Jean Riquier: “It was commonly said that the English did not dare lay siege to Louviers until Joan was dead. . . . Among others I heard Master Pierre Maurice, and Nicolas Loiseleur and others whom I no longer remember, say that the English so feared her that they did not dare, while she still lived, lay siege to Louviers, and that it was necessary to humour them, that a trial would be quickly made against her and that therein they would find occasion for her death.” (R.194)
This remark was also reported by Brother Jean Toutmouillé: “Before her death the English were proposing to lay siege to Louviers, but soon ate their words, saying that they would not besiege the town until the Maid had been examined. Of which what follows is manifest proof, for immediately after her burning, they went and set siege to Louviers, estimating that never in her lifetime would they get glory or prosperity in deeds of war.” (R.194)
This was also the opinion of another witness, prior of the convent of Saint-Michel near Rouen, who had not personally taken any part in the trial but who, inhabiting Rouen, had followed the whole business from outside.
Thomas Marie: “As Joan had done wonders in the war and as the English are generally superstitious, they thought that there was in her something of magic. That was why, as I believe, in all their councils and otherwise, they desired her death.”
Question: How do you know that the English are superstitious? THOMAS MARIE: Everyone knows it, it is even a current proverb.* (R.191)
Meanwhile, the University of Paris and Bedford himself, acting for the King of England, hastened to make known to all that Joan had died at the stake as a heretic. An official letter from the King was sent “to the emperor, to the King, to the dukes and other princes and all Christendom, 8th June 1431 (text in C.423-426); it is written in Latin, the European language and the language of all official documents. Another letter, dated June 28th, was written in French and sent to “the prelates of the Church, to the dukes, counts and other nobles and cities of the Kingdom of France”; it was only a translation of the other one but it was important that to the French people of France it be written in their own language. The letter sums up the events following which “This woman, who had herself called Joan the Maid, had, for two years and more, against divine law and her condition as of the feminine sex, worn male attire, a thing abominable to God, and in that state conveyed to our capital enemy, to whom and to those of his party, Churchmen, nobles and common people, she gave it often to be understood that she was sent by God.”
The trial and the Saint-Ouen “abjuration” were next described, after which “. . . for the which things, according to what the judgments and institutions of holy Church ordain, in order that henceforth she contaminate not the other members of Jesus Christ, she was forthwith preached to publicly and as a backslider into the crimes and faults to her habitual, abandoned to secular justice which without delay condemned her to be burned.”
The University of Paris, meanwhile, was sending its own letter to the pope and the College of Cardinals to inform them of what had been done with its full approbation. It has often been asked what the court of Rome had known about the trial. In fact, Pope Martin V, who without any doubt had heard of Joan and her victories, had died on February 20, 1431, on the eve of the first phase of Joan’s trial. His successor, Gabriel Condulmaro, Bishop of Siena, elected on March 3rd and taking the name Eugenius IV, was obliged, from the very beginning of his pontificate, to deal with that series of disturbances which were to mar its whole course: besieged in Rome by the Colonna, threatened by the Duke of Milan, and betrayed by the papal troops, he fled to Florence on May 29th—the eve of Joan’s execution. Three months later he was stricken with hemiplegia but, his mental faculties intact, for the next sixteen years he stood up to that extraordinary Council of Basle which has been called “the greatest assembly of indiscipline the world has ever known”. It is a curious circumstance that most of Joan’s judges were to figure in it, at the head of the faction which wanted to make the pope submit to conciliar authority. Jean Beaupère left Rouen even before Joan’s execution, for Rome, to persuade the new pope, if necessary with menaces, that Basle, and not some Italian city as the pope would have preferred, should be the meeting place of the forthcoming council. Among speakers in the debate were Nicolas Loiseleur, Nicolas Midy, Pierre Maurice and Pierre Cauchon himself, while Thomas de Courcelles succeeded in getting a cardinal’s hat out of the anti-pope Felix V who had been elected by the council as a move in their struggle with Eugenius IV. In point of fact, the same power was at work in both cases—Joan’s trial and the Council of Basle: this power was the University of Paris, which held itself to be the real head of Christendom as, in good faith, it held itself to be the real head of the Kingdom of France. And having come out for the double monarchy in civil government and for the conciliar theses in ecclesiastical government, Joan was the university’s enemy as well as the pope himself.
