The Life of Joan of Arc Part 71

[Footnote 1634: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 170, 171.

Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 96. _Livre des trahisons_, pp. 167, 168.]

While she was before the Gascon, there in sight of her were brought forth several craftsmen, held to ransom, who, unable to pay, were straightway despatched to be hanged or drowned. At this spectacle a great fear for her husband came over her; nevertheless, her love for him gave her heart of courage and she paid the ransom. As soon as the Duke's men had counted the coins, they dismissed her saying that her husband had died like the other villeins.

At those cruel words, wild with sorrow and despair, she broke forth into curses and railing. When she refused to be silent, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Vauru had her beaten and taken to the Elm-tree.

There she was stripped to the waist and tied to the Tree, whence hung forty to fifty men, some from the higher, some from the lower branches, so that, when the wind blew, their bodies touched her head.

At nightfall she uttered shrieks so piercing that they were heard in the town. But whosoever had dared to go and unloose her would have been a dead man. Fright, fatigue, and exertion brought on her delivery. The wolves, attracted by her cries, came and consumed the fruit of her womb, and then devoured alive the body of the wretched creature.

In 1422, the town of Meaux was taken by the Burgundians. Then were the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Vauru and his cousin hanged from that Tree on which they had caused so many innocent folk to die so shameful a death.[1635]

[Footnote 1635: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 170. According to Monstrelet (vol. iv, p. 96), Denis de Vauru, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's cousin, was beheaded in the Market of Paris.]

For the poor peasants of these unhappy lands, whether Armagnac or Burgundian, it was all of a piece; they had nothing to gain by changing masters. Nevertheless, it is possible that, on beholding the King, the descendant of Saint Louis and Charles the Wise, they may have taken heart of courage and of hope, so great was the fame for justice and for mercy of the ill.u.s.trious house of France.

Thus, riding by the side of the Archbishop of Reims, the Maid looked with a friendly eye on the peasants crying "Noel!" After saying that she had nowhere seen folk so joyful at the coming of the fair King, she sighed: "Would to G.o.d I were so fortunate as, when I die, to find burial in this land."[1636]

[Footnote 1636: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 326.]

Peradventure the Lord Archbishop was curious to know whether from her Voices she had received any revelation concerning her approaching death. She often said that she would not last long. Doubtless he was acquainted with a prophecy widely known at that time, that the maid would die in the Holy Land, after having reconquered with King Charles the sepulchre of our Lord. There were those who attributed this prophecy to the Maid herself; for she had told her Confessor that she would die in battle with the Infidel, and that after her G.o.d would send a Maid of Rome who would take her place.[1637] And it is obvious that Messire Regnault knew what store to set on such things. At any rate, for that reason or for another, he asked: "Jeanne, in what place look you for to die?"

[Footnote 1637: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 108, 109, 188, 189.]

To which she made answer: "Where it shall please G.o.d. For I am sure neither of the time nor of the place, and I know no more thereof than you."

No answer could have been more devout. My Lord the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, who was present at this conversation, many years later thought he remembered that Jeanne had added: "But I would it were now G.o.d's pleasure for me to retire, leaving my arms, and to go and serve my father and mother, keeping sheep with my brethren and sister."[1638]

[Footnote 1638: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. It is Dunois who is giving evidence, and the text runs: _In custodiendo oves ipsorum, c.u.m sorore et fratribus meis, qui multum gauderent videre me_. But there is reason to believe she had only one sister, whom she had lost before coming into France. As for her brothers, two of them were with her.

Dunois' evidence appears to have been written down by a clerk unacquainted with events. The hagiographical character of the pa.s.sage is obvious.]

