The Story of Rouen Part 4

One more bitter disappointment the citizens were destined to suffer before the end came. From the right bank of the Seine two Norman n.o.bles, Jacques d'Harcourt and the Sire de Moreuil attempted to draw the English into an ambuscade. They had only two thousand men, but they might well have created sufficient diversion to render a victorious sally possible from the city, for the English imagined it was the royal army of rescue come at last. But the eager watchers from the walls of Rouen had the mortification of seeing their compatriots put to flight by a far smaller body of the enemy, and their last hope faded like dew before the sun. Then the fateful twenty-ninth of December came, and went, without a sign of royal or Burgundian help. For two more miserable days the citizens waited in vain, and not till fifty thousand persons had died of famine did they think of surrender. Their walls were still intact, their hearts as stout as ever, but starvation began to make irreparable breaches where the enemy's artillery had been of no avail. So on the eve of New Year's Day, the envoys chosen by the meeting in the Hotel de Ville, went out to parley with the English.

They wandered in vain from one camp to another, until they were obliged to cross over to St. Sever, and there they found Sir Gilbert d'Umfreville, whose Norman lineage perhaps made him kinder than the rest. He was at last prevailed upon to take them on the second day of the year, a Monday, into the presence of the King. Though every hour meant a prolonging of their torture, the amba.s.sadors fought foot by foot the conditions of surrender and calmly argued every sentence of the treaty with that Norman love of litigation which now rose to its highest and most impa.s.sioned point. In the great hall of the Chartreuse de la Rose, they saw the cold, impa.s.sive, handsome countenance of the young English King, with that touch of sadness on it that foretold his early death,[42] and the detached n.o.bility of manner which fitted a King who had exhausted every pleasure before he took, and worthily wielded, the responsibilities of power.

[Footnote 42: The prophetic word "Jamais" was in the device upon the tapestry above him.]

The first request of the amba.s.sadors was for the succour of the poor outcasts in the moat all round the town. But Henry only announced his firm resolve to take Rouen and all its citizens and to make those who had opposed his will "remember me until the Day of Judgment." At last an armistice of two or three days was granted, and on the third of January a solemn meeting of the picked amba.s.sadors of either side took place between the Chartreuse and the Porte St. Hilaire, where all the splendour of the English n.o.blemen's caparisons and furniture was displayed, and the starving commissioners from Rouen made the bravest show they could beneath the Fleurs de Lys of France. Close to all this magnificence was the yet living horror of the moat, which was now almost filled up with dead. From time to time the heap of rags and withered anatomies heaved slowly, and the little spectre of a child crawled out, imploring food. And all day long the solemn arguments went on beneath the sumptuous pavilions of the English, until, after three days of discussion, the amba.s.sadors of Rouen went back, unsatisfied, into their city.

"We askid mykille," says the poet, "they proferid smal, That is yuelle to accorde with alle. Tho thay tretid an xiiij nyzt And zit accorde they ne myzt."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE APSE OF ST. OUEN, SHOWING THE TOUR AUX CLERCS ON THE RIGHT, SEEN FROM THE GARDENS OF THE HoTEL DE VILLE]

Both sides were indeed so resolute, that they "might have argued for a fortnight without coming to an agreement." But the people of the city had starved long enough, and they drove back their emissaries to the Porte St. Hilaire, after one proposal, born of madness, had been made, to set fire to the town and then by every gate at once to pour out upon the English camp with the whole population in a flood, and so win through or die at least with weapons in their hands. Some news of this despairing possibility may have suggested to King Henry that the representations of the Archbishop of Canterbury were not without their value. At any rate he yielded to solicitation, granted another truce, and on the ninth of January opened negotiations once again.

This time the pressure of famine was so hard upon the amba.s.sadors themselves that they went on with discussions night and day, burning torches and candles when the sun set. At last a definite instrument was signed and sealed that guaranteed life and a free pa.s.s to the garrison, their goods to the citizens, and great portion of its privileges to the town. But the terms were hard enough. Three hundred thousand crowns of gold[43] was fixed as the ransom of the city; the chains were to be taken down from every street; ground sufficient for an English palace was to be given up, which was eventually chosen at the south-west corner of the town near the river; nine persons, among whom were the Canon Robert de Livet and Alain Blanchart, were exempted from the capitulation and "reserved to the mercy of the King," which in one case at least meant death.

[Footnote 43: Eighteen million francs would represent the relative value of this sum nowadays. It was not fully paid eleven years later.]

Upon a throne, and dressed in cloth of gold, Henry V. received the keys of Rouen from Guy le Bouteiller, in the Chartreuse de la Rose. Then the Duke of Exeter, as captain of the town, set up the English standard over all her gates and above the donjon of the castle; and at daylight on the twentieth of January the French garrison filed out of Rouen across the Seine towards the Bridge of St. George on the left bank, and were stripped of everything, save one suit of clothes, by the English soldiers, as they went. Only two thousand men survived out of the six thousand who had so gallantly come into Rouen to help resist the enemy. While they escaped sadly into desolated Normandy, King Henry V. was advancing from the Chartreuse; he moved slowly round the city to the Porte Cauchoise, and behind him was borne a fox's brush swinging upon a lance.[44] The bells rang and the cannon roared salute as he entered Rouen, but of the inhabitants scarcely one had strength to stand upright, not one had voice to cheer, and all besought for bread. Alone of the nine prisoners, Alain Blanchart was beheaded. But thirty-three burgesses were picked out to pay a special tax in ready money and imprisoned till it was delivered.[45] The main sum of the ransom was disputed with the true Norman delight in legal quibbling, and not fully paid (or at least "arranged for") till 1430.

[Footnote 44: No one has ever explained this to my satisfaction. But visitors to Heidelberg will remember the connection of a fox's brush with the Court Fool Perkeo, and various other legends of Renard which give the symbol, I fear, anything but a courteous significance for a foe beaten but not disgraced.]

[Footnote 45: The Englishmen recorded that some of their prisoners were put in the "Ostel de la Cloche dont avoit la garde Jehan Lemorgue." By this changed name is meant the humbled Hotel de Ville, where prisons had been managed in the lower storeys early in the fifteenth century.]

The imposition of this huge sum on a community already at the end of its resources had a lasting and terrible effect upon the town. The.

