almost seem as if between these two hereditary opponents one must always be forced into this miserable part. Not all the chivalry of France had been able to prevent it at the long string of battles in which they were, before the revelation of the Maid; and not the desperate and furious valour of Talbot could preserve his English force from the infection now. Fastolfe, with the philosophy of an old soldier, deciding that it was vain to risk his men when the field was already lost, rode off with all his band. Talbot fought with desperation, half mad with rage to be thus a second time overcome by so unlikely an adversary, and finally was taken prisoner; while the whole force behind him fled and were killed in their flight, the plain being scattered with their dead bodies.
Jeanne herself made use of those spurs concerning which she had enquired, and carried away by the passion of battle, followed in the pursuit, we are told, until she met a Frenchman brutally ill-using a prisoner whom he had taken, upon which the Maid, indignant, flung herself from her horse, and, seating herself on the ground beside the unfortunate Englishman, took his bleeding head upon her lap and, sending for a priest, made his departure from life at least as easy as pity and spiritual consolation could make it on such a disastrous field. In all the records there is no mention of any actual fighting on her part. She stands in the thick of the flying arrows with her banner, exposing herself to every danger; in moments of alarm, when her forces seem flagging, she seizes and places a ladder against the wall for an assault, and climbs the first as some say; but we never see her strike a blow. On the banks of the Loire the fate of the mail- clad Glasdale, hopeless in the strong stream underneath the ruined bridge, brought tears to her eyes, and now all the excitement of the pursuit vanished in an instant from her mind, when she saw the English man-at-arms dying without the succour of the Church. Pity was always in her heart; she was ever on the side of the angels, though an angel of war and not of peace.
It is perhaps because the numbers engaged were so few that this flight or “Chasse de Patay,” has not taken a more important place in the records of French historians. In general it is only by means of Fontenoy that the /amour propre/ of the French nation defends itself against the overwhelming list of battles in which the English have had the better of it. But this was probably the most complete victory that has ever been gained over the stubborn enemy whom French tactics are so seldom able to touch; and the conquerors were purely French without any alloy of alien arms, except a few Scots, to help them. The entire campaign on the Loire was one of triumph for the French arms, and of disaster for the English. They–it is perhaps a point of national pride to admit it frankly–were as well beaten as heart of Frenchman could desire, beaten not only in the result, but in the conduct of the campaign, in heart and in courage, in skill and in genius. There is no reason in the world why it should not be admitted. But it was not the French generals, not even Dunois, who secured these victories. It was the young peasant woman, the dauntless Maid, who underneath the white mantle of her inspiration, miraculous indeed, but not so miraculous as this, had already developed the genius of a soldier, and who in her simplicity, thinking nothing but of her “voices” and the counsel they gave her, was already the best general of them all.
When Talbot stood before the French generals, no less a person than Alen�on himself is reported to have made a remark to him, of that ungenerous kind which we call in feminine language “spiteful,” and which is not foreign to the habit of that great nation. “You did not think this morning what would have happened to you before sunset,” said the Duc d’Alen�on to the prisoner. “It is the fortune of war,” replied the English chief.
Once more, however it is like a sudden fall from the open air and sunshine when the victorious army and its chiefs turned back to the Court where the King and his councillors sat idle, waiting for news of what was being done for them. A battle-field is no fine sight; the excitement of the conflict, the great end to be served by it, the sense of God’s special protection, even the tremendous uproar of the fight, the intoxication of personal action, danger, and success have, we do not doubt a rapture and passion in them for the moment, which carry the mind away; but the bravest soldier holds his breath when he remembers the after scene, the dead and dying, the horrible injuries inflicted, the loss and misery. However, not even the miserable scene of the Chasse de Patay is so painful as the reverse of the dismal picture, the halls of the royal habitation where, while men died for him almost within hearing of the fiddling and the dances, the young King trifled away his useless days among his idle favourites, and the musicians played, the assemblies were held, and all went on as in the Tuileries. We feel as if we had fallen fathoms deep into the meannesses of mankind when we come back from the bloodshed and the horror outside, to the King’s presence within. The troops which had gone out in uncertainty, on an enterprise which might well have proved too great for them, had returned in full flush of triumph, having at last fully broken the spell of the English superiority–which was the greatest victory that could have been achieved: besides gaining the substantial advantage of three important towns brought back to the King’s allegiance–only to find themselves as little advanced as before, coming back to the self-same struggle with indolent complaining, indifference, and ingratitude.
Jeanne had given the signs that had been demanded from her. She had delivered Orleans, she cleared the King’s road toward the north. She had filled the French forces with an enthusiasm and transport of valour which swept away all the traditions of ill fortune. From every point of view the instant march upon Rheims and the accomplishment of the great object of her mission had not only become practicable, but was the wisest and most prudent thing to do.
But this was not the opinion of the Chancellor of France, the Archbishop of Rheims, and La Tremouille, or of the indolent young King himself, who was very willing to rejoice in the relief from all immediate danger, the restoration of the surrounding country, and even the victory itself, if only they would have left him in quiet where he was, sufficiently comfortable, amused, and happy, without forcing necessary dangers. Jeanne’s successes and her unseasonable zeal and the commotion that she and her train of captains made, pouring in, in all the excitement of their triumph, into the midst of the madrigals– seem to have been anything but welcome. Go to Rheims to be crowned? yes, some time when it was convenient, when it was safe. But in the meantime what was more important was to forbid Richemont, whom the Chancellor hated and the King did not love, to come into the presence or to have any share either in warfare or in pageant. This was not only in itself an extremely foolish thing to do, which is always a recommendation, but it was at the same time an excuse for wasting a little precious time. When this was at last accomplished, and Richemont, though deeply wounded and offended, proved himself so much a man of honour and a patriot, that though dismissed by the King he still upheld, if languidly, his cause–there was yet a great deal of resistance to be overcome. Paris though so far off was thrown into great excitement and alarm by the flight at Patay, and the whole city was in commotion fearing an immediate advance and attack. But in Loches, or wherever Charles may have been, it was all taken very easily. Fastolfe, the fugitive, had his Garter taken from him as the greatest disgrace that could be inflicted, for his shameful flight, about the time when Richemont, one of the victors, was being sent off and disgraced on the other side for the crime of having helped to inflict, without the consent of the King, the greatest blow which had yet been given to the English domination! So the Court held on its ridiculous and fatal course.
However the force of public feeling which must have been very frankly expressed by many important voices was too much for Charles and he was at length compelled to put himself in motion. The army had assembled at Gien, where he joined it, and the great wave of enthusiasm awakened by Jeanne, and on which he now moved forth as on the top of the wave, was for the time triumphant. No one dared say now that the Maid was a sorceress, or that it was by the aid of Beelzebub that she cast out devils; but a hundred jealousies and hatreds worked against her behind backs, among the courtiers, among the clergy, strange as that may sound, in sight of the absolute devotion of her mind, and the saintly life she led. So much was this the case still, notwithstanding the practical proofs she had given of her claims, that even persons of kindred mind, partially sharing her inspirations, such as the famous Brother Richard of Troyes, looked upon her with suspicion and alarm– fearing a delusion of Satan. It is more easy perhaps to understand why the archbishops and bishops should have been inclined against her, since, though perfectly orthodox and a good Catholic, Jeanne had been independent of all priestly guidance and had sought no sanction from the Church to her commission, which she believed to be given by Heaven. “Give God the praise; but we know that this woman is a sinner.” This was the best they could find to say of her in the moment of her greatest victories; but indeed it is no disparagement to Jeanne or to any saint that she should share with her Master the opprobrium of such words as these.
