The Life of Joan of Arc Part 21

These rude comrades did not all preserve an att.i.tude of religious respect in her presence. Certain mocked her and diverted themselves by talking before her as if they belonged to the English party.

Sometimes, as a joke, they got up a false alarm and pretended to turn back. Their jests were wasted. She believed them, but she was not afraid, and would say gravely to those who thought to frighten her with the English: "Be sure not to flee. I tell you in G.o.d's name, they will not harm you."[452]

[Footnote 452: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 199.]

Ever at the approach of danger whether real or feigned, there came to her lips the words of encouragement: "Do not be afraid. You will see how graciously the fair Dauphin will look upon us when we come to Chinon."[453]

[Footnote 453: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 458.]

Her greatest grief was that she could not pray in church as often as she would like. Every day she repeated: "If we could, we should do well to hear ma.s.s."[454]

[Footnote 454: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 438.]

As they avoided high roads they were not often in the way of bridges; and they were frequently forced to ford rivers in flood. They crossed the Aube, near Bar-sur-Aube, the Seine near Bar-sur-Seine, the Yonne opposite Auxerre, where Jeanne heard ma.s.s in the church of Saint-Etienne; then they reached the town of Gien, on the right bank of the Loire.[455]

[Footnote 455: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 54; vol. ii, p. 437.]

At length these Lorrainers beheld a French town loyal to the King of France. They had travelled seventy-five leagues through the enemy's country without being attacked or molested. Afterwards this was considered miraculous. But was it impossible for seven or eight Armagnac hors.e.m.e.n to traverse English and Burgundian lands without misadventure? The Commander of Vaucouleurs frequently sent letters to the Dauphin which reached him, and the Dauphin was in the habit of despatching messengers to the Commander; Colet de Vienne had just borne his message.[456]

[Footnote 456: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 406, 432, 445, 448, 457.]

In point of fact the followers of the Dauphin ran risks well nigh as great in the provinces under his sway as in lands subject to other masters.[457]

[Footnote 457: Monstrelet, vol. v, p. 269. Th. Basin, vol. i, p. 44.

Bueil, _Le jouvencel_, introduction. Royal Pardons, in E. Boutaric, _Inst.i.tutions militaires de la France avant les armees permanentes...._ 1863, in 8vo, p. 266. _Recit du prieur de Droillet_, ed. Quicherat, in _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_, fourth series, vol. iii, p.

359. Mantellier, _Histoire de la communaute des marchands frequentant la riviere de Loire_, vol. i, p. 195. Le P. H. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres, hopitaux en France, vers le milieu du XV'e siecle_, Macon, in 8vo.]

Freebooters in the pay of King Charles, when they pillaged travellers and held them to ransom, did not stay to ask whether they were Armagnacs or Burgundians. Indeed, it was after their pa.s.sage of the Loire that Bertrand de Poulengy and his companions found themselves exposed to the greatest danger.

Informed of their approach, certain men-at-arms of the French party went before and lay in ambush, waiting to surprise them. They intended to capture the damsel, cast her into a pit, and keep her there beneath a great stone, in the hope that the King who had sent for her would give a large sum for her rescue.[458] It was the custom for freebooters and mercenaries thus to cast travellers into pits delivering them on payment of ransom. Eighteen years before, at Corbeil, five men had been kept in a pit on bread and water by Burgundians. Three of them died, being unable to pay the ransom.[459]

Such a fate very nearly befell Jeanne. But the wretches who were lying in wait for her, at the moment when they should have struck did nothing, wherefore is unknown, perhaps because they were afraid of not being the stronger.[460]

[Footnote 458: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 203.]

[Footnote 459: Abbe J.-J. Boura.s.se, _Les miracles de Madame Sainte Katerine de Fierboys en Touraine, d'apres un ma.n.u.scrit de la Bibliotheque Imperiale_, Paris, in 12mo, 1858, p. 28.]

[Footnote 460: I have here interwoven the account given by Seguin, _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 203, with that of Touroulde, _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 86, 87. It seems to me the same incident reported summarily by the former, inexactly by the latter.]

