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JEANNE D'ARC

It is no small effort for the mind, even of the most well-informed, how much more of those whose exact knowledge is not great , to transport itself out of this nineteenth century which we know so thoroughly, and which has trained us in all our present habits and modes of thought, into the fifteenth, four hundred years back in time, and worlds apart in every custom and action of life. What is there indeed the same in the two ages? Nothing but the man and the woman, the living agents in spheres so different; nothing but love and grief, the affections and the sufferings by which humanity is ruled and of which it is capable. Everything else is changed: the customs of life, and its methods, and even its motives, the ruling principles of its continuance. Peace and mutual consideration, the policy which even in its selfish developments is so far good that it enables men to live together, making existence possible,--scarcely existed in those days. The highest ideal was that of war, war no doubt sometimes for good ends, to redress wrongs, to avenge injuries, to make crooked things straight--but yet always war, implying a state of affairs in which the last thing that men thought of was the golden rule, and the highest attainment to be looked for was the position of a protector, doer of justice, deliverer of the oppressed. Our aim now that no one should be oppressed, that every man should have justice as by the order of nature, was a thing unthought of. What individual help did feebly for the sufferer then, the laws do for us now, without fear or favour: which is a much greater thing to say than that the organisation of modern life, the mechanical helps, the comforts, the easements of the modern world, had no existence in those days. We are often told that the poorest peasant in our own time has aids to existence that had not been dreamt of for princes in the Middle Ages. Thirty years ago the world was mostly of opinion that the balance was entirely on our side, and that in everything we were so much better off than our fathers, that comparison was impossible. Since then there have been many revolutions of opinion, and we think it is now the general conclusion of wise men, that one period has little to boast itself of against another, that one form of civilisation replaces another without improving upon it, at least to the extent which appears on the surface. But yet the general prevalence of peace, interrupted only by occasional wars, even when we recognise a certain large and terrible utility in war itself, must always make a difference incalculable between the condition of the nations now, and then.

It is difficult, indeed, to imagine any concatenation of affairs which could reduce a country now to the condition in which France was in the beginning of the fifteenth century. A strong and splendid kingdom, to which in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy of a united nation, had fallen into a disintegration which seems almost incredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationality which now illumines, almost above all others, the French nation. But Frenchmen were not Frenchmen, they were Burgundians, Armagnacs, Bretons, Proven?aux five hundred years ago. The interests of one part of the kingdom were not those of the other. Unity had no existence. Princes of the same family were more furious enemies to each other, at the head of their respective fiefs and provinces, than the traditional foes of their race; and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of patriotic resistance, one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to side with the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own flesh and blood than anything the alien could do.

If we had any right to theorise on such a subject--which is a thing the French themselves above all other men love to do,--we should be disposed to say, that wars and revolutions, legislation and politics, are things which go on over the head of France, so to speak--boilings on the surface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a word may be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while she herself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusually obstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pursuit of a certain kind of well-being congenial to her--goes steadily on, less susceptible to temporary humiliation than many peoples much less excitable on the surface, and always coming back into sight when the commotion is over, acquisitive, money-making, profit-loving, uninjured in any essential particular by the most terrific of convulsions. This of course is to be said more or less of every country, the strain of common life being always, thank God, too strong for every temporary commotion--but it is true in a special way of France:--witness the extraordinary manner in which in our own time, and under our own eyes, that wonderful country righted herself after the tremendous misfortunes of the Franco-German war, in which for a moment not only her prestige, her honour, but her money and credit seemed to be lost.

With the permission of the reader I will retain her natural and beautiful name. To translate it into Joan seems quite unnecessary. Though she is the finest emblem to the world in general of that noble, fearless, and spotless Virginity which is one of the finest inspirations of the mediaeval mind, yet she is inherently French, though France scarcely was in her time: and national, though as yet there were rather the elements of a nation than any indivisible People in that great country. Was not she herself one of the strongest and purest threads of gold to draw that broken race together and bind it irrevocably, beneficially, into one?

It is curious that it should have been from the farthest edge of French territory that this national deliverer came. It is a commonplace that a Borderer should be a more hot partisan of his own country against the other from which but a line divides him in fact, and scarcely so much in race--than the calmer inhabitant of the midland country who knows no such press of constant antagonism; and Jeanne is another example of this well known fact. It is even a question still languidly discussed whether Jeanne and her family were actually on one side of the line or the other. "Il faut opter," says M. Blaze de Bury, one of her latest biographers, as if the peasant household of 1412 had inhabited an Alsatian cottage in 1872. When the line is drawn so closely, it is difficult to determine, but Jeanne herself does not ever seem to have entertained a moment's doubt on the subject, and she after all is the best authority. Perhaps Villon was thinking more of his rhyme than of absolute fact when he spoke of "Jeanne la bonne Lorraine." She was born on the 5th of January, 1412, in the village of Domremy, on the banks of the Meuse, one of those little grey hamlets, with its little church tower, and remains of a little chateau on the soft elevation of a mound not sufficient for the name of hill--which are scattered everywhere through those level countries, like places which have never been built, which have grown out of the soil, of undecipherable antiquity--perhaps, one feels, only a hundred, perhaps a thousand years old--yet always inhabitable in all the ages, with the same names lingering about, the same surroundings, the same mild rural occupations, simple plenty and bare want mingling together with as little difference of level as exists in the sweeping lines of the landscape round.

