by Dan Davis
I wondered also whether he knew how close I had come to capturing her myself.
18. The Trial of Joan
March 1431
After the Dauphin was crowned and became the King, Joan had urged the new king to storm Paris, as she had foretold.
We fought off the assault and Joan was wounded in the leg by a crossbow bolt. King Charles ordered the retreat from Paris and sought to find a diplomatic solution with the Burgundians that would allow him to be rid of the English and at the same time he quietly excluded Joan. Her manic pleas for endless assaults and grand pronouncements ceased being helpful and began to be a hindrance. In the hope that she would take the hint and go away, he made her and her family into nobility. They were awarded an annual sum from the crown and were allowed all the other legal benefits of being above the station of commoners. Such a thing was not unheard of but usually was granted only to a fabulously wealthy and successful soldier or courtier after a lifetime of service and most people, lords especially, saw the ennobling as the farce that it was.
As the King withdrew active support, so too did other lords and knights until the number of men around her dwindled. Of the great men, only Gilles de Rais remained at her side. And he did so almost to the end.
But Joan did not take the hint and she would not give up her struggle. She would not be sidelined by anyone, not even the King of France, and so she continued to throw herself into any conflict that she could find in the hope that her strength of will would carry the day.
In May 1430, a year after her triumphs at Orléans, she led a force that attempted to attack the Burgundian camp at Margny north of Compiègne.
But I was hunting her.
Together with a handful of loyal archers we had tracked her from Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier to La-Charité-sur-Loire to Compiègne but she was always too well protected. Once, we saw her at a distance and Rob had begged to be allowed to shoot her with an arrow but I had denied him.
“It must be over two hundred yards, Rob,” I said. “It would serve only to alert them to our presence and we would be killed.”
“I can hit her in the crown, I swear it.”
“And you could hit her in the eye if only she was looking up,” Walt said. “And shoot it up her arse if only she was bending over.”
But with every failed attack that Joan led, her protectors dwindled in number and we got closer and closer to springing an ambush on her so that I could cut her damned throat.
When the French army withdrew into the fortifications of Compiègne after six thousand additional Burgundian soldiers arrived, Joan stayed with the rear guard of the army. We stayed close, moving parallel to Joan’s position at the rear, keeping our distance. But when the Burgundians caught up with the French, they began skirmishing as they moved. Darting attacks by mounted men attacked stragglers and picked them off, which drew more French soldiers back to protect their comrades. And so the Burgundian vanguard crept up and slowly consumed the French rearguard, nibbling away at it until their flanks started to envelop them like a snake swallowing a rat. Joan’s banner was visible as she attempted to rally her soldiers.
“This is our chance,” I said, kicking my heels back and started out toward them. “We have to get through the lot of them and take her.”
“They’ll take us for Frenchmen,” Walt pointed out, using his spurs to catch up with me.
“What’s the Burgundian cry, now?” Rob asked, coming up behind with the archers.
“We will cry for Duke Philip,” I said.
And that is what we did, crying his name as we pushed our horses boldly through the flanks of Burgundian forces and they cheered us on. Many even followed us in as we clashed with desperate Frenchmen and cut them down or drove them away.
The Maiden’s white banner fluttered above the mass of men so closely that I could have thrown a stone and hit it but there were many fighting to protect her. I did not know whether I would have the courage to cut her down or if I would have to take her prisoner but I was saved from making the decision.
From the opposite flank came a massive charge by two hundred Burgundian men-at-arms, crying out for their lord and for their duke and the hooves thundered and trumpets blasted and the fear of it overwhelmed the French, who dropped their weapons and fled as the assault crashed into them. It was slaughter and they abandoned their beloved Maiden to her fate.
Many ran toward the rest of their army but even more ran directly opposite to the attack, which meant they were driven into us. We cut them down and pushed on through the press of desperate men and I shouted and cursed but it did no good.
Amongst so many men and horses, she appeared to be very small to my eyes. She wore a helm with no visor but I could not get a good look at her face. At a glance, it appeared snub-nosed and quite unattractive. Her armour was excellent, and her horse was one I would have killed to have under me but she did not use his size and strength in an attempt to break free of her encirclement. Perhaps it was my imagination but she seemed stunned by being abandoned and surely believed that it was all over. Still, she refused to lower the great banner and her squire, the only loyal man remaining, did not lower his sword. The Burgundians shouted at her to dismount and to give herself up but she sat and stared back at them.
“I could shoot her now, Richard?” Rob suggested from the saddle, his bow in hand with an arrow nocked. Even from horseback, I expected he could hit the target.
I sighed. “A thousand Burgundians would tear us to pieces for denying them their prize. Leave it, Rob. It is done.”
The Maiden of Orléans was pulled from her horse by a Burgundian archer who rushed forward to do the deed and she fell hard. This brought others crowding in close about her so that when she regained her feet, covered in mud, she found herself surrounded by half a hundred soldiers with no ally but her squire at her side. Even then, she was too proud to give herself up until a nobleman from Luxembourg volunteered to be her captor. This she agreed to and she was seized. Her famous banner was grabbed and torn and trampled as men tried to take a piece for themselves.
