Foreword
The story of Joan of Arc is hardly a tale for young children, and, strictly speaking, this is not a children’s book. It is, however, suitable to “younger readers,” and to those older ones who do not care for a longer and more detailed relation.
Joan’s story as here set down is history. Every episode and detail of it is from the sworn testimony taken at her two trials, and from authentic contemporary chronicles. Nothing is invented. From the first page to the last it is all true.
Chapter 1 – The Tree
It grew in Fairyland
A mile and a half to the south of Domremy, crowning a hill that overlooked the valley of the Meuse, the Tree could be seen from many directions. A mighty beech of great age, it was variously called “Ladies’ Lodge” and “Fairy Tree,” because, according to tradition, the ladies of Fairyland sometimes danced there; further, it was said that in the ancient days Pierre Granier, of the great castle of Bourlemont whose six towers still rose against the south, had walked under the Tree with a radiant lady, known only as “Fairy,” and never seen elsewhere.
The children found it no trouble to believe these things, nor, for that matter, did their parents, for it was a day when myth and legend passed as history. Children had always played under the Ladies’ Tree, and on special days in springtime brought “little loaves baked expressly by their mothers,” to eat in the quiet shade. Not far below the Tree a clear spring flowed from the hillside. Its waters were said to be healing; at any rate they were cold and sweet, and when the children had drunk their fill they gathered the flowers that grew round about and twined them into wreaths and garlands, to lay before the picture of the Virgin in the village church, or to hang on the branches of the Tree, for the fairies. Joining hands, they circled under the suspended offerings, singing and dancing, according to a custom of which no one knew the beginning.
They christened her Jeanne, or Jeannette
Something more than five hundred years ago one of the children who twined garlands and danced and sang under the Fairy Tree was a little girl who only a few years later would change the fortunes of France. She was the youngest child of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romee (women did not always take the husband’s surname), and in the small stone church across the garden they christened her Jeanne, or Jeannette – later, in English, to be called “Joan,” “Joan of Arc.” (The ancestors of Jacques d’Arc are thought to have come from the village of Arc-en-Barrois, fifty miles to the southwest of Domremy; hence, “d’Arc” (of Arc). Joan’s father himself came from Ceffonds, her mother from Vouthon.)
In Domremy the birthday of a little peasant girl was held of small account; in after years Joan herself did not know how old she was. Nevertheless, neighbors remembered that she was born on the eve of Epiphany, or Twelfth-night, which is January 6, and the year has been fixed as 1412.
Beyond certain marvels said to have occurred on the night of her birth, of Joan’s infancy there is not even a tradition. But of her childhood and the amazing years that followed details are not lacking. Joan herself supplied some of them, and playmates, neighbors, companions in arms, and learned doctors – witnesses sworn to tell the truth – completed the story. The picture is fresh and clear. Nothing else in history compares with it.
A child in a garden
A sturdy little girl, we see her presently following her father to the field, or her brothers when they drove the flocks to the pasture – at evening learning her prayers from the devout Isabelle Romee.
“My mother taught me the pater noster, Ave Maria, and the credo; no other than she instructed me in my belief probably as soon as the child could lisp the words.
The religion of that day was as primitive as it was profound. Everybody believed in demons and witchcraft, evils to be opposed with prayer. Legendary tales of the saints were
When the crosses were carried along the fields
A little peasant girl like the others, Joan followed the flocks, or played with her small companions in the meadows and under the Fairy Tree. Of her early friends there were two that she loved most: Hauviette and Mengette, near neighbors. Little Hauviette may have been the favorite, for she has been called “la preferee.” Long afterward she said:
“As children Jeannette and I were happy together in her father’s house. It was a pleasure for us to sleep in the same bed. Jeannette was good, simple, and sweet.”
Mengette also told of happy days with Joan, and how sometimes they had spun and performed other household duties in company. Joan loved to go to church, she said, and gave alms of whatever she received from her father. Then, of the Tree:
“It was a very ancient Tree. From the memory of man one has always seen it there where it is. Each year in the spring, particularly on the Sunday of the Fountains, this Tree was a gathering place. Girls and boys, we came in a troop, bringing small loaves of bread. Often I was with Jeannette. We ate under the Tree; then we went to drink from the Currant Spring. How many times we have laid the cloth under the Tree and eaten together! Afterward we played and danced. Those things still go on; our children do today what we did then.”
Another friend of that day told how the little girl’s heart had gone out to the poor, how she had slept by the hearth that they might have her bed. And she told of Joan’s going to pray in the little chapel of Bermont, on a hill in the woods beyond the adjoining village of Greux.
All remembered the Tree, and one of those who had played there with Joan told of its great beauty, and how on Ascension Eve, when the crosses were carried along the fields, the priest went there to chant the service.
Joan herself once referred to the Tree as le Fau, a native word for beech, “whence comes the fair May,” meaning the branches which the peasants set before their houses on May Day. She had gone there with the other children and twined wreaths for the picture of the Virgin at Domremy. It was held by old people that fairies came there, and that Maire Aubery’s wife had seen them. To her knowledge, Joan had never seen fairies near the Tree. Whether she had seen them elsewhere, or not, she did not know. With the others she had hung garlands on the branches. Sometimes she had carried them away afterward, sometimes had left them there. As a child she had danced with the other children, though “she had sung more than she had danced.”
Of the generations of children that played there, probably no one ever loved the spot more than Joan. The wide and fair expanse it commanded appealed not only to her sense of beauty but to something deeper in her, something romantic and glorious, too mystical to be understood. Southward, on the hill above Neufchateau rose the six towers of the lords of Bourlemont, seigneurs of Domremy and Greux, who sometimes with their ladies came to lead the children to the Tree. To the eastward lay the level valley of the Meuse, its placid, irresolute river breaking into channels to form islands, on one of which was another castle, though abandoned, of the lords of Bourlemont. The Meuse has its source in the south, and mists rise from its mildly tempered waters. In winter its valley is a weird region of fogs; in spring low-hanging clouds drift above its brilliant green; in June it is a dream valley, its fields under the quiet spell which precedes harvest. In whatever season, to Joan it was a valley of illusion, of knights on holy errands, of phantom marching armies.