In Paris itself the university did not fail to make known, with great ceremony, the outcome of the trial in which it had played a predominant role. The Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, written by a university man and therefore conveying university feeling exactly, has a long account of how “. . . on the day of Saint-Martin-le-Bouillant (July 4th) a general procession was made to Saint-Martin-des-Champs and a brother of the Order of Saint Dominic, who was an Inquisitor and a Master of Theology, preached a sermon. In this he included a version of Joan the Maid’s whole life; she had claimed to be the daughter of very poor folk; she had adopted man’s attire when she was only fourteen and her father and mother would willingly have killed her then had they been able to do it without wounding their own conscience; and that was why she left them, accompanied the hellish Enemy. Thereafter her life was one of fire and blood and the murder of Christians until she was burned at the stake.”
The Journal records, before this, and in all the detail which the writer had been able to obtain, a life and trial of Joan in much the same spirit, adding an account of her execution which no doubt conveys more or less what was known in Paris and echoes the version put about by the university: “When she saw that her punishment was certain she cried for mercy and orally abjured. Her clothes were taken from her and she was attired as a woman, but no sooner did she find herself in this attire than she fell again into error and asked for her man’s clothes. She was therefore soon condemned to death by all the judges, and bound to a stake on the scaffold of plaster (cement) on which the fire was built. She perished soon, and her dress was all burned away, then the fire was drawn a little back that the people should doubt not. The people saw her stark naked with all the secrets which a woman can and should have. When this sight had lasted long enough, the executioner replaced great fire under that poor carrion which was soon charred and the bones reduced to ashes. Many people said there and elsewhere that she was a martyr and that she had sacrificed herself for her true prince. Others said that this was not so and that he who had so long protected her had done ill. Thus spake the people, but whether she had done well or ill, she was burned that day.” (P. 106)
Meanwhile Clement de Fauquembergue, clerk to the Parliament, was noting in his register: “The thirtieth day of May 1431, by trial of the Church, Joan, who called herself the Maid, who had been taken in a sortie from the town of Compiègne by the men of messire John of Luxembourg . . . was burned in the Town of Rouen and there was written on the mitre she had on her head the following words: ‘heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater’. And on a placard before the scaffold where the said Joan was, were written these words: ‘Joan, self-styled the Maid, liar, pernicious, abuser of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, blasphemer of God; presumptuous, misbeliever in the faith of Jesus-Christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic.’ And there pronounced the sentence messire Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in whose diocese the said Joan had, so they say, been taken. And he summoned to hold the trial many notable Churchmen of the duchy of Normandy, graduates in sciences, and many
theologians and jurists of the University of Paris, as they say is contained in the proceedings.” He then includes a reference to his first mention of Joan, thus: “See above in our register for the tenth day of May 1429, etc.” (Q. iv, 459–460. The original register is in the National Archives.)
Finally, there are various references to the event, notably in the Burgundian chroniclers such as Monstrelet, who gives a copy of the letter addressed by the King of England to the Duke of Burgundy, relating Joan’s death: “Most dear and well-beloved uncle, the fervent delectation which we know that you have as a true Catholic prince in our Holy Mother Church and the exaltation of our holy faith exhorts and admonishes us to signify to you and write that to the honour of our Mother the holy Church, . . . has been solemnly accomplished extirpation of errors in our town of Rouen. . . . This woman, who had herself styled Joan the Maid . . . was taken by secular justice to the Old Market within Rouen and there was publicly burned in sight of the whole people.” (Q. iv, 403.) The remainder of the letter was simply a translation of the circular mentioned above.
Subsequent events clearly show the English anxiety to wipe out and utterly abolish everything which had been due to Joan’s activities. At the same time as they resumed military operations, they were busy arranging to crown the boy-king Henry VI, King of France. He had been crowned King of England, at Westminster, on November 6, 1429; he received the second crown of his double monarchy at Notre Dame in Paris on December 16, 1431, six months after Joan’s death. Paris was chosen in default of Rheims, which was back in French hands. No surprise need be felt at the fact that among the ecclesiastics summoned to assist at this coronation were the Bishops of Beauvais and Noyon. The invaluable Beauchamp Household Book is very interesting at this stage, giving as it does a day-by-day account of the stages in the journey from Rouen to Paris which the countess and her suite entered at night, by way of the river, possibly to avoid attracting too much attention.
The Bourgeois de Paris gives copious details of the coronation ceremonies: “Sunday December 16th, early in the morning, King Henry went on foot from the Palais Royal to Notre Dame, accompanied by processions from the town which sang very melodiously. In Notre Dame a long and wide platform, on to which ten men could mount side by side, was erected before the choir, the steps of it were painted azure dotted with fleurs-de-lys in gold. . . .”
There follow some remarks in which, albeit a fervent Burgundian, the diarist expresses his disapproval of English cuisine, on the subject of the coronation banquet. “Nobody,” he writes, “had reason to boast of the meal. The most part of the meats, especially those destined for the common people, had been cooked on the preceding Thursday, which seemed very strange to the French. . . .” (P. 110)
How was the news of Joan’s death received in that part of France which, on a later occasion, was to be known as the Zone Libre? The part, in short, which had remained outside the Anglo-Burgundian dominion or had been liberated in the astonishing epic campaign of 1429. The letters circulated by the University of Paris and by the English Government had obviously spread the news widely; it was officially distributed everywhere.
But—and it will suffice those who lived through the more recent Occupation to recall their own memories of 1940–45—many must have received this news with scepticism, convinced that this was a case of false news spread by the enemy to undermine his opponent’s morale. And it is probable that in Orleans, even more than elsewhere, eye-witnesses of Joan’s exploits, prompt to consider her as an “angel of God”, must long have refused to believe that she, the Joan whom they had known in all the glory of an unhoped-for victory, could possibly have suffered the most infamous of all deaths on the scaffold, the death reserved for heretics. The English might do what they would in taking care that nobody could say that she had escaped; many must certainly have believed it and persisted in hoping against hope.
In short, what happened to Joan was what happens to every hero of every age: people refuse to believe in their death, they are endowed with an imaginary post-mortem life. How many times, even in our own epoch, have we not read in our newspapers, concerning a gentleman not precisely beloved by the generality of mankind, that Hitler was still alive, that he was on an island in the Pacific, or in South America, or elsewhere? The same kind of folk legend which brought Frederick Barbarossa back to life after he had died on a crusade in 1190, and did the same for his grandson, Frederick II who died sixty years later, brought Joan of Arc back to life in thousands of imaginations. It was inevitable. National feeling, sharpened in a period of warfare, played its part. An exactly similar fate attended a contemporary of Joan’s whose importance was in no way comparable with hers: the astrologer Jean des Builhons, who was said to have predicted to Salisbury the latter’s death before Orleans: “King Charles VII had him set at liberty (after the siege) and kept him, giving him a pension and an honourable house, albeit some who are still of the English party say the contrary and that he died in prison.” This is from a contemporary treatise on astrology. (See Q. iv, 345, in footnote.)
There was far more reason for such rumours to get about in Joan’s case. And we have an echo of them in an anonymous Norman chronicle written after Charles VII’s death, which recounts her trial in a few words and adds, referring to the English: “Finally they had her publicly burned or another woman like her, as to which many men were and still are of diverse opinions.” (Q. iv, 344)
And as was also to be expected, the situation was exploited by more than one woman, deliberate impostors or under a genuine illusion, who claimed to be Joan the Maid, or thought themselves capable of continuing her exploits. There was, for example, Jeanne la Feronne who, like Catherine de la Rochelle, claimed to have good advice to give the King who certainly wanted none of it.
