The Life of Joan of Arc Part 66

Guillaume Girault, former magistrate of the town and notary at the Chatelet, wrote and signed, with his own hand, a brief account of the deliverance of the city. Herein he states that on Wednesday, Ascension Eve, the bastion of Saint-Loup was stormed and taken as if by miracle, "there being present, and aiding in the fight, Jeanne the Maid, sent of G.o.d;" and that, on the following Sat.u.r.day, the siege laid by the English to Les Tourelles at the end of the bridge was raised by the most obvious miracle since the Pa.s.sion. And Guillaume Girault testifies that the Maid led the enterprise.[1551] When eye-witnesses, partic.i.p.ators in the deeds themselves, had no clear idea of events, what could those more remote from the scene of action think of them?

[Footnote 1551: _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 282, 283.]

The tidings of the French victories flew with astonishing rapidity.[1552] The brevity of authentic accounts was amply supplemented by the eloquence of loquacious clerks and the popular imagination. The Loire campaign and the coronation expedition were scarcely known at first save by fabulous reports, and the people only thought of them as supernatural events.

[Footnote 1552: Tidings of the Deliverance of Orleans sent from Bruges to Venice the 10th of May (Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 23, 24).]

In the letters sent by royal secretaries to the towns of the realm and the princes of Christendom, the name of Jeanne the Maid was a.s.sociated with all the deeds of prowess. Jeanne herself, by her monastic scribe, made known to all the great deeds which, it was her firm belief, she had accomplished.[1553]

[Footnote 1553: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 123, 139, 145, 147, 156, 159, 161.]

It was believed that everything had been done through her, that the King had consulted her in all things, when in truth the King's counsellors and the Captains rarely asked her advice, listened to it but seldom, and brought her forth only at convenient seasons.

Everything was attributed to her alone. Her personality, a.s.sociated with deeds attested and seemingly marvellous, became buried in a vast cycle of astonishing fables and disappeared in a forest of heroic stories.[1554]

[Footnote 1554: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 60, 61.]

Contrite souls there were in those days, who, ascribing all the woes of the kingdom to the sins of the people, looked for salvation to humility, repentance, and penance.[1555] They expected the end of iniquity and the kingdom of G.o.d on earth. Jeanne, at least in the beginning, was one of those pious folk. Sometimes, speaking as a mystic reformer, she would say that Jesus is King of the holy realm of France, that King Charles is his lieutenant, and does but hold the kingdom "in fief."[1556] She uttered words which would create the impression that her mission was all charity, peace, and love,--these, for example, "I am sent to comfort the poor and needy."[1557] Such gentle penitents as dreamed of a world pure, faithful, and good, made of Jeanne their saint and their prophetess. They ascribed to her edifying words she had never uttered.

[Footnote 1555: Saint Vincent Ferrier; and Saint Bernardino of Siena.]

[Footnote 1556: See _ante_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 1557: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 88.]

"When the Maid came to the King," they said, "she caused him to make three promises: the first was to resign his kingdom, to renounce it and give it back to G.o.d, from whom he held it; the second, to pardon all such as had turned against him and afflicted him; the third, to humiliate himself so far as to receive into favour all such as should come to him, poor and rich, friend and foe."[1558]

[Footnote 1558: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 52-53. See _ante_, p. 184.]

Or again, in apologues, simple and charming, like the following, they represented her accomplishing her mission:

"One day, the Maid asked the King to bestow a present upon her; and when he consented, she claimed as a gift the realm of France. Though astonished, the King did not withdraw his promise. Having received her present, the Maid required a deed of gift to be solemnly drawn up by four of the King's notaries and read aloud. While the King listened to the reading, she pointed him out to those that stood by, saying: 'Behold the poorest knight in the kingdom.' Then, after a short time, disposing of the realm of France, she gave it back to G.o.d. Thereafter, acting in G.o.d's name, she invested King Charles with it and commanded that this solemn act of transmission should be recorded in writing."[1559]

[Footnote 1559: L. Delisle, _Un nouveau temoignage relatif a la mission de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_, vol. xlvi, p. 649. Le P. Ayroles, _La Pucelle devant l'eglise de son temps_, pp. 57, 58.]