Chapterhouse.

were obliged to remit half their rents from the farmers ruined by the war. All debts had to receive special postponement, and commerce suffered almost as fatally as agriculture. All over Rouen houses were continually being put up to auction for public or private defalcations, to be bought by those Englishmen who had not been already given estates as a reward for their services. The buildings of the Abbey of St. Ouen were entirely occupied by the men of the Duke of Suffolk, so that the archbishop of 1423 was unable to pa.s.s the night before his entry in the abbey, as of immemorial custom, because the English filled up every inch of it. Of the exquisite east end we can see now, not much more than the beautiful little "Tour aux Clercs" of the older abbey was standing in 1419. But it may be put down as one of the few things creditable to the English occupation that part of the nave was certainly finished under their encouragement (see Chap. X.). Meanwhile the King took care to strengthen the castle at the Porte Bouvreuil, and the barbacan at the bridge; and his own palace began to rise near the Tour Malsifrotte and the Porte du Pre de la Bataille. Nothing now remains of it save the name of "Rue du Vieux Palais" in the Quartier St. Eloi (see map D). But it served in the first years as a residence for the Duke of Bedford, and for the young King Henry VI.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA TOUR DU COLOMBIER, FROM THE BOULEVARD GAMBETTA]

After the conquest of Rouen, one town after another fell into the English hands. On September 23 in 1419, the last resistance in Normandy was quelled at Chateau Gaillard. Mont St. Michael alone remained free until the English domination ceased and France joined her in her freedom. The King who took the city of Rouen was seen there twice again. In 1421, with Catherine of France, his wife, he opened the Estates of Normandy. In 1422 he was borne through Rouen on his funeral bier; two months before the crown of France would have been his.

The Rouen besieged by King Henry V. can be almost exactly traced along the lines of the modern boulevards shown in map B. The extension eastwards, which is given in map E. with this chapter, took place chiefly during the fourteenth century when Rouen was rapidly growing to be the second town in the kingdom. In making the circuit of the walls you will remember pa.s.sing the Tour du Colombier between the Porte Martainville and the Porte St. Hilaire. It is represented now by a picturesque old house standing four-square upon a b.u.t.tressed wall above the stream, at the extreme eastern verge of the great enclosure of the hospital. It is still called the Maison des Celestins, and aged men over sixty are preserved there to live out in peace the autumn of their days. Both the name and the present occupiers are an appropriate reminder of one who is connected with some of the better memories of the English occupation, the Duke of Bedford who founded the Couvent des Celestins, that was ruined by the Huguenots in 1562, upon the land formerly occupied by his Chateau de Chantereine, called "Joyeux Repos."

This convent, which was also known as the "Val Notre Dame," is not the only trace which the Duke of Bedford's benefactions left in Rouen. He also took the Carmelite brethren under his especial protection, being no doubt supported in this charitable action by the English Carmelite confessor of Henry V., Thomas de Valde, who died at Rouen in 1430. But his most intimate connection with ecclesiastical Rouen is recorded in the archives of the Cathedral, where we are told that he left the chapterhouse in his will a beautiful golden chalice garnished with gems, a pair of golden censers and a silver-gilt crucifix, in memory of his being made a canon at his own request. And there is some irony in the thought that at the moment he was giving these proofs of his affection for the town, his councillors were, with his consent, pursuing Jeanne d'Arc with every subtlest form of legal and religious torture.

Scarcely a year after Jeanne had been burnt in the Vieux Marche, the Duke's wife, Anne of Burgundy, died at the early age of 28, and in addition to this private loss he had to submit to the consequences of a grave error of judgment in his second marriage to Jacqueline, daughter of Pierre de Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol, an alliance which gravely offended the whole house of Burgundy. In 1435 he died himself on the 14th of September, "die exaltacionis Sancte Crucis" as the chapterhouse entries record, in the same Chateau of Rouen where Jeanne d'Arc had suffered her last imprisonment. His body was embalmed and buried in a leaden coffin in the choir of Rouen Cathedral by the side of the dukes of Normandy and the English kings his ancestors, beneath a magnificently sculptured tomb.

He left the Celestins of "Joyeux Repos," near the Tour du Colombier,[46] a small legacy, and benefactions to many other abbeys and churches in the town. Though the canons did not get their golden treasure by any means intact, or indeed get any part of it without protracted struggles, they always took good care of his tomb, which was certainly in excellent preservation before the Calvinists of 1562 began a destruction which was completed by the Revolution. An inscription, however, was left on an adjacent pillar, and this was copied by Dugdale. The ostrich feathers and the order of the garter were shown upon the bra.s.s besides the epitaph. In 1866 his coffin was found still in its original position on the right side of the altar, and nothing more is now left of him in Rouen.

[Footnote 46: After the Duke of Bedford had given the Celestins their Monastery, Charles VII. further a.s.sisted them by taking off all taxes on their wine. In recognition of this a monk used to dance and sing in front of the Monastic barrels as they were rolled past the Governor's house. Occasionally the combination of good claret and freedom from taxation overcame the monk's discretion, and the old proverb "Voila un plaisant Celestin" preserves the memory of some such amiably festive ecclesiastic. The "Oison bride" of the monks of St. Ouen was another instance of the way in which feudal privileges were commemorated by queer ceremonials which long outlived the society that gave them birth.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX.

Jeanne d'Arc and the English Occupation.

"Je scay bien que les Angloys me feront mourir, croyant qu' apres ma mort ils gagneront le royaume de France; mais quand meme ils seraient cent mille G.o.dons de plus qu'ils ne sont presentement, ils n'auraient pas ce royaume."

Of the many interesting processions which must have taken place in the fifteenth century on the occasion of the great ceremony of the Fierte St. Romain, surely few can have been more impressive than that in which the Duke of Bedford, in his capacity as Canon of the Cathedral, walked among the ecclesiastics towards the little chapel in the Place de la Haute Vieille Tour where the freedom of the prisoner was declared before the a.s.sembled people. For in him all might see the outward and visible proof of an English occupation in its most intimate connection with the ancient traditions begun under his ancestors the Dukes of Normandy. But his presence is not the only sign that can be clearly traced of the interest which the English inevitably felt in the most extraordinary privilege of their new possession. As usual on every occasion when a new set of officials came in touch with this astonishing and deeply-rooted custom, their contact is marked by fresh expressions of dissent. So, just as Philip-Augustus had to uphold, against his own officials, the custom which every prince before him had sanctioned, in exactly the same way we find Henry V. affirming that the Privilege of St. Romain was of right to be exercised by the canons of the Cathedral according to their ancient precedents. And it is instructive that though his verdict was first p.r.o.nounced in a case by which a native prisoner benefited, it was only in the next year, and again on some other occasions, that an Englishman was chosen to bear the holy shrine and win pardon for his sins. So strangely, indeed, and so strongly was the privilege exercised during these years of foreign dominion, that I cannot avoid the reflection--humiliating to Rouen as it is--that an attempt at least might have been made to exercise it in the case of the most famous prisoner ever in the donjons of the city, of the woman who would have been most worthy of those upon the roll of mercy to benefit by the protection of the Church. But if any attempt was made in favour of Jeanne d'Arc, it has not been recorded, and this is one of the strongest reasons for my regret that, full as they are, these records of the Privilege are often only too obviously imperfect.

