Joan of Arc
Page 19
JOAN: I had heard say that all they of Compiègne down to the age of seven years were to be put to fire and to blood, and I preferred to die rather than live after such destruction of good people, and that was one of the causes of my leaping. And the other was that I knew that I was sold to the English and I would rather have died than to be in the hands of the English, my adversaries.
Question: Did you make that leap on the advice of your voices?
JOAN: Catherine told me almost every day that I must not leap and that God would help me and also them of Compiègne. And I said to Saint Catherine that since God would help them of Compiègne, I myself would (like to) be there. Then Saint Catherine said to me: “Without fail, you must accept your lot (be resigned, take what is happening in good part), and you will not be delivered until you have seen the king of the English.” And I answered her: “Truly, I would rather not see him, and I would rather die than be put into the hands of the English.”
Question: Did you say, to Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, these words: “Will God let the good people of Compiègne die in so wicked a way (si mauvaisement)”?
JOAN: I did not say the word “si mauvaisement”, but I said: “How can God let the good people of Compiègne die, who have been so faithful to their Lord?” After I had fallen from the tower I was, during two or three days, without will to eat. And I was so hurt in that leap that I could neither eat nor drink. And meanwhile I had comfort from Saint Catherine who told me that I should confess and ask forgiveness of God for having leapt, and that without fail the people of Compiègne would have succour before the feast of Saint Martin of the winter. Then I began to return to health and I began to eat and soon I was cured.
Question: When you leapt did you think to kill yourself?
JOAN: No, in leaping I commended myself to God, and I thought in making that leap to escape so that I should not be delivered over to the English. (C.143–145)
Of the time when she was a prisoner we have but little evidence. However, in the course of the Trial of Rehabilitation a Burgundian knight gave evidence. This was Haimond de Macy who was in John of Luxembourg’s service:
“I saw Joan for the first time when she was shut up in the castle of Beaurevoir for the lord count of Ligny (John of Luxembourg). I saw her several (many) times in prison and on several occasions conversed with her. I tried several times, playfully, to touch her breasts, trying to put my hand on her chest, the which Joan would not suffer but repulsed me with all her strength. Joan was, indeed, of decent conduct (honnête tenue) both in speech and act.
“Joan was taken to the castle of Crotoy where was held prisoner a man altogether notable, called master Nicholas de Queuville, chancellor of the church of Amiens, doctor of both civil and canon law, who often celebrated mass in the prison, and Joan, the most often, heard his mass. I later heard this master Nicholas say that he had heard Joan’s confession and that she was a good Christian and very pious. He spoke much good of Joan.” (R.186)
At Beaurevoir lived John of Luxembourg’s wife, Jeanne de Béthune, and his aunt, the aged Demoiselle de Luxembourg, who was to die before Joan herself, on November 13, 1430. These two women seem to have shown Joan some kindness and she remembered them with affection.
Question: Were you required at Beaurevoir (to wear women’s clothes)?
JOAN: Yes, truly, and I answered that I would not change clothes without the permission of Our Lord. The demoiselle of Luxembourg and the lady of Beaurevoir offered me a woman’s dress or the stuff to make one, asking me to wear that habit, and I answered that I had not permission from God and that it was not yet time. . . . Had it been that I was to wear women’s clothes, I should have done so more willingly at the request of those women than of any other woman in all France excepting my queen. . . . The lady of Luxembourg had requested my lord of Luxembourg that I be not delivered up to the English.
