 CHAPTER 7 THE SECOND PERIOD 1429-1430 The epic so brief, so exciting, so full of wonder, had now reached its climax. Whatever we may think on the question as to whether Jean had now reached the limit of her commission, it is at least evident that she had reached the highest point of her triumph, and that her short day of glory and success came to an end in the great act which she had always spoken of as her chief object. She had crowned her king, she had recovered for him one of the richest of his provinces, and established a strong base for further action on his part. She had taught Frenchmen how not to fly before the English, and she had filled those stout-hearted English who for a time had the Frenchmen in their powerful steel-clad grip, with terror and panic, and taught them how to fly in their turn. This was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do, and not one of her promises had been broken. Her career had been a short one, begun in April, ending in July, one brief, continuous course of glory. But this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. The messenger of God had done her work, the servant must not desire to be greater than his Lord. There have been heroes in this world whose career has continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. Our hearts follow them in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over they come into their kingdom and reap the reward the interest fails. We are glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but their happiness does not attract us like their struggle. It is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those of this world. When they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph into sorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow the bleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love, and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure which proves that our birthright too is of heaven, however we may tarnish or even deny that highest pedigree. The chivalrous romance of that age would have made of Jeanne d'Arc, the heroine of human story. She would have had a noble lover, say, a young Guy de Laval, or some other generous embrayant-seneur of France, and after her achievements she would have laid by her sword and clothed herself with the beautiful garments of the age and would have going to be a noble lady in some half-rigal chateau to which her name would have given new luster. The young reader will probably long that it should be so. He will feel it an injustice, a wrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward. It will seem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noble chivalier at hand to snatch that devoted maid out of the danger that threatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her, and we can imagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash their teeth at the terrible and dishonoring thought that it was by English hands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished in the flames. For the last it becomes us to repent. For it was to our everlasting shame, but not more to us than to France who condemned her, who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest against the cruelty and wrong. For her fate in itself let us not mourn over much. Had the maid become a great and honoured lady, should not we all have said, as Satan says in the Book of Job, Dejean serve God for not? We should say. See what she made by it. Honor and fame and love and happiness. She did nobly, but nobly has she been rewarded. But that is not God's way. The highest saint is born to Matardom. To serve God for not is the greatest distinction which he reserves for his chosen. And this was the fate to which the maid of France was consecrated from the moment she set out upon her mission. She had the supreme glory of accomplishing that which she believed herself to be sent to do, in which I also believed she was sent to do, miraculously, by means undreamed of, and in which no one beforehand could have believed. But when that was done a higher consecration awaited her. She had the drink of the cup of which our Lord drank, and to be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized. It was involved in every step of the progress that it should be so. And she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. What else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl of eighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touch her, was a benediction? When she went forth from those gates she was going to her execution, though the end was not to be yet. There was still a long struggle before her, lingering and slow, more bitter than death, the preface of discouragement, of disappointment, of failure, when she had most hoped to succeed. She was on the threshold of this second period when she wrote out of rim, all brilliant in the summer weather, her banner faded now but glorious, her shining armor bearing signs of warfare, her end achieved, yet all the while her heart troubled, uncertain, and full of unrest. And it is impossible not to note that from this time her plans were less defined than before. Up to the coronation she had known exactly what she meant to do, and in spite of all obstructions had done it, keeping her genial humor and her patience, steering her simple way through all the intrigues of the court, without bitterness and without fear. But now a vague mist seems to fall about the path which was so open and so clear. Paris. Yes, the best policy, the true generalship would have been to march straight upon Paris, to lose no time, to leave as little leisure as possible to the intrigues to resume their old plots. So the generals thought as well as Jean, but the courtiers were not of that mind. The weak and foolish notion of falling back upon what they had gained, and of contenting themselves with that, was all they thought of. And the unfrench, unpatriotic temper of Paris, which wanted no native king, but was content with the foreigner, gave them a certain excuse. We could not even imagine London as being ever, at any time, contented with an alien rule. But Paris evidently was so, and was ready to defend itself to the death against its lawful sovereign. Jean had never before been brought face to face with such a complication. It had been a straightforward struggle, each man for his own side up to this time. But now other things had to be taken into consideration. Here was no faithful Orlean holding out eager arms to its deliverer. But a crafty, self-seeking city, deft to patriotism, indifferent to freedom, calculating, which was most to its profit, and deciding that the stranger, with Philip of Burgundy at his back, was the safer guide. This was enough of itself to make a simple mind pause in astonishment and dismay. There is no evidence that the supernatural leaders who had shaped the course of the maid failed her now. She still heard her voices. She still held communion with the three saints who, she believed devoutly, came out of heaven to aid her. The whole question of this supernatural guidance is one which is, of course, open to discussion. There are many in these days who do not believe in it at all, who believe in the exaltation of Jean's brain, and the excitement of her nerves, in some strange complication of bodily conditions which made her believe she saw and heard what she did not really see or hear. For our part, we confess, frankly, that these explanations are no explanation at all so far as we are concerned. We are far more inclined to believe that the maid spoke truth. She who never told a lie. She who fulfilled all the promises she made in the name of her guides. Then that those people are right who tell us on their own authority that such interpositions of heaven are impossible. Nobody in Jean's day doubted that heaven did interpose directly in human affairs. The only question was, was it heaven in this instance? Was it not rather the evil one? Was it sorcery and witchcraft? Or was it the agency of God? The English believed firmly that it was witchcraft. They could not imagine that it was God, the God of battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courage out of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. It was the devil, and the maid herself was a wicked witch. Neither one side nor the other believed that it was from Jean's excited nerves that these great things came. There were plenty of women with excited nerves in France, nerves much more excited than those of Jean, who was always reasonable at the height of her inspiration. But to none of them did it happen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy, up to that moment invincible, flying from the field. But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear, indefinite message for the maid. Their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. Fear not, for God will stand by you. She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety, as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises have always something enigmatic in them. And it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. For the first time the maid was often sad. She feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orlean and Reem had been clear as daylight. Her voices had said to her, Do this! And she had done it. Now there was no definite direction. She had to judge for herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. This of itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart. And Father tells, alone among the biographers of Jean, that there were symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways, during the moment of triumph. Her chaplain, Pascal, wrote a letter in her name to the Hussites against whom the Pope was then sending crusades, in which I, the maid, threatened if they were not converted to come against them and give them the alternative of death or amendment. Keshavah says that to the Count Dominach, who had written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three then-existent Popes was the real one, she has reported to have answered that she would tell him as soon as the English left her free to do so. But this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and M. Fawber seems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates, and the documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestioned authority. These, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshine of her perfect humility and sobriety, if indeed they are to be depended upon as authentic at all. The day of Jean, her time of glory and success, was but a short one, or Liam was delivered on the 8th of May, the coronation of Charles took place on the 17th of July. Before the earliest of these dates, she had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle of preparation before she was permitted to enter upon her career. The time of her discouragement was longer. It was ten months from the day when she wrote out of Rem, the 25th of July, 1429, till the 23rd of May, 1430, when she was taken. She had said after the deliverance of Orlean that she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a later period, Easter, 1430, her voices told her that, before the Saint Jean, she would be in the power of her enemies. Both these statements came true. She rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon the downward course, unable to carry out what she would, hampered on every hand, and not apparently followed with the same fervor as of old. It is true that the principal cause of all seems to have been the schemes of the court and the indolence of Charles, but all these hindrances had existed before, and the king and his treacherous advisors had been unwillingly dragged every mile of the way, though every step made had been to Charles' advantage. But now, though the course is still won a victory, the maid no longer seems to be either the chief cause or the immediate leader. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that little fighting was necessary, town after town yielding to the king, which reduced the part of Jean to that of a spectator. But there is a change of atmosphere and tone which seems to point to something more fundamental than this. The historians are very unwilling to acknowledge, except Maqulette, who does so without hesitation, that she had herself fixed the term of her commission as ending at rim. It is certain that she said many things which bear this meaning, and every fact of her after career seems to us to prove it. But it is also true that her conviction wavered and other sayings indicate a different belief or hope. She did no wrong in following the profession of arms in which she had made so glorious a beginning. She may have many gifts and aptitudes for it, of which she was not herself at first aware. But she was no longer the envoy of God. Enough had been done to arouse the old spirit of France, to break the spell of the English supremacy. It was right and fitting that France should do the rest for herself. Perhaps Jean was not herself very clear on this point, and after her first statement of it became less assured. It is not necessary that the servant should know the designs of the master. It did not, after all, affect her. Her business was to serve God to the best of her power, not to take the management out of his hands. The army went forth joyously upon its way, directing itself toward Paris. There was a pilgrimage to make, such as the kings of France were in the habit of making after the coronation. They were pleasant incidents, the submission of a village, the faint resistance instantly overcome of a small town, to make the early days pleasant. Le Huan and Suisone both surrendered. Henry and Buwei received the king's envoys with joy. The independent captains of the army made little circles about, like parties of pleasure, bringing in another and another little stronghold to the allegiance of the king. When he turned aside, taking as he passed through, without as yet any serious deflection, the road rather to the lois than to Paris, success still attended him. A château théée, resistance was expected to give zest to the movement of the forces. But that, too, yielded at once as the others had done. The dates are very vague, and it seems difficult to find any mode of reconciling them. Almost all the historians, while accusing the king of foolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans, give us a description of the undefended state of Paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on the part of Charles might have carried with little