At last however a reluctant start was made. Jeanne with her “people,” her little staff, in which, now, were two of her brothers, a second having joined her after Orleans, left Gien on the 28th of June; and the next day the King very unwillingly set out. There is given a long list of generals who surrounded and accompanied him, three or four princes of the blood, the Bastard of Orleans, the Archbishop of Rheims, marshals, admirals, and innumerable seigneurs, among whom was our young Guy de Laval who wrote the letter to his “mothers” which we have already quoted and whose faith in the Maid we thus know; and our ever faithful La Hire, the big-voiced Gascon who had permission to swear by his /b�ton/, the d’Artagnan of this history. We reckon these names as those of friends: Dunois the ever-brave, Alen�on the /gentil Duc/ for whom Jeanne had a special and protecting kindness, La Hire the rough captain of Free Lances, and the graceful young seigneur, Sir Guy as we should have called him had he been English, who was so ready to sell or mortgage his land that he might convey his troop befittingly to the wars. This little group brightens the march for us with their friendly faces. We know that they have but one thought of the warrior maiden in whose genius they had begun to have a wondering confidence as well as in her divine mission. While they were there we feel that she had at least so many who understood her, and who bore her the affection of brothers. We are told that in the progress of the army Jeanne had no definite place. She rode where she pleased, sometimes in the front, sometimes in the rear. One imagines with pleasure that wherever her charger passed along the lines it would be accompanied by one or other of those valiant and faithful companions.
The first place at which a halt was made was Auxerre, a town occupied chiefly by Burgundians, which closed its gates, but by means of bribes, partly of provisions to be supplied, partly of gifts to La Tremouille, secured itself from the attack which Jeanne longed to lead. Other smaller strongholds on the road yielded without hesitation. At last they came to Troyes, a large and strong place, well garrisoned and confident in its strength, the town distinguished in the history of the time by the treaty made there, by which the young King had been disinherited–and by the marriage of Henry of England with the Princess Catherine of France, in whose right he was to succeed to the throne. It was an ill-omened place for a French king and the camp was torn with dissensions. Should the army march by, taking no notice of it and so get all the sooner to Rheims? or should they pause first, to try their fortune against those solid walls? But indeed it was not the camp that debated this question. The camp was of Jeanne’s mind whichever side she took, and her side was always that of the promptest action. The garrison made a bold sortie, the very day of the arrival of Charles and his forces, but had been beaten back: and the King encamped under the walls, wavering and uncertain whether he might not still depart on the morrow, but sending a repeated summons to surrender, to which no attention was paid.
Once more there was a pause of indecision; the King was not bold enough either to push on and leave the city, or to attack it. Again councils of war succeeded each other day after day, discussing the matter over and over, leaving the King each time more doubtful, more timid than before. From these debates Jeanne was anxiously held back, while every silken fool gave his opinion. At last, one of the councillors was stirred by this strange anomaly. He declared among them all, that as it was by the advice of the Maid that the expedition had been undertaken, without her acquiescence it ought not to be abandoned. “When the King set out it was not because of the great puissance of the army he then had with him, or the great treasure he had to provide for them, nor yet because it seemed to him a probable thing to be accomplished; but the said expedition was undertaken solely at the suit of the said Jeanne, who urged him constantly to go forward, to be crowned at Rheims, and that he should find little resistance, for it was the pleasure and will of God. If the said Jeanne is not to be allowed to give her advice now, it is my opinion that we should turn back,” said the Seigneur de Treves, who had never been a partisan of or believer in Jeanne. We are told that at this fortunate moment when one of her opponents had thus pronounced in her favour, Jeanne, impatient and restless, knocked at the door of the council chamber as she had done before in her rustic boldness; and then there occurred a brief and characteristic dialogue.
“Jeanne,” said the Archbishop of Rheims, taking the first word, probably with the ready instinct of a conspirator to excuse himself from having helped to shut her out, “the King and his council are in great perplexity to know what they should do.”
“Shall I be believed if I speak?” said the Maid.
“I cannot tell,” replied the King, interposing; “though if you say things that are reasonable and profitable, I shall certainly believe you.”
“Shall I be believed?” she repeated.
“Yes,” said the King, “according as you speak.”
“Noble Dauphin,” she exclaimed, “order your people to assault the city of Troyes, to hold no more councils; for, by my God, in three days I will introduce you into the town of Troyes, by love or by force, and false Burgundy shall be dismayed.”
“Jeanne,” said the Chancellor, “if you could do that in six days, we might well wait.”
“You shall be master of the place,” said the Maid, addressing herself steadily to the King, “not in six days, but to-morrow.”
And then there occurred once more the now habitual scene. It was no longer the miracle it had been to see her dash forward to her post under the walls with her standard which was the signal for battle, to which the impatient troops responded, confident in her, as she in herself. But for the first time we hear how the young general, learning her trade of war day by day, made her preparations for the siege. She was a gunner born, according to all we hear, and was quick to perceive the advantage of her rude artillery though she had never seen one of these /bouches de feu/ till she encountered them at Orleans. The whole army was set to work during the night, knights and men-at-arms alike, to raise–with any kind of handy material, palings faggots, tables, even doors and windows, taken it must be feared from some neighbouring village or faubourg–a mound on which to place the guns. The country as we have said is as flat as the palm of one’s hand. They worked all night under cover of the darkness with incredible devotion, while the alarmed townsfolk not knowing what was being done, but no doubt divining something from the unusual commotion, betook themselves to the churches to pray, and began to ponder whether after all it might not be better to join the King whose armies were led by St. Michael himself in the person of his representative, than to risk a siege. Once more the spell of the Maid fell on the defenders of the place. It was witchcraft, it was some vile art. They had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like their brothers at Orleans and Jargeau in face of all the powers of the evil one: the cry of “/Sus! Sus!/” was like the death-knell in their ears.
While the soldiers within the walls were thus trembling and drawing back, the bishop and his clergy took the matter in hand; they sallied forth, a long procession attended by half the city, to parley with the King. It was in the earliest dawn, while yet the peaceful world was scarcely awake; but the town had been in commotion all night, every visionary person in it seeing visions and dreaming dreams, and a panic of superstition and spiritual terror taking the strength out of every arm. Jeanne was already at her post, a glimmering white figure in the faint and visionary twilight of the morning, when the gates of the city swung back before this tremulous procession. The King, however, received the envoys graciously, and readily promised to guarantee all the rights of Troyes, and to permit the garrison to depart in peace, if the town was given up to him. We are not told whether the Maid acquiesced in this arrangement, though it at once secured the fulfilment of her prophecy; but in any case she would seem to have been suspicious of the good faith of the departing garrison. Instead of retiring to her tent she took her place at the gate, watchful, to see the enemy march forth. And her suspicion was not without reason. The allied troops, English and Burgundian, poured forth from the city gates, crestfallen, unwilling to look the way of the white witch, who might for aught they knew lay them under some dreadful spell, even in the moment of passing. But in the midst of them came a darker band, the French prisoners whom they had previously taken, who were as a sort of funded capital in their hands, each man worth so much money as a ransom, It was for this that Jeanne had prepared herself. “/En nom Dieu/,” she cried, “they shall not be carried away.” The march was stopped, the alarm given, the King unwillingly aroused once more from his slumbers. Charles must have been disturbed at the most untimely hour by the ambassadors from the town, and it mattered little to his supreme indolence and indifference what might happen to his unfortunate lieges; but he was forced to bestir himself, and even to give something from his impoverished exchequer for the ransom of the prisoners, which must have been more disagreeable still. The feelings of these men who would have been dragged away in captivity under the eyes of their victorious countrymen, but for the vigilance of the Maid, may easily be imagined.