The case in which objection was first raised was very naturally the first which occurred after the English flag had been unfurled above the city. In great surprise at the confidence shown by the good canons, the new bailli, Gauthier de Beauchamp, demanded an enquiry which was promptly held in his presence before the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester. On learning of the dispute Henry V. at once wrote to declare his reverence for the privilege established "En l'onneur et reverence du dict glorieux confesseur monsieur sainct Rommaing"; so Jehan Anquetil was duly delivered to mercy, after a crime to which modern civilisation is very rightly and unswervingly severe, and his accomplice was claimed by the Chapterhouse and delivered also. I confess it is beyond my powers to suggest the reason for so solemn a prerogative having been exercised by the highest dignitaries of the city's Cathedral in favour of a prisoner convicted of rape.[47] If a privilege that can only have resisted official compet.i.tion for so long because it was based on deeply-rooted popular support, could survive a choice of this kind, it is one of the strongest proofs of the changes in society and in public opinion which have fortunately appeared in civilised communities since the fifteenth century.

[Footnote 47: In 1431 another prisoner, Souplis Lemire, of Yvetot, was pardoned for exactly the same crime. By a lie he induced Jehanne Corviere to mount behind his horse, rode with her into a country lane, where in the words of the ma.n.u.script, "il la fery et frapa de plusieurs...o...b..s coups, plus de l'es.p.a.ce de quatre heures, et lui fist la char toute noire et meudrie en plusieurs parties de son corps, et tant fist que il oult violemment et oultre le gre d'elle sa compaignie par grant force et a plusieurs clameurs de haro." In this case it was evidently the influence of the offender's family which procured him the Fierte, and his victim raised the "clameur de haro" during the ceremony itself. For this she was obliged to apologise to the canons, but Lemire's conduct throughout had been so disgraceful that, though the Fierte had absolved him definitely of all criminal penalty, after eight years of discussion he was condemned in the civil courts to pay damages of 250 livres tournois to Jehanne. In 1540 the same principle was upheld, and it generally seems to have been the custom that any prisoner chosen should give surety for the payment of his civil penalties before he was released by the Fierte from his criminal sentence.]

In 1420 a still more interesting case arose, which is the first that suggests to my mind the possibility of the canons' choice being occasionally influenced by those in authority, and if by them, then it is only too probable that other suggestions (not strictly religious in their nature) may have been made in other years when "equity," according to our notions, does not explain their triumph over "law." For in this year the ma.n.u.script records, "Pierre Lamequin, de la paroisse de Vize, en Angleterre, diocese de Salisbery;" an entry which inevitably suggests to English ears that Peter Lambkin of Devizes was the lucky prisoner. He killed a merchant at an outlying village, with a French friend to help him. Other instances occur in which the foreign army profited by the native privilege. In 1429 the entry reads: "Thomas Grandon, anglais, de la paroisse de Hanniquem, diocese d'York," who killed two Scotchmen at Chambroix. In 1434 we find: "Guillaume Banc, anglais, de la paroisse de Saint-Bin, diocese de Carlisle," who slew one Saunders in a brawl, helped by a friend named William Peters. In 1437, "Jehan Hotot, laque, de la paroisse de Sainte-Marie de Helnyngan, diocese de Norfolk," who killed a pair of Englishmen in the country. In 1438, "Jennequin Benc ou Bent, anglais, de la paroisse de Bosc-Chatel, diocese d'Hereford, dans le pays de Galles," who killed an Englishman. In 1439, "Jehan Helys, anglais, de la paroisse de Hest-Monceaulz, diocese de Cantorbery," who had stolen goods in Rouen, in company with one John Johnson and Thomas "Kneet."[48] In 1447, "Jean Houcton, anglais, de la paroisse de Langthon, en Clindal, diocese de Dublin," who was charged with stealing a horse, alleging, in defence, that foraging was a common privilege of soldiers, and was subsequently convicted of robbing an innkeeper near the bridge of a silver cup six ounces in weight. Now that these names are brought to the knowledge of English antiquaries with more science and leisure at their disposal than are mine, I await with interest to hear whether any traces of these freebooters exist in the parish records of their native towns.[49]

[Footnote 48: This Ellis was particularly lucky, for the first prisoner chosen had been Denisot le Charretier, who was claimed as an ecclesiastic by the Archbishop, Louis of Luxembourg, who was also Chancellor of France for the English King. They tried to secure his deliverance, but the Chancellor was too strong for them, and the dispute was settled by the intervention of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who came in person to the Chapterhouse and persuaded the canons to renounce their right and choose another prisoner.]

[Footnote 49: These queerly distorted names are not the only ones that recall the English occupation. A still more vivid memory of it may be found in their old bowling green, which is still the "Boulingrin" of the Boulevard St. Hilaire (see Map B), a word with which Brachet compares "flibustier," "poulie," and others. The "redingote" for our riding-coat is at once a more familiar and more modern instance.]

But, after all, the privilege was not always exercised in one direction. Occasionally the feelings of the conquered population had evidently to be consulted, as in 1425, when Geoffroy Cordeboeuf was chosen to bear the shrine, who had murdered an Englishman at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. There was a lengthy discussion over this, during which it is recorded that the year before, the disputing canons in their ecclesiastical costume had gone to the tavern of the Lion d'Or to drink with Lieutenant Poolin, their opponent, in flat disobedience to the Cathedral statute of 1361. It came out in the evidence presented that the canons were actually allowed to keep the keys of the prisons during Ascension Day and the three Rogation Days before it, and that they questioned the prisoners alone, without the jailers being present. In 1448 the same cause evidently suggested the liberation of no less than eighteen prisoners at once, who had banded together in the village of St. Trinite-de-Tankerville, and killed four Englishmen. The soldiers thoroughly deserved their fate, for they had brutally ill-treated two women, and killed one of their husbands, before the villagers took vengeance into their own hands.

There is but s.p.a.ce to notice very briefly the other more interesting cases in this period. In 1428 a woman, named Estiennote Presart, who had stolen a silver cup from a priest, was pardoned. In 1441 some workmen on the Palace of the English King near "Mal s'y Frotte," who had thrown some troublesome brawlers into the Seine, bore the shrine. The next year the privilege was enjoyed by a husband who had several times discovered his wife's infidelity with a neighbouring knight, and had killed her on finding that she also extended her favours to a priest. This is one of the most intelligible instances of all; and in 1454 its circ.u.mstances are almost exactly repeated in the case of Michel Manant, who also slew his unfaithful wife. Indeed, a French jury even of to-day is never very hard upon the "crime pa.s.sionel," with which that nation has always had so much sympathy. A similar case of the "equity" I have sometimes fancied I could trace occurs in 1446, when Nicolas Hebert stole four cups of silver, two belts studded with silver, twelve silver and ten gold spoons, having been unable to get any wages paid him after nine years of service with an advocate of Falaise. He was condemned to death and pardoned by the canons.

