Jeanne’s own part in the Paris affair is not nearly so clear cut and well defined as usual. She had long been fretting to get to Paris, yet she admitted later, at her trial, that on the day of September 8th she had followed, not the counsel of her voices, but the request of certain lords (gentilz hommes) who wanted to make a vaillance d’armes.fn22 Had she, then, gone to the attack without that real conviction which had always carried her to victory in the past? Is it superstitious to suggest that without the direct inspiration of her voices she lacked the necessary spark which lit her followers to seemingly impossible deeds? True, she adds that her own private intention was to go further and cross the fesses of Paris. But that private intention, on her own showing, was unsupported on this occasion by heavenly encouragement. Thus, although her personal courage and determination remained undiminished, one cannot help wondering whether, having regard to the peculiar resources of her strength, the whole difference did not lie between human tenacity and spiritual afflatus? In other words, could she work apparent miracles only when she genuinely felt the breath of God to be in her, and did she fail when she was acting, so to speak, on her own? And had that breath of God begun to fail her immediately after Reims? Had the poor vessel of her receptivity already overflowed? Had the effort already proved so great that she could no longer sustain it in its early vigour, although half her promises remained as yet unfulfilled? Were her sails already drooping in a flagging wind? Had she tired so soon, as she seemed to suggest by the wistful remark that she would gladly lay down her arms and go back to Domremy to look after her parents’ sheep?fn23
There can be no question that her personal courage was as great as ever, even if her personal leadership had lost something of its miraculous quality. In the fosses of Paris she behaved with all the heroism she had displayed in the fosses of Orleans: at Paris, as at Orleans, she and her standard were in the thick of the battle, and her voice was raised, as before, in encouragement towards her men. Not only did she cross the dry fosse, but descended even into the second or wet fosse, probing it with a lance to discover the depth of water or of mud.fn24 The external similarity between Paris and Orleans does not end with her exploits and example in the moat beneath the city walls. In the moat beneath the walls of Paris, as in the moat beneath the walls of the Tourelles at Orleans, she received a wound from an arrow – in the thigh this time instead of above the breast. ‘Paillarde! ribaude!’ said the man who aimed the shot; and with another shot he pierced the foot of her standard-bearer. This unlucky man was so incautious as to raise the visor of his helmet in order to remove the dart (vireton) which had hurt him, and in that uncovered moment a second arrow struck him between the eyes so that he fell dead.fn25 But Jeanne, much against her will,fn26 was carried out of danger by de Gaucourt and others. She went protesting, and saying that the place would have been taken but for her withdrawal. D’Alençon seems to have added his voice to those who forced her to retire,fn27 but she evidently bore him no resentment, for early next morning we find her sending for him to beg him to give the order for a renewed assault, saying that, par mon martin, she would not leave Paris before she had captured it. Her beau duc, as usual, was ready to follow her, but even as they were still in discussion the Duke of Bar and the Count of Clermont arrived with a command from the King, to the effect that they were both to rejoin him immediately at Saint Denis.
Most reluctantly they obeyed, but even now all hope had not left their hearts. They knew that by d’Alençon’s orders a bridge had been thrown across the Seine near Saint Denis, and they still looked forward to the chance of invading the city that way. Unluckily for them, Charles also knew of the bridge, and, foreseeing their scheme, took the incredible step of having the bridge secretly destroyed by night.fn28 How are we to explain Charles’ conduct throughout? On the face of it he had played false by Jeanne at every tum. He put every obstacle in her way. How could his faithful servant possibly capture Paris for him under such conditions? His dealings with the Duke of Burgundy had been foolish and shady beyond belief. His destruction of d’Alençon’s bridge was an act of overt treachery. One is almost forced to the conclusion that he never intended Jeanne to bring Paris to him, as it were a present in her hand. Still the question remains, Why? A teasing echo answers, Why? Mere indolence and cowardice can scarcely explain so apparently insane a course. Was bribery at the bottom of it? Was he genuinely hoaxed by the Duke of Burgundy? Was La Trémoïlle responsible? These questions are perhaps idle, since they cannot be answered, but they suggest themselves inevitably to our bewilderment.
At any rate, he succeeded in his object. By September 22nd he was back at Gien on his beloved Loire, and the army, for lack of funds, was being disbanded. Jeanne is sad to contemplate at this moment. Little more than an honoured captive, she remained in Charles’ company, but it is no longer as the heroic, shining figure that she appears. On receiving the King’s final command to abandon Paris and to accompany him in his retreat, she had discarded her armour, symbol of conquest, and had left it lying before the image of Our Lady in the cathedral of Saint Denis.fn29 It was the supreme gesture of renunciation.
She parted from d’Alençon too. Their friendship, which had begun so gaily, and which had been preserved so loyally through all the dangers and difficulties they had weathered together, was broken by d’Alençon’s departure from Gien to rejoin his wife in his vicomté of Beaumont. She had promised his wife that she would send him home safe and sound, and she had kept her word, but he and she, those young and hopeful comrades-in-arms, were never to meet again. The large and sinister shadow of their enemies falls across their gay, gallant, chivalrous, and platonic path. The Archbishop of Reims, the due de la Trémoïlle, the seigneur de Gaucourt, qui lors gouvernoient le corps du roy et le fait de sa guerre, ne vouldrent oncques consentir, ne faire, ne souffrir que la Pucelle et le due d’Alençon fussent ensemble.
Et la Pucelle demoura vers le roy, moult ennuyée du dçpartement et par especial du due d’Alençon que elle amoit très fort et faisoit pour lui ce que elle n’eust fait pour ung autre.
Et ainsi fut le vouloir de la Pucelle et l’armée du roy rompue.fn30
13. PARIS TO COMPIÈGNE
I
It would, in a sense, be better if we could here record that Jeanne had been allowed to satisfy the wish she had expressed to the Archbishop of Reims in the hearing of the Bastard of Orleans – the wish that she might now return to Domremy to look after her parents’ sheep. It would be better for her in the sense of being more comfortable and less painful, but, dramatically speaking, the catharsis would not be complete. Jeanne d’Arc was meant dramatically to die. Not the least queerness of each individual human life is its insistence upon adjusting itself throughout to the key imposed upon it from the first. Jeanne’s life had been led on the high planes of feeling, and it was :fitting that death should meet her in the same high key; her career, ifit was to be rounded off into the unity which it dramatically demanded, must end in an early and tragic death. There is something unsuitable, even offensive, in the idea of her returning to keep sheep when she had led armies, or of her givingherselfdocilely in marriage to a young man of Toul, or to another, when other, perhaps more worthy, men had been summarily drowned by the act of God for offering an insult to her virginity. Jeanne’s life, as I see it, divides itself into four almost deliberately designed theatrical Acts: First Act, The Rise; Second Act, The Triumphs; Third Act, The Stagnant Interlude; Fourth Act, The Culmination of the Tragedy. The Third Act is the one that one would wish to cut out; one could wish to take a short-cut between the Second and the Fourth. Unfortunately the Third Act is the very one we have to consider now. Let us do so as briefly as possible.
It covers, in time, the period from July 1429 to May 1430, and is marked by no outstanding event save the abortive attempt on Paris in September with which we have already dealt. After this, it deteriorates into a dreary recital of poor Jeanne’s attendance on the Court. She was no born lady-in-waiting. She was still full of militant ideas
; she wanted to go into Normandy with d’Alençon, but the King’s council would not hear of it; failing this, she had not yet given up the idea of capturing Paris. All these projects being officially blocked, for the very pertinent reason, amongst others, that the King could not allow her to make war against the Duke of Burgundy whilst the truce between them still held good, Jeanne could do nothing but resign herself to a life of unwelcome fainéantise at the heels of her fainéant King. Nine months went by; nine months nibbled away from her short predicted span. It is shocking and surprising to find that she endured it so meekly; surprising, because such endurance is not in character; shocking, because she is not being true to herself The old Jeanne, surely, would have been in revolt; the old Jeanne would have forced even the most reluctant, fainéant, and involved of kings into some prosecution of action. The new Jeanne, the Jeanne who seems to have spent herself in her first original effort, tamely accepted conditions instead of vigorously rebelling against them. She submitted herself to a tame, cheap mode of life, trailing about after the King and Queen, being first taken to stay in the house of her darkest ememy, La Trémoïlle, at Selles-en-Berri, and then to Bourges, which must ironically have recalled the days when Charles, her hero, was known as the King of Bourges for want of a prouder title, a King so poor that even a cobbler of the town refused him credit for a pair of slippers, et qu’il en avoit chaussez ung et pour tant qu’il ne le pehut payer contant, il lui redechaussit le dict houzel, et lui convint reprendre ses vielz houzels.fn40 If Jeanne had only realised it from the start, she would have put no more trust in Charles VII than in any man who could order a pair of new slippers knowing that he could not pay the cobbler for them. He came back now to Bourges in better case, certainly, but still with the lack ofmoney pressing upon him, for, in justice, it should always be remembered, when we rail against his inactivity and disinclination for war, that his coffers were permanently depleted and that there were times when the crown jewels themselves were in pawn. We may imagine therefore that the Court of Charles VII was less splendid in fact than in name, even when he returned to his old haunt at Bourges with the holy oil upon his head and the victorious Pucelle of Orleans at his heels.
