A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume III Part 4

crowned, the situation, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change.

She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs.

She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Dunois; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon her-self as triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon Paris, in order to take up a fixed position in it, as being the political centre of the realm of which Rheims was the religious. Nothing of the sort was done. Charles and La Tremoille once more began their course of hesitation, tergiversation, and changes of tactics and residence without doing anything of a public and decisive character. They negotiated with the Duke of Burgundy, in the hope of detaching him from the English cause; and they even concluded with him a secret, local, and temporary truce. From the 20th of July to the 23d of August Joan followed the king whithersoever he went, to Chateau-Thierry, to Senlis, to Blois, to Provins, and to Compigne, as devoted as ever, but without having her former power. She was still active, but not from inspiration and to obey her voices, simply to promote the royal policy. She wrote the Duke of Burgundy a letter full of dignity and patriotism, which had no more effect than the negotiations of La Tremoille. During this fruitless labor amongst the French the Duke of Bedford sent for five thousand men from England, who came and settled themselves at Paris. One division of this army had a white standard, in the middle of which was depicted a distaff full of cotton; a half-filled spindle was hanging to the distaff; and the field, studded with empty spindles, bore this inscription: "Now, fair one, come!" Insult to Joan was accompanied by redoubled war against France. Joan, saddened and wearied by the position of things, attempted to escape from it by a bold stroke. On the 23d of August, 1429, she set out from Compiegne with the Duke d'Alencon and "a fair company of men-at-arms;" and suddenly went and occupied St. Denis, with the view of attacking Paris. Charles VII. felt himself obliged to quit Compiegne likewise, "and went, greatly against the grain," says a contemporary chronicler, "as far as into the town of Senlis." The attack on Paris began vigorously. Joan, with the Duke d'Alencon, pitched her camp at La Chapelle. Charles took up his abode in the abbey of St. Denis. The munic.i.p.al corporation of Paris received letters with the arms of the Duke d'Alencon, which called upon them to recognize the king's authority, and promised a general amnesty. The a.s.sault was delivered on the 8th of September. Joan was severely wounded, but she insisted upon remaining where she was. Night came, and the troops had not entered the breach which had been opened in the morning. Joan was still calling out to persevere. The Duke d'Alencon himself begged her, but in vain, to retire. La Tremoille gave orders to retreat; and some knights came up, set Joan on horse-back, and led her back, against her will, to La Chapelle. "By my martin" (staff of command), said she, "the place would have been taken." One hope still remained. In concert with the Duke d'Alencon she had caused a flying bridge to be thrown across the Seine opposite St. Denis. The next day but one she sent her vanguard in this direction; she intended to return thereby to the siege; but, by the king's order, the bridge had been cut adrift. St. Denis fell once more into the hands of the English. Before leaving, Joan left there, on the tomb of St. Denis, her complete suit of armor and a sword she had lately obtained possession of at the St. Honore gate of Paris, as trophy of war.

From the 13th of September, 1429, to the 24th of May, 1430, she continued to lead the same life of efforts ever equally valiant and equally ineffectual. She failed in an attempt upon Laemir. Charite-sur-Loire, undertaken, for all that appears, with the sole design of recovering an important town in the possession of the enemy. The English evacuated Paris, and left the keeping of it to the Duke of Burgundy, no doubt to test his fidelity. On the 13th of Aprils 1430, at the expiration of the truce he had concluded, Philip the Good resumed hostilities against Charles VII. Joan of Arc once more plunged into them with her wonted zeal. Ile-de-France and Picardy became the theatre of war. Compiegne was regarded as the gate of the road between these two provinces; and the Duke of Burgundy attached much importance to holding the key of it. The authority of Charles VII. was recognized there; and a young knight of Compiegne, William de Flavy, held the command there as lieutenant of La Tremoille, who had got himself appointed captain of the town. La Tremoille attempted to treat with the Duke of Burgundy for the cession of Compiegne; but the inhabitants were strenuously opposed to it. "They were," they said, "the king's most humble subjects, and they desired to serve him with body and substance; but as for trusting themselves to the lord Duke of Burgundy, they could not do it; they were resolved to suffer destruction, themselves and their wives and children, rather than be exposed to the tender mercies of the said duke." Meanwhile Joan of Arc, after several warlike expeditions in the neighborhood, re-entered Compiegne, and was received there with a popular expression of satisfaction. "She was presented," says a local chronicler, with three hogsheads of wine, a present which was large and exceeding costly, and which showed the estimate formed of this maiden's worth." Joan manifested the profound distrust with which she was inspired of the Duke of Burgundy. There is no peace possible with him," she said, "save at the point of the lance." She had quarters at the house of the king's attorney, Le Boucher, and shared the bed of his wife, Mary. "She often made the said Mary rise from her bed to go and warn the said attorney to be on his guard against several acts of Burgundian treachery." At this period, again, she said she was often warned by her voices of what must happen to her; she expected to be taken prisoner before St. John's or Midsummer-day (June 24); on what day and hour she did not know; she had received no instructions as to sorties from the place; but she had constantly been told that she would be taken, and she was distrustful of the captains who were in command there. She was, nevertheless, not the less bold and enterprising. On the 20th of May, 1430, the Duke of Burgundy came and laid siege to Compiegne. Joan was away on an expedition to Crepy in Valois, with a small band of three or four hundred brave comrades. On the 24th of May, the eve of Ascension-day, she learned that Compiegne was being besieged, and she resolved to re-enter it. She was reminded that her force was a very weak one to cut its way through the besiegers' camp. "By my martin," said she, "we are enough; I will go see my friends in Compiegne." She arrived about daybreak without hinderance, and penetrated into the town; and repaired immediately to the parish church of St. Jacques to perform her devotions on the eve of so great a festival. Many persons, attracted by her presence, and amongst others "from a hundred to six-score children," thronged to the church.

