Saint Joan of Arc

by Vita Sackville-West

  Poor Charles. He is not an impressive figure. Jeanne might give him the symbolic title of oriflamme, with its suggestion of heraldic scarlet and gold; actually, his limbs were so thin and frail that it gave people a shock to see him without his ennobling cloak, dressed only in his usual short tunic of green cloth.fn22 And although one chronicler says that his face was pleasing enough, M Anatole France, probably more truthful than polite, represents him as ‘very ugly, with small grey wandering eyes, his nose thick and bulbous.’fn23 Jeanne might call him gentil Dauphin, and, more superbly and defiantly, oriflamme, but other people, again more truthful than polite, called him le Falot, which, being interpreted, means clown, droll, grotesque – not a very dignified description for a King of France. He was poor; he was sometimes reduced to borrowing money from his cook; he had to pawn the crown jewels; he got his old tunics repaired with new sleeves.fn24 His poverty lent itself to the wit of the epigrammatists:

  Un jour que La Hire et Poton

  Le vindrent veoir, pour festoyement,

  N’avoient qu’une queue de mouton

  Et deux poulets tant seulement.fn25

  His miserable physique, his shifty eyes, his languor, his piety, his self-indulgence, his weakness towards his favourites, his envy of people more definite and successful than himself (which, I fancy, included not only his fellow-princes and counsellors, but also that dominating woman, his mother), might today receive a more sympathetic tolerance in the light of our increased psychological knowledge. Humanly speaking, we cannot withhold all sympathy from his mother who, apart from being married to a madman, had spent twenty-one years of her life either pregnant or mourning the death of one of her children,fn26 and who, moreover, suffered from excessive stoutness and gout to such an extent that she had to spend most of her time in a wheeled chair. These misfortunes, however, had increased neither her tenderness nor her wisdom in her dealings with her unfortunate son. He was physically weak. He was mentally twisted. His own mother had, in so many words, declared him a bastard. Charles in addition had been brought up to regard himself as the rightful heir to France, or, at any rate, to some part of it; then to find himself stigmatised by his own mother with illegitimacy, must to say the least of it have been an exceedingly trying experience to overcome. It would take a strong character to triumph over such a test. The Dauphin possessed no such strong character. He was doubly unfortunate. He had the question of his illegitimacy to worry him; he had the fact of his kingdom being claimed and partially occupied by a foreign power to worry him still more, a burden altogether too heavy for his inadequate sinews to support. He took refuge in being merely pious, hard-working at moments and pleasure-loving at others. Not only were his knees weak and knock, but his whole nature. Today, we might extend a greater tolerance to his disability. As it is, we see him as a perplexed little man, contemptibly pathetic, shamed and terrorised by his alarming saviour into exercising the muscles which he frankly did not possess, to carry the load of so difficult a kingship. Jeanne and Charles, the one with her simplicity, the other with his neuroses, do indeed present themselves as the most ironical of protagonists.

  He allowed himself to be insulted by his subjects. Jean Jouvenal des Ursins could write to him saying, Vous voulez toujours être caché en châteaux, méchantes places et manières de petites chambrettes, sans vous montrer et ouir les plaintes de votre pauvre peuple.fn27 These are scarcely the terms in which a self-respecting sovereign should suffer a subject to address him with impunity. He allowed himself also to be insulted by his enemies, the Duke of Bedford writing to him in terms which no man of spirit or honour could have allowed to pass ignored. More seriously, at the time of Jeanne’s arrival, he had allowed himself to fall under the influence of a quartet of advisers, two of them unscrupulous and despicable, one of them merely a cat’s-paw, and the fourth an obstinate short-sighted old soldier. Neither Georges de Ia Trémoïlle, Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, Robert Lemaçon, or Raoul de Gaucourt figures at all admirably in the history of Charles VII. Perhaps they are scarcely to be blamed. It was asking much of them to accept without opposition so preposterously young and unqualified an interloper as Jeannette from Domremy.

