Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  “Now, to the assault! Ours will the Tournelles be, by the order of God! To arms! Be brave! Forward, victory to Gaul!”

  The cry was repeated from mouth to mouth with a tremor of impatient bravery. The quick peals from the belfry rent the air. The detonations of the artillery resounded from the side of the town, announcing the execution of the Maid’s orders, however tardy. The Tournelles was assailed by the captains from the bridge at the moment when the Maid marched to the attack of the fortress in front. The happy plan redoubled the already exalted ardor of the assailants under the Maid. Led by her they resumed the assault with irresistible impetus. After a stubborn and bloody struggle that lasted until night the Tournelles was carried. As on the previous day, the sinking rays of the sun cast the gleam of their ruddy aureola upon the folds of Joan Darc’s standard, planted by herself upon the battlements of the fortress. The enemy was vanquished again.

  Gladescal, who had so outrageously insulted Joan, was killed during the combat, as also the Seigneurs of Moulin and Pommiers and the Bailiff of Trente, together with a great number of English noblemen. Almost all their men who were not killed were made prisoners, the rest were either burned or drowned in the attempt to flee when the assailants were upon them. They sought to escape by the improvised bridge under which Poitevin let his burning barges float. The bridge took fire and broke under the feet of the fleeing soldiers who thus perished either in the flames or the river.

  As Joan had calculated, the garrisons of the other bastilles, to the number of from eight to ten thousand men, decamped in haste during the very first night that followed the capture of the Tournelles. They left in terror and consternation. At break of the next day, the warrior maid mounted her horse, assembled the town militiamen and a few companies of the captains’ troops and marched out to offer battle to the English whom they supposed to be still there. But these were gone, they were beating a precipitate retreat towards Meung and Beaugency, fortified places held by the English.

  On that day, Sunday, May 8, 1429, Joan re-entered Orleans at the head of the troops, and attended noon mass at the Church of St. Croix in the midst of an immense concourse of people, delirious with joy and gratitude to the warrior maid — the redeeming angel of Orleans.

  Such was the “Week of Joan Darc.” In eight days and with three battles she caused the raising of the siege that had lasted nearly a year. The deed achieved by the peasant girl of Domremy dealt a mortal blow to the rule of England in Gaul.

  But not yet was Joan’s secret martyrdom at an end; it increased from day to day with her glory. Charles VII, that poltroon and ingrate prince, unnerved and plunged in ignoble effeminacy, was yet to cause the shepherdess of Domremy to undergo all the tortures and all the disappointments that a soul inflamed with patriotism can not choose but undergo when it has devoted itself to a prince whose baseness is equal to his selfishness and cowardice.

  CHAPTER X.

  THE KING CROWNED.

  IMMEDIATELY UPON THE raising of the siege of Orleans, Joan hastened to the Castle of Loches. The fame of her triumphs ran ahead heralding her approach. The gates of the palace flew open before her. She was told the King was closeted in his private cabinet with his council. Thither Joan walked resolutely, knocked at the door and intrepidly addressed Charles VII:

  “Sire, pray do not hold such long conferences with these seigneurs. The siege of Orleans is raised. The good town is now restored to you. You must now march boldly to Rheims and be consecrated. The consecration will crown you King of France in the eyes of the French. The English will then be impotent against you.”

  The sound sense and political acumen of Joan traced to Charles VII in these few words the only path that wisdom dictated. His consecration at Rheims, a divine attestation of his contested rights, would impart in the eyes of the ignorant and credulous mass a powerful prestige to a royalty thus reconstituted, rehabilitated, rejuvenated and breaking forth in renewed splendor. The step was moreover a bold challenge flung at the English, whose King claimed also to be King of France, and the challenge had the proper threatening ring coming swiftly upon the victory of Orleans. But Joan had counted without the pusillanimity of a prince who doted on his idleness, who was jealous of his pleasures, who hated the bare thought of physical exertion, and who considered only his personal comfort. In order to be consecrated at Rheims he would have to mount on horseback and place himself at the head of the army. It would be necessary to confront considerable danger seeing that from Orleans to Rheims the whole country still was in the hands of the English.

  “Go to Rheims! Why, the project is insane, criminal!” cried La Tremouille and the Bishop of Chartres. “Does it not endanger the life, at least the health of the King?”

  And the sorry King joined his council:

  “I, risk myself out of my Castles of Loches and Chinon! And do so when the English still are in possession of Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau and other strongholds on the frontier of Touraine! Why, at the first step that I take out of my retreat they will gobble me up!” and to himself he cursed his luck and wished the possessed Maid to the devil, seeing her more interested than himself in the honor of the crown.

  Disappointed and grieved Joan hardly repressed her indignation. The brave Maid answered that if Charles’s departure for Rheims only depended upon the capture of the strongholds held in Touraine by the English, she would capture these fortresses and drive the enemy so far, so very far that they could not then inspire the King with the slightest fear. She then appointed Gien for their rendezvous, implored the King to meet her there in a week, and promised him that he would then be able to undertake the journey to Rheims without danger. The Maid forthwith left the court and rejoined the army.

  On the 12th of June, 1429, Joan took the fortified town of Meung; on the 17th of the same month she captured Jargeau, and the next day Beaugency. In all these assaults the Maid displayed the same bravery, the same military genius that distinguished her at the siege of Orleans. At the capture of Jargeau she came near being killed. This second series of triumphs was crowned by the battle of Patay, where all the English forces were assembled under the command of Warwick and their most illustrious captains, most of whom were taken prisoner. At this bloody and hotly contested battle Joan showed herself the peer of the most famous captains by the boldness of her manoeuvres, the quickness of her eye, the use that she put the artillery to, by the enthusiasm that she knew how to fire her soldiers with, and by her imperturbable good nature. Just before the battle she said to the Duke of Alençon with a cheerfulness and terseness worthy of the best passages of antiquity:

  “Gallant sir, are your spurs good?”

  “What?” asked the Duke in surprise. “Spurs? To flee?”

  “No, sir — to pursue!” was the answer.

  Indeed, after their defeat, the enemy was pursued at the point of the lance for over three leagues. But these victories were won by the warrior maid not over the English merely, they were won also over the ill will of most of the French captains, whose envy of her increased in the same measure as her triumph. Accordingly she no longer doubted their secret animosity, and a vague presentiment told her she would be eventually betrayed by them to the enemy. The foreboding did not affect her conduct. Long before had she made a sacrifice of her life.

  Considering that these last triumphs must have finally put an end to Charles’s hesitancy, Joan returned to him, and said:

  “Sire, Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau have all been carried by assault, is that enough? The English have been defeated in pitched battle at Patay, is that enough? Talbot, Warwick, Suffolk, are either captured or forced to flee, is that enough? Would you still hesitate to follow me to Rheims and be consecrated King by the command of God?”

  The royal coward did not now hesitate, he declined point blank. The English had been driven out of Touraine, but still they held the provinces that had to be crossed in order to reach Rheims.

  Joan was unable to overcome her disgust. No longer expecting anything from the coward, s
he was of a mind to give him up to his fate. In despair she took off her armor, left the court, and communicating her designs to none, she took to the woods where she wandered the whole day intending to return to Domremy. Towards evening, and noticing that she had lost her way, she asked for hospitality at a poor peasant house of Touraine. Unarmed and in her male attire, Joan looked like a young page. She was received as such by the good people who gladly gave her shelter, treated her at their best and made room for her at their hearth. Joan sat down. The peaceful aspect of the rustic home recalled to her mind the happy days of her childhood spent in Domremy. The sweet recollections of the paternal home drew involuntary tears. Struck by her sadness, her hosts questioned her with timid and respectful interest.

  “How can you cry in such happy days as these,” they asked naïvely, “in these days of the deliverance of Gaul? They are happy days, especially for us peasants! For us who are now at last delivered from the English by the grace of the Lord and the bravery of Joan the Maid, our redeeming angel!”

  In the enthusiasm of their gratitude, the peasant hosts showed the tenderly touched warrior maid a bit of parchment fastened to the wall above the hearth. On the parchment the name of “Joan” was inscribed, surmounted with a cross. In default of the image of their beloved liberatrix, these poor people had inscribed her name and thus gave token of the sincere reverence that they rendered the heroine. The questions were innumerable that they plied their young guest with regarding Joan. Perhaps he had seen her, seen that holy maid, the new Our Lady of the peasants who had suffered so grievously at the hands of the English before she drove them away. The questions were tantamount to a choir of benedictions mixed with passionate adoration of the Maid. More and more touched by these words, Joan began to reproach herself severely for her momentary weakness. To abandon Charles VII to his fate was to abandon France; it was above all to expose these poor peasants, the humble and industrious race of which she was herself born, to fall back under the yoke of the stranger; it was to re-deliver the poor wretches to all the horrors of a war which it was her mission to put an end to. These thoughts re-invigorated her; they inspired her with the resolve to struggle onward for the accomplishment of her projects, to struggle doggedly even against the King, against his councilors, against the captains who pursued her with their hatred and whom she perhaps stood in greater fear of than of the English. The latter fought in arms in the open; the former labored in the dark, and plotted treason. Absorbed in these meditations, Joan threw herself upon a bed of fresh cut grass, the only couch that her hosts could offer her. She invoked the support and the advice of her saints, and their dear voices speedily whispered in her ear:

  “Go, daughter of God; no weakness; fulfil your mission; heaven will not forsake you!”

  Early the next morning, the heroine left her hosts, who remained in ignorance that their humble roof had sheltered the country’s savior. Resolved to conceal from the King the contempt she entertained for him and to see in him only an instrument for the welfare of Gaul, Joan returned to court. The Maid’s disappearance had caused alarm, alarm among those whose every wish was for the termination of the English domination. Joan’s project — the King’s consecration at Rheims — spread abroad by the councilors in the hope of giving the widest publicity to its absurdity, met, on the contrary, with a large number of supporters, all of whom were impressed with the political grandeur and the audacity, withal, of the idea. The Maid’s return was looked upon as providential, and so powerful did the popular outcry wax that the craven monarch finally resigned himself to the idea of departing at the head of his troops that were constantly swelling in numbers, thanks to the fame of the Maid. The march to Rheims was decided on and undertaken.

  The journey to the royal town displayed the genius of the heroine from a side not before dreamed of. Matchlessly energetic and intrepid in her desperate combats with the foreign enemy of Gaul, she now showed herself endowed with an inexpressible power of persuasion. She undertook and succeeded in inducing the towns of the English or Burgundian party to become French again and to open their gates to Charles VII, from whom she had obtained, not without much trouble, a written promise of absolute amnesty for the dissidents. Without drawing her sword, Joan reconquered for the King all the fortified places on the route to Rheims. The heroine found in her soul, in her aversion to civil war, in her patriotism, such treasures of naïve eloquence that, coupled with her fame, her words penetrated the spirits of all, unarmed all hands, and won over all hearts to the cause of the miserable prince whom she protected, whom she covered with the splendor of her own plebeian glory, and whom she caused the people to love by speaking in his name.

  Upon the arrival of the royal army before a fortified town, Joan would approach the barriers alone, her standard in her hand. She swore to God she did not wish to shed French blood; she besought and implored those who heard her to renounce the English domination that was so disgraceful and so fatal to the country, to recognize the sovereignty of Charles VII, if not out of loyalty to him at least out of hatred for the foreigner, out of love for the motherland that for so many years had bled and been dishonored by an atrocious yoke. The heroine’s beauty, her emotion, her sweet and vibrant voice, the immense stir made by her victories, the irresistible charm of the virginal and martial being, all combined to operate prodigies. The old Gallic blood, cold for so long a time, boiled again in the veins of even the least valorous at the cry of national deliverance uttered by the maid of seventeen, whose sword was fleshed in the victory of so many battles. The barriers of the towns fell down at her voice.