The life was calm in so humble a corner which offered nothing to the invader or marauder of the time, but yet was so much within the universal conditions of war that the next-door neighbour, so to speak, the adjacent village of Maxey, held for the Burgundian and English alliance, while little Domremy was for the King. And once at least when Jeanne was a girl at home, the family were startled in their quiet by the swoop of an armed party of Burgundians, and had to gather up babies and what portable property they might have, and flee across the frontier, where the good Lorrainers received and sheltered them, till they could go back to their village, sacked and pillaged and devastated in the meantime by the passing storm. Thus even in their humility and inoffensiveness the Domremy villagers knew what war and its miseries were, and the recollection would no doubt be vivid among the children, of that half terrible, half exhilarating adventure, the fright and excitement of personal participation in the troubles, of which, night and day, from one quarter or another, they must have heard.

There would seem to have been no one of more importance in Domremy than Jacques d'Arc himself and his wife, respectable peasants, with a little money, a considerable rural property in flocks and herds and pastures, and a good reputation among their kind. He had three sons working with their father in the peaceful routine of the fields; and two daughters, of whom some authorities indicate Jeanne as the younger, and some as the elder. The cottage interior, however, appears more clearly to us than the outward aspect of the family life. The daughters were not, like the children of poorer peasants, brought up to the rude outdoor labours of the little farm. Painters have represented Jeanne as keeping her father's sheep, and even the early witnesses say the same; but it is contradicted by herself, who ought to know best--. If she followed the flocks to the fields, it must have been, she says, in her childhood, and she has no recollection of it. Hers was a more sheltered and safer lot. The girls were brought up by their mother indoors in all the labours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of needlework, so much more exquisite in those days than now. Perhaps Isabeau, the mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancient privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, and church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had been Church lands. At all events this, and other kindred works of the needle, seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne was brought up.

We hear of the woods, the fields, the cottages, the little church and its bells, the garden where she sat and sewed, the mother's stories, the morning mass, in this quiet preface of the little maiden's life; but nothing of the highroad with its wayfarers, the convoys of provisions for the war, the fighting men that were coming and going. Yet these, too, must have filled a large part in the village life, and it is evident that a strong impression of the pity of it all, of the distraction of the country and all the cruelties and miseries of which she could not but hear, must have early begun to work in Jeanne's being, and that while she kept silence the fire burned in her heart. The love of God, and that love of country which has nothing to say to political patriotism but translates itself in an ardent longing and desire to do "some excelling thing" for the benefit and glory of that country, and to heal its wounds--were the two principles of her life. We have not the slightest indication how much or how little of this latter sentiment was shared by the simple community about her; unless from the fact that the Domremy children fought with those of Maxey, their disaffected neighbours, to the occasional effusion of blood. We do not know even of any volunteer from the village, or enthusiasm for the King. The district was voiceless, the little clusters of cottages fully occupied in getting their own bread, and probably like most other village societies, disposed to treat any military impulse among their sons as mere vagabondism and love of adventure and idleness.

Nothing, so far as anyone knows, came near the most unlikely volunteer of all, to lead her thoughts to that art of war of which she knew nothing, and of which her little experience could only have shown her the horrors and miseries, the sufferings of wounded fugitives and the ruin of sacked houses. Of all people in the world, the little daughter of a peasant was the last who could have been expected to respond to the appeal of the wretched country. She had three brothers who might have served the King, and there was no doubt many a stout clodhopper about, of that kind which in every country is the fittest material for fighting, and "food for powder." But to none of these did the call come. Every detail goes to increase the profound impression of peacefulness which fills the atmosphere--the slow river floating by, the roofs clustered together, the church bells tinkling their continual summons, the girl with her work at the cottage door in the shadow of the apple trees. To pack the little knapsack of a brother or a lover, and to convoy him weeping a little way on his road to the army, coming back to the silent church to pray there, with the soft natural tears which the uses of common life must soon dry--that is all that imagination could have demanded of Jeanne. She was even too young for any interposition of the lover, too undeveloped, the French historians tell us with their astonishing frankness, to the end of her short life, to have been moved by any such thought. She might have poured forth a song, a prayer, a rude but sweet lament for her country, out of the still bosom of that rustic existence. Such things have been, the trouble of the age forcing an utterance from the very depths of its inarticulate life. But it was not for this that Jeanne d'Arc was born.

This was probably not the God-dam of later French, a reflection of the supposed prevalent English oath, but most likely merely the God-den or good-day, the common salutation.

Domremy was split, Mr. Lang says, by the burn, and Jeanne's side were probably King's men. We have it on her own word that there was but one Burgundian in the village, but that might mean on her side.

There is little evidence, however, that this treaty, or anything so distinct in detail, had made much impression on the outlying borders of France. What was known there, was only that the English were victorious, that the rightful King of France was still uncrowned and unacknowledged, and that the country was oppressed and humiliated under the foot of the invader. The fact that the new King was not yet the Lord's anointed, and had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more importance than many greater things--being at once more visible and matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any other circumstance in the dreadful tale.

It is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated in France, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing the same circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature of the woman-child. The little Bernadette of Lourdes is almost of our own day; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence. What her visions and her voices were, who can say? The last historian of them is not a man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent, except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before the little Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle--so is the rest of the world. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the finest vision--become the special sphere and birthplace of these spotless infant-saints? This is one of the wonders which nobody attempts to account for. Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more than four hundred years between.