I have already mentioned the famous Talbot (see p. 203) in connection with the Fierte. He appears again in its records (as the Comte de Sursberik) in 1444 with a refusal to allow the canons to visit the prisons of the castle, because they contained Armagnacs and other treasonable enemies to the King's Majesty. But the usual processions and popular enthusiasm with which the canons replied soon made him change his mind, and the prisoners were duly visited both in "La Grosse Tour" or donjon, and in every other jail. His refusal had been particularly ill-advised, because in May of 1430 the canons had appealed from an obstinate jailer to the Duke of Bedford, and had obtained his permission to visit the donjon according to their ancient custom. That very winter the castle of Philip Augustus in the Place Bouvreuil was to hold its most famous prisoner. For when Jeanne d'Arc was brought to Rouen in December 1430, the prison of the Baillage (called "les prisons ou la geole du roi"), whose archways you may still see near the stairway of the Rue du Baillage, had been destroyed by fire in 1425; and it is particularly mentioned that she was not placed either in the cells of the Hotel de Ville, where I have already recorded that an English jailer had been placed, or in the "Ecclesiastical Prisons" of the Rue St. Romain near the Cathedral, although her whole trial was conducted by ecclesiastics, but in the "Chateau de Rouen," where (in Talbot's words) "prisoners of war and treasonable felons" were especially guarded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. ROMAIN CALLED THE MAISON JEANNE D'ARC (IN THE DISTANCE THE DOOR OF THE COUR DES COMPTES IN THE RUE DES QUATRE VENTS)]

At the siege of Compiegne, on May 24, 1430, Jeanne d'Arc had been taken prisoner by one of the men of John of Luxemburg, and from the English camp at Margny she was sent further off to the Chateau of Beaulieu. Within two days the Vicar-General of the Inquisition, and the University of Paris, had demanded that she should be delivered over to the "Justice of the Church." And behind both was a power stronger than either, the hatred of the English. They soon found a ready instrument in Pierre Cauchon, who had been made Bishop of Beauvais by the Duke of Burgundy, was chased out of it by the party of Charles VII., and now expected to get the Archbishopric of Rouen by the help of the English. It was he who bore the King of England's request to John of Luxemburg that he would give up Jeanne d'Arc for ten thousand pieces of gold to the Church to be judged. Neither Charles VII. nor any French ecclesiastic (save the Archbishop of Reims) made any movement, so she was surrendered at the price of an army. After being taken to Beaurevoir, to Arras, and to Crotoy, she was moved by way of St. Valery, Eu, and Dieppe to Rouen. She entered the town by the valley of Bih.o.r.el, past the spot where the Gare du Havre now stands, and by way of the Rue Verte was led to the castle of Philip Augustus and placed in an iron cage, so that the smirched authority of English rule might be re-established by proving her, in the formal processes of law, a witch.

Of the castle itself the only tower that now stands still bears her name. Almost the last scene of her imprisonment took place within the walls that you may visit here, though originally she was not placed in this donjon itself. For the original castle, built by Philip Augustus in 1205 to consolidate his rule over John Lackland's fresh-won province, had consisted of an almost circular building, with six towers, a demi-tower, and this donjon which was built upon two thick curtain-walls and entirely interrupted the guards' "chemin de ronde," on to which no door opened from its ma.s.sive circular walls. The Castle of Arques (1038), and of Chateau Guillard (1195), are indeed older than this of Rouen, but the ruins of their donjon-keeps do not show anything like the character of the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, which is itself earlier in date than either Coucy (1228) or Pierrefonds (1390). More than this, a doc.u.ment of 1202 preserves the most interesting fact that this tower was planned after the dimensions and shape of the famous Tour du Louvre, of which Paris now possesses only a circle of white marble to mark the site of the royal tower that once stood where the south-west corner of the Louvre courtyard is now.

The walls of Rouen's donjon are 4 metres 20 thick, 46 metres in circ.u.mference at the base, and 30 metres high. These last two measurements show a difference of only two metres from those of the vanished Tour du Louvre. Before this chapter closes I shall be able to explain how it is that you are able to see in Rouen the most perfect presentment of a thirteenth-century donjon in France, with two-thirds of the present building in its original masonry. Within it took place most of the stirring events of history after a change in dynasty had left the castle of the Norman dukes to develop gradually into a commercial instead of a royal or military centre. One of these, the arrest of Charles le Mauvais, and the execution of his four friends by King Jean le Bon, I have spoken of in earlier chapters. This, too, was the fortress that held out longest for the King when the Revolte de la Harelle was at its height in 1382. Before its walls Sir Gilbert Talbot and Sir William Hanington sat down to besiege Guy le Bouteiller, who as captain of the garrison had it in his especial charge. Within it the eighty hostages for the ransom of the city, and the thirty burgesses especially punished with high fines, were imprisoned when King Henry V. took the town. It was still held by the English garrison when Jeanne d'Arc was brought to Rouen as a prisoner. It is the last visible relic of the royal homes of Rouen, for every other one has disappeared, from the first keep of Rollo to the Haute et Ba.s.se Vieilles Tours of his descendants, to the Palace of Philip Augustus and of the English kings, even to the fortresses of St. Catherine's Hill and of the barbacan beside the bridge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP F.

PLAN OF THE VIEUX-MARCHe AND OF THE MARCHe AUX VEAUX, FROM THE "LIVRE DES FONTAINES DE ROUEN," DRAWN BY JACQUES LELIEUR IN 1525]

Once his prisoner was safe within the castle, the Bishop of Beauvais proceeded to "pack his jury," and choose his companions for the trial. His right hand man was Jean d'Estivet (or "Benedicite"). From Paris arrived Jean Beaupere, who took Gerson's place as Chancellor, with Jacques de Touraine, Nicole Midi, and Thomas de Courcelles, all brilliant and authoritative theologians. From Normandy itself came the Prior of Longueville, the Abbe of Jumieges, Gilles, Abbe of Fecamp and councillor to the English King, Nicolas Loyseleur, a canon of Rouen, and others. One alone of those invited, Nicolas de Houppeville, objected to serving, because his direct superior, the Archbishop of Reims, had already disapproved. He was only just saved from being murdered. No one else dared to differ with Pierre Cauchon, and several affirmed later on that they had voted in fear of their lives. Both the clerk of the court, Manchon, and Ma.s.sieu, the doorkeeper, found their sympathies too perilous to express. This was because, though scarcely an Englishman was actually a member of the Court, the English kept the whole proceeding directly under their thumb, and to every appeal the same answer was returned--"The King (of England) has ordered it." The King's two uncles, of Bedford and of Winchester, watched that the orders were carried out; and the price of every one is still recorded in the exact account-books of the time. The English never let her leave their castle till the end, so that any slight "judicial error" might always be corrected if need were.

