Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

by Donald Spoto

  By early June they were on their way, separating occasionally to recruit volunteers in various villages. Two young brothers joined them, Guy and André de Laval (cousin of Gilles de Laval, the baron de Rais). On June 8 Guy wrote to their mother about Joan’s visit to them in Selles:

  On Monday [June 6], I went to see the Maid. She had some wine brought in and said, “Next time, we’ll all drink it in Paris!” Seeing and hearing her, and observing her manner and actions, everything about her seemed to me a blessing from God [sont choses toutes divines]. She left in the evening for Romorantin, wearing white [that is, polished] armor and accompanied by men-at-arms. She rode a black horse…a page held her standard, and one of her brothers departed with her…. This morning the Duke of Alençon arrived with a great retinue. I played a game of handball with him—and won. He is leaving this evening with Dunois and Gaucourt to follow the Maid….

  Alençon was entirely content to take seriously Joan’s advice about upcoming strategy, and with an army of about two thousand men the Loire Valley campaign was successful—despite her disagreements with some captains about whether Jargeau or Beaugency ought to be attacked first. According to Alençon, Joan said that the former town ought definitely to be their primary goal; she was “certain that God was leading their cause—and if she did not believe that, she would have preferred to be home taking care of her father’s sheep and avoiding all this danger.” At first the lightly armed men of the expedition attacked Jargeau without help, but they were repulsed by the English. Then Joan, carrying her banner and leading the knights and more heavily armored men, joined with reinforcements (mostly cannons, collected after the English abandoned Orléans).

  The victory at Jargeau was achieved on Sunday, June 12, but not without some suspenseful moments: Joan’s good friend Alençon, for example, narrowly escaped lethal injury. Three hundred English and Burgundian troops died, and as many French; as always, Joan took no pleasure in the enemy’s casualties. She was near a young English soldier who had been severely wounded and was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely and moaning. At that moment one of her troops approached and began to beat the injured boy with a club. Joan rode up, angrily dismissed the Frenchman, and tenderly cradled the head of the “enemy” in her arms. She asked that a priest be summoned, and presently the young man died in her embrace.

  From June 15 through 18, she and her company took back the towns of Meung, Beaugency and Patay. But these exploits were not quite as uncomplicated as at Jargeau: the English had received reinforcements, and their army now numbered about five thousand men, twice as many soldiers as the French. Alençon asked Joan’s advice on how to proceed; practical as always, she replied—perhaps with a smile—“You’ll need your spurs.” When they approached Beaugency, the English barricaded themselves in the castle. Just then a platoon of soldiers arrived with Arthur de Richemont, the French constable who had fallen out of favor with Charles and his court. They rejected his offer of help, but Joan asked Richemont to swear an oath to the dauphin, and he was allowed to fight once again for France. Soon after, the English surrendered the castle of Beaugency.

  This was a terrible personal setback for the Duke of Bedford, brother of the late Henry V, commander of the English forces in France and regent for the boy-king Henry VI. According to Monstrelet, “The English captains in Beaugency saw that this Maiden’s fame…caused them to lose several towns and fortresses, some by attack and conquest, others by [surrender]. Moreover, their men were mostly in a sorry state of fear and seemed to have lost their usual prudence in action.” This was at least partly responsible for the overwhelming success of an army of fifteen hundred French assembled at Patay, the next town to be retaken. Almost three thousand English died or were taken prisoner; almost incredibly, the French lost only three men.

  With the victory at Patay, the only English field army remaining in France was at last vanquished; the enemy’s morale was now low and their tactics disorganized. Still, the war was far from over. Serious challenges lay ahead, and the French cause would experience major setbacks before the English were entirely routed. From this time the Duke of Bedford, a man accustomed to victories on the field and in royal negotiating rooms, cultivated a growing hatred for Joan of Arc that can only be called obsessive.

