The Life of Joan of Arc Part 83

[Footnote 1901: Accounts of the fortress, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 259, 260.]

On the third of March she followed King Charles to Sully.[1902] The chateau, in which she lodged near the King, belonged to the Sire de la Tremouille, who had inherited it from his mother, Marie de Sully, the daughter of Louis I of Bourbon. It had been recaptured from the English after the deliverance of Orleans.[1903] A stronghold on the Loire, on the highroad from Paris to Autun, and commanding the plain between Orleans and Briare and the ancient bridge with twenty arches, the chateau of Sully linked together central France and those northern provinces which Jeanne had so regretfully quitted, and whither with all her heart she longed to return to engage in fresh expeditions and fresh sieges.

[Footnote 1902: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 159.]

[Footnote 1903: Perceval de Cagny, p. 173. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 258. _Berry_, in G.o.defroy, p. 376. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 294, notes 4, 5. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, pp. 139, 163. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p.

144.]

During the first fortnight of March, from the townsfolk of Reims she received a message in which they confided to her fears only too well grounded.[1904] On the 8th of March the Regent had granted to the Duke of Burgundy the counties of Champagne and of Brie on condition of his reconquering them.[1905] Armagnacs and English vied with each other in offering the biggest and most tempting morsels to this Gargantuan Duke. Not being able to keep their promise and deliver to him Compiegne which refused to be delivered, the French offered him in its place Pont-Sainte-Maxence.[1906] But it was Compiegne that he wanted.

The truces, which had been very imperfectly kept, were to have expired at Christmas, but first they had been prolonged till the 15th of March and then till Easter. In the year 1430 Easter fell on the 16th of April; and Duke Philip was only waiting for that date to put an army in the field.[1907]

[Footnote 1904: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 378. D. Plancher, _Histoire de Bourgogne_, vol. iv, p. 137. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 268.]

[Footnote 1905: Du Tillet, _Recueil des rois de France_, vol. ii, p. 39 (ed. 1601-1602). Rymer, _Foedera_, March, 1430.]

[Footnote 1906: P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, pp. 35, 152.]

[Footnote 1907: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp.

351, 389.]

In a manner concise and vivacious the Maid replied to the townsfolk of Reims:

"Dear friends and beloved and mightily desired. Jehenne the Maid hath received your letters making mention that ye fear a siege. Know ye that it shall not so betide, and I may but encounter them shortly. And if I do not encounter them and they do not come to you, if you shut your gates firmly, I shall shortly be with you: and if they be there, I shall make them put on their spurs so hastily that they will not know where to take them and so quickly that it shall be very soon. Other things I will not write unto you now, save that ye be always good and loyal. I pray G.o.d to have you in his keeping. Written at Sully, the 16th day of March.

I would announce unto you other tidings at which ye would mightily rejoice; but I fear lest the letters be taken on the road, and the said tidings be seen.

Signed. Jehanne.

_Addressed_ to my dear friends and beloved, churchmen, burgesses and other citizens of the town of Rains."[1908]

[Footnote 1908: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 160, according to Rogier's copy. H.

Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc a Reims_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations xv. Facsimile in Wallon, 1876 edition, p. 200. The original of this letter exists, likewise the original of the letter addressed on the 9th of November, 1429, to the citizens of Riom. These two letters, about one hundred and twenty-six days apart, are not written by the same scribe. The signature of neither one nor the other can be attributed to the hand which indited the rest of the letter. The seven letters of the name _Jehanne_ seem to have been written by some one whose hand was being held, which is not surprising, seeing that the Maid did not know how to write. But a comparison of the two signatures reveals their close similarity. In both the stem of the J slopes in the same direction and is of identical length; the first _n_ through one letter being written on the top of another has three pothooks instead of two; the second pothook of the second _n_ obviously written in two strokes is too long, in short the two signatures correspond exactly. We must conclude therefore that having once obtained the Maid's signature by guiding her hand, an impression was taken to serve as a model for all her other letters. To judge from the two missives of the 9th of November, 1429 and the 16th of March, 1430, this impression was most faithfully reproduced. Cf. _post_, p. 117, note 2.]