From Gien, the little company followed the northern boundary of the duchy of Berry, crossed into Blesois, possibly pa.s.sed through Selles-sur-Cher and Saint-Aignan, then, having entered Touraine, reached the green slopes of Fierbois.[461] There one of the two heavenly ladies, who daily discoursed familiarly with the peasant girl, had her most famous sanctuary; there it was that Saint Catherine received mult.i.tudes of pilgrims and worked great miracles. According to popular belief the origin of her worship in this place was warlike and national and dated back to the beginning of French history. It was known that after his victory over the Saracens at Poitiers Charles Martel had placed his sword in the oratory of the Blessed Catherine.[462] But it must be admitted that since then the sanctuary had long suffered from desertion and neglect. Rather more than forty years before the coming of the damsel from Domremy, its walls in the depths of a wood were overrun by briers and brambles.

[Footnote 461: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 56, 75; vol. iii, pp. 3, 21; vol.

v, p. 378.]

[Footnote 462: That Saint Catherine was known in the west shortly before the Crusades is possible, but not that her worship should date back to Charles Martel; at any rate it flourished in the days of Jeanne d'Arc. _Cf._ H. Moranville, _Un pelerinage en Terre sainte et au Sinai au XV'e siecle_, in the _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_, vol. lxvi (1905), pp. 70 _et seq._]

In those days it was not uncommon for saints of both s.e.xes, if they had suffered from some unjust neglect, to come and complain to some pious person of the wrong being done them on earth. They appeared possibly to a monk, to a peasant or a citizen, denounced the impiety of the faithful in terms urgent and sometimes violent, and commanded him to reinstate their worship and restore their sanctuary. And this is what Madame Saint Catherine did. In the year 1375 she entrusted a knight of the neighbourhood of Fierbois, one Jean G.o.defroy, who was blind and paralysed, with the restoration of her oratory to its old brilliance and fame, promising to cure him if he would pray for nine days in the place where Charles Martel had put his sword. Jean G.o.defroy had himself carried to the deserted chapel, but beforehand his servants must perforce hew a way through the thicket with their axes. Madame Saint Catherine restored to Jean G.o.defroy the use of his eyes and his limbs, and it was by this benefit that she recalled to the people of Touraine the glory they had slighted. The oratory was repaired; the faithful again wended their way thither, and miracles abounded. At first the saint healed the sick; then, when the land was ravaged by war, it was her office more especially to deliver from the hands of the English such prisoners as had recourse to her. Sometimes she rendered captives invisible to their guards; sometimes she broke bonds, chains, and locks; to wit, those of a n.o.bleman by name Cazin du Boys, who in 1418 was taken with the garrison of Beaumont-sur-Oise.

Locked in an iron cage, bound with a strong rope on which slept a Burgundian, he thought on Madame Saint Catherine, and dedicated himself to this glorious virgin. Immediately the cage was opened.

Sometimes she even constrained the English to unchain their prisoners themselves and set them free without ransom. That was a great miracle.

One no less great was worked by her on Perrot Chapon, of Saint-Sauveur, near Luzarches. For a month Perrot had been in bonds in an English prison, when he dedicated himself to Saint Catherine and fell asleep. He awoke, still bound, in his own house.

Generally she helped those who helped themselves. Such was the case of Jean Ducoudray, citizen of Saumur, a prisoner in the castle of Belleme in 1429. He commended his soul devoutly to Saint Catherine, then leapt forth, throttled the guard, climbed the ramparts, dropped the height of two lances, and went out a free man into the country.[463]

[Footnote 463: _Les miracles de Madame Sainte Katerine_, _pa.s.sim_. G.

Launay, Article in _Bull. soc. archeol. du Vendomois_, 1880, vol. xix, pp. 23-25.]

Perhaps these miracles would have been less frequent had the English been in greater force in France; but their men were few: in Normandy they intrenched themselves in towns, abandoning the open country to soldiers of fortune who ranged the district and captured convoys, thus greatly promoting the intervention of Madame Saint Catherine.[464]

[Footnote 464: G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La guerre des partisans dans la Haute Normandie_ (1424-1429), in _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_ (1893-1896).]

