I dedicate these life lessons to the daughters of Erin who, because so pure, so brave, so true, must beyond all others find fulfilled in Blessed Joan of Arc, their ideal of patriotism, Catholicism, and heroism.
We’ll set thy statue in some holy place
And have thee reverenced like a blessed saint.
Employ thee, then, sweet virgin, for our good!’
King Henry VI, Act iii, Scene 3
Preface
The arrangements of Divine Providence are inexhaustible. We live in an age when the energies of women are of necessity taking new directions. The old home life is impossible or insufficient for many of them, and they have to go forth abroad to live often solitary lives, to work out a career unaided, and to enter upon pursuits which until recent times were confined to the stronger sex.
It is useless to ignore this tendency. It arises from causes, which cannot be controlled. But while this transformation and development of womanly activity goes on, it is all-important that the sacred characteristics which give to womanhood its power and its charm should not be overshadowed by the stress and toil which accompany the new conditions in which it is now placed.
And in this moment the Church of God sets up before our gaze the beautiful figure of Blessed Joan the Maid, called by God from home and given a work in which many brave men had failed. She did her work, she went in and out in camp and city, but she still remained the gentle, simple maiden.
May her story, told so eloquently by the writer of the following pages, teach our Catholic maidens, and women of every degree, how to do whatever God puts into their hands to do, and yet keep untouched and bright all the glory of their womanhood.
+ Archbishop Francis of Westminster, 12 May 1910
Chief Events in the Life of Blessed Joan of Arc
1412 – Birth at Domremy
1424 – First visitation
1428 – First interview with Robert de Baudricourt
1429 – Meets the Dauphin at Chinon
1429 – Raises the siege of Orleans
1429 – Coronation of Charles VII at Reims
1429 – Attack on Paris
1430 – Capture at Compiegne
1430 – Sold to the English, and brought to Rouen
1431 – Trial at Rouen
1431 – Condemnation and death
1456 – Rehabilitation by Pope Calixtus III
1909 – Beatification by Pope Pius X
Foreword
This little volume of “Life Lessons from Joan of Arc” is offered to the world only because many of my friends, in different spheres and stations of life, have requested me to publish it.
Some have gone out of their way to assure me that what I have said in my various lectures and talks about the blessed heroine has in no small degree helped and encouraged them to fight the good fight, and to keep the faith. In other words, the inspiring example of blessed Joan of Arc has brought home to them the serious and sacred character of their own mission in life.
For instance, the Maid has forced her sex to learn from the study of her own life’s story that, till vital spirituality penetrates and permeates a woman’s everyday life, she cannot even pretend to exercise, in society and upon the world at large, that refining and spiritualizing influence which is her special charm as well as her principal prerogative and primal duty.
If to-day woman is losing her hold upon man for his good, if she is striving after the impossible, and seeking to shift her centre of social gravity in the hope of realizing herself in a sphere where God does not want her, and will not have her, the reason is not far to seek. Woman is neglecting her high call, her true mission, because she ignores those Christian ideals which should inspire and actuate the life of her sex, no matter in what state of being she may happen to be placed.
“The imperious need of to-day is ideals,” says a recent writer in the Times. “At no time,” he continues, “has there ever been a greater need for ethical and spiritual ideals than now, when on all sides the material things of life are apt to assume undue prominence.”
If this be so — and who that is observant will care to deny it? — then, no better service can be done to the man and woman of to-day than to lift up before them both the portrait of a womanly woman who, when the bugle call of duty summoned her, could become as a manly man, who always and everywhere, in peace and war, at Court, in camp, and at home, lived up to her high Christian ideals, and nowhere forgot her true womanly character and her divine mission.
Blessed Joan the Maid has something to say both to man and woman, to boy and girl, irrespective of their religion, their nationality, or their political outlook.
Hang this portrait of her on the line in that gallery of living pictures which follows you whithersoever you go, and in which you move and have your being, and the Maid will, in her own good time, deliver her message to you, and you will find life becoming dominated by the high principles and lofty ideals inseparable from the Christian character.
Chapter 1 – Her Childhood and Calls to Arms
“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.” – 1st Corinthians 1:27-29
In the province of Lorraine, in France, lying south of Vaucouleurs, and beside the Meuse, there is a little village called Domremy. Here, in a cottage standing between the river and the village church, wasborn, on the vigil of the Epiphany, in the year 1412, Jacques and Isabelle d’Arc’s second daughter.
She was their fifth child, and they christened her Jeanne. The pretty, healthy Jeannette grew up with her brothers and sister full of frolic and fun, and full of sweet and simple piety. Dressed in russet serge and linen coif, the nimble-footed, laughter-loving child was conspicuously clever in whatever part she took, whether helping her father in the garden, or her mother in the house, or joining with the children in their games on the green.
When Jeannette was about seven, having learned the “Our Father,” the “Hail Mary,” and the “Creed ” at her mother’s knee, she made her first Confession, and then her thoughts were occupied in preparation for the day of her first Communion. She has told us that from her mother she learned ” all that a child ought to do to be good.” She was a typical little French peasant girl—bright and lively, loving to sing at her work when alone, even more than to dance with the other children round the fairy trees. ” I loved to play under ‘Beau Mai,’ and hang garlands on the boughs with the other girls.”
But what delighted her still more than playing games was weaving garlands of flowers wherewith to festoon Our Lady’s statue in the village church, or buying with her scant earnings candles to burn before the shrine of our Lady of Bermont, whither she went with her sister out of devotion on Saturdays. Her love of the blessed Virgin was childlike and clinging.
For a child so young Jeanne was exceptionally pious, and it was a healthy, vitalizing piety. Not often do we hear of a girl breaking away in the midst of a game or a dance to conceal herself, as our heroine used to do, in the wood, there to fall upon her knees, and pour forth the treasures of her soul to her divine Lord and His blessed Mother. We are told, too, that such was her love of holy Mass that she failed not to hear it daily, while her practice of going to confession was, in the judgment of her confessor, somewhat too frequent. To holy Communion she went, weekly. Other tokens of her strong faith and simple piety were her love of the sick and of the poor, and of helpless children. A deep sense of duty was another conspicuous characteristic trait of Jeanne. Perrin le Drapsier, the bell-ringer of the church, when careless about his duty, she would often coax and bribe, with handfuls of wool from her sheep, to ring his bell more punctually. We are also reminded that on more than one occasion the dear Jeannette made her bed on the bare boards, in order to give up her own cosy one to some benighted wayfarer who craved a lodging of her father. These little traits reveal to us a child early saturated with true religion.