At length, however, one does not know how, the secret of her double life came out. No doubt long brooding over these voices, long intercourse with such celestial visitors, and the mission continually pressed upon her--meaningless to the child at first, a thing only to shed terrified tears over and wonder at--ripened her intelligence so that she came at last to perceive that it was practicable, a thing to be done, a charge to be obeyed. She had this before her, as a girl in ordinary circumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and how to be a wife and mother. And the news brought by every passer-by would prove doubly interesting, doubly important to Jeanne, in her daily growing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. As she felt the current more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming all resistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious to know what was going on in the distracted world, more and more touched by that great pity which had awakened her soul. And all these reports were of a nature to increase that pity till it became overwhelming. The tales she would hear of the English must have been tales of cruelty and horror; not so many years ago what tales did not we hear of German ferocity in the French villages, perhaps not true at all, yet making their impression always; and it was more probable in that age that every such story should be true. Then the compassion which no one can help feeling for a young man deprived of his rights, his inheritance taken from him, his very life in danger, threatened by the stranger and usurper, was deepened in every particular by the fact that it was the King, the very impersonation of France, appointed by God as the head of the country, who was in danger. Everything that Jeanne heard would help to swell the stream.

Thus she must have come step by step--this extraordinary, impossible suggestion once sown in her dreaming soul--to perceive a kind of miraculous reasonableness in it, to see its necessity, and how everything pointed towards such a deliverance. It would have seemed natural to believe that the prophecies of the countryside which promised a virgin from an oak grove, a maiden from Lorraine, to deliver France, might have affected her mind, did we not have it from her own voice that she had never heard that prophecy; but the word of the blessed Michael, so often repeated, was more than an old wife's tale; and the child's alarm would seem to have died away as she came to her full growth. And Jeanne was no ethereal spirit lost in visions, but a robust and capable peasant girl, fearing little, and full of sense and determination, as well as of an inspiration so far above the level of the crowd. We hear with wonder afterwards that she had the making of a great general in her untutored female soul,--which is perhaps the most wonderful thing in her career,--and saw with the eye of an experienced and able soldier, as even Dunois did not always see it, the fit order of an attack, the best arrangement of the forces at her command. This I honestly avow is to me the most incredible point in the story. I am not disturbed by the apparition of the saints; there is in them an ineffable appropriateness and fitness against which the imagination, at least, has not a word to say. The wonder is not, to the natural mind, that such interpositions of heaven come, but that they come so seldom. But that Jacques d'Arc's daughter, the little girl over her sewing, whose only fault was that she went to church too often, should have the genius of a soldier, is too bewildering for words to say. A poet, yes, an inspiring influence leading on to miraculous victory; but a general, skilful with the rude artillery of the time, divining the better way in strategy,--this is a wonder beyond the reach of our faculties; yet according to Alen?on, Dunois, and other military authorities, it was true.

Jeanne, however, was not discouraged by M. de Baudricourt's joke, and her interview with him changed his views completely. She appears indeed from the moment of setting out from her father's house to have taken a new attitude. These great personages of the country before whom all the peasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps, instruments in the hand of God to speed her on her way if they could see their privileges--if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind. It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but after that disruption what did anything matter? And she had gone through five years of gradual training of which no one knew. The tears and terror, the plea, "I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride," of her first childlike alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and their meaning. They were now her familiar friends guiding her at every step; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar of laughter, to Jeanne? She went to her audience with none of the alarm of the peasant. A certain young man of Baudricourt's suite, Bertrand de Poulengy, another young D'Artagnan seeking his fortune, was present in the hall and witnessed the scene. The joke would seem to have been exhausted by the time Jeanne appeared, or her perfect gravity and simplicity, and beautiful manners--so unlike her rustic dress and village coif--imposed upon the Seigneur and his little court. This is how the story is told, twenty-five years after, by the witness, then an elderly knight, recalling the story of his youth.

"She said that she came to Robert on the part of her Lord, that he should send to the Dauphin, and tell him to hold out, and have no fear, for the Lord would send him succour before the middle of Lent. She also said that France did not belong to the Dauphin but to her Lord; but her Lord willed that the Dauphin should be its King, and hold it in command, and that in spite of his enemies she herself would conduct him to be consecrated. Robert then asked her who was this Lord? She answered, 'The King of Heaven.' This being done she returned to her father's house with her uncle, Durand Laxart of Burey le Petit."

Meantime, Jeanne returned home--the strangest home-going,--for by this time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph, to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any difference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness to which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reached Jacques d'Arc's cottage even before she came back with the kind Durand, a changed creature, already the consecrated Maid of France, La Pucelle, apart from all others. The French peasant is a hard man, more fierce in his terror of the unconventional, of having his domestic affairs exposed to the public eye, or his family disgraced by an exhibition of anything unusual either in act or feeling, than almost any other class of beings. And it is evident that he took his daughter's intention according to the coarsest interpretation, as a wild desire for adventure and intention of joining herself to the roving troopers, the soldiers always hated and dreaded in rural life. He suddenly appears in the narrative in a fever of apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl, but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. We do not know what passed when she returned, further than that her father had a dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purpose that had so long been ripening in her mind. He dreamed that he saw her surrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evident and natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could divine that she meant to be their leader and general, on a level not with the common men-at-arms, but of princes and nobles? In the morning he told his dream to his wife and also to his sons. "If I could think that the thing would happen that I dreamed, I would wish that she should be drowned; and if you would not do it, I should do it with my own hands." The reader remembers with a shudder the Meuse flowing at the foot of the garden, while the fierce peasant, mad with fear lest shame should be coming to his family, clenched his strong fist and made this outcry of dismay.

