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A Popular History of France Vol 3
CHAPTER XXIV. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.--CHARLES VII. AND JOAN OF ARC. 1422-1461.
by Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume
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Whilst Charles VI. was dying at Paris, his son Charles, the dauphin,
was on his way back from Saintonge to Berry, where he usually resided.
On the 24th of October, 1422, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, he heard of his
father's death. For six days longer, from the 24th to the 29th of
October, he took no style but that of regent, as if he were waiting to
see what was going to happen elsewhere in respect of the succession to
the throne. It was only when he knew that, on the 27th of October, the
parliament of Paris had, not without some little hesitation and
ambiguity, recognized "as King of England and of France, Henry VI., son
of Henry V. lately deceased," that the dauphin Charles assumed on the
30th of October, in his castle of Mehun-sur-Yevre, the title of king, and
repaired to Bourges to inaugurate in the cathedral of that city his reign
as Charles VII.
He was twenty years old, and had as yet done nothing to gain for himself,
not to say anything of glory, the confidence and hopes of the people. He
passed for an indolent and frivolous prince, abandoned to his pleasures
only; one whose capacity there was nothing to foreshadow, and of whom
France, outside of his own court, scarcely ever thought at all. Some
days before his accession he had all but lost his life at Rochelle by the
sudden breaking down of the room in the episcopal palace where he was
staying; and so little did the country know of what happened to him that,
a short time after the accident, messengers sent by some of his partisans
had arrived at Bourges to inquire if the prince were still living. At a
time when not only the crown of the kingdom, but the existence and
independence of the nation, were at stake, Charles had not given any
signs of being strongly moved by patriotic feelings. "He was, in person,
a handsome prince, and handsome in speech with all persons, and
compassionate towards poor folks," says his contemporary Monstrelet; "but
he did not readily put on his harness, and he had no heart for war if he
could do without it." On ascending the throne, this young prince, so
little of the politician and so little of the knight, encountered at the
head of his enemies the most able amongst the politicians and warriors of
the day in the Duke of Bedford, whom his brother Henry V. had appointed
regent of France, and had charged to defend on behalf of his nephew,
Henry VI., a child in the cradle, the crown of France, already more than
half won. Never did struggle appear more unequal or native king more
inferior to foreign pretender.
Sagacious observers, however, would have easily discerned in the cause
which appeared the stronger and the better supported many seeds of
weakness and danger. When Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, heard at
Arras, that Charles VI. was dead, it occurred to him immediately that if
he attended the obsequies of the English King of France he would be
obliged, French prince as he was, and cousin-german of Charles VI., to
yield precedence to John, Duke of Bedford, regent of France, and uncle of
the new king, Henry VI. He resolved to hold aloof, and contented himself
with sending to Paris chamberlains to make his excuses and supply his
place with the regent. On the 11th of November, 1422, the Duke of
Bedford followed alone at the funeral of the late king of France, and
alone made offering at the mass. Alone he went, but with the sword of
state borne before him as regent. The people of Paris cast down their
eyes with restrained wrath. "They wept," says a contemporary, "and not
without cause, for they knew not whether for a long, long while they
would have any king in France." But they did not for long confine
themselves to tears. Two poets, partly in Latin and partly in French,
Robert Blondel, and Alan Chartier, whilst deploring the public woes,
excited the popular feeling. Conspiracies soon followed the songs. One
was set on foot at Paris to deliver the city to king Charles VII., but it
was stifled ruthlessly; several burgesses were beheaded, and one woman
was burned. In several great provincial cities, at Troyes and at Rheims,
the same ferment showed itself, and drew down the same severity. William
Prieuse, superior of the Carmelites, was accused of propagating
sentiments favorable to the dauphin, as the English called Charles VII.
Being brought, in spite of the privileges of his gown, before John
Cauchon, lieutenant of the captain of Rheims [related probably to Peter
Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who nine years afterwards was to sentence
Joan of Arc to be burned], he stoutly replied, "Never was English king of
France, and never shall be." The country had no mind to believe in the
conquest it was undergoing; and the Duke of Burgundy, the most puissant
ally of the English, sulkily went on eluding the consequences of the
anti-national alliance he had accepted.
Such being the disposition of conquerors and conquered, the war, though
still carried on with great spirit, could not, and in fact did not, bring
about any decisive result from 1422 to 1429. Towns were alternately
taken, lost, and retaken, at one time by the French, at another by the
English or Burgundians; petty encounters and even important engagements
took place with vicissitudes of success and reverses on both sides. At
Crevant-sur-Yonne, on the 31st of July, 1423, and at Verneuil, in
Normandy, on the 17th of August, 1424, the French were beaten, and their
faithful allies, the Scots, suffered considerable loss. In the latter
affair, however, several Norman lords deserted the English flag, refusing
to fight against the King of France. On the 26th of September, 1423, at
La Gravelle, in Maine, the French were victorious, and Du Guesclin was
commemorated in their victory. Anne de Laval, granddaughter of the great
Breton warrior, and mistress of a castle hard by the scene of action,
sent thither her son, Andrew de Laval, a child twelve years of age, and,
as she buckled with her own hands the sword which his ancestor had worn,
she said to him, "God make thee as valiant as he whose sword this was!"
The boy received the order of knighthood on the field of battle, and
became afterwards a marshal of France. Little bands, made up of
volunteers, attempted enterprises which the chiefs of the regular armies
considered impossible. Stephen de Vignolles, celebrated under the name
of La Hire, resolved to succor the town of Montargis, besieged by the
English; and young Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, joined him. On
arriving, September 5, 1427, beneath the walls of the place, a priest was
encountered in their road. La Hire asked him for absolution. The priest
told him to confess. "I have no time for that," said La Hire; "I am in a
hurry; I have done in the way of sins all that men of war are in the
habit of doing." Whereupon, says the chronicler, the chaplain gave him
absolution for what it was worth; and La Hire, putting his hands
together, said, "God, I pray Thee to do for La Hire this day as much as
Thou wouldst have La Hire do for Thee if he were God and Thou wert La
Hire." And Montargis was rid of its besiegers. The English determined
to become masters of Mont St. Michel au peril de la mer, that abbey built
on a rock facing the western coast of Normandy and surrounded every day
by the waves of ocean. The thirty-second abbot, Robert Jolivet, promised
to give the place up to them, and went to Rouen with that design; but one
of his monks, John Enault, being elected vicar-general by the chapter,
and supported by some valiant Norman warriors, offered an obstinate
resistance for eight years, baffled all the attacks of the English, and
retained the abbey in the possession of the King of France. The
inhabitants of La Rochelle rendered the same service to the king and to
France in a more important case. On the 15th of August, 1427, an English
fleet of a hundred and twenty sail, it is said, appeared off their city
with invading troops aboard. The Rochellese immediately levied upon
themselves an extraordinary tax, and put themselves in a state of
defence; troops raised in the neighborhood went and occupied the heights
bordering on the coast; and a bold Breton sailor, Bernard de Kercabin,
put to sea to meet the enemy, with ships armed as privateers. The
attempt of the English seemed to them to offer more danger than chance of
success; and they withdrew. Thus Charles VII. kept possession of the
only seaport remaining to the crown. Almost everywhere in the midst of a
war as indecisive as it was obstinate local patriotism and the spirit of
chivalry successfully disputed against foreign supremacy the scattered
fragments of the fatherland and the throne.
In order to put an end to this doubtful condition of events and of minds,
the Duke of Bedford determined to aim a grand blow at the national party
in France and at her king. After Paris and Rouen, Orleans was the most
important city in the kingdom; it was as supreme on the banks of the
Loire as Paris and Rouen were on those of the Seine. After having
obtained from England considerable re-enforcements commanded by leaders
of experience, the English commenced, in October, 1428, the siege of
Orleans. The approaches to the place were occupied in force, and
bastilles closely connected one with another were constructed around the
walls. As a set-off, the most valiant warriors of France, La Hire,
Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the Marshal La Fayette threw themselves into
Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men.
Several towns, Bourges, Poitiers, and La Rochelle, sent thither money,
munitions, and militia; the states-general, assembled at Chinon, voted an
extraordinary aid; and Charles VII. called out the regulars and the
reserves. Assaults on the one side and sorties on the other were begun
with ardor. Besiegers and besieged quite felt that they were engaged in
a decisive struggle. The first encounter was unfortunate for the
Orleannese. In a fight called the Herring affair, they were unsuccessful
in an attempt to carry off a supply of victuals and salt fish which Sir
John Falstolf was bringing to the besiegers. Being a little discouraged,
they offered the Duke of Burgundy to place their city in his hands, that
it might not fall into those of the English; and Philip the Good accepted
the offer, but the Duke of Bedford made a formal objection: "He didn't
care," he said, "to beat the bushes for another to get the birds."
Philip in displeasure withdrew from the siege the small force of
Burgundians he had sent. The English remained alone before the place,
which was every day harder pressed and more strictly blockaded. The
besieged were far from foreseeing what succor was preparing for them.
This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village
in the valley of the Meuse, between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the
edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of
simple tillers of the soil, "of good life and repute, herself a good,
simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning
with her mother, or driving afield her parent's sheep, and sometimes,
even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock
of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc,
whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often
went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the
gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but
dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in
the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, and
she blushed when her fair friends taxed her with being too religious. In
1421, when Joan was hardly nine, a band of Anglo-Burgundians penetrated
into her country, and transferred thither the ravages of war. The
village of Domremy and the little town of Vaucouleurs were French, and
faithful to the French king-ship; and Joan wept to see the lads of her
parish returning bruised and bleeding from encounters with the enemy.
Her relations and neighbors were one day obliged to take to flight, and
at their return they found their houses burned or devastated. Joan
wondered whether it could possibly be that God permitted such excesses
and disasters. In 1425, on a summer's day, at noon, she was in her
father's little garden. She heard a voice calling her, at her right
side, in the direction of the church, and a great brightness shone upon
her at the same time in the same spot. At first she was frightened, but
she recovered herself on finding that "it was a worthy voice;" and, at
the second call, she perceived that it was the voice of angels. "I saw
them with my bodily eyes," she said, six years later, to her judges at
Rouen, "as plainly as I see you; when they departed from me I wept, and
would fain have had them take me with them." The apparitions came again
and again, and exhorted her "to go to France for to deliver the kingdom."
She became dreamy, rapt in constant meditation. "I could endure no
longer," said she, at a later period, "and the time went heavily with me
as with a woman in travail." She ended by telling everything to her
father, who listened to her words anxiously at first, and afterwards
wrathfully. He himself one night dreamed that his daughter had followed
the king's men-at-arms to France, and from that moment he kept her under
strict superintendence. "If I knew of your sister's going," he said to
his sons, "I would bid you drown her; and, if you did not do it, I would
drown her myself." Joan submitted: there was no leaven of pride in her
sublimation, and she did not suppose that her intercourse with celestial
voices relieved her from the duty of obeying her parents. Attempts were
made to distract her mind. A young man who had courted her was induced
to say that he had a promise of marriage from her, and to claim the
fulfilment of it. Joan went before the ecclesiastical judge, made
affirmation that she had given no promise, and without difficulty gained
her cause. Everybody believed and respected her.
In a village hard by Domremy she had an uncle whose wife was near her
confinement; she got herself invited to go and nurse her aunt, and
thereupon she opened her heart to her uncle, repeating to him a popular
saying, which had spread indeed throughout the country: "Is it not said
that a woman shall ruin France, and a young maid restore it?" She
pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de Baudricourt,
captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the dauphin and carry
assistance to him. Her uncle gave way, and on the 13th of May, 1428, he
did take her to Vaucouleurs. "I come on behalf of my Lord," said she to
Sire de Baudricourt, "to bid you send word to the dauphin to keep
himself well in hand, and not give battle to his foes, for my Lord will
presently give him succor." "Who is thy lord?" asked Baudricourt. "The
King of Heaven," answered Joan. Baudricourt set her down for mad, and
urged her uncle to take her back to her parents "with a good slap o' the
face."
In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and
redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards, the report
touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more
passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vaucouleurs. "I must
go," said she to Sire de Baudricourt, "for to raise the siege of Orleans.
I will go, should I have to wear off my legs to the knee." She had
returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. "Had I
possessed," said she, in 1431, to her judges at Rouen, "a hundred fathers
and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king's daughter, I should have
gone." Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose
her remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young
girl to Duke Charles of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according
to some chronicles, to the king's court. Joan lodged at Vaucouleurs in a
wheelwright's house, and passed three weeks there, spinning with her
hostess, and dividing her time between work and church. There was much
talk in Vaucouleurs of her, and her visions, and her purpose. John of
Metz [also called John of Novelompont], a knight serving with Sire de
Baudricourt, desired to see her, and went to the wheelwright's. "What do
you here, my dear?" said he; "must the king be driven from his kingdom,
and we become English?" "I am come hither," answered Joan, "to speak to
Robert de Baudricourt, that he may be pleased to take me or have me taken
to the king; but he pays no heed to me or my words. However, I must be
with the king before the middle of Lent, for none in the world, nor
kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of the Scottish king can recover the
kingdom of France; there is no help but in me. Assuredly I would far
rather be spinning beside my poor mother, for this other is not my
condition; but I must go and do the work because my Lord wills that I
should do it." "Who is your lord?" "The Lord God." "By my faith,"
said the knight, seizing Joan's hands, "I will take you to the king, God
helping. When will you set out?" "Rather now than to-morrow; rather
to-morrow than later." Vaucouleurs was full of the fame and the sayings
of Joan. Another knight, Bertrand de Poulengy, offered, as John of Metz
had, to be her escort, Duke Charles of Lorraine wished to see her, and
sent for her to Nancy. Old and ill as he was, he had deserted the
duchess his wife, a virtuous lady, and was leading anything but a regular
life. He asked Joan's advice about his health. "I have no power to cure
you," said Joan, "but go back to your wife and help me in that for which
God ordains me." The duke ordered her four golden crowns, and she
returned to Vaucouleurs, thinking of nothing but her departure. There
was no want of confidence and good will on the part of the inhabitants of
Vaucouleurs in forwarding her preparations. John of Metz, the knight
charged to accompany her, asked her if she intended to make the journey
in her poor red rustic petticoats. "I would like to don man's clothes,"
answered Joan. Subscriptions were made to give her a suitable costume.
She was supplied with a horse, a coat of mail, a lance, a sword, the
complete equipment, indeed, of a man-at-arms; and a king's messenger and
an archer formed her train. Baudricourt made them swear to escort her
safely, and on the 25th of February, 1429, he bade her farewell, and all
he said was, "Away then, Joan, and come what may."
Charles VII. was at that time residing at Chinon, in Touraine. In order
to get there Joan had nearly a hundred and fifty leagues to go, in a
country occupied here and there by English and Burgundians, and
everywhere a theatre of war. She took eleven days to do this journey,
often marching by night, never giving up man's dress, disquieted by no
difficulty and no danger, and testifying no desire for a halt save to
worship God. "Could we hear mass daily," said she to her comrades, "we
should do well." They only consented twice, first in the abbey of St.
Urban, and again in the principal church of Auxerre. As they were full
of respect, though at the same time also of doubt, towards Joan, she
never had to defend herself against their familiarities, but she had
constantly to dissipate their disquietude touching the reality or the
character of her mission. "Fear nothing," she said to them; "God shows
me the way I should go; for thereto was I born." On arriving at the
village of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, near Chinon, she heard three masses
on the same day, and had a letter written thence to the king, to announce
her coming and to ask to see him; she had gone, she said, a hundred and
fifty leagues to come and tell him things which would be most useful to
him. Charles VII. and his councillors hesitated. The men of war did not
like to believe that a little peasant-girl of Lorraine was coming to
bring the king a more effectual support than their own. Nevertheless
some, and the most heroic amongst them,—Dunois, La Hire, and
Xaintrailles,—were moved by what was told of this young girl. The
letters of Sire de Baudricourt, though full of doubt, suffered a gleam of
something like a serious impression to peep out; and why should not the
king receive this young girl whom the captain of Vaucouleurs had thought
it a duty to send? It would soon be seen what she was and what she would
do. The politicians and courtiers, especially the most trusted of them,
George de la Tremoille, the king's favorite, shrugged their shoulders.
What could be expected from the dreams of a young peasant-girl of
nineteen? Influences of a more private character and more disposed
towards sympathy—Yolande of Arragon, for instance, Queen of Sicily and
mother-in-law of Charles VII., and perhaps, also, her daughter, the young
queen, Mary of Anjou, were urgent for the king to reply to Joan that she
might go to Chinon. She was authorized to do so, and, on the 6th of
March, 1429, she with her comrades arrived at the royal residence.
At the very first moment two incidents occurred to still further increase
the curiosity of which she was the object. Quite close to Chinon some
vagabonds, it is said, had prepared an ambuscade for the purpose of
despoiling her, her and her train. She passed close by them without the
least obstacle. The rumor went that at her approach they were struck
motionless, and had been unable to attempt their wicked purpose. Joan
was rather tall, well shaped, dark, with a look of composure, animation,
and gentleness. A man-at-arms, who met her on her way, thought her
pretty, and with an impious oath expressed a coarse sentiment. "Alas!"
said Joan, "thou blasphemest thy God, and yet thou art so near thy
death!" He drowned himself, it is said, soon after. Already popular
feeling was surrounding her marvellous mission with a halo of
instantaneous miracles.
On her arrival at Chinon she at first lodged with an honest family near
the castle. For three days longer there was a deliberation in the
council as to whether the king ought to receive her. But there was bad
news from Orleans. There were no more troops to send thither, and there
was no money forthcoming: the king's treasurer, it was said, had but four
crowns in the chest. If Orleans were taken, the king would perhaps be
reduced to seeking a refuge in Spain or in Scotland. Joan promised to
set Orleans free. The Orleannese themselves were clamorous for her;
Dunois kept up their spirits with the expectation of this marvellous
assistance. It was decided that the king should receive her. She had
assigned to her for residence an apartment in the tower of the Coudray, a
block of quarters adjoining the royal mansion, and she was committed to
the charge of William Bellier, an officer of the king's household, whose
wife was a woman of great piety and excellent fame. On the 9th of March,
1429, Joan was at last introduced into the king's presence by the Count
of Vendome, high steward, in the great hall on the first story, a portion
of the wall and the fireplace being still visible in the present day. It
was evening, candle-light; and nearly three hundred knights were present.
Charles kept himself a little aloof, amidst a group of warriors and
courtiers more richly dressed than he. According to some chroniclers,
Joan had demanded that "she should not be deceived, and should have
pointed out to her him to whom she was to speak;" others affirm that she
went straight to the king, whom she had never seen, "accosting him humbly
and simply, like a poor little shepherdess," says an eye-witness, and,
according to another account, "making the usual bends and reverences as
if she had been brought up at court." Whatever may have been her outward
behavior, "Gentle dauphin," she said to the king (for she did not think
it right to call him king so long as he was not crowned), "my name is Joan
the maid; the King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be
anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of
the King of Heaven, who is King of France. It is God's pleasure that our
enemies the English should depart to their own country; if they depart no
evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours."
Charles was impressed without being convinced, as so many others had been
before, or were, as he was, on that very day. He saw Joan again several
times. She did not delude herself as to the doubts he still entertained.
"Gentle dauphin," she said to him one day, "why do you not believe me?
I say unto you that God hath compassion on you, your kingdom, and your
people; St. Louis and Charlemagne are kneeling before Him, making prayer
for you, and I will say unto you, so please you, a thing which will give
you to understand that you ought to believe me." Charles gave her
audience on this occasion in the presence, according to some accounts, of
four witnesses, the most trusted of his intimates, who swore to reveal
nothing, and, according to others, completely alone. "What she said to
him there is none who knows," wrote Alan Chartier, a short time after [in
July, 1429], "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy
thereat as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit." M. Wallop, after a
scrupulous sifting of evidence, has given the following exposition of
this mysterious interview. "Sire de Boisy," he says, "who was in his
youth one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber on the most familiar terms
with Charles VII., told Peter Sala, giving the king himself as his
authority for the story, that one day, at the period of his greatest
adversity, the prince, vainly looking for a remedy against so many
troubles, entered in the morning, alone, into his oratory, and there,
without uttering a word aloud, made prayer to God from the depths of his
heart that if he were the true heir, issue of the house of France (and a
doubt was possible with such a queen as Isabel of Bavaria), and the
kingdom ought justly to be his, God would be pleased to keep and defend
it for him; if not, to give him grace to escape without death or
imprisonment, and find safety in Spain or in Scotland, where he intended
in the last resort to seek a refuge. This prayer, known to God alone,
the Maid recalled to the mind of Charles VII.; and thus is explained the
joy which, as the witnesses say, he testified, whilst none at that time
knew the cause. Joan by this revelation not only caused the king to
believe in her; she caused him to believe in himself and his right and
title: though she never spoke in that way as of her own motion to the
king, it was always a superior power speaking by her voice, 'I tell thee
on behalf of my Lord that thou art true heir of France, and son of the
king.'" (Jeanne d'Arc, by M. Wallon, t. i. p. 32.)
Whether Charles VII. were or were not convinced by this interview of
Joan's divine mission, he clearly saw that many of those about him had
little or no faith in it, and that other proofs were required to upset
their doubts. He resolved to go to Poitiers, where his council, the
parliament, and several learned members of the University of Paris were
in session, and have Joan put to the strictest examination. When she
learned her destination, she said, "In the name of God, I know that I
shall have tough work there, but my Lord will help me. Let us go, then,
for God's sake." On her arrival at Poitiers, on the 11th of March, 1429,
she was placed in one of the most respectable families in the town, that
of John Rabuteau, advocate-general in parliament. The Archbishop of
Rheims, Reginald de Chartres, Chancellor of France, five bishops, the
king's councillors, several learned doctors, and amongst others Father
Seguin, an austere and harsh Dominican, repaired thither to question her.
When she saw them come in, she went and sat down at the end of the bench,
and asked them what they wanted with her. For two hours they set
themselves to the task of showing her, "by fair and gentle arguments,"
that she was not entitled to belief. "Joan," said William Aimery,
professor of theology, "you ask for men-at-arms, and you say that it is
God's pleasure that the English should leave the kingdom of France, and
depart to their own land; if so, there is no need of men-at-arms, for
God's pleasure alone can discomfit them, and force them to return to
their homes." "In the name of God," answered Joan, "the men-at-arms will
do battle, and God will give them victory." Master William did not urge
his point. The Dominican, Seguin, "a very sour man," says the chronicle,
asked Joan what language the voices spoke to her. "Better than yours,"
answered Joan. The doctor spoke the Limousine dialect. "Do you believe
in God?" he asked, ill-humoredly. "More than you do," retorted Joan,
offended. "Well," rejoined the monk, "God forbids belief in you without
some sign tending thereto: I shall not give the king advice to trust
men-at-arms to you, and put them in peril on your simple word." "In the
name of God," said Joan, "I am not come to Poitiers to show signs; take
me to Orleans, and I will give you signs of what I am sent for. Let me
have ever so few men-at-arms given me, and I will go to Orleans;" then,
addressing another of the examiners, Master Peter of Versailles, who was
afterwards Bishop of Meaux, she said, "I know nor A nor B; but in our
Lord's book there is more than in your books; I come on behalf of the
King of Heaven to cause the siege of Orleans to be raised, and to take
the king to Rheims, that he may be crowned and anointed there." The
examination was prolonged for a fortnight, not without symptoms of
impatience on the part of Joan. At the end of it, she said to one of the
doctors, John Erault, "Have you paper and ink? Write what I shall say to
you." And she dictated a form of letter which became, some weeks later,
the manifesto addressed in a more developed shape by her from Orleans to
the English, calling upon them to raise the siege and put a stop to the
war. The chief of those piously and patriotically heroic phrases were as
follows:—
"Jesu Maria,
"King of England, account to the King of Heaven for His blood royal.
Give up to the Maid the keys of all the good towns you have taken by
force. She is come from God to avenge the blood royal, and quite
ready to make peace, if you will render proper account. If you do
not so I am a war-chief; in whatsoever place I shall fall in with
your folks in France, if they be not willing to obey, I shall make
them get thence, whether they will or not; and if they be willing to
obey, I will receive them to mercy. . . . The Maid cometh from
the King of Heaven as His representative, to thrust you out of
France; she doth promise and certify you that she will make therein
such mighty haha [great tumult], that for a thousand years
hitherto in France was never the like. . . . Duke of Bedford,
who call yourself regent of France, the Maid doth pray you and
request you not to bring destruction on yourself; if you do not
justice towards her, she will do the finest deed ever done in
Christendom.
"Writ on Tuesday in the great week." [Easter week, March, 1429].
Subscribed: "Hearken to the news from God and the
Maid."
At the end of their examination, the doctors decided in Joan's favor.
Two of them, the Bishop of Castres, Gerard Machet, the king's confessor,
and Master John Erault, recognized the divine nature of her mission. She
was, they said, the virgin foretold in the ancient prophecies, notably in
those of Merlin; and the most exacting amongst them approved of the
king's having neither accepted nor rejected, with levity, the promises
made by Joan; "after a grave inquiry there had been discovered in her,"
they said, "nought but goodness, humility, devotion, honesty, simplicity.
Before Orleans she professes to be going to show her sign; so she must be
taken to Orleans, for to give her up without any appearance on her part
of evil would be to fight against the Holy Spirit, and to become unworthy
of aid from God." After the doctors' examination came that of the women.
Three of the greatest ladies in France, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of
Sicily; the Countess of Gaucourt, wife of the Governor of Orleans; and
Joan de Mortemer, wife of Robert le Macon, Baron of Troves, were charged
to examine Joan as to her life as a woman. They found therein nothing
but truth, virtue, and modesty; "she spoke to them with such sweetness
and grace," says the chronicle, "that she drew tears from their eyes;"
and she excused herself to them for the dress she wore, and for which the
sternest doctors had not dreamed of reproaching her. "It is more
decent," said the Archbishop of Embrun, "to do such things in man's
dress, since they must be done along with men." The men of intelligence
at court bowed down before this village-saint, who was coming to bring to
the king in his peril assistance from God; the most valiant men of war
were moved by the confident outbursts of her patriotic courage; and the
people everywhere welcomed her with faith and enthusiasm. Joan had as
yet only just appeared, and already she was the heaven-sent interpretress
of the nation's feeling, the hope of the people of France.
Charles no longer hesitated. Joan was treated, according to her own
expression in her letter to the English, "as a war-chief;" there were
assigned to her a squire, a page, two heralds, a chaplain, Brother
Pasquerel, of the order of the hermit-brotherhood of St. Augustin,
varlets, and serving-folks. A complete suit of armor was made to fit
her. Her two guides, John of Metz and Bertrand of Poulengy, had not
quitted her; and the king continued them in her train. Her sword he
wished to be supplied by himself; she asked for one marked with five
crosses; it would be found, she said, behind the altar in the chapel of
St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, where she had halted on her arrival at
Chinon; and there, indeed, it was found. She had a white banner made,
studded with lilies, bearing the representation of God seated upon the
clouds, and holding in His hand the globe of the world. Above were the
words "Jesu Maria," and below were two angels, on their knees in
adoration. Joan was fond of her sword, as she said two years afterwards
at her trial, but she was forty times more fond of her banner, which was,
in her eyes, the sign of her commission and the pledge of victory. On
the completion of the preparations she demanded the immediate departure
of the expedition. Orleans was crying for succor; Dunois was sending
messenger after messenger; and Joan was in a greater hurry than anybody
else.
More than a month elapsed before her anxieties were satisfied. During
this interval we find Charles VII. and Joan of Arc at Chatelherault, at
Poitiers, at Tours, at Florent-les-Saumur, at Chinon, and at Blois, going
to and fro through all that country to push forward the expedition
resolved upon, and to remove the obstacles it encountered. Through a
haze of vague indications a glimpse is caught of the struggle which was
commencing between the partisans and the adversaries of Joan, and in
favor of or in opposition to the impulse she was communicating to the war
of nationality. Charles VII.'s mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen
of Sicily, and the young Duke of Alencon, whose father had been killed at
the battle of Agincourt, were at the head of Joan's partisans. Yolande
gave money and took a great deal of trouble in order to promote the
expedition which was to go and succor Orleans. The Duke of Alencon,
hardly twenty years of age, was the only one amongst the princes of the
house of Valois who had given Joan a kind reception on her arrival, and
who, together with the brave La Hire, said that he would follow her
whithersoever she pleased to lead him. Joan, in her gratitude, called
him the handsome duke, and exhibited towards him amity and confidence.
But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the king's
favorite, George de la Tremoille, an ambitious courtier, jealous of any
one who seemed within the range of the king's favor, and opposed to a
vigorous prosecution of the war, since it hampered him in the policy he
wished to keep up towards the Duke of Burgundy. To the ill will of La
Tremoille was added that of the majority of courtiers enlisted in the
following of the powerful favorite, and that of warriors irritated at the
importance acquired at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little
adventuress. Here was the source of the enmities and intrigues which
stood in the way of all Joan's demands, rendered her successes more
tardy, difficult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more
dearly still.
At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness. It was a
heavy convoy of revictualment, protected by a body of ten or twelve
thousand men, commanded by Marshal de Boussac, and numbering amongst them
Xaintrailles and La Hire. The march began on the 27th of April, 1429.
Joan had caused the removal of all women of bad character, and had
recommended her comrades to confess. She took the communion in the open
air, before their eyes; and a company of priests, headed by her chaplain,
Pasquerel, led the way whilst chanting sacred hymns. Great was the
surprise amongst the men-at-arms, many had words of mockery on their
lips. It was the time when La Hire used to say, "If God were a soldier,
He would turn robber." Nevertheless, respect got the better of habit;
the most honorable were really touched; the coarsest considered
themselves bound to show restraint. On the 29th of April they arrived
before Orleans. But, in consequence of the road they had followed, the
Loire was between the army and the town; the expeditionary corps had to
be split in two; the troops were obliged to go and feel for the bridge of
Blois in order to 'cross the river; and Joan was vexed and surprised.
Dunois, arrived from Orleans in a little boat, urged her to enter the
town that same evening. "Are you the bastard of Orleans?" asked she,
when he accosted her. "Yes; and I am rejoiced at your coming." "Was it
you who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the river,
and not the direct way, over yonder where Talbot and the English were?"
"Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest captains." "In the name of God,
the counsel of my Lord is wiser than yours; you thought to deceive me,
and you have deceived yourselves, for I am bringing you the best succor
that ever had knight, or town, or city, and that is the good will of God,
and succor from the King of Heaven; not assuredly for love of me, it is
from God only that it proceeds." It was a great trial for Joan to
separate from her comrades, "so well prepared, penitent, and well
disposed; in their company," said she, "I should not fear the whole power
of the English." She was afraid that disorder might set in amongst the
troops, and that they might break up, instead of fulfilling her mission.
Dunois was urgent for her to go herself at once into Orleans, with such
portion of the convoy as boats might be able to transport thither without
delay. "Orleans," said he, "would count it for nought, if they received
the victuals without the Maid." Joan decided to go: the captains of her
division promised to rejoin her at Orleans; she left them her chaplain,
Pasquerel, the priests who accompanied him, and the banner around which
she was accustomed to muster them; and she herself, with Dunois, La Hire,
and two hundred men-at-arms, crossed the river at the same time with a
part of the supplies.
The same day, at eight P. M., she entered the city, on horseback,
completely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her
Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the
most distinguished burgesses of Orleans who had gone out to meet her.
The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying
torches, and greeting her arrival "with joy as great as if they had seen
God come down amongst them. They felt," says the Journal of the Siege,
"all of them recomforted and as it were disbesieged by the divine virtue
which they had been told existed in this simple maid." In their anxiety
to approach her, to touch her, one of their lighted torches set fire to
her banner. Joan disengaged herself with her horse as cleverly as it
could have been done by the most skilful horseman, and herself
extinguished the flame. The crowd attended her to the church whither she
desired to go first of all to render thanks to God, and then to the house
of John Boucher, the Duke of Orleans's treasurer, where she was received
together with her two brothers and the two gentlemen who had been her
guides from Vaucouleurs. The treasurer's wife was one of the most
virtuous city dames in Orleans, and from this night forth her daughter
Charlotte had Joan for her bedfellow. A splendid supper had been
prepared for her; but she would merely dip some slices of bread in wine
and water. Neither her enthusiasm nor her success, the two greatest
tempters to pride in mankind, made any change in her modesty and
simplicity.
The very day after her arrival she would have liked to go and attack the
English in their bastilles, within which they kept themselves shut up.
La Hire was pretty much of her opinion; but Dunois and the captains of
the garrison thought they ought to await the coming of the troops which
had gone to cross the Loire at Blois, and the supports which several
French garrisons in the neighborhood had received orders to forward to
Orleans. Joan insisted. Sire de Gamaches, one of the officers present,
could not contain himself. "Since ear is given," said he, "to the advice
of a wench of low degree rather than to that of a knight like me, I will
not bandy more words; when the time comes, it shall be my sword that
will speak; I shall fall, perhaps, but the king and my own honor demand
it; henceforth I give up my banner and am nothing more than a poor
esquire. I prefer to have for master a noble man rather than a girl who
has heretofore been, perhaps, I know not what." He furled his banner
and handed it to Dunois. Dunois, as sensible as he was brave, would not
give heed either to the choler of Gamaches or to the insistence of Joan;
and, thanks to his intervention, they were reconciled on being induced
to think better, respectively, of giving up the banner and ordering an
immediate attack. Dunois went to Blois to hurry the movements of the
division which had repaired thither; and his presence there was highly
necessary, since Joan's enemies, especially the chancellor Regnault,
were nearly carrying a decision that no such re-enforcement should be
sent to Orleans. Dunois frustrated this purpose, and led back to
Orleans, by way of Beauce, the troops concentrated at Blois. On the 4th
of May, as soon as it was known that he was coming, Joan, La Hire, and
the principal leaders of the city as well as of the garrison, went to
meet him, and re-entered Orleans with him and his troops, passing
between the bastilles of the English, who made not even an attempt to
oppose them. "That is the sorceress yonder," said some of the
besiegers; others asked if it were quite so clear that her power, did
not come to her from on high; and their commander, the Earl of Suffolk,
being himself, perhaps, uncertain, did not like to risk it: doubt
produced terror, and terror inactivity. The convoy from Blois entered
Orleans, preceded by Brother Pasquerel and the priests.
Joan, whilst she was awaiting it, sent the English captains a fresh
summons to withdraw conformably with the letter which she had already
addressed to them from Blois, and the principal clauses of which were
just now quoted here. They replied with coarse insults, calling her
strumpet and cow-girl, and threatening to burn her when they caught her.
She was very much moved by their insults, insomuch as to weep; but
calling God to witness her innocence, she found herself comforted, and
expressed it by saying, "I have had news from my Lord." The English had
detained the first herald she had sent them; and when she would have sent
them a second to demand his comrade back, he was afraid. "In the name of
God," said Joan, "they will do no harm nor to thee nor to him; thou shalt
tell Talbot to arm, and I too will arm; let him show himself in front of
the city; if he can take me, let him burn me; if I discomfit him, let him
raise the siege, and let the English get them gone to their own country."
The second herald appeared to be far from reassured; but Dunois charged
him to say that the English prisoners should answer for what was done to
the heralds from the Maid. The two heralds were sent back. Joan made up
her mind to iterate in person to the English the warnings she had given
them in her letter. She mounted upon one of the bastions of Orleans,
opposite the English bastille called Tournelles, and there, at the top of
her voice, she repeated her counsel to them to be gone; else, woe and
shame would come upon them. The commandant of the bastille, Sir William
Gladesdale [called by Joan and the French chroniclers Glacidas],
answered with the usual insults, telling her to go back and mind her
cows, and alluding to the French as miscreants. "You lie," cried Joan,
"and in spite of you soon shall ye depart hence; many of your people
shall be slain; but as for you, you shall not see it."