After hearing ma.s.s, and herself taking the communion, Joan said to those who surrounded her, "My children and dear friends, I notify you that I am sold and betrayed, and that I shall shortly be delivered over to death; I beseech you, pray G.o.d for me." When evening came, she was not the less eager to take part in a sortie with her usual comrades and a troop of about five hundred men. William de Flavy, commandant of the place, got ready some boats on the Oise to a.s.sist the return of the troops. All the town-gates were closed, save the bridge-gate. The sortie was unsuccessful. Being severely repulsed and all but hemmed in, the majority of the soldiers shouted to Joan, "Try to quickly regain the town, or we are lost." "Silence," said Joan; "it only rests with you to throw the enemy into confusion; think only of striking at them." Her words and her bravery were in vain; the infantry flung themselves into the boats, and regained the town, and Joan and her brave comrades covered their retreat. The Burgundians were coming up in ma.s.s upon Compiegne, and Flavy gave orders to pull up the draw-bridge and let down the portcullis. Joan and some of her following lingered outside, still fighting. She wore a rich surcoat and a red sash, and all the efforts of the Burgundians were directed against her. Twenty men thronged round her horse; and a Picard archer, "a tough fellow and mighty sour," seized her by her dress, and flung her on the ground. All, at once, called on her to surrender. "Yield you to me," said one of them; "pledge your faith to me; I am a gentleman." It was an archer of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Wandonne, one of the lieutenants of John of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny. "I have pledged my faith to one other than you," said Joan, "and to Him I will keep my oath." The archer took her and conducted her to Count John, whose prisoner she became.

Was she betrayed and delivered up, as she had predicted? Did William de Flavy purposely have the drawbridge raised and the portcullis lowered before she could get back into Compiegne? He was suspected of it at the time, and many historians have indorsed the suspicion. But there is nothing to prove it. That La Tremoille, prime minister of Charles VII., and Reginald de Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims, had an antipathy to Joan of Arc, and did all they could on every occasion to compromise her and destroy her influence, and that they were glad to see her a prisoner, is as certain as anything can be. On announcing her capture to the inhabitants of Rheims, the arch-bishop said, "She would not listen to counsel, and did everything according to her pleasure." But there is a long distance between such expressions and a premeditated plot to deliver to the enemy the young heroine who had just raised the siege of Orleans and brought the king to be crowned at Rheims. History must not, without proof, impute crimes so odious and so shameful to even the most depraved of men.

However that may be, Joan remained for six months the prisoner of John of Luxembourg, who, to make his possession of her secure, sent her, under good escort, successively to his two castles of Beaulieu and Beaurevoir, one in the Vermandois and the other in the Cambresis. Twice, in July and in October, 1430, Joan attempted, unsuccessfully, to escape. The second time she carried despair and hardihood so far as to throw herself down from the platform of her prison. She was picked up cruelly bruised, but without any fracture or wound of importance. Her fame, her youth, her virtue, her courage, made her, even in her prison and in the very family of her custodian, two warm and powerful friends. John of Luxembourg had with him his wife, Joan of Bethune, and his aunt, Joan of Luxembourg, G.o.dmother of Charles VII. They both of them took a tender interest in the prisoner; and they often went to see her, and left nothing undone to mitigate the annoyances of a prison. One thing only shocked them about her--her man's clothes. "They offered her," as Joan herself said, when questioned upon this subject at a later period during her trial, "a woman's dress, or stuff to make it to her liking, and requested her to wear it; but she answered that she had not leave from our Lord, and that it was not yet time for it." John of Luxembourg's aunt was full of years and reverenced as a saint. Hearing that the English were tempting her nephew by the offer of a sum of money to give up his prisoner to them, she conjured him in her will, dated September 10, 1430, not to sully by such an act the honor of his name. But Count John was neither rich nor scrupulous; and pretexts were not wanting to aid his cupidity and his weakness. Joan had been taken at Compiegne on the 23d of May, in the evening; and the news arrived in Paris on the 25th of May, in the morning. On the morrow, the 26th, the registrar of the University, in the name and under the seal of the inquisition of France, wrote a citation to the Duke of Burgundy "to the end that the Maid should be delivered up to appear before the said inquisitor, and to respond to the good counsel, favor, and aid of the good doctors and masters of the University of Paris." Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had been the prime mover in this step. Some weeks later, on the 14th of July, seeing that no reply arrived from the Duke of Burgundy, he caused a renewal of the same demands to be made on the part of the University in more urgent terms, and he added, in his own name, that Joan, having been taken at Compiegne, in his own diocese, belonged to him as judge spiritual. He further a.s.serted that "according to the law, usage, and custom of France, every prisoner of war, even were it king, _dauphin_, or other prince, might be redeemed in the name of the King of England in consideration of an indemnity of ten thousand livres granted to the capturer." Nothing was more opposed to the common law of nations and to the feudal spirit, often grasping, but n.o.ble at bottom. For four months still, John of Luxembourg hesitated; but his aunt, Joan, died at Boulogne, on the 13th of November, and Joan of Arc had no longer near him this powerful intercessor. The King of England transmitted to the keeping of his coffers at Rouen, in golden coin, English money, the sum of ten thousand livres. John of Luxembourg yielded to the temptation. On the 21st of November, 1430, Joan of Arc was handed over to the King of England, and the same day the University of Paris, through its rector, Hebert, besought that sovereign, as King of France, "to order that this woman be brought to their city for to be shortly placed in the hands of the justice of the Church, that is, of our honored lord, the Bishop and Count of Beauvais, and also of the ordained inquisitor in France, in order that her trial may be conducted officially and securely."

