The Life of Joan of Arc Part 4

But at heart what did they really think, those who employed her, those Regnaults de Chartres, those Roberts le Macon, those Gerards Machet?

They were certainly in no position to discuss the origin of the illusions which enveloped her. And, albeit there were atheists even among churchmen, to the majority there would be nothing to cause astonishment in the appearance of Saint Michael, the Archangel. In those days nothing appeared more natural than a miracle. But a miracle vanishes when closely observed. And they had the damsel before their very eyes. They perceived that good and saintly as she was, she wielded no supernatural power.

While the men-at-arms and all the common folk welcomed her as the maid of G.o.d and an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of the realm, these good lords thought only of profiting from the sentiments of confidence which she inspired and in which they had little share.

Finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked with her. They must soon have discovered that it was not always easy.

She was a saint, saints are intractable. What were the true relations between the Royal Council and the Maid? We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael.[90] It is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of his benefices.

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

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

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

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 13.]

[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, p. 100. See _ante_, p. xxvi (note 4).]

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

[Footnote 93: Letter from Alain Chartier in the _Trial_, vol. v, pp.

135, 136; Capitaine P. Marin, _Jeanne d'Arc tacticien et strategiste_, Paris, 1889, 4 vols. in 12mo; Le General Canonge, _Jeanne d'Arc guerriere_, Paris, 1907, in 8vo.]

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

[Footnote 94: _Rossel et la legende de Jeanne d'Arc_ in _la Pet.i.te Republique_ of July 15, 1896; _Jeanne d'Arc soldat_ by Art Roe, in _le Temps_ of May 8, 1907. See also the works of Captain Marin, always so praiseworthy for their carefulness and good faith.]

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

Certain of the leaders indeed, and notably the princes of the blood royal, knew no more than she. The art of war in those days resolved itself into the art of riding. Any idea of marching along converging lines, of concentrated movements, of a campaign methodically planned, of a prolonged effort with a view to some great result was unknown.

Military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants'

stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. The freebooters, captains, and soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade, but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was pillage. The n.o.bles affected great concern for honour and praise; in reality they thought of nothing but gain. Alain Chartier said of them: "They cry 'to arms,' but they fight for money."[96]

[Footnote 96: Alain Chartier, _Oeuvres_, ed. Andre du Chesne, p.

412.]

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

Because they wanted goods.

[Footnote 97: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de Charles VII_, vol. i, p.

121.]

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

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

In 1428, they were but a handful in France, and to maintain themselves there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.

They lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the pacification of those they had already conquered. The very character of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights they a.s.serted, which were founded on inst.i.tutions common to the two countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal concurrence and friends.h.i.+p of the conquered. The Treaty of Troyes did not subject France to England, it united one country to the other.

Such a union occasioned much anxiety in London. The Commons did not conceal their fear that Old England might become a mere isolated province of the new kingdom.[98] France for her part did not concur in the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been making war on these _Coues_[99] they had grown to hate them. And possibly there already existed an English character and a French character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the _G.o.dons_[100] met with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part whatever in the work of deliverance? By no means. Hers was the n.o.bler, the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and charming. The King's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by striking fear into the English, who imagined her to be the devil.

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

ii, pp. 393 _et seq._]

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

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

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

[Footnote 101: The Reverend Father M. Fornier, _Histoire des Alpes-Maritimes_, Paris, 1890, in 8vo, vol. ii, p. 324; Lanery d'Arc, _Memoires et consultations_, pp. 565 _et seq._]

It has frequently been repeated that the lords and captains were jealous of her, especially old Gaucourt.[102] But such a statement shows an absolute ignorance of human nature. They were envious one of another; this and no other sentiment was the jealousy that made them tolerate the Maid's a.s.suming the t.i.tle of commander in war.[103]

[Footnote 102: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 117; _Perceval de Cagny_, p. 168; Marquis de Gaucourt, _Le sire de Gaucourt_, Orleans, 1855, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 103: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 168, 170, 171; _Cronicques de Normendie_, ed. h.e.l.lot, pp. 77, 78.]