Jeanne seems to have entered the town at once, to prepare for the reception of the King, and to take instant possession of the place, forestalling all further impediment. The people in the streets, however, received her in a very different way from those of Orleans, with trouble and alarm, staring at her as at a dangerous and malignant visitor. The Brother Richard, before mentioned, the great preacher and reformer, was the oracle of Troyes, and held the conscience of the city in his hands. When he suddenly appeared to confront her, every eye was turned upon them. But the friar himself was in no less doubt than his disciples; he approached her dubiously, crossing himself, making the sacred sign in the air, and sprinkling a shower of holy water before him to drive away the demon, if demon there was. Jeanne was not unused to support the rudest accost, and her frank voice, still /assez femme/, made itself heard over every clamour. “Come on, I shall not fly away,” she cried, with, one hopes, a laugh of confident innocence and good-humour, in face of those significant gestures and the terrified looks of all about her. French art has been unkind to Jeanne, occupying itself very little about her till recently; but her short career is full of pictures. Here the simple page grows bright with the ancient houses and highly coloured crowd: the frightened and eager faces at every window, the white warrior in the midst, sending forth a thousand rays from the polished steel and silver of breastplate and helmet: and the brown Franciscan monk advancing amid a shower of water drops, a mysterious repetition of signs. It gives us an extraordinary epitome of the history of France at that period to turn from this scene to the wild enthusiasm of Orleans, its crowd of people thronging about her, its shouts rending the air; while Troyes was full of terror, doubt, and ill-will, though its nearest neighbour, so to speak, the next town, and so short a distance away.
A little later in the same day, the next after the surrender, Jeanne, riding with her standard by the side of the King, conducted him to the cathedral where he confirmed his previous promises and received the homage of the town. It was a beautiful sight, the chronicle tells us, to see all these magnificent people, so well dressed and well mounted; “/il feroit tr�s beau voir./”
The fate of Troyes decided that of Chalons, the only other important town on the way, the gates of which were thrown open as Charles and his army, which grew and increased every day, proceeded on its road. Every promise of the Maid had been so far accomplished, both in the greater object and in the details: and now there was nothing between Charles the disinherited and almost ruined Dauphin of three months ago, trying to forget himself in the seclusion and the sports of Chinon–and the sacred ceremonial which drew with it every tradition and every assurance of an ancient and lawful throne.
Jeanne had her little adventure, personal to herself on the way. Though there were neither posts nor telegraphs in those days, there has always been a strange swift current in the air or soil which has conveyed news, in a great national crisis, from one end of the country to the other. It was not so great a distance to Domremy on the Meuse from Troyes on the Loire, and it appears that a little group of peasants, bolder than the rest, had come forth to hang about the road when the army passed and see what was so fine a sight, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of their /payse/, their little neighbour, the /comm�re/ who was godmother to Gerard d’Epinal’s child, the youthful gossip of his young wife–but who was now, if all tales were true, a great person, and rode by the side of the King. They went as far as Chalons to see if perhaps all this were true and not a fable; and no doubt stood astonished to see her ride by, to hear all the marvellous tales that were told of her, and to assure themselves that it was truly Jeanne upon whom, more than upon the King, every eye was bent. This small scene in the midst of so many great ones would probably have been the most interesting of all had it been told us at any length. The peasant travellers surrounded her with wistful questions, with wonder and admiration. Was she never afraid among all those risks of war, when the arrows hailed about her and the /bouches de feu/, the mouths of fire, bellowed and flung forth great stones and bullets upon her? “I fear nothing but treason,” said the victorious Maid. She knew, though her humble visitors did not, how that base thing skulked at her heels, and infested every path. It must not be forgotten that this wonderful and victorious campaign, with all its lists of towns taken and armies discomfited, lasted six weeks only, almost every day of which was distinguished by some victory. ———- [1] The former story was written in 1429, by the Greffier of Rochelle. “I will yield me only to her, the most valiant woman in the world.” The Greffier was writing at the moment, but not, of course, as an eyewitness.–A. L.
CHAPTER VI
THE CORONATION. JULY 17, 1429.
The road was now clear, and even the most timid of counsellors could not longer hold back the most indolent of kings. Jeanne had kept her word once more and fulfilled her own prophecy, and a force of enthusiasm and certainty, not to be put down, pressed forward the unwilling Court towards the great ceremonial of the coronation, to which all except those most chiefly concerned attached so great an importance. Charles would have hesitated still, and questioned the possibility of resistance on the part of Rheims, if that city had not sent a deputation of citizens with the keys of the town, to meet him. After this it was but a triumphal march into the sacred place, where the great cathedral dominated a swarming, busy, medi�val city. King and Archbishop had a double triumph, for the priest like the monarch had been shut out from his lawful throne, and it was only in the train of the Maid that this great ecclesiastic was able to take possession of his dignities. The King alighted with the Archbishop at the Archev�ch� which is close to the cathedral, an immense, old palace in which the heads of the expedition were lodged. There is a magnificent old hall still remaining in which no doubt they all assembled, scarcely able to believe that their object was accomplished and that the King of France was actually in Rheims, and all the prophecies fulfilled. The Archbishop marched into the city in the morning; Charles and his Court, and all his great seigneurs, and the body of his army, in which there were many fighting men half armed, and some in their rustic clothes as they had left their fields to join the King in his march–poured in in the evening, after the ecclesiastical procession, filling the town with commotion. Jeanne rode beside the King, her banner in her hand. It was July, the vigil of the Madeleine, and every church poured forth its crowd to witness the entry, and the populace, half troubled, half glad, gazed its eyes out upon the white warrior at the side of the King. Her father and uncle were there to meet her at the old inn in the Place, which still proudly preserves the record of the peasant guests: two astonished rustics, no doubt, were thrust forth from some window to watch that incredible sight– Jacques who would rather have drowned his daughter with his own hands, than have seen her thus launched among men, gazing still aghast at the resplendent figure of the chevali�re at the head of the procession. This was very different from what he had thought of when his village respectability was tortured by the idea of his girl among the troopers, yet probably the rigid peasant had never changed his mind.
We are told by M. Blaze de Bury of an ancient custom which we do not find stated elsewhere. A platform was erected, he tells us, outside the choir of the cathedral to which the King was led the evening before the coronation, surrounded by his peers, who showed him to the assembled people with a traditional proclamation: “Here is your King whom we, peers of France, crown as King and sovereign lord. And if there is a soul here which has any objection to make, let him speak and we will answer him. And to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of the Holy Spirit if you have nothing to say against it.” The people replied by cries of “No�l, No�l!” It is not to be supposed that the veto of the people of Rheims would have been effectual had they opposed: but the scene is wonderfully picturesque. No doubt Jeanne too was there, watching over her King, as she seems to have done, like a mother over her child, at this crisis of his affairs.