difficulty, during the absence of all the chiefs from the city, and the great terror of the inhabitants. But a comparison of dates shows that the Duke of Bedford re-entered Paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on which Charles left Rome, three days only after his coronation, so that he scarcely seemed so much to blame as appears. But the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters naturally led to mistakes of this kind. The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed to receive the king. Strange as it seems to say so, Paris was bitterly, fiercely English at that extraordinary moment. A fact which ought to be taken into account as the most important in the whole matter. There was no answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliary force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. The populace perhaps might be indifferent. At the best it had no feeling on the subject. But there was no welcome awaiting the king. During the time of Bedford's absence, the city felt itself to have no lord. Soud de Paris avoit grand peur qu'on n'en seigneur n'y avel. It was believed that Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and hopeless defense than to submission. The Duke of Bedford, governing in the name of the infant Henry VI of England, was their seigneur, instead of their natural sovereign. It is a fact which to us seems scarcely credible, but it was certainly true. There seems to have been no feeling even on the subject, no general shame, as of a national betrayal, nothing of the kind. Paris was English, holding by the English kings who had never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of its party. It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions. In the Journain des bourgeois de Paris, who was no bourgeois but a distinguished member of that university which held the maid in all her ways in horror, Jean, the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism, and of France, is spoken of as a creature in the form of a woman. How extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs, in which it is almost impossible to believe. Paris is France nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment. But in the early part of the 15th century, she was frankly English, not by compulsion even, but by habit and policy. Perhaps the delays, the hesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors, are thus rendered more excusable than by any other explanation. In the meantime, it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings of this facilitating army without a map. If the reader should trace its movements, he would see what a stumbling, endeavious course it took as of a man blundering in the dark. From Rheim to Soussonne, the way was clear. Then there came a sudden move southward to Château Théry, from which indeed there was still a straight line to Paris, but which still more clearly indicated the high road, leading to the Orléans, the faithful districts of the Loire. This retrograde movement was not made without a great outcry from the generals. Their opinion was that the king ought to press on to conquer everything while the English forces were still depressed and discouraged. In their mind, this deflection toward the south was an abandonment at once of honour and safety. An unimportant check on the way, however, gave an argument to the leaders of the army, and Charles permitted himself to be dragged back. They then made their way by L'affaire de Milan, Trepe, and d'Almartine, and on this road the English troops, which had been led out from Paris by Bedford, to intercept them came twice within fighting distance of the French army. The English, as all the French historians are eager to inform us, invariably entrenched themselves in their positions, surrounding their lines with sharp pointed posts by which the equally invariable rush of the French could be broken. But the French on these occasions were too wise to repeat the impetuous charge which had ruined them at Crécy and Agincourt, and the consequence was that the two forces remained within sight of each other, with a few skirmishes going on at the flanks, but without any serious encounter. It will be more satisfactory, however, to copy the following itinerary of Charles's movements from the chronicle of Percival D'Chancy, who was a member of the household of the Duc de L'Ençonne, and probably present, certainly at all events bound to have the best and most correct information. He informs us that the king left Rome on Thursday, the 21st of July, and dined, supped, and lay, at the Abbey of Saint Nanou, that night, where we're brought to him the keys of the city of Lyon. He then set out on les voyages à venir devant Paris, and on Saturday, the 23rd of the same month, the king dined, supped, and lay, as sous son, and was there received the most honorably that the churchmen, burgers, and other people of the town were capable of, for they had all great fear because of the destruction of the town, which had been taken by the Burgundians, and made to rebel against the king. Friday, the 29th day of July, the king and his company were all day before Chateau Théry, in order of battle, hoping that the Duke of Bedford would appear to fight. The place surrendered at the hour of Vespers, and the king launched there till Monday the 1st of August. On that day, the king lay at Mont Maria, in Brie. Tuesday the 2nd of August, he passed the night in the town of Provene, and had the best possible reception there, and remained till the Friday following, the 5th of August. Sunday the 7th, the king lay at the town of Cumaillet, in Brie. Wednesday the 10th, he lay at La Ferte Milon. Thursday at Crespi, in Valois. Friday at Léni-les-Sèques. The following Saturday the 13th, the king held the field near in Damartine, Angolais, for the whole day looking out for the English, but they came not. On Sunday the 14th, August, the maid, the Duke D'Alençon, the Count de Vendomes, the marshals, and other captains accompanied by six or seven thousand combatants, were at the hour of Vespers lodged in the fields near Montpélois, nearly two leagues from the town of Saint-Lis. The Duke of Bedford and other English captains with between eight and ten thousand English, lying half a league from Saint-Lis between our people and the said city on a little stream, in a village called Notre-Dame de la Victoire. That evening our people skirmished with the English near to their camp, and in this skirmish were people taken on each side, and of the English captain Dorbec, and ten or twelve others, and people wounded on both sides. When night fell, each retired to their own quarters. The same writer records an appeal in the true tone of chivalry addressed to the English by Jean and D'Alençon, desiring them to come out from their entrenchments and fight, and promising to withdraw to a sufficient distance to permit the enemy to place himself in the open field. The French troops had first put themselves in the best state of conscience that could possibly be, hearing mass at an early hour and then to horse. But the English would not come out. Jean, with her standard in her hand, wrote up to the English entrenchments, and someone says, not the concierge, struck the posts with her banner, challenging the force within to come out and fight. While they on their side waved at the French in defiance, a standard copied from that of Jean, on which was depicted a dis-staff and spindle. But neither host approached any nearer. Finally, Charles made his way to compagnie. At Château Théoré, there was concluded an arrangement with Philip of Burgundy for a truce of 15 days, before the end of which time the Duke undertook to deliver Paris peaceably to the French. That this was simply to gain time and that no idea of giving up Paris had ever been entertained is evident. Perhaps Charles was not even deceived. He, no more than Philip, had any desire to encounter the dangers of such a siege. But he was able at least to silence the clamours of the army and the representations of the persistent made by this truce. To wait for 15 days and receive the prize without a blow struck, would not that be best? The counsellors of the king held thus a strong position, though the delay made the hearts of the warriors sick. The figure of Jean appears during these marchings and counter-marchings like that of any other general, pursuing a skillful but not unusual plan of campaign. That she did well and bravely there can be no doubt. And there is a characteristic touch which we recognize, in the fact that she and all of her company put themselves in the best state of conscience that could be before they took the horse. But the skirmishes and repulses are such as Allen's son himself might have made. She made much diligence, the same chronicler tells us, to reduce and place many towns in the obedience of the king. But so did many others with like success. We hear no more her vigorous knock at the door of the council chamber if the discussion there was too long or the proceedings too secret. Her appearances are those of a general among many other generals, no longer with any special certainty in her movements as of a person inspired. We are reminded of a story told of a previous period after the fight of Patay. When blazing forth in the indignation of her youthful purity at the sight of one of the camp followers, a degraded woman with some soldiers, she struck the wanton with the flat of her sword, driving her forth from the camp. Where was no longer that chastened army of odd and reverent soldiers making their confession on the eve of every battle whom she had led to Orlean. The sword she used on this occasion was, it is said, the miraculous sword which happened found under the high altar of St. Catherine at Feirbois. But at the touch of the unclean, the maiden brand broke in two. If this was an allegory to show that the work of that weapon was over and the common sword of the soldier enough for the warfare that remained, it could not be more clearly realized than in the history of this campaign. The only touch of our real maid in her own distinct person comes to us in a letter written in a field on that same wavering road to Paris, dated as early as the fifth of August and addressed to the good people of Rem, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was the meaning of the delay and whether she had given up the cause of the country. There is a terse determination in its brief and dignified sentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering and purposeless campaign. Dear and good friends, good and loyal Frenchmen of the town of Rem, Jean the maid sends you news of her. It is true that the king has made a truce of 15 days with the Duke of Burgundy who promises to render peaceably the city of Paris in that time. Do not however be surprised if I enter there sooner, for I like not truces so made and know not whether I will keep them, but if I keep them it will be only because of the honor of the king. While Jean and her army thus played with the unmoving English, advancing and retiring, attempting every means of drawing them out, the enemy took advantage of one of these seeming withdraws to march out of their camp suddenly and return to Paris, which all this time had been lying comparatively defenseless, had the French made their attack sooner. At the same time, Charles moved on to Campagnet, where he gave himself up to fresh intrigues with Philip of Burgundy, this time for a truce to last till Christmas. The maid was grievously troubled by the steppe, Montemay, and by the new period of delay and negotiation on which the court had entered. Paris was not given up, nor was there any appearance that it ever would be, and to all the generals as well as to the maid it was very evident that this was the next step to be taken. Some of the leaders weiried with inaction had pushed on to Normandy, where four great fortresses, greatest of all the immense and mysterious stronghold on the high cliffs of the Seine, that imposing Chateau Galliard, which Richard, Cor de Leon, had built, the ruins of which white and mystics still dominate, like some titanic ghost above the course of the river had yielded to them. So great was the danger of Normandy, the most securely English of all French provinces, that Bedford had again been drawn out of Paris to defend it. Here then was another opportunity to seize the capital, but Charles could not be induced to move. He found many ways of amusing himself at Campagnet, and the new treaty was being hashed with Burgundy, which gave an excuse for doing nothing. The pause, which weiried them all out, both captains and soldiers, at last became more than flesh and blood could bear. Jean once more was driven to take the initiative. Already on one occasion she had forced the hand of the lingering court, and resumed the campaign of her own accord, an impatient movement which had been perfectly successful. No doubt again the army itself was becoming demoralized, and showing symptoms of falling to pieces. One day she sent for Elenson in haste, during the absence of the ambassadors at Arras. On Baudouk, she cried, Prepare your troops and the other captains. Un monde de pomme aux matines. I will see Paris nearer than I have yet seen it. She had seen the towers from afar as she wandered over the country in Charles's lingering train. Her sudden resolutions struck like fire upon the impatient band. They set out at once Elenson and the maid at the head of their division of the army, and all rejoiced to get to horse again, to push their way through every obstacle. They started on the 23rd August, nearly a month after the departure from Rem. A month entirely lost, though full of events, lost without Remedy so far as Paris was concerned. Ascently, they made a pause, perhaps to await the king, who, it was hoped, would have been constrained to follow. Then, carrying with them all the forces that could be spared from that town, they spurred on to Saint Denis, where they arrived on the 27th. Saint Denis, the other sacred town of France, the place of the tomb, as Rem was the place of the crown. The royalty of France was Jean's passion. I do not say the king, which might be capable of malinterpretation, but the kings, the monarchy, the anointed of the Lord, by whom France was represented, embodied and made into a living thing. She had loved Rem, its associations, its triumphs, the rejoicing of its citizens. These had been the accompaniments of her own highest victory. She came to Saint Denis in a different mood, her heart hot with disappointment and the thwarting of all her plans. From whatever cause it might spring, it was clear that she was no longer buoyed up by that certainty, which only a little while before had carried her through every danger and over every obstacle. But to have reached Saint Denis, at least, was something. It was a place doubly sacred, consecrated to that royal house for which she would so willingly have given her life. And at last she was within Saita Pari, the greatest prize of all. Up to this time, she had known in actual warfare nothing but victory. If her heart for the first time wavered and feared, there is still no certain reason that, de part de, she might not win the day again. At Saint Denis, there was once more accrual delay. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there was no news of the king. The maid employed the time in skirmishes and recoiniscences, but does not seem to have ventured on an attack without the sanction of Charles, whom Alan Sohn, finally, going back on two several occasions, succeeded in setting in motion. Charles had remained accompagné to carry out his treaty with Burgundy, and the last thing he desired was this attack. But when he could resist no longer, he moved on reluctantly to Saint Denis, where his arrival was hailed with great delight. This was not until the 5th of September, and the army, wrought up to a high pitch of excitement and expectation, was eager for the fight. There was no one of whatever condition, who did not say, she will lead the king into Perry, if he will let her, says the chronicler. In the meantime, the authorities in Perry were at work, strengthening its fortifications, frightening the populace with threats of the vengeance of Charles, persuading every citizen of the danger of submission. The bourgeois tells us that letters came from the Arminos, that is, the party of the king, sealed with the seal of the Duke de l'Ençon, and addressed to the heads of the city guilds and municipality, inviting their cooperation as Frenchmen. But, as the Parisian, it was easy to see through their meaning, and an answer was returned that they need not throw away their paper, as no attention was paid to it. There is no sign at all that any national feeling existed to respond to such an appeal. Perry, its courts of law, parliaments, salaried by Bedford, university, church, every department was English in the first place, Burgundian in the second, dependent on English support and money. There was no French party existing. The maid was to them an evil sorceress, a creature in the form of a woman, exercising the blackest arts. Perhaps there was even a breath of consciousness in the air that Charles himself had no desire for the fall of the city. He had let the Parisians full time to make every preparation. He had held back as long as was possible. His favour was all on the side of his enemies. For his own forces and their leaders, and especially for the maid, he had nothing but discouragement, distrust, and auguries of evil. Nevertheless, these oppositions came to an end, and Jean, though less ready and eager for the assault, found herself under the walls of Paris at last. It was on the 7th September that Jean and her immediate followers reached the village of La Chapelle, where they encamped for the night. The next day was the day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a great festival of the church. It could scarcely be a matter of choice on the part of so devout a Catholic as Jean to take this day of all others, when every church bell was tinkling forth the summons to the faithful for the day of assault. In all probability, she was not now acting on her own impulse, but on that of the other generals and nobles. Had she refused, might it not have been alleged against her that after all her impatience it was she who was the cause of delay. The forces with Jean were not very large, a great proportion of the army remaining with Charles, no one seems to know where, either at Saint Denis or at some intermediate spot, possibly to form a reserve force, which could be brought up when wanted. The best informed historian only knows that Charles was not with the active force, but Alain Somme was at the head of the troops, along with many other names well known to us, Lahire and Young Guy de la Bal, and Zantrel, all mighty men of Valor and the devoted friends of Jean. There is a something, a mist, an insertitude in the beginning of the assault, which was unlike the previous achievements of Jean, a certain want of precaution or knowledge of the difficulties which does not reflect honor upon the generals with her. Absolutely new to warfare as she was before Orléans, she had written out at once on her arrival there to inspect the fortifications of the besiegers, but probably the continual skirmishing of which we are told made this impossible here, so that though the maid studied the situation of the town in order to choose the best point for attack, it was only when already engaged that the army discovered a double ditch around the walls, the inner one of which was full of water. By sheer impetuousity the French took the gate of Saint Honoré and its boulevard or tower, driving its defenders back into the city, but their further progress was arrested by that discovery. It was on this occasion that Jean is supposed to have seized from a Burgundian in the melee a sword of which she boasted afterward that it was a good sword capable of good blows, that we have no certain record that in all her battles she ever gave one blow or shed blood at all. It would seem to have been only after the taking of this gate that the discovery was made as to the two deep ditches, one dry, the other filled with water. Jean, whose place had always been with her standard at the immediate foot of the wall, from whence to direct and cheer on her soldiers, pressed forward to this point of peril, descending into the first false, and climbing up again on the second, the D'Alse d'Ian which separated them, where she stood in the midst of a rain of arrows, fully exposed to all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the ramparts above, testing with her lance the depth of the water. We seem in the story to see her all alone or with her standard-bearer, only by her side, making this investigation. But that of course is only a pictorial suggestion, though it might for a moment be the fact. She remained there, however, from through in the afternoon till night when she was forced away. The struggle must have raged around, while she stood on the dark edge of the ditch, probing the muddy water to see where it could best be crossed, shouting directions to her men in that voice as a femme, which penetrated the noise of battle, and summoning the active and desperate enemy overhead. Rente, they rent thee, she cried as she had done at Orlean, surrender to the King of France. We hear nothing now of the White Armor. It must have been dimmed and worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances of the war. But it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering the men, a spot of light still amid all the steely glimmering of the mailcoats, and the dark downpour of that iron rain. Half a hundred war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of witch, devil, ribald, and names still more insulting to her purity, could not silence that trouble-shout. The most wonderful, surely, that ever ran through such an infernal clamour. So prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. Departure, rendez-vous, rendez-vous, à Roy de France. If, as we believe, she never struck a blow, the aspect of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. While the boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves, and what beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood, without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot. The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing to discourage them, as the fight raged on. Few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverines, by the grace of God and the good luck of the maid. But towards the evening Jean herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh. She seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a still greater misfortune befell. Her standard bearer was hit, first in the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. What happened to the banner? We are not told. Jean most likely herself caught it as it fell. But at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strength failed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where she lay, refusing to quit the place. Some say she managed to slide into the dry ditch, where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attempts to carry her away. And some add that while she lay there, she employed herself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make it passable. It is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, to go on, and Paris would be won. She had promised, they say, to sleep that night within the conquered city. But this promise comes to us with no seal of authority. Jean knew that it had taken her eight days to free Orleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success in the more formidable achievement. But she was at least determined in her conviction that perseverance only was needed. She must have lain for hours on the slope of the outer moat. Urging on the troops was such force as her drauntless voice could give, repeating again and again that the place could be taken if they but held on. But when night came, Alain's son, and some other of the captains, overcame her resistance. And there being clearly no further possibility for the moment, succeeded in setting her upon her horse and conveyed her back to the camp. While they rode with her, supporting her on her charger, she did nothing but repeat, gale d'hommage. Oh, what a misfortune that the siege of Paris should fail, all for want of constancy and courage. If they had but gone on till morning, she cried, the inhabitants would have known. It is evident from this that she must have expected a rising within, and could not yet believe that no such thing was to be looked for. Parment motine! That place would have been taken! She said in the hearing, one cannot but feel of the chronicler, who reports so often those homely words. Thus Jean was led back after the first day's attack. Her wound was not serious, and she had been repulsed during one of the days fighting at Orléans without losing courage. But something had changed her spirit, as well as the spirit of the army she led. There is a curious glimpse given us into her camp at this point, which indeed comes to us through the observation of an enemy, yet seems to have in it an unmistakable gleam of truth. It comes from one of the parties which have been granted a safe conduct to carry away the dead of the English and Burgundy inside. They tell us, among other circumstances, such as that the French burnt their dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make them a horror to their neighbors, that many in the ranks cursed the maid who had promised that they should, without any doubt, sleep that night in Paris and plunder the wealthy city. The men with their safe conduct creeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which have fallen on their own side, infertively to count the fallen on the other, who were delighted to bring a report that the maid was no longer the fountain of strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces, are sinister figures, gripping their way through the darkness of the September night. Next morning, however, her wound being slight, Jean was up early and in conference with Elençon, begging him to sound his trumpets and set forth once more. I shall not budge from here till Paris is taken, she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp. The senior of Montmorency, with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entire camp. In the commotion of the revoyer, while each man looked to his weapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of the September morning, greeting the new friends and brothers in arms who had come in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than that of yesterday, the mode of attack. Jean would not confess that she felt her wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. And all were in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away, and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. Were the men at arms perhaps less amenable? Were they whispering to each other that Jean had promised them parry yesterday, and for the first time had not kept her word? It would almost require such a fact as this to explain what follows. For as they began to set out, the whole field and movement, they were suddenly seen approaching another party of cavaliers. Perhaps another reinforcement, like that of Montmorency? This new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen, and their immediate attendants, the Duke de Barre and the Comte de Clermont, always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from Saint Denis with orders from the king. These orders were abrupt and preemptory, to turn back. Jean and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and parry at their feet? There must have burst forth a storm of remonstrance and appeal. We cannot tell how long the indignant parlay lasted. The historians do not enlarge upon the disastrous incident. But at last the generals yielded to the orders of the king. Jean humiliated, miserable, and almost in despair. We cannot but feel that on no former occasion would she have given way so completely. She would have rushed to the king's presence, overwhelmed him with impetuous prayers, exhorted somehow the permission to go on. But Charles was safe at seven miles distance, and his envoys were imperious and preemptory, like men able to enforce obedience if it were not given. She obeyed at last, recovering courage a little in the hope of being able to persuade Charles to change his mind, and sanction another assault on parry from the other side, by means of a bridge over the Seine towards Saint Denis, which Alan's son had constructed. Next morning it appears that without even asking that permission, a portion of the army set out very early for this bridge. But the king had divined their project, and when they reached the riverside the first thing they saw was their bridge in ruins. It had been treacherously destroyed in the night, not by their enemies, but by their king. It is natural that the French historians should exhaust themselves in explanation of this fatal change