Dunois, the very day of his return to Orleans, after dinner, went to call
upon Joan, and told her that he had heard on his way that Sir John
Falstolf, the same who on the 12th of the previous February had beaten
the French in the Herring affair, was about to arrive with
re-enforcements and supplies for the besiegers. "Bastard, bastard," said
Joan, "in the name of God I command thee, as soon as thou shalt know of
this Pascot's coming, to have me warned of it, for, should he pass
without my knowing of it, I promise thee that I will have thy head cut
off." Dunois assured her that she should be warned. Joan was tired with
the day's excitement; she threw herself upon her bed to sleep, but
unsuccessfully; all at once she said to Sire Daulon, her esquire, "My
counsel doth tell me to go against the English; but I know not whether
against their bastilles or against this Fascot. I must arm." Her
esquire was beginning to arm her when she heard it shouted in the street
that the enemy were at that moment doing great damage to the French. "My
God," said she, "the blood of our people is running on the ground; why
was I not awakened sooner? Ah! it was ill done! . . . My arms! My
arms! my horse!" Leaving behind her esquire, who was not yet armed, she
went down. Her page was playing at the door: "Ah! naughty boy," said
she, "not to come and tell me that the blood of France was being shed!
Come! quick! my horse!" It was brought to her; she bade them hand down to
her by the window her banner, which she had left behind, and, without any
further waiting, she departed and went to the Burgundy gate, whence the
noise seemed to come. Seeing on her way one of the townsmen passing who
was being carried off wounded, she said, "Alas! I never see a Frenchman's
blood but my hair stands up on my head!" It was some of the Orleannese
themselves who, without consulting their chiefs, had made a sortie and
attacked the Bastille St. Loup, the strongest held by the English on this
side. The French had been repulsed, and were falling back in flight when
Joan came up, and soon after her Dunois and a throng of men-at-arms who
had been warned of the danger. The fugitives returned to the assault;
the battle was renewed with ardor; the bastille of St. Loup,
notwithstanding energetic resistance on the part of the English who
manned it, was taken; and all its defenders were put to the sword before
Talbot and the main body of the besiegers could come up to their
assistance. Joan showed sorrow that so many people should have died
unconfessed; and she herself was the means of saving some who had
disguised themselves as priests in gowns which they had taken from the
church of St. Loup. Great was the joy in Orleans, and the enthusiasm for
Joan was more lively than ever. "Her voices had warned her," they said,
"and apprised her that there was a battle; and then she had found by
herself alone and without any guide the way to the Burgundy gate."
Men-at-arms and burgesses all demanded that the attack upon the English
hastilles should be resumed; but the next day, the 5th of May, was
Ascension-day. Joan advocated lions repose on this holy festival, and
the general feeling was in accord with her own. She recommended her
comrades to fulfil their religious duties, and she herself received the
communion. The chiefs of the besieged resolved to begin on the morrow a
combined attack upon the English bastilles which surrounded the palace;
but Joan was not in their counsels. "Tell me what you have resolved,"
she said to them; "I can keep this and greater secrets." Dunois made her
acquainted with the plan adopted, of which she fully approved; and on the
morrow, the 6th of May, a fierce struggle began again all round Orleans.
For two days the bastilles erected by the besiegers against the place
were repeatedly attacked by the besieged. On the first day Joan was
slightly wounded in the foot. Some disagreement arose between her and
Sire de Gaucourt, governor of Orleans, as to continuing the struggle; and
John Boucher, her host, tried to keep her back the second day. "Stay and
dine with us," said he, "to eat that shad which has just been brought."
"Keep it for supper," said Joan; "I will come back this evening and bring
you some goddamns (Englishman) or other to eat his share;" and she
sallied forth, eager to return to the assault. On arriving at the
Burgundy gate she found it closed; the governor would not allow any
sortie thereby to attack on that side. "Ah! naughty man," said Joan,
"you are wrong; whether you will or no, our men-at-arms shall go and win
on this day as they have already won." The gate was forced; and
men-at-arms and burgesses rushed out from all quarters to attack the
bastille of Tournelles, the strongest of the English works. It was ten
o'clock in the morning; the passive and active powers of both parties
were concentrated on this point; and for a moment the French appeared
weary and downcast. Joan took a scaling-ladder, set it against the
rampart, and was the first to mount. There came an arrow and struck her
between neck and shoulder, and she fell. Sire de Gamaches, who had but
lately displayed so much temper towards her, found her where she lay.
"Take my horse," said he, "and bear no malice: I was wrong; I had formed
a false idea of you." "Yes," said Joan, "and bear no malice: I never saw
a more accomplished knight." She was taken away and had her armor
removed. The arrow, it is said, stood out almost half-a-foot behind.
There was an instant of faintness and tears; but she prayed and felt her
strength renewed, and pulled out the arrow with her own hand.
Some one proposed to her to charm the wound by means of cabalistic words;
but "I would rather die," she said, "than so sin against the will of God.
I know full well that I must die some day; but I know nor where nor when
nor how. If, without sin, my wound may be healed, I am right willing."
A dressing of oil and lard was applied to the wound; and she retired
apart into a vineyard, and was continually in prayer. Fatigue and
discouragement were overcoming the French; and the captains ordered the
retreat to be sounded. Joan begged Dunois to wait a while. "My God,"
said she, "we shall soon be inside. Give your people a little rest; eat
and drink." She resumed her arms and remounted her horse; her banner
floated in the air; the French took fresh courage; the English, who
thought Joan half dead, were seized with surprise and fear; and one of
their principal leaders, Sir William Gladesdale, made up his mind to
abandon the outwork which he had hitherto so well kept, and retire within
the bastille itself. Joan perceived his movement. "Yield thee," she
shouted to him from afar; "yield thee to the King of Heaven! Ah!
Glacidas, thou hast basely insulted me; but I have great pity on the
souls of thee and thine." The Englishman continued his retreat. Whilst
he was passing over the drawbridge which reached from the out-work to the
bastille, a shot from the side of Orleans broke down the bridge;
Gladesdale fell into the water and was drowned, together with many of his
comrades; the French got into the bastille without any fresh fighting;
and Joan re-entered Orleans amidst the joy and acclamations of the
people. The bells rang all through the night, and the Te Deum was
chanted. The day of combat was about to be succeeded by the day of
deliverance.
On the morrow, the 8th of May, 1429, at daybreak, the English leaders
drew up their troops close to the very moats of the city, and seemed to
offer battle to the French. Many of the Orleannese leaders would have
liked to accept this challenge; but Joan got up from her bed, where she
was resting because of her wound, put on a light suit of armor, and ran
to the city gates. "For the love and honor of holy Sunday," said she to
the assembled warriors, "do not be the first to attack, and make to them
no demand; it is God's good will and pleasure that they be allowed to get
them gone if they be minded to go away; if they attack you, defend
yourselves boldly; you will be the masters." She caused an altar to be
raised; thanksgivings were sung, and mass was celebrated. "See!" said
Joan; "are the English turning to you their faces, or verily their
backs?" They had commenced their retreat in good order, with standards
flying. "Let them go: my Lord willeth not that there be any fighting
to-day; you shall have them another time." The good words spoken by Joan
were not so preventive but that many men set off to pursue the English,
and cut off stragglers and baggage. Their bastilles were found to be
full of victual and munitions; and they had abandoned their sick and many
of their prisoners. The siege of Orleans was raised.
The day but one after this deliverance, Joan set out to go and rejoin the
king, and prosecute her work at his side. She fell in with him on the
13th of May, at Tours, moved forward to meet him, with her banner in her
hand and her head uncovered, and bending down over her charger's neck,
made him a deep obeisance. Charles took off his cap, held out his hand
to her, and, "as it seemed to many," says a contemporary chronicler, "he
would fain have kissed her, for the joy that he felt." But the king's
joy was not enough for Joan. She urged him to march with her against
enemies who were flying, so to speak, from themselves, and to start
without delay for Rheims, where he would be crowned. "I shall hardly
last more than a year," said she; "we must think about working right well
this year, for there is much to do." Hesitation was natural to Charles,
even in the hour of victory. His favorite, La Tremoille, and his
chancellor, the Archbishop of Rheims, opposed Joan's entreaties with all
the objections that could be devised under the inspiration of their ill
will: there were neither troops nor money in hand for so great a journey;
and council after council was held for the purpose of doing nothing.
Joan, in her impatience, went one day to Loches, without previous notice,
and tapped softly at the door of the king's privy chamber (chambre de re-
trait). He bade her enter. She fell upon her knees, saying, "Gentle
dauphin, hold not so many and such long councils, but rather come to
Rheims, and there assume your crown; I am much pricked to take you
thither." "Joan," said the Bishop of Castres, Christopher d'Harcourt,
the king's confessor, "cannot you tell the king what pricketh you?"
"Ah! I see," replied Joan, with some embarrassment: "well, I will tell
you. I had set me to prayer, according to my wont, and I was making
complaint for that you would not believe what I said; then the voice came
and said unto me, 'Go, go, my daughter; I will be a help to thee; go.'
When this voice comes to me, I feel marvellously rejoiced; I would that
it might endure forever." She was eager and overcome.
Joan and her voices were not alone in urging the king to shake off his
doubts and his indolence. In church, and court, and army, allies were
not wanting to the pious and valiant maid. In a written document dated
the 14th of May, six days after the siege of Orleans was raised, the most
Christian doctor of the age, as Gerson was called, sifted the question
whether it were possible, whether it were a duty, to believe in the Maid.
"Even if (which God forbid)," said he, "she should be mistaken in her
hope and ours, it would not necessarily follow that what she does comes
of the evil spirit, and not of God, but that rather our ingratitude was
to blame. Let the party which hath a just cause take care how, by
incredulity or injustice, it rendereth useless the divine succor so
miraculously manifested, for God, without any change of counsel, changeth
the upshot according to deserts." Great lords and simple gentlemen, old
and young warriors, were eager to go and join Joan for the salvation of
the king and of France. The constable, De Richemont, banished from the
court through the jealous hatred of George la Tremoille, made a pressing
application there, followed by a body of men-at-arms; and, when the king
refused to see him, he resolved, though continuing in disgrace, to take
an active part in the war. The young Duke of Alencon, who had been a
prisoner with the English since the battle of Agincourt, hurried on the
payment of his ransom in order to accompany Joan as lieutenant-general of
the king in the little army which was forming. His wife, the duchess,
was in grief about it. "We have just spent great sums," said she, "in
buying him back from the English; if he would take my advice, he would
stay at home." "Madame," said Joan, "I will bring him back to you safe
and sound, nay, even in better contentment than at present; be not
afraid." And on this promise the duchess took heart. Du Guesciin's
widow, Joan de Laval, was still living; and she had two grandsons, Guy
and Andrew de Laval, who were amongst the most zealous of those taking
service in the army destined to march on Rheims. The king, to all
appearance, desired to keep them near his person. "God forbid that I
should do so," wrote Guy de Laval, on the 8th of June, 1429, to those
most dread dames, his grandmother and his mother; "my brother says, as
also my lord the Duke d'Alencon, that a good riddance of bad rubbish
would he be who should stay at home." And he describes his first
interview with the Maid as follows: "The king had sent for her to come
and meet him at Selles-en-Berry. Some say that it was for my sake, in
order that I might see her. She gave right good cheer (a kind reception)
to my brother and myself; and after we had dismounted at Selles I went to
see her in her quarters. She ordered wine, and told me that she would
soon have me drinking some at Paris. It seems a thing divine to look on
her and listen to her. I saw her mount on horseback, armed all in white
armor, save her head, and with a little axe in her hand, on a great black
charger, which, at the door of her quarters, was very restive, and would
not let her mount. Then said she, 'Lead him to the cross,' which was in
front of the neighboring church, on the road. There she mounted him
without his moving, and as if he were tied up; and turning towards the
door of the church, which was very nigh at hand, she said, in quite a
womanly voice, 'You, priests and church-men, make procession and prayers
to God.' Then she resumed her road, saying, 'Push forward, push
forward.' She told me that three days before my arrival she had sent
you, dear grand-mother, a little golden ring, but that it was a very
small matter, and she would have liked to send you something better,
having regard to your estimation."
It was amidst this burst of patriotism, and with all these valiant
comrades, that Joan recommenced the campaign on the 10th of June, 1429,
quite resolved to bring the king to Rheims. To complete the deliverance
of Orleans, an attack was begun upon the neighboring places, Jargeau,
Meung, and Beaugency. Before Jargeau, on the 12th of June, although it
was Sunday, Joan had the trumpets sounded for the assault. The Duke
d'Alencon thought it was too soon. "Ah!" said Joan, "be not doubtful; it
is the hour pleasing to God; work ye, and God will work." And she added,
familiarly, "Art thou afeard, gentle duke? Knowest thou not that I have
promised thy wife to take thee back safe and sound?" The assault began;
and Joan soon had occasion to keep her promise. The Duke d'Alencon was
watching the assault from an exposed spot, and Joan remarked a piece
pointed at this spot. "Get you hence," said she to the duke; "yonder is
a piece which will slay you." The Duke moved, and a moment afterwards
Sire de Lude was killed at the self-same place by a shot from the said
piece. Jargeau was taken. Before Beaugency a serious incident took
place. The constable, De Richemont, came up with a force of twelve
hundred men. When he was crossing to Loudun, Charles VII., swayed as
ever by the jealous La Tremoille, had word sent to him to withdraw, and
that if he advanced he would be attacked. "What I am doing in the
matter," said the constable, "is for the good of the king and the realm;
if anybody comes to attack me, we shall see." When he had joined the
army before Beaugency, the Duke d'Alencon was much troubled. The king's
orders were precise, and Joan herself hesitated. But news came that
Talbot and the English were approaching. "Now," said Joan, "we must
think no more of anything but helping one another." She rode forward to
meet the constable, and saluted him courteously. "Joan," said he, "I was
told that you meant to attack me; I know not whether you come from God or
not; if you are from God, I fear you not at all, for God knows my good
will; if you are from the devil, I fear you still less." He remained,
and Beaugency was taken. The English army came up. Sir John Falstolf
had joined Talbot. Some disquietude showed itself amongst the French, so
roughly handled for some time past in pitched battles. "Ah! fair
constable," said Joan to Richemont, "you are not come by my orders, but
you are right welcome." The Duke d'Alencon consulted Joan as to what was
to be done. "It will be well to have horses," was suggested by those
about her. She asked her neighbors, "Have you good spurs?" "Ha!" cried
they, "must we fly, then?"
"No, surely," replied Joan: "but there will be need to ride boldly; we
shall give a good account of the English, and our spurs will serve us
famously in pursuing them." The battle began on the 18th of June, at
Patay, between Orleans and Chateaudun. By Joan's advice, the French
attacked. "In the name of God," said she, "we must fight. Though the
English were suspended from the clouds, we should have them, for God hath
sent us to punish them. The gentle king shall have to-day the greatest
victory he has ever had; my counsel hath told me they are ours." The
English lost heart, in their turn; the battle was short, and the victory
brilliant; Lord Talbot and the most part of the English captains remained
prisoners. "Lord Talbot," said the Duke d'Alencon to him, "this is not
what you expected this morning." "It is the fortune of war," answered
Talbot, with the cool dignity of an old warrior. Joan's immediate return
to Orleans was a triumph; but even triumph has its embarrassments and
perils. She demanded the speedy march of the army upon Rheims, that the
king might be crowned there without delay; but objections were raised on
all sides, the objections of the timid and those of the jealous. "By
reason of Joan the Maid," says a contemporary chronicler, "so many folks
came from all parts unto the king for to serve him at their own expense,
that La Tremoille and others of the council were much wroth thereat,
through anxiety for their own persons." Joan, impatient and irritated at
so much hesitation and intrigue, took upon herself to act as if the
decision belonged to her. On the 25th of June she wrote to the
inhabitants of Tournai, "Loyal Frenchmen, I do pray and require you to be
all ready to come to the coronation of the gentle King Charles, at
Rheims, where we shall shortly be, and to come and meet us when ye shall
learn that we are approaching." Two days afterwards, on the 27th of
June, she left Gien, where the court was, and went to take up her
quarters in the open country with the troops. There was nothing for it
but to follow her. On the 29th of June, the king, the court (including
La Tremoille), and the army, about twelve thousand strong, set out on the
march for Rheims. Other obstacles were encountered on the road. In most
of the towns the inhabitants, even the royalists, feared to compromise
themselves by openly pronouncing against the English and the Duke of
Burgundy. Those of Auxerre demanded a truce, offering provisions, and
promising to do as those of Troyes, Chalons, and Rheims should do. At
Troyes the difficulty was greater still. There was in it a garrison of
five or six hundred English and Burgundians, who had the burgesses under
their thumbs. All attempts at accommodation failed. There was great
perplexity in the royal camp; there were neither provisions enough for a
long stay before Troyes, nor batteries and siege trains to carry it by
force. There was talk of turning back. One of the king's councillors,
Robert le Macon, proposed that Joan should be summoned to the council.
It was at her instance that the expedition had been undertaken; she had
great influence amongst the army and the populace; the idea ought not to
be given up without consulting her. Whilst he was speaking, Joan came
knocking at the door; she was told to come in; and the chancellor, the
Archbishop of Rheims, put the question to her. Joan, turning to the
king, asked him if he would believe her. "Speak," said the king; "if you
say what is reasonable and tends to profit, readily will you be
believed." "Gentle king of France," said Joan, "if you be willing to
abide here before your town of Troyes, it shall be at your disposal
within two days, by love or by force; make no doubt of it." "Joan,"
replied the chancellor, "whoever could be certain of having it within six
days might well wait for it; but say you true?" Joan repeated her
assertion; and it was decided to wait. Joan mounted her horse, and, with
her banner in her hand, she went through the camp, giving orders
everywhere to prepare for the assault. She had her own tent pitched
close to the ditch, "doing more," says a contemporary, "than two of the
ablest captains would have done." On the next day, July 10, all was
ready. Joan had the fascines thrown into the ditches, and was shouting
out, "Assault!" when the inhabitants of Troyes, burgesses and
men-at-arms, came demanding permission to capitulate. The conditions
were easy. The inhabitants obtained for themselves and their property
such guarantees as they desired; and the strangers were allowed to go out
with what belonged to them. On the morrow, July 11, the king entered
Troyes with all his captains, and at his side the Maid carrying her
banner. All the difficulties of the journey were surmounted. On the
15th of July the Bishop of Chalons brought the keys of his town to the
king, who took up his quarters there. Joan found there four or five of
her own villagers, who had hastened up to see the young girl of Domremy
in all her glory. She received them with a satisfaction in which
familiarity was blended with gravity. To one of them, her godfather, she
gave a red cap which she had worn; to another, who had been a Burgundian,
she said, "I fear but one thing—treachery." In the Duke d'Alencon's
presence she repeated to the king, "Make good use of my time, for I shall
hardly last longer than a year." On the 16th of July King Charles
entered Rheims, and the ceremony of his coronation was fixed for the
morrow.
It was solemn and emotional, as are all old national traditions which
recur after a forced suspension. Joan rode between Dunois and the
Archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France. The air resounded with the
Te Deum sung with all their hearts by clergy and crowd. "In God's name,"
said Joan to Dunois, "here is a good people and a devout when I die, I
should much like it to be in these parts." "Joan," inquired Dunois,
"know you when you will die, and in what place?" "I know not," said she,
"for I am at the will of God." Then she added, "I have accomplished that
which my Lord commanded me, to raise the siege of Orleans and have the
gentle king crowned. I would like it well if it should please him to
send me back to my father and mother, to keep their sheep and their
cattle, and do that which was my wont." "When the said lords," says the
chronicler, an eye-witness, "heard these words of Joan, who, with eyes
towards heaven, gave thanks to God, they the more believed that it was
somewhat sent from God, and not otherwise."
Historians, and even contemporaries, have given much discussion to the
question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, had really
limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans and the
coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims. She had said so herself several
times, just as she had to Dunois at Rheims on the 17th of July, 1429; but
she sometimes also spoke of more vast and varied projects, as, for
instance, driving the English completely out of France, and withdrawing
from his long captivity Charles, Duke of Orleans. He had been a prisoner
in London ever since the battle of Agincourt, and was popular in his day,
as he has continued to be in French history, on the double ground of
having been the father of Louis XII. and one of the most charming poets
in the ancient literature of France. The Duke d'Alencon, who was so high
in the regard of Joan, attributed to her more expressly this quadruple
design: "She said," according to him, "that she had four duties; to get
rid of the English, to have the king anointed and crowned, to deliver
Duke Charles of Orleans, and to raise the siege laid by the English to
Orleans." One is inclined to believe that Joan's language to Dunois at
Rheims in the hour of Charles VII.'s coronation more accurately expressed
her first idea; the two other notions occurred to her naturally in
proportion as her hopes as well as her power kept growing greater with
success. But however lofty and daring her soul may have been, she had a
simple and not at all a fantastic mind. She may have foreseen the
complete expulsion of the English, and may have desired the deliverance
of the Duke of Orleans, without having in the first instance premeditated
anything more than she said to Dunois during the king's coronation at
Rheims, which was looked upon by her as the triumph of the national
cause.
However that may be, when Orleans was relieved, and Charles VII.
crowned, the situation, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change.
She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs.
She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same
authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes
with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Dunois; never
discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon her-self as
triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon
Paris, in order to take up a fixed position in it, as being the political
centre of the realm of which Rheims was the religious. Nothing of the
sort was done. Charles and La Tremoille once more began their course of
hesitation, tergiversation, and changes of tactics and residence without
doing anything of a public and decisive character. They negotiated with
the Duke of Burgundy, in the hope of detaching him from the English
cause; and they even concluded with him a secret, local, and temporary
truce. From the 20th of July to the 23d of August Joan followed the king
whithersoever he went, to Chateau-Thierry, to Senlis, to Blois, to
Provins, and to Compigne, as devoted as ever, but without having her
former power. She was still active, but not from inspiration and to obey
her voices, simply to promote the royal policy. She wrote the Duke of
Burgundy a letter full of dignity and patriotism, which had no more
effect than the negotiations of La Tremoille. During this fruitless
labor amongst the French the Duke of Bedford sent for five thousand men
from England, who came and settled themselves at Paris. One division of
this army had a white standard, in the middle of which was depicted a
distaff full of cotton; a half-filled spindle was hanging to the distaff;
and the field, studded with empty spindles, bore this inscription: "Now,
fair one, come!" Insult to Joan was accompanied by redoubled war against
France. Joan, saddened and wearied by the position of things, attempted
to escape from it by a bold stroke. On the 23d of August, 1429, she set
out from Compiegne with the Duke d'Alencon and "a fair company of
men-at-arms;" and suddenly went and occupied St. Denis, with the view of
attacking Paris. Charles VII. felt himself obliged to quit Compiegne
likewise, "and went, greatly against the grain," says a contemporary
chronicler, "as far as into the town of Senlis." The attack on Paris
began vigorously. Joan, with the Duke d'Alencon, pitched her camp at La
Chapelle. Charles took up his abode in the abbey of St. Denis. The
municipal corporation of Paris received letters with the arms of the Duke
d'Alencon, which called upon them to recognize the king's authority, and
promised a general amnesty. The assault was delivered on the 8th of
September. Joan was severely wounded, but she insisted upon remaining
where she was. Night came, and the troops had not entered the breach
which had been opened in the morning. Joan was still calling out to
persevere. The Duke d'Alencon himself begged her, but in vain, to
retire. La Tremoille gave orders to retreat; and some knights came up,
set Joan on horse-back, and led her back, against her will, to La
Chapelle. "By my martin" (staff of command), said she, "the place would
have been taken." One hope still remained. In concert with the Duke
d'Alencon she had caused a flying bridge to be thrown across the Seine
opposite St. Denis. The next day but one she sent her vanguard in this
direction; she intended to return thereby to the siege; but, by the
king's order, the bridge had been cut adrift. St. Denis fell once more
into the hands of the English. Before leaving, Joan left there, on the
tomb of St. Denis, her complete suit of armor and a sword she had lately
obtained possession of at the St. Honore gate of Paris, as trophy of war.
From the 13th of September, 1429, to the 24th of May, 1430, she continued
to lead the same life of efforts ever equally valiant and equally
ineffectual. She failed in an attempt upon Laemir. Charite-sur-Loire,
undertaken, for all that appears, with the sole design of recovering an
important town in the possession of the enemy. The English evacuated
Paris, and left the keeping of it to the Duke of Burgundy, no doubt to
test his fidelity. On the 13th of Aprils 1430, at the expiration of the
truce he had concluded, Philip the Good resumed hostilities against
Charles VII. Joan of Arc once more plunged into them with her wonted
zeal. Ile-de-France and Picardy became the theatre of war. Compiegne
was regarded as the gate of the road between these two provinces; and the
Duke of Burgundy attached much importance to holding the key of it. The
authority of Charles VII. was recognized there; and a young knight of
Compiegne, William de Flavy, held the command there as lieutenant of La
Tremoille, who had got himself appointed captain of the town. La
Tremoille attempted to treat with the Duke of Burgundy for the cession of
Compiegne; but the inhabitants were strenuously opposed to it. "They
were," they said, "the king's most humble subjects, and they desired to
serve him with body and substance; but as for trusting themselves to the
lord Duke of Burgundy, they could not do it; they were resolved to suffer
destruction, themselves and their wives and children, rather than be
exposed to the tender mercies of the said duke." Meanwhile Joan of Arc,
after several warlike expeditions in the neighborhood, re-entered
Compiegne, and was received there with a popular expression of
satisfaction. "She was presented," says a local chronicler, with three
hogsheads of wine, a present which was large and exceeding costly, and
which showed the estimate formed of this maiden's worth." Joan
manifested the profound distrust with which she was inspired of the Duke
of Burgundy. There is no peace possible with him," she said, "save at
the point of the lance." She had quarters at the house of the king's
attorney, Le Boucher, and shared the bed of his wife, Mary. "She often
made the said Mary rise from her bed to go and warn the said attorney to
be on his guard against several acts of Burgundian treachery." At this
period, again, she said she was often warned by her voices of what must
happen to her; she expected to be taken prisoner before St. John's or
Midsummer-day (June 24); on what day and hour she did not know; she had
received no instructions as to sorties from the place; but she had
constantly been told that she would be taken, and she was distrustful of
the captains who were in command there. She was, nevertheless, not the
less bold and enterprising. On the 20th of May, 1430, the Duke of
Burgundy came and laid siege to Compiegne. Joan was away on an
expedition to Crepy in Valois, with a small band of three or four hundred
brave comrades. On the 24th of May, the eve of Ascension-day, she
learned that Compiegne was being besieged, and she resolved to re-enter
it. She was reminded that her force was a very weak one to cut its way
through the besiegers' camp. "By my martin," said she, "we are enough; I
will go see my friends in Compiegne." She arrived about daybreak without
hinderance, and penetrated into the town; and repaired immediately to the
parish church of St. Jacques to perform her devotions on the eve of so
great a festival. Many persons, attracted by her presence, and amongst
others "from a hundred to six-score children," thronged to the church.
After hearing mass, and herself taking the communion, Joan said to those
who surrounded her, "My children and dear friends, I notify you that I am
sold and betrayed, and that I shall shortly be delivered over to death; I
beseech you, pray God for me." When evening came, she was not the less
eager to take part in a sortie with her usual comrades and a troop of
about five hundred men. William de Flavy, commandant of the place, got
ready some boats on the Oise to assist the return of the troops. All the
town-gates were closed, save the bridge-gate. The sortie was
unsuccessful. Being severely repulsed and all but hemmed in, the
majority of the soldiers shouted to Joan, "Try to quickly regain the
town, or we are lost." "Silence," said Joan; "it only rests with you to
throw the enemy into confusion; think only of striking at them." Her
words and her bravery were in vain; the infantry flung themselves into
the boats, and regained the town, and Joan and her brave comrades covered
their retreat. The Burgundians were coming up in mass upon Compiegne,
and Flavy gave orders to pull up the draw-bridge and let down the
portcullis. Joan and some of her following lingered outside, still
fighting. She wore a rich surcoat and a red sash, and all the efforts of
the Burgundians were directed against her. Twenty men thronged round her
horse; and a Picard archer, "a tough fellow and mighty sour," seized her
by her dress, and flung her on the ground. All, at once, called on her
to surrender. "Yield you to me," said one of them; "pledge your faith to
me; I am a gentleman." It was an archer of the bastard of Wandonne, one
of the lieutenants of John of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny. "I have
pledged my faith to one other than you," said Joan, "and to Him I will
keep my oath." The archer took her and conducted her to Count John,
whose prisoner she became.
Was she betrayed and delivered up, as she had predicted? Did William de
Flavy purposely have the drawbridge raised and the portcullis lowered
before she could get back into Compiegne? He was suspected of it at the
time, and many historians have indorsed the suspicion. But there is
nothing to prove it. That La Tremoille, prime minister of Charles VII.,
and Reginald de Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims, had an antipathy to Joan
of Arc, and did all they could on every occasion to compromise her and
destroy her influence, and that they were glad to see her a prisoner, is
as certain as anything can be. On announcing her capture to the
inhabitants of Rheims, the arch-bishop said, "She would not listen to
counsel, and did everything according to her pleasure." But there is a
long distance between such expressions and a premeditated plot to deliver
to the enemy the young heroine who had just raised the siege of Orleans
and brought the king to be crowned at Rheims. History must not, without
proof, impute crimes so odious and so shameful to even the most depraved
of men.
However that may be, Joan remained for six months the prisoner of John of
Luxembourg, who, to make his possession of her secure, sent her, under
good escort, successively to his two castles of Beaulieu and Beaurevoir,
one in the Vermandois and the other in the Cambresis. Twice, in July and
in October, 1430, Joan attempted, unsuccessfully, to escape. The second
time she carried despair and hardihood so far as to throw herself down
from the platform of her prison. She was picked up cruelly bruised, but
without any fracture or wound of importance. Her fame, her youth, her
virtue, her courage, made her, even in her prison and in the very family
of her custodian, two warm and powerful friends. John of Luxembourg had
with him his wife, Joan of Bethune, and his aunt, Joan of Luxembourg,
godmother of Charles VII. They both of them took a tender interest in
the prisoner; and they often went to see her, and left nothing undone to
mitigate the annoyances of a prison. One thing only shocked them about
her—her man's clothes. "They offered her," as Joan herself said, when
questioned upon this subject at a later period during her trial, "a
woman's dress, or stuff to make it to her liking, and requested her to
wear it; but she answered that she had not leave from our Lord, and that
it was not yet time for it." John of Luxembourg's aunt was full of years
and reverenced as a saint. Hearing that the English were tempting her
nephew by the offer of a sum of money to give up his prisoner to them,
she conjured him in her will, dated September 10, 1430, not to sully by
such an act the honor of his name. But Count John was neither rich nor
scrupulous; and pretexts were not wanting to aid his cupidity and his
weakness. Joan had been taken at Compiegne on the 23d of May, in the
evening; and the news arrived in Paris on the 25th of May, in the
morning. On the morrow, the 26th, the registrar of the University, in
the name and under the seal of the inquisition of France, wrote a
citation to the Duke of Burgundy "to the end that the Maid should be
delivered up to appear before the said inquisitor, and to respond to the
good counsel, favor, and aid of the good doctors and masters of the
University of Paris." Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had been the
prime mover in this step. Some weeks later, on the 14th of July, seeing
that no reply arrived from the Duke of Burgundy, he caused a renewal of
the same demands to be made on the part of the University in more urgent
terms, and he added, in his own name, that Joan, having been taken at
Compiegne, in his own diocese, belonged to him as judge spiritual. He
further asserted that "according to the law, usage, and custom of France,
every prisoner of war, even were it king, dauphin, or other prince,
might be redeemed in the name of the King of England in consideration of
an indemnity of ten thousand livres granted to the capturer." Nothing
was more opposed to the common law of nations and to the feudal spirit,
often grasping, but noble at bottom. For four months still, John of
Luxembourg hesitated; but his aunt, Joan, died at Boulogne, on the 13th
of November, and Joan of Arc had no longer near him this powerful
intercessor. The King of England transmitted to the keeping of his
coffers at Rouen, in golden coin, English money, the sum of ten thousand
livres. John of Luxembourg yielded to the temptation. On the 21st of
November, 1430, Joan of Arc was handed over to the King of England, and
the same day the University of Paris, through its rector, Hebert,
besought that sovereign, as King of France, "to order that this woman be
brought to their city for to be shortly placed in the hands of the
justice of the Church, that is, of our honored lord, the Bishop and Count
of Beauvais, and also of the ordained inquisitor in France, in order that
her trial may be conducted officially and securely."
It was not to Paris, but to Rouen, the real capital of the English in
France, that Joan was taken. She arrived there on the 23d of December,
1430. On the 3d of January, 1431, an order from Henry VI., King of
England, placed her in the hands of the Bishop of Beauvais, Peter
Cauchon. Some days afterwards, Count John of Luxembourg, accompanied by
his brother, the English chancellor, by his esquire, and by two English
lords, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and Humphrey, Earl of
Stafford, the King of England's constable in France, entered the prison.
Had John of Luxembourg come out of sheer curiosity, or to relieve himself
of certain scruples by offering Joan a chance for her life? "Joan," said
he, "I am come hither to put you to ransom, and to treat for the price of
your deliverance; only give us your promise here to no more bear arms
against us." "In God's name," answered Joan, "are you making a mock of
me, captain? Ransom me! You have neither the will nor the power; no,
you have neither." The count persisted. "I know well," said Joan, "that
these English will put me to death; but were they a hundred thousand more
Goddams than have already been in France, they shall never have the
kingdom."
At this patriotic burst on the heroine's part, the Earl of Stafford half
drew his dagger from the sheath as if to strike Joan, but the Earl of
Warwick held him back. The visitors went out from the prison and handed
over Joan to the judges.
The court of Rouen was promptly formed, but not without opposition and
difficulty. Though Joan had lost somewhat of her greatness and
importance by going beyond her main object, and by showing recklessness,
unattended by success, on small occasions, she still remained the true,
heroic representative of the feelings and wishes of the nation. When she
was removed from Beaurevoir to Rouen, all the places at which she stopped
were like so many luminous points for the illustration of her popularity.
At Arras, a Scot showed her a portrait of her which he wore, an outward
sign of the devoted worship of her lieges. At Amiens, the chancellor of
the cathedral gave her audience at confession and administered to her the
eucharist. At Abbeville, ladies of distinction went five leagues to pay
her a visit; they were glad to have had the happiness of seeing her so
firm and resigned to the will of Our Lord; they wished her all the favors
of heaven, and then wept affectionately on taking leave of her. Joan,
touched by their sympathy and open heartedness, said, "Ah! what a good
people is this! Would to God I might be so happy, when my days are
ended, as to be buried in these parts!"
When the Bishop of Beauvais, installed at Rouen, set about forming his
court of justice, the majority of the members he appointed amongst the
clergy or the University of Paris obeyed the summons without hesitation.
Some few would have refused; but their wishes were overruled. The Abbot
of Jumieges, Nicholas de Houppeville, maintained that the trial was not
legal. The Bishop of Beauvais, he said, belonged to the party which
declared itself hostile to the Maid; and, besides, he made himself judge
in a case already decided by his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Rheims,
of whom Beauvais was holden, and who had approved of Joan's conduct. The
bishop summoned before him the recalcitrant, who refused to appear,
saying that he was under no official jurisdiction but that of Rouen. He
was arrested and thrown into prison, by order of the bishop, whose
authority he denied. There was some talk of banishing him, and even of
throwing him into the river; but the influence of his brethren saved him.