They kept her first in an iron cage, then in one of the castle towers, with irons upon her feet, chained to a log of wood, and guarded night and day by four common soldiers. On the 9th of January 1431 the Bishop of Beauvais summoned in Rouen the council chosen for the trial, and appointed its officials. On the 20th, Jeanne, being summoned to make her appearance before the court at eight next morning, begged that her judges might be more fairly chosen, and that she might hear Ma.s.s. She was refused both, and appeared on the 21st, in the chapel of the castle. Asked to answer truly upon oath all the questions put to her, Jeanne replied--"I do not know on what points you wish to question me. You might perhaps ask me things which I will not tell you." After this she told how she was called "Jeannette" at home, and Jeanne "in France," and knew no surname; how she was baptised and born at Domremy, of Jacques d'Arc and his wife Isabel about nineteen years ago; she refused to promise not to escape if she could; and would only recite the Lord's Prayer in confession to a priest. After Cauchon had begun, the next day's questioning was more gently taken by Jean Beaupere, to whom she told of her care of the house at home, and of her skill in needlework, "as good as any in Rouen." The inquirers then went on to reveal the story of her "voices," and she firmly repeated her refusal to bind herself by a general oath as to every answer, saying that she had more fear of G.o.d and of her "voices," than of her conduct in that trial. Asked whether she was sure of the favour of G.o.d (a double-edged question at which some even of her judges murmured) she pa.s.sed the danger by saying, "If I am not, may G.o.d help me to it; and if I am, may G.o.d preserve me in it."

Baffled at this point by the innocent faith of this country girl, the university professor changed the attack, and approached questions of a more political importance, cleverly interwoven with the first appearance of her "voices" when she was a girl of thirteen at Domremy. But neither of treasonable partisanship nor of local superst.i.tions could he convict her. She gave the names of her heavenly councillors as St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael, the same saint whose fortress held out inviolable against every English attack among the quicksands and the rushing tides of the north coast. Unable to find anything heretic or infidel in her replies on religious subjects, and only getting candid common sense in return for their suspicions, her judges turned to the idea of satanic inspiration and support. But it proved equally useless. Her patriotism shone clear above every trivial element in her long examination.

The last public hearing of her evidence before all her judges was on the 3rd of March. The result of the inquiry was then collected to form the basis of a fresh interrogation in her prison, which was conducted on the 10th by Jean de la Fontaine for a whole week. At the end of it Jean Lemaitre himself arrived by order of the Chief Inquisitor. Nothing was added to the information already gathered, and nothing shook the firmness of the girl's replies. For only explanation she repeated, "It pleased G.o.d to do this by means of a simple maid, in order to rebuff the enemies of the King." Throughout, her negligence of trifles, her insistence upon the important points, her swift common sense, were the more conspicuous, because her judges persisted in reading their own meaning into all she answered to their subtle questions. Did they ask her, for instance, "Does G.o.d hate the English?" she would reply, "I know nothing of the hatred or the love of G.o.d for Englishmen, but this I know, that they will soon be all thrust out of France, save those of them who leave their bodies here."

On the much-disputed question of her masculine attire, she said she would wear woman's dress only when she heard Ma.s.s, and woman's clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason for her dress, but they persisted--without result--in trying to trap her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an act of simple prudence.

Her judges, strong and clever men as most of them were, themselves were tired out by the closeness and the duration of the trial. Yet this young girl, fasting even from her prison-fare, was resolute enough to keep her head, and reply steadily through it all. But she refused to be troubled with unnecessary or merely reiterated questions, and claimed her right to feel as tired as were her judges when she felt it necessary. She was in fact perfectly natural and frank throughout, even when the open expression of her thoughts was hardly politic for one in her position. Without the help of counsel, or of any to a.s.sist her, French or English, layman or ecclesiastic, she was even deprived of the friendly countenance or signs of anyone whose sympathy overcame for the moment his very justifiable fear of her persecutors. Even the consolations of her religion were denied her. The only semblance of advice she got was in the base and hypocritical attempts of a scoundrelly canon of Rouen Cathedral to teach her certain answers which might afterwards be used against her by her accusers.[50] It is a shameful thing to have to record that the Earl of Warwick helped the Bishop of Beauvais to complete this villainy, and took clerks with him to listen at the door, but they refused to lend themselves to such dishonourable methods.

[Footnote 50: There is a quaint suggestion of repentance for all this in the cathedral of to-day. If you enter by the Portail des Libraires and stand beside the north-east pillar of the great lantern, at your feet is the tombstone of one of these unjust judges, Denis Gastinel, and beneath it is the great Calorifere that warms the building, a suggestively gruesome foretaste of the punishment which the modern canons evidently think his conduct towards Jeanne d'Arc deserves.]

Early in the week of Palm Sunday she was formally summoned to the great hall of the castle to hear the seventy articles of the Act of Accusation against her. The web of calumny that had been spun out of her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though silent for the most part, she quickly contradicted some statements, and pointed out the fallacy of others. Reproached for her unwomanly behaviour, she replied at once, "As for woman's work, there are plenty of other women who can do that"; and a.s.serted that before fighting at all, she had made every effort to obtain her wishes peacefully. She even recited the short prayer it was her custom to make when she needed the counsel of her heavenly visitors.

After this the seventy articles were reduced to twelve, which resumed the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her att.i.tude towards the Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the Archbishop of Reims, instead of to Pierre Cauchon, his subordinate.

On Thursday the 6th of April erard emengard held a meeting in the chapel of the Archbishop's Palace at Rouen to deliberate over the twelve articles. You may still see the place where this went on. As you enter the gateway of the Screen to the Portail des Libraires from the Rue St. Romain, on the left of the forecourt before the great carved door, you will see an old building which in the August of 1897 was being repaired and reconstructed to provide a school for the children of the Cathedral choir. This house forms itself the western side of a courtyard into which a door has no doubt by this time (December 1898) been opened from the Rue St. Romain, between the large turret that projects on the left of the old screened entrance in the street and the next octagonal turret with a sharply pointed roof that is built on the wall of the Cathedral buildings. By whatever entrance practicable, you must go into this courtyard and see the private chapel of the Archbishop, the old "Chapelle des Ordres" which touches the north wall of the Cathedral choir. Within this chapel the council was held, that by its approval of the Twelve Articles of Accusation p.r.o.nounced the death-warrant of Jeanne d'Arc.[51]

[Footnote 51: The actual death-sentence, p.r.o.nounced on the 29th of May by the forty-two judges in full council ran as follows:-- "Mandons ... que vous citiez ladite Jeanne a comparaitre en personne devant nous demain, heure de huit heures du matin, au lieu dit Le Vieux Marche, pour se voir par nous declaree relapse, excommuniee, heretique, avec l'intimation a lui faire en pareil cas--Donne en la Chapelle du Manoir archiepiscopal de Rouen, le mardi 29 mai, l'an du Seigneur 1431, apres la fete de la Trinite de notre Seigneur."