of policy. Kishirah, who was the first to bring to light all the most important records of this period of history, lays the entire blame upon La Tremuelle, the chief advisor of Charles. But that Charles himself was at heart equally guilty no one can doubt. He was a man who proved himself in the end of his career to possess both sense and energy, though totally developed. It was to him that Jean had given that private sign of the truth of her mission, by which he was overawed and convinced in the first moment of their intercourse. Within the few months, which had elapsed since she appeared as Shinnon, everything that was wonderful had been done for him by her means. He was then a fugitive pretender, not even very certain of his own claim, driven into a corner of his lawful dominions, and fully prepared to abandon even that small standing ground to fly into Spain or Scotland and give up the attempt to hold his place as king of France. Now he was the consecrated king, with the holy oil upon his brows and the crown of his ancestors on his head, accepted and proclaimed, all France, stirring to her old allegiance, knew conquests falling into his hands every day and the richest portion of his kingdom secure under his sway. To check thus preemptorily the career of the deliverer who had done so much for him, degrading her from her place, throwing more than doubt upon her inspiration, falsifying by force the promises which she had made, promises which had never failed before, was a worse and deeper sin on the part of a young man, by right of his kingly office, the very head of knighthood and every chivalrous undertaking, than it could be on the part of an old and subtle diplomatist who had never believed in such wild measures and all through had clogged the steps and endeavored to neutralize the mission of the warrior made. It is very clear, however, that between them it was the king and his chamberlain who made this assault upon Paris so evident and complete a failure. One day his repulse was nothing in a siege, there had been one great repulse and several lesser ones at Orléans. Jean, even though weakened by her wound, had sprung up that morning full of confidence and courage. In no way was the failure to be laid to her charge. But this could never, perhaps, have been explained to the whole body of the army, who had believed her word without a doubt and taken her success for granted. If they had been wavering before, which seems possible, for they must have been to a considerable extent. New levees? The campaigners of the Loire having accomplished their period of feudal service. This sudden downfall must have strengthened every doubt and damped every enthusiasm. The maid of whom such wonderful tales have been told, she who have been the angel of triumph, the irresistible, before whom the English fled, and the very walls fell down. Was she after all only a sorceress, as the others called her, a creature whose incantations had failed after the flash of momentary success? Such impressions are too apt to come like clouds over every popular enthusiasm, quenching the light and chilling the heart. Jean was thus dragged back to Saint Denis against her will and every instinct of her being, and there ensued three days of passionate debate and discussion. For a moment it appeared as if she would have thrown off the bonds of loyal obedience and pursued her mission at all hazards. Her, voices, if they had previously given her uncertain sound, promising only the support and succour of God, but no success, now spoke more plainly and urged the continuance of the siege. And the maid was torn in pieces between the requirements of her celestial guardians and the force of authority around her. If she had broken out into open rebellion, who would have followed her? She had never yet done so. When the king was against her she had pleaded or forced an agreement and received or snatched a consent from the malevolent chamberlain, as at Jarjeu and Troy. Never yet had she set herself in public opposition to the will of her sovereign. She had submitted to all kinds of tests and trials rather than this, and to have lain half a day wounded outside Paris and to stand there pleading her cause with her wound still unhealed were not likely things to strengthen her powers of resistance. The voices bade, me remain, as Saint Denis, she said afterwards at her trial. And I desired to remain, but the seniors took me away in spite of myself. If I had not been wounded I should never have left. Added to the force of these circumstances it was no doubt apparent to all that to resume operations after that forced retreat and the betrayal it gave of divided councils would be less hopeful than ever. These arguments even convinced the bold Leheret, who for his part being no better than a freelance could move hither and thither as he would, and thus the first defeat of the Maid, a disaster involving all the misfortunes that followed in its train, was accomplished. Jean's last act in Saint Denis was one to which perhaps the modern reader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had a certain melancholy meaning. Before she left, dragged almost a captive in the train of the king, we are told that she laid on the altar of the cathedral the armor she had worn on that evil day before Paris. It was not an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the wars, and if she had been about to renounce her mission it would have been easily comprehensible. But no such thought was in her mind. Was it a movement of despair? Was it with some womanish fancy that the arms in which she had suffered defeat should not be born again? Or was it done in some gleam of higher revelation made to her that defeat, too, was a part of victory, and that not without that bitterness of failure could the fame of the soldier of Christ be perfected? I have remarked already that we hear no more of the white armor, inlaid with silver and dazzling like a mirror, in which she had begun her career. Perhaps it was the remains of that panoply of triumph, which she laid out before the altar of the patron saint of France, all dim now with hard work in the shadow of defeat. It must have marked a renunciation of one kind or another, the sacrifice of some hope. She was no longer Jean the Invincible, the triumphant whose very look made the enemy tremble and flee, and gave double force to every Frenchman's arm. Was she then and there abdicating, becoming to her own consciousness Jean the Champion only, honest and true, but no longer the inspired maid, the envoy of God? To these questions we can give no answer, but the act is pathetic and fills the mind with suggestions. She, who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature to have the triumph alone, the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. Jean had entered into that cloud when she offered the armor, that had been like a star in front of the battle at the Shrine of St. Denis. Hers was now to be a sadder, a humbler, perhaps a still nobler part. It is enough to trace the further movements of the king to perceive how at every step the iron must have entered deeper and deeper into the heart of the maid. He made his arrangements for the government of each of the towns which had acknowledged him, Buvais, Campagnet, Saint-Lis and the rest. He appointed commissioners for the due regulation of the truce with Philippe of Burgundy. And then the retreating army took its march southward, towards the mild and wealthy country, all fertility and quiet, where a requerient prince might feel himself safe and amuse himself at his leisure. By Lagne, by Provin, by Berset, Sceux, Sien, where he had been checked before in his retreat and almost forced to the March on Paris, by Sain and Montargis. Until at last on the 29th of September, no doubt diminished by the withdrawal of many a local troop and knight whose service was over, the forces arrived at Chien, where they had set forth at the end of June for a series of victories. It is to be supposed that the king was well enough satisfied with the conquests accomplished in three months, and indeed in ordinary circumstances they would have formed a triumphant list. Charles must have felt himself free to play after the work which he had not done, and to leave his good fortune and the able negotiators who hoped to get Paris and other good things from Philippe of Burgundy without paying anything for them, to do the rest. We can imagine nothing more dreadful for the maid than the months that followed. The court was not ungrateful to her, she received the warmest welcome from the queen. She had a maison arranged for her, like the household of a noble chief, with the addition of women and maidens of rank to her existing staff, and everything which could serve to show that she was one whom the king delighted to honor, and Charles would have her apparaled gloriously like the king's daughter in the psalm. He gave her a mantle of cloth of gold, open at both sides to wear over her armor, and apparently did his best to make her, if not a noble lady, yet into the semblance of a noble young Chevalier, one of the glories of his court, with all the distinction of her achievements and all the complacences of a carpet knight. It was set afterwards in the absence of any grave or possibility of accusation that she liked her fine clothes. The tears rise to the eyes at such a suggestion. She was so natural that let us hope she did, the murder maid whose torture had already begun. If that mantle of gold gave her a moment of pleasure, it is something to be thankful for in the midst of the dismal shadows that were already closing round her. They were ready to give her any shining mantle, any beautiful dress, even a title and a noble name if she would. But what the king and his counselors were determined on was that she should no more have the fame of individual triumph, or do anything save under their orders. Allen Sun, the gentle duke with whom she had taken so much trouble, and who had grown into a true and noble comrade, made one effort to free his friend and later. He planned an expedition into Normandy, where, with the help of Jean, he hoped to inflict upon the English a law so tremendous the destruction of their base of operations that they would be compelled to abandon the center of France altogether, and leave the way open to Paris into the recovery of the entire kingdom. But the king, or La Tramewell, as the historians prefer to say, would not permit Jean to accompany him, and this hope came to nothing. Allen Sun disbanded his troops, everything in the form of an army was broken up, the short period of feudal service making this inevitable unless new levies were made, and no forces were left under arms except those bands which formed at the bodyguard of the king. Nevertheless, there was plenty of work to be done still, and the breaking up of the French forces encouraged many a little garrison of English partisans, which would have yielded naturally and easily to a strong national party. In the midst of the winter, however, it seemed appropriate to the court to launch forth an expedition against some of the unsubdued towns, perhaps on account of the mortal languishment of Jean herself, perhaps for some other reason of its own. The first necessity was to collect the necessary forces, and for this reason Jean came de Bourges, where she was lodged in one of the great houses of the city, that of Reynard de Boulogne, Consolaire de Wa, and his wife, Marguerite, one of the queen's ladies. She was there for three weeks collecting her men, and the noble gentlewoman who was her hostess was afterwards in the rehabilitation trial, one of the witnesses to the purity of her life. From this lady and others we have a clear enough view of what the maid was in the second chapter of her history. She spent her time in the most intimate intercourse with Madame Marguerite, sharing even her room, so that nothing could be more complete than the knowledge of her hostess of every detail of her young guest's life, and wonderful as was the difference between the peasant maiden of Dom Rémy and the most famous woman in France, the life of Jean, the deliverer of her country, is as the life of Jean, the cottage's same stress, as simple, as devout, and as pure. She loved to go to church for the early metines, but as it was not fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought Madame Marguerite to go with her. In the evening she went to the nearest church, and there with all her old childish love for the church bells, she had them rung for half an hour, calling together the poor, the beggars who haunt every Catholic church, the poor friars and badest men, the penniless and forlorn from all the neighborhood. This custom would no doubt soon become known, and not only her poor pensioners, but the general crowd would gather to gaze at the maid, as well as to join in her prayers. It was her great pleasure to sing a hymn to the virgin, probably one of the litanies which the unlearned worshiper loves, with its choruses and constant repetitions, and company with all those untutored voices in the dimness of the church, while the twilight sank into night and the twinkling stars of candles on the altar made a radiance in the middle of the gloom. When she had money to give, she divided it, according to the liberal custom of her time, among her poor fellow-worshipers. These evening services were her recreation. The days were full of business, of enrolling soldiers and regulating the lances, groups of retainers, headed by their Lord, who came to perform their futile service. The ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing Madame Marguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege and thronged to visit her wonderful guest. They brought her their sacred medals and miseries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions. Was she afraid of being wounded, or was she assured that she would not be wounded? No more than others, she said, and she put away their religious ornaments with a smile, bidding Madame Marguerite touch them or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she did it. She would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking with a laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom were medals with her own effigy, if only one had the take for us. As there were many banners made after the pattern of hers, but cheerful as she was, a prevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life. On several occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attended her everywhere, of her death. If it should be my