The sub-inquisitor himself allowed the trial in which he was to be one of
the judges to begin without him; and he only put in an appearance at the
express order of the inquisitor-general, and on a confidential hint that
he would be in danger of his life if he persisted in his refusal. The
court being thus constituted, Joan, after it had been put in possession
of the evidence already collected, was cited, on the 20th of February,
1431, to appear on the morrow, the 21st, before her judges assembled in
the chapel of Rouen Castle.
The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, 1431. The
court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the castle, some in
Joan's very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron
cage; afterwards she was kept no longer in the cage, but in a dark room
in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a
chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five
"soldiers of low grade." She complained of being thus chained; but the
bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this
precaution. "It is true," said Joan, as truthful as heroic, "I did wish
and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every
prisoner." At her examination, the bishop required her to take an oath
to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned."
"I know not what you mean to question me about; perchance you may ask me
things I would not tell you; touching my revelations, for instance, you
might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell; thus I should be
perjured, which you ought not to desire." The bishop insisted upon an
oath absolute and with-out condition. "You are too hard on me," said
Joan; I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters
which concern the faith." The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of
being held guilty of the things imputed to her.
"Go on to something else," said she. And this was the answer she made to
all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be
silent. Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said,
"I come on God's business, and I have nought to do here; send me back to
God, from whom I come." "Are you sure you are in God's grace?" asked the
bishop. "If I be not," answered Joan, "please God to bring me to it; and
if I be, please God to keep me in it!" The bishop himself remained
dumbfounded.
There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its
twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced
servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear
out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of
nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into
discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or
appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she
had done. In order to force her from her silence or bring her to submit
to the Church instead of appealing from it to God, it was proposed to
employ the last means of all, torture. On the 9th of May the bishop had
Joan brought into the great tower of Rouen Castle; the instruments of
torture were displayed before her eyes; and the executioners were ready
to fulfil their office, "for to bring her back," said the bishop, "into
the ways of truth, in order to insure the salvation of her soul and body,
so gravely endangered by erroneous inventions." "Verily," answered Joan,
"if you should have to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul from
body, I should not tell you aught else; and if I were to tell you aught
else, I should afterwards still tell you that you had made me tell it by
force." The idea of torture was given up. It was resolved to display
all the armory of science in order to subdue the mind of this young girl,
whose conscience was not to be subjugated. The chapter of Rouen declared
that in consequence of her public refusal to submit herself to the
decision of the Church as to her deeds and her statements, Joan deserved
to be declared a heretic. The University of Paris, to which had been
handed in the twelve heads of accusation resulting from Joan's statements
and examinations, replied that "if, having been charitably admonished,
she would not make reparation and return to union with the Catholic
faith, she must be left to the secular judges to undergo punishment for
her crime." Armed with these documents the Bishop of Beauvais had Joan
brought up, on the 23d of May, in a hall adjoining her prison, and, after
having addressed to her a long exhortation, "Joan," said he, "if in the
dominions of your king, when you were at large in them, a knight or any
other, born under his rule and allegiance to him, had risen up, saying,
'I will not obey the king or submit to his officers,' would you not have
said that he ought to be condemned? What then will you say of yourself,
you who were born in the faith of Christ and became by baptism a daughter
of the Church and spouse of Jesus Christ, if you obey not the officers of
Christ, that is, the prelates of the Church?" Joan listened modestly to
this admonition, and confined herself to answering, "As to my deeds and
sayings, what I said of them at the trial I do hold to and mean to abide
by." "Think you that you are not bound to submit your sayings and deeds
to the Church militant or to any other than God?" "The course that I
always mentioned and pursued at the trial I mean to maintain as to that.
If I were at the stake, and saw the torch lighted, and the executioner
ready to set fire to the fagots, even if I were in the midst of the
flames, I should not say aught else, and I should uphold that which I
said at the trial even unto death."
According to the laws, ideas, and practices of the time the legal
question was decided. Joan, declared heretic and rebellious by the
Church, was liable to have sentence pronounced against her; but she had
persisted in her statements, she had shown no submission. Although she
appeared to be quite forgotten, and was quite neglected by the king whose
coronation she had effected, by his councillors, and even by the brave
warriors at whose side she had fought, the public exhibited a lively
interest in her; accounts of the scenes which took place at her trial
were inquired after with curiosity. Amongst the very judges who
prosecuted her, many were troubled in spirit, and wished that Joan, by an
abjuration of her statements, would herself put them at ease and relieve
them from pronouncing against her the most severe penalty. What means
were employed to arrive at this end? Did she really, and with full
knowledge of what she was about, come round to the adjuration which there
was so much anxiety to obtain from her? It is difficult to solve this
historical problem with exactness and certainty. More than once, during
the examinations and the conversations which took place at that time
between Joan and her judges, she maintained her firm posture and her
first statements. One of those who were exhorting her to yield said to
her one day, "Thy king is a heretic and a schismatic." Joan could not
brook this insult to her king. "By my faith," said she, "full well dare
I both say and swear that he is the noblest Christian of all Christians,
and the truest lover of the faith and the Church." "Make her hold her
tongue," said the usher to the preacher, who was disconcerted at having
provoked such language. Another day, when Joan was being urged to submit
to the Church, brother Isambard de la Pierre, a Dominican, who was
interested in her, spoke to her about the council, at the same time
explaining to her its province in the church. It was the very time when
that of Bale had been convoked. "Ah!" said Joan, "I would fain surrender
and submit myself to the council of Bale." The Bishop of Beauvais
trembled at the idea of this appeal. "Hold your tongue in the devil's
name!" said he to the monk. Another of the judges, William Erard, asked
Joan menacingly, "Will you abjure those reprobate words and deeds of
yours?" "I leave it to the universal Church whether I ought to abjure or
not." "That is not enough: you shall abjure at once or you shall burn."
Joan shuddered. "I would rather sign than burn," she said. There was
put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations
and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith,
and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the document she made the
mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long
and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the
trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial
undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been
present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher
Massieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration
read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or
eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene
it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of
England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little
paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she
had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her
name, every letter. However that may be, as soon as Joan's abjuration
had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a
definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the
preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, "with the bread of
affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore
the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more
henceforth."
The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors
and his officers, were not. It was Joan living, even though a prisoner,
that they feared. They were animated towards her by the two ruthless
passions of vengeance and fear. When it was known that she would escape
with her life, murmurs broke out amongst the crowd of enemies present at
the trial. Stones were thrown at the judges. One of the Cardinal of
Winchester's chaplains, who happened to be close to the Bishop of
Beauvais, called him traitor. "You lie," said the bishop. And the
bishop was right; the chaplain did lie; the bishop had no intention of
betraying his masters. The Earl of Warwick complained to him of the
inadequacy of the sentence. "Never you mind, my lord," said one of Peter
Cauchon's confidants; "we will have her up again." After the passing of
her sentence Joan had said to those about her, "Come, now, you churchmen
amongst you, lead me off to your own prisons, and let me be no more in
the hands of the English." "Lead her to where you took her," said the
bishop; and she was conducted to the castle prison. She had been told by
some of the judges who went to see her after her sentence, that she would
have to give up her man's dress and resume her woman's clothing, as the
Church ordained. She was rejoiced thereat; forthwith, accordingly,
resumed her woman's clothes, and had her hair properly cut, which up to
that time she used to wear clipped round like a man's. When she was
taken back to prison, the man's dress which she had worn was put in a
sack in the same room in which she was confined, and she remained in
custody at the said place in the hands of five Englishmen, of whom three
staid by night in the room and two outside at the door. "And he who
speaks [John Massieu, a priest, the same who in 1431 had been present as
usher of the court at the trial in which Joan was condemned] knows for
certain that at night she had her legs ironed in such sort that she could
not stir from the spot. When the next Sunday morning, which was Trinity
Sunday, had come, and she should have got up, according to what she
herself told to him who speaks, she said to her English guards, 'Uniron
me; I will get up.' Then one of then took away her woman's clothes; they
emptied the sack in which was her man's dress, and pitched the said dress
to her, saying, 'Get up, then,' and they put her woman's clothes in the
same sack. And according to what she told me she only clad herself in
her man's dress after saying, 'You know it is forbidden me; I certainly
will not take it.' Nevertheless they would not allow her any other;
insomuch that the dispute lasted to the hour of noon. Finally, from
corporeal necessity, Joan was constrained to get up and take the dress."
The official documents drawn up during the condemnation-trial contain
quite a different account. "On the 28th of May," it is there said,
"eight of the judges who had taken part in the sentence [their names are
given in the document, t. i. p. 454] betook themselves to Joan's prison,
and seeing her clad in man's dress, 'which she had but just given up
according to our order that she should resume woman's clothes, we asked
her when and for what cause she had resumed this dress, and who had
prevailed on her to do so. Joan answered that it was of her own will,
without any constraint from any one, and because she preferred that dress
to woman's clothes. To our question as to why she had made this change,
she answered, that, being surrounded by men, man's dress was more
suitable for her than woman's. She also said that she had resumed it
because there had been made to her, but not kept, a promise that she
should go to mass, receive the body of Christ, and be set free from her
fetters. She added that if this promise were kept, she would be good,
and would do what was the will of the Church. As we had heard some
persons say that she persisted in her errors as to the pretended
revelations which she had but lately renounced, we asked whether she had
since Thursday last heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret;
and she answered, Yes. To our question as to what the saints had said
she answered, that God had testified to her by their voices great pity
for the great treason she had committed in abjuring for the sake of
saving her life, and that by so doing she had damned herself. She said
that all she had thus done last Thursday in abjuring her visions and
revelations she had done through fear of the stake, and that all her
abjuration was contrary to the truth. She added that she did not herself
comprehend what was contained in the form of abjuration she had been made
to sign, and that she would rather do penance once for all by dying to
maintain the truth than remain any longer a prisoner, being all the while
a traitress to it."
We will not stop to examine whether these two accounts, though very
different, are not fundamentally reconcilable, and whether Joan resumed
man's dress of her own desire or was constrained to do so by the soldiers
on guard over her, and perhaps to escape from their insults. The
important points in the incident are the burst of remorse which Joan felt
for her weakness and her striking retractation of the abjuration which
had been wrung from her. So soon as the news was noised abroad, her
enemies cried, "She has relapsed!" This was exactly what they had hoped
for when, on learning that she had been sentenced only to perpetual
imprisonment, they had said, "Never you mind; we will have her up again."
"Farewell, farewell, my lord," said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl
of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan's retractation; and in his
words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere
phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty
judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a
case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the
30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence pronounced, and then undergo
the punishment of the stake.
When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin
Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at
first to grief and terror. "Alas!" she cried, "am I to be so horribly
and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never
defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would
seven times rather be beheaded than burned!" The Bishop of Beauvais at
this moment came up. "Bishop," said Joan, "you are the cause of my
death; if you had put me in the prisons of the Church and in the hands of
fit and proper ecclesiastical warders, this had never happened; I appeal
from you to the presence of God." One of the doctors who had sat in
judgment upon her, Peter Maurice, went to see her, and spoke to her with
sympathy. "Master Peter," said she to him, "where shall I be to-night?"
"Have you not good hope in God?" asked the doctor. "O! yes," she
answered; "by the grace of God I shall be in paradise." Being left alone
with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to
communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he
was to do. "Tell brother Martin," was the answer, "to give her the
eucharist and all she asks for." At nine o'clock, having resumed her
woman's dress, Joan was dragged from prison and driven to the Vieux-
Marche. From seven to eight hundred soldiers escorted the car and
prohibited all approach to it on the part of the crowd, which encumbered
the road and the vicinities; but a man forced a passage and flung himself
towards Joan. It was a canon of Rouen, Nicholas Loiseleur, whom the
Bishop of Beauvais had placed near her, and who had abused the confidence
she had shown him. Beside himself with despair, he wished to ask pardon
of her; but the English soldiers drove him back with violence and with
the epithet of traitor, and but for the intervention of the Earl of
Warwick his life would have been in danger. Joan wept and prayed; and
the crowd, afar off, wept and prayed with her. On arriving at the place,
she listened in silence to a sermon by one of the doctors of the court,
who ended by saying, "Joan, go in peace; the Church can no longer defend
thee; she gives thee over to the secular arm." The laic judges, Raoul
Bouteillier, baillie of Rouen, and his lieutenant, Peter Daron, were
alone qualified to pronounce sentence of death; but no time was given
them. The priest Massieu was still continuing his exhortations to Joan,
but "How now! priest," was the cry from amidst the soldiery, "are you
going to make us dine here?" "Away with her! Away with her!" said the
baillie to the guards; and to the executioner, "Do thy duty." When she
came to the stake, Joan knelt down completely absorbed in prayer. She
had begged Massieu to get her a cross; and an Englishman present made one
out of a little stick, and handed it to the French heroine, who took it,
kissed it, and laid it on her breast. She begged brother Isambard de la
Pierre to go and fetch the cross from the church of St. Sauveur, the
chief door of which opened on the Vieux-Marche, and to hold it "upright
before her eyes till the coming of death, in order," she said, "that the
cross whereon God hung might, as long as she lived, be continually in her
sight;" and her wishes were fulfilled. She wept over her country and the
spectators as well as over herself. "Rouen, Rouen," she cried, "is it
here that I must die? Shalt thou be my last resting-place? I fear
greatly thou wilt have to suffer for my death." It is said that the aged
Cardinal of Winchester and the Bishop of Beauvais himself could not
stifle their emotion—and, peradventure, their tears. The executioner
set fire to the fagots. When Joan perceived the flames rising, she urged
her confessor, the Dominican brother, Martin Ladvenu, to go down, at the
same time asking him to keep holding the cross up high in front of her,
that she might never cease to see it. The same monk, when questioned
four and twenty years later, at the rehabilitation trial, as to the last
sentiments and the last words of Joan, said that to the very latest
moment she had affirmed that her voices were heavenly, that they had not
deluded her, and that the revelations she had received came from God.
When she had ceased to live, two of her judges, John Alespie, canon of
Rouen, and Peter Maurice, doctor of theology, cried out, "Would that my
soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is!" And Tressart,
secretary to King Henry VI., said sorrowfully, on returning from the
place of execution, "We are all lost; we have burned a saint."
A saint indeed in faith and in destiny. Never was human creature more
heroically confident in, and devoted to, inspiration coming from God, a
commission received from God. Joan of Arc sought nothing of all that
happened to her and of all she did, nor exploit, nor power, nor glory.
"It was not her condition," as she used to say, to be a warrior, to get
her king crowned, and to deliver her country from the foreigner.
Everything came to her from on high, and she accepted everything without
hesitation, without discussion, without calculation, as we should say in
our times. She believed in God, and obeyed Him. God was not to her an
idea, a hope, a flash of human imagination, or a problem of human
science; He was the Creator of the world, the Saviour of mankind through
Jesus Christ, the Being of beings, ever present, ever in action, sole
legitimate sovereign of man whom He has made intelligent and free, the
real and true God whom we are painfully searching for in our own day, and
whom we shall never find again until we cease pretending to do without
Him and putting ourselves in His place. Meanwhile one fact may be
mentioned which does honor to our epoch and gives us hope for our future.
Four centuries have rolled by since Joan of Arc, that modest and heroic
servant of God, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For four and
twenty years after her death, France and the king appeared to think no
more of her. However, in 1455, remorse came upon Charles VII. and upon
France. Nearly all the provinces, all the towns, were freed from the
foreigner, and shame was felt that nothing was said, nothing done, for
the young girl who had saved everything. At Rouen, especially, where the
sacrifice was completed, a cry for reparation arose. It was timidly
demanded from the spiritual power which had sentenced and delivered over
Joan as a heretic to the stake. Pope Calixtus III. entertained the
request preferred, not by the King of France, but in the name of Isabel
Romee, Joan's mother, and her whole family. Regular proceedings were
commenced and followed up for the rehabilitation of the martyr; and, on
the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court assembled at Rouen quashed
the sentence of 1431, together with all its consequences, and ordered
"a general procession and solemn sermon at St. Ouen Place and the Vieux-
Marche," where the said maid had been cruelly and horribly burned; besides
the planting of a cross of honor (crucis honestee) on the Vieux-Marche,
the judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision
"throughout the cities and notable places of the realm." The city of
Orleans responded to this appeal by raising on the bridge over the Loire
a group in bronze representing Joan of Arc on her knees before Our Lady
between two angels. This monument, which was broken during the religious
wars of the sixteenth century and repaired shortly afterwards, was
removed in the eighteenth century, and, Joan of Arc then received a fresh
insult; the poetry of a cynic was devoted to the task of diverting a
licentious public at the expense of the saint whom, three centuries
before, fanatical hatred had brought to the stake. In 1792 the council
of the commune of Orleans, "considering that the monument in bronze did
not represent the heroine's services, and did not by any sign call to
mind the struggle against the English," ordered it to be melted down and
cast into cannons, of which "one should bear the name of Joan of Arc."
It is in our time that the city of Orleans and its distinguished bishop,
Mgr. Dupanloup, have at last paid Joan homage worthy of her, not only by
erecting to her a new statue, but by recalling her again to the memory of
France with her true features, and in her grand character. Neither
French nor any other history offers a like example of a modest little
soul, with a faith so pure and efficacious, resting on divine inspiration
and patriotic hope.