Yet there is not a single mark or inscription to record the fact of which this lonely and neglected chapel was the scene.]

In the midst of all these machinations the prisoner herself fell ill. Doctors were hurried to her cell to save her for the vengeance of her judges, and the "processes of law" were pushed forward more hastily than ever. On the 2nd of May she was once more confronted with the accusations made against her, in a long speech by the Archdeacon. She would add nothing to what had been already said. "Even if I saw the flames before me I should say what I have already told you, and do what I have done;" and the clerk writes "Superba Responsio" opposite the entry.

Determined to leave no means untried to overcome this resistance, her judges summoned her on Wednesday the 9th of May into the "Grosse Tour du chateau de Rouen," the donjon which you can visit in the Rouen of to-day, by turning to the left as you go northward up the Rue Bouvreuil (see Map D). The room in which Jeanne stood to answer her accusers has been carefully restored, but it is obscured by the huge plaster cast of a statue by Mercie. The vaulting is the original work intact, and on the keystone is carved the oldest existing shield of the arms of France, the six truncated Fleurs de Lys of Philip Augustus, which are reproduced more clearly on the huge and lofty cowl above the chimney. Beneath the floor there is still the old well that supplied the garrison, a little to the left of the entrance, and rather further round is the small spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms, which are not so large.

She was brought here because there was no room in her former prison for the instruments of torture, and the executioners' gear with which her courage was finally to be tested. Pierre Cauchon directed the proceedings, with Lemaitre and nine others, of whom three were members of the Chapterhouse of Rouen, and one was Ma.s.sieu the clerk. Besides these, the ushers and the guard of English soldiers lined the walls. Here it is recorded how she was threatened with torture "if she did not avow the truth," and shown the instruments and the officials who were ready to administer it. I will not attempt to translate the few words Jeanne d'Arc ever uttered whose echoes we may still imagine beneath the very roof that heard them. There is hardly a single other[52] place of which the same thing can be said.

[Footnote 52: With all that happened before Jeanne came to Rouen I have no concern here, and I must take it for granted that you know at least the outlines. But to confirm the sentence to which this note refers, I may add that they still point out to you at Chinon the well where she alighted off her horse, and the house of the "bonne femme" who sheltered her. Of the Tour du Coudray in the Castle of Chinon, as of the great hall on the first floor where she met the King, little save ruined stones remain. And it is not often that even so much as that is left of other places in which she is known to have stayed, such as the chamber in the Castle of Crotoy, the tower at Beaurevoir, the gate-tower of Compiegne, or any of the cells in which she was confined within the Castle of Rouen itself.]

In answer to the first threatening question the ma.n.u.script gives her reply as follows:-- "Vraiement, se vous me deviez faire detraire les membres et faire partir l'ame hors du corps, si ne vous diray-je autre chose; et se aucune chose vous en disoye-je, apres si diroye-je tousjours que vous le me auries fait dire par force.

"Item, dit que, a la Sainte-Croix, oult le confort de Saint Gabriel: 'Et croiez que ce fust sainct Gabriel;' et l'a sceu par les voix que c'estoit Saint Gabriel.

"Item, dit qu'elle (a) demande conseil a ses voix s'elle se submectroit a l'eglise, pour ce que les gens d'eglise la pressoient fort de se submectre a l'Eglise, et ils lui ont dit que s'elle veult que nostre Seigneur luy aide, qu'elle s'actende a luy de tous ses fais.

"Item, dit qu'elle scait bien que nostre Seigneur a este toujours maistre de ses fais, et que l'ennemy n'avait oncques eu puissance sur ses faits.

"Item, dit qu'elle a demande a ses voix s'elle sera a.r.s.e, et que les dictes voix luy ont repondu que elle se actende a nostre sire, et il luy aidera.

"Item, du signe de la couronne qu'elle dit avoir este baille a l'arcevesque de Reims, interoguee s'elle s'en veult rapporter a luy, respond; 'Faictes le y venir, et que je l'oe parler, et puis je vous respondray; ne il ne oseroit dire le contraire de ce que je vous en ay dit.'"

In 1455 the "Proces de rehabilitation" recorded the testimony of Mauger Separmentier, the executioner, who saw her during this scene in the donjon, whither he had been summoned, with his a.s.sistant, to administer the torture, if necessary. "She showed great prudence in her replies," he affirmed, "so that those who heard were astonished; and this deponent retired with his a.s.sistant without touching her" (see Quicherat, "Proces," vols. i., ii., iii.). It is evident that if she had given them the least excuse, by any mistake in her replies, her judges would not have allowed the executioner to depart idle.

There are very few other places to which I can point you as witnesses of her tragedy. But, besides that chapel you have already visited, there is in the same district, between the north side of the Cathedral and the Rue de la Chaine, a whole labyrinth of twisting streets wherein lived the ecclesiastics who plotted her death.[53]

[Footnote 53: See Map C.]

In the Rue St. Nicolas (which turns eastward after the Cathedral Parvis from the Rue des Carmes) there is a small open square just opposite the opening of the Rue Croix de Fer; within the walls of a house there are still preserved a few ruined stones of the Church of St. Nicolas le Paincteur, at the end of a courtyard. If you go round into the Place des Carmes, it is still possible to trace (at Nos. 27 and 31) some old vaults beneath the soil, by the ventilation holes just above the pavement. Close to this Church of St. Nicolas was the house of Jean Rube, Canon of Rouen, with whom lodged Pierre Cauchon when he came to preside over the trial. It was there that, with Nicolas Loyseleur and others, those sinister discussions went on between every public examination of the prisoner. And in the house that rose above those vaults lived Loyseleur himself. The present facade has been so altered since 1818 that only in the interior courtyard (if M. Laurent, Mayor of Rouen in 1897, and M. Sarrasin, the historian of Jeanne d'Arc, are kind enough to allow it) can you realise the age of the building. The thick walls and deep-set windows leave no doubt of the age of their construction. The vaults beneath are still more extraordinary relics of antiquity, with their ma.s.sive round arches and double sets of substructures. The house itself was most probably given to the Cathedral in those days by the Duke of Bedford, who had already done much in the same direction; and it was therefore very appropriately allotted as a lodging to that one of the canons who was helping the English most effectually in their iniquitous task.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COUR D'ALBANE, ROUEN CATHEDRAL]