It was believed that Jeanne had prophesied that on Saint John the Baptist's Day, 1429, not an Englishman should be left in France.[1560]

These simple folk expected their saint's promises to be fulfilled on the day she had fixed. They maintained that on the 23rd of June she had entered the city of Rouen, and that on the morrow, Saint John the Baptist's day, the inhabitants of Paris had of their own accord, opened their gates to the King of France. In the month of July these stories were being told in Avignon.[1561] Reformers, numerous it would seem in France and throughout Christendom, believed that the Maid would organise the English and French on monastic lines and make of them one nation of pious beggars, one brotherhood of penitents.

According to them, the following were the intentions of the two parties and the clauses of the treaty:

[Footnote 1560: Letter written by the agents of a town or of a prince of Germany, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 351.]

[Footnote 1561: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 38, 46, 61.]

"King Charles of Valois bestows universal pardon and is willing to forget all wrongs. The English and French, having turned to contrition and repentance, are endeavouring to conclude a good and binding peace. The Maid herself has imposed conditions upon them.

Conforming to her will, the English and French for one year or for two will wear a grey habit, with a little cross sewn upon it; on every Friday they will live on bread and water; they will dwell in unity with their wives and will seek no other women. They promise G.o.d not to make war except for the defense of their country."[1562]

[Footnote 1562: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 64, 65.]

During the coronation campaign, nothing being known of the agreement between the King's men and the people of Auxerre, towards the end of July, it was related that the town having been taken by storm, four thousand five hundred citizens had been killed and likewise fifteen hundred men-at-arms, knights as well as squires belonging to the parties of Burgundy and Savoy. Among the n.o.bles slain were mentioned Humbert Marechal, Lord of Varambon, and a very famous warrior, le Viau de Bar. Stories were told of treasons and ma.s.sacres, horrible adventures in which the Maid was a.s.sociated with that knave of hearts who was already famous. She was said to have had twelve traitors beheaded.[1563] Such tales were real romances of chivalry. Here is one of them:

[Footnote 1563: _Ibid._, pp. 144 _et seq._]

About two thousand English surrounded the King's camp, watching to see if they could do him some hurt. Then the Maid called Captain La Hire and said to him: "Thou hast in thy time done great prowess, but to-day G.o.d prepares for thee a deed greater than any thou hast yet performed.

Take thy men and go to such and such a wood two leagues herefrom, and there shalt thou find two thousand English, all lance in hand; them shalt thou take and slay."

La Hire went forth to the English and all were taken and slain as the Maid had said.[1564]

[Footnote 1564: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 150, 153.]

Such were the fairy-stories told of Jeanne to the joy of simple primitive folk, who delighted in the idea of a maid slayer of giants and remover of mountains.

There was a rumour that after the sack of Auxerre, the Duke of Burgundy had been defeated and taken in a great battle, that the Regent was dead and that the Armagnacs had entered Paris.[1565]

Prodigies were said to have attended the capitulation of Troyes. On the coming of the French, it was told how the townsfolk beheld from their ramparts a vast mult.i.tude of men-at-arms, some five or six thousand, each man holding a white pennon in his hand. On the departure of the French, they beheld them again, ranged but a bow-shot behind King Charles. These knights with white pennons vanished when the King had gone; for they were as miraculous as those white-scarfed knights, whom the Bretons had seen riding in the sky but shortly before.[1566]

[Footnote 1565: _Ibid._, pp. 166, 167.]

[Footnote 1566: Fragment of a letter on the marvels in Poitou, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 121, 122. _Relation du greffier de La Roch.e.l.le_, _op. cit._, p. 343.]

