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

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

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

[Footnote 116: Oeuvres de messire Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Paris, in 4to, vol. xi, 1749, numbered pages; vol. xii, pp. 234 et seq. Cf. what he says of inspired persons in l'Instruction sur les etats d'oraison, Paris, 1697, in 8vo.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 125: Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. v.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 132: Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, op. cit.; La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans, op. cit.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 134: A. Thomas, Le mot "Patrie" et Jeanne d'Arc in Revue des Idees, July 15, 1906.]

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

[Footnote 136: Trial, vol. ii, p. 436. See post, vol. i, p. 82.]

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

[Footnote 138: Jean Juvenal des Ursins in Buchon, Choix des Chroniques, iv.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 141: La Pucelle, Preface.]

It cannot be denied that the feeling for la patrie did exist under the old regime. The impulse imparted to this sentiment by the Revolution was none the less immense. It added to it the idea of national unity and national territorial integrity. It extended to all the right of property hitherto reserved to a small number, and thus, so to speak, divided la patrie among the citizens. While rendering the peasant capable of possessing, the new regime imposed upon him the obligations of defending his actual or potential possessions. Recourse to arms is a necessity alike for whomsoever acquires or wishes to acquire territory. Hardly had the Frenchman come to enjoy the rights of a man and of a citizen, hardly had he entered into possession or thought he might enter into possession of a home and lands of his own, when the armies of the Coalition arrived "to drive him back to ancient slavery." Then the patriot became a soldier. Twenty-three years of warfare, with the inevitable alternations of victories and defeats, built up our fathers in their love of la patrie and their hatred of the foreigner.

Since then, as the result of industrial progress, there have arisen in one country and another, rivalries which are every day growing more bitter. The present methods of production by multiplying antagonism among nations, have given rise to imperialism, to colonial expansion and to armed peace.

But how many contrary forces are at work in this formidable creation of a new order of things! In all countries the great development of trade and manufactures has given birth to a new class. This class, possessing nothing, having no hope of ever possessing anything, enjoying none of the good things of life, not even the light of day, does not share the fear which haunted the peasant and burgher of the Revolution, of being despoiled by an enemy coming from abroad; the members of this new class, having no wealth to defend, regard foreign nations with neither terror nor hatred. At the same time over all the markets of the world there have arisen financial powers, which, although they often affect respect for old traditions, are by their very functions essentially destructive of the national and patriotic spirit. The universal capitalist system has created in France, as everywhere else, the internationalism of the workers and the cosmopolitanism of the financiers.

To-day, just as two thousand years ago, in order to discern the future, we must regard not the enterprises of the great but the confused movements of the working classes. The nations will not indefinitely endure this armed peace which weighs so heavily upon them. Every day we behold the organising of an universal community of workers.

I believe in the future union of nations, and I long for it with that ardent charity for the human race, which, formed in the Latin conscience in the days of Epictetus and Seneca, and through so many centuries extinguished by European barbarism, has been revived in the noblest breasts of modern times. And in vain will it be argued against me that these are the mere dream-illusions of desire: it is desire that creates life and the future is careful to realise the dreams of philosophers. Nevertheless, that we to-day are assured of a peace that nothing will disturb, none but a madman would maintain. On the contrary, the terrible industrial and commercial rivalries growing up around us indicate future conflicts, and there is nothing to assure us that France will not one day find herself involved in a great European or world conflagration. Her obligation to provide for her defence increases not a little those difficulties which arise from a social order profoundly agitated by competition in production and antagonism between classes.

An absolute empire obtains its defenders by inspiring fear; democracy only by bestowing benefits. Fear or interest lies at the root of all devotion. If the French proletariat is to defend the Republic heroically in the hour of peril, then it must either be happy or have the hope of becoming so. And what use is it to deceive ourselves? The lot of the workman to-day is no better in France than in Germany, and not so good as in England or America.

On these important subjects I have not been able to forbear expressing the truth as it appears to me; there is a great satisfaction in saying what one believes useful and just.

It now only remains for me to submit to my readers a few reflections on the difficult art of writing history, and to explain certain peculiarities of form and language which will be found in this work.

To enter into the spirit of a period that has passed away, to make oneself the contemporary of men of former days, deliberate study and loving care are necessary. The difficulty lies not so much in what one must know as in what one must not know. If we would really live in the fifteenth century, how many things we must forget: knowledge, methods, all those acquisitions which make moderns of us. We must forget that the earth is round, and that the stars are suns, and not lamps suspended from a crystal vault; we must forget the cosmogony of Laplace, and believe in the science of Saint Thomas, of Dante, and of those cosmographers of the Middle Age who teach the Creation in seven days and the foundation of kingdoms by the sons of Priam, after the destruction of Great Troy. Such and such a historian or paleographer is powerless to make us understand the contemporaries of the Maid. It is not knowledge he lacks, but ignorance—ignorance of modern warfare, of modern politics, of modern religion.

But when we have forgotten, as far as possible, all that has happened since the youth of Charles VII, in order to think like a clerk in exile at Poitiers, or a burgher at Orleans serving on the ramparts of his city, we must recover all our intellectual resources in order to embrace the entirety of events, and discover that sequence between cause and effect which escape the clerk or the burgher. "I have contracted my horizon," says the Chatterton of Alfred de Vigny, when he explains how he is conscious of nothing that has happened since the days of the old Saxons. But Chatterton wrote poems, pseudo chronicles, and not history. The historian must alternately contract his horizon and widen it. If he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs successively—or sometimes at one and the same moment—assume the credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the most accomplished critic. By a strange process, he must divide his personality. He must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a story by Mr. H.G. Wells, who lives and moves in a little English town, and all the time sees herself at the bottom of the ocean.

I have carefully visited cities and countries in which the events I propose to relate took place. I have seen the valley of the Meuse amidst the flowers and perfumes of spring, and I have seen it again beneath a mass of mist and cloud. I have travelled along the smiling banks of the Loire, so full of renown; through La Beauce, with its vast horizons bordered with snow-topped mountains; through l'Ile-de-France, where the sky is serene; through La Champagne, with its stony hills covered with those low vines which, trampled upon by the coronation army, bloomed again into leaves and fruit, says the legend, and by St. Martin's Day yielded a late but rich vintage.[142] I have lingered in barren Picardy, along the Bay of the Somme so sad and bare beneath the flight of its birds of passage. I have wandered through the fat meadows of Normandy to Rouen with its steeples and towers, its ancient charnel houses, its damp streets, its last remaining timbered houses with high gables. I have imagined these rivers, these lands, these chateaux and these towns as they were five hundred years ago.

[Footnote 142: Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, Les sources allemandes de l'histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 93.]

I have accustomed my gaze to the forms assumed by the beings and the objects of those days. I have examined all that remains of stone, of iron, or of wood worked by the hands of those old artisans, who were freer and consequently more ingenious than ours, and whose handicraft reveals a desire to animate and adorn everything. To the best of my ability I have studied figures carved and painted, not exactly in France—for there, in those days of misery and death, art was little practised—but in Flanders, in Burgundy, in Provence, where the workmanship is often in a style at once affected and naif, and frequently beautiful. As I gazed at the old miniatures, they seemed to live before me, and I saw the nobles in the absurd magnificence of their etoffes a tripes,[143] the dames and the damoiselles somewhat devilish with their horned caps and their pointed shoes; clerks seated at the desk, men-at-arms riding their chargers and merchants their mules, husbandmen performing from April till March all the tasks of the rural calendar; peasant women, whose broad coifs are still worn by nuns. I drew near to these folk, who were our fellows, and who yet differed from us by a thousand shades of sentiment and of thought; I lived their lives; I read their hearts.

[Footnote 143: Imitation velvet.]

It is hardly necessary to say that there exists no authentic representation of Jeanne. In the art of the fifteenth century all that relates to her amounts to very little: hardly anything remains—a small piece of bestion tapestry, a slight pen-and-ink figure on a register, a few illuminations in manuscripts of the reigns of Charles VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII, that is all. I have found it necessary to contribute to this very meagre iconography of Jeanne d'Arc, not because I had anything to add to it, but in order to expunge the contributions of the forgers of that period. In Appendix IV, at the end of this work, will be found the short article in which I point out the forgeries which, for the most part, are already old, but had not been previously denounced. I have limited my researches to the fifteenth century, leaving to others the task of studying those pictures of the Renaissance in which the Maid appears decked out in the German fashion, with the plumed hat and slashed doubtlet of a Saxon ritter or a Swiss mercenary.[144] I cannot say who served as a prototype for these portraits, but they closely resemble the woman accompanying the mercenaries in La Danse des morts, which Nicholas Manuel painted at Berne, on the wall of the Dominican Monastery, between 1515 and 1521.[145] In le Grand Siecle Jeanne d'Arc becomes Clorinda, Minerva, Bellona in ballet costume.[146]

[Footnote 144: See the picture of 1581, preserved in the Orleans Museum and reproduced in Wallon's Jeanne d'Arc, p. 466.]

[Footnote 145: La Danse des Morts, painted at Berne between 1515 and 1520 by Nicolas Manuel, lithographed by Guillaume Stettler, s.d. in folio oblong, engraving xx. M. Salomon Reinach believes this prototype may be found in the Judiths of Cranach.]

[Footnote 146: Lanery d'Arc, Le livre d'Or de Jeanne d'Arc, Iconography, Nos. 2080-2112.]

To my mind a continuous story is more likely than any controversy or discussion to make my subject live, and bring home its verities to my readers. It is true that the documents relating to the Maid do not lend themselves very easily to this kind of treatment. As I have just shown, they may nearly all be regarded as doubtful from several points of view, and objections to them arise at every moment. Nevertheless, I think that by making a cautious and judicious use of these documents one may obtain material sufficient for a truthful history of considerable extent. Besides, I have always indicated the sources of my facts, so that every one may judge for himself of the trustworthiness of my authorities.

In the course of my story I have related many incidents which, without having a direct relation to Jeanne, reveal the spirit, the morals, and the beliefs of her time. These incidents are usually of a religious order. They must necessarily be so, for Jeanne's story—and I cannot repeat it too often—is the story of a saint, just like that of Colette of Corbie, or of Catherine of Sienna.

I have yielded frequently, perhaps too frequently, to the desire to make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth century. And in order not to distract him suddenly from them, I have avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although many such occurred to me.

My history is founded on the form and substance of ancient documents; but I have hardly ever introduced into it literal quotations; I believe that unless it possesses a certain unity of language a book is unreadable, and I want to be read.

It is neither affectation of style nor artistic taste that has led me to adhere as far as possible to the tone of the period and to prefer archaic forms of language whenever I thought they would be intelligible, it is because ideas are changed when words are changed and because one cannot substitute modern for ancient expressions without altering sentiments and characters.

I have endeavoured to make my style simple and familiar. History is too often written in a high-flown manner that renders it wearisome and false. Why should we imagine historical facts to be out of the ordinary run of things and on a scale different from every-day humanity?

The writer of a history such as this is terribly tempted to throw himself into the battle. There is hardly a modern account of these old contests, in which the author, be he ecclesiastic or professor, does not with pen behind ear, rush into the melee by the side of the Maid. Even at the risk of missing the revelation of some of the beauties of her nature, I deem it better to keep one's own personality out of the action.

I have written this history with a zeal ardent and tranquil; I have sought truth strenuously, I have met her fearlessly. Even when she assumed an unexpected aspect, I have not turned from her. I shall be reproached for audacity, until I am reproached for timidity.

I have pleasure in expressing my gratitude to my illustrious confreres, MM. Paul Meyer and Ernest Lavisse, who have given me valuable advice. I owe much to M. Petit Dutaillis for certain kindly observations which I have taken into consideration. I am also greatly indebted to M. Henri Jadart, Secretary of the Reims Academy; M. E. Langlois, Professor at the Faculte des Lettres of Lille; M. Camille Bloch, some time archivist of Loiret, M. Noel Charavay, autographic expert, and M. Raoul Bonnet.

M. Pierre Champion, who albeit still young is already known as the author of valuable historical works, has placed the result of his researches at my disposal with a disinterestedness I shall never be able adequately to acknowledge. He has also carefully read the whole of my work. M. Jean Brousson has given me the advantage of his perspicacity which far surpasses what one is entitled to expect from one's secretary.

In the century which I have endeavoured to represent in this work, there was a fiend, by name Titivillus. Every evening this fiend put into a sack all the letters omitted or altered by the copyists during the day. He carried them to hell, in order that, when Saint Michael weighed the souls of these negligent scribes, the share of each one might be put in the scale of his iniquities. Should he have survived the invention of printing, surely this most properly meticulous fiend must to-day be assuming the heavy task of collecting the misprints scattered throughout the books which aspire to exactitude; it would be very foolish of him to trouble about others. As occasion requires he will place those misprints to the account of reader or author. I am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Levy and to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have employed in lightening the burden, which Titivillus will place on my back on the Day of Judgment.

PARIS, February, 1908.



CONTENTS

VOL. I

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE v

INTRODUCTION vii

I. CHILDHOOD 1

II. VOICES 29

III. FIRST VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS. FLIGHT TO NEUFCHATEAU. JOURNEY TO TOUL. SECOND VISIT TO VAUCOULEURS 61

IV. JOURNEY TO NANCY. ITINERARY FROM VAUCOULEURS TO SAINTE-CATHERINE-DE-FIERBOIS 91

V. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 12TH OF OCTOBER, 1428, TO THE 6TH OF MARCH, 1429 106

VI. THE MAID AT CHINON—PROPHECIES 145

VII. THE MAID AT POITIERS 187

VIII. THE MAID AT POITIERS (continued) 204

IX. THE MAID AT TOURS 217

X. THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 7TH OF MARCH TO THE 28TH OF APRIL, 1429 230

XI. THE MAID AT BLOIS. LETTER TO THE ENGLISH. DEPARTURE FOR ORLEANS 243

XII. THE MAID AT ORLEANS 258

XIII. THE TAKING OF LES TOURELLES AND THE DELIVERANCE OF ORLEANS 296

XIV. THE MAID AT TOURS AND SELLES-EN-BERRY. TREATISES OF JACQUES GELU AND JEAN GERSON 318

XV. TAKING OF JARGEAU. THE MEUNG BRIDGE. BEAUGENCY 345

XVI. THE BATTLE OF PATAY. OPINIONS OF ITALIAN AND GERMAN CLERKS. THE GIEN ARMY 368

XVII. THE AUXERRE CONVENTION. FRIAR RICHARD. THE SURRENDER OF TROYES 403

XVIII. THE SURRENDER OF CHALONS AND OF REIMS. THE CORONATION 435

XIX. RISE OF THE LEGEND 461



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

JOAN OF ARC Frontispiece From a painting by Deruet.

To face page

HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC AT DOMREMY IN 1419 12

VIEW OF ORLEANS, 1428-1429 106

PLAN OF ORLEANS 258

CHARLES VII 444 From an old engraving.



JOAN OF ARC



CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD

From Neufchateau to Vaucouleurs the clear waters of the Meuse flow freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes of alder and willow. Now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are suddenly lost to sight underground. In the summer the river is a lazy stream, barely bending in its course the reeds which grow upon its shallow bed; and from the bank one may watch its lapping waters kept back by clumps of rushes scarcely covering a little sand and moss. But in the season of heavy rains, swollen by sudden torrents, deeper and more rapid, as it rushes along, it leaves behind it on the banks a kind of dew, which rises in pools of clear water on a level with the grass of the valley.

This valley, two or three miles broad, stretches unbroken between low hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples, and birches. Although strewn with wild-flowers in the spring, it looks severe, grave, and sometimes even sad. The green grass imparts to it a monotony like that of stagnant water. Even on fine days one is conscious of a hard, cold climate. The sky seems more genial than the earth. It beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil landscape. Then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a kind of chaos. Fogs come down thick and clinging. The white light mists, which in summer veil the bottom of the valley, give place to thick clouds and dark moving mountains, but slowly scattered by a red, cold sun. Wanderers ranging the uplands in the early morning might dream with the mystics in their ecstasy that they are walking on clouds.

Thus, after having passed on the left the wooded plateau, from the height of which the chateau of Bourlemont dominates the valley of the Saonelle, and on the right Coussey with its old church, the winding river flows between le Bois Chesnu on the west and the hill of Julien on the east. Then on it goes, passing the adjacent villages of Domremy and Greux on the west bank and separating Greux from Maxey-sur-Meuse. Among other hamlets nestling in the hollows of the hills or rising on the high ground, it passes Burey-la-Cote, Maxey-sur-Vaise, and Burey-en-Vaux, and flows on to water the beautiful meadows of Vaucouleurs.[147]

[Footnote 147: J. Ch. Chappellier, Etude historique et geographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo. E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1894, in 18mo.]

In this little village of Domremy, situated at least seven and a half miles further down the river than Neufchateau and twelve and a half above Vaucouleurs, there was born, about the year 1410 or 1412,[148] a girl who was destined to live a remarkable life. She was born poor. Her father,[149] Jacques or Jacquot d'Arc, a native of the village of Ceffonds in Champagne,[150] was a small farmer and himself drove his horses at the plough.[151] His neighbours, men and women alike, held him to be a good Christian and an industrious workman.[152] His wife came from Vouthon, a village nearly four miles northwest of Domremy, beyond the woods of Greux. Her name being Isabelle or Zabillet, she received at some time, exactly when is uncertain, the surname of Romee.[153] That name was given to those who had been to Rome or on some other important pilgrimage;[154] and it is possible that Isabelle may have acquired her name of Romee by assuming the pilgrim's shell and staff.[155] One of her brothers was a parish priest, another a tiler; she had a nephew who was a carpenter.[156] She had already borne her husband three children: Jacques or Jacquemin, Catherine, and Jean.[157]

[Footnote 148: This may be inferred from vol. i, p. 46, of the Trial. But Jeanne did not know how old she was when she left her father's house (Trial, vol. i, p. 51). I have ignored the letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, p. 116, vol. v, of the Trial. It is quite unauthentic and is too much in the manner of a hagiologist. See post, p. 468, note 1.]

[Footnote 149: Darc (Trial, vol. i, p. 191; vol. ii, p. 82). Dars (Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. 360). Day (Trial, vol. v, p. 150). Daiz (furnished by M. Pierre Champion). This document appears to justify the pronunciation Jeanne d'Arc. Concerning the orthography of the name d'Arc, cf. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc, notes 647-657.]

[Footnote 150: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 208. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1878, in 8vo, p. 185; Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, Orleans, 1879, in 12mo, p. x, passim. Boucher de Molandon, Jacques d'Arc, pere de la Pucelle, Orleans, 1885, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 151: See post, pp. 57, 451, 452.]

[Footnote 152: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 378 et seq.]

[Footnote 153: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 191, 208; vol. ii, p. 74, note 1. Armand Boucher de Crevecoeur, Les Romee et les de Perthes, famille maternelle de Jeanne d'Arc, Abbeville, 1891, in 8vo. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, notes 1278-1308.]

[Footnote 154: Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Romeus. G. de Braux, Jeanne d'Arc a Saint-Nicolas, Nancy, 1889, p. 8. Revue catholique des institutions et du droit, August, 1886. E. de Bouteiller, Nouvelles recherches, p. xii. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 43.]

[Footnote 155: Probably before Jeanne's birth. "My surname is d'Arc or Romee," said Jeanne (Trial, vol. i, p. 191). Thus she indiscriminately assumes either her father's or her mother's surname, although she says (Trial, vol. i, p. 191) that in her country girls are called by their mother's surname.]

[Footnote 156: Trial, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1879, pp. 3-20. Ch. du Lys, Traite sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle d'Orleans et de ses freres, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1857, p. 28. E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois, Troyes, 1893, in 8vo, p. 101.]

[Footnote 157: The order of the births of Jacques d'Arc's children is extremely doubtful (Trial, index, under the word Arc).]

Jacques d'Arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish church, dedicated to Saint Remi, the apostle of Gaul.[158] There was only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. It is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism pronounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer for girls than for boys.[159] We do not know whether Messire Jean Minet,[160] the parish priest, pronounced it over the child in all its literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs of the Church's invincible mistrust of woman.

[Footnote 158: Trial, vol. ii, p. 393, passim. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, vol. xvi, p. 357.]

[Footnote 159: A. Monteil, Histoire des Francais, 1853, in 18mo, vol. ii, p. 194.]

[Footnote 160: Trial, vol. i, p. 46. Jean Minet was a native of Neufchateau.]

According to the custom then prevailing the child had several godfathers and godmothers.[161] The men-gossips were Jean Morel, of Greux,[162] husbandman; Jean Barrey, of Neufchateau; Jean Le Langart or Lingui, and Jean Rainguesson; the women, Jeannette, wife of Thevenin le Royer, called Roze, of Domremy; Beatrix, wife of Estellin,[163] husbandman in the same village; Edite, wife of Jean Barrey; Jeanne, wife of Aubrit, called Jannet and described as Maire Aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of Bourlemont; Jeannette, wife of Thiesselin de Vittel, a scholar of Neufchateau. She was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of books. Among the godmothers there are mentioned also the wife of Nicolas d'Arc, Jacques' brother, and two obscure Christians, one called Agnes, the other Sibylle.[164] Here, as in every group of good Catholics, we have a number of Jeans, Jeannes, and Jeannettes. St. John the Baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the 24th of June, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and contracts of all kinds. In the opinion of certain ecclesiastics, especially of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette, Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child was named Jeannette. That was the name by which she was known in the village. Later, in France, she was called Jeanne.[167]

[Footnote 161: J. Corblet, Parrains et marraines, in Revue de l'art chretien, 1881, vol. xiv, pp. 336 et seq.]

[Footnote 162: Simeon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, proofs and illustrations, li, p. 98.]

[Footnote 163: Ibid., p. clxxix, note.]

[Footnote 164: Cf. Trial, index, under parrains and marraines. It is not always possible to assign to these personages the names they bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are introduced.]

[Footnote 165: Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, in the Revue Historique, vol. iv, p. 342. Cf. Eustache Deschamps, ballad 354, vol. iii, p. 83, ed. Queux de Saint Hilaire.]

[Footnote 166: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74-388; vol. v, pp. 151, 220, passim.]

[Footnote 167: Ibid., vol. i, p. 46. Henri Lepage, Jeanne d'Arc est-elle Lorraine? Nancy, 1852, pp. 57-79.]

She was brought up in her father's house, in Jacques' poor dwelling.[168] In the front there were two windows admitting but a scanty light. The stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden side sloped almost to the ground. Close by the door, as was usual in that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm tools covered with rust and mud. But the humble enclosure, which served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a wealth of pink and white flowers.[169]

[Footnote 168: Trial, vol. v, pp. 244 et seq. Jacques d'Arc's house doubtless looked on to the road; the Du Lys, or rather the Thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer existing. The shields which ornamented its facade have been placed upon the door of the building now shown as Jeanne's house. What is represented as Jeanne's room is the bakehouse (E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 74). See an article by Henri Arsac in L'echo de l'Est, 26 July, 1890. A whole literature has been written on this subject (Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 330 et seq.).]

[Footnote 169: Emile Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, passim.]

These good Christians had one more child, the youngest, Pierre, who was called Pierrelot.[170]

[Footnote 170: Trial, vol. v, pp. 151, 220.]

Fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, Jeanne grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober. She lived in perfect liberty. Among hard-working peasants the children are left to themselves. Isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well with the village children.

A little neighbour, Hauviette, three or four years younger than she, was her daily companion. They liked to sleep together in the same bed.[171] Mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and spin at Jacques d'Arc's house. She helped Jeanne with her household duties.[172] Taking her distaff with her, Jeanne used often to go and pass the evening at Saint-Amance, at the house of a husbandman Jacquier, who had a young daughter.[173] Boys and girls grew up as a matter of course side by side. Being neighbours, Jeanne and Simonin Musnier's son were brought up together. When Musnier's son was still a child he fell ill, and Jeanne nursed him.[174]

[Footnote 171: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 417: "Jacuit amorose in domo patris sui."]

[Footnote 172: Ibid., p. 429.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid., p. 408.]

[Footnote 174: Ibid., p. 423.]

In those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know their letters. A few years earlier Maitre Jean Gerson had counselled his sisters, peasants of Champagne, to learn to read, and had promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[175] Albeit the niece of a parish priest, Jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at Maxey there was a school attended by boys from Domremy.[176]

[Footnote 175: E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois, p. 115. De La Fons-Melicocq, Documents inedits pour servir a l'histoire de l'instruction publique en France et a l'histoire des moeurs au XV'ieme siecle, in the Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Morinie, vol. iii, pp. 460 et seq.]

[Footnote 176: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65-66. (Item: je donne a Oudinot, a Richard et a Gerard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de Marcey dessoubz Brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept psaulmes.) (Item: I give to the boys, Oudinot, Richard, and Gerard, scholars of the school-master at Marcey below Brixey, twelve crowns to pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) The will of Jean de Bourlemont, 23 October, 1399, in S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, document in facsimile xiii.]

From her mother she learnt the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and the credo.[177] She heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. That was her whole education. On holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's sermon.[178]

[Footnote 177: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise, vol. iii, the second miniature, the "Douze perils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).]

As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a man.[179]

[Footnote 179: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]

The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows. Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]

[Footnote 180: Trial, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lij.]

But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She swore neither by God nor his saints; and to assert the truth of anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the bells rang for the Angelus, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On Saturday, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill, barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth the clear waters of the Saint-Thiebault spring, which cure fevers and heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown, with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. She worked miracles. Jeanne used to visit her with her sister Catherine and the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. And as often as she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[183]

[Footnote 181: Trial, vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 182: Ibid., vol. i, p. 423.]

[Footnote 183: Trial, index, at the word Bermont. Du Haldat, Notice sur la chapelle de Belmont, in the Memoires de l'Academie Stanislas de Nancy, 1833-1834, p. 96. E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 95. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, p. 330.]

A mile and a quarter west of Domremy was a hill covered with a dense wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. Wolves were the terror of the countryside. The village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [chenu] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician.

[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, Histoire des Francois, vol. i, p. 91.]

[Footnote 185: Trial, index, under the words Bois Chesnu.]

At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187] If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. By making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as goddesses.[189] It was quite true. Goddesses as much feared and venerated as the Parcae had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men. But, fallen long since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. They were invited to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next the mother's. At these festivals they ate alone and came and went without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements for fear of displeasing them. It is the custom of divine personages to go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]

[Footnote 186: Ibid., index, under the words Fontaine des Groseilliers.]

[Footnote 187: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 et seq.]

[Footnote 188: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]

[Footnote 189: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

[Footnote 190: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390, 404, 450.]

[Footnote 191: Wolf, Mythologie des fees et des elfes, 1828, in 8vo. A. Maury, Les fees au moyen age, 1843, in 18mo, and Croyances et legendes du moyen age, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]

Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the highroad to Neufchateau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many names. It was called l'Arbre-des-Dames, l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames, l'Arbre-des-Fees, l'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-de-Bourlemont, le Beau-Mai.[195]

[Footnote 192: Richer, Histoire manuscrite de Jeanne d'Arc, ms. fr. 10,448, fols. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 193: For tree worship, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in La tradition, 15 March, 1889.]

[Footnote 194: Trial, vol. ii, p. 422.]

[Footnote 195: Ibid., index, under the words Arbre des Fees.]

Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been seen under l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames. In the old days, when Berthe was spinning, a lord of Bourlemont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's godmothers, who was a scholar at Neufchateau, had heard this story, which closely resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree. Some believed they did, others thought they did not. Beatrix, another of Jeanne's godmothers, used to say: "I have heard tell that fairies came to the tree in the old days. But for their sins they come there no longer."[198]

[Footnote 196: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 197: Ibid., p. 404, passim. Simple Crayon de la noblesse des ducs de Lorraine et de Bar, in Le Brun des Charmettes' Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i, p. 266. Jules Baudot, Les princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar de la famille des Valois, first part. Melusine, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, p. 121.]

[Footnote 198: Propter eorum peccata, in the Trial, vol. ii, p. 396. There is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.]

This simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of God and that the priest had driven them away. Jean Morel, Jeanne's godfather, believed the same.[199]

[Footnote 199: Trial, vol. ii, p. 390.]



Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to l'Arbre-des-Fees and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.[200] For the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St. John.[201]

[Footnote 200: Trial, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 201: Ibid., p. 390. Bergier, Dictionnaire de theologie, under the word Conjuration.]

My Lord Aubert d'Ourches held that there had been no fairies at Domremy for twenty or thirty years.[202] On the other hand there were those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.

[Footnote 202: Trial, vol. i, p. 187.]

Yet another of Jeanne's godmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her goddaughter. And Aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circumspect.[203]

[Footnote 203: Ibid., pp. 67, 209.]

In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[204] Fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.[205]

[Footnote 204: Ibid., pp. 178, 209 et seq.]

[Footnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for Jeanne's opinion of them, see Trial, index, under the word Fees.]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,—called by the Church "Laetare Sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning Laetare Jerusalem,—the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at l'Arbre-des-Fees.[206] They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the Well-Dressing at Domremy, see Trial, index, under the word Fontaine.]

[Footnote 207: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 et seq. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and l'Arbre-des-Fees.[209]

[Footnote 209: Ibid., pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of l'Arbre-des-Fees. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder. One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]

[Footnote 210: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]

To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[211]

[Footnote 211: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 434.]

Close by l'Arbre-des-Dames, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.

[Footnote 212: Atropa Mandragor, female mandragora, main de gloire, herbe aux magiciens. Trial, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 236.]

The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]

[Footnote 213: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.[214]

[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. xviii et seq.; 7, 8, 10, passim. C. Gilardoni, Sermaize et son eglise, published at Vitry-le-Francois, 1893, 8vo.]

Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[215]

[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere, Paris, 1901, 12mo, p. 28.]

At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's house.[216]

[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 9 and 10. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xlv et seq.]

With regard to feudal overlordship the village of Domremy was divided into two distinct parts. The southern part, with the chateau on the Meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of Bourlemont and was in the domain of the castellany of Grondrecourt, held in fief from the crown of France. It was a part of Lorraine and of Bar. The northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was subject to the provost of Monteclaire and Andelot and was in the bailiwick of Chaumont in Champagne.[217] It was sometimes called Domremy de Greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of Greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of Vaucouleurs.[218] The serfs of Bourlemont were separated from the king's men by a brook, close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence called, so it is said, the Brook of the Three Springs. Modestly the stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then rushed down a rapid incline into the Meuse, opposite Jacques d'Arc's house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of Champagne and of France.[219] So far we may be fairly certain; but we must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. In 1429 King Charles' council was uncertain as to whether Jacques d'Arc was a freeman or a serf.[220] And Jacques d'Arc himself doubtless was no better informed. On both banks of the brook, the men of Lorraine and Champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship. Although they were subject to different masters they formed none the less one community closely united, one single rural family. They shared interests, necessities, feelings—everything. Threatened by the same dangers, they had the same anxieties.

[Footnote 217: E. Misset, Jeanne d'Arc champenoise, Paris, s.d. (1894), 8vo. Concerning the nationality of Joan of Arc there is a whole literature extremely rich, the bibliography of which it is impossible to give here. Cf. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 295 et seq.]

[Footnote 218: Trial, vol. i, p. 208.]

[Footnote 219: P. Jollois, Histoire abregee de la vie et des exploits de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1821, engraving I, p. 190. A. Renard, La patrie de Jeanne d'Arc, Langres, 1880, in 18mo, p. 6. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, supplement with proofs and illustrations, pp. 281, 282.]

[Footnote 220: Trial, vol. v, p. 152.]

Lying at the extreme south of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, the village of Domremy was between Bar and Champagne on the east, and Lorraine on the west.[221] They were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that Count of Vaudemont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the whole of Christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the Lorraine Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. Unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who, subsisting on plunder, was especially given to the Lorraine custom of marauding. He was of the same way of thinking as that English king who said that warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings without mustard.[222] One day, when he was besieging a little stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the Damoiseau set fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.[223]

[Footnote 221: Colonel de Boureulle, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Die, 1890, in 8vo, 28 small engravings. J. Ch. Chappellier, Etude historique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, 2 plans; C. Niobe, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Memoires de la Societe academique de l'Aube, 1894, 3d series, vol. xxxi, pp. 307 et seq.]

[Footnote 222: Juvenal des Ursins, in the Collection Michaud et Poujoulat, col. 561.]

[Footnote 223: A. Tuetey, Les ecorcheurs sous Charles VII, Montbeliard, 1874, vol. i, p. 87.]

In 1419 this baron was making war on the brothers Didier and Durand of Saint-Die. It matters not for what reason. For this war as for every war the villagers had to pay. As the men-at-arms were fighting throughout the whole castellany of Vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of Domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. At Domremy there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.[224] Belonging to this castle was a chapel of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the dwelling of the Lords of Bourlemont, was commonly called the Fortress of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. But soon after Jeanne d'Arc's birth she married a Lorraine baron, Henri d'Ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of Ogiviller and at the ducal court of Nancy. Since her departure the fortress of the island had remained uninhabited. The village folk decided to rent it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the plunderers. The renting was put up to auction. A certain Jean Biget of Domremy and Jacques d'Arc, Jeanne's father, being the highest bidders, and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between them and the representatives of Dame d'Ogiviller. The fortress, the garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain, were let to Jean Biget and Jacques d'Arc for a term of nine years beginning on St. John the Baptist's Day, 1419, and in consideration of a yearly rent of fourteen livres tournois[225] and three imaux of wheat.[226] Besides the two tenants in chief there were five sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was Jacquemin, the eldest of Jacques d'Arc's sons.[227]

[Footnote 224: Trial, vol. i, pp. 66, 215.]

[Footnote 225: In 1390 one livre tournois was worth L7 5s of present money; in 1488, L5. Cf. Avenel, Histoire economique, 1894 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 226: "Imal," says Le Trevoux, "is a measure of corn used at Nancy." There are two imaux in a quarter, and four quarters in a real, which contains fifteen bushels, according to the Paris measure.]

[Footnote 227: The Archives of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, collection Ruppes II, No. 28. The farm lease, dated 2nd of April, 1420, was first published by M. J. Ch. Chappellier in Le Journal de la Societe d'Archeologie Lorraine, Jan.-Feb., 1889; and Deux actes inedits du XV siecle sur Domremy, Nancy, 1889, 8vo, 16 pages. S. Luce, La France pendant la guerre de cent ans, 1890, 18mo, pp. 274 et seq. Lefevre-Pontalis, Etude historique et geographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, vol. lvi, pp. 154-168.]

The precaution proved to be useful. In that very year, 1419, Robert de Saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers Didier and Durand at the village of Maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be seen opposite Greux, on the other bank of the Meuse, along the foot of wooded hills. The two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the victorious Damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. Among these prisoners was the Squire Thiesselin de Vittel, whose wife had held Jacques d'Arc's second daughter over the baptismal font. From one of the hills of her village, Jeanne, who was then seven or a little older, could see the battle in which her godmother's husband was taken prisoner.[228]

[Footnote 228: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 420-426. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lxiv.]

Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[229] Thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge at Montereau, when the Dauphin's Councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,[230] sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l'Ile-de-France, and Paris the great city.[231] Now in France the English were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[232] In Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath Goddam[233] was so often on their lips that they were called Godons. They were devils. They were said to be coues, that is, to have tails behind.[234] There was mourning in many a French household when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the coues,[235] making of the noble French lilies a litter for the leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.[236] Dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the side of the Burgundians?

[Footnote 229: Lienard, Dictionnaire topographique de la Meuse, introduction, p. x.]

[Footnote 230: Dom Devienne, Histoire de Bordeaux, pp. 98, 103. L. Bachelier, Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 1862, in 8vo, p. 45. D. Brissaud, Les Anglais en Guyenne, Paris, 1875, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 231: Ch. de Beaurepaire, De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, Caen, 1859, in 4to; and Etats de Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, Evreux, 1859, in 8vo. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. v, pp. 40-56, 261-286.]

[Footnote 232: Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, ed. Quicherat, vol. i, p. 27.]

[Footnote 233: La Curne, under the words Anglois and Goddons.]

[Footnote 234: Voragine, La legende de Saint-Gregoire. Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Caudatus. Le Roux de Lincy, Recueil de chants historiques francais, Paris, 1851, vol. i, pp. 300, 301. This oath is to be found current as early as Eustache Deschamps; it was still in use in the seventeenth century (Sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parente de la Pucelle, ed. Vallet de Viriville).]

[Footnote 235: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii. Carlier, Histoire du Valois, vol. ii, pp. 441 et seq.]

[Footnote 236: Dom Calmet, Histoire de Lorraine, vol. ii, col. 631. Bonnabelle, Notice sur la ville de Vaucouleurs, Bar-le-Duc, 1879, in 8vo, 75 pages.]

Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.[237] It is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[238] Insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux, and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies.

[Footnote 237: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65, 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. 18 et seq.]

[Footnote 238: N. Villiaume, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, 1864, in 8vo, p. 52, note 1.]

In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt and Blaise, son of the late Messire Liebault de Baudricourt, was then captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles. He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of English and Burgundians.[239]

[Footnote 239: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii.]

In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one Etienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of La Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages.

[Footnote 240: Pierre d'Alheim, Le jargon Jobelin, Paris, 1892, in 18mo: glossary, under the word Hirenalle, p. 61, and the verbal communication of M. Marcel Schwob. Cronique Martiniane, ed. P. Champion, p. 8, note 3; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 270; De Montlezun, Histoire de Gascogne, 1847, in 8vo, p. 143; A. Castaing, La patrie du valet de coeur, in Revue de Gascogne, 1869, vol. x, pp. 29-33.]

While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar.

[Footnote 241: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. lxxiii, 87, note 1. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]

Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (doyen) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242]

[Footnote 242: Bonvalot, Le tiers etat d'apres la charte de Beaumont et ses filiales, Paris, 1886, p. 412.]

Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two gros from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.[244]

[Footnote 243: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. lxxi et seq.]

[Footnote 244: Ibid., proofs and illustrations, li, p. 97.]

The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, Rene d'Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246]

[Footnote 245: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 16, 17.]

[Footnote 246: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, appendix, lxii.]

At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248]

[Footnote 247: Du Chesne, Genealogie de la maison de Vergy, Paris, 1625, folio. Nouvelle biographie generale, vol. xlv, p. 1125.]

[Footnote 248: S. Luce, Domremy and Vaucouleurs, from 1412 to 1425, in Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iii.]

Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250]

[Footnote 249: Trial, vol. i, p. 66.]

[Footnote 250: Trial, vol. i, p. 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. 20.]

One day in the summer of 1425, there fell upon the villages of Greux and Domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name Henri d'Orly, known as Henri de Savoie. This time the island fortress was of no use to the villagers. Lord Henri took all the cattle from the two villages and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues[251] away to his chateau of Doulevant. He had also captured much furniture and other property; and the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one place; wherefore he had part of it carried to Dommartin-le-Franc, a neighbouring village, where there was a chateau with so large a court in front that the place was called Dommartin-la-Cour. The peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. Happily for them, at the news of this pillage, Dame d'Ogiviller sent to the Count of Vaudemont in his chateau of Joinville, complaining to him, as her kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of Greux and Domremy. The chateau of Doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty of the Count of Vaudemont. As soon as he received his kinswoman's message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to recapture the cattle. This man-at-arms, by name Barthelemy de Clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of war. He found the stolen beasts in the chateau of Dommartin-le-Franc, took them and drove them to Joinville. On the way he was pursued and attacked by Lord d'Orly's men and stood in great danger of death. But so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at Joinville, bringing the cattle, which the Count of Vaudemont caused to be driven back to the pastures of Greux and Domremy.[252]

[Footnote 251: A league is two and a half English miles (W.S.).]

[Footnote 252: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. 275 et seq.]

Unexpected good fortune! With tears the husbandman welcomed his restored flocks and herds. But was he not likely to lose them for ever on the morrow?

At that time Jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. War everywhere around her, even in the children's play; the husband of one of her godmothers taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german Mengette killed by a mortar;[253] her native land overrun by marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off; nights of terror, dreams of horror,—such were the surroundings of her childhood.

[Footnote 253: E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]



CHAPTER II

JEANNE'S VOICES

Now, when she was about thirteen, it befell one summer day, at noon, that while she was in her father's garden she heard a voice that filled her with a great fear. It came from the right, from towards the church, and at the same time in the same direction there appeared a light. The voice said: "I come from God to help thee to live a good and holy life.[254] Be good, Jeannette, and God will aid thee."

[Footnote 254: Trial, vol. i, pp. 52, 72, 73, 89, 170.]

It is well known that fasting conduces to the seeing of visions. Jeanne was accustomed to fast. Had she abstained from food that morning and if so when had she last partaken of it? We cannot say.[255]

[Footnote 255: The manuscript runs: non jejunaverat die praecedenti. Quicherat omits non. Trial, vol. i, p. 52. Cf. Revue critique, March, 1908, p. 215.]

On another day the voice spoke again and repeated, "Jeannette, be good."

The child did not know whence the voice came. But the third time, as she listened, she knew it was an angel's voice and she even recognised the angel to be St. Michael. She could not be mistaken, for she knew him well. He was the patron saint of the duchy of Bar.[256] She sometimes saw him on the pillar of church or chapel, in the guise of a handsome knight, with a crown on his helmet, wearing a coat of mail, bearing a shield, and transfixing the devil with his lance.[257] Sometimes he was represented holding the scales in which he weighed souls, for he was provost of heaven and warden of paradise;[258] at once the leader of the heavenly hosts and the angel of judgment.[259] He loved high lands.[260] That is why in Lorraine a chapel had been dedicated to him on Mount Sombar, north of the town of Toul. In very remote times he had appeared to the Bishop of Avranches and commanded him to build a church on Mount Tombe, in such a place as he should find a bull hidden by thieves; and the site of the building was to include the whole area overtrodden by the bull. The Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel-au-Peril-de-la-Mer was erected in obedience to this command.[261]

[Footnote 256: V. Servais, Annales historiques du Barrois, Bar-le-Duc, 1865, vol. i, engraving 2.]

[Footnote 257: P. Ch. Cahier, Caracteristique des saints dans l'art populaire, vol. i, p. 363. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 50. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, pp. xcv, xcvi, and proofs and illustrations, xxiv, p. 74.]

[Footnote 258: Mystere de Saint Remi, the Arsenal Library, ms. 3.364, folios 4 and 108.]

[Footnote 259: "Sed signifer Sanctus Michael representet eas (animas) in lucem sanctam." Prayer from the mass for the dead.]

[Footnote 260: A. Maury, Croyances et legendes du moyen age, pp. 171 et seq. Barbier de Montault, Traite d'iconographie chretienne, vol. i, p. 191.]

[Footnote 261: AA. SS., 1672, vol. iii, i, pp. 85 et seq. Dom. J. Huynes, Histoire generale de l'abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. R. de Beaurepaire, Rouen, 1872, pp. 61 et seq. A. Forgeais, Collection de plombs (seals) histories trouves dans la Seine, Paris, 1864, vol. iii, p. 197. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, ch. iv. Chronique du Mont-Saint-Michel (1343-1468), ed. S. Luce, Paris, 1880-1886 (2 vols. in 8vo), vol. i, pp. 26, 146, 163 et seq.]

About the time when the child was having these visions, the defenders of Mont-Saint-Michel discomfited the English who were attacking the fortress by land and sea. The French attributed this victory to the all-powerful intercession of the archangel.[262] And why should he not have favoured the French who worshipped him with peculiar devoutness? Since my Lord St. Denys had permitted his abbey to be taken by the English, my Lord St. Michael, who carefully guarded his, was in a fair way to become the true patron saint of the kingdom.[263] In the year 1419 the Dauphin Charles had had escutcheons painted, representing St. Michael fully armed, holding a naked sword and in the act of slaying a serpent.[264] The maid of Domremy, however, knew but little of the miracles worked by my Lord St. Michael in Normandy. She recognised the angel by his weapons, his courtesy, and the noble words that fell from his lips.[265]

[Footnote 262: Lanery d'Arc, Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 272 (opinion of Jean Bochard, called de Vaucelle, Bishop of Avranches). Dom. J. Huynes, loc. cit., ch. viii, p. 105.]

[Footnote 263: Dom Felibien, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-Denis.... Paris, 1706, in folio, p. 341.]

[Footnote 264: Richer, Histoire manuscrite de la Pucelle, ms. fr. 10,448, fol. 13. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, proofs and illustrations, xxiv.]

[Footnote 265: Trial, vol. i, pp. 173, 248, 249.]

One day he said to her: "Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret will come to thee. Act according to their advice; for they are appointed to guide thee and counsel thee in all thou hast to do, and thou mayest believe what they shall say unto thee." And these things came to pass as the Lord had ordained.[266]

[Footnote 266: Ibid., p. 170.]

This promise filled her with great joy, for she loved them both. Madame Sainte Marguerite was highly honoured in the kingdom of France, where she was a great benefactress. She helped women in labour,[267] and protected the peasant at work in the fields. She was the patron saint of flax-spinners, of procurers of wet-nurses, of vellum-dressers, and of bleachers of wool. Her precious relics in a reliquary, carried on a mule's back, were paraded by ecclesiastics through towns and villages. Plenteous alms[268] were showered upon the exhibitors in return for permission to touch the relics. Many times had Jeanne seen Madame Sainte Marguerite at church, painted life-size, a holy-water sprinkler in her hand, her foot on a dragon's head.[269] She was acquainted with her history as it was related in those days, somewhat on the lines of the following narrative.

[Footnote 267: La vierge Marguerite substituee a la Lucine antique, analysis of an unpublished poem of the fifteenth century, Paris, 1885, in 8vo, p. 2. Rabelais, Gargantua, vol. i, ch. vi. L'Abbe J.B. Thiers, Traite des superstitions qui regarde les sacrements selon l'Ecriture sainte, Paris, 1697 (4 vols. in 12mo), vol. i, p. 109.]

[Footnote 268: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, proofs and illustrations, ccxxxiv, p. 272.]

[Footnote 269: Abbe Bourgaut, Guide du pelerin a Domremy, Nancy, 1878, in 12mo, p. 60. E. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 65-72.]

The blessed Margaret was born at Antioch. Her father, Theodosius, was a priest of the Gentiles. She was put out to nurse and secretly baptised. One day when she was in her fifteenth year, as she was watching the flock belonging to her nurse, the governor Olibrius saw her, and, struck by her great beauty, conceived a great passion for her. Wherefore he said to his servants: "Go, bring me that girl, in order that if she be free I may marry her, or if she be a slave I may take her into my service."

And when she was brought he inquired of her her country, her name, and her religion. She replied that she was called Margaret and that she was a Christian.

And Olibrius said unto her: "How comes it that so noble and beautiful a girl as you can worship Jesus the Crucified?"