It was not to Paris, but to Rouen, the real capital of the English in France, that Joan was taken. She arrived there on the 23d of December, 1430. On the 3d of January, 1431, an order from Henry VI., King of England, placed her in the hands of the Bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon. Some days afterwards, Count John of Luxembourg, accompanied by his brother, the English chancellor, by his esquire, and by two English lords, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, the King of England's constable in France, entered the prison.

Had John of Luxembourg come out of sheer curiosity, or to relieve himself of certain scruples by offering Joan a chance for her life? "Joan," said he, "I am come hither to put you to ransom, and to treat for the price of your deliverance; only give us your promise here to no more bear arms against us." "In G.o.d's name," answered Joan, "are you making a mock of me, captain? Ransom me! You have neither the will nor the power; no, you have neither." The count persisted. "I know well," said Joan, "that these English will put me to death; but were they a hundred thousand more G.o.ddams than have already been in France, they shall never have the kingdom."

At this patriotic burst on the heroine's part, the Earl of Stafford half drew his dagger from the sheath as if to strike Joan, but the Earl of Warwick held him back. The visitors went out from the prison and handed over Joan to the judges.

The court of Rouen was promptly formed, but not without opposition and difficulty. Though Joan had lost somewhat of her greatness and importance by going beyond her main object, and by showing recklessness, unattended by success, on small occasions, she still remained the true, heroic representative of the feelings and wishes of the nation. When she was removed from Beaurevoir to Rouen, all the places at which she stopped were like so many luminous points for the ill.u.s.tration of her popularity.

At Arras, a Scot showed her a portrait of her which he wore, an outward sign of the devoted worship of her lieges. At Amiens, the chancellor of the cathedral gave her audience at confession and administered to her the eucharist. At Abbeville, ladies of distinction went five leagues to pay her a visit; they were glad to have had the happiness of seeing her so firm and resigned to the will of Our Lord; they wished her all the favors of heaven, and then wept affectionately on taking leave of her. Joan, touched by their sympathy and open heartedness, said, "Ah! what a good people is this! Would to G.o.d I might be so happy, when my days are ended, as to be buried in these parts!"

When the Bishop of Beauvais, installed at Rouen, set about forming his court of justice, the majority of the members he appointed amongst the clergy or the University of Paris obeyed the summons without hesitation.

Some few would have refused; but their wishes were overruled. The Abbot of Jumieges, Nicholas de Houppeville, maintained that the trial was not legal. The Bishop of Beauvais, he said, belonged to the party which declared itself hostile to the Maid; and, besides, he made himself judge in a case already decided by his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Rheims, of whom Beauvais was holden, and who had approved of Joan's conduct. The bishop summoned before him the recalcitrant, who refused to appear, saying that he was under no official jurisdiction but that of Rouen. He was arrested and thrown into prison, by order of the bishop, whose authority he denied. There was some talk of banishing him, and even of throwing him into the river; but the influence of his brethren saved him.

The sub-inquisitor himself allowed the trial in which he was to be one of the judges to begin without him; and he only put in an appearance at the express order of the inquisitor-general, and on a confidential hint that he would be in danger of his life if he persisted in his refusal. The court being thus const.i.tuted, Joan, after it had been put in possession of the evidence already collected, was cited, on the 20th of February, 1431, to appear on the morrow, the 21st, before her judges a.s.sembled in the chapel of Rouen Castle.

The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, 1431. The court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the castle, some in Joan's very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron cage; afterwards she was kept no longer in the cage, but in a dark room in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five "soldiers of low grade." She complained of being thus chained; but the bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this precaution. "It is true," said Joan, as truthful as heroic, "I did wish and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every prisoner." At her examination, the bishop required her to take an oath to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned."

"I know not what you mean to question me about; perchance you may ask me things I would not tell you; touching my revelations, for instance, you might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell; thus I should be perjured, which you ought not to desire." The bishop insisted upon an oath absolute and with-out condition. "You are too hard on me," said Joan; I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters which concern the faith." The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of being held guilty of the things imputed to her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Joan examined in Prison----128]

"Go on to something else," said she. And this was the answer she made to all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be silent. Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said, "I come on G.o.d's business, and I have nought to do here; send me back to G.o.d, from whom I come." "Are you sure you are in G.o.d's grace?" asked the bishop. "If I be not," answered Joan, "please G.o.d to bring me to it; and if I be, please G.o.d to keep me in it!" The bishop himself remained dumbfounded.