During the trial of Joan of Arc the war between France and England,
without being discontinued, had been somewhat slack: the curiosity and
the passions of men were concentrated upon the scenes at Rouen. After
the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though without any
great events. By way of a step towards solution, the Duke of Bedford, in
November, 1431, escorted to Paris King Henry VI., scarcely ten years old,
and had him crowned at Notre-Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for
pomp, but not for warmth. The Duke of Burgundy was not present; it was
an Englishman, the Cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the young
Englander King of France; the Bishop of Paris complained of it as a
violation of his rights; the parliament, the university, and the
municipal body had not even seats reserved at the royal banquet; Paris
was melancholy, and day by day more deserted by the native inhabitants;
grass was growing in the court-yards of the great mansions; the students
were leaving the great school of Paris, to which the Duke of Bedford at
Caen, and Charles VII. himself at Poitiers, were attempting to raise up
rivals; and silence reigned in the Latin quarter. The child-king was
considered unintelligent, and ungraceful, and ungracious. When, on the
day after Christmas, he started on his way back to Rouen, and from Rouen
to England, he did not confer on Paris "any of the boons expected, either
by releasing prisoners or by putting an end to black-mails, gabels, and
wicked imposts." The burgesses were astonished, and grumbled; and the
old queen, Isabel of Bavaria, who was still living at the hostel of St.
Paul, wept, it is said, for vexation, at seeing from one of her windows
her grandson's royal procession go by.
Though war was going on all the while, attempts were made to negotiate;
and in March, 1433, a conference was opened at Seineport, near Corbeil.
Everybody in France desired peace. Philip the Good himself began to feel
the necessity of it. Burgundy was almost as discontented and troubled as
Ile-de-France. There was grumbling at Dijon as there was conspiracy at
Paris. The English gave fresh cause for national irritation. They
showed an inclination to canton themselves in Normandy, and abandon the
other French provinces to the hazards and sufferings of a desultory war.
Anne of Burgundy, the Duke of Bedford's wife and Philip the Good's
sister, died. The English duke speedily married again without even
giving any notice to the French prince. Every family tie between the two
persons was broken; and the negotiations as well as the war remained
without result.
An incident at court caused a change in the situation, and gave the
government of Charles a different character. His favorite, George de la
Tremoille, had become almost as unpopular amongst the royal family as in
the country in general. He could not manage a war, and he frustrated
attempts at peace. The Queen of Sicily, Yolande d'Aragon, her daughter,
Mary d'Anjou, Queen of France, and her son, Louis, Count of Maine, who
all three desired peace, set themselves to work to overthrow the
favorite. In June, 1433, four young lords, one of whom, Sire de Beuil,
was La Tremoille's own nephew, introduced themselves unexpectedly into
his room at the castle of Coudray, near Chinon, where Charles VII. was.
La Tremoille showed an intention of resisting, and received a
sword-thrust. He was made to resign all his offices, and was sent under
strict guard to the castle of Alontresor, the property of his nephew,
Sire de Beuil. The conspirators had concerted measures with La
Tremoille's rival, the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, a man
distinguished in war, who had lately gone to help Joan of Arc, and who
was known to be a friend of peace at the same time that he was firmly
devoted to the national cause. He was called away from his castle of
Parthenay, and set at the head of the government as well as of the army.
Charles VII. at first showed anger at his favorite's downfall. He asked
if Richemont was present, and was told no: where-upon he seemed to grow
calmer. Before long he did more; he became resigned, and, continuing all
the while to give La Tremoille occasional proofs of his former favor, he
fully accepted De Richemont's influence and the new direction which the
constable imposed upon his government.
War was continued nearly everywhere, with alternations of success and
reverse which deprived none of the parties of hope without giving victory
to any. Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely
had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun. The
constable De Richemont's return to power led to fresh overtures. He was
a states-man as well as a warrior; and his inclinations were known at
Dijon and London, as well as at Chinon. The advisers of King Henry VI.
proposed to open a conference, on the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais.
They had, they said, a prisoner in England, confined there ever since the
battle of Agincourt, Duke Charles of Orleans, who was sincerely desirous
of peace, in spite of his family enmity towards the Duke of Burgundy. He
was considered a very proper person to promote the negotiations, although
he sought in poetry, which was destined to bring lustre to his name, a
refuge from politics which made his life a burden. He, one day meeting
the Duke of Burgundy's two ambassadors at the Earl of Suffolk's, Henry
VI.'s prime minister, went up to them, affectionately took their hands,
and, when they inquired after his health, said, "My body is well, my soul
is sick; I am dying with vexation at passing my best days a prisoner,
without any one to think of me." The ambassadors said that people would
be indebted to him for the benefit of peace, for he was known to be
laboring for it. "My Lord of Suffolk," said he, "can tell you that I
never cease to urge it upon the king and his council; but I am as useless
here as the sword never drawn from the scabbard. I must see my relatives
and friends in France; they will not treat, surely, without having
consulted with me. If peace depended upon me, though I were doomed to
die seven days after swearing it, that would cause me no regret.
however, what matters it what I say? I am not master in anything at all;
next to the two kings, it is the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of
Brittany who have most power. Will you not come and call upon me?" he
added, pressing the hand of one of the ambassadors. "They will see you
before they go," said the Earl of Suffolk, in a tone which made it plain
that no private conversation would be permitted between them. And,
indeed, the Earl of Suffolk's barber went alone to wait upon the
ambassadors in order to tell them that, if the Duke of Burgundy desired
it, the Duke of Orleans would write to him. "I will undertake," he
added, "to bring you his letter." There was evident mistrust; and it was
explained to the Burgundian ambassadors by the Earl of Warwick's remark,
"Your duke never once came to see our king during his stay in France.
The Duke of Bedford used similar language to them. Why," said he, "does
my brother the Duke of Burgundy give way to evil imaginings against me?
There is not a prince in the world, after my king, whom I esteem so much.
The ill-will which seems to exist between us spoils the king's affairs
and his own too. But tell him that I am not the less disposed to serve
him."
In March, 1435, the Duke of Burgundy went to Paris, taking with him his
third wife, Isabel of Portugal, and a magnificent following. There were
seen, moreover, in his train, a hundred wagons laden with artillery,
armor, salted provisions, cheeses, and wines of Burgundy. There was once
more joy in Paris, and the duke received the most affectionate welcome.
The university was represented before him, and made him a great speech on
the necessity of peace. Two days afterwards a deputation from the city
dames of Paris waited upon the Duchess of Burgundy, and implored her to
use her influence for the re-establishment of peace. She answered, "My
good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray
for it night and day to the Lord our God, for I believe that we all have
great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the
greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his
substance." At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip's decision was already
taken. He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the
constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law,
whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design. Being convinced of the
necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England's advisers
whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it.
It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly
speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of
Pope Eugenius IV. should be invited to it, and that consultation should
be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of
the two kingdoms.
Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted
with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there
arrived at Arras the pope's legates and the ambassadors of the Emperor
Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily,
Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan. The
university of Paris and many of the good towns of France, Flanders, and
even Holland, had sent their deputies thither. Many bishops were there
in person. The Bishop of Liege came thither with a magnificent train,
mounted, says the chroniclers, on two hundred white horses. The Duke of
Burgundy made his entrance on the 30th of July, escorted by three hundred
archers wearing his livery. All the lords who happened to be in the city
went to meet him at a league's distance, except the cardinal-legates of
the pope, who confined themselves to sending their people. Two days
afterwards arrived the ambassadors of the King of France, having at their
head the Duke of Bourbon and the constable De Richemont, together with
several of the greatest French lords, and a retinue of four or five
hundred persons. Duke Philip, forewarned of their coming, issued from
the city with all the princes and lords who happened to be there. The
English alone refused to accompany him, wondering at his showing such
great honor to the ambassadors of their common enemy. Philip went
forward a mile to meet his two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and
the Count de Richemont, embraced them affectionately, and turned back
with them into Arras, amidst the joy and acclamations of the populace.
Last of all arrived the Duchess of Burgundy, magnificently dressed, and
bringing with her her young son, the Count of Charolais, who was
hereafter to be Charles the Rash. The Duke of Bourbon, the constable De
Richemont, and all the lords were on horseback around her litter; but the
English, who had gone, like the others, to meet her, were unwilling, on
turning back to Arras, to form a part of her retinue with the French.
Grand as was the sight, it was not superior in grandeur to the event on
the eve of accomplishment. The question was whether France should remain
a great nation, in full possession of itself and of its independence
under a French king, or whether the King of England should, in London and
with the title of King of France, have France in his possession and under
his government. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was called upon to
solve this problem of the future, that is to say, to decide upon the fate
of his lineage and his country.
As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were
made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly. The English,
instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of
Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles. The French ambassadors
refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a
definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of
England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole
royal house, and of suffering for the people. Nevertheless, the duke
showed strong scruples. The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he
had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have
any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor. He
asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected
with the pope's legates, another with English doctors, and another with
French doctors. He was granted all three, though they were more
calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than
to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones. The legates ended by
solemnly saying to him, "We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the
holy council assembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce
that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in
memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more
pleasing in the eyes of God, or further augment your fame in this world."
For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that
the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was
his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September. He
was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who
had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him.
Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of
Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the principal causes of
shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from
the stage of the world. Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at
rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and
worldly expedience was concerned. He declared his readiness to accept
the proposals which had been communicated to him by the ambassadors of
Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at
Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England
might say or do.
There was great and general joy in France. It was peace, and national
reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the
streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves
Frenchmen. Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to
consecrate this alliance. On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the
Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated mass, the king laid his
hands upon the Gospels, and swore the peace, saying that "It was his duty
to imitate the King of kings, our divine Saviour, who had brought peace
amongst men." At the chancellor's order, the princes and great lords,
one after the other, took the oath; the nobles and the people of the
third estate swore the peace all together, with cries of "Long live the
king! Long live the Duke of Burgundy!" "With this hand," said Sire de
Lannoy, "I have thrice sworn peace during this war; but I call God to
witness that, for my part, this time it shall be kept, and that never
will I break it (the peace)." Charles VII., in his emotion, seized the
hands of Duke Philip's ambassadors, saying, "For a long while I have
languished for this happy day; we must thank God for it." And the Te
Deum was intoned with enthusiasm.
Peace was really made amongst Frenchmen; and, in spite of many internal
difficulties and quarrels, it was not broken as long as Charles VII. and
Duke Philip the Good were living. But the war with the English went on
incessantly. They still possessed several of the finest provinces of
France; and the treaty of Arras, which had weakened them very much on the
Continent, had likewise made them very angry. For twenty-six years, from
1435 to 1461, hostilities continued between the two kingdoms, at one time
actively and at another slackly, with occasional suspension by truce, but
without any formal termination. There is no use in recounting the
details of their monotonous and barren history. Governments and people
often persist in maintaining their quarrels and inflicting mutual
injuries by the instrumentality of events, acts, and actors that deserve
nothing but oblivion. There is no intention here of dwelling upon any
events or persons save such as have, for good or for evil, to its glory
or its sorrow, exercised a considerable influence upon the condition and
fortune of France.
The peace of Arras brought back to the service of France and her king the
constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, whom the jealousy of George
de la Tremoille and the distrustful indolence of Charles VII. had so long
kept out of it. By a somewhat rare privilege, he was in reality, there
is reason to suppose, superior to the name he has left behind him in
history; and it is only justice to reproduce here the portrait given of
him by one of his contemporaries who observed him closely and knew him
well. "Never a man of his time," says William Gruet, "loved justice more
than he, or took more pains to do it according to his ability. Never was
prince more humble, more charitable, more compassionate, more liberal,
less avaricious, or more open-handed in a good fashion and without
prodigality. He was a proper man, chaste and brave as prince can be; and
there was none of his time of better conduct than lie in conducting a
great battle, or a great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts
of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his
conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught
else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he
more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good
to poor mendicants and others of God's poor."
Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful
again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his
first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy
city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and
ruin. "The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it," says
an eye-witness, "twenty-four thousand houses empty." The Duke of
Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted
to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses);
but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there
was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance
of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by
the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them
dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from
its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. "Four blind men,
armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had
to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they
were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another." The constable
resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital
of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself
apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there
and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The
Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and
would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun
to St. Denis. "You know the country?" said the constable to Marshal
Isle-Adam. "Yes, my lord," answered the other; "and by my faith, in the
position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them,
though you had ten thousand fighting men." "Ah! but we will," replied
Richemont; "God will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the
skirmishers." And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The
population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved
and encouraged. One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of
the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were
ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an
engagement were entered into in the king's name for a general amnesty and
the prevention of all disorder. The constable, on the king's behalf,
entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day,
the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate. The
enterprise was discovered. A man posted on the wall made signs to them
with his hat, crying out, "Go to the other gate; there's no opening this;
work is going on for you in the Market-quarter." The picked force
followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate. "Who
goes there?" demanded some burghers who had the guard of it. "Some of
the constable's people." He himself came up on his big charger, with
satisfaction and courtesy in his mien. Some little time was required for
opening the gate; a long ladder was let down; and Marshal Isle-Adam was
the first to mount, and planted on the wall the standard of France. The
fastenings of the drawbridge were burst, and when it was let down, the
constable made his entry on horseback, riding calmly down St. Jacques
Street, in the midst of a joyous and comforted crowd. "My good friends,"
he said to them, "the good King Charles, and I on his behalf, do thank
you a hundred thousand times for yielding up to him so quietly the chief
city of his kingdom. If there be amongst you any, of whatsoever
condition he may be, who hath offended against my lord 'the king, all is
forgiven, in the case both of the absent and the present."
Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the
streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as
to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to
use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any. At sight
of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the
constable was disposed to besiege them. "My lord," said the burghers to
him, "they will surrender; do not reject their offer; it is so far a fine
thing enough to have thus recovered Paris; often, on the contrary, many
constables and many marshals have been driven out of it. Take
contentedly what God hath granted you." The burghers' prediction was not
unverified. The English sallied out of the Bastille by the gate which
opened on the fields, and went and took boat in the rear of the Louvre.
Next day abundance of provisions arrived in Paris; and the gates were
opened to the country folks. The populace freely manifested their joy at
being rid of the English. "It was plain to see," was the saving, "that
they were not in France to remain; not one of them had been seen to sow a
field with corn or build a house; they destroyed their quarters without a
thought of repairing them; they had not restored, peradventure, a single
fireplace. There was only their regent, the Duke of Bedford, who was
fond of building and making the poor people work; he would have liked
peace; but the nature of those English is to be always at war with their
neighbors, and accordingly they all made a bad end; thank God there have
already died in France more than seventy thousand of them."
Up to the taking of Paris by the constable the Duke of Burgundy had kept
himself in reserve, and had maintained a tacit neutrality towards
England; he had merely been making, without noisy demonstration,
preparations for an enterprise in which he, as Count of Flanders, was
very much interested. The success of Richemont inspired him with a hope,
and perhaps with a jealous desire, of showing his power and his
patriotism as a Frenchman by making war, in his turn, upon the English,
from whom he had by the treaty of Arras effected only a pacific
separation. In June, 1436, he went and besieged Calais. This was
attacking England at one of the points she was bent upon defending most
obstinately. Philip had reckoned on the energetic cooperation of the
cities of Flanders, and at the first blush the Flemings did display a
strong inclination to support him in his enterprise. "When the
English," they said, "know that my lords of Ghent are on the way to
attack them with all their might they will not await us; they will leave
the city and flee away to England." Neither the Flemings nor Philip had
correctly estimated the importance which was attached in London to the
possession of Calais. When the Duke of Gloucester, lord-protector of
England, found this possession threatened, he sent a herald to defy the
Duke of Burgundy and declare to him that, if he did not wait for battle
beneath the walls of Calais, Humphrey of Gloucester would go after him
even into his own dominions. "Tell your lord that he will not need to
take so much trouble, and that he will find me here," answered Philip
proudly. His pride was over-confident. Whether it were only a people's
fickleness or intelligent appreciation of their own commercial interests
in their relations with England, the Flemings grew speedily disgusted
with the siege of Calais, complained of the tardiness in arrival of the
fleet which Philip had despatched thither to close the port against
English vessels, and, after having suffered several reverses by sorties
of the English garrison, they ended by retiring with such precipitation
that they abandoned part of their supplies and artillery. Philip,
according to the expression of M. Henri Martin, was reduced to covering
their retreat with his cavalry; and then he went away sorrowfully to
Lille, to advise about the means of defending his Flemish lordships
exposed to the reprisals of the English.
Thus the fortune of Burgundy was tottering whilst that of France was
recovering itself. The constable's easy occupation of Paris led the
majority of the small places in the neighborhood, St. Denis, Chevreuse,
Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon spontaneous surrender or
allowing themselves to be taken after no great resistance. Charles VII.,
on his way through France to Lyon, in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and
along the Loire, recovered several other towns, for instance, Chateau-
Landon, Nemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an
important military post with which a recent and sinister reminiscence was
connected. A great change now made itself apparent in the king's
behavior and disposition. He showed activity and vigilance, and was
ready to expose himself without any care for fatigue or danger. On the
day of the assault (10th of October, 1437) he went down into the
trenches, remained there in water up to his waist, mounted the scaling-
ladder sword in hand, and was one of the first assailants who penetrated
over the top of the walls right into the place. After the surrender of
the castle as well as the town of Montereau, he marched on Paris, and
made his solemn re-entry there on the 12th of November, 1437, for the
first time since in 1418 Tanneguy-Duchatel had carried him away, whilst
still a child, wrapped in his bed-clothes. Charles was received and
entertained as became a recovered and a victorious king; but he passed
only three weeks there, and went away once more, on the 3d of December,
to go and resume at Orleans first, and then at Bourges, the serious cares
of government. It is said to have been at this royal entry into Paris
that Agnes Sorel or Soreau, who was soon to have the name of Queen of
Beauty, and to assume in French history an almost glorious though
illegitimate position, appeared with brilliancy in the train of the
queen, Mary of Anjou, to whom the king had appointed her a maid of honor.
It is a question whether she did not even then exercise over Charles VII.
that influence, serviceable alike to the honor of the king and of France,
which was to inspire Francis I., a century later, with this gallant
quatrain:
"If to win back poor captive France be aught,
More honor, gentle Agnes, is thy weed,
Than ere was due to deeds of virtue wrought
By cloistered nun or pious hermit-breed."
It is worth while perhaps to remark that in 1437 Agnes Sorel was already
twenty-seven.
