Chapter VIII · THE RESCUE OF THE REALM (continued 2)

The poor girl, exposed to such danger, had hitherto possessed no other defence than her male attire; but strange to say, no one had ever chosen to understand why she wore it. Her friends and her enemies were alike shocked at her doing so. In the beginning she had been obliged to explain herself to the women of Poitiers. After her capture, when she was in the custody of the ladies of Luxemburg,[45] those good dames begged her to dress as became a decent girl. If the women understood nothing of this female question, how much less did the priests! They quoted the text of a council of the fourth century, which anathematises this exchange of garments. They did not perceive that this prohibition applied especially to an epoch which had scarcely emerged from pagan impurity.

A French Knight, Time of Joan of Arc

On Friday and Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, deprived of her male attire, had much to fear. According to the statement of her confessor, to whom she revealed the fact, an Englishman, not a soldier, but a gentleman, a lord, bravely undertook to violate a chained girl and, failing in the attempt, loaded her with blows.

“When the morning of Trinity Sunday was come, and it was time for her to rise (as she has related to him who speaks) she said to the English, her guards, ‘Un-iron me that I may rise.’ One of them took off the woman’s garments that were on her, emptied the bag in which was the male dress, and said to her, ‘Get up.’ ‘Sirs,’ said she, ‘you know it is forbidden me; certainly I will not take it.’ This dispute lasted until noon, and at last, by reason of bodily necessity, she was obliged to go out and take that dress. On her return, they would not give her any other, notwithstanding all her supplications.”

In reality, it was not for the interest of the English that she should resume the garb of a man, and thus annul the retractation so laboriously obtained; but at that moment their rage knew no bounds. Saintrailles had just made a bold attempt on Rouen. It would have been a fine exploit to seize the judges on their bench, and carry off Beaufort and Bedford to Poitiers. The latter had another narrow escape of being captured on his return between Rouen and Paris. There was no safety for the English so long as that infernal girl lived, who was doubtless continuing her diabolical arts in prison. It was necessary she should die.

The assessors being instantly sent for to the castle to see the change of dress, found in the courtyard some hundred English, who stopped their way. Thinking that if these doctors entered, they might spoil all, they brandished axes and swords in their faces, and drove them out, calling them Armagnac traitors. Cauchon, getting in with great difficulty, assumed a gay air to please Warwick, and said, laughing, “She is caught.” On Monday he returned with the inquisitor and eight assessors to interrogate the Maid, and ask her why she had resumed that garb. She offered no excuse, but bravely accepting her danger said that this dress suited her better so long as she should be guarded by men; that moreover, word had not been kept with her. Her saints had said to her that it was great pity to have abjured to save her life. At the same time she did not refuse to put on female garments again. “Let me be consigned to a mild and safe prison,” she said, “I will be good and do all the church shall desire.”

On Tuesday the judges got together, at the archiepiscopal palace, some sort of an assemblage of assessors, some of whom had been present only at the first sittings, and the rest at none; they were men of every kind—priests, lawyers, and three were even physicians. The judges reported to them what had taken place, and asked their opinions. The opinion they gave, very different from what was expected, was that the prisoner ought to be brought again into court and have her act of abjuration read again to her. It is doubtful that this was within the power of the judges. Judge or judgment was in fact no longer a thing possible amidst naked swords and raging soldiers. Bloodshed was inevitable; the judges perhaps were not far from seeing their own spilt. They drew up a hasty citation to be served the next morning at eight; her next appearance was only to be for the purpose of being burned.

In the morning, Cauchon sent her a confessor, Brother Martin l’Advenu, “to announce death to her and induce her to penitence. And when he announced to the poor girl the death she was to die that day, she began to cry out woefully, sinking with faintness, and tearing her hair. ‘Alas! am I to be treated so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, whole and entire, which was never corrupted, be now consumed and reduced to ashes? Oh! oh! I would rather be beheaded seven times than be thus burned! Oh! I appeal to God, the great Judge of the wrongs and grievances they do me!’”

