The Life of Joan of Arc Part 72

[Footnote 1655: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161.]

According to the established rule, the army was in several divisions: the van-guard, the archers, the main body, the rear-guard and the three wings.[1656] Further, and according to the same rule, there had been formed a skirmishing company, destined if need were to succour and reinforce the other divisions. It was commanded by Captain La Hire, my Lord the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and the Sire d'Albret, La Tremouille's half-brother. With this company was the Maid. At the Battle of Patay, despite her entreaties, she had been forced to keep with the rear-guard; now she rode with the bravest and ablest, with those skirmishers or scouts, whose duty it was, says Jean de Bueil,[1657] to repulse the scouts of the opposite party and to observe the number and the ordering of the enemy.[1658] At length justice was done her; at length she was a.s.signed the place which her skill in horsemanship and her courage in battle merited; and yet she hesitated to follow her comrades. According to the report of a Burgundian knight chronicler, there she was, "swayed to and fro, at one moment wishing to fight, at another not."[1659]

[Footnote 1656: _Le Jouvencel_, _pa.s.sim_.]

[Footnote 1657: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 329. _Journal du siege_, p. 121.]

[Footnote 1658: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. 35.]

[Footnote 1659: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 346.]

Her perplexity is easily comprehensible. The little Saint could not bring herself to decide whether to ride forth to battle on the day of our Lady's Feast or to fold her arms while fighting was going on around her. Her Voices intensified her indecision. They never instructed her what to do save when she knew herself. In the end she went with the men-at-arms, not one of whom appears to have shared her scruples. The two armies were but the s.p.a.ce of a culverin shot apart.[1660] She, with certain of her company, went right up to the d.y.k.es and to the carts, behind which the English were entrenched.

Sundry _G.o.dons_ and men of Picardy came forth from their camp and fought, some on foot, others on horseback against an equal number of French. On both sides there were wounded, and prisoners were taken.

This hand to hand fighting continued the whole day; at sunset the most serious skirmish happened, and so much dust was raised that it was impossible to see anything.[1661] On that day there befell what had happened on the 17th of June, between Beaugency and Meung. With the armaments and the customs of warfare of those days, it was very difficult to force an army to come out of its entrenched camp.

Generally, if a battle was to be fought, it was necessary for the two sides to be in accord, and, after the pledge of battle had been sent and accepted, for each to level his own half of the field where the engagement was to take place.

[Footnote 1660: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162.]

[Footnote 1661: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de la Pucelle_. _Journal du siege._ Monstrelet, _loc. cit._]

At nightfall the skirmishing ceased, and the two armies slept at a crossbow-shot from each other. Then King Charles went off to Crepy, leaving the English free to go and relieve the town of evreux, which had agreed to surrender on the 27th of August. With this town the Regent made sure of Normandy.[1662]

[Footnote 1662: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 332. Perceval de Cagny, p.

165. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 106. Cochon, p. 457. G.

Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique anglaise_, Paris, 1894, in 8vo, pp. 10, 11. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 215, note 3. Ch. de Beaurepaire, _De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination anglaise aux annees 1424, 1425, 1429_, p. 62 (_Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie_, vol. xxiv).]

Their loss of the opportunity of conquering Normandy was the price the French had to pay for the royal coronation procession, for that march to Reims, which was at once military, civil and religious. If, after the victory of Patay, they had hastened at once to Rouen, Normandy would have been reconquered and the English cast into the sea; if, from Patay they had pushed on to Paris they would have entered the city without resistance. Yet we must not too hastily condemn that ceremonious promenading of the Lilies through Champagne. By the march to Reims the French party, those Armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little King of Bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of Maine and the duchy of Normandy and than a victorious a.s.sault on the first city of the realm. By retaking his towns of Champagne and of France without bloodshed, King Charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities.

In short, by concluding that campaign of honest and successful negotiations and by the august ceremonial of the coronation, he came forth at once as the lawful and very holy King of France.