One of the best informed, most impartial, and most sensible historians of
that epoch, James Duclercq, merely says on this subject, King Charles,
before he had peace with Duke Philip of Burgundy, led a right holy life
and said his canonical hours. But after peace was made with the duke,
though the king continued to serve God, he joined himself unto a young
woman who was afterwards called Fair Agnes.
Nothing is gained by ignoring good even when it is found in company with
evil, and there is no intention here of disputing the share of influence
exercised by Agnes Sorel upon Charles VII.'s regeneration in politics and
war after the treaty of Arras. Nevertheless, in spite of the king's
successes at Montereau and during his passage through Central and
Northern France, the condition of the country was still so bad in 1440,
the disorder was so great, and the king so powerless to apply a remedy,
that Richemont, disconsolate, was tempted to rid and disburden himself
from the government of France and between the rivers [Seine and Loire, no
doubt] and to go or send to the king for that purpose. But one day the
prior of the Carthusians at Paris called on the constable and found him
in his private chapel. "What need you, fair father?" asked Richemont.
The prior answered that he wished to speak with my lord the constable.
Richemont replied that it was he himself. "Pardon me, my lord," said the
prior, "I did not know you; I wish to speak to you, if you please."
"Gladly," said Richemont. "Well, my lord, you yesterday held counsel and
considered about disburdening yourself from the government and office you
hold hereabouts." "How know you that? Who told you?" "My lord, I do
not know it through any person of your council, and do not put yourself
out to learn who told me, for it was one of my brethren. My lord, do not
do this thing; and be not troubled, for God will help you." "Ah! fair
father, how can that be? The king has no mind to aid me or grant me men
or money; and the men-at-arms hate me because I have justice done on
them, and they have no mind to obey me." "My lord, they will do what you
desire; and the king will give you orders to go and lay siege to Meaux,
and will send you men and money." "Ah! fair father, Meaux is so strong!
How can it be done? The King of England was there for nine months before
it." "My lord, be not you troubled; you will not be there so long; keep
having good hope in God and He will help you. Be ever humble and grow
not proud; you will take Meaux ere long; your men will grow proud; they
will then have somewhat to suffer; but you will come out of it to your
honor."
The good prior was right. Meaux was taken; and when the constable went
to tell the news at Paris the king made him "great cheer." There was a
continuance of war to the north of the Loire; and amidst many
alternations of successes and reverses the national cause made great way
there. Charles resolved, in 1442, to undertake an expedition to the
south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, where the English were still dominant;
and he was successful. He took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever,
Marmande, La Reole, Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John
d'Armagnac, submitted to the King of France. These successes cost
Charles VII. the brave La Hire, who died at Montauban of his wounds.
On returning to Normandy, where he had left Dunois, Charles, in 1443,
conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English leaders were getting
weary of a war without any definite issue; and they had proposals made to
Charles for a truce, accompanied with a demand on the part of their young
king, Henry VI., for the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou,
daughter of King Rena, who wore the three crowns of Naples, Sicily, and
Jerusalem, without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The truce and the
marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. Neither of the arrangements
was popular in England; the English people, who had only a far-off touch
of suffering from the war, considered that their government made too many
concessions to France. In France, too, there was some murmuring; the
king, it was said, did not press his advantages with sufficient vigor;
everybody was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered. "But a joy
that was boundless and impossible to describe," says Thomas Bazin, the
most intelligent of the contemporary historians, "spread abroad through
the whole population of the Gauls. Having been a prey for so long to
incessant terrors, and shut up within the walls of their towns like
convicts in a prison, they rejoiced like people restored to freedom after
a long and bitter slavery. Companies of both sexes were seen going forth
into the country and visiting temples or oratories dedicated to the
saints, to pay the vows which they had made in their distress. One fact
especially was admirable and the work of God Himself: before the truce so
violent had been the hatred between the two sides, both men-at-arms and
people, that none, whether soldier or burgher, could without risk to life
go out and pass from one place to another unless under the protection of
a safe-conduct. But, so soon as the truce was proclaimed, every one went
and came at pleasure, in full liberty and security, whether in the same
district or in districts under divided rule; and even those who, before
the proclamation of the truce, seemed to take no pleasure in anything but
a savage outpouring of human blood, now took delight in the sweets of
peace, and passed the days in holiday-making and dancing with enemies who
but lately had been as bloodthirsty as themselves."
But for all their rejoicing at the peace, the French, king, lords, and
commons, had war still in their hearts; national feelings were waking up
afresh; the successes of late years had revived their hopes; and the
civil dissensions which were at that time disturbing England let
favorable chances peep out. Charles VII. and his advisers employed the
leisure afforded by the truce in preparing for a renewal of the struggle.
They were the first to begin it again; and from 1449 to 1451 it was
pursued by the French king and nation with ever-increasing ardor, and
with obstinate courage by the veteran English warriors astounded at no
longer being victorious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to
be called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and the
chief theatre of war. Amongst the greatest number of fights and
incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two provinces,
the recapture of Rouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the battle of
Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15th of April, 1450, by the constable De
Richemont, and the twofold capitulation of Bordeaux, first on the 28th of
June, 1451, and next on the 9th of October, 1453, in order to submit to
Charles VII., are the only events to which a place in history is due, for
those were the days on which the question was solved touching the
independence of the nation and the kingship in France. The Duke of
Somerset and Lord Talbot were commanding in Rouen when Dunois presented
himself beneath its walls, in hopes that the inhabitants would open the
gates to him. Some burgesses, indeed, had him apprised of a certain
point in the walls at which they might be able to favor the entry of the
French. Dunois, at the same time making a feint of attacking in another
quarter, arrived at the spot indicated with four thousand men. The
archers drew up before the wall; the men-at-arms dismounted; the
burgesses gave the signal, and the planting of scaling-ladders began; but
when hardly as many as fifty or sixty men had reached the top of the wall
the banner and troops of Talbot were seen advancing. He had been warned
in time and had taken his measures. The assailants were repulsed; and
Charles VII., who was just arriving at the camp, seeing the abortiveness
of the attempt, went back to Pont-de-l'Arehe. But the English had no
long joy of their success. They were too weak to make any effectual
resistance, and they had no hope of any aid from England. Their leaders
authorized the burgesses to demand of the king a safe-conduct in order to
treat. The conditions offered by Charles were agreeable to the
burgesses, but not to the English; and when the archbishop read them
out in the hall of the mansion-house, Somerset and Talbot witnessed an
outburst of joy which revealed to them all their peril. Fagots and
benches at once began to rain down from the windows; the English shut
themselves up precipitately in the castle, in the gate-towers, and in the
great tower of the bridge; and the burgesses armed themselves and took
possession during the night of the streets and the walls. Dunois, having
received notice, arrived in force at the Martainville gate. The
inhabitants begged him to march into the city as many men as he pleased.
"It shall be as you will," said Dunois. Three hundred men-at-arms and
archers seemed sufficient. Charles VII returned before Rouen; the
English asked leave to withdraw without loss of life or kit; and "on
condition," said the king "that they take nothing on the march without
paying." "We have not the wherewithal," they answered; and the king gave
them a hundred francs. Negotiations were recommenced. The king required
that Harfleur and all the places in the district of Caux should be given
up to him. "Ah! as for Harfleur, that cannot be," said the Duke of
Somerset; "it is the first town which surrendered to our glorious king,
Henry V., thirty-five years ago." There was further parley. The French
consented to give up the demand for Harfleur; but they required that
Talbot should remain as a hostage until the conditions were fulfilled.
The English protested. At last, however, they yielded, and undertook to
pay fifty thousand golden crowns to settle all accounts which they owed
to the tradesmen in the city, and to give up all places in the district
of Caen except Harfleur. The Duchess of Somerset and Lord Talbot
remained as hostages; and on the 10th of November, 1449, Charles entered
Rouen in state, with the character of a victor who knew how to use
victory with moderation.
The battle of Formigny was at first very doubtful. In order to get from
Valognes to Bayeux and Caen the English had to cross at the mouth of the
Vire great sands which were passable only at low tide. A weak body of
French under command of the Count de Clermont had orders to cut them off
from this passage. The English, however, succeeded in forcing it; but
just as they were taking position, with the village of Formigny to cover
their rear, the constable De Richemont was seen coming up with three
thousand men in fine order. The English were already strongly
intrenched, when the battle began. "Let us go and look close in their
faces, admiral," said the constable to Sire de Coetivi. "I doubt whether
they will leave their intrenchments," replied the admiral. "I vow to God
that with His grace they will not abide in them," rejoined the
constable; and he gave orders for the most vigorous assault. It lasted
nearly three hours; the English were forced to fly at three points, and
lost thirty-seven hundred men; several of their leaders were made
prisoners; those who were left retired in good order; Bayeux, Avranches,
Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other into the hands of
Charles VII.; and by the end of August, 1450, the whole of Normandy had
been completely won back by France.
The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately after that of
Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more speedy. Amongst the lords
of Southern France several hearty patriots, such as John of Blois, Count
of Perigord, and Arnold Amanieu, Sire d'Albret, of their own accord began
the strife, and on the 1st of November, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe
reverse upon the English, near Blanquefort. In the spring of the
following year Charles VII. authorized the Count of Armagnac to take the
field, and sent Dunois to assume the command-in-chief. An army of twenty
thousand men mustered under his orders; and, in the course of May, 1451,
some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emillon, Blaye,
Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or
capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne held out for some weeks; but, on the
12th of June, a treaty concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured
to the three estates of the district the liberties and privileges which
they had enjoyed under English supremacy; and it was further stipulated
that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succored by English
forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the sovereignty of King
Charles. When the 24th of June came, a herald went up to one of the
towers of the castle and shouted, "Succor from the King of England for
them of Bordeaux!!" None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux
surrendered, and on the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the
name of the King of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the
6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty.
Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had a
considerable following there. They had held it for three centuries;
and they had always treated it well in respect of local liberties,
agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering it, was less
wise. He determined to establish there forthwith the taxes, the laws,
and the whole regimen of Northern France; and the Bordelese were as
prompt in protesting against these measures as the king was in employing
them. In August, 1452, a deputation from the three estates of the
province waited upon Charles at Bourges, but did not obtain their
demands. On their return to Bordeaux an insurrection was organized; and
Peter de Montferrand, Sire de Lesparre, repaired to London and proposed
to the English government to resume possession of Guyenne. On the 22d of
October, 1452, Talbot appeared before Bordeaux with a body of five
thousand men; the inhabitants opened their gates to him; and he installed
himself there as lieutenant of the King of England, Henry VI. Nearly all
the places in the neighborhood, with the exception of Bourg and Blaye,
returned beneath the sway of the English; considerable reenforcements
were sent to Talbot from England; and at the same time an English fleet
threatened the coast of Normandy. But Charles VII. was no longer the
blind and indolent king he had been in his youth. Nor can the prompt and
effectual energy he displayed in 1453 be any longer attributed to the
influence of Agnes Sorel, for she died on the 9th of February, 1450.
Charles left Richemont and Dunois to hold Normandy; and, in the early
days of spring, moved in person to the south of France with a strong army
and the principal Gascon lords who two years previously had brought
Guyenne back under his power. On the 2d of June, 1453, he opened the
campaign at St. Jean-d'Angely. Several places surrendered to him as soon
as he appeared before their walls; and on the 13th of July he laid siege
to Castillon, on the Dordogne, which had shortly before fallen into the
hands of the English. The Bordelese grew alarmed and urged Talbot to
oppose the advance of the French. "We may very well let them come nearer
yet," said the old warrior, then eighty years of age; "rest assured that,
if it please God, I will fulfil my promise when I see that the time and
the hour have come."
On the night between the 16th and 17th of July, however, Talbot set out
with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon. He marched all night
and came suddenly in the early morning upon the French archers, quartered
in an abbey, who formed the advanced guard of their army, which was
strongly intrenched before the place. A panic set in amongst this small
body, and some of them took to flight. "Ha! you would desert me then?"
said Sire de Rouault, who was in command of them; "have I not promised
you to live and die with you?" They thereupon rallied and managed to
join the camp. Talbot, content for the time with this petty success,
sent for a chaplain to come and say mass; and, whilst waiting for an
opportunity to resume the fight, he permitted the tapping of some casks
of wine which had been found in the abbey, and his men set themselves to
drinking. A countryman of those parts came hurrying up, and said to
Talbot, "My lord, the French are deserting their park and taking to
flight; now or never is the hour for fulfilling your promise." Talbot
arose and left the mass, shouting, "Never may I hear mass again if I put
not to rout the French who are in yonder park." When he arrived in front
of the Frenchmen's intrenchment, "My lord," said Sir Thomas Cunningham,
an aged gentleman who had for a long time past been his standard-bearer,
"they have made a false report to you; observe the depth of the ditch and
the faces of yonder men; they don't look like retreating; my opinion is,
that for the present we should turn back; the country is for us, we have
no lack of provisions, and with a little patience we shall starve out the
French." Talbot flew into a passion, gave Sir Thomas a sword-cut across
the face, had his banner planted on the edge of the ditch, and began the
attack. The banner was torn down and Sir Thomas Cunningham killed.
"Dismount!" shouted Talbot to his men-at-arms, English and Gascon. The
French camp was defended by a more than usually strong artillery; a body
of Bretons, held in reserve, advanced to sustain the shock of the
English; and a shot from a culverin struck Talbot, who was already
wounded in the face, shattered his thigh, and brought him to the ground.
Lord Lisle, his son, flew to him to raise him. "Let me be," said Talbot;
"the day is the enemies'; it will be no shame for thee to fly, for this
is thy first battle." But the son remained with his father, and was
slain at his side. The defeat of the English was complete. Talbot's
body, pierced with wounds, was left on the field of battle. He was so
disfigured that, when the dead were removed, he was not recognized.
Notice, however, was taken of an old man wearing a cuirass covered with
red velvet; this, it was presumed, was he; and he was placed upon a
shield and carried into the camp. An English herald came with a request
that he might look for Lord' Talbot's body. "Would you know him?" he was
asked. "Take me to see him," joyfully answered the poor servant,
thinking that his master was a prisoner and alive. When he saw him, he
hesitated to identify him; he knelt down, put his finger in the mouth of
the corpse, and recognized Talbot by the loss of a molar tooth. Throwing
off immediately his coat-of-arms with the colors and bearings of Talbot,
"Ah! my lord and master," he cried, "can this be verily you? May God
forgive your sins! For forty years and more I have been your
officer-at-arms and worn your livery, and thus I give it back to you!"
And he covered with his coat-of-arms the stark-stripped body of the
old hero.
The English being beaten and Talbot dead, Castillon surrendered; and at
unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emillon, Chateau-Neuf de Medoc,
Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed the example. At the
commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The
promoters of the insurrection which had been concerted with the English,
amongst others Sires de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance
rather in their own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the
population; the king's artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea
a king's fleet from Rochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the
Gironde. "The majority of the king's officers," says the contemporary
historian, Thomas Basin, "advised him to punish by at least the
destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to
their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused."
He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal
privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing
upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to
thirty thousand; he caused to be built at the expense of the city two
fortresses, the Fort of the Ila and the Castle of Trompette, to keep in
check so bold and fickle a population; and an amnesty was proclaimed for
all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these conditions
the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th of October; the
English re-embarked; and Charles, without entering Bordeaux, returned to
Touraine. The English had no longer any possession in France but Calais
and Guines; the Hundred Years' War was over.
And to whom was the glory?
Charles VII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, twenty-four
years after the death of Joan of Are, he at Rome and at Rouen prosecuted
her claims for restoration of character and did for her fame and her
memory all that was still possible, he was but relieving his conscience
from a load of ingratitude and remorse which in general weighs but
lightly upon men, and especially upon kings; and he was discharging
towards the Maid of Domremy the debt due by France and the French
kingship when he thus proclaimed that to Joan above all they owed their
deliverance and their independence. Before men and before God Charles
was justified in so thinking; the moral are not the sole, but they are
the most powerful forces which decide the fates of people; and Joan had
roused the feelings of the soul, and given to the struggles between
France and England its religious and national character. At Rheims, when
she repaired thither for the king's coronation, she said of her own
banner, "It has a right to the honor, for it has been at the pains."
She, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had been the
first to contribute to the success.
Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richemont was the most effective
and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France and of the king.
He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his
enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to
himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself and
punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed
under his orders. Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart
his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal
interests. He was fond of war, and conducted it bravely and skilfully,
without rashness, but without timidity: "Wherever the constable is," said
Charles VII., "there I am free from anxiety; he will do all that is
possible!" He set his title and office of constable of France above his
rank as a great lord; and when, after the death of his brother, Duke
Peter II., he himself became Duke of Brittany, he always had the
constable's sword carried before him, saying, "I wish to honor in my old
age a function which did me honor in my youth." His good services were
not confined to the wars of his time; he was one of the principal
reformers of the military system in France by the substitution of regular
troops for feudal service. He has not obtained, it is to be feared, in
the history of the fifteenth century, the place which properly belongs to
him.
Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and Marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette
were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the
king and of Fiance; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is
questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont,
amongst the liberators of national independence. There are degrees of
glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and
as it were by handfuls.
Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at
first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic
service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a
different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless
acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought
to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from
which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by
means of fresh ventures. Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close
of the fourteenth century. His father was a furrier, already
sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son's
marrying, in 1418, the provost's daughter of his own city. Some years
afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of
the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of
the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine,
and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce.
In 1432 a squire in the service of the Duke of Burgundy was travelling in
the Holy Land, and met him at Damascus in company with several Venetians,
Genoese, Florentine, and Catalan traders with whom he was doing
business. "He was," says his contemporary, Thomas Basin, "a man
unlettered and of plebeian family, but of great and ingenious mind, well
versed in the practical affairs of that age. He was the first in all
France to build and man ships which transported to Africa and the East
woollen stuffs and other produce of the kingdom, penetrated as far as
Egypt, and brought back with them silken stuffs and all manner of spices,
which they distributed not only in France, but in Catalonia and the
neighboring countries, whereas heretofore it was by means of the
Venetians, the Genoese, or the Barcelonese that such supplies found their
way into France."
