VI
The attempt on La Charité ended in a sad failure – the siege had to be raised, and from the end of November 1429 until the spring of 1430 nothing but odd bits of information, picked mostly from account-books and letters, provides us with any guide as to Jeanne’s pursuits and whereabouts. We know that the Court spent two months at Meung-sur-Yèvre, from November till January, and it is possible, and probable, that Jeanne remained there also, in the very ambiguous position of a dependant, honoured indeed, but unemployed. How did she occupy herself during that time? We do not know even where she was lodged – a piece of information usually supplied whenever she spent more than a few days in any place; no good woman such as Marguerite La Touroulde was brought forward later at the procès de réhabilitation to testify to the impeccable conduct and piety of her life during this distressing period when Satan might well have been expected to be doing his worst. At the same time it is worth noting how many women play a part just at this phase; we should scarcely notice their intrusion, were it not for our unconscious habit of regarding Jeanne’s life as led entirely in the company of men. We have really grown so well accustomed to the rattle of armour that the rustle of a skirt comes as something of a surprise. The feminine life is a life we had forgotten; true, Jeanne, most wisely, had always been careful to safeguard her reputation by sleeping with women under a roof when not sleeping under the stars with men; but, for the rest, she lived the life ofa man so naturally that we cease to be conscious of her sex either one way or the other. It was even brought against her at her trial that she had refused all offices of women in her room and private affairs, preferring men as her servants – a sly suggestion which she denied, with, as I believe, absolute truth.fn7 At the same time she answered with equal frankness that men had always been of her government, meaning, obviously, that men had represented the strong, vital, public element in her life; women the soft, private, and subsidiary. In this respect she seems quite naturally to have looked upon men as another man would have looked upon them. Thus, when women do appear on the scene, it requires almost an effort to readjust ourselves to the idea that Jeanne was herselfa woman, and to remember that this young fighting captain could consort with women in an even more natural freemasonry than she could consort with men. And in the months between September 1429 and April 1430 quite a number of women pass across Jeanne’s stage. She had had those three weeks in the enforced intimacy of Marguerite La Touroulde. The Queen, meanwhile, had joined the King, which in itself musthacve imported a feminine softening into the Court. Then, Jeanne came into contact with that very uninteresting fraud, Catherine de la Rochelle. Jeanne met her twice, once at Jargeau and once at Montfaucon-en-Berry, and saw through her without any difficulty. Catherine de la Rochelle was not at all the kind of person designed to impose upon that sincere spirit and cutting mind. Her encounters with Jeanne must have been, from her point of view, destructive in the extreme. It is always distressing to have one’s own falsities exposed, especially to oneself. She cannot have enjoyed being told to go back to her husband and look after her house and her children. She cannot have enjoyed hearing her offers of peace-making with the Duke of Burgundy snubbed as Jeanne snubbed them, saying, so rightly, that the only peace which could be made would be made at the point of the lance. Still less can she have enjoyed spending two successive nights with Jeanne, waiting for her own particular ‘white lady,’ dressed in cloth of gold, to appear to them both. Poor Catherine de la Rochelle: on the first night, Jeanne, having stayed awake till midnight, evidently got bored and went to sleep. In the morning, when she asked if the ‘white lady’ had appeared, Catherine assured her that she had indeed appeared, but that she, Catherine, had been unable to awaken her, Jeanne, adding that the ‘white lady’ would surely appear again next night. Here, I think, occurs one of the most typical instances of Jeanne’s good rustic common sense, nor am I at all sure that it does not also mark her instinctive, humorous, and wise mistrust of a certain type of members of her sex: she spent most of the following day in sleep, in order to stay awake watching for the ‘white lady’ during the whole of the following night. It is evident that she was determined not to let Catherine go to sleep either, for she kept asking her if the said lady was not soon going to put in an appearance. Poor Catherine kept on answering, ‘Yes, soon!’ Her eyelids must have been drooping, but Jeanne, having slept all day, pitilessly kept her awake till dawn, and, of course, nothing came.fn8
Jeanne was not to be taken in by frauds. If she had been a more sophisticated person, one would be tempted to say that she had deliberately made a fool of Catherine de la Rochelle. As it is, she probably wanted to get at the truth of the matter, and took the best and quickest way she knew of doing so, putting her sincerity like a scythe through the humbug of the woman who had advised her not to go to La Charité ‘because it was too cold there.’
