Jeanne was at Crespy en Valois when this news reached her. She set out immediately (May 22, 1430) to carry aid to the garrison: "_F"irai voir mes bons amis de Compiegne_," she said. The words are on the base of her statue which now stands in the Place of that town. Something of her early impetuosity was in this impulse, and no apparent dread of any fatality. She rode all night at the head of her party, and arrived before the dawn, a May morning, the 23d, still a month from the fatal "St. Jean." Though the prophecy was always in her ears, she must have felt that whole month still before her, with a sensation of almost greater safety because the dangerous moment was fixed. The town received her with joy, and no doubt the satisfaction and relief which hailed her and her reinforcements gave additional fervour to the Maid, and drove out of her mind for a moment the fatal knowledge which oppressed it.
There is some difficulty in understanding the events of this day, but the lucid narrative of Quicherat, which we shall now quote, gives a very vivid picture of it. Jeanne had timed her arrival so early in the morning, probably with the intention of keeping the adversaries in their camps unaware of so important an addition to the garrison, in order that she might surprise them by the sortie she had determined upon; but no doubt the news had leaked forth somehow, if through no other means, by the sudden ringing of the bells and sounds of joy from the city. She paid her usual visits to the churches, and noted and made all her arrangements for the sortie with her usual care, occupying the long summer day in these preparations. And it was not till five o"clock in the evening that everything was complete, and she sallied forth. We hear nothing of the state of the town, or of any suspicion existing at the time as to the governor Flavy who was afterwards believed by some to be the man who sold and betrayed her. It is a question debated warmly like all these questions. He was a man of bad reputation, but there is no evidence that he was a traitor. The incidents are all natural enough, and seem to indicate clearly the mere fortune of war upon which no man can calculate. We add from Quicherat the description of the field and what took place there:
"Compiegne is situated on the left bank of the Oise. On the other side extends a great meadow, nearly a mile broad, at the end of which the rising ground of Picardy rises suddenly like a wall, shutting in the horizon. The meadow is so low and so subject to floods that it is crossed by an ancient foot of the low hills. Three village churches mark the extent of the landscape visible from the walls of Compiegne; Margny (sometimes spelt Marigny) at the end of the road; Clairoix three quarters of a league higher up, at the confluence of the two rivers, the Aronde and the Oise, close to the spot where another tributary, the Aisne, also flows into the Oise; and Venette a mile and a half lower down. The Burgundians had one camp at Margny, another at Clairoix; the headquarters of the English were at Venette. As for the inhabitants of Compiegne, their first defence facing the enemy was one of those redoubts or towers which the chronicles of the fifteenth century called a boulevard. It was placed at the end of the bridge and commanded the road.
"The plan of the Maid was to make a sortie towards the evening, to attack Margny and afterwards Clairoix, and then at the opening of the Aronde valley to meet the Duke of Burgundy and his forces who were lodged there, and who would naturally come to the aid of his other troops when attacked. She took no thought for the English, having already carefully arranged with Flavy how they should be prevented from cutting off her retreat. The governor provided against any chance of this by arming the boulevard strongly with archers to drive off any advancing force, and also by keeping ready on the Oise a number of covered boats to receive the foot-soldiers in case of a retrograde movement.
"The action began well: the garrison of Margny yielded in the twinkling of an eye. That of Clairoix rushing to the support of their brothers in arms was repulsed, then in its turn repulsed the French; and three times this alternative of advance and retreat took place on the flat ground of the meadow without serious injury to either party. This gave time to the English to take part in the fray;(1) though thanks to the precautions of Flavy all they could do was to swell the ranks of the Burgundians.
But unfortunately the rear of the Maid"s army was struck with the possibility that a diversion might be attempted from behind, and their retreat cut off. A panic seized them; they broke their ranks, turned back and fled, some to the boats, some to the barrier of the boulevard.
The English witnessing this flight rushed after them, secure now on the side of Compiegne, where the archers no longer ventured to shoot lest they should kill the fugitives instead of the enemies. They (the English) thus got possession of the raised road, and pushed on so hotly after the fugitives that their horses" heads touched the backs of the crowd. It thus became necessary for the safety of the town to close the gates until the barrier of the boulevard should be set up again."