That night there was little sleep in Rheims, for everything had to be prepared in haste, the decorations of the cathedral, the provisions for the ceremonial. Many of the necessary articles were at Saint Denis in the hands of the English, and the treasury of the cathedral had to be ransacked to find the fitting vessels. Fortunately it was rich, more rich probably than it is now, when the commonplace silver of the beginning of this century has replaced the ancient vials. Through the short summer night everyone was at work in these preparations; and by the dawn of day visitors began to flow into the city, great personages and small, to attend the great ceremonial and to pay their homage. The greatest of all was the Duke of Lorraine, he who had consulted Jeanne about his health, husband of the heiress of that rich principality, and son of Queen Yolande who was no doubt with the Court. All France seemed to pour into the famous town, where so important an act was about to be accomplished, with money and wine flowing on all hands, and the enthusiasm growing along with the popular excitement and profit. Even great London is stirred to its limits, many miles off from the centre of proceedings, by such a great event; how much more the little medi�val city, in which every one might hope to see something of the pageant, as one shining group after another, with armour blazing in the sun, and sleek horses caracoling, arrived at the great gates of the Archev�ch�: and lesser parties scarcely less interesting poured in in need of lodging, of equipment and provisions; while every housewife searched her stores for a piece of brilliant stuff, of old silk or embroidery, to make her house shine like the rest.
Early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of the Archbishop’s house. Four splendid peers of France, in full armour with their banners, rode through the streets to the old Abbey of Saint Remy –the old church which Leo IX. consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day– to fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of consecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven. These noble messengers were the “hostages” of this sacred charge, engaging themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it was restored to its appointed guardians. This vow having been made, the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the cathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in the flashes of their armour. This procession was met half-way, before the Church of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd.
The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest. We hear nothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good uncle who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durand who was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne’s life in her childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d’Arc still stood aloof, /dour/, as a Scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter’s intimacy with all these fine people, and in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less than shame to such rugged folk. And there were his two sons who would take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace he was more at home than with Jeanne. What the Maid had to do on the morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home talk with her relations. She who felt herself commissioned not only to lead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part in her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke of Burgundy. She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God’s will were French. It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip of Burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the breach which had torn France in two:
JHESUS, MARIA.
High and redoubtable Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Jeanne the Maid requires on the part of the King of Heaven, my most just sovereign and Lord (/mon droicturier souverain seigneur/), that the King of France and you make peace between yourselves, firm, strong and that will endure. Pardon each other of good heart, entirely, as loyal Christians ought to do, and if you desire to fight let it be against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, supplicate, and require, as humbly as may be, fight no longer against the holy kingdom of France: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and on the part of the gentle King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, having respect to his honour, and upon your life that you never will gain a battle against loyal Frenchmen and that all those who war against the said holy kingdom of France, war against the King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world and my just and sovereign Lord. And I pray and require with clasped hands that you fight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor your subjects; but believe always however great in number may be the men you lead against us, that you will never win, and it would be great pity for the great battle and the blood that would be shed of those who came against us. Three weeks ago I sent you a letter by a herald that you should be present at the consecration of the King, which to-day, Sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of July, is done in the city of Rheims: to which I have had no answer, nor even any news by the said herald. To God I commend you, and may He be your guard if it pleases Him, and I pray God to make good peace.
Written at the aforesaid Rheims, the seventeenth day of July, 1429.
When the letter was finished Jeanne put on her armour and prepared for the great ceremony. We are not told what part she took in it, nor is any more prominent position assigned to her than among the noble crowd of peers and generals who surrounded the altar, where her place would naturally be, upon the broad raised platform of the choir, so excellently adapted for such ceremonies. Her banner we are told was borne into the cathedral, in order, as she proudly explained afterwards, that having been foremost in the danger it should share the honour.
But we have no right to suppose that the Maid took the position of the chief actor in the pageant and stood alone by the side of Charles, as the exigencies of the pictorial art have required her to do. When, however, the ceremony was completed, and he had received on his knees the anointing which separated him as king from every other class of men, and while the lofty vaults echoed with the cries of No�l! No�l! by which the people hailed the completed ceremony, Jeanne could contain herself no longer. The object was attained for which she had laboured and struggled, and overcome every opponent. She stepped forward out of the brilliant crowd, and threw herself at the feet of the now crowned monarch, embracing his knees. “Gentle King,” she cried with tears, “now is the pleasure of God fulfilled–whose will it was that I should raise the siege of Orleans and lead you to this city of Rheims to receive your consecration. Now has He shown that you are true King, and that the kingdom of France truly belongs to you alone.”
Those broken words, her tears, the cry of that profound satisfaction which is almost anguish, the “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” which is so suitable to the lips of the old, so poignant from those of the young, pierced all hearts. It is added that she asked leave to withdraw, her work being done, and that all who saw her were filled with sympathy. It was no doubt the irresistible outburst of a heart too full; and though that fulness was all joy and triumph, yet there was in it a sense of completed work, a rending asunder and tearing away from life, the end of a wonderful and triumphant tale.
There is a considerable controversy as to the precise meaning of that outburst of emotion. Did the Maid mean that her work was over, and her divine mission fulfilled? Was this all that she believed herself to be appointed to do? or did she expect, as she sometimes said, to /bouter/ the English out of France altogether? In the one case she ought to have relinquished her work, and in not doing so she acted without the protection of God which had hitherto made her invulnerable. In the other, her “voices,” her inspiration, must have failed her, for her course of triumph went no farther. It is impossible to decide between these contending theories. She did speak in both senses, sometimes declaring that she was to take Paris, sometimes, her intention to /bouter/ the English out of the kingdom. At the same time she betrayed a constant conviction that her office had limitations and must come to an end. “I will last but a year,” she said to the King and to Alen�on. The testimony of Dunois seems to be the best we can have on this point. He says in his deposition, made many years after her death: “Although Jeanne sometimes talked playfully to amuse people, of things concerning the war which were not afterwards accomplished, yet when she spoke seriously of the war, and of her own career and her vocation, she never affirmed anything but that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead the King to Rheims to be crowned.”
If this were so was she wrong in continuing her warfare, and did she place herself in the position of one who goes on her own charges, finding the mission from on high unnecessary? Or in the other case did her inspiration fail her, or were the intrigues of Charles and his Court sufficient to balk the designs of Heaven? We prefer to think that Jeanne’s commission concerned only those two things which she accomplished so completely; but that in continuing the war, she acted only as a well inspired and honourable young soldier might, though no longer as the direct messenger of God. She had as much right to do so as to return to her distaff or her needle in her native village; but she became subject to all the ordinary laws of war by so doing, exposed herself to be taken or overthrown like any man-at-arms, and accepted that risk. What is certain is, that every intrigue sprang up again afresh on the evening of that brilliant and triumphant ceremonial, and that from the moment of the accomplishment of her great work the failure of the Maid began.
These intrigues had been in her way since her very first beginning, as has been seen. At Orleans, in the very field as well as in the council chamber and the presence, everything was done to balk her, and to cross her plans, but in vain; she triumphed over every contrivance against her, and broke through the plots, and overcame the plotters. But after Rheims the combination of dangers became ever greater and greater, and we may say that no merely human general would have had a chance in face of the many and bewildering influences of evil. Charles who was himself, at least at this period of his career, sufficiently indolent and unenterprising to have damped the energies of any commander, was, in addition, surrounded by advisers who had always been impatient and jealous of the interference of Jeanne, and would have cast her off as a witch, or passed her by as an impostor, had that been possible, without permitting her to strike a blow. They had now grudgingly made use of her, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her action where they had no power to restrain it: but they were as little friendly, as malignant in their treatment of the Maid as ever, and more hopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able to shake her off and pursue their fate in their own way.