  Charles himself received Jeanne in no very welcoming spirit. It is rather surprising that he should have consented to receive her at all. What, and who, he may well have asked, is this lunatical virgin whom one of my provincial governors is sending to me from the other side of France? Still, the very fact that so steady and solid a soldier as Robert de Baudricourt thought it worth while to despatch the girl, escorted by two of his own lieutenants and by a royal messenger, postulated that she must in some way be worthy of the despatching; also, it was an age when visionaries were common, though not usually very effective; it was an age when superstition was rife, faith paramount, and Charles himself a devoted son of the Church. It is also possible that his mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, used her influence on Jeanne’s behalf. Other people, however, opposed her. The Dauphin, tom between his courtiers, his counsellors, and his relations, hesitated. Jeanne meanwhile found lodgings with a respectable woman near the castle of Chinon (mon lougeis, qui est cheiux une bonne femme près du chastel).fn28 It was Lent, and she was fasting according to her habit, although fasting was not obligatory on her at the age of seventeen; abstinence only would have been obligatory.fn29 During these two days’ delay, it is reported that Charles sent messengers to interview her and to ask her why she had come. At first she refused to reply, saying that she would speak only to the Dauphin, but, when they explained that they had come to her in the Dauphin’s name, she condescended to say that the King of Heaven had sent her with a double mission, first to raise the siege of Orleans, and second to lead the Dauphin to Reims for his coronation.fn30 It is reported, also, that during this time the Dauphin sent for les gentilshommes who had escorted her, by whom are presumably meant Jean de Metz and Poulengy, and questioned them, for they had been talking all over the town of rivers marvellously forded and dangers marvellously escaped.fn31 Finally, after much hesitation (grande doubte si ladicte Jeanne parleroit au roy ou non, et si il la feroit venir devers lui, sur quoy y eut diverses opinions et imaginations),fn32 it was decided that she should be admitted into his presence (et fut conclud qu’elle verroit le roy). But even after taking this decision, Charles did not play fair by Jeanne. Perhaps he was well advised. Perhaps he really wanted to test her. Perhaps he really wanted to find out whether she could support her claims, which were, to say the least of it, extravagant and excessive. Looking back, in the light of her subsequent accomplishment, it is easy to criticise Charles for his waste of her precious time. Looking at it from his point of view, it is equally easy to understand his caution. Visionaries were going cheap in those days, and only a very small percentage of them turned out to be of any practical use at all. Why should he, who was, after all, the potential King of France, have consented to give an audience to her, who was, after all, an unknown cinder-wench from a remote part of his precarious domains? Why should he have done this in opposition to half his Court – in opposition, moreover, to his dominating counsellors? I think it may be explained in human, if historically unorthodox, terms. In Charles, though pious and in some ways conscientious, the frivolous side generously exceeded the serious side of his character. He was bored, and any diversion afforded a relief. More creditably, he was probably rather conscience-stricken, deep down inside himself, about the state of France. Then the religious-superstitious side of him was struck by this obscure virgin advertising herself as the saviour predicted by Merlin and other prophets. I think that all these things mixed themselves up in the Dauphin’s muddled and cowardly mind. It is very difficult to enter into the mind of Charles VII. One has to sort out the differences between his indolence and his seriousness; between his natural weakness and the practical difficulties with which he had to contend. But there, again, how difficult it is to sort out those differences in the make-up of one’s own personal friends, or even in one’s own make-up. Who r
eally knows himself? And who can really know another? So, logically, if we fail to know ourselves or our contemporaries, how can we hope to know a person who lived five hundred years ago, and whose character we can reconstruct only from very inadequate and polite contemporary records? Chroniclers are almost always polite to kings. King, even feeble kings, hold a certain glamour which prevents their chroniclers from telling the whole truth about them. It takes a brave man to call a monarch contemptible, especially when that monarch is still alive: it would be a rude, and, indeed, a rash thing to do. It is thus very difficult to arrive at a just estimate of the character and motives of Charles VII. It is especially difficult to organise one’s ideas as to the spirit in which he received Jeanne. Was he credulous? Was he sceptical? It is one of the problems of history. The solid fact remains that he did eventually, after two days’ delay, grant her an audience. The Dauphin and Jeanne d’Arc were at last brought face to face.

  VI

  It was, as I see it, one of the most remarkable meetings ever consummated. Jeanne had to make her way up the steep hill, across the main drawbridge, and to pass under the Tour de l’Horloge, before she could reach the Château de Milieu where the Dauphin was accustomed to give audience. As she was about to enter the castle, a man on horseback drew rein to stare at her and to say, ‘Jarnidieu! is that not the Pucelle? If I could have her for one night, I would not return her in like condition.’ Jeanne heard his words. ‘Ha!’ she said to him, ‘en nom Dieu, you deny Him, and you so near to your death!’ Within an hour he had fallen into water and was drowned.fn33

  Jeanne meanwhile had gone forward. She crossed the drawbridge. She was to be received in the Grande Salle, a splendid apartment on the upper floor of the Château du Milieu, some seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide, with a vast hooded fireplace at one end, three large windows overlooking the gardens of the inner court, and one smaller window overlooking the town, the river, and the landscape beyond. Curiosity had filled the salle into which Jeanne was introduced by the Comte de Vendôme. But even then the Dauphin did not play fair by her. He attempted to deceive her by concealing himself among the crowd,fn34 less magnificently dressed than some of his lords.fn35 Yct, having first asked rather piteously that they should not seek to mislead her, she picked him out. She went straight up to him, disguised as he was, dropped a curtsey (which must have struck the onlookers as most incongruous with her boyish appearance), and thus addressed him: ‘Gentil Dauphin, j’ai nom Jehanne la Pucelle.fn36 The King of Heaven sends me to you with the message that you shall be anointed [sacré] and crowned in the city of Reims, and that you shall be the lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is the King of France.’fn37

  The recognition evidently created something of a sensation. The hall was lit by fifty torches and packed with over three hundred people,fn38 a brilliant crowd of soldiers, courtiers, and prelates, some of them hostile, some of them frivolously amused, but all of them curious to see this new exhibit who might for an hour at least enliven the farce of their existence in a Court which was a Court only in name. A dancing bear, a juggler, a troupe of mountebanks, would have tickled their childish curiosity in much the same way. Jeanne’s personal appearance alone must have produced a ripple of amusement. Not only was she breeched, but her cropped black hair must have struck an odd note among men accustomed to fashionable women who allowed no single lock to peep out from beneath their strange pointed head-dresses and floating veils. Yet this small, queer, solitary figure, this paupercula bergereta, showed no sign of hesitation, distress, shyness, or embarrassment, addressing the Dauphin familiarly and without awe, in terms of a firm arrogance which could not be called boastful in view of its sincerity and simplicity. One wonders especially what the Archbishop of Reims thought, being present, on hearing these arrangements made for his own cathedral; to which, in spite of having been Archbishop of Reims for over twenty years, he had never yet paid a visit.fn39 Prelates of that standing were not accusomed to hearing of coronations arranged for them thus; coronations either came, or did not come, according to the great traditional hierarchy of France. Still the Dauphin held firm and prolonged the test. ‘It is not I who am the King, Jehanne. There is the King,’ he said, pointing to one of his lords. She was not to be taken in. ‘In God’s name, noble prince, it is you and none other.’fn40