Till her thirteenth year Jeannette’s life ran evenly enough; it was pure as the stream that danced beside her home, bright as the bloom that decked her garden plot, sweet as the herbs hidden in the wood, and as full of the promise of summer as the love-songs of the birds that flew from tree to tree.
According to her playmates, Jeannette’s only fault was that she was much too pious, “quite a little saint” and they teased her, as children are wont to do, when one of their number outruns the others in strivings after piety.
So our little maiden grew up strong and lithe and well-built, as finely proportioned physically as she was morally- “a perfect Christian and a true Catholic,” as the village curb bore witness, ” without her like in the whole country around.”
During the course of her thirteenth year it was revealed to Jeanne that God had deputed her to a strangely wonderful and difficult mission. ” I was thirteen,” she tells us, ” when I heard a voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time I heard this voice I was very much frightened. It was midday in the summer in my father’s garden.”
What happened was this: Jeanne was one day turning up the soil in the old-fashioned garden dropping down to the river when she found herself enveloped in a great light. When presently she ventured to raise her eyes and look around she recognized the radiant form of Saint Michael, who was not alone, but was accompanied by a very host of angels. Naturally enough the child was at first not only startled but terribly frightened, but before the Archangel had left her she felt transported into an ecstasy of joy. Saint Michael told her to be a good child and to say her prayers, and then he passed out of sight, assuring her that both Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret would come to give her guidance and help.
Perhaps nothing in Joan of Arc’s eventful life shows forth more clearly her brave as well as her strong character than the three years’ silence she maintained about her ” Voices ” and ” visions.” Neither to her mother, nor even to her confessor, did this wondrous, self-possessed child drop even a hint about the tokens, which marked her off as a special favorite of Heaven. She kept her own counsel and no one who watched her at her daily round of home duties—running her father’s errands, gathering firewood, sweeping the floor, baking bread, or sewing beside her mother—could have guessed that the bright-eyed, dark-haired little Jeanne was on terms of loving intimacy with chosen ones in her Master’s heavenly court. Yet it was so, for her visitors now kept on coming to her two and three times a week. Gradually they unfolded to her the character of the mission with which she was charged. She was to ” go into France,” to ” raise the siege of Orleans,” and to ” crown the Dauphin.” More definitely did the Voices speak. ” Go,” they said, ” to Robert de Baudricourt, Captain of Vaucouleurs; he will furnish you with an escort to accompany you.”
We may well imagine how completely taken aback this unschooled country girl must have been to learn that she was chosen to undertake a task for which she felt totally unfitted, and altogether unworthy. It was in vain she pleaded with tears in her eyes that, being only a poor girl, knowing nothing of riding or fighting, she might be spared and released from a work for which she thought herself to be wholly unequal, both by nature and training.
To those, of course, who do not believe in the miraculous, La Pucelle’s Voices and visions have a subjective origin only. Maintaining that miracles do not happen, they refuse to accept the objective reality of the Maid’s visions. Against their contentions there is Jeanne’s own evidence of their reality. Does she not tell us again and again that she not only heard the voices of her heavenly visitors, saw their faces, and scanned their persons, but that she clung to their knees, embraced their feet, and that when they had gone, weeping she would kiss the very ground on which they had stood?
We must take our little heroine’s story as she herself tells it, or else reject it altogether. To a Catholic, of course, it presents no difficulty at all. It hangs together most wonderfully and beautifully well, and, if I may say so, reverently ; her life story once begun runs on as one might have expected it.
Her ” Voices ” having insisted on her taking up the task set her, La Pucelle de Dieu was not long in discovering some good excuse for going to Vaucouleurs, lying north of Domremy. The famous interview with Robert de Baudricourt seems to have taken place on Ascension Day, 1428. It was arranged by her uncle Durand, who was told by the governor to take the girl back and box her ears. Poor Jeanne returned home a little disappointed, but not at all discouraged by the reception she met with from the rude, rough captain. Had she known the world a little better, the greeting she received would have been exactly what she might have anticipated. God’s good time had not yet arrived, and meanwhile the Maid must be trained in the school of sanctity, suffering. Before reaping in joy, she must sow in tears.
Jeanne passed a very trying summer and autumn with the knowledge of a pressing mission ever before her, while the means of accomplishing it were not ready to hand. However, after much thought and more prayers, without announcing her intention to any one, early in January she once more turned her back upon Domremy, and pushed forward to Vaucouleurs, determined not to leave Baudricourt this time till he had promised to furnish her with an escort to the Dauphin at Chinon. She is at pains to remind us that nothing could have prevailed upon her to leave her home by stealth as she did except a call from God; but that once being certain God was actually calling her away, she would not have stayed—no, not if she had had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers. How thoroughly this unschooled peasant child understood what is meant by being a creature, one belonging inalienably to God, and depending entirely on His Will!
It is not necessary to enter into the details of La Pucelle’s second interview with the Governor of Vaucouleurs. Suffice it to say that on this occasion God Himself helped her to win a way into the brusque soldier’s heart. This time Robert not only believed in Jeanne, but in her divine-sent mission. Accordingly, instead of ordering the child back to Domremy with the suggestion of a sound whipping, he sends her forward to the Castle of Chinon with a special escort.
Look at her and be sure you realize what is actually taking place. It is a cold, drizzling evening in February, and in a little group of seven horsemen, gathered beside the courtyard of Baudricourt’s house, observe well our little peasant girl, clad in riding-dress like a page-boy. See her leaping for the first time in her life into a saddle, about to undertake a ride of four hundred miles over wild and marshy land, and through a country infested with robbers, and held by Anglo-Burgundians, the enemies of the Dauphin, to whom she is the bearer of a message from God Himself. What an exquisite picture does this present us in its simple setting on the cobble-stones, and under the rude archway of Baudricourt’s house, where he himself is seen to give the Maid a send-off with the word: ” Go then, away, away, come what come may! ”
If you ask me what explanation I have to offer of the Maid’s extraordinary conquest of Robert de Baudricourt, my answer is: “The weak things of this world hash God chosen to confound the strong.” Leave God out of the case, and there is nothing to be said about it to satisfy any sane mind.
It was March the 6th when the Maid with her escort, after eleven days’ ride, drew rein under the archway leading into the courtyard of the fortress-castle standing high over Chinon. There it was that the Dauphin held court, and there he was wasting his time in frivolous festivities.
Baudricourt had dispatched letters informing the Dauphin of the Maid’s intended visit, but endless difficulties delayed the interview. La Tremoille, in whose hands the king was but a tool, relished, no more than did the Archbishop of Reims, the idea that aid should be forthcoming to France through the ministry of an untutored village girl. But the foolish things of this world God chooses to confound the wise; and so on March the 8th the summons came to the Maid to meet the Dauphin that evening. Charles, partly out of inordinate love of mischief, but still more to test the reality of her mission, concealed himself among his retainers in the great banqueting-hall, which was a mosaic of color when the Maid entered.
Can you not picture to yourselves that lithe, supple, well-built girl in doublet, hose, gaiters, and spurred boots, crossing the gorgeous threshold where for the first time she beholds before her a scene such as might well have turned the head of any ordinary girl? But when God takes possession of the heart, and He is known and entertained there in intimacy, scenes of earthly pomp and circumstance sink into mere insignificance. After all, they are but poor, paltry, and monotonous shows. Upon La Pucelle de Dieu, whose bosom friends were members of no earthly court, the sight in the banquet-hall with all its bravery made little or no impression.
Accoutered in riding gear as she was, with sword swinging at her side, Jeanne passed calmly and firmly over the rush-strewn floor of that great hall, intent upon one thing only: to find out where, amid that gorgeous assembly, stood the king. Her eye was not long in discovering him in the background, and forthwith approaching him, kneeling, she kissed his hand, and offered her homage with the salutation: ” God give you life, noble Dauphin.” Then, after vain protests from retainers that she was mistaken as to his identity, the Maid, still persisting in her opinion, continued: “I am Jeanne the Maid, and I am sent by God to regain for you the kingdom which is yours; and to make war on those English. Why do you not believe me?
I tell you the truth when I say that God has pity on you, and on your people.” Then to confirm her words the Maid drew his Majesty aside and whispered into his ear a secret which had been revealed to her by her Voices. The Dauphin, on this sign, readily believed the supernatural character of Jeanne’s mission; but before he could or would act upon it he summoned a commission of high ecclesiastics and learned professors at Poitiers, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Reims, whose business it was to examine into the nature of her claims, and to determine whether her mission was from a good or an evil spirit. So searching was the examination to which she was subjected, and so detailed the questions, that it seemed to the Maid it would never come to an end. ” There need not be so many words,” she said to her inquisitors: ” this is not a time for talking, but for doing.” She herself summed up for them the story of her mission, saying, ” I am a poor village girl ; a voice came to me and told me that God had taken pity on France, and that I was to go to her aid. Then I wept, but the Voices told me to fear nothing, but to go to Vaucouleurs, where I should find a captain who would send me to the king. And I went to him there, and behold now I am here.”
There is nothing in the story of the Maid’s eventful life so naive, so clever, so witty, and withal so humorous as her answers to the imposing bench of examiners before whom she was summoned and cross-questioned during three consecutive weeks.
We ask for some sign of the truth of what you have told us,” said the Archbishop.
“I did not come to Poitiers,” was her answer, “to give signs. Let me go to Orleans, and there you will know that my mission is from God.”
“But,” exclaimed the Bench, ” if your mission is from God, and He has sent you, why do you want soldiers? ”
“I want soldiers,” was her ready reply, to do the fighting, while God Himself will give the victory.”
“What language,” asked a provincial ecclesiastic, “do your Voices speak?”
The Maid, fixing her eyes upon the Dominican, who had a Limousin accent, retorted, ” A better language far than yours, sir.”
It is impossible to read through the history of her examination at Poitiers, or later on at Rouen, without realizing again and again the truth of Saint Paul’s saying, ” The foolish things of this world hash God chosen to confound the wise.”
Well might the commission, after their very diligent inquiry into the character of her life, recommend Charles to entrust her with the troops for which she asked, for they said, ” We have found in the Maid nothing but what is good.” Is it not remarkable that the Rouen commission should have so completely ignored the verdict passed at Poitiers, and should have so easily forgotten that La Pucelle had there said, “If I dress as a man they will forget I am only a girl,” and that the Archbishop of Reims had himself not only approved her resolution but had added, ” It is far more becoming, since these things have to be done in the company of men, that they should be done in male attire “?
After reading what the Archbishop and the Maid herself have to say about the adoption of male attire, it does seem truly pitiable and contemptible that for a moment in her trial at Rouen the verdict should have turned upon nothing more important than the use of male clothes, which, under the direction of her Voices and with the sanction of authority, the Maid had worn for three years.
It was April the 27th, 1429, when Joan of Arc, at the head of the Dauphin’s troops, left Chinon for the relief of Orleans. Look at her, the village maiden riding forth at the head of an army. She is clad in a complete suit of armor, helmet, gorges, steel corselet, with sword at side —a tall, graceful figure, all white in burnished steel, and sitting a charger raven black. Well might the mere sight of her inspire her own troops with a sense of coming victory, and in her foes a feeling of impending defeat.
When in spirit I follow the well-organized body of troops under the command of Xaintrailles, La Hire, and others, and headed by a maiden, who till lately was seen plying the spinning-wheel or following the plough, or else playing on the village green beside the Meuse, I feel my soul recalling once more the word of the Apostle, ” The weak things of this world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong.”
In the story of Joan of Arc’s childhood and call to arms there is for each one of us a lesson of vital importance to learn. The lesson I refer to is perhaps brought home to us more clearly and definitely by her than by any other heroine in all history. Neither Joseph in Egypt, nor David before Goliath, nor Daniel in the den of lions, is so wonderful as the peasant girl of Domremy. Yes, she is more wonderful than an Agnes or a Cecilia, an Aloysius or a Stanislaus. In fact, there is no one in story, profane or sacred, who is her counterpart. She is unique, and she teaches us, as no one else does or can, what is the meaning of being a creature. Her life tells us that it means being in the hands of God, as clay in the hands of the potter. It further tells us that in His hands prince, or peer, or peasant may be formed and fashioned into whatever He pleases. But the clay must yield to the pressure of His hand, and must in no sense resist being moulded into the vessel for which it is His good pleasure to destine it.
In other words, we too must try to realize, as did the peasant girl of Domremy, that each one of us has a mission in this world to fulfil, for God’s glory and the weal of souls. It may not be our vocation to fight and conquer some external foe, but certainly each one of us is called to fight and conquer self. The voice, which we must follow may not be that of an archangel or of a saint, but surely not less but more wonderful, not less but more truthful, is the voice actually warning, exhorting, commanding, or reprimanding us; for is it not the voice of God Himself, which speaks in language distinct and definite to the conscience of each? Our very first duty as intelligent beings, after realizing that we belong inalienably and absolutely to God, is to find out what it is that He does reveal to us through our conscience. It will tell us unerringly why God has sent us here; in other words, what our mission is, and what the special work is to which He has deigned to set us. No matter what that task may be, God Himself will infallibly guide us to the accomplishment of it, provided, like the Maid, we resolve not only to do, but to be the thing He wants. What God wants of each one is what each can give—an upright, brave, disinterested, generous, chivalrous character. Given character, God can do with us as He wills, make of us what He chooses.
Like the Maid, then, let us set about building up a character prepared to undertake any work for God. Do not shrink from the effort, do not say, ” I am unfitted for it, unequal to it,” but look up at the village maiden, and find in her fulfilled the word: ” The weak things of this world hash God chosen to confound the strong.” If we, like her, will but follow the voice of conscience, we too shall fulfil the call of God.
“With cheerful steps the paths of duty run. God nothing does, nor suffers to be done,
But thou thyself wouldst do it, couldst thou see The end of all events as well as He.”
God’s Will is the end of life, not alone for Joan of Arc, but also for you and for me. When He calls we, may not tarry, we must go: nay, not if we had even a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers calling us back, could we ever stay. For God’s Will is a sovereign command.
The Maid’s Message To The Duke Of Bedford
Say to the Princes who have sent you forth: O King of England, and ye haughty Dukes, Bedford and Gloster, Regents of his realm, Give reckoning unto the King of Heaven For all the guiltless blood that ye have shed, Give back to us the keys of all the towns Which ye have wrung from us’ gainst right divine. The Maiden comes, sent forth by Heaven’s King, To proffer to you peace or deadly war.
Choose which you will; but this I tell you plain, Fair France hath never been decreed to you By Mary’s Son Divine ; for Charles the Seventh, My liege and Dauphin, chosen of the Lord, Shall enter Paris as its rightful King, Accompanied by all his noble peers.
Now go, Sir Herald, get you quickly gone, For ere you may attain the hostile camp, And bring your tidings, is the Maiden there, To plant on Orleans her conquering flag.
- Schiller,
Maid of Orleans
Chapter 2 – Her Relief of Orleans and Crowning of the King
“She kept him safe from his enemies, and she defended him from seducers. . . . She forsook not the just when he was sold, but delivered him from sinners; she went down with him into the pit ; and in bands she left him not, till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom, and power against those that oppressed him.” — Wisdom 10:12-14
After two days in the saddle, and two nights lying in her armor on the ground, the warrior maid saw rising, on the northern side of the river, the fortress city of Orleans in the last extremity of distress. There it stood girt about by an army that had raised up around it a line of fortifications, mounted for the first time in the history of warfare with cannon. As the Maid gazed upon the heart-rending spectacle, recalling to mind all the anguish which such a siege as that had meant to her countrymen, girl-like she wept. The fate of her country depended, as she so fully realized, on Orleans. It was April, and the city had now held out valiantly against Bedford for more than six months. Unless she could raise the siege at once, and so relieve the worn-out garrison, she felt sure that the worst would happen. The city must be starved into capitulating. The Battle of Herrings was fresh in her memory, nor could she free her mind of the tantalizing boast of Suffolk and his troops, that two hundred Englishmen were ready to fight and defeat eight hundred of her own countrymen.
So dispirited had the besieged under Dunois become that terms of surrender had been actually drawn up and offered to the Burgundians. But Bedford, sportsmanlike, intervened, declaring it was not likely that after he had beaten the covers others were to have the birds. If the city was to be handed over at all, it must be given up to none but the English. Such was his contention, but to those conditions the royalist city could not agree, and so the English, exasperated, tightened their forces about her, Gladsdale swearing that before many days he would take the place and put to the sword every man, woman, and child in it.
This, then, was the position of affairs when Joan of Arc appeared upon the scene, and met Dunois, who had come forth from the citadel to greet her What next happened was the unexpected. Dunois made a feint attack on Saint Loup with the object of drawing attention from the Maid, who meanwhile with two hundred men passed within a stone’s throw of the fortifications, unhurt, nay unattacked, into the city. How this ever came about passes comprehension. Were the besiegers awed by the apparition of a girl leading an army, or were they paralyzed by the sight of the white Maid on her black charger? I do not pretend to know. This only is certain, that whereas Joan might so easily have been kept out of Orleans by the English, she actually crossed their lines and entered the city with a handful of men triumphant.
All this took place on April the 29th.From henceforth Joan of Arc was to be known as the Maid of Orleans. We may well imagine with what mad enthusiasm the beleaguered city received her, their savior-guest. It was with no little difficulty that she managed to make her way on horseback through the throng pressing her on every side, to the great cathedral, where she rendered public thanks to the real Savior of the city, Christ Jesus.
The next few days were spent in examining the fortifications, testing the lines of defense, reconnoitering the ground, in grasping the general state of affairs, and in inspecting the troops. With so keen a soldier’s eye did the Maid survey and realize the situation, that skilled tacticians like -Dunois, La Hire, D’Alencon and others marveled not a little to find themselves wholly outwitted by a village girl, who did not know how to write her own name. With such courage and confidence, too, did her presence inspire the rank and file of the army that, to borrow Dunois’ words, “five hundred Frenchmen were now ready to face the whole strength of the English.”
On May the 4th she astonished not only her friends, but her foes also. On that Wednesday it was that she vaulted suddenly into the saddle, rode round the ramparts, halting at the Burgundy gate ; and then for three hours in the very thick of the fight, holding her banner aloft, fearlessly she sat her charger beside Fort Saint Loup, cheering her archers and directing their attack till the killed and wounded lying thick around her told of the heavy loss that had been inflicted on the English, while for the first time, after months of sullen silence, wild shouts within the city proclaimed a glorious victory for the French.
This was Jeanne’s first experience of the havoc and the horrors of real warfare. The sickening sights she saw pained her to the heart, and as she dismounted to thank the God of battles for the victory, she forgot not to offer a fervent prayer for the souls of the faithful warriors, who had been sent to their account. She herself had drawn no weapon, had shed no blood, nay, rather she had done what lay in her power to check bloodshed and slaughter. With her own hands she tended the wounded, taking care that they received surgical aid, and the rites of the Church. Nor did she ever forget to urge, with all the vehemence of her soul, her combatants to prepare for battle as for death, by prayer and the sacraments. On these spiritual weapons of warfare she relied for victory far more than on the crossbow and the sword. She forgot nothing, she neglected nothing.
We may well understand how irresistible, under a warrior-maid like Jeanne, became the fighting stuff of France. Her presence, while vitalizing her own troops, paralyzed the forces against her.
Call to mind what happened on the 7th of May. Her prediction that the siege would be raised was verified. On that day, for ten hours, a most determined attack was made on the Tourelles, the great bastille occupying the center of the famous bridge, which, with its twenty-two arches, spanned the Loire. Jeanne herself led the troops, supported by Dunois and De Gaucourt. Again and again were the French driven back, and again and again did she urge them to press forward and capture the place. Seeing her opportunity she herself, quickly seizing hold of a scaling-ladder, was about to plant it against the fortress wall to scale it, when a bowman’s shaft pierced her right shoulder. For a moment she staggered and then fell helpless to the ground. At once the rumor began to spread that the Maid was bleeding to death. The French, losing sight of their heroine, began at once to lose heart, while the English, on the contrary, believing ” the Demon Witch ” was really slain, were beside themselves with the hope of immediate victory. Before an hour had passed, to the unutterable surprise of all, having with her own hand withdrawn from her bleeding shoulder the barbed arrow, the Maid reappeared, crying out to her followers, ” When my banner touches the wall the place is yours! ” No sooner had she spoken than she bounded forward through the thick of the fight, and lifting her sacred flag high upon the walls once more she cried aloud, “The victory is ours ! ” It was so, the iron gates were stormed and were being battered in; the keep was filling with men, and presently the great tower itself began to totter, and finally fell into the river, crushing and drowning the forces under Talbot which were not already slain or taken prisoners. Escape was impossible; the fort with the great bridge was in flames.
With the capture and fall of the Tourelles, Orleans was delivered. France was saved. The Maid had actually accomplished the first part of the work that had been set her. She, a village maiden, who had had no experience of war or even of soldiering, achieved what had baffled and baulked the best trained generals in the Dauphin’s army. She did, as a young untutored girl, what even to-day is an insoluble puzzle to the military tactician. Jeanne d’Arc fought and gained under the walls of Orleans what has been described as one of the decisive battles of the world. What a commentary on the words: ” The weak things of this world hash God chosen that He may confound the strong!”
When the morning of the 8th of May dawned, some watchmen on the towers of the city noticed there was no stir in the English camp. It was empty. The siege of Orleans was raised. The Maid’s prophecy was verified.
The troops under Suffolk and Talbot, feeling it was waste of time fighting against men led by a mad girl who was an arch-fiend, could not be induced to stay and face the enemy. Before the sun was up the English had struck camp; they were gone, they were out of sight.
Dunois, elated by success, was for pursuing them, but the Maid, on the contrary, said: ” If they attack us, let us fight valiantly; but if they fly, let them. Seek not their blood. This is Sunday, a day of rest; let us spend it thanking God for the victory.”
It was so spent. An altar was erected on the ground where the English camp had stood. There in the midst of the triumphant army and the exultant citizens, beside themselves with joyous gratitude for that most wondrous and glorious termination to a seven months’ siege, the Great Sacrifice was offered, while the God of Armies was praised and thanked for the victory.
Mass being ended, and the Te Deum sung, the Maid, instead of taking a well-earned rest, pushed forward without delay, going by Blois to Tours, whither the Dauphin had come from Chinon to meet her. That interview went to show that the listless Charles was yet capable of being occasionally stirred by fine emotions. He met the Maid bareheaded, and expressed his wish that her family should henceforth quarter the lilies of France on their arms. But the king’s nature seemed incapable of sustained endeavor, so that the Maid found it a far easier task to storm an English camp than to rouse the sluggard scion of France and his court. Every argument she could think of Jeanne used in order to try and spur on the Dauphin, and to prevail upon him to accompany her to Reims, there to be anointed king with the holy chrism of Clovis. “Noble Dauphin,” she pleaded piteously, ” hold not such long and so many councils “; but her eloquence was wasted on the indolent princeling, a mere tool in the hands of men like the intriguing La Tremoille, and satisfied with “fullness of bread and idleness.”
Taking refuge in the contemptible excuse that he could not think of proceeding to Reims till the valley of the Loire was cleared of the enemy, and the towns en route had offered him their loyal submission, the spiritless and craven prince declined the Maid’s offer. He would not go. Jeanne, realizing there was nothing for it but to take matters into her own hands, gathered about her a strong force, and made up her mind to compel the Dauphin to a sense of his duty; she would shame him into going forward to Reims for his coronation. Questioned as to the possibility of her success in clearing a way for her indolent sovereign through the valley so completely in the hands of the enemy, she replied: ” What ! Do you think that if I were not sure of victory I should be here? I tell you I would far rather be in my father’s meadows tending sheep than facing these ceaseless hardships and perils.”
Her march from Tours to Reims was not merely successful, but it may be described as a continued progress from triumph to triumph, from victory to victory. At Jargeau, Suffolk, that fine, strong, and stubborn English soldier, was forced to yield and surrender himself prisoner. Other towns fell in quick succession, and at Patay the unflinching Talbot was also captured. In on single week, between the storming of Jargeau on June the 11th and the victory of Patsy on the 18th of the same month, an open road was cleared for the Dauphin to Reims. The campaign had all been planned, and it was all carried out by the unlettered village girl, whom Guy de Laval has described for us as ” a thing divine to look on as well as to hear.” Who will deny that her mission was from God?
Referring to this peasant girl’s generalship, “everybody,” remarked D’Alencon, “was amazed to see that in all things appertaining to warfare the Maid acted with as much knowledge and capacity as if she had been twenty or thirty years trained in the art of war, while in all other things she was as simple as any other young girl.” D’Armagnac went even further in his eulogy of the soldier-maiden. “In the manner of the conduct and the ordering of troops,” he writes, “and in that of placing them in battle array, and of animating them, Jeanne showed as much capacity as the most accomplished captain in the art of war.”
Let the incredulous offer what explanation they will of the Maid’s marvelous, matchless skill as tactician and leader of men, there is, after all, one explanation, and one only, of her military genius, and it is this—that having called her to fight for the deliverance of her fatherland, God Himself dowered her with the genius and the skill and the endurance to accomplish it. She was, let us ever bear in mind, ” La Pucelle de Dieu.” Nor did she ever forget to Whom she belonged, or to Whom she owed her victories. She was a “witness faithful and true.”
Unable to discover any further excuse for holding back, Charles felt compelled to start for Reims. He set out on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 1429. This march, too, was a triumphal progress. Troyes capitulated without a blow being struck, and Reims opened its gates to welcome its legitimate king, though it had been set down as uncompromisingly in favor of the English. On the 16th of July Charles the Dauphin made his royal entry into the city brave with bunting and garlands, the bells pealing, the trumpets braying, the cannons roaring, while the massed throngs, beside themselves with joy, shout their acclamations of welcome, delight, and homage.
The following day was Sunday, July the 17th. It was the day for which the Maid had lived, had fought, had bled, had prayed. The supreme moment of her life’s mission seemed to her to have at last arrived. Look up, and in imagination picture before your eyes, if you can, Jeanne d’Arc, La Vierge Lorraine, La Gloire de la France!
See her in the garb of battle, with sacred emblem in hand, standing beside the king, who, kneeling in the sanctuary of the cathedral, is surrounded by bishops and abbots, clergy and serving-men, while the pride and glory of his kingdom, the peers of the realm, fill the nave of the great basilica with a blaze of gold and a tangle of color lit up by the gleam of a thousand tapers.
Presently the stirring, martial music is hushed, and in the impressive silence that follows, while the crown of France is being held above his brow, is heard the king’s voice. He is pledging himself to be true to his coronation oath, and to defend his subjects from all wrong. The oath being taken, and the king being crowned, Jeanne the Maid, weeping with emotion, sinks to her knees before him, offers him her homage, and then pleads fervently, now that1her work is done, now that the siege of Orleans has been raised and her liege lord has been crowned, she may be released from further service and may have leave to return home again to pass the rest of her days working for her thrifty parents, whose simple surroundings were far more to her liking than the entourage of a court.
What a beautiful revelation of a beautiful character is here! Had the Maid been what her enemies have so vainly attempted to make out she was—an adventuress, a sorceress, one to be “burned as a heretic or drowned as a witch” should we find her on her knees beseeching the king to be allowed to return as a poor girl to her monotonous housework and spinning-wheel in an obscure village? No, on the contrary, we should find her improving the occasion, crowning her day of success by seeking the hand of some prince of royal blood, with whom to dispute place and, fame in mansions majestic surrounded by society.
But the white Maid’s ambitions could be satisfied by no great temporal honors, by no mere royal gifts or human privilege. Hers was a high, vaulting ambition, leaping beyond the very gates of heaven itself; the prize for which she yearned was in the power of no earthly potentate to bestow. With streaming eyes and outstretched arms her pleadings were for a smile of approval from her King Eternal, from Jesus Christ, in Whose Name and by Whose help she had done the thing she had. Having done it, she asked no thanks, she sought no reward, she became altogether what, off duty, she always was—Jeanne, the peasant child of Domremy; Jeanne, the little client of Mary, God’s Mother.
Wonderful was her call to arms, wonderful her gaining over of Baudricourt, wonderful her audience with the Dauphin, more wonderful her relief of Orleans, yet more wonderful still her crowing of the king; but what is most wonderfully wonderful, as well as most beautifully beautiful at all, is the ever-present revelation to us throughout all these achievements of her childlike character – sweet and fair and pure as the bloom of spring. Never on God’s earth has history pointed out to us sublime, so enchanting, so fascinating a personality.
Do not seek to discover the secret of that fascination as you follow her from victory to victory, seated warrior-like upon her sable charger; do not hope to understand it as you accompany her in spirit through the various stages of her matchless campaign. Nor will you came to know anything of the depths of that brave and beautiful soul till you begin to catch a glimpse of her, if I may so express it, off her guard, when alone in communion with God. When not leading her troops, when off duty, when free, whither fly Jeanne’s thoughts? Before whom does her soul expand? To whom has she recourse? At whose feet is she pleading with tears upon her cheeks? At the feet of her Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that during the whole of that extraordinary campaign, from the gates of Orleans to the sanctuary at Reims, when Joan of Arc was not in the saddle she was on her knees. Prayer was the breath of her life, the soul of her soul. She lived in the presence of God, she basked in the sunshine of His smile, she borrowed all her strength, as she received all her genius, from Him. As a child apart from Him and His Will, it is impossible to form a picture of her.
The secret of her success, as of her sanctity, was her childlike clinging to God. In Him she lived, she moved, she had her being. It was this intimate union with God that helped her to despise all flattery of courtiers and to forget even her own self; or if ever she was thrown across the thought of self at all, she thought of herself only as Jeanne, ” the handmaiden of the Lord.”
In her thirteenth year, as you may recollect, she vowed her virginity to God. In simple words she has told us so. During all her subsequent life so watchful was she over this ” pearl beyond all price ” that, except on occasions when women were with her, she would not even unbuckle her armor while sleeping at night. We are told by members of her entourage that the mere sight of her inspired a sense of purity, that in her presence all that was unclean seemed to shrink into the background, not daring to reveal itself in presence of the Maid.
Another token of the Maid’s sanctity, as well as of her love of purity, was her self-denying life. Take the matter of meat and drink. While her chivalrous friends, feeling nothing was good enough for La Pucelle, would offer her viands rare and costly, she would smile, saying such dainties were not for her. She preferred a simpler diet. A few slices of bread dipped in a cup of wine and water were often support enough for her during a long fighting day. Never could she be persuaded to indulge her appetite.
These may seem small matters, but they point like the weather-vane, they tell a truth. To live in the presence of God, to keep constant guard over virtue, to breathe the atmosphere of prayer, never to indulge the appetites, and always to exercise self-control, are unmistakable marks of ” a life hid with Christ in God.” They mean complete self-conquest; Jeanne’s conquest of self was her most glorious victory of all.
We must not lay aside the picture of the fighting Maid upon which we have been so keenly looking, without drawing from it a lesson, which it ought to teach every one of us. To me, it seems that what we have to learn from her life at Domremy, before Orleans, and in Reims is this, not to be elated by success or depressed by failure. This may seem an easy lesson enough. But is it so? Are not many of us as much spoiled by success as others among us are hardened by failure? What the Maid teaches us is this, bravely and whole-heartedly and perseveringly to pursue our interior life, our close union ” hid with Christ in God ” under all circumstances, no matter whether those circumstances be flattering and seemingly helpful, or trying and apparently hurtful.
Let us realize with the Maid that we come from God, that we belong to God, and that we have each one of us a mission to carry out for God, and then all will be well with us, whether life shall run over rough ways or over smooth. Like the Maid, be persuaded that although clouds may lower and storms – threaten—nay, thunders roar — yet if only you belong to God, and like her lie placidly in the hollow of His hand, He will close it over you in protection, shielding you in the day of distress even as He guarded the heroine Jeanne. On the other hand, when prosperity like the sun shines over you in noonday glory, and the buoyancy of victory so bears you up, that your feet seem scarcely to touch the earth across which they bound with delight, remember then, as did this warrior-maiden, that without God you are just nothing at all ; that were He for a moment to relax His hold over you, you would at once relapse into that nothing out of which His love drew you; and formed and fashioned you. With Him what is there we may not achieve? Apart from Him what can we avail? “Without Me you can do nothing.”
“Servants must not forget their place.” We are God’s servants, no matter what our position on the social ladder. Let us keep our place as servants of God. We cannot improve on that. It was because Jeanne d’Arc never lost sight of her true position before God, because always and everywhere she was His handmaiden, and a ready instrument in His hands for the doing of His Holy Will, that He was able to make use of her for great ends, sending her unspoiled by success or failure on her great mission to the Dauphin of France. Who will deny that the mission with which she was charged was carried out fully and adequately?
May we not apply the words of my text to her and what she did for the Dauphin of France? “She kept him safe from his enemies, and she defended him from seducers. . . . She forsook not the just when he was sold, but delivered him from sinners: she went down with him into the pit, and in bands she left him not, till she brought him the scepter of the kingdom, and power against those that oppressed him.” Under God, Joan of Arc routed her foes, saved her fatherland, crowned her king, she herself remaining to the last what she was at the beginning, a maiden pure as she was brave, simple as she was great—La Vierge Lorraine, La Pucelle de Dieu.
The Crowning of the King
The morn was fair
When Reims re-echoed to the busy hum
Of multitudes, for high solemnity
Assembled. To the holy fabric moves
The long procession, through the streets bestrewn
With flowers and laurel boughs. The courtier throng
Were there, and they in Orleans, who endured The siege right bravely; Gaucourt, and
La Hire, The gallant Xaintrailles, Boussac, and Chabannes, La Fayette, name that freedom still shall love, Alencon, and the bravest of the brave,
The Bastard Orleans, now in hope elate,
Soon to release from hard captivity
His dear beloved brother; gallant men,
And worthy of eternal memory,
For they, in the most perilous times of France, Despaired not of their country.
By the King The delegated damsel passed along,
Clad in her battered arms. She bore on high Her hallowed banner to the sacred pile,
And fixed it on the altar, whilst her hand
Poured on the monarch’s head the mystic oil,
Wafted of yore by milk-white dove from Heaven
(So legend says) to Clovis when he stood
At Reims for baptism. . . .
The missioned Maid
Then placed on Charles’s brow the crown of France,
And back retiring, gazed upon the King
One moment, quickly scanning all the past,
Till in a tumult of wild wonderment
She wept aloud. The assembled multitude
In awful stillness witnessed ; then at once,
As with a tempest-rushing noise of winds
Lifted their mingled clamors.
- from Southey’s
Joan of Arc
Chapter 3 – Her Capture and Iniquitous Condemnation
“In Thy sight are all they that afflict me: my heart hash expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none; and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.” — Psalm 118:21-22
Judged by man’s day, Joan of Arc’s climax of success was reached when she stood in the sanctuary of the cathedral at Reims, and saw the crown of France settle on the brow of Charles, the Dauphin. That was the supreme moment, for which she had lived, had fought, and had bled. In the coronation service she witnessed the fulfillment of her ambition, the realization of her mission. Her work seemed done.
With what heartfelt gratitude would she now have lifted her voice and sung her Nunc dimittis! With what an elastic step and light heart would she have made her way back to the village, where, in exchange for the din- of battle and the glare of palaces, she would have found that peace and seclusion, and that rest of home-life for which her whole soul yearned!
To the blessed Maid there was something distasteful, nay, altogether discordant, in the environment of court life, and a fit of home-sickness seems at this juncture to have seized her, so that she could not refrain from exclaiming to her friends: ” Would that it were pleasing to God, my Creator, that I might now leave this scene and this life, and return to my father and mother, whom for the rest of my life I should like to serve, tending their sheep and doing their bidding. How enchanted would they be to have me home again.”
As a matter of fact, Jeanne’s mission was by no means as yet fulfilled. She was not to return to the village that had given her birth, and where she still hoped one day to lay her bones. No, God had other designs upon His chosen child. Her dear father, indeed, she was to send home, the bearer to his village of a deed of exemption from taxation granted at her request by the king, but she herself was never again to pace beside the meandering stream babbling past her cottage door, was never again to watch the sun setting in glory behind the village green, nor was she ever again to hear the vesper chimes from the tower of that church, which to her was the dearest spot on all God’s earth.
The closing scene of Jeanne’s life was to be not Domremy on the Meuse, but Rouen on the Seine.
Truth to tell, this child of grace, this follower of Christ, was to triumph like her Master on the Cross. Her note of victory was to be struck not in the sanctuary of Reims, but on the Calvary of Rouen; the Maid was to die not amid a blaze of glory, but through flames of fire.