  French confidence had vastly improved and, with it, the will to prevail. Alençon, who had no reason to diminish his own influence and achievements in order to praise Joan, was forthright about her courage and prudence: “It had seemed premature to me to begin the assault [on Jargeau], but Joan said, ‘Don’t hesitate! This is the hour God has planned for us—so let us do our task, and God will work on our behalf!…Are you afraid? Don’t be—don’t you remember that I promised your wife I would bring you home safe and sound?’”* As for Joan’s fears, “She said she was afraid of nothing except betrayal,” a friend recalled.

  However we assess the relief of the siege of Orléans and the subsequent successes in the Loire Valley, the military proficiency of the French shocked the English to the point that French victory now seemed almost inevitable. If the English had learned that the French had new matériel or a brilliant new commander, they might have been able to devise counter procedures. But they had underestimated everything, from the loyalty evoked by Joan’s leadership at Orléans to the fresh resolve of the men who knew her. In a way she also stood for something like a principle of minimal violence, for although she was always exposed to injury and indeed sustained serious wounds, she never personally harmed an enemy soldier. The events of the late spring and early summer of 1429 engendered a new collective spirit among the French.

  With his army now numbered at about twelve thousand, the dauphin at last agreed to go to Reims, where he would be officially anointed and crowned as Charles VII, King of France. This journey was no simple matter, for the route would take them through territory hostile to him; nevertheless, the royal caravan set out from Gien on June 29 led by Joan, Alençon, Dunois, her retinue, many captains and commanders, and thousands of knights and men-at-arms. The ardor of the company may be gauged by the fact that all the men agreed to proceed as volunteers: the royal treasury did not have a single coin to offer.

  Four days before she departed, Joan dictated a letter to the people of Tournai—still officially a Burgundian stronghold but populated by many loyalists. Obviously she felt that both a warning and an invitation were in order:

  The Maid sends you the news that in eight days she has chased the English out of every place they held on the river Loire. Many of them are dead or taken prisoners, and they are weary of battle. The Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot, the lord of Scales, and Lord John Fastolf and many knights and captains have been taken, and Suffolk’s brother and Glasdale are dead. Hold yourselves fast, loyal Frenchmen, I pray you. And I pray and demand that you be ready to come to the anointing of the gracious King Charles at Reims, where we shall soon be. I commend you to God; may He keep watch over you and give you grace to be able to sustain the cause of the kingdom of France.

  Three days of negotiations in Auxerre brought that town at last within the Valois fold and without open conflict; further along, Troyes, Chalons and Reims pledged their obedience too—although not without some initial resistance from Troyes. Fifteen miles from the city, Joan sent an offer of amnesty and an invitation, dated July 4:

  Very good and dear friends—lords, townsmen, and residents of the city of Troyes—Joan the Maid commands and informs you on behalf of the King of Heaven our rightful and sovereign Lord, in whose royal service she serves daily, that you should truly obey and recognize the gracious king of France, who will soon be at the city of Reims and at Paris, come what may against him. And with the aid of King Jesus, he will be in all the good cities of this holy kingdom. Loyal Frenchmen, come before King Charles. Do not fail to do so, and have no hesitation about your lives and property. I commend you to God, may God protect you. Reply soon.

  But on July 5, by way of reply, the people of Troyes sent out to Joan an unstable and
volatile friar named Richard, who firmly believed that for some reason the world would end the next year. He had been preaching about Joan, telling people that she knew the secrets of God and that she could magically penetrate any city walls. His inference was clear: she might be a witch. “When he came toward me,” Joan recalled, “he made the sign of the cross and tossed holy water all around. I said, ‘Be brave and approach—I won’t fly away!’” Nothing more is known of their meeting, but soon Friar Richard was forbidden to teach and preach.

  Troyes decided not to welcome the royal caravan, and the citizens renewed their support for the Anglo-Burgundian cause. Charles called a council, and Joan proposed an immediate attack. When the assault moved forward the next morning, the citizens at once called for negotiations.

  As part of her desire to see all Frenchmen unite in support of the new king, Joan sent an invitation to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who was called “the Good” on account of his vow to go on Crusade against the Turks—a commitment he never honored. Nor did he attend the coronation.

  On Saturday, July 16, the people of Reims overwhelmingly abandoned their Anglo-Burgundian loyalty, pledged obedience to Charles, and threw open the gates of the city. At the same time, some lay and clerical English collaborators left Reims. Among them was one of the bishops who had negotiated the infamous Treaty of Troyes, which had denied Charles’s legitimacy and promoted England’s heirs to the throne of France. The man’s name was Pierre Cauchon, and he had been bishop of Beauvais until that city declared its loyalty to Charles. That July he took refuge in Rouen, headquarters of the English presence in France. Cauchon was fiercely Burgundian in his political sympathies. Brilliant and unscrupulous, he was also the former rector of the University of Paris, of whose privileges he was the custodian. Alas, Cauchon eventually masterminded the death of Joan of Arc.

  THE ROYAL JOURNEY to Reims had been without battle or bloodshed, which seemed another sign of divine favor. In the eyes of the French and even of some Anglo-Burgundians, the presence of Charles and the Maid announced an era of peace. Because Sunday was the traditional day for sacred events, the coronation was held in the cathedral in great haste on Sunday, July 17. The ceremony, which began at nine in the morning and concluded at about two in the afternoon, was a triumph of liturgical splendor.

  Moments before it began, the Duke of Alençon ritually touched the dauphin’s shoulder with a sword and uttered the formula of knighthood: he was twenty-six years old, but the king-to-be was still not a knight. At the same time, Georges de la Trémoïlle, grand chamberlain of the royal household, assisted Charles as he put on the shoes decorated with fleur-de-lis; onto these Alençon buckled the golden spurs. De la Trémoïlle was also Charles’s lieutenant general for Burgundy, an ambitious self-promoter and a zealous enemy of Joan and her influence with the king.

  The major ceremony began as four lords were chosen to bring from the abbey of Saint-Rémy the sacred oil used for the anointing of Frankish kings since the fourth century. According to ancient custom, the four escorts—Gilles de Rais, Jean de Brosse, Jean de Graville, and Louis de Culant—met the humbly barefoot abbot of Saint-Rémy at the door of his abbey. They formed a silent cordon round him and then slowly made their way to the cathedral; at the edge of the sanctuary the abbot handed over the oil to Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Reims.

  Next came the entourage of the royal sword, brought from the abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris—but secretly because the region was still controlled by Anglo-Burgundian captains. The blade was engraved with fleur-de-lis from hilt to point, and the sword was held aloft in procession to the altar by the favorite nephew of Georges de la Trémoïlle.

  Following that was the procession of six peers who (imitating the ritual of Clovis) were to hold the crown above Charles’s head before the actual coronation. The men for the task that day were Alençon; the counts of Clermont, Vendôme and Laval; Raoul de Gaucourt (captain of Orléans); and Georges de la Trémoïlle. This procession also included six bishops, but three had to be replaced because they were fiercely anti-Valois and hence were absent. One of those three was Pierre Cauchon.

  In the tradition of the anointing of the ancient kings of Israel (especially David), Charles was anointed on his chest, shoulders, elbows, and wrists by the archbishop of Reims, his body thus consecrated to the service of God and the people. The king was the lieutenant of God in matters temporal; more than anyone, he was the servant and leader of the French people, as much chosen by God as Israel of old had been. Charles swore to honor “justice and the law” and to defend Church and people, especially the poor and disenfranchised, from all enemies.

  The archbishop then escorted Charles to the main altar, where his head was anointed and a ring was slipped onto his right index finger, symbol of the union between the king and his people. To the accompaniment of the blast of trumpets and the cheers of everyone in the cathedral, the crown was then lowered onto Charles’s head. At last he was no longer the dauphin but Charles VII, the consecrated, true, and legitimate king of France.

  Wearing armor and bearing her banner, Joan stood nearby throughout the ceremony. Why did she bring her personal standard? “It had endured very much,” she said later, “and it was only fair that it should share in the honor.”* Her presence must have impressed everyone in the cathedral, for the coronation vindicated a woman, who would normally have been held suspect in the male world of court, army and clergy. Perhaps most among the worshippers, the honor was shared by five people who stood near Joan and whose pride we may only imagine—her parents, who had come from Domrémy; her brothers Jean and Pierre; and Durand Laxart, her first advocate and helper. The financial records of Reims testify to their attendance, adding that the city paid for their lodging at an inn across the cathedral square.

  Her family’s presence may well have inspired Joan when the king asked if she wished a favor on this great occasion. She begged nothing for herself, she replied, but she requested that the people of Domrémy and of neighboring Greux might henceforth have the privilege of tax-free status. This the king gladly bestowed two weeks later, as a surviving document reveals. Beside the royal decree, written in Charles’s own hand, is a simple explanation of the exemption: “Rien—la Pucelle: Nothing [in taxes], [it was for] the Maid.”

  ON CORONATION DAY Joan dictated a letter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, still an enemy of the king:

  Most high and noble prince, the Maid summons you—by my sovereign Lord the King of Heaven—to make a lasting peace with the king of France. Each of you must pardon the other fully and sincerely, as loyal Christians should. If it pleases you to make war, go and do so against the Saracens.* Prince of Burgundy, I beg you: make no more war on France. Withdraw at once your men who do so. As for my gentle king of France, he is ready to make peace with you…. You will win no more battles against loyal Frenchmen, and all who do so are warring against King Jesus, King of Heaven and earth. I pray you, with my hands joined, not to seek battle or war…. I wrote to you, inviting you to the coronation—but I have had no reply, nor have I heard any news of the herald whom I sent to you with that message. I commend you to God…and I pray God that He will establish a good peace.

  The letter, as one historian has written, “evokes the grandeur of Joan’s Christian, martial, and chivalric mentality at the same time that it [indicates] the increasing irrelevance of these qualities to her world and moment.” The letter also reveals Joan’s poignant unawareness of the political machinations then driving powerful men among the English, their Burgundian allies, and the French. Not long after, a two-week truce was declared between the king and the duke. Philip said he would turn Paris over to the king after that period, but of course he intended no such thing; instead, he used the time to shore up his defense of the capital.

  As these intrigues were taking shape, Joan was being celebrated in a long poem by Christine de Pisan, a prolific author who wrote courtly love poems, a life of Charles V and books about heroic women. Her last work, almost certainly
written during the week of July 23–31, was “Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc” (The Story of Joan of Arc), an extended lyric in praise of the Maid’s achievements.

  It is a fact well worth remembering that God has wished to bestow such great blessings on France through a young virgin…. And you, Charles, King of France, see your honor exalted by the Maid who has laid low your enemies…. And all this has been brought about by the intelligence of the Maid who, God be thanked, has played her part in this matter…. And you, blessed Maid, you untied the rope which held France so tightly bound….

  Blessed be He who created you, Joan, Maiden sent from God…. Moses miraculously and indefatigably led God’s people out of Egypt. In the same way, blessed Maid, you have led us out of evil…. And the prowess of all the great men of the past cannot be compared to this woman’s, whose concern it is to cast out our enemies. This is God’s doing: it is He who guides her and who has given her a heart greater than that of any man….

  I have heard of Esther, Judith, and Deborah, women of great worth, through whom God delivered His people from oppression, and I have heard of many other women as well, champions every one of them, through whom He performed many miracles—but He has accomplished more through this Maid. Her achievement is no illusion, for she was carefully put to the test in council and well examined. But she was destined to accomplish her mission. Whatever she does, she always has her eyes fixed on God; nowhere does her devotion ever falter. What honor for the female sex, that the kingdom is now recovered and made safe by a woman—something that five thousand men could not have done…. This is God’s doing: it is He who leads her. Before all the brave men of the past, this woman must wear the crown—and she has not yet accomplished her whole mission! But destroying the English race is not her main concern—it is rather to ensure the survival of the faith….