  Amazed and above all delighted at not having to incur danger, the royal coward made his triumphant entry into the good towns that acclaimed the Maid. One day, however, he had a great fright. A strong English garrison occupied the town of Troyes, whose councilmen were bitter partisans of Burgundy. The gates were barricaded, the ramparts manned, and the cannons opened fire upon the royal vanguard. Charles already spoke of plying his spurs, but was with difficulty restrained by Joan, who advanced unescorted towards the barrier and requested a parley with the councilmen. The English captains answered her with insults accompanied with a shower of missiles. The soldier who bore the heroine’s banner was killed at her side. A few townsmen of Troyes belonging to the French party, who happened to be on the ramparts and heard Joan’s request for a parley, spread the news among the townsmen, most of whom were tired and dissatisfied with the foreign rule, but were held under by the obstinate Burgundian councilmen. A great and increasing agitation manifested itself in the town. A few English companies attempted a sally against the royal vanguard commanded by Joan and were beaten back. Encouraged by the defeat, the French party within the walls gathered courage and ran to arms. Their numbers proved unexpectedly large. The Burgundian councilmen were overthrown, a new set of municipal magistrates was set up and they immediately took measures against the English who entrenched themselves in a fort that dominated the town. Frightened at the threatening attitude of the people, the English evacuated the citadel over night and drew away. The new councilmen asked for a parley with Joan, and in their turn they experienced the irresistible charm of her beauty, her mildness and her eloquence. Assured by her that none of the inhabitants would be troubled on the score of past acts, the magistrates placed the keys of the town in the hands of Joan, who took them to the King, and he thus resumed possession of one of the most important towns of his empire.

  The King’s march continued triumphal unto Rheims, thanks to the marvelous influence of Joan. At Chalons a delightful surprise was in store for the heroine’s heart. She there met four peasants of Domremy. Informed by public rumor that Joan was to traverse Champagne, they boldly started out to see her at her passage. Among them was Urbain, the one-time general of the boys’ army, that owed its famous victory over the boys of Maxey to Jeannette’s bravery. These and many other memories of the village were exchanged between the heroine and the companions of her youth. During the conversation that they had a few wo
rds of sinister augury escaped from Joan’s lips. Urbain had ingenuously asked her how she had the strength and the courage to face all the dangers of battle. A painful smile played around her lips, she remained pensive for a moment, and then as if moved by the presentiment of the evil days that were approaching for her through the machinations of the captains, she answered Urbain:

  “I fear nothing — except — TREASON!”

  Poor girl of Domremy! Her apprehensions did not deceive her. But before climbing her Calvary to its summit, and there experiencing her martyrdom, she was first to accomplish the sacred mission that she had assumed — deal a fatal blow to English rule in Gaul by awakening the national spirit that had lain in a stupor for over fifty years, and having Charles VII consecrated King at Rheims. It was not the man, contemptible in her eyes, that Joan wished to consecrate in the face of the world; it was the living incarnation of France in the person of the sovereign, an incarnation visible to the eyes of the people.

  The warrior maid fulfilled her promise. Charles VII was led to Rheims. He arrived there on July 16, 1429, thirty-five days after the siege of Orleans was raised — the signal for the long series of English routs that followed and that culminated with the breakdown of English rule. At Rheims Joan conceived the noble thought of putting an end to the civil strife — the furious strife that had raged between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, and that for so many years had desolated and exhausted the land, and delivered it over to the foreigner. On the day of the consecration of Charles VII she dictated the following beautiful and touching letter addressed to the Duke of Burgundy, the chief of the party that bore his name:

  High and redoubtable prince, Duke of Burgundy: — I, Joan, call upon you, by orders of the King of heaven, my sovereign Lord, to make a good, firm and sincere peace with the King of France, a peace that shall last long. Pardon one another with a full heart and entirely, as all loyal Christians should. If you take pleasure in war, war against the Saracens.