Joan was to remain in the fortress of Beaurevoir until the end of November 1430. In the meantime the English had not been inactive; they wanted the prisoner handed over to them. To handle the negotiations they applied to a man whose antecedents rendered him particularly apt for the work, the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. In 1430 he was about sixty years of age, and he had had a brilliant career both as a diplomat and as a university man. He had been Rector of the University of Paris as early as 1403, and he had played a leading role throughout the troubles as a result of which the university had taken the Burgundian side against the Armagnacs. In 1419, at the time when the theory of the double monarchy was being worked out at the university, which placed the two kingdoms of France and England under the single crown of England, Cauchon was conservator of the university privileges. He was one of the negotiators appointed for the famous Treaty of Troyes, and immediately thereafter, on August 21, 1420, he was made Bishop of Beauvais. In 1424 he received the capitulation of the town of Vitry on behalf of the King of England; the town had succumbed despite the defence put up by La Hire, one of the captains who was to find himself fighting at Joan’s side five years later. It is not difficult to imagine what Cauchon must have felt about the year 1429, in which he had been forced to flee first from Rheims, where he was living just before the coronation and where he had conducted the Fête-Dieu ceremonies, then from Beauvais when that town opened its gates to Charles VII. The negotiations entrusted to him would enable him both to avenge himself for that double humiliation and to vindicate the political theories dear to the heart of the Paris University men, and which he maintained throughout the whole course of his life. Checked in its progress by Joan’s dazzling campaign and by the sacring of Charles VII at Rheims, the double-monarchy theory would recover all its prestige if it could be shown that the instrument of the French cause was nothing but a wretched heretic and a witch. There was another and still secret stimulus to his activity as a negotiator: the archbishopric of Rouen had recently fallen vacant and he, driven out of his own diocese, had good hopes of obtaining the preferment as a reward for his good offices.
The news of Joan’s capture was, as we have seen, known in Paris on May 25 and recorded under that date in the Register of the Parliament. On the following day, May 26, the University of Paris sent a letter to the Duke of Burgundy, in the name of the Inquisitor of France, asking that Joan be handed over to him.
“Whereas all faithful Christian princes and all other true Catholics are required to extirpate all errors arising against the faith and the scandals which they entail among the simple Christian people, and that it be now of common renown that by a certain woman named Joan whom the adversaries of this kingdom call the Maid, have been in several cities, good towns and other places of this kingdom, broadcast* and published . . . diverse errors . . . we implore you of good affection, you, most puissant prince . . . that the soonest and most safely and conveniently it can be done, be sent and brought prisoner to us the said Joan, vehemently suspected of many crimes smacking of heresy, to appear before us and a procurator of the Holy Inquisitor, to answer and proceed as in reason bound with the good council, favour and aid of the good doctors and masters of the University of Paris and other notable councillors.” (C.8–9)
On July the 14th following the university wrote, this time in its own name, to John of Luxembourg and to the Duke of Burgundy himself. And Pierre Cauchon appeared in person before John of Luxembourg, in the camp outside Compiègne, with letters of summons from the University requiring Joan to be delivered to him.
“It is by this (these presents) that it is required by the Bishop of Beauvais of my lord the Duke of Burgundy and of my lord John of Luxembourg and of the Bastard of Wandomme, in the name and on behalf of the King our sire and on his own behalf as Bishop of Beauvais: that the woman who is commonly called Joan the Maid, prisoner, be sent to the King to be delivered over to the Church to hold her trial because she is suspected and defamed to have committed many crimes, sortileges, idolatry, invocations of enemies (devils) and other several cases touching our faith and against that faith.” (C.90)
&
nbsp; He offered, on behalf of the King of England, a sum of six thousand francs to those who had captured Joan, and to the Bastard of Wandomme a pension of between three and four hundred livres; for her actual ransom the sum of ten thousand francs was offered.
As we can see, neither time nor money were spared. And to this activity on the part of the English government the King of France opposed only a complete inertia. It is true that in Antonio Morosini’s Journal we find references to a rumour passed on to him by a kinsman living in Bruges that Charles VII had instructed the Burgundians “that they should not for anything in the world lend themselves to such a transaction or, if they did, he would inflict similar treatment on those of their party whom he had in his hands”. (Herval, p. 14) And in the university’s letter to John of Luxembourg we read that it could happen “that this woman be delivered or lost, for it is said that some of the adversaries (i.e., of the King of England) are doing all in their power to accomplish and apply to that end all their understanding by extraordinary means and what is worse by money or ransom”. (C.7) These are the only allusions, remote and indirect, to any effort the King of France might be making to save the girl to whom he owed his crown.