After the canons left the main block of Cathedral-buildings to go into lodgings in this quarter so near at hand, they still kept their oven, their granary, and their common cellar in the Cour d'Albane. This quiet little quadrangle is one of the prettiest nooks of old Rouen, and I am fortunate enough to be able to show in the drawing on p. 218 how well worth while it is to find the entrance to it just north of the Tour St. Romain in the angle of the Rue des Quatre Vents. It was probably first built for cloisters and a cemetery, and afterwards used merely as a "deambulatorium." But the bakery of the chapterhouse, which remained here for so long, was always renowned for the purity and goodness of its bread, and loaves from it were often presented to distinguished visitors on occasions when the civic authorities were obliged either to rise to jewellery or to descend to nuts. The "Salle Capitulaire," now being restored from M. Sauvageot's designs, used also to open on the cloister, and in it the canons transacted their temporal and spiritual business, including their famous choice for the Fierte St. Romain, and their trials of ecclesiastical prisoners. Crimes of "outsiders" committed within the Cathedral limits were tried by a special tribunal in the Porter's Lodge, and he guarded the prisoners in the dungeon beneath the Tour St. Romain. Another more interesting duty of the same official was to care, during daytime, for the dogs who were loosed in the Cathedral at night to keep out sacrilegious robbers, a custom which lasted down to 1760. But the Cour d'Albane took its name from the founder of that school for choir-boys with which it is most intimately a.s.sociated now. Pierre de Colmieu, the Archbishop from 1236 to 1245, was also Cardinal d'Albano, and from him was named the inst.i.tution he endowed to educate three priests, three deacons, and four subdeacons. Paid singers were unknown at that time; the services were long and pompous, and it took some time to learn them, so these men, all over twenty-one, were chosen as much for their ability to read and sing as for their good conduct. They benefited again in 1401 by the bequests of Jacques Cave, who is buried beneath the Tour de Beurre. There were seven of these singers in 1440, and it was one of Jeanne d'Arc's judges, Gilles Deschamps, who left money to provide the little choir-boys with the red caps they wear to this day to keep their little shaved heads from the cold. In 1459 painters and sculptors were allowed to exhibit some of their work in this beautiful courtyard, "if it was decent"; and every year the canons and the clerks lit in this open s.p.a.ce the "Feu de la St. Jean," and even planted their pious Maypole.

But the memories of this quarter are not exhausted yet. Turn down into the Rue St. Romain. From No. 8 to No. 14 are the old canons' lodgings, where more of Jeanne's judges lived, and especially Canon Guillaume le Desert, who survived the trial longer than any of his companions. Near No. 28 is the Rue des Chanoines. Close by, at the "ecu de France," lived Jehan Salvart, the architect who built the palace for Henry V. near Mal s'y Frotte. Within his house a workman saw, it is recorded, the iron cage made by etienne Castille, in which Jeanne was chained by hands and feet and neck. At the tavern called "Maison de Pierre"[54] Manchon, the clerk of the court, used to take his wine of an afternoon. On the side next the Cathedral were the ecclesiastical prisons, whose deepest dungeon was beneath the Tour St. Romain. Just opposite the screen of the Portail des Libraires is No. 74, a strange old house, carved with two bishops on the beams of the first floor, and three more upon the brackets above. The door may well be original, and the whole house is as old as the fifteenth century. On the other side again, and just in face of the opening of the Rue Croix de Fer, is the "Maison Jeanne d'Arc," which has no right to that name beyond the possibility of her having seen it. For this strange remnant of Gothic woodwork that juts out above the pavement is no doubt contemporaneous with the trial that we are following out now. In August 1897 the Munic.i.p.al Council announced its determination to pull it down. The Journal de Rouen, which deserves well of every honest lover of antiquity, at once published a letter from M. Paul Dubosc, in which that zealous writer pointed out the unnecessary vandalism of the proposal; Englishmen in Rouen at the time were not afraid to add their protests even in an alien tongue; when I left it last year it had, at least, been standing long enough for Miss James to draw it (see p. 206) on the left hand side of an ill.u.s.tration that gives a very good idea of the Rouen of the fifteenth century. The little Renaissance doorway in the distance, at the angle of the Rue des Quatre Vents, is an entrance to the Cour des Comptes, which at the same date had just been freed from ruined enc.u.mbrances, and its lovely courtyard opened to the Rue des Carmes on the other side (see p. 288).

[Footnote 54: Most of the dwelling-houses were of wood, which explains why so few are left.]

This same old house was a canon's residence, and the property of the.

Chapter of.

the Cathedral before the Revolution. Some furniture-dealers bought it at the general sale of ecclesiastical effects. In 1893 it was sold to the State for 36,000 francs by Mr Dumont, to whom the Civil Tribunal had awarded it. The loss to the Rue St. Romain would be a serious one, if the house were finally pulled down. A fatal pa.s.sion for "alignement" has Haussmannised Rouen quite enough already, and to strip the Cathedral bare of all appendages would be to forget the main object of mediaeval architecture in France. I have pointed out elsewhere that it was owing to a more settled state of society that the English Cathedral rose from the turf of a broad quiet close, as at Salisbury. In France the houses of the Cathedral towns crowded close round the walls that were their temporal safety as well as their spiritual salvation. The Parvis of Notre Dame is a creation of modern Paris. Many a church in Provence still shows by the machicolations and loopholes on its walls and towers that it could have played the fortress with a good grace whenever necessary. And it was no doubt because a French cathedral rose above the cl.u.s.tered houses round its base that its lines of architecture spring so boldly to the sky, and that its detailed carving within easy vision was so close and excellent.

This old Rue St. Romain may have received its name from the Hotel St. Romain mentioned in it in 1466. In any case the name of the city's patron saint could hardly have been given to a more characteristic thoroughfare. By 1423 it seems to have been called the Rue Feronnerie, which is interesting, because the workers in metal (whose trade is preserved in their old quarter of the Rue Dinanderie) were not natives of Rouen, but all came from Lorraine, and especially from Urville, a town within a few leagues of Domremy. So that Jean Moreau, a maker of copper flagons in the Rue ecuyere, was especially chosen by Pierre Cauchon to go to his native place and make inquiries as to the truth of Jeanne d'Arc's statement about her birth and upbringing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CENTRAL TOWER OF ST. OUEN FROM THE SOUTH-EAST]

The next place in Rouen that actually saw Jeanne herself was the open s.p.a.ce round the rising nave of St. Ouen, then called the Cemetery, where we have already watched the farcical royalty of the Revolte de la Harelle (p. 152). In thus tracing her footsteps, where we may still find them, I shall be showing you what little is left of the Rouen of the English occupation. Few of the towers and spires that rise now above the roofs of Rouen were standing then. "Rouvel" indeed was in the Town-Belfry, but uttered never a sound in his captivity. Of the Cathedral the Tour de Beurre did not exist, the Tour St. Romain was scarce two-thirds its present height, the western facade was far simpler and smaller. St. Maclou was not completed when Jeanne d'Arc died, nor the Palais de Justice begun. Of St. Ouen only the eastern end of the nave, the apse and the choir, with the far older Tour aux Clercs beside them, were being built; neither its central crown nor its rose windows yet existed. The French architect chosen by the English was at this time Alexander de Berneval, who had carried on the work of Jean de Bayeux and his son, the architects from 1378 to 1421. And you may still see where Jacques Theroulde (for Antoine Bohier) carried on the work which Berneval's son left unfinished in 1441.

