La grande pitié qu’il y avait au royaume de France
(Les Voix)
THE little village of Domrémy lies on the banks of the Upper Meuse, the river that forms the boundary between France and the Duchy of Lorraine.
It must have always been a straggling little place, surrounded by hills and oak forests, but itself lying low, with meadows apt to be swamped by the autumn overflow of the river, and vineyards sloping gently back to the rising ground in the distance.
Just across the river, the rival village of Maxey stood firm for the Burgundians and for the English King; and no doubt the children of Domrémy often reproduced the strife that was raging in France, when they went forth armed with stones and sticks “for the cause of the King” to strike a blow at the “traitors” of Maxey, the boys and girls across the water.
Higher up the Meuse stood the walled city of Vaucouleurs, the capital of the district, held at that time for the Dauphin by the Seigneur, Robert de Baudricourt, who was to play no unimportant part in the history of Jeanne.
Here, then, in this outlying corner of the champagne district, lived the worthy peasant-farmer, Jacques d’Arc, a good, steady, unimaginative man, wholehearted in his care for his little family and for the horses and sheep and pigs which he owned. It was he who, first among the villagers, saw the advantage of renting, together with six others, that curious place known as the “Castle of the Island” for the protection of families and cattle in case of attack from Burgundian or English foes.
A deserted feudal castle, surrounded by a wonderful old garden and a deep moat, was no bad playground for an imaginative child; and little did stolid Jacques d’Arc reck of the dreams that were dreamed there by his little daughter Jeanne, while his boys Jacques and Jean and Pierre were off and away with pockets full of stones wherewith to quell the bold spirits of the Maxey lads who stood for the cause of the usurper.
Not that Jeanne was permitted to waste much time in day-dreaming in her Castle of the Island. She had a good, religious, practical mother, Isambeau by name, who, though she saw no need to teach her little daughter to read and write, would have her busy with skilled needlework, to say nothing of the necessity of spinning flax into linen for shirts for her father and the boys. When in after days she was asked if she had been taught any art or trade, she could answer with innocent pride, “Yes, my mother taught me to sew and spin, and so well indeed that I do not think any lady in Rouen could teach me more.”
One who has visited3 the humble home of the Maid in Domrémy describes the place as a little grey cottage, covered with a wild vine which almost hides the primitive carving over the door. But there can still be distinguished with difficulty the narrow escutcheons containing the royal arms of France, with the device Vive le Roy Loys; and the armoral bearings granted by Charles VII to the Maid—a drawn sword of silver, the point of which supports a royal crown.
Within the house is seen the dark and gloomy “chambre de famille,” where little Jeanne passed many an hour of her young life in needlework or knitting under the eye of her mother. It is sparsely furnished, and still retains the austere appearance of former days.
Darker and still more austere is the little room beyond, where Jeanne dreamed her girlish dreams and slept the healthy sleep of childhood. Formerly it served also as the family bakehouse, and the place where the oven was built is still visible in the corner of the room.
The cupboard where Jeanne hung her poor little peasant’s dress is now only a hole in the wall; and the room itself has the bareness of a cave, touching in its simplicity.
In these surroundings the child was trained to be helpful to her parents and to her neighbours. In later years, when these early days of her life underwent an examination extraordinarily searching and hostile, we have the witness of one Simon, a labourer, to the fact that as a child he was nursed in illness by the little maid from the cottage of Jacques d’Arc, and others told how, when some poor soul sought a night’s lodging, she was content to lie by the hearth and give up her bed to the wayfarer. “She was such,” they said, “that, in a way of speaking, all the people of Domrémy were fond of her.” She was certainly, from the first, a deeply religious little maiden. From the days when she learnt her Ave and her Paternoster at her mother’s knee, the ruined chapel of the Castle, the little grey village church, drew the child with cords of love.
It was said of her that “she often went to church when others went to dance”; to the church that stood so close by her cottage home, and which, for her, was full of the memories of saints and angels.
The building itself was dedicated to St. Remy, and so she would be familiar with the story that tells how an angel brought the holy oil to the saint, by which henceforth every king of France must be consecrated at his own city of Rheims. Probably from the lips of her mother or from the village curé, who must have had a very tender spot for this pious little member of his flock, she heard also the story of St. Margaret and St. Catherine, with whose images she was familiar in the church; and she had also a special devotion to St. Michael the Archangel, a favourite saint in France, for to him belonged that great castle in Normandy of which every child had heard, since it was one of the few that yet held out against the English.
