May 1430
Mes enfants, je vous signifie que l’on m’a vendue
et trahie et que de brief je serai livrée à mort.
(The prophecy of the Maid at Compiègne)
DURING the months that elapsed between the repulse at La Charité and the end of the truce with Burgundy many disquieting rumours reached the ears of Jeanne as to the state of her beloved country.
Paris was torn by plots and counterplots; the little towns of the Ile de France were constantly changing hands, to their own great misery and disadvantage; the royal city of Rheims was threatened by a siege, and appealed directly to the Maid for help.
“You shall not have a siege if I meet the foes,” she writes to them with eager consolation, “and if I do not, shut your gates; I will soon be with you, and I will make the enemy buckle their spurs in haste.”
Her hopes were still high; and indeed, from the English point of view, the army of the young Henry VI had much to fear in the forthcoming campaign from the result of her former energies.
Says Burgundy in his letter of advice to the English Council, written during that spring, “Owing to the campaign of July and August 1429 the French now hold many towns and fortresses on what was formerly the English side of the rivers Loire, Yonne, Seine, Marne and Oise. In these regions you will find no supplies. Paris is beset, and is daily in great peril and danger, for it had obtained supplies formerly from those towns that are now in the enemies’ hands.
“To lose Paris would be to lose the kingdom.”
He goes on to advise that time be not wasted in besieging Rheims for the sake of crowning the young King; and advises that the attack be concentrated on the town of Compiègne, which, from its position as the most loyal town of the north, was able to hinder supplies from passing in to Paris, and to safeguard the royalist towns in the district.
This was the point of view of her enemies, and shows plainly that they realized to the full the difficult and dangerous position in which they stood. But Jeanne heard only of the misery of the people, of smoking villages and pillaged towns, of ruined crops and roads beset with desperate vagabonds, and chafed wildly at the golden chains that bound her to the Court when she was ready and longing to drive out the English foe and to capture Paris with one bold dash for victory.
At length she could bear it no longer. The Court was at Sully at the end of March when she made up her mind that to hope for official leave was useless, and so rode off with a little troop for Melun, a town that had been in the hands of the English for ten years until it had been given over in the previous autumn to the Duke of Burgundy.
Jeanne took this step in no moment of exultation or triumphant hope. She had wasted nerve force and vitality in the baffling atmosphere of the Court; she had knelt at the feet of Charles in vain; and she now rode from him for the last time not so much without his leave as without his direct prohibition. “Laissez-faire!”—it was the old old story as far as the King was concerned, and Jeanne, knowing her time grew short, determined to act as she herself thought best. But she could get no direction, no encouragement from her Voices as in the former days. When, at her approach about Eastertide, the town of Melun opened its gates to the King’s men, she sought in that place another revelation, but it was of no exhilarating nature.
“As I was on the ramparts of Melun,” she told her judges, “St. Catherine and St. Margaret warned me that I should be captured before Midsummer Day; that so it must needs be; nor must I be afraid or astounded, but take all things well, for God would help me.
“So they spoke, almost every day. And I prayed that when I was taken I might die in that hour without wretchedness of long captivity; but the Voices said that so it must be. Often I asked the hour, which they told me not; had I known the hour, I would not have gone into battle.”
Here speaks the true-hearted Maid, scorning to pretend she knew no fear of capture or death. Here was the highest form of courage, which “braves the danger nature shrinks from” when it was her duty so to do.
From Melun she rode to Lagny “because she had heard that they of Lagny made good war on the people of Paris”; and here occurred two incidents which were afterwards used against her in her trial.
Soon after her arrival she heard that the neighbouring roads and villages were being ravaged by a horde of bandit “Englishmen” or more likely Picard or Burgundian allies. Against these rode Jeanne and the Scottish garrison of Lagny, for nothing stirred the tender heart of the Maid more than the sufferings of the humble folk of the country-side. With some difficulty the men were taken or slain, and amongst the former was made prisoner a certain Franquet d’Arras, who was forthwith given over to Jeanne that he might be exchanged for a loyal Frenchman, landlord of a Paris inn, who had been imprisoned on a charge of treason by the Burgundians.
When news came that this man had either died in prison or been executed, Franquet was handed over to the authorities at Lagny, was tried, condemned and forthwith put to death. It was all fair enough under the circumstances, but the Burgundians raised a great outcry at the execution of a mere robber, who was, moreover, a prisoner of war.
They painted lurid and impossible pictures of the Maid as Franquet’s executioner, and stored up the fact to be used against her when she fell, also a prisoner of war, into their hands. The other incident, which was used equally against her, was of a curiously different nature.
A child of three days old had apparently died before he could receive baptism, and, following a very usual custom, his parents laid him before an image of the Blessed Virgin in the church and asked all the maids of the town to pray to God that life might be restored to the child. Jeanne, always pitiful, and never far from church when not on active service, hastened to join the little group. “I went with the other maids and prayed and at last there seemed to be life in the child, who gasped thrice, was baptized; then instantly died and was buried in holy ground. For three days, as people say, he had given no sign of life. He was as black as my coat, but when he gasped his colour began to come back.”
Thus to her judges, who asked insinuatingly: “Was it said in the town that you had caused the resurrection and that it was done at your prayer?”
“I asked no questions on the subject,” answered Jeanne, with proud disdain.7
The taking of life, the restoration of life, both were turned and twisted into ropes to strengthen the net already wide spread about the hapless Maid.
It was in the first week of May that the recreant Charles discovered what Jeanne had known and acted on all along, and was able to announce openly to the people of Rheims that “the Duke of Burgundy has never had and now has not any intention of coming to terms of peace, but always has favoured and does favour our enemies.”
Thus the time long wasted in pretended and impossible plans for truces came to an abrupt end, and open war was declared at last.
The chief object of the Anglo-Burgundian forces at this juncture (May 1430) was to capture Compiègne, the city that commanded the passage of the river Oise and the road to Paris. Their troops were concentrated some thirty miles to the northwest, and proceeded to make good their position on the northern side of the river. If Compiègne were taken, entrance into the Ile de France and so into Paris would be a matter of comparative ease.
The Burgundians had already made themselves masters of most of the outlying posts on the northern side of the river, when Jeanne, hearing that the Duke of Burgundy and the Earl of Arundel were encamped before the city with a large force, exclaimed, “I will go see my good friends at Compiègne,” and forthwith, in her accustomed way, started off headlong and rode rapidly by forest paths into the town. It was not her first visit to the place; she had stayed there for a few days on more than one occasion during these restless months, and had made “good friends” with the citizens according to her wont. There must have been some of these indeed who received her now with pitiful eyes and heavy thoughts; for fresh in remembrance was a strange little scene that appears to have taken place early one Sunday morning when the Maid had last stayed in Compiègne. Mass was over, when Jeanne was seen by the worshippers in the church standing with head bowed and face turned toward one of the pillars of the nave. The children, of whom there were many present, drew near and looked in awestruck silence on the sad young figure of her who was always their friend in joy or grief. A few older people joined them: possibly one of them inquired gently what ailed the Maid. Suddenly she faced them, crying out forlornly, “Dear friends and children, I have to tell you that I have been sold and betrayed and will soon be given up to death. I beg of you to pray for me, for soon I shall not have any power to serve the King and his kingdom.”
Many years after Jeanne’s death the story was told by two old men who at that time must have been young lads somewhat older than herself, and who had evidently been deeply impressed by her sad prophetic little speech. Had she any reason to fear and distrust those who should have stood her friends at that time? Or was it, we wonder, merely an echo of that grim warning sentence:
“Jeanne, tu seras prise avant la Saint-Jean.”
It was just a month before that fatal date that Jeanne rode gaily into Compiègne one bright May morning, laid her plans before Flavy, the Governor, heard Mass and visited the churches as usual, and then occupied herself in preparing the forces for a sortie upon the enemy.
Her plan was to make a sudden attack upon the village of Margny, held by the advanced guard of the Burgundian army under Baudot de Noyelles. This lay between Clairoix, held in force by Jean de Luxembourg, and Venette, where the English army lay, under Montgomery. If it could be taken, therefore, the forces of the enemy would be separated and a strong position achieved from which to attack the army of Burgundy, which lay about three miles beyond it.