Looking down from the Tree one saw the spire of Coussey, and in another direction Domremy and Greux – the two villages were really one – with Maxey across the river, in Lorraine. Hill and wood shut away the distance, but one knew that the loitering river found its way past other villages and came at last, to the seat of government, Vaucouleurs, valley of colors, a strong town for all its tranquil name, commanded by Robert de Baudricourt a sturdy captain hardened in the trade of arms.
Behind Domremy lay the Bois Chenu, a deep forest that skirted the hillside and stretched back to mysterious depths, haunted by wolves and reputed dragons. It was hardly a place for little folks, but below it in early summer the slope was red with wild strawberries which the children gathered to eat with their small loaves: and when they had eaten, and sung, and danced, they sat under the shade of the great beech and, looking over the drowsy valley, talked of wonderful things.
Whatever their parents might think of fairies, the children had no doubts on the subject. They not only believed in them but were favorable to them. That the fairies had been banished for their sins and forbidden the Tree was not proof that they did not visibly assemble there. Jeanne, wife of Maire Aubery, had seen them! It was said that they sometimes took one up in the air! This happened on Thursday, clearly a magic day. The wreaths suspended on the Tree by the children were sometimes carried away during the night. Who but fairies would take them?
The children discussed these matters, and the virtue of charms and amulets. And there was a mandragora, (mandrake) a very potent magic that brought riches, and grew somewhere in the ground near the Tree under a hazel bush. But this was evil, a perilous thing to have and not to be spoken of openly. That Joan heard this talk we know from her own story. As a child she probably believed in it, for she was as the others.
Yet she was different. Even in that early time when she played and danced and sang with her companions, she was often not really with them, but in a land where her playmates did not, and could not, enter.
She loved the sound of the bells, and sometimes when the sexton did not ring them promptly, or as much as she thought proper, she reproached him for it, offering to give him wool from her sheep and some of the big round cakes called “moons” if he would do better. Hearing the bells, Joan crossed herself and knelt. When not at her duties she was likely to be in the church, at prayer. Her companions rallied her for being so devout. She blushed and did not know how to answer. To escape them she went to the little chapel of Our Lady of Bermont, the remote shrine in the wood beyond Greux. She loved the stillness of the place, having for company the birds that are said to have eaten from her hands.
So we complete the picture of the little peasant girl: diligent, tender-hearted, devout; requiring duty of the bell ringer, offering reward if he performed it; mingling with her companions yet finding alone companionship they could not understand. Said one of these:
“Often while we were at play, Jeannette drew apart and spoke to God. The others and myself teased her about it.”
Certainly she was different. Her priest of that time declared that there was not her like in the village.
Chapter 2 – The Voices
Children dream long dreams
Thus far the picture has seemed peaceful enough, but a very different one lay just behind it. Almost the first word these children had heard spoken was “war.” They had known through their childhood that not far away beyond the hills, to the west, France was torn by fierce struggles; that bloodshed and famine were there; that their hereditary king was not really a king, never having been crowned, but was little more than a penniless fugitive, secluded in some still unconquered corner of his kingdom below the river Loire.
Crushed by a hundred years’ warfare with England, France was not even a nation, but a medley of warring factions, each, under whatever flag or pretense, striving only for personal gain. Great captains had become bandits; soldiers had become mere marauders; even the peasants had deserted their fields and formed themselves into cruel bands that laid waste far and wide.
Domremy, on the main road from the south, had plenty of news of these things, brought by traveling merchants, peddlers, begging friars, straggling soldiers. Eager-eyed and open-mouthed, the children gathered round to hear their tales. Then there were the fugitives–hungry and bedraggled refugees – it was to such that Joan offered her bed. Dwellers in the quieter lands along the Meuse knew that the world was stricken; they prepared for the worst.
Governed by that grim soldier, Robert de Baudricourt, at Vaucouleurs, their little province had for the most part escaped hostilities. Cattle had been driven off, but this was mere thievery, and once at least the cattle had been recovered. Joan’s father and his neighbors leased the abandoned castle – on an island facing the village and connecting with it – as protection for their flocks. Joan herself told of having helped drive the herds to this stronghold. At any alarm the village bells were rung, and the cattle were driven there more than once. The old castle also made a fine playground, especially for the game of war.
The children were familiar with the politics of their country. They knew that as a boy their young King, Charles VII, had been driven from Paris, and was jestingly called the “King of Bourges” because he had taken refuge in that city. They knew that the King’s uncle, the Duke of Orleans, had been basely murdered by John, Duke of Burgundy, and that the present Duke of Orleans, captured at the great French defeat of Agincourt, was still held a prisoner in England. They knew that in his turn John of Burgundy had been assassinated and that his son, Philip, with vast domain and wealth and armies, had allied himself with England. They knew that their King’s unworthy mother, called Isabeau of Bavaria, had disowned her son, married her daughter to King Henry of England, and joined in a treaty that would make the son of this marriage ruler of both England and France. They knew that the party of their King was called “Armagnac,” after the Gascon noble who had led it, and that everywhere Armagnac and Burgundian, at each other’s throats, were desolating France.
Stout partisans of their fugitive King, the children were fiercely Armagnac, while Maxey across the river was Burgundian. The boys of Domremy would occasionally invade Maxey, and Joan saw them return with bruised and scratched faces. Thus in a way she was already a part of the struggle for the “Dauphin,” as Charles VII was then known to her. To a sensitive imagination like hers the Dauphin was a romantic figure – the wandering prince of legendary tale.
“I had a great and warm zeal that the King should recover his kingdom,” are her own words. Children dream long dreams; even before her summons she may have pictured herself offering humble service. We cannot know what she thought, but only that her child heart was heavy with the sorrows of her people and the ill fortune of her King.
When Joan was well into her thirteenth year, news came of the Battle of Verneuil (August 17, 1424), another defeat for the French army, leaving Charles VII almost without hope. His soldiers, such as were still loyal, were more than ever broken in spirit. The saying was common that two hundred of the English could put to flight a thousand of the French.
“The pity that was of the Kingdom of France”
It was within the year following Verneuil, probably within the month, that Joan received the first word of the work she was to do. On a summer day at the hour of noon, in her father’s garden, she saw toward the church a great light, and heard a Voice. At that hour she would hardly be spinning or sewing. It would be when dinner had been prepared, and she was waiting a little in the shade for her father and brothers to come from the fields. The Voice came from the direction of the light, “a worthy Voice,” full of dignity.