If she really spoke thus, it was doubtless because she was haunted by dark forebodings. For some time she had believed herself betrayed.[1639]

Possibly she suspected the Lord Archbishop of Reims of wishing her ill. But it is hard to believe that he can have thought of getting rid of her now when he had employed her with such signal success; rather his intention was to make further use of her. Nevertheless he did not like her, and she felt it. He never consulted her and never told her what had been decided in council. And she suffered cruelly from the small account made of the revelations she was always receiving so abundantly. May we not interpret as a subtle and delicate reproach the utterance in his presence of this wish, this complaint? Doubtless she longed for her absent mother. And yet she was mistaken when she thought that henceforth she could endure the tranquil life of a village maiden. In her childhood at Domremy she seldom went to tend the flocks in the field; she preferred to occupy herself in household affairs;[1640] but if, after having waged war beside the King and the n.o.bles, she had had to return to her country and keep sheep, she would not have stayed there six months. Henceforth it was impossible for her to live save with that knighthood, to whose company she believed G.o.d had called her. All her heart was there, and she had finished with the distaff.

[Footnote 1639: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 423.]

[Footnote 1640: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 51, 66.]

During the march on La Ferte and Crepy, King Charles received a challenge from the Regent, then at Montereau with his baronage, calling upon him to fix a meeting at whatsoever place he should appoint.[1641] "We, who with all our hearts," said the Duke of Bedford, "desire the end of the war, summon and require you, if you have pity and compa.s.sion on the poor folk, who in your cause have so long time been cruelly treated, downtrodden, and oppressed, to appoint a place suitable either in this land of Brie, where we both are, or in l'ile-de-France. There will we meet. And if you have any proposal of peace to make unto us, we will listen to it and as beseemeth a good Catholic prince we will take counsel thereon."[1642]

[Footnote 1641: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 340, 344.]

[Footnote 1642: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 342.]

This arrogant and insulting letter had not been penned by the Regent in any desire or hope of peace, but rather, against all reason, to throw on King Charles's shoulders the responsibility for the miseries and suffering the war was causing the commonalty.

Writing to the King crowned in Reims Cathedral, from the beginning he addresses him in this disdainful manner: "You who were accustomed to call yourself Dauphin of Viennois and who now without reason take unto yourself the t.i.tle of King." He declares that he wants peace and then adds forthwith: "Not a peace hollow, corrupt, feigned, violated, perjured, like that of Montereau, on which, by your fault and your consent, there followed that terrible and detestable murder, committed contrary to all law and honour of knighthood, on the person of our late dear and greatly loved Father, Jean, Duke of Burgundy."[1643]

[Footnote 1643: _Ibid._, pp. 342, 343.]

My Lord of Bedford had married one of the daughters of that Duke Jean, who had been treacherously murdered in revenge for the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Duke of Orleans. But indeed it was not wisely to prepare the way of peace to cast the crime of Montereau in the face of Charles of Valois, who had been dragged there as a child and with whom there had remained ever after a physical trembling and a haunting fear of crossing bridges.[1644]

[Footnote 1644: Georges Chastellain, fragments published by J. Quicherat in _La Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_, 1st series, vol. iv, p.

78.]

For the moment the Duke of Bedford's most serious grievance against Charles was that he was accompanied by the Maid and Friar Richard.

"You cause the ignorant folk to be seduced and deceived," he said, "for you are supported by superst.i.tious and reprobate persons, such as this woman of ill fame and disorderly life, wearing man's attire and dissolute in manners, and likewise by that apostate and seditious mendicant friar, they both alike being, according to Holy Scripture, abominable in the sight of G.o.d."

To strike still greater shame into the heart of the enemy, the Duke of Bedford proceeds to a second attack on the maiden and the monk. And in the most eloquent pa.s.sage of the letter, when he is citing Charles of Valois to appear before him, he says ironically that he expects to see him come led by this woman of ill fame and this apostate monk.[1645]

[Footnote 1645: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 341, 342.]

Thus wrote the Regent of England; albeit he had a mind, subtle, moderate, and graceful, he was moreover a good Catholic and a believer in all manner of devilry and witchcraft.

His horror at the army of Charles of Valois being commanded by a witch and a heretic monk was certainly sincere, and he deemed it wise to publish the scandal. There were doubtless only too many, who, like him, were ready to believe that the Maid of the Armagnacs was a heretic, a worshipper of idols and given to the practice of magic. In the opinion of many worthy and wise Burgundians a prince must forfeit his honour by keeping such company. And if Jeanne were in very deed a witch, what a disgrace! What an abomination! The Flowers de Luce reinstated by the devil! The Dauphin's whole camp was tainted by it.