No doubt his wife smoothed the matter over as well as she could, and, whatever alarms were in her own mind, hastily thought of a feminine expedient to mend matters, and persuaded the angry father that to substitute other dreams for these would be an easier way. Isabeau most probably knew the village lad who would fain have had her child, so good a housewife, so industrious a workwoman, and always so friendly and so helpful, for his wife. At all events there was such a one, too willing to exert himself, not discouraged by any refusal, who could be egged up to the very strong point of appearing before the bishop at Toul and swearing that Jeanne had been promised to him from her childhood. So timid a girl, they all thought, so devout a Catholic, would simply obey the bishop's decision and would not be bold enough even to remonstrate, though it is curious that with the spectacle of her grave determination before them, and sorrowful sense of that necessity of her mission which had steeled her to dispense with their consent, they should have expected such an expedient to arrest her steps. The affair, we must suppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on the lover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such an attempt was finally made. But the shy Jeanne had by this time attained that courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the most gentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went to Toul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from the pretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her very different destination we are not told.

Anyhow from any point of view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, it was expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real or visionary, should lightly be rejected. There was much anxiety no doubt in the careless Court still dancing and singing in the midst of calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form an exciting incident at least, if nothing more important and notable.

Much time, however, was passed in these preliminaries. The final start was not made till the 23d February, 1429, when the permission is supposed to have come by the hands of Colet de Vienne, the King's messenger, who attended by a single archer, was to be her escort. It is possible that he had no mission to this effect, but he certainly did escort her to Chinon. The whole town gathered before the house of Baudricourt to see her depart. Baudricourt, however, does not seem to have provided any guard for her. Jean de Metz, who had so chivalrously pledged himself to her service, with his friend De Poulengy, equally ready for adventure, each with his servant, formed her sole protectors. Jean de Metz had already sent her the clothes of one of his retainers, with the light breastplate and partial armour that suited it; and the townspeople had subscribed to buy her a further outfit, and a horse which seems to have cost sixteen francs--not so small a sum in those days as now. Laxart declares himself to have been responsible for this outlay, though the money was afterwards paid by Baudricourt, who gave Jeanne a sword, which some of her historians consider a very poor gift: none, however, of her equipments would seem to have been costly. The little party set out thus, with a sanction of authority, from the Captain's gate, the two gentlemen and the King's messenger at the head of the party with their attendants, and the Maid in the midst. "Go: and let what will happen," was the parting salutation of Baudricourt. The gazers outside set up a cry when the decisive moment came, and someone, struck with the feeble force which was all the safeguard she had for her long journey through an agitated country--perhaps a woman in the sudden passion of misgiving which often follows enthusiasm,--called out to Jeanne with an astonished outcry to ask how she could dare to go by such a dangerous road. "It was for that I was born," answered the fearless Maid. The last thing she had done had been to write a letter to her parents, asking their pardon if she obeyed a higher command than theirs, and bidding them farewell.

The French historians, with that amazement which they always show when they find a man behaving like a gentleman towards a woman confided to his honour, all pause with deep-drawn breath to note that the awe of Jeanne's absolute purity preserved her from any unseemly overture, or even evil thought, on the part of her companions. We need not take up even the shadow of so grave a censure upon Frenchmen in general, although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. The two young men, thus starting upon a dangerous adventure, pledged by their honour to protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble and generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. They were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild errand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of Burgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. Sometimes, too, they had many doubts, Bertrand says, perhaps as to their reception at Chinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to the ridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contact with the Evil One, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspired virgin but a pretender or sorceress. Jean de Metz informs us that she bade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was now doing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and that for the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her God had told her that she must go to the war to save the kingdom of France. This phrase must have struck his ear, as he thus repeats it. Her brothers in paradise! She had not apparently talked of them to anyone as yet, but now no one could hinder her more, and she felt herself free to speak. A great calm seems to have been in her soul. She had at last begun her work. How it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked; she knew only what she had to do. When they ventured into a town she insisted on stopping to hear mass, bidding them fear nothing. "God clears the way for me," she said; "I was born for this," and so proceeded safe, though threatened with many dangers. There is something that breathes of supreme satisfaction and content in her repetition of those words.

She was, however, acquainted with the simpler byword, that France should be destroyed by a woman and afterwards redeemed by a virgin, which she quoted to several persons on her first setting out.

I have to thank Mr. Andrew Lang for making the course of these events quite clear to myself.

Mr. Andrew Lang thinks that this appearance at Toul was made after she had finally left Domremy, and when she was already accompanied by the escort which was to attend her to Chinon.

Mr. Andrew Lang will not hear of this. He thinks the man was a mere King's messenger with news, probably charged with the melancholy tidings of the loss at Rouvray : and that the fact he did accompany Jeanne and her little part was entirely accidental.