It was done but I could not entirely rid my thoughts of her.
Joan was imprisoned by the Burgundians at Beaurevoir Castle, north beyond Paris and I made sure to follow closely what happened to her by employing Stephen and Eva’s agents. The girl made several escape attempts, one of them being her leap from seventy feet up. When she recovered the use of her legs after a few days, she was moved further north to the Burgundian town of Arras.
Throughout her imprisonment, the lords of England negotiated with the Burgundians to transfer Joan into our custody. Eventually, we bought her for ten thousand livres, which was a vast sum.
Immediately, she was transported to Rouen, our soundest stronghold on the continent and I took my men there. Lucky that I did, for the French launched a number of small campaigns against us there in the hopes of rescuing her. One campaign occurred during the winter of 1430–1431, another in March 1431, and one in late May shortly before her execution. Of course, each time we beat them back. We were not so far gone as all that.
The French were outraged that we had their beloved Maiden of Orléans. King Charles VII threatened to exact vengeance upon Burgundian troops in his captivity and also he threatened a terrible fate for the English and women of England in retaliation for our treatment of her. Many believed that the French meant to invade England but I doubted such a thing was even possible for a kingdom still so divided and in turmoil as that of France. Still, they were angry to say the least.
The English celebrated the coronation of Henry VI as King of France at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris on 16 December 1431, the boy king's tenth birthday. Charles VII however continued to act as if he was the legitimate king and it was difficult to argue. Indeed, his diplomacy was far greater than ours. Before we could rebuild our military leadership and replace our veteran archers, we lost our alliance with Burgundy when the Treaty of Arras was signed in 1435. The Duke of Bedford died the same year and Henry VI be
came the youngest king of England to rule without a regent.
But back in January 1431, in Rouen, Joan was put on trial. The tribunal was composed entirely of pro-English and Burgundian clerics and overseen by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Warwick. They meant to not only destroy her but also to humiliate her and through her, all France.
“It is we who shall be humiliated,” Stephen grumbled after it started. We sat drinking in our rooms in Rouen one night after the trial had begun.
“You believe she will be acquitted?”
“Ha! No, indeed. Far from it. These bastards are going to convict her no matter what. The law be damned.”
“What law?”
He waved his hand. “Ecclesiastical law, English law. Bishop Cauchon lacks jurisdiction over the case but he oversees it anyway purely because of his open support of us. And the English crown is paying for the entire thing, all expenses, so what does that mean for a fair outcome? The Inquisition has very clear rules regarding the standard of evidence allowed for the trial but this has been utterly disregarded and the evidence so far submitted is absurdly weak.”
“Oh?”
“Look, the testimony gathered by the notary does not even technically allow the court to initiate the trial but they have gone and done it anyway.” He took a great gulp of his wine and wiped his lips before ploughing on. “And then they violate the rules again by denying the girl the right to a legal adviser.”
“That girl is an enemy of England, Stephen.”
“The rule of law should be followed nevertheless. The law must be applied equally to all or else it becomes a worthless thing. If she truly is a heretic, she should burn. Of course she should. But every member of the tribunal is bought and paid for by the English, one way or another.”
“The Inquisition are supporting it,” I pointed out.
Stephen laughed. “The Vice-Inquisitor objected to the trial from the outset and yet his life was threatened.”
“Rumours, that is all.”
“It is true for him and for other clergy at the trial. I spoke personally to that Dominican Isambart de la Pierre, and he swore to God that Englishmen had threatened the lives of his family, Richard!”
“If true, that is rather heavy-handed, I admit.” I pointed over my cup at him. “If true, that is.”
“The standards for heresy trials are very clear. They must be judged by an impartial or balanced group of clerics. It is heresy, Richard. It hardly gets more serious than this and yet the rules are being discarded in order to achieve the desired outcome. The law is what protects the common man from the rampant predations of their lords. Disregarding it demeans us to ourselves and also to our enemies. Were we not better than this, once? Do you think the third Edward would have allowed this? Or the fifth Henry?”
“They would not have lost the damned war in the first place,” I said, growling as I thought of it. “And yet you are right.”
“I am.”
“You know so much about the law, Stephen. Perhaps you should use your coming time away from London to train as a lawyer. You have mentioned wanting to do so in years gone by, I believe.”
“Bah, I have so much else to do from afar. I would not like to leave it all to Eva in my absence, there is too much business to attend to on behalf of the Order.”
“And yet you have such a passion for it. The Order’s finances are strong enough, thanks to you, that we can do without you for a while. Why not take a decade or two? Perhaps if you had already made yourself into a powerful lawyer, you could have had an influence on this trial. Perhaps you could have persuaded them to follow the rules a little more.”
He took a long while to answer but, in the end, waved it away. “They will have her destroyed no matter what. I could do nothing to change her fate.”
I shrugged. “Especially as she is a heretic.”
“So sure, are you?”