There can be no doubt that the scribe wrote this letter faithfully as it was dictated by the Maid, and that he wrote her words as they fell from her lips. In her haste she now and again forgot words and sometimes whole phrases; but the sense is clear all the same. And what confidence! "You will have no siege if I encounter the enemy." How completely is this the language of chivalry! On the eve of Patay she had asked: "Have you good spurs?"[1909] Here she cries: "I will make them put on their spurs." She says that soon she will be in Champagne, that she is about to start. Surely we can no longer think of her shut up in the Castle of La Tremouille as in a kind of gilded cage.[1910] In conclusion, she tells her friends at Reims that she does not write unto them all that she would like for fear lest her letter should be captured on the road. She knew what it was to be cautious. Sometimes she affixed a cross to her letters to warn her followers to pay no heed to what she wrote, in the hope that the missive would be intercepted and the enemy deceived.[1911]

[Footnote 1909: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 11.]

[Footnote 1910: Perceval de Cagny, p. 172.]

[Footnote 1911: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 83.]

It was from Sully that on the 23rd of March Brother Pasquerel sent the Emperor Sigismund a letter intended for the Hussites of Bohemia.[1912]

[Footnote 1912: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 156.]

The Hussites of those days were abhorred and execrated throughout Christendom. They demanded the free preaching of G.o.d's word, communion in both kinds, and the return of the Church to that evangelical life which allowed neither the wealth of priests nor the temporal power of popes. They desired the punishment of sin by the civil magistrates, a custom which could prevail only in very holy society. They were saints indeed and heretics too on every possible point. Pope Martin held the destruction of these wicked persons to be salutary, and such was the opinion of every good Catholic. But how could this armed heresy be dealt with when it routed all the forces of the Empire and the Holy See? The Hussites were too much for that worn-out ancient chivalry of Christendom, for the knighthood of France and of Germany, which was good for nothing but to be thrown on to the refuse heaps like so much old iron. And this was precisely what the towns of the realm of France did when over these knights of chivalry they placed a peasant girl.[1913]

[Footnote 1913: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 24, 86, 87. J. Zeller, _Histoire d'Allemagne_, vol. vii, _La reforme_, Paris, 1891, pp. 78 _et seq._ E. Denis, _Jean Hus et la guerre des Hussites_ (1879); _Les origines de l'Unite des Freres Bohemes_, Angers, 1885, in 8vo, pp. 5 _et seq._]

At Tachov, in 1427, the Crusaders, blessed by the Holy Father, had fled at the mere sound of the chariot wheels of the Procops.[1914] Pope Martin knew not where to turn for defenders of Holy Church, one and indivisible. He had paid for the armament of five thousand English crusaders, which the Cardinal of Winchester was to lead against these accursed Bohemians; but in this force the Holy Father was cruelly disappointed; hardly had his five thousand crusaders landed in France, than the Regent of England diverted them from their route and sent them to Brie to occupy the attention of the Maid of the Armagnacs.[1915]

[Footnote 1914: Two of the great leaders of the Hussites who held large parts of central Germany in terror from 1419-1434 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1915: L. Paris, _Cabinet historique_, vol. i, 1855, pp. 74, 76. Rogier, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 294. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 132, 133, 136, 137, 168, 169, 188, 189; vol. iv, supplement, xvii.]

Since her coming into France Jeanne had spoken of the crusade as a work good and meritorious. In the letter dictated before the expedition to Orleans, she summoned the English to join the French and go together to fight against the Church's foe. And later, writing to the Duke of Burgundy, she invited the son of the Duke vanquished at Nicopolis to make war against the Turks.[1916] Who but the mendicants directing her can have put these crusading ideas into Jeanne's head?

