Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 3 Weaving the Net About Her
by Mark Twain
It was necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noël
and myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write,
the applied to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for
me with a good priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief
recorder in the Great Trial of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was
a strange position for me--clerk to the recorder--and dangerous if
my sympathies and the late employment should be found out. But
there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom friendly to
Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I had
discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a
person of low degree.
I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and
into February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very
fortress where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon
where she was confined, and so did not see her, of course.
Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my
coming. Ever since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy
packing his jury for the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks
he had spent in this bad industry. The University of Paris had sent
him a number of learned and able and trusty ecclesiastics of the
stripe he wanted; and he had scraped together a clergyman of like
stripe and great fame here and there and yonder, until he was able
to construct a formidable court numbering half a hundred
distinguished names. French names they were, but their interests
and sympathies were English.
A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the
accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was
a brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had
no power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same
honest talk was uttered by two or three others.
The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan
had already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her
favor. Yes, and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of
it was an Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan.
So here, you see, a lower court was impudently preparing to try
and redecide a cause which had already been decided by its
superior, a court of higher authority. Imagine it! No, the case could
not properly be tried again. Cauchon could not properly preside in
this new court, for more than one reason:
Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her
domicile, which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed
judge was the prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was
incompetent to try her. Yet all these large difficulties were gotten
rid of. The territorial chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial
letters to Cauchon--though only after a struggle and under
compulsion. Force was also applied to the Inquisitor, and he was
obliged to submit.
So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this
reservation: if the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her
back again! Ah, dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and
friendless child? Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she
was in a black dungeon, with half a dozen brutal common soldiers
keeping guard night and day in the room where her cage was--for
she was in a cage; an iron cage, and chained to her bed by neck
and hands and feet. Never a person near her whom she had ever
seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was, indeed,
friendlessness.
Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan
and Compiègne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of
Burgundy. Yet this very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to
go and show his face to Joan in her cage. He came with two
English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was a poor reptile. He
told her he would get her set free if she would promise not to fight
the English any more. She had been in that cage a long time now,
but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted scornfully:
"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the
power nor the will to do it."
He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan,
and she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash,
saying:
"See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I
know that the English are going to kill me, for they think that
when I am dead they can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never
get it."
This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a
free, strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his
dagger and flung himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized
him and held him back. Warwick was wise. Take her life in that
way? Send her to Heaven stainless and undisgraced? It would
make her the idol of France, and the whole nation would rise and
march to victory and emancipation under the inspiration of her
spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than that.
Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than
two months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for
any odds and ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that
might be usable against Joan, and carefully suppressing all
evidence that came to hand in her favor. He had limitless ways and
means and powers at his disposal for preparing and strengthening
the case for the prosecution, and he used them all.
But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut
up in those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help.
And as for witnesses, she could not call a single one in her
defense; they were all far away, under the French flag, and this
was an English court; they would have been seized and hanged if
they had shown their faces at the gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner
must be the sole witness--witness for the prosecution, witness for
the defense; and with a verdict of death resolved upon before the
doors were opened for the court's first sitting.
When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in
the interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal
number of priests of the French party should be added to these.
Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to
answer it.
By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it
was her right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how
to answer when questioned, and protect her from falling into traps
set by cunning devices of the prosecution. She probably did not
know that this was her right, and that she could demand it and
require it, for there was none to tell her that; but she begged for
this help, at any rate. Cauchon refused it. She urged and implored,
pleading her youth and her ignorance of the complexities and
intricacies of the law and of legal procedure. Cauchon refused
again, and said she must get along with her case as best she might
by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.
Cauchon prepared the procès verbal. I will simplify that by calling
it the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against
her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was
merely charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of
heresies, witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion.
Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be
begun until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and
character of the accused, and it was essential that the result of this
inquiry be added to the procès verbal and form a part of it. You
remember that that was the first thing they did before the trial at
Poitiers. They did it again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to
Domremy. There and all about the neighborhood he made an
exhaustive search into Joan's history and character, and came back
with his verdict. It was very clear. The searcher reported that he
found Joan's character to be in every way what he "would like his
own sister's character to be." Just about the same report that was
brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a character which
could endure the minutest examination.
This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it
would have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was
awake, and it disappeared from the procès verbal before the trial.
People were prudent enough not to inquire what became of it.
One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by
this time. But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's
destruction, and it promised to be a deadly one.
One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the
University of Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur.
He was tall, handsome, grave, of smooth, soft speech and
courteous and winning manners. There was no seeming of
treachery or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of both. He was
admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised as a cobbler; he
pretended to be from her own country; he professed to be secretly
a patriot; he revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was filled
with gladness to see one from the hills and plains that were so dear
to her; happier still to look upon a priest and disburden her heart in
confession, for the offices of the Church were the bread of life, the
breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been long forced to pine
for them in vain. She opened her whole innocent heart to this
creature, and in return he gave her advice concerning her trial
which could have destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not
protected her against following it.
You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets
of the confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but
suppose another person should overhear them? That person is not
bound to keep the secret. Well, that is what happened. Cauchon
had previously caused a hole to be bored through the wall; and he
stood with his ear to that hole and heard all. It is pitiful to think of
these things. One wonders how they could treat that poor child so.
She had not done them any harm.