fate to die soon, tell the king our master, on my part, to build chapels, where prayer may be made to the most high for the salvation of the souls of those who shall die in the wars for the defense of the kingdom. This was the one thing she seemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind. Her thoughts indeed were heavy enough. Her larger enterprises had been cruelly put a stop to. Her companions and arms had been dispersed. She had been separated from her lieutenant, Ellen Sohn, and from all the friends between whom and herself great mutual confidence had sprung up. Even the commission, which had at last been put in her hands, was a trifling one, and led to nothing, bringing the king no nearer to any satisfactory end. And the troops were under command of a new captain, whom she scarcely knew, de Albert, who was the son-in-law of La Tremuelle, and probably little inclined to be a friend to Jean. In these circumstances, there was little of an exhilarating or promising kind. Nevertheless, as an episode, few things had happened to Jean more memorable than the siege of Saint Pierre-la-Motier. The first assault upon the town was unsuccessful. The retreat had sounded, and the troops were streaming back from the point of attack, when Jean de Lune, the faithful friend and brave gentleman who was at the head of the maid's military household, being himself wounded in the heel and unable to stand or walk, saw the maid almost alone before the stronghold, four or five men only with her. He dragged himself up as well as he could upon his horse, and hastened towards her, calling out to her to ask what she did there, and why she did not retire with the rest. She answered him, taking off her helmet to speak, that she would leave only when the place was taken, and went on shouting for faggots and beams to make a bridge across the ditch. It is to be supposed that seeing she paid no attention nor budged a step from that dangerous point. This brave man, wounded though he was, must have made an effort to rally the retiring besiegers. But Jean seems to have taken no notice of her desertion, nor ever to have paused in her shop for planks and cabians. All to the bridge, she shouted. Jean, with draw, with draw, you are alone, someone said to her, bareheaded her countenance all aglow, the maid replied, I have stood with me fifty thousand of my men. Were those the men whom the prophet's servants saw when his eyes were opened and he beheld the innumerable company of angels that surrounded his master? But Jean, wrapped in the trance and ecstasy of battle gave no explanation. To work, to work! her clear voice went on, ringing over the startled head of the good knight who knew war, but not any rapture like this. History itself, all stricken, would almost have us believe that alone, with her own hand, the maid took the city. So entirely does every figure disappear but that one, and the perplexed and terrified spectator, vainly urging her to give up so desperate an attempt. But no doubt the shouts of a voice so strange to every such scene, the vox infantile, the amazing and clear voice, silvery and womanly, as a femme, and the efforts of Doulan to bring back the retreating troops were successful, and Jean once more triumphantly kept her word. The place was strongly fortified, well provisioned, and full of people. Therefore the whole narrative is little less than miraculous, though very little is said of it. Had Daba persevered, as she had said, a few hours longer before Paris, who could tell that the same result might not have been obtained? She was not successful, however, with La Chèrette, which after a siege of a month's duration still held out and had to be abandoned. These long operations of regular warfare were not in Jean's way, and her co-ajouter in command, it must be remembered, was in this case commissioned by her chief enemy. We are told that she was left without supplies, and in the depths of winter and cold and rain and snow, with every movement hampered, and the ineffective government ever ready to send orders of retreat or to cause bewildering and confusing delays by the want of every munition of war. Finally, at all events, the French forces withdrew, and again, an unsuccessful enterprise was added to the record of the once victorious maid. That she went on continually promising victory as in her early times is probably the mere rumour spread by her detractors, who were now so many, for there is no real evidence that she did so. Everything, rather, points to discouragement, uncertainty, and to a silent rage against the coercion which she could not overcome. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Jean-Docke, Her Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ella Quint of Applebacksville, Pennsylvania. Jean-Docke, Her Life and Death by Margaret O. Oliphant. Chapter 9. Campagnet, 1430 By this time, France was once more all in flames. The English and Burgundians had entered and then abandoned Paris. Duke Philip cynically leaving that city, which he had promised to give up to Charles, to its own protection in order to look after his more pressing personal concerns. While Bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacent country, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which had opened their gates to the king. Thus, while Charles gave no attention to anything beyond the Loire, and kept his chief companion there, as it were, on the leash, permitting no return to the most important field of operations, almost all that had been gained was again lost upon the banks of the Seine. This was the state of affairs when Jean returned humbled and sad from the abandoned siege of La Charité. Her enemy's councils had triumphed all round, and this was the result. Individual fighting of no particular account and under no efficient organization were taking place day by day. Here, a town stood out heroically, there, another yielded to the foreign arms. The population were thrown back into universal misery. The spring fields trampled underfoot, the villages burned, every evil of war in full operation, invasion aggravated by faction, the English always aided by one side of France against the other, and neither peace nor security anywhere. This was the aspect of affairs on one side. On the other, appeared a still less satisfactory scene. Charles amusing himself, his counsellors, La Tramewell, and the Archbishop of Rem, carrying on fictitious negotiations with Burgundy, and playing with the maid who was in their power, sending her out to make a show and cast a spell, then dragging her back at the end of their shameful chain. While the court, the king and queen, and all their fluttering attendants gilded that chain and tried to make her forget by fine-closing caresses at once her mission and her despair. They were not ungrateful, no. Let us do them justice, for they might well have added this to the number of their sins. Mantles of cloth of gold, patents of nobility were at her command, had these been what she wanted. The only personal wrong they did to Jean was to set up against her a sort of opposition, another enchantress and visionary who had voices and apparitions too, and who was admitted to all the councils and gave her advice in contradiction of the maid, a certain Catherine de la Rochelle, who was ready to say anything that was put into her mouth, but who had done nothing to prove any mission for France or from God. We have little light, however, upon the state of affairs in those castles, which one after another were the abode of the court during this disastrous winter. They were safe enough on the other side of the Loire in the fat country, where the vines still flourished and the young corn grew. Now and then a band of armed men was sent forth to succor a fighting town in the suffering and struggling Île de France, always under the conflicting orders of those intringents and courtiers. But within the court all was gay. Never man, as Ruff Le Hire had said on an earlier occasion, lost his kingdom more gaily or with better grace. Then did Charles. Where was Le Hire? Where was Dunois? There is no appearance of these champions anywhere. Alan's son had returned to his province, only Latres-Muel and the Archbishop holding all the strings in their hands, upsetting all military plans, disgusting every chief, met and talked and carried on their busy intrigues, and played their civil. Sibel de Carrefour, says one of the historians indignantly, against the maid, who, all discouraged and downcast, fretted by caresses, sick of inactivity, dragged out the uneasy days in an uncongenial world. But Jean has left no record of the sensations with which she saw these days pass, eating her heart out, gazing over that rapid river, on the other side of which all the devils were unchained and every result of her brief revolution was being lost. At length, however, the impatience and despair were more than she could bear. The court was then at Sully, and the spring had begun with its longer days and more passable roads. Without a word to anyone, the maid left the castle. The war had rolled towards these princely walls as near as Melune, which was threatened by the English. A little band of intimate servants and associates, her two brothers, and a few faithful followers were with her. So far as we know, she never saw Charles or his courtiers again. They arrived at Melune in time to witness and to take part in the repulse of the English, and it was here that a communication was made to John by her saints, of which afterwards there was frequent mention. Little had been set of them during her dark time of inaction, and their tone was no longer as of old. It was on the side of the moat of Melune, where probably she was superintending some necessary work to strengthen the fortifications, or to put them in better order for defense, that this message reached her. The voices, which so often had urged her to victory and engage the faith of heaven for her success, had now a word to say, secret and personal to herself. It was that she should be taken prisoner, and the date was fixed before the St. John. It was the middle of April when this communication was made, and the feast of St. John, as everybody knows, is in the end of June, two months only to work in, to strike another blow for France. The voices bade her not to fear that God would sustain her, but it would be impossible not to be startled by such a sudden intimation in the midst of her reviving plans. The maid made one terrified prayer that God would let her die when she was taken, not subject her to long imprisonment. Her heart prophetically sprang to a sudden consciousness of the most likely, most terrible end that lay before her, for she had been often enough threatened with the sake and the fire to know what to expect. But the saintly voices made no reply. They bade her be strong and of good courage. Is not that the all-sustaining, all-delusive message for every martyr? It was the will of God and his support and sustaining power, which we often take to mean deliverance, but which is not always so, were promised. She asked where this terrible thing was to happen, but received no reply. Natural and simple as she was, she confessed afterwards that had she known she was to be taken on any certain day, she would not have gone out to meet the catastrophe, unless she had been forced by evident duty to do so. But this was not revealed to her. Before the saint John, it must almost have seemed a guarantee that until that time or near it she was safe. She would seem to have said nothing immediately of this vision to sadden those about her. In the meantime, however, there were other adventures in store for her. From Maloon to Lagney was no long journey, but it was through a country full of enemies, in which she must have been subject to attack at every corner of every road or field. And she had not been long in the latter place, which is said to have had a garrison of Scots, when news came of the passing of a band of Burgundians, a troop of raiders indeed, ravaging the country, taking advantage of the war to rob and lay waste churches, villages, and the growing fields wherever they passed. The troops was led by Frankat Duras, a famous pilard, robber of God and man. Jean set out to encounter this bandit with a party of some 400 men and various noble companions, among whom, however, we find no name familiar in her previous career, a certain Hugh Kennedy, a Scot, who is to be met with in various records of fighting, being one of the most notable among them. Frankat's band fought vigorously but were cut to pieces and the leader was taken prisoner. When this man was brought back to Lagney, a prisoner to be ransomed, in whom Jean desired to exchange for one of her own side, the law laid claim to him as a criminal. He was a prisoner of war. What was it that made his duty to do? The question is hotly debated by the historians and it was brought against her at her trial. He was a murderer, a robber, the scourge of the country, especially to the poor whom Jean protected and cared for everywhere, was he pitiless and cruel. She gave him up to justice and he was tried, condemned, and beheaded. If it was wrong, from a military point of view, it was her only error, and shows how little there was with which to reproach her. In Lagney other things passed of a more private nature. Every day and all day long her voices repeated their message in her ears. Before the Saint John. She repeated it to some of her closest comrades, but left herself no time to dwell upon it. Still worse than the giving up of Franquette was the supposed resuscitation of a child, born dead, which its parents implored her to pray for, that it might live again to be baptized. She explained the story to her judges afterwards. It was the habit of the time. Nay, we believe continues to this day in some primitive places to lay the dead infant on the altar in such a case, in hope of a miracle. It is true, said Jean, that the maidens of the town were all assembled in the church praying God to restore life that it might be baptized. It is also true that I went and prayed with them. The child opened its eyes, yawned three or four times, was christened, and died. This is all I know. The miracle is not one that will find much credit nowadays, but the devout custom was at least simple and intelligible enough. They would afford it an excellent occasion to attribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of Lagné, but of God. From Lagné, Jean went on to various other places in danger, or which wanted encouragement and help. She made two or three hurried visits to