But need we be surprised? Contemporary accounts of Charles VII agree in showing him to have been of weak character and in telling us that he was “of a changeable condition”. “There were frequent and diverse changes about his person, for it was his custom . . . when a man had raised himself high beside him, to the summit of the wheel, then he began to be troubled by it, and, on the first occasion which might give it countenance, readily reversed the wheel from high to low.” Georges Chastellain, to whom we owe this portrait, adds that he “savoured of the fruit all he could suck from it”. Moreover, it can be seen that the King was very careful to foster his own fame whenever he had a chance to do so: after the recovery of his kingdom he had innumerable medals struck on which he is entitled “Charles the Victorious”. It may be, after all, that once, contrary to all expectation, he had received that crown and sacring which made him King of France, he was not sorry to see her to whom he owed them put out of the way.
Furthermore, there were not wanting envious persons in his entourage who might even go so far as to rejoice over Joan’s capture. Most notable among these was the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres, who was hand-in-glove with La Trémoille and who was, as we have noted, at the head of the delegation which had presented itself to the Duke of Burgundy exactly one month after the sacring, at Arras, and, unknown to Joan, to sign the truces, which were a betrayal of the Maid. Events had shown his policy to have been wrong, and one may well wonder whether he did not bear Joan a grudge because he had been forced, willy nilly, to recognize that he had been duped in those negotiations and to come round to her view when it again became apparent that armed force alone would be effective. We have a reference to a letter which he had written to his diocesans in which he insinuates that “God had suffered that Joan the Maid be taken because she had puffed herself up with pride and because of the rich garments which she had adopted, and because she had not done what God had commanded her, but had done her own will”. (Q. v, 169)
The negotiations touching Joan were to keep Cauchon busy for more than four months as we know from the receipt which he signed for Pierre Surreau, Receiver General of Normandy, declaring that he had received the sum of seven hundred and sixty-five pounds tournois “for seven score and thirteen days which we affirm to have spent in the service of the King our lord for his business, both in the town of Calais and in several journeys going to my lord the duke of Burgundy or to messire John of Luxembourg in Flanders, to the siege before Compiègne, to Beaurevoir, for the matter of Joan called the Maid, as for several other tasks and business of the King, our sire”. Cauchon was, in fact, one of those men who know how to get their services well paid for: the diverse prebends and benefices which he accumulated represent about two thousand livres per annum.
One of the very few clerics of Rouen who had persisted in resistance to all political pressure, Nicholas de Houppville deposed, at the Trial of Rehabilitation, how he had seen Cauchon return from his various embassies and with what joy he had given an account of his transactions:
“I know very well,” he said on that occasion, “that Joan was brought to this city of Rouen by the English and that she was put in prison in the castle of Rouen; the trial was held at the expense of the English, as I believe. As to fears and pressures, I believe no such thing as far as the judges are concerned; I think that on the contrary they did it voluntarily, and above all the Bishop of Beauvais whom I saw return after he had been to fetch her, and give an account of his embassy to the King and the lord of Warwick, saying with joy and exultation words which I did not understand. Then he spoke later in secret with the lord of Warwick; what he said to him I know nothing about.” (R.261-262)
Joan’s last long journey was to take her from the castle of Beaurevoir to Rouen, where she was to stand trial for heresy. The University of Paris would have liked this trial to be held in Paris, but Paris was much too exposed, too close to territory recently given back to the King of France. Whereas in Rouen the English felt quite sure of themselves, for Normandy had been a fief of the English crown for two centuries. The town had been in their possession for ten years, and it was there that the King of England resided with his tutor, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick.
