Chapter III: Introduction (2)

[Footnote 84: Vol. ii, Appendices ii and iii.]

The free-thinkers of our day, imbued as they are, for the most part, with transcendentalism, refuse to recognise in Jeanne not merely that automatism which determines the acts of such a seeress, not only the influence of constant hallucination, but even the suggestions of the religious spirit. What she achieved through saintliness and devoutness, they make her out to have accomplished by intelligent enthusiasm. Such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and erudite Quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of the Maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy. This point was not without its drawbacks. It led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous exaggeration of Jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of attributing military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel. The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. Unfortunately the Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the Catholic Church down the ages. In their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. So much so that in a search for the most curiously travestied of all the Jeannes d'Arc we should have been driven to choose between their miraculous protectress of Christian France, the patroness of officers, the inimitable model of the pupils of Saint-Cyr, and the romantic Druidess, the inspired woman-soldier of the national guard, the patriot gunneress of the Republicans, had there not arisen a Jesuit Father to create an ultramontane Jeanne d'Arc.[85]

[Footnote 85: Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, 5 vols. in large 8vo, Paris, 1894-1902. Writing of this book in a study of _L'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, 1902, pp. 7 and 8, note), Canon Ulysse Chevalier, author of a valuable _Repertoire des sources du moyen age_, displays boldness and sound sense. "From the dimensions of these five volumes," he says, "one might expect this work to be the fullest history of Jeanne d'Arc; it is nothing of the sort. It is a chaos of memoranda translated or rendered into modern French, reflections and arguments against free-thought as represented by Michelet, H. Martin, Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, and Joseph Fabre. Two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's tone: _The Pseudo-theologians, executioners of Jeanne d'Arc, executioners of the Papacy_ (vol. i, p. 87); _The University of Paris and the Brigandage of Rouen_ (p. 149). The author too often judges the fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. Is he quite sure that if he had been a member of the University of Paris in 1431 he would have thought and pronounced in favour of Jeanne, and in opposition to his colleagues?"]

On the subject of Jeanne's sincerity I have raised no doubts. It is impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she received her mission from her voices. But whether she were not unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. What we know of her before her arrival at Chinon comes to very little. One is inclined to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (_en commende_).[86] Such a term she had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for her.

[Footnote 86: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 456.]

She must have associated with priests who were faithful to the cause of the Dauphin Charles, and who desired above all things the end of the war. Abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service discontinued.[87] Those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that they saw the Treaty of Troyes failing to establish it, looked for the realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the English. And the wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself called to ride forth and fight, but that in "her great pity" she announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and coronation of the King, at a time when the nobles of the two countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected nor desired the war ever to come to an end.

[Footnote 87: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres hopitaux en France vers le milieu du xv'ieme siecle_, Macon, 1897, in 8vo.]

The mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and to which she consecrated her life, was doubtless extraordinary, marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in human affairs. Jeanne d'Arc arose in the decline of the great Catholic age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities, manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of men. And of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries God's servants perform wondrous works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy with fire and sword; Saint Francis of Assisi for the nonce founds poverty as an institution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with God's aid, to re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power instituted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new Joash snatched from death for the salvation of the holy people?

Thus did pious French folk, in the year 1428, regard the mission of the Maid. She represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by God. There was nothing incredible in that. When she announced that she had received revelations touching the war from my Lord Saint Michael, she inspired the men-at-arms of the Armagnac party and the burghers of the city of Orleans with a confidence as great as could have been communicated to the troops, marching along the Loire in the winter of 1871, by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or an improved form of cannon. What was expected from science in 1871 was expected from religion in 1428, so that the Bastard of Orleans would as naturally employ Jeanne as Gambetta would resort to the technical knowledge of M. de Freycinet.

What has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they constituted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the banished members of the University, men deeply involved in political affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very impatient to regain possession of their property. They were directed by the cleverest man in the King's Council, the Duke Archbishop of Reims, the Chancellor of the kingdom. By the ceremoniousness and the deliberation of their inquiries, they drew upon Jeanne the curiosity, the interest, and the hopes of minds lost in amazement.[88]

[Footnote 88: O. Raguenet, _Les juges de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, membres du Parlement ou gens d'Eglise?_ in _Lettres et memoires de l'Academie de Sainte-Croix d'Orleans VII_, 1894, pp. 339-442; D. Lacombe, _L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, maitre Jean Rabateau, President au Parlement de Poitiers in Revue du Bas-Poitou_, 1891, pp. 46-66.]

The defences of the city of Orleans consisted in its walls, its trenches, its cannon, its men-at-arms, and its money. The English had failed both to surround it and to take it by assault. Convoys and companies passed between their bastions. Jeanne was introduced into the town with a strong relieving army. She brought flocks of oxen, sheep, and pigs. The townsfolk believed her to be an angel of the Lord. Meanwhile the men and the money of the besiegers were waxing scant. They had lost all their horses. Far from being in a position to attempt a new attack, they were not likely to be able to hold out long in their bastions. At the end of April there were four thousand English before Orleans and perhaps less, for, as it was said, soldiers were deserting every day; and companies of these deserters went plundering through the villages. At the same time the city was defended by six thousand men-at-arms and archers, and by more than three thousand men of the town bands. At Saint Loup, there were fifteen hundred French against four hundred English; at Les Tourelles, there were five thousand French against four or five hundred English. By their retreat from Orleans the _Godons_ abandoned to their fate the small garrisons of Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency.[89] The Battle of Patay gives us some idea of the condition of the English army. It was no battle but a massacre, and one which Jeanne only reached in time to mourn over the cruelty of the conquerors. And yet the King, in his letters to his good towns, attributed to her a share in the victory. Evidently the Royal Council made a point of glorifying its Holy Maid.

[Footnote 89: Mr. Andrew Lang (_La Jeanne d'Arc de M. Anatole France_, p. 60) misreads this passage when he takes it to mean that the English withdrew their garrisons from these places. That their ultimate surrender became inevitable after the English retreat from Orleans is what the writer intends to convey.--W.S.]

But at heart what did they really think, those who employed her, those Regnaults de Chartres, those Roberts le Macon, those Gerards Machet? They were certainly in no position to discuss the origin of the illusions which enveloped her. And, albeit there were atheists even among churchmen, to the majority there would be nothing to cause astonishment in the appearance of Saint Michael, the Archangel. In those days nothing appeared more natural than a miracle. But a miracle vanishes when closely observed. And they had the damsel before their very eyes. They perceived that good and saintly as she was, she wielded no supernatural power.

While the men-at-arms and all the common folk welcomed her as the maid of God and an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of the realm, these good lords thought only of profiting from the sentiments of confidence which she inspired and in which they had little share. Finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked with her. They must soon have discovered that it was not always easy. She was a saint, saints are intractable. What were the true relations between the Royal Council and the Maid? We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael.[90] It is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of his benefices.

[Footnote 90: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 146.]

The coronation campaign was really nothing but a series of negotiations, backed by an army. Its object was to show the good towns a king saintly and pacific. Had there been any idea of fighting, the campaign would have been directed against Paris or against Normandy.

At the inquiry of 1456, five or six witnesses, captains, magistrates, ecclesiastics, and an honest widow, gave evidence that Jeanne was well versed in the art of war. They agreed in saying that she rode a horse and wielded a lance better than any one. A master of requests stated that she amazed the army by the length of time she could remain in the saddle. Such qualities we are not entitled to deny her, neither can we dispute the diligence and the ardour which Dunois praised in her, on the occasion of a demonstration by night before Troyes.[91] As to the opinion that this damsel was clever in arraying and leading an army and especially skilled in the management of artillery, that is more difficult to credit and would require to be vouched for by some one more trustworthy than the poor Duke of Alencon, who was never considered a very rational person.[92] What we have said about the rehabilitation trial sufficiently explains this curious glorification of the Maid. It was understood that Jeanne's military inspiration came from God. Henceforth there was no danger of its being too much admired and it came to be praised somewhat at random.

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 13.]

[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, p. 100. See _ante_, p. xxvi (note 4).]

After all the Duke of Alencon was quite moderate when he represented her as a distinguished artillery-woman. As early as 1429, a humanist on the side of Charles VII asserted in Ciceronian language that in military glory she equalled and surpassed Hector, Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar: "Non Hectore reminiscat et gaudeat Troja, exultet Graecia Alexandro, Annibale Africa, Italia Caesare et Romanis ducibus omnibus glorietur, Gallia etsi ex pristinis multos habeat, hac tamen una Puella contenta, audebit se gloriari et laude bellica caeteris nationibus se comparare, verum quoque, si expediet, se anteponere."[93]

[Footnote 93: Letter from Alain Chartier in the _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 135, 136; Capitaine P. Marin, _Jeanne d'Arc tacticien et strategiste_, Paris, 1889, 4 vols. in 12mo; Le General Canonge, _Jeanne d'Arc guerriere_, Paris, 1907, in 8vo.]

For ever praying and for ever wrapped in ecstasy, Jeanne never observed the enemy; she did not know the roads; she paid no heed to the number of troops engaged; she did not take into account either the height of walls or the breadth of trenches. Even to-day officers are to be heard discussing the Maid's military tactics.[94] Those tactics were simple; they consisted in preventing men from blaspheming against God and consorting with light women. She believed that for their sins they would be destroyed, but that if they fought in a state of grace they would win the victory. Therein lay all her military science, save that she never feared danger.[95] She displayed a courage which was at once proud and gentle; she was more valiant, more constant, more noble than the men and in that worthy to lead them. And is it not admirable and rare to find such heroism united to such innocence?

[Footnote 94: _Rossel et la legende de Jeanne d'Arc_ in _la Petite Republique_ of July 15, 1896; _Jeanne d'Arc soldat_ by Art Roe, in _le Temps_ of May 8, 1907. See also the works of Captain Marin, always so praiseworthy for their carefulness and good faith.]

[Footnote 95: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 16.]

Certain of the leaders indeed, and notably the princes of the blood royal, knew no more than she. The art of war in those days resolved itself into the art of riding. Any idea of marching along converging lines, of concentrated movements, of a campaign methodically planned, of a prolonged effort with a view to some great result was unknown. Military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants' stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. The freebooters, captains, and soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade, but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was pillage. The nobles affected great concern for honour and praise; in reality they thought of nothing but gain. Alain Chartier said of them: "They cry 'to arms,' but they fight for money."[96]

[Footnote 96: Alain Chartier, _Oeuvres_, ed. Andre du Chesne, p. 412.]

Seeing that war was to last as long as life, it was waged with deliberation. Men-at-arms, horse-soldiers and foot, archers, cross-bowmen, Armagnacs as well as English and Burgundians, fought with no great ardour. Of course they were brave: but they were cautious too and were not ashamed to confess it. Jean Chartier, precentor of Saint-Denys, chronicler of the Kings of France, relating how on a day the French met the English near Lagny, adds: "And there the battle was hard and fierce, for the French were barely more than the English."[97] These simple folk, seeing that one man is as good as another, admitted the risk of fighting one to one. Their minds had not fed on Plutarch as had those of the Revolution and the Empire. And for their encouragement they had neither the _carmagnoles_ of Barrere, nor the songs of Marie-Joseph Chenier, nor the bulletins of _la grande armee_. Why did these captains, these men-at-arms go and fight in one place rather than in another seems to be a natural question.... Because they wanted goods.

[Footnote 97: Jean Chartier, _Chronique de Charles VII_, vol. i, p. 121.]

This perpetual warfare was not sanguinary. During what was described as Jeanne d'Arc's mission, that is from Orleans to Compiegne, the French lost barely a few hundred men. The English suffered much more heavily, because they were the fugitives, and in a rout it was the custom for the conquerors to kill all those who were not worth holding to ransom. But battles were rare, and so consequently were defeats, and the number of the combatants was small. There were but a handful of English in France. And they may be said to have fought only for plunder. Those who suffered from the war were those who did not fight, burghers, priests, and peasants. The peasants endured terrible hardships, and it is quite conceivable that a peasant girl should have displayed a firmness in war, a persistence and an ardour unknown throughout the whole of chivalry.

It was not Jeanne who drove the English from France. If she contributed to the deliverance of Orleans, she retarded the ultimate salvation of France by causing the opportunity of conquering Normandy to be lost through the coronation campaign. The misfortunes of the English after 1428 are easily explained. While in peaceful Guyenne they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous was strongly attached to them. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the country. Shut up in fortresses and chateaux, they did not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better? In 1428, they were but a handful in France, and to maintain themselves there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.

They lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the pacification of those they had already conquered. The very character of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights they asserted, which were founded on institutions common to the two countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal concurrence and friendship of the conquered. The Treaty of Troyes did not subject France to England, it united one country to the other. Such a union occasioned much anxiety in London. The Commons did not conceal their fear that Old England might become a mere isolated province of the new kingdom.[98] France for her part did not concur in the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been making war on these _Coues_[99] they had grown to hate them. And possibly there already existed an English character and a French character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the _Godons_[100] met with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part whatever in the work of deliverance? By no means. Hers was the nobler, the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and charming. The King's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by striking fear into the English, who imagined her to be the devil.

[Footnote 98: See the deliberations of the Commons on December 2, 1421, in Brequigny, _Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des cours de France et d'Angleterre_, Paris, 1847 (2 vols. in 4to), vol. ii, pp. 393 _et seq._]

[Footnote 99: For the origin of this term see _post_, vol. i, p. 22 and note 2.--W.S.]

[Footnote 100: For the origin of this term see _ibid._ and note 1.--W.S.]

Our best historians cannot forgive the ministers and captains of 1428 for not having blindly obeyed the Maid. But that was not at all the advice given at the time by the Archbishop of Embrun to King Charles; he, on the contrary, recommended him not to abandon the means inspired by human reason.[101]

[Footnote 101: The Reverend Father M. Fornier, _Histoire des Alpes-Maritimes_, Paris, 1890, in 8vo, vol. ii, p. 324; Lanery d'Arc, _Memoires et consultations_, pp. 565 _et seq._]

It has frequently been repeated that the lords and captains were jealous of her, especially old Gaucourt.[102] But such a statement shows an absolute ignorance of human nature. They were envious one of another; this and no other sentiment was the jealousy that made them tolerate the Maid's assuming the title of commander in war.[103]

[Footnote 102: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 117; _Perceval de Cagny_, p. 168; Marquis de Gaucourt, _Le sire de Gaucourt_, Orleans, 1855, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 103: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 168, 170, 171; _Cronicques de Normendie_, ed. Hellot, pp. 77, 78.]

Those secret intrigues on the part of the King and his captains, who are said to have plotted together the destruction of the saint, I admit having found it impossible to discover. To certain historians they appear very obvious: for my part, do what I may, I cannot discern them. The Chamberlain, the Sire de la Tremouille, had no pretensions to nobility of character; and the Chancellor Regnault de Chartres was hard-hearted, but what strikes me is that the Sire de la Tremouille refused to give up this valuable damsel to the Duke of Alencon when he asked for her, and that the Chancellor retained her in order to make use of her.[104] I am not of the opinion that Jeanne was a prisoner at Sully. I believe that when she went to join the Chancellor, who employed her until her capture by the Burgundians, she quitted the castle in estate, with trumpeters, and banners flying. After the girl saint he employed a boy saint, a shepherd who had stigmata; which proves that he did not regret having made use of a devout person to fight against the King's enemies and to recover his own archbishopric.

[Footnote 104: _Perceval de Cagny_, pp. 170, 171; _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 313; Heraut Berry, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 48.]

The excellent Quicherat and the magnanimous Henri Martin are very hard on the Government of 1428. According to them it was a treacherous Government. Yet the only reproach they bring against Charles VII and his councillors is that they did not understand the Maid as they themselves understood her. But such an understanding has required the lapse of four hundred years. To arrive at the illuminated ideas of a Quicherat and a Henri Martin concerning Jeanne d'Arc, three centuries of absolute monarchy, the Reformation, the Revolution, the wars of the Republic and of the Empire, and the sentimental Neo-Catholicism of '48, have all been necessary. Through all these brilliant prisms, through all these succeeding lights do romantic historians and broad-minded paleographers view the figure of Jeanne d'Arc; and we ask too much from the poor Dauphin Charles, from La Tremouille, from Regnault de Chartres, from the Lord of Treves, from old Gaucourt, when we require them to have seen Jeanne as centuries have made and moulded her.[105]

[Footnote 105: H. Martin, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1856, in 12mo; J. Quicherat, _Nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyees par la Pucelle_ in _Revue de Normandie_, vol. vi (1866), pp. 396-401.]

This, however, remains: after having made so much use of her, the Royal Council did nothing to save her.

Must the disgrace of such neglect fall upon the whole Council and upon the Council alone? Who ought really to have interfered? And how? What ought King Charles to have done? Should he have offered to ransom the Maid? She would not have been surrendered to him at any price. As for capturing her by force, that is a mere child's dream. Had they entered Rouen, the French would not have found her there; Warwick would always have had time to put her in a place of safety, or to drown her in the river. Neither money nor arms would have availed to recapture her.

But this was no reason for standing with folded arms. Influence could have been brought to bear on those who were conducting the trial. Doubtless they were all on the side of the _Godons_; that old _Cabochien_ of a Pierre Cauchon was very much committed to them; he detested the French; the clerks, who owed allegiance to Henry VI, were naturally inclined to please the Great Council of England which disposed of patronage; the doctors and masters of the University of France greatly hated and feared the Armagnacs. And yet the judges of the trial were not all infamous prevaricators; the chapter of Rouen lacked neither courage nor independence.[106] Among those members of the University who were so bitter against Jeanne, there were men highly esteemed for doctrine and character. They for the most part believed this trial to be a purely religious one. By dint of seeking for witches, they had come to find them everywhere. These females, as they called them, they were sending to the stake every day, and receiving nothing but thanks for it. They believed as firmly as Jeanne in the possibility of the apparitions which she said had been vouchsafed to her, only they were persuaded either that she lied or that she saw devils. The Bishop, the Vice-Inquisitor and the assessors, to the number of forty and upwards, were unanimous in declaring her heretical and devilish. There were doubtless many who imagined that by passing sentence against her they were maintaining Catholic orthodoxy and unity of obedience against the abettors of schism and heresy; they wished to judge wisely. And even the boldest and the most unscrupulous, the Bishop and the Promoter, would not have dared too openly to infringe the rules of ecclesiastical justice in order to please the English. They were priests, and they preserved priestly pride and respect for formality. Here was their weak point; in this respect for formality they might have been struck. Had the other side instituted vigorous legal proceedings, theirs might possibly have been thwarted, arrested, and the fatal sentence prevented. If the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, the Archbishop of Reims, had intervened in the trial, if he had suspended his suffragan for abuse of authority, or some other reason, Pierre Cauchon would have been greatly embarrassed; if, as he decided to do later, King Charles VII had brought about the intervention of the mother and brothers of the Maid; if Jacques d'Arc and la Romee had protested in due form against an action so manifestly one-sided; if the register of Poitiers[107] had been sent for inclusion among the documents of the trial; if the high prelates subject to King Charles VII had asked for a safe conduct in order to come and give evidence in Jeanne's favour at Rouen; finally, if the King, his Council, and the whole Church of France had demanded an appeal to the Pope, as they were legally entitled to do, then the trial might have had a different issue.

[Footnote 106: Even when the canons who took part in the trial are severally considered. _Cf._ Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc_, Rouen, 1869, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 107: Or at least the conclusions of the doctors which have been preserved. As for the register itself it could not have contained anything of great importance. From their evidence at the rehabilitation trial we see that the Poitiers clerks were not desirous for much to be said of their inquiry.]

But they were afraid of the University of Paris. They feared lest Jeanne might be after all what so many learned doctors maintained her to be, a heretic, a miscreant seduced by the prince of darkness. Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and it is difficult to distinguish the true prophets from the false. The hapless Maid was deserted by the very clergy whose croziers had so recently been carried before her; of all the Poitiers masters not one was found to testify in the chateau of Rouen to that innocence which they had officially recognised eighteen months before.

It would be very interesting to trace the reputation of the Maid down the ages. But to do so would require a whole book. I shall merely indicate the most striking revolutions of public opinion concerning her. The humanists of the Renaissance display no great interest in her: she was too Gothic for them. The Reformers, for whom she was tainted with idolatry, could not tolerate her picture.[108] It seems strange to us to-day, but it is none the less certain, and in conformity with all we know of French feeling for royalty, that whilst the monarchy endured it was the memory of Charles VII that kept alive the memory of Jeanne d'Arc and saved her from oblivion.[109] Respect due to the Prince generally hindered his faithful subjects from too closely inquiring into the legends of Jeanne as well as into those of the Holy Ampulla, the cures for King's evil, the _oriflamme_ and all other popular traditions relating to the antiquity and celebrity of the royal throne of France. In 1609, when in a college of Paris, the Maid was the subject of sundry literary themes in which she was unfavourably treated,[110] a certain lawyer, Jean Hordal, who boasted that he came of the same race as the heroine, complained of these academic disputes as being derogatory to royal majesty--"I am greatly astonished," he said, "that ... public declamations against the honour of France, of King Charles VII and his Council,[111] should be suffered in France." Had Jeanne not been so closely associated with royalty, her memory would have been very much neglected by the wits of the seventeenth century. In the minds of scholars, Catholics and Protestants alike, who considered the life of St. Margaret as mere superstition,[112] her apparitions did her harm. In those days even the _Sorbonagres_ themselves were expurgating the martyrology and the legends of saints. One of them, Edmond Richer, like Jeanne a native of Champagne, the censor of the university in 1600, and a zealous Gallican, wrote an apology for the Maid who had defended the Crown of Charles VII[113] with her sword. Albeit a firm upholder of the liberties of the French Church, Edmond Richer was a good Catholic. He was pious and of sound doctrine; he firmly believed in angels, but he did not believe either in Saint Catherine or Saint Margaret, and their appearing to the Maid greatly embarrassed him. He solved the difficulty by supposing that the angels had represented themselves to the Maid as the two saints, whom in her ignorance she devoutly worshipped. The hypothesis seemed to him satisfactory, "all the more so," he said, "because the Spirit of God, which governs the Church, accommodates himself to our infirmity." Thirty or forty years later, another doctor of the Sorbonne, Jean de Launoy, who was always ferreting after saints, completed the discrediting of Saint Catherine's legend.[114] The voices of Domremy were falling into disrepute.

[Footnote 108: Aug. Vallet, _Observation sur l'ancien monument erige a Orleans_, Paris, 1858, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 109: See a curious project for the decoration of the platform of the Pont-Neuf addressed to Louis XIV (B.N.V., p. zz'338, in fol.). A Sieur Dupuis, Aide des Ceremonies, proposes that thereon shall be erected statues to "those great and illustrious captains who from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the crown.... Artus of Bretagne, Constable, Jean, Count of Dunois, Jeanne Dark, Maid of Orleans, Roger de Gramont, Count of Guiche, Guillaume, Count of Chaumont, Amaury de Severac, Vignoles, called La Hire...." (Communications of M. Paul Lacombe, _Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris_, 1894, p. 115, June 11, 1907. _Ibid._)]

[Footnote 110: _Puellae Aureliensis causa adversariis orationibus disceptata auctore Jacobo Jolio_, Parisiis apud Julianum Bertant, 1609.]

[Footnote 111: Jean Hordal, _Heroinae nobilissimae Ioannae Darc Lotharingae vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia_, Ponti-Mussi, 1612, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 112: Rabelais, _Gargantua_, chap. vi; Abbe Thiers, _Traite des superstitions selon l'Ecriture sainte_, Paris, 1697, vol. i, p. 109.]

[Footnote 113: Edmond Richer, _Histoire de la Pucelle d'Orleans en 4 livres_, MS. Biblioth. Nat. f. Fr. 10448, fol. 12mo.]

[Footnote 114: "The Life of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, is fabulous throughout from beginning to end," _Valesiana_, p. 48. "M. de Launoy, doctor of theology, had cut Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, out of his calendar. He said that her life was a myth, and to show that he placed no faith in it, every year when the feast of the saint came round, he said a Requiem mass. This curious circumstance I learn from his own telling," _Ibid._, p. 36.]

Take Chapelain, for example, whose poem was first published in 1656. Chapelain is unconsciously burlesque; he is a Scarron without knowing it. It is none the less interesting to learn from him that he merely treated his subject as an occasion for glorifying the Bastard of Orleans. He expressly says in his preface: "I did not so much regard her (the Maid) as the chief character of the poem, who, strictly speaking, is the Comte de Dunois." Chapelain was in the pay of the Duc de Longueville, a descendant of Dunois.[115] It is of Dunois that he sings; "the illustrious shepherdess" contributes the marvellous element to his poem, and, according to the good man's own expression, furnishes _les machines necessaires_ for an epic. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret are too commonplace to be included among _ces machines_. Chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." Herein we discern the dawn of the modern spirit.

[Footnote 115: Jean Chapelain, _La Pucelle ou la France delivree_, Paris, 1656, in fol.]

Bossuet also is careful not to mention Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. The four or five quarto pages which he devotes to Jeanne d'Arc in his "Abrege de l'Histoire de France pour l'instruction du Dauphin"[116] are very interesting, not for his statement of facts, which is confused and inexact,[117] but for the care the author takes to represent the miraculous deeds attributed to Jeanne in an incidental and dubious manner. In Bossuet's opinion, as in Gerson's, these things are matters of edification, not of faith. Writing for the instruction of a prince, Bossuet was bound to abridge; but his abridgment goes too far when, representing Jeanne's condemnation to be the work of the Bishop of Beauvais, he omits to say that the Bishop of Beauvais pronounced this sentence with the unanimous concurrence of the University of Paris, and in conjunction with the Vice-Inquisitor.[118]

[Footnote 116: _Oeuvres de messire Jacques-Benigne Bossuet_, Paris, in 4to, vol. xi, 1749, numbered pages; vol. xii, pp. 234 _et seq._ Cf. what he says of inspired persons in _l'Instruction sur les etats d'oraison_, Paris, 1697, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 117: "This girl called Jeanne d'Arq ... had been a servant in an inn," _loc. cit._, p. 233.]

[Footnote 118: We must not be too severe on a tutor's note-books. But Bossuet, who places the rehabilitation under the date 1431, does not tell us that it was only pronounced twenty-five years later. On the contrary, as far as he is concerned, we might conclude that it occurred before the deliverance of Compiegne. The following are his words: "In execution of this sentence, she was burned alive at Rouen in 1431. The English spread the rumour that at the last she had admitted the revelations which she had so loudly boasted to be false. But some time afterwards the Pope appointed commissioners. Her trial was solemnly revised and her conduct approved of by a final sentence which the Pope himself confirmed. The Burgundians were forced to raise the siege of Compiegne," _loc. cit._ p. 236. Mezeray is more credulous than Bossuet; he mentions "the Saints Catherine and Margaret, who purified her soul with heavenly conversations, wherefore she venerated them with a particular devotion." In relating the trial, he like Bossuet, ignores the Vice-Inquisitor (_Histoire de France_, vol. ii, 1746, in folio, pp. 11 _et seq._)]

The eighteenth-century philosophers did not descend on France like a cloud of locusts; they were the result of two centuries of the critical spirit. If the story of Jeanne d'Arc contained too much monkish superstition for their taste, it was because they had learned their ecclesiastical history from the Baillets and the Tillemonts, who were pious indeed, but very critical of legends. Voltaire, writing of Jeanne, jeered at the rascally monks and their dupes. But if we quote the lines of _La Pucelle_, why not also the article[119] in the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, which contains three pages of profounder truth and nobler thought than certain voluminous modern works in which Voltaire is insulted in clerical jargon?

[Footnote 119: Voltaire ed. Beuchot, vol. xxvi. _Cf._ also _Essai sur les moeurs_, chap. lxxx. "Finally, being accused of having once resumed man's dress, which had been left near her on purpose to tempt her, her judges ... declared her a relapsed heretic and caused to be burnt at the stake one who in heroic ages, when men erected altars to their liberators, would have had an altar raised to her for having served her King. Afterwards Charles VII rehabilitated her memory, which her death itself had sufficiently honoured."]

It was precisely at the end of the eighteenth century that Jeanne began to be better known and more justly appreciated, first through a little book, which the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy derived almost wholly from the unpublished history of old Richer,[120] then by l'Averdy's erudite researches into the two trials.[121]

[Footnote 120: L'Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vierge, heroine et martyre d'Etat suscitee par la Providence pour retablir la monarchie francaise, tiree des proces et pieces originales du temps_, Paris, 1753-1754, 3 vols. in 12mo.]

[Footnote 121: F. de L'Averdy, _Memorial lu au comite des manuscrits concernant la recherche a faire des minutes originales des differentes affaires qui ont eu lieu par rapport a Jeanne d'Arc, appelee communement la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1787, in 4to; _Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du roi, lus au comite etabli par sa Majeste dans l'Academie royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, Paris, Imp. Royale, 1790, vol. iii.]

Nevertheless humanism, and after humanism the Reformation, and after the Reformation Cartesianism, and after Cartesianism experimental philosophy had banished the old credulity from thoughtful minds. When the Revolution came, the bloom had already long faded from the flower of Gothic legend. It seemed as if the glory of Jeanne d'Arc, so intimately related to the traditions of the royal house of France, could not survive the monarchy, and as if the tempest which scattered the royal ashes of Saint Denys and the treasure of Reims, would also bear away the frail relics and the venerated images of the saint of the Valois. The new _regime_ did indeed refuse to honour a memory so inseparable from royalty and from religion. The festival of Jeanne d'Arc at Orleans, shorn of ecclesiastical pomp in 1791, was discontinued in 1793. Later the Maid's history appeared somewhat too Gothic even to the _emigres_; Chateaubriand did not dare to introduce her into his "Genie du Christianisme."[122]

[Footnote 122: "Modern times present but two fine subjects for an epic poem, the Crusades and the Discovery of the New World" (ed. 1802, Paris, vol. ii, p. 7).]

But in the year XI the First Consul, who had just concluded the Concordat and was meditating the restoration of all the pageantry of the coronation, reinstituted the festival of the Maid with its incense and its crosses. Glorified of old in Charles VII's letters to his good towns, Jeanne was now exalted in _Le Moniteur_ by Bonaparte.[123]

[Footnote 123: "The illustrious Jeanne d'Arc has proved that there is no miracle which the French genius is incapable of working when national independence is at stake" (_Moniteur_ of 10 Pluviose, year XI, January 30, 1803). For the approval of the First Consul: facsimile in A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie_, p. 600. [Original taken from the Reiset collection.]]

Only by constant transformation do the figures of poetry and history live in the minds of nations. Humanity cannot be interested in a personage of old time unless it clothe it in its own sentiments and in its own passions. After having been associated with the monarchy of divine right, the memory of Jeanne d'Arc came to be connected with the national unity which that monarchy had rendered possible; in Imperial and Republican France she became the symbol of _la patrie_. Certainly the daughter of Isabelle Romee had no more idea of _la patrie_ as it is conceived to-day than she had of the idea of landed property which lies at its base. She never imagined anything like what we call the nation. That is something quite modern; but she did conceive of the heritage of kings and of the domain of the House of France. And it was there, in that domain and in that heritage, that the French gathered together before forming themselves into _la patrie_.

Under influences which it is impossible for us exactly to discover, the idea came to her of re-establishing the Dauphin in his inheritance; and this idea appeared to her so grand and so beautiful that in the fulness of her very ingenuous pride, she believed it to have been suggested to her by angels and saints from Paradise. For this idea she gave her life. That is why she has survived the cause for which she suffered. The very highest enterprises perish in their defeat and even more surely in their victory. The devotion, which inspired them, remains as an immortal example. And if the illusion, under which her senses laboured, helped her to this act of self-consecration, was not that illusion the unconscious outcome of her own heart? Her foolishness was wiser than wisdom, for it was that foolishness of martyrdom, without which men have never yet founded anything great or useful. Cities, empires, republics rest on sacrifice. It is not without reason therefore, not without justice that, transformed by enthusiastic imagination, she became the symbol of _la patrie_ in arms.

In 1817, Le Brun de Charmettes,[124] a royalist jealous of imperial glory, wrote the first patriotic history of Jeanne d'Arc. The history is an able work. It has been followed by many others, conceived in the same spirit, composed on the same plan, written in the same style. From 1841 to 1849, Jules Quicherat, by his publication of the two trials and the evidence, worthily opened an incomparable period of research and discovery. At the same time, Michelet in the fifth volume of his "Histoire de France," wrote pages of high colour and rapid movement, which will doubtless remain the highest expression of the romantic art as applied to the Maid.[125]

[Footnote 124: Le Brun de Charmettes, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc surnommee la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, 1817, 4 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 125: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, vol. v.]

But of all the histories written between 1817 and 1870, or at least of all those with which I have made acquaintance, for I have not attempted to read them all, the most discerning in my opinion is the fourth book of Vallet de Viriville's "Histoire de Charles VII" in which his chief preoccupation is to place the Maid in that group of visionaries to which she really belongs.[126]

[Footnote 126: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, Paris, 1863, in 8vo.]

Wallon's book has been widely circulated if not widely read. A monotonous, conscientious work moderately enthusiastic, it owes its success to its unimpeachable exactitude.[127] If there must be an orthodox Jeanne d'Arc to suit fashionable persons, then for such a purpose, M. Marius Sepet's representation of the Maid would be equally exact and more graceful.[128]

[Footnote 127: H. Wallon, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1860, 2 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 128: M. Sepet, _Jeanne d'Arc_, with an introduction by Leon Gautier, Tours, 1869, in 8vo.]

After the war of 1871, the twofold influence of the patriotic spirit, exalted by defeat, and the revival of Catholicism among the middle class gave a new impetus to admiration of the Maid. Arts and letters completed the transfiguration of Jeanne.

Catholics, like the learned Canon Dunand,[129] vie in zeal and enthusiasm with free-thinking idealists like M. Joseph Fabre.[130] By reproducing the two trials in a very artistic manner, in modern French and in a direct form of speech, M. Fabre has popularised the most ancient and the most touching impression of the Maid.[131]

[Footnote 129: Chanoine Dunand, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, Toulouse, 1898-1899, 3 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 130: Joseph Fabre, _Jeanne d'Arc liberatrice de la France_, new edition, Paris, 1894, in 12mo.]

[Footnote 131: _Proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc...._, translated with commentary by J. Fabre, new edition, Paris, 1895, in 18mo.]

From this period date almost innumerable works of erudition, among which must be noted those of Simeon Luce, which henceforth no one who would treat of Jeanne's early years can afford to neglect.[132]

[Footnote 132: _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, _op. cit._; _La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans_, _op. cit._]

We are equally indebted to M. Germain Lefevre-Pontalis for his fine editions and his discerning studies so eruditely graceful and exact.

Throughout this period of romantic and Neo-Catholic enthusiasm the arts of painting and sculpture produced numerous representations of Jeanne, which had hitherto been very rare. Now everywhere were to be found Jeanne in armour and on horseback, Jeanne in prayer, Jeanne in captivity, Jeanne suffering martyrdom. Of all these images expressing in different manners and with varying merit the taste and the sentiment of the period, one work only appears great and true, and of striking beauty: Rude's Jeanne d'Arc beholding a vision.[133]

[Footnote 133: Lanery d'Arc, _Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc_, Nos. 2080 to 2112.]

The word _patrie_ did not exist in the days of the Maid. People spoke of the kingdom of France.[134] No one, not even jurists, knew exactly what were its limits, which were constantly changing. The diversity of laws and customs was infinite, and quarrels between nobles were constantly arising. Nevertheless, men felt in their hearts that they loved their native land and hated the foreigner. If the Hundred Years' War did not create the sentiment of nationality in France, it fostered it. In his "Quadrilogue Invectif" Alain Chartier represents France, indicated by her robe sumptuously adorned with the emblems of the nobility, of the clergy and of the _tiers etat_, but lamentably soiled and torn, adjuring the three orders not to permit her to perish. "After the bond of the Catholic faith," she says to them, "Nature has called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native land, and for the defence of that lordship under which God has caused you to be born and to live."[135] And these are not the mere maxims of a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. On the hearts of humble Frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth. "Must the King be driven from his kingdom, and must we become English?" cried a man-at-arms of Lorraine in 1428.[136] The subjects of the Lilies, as well as those of the Leopard, felt it incumbent upon them to be loyal to their liege lord. But if any change for the worse occurred in the lordships to which they belonged, they were quite ready to make the best of it, because a lordship must increase or decrease, according to power and fortune, according to the good right or the good pleasure of the holder; it may be dismembered by marriages, or gifts, or inheritance, or alienated by various contracts. On the occasion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which seriously narrowed the dominions of King John, the folk of Paris strewed the streets with grass and flowers as a sign of rejoicing.[137] As a matter of fact, nobles changed their allegiance as often as it was necessary. Juvenal des Ursins relates in his Journal[138] how at the time of the English conquest of Normandy, a young widow was known to quit her domain with her three children in order to escape doing homage to the King from beyond the seas. But how many Norman nobles were like her in refusing to swear fealty to the former enemies of the kingdom? The example of fidelity to the king was not always set by those of his own family. The Duke of Bourbon, in the name of all the princes of the blood royal, prisoners with him in the hands of the English, proposed to Henry V that they should go and negotiate in France for the cession of Harfleur, promising that if the Royal Council met them with refusal they would acknowledge Henry V to be King of France.[139]

[Footnote 134: A. Thomas, _Le mot "Patrie" et Jeanne d'Arc_ in _Revue des Idees_, July 15, 1906.]

[Footnote 135: _Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier_, published by Andre Duchesne, Paris, 1642, in 4to, p. 410.]

[Footnote 136: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 436. See _post_, vol. i, p. 82.]

[Footnote 137: Froissart, _Chroniques_, book i, chap. 128.]

[Footnote 138: Jean Juvenal des Ursins in Buchon, _Choix des Chroniques_, iv.]

[Footnote 139: Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. ix, p. 427.]

Every one thought first of himself. Whoever possessed land owed himself to his land; his neighbour was his enemy. The burgher thought only of his town. The peasant changed his master without knowing it. The three orders were not yet united closely enough to form, in the modern sense of the word, a state.

Little by little the royal power united the French. This union became stronger in proportion as royalty grew more powerful. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that desire to think and act in common, which creates great nations, became very strong among us--at least in those families which furnished officers to the Crown--and it even spread among the lower orders of society. Rabelais introduces Francois Villon and the King of England into a tale so inflamed with military bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost identical manner by one of Napoleon's grenadiers.[140] In his preface to the poem we have just quoted, Chapelain writes of the occasions when "_la patrie_ who is our common mother, has need of all her children." Already the old poet expresses himself like the author of the _Marseillaise_.[141]

[Footnote 140: _Pantagruel_, book iv, chap. lxvii.]

[Footnote 141: _La Pucelle_, Preface.]