Among the imitators who claimed actually to be Joan herself, the best known was the famous Claude des Armoises, of whom we shall give some account, since, despite repeated refutations, there have been, even in our own time, diverse writings making use of her history with a view to showing that Joan was never burned at the stake. It was in 1436, five years after Joan’s execution and not long after the entry of the royal army into Paris (April 13th), that this good lady made her appearance. The event is thus related in the chronicle which reports it, that of the Dean of Saint-Thiébault of Metz, whose text we give in full:
“Year 1436, sire Philippin Marcoult was chief municipal magistrate of Metz. The same year on the twentieth day of May the Maid Joan, who had been in France, went to La Grande-aux-Ormes, near Saint-Privas. She was led there to talk to some of the lords of Metz and was calling herself Claude. On the same day there came to see her her two brothers, one of whom was a knight and was called messire Pierre, and the other Petit-Jean, esquire. And they thought that she had been burned, but when they saw her they recognized her and she too recognized them. And the Monday one and twentieth day of the said month, they took her with them to Bacquillon and the sire Nicole Louve, knight, gave her a horse whose price was thirty francs and a pair of hose, and the lord Aubert de Boullay a hooded cape, and sire Nicole Grognat a sword. And the said Maid leapt upon the horse very skilfully and told sire Nicole Louve several things by which he understood well that she it was who had been in France. And she was recognized by many signs for the Maid Joan of France who took King Charles to be crowned at Rheims. And there were some who would say that she had been burned at Rouen in Normandy; and she spoke most often in parables, and she told neither the substance nor the appearance of her intentions. She said that she would have no power before Saint-John-the-Baptist’s Day. But when her brothers had taken her away, she soon returned for the Feast of Pentecost (May 28th) to the town of Marieulle to the house of Jean Cugnot and there stayed about three weeks. Then she set out on the third for Notre-Dame-de-Liesse. And when she was about to go many from Metz went to see her at Marieulle; they gave her several jewels and they recognized that she was indeed Joan the Maid of France. And then Geoffroy Dex (Desch) gave her a horse and then s
he went away to Arlon, a town which is in the duchy of Luxembourg. When she was in Arlon she was constantly with Madame de Luxembourg, and she was there until the moment when the son of the Count of Warnembourg took her to Cologne; and the count loved her greatly, so much so that when she wanted to go he had made for her a beautiful cuirass for her armour; and then she returned to Arlon and there was celebrated the wedding of Robert of Armoises, knight, and the said Joan the Maid, and then afterwards departed the said sieur of Armoises with his wife, the Maid, to live at Metz in the house of the said Sir Robert, which he had before Sainte-Segolene. And there they stayed for as long as it pleased them.”
Such is the story told by the Dean of Saint-Thiébault of Metz in the oldest MS. of his chronicle. But a second MS. (Bib. Nat. Coll. Dupuy, No. 630), of later date, rectifies in some particulars the terms of the first, thus: “In this year came a young girl who said she was the Maid of France, and playing her part so well that many were deceived by her, and especially all the people of most consequence. She was at La Grande-aux-Ormes and there were the lords of Metz, such as the lord Nicole Louve . . .”
The rest of this MS. recounts, more briefly than the first, how she went to Notre-Dame-de-la-Liesse and to Arlon, and then was married to the lord Robert of Armoises, and it no longer identifies her with Joan the Maid. It is obvious that the Dean of Saint-Thiébault had at first, like many others, been duped, and then changed his mind when the fraud had been exposed.
He was certainly not the only one who was to be fooled by Claude des Armoises, who must surely have had some physical resemblance to the heroine, to pass herself off as Joan; she must also have had that ease in playing her part which has distinguished so many adventurers of the same kind. As we have seen, she put in her first appearance at Metz. The people of Orleans got to hear of her and wanted to know what this was all about; the town’s account books give us some information as to what steps they took. On July 31st the municipal council sent a messenger named Coeur-de-Lys to Arlon:
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