The moment of Joan’s delivery to the English coincided with the death of “the lady of Luxembourg” whom her nephew, John, Count of Luxembourg-Ligny, had probably hesitated to offend. It was at Arras that she was put into the charge of an English escort; she was then taken to the strong castle of Crotoy. A contemporary chronicle, Jean de la Chapelle’s, says that she spent one night at the castle of Drugy near Saint-Riquier abbey. He was himself almoner of the abbey at the time, and he went with the provost of the same abbey, master Nicholas Bourdon, to visit Joan. (Q. v, 360). Studies of the tidal movements in the Somme bay have made it possible to determine when it was possible to cross the bay: Joan must have crossed it at about nine in the morning on December 20, 1430, to land at Saint Valery. The two gates of the town, the porte du Bas now called the porte de Nevers, and the porte du Haut now called the porte Guillaume, are still there. From there she must have been taken to the castle of Eu, going thence by way of Dieppe and Bosc-le-Haut to arrive at night-fall of December 23 in Rouen. There she was imprisoned in the castle of Bouvreuil under the guard of English gaolers.
On November 21st, when Joan was handed over to the English, the University of Paris had sent another letter to the King of England, signifying the joy felt by the worthy masters of that University on hearing that she was at last in the King’s hands:
“To the most excellent prince, King of France and England. . . . We have newly heard that into your power is now delivered the woman called the Maid, at which are we mighty joyous, confident that by your good order this woman will be brought to justice for the repairing of the great malifices and scandals notoriously come about in this kingdom on her account, to the great prejudice of the divine honour, of our holy faith and of all your good people.”
They ask that the mission of judging her be given to the Bishop of Beauvais and the Inquisitor of France, and it is at this point that they express the wish that she be judged in Paris. The King of England, as we have seen, was to decide otherwise, but was in agreement that the Bishop of Beauvais should be her judge. In principle a heretic was supposed to be judged by the bishop of his or her place of birth, or in the diocese where the heresy had been committed. The pretext, in this case, whereby it was possible to make Cauchon her judge, was that she had been taken at Compiègne which came into the diocese of Beauvais. But there was a difficulty: Cauchon, as Bishop of Beauvais, had no right to act as a judge in Rouen. But on the twenty-eighth of the previous December Bedford had made the chapter of Rouen grant him a “commission of territory” which enabled him to get round this rule.
A letter of January 3rd, writt
en in the name of the king of England, stated: “It is our intention to recover and take back to ourselves that Joan if so be that she be not convicted or attainted of the case (of heresy) or other touching or regarding our faith.” (C.15) This makes it quite clear that whatever the outcome of the trial the English intended to keep the prisoner. The duplicity of the trial is thus exposed: in theory Joan was judged by the Church in a matter of heresy; in point of fact she was simply a prisoner-of-war whose fate depended on the English government.
For that matter the political character of the Rouen trial was not doubted even at the time. When, during the later Trial of Rehabilitation, lips were unsealed—Rouen having at last been liberated after thirty years of occupation by the English—the evidence on that subject was unanimous. We will, to begin with, quote the evidence given by the notaries, or as we should say, clerks, appointed to make a written record of the Trial of Condemnation.
Guillaume Manchon: “Whether the judges proceeded from hate or otherwise, I leave to their conscience. I know however and firmly believe that had she been on the English side they would not have treated her so and would not have brought such proceedings against her. She was, indeed, brought to the town of Rouen and not to Paris because, as I believe, the King of England was in the town of Rouen as were the principal men of his council, and she was placed in the prisons of the castle of Rouen. I was forced, in that business, to act as notary, and I did it in spite of myself, for I would not have dared to go against the order of the lords of the King’s council. And the English pursued this trial and it was at their expense that it was prepared. I believe, however, that the Bishop of Beauvais was not obliged to conduct this trial against Joan, nor was the promoter Jean d’Estivet. But it was voluntarily that they did it. As for the assessors and other councillors, I believe that they would not have dared contradict (refuse), and there was nobody who went not in fear.” (R.193–197)