‘I have myself occasionally seen persons who have fallen from a considerable height without serious consequences. When I was a house surgeon at Guy’s, I saw a porter from one of the hop-ware-houses near by who fell to the pavement, from the fourth floor, and sustained only bruises, and a severe fright. I also saw a baby which fell from a third-floor window of Peabody Buildings, and was absolutely uninjured. Both patients were very thoroughly X-rayed.
‘I have also seen, in my time, quite a number of persons who have suffered a crush-fracture of the body of a vertebra (usually the last dorsal or first lumbar), who have never, as far as they can remember, had any serious fall, or had any symptoms in consequence of their injury. Yet there the fracture is, in the radiogram, for all men to see-quite unmistakeable. That can only mean that a vertebra can be broken in consequence of relatively slight force, in some cases, and the fracture may cause little disturbance, so much so that the causal injury is forgotten.
‘Assuming, then, that the story about Joan of Arc is true, it is possible that she did suffer some bone injury, but that it caused no very disabling symptoms. And if, at that time, she was already strongly moved by religious ardour amounting almost to fanaticism – she might well have disregarded pain and disability of such a degree.’
We are left, therefore, to take our choice of the explanations. Either it was some extraordinary chance which preserved Jeanne from injury, or else she did actually suffer some injury but remained unaware of it, or else she was upheld by some inexplicable agency. In any case, the incident is, to say the least of it, remarkable.
IV
Meanwhile, outside the confines of Beaurevoir, events had been moving towards an end which was finally to deliver Jeanne into the power of the Church. Even though delays were to arise, no time had at first been wasted. Three days after her capture (May 26th) the Vicar-General of the Inquisition had addressed a letter to the Duke of Burgundy, demanding that she should be handed over,fn22 and the University of Paris had likewise written, asking that La Pucelle should be submitted to the justice of the Church, to be duly tried for idolatry and other matters.fn23 Jean de Luxembourg and the Bastard of Wendomme were also called upon to do their duty, i.e. to give their captive up. Delays ensuing, the tone of the letters becomes more and more peremptory, but by July we find a new protagonist taking charge of the situation, a protagonist who had no intention whatsoever of letting Jeanne slip through his fingers. Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had every reason for wishing to square his account with the French King and his Pucelle. From the first, Pierre Cauchon had been marked for success. He had been associated with the University of Paris from the moment he went there at undergraduate age. In various stages, he proceeded from responsibility to responsibility. He was sent to Rome; he was given office after office. He progressed with certainty all along his particular line. As a churchman, he was doing well, but, even as a churchman, it sooner or later became necessary for him to decide on which secular side he would politically throw his weight. He chose the English side. Ever since his election to the see of Beauvais, in 1420, he had served the English cause in France, enjoying first the confidence of Bedford and presently the income of a thousand pounds as a member of the Council of Henry VI. Highly esteemed by the University of Paris, and in great favour with Pope Martin V, life was pleasant and successful enough until, in the summer of 1429, disaster fell upon him when his English friends were driven from Beauvais and he himself lost possession of his see. A fugitive at Rouen, he had time to reflect upon the wrongs he had suffered even as an indirect result of the triumphant campaigns of the idolatrous Pucelle. And Pierre Cauchon was not a man who readily forgave.
