Saint Joan of Arc

by Vita Sackville-West

  14. COMPIÈGNE TO ROUEN

  I

  Her capture aroused tremendous and immediate excitement, than which no greater tribute could have been paid to the fear and hatred she had inspired among her enemies for the past full year. They had called her by insulting names; they had pretended that she came from the Devil; they had threatened to bum her as a witch if they could catch her; they had jeered at her as a woman in men’s clothes; they had affected to despise her, but now that she was actually in their power there could be no doubt that they regarded her as a major prize. They were frankly jubilant. Ceux de la partie de Bourgogne et les Angloix en furent moult joyeux … car ilz ne redoubtoient nul capitainne ne aultre chief de guerre, tant comme ilz avoient tousjours fait jusques à che présent jour, ycelle Pucelle.fn1 Their manner towards her was marked by no contempt and no condescension. They did not in any way affect to underrate their capture. Among her first visitors was the great Duke of Burgundy himself, who had missed the fighting, but who had arrived from Coudun just after it was over, when the troops, English and Burgundian, were still in the fields opposite Compiègne shouting with joy (faisans grans eris et rebaudissemens, pour la prinse de ladicte Pucelle).fn2 He went at once to see Jeanne, and for the first time those so different antagonists met face to face. There is no record of what passed between them at their interview on that May evening in the quarters of Jean de Luxembourg. Enguerran de Monstrelet was present, but conveniently forgets what they said to one another. As it seems improbable that so biased a chronicler would forget what was said on so momentous an occasion, it is fair to assume either that the Duke confined his remarks to some banal enquiry after her comfort not worth recording, or that he made some perilous reference and got rapped over the knuckles for his pains.fn3 We do know, however, that the Duke then went back to Coudun and dictated a letter to the citizens of Saint Quentin that same evening – a boastful letter, proclaiming that although his own side had lost no men either dead, wounded, or prisoners, the enemy had suffered severe losses both by death, drowning, and captivity. Through the pleasure of our blessed Creator, he says, the Pucelle is a prisoner, which, he is sure, will come as great news everywhere and will expose the error and wild credulity folle créance) of those who inclined themselves favourably to that woman.fn4

  He wrote to the Duke of Brittany toofn5 There was no pretence: the Duke of Burgundy was pleased; the Duke of Burgundy was very much relieved.

  II

  After the shouts, the jubilations, and the letters, a far more vital point remained to be discussed: to whom did the notorious prisoner really belong? Safely locked up in the castle of Beaulieu en Vermandois as she was, with her faithful d’Aulon to attend her, claims and controversy raged round her person: celle femme que l’on nomme communément Jehanne la Pucelle, prisonnière. The claim was, so to speak, five deep:

  (1) Her actual captor was an archer in the service of the Bastard of Wendomme.

  (2) The Bastard of Wendomme was himself in the service of Jean de Luxembourg.

  (3) Jean de Luxembourg, although a vassal of the Duke of Burgundy, was himself in the service of the King of England.fn6

  (4) The King of England himself had a lien on French prisoners, including Charles VII in person.fn7 Therefore he had a lien on Jeanne.

  (5) As though this were not enough, the Bishop of Beauvais could claim that as Jeanne had been taken within his diocese, he had the right to demand her and conduct her trial. This meant that she could legally be handed over to the mercies of the Church.

  In this extremely complicated situation, the archer who had actually dragged her off her horse and his immediate employer, the Bastard of Wendomme, quickly disappear. There remain only Jean de Luxembourg, the Duke of Burgundy, the King of England, and the Church to be considered. Jean de Luxembourg was easily bought off: it was he, in fact, who eventually pocketed the six thousand francs paid for Jeanne.fn8 Sentimentalists who are shocked by these mercenary transactions should realise that, according to the current usage, Jean de Luxembourg could not really be blamed for not listening to his aunt, who threw herself at his feet, begging him not to dishonour himself.fn9 He came of a noble house, but he was poor; the younger son of a younger son, he could not even count with any certainty on succeeding to his aunt’s fortune, which he fully expected his elder brother to dispute. The prospect of a ransom was tempting; and, indeed, he could scarcely have refused to yield his prisoner to his feudal superior on demand. He had no choice, any more than the Duke of Burgundy had any choice (even had he desired it), when the King of England, whom he recognised as the King of France, demanded the person of Jeanne or another. The only person who can really be blamed in the whole affair is the miserable Charles VII. However dispassionate a point of view we may strive to preserve, there comes a moment when our indignation gets the upper hand. Charles owed everything to Jeanne. Admittedly, he had his difficulties to contend with. He had his own weak character, and his own strong false friends – two conflicting influences which tore him into pieces between them. He had his own poverty to consider. But all the same, when both these things have duly been taken into consideration, there still remains a residue of contemptible treachery which must for ever be associated with his name. He ought to have made some attempt to rescue Jeanne. He ought either to have ransomed her, which would, technically, have been easy and usual, even if expensive; or, if he could not afford that expense out of his exchequer, he could have exchanged her. He could, at any rate, have made some attempt to do so. He had, for instance, still got Talbot in his keeping ever since the battle of Patay. I am not suggesting that the English would have been prepared to exchange Jeanne for Talbot. Talbot as a prisoner was obviously of far less value than Jeanne: Talbot was just one among other captains, whereas Jeanne, although not a captain strictly speaking, was something incalculable and exceptional, a real danger, and, as such, a real prize. The English had enough sense to sec that Talbot against Jeanne would not have weighed as a good exchange. Still, Charles should have tried it; he should have offered Talbot and other prisoners, and possibly a large sum of money, in order to recover Jeanne. He had pawned the crown jewels for meaner purposes. A bigger man would have pawned the richest towns of France for such a rescue.

  Again, had he been a bigger man, he could have compelled the Archbishop of Reims, as Primate of France, to disqualify the Bishop of Beauvais as a traitor and a renegade. The Bishop of Beauvais had already been turned out of his see. He could have been suspended in the performance of his duties. Charles took no such step. His apologists have done their best to absolve him from the charge of criminal ingratitude, but theirs is an ungrateful task. They have not even the excuse to plead that Charles was temperamentally incapable of understanding the elements of loyalty, for when he wanted to be loyal he could be passionately and unwisely so. No one had ever dared to say a word against La Trémoïlle (si n’y avoit personne qui en eust osé parler contre icely de la Trémoïlle, says Cousinot), and, as for Agnès Sorel, when she was Charles’ mistress, his loyalty to her was such that if any man wanted to damage an enemy, he had only to say that that enemy had spoken ill of the lady.fn10

  But Charles, although he could run all risks for objects where his heart was really engaged, and could bribe the Duke of Burgundy with Compiègne as part of an unnecessary and foolish truce, lay low, small, mean, and evasive as he always was, when it came to the point of ransoming the most valuable prisoner in his kingdom. He left his best friend to her fate.

  III

  That fate seems, to us, rapid and preordained. To its victim, it must have seemed protracted and slow. She who had been accustomed to carry her standard to victory was now incarcerated within walls. At first she was not unkindly treated. She was allowed to keep d’Aulon to serve her, and when she was removed from Beaulieu to Jean de Luxembourg’s castle of Beaurevoir at the source of the Escaut, not far from Saint Quentin, a place of greater security,fn11 she was put under the care of three women for whom she evidently conceived a great devotio
n. These were Jeanne de Luxembourg, the aged aunt of Jean; Jeanne de Béthune, his wife; and Jeanne de Bar, his step-daughter. The ladies of Luxembourg did all they could for their young namesake. They were greatly distressed by her obstinate refusal to abandon her masculine clothes, and tried by every means to persuade her into a more feminine frame of mind, giving her the choice between a woman’s dress or a length of material from which to make it. Jeanne was not tempted by either of these induceµl.ents. She was reluctant to reject an offer so kindly meant, and stated at her trial that she would sooner have done it at their request than at the request of any other ladies in France, except the Queen’s, but that God would not permit it.fn12 From Jeanne, also, we hear of the old demoiselle de Luxembourg’s remonstrance with her nephew when she begged him not to sell his prisoner to the English.fn13 There can be no doubt that the ladies of Luxembourg treated their guest with gentleness and affection. One wonders what they thought of Aimond de Macy, a young knight who later admitted naïvely that he had tried to treat her with familiarity when he saw her at Beaurevoir (tentavit, cum ea ludendo, tangere mammas suas, nitendo ponere manus in sinu suo), but whom she had pushed away with all her strength.fn14

  Kind though the ladies were, it was not to be expected that Jeanne would accept captivity tamely. Apart from her personal feelings, she was terribly and constantly distressed by the thought of Compiègne abandoned by its King and threatened by the enemy. It was all very well for her to assure d’Aulon that the King of Heaven would never allow it to be retaken: ever practical, however much she might trust the King of Heaven, she wanted to go and see to things for herself. She had been told that everyone in the town over the age of seven would be put to fire and blood, and stated that she would sooner die than continue to live after such a destruction of good people. This was bad enough, but another dread came urging her to take the desperate step she was contemplating. She had known all along that negotiations were in progress for her sale to the English. She could not fail to know this, aware as she was that her friendly old hostess was doing her best to prevent it. At least she knew for certain that the transaction had been completed, and that she was indeed about to be handed over to the foreigner and the enemy by one who, Burgundian though he was, was yet her own countryman. At this, a kind of frenzy seems to have taken possession of her. On her own showing, she had no desire to commit suicide – she had only the desire to get away. To fall into English hands was the thing she most dreaded. It was in vain that her voices sought to restrain her. In vain that Saint Catherine assured her that she would not be delivered until she had seen the King of England. She had no desire to see him, and said so. Still, the voices would not authorise her to do as she wished. The argument continued daily for some time, Jeanne beseeching, the voices refusing their permission. Finally she took the law into her own hands, commended herself to God, and threw herself off the top of the castle tower.fn15

  This leap from Beaurevoir constitutes one of the most inexplicable and curious episodes in her career. It is assumed that the height cannot have been less than sixty or seventy feet.fn16 The Act of Accusation expressly states that she jumped from the top (a summitate unius turris altæ), i.e. not from a window on the way up, as we can readily understand when we reflect that any window would have been heavily barred, even assuming, which is unlikely, that it was anything more than a mere arrow-slit; and also that her kind jailers probably allowed her freely to take the air on the fiat roof, never imagining that any prisoner, however wild, would be so insane as to seek escape that way. They had underrated Jeanne’s courage and desperation. It is left to our imagination to picture their consternation when they discovered that she had disappeared, still more when they found her lying insensible on the ground, for, apart from Jeanne’s own replies to questions, we have been left no first-hand account of the happening. At first they thought her dead, and, indeed, she later confessed that she had been unable to eat anything for two or three days. She seems to have been knocked thoroughly unconscious, perhaps even suffered slight concussion, for she records that when the Burgundians saw that she was alive they told her that she had leaped.fn17 The simple statement gives a good idea of the bewilderment she must have experienced when first she reopened her eyes. Still, it seems a small price to pay for so crazy an adventure. Far from falling on her head and breaking her neck, she did not even sprain an ankle, and as soon as Saint Catherine started telling her that she must ask forgiveness of God, and that the people of Compiègne would be relieved before Martinmas, November nth, she began to eat again and was soon recovered.fn18

