Chapter VIII: The Rescue of the Realm (3)

Thus abandoned by the church she cast herself in full confidence on God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman handed her a wooden cross which he had made out of a stick; she received it not the less piously, kissed it, and put that rough emblem of salvation under her clothes next her skin. But she would rather have had the church cross to keep before her eyes until death. The good _huissier_ Massieu and Brother Isambart exerted themselves to fulfil her wishes, and the cross was brought her from the parish of St. Sauveur. While she was embracing it, and Isambart was exhorting her, the English began to think the business very tedious; it was noon at least; the soldiers grumbled, and the captains called out, “Holla, priest! are you going to keep us here to dinner?” Then losing patience and not waiting for the order of the bailiff, though he alone had authority to send her to death, they sent up two sergeants to take her out of the hands of the priests. She was seized at the foot of the tribunal by the soldiers, who dragged her to the executioner, and said to him, “Do thy office.” This fury of the soldiery excited horror; many of the by-standers, and even of the judges, rushed from the ground to avoid seeing any more of it.

When she was on the ground among those English who laid hands on her, nature gave way and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried, “O Rouen, thou art then to be my last abode!” She said no more and sinned not with her lips, even in that awful moment. She accused not her king or her saints. But when she was on the top of the pile, and saw that great town and that motionless and silent multitude, she could not help saying, “Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I fear me much thou wilt have to suffer for my death!” Wonderful gentleness of soul! she who had saved the people, and whom the people forsook, expressed but compassion for them in her dying moments.

She was bound beneath the infamous inscription, and on her head was placed a mitre, on which was written: “Heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolator.” Then the executioner applied the fire. She saw it from above and shrieked. The monk who was exhorting her did not pay attention to the flames; and she, forgetting herself, became alarmed for him and made him go down. What plainly proves that until then she had retracted nothing expressly is that the wretched Cauchon was obliged (doubtless by the imperious Satanic will of him that presided) to approach the foot of the pile, obliged to look his victim in the face, and try to elicit something from her. She repeated to him mildly what she had already said: “Bishop, I die by you. Had you placed me in the church prisons this would not have happened.” Of course it had been expected that, thinking herself abandoned by her king, she would at last accuse him and speak against him; but she defended him still: “Whether I have done well or done ill, my king is in no wise implicated therein: it was not he who advised me.”

Meanwhile, the flames were ascending. At the moment they reached her the poor creature started and called out for holy water; this apparently was a cry of terror. But immediately collecting herself she uttered no names but those of God, her angels, and her saints. She testified her faith in them: “Yes, my voices were of God; my voices have not deceived me!” That grand expression of hers is attested by the compulsory and sworn witness of her death, the Dominican who ascended the pile with her, whom she sent down from that dangerous post, but who continued speaking with her from below, listened to her words, and held up the cross to her sight.

We have yet another witness of this holy death, a witness of very grave character, who was himself doubtless a saint. This man, whose name history ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned, Brother Isambart de la Pierre. He was near perishing in the course of the prosecution for having given counsel to the Maid, and yet though so conspicuously obnoxious to the English, he voluntarily ascended the cart with her, procured her the parish cross, and stood by her in the midst of the furious crowd, both on the platform and at the stake. Twenty years after the event the two venerable men, humble monks, devoted to poverty and with nothing to gain or to fear in this world, depose as follows: “We heard her in the fire invoking her saints and her archangel; she repeated the Saviour’s name. At last, dropping her head, she cried aloud, ‘Jesus.’”

“Ten thousand men wept.” Some English alone laughed or tried to laugh. One of the most violent among them had sworn to fling a fagot on the pile; she was expiring at the moment he deposited it, and he was taken ill. His comrades carried him off to a tavern to revive his spirits with drink, but he could not recover his equanimity. “I saw,” he cried distractedly, “I saw a dove escape from her mouth with her last sigh.” Others had read in the flames the word Jesus which she repeated. The executioner went that evening in utter dismay to Brother Isambart, and confessed, but could not believe that God would ever forgive him. One of the king of England’s secretaries said openly as he returned from the horrid scene, “We are undone; we have burned a saint!”[c]

THE REHABILITATION OF JOAN OF ARC (1456 A.D.)

For a long time the people refused to believe in Joan’s death.[47] The memory of her who had been both the heroine and victim of patriotic and national sentiment became more and more popular, and several years after the English had been driven from France and her predictions accomplished, there arose a desire that her memory should be avenged.

When Charles VII entered Rouen in 1450 he had ordered the revision of the trial. Cardinal Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen and papal legate, began investigation in the name of the church. But for political reasons, and so as not to irritate the English, it was judged better to have the request for rehabilitation come from Joan’s own family, as a private matter. Two doctors designated by the court of Rome examined the request, declared it founded on the most serious motives, and concluded if the church must hesitate to pronounce on Joan’s visions, it could not charge them with crime. Upon these conclusions Pope Calixtus III appointed three prelates and an inquisitor to form a court of revision over which the archbishop of Rheims presided.

The new judges began their labour. All the witnesses still living who had known Joan appeared before them. Military leaders who had fought with her--as Alençon and Dunois--gave testimony to her memory. Three clerks who had exercised their office at the trial in Rouen furnished proof of irregularities that had been committed. No defender of the former proceedings appeared. Thereupon the court, giving the most simple explanation of all that had determined the former judges, found a hundred and one reasons for nullity. In consequence the new judges quashed, in 1456, the decree of their predecessors--as stained with illegality, fraud, violence, and manifest partiality. They declared the twelve articles of the condemnation false, calumnious, and full of fraud--while recognising that the manner in which they had been drawn up might easily have deceived the good faith of those that acted upon them. They declared the trial iniquitous--that Joan had been judged by her enemies. The church thus restored that which an ecclesiastical tribunal had struck down. The sentence of rehabilitation was published in every town of France; Orleans raised on a bridge over the Loire a statue to her liberator. Rouen held expiation processions in honour of her victim.[k]

A BRITISH ESTIMATE OF JOAN’S SERVICES

Those writers who consider Joan of Arc not merely as a female Mohammed, but as a heaven-sent saviour, do not enhance the virtue or the beauty of her own natural character, whilst they exaggerate the depression, and derogate from the martial spirit of the French, by representing them as only to be saved at the time by an avatar. It does not appear that France was in such imminent danger, or was likely to be conquered, even had Orleans fallen by a handful of English, very unequal to the subjugation of the country.

If the starting up a great prince or warrior, like Henry V, on the throne of England had brought disaster upon France, his premature death, with the consequent abstraction of English aid and English vigour from the duke of Bedford, was a greater blow to English ascendency than any supposed mission of Joan of Arc. If the French were defeated at Agincourt and Verneuil, this was mainly owing to the yeoman middle classes, which formed the strength of the English army, whilst a similar class in France was kept out of the ranks of the national defence. But the sieges of Rouen and of Orleans had restored to the French peasant and the French townsman the right and the habit of wielding a sword by the side of the gentleman. What Joan of Arc did was to restore their confidence; this was her good fortune or her mission. The disinherited and degraded middle and lower classes rose to defend and save the monarchy, which counts and barons had allowed to fall with themselves into the mire. This was the revolution, this the new spirit that saved France from the English, and not the trumped-up miracle of La Pucelle. It was the red right arm of French manhood which did that act, and not the prophecies of Merlin, the visions of saints, or the embroidered banner of the virgin of Domrémy.[g]

FOOTNOTES

[39] [It was positively asserted that a ball had taken off a man’s shoe without hurting his foot.]

[40] [The duke of Orleans had been a captive in England since the battle of Agincourt.]

[41] [The family name was Darc, and the name of the Maid of Orleans was therefore, properly, Jeanne Darc, not Jeanne d’Arc as commonly written; but the latter has the sanction of general usage.]

[42] [His aunt, the saintly Joan of Luxemburg, was also most energetic in her efforts to have Joan released.]

[43] [The count of Ligny received the money before October. The duke of Burgundy handed Joan over to the English on the 21st of November.]

[44] [From the door of her father’s dwelling she looked on an old oak wood. The fairies haunted that wood; their favourite spot was a certain spring near a great ash called the “fairies’ tree.” The children used to hang garlands on it and sing to it. These somewhile ladies and mistresses of the forest could no longer, it was said, assemble at the spring; they had been excluded from it for their sins. The church, however, always retained a jealous fear of the old local divinities, and the curé used to go once every year, and read a mass at the spring, in order to drive them away.[c]]

[45] [The mother and aunt of the count of Ligny, who took a tender interest in the Maid while she was in his keeping.]

[46] [The regular formula for the sentence of giving over a heretic to the secular arm.]

[47] [In 1436 rumour spread through France that it was not La Pucelle that the English had burned at Rouen. In fact, a woman whose resemblance to Joan was astonishing had presented herself to her two brothers and was acknowledged by them. In 1438 and 1439 this “false Joan” headed a body of armed men and was enthusiastically received by the people of Orleans. Brought before the king, she admitted the imposture, was imprisoned, afterwards released and came, according to report, to a bad and shameful end.]