Campagné, which was threatened by both parties of the enemy. At one time raising the siege of Choussus near Campagné, in company with the Archbishop of Rem, a strange brother-in-arms. On another of her visits to Campagné, there is said to have occurred an incident which, if true, reveals to us with very sad reality the trouble that overshadowed the maid. She had gone to early Mass in the Church of Saint-Jacques, and communicated as was her custom. It must have been near Easter, perhaps the occasion of the First Communion of some of the children who are so often referred to, among whom she loved to worship. She had retired behind a pillar on which she leaned as she stood, and a number of people, among whom were many children, drew near after the service to gaze at her. Jean's heart was full, and she had no one near to whom she could open it and relieve her soul. As she stood against the pillar, her trouble burst forth. Dear friends and children, she said, I have to tell you that I have been sold and betrayed, and will soon be given up to death. I beg of you to pray for me, for soon I shall no longer have any power to serve the King and the Kingdom. These words were told to the writer who records them, in the year 1498, by two very old men who had heard them, being children at the time. The scene was one to dwell in a child's recollection, and, if true, it throws a melancholy light upon the thoughts that filled the mind of Jean, though her actions may have seemed as energetic and her impulses as strong as in her best days. At last the news came speeding through the country that Compagnier was being invested on all sides. It had been the headquarters of Charles and had received him with acclamations, and therefore the alarm of the townsfolk for the retribution awaiting them, should they fall into the hands of the enemy, was great. It was besides a very important position. Jean was at Crespi en Velois when this news reached her. She set out immediately, May 22nd, 1430, to carry aid to the garrison. Theraïvois main bon ami des compagnies, she said. The words are on the base of her statue, which now stands in the place of that town. Something of her early impetuosity was in this impulse, and no apparent dread of any fatality. She wrote all night at the head of her party, and arrived before the dawn, a May morning, the 23rd, still a month from the fatal Saint-Jean. Though the prophecy was always in her ears, she must have felt that whole month still before her, with the sensation of almost greater safety because the dangerous moment was fixed. The town received her with joy, and no doubt the satisfaction and relief which hailed her and her reinforcements gave additional fervor to the maid, and drove out of her mind for a moment the fatal knowledge which oppressed it. There is some difficulty in understanding the events of this day, but the lucid narrative of Kishara, which we shall not quote, gives a very vivid picture of it. Jean had timed her arrival so early in the morning, probably with the intention of keeping the adversaries in their camps unaware of so important an addition to the garrison, in order that she might surprise them by the sortie she had determined upon. But no doubt the news had leaked forth somehow, if through no other means, by the sudden ringing of the bells and sounds of joy from the city. She paid her usual visits to the churches, and noted, and made all her arrangements for the sortie with her usual care, occupying the long summer day in these preparations. And it was not till five o'clock in the evening that everything was complete, and she sallied forth. We hear nothing of the State of the Town, or of any suspicion existing at the time as to the Governor Flavie, who was afterwards believed by some to be the man who sold and betrayed her. It is a question debated warmly like all these questions. He was a man of bad reputation, but there is no evidence that he was a traitor. The incidents are all natural enough, and seem to indicate clearly the mere fortune of war upon which no man can calculate. We add from Kishara the description of the field and what took place there. Compagnet is situated on the left bank of the was. On the other side extends a great meadow, nearly a mile broad, at the end of which the rising ground of Picardie rises suddenly like a wall, shutting in the horizon. The meadow is so low and so subject to floods that it is crossed by an ancient foot of the low hills. Three village churches mark the extent of the landscape visible from the walls of Compagnet. Magne, sometimes spelled M-A-R-I-G-N-Y, at the end of the road. Clairois, three-quarters of a league higher up, at the confluence of the two rivers, the Arand and the was, close to the spot where another tributary, the N, also flows into the was, and Venet a mile and a half lower down. The Burgundians had one camp at Magne, another at Clairois. The headquarters of the English were at Venet. As for the inhabitants of Compagnet, their first defense facing the enemy was one of those redoubts, or towers, which the chronicles of the 15th century called a boulevard. It was placed at the end of the bridge and commanded the road. The plan of the maid was to make a sortie towards the evening, to attack Magne and afterwards Clairois, and then at the opening of the Arand valley, to meet the Duke of Burgundy and his forces who were lodged there, and who would naturally come to the aid of his other troops when attacked. She took no thought for the English, having already carefully arranged with Flavie how they should be prevented from cutting off her retreat. The Governor provided against any chance of this by arming the boulevard strongly with archers, to drive off any advancing force, and also by keeping Reddy on the was a number of covered boots to receive the foot soldiers in case of a retrograde movement. The action began well. The garrison of Magne yielded in the twinkling of an eye. That of Clairois, rushing to the support of their brothers in arms, was repulsed, then in its turn repulsed the French, and three times this alternative of advance and retreat took place on the flat ground of the meadow without serious injury to either party. This gave time to the English to take part in the fray. Though thanks to the precautions of Flavie all they could do was to swell the ranks of the Regundians. But unfortunately the rear of the maids army was struck with the possibility that a diversion may be attempted from behind, and their retreat cut off. A panic seized them. They broke their ranks, turned back and fled, some to the boats, some to the barrier of the boulevard. The English, witnessing this flight, rushed after them, secure now on the side of Compagnet, where the archers no longer ventured to shoot lest they should kill the fugitives instead of the enemies. They, the English, thus got possession of the raised road, and pushed on so hotly after the fugitives that their horses' heads touched the backs of the crowd. It thus became necessary for the safety of the town to close the gates until the barrier of the boulevard should be set up again. These disastrous accidents had taken place while Jean, charging in front with her companions and bodyguard, remained quite unaware of any misfortune. She would hear no call to retreat even when her companions were roused to the dangers of their position. Forward they are ours, was all her cry. As at St. Pierre-La-Moutier, she was ready to defeat the Burgundian army alone. At length the others perceiving something of what had happened seized her bridle and forced her to retire. She was of herself too remarkable a figure to be concealed amid the group of armed men who rode with her, encircling her, defending the rear of the flying party. Over her armour she wore a crimson tunic, or according to some authorities, a short cloak, of gorgeous material embroidered with gold, and though by this time the twilight must have afforded a partial shelter, yet the knowledge that she was there gave keenness to every eye. Behind the scattered Burgundians had rallied and begun to pursue, while the armour and spears of the English glittered in front between the little party and the barrier which was blocked by a terrified crowd of fugitives. Even then a party of horsemen might have cut their way through, but at the moment when Jean and her followers drew near, the barrier was sharply closed and the wild, confused and fighting crowd treading each other down, struggling for life, were forced back upon the English Lances. Thus the retreating band riding hard along the raised road, in order and unbroken, found the path suddenly barred by the forces of the enemy, the fugitives of their own army, and the closed gates of the town. An attempt was then made by the maid and her companions to turn towards the western gate where there still might have been a chance of safety, but by this time the smaller figure among all those steelclad men and the waving mantle must have been distinguished through the dusk and the dusk. There was a wild rush of combat and confusion and in a moment she was surrounded, seized, her horse and her person notwithstanding all resistance. With cries of rendezvous and many an evil name, fierce faces and threatening weapons closed round her. One of her assailants, a Burgundian knight, a Picard archer, the accounts differ, caught her by her mantle and dragged her from her horse. No Englishmen, let us be thankful, though no doubt all were equally eager and ready. Into the midst of that shouting massive men, in the blinding cloud of dust and the darkening of the night, the maid of France disappeared for one terrible moment and was lost to view. And then, and not till then, came a clamour of bells into the night and all the steeples of Campagnet trembled with the call to arms, a sally to save the deliverer. Was it treachery? Was it only a perception too late of the danger? There are not wanting voices to say that a prompt sally might have saved Jean, and that it was quite within the power of the governor and the city had they chosen. Who can answer so dreadful a suggestion? It is too much shame to human nature to believe it. Perhaps within Campagnet as without they were too slow to perceive the supreme moment, too much overwhelmed to snatch any chance of rescue till it was too late. Happily we have no light upon the tumult around the prisoner, the ugly triumph, the shouts and exultation of the captors who had seized the sorceress at last, nor upon the thoughts of Jean, with her threatened doom fulfilled and unknown horrors before her upon which imagination must have thrown the most dreadful light, however strong like her courage was sustained by the promise of succor from on high. She had not been sent upon this mission as of old. No heavenly voice had said to her, go and deliver Campagnet. She had undertaken that warfare on her own charges with no promise to encourage her, only the certainty of being overthrown before the St. Jean. But the St. Jean was still far off, a long month of summer days between her and that moment of fate. So far as we can see Jean showed no one seemly weakness in this dark hour. One account tells us that she held her sword high over her head declaring that it was given by a higher than any who could claim its surrender there, but she neither struggled nor wept. Not a word against her constancy and courage could anyone, then or after, find to say. The Burgundian chronicler tells us one thing, the French, another. The maid, easily recognized by her costume of crimson and by the standard which she carried in her hand, alone continued to defend herself, says one. But that, we are sure, could not have been the case as long as Doulan, who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse. She yielded and gave her parole to Lionel Batard de Wadom, says another. But Jean herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reserving to herself the right to escape if she could. In that dark evening scene nothing is clear except the fact that the maid was taken, to the exultation and the light of her captors, and to the terror and grief of the unhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms, and with its sons and champions by hundreds dying under the English lances and in the dark waves of the was. The archer, or whoever it was who secured this prize, took Jean back, along the bloody road with its relics of the fight, to Margne, the Burgundian camp, where the leaders crowded together to see so important a prisoner. Thither came soon after, says Monstrelet. The Duke of Burgundy, from his camp of Kaldun, and there assembled the English, the said Duke, and those of the other camps in great numbers, making, one with the other, great cries and rejoicings on the taking of the maid, whom the said Duke went to see in the lodging where she was and spoke some words to her which I cannot call to mind, though I was there present. After which the said Duke and the others withdrew for the night, leaving the maid in the keeping of Messer John of Lundsenburg, to whom she had been immediately sold by her first captor. The same night Philip, this noble Duke and Prince of France, wrote a letter to convey the blessed information. The great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and brought to the knowledge of all that they may see the error of those who could believe and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman. We write this in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and that you may thank God, our Creator. Pray that it may be his holy will to be more and more favorable to the enterprises of our Royal Master and to the restoration of his sway over all his good and faithful subjects. This Royal Master was Henry the Sixth of England, the baby king, doomed already to expiate sins that were not his by the saddest life and reign. The French historians whimsically, but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on Philip's part, and on that of his contemporaries in general, to the score of the English, which is hard measure, seeing that the treachery of a Frenchman could in no way be attributed to the other nation, of which he was the natural enemy, or at least antagonist. Very naturally, the subsequent proceedings in all their horror and cruelty are equally put down to the English account, although Frenchmen took. Exalted over as a prisoner, tried and condemned as an enemy of God and the Church, the spotless creature who was France incarnate, the very embodiment of her country in all that was purest and noblest. We shall see with what spontaneous zeal of France, except her own