Immediately after the deliverance of Orleans it was said that she would lead King Charles to the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre and that she would die in the Holy Land.[1917] At the same time it was rumoured that she would make war on the Hussites. In the month of July, 1429, when the coronation campaign had barely begun, it was proclaimed in Germany, on the faith of a prophetess of Rome, that by a prophetess of France the Bohemian kingdom should be recovered.[1918]

[Footnote 1916: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 240; vol. v, p. 126.]

[Footnote 1917: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 82-85. Christine de Pisan, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 416. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 60-63.]

[Footnote 1918: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 108, 115, 188.]

Already zealous for the Crusade against the Turks, the Maid was now equally eager for the Crusade against the Hussites. Turks or Bohemians, it was all alike to her. Of one and the other her only knowledge lay in the stories full of witchcraft related to her by the mendicants of her company. Touching the Hussites, stories were told, not all true, but which Jeanne must have believed; and they cannot have pleased her. It was said that they worshipped the devil, and that they called him "the wronged one." It was told that as works of piety they committed all manner of fornication. Every Bohemian was said to be possessed by a hundred demons. They were accused of killing thousands of churchmen. Again, and this time with truth, they were charged with burning churches and monasteries. The Maid believed in the G.o.d who commanded Israel to wipe out the Philistines from the face of the earth. But recently there had arisen Cathari who held the G.o.d of the Old Testament to be none other than Lucifer or Luciabelus, author of evil, liar and murderer. The Cathari abhorred war; they refused to shed blood; they were heretics; they had been ma.s.sacred, and none remained. The Maid believed in good faith that the extirpation of the Hussites was a work pleasing to G.o.d. Men more learned than she, not like her addicted to chivalry, but of gentle life, clerks like the Chancellor Jean Gerson, believed it likewise.[1919] Of these Bohemian heretics she thought what every one thought: her opinions were those of the mult.i.tude; her views were modelled on public opinion. Wherefore in all the simplicity of her heart she hated the Hussites, but she feared them not, because she feared nothing and because she believed, G.o.d helping her, that she was able to overcome all the English, all the Turks, and all the Bohemians in the world. At the first trumpet call she was ready to sally forth against them. On the 23rd of March, 1430, Brother Pasquerel sent the Emperor Sigismund a letter written in the name of the Maid and intended for the Hussites of Bohemia. This letter was indited in Latin. The following is the purport of it:

[Footnote 1919: Lea, _A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages_, vol. ii, p. 481 (1906).]

JESUS [cross symbol] MARIE

Long ago there reached me the tidings that ye from the true Christians that ye once were have become heretics, like unto the Saracens, that ye have abolished true religion and worship and have turned to a superst.i.tion corrupt and fatal, the which in your zeal to maintain and to spread abroad there be no shame nor cruelty ye do not dare to perpetrate.

You defile the sacraments of the Church, tear to pieces the articles of her faith, overthrow her temples. The images which were made for similitudes you break and throw into the fire. Finally such Christians as embrace not your faith you ma.s.sacre. What fury, what folly, what rage possesses you?

That religion which G.o.d the All Powerful, which the Son, which the Holy Ghost raised up, inst.i.tuted, exalted and revealed in a thousand manners, by a thousand miracles, ye persecute, ye employ all arts to overturn and to exterminate.

It is you, you who are blind and not those who have not eyes nor sight. Think ye that ye will go unpunished? Do ye not know that if G.o.d prevent not your impious violence, if he suffer you to grope on in darkness and in error, it is that he is preparing for you a greater sorrow and a greater punishment? As for me, in good sooth, were I not occupied with the English wars, I would have already come against you. But in very deed if I learn not that ye have turned from your wicked ways, I will peradventure leave the English and hasten against you, in order that I may destroy by the sword your vain and violent superst.i.tion, if I can do so in no other manner, and that I may rid you either of heresy or of life. Notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the Catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto me your amba.s.sadors and I will tell them what ye must do. If on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against the p.r.i.c.ks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with all strength divine and human to render unto you again all the evil ye have done unto others.