“She is either a heretic or God Himself is a Frenchman. And that is too terrible a notion to entertain.”
Even Joan herself complained on her first day being questioned that the tribunal were all enemies and she requested that ecclesiastics of the French side be invited to provide the balance required in law. This request was simply denied.
The Maiden of Orléans continued to do very well for herself when questioned in the public court. I could not bring myself to attend for most of it and the couple of times I did, I stood at the rear of the hall. When she spoke, however, she did not sound like an illiterate commoner from Lorraine. That is, she had the rough accent of such a girl. But she spoke with such forceful confidence that it seemed she was filled with the righteousness of one of noble birth. And not so much a princess as she seemed a prince, arrogant and dismissive when questioned and openly contemptuous of the intelligence displayed by the members of the tribunal who launched questions at her unceasingly.
Somehow, without the presence of legal or ecclesiastical advice, this young girl was able to evade the theological pitfalls the tribunal had set up to entrap her.
One day when I was there, a bishop launched one of those traps.
“Tell me, do you know if you are in God’s grace?”
Stephen, at my side, winced.
“What is it?” I whispered, while Joan hesitated in answering.
“If she says that she is then she is admitting that she knows God’s will.”
I shrugged. “And?”
Stephen sighed. “If she says yes, she is admitting to heresy, Richard!”
A single question with the power to convict her before all the lords of the Church. After so much of her grandstanding and insisting on her closeness to God’s angels, it seemed impossible that she would avoid falling for it.
Finally, she spoke up in a clear voice that echoed like the ringing of a bell. “If I am not, may God put me there,” she said. “And if I am, may God so keep me.”
The lords of the church sitting behind their benches were struck dumb at her answer and the public muttered and sighed.
Stephen let out a surprised exclamation. “Well, I never.”
“That was a fine thing to say,” I said.
“It was brilliant, Richard,” he replied, shaking his head in wonder. “Quite brilliant.”
On and on the trial went, with repeated days where she was questioned for hours and in between was kept in awful conditions in prison under the guard of English soldiers. The Inquisition’s rules dictated that she should have been kept in an ecclesiastical prison with nuns watching over her but again this was simply ignored. She appealed to the Pope but her appeals were not passed on. Over the weeks, she grew thinner and paler. Never an attractive girl, she became quite unpleasant to look upon. All this was of course another attempt at breaking her will. It grew hard for me to maintain my anger at her.
When she was stupefied by the physical and mental exertions, they cornered her and forced her to sign a document on pain of execution if she did not. The girl was illiterate and knew not what she had signed and even then the admission of guilt which she signed was substituted for another before it was submitted to the court.
But even conviction for heresy was not a capital offence. She was condemned to live her life in prison and all expected her to be transferred to a convent for the rest of her days. It seemed done and dusted and few English or Normans complained about the sentence. It seemed fair to me and to everyone I spoke to.
And yet the lords could not abide her getting away with her life and so she was set up in such a way as to condemn herself.
Ever since setting out from Lorraine on her God-given quest, Joan had dressed a page and also in armour, although this was allowed under Church doctrine where cross-dressing was permitted if it was to protect the wearer from rape.
Joan had agreed in her signed abjuration document to from that day on to forever wear feminine clothing. A few days after her abjuration she resumed male attire as a defence against molestation and because her dress had been taken by the guards and she was left with nothing el
se to wear.
The lords of the court were conveniently marched in at that very moment to catch her in the act of wearing a man’s clothing. And thus she had gone back on her abjuration agreement and so she was now legally a lapsed heretic.
This verdict meant death.
I heard in the taverns and inns after it happened exactly how it had occurred. It made me miserable to hear it but the place was awash with the tale. Joan was brought out into the marketplace in Rouen. They had put her in a pretty, long white dress. She was far from her former, fierce self and came on with her head bowed and her body shaking. In the square was a great stake standing up, twice the height of a man, with bundle after bundle of branches and logs all around it, drenched in oil. It was to that stake that she was bound with chains and they came forward with a torch and set the mass of it ablaze. The oil went up quick, catching the dry sticks and burning white hot.
“An English soldier gave her two sticks tied together in the shape of a crucifix,” one old man said to me, showing me the size of it with his hands. “Little one, about so high. She placed it against her bosom.”
“Shut up, did she,” another man said. “I never saw that.”
“She bloody well did and I’ll knock out the teeth of any man who says otherwise.”
Most agreed that the girl said nothing the entire time. The girl who had said so much, who had spoken with such certainty that an entire nation had been moved to action, moved to victory, hung her head and said nothing when she was burned. Nothing, that is, until the flames took her and blackened her feet and legs and blistered her skin in boiling agony, when she cried out the holy name of Jesus Christ in a plaintive, terrible cry.
The fire was enormous and burned high and hot and turned the girl’s body to ashes, even the bones. All swore, though none knew how they knew, that the only part to survive was her heart. But they swept up her ashes and threw them into the Seine, and then they tossed her heart in after.
And although I saw none of it, I could see it all in my mind’s eye as if I had been witness to the terrible event.