  How are we to account for this extraordinary story? There can be no doubt of its truth, for Jeanne never sought to deny it and patiently answered all the questions put to her during the trial, where it was greatly insisted on, the accusation of attempted suicide providing a point of considerable value in the e:yes of the Church, which will not allow any human being, however wretched, the right to dispose of his own life. Not that Jeanne, when she jumped from the tower of Beaurevoir, intended to take her own life. She was far too good a Catholic for that. Escape was all she thought of, and, determined upon escape, in defiance of her intermediary voices, she preferred for once to short-circuit them and to go to the fountain-head of God for protection and support. From whichever angle we look at the story, it is a very queer one. It is significant in so far as it proves that Jeanne on occasion, could deliberately disobey the counsel of her chosen saints – a proof which surely disposes of the argument, so often advanced, that ‘her voices said what she wanted them to say.’ It disposes, almost ipso facto, of the argument, again so often advanced, that her voices were merely the subjective expression of her own inward desires. It proves that, on occasion, her saints could go against her, and that she could go against her saints. What are we to make of this? We can regard it either as a complication of the general problem or as a simplification of it; we can take it, in short, according to our individual temperament and mentality. The entirely credulous mentality will accept it as a final proofof the objective nature of Jeanne’s inspiration. The more sceptical mentality will ponder over the psychological questions aroused, and will fail to come to any decision. For myself, being neither credulous nor sceptical, but trying to keep a balance, an aurea mediocritas, the whole story appears as one of the strongest arguments that can be advanced in favour of an objective rather than a subjective influence working on Jeanne. It seems to me, for instance, highly significant that her voices, although at the moment entirely opposed to her personal wishes, could still inspire her with the gift of prophecy, so far as to inform her that Compiègne would be relieved before Saint Martin’s Day – as, indeed, it was. This was a thing that no one could exactly have foretold from a study of the situation, least of all Jeanne in her captivity, yet she appears to have known it. True, in this case she related it after the event, a circumstance which might well arouse our suspicion over anyone less impeccable: where Jeanne is concerned, we may, I think, take her word for any such serious statement. If she said Saint Catherine told her Compiègne would be relieved before a certain date, we may accept without question that she did honestly believe that Saint Catherine had told her so. Her saints, therefore, although they forbade her to leap and risk her life, still kept her informed of what was going to happen. It is all very inexplicable and contradictory.

  And even could we explain the psychological mystery, the physical aspect remains equally baffling. Several theories have been advanced to cover the facts, amongst them the suggestion that she attempted to let herself down – perhaps by bedclothes knotted together – but that the thing, whatever it was, broke (mais ce par quoi elle se glissait rompit).fn19 As, however, the chronicler adds that she nearly broke her back, and suffered a long illness from her injuries, his evidence on this point may probably be safely discarded, especially taking into consideration that neither Jeanne nor her judges made any reference to ropes or bedclothes in the very exhaustive examination at the trial. It is suggested, also, by a modem
author, who has the advantage of being a doctor, that at the age of nineteen her bones had not yet hardened, or, as he prefers to put it, ‘her epiphyseal cartilages had not ossified’ – and that ‘if she fell on soft ground it is perfectly credible that she might not receive worse than a severe shock.’fn20 I confess that I find this contention less perfectly credible than does its originator. Let anyone stand on a tower the height of Beaurevoir, and ask himself if he would care to throw himself over with any reasonable hope of not being smashed at the bottom. Moreover, a leading orthopaedic surgeon whom I questioned, emphatically replied that the suggestion that the bones were not yet hardened at nineteen is untenable, since, although ossification at the growth-lines is not complete at that age, the main portion of each bone is as hard and as breakable as in adult life.

  Then there is M Quicherat, who, as the greatest and most scholarly authority on Jeanne, cannot possibly be disregarded. M Quicherat throws out a mysterious remark, to the effect that une certaine maladie qui fait l’étonnement de la médecine offers parallel cases of tremendous falls without organic injury.fn21 To what disease M Quicherat refers here I have been unable to discover, nor can any of my medical acquaintances throw any light on the puzzle. The specialist whom I have already quoted has been kind enough to write me a long letter, from which the following are extracts:

  ‘There is, as you say, a well-known condition in which bones are praetematurally brittle, but there is none in which they are abnormally resilient; they can, it is true, become extremely flexible in one condition of disease (osteomalacia), but that is the result of many pregnancies, or of severe deprivation of diet, and it causes gross defonnities of the skeleton (flattened pelvis, stunted bent limbs, and so on). I do not think that it has ever been suggested that the Maid was a stunted cripple, has it?