May 1430–January 1431
WHEN Jeanne d’Arc disappeared into the darkness of the Burgundian camp, it might well have been said by a poet of the day that the sun of France had set behind storm clouds of woe and distress for that unhappy land. Perhaps the strangest thing of all about the matter is the very few people who seemed to care that such an event had actually happened. The English, it is true, made the most of it. Bonfires were lit in Paris, and a solemn Te Deum of gratitude was sung in Notre Dame.
And such loyalist towns as Orleans, Tours and Blois remembered the bright-faced Maid with regret and affection, for we hear that the inhabitants offered public prayers for her release, and in one of them, at any rate, the people to a man turned out into the rough cobbled streets, walking barefoot and singing the Miserere in penance for the sins that had brought this woe upon the land.
But what was the King about, or La Trémouille, or the forces inside Compiègne which she had led to the relief of that city? Did they attempt her rescue? Did they at least begin to open negotiations for her ransom as a prisoner of war? Nothing of the kind.
The men of Compiègne who bore the news to Charles and entreated further help to save the city were assured by the royal dawdler that he would speedily come to their aid; a promise that, it is needless to say, was never kept. Of the capture of the Maid he said nothing at all, being perhaps inwardly relieved that the strenuous enthusiastic spirit which had so often silently reproached him was likely to be quelled for the future.
Most sinister of all, alas! is the letter written to the men of Rheims by their Archbishop, in which he throws the blame of her capture entirely on the Maid. “She would not take advice but did as she chose.” Then he goes on to say that the Court is now absorbed in a new prophet, a shepherd boy, “who says that he is commanded by God to defeat the English; and that this boