[Footnote 1644: Georges Chastellain, fragments published by J. Quicherat in La Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1st series, vol. iv, p. 78.]

For the moment the Duke of Bedford's most serious grievance against Charles was that he was accompanied by the Maid and Friar Richard. "You cause the ignorant folk to be seduced and deceived," he said, "for you are supported by superstitious and reprobate persons, such as this woman of ill fame and disorderly life, wearing man's attire and dissolute in manners, and likewise by that apostate and seditious mendicant friar, they both alike being, according to Holy Scripture, abominable in the sight of God."

To strike still greater shame into the heart of the enemy, the Duke of Bedford proceeds to a second attack on the maiden and the monk. And in the most eloquent passage of the letter, when he is citing Charles of Valois to appear before him, he says ironically that he expects to see him come led by this woman of ill fame and this apostate monk.[1645]

[Footnote 1645: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 341, 342.]

Thus wrote the Regent of England; albeit he had a mind, subtle, moderate, and graceful, he was moreover a good Catholic and a believer in all manner of devilry and witchcraft.

His horror at the army of Charles of Valois being commanded by a witch and a heretic monk was certainly sincere, and he deemed it wise to publish the scandal. There were doubtless only too many, who, like him, were ready to believe that the Maid of the Armagnacs was a heretic, a worshipper of idols and given to the practice of magic. In the opinion of many worthy and wise Burgundians a prince must forfeit his honour by keeping such company. And if Jeanne were in very deed a witch, what a disgrace! What an abomination! The Flowers de Luce reinstated by the devil! The Dauphin's whole camp was tainted by it. And yet when my Lord of Bedford spread abroad those ideas he was not so adroit as he thought.

Jeanne, as we know, was good-hearted and in energy untiring. By inspiring the men of her party with the idea that she brought them good luck, she gave them courage.[1646] Nevertheless King Charles's counsellors knew what she could do for them and avoided consulting her. She herself felt that she would not last long.[1647] Then who represented her as a great war leader? Who exalted her as a supernatural power? The enemy.

[Footnote 1646: Trial, vol. ii, p. 324; vol. iii, p. 130. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388.]

[Footnote 1647: Trial, vol. iii, p. 99.]

This letter shows how the English had transformed an innocent child into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of hell causing the bravest to grow pale. In a voice of lamentation the Regent cries: The devil! the witch! And then he marvels that his fighting men tremble before the Maid, and desert rather than face her.[1648]

[Footnote 1648: Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 206, 406, 444, 470, 472. Rymer, Foedera, vol. iv, p. 141. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise.]

From Montereau, the English army had fallen back on Paris. Now it once again came forth to meet the French. On Saturday, the 13th of August, King Charles held the country between Crepy and Paris. Now the Maid from the heights of Dammartin could espy the summit of Montmartre with its windmills, and the light mists from the Seine veiling that great city of Paris, promised to her by those Voices which alas! she had heeded too well.[1649] On the morrow, Sunday, the King and his army encamped in a village, by name Barron, on the River Nonnette on which, five miles lower down, stands Senlis.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: Trial, vol. i, pp. 246, 298. Letter from Alain Chartier in Trial, vol. v, pp. 131 et seq.]

[Footnote 1650: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 344, 345. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 161, 162.]

Senlis was subject to the English.[1651] It was said that the Regent was approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot and the Bastard Saint Pol. With him were the crusaders of the Cardinal of Winchester, the late King's uncle, between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with the Pope's money to go and fight against the Hussites in Bohemia. The Cardinal judged it well to use them against the King of France, a very Christian King forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: "Ores, vienne la Belle!"[1653] By these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the Maid of the Armagnacs she would find her work cut out.

[Footnote 1651: Flammermont, Histoire de Senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans (1405-1441), in Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris.]

[Footnote 1652: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 101, 102. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 328. Journal du siege, p. 118. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 188, 189; vol. iv, appendix xvii. Rymer, Foedera, July, 1429. Raynaldi, Annales ecclesiastici, pp. 77, 88. S. Bougenot, Notices et extraits de manuscrits interessant l'histoire de France conserves a la Bibliotheque imperial de Vienne, p. 62.]

[Footnote 1653: Now, come forth Beauty (W.S.). Le Livre des trahisons de France, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, in La collection des chroniques belges, 1873, p. 198.]

Captain Jean de Saintrailles, the Brother of Poton, observed the English first when, marching towards Senlis, they were crossing La Nonnette by a ford so narrow that two horses could barely pass abreast. But King Charles's army, which was coming down the Nonnette valley, did not arrive in time to surprise them.[1654] It passed the night opposite them, near Montepilloy.

[Footnote 1654: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 102. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 329. Journal du siege, pp. 119, 120.]

On the morrow, Monday, the 15th of August, at daybreak, the men-at-arms heard mass in camp and, as far as might be, cleared their consciences; for great plunderers and whoremongers as they were, they had not given up hope of winning Paradise when this life should be over. That day was a solemn feast, when the Church, on the authority of St. Gregoire de Tours, commemorates the physical and spiritual exaltation to heaven of the Virgin Mary. Churchmen taught that it behoves men to keep the feasts of Our Lord and the Holy Virgin, and that to wage battle on days consecrated to them is to sin grievously against the glorious Mother of God. No one in King Charles's camp could maintain a contrary opinion, since all were Christians as they were in the camp of the Regent. And yet, immediately after the Deo Gratias, every man took up his post ready for battle.[1655]

[Footnote 1655: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161.]

According to the established rule, the army was in several divisions: the van-guard, the archers, the main body, the rear-guard and the three wings.[1656] Further, and according to the same rule, there had been formed a skirmishing company, destined if need were to succour and reinforce the other divisions. It was commanded by Captain La Hire, my Lord the Bastard, and the Sire d'Albret, La Tremouille's half-brother. With this company was the Maid. At the Battle of Patay, despite her entreaties, she had been forced to keep with the rear-guard; now she rode with the bravest and ablest, with those skirmishers or scouts, whose duty it was, says Jean de Bueil,[1657] to repulse the scouts of the opposite party and to observe the number and the ordering of the enemy.[1658] At length justice was done her; at length she was assigned the place which her skill in horsemanship and her courage in battle merited; and yet she hesitated to follow her comrades. According to the report of a Burgundian knight chronicler, there she was, "swayed to and fro, at one moment wishing to fight, at another not."[1659]

[Footnote 1656: Le Jouvencel, passim.]

[Footnote 1657: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 329. Journal du siege, p. 121.]

[Footnote 1658: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 35.]

[Footnote 1659: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 346.]

Her perplexity is easily comprehensible. The little Saint could not bring herself to decide whether to ride forth to battle on the day of our Lady's Feast or to fold her arms while fighting was going on around her. Her Voices intensified her indecision. They never instructed her what to do save when she knew herself. In the end she went with the men-at-arms, not one of whom appears to have shared her scruples. The two armies were but the space of a culverin shot apart.[1660] She, with certain of her company, went right up to the dykes and to the carts, behind which the English were entrenched. Sundry Godons and men of Picardy came forth from their camp and fought, some on foot, others on horseback against an equal number of French. On both sides there were wounded, and prisoners were taken. This hand to hand fighting continued the whole day; at sunset the most serious skirmish happened, and so much dust was raised that it was impossible to see anything.[1661] On that day there befell what had happened on the 17th of June, between Beaugency and Meung. With the armaments and the customs of warfare of those days, it was very difficult to force an army to come out of its entrenched camp. Generally, if a battle was to be fought, it was necessary for the two sides to be in accord, and, after the pledge of battle had been sent and accepted, for each to level his own half of the field where the engagement was to take place.

[Footnote 1660: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162.]

[Footnote 1661: Jean Chartier, Chronique de la Pucelle. Journal du siege. Monstrelet, loc. cit.]

At nightfall the skirmishing ceased, and the two armies slept at a crossbow-shot from each other. Then King Charles went off to Crepy, leaving the English free to go and relieve the town of Evreux, which had agreed to surrender on the 27th of August. With this town the Regent made sure of Normandy.[1662]

[Footnote 1662: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Cochon, p. 457. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise, Paris, 1894, in 8vo, pp. 10, 11. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 215, note 3. Ch. de Beaurepaire, De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination anglaise aux annees 1424, 1425, 1429, p. 62 (Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. xxiv).]

Their loss of the opportunity of conquering Normandy was the price the French had to pay for the royal coronation procession, for that march to Reims, which was at once military, civil and religious. If, after the victory of Patay, they had hastened at once to Rouen, Normandy would have been reconquered and the English cast into the sea; if, from Patay they had pushed on to Paris they would have entered the city without resistance. Yet we must not too hastily condemn that ceremonious promenading of the Lilies through Champagne. By the march to Reims the French party, those Armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little King of Bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of Maine and the duchy of Normandy and than a victorious assault on the first city of the realm. By retaking his towns of Champagne and of France without bloodshed, King Charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities. In short, by concluding that campaign of honest and successful negotiations and by the august ceremonial of the coronation, he came forth at once as the lawful and very holy King of France.

An illustrious lady, a descendant of Bolognese nobles and the widow of a knight of Picardy, well versed in the liberal arts, was the author of a number of lays, virelays,[1663] and ballads. Christine de Pisan, noble and high-minded, wrote with distinction in prose and verse. Loyal to France and a champion of her sex, there was nothing she more fervently desired than to see the French prosperous and their ladies honoured. In her old age she was cloistered in the Abbey of Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. There, on the 31st of July, 1429, she completed a poem of sixty-one stanzas, each containing eight lines of eight syllables, in praise of the Maid. In halting measures and affected language, these verses expressed the thoughts of the finest, the most cultured and the most pious souls touching the angel of war sent of God to the Dauphin Charles.[1664]

[Footnote 1663: A virelay was a later variation of the lay, differing from it chiefly in the arrangement of the rhymes (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1664: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 426 et seq.]

In this work she begins by saying that for eleven years she has spent her cloistered life in weeping. And in very truth, this noble-hearted woman wept over the misfortunes of the realm, into which she had been born, wherein she had grown up, where kings and princes had received her and learned poets had done her honour, and the language of which she spoke with the precision of a purist. After eleven years of mourning, the victories of the Dauphin were her first joy.

"At length," she says, "the sun begins to shine once more and the fine days to bloom again. That royal child so long despised and offended, behold him coming, wearing on his head a crown and accoutred with spurs of gold. Let us cry: 'Noel! Charles, the seventh of that great name, King of the French, thou hast recovered thy kingdom, with the help of a Maid.'"

Christine recalls a prophecy concerning a King, Charles, son of Charles, surnamed The Flying Hart,[1665] who was to be emperor. Of this prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of King Charles VII was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an Italian merchant, written in 1429, contains an obscure announcement of the coronation of the Dauphin at Rome.[1666]

[Footnote 1665: A winged stag (le cerf-volant) is the symbol of a king. Froissart thus explains its origin. Before setting out for Flanders, in 1382, Charles VI dreamed that his falcon had flown away. "Thē [Transcriber's Note: e with macron] apered sodenly before hym a great hart with wynges whereof he had great joye." And the hart bore him to his lost bird. Froissart, Bk. II, ch. clxiv. [The Chronycle of Syr John Froissart translated by Lord Berners, vol. iii, p. 339, Tudor Translation, 1901.] (W.S.) According to Juvenal des Ursins, Charles VI, in 1380, met in the Forest of Senlis a stag with a golden collar bearing this inscription: Hoc me Caesar donavit (Paillot, Parfaite science des armoiries, Paris, 1660, in fo., p. 595). In the works of Eustache Deschamps this same allegory is frequently employed to designate the king. (Eustache Deschamps, OEuvres, ed. G. Raynaud, vol. ii, p. 57.)]

[Footnote 1666: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 66, 67.]

"I pray God," continued Christine, "that thou mayest be that one, that God will grant thee life to see thy children grow up, that through thee and through them, France may have joy, that serving God, thou wage not war to the utterance. My hope is that thou shalt be good, upright, a friend of justice, greater than any other, that pride sully not thy prowess, that thou be gentle, favourable to thy people and fearing God who hath chosen thee to serve him.

"And thou, Maid most happy, most honoured of God, thou hast loosened the cord with which France was bound. Canst thou be praised enough, thou who hast brought peace to this land laid low by war?

"Jeanne, born in a propitious hour, blessed be thy creator! Maid, sent of God, in whom the Holy Ghost shed abroad a ray of his grace, who hast from him received and dost keep gifts in abundance; never did he refuse thy request. Who can ever be thankful enough unto thee?"

The Maid, saviour of the realm, Dame Christine compares to Moses who delivered Israel out of the Land of Egypt.

"That a Maid should proffer her breast, whence France may suck the sweet milk of peace, behold a matter which is above nature!

"Joshua was a mighty conqueror. What is there strange in that, since he was a strong man? But now behold, a woman, a shepherdess doth appear, of greater worship than any man. But with God all things are easy.

"By Esther, Judith and Deborah, women of high esteem, he delivered his oppressed people. And well I know there have been women of great worship. But Jeanne is above all. Through her God hath worked many miracles.

"By a miracle was she sent; the angel of the Lord led her to the King."

"Before she could be believed, to clerks and to scholars was she taken and thoroughly examined. She said she was come from God, and history proved her saying to be true, for Merlin, the Sibyl and Bede had seen her in the spirit. In their books they point to her as the saviour of France, and in their prophecies they let wit of her, saying: 'In the French wars she shall bear the banner.' And indeed they relate all the manner of her history."

We are not astonished that Dame Christine should have been acquainted with the Sibylline poems; for it is known that she was well versed in the writings of the ancients. But we perceive that the obviously mutilated prophecy of Merlin the Magician and the apocryphal chronogram of the Venerable Bede had come under her notice. The predictions and verses of the Armagnac ecclesiastics were spread abroad everywhere with amazing rapidity.[1667]

[Footnote 1667: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 133, 338, 340 et seq.; vol. iv, pp. 305, 480; vol. v, p. 12.]

Dame Christine's views concerning the Maid accord with those of the doctors of the French party; and the poem she wrote in her convent in many passages bears resemblance to the treatise of the Archbishop of Embrun.

There it is said:

"The goodness of her life proves that Jeanne possesses the grace of God.

"It was made manifest, when at the siege of Orleans her might revealed itself. Never was miracle plainer. God did so succour his own people, that the strength of the enemy was but as that of a dead dog. They were taken or slain.

"Honour to the feminine sex, God loves it. A damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? The enemy flees before her. Many eyes behold it.

"She goeth forth capturing towns and castles. She is the first captain of our host. Such power had not Hector or Achilles. But God, who leads her, does all.

"And you, ye men-at-arms, who suffer durance vile and risk your lives for the right, be ye faithful: in heaven shall ye have reward and glory, for whosoever fighteth for the just cause, winneth Paradise.

"Know ye that by her the English shall be cast down, for it is the will of God, who inclineth his ear to the voice of the good folk, whom they desired to overthrow. The blood of the slain crieth against them."

In the shadow of her convent Dame Christine shares the hope common to every noble soul; from the Maid she expects all the good things she longs for. She believes that Jeanne will restore concord to the Christian Church. The gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that Christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. Wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the Maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words the Turk and the Hussite.

"In her conquest of the Holy Land, she will tear up the Saracens like weeds. Thither will she lead King Charles, whom God defend! Before he dies he shall make that journey. He it is who shall conquer the land. There shall she end her life. There shall the thing come to pass."

The good Christine would appear to have brought her poem to this conclusion when she received tidings of the King's coronation. She then added thirteen stanzas to celebrate the mystery of Reims and to foretell the taking of Paris.[1668]

[Footnote 1668: Trial, vol. v, pp. 3 et seq. R. Thomassy, Essai sur les ecrits politiques de Christine de Pisan, suivi d'une notice litteraire et de pieces inedites, Paris, 1838, in 8vo.]

Thus in the gloom and silence of one of those convents where even the hushed noises of the world penetrated but seldom, this virtuous lady collected and expressed in rhyme all those dreams of church and state which centred round a child.

In a fairly good ballad written at the time of the coronation, in love and honour "of the beautiful garden of the noble flowers de luce,"[1669] and for the elevation of the white cross, King Charles VII is described by that mysterious name "the noble stag," which we have first discovered in Christine's poem. The unknown author of the ballad says that the Sibyl, daughter of King Priam, prophesied the misfortunes of this royal stag; but such a prediction need not surprise us, when we remember that Charles of Valois was of Priam's royal line, wherefore Cassandra, when she revealed the destiny of the Flying Hart, did but prolong down the centuries the vicissitudes of her own family.[1670]

[Footnote 1669: Du beau jardin des nobles fleurs de lis.]

[Footnote 1670: M. Pierre Champion has kindly communicated to me the text of this unpublished ballad, which he discovered in a French MS. at Stockholm, LIII, fol. 238. This is the title which the copyist affixed to it about 1472: Ballade faicte quant le Roy Charles VII'eme fut couronne a Rains du temps de Jehanne daiz dicte la Pucelle.]

Rhymers on the French side celebrated the unexpected victories of Charles and the Maid as best they knew how, in a commonplace fashion, by some stiff poem but scantily clothing a thin and meagre muse.

Nevertheless there is a ballad,[1671] by a Dauphinois poet, beginning with this line; "Back, English coues, back!"[1672] which is powerful through the genuine religious spirit which prevails throughout. The author, some poor ecclesiastic, points piously to the English banner cast down, "by the will of King Jesus and of Jeanne the sweet Maid."[1673]

[Footnote 1671: P. Meyer, Ballade contre les Anglais (1429), in Romania, xxi (1892), pp. 50, 52.]

[Footnote 1672: Arriere, Englois coues, arriere! For Coues see vol. i, p. 22, note 2.]

[Footnote 1673:

Par le vouloir dou roy Jesus Et Jeanne la douce Pucelle.]

The Maid had derived her influence over the common folk from the prophecies of Merlin the Magician and the Venerable Bede.[1674] As Jeanne's deeds became known, predictions foretelling them came to be discovered. For example it was found that Engelide, daughter of an old King of Hungary,[1675] had known long before of the coronation at Reims. Indeed to this royal virgin was attributed a prophecy recorded in Latin, of which the following is a literal translation:

[Footnote 1674: For the legend cf. Merlin, roman en prose du XIII'e siecle, ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich, 1886, 2 vols. in 8vo, introduction. Premier volume de Merlin, Paris, Verard, 1498, in fol. Hersart de la Villemarque, Myrdhin ou l'enchanteur Merlin, son histoire, ses oeuvres, son influence, Paris, 1862, in 12mo. La Borderie, Les veritables propheties de Merlin; examen des poemes bretons attribues a ce barde, in Revue de Bretagne, vol. liii (1883). D'Arbois de Jubainville, Merlin est il un personnage reel ou les origines de la legende de Merlin, in Revue des questions historiques, vol. v (1868), pp. 559, 568.]

[Footnote 1675: Trial, vol. iii, p. 340. Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations, p. 402.]

"O Lily illustrious, watered by princes, by the sower planted in the open, in an orchard delectable, by flowers and sweet-smelling roses surrounded. But, alas! dismay of the Lily, terror of the orchard! Sundry beasts, some coming from without, others nourished within the orchard, hurtling horns against horns, have well nigh crushed the Lily, which fades for lack of water. Long do they trample upon it, destroying nearly all its roots and assaying to wither it with their poisoned breath.

"But the beasts shall be driven forth in shame from the orchard, by a virgin coming from the land whence flows the cruel venom. Behind her right ear the Virgin bears a little scarlet sign; she speaks softly, and her neck is short. To the Lily shall she give fountains of living water, and shall drive out the serpent, to all men revealing its venom. With a laurel wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she at Reims engarland happily the gardener of the Lily, named Charles, son of Charles. All around the turbulent neighbours shall submit, the waters shall surge, the folk shall cry: 'Long live the Lily! Away with the beast! Let the orchard flower!' He shall approach the fields of the Island, adding fleet to fleet, and there a multitude of beasts shall perish in the rout. Peace for many shall be established. The keys of a great number shall recognise the hand that had forged them. The citizens of a noble city shall be punished for perjury by defeat, groaning with many groans, and at the entrance [of Charles?] high walls shall fall low. Then the orchard of the Lily shall be ... (?) and long shall it flower."[1676]

[Footnote 1676: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 344, 345.]

This prophecy attributed to the unknown daughter of a distant king would seem to us to proceed from a French ecclesiastic and an Armagnac. French royalty is portrayed in the figure of the delectable orchard, around which contend beasts nourished in the orchard as well as foreign beasts, that is Burgundians and English. King Charles of Valois is mentioned by his own name and that of his father, and the name of the coronation town occurs in full.

The reduction of certain towns by their liege lord is stated most clearly. Doubtless the prediction was made at the very time of the coronation. It explicitly mentions deeds already accomplished and dimly hints at events looked for, fulfilment of which was delayed, or happened in a manner other than what was expected, or never happened at all, such as the taking of Paris after a terrible assault, the invasion of England by the French, the conclusion of peace.

It is highly probable that when announcing that the deliverer of the orchard might be recognised by her short neck, her sweet voice and a little scarlet mark, the pseudo Engelide was carefully depicting characteristics noticeable in Jeanne herself. Moreover we know that Isabelle Romee's daughter had a sweet woman's voice.[1677] That her neck was broad and firmly set on her shoulders accords with what is known concerning her robust appearance.[1678] And doubtless the so-called daughter of the King of Hungary did not imagine the birth-mark behind her right ear.[1679]

[Footnote 1677: Philippe de Bergame, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 523; vol. v, pp. 108, 120.]

[Footnote 1678: Trial, vol. iii, p. 100. Philippe de Bergame, De claris mulieribus, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 323. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 271. Perceval de Boulainvilliers, Lettre au duc de Milan, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 119, 120.]

[Footnote 1679: J. Brehal, in Trial, vol. iii, p. 345.]



CHAPTER II

THE MAID'S FIRST VISIT TO COMPIEGNE—THE THREE POPES—SAINT DENYS—TRUCES

After the English army had departed for Normandy, King Charles sent from Crepy to Senlis the Count of Vendome, the Marechal de Rais and the Marechal de Boussac with their men-at-arms. The inhabitants gave them to wit that they inclined to favour the Flowers de Luce.[1680] Henceforth the submission of Compiegne was sure. The King summoned the citizens to receive him; on Wednesday the 18th, the keys of the town were brought to him; on the next day he entered.[1681] The Attorneys[1682] (for by that name the aldermen of the town were called) presented to him Messire Guillaume de Flavy, whom they had elected governor of their town, as being their most experienced and most faithful citizen. On his being presented they asked the King, according to their privilege, to confirm and ratify his appointment. But the sire de la Tremouille took for himself the governorship of Compiegne and appointed as his lieutenant Messire Guillaume de Flavy, whom, notwithstanding, the inhabitants regarded as their captain.[1683]

[Footnote 1680: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 328. Journal du siege, p. 18. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 163, 164. Morosini, pp. 212, 213. Flammermont, Senlis pendant la seconde periode de la guerre cent ans, in Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris, vol. v, 1878, p. 241.]

[Footnote 1681: Perceval de Cagny, p. 164. Monstrelet, p. 352. De l'Epinois, Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiegne, pp. 483, 484. A. Sorel, Sejours de Jeanne d'Arc a Compiegne, maisons ou elle a loge en 1429 et 1430, Paris, 1889, in 8vo, 20 pages.]

[Footnote 1682: French attournes, cf. La Curne, attournes, Godefroi, atornes, magistrates at Compiegne, elected on St. John the Baptist's Day for three years (W.S.). Proces, vol. v, p. 174.]

[Footnote 1683: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 331. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. A. Sorel, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc devant Compiegne, Paris, 1889, in 8vo, pp. 117, 118. Duc de la Tremoille, Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles, Nantes, 1890, in 4to, vol. i, pp. 185, 212. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, capitaine de Compiegne, Paris, 1906, in 8vo, proofs and illustrations, vol. xiii, p. 137.]

One by one, the King was recovering his good towns. He charged the folk of Beauvais to acknowledge him as their lord. When they saw the flowers-de-luce borne by the heralds, the citizens cried: "Long live Charles of France!" The clergy chanted a Te Deum and there was great rejoicing. Those who refused fealty to King Charles were put out of the town with permission to take away their possessions.[1684] The Bishop and Vidame of Beauvais, Messire Pierre Cauchon, who was Grand Almoner of France to King Henry, and a negotiator of important ecclesiastical business, grieved to see his city returning to the French;[1685] it was to the city's hurt, but he could not help it. He failed not to realise that part of this disgrace he owed to the Maid of the Armagnacs, who was influential with her party and had the reputation of being all powerful. As he was a good theologian he must have suspected that the devil was leading her and he wished her all possible harm.

[Footnote 1684: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 327. Journal du siege, p. 118. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 353, 354. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 214, 215.]

[Footnote 1685: A. Sarrazin, Pierre Cauchon, juge de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, pp. 49 et seq.]

At this time Artois, Picardy, all the Burgundian territory in the north, was slipping away from Burgundy. Had King Charles gone there the majority of the dwellers in the strong towers and castles of Picardy would have received him as their sovereign.[1686] But meanwhile his enemies would have recaptured what he had just won in Valois and the Ile de France.

[Footnote 1686: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354.]

Having entered Compiegne with the King, Jeanne lodged at the Hotel du Boeuf, the house of the King's proctor. She slept with the proctor's wife, Marie Le Boucher, who was a kinswoman of Jacques Boucher, Treasurer of Orleans.[1687]

[Footnote 1687: A. Sorel, Sejours de Jeanne d'Arc a Compiegne, p. 6.]

She longed to march on Paris, which she was sure of taking since her Voices had promised it to her. It is related that at the end of two or three days she grew impatient, and, calling the Duke of Alencon, said to him: "My fair Duke, command your men and likewise those of the other captains to equip themselves," then she is said to have cried: "By my staff! I must to Paris."[1688] But this could not have happened: the Maid never gave orders to the men-at-arms. The truth of the matter is that the Duke of Alencon, with a goodly company of fighting men, took his leave of the King and that Jeanne was to accompany him. She was ready to mount her horse when on Monday the 22nd of August, a messenger from the Count of Armagnac brought her a letter which she caused to be read to her.[1689] The following are the contents of the missive:

[Footnote 1688: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 164, 165. Chronique de Tournai, vol. iii, in the Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, ed. Smedt, p. 414.]

[Footnote 1689: Trial, vol. i, pp. 82, 83.]

"My very dear Lady, I commend myself humbly to you, and I entreat you, for God's sake, that seeing the divisions which are at present in the holy Church Universal, concerning the question of the popes (for there are three contending for the papacy: one dwells at Rome and calls himself Martin V, whom all Christian kings obey: the other dwells at Peniscola, in the kingdom of Valentia, and calls himself Clement VIII; the third dwells no man knows where, unless it be the Cardinal de Saint-Estienne and a few folk with him, and calls himself Pope Benedict XIV; the first, who is called Pope Martin, was elected at Constance by consent of all Christian nations; he who is called Clement was elected at Peniscola, after the death of Pope Benedict XIII, by three of his cardinals; the third who is called Pope Benedict XIV was elected secretly at Peniscola, by that same Cardinal Saint-Estienne himself): I pray you beseech Our Lord Jesus Christ that in his infinite mercy, he declare unto us through you, which of the three aforesaid is the true pope and whom it shall be his pleasure that henceforth we obey, him who is called Martin, or him who is called Clement or him who is called Benedict; and in whom we should believe, either in secret or under reservation or by public pronouncement: for we shall all be ready to work the will and the pleasure of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yours in all things,

COUNT D'ARMAGNAC."[1690]

[Footnote 1690: Ibid., pp. 245, 246.]

He who wrote thus, calling Jeanne his very dear lady, recommending himself humbly to her, not in self-abasement, but merely, as we should say to-day, out of courtesy, was one of the greater vassals of the crown.

She had never seen this baron, and doubtless she had never heard of him. Jean IV, son of that Constable of France who had been killed in 1418, was the cruellest man in the kingdom. At that time he was between thirty-three and thirty-four years of age. He held both Armagnacs, the Black and the White, the country of the Four Valleys, the counties of Pardiac, of Fesenzac, Astarac, La Lomagne, and l'Ile-Jourdain. After the Count of Foix he was the most powerful noble of Gascony.[1691]

[Footnote 1691: A. Longnon, Les limites de la France et l'etendue de la domination anglaise a l'epoque de la mission de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1875, in 8vo. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale, iii, col. 255, 257.]

While his name was among those of the adherents of the King and while it was used to designate those who were hostile to the English and Burgundians, Jean IV himself was neither French nor English, but simply Gascon. He called himself count by the grace of God, but he was ever ready to acknowledge himself the King's vassal when it was a question of receiving gifts from that suzerain, who might not always be able to afford himself new gaiters, but who must perforce spend large sums on his great vassals. Meanwhile Jean IV showed consideration to the English, protected an adventurer in the Regent's pay, and gave appointments in his household to men wearing the red cross. He was as violent and treacherous as any of his retainers. Having unlawfully seized the Marshal de Severac, he exacted from him the cession of all his goods and then had him strangled.[1692]

[Footnote 1692: Chronique de Mathieu d'Escouchy, vol. i, p. 68, and proofs and illustrations, pp. 126, 128, 139, 140. Dom Vaissette, Histoire generale du Languedoc, vol. iv, pp. 469, 470. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 151. Vallet de Viriville, in Nouvelle biographie generale, 1861, vol. iii, pp. 255-257. Le P. Ayroles, La vierge guerriere, p. 66.]

This murder was quite recent. And now we have the docile son of Holy Church appearing eager to discover who is his true spiritual father. It would seem, however, that his mind was already made up on the subject and that he already knew the answer to his question. In verity the long schism, which had rent Christendom asunder, had terminated twelve years earlier. It had ended when the Conclave, which had assembled at Constance in the House of the Merchants on the 8th of November, 1417, on the 11th of that month, Saint Martin's Day, proclaimed Pope, the Cardinal Deacon Otto Colonna, who assumed the title of Martin V. In the Eternal City Martin V wore that tiara which Lorenzo Ghiberti had adorned with eight figures in gold;[1693] and the wily Roman had contrived to obtain his recognition by England and even by France, who thenceforward renounced all hope of a French pontiff. While Charles VII's advisers may not have agreed with Martin V on the question of a General Council, all the rights of the Pope of Rome in the Kingdom of France had been restored to him by an edict, in 1425. Martin V was the one and only pope. Nevertheless, Alphonso of Aragon, highly incensed because Martin V supported against him the rights of Louis d'Anjou to the Kingdom of Naples, determined to oppose to the Pope of Rome a pontiff of his own making. And just ready to hand he had a canon who called himself pope, and on the following grounds: the Anti-pope, Benedict XIII, having fled to Peniscola, had on his death-bed nominated four cardinals, three of whom appointed to succeed him a canon of Barcelona, one Gil Munoz, who assumed the title of Clement VIII. Imprisoned in the chateau of Peniscola on a barren neck of land on three sides washed by the sea, this was the Clement whom the King of Aragon had chosen to be the rival of Martin V.[1694]

[Footnote 1693: Annales juris pontificis (1872-1875), vii, 385. E. Muntz, La tiare pontificale du VIII'e au XVI'e siecle in Mem. Acad. Inscript. et Belles Lettres, vol. xxvi, I, pp. 235-324, fig. Les arts a la cour des papes pendant les XV'e et XVI'e siecles, in Bibl. des Ecoles francaises d'Athenes et Rome, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 1694: Baluze, Vitae paparum Avenionensium, 1693, I, pp. 1182 et seq. Fabricius, Bibliotheca medii aevi, 1734, I, p. 1109.]

The Pope excommunicated the King of Aragon and then opened negotiations with him. The Count of Armagnac joined the King's party. For the baptism of his children the Count had holy water blessed by Benedict XIII brought from Peniscola. He likewise was excommunicated. The blow had fallen upon him in this very year, 1429. Thus for some months he had been deprived of the sacraments and excluded from public worship. Hence arose all manner of secular difficulties, in addition to which he was probably afraid of the devil.

Moreover his position was becoming impossible. His powerful ally, King Alfonso, gave in, and himself called upon Clement VIII to resign. When he addressed his inquiry to the Maid of France, the Armagnac was evidently meditating the withdrawal of his allegiance from an unfortunate anti-pope, who was himself renouncing or about to renounce the tiara; for Clement VIII abdicated at Peniscola on the 26th of July. The dictation of the Count's letter cannot have occurred long before that date and may have been after. At any rate whenever he dictated it he must have been aware of the position of the Sovereign Pontiff Clement VIII.

As for the third Pope mentioned in his missive, Benedict XIV, he had no tidings of him, and indeed he was keeping very quiet. His election to the Holy See had been singular in that it had been made by one cardinal alone. Benedict XIV's right to the papacy had been communicated to him by a cardinal created by the Anti-pope, Benedict XIII, at the time of his promotion in 1409. That Cardinal was Jean Barrere, a Frenchman, Bachelor of laws, priest and Cardinal of Saint-Etienne in Coelio monte. It was not to Benedict XIV that the Armagnac was thinking of giving his allegiance; obviously he was eager to submit to Martin V.

It is not easy therefore to discover why he should have asked Jeanne to indicate the true pope. Doubtless it was customary in those days to consult on all manner of questions those holy maids to whom God vouchsafed illumination. Such an one the Maid appeared, and her fame as a prophetess had been spread abroad in a very short time. She revealed hidden things, she drew the curtain from the future. We are reminded of that capitoul[1695] of Toulouse, who about three weeks after the deliverance of Orleans, advised her being consulted as to a remedy for the corruption of the coinage. Bona of Milan, married to a poor gentleman in the train of her cousin, Queen Ysabeau, besought the Maid's help in her endeavour to regain the duchy which she claimed through her descent from the Visconti.[1696] It was just as appropriate to question the Maid concerning the Pope and the Anti-pope. But the most difficult point in this question is to discover what were the Count of Armagnac's reasons for consulting the Holy Maid on a matter concerning which he appears to have been sufficiently informed. The following seems the most probable.

[Footnote 1695: Cf. vol. i, p. 337 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1696: According to Le Maire, Histoire et antiquites de la ville et duche d'Orleans, p. 197, this request is addressed to "Jeanne the Maid, greatly to be honoured and most devout, sent by the King of Heaven for the restoration, and for the extirpation of the English who tyrannize over France." Trial, vol. v, p. 253. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 131.]

Jean IV was prepared to recognise Martin V as Pope; but he desired his submission to appear honourable and reasonable. Wherefore he conceived the idea of ascribing his conduct to the command of Jesus Christ, speaking through the Holy Maid. But it was necessary for the command to be in accordance with his wishes. The letter provides for that. He is careful to indicate to Jeanne, and consequently to God, what reply would be suitable. He lays stress on the fact that Martin V, who had recently excommunicated him, was elected at Constance by the consent of all Christian nations, that he dwells at Rome and that he is obeyed by all Christian kings. He points out on the other hand the circumstances which invalidate the election of Clement VIII by only three cardinals, and the still more ridiculous election of that Benedict, who was chosen by a conclave consisting of only one cardinal.[1697]

[Footnote 1697: Noel Valois, La France et le grand schisme d'Occident, vol. iv (1902), in 8vo, passim.]

After such a setting forth could there possibly remain a single doubt as to whether Pope Martin was the true pope? But such guile was lost on Jeanne; it escaped her entirely. The Count of Armagnac's letter, which she had read to her as she was mounting her horse, must have struck her as very obscure.[1698] The names of Benedict, of Clement and of Martin she had never heard. The Saints, Catherine and Margaret, with whom she was constantly holding converse, revealed to her nothing concerning the Pope. They spoke to her of nought save of the realm of France; and Jeanne's prudence generally led her to confine her prophecies to the subject of the war. This circumstance was pointed out by a German clerk as a matter extraordinary and worthy of note.[1699] But for this once she consented to reply to Jean IV, in order to maintain her reputation as a prophet and because the title of Armagnac strongly appealed to her. She told him that at that moment she was unable to instruct him concerning the true pope, but that later she would inform him in which of the three he must believe, according as God should reveal it unto her. In short, she in a measure followed the example of such soothsayers as postpone the announcement of the oracle to a future day.

[Footnote 1698: Trial, vol. i, p. 82.]

[Footnote 1699: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 466, 467.]

Jhesus [cross symbol] Maria

Count of Armagnac, my good friend and beloved, Jehanne the Maid lets you to wit that your message hath come before me, the which hath told me that you have sent from where you are to know from me in which of the three popes, whom you mention in your memorial, you ought to believe. This thing in sooth I cannot tell you truly for the present, until I be in Paris or at rest elsewhere, because for the present I am too much hindered by affairs of war; but when you hear that I am in Paris send a message to me, and I will give you to understand what you shall rightfully believe, and what I shall know by the counsel of my Righteous and Sovereign Lord, the King of all the world, and what you should do, as far as I may. To God I commend you; God keep you. Written at Compiengne, the 22nd day of August.[1700]

[Footnote 1700: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 245, 246.]

Jeanne before she made this reply can have consulted neither the good Brother Pasquerel nor the good Friar Richard nor indeed any of the churchmen of her company. They would have told her that the true pope was the Pope of Rome, Martin V. They might also have represented to her that she was belittling the authority of the Church by appealing to a revelation from God concerning popes and anti-popes. Sometimes, they would have told her, God confides the secrets of his Church to holy persons. But it would be rash to count upon so rare a privilege.

Jeanne exchanged a few words with the messenger who had brought her the missive; but the interview was brief. The messenger was not safe in the town, not that the soldiers would have made him pay for his master's crimes and treasons; but the Sire de la Tremouille was at Compiegne; and he knew that Count Jean, who for the nonce was in alliance with the Constable De Richemont, was meditating something against him. La Tremouille was not so malevolent as the Count of Armagnac: and yet the poor messenger only narrowly escaped being thrown into the Oise.[1701]

[Footnote 1701: Trial, vol. i, p. 83.]

On the morrow, Tuesday the 23rd of August, the Maid and the Duke of Alencon took leave of the King and set out from Compiegne with a goodly company of fighting men. Before marching on Saint-Denys in France, they went to Senlis to collect a company of men-at-arms whom the King had sent there.[1702] As was her custom, the Maid rode surrounded by monks. Friar Richard, who predicted the approaching end of the world, had joined the procession. It would seem that he had superseded the others, even Brother Pasquerel, the chaplain. It was to him that the Maid confessed beneath the walls of Senlis. In that same spot, with the Dukes of Clermont and Alencon,[1703] she took the communion on two consecutive days. She must have been in the hands of monks who were in the habit of making a very frequent use of the Eucharist.

[Footnote 1702: Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 331. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 212, 213. The accounts of Hemon Raguier, in the Trial, vol. iv, p. 24.]

[Footnote 1703: Trial, vol. ii, p. 450.]

The Lord Bishop of Senlis was Jean Fouquerel. Hitherto, he had been on the side of the English and entirely devoted to the Lord Bishop of Beauvais. On the approach of the royal army, Jean Fouquerel, who was a cautious person, had gone off to Paris to hide a large sum of money. He was careful of his possessions. Some one in the army took his nag and gave it to the Maid. By means of a draft on the receiver of taxes and the gabelle officer of the town, two hundred golden saluts[1704] were paid for it. The Lord Bishop did not approve of this transaction and demanded his hackney. Hearing of his displeasure, the Maid caused a letter to be written to him, saying that he might have back his nag if he liked; she did not want it for she found it not sufficiently hardy for men-at-arms. The horse was sent to the Sire de La Tremouille with a request that he would deliver it to the Lord Bishop, who never received it.[1705]

[Footnote 1704: So called because stamped with the picture of the Annunciation and bearing the inscription: Salus populi suprema lex est; the coin was worth about L1 of our money (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1705: Trial, vol. i, p. 104. Extracts from the 13th account of Hemon Raguier, in Trial, vol. v, p. 267. E. Dupuis, Jean Fouquerel, eveque de Senlis, in Memoires du comite archeologique de Senlis, 1875, vol. i, p. 93. Vatin, Combat sous Senlis entre Charles VII et les Anglais, in Comite archeologique de Senlis, Comptes rendus et memoires, 1866, pp. 41, 54.]

As for the bill on the tax receiver and gabelle officer, it may have been worthless; and probably the Reverend Father in God, Jean Fouquerel, never had either horse or money. Jeanne was not at fault, and yet the Lord Bishop of Beauvais and the clerks of the university were shortly to bring home to her the gravity of the sacrilege of laying hands on an ecclesiastical hackney.[1706]

[Footnote 1706: Trial, vol. i, p. 264.]

To the north of Paris, about five miles distant from the great city, there rose the towers of Saint-Denys. On the 26th of August, the army of the Duke of Alencon arrived there, and entered without resistance, albeit the town was strongly fortified.[1707] The place was famous for its illustrious abbey very rich and very ancient. The following is the story of its foundation.

[Footnote 1707: Perceval de Cagny, p. 165. The 25th according to Le journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

Dagobert, King of the French, had from childhood been a devout worshipper of Saint Denys. And whenever he trembled before the ire of King Clotaire his father, he would take refuge in the church of the holy martyr. When he died, a pious man dreamed that he saw Dagobert summoned before the tribunal of God; a great number of saints accused him of having despoiled their churches; and the demons were about to drag him into hell when Saint Denys appeared; and by his intercession, the soul of the King was delivered and escaped punishment. The story was held to be true, and it was thought that the King's soul returned to animate his body and that he did penance.[1708]

[Footnote 1708: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys en France, contenant les antiquites d'icelle, les fondations, prerogatives et privileges, Paris, 1625, 2 vol. in 4to, vol. i, ch. xx and xxiv. Des Rues, Les antiquites, fondations et singularites des plus celebres villes, pp. 84, 85.]

When the Maid with the army occupied Saint-Denys, the three porches, the embattled parapets, the tower of the Abbey Church, erected by the Abbot Suger, were already three centuries old. There were buried the kings of France; and thither they came to take the oriflamme. Fourteen years earlier the late King Charles had fetched it forth, but since then none had borne it.[1709]

[Footnote 1709: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, vol. i, ch. xxxi, xxxiv.]

Many were the wonders told touching this royal standard. And with some of those marvels the Maid must needs have been acquainted, since on her coming into France, she was said to have given the Dauphin Charles the surname of oriflamme,[1710] as a pledge and promise of victory.[1711] At Saint-Denys was preserved the heart of the Constable Du Guesclin.[1712] Jeanne had heard of his high renown; she had proffered wine to Madame de Laval's eldest son; and to his grandmother, who had been Sire Bertrand's second wife, she had sent a little ring of gold, out of respect for the widow of so valiant a man,[1713] asking her to forgive the poverty of the gift.

[Footnote 1710: Cf. vol. i, p. 182 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1711: Thomassin, Registre Delphinal, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 304. See Du Cange, Glossaire under the word Auriflamme.]

[Footnote 1712: J. Doublet, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys, vol. i, ch. xxii. D. Michel Felibien, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France, Paris, in folio, 1706, pp. 229, 320. Vallet de Viriville, Notice du manuscrit de P. Cochon, at the end of La chronique de la Pucelle, p. 360. Chronique de Du Guesclin, ed. Francisque-Michel, pp. 452 et seq.]

[Footnote 1713: Trial, vol. v, pp. 107, 109.]

The monks of Saint-Denys preserved precious relics, notably a piece of the wood of the true cross, the linen in which the Child Jesus had been wrapped, a fragment of the pitcher wherein the water had been changed to wine at the Cana marriage feast, a bar of Saint Lawrence's gridiron, the chin of Saint Mary Magdalen, a cup of tamarisk wood used by Saint Louis as a charm against the spleen. There likewise was to be seen the head of Saint Denys. True, at the same time one was being shown in the Cathedral church of Paris. The Chancellor, Jean Gerson, treating of Jeanne the Maid, a few days before his death, wrote that of her it might be said as of the head of Saint Denys, that belief in her was a matter of edification and not of faith, albeit in both places alike the head ought to be worshipped in order that edification should not be turned into scandal.[1714]

[Footnote 1714: D. M. Felibien, op. cit., ch. ii, pp. 528 et seq. Illustrations. J. Doublet, op. cit., vol. i, ch. xliii, xlvi. Trial, vol. iii, p. 301. Gallia Christiana, vol. vii, col. 142.]

In this abbey everything proclaimed the dignity, the prerogatives and the high worship of the house of France. Jeanne must joyously have wondered at the insignia, the symbols and signs of the royalty of the Lilies gathered together in this spot,[1715] if indeed those eyes, occupied with celestial visions, had leisure to perceive the things of earth, and if her Voices, endlessly whispering in her ear, left her one moment's respite.

[Footnote 1715: Religieux de Saint-Denis, pp. 154, 156, 226.]

Saint Denys was a great saint, since there was no doubt of his being in very deed the Areopagite himself.[1716] But since he had permitted his abbey to be taken he was no longer invoked as the patron saint of the Kings of France. The Dauphin's followers had replaced him by the Blessed Archangel Michael, whose abbey, near the city of Avranches, had victoriously held out against the English. It was Saint Michael not Saint Denys who had appeared to Jeanne in the garden at Domremy; but she knew that Saint Denys was the war cry of France.[1717]

[Footnote 1716: Estienne Binet, La vie apostolique de saint Denys l'Areopagite, patron et apostre de la France, Paris, 1624, in 12mo. J. Doublet, Histoire chronologique pour la verite de Saint Denys l'Areopagite, apotre de France et premier eveque de Paris, Paris, 1646, in 4to, and Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys en France, p. 95. J. Havet, Les origines de Saint-Denis, in Les Questions merovingiennes.]

[Footnote 1717: Trial, vol. i, p. 179.]

The monks of that rich abbey wasted by war lived there in poverty and in disorder.[1718] Armagnacs and Burgundians in turn descended upon the neighbouring fields and villages, plundering and ravaging, leaving nought that it was possible to carry off. At Saint-Denys was held the Fair of Le Lendit, one of the greatest in Christendom. But now Merchants had ceased to attend it. At the Lendit of 1418, there were but three booths, and those for the selling of shoes from Brabant, in the high street of Saint-Denys, near the Convent of Les Filles-Dieu. Since 1426, there had been no fair at all.[1719]

[Footnote 1718: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 179, note 5.]

[Footnote 1719: Ibid., pp. 101, 209, note 1.]

At the tidings that the Armagnacs were approaching Troyes, the peasants had cut their corn before it was ripe and brought it into Paris. On entering Saint-Denys, the Duke of Alencon's men-at-arms found the town deserted. The chief burgesses had taken refuge in Paris.[1720] Only a few of the poorer families were left. The Maid held two newly born infants over the baptismal font.[1721]

[Footnote 1720: Ibid., pp. 241, 242. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354.]

[Footnote 1721: Trial, vol. i, p. 103.]

Hearing of these Saint-Denys baptisms, her enemies accused her of having lit candles and held them inclined over the infant's heads, in order that she might read their destinies in the melted wax. It was not the first time, it appeared, that she indulged in such practices. When she entered a town, little children were said to offer her candles kneeling, and she received them as an agreeable sacrifice. Then upon the heads of these innocents she would let fall three drops of burning wax, proclaiming that by virtue of this ceremony they could not fail to be good. In such acts Burgundian ecclesiastics discerned idolatry and witchcraft, in which was likewise involved heresy.[1722]

[Footnote 1722: Ibid., p. 304. Noel Valois, Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc, in Annuaire-bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France, Paris, 1907, in 8vo, separate issue, pp. 17, 18.]

Here again, at Saint-Denys, she distributed banners to the men-at-arms. Churchmen on the English side strongly suspected her of charming those banners. And as everyone in those days believed in magic, such a suspicion was not without its danger.[1723]

[Footnote 1723: Trial, vol. i, p. 236.]

The Maid and the Duke of Alencon lost no time. Immediately after their arrival at Saint-Denys they went forth to skirmish before the gates of Paris. Two or three times a day they engaged in this desultory warfare, notably by the wind-mill at the Saint-Denys Gate and in the village of La Chapelle. "Every day there was booty taken," says Messire Jean de Bueil.[1724] It seems hardly credible that in a country which had been plundered and ravaged over and over again, there should have been anything left to be taken; and yet the statement is made and attested by one of the nobles in the army.

[Footnote 1724: Le Jouvencel, vol. ii, p. 281.]

Out of respect for the seventh commandment, the Maid forbade the men of her company to commit any theft whatsoever. And she always refused victuals offered her when she knew they had been stolen. In reality she, like the others, lived on pillage, but she did not know it. One day when a Scotsman gave her to wit that she had just partaken of some stolen veal, she flew into a fury and would have beaten him: saintly women are subject to such fits of passion.[1725]

[Footnote 1725: Trial, vol. iii, p. 81.]

Jeanne is said to have observed the walls of Paris carefully, seeking the spot most favourable for attack.[1726] The truth is that in this matter as in all others she depended on her Voices. For the rest she was far superior to all the men-at-arms in courage and in good will. From Saint-Denys she sent the King message after message, urging him to come and take Paris.[1727] But at Compiegne the King and his Council were negotiating with the ambassadors of the Duke of Burgundy, to wit: Jean de Luxembourg, Lord of Beaurevoir, Hugues de Cayeux, Bishop of Arras, David de Brimeu and my Lord of Charny.[1728]

[Footnote 1726: Perceval de Cagny, p. 166.]

[Footnote 1727: Ibid., p. 166.]

[Footnote 1728: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 112. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 404, 408. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 192; vol. iv, appendix xviii.]

The fifteen days' truce had expired. Our only information concerning it is contained in Jeanne's letter to the citizens of Reims. According to Jeanne, the Duke of Burgundy had undertaken to surrender the city to the King of France on the fifteenth day.[1729] If he had so agreed it was on conditions of which we know nothing; we are not therefore in a position to say whether or no those conditions had been carried out. The Maid placed no trust in this promise, and she was quite right; but she did not know everything; and on the very day when she was complaining of the truce to the citizens of Reims, Duke Philip was receiving the command of Paris at the hands of the Regent, and was henceforth in a position to dispose of the city as he liked.[1730] Duke Philip could not bear the sight of Charles of Valois, who had been present at the murder on the Bridge of Montereau, but he detested the English and wished they would go to the devil or return to their island. The vineyards and the cloth looms of his dominions were too numerous and too important for him not to wish for peace. He had no desire to be King of France; therefore he could be treated with, despite his avarice and dissimulation. Nevertheless the fifteenth day had gone by and the city of Paris remained in the hands of the English and the Burgundians, who were not friends but allies.

[Footnote 1729: Trial, vol. v, p. 140.]

[Footnote 1730: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 106. P. Cochon, p. 457. Perceval de Cagny, p. 165.]

On the 28th of August a truce was concluded. It was to last till Christmas and was to extend over the whole country north of the Seine, from Nogent to Harfleur, with the exception of such towns as were situated where there was a passage over the river. Concerning the city of Paris it was expressly stated that "Our Cousin of Burgundy, he and his men, may engage in the defence of the town and in resisting such as shall make war upon it or do it hurt."[1731] The Chancellor Regnault de Chartres, the Sire de la Tremouille, Christophe d'Harcourt, the Bastard of Orleans, the Bishop of Seez, and likewise certain young nobles very eager for war, such as the Counts of Clermont and of Vendome and the Duke of Bar, in short all the Counsellors of the King and the Princes of the Blood who signed this article, were apparently giving the enemy a weapon against them and renouncing any attempt upon Paris. But they were not all fools; the Bastard of Orleans was keen witted and the Lord Archbishop of Reims was anything but an Olibrius.[1732] They doubtless knew what they were about when they recognised the Duke of Burgundy's rights over Paris. Duke Philip, as we know, had been governor of the great town since the 13th of August. The Regent had ceded it with the idea that Burgundy would keep the Parisians in order better than England, for the English were few in number and were disliked as foreigners. What did it profit King Charles to recognise his cousin's rights over Paris? We fail to see precisely; but after all this truce was no better and no worse than others. In sooth it did not give Paris to the King, but neither did it prevent the King from taking it. Did truces ever hinder Armagnacs and Burgundians from fighting when they had a mind to fight? Was one of those frequent truces ever kept?[1733] After having signed this one, the King advanced to Senlis. The Duke of Alencon came to him there twice. Charles reached Saint-Denys on Wednesday the 7th of September.[1734]

[Footnote 1731: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 352, 353. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 247, 248. D. Felibien, Histoire de Paris, vol. ii, p. 813, and proofs and illustrations, vol. iv, p. 591. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 208, 209, 224, note 2; vol. iv, appendix xviii, pp. 343, 344.]

[Footnote 1732: Cf. vol. i, p. 34, note 3 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1733: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, ch. vii. La diplomatie de Charles VII jusqu'au traite d'Arras.]

[Footnote 1734: Perceval de Cagny, p. 166.]



CHAPTER III

THE ATTACK ON PARIS

In the days when King John was a prisoner in the hands of the English, the townsfolk of Paris, beholding the enemy in the heart of the land, feared lest their city should be besieged. In all haste therefore they proceeded to put it in a state of defence; they surrounded it with trenches and counter trenches. On the side of the University the suburbs were left defenceless; small and remote, they were burned down. But on the right bank the more extensive suburbs well nigh touched the city. One part of them was enclosed by the trenches. When peace was concluded, Charles, Regent of the Realm, undertook to surround the town on the north with an embattled wall, flanked with square towers, with terraces and parapets, with a road round and steps leading up to the ramparts.

In certain places the trench was single, in others double. The work was superintended by Hugues Aubriot, Provost of Paris, to whom was entrusted also the building of the Saint-Antoine bastion, completed under King Charles VI.[1735] This new fortification began on the east, near the river, on the rising ground of Les Celestins. Within its circle it enclosed the district of Saint Paul, the Culture Sainte-Catherine, the Temple, Saint-Martin, Les Filles-Dieu, Saint Sauveur, Saint Honore, Les Quinze Vingts, which hitherto had been in the suburbs and undefended; and it reached the river below the Louvre, which was thus united to the town. There were six gates in the circumvallation, to wit: beginning on the east, the Baudet Gate or Saint-Antoine Gate, the Saint-Avoye or Temple Gate, the Gate of the Painters or of Saint-Denis, the Saint-Martin or Montmartre Gate, the Saint-Honore Gate and the Gate of the Seine.[1736]

[Footnote 1735: Le Roux de Lincy, Hugues Aubriot, prevot de Paris sous Charles V, Paris, 1862, in 8vo, passim. Paris et ses historiens au XIV'e et XV'e siecle by Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris, in fol. [Histoire generale de Paris.]]

[Footnote 1736: Delamare, Traite de la police, Paris, 1710, in folio, vol. i, p. 79. A. Bonnardot, Dissertation archeologique sur les enceintes de Paris, suivie de recherches sur les portes fortifiees qui dependaient des enceintes de Paris, 1851, in 4to, with plan. Etudes archeologiques sur les anciens plans de Paris, 1853, in 4to. Appendice aux etudes archeologiques sur les anciens plans de Paris et aux dissertations sur les enceintes de Paris, Paris, 1877, in 4to. Etude sur Gilles Corrozet, suivie d'une notice sur un manuscrit de la Bibliotheque des ducs de Bourgogne, contenant une description de Paris, en 1432, par Guillebert de Metz, Paris, 1846, in 8vo, 56 pages. Kausler, Atlas des plus memorables batailles, Carlsruhe, 1831, pl. 34. H. Legrand, Paris en 1380, with plan conjecturally reconstructed, Paris in fol. 1868, p. 58. A. Guilaumot, Les Portes de l'enceinte de Paris sous Charles V, Paris, 1879. Rigaud, Chronique de la Pucelle, campagne de Paris, cartes et plans, Bergerac, 1886, in 8vo.]

The Parisians did not like the English and were sorely grieved by their occupation of the city. The folk murmured when, after the funeral of the late King, Charles VI, the Duke of Bedford had the sword of the King of France borne before him.[1737] But what cannot be helped must be endured. The Parisians may have disliked the English; they admired Duke Philip, a prince of comely countenance and the richest potentate of Christendom. As for the little King of Bourges, mean-looking and sad-faced, strongly suspected of treason at Montereau, there was nothing pleasing in him; he was despised and his followers were regarded with fear and horror. For ten years they had been ranging round the town, pillaging, taking prisoners and holding them to ransom. The English and Burgundians indeed did likewise. When, in the August of 1423, Duke Philip came to Paris, his men ravaged all the neighbouring fields, albeit they belonged to friends and allies. But they were only passing through,[1738] while the Armagnacs were for ever raiding, eternally stealing all they could lay hands on, setting fire to barns and churches, killing women and children, ravishing maids and nuns, hanging men by the thumbs. In 1420, like devils let loose, they descended upon the village of Champigny and burned at once oats, wheat, sheep, cows, oxen, women and children. Likewise did they and worse still at Croissy.[1739] One ecclesiastic said they had caused more Christians to suffer martyrdom than Maximian and Diocletian.[1740]

[Footnote 1737: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 180.]

[Footnote 1738: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 189.]

[Footnote 1739: Ibid., pp. 136, 137.]

[Footnote 1740: Ibid., p. 107. Document inedit relatif a l'etat de Paris en 1430, in Revue des societes savantes, 1863, p. 203.]

And yet, in the year 1429, there might have been discovered in the city of Paris not a few followers of the Dauphin. Christine de Pisan, who was very loyal to the House of Valois, said: "In Paris there are many wicked. Good are there also and faithful to their King. But they dare not lift up their voices."[1741]

[Footnote 1741: Christine de Pisan, in Trial, vol. v, stanza 56, p. 20. Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, p. 426.]

It was common knowledge that in the Parlement and even in the Chapter of Notre-Dame were to be found those who had dealings with the Armagnacs.[1742]

[Footnote 1742: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 251. A. Longnon, Paris pendant la domination anglaise (1420-1436), documents extraits des registres de la chancellerie de France, Paris, 1877, in 8vo, introduction, p. xiij. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 116, note 1.]

On the morrow of their victory at Patay, those terrible Armagnacs had only to march straight on the town to take it. They were expected to enter it one day or the other. In the mind of the Regent it was as if they had already taken it. He went off and shut himself in the Castle of Vincennes with the few men who remained to him.[1743] Three days after the discomfiture of the English there was a panic in the town. "The Armagnacs are coming to-night," they said. Meanwhile the Armagnacs were at Orleans awaiting orders to assemble at Gien and to march on Auxerre. At these tidings the Duke of Bedford must have sighed a deep sigh of relief; and straightway he set to work to provide for the defence of Paris and the safety of Normandy.[1744]

[Footnote 1743: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 248. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 297. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 79, note.]

[Footnote 1744: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 257. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 198.]

When the panic was past, the heart of the great town returned to its allegiance, not to the English cause—it had never been English—but to the Burgundian. Its Provost, Messire Simon Morhier, who had made great slaughter of the French at the Battle of the Herrings, remained loyal to the Leopard.[1745] The aldermen on the contrary were suspected of inclining a favourable ear to King Charles's proposals. On the 12th of July, the Parisians elected a new town council composed of the most zealous Burgundians they could find in commerce and on change. To be provost of the merchants they appointed the treasurer, Guillaume Sanguin, to whom the Duke of Burgundy owed more then seven thousand livres tournois[1746] and who had the Regent's jewels in his keeping.[1747] Such an alteration was greatly to the detriment of King Charles, who preferred to win back his good towns by peaceful means rather than by force, and who relied more on negotiations with the citizens than on cannon balls and stones.

[Footnote 1745: Journal du siege, p. 38. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 106, 107. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 454.]

[Footnote 1746: See vol. i, p. 222, note 2 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1747: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 239, note 2. Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 340 et seq.]

Just in the nick of time the Regent surrendered the town to Duke Philip, not, we may be sure, without many regrets for having recently refused him Orleans. He realised that thus, by returning to its French allegiance, the chief city of the realm would make a more energetic defense against the Dauphin's men. The Parisians' old liking for the magnificent Duke would revive, and so would their old hatred of the disinherited son of Madame Ysabeau. In the Palais de Justice the Duke read the story of his father's death, punctuated with complaints of Armagnac treason and violated treaties; he caused the blood of Montereau[1748] to cry to heaven; those who were present swore to be right loyal to him and to the Regent. On the following days the same oath was taken by the regular and secular clergy.[1749]

[Footnote 1748: 14th July, 1429, Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 240, 241. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 240. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 186.]

[Footnote 1749: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 241.]

But the citizens were strengthened in their resistance more by their remembrance of Armagnac cruelty than by their affection for the fair Duke. A rumour ran and was believed by them that Messire Charles of Valois had abandoned to his mercenaries the city and the citizens of all ranks, high and low, men and women, and that he intended to plough up the very ground on which Paris stood. Such a rumour represented him very falsely; on all occasions he was pitiful and debonair; his Council had prudently converted the coronation campaign into an armed and peaceful procession. But the Parisians were incapable of judging sanely when the intentions of the King of France were concerned; and they knew only too well that once their town was taken there would be nothing to prevent the Armagnacs from laying it waste with fire and sword.[1750]

[Footnote 1750: Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 356.]

One other circumstance intensified their fear and their dislike. When they heard that Friar Richard, to whose sermons they had once listened so devoutly, was riding with the Dauphin's men and with his nimble tongue winning such good towns as Troyes in Champagne, they called down upon him the malediction of God and his Saints. They tore from their caps the pewter medals engraved with the holy name of Jesus, which the good Brother had given them, and in their bitter hatred towards him they returned straightway to the dice, bowls and draughts which they had renounced at his exhortation. With no less horror did the Maid inspire them. It was said that she was acting the prophetess and uttering such words as: "In very deed this or that shall come to pass." "With the Armagnacs is a creature in woman's form. What it is God only knows," they cried. They spoke of her as a woman of ill fame.[1751] Among these enemies, there were those who filled them with even greater horror than pagans and Saracens—to wit: a monk and a maid. They all took the cross of Saint Andrew.[1752]

[Footnote 1751: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 242.]

[Footnote 1752: Ibid., p. 243.]

While the Dauphin had been away at his coronation an army had come from England into France. The Regent intended it to overrun Normandy. In its march on Rouen he commanded it in person. The defence and ward of Paris he left to Louis of Luxembourg, Bishop of Therouanne, Chancellor of France for the English, to the Sire de l'Isle-Adam, Marshal of France, Captain of Paris, to two thousand men-at-arms and to the Parisian train-bands. To the last were entrusted the defence of the ramparts and the management of the artillery. They were commanded by twenty-four burgesses, called quarteniers because they represented the twenty-four quarters of the city. From the end of July all danger of a surprise had been guarded against.[1753]

[Footnote 1753: Rymer, Foedera, May. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 355. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 106, 107. Wallon, Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i, p. 290, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise, p. 9. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 216, note 5; vol. iv, appendix xviii.]

On the 10th of August, on Saint-Laurence's Eve, while the Armagnacs were encamped at La Ferte-Milon, the Saint-Martin Gate, flanked by four towers and a double drawbridge, was closed; and all men were forbidden to go to Saint-Laurent, either to the procession or to the fair, as in previous years.[1754]

[Footnote 1754: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

On the 28th of the same month, the royal army occupied Saint-Denys. Henceforth no one dared leave the city, neither for the vintage nor for the gathering of anything in the kitchen gardens, which covered the plain north of the town. Prices immediately went up.[1755]

[Footnote 1755: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243. Perceval de Cagny, p. 166. Chronique des cordeliers, folio, 486 verso.]

In the early days of September, the quarteniers, each one in his own district, had the trenches set in order and the cannons mounted on walls, gates, and towers. At the command of the aldermen, the hewers of stone for the cannon made thousands of balls.[1756]

[Footnote 1756: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 243.]

From My Lord, the Duke of Alencon, the magistrates received letters beginning thus: "To you, Provost of Paris and Provost of the Merchants and Aldermen...." He named them by name and greeted them in eloquent language. These letters were regarded as an artifice intended to render the townsfolk suspicious of the aldermen and to incite one class of the populace against the other. The only answer sent to the Duke was a request that he would not spoil any more paper with such malicious endeavours.[1757]

[Footnote 1757: Ibid., pp. 243, 244.]

The chapter of Notre-Dame ordered masses to be said for the salvation of the people. On the 5th of September, three canons were authorised to make arrangements for the defence of the monastery. Those in charge of the sacristy took measures to hide the relics and the treasure of the cathedral from the Armagnac soldiers. For two hundred golden saluts[1758] they sold the body of Saint Denys; but they kept the foot, which was of silver, the head and the crown.[1759]

[Footnote 1758: Cf. ante, p. 45, note 2 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1759: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame (Arch. Nat., LL, 716, pp. 173, 174), in Le journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, loc. cit. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, pp. 530, 531, proofs and illustrations, J, p. 639. Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Le proces de Jeanne d'Arc et l'universite de Paris, Nogent-le-Rotrou, 1898, in 8vo.]

On Wednesday, the 7th of September, the Eve of the Virgin's Nativity, there was a procession to Sainte-Genevieve-du-Mont with the object of counteracting the evil of the times and allaying the animosity of the enemy. In it walked the canons of the Palace, bearing the True Cross.[1760]

[Footnote 1760: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, in Tuetey, notes to Le Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 241, note 1. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 456. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, proofs and illustrations, p. 640.]

That very day the army of the Duke of Alencon and of the Maid was skirmishing beneath the walls. It retreated in the evening; and on that night the townsfolk slept in peace, for on the morrow Christians celebrated the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.[1761]

[Footnote 1761: Register of the Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 332. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 244. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustelier, vol. i, p. 113. Perceval de Cagny, p. 166. Chronique des cordeliers, folio, 486 verso. Le P. Ayroles, La vrai Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iii, p. 531.]

It was a great festival and a very ancient one. Its origin is described in the following manner. There was a certain holy man, who passed his life in meditation. On a day he called to mind that for many years, on the 8th of September, he had heard marvellous angelic music in the air, and he prayed to God to reveal to him the reason for this concert of instruments and of celestial voices. He was vouchsafed the answer that it was the anniversary of the birth of the glorious Virgin Mary; and he received the command to instruct the faithful in order that they on that solemn day might join their voices to the angelic chorus. The matter was reported to the Sovereign Pontiff and the other heads of the Church, who, after having prayed, fasted and consulted the witnesses and traditions of the Church, decreed that henceforth that day, the 8th of September, should be universally consecrated to the celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary.[1762]

[Footnote 1762: Voragine, Legenda Aurea. Anquetil, La nativite, miracle extrait de la legende doree, in Mem. Soc. Agr. de Bayeux, 1883, vol. x, p. 286. Douhet, Dictionnaire des mysteres, 1854, p. 545.]

That day were read at mass the words of the prophet Isaiah: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots."

The people of Paris thought that even the Armagnacs would do no work on so high a festival and would keep the third commandment.

On this Thursday, the 8th of September, about eight o'clock in the morning, the Maid, the Dukes of Alencon and of Bourbon, the Marshals of Boussac and of Rais, the Count of Vendome, the Lords of Laval, of Albret and of Gaucourt, who with their men, to the number of ten thousand and more, had encamped in the village of La Chapelle, half-way along the road from Saint-Denys to Paris, set out on the march. At the hour of high mass, between eleven and twelve o'clock, they reached the height of Les Moulins, at the foot of which the Swine Market was held.[1763] Here there was a gibbet. Fifty-six years earlier, a woman of saintly life according to the people, but according to the holy inquisitors, a heretic and a Turlupine, had been burned alive on that very market-place.[1764]

[Footnote 1763: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 166, 168. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 333, 334. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, pp. 107, 109. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, pp. 456, 458. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 244, 245. Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 486 verso. P. Cochon, ed. Beaurepaire, p. 307. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 210.]

[Footnote 1764: Gaguin, Hist. Francorum, Frankfort, 1577, book viii, chap. ii, p. 158. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en France, p. 121. Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Age, vol. ii, p. 126. (The Turlupins were a German sect who called themselves "the Brethren of the Free Spirit." W.S.)]

Wherefore did the King's men appear first before the northern walls, those of Charles V, which were the strongest? It is impossible to tell. A few days earlier they had thrown a bridge across the River above Paris,[1765] which looks as if they intended to attack the old fortification and get into the city from the University side. Did they mean to carry out the two attacks simultaneously? It is probable. Did they renounce the project of their own accord or against their will? We cannot tell.

[Footnote 1765: Perceval de Cagny, p. 161. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 120, note 1. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Un detail du siege de Paris, par Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. xlvi, 1885, pp. 5 et seq.]

Beneath the walls of Charles V they assembled a quantity of artillery, cannons, culverins, mortars; and in hand-carts they brought fagots to fill up the trenches, hurdles to bridge them over and seven hundred ladders: very elaborate material for the siege, despite their having, as we shall see, forgotten what was most necessary.[1766] They came not therefore to skirmish nor to do great feats of arms. They came to attempt in broad daylight the escalading and the storming of the greatest, the most illustrious, and the most populous town of the realm; an undertaking of vast importance, proposed doubtless and decided in the royal council and with the knowledge of the King, who can have been neither indifferent nor hostile to it.[1767] Charles of Valois wanted to retake Paris. It remains to be seen whether for the accomplishment of his desire he depended merely on men-at-arms and ladders.

[Footnote 1766: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 457.]

[Footnote 1767: Trial, vol. i, pp. 240, 246, 298; vol. iii, pp. 425, 427; vol. v, pp. 97, 107, 130, 140.]

It would seem that the Maid had not been told of the resolutions taken.[1768] She was never consulted and was seldom informed of what had been decided. But she was as sure of entering the town that day as of going to Paradise when she died. For more than three years her Voices had been drumming the attack on Paris in her ears.[1769] But the astonishing point is that, saint as she was, she should have consented to arm and fight on the day of the Nativity. It was contrary to her action on the 5th of May, Ascension Day, and inconsistent with what she had said on the 8th of the same month: "As ye love and honour the Sacred Sabbath do not begin the battle."[1770]

[Footnote 1768: Ibid., pp. 57, 146, 168, 250.]

[Footnote 1769: Ibid., vol. v, p. 130 (letter of the 17th of July, 1429), vol. i, p. 298. "Et hoc sciebar per revelationem." Cf. vol. i, pp. 57, 260, 288 in contradiction.]

[Footnote 1770: Journal du siege, p. 89.]

True it is that afterwards, at Montepilloy, she had engaged in a skirmish on the Day of the Assumption, and thus scandalized the masters of the University. She acted according to the counsel of her Voices and her decisions depended on the vaguest murmurings in her ear. Nothing is more inconstant and more contradictory than the inspirations of such visionaries, who are but the playthings of their dreams. What is certain at least is that Jeanne now as always was convinced that she was doing right and committing no sin.[1771] Arrayed on the height of Les Moulins, in front of Paris with its grey fortifications, the French had immediately before them the outermost of the trenches, dry and narrow, some sixteen or seventeen feet deep, separated by a mound from the second trench, nearly one hundred feet broad, deep and filled with water which lapped the walls of the city. Quite close, on their right, the road to Roule led up to the Saint Honore Gate, also called the Gate of the Blind because it was near the Hospital of Les Quinze Vingts.[1772] It opened beneath a castlet flanked by turrets, and for an advanced defence it had a bulwark surrounded by wooden barriers, like those of Orleans.[1773]

[Footnote 1771: Trial, vol. i, pp. 147, 148.]

[Footnote 1772: In 1254 Saint Louis founded this hospital for three hundred blind knights whose eyes had been put out by the Saracens. (W.S.)]

[Footnote 1773: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 205 and 231, note 4. Adolphe Berty, Topographie historique du vieux Paris, region du Louvre et des Tuileries, p. 180, and app. vi, p. ix. E. Eude, L'attaque de Jeanne d'Arc contre Paris, 1429, in Cosmos, nouv. serie, xxix (1894), pp. 241, 244.]

The Parisians did not expect to be attacked on a feast day.[1774] And yet the ramparts were by no means deserted, and on the walls standards could be seen waving, and especially a great white banner with a Saint Andrew's cross in silver gilt.[1775]

[Footnote 1774: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 246.]

[Footnote 1775: Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 332, 333. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 108.]

The French arrayed themselves slightly behind the Moulin hill, which was to protect them from the stream of lead and stones beginning to be discharged from the artillery on the ramparts. There they ranged their mortars, their culverins and their cannon, ready to fire on the city walls. In this position, which commanded the widest stretch of the fortifications, was the main body of the army. Led by Messire de Saint-Vallier a knight of Dauphine, several captains and men-at-arms approached the Saint Honore Gate and set fire to the barriers. As the garrison of the gate had withdrawn within the fortification, and as the enemy was not seen to be coming out by any other exit, the Marechal de Rais' company advanced with fagots, bundles and ladders right up to the ramparts. The Maid rode at the head of her company. They halted between the Saint-Denys and the Saint-Honore Gates, but nearer the latter, and went down into the first trench, which was not difficult to cross. But on the mound they found themselves exposed to bolts and arrows which rained straight down from the walls.[1776] As at Orleans, and at Les Tourelles, Jeanne had given her banner to a man of valour to hold.

[Footnote 1776: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167.]

When she reached the top of the mound, she cried out to the folk in Paris: "Surrender the town to the King of France."[1777]

[Footnote 1777: Trial, vol. i, p. 148.]

The Burgundians heard her saying also: "In Jesus' name surrender to us speedily. For if ye yield not before nightfall, we shall enter by force, whether ye will or no, and ye shall all be put to death without mercy."[1778]

[Footnote 1778: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245.]

On the mound she remained, sounding the great dyke with her lance and marvelling to find it so full and so deep. And yet for eleven days she and her men-at-arms had been reconnoitring round the walls and seeking the most favourable point of attack. That she should not have known how to plan an attack was quite natural. But what is to be thought of the men-at-arms, who were there on the mound, taken by surprise, as baffled as she, and all aghast at finding so much water close to the Seine when the River was in flood? To be able to reconnoitre the defences of a fortress was surely the a b c of the trade of war. Captains and soldiers of fortune never risked advancing against a fortification without knowing first whether there were water, morass or briars, and arming themselves accordingly with siege train suitable to the occasion. When the water of the moat was deep they launched leather boats carried on horses' backs.[1779] The men-at-arms of the Marechal de Rais and my Lord of Alencon were more ignorant than the meanest adventurers. What would the doughty La Hire have thought of them? Such gross ineptitude and ignorance appeared so incredible that it was supposed that those fighting men knew the depth of the moat but concealed it from the Maid, desiring her discomfiture.[1780] In such a case, while entrapping the damsel they were themselves entrapped, for there they stayed moving neither backwards nor forwards.

[Footnote 1779: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. 67.]

[Footnote 1780: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 333. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 109. Journal du siege, p. 127. Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustelier, 1724, vol. i, p. 113.]

Certain among them idly threw fagots into the moat. Meanwhile the defenders assailed by flights of arrows, disappeared one after the other.[1781] But towards four o'clock in the afternoon, the citizens arrived in crowds. The cannon of the Saint-Denys Gate thundered. Arrows and abuse flew between those above and those below. The hours passed, the sun was sinking. The Maid never ceased sounding the moat with the staff of her lance and crying out to the Parisians to surrender.

[Footnote 1781: Perceval de Cagny, p. 167. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 355, 356. Morosini, vol. iii, note 3. E. Eude, L'attaque de Jeanne d'Arc contre Paris, in Cosmos, 22 Sept., 1894, vol. xxix. P. Marin, Le genie militaire de Jeanne d'Arc, in Grande revue de Paris et de Saint-Petersbourg, 2nd year, vol. i, 1889, p. 142.]

"There, wanton! There, minx!" cried a Burgundian.

And planting his cross-bow in the ground with his foot, he shot an arrow which split one of her greaves and wounded her in the thigh. Another Burgundian took aim at the Maid's standard-bearer and wounded him in the foot. The wounded man raised his visor to see whence the arrow came and straightway received another between the eyes. The Maid and the Duke of Alencon sorely regretted the loss of this man-at-arms.[1782]

[Footnote 1782: Trial, vol. i, pp. 57, 246. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245. Deliberations of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit. Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 457. Perceval de Cagny, Jean Chartier, Journal du siege, Monstrelet, Morosini, loc. cit.]

After she had been wounded, Jeanne cried all the more loudly that the walls must be reached and the city taken. She was placed out of reach of the arrows in the shelter of a breast-work. There she urged the men-at-arms to throw fagots into the water and make a bridge. About ten or eleven o'clock in the evening, the Sire de la Tremouille charged the combatants to retreat. The Maid would not leave the place. She was doubtless listening to her Saints and beholding celestial hosts around her. The Duke of Alencon sent for her. The aged Sire de Gaucourt[1783] carried her off with the aid of a captain of Picardy, one Guichard Bournel, who did not please her on that day, and who by his treachery six months later, was to please her still less.[1784] Had she not been wounded she would have resisted more strongly.[1785] She yielded regretfully, saying: "In God's name! the city might have been taken."[1786]

[Footnote 1783: Trial, vol. i, p. 298.]

[Footnote 1784: Trial, vol. i, p. 111, 273. Berry, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 50. F. Brun, Jeanne d Arc et le capitaine de Soissons, pp. 31 et seq.]

[Footnote 1785: Trial, vol. i, p. 57.]

[Footnote 1786: The oath "Par mon martin" (by my staff) is an invention of the scribe who wrote the Chronicle which is attributed to Perceval de Cagny, p. 168.]

They put her on horseback; and thus she was able to follow the army. The rumour ran that she had been shot in both thighs; in sooth her wound was but slight.[1787]

[Footnote 1787: Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 334. Journal du siege, p. 128. Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 109. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 355, 356.]

The French returned to La Chapelle, whence they had set out in the morning. They carried their wounded on some of the carts which they had used for the transport of fagots and ladders. In the hands of the enemy they left three hundred hand-carts, six hundred and sixty ladders, four thousand hurdles and large fagots, of which they had used but a small number.[1788] Their retreat must have been somewhat hurried, seeing that, when they came to the Barn of Les Mathurins, near The Swine Market, they forsook their baggage and set fire to it. With horror it was related that, like pagans of Rome, they had cast their dead into the flames.[1789] Nevertheless the Parisians dared not pursue them. In those days men-at-arms who knew their trade never retreated without laying some snare for the enemy. Consequently the King's men posted a considerable company in ambush by the roadside, to lie in wait for the light troops who should come in pursuit of the retreating army.[1790] It was precisely such an ambuscade that the Parisians feared; wherefore they permitted the Armagnacs to regain their camp at La Chapelle-Saint-Denys unmolested.[1791]

[Footnote 1788: Deliberation of the Chapter of Notre Dame, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 1789: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 245.]

[Footnote 1790: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, p. 142.]

[Footnote 1791: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 245, 246.]

If we regard only the military tactics of the day, there is no doubt that the French had blundered and had lacked energy. But it was not on military tactics that the greatest reliance had been placed. Those who conducted the war, the King and his council, certainly expected to enter Paris that day. But how? As they had entered Chalons, as they had entered Reims, as they had entered all the King's good towns from Troyes to Compiegne. King Charles had shown himself determined to recover his towns by means of the townsfolk; towards Paris he acted as he had acted towards his other towns.