KN-.\V V \x\^s \ \ \s , \\ ^ \-- ■V • DC 103.F69"^" ""'"""'•>' ^"""'^ , Bjessed Joan of Arc- CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240281 61 002 Blesseb Joan of Etc Complete ^torp of Ijec ^onber:; ful Eife, Ijer €ragtc SDeatlj, l^er ]!lel)atitiitatton, '^tt ^eatiftcatton NEW YORK CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION PUBLISHING COMPANY -nibil metut, BBsnoius Lafobt, 8.T.L. Censor. Umptfmatut, * John M. Fablet, D.D. AreltMshop of New York. Jan. 24, 1910. COPTIUOHTED SI £. A. POBD, 1910. TO HIS GRACE MOST REVEREND JOHN IRELAND. ARCHBISHOP OF ST. PAUL, WHOSE VOICE AND PEN WERE EARLY ENLISTED IN THE CAUSE OF JOAN OF ARC, THIS LITTLE WORK IS APFECIIONATBLY DEDICATED. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. For the narrative of this story the writer had much from which to cull. The books written about Joan of Arc make a respectable library in themselves. Few lives of great persons are so well authenticated by sworn testimony still pre- served intact, and easily available. We have every detail of her strange career on oath. The questions and answers of the Examinations, and of the public Trials, and the documents herein quoted, are taken from T. Douglass Murray's English translation of the original documents in the archives of Paris. The only originality claimed for this " Story " is its brevity and con- nectedness, necessarily it is not much more than an outline. "We have tried to give it the proper religious and patriotic atmosphere, for Joan of Arc was a saint and a patriot of the purest type. E. A. F. POPE PIUS X TO THE FRENCH BISHOP. Called by the Lord to defend her country, she answers her vocation for an undertaking which everybody and she herself deemed im- possible; but what is impossible for men is always possible with the help of God. Let us not exaggerate, then, the diflBculties of doing what faith commands us to do, what duty en- tails upon us, or the exercise of the fruitful apostolate of example, which the Lord expects from every one of us. Difficulties come from those who create and exaggerate them, from those who trust in themselves without the help of Heaven, from those who yield in cowardly fear to the sneers and derision of the world. Hence it is that in our day, more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked lies in the cowardice and the weakness of the good, and all the force of the kingdom of Satan, comes from the apathy of Christians. — Pope Pius X to the French tishops and pilgrims on the occasion of the Beatification of Joan of 'Arc. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. "I was thirteen when I heard a voice from God telling me to go and save France. ". . . 9 II. Joan starts on her mission — "For this was I born — to drive the English out of France." 30 III. Her miraculous march to the King — He gives her command of the armies of France. . . 35 IV. She reorganizes the French army and warns the English to leave France !i2 V. " Strike boldly ! God will give the victory! On to Orleans ! " 65 VI. "The stroke of God " — Beginning of the end of the hundred years of English oc- cupation 83 VII. The march to Rheims — Joan and the King ride in triumph to the Coronation 98 VIII. "Now let me go back to my poor old mother who has need of me." The King de- tains Joan as head of his army 115 IX. France is free — Joan a prisoner of the Eng- lish King 133 X. The lamb in the midst of the wolves. The mock trial 151 XI. " In spinning and sewing I do not fear any woman in Rouen." 164 CONTENTS. CHAPTEB PAOK XII. " If I be not in the state of grace I pray God place me in it ITS XIII. "I will tell willingly whatever I have per- mission from God to reveal." 190 XIV. She tells her English Judges they will lose France forever , 203 XV. " Let me be taken before the Pope and I will answer all I ought toanswer.". 215 XVI. "I would rather die than be in the hands of the English." 233 XVII. Joan keeps the King's secret — defends her male attire — and refuses to acknowledge the authority of her judges 245 XVIII. Joan is cheated into a show of recanting. . . . 261 XIX. The cruel death scene — The illegal trial ends in illegal execution 276 XX. The official rehabilitation of Joan's character after her death 286 XXI. The Beatification of Joan of Arc by Pius X — ' ' Joan of Arc shall be France's Saint. ". 306 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. CHAPTER I. "I was thirteen wten I heard a voice from God telling me to go and save France." " But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong." " And the base things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that He might bring to nought things that are." (1 Cor. i-v. 27-28.) It is in the light of this lesson from St. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, that we must read the wonderful story of Joan of Arc if we would properly understand it and get the full value of it as a human document, as well as a flashing page in national annals, and now a precious addition to the treasury of the Church. " The work wrought by Joan of Arc," said 9 10 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. the non-Catholic Mark Twain, in his " Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc," " may fairly be regarded as ranking any recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal. Caesar carried conquest far, but he did it with the trained and confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a trained soldier, and he began his work with patriot battalions inflamed and inspired by the miracle working new breath of Liberty breathed upon them by the Revolution — eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of war. But, Joan of Arc, a mere child in years, inno- cent, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without influence, found a great nation ly- ing in chains, helpless and hopeless under alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage and oppression, its king cowed, re- signed to his fate, and preparing to fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this na- tion, this corpse, and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. H fatally crippled the English power, and died with the earned title of Deliverer of Prance, which she bears to this day." It is a wonderful story but " he that glorieth in it must glory in the Lord " who chose the weak girl to drive the English out of France, and the ignorant girl to confound the wise churchmen and statesmen, that, failing to see God's hand in her career persecuted her and put her to death. " Ah, France had fallen low, so low ! " says Mark Twain. " For more than three-quarters of a century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had her armies be- come by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a French one to flight. * * * Famine, pestilence, slaugh- ter, ice, snow — Paris had all these at once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the city in daylight and de- voured them." At the same time, far off in the little village of Domremy, on the Belgian border of France, a young girl, poor, innocent, ignorant, was chosen by Almighty God to undo all that hor- ror, to restore the French people, to their king and the king to the people, to drive out the English invader and " deal the English a blow 12 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. from which they would not recover in a thou- sand years." This was Jeanne d'Arc, or, as we say in English, Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was born in the pleasant village of Domremy on the Belgian border of France, on " Little Christmas " Day, January 6, in 1412. Her parents were humble, honest, work- ing people, and her three brothers and little sister, as well as herself, were taught to love God, to obey the Church, to love their country, and to work diligently and contentedly, and live in peace and justice with their neighbors. In the years that followed Joan's great achievement, it became necessary to take the testimony of her childhood friends and neigh- bors as to her previous character, and this testimony was sworn to, duly recorded and remains to this day. All the accounts of her agree that she was a good, gentle, obedient child; cheerful and industrious in her home, gay with the gay in the village sports; ever compassionate and helpful to the sick and the poor. An honest laborer, who came to speak for Joan at her second trial long years afterwards, gave this simple tribute : " I was then a child and it was she who nursed me in my illness." And another: " I was thirteen when I first heard a voice." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 15 " I was one of the godfathers of Jeanne. She was so good that all the village of Dom- remy loved her. She had modest ways, as beseemed one whose parents were not rich. She followed the usual duties of women, such as spinning and she sometimes followed the plow if needed. If she were in the fields and heard the Mass bell she would go back to the village and to church and hear Mass." All through her childhood and up to the middle of her fourteenth year Joan had been the merriest and most light-hearted creature in the village of Domremy. Sometimes the news of the wars reached the village and so- bered her spirits as it did her elders, but Dom- remy was remote from the actual scenes, and the horrors of the English occupation were not brought home to her so vividly. But a change came. According to her own testimony: " I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to live well. I was frightened. It came at midday in my father's garden in the summer. * » * it was a noble voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The third time I heard it I recog- nized it as being an angel's." The Voice came many times afterwards and 16 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. with it the vision of St. Michael the Arch- angel, the warrior angel, and he told her the sad story of her suffering country and that it was God's will that she be the one to deliver it. God had chosen a small thing of the world to confound the great " You must go to the help of the King of France; it is you who shall give him back his kingdom." Strange message from the Prince of the soldiers of Heaven to a trembling, unlettered little girl ! Like the Mother of God, when the angel Gabriel came to her to tell her she was to bear the Son of God in her womb, Joan was troubled and wondered, "How can this be?" She knew nothing of arms or soldiers or even how to ride a horse or handle a sword. And he but repeated to her again and again, " You must go into France." He promised her that St. Catherine and St. Margaret would come to her and tell her what to do. And they came. She saw and heard them again and again; in soft halos of light, and sweet, loving tones, these two martyr saints came to prepare their little sister martyr. To encourage and strengthen her for the great work she had to do. Most of all to fill her with a great love of BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 17 God's will, a great love for her suffering coun- try, and a great confidence in her sublime mission, without any care for what might happen to herself. In her descriptions on oath of the appear- ances and impressions of these visions and voices one gets the idea of their frequency: " The "Voice said to me two or three times a week, ' You must go into Prance.' " One is struck with their gentleness to her, and their beautiful appearance, though vague, and that they were rather voices than visions. Joan always spoke of them as " My Voices." She was but thirteen when these revelations began. She was seventeen when at last she left her father's house and started on her mission. During those four years there is no record that there was any change in her regu- lar domestic life at home, and intercourse with her neighbors, beyond a growing seriousness that her grovring years demanded. This was augmented, no doubt, by the growing serious- ness of the national affairs, for even far off Domremy felt the scourge of the presence of English soldiers ; and " the great pity there is in the kingdom of France" was everybody's thought. But neither to her parents, nor to the good 18 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. priest of the parish, nor to any of her comrades or neighbors could Joan tell the story of her call to so wonderful a task. Nothing presented as a favoring circum- stance to carry out the commands of her Voices. The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months, and no definite way to carry out the will of God with regard to the rescue of France from the ever further advancing English came. The humble handmaid of God was ready if only the way were pointed out. At last the voices grew more urgent : " You must go into France." " Go raise the seige which is being made be- fore the city of Orleans." " Go to Robert de Baudricourt, Governor of Vaucouleurs, he will furnish you with an es- cort to accompany you to the King." And the opportunity came to the willing in- strument. Joan's uncle Laxart, came to Domremy on a visit and to him she told her secret. She persuaded him to take her to his home for a visit in return. From there she persuaded him to take her to Vaucouleurs to the Governor. She wanted only his escort, for decency sake; she would do the rest herself. This was on Ascension Day, May 13, 1428. Joan was sixteen years of age. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 19 " I am so young to leave my mother and my home, and go into the strange world to under- take a thing so great. How can I talk with men — be comrade with men — soldiers? It would give me over to insult and rude usage and contempt. How can I go to the great wars, and bad armies? I, a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing nothing of arms, nor how to mount a horse nor ride it. Yet — if it is commanded " — was Joan's final protest to the urgent voices of her saints. CHAPTER II. Joan starts on her mission — " For this was I born — to drive the English out of France." With the increased urgency of her Voices came also what seemed the first opportunity to act. Her uncle Durand Laxart came on a visit to Domremy from his home near Vaucou- leurs. To him she opened her heart. She told him of the miraculous mission entrusted to her. How she was to fulfill it she did not know. Only that God would be with her and guide and guard her until its consummation. She won over the good-hearted old man who knew her for a pious, obedient, industrious child. Of armies or sieges or crowning of kings he knew nothing; but he believed in Joan and promised to help her in every way she asked, without doubts or questions. This brave, sim- ple, old man was heaven's next instrument in the saving of France and Europe and the Chair of St. Peter, from English domination. For to the writer it has always seemed as if this last was the real cause of Heaven's interference in the military schemes of a people whose national policy seemed mainly foreign conquest; and 30 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 21 whose success in Fraace would make the sub- jugation of Italy comparatively easy. Joan induced her uncle to take her back with him on a visit to his home in Burey right near Vaucouleurs. Under cover of this visit to her uncle she was to leave Domreny without at- tracting any attention. On the way she ex- plained to old Laxart : " For this was I born — to drive the English out of France." " I must go to Robert de Baudricourt, the Governor of Vaucouleurs and demand of him an escort of men at arms, and a letter to the king. A year from now a blow will be struck which will be the beginning of the end, and the end will follow swiftly." Joan and her uncle presented themselves at the house of the Governor of Vaucouleurs. Around the Governor at the time were many members of his garrison and oflSteial staff, dis- cussing the latest news from the interior, which was as usual without any streak of lightning about French victories. It was a monoto- nous record of the steady advance of the Eng- lish army, swallowing one town after another in their onward march, leaving in each new conquest some of their army for garrison and gome of their standards for sign of their occu- 22 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. pation. The capture'of their own Vaucouleurs, too, seemed inevitable. It was not a very cheerful company around the Governor who heard the announcement that a young girl was outside begging audience with him, who would not tell her business but to him. " Bring her in," said Baudricourt. At sight of the room full of bravely costumed men uncle Laxart became embarrassed, fum- bled with his cap and forgot what he wanted to say. But the inspired girl in her homespun red dress, rough shoes and white coif, came for- ward looking at no one but the Governor, whom she recognized at once, and said: " My message is to you, Robert de Baudri- court, Governor of Vaucouleurs, and it is this : that you will send and tell the Dauphin to wait and not give battle to his enemies yet, for God will presently send him help." All eyes were riveted on the speaker of such a strange message, and for a moment there was silence. The Governor scowled : " What non- sense is this? The King — or the Dauphin as you call him — ^needs no message of that sort. He will wait indeed. He has no thought of fight. What further have you to say to me?" " This : to beg of you to give me an escort of men-at-arms and send me to the Dauphin." "What for?" BLE:SSED JOAN OF ARC. 23 " That he may make me his General ; for it is appointed that I shall drive the English out of France, and set the crown upon his head." "What! You? You are but a child." " Nevertheless, I am appointed to do this thing." " Indeed ! And when is all this to happen ? " " Next year he will be crowned, and after that will remain master of France." " Who sent you with these extravagant messages ? " " My Lord, the King of Heaven." The seriousness and sadness of the Gover- nor's company had changed to merriment at Joan's first words, but now they changed again to pity for the " poor demented thing," and Baudicourt said to Laxart: " Take this mad child home and whip her soundly. That is the best cure for her ail- ment." Poor Joan ! What could she do but turn and go. But ere she went she raised her eyes to the Governor's and said sweetly: " It is my Lord that has commanded. There- fore must I come again and yet again. Then I shall have the men-at-arms." The Governor said nothing to this, and uncle Laxart led her away. Joan, disappointed but not discouraged, 24 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. went back to Domremy to wait further what God's will had in store for her. Now her story was out she made no further reserve, but calmly and firmly reiterated when asked, that she had a commission from God to help the King and France, and that God in His own good time would help his willing handmaid to accomplish the task she never sought and would fain es- cape now if God so willed. A hard summer and fall and winter followed for Joan. Her father's displeasure at the un- natural future his daughter was seeking, her mother's patient sympathy which however had no understanding in it of her mission, would have been hard to bear if her Voices had not sustained her. Her brothers and former companions could DO longer share with her their sports or gay conversation. Her eyes seemed to look over and beyond them ever, as if her wonderful call was always in her ears. But she was gentle and patient with everybody. Even when an ardent youth with her hopeful parents' glad consent, sought to take her out of all diflSculties by asking her to be his wife, her refusal was kind. So kind that he and her parents thought if they got the Bishop to command her she would never dare hesitate; and once married all would end BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 25 well. Joan was cited before the Bishop; but her simple directness saved her; with her eyes on the horizon beyond which was her un- crowned king, she gave such sweetly courage- ous denial to the Bishop that she had ever been engaged to this man, the Bishop let her go and put no command on her whose path was so plainly marked out by heaven already. From May, 1428, until the 5th of January, 1429, Joan spent in trying to reconcile her parents and friends to her fate and waiting for definite call to action. At last she sought her uncle Laxart again. " I must go into France. The time is come. My Voices are not vague now, but clear, and they have told me what I must do. In two months I shall be with the Dauphin." Once more and for the last time (and she knew it) she left her childhood's home. She was seventeen now, and though of the poor and dressed like them in her rough red dress, she had an exalted look on her face and a dignity in her carriage, that Baudricourt marked well when she again presented herself to him, begging him to send her with a proper escort to the Dauphin that she might free France. " I must still come to you until you send me to the king for so it is commanded me. I dare 26 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. not disobey. I must go to the Dauphin though I go on my knees." But Baudricourt sent her away with no promise of ever granting her request. In Baudricourt's council was a noble cava- lier, Sieur Jean de Metz, a true soldier, as it proved later, who was a silent spectator at both meetings of Joan with the Governor. He was struck with the tranquillity of Joan's courage. Her face and voice and whole atti- tude appealed to him, and he was inspired to take up her cause. Joan's earnestness was contagious. The Sieur de Metz was touched with sym- pathy to see the little maid's disappointment after Baudricourt's second refusal to help her. He followed her and questioned her. " Is it necessary that you go to the king soon? That is I mean — " " Before Mid-Lent even though I wear my legs to the knees," replied Joan, and the reflec- tion of the glory of St. Michael the Archangel was on her face and in her clear eyes as she turned them on him. For a silent moment he gazed down into that face and caught somewhat of its holy earnest- ness. At length he said : " God knows I think you should have the men-at-arms, and that something would come BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 27 of it. What is it that you would do? What is your hope and purpose?" " To rescue France," she said. " And it is appointed that I shall do it. For no one else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, nor the daughter of the King of Scotland, nor any other can recover the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me." (The daughter of the King of Scotland was to marry the son of the Dauphin and so ally the two countries.) And seeing the infinite pity in the eyes of the nobleman she dropped her own and added pathetically : " But indeed I would rather spin with my poor mother; for this is not my calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord's will." "Who is your Lord?" " He is God." " When do you wish to start? " " Sooner at once than to-morrow. Sooner to-morrow than later." Then the Sieur de Metz, Inspired no doubt by the kind Heaven that led Joan, knelt, and made oath to Joan that by God's help he would himself, if no other, lead her to the King. He brought his friend and comrade knight, Sieur Bertrand de Poulengy, to her also and together they pledged themselves her knights hencefor- 28 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. ward, to lead her to the King and to follow her lead thereafter. But these two strong allies were not the Governor and it was the Governor of Vaucou- leurs, her Voices said, should send her to the king. It was Ascension Day, 1428, when Joan went first to Baudricourt. Ten months were wasted in trying to win his favorable attention. Joan induced her uncle to take lodgings with her near the Governor's house, for she knew she must see him again and soon. Meantime her story got abroad. There had been not one syllable of good news for so long in any part of France that the word that a maiden had come with a commission from Heaven to help Orleans and the King, was like a beautiful shower after a long, long drought. Everybody seized it eagerly and passed it along. They may not have placed any faith in it, but it was a word of hope and sounded so good to a despairing people. The whole population of that part of France talked of nothing but the angel woman sent by God to crown the King and drive out the English. With the people the crowning of the king was a most necessary preliminary. They re- fused to acknowledge the King of England who had been proclaimed in Paris six years before. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 29 But the Dauphin of France was not king till the sacred oil be poured upon his head at Rheims. Meanwhile they had no head and Joan's promise to crown the king at Rheims had great significance for them. Then, too, some one revived the old prophesy that said France would be lost by a harlot, and regained by a maid. It was now on every tongue. Did not the frivolous Queen of Charles VI sign away the right of her son, the Dauphin, to the succession, acknowledging the King of England to be King of France, thus opening the gates full to the English. And here now was a maid come say- ing she was sent to crown the Dauphin and drive out the English. Meantime the siege of Orleans was in prog- ress. " The Moscow Campaign of the English in France," as Andrew Lang aptly calls it. In his excellent work on " The Maid of France," he details from English official accounts, the gigantic English preparations for the complete subjugation of France. The English Treasury was emptied to purchase great stores of arms and ammunition, and the latest and best ap- pliances of military science. The men to fight were drafted for six months, which was considered ample time now to finish 30 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. the war that had lasted for nearly a hundred years. Orleans was the last real stronghold of the French. It was a brave town within a square mile of walls of great height and thickness, with a coronal of towers, and its river front protected by a fort and bridge. It was well garrisoned and well provided with food and guns, when the siege began on October 12, 1428. Around the town the English had built forts or bastiles connected with each other, impos- ing in appearance. There were fully a dozen of these commanding all approaches to the city. Between all of these in turn and the besieged city a series of skirmishes was kept up all through the months of October and November, 1428, while Joan was at Vaucouleurs trying to be patient; her heavenly voices urging her on and the ofiScials of beleaguered France bar- ring her progress. On December 1, 1428, the great Talbot ar- rived from England to take the place of Salis- bury who had been mortally wounded in one of the skirmishes. Talbot brought fresh sup- plies of men and guns and ammunition and before one or other of the half-dozen gates of the city more or less fighting took place every day. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 3I Only on Christmas Day there was a truce. Some of these skirmishes were serious enough on both sides to be called battles. Two armies could hardly live seven months within such close range without some bloodshed. But there was no real sustained fighting. The French were afraid and the English, sure of them- selves, were in no hurry. The Dauphin was expecting help from Scotland, France's old ally. France and Scotland had in turn saved each other's independence before from England. On January 3, 1429, the town council of Tour- nai heard from the Dauphin, who was at Chinon, that an army was coming from Scot- land which would arrive early in May. The infant daughter of King James I of Scotland, betrothed to the infant son of the Dauphin, was coming with a splendid army to the succor of her future home. The English heard the news, too, and pre- pared to attack the Scottish transports. On February 14, 1429, Joan went once more to the castle at Vaucouleurs and presented her- self to the Governor. A few days previously he had come to her at her lodgings bringing with him a priest who in surplice and stole read from the Divine OfQce for the exorcism of the evil spirit — while the Governor watched eagerly for any sign of witch or devil. 32 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Joan answered the priest's questions and submitted to his tests with perfect calmness and good temper. She was more sorry for the wrong he did himself than for the insult put on her. He pronounced her safe and sane, how- ever, very much to the Governor's trouble of mind, who would like to be excused from further thought of her. About this time the defenders of Orleans got word of a huge convoy of food and am- munition to the English. A French army of 4,000 fighting men mostly mounted left Orleans to intercept and capture the convoy. Their own food was becoming scarce. The English convoy numbered but 1,500, including the com- missariat, to guard the wagons loaded with guns and barrels of salt herrings, for it was Lent. But the 1,500 English and their allies drove the French back to Orleans and drove their herrings safely to their own camp. So discouraged were the French by this one defeat, the " Battle of the Herrings," as it is known in history, that two thousand of those defeated Orleanists, with Charles de Bourbon (who commanded at Orleans) at their head and the bishop of Orleans (who, by the way, was a Scotchman, Andrew Lang says) left Orleans as already a doomed town and went 3LBSSBD JOAN OF ARC. 33 further south to where the Dauphin was sheltered. The 14th of February Joan presented herself once more to the Governor. " In God's name," she said vehemently, " you are too slow about sending me and have caused damage thereby, for this day the Dauphin's cause has lost a battle near Orleans." The Governor looked earnestly at her for a full moment. "To-day? How can you know what has happened in that region to-day? It would take eight or ten days for word to come from there." " I tell you a serious battle was lost to-day and it is your fault to delay me so." A ray of light struck the puzzled old soldier. He swore a great oath that if it proved true, as she said, that a battle that day was fought and lost, she should have a letter and an escort to the king. Then answered Joan : " Now God be thanked these waiting days are almost done. In nine days you will fetch me the letter." And Joan made her preparations accord- ingly. Her weary waiting was at last over. To her trusted knights, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy, she gave orders to be ready for one hour before midnight of the 23d. 34 BLESSED JOAN OF AHC. They would march secretly out of Vaucouleurs and through the country to Ghinon where the Dauphin was. At ten, the night of the 23d, the Governor came. He had received news of the Battle of the Herrings. He delivered over to Joan a mounted escort of soldiers. He gave her also horses for her brothers and her two knights and a letter to the king. Then he took off his own sword and belted it around her waist. " You said true, child. The battle was lost on that day. So I have kept my word. Now go ! Come of it what may ! " CHAPTER III. Her miraculous march to the King — He gives her command of the armies of France. Great was the joy of Joan to hear Baudri- court's words. " Go then in God's name — let come of it what may." The grave patience of her countenance during the weary ten months of waiting and pleading to be sent on her mission, now gave place to a look of exultation that reflected itself on the faces of her escort — the " men-at-arms " — that she had at last obtained from the Governor. God's ways are not man's ways. Else the Almighty power that chose so weak an instru- ment for so seemingly impossible a work would have somewhat smoothed the way for her at the start. But those weary months of waiting tested and strengthened her patience and her confidence, and, by so much, prepared her for further and heavier trials. That Baudricourt, bluff, rough, skeptical old soldier, should believe in her and send her on her way, was in itself a miracle most encouraging. And he made every one of the twenty men-at-arms 35 36 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. swear to conduct her safely and well to the king. Joan's task was well begun now, as she started out of the " Gate of France " of the walled town of Vaucouleurs at the head of her little company. Between her and the Dauphin at Chinon lay the width of France. Over four hundred miles of English-infested land and fully a score of streams to cross. No convoy of supplies for food or shelter accompanied or met them. No guarantee of any kind for safety went with them, except the word of God in the heart of a maiden, and her courage reflected in the faces and hearts of her comrades. Looking back through history at that march with all its circumstances, we see in it again 'the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day, that led the Israelites of old. Jean de Metz, testifying to this journey on oath years afterwards, swore : " We traveled for the most part at night for fear of the Burgundians and the English, who were masters of the roads. We journeyed eleven days always riding (westward), towards the said town of Chinon where the Dauphin was. On the way I asked her many times if she would really do all she said. ' Have no fear,' she answered me, ' what I am commanded to BLBSSKD JOAN OF ARC. 37 do I will do; my brothers in Paradise have told me how to act; it is four or five years since my brothers in Paradise, and my Lord — that is, God — ^^told me that I must go and fight in order to regain the kingdom of France.' On the way Bertrand and I slept every night by her — Jeanne being at my side fully dressed. She inspired me with such respect that for nothing in the world would I have dared to molest her; also never did I feel towards her — I say it on oath — any carnal desire. On the way she always wished to hear Mass. She said to us : ' If we can we shall do well to hear Mass.' But for fear of being recognized we were able only to hear it twice. I had abso- lute faith in her. Her words and her ardent faith in God inflamed me." Bertrand de Poulengy testified: " I felt myself inspired by her words, for I saw she was indeed a messenger of God ; never did I see in her any evil, but always she was as good as if she had been a saint. We took our road thus and without many obstacles gained Chinon, where the king, the Dauphin, was then staying." The first place of any interest recorded in their journey was the little town of St. Cather- ine de Fierbois, about a half day's journey by horse, from Chinon. Here in a famous chapel 38 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. dedicated to the St. Catherine of her visions and voices, they arrived on Sunday, March 6, 1429. Three Masses after one another they stopped to hear. Then the Maid sent her two faithful friends, Sieur Bertrand and Jean de Metz, ahead of her to Chinon with Baudricourt's letter to the Dauphin and a letter of her own, which she dictated to Jean de Metz. In it she told the Dauphin that she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news, and begged the privilege of delivering it in person. She added that though she had never seen him she would recognize him in any disguise. After resting a few hours her li ttle cavalcade started again for Chinon and arriving in the evening took lodgings in an inn — awaiting the Dauphin's commands. Just as Joan rode into Chinon there came there also two knightly messengers from be- leaguered Orleans, appealing to the king for immediate help or the city must fall. There was a good man and a capable soldier at the time in command of Orleans. He was Jean, a natural son of the Duke of Orleans, and is well known in French and English his- tory as " The Bastard of Orleans." That was his popular title at the time, though when peace returned to France ten years later he was BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 39 created Count de Dunois. We shall call him Dunois for we shall meet him often in this story, and learn to love him for his splendid courage and good sense. He was the king's Lieutenant-General of the wars. He was in despair of Orleans when the news reached him that a maid was advancing from Lorraine to the rescue of Orleans and the king. That she had just passed Orleans on her way to Chinon. That she promised no less than the raising of the siege of Orleans, the crowning of the King at Eheims, the reunion of Burgundy with the king, and the final ex- pulsion of the English from France. The besieged Orleanists drank in new life and hope with the news. Dunois sent trusted messengers to Chinon to learn the truth. These soon returned to Orleans and reported to Dunois that they had seen the maid; they had talked with her men ; that she came to beg men and arms and authority from the Dauphin to raise the siege of Orleans. She had not asked for a great army — had not specified for any number of men — if only the king would give her soldiers and authority — saying: " When God fights it is but small matter whether the hand that holds the sword is big or little." But the King had at first as little mind to 40 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. heed her as Baudricourt had before him. He was too bothered and bewildered — too over- whelmed with disasters, to sense the amazing offer of help so near and so boldly held out. He sent councillors to Joan to find out her business with him and act for him in the matter. But Joan gently refused to treat with them. Her business was with the Dauphin and she keenly suspected that her business would never get to him through these councillors. " Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me pres- ently. Have no fear," she would say to those who expressed anger at the delays put upon her. God raised for her a friend at Court in the person of Yolande, queen of Sicily, mother of the Dauphin's wife, a sensible, pious woman, who prevailed upon the king not to turn his back on any promise of help in his straitened condition without investigating it. She caused Joan to be brought to the Castle of Chinon and lodged near herself. Here for two days the humble girl from Domremy met the chivalry of France, talked with everybody but the one with whom she longed to have speech. The elegance of the court life, the gay attire, the stately ceremonies, and fine speeches, had no attraction for her. The echo in her heart of Gods pity for France made her sad but the BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 41 knowledge that it must end happily kept her patient. After two days word came that the Dauphin would see her. He sent a great lord of the court, Count de Vendome, to escort her to the throne room. As she followed her guide in through the great door at one end of the long hall she took in at a glance the three hundred and more splendidly dressed courtiers and soldiers that lined both sides, leaving a wide free space down the middle. At the farther end opposite the entrance was the canopied throne and on its comely occupant the brave girl fixed her gaze as she advanced with the simple dignity of the true woman, untrained, unspoiled, unconscious of herself, and of every- thing around not directly concerned with her mission. All eyes were fixed upon the maid. And in- deed according to all accounts Joan was good to look at. No Amazon, no weakling, but a fair good figure, graceful enough to cause no comment in any crowd. From long and frequent con- verse with her heavenly visitants it is no won- der her countenance was beautiful, but now when joy and hope ran unwonted riot in her heart, her face was radiant beyond telling. Yet awe of her great task doubtless was in it, too. '42 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. Joan of Arc never sat for a picture, but she has been a favorite with painters and we are at no loss to imagine how she must have looked at this audience with the favored-of-Heaven Charles VI. Orleans still shows in its Treasury the dress worn by Joan of Arc at this first interview with the king. A simple white dress of fine material and make — procured for her so the history attached says, by Yolande. She herself never mentions it in any of her depositions. The great soul of the woman was too full of the fate of the nation to note trifles. Neither should we. Sufficient to know that some reflection of heaven was in her face and the glory of it was the courage of her friends and the confusion of her enemies. Joan was led quite to the foot of the throne, her name pronounced, the Count de Vendome made his obeisance and bowed himself out of the way. But Joan made no obeisance. One long, silent puzzled look she gave the throne and then slowly turned her eyes down the long line of waiting knights on one side till they rested on one. A joyous light came into her face, with one swift motion she was on her knees before him, her hands clasped together and lifted to him as she said : " God of His grace give you long life, O dear and gentle Dauphin." BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 43 She had recognized him, though he had changed places with another to test her. " Do you seek the king ? " asked he, pointing to the throne as if to make or to shake her sureness. " Ah, my gracious liege, you are he, and none other." "But who are you and what would you?" " I am Joan the maid, and am sent to you by the King of Heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated and crowned at Rheims, and shall be thereafter Lieutenant of the Lord of Heaven, who is King of France." She paused and no one found words to utter. She spoke again : " The Lord of Heaven wills that you set me at my appointed work, and give me men-at- arms. For then will I raise the siege of Or- leans and break the English power." More than three hundred men of the king's immediate following, had seen that humble girl face unabashed, and yet with no boldness, that grand assembly. They had been eye-witness to her quick penetration of the king's disguise and now their ears are filled with a message of impossible meaning. While they looked and listened for more of that blessed voice, the King made a sign for all to withdraw and Joan and himself were left alone in a vacant space. 44 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The two talked long and earnestly. This was a most momentous conversation for Joan gave him a sign by which he might know she came from God to him. What this sign was no one was told at the time. It was seen to make a new man of the doubting, despairing king, but no one guessed it even. At Joan's trial two years afterwards she was tortured unmercifully to make her reveal it but she did not. Of course the whole world knows it since. From depositions on oath of eye-witnesses, from confessions of the King to favorites in after years — handed down by these the whole story is told and in sub- stance it is this : Naturally the King wished to believe that Joan was sent to him to help him. The couriers from Orleans were even then clamoring at his gate for him to come and bring what men he had to the help of Orleans. But many re- verses had made him timorous. " I wish I knew what to do," he said to Joan at last. " I will give you a sign and yon shall no more doubt," said Joan. "There is a secret trouble in your heart which you have not even put into words. A doubt which wastes your courage and makes you wish to fly from France and hide your head in ignoble peace." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 45 The King was amazed. Only that morning he had gone to his chapel alone and prayed in his heart that if through his weak mother's sin he was only an imposition on the people of France and no true heir to Charles VI, God would make it known to him and he would relinquish all right to the throne of Charle- magne and St. Louis. " Thou art lawful heir to the king, thy father, and true heir of France. God has spoken it. Now lift up thy head and doubt no more, but give me men-at-arms and let me get about my work, for I must raise the siege of Orleans." No one but God knew of his doubt or his resolve, and now here was a quick and com- plete answer to both. The King was satisfied. Not so his councillors. The old soldiers among them made sport of the very idea of a country maid raising the siege of Orleans, where grim old veterans were trembling for the morrow. When the King mentioned the ac- curacy of the sign she gave him, the Archbishop of Rheims reminded him gravely that Satan knows the secrets of men. And so the King was persuaded to form a commission to examine Joan as to her author- ity from God and to report to him. Several bishops and their secretaries met Joan every day for several days, asking her 46 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. questions about her Voices and her mission to France. Joan's answers were always simple and direct. The Commission did not like to countenance the irregularity of a girl leading an army, but they could not decide against Joan. They advised the king to let her case go be- fore the doctors of the university of Poitiers. Once more must the heroic little woman summon all her fortitude and her patience. While the English were landing reinforce- ments and strengthening their bastiles around Orleans ; and the people of Orleans facing slow death by hunger, or, later violent death and everlasting disgrace, Joan must wait and wait and wait for leave to succor them. One great sign of the orthodoxy of Joan's mission was her submission to the proper authority. She would not, though guided by God and strong in His care and lead, go from Vaucouleurs to Chinon without proper authority and escort from the Governor there. Nor would she lift a finger to aid Orleans except under the lawful authority of the king. There were men enough who would follow her lead to the rescue of Orleans if she gave the word. But she went nowhere of her own free will. " Send me to Orleans," she cried ; " give me fighting men — few or many — and let me go ! " BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 47 That was peculiarily her plea always. " Gid- eon's few " even, if only there was lawful au- thority behind them. For three weeks Joan had to undergo trial as to her orthodoxy before a corps of learned ecclesiastics at Poitiers. She sat or stood by turns before them while they cross-questioned her, badgered her, insulted her. She all the while answering them patiently and sometimes very pointedly. " I don't know A from B ; but I know this : that I am come by command of the Lord of Heaven to deliver Orleans from the English power and crown the King at Rheims, and the matters ye are pottering over are of no conse- quence." "You assert that God has willed to deliver France from this English bondage? " " Yes ; He has so willed it." " You wish for men-at-arms so that you may go to the relief of Orleans ? " " Yes ; and the sooner the better." " God is all powerful, and able to do what- soever thing He wills to do, is it not so?" " Most surely — none doubts it." " Then answer me. If He has willed to de- liver France, and is able to do whatsoever He wills, where is the need for men-at-arms ? " 48 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. " The sons of France will fight the battles, but God will give the victory ! " The testimony of some of these doctors of theology, who rigorously questioned Joan, taken on oath, is to be seen in the archives of Paris to-day. We shall quote one here as a sample of the rest for they all under oath told the same story in almost the very same words : Brother Seguin de Seguin, Dominican, Pro- fessor of Theology, Dean of the Faculty of Theology of Poitiers. " I saw Jeanne for the first time at Poitiers. The King's Council was assembled in the house of the Lady La Macee, the Archbishop of Rheims, then Chancellor of France, being of their number. I was summoned as was also the Professor of Theology of the University of Paris * * * and many others. " The Council told us we were summoned, in the King's name, to question Jeanne and give our opinion upon her. " I, in my turn, asked Jeanne what dialect the Voices spoke. " ' A better one than yours,' she replied. I speak the Limousin dialect. " Do you believe in God ? I asked her. ' In truth, more than you do,' she answered. ' But BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 49 God wills that you should not be believed un- less you show signs to prove that you ought to be believed. We shall not advise the king to risk an army on your simple statement.' " ' In God's name, I am not come to Poitiers to show signs; but send me to Orleans where I shall show you the signs for which I am sent.' * * * " And then she foretold to me and to the others these four things which should happen, and which did afterwards come to pass. First, that the English would be destroyed, the siege of Orleans raised, and the town delivered from the English. Secondly, that the King would be crowned at Rheims. Thirdly, that Paris would be restored to his dominion ; and fourthly, that the Duke of Orleans (then a prisoner in Eng- land) would be brought back from England. " And I who speak have in truth seen these four things accomplished. " We reported all this to the king, and gave our opinion that considering the extreme neces- sity, the king might make use of her help and send her to Orleans. " Besides we enquired into her life and morals. We found she was a good Christian, living as a Catholic and never idle. In order that her manner of living might better be known women were placed with her who were 50 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. to report to the king's council her actions and her ways. " As for me, I believe she was sent from God, because, at the time when she appeared, the king and all the French people with him had lost hope; no one thought of aught but to save himself." The verdict made a prodigious stir. The news of it flew like wildfire and every man in France awoke to the meaning of it. For a long time past there had been no French army in the field. The king's authority was openly flouted. The Duke of Burgundy openly for the English side was making friends with the Dukes of Lorraine and Brittany for the English alliance. Money had run out. There was absolutely no hope left. And in this strait the king and his council decided to stake their last chance in the proffered help of this maid, who claimed to come from God. In truth there was no help for France now but from God. The council of theologians an- nounced also that as Joan must do the work of a man she could do it better in the dress of a man. A day later with a great blare of trumpets the King announced that Joan of Arc, called the Maid, was appointed general in chief of the armies of France. The Duke d'Alencon, a BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. gl relative of the king, a brave soldier newly ran- somed from a three years' captivity in England was made her lieutenant. It was a great day for Joan. Her happiness found vent in fervent thanks to her Divine Lord that now France's long night was near its end. Her enthusiasm was caught up by the people near her and spread far and quickly until all France was eager to begin the work of redemption. Joan went to Tours at once to have a suit of armor fitted her. She sent at the same time to Fierbois asking the churchmen of St. Catherine's to send her an old sword they would find buried behind the altar. They found the sword, and cleaned it and fitting a sheath to it sent it to her. Now was Joan equipped and ready for Orleans. CHAPTER IV. She reorganizes the French army and warns the English to leave France. Joan's first oflScial act as General-in-Chief of the armies of France was to send a letter to the English commanders concentrated before Orleans ordering them to deliver up all the cities in their possession and depart from France. Joan was never one to hesitate or lose time once her work was in view. She sent this letter at once by a trusted messenger, Guienne, so that the Englishmen might have time to cogitate over it while she was making prepara- tions to follow it up. The letter is among the original documents preserved still in the ar- chives of Paris. It reads : " JESU, MARIE. " King of England ; and you, Duke of Bed- ford, who call yourself Regent of the King- dom of France; you, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; John, Lord Talbot; and you, Thomas, Lord Scales, who call yourselves^ Lieu- 53 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 53 tenants to the Duke of Bedford: Give satis- faction to the King of Heaven; give up to the maid, who is sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns in France which you have taken and broken into. She is come here by the order of God to reclaim the blood royal. She is quite ready to make peace, if you are willing to give her satisfac- tion, by giving and paying back to France what you have taken. And as for you, archers, com- panions-in-arms, gentlemen and others, who are before the town of Orleans, return to your own countries, by God's order; and if this be not done, then hear the message of the Maid, who will shortly come upon you to your very great hurt: King of England, I am a chieftain of war and, if this be not done, wheresoever I find your fol- lowers in France I will make them leave, will- ingly or unwillingly; if they will not leave I will have them put to death. I am sent here by God, the King of Heaven, to drive them all out of the whole of France. And if they will obey I will have mercy on them. And do not think to yourselves that you will get possession of the realm of France from God, the King of Heaven, Son of the Blessed Mary; for King Charles will gain it, the true 54 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. heir ; and God, the King of Heaven, so wills it, and it is revealed to him, (the King) by the Maid, and he will enter Paris with a good company. If you will not believe the message of God and of the Maid and act aright, in whatsoever place we find you, we will enter therein and make so great a disturbance that for a thou- sand years none in France will be so great. And believe surely that the King of Heaven will send greater power to the Maid, to her and her good men-at-arms, than you can bring to the attack; and, when it comes to blows, we shall see who has the better right from the King of Heaven. You, Duke of Burgundy, the Maid prays and enjoins, you, that you do not come to grievous hurt. If you will give her satisfactory pledges, you may yet join with her, so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom. And answer, if you wish to make peace in the City of Orleans; if this be not done you may shortly be reminded of it to your very great hurt. Written this Tuesday in Holy Week, March 22, 1429. • • • • • • • Now was a busy month ahead for Joan. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 5g Following the King's proclamation that she was henceforward the chief in command of the armies of France, was the necessity for her to see the generals and the army, to recruit and reorganize. The great and good Dunois, Governor of Or- leans, had been clamoring for weeks for speedy assistance. He sent a valued veteran oflflcer to the King, old D'Aulon, whom the King at once recommended to Joan, and was accepted as chief of her personal staff. Joan had all her old friends of the journey from Vaucouleurs put on her staff, too, re- lying for success more on honest hearts than on military knowledge; for had she not said time and time again that the victory would come from God? The King had a complete suit of armor made for her at Tours nearby, a town famous for its workers in metals. It was of silver white steel, complete as any soldier's, but lighter in weight. She herself designed her standard for the painter, whose name was James Powers, as the records tell. The banner was of white silk, fringed. For device it bore the representation of God the Father, throned in the clouds, the globe in His hand, two angels kneeling on either side. 56 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The reverse bore the crown of Charlemagne upheld by two angels. A smaller standard was made also bearing a picture of the Annunciation. Joan chose for recruiting station and marching point for Orleans, the town of Blois, about thirty miles from Orleans, and like Orleans on the north bank of the Loire — whereas Chinon and Tours were on the south side of the river. At Blois a great store of provisions were prepared to be conveyed to the famished Or- leanists. At Blois, too, the army was put in shape for Orleans. La Hire, the Marshal of France, was placed in charge of it till Joan should arrive. Joan all in armor and with her standards and her general staff of oflScers, D'Alencon, D'Aulon, Bertrand de Poulengy, Jean de Metz, her two brothers, Louis de Contes, and a giant in size though not in sense, named in all the records " The Paladin," who had followed her from Domremy, and to whom she gave charge of her standards, and a numerous retinue all in new armor, came to Blois in the last week of April, 1429. There she found an army of about twelve thousand men well armed and well organized under the leadership of La Hire who next BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 57 to Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, bore the mightiest military name in Prance. La Hire had his battallions well drilled in military tac- tics but Joan wanted more than that. She wanted a moral soldiery. She allowed no women in the camp. She forbade all drinking and disorder. More than that, " Every man who joins my standard must confess before the priest and be absolved from sin; and all accepted recruits must be present at divine service twice a day," she pro- claimed. She caused a banner bearing a representa- tion of Our Lord on the cross to be painted, and twice a day she had the priests to as- semble in the midst of the army, raising this banner and singing hymns to the Blessed Vir- gin. Only the soldiers who confessed in the morning were allowed to join in these hymns. And she saw to it that priests were always on hand to hear confessions. This is known on the sworn testimony of many of these priests. These same documents tell, too, of Joan's efforts to bring to a state of grace the giant old soldier, La Hire. He whose every second word was an oath and to whom prayer and pity were equally strangers, was gently ap- proached by this angel of both prayer and 58 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. pity. As they rode side by side through the camp, inspecting and perfecting, Joan broke it to La Hire that he, too, had a soul to save and that he must do honor to God by raising his hands in prayer to Him. At first the old soldier laughed at the idea. But Joan pressed him hard. He must pray. La Hire held out as long as he could, but his prayer at last is among the records of those miraculous days, and is worthy of the strong simple soul of the old soldier, whose whole life was spent on battlefields — always grim and mostly hopeless. At Joan's gentle persistence La Hire, who could refuse her nothing, raised his mailed hands to heaven as he stood before the Maid and prayed : " Fair, Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you were La Hire and he were God." And for the time being Joan was obliged to appear satisfied. At last all was ready and on the 27th of April, the French army, Joan of Arc at its head, started in great strength and splendor for Orleans. Joan in her shining white armor rode at the head of it with her personal staff; then a body of priests bearing the crucifix and singing the " Veni Creator " ; behind them in five divisions, BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 59 the army of France, not more than twelve thousand but, under the new leader and the new hope, an invincible legion. Joan's plan was to march along the north bank of the river to Orleans and into Orleans. But the old military leaders of France had put their heads together and deemed that a risky plan. Joan's proposal to march boldly up on Or- leans seemed to them insane. How could an army of twelve thousand force its way through Talbot's English camp, the major part of which was just near that western gate she planned to enter? Better go the other way and instead of oflfering open battle in the face of odds, be- siege the besiegers by cutting ofiE their supplies and reinforcements. So Joan and the army, unsuspicious of treachery, were led to Orleans by way of the Soulonge instead by the Bleuce road. The third day's march brought the army in sight of Orleans and Joan saw the river Loire be- tween her and the beleaguered city and knew she had been tricked. Dunois, the Governor of Orleans, came with his staff in a boat across to meet her. " Are you the Bastard of Orleans ? " she asked, using the only title he bore then. " I am, and right glad of your coming," said he. 60 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Was it you who gave counsel to come by this bank of the river, so that I cannot go straight against Talbot and the English ? " " I, and others wiser than I, gave that coun- sel, and I think it the wiser way and the safer." " In God's name, the counsel of Our Lord is wiser and safer than yours. You think to de- ceive me, and you deceive yourself, for I bring you better rescue than ever came to knight or city, the succor of the King of Heaven. At the prayer of St. Louis and of Charlemagne, he has had pity on Orleans and will not suffer the enemy to have both the Duke of Orleans and his city." (The Duke of Orleans was at this time a prisoner in England.) Joan was hurt and sad. Here were pro- visions for the starving in Orleans, but the boats were below the city, the wind was against them, and the army had no chance whatever of marching into Orleans. Dunois admitted a blunder had been made. " Yes, a blunder has been made and except God take your proper work upon Himself and change the wind, there is no remedy." But at the prayer of Joan just that did happen. The wind did change, the fleet of boats came up and conveyed the provisions into the city. But Joan and the army must go back to BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Qi Blois and start again for Orleans on the other side of the river. Joan gave her orders accordingly with many grievings over the precious time so lost while her army was in the state of grace and so full of enthusiasm. Worse yet, Dunois begged her not to go back with the army. Let the other generals lead it. The people of Orleans were expecting her and he could not answer for what they might do if he went back to them without her. So Joan bade her beloved army go all the way back to Blois and crossing the river come by the other road to Orleans where she would be looking for them inside a week. She went with La Hire and a few companies of lancers to Orleans. All Orleans crowded to meet her. On her white horse and with the shining white armor that seemed even brighter in the glare of the innumerable torches Joan looked the inspired messenger of Heaven. It was evening when at the Burgundy gate the expectant masses in- side met the long-hoped band of deliverance, and the air was filled with shouts of joy and cries of welcome. Straight for the great Cathedral at Joan's command the procession formed. Joan was 62 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. allowed to enter first and after her as many aa could get in and those on the squares and streets around took up the hymn of thanks and praise while bells rang and cannon boomed. It was late that night when Joan laid aside the coat of mail in which she had slept the two previous nights with great discomfort to bone and muscle. At the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the city, rooms were prepared for her where she was to stay, while in Orleans, the honored guest of Madame Boucher and her young daughter. Next morning, Saturday, she was up early and after hearing several Masses in the Cathe- dral and before she broke her fast, we are told, she set about inquiring about her messenger that she had sent with the letter to the English. No one knew of any answer nor of any mes- senger. She had sent him from Blois with directions to bring her the answer in Orleans. She now sent her two heralds with a new letter warning the English to raise the siege and to return the missing messenger. For answer to her demands they brought back from the English commanders to her a notice that they would presently catch her and burn her. Then she sent the heralds back : " Go back and say to Lord Talbot from me : BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 63 ' Come out of your bastiles with your host, and I will come with mine; if I beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me bum me, according to your desire." This challenge was not accepted. Sunday morning she spent again in the Cathedral and later in the day she told Dunois her army was in some danger and begged him to go to Blois and lead it for her to Orleans. Dunois sure enough found one Regnault de Chartres, a self-seeking, proud officer, conspir- ing with others of lesser importance to prevent the march to Orleans. Dunois rushed the army to Orleans — all the city turned out to meet it. Joan and her staff met and greeted the head of the column four or five miles out- side the city and Joan held a review of the now happy troops— happy at having her again for encouragement and inspiration. It is told in the annals of that day that the greatest surprise those French soldiers ever had so far was that march into Orleans. With Joan on her white steed at their head they rode past the fortified bastilles with which the English had surrounded the principal avenues of approach to the city. The strongest for- tress of the English was just on the line of march of that incoming army. Each side could see the other; Lord Talbot's men could easily 64 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. count the Frenchmen. But Joan nor her men never looked Lord Talbot's way — nor did Lord Talbot's men take any notice of Joan's army. Doubtless it was again the cloud by day shield- ing those whom God would shield. By night Joan's army was safe inside Orleans and after the city had yelled itself hoarse with joy and welcome all settled down for as peaceful a night as Orleans ever saw before or since. That was Tuesday, May 3, 1429. CHAPTEK V. Strike boldly I God will give the victory ! On to Orleans ! It was not to be expected that the young girl from Domremy could take the command of the armies of the nation from brave and ex- perienced old commanders, nor from dashing and ambitious young ones, without some op- position, open or secret. Nothing but the plainly miraculous nature of her help, and their extreme need, would have induced the French oflScers to accept her at all. But even then there were limits. Let her do the miracles. They would do the fight- ing. Well, that is what Joan wanted, too. " Let the sons of France fight; God will give the victory," was the spirit of her war messages from the first. She never counted her men. She knew that victory came from God and waited not on numbers or scientific tactics. " Strike boldly; God will help the right." She arrogated to herself no credit. She did not want to fight. When they wanted to sharpen 65 66 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. her sword for her at Fierbois, she would not have it. She did not carry it to kill anybody, but as a sign of authority, she said. (By the way, she broke that same consecrated sword later, driving away some dissolute women that were inclined to follow the army. She was death on such and never would let one of them in camp.) To return to the fighters : The knightly old veterans of the hundred years' war with England were eager enough for battle. But they had their military tac- tics and councils of war, and pride and pru- dence, for none of which Joan saw any place in this campaign. This was not a war between two equal combatants in a fair field. The French were in their last ditch, outnumbered and surrounded and cowed. The French generals were glad to believe Joan came to them with succor from heaven, but the remnant of the old Adam in them pre- vented their generous acceptance of her terms. " Bold attack," was the keynote of her system. But the grizzled war chiefs always found a way to temper her boldness and so delay the victory. Still it always turned out that when they followed their own plans, they came to grief, and were glad to return to her way of think- ing. As in the case of the army coming from BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 67 Blois to Orleans. They cheated her out of the bold road through the enemy's country, and had to let the army retrace and come exactly by that way after all — losing a week's time and not learning properly their lesson from it. For the great captains of Prance chafed and balked all through those splendid maneuvers, that in a few weeks cleared the country of an invading army, that had come to stay forever, and believed itself at home. Knowing how the end would be Joan was patient and firm through it all, and kindest to these proud, old soldiers when they thwarted her most. She always grieved, though, at the delays to the deliverance of France thus caused. If she had had her way she would have raised the siege the very first time she appeared be- fore Orleans. But she had to curb her im- petuosity, and lose a week through the blunders of the secret conspirators. Now this happy 4th of May, 1429, a decent French army, freshly accoutred, was safe with- in the walls of Orleans, to the great joy of the inhabitants who had been facing certain death either by famine inside the walls or the English sword outside. Joan was tired out with her morning's work of meeting and escorting the army into the city past the English forts. 68 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The army was tired from more than a week's marching forward, and back, and forward again. Joan and the generals, and every individual soldier, had laid aside their arms now with a feeling of freedom from danger, and not know- ing just how or when the beginning of the end of the siege was to be. Joan had said that within five days there would not be an English soldier in or around Orleans. But she lay down for a needed rest now. This was Wednesday, May 4, and the French army and its glorious young commander-in- chief were asleep at noon. All at once Joan jumped up and called out : " My arms ! Give me my arms. French blood is being spilled." All around her was bustle and excitement in a moment. She was herself the first in armor and on a horse; her banner had to be reached to her through a window, so hastily did she get ready. Without waiting to see who followed she raised her banner high and galloped furiously in the direction from which she could now plainly hear the noise of the battle. She followed the sound across the width of the city and as the crowds gathered at the sound of her horse's hoofs, "'Forward, French hearts! Follow me," she shouted. Fast as they could arm and follow they did BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 69 SO. First her staff and close after them the troops nearest hand, all making for the Bur- gundy gate. It appears that the garrison so long hope- less, had got excited over Joan's coining, and all it promised, and were anxious to begin. Without orders from anybody some oflScers planned a little sortie of their own and made an attack on one of Talbot's thirteen fortresses built around the city — the fortress of St. Loup — and got the worst of it. Were getting the worst would be more accurate, for Joan came to their aid in good time. As she, at the head of her eager troopers, rushed out the Burgundy gate, they met the wounded being brought in. The sight moved Joan very much. " Ah ! French blood ; it makes my hair rise to see it," she said. Waving her banner high over her head she called out : " Follow me ! " And out into the open field she dashed for her first battle with the English. She did not have to fight the Burgundians. It is a curious fact that the Burgundian allies had been sent elsewhere a short time before. Orleans was deemed an easy prey and there was work for them elsewhere. So Joan was spared the pain of fighting them. 70 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. This hastily improvised battle was a real one, no less. The garrison of St. Loup had come out of their bastile to meet the French attack. The garrison from another bastile, nearby, had come to help them and the French- men seemed to have but small chance of ever getting inside the Burgundy gate again. When Joan came charging through the re- treating French crying : " Forward men — follow me," there came a change. The French turned about and followed her and surged for- ward like a great wave of the sea. They swept down upon the English and through them and doubled back and hemmed them round, the English fighting and backing ther way again into St. Loup, leaving wounded and dead out- side on the field. Joan thought for a brief space. " We will take this fortress," she concluded. " We will carry it by storm. Sound the charge." A wave of incredulity and remonstrance swept over the faces of Dunois and the rest. They thought the attempt needlessly hasty as well as desperate. " Will you always play with these English? " she asked. " Now verily, I will not budge until this place is ours. Let the bugles sound the assault." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 71 And truly wWle their blood was up was just the time to fight. The martial notes rang out, the troops an- swered with a yell and dashed themselves against the walls whose sides were now spout- ing flame and smoke. They were driven back. " Forward," was Joan's word again. Again they hurled themselves against those deadly walls and again and again, each time with ever increasing zest. At last La Hire came with a fresh body of men just in time to be in with a fresh and final rush against the smoking walls, and soon St. Loup was full of the victorious French. All of the English who were not killed were taken prisoners and the French standard was planted on the walls to remain there. " The English died at St. Loup in great numbers," say the Chronicles, and Joan's con- fessor testified: " Jeanne was much afflicted when she heard they died without confession." Her confessor testified also : " On this day, the eve of the Ascension, she predicted that within five days the siege would be raised and not a single Englishman left in or around Orleans." Joan and the victorious army marched back into the city, with their prisoners and a large quantity of ammunition and food from the 72 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. captured St. Loup. Straight to the Cathedral first to give thanks to God Joan led the way. Thanks for this first victory of a whole series of victories to come, and soon. Joan's care was always to lead the march to the Cathedral; and so it is eminently fitting that the hroad, beautiful avenue leading to the Cathedral to this day is named " Rue Jeanne d'Arc." After the Te Deum the interrupted rest waa resumed. " The army slept," the annals say. Next day was Ascension Thursday. Joan was early at Mass, at Confession, at Holy Com- munion, and then she had this letter written to the English in the forts: " JESU, MARIE. " You, men of England, who have no right in this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you by me, Jeanne the Maid, that you quit your strong places and re- turn to your own country; if you do not I will cause you such an overthrow as shall be remembered for all time. I write to you for the third and last time, and shall write to you no more." " Signed, « JEANNE la PUCELLE." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 73 To which this note was added : " I would have sent this letter in a more suitable manner, but you keep back my her- alds ; you have kept my herald, Guinne ; I pray you send him back and I will send you some of your people who have been taken at St. Loup — for all were not killed there." Joan fastened this letter to an arrow head and had an archer shoot it towards the English, at the same time calling loudly in her clear, young voice : " Read, here is news." The English received the arrow, and read the letter and shouted in answer : " Yes, news from the harlot of the Armagnacs " — which made Joan wince and weep and seek comfort and strength in prayer. After supper that night a council of war was held in the house of one of the big men of the city. She heard the captains of war, in turn, advise to make haste slowly and tire the English out. Her usual gentleness was some- what modified by her impatience as she gave her word in her turn: " I am commander here ; you have my orders here and now. We move upon the forts on the south bank of the river to-morrow at dawn." " That means we must first take the fort oa 74 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. the north bank— the bastile St, John?" said an iron-gray warrior. " We will not need to mind the bastile St. John. The English themselves will know enough to vacate it when they see us coming and strengthen themselves in the forts across the river," was her prophetic answer. It was an answer to be expected from an expert tac- tician, too. And so it proved. The English were at last on the defensive, whereas they had been the attacking party always heretofore, as their fathers and grandfathers had been. Early the next morning, Friday, the 6th of May, Joan led the newly shrived and eager army out the Burgundy gate, and towards the river, which they crossed in boats to the island (St. Aignan) in the middle of the river, and front of the ci ty. Thence over the narrow strip of river in a bridge of boats to the now aban- doned fort of St. John — hastily abandoned by the English when they saw the French line of march in the morning. From St. John, the white standard of John floated on down the river a little way and then stopped fair and square, right in front of the formidable fortress that guarded the entrance of the bridge that led into the city — the fortress of the Augustins. Joan came to a stand in the face of the for- BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 75 tress and, without waiting for the rest of the army to come up, ordered the bugles to sound the assault at once. The trumpets sounded. Joan's voice rang out in " Onward in God's name ! " and the French threw themselves against the walls furiously. They were driven back. The bugles again rang out, again Joan's word of command thrilled the heart of every man, again they faced the living walls, and again were forced back. By this time the fortress (English) of St. Prive, about three-quarters of a mile away, further down the river, sent its garrison on a run to the help of the Augustins. Seeing them coming, the garrison of the Augustins sallied out of their walls to meet them, and together they rushed on the French. Hour after hour of fierce fighting followed, the English finally backing into their fortress again, the French pursuing and battering against the walls, receding and advancing with ever increasing impetuosity until they at last planted the Maid's fair banner on the top, full in sight of the English at the other forts, and in sight of the towers of Orleans. It was a great fight and a great victory. It had lasted from early morning until sundown. The strong fortress of the Augustins guarding the bridge was now in the hands of the French. 76 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. But between them and the city of Orleans, was the still stronger fort of the Tourelles, of which the Augustins was the outpost. To free the bridge and raise the siege, the twin Tourelles must be taken and the Boulevard that strength- ened them, also. Here was Joan's work for the morrow already mapped out. Now between them and Orleans were the strong twin Tourelles and the Boulevard. They would have to go the roundabout way they came to get back to the Burgundy gate. She decided at once that the army must sleep on their arms where they were, ready for the morning. In the few hours of daylight left she ordered the Augustins emptied of its artillery and am- munition and the stores destroyed, lest the eating and drinking demoralize the troops and unfit them for the morning's work, its hardest task yet on the morrow. To her confessor she said : " Rise early and stay by me all day. To- morrow I will have much more to do than ever I had and blood will flow from my body above my breast." Her confessor tells also on oath that whereas she always fasted on Friday most rigorously, after this day's hard work she took some sup- per, feeling great need of it. She wished to BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 77 stay with the army all night, but yielded to the pressure of D'Aulon and the others, and re- turned to the city for a night's rest. But her anxiety for the army had her up very early next morning. After Mass, and without waiting for breakfast, she was on her horse and eager to be off. She was besought to eat some- thing. A fine fish, the first fruits of the free- dom of the river front, was prepared for her. But she would not wait to eat, saying gaily : " There is going to be fish in plenty. When this day's work is over the whole river front will be yours to do with as you please. I shall come back to Orleans by the bridge." Now this was looked upon as extravagance run mad. " The place, to all men of the sword, seemed impregnable," said Percival de Oagny. " Doubt not, the place is ours," called out the girlish voice of the commander-in-chief. The twin Tourelles and the Boulevard were all manned and ammunitioned, and the garri- son, strong and saucy, had not the least notion of surrendering; nor had the fighting men of France any hope of dislodging them with a year's fighting much less a day's. At sunrise on May 7, Joan heard Mass and started at once for the Augustins, with Du- nois, La Hire, de Saintrailles, de Villars, and 78 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. many other captains of war and as many of the garrison as could be spared from the safekeep- ing of Orleans. They went by the boats, as the day before, in full view of the English in the Tourelles. The commander of the Tourelles, a brave soldier named Glasdale, sent a very in- sulting message to the Maid. But undauntedly her joyous voice rang out : " In God's name, we shall enter the town this night by the bridge." Only by a miracle could this happen, for on this bridge between them and Orleans was this series of fortifications and brave, live bodies of Englishmen fully as many as the French. And here again the nation's warriors crossed councils with their inspired leader. They boldly held her intention of attacking the Tourelles as madness — a useless sacrifice of life, and calculated to bring scorn upon the nation's military records. But Joan led the assault on the Boulevard at early morn, and they could do but her bidding. She pounded it with artillery incessantly from morn till noon. Then she ordered the assault, and led it herself. Her standard was the guiding star for every eye. Her clear voice ringing out now and again thrilled every heart, nerved every arm. Down BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 79 into the fosse went Joan and started to climb a scaling ladder, when an iron bolt struck her between the neck and the shoulder, tearing through her armor, and piercing her through and through. Her cry of pain as she sank to the ground was heard by French and English, though with different emotions. The English sent up a glad shout and surged about the spot where she fell. The French centered there, too — and for a short while it seemed as if the fate of France hung upon the fate of that small figure whose blood broke the glowing whiteness of her silver armor. "If the English had captured Joan then," says Mark Twain in his poetic account of her life, " Charles VII would have flown the coun- try, the Treaty of Troyes (making the King of England the King of France also) would have held good and France already English prop- erty, would have become, without further dis- pute, an English province, to so remain till the Judgment Day. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock has ever ticked in France or ever will. * * * Joan of Arc lay bleeding in the fosse, with two nations strug- gling over her for possession of her." Joan was with diflaculty carried out of the melee to a safe place, her armor removed, her wound dressed with oil, and she lay down for a necessary rest. 80 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The battle had to go on without her. Of that battle it is hard to write briefly. Historians call it one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. Pictures and poems and graphic de- scriptions of it we have in plenty. By all the rules of war the English should have won. They had everything in their favor except — the will of God. One of the chief actors in this battle is the Count de Dunois, the great " Bastard of Or- leans," whose name will always be nobly asso- ciated with Joan's in the chronicles of that wonderful campaign, spoke of it simply enough when he was on his oath some few years later. It is like a soldier's statement — confined to facts : " The attack lasted throughout, from the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, without hope of success for us; for which reason I was anxious that the army should re- tire into the town. The Maid (who had been wounded previously and was suffering keenly) then came to me, praying me to wait yet a little longer. Thereupon she mounted her horse, re- tired to a vineyard, remained in prayer about half an hour, then, returning and seizing her banner by both hands, she placed herself on the edge of the trench. At sight of her the English trembled, and were seized with sudden fear. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 81 Our people, on the contrary, took courage and began to mount, and assail the Boulevard, not meeting any resistance. Thus was the Boule- vard taken, and the English therein put to flight. All were killed, among them Glasdale, and the other principal English captains of the Bastile, who, thinking to gain the bridge Tower, fell into the river and were drowned. Their heavy armor carried them to the bottom at once. ' Ah ! God pity them,' said Joan, and she wept. Before the sun went down quite, that Saturday evening, Joan's memorable day's work was over, her banner floated free from the enemy's greatest fortress, her promise was ful- filled, she had raised the siege of Orleans." " What the first generals of France had called impossible," says Mark Twain, " was accom- plished. In spite of the king's ministers and war councils, the country maid of seventeen had carried her immortal task through and had done it in four days as she had promised to do a year before." Home by the bridge went the happy army that night, Joan ahead; and all Orleans came to meet them. Such bonfires and bells and shouting can never be described ! When a lull came it was to let the wounded and tired little maiden warrior rest. " She has given us peace, she shall have peace 82 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. herself ! " they said. All knew that next day the whole region would be empty of the Eng- lish, and all said that never should France for- get that day. Orleans does to this day, keep holiday all those five days from May 4, but especially with military honors, and religious thanksgiving, and general rejoicing, the 8th of May — Joan of Arc's Day. CHAPTER VI. "The stroke of God" — Beginning of the end of the hundred years of English occupation. " The stroke of God," the English Duke of Bedford called the demolition of the English fortresses that guarded the bridge over the river into Orleans on that brave Saturday evening, May 8, when the news of it was brought him a few days later to Paris, where he was ensconced securely, as he thought for all time. " All things prospered for you till the time of the siege of Orleans," he wrote to the young king of England. But those four days' work around and out- side the walls of Orleans decided the fate of the English in France. They had to go and as the sequel proved they did not stand on the order of their going, but went quickly. There was quite a dramatic finale to the siege of Orleans not often found, if ever, in books of battles and sieges. The four days' fighting had been on the east side and in front of the city. The fortresses of St. Loup, St. Jean le Blanc, the Augustins, the Tourelles, formed the English stronghold on 83 84 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. two main sides of the city. On the west, on the way to Blois and Tours and Ohinon, out- side the Eegnart Gate were encamped in greater number but not so fortified, the main English army under Lord Talbot. They could not get to the aid of the Tourelles even if they had had time to collect their thoughts and get themselves together for such a reinforcement. The descent of Joan and the army on the bridge fortresses had been swift and too overwhelming in its result. The French returned " by the bridge " that Saturday night and after the fervent thanks- givings in the churches, and the inevitable shouting and exultation over the victory, they had dropped from sheer exhaustion into a few hours of as deep and peaceful sleep as few Frenchmen had known in that neighborhood for nearly a year. Not many hours of sleep though, for at the first streak of dawn the watchers on the towers after feasting their eyes on the still smoking remains of the English forts across the river, turning their eyes westward, where the enemy's camp whitened the plain, saw unusual signs of activity for so early an hour. The English had left their tents and were drawn up in line of battle. Quickly the Maid and the French cap- tains and garrison and tired soldiers were up The Siege of Orleans. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 87 and marshaled. Out of the Regnart Gate, Joan led them and soon they were in shape for work, facing the English troops and between them and the city walls. Thus the two armies stood a brief space. Both apparently ready, neither anxious to begin. For once Joan was not calling " Forward French hearts ! " She surveyed the field quietly for a few moments and then saying : " This is Sunday morning," gave orders for a table to be brought, and a temporary altar erected right there on the field, between the two armies. Her confessor then ofifered up the Holy Sacri- fice, and immediately after him another priest did so, both armies attending as reverently as circumstances permitted. When the second Mass was finished, Joan, who had dismounted and knelt near the altar, asked those near her how were the English facing. " Their backs are towards us. They are fac- ing Meung," was the answer. " They are going. In God's name we will let them go. We shall catch them another time," she said. A detachment of the French army followed them some distance to be sure they were not planning some detour. As it proved later the English retired to Meung, a town about ten miles down the Loire 88 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. from Orleans, which had been a long time in possession of the English. After following them a few leagues, the French army turned back to Orleans and the day was given up to processions to the churches in thanksgiving; and later in the day to civic and military parades and music and illumina- tions. In the evening the populace spread itself freely and happily outside the gates over the open fields from which they had been so long shut off, and enjoyed the spring freshness of meadow and forest to the full. 'Twas a happy day to Orleans and to this day it is sacred to religious processions in the morning and military parades and maneuvers in the afternoon — it is Joan of Arc Day — May 8th. Now that the siege of Orleans really was raised did Joan rest on her oars and nurse her still paipful wound ? No ! There was no peace for Joan till Prance was free. Now for Eheims and the Coronation of Charles and then to Paris to take his Capital from the English. That was her plan and she was eager to put it through at once. To the east and west were towns on the Loire occupied by the English. These must be recovered. But her first duty now was to go BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 89 to the Dauphin, have him crowned and then with his authority — maybe his help — clear Paris and then these Loire towns and every town in France, of the invaders. Leaving La Hire in charge of the army and garrison in Orleans, she took a small escort and proceeded towards Blois and Chinon to meet the Dauphin. Charles came as far as Tours to meet her. Less than a week before he had sent her hope- fully over this same route and he welcomed her now joyously and with a feeling of awe that she could be responsible for such a change in his fortunes in one short week. The journals of those days tell of the glad picture they made riding side by side with bands playing and banners flying and the wondering people on the streets striving to see and to touch if pos- sible the angel of deliverance sent so directly from heaven to them. The whole country was full of her praises as couriers rode here and there to all the towns still in the King's fealty with the news of the end of the siege of Orleans. But Joan took little comfort in the praises of the people. She repeatedly asserted that if the Dauphin were but crowned the power of his enemies would quickly dwindle. She begged Charles to accompany her at once to Rheims. But Charles was surrounded 90 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. by unworthy councillors who advised him to hesitate going to Eheims through a country still infested with English. The Archbishop of Rheims' opinion was: " We piously believe her to be the angel of the armies of the Lord," and he advised that while human wisdom must exercise itself in matters of military finance, artillery, bridges, and so forth, in extraordinary enterprises the Maid should be first and chiefly consulted. But the self-seeking and truculent La Tre- moille, the king's chief councillor, counter- weighed the Archbishop's advice and kept Charles idle on the plea that it would not be safe to go to Eheims while the towns on the way were inimical to him. " Noble Dauphin," Joan said at length, after nearly two weeks of waiting to move him; " hold not such long councils but come at once to Rheims and be worthily crowned." One of the king's pusillanimous council, d'Harcourt, asked her if the march on Rheims was part of the monitions of her saintly ad- visers. " Yes, they chiefly insist on it." " Will you not tell us in the presence of the King what is the nature of this council of yours?" The King was ashamed at the bold question BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 91 and told her she need not answer it unless she wished to do so. " I will tell you willingly," she said. " When I am somewhat hurt because I am not readily believed in the things which I speak from God, I am wont to go apart and pray God, complaining that they are hard of belief; and after that prayer I hear a Voice saying to me : ' Daughter of God, go on ! go on ! go on ! I will be your aid, go on ! ' When I hear that voice I am glad and desire always to be in that state." And her countenance was raised to heaven while she spoke with a joyous earnestness that affected all beholders towards her to believe her. But a whole month was wasted trying to get the King to go to Rheims. The most he would do was to authorize an army to invade, and if possible, win back, from the English the good towns of the Loire valley so that he might travel without fear of attack. He made Joan the Commander-in-Chief of this expedition and warned all the great cap- tains of France to do nothing without consult- ing her and to follow her lead implicitly. Joan was obliged to content herself though she knew that her plan was quicker and safer. The obedience to the King was a holy trait in 92 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Joan's character and goes far to prove the sanctity of her brave soul. Not hers to sit in judgment on her sovereign. He represented Prance, he represented lawful authority, he was her civil superior. It was hers to obey him. She might urge or coax him, she might even represent to him the dangers and the wrong of the delay; but he was her rightful sovereign and if he insisted she must yield. And so she did, generously and grace- fully. She led her army back to Orleans to start from there against Jargeau and Meung and Beaugency and other towns still full of the English. Prom the letter to his mother of a nobleman who was of her company at this time we get this picture of Joan : " I saw her mount all in white armor but un- helmeted, a small steel sperth (a little battle- axe) in her hand. She had a great black horse, which plunged at the door of her house and would not permit her to mount. ' Lead him to the Cross,' she cried, meaning the cross that stands in the road in front of the church. There he stood as if cords held him and she mounted, and turning towards the church gate, she said in a sweet womanly voice, ' Ye priests and churchmen, go in procession and pray to God for us.' Then, ' Porward ! Forward ! ' she BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 93 cried aloud, a gracious page bearing her white standard displayed, and she with the little sperth in her hand. D'Alencon, Dunois, de Gaucourt, are all following the Maid. The King wants to keep Grey with him till the Maid has cleared the line of the Loire, and then to ride with him to Rheims." Joan went back to Orleans, the base of the Loire campaign, on June 9, to the great joy of the people — just exactly a month after raising the siege. She, or rather the big men who were the chiefs of the national forces, mustered an army of about ten thousand men which the people of Orleans generously robbed themselves to equip. Jargeau, a strongly fortified town, about twelve miles to the east of Orleans, was their first point of attack. The people of Orleans filled five sloops, manned by forty boat men, with heavy guns and field-pieces, ropes and scaling ladders, and everything needed to attack fortified walls. Joan lost not one hour, for she heard that to Jargeau's garrison of about eight hundred, Bedford was sending Fastolf from Paris with five thousand men and supplies to the help of Jargeau. Joan harangued the army before starting out : " Success is certain. If I were not as- 94 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. sured of this from God, I would rather herd sheep than put myself in so great jeopardy." June 11, Joan planted her standard in front of Jargeau and called on the garrison to yield themselves peaceably to the Dauphin. But they heeded not her message. Next day, June 12, the artillery duel began, and a great gun sent from Orleans ruined one of the towers in the wall. Suffolk, the English commander, begged a truce for a fortnight, hoping that Fastolf with the reinforcements would arrive by that time. Joan refused. She consented to let them all go unarmed and peaceably out of the town at once. Suffolk re- fused this and Joan gave the word to sound the bugles for the assault. The Duke d'Alencon testified on oath of this engagement : " ' Forward, gentle Duke, to the assault,' cried Jeanne to me. And when I told her it was premature to attack so quickly : ' Have no fear,' she said, ' it is the right time when it pleases God ; we must work when it is His will; Act, and God will act! ' Later she said to me: * Ah ! gentle Duke, art thou afraid? Did I not promise thy wife to bring thee back safe and sound ? ' And, indeed when I left my wife to come with Jeanne to the headquarters of the army, my wife had feared much for me, for that I had but just left prison and much had BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 95 been spent on my ransom. To which Jeanne replied ' Lady have no fear; I will give him back to you whole, or even in better case than he is now ! ' During the assault on Jargeau, Jeanne said to me: ' Go back from this place, or that engine will kill you,' pointing to an en- gine of war in the city. I retired and shortly after that very engine killed the Sieur de Lude who had taken my place. I had great fear and wondered much at Jeanne's words and how true they came. Afterwards Jeanne made the attack and I followed her. As our men were invading the place, Suffolk made proclamation that he wished to speak with us, but it was too late ; we did not listen to him. Jeanne was on a scaling ladder, her standard in her hand, when her standard was struck and she herself hit on the head by a stone which was partly spent, and which struck her calotte. She was thrown to the ground, but raising herself she cried, ' Friend, friends, come on. Come on ! Our Lord hath doomed the English. They are ours ! Keep a good heart ! ' " At that moment the town was carried and the English retired to the bridges where the French pursued them and killed more than eleven hundred men." Jargeau was taken. Suffolk, himself was captured. The Maid and d'Alencon returned to Orleans that night in triumph. The next day Joan ordered the troops a com- plete rest. " To-morrow after dinner I wish to pay the English at Meung a visit." 96 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. Meung was about as far down the river from Orleans as Jargeau was above. Beaugency was some miles still further down and occupied also by the English. Promptly at noon they marched to Meung and took it by assault in a few hours, left a garrison to hold it and marched on to Beau- gency where the terrible Talbot was. Here news of Falstof's coming to Talbot's rescue paled the faces of many of the French captains. Undaunted Joan placed her bat- teries. More news came. This time it was Eichmonte, the Constable of France, who was coming to her aid. But the Constable had lost the King's favor through the trickery of La Tremoille and the other captains would not ac- cept his aid. Joan proved her statesmanship as well as her military skill by welcoming Richmonte's aid and just in time. Falstof's reinforcement put great courage in Talbot and a stubborn resistance put the French on their mettle. So much so that they wanted to fight that evening whereas the heretofore impetuous Joan counseled waiting till morning — ^for a fair light, for the battle must be decisive. So they waited and lo! the English got away on the road to Paris that night. " In God's name, we must fight them at once," she said early next day. " Even if they BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 97 were hanging from the clouds we should have them, because God has sent us to chastise them. The gentle King shall have to-day the greatest victory he has ever had." And off Joan and the French troops were after the fleeing English. At Patay Falstof and Talbot were overtaken and after three hours hard fighting the two were taken prisoner and their command lay dead in heaps among the bushes. " The praise is to God," said Joan, surveying the field. " In a thousand years — a thousand years — the English power in France will not rise up from this blow." And this merciful note is added in the de- positions of an eye-witness: " Towards the end of the day I came upon her where the dead and dying lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows; our men had mortally wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a dis- tance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the place and sent for a priest and now she was holding the head of her dying enemy in her lap and easing him to his death with comforting soft words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears run- ning down her face all the time," CHAPTER VII. The march to Rheims — Joan and the King ride in truimph to the Coronation. The news of the great slaughter of the Eng- lish at Patay, and the capture of Talbot and Suffolk, spread like magic through all the towns of France; giving new life to the loyal French in many towns of the English garrison so that they lost fear of their English masters. To the English it sounded like a page from the Doomsday Book. Once more the white-mailed figure of the Maid of Orleans on the great black horse, rode into Orleans, her banner flying and seeming to tell in its joyous fluttering of this latest and greatest yet of many victories led by this hardly four months' old standard. Many a glorious old battle flag, scarred and rent and bloodstained, might be jealous of this fair young pennant, whose glories might count almost one for every day of its young life. Orleans fairly went wild when Joan and the army returned after Meung, Beaugency and Patay in three short days. It sounded like Joan o( Arc entering Orleans. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. IQI Caesar's : " I came ! I saw ! I conquered ! " all over again — only in this case there was no self- glorification on the part of the conqueror. She was " the handmaid of the Lord," the " Sword of God," and to Him alone gave the praise and the glory. And the grim English Talbot rode beside Joan through the streets of Orleans a prisoner of war. Joan sent to the king to beg him to come straight on to Orleans. The people wanted to see him. It was on the way to Eheims. It would expedite his crowning by saving so much time. She was most anxious to see him crowned : " The power of his enemies would dwindle away to nothing then," she said. But the King's advisers, chief of whom was La Tremoille, of hated memory, would not let him go. He must take no risks, they said. There were English fortresses at intervals all along the two hundred miles from Gien to Eheims. He came to Sully on the Loire, where was La Tremoile's home, and would go no further. Joan must needs come to him there. At Sully and Gien he held councils, without Joan, and La Tremoille and d'Harcourt and others advised going to Normandy to recruit and then clear the country of the English and Burgundians, ahead of the Dauphin. For ten days the one who saw the way so clear to the 102 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. freedom of France, and who had the commis- sion to act on it, had to chafe and wait while blind men sat daily considering whether this road or that was the least dangerous; whether it was not better to go to Normandy until the English got tired out. The Maid knew as well as any man of them the strength of the hostile cities on the road. She had passed through some of them before. On her way from Domremy she passed safely through Auxerre with a handful of men, and if she had wished it, she could have had half the population to join her. But she had not the authority and she was not a freebooter. Only with the authority of her sovereign would she lead any army anywhere. But with that authority and even a few men she felt herself a match for any force. " There are so many fortified English towns on the road to Rheims," explained the King's coun- cillors. " I know all that, and make no account of it," she said. In her impatience to be on the road to the coronation she left the king and the council and waited for them outside the gates of Gien for two days, with the army. At length, on the 29th of June, they joined her and the march to Rheims was begun. With her prophetic eye on Rheims afar off BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 103 and knowing that between her and Rheims were many English or Bnrgundian garrisoned towns, yet she took no artillery with her. She received the Body of her Lord that morning, shedding tears of thankfulness that so much of her great task was accomplished; and she made no complaint that king or coun- cillor still doubted and delayed her. She was too joyous to remember aught but that they were on their way to the coronation. Every one who looked at her caught the reflection of her bright face, and so it was a happy army set out for the open country early on that June 29, 1429, the King and Joan riding side by side, and behind them all the big men of France, and behind them again the rank and file of France's National Guard, twelve thou- sand strong. The second day's march across the open country brought them to the Burgundian-Eng- lish town of Auxerre. The Maid would have at once requested its gates opened to the sov- ereign and the army of France and followed up the request by force, but she was overruled. The town sent out a deputation and La Tre- moille took it upon himself to meet it and agree to pass by the town without entering. The Maid's opinion was not asked nor given. For three days the army rested outside the 104 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. gates and were supplied with food by the people from within. July 4 they marched away, leaving Auxerre, half friendly, half hostile, behind them, and after a steady advance over another thirty, or nearly forty, miles of sparsely settled country arrived at Troyes and camped before its gates. The inspired Joan took the initiative here at once and summoned Troyes to surrender. Its commandant, seeing there was no artillery behind the summons, sent an insulting refusal. That was Tuesday, the 5th of July. That day and three days more were lost in Joan's en- deavoring to persuade the king's councillors not to turn back. They were afraid, they said, to go on leaving so strong an enemy in their rear. Finally, the King left it to Joan. " In three days' time the place is ours," she said in a tone of which no man that heard it could fail to catch the enthusiasm. " Oh ! " said the council, " we can wait six days if you are so sure." " Three days, did I say? In the name of God, we will enter the gates to-morrow ! " cried Joan. Then she mounted her black steed and rode along the lines giving the order : " Make prep- ation; we assault at dawn." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 105 All that night she had every man working, and herself worked the hardest, bringing fag- gots, branches, small trees, everything that could be lifted and carried and thrown into the fosse that ran around the walls, to fill it up so the storming party might stand their ladders on it. At dawn the people of the town saw the preparations for storming. They rushed to the churches and besieged the Bishop to save them. As the bugles outside the walls blew the assault, the frightened burghers had prevailed with the garrison and a flag of truce was hoisted. Without striking one blow the town surrendered. Early on Sun- day morning, July 10, the King and Joan, side by side, and with banners flying, entered with the army and received the submission of all within its gates and heard Mass in the Cathedral. They were now half-way to Eheims and the march had been a pleasant one. They might have rested as long as they liked at Troyes, but Joan was for the road without de- lay. Inside the year must her work be done, she asserted. So the very next day the Grand March to Eheims, the army grown more joyful and enthusiastic than ever, was resumed. Chalons was the next big town to be en- countered. 106 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Chalons, another fifty miles off to the north and near Eheims. The French army grew in numbers greatly by voluntary accession to its ranks at every stopping place. The news of Troyes' surrender went ahead of the army, so when Joan and the Dauphin reached the main gate of Chalons they were met by the Bishop and the city council with the keys. And the word was passed on to Eheims quickly that Chalons was happy in its restored allegiance to its rightful sovereign and requested a place for honorable representation at the coming coronation. " Joy, joy ! Freedom to-day ! " was every- body's song, and every countenance was radiant all around Joan. Only she, herself, was gravely serene. She was not surprised at this bloodless march — only glad. She met at Chalons a friend from Domremy. He congratulated her on her series of triumphant marches. From Vaucouleurs to Chinon but a few months before. From Chinon to Orleans. From Orleans to Patay, and now to Eheims. Evidently she had noth- ing to fear. " Only treachery and betrayal," she answered. From all the signs she gave of her mission being Heaven-sent, she could not awaken any generous co-operation in men like Tremoille. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 107 At La Perte, the people came to meet the army, offering fruits and cakes, and escorted it in a body several miles on the road. The Maid was riding with the Archbishop of Rheims who had joined the party at Chalons, and was in a happy mood. " This is a good people," she said, " I have seen none elsewhere who rejoiced as much at the coming of so noble a king. How happy should I be if, when my days are done, I might be buried here!" " Jeanne," said the Archbishop to her, " in what place do you hope to die?" " Where it shall please God," was her saintly answer. " I am not certain of either the time or the place, any more than you are yourself. Would it might please God, my Creator, that I might retire now, abandon arms and return to serve my father and mother, and to take care of their sheep with my sister and my brothers, who would be so happy to see me again." On July 16 the army was halted by a deputa- tion sent from Rheims to meet and conduct the Dauphin into the city. Joan had told him long before to " have no fear for Rheims, the burghers of the city will come out to meet you." The Cathedral towers were in view and as the word passed from rank to rank that they were at Rheims and that its burghers had 108 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. come out to welcome them, the whole army broke out Into cheers upon cheers, and Joan's name went up with a mighty shout that was caught up and carried even into Eheims. At the Archbishop's Palace the Dauphin and Joan were lodged and preparations for the solemn coronation, on the morrow were con- tinued all through the night. Rheims had never known so grand a day. Every one was in holiday costume and holiday mood, and nothing was spared from public or private purse to give the town a joyous, gorgeous face. Sunday, July 17, offering of the Holy Sacri- fice of the Mass began at dawn. Every church was filled. But the Cathedral was the center of attraction. At the abbey church of St. Remi, was kept the " Sainte Ampoule " or flask of holy oil with which King Clovis, nearly a thousand years before, and every king of France after him, had been anointed. A stately procession of ecclesiastics escorted by military guards brought the holy oil from St. Remi to the Cathedral, through streets lined with the people on their knees who could not get into the already thronged Cathedral. The coronation ceremony began at nine o'clock of the morning of July 17. We have de- scriptions of it from letters to the Queen of BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 109 France and her mother, the Queen of Sicily, by Pierre de Beauvais and two other gentle- men of their suite whom they had sent on to be present and to send them accounts of the coronation. " A right fair thing it was to see that fair mystery, for it was as solemn and as well adorned with all things thereto pertaining, as if it had been ordered a year before." And then they describe and name the five great men of France who, on prancing war steeds, ac- companied the Archbishops bearing the holy oil into the Cathedral, riding right down the four hundred feet of its broad nave right down to the chancel, backing their steeds out all the way again to the main door. Then a mighty flood of music from four hundred silver trumpets announced the en- trance of the Dauphin. The roll of the organ, and the chanting of the choir, timed his march down the long aisle formed by his happy people. Joan was by his side. Behind him the chivalry of France in its gayest plumes, and the dignitaries of the Church from all the surrounding cities, and all the great generals and governors in the rich dresses of those days. At last the King Iinelt in front of the altar. He took the oath and was solemnly anointed 110 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. with the magnificent ritual of the Church for the occasion. The Crown of France was brought to him on a cushion, and kneeling he took it and placed it on his head, amidst the breathless silence of the twenty thousand hearts that almost stopped for awe of the wonder of it. Only a moment's awestruck silence — then the crash of the organ, the blare of the trumpets, the ringing of the bells broke out all at once and together. The Te Deum was raised and the cannon out- side added its deep boom until the over- wrought people wept for very ecstasy of grate- ful joy. Joan wept too — though her face was raised and she noted not the tears as she embraced the King's knees and said: " Gentle King, now is accomplished the Will of God, Who decreed that I should raise the siege of Orleans and bring you to this city of Rheims to receive your solemn sacring, thereby showing that you are the true king and that France should be yours. My work which was given me to do is finished ; give me your peace and let me go back to my mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me." The King raised her up and before all that host of people acknowledged his immense debt Joan of Arc at the Crowning of the King at Rheims. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 113 to her and begged her to name what should be her recompense. He had previously confirmed titles of nobility on her and her family. " You have saved France. Speak ! What- ever grace you ask shall be granted you, though it make the kingdom poor to meet it." And that wonder of the world, that con- queror of whole armies and leader of other armies, into whose hands at a word, fell for- tresses and cities, whose march across France had been like a tornado to her foes, like a sum- mer's sun and rain to her famishing friends, the noblest woman ever born save one, thought of her humble childhood's home and asked simply that its yearly taxes be remitted. Only this would she accept. " She has won a kingdom and crowned its king," said Charles, after a pause ; " and all she asks is this poor grace, and this not for herself, but for others. Her act is in propor- tion to the dignity of one who carries in her heart and head riches which outvalue any that any king could add, though he gave his all. She shall have her way. It is decreed from this day forth Domremy, natal village of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is freed from taxation forever." At two o'clock the coronation services were over, and Joan and the King of France sol- 114 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. emnly marclied down the long nave together. Joan's work was ended. The siege of Or- leans had been raised (May 8) ; the power of the English in France had been broken for- ever at Patay (June 18), and now the king was crowned with the authority and ceremo- nies and crown of Clovis, Pepin, Charlemagne and St. Louis. She sat up that night and talked of home and mother with her father and the brother of her mother, the old uncle Laxart, who had been the one to first listen to the story of her mission and lend his countenance and help to its first step. Now he would escort her home again to her mother and her spinning. CHAPTER VIII. "Now let me go back to my poor old mother who haa need of me. The King detains Joan as head of his army. God can do all things and nothing is hard or impossible to Him. And so His accredited and empowered agent, the little maid from the woods of Lorraine, made no wonder of the series of lightning-like victories that in four months changed France from a prostrate people at the feet of England, disheartened and dis- couraged beyond hope, getting ready to yield to the inevitable and become a province of England, to a new and buoyant nation, once again, with hands and face uplifted in joyous gratitude to the God of nations who sent them so unexpected deliverance. With the crowning of the King at Rheims, on June 17, 1429, Joan of Arc's unique mission was also crowned in triumph and her heaven- appointed task finished. To be sure, the English still held Paris, the French capital, but that was only a matter of another day's effort. To-morrow the French 115 116 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. army would march on Paris and take it with- out fail for their king, its rightful occupant. That was the well-understood plan all around. Outlined by Joan, accepted by the king, and looked forward to eagerly by the army, whose banner and lances were already weighted with more victories than they could keep proper count of, and no losses at all. Even the English expected to lose Paris immediately, unless something desperate was done to hold it. The Duke of Bedford sent a frantic message to England on June 16th for more men and arms. He said : " The Dauphin has taken the field ! He will be crowned on the 17th! And he will march to take Paris on the 18th ! ! '. " Bedford hastily drew from the surrounding districts and from Normandy all the troops that could be spared to concentrate in Paris. At the same time he renewed and strengthened his alliance with the French Duke of Bur- gundy, and had him send a messenger to Eheims asking the newly crowned king to delay the march on Paris for a fortnight, on the pretense that he would try to arrange its delivery to Charles without fighting. It was a brazen piece of treachery, because he and Bedford wanted just that fortnight to get reinforcements from England. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 117 Burgundy's messenger arrived at Rheims the very day of the coronation and had no great trouble in persuading the king and his council to grant the delay. When he was gone they began to weigh mat- ters. They would have to go on some kind of a warpath to keep up appearances and let the people see something was being done. They had let Joan believe they would go to Paris at once. Now they were not going — at least, not just yet. What could Joan say? Well, she was no longer commander-in-chief. She was going back to Domremy and it was really none of her business. They made the bargain with Bur- gundy without her advice and they must keep it. She did not matter now. Ah ! but she did matter ! Before the troubled eyes of some of those war chiefs rose the vision of that slender white mailed figure and her shining banner, that was for them light and strength, and day after day, turned defeat into victory. They knew in their hearts there had been no winning except in the wake of that banner. They knew that all their valor and military skill counted less than the mere sight to the army of that inspired child ; that her voice was more potent at St. Loup, St. Jean le Blanc, the Augustins, the Tourelles, 118 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. Meung, Beaugency, Patay, Jargeau, Troyes, Rheims, and twenty other meetings with the foe, than had been their loudest cannon. How could they head an army without her! At least, just yet. Their only knowledge of vic- tory — those old soldiers had to say it — was when her stainless sword pointed the way. No! They could not spare her now. They might have their councils without her. But they must have her in front of their war horses. So Joan, talking to her father and her uncle Laxart, about to-morrow's glad trip home to her mother was interrupted to hear that the King wanted her. An escort of nobles was at the door to conduct her to the king, who was in council. She bade good-night to her father and uncle and promised to meet them early in the morning, and went at the summons of the king. She found him and his council in session. They rose at her entrance, for though they put the slight on her of time and again holding meetings without her, yet in her presence, humble and gentle though she was, they felt they were in the presence of a superior. They might not have said as much even to them- selves, but her holiness and her heroism awed BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 119 them into a deference shown only to the king beside. " What is this ? " she said on entering ; " a council of war? When there is only one thing to do, there is no need of counsel. There is only one thing to do. To-morrow march on Paris ! It is yours for the asking. Surely you are not going to delay for even one day. The Duke of Bedford must not have even one day's chance to reinforce." There were fine men as well as mean men in that council, and the records of that day tell us that their faces lit up at Joan's words, while the angry looks of the others revealed to Joan that there was some conspiracy afoot. She appealed by a look and a gesture to the King. He told her of their decision, that she must for the present stay with the army as commander-in-chief. He put it as a command on her. Joan's face fell and for a space she spoke no word. She was lost in thought or in prayer. At last she broke out in a questioning tone: "And march to Paris to-morrow?" The king looked at La Tremoille. La Tremoille looked down, pale but silent. Joan looked beseechingly from one to the other, then at the chancellor, whose most persuasive voice vouched the explanation: 120 • BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to move so abruptly from here without waiting for a word from the Duke of Burgundy ? You may not be aware that we are negotiating with his Highness and there is likely to be a fort- night's truce — on his part a pledge to deliver Paris to the king without cost to us of a fight or the fatigue of a march thither." Poor Joan of Arc ! Hero of so many glorious fights for France! It was her turn to quiver and grow pale. She stared dumbly at the speaker and then said slowly in a half whisper: "Treachery and cowardice!" The king's minister and the chancellor rose to their feet at the words, but the king mo- tioned for silence. She went on still quietly and slowly, as if dictating a letter: " We took Orleans on the 8th of May, and could have cleared the country round it in three days and saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Eheims six weeks ago, and in Paris now, and see the last Englishman leave France before the year is out. But we struck no blow after Orleans — we counseled and counseled, instead of fighting, and gave Bedford time to reinforce Talbot and so had to fight the strengthened English at Patay. So at Chinon, so at Gien, councils of war sapping our time and giving strength to our enemies. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 121 Now again we are counseling instead of march- ing immediately on Paris. O my king, speak the word. Bid me march on Paris to-night." The chancellor saw the king's eye light. He hurried to interpose : " March on Paris ! The road bristles with English strongholds." Joan snapped her finger : " That ! for your English strongholds," she said. " English strongholds bristled in our way before. Where are they now? They are French strongholds, and they cost us no time, little trouble and less blood. That was the talk before we came to Rheims. We met the English strongholds and they were ours for the asking. We left a line of French for- tresses behind us on all our marches. Eouse, gentle king, Paris calls you. You have but to show your face before its gate and it is yours. I promise it to you. I who promised you Or- leans and Eheims and kept my promises. Will you not listen to me now ? " " It is madness, sire," said La Tremoille, " we must treat first with the Duke of Bur- gundy." "We shall treat with Burgundy," said Joan, and as all eyes turned on her in surprise, she added : " — at the point of the lance ! " And the spirit that emanated from her so often when she cried " to the assault ! " seemed; 122 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. to flood the room now and catch the king in its wave. He handed his sword to Joan, " You have won," said he, " carry it to Paris." Joan waited for no more. She flew to her own quarters, calling on La Hire from the door of the council chamber to summon the generals to meet her in an hour. It was then midnight. The excitement of the last days surely warranted her to seek some rest. But France called, and there was no rest for Joan while France's interest was even in remote 'danger. She dictated a letter at once, and sent it at once, to the Duke of Burgundy. < She informed him of the coronation of his lawful sovereign and reminded him of his duty as a Frenchman to send in his allegiance without delay. It was his wisest course be- side, she said, for nothing on earth could now prevent Charles VII from winning Paris and every town in France from the English. With the English she wished to make no peace. They must leave France. God willed they should not be left in France. As for himself, if the great Duke of Burgundy wanted fight let him join with his king, and let them both go together and rescue the Holy Land from the Saracens. That was the message that the deliverer of France sent to her recalcitrant countryman, the Duke of Burgundy. BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 123 As it proved, he was not equal to the Maid's magnificent program. Instead he lent him- self to the duplicity and doomed fortunes of the English invaders of his country. Then she saw the generals, gave her com- mands, sent a last message to the dear old father and imcle. At dawn the vanguard moved out of Rheims and faced Paris with bands braying and ban- ners flying. The second division followed a few hours later. Joan's impatence would not wait for them. But they all met the ambassadors of Bur- gundy. On June 18, Joan of Arc and the vanguard of the French army left Rheims to take Paris from the English. It was September 8 — the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin — before the at- tack on Paris was begun. Nearly three months trying to do what Joan had expected to do in three days. It would be a long and thankless task to record the doings of the army during those three months. Joan's constant urging to go forward, the just as cons-tant urging of the king's ministers to be in no hurry. Hoping to win over the Duke of Burgundy 124 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. from the English alliance, the king did not want to reach Paris but to give plenty of time to Burgundy to give it up of himself. Wishing to please Joan the army must be kept going with its face some of the time at least towards Paris. So it was one step for- ward and two sideways and back, every day. Meanwhile there was a score of small towns on the way mastered by the English that had to be taken. These towns lay in their round- about march to Paris in the valleys of the Seine, the Oise, the Marne and the Yonne, as they flowed into each other in the race to the sea. Marconi, Soissons, Laon, Compiegne, Chateau Thierry, Senlis, Beauvais and a half- dozen other cities, handed over their keys wil- lingly enough to their sovereign and to the Maid. But the bloodless capture of these towns did not require a day each, so that fully sixty days were spent killing time, giving Bur- gundy and Bedford every chance to concen- trate at Paris. The towns they took were sad losses to the English and permanent gain to the French, es- pecially Compiegne, which like Orleans, was a fortified key to a whole territory. D'Alencon wrote from Compiegne: " The Maid is in sorrow for the king's long BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 125 tarrying at Compiegne. It seems he is con- tent, in his usual way, with the grace that God has done him and will make no further enterprise." The Maid wrote a letter to Rheims dated, " On the road to Paris, August 5 " : " Dear and good friends and loyal French- men, the Maid sends you news. It is true the king has made a fifteen days' truce with the Duke of Burgundy who is to give up to him the town of Paris peacefully on the fifteenth day. Although the treaty is made I am not content; and am not certain that I will keep it. If I do, it will be merely for the sake of the king's honor, and in any case I will keep the king's army together and in readiness, at the end of the fifteen days, if peace is not made." But Joan could not save the king against his will, nor would she raise her standard without his authority. The English army was also in the field in the same time-killing way. There in the neighborhood of Paris, in the valleys formed by the Oise, and the Seine and the Yonne and the Marne, the two armies skirmished around all summer, sometimes facing each other, for a day, without coming 126 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. to blows. Bedford wrote a challenge to Charles, addressing him, " You who were wont to style yourself the Dauphin, and now call yourself king." Just like an Englishman, he laid all the blame of the wars in France, and all the con- sequent wretchedness of the French people, on the head of Charles. In pious frenzy he accuses him of insulting Almighty God by marching in the protection of a woman dressed like a man, and of beggarly friars. He challenged him to come out in the open and fight men, not women nor monks. But all this was to gain time. The English could not be induced to come out of their earthworks. The Maid and D'Alencon were always trying to get the En- glish to come out, and skirmishes forced by her were of daily occurrence. At last the weary marching and more weary waiting to march, the secret treaties and the open insults, the skirmishes and retreats, and saucy challenges that brought no result, came to an end before the gates of Paris on Sep- tember 7. Joan ordered the bugles at noon to sound the assault before the gate of St. Honore. The assault was made with all the vim that characterized Joan's previous work. The gate BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 127 was almost won, and with it Paris would be won, when Joan was struck by a crossbolt and fell. Badly wounded as she was she refused to retire. " I will take Paris now or die," she said. D'Alencon carried her oflf by force, she cry- ing out : " I will be here in the morning early, and in half an hour we will take Paris." In the morning the king forbade the attempt on Paris. He had a new embassy from the Duke of Burgundy. Bedford had taken his own troops out of the city and left it to Burgundy's defense, and Burgundy and the king juggled and quibbled and perpetrated some curious specimens of give-and-take treaties, which after some play at words and swords, ended by the king taking himself and his army off to the Loire again and leaving Burgundy to think it over safely in Paris. It was a most inexplicable arrangement. Joan was broken-hearted. But as became a saint she had no word of reproach for the king. She knew his bad advisers were to blame. It was of little use to blame them. They did not care for her blame. She also knew in her heart of hearts that though the freedom of France was delayed it was sure in 128 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. the end, and if the good God in Heaven could be patient with these men, surely she must be patient. So she hung her shining armor in the Cathe- dral of St. Denis, the ancient burial place of the kings of Prance, and went to the king once more, begging him to let her go back to her former humble, quiet life. But the king refused to let her go. There were still many towns to recover and to keep. France needed her. And more than all, her Voices said: " Remain at St. Denis." They did not say why. But they were to (her God's command. She would stay. But jeven in this La Tremoille, through the king, crossed and balked her. Wounded and help- less, she was carried off with the army all the way back to Gien, beyond Orleans. Here the king disbanded the army. For the present, there was no more fighting to do. Burgundy held Paris for the English and the king had promised not to molest him — at least for the present. And yet nothing could save the situation for the doomed English. Bedfor(i wrote home to the king of England : " All things prospered with us till the great BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 129 stroke at Orleans. After that divers of your great cities and towns: Rheims, Troyes, Cha- lons, Laon, Sens, Provins, Senlis, Lagny, Creil, Beauvais and the substance of the counties of Champagne, Beauce, and a part of Picardy, yielded to Charles VII without resistance or awaiting succors." And he, the Duke of Bedford, in this letter to the English, blames the great losses of the English to the presence in the French army of a young woman, who for four months inspired the army with a most incredible enthusiasm. He begged that the king of England come over himself and be crowned in France, for France, and to bring men and money as much as pos- sible. Bedford went himself to England to press personally his appeal for help. This was late in September. All October and November was spent by the Maid in clear- ing up the country about the Loire. With a small force she appeared before one town after another that had not yet given in their allegiance. Sometimes her simple demand was enough; sometimes, as at La Charite, things went ill and the duty of the people to their sovereign had to be sent home with the point of the lance. But for the most part Joan's commission as commander-in-chief of the wars was an empty title. 130 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The truce with Burgundy was to last till Easter of 1430. Meanwhile Joan spent a large part of the time visiting the places she had won from the English. At Rheims and Or- leans she was received by the people in her true character — a messenger of God. In Easter week (April 17-23) she was in Melun with her handful of lancers. For ten years Melun had had an English garrison. At Joan's word the townsfolk rose, ejected the garrison, and threw open the bridge over the Seine, which meant the freedom of the town to Joan's army. As she stood on the ramparts of the bridge, reviewing the scene, thanking God for a good day's work easily done, her Voices, silent for some time, came to her with a warning that before St. John's day she should be captured and imprisoned. They bade her be of good heart for they would be her help. That very day the young king of England, Henry VI, landed at Calais with an army, and the Anglo-Burgundian forces encamped at Compiegne, like Orleans, a strategic point commanding the road to Paris from the north. On May 6 the French king, his eyes opened at last, wrote to Rheims that the Duke of Bur- gundy— BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 131 " Has never had, and now has not, any in- tention of coming to terms of peace, but always has favored our enemies." Joan heard of the concentration of the en- emy at Compiegne. At midnight she started with a band of about four hundred, and en- tered Compiegne about sunrise. She heard Mass, then told her troopers to rest. All day she consulted with the garrison and made her plans. In the meadow on the other side of the bridge leading over the river into the town was the advance guard of the besiegers, an isolated outpost. Up and down the river were other English camps. About five o'clock she got her men together and in the evening the Maid gave the word, and a sudden sally was made on the nearest outpost while its men were unarmed. It was soon put out of commission and its occupants scattered. Joan and her lancers were retreat- ing again into the town, when Jean de Luxem- burg, of Burgundy's camp, happened to be riding by with a small force. He saw the sortie, and he dashed up to prevent Joan's return over the bridge to Compiegne. Twice she forced him ofif and called to her men to back into the town. She like a valiant leader 132 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. riding in the rear. Now all her men were in the gates; only a few of those nearest her— d'Aulon, her brothers, and a few more. The English and Burgundians swarmed from other outposts. They got between her and the draw- bridge. They drew nearer and nearer, around her, and at last an archer reaching out seized her cape and dragged her from her horse. She was borne in triumph to the camp of the Burgundians as the prize of Jean de Lux- emburg — she and the men with her — the whole English and Burgundian camp roaring with joy. That was on the 24th of May, 1430. Joan of Arc was a prisoner. CHAPTER IX. France is free — Joan a prisoner of tlie English King. Joan of Aec fell into the hands of her enemies on May 24, 1430. It was just a year since she sent her first message to the English from the Gate of Orleans, begging them, in God's name, to take themselves out of France, to their own country, or they would come to great hurt. They had answered that message with jeers, and promised, when they caught her, they would burn her alive. During that year she had taken from them their gains of a hundred years. At the head of a much smaller army than theirs she had driven them out of one town after another, up and down the banks of the Loire, and in the broad valleys of the Seine, between Orleans and Rheims; and from Rheims westward and north, their many garrisoned gates were open to her almost at her simple word and to the handful of French soldiers that followed her, and the allegiance of the towns made secure to Charles. 133 134 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Through very fear of her white banner in the vanguard of the approaching French, the English soldiers had deserted in such numbers that it became impossible to follow them up. The traditional fear of the French at the sight of an English soldier, was changed to a state of panic among the English soldiers at the mere sight of the white figure on horseback in the van of a few French troopers. The whole face of France, nay, the heart and soul of France as well, were newly risen to a strong, proud national life, in which Eng- land would nevermore have part. Paris and Rouen and a few other towns which they still held, she warned them would soon be taken from them likewise, and not an Englishman left in all France, where the Eng- lish had ruled and ruined for three genera- tions. There was no accounting for this extraor- dinary change, as sudden as it was thorough, except by the presence of this inspired and inspiring girl, who claimed to be sent from God to do just this work. " For this was I born." But now they had this warrior maid, this light and life of the French army in their own hands, under lock and key. She was theirs to do as they liked with. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 135 And thei'eupon rose up a great ado. What should they do with her? De Luxemburg, who had pulled her off her horse, carried her in triumph to his quarters in the camp, the whole Anglo-Burgundian army following at his heels roaring for joy. She was the center of a mad whirl of men anxious to get sight of her who had been the nightmare of their dreams for the past year. And humble, gentle Joan looked at them more in pity than in fear, for they were largely Frenchmen who had sold themselves to the service of the conqueror, but whom she knew would make good French subjects yet. The Duke of Burgundy hastened to see the distinguished captive. He gazed dazedly at her for some time as if trying to pierce the secret of her great power. To his sneers and taunts and insolent questions she answered with a simple dignity and truth, common to brave hearts, and which the soldier-courtier could never emulate. When he asked was she not afraid of his vengeance, she told him calmly that nothing could happen to her but by the will of God, to which she bowed joy- fully. All the more joyfully because she was assured that no matter what befell her now, the complete freedom of France was the matter of a few years at longest, and that no power 136 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. on earth could help the English to hold France now. Her people would rise again to great prosperity. In turn she bade him tremble for himself unless he returned to his lawful allegiance and became a good Frenchman. All of which was lost for the time on Bur- gundy. He liked to think the English would soon lose their hold on France, but he thought himself a better man than Charles VII, to hold the reins and govern France in place of the English. Burgundy and Luxemburg sent joyous despatches, hither and thither, telling of the capture of the Maid of Orleans. The Duke of Bedford seemed crazy with joy when he heard it in Paris. He immediately sent word to Burgundy that the captive was the prop- erty of the King of England, in whose pay Luxemburg was. She was prisoner of war to Henry VI. " I must have the ransom of a prince for her," said Luxemburg. By the military usage of the time ten thou- sand livres of gold — over sixty thousand francs — was the ransom price for a prince of the blood royal. If offered for Joan it could not be refused. After three or four days Luxemburg re- moved Joan to a safer place in his strong BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 137 castle at Beaulieu, while he went on with the siege of Compiegne. D'Aulon who was captured with the Maid was allowed to remain with her at Beaulieu. D'Aulon told afterwards at the trial, that when they found themselves thus removed from sight and news of Compiegne, he said to Joan : " That poor town of Compiegne, which you have loved so dearly, will now be placed in the hands of the enemies of France." " It shall not be," answered Joan, " for no places which the King of Heaven has put in the hands of the gentle King Charles by my aid, shall be retaken by his enemies, while he does his best to keep them." All through June and July Joan was kept at Beaulieu while her friends and her enemies were deciding what to do about her. The Archbishop of Embrun wrote to Charles VII : " For the recovery of this girl and for the ransom of her life, I bid you spare neither means nor money, unless you would incur the indelible shame of most disgraceful ingrati- tude." But Charles did not, probably could not, do 138 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. anything to rescue her. He bowed to the will of God, too, likely thinking one so miracu- lous could help herself out of this difficulty as she had helped him and the army out of worse, often. Besides he was not an autocrat, and the same power that prevented him marching straight to Paris the day after his coronation, and taking it as the Maid urged him to do, prevented him now offering any ransom for his hitherto invincible commander-in-chief. She was a prisoner of war and as such was safe for the present even in the hands of the enemy. In Rheims, Troyes, and many other cities that had known her inspired presence, the people gathered for public prayers for her restoration, and patriotic priests went among the people to collect money for her ransom. But the People had been brought to such poverty by the long cruel wars, there had been for so long a time no national government and no coinage of money, that there was little money among the people to collect. Two months passed and no ransom was of- fered from any quarter, or, if offered, was not accepted. The Duke of Bedford and his advisers were not certain what to do. As a political prisoner BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 139 they dare not do away with her violently. Even if the French King did not resent it, the very act would make her a hero more than ever and would fire the French heart to even greater deeds of valor than her Mving presence inspired. No ! she must be brought down from her high esteem in the minds of the French people. Bedford got the Vicar General of the In- quisition to demand Joan from Burgundy to be tried as a heretic. The University of Paris, too, was induced to ask for her trial as an offender against the Church. Both the University of Paris and the oflScers of the Inquisition in France were overruled by the English. For fifty years the Duke of Bedford and the King of England had named the heads of both institutions. But Burgundy hesitated to give her up. Meanwhile Joan one day saw her door left open and the key left in the lock. She walked out unhesitatingly, turned the key in the lock, locking in her jailer, and fled. But she was seen and brought back. The effect of this was her removal to Beau- revoir, to a strong castle with a tower sixty feet high. Her confinement here was com- paratively pleasant. She had the friendly 140 BLESSED JOAN OF. ARC. companionship of de Luxemburg's good old aunt, his wife and daughter. She heard Mass every day, confessed and received Holy Com- munion and recovered her health and strength, and, -for a time, her peace of mind. But here she was told one day that Compiegne was still in a state of siege, and was likely to be cap- tured, and, if captured, every man, woman and child would be put to death, in revenge for so long and so stubborn a resistance. It was an exaggerated report but it flred Joan's heart with a desire to help her country- men, and she, who had heard unmoved the slanders and threats of the English against herself, personally, could not bear to think of so good a people so slaughtered. In her agony, and, as she told afterwards, at the trial, against the advice of her heavenly councillors, she tried to escape from the tower. She was found bruised and unconscious, at the foot of the tower and for three days was like one dead. But to the astonishment of her jailers she was not seriously hurt. She would rather have died, she said, than hear of the massacre of her people; and would rather have died than fallen into the hands of the English. At her trial, later, when she was questioned about this incident and if she did not think it wrong to wish to die, she denied the attempt BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 141 was made with any such wish. Her hope was to escape. But her heavenly guides told her afterwards she must confess and ask God's pardon for that, and that she must be content to stay as she was, until she would see the little King of England — " and indeed I have no wish to see him," she pathetically added. Her recovery was aided very much by the news that Compiegne was saved to the French. The skill of its captain, de Flavy, and the fine courage and endurance of its poor people were rewarded. The Duke of Burgundy and de Luxemburg had to take their forces off. The consequent expense and losses made them more than ever willing to sell Joan to the English, for they needed the money. Joan grew fond of the good, kindly French- women at Beaurevoir, Jean de Luxemburg's wife and daughter and his old aunt who, ac- cording to Joan's testimony, " begged Jean de Luxemburg not to hand me over to the Eng- lish." These ladies treated Joan with every kindness possible, but to their entreaties to her to abandon the male costume in which she was captured, she always replied, " it is not yet time." Her dress as a soldier, was a symbol of her mission, and not in her enemies sight would she renounec either. 142 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. She said afterwards in her trial : " I would have changed my fashion of dress, if it had been within my duty, at the request of these ladies, rather than for any soul in France, except my Queen." Five months of suffering and anxiety passed over Joan in prison while her enemies were making up their minds how to compass her death under semblance of legal execution. She was no rebel. To put her to death for op- posing English supremacy would only make a hero of her, and fire the French to complete her work of clearing out the enemy. No, her memory must be made execrable. And they conceived the plan of convicting her by an ecclesiastical court, of crimes against the faith. That would save England from execration and cover Joan's name and that of Charles VII, as her accomplice, with the most dreaded kind of infamy. A ready tool for this wicked scheme was found in Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. When Joan and the King took Beauvais in the memorable days after the coronation, the Bishop refused to change his allegiance from the English to the French King, and preferred to fly to Paris to the Duke of Bedford's pro- tection. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 143 Bedford now sent this Cauchon to the Bur- gundian camp to claim Joan in the name of the English King, Henry VI. He paid the 10,000 livres gold demanded for her, though Bedford could have really taken her without the ransom seeing that Luxemburg was in his pay and thus of his own side in the war. Cau- chon not only was the medium of transfer of the heroine to the English, but he claimed the right to try her on the ground that she was captured in his diocese. Cauchon brought his victim to Rouen. It was the heart of the English power. It was the residence of the Regent Bedford. Its in- habitants had almost forgotten they were French, so long were they in English power. It was a strongly garrisoned town. So to Rouen Joan was brought just after Christmas, and flung into prison strongly chained and with two Englishmen, John Gray and William Talbot, to stay in her cell night and day for guard. As a suspected heretic she was to be al- lowed no Mass, no confession, no sacraments, no friendly face, no woman near her day or night to give her help or sympathy. Yet even her jailers testify she never lost her gentle iignity, never cried nor complained. She was but a few days in irons when the 144 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. shameless de Luxemburg came to her prison with two English Earls, Warwick and Staf- ford, with a proposal to set her free if she would promise not to fight the English army any more. " You but mock me," she answered. " I know that you have neither the power nor the will to set me free. I know that the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead they can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so. Though there were a hundred thousand of them they will never get it." It is told that Lord Stafford got so furious at her quiet defiance, he drew his dagger and would have struck her but for Warwick. Warwick saved her life another time when some English soldiers of Rouen proposed to sew her up in a bag and drown her to be sure of her death. Warwick quieted them with a promise that they should see her die, and soon, to be sure enough of it. Meanwhile, Cauchon, as chief prosecutor, was preparing for the trial of Joan. In his desire to compass her ruin he and his aids blindly piled illegality upon illegality. In the first place they claimed her as a prisoner of the church. As such she should have been in an ecclesiastical prison, un- BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. I45 chained and courteously treated and with ac- cess to the sacraments and with women about her. This she repeatedly begged for but without effect. Her jailers would tell her if she would give her promise not to try to escape she would not be chained, hands and feet. But her courage and her adherence to the cause for which she suffered forbade her giving her word of honor in that way. She held it her right to try to escape and she would not say that she would not if she could. On January 3d, 1431, Henry VI, oflScially handed Joan over to the " Ecclesiastical " court gathered together by the traitorous Bishop of Beauvais. Henry's document pro- vided: " It is our intention to repossess ourselves of her, if she be not convicted of High Treason to God." She was now as it were in the hands of the church. But the Earl of Warwick was her jailer. It was in his castle at Rouen she was imprisoned. She should be in a churchman's guard. As a minor she should have had coun- sel, and she asked for it but Cauchon would not even answer her, and, " for fear of the Eng- lish " nobody interfered for her. 146 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. The trial was appointed to be held in the castle, though it was pointed out to Cauchon that it should be held in open court to secure fairness on both sides. Cauchon paid no at- tention to that either. There was a great trouble at the very be- ginning of the preliminaries of the trial. Cauchon had picked his jury. There were fully fifty distinguished lawyers and clerics picked from here and there because of their known antagonism to the French Cause, Frenchmen — French priests they were, but in their sympathies and interests, English. The recorders were two decent men, Man- chon and Colles, secretly friendly to the Maid, and luckily honest men, who recorded only what was said and done, and so were in con- stant trouble with Cauchon who found fault with their records. Doctors of the University, Abbots of Nor- mandy, Canons of Rouen, were among the as- sessors who were to find the Maid guilty of treason to the Faith, but they were all chosen because of their political bias to the English, and afraid of their lives to say a word that Warwick or Bedford would not like. Besides, they probably had not the grace of God to see that Joan was inspired by heaven for the rescue of her country. Content with English domination, because it promised personal BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 147 advantage to themselves, these interested guardians of the faith, saw nothing holy or heavenly in the Maid, and their hearts were hardened and their eyes blinded to any claim for pity or justice on her part. When Joan found that the court to try her was made up of churchmen in the interests of the English, she begged that an equal number of priests of the French party be added. Of course there was no heed to her request. Nor did she expect there would be, but she was a brave girl and would not knowingly fail to assert her right, useless though she knew it to be. She also pleaded for counsel, as she was so young and inexperienced in law and theology. But no, she must do the best she could alone, and further, no friend of her cause was to be called as a witness. She was to be sole wit- ness for defense and prosecution. When Cauchon was ready to go on with the trial Jean de Lohier, representing the Inquisi- tion was to be one of the chief judges. Lohier came to Rouen from Paris and carefully ex- amined beforehand the process. He said promptly and bravely that: " In his view Jeanne could not be proceeded against in matters of faith except on evidence proving that there was a 'fama', popular 148 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. report, against her; the production of such information was legally necessary." Lohier asked for three days to consider the documents, and then declared that the mode of trial was not valid. The manner of trial was not valid : first, because it was held in a castle where men were not at liberty to give their full and free opinions; secondly, because the honor of the King of France was im- peached; he was a party in the suit and yet was not represented; thirdly, the accusation had not been given to the Maid that she might prepare her answer, neither had she counsel to answer for her, and she was a simple girl to be tried in matters of deep faith. To the Chief Registrar, Manchon, Lohier said: " It seems to me there is more hate than desire of justice in this action; and for this reason I will not stay here, for I do not wish to be in it." And he left Rouen and Paris and went to Rome for safety. Cauchon decided to go on without him. Another of the judges, Nicoles de Houppe- ville, said the whole procedure was invalid since the accused had been tried for the same causQ a year before by the Superior Court of the Archbishop of Rheims and acquitted. Oau- BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 149 chon replied that the Archbishop of Rheims made a mistake that time at Poitiers, and had not since recognized the Maid as orthodox, and he put De Houppeville in prison for his objecting. In the getting together of the evidence Cau- chon employed a spy, Pere Loyseleur, to go to Joan's cell, and introducing himself as a sym- pathizing fellow-countryman from Lorraine, drew her out and tried to get confession from her of deceit in the matter of the Voices, while Cauchon had his ear to a place so formed as to catch every whisper. They got nothing for their pains, for Joan had nothing to tell of deceit on her part or her Voices. On January 13 all the evidence was exam- ined by the " Board ", and such as was useful fixed up for use and other parts rejected. By January 19, there was a plausible array of accusations put together in a " Preliminary Instruction ", a sort of cut-and-dried affair, in which the Maid was made to confess all that Cauchon wanted. The whole Process was a jumble of illegalities and hypocrisies and foul insinuations and attempts to trap Joan. Gross however as the injustice was, there were certain barriers within which even Cau- chon and his accomplices had to work their 150 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. wicked wills. As there were fearless Canon- ists like Lohier, who, as members of a great International Bar, were independent of any king or court, so the notaries being apostolic and imperial officers, were in no way amenable to Cauchon or his crew. We have luckily their faithful records of the trial — one of the most appalling dramas in all history. CHAPTER X. The lamb in the midst of the wolves. The mock trial. How shall one write of the trial of Joan of Arc! The cruel, illegal mockery of justice, called the trial of Joan of Arc ! How describe the savior of France, the embodiment of patri- otism and purity, the child leader of victori- ous armies, the girl winner of great battles, the womanly angel of camp and court, so sud- denly and so utterly alone in the midst of a host of enemies thirsting for her death. Hundreds of classic penmen have described that tragic drama for us through the centu- ries since, with one bias or another, according as their sympathies were pro-English or pro- French, anti-clerical, or enthusiastically de- vout and hero worshipful. But we know Joan of Arc now for a saint, and the cheer and the sneer are alike hushed in awe as the finger of God is seen in every act of that drama, and in every answer of that unlearned child of the fields, to the deep questions on faith and morals put to her by learned doctors of the schools, for her discomfiture, as they thought, but for their own discomfiture, as 151 152 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. they found. A lamb in a den of wolves. No matter which way she answered, she was al- ready condemned. And not one voice raised to counsel or defend her. There is no irreverence in seeing in her arraignment before a horde of venal French priests and English soldiers, a resemblance, in divers points, to the howling of the mob in Pilate's house, " Crucify Him ! Crucify Him ! " that ended in the divine tragedy on Calvary at the hands of Jewish priests and Roman soldiers. The same mockery of law, the same utter loneliness of the victim, the same hypocritical combining of religion and politics to make assurance of condemnation doubly sure. The same ingratitude for good accomplished, the same holy horror at the supernatural claims supported by so many signs and prophecies, and yet denied as out- rageous and impossible. The details of this long-drawn-out harrowing of the Maid of Orleans before her final martyrdom, are full of keenest interest for us, because in it are laid bare the heart and soul of this most unique human spirit. In it we get an insight into God's ways in the affairs of men, into how human a saint may be; how holy a mere mortal may be; how wise and safe it is to follow God's lead and abandon one's will to BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 153 His will ; and how utterly foolish and futile to propose and plan big things without taking God's interests into account. In the chapel of the vast, fortressed castle of Rouen, owned and occupied by the Earl of Warwick and his men at arms, was commenced, at eight o'clock in the morning of February 21, 1431, the trial of the Maid of Orleans. It was now eight months since she was captured before the gates of Gompiegne. Eight months' idle waiting for the active spirit who in one year undid a century's war! Most of that time she was in easy captivity among her own countrymen and country- women; but since Ghristmas she was in the cruel keeping of the Earl of Warwick, bound like a wild beast and denied the Mass and the Sacraments, and the presence of a woman, or a friendly face, or one kind counsellor. The English were impatient for her death. Since her capture the white flag of truce waved in many parts waiting till she would be dead to go on with the fighting more securely. An English army waited at Galais for months, loath to go into France until assured the " witch-warrior " was removed. An impor- tant siege in another place suspended opera- tions, pending word of her execution. And yet it took three months for the cow- 154 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. ards and hypocrites to manufacture sufiflci- ient excuse for her death, that would at the same time remove her bodily presence from their path, and damn her memory for the French. She had already, by a pompous doc- ument, been handed over by the King of England to the EngMsh tools that infested the Church in Paris and Eouen. Chief of these was Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who had been driven from his See by his own people because of his English politics. Rouen had no archbishop since the last incumbent died some years before. The Holy See could not recognize the English government there, and the English government would not toler- ate a true Frenchman, so the Archbishopric remained vacant. The fugitive Cauchon being a Bishop, albeit a fugitive, assumed the lead in church affairs in Rouen without any authority except the political backing of the English garrison. With that backing, and all it promised of pelf and preferment, Cauchon had no trouble in getting tools enough to do his bidding and give the appearance at the same time of justice and fair play. There are among the historians of that time a great variety of opinions as to his relative vindic- tiveness in the whole proceedings. It certainly is between him and his English masters that BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 155 Joan was spared no cruelty, no indignity, no injustice. She should have been in a church prison as she was tried as an offender against the Faith. Instead she was jailed like the worst criminal. She should have had counsel. She should not have been condemned out of her own mouth alone, without even one wit- ness for or against her. Cauchon had no legal jurisdiction for the trial any more than for the government of the ecclesiastical functions, but he assumed all the jurisdiction and no one was able to prevent or even criticize one who had the English king and the Duke of Bedford behind him. From the University of Paris he got more of the same kind as himself to sit with him in the judgment. The University of Paris was one of the great law schools of Europe. Civil law and Canon law were studied by thousands of young men under hundreds of professors, unchallenged for accuracy and keenness and depth of their learning. But here again Eng- lish influence had damned righteousness. For a quarter of a century Paris had been in English hands, and English politics had driven to the law schools of Florence and Bologna, the true Frenchman from the Paris University. 156 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. It was easy for Cauchon to find fifty and more learned men in the university, to come to Rouen and say " Amen " to his cut-and- dried condemnation of the Maid of Orleans as a heretic and a witch. On the 21st of February, 1431, forty-two of the doctors, learned in civil and canon law, — the number varied from forty to seventy some days — sat in a semicircle on both sides of Bishop Cauchon, who occupied a throne in the center. Before and a little below them sat numer- ous clerks and reporters, with pens and paper ready to take down as ordered all that would be said and done. Three of these in particular, were the offi- cial recorders of the proceedings, and to the records of these, translated into Latin, and still preserved, we are indebted for the account of the trial. On a raised dais, in a clear space in front and to one side, in full view of every- body, was a seat for Joan. The body of the chapel was full of English soldiers and retain- ers of the Earl, as much as it would hold. Probably numbers of the citizens of Rouen were present also, for we read in the account of the trial that because of the tumult and applause on the first day it was no more held in the chapel, but in another and more private hall of the castle. Among the judges, regis- BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. I57 trars, clerks, etc., there were few if any Englishmen. But it was well understood, not only by the pathetic little victim sitting in the midst, but by the circles of judges and report- ers that hemmed her round, that outside of all these was all the power of the English King and court and army, to urge and hurry and if need be force the sentence of ignominious death. Three Registrars, each with his clerks, took down the proceedings publicly: but be- hind curtains were two English Clerns under the direction of Loyseleur, a renegade priest, who had tried secretly to wring damaging ad- missions from Joan, while he had concealed witnesses, listening. The Public Registrars had their difBculties from the very beginning. The notes taken by them at the morning sittings were read over in presence of some of the Bishop's assessors at his house in the afternoons, and compared with those made by the concealed English clerks. They did not always agree, and then there was trouble. Between what they recorded and what Cauchon wanted them to record there were many discrepancies, and there were long arguments from the Bishop to make them to suit. But to their credit the Regis- trars were honest. One of them especially, named Manchon, secretly friendly to Joan, and 158 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. a fearless man, stood by the truth and fought for it. He it was who finally drew up all the notes in a complete form — they were then translated into Latin by another recorder, Thomas de Courcelles, and in this shape are preserved intact to this day. Judges and re- corders and clerks were all early in their places and the chapel filled to its utmost on the morning of that February 21, when the call was given : " Produce the accused." There was a great buzz, then a silence deep and painful, and then the sound of clanking chains came gradually nearer. All eyes were on the pathetic little figure in a page's suit of soft, dead black, moving slowly because of the chains, until the pale face was raised directly before the double row of judges or assessors, as they were called and are called in the documents. For a brief space of time she stood and the clear gaze ran along the lines of judges as if searching for a smile or a kind look. But the guards shoved her to her place on the dais and she seated herself, gath- ering her chains into her lap and holding them there. Her white face scanned the rows of judges, the row of registrars and their clerks, among whom were some sympathizers, though none dared avow themselves so. It is told that as her eyes rested on the lines of English BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 159 soldiers in the body of the chapel, one soldier meeting her look respectfully put his hand to his head, giving her the military salute. With a friendly smile she put up her chained hand to her head, and returned the salute, whereat there was a little burst of applause which the judge sternly rebuked. The trial began with the reading of the royal letters conveying Joan to the hands of the court for trial, letters of the chapter of Kouen giving concession of territory to the Bishop of Beauvais. Then Jean d'Estivet, ap- pointed by the court promoter of the case, summarized with a great show of legal forms the circumstances of the case and the public reports and suspicions on which it was based. Then he called upon Joan to kneel and take oath that she would answer truthfully and exactly the questions to be put to her. Did the grave great judges in two solemn rows before her, scare the lonely little woman or throw her off her guard? Their demand that she take oath to speak the truth was ap- parently reasonable enough. But Joan's simplicity and candor were her strength. Calmly and very gently she refused to take the oath, saying: " No ; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me things which 160 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. I would not tell you." Cauchon got angry and excited immediately. He forgot the dignity with which he opened the court. He said, ris- ing his voice : " Swear to speak truth on the things which shall be asked you concerning the Faith and of which you know." " Of my father and mother and of what I did after taking the road to France, willingly will I swear ; but of the revelations which have come to me from God, to no one will I speak or reveal them, save only to Charles, my King; and to you I will not reveal them, even if it cost me my head, because I have received them in visions and by secret counsel, and am for- bidden to reveal them." At this, every one, it seemed, of the forty- two judges had something to say of threat or command, until in a lull in the tumult Joan begged : " Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then will I answer all of you." For whole hours they argued and threatened in vain to force Joan to take an unmodified oath. She herself was the only one not ex- cited. Finally they agreed to let her take oath under the conditions she said. She sank to her knees at once, put her two hands on the Mass book before her, and swore solemnly to tell the truth on what should be asked of her on mat- ters concerning the Faith and her work in France. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 161 Then she was asked her name and surname, age, place of birth, and such like questions touching her own personal history. " In my own country (Lorraine was on the borders of France) they called me Jeannette; since I came into France I have been called Jeanne. Of my surname I know nothing. I was born in the village of Domremy, which is really one with the village of Greux. The principal church is at Greux. My father is called Jacques d'Arc, my mother, Ysabelle. I was baptized in the village of Domremy. * * * I was, I believe, baptized by Messire Jean Minet; he still lives, so far as I know. I am, I should say, about nineteen years of age. From my mother I learned my Pater, my Ave Maria, and my Credo." " Say your Pater." This was from Cauchon, and suddenly. The idea was to hint at witchcraft for it was sup- posed a witch could not say the Our Father. But Joan resented the imputation. " No, I will not say my Pater to you unless you will hear me in confession." Many times the effort was made to have her say the Our Father, but her answer was still, "Hear me in confession and I will say it wil- lingly." Having already exhausted some hours in trying to force her oath and have her say 162 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. the Pater, the court prepared to rise. Cau- chon ordered her back to prison. She had hoped for a change of prison. Cauchon for- bade Joan under pain of great penalty to try to leave the prison which had been assigned her in the castle. " I do not accept such a prohibition," she an- swered. If ever I do escape, no one shall reproach me with having given my word to any one." " You have before this, and many times sought, we are told, to escape from the prison, where you were detained and it is to keep you more surely that it has been ordered to put you in irons." "It is true I wished to escape; and so I wish still ; is not this lawful for all prisoners? " And again they had to content themselves without getting her promise. Then John Gray was appointed solemnly as chief jailer to Joan, with John Berwoist and William Talbot as assistants, and all three were made to swear, with their hands on the gospels, to keep her close and let no one see her or speak to her without order from Pierre Cauchon — and they were further ordered to bring the prisoner next morning at eight o'clock in the ornament room of the same castle for continuance of the trial. Thus ended BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 163 the first day of the most dramatic trial of a prisoner for life on record in all history. There were forty-two learned men against one woman that the world would call ignorant. Yet she proved a match for the great array of technical talent, because versed in the science of the saints which single-eyed, keeps God and God's interest in sight always and so makes no mistakes. The grueling lasted for three months, with intermissions which the judges needed more than did their victim. They even showed her at the first, as a reminder to be careful of her answers, the torture room and hinted at its possibilities. In the face of this tribunal, learned, able, powerful and preju- diced, the peasant girl of nineteen stood like a rock, unmoved by all their cleverness, un- daunted by all their severity, never losing her head nor her temper, her modest steadfastness nor her high spirit. The oiHcial record of the first day ends thus : " Finally, having accomplished all the pre- ceding, we appointed the said Jeanne to appear the next day, at 8 o'clock in the morning, be- fore us, in the ornament room, at the end of the great hall of the Castle of Kouen." CHAPTER XI. " In spinning and sewing I do not fear any woman in Rouen." February 22, at eight o'clock in the morn- ing, Pierre Cauchon and his peculiar ecclesias- tical court increased from forty-two of the day before to forty-eight judges, were in their seats ready for the second day's trial of Joan of Arc for treason to the Catholic Faith. To one of the judges, Jean Beaupere, a reverend doctor of theology from the Univer- sity of Paris, was given the privilege of chief questioner. The plan of the day was to trap her into saying something contrary to Christian doc- trine, or something that would cast doubt on the heavenly nature of her revelations, or something that would give any color of witch- craft to her miraculous triumphs. Of her direct and deadly opposition to the English invasion of France, there was no doubt nor secret, and, of course, for this she was amenable to English law, and liable to quick and cruel death at the hands of her English 164 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 165 captors. But that was never England's way. A hero's death would leave her memory a source of strength to French arms. She must be discredited. It must be shown that her miraculous powers came from the demon and not from God. An ecclesiastical court at Poitiers examined her a year before, when she first came to the king for the rescue of Orleans. That court decided that her mission and her Voices were from God. But she was in different hands and she must be proved to do wonders in the name of Beel- zebub, so the English could bum her with decency. " Bring in the accused." And for a second time the gentlest, purest, bravest heart in France faced that throng of angry men— seek- ing from herself an excuse to do away with her as unworthy to live. The evening before, Cauchon had spent an hour with a man whom he had sent to Dom- remy to collect evidence against Joan, espe- cially her connection with the Fairy Tree in that village. The man had brought back from Domremy and five adjacent parishes, a great deal of testimony in praise of Joan, from young and old, and as he said himself, " such 166 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. things as he would like to hear said of his own sister." But not one word that showed she frequented the neighborhood of the fairy tree. The Bishop was furious and sent him off without one franc of the promised wage he was to get for his time and trouble. A further ruffle to Cauchon's temper was occasioned by Joan's jailer, Massieu, who, con- ducting her to and from her prison, allowed her in passing the chapel door, to pause for a moment's adoration, outside the closed door, of the Blessed Sacrament kept within. Joan had begged it — she who asked no favors of her jailers else. Cauchon warned Massieu not to let " the Ex- communicate " again have such privilege if he did not want to lose his head. Another vexation Cauchon suffered »vas the defection of one of the judges who expressing his disapproval of the whole proceedings fled the country. Cauchon opened the proceedings the second day. " You are now required to take oath to an- swer truly all questions asked you." " I made oath yesterday, my lord, let that suffice." The bishop flared up at the quiet refusal and insisted. For a long time he urged and BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 157 commanded, Joan simply shaking her head in refusal. At last she said slowly and firmly : " I made oath yesterday, let that suffice. Of a truth you do burden me too much." Cauchon, disgusted and chagrined, turned to Beaupere and bade him go on with the in- quiry. Rev. Jean Beaupere, doctor of theology, began graciously: " Now, Jeanne, the matter is very simple. You are to answer truly the questions I put to you as you have sworn to do." But Joan was not to be caught by gracious- ness any more than by bad temper. " You may well ask me some things on which I shall tell you the truth, and some on which I shall not tell you anything. If you were well informed about me, you would wish me well out of your hands. I have done nothing except by revelation." " How old were you when you left your father's house? " " On the subject of my age I cannot vouch." "In your youth did you learn any trade?" " Yes. I learned to spin and to sew. In spinning and sewing I do not fear any woman in Rouen." This was greeted with some applause, and a pleased expression lit up her face for a mo- ment. 168 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Had you other occupations at home? " " Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures sometimes with the sheep and cattle." Asked about her religious duties she an- swered : " Every year I confessed myself to my own Cur6, and, with his permission to another priest, when he was prevented. Sometimes also, two or three times, I confessed to the mendicant friars; this was at Neuf chateau. At Easter I received the Sacrament of the Eucharist." " Did you receive the Sacrament of the Eu- charist at any other time but Easter?" Several times was this question put to her, but as if she would say, " Why do ye tempt me, ye hypocrites ? " she refused to answer, merely saying: " Pass on to things you are privileged to pry into." Beaupere winced, but passed on to the ques- tion of her Voices : " When did you first hear these Voices ? " " I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to live well. I was frightened. It came at mid-day, in my father's garden in the summer." "Had you been fasting?" BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 169 " Yes." "The day before?" " No." " From what direction did it come? " " From the right. From towards the church. It came with a bright light; rarely do I hear it without its being accompanied by a bright light. This light comes from the same side as the Voice. Generally it is a great light. Since I came into France I have often heard this Voice." " But how could you see this light you speak of, when the light was at the side? " Joan brushed aside this question as un- worthy an answer, and went on : " If I were in a wood I could easily hear the Voice which came to me. It seemed to me to come from lips I should reverence. " I believe it was sent me from God. When I heard it for the third time, I recognized thai' it was the Voice of an angel. This Voice has always guarded me well and I have always understood it; it instructed me to be good and to go often to church ; it told me it was neces- sary to come into France." "In what form did the Voice appear?" Joan hesitated a moment, looking into her questioner's face, and then said quietly: " As to that I will not tell you." 170 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. "Did the Voice seek you often?" " Yes. Twice or three times a week it said to me : 'Go into France.' I could stay no longer." "What else did it say?" " That I should raise the siege of Orleans." "Was that all?" " No ; I was to go to Vaucouleurs and Robert de Baudricourt would give me soldiers to go with me to France. I replied that I was a poor girl, who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight. At last I went to my uncle and said I wished to stay near him for a time. I remained with my uncle eight days. Then I said to him : ' I must go to Vaucoul- eurs.' He took me there. When I arrived I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, though I had never seen him. I knew him, thanks to my Voice, which made me recognize him. I said to Robert : ' I must go into France.' " Twice Robert refused to hear me and re- pulsed me. The third time, he received me, and furnished me with men; the Voice had told me it would be thus. The Duke of Lor- raine gave orders that I should be taken to him. I went there. I told him that I wished to go into France. " The Duke asked me questions about his health; but I said of that I knew nothing. I BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 171 spoke to him a little of my journey. I told him he was to send his son with me, together with some people to conduct me into France, and that I would pray to God for his health. I had gone to him with a safe conduct from Vaucouleurs and from him I returned. From Vaucouleurs I departed for the Dauphin." "How were you dressed?" Now this was her chief sin in their eyes — her man's dress. The Court at Poitiers, over which an Arch- bishop had presided, had tried her on this and other matters, and decided that as she had a man's work to do, it was proper for her to wear a man's dress. But this court made no account of that de- cision. " How were you dressed ? " And every ear was keen for the answer. The answer came quickly and simply : " I wore a man's dress, and also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me, but no other weapon." " Who advised you to wear the dress of a man?" She paid no heed but went on : " I had with me a knight, a squire, and their servants, with whom I reached the town of St. Urbain, where I slept in an abbey. On the 172 BLESSED JOAN OF AKC. way later I passed through Auxerre, where I heard Mass in the principal church. Thence- forward I often heard my Voices." " Who counseled you to take a man's dress? " At last she answered : " With that I charge no one." " What did Baudricourt say to you when you were leaving?" " He made them that were with me promise to conduct me well and safely, and to me he said : ' Go, and let come what may ! ' " Again the subject of her man's dress was brought up: " Did your Voice advise you to wear man's dress ? " " I believe my Voice gave me good advice." That was as definite an answer as they could get. Then she was asked how she happened to be let near the king. " I went without hindrance to the king. Having arrived at the village of St. Catherine de Fierbois, I sent for the first time to the castle of Chinon, where the king was. " I wen t to the king who was at the castle. When I entered the room where he was I rec- ognized him among many others by the coun- sel of my Voice, which revealed him to me. I told him that I wished to go and make war on the English." BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 173 " When the Voice showed you the king, was there any light ? " " Pass that ! " " Did you see an angel over the king? " " Pass that ! Before the king set me to work he had many apparitions and beautiful revela- tions." "What revelations and apparitions had the king?" " I will not tell you. It is not time to an- swer about them ; but send to the king and he will tell you. The Voice had promised me that as soon as I came to the king he would receive me. " Those of my party knew well that the Voice had been sent me from God ; my king and many others, I am sure, have also heard the Voices which came to me. " There were there Charles de Bourbon and two or three others." "Do you still hear the Voices?" " There is not a day when I do not hear my Voices; indeed I have much need of them." " What do you ask of them?" " I have never asked any recompense but the salvation of my soul." " Did the Voice tell you to follow the army?" " The Voice told me to remain at St. Denis. 174 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. I wished to do so, but, against my will, the lords made me leave. If I had not been wounded I should not have left." " When were you wounded ? " " In the moat before Paris, in the assault." "Was it a Festival day?" " Yes, it was a Festival." Now they had her. She acknowledged she made an assault, and it was a Feast day of the Church. The next question was supposed to annihilate her: "Is it right to make an assault on a Fes- tival?" If she said " Yes " her piety could be im- peached. If she said " No " then her own conduct and the integrity of her counsel could be impeached. After just a moment's thoughtful pause Joan said : " Let it pass." As if to say : we are not the judges of the right or wrong of it. It is done, let it stand. The record ends : " And as it appeared that enough had been done for to-day, we have postponed the aflfair to Saturday next, at 8 o'clock in the morning." The great men were tired after the four or five hours' anxious searching into the poor girl's life and motives with such meager results. As for her, she was fasting in the first BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 175 place and there was no rest for her body in the hard unbacked seat. Her woman's heart must have sank like lead at the cold cruelty mani- fested towards her, and the hypocrisy shown in the name of Catholic piety. In connection with this second day's pro- ceedings, the sworn testimony of a Rouen theologian, Master Nicholas de Houpperville, one of the judges, is pertinent here. He swore at the enquiries instituted some years later : " I was called at the beginning of the Process. I could not come the first day. When I presented myself the second day I was not admitted. I was even driven away by the bishop, because, talking one day with Master Michel Colles, I had told him that it was dan- gerous for many reasons to take part in this Process. This was repeated to the bishop ; and for this cause he had me shut up in the king's prison at Rouen, whence I was delivered only by the prayers of the Lord Abbot of Fecamp; and I heard that some whom the bishop sum- moned, advised that I should be exiled to Eng- land or elsewhere beyond the bounds of Rouen, had I not been delivered by the Abbot and his friends. " I never thought that zeal for the faith, nor desire to bring her back to the right way, caused the English to act thus." CHAPTER XII. "If I be not in the state of grace I pray God place me in it." Friday, Joan had a day of rest — if rest it might be called — in prison. Comparative rest, for though Cauchon and the Earl of Warwick visited her in her prison they did not stay long and they did not ask her many questions. Manchon, the chief recorder of the trial, and one to whom we are indebted that it is handed down so true in all its details, tells of this visit to Joan in prison, for he accompanied them. They went to gaze at her as they might go to see a dangerous animal, captured and safely caged to ensure public safety. There were three keys to her prison. The English Cardinal or his secretary carried one, the representative of the Inquisition carried another, and the Promoter of the trial carried the third. For the king and statesmen of England had paid a thousand pounds for her, and had promised an annuity of three hundred pounds to the Burgundian soldier who had captured 176 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 177 her. They valued their prize too highly to let her out of their mind or sight for a whole day. Three English soldiers were locked in with her, and besides these she saw no one except by special permission of Warwick or Cauchon. The Duchess of Bedford was asked to have her examined by competent women in the begin- ning and this was done. The Duchess ap- pointed two women who pronounced Joan " a maiden pure and good," and the Duchess forth- with warned her husband to see that no harm came to the girl's honor. Nevertheless, Joan retained her dress of a man for better safety; and her ignorance of the English language saved her from the coarse talk of her jailers, who played cards and cracked jokes all day, unmindful of her unless when they piously wished she was dead so they might have a change of scene and occupa- tion. On Saturday, February 24, early in the morning was opened the third day of the trial. The Bishop and sixty-two assessors present. The accused was brought in wearily drag- ging her chains, and then the same struggle began as on the two other days, the struggle to make her swear unreservedly to answer truly all their questions. Jn the exact words of the Evidence: 178 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " We did require the aforenamed Jeanne to swear to speak the truth simply and absolutely on the questions to be addressed to her, with- out adding any restrictions to her oath. We did three times thus admonish her. She an- swered : " ' Give me leave to speak. By my faith ! You may well ask me such things as I will not tell you. Perhaps on many of the things you may ask me I shall not tell you truly, espe- cially on those that touch on my revelations; for you may constrain me to say things that I have sworn not to say ; then I should be per- jured, which you ought not to wish.' And then she looked keenly at the Bishop and said : " ' I tell you, take good heed of what you say, you who are my judge; you take great re- sponsibility in thus charging me. I should say that it is enough to have sworn twice.' " But the hectoring went on. We have it word for word in the documents, and none of it is immaterial for it concerns this great drama of five hundred years ago, newly revived through the recent action of the Church in giving Joan to us as a mediator with God. Gauchon seemed not to notice her warning, but asked again: " Will you swear simply and absolutely ? " "You may surely do without this. I have BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 179 sworn enough already, twice. All the clergy of Eouen and Paris cannot condemn me if it be not law. Of my coming into France I will speak the truth willingly; but I will not say all : the space of eight days would not suffice." " Take the advice of the Assessors whether you should swear or not." " Of my coming into France I will speak truth willingly; but not of the rest. Speak no more of it to me." " You render yourself liable to suspicion in not being willing to speak the truth abso- lutely." " Speak to me no more of it. Pass on." " We again require you to swear, precisely and absolutely." " I will say willingly what 1 know, and yet not all." And holding out her manacled hands, she said in most appealing tones: " I am come in God's name ; I have nothing to do here ; let me be sent back to God, whence I came." " Again we summon and require you to swear, under pain of going forth charged with what is imputed to you." " Pass on." "A last time we require you to swear, and urgently admonish you to speak the truth on 180 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. all that concerns your trial, you expose your- self to great peril by such a refusal." Now he had said it, " on all that concerns your trial." Not " absolutely and precisely." If he had said it so at first it would have been all right, but they thought to spring it on the child. But she was wiser than they deemed her and saw the point. " I am ready to speak the truth on what I know touching the trial," was her quick re- sponse in a relieved tone of voice. Disgusted with his seeming victory that was really a victory for her, Cauchon turned to Beaupere and bade him question her—which he did as follows. We give it word for word, as it is in the Records : " How long is it since you have had food and drink ? " " Since yesterday afternoon." This and subsequent inquiries as to Joan's habit of fasting was to prove a weak bodily health that might prove her visions merely hallucinations. Joan's usual meal was bread dipped in wine and water. " How long Is it since you heard your Voices?" " I heard them yesterday and to-day." " At what hour yesterday did you hear them?" BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 181 " Yesterday I heard them three times — once in the morning, once at Vespers, and again when the Ave Maria rang in the evening. I have even heard them oftener than that." " What were you doing yesterday morning when the Voice came to you ? " " I was asleep ; the Voice woke me." " By touching you on the arm ? " " It awoke me without touching me." " Was it in your room ? " " Not so far as I know, but in the Castle." " Did you thank it and did you go on your knees ? " " I did thank it — sitting on the bed ; I joined my hands; I implored its help. The Voice said to me ' Answer boldly ! ' I asked advice as to how I should answer, begging it to en- treat for this the counsel of the Lord. The Voice said to me : ' Answer boldly ; God will help thee.' Before I had prayed it to give me counsel, it said to me several words I could not readily understand. After I was awake it said to me ' Answer boldly ! ' " Turning full on Bishop Cauchon : " You say you are my judge. Take care what you are doing; for in truth I am sent by God, and you place yourself in great danger." Beaupere then continued; 182 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Has this Voice sometimes varied in its counsel? " " I have never found it to give two contrary opinions. This night I heard it say again ' Answer boldly ! ' " " Has your Voice forbidden you to say everything on what you are asked ? " " I will not answer you about that. I have revelations touching the king that I will not tell you." Then rising and lifting her face and her voice, as if speaking to far beyond her sur- roundings, she said while the tears sprang to her eyes : " I believe wholly — as firmly as I believe in the Christian Faith, and that God has re- deemed us from the pains of hell, that Voice hath come to me from God, and by His com- mand. The Voice comes to me from God; and I do not tell you all I know about it, for I have far greater fear of doing wrong in saying to you things that would displease it, than I have of answering you." " Is it displeasing to God to speak the truth?" " My Voices have entrusted to me certain things to tell to the king not to you. This very night they told me many things for the welfare of my king, which I would he might BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 183 know at once, even if I should drink no wine until Easter; the king would be more joyful at his dinner." " Can you not so deal with your Voices that they will convey this news to your king? " " I know not if it be God's will. If it please God He will know how to reveal it to the king and I shall be well content." " Why does not this Voice speak any more to your king, as it did when you were in his presence?" " I do not know if it be the will of God." Again her thoughts were above and joining her manacled hands she said feelingly: " Without the grace of God I should not know how to do anything." She sat down again with a preoccupied air, and looking pitifully weary. Beaupere saw his chance: " Are you in the grace of God ? " Joan was brought back from her dream- iness. She turned her face on Beaupere for a moment, as if trying to fathom his question. It was a big question from a venerable doctor of theology to a young girl who ac- knowledged she did not know A from B. One of the judges, Jean Lefevre, rose in his place instantly and cried out : 184 BLBSSE3D JOAN OF ARC. • " It is a terrible question. The accused is not obliged to answer it." Poor Joan. It was about the only hint of counsel she had had so far in her battle with these theologians and logicians. Cauchon was angry in a flash. " Silence ! Take your seat. The accused will answer the question." But in the mouth of babes God puts wisdom to confound the mighty. While all the court held its breath to hear, Joan humbly and gently gave the memorable answer to that snaring question : " If I be not in a state of grace, I pray God place me in it; if I am, may God keep me there." Beaupere and Cauchon exchanged glances and Lefevre said for all to hear : " It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer." Joan went on : " I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it. I think I was about thirteen when it came to me for the first time." Talking of her youth brought a new thought BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 185 to Beaupere. He took a new tack in his effort to make the poor girl say something damaging to her character or the character of her Voices. The Fairy Tree was a strong point in their attack. But he must come to it in- directly so as to catch her unprepared. " Has your counsel revealed to you that you will escape from prison?" " I have nothing to tell you about that." " Besides the Voice do you see anything? " "I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that. My Voice is good and to be honored. I am not bound to answer you about it. I request that the points on which I do not now answer may be given me in writing. There is a saying among chil- dren that sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth." " Do the Domremy people side with the Burgundians or with the opposite party?" " I knew only one Burgundian at Domremy ; I should have been quite willing for them to have cut off his head — always had it pleased God." " Were the people of Maxey Burgundians? " " They were. As soon as I knew that my Voices were for the king of France, I loved the Burgundians no more." " Had you any intention of fighting the Bur- gundians?" 186 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " I had a great will and desire that my king should have his own kingdom." " When you came into France did you wish to be a man ? " " I have answered this elsewhere." " Did you not take the animals to the fields?" " I have already answered this also. When I was bigger and had come to the years of discretion I did not look after the animals generally. But I helped to take them to the meadows and to a castle called The Island, for fear of the soldiers." " What have you to say about a certain tree which is near to your village?" This tree, like the man's dress, was one of the points on which they hoped to catch Joan. If her Voices and the Fairies could be con- nected, Joan's condemnation would be swift and easy. But all unconscious of the malicious intent of her questioner, she answered frankly, and gave in a few words a graphic history of the tree: " Not far from Domremy there is a tree that they call 'the Ladies' Tree'; others call it ' the Fairies' Tree.' Nearby is a spring where people sick of the fever come to drink, as I have heard, and to seek water to restore their BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 187 health. I have myself seen them come thus; but I do not know if they were healed. " 1 have heard that the sick if once cured, come to this tree to walk about. It is a beau- tiful tree, a beech, from which comes the ' beau may.' It belongs to the Seigneur Pierre de Bourlemont, Knight. I have sometimes been to play with the young girls, to make gar- lands for our Lady of Domremy. Often I have heard old folks — not of my lineage— say that the fairies haunt this tree. I have also heard one of my godmothers, named Jeanne, wife of the Maire Aubrey of Domremy, say that she has seen fairies there; whether it be true I do not know. As for me, I never saw them that I know of. Nor anywhere else that I know of. I have seen the young girls putting gar- lands on the branches of this tree, and I my- self have sometimes put them there with my companions ; sometimes we took these garlands away — sometimes we left them there. Ever since I knew that it was necessary for me to come into France, I have given myself up as little as possible to these distractions and games. " Since I was grown up I do not remember to have danced there. I may have danced there when very young with the young children. I have sung there more than danced. 188 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " There is also a wood called the Oakwood, which can be seen from my father's door ; it is not more than half a league away. I do not know and have never heard if the fairies ap- pear there; but my brother told me that it is said in the neighborhood : ' Jeannette received her mission at the fairy tree.' It is not the case. I told him the contrary. When I came before the king several people asked me if there were not in my country a woods called the Oakwood, because there were prophecies which said that from the neighborhood of this wood would come a maid who should do mar- velous things. I put no faith in that." Joan was heard with great attention and the recorders bent over their papers putting down every word, and the secret recorders be- hind the curtains too, and from Joan's frank story of the fairies' tree and the Oakwood they made up, as we shall see later, a whole tissue of damaging superstitions against her. Beaupere had enough to think about for one day so he contented himself with one more question, harking back to the old subject: " Would you like to have a woman's dress ? " " Give me one and I will take it and be gone from prison. Otherwise no. I am content with what I have, since it pleases God that I wear it." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 189 " Since it pleases God that I wear it I am content with it." There was a saint's answer to a lawyer's quibbling question. Beaupere being a theolo- gian should appreciate the religious beauty of it. But he shut his eyes to that and only counted it as a further refusal to abandon what they pretended to look upon as a horror : " A woman in a man's dress." The day's work is duly ended in the records in these words : " This done, We stayed the Interrogation, and put off the remainder to Tuesday next, on which day we have convoked all the Assessors, at the same place and hour." CHAPTER XIII. "I will tell willingly whatever I have permission from God to reveal." Sunday and Monday Joan had a quiet time in her chains, and on Tuesday her sweet patient countenance was once more turned to Bishop Cauchon in the court room as he again tried to make her swear to tell the truth in everything on which she would be questioned. Joan as on the three previous days of trial steadily refused to take such an oath, reserv- ing to herself silence on matters relating to the king, and such as did not concern the trial. She would tell the truth on those things she might speak of but she would not promise to tell all she knew. The effort to make her turn spy on her party, on the king of France, and his council, and to satisfy the curiosity of her questioners as to the appearance and conver- sation of her Voices, was made again and again but without finding Joan asleep or afraid. This day there were but fifty-four judges present with the Bishop, instead of the sixty- 190 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. I9I two of the preceding day. She was at once and several times commanded to take the oath to speak the truth on all which should be asked of her. But she held out that she had already sworn to answer truthfully on everything con- cerning the trial. To that oath she would keep and would take no other. Then the fire opened on the gentle little woman sitting all alone with fifty-four pairs of eyes bent intently and not kindly on her, and as many ears listening for words from her that would give them an excuse to condemn her as a bad Catholic. Beaupere was given the privilege of ques- tioning her and began by asking politely, "How are you, to-day?" " You can see for yourself how I am. I am as well as can be." "Do you fast everyday this Lent?" "Is that in the case?" and as he nodded assent — " Well, yes ! I have fasted every day during this Lent." " Have you heard . your Voices since Satur- day?" " Yes ! truly, many times." "Did you hear them last Saturday in the hall while you were being examined?" " That is not in the case " — every head 192 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. nodded yes, for it was a question they all wanted to ask. " Very well, then — ^yes ! I did hear them — but up to the moment I returned to my prison, I heard nothing that I may repeat to you ! " "What did it say to you in your room?" " It said to me ' Answer boldly ! ' I take council with my Voice about what you ask me. I will tell willingly whatever I have per- mission from God to reveal." " What did your Voice last say to you? " " I asked counsel about certain things that you had asked me." " Did it give you counsel ? " " On some points, yes ; on others you may ask me for an answer that I shall not give, not having had leave. For, if I answered without leave I should no longer have my Voices as warrant. When I have permission from Our Savior I shall not fear to speak, because I shall have warrant." " This Voice that speaks to you, is it that of an angel, or of a saint, or from God direct?" " It is the Voice of St. Catherine and of St. Margaret. Their faces are adorned with beau- tiful crowns, very rich and precious. To tell you this I have leave from Our Lord. If you doubt this send to Poitiers where I was exam- ined before." BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 193 " How do you know if these were the two Saints? How do you distinguish them?" " I know quite well it is they ; and I can easily distinguish one from the other. It is seven years now since they have undertaken to guide me. I know them well because they were named to me." " Are these two Saints dressed in the same stuff? " " I will tell you no more on this point just now. I have not leave to reveal it." " Are they of the same age? " " I have not leave to say." "Which of them appeared to you first?" "I did not distinguish them at first. » * * I have also received comfort from St. Michael." " What was the first Voice came to you when you were about thirteen ? " " It was St. Michael ; I saw him before my eyes; he was not alone but quite surrounded by angels." " Did you see St. Michael and these angels bodily and in reality?" " I saw them with my bodily eyes as well as I see you ; when they went from me I wept. I should have liked to be taken away with them." " And what was St. Michael like? " " I am not yet free to tell you." 194 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " What did St. Michael saj to you this first time?" " You will have no more about it from me to-day. Once I told the king all that had been revealed to me, because it concerned him; but I am no longer free to speak of all St. Michael said to me." Turning to Beaupere she said: " I wish you could get a copy of the book of the trial at Poitiers, if it please God." " What sign do you give that you have this revelation from God, and that it is Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret who talks with you?" " I have told you that it is they ; believe me if you will." " How can you make sure of distinguishing such things as you are free to tell from those which are forbidden ? " " On some points I have asked leave. On others I have obtained it. I would have been torn asunder by four horses rather than have come into France without God's leave." " Was it God who prescribed for you the dress of a man?" " What concerns this dress is a small thing — less than nothing. I did not take it by the advice of any man in the world. I did not BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 195 take this dress nor do anything but by the com- mand of Our Lord and of the Angels." " Did it appear to you that this command to take man's dress was lawful ? " " All that I have done is by Our Lord's command. If I had been told to take some other, I should have done it, because it would have been His command." Some cross-questioning followed, trying to shake her testimony, that it was by no man's advice she took man's dress, and then Beau- pere came back to the King of France : " Why was your King able to put faith in your words?" " He had good signs, and the clergy bore me witness." " What revelations has your King had ? " "You will not have them from me this year. During three weeks I was closely ques- tioned by the clergy at Chinon and Poitiers. Before he was willing to believe me, the King had a sign of my mission, and the clergy of my party were of opinion that there was nothing but good in my mission." " Have you been to St. Catherine de Fier- bois?" " Yes. I heard there three Masses in one day. Afterwards I went to the Castle of Chinon, whence I sent letters to the King, to 196 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. know if I should be allowed to see him, saying that I had traveled a hundred and fifty leagues to come to his help, and that I knew many things good for him. " I think I remember there was in my letter a remark that I should recognize him among all others. " I had a sword that I had received at Vaucouleurs ; whilst I was at Tours or at Chi- non I sent to seek for a sword which was in the Church of St. Catherine de Fierbois, be- hind the altar; it was found there at once; the sword was in the ground and rusty; upon it were five crosses (possibly a Jerusalem cross, bearing out the legend that it was a Crusader's sword). I wrote to the priests of this place, that it might please them to let me have this sword, and they sent it to me. It was under the earth, not very deeply buried, behind the altar as it seemed to me, but I do not know exactly if it was before or behind the altar. As soon as it was found the priests rubbed it and the rust fell off at once without effort. It was an armorer of Tours who went to look for it. The priests of Fierbois made me a present of a scabbard; those of Tours of an- other; the one was of crimson velvet; the other of cloth of gold. I had a third made of leather, very strong. When I was taken pris- I offered at St. Denis my sword and armor. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 199 oner I did not have this sword. I always bore this sword of Fierbois from the time I got it, up to my departure from Saint Denis after the attack on Paris." " What blessing did you invoke or have in- voked on this sword ? " " I neither blessed it nor had it blessed ; I should not have known how to set about it. I cared very much for this sword because it had come from the Church of Saint Catherine, whom I love so much." " Have you sometimes prayed that your sword might be fortunate?" " It is good to know that I wished my armor might have good fortune." " Had you your sword when you were taken prisoner?" " No ! I had one which had been taken from a Burgundian." "Where was the sword of Fierbois left?" " I offered at Saint Denis a sword and armor, but it was not this sword. I had that at Lagny ; from Lagny to Compiegne I bore the sword of the Burgundian ; it was a good sword for fighting — very good for giving stout buffets and hard clouts. To tell what became of the other sword does not concern this case, and I will not tell it now. My brothers have all my goods — ^my horses, my sword, so far as I 200 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. know, and the rest, which are worth more than twelve thousand crowns." " Had you a standard at Orleans, and what color was it ? " " I had a banner, the field of which was sprinkled with lilies; the world was painted on it with an angel at each side. It was white, of the white cloth called ' bocasln ', and above were the words ' Jesus, Maria ' ; it was fringed with silk." " Which did you care most for, your banner or your sword ? " " Better, forty times better, my banner than my sword." " Who caused you to get this painting done upon your banner ? " "I have told you often enough I have had nothing done but by the command of God. It was I myself who carried this banner, when I attacked the enemy, so that I might kill no one. I never killed any one." " What force did your King give you when he set you to work ? " " He gave me ten or twelve thousand men. First, I went to Orleans, to the fortress of St. Loup, and afterwards to that of the bridge. I was quite certain of raising the siege of Orleans. I had revelation of it. I told it to the King before going there." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 201 " Did you tell your people before going to the assault, that only you would receive the arrows, stones and cross bolts thrown by the machines and cannons ? " " No ! A hundred and even more of my people were wounded. I had said to them: ' Be fearless and you will raise the siege ! ' Then, in the attack on the bridge fortress I was wounded by a cross-bolt in the neck; but I had great comfort from Saint Catherine and was healed in less than a fortnight. I did not interrupt for this either my riding or my work. I knew I should be wounded. I had told the King so, but that, nothwithstanding, I should go on with my work. " This had been revealed to me by the Voices of my two Saints — the blessed Cather- ine and the blessed Margaret. It was I who first planted a ladder against the bridge for- tress, and it was in raising this ladder that I was wounded." "Why did you not accept the treaty with the Captain of Jargeau?" " It was the Lords of my party who answered the English that they should not have the fortnight's delay which they asked, telling them to retire at once, they and their horses. As for me, I told the English at Jar- geau to retire if they wished with their doub- 202 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. lets and their lives, if not they would be taken by assault." "Had you revelation from your Voices whether it was right or not to give this fort- night's delay?" " I do not remember." " At this point," say the records, " the rest of the inquiry hath been postponed until Thursday at the same place." It had been a long and tiresome sitting, for between the questions often there were pauses for consultation (not by the accused with her counsel, for she had none visible) and there was much referring to the record of Joan's previous day's testimony to find something weak or contradictory in her statements. Sor- cery must be somehow fastened on her sword, witchcraft on her banner, and presumption and impiety on herself. Joan was fasting and tired and ought to be frightened by such overpowering and hostile surroundings. Fifty-two Canon Law profici- ents ought to be able to trap a country girl who " did not know A from B." Joan went back to her cell less anxious and tired than they were, however, for God and His Saints went with her. CHAPTER XIV. She tells her English Judges they will lose France forever* On Thursday, March 1, 1431, for the fifth time, Joan of Arc was brought out from her lonely prison to sit before Bishop Cauchon and fifty-eight assistant judges in a large hall in the Earl of Warwick's Castle of Rouen, and defend herself against charges of heresy and witchcraft. True, no special charge at all was so far formally made against her, but these public examinations were held so that out of them, out of her answers to questions of her judges, such evidence would be gleaned as could be put together for specific charges when the proper time and occasion required. As on the four previous examinations, this fifth one began with the same persistent effort to make Joan swear unconditionally to answer all questions put to her, which she, first and last, guided, as we see now, by the Spirit of Light and Truth, firmly refused to do. She always maintained that there were some things she would not tell because she had no leave from her Heavenly Voices to do so. In the exact words of the document still to 203 204 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. be seen as it was recorded that day, nearly five hundred years ago: " Thursday, March 1st, in the same place, the Bishop and fifty-eight assessors present. " In their presence, we summoned and re- quired Jeanne simply and absolutely to take her oath to speak the truth on that which should be asked her. " ' I am ready,' she replied, ' as I have al- ready declared to you, to speak the truth on all that I know touching this Case; but I know many things which do not touch on this Case, and of which there is no need to speak to you. I will speak willingly and in all truth on all which touches this Case.' " We again summoned her and required her ; and she replied: " ' What I know in truth touching this Case, I will tell willingly.' "And in this wise did she swear, her hands on the Holy Gospels. Then she said: " ' On what I know touching the Case, I will speak the truth willingly ; I will tell you as much as I would to the Pope of Rome, if I were before him.' " Now in mentioning the Pope of Rome she unwittingly opened up a new vista for her tor- mentors. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 205 Early in her career, when the fame of her revelations had received the approval of the ecclesiastical Court at Poitiers, the Count de Armagnac had sent a messenger, with a letter, to Joan, asking her to beg the light of the Holy Ghost, and tell the people which of three men claiming to be Pope was really the suc- cessor of Saint Peter, and entitled to the allegiance of the people. For the Church was in a storm at the time, owing to the intrigues of politicians, taking advantage of a vacancy in the See of Saint Peter, and fear and favor were brought to bear on either hand to inter- fere with the College of Cardinals, so that actually three men were publicly announced as Pope; Martin V. in Rome, another in Val- ence, styled Clement VII., and a third calling himself Benedict XIV. Now, when the Count de Armagnac sent his letter to Joan, asking her help in deciding which was the true Pope, she was more inter- ested in driving the English out of France than in any other question. It was not her business to decide the Papal succession. Per- haps she should have said so. But she was not prepared for the question, and was getting ready for battle with the English. She was mounting her horse when the Count's letter was brought, and read to her, and she told her 206 BLESSED JOAN OF. AEC. secretary to answer the Count and say that she could not tell anything about it now, but when she had leisure in Paris or elsewhere she would think about it and answer him with the help of God. Joan rode ofif to her battle and probably thought little of either her letter or the Count's, but they fell into the hands of her enemies and were witnesses against her — prov- ing her presumptuous for one thing, besides a few other equally sad and un-Catholic faults in her character. Joan's simple sincerity shone once more and put the quibblers at a disadvantage. The two letters were read to her and she was asked if they were correct. She readily acknowledged the letters and that in the main they were correct. She made some corrections in the phraseology of her own. "What do you say of Our Lord the Pope? And whom do you believe to be the true Pope?" Fifty-eight theologians and lawyers stood for the question, to one, confessedly ignorant young girl. But her inspired answer, mag- nificent in its utter innocence and simplicity, turned the tables on them. " Whom do you believe to be the true Pope? " they asked again. "Are there two ? " BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 207 That was all she said in reply, and she said it gravely and with a look of surprise. The wise men felt they were answered. " Out of the mouth of babes comes forth wisdom " they remembered, and held their peace for a space. But they recovered their wits. They must not let it go with her. Joan represented France. How bitterly to them she had stood for France during the past two years! They must let nothing go with her! They tried the question in another form : " Had you any doubt about whom the Count should obey?" " I did not know how to inform the Count. * * * But as for myself, I hold and believe that we should obey Our Lord, the Pope, who is in Rome." That was not satisfactory, so they put it in another shape: " Did you say that on the matter of the three Sovereign Pontiffs, you would have counsel ? " " I never wrote or gave command to write in the matter of the three Sovereign Pontiffs." They gave it up and probed her presumption in other matters. They read aloud the letter that Joan first sent to the English before Orleans in which she told them she was sent by God to drive them from France, and restore 208 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. to his crown and throne the true King of France, Charles VII; and threatened them if they did not take themselves off at once they would be hurt, and that she would raise around them so great a disturbance that for a thousand years there should be none so great. She was asked if she recognized the letter and accepted responsibility for it. She said yes, and with some unimportant alterations it was correct. That nobody dictated it to her, but she showed it to some of her party before sending it. Then as if the memory of it and the splendid work that followed it were like a draught of strong fresh air, she stood up very straight and fine, while her glance swept the whole assemblage: " Before seven years are passed the English will lose a greater wager than they have al- ready done at Orleans; they will lose every- thing in France. The English will have in France a greater loss than they have ever had, and that by a great victory which God will send to the French." Frenchmen most of them were, that were in front of her as judges, albeit Frenchmen bought by the English. But the room was full of Englishmen too, and there was great com- motion among them to hear such bold prophecies. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 209 " How do you know this ? " " I should know it well by revelation, which has been made to me, and that this will hap- pen within seven years; and I am sore vexed that it is deferred so long. I know it by reve- lation, as clearly as I know that you are before me at this moment." " When will this happen ? " " I know not the day nor the hour." " In what year will it happen ? " " You will have no more from me about it. Nevertheles, I heartily wish it might be before St. John's Day." " Did you not say that this would happen before Martinmas, in winter?" " I said that before Martinmas many things would be seen, and that the English might perhaps be overthrown." (The English did retire from Compiegne before St. Martin's Day, November 11.) " Through whom did you know that this would happen ? " " Through Saint Catherine and Saint Mar- garet." There was something to think about. They had their own eye witness of the truth of so many of her prophecies that this promise of their complete downfall, made so calmly and earnestly right in their faces, was very dis- 210 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. turbing. They must know accurately more about the Voices that told her such things. They pressed her closely for exact information about how they, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, looked, and what they wore, and how they were adorned. To all of which Joan gave ready answer: that she spoke with them every day; that she knew them to be Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, because they told her they were; that she saw their faces and glorious crowns on their heads; she was not curious about the rest of their dress or their limbs or other members; they spoke well and in good language, and she heard them well. " How do they speak if they have no mem- bers?" " I refer me to God. That is God's affair, not mine. The voice is beautiful, sweet and low; it speaks in the French tongue." "Does not Saint Margaret speak English?" " Why should she speak English, when she is not on the English side? " " On these crowned heads were there rings? — in the ears or elsewhere?" Maybe her rings were the instruments of her sorcery, so they came to them in this round- about way — "Did the Saints wear rings?" " I know nothing about it." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 211 " Have you any rings yourself?" This question reminded her, and turning to Bishop Cauchon she said : " You hare one of mine ; give it back to me. The Burgundians have another of them. I pray you if you have my ring, show it to me." " Who gave you the ring which the Bur- gundians have?" " My father or my mother. I think the names ' Jesus, Maria' are engraved on it. I do not know who had them written there; there is not, I should say, any stone in the ring; it was given to me at Domremy. It was my brother gave me the one you have. I charge you give it to me; if not to me, then to the Church. I never cured anyone with any of my rings." She was pressed to say what promises her Voices made to her, for herself. " They told me that my King would be re- established in his Kingdom, whether his en- emies willed it or no; they told me they would lead me to Paradise; I begged it of them indeed." " Did they make you any other promise? " " Yes, but that is not in the Case. In three months I will tell you the other promise." " Did your Voices tell you that before three months you will be liberated from prison ? " 212 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " That is not in your Case. Nevertheless, I will answer. I do not know when I shall be delivered. But those who wish to send me out of the world may well go before me." They pressed the question. Joan insisted it was not in the Case. They held a counsel, and the opinion of the judges there and then was that it did touch on the Case. She was urged to name the time of her deliverance. But she persisted she had no leave to do so. Besides the day was not named to her. She wished for delay that she might get leave to tell them. " Did your Voices forbid you to tell the truth?" " There are a number of things that do not touch on the Case. I know well that my King will regain the Kingdom of France. I know it as well as I know that you are before me, seated in judgment. I should die if this revela- tion did not comfort me every day." They thought for a while and put heads to- gether and took another tack: " What have you done with your man- drake?" " I never have had one. I have heard there is one near our home but I have never seen it. I have heard it is a dangerous thing to keep. I do not know for what it is used." [The mandrake was considered part of a sorcerer's outfit.] BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. £13 " Where is the mandrake of which you have heard?" " I have heard that it is in the earth, near the tree of which I spoke before; but I do not know the place. Above this mandrake, there was, it is said, a large tree." Then she was asked some trivial questions about St. Michael's appearance, and what he wore and had he a balance. She was grieved at the irreverence but answered the many fool- ish questions about St. Michael with dignity and calmness. " I have great joy in seeing him for then it seems to me I cannot be in mortal sin. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret were pleased, in turn, from time to time, to receive my con- fession. If I am in mortal sin, it is without my knowing it." " When you confessed did you think you were in mortal sin ? " " I do not know that I am in mortal sin, and, if it please God, I will never so be, nor please God, have I ever done or ever will do deeds which charge my soul." Their probing of her secret soul gave little ammunition for their batteries, and now they shift to get her King's secrets from her : " What sign did you give your King that you came from God ? " 214 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. " Go and ask it of him. I will tell you noth- ing of what concerns my King. Thereon I will not speak." They continued to press her with many questions concerning the King, to none of which she vouchsafed answer until they came to: " Has your King a real crown at Rheims ? " " I think my King took with joy the Crown he had at Rheims; but another, much richer, would have been given him later. He took the first to hurry on his work, at the request of the people at Rheims, to avoid too long a charge upon them of the King's soldiers. If he had waited he would have had a crown a thousand times more rich. I have not seen it but I have heard that it is rich and valuable to a degree." Many more questions about this mysterious crown was she pestered with until at last they were worn out even more than she was, though she was fasting and heavily chained, with the long hard day's work. The record for the day ends: " We put an end to the interrogation and postponed the remainder to Saturday next, 8 o'clock in the morning, in the same place, summoning all the Assessors to be present." CHAPTER XV. " Let me be taken before the Pope and I will answer all I ought to answer." Joan had a week's rest from persecution of her questioners while Cauchon and his secret Council of three or four picked men, assembled in his house morning and afternoon, to go over the records of the six days' public exami- nation. Cauchon was angry and dissatisfied. On not one point had they got satisfactory infor- mation from her. Though they had asked her repeatedly and directly, they did not yet know what sign she brought to Charles VII, by which he accepted her as a messenger from God. That was something they wanted to know badly. Then they wanted to know by whose advice or orders she wore the male attire, which she so decidedly refused to change while in prison. They wanted to know if she knew she was to be captured, and, if that was revealed to her, maybe it was revealed also when and how she would end. 215 216 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. They knew how they wanted to end her. They could give her to the flames in twenty- four hours — or less — and they intended her for the flames from the first. But there were many things they wanted to know from her. The crowning of the King of France at Rheims was a great blow to them — greater even than the loss of Orleans ; because, though the English held his capital, Paris, yet the fact that he was regularly crowned at Rheims, as all the Kings of France had been, gave him a standing all over Europe, and even with the Burgundians. The crowning of the young English king, Henry VI, at Paris as King of France, was a flank movement, a po- litical strategy. The crowning of Charles VII had a majestic regularity about it that the whole world must recognize. If they could only vitiate it in some way! If they could show France and England and Rome that Beelzebub, not St. Michael, was the leading spirit of the anti-English reaction in France, and that Joan's mission was not from God but God's enemy — the English interests might be saved even yet. Warwick's revengeful impatience for Joan's death was kept in check by his desire to get from her what he felt she must know (whether BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 217 from God or the Devil), how it all would end. She had told them that it was revealed to her that before seven years the English would lose every hold they had on France. She had predicted this at the same time that she told them she was going to deliver Orleans and crown her king. She did both, and that made the prophecy about England's final defeat more interesting. With a brave countenance she faced the Eng- lish still, and told them they had to go. They were greatly in doubt that all this was God's work. Warwick nagged at Cauchon about it, and Cauchon, in desperation, deter- mined, before they burnt her, to make her tell all she knew. So they picked out points in her testimony, on which they would drive her to tell every- thing. Then for nine days, morning and afternoon, Cauchon, two other reverend doctors from the Anglicized University of Paris, two witnesses, to make show of legality, and a recorder to take everything down in proper form and order, went to Joan's prison, and closing in on their prey — tired and lonely and abandoned — they coaxed, they threatened, they questioned and cross-questioned her; there was not a secret of the girl's life they did not wrench from her. 218 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. But their first and last question every day, asked in a variety of ways, so as to throw her off her guard, was : " What was the sign that you brought your king?" But they never got it from Joan. All the world knew twenty years later that it was the assurance that he was the legitimate son of Charles VI, and the rightful heir to the French throne. He had his doubts, known only to God and himself, and when this child came from far-off Domremy and told him of his doubts, and that he must put them away, for he was the rightful heir and would soon be the crowned king, he knew she was sent from God. Then he had the Archbishop and a clerical council at Poitier's, examine Joan as to her piety and probity and her right to wear a man's dress and lead the army. And the coun- cil at Poitier's pronounced her a messenger from God. Now, the English, nor their allies, knew none of this except by hearsay. They had no wit- nesses but Joan herself. She spoke freely of everything " concerning the trial " ; but the sign she brought the king was his secret, and she would not reveal it though they " cut her head off." Indeed, if they had even guessed at it, what BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 219 a mountain they would have made of it! If they knew that the French king had doubted his own legitimacy, they would have poisoned all Europe, and his subjects especially, against him. They would have rung all the changes on the horror of it, until Charles would be glad to hide his head in shame anywhere out of France. But they did not suspect it, and Joan kept the secret well, in spite of the great stress brought to bear upon her to tell it. They spent the best part of two days ques- tioning her about this sign, of which she, in her wearied, weakened state of body and mind, was beguiled into saying many things, which did not satisfy them or their curiosity, yet gave them pegs on which to hang new accu- sations. " What was the sign you brought your king?" Every examination began thus. " It was something beautiful, honorable and most credible; the best and richest in the world." "Does this sign still last?" " It is well to know it ; it will last a thou- sand years and more. My sign is with the king's treasures." " Is it gold, silver, precious stones, or a crown ? " 220 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. And they crowded close to her, with eager faces, in her narrow, ugly prison. " I will tell you nothing more about it." And then, as if she could not contain herself with thinking about it, she broke out : " No man in the world can devise so rich a thing as this sign ; but the sign that you need is that God may deliver me from your hands; that is the most sure sign He could send you. When I was in the trenches of Melun, it was told me by my Voices — that is to say by St. Catherine and St. Margaret- -' Thou wilt be taken before St. John's Day; and so it must be; do not trouble thyself about it; be re- signed. God will help thee.' " " Before this had not your Voices told you that you would be taken prisoner?" " Yes, many times and nearly every day. And I asked of my Voices, that, when I should be taken I might die soon, without long suffer- ing in prison ; and they said to me : ' Be re- signed to all — thus it must be.' Often I asked to know the hour but they never told me." They wondered if she had any warning be- fore being taken at Compiegne. She told them without any reserve: " That day I did not know at all that I should be taken, and I had no command to go forth; but they always told me it was necessary for BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 221 me to be taken prisoner. If I had known the hour when I should be taken, I would not have gone forth of my own free will; I should al- ways have obeyed their commands in the end, whatever might happen to me." They asked her did she not think her Saints deceived her, seeing she was now in prison and in danger of death. She answered like a theo- logian : " I think, as it has pleased our Lord, that it is for my well-being that I was taken pris- oner." And again at another time in answer to a similar question: " St. Catherine has told me that I shall have help. I do not know if this will be to be de- livered from prison, or if, whilst I am being tried, some disturbance may happen by which I shall be delivered. The help will come to me, one way or another. My Voices have told me I shall be delivered, by a great victory; and they add : ' Be resigned ; have no care for thy martyrdom ; thou shalt come in the end to the Kingdom of Paradise.' They have told me this simply, absolutely and without fail. What is meant by my martrydom is the pain and adversity that I suffer in prison ; I do not know if I shall have still greater sufferings to bear; for that I refer me to God." 222 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Since your Voices told you that you would come in the end to Paradise, have you felt assured of being saved, and of not being damned in Hell?" " I believe firmly what my Voices told me, that I shall be saved; I believe it as firmly as if I were already there." " Do you believe that you cannot yet com- mit mortal sin ? " "I do not know; and in all things I wait on Our Lord." " That is an answer of great weight." " Yes, and one which I hold for a great treasure." Then other things bothered them to know. In what lay the secret of her amazing success with that small, half -demoralized and hitherto cowed band of men called the French army? Was her sword specially blessed to be invinci- ble? Did her banner bear magic spells from demon or angel? Was the charm in her armor, or her soldier's dress, or in the two rude rings she wore when they captured her, and which they promptly took from her. Unlike Samp- son, there was no Delilah to worm the secrets for them. They must get them from herself and they started in once more to do so. " Why did you throw yourself from the top of the tower at Beaurevoir ? " BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 223 " I had heard that the people of Compiegne, all, to the age of seven years, were to be put to the sword; and I would rather have died than live after such a destruction of good peo- ple. That was one of the reasons. The other was, that I knew I was sold to the English; and I had rather die than be in the hands of the English. * » * By the fall I was so in- jured I could not eat nor drink. But I was consoled by St. Catherine, who told me to confess and beg pardon of God; and without fail those at Compiegne would have relief before St. Martin's Day in the winter. Then I began to recover and to eat and was cured." But surely she was a public sinner. They summed up for her several things she did. Her leap from Beaurevoir, her taking the Bishop's horse at Senlis, her attack on Paris on the Blessed Virgin's feast day, her allowing a prisoner of war to be put to death at one time and then asked, was she not in mortal sin? She explained seriatim her justification in each case of those they named and then said: "I do not believe that I am in mortal sin; and if I have been it is for God to know it and for the priest in confession." They asked her if she would submit to the judgment of the Church, her alleged sins 224 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. against the faith, and the nature of her Voices. By " the Church " they meant themselves — the little clique of Anglo-Burgundian clerics in Paris and Eouen, headed by Cauchon, who was a bishop driven from his own see of Beau- vais by his own people because of his English politics; and who hoped to be made by English influence, Archbishop of Rouen. Joan, coun- seled as she was by the spirit of Truth, knew well enough how to distinguish between this body and the Church. They had refused to refer her case to Rome. " Will you refer yourself to the decision of the Church?" " I refer myself to God Who sent me, to Our Lady, and to all the saints in Paradise. And in my opinion it is all one, God and the Church; and one should make no difiBculty about it. Why do you make a diflSculty?" " Will you submit your words and actions to the decision of the Church ? " " My words and deeds are all in God's hands ; in all, I wait upon Him. I assure you I would say or do nothing against the Christian Faith ; in case I have done or said anything which might be on my soul, and which the clergy could say was contrary to the Christian Faith, established by Our Lord, I would not maintain it, and would put it away." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 225 That was sensible and humble and any- thing but a bold contumacious answer, but they made contumacy out of it, in the summing up. " There is a Church Triumphant in which are God and the Saints, the Angels and the souls of the saved. There is another Church, the Church Militant, in which are the Pope, the Vicar of God on earth, the Cardinals, Prelates of the Church, the clergy and all good Chris- tians and Catholics ; this Church, regularly as- sembled, cannot err, being ruled by the Holy Spirit. Will you refer yourself to this Church which we have thus just defined to you?" " I came to the King of France from God, from the Blessed Virgin Mary, from all the Saints of Paradise, and the Church Victorious, and by their command. To this Church I sub- mit all my good deeds, all I have done or will do. As to saying whether I will submit my- self to the Church Militant, I will now answer no more." " Does it not seem to you that you are bound to reply more fully to our Lord the Pope, the Vicar of God?" " Let me be taken before the Pope and I will answer before him all I ought to answer." They did not like that and immediately switched off to her banner, trying to draw from her when or how the charms were put 226 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. upon it that made it victorious. But its whole history did not include any blessings or incan- tations more than any banner ever bore in battle. " Why, then, was it placed alone of all the banners near the altar, in prominence and honor, at the crowning of the King? " And her answer is revered to this day as a classic : " It had shared the pain, it was only right that it should share the honor." The appearances of the saints, their size and clothing and speech, and familiarity with her, were gone over at great length, Joan always reserving such items of information as she deemed unnecessary to tell. " Do St. Catherine and St. Margaret hate the English?" " They love what God loves ; they hate what God hates." "Does God hate the English?" " Of the love or hate God may have for the English, or of what he will do for their souls, I know nothing; but I know quite well that they will be put out of France, except those who shall die here, and that God will send victory to the French against the English." " Was God for the English when they were prospering in France?" BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 227 " I do not know if God hated the French ; but I believe that He wished them to be defeated for their sins, if they were in sin." " You have no need to confess, as you believe by the revelation of your Voices that you will be saved?" " If I were in mortal sin I think St. Cather- ine and St. Margaret would abandon me at once; but one cannot cleanse one's conscience too much." She was asked how she knew the saints and angels she saw and spoke to, were angels and not demons. She told them very simply that she knew and believed them to be what they said they were, and the good results of their counsels con- firmed her. The Voices came to her every day, even now, in her prison and the results of their visits are courage and peace and devotion to the will of God. Her male attire was a sore point. They gave whole days to pumping her as to just why she put it on and just why she would not put it off. To both of which she gave them answer that by God's command she put it on, and only by His command would she put it off. It was in a way the insignia of her mission against the English. Besides while she was in prison she needed it for modesty and safety. She had 228 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. begged to be allowed to hear Mass, but her jailers protested that it would never do to insult God by hearing Mass in so unbecoming a dress. She begged a woman's dress then to hear Mass in, though she protested " this dress does not weigh upon my soul, and is not con- trary to the laws of the Church." Indeed the council of bishops at Poitiers had decided at the very begitining, that as Joan had a man's work to do it was proper she should wear man's dress for greater conveni- ence. Still harassed about it, she said finally: " Give me a woman's dress to go and rejoin my mother; I will take it that I may get out of prison, because when I am outside I will consider as to what I should do. I desire ardently to hear Mass, and in the dress in which I am. It is not in my power to change it." All this is but a small part of the questions and answers that filled nine days' close work between Joan and her judges; but it covers the main points, for much of it was repetition of former questions, and the same questions asked over again in different ways, trying to trip and bewilder Joan and make her contra- dict herself. As it was, they made contradic- tion out of the many things she said about the BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 229 " sign " to her king, though, knowing the truth now, the reader will discover that all the dif- ferent allegories employed by her fit it equally and truly. Joan always distinguished between the Bur- gundians and the English. The former were Frenchmen and must be brought back to their true allegiance. The English, however, must leave France. " Do you mean to say that God and the Saints are for war and bloodshed ? " " God and the Saints are for peace among men. The Burgundians must make peace with their lawful sovereign. For the English there is no peace but to go home." And none of the answers offended against Catholic theology though it was the hope of the questioners that she would sin against Faith, none of them proved or even quibbled about the fairies, or sorcery in any shape. Joan first and last, in plain language, disclaimed any connection between her Voices and the fairy tree of Domremy, and her discernment against superstition and witchery was decided and outspoken. Yet they saddled her with ac- knowledgments of witchcraft. After the nine days' harrowing of the girl the records read : On the following Saturday, March 24, in the 230 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. prison of Jeanne, Maitre Jean Delafontaine, Commissioner for Us, the Bishop, and Brother Jean Lemaitre; assisted by J. Beaupere, N. Midi, P. Maurice, G. Feuillet, Thomas de Cour- celles, Anguerrand de Champrond. In presence of the above-mentioned, We caused to be read to Jeanne the Eegister, which contained the questions made to her and her answers. This reading was made in the presence of the said Jeanne, and in the French language, by G. Manchon, Eegister. The reading of the Eegister being finished, she said: " I believe certainly to have so spoken as it is written in the Eegister, and as has been read ; I do not contradict on any point." And now they were ready for the real trial. Hitherto they were just gathering, from the captive, the material for a formal charge. Next day was Palm Sunday, and early in the morning Bishop Cauchon and his aids of the day before, presented themselves to Joan in her prison, telling her they were so moved by her great desire, often expressed, to hear Mass as to oflfer her that privilege if she would con- sent to put off her male attire and dress as became a woman of her birthplace. They spent some time arguing with her BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 231 about it, to all their urging she sadly but firmly asserted it was not in her power to change her dress yet, much as she wanted to hear Mass and especially on the next Sunday — Easter. " I cannot change my dress," she said, " though indeed this dress or any dress is of little matter." Again the Records read : Of all the preceding. Master Jean d'Estivet, Promoter, hath asked that there be delivered to him a Public Instrument, in the presence of the Lords and Masters, Adam Hillet, Wil- liam Brolbster, and Pierre Orient of the clergy of Rouen, London and Chalons respectively. This was done on this Palm Sunday. The next morning, in Cauchon's house, the Pro- moter presented to the Bishop and his council the petition for the trial, and on Tuesday presented the text of the accusation against Joan. This accusation consisted of seventy articles made up mostly from the preconceived notions of Cauchon, but ostensibly from the testimony of Joan herself. With great for- mality, and in the presence of thirty-eight judges assembled in the great hall of War- wick's Castle, Thomas de Courcelles read the act of accusation to Joan, the seventy articles, one by one, pausing at the end of each for her 232 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. answer or protest or agreement as the case might be. The burden of these seventy articles of ac- cusation against Joan and her replies, will be the subject of our next chapter. CHAPTER XVI. "I would rather die than be In the hands of the English." Foe the sixth time, on March 3d, in the great hall of the Earl of Warwick's Castle of Rouen, Joan of Arc was brought early in the morning to find Bishop Cauchon and forty- one, of the previous fifty-eight Assessors wait- ing for her. A half hour was as usual spent trying to surprise her, and, failing that, to force her into taking an unconditional oath to answer everything. Joan held out and at last was allowed to take oath " with her hands on the Holy Gospels " to answer all questions " touching the trial." She had in one examination mentioned St, Michael's wings, but in another she said she did not know if St. Catherine and St. Mar- garet had limbs — she only looked at their beautiful faces and heads. The judges began by cross-questioning her about the physical appearances of the Saints. " I have told you what I know. I saw St. Michael and those two Saints so well that I know they are Saints of Paradise." 233 234 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. " Did you see anything else of them but the face? " " To tell you all I know I would rather that you made me cut my throat. All that I know touching the trial I will tell you willingly." How often and often she had to use that same phrase " on everything touching the trial " during the few months before her death ! The ignorant young girl having to keep a great bench full of Canon law doctors to the letter of the law ! But she could not. They probed her secrets and made her lay bare her great, brave heart for their cruel curiosity — not their pity nor admiration. Again they return to catch her contradicting herself about the Saints. " Do you think that St. Gabriel and St. Michael have human heads?" " Yes, I saw them with my eyes." " Did God create them from the first in this form and fashion?" What a question to a child from theologians ! But Joan was able for them : " You will have no more on that at present than what I have answered." They gave it up and changed the subject " Do you know by revelation if you will escape?" " That does not touch on your Case. Do BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 235 you wish me to speak against myself? If all concerned you I would tell you all. By my faith, I know neither the day nor the hour that I shall escape." " Have your Voices told you anything in a general way?" " Yes, truly, they have told me that I shall be delivered, but I know neither the day nor the hour. They said to me : ' Be of good cour- age and keep a cheerful countenance ! ' " Then a dozen questions followed about her military dress — when she adopted it and by whose advice. Questions she had answered a dozen times and would be asked again an- other dozen times and more. She told them all they needed to know without satisfying their curiosity as to just how, and when, and by whom, was she told to adopt it. About being asked to take it off she admitted : " Yes, truly, I was asked to take it off ; and I answered that I would not take it ofiE with- out leave from God. The Demoiselle de Lux- embourg and the Lady de Beaurevoir offered to me a woman's dress, or cloth to make one, telling me to wear it. I answered that I had not leave from Our Lord and that it was not time. Messire Jeane de Pressy and others at Arras, offered to get me woman's dress." " Do you think you would have done wrong 236 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. or committed mortal sin by taking a woman's dress?" " I did better to obey and serve my Sovereign Lord, who is God. Had I dared to do it, I would sooner have done it at the request of these ladies than of any other in France, ex- cepting my Queen." " When God revealed to you that you should change your dress, was it by the voice of St. Michael, St. Catherine or St. Margaret?" " You shall have nothing more from me about it at present." And they never got from her any more par- ticulars of how she was told to change her dress than that it was by God's command. They turned now to her banner, hoping to prove the spells and enchantment woven round it. They tried to get it out of her that others had banners just like hers because she told them to copy hers for good luck. " What I told my followers was ' go in boldly against the English ' and I did it myself." " Did you or they put Holy Water on the pennons? " " I know nothing of it." " Have you not carried cloth around the Church, in procession, and then had it made into pennons? " "No! and I have never seen it done." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 237 There was no grist to their mill in that kind of testimony so they turned from her dress and her banners to herself personally. If she claimed honors and homage for herself she was a sinner. " Did you not cause paintings of yourself to be made? " " I saw at Arras a painting in the hands of a Scot; it was like me. I was represented fully armed, presenting a letter to my King, one knee on the ground. I have never seen any other image or painting in my likeness nor had one made." " Do you know that the people of your party had Mass, services, and prayers offered for you?" " I know nothing of it ; if they had it was not by my order; but if they prayed for me, my opinion is they did not do ill." " Did those of your party firmly believe that you were sent from God ? " " I do not know if they believed it, and in this I refer to their own feeling in the matter. But even though they do not believe, yet am I sent from God." " Do you not think they have a good belief, if they believe this?" " If they think that I am sent from God, they will not be deceived." 238 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " In what spirit did the people of your party kiss your hands and feet?" " Many came to see me but they kissed my hands as little as I could help. The poor came to me readily, because I never did them an unkindness, on the contrary I loved to help them." " What honor did the people of Troyes do you on your entry ? " " None at all." " Were you many days at Rheims? " " Five or six, I believe." "Did you not act there as God-mother?" " At Troyes, I did. At Rheims I do not re- member, nor at Chateau-Thierry. I was God- mother twice at St. Denis. Usually I give to the boys the name Charles in honor of my King; and to the girls, Jeanne. At other times such names as pleased the mothers." " Did not the good women of the town touch with their rings one that you wore?" " Many women touched my hands and my rings ; but I know nothing of their feelings nor intentions." " Who of your people caught butterflies in your s tandard ? " "My people never did such a thing; it is your side who have invented it." " When you were going through the country BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 239 did you often receive the sacrament of Pen- ance and the Eucharist in the good towns?" " Yes." " And in man's dress? " " Yes." " Why did you take the horse of the Bishop of Senlis?" " It was bought for 200 saluts (about |1,000). I do not know if he received the money. There was a place fixed at which it was to be paid. I wrote to him he might have his horse back if he wished. As for me, I did not wish it; it was worth nothing for weight-carrying." Notwithstanding this straightforward and evidently fair statement, the horse of the Bishop of Senlis was a large item in the charges against her -as summed up later. Sud- denly the scene was shifted : " It is reported you brought a dead child to life at Lagny. How old was the child you visited at Lagny?" " Three days old. It was brought before an image of Our Lady. The young girls of the village were praying before this image, that God might restore the infant. She had not been baptized. I prayed with them. At last life returned to the child, it yawned three times and was baptized ; soon after it died and 240 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. was buried in consecrated ground. It had been three days dead and was black as my coat." " Did they not say in the village that it was through your prayers it was restored ? " " I did not enquire about it." Well, there was no self-gloriflcation nor pre- sumption proven there. But did she not try to commit suicide and failing in her effort, did she not get angry, curse and blaspheme? " Were you not a long time in the Tower of Beaurevoir ? " " About four months. When I knew the English were coming to take me, I was angry, nevertheless my Voices forbade me to leap. But in the end full of the fear of the English, I did leap after commending myself to God and Our Lady. I was wounded. After I had leaped the Voice of St. Catherine bade me be of good cheer, for Compiegne would have suc- cor. I had prayers for the relief of Compiegne, with my Counsel." " Did you not say that you would rather die than be in the hands of the English?" " I said I would rather give up my soul to God than be in the hands of the English." " Were you not very angry to the extent of blaspheming the name of God ? " " I have never blasphemed. It is not my BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 241 habit to swear. Those who say so have mis- understood." There was no arrangement for another day recorded at the end of that day's examination. Cauchon was angry. The trial thus far gave him no satisfaction. Among the Assessors, new friends of Joan appeared each day. As they listened to the " grueling," or took pari: in it, they were edified with the brave, honest front she presented to them. They found her womanly and soldierly in the glimpses of her public and private life wrung from her by her enemies. By look and word and gesture they let their sympathy with Joan be known, to the great chagrin of Cauchon and his English backers. Clearly this could not go on. The object of the trial was to prove that all her acts of valor, her prophecies, her victories, were inspired and aided by Beelzebub: Her Saints were merely hallucinations of a dis- eased mind or inventions of a depraved one. Her courage was brazen audacity. Her piety was blasphemous hypocrisy. Her power to sway men to her way of thinking was sorcery. Her victories on a score of great occasions were due to the aid of the powers of darkness. He who thought otherwise was of no use in this Trial. So Cauchon who had been noting his col- 242 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. leagues, chose a few of his own color from among the great array of legal talent he had gathered around him; out of the seventy not more than seven, and dismissed the rest with great show of thanks for their pains, etc. He decreed that " if any further inquiries are thought necessary they shall be made hence- forth in private." The official document reads: " Sunday, March 4th, and the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, of the same month, We, the Bishop, assembled in Our dwelling, many grave doctors and masters in law, sacred and civil, who were charged by us to collect all that has been confessed or answered by Jeanne in these Enquiries, and to extract there- from the points on which she answered in an incomplete manner, and which seem to these doctors susceptible of further examination." During the five days these chosen few French accomplices of English animosity to the Maid of Orleans, the great stumbling block to Eng- lish aggression in Europe, met and went over the evidence drawn from Joan so far. They sifted it over and over. They picked out of it and twisted to their own design what suited them, rejecting everything that could not be made to tell against Joan from their point BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 243 of view. Wherever a damaging meaning could be construed into a word or phrase or sen- tence they so construed it. Coolly throwing over the work of the past month, and of the sixty or more learned judges he had gathered to aid him in it, but whose sympathy for Joan angered him, Cauchon planned a new trial. It was to be strictly pri- vate and only a chosen few were to aid him in worrying their prey, and framing some plausi- ble excuse for a public and ignominious death, that would please his English masters, strike terror into the French party, and avenge the insult put upon himself when he was driven from his See of Beauvais. On the tenth of March the secret trial was begun. The Bishop and his accomplices went to Joan's prison. Bishop Cauchon, Master Jean Delafontaine, and two Doctors in The- ology, Nicholas Midi and Gerard Feuillet. As witnesses they brought a lawyer, Jean Fecard, and a priest, Jean Massieu. They had Joan now at close quarters, with no likely obstruction to their own peculiar method of harrowing the poor soul; and for nine more days, with no intermission, morning and afternoon, they closed around her, hungry, weary, and lonely, as she was, and put her through a series of questions and cross-quee- 244 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. tions about things she had a hundred times said she would not tell. They would double back one day on what she said the day before, trying to prove to her that she admitted cer- tain damaging things, and then simulate great horror at her duplicity in denying them. It was a most cruel proceeding all through, but it is interesting to us now because in it the heart and soul of this wonderful woman were wrenched open, as it were, and laid bare to the world and God's providence singularly proved. Some of it shall be the burden of the succeeding chapter. CHAPTER XVII. Joan keeps the King's secret — defends her male attire— and refuses to aclinowledge the authority of her judges. Article I of the seventy that formed the Act of Accusation against Joan, was really a sort of preamble setting forth that according to Divine and Canon and Civil Law, the Bishop and the Inquisitor of the Faith were in duty bound to drive out of the Kingdom of France all heresies and witchcraft and crimes against the Faith; and to punish all offenders against the Faith, lay or cleric, " whatever be their estate, sex, quality, and pre-eminence," and whether they committed the crimes in Bishop Canchon's diocese or any part of France, he was competent to judge them. It was long and wordy and in the stilted, legal phraseology of those times; but above is the substance of it as it comes down to us and after it came the question, which was repeated ceremoniously after every one of the seventy articles as they were read to Joan, one by one, in a loud voice and in the French tongue, by Thomas de Courcelles : 245 246 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " What have jou to say to this article?" " I believe surely that our Lord, the Pope of Rome, the Bishops, and the other clergy, are established to guard the Christian Faith and punish those who are found wanting therein, but as for me, for my doings, I submit myself to the Heavenly Church — that is to say to God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the Saints in Para- dise. I firmly believe I have not wavered in the Christian Faith, nor would I ever." Article II accused Joan, " not only this year, but from her infancy," not only in Bishop Cauchon's diocese, but many other places, of having " composed, contrived and ordained a number of sacrileges and superstitions; she made herself a diviner; she caused herself to be adored and venerated; she invoked demons and evil spirits; consulted them, associated with them, made and had with them compacts, treaties, conventions," etc., and caused others to do the same. Not only that but maintained that all that sorcery, etc., was not a sin, on the contrary, commendable, and ended with the climax that in all this horror, she was caught at " in the limits, Bishop, of your diocese of Beauvais." As if that gave him perfect warrant to do his worst towards her. To all of which Joan entered a denial in toto. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 247 Article III charged her with promulgating doctrines contrary to the Church. Article IV went over her early life and how her godmother taught her intercourse with the fairies and evil spirits according to her own confessions. Joan in answer said : " As to the fairies, I do not know what they are. As to my teach- ing — I learnt to believe, and have been brought up well and duly to do what a good child ought to do." Articles V, VI, VII, still further elaborated about the fairies and the horrible superstitions and were simply denied by Joan. Articles VIII, IX, X, accused her of leaving home and living with bad women, and getting acquainted with soldiers, learning to ride horses and swear, and finally hauling a young man to court to force him to marry her, which he refused to do because she had been con- nected with bad women. Article XI accused her of boasting she would yet have three sons (by the Holy Spirit). The next six articles lugubriously described her vile adoption of the dress of a man and her stubborn refusal to put it off, even to hear Mass, or receive Our Saviour's Body on Easter Sunday. 248 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " If you refuse to let me hear Mass, it is in the power of Our Lord to let me hear Mass without you, when it shall please Him. I make no difference between man's dress and woman's dress for receiving my Saviour." Article XVIII charged Joan with inciting to murder and bloodshed inasmuch as she pre- vented Charles VII making peace with the English. What had she to say? " As to my Lord of Burgundy, I requested him by my ambassadors and my letters that he would make peace between the King and himself; but as to the English, the peace they need is that they may go away to their own country, to England." Thirty of the seventy articles were read to her that day, her reply to each in turn being duly recorded. The replies were mostly de- nials of the sorcery and insubordination to the Church and reference to former answers. Early next day they were all assembled again and the remaining forty articles read to Joan accusing her of, as usual, dealing with demons, setting herself up for divine honors, unwoman- liness in dress, and boldness in her claims to know only what God may know. To all of which her answers were simple and short and to the point; never taking back anything she iever said; always protesting her humble and BLESSED JOAN OF AEC. 249 thorough adhesion to the Church and the Faith; and always stoutly maintaining that she was sent directly by God to the aid of the French King and the French people. Article XXXV read : " Jeanne hath boasted and affirmed that she did know how to dis- cern those whom God loveth and those whom He hateth. What have you to say on this article?" " I know well that God, for their well being, loves my King and the Duke of Orleans better than me. I know this by revelation. Of others I know not." Another article flatly accuses her of acting against the counsel of her Voices, so she was wrong in not obeying as well as in listening to and obeying them. Another read: " Jeanne hath said and published that the Saints, the Angels, and the Archangels speak the French language and not the English lan- guage, because the Saints, the Angels, and the Archangels are not on the side of the English, but of the French; she hath outraged the Saints in glory, in implying to them a mortal hatred against a Catholic realm and a nation devoted, according to the will of the Church, to the veneration of all the Saints." Jeanne, tired and annoyed as she was, smiled at the jealousy implied in the accusa- 250 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. tion. She might have answered that the Saints spoke to her in the only tongue she understood, but she only said : " I rely upon God and upon what I replied before to this." Indeed, to nearly all the accusations and the " What have you to say to this ? " her answer was: " I have replied to that already." And so their badgering efforts to make her contradict herself always failed. " Jeanne is not afraid to lie in court, and to violate her own oath when on the subject of her revelations." " Jeanne hath labored to scandalize the peo- ple, to induce them to believe in her talk, taking to herself the authority of God and His Angels." "Jeanne hath abused the revelations and prophecies that she saith she hath had from God, to procure for herself lucre and temporal profit." " She hath denied making certain predic- tions because they were not realized, though many people of trust report to have heard her make them." " Jeanne doth behave unseemly with men, and refuses the society of women." With phrases like these began each each BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 251 article and the rest of the article contains the statement of facts to prove the accusation. To all of which Jeanne made denial or else simply referred to her former answers to the same charges. Article Seventy lied the boldest of all for it proclaimed : " All and each of these propositions con- tained in these Articles are true, notorious and manifest; the accused hath recognized and acknowledged these things as true, many times and suflSciently, before witnesses proved and worthy of belief, in and out of court." Poor Jeanne's ears were full of these vile accusations against her and her heart sore (only that the Holy Spirit was sustaining her) at the overwhelming power and numbers and persistency of her enemies and their evident hatred of her this Wednesday of Holy Week in the year 1431. She knew now they were thirsting for her death. The Seventy Articles were a jumble of every crime against God and man. But she did not lose her head nor her courage. She gave them no satisfaction. The ofScial record for this day ends thus: " We, the Bishop, did then address to Jeanne a Canonical Admonition. We told her that all the Assessors were persons of consummate 252 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. knowledge, experts in law, human and divine, who desired and intended to proceed against her, as they had already done up to this time, with kindness and piety, and that, far from seeking vengeance or punishment, they desired, on the contrary, only her instruction and re- turn into the way of truth and salvation." And then he offered to appoint counsel to plead her cause for her. " To our exhortations Jeanne replied : ' As to that on which you admonish me for my good and for our Faith, I thank you and all the company also; as to the counsel which you offer me, also I thank you; but I have no in- tention of desisting from the counsel of Our Lord.' " Cauchon was not pleased with the answer, and the more he thought it over the less and less pleased was he. Joan had never for one moment directly or impliedly, acknowledged his right to try her or judge her, and it was not at all clear that she recognized the tribunal over which he sat, as the voice of the Church. That was a point to clear up and insist upon. It must be made plain that it was the Church she was opposing. Accordingly, on Saturday, Easter Eve, he and his little crowd of tor- mentors presented themselves before Joan in her prison again. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 203 " Will you refer yourself to the judgment of the Church on earth for all you have said or done, be it good or bad? Especially will you refer to the Church the cases, crimes, and of- fenses which are imputed to you and every- thing which touches on this trial? * * • if the Church Militant tells you that your reve- lations are illusions, or diabolical things, will you defer to the Church ? " " I will defer to God whose commandment I always do. I know well that that which is contained in my Case has come to me by the command of God. What I afflrm in the Case is, that I have acted by the order of God; it is impossible for me to say otherwise. In case the Church should prescribe the contrary, I should not refer to any one in the world, but to God alone whose commandment I always follow." Cauchon was furious. She must be made to acknowledge his right to condemn her visions as illusions and her subsequent acts as diaboli- cal. " Do you not believe that you are subject to the Church of God which is on earth, that is to say to our Lord the Pope, to the Cardinals, the Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church? " 254 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. "Yes, I believe myself subject to them; but God must be served first." " Have your Voices commanded you not to submit to the Church Militant, which is on earth, nor to its decisions?" " I answer nothing from my own head ; what I answer is by command of my Voices; they do not order me to disobey the Church, but God must be served first." Cauchon retired to cogitate again the simple wisdom of this " Daughter of God " so fear- fully tried. Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Bedford in the name of the boy king were impatient with Cauchon. In other parts of France the French troops were gaining on the English. The Duke of Burgundy was showing less and less interest in his English allies. It was known that Joan was on trial and the fame of her, the fine courage she showed the English even in her chains was abroad. Many of the assessors were weaken- ing in their antagonism to her. Cauchon must hurry and do something tangible. Easter Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, a commit- tee sat on the Seventy Arcticles and boiled them down to twelve without altering the vicious substance nor the bitter spirit of them. Copies of the Twelve Articles were sent to BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. £55 each of the assessors, most of whom had gone back to Paris for Easter. Thej were warned to read them at once and give their judgment on them as early as possible; and not later than April 10. Easter Sunday was on April 1 that year. On the 18th of April the whole band trailed after Cauchon again to the prison of Joan to get her to say something that would look like acknowledgment of their right as " the Church " to judge her. They found her very ill, and she piteously appealed to them that she might have the Sacraments, and if it pleased God she should die, that she would have burial in consecrated ground. Now they thought they had her. They seized on her eagerness for the Sacra- ments and for Christian burial to scare her into accedance to their wishes. They declared if she would not submit to the Church, the Church must abandon her as an infidel. She assured them she believed in the Christian Faith ; in the divine revelation of the Holy Scriptures; that she loved God and would die a Christian, but she could make no other an- swer to their demands than she had made. She must leave the rest to God. Balked again they were and badly. But they had no notion of letting her die thus. The best doctor was 256 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. sent to her, and told to cure her ; that the King of England had bought her too dearly to let her die quietly and privately. She must be publicly burned at the stake. The English Cardinal and the Earl of Warwick together visited her and admonished the doctor to do his best; and he did, and Joan was cured of the fever that had attacked her, so that by the 2d of May she was able to face her judges once more assembled in the great hall of the Castle. The meeting had been in session some time without her, listening to Cauchon's summing up of the whole case, in which he represented how he and his assistant assessors had gently tried to win her from her devilishness, but without avail. But once more they were going to admonish her and for this purpose " an an- cient master in theology, very learned and sin- gularly well versfed in these affairs, Maitre Jean de Chatillon, Archdeacon of Evreux '' was invited "to try his powers of persuasion on her. Joan was then brought before the assembly and told why she was sent for. The Lord Archdeacon was invited to proceed. He did, reading at first from manuscript describing the unity and beauty of the Church and the necessity of abiding by her rules for the gov- ernment of the faithful. And then he be- BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 257 seeched her, with fervent voice and gesture, to listen to the gentle Bishops and Judges, here present, who had her soul's safety on their consciences, etc., etc. But Joan had only the one answer for him as for the others. " I rely on God, who caused me to do all these things. * * * If I saw the fire I should say nothing different." They assailed her again and again, repre- senting her as defying and denying the Church Militant. " I believe that the Church Militant cannot err or fail; but as to my words and deeds, I submit them and refer them all to God, who caused me to do what I have done." Finally, in desperation, they forgot them- selves and asked her: "Will you submit to our Holy Father the Pope?" " Take me to him, I will reply to him." Canonists then and since and now regard this as an appeal to the Pope — informal but valid — and her legal right, if there had been any legality at all in her trial by Cauchon, which there was not. One of the assessors reminded Joan that there was a council of prelates siting at Basle just then, in which prelates of her party were as numerous as the others, and asked would she be willing to let her case go to them. 258 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. Yes, if there were true French prelates in the council, she would submit her case to them, she said. But Cauchon quickly changed the subject, telling the Judge, who offered the suggestion to mind his own business, " in the devil's name." The whole day's strenuous efforts of that big band of theologians failed to get anything different from Joan, and in disgust, and wearied, even more than she was, they ordered her back to prison. That day week they returned to the charge. They assembled this time in the torture chamber of the castle. All the instruments were there in front of her and then they told her they could force her to tell the truth and acknowledge her sorceries. The executioners were standing ready at a word to force her back into ways of truth and salvation. But they did not scare Joan. Her pale face was a shade paler, and her poor bound hands clasped her chains convulsively; but she said bravely, yet quietly and slowly, as if half to herself: " Truly, if you tear me limb from limb, and separate soul from body, I will tell you noth- ing else; and if I were to say anything else, I should always afterwards declare that you made me say it by force. Last Thursday I received comfort from St. Gabriel, and I asked BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 259 counsel of my Voices, if I ought to submit because the clergy were pressing me hard. I asked of my Voices if I should be burned, and they answered me : ' Wait on Our Lord, He will help thee.' " The judges " seeing the manner of her re- plies, and her obdurate mind, and feeling that the agony of torture would not do her any good, postponed the torture until they had further counsel." She was sent back to prison and they took counsel together. Three of them were for putting her on the rack to " break her stubbornness." Eleven were of the opinion it would do no good, seeing she might retract, as she said she would, and fearing also in the state of her health, she might not sur- vive it, and the King of England wanted a public execution. There was, then, a week's rest all around, while the reply from the University of Paris was awaited. It came. The twelve Articles had been duly considered and the decision was that Joan's St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret were really Belial, Satan and Behemoth; Joan a crafty traitor and liar and heretic. But they advised still further gentle admonitions. On May 23d, Pierre Maurice brought her the compliments of the University 260 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. and a lengthy exhortation to save her life and her soul by telling the truth. " If I saw the fire lit, if I were in the flames, I would say no other thing than I have said," was Joan's answer, which as the recorder wrote down he characterized in a marginal note as " Jeanne's superb answer." Pierre Maurice was a Canon of the Cathedral of Rouen and he and the Rouen clergy in the trial were all sorry for Joan, and in no hurry to send her to the stake, but the English Lords were, and gave Cauchon no peace. Then the Judges announced that they could delay sentence and punishment no longer, and declared the Process concluded, and ordered all to assemble again to-morrow " to hear the law which will be laid down by Us, the Judges, competent in this Process, and the sentence which shall be pronounced by Us, to be after- wards carried out and proceeded with accord- ing to law and right." CHAPTER XVIII. Joan is cheated into a show of recanting. The farce of a trial of Joan of Arc by eccle- siastical tools of England in France was over, and Pierre Cauchon had announced that sen- tence would be given in the public square on the morrow. A great many people in Kouen did not sleep that night. To be sentenced to death meant speedy execution. A public burning at the stake was an event of great moment. All night workmen were busy erecting the neces- sary platforms. One for the Bishop and his assistants, and one for the recorders and the accused. These were built quite close to the walls of the Church of St. Ouen. One canopied and carpeted and both with a flight of steps leading up to a height just over men's heads. About ten yards off in front of both, was a little pyramid of stones, a stake 'rising from the midst, and bundles of dry faggots piled around and in a separate stack nearby. 861 262 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. People going into the church to the early Masses on the morning of the 24th of May, 1431, saw these; and as they came out again after Mass, they saw the pot of coals at the foot of the stake, and three executioners stand- ing grim and stiff in waiting. In all the streets leading to the square were streams of people, that soon became a solid mass of dark heads in the square. Already the English soldiers had formed — shoulder to shoulder — a solid wall around the three platforms, a square within the square. Soon the Bishop of Beauvais, Cardinal Beau- fort of England, the Bishop of Norfolk, and half a dozen other eminent ecclesiastics of the English Party, filled one of the platforms — the canopied one. The recorder and their clerks filed into the seats provided for them on the other platform, and then Joan was brought, under a strong escort, and seated in this second platform, in full view of the judges and the multitude. Loyseleur, the English spy, who was also a French priest, was by her side, as if giving counsel and comfort. But she was wearied and worried-looking, according to all the accounts of eye-witnesses. All night she had been tor- mented in her prison by Loyseleur, Beaupre and others, urging her to save herself by sub- BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 263 mitting to the judgment of " the Church," and acknowledging herself wrong in the whole pro- ceedings. She had seemed to listen to them and to half acquiesce to their demands, and now she looked so haggard and listless, Cauchon saw his op- portunity. Of course they had found her guilty of numerous, most heinous crimes against God and England, and could, without five minutes' delay, and with religious and legal formality, make ashes of her. But that did not suit at all. She would die thus a martyr and her stake would be as a pil- lar of fire to guide and nerve the French ar- mies, already aflame with their success against the English pretensions. If Joan could be made to acknowledge her- self and her mission a fraud, then Charles VII might feel uneasy under the crown which she placed on his head, and the French allegiance might be saved to the English crown. She must be made to abjure and acknowl- edge herself a liar and an impostor. And if she was an impostor so was the King of France. The solidity of the French throne rested on her fame. Everything was ready for her death, but Cauchon and his aides were not at all ready. Beaupere had told that he believed she 264 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. was wavering, and so a great preacher, the bosom friend once of the confessor of her king, William Erard, Doctor of Divinity, was ap pointed to preach to her once more and get her to condemn herself publicly. He made a most fervent appeal to her to tell the- truth and submit to the Church. Then he stormed at her. " O France ! " he said, " how hast thou been abused! Thou hast always been the home of Christianity ; but now, Charles, who calls him- self thy king and governor, indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds of a worthless and infamous woman. I tell you that your King is a heretic and schismatic." Joan had been a listless listener so far, but when her King's honor was attacked, she raised her eyes to the speaker's face and said, with spirit, loud enough for the recorder anyhow, who put it down faithfully : " By my faith, sir ! I make bold to say and swear, on pain of death, that he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of the Faith and the Church." At last in a loud and impressive manner the reverend preacher summoned for the last time, the prisoner to submit to the Church. Then he BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 265 paused, and the whole assemblage paused, for Joan's answer: " As to that matter I have answered my judges before. I have told them to report all that I have said and done to our Holy Father, the Pope — to whom and to God, first, I ap- peal." Well might Cauchon and his English backers be furious with her now. So formal and pub- licly expressed an appeal to the Pope, took the case out of their hands, according to all law, civil and ecclesiastical. This was not the sub- mission to the Church they wanted at all. They were all angry, and while they were dumbfoundedly considering what next, she gave them another thrust : " I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my King, nor upon any other. If there be any fault in them, I am responsible and no other." " Will you recant those of your words and deeds that have been pronounced evil by your judges here present?" " I submit them to God and the Pope." The appeal to Rome repeated and so openly! Cauchon ground his teeth for a moment; then he explained to her that the Pope was too far away, and that the present judges had power and authority to deal with her case, and 266 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. either to burn her, or imprison her for life, or pardon her and set her free, just as they chose. But she must act at once and abjure; and Erard showed her a written form he had made out for her signature, which would restore her to the Church, from which she was separated by excommunication, and, " as I be- lieve," said he, " save your life as well as your soul." "What is 'to abjure'?" she asked, and the meaning of the word was explained to her. " I appeal to the Universal Church whether or not I ought to abjure." " You shall abjure instantly or instantly be burned," said Erard. Joan's face blanched at the words, and she looked pitifully from one to the other of the priests and lawyers surrounding her. " God and St. Michael counsel me ! " she cried. Erard had his paper ready and they crowded round her urging her. "Ah! You do not do well to seduce me," she said, as she probably ran over in her mind the delights of freedom. Cauchon rose at this point to read the sen- tence of death, the first words pealing out in frightful solemnity. " In the name of the Lord, Amen. " All the pastors of the Church who have it in their hearts to watch faithfully over their BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 267 flocks, should, when the pernicious Sower of Errors, works by his machinations and deceits, etc., etc. ■" Joan held up her hands appealingly as the Bishop went on; and when silence was ob- tained, she said with a moan : " I submit." And, repeating Loyseleur's prompting: " I will hold all that the Church ordains, all that you, the judges, wish to say and decree — in all I will refer myself to your orders." Cauchon stopped his sentence to hear her and made her repeat, which she did, saying: " Inasmuch as the clergy decide that the apparitions and revelations which I have had are not to be maintained or believed, I will not believe nor maintain them ; in all I refer me to you and to our Holy Mother Church ! " Immediately Massieu was ready with the paper for her to sign. A short paper of half a dozen lines, as many on the platform tes- tified to afterwards. He read it for her, and she repeated the words after him. Then he told her she must sign it. Now everything was confusion. The people who had come to see a burning were dissatis- fied and got into rows with the people who were glad the prisoner was to escape. The English lords were in a tumult and one of 268 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. them accused Cauchon of treachery to Eng- land. But Cauchon and Massieu and Erard and Loyseleur knew what they were doing. Joan was urged to sign quickly and so get into ecclesiastical hands and out of excommu- nication, etc., etc. Dazed and weary she took the pen while a secretary of the King of England held and guided her hand, signing " Jeanne," to a paper that was deftly substituted for the one read to her, and which contained a detailed list of crimes and abominations committed by her. The Substituted Paper. " I confess that I have most grievously sinned, in pretending untruthfully to have revelations and apparitions from God, from, the Angels, from St. Margaret and St. Cather- rine, etc. » * * l swear to my lord Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to our Holy Father the Pope of Rome, Christ's Vicar, and his succes- sors, and to you my Lords, the reverend Father in God my Lord the Bishop of Beauvais, the religious person. Brother Jean Lemaitre, Deputy of my Lord the Inquisitor of the Faith, as my judges, that never, will I return to the aforesaid errors, etc., etc." It was a long document and is still in the BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 269 Archives at Paris, with Joan's signature at- tached. But various eye-witnesses testified later that the document read to Joan to sign was but a matter of five or six lines for which the other was substituted in the confusion. She was not scrutinizing and alert as she had been. She had in reality signed a paper confessing her- self a liar, an impostor, a sorceress, a dealer with devils, a blasphemer of God and His saints. Over her signature was the promise not to wear her soldier dress, and to wear hair like other women, and so on. She did not know it. She seemed too weary to care. Then Cauchon read aloud the words dissolving the excommunication and brought a ray of light at last to her countenance. She smiled and raised her eyes to heaven. The next sen- ence dispelled that light all too quickly: " And that she may repent of her crimes, and repeat them no more, she is sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of af- fliction and the water of anguish." " Perpetual imprisonment ! " That was something Joan never dreamed of. It was never even hinted to her in all the tricks and cruelties put upon her. It came upon her now with an awful suddenness that crushed her. Only for a moment. The buoyancy of youth, 270 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. the quick intuitions that served her so well as a general, maybe the whisper of her Voices, came to her relief. She remembered that she was to be in the hands of ecclesiastics, now that she had submitted to the ecclesiastics who judged her. She snatched at that ray of comfort. There was almost exultation in her voice as she turned to Erard and said : " Now you men of the Church take me to your prison, and leave me no longer in the hands of the English." And she stood as if ready and eager to go. Cold and cruel and deliberate came the voice of Cauchon as her jailers looked to him for orders : " Take her back to the prison whence she came." And for the first time since she was cap- tured, exactly that day one year before, Joan lost her brave, patient attitude towards her enemies. She collapsed and had to be carried rather than led back to the Earl of Warwick's Castle, and to the steady companionship of the three English boors with whom she had not made friends in all her months of imprison- ment. There were anguish and tumult in Joan's heart in that hour. There were anger and BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 271 tumult also in the square of St. Ouen. Hun- dreds were glad the stake was cheated, though they did not understand all that was done on the two platforms that day. Hundreds were angry that she had escaped — they did not know why; and there were small riots every- where. Among the English Lords and their French tools of clergymen, there was tumult, too. Nothing but her death by Are would satisfy the Earl of Warwick and his fellows and they turned on Cauchon with fury. When the King of England formally handed her to the care of Cauchon, it was with the plainly expressed provision that if he did not find her guilty of death, she was to be re- manded back to the King of England's care. As Cauchon failed to send her to the stake he was out of it now, and they owed him nothing, except blame for delaying so long with his trials and preachings. Cauchon's smile of congratulation is down in every record of this day's doings. He even rubbed his hands with glee, we are told, and bade them be patient, he would soon satisfy them. He and Cardinal Beaufort had their plans and they were working beautifully. There was only one more act in the farce, and then the final scene would be in the hands of the English soldiers to their own content. 272 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. The great meeting in the square broke up. The platforms and the stake remained. Cauchon and some of his clique went straight to Joan's prison and brought her a woman's dress, and made her put it on, and told her if she wore any other it would be a sign of re- lapse into her sins and would mean immediate death to her. That was Thursday afternoon. Joan lay like one dazed and despairing on her cot all Friday and Saturday. Early Sunday morning she woke from a sleep of exhaustion and wished to get up. While she had slept her guards had taken her woman's dress and left in its place the forbidden costume. Joan begged for the other, reminding them it meant death for her to resume the male dress. They would not give her the other, nor any explanations as to why they would not, and in sheer desperation, and with a calm resignation to meet the worst and fight no more, Joan put on the only dress, the man's dress, she could get. She was obliged to get up and had to cover herself. As if watching for the moment and knowing it would come, Cauchon burst in upon her and with great show of anger reproached her for relapsing into her old sins. Out he went with the news to his English BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 273 masters and before noon the word was all over Eouen : " Joan has relapsed ! Joan has re- lapsed ! " Cauchon's victory was complete. He could condemn her now as a relapsed heretic without any further delay and the whole world would believe that she got what she deserved. A heretic was bad and deserved death — but so much more so, one who acknowledged her sin and swore repentance, and then immediately went back to her crimes. To be sure Joan answered when questioned about it stubbornly. When she saw how she was tricked she made up her mind that it was no use to fight any longer for her life. So instead of complaining that she had to put on male dress because no other dress was left her, she stoutly maintained that she never meant or understood herself to promise that she would not resume it. She said, too, as the promises made to here were not kept, neither was she bound. It was never her way to blame anybody. " Do you still believe in your Voices ? " asked Cauchon. " Yes, and that they come from God." " Yet you denied them on the scaffold." " If I made retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the fire, and 274 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. was a violation of the truth. ♦ * • I would rather do my penance all at once. Let me die. I cannot endure captivity any longer." Cauchon went from Joan to the Earl of Warwick. " Make yourselves comfortable. It is all over with her." The next day he summoned his serfs and forty-two (out of the original sixty-two) came at his call. It took very little time for them to decide Joan was a relapsed heretic, and con- demned her to be delivered over to the secular arm of the law, that is, to the civil authorities, for punishment. Orders were immediately issued that Joan be conveyed in the morning to the place known as the Old Market, there to be delivered to the civil judge and by him to the executioner. It was Joan of Arc's last night upon earth. For once her persecutors left her alone all night. In spirit bowed she kneels alone, And prays that Power at whose command She rose to free her fettered land, To he her shield in every ill. And give her strength to do His will. Then swift as light her thoughts go back. Along the past's familiar track — The fields where oft in childhood's hours She watched her flock and gathered flowers ; The lowly hamlet chapel, where BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 275 Each day was breathed her fervent prayer; Her cottage homestead's humble walls. To her more dear than palace halls — All meet her view ; she pictures there Her father with his silvery hair Grown brighter, and her mother's brow By sorrow marked, and silent now Her gay young brothers, whose light mirth Of old made glad the household hearth. She knows 'tis sorrow for her fate That makes their hearts so desolate; The warrior's sternness disappears, The woman's cheek is wet with tears. At length by weariness oppressed. The captive closed her eyes in rest, And peaceful slumber deep and calm. That brings a sweet though transient balm For every ill, in pity stole Its downy pinions o'er her soul. She slept — the dreaded funeral pyre. The yelling crowd the blistering fire Forgot, for God perhaps had given To bless her dreams a glimpse of heaven While angels spread their wings to shade The slumbers of the naartyr maid. CHAPTER XIX. The cmel death scene— The illegal trial ends in illegal execution. Early in the morning of May 30, 1431, Joan's jailer admitted to her cell the Domin- ican Friar, Martin Ladvenu and Jean Mas- sieu, a Dean of Rouen, Doctor of Theology, and who as Usher and Citer of Cauchon's Court, was prominent in the trial from the beginning and always had access to Joan's cell. Joan noted the portentous gravity of their looks. " You bring me a message ? " she asked of Friar Ladvenu. " I am come to prepare you for death." "Death! How soon?" " Even now. You are cited to appear in the Old Market Place at 8 o'clock." "What kind of death?" And he hardly had uttered the words "by fire," when she cried out agonizingly: " I knew it ! I knew it ! Oh ! it is too cruel ; too cruel! And must this body which has never been defiled, be consumed to-day — reduced to ashes! Sooner would I that my 276 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 277 head were cut off seven times than suffer the flames. I had the promise of the Church's prison when I submitted, and if I had been In the Church's prison and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this had not befallen me. Oh, I appeal to the Great Judge against this injustice done me!" Just then Cauchon accompanied by Warwick and Pierre Maurice showed himself at the door. " Bishop, it is by you that I die." "Patience, Joan; you die because you have not kept your promise but have returned to your sins," said the Bishop. " Alas ! if you had kept your promise and put me in the Church's prison, this would not come to pass. And for this I summon you to answer before God." The Bishop winced and turned away with Warwick; Pierre Maurice before leaving put his hand as if in compassionate farewell bene- diction on her head. " Master Peter, where shall I be this night? " " Have you not good hope in God ? " " Yes, and by His grace I shall be in Para- dise." Friar Ladvenu heard her confession and sent to Cauchon asking if she might not receive the Holy Communion. 278 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. " Give her whatever she wants now," was Cauchon's answer, and he ordered the Blessed Sacrament conveyed to her as quietly and secretly as possible, without lights or acolytes. Ladvenu would not have it so. He got to- gether the proi)er accessories and formed a procession of priests and acolytes, and the Body of her Saviour was brought to Joan's cell through lines of kneeling, weeping, praying people on the streets adjacent to the Castle, saying aloud the prayers for the dying. The tolling of the bell had been the signal that brought them out for the public execution. Quickly a long white robe was thrown over Joan and the two friars, Isambard and Lad- venu, climbed with her into the felon's cart sent to convey her to the Old Market Place. A regiment of eight hundred English soldiers surrounded the cart. For the English feared she would escape them somehow. As the cart turned a corner of a street lead- ing to the square a great commotion was caused by a howling man darting through the lines of the military and clinging to the cart, crying : " Pardon, pardon, pardon." It was Loyseleur who, for English promise of prefer- ment, had spied on her, and lied to her, and then gave false reports to blacken her char- acter to suit his masters. Joan willingly for- BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 279 gave him, but not so the English soldiers for seeking her pardon. Only for the Earl of War- wick's quick interposition, he would have met his deserts at their hands, right there and then. The platforms of the day before at St. Ouen's had been moved to the Market Square, and on one of these Joan was placed, all alone, to signify her abandonment by the Church. On the other platform sat Cauchon, Warwick, the English Cardinal Winchester, and a number of Divines from the Paris University. The Rouen clergy had largely during the trial be- come sympathisers with Joan and showed it as far as they dared, and so won the distrust of Cauchon and his Englishmen. One of these Paris Doctors of Divinity, Nicholas Midi, was, as soon as the bustle of getting into place quieted down, bidden to preach. He took his text from St. Paul to the Corinthians : " If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it," applying it to Joan, that the corrupt member was to be cut off to save the whole body. It was not long and Joan seemed to listen res- pectfully, her pale countenance cast down over her clasped hands. Then the Bishop in a brief, bitter speech, harangued her before reading the long sen- tence of excommunication, that handed her over to the civil authorities for judgment and 280 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. sentence and execution. But the civil author- ities failed to condemn her, though the Bailly of Rouen, the civil magistrate was there on a raised platform. According to the Friar Lad- venu (who testified under oath years later) : "When she had been finally preached to in the Old Market Place and abandoned to the secular authority, although the secular judges were seated on the platform, in no way was she condemned by any of these judges, but without being condemned she was forced by two ser- geants to come down from the platform, and was taken by the said sergeants to the place where she was to be burned, and by them de- livered into the hands of the executioner.'' The illegal trial was to end in illegal execu- tion. But no one was there to protest. The fear of the English was more than the fear of God, and the English were in a hurry. It was drawing towards noon time. The Dominicans, Isambard and Ladvenu, drew near to Joan and spoke words of courage. Joan kneeled down between them and in loud clear tones prayed for France, for her King. She begged the prayers and forgiveness of all those around her, her enemies, as well as those who wept with her. The cries of the women beyond the cordon of soldiers came to BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 281 her ears and almost unnerved her. She begged for a cross. An English soldier took a fagot from the pile prepared for her burning, broke it in two and fastened it in the shape of a cross. She thankfully took it, kissed it, and placed it in her bosom. Then she remembered that the Church of St. Savior was near and asked one of the Dominicans to get her a Crucifix from there. He did so, bringing the tall proces- sional cross which she embraced with tears running down her cheeks, and uttering most beautiful words of love and gratitude to God in a firm clear voice. Bishop Cauchon came down from his plat- form to speak to her. Once more she addressed to him the words that made him shiver : " It is by you that I die." "Do you still believe in your Saints?" he asked, but she answered him no more, praying instead in a loud voice to St. Michael and St. Catherine and St. Margaret to come to her quick release. All this time the executioners were placing her in position and fastening her body with chains to the stake, in several places, from her shoulders to her knees. Friar Isambard was speaking words of com- fort and courage and holding the Crucifix to 282 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. her lips. The executioner descended and Joan was alone, and looking once around her at the sky and the distant hills and the multitudes near by, she exclaimed : " Oh, Rouen, Eouen, must I die here and must you be my tomb ? " Again Isambard was at her side to encourage her, but her enemies were in a hurry. " What, priest ! wilt thou have us dine here? " Joan herself begged him to step down, but to keep the cross before her eyes till the last. On her head was placed a paper cap bearing the inscription: " Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater," and out of reach of the fire was a large placard bearing her record according to these judges, that she blasphemed God, reviled the Saints, despised the Church, held dealings with Satan and other vile charges. High up and close to her eyes, Isambard held the Crucifix, while the executioner placed the coals among the dry faggots below, and the first whiflf of smoke drew an agonizing cry from her lips. Only one. Doubtless her Saints came to her aid. Begging Isambard to step out of danger but keep the Cross up high, she called from out the flame the sweet name of Jesus and repeated it many times. Most of the people, and a great many of the judges went BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 283 away at the first sign of the smoke rising, not wanting to see what would harrow their souls. Swiftly the flames shot up and enveloped her. Once the executioner forcibly parted them to let those interested see she was really there and had not vanished nor been rescued. With one last loud cry of " Jesus " her suffer- ings were at last ended, and a black page fastened forever in England's history. Joan of Arc was no more on earth. She was with her Saints in Paradise. The executioner, when the fire died down, gathered her ashes and threw them into the Seine to be sure she was really gone. He found her heart unconsumed by the fire and threw it after her ashes into the swift river. A certain Englishman who hated her greatly because of her victories over the English, had sworn to bring a faggot for her stake. When he did so and heard her calling on the name of Jesus, he fainted and had to be dragged away from the fire. He confessed afterward that he felt he had raised his hand against a holy one. He saw, he said, as he looked up at her and heard her last cry, her spirit leaving her body, in the shape of a white dove. That afternoon the executioner came to the 284 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. Convent of the Dominicans to confess; saying he feared he was damned because he had burned a saint. " He never before felt so great dread of his oflSce as in this burning of the Maid, and for many reasons, but mostly for the cruel manner of fastening her to the stake — for the English had caused a high scaffold to be made of plaster, so all might see her, and the execu- tioner could not well reach her to hasten mat- ters, at which he was much vexed, as it was wanton and unnecessary cruelty." Her death did more to bring back the alle- giance of the people of Rouen to their lawful King than did even the victories of the French armies. The multitude went home that day weeping and crying that a Saint had been burned in their midst, and a great wrong put upon their city by it. Even in death she was not out of the reach of her enemies. Knowing that it would be asked of him why if Joan had returned to her sins and died a heretic, she was allowed the Sacraments, Cauchon drew up a document ex- plaining that she had at the last few moments in her cell, made all proper submission and confession. That document was brought out later, but it lacked the signatures of the only honest men BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 285 on the trial and was discounted. This docu- ment is dated June 7, a week after the execu- tion of Joan. With it are letters of guarantee of safety from the King of England to those responsible for the trial and execution, and a letter from the University of Paris to the Pope explaining in their own pro-English way the whole proceedings. CHAPTER XX. The official rehabilitation of Joan's character after her death. While the trial of Joan of Arc was going on at Eouen, her brother Jacques died in Dom- remy. When the news of the burning reached Domremy her father's heart broke and he died. The whole people of France were broken- hearted for the loss of their champion, and for a time all energies seemed paralyzed. Fear and shame fell upon the English and the French both. For though Joan was burned as a heretic and idolatress and sorceress — no one believed she was any of these things; and those who were responsible for her death, Frenchmen or Englishmen, took refuge under the ten-year-old King of England's letters of protection to all who had a hand in her death. Cauchon did not long need the protection of the English King. He died suddenly in the barber's chair not long after. His chief aid, in the whole tragedy, Nicholas Midi, had already died of leprosy. After a spell of gloomy inactivity Joan's BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 289 prayers for her beloved France were felt. The King's base chief-minister, La Tremoille, was deposed, and the brave Eichemont took his place. The Count de Dunois (Bastard of Or- leans), D'Aulon, D'Alencon, La Hire, gathered their forces before Paris and took it from the English; and in 1436 King Charles entered amid the great rejoicing of the people and took solemn possession of his capital as Joan had foretold. Step by step he regained all his territory, until in 1449, all of Normandy had returned to his allegiance and the City of Rouen flew his flag over the towers of Warwick's old castle, where Joan's imprisonment was suf- fered, and in the old Market Square where the horror of her death still lingered. Here it was brought home to Charles vividly that the stigma thrown on the Maid of Orleans was also a stigma on his crown, in a manner. He therefore issued a Declaration empower- ing the Rector of the University of Paris (now purged of most of its English taint), to en- quire into the trial of Joan by " our ancient English enemies, who against reason had cruelly put her to death." Three weeks later a Commission sat in Rouen, on March 4 and 5, 1450. Seven wit- nesses were heard. Four Dominicans of 290 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. Rouen, one of them her confessor; the usher of the court (the Bedford-Cauchon Court that condemned her) Massieu; the notary, Man- chon; and Canon Beaupere, one of the chief examiners. Toutmouille, one of the Dominicans, testi- fied: " Before her death the English proposed to lay siege to Louviers, but deemed it better to wait the result of the trial. Immediately after she was burnt they besieged Louviers, for they thought that while she was alive they could not have success in deeds of war." That was to show the animus of the Trial and Execution. The other Dominicans testi- fied to her true Catholicity and true woman- liness. Manchon's testimony was longest and most valuable and bore most heavily on the French clerical tools of England, though at the time of the Trial he was obliged to act for both French and English, without any protest or show of sympathy with Joan. He told of how the chief oflScer of the Inquisition who had come on from Paris for the Trial, saw that " it proceeded rather from hatred and anger on account of the quarrel with the King of France," and so would not have anything to BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 291 do with it and because of his refusal he had to leave Bouen and even France, taking refuge in Rome. The Vice Inquisitor took his place on the Trial. Massieu deposed among other things that for one word he let drop about the irregularity of the Trial, the Bishop of Beauvais told him " Be very careful or he should be made to drink more than was good for him," meaning he would be thrown into the Seine. Beaupere, a Canon of Rouen, excused his ugly attitude towards Joan during the Trial by the great fear of the English, that shut many mouths who would have said a good word for Joan at the Trial. The Commission sent all the evidence they collected with their unanimous verdict that the Process of Condemnation of the Maid of Or- leans should be declared null and void. Nothing further was heard from the King or Council, however, for two years. The Univer- sity of Paris had enough pro-English influence within its walls to delay definite proceedings in the matter. Two years later, the Cardinal Bishop of Digne, who was Legate in France for Pope Nicholas V, took up the matter in answer to an appeal from Joan's mother, who claimed on civil grounds the restoration of her daughter's character and the family honor, 292 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. which had been hurt by the imputation of heresy cast upon one of its members. In consequence a second Commission of In- quiry was opened at Rouen, in April, 1452, at which twenty-one witnesses were examined. English influence again hindered any action on the mass of evidence which brought out the cruelty and illegality of the Trial in strong colors ; and showed Joan's death to be a public political crime, not chargeable to the Church nor the proper ecclesiastical authorities, in any way. There was nothing definite done for three more years. Then Pope Nicholas V died and the d'Arc family formally petitioned his suc- cessor, Calixtus III, to open the case again, which he did on November 7, 1455, in the Church of Notre Dame in Paris. The Archbishop of Rheims, the Bishop of Paris, the Bishop of Coutances and the chief officer of the Inquisition formed the Court. At the feet of this Court the mother of Joan threw herself, with the Papal Rescript in her hand, and tears running down her cheeks, as she im- plored justice for her murdered daughter's name. The chronicles of the time tell us the Court was moved to tears, and the whole peo- ple joined aloud in one great petition for " justice to Joan of Arc." BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 293 The judges took all the testimony and on December 12, the Trial was opened. The advocate for the mother and brothers of Joan of Arc, brought his formal accusation against the Judge and Promoter of the Trial of the Maid of Orleans at Rouen. The asses- sors were not included in the accusation be- cause they were, he said, led by false deduc- tions into wrong conclusions, and could not be held responsible. Thus the Bishop of Beauvais or his heirs, were the chief defendants. As only the plaintiff's were represented, the Court adjourned to give the defendants an op- portunity to put in their appeal, and citations to do so were nailed on the church doors and other public places. On December 20th — the last day appointed for the appearance of any representative of the accused — only the advocate of the family of Cauchon presented himself. He made declaration that the heirs of the late Bishop Cauchon had no desire to maintain the validity of a Trial with which they had no concern, that Joan had been the victim of the hatred of the English, and that therefore the responsibility fell rather upon the English who had urged on Cauchon and begged finally that the Rehabilitation of Joan might not be 294 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. to their prejudice as they had accepted the amnesty of the King of France when he retook Rouen. The Court decided readily that Cauchon's heirs were not to be held responsible in any way. No other defendants appearing, the Pro- moter formulated his accusation in proper form, pronouncing the Court that tried Joan incompetent, the methods of its procedure un- fair, its sentence illegal and its execution ir- regular. Then to settle the Maid's character and the character of her mission to reconquer the country from its old-time enemies, a special inquiry was ordered to be made at Domremy, Vaucouleurs and elsewhere, into the life and conduct of the Maid. Everybody was questioned who knew the Maid at any time. The Registrars of the illegal trial laid their properly attested books before the Court with attestation of their authenticity, and their dis- claimers of any sympathy with the judges whose records they were obliged to make at the time. On the 7th of June, 1456, at 8 o'clock in the morning, the Pontifical Delegates met in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Rouen and the formal sentence of the restoration of Joan's character was solemnly read by the Archbishop of Rheims. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 295 The document is a noble one, beginning as was usual in those days : " In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen." The providence of the Eternal majesty, the Saviour, Christ, Lord God and man, hath in- stituted for the rule of His Church Militant, the Blessed Peter and his Apostolic successors. He hath made them His principal representa- tives, and charged them, by the light of Truth, which He hath manifested to them, to teach men justice, protecting the good, relieving the oppressed in the whole universe, and, by a reasonable judgment, bringing back into the right road those who have turned therefrom. Invested with this Apostolic Authority, for the matter in question, we, Jean of Eheims, William of Paris, and Richard of Coutances, by the grace of God Archbishops and Bishop, and Jean Brehal, of the Order of St. Dominic, Professor of Sacred Theology, one of the two Inquisitors of the Heretical Evil for the Realm of France, all four judges specially delegated by our most holy Lord the Pope ac- tually reigning: Having seen the Solemn Process brought be- fore us, by virtue of the Apostolic mandate addressed to us, and by us respectfully ac- cepted. 296 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. In the case concerning the honest woman, Widow Isabelle d'Arc, mother, Pierre and Jean d'Arc, brothers german, natural and legal, of the deceased Jeanne d'Arc, of good memory, commonly called the Maid: The said case brought in their name; Against the Sub-Inquisitor of the Heretical Evil for the Diocese of Beauvais, the Promoter of the officiality of the said Diocese of Beau- vais, and also the Reverend Father in Christ and Lord William de Hellende, Bishop of Beauvais, and against all others and each in particular who might be thought to be therein interested, all together respectively Defend- ants, as well conjointly as separately : Having seen, in the first place, the peremp- tory citation and the execution of this cita- tion made against the said Defendants, at the request not only of the said Plaintiffs but of the Promoter of our offlce, appointed by us, sworn and created; to the end that the said Defendants might see the carrying out of the said Rescript, hear the conclusions against them, and answer themselves; and to proceed, in one word, according to right ; Having seen the request of the said Plain- tiffs, their deeds, reasons, and conclusions set down in writing under the form of Articles, putting forward a declaration of nullity, of BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 297 iniquity, and of cozenage against a certain Process in a pretended Trial for the Faith, for- merly done and executed in this city against the above named woman, now deceased, by the late Lord Pierre Cauchon, then Bishop of Beauvais, Jean Lemaitre, then Vice Inquisitor of the said Dioces6 of Beauvais, and Jean d'Es- tivet, Promoter, or having at least acted in this capacity; The said request putting forward and infer- ring further the breaking down and annulling of the Process in question and of all which fol- lowed it, to the justification of the said Deceased, and to all other ends therein enu- merated : Having seen, read, re-read and examined the original books, instruments, means, acts, notes and protocols of the said Process, shown and sent to us, in virtue of the compulsory letters, by the Registrars and others whose signa- tures and writings have been, as a preliminary, acknowledged in our presence: Having studied at length all these docu- ments, not only with the said Registrars and other officials appointed in the said Process, but also with those of the Councillors who were called to the same Process, those, at least, ,whom we have been able to bring before us : Having ourselves collated and compared the 298 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. final text with the Minute itself of the said Process : Having considered also the Preparatory En- quiries — first, those which were conducted by the Most Reverend Father in Christ, the Lord Guillaume, Cardinal Priest, under the title of Saint-Martin-Les-Monets, then Legate of the Holy Apostolic See in the Kingdom of France, assisted by the Inquisitor, after the examina- tion which had been made by the said Cardinal Legate of the books and instruments then presented : Having afterwards considered the Prepara- tory Enquiry conducted at the beginning of the actual Process by us or our Commissaries: Having considered also divers treatises which had come from the Prelates, Doctors, and men of learning, the most celebrated and the most authorized, who, after having studied at length the books and instruments of the said Process, have separated from these books and instruments the doubtful points which they would have to elucidate in their said treatises composed afterwards and brought to light, whether by the order of the Most Rev- erend Father aforesaid or by us : Having considered the Articles and Interro- gations to be submitted to the witnesses, pre- sented to us, in the name of the Plaintiffs and BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 299 of our Promoter, and after many citations ad- mitted in proof by us : Having considered the depositions and at- testations of tlie witnesses heard on the sub- ject of the said Articles and Interrogations on the life of the said Deceased in the place of her birth — on her departure; on her examina- tion before several Prelates, Doctors, and others having knowledge thereof, in presence notably of the Most Reverend Father Reginald, then Archbishop of Rheims and Metropolitan of the said Bishopric of Beauvais ; an examina- tion made at Poitiers, and elsewhere, on several occasions; on the marvelous deliver- ance of the City of Orleans ; on the journey to the City of Rheims and the Coronation of the King; and the divers circumstances of the Trial, the qualifications, the judges, the man- ner of proceeding: In the first place we say and, because justice requires it, we declare that the Articles begin- ning with the words " a woman," which are found inserted in the pretended Process and Instrument of the pretended sentences, lodged against the said Deceased, ought to have been, have been and are, extracted from the Process and the said pretended Confessions of the said Deceased, with corruption, cozenage, calumny, fraud and malice: 300 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. We declare, that on certain points the truth of her Confessions has been passed over in silence; that on other points her confessions have been falsely translated — a double un- faithfulness, by which, had it been prevented, the mind of the Doctors consulted and the judges might have been led to a different opinion : We declare, that in these Articles there have been added without right many aggravating circumstances, which are not in the aforesaid Confessions, and many circumstances both relevant and justifying have been passed over in silence: We declare, that even the form of certain words has been altered, in such manner as to change the substance: For the which, the same Articles, as falsely, calumniously and deceitfully extracted, and as contrary even to the confessions of the Accused, we break, annihilate and annul ; and after they shall have been detached from the Process we ordain, by this present judgment, that they be torn up : In the second place, after having examined with great care the other parts of the same said Process — particularly the two sentences which the Process contained, designated by the Judges as " Lapse " and " Relapse " — BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 301 and after having also for a long time weighed the qualifications of the Judges and of all those under whom and in wliose keeping the said Jeanne was detained : We say, pronounce, decree and declare, the said Processes and Sentences full of cozenage, iniquity, inconsequences, and manifest errors, in fact as well as in law : We say that they have been, are, and shall be— as well as the aforesaid Abjuration, their execution and all that followed — null, non- existent, without value or effect. Nevertheless in so far as is necessary, and as reason doth command us, we break them, annihilate them, annul them, and declare them void of effect : And we declare that the said Jeanne and her relatives. Plaintiffs in the Actual Process, have not on account of the said trial, con- tracted nor incurred any mark or stigma of infamy : We declare them quit and purged of all the consequences of these same Processes: We declare them, in so far as is necessary, entirely purged thereof by this present : We ordain that the execution and solemn publication of our present Sentence stiall take place immediately in this City in two different places, to wit : 302 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. To-day in the Square of St. Ouen, after a General Procession and a public sermon. To-morrow, at the old Market Place, in the same place where the said Jeanne was suffo- cated by a cruel and horrible fire, also with a General Preaching and with the placing of a handsome Cross for the perpetual memory of the Deceased and for her salvation and that of other deceased persons: We declare that we reserve to ourselves [the power] later on to execute, publish, and for the honor of her memory to signify with acclaim, our said sentence in the cities and other well-known places of the Kingdom when- ever we shall find it well so to do, under the reserves, finally, of all the other formalities which may yet remain to be done. [All of which was duly attested as follows :] This present Sentence hath been brought out, read, and promulgated by the Lords Judges, in presence of the Reverend Father in Christ the Lord Bishop of Demetriuide, of Hector de Coquerel, Nicholas du Bois, Alain Olivier, Jean du Bee, Jean de Gouys, Guil- laime Roussel, Laurent Surreau, Canons; of Martin Ladvenu, Jean Roussel, and Thomas de Fanouilleres. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 303 Maitre Simon Chapitault, Promoter; Jean d'Arc and Prevosteau for the other Plaintiffs. Done at Rouen in the Archiepiscopal Palace, in the year of our Lord 1456, the 7th day of the month of June. This was done, the whole population of Rouen and adjacent towns doing all in their power to add to the solemnity of the two days' reversal of the dreadful scenes of the two days, twenty-five years before. The cross they erected in the place of her martyrdom became a place of pilgrimage, and around its foot the youth of France were taught the glories of old France, the shameful century of her fall into English hands, and her splendid and speedy rescue from English domination by the Maid sent by Heaven and aided by St. Michael the Archangel and St. Catherine and St. Margaret. This Cross after a hundred years was re- placed by a fountain around a beautiful statue of Joan of Arc surmounted by a cross. This was again replaced in 1756, by the magnificent fountain that at present marks the spot whence Joan's pure soul ascended to Heaven. We know now what Joan in her last sad days did not know, that her career was under- stood and appreciated by the Church of France, and while a schismatic bishop and a 304 BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. few pnbsidized clerical tools were sending her to a disgraced and disgraceful death, she was being prayed for aflfectionately by bishops and priests all over France. That Joan was recognized by the clergy and people of France as a holy woman as well as a patriot, there is ample evidence. Notably are a Collect, a Secret prayer and a Post Communion used in the Masses of the day. The Collect is as follows: " O Almighty and Eternal God, who through Thy holy and ineffable clemency, and by the wonderful strength of Thy arm, hast raised up a young virgin for the glory and welfare of France, for the expulsion, confusion and ruin of our enemies; and who hast permitted, in the fulfillment of the mission which Thou hast confided to her, that she should fall into the hands of those enemies; grant to our prayers that through the intercession of the ever blessed Virgin Mary, and of all of the Saints, we may behold her escape in safety from their power, that she may continue to execute Thy formal commands." The secret prayer in the Mass reads : " O Father of virtues and Almighty God, may Thy holy benediction descend on this oblation; may it excite Thy miraculous power; and through the intercession of the BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 305 Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints, may it preserve and deliver the Maid now confined in the prison of our enemies and may it enable her to perform effectively the work which Thou hast ordained." The Post Communion reads : " O Almighty God, hearken to the prayers of Thy people, and through the sacraments which we have received and through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints, break the chains of the Maid who, while per- forming the deeds enjoined by Thee has been shut up in the prison of our enemies. Through Thy divine compassion and mercy grant that she may accomplish in safety the mission which Thou hast entrusted to her." No better status could be given any human being than such a personal commemoration in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, even though circumscribed as to place and time. It is a curious coincidence that the great Shakespeare, who did not at all understand or properly characterize Joan of Arc, should put the prophetic words into the mouth of Charles VII.: "Joan, the Maid, shall be France's Saint." CHAPTER XXI. The Beatification of Joan of Arc by Pius X. " Joan of Arc shall be France's Saint. In 1841 the Historical Society of France resolved upon the publication of the Trials of the condemnation and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, which M. Jules Quicherat had transcribed from the original manuscripts preserved in the National Library in Paris. The publication was completed in 1849, in five volumes. Thenceforward writers had authen- tic documents upon which to rely. In 1869, Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Or- leans, with two Cardinals and ten Bishops signed a suplica to Pius IX, praying for the introduction of the Cause of Beatification. The war of 1870 interrupted the proceedings. In 1874 the inquiry was resumed; and, after thirty-six sittings, the result of the labors of the Diocesan Tribunal was presented to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in February, 1876, by Mgr. Dupanloup. Mgr. Coullie, the successor of Mgr. Dupanloup in the see of Orleans, instituted a second inquiry in 1885, and a third one in 1887. On January 27, 306 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 307 1894, Leo XIII signed the "Introduction of the Cause", by which the cause of Joan of Arc was summoned before the Tribunal of the Pope, and she was thus accorded the title of " Venerable." The Holy See then commissioned the Bishop of Orleans to hold three inquiries: (1) " de non-culta"; (2) on the heroic virtues alleged to have been practised by Joan of Arc; and (3) on miracles alleged to have been worked through her intercession. The inquiry on the heroic virtues began in 1896; 122 sittings were held, and twenty wit- nesses were examined. The inquiry was closed on November 22, 1897; and, in a folio volume of about 2,000 pages, the proceedings were presented to the Sacred Congregation of Eites by the Bishop of Orleans. Thencefor- ward the Cause was immediately before the Holy See. An important question was raised at the very beginning of the Cause in 1894, namely, what documents should be admitted as being evidence in the Cause; and it was determined that the Trials of Condemnation and of Re- habilitation being records of sworn testimony on oath were admissible. The next point was whether the volumes of Quicherat were a faithful transcription of the 308 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. original manuscripts. These documents had already been carefully collated by enthusiastic and competent students; and, upon sworn declaration that Quicherat's transcription cor- responded with the original manuscripts, his published volumes of the two trials were ad- mitted as evidence in the Cause. This declaration, however, did not go so far as to determine the value of every statement contained in those Trials; it only declared that the printed volumes corresponded with the manuscripts. Hence the value as evidence of the various portions of the Trials was left as debatable in each case. This is a matter of great importance, and it must be carefully borne in mind in relation to the three chief objections which have been made against the sanctity of Joan of Arc. The Maid is recorded in the trial of con- demnation to have objected to the minutes of the Trial as they were written down at the time by the clerks of the Court. " You write down," she said, " what is against me, but you do not write down what is in my favor." If the Evidence given in the Trial of Reha- bilitation may be thought by some persons to be at times over favorable, there is no doubt that the Trial of Condemnation is to be read BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 309 with caution as being recorded with a bias against the prisoner. Secondly, the inquiry held on June 7, eight days after the death of the Maid, is of alto- gether questionable veracity, and the clerks of the Court refused to append their signatures to it — an act which they would not have dared to have dgne on previous occasions. It is after giving their relative value to the various statements as to Joan of Arc's attemp- ted escape from prison, her alleged recan- tation and her pretended denial of her Voices that we are able to come to the unhesitating conclusion that the accusation that her en- deavor to escape was an attempt to commit suicide is false, that she did not make a re- cantation on the scaffold at St. Ouen, and that she never did otherwise than assert that her Voices were from God. Seven alleged miracles were presented to the Holy See. Four were from the diocese of Orleans, one from that of Nancy, one from the diocese of Evruex, and one from the diocese of Arras. Four were set aside for various reasons. Three were admitted. THE FIRST MIRACLE. Sister Teresa of Saint Augustine, a Bene- dictine Nun of Orleans, was attacked in De- 310 BLESSED JOAiSr OP ARC. cember, 1897, by acute pains in the stomach- These increased continually, accompanied by frequent sickness, till in May, 1900, she had vomitings of blood so exhausting that she appeared to be almost dead. From that time forward she never left her bed. The vomitings became of daily and almost of constant recurrence. She was in the dilemma of choking if she took any food, or of dying of starvation if she did not. The doctor expected her speedy death. Under these conditions a novena to Joan of Arc was begun on July 30, 1900. The vomitings of blood continued almost incessantly. On August 6 they were more frequent than ever. In the night of the 6th to the 7th, there was a crisis of weakness and of syncope. On the 7th the vomitings were renewed. On the evening of August 7, at the height of the crisis. Sister Teresa asks for her habit, saying that she will get up the next day, as she will be cured. The Sisters in attendance say to one another, " Get her habit, it will do for her burial." Meanwhile Sister Teresa fell asleep till two o'clock in the morning. At the sound of the bell for Matins she wanted to rise. She was told to remain quiet till half-past five, and she obeyed. BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. 311 At half-past five, on the morning of August 8, she dressed herself, went down to the chapel, and prayed with her arms extended in the form of a cross, received Holy Communion, dined with the community on the ordinary fare, and suffered no inconvenience whatever. Since that time the perfect and instantane- ous cure has been fully substantiated by sub- sequent experience. THE SECOND MIRACLE. Sister Julie Gauthier, of Favrolles in the diocese of Evruex, had suffered for fifteen years from a cancerous ulcer in the left breast. One day as she was speaking to her class of children about Joan of Arc, the idea occurred to her of making a novena to the Maid, for she had laid aside all hope of cure by natural means. But her sufferings were so great that she feared she would be unable to make a novena of nine days' prayer in succession. She bethought herself then of a plan by which the novena might be promptly con- cluded. She would take eight of the children of her class, she herself would make the ninth, and they would go together and say the prayers for her recovery at one single visit to the church. 312 BLESSED JOAN OF ARC. To gather children around her, and to go with them to pray or to receive the Holy Sacraments, was one of the delights of Joan of Arc. She would do likewise. They went; and then and there Sister Julie, who with diflflculty had been able to go so far as the church, returned from it in full vigor. The wound was closed, and Sister Julie was perfectly and permanently cured. THE THIRD MIRACLE, Marie Sagnier, of Fruges in the diocese of Arras, a nun of the congregation of the Holy Family, had suffered for three months from ulcers and abscesses in both legs. The disease was diagnosed as being one of tuberculous affection of the flesh and bones. She made a novena to Joan of Arc. On the morning of the fifth day the bandages had become loose, the inflammation had dis- appeared, the ulcers and the wounds had healed, the bones had become firm, and Marie Sagnier had regained her former vigor, which has been maintained ever since. On May 8, 1869, was signed the first petition to the Holy See for the " Introduction of the Cause of Beatification." On January 27, 1894, Leo XIII. signed the BLESSED JOAN OP ARC. 313 decree authorizing the " Introduction of the Cause ". On January 27, 1894, Leo XIII signed the decree declaring the heroicity of the virtues prac- tised by Joan of Arc. On December 13, 1908, the decree concerning the miracles was promulgated in the presence of the Holy Father; and on January 24, 1909, Pius X declared that the solemn beatification of Joan of Arc might be proceeded with. On April 18, 1909, in the presence of fifty thousand people, thirty thousand of whom were French men and women, who had jour- neyed to Rome on purpose, Pius X proclaimed, with all the splendid solemnity with which the Church vests herself on suca occasion, that Joan of Arc be hereafter called BLESSED, and exhorted the faithful to seek her inter- cession, who, as she lives in the hearts of the French people, continues also to repeat in heaven the prayer " Great God of nations, Save France ! " 'APPENDIX. As this volume goes to press word comes from Rome that the cause of the canonization of Blessed Joan of Arc is to be reopened by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, who have under consideration two recent miracles at- tributed to the Blessed Joan's intercession. It seems certain that she will be proclaimed shortly, Saint Joan of Arc. Meanwhile the Congregation has approved an OflQce and Mass for her Feast, on the Sunday after Ascension, as a " double major " for all France, and for Orleans, Rheims, and Rouen as a " double of the second class," because of her special con- nection with these cities. Also it is hoped that she will be as " Virgin and Martyr " her final title to sanctity will be established. " St Joan of Arc Virgin and Martyr." God speed the day. It will be a great one for France. 814