To this coldly revengeful prelate, therefore, the task now laid upon him by Bedford must have been congenial in the extreme. It must have afforded him great satisfaction to associate his own name with that of Henry Vl, in demanding that ‘this woman who had been taken within his diocese and under his spiritual jurisdiction’ should be delivered to him in order that he might conduct her trial as it behoved.fn24 It must have been most agreeable to arrive in person at the camp of Jean de Luxembourg opposite Compiègne, as the accredited agent of Bedford, to put an end to all the shilly-shally and bargaining over rhe person of Jeanne. With the authority of Bedford and Henry VI behind him, he was in a position to dictate to Jean de Luxembourg and even to the great Burgundy himself. He came backed by the full authority of the English crown, and with promises of English money in his hand. The Burgundians, as we have seen, had no choice but to agree. Cauchon was unremitting and energetic in his efforts. He travelled, as he tells us, now to Compiègne, now to Beaurevoir, now to Rouen, and now to Flanders, and at the end of his mission he received seven hundred and sixty-five livres tournois for his expenses.fn25
The delay in the actual delivery of Jeanne seems to have been largely due to the difficulty of raising the necessary money. It was raised, eventually, by a tax imposed on the Duchy of Normandy, to the tune of eighty thousand pounds, ten thousand livres tournois being used and converted into the payment for Jeanne la Pucelle, sorcière, personne de guerre.fn26 It was not until November 1430 that she was finally handed over. There is no record of the exact date of her removal from Beaurevoir to another place of captivity. We know only that some time during November 1430 she was taken from Beurevoir to Arras, where she was shown the portrait of herself in armour, kneeling before the King (see Chapter 1, here). As she was depicted in full armour, we may imagine that this reminder of her glorious days hurt her considerably. Nessun maggior dolore … Where was that armour now? She had left it at Saint Denis in a mood of despair. Incidentally, it is worthy of remark that, although the early descriptions of her clothes are detailed and numerous, they cease altogether from the beginning of her decline. She must, for instance, have procured some kind of armour after she had abandoned her own at Saint Denis, for she was often in battle after that; but what happened to it after she had been taken at Compiègne? What did she wear in prison? What did she look like, deprived of her armour and her scarlet cloak? Did they leave her in possession of the tunic in the colours of Orleans? Or was the association with Orleans too dangerous a reminder? We know nothing for certain except that she wore boy’s dress, and we may supplement this knowledge by reflecting that since she had now spent nearly six months in prison, wearing the same suit every day, she must have presented an exceedingly shabby appearance by the time she reached Arras. It is logical, I think, to assume that she had had no change of suit. Her jailers, however kind, would never have consented to supply her with new clothes of masculine fashion, and we know that she had steadily rejected the offer of any others. We know, also, that at Arras a certain Jean de Pressy and others, who remain anonymous, renewed the plea that she should adopt feminine clothes.fn27 Her small human problems suggest themselves inevitably to our curiosity. How did she manage to cut her hair? It is unlikely that she would have been allowed anything in the nature of a knife, and equally unlikely that even the kind ladies of Beaurevoir, who for her own sake deplored her insistence on her masculine appearance, would have abetted her obstinacy by any loan of scissors from their work-baskets. These questions must remain for ever unanswered. All we can imagine for certain is that she must have arrived at Arras looking very shabby, very forlorn, and very young.
V
From Arras she was taken by stages to Rouen. First to the castle of Drugy near Saint Riquier,fn28 then to the castle of Crotoy, on the sea at the mouth of the Somme. She had, of course, never seen the sea before, and it would be interesting to know what her feelings were on beholding for the first time this expanse of grey tossing water – the month was November, and the sea the English Channel. If children who have never seen the sea can still be astounded and impressed when confronted by its immensity, even today when photographs and cinemas might be expected to have bred a second-hand degree of familiarity in their minds, how much more must a girl like Jeanne, who belonged to an age of a very different type of wonder, who had never seen
a photograph, and who could have formed no idea of the sea save by the very inadequate descriptions of illiterate travellers, have gazed in astonishment at its actuality. Add to this, that she was at that time a prisoner, and that to the yearning prisoner the sea and its ships must always romantically represent a symbol of freedom and escape. Add to this, again, that across the sea lay, somewhere, England, that dim strong island which had sent out such enemies of France as Henry V, Salisbury, Talbot, and Bedford, and which even now held her especial favourite, the Duke of Orleans, captive in one of its fortresses called the Tower of London. One thing taken with another, Jeanne’s first sight of the English Channel must have been enough to move the firmest soul.
There was another point about the castle of Crotoy which cannot have failed emotionally to affect her: it was the very place where her friend d’Alençon had been incarcerated for five years as the prisoner of the English after the battle of Vemeuil. Knowing this, she can scarcely have failed to think of him when she herself arrived there wider similar, though more terrible, conditions. More terrible, for d’Alernçon knew he could be ransomed; Jeanne, by that time, must have known that no ransom was forthcoming for her; she must have known, also, that no offered ransom would outbid the determination of the Church and the English. She must have thought with envy of d’Alençon’s gay yowig figure, impatient, but daily expecting the release she could never hope to gain.
Still, the records prove that nowhere was she regarded as a mere prisoner, hustled unimportantly from place to place. At Drugy the monks of the local abbey attended upon her (la visitèrent par honneur), headed by their provost and their almoner, and followed by the principal citizens of Saint Riquier, all being much moved on seeing so innocent a person thus persecuted.fn29 At Crotoy she received the ladies of Abbeville, who had come to see her as a marvel of their sex and who arrived by boat down the Somme. Jeanne expressed her appreciation, commended herself to their prayers, kissed them, and allowed them to take their departure in tears by boat again. So much impressed was she by their frankness, their candour, and their naïveté (leur franchise, leur candeur, et leur naïveté) that she came near to denying her own people in Lorraine. ‘Ha!’ she exclaimed, ‘que voicy un hon peuple! pleust à Dieu que je fusse si heureuse, lorsque je finiray mes jours, que je pusse estre enterrée en ce pays.’fn30 It is difficult not to be touched by the generous response of the shabby, boyish, important little captive towards these voluminous and prosperous matrons of Abbeville, who had come, in the first instance, one suspects, largely in order to satisfy their curiosity, although they may have gone away truly impressed and moved by their brief contact with a personality so entirely different from their own. Anyhow, they floated away on their barge, tears in their eyes, and Jeanne stayed behind, knowing that sooner or later she must be called upon to confront the dry damning assessors at Rouen.fn31
In one respect, Jeanne was fortunate during her brief stay at le Crotoy: she found a fellow-prisoner there, a remarkable man, Nicolas de Queuville, chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, whose celebrations of Mass in the prison Jeanne was allowed to attend, and to whom she was allowed to make her confession.fn32 But it was notlong before she followed the example of the ladies of Abbeville, embarking, like them, on the waters of the Somme, unlike them under guard, merely to be taken across the wide mouth of the river from le Crotoy to Saint Valery on the opposite bank. She does not appear to have paused at Saint Valery, but went straight on to Eu, where tradition says that she was lodged in the prison of the castle. Very little evidence is available about her journey. We know only that from Eu she was taken to Dieppe and from Dieppe – the last stage – to Rouen,fn33 where she arrived some time during December 1430.
VI
The days of respectful and even kindly treatment were over. She had now known captivity for some seven months, but never captivity such as this. Spiritually and physically she suffered as she had never suffered before. Spiritually, she was now denied all the comforts of the Church. Physically, she was denied the privilege which should have been accorded her as one about to be tried by the Church, of being kept in the ecclesiastical prison, where the Bishop of Rouen had at his disposal a room for women, and where she might have been placed under the care of women;fn34 but was thrown, instead, in irons into a common cell. The best that can be said for the cell is that it was not a dungeon, since eight steps up gave access to it (Massieu). Accounts of witnesses vary slightly as to the exact nature of her fetters; some denied all knowledge of the matter; others, who had some means of judging it, either by hearsay or by personal experience, agree that her feet were chained; and some of these add that her feet were padlocked to a long chain attached to a beam;fn35 others go so far as to say that at night an extra chain was passed round her body. Did they allow her a bed or not? Here, again, accounts differ. Jean Tiphaine, who visited her as a doctor during an illness, says she had a bed, and so do others (Boisguillaume, Massieu); Manchon, on the other hand, explicitly states that she had none. Perhaps the discrepancy may be explained by suggesting that they gave her a bed when she fell ill, and allowed her to retain it once her illness had put it into their heads that she might elude their vengeance by natural means. For the rest, there can be no doubt whatsoever that she was most uncomfortably housed and harshly guarded. Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie was not under more constant or less pitiless supervision. Day and night she was watched by five English soldiers of the lowest type, houcepaillers, who missed no opportunity of tormenting and mocking her.fn36 Manchon heard her complaining both to the Bishop of Beauvais and to the Earl of Warwick that they had several times attempted to rape her, and heard her reminding Warwick that, but for his timely arrival in response to her cries for help, they would have achieved their object.fn37 No one could approach her or speak to her without permission; the English dreaded lest she should escape, and, of the three keys to her cell, one was in the keeping of the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester.fn38 There are further reports of an iron cage having been made for her, and, even if she was never put into it, we can scarcely doubt that her jubilant enemies took pleasure in describing it to her in all its horrid detail. The evidence for its existence is considerable. Thomas Marie and Jean Massieu had both heard of it; Massieu, indeed, claims to have derived his information from Etienne Castille, the very locksmith who made it, and credulously repeats the locksmith’s statement that Jeanne was kept in it from the day of her arrival at Rouen until the beginning of the trial, standing upright, tied by the throat, hands, and feet. Thomas Marie had also heard of the cage from the locksmith who made it, and confirms the statement that the prisoner would be obliged to stand upright, but, less definite than Massieu, said no more than that ‘he believed’ she had been kept in it. The most interesting witness on the subject of the cage, however, is Pierre Cusquel, a simple workman of Rouen, who twice had speech with her in her cell, owing to the fact that he was employed by Jean Son, the master mason of the prison. He seems to have been allowed to talk to her quite freely, and indeed privately, for he was able to warn her to answer very prudently as it concerned her life and death, and was also able to put questions to her and to receive her replies, during which time he could observe the cell at leisure, and is one of the witnesses who mentions the chain attaching her to a beam. He never saw her in the cage, but – and this is the value of his evidence-he does say that he saw the cage weighed in his house.fn39 He is the only witness who claims to have seen the cage with his own eyes, the others are basing their stories on hearsay. Why the cage should have found its way to Cusquel’s house for the purpose of being weighed, he does not explain. Possibly his connexion with the master mason had something to do with it.