Jeanne and her little party were eleven days on the road, but do not seem to have encountered any special peril. They lodged sometimes in the security of a convent, sometimes in a village hostel, pursuing the long and tedious way across the great levels of midland France, which has so few features of beauty except in the picturesque towns with their castles and churches, which the escort avoided. At length they paused in the village of Fierbois not far from Chinon where the Court was, in order to announce their arrival and ask for an audience, which was not immediately accorded. Charles held his Court with incredible gaiety and folly, in the midst of almost every disaster that could overtake a king, in the castle of Chinon on the banks of the Vienne. The situation and aspect of this noble building, now in ruins, is wonderfully like that of Windsor Castle. The great walls, interrupted and strengthened by huge towers, stretch along a low ridge of rocky hill, with the swift and clear river, a little broader and swifter than the Thames, flowing at its foot. The red and high-pitched roofs of the houses clustered between the castle hill and the stream, give a point of resemblance the more. The large and ample dwelling, defensible, but with no thought of any need of defence, a midland castle surrounded by many a level league of wealthy country, which no hostile force should ever have power to get through, must have looked like the home of a well-established royalty. There was no sound or sight of war within its splendid enclosure. Noble lords and gentlemen crowded the corridors; trains of gay ladies, attendant upon two queens, filled the castle with fine dresses and gay voices. There had been but lately a dreadful and indeed shameful defeat, inflicted by a mere English convoy of provisions upon a large force of French and Scottish soldiers, the former led by such men as Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, etc., the latter by the Constable of Scotland, John Stuart--which defeat might well have been enough to subdue every sound of revelry: yet Charles's Court was ringing with music and pleasantry, as if peace had reigned around.

It may be believed that there were many doubts and questions how to receive this peasant from the fields, which prevented an immediate reply to her demand for an audience. From the first, de la Tremoille, Charles's Prime Minister and chief adviser, was strongly against any encouragement of the visionary, or dealings with the supernatural; but there would no doubt be others, hoping if not for a miraculous maid, yet at least for a passing wonder, who might kindle enthusiasm in the country and rouse the ignorant with hopes of a special blessing from Heaven. The gayer and younger portion of the Court probably expected a little amusement, above all, a new butt for their wit, or perhaps a soothsayer to tell their fortunes and promise good things to come. They had not very much to amuse them, though they made the best of it. The joys of Paris were very far off; they were all but imprisoned in this dull province of Touraine; nobody knew at what moment they might be forced to leave even that refuge. For the moment here was a new event, a little stir of interest, something to pass an hour. Jeanne had to wait two days in Chinon before she was granted an audience, but considering the carelessness of the Court and the absence of any patron that was but a brief delay.

The chamber of audience is now in ruins. A wild rose with long, arching, thorny branches and pale flowers, straggles over the greensward where once the floor was trod by so many gay figures. From the broken wall you look sheer down upon the shining river; one great chimney, which at that season must have been still the most pleasant centre of the large, draughty hall, shows at the end of the room, with a curious suggestion of warmth and light which makes ruin more conspicuous. The room must have been on the ground floor almost level with the soil towards the interior of the castle, but raised to the height of the cliffs outside. It was evening, an evening of March, and fifty torches lighted up the ample room; many noble personages, almost as great as kings, and clothed in the bewildering splendour of the time, and more than three hundred cavaliers of the best names in France filled it to overflowing. The peasant girl from Domremy in the hose and doublet of a servant, a little travel-worn after her tedious journey, was led in by one of those splendid seigneurs, dazzled with the grandeur she had never seen before, looking about her in wonder to see which was the King--while Charles, perhaps with boyish pleasure in the mystification, perhaps with a little half-conviction stealing over him that there might be something more in it, stood among the smiling crowd.

The young stranger looked round upon all those amused, light-minded, sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward and knelt down before him. "Gentil Dauphin," she said, "God give you good life." "But it is not I that am the King; there is the King," said Charles. "Gentil Prince, it is you and no other," she said; then rising from her knee: "Gentil Dauphin, I am Jeanne the Maid. I am sent to you by the King of Heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated and crowned at Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France." The little masquerade had failed, the jest was over. There would be little more laughing among the courtiers, when they saw the face of Charles grow grave. He took the new-comer aside, perhaps to that deep recess of the window where in the darkening night the glimmer of the clear, flowing river, the great vault of sky would still be visible dimly, outside the circle of the blazing interior with all its smoky lights.

"This was in the time of the good King Charles, when he knew not what step to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for as I have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. The King in this extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; and there he made a prayer to our Lord, in his heart, without pronouncing any words, in which he asked of Him devoutly that if he were indeed the true heir, descended from the royal House of France, and that justly the kingdom was his, that He would be pleased to guard and defend him, or at the worst to give him grace to escape into Spain or Scotland, whose people, from all antiquity, were brothers-in-arms, friends and allies of the kings of France, and that he might find a refuge there."

Perhaps there is some excuse for a young man's endeavour to forget himself in folly or even in dissipation when his secret thoughts are so despairing as these.

It was soon after this melancholy moment that the arrival of Jeanne took place. The King led her aside, touched as all were, by her look of perfect sincerity and good faith; but it is she herself, not Charles, who repeats what she said to him. "I have to tell you," said the young messenger of God, "on the part of my Lord that you are the true heir of France and the son of the King; He has sent me to conduct you to Rheims that you may receive your consecration and your crown,"--perhaps here, Jeanne caught some look which she did not understand in his eyes, for she adds with, one cannot but think a touch of sternness--"if you will."