The prisoners, who had become her votaries and whom she had delivered, discharged their vows by making the pilgrimage to Fierbois. In her chapel there, they hung the cords and chains with which they had been bound, their armour, and sometimes, in special cases, the armour of the enemy.

This had been done nine months before Jeanne's coming to Fierbois by a certain knight, Jean du Chastel. He had escaped from the hands of a captain, who accused him of having committed treason thereby, alleging that du Chastel had given him his word of honour. Du Chastel on the other hand maintained that he had not sworn, and he challenged the captain to meet him in single combat. The issue of the combat proved right to be on the side of the French knight; for with the aid of Madame Saint Catherine he was victorious. In return he came to Fierbois to offer to his holy protectress the armour of the vanquished Englishman, in the presence of my Lord, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Orleans, of Captain La Hire and several other n.o.bles.[465]

[Footnote 465: _Les miracles de Madame Sainte Katerine_, _pa.s.sim_.]

Jeanne must have delighted to hear tell of such miracles, or others like them, and to see so many weapons hanging from the chapel walls.

She must have been well pleased that the saint who visited her at all hours and gave her counsel should so manifestly appear the friend of poor soldiers and peasants cast into bonds, cages and pits, or hanged on trees by the _G.o.dons_.

She prayed in the chapel and heard two ma.s.ses.[466]

[Footnote 466: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 75.]

CHAPTER V

THE SIEGE OF ORLeANS FROM THE 12TH OF OCTOBER, 1428, TILL THE 6TH OF MARCH, 1429

Since the victory of Verneuil and the conquest of Maine, the English had advanced but little in France and their actual possessions there were becoming less and less secure.[467] If they spared the lands of the Duke of Orleans it was not on account of any scruple. Albeit on the banks of the Loire it was held dishonourable to seize the domains of a n.o.ble when he was a prisoner,[468] everything is fair in war. The Regent had not scrupled to seize the duchy of Alencon when its duke was a prisoner.[469] The truth is that by bribes and entreaties the good Duke Charles dissuaded the English from attacking his duchy. From 1424 until 1426 the citizens of Orleans purchased peace by money payments.[470] The _G.o.dons_, not being in a position to take the field, were all the more ready to enter into such agreements. During the minority of their half English and half French King, the Duke of Gloucester, the brother and deputy of the Regent, and his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of the Kingdom, were tearing out each other's hair, and their disputes were the occasion of bloodshed in the London streets.[471] Towards the end of the year 1425 the Regent returned to England, where he spent seventeen months reconciling uncle and nephew and restoring public peace. By dint of craft and vigour he succeeded so far as to render his fellow countrymen desirous and hopeful of completing the conquest of France. With that object, in 1428, the English Parliament voted subsidies.[472]

[Footnote 467: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 190. Alain Chartier, _L'esperance ou consolation des trois vertus_, in _Oeuvres_, p. 271. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 14.]

[Footnote 468: _Mistere du siege_, line 497.]

[Footnote 469: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 21, 22.]

[Footnote 470: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 255. _Chronique de l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la fete_ in the _Trial_, vol. v, p. 286. Le Maire, _Histoire et antiquites de la ville et d.u.c.h.e d'Orleans_, Orleans, 1645, in 4to, pp. 129 _et seq._ Lottin, _Recherches historiques sur la ville d'Orleans_, Orleans, 1836-1845 (7 vols. in 8vo), vol. i, p.

197.]

[Footnote 471: Joseph Stevenson, _Letters and Papers_, Introduction, vol. i, p. xlvii. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p.

17.]

[Footnote 472: Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. iv, part iv, p. 135.

Mademoiselle A. de Villaret, _Campagne des Anglais dans l'Orleanais, la Beauce chartraine et le Gatinais_ (1421-1428), Orleans, 1893, in 8vo, original doc.u.ments, p. 134. Stevenson, _Letters and Papers_, vol.

i, pp. 403 _et seq._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF ORLeANS, 1428-1429]