These disastrous accidents had taken place while Jeanne, charging in front with her companions and body-guard, remained quite unaware of any misfortune. She would hear no call to retreat, even when her companions were roused to the dangers of their position. "Forward, they are ours!"
was all her cry. As at St. Pierre-le-Moutier she was ready to defeat the Burgundian army alone. At length the others perceiving something of what had happened seized her bridle and forced her to retire. She was of herself too remarkable a figure to be concealed amid the group of armed men who rode with her, encircling her, defending the rear of the flying party. Over her armour she wore a crimson tunic, or according to some authorities a short cloak, of gorgeous material embroidered with gold, and though by this time the twilight must have afforded a partial shelter, yet the knowledge that she was there gave keenness to every eye. Behind, the scattered Burgundians had rallied and begun to pursue, while the armour and spears of the English glittered in front between the little party and the barrier which was blocked by a terrified crowd of fugitives. Even then a party of hors.e.m.e.n might have cut their way through; but at the moment when Jeanne and her followers drew near, the barrier was sharply closed and the wild, confused, and fighting crowd, treading each other down, struggling for life, were forced back upon the English lances. Thus the retreating band riding hard along the raised road, in order and unbroken, found the path suddenly barred by the forces of the enemy, the fugitives of their own army, and the closed gates of the town.
An attempt was then made by the Maid and her companions to turn towards the western gate where there still might have been a chance of safety; but by this time the smaller figure among all those steel-clad men, and the waving mantle, must have been distinguished through the dusk and the dust. There was a wild rush of combat and confusion, and in a moment she was surrounded, seized, her horse and her person, notwithstanding all resistance. With cries of "Rendez vous," and many an evil name, fierce faces and threatening weapons closed round her. One of her a.s.sailants--a Burgundian knight, a Picard archer, the accounts differ--caught her by her mantle and dragged her from her horse; no Englishman let us be thankful, though no doubt all were equally eager and ready. Into the midst of that shouting ma.s.s of men, in the blinding cloud of dust, in the darkening of the night, the Maid of France disappeared for one terrible moment, and was lost to view. And then, and not till then, came a clamour of bells into the night, and all the steeples of Compiegne trembled with the call to arms, a sally to save the deliverer. Was it treachery? Was it only a perception, too late, of the danger? There are not wanting voices to say that a prompt sally might have saved Jeanne, and that it was quite within the power of the Governor and city had they chosen. Who can answer so dreadful a suggestion? it is too much shame to human nature to believe it. Perhaps within Compiegne as without, they were too slow to perceive the supreme moment, too much overwhelmed to s.n.a.t.c.h any chance of rescue till it was too late.
Happily we have no light upon the tumult around the prisoner, the ugly triumph, the shouts and exultation of the captors who had seized the sorceress at last; nor upon the thoughts of Jeanne, with her threatened doom fulfilled and unknown horrors before her, upon which imagination must have thrown the most dreadful light, however strongly her courage was sustained by the promise of succour from on high. She had not been sent upon this mission as of old. No heavenly voice had said to her "Go and deliver Compiegne." She had undertaken that warfare on her own charges with no promise to encourage her, only the certainty of being overthrown "before the St. Jean." But the St. Jean was still far off, a long month of summer days between her and that moment of fate! So far as we can see Jeanne showed no unseemly weakness in this dark hour. One account tells us that she held her sword high over her head declaring that it was given by a higher than any who could claim its surrender there. But she neither struggled nor wept. Not a word against her constancy and courage could any one, then or after, find to say. The Burgundian chronicler tells us one thing, the French another. "The Maid, easily recognised by her costume of crimson and by the standard which she carried in her hand, alone continued to defend herself," says one; but that we are sure could not have been the case as long as d"Aulon, who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse. "She yielded and gave her parole to Lyonnel, batard de Wandomme," says another; but Jeanne herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reserving to herself the right to escape if she could. In that dark evening scene nothing is clear except the fact that the Maid was taken, to the exultation and delight of her captors and to the terror and grief of the unhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms,--and with its sons and champions by hundreds dying under the English lances and in the dark waves of the Oise.
The archer or whoever it was who secured this prize, took Jeanne back, along the b.l.o.o.d.y road with its relics of the fight, to Margny, the Burgundian camp, where the leaders crowded together to see so important a prisoner. "Thither came soon after," says Monstrelet, "the Duke of Burgundy from his camp of Coudon, and there a.s.sembled the English, the said Duke and those of the other camps in great numbers, making, one with the other, great cries and rejoicings on the taking of the Maid: whom the said Duke went to see in the lodging where she was and spoke some words to her which I cannot call to mind, though I was there present; after which the said Duke and the others withdrew for the night, leaving the Maid in the keeping of Messer John of Luxembourg"--to whom she had been immediately sold by her first captor. The same night, Philip, this n.o.ble Duke and Prince of France, wrote a letter to convey the blessed information:
"The great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and brought to the knowledge of all, that they may see the error of those who could believe and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman. We write this in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and that you may thank G.o.d our Creator. Pray that it may be His holy will to be more and more favourable to the enterprises of our royal master and to the restoration of his sway over all his good and faithful subjects."