Whatever else Jeanne might have to complain of in her prison, she could not complain of loneliness. Loneliness, which would have meant uninterrupted communion with her saints, she could have borne better. As it was, she had to endure the coarse :md often ingenious banter and even the ill-treatment of the English guards,fn40 constant visits from
men who came on any pretext to satisfy their curiosity, threatening visits from men she knew to be her sworn enemies, nocturnal visits from mysterious figures she hesitated to trust. Trapped, friendless, she had nothing left to rely on but her courage and her wits. Neither failed her, but she knew very well that fate had closed round her as surely as the walls of her cell. It was partly her own superb honesty which made her captivity so hard, for she refused absolutely to give her word not to attempt an escape. Should she succeed in escaping, she said, no one could reproach her with having broken her word if she had given it to no one. Then, rather illogically, she complained of her chains and gyves. But when they told her that her previous attempts at escape had rendered necessary the order for a dose guard and iron shackles, she replied, in her old uncompromising manner, that it was quite true she had wished to escape, and still wished it – that being within the right of any prisoner.fn41 In no way would she condescend to placate or conciliate her jailers.
Many came to see her in prison. Pierre Daron and Pierre Manuel went together, and remarked to her, by way of jocularity (dicendo eidem Johanna jocose), that she would not have come to that place had she not been brought. Such wit was not perhaps in the best of taste when offered to a helpless prisoner chained to a heavy piece of wood, as Daron had occasion to observe, but they went on to question her about her foreknowledge of the day when she should be taken – questions which she answered patiently, seriously, and with good humour.fn42 Far worse than these privileged and casual visitors, whose curiosity provided their only reason for wishing to get a sight of the witch, was the incessant attack maintained by those who had only too dear a reason for doing so. Sometimes they came openly and by daylight; sometimes, as we shall see, in disguise and by night. One of the open raids is described in some detail by that same Airnond de Macy who had already tried to take liberties with Jeanne at Beaurevoir, and who was to end by saying that he believed her to be in Paradise. Having seen her at Beaurevoir under the care of her kindly ladies, he was now to see her at Rouen surrounded by armed men. Indeed, the tramp of the company with whom he went must have resounded with ominous masculinity on the stone steps of Jeanne’s tower. It was a distinguished company, for it included Jean de Luxembourg, his brother the Bishop of Thérouenne, and the Earls of Warwick and Stafford. It is difficult to imagine what Jean de Luxembourg’s motive for the visit really was. Did he go merely to have another look at the young prisoner who had for so long enjoyed his hospitality? Ostensibly he went to tell her that he would ransom her, on condition that she would promise never to take arms again. Jeanne of course immediately saw through this empty offer, and very rightly pointed out that since he had neither the wish nor the power to do so, en nom Dé, he must be laughing at her. De Luxembourg insisting, Jeanne several times repeated what she had already said, then added that she well knew the English would bring her death about, in the belief that they would regain the kingdom of France after she was dead. ‘But,’ she said, ‘even if they were a hundred thousand Godons more than they are now, they should not have the kingdom.’
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