The impression thus made, however, was on Charles alone, and he was surrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious as they were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with which in themselves they had no power to cope. It may easily be allowed, also, that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on the word of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason, madness and folly. She would seem to have had the women on her side always and at every point. The Church did not stir, or else was hostile; the commanders and military men about, regarded with scornful disgust the idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should be confided to an ignorant woman--all with perfect reason we are obliged to allow. Probably it was to gain time--yet without losing the aid of such a stimulus to the superstitious among the masses--and to retard any rash undertaking--that it was proposed to subject Jeanne to an examination of doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character of her visions, which all this time had been of continual recurrence, yet charged with no further revelation, no mystic creed, but only with the one simple, constantly repeated command.

The situation of Orleans was at the time a desperate one. It was besieged by a strong army of English, who had built a succession of towers round the city, from which to assail it, after the manner of the times. The town lies in the midst of the plain of the Loire, with not so much as a hillock to offer any advantage to the besiegers. Therefore these great works were necessary in face of a very strenuous resistance, and the possibility of provisioning the besieged, which their river secured. The English from their high towers kept up a disastrous fire, which, though their artillery was of the rudest kind, did great execution. The siege was conducted by eminent generals. The works were of themselves great fortifications, the assailants numerous, and strengthened by the prestige of almost unbroken success; there seemed no human hope of the deliverance of the town unless by an overwhelming army, which the King's party did not possess, or by some wonderful and utterly unexpected event. Jeanne had always declared the destruction of the English and the relief of Orleans to be the first step in her mission.

Jeanne was then brought back to Chinon, where she was lodged in one of the great towers still standing, though no special room is pointed out as hers. And there she was subjected to another process, more penetrating still than the interrogations of the graver tribunals. The Queens and their ladies and all the women of the Court took her in hand. They inquired into her history in every subtle and intimate feminine way, testing her innocence and purity; and once more she came out triumphant. The final judgment was given as follows: "After hearing all these reports, the King taking into consideration the great goodness that was in the Maid, and that she declared herself to be sent by God, it was by the said Seigneur and his council determined that from henceforward he should make use of her for his wars, since it was for this that she was sent."

It will show how long a time all these examinations and preparations had taken when we read that Jeanne set out from Blois, where she had passed some time in military preparations, only on the 27th day of April; nearly two whole months had thus been taken up in testing her truth, and arranging details, trifling and unnecessary in her eyes:--a period which had been passed in great anxiety by the people of Orleans, with the huge bastilles of the English--three of which were named Paris, Rouen, and London--towering round them, their provisions often intercepted, all the business of life come to a standstill, and the overwhelming responsibility upon them of being almost the last barrier between the invader and the final subjugation of France. It is strange to add that, judging by ordinary rules, the garrison of Orleans ought to have been quite sufficient in itself in numbers and science of war, to have beaten and dispersed the English force which had thus succeeded in shutting them in; there were many notable captains among them, with Dunois, known as the Bastard of Orleans, one of the most celebrated and brave of French generals, at their head. Dunois was in no way inferior to the generals of the English army; he was popular, beloved by the people and soldiers alike, and though illegitimate, of the House of Orleans, one of the native seigneurs of the place. The wonder is how he and his officers permitted the building of these towers, and the shutting in of the town which they were quite strong enough to protect. But it was a losing game which they were playing, a part which does not suit the genius of the nation; and the superstition in favour of the English who had won so many battles with all the disadvantages on their side,--cutting the finest armies to pieces--was strong upon the imagination of the time. It seemed a fate which no valour or skill upon the side of the French could avert. Dunois, himself an unlikely person, one would have thought, to yield the honour of the fight to a woman, seems to have perceived that without a strong counter-motive, not within the range of ordinary methods, the situation was beyond hope.

JHESUS MARIA.

King of England, and you Duke of Bedford calling yourself Regent of France, you, William de la Poule, Comte de Sulford, John, Lord of Talbot, and you Thomas, Lord of Scales, who call yourself lieutenants of the said Bedford, listen to the King of Heaven: Give back to the Maid who is here sent on the part of God the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken by violence in His France. She is ready to make peace if you will hear reason and be just towards France and pay for what you have taken. And you archers, brothers-in-arms, gentles and others who are before the town of Orleans, go in peace on the part of God; if you do not so you will soon have news of the Maid who will see you shortly to your great damage. King of England, if you do not this, I am captain in this war, and in whatsoever place in France I find your people I will make them go away. I am sent here on the part of God the King of Heaven to push you all forth of France. If you obey I will be merciful. And be not strong in your own opinion, for you do not hold the kingdom from God the Son of the Holy Mary, but it is held by Charles the true heir, for God, the King of Heaven so wills, and it is revealed by the Maid who shall enter Paris in good company. If you will not believe this news on the part of God and the Maid, in whatever place you may find yourselves we shall make our way there, and make so great a commotion as has not been in France for a thousand years, if you will not hear reason. And believe this, that the King of Heaven will send more strength to the Maid than you can bring against her in all your assaults, to her and to her good men-at-arms. You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and requires you to destroy no more. If you act according to reason you may still come in her company where the French shall do the greatest work that has ever been done for Christianity. Answer then if you will still continue against the city of Orleans. If you do so you will soon recall it to yourself by great misfortunes. Written the Saturday of Holy Week .