This royal master was Henry VI. of England, the baby king, doomed already to expiate sins that were not his, by the saddest life and reign. The French historians whimsically but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on Philip"s part, and on that of his contemporaries in general, to the score of the English, which is hard measure, seeing that the treachery of a Frenchman could in no way be attributed to the other nation of which he was the natural enemy, or at least, antagonist. Very naturally the subsequent proceedings in all their horror and cruelty are equally put down to the English account, although Frenchmen took, exulted over as a prisoner, tried and condemned as an enemy of G.o.d and the Church, the spotless creature who was France incarnate, the very embodiment of her country in all that was purest and n.o.blest. We shall see with what spontaneous zeal all France, except her own small party, set to work to accomplish this n.o.ble office.
Almost before one could draw breath the University of Paris claimed her as a proper victim for the Inquisition. Compiegne made no sally for her deliverance; Charles, no attempt to ransom her. From end to end of France not a finger was lifted for her rescue; the women wept over her, the poor people still crowded around the prisoner wherever seen, but the France of every public doc.u.ment, of every practical power, the living nation, when it did not utter cries of hatred, kept silence. We in England have over and over again acknowledged with shame our guilty part in her murder; but still to this day the Frenchman tries to shield his under cover of the English influence and terror. He cannot deny La Tremolle, nor Cauchon, nor the University, nor the learned doctors who did the deed; individually he is ready to give them all up to the everlasting fires which one cannot but hope are kept alive for some people in spite of all modern benevolences; but he skilfully turns back to the English as a moving cause of everything. Nothing can be more untrue. The English were not better than the French, but they had the excuse at least of being the enemy. France saved by a happy chance her _blanches mains_ from the actual blood of the pure and spotless Maid; but with exultation she prepared the victim for the stake, sent her thither, played with her like a cat with a mouse and condemned her to the fire. This is not to free us from our share: but it is the height of hypocrisy to lay the blood of Jeanne, entirely to our door.
Thus Jeanne"s inspiration proved itself over again in blood and tears; it had been proved already on battle-field and city wall, with loud trumpets of joy and victory. But the "voices" had spoken again, sounding another strain; not always of glory--it is not the way of G.o.d; but of prison, downfall, distress. "Be not astonished at it," they said to her; "G.o.d will be with you." From day to day they had spoken in the same strain, with no joyful commands to go forth and conquer, but the one refrain: "Before the St. Jean." Perhaps there was a certain relief in her mind at first when the blow fell and the prophecy was accomplished.
All she had to do now was to suffer, not to be surprised, to trust in G.o.d that He would support her. To Jeanne, no doubt, in the confidence and inexperience of her youth, that meant that G.o.d would deliver her.
And so He did; but not as she expected. The sunshine of her life was over, and now the long shadow, the bitter storm was to come.
Nothing could be more remarkable than the response of France in general to this extraordinary event. In Paris there were bonfires lighted to show their joy, the _Te Deum_ was sung at Notre Dame. At the Court Charles and his counsellors amused themselves with another prophet, a shepherd from the hills who was to rival Jeanne"s best achievements, but never did so. Only the towns which she had delivered had still a tender thought for Jeanne. At Tours the entire population appeared in the streets with bare feet, singing the _Miserere_ in penance and affliction. Orleans and Blois made public prayers for her safety.
Rheims, in which there was much independent interest in Jeanne and her truth, had to be specially soothed by a letter from the Archbishop, in which he made out with great cleverness that it was the fault of Jeanne alone that she was taken. "She did nothing but by her own will, without obeying the commandments of G.o.d," he says; "she would hear no counsel, but followed her own pleasure,"; and it is in this letter that we hear of the shepherd lad who was to replace Jeanne, and that it was his opinion or revelation that G.o.d had suffered the Maid to be taken because of her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred her own will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented the city of Rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced France.
n.o.body uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession of Tours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the prayers of Orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we know of. Otherwise there was lifted in France neither voice nor hand to avert her doom.
(1) The three camps must have formed a sort of irregular triangle. The English at Venette being only half a mile from the gates of Compiegne.
CHAPTER X -- THE CAPTIVE. MAY, 1430-JAN., 1431.
We have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary laws at once of chivalry and of honest warfare. Jeanne had been captured as a general at the head of her forces. She was a prisoner of war. Such a prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in no bodily danger. He is worth more alive than dead--a great ransom perhaps--perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishment of everything it was intended to gain: at least he is most valuable to exchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. It was like taking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outrage deeply resented by his captor and unjustified by any law. It was true that Jeanne herself had transgressed this universal custom but a little while before, by giving up Franquet d"Arras to his prosecutors. But Franquet was beyond the courtesies of war, a noted criminal, robber, and destroyer: yet she ought not perhaps to have departed from the military laws of right and wrong while everything in the country was under the hasty arbitration of war. No one, however, so far as we know, produces this matter of Franquet as a precedent in her own case. From the first moment of her seizure there was no question of the custom and privilege of warfare. She was taken as a wild animal might have been taken, the only doubt being how to make the most signal example of her. Vengeance in the gloomy form of the Inquisition claimed her the first day. No such word as ransom was breathed from her own side, none was demanded, none was offered. Her case is at once separated from every other.
Yet the reign of chivalry was at its height, and women were supposed to be the objects of a kind of worship, every knight being sworn to succour and help them in need and trouble. There was perhaps something of the subtle jealousy of s.e.x so constantly denied on the stronger side, but yet always existing, in the abrogation of every law of chivalry as well as of warfare, in respect to the Maid. That man is indeed of the highest strain of generosity who can bear to be beaten by a woman. And all the seething, agitated world of France had been beaten by this girl. The English and Burgundians, in the ordinary sense of the word, had been overcome in fair field, forced to fly before her; the French, her own side, had experienced an even more penetrating downfall by having the honours of victory taken from them, she alone winning the day where they had all failed. This is bitterer, perhaps, than merely to be compelled to raise a siege or to fail in a fight. The Frenchmen fought like lions, but the praise was to Jeanne who never struck a blow. Such great hearts as Dunois, such a courteous prince as Alencon, were too magnanimous to feel, or at least to resent, the grievance; they seconded her and fought under her with a n.o.bility of mind and disinterestedness beyond praise; but it was not to be supposed that the common ma.s.s of the French captains were like these; she had wronged and shamed them by taking the glory from them, as much as she had shamed the English by making those universal victors fly before her. The burghers whom she had rescued, the poor people who were her brethren and whom she sought everywhere, might weep and cry out to Heaven, but they were powerless at such a moment.
And every law that might have helped her was pushed aside.
On the 25th the news was known in Paris, and immediately there appears in the record a new adversary to Jeanne, the most bitter and implacable of all; the next day, May 26, 1430, without the loss of an hour, a letter was addressed to the Burgundian camp from the capital. Quicherat speaks of it as a letter from the Inquisitor or vicar-general of the Inquisition, written by the officials of the University; others tell us that an independent letter was sent from the University to second that of the Inquisitor. The University we may add was not a university like one of ours, or like any existing at the present day. It was an ecclesiastical corporation of the highest authority in every cause connected with the Church, while gathering law, philosophy, and literature under its wing. The first theologians, the most eminent jurists were collected there, not by any means always in alliance with the narrower tendencies and methods of the Inquisition. It is notable, however, that this great inst.i.tution lost no time in claiming the prisoner, whose chief offence in its eyes was less her career as a warrior than her position as a sorceress. The actual facts of her life were of secondary importance to them. Orleans, Rheims, even her attack upon Paris were nothing in comparison with the black art which they believed to be her inspiration. The guidance of Heaven which was not the guidance of the Church was to them a claim which meant only rebellion of the direst kind. They had longed to seize her and strip her of her presumptuous pretensions from the first moment of her appearance. They could not allow a day of her overthrow to pa.s.s by without s.n.a.t.c.hing at this much-desired victim.
No one perhaps will ever be able to say what it is that makes a trial for heresy and sorcery, especially in the days when fire and flame, the rack and the stake, stood at the end, so exciting and horribly attractive to the mind. Whether it is the revelations that are hoped for, of these strange commerces between earth and the unknown, into which we would all fain pry if we could, in pursuit of some better understanding than has ever yet fallen to the lot of man; whether it is the strange and dreadful pleasure of seeing a soul driven to extremity and fighting for its life through all the subtleties of thought and fierce attacks of interrogation--or the mere love of inflicting torture, misery, and death, which the Church was prevented from doing in the common way, it is impossible to tell; but there is no doubt that a thrill like the wings of vultures crowding to the prey, a sense of horrible claws and beaks and greedy eyes is in the air, whenever such a tribunal is thought of. The thrill, the stir, the eagerness among those black birds of doom is more evident than usual in the headlong haste of that demand. _Sous l"influence de l"Angleterre_, say the historians; the more shame for them if it was so; but they were clearly under influence wider and more infallible, the influence of that instinct, whatever it may be, which makes a trial for heresy ten thousand times more cruel, less restrained by any humanities of nature, than any other kind of trial which history records.
That is what the Inquisitor demanded after a long description of Jeanne, "called the Maid," as having "dogmatised, sown, published, and caused to be published, many and diverse errors from which have ensued great scandals against the divine honour and our holy faith." "Using the rights of our office and the authority committed to us by the Holy See of Rome we instantly command, and enjoin you in the name of the Catholic faith, and under penalty of the law: and all other Catholic persons of whatsoever condition, pre-eminence, authority, or estate, to send or to bring as prisoner before us with all speed and surety the said Jeanne, vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy, that proceedings may be taken against her before us in the name of the Holy Inquisition, and with the favour and aid of the doctors and masters of the University of Paris, and other notable counsellors present there."
It was the English who put it into the heads of the Inquisitor and the University to do this, all the anxious Frenchmen cry. We can only reply again, the more shame for the French doctors and priests! But there was very little time to bring that influence to bear; and there is an eagerness and precipitation in the demand which is far more like the headlong natural rush for a much desired prize than any course of action suggested by a third party. Nor is there anything to lead us to believe that the movement was not spontaneous. It is little likely, indeed, that the Sorbonne nowadays would concern itself about any inspired maid, any more than the enlightened Oxford would do so. But the ideas of the fifteenth century were widely different, and witchcraft and heresy were the most enthralling and exciting of subjects, as they are still to whosoever believes in them, learned or unlearned, great or small.
It must be added that the entire mind of France, even of those who loved Jeanne and believed in her, must have been shaken to its depths by this catastrophe. We have no sympathy with those who compare the career of any mortal martyr with the far more mysterious agony and pa.s.sion of our Lord. Yet we cannot but remember what a tremendous element the disappointment of their hopes must have been in the misery of the first disciples, the Apostles, the mother, all the spectators who had watched with wonder and faith the mission of the Messiah. Had it failed? had all the signs come to nothing, all those divine words and ways, to our minds so much more wonderful than any miracles? Was there no meaning in them? Were they mere unaccountable delusions, deceptions of the senses, inspirations perhaps of mere genius--not from G.o.d at all except in a secondary way? In the three terrible days that followed the Crucifixion the burden of a world must have lain on the minds of those who had seen every hope fail: no legions of angels appearing, no overwhelming revelation from heaven, no change in a moment out of misery into the universal kingship, the triumphant march. That was but the self-delusion of the earth which continually travesties the schemes of Heaven; yet the most terrible of all despairs is such a pause and horror of doubt lest nothing should be true.
But in the case of this little Maiden, this handmaid of the Lord, the deception might have been all natural and perhaps shared by herself.
Were her first triumphs accidents merely, were her "voices" delusions, had she been given up by Heaven, of which she had called herself the servant? It was a stupor which quenched every voice--a great silence through the country, only broken by the penitential psalms at Tours.
The Compiegne people, writing to Charles two days after May 23d, do not mention Jeanne at all. We need not immediately take into account the baser souls always plentiful, the envious captains and the rest who might be secretly rejoicing. The entire country, both friends and foes, had come to a dreadful pause and did not know what to think. The last circ.u.mstance of which we must remind the reader, and which was of the greatest importance, is, that it was only a small part of France that knew anything personally of Jeanne. From Tours it is a far cry to Picardy. All her triumphs had taken place in the south. The captive of Beaulieu and Beaurevoir spent the sad months of her captivity among a population which could have heard of her only by flying rumours coming from hostile quarters. From the midland of France to the sea, near to which her prison was situated, is a long way, and those northern districts were as unlike the Orleannais as if they had been in two different countries. Rouen in Normandy no more resembled Rheims, than Edinburgh resembled London: and in the fifteenth century that was saying a great deal. Nothing can be more deceptive than to think of these separate and often hostile duchies as if they bore any resemblance to the France of to-day.
The captor of Jeanne was a va.s.sal of Jean de Luxembourg and took her as we have seen to the quarters of his master at Margny, into whose hands she thenceforward pa.s.sed. She was kept in the camp three or four days and then transferred to the castle of Beaulieu, which belonged to him; and afterwards to the more important stronghold of Beaurevoir, which seems to have been his princ.i.p.al residence. We know very few details of her captivity. According to one chronicler, d"Aulon, her faithful friend and intendant, was with her at least in the former of those prisons, where at first she would appear to have been hopeful and in good spirits, if we may trust to the brief conversation between her and d"Aulon, which is one of the few details which reach us of that period.
While he lamented over the probable fate of Compiegne she was confident.
"That poor town of Compiegne that you loved so much," he said, "by this time it will be in the hands of the enemies of France." "No," said the Maid, "the places which the king of Heaven brought back to the allegiance of the gentle King Charles by me, will not be retaken by his enemies." In this case at least the prophecy came true.
And perhaps there might have been at first a certain relief in Jeanne"s mind, such as often follows after a long threatened blow has fallen. She had no longer the vague tortures of suspense, and probably believed that she would be ransomed as was usual: and in this silence and seclusion her "voices" which she had not obeyed as at first, but yet which had not abandoned her, nor shown estrangement, were more near and audible than amid the noise and tumult of war. They spoke to her often, sometimes three times a day, as she afterwards said, in the unbroken quiet of her prison. And though they no longer spoke of new enterprises and victories, their words were full of consolation. But it was not long that Jeanne"s young and vigorous spirit could content itself with inaction. She was no mystic; willingly giving herself over to dreams and visions is more possible to the old than to the young. Her confidence and hope for her good friends of Compiegne gave way before the continued tale of their sufferings, and the inveterate siege which was driving them to desperation. No doubt the worst news was told to Jeanne, and twice over she made a desperate attempt to escape, in hope of being able to succour them, but without any sanction, as she confesses, from her spiritual instructors. At Beaulieu the attempt was simple enough: the narrative seems to imply that the doorway, or some part of the wall of her room, had been closed with laths or planks nailed across an opening: and between these she succeeded in slipping, "as she was very slight,"
with the hope of locking the door to an adjoining guard-room upon the men who had charge of her, and thus getting free. But alas! The porter of the chateau, who had no business there, suddenly appeared in the corridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber. At Beaurevoir, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperate one, and indicates a despair and irritation of mind which had become unbearable. At this place her own condition was much alleviated; the castle was the residence of Jean de Luxembourg"s wife and aunt, ladies who visited Jeanne continually, and soon became interested and attached to her; but as the master of the house was himself in the camp before Compiegne, they had the advantage or disadvantage, as far as the prisoner was concerned, of constant news, and Jeanne"s trouble for her friends grew daily.
She seems, indeed, after the a.s.surance she had expressed at first, to have fallen into great doubt and even carried on within herself a despairing argument with her spiritual guides on this point, battling with these saintly influences as in the depths of the troubled heart many have done with the Creator Himself in similar circ.u.mstances. "How,"
she cried, "could G.o.d let them perish who had been so good and loyal to their King?" St. Catherine replied gently that He would Himself care for these _bons amis_, and even promised that "before the St. Martin"
relief would come. But Jeanne had probably by this time--in her great disappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so much power to help were she only free--got beyond her own control. They bade her to be patient. One of them, amid their exhortations to accept her fate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyed to her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she had seen the King of England. "Truly I will not see him! I would rather die than fall into the hands of the English," cried Jeanne in her petulance.
The King of England is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as if he had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child he really was. But Jeanne in her helplessness and impotence was impatient even with her saints. Day by day the news came in from Compiegne, all that was favourable to the Burgundians received with joy and thanksgiving by the ladies of Luxembourg, while the captive consumed her heart with vain indignation. At last Jeanne would seem to have wrought herself up to the most desperate of expedients. Whether her room was in the donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the house to mount to the battlements there, we are not informed--probably the latter was the case: for it was from the top of the tower that the rash girl at last flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzy of alarm or sting of evil tidings can never be known. Probably she had hoped that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, and that faith was all that was wanted, as on so many other occasions. Perhaps she had heard of the negotiations to sell her to the English, which would give a keener urgency to her determination to get free; all that appears in the story, however, is her wild anxiety about Compiegne and her _bons amis_.
How she escaped destruction no one knows. She was rescued for a more tremendous and harder fate.
The Maid was taken up as dead from the foot of the tower (the height is estimated at sixty feet); but she was not dead, nor even seriously hurt.
Her frame, so slight that she had been able to slip between the bars put up to secure her, had so little solidity that the shock would seem to have been all that ailed her. She was stunned and unconscious and remained so far some time; and for three days neither ate nor drank. But though she was so humbled by the effects of the fall, "she was comforted by St. Catherine, who bade her confess and implore the mercy of G.o.d" for her rash disobedience--and repeated the promise that before Martinmas Compiegne should be relieved. Jeanne did not perhaps in her rebellion deserve this encouragement; but the heavenly ladies were kind and pitiful and did not stand upon their dignity. The wonderful thing was that Jeanne recovered perfectly from this tremendous leap.