From their scaffolding round the uncompleted arches the architect and his apprentices must have had a good view, on the Thursday after Pentecost in 1431, of those other scaffoldings erected in the Cemetery below them, on one of which sat Pierre Cauchon with the Cardinal of Winchester, while on the other stood Jeanne d'Arc. The ceremony, called the Abjuration, was a last attempt to frighten Jeanne into confessing that her "Voices" had deceived her, and her mission was untrue. It succeeded only because of her physical weakness, and in forty-eight hours her moral courage repudiated it entirely. Proceedings began by a long sermon from Guillaume Erard, a celebrated preacher. When he called the King of France "heretic and schismatic" she interrupted him at once to contradict. When he commanded her own submission to the Church, she replied that she was ready to answer to G.o.d and to the Pope for all, and that for all she was herself alone responsible. This was a confusing reply for her judges, when made before the great concourse of people who had a.s.sembled to witness this young girl's examination. They could only retort that the ecclesiastics there present were the representatives both of G.o.d and of the Pope, and that she must submit to them. They then ordered her "to abjure" publicly the various things of which she was accused. She did not understand what was required of her. Erard exclaimed that she must "abjure" or be burnt at once. At last he began to read her sentence of condemnation. Then, though she was conscious of no evil, she at last said, "I submit myself to the Church." They hastened to read over the twelve articles of accusation already given, and the poor girl agreed to them, promising never to sin again and to submit herself to the justice of the Church. Ma.s.sieu read to her a formula "of some eight lines," according to his testimony afterwards.

There was some murmuring among the crowd during this long ceremony; for while Jeanne was alive the English soldiery dared attempt nothing fresh; and they only saw in her refusals to "abjure" an immediate reason for handing her over from the ecclesiastical justice to the secular, whose ways were swifter. But merely burning Jeanne would not have been enough. She had to confess her sins, to disavow her mission, to be received into the bosom of the Church and pardoned, and then--to be discovered in fresh crime. One of the consequences of her "abjuration" was that she was wearing woman's dress that very afternoon. Two days afterwards (on Sunday) the ecclesiastics heard that she had changed to masculine attire again. They rushed to the castle to verify the "relapse" they were so ardently expecting, but the English soldiers drove them out again, being very tired by this time of their unintelligible delays. On May 28th Pierre Cauchon questioned her, and she said that if they kept their word, to free her and let her hear ma.s.s, she would keep hers and change her dress, but that among men a man's dress suited her best.[55] Asked if she had heard her "voices" again--a deliberate trap to secure the certainty of proved "relapse"--she replied, "G.o.d has told me by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret of the pity and the betrayal that I have wrought in making abjuration to save my life, and that I lost my soul to save my life." To this the clerk added the fatal comment, "RESPONSIO MORTIFERA." Jeanne realised now what her "abjuration" had really meant. The fear that had inspired it had pa.s.sed, and she boldly reaffirmed her mission and her faith. It was all her judges needed. "Farewell," cried Pierre Cauchon to Warwick and his English who waited in the castle-yard, "be of good cheer, for it is done."

[Footnote 55: The "Proces de Rehabilitation" reveals, on the testimony of Manchon the clerk, that her reply as recorded in the "Proces de condemnation" was not correctly set down with reference to her change of attire. She resumed her male dress, though it meant her death-sentence, because, as both Ma.s.sieu and Ladvenu swore, several gross attempts had been made upon her honour since the scene in the Cemetery of St. Ouen; and Pierre Cauchon cannot have been unaware that this would certainly occur.]

By orders of the meeting of the 29th of May, already mentioned as held in the Chapelle des Ordres, Martin Ladvenu and Jean Toutmouille came to her cell early in the morning of the next day, and announced that she was to be handed over to the Secular Justice and burnt. "Helas!" she cried, with all the natural terror of a woman, "me traite-t-on si horriblement et cruellement, qu'il faille que mon corps net et entier, qui ne fut jamais corrompu, soit aujourd'hui consume et rendu en cendres!" She then confessed to Ladvenu, and after some discussion the sacred elements were brought to her, without any of the usual ceremonial accompaniments, and she received them with deep devotion.

The last scene in her life now drew near. That you may understand it, you must realise that the present Place du Vieux Marche has little except its name in common with the Vieux Marche where Jeanne was burnt. The map I have reproduced from Jacques Lelieur's plan of 1525 will show you very much what it was like in the fifteenth century (see map F), and will prove not only that it was far smaller in extent, but that many buildings round it then have now disappeared without a trace of them remaining. In this old map the "Rue Ma.s.sacre" must be understood as representing that part of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge which extended from the Porte Ma.s.sacre (see p. 135) to the Place du Vieux Marche. When you stand in the Vieux Marche now, if you imagine that the houses of the Rue Cauchoise extended across the open square to the beginning of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, you may realise how much less s.p.a.ce there was in the fifteenth century. In those days, too, it must be remembered that what is now the Place Verdrel was called the Marche Neuf, and that the old Marche aux Veaux has now become quite wrongly the Place de la Pucelle. How this mistake arose will soon be clear.

M. Charles de Beaurepaire's untiring researches have established from recorded doc.u.ments every house that stood round the Vieux Marche. The map shows that the Church of St. Sauveur (now vanished) stood near the Rue du Vieux Palais and the Rue de la Pie, with its apse turned towards the Grosse Horloge. Within its cemetery was erected the scaffolding beyond the east end of the church on which Jeanne's judges stood at her execution. Near it was another stage at the end of the Market-Hall, and in sight of both was the place where she was burnt, marked by the "Escharfaut," recorded by Lelieur, and known to have been in the same place since 1233. It was well within the view not only of the judges but of a crowd in the Vieux Marche and the Rue Cauchoise, and its place is commemorated by the tablet you can now read at the corner of the new Market-Hall.

The mistake of the "Place de la Pucelle" arose because a monumental fountain was erected there for the first time, when Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, who really started the waterworks of Rouen on a proper basis, used the Fontaine St. Filleul for the benefit of the Quartier Cauchoise. The pipe was brought into the Marche aux Veaux because the level of the ground permitted a better fall for the water, and the town took advantage of the opportunity to turn the new fountain into a memorial of Jeanne d'Arc. The actual spot where she was burnt was never marked at all, until the tablet of to-day was set up; for although the "Proces de Rehabilitation" decreed that the scene of her execution should be consecrated with a cross, that cross was placed on the point of the wall of the Cemetery of St. Sauveur, which was nearest to her scaffold; and this for the very good reason that the English (if for no other motive) would not allow another "sanctuary" (as all crosses were in the fifteenth century) to be erected so near to the cemetery which was already holy ground itself. It was this commemorative cr