II
Jeanne’s hostess at Bourges, Marguerite La Touroulde, then a woman of nearly forty, had long been familiar with the penurious state of Charles’ finances, for her husband, then Receiver-general, had once found himself with only four écus left, either of his own or the King’s money. She herself was attached in some way to the service of the Queen. She and Jeanne seem to have got on very well together during the three weeks of Jeanne’s stay in her house, and, as Marguerite was evidently a chatterbox only too willing to recount everything she knew of her illustrious guest, she has left us many details we do not learn from other sources. I cannot help suspecting that Marguerite was not averse to exaggerating the friendship which had sprung up between them, any more than she was averse to repeating popular gossip, such as that those who first brought Jeanne to Chinon had begun by thinking her mad, and had decided to throw her into a deep ditch – an account which does not tally at all well with the words of Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy. Perhaps Mme La Touroulde lacked the power of selection, and perhaps, also, she was apt to represent Jeanne as more communicative than she really was; I fancy, in fact, that the hostess, an eager and inquisitive soul, besieged her guest with questions to which Jeanne good-manneredly replied, and which later could be advanced as proofs of intimacy and confidence. I estimate Marguerite La Touroulde, perhaps unjustly, as a kindly, rather bustling busybody, as self-important as she was worthy, to whom we must, however, be grateful for the little pen-picture she has left of one on whom no additional detail can be superfluous.
They slept together, according to custom. They went to church together, and to the public baths, where Marguerite decided cheerfully that Jeanne, so far as she could judge, was a virgin. (Evidently she hesitated to ask Jeanne the direct question, for she lays no claim to anything but her own powers of observation. How she, or any other, could possibly establish the fact ofvirginity from a mere look, howevet searching, at a girl of seventeen about to enter, or havingjust emerged from, her bath, is a point which I must leave to more physiologically experienced persons to settle.) When neither at church nor at the baths, they frequently talked together (fabularentur ad invicem), and, according to Marguerite, the topics of their conversation ranged over many outstanding points in Jeanne’s short career. Thus it is to Marguerite that we owe the record of Jeanne’s admonitions to the Duke of Lorraine (see Chapter 6, here); to her that we owe one of Jeanne’s own allusions to her examination at Poitiers, her answer to the doctors in theology: Il y as ès livres de Notre Seigneur plus que ès votres; to her that we owe the odd little bit of information that Jeanne hated dice, was extremely lavish in charity, and laughed at the women of Bourges who brought their rosaries to the house for her to touch, saying, ‘Touch them yourselves; they will benefit from your touch quite as much as from mine.’fn1 Marguerite, of course, gave this last piece of evidence as a proof that Jeanne had never arrogated holy powers to herself.