The earthly ladies, though so completely on the other side, were scarcely less kind to the Maid. They visited her daily, carried their news to her, were very friendly and sweet: and no doubt other visitors came to make the acquaintance of a prisoner so wonderful. There was one point on which they were very urgent, and this was about her dress. It shamed and troubled them to see her in the costume of a man. Jeanne had her good reasons for that, which perhaps she did not care to tell them, fearing to shock the ears of a demoiselle of Luxembourg with the suggestion of dangers of which she knew nothing. No doubt it was true that while doing the serious work of war, as she said afterwards, it was best that she should be dressed as a man; but Jeanne had reason to know besides, that it was safer, among the rough comrades and gaolers who now surrounded her, to wear the tight-fitting and firmly fastened dress of a soldier. She answered the ladies and their remonstrances with all the grace of a courtier. Could she have done it she would rather have yielded the point to them, she said, than to any one else in France, except the Queen. The women wherever she went were always faithful to this young creature, so pure-womanly in her young angel-hood and man-hood. The poor followed to kiss her hands or her armour, the rich wooed her with tender flatteries and persuasions. There is not record in all her career of any woman who was not her friend.
For the last dreary month of that winter she was sent to the fortress of Crotoy on the Somme, for what reason we are not told, probably to be more near the English into whose hands she was about to be given up: again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with the Burgundians and not with the English. If Charles I. was sold as we Scots all indignantly deny, the shame of the sale was on our nation, not on England, whom n.o.body has ever blamed for the transaction. The sale of Jeanne was brutally frank. It was indeed a ransom which was paid to Jean of Luxembourg with a share to the first captor, the archer who had secured her; but it was simple blood-money as everybody knew. At Crotoy she had once more the solace of female society, again with much pressing upon her of their own heavy skirts and hanging sleeves. A fellow-prisoner in the dungeon of Crotoy, a priest, said ma.s.s every day and gave her the holy communion. And her mind seems to have been soothed and calmed. Compiegne was relieved; the saints had kept their word: she had that burden the less upon her soul: and over the country there were against stirrings of French valour and success. The day of the Maid was over, but it began to bear the fruit of a national quickening of vigour and life.
It was at Crotoy, in December, that she was transferred to English hands. The eager offer of the University of Paris to see her speedy condemnation had not been accepted, and perhaps the Burgundians had been willing to wait, to see if any ransom was forthcoming from France. Perhaps too, Paris, which sang the _Te Deum_ when she was taken prisoner, began to be a little startled by its own enthusiasm and to ask itself the question what there was to be so thankful about?--a result which has happened before in the history of that impulsive city:--and Paris was too near the centre of France, where the balance seemed to be turning again in favour of the national party, to have its thoughts distracted by such a trial as was impending. It seemed better to the English leaders to conduct their prisoner to a safer place, to the depths of Normandy where they were most strong. They seem to have carried her away in the end of the year, travelling slowly along the coast, and reaching Rouen by way of Eu and Dieppe, as far away as possible from any risk of rescue. She arrived in Rouen in the beginning of the year 1431, having thus been already for nearly eight months in close custody. But there were no further ministrations of kind women for Jeanne. She was now distinctly in the hands of her enemies, those who had no sympathy or natural softening of feeling towards her.
The severities inflicted upon her in her new prison at Rouen were terrible, almost incredible. We are told that she was kept in an iron cage (like the Countess of Buchan in earlier days by Edward I.), bound hands, and feet, and throat, to a pillar, and watched incessantly by English soldiers--the latter being an abominable and hideous method of torture which was never departed from during the rest of her life.
Afterwards, at the beginning of her trial she was relieved from the cage, but never from the presence and scrutiny of this fierce and hateful bodyguard. Such detestable cruelties were in the manner of the time, which does not make us the less sicken at them with burning indignation and the rage of shame. For this aggravation of her sufferings England alone was responsible. The Burgundians at their worst had not used her so. It is true that she was to them a piece of valuable property worth so much good money; which is a powerful argument everywhere. But to the English she meant no money: no one offered to ransom Jeanne on the side of her own party, for whom she had done so much. Even at Tours and Orleans, so far as appears, there was no subscription--to speak in modern terms,--no cry among the burghers to gather their crowns for her redemption--not a word, not an effort, only a barefooted procession, a ma.s.s, a Miserere, which had no issue. France stood silent to see what would come of it; and her scholars and divines swarmed towards Rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should come of it to the ignorant country la.s.s, who had set up such pretences of knowing better than others. The King congratulated himself that he had another prophetess as good as she, and a Heaven-sent boy from the mountains who would do as well and better than Jeanne. Where was Dunois?