An ill.u.s.trious lady, a descendant of Bolognese n.o.bles and the widow of a knight of Picardy, well versed in the liberal arts, was the author of a number of lays, virelays,[1663] and ballads. Christine de Pisan, n.o.ble and high-minded, wrote with distinction in prose and verse.

Loyal to France and a champion of her s.e.x, there was nothing she more fervently desired than to see the French prosperous and their ladies honoured. In her old age she was cloistered in the Abbey of Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. There, on the 31st of July, 1429, she completed a poem of sixty-one stanzas, each containing eight lines of eight syllables, in praise of the Maid. In halting measures and affected language, these verses expressed the thoughts of the finest, the most cultured and the most pious souls touching the angel of war sent of G.o.d to the Dauphin Charles.[1664]

[Footnote 1663: A virelay was a later variation of the lay, differing from it chiefly in the arrangement of the rhymes (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1664: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, _Paris et ses historiens_, pp. 426 _et seq._]

In this work she begins by saying that for eleven years she has spent her cloistered life in weeping. And in very truth, this n.o.ble-hearted woman wept over the misfortunes of the realm, into which she had been born, wherein she had grown up, where kings and princes had received her and learned poets had done her honour, and the language of which she spoke with the precision of a purist. After eleven years of mourning, the victories of the Dauphin were her first joy.

"At length," she says, "the sun begins to shine once more and the fine days to bloom again. That royal child so long despised and offended, behold him coming, wearing on his head a crown and accoutred with spurs of gold. Let us cry: 'Noel! Charles, the seventh of that great name, King of the French, thou hast recovered thy kingdom, with the help of a Maid.'"

Christine recalls a prophecy concerning a King, Charles, son of Charles, surnamed The Flying Hart,[1665] who was to be emperor. Of this prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of King Charles VII was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an Italian merchant, written in 1429, contains an obscure announcement of the coronation of the Dauphin at Rome.[1666]

[Footnote 1665: A winged stag (_le cerf-volant_) is the symbol of a king. Froissart thus explains its origin. Before setting out for Flanders, in 1382, Charles VI dreamed that his falcon had flown away.

"Th[=e] [Transcriber's Note: e with macron] apered sodenly before hym a great hart with wynges whereof he had great joye." And the hart bore him to his lost bird. Froissart, Bk. II, ch. clxiv. [The Chronycle of Syr John Froissart translated by Lord Berners, vol. iii, p. 339, Tudor Translation, 1901.] (W.S.) According to Juvenal des Ursins, Charles VI, in 1380, met in the Forest of Senlis a stag with a golden collar bearing this inscription: _Hoc me Caesar donavit_ (Paillot, _Parfaite science des armoiries_, Paris, 1660, in fo., p. 595). In the works of Eustache Deschamps this same allegory is frequently employed to designate the king. (Eustache Deschamps, _OEuvres_, ed. G. Raynaud, vol. ii, p. 57.)]

[Footnote 1666: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 66, 67.]

"I pray G.o.d," continued Christine, "that thou mayest be that one, that G.o.d will grant thee life to see thy children grow up, that through thee and through them, France may have joy, that serving G.o.d, thou wage not war to the utterance. My hope is that thou shalt be good, upright, a friend of justice, greater than any other, that pride sully not thy prowess, that thou be gentle, favourable to thy people and fearing G.o.d who hath chosen thee to serve him.

"And thou, Maid most happy, most honoured of G.o.d, thou hast loosened the cord with which France was bound. Canst thou be praised enough, thou who hast brought peace to this land laid low by war?

"Jeanne, born in a propitious hour, blessed be thy creator! Maid, sent of G.o.d, in whom the Holy Ghost shed abroad a ray of his grace, who hast from him received and dost keep gifts in abundance; never did he refuse thy request. Who can ever be thankful enough unto thee?"

The Maid, saviour of the realm, Dame Christine compares to Moses who delivered Israel out of the Land of Egypt.

"That a Maid should proffer her breast, whence France may suck the sweet milk of peace, behold a matter which is above nature!

"Joshua was a mighty conqueror. What is there strange in that, since he was a strong man? But now behold, a woman, a shepherdess doth appear, of greater worship than any man. But with G.o.d all things are easy.