small party, set to work to accomplish this noble office. Almost before one could draw breath, the University of Perry claimed her as a proper victim for the inquisition. Compagné made no sally for her deliverance, Charles no attempt to ransom her. From end to end of France not a finger was lifted for her rescue. The women wept over her, the poor people still crowded around the prisoner wherever seen, but the France of every public document, of every practical power, the living nation, when it did not utter cries of hatred, kept silence. We in England have over and over again acknowledged with shame our guilty part in her murder, but still to this day the Frenchmen tries to shield his undercover of the English influence and terror. He cannot deny Les Tremois, nor Cauchon, nor the University, nor the learned doctors who did the deed. Individually he is ready to give them all up to the everlasting fires which one cannot but hope are kept alive for some people in spite of all modern benevolences, but he skillfully turns back to the English as a moving cause of everything. Nothing can be more untrue. The English were not better than the French, but they had the excuse at least of being the enemy. France saved by a happy chance her blanche main from the actual blood of the pure and spotless maid. But with exultation she prepared the victim for the steak, sent her thither, played with her like a cat with a mouse, and condemned her to the fire. This is not to free us from our share, but it is the height of hypocrisy to lay the blood of Jean entirely to our door. Thus Jean's inspiration proved itself over again in blood and tears. It had been proved already on battlefield and city wall, with loud trumpets of joy and victory. But the voices had spoken again, sounding another strain. Not always of glory, it is not the way of God, but of prison, downfall, distress. Be not astonished at it, they said to her. God will be with you. From day to day they had spoken in the same strain, with no joyful commands to go forth and conquer, but the one refrain, before the Saint-Jean. Perhaps there was a certain relief in her mind at first when the blow fell and the prophecy was accomplished. All she had to do now was to suffer, not to be surprised, to trust in God that he would support her, to Jean, no doubt, in the confidence and inexperience of her youth, that meant that God would deliver her. And so he did, but not as she expected. The sunshine of her life was over, and now the long shadow, the bitter storm, was to come. Nothing could be more remarkable than the response of France in general to this extraordinary event. In Paris, there were bonfires lighted to share their joy. The Thaad Thu'em was sung at Notre-Dame. At the court, Charles and his counselors amused themselves with another prophet, a shepherd from the hills who was to rival Jean's best achievements, but never did so. Only the towns which she had delivered had still a tender thought for Jean. At Tour, the entire population appeared in the streets with bare feet, singing the misery, impenance, and affliction. Orléans and Blois made public prayers for her safety. Rem, in which there was much independent interest in Jean and her truth, had to be specially soothed by a letter from the Archbishop, in which he made out with great cleverness that it was the fault of Jean alone that she was taken. She did nothing but by her own will, without obeying the commandments of God, he says. She would hear no counsel, but followed her own pleasure. And it is in this letter that we hear of the shepherd-led who was to replace Jean, and that it was his opinion, or revelation, that God had suffered the maid to be taken because of her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred her own will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented the city of Rome. Similar reasoning, however, seems to have silenced France. Nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow. The mournful procession of Torre, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the prayers of Orléans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we know of. Otherwise there was lifted in France neither voice nor hand to avert her doom. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Jean-Doc, Her Life and Death This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ella Quint of Applebacksville, Pennsylvania. Jean-Doc, Her Life and Death by Margaret O. Oliphant Chapter 10 The Captive May 1430 January 1431 We have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary laws at once of chivalry and of honest warfare. Jean had been captured as a general at the head of her forces. She was a prisoner of war. Such a prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in no bodily danger. He is worth more alive than dead, a great ransom perhaps, perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishment of everything it was intended to gain. At least he is most valuable to exchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. It was like taking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outrage deeply resented by his captor, and unjustified by any law. It was true that Jean herself had transgressed this universal custom, but a little while before, by giving it Francket de Raas to his prosecutors. But Francket was beyond the courtesies of war, a noted criminal, robber, and destroyer. Yet she ought not perhaps to have departed from the military laws of right and wrong, while everything in the country was under the hasty arbitration of war. No one, however, so far as we know, produces this matter of Francket as a precedent in her own case. From the first moment of her seizure there was no question of the custom and privilege of warfare. She was taken as a wild animal might have been taken, the only doubt being how to make the most signal example of her. Vengeance in the glimmy form of the Inquisition claimed her the first day. No such word as ransom was breathed from her own side. None was demanded, none was offered. Her case is at once separated from every other. Yet the reign of chivalry was at its height, and women were supposed to be the objects of a kind of worship, every night being sworn to succor and help them in need and trouble. There was perhaps something of the subtle jealousy of sex so constantly denied on the stronger side, but yet always existing, in the abrogation of every law of chivalry as well as of warfare, in respect to the maid. That man is indeed of the highest strain of generosity who can bear to be beaten by a woman, and all the seething, agitated world of France had been beaten by this girl. The English and Burgundians, in the ordinary sense of the word, have been overcome in fair field, forced to fly before her. The French, her own side, had experienced an even more penetrating downfall by having the honors of victory taken from them, she alone winning the day where they had all failed. This is bitterer, perhaps, than merely to be compelled to raise a siege or to fail in a fight. The Frenchmen fought like lions, but the praise was to Jean, who never struck a blow. Such great hearts as Du Noir, such a courteous prince as Alonçon, were too magnanimous to feel, or at least to resent, the grievance. They seconded her, and fought under her with a nobility of mind and disinterestedness beyond praise. But it was not to be supposed that the common mass of the French captains were like these. She had wronged and shamed them by taking the glory from them, as much as she had shamed the English by making those universal fictors fly before her. The burgers whom she had rescued, the poor people who were her brethren in whom she sought everywhere, might weep and cry out to heaven, but they were powerless at such a moment. And every law that might have helped her was pushed aside. On the 25th the news was known in Paris, and immediately there appears in the record a new adversary to Jean, the most bitter and implacable of all. The next day, May 26th, 1430, without the loss of an hour, a letter was addressed to the Burgundian camp from the capital. Kishibah speaks of it as a letter from the inquisitor or vicar general of the inquisition, written by the officials of the university. Others tell us that an independent letter was sent from the university to second that of the inquisitor. The university we may add was not a university like one of ours, or like any existing at the present day. It was an ecclesiastical corporation of the highest authority in every cause connected with the church, while gathering law, philosophy, and literature under its wing. The first theologians, the most eminent jurists, were collected there, not by any means always in alliance with the narrower tendencies and methods of the inquisition. It is notable, however, that this great institution lost no time in claiming the prisoner, whose chief offense in its eyes was less her career as a warrior than her position as a sorceress. The actual facts of her life were of secondary importance to them. Orlean, Rem, even her attack upon Paris, were nothing in comparison with the black art which they believed to be her inspiration. The guidance of heaven, which was not the guidance of the church, was to them a claim which meant only rebellion of the direst kind. They had longed to seize her and strip her of her presumptuous pretensions from the first moment of her appearance. They could not allow a day of her overthrow to pass by without snatching, at this much desired victim. No one perhaps will ever be able to say what it is that makes a trial for heresy and sorcery, especially in the days when fire and flame, the rack and the stake, stood at the end, so exciting and horribly attractive to the mind. Whether it is the revelations that are hoped for, of these strange commresses between earth and the unknown, into which we would all feign pride if we could, in pursuit of some better understanding than has ever yet fallen to the lot of man. Whether it is the strange and dreadful pleasure of seeing a soul driven to extremity and fighting for its life through all the subtleties of thought and fierce attacks of interrogation, or the mere love of inflicting torture, misery and death, which the Church was prevented from doing in the common way, it is impossible to tell. But there is no doubt that a thrill like the wings of vultures crowding to the prey, a sense of horrible claws and beaks and greedy eyes is in the air, whenever such a tribunal is thought of. The thrill, the stir, the eagerness among those black birds of doom is more evident than usual in the headlong haste of that demand. Say the historians. The more shame for them if it was so. But they were clearly under influence wider and more infallible, the influence of that instinct, whatever it may be, which makes a trial for heresy ten thousand times more cruel, less restrained by any humanities of nature, than any other kind of trial which history records. That is what the Inquisitor demanded after a long description of Jean, called the Maid, as having dogmatized, sown, published, and caused to be published, many and diverse errors from which have ensued great scandals against the divine honor and our holy faith. Using the rights of our office and the authority committed to us by the Holy See of Rome, we instantly command and enjoin you, in the name of the Catholic faith, and under penalty of the law, and all other Catholic persons of whatsoever condition, preeminence, authority, or estate, to send or to bring as prisoner before us with all speed and surety, the said Jean, vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy, that proceedings may be taken against her before us in the name of the Holy Inquisition, and with the favor and aid of the doctors and masters of the University of Paris and other notable counselors present there. It was the English who put it into the heads of the Inquisitor and the University to do this, all the anxious Frenchmen cry. We can only reply again, the more same for the French doctors and priests, but there was very little time to bring that influence to bear, and there is an eagerness and precipitation in the demand which is far more like the headlong natural rush for a much desired prize than any course of action suggested by a third party. Nor is there anything to lead us to believe that the movement was not spontaneous. It is little likely indeed that the Sorbonne nowadays would concern itself about any inspired maid, any more than the enlightened Oxford would do so. But the ideas of the 15th century were widely different, in which craft and heresy were the most enthralling and exciting of subjects, as they are still to whosoever believes in them, learned or unlearned, great or small. It must be added that the entire mind of France, even of those who loved Jean and believed in her, must have been shaken to its depths by this catastrophe. We have no sympathy with those who compare the career of any mortal martyr with the far more mysterious agony and passion of our Lord. Yet we cannot but remember what a tremendous element the disappointment of their hopes must have been in the misery of the first disciples, the apostles, the mother, all the spectators who had watched with wonder and faith the mission of the Messiah. Had it failed? Had all the signs come to nothing, all those divine words and ways, to our minds so much more wonderful than any miracles? Was there no meaning in them? Were they mere, unaccountable delusions, deceptions of the senses, inspirations perhaps of mere genius, not from God at all except in a secondary way? In the three terrible days that followed the crucifixion, the burden of a world must have lain on the minds of those who had seen every hope fail. No legions of angels appearing, no overwhelming revelation from heaven, no change in a moment out of misery into the universal kingship, the triumphant march. That was but the self-delusion of the earth, which continually travestized the schemes of heaven. Yet the most terrible of all despairs is such a pause and horror of doubt, lest nothing should be true. But in the case of this little maiden, this handmaid of the Lord, the deception might have been all-natural and perhaps shared by herself. Were her first triumphs accidents merely? Were her voices delusions? Had she been given up by heaven, of which she had called herself the servant? It was a stupor which quenched every voice, a great silence through the country, only broken by the penitential psalms at tour. The compagniae people, writing to Charles two days after May 23rd, did not mention Jean at all. We need