  After this he gave way and took her aside for a private conversation out of earshot,fn41 a procedure most tantalising for the rest of the Court. It was then, apparently, that she revealed something to him which sent him far along the road towards belief in the authenticity of her claims. ‘Sire,’ she said, ‘if I tell you things so secret that you and God alone are privy to them, will you believe that I am sent by God?’ And then, being encouraged by him to continue, ‘Sire,’ she said, ‘do you not remember that on last All Saints’ Day,fn42 being alone in your oratory in the chapel of the castle of Loches, you requested three things of God?’ He answered that he remembered it well. Had he, she asked, ever spoken of these things to his confessor or any other? He had not. Then she said, ‘The first request was that it should be God’s pleasure to remove your courage in the matter of recovering France, if you were not the true heir [italics mine], so that you should no longer be the cause of prolonging a war bringing so much suffering in its train. The second request was that you alone should be punished, either through death or any other penance, if the adversities and tribulations which the poor people of France had endured for so long were due to your own sins. The third request was that the people should be forgiven and God’s anger appeased, if the sins of the people were the cause of their troubles.’ The Dauphin admitted that she had spoken the truth.fn43 He was duly impressed. Those who were present noticed the change in his face when he returned.fn44

  VII

  What Jeanne had really done, was to voice his own suspicion that the blood of the Kings of France did not run in his veins. It is easy to understand his suspicion and his anxiety. The possibility that he might be a bastard, with no real claim to the crown of France, must have haunted him ever since the signing of the Treaty of Troyes, nine years before (Chapter 2, here). By the terms of that treaty, his probable illegitimacy had been indicted with the widest publicity by his own mother, who, after all, was the person in possession of the best available information. She had done it in terms just sufficiently and decently veiled as to leave her son in doubt. In that doubt he had lived ever since. To him it was a vital, personal question. His mother, true, was the Queen of France, but was his father the King? No, almost certainly not. To everybody else in France and England it was an accepted fact that the Dauphin might not be the Dauphin at all; might be nothing more than one of the many illegitimate sons of the Duke of Orleans, whose mistress his mother may have been, at the appropriate cime.fn45 To most people it did not matter very much, since for one thing he was officially the son of Charles VI, born in wedlock; and for another he seemed so disinclined to assert his claims to the throne, that he had not even attempted the preliminary step of getting himself crowned. But to Charles as an uneasy person it mattered very much, and when Jeanne arrived with her reassurances he naturally opened his ears.

  There can, I think, be no doubt that the famous ‘King’s secret’ revealed by Jeanne referred to the question of his legitimacy. Why it should ever have been regarded as a secret at all is what I cannot understand, and, without wishing to be or to appear unduly cynical over this example of Jeanne’s reputedly supernatural powers of divination, I find it hard to see why the revelation of the King’s secret should be considered so miraculous as is commonly supposed. It seems to me much more like an example of the common sense which was one of Jeanne’s leading characteristics – her common sense assisted by her feminine instinct. What more obvious than that Charles should dwell morbidly upon this problem of common gossip? What more obvious than that reassurance was the one thing he desired? Besides, it must be remembered that Jeanne herself was absolutely and sincerely convinced that he was the true King. She was not humbugging h
im by her assurances. She was only saying that which she herself believed, and which she rightly guessed he most wanted to hear. Paquerel, her confessor, tells us that she said: ‘I tell you in the name of Our Lord that you are the true heir of France and the son of the King’ (que tu es vray héritier de France et filz du roy), but implies that she uttered these words to Charles after he had taken her aside; therefore, in private, not in public. Why, then, if the question of his legitimacy was so widely discussed, did she wait until he had taken her aside? Why did she not declare him the true King at once, and publicly, when she was first brought into his presence? And why, again, was he so startled during their private conversation that his countenance was not only irradiated by joy,fn46 but that it looked also as though he had been visited by the Holy Ghost?fn47 We can understand Jeanne’s reticence by no more subtle an explanation than her passionate loyalty to the Crown and her natural tact in not alluding to so delicate a subject with three hundred people listening; Charles’ surprise is more difficult to explain away. It is inconceivable that he should not have realised the extent of the common talk about his birth. Some mischievous courtier must have brought it to his ears. Why, then, should he have been so startled when Jeanne, suddenly emerging out of the mass of his unknown subjects, put her finger on his sorest wound? We can explain it only by suggesting that he must have been more of an ostrich than is reasonably likely, if he could imagine that the King’s secret had ever been a secret at all.