The little girl was greatly frightened and very likely did not remember later just what it was she had seen and heard. But either then, or soon after, for the light and the Voice came often, she was told to be a good child, that God would help her, and that she would go to the rescue of the King. And the angel spoke to her of “the pity [the sorrow] that was of the kingdom of France.”
Telling of this, long after, Joan said that on hearing the Voice the third time she knew it to be that of a celestial being – Saint Michael, as she learned – though at first she had great doubts. She also saw a figure, one of stateliness and beauty, accompanied by angels.
At the time she told no one, not even her priest or her pious mother, of these marvelous things. She may have felt that they were for herself alone. She may have feared censure and ridicule. Many strange happening remain locked in the heart of a sensitive child.
All that we know of Joan’s visions is from herself. What ever their nature – and they have been much discussed – to Joan they were realities that brought her comfort and revealed to her the future. Two or three times a week the light came to her, and the Voice she had accepted as that of Saint Michael told her she must go to France.
The little girl may have had dreams of being useful to the King, but she was now filled with fear. The Voice promised her soldiers, and told her that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret would come to her, to comfort and counsel her in all that she had to do. They would be good spirits, and she must believe what they would say to her; this was “by commandment of the Lord.” At such times Joan prostrated herself before the saint and his angels, and after their departure kissed the earth where they had stood, making reverence. It was only a little while later that Joan’s other “Voices,” Saints Catherine and Margaret, came to her. She once spoke of their appearance at the spring below the Fairy Tree, so it may have been in that quiet place that they first revealed themselves, or the chapel of Bermont. “If I was in the wood I was certain to hear the Voices come.”
She did not separate them at first, but later knew them very well and could easily tell one from the other; also they told her their names and seemed to salute her. They were richly crowned and of sweet and gentle speech. They assured her that the King would come into his own and promised to conduct her at last to paradise. She saw their faces, their hair; they exhaled sweet incense. They were so real that at one time or another they confessed her. She embraced their knees at parting, weeping that they would not take her with them.
In time, her visitants became less distinct, and she was not sure of their individual faces; but their voices remained clear, their message always the same. She had been chosen to restore France, to crown the King and give him back his kingdom. To the saints, Joan pledged her maidenhood “for so long that it pleased God;” that is, until her mission should be ended.
Joan was no pale visionary, of delicate health and nerves. She was a hardy country girl, of great endurance; capable, and with plenty of temper and determination, as we shall see later one; but being also deeply devout, she was moved to accept whatever came as by divine command.
Keeping the great secret
During four years and more the visions and Voices continued to come, before Joan was ready for her work. How did a girl in the interval from thirteen to seventeen manage to keep that great secret shut up in her heart?
Our story of those years is rather meager. We know that she was less often at play with her companions, after knowing that she must “go to France.” When she was with them it was in a quieter fashion.
“Come and dance with us, Joan; one would think you were a saint!”
But though she gladly sang with them, she joined less and less in their gay dancing. One of those who knew her testified:
“She was not a dancer; many times while the others danced and, sang she went to pray.” This would be after she had begun to hear the Voices; she had slipped away to commune with them. “Consoled the sick, gave alms to the poor,” are the words of another. “I experienced her goodness, for as a child I was ill and Jeannette attended me.”
Yet she seemed to remain much as she had always been, except that as the years passed and she grew taller, stronger, handsomer, she became also more earnest, more grave.
To this day, life in Domremy is primitive; girls still spin with the distaff as they follow their flocks to the field. Yet ‘it was far more simple in Joan’s time. In that day there was no such thing as a book or paper, to pick up at a leisure moment. Printing was still unknown; hardly anybody could read, or needed to. The humble life of the village was varied only by the, arrival of a mendicant priest, a peddler, or straggling wanderers bringing word of some new raid by the Burgundians, and always of the declining fortunes of the King. For leisure one could gossip with a neighbor, walk by the river, or go to the church for prayer. During these years Joan was often at the secluded chapel of Bermont. In the quiet places she was being instructed for the great days ahead, trained for a mission such as has never been assigned to another in all the world’s history.
She no longer shared the labor of the fields or tended the flocks, and with three brothers for such work there was little need. She had been taught to sew and to spin, and at such things became very skillful. There was enough for her to do in the home, and when one thinks of the long days spent with her devout mother, Isabelle Romee, the wonder grows that she did not reveal something of the story of her celestial visitors. We have her own word that she did not do this.
Yet she may have let fall something of what was in her mind, for one night her father dreamed that she would “go with the soldiers.” Joan’s mother told her of this dream, adding that Jacques d’Arc had said to his sons:
“If I believed that the thing I dreamed of her would happen, I would wish that you might drown her, and if you did not do it I would drown her myself.” The Voices had been coming to her more than two years at this time, so she would be then about fifteen.
It is certain that Joan longed for a confidant and was often on the point of trusting in some friend. To Michel Lebuin, a playmate from childhood, she said:
“There is between Coussey and Vaucouleurs a young girl who before another year will cause to be crowned the King of France.”
This happened on the eve of Saint John the Baptist, June 23, 1428. Domremy was between Coussey and Vaucouleurs, and the year would only need to stretch into another month to bring fulfillment. A generation earlier a woman known as Marie of Avignon had predicted that France, ruined by a woman, would be saved by a maid from the borders of Lorraine. Joan had heard this prophecy; Domremy was on the borders of Lorraine; France had been ruined by the King’s unworthy mother, Isabeau of Bavaria; Joan’s Voices had told her that she herself was the maid who would lift up the fallen kingdom.
“Comrade, if you were not a Burgundian, I would tell you something,” she one day said to another friend, a man considerably older than herself. Her friend imagined that she wished to tell him of some offer of marriage that had been made to her. She had called him “Burgundian,” but he could not have been very fiercely of that party. At a later day Joan said that there had been in Domremy but one Burgundian, whose head she wished might have been cut off – quickly adding, “providing it was pleasing to God.” This could hardly have been her comrade.
Joan was now sixteen, a marriageable age for a girl of that day, so that her friend’s conclusion was fair enough. As to her appearance, we know little more than that she was strong, of good height and carriage, and we have the words of one who was nearest her during her days of battle that she was “beautiful and well formed.” (Belle et bien formee.” Testimony of Jean d’Aulon, chief of Joan’s personal staff.) We may picture her as wearing the bodice and red wool skirt of the peasant girl of her day, her hair loose or braided, her feet in sabots, in summer bare. She wore no ornaments except two small, cheap rings, given her by her parents and one of her brothers. One of the rings had on it three crosses and the words “JESUS MARIA.” Such rings were not uncommon, but hers she held as very sacred, for they had been on her hands when she embraced the saints, and so were consecrated.
Chapter 3 – The Voices Obeyed
A dark hour for France
The long-dreaded raid of the Burgundians came to Domremy that year. In July, 1428, the enemy swept in from the westward with fire and sword. What happened to the other villages is not told, but one morning the alarm ran through the streets of Domremy, the bells rang, the villagers wildly bundled their possessions into carts, and with their Rocks went helter-skelter down the road toward Neufchateau, a fortified town. The warning had been in time, and they got safely away with their chief possessions. A good many of the fugitives put up at an inn kept by a worthy woman called “La Rousse,” from her ruddy hair. In that day when surnames were few, such nicknames were much the fashion.
Joan, strong and willing, assisted La Rousse with her household labors, heavier than usual with a whole village as guests. Within a week, however, word came that the raiders were gone, after burning or partly burning the village in revenge for its lack of spoil. The villagers returned to find their homes in a state of havoc, their little church so damaged by fire that the people of Domremy for a time attended the church of the adjoining village of Greux.
But now came news of greater and graver events. The English having conquered northern France were rapidly moving southward, occupying towns, plundering right and left. Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency, on the river Loire, were taken. Worse than this, the great city of Orleans was besieged. It was the twelfth of October that the siege had begun; it may have been a fortnight later when the report reached Domremy.
It was a dark hour for France. Orleans was the key to the country below the Loire; if the English captured it, France would be no longer France, but a chattel of England – it was little more than that already. As for Charles VII, he would end his days in exile, probably in Scotland or Spain.
Joan’s Voices now became very urgent. We have her own statement that two or three times a week they exhorted her to go to France.
“The Voice kept urging me – I could no longer endure it. It told me that I would raise the siege of Orleans, it told me to go to Robert de Baudricourt, captain, and that he would give me men; for I was a poor girl, knowing neither how to ride nor to conduct war.”
Joan was face to face with the work she had to do. Until now it had seemed hazy and far off – something for the future, never quite to be met as a reality. Now she must act. The thought dazed her. Her parents must not know. Jacques d’Arc would promptly deprive her of her liberty; he might even make good his threat of two years before, and so put an end to her mission before it had begun. Yet it was necessary to speak to somebody – one who could make even a beginning possible. The young girl was torn with emotions; she had never disobeyed her parents, now she was planning to mislead them.
Of this she said: “Since God had commanded it, it was right to do it.” She added that if she had been a daughter of a king, still would she have gone. She said that her Voice had been willing that she should tell her parents, except for the sorrow they would have caused her. Her Voice had left it to her to tell her father and her mother, or to keep silent. We feel something of the struggle behind these words.
She finally turned to one as humble as herself, a peasant, Durand Laxart, of Buret’, a village near Vaucouleurs. Laxart had married her mother’s cousin, and as he was much older than herself, Joan called him “uncle.” She somehow got word to the Laxart home that she wished to see him. When Laxart arrived, she begged of him to ask her parents that she might be allowed to go home with him to care for his wife, then in delicate health. Knowing nothing of her real purpose, this good soul agreed. The consent of her parents obtained, Joan with her uncle set out on her great mission.
There is a question as to the time of their going, but it must have been somewhat after the news of the siege of Orleans. There are good reasons for believing that it was near the end of December, 1428, within a week or two of Joan’s seventeenth birthday. As to their mode of travel, it is likely that they walked; also, that they set out early, for the distance to Buret’ was considerable. Of those who testified later, only three recalled having seen them go: little Mengette, to whom Joan had said: “Adieu, Mengette, I commend thee to God”; and Jean Waterin and Gerard Guillemette, who saw them pass through Greux and heard Joan say adieu to the people there.
But to little Hauviette, la preferee, she had sent no word of her going; perhaps she could not.
“I did not know that she had gone,” Hauviette said, telling of it long after; “and I wept bitterly. She was so good, and I loved her so much. She was my friend.”
France owes a debt of gratitude to Durand Laxart
Leaving Greux behind them, Joan and Uncle Laxart took the road that follows the Meuse – a road frozen and rough at that season. It is a strange picture when we think of it – those two peasants, as humble as any to be found in France, the man in a wool cap and jerkin; the girl wearing a hood, come sort of cape, a worn and patched red skirt, both of them in sabots, setting out on a winter’s day to lift up a fallen kingdom.
Durand Laxart was ignorant of his part in the mission until they got well beyond the village. Then Joan said:
“I must tell you something. I wish to go to France – to the Dauphin, to have him crowned.”
The people of Domremy always spoke of “going to France” as if it were a separate country. Honest Durand Laxart would seem to have been too startled to reply. He knew Joan’s earnest and devout nature, and that she spoke seriously. Then immediately she added:
“Has it not already been said that France would be desolated by a woman and must be restored by a maid? I want you to go and tell Sire Robert de Baudricourt to have me conducted to where my lord the Dauphin is.”
Very likely Durand Laxart had never in his life spoken a word to Robert de Baudricourt. He had watched that burly captain ride by, at the head of his bristling guard, and he may now have dimly wondered how long a peasant like himself would last after entering the grim presence on such an errand. Yet he seems not to have hesitated. Whether or not he believed in the prophecy, he believed in Joan. His reply to her is lost, but he took her at once to Vaucouleurs. The nation of France owes a debt of gratitude to Durand Laxart.
Joan faces de Baudricourt
That afternoon, or next morning, Joan and Uncle Laxart toiled up the steep hill to the governor’s castle. Unusual visitors in that forbidding place of stone bastions and armed men, they seem to have had little difficulty in obtaining admission to the governor’s presence. If Laxart himself made any statement there it has been forgotten. None was needed. Joan from the beginning of her mission never lacked for words, never was awed or embarrassed before any earthly dignity. She said later that she recognized de Baudricourt on seeing him. “My Voices told me it was he.” When he brusquely demanded what she wanted, she answered:
“I have come to you on the part of my Lord, in order that you may send word to the Dauphin to hold fast and not to cease the war against his enemies. Before mid-Lent the Lord will give him help. In truth, the kingdom belongs not to the Dauphin, but to my Lord. But my Lord wills that the Dauphin be made King, and have the kingdom in command. Notwithstanding his enemies, the Dauphin will be made King, and it is I who will conduct him to the coronation.”
De Baudricourt listened to this long speech, half annoyed, half amused. He thought her irresponsible, flighty.
“Who is your Lord?” he demanded.
“The King of Heaven.”
The burly governor turned to the anxious Laxart. The girl must be brought to her senses.
“Take her to her father’s home and box her ears,” he said, and as the couple turned away he more than once repeated: “Take her to her father’s home and box her ears.”
Some of those who listened, rough guards and men at arms, laughed loudly at the governor’s verdict. But among them a young squire, Bertrand de Poulengy, was moved by this peasant girl that, unafraid, delivered her message. One might well pledge his sword to such as she. It is from Bertrand de Poulengy that we know today of that first meeting of Joan and de Baudricourt. Only, the gallant squire forgot the governor’s order as to Joan’s ears. That detail was supplied by Durand Laxart, the only thing he could remember of the meeting.
“To thee, Joan, I pledge my knightly faith”
De Poulengy thought Joan now returned to Domremy, but it is more likely that she went with her uncle to Buret’. She would hardly leave her aunt so soon; also, the news of her visit to de Baudricourt would at once travel to Domremy, making it unwise for her to meet the fury of Jacques d’Arc. She may never have returned to Domremy at all, though she must have seen her parents again, for she once said that they “nearly lost their minds” when she left for Vaucouleurs. This scene could have occurred at the Laxart home in Buret’, to which place they would certainly follow her as soon as they heard of her visit to the governor.
They made at least one effort to put an end to her mission. Apparently they did not wish to use force, not in the face of public opinion, that almost from the first moment saw in Joan “something divine.” They chose a milder and, as they perhaps believed, a surer method. Among the young men of Domremy willing to marry a handsome, industrious girl like Joan, there was one who made himself believe, or at least made her parents believe, that he had a promise from her. Joan’s parents now arranged to have her summoned before the Bishop of Toul, in the hope that he would compel fulfillment. The devout Joan would obey a summons from a bishop, and there was a fair chance that she would lose the case. Besides, Toul was a good way off, in a hostile country. This would mean delay, and in the meantime —.
In the meantime Joan had met with another refusal from de Baudricourt and becoming exasperated had declared she would go to Chinon alone, on foot. She would dress as a man, she said, and borrowed a suit of clothes from her uncle. But Laxart would not let her go alone, and with a friend of the family, Jacques Alain, set out in her company. They did not go far, only to the little village of Saint Nicolas, a few miles to the southwestward.
“It is not honest,” she said, “to go like this,” and they returned to Vaucouleurs. Here she found the summons from the Bishop of Toul; also one from the Duke of Lorraine, who had heard of her and, believing her to be a healer and a fortune teller, requested that she come to Nancy. With the duke’s message was a safe-conduct, a document, which would protect her from Burgundian attack.
Joan was quite willing to go to Nancy. Toul was on the way there; she could stop and defend herself against the charge of having broken her promise. Also, the Duke of Lorraine was rich and powerful, and was connected by marriage with the Dauphin of France. There was a chance that she might win him to her cause.
It was just at this moment that another important event occurred – her first meeting with the knight, Jean de Novelompont, called Jean de Metz. Wherever Joan went, now, she was followed by those who believed in her, or were curious, and one day there stepped forward a young cavalier who said to her:
“My child, what are you doing here? Must the King be driven from his kingdom and we become English?”
De Metz said afterward that Joan’s dress was “poor and worn, and of a red color.” Perhaps he spoke to her only out of sympathy, or it may be that the “something divine” which so many saw in her had stirred his faith. Joan, he said, answered him:
“I have come to this loyal city to speak to Sire de Baudricourt in order that he may conduct me, or have me conducted, to the King. But he cares neither for me nor my words. Nevertheless before the coming of mid-Lent, I must be with the King, even if I must wear my legs down to my knees; for nobody in the world can recover the kingdom of France – save only myself, though I would like better to spin by the side of my poor mother, seeing that this is not my station. Yet I needs must go, and I will do this because my Lord wills it so.”
Like de Baudricourt, de Metz asked: “Who is your Lord?”
“It is God.”
Taking her hands the young cavalier looked into her eyes, saying:
“To thee, Joan, I, Jean de Novelompont, called Jean de Metz, pledge my knightly faith, and promise thee, God aiding, that I will conduct thee to the King!”
Gallant Jean de Metz! In all knightly romance there is no finer picture.
“And when do you wish to start?” he asked her.
“Rather today than tomorrow, and tomorrow than afterward.”
“And you will take the road in woman’s garments!”
“I will willingly take the dress of a man.”
She told him, however, that she must first go to Toul and Nancy. It was thirty miles to Nancy, and Joan and her uncle somehow obtained horses for the journey. Jean de Metz rode with them as far as Toul, where Joan appeared before the bishop, and swore to tell the truth. Being, as she was, a reputed messenger of God, with a worthy relative and a knight of degree, on her way to hold converse with the Duke of Lorrain, gave Joan a standing in the eyes of the bishop. Looking into her clear countenance, and hearing her bravely spoken words, he released her from the charge against her, and gave her his blessing.
Arriving at Nancy, Joan appeared in the presence of the duke, who told her he wished to consult her about his health. Joan told him that she knew nothing of such things, and asked him to give her his son (meaning his son-in-law, Rene of Anjou, brother of the Queen of France) with men, to accompany her to Chinon. “I will pray God to give you health,” she said.
The duke’s sympathies were Burgundian, and he would make her no promises, but he gave her a present of four francs, then not so small a sum, equal to forty or fifty dollars, today. (In 2008 dollars this is = to about $1,000. VF)
“It is for this that I was born!”
Returning to Vaucouleurs, Joan was now for the most part at the home of Henry and Catherine Royer, where she would be near the castle if summoned. The governor, as she believed, had sent word of her to the King, and at any time a messenger might arrive. Meantime, she busied herself with spinning and other duties to offset her keep. With Madame Royer she went to church and to confession. In a vault below the castle was a chapel where she sometimes retired to pray.
It was now the middle of February. The Battle of Rouvray, another French disaster, know also as the “Battle of the Herrings,” was fought on the twelfth of that month, but news of it would take a good ten days to get to Vaucouleurs. There is a legend that Joan told de Baudricourt of this defeat on the day of its occurrence, and that when reported of it come he believed in her; but as no mention of such an incident was ever made by those nearest Joan, nor by any one until thirty-eight years later, this is probably an invention.
De Baudricourt, in fact, seems never to have fully been convinced of Joan’s mission. That Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy believed in her was much in her favor. De Metz had openly pledged himself to take her to the King, and de Poulengy, as well. These two were going, with or without de Baudricourt’s sanction. The governor was worried. A time had come when he wished neither to delay Joan, nor to become her champion. He had written to the King of her, and he may have received an answer. Certain it is that a messenger arrived from Chinon, and whether or not hr brought word concerning Joan, he did bring world of the disaster of the Herrings at Rouvray. Matters were going from bad to worse. It was a time to grasp at straws.
Madame Royer and Joan, spinning most likely, were one day astonished to see approaching the warlike de Baudricourt, with the priest whom they knew. The callers entered and took Joan aside. The priest had brought his holy vestments, and, putting them on, said solemnly to Joan:
“If thou art evil, depart from us; if thou art good, approach.”
Joan knelt, dragged herself to his knees, and remained there; after which governor and priest went away, apparently satisfied. But Joan said to Madame Royer:
“It was not well of the priest to do that. He knows me, and has heard me in confession.”
If this incident happened on the arrival of the news of Rouvray it would be about February 22. Whether Joan had already told of that battle would make little difference. The governor in any case would wish to satisfy himself that she was not a witch. Joan later said that the third time she asked de Baudricourt for help she received it. She probably asked the morning following his visit, and set out the same evening. Permission once granted, there must be no delay in starting; the Anglo-Burgundians could get the news and be lying in wait a stone’s throw beyond the castle walls.
De Baudricourt was willing enough to be rid of Joan, and he really gave her very little besides a sword and his blessing.
Those two high-hearted soldiers of fortune, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy, belonged to nobody, were under no orders but their own. Colet de Vienne, King’s messenger, and his comrade, Richard the Archer, were due to go back to Chinon, anyway. De Metz and Poulengy provided funds for the expedition, the citizens of Vaucouleurs presented Joan with suitable clothing, a page’s costume, and it was Uncle Laxart and his friend Jacques Alain who furnished her with a horse. Said Laxart:
“At the same time Alain of Vaucouleurs and I bought her a horse costing twelve francs, for which we assumed the debt.” They bought it on credit, these two good souls, for twelve francs, two dollars and forty cents, in that time and place an average price, about equal to one hundred and fifty dollars today. They pledged themselves in that amount, which is more than can be said for de Baudricourt, who in all ways seems to have been a prudent person. He made Joan’s companions swear to “well and safely conduct her,” which cost him nothing, and he gave her a sword from those about the castle. It was as if he had said:
“You have made two converts, and Colet and Richard are going your way. Here is a sword, and my permission to use it.”
Perhaps it is fair to allow that he did give her Colet and Richard, who, for the time at least, were under his orders; and to add that later, when the expedition had turned out well, he paid the two dollars and forty cents for Joan’s horse, probably out of the King’s funds. That there are certain amusing aspects to this splendid adventure must be confessed, and nobody would appreciate them more than Joan, who was by no means lacking in humor.
It was on the evening of February 23, 1429, that the Maid, as people now called her, with her little army of six – her two knights, their two servants, and the King’s messengers – assembled, mounted, in the castle courtyard, at the gate opening to the westward, the “Port of France.” They must travel by night if they would avoid capture. A group had assembled to see them go, and when the portcullis was raised, and Joan between her knights was about to pass, a woman called to her:
“How can you make such a journey, when on all sides are soldiers?”
Joan answered:
“I do not fear the soldiers, for my road is made open to me; and if the soldiers come I have God, my Lord, who will know how to clear the route that leads to messire the Dauphin. It is for this that I was born.”
And as they rode through the stone archway, Robert de Baudricourt called out:
“Go, and let come what may!”
After which they passed into the mist and winter gloaming and were lost among the trees, taking the direction of Chinon.
Chapter 4 – Joan Rides to the King
Icy rivers forded in the dark
Joan, between her two cavaliers, followed by their two servants and the King’s messengers, completed an army as picturesque as it was small.
“I was clad as a man,” Joan’s said, describing her departure, “wearing a sword which the captain had given me, without other arms.” She further said she had taken male dress by command of God and the angels.
Dressed as a youth of the period, mounted and wearing a sword, the young girl made a striking figure. Her hair was cropped, and she wore the loose black cap of a page. Her short coat was a kind of tunic belted at the waist. Underneath it was a justaucorps, or doublet, a kind of heavy shirt to which the band of her close fitting leggings was attached by means of “laces and points” – that is to say, stout hooks and a leather thong. High-laced boots or gaiters, spurs, and a cape completed her costume. She was seventeen, doing what girls of all ages have dreamed, riding at glorious venture, a knight and a squire on either hand. To her the dream had come true.
Of their winter’s journey through the long stretch of forest and desolated field that lay between Vaucouleurs and Chinon, little is left to us. The story, if we knew the details, would of itself make an exciting book. Because of the enemy, the “army” must avoid the roads and bridges. Icy rivers, swollen by winter rains, must be forded in the dark. There were four of these between Vaucouleurs and Saint Urbain, their first stop – two of them deep and swift. Joan had ridden as any other peasant child might ride to and from the field. To swim a horse through a racing current was another matter. Without doubt her knights kept her between them. None of them later spoke of this – such things became too common.
It was near morning when they reached the Abbey of Saint Urbain, thirty miles from Vaucouleurs. How grateful was the welcome it offered, the comfort they found within. The distance still to be traveled was more than three hundred miles. Everywhere was the enemy; such roads as there were they could not follow, but must keep to the forest. After Saint Urbain there would be no such protecting shelter. How precious are the brief accounts left by Joan’s cavaliers of that terrific winter journey. Said Jean de Metz:
“We traveled by night, through fear of the English and Burgundians, who were in possession of the roads. We were on the road the space of eleven days, always riding.”
Always riding, through the winter night and storm, with every little way a black, boiling river, and none that by any chance ran in their direction. Sometimes in deep anxiety, de Metz said to Joan:
“Will you surely do what you say?”
To which she never failed to reply:
“Have no fear; what I do, I do by commandment.”
When they could travel no more they sought out some hidden place to sleep, stretched themselves in their wet clothing, Joan between her two knights, her sworn protectors from evil. De Metz and de Poulengy both told of this, and the latter added:
“During the eleven days that our journey lasted we had many afflictions, but Joan always said to us: ‘Fear nothing. You shall see how at Chinon the noble Dauphin will greet us with a glad face.’ In hearing her speak I felt myself deeply stirred.”
Few episodes in knightly annals can compare with the eleven days’ journey of this little army, struggling through seemingly endless nights, beset by hidden dangers, dropping down exhausted for a little rest on the frozen ground. A girl of seventeen, fording rivers in February and sleeping on the ground afterward! But Joan was strong of body, and made stronger by her purpose. Between her faithful knights she probably slept untroubled by doubts and dreams. If only de Poulengy had told us something more of the “many afflictions.” Were they night alarms, hairbreadth escapes, accidents, periods of hunger? The country was stripped, picked clean by war; villages were desolated, peasants lying dead at their thresholds. De Metz told of providing Joan with money, for alms, without doubt for straggling survivors. Supplies could be found only in the larger places, and these were in enemy hands. The King’s messengers knew the route and its resources, but two men foraging for themselves is one thing, while provisioning an army of seven is quite another.
Joan herself dismissed this terrific journey with a word. It was her habit to meet troubles without fear, and once they were over to put them behind her. “My Voices often came to me,” she said. She further said they passed by Auxerre, and that she heard mass there at the cathedral. How did she manage this? Auxerre was a hostile city, walled, its massive gates guarded. De Poulengy did not hear mass on the way, but de Metz heard it twice. So it was Joan and de Metz who left their camp disguised, crossed the river Yonne, climbed the steep hill, took their chances with the guards at the city gates, and threaded their way through the narrow streets to the great cathedral, where today there is a statue of the Maid kneeling, with an inscription which tells us that Joan of Arc on her way to Chinon stopped there, February 27, 1429, to pray.
They had been four days coming from Vaucouleurs, a distance, as they traveled, of one hundred and fifty miles. The way to Chinon was longer than that behind them, but the worst was over. Another two days of blind paths and dark rivers and they would reach Gien, a friendly city on the Loire. There were marauding bands beyond Gien, but the land was loyal, and they need not avoid the towns.
Came to Saint Catherine de Fierbois
At Gien they told who they were and were given welcome. The messengers, possibly the knights, were known there, and word quickly flew in every direction that a maid from the borders of Lorraine, fulfilling an old prophecy, was on her way to restore the King. It reached the people shut up in Orleans and gave them hope. It found its way to the besieging English camps and filled them with dread. Captains and men jeered at the idea, but they were afraid. They believed Joan a witch. Of the French army they had no fear; witchcraft was another matter.
Joan did not linger at Gien. She had great work to do – the greatest ever given to one of her years – she must be on her way. Crossing the Loire she may have been reminded, that forty miles farther down its waters washed the walls of Orleans to whose relief she was marching. For the present they must avoid that city, passing below and beyond it.
The season was less bitter now; they rode through a fair, level land, where one need not always avoid the roads and where rivers ran in the right direction. They made their way to the Cher and followed it to Selles, to which loyal city she was one day to come in her glory, then presently bending southward came to Saint Catherine de Fierbois, a famous shrine.
Joan had heard of Fierbois, for word of these holy places traveled far. Many knights made pilgrimages to this chapel of Saint Catherine, to give thanks for preservation from great danger and to leave some portion of their arms, as an offering. Joan had been preserved through great dangers; Saint Catherine was one of her Voices – she would offer prayers from a grateful heart.
She heard three masses at Fierbois and sent a letter to the King at Chinon, now only eighteen miles distant. In this letter she told him that she had traveled far to reach him and knew many things for his good. Afterward she testified:
“It seems to me that I said to him . . . that I would know him among all others.”
Joan could neither read nor write, and it is not likely that her knights were much better off. Few in that day had these accomplishments. Some priest of Saint Catherine’s wrote the letter, of which unfortunately no trace remains today. She expected an answer, for in it she asked the King if she should enter the town where he was. None came. Her letter may never have reached Charles, a weakling surrounded by frivolous lows or malicious triflers, who would be likely to throw aside such a message.
The little army spent the night at Fierbois, and was off next morning for Chinon. Arriving at a point where the grim castle on the heights came into view, the peasant girl of Domremy must have been deeply moved. The long gray pile of towers and buildings and battlements that crowned the hilltop contained her uncrowned King. Her mission was to restore his realm and place the crown upon his head – she, a young girl, humble, unknown, who had been taught only to sew and to spin at her mother’s side. The great stronghold was already ancient – weather-beaten by centuries of storm and battle – a frowning front of masonry, terrifying to a heart less resolute than hers.
Joan once spoke of her arrival at Chinon, but said no more than that she “arrived near the King without interference and lodged first at an inn kept by an honest woman.”
Chapter 5 – At the Court of Charles VII
A committee came down from the castle
Joan was never one to delay, and a messenger was promptly sent to the castle asking for an audience. The King may, or may not, have been told of this request.
Charles’s rule was a mockery, his court a sham. He was the victim of parasites, who were jealous and suspicious of any influence from the outside and made it a point to keep from him anything that might interfere with their pleasure or profit. Chief among them was Georges de Le Tremoille, a greedy traitor that stopped at no crime which would serve his ends, and Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, who, though a churchman of high rank, honored religion only as a form and had neither charity nor human pity in his heart. These two dominated Charles, and ruled such of his kingdom as remained to him. The archbishop bore the title of Chancellor, and La Tremoille that of Chief Counselor; Joan’s message naturally fell into their hands.