And now let us follow her career subsequent to the coronation, and let us note how at every stage of it the holy child is made to drink deeper and deeper of the chalice of bitterness, the nectar of sainted souls. “Can you drink the chalice?” Seems to be the one question that is being put her at every turn of her journey from the city of the coronation and the triumph, to the city of her condemnation and death. Never was there such a terribly striking contrast in any other famous life. As you read of disappointment followed by disaster, and disaster by what, but for the grace of God, must have been despair, the heart almost bleeds in its agonizing sympathy with the blameless girl whose one crime it was, that she had dared to do the work set her by God, and would not acknowledge that to be wrong which she knew to be right. Hers was a character altogether uncompromising when principle was in question.
Let us look a little more closely into those tiresome, tedious months made up of jealousies, intrigues, and iniquitous schemes to baffle and defeat her designs for the complete conquest of France. No doubt a succession of easily won victories marked the progress of the Dauphin’s troops from Reims to Saint Denis. Yes, all that is true, but true no less is it that much most precious time was wasted in receiving keys, and acknowledging acts of homage and submission, with other tokens of loyalty from the cities through which the king passed on his way North.
Meanwhile Bedford was losing no time. He was stealing a march upon Charles. Literally he was racing the king to Paris, and on August the 10th he dispatched a letter to his Majesty denying his right to the throne of France, and declaring that the Maid who had rendered such miraculous service to her country was nothing better than “an abandoned and ill-famed woman in man’s clothes, and leading a corrupt life.” The miserable, pleasure-loving king, instead of being stung to action by the plentiful insults of the English duke, and resolving to prove his royal rights at the point of the sword, seems to have been half ashamed of the glorious victories achieved under her flag by the Maid. He made Bedford no answer; he did nothing. Seeing the plight to which they were being brought by the king’s unmanly irresolution, Jeanne determined to take matters into her own hands, and to push forward in conjunction with D’Alencon to the French capital. “Fair duke,” she said, as she turned to him for aid, “cause your captains and men to arm, for I wish to see Paris nearer than yet I have seen it.” Well did the Maid appreciate the situation? She fully understood Bedford’s influence in Paris, and how the university and the leading aristocracy of the city would most likely stand by him, and unite to overthrow the Dauphin’s forces. But she relied on the people whose sympathies were French, and who, unless they became cowed by the menaces of the English regent, would, she felt sure, be glad to welcome their only legitimate sovereign. Anyhow, Jeanne was persuaded that, no matter what might be the risk, Paris must be stormed, and a desperate attempt made to capture it. Till Paris was taken France was not won. Once the capital was wrested from the enemy the country would be sure to rally to Charles’s oriflamme. The Duke D’Alencon, recognizing the force of her arguments, lent all his influence to strengthen an expedition with Paris for its objective.
No time was lost, and on August the 26th Saint Denis was entered, and then D’Alencon tried to prevail on the king to come and join them in an attack upon the capital. “Sire, only show yourself before the walls of Paris,” wrote the duke, “and we will compel the gates of Paris to open to you.” Alas! The dilatory monarch, like so many others before and since his day, had no other answer to make to the urgent appeal but the fatal one, “I will come to-morrow.” That morrow of action never dawned. The king never went farther than Saint Denis, and it was not till September the 7th that he was dragged that far.
So enthusiastic was the Maid with the news of the king’s arrival that she did not hesitate to proclaim that whole forces of troops would unite in making a resolute attack on Paris; she would escort her king before nightfall of the following day into his own capital.
What the Maid had planned to achieve might have been accomplished, had the rank and file under Rais and De Gaucourt been inspired by a loyalty such as actuated her own great soul. But there was treachery in the camp, and the men, like some of their leaders, growing weary of military discipline and service, were relapsing into ways of self-indulgence and carousal.
The warrior-Maid was not slow to note the want of soldier-like bearing among the men, and the general tone of restlessness, and even of insubordination prevailing among them. However, she saw there was nothing to be gained by waiting; better to strike at once. Accordingly, true to her word, on the morrow, September the 8th, the feast of Our Lady’s Nativity, the Maid sallied forth with all her forces, and led so determined an attack on the gate Saint Honore, that but for a chance shaft from an archer’s bow which laid her low, an entrance into the capital city might have been made. Those who lived to tell the story have left on record how the soldier-Maid, with the glow of victory on her brow, led the assault, leaping the first moat which was dry, and plunging through the next which held deep water. Nothing daunted, the fearless girl forged her way through drowning waters till, plunging onward and springing forward, she struggled, agile as an athlete, up the side of the last moat, where she stood her ground amid a rain of arrows, cheering her men to action, and urging them in the name of Saint Denis and the king to force the gate, to scale the wall, and take possession of the city. It was while standing beneath the walls of Paris, seeing her men mowed down like grass beside her, that the Maid felt an arrow spring into her flesh and pierce her through. Unable to stand erect, presently, faint with loss of blood and giddy with pain, she reeled and fell into the moat below, where she lay like one dead. But soon she recovered her self-consciousness, and remembering her mission, she dragged herself to the side of the steep parapet. Then from the moat there came forth the accents of her well-known pleading and cheering voice exhorting her men to be brave, to endure, to do their duty, and scale the walls and capture their capital before sundown. Wounded and helpless, there in the moat prone she lay, till at length her friends, unwilling to lose so valued a life, raised her up and bore her away before nightfall to La Chapelle, a village lying between Paris and Saint Denis.
As they were lifting her under darkness of evening, the brave girl’s only commentary on the situation was Quel dommage!”
Next morning the Maid arose betimes from her bed, undaunted and ready, in spite of weakness and pain, to sally forth and lead her troops once more to the walls of Paris. She felt convinced that, if only she could inspire those under her command with enthusiasm and confidence, the impregnable capital might yet be stormed and taken.
Imagine what must have been La Pucelle’s feelings of disappointment and dismay when news was brought her by De Gaucourt, that it was the king’s wish the siege of Paris should be abandoned, and the troops withdrawn at once. Scarcely could the warrior-girl bring herself to believe the king could have been so ill-advised, but when she was told it was by his orders that the bridge over the Seine had been broken down, she knew it was all only too true. She raised her eyes to heaven, she lifted her soul to God, but nothing did she say.
In her utter loneliness it was a comfort to Jeanne to wend her way to the cathedral, there to pour forth her soul in resignation to the ruling of Heaven. Before leaving the church she turned to Our Lady’s altar, where, unbuckling her