Her meeting with Dunois makes this at once evident. She had been deceived in the manner of her approach to Orleans, her companions, among whom there were several field-marshals and distinguished leaders, taking advantage of her ignorance of the place to lead her by the opposite bank of the river instead of that on which the English towers were built, which she desired to attack at once. This was the beginning of a long series of deceits and hostile combinations, by which at every step of her way she was met and retarded; but it turned, as these devices generally did, to the discomfiture of the adverse captains. She crossed the river at Ch?cy above Orleans, to meet Dunois who had come so far to meet her. It will be seen by the conversation which she held with him on his first appearance, how completely Jeanne had learnt to assert herself, and how much she had overcome any fear of man. "Are you the Bastard of Orleans?" she said. "I am; and glad of your coming," he replied. "Is it you who have had me led to this side of the river and not to the bank on which Talbot is and his English?" He answered that he and the wisest of the leaders had thought it the best and safest way. "The counsel of God, our Lord, is more sure and more powerful than yours," she replied. The expedition, as a matter of fact, had to turn back, and to lose precious time, there being, it is to be presumed, no means of transporting so large a force across the river. The large convoy of provisions which Jeanne brought was embarked in boats while the majority of the army returned to Blois, in order to cross by the bridge.

Jeanne, however, having freely expressed her opinion, adapted herself to the circumstances, though extremely averse to separate herself from her soldiers, good men who had confessed and prepared their souls for every emergency. She finally consented, however, to ride on with Dunois and La Hire. The wind was against the convoy, so that the heavy boats, deeply laden with beeves and corn, had a dangerous and slow voyage before them. "Have patience," cried Jeanne; "by the help of God all will go well"; and immediately the wind changed, to the astonishment and joy of all, and the boats arrived in safety "in spite of the English, who offered no hindrance whatever," as she had predicted. The little party made their way along the bank, and in the twilight of the April evening, about eight o'clock, entered Orleans. The Deliverer, it need not be said, was hailed with joy indescribable. She was on a white horse, and carried, Dunois says, the banner in her hand, though it was carried before her when she entered the town. The white figure in the midst of those darkly gleaming mailed men, would in itself throw a certain glory through the dimness of the night, as she passed the gates and came into view by the blaze of all the torches, and the lights in the windows, over the dark swarming crowds of the citizens. Her white banner waving, her white armour shining, it was little wonder that the throng that filled the streets received the Maid "as if they had seen God descending among them." "And they had good reason," says the Chronicle, "for they had suffered many disturbances, labours, and pains, and, what is worse, great doubt whether they ever should be delivered. But now all were comforted, as if the siege were over, by the divine strength that was in this simple Maid whom they regarded most affectionately, men, women, and little children. There was a marvellous press around her to touch her or the horse on which she rode, so much so that one of the torchbearers approached too near and set fire to her pennon; upon which she touched her horse with her spurs, and turning him cleverly, extinguished the flame, as if she had long followed the wars."

The dates must of course be reckoned by the old style.-- This letter was dispatched from Tours, during her pause there.

Next morning there was a council of war among the many leaders now collected within the town. It was the eager desire of Jeanne that an assault should be made at once, in all the enthusiasm of the moment, upon the English towers, without waiting even for the arrival of the little army which she had preceded. But the captains of the defence who had borne the heat and burden of the day, and who might naturally enough be irritated by the enthusiasm with which this stranger had been received, were of a different opinion. I quote here a story, for which I am told there is no foundation whatever, touching a personage who probably never existed, so that the reader may take it as he pleases, with indulgence for the writer's weakness, or indignation at her credulity. It seems to me, however, to express very naturally a sentiment which must have existed among the many captains who had been fighting unsuccessfully for months in defence of the beleaguered city. A certain Guillaume de Gamache felt himself insulted above all by the suggestion. "What," he cried, "is the advice of this hussy from the fields to be taken against that of a knight and captain! I will fold up my banner and become again a simple soldier. I would rather have a nobleman for my master than a woman whom nobody knows."

Jeanne's presentiment was well-founded. There had been a private expedition against the English fort of St. Loup carried out quietly to steal a march upon her--Gamache, possibly, or other malcontents of his temper, in the hope perhaps of making use of her prestige to gain a victory without her presence. But it had happened with this sally as with many others which had been made from Orleans; and when Jeanne appeared outside the gate which she and the rest of the followers after her had almost forced--coming down upon them at full gallop, her standard streaming, her white armour in a blaze of reflection, she met the fugitives flying back towards the shelter of the town. She does not seem to have paused or to have deigned to address a word to them, though the troop of soldiers and citizens who had snatched arms and flung themselves after her, arrested and turned them back. Straight to the foot of the tower she went, Dunois startled in his turn, thundering after her. It is not for a woman to describe, any more than it was for a woman to execute such a feat of war. It is said that she put herself at the head of the citizens, Dunois at the head of the soldiers. One moment of pity and horror and heart-sickness Jeanne had felt when she met several wounded men who were being carried towards the town. She had never seen French blood shed before, and the dreadful thought that they might die unconfessed, overwhelmed her soul; but this was but an incident of her breathless gallop to the encounter. To isolate the tower which was attacked was the first necessity, and then the conflict was furious--the English discouraged, but fighting desperately against a mysterious force which overwhelmed them, at the same time that it redoubled the ardour of every Frenchman. Lord Talbot sent forth parties from the other forts to help their companions, but these were met in the midst by the rest of the army arriving from Orleans, which stopped their course. It was not till evening, "the hour of Vespers," that the bastille was finally taken, with great slaughter, the Orleanists giving little quarter. During these dreadful hours the Maid was everywhere visible with her standard, the most marked figure, shouting to her men, weeping for the others, not fighting herself so far as we hear, but always in the front of the battle. When she went back to Orleans triumphant, she led a band of prisoners with her, keeping a wary eye upon them that they might not come to harm.