And yet when my Lord of Bedford spread abroad those ideas he was not so adroit as he thought.

Jeanne, as we know, was good-hearted and in energy untiring. By inspiring the men of her party with the idea that she brought them good luck, she gave them courage.[1646] Nevertheless King Charles's counsellors knew what she could do for them and avoided consulting her. She herself felt that she would not last long.[1647] Then who represented her as a great war leader? Who exalted her as a supernatural power? The enemy.

[Footnote 1646: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 324; vol. iii, p. 130. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388.]

[Footnote 1647: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 99.]

This letter shows how the English had transformed an innocent child into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of h.e.l.l causing the bravest to grow pale. In a voice of lamentation the Regent cries: The devil! the witch! And then he marvels that his fighting men tremble before the Maid, and desert rather than face her.[1648]

[Footnote 1648: _Ibid._, vol. iv, pp. 206, 406, 444, 470, 472. Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. iv, p. 141. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique anglaise_.]

From Montereau, the English army had fallen back on Paris. Now it once again came forth to meet the French. On Sat.u.r.day, the 13th of August, King Charles held the country between Crepy and Paris. Now the Maid from the heights of Dammartin could espy the summit of Montmartre with its windmills, and the light mists from the Seine veiling that great city of Paris, promised to her by those Voices which alas! she had heeded too well.[1649] On the morrow, Sunday, the King and his army encamped in a village, by name Barron, on the River Nonnette on which, five miles lower down, stands Senlis.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 246, 298. Letter from Alain Chartier in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 131 _et seq._]

[Footnote 1650: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 344, 345. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 161, 162.]

Senlis was subject to the English.[1651] It was said that the Regent was approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Saint Pol. With him were the crusaders of the Cardinal of Winchester, the late King's uncle, between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with the Pope's money to go and fight against the Hussites in Bohemia. The Cardinal judged it well to use them against the King of France, a very Christian King forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: "_Ores, vienne la Belle!_"[1653] By these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the Maid of the Armagnacs she would find her work cut out.

[Footnote 1651: Flammermont, _Histoire de Senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans_ (1405-1441), in _Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris_.]

[Footnote 1652: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 101, 102.

_Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 328. _Journal du siege_, p. 118.

Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, pp.

188, 189; vol. iv, appendix xvii. Rymer, _Foedera_, July, 1429.

Raynaldi, _Annales ecclesiastici_, pp. 77, 88. S. Bougenot, _Notices et extraits de ma.n.u.scrits interessant l'histoire de France conserves a la Bibliotheque imperial de Vienne_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 1653: Now, come forth Beauty (W.S.). _Le Livre des trahisons de France_, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, in _La collection des chroniques belges_, 1873, p. 198.]

Captain Jean de Saintrailles, the Brother of Poton, observed the English first when, marching towards Senlis, they were crossing La Nonnette by a ford so narrow that two horses could barely pa.s.s abreast. But King Charles's army, which was coming down the Nonnette valley, did not arrive in time to surprise them.[1654] It pa.s.sed the night opposite them, near Montepilloy.

[Footnote 1654: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 102. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 329. _Journal du siege_, pp. 119, 120.]

On the morrow, Monday, the 15th of August, at daybreak, the men-at-arms heard ma.s.s in camp and, as far as might be, cleared their consciences; for great plunderers and wh.o.r.emongers as they were, they had not given up hope of winning Paradise when this life should be over. That day was a solemn feast, when the Church, on the authority of St. Gregoire de Tours, commemorates the physical and spiritual exaltation to heaven of the Virgin Mary. Churchmen taught that it behoves men to keep the feasts of Our Lord and the Holy Virgin, and that to wage battle on days consecrated to them is to sin grievously against the glorious Mother of G.o.d. No one in King Charles's camp could maintain a contrary opinion, since all were Christians as they were in the camp of the Regent. And yet, immediately after the _Deo Gratias_, every man took up his post ready for battle.[1655]