The attack on Margny, at a time when most of the soldiers had laid aside their armour and were cooking their evening meal, promised well enough, seeing that the retreat of Jeanne and her men was covered by the bowmen who stood upon the ramparts of Compiègne. Quite easily the Maid reached the village and scattered the men at the outposts, but she was unaware that her movements were being watched by a little party of riders led by Jean de Luxembourg coming from Clairoix to visit Baudot.
In hot haste a message was sent for reinforcements, which rode up at the gallop and would have intercepted her then and there had not she gallantly forced them back twice along the causeway where she had drawn up her little band above the flat meadows that surrounded Margny. But by this time a party from Venette had come to the help of the Burgundians, and had driven her with her little body-guard down into the marshy fields. Still she returned, gallant as ever, to the attack, but her main body of soldiers, separated from their leader and terrified by the fast swelling numbers of the English, turned and fled helter-skelter back to Compiègne, with the enemy so close upon them that the archers on the ramparts dared not shoot lest they should slay friend and foe alike.
At first the Maid knew nothing of this, for the English horsemen of Venette had cut her little party off from her own troop; then at length, in desperation, d’Aulon and her brothers seized her bridle and forced her to retreat at the rear of the flying soldiers. Still she made a gallant struggle, charging back on the pursuers, shouting encouragement to her men; but the Burgundians were now in close pursuit, while the English spears could be seen gleaming in the dim twilight between Jeanne’s little party and the crowd of fugitives which pressed upon the gates of Compiègne. Then, panic-stricken at the sight, de Flavy, fully expecting that in the confusion the foe would enter the city and make it their own, ordered the drawbridge to be raised and the gates to be closed, so that when Jeanne and her little company reached Compiègne it was to find their way blocked by a confused crowd of fugitives and foemen, all pressing hard upon the closed gates.
Her one chance now was to turn aside into the fields that surrounded the town and try for another entrance; but it was too late. The bright scarlet gold-embroidered cloak she wore attracted the attention of the foemen, eager for such a prize. Her few companions closed round her, fighting desperately, but to no avail. Surrounded by wild, dark faces, with open mouths yelling her own war-cry of “Renty!” (rendez-vous) she was dragged from her horse by a fold of her bright mantle, and brought to the ground in a mêlée of struggling horses and men and blinding dust.
“When asked to surrender,” reports an eye-witness, “she said ‘I have sworn and given my faith to another than you, and I will keep my oath!’”
Some say that de Flavy was guilty of treachery toward the Maid, and that it was of him she spoke when she talked of being “betrayed and sold.” But it seems clear that the man could not well have acted otherwise. Jeanne would have been the first to assure him that his duty was to save the town at any cost, and to do this he was bound to sacrifice her safety.
So the Maid became, as has been well said, “a willing sacrifice for the people she had led.” Most of them escaped; d’Aulon and her brothers and one other were carried off prisoners with her; and into the mingled glare and darkness of the Burgundian camp at Clairoix, ringing with shouts of triumphant delight, the weary young figure of the Maid of France disappears.
The exultation of the Duke of Burgundy over this capture, as shown in the letter written by him that night after a hurried visit to the camp to prove the truth of the report, was almost hysterical.
“By the pleasure of our Blessed Creator, the thing has so happened, and such favour has been done us that she who is called the Maid has been taken, and with her many captains, knights and squires. (This was a gross exaggeration of the facts.) Of this capture we are sure there will be everywhere great news and the error and foolish belief of those who were favourably inclined to her will be made known. We write you these tidings hoping you will have great comfort, joy, and consolation in them, and that you will give thanks and praise to our Creator who sees and knows all, and who by His blessed pleasure deigns to guide most of our enterprises to the good of our lord the King, and the relief of his loyal and good subjects.”
Then the darkness of the night comes down on the weeping people of Compiègne, bewildered and distraught by the loss of her who had been their guiding star, and upon the exultant camp at Clairoix, where Jeanne was vainly trying to catch a whisper of her Voices to console her through the hours of that bitter night watch.