Catherine, who had offered to discover hidden treasure for the King, was no good, and Jeanne told the King so, greatly to the displeasure of Brother Richard and of Catherine herself. Jeanne, an uncompromising person, had no patience with adventurers like Brother Richard and Catherine de la Rochelle. On the other hand, she would take trouble for people she was fond of, and threw the notables of Tours into some consternation by writing to demand a marriage-dowry for her friend Héliote Poulnoir, the daughter of that Scottish painter who had executed her standard and her pennon (see Appendix E, here). It is amusing to read their embarrassment through the lines of their official report. A special meeting was summoned to deal with the situation–a very grave meeting, including the judge of Touraine, the councillorof the Queen of Sicily, four canons, representing the churches of Town, and three leading citizens. It was decided that the painter himself should be consulted, and that the opinion of two other important burgesses should be sought – they being for the moment with the Court at Bourges, on the business of their city. The next meeting was held three weeks later, and was even more numerously attended. Héliote, perhaps wisely, had not waited on their deliberations, and the wedding had meanwhile taken place. A certain apologetic regret appears in their finding that the public funds of Tours must be expended on the needs of the city and on nothing else (pour ce que les deniers de la ville convient emploier ès réparacions de la ville et non ailleurs). This ruling evidently seemed to them a little too ungracious and too harsh, for they added that, for the love and honour of the Pucelle, the bride should be prayed for in the name of the city, and, moreover, should receive bread and wine, botl1 white and red, on the day of her benediction. Colas de Montbazon was charged with the execution of this friendly office.fn9
Jeanne’s effort on behalf of her friend, although partially wisuccessful, does her credit. She was evidently not so inhuman as we might sometimes be tempted to believe. She could take trouble about the wedding of a girl in Tours – a girl whose father had supplied what was, perhaps, her most precious and symbolic possession. It proves that she was neither wigrateful nor forgetful in small matters, which is more than can be said of many people, whether preoccupied with greater matters or not.
Nor, among strange women associated with Jeanne, must we forget La Pierronne, the unfortwiate Breton visionary, who claimed that God appeared to her dressed in a long white robe with a scarlet tunic, and addressed her as one friend might speak to another. She knew Jeanne at just about this time, but was burnt for defending her, as well as for blasphemy, after Jeanne had been taken prisoner.fn10
VII
It would be suitable and pleasant to add the name of Sainte Colette de Corbie to the list of women who figured in Jeanne’s life during this period, but unluckily we cannot do so with any certainty. It seems more than probable that Jeanne must have come across this very remarkable woman at Moulins in November 1429, and, although there is no evidence to prove their meeting, there is equally none to disprove it. It is almost incredible that these two women, two of the great saints of France, should have been in the same town on the same date – as we know they were – without contrivin
g to meet. Of course, neither thought of herself as a ‘great saint’; it is we who set them together in that juxtaposition: Sainte Colette de Corbie, Sainte Jeanne d’Arc. There are sound reasons for assuming that Sainte Colette and Sainte Jeanne almost certainly met at Moulins in the Bourbonnais during the first fortnight of November 1429. There is the fact that Marie de Bourbon, who was Jeanne’s friend, and who was also the foundress of Colette’s convent at Moulins, happened to be at Moulins when Jeanne and Colette were both there, and so would naturally have been anxious to bring the two together. There is the further fact that Jeanne, according to local tradition, prayed frequently and at great length in the chapel of the Poor Clares, the very Order to which Colette belonged, and the very chapel attached to Colette’s convent. There is the further fact that Colette, quite apart from her miraculous gift of making clocks go slow and the sun rise too early, of rooting hostile men to the ground, and of teaching lambs to keel down at the moment of the Elevation, had not led the life ofa cloistered nun but ofa very practical and active woman with an interest in public affairs – on occasion she had even interfered in the negotiations between the Dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy – so that the two saints would have had much in common besides their religious experiences. Even in religious experience they shared much: both had fallen under the usual suspicion of being witches; both had seen visions and had been directed by heavenly voices, though Colette’s visitations had treated her less kindly than Jeanne’s, striking her first with dumbness and then with blindness when she displayed a somewhat natural reluctance to obey their commands; there were even occasions when her chair was snatched from under her by invisible hands.fn11 There were ample reasons for their wishing to meet, and there seems to be no reason why they should not have gratified the wish. I think we can take it, safely, that Colette de Corbie may be included among the women who crossed Jeanne’s path during those unhappy months which filled the interim between the splendour of Reims and the downfall at Compiègne; and that Colette de Corbie, among all those women, was the most worthy of the friendship, however briefly, owing to circumstances, accorded.
VIII
Jeanne’s movements from December 1429 to April 1430 are sparsely recorded compared with the detail in which we have hitherto been able to follow them, and the events which do give us some guide as to her occupations appear insignificant enough as the aftermath of her great doings. In December the King was so gracious as to confer a patent of nobility upon his cara et delecta Jeanne, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all their posterity.fn12 I doubt very much whether this honour brought any particular gratification to Jeanne, who would certainly have preferred a document granting her foll powers to proceed against the Duke of Burgundy and the Engli;;h, nor is there any reason to believe that she herself ever availed herself of the privilege thus conferred. The only interest which this easy instance of the royal gratitude holds for us is the light it throws upon the pronundation of Jeanne’s name (see Chapter 3, here).
