The Life of Joan of Arc Part 119

The Lord Chancellor of England sent to the Emperor, to the Kings and to the princes of Christendom, letters in Latin; to the prelates, dukes, counts, lords, and all the towns of France, letters in French.[2586] Herein he made known unto them that King Henry and his Counsellors had had sore pity on the Maid, and that if they had caused her death it was through their zeal for the faith and their solicitude Christian folk.[2587]

[Footnote 2586: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 240, 243.]

[Footnote 2587: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 485, 496; vol. iv, p. 403.

Monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. cv.]

In like tenor did the University of Paris write to the Holy Father, the Emperor and the College of Cardinals.[2588]

[Footnote 2588: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 496, 500.]

On the 4th of July, the day of Saint-Martin-le-Bouillant, Master Jean Graverent, Prior of the Jacobins, Inquisitor of the Faith, preached at Saint-Martin-des-Champs. In his sermon he related the deeds of Jeanne, and told how for her errors and shortcomings she had been delivered to the secular judges and burned alive.

Then he added: "There were four, three of whom have been taken, to wit, this Maid, Pierronne, and her companion. One, Catherine de la Roch.e.l.le, still remaineth with the Armagnacs. Friar Richard, the Franciscan, who attracted so great a mult.i.tude of folk when he preached in Paris at the Innocents and elsewhere, directed these women; he was their spiritual father."[2589]

[Footnote 2589: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 270, 272. This sermon contains curious inaccuracies. Are they the fault of the Inquisitor or of the author of _Le Journal_?]

With Pierronne burned in Paris, her companion eating the bread of bitterness and drinking the water of affliction in the prison of the Church, and Jeanne burned at Rouen, the royal company of _beguines_ was now almost entirely annihilated. There only remained to the King the holy dame of La Roch.e.l.le, who had escaped from the hands of the Paris Official; but her indiscreet talk had rendered her troublesome.[2590] While his penitents were being discredited, good Friar Richard himself had fallen on evil days. The Vicars in the diocese of Poitiers and the Inquisitor of the Faith had forbidden him to preach. The great orator, who had converted so many Christian folk, could no longer thunder against gaming-tables and dice, against women's finery, and mandrakes arrayed in magnificent attire. No longer could he declare the coming of Antichrist nor prepare souls for the terrible trials which were to herald the imminent end of the world. He was ordered to lie under arrest in the Franciscan monastery at Poitiers. And doubtless it was with no great docility that he submitted to the sentence of his superiors; for on Friday, the 23rd of March, 1431, we find the Ordinary and the Inquisitor, asking aid in the execution of the sentence from the Parliament of Poitiers, which did not refuse it. Why did Holy Church exercise such severity towards a preacher endowed with so wondrous a power of moving sinful souls? We may at any rate suspect the reason. For some time the English and Burgundian clergy had been accusing him of apostasy and magic. Now, owing to the unity of the Church in general and to that of the Gallican Church in particular, owing also to the authority of that bright sun of Christendom, the University of Paris, when a clerk was suspected of error and heresy by the doctors of the English and Burgundian party he came to be looked at askance by the clergy who were loyal to King Charles. Especially was this so when in a matter touching the Catholic faith, the University had p.r.o.nounced against him and in favour of the English. It is quite likely that the clerks of Poitiers had been prejudiced against Friar Richard by Pierronne's conviction and even by the Maid's trial. The good brother, who persisted in preaching the end of the world, was strongly suspected of dealing in the black art. Wherefore, realising the fate which was threatening him, he fled, and was never heard of again.[2591]

[Footnote 2590: _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 473.]

[Footnote 2591: Th. Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_, vol. iv, pp. 103, 104. Monstrelet, ch. lxiii. Bougenot, _Deux doc.u.ments inedits relatifs a Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue bleue_, 13 Feb., 1892, pp. 203, 204.]

None the less, however, did the counsellors of King Charles continue to employ the devout in the army. At the time of the disappearance of Friar Richard and his penitents, they were making use of a young shepherd whom my Lord the Archbishop, Duke of Reims and Chancellor of the kingdom, had proclaimed to be Jeanne's miraculous successor. And it was in the following circ.u.mstance that the shepherd was permitted to display his power.

The war continued. Twenty days after Jeanne's death the English in great force marched to recapture the town of Louviers. They had delayed till then, not, as some have stated, because they despaired of succeeding in anything as long as the Maid lived, but because they needed time to collect money and engines for the siege.[2592] In the July and August of this same year, at Senlis and at Beauvais, my Lord of Reims, Chancellor of France and the Marechal de Boussac, were upholding the French cause. And we may be sure that my Lord of Reims was upholding it with no little vigour since at the same time he was defending the benefices which were so dear to him.[2593] A Maid had reconquered them, now he intended a lad to hold them. With this object he employed the little shepherd, Guillaume, from the Lozere Mountains, who, like Saint Francis of a.s.sisi and Saint Catherine of Sienna, had received stigmata. A party of French surprised the Regent at Mantes and were on the point of taking him prisoner. The alarm was given to the army besieging Louviers; and two or three companies of men-at-arms were despatched. They hastened to Mantes, where they learnt that the Regent had succeeded in reaching Paris. Thereupon, having been reinforced by troops from Gournay and certain other English garrisons, being some two thousand strong and commanded by the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, Salisbury, and Suffolk, and by Lord Talbot and Sir Thomas Kiriel, the English made bold to march upon Beauvais. The French, informed of their approach, left the town at daybreak, and marched out to meet them in the direction of Savignies. King Charles's men, numbering between eight hundred and one thousand combatants, were commanded by the Marechal de Boussac, the Captains La Hire, Poton, and others.[2594]

[Footnote 2592: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 3, 344, 348, 373; vol. iii, p.

189; vol. v, pp. 169, 179, 181. Dibon, _Essai sur Louviers_, Rouen, 1836, in 8vo, pp. 33 _et seq._ Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 246 _et seq._]

[Footnote 2593: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises de France vers le milieu du XV'e siecle_, vol. i, p. xvi.]

[Footnote 2594: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 132. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 433. Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 265.]

The shepherd Guillaume, whom they believed to be sent of G.o.d, was at their head, riding side-saddle and displaying the miraculous wounds in his hands, his feet, and his left side.[2595]

[Footnote 2595: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 272.]

When they were about two and a half miles from the town, just when they least expected it, a shower of arrows came down upon them. The English, informed by their scouts of the French approach, had lain in wait for them in a hollow of the road. Now they attacked them closely both in the van and in the rear. Each side fought valiantly. A considerable number were slain, which was not the case in most of the battles of those days, when few but the fugitives were killed. But the French, feeling themselves surrounded, were seized with panic, and thus brought about their own destruction. Most of them, with the Marechal de Boussac and Captain La Hire, fled to the town of Beauvais.

Captain Poton and the shepherd, Guillaume, remained in the hands of the English, who returned to Rouen in triumph.[2596]

[Footnote 2596: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 272.]

Poton made sure of being ransomed in the usual manner. But the little shepherd could not hope for such a fate; he was suspected of heresy and magic; he had deceived Christian folk and accepted from them idolatrous veneration. The signs of our Saviour's pa.s.sion that he bore upon him helped him not a whit; on the contrary the wounds, by the French held to have been divinely imprinted, to the English seemed the marks of the devil.

Guillaume, like the Maid, had been taken in the diocese of Beauvais.

The Lord Bishop of this town, Messire Pierre Cauchon, who had claimed the right to try Jeanne, made a similar claim for Guillaume; and the shepherd was granted what the Maid had been refused, he was cast into an ecclesiastical prison.[2597] He would seem to have been less difficult to guard than Jeanne and also less important. But the English had recently learnt what was involved in a trial by the Inquisition; they now knew how lengthy and how punctilious it was.

Moreover, they did not see how it would profit them if this shepherd were convicted of heresy. If the French had set their hope of success in war[2598] in Guillaume as they had done in Jeanne, then that hope was but short-lived. To put the Armagnacs to shame by proving that their shepherd lad came from the devil, that game was not worth the candle. The youth was taken to Rouen and thence to Paris.[2599]

[Footnote 2597: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.

ii, p. 248. De Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur les juges_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 2598: Lea, _History of the Inquisition_, vol. iii, 377 (ed.

1905).]

[Footnote 2599: Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, pp. 263, 264.]

He had been a prisoner for four months when King Henry VI, who was nine years old, came to Paris to be crowned in the church of Notre Dame with the two crowns of France and England. With high pomp and great rejoicing he made his entrance into the city on Sunday, the 16th of December. Along the route of the procession, in the Rue du Ponceau-Saint-Denys, had been constructed a fountain adorned with three sirens; and from their midst rose a tall lily stalk, from the buds and blossoms of which flowed streams of wine and milk. Folk flocked to drink of the fountain; and around its basin men disguised as savages entertained them with games and sham fights.

From the Porte Saint-Denys to the Hotel Saint-Paul in the Marais, the child King rode beneath a great azure canopy, embroidered with flowers-de-luce in gold, borne first by the four aldermen hooded and clothed in purple, then by the corporations, drapers, grocers, money-changers, goldsmiths and hosiers. Before him went twenty-five heralds and twenty-five trumpeters; followed by nine handsome men and nine beautiful ladies, wearing magnificent armour and bearing great shields, representing the nine _preux_ and the nine _preuses_, also by a number of knights and squires. In this brilliant procession appeared the little shepherd Guillaume; he no longer stretched out his arms to show the wounds of the pa.s.sion, for he was strongly bound.[2600]

[Footnote 2600: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 274.]

After the ceremony he was conducted back to prison, whence he was taken later to be sewn in a sack and thrown into the Seine.[2601] Even the French admitted that Guillaume was but a simpleton and that his mission was not of G.o.d.[2602]

[Footnote 2601: Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 264.]

[Footnote 2602: Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, ed. Coustelier, vol.

i.]

In 1433, the Constable, with the a.s.sistance of the Queen of Sicily, caused the capture and planned the a.s.sa.s.sination of La Tremouille. It was the custom of the n.o.bles of that day to appoint counsellors for King Charles and afterwards to kill them. However, the sword which was to have caused the death of La Tremouille, owing to his corpulence, failed to inflict a mortal wound. His life was saved, but his influence was dead. King Charles tolerated the Constable as he had tolerated the Sire de la Tremouille.[2603]

[Footnote 2603: Gruel, _Chronique d'Arthur de Richemont_, p. 81.

Vallet de Viriville, in _Nouvelle biographie generale_. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 297. E. Cosneau, _Le connetable de Richemont_, pp. 200, 201.]

The latter left behind him the reputation of having been grasping and indifferent to the welfare of the kingdom. Perhaps his greatest fault was that he governed in a time of war and pillage, when friends and foes alike were devouring the realm. He was charged with the destruction of the Maid, of whom he was said to have been jealous.

This accusation proceeds from the House of Alencon, with whom the Lord Chamberlain was not popular.[2604] On the contrary, it must be admitted, that after the Lord Chancellor, La Tremouille was the boldest in employing the Maid, and if later she did thwart his plans there is nothing to prove that it was his intention to have her destroyed by the English. She destroyed herself and was consumed by her own zeal.

[Footnote 2604: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 170, 173, _pa.s.sim_.]

Rightly or wrongly, the Lord Chamberlain was held to be a bad man; and, although his successor in the King's favour, the Duc de Richemont, was avaricious, hard, violent, incredibly stupid, surly, malicious, always beaten and always discontented, the exchange appeared to be no loss. The Constable came in a fortunate hour, when the Duke of Burgundy was making peace with the King of France.

In the words of a Carthusian friar, the English who had entered the kingdom by the hole made in Duke John's head on the Bridge of Montereau, only retained their hold on the kingdom by the hand of Duke Philip. They were but few in number, and if the giant were to withdraw his hand a breath of wind would suffice to blow them away. The Regent died of sorrow and wrath, beholding the fulfilment of the horoscope of King Henry VI: "Exeter shall lose what Monmouth hath won."[2605]

[Footnote 2605: Carlier, _Histoire des Valois_, 1764, in 4to, vol. ii, p. 442. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, p.

307. The Regent also believed in astrology (B.N. MS. 1352).]

On the 13th of April, 1436, the Count of Richemont entered Paris. The nursing mother of Burgundian clerks and _Cabochien_ doctors, the University herself, had helped to mediate peace.[2606]

[Footnote 2606: Gruel, _Chronique d'Arthur de Richemont_, pp. 120, 121. Dom Felibien, _Histoire de Paris_, vol. iv, p. 597.]

Now, one month after Paris had returned to her allegiance to King Charles, there appeared in Lorraine a certain damsel. She was about twenty-five years old. Hitherto she had been called Claude; but she now made herself known to divers lords of the town of Metz as being Jeanne the Maid.[2607]

[Footnote 2607: _Chronique du doyen de Saint-Thibaud de Metz_, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 321, 324. Jacomin Husson, _Chronique de Metz_, ed. Michelant, Metz, 1870, pp. 64, 65. Cf. Lecoy de la Marche, _Une fausse Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue des questions historiques_, October, 1871, pp. 562 _et seq._ Vergniaud-Romagnesi, _Des portraits de Jeanne d'Arc et de la fausse Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Memoires de la Societe d'Agriculture d'Orleans_, vol. i (1853), pp. 250, 253. De Puymaigre, _La fausse Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue nouvelle d'Alsace-Lorraine_, vol.

v (1885), pp. 533 _et seq._ A. France, _Une fausse Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue des familles_, 15 February, 1891.]

At this time, Jeanne's father and eldest brother were dead.[2608]

Isabelle Romee was alive. Her two youngest sons were in the service of the King of France, who had raised them to the rank of n.o.bility and given them the name of Du Lys. Jean, the eldest, called Pet.i.t-Jean,[2609] had been appointed Bailie of Vermandois, then Captain of Chartres. About this year, 1436, he was provost and captain of Vaucouleurs.[2610]

[Footnote 2608: Varanius alone says that Jacques d'Arc died of sorrow at the loss of his daughter. _Trial_, vol. v, p. 85.]