There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to G.o.d who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In order to force her from her silence or bring her to submit to the Church instead of appealing from it to G.o.d, it was proposed to employ the last means of all, torture. On the 9th of May the bishop had Joan brought into the great tower of Rouen Castle; the instruments of torture were displayed before her eyes; and the executioners were ready to fulfil their office, "for to bring her back," said the bishop, "into the ways of truth, in order to insure the salvation of her soul and body, so gravely endangered by erroneous inventions." "Verily," answered Joan, "if you should have to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul from body, I should not tell you aught else; and if I were to tell you aught else, I should afterwards still tell you that you had made me tell it by force." The idea of torture was given up. It was resolved to display all the armory of science in order to subdue the mind of this young girl, whose conscience was not to be subjugated. The chapter of Rouen declared that in consequence of her public refusal to submit herself to the decision of the Church as to her deeds and her statements, Joan deserved to be declared a heretic. The University of Paris, to which had been handed in the twelve heads of accusation resulting from Joan's statements and examinations, replied that "if, having been charitably admonished, she would not make reparation and return to union with the Catholic faith, she must be left to the secular judges to undergo punishment for her crime." Armed with these doc.u.ments the Bishop of Beauvais had Joan brought up, on the 23d of May, in a hall adjoining her prison, and, after having addressed to her a long exhortation, "Joan," said he, "if in the dominions of your king, when you were at large in them, a knight or any other, born under his rule and allegiance to him, had risen up, saying, 'I will not obey the king or submit to his officers,' would you not have said that he ought to be condemned? What then will you say of yourself, you who were born in the faith of Christ and became by baptism a daughter of the Church and spouse of Jesus Christ, if you obey not the officers of Christ, that is, the prelates of the Church?" Joan listened modestly to this admonition, and confined herself to answering, "As to my deeds and sayings, what I said of them at the trial I do hold to and mean to abide by." "Think you that you are not bound to submit your sayings and deeds to the Church militant or to any other than G.o.d?" "The course that I always mentioned and pursued at the trial I mean to maintain as to that.

If I were at the stake, and saw the torch lighted, and the executioner ready to set fire to the f.a.gots, even if I were in the midst of the flames, I should not say aught else, and I should uphold that which I said at the trial even unto death."

According to the laws, ideas, and practices of the time the legal question was decided. Joan, declared heretic and rebellious by the Church, was liable to have sentence p.r.o.nounced against her; but she had persisted in her statements, she had shown no submission. Although she appeared to be quite forgotten, and was quite neglected by the king whose coronation she had effected, by his councillors, and even by the brave warriors at whose side she had fought, the public exhibited a lively interest in her; accounts of the scenes which took place at her trial were inquired after with curiosity. Amongst the very judges who prosecuted her, many were troubled in spirit, and wished that Joan, by an abjuration of her statements, would herself put them at ease and relieve them from p.r.o.nouncing against her the most severe penalty. What means were employed to arrive at this end? Did she really, and with full knowledge of what she was about, come round to the adjuration which there was so much anxiety to obtain from her? It is difficult to solve this historical problem with exactness and certainty. More than once, during the examinations and the conversations which took place at that time between Joan and her judges, she maintained her firm posture and her first statements. One of those who were exhorting her to yield said to her one day, "Thy king is a heretic and a schismatic." Joan could not brook this insult to her king. "By my faith," said she, "full well dare I both say and swear that he is the n.o.blest Christian of all Christians, and the truest lover of the faith and the Church." "Make her hold her tongue," said the usher to the preacher, who was disconcerted at having provoked such language. Another day, when Joan was being urged to submit to the Church, brother Isambard de la Pierre, a Dominican, who was interested in her, spoke to her about the council, at the same time explaining to her its province in the church. It was the very time when that of Bale had been convoked. "Ah!" said Joan, "I would fain surrender and submit myself to the council of Bale." The Bishop of Beauvais trembled at the idea of this appeal. "Hold your tongue in the devil's name!" said he to the monk. Another of the judges, William Erard, asked Joan menacingly, "Will you abjure those reprobate words and deeds of yours?" "I leave it to the universal Church whether I ought to abjure or not." "That is not enough: you shall abjure at once or you shall burn."

Joan shuddered. "I would rather sign than burn," she said. There was put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith, and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the doc.u.ment she made the mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher Ma.s.sieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her name, every letter. However that may be, as soon as Joan's abjuration had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, "with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more henceforth."

The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors and his officers, were not. It was Joan living, even though a prisoner, that they feared. They were animated towards her by the two ruthless pa.s.sions of vengeance and fear. When it was known that she would escape with her life, murmurs broke out amongst the crowd of enemies present at the trial. Stones were thrown at the judges. One of the Cardinal of Winchester's chaplains, who happened to be close to the Bishop of Beauvais, called him traitor. "You lie," said the bishop. And the bishop was right; the chaplain did lie; the bishop had no intention of betraying his masters. The Earl of Warwick complained to him of the inadequacy of the sentence. "Never you mind, my lord," said one of Peter Cauchon's confidants; "we will have her up again." After the pa.s.sing of her sentence Joan had said to those about her, "Come, now, you churchmen amongst you, lead me off to your own prisons, and let me be no more in the hands of the English." "Lead her to where you took her," said the bishop; and she was conducted to the castle prison. She had been told by some of the judges who went to see her after her sentence, that she would have to give up her man's dress and resume her woman's clothing, as the Church ordained. She was rejoiced thereat; forthwith, accordingly, resumed her woman's clothes, and had her hair properly cut, which up to that time she used to wear clipped round like a man's. When she was taken back to prison, the man's dress which she had worn was put in a sack in the same room in which she was confined, and she remained in custody at the said place in the hands of five Englishmen, of whom three staid by night in the room and two outside at the door. "And he who speaks [John Ma.s.sieu, a priest, the same who in 1431 had been present as usher of the court at the trial in which Joan was condemned] knows for certain that at night she had her legs ironed in such sort that she could not stir from the spot. When the next Sunday morning, which was Trinity Sunday, had come, and she should have got up, according to what she herself told to him who speaks, she said to her English guards, 'Uniron me; I will get up.' Then one of then took away her woman's clothes; they emptied the sack in which was her man's dress, and pitched the said dress to her, saying, 'Get up, then,' and they put her woman's clothes in the same sack. And according to what she told me she only clad herself in her man's dress after saying, 'You know it is forbidden me; I certainly will not take it.' Nevertheless they would not allow her any other; insomuch that the dispute lasted to the hour of noon. Finally, from corporeal necessity, Joan was constrained to get up and take the dress."