At nine she was dressed in women’s clothes and placed on a car, with Friar Martin l’Advenu on one side of her, and the huissier Massieu on the other. Isambart, the Augustine monk, who had already displayed so much charity and courage, would not quit her. The Maid had never despaired until now. Even whilst saying, as she did at times, “the English will put me to death,” she did not in reality believe it. She did not imagine she could ever be forsaken. She had faith in her king, and in the good people of France. She had said expressly, “There will be in the prison or at the condemnation some tumult by which I shall be delivered—delivered with great victory!” But though the king and the people should fail her, she had another aid, far more potent and sure—that of her friends on high, the good and precious saints. What then were her thoughts when she saw that she was really to die—when, mounted on the cart, she passed along through the trembling crowd, guarded by eight hundred Englishmen armed with lances and swords? She wept and bewailed her fate, but never accused either her king or her saints. But one phrase escaped her lips, “O Rouen, Rouen, must I die here!”

The end of this dismal journey was the Vieux Marché, the fish market. Three platforms had been erected there. On one was the episcopal and royal chair, the throne of the cardinal of England, surrounded by the seats of his prelates; the other was destined for the performers in this melancholy drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and lastly the culprit. Some way off from these was seen a great platform in plaster filled and heaped with wood; materials had not been spared upon the pile: it struck terror by its height. This was done not merely for the purpose of rendering the execution more solemn; there was another intention—namely, that the great height of the pile should make it inaccessible to the executioner except from below, where he was to light it, and thus prevent him from abridging the sufferer’s agony and despatching her, as usual, before the flames reached her. There was no thought here of defrauding justice and giving a dead body to the fire; it was meant that she should be literally and truly burned alive, and that placed on the summit of that mound of wood she should be visible above the circle of lances and swords to every spectator on the ground. Burning slowly before the eyes of a gaping multitude there was reason to expect that she would at last yield to some weakness, and utter something that might be given out as a recantation; at the very least it was probable that some incoherent words would escape her, which might be interpreted as her judges desired; perhaps that in womanly terror and despair she would descend to ignoble prayers and cries for mercy.

The hideous ceremony began with a sermon. Master Nicholas Midi, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached from this edifying text: “When a member of the church is sick the whole church is sick.” That poor church could only be cured by cutting off a limb. He concluded with the formal phrase: “Joan, go in peace; the church can no longer defend thee.”

Then the ecclesiastical judge, the bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted her to think of her soul and to recollect all her misdeeds, that she might be moved to contrition. The assessors had decided that it was incumbent in law to read her abjuration to her again; but the bishop did not do so, fearing that she would contradict and remonstrate. But the poor girl had no thought of thus battling with lawyers’ subtleties for her life; her mind was far differently engaged. Before even she had been exhorted to contrition she was on her knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine, pardoning all and asking pardon, and saying to the by-standers, “Pray for me.” She particularly requested each of the priests to say a mass for her soul; and all this she did in a manner so pious, humble, and affecting, that the emotion spread from man to man, and none present could restrain their feelings; the bishop of Beauvais wept, the bishop of Boulogne sobbed, and at last the English themselves shed tears, and Beaufort as well as the rest.

The judges soon recovered from their momentary fit of humanity, and the bishop of Beauvais, wiping his eyes, began to read the sentence. He recapitulated to the culprit all her crimes, schism, idolatry, invocation of fiends, and set forth how she had been admitted to repentance, and how, “seduced by the prince of lies, she had relapsed, O grief! as a dog returns to his vomit. Therefore we pronounce you a rotten member, and as such cut off from the church. We give you over to the secular power, entreating it at the same time to moderate its sentence, and to spare you the pain of death and mutilation of your limbs.”[46]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A BRITISH ESTIMATE OF JOAN’S SERVICES

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

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

FOOTNOTES