All that the people of Orleans beheld when their siege was suddenly raised, all that Armagnac mendicants and the Dauphin's clerks related was greedily received, accredited, and amplified. Three months after her coming to Chinon, Jeanne had her legend, which grew and increased and extended into Italy, Flanders, and Germany.[1567] In the summer of 1429, this legend was already formed. All the scattered parts of what may be described as the gospel of her childhood existed.

[Footnote 1567: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 78, note 1. Eberhard Windecke, _pa.s.sim_. Fauche-Prunelle, _Lettres tirees des archives de Gren.o.ble_ in _Bull. Acad. delph._, vol. ii, 1847, 1849, pp. 459, 460. Letter written by deputies, agents of a German town, in _Trial_, vol. v, p.

347. Letter from Jean Desch, Secretary of the town of Metz, _ibid._, pp. 352, 355.]

At the age of seven Jeanne kept sheep; the wolves did not molest her flock; the birds of the field, when she called them, came and ate bread from her lap. The wicked had no power over her. No one beneath her roof need fear man's fraud or ill-will.[1568]

[Footnote 1568: Letters from Perceval de Boulainvilliers to the Duke of Milan, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 114, 116.]

When it is a Latin poet who is writing, the miracles attending Jeanne's birth a.s.sume a Roman majesty and are clothed with the august dignity of ancient myths. Thus it is curious to find a humanist of 1429 summoning the Italian muse to the cradle of Zabillet Romee's daughter.

"The thunder rolled, the ocean shuddered, the earth shook, the heavens were on fire, the universe rejoiced visibly; a strange transport mingled with fear moved the enraptured nations. They sing sweet verses and dance in harmonious motion at the sign of the salvation prepared for the French people by this celestial birth."[1569]

[Footnote 1569: Anonymous poem on the coming of the Maid and the Deliverance of Orleans, _Trial_, vol. v, p. 27, line 70 _et seq._]

Moreover an attempt was made to represent the wonders that had heralded the nativity of Jesus as having been repeated on the birth of Jeanne. It was imagined that she was born on the night of the Epiphany. The shepherds of her village, moved by an indescribable joy, the cause of which was unknown to them, hastened through the darkness towards the marvellous mystery. The c.o.c.ks, heralds of this new joy, sing at an unusual season and, flapping their wings, seem to prophesy for two hours. Thus the child in her cradle had her adoration of the shepherds.[1570]

[Footnote 1570: "_In nocte Epiphaniarum_," says the letter from Perceval de Boulainvilliers (_Trial_, vol. v, p. 116), that is, Jan.

6. For centuries, even after the fourth century, the birth of our Lord was celebrated on that day. In France it was the Feast of Kings and then was sung the anthem: _Magi videntes stellam_.]

Of her coming into France there was much to tell. It was related that in the Chateau of Chinon she had recognised the King, whom she had never seen before, and had gone straight to him, although he was but poorly clad and surrounded by his baronage.[1571] It was said that she had given the King a sign, that she had revealed a secret to him; and that on the revelation of the secret, known to him alone, he had been illuminated with a heavenly joy. Concerning this interview at Chinon, while those present had little to say, the stories of many who were not there were interminable.[1572]

[Footnote 1571: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 116, 192. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 273. _Journal du siege_, p. 47. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 67. _Relation du greffier de La Roch.e.l.le_, pp.

336, 337. Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, vol. i, p. 96.]

[Footnote 1572: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 103, 116, 209, _pa.s.sim_.

_Journal du siege_, p. 48. Th. Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.

i, p. 68. _Mirouer des femmes vertueuses_, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p.

271. Pierre Sala, _ibid._, p. 280. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 104.

Eberhard Windecke, p. 153.]

On the 7th of May, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a white dove alighted on the Maid's standard; and on the same day, during the a.s.sault, two white birds were seen to be flying over her head.[1573]