III
The King was restless, and the three weeks spent in Bourges were succeeded by sojourns in various places – Montargis, Loches, Jargeau, lssoudun, and Meung-sur-Yèvre. Most of these names mean very little to us – at most, to the English traveller on French roads, they may suggest a blue-and-white sign with arrows pointing in opposite directions and a figure expressed in kilometres – but to Jeanne they must by that time have become extremely and personally familiar. Loches: that was where she had knocked on the Dauphin’s private door, beseeching him to come with her to Reims. Jargeau: that was where she had saved her dear d’Alençon’s life, and where Suffolk had been taken prisoner. How otiose and fretful must have appeared the change from camp to Court! At Meung-sur-Yèvre her prospects seemed to brighten a little and her opportunity for activity to revive. It was to prove but a flash in the pan, but Jeanne, with her hopes starting once more into life, could not foresee this. For the moment, all she could see was that she was to be allowed to take up her arms again, and, ironically enough, in a more officially authorised position than ever before: her name and that of the seigneur d’Albret were linked as commanders of the army. For the army, although still unpaid, was once more to be sent into the field. Charles’ Council in October decided that it was ‘very necessary to recover the town of La Charité’ from the enemy, but that it was also necessary to take the town of Saint Pierre-le-Moutier first.fn2 Jeanne, thus released, rode off to Bourges with d’Albret to assemble the army, and by October 25th was at her old occupation of besieging a town. The unfortunate citizensof Bourges, byroyalcommand, were required to supply, promptly and without delay, thirteen hundred gold écus to be sent instantly to d’Albret and Jeanne – a command accompanied by the ominous remark that it would be a great pity for the said town and the whole province of Berry (grant dommaige pour ladicte ville et tout le pays de Berry) if the siege of La Charité had to be raised in default of this payment. Bourges, perhaps wisely, decided to sell by auction the rights over a thirteenth part of its retail wine-trade for a year.fn3
Other towns sent contributions: Orleans, always generous to its deliverer, gave money and cloth; Clermont Ferrand, munitions of war; Jeanne wrote herself to Riom, asking for saltpetre, sulphur, and cross-bows.fn4
IV
Jean d’Aulon leaves an account of her at Saint Pierre-le-Montier, an account in which his own part is not omitted, for there was something in that honest man which could never resist putting himself into the front of the stage. On this occasion he appears on crutches, having been wounded in the foot, but heroically struggles on to a horse and rides up to Jeanne, who, abandoned by all save four or five men, was watching the retreat of her discouraged troops. What, he asked, having ridden up to her, was she doing there alone? There is something in his question which suggests the old hen fussing after her chick. He is half cross with her for exposing herself to danger; h
alf proud of her for doing it, as she had done so many times before. One sympathises with the irritability of Jean d’Aulon. It was no light task for him to look after a militant saint at the best of times, mote especially when he was on crutches from a wound in his heel, and had hoisted himself on to a horse in order to rescue his troublesome, temerarious, and sublime charge. Jeanne, his chick and charge, took off her helmet before replying. She was not alone, she said then, for a company of fifty thousand was with her. Practical as ever, after this sudden flight among the heavenly hosts, she immediately added that he must call for faggots and fascines to enable them to cross the moat, and raised her voice to call her men back to the attack. It is a story which has to be told many times in speaking of Jeanne. The old magic worked once more: Saint Pierre-le-Moutier fell.fn5
V
She was less fortunate at La Charité, not perhaps entirely by her fault. According to her own account she had received no heavenly guidance about La Charité.fn6 At her trial, she remained obstinately evasive on this point; she never definitely said that her voices had forbidden her to go there, although, in her honesty, she would not be persuaded to say that they had spoken. A loyal soul, she was always reluctant to state specifically that her counsel at a given moment had failed her. Without wishing to fall into the easy error of unduly stressing a theory, it does seem significant that her first serious failures under arms – at Paris and at La Charité – should have occurred after what I have represented as the peak of her career: the coronation at Reims. It does suggest rather that her inspiration was deserting her at last. At the same time it must be borne in mind that circumstances at Paris had been almost overwhelmingly against her – so overwhehningly that nothing but the strongest supernatural power could have conquered; and at La Charité the same considerations must be given their fair chance. One must keep one’s head and remain practical, otherwise romanticism will run the danger of being totally discounted when it tries most extravagantly to break out of the ledger. Jeanne herself evidently recognised this elementary truth, in her queer strong mixture of the visionary and the executive. Without vision, nothing can be; without the executive faculty, nothing, save on purely spiritual lines, can be accomplished either. It is useless to try and write about Jeanne d’Arc without keeping a sense of proportion equivalent to her own. Thus it is salutary to remember that, although in a moment of exaltation she might see fifty thousand angels surrounding her at Saint Pierre-le-Moutier, she was not so carried away as to forget to call for faggots next moment to bridge the fosse. And thus, again, not unduly romanticising her supernatural powers, one must soberly take into consideration that at La Charité the winter season was against her, money was short, and the repeated promises of money and supplies were made only to be broken.
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