"By Esther, Judith and Deborah, women of high esteem, he delivered his oppressed people. And well I know there have been women of great worship. But Jeanne is above all. Through her G.o.d hath worked many miracles.

"By a miracle was she sent; the angel of the Lord led her to the King."

"Before she could be believed, to clerks and to scholars was she taken and thoroughly examined. She said she was come from G.o.d, and history proved her saying to be true, for Merlin, the Sibyl and Bede had seen her in the spirit. In their books they point to her as the saviour of France, and in their prophecies they let wit of her, saying: 'In the French wars she shall bear the banner.' And indeed they relate all the manner of her history."

We are not astonished that Dame Christine should have been acquainted with the Sibylline poems; for it is known that she was well versed in the writings of the ancients. But we perceive that the obviously mutilated prophecy of Merlin the Magician and the apocryphal chronogram of the Venerable Bede had come under her notice. The predictions and verses of the Armagnac ecclesiastics were spread abroad everywhere with amazing rapidity.[1667]

[Footnote 1667: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 133, 338, 340 _et seq._; vol. iv, pp. 305, 480; vol. v, p. 12.]

Dame Christine's views concerning the Maid accord with those of the doctors of the French party; and the poem she wrote in her convent in many pa.s.sages bears resemblance to the treatise of the Archbishop of Embrun.

There it is said:

"The goodness of her life proves that Jeanne possesses the grace of G.o.d.

"It was made manifest, when at the siege of Orleans her might revealed itself. Never was miracle plainer. G.o.d did so succour his own people, that the strength of the enemy was but as that of a dead dog. They were taken or slain.

"Honour to the feminine s.e.x, G.o.d loves it. A damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? The enemy flees before her. Many eyes behold it.

"She goeth forth capturing towns and castles. She is the first captain of our host. Such power had not Hector or Achilles. But G.o.d, who leads her, does all.

"And you, ye men-at-arms, who suffer durance vile and risk your lives for the right, be ye faithful: in heaven shall ye have reward and glory, for whosoever fighteth for the just cause, winneth Paradise.

"Know ye that by her the English shall be cast down, for it is the will of G.o.d, who inclineth his ear to the voice of the good folk, whom they desired to overthrow. The blood of the slain crieth against them."

In the shadow of her convent Dame Christine shares the hope common to every n.o.ble soul; from the Maid she expects all the good things she longs for. She believes that Jeanne will restore concord to the Christian Church. The gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that Christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. Wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the Maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words the Turk and the Hussite.

"In her conquest of the Holy Land, she will tear up the Saracens like weeds. Thither will she lead King Charles, whom G.o.d defend! Before he dies he shall make that journey. He it is who shall conquer the land.

There shall she end her life. There shall the thing come to pa.s.s."

The good Christine would appear to have brought her poem to this conclusion when she received tidings of the King's coronation. She then added thirteen stanzas to celebrate the mystery of Reims and to foretell the taking of Paris.[1668]

[Footnote 1668: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 3 _et seq._ R. Thoma.s.sy, _Essai sur les ecrits politiques de Christine de Pisan, suivi d'une notice litteraire et de pieces inedites_, Paris, 1838, in 8vo.]

Thus in the gloom and silence of one of those convents where even the hushed noises of the world penetrated but seldom, this virtuous lady collected and expressed in rhyme all those dreams of church and state which centred round a child.

In a fairly good ballad written at the time of the coronation, in love and honour "of the beautiful garden of the n.o.ble flowers de luce,"[1669]

and for the elevation of the white cross, King Charles VII is described by that mysterious name "the n.o.ble stag," which we have first discovered in Christine's poem. The unknown author of the ballad says that the Sibyl, daughter of King Priam, prophesied the misfortunes of this royal stag; but such a prediction need not surprise us, when we remember that Charles of Valois was of Priam's royal line, wherefore Ca.s.sandra, when she revealed the destiny of the Flying Hart, did but prolong down the centuries the vicissitudes of her own family.[1670]