not immediately take into account the baser souls always plentiful, the envious captains and the rest who might be secretly rejoicing. The entire country, both friends and foes, had come to a dreadful pause and did not know what to think. The last circumstance of which we must remind the reader, and which was of the greatest importance, is that it was only a small part of France that knew anything personally of Jean. From tour it is a far cry to pick our day. All her triumphs had taken place in the south. The captive of Beaulieu and Beaurevoir spent the sad months of her captivity among a population which could have heard of her only by flying rumours coming from hostile quarters. From the midland of France to the sea, near to which her prison was situated, is a long way. And those northern districts were as unlike the Orléans as if they had been in two different countries. Rouen and Normandy no more resembled Rem than Eidenburg resembled London, and in the 15th century that was saying a great deal. Nothing can be more deceptive than to think of these separate and often hostile duchies as if they bore any resemblance to the France of today. The captor of Jean was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg, and took her, as we have seen, to the quarters of his master at Margne, into whose hands she thence forward passed. She was kept in the camp three or four days and then transferred to the castle of Beaulieu, which belonged to him, and afterwards to the more important stronghold of Beaurevoir, which seems to have been his principal residence. We know very few details of her captivity, according to one chronicler, Dalon, her faithful friend and attendant, was with her at least in the former of those prisons, where at first she would appear to have been hopeful and in good spirits. If we may trust to the brief conversation between her and Dalon, which is one of the few details which reach us of that period. While he lamented over the probable fate of Compagnie, she was confident. That poor town of Compagnie that you loved so much, he said, by this time it will be in the hands of the enemies of France. No, said the maith, the places which the king of heaven brought back to the allegiance of the gentle king Charles by me will not be retaken by his enemies. In this case, at least, the prophecy came true. And perhaps there might have been at first a certain relief in Jean's mind, such as often follows after a long threatened blow has fallen. She had no longer the vague tortures of suspense, and probably believed that she would be ransomed as was usual, and in the silence and seclusion her voices, which she had not obeyed as of first, but yet which had not abandoned her, nor shown estrangement, were more near and audible than amid the noise and tumult of war. They spoke to her often, sometimes three times a day, as she afterward said, in the unbroken quiet of her prison. And though they no longer spoke of new enterprises and victories, their words were full of consolation. But it was not long that Jean's young and vigorous spirit could content itself with inaction. She was no mystic, willingly giving herself over to dreams and visions is more possible to the old than to the young. Her confidence and hope for her good friends of Compagnet gave way before the continued tail of their sufferings, and the inveterate siege which was driving them to desperation. No doubt the worst news was told to Jean, and twice over she made a desperate attempt to escape, in hope of being able to sucker them, but without any sanction, as she confesses, from her spiritual instructors. At Beaulieu the attempt was simple enough. The narrative seems to imply that the doorway, or some part of the wall of her room, had been closed with laths or planks nailed across an opening, and between these she succeeded in slipping, as she was very slight, with the hope of locking the door to an adjoining guard room upon the men who had charge of her and thus getting free. But alas, the porter of the chateau who had no business there suddenly appeared in the corridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber. At Beaulieu, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperate one, and indicated despair and irritation of mine which had become unbearable. At this place her own condition was much alleviated. The castle was the residence of Jean de Luxembourg's wife and aunt, ladies who visited Jean continually, and soon became interested and attached to her. But as the master of the house was himself in the camp before Campagnet, they had the advantage or disadvantage, as far as the prisoner was concerned, of constant news, and Jean's trouble for her friends grew daily. She seems, indeed, after the assurance she had expressed at first, to have fallen into great doubt and even carried on within herself a despairing argument with her spiritual guides on this point, battling with these saintly influences, as in the depths of the troubled heart many have done with the creator himself in similar circumstances. How, she cried, could God let them perish who had been so good and loyal to their king? Saint Catherine replied gently that he would himself care for these bonamis, and even promised that, before the Saint Martin, relief would come. But Jean had probably by this time, in her great disappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so much power to help, where she only free, got beyond her own control. They bade her to be patient. One of them, amid their exhortations to accept her fate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyed to her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she had seen the King of England. Truly I will not see him. I would rather die than fall into the hands of the English, cried Jean in her petulance. The King of England is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as if he had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child he really was. But Jean, in her helplessness and impotence, was impatient even with her saints. Day by day the news came in from Compagnet, all that was favourable to the Burgundians, received with joy and thanksgiving by the ladies of Luxembourg, while the captive consumed her heart with vain indignation. At last Jean would seem to have wrought herself up to the most desperate of expedience. Whether her room was in the donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the house to mount to the battlements there, we are not informed. Probably the latter was the case, for it was from the top of the tower that the rash girl, at last, flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzy of alarm or sting of evil tidings can never be known. Probably she had hoped that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, and that faith was all that was wanted, as on so many other occasions. Perhaps she had heard of the negotiations to sell her to the English, which would give a keener urgency to her determination to get free. All that appears in the story, however, is her wild anxiety about Compagnet and her Bonamie, how she escaped destruction no one knows. She was rescued for a more tremendous and harder fate. The maid was taken up as dead from the foot of the tower, the height is estimated at 60 feet. But she was not dead, nor even seriously hurt. Her frame, so slight that she had been able to slip between the bars put up to secure her, had so little solidity that the shock would seem to have been all that ailed her. She was stunned and unconscious and remained so far some time, and for three days neither ate nor drank. But though she was so humbled by the effects of the fall, she was comforted by St. Catherine, who bade her confess and implore the mercy of God for her rash disobedience, and repeated the promise that before, Martin Mass Compagnet should be relieved. Jean did not perhaps in her rebellion deserve this encouragement, but the heavenly ladies were kind and pitiful, and did not stand upon their dignity. The wonderful thing was that Jean recovered perfectly from this tremendous leap. The earthly ladies, those who completely on the other side, were scarcely less kind to the maid. They visited her daily, carried their news to her, were very friendly and sweet, and no doubt other visitors came to make the acquaintance of a prisoner so wonderful. There was one point on which they were very urgent, and this was about her dress. It shamed and troubled them to see her in the costume of a man. Jean had her good reasons for that, which perhaps she did not care to tell them, fearing to shock the ears of a demoiselle of Luxembourg with a suggestion of dangers of which she knew nothing. No doubt it was true that while doing the serious work of war, as she said afterwards, it was best that she should be dressed as a man. But Jean had reason to know besides that it was safer among the rough comrades and gaolers who now surrounded her to wear the tight-fitting and firmly fastened dress of a soldier. She answered the ladies and the remonstrances with all the grace of a courtier. Could she have done it? She would rather have yielded the point to them, she said, than to anyone else in France except the Queen. The women wherever she went were always faithful to this young creature, so pure womanly in her young angelhood and manhood. The poor followed to kiss her hands or her armor, the rich wooed her with tender flatteries and persuasions. There is not record in all her career of any woman who was not her friend. For the last dreary month of that winter, she was sent to the fortress of Courtois on the Somme, for what reason we are not told, probably to be more near the English into whose hands she was about to be given up. Again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with the ragundians and not with the English. If Charles I was sold as we Scots all indignantly deny, the shame of the sale was on our nation, not on England, whom nobody has ever blamed for the transaction. The sale of Jean was brutally frank. It was indeed a ransom which was paid to Jean of Luxembourg with a share to the first captor, the archer who had secured her. But it was simple blood money as everybody knew. At Courtois she had once more the solace of female society, again with much pressing upon her of their own heavy skirts and hanging sleeves. A fellow prisoner in the dungeon of Courtois, a priest, said mass every day and gave her the Holy Communion. And her mind seems to have been soothed and calmed. Compagnie was relieved, the saints had kept their word. She had that burdened the less upon her soul. And over the country there were again stirrings of French rallyer and success. The day of the maid was over, but it began to bear the fruit of a national quickening of vigor and life. It was at Courtois in December that she was transferred to English hands. The eager offer of the University of Paris to see her speedy condemnation had not been accepted, and perhaps the Burgundians had been willing to wait to see if any ransom was forthcoming from France. Perhaps too, Paris, which sang the thé d'homme when she was taken prisoner, began to be a little startled by its own enthusiasm and to ask itself the question, what there was to be so thankful about. A result which has happened before in the history of that impulsive city. And Paris was too near the centre of France, where the balance seemed to be turning again in favour of the national party, to have its thoughts distracted by such a trial as was impending. It seemed better to the English leaders to conduct their prisoner to a safer place, to the depths of Normandy where they were most strong. They seemed to have carried her away in the end of the year, travelling slowly along the coast and reaching Rouen by way of eau and dip, as far away as possible from any risk of rescue. She arrived in Rouen in the beginning of the year 1431, having thus been already for nearly eight months in close custody. But there were no further administrations of kind women for Jean. She was now distinctly in the hands of her enemies, those who had no sympathy or natural softening of feeling towards her. The severities inflicted upon her in her new prison at Rouen were terrible, almost incredible. We are told that she was kept in an iron cage, like the Countess of Boucan in earlier days by Edward I, bound hands and feet and throat to a pillar, and watched incessantly by English soldiers, the latter being an abominable and hideous method of torture which was never departed from during the rest of her life. Afterwards at the beginning of her trial she was relieved from the cage, but never from the presence and scrutiny of this fierce and hateful bodyguard. Such detestable cruelties were in the matter of the time, which does not make us the less sicken at them with burning indignation and the rage of shame. For this aggravation of her sufferings England alone was responsible. The Burgundians at their worst had not used her so. It is true that she was to them a piece of valuable property worth so much good money, which is a powerful argument everywhere. But to the English she meant no money, no one offered to ransom Jean on the side of her own party for whom she had done so much, even at tour and orlion so far as appears there was no subscription to speak in modern terms. No cry among the Burgers to gather their crowns for her redemption, not a word, not an effort, only a barefooted procession, a mass, a misery which had no issue. France stood silent to see what would come of it, and her scholars and divines swarmed towards Rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should come of it to the ignorant country lass, who had set up such pretenses of knowing better than others. The king congratulated himself that he had another prophetess as good as she, and a heaven-sent boy from the mountains who would do as well and better than Jean. Where was Junois? Where was Lahire? A soldier bound by no conventions, a captain whose troop went like the wind where it listed and whose valour was known. Where was Young Guy de Laval, so ready to sell his lands that his men might be fit for service? All silent. No man drawing a sword or saying a word. It is evident that in this frightful pause of fate Jean had become to France as to England, the witch whom it was perhaps a danger to have had anything to do with, whose spells had turned the world upside down for a moment. But these spells had become ineffectual or worn out as is the nature of sorcery. No explanation, not even the well-worn and so often valid one of human baseness, could explain the terrible situation, if not this.