Joan of Arc

by Regine Pernoud

  So resounding was the exploit at Orleans that it rallied to Charles VII’s cause certain notabilities who had hitherto been hesitating to embrace it. For example, the Duke of Brittany sent a religious, his confessor, and a herald to congratulate him upon his victory; this fact is known to us by means of a register of accounts which was formerly preserved in the Nantes Archives of the Chamber of Accounts; and also from a German chronicle of the times, composed by the Emperor Sigismund’s treasurer, Eberhard of Windecken; this official had all the emperor’s official correspondence through his hands, and he made good use of it. It is he who tells how “the Duke of Brittany sent his confessor to the girl to question her whether it was by God that she was come to succour the King. The girl answered ‘Yes’. Then the confessor said: ‘If it be so, my lord the duke of Brittany is disposed to come to the King’s aid with his service’, and he called the duke her right lord. ‘He cannot come in his proper person’, he added, ‘for he is in a great state of infirmity, but he can send his eldest son with a great army.’ Then the girl said to the confessor that the duke of Brittany was not her right lord, for it was the King who was her right lord, and that the duke should not reasonably have waited so long to send his men to help the King with their services.” (German text and translation in Q. v, 498)

  Nor was a note of comedy missing from the concert of praise: the capitouls, municipal councillors, of the city of Toulouse, then very embarrassed by the state of the city’s finances, decided, in the course of their meeting of June 2nd, to write to the Maid, “explaining to her the inconveniences of money changing and asking her what remedy to apply”. . . . Joan seemed to them to be a sort of magician whose abilities must be universal! In the same spirit, Bonne de Visconti, Duchess of Milan, wrote asking her to restore her to the possession of her duchy. And then there was the case of the Duke of Armagnac who wrote her a letter which was to be exploited by the judges at her Trial of Condemnation, asking her which of the three popes at that time claiming to be the rightful sovereign pontiff ought to be considered the true head of Christianity. The duke had an axe to grind; he had supported two anti-popes in succession and had been placed under an interdict by the legitimate pope, Martin V.

  Furthermore, while the deliverance of Orleans had a tremendous importance for the French, its effect was no less great on the English and Burgundian side. Its extent can be measured by the fact that in the course of the following year, on May 3rd and December 12, 1430, two mandates were published “against the captains and soldiers, deserters terrified by the Maid’s enchantments”. These mandates were proclaimed in the name of the infant King of England by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester.

  As for the Regent himself, John, Duke of Bedford, his feelings are known to us from a letter which he wrote in 1434, summing up events in France for his nephew the King of England:

  “And alle thing there prospered for you, til thety me of the siege of Orleans taken in hand, God knoweth by what advis. At the whiche tyme, after the adventure fallen to the persone of my cousin of Salysbury, whom God assoille, there felle, by the hand of God, as it seemeth, a greet strook upon your peuple that was assembled there in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadde beleve, and of unlevefulle doubte that thei hadde of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fais enchauntements and sorcerie. The which strooke and discomfiture nought oonly lessed in grete partie the nombre of youre people, there, but as well withdrowe the courage of the remenant in merveillous wyse, and couraiged youre adverse partie and ennemys to assemble hem forthwith in grete nombre.”

  Clearly from the beginning of these events the English were desirous of attributing Joan’s victories to “enchantments and sorceries”. Which is what the judges at her trial tried to establish, though without success as we shall see.

  As for the “foresworn Frenchmen” . . . or, as we should say nowadays, collaborators, their feelings are known to us by those of, among others, a man who can be taken as being thoroughly representative, to wit that “Bourgeois of Paris”, who was, in reality, a clerk of the University of Paris which Bedford had taken good care to pack with his creatures, and who wrote a Journal kept from day to day throughout the whole course of events. In 1429 he wrote as follows:

  “There was then on the Loire a Maid, as she was called, who claimed to be a prophet and who said: ‘Such-and-such a thing will surely happen’. She was against the regent of France and his allies. It is said that despite the siege she entered into Orleans at the head of a host of Armagnacs with a great quantity of victuals, and that the English made no move, although she was at a bow-shot or two and despite so great a want of sustenance that one man had eaten three silver coins’ worth of bread at least at his meal. And those who preferred the Armagnacs to the Burgundians and to the regent of France said of her many other things: they affirmed that as a little child she kept the sheep and that the birds of the woods and fields came to her call to eat bread from her lap, as if tamed.