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

[Footnote 104: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 170, 171; _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 313; Heraut Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 48.]

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

[Footnote 105: H. Martin, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1856, in 12mo; J.

Quicherat, _Nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyees par la Pucelle_ in _Revue de Normandie_, vol. vi (1866), pp. 396-401.]

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

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

But this was no reason for standing with folded arms. Influence could have been brought to bear on those who were conducting the trial.

Doubtless they were all on the side of the _G.o.dons_; that old _Cabochien_ of a Pierre Cauchon was very much committed to them; he detested the French; the clerks, who owed allegiance to Henry VI, were naturally inclined to please the Great Council of England which disposed of patronage; the doctors and masters of the University of France greatly hated and feared the Armagnacs. And yet the judges of the trial were not all infamous prevaricators; the chapter of Rouen lacked neither courage nor independence.[106] Among those members of the University who were so bitter against Jeanne, there were men highly esteemed for doctrine and character. They for the most part believed this trial to be a purely religious one. By dint of seeking for witches, they had come to find them everywhere. These females, as they called them, they were sending to the stake every day, and receiving nothing but thanks for it. They believed as firmly as Jeanne in the possibility of the apparitions which she said had been vouchsafed to her, only they were persuaded either that she lied or that she saw devils. The Bishop, the Vice-Inquisitor and the a.s.sessors, to the number of forty and upwards, were unanimous in declaring her heretical and devilish. There were doubtless many who imagined that by pa.s.sing sentence against her they were maintaining Catholic orthodoxy and unity of obedience against the abettors of schism and heresy; they wished to judge wisely. And even the boldest and the most unscrupulous, the Bishop and the Promoter, would not have dared too openly to infringe the rules of ecclesiastical justice in order to please the English. They were priests, and they preserved priestly pride and respect for formality. Here was their weak point; in this respect for formality they might have been struck. Had the other side inst.i.tuted vigorous legal proceedings, theirs might possibly have been thwarted, arrested, and the fatal sentence prevented. If the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, the Archbishop of Reims, had intervened in the trial, if he had suspended his suffragan for abuse of authority, or some other reason, Pierre Cauchon would have been greatly embarra.s.sed; if, as he decided to do later, King Charles VII had brought about the intervention of the mother and brothers of the Maid; if Jacques d'Arc and la Romee had protested in due form against an action so manifestly one-sided; if the register of Poitiers[107] had been sent for inclusion among the doc.u.ments of the trial; if the high prelates subject to King Charles VII had asked for a safe conduct in order to come and give evidence in Jeanne's favour at Rouen; finally, if the King, his Council, and the whole Church of France had demanded an appeal to the Pope, as they were legally ent.i.tled to do, then the trial might have had a different issue.

[Footnote 106: Even when the canons who took part in the trial are severally considered. _Cf._ Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces de cond.a.m.nation de Jeanne d'Arc_, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 109: See a curious project for the decoration of the platform of the Pont-Neuf addressed to Louis XIV (B.N.V., p. zz'338, in fol.). A Sieur Dupuis, Aide des Ceremonies, proposes that thereon shall be erected statues to "those great and ill.u.s.trious captains who from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the crown.... Artus of Bretagne, Constable, Jean, Count of Dunois, Jeanne Dark, Maid of Orleans, Roger de Gramont, Count of Guiche, Guillaume, Count of Chaumont, Amaury de Severac, Vignoles, called La Hire...."

(Communications of M. Paul Lacombe, _Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris_, 1894, p. 115, June 11, 1907. _Ibid._)]

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

[Footnote 111: Jean Hordal, _Heroinae n.o.bilissimae Ioannae Darc Lotharingae vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia_, Ponti-Mussi, 1612, in 8vo.]