The next day, May 5th, was the Feast of the Ascension, and it was spent by Jeanne in rest and in prayer. But the other leaders were not so devout. They held a crowded and anxious council of war, taking care that no news of it should reach the ears of the Maid. When, however, they had decided upon the course to pursue they sent for her, and intimated to her their decision to attack only the smaller forts, which she heard with great impatience, not sitting down, but walking about the room in disappointment and anger. It is difficult for the present writer to follow the plans of this council or to understand in what way Jeanne felt herself contradicted and set aside. However it was, the fact seems certain that their plan failed at first, the English having themselves abandoned one of the smaller forts on the right side of the river and concentrated their forces in the greater ones of Les Augustins and Les Tourelles on the left bank. For all this, reference to the map is necessary, which will make it quite clear. It was Classidas, as he is called, Glasdale, the most furious enemy of France, and one of the bravest of the English captains who held the former, and for a moment succeeded in repulsing the attack. The fortune of war seemed about to turn back to its former current, and the French fell back on the boats which had brought them to the scene of action, carrying the Maid with them in their retreat. But she perceived how critical the moment was, and reining up her horse from the bank, down which she was being forced by the crowd, turned back again, closely followed by La Hire, and at once, no doubt, by the stouter hearts who only wanted a leader--and charging the English, who had regained their courage as the white armour of the witch disappeared, and were in full career after the fugitives--drove them back to their fortifications, which they gained with a rush, leaving the ground strewn with the wounded and dying. Jeanne herself did not draw bridle till she had planted her standard on the edge of the moat which surrounded the tower.

Michelet is very brief concerning this first victory, and claims only that "the success was due in part to the Maid," although the crowd of captains and men-at-arms where by themselves quite sufficient for the work, had there been any heart in them. But this was true to fact in almost every case: and it is clear that she was simply the heart, which was the only thing wanted to those often beaten Frenchmen; where she was, where they could hear her robust young voice echoing over all the din, they were as men inspired; when the impetus of their flight carried her also away, they became once more the defeated of so many battles. The effect upon the English was equally strong; when the back of Jeanne was turned, they were again the men of Agincourt; when she turned upon them, her white breastplate blazing out like a star, the sunshine striking dazzling rays from her helmet, they trembled before the sorceress; an angel to her own side, she was the very spirit of magic and witchcraft to her opponents. Classidas, or which captain soever of the English side it might happen to be, blaspheming from the battlements, hurled all the evil names of which a trooper was capable, upon her, while she from below summoned them, in different tones of appeal and menace, calling upon them to yield, to go home, to give up the struggle. Her form, her voice are always evident in the midst of the great stone bullets, the cloth-yard shafts that were flying--they were so near, the one above, the other below, that they could hear each other speak.

On the 7th of May the fort of Les Augustins on the left bank was taken. It will be seen by reference to the map, that this bastille, an ancient convent, stood at some distance from the river, in peaceful times a little way beyond the bridge, and no doubt a favourite Sunday walk from the city. The bridge was now closed up by the frowning bulk of the Tourelles built upon it, with a smaller tower or "boulevard" on the left bank communicating with it by a drawbridge. When Les Augustins was taken, the victorious French turned their arms against this boulevard, but as night had fallen by this time, they suspended the fighting, having driven back the English, who had made a sally in help of Les Augustins. Here in the dark, which suited their purpose, another council was held. The captains decided that they would now pursue their victory no further, the town being fully supplied with provisions and joyful with success, but that they would await the arrival of reinforcements before they proceeded further; probably their object was solely to get rid of Jeanne, to conclude the struggle without her, and secure the credit of it. The council was held in the camp within sight of the fort, by the light of torches; after she had been persuaded to withdraw, on account of a slight wound in her foot from a calthrop, it is said. This message was sent after her into Orleans. She heard it with quiet disdain. "You have held your council, and I have had mine," she said calmly to the messengers; then turning to her chaplain, "Come to me to-morrow at dawn," she said, "and do not leave me; I shall have much to do. My blood will be shed. I shall be wounded to-morrow," pointing above her right breast. Up to this time no weapon had touched her; she had stood fast among all the flying arrows, the fierce play of spear and sword, and had taken no harm.

Their special mission seems to have been a demand for the return of a herald previously sent who had never come back. As Dunois accompanied the demand by a threat to kill the English prisoners in Orleans if the herald was not sent back, the request was at once accorded, with fierce defiances to the Maid, the dairy-maid as she is called, bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her if they caught her.

I avail myself here as elsewhere of Mr. Lang's lucid description. "It is really perfectly intelligible. The Council wanted a feint on the left bank, Jeanne an attack on the right. She knew their scheme, untold, but entered into it. There was, however, no feint. She deliberately forced the fighting. There was grand fighting, well worth telling," adds my martial critic, who understands it so much better than I do, and who I am happy to think is himself telling the tale in another way.

She had made this prophecy a month before, and it was recorded three weeks before the event in the Town Book of Brabant.--A. L.

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