The official doc.u.ments drawn up during the condemnation-trial contain quite a different account. "On the 28th of May," it is there said, "eight of the judges who had taken part in the sentence [their names are given in the doc.u.ment, t. i. p. 454] betook themselves to Joan's prison, and seeing her clad in man's dress, 'which she had but just given up according to our order that she should resume woman's clothes, we asked her when and for what cause she had resumed this dress, and who had prevailed on her to do so. Joan answered that it was of her own will, without any constraint from any one, and because she preferred that dress to woman's clothes. To our question as to why she had made this change, she answered, that, being surrounded by men, man's dress was more suitable for her than woman's. She also said that she had resumed it because there had been made to her, but not kept, a promise that she should go to ma.s.s, receive the body of Christ, and be set free from her fetters. She added that if this promise were kept, she would be good, and would do what was the will of the Church. As we had heard some persons say that she persisted in her errors as to the pretended revelations which she had but lately renounced, we asked whether she had since Thursday last heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret; and she answered, Yes. To our question as to what the saints had said she answered, that G.o.d had testified to her by their voices great pity for the great treason she had committed in abjuring for the sake of saving her life, and that by so doing she had d.a.m.ned herself. She said that all she had thus done last Thursday in abjuring her visions and revelations she had done through fear of the stake, and that all her abjuration was contrary to the truth. She added that she did not herself comprehend what was contained in the form of abjuration she had been made to sign, and that she would rather do penance once for all by dying to maintain the truth than remain any longer a prisoner, being all the while a traitress to it."

We will not stop to examine whether these two accounts, though very different, are not fundamentally reconcilable, and whether Joan resumed man's dress of her own desire or was constrained to do so by the soldiers on guard over her, and perhaps to escape from their insults. The important points in the incident are the burst of remorse which Joan felt for her weakness and her striking retractation of the abjuration which had been wrung from her. So soon as the news was noised abroad, her enemies cried, "She has relapsed!" This was exactly what they had hoped for when, on learning that she had been sentenced only to perpetual imprisonment, they had said, "Never you mind; we will have her up again."

"_Farewell, farewell_, my lord," said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan's retractation; and in his words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the 30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence p.r.o.nounced, and then undergo the punishment of the stake.

When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at first to grief and terror. "Alas!" she cried, "am I to be so horribly and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would seven times rather be beheaded than burned!" The Bishop of Beauvais at this moment came up. "Bishop," said Joan, "you are the cause of my death; if you had put me in the prisons of the Church and in the hands of fit and proper ecclesiastical warders, this had never happened; I appeal from you to the presence of G.o.d." One of the doctors who had sat in judgment upon her, Peter Maurice, went to see her, and spoke to her with sympathy. "Master Peter," said she to him, "where shall I be to-night?"

"Have you not good hope in G.o.d?" asked the doctor. "O! yes," she answered; "by the grace of G.o.d I shall be in paradise." Being left alone with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he was to do. "Tell brother Martin," was the answer, "to give her the eucharist and all she asks for." At nine o'clock, having resumed her woman's dress, Joan was dragged from prison and driven to the Vieux- Marche. From seven to eight hundred soldiers escorted the car and prohibited all approach to it on the part of the crowd, which enc.u.mbered the road and the vicinities; but a man forced a pa.s.sage and flung himself towards Joan. It was a canon of Rouen, Nicholas Loiseleur, whom the Bishop of Beauvais had placed near her, and who had abused the confidence she had shown him. Beside himself with despair, he wished to ask pardon of her; but the English soldiers drove him back with violence and with the epithet of traitor, and but for the intervention of the Earl of Warwick his life would have been in danger. Joan wept and prayed; and the crowd, afar off, wept and prayed with her. On arriving at the place, she listened in silence to a sermon by one of the doctors of the court, who ended by saying, "Joan, go in peace; the Church can no longer defend thee; she gives thee over to the secular arm." The laic judges, Raoul Bouteillier, baillie of Rouen, and his lieutenant, Peter Daron, were alone qualified to p.r.o.nounce sentence of death; but no time was given them. The priest Ma.s.sieu was still continuing his exhortations to Joan, but "How now! priest," was the cry from amidst the soldiery, "are you going to make us dine here?" "Away with her! Away with her!" said the baillie to the guards; and to the executioner, "Do thy duty." When she came to the stake, Joan knelt down completely absorbed in prayer. She had begged Ma.s.sieu to get her a cross; and an Englishman present made one out of a little stick, and handed it to the French heroine, who took it, kissed it, and laid it on her breast. She begged brother Isambard de la Pierre to go and fetch the cross from the church of St. Sauveur, the chief door of which opened on the Vieux-Marche, and to hold it "upright before her eyes till the coming of death, in order," she said, "that the cross whereon G.o.d hung might, as long as she lived, be continually in her sight;" and her wishes were fulfilled. She wept over her country and the spectators as well as over herself. "Rouen, Rouen," she cried, "is it here that I must die? Shalt thou be my last resting-place? I fear greatly thou wilt have to suffer for my death." It is said that the aged Cardinal of Winchester and the Bishop of Beauvais himself could not stifle their emotion--and, peradventure, their tears. The executioner set fire to the f.a.gots. When Joan perceived the flames rising, she urged her confessor, the Dominican brother, Martin Ladvenu, to go down, at the same time asking him to keep holding the cross up high in front of her, that she might never cease to see it. The same monk, when questioned four and twenty years later, at the rehabilitation trial, as to the last sentiments and the last words of Joan, said that to the very latest moment she had affirmed that her voices were heavenly, that they had not deluded her, and that the revelations she had received came from G.o.d.