Given at Sully, on the 23rd of March, to the Bohemian heretics.

Signed. Pasquerel.[1920]

[Footnote 1920: Th. de Sickel, _Lettre de Jeanne d'Arc aux Hussites_, in _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes_, 3rd series, vol. ii, p. 81.

A wrong date is given in the German translation used by Quicherat, _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 156-159.]

This was the letter sent to the Emperor. How had Jeanne really expressed herself in her dialect savouring alike of the speech of Champagne and of that of l'ile de France? There can be no doubt but that her letter had been sadly embellished by the good Brother. Such Ciceronian language cannot have proceeded from the Maid. It is all very well to say that a saint of those days could do everything, could prophesy on any subject and in any tongue, so fine an epistle remains far too rhetorical to have been composed by a damsel whom even the Armagnac captains considered simple. Nevertheless, a careful examination will reveal in this missive, at any rate in the second half of it, certain of those bluntly naive pa.s.sages and some of that childish a.s.surance which are noticeable in Jeanne's genuine letters, especially in her reply to the Count of Armagnac;[1921] and more than once there occurs an expression characteristic of a village sibyl. The following, for example, is quite in Jeanne's own manner: "If you will return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, send me your amba.s.sadors; I will tell you what you have to do." And her usual threat: "Expect me with all strength human and divine."[1922] As for the phrase: "If I hear not shortly of your conversion, of your return to the bosom of the Church, I will peradventure leave the English and come against you," here we may suspect the mendicant friar, less interested in the affairs of Charles VII than in those of the Church, of having ascribed to the Maid greater eagerness to set forth on the Crusade than she really felt. Good and salutary as she deemed the taking of the Cross, as far as we know her, she would never have consented to take it until she had driven the English out of the realm of France. She believed this to be her mission, and the persistence, the consistency, the strength of will she evinced in its fulfilment, are truly admirable.

It is quite probable that she dictated to the good Brother some phrase like: "When I have put the English out of the kingdom, I will turn against you." This would explain and excuse Brother Pasquerel's error.

It is very likely that Jeanne believed she would dispose of the English in a trice and that she already saw herself distributing good buffets and sound clouts to the renegade and infidel Bohemians. The Maid's simplicity makes itself felt through the clerk's Latin. This epistle to the Bohemians recalls, alas! that f.a.got placed upon the stake whereon John Huss was burning, by the pious zeal of the good wife whose saintly simplicity John Huss himself teaches us to admire.

[Footnote 1921: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 246.]

[Footnote 1922: _Ibid._, vol. v, p. 95.]

One cannot help reflecting that Jeanne and those very men against whom she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were impelled by faith, chast.i.ty, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation to G.o.d's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of devotion. Zizka[1923] had established in his camp that purity of morals which the Maid was endeavouring to introduce among the Armagnacs. The peasant soldiers of Bohemia and the peasant Maid of France bearing her sword amidst mendicant monks had much in common. On the one hand and on the other, we have the religious spirit in the place of the political spirit, the fear of sin in the place of obedience to the civil law, the spiritual introduced into the temporal. Here is indeed a woeful sight and a piteous; the devout set one against the other, the innocent against the innocent, the simple against the simple, the heretic against heretics; and it is painful to think that when she is threatening with extermination the disciples of that John Huss, who had been treacherously taken and burned as a heretic, she herself is on the point of being sold to her enemies and condemned to suffer as a witch. It would have been different if this letter, at which the accomplished wits and humorists of the day looked askance, had won the approval of theologians. But they also found fault with it, an ill.u.s.trious canonist, a zealous inquisitor deemed highly presumptuous this threatening of a mult.i.tude of men by a Maid.[1924]

[Footnote 1923: Another of the Hussite leaders (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1924: J. Nider, _Formicarium_ in _Trial_, vol. iv, pp.

502-504.]