Their first thought was as to how Joan could be used to their own advantage. The King’s prestige was waning; La Tremoille, who traded on it with the English and Burgundians, could not afford to see the kingdom of France entirely a ruin, its King in exile. He had read de Baudricourt’s letter about Joan, and, if the girl was what she claimed, it seemed worth while to encourage her. On the other hand, she might prove to be a witch, and dangerous. Whatever she was, she could influence the King against his advisers; one must move cautiously.
So the King’s counselors deliberated as to whether he should hear this girl, who came as she said with messages from God. Later in the day a sort of committee came down from the castle to question her.
“Why have you come?” they demanded.
“That I will tell only to the King.”
But it is in the name of the King that you are asked this question.”
Joan then answered: “I have been commanded to do two things on the part of the King of Heaven: one to raise the siege of Orleans; the other, to conduct the King to Reims for sacrament and his coronation.”
The committee returned and the Council debated. Some were in favor of letting the King see Joan, others not. The matter had been noised through the castle by this time, arousing the interest and curiosity of the courtiers. Many of the Idlers, wishing to see this strange girl who claimed to be sent from God, were in favor of her coming furthermore, not all of those about the King were evil. Some, like the King’s secretary, Alain de Chartier, a gentle poet, were stirred by sympathy for the maid; likewise the Queen, Marie of Anjou, and her mother, Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Sicily, two good women, were favorable to Joan from the beginning.
The timid King, by this time aware of what was going on, asked that this girl, before he saw her, be questioned by men of the Church. Messengers claiming to be sent by Heaven, with revelations and warnings, were not uncommon. She was probably no more than a fortuneteller. She might even be a witch. Nevertheless, if the priests found her harmless he would see her.
Charles was in the depths of despair. The month following the Battle of Rouvray had been his darkest hour. Poor in spirit and purse, surrounded by his tawdry, time-serving court, he had become childish and querulous. How could he guess that to a little girl dreaming over her spinning he had seemed all that was fine and noble – that listening to illumined beings she had come with messages that would lift him up and give him back his kingdom?
“I am come, being sent on the part of God”
The group of priests who called upon Joan must have found her answers satisfactory, for she was told that the King would receive her that same evening – this being the day of her arrival at Chinon. Yet in the very moment of her coming, the irresolute Charles, prompted by certain of his counselors, would have sent her away. He was reminded – perhaps by Queens Marie and Yolande – that this girl, commended to him by de Baudricourt, had been conducted across provinces occupied by the enemy and had miraculously forded rivers, to come to him. On this he consented to see her.
Being early March (the sixth), it was dark “after dinner” when, by Joan’s statement, she went to the castle. One may picture her with her two knights, mounted, preceded by torches, climbing the steep, stony way that winds up to the entrance, crossing the drawbridge and passing under the arch of the lofty tour de de l’horloge, a clock-tower to this day. A space of court to cross, a stair to mount, then a blaze of light, a dazzle of silk and cloth of gold, and facing it all a peasant girl who claimed to have brought messages to the King.
At the farther end of the room a fire was roaring up the great chimney. Also, according to Joan, there were “fifty flambeaux, and three hundred men at arms.” At all events there was a great assembly of both men and women. Any diversion was welcome; a novelty like Joan would bring out every member of the castle.
There was a moment of expectant silence. Those idle, simpering people were curious to see how she looked, what she would do first. What they saw was a lithe, rather slender, fairly tall youth, with cropped hair – Joan in the page’s costume she had worn from Vaucouleurs, the suit in which she had forded rivers and slept on the frozen ground; surely a curious figure before that tinsel throng.
If they had expected her to be dazed and awed they were quickly undeceived. Led forward by the Count of Vendome, what she did was to go immediately to Charles, who occupied no special place, but had “retired behind some others,” and falling on her knees make him reverence, saying:
“Very illustrious Lord Dauphin, I am come, being sent on the part of God, to give succor to the kingdom, and to you.”
Joan never revealed by what sign she knew the King. Her statement: “I recognized him by the counsel and revelation of my Voice,” is as far as she ever went on the subject.
The King led her apart – perhaps to the small tower embrasure at the left of the fireplace, where they spoke together. Making reverence, Joan said:
“Noble King, I am called Joan the Maid, and I tell thee on the part of Messire [God] that thou art the true heritor of France, son of the King, and He sends me to conduct thee to Reims, in order that thou receivest there thy coronation and thy sacrament, if such be thy wish.”
Charles asked her:
“How am I to know that you come from God?” Joan’s answer to this was another secret that died with her; but long after, the King himself, near death, declared that a little before Joan’s coming he had made a secret prayer of which no one else could know. He had prayed, he said, that if he was the true heir to the kingdom, God would defend him, or at the worst grant him the grace to escape without death or prison, allowing him to take refuge in Spain or Scotland, ancient brothers in arms, allies of the kings of France. Joan, the King said, repeated to him this prayer, known only to himself and God, thus gaining his confidence.
Returning now to the others, all saw the joy in the King’s face. The poet secretary, Alain Chartier, wrote: “It was most manifest the King was greatly encouraged, as if by the Spirit.”
Joan’s own story of the royal audience was no more than a few words: “When I entered the presence of the King I recognized him by the revelation and counsel of my Voices. I told him I wanted to make war on the English.” That was all; she had arrived “without interference”; the long days and longer nights were behind her. She told the King she wanted to make war on the English. It was as when on the road to Buret’ she had said to Durand Laxart that she wanted him to tell Sire Robert de Baudricourt to have her taken to the King. That was Joan’s simple and direct way. She had no use for the roundabout. She traveled in a straight line to the point in view.
Chapter 6 – Joan Before the Wise Men
“My cousin, the Duke of Alencon”
The King had accepted Joan, or was about to do so; and that night or very soon after she was given lodging in the tower of Coudray, across a deep ravine but connected by a footbridge with the main castle. The Maid was confided to the care of Madame Bellier, wife of the King’s major-domo, with Louis de Contes, a boy of fifteen, named as her page. Her faithful knights remained her special guards.
The tower of Coudray was very ancient, the lar