When she had ceased to live, two of her judges, John Alespie, canon of Rouen, and Peter Maurice, doctor of theology, cried out, "Would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is!" And Tressart, secretary to King Henry VI., said sorrowfully, on returning from the place of execution, "We are all lost; we have burned a saint."

A saint indeed in faith and in destiny. Never was human creature more heroically confident in, and devoted to, inspiration coming from G.o.d, a commission received from G.o.d. Joan of Arc sought nothing of all that happened to her and of all she did, nor exploit, nor power, nor glory.

"It was not her condition," as she used to say, to be a warrior, to get her king crowned, and to deliver her country from the foreigner.

Everything came to her from on high, and she accepted everything without hesitation, without discussion, without calculation, as we should say in our times. She believed in G.o.d, and obeyed Him. G.o.d was not to her an idea, a hope, a flash of human imagination, or a problem of human science; He was the Creator of the world, the Saviour of mankind through Jesus Christ, the Being of beings, ever present, ever in action, sole legitimate sovereign of man whom He has made intelligent and free, the real and true G.o.d whom we are painfully searching for in our own day, and whom we shall never find again until we cease pretending to do without Him and putting ourselves in His place. Meanwhile one fact may be mentioned which does honor to our epoch and gives us hope for our future.

Four centuries have rolled by since Joan of Arc, that modest and heroic servant of G.o.d, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For four and twenty years after her death, France and the king appeared to think no more of her. However, in 1455, remorse came upon Charles VII. and upon France. Nearly all the provinces, all the towns, were freed from the foreigner, and shame was felt that nothing was said, nothing done, for the young girl who had saved everything. At Rouen, especially, where the sacrifice was completed, a cry for reparation arose. It was timidly demanded from the spiritual power which had sentenced and delivered over Joan as a heretic to the stake. Pope Calixtus III. entertained the request preferred, not by the King of France, but in the name of Isabel Romee, Joan's mother, and her whole family. Regular proceedings were commenced and followed up for the rehabilitation of the martyr; and, on the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court a.s.sembled at Rouen quashed the sentence of 1431, together with all its consequences, and ordered "a general procession and solemn sermon at St. Ouen Place and the Vieux- Marche," where the said maid had been cruelly and horribly burned; besides the planting of a cross of honor (crucis honestee) on the Vieux-Marche, the judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision "throughout the cities and notable places of the realm." The city of Orleans responded to this appeal by raising on the bridge over the Loire a group in bronze representing Joan of Arc on her knees before Our Lady between two angels. This monument, which was broken during the religious wars of the sixteenth century and repaired shortly afterwards, was removed in the eighteenth century, and, Joan of Arc then received a fresh insult; the poetry of a cynic was devoted to the task of diverting a licentious public at the expense of the saint whom, three centuries before, fanatical hatred had brought to the stake. In 1792 the council of the commune of Orleans, "considering that the monument in bronze did not represent the heroine's services, and did not by any sign call to mind the struggle against the English," ordered it to be melted down and cast into cannons, of which "one should bear the name of Joan of Arc."

It is in our time that the city of Orleans and its distinguished bishop, Mgr. Dupanloup, have at last paid Joan homage worthy of her, not only by erecting to her a new statue, but by recalling her again to the memory of France with her true features, and in her grand character. Neither French nor any other history offers a like example of a modest little soul, with a faith so pure and efficacious, resting on divine inspiration and patriotic hope.

During the trial of Joan of Arc the war between France and England, without being discontinued, had been somewhat slack: the curiosity and the pa.s.sions of men were concentrated upon the scenes at Rouen. After the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though without any great events. By way of a step towards solution, the Duke of Bedford, in November, 1431, escorted to Paris King Henry VI., scarcely ten years old, and had him crowned at Notre-Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for pomp, but not for warmth. The Duke of Burgundy was not present; it was an Englishman, the Cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the young Englander King of France; the Bishop of Paris complained of it as a violation of his rights; the parliament, the university, and the munic.i.p.al body had not even seats reserved at the royal banquet; Paris was melancholy, and day by day more deserted by the native inhabitants; gra.s.s was growing in the court-yards of the great mansions; the students were leaving the great school of Paris, to which the Duke of Bedford at Caen, and Charles VII. himself at Poitiers, were attempting to raise up rivals; and silence reigned in the Latin quarter. The child-king was considered unintelligent, and ungraceful, and ungracious. When, on the day after Christmas, he started on his way back to Rouen, and from Rouen to England, he did not confer on Paris "any of the boons expected, either by releasing prisoners or by putting an end to black-mails, gabels, and wicked imposts." The burgesses were astonished, and grumbled; and the old queen, Isabel of Bavaria, who was still living at the hostel of St.

Paul, wept, it is said, for vexation, at seeing from one of her windows her grandson's royal procession go by.

Though war was going on all the while, attempts were made to negotiate; and in March, 1433, a conference was opened at Seineport, near Corbeil.

Everybody in France desired peace. Philip the Good himself began to feel the necessity of it. Burgundy was almost as discontented and troubled as Ile-de-France. There was grumbling at Dijon as there was conspiracy at Paris. The English gave fresh cause for national irritation. They showed an inclination to canton themselves in Normandy, and abandon the other French provinces to the hazards and sufferings of a desultory war.

Anne of Burgundy, the Duke of Bedford's wife and Philip the Good's sister, died. The English duke speedily married again without even giving any notice to the French prince. Every family tie between the two persons was broken; and the negotiations as well as the war remained without result.