Jacques Coeur, temporarily established at Montpellier, became a great and
a celebrated merchant. In 1433 Charles VII. put into his hands the
direction of the mint at Paris, and began to take his advice as to the
administration of the crown's finances. In 1440 he was appointed
moneyman to the king, ennobled together with his wife and children,
commissioned soon afterwards to draw up new regulations for the
manufacture of cloth at Bourges, and invested on his own private account
with numerous commercial privileges. He had already at this period, it
was said, three hundred manufacturing hands in his employment, and he was
working at the same time silver, lead, and copper mines situated in the
environs of Tarare and Lyons. Between 1442 and 1446 he had one of his
nephews sent as ambassador to Egypt, and obtained for the French consuls
in the Levant the same advantages as were enjoyed by those of the most
favored nations. Not only his favor in the eyes of the king, but his
administrative and even his political appointments, went on constantly
increasing. Between 1444 and 1446 the king several times named him one
of his commissioners to the estates of Languedoc and for the installation
of the new parliament of Toulouse. In 1446 he formed one of an embassy
sent to Italy to try and acquire for France the possession of Genoa,
which was harassed by civil dissensions. In 1447 he received from
Charles VII. a still more important commission, to bring about an
arrangement between the two popes elected, one under the name of Felix
V., and the other under that of Nicholas V.; and he was successful. His
immense wealth greatly contributed to his influence. M. Pierre Clement
[Jacques Coeur et Charles WE, ou la France au quinzieme siecle; t. ii.,
pp. 1-46] has given a list of thirty-two estates and lordships which
Jacques Coeur had bought either in Berry or in the neighboring provinces.
He possessed, besides, four mansions and two hostels at Lyons; mansions
at Beaucaire, at Beziers, at St. Pourcain, at Marseilles, and at
Montpellier; and he had built, for his own residence, at Bourges, the
celebrated hostel which still exists as an admirable model of Gothic and
national art in the fifteenth century, attempting combination with the
art of Italian renaissance.
M. Clement, in his table of Jacques Coeur's wealth does not count either
the mines which he worked at various spots in France, nor the vast
capital, unknown, which he turned to profit in his commercial
enterprises; but, on the other hand, he names, with certain et ceteras,
forty-two court-personages, or king's officers, indebted to Jacques Coeur
for large or small sums he had lent them. We will quote but two
instances of Jacques Coeur's financial connection, not with courtiers,
however, but with the royal family and the king himself. Margaret of
Scotland, wife of the dauphin, who became Louis XI., wrote with her own
hand, on the 20th of July, 1445, "We, Margaret, dauphiness of Viennois,
do acknowledge to have received from Master Stephen Petit, secretary of
my lord the king, and receiver-general of his finances for Languedoc and
Guienne, two thousand livres of Tours, to us given by my said lord, and
to us advanced by the hands of Jacques Coeur, his moneyman, we being but
lately in Lorraine, for to get silken stuff and sables to make robes for
our person." In 1449, when Charles VII. determined to drive the English
from Normandy, his treasury was exhausted, and he had recourse to Jacques
Coeur. "Sir," said the trader to the king, "what I have is yours," and
lent him two hundred thousand crowns; "the effect of which was," says
Jacques Duclercq, "that during, this conquest, all the men-at-arms of the
King of France, and all those who were in his service, were paid their
wages month by month."
An original document, dated 1450, which exists in the "cabinet des
titres" of the National Library, bears upon it a receipt for sixty
thousand livres from Jacques Coeur to the king's receiver-general in
Normandy, "in restitution of the like sum lent by me in ready money to
the said lord in the month of August last past, on occasion of the
surrendering to his authority of the towns and castle of Cherbourg, at
that time held by the English, the ancient enemies of this realm." It
was probably a partial repayment of the two hundred thousand crowns lent
by Jacques Coeur to the king at this juncture, according to all the
contemporary chroniclers.
Enormous and unexpected wealth excites envy and suspicion at the same
time that it confers influence; and the envious before long become
enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Coeur were raised in the king's
own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune—the
coinage of questionable money—furnished some specious ground for them.
There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to
give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the
gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles
VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all
at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To
accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters was added
one of even more importance. Agnes Sorel had died eighteen months
previously (February 9, 1450); and on her death-bed she had appointed
Jacques Coeur one of the three executors of her will. In July, 1451,
Jacques was at Taillebourg, in Guyenne, whence he wrote to his wife that
"he was in as good case and was as well with the king as ever he had
been, whatever anybody might say." Indeed, on the 22d of July Charles
VII. granted him a "sum of seven hundred and seventy-two livres of Tours
to help him to keep up his condition and to be more honorably equipped
for his service;" and, nevertheless, on the 31st of July, on the
information of two persons of the court, who accused Jacques Coeur of
having poisoned Agnes Sorel, Charles ordered his arrest and the seizure
of his goods, on which he immediately levied a hundred thousand crowns
for the purposes of the war. Commissioners extraordinary, taken from
amongst the king's grand council, were charged to try him; and Charles
VII. declared, it is said, that "if the said moneyman were not found
liable to the charge of having poisoned or caused to be poisoned Agnes
Sorel, he threw up and forgave all the other cases against him." The
accusation of poisoning was soon acknowledged to be false, and the two
informers were condemned as calumniators; but the trial was,
nevertheless, proceeded with. Jacques Coeur was accused "of having sold
arms to the infidels, of having coined light crowns, of having pressed on
board of his vessels, at Montpellier, several individuals, of whom one
had thrown himself into the sea from desperation, and lastly of having
appropriated to himself presents made to the king, in several towns of
Languedoc, and of having practised in that country frequent exaction, to
the prejudice of the king as well as of his subjects." After twenty-two
months of imprisonment, Jacques Coeur, on the 29th of May, 1453, was
convicted, in the king's name, on divers charges, of which several
entailed a capital penalty; but "whereas Pope Nicholas V. had issued a
rescript and made request in favor of Jacques Coeur, and regard also
being had to services received from him," Charles VII. spared his life,
"on condition that he should pay to the king a hundred thousand crowns by
way of restitution, three hundred thousand by way of fine, and should be
kept in prison until the whole claim was satisfied;" and the decree ended
as follows: "We have declared and do declare all the goods of the said
Jacques Coeur confiscated to us, and we have banished and do banish this
Jacques Coeur forever from this realm, reserving thereanent our own good
pleasure."
After having spent nearly three years more in prison, transported from
dungeon to dungeon, Jacques Coeur, thanks to the faithful and zealous
affection of a few friends, managed to escape from Beaucaire, to embark
at Nice and to reach Rome, where Pope Nicholas V. welcomed him with
tokens of lively interest. Nicholas died shortly afterwards, just when
he was preparing an expedition against the Turks. His successor,
Calixtus III., carried out his design, and equipped a fleet of sixteen
galleys. This fleet required a commander of energy, resolution, and
celebrity. Jacques Coeur had lived and fought with Dunois, Xaintrailles,
La Hire, and the most valiant French captains; he was known and popular
in Italy and the Levant; and the pope appointed him captain-general of
the expedition. Charles VII.'s moneyman, ruined, convicted, and banished
from France, sailed away at the head of the pope's squadron and of some
Catalan pirates to carry help against the Turks to Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos,
Lemnos, and the whole Grecian archipelago. On arriving at Chios, in
November, 1456, he fell ill there, and perceiving his end approaching,
he wrote to his king "to commend to him his children, and to beg that,
considering the great wealth and honors he had in his time enjoyed in the
king's service, it might be the king's good pleasure to give something to
his children, in order that they, even those of them who were secular,
might be able to live honestly, without coming to want." He died at
Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John
d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur's
children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that
island, at the centre of the choir."
We have felt bound to represent with some detail the active and energetic
life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and
hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the
close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe,
Africa, and Asia the commercial relations of France, and, after the
example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine
politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the
material interests of his country and the influence of his government.
There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and
frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was
inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the
utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the
commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France.
In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a
servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often
also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of
difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful
patron, who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains he had sucked,
and ruined him pitilessly after having himself contributed to enrich him
unscrupulously.
We have now reached the end of events under this long reign; all that
remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII.'s
government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his latter years with his
son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born-conspirator, who was
to succeed him under the name of Louis XI.
One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush
appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first
nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very
frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of Northern France,
or Langue d'oil, at another of Southern France, or Langue d'oc.
Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period at Bourges,
at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Mean-sur-Yevre, at Chinon,
at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Nevers, at Carcassonne,
and at different spots in Languedoc. It was the time of the great war
between France on the one side and England and Burgundy allied on the
other, the time of intrigues incessantly recurring at court, and the time
likewise of carelessness and indolence on the part of Charles VII., more
devoted to his pleasures than regardful of his government. He had
incessant need of states-general to supply him with money and men, and
support him through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating
from the peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles VII., having become
reconciled with the Duke of Burgundy, was deliverer from civil war, and
was at grips with none but England alone already half beaten by the
divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, his
posture and his behavior underwent a rare transformation. Without
ceasing to be coldly selfish and scandalously licentious king he became
practical, hard-working, statesman-like king, jealous and disposed to
govern by himself, but at the same time watchful and skilful in availing
himself of the able advisers who, whether it were by a happy accident or
by his own choice, were grouped around him. "He had his days and hours
for dealing with all sorts of men, one hour with the clergy, another with
the nobles, another with foreigners, another with mechanical folks,
armorers, and gunners; and in respect of all these persons he had a full
remembrance of their cases and their appointed day. On Monday, Tuesday,
and Thursday he worked with the chancellor, and got through all claims
connected with justice. On Wednesday he first of all gave audience to
the marshals, captains, and men of war. On the same day he held a
council of finance, independently of another council which was also held
on the same subject every Friday." It was by such assiduous toil that
Charles VII., in concert with his advisers, was able to take in hand and
accomplish, in the military, financial, and judicial system of the realm,
those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country
from the state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it
had been a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical
administration, which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was
destined to be, during more than three centuries, the government of
France. The constable De Richemont and marshal De la Fayette were, in
respect of military matters, Charles VII.'s principal advisers; and it
was by their counsel and with their co-operation that he substituted for
feudal service and for the bands of wandering mercenaries (routiers),
mustered and maintained by hap-hazard, a permanent army, regularly
levied, provided for, paid, and commanded, and charged with the duty of
keeping order at home, and at the same time subserving abroad the
interests and policy of the state. In connection with, and as a natural
consequence of this military system, Charles VII., on his own sole
authority, established certain permanent imposts with the object of
making up any deficiency in the royal treasury, whilst waiting for a vote
of such taxes extraordinary as might be demanded of the states-general.
Jacques Coeur, the two brothers Bureau, Martin Gouge, Michel Lailler,
William Cousinot, and many other councillors, of burgher origin, labored
zealously to establish this administrative system, so prompt and freed
from all independent discussion. Weary of wars, irregularities, and
sufferings, France, in the fifteenth century, asked for nothing but peace
and security; and so soon as the kingship showed that it had an intention
and was in a condition to provide her with them, the nation took little
or no trouble about political guarantees which as yet it knew neither how
to establish nor how to exercise; its right to them was not disputed in
principle, they were merely permitted to fall into desuetude; and Charles
VII., who during the first half of his reign had twenty-four times
assembled the states-general to ask them for taxes and soldiers, was able
in the second to raise personally both soldiers and taxes without drawing
forth any complaint hardly, save from his contemporary historian, the
Bishop of Lisieux, Thomas Basin, who said, "Into such misery and
servitude is fallen the realm of France, heretofore so noble and free,
that all the inhabitants are openly declared by the generals of finance
and their clerks taxable at the will of the king, without anybody's
daring to murmur or even ask for mercy." There is at every juncture, and
in all ages of the world, a certain amount, though varying very much, of
good order, justice, and security, without which men cannot get on; and
when they lack it, either through the fault of those who govern them or
through their own fault, they seek after it with the blind eyes of
passion, and are ready to accept it, no matter what power may procure it
for them, or what price it may cost them. Charles VII. was a prince
neither to be respected nor to be loved, and during many years his reign
had not been a prosperous one; but "he re-quickened justice, which had
been a long while dead," says a chronicler devoted to the Duke of
Burgundy; "he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the
men-at-arms, and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed
men of resolution and honest life; he made regular paths in murderous
woods and forests, all roads safe, all towns peaceful, all nationalities
of his kingdom tranquil; he chastised the evil and honored the good, and
he was sparing of human blood."
Let it be added, in accordance with contemporary testimony, that at the
same time that he established an all but arbitrary rule in military and
financial matters, Charles VII. took care that "practical justice, in the
case of every individual, was promptly rendered to poor as well as rich,
to small as well as great; he forbade all trafficking in the offices of
the magistracy, and every time that a place became vacant in a parliament
he made no nomination to it, save on the presentations of the court."
Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the
only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. He attacked also
ecclesiastical questions, which were at that period a subject of
passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the councils of the
Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated ordinance, known by
the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles VII. issued at Bourges on
the 7th of July, 1438, with the concurrence of a grand national council,
laic and ecclesiastical, was directed towards the carrying out, in the
internal regulations of the French Church, and in the relations either of
the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the
papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers
and interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult
and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed upon
the writer of this history. All that can be said is, that there was no
lack of a religious spirit, or of a liberal spirit, in the Pragmatic
Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the measures contained
in it were adopted with the approbation of the greater part of the French
clergy, as well as of educated laymen in France.
In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VII. in the
latter part of his reign brought him not only in France, but throughout
Europe, a great deal of fame and power. When he had driven the English
out of his kingdom, he was called Charles the Victorious; and when he had
introduced into the internal regulations of the state so many important
and effective reforms, he was called Charles the Well-served. "The sense
he had by nature," says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to
twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and
perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce." "He is the king of
kings," was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good
judge of policy; "there is no doing without him."
Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign,
Charles VII. was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate,
the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. In 1442 and
1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most
devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his
mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite,
Agnes Sorel. His avowed intimacy with Agnes, and even, independently of
her and after her death, the scandalous licentiousness of his morals, had
justly offended his virtuous wife, Mary of Anjou, the only lady of the
royal establishment who survived him. She had brought him twelve
children, and the eldest, the dauphin Louis, after having from his very
youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king
his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous
conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth in 1423, he had been
named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St. Louis, and in hopes that
he would resemble him. In 1440, at seventeen years of age, he allied
himself with the great lords, who were displeased with the new military
system established by Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by
them into the transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. When
the king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favor, the
dauphin said to his father, "My lord, I must go back with them, then;
for so I promised them." "Louis," replied the king, "the gates are open,
and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of
wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you."
Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that
charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of
France that, coming one day upon the poet Alan Chartier asleep upon a
bench, she kissed him on the forehead in the presence of her mightily
astonished train, for he was very ugly. The dauphin rendered his wife
so wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with
these words upon her lips: "O! fie on life! Speak to me no more of it!"
In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to drive the
English out of Normandy, the dauphin Louis, who was now living entirely
in Dauphiny, concluded at Briancon a secret league with the Duke of Savoy
"against the ministers of the King of France, his enemies." In 1456, in
order to escape from the perils brought upon him by the plots which he,
in the heart of Dauphiny, was incessantly hatching against his father,
Louis fled from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the
Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the
same time excusing himself to Charles VII. "on the ground of the respect
he owed to the son of his suzerain," and putting at the disposal of
Louis, "his guest," a pension of thirty-six thousand livres. "He has
received the fox at his court," said Charles: "he will soon see what will
become of his chickens." But the pleasantries of the king did not chase
away the sorrows of the father. "Mine enemies have full trust in me,"
said Charles, "but my son will have none. If he had but once spoken with
me, he would have known full well that he ought to have neither doubts
nor fears. On my royal word, if he will but come to me, when he has
opened his heart and learned my intentions, he may go away again
whithersoever it seems good to him." Charles, in his old age and his
sorrow, forgot how distrustful and how fearful he himself had been. "It
is ever your pleasure," wrote one of his councillors to him in a burst of
frankness, "to be shut up in castles, wretched places, and all sorts of
little closets, without showing yourself and listening to the complaints
of your poor people." Charles VII. had shown scarcely more confidence to
his son than to his people. Louis yielded neither to words, nor to
sorrows of which proofs were reaching him nearly every day. He remained
impassive at the Duke of Burgundy's, where he seemed to be waiting with
scandalous indifference for the news of his father's death. Charles sank
into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. He had his
doctor, Adam Fumee, put in prison; persuaded himself that his son had
wished, and was still wishing, to poison him; and refused to take any
kind of nourishment. No representation, no solicitation, could win him
from his depression and obstinacy. It was in vain that Charles, Duke of
Berry, his favorite child, offered to first taste the food set before
him. It was in vain that his servants "represented to him with tears,"
says Bossuet, "what madness it was to cause his own death for fear of
dying; when at last he would have made an effort to eat, it was too late,
and he must die." On the 2nd of July, 1461, he asked what day it was,
and was told that it was St. Magdalen's day. "Ah!" said he, "I do laud
my God, and thank Him for that it hath pleased Him that the most sinful
man in the world should die on the sinful woman's day! Dampmartin," said
he to the count of that name, who was leaning over his bed, "I do beseech
you that after my death you will serve so far as you can the little lord,
my son Charles." He called his confessor, received the sacraments, gave
orders that he should be buried at St. Denis beside the king his father,
and expired. No more than his son Louis, though for different reasons,
was his wife, Queen Mary of Anjou, at his side. She was living at
Chinon, whither she had removed a long while before by order of the king
her husband. Thus, deserted by them of his own household, and disgusted
with his own life, died that king of whom a contemporary chronicler,
whilst recommending his soul to God, re-marked, "When he was alive, he
was a right wise and valiant lord, and he left his kingdom united, and in
good case as to justice and tranquillity."
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