The act of ennoblement can scarcely be ranked as an occupation. It throws no light on what Jeanne was doing at the time: she appears in it as a passive rather than an active agent. As to her own movements, she may perhaps have spent Christmas Day at Jargeau;fn13 she was certainly at Orleans on January 19th, when the city present1ed her with fifty-two pints of wine, six capons, nine partridges, thirteen rabbits, and a pheasant, plus a doublet for her brother.fn14 The city of Orleans was always loyal and generous to its Pucelle. Jeanne herself, who went back to Orleans as often as she could, seems, in her frequent returns, to have expressed her especial affection for the city she had saved. It is suggested even that she ‘took the lease of a house in Orleans, perhaps as a home for her mother.’fn15 Having taken the whole city and made it historically hers, she could well afford to take a house in it as a pied-à-terre. A pheasant for her dinner; a doublet for her brother; a lodging for her mother – Orleans was the last place in the whole of France to grudge such small benefits to its deliverer. Jeanne was always its welcome guest – so welcome, that it was perhaps fortunate for Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, that she should eventually have been bound to the stake at Rouen instead ofat Orleans. Had she been bound to it at Orleans, I fancy that it would have been a case of Water, water, quench fire!’ while Pierre Cauchon found himself held down to the nostrils in the Loire at the same time as the waters of the river were being poured from buckets over the pyre his orders had ignited. Orleans would have drowned the Bishop sooner than have burnt the Pucelle.
But the Bishop of Beauvais has not yet, properly speaking, walked on to the stage. His shadow is as yet only darkly and gigantically projected from the wings. He waits.
The Duke of Burgundy took advantage of the lull to celebrate his third marriage, with extravagant pomp, at Bruges (January 10th, 1430). Described as the richest prince in Christendom, he has three wives, twenty-four mistresses, and the rather moderate allowance of sixteen illegitimate children to his credit. On this occasion he was marrying Isabella of Portugal, who was brought to him from Portugal by a special embassy including his favourite painter, John Van Eyck. For eight days and nights the city of Bruges excelled itself in display: seventeen nations, who had their banking houses in the Flemish city, vied with one another in magnificence; the burghers vied with the nobles, so that fete succeeded fete, the streets were hung with the richest tapestries of Flanders, and wine ran night and day from fountains – Rhine wine from the mouth of a stone lion, Beaune from the mouth of a stag, while during meals a unicorn spouted rose-water and malmsey. As the crowning symbol of the fidelity he intended to bnng to his marriage, the Duke instituted a new order of chivalry with the comforting motto Autre n’auray – the Order of the Golden Fleece, ‘conquered by Jason.’fn16
Meanwhile, those three little bubbles of information about Jeanne rise to the surface and burst. She is ennobled; she spends Christmas at Jargeau; she is found at Orleans in January. Then there is a gap till March 3rd, when she reappears at Sully as the originator of a letter to the Hussites of Bohemia.fn17 Then on March 16th and again on March 28th she reappears as the incontestable dictater of two letters to her ‘very dear and good friends’ at Reims. She is not at all happy or easy in her mind, and, as with most people who are not happy or easy in their minds, a certain irritability pierces through the tone of her letters. She is keeping something back from her dear and good friends: she would willingly send them good news, but is afraid the letters may be intercepted on the way. (Je vous mandesse anqunores augunes nouvelles de quoy vous seriés bien joyeux: mais je doubte que les letres ne fussent prises en chemin.fn18) This is a short letter. In the nex1c one she allows herself to be more outspoken, and quite openly mentions ces traitrez Bourguignons adversaires; but then, recollecting herself, refers again, darkly, to the bonnes nouvelles she will shortly send them plus à plain.fn19 It is dear that neither Jeanne nor her friends at Reims trusted the Burgundians or their truces in the least; it is, in fact, quite dear that the Remois were worried by the presence of a Burgundian party within their walls. The English were even entertaining the idea that they might take their own little King to be crowned at Reims. He was only eight, but he could serve as a figurehead. His head was as good as a grown-up head, when nothing was required of it but to support the crown of France and England during the brief though impressive ceremony of an hour. After that, he could go back to his lessons or his toys, leaving the Dukes of Burgundy and Bedford to do the rest. He need take, momentarily, no further part in the governance of his double kingdom.
On the other hand, the Dukes of Burgundy and Bedford had still to reckon with ‘la Pucelle.’ She had been kept waiting for more months than she could afford, and although her personal King, Charles VII, was easily persuaded and gullible, his evil genius, that limb of the Fiend, that Pucelle de malheur, was not gullible at all. Truces failed entirely to convince her that people whom she regarded as enemies of France really desired the good of France and were not merely gaining time for their own advantage. Truce
s, however often renewed, were bound to come to an end some day. Danger could be staved off, but not indefinitely. It was becoming really necessary to clear this sorceress out of France. So long as she was in it, there could be no ease for either the Duke of Burgundy or the Duke of Bedford. Neither of them could get on with his affairs.
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