  “In that time the Armagnacs raised the siege of Orleans from which they drove the English, then marched on Vendome which they took, it was said. This Maid in arms accompanied them everywhere, bearing her standard on which was inscribed only ‘Jesus’. It was said that she had told an English captain to abandon the siege with his troop otherwise would happen to them only ill and shame. And this captain had much insulted her, calling her, for example, a ribald woman and a whore. She answered that they would all depart swiftly despite themselves, but that he would no longer be there to see it and that a great part of his troop would likewise be killed. It was so for he drowned himself on the day of battle.” (The allusion is to William Glasdale.) (Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris de 1405 à 1449, Ed. J. Megret, p. 90)

  The Burgundian chroniclers give a correct account of the facts touching the siege of Orleans, but do their best to run down Joan herself. We quote, as representative, Enguerrand de Monstrelet, a bastard of good family in the personal service of Philippe the Good, Duke of Burgundy, from 1430:

  “In the year (1429) came to the King Charles of France at Chinon, where he dwelt a great part of the time, a Maid aged twenty years or thereabouts, named Joan, she being attired and dressed as a man and was born in a part between Burgundy and Lorraine, in a town called Domremy quite close to Vaucouleurs; the which Joan was long serving-maid in a hostelry and was bold in riding horses and taking them to water and also in other skills which young girls are not accustomed to do. She was put on the road and sent towards the King by a knight called messire Robert of Baudricourt, a captain of the King, at Vaucouleurs, which knight gave her horses and four or five companions. She said that she was a maid inspired by divine grace and that she was sent to the King to restore him to the possession of his kingdom. . . .” (Q. iv, 361 et seq., after the MS in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Fr. No. 8. 346)

  And here is a piece of evidence all the more valuable in that it comes from foreigners not directly involved or interested in the strife but who, owing to their situation, were particularly well informed. Our witness is the agent of a great Venetian commercial house, the Morosini—a square in Venice still bears their name. In the fifteenth century their house of business was one of the most important of the Republic, with branches all over Europe. The branch in Bruges, at the time a principal centre for West European trade, was directed by Pancrazio Giustiniani, himself a member of another great Venetian family. It happens that the head of the central office, Antonio Morosini, preserved letters and news from his agents in a Journal: the firm dealt, among other things, in arms, and it was important for him to be kept in touch with the political situation in a Europe in which the armourers had good reason to be flourishing.

  On June 18, 1429, he transcribed into his Journal a letter which had been written to him from Bruges during May, probably about May 20th, since couriers took from twenty to twenty-five days to travel from Flanders to Venice. The letter was from Giustiniani:

  “Fifteen days ago, and since then also, the
re has been much talk of prophecies found in Paris and other things touching the dauphin . . . especially in the matter of a maid, a shepherdess, born near the confines of Lorraine. A month and a half ago she went to the dauphin; she wished to speak to him alone, to the exclusion of anyone else. She told him . . . that he should make a military effort, throw victuals into Orleans, and give battle to the English; that he would certainly be victorious and the siege of the town would be raised. . . . An Englishman called Lawrence Trent, whom Marino knew well, honest and discreet, wrote of all this, seeing what so many men, albeit honourable and in all good faith, were writing in their letters: ‘This is driving me mad.’ He adds, as an eye-witness, that many barons hold her in esteem as well as many of the common people. . . . Her incontestable victory in the argument with the masters of theology makes her like another Saint Catherine come down to earth. Many knights, hearing her argue and say every day so many admirable things, say that here is a great miracle.” (See R. Herval, Jeanne d’ Arc et ses témoins vénitiens, in Revue des sociétés savantes de Haute Normandie, No. 19, 1960, p. 7.)

  A little later, on June 23rd, Antonio Morosini copied another letter into his Journal, this time from his Avignon correspondent:

  “This damsel told messire the dauphin that she would go to Rheims to cause him to assume the crown of all France; and we know that all she has said has always come to pass, that her words are always confirmed by the event. She is in truth come to accomplish magnificent things in this world.”