An incident at court caused a change in the situation, and gave the government of Charles a different character. His favorite, George de la Tremoille, had become almost as unpopular amongst the royal family as in the country in general. He could not manage a war, and he frustrated attempts at peace. The Queen of Sicily, Yolande d'Aragon, her daughter, Mary d'Anjou, Queen of France, and her son, Louis, Count of Maine, who all three desired peace, set themselves to work to overthrow the favorite. In June, 1433, four young lords, one of whom, Sire de Beuil, was La Tremoille's own nephew, introduced themselves unexpectedly into his room at the castle of Coudray, near Chinon, where Charles VII. was.

La Tremoille showed an intention of resisting, and received a sword-thrust. He was made to resign all his offices, and was sent under strict guard to the castle of Alontresor, the property of his nephew, Sire de Beuil. The conspirators had concerted measures with La Tremoille's rival, the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, a man distinguished in war, who had lately gone to help Joan of Arc, and who was known to be a friend of peace at the same time that he was firmly devoted to the national cause. He was called away from his castle of Parthenay, and set at the head of the government as well as of the army.

Charles VII. at first showed anger at his favorite's downfall. He asked if Richemont was present, and was told no: where-upon he seemed to grow calmer. Before long he did more; he became resigned, and, continuing all the while to give La Tremoille occasional proofs of his former favor, he fully accepted De Richemont's influence and the new direction which the constable imposed upon his government.

War was continued nearly everywhere, with alternations of success and reverse which deprived none of the parties of hope without giving victory to any. Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun. The constable De Richemont's return to power led to fresh overtures. He was a states-man as well as a warrior; and his inclinations were known at Dijon and London, as well as at Chinon. The advisers of King Henry VI.

proposed to open a conference, on the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais.

They had, they said, a prisoner in England, confined there ever since the battle of Agincourt, Duke Charles of Orleans, who was sincerely desirous of peace, in spite of his family enmity towards the Duke of Burgundy. He was considered a very proper person to promote the negotiations, although he sought in poetry, which was destined to bring l.u.s.tre to his name, a refuge from politics which made his life a burden. He, one day meeting the Duke of Burgundy's two amba.s.sadors at the Earl of Suffolk's, Henry VI.'s prime minister, went up to them, affectionately took their hands, and, when they inquired after his health, said, "My body is well, my soul is sick; I am dying with vexation at pa.s.sing my best days a prisoner, without any one to think of me." The amba.s.sadors said that people would be indebted to him for the benefit of peace, for he was known to be laboring for it. "My Lord of Suffolk," said he, "can tell you that I never cease to urge it upon the king and his council; but I am as useless here as the sword never drawn from the scabbard. I must see my relatives and friends in France; they will not treat, surely, without having consulted with me. If peace depended upon me, though I were doomed to die seven days after swearing it, that would cause me no regret.

however, what matters it what I say? I am not master in anything at all; next to the two kings, it is the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Brittany who have most power. Will you not come and call upon me?" he added, pressing the hand of one of the amba.s.sadors. "They will see you before they go," said the Earl of Suffolk, in a tone which made it plain that no private conversation would be permitted between them. And, indeed, the Earl of Suffolk's barber went alone to wait upon the amba.s.sadors in order to tell them that, if the Duke of Burgundy desired it, the Duke of Orleans would write to him. "I will undertake," he added, "to bring you his letter." There was evident mistrust; and it was explained to the Burgundian amba.s.sadors by the Earl of Warwick's remark, "Your duke never once came to see our king during his stay in France.

The Duke of Bedford used similar language to them. Why," said he, "does my brother the Duke of Burgundy give way to evil imaginings against me?

There is not a prince in the world, after my king, whom I esteem so much.

The ill-will which seems to exist between us spoils the king's affairs and his own too. But tell him that I am not the less disposed to serve him."

In March, 1435, the Duke of Burgundy went to Paris, taking with him his third wife, Isabel of Portugal, and a magnificent following. There were seen, moreover, in his train, a hundred wagons laden with artillery, armor, salted provisions, cheeses, and wines of Burgundy. There was once more joy in Paris, and the duke received the most affectionate welcome.

The university was represented before him, and made him a great speech on the necessity of peace. Two days afterwards a deputation from the city dames of Paris waited upon the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, and implored her to use her influence for the re-establishment of peace. She answered, "My good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray for it night and day to the Lord our G.o.d, for I believe that we all have great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his substance." At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip's decision was already taken. He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law, whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design. Being convinced of the necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England's advisers whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it.

It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of Pope Eugenius IV. should be invited to it, and that consultation should be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of the two kingdoms.

Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there arrived at Arras the pope's legates and the amba.s.sadors of the Emperor Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan. The university of Paris and many of the good towns of France, Flanders, and even Holland, had sent their deputies thither. Many bishops were there in person. The Bishop of Liege came thither with a magnificent train, mounted, says the chroniclers, on two hundred white horses. The Duke of Burgundy made his entrance on the 30th of July, escorted by three hundred archers wearing his livery. All the lords who happened to be in the city went to meet him at a league's distance, except the cardinal-legates of the pope, who confined themselves to sending their people. Two days afterwards arrived the amba.s.sadors of the King of France, having at their head the Duke of Bourbon and the constable De Richemont, together with several of the greatest French lords, and a retinue of four or five hundred persons. Duke Philip, forewarned of their coming, issued from the city with all the princes and lords who happened to be there. The English alone refused to accompany him, wondering at his showing such great honor to the amba.s.sadors of their common enemy. Philip went forward a mile to meet his two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and the Count de Richemont, embraced them affectionately, and turned back with them into Arras, amidst the joy and acclamations of the populace.

Last of all arrived the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, magnificently dressed, and bringing with her her young son, the Count of Charolais, who was hereafter to be Charles the Rash. The Duke of Bourbon, the constable De Richemont, and all the lords were on horseback around her litter; but the English, who had gone, like the others, to meet her, were unwilling, on turning back to Arras, to form a part of her retinue with the French.

Grand as was the sight, it was not superior in grandeur to the event on the eve of accomplishment. The question was whether France should remain a great nation, in full possession of itself and of its independence under a French king, or whether the King of England should, in London and with the t.i.tle of King of France, have France in his possession and under his government. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was called upon to solve this problem of the future, that is to say, to decide upon the fate of his lineage and his country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Philip the Good of Burgundy----144]

As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly. The English, instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles. The French amba.s.sadors refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole royal house, and of suffering for the people. Nevertheless, the duke showed strong scruples. The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor. He asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected with the pope's legates, another with English doctors, and another with French doctors. He was granted all three, though they were more calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones. The legates ended by solemnly saying to him, "We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the holy council a.s.sembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more pleasing in the eyes of G.o.d, or further augment your fame in this world."

For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September. He was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him.

Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the princ.i.p.al causes of shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from the stage of the world. Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and worldly expedience was concerned. He declared his readiness to accept the proposals which had been communicated to him by the amba.s.sadors of Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England might say or do.

There was great and general joy in France. It was peace, and national reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves Frenchmen. Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to consecrate this alliance. On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated ma.s.s, the king laid his hands upon the Gospels, and swore the peace, saying that "It was his duty to imitate the King of kings, our divine Saviour, who had brought peace amongst men." At the chancellor's order, the princes and great lords, one after the other, took the oath; the n.o.bles and the people of the third estate swore the peace all together, with cries of "Long live the king! Long live the Duke of Burgundy!" "With this hand," said Sire de Lannoy, "I have thrice sworn peace during this war; but I call G.o.d to witness that, for my part, this time it shall be kept, and that never will I break it (the peace)." Charles VII., in his emotion, seized the hands of Duke Philip's amba.s.sadors, saying, "For a long while I have languished for this happy day; we must thank G.o.d for it." And the Te Deum was intoned with enthusiasm.

Peace was really made amongst Frenchmen; and, in spite of many internal difficulties and quarrels, it was not broken as long as Charles VII. and Duke Philip the Good were living. But the war with the English went on incessantly. They still possessed several of the finest provinces of France; and the treaty of Arras, which had weakened them very much on the Continent, had likewise made them very angry. For twenty-six years, from 1435 to 1461, hostilities continued between the two kingdoms, at one time actively and at another slackly, with occasional suspension by truce, but without any formal termination. There is no use in recounting the details of their monotonous and barren history. Governments and people often persist in maintaining their quarrels and inflicting mutual injuries by the instrumentality of events, acts, and actors that deserve nothing but oblivion. There is no intention here of dwelling upon any events or persons save such as have, for good or for evil, to its glory or its sorrow, exercised a considerable influence upon the condition and fortune of France.

The peace of Arras brought back to the service of France and her king the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, whom the jealousy of George de la Tremoille and the distrustful indolence of Charles VII. had so long kept out of it. By a somewhat rare privilege, he was in reality, there is reason to suppose, superior to the name he has left behind him in history; and it is only justice to reproduce here the portrait given of him by one of his contemporaries who observed him closely and knew him well. "Never a man of his time," says William Gruet, "loved justice more than he, or took more pains to do it according to his ability. Never was prince more humble, more charitable, more compa.s.sionate, more liberal, less avaricious, or more open-handed in a good fashion and without prodigality. He was a proper man, chaste and brave as prince can be; and there was none of his time of better conduct than lie in conducting a great battle, or a great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good to poor mendicants and others of G.o.d's poor."

Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and ruin. "The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it," says an eye-witness, "twenty-four thousand houses empty." The Duke of Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted to supply the Parisians with bread and amus.e.m.e.nts (panem et circenses); but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. "Four blind men, armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another." The constable resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun to St. Denis. "You know the country?" said the constable to Marshal Isle-Adam. "Yes, my lord," answered the other; "and by my faith, in the position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them, though you had ten thousand fighting men." "Ah! but we will," replied Richemont; "G.o.d will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the skirmishers." And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved and encouraged. One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an engagement were entered into in the king's name for a general amnesty and the prevention of all disorder. The constable, on the king's behalf, entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day, the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate. The enterprise was discovered. A man posted on the wall made signs to them with his hat, crying out, "Go to the other gate; there's no opening this; work is going on for you in the Market-quarter." The picked force followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate. "Who goes there?" demanded some burghers who had the guard of it. "Some of the constable's people." He himself came up on his big charger, with satisfaction and courtesy in his mien. Some little time was required for opening the gate; a long ladder was let down; and Marshal Isle-Adam was the first to mount, and planted on the wall the standard of France. The fastenings of the drawbridge were burst, and when it was let down, the constable made his entry on horseback, riding calmly down St. Jacques Street, in the midst of a joyous and comforted crowd. "My good friends,"

he said to them, "the good King Charles, and I on his behalf, do thank you a hundred thousand times for yielding up to him so quietly the chief city of his kingdom. If there be amongst you any, of whatsoever condition he may be, who hath offended against my lord 'the king, all is forgiven, in the case both of the absent and the present."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Constable Made his Entry on Horseback----150]

Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any. At sight of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the constable was disposed to besiege them. "My lord," said the burghers to him, "they wi