Where was La Hire,(1) a soldier bound by no conventions, a captain whose troop went like the wind where it listed, and whose valour was known?
Where was young Guy de Laval, so ready to sell his lands that his men might be fit for service? All silent; no man drawing a sword or saying a word. It is evident that in this frightful pause of fate, Jeanne had become to France as to England, the Witch whom it was perhaps a danger to have had anything to do with, whose spells had turned the world upside down for a moment: but these spells had become ineffectual or worn out as is the nature of sorcery. No explanation, not even the well-worn and so often valid one of human baseness, could explain the terrible situation, if not this.
(1) La Hire was at Louvain, which we hear a little later the new English levies would not march to besiege till the Maid was dead, and where Dunois joined him in March of this fatal year. These two at Louvain within a few leagues of Rouen and not a sword drawn for Jeanne!--the wonder grows.
CHAPTER XI -- THE JUDGES. 1431.
The name of Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, appears to us at this long distance as arising out of the infernal mists, into which, when his ministry of shame was accomplished, he disappeared again, bearing with him nothing but hatred and ill fame. Yet in his own day and to his contemporaries, he was not an inconsiderable man. He was of Rheims, a great student, and excellent scholar, the friend of many good men, highly esteemed among the ranks of the learned, a good man of business, which is not always the attribute of a scholar, and at the same time a Burgundian of p.r.o.nounced sentiments, holding for his Duke, against the King. When Beauvais was summoned by Charles, after his coronation, at that moment of universal triumph when all seemed open for him to march upon Paris if he would, the city had joyfully thrown open its doors to the royal army, and in doing so had driven out its Bishop, who was hot on the other side. He would not seem to have been wanted in Paris at that moment. The "triste Bedford," as Michelet calls him, had no means of employing an ambitious priest, no dirty work for the moment to give him. It is natural to suppose that a man so admirably adapted for that employment went in search of it to the ecclesiastical court, not beloved of England, which the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester held there.
Winchester was the only one of the House of Lancaster who had money to carry on the government either at home or abroad. The two priests, as the historians are always pleased to insinuate in respect to ecclesiastics, soon understood each other, and Winchester became aware that he had in Cauchon a tool ready for any shameful enterprise. It is not, however, necessary to a.s.sume so much as this, for we have not the least reason to believe that either one or the other of them had the slightest doubt on the subject of Jeanne, or as to her character. She was a pernicious witch, filling a hitherto invincible army with that savage fright which is but too well understood among men, and which produces cruel outrages as well as cowardly panic. The air of this very day, while I write, is ringing with the story of a woman burnt to death by her own family under the influence of that same horrible panic and terror. Cauchon was the countryman, almost the _pays_--an untranslatable expression,--of Jeanne; but he did not believe in her any more than the loftier ecclesiastics of France believed in Bernadette of Lourdes, who was of the spiritual lineage of Jeanne, nor than we should believe to-day in a similar pretender. It seems unnecessary then to think of dark plots hatched between these two dark priests against the white, angelic apparition of the Maid.
What services Cauchon had done to recommend him to the favour of Winchester we are not told, but he was so much in favour that the Cardinal had recommended him to the Pope for the vacant archbishopric of Rouen a few months before there was any immediate question of Jeanne.
The appointment was opposed by the clergy of Rouen, and the Pope had not come to any decision as yet on the subject. But no doubt the ambition of Cauchon made him very eager, with such a tempting prize before him, to recommend himself to his English patron by every means in his power. And he it was who undertook the office of negotiating the ransom of Jeanne from the hands of Jean de Luxembourg. We doubt whether after all it would be just even to call this a nefarious bargain. To the careless seigneur it would probably be very much a matter of course. The ransom offered--six thousand francs--was as good as if she had been a prince.
The ladies at home might be indignant, but what was their foolish fancy for a high-flown girl in comparison with these substantial crowns in his pocket; and to be free from the responsibility of guarding her would be an advantage too. And if her own party did not stir on her behalf, why should he? A most pertinent question. Cauchon, on the other hand, could a.s.sure all objectors that no summary vengeance was to be taken on the Maid. She was to be judged by the Church, and by the best men the University could provide, and if she were found innocent, no doubt would go free.