  It should be noted here, while on the subject of the resounding impression made by the exploit of Orleans, that already pro- and anti-Joan parties were appearing clearly in France. And that already the “renegade Frenchmen”, those who had espoused the enemy’s cause, were giving expression to their hostility by the mouth of the University of Paris. In May a memorandum drawn up by a clerk of the university, but which has not been preserved, was accusing Joan of heresy; and it may have been in defence of her and in reply to this libelle that Jean Gerson, former Chancellor of the University but still loyal to the French King, composed the work we have already referred to; or it may be that this work was called for by the Poitiers doctors themselves. At all events Gerson’s work—his last since he was to die on July 12, 1429—was very soon in circulation, as indeed were all the writings of that eminent man. Thus it was that, at the end of the year 1429, Giustiniani was writing:

  “I have recently had occasion to be talking of this affair with certain religious. As I understand it, the University of Paris, or rather the enemies of the King, have had her accused—I mean, this maid—of heresy at Rome before the pope. Likewise for those who believe in her. They accuse her of sinning against the faith because she insists on being believed and can foresee the future. But the chancellor of the university, who is a most learned man and a doctor of theology, has composed in honour, in the defence and in praise of the said maid, a very fine work which I send you with the present letter. I think that messire the Doge, as well as many others, will take great pleasure in it.” (Op. cit. p. 12)

  Finally, we will quote Jean Pasquerel, who sums up the impressions made by Joan’s victory:

  “It was said to her: Never have been seen such things as you have been seen to do; in no book are to be read of deeds like them.” (R.183)

  COMMENTARY

  Why was Joan always called the Maid of Orleans, unless because she did indeed belong to the House of Orleans of which she was a bastard daughter?

  The fact is, however, that there is another reason why Joan could rightfully be called “the Maid of Orleans”; or that, at least, is what emerges from a study of contemporary texts. For, after all, the deliverance of the city did not seem an ordinary or easy thing to the people of that time; and the merit of it is universally attributed to Joan. We have quoted only the principal texts and facts which, immediately following the victory of May 8, 1429, demonstrate the gratitude felt by the people of Orleans, a gratitude which has remained a living feeling even into our own times. But examples could be multiplied: for one, there was the composition of a Mystery of the Siege of Orleans in twenty-five thousand lines of verse, a manuscript copy of which is to be found in the Vatican Library. (See Q. iv, 79)

  Again, as early as the fifteenth century, probably in the reign of Louis XI, a monument was erected on the Orleans bridge itself, cast in bronze and showing Charles VII and Joan kneeling at the foot of a Calvary. A Dutchman who passed through Orleans while travelling in France in 1560 described it (Q. iv, 448) before it was destroyed, for the first time, by the Huguenots in 1567. We still have the accounts of the cost of restoring it in 1571 (Q. v, 222–225); likewise, the banner which was brought out to be carried in the May 8th procession, and which also shows Joan kneeling at the foot of a crucifix, is preserved at the Musée Historique of the Orléanais.

  There were, then, many reasons why Joan should have been called “the Maid of Orleans”. But as a matter of fact she was never so called in her lifetime. On this subject, the detailed study made by the historian Edouard Bruley should be read. (Sur l’expression Pucelle d’Orleans, Bul. de la Soc. Arch. et Hist. de l’Orléanais, Vol. XXIII, 1939, No. 237.) This author took the trouble to examine every manuscript cited as a basis for justifying this epithet: every time the term “Maid of Orleans” appears, it is only as a title added subsequently, in a different and later hand, whereas in the original account Joan is referred to simply and only as “The Maid”. That was the only epithet by which she was known to her contemporaries. This piece of research wipes out all the deductions which had been based on an epithet which did not, in fact, become current until the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Edouard Bruley has shown that the oldest work in which the epithet is used is “an allegorical work written in about 1552 and published in 1555: Le Fort inexpugnable de l’honneur du sexe féminin construit par François de Billon secrétaire” (op. cit.). In that work, on folio 47, the author refers to “the very courageous maid, Joan, called of Orleans”.

  Attempts have also been made to draw inferences from the fact that Joan received a livery bearing the Orleans arms as a gift. They overlook the fact that gifts of such livery, bearing the arms of the lord for whom they had fought, were common form during the Middle Ages; moreover, at the time a gift of clothes was a common practice quite apart from any question of rewarding a military exploit; from the time of Charlemagne there are innumerable cases of princes making a present of robes, mantles, cloaks or other such gear. It will suffice here if we quote a few examples from Joan’s own epoch: for the New Year in 1400, Charles VI ordered three hundred and fifty surcoats in his colours and bearing his arms, as gifts for his courtiers; we can hardly infer that all three hundred and fifty recipients were his bastards. (See M. Defourneaux, La Vie quotidienne au temps de Jeanne d’Arc.) Louis d’Orleans did the same thing in 1404. And in the very complete accounts which we possess of the Duke of Burgundy’s household expenses (Philippe the Bold), similar gifts appear repeatedly: 1378, gift of clothes to all the knights of his suite for the emperor’s visit; in 1390 the Dukes of Burgundy and of Nevers (John the Fearless) gave green taffeta tunics bearing the Burgundian arms to eight knights and fifty esquires for their appearance in the jousting tournament organised by the King at St. Denis. (See E. Petit, Itineraire de Philippe le Hardi, notably on pp. 480, 506, 521, 529, 531, 536, 542, 546, 549, 552 . . . which show gifts of clothes specifying whether or not they are to bear the donor’s arms.)

  So that, here again, the mistake of giving the gift of clothes to Joan a special significance derives from ignorance of the customs of her time.

  A word should also be said here touching the lease of a house in the rue des Petits-Souliers, at Orleans, long supposed to have been taken by Joan. The mistake derives here from a simple misreading; the word which was taken to be Pucelle is, in fact, Pinelle, the wife of the Jean Pinel named later in the document. The correction was made by Eugene Jarry as early as 1908. (See the 1908 Bulletin de la Soc. Arch. et Hist. de l’Orleanais.)
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  Of more validity in the eyes of historians than all this supposed evidence for Joan’s “bastardy” are the arguments about the numbers of fighting men and weapons confronting each other in the two armies at Orleans. But although floods of ink have been consumed over this question, there can be no certain conclusion. It will have been clear from the texts we have quoted that inexactitude was the rule in the matter of figures as of dates. We must repeat that what we have here is a radical difference between the civilization of the Middle Ages and our own. We are accustomed to see even the time taken to run a race, the motions of factory workers, exactly measured; and to see the humblest domestic chores converted into statistics. In Joan’s day, on the other hand, the actions of daily life were regulated, whether hourly or yearly, by the course of the sun. There was a beginning—for example, after Agincourt, at least on the English side—of the practice of taking some account of numbers, after battle; but it was rarely done and the figures were far from exact. In the case of Orleans we are even short of basic facts and figures; moreover, in order to strike a balance we should have to take into account factors which we have no means of evaluating; for example, the means of defence were, at the time, very superior to the means of attack (again, contrary to the state of affairs in our own time). That, indeed, is why sieges lasted so long and why the taking of a “bastion” did not depend solely upon the numbers attacking and defending respectively.

  A theory has also been put forward to the effect that the Orleans victory might have been a feat of arms carefully prepared in advance by Charles VII to raise his prestige in the eyes of his contemporaries. According to this opinion, he is supposed to have sent for a “shepherdess” who was carefully tutored and prepared for the part she must play, and thereafter contrived a victory for her, actually won by his usual captains, simply in order to have everyone crying out that it was a miracle. It must be confessed that if this be true then Charles VII must have had an imagination without equal before or since; must have solved a military problem in a manner quite unprecedented; and must have been gifted with miraculous foresight since he would have had to foresee the siege of Orleans: eight months would hardly have been time enough in which to train a girl for so difficult a role and to arrange, at a distance too, all the necessary complicities. And it is surely rather surprising to find him, after all this, making hardly any use of his idea at all: the slight mention which he makes of the Maid, in the circular letter announcing the good news to his loyal towns, seems rather pitiful after all the Machiavellic devices which must have been required.