The position of Charles crowned King of France with all the traditional pomp, master of the Orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming in to swell his army day by day, and Paris itself almost within his reach, was very different from that of the discredited Dauphin at Chinon, whom half the world believed to have no right to the crown which his own mother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in folly to the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and trafficked with his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. The strange apparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken up and saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for a moment to be hateful to La Tremouille and his party; and Charles–though he seems to have had a certain appreciation of the Maid, and even a liking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith in her mission–was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, and probably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour with Heaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success: certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. But that she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantly apparent to them all. To keep her as a sort of tame angel about the Court in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart into the soldiers and frighten the English as she certainly had the gift of doing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. And they dared not let her go “because of the people,” nor, may we believe, would Alen�on, Dunois, La Hire, and the rest have tolerated thus the abandonment of their comrade. To dismiss her even at her own word would have been impossible, and it is hard to believe that Jeanne, after that extraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, could have gone back to her father’s cottage of the village, though she thought she would fain have done so. If we are to believe that she felt her mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serve France and the King as seemed best.
And we have no evidence that her “voices” forsook her, or discouraged her. They seem to have changed a little in their burden, they began to mingle a sadder tone in their intimations. It began to be breathed into her mind though not immediately, that something was to happen to her, some disaster not explained, yet that God was to be with her. It seems to me that all the circumstances are compatible with a change in Jeanne’s consciousness, from the moment of the coronation. It might have been a grander thing had she retired there and then, her work being accomplished as she declared it to be; but it would not have been human. She was still a power, if no longer the direct messenger from Heaven; a general, with much skill and natural aptitude if not the Sent of God; and the ardour of a military career had got into her veins. No doubt she was much more good for that, now, than for sitting by the side of Isabeau d’Arc at Domremy, and working even into a piece of embroidery for the altar, her remembrances and visions of camp and siege and the intoxication of victory. She remained, conscious that she was no longer exactly as of old, to fight not only against the English, but with intimate enemies, far more bitter, whom now she knew, against the ordinary fortune of war, and against that which is a thousand times worse, the hatred and envy, the cruel carelessness, and the malignant schemes of her own countrymen for whom she had fought.
This, so far as we can judge, appears to be the position of Jeanne in the second portion of her career; perhaps only dimly apprehended and at moments, by herself; not much thought of probably by those around her, the wisest of whom had always been sceptical of her divine commission; while the populace never saw any change in her, and believed that at one time as well as at another the Maid was the Maid, and had victory at her command. And no doubt that influence would have endured for some time at least, and her dauntless rush against every obstacle would have carried success with it, had she been able to carry out her plans, and fly forth upon Paris as she had done upon Orleans, carrying on the campaign swiftly, promptly, without pause or uncertainty. Bedford himself said that Paris “would fall at a blow,” if she came on. It had been hard enough, however, to do that, as we have seen, when she was the only hope of France and had the fire of the divine enthusiasm in her veins; but it was still more hard now to mould a young King elated with triumph, beginning to feel the crown safe upon his head, and to feel that if there was still much to gain, there was now a great deal to be lost. The position was complicated and made more difficult for Jeanne by every advantage she had gained.
In the meantime the secret negotiations, which were always being carried on under the surface, had come to this point, that Charles had made a private treaty with Philip of Burgundy by which that prince pledged himself to give up Paris into the King’s hands within fifteen days. This agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marching against Paris, delay which was Charles’s invariable method, and which but for Jeanne’s hardihood and determination, had all but crushed the expedition to Rheims itself. It was never with any will of his or of his adviser, La Tremouille, that any stronghold was assailed. He would fain have passed by Troyes, as the reader will remember, he would fain have delayed going to Rheims; in each case he had been forced to move by the impetuosity of the Maid. But a treaty which touched the honour of the King was a different matter. Philip of Burgundy, with whom it was made, seems to have held the key of the position. He was called to Paris by Bedford on one side to defend the city against its lawful King; he had pledged himself on the other to Charles to give it up. He had in his hands, though it is uncertain whether he ever read it, that missive of the sorceress, the letter of Jeanne which I have quoted, calling upon him on the part of God to make peace. What was he to do? There were reasons drawing him to both sides. He was the enemy of Charles on account of the murder of his father, and therefore had every interest in keeping Paris from him; he was angry with the English on account of the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Brabant, which interfered with his own rights and safety in Flanders, and therefore might have served himself by giving up the capital to the King. As for the appeal of Jeanne, what was the letter of that mad creature to a prince and statesman? The progress of affairs was arrested by this double problem. Jeanne had been the prominent, the only important figure in the history of France for some months past. Now that shining figure was jostled aside, and the ordinary laws of life, with all the counter changes of negotiation, the ineffectual comings and goings, the meaner half-seen persons, the fierce contending personal interests–in which there was no love of either God or man, or any elevated notion of patriotism– came again into play.
Jeanne would seem to have already foreseen and felt this change even before she left Rheims; there is a new tone of sadness in some of her recorded words; or if not of sadness, at least of consciousness that an end was approaching to all these triumphs and splendours. The following tale is told in various different versions, as occurring with different people; but the account I give is taken from the lips of Dunois himself, a very competent witness. As the King, after his coronation, wended his way through the country, receiving submission and joyous welcome from every village and little town, it happened that while passing through the town of La Fert�, Jeanne rode between the Archbishop of Rheims and Dunois. The Archbishop had never been friendly to the Maid, and now it was clear, watched her with that half satirical, half amused look of the wise man, curious and cynical in presence of the incomprehensible, observing her ways and very ready to catch her tripping and to entangle her if possible in her own words. The people thronged the way, full of enthusiasm, acclaiming the King and shouting their joyful exclamations of “No�l!” though it does not appear that any part of their devotion was addressed to Jeanne herself. “Oh, the good people,” she cried with tears in her eyes, “how joyful they are to see their noble King! And how happy should I be to end my days and be buried here among them!” The priest unmoved by such an exclamation from so young a mouth attempted instantly, like the Jewish doctors with our Lord, to catch her in her words and draw from her some expression that might be used against her. “Jeanne,” he said, “in what place do you expect to die?” It was a direct challenge to the messenger of Heaven to take upon herself the gift of prophecy. But Jeanne in her simplicity shattered the snare which probably she did not even perceive: “When it pleases God,” she said. “I know neither the place nor the time.”
It was enough, however, that she should think of death and of the sweetness of it, after her work accomplished, in the very moment of her height of triumph–to show something of a new leaven working in her virgin soul.
One characteristic reward, however, Jeanne did receive. Her father and uncle were lodged at the public cost as benefactors of the kingdom, as may still be seen by the inscription on the old inn in the great Place at Rheims; and when Jacques d’Arc left the city he carried with him a patent–better than one of nobility which, however, came to the family later–of exemption for the villages of Domremy and Greux of all taxes and tributes; “an exemption maintained and confirmed up to the Revolution, in favour of the said Maid, native of that parish, in which are her relations.” “In the register of the Exchequer,” says M. Blaze de Bury, “at the name of the parish of Greux and Domremy, the place for the receipt is blank, with these words as explanation: /� cause de la Pucelle/, on account of the Maid.” There could not have been a more delightful reward or one more after her own heart. It would be a graceful act of the France of to-day, which has so warmly revived the name and image of her maiden deliverer, to renew so touching a distinction to her native place.