With these and other saints did Jeanne hold converse, and to them she paid her little devotions just as Catholic children have always done; and beyond the fact that she loved more than the rest to hear the bell ring for daily Mass and left the dance gladly to go and pray in church, she was no more devout or mystically inclined than most little Catholic maids of eleven or twelve. Simple homely work, simple homely faith, those were the chief influences that touched the early life of the Maid of France at this time.
Gradually, however, other impressions began to overshadow her young soul. Through the village troops of soldiers on their way to garrison duty at Vaucouleurs during the active season of the war, or preparing to give their forty days’ service, must have passed from time to time. Sometimes, too, their fierce neighbours, the Duke of Lorraine and the Damoiseau de Commercy, made plundering raids upon these peaceful villages on the banks of the Meuse. On one of these Jeanne said that “she helped well in driving the beasts from and to the island castle, named the Island, for fear of the men-at-arms.”
Then faces, once familiar in Domrémy, began to disappear and be seen again no more. “He is gone to the war.” “He was killed in the siege”; such sayings fell not unheeded on the ears of the Maid, as she noted the absence of here a cousin and there a friend. Once at least the cattle of the village were driven off by a marauder, and though they were recovered, such an exciting event for quiet Domrémy would have had a marked effect upon a sensitive, intelligent child, who at that time had already received, as far as we can judge, a strange mysterious message from an unknown source. “What is the war about?” She must have asked the question long ere this; and from whatever quarter the answer came, whether from father or mother, village priest or wandering friar, the effect of the story must have been to have raised an ever-increasing “pity for the fair realm of France” in the simple, innocent heart of little Jeanne.
One other influence of her early days must be noticed, since of it her enemies strove to make such evil use in days to come. Within sight of her doorstep was the gloomy Oak Forest, the home of wolves, said to be haunted by fairies, not always “good folk,” but more like the “dark ladye” who brought ill-luck to all her lovers.
Legend, vague and obscure enough, based upon a prophecy of the ancient seer Merlin, said that from the Oak Wood should come a marvellous maid for the healing of the nations; and some years before the birth of Jeanne this had crystallized into a prophecy, more detached and precise, to the effect that “A maid who is to restore France, ruined by a woman, shall come from the marches of Lorraine.” The reference to the “woman” is, of course, to the wicked Isabel, wife of Charles VI, and this popular version was common property among the whole neighbourhood.
Now some would have it that in this prophecy we have the whole source of the “suggestion” that inspired the Maid to go forth on her mission; and such folk would see that dark Oak Wood constantly haunted by the presence of the Maid, would even see her influenced by the powers of witchcraft, said to pervade its gloomy shades.
But apart from the fact that on her own assertion Jeanne, though she knew the popular version given above, never heard of the Merlin prophecy of the “Oak Wood” till it was told her after she had begun her task, we have plenty of witnesses to the fact that the wood had no fascination for the girl. Perhaps she was too well satisfied with the mystical company of saints and angels, which were the daily intimates of every devout Catholic child, to be interested in the tales of fairies and witches which attracted more worldly minds. She said in later days that she had “heard the talk of these things, but she did not believe in it.” But since she was of a singularly gay and happy nature, and very far from being a morbid, introspective damsel, she undoubtedly used to join in the May day revels about one of these great forest oaks, dancing with the merry children round the trunk, and hanging garlands on the boughs. “She never knew there were fairies in the wood,” she said; and only a dark and perverted mind would see in this innocent amusement of the child Jeanne anything that could possibly be connected with the powers of darkness.
Rather, her lack of interest goes to prove that Jeanne was a normal, healthy-minded child, sensible and practical, by no means given to credulous fancies; and if she were rather more devout than most children of her age, her prayers and love of the Sacraments were anything but a hindrance to the fulfilment of her daily duties. “She was modest, simple, devout,” says one who knew her in those years, “went gladly to church and to sacred places; worked, sewed, hoed in the fields, and did what was needful about the house.”
This, then, was the life of the Maid of Domrémy until her thirteenth year, up to which time no shadow of foreboding as to the extraordinary task that lay in front of her seems to have crossed her sunny path.