We are told that Jeanne parted with her father and uncle with tears, longing that she might return with them and go back to her mother who would rejoice to see her again. This was no doubt quite true, though it might be equally true that she could not have gone back. Did not the father return, a little sullen, grasping the present he had himself received, not sure still that it was not disreputable to have a daughter who wore coat armour and rode by the side of the King, a position certainly not proper for maidens of humble birth? The dazzled peasants turned their backs upon her while she was thus at the height of glory, and never, so far as appears, saw her face again.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND PERIOD. 1429-1430.
The epic so brief, so exciting, so full of wonder had now reached its climax. Whatever we may think on the question as to whether Jeanne had now reached the limit of her commission, it is at least evident that she had reached the highest point of her triumph, and that her short day of glory and success came to an end in the great act which she had always spoken of as her chief object. She had crowned her King; she had recovered for him one of the richest of his provinces, and established a strong base for further action on his part. She had taught Frenchmen how not to fly before the English, and she had filled those stout-hearted English, who for a time had the Frenchmen in their powerful steel-clad grip, with terror and panic, and taught them how to fly in their turn. This was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do, and not one of her promises had been broken. Her career had been a short one, begun in April, ending in July, one brief continuous course of glory. But this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. The messenger of God had done her work; the servant must not desire to be greater than his Lord. There have been heroes in this world whose career has continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. Our hearts follow them in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over they come into their kingdom and reap their reward the interest fails. We are glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but their happiness does not attract us like their struggle.
It is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those of this world. When they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph into sorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow the bleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love, and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure, which proves that our birthright too is of Heaven, however we may tarnish or even deny that highest pedigree. The chivalrous romance of that age would have made of Jeanne d’Arc the heroine of human story. She would have had a noble lover, say our young Guy de Laval, or some other generous and brilliant Seigneur of France, and after her achievements she would have laid by her sword, and clothed herself with the beautiful garments of the age, and would have grown to be a noble lady in some half regal chateau, to which her name would have given new lustre. The young reader will probably long that it should be so; he will feel it an injustice, a wrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward; it will seem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noble chevalier at hand to snatch that devoted Maid out of the danger that threatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her; and we can imagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash their teeth at the terrible and dishonouring thought that it was by English hands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished in the flames. For the last it becomes us[1] to repent, for it was to our everlasting shame; but not more to us than to France who condemned her, who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest, against the cruelty and wrong. But for her fate in itself let us not mourn over- much. Had the Maid become a great and honoured lady should not we all have said as Satan says in the Book of Job: Did Jeanne serve God for nought? We should say: See what she made by it. Honour and fame and love and happiness. She did nobly, but nobly has she been rewarded.
But that is not God’s way. The highest saint is born to martyrdom. To serve God for nought is the greatest distinction which He reserves for His chosen. And this was the fate to which the Maid of France was consecrated from the moment she set out upon her mission. She had the supreme glory of accomplishing that which she believed herself to be sent to do, and which I also believe she was sent to do, miraculously, by means undreamed of, and in which no one beforehand could have believed. But when that was done a higher consecration awaited her. She had to drink of the cup of which our Lord drank, and to be baptised with the baptism with which He was baptised. It was involved in every step of the progress that it should be so. And she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. What else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl of eighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touch her, was a benediction? When she went forth from those gates she was going to her execution, though the end was not to be yet. There was still a long struggle before her, lingering and slow, more bitter than death, the preface of discouragement, of disappointment, of failure when she had most hoped to succeed.
She was on the threshold of this second period when she rode out of Rheims all brilliant in the summer weather, her banner faded now, but glorious, her shining armour bearing signs of warfare, her end achieved–yet all the while her heart troubled, uncertain, and full of unrest. And it is impossible not to note that from this time her plans were less defined than before. Up to the coronation she had known exactly what she meant to do, and in spite of all obstructions had done it, keeping her genial humour and her patience, steering her simple way through all the intrigues of the Court, without bitterness and without fear. But now a vague mist seems to fall about the path which was so open and so clear. Paris! Yes, the best policy, the true generalship would have been to march straight upon Paris, to lose no time, to leave as little leisure as possible to the intriguers to resume their old plots. So the generals thought as well as Jeanne: but the courtiers were not of that mind. The weak and foolish notion of falling back upon what they had gained, and of contenting themselves with that, was all they thought of; and the un-French, unpatriotic temper of Paris which wanted no native king, but was content with the foreigner, gave them a certain excuse. We could not even imagine London as being ever, at any time, contented with an alien rule. But Paris evidently was so, and was ready to defend itself to the death against its lawful sovereign. Jeanne had never before been brought face to face with such a complication. It had been a straightforward struggle, each man for his own side, up to this time. But now other things had to be taken into consideration. Here was no faithful Orleans holding out eager arms to its deliverer, but a crafty, self- seeking city, deaf to patriotism, indifferent to freedom, calculating which was most to its profit–and deciding that the stranger, with Philip of Burgundy at his back, was the safer guide. This was enough of itself to make a simple mind pause in astonishment and dismay.
There is no evidence that the supernatural leaders who had shaped the course of the Maid failed her now. She still heard her “voices.” She still held communion with the three saints who, she believed devoutly, came out of Heaven to aid her. The whole question of this supernatural guidance is one which is of course open to discussion. There are many in these days who do not believe in it at all, who believe in the exaltation of Jeanne’s brain, in the excitement of her nerves, in some strange complication of bodily conditions, which made her believe she saw and heard what she did not really see or hear. For our part, we confess frankly that these explanations are no explanation at all so far as we are concerned; we are far more inclined to believe that the Maid spoke truth, she who never told a lie, she who fulfilled all the promises she made in the name of her guides, than that those people are right who tell us on their own authority that such interpositions of Heaven are impossible. Nobody in Jeanne’s day doubted that Heaven did interpose directly in human affairs. The only question was, Was it Heaven in this instance? Was it not rather the evil one? Was it sorcery and witchcraft, or was it the agency of God? The English believed firmly that it was witchcraft; they could not imagine that it was God, the God of battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courage out of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. It was the devil, and the Maid herself was a wicked witch. Neither one side nor the other believed that it was from Jeanne’s excited nerves that these great things came. There were plenty of women with excited nerves in France, nerves much more excited than those of Jeanne, who was always reasonable at the height of her inspiration; but to none of them did it happen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy–up to that moment invincible,–flying from the field.
But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear and definite message for the Maid. Their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. “Fear not, for God will stand by you.” She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. For the first time the Maid was often sad; she feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orleans and Rheims had been clear as daylight, her “voices” had said to her “Do this” and she had done it. Now there was no definite direction. She had to judge for herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. This of itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart. M. Fabre tells (alone among the biographers of Jeanne) that there were symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways during the moment of triumph. Her chaplain Pasquerel wrote a letter in her name to the Hussites, against whom the Pope was then sending crusades, in which “I, the Maid,” threatened, if they were not converted, to come against them and give them the alternative of death or amendment. Quicherat says that to the Count d’Armagnac who had written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three then existent Popes was the real one, she is reported to have answered that she would tell him as soon as the English left her free to do so. But this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and M. Fabre seems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates: and the documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestioned authority. These, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshine of her perfect humility and sobriety; if indeed they are to be depended upon as authentic at all.
The day of Jeanne, her time of glory and success, was but a short one –Orleans was delivered on the 8th of May, the coronation of Charles took place on the 17th of July; before the earliest of these dates she had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle of preparation, before she was permitted to enter upon her career. The time of her discouragement was longer. It was ten months from the day when she rode out of Rheims, the 25th of July, 1429, till the 23d of May, 1430, when she was taken. She had said after the deliverance of Orleans that she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a later period, Easter, 1430, her “voices” told her that “before the St. Jean” she would be in the power of her enemies. Both these statements came true. She rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon the downward course, unable to carry out what she would, hampered on every hand, and not apparently followed with the same fervour as of old. It is true that the principal cause of all seems to have been the schemes of the Court and the indolence of Charles; but all these hindrances had existed before, and the King and his treacherous advisers had been unwillingly dragged every mile of the way, though every step made had been to Charles’s advantage. But now though the course is still one of victory the Maid no longer seems to be either the chief cause or the immediate leader. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that little fighting was necessary, town after town yielding to the King, which reduced the part of Jeanne to that of a spectator; but there is a change of atmosphere and tone which seems to point to something more fundamental than this. The historians are very unwilling to acknowledge, except Michelet who does so without hesitation, that she had herself fixed the term of her commission as ending at Rheims; it is certain that she said many things which bear this meaning, and every fact of her after career seems to us to prove it: but it is also true that her conviction wavered, and other sayings indicate a different belief or hope. She did no wrong in following the profession of arms in which she had made so glorious a beginning; she had many gifts and aptitudes for it of which she was not herself at first aware: but she was no longer the Envoy of God. Enough had been done to arouse the old spirit of France, to break the spell of the English supremacy; it was right and fitting that France should do the rest for herself. Perhaps Jeanne was not herself very clear on this point, and after her first statement of it, became less assured. It is not necessary that the servant should know the designs of the master. It did not after all affect her. Her business was to serve God to the best of her power, not to take the management out of His hands.
The army went forth joyously upon its way, directing itself towards Paris. There was a pilgrimage to make, such as the Kings of France were in the habit of making after their coronation; there were pleasant incidents, the submission of a village, the faint resistance, instantly overcome, of a small town, to make the early days pleasant. Laon and Soissons both surrendered. Senlis and Beauvais received the King’s envoys with joy. The independent captains of the army made little circles about, like parties of pleasure, bringing in another and another little stronghold to the allegiance of the King. When he turned aside, taking as he passed through, without as yet any serious deflection, the road rather to the Loire than to Paris, success still attended him. At Ch�teau-Thierry resistance was expected to give zest to the movement of the forces, but that too yielded at once as the others had done. The dates are very vague and it seems difficult to find any mode of reconciling them. Almost all the historians while accusing the King of foolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans give us a description of the undefended state of Paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on the part of Charles might have carried with little difficulty, during the absence of all the chiefs from the city and the great terror of the inhabitants; but a comparison of dates shows that the Duke of Bedford re-entered Paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on which Charles left Rheims three days only after his coronation, so that he scarcely seems so much to blame as appears. But the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters, naturally lead to mistakes of this kind.
The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed to receive the King. Strange as it seems to say so Paris was bitterly, fiercely English at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to be taken into account as the most important in the whole matter. There was no answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliary force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. The populace perhaps might be indifferent: at the best it had no feeling on the subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the King. During the time of Bedford’s absence the city felt itself to have “no lord”–/ceux de Paris avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n’ y avoit/. It was believed that Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and hopeless defence than to submission. The Duke of Bedford, governing in the name of the infant Henry VI. Of England, was their seigneur, instead of their natural sovereign. It is a fact which to us seems scarcely credible, but it was certainly true. There seems to have been no feeling even, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal; nothing of the kind. Paris was English, holding by the English kings who had never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of its party. It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions. In the /Journal du Bourgeois de Paris/–who was no /bourgeois/ but a distinguished member of that university which held the Maid and all her ways in horror–Jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism and of France is spoken of as “a creature in the form of a woman.” How extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it is almost impossible to believe! Paris is France nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly English, not by compulsion even, but by habit and policy. Perhaps the delays, the hesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors are thus rendered more excusable than by any other explanation.
In the meantime it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings of this vacillating army without a map. If the reader should trace its movements, he would see what a stumbling and devious course it took as of a man blundering in the dark. From Rheims to Soissons the way was clear; then there came a sudden move southward to Ch�teau-Thierry from which indeed there was still a straight line to Paris but which still more clearly indicated the highroad leading to the Orleannais, the faithful districts of the Loire. This retrograde movement was not made without a great outcry from the generals. Their opinion was that the King ought to press on to conquer everything while the English forces were still depressed and discouraged. In their mind this deflection towards the south was an abandonment at once of honour and safety. An unimportant check on the way, however, gave an argument to the leaders of the army, and Charles permitted himself to be dragged back. They then made their way by La Fert�-Milon, Cr�py, and Daumartin, and on this road the English troops which had been led out from Paris by Bedford to intercept them came twice within fighting distance of the French army. The English, as all the French historians are eager to inform us, invariably entrenched themselves in their positions, surrounding their lines with sharp-pointed posts by which the equally invariable rush of the French could be broken. But the French on these occasions were too wise to repeat the impetuous charge which had ruined them at Cr�cy and Agincourt, and the consequence was that the two forces remained within sight of each other, with a few skirmishes going on at the flanks, but without any serious encounter.
It will be more satisfactory, however, to copy the following /itineraire/ of Charles’s movements from the Chronicle of Perceval de Cagny who was a member of the household of the Duc d’Alen�on, and probably present, certainly at all events bound to have the best and most correct information. He informs us that the King left Rheims on Thursday the 21st of July, and dined, supped, and lay at the Abbey of St. Nanuol that night, where were brought to him the keys of the city of Laon. He then set out on /le voyage � venir devant Paris/.
“And on Saturday the 23d of the same month the King dined, supped and lay at Soissons, and was there received the most honourably that the churchmen, burghers and other people of the town were capable of: for they had all great fear because of the destruction of the town which had been taken by the Burgundians and made to rebel against the King.
“Friday the 29th day of July the King and his company were all day before Ch�teau-Thierry in order of battle, hoping that the Duke of Bedford would appear to fight. The place surrendered at the hour of vespers, and the King lodged there till Monday the first of August. On that day the King lay at Monmirail in Brie.
“Tuesday the 2d of August he passed the night in the town of Provins, and had the best possible reception there, and remained till the Friday following, the 5th August. Sunday the 7th the King lay at the town of Coulommi�rs in Brie. Wednesday the 10th he lay at La Fert�- Milon, Thursday at Crespy in Valois–Friday at Laigny-le-Sec. The following Saturday the 13th the King held the field near Dammartin-en- Gouelle, for the whole day looking out for the English: but they came not.
“On Sunday the 14th August the Maid, the Duc d’Alen�on, the Count de Vendosme, the Marshals and other captains accompanied by six or seven thousand combatants were at the hour of vespers lodged in the fields near Mont�pilloy, nearly two leagues from the town of Senlis–The Duke of Bedford and other English captains with between eight and ten thousand English lying half a league from Senlis between our people and the said city on a little stream, in a village called Notre Dame de la Victoire. That evening our people skirmished with the English near to their camp and in this skirmish were people taken on each side, and of the English Captain d’Orbec and ten or twelve others, and people wounded on both sides: when night fell each retired to their own quarters.”
The same writer records an appeal in the true tone of chivalry addressed to the English by Jeanne and Alen�on desiring them to come out from their entrenchments and fight: and promising to withdraw to a sufficient distance to permit the enemy to place himself in the open field. The French troops had first “put themselves in the best state of conscience that could possibly be, hearing mass at an early hour and then to horse.” But the English would not come out. Jeanne, with her standard in her hand rode up to the English entrenchments, and some one says (not de Cagny) struck the posts with her banner, challenging the force within to come out and fight; while they on their side waved at the French in defiance, a standard copied from that of Jeanne, on which was depicted a distaff and spindle. But neither host approached any nearer. Finally, Charles made his way to Compi�gne.
At Ch�teau-Thierry there was concluded an arrangement with Philip of Burgundy for a truce of fifteen days, before the end of which time the Duke undertook to deliver Paris peaceably to the French. That this was simply to gain time and that no idea of giving up Paris had ever been entertained is evident; perhaps Charles was not even deceived. He, no more than Philip, had any desire to encounter the dangers of such a siege. But he was able at least to silence the clamours of the army and the representations of the persistent Maid by this truce. To wait for fifteen days and receive the prize without a blow struck, would not that be best? The counsellors of the King held thus a strong position, though the delay made the hearts of the warriors sick.
The figure of Jeanne appears during these marchings and counter- marchings like that of any other general, pursuing a skilful but not unusual plan of campaign. That she did well and bravely there can be no doubt, and there is a characteristic touch which we recognise, in the fact that she and all of her company “put themselves in the best state of conscience that could be,” before they took to horse; but the skirmishes and repulses are such as Alen�on himself might have made. “She made much diligence,” the same chronicler tells us, “to reduce and place many towns in the obedience of the King,” but so did many others with like success. We hear no more her vigorous knock at the door of the council chamber if the discussion there was too long or the proceedings too secret. Her appearances are those of a general among many other generals, no longer with any special certainty in her movements as of a person inspired. We are reminded of a story told of a previous period, after the fight at Patay, when blazing forth in the indignation of her youthful purity at the sight of one of the camp followers, a degraded woman with some soldiers, she struck the wanton with the flat of her sword, driving her forth from the camp, where was no longer that chastened army of awed and reverent soldiers making their confession on the eve of every battle, whom she had led to Orleans. The sword she used on this occasion, was, it is said, the miraculous sword which had been found under the high altar of St. Catharine at Fierbois; but at the touch of the unclean the maiden brand broke in two. If this was an allegory[2] to show that the work of that weapon was over, and the common sword of the soldier enough for the warfare that remained, it could not be more clearly realised than in the history of this campaign. The only touch of our real Maid in her own distinct person comes to us in a letter written in a field on that same wavering road to Paris, dated as early as the 5th of August and addressed to the good people of Rheims, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was the meaning of the delay, and whether she had given up the cause of the country. There is a terse determination in its brief, indignant sentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering and purposeless campaign:
“Dear and good friends, good and loyal Frenchmen of the town of Rheims. Jeanne, the Maid, sends you news of her. It is true that the King has made a truce of fifteen days with the Duke of Burgundy, who promises to render peaceably the city of Paris in that time. Do not, however, be surprised if I enter there sooner, for I like not truces so made, and know not whether I will keep them, but if I keep them, it will be only because of the honour of the King.”
While Jeanne and her army thus played with the unmoving English, advancing and retiring, attempting every means of drawing them out, the enemy took advantage of one of these seeming withdrawals to march out of their camp suddenly and return to Paris, which all this time had been lying comparatively defenceless, had the French made their attack sooner. At the same time Charles moved on to Compi�gne where he gave himself up to fresh intrigues with Philip of Burgundy, this time for a truce to last till Christmas. The Maid was grievously troubled by this step, /moult marrie/, and by the new period of delay and negotiation on which the Court had entered. Paris was not given up, nor was there any appearance that it ever would be, and to all the generals as well as to the Maid it was very evident that this was the next step to be taken. Some of the leaders wearied with inaction had pushed on to Normandy where four great fortresses–greatest of all the immense and mysterious stronghold on the high cliffs of the Seine, that imposing Ch�teau Gaillard which Richard C�ur-de-lion had built, the ruins of which, white and mystic, still dominate, like some Titanic ghost, above the course of the river–had yielded to them. So great was the danger of Normandy, the most securely English of all French provinces, that Bedford had again been drawn out of Paris to defend it. Here then was another opportunity to seize the capital. But Charles could not be induced to move. He found many ways of amusing himself at Compi�gne, and the new treaty was being hatched with Burgundy which gave an excuse for doing nothing. The pause which wearied them all out, both captains and soldiers, at last became more than flesh and blood could bear.
Jeanne once more was driven to take the initiative. Already on one occasion she had forced the hand of the lingering Court, and resumed the campaign of her own accord, an impatient movement which had been perfectly successful. No doubt again the army itself was becoming demoralised, and showing symptoms of falling to pieces. One day she sent for Alen�on in haste during the absence of the ambassadors at Arras. “/Beau duc/,” she cried, “prepare your troops and the other captains. /En mon Dieu, par mon martin/,[3] I will see Paris nearer than I have yet seen it.” She had seen the towers from afar as she wandered over the country in Charles’s lingering train. Her sudden resolution struck like fire upon the impatient band. They set out at once, Alen�on and the Maid at the head of their division of the army, and all rejoiced to get to horse again, to push their way through every obstacle. They started on the 23d August, nearly a month after the departure from Rheims, a month entirely lost, though full of events, lost without remedy so far as Paris was concerned. At Senlis they made a pause, perhaps to await the King, who, it was hoped, would have been constrained to follow; then carrying with them all the forces that could be spared from that town, they spurred on to St. Denis where they arrived on the 27th: St. Denis, the other sacred town of France, the place of the tomb, as Rheims was the place of the crown.
The royalty of France was Jeanne’s passion. I do not say the King, which might be capable of malinterpretation, but the kings, the monarchy, the anointed of the Lord, by whom France was represented, embodied and made into a living thing. She had loved Rheims, its associations, its triumphs, the rejoicing of its citizens. These had been the accompaniments of her own highest victory. She came to St. Denis in a different mood, her heart hot with disappointment and the thwarting of all her plans. From whatever cause it might spring, it was clear that she was no longer buoyed up by that certainty which only a little while before had carried her through every danger and over every obstacle. But to have reached St. Denis at least was something. It was a place doubly sacred, consecrated to that royal House for which she would so willingly have given her life. And at last she was within sight of Paris, the greatest prize of all. Up to this time she had known in actual warfare nothing but victory. If her heart for the first time wavered and feared, there was still no certain reason that, /de par Dieu/, she might not win the day again.
At St. Denis there was once more a cruel delay. Nearly a fortnight passed and there was no news of the King. The Maid employed the time in skirmishes and reconnoissances, but does not seem to have ventured on an attack without the sanction of Charles, whom Alen�on, finally, going back on two several occasions, succeeded in setting in motion. Charles had remained at Compi�gne to carry out his treaty with Burgundy, and the last thing he desired was this attack; but when he could resist no longer he moved on reluctantly to St. Denis, where his arrival was hailed with great delight. This was not until the 5th of September, and the army, wrought up to a high pitch of excitement and expectation, was eager for the fight. “There was no one of whatever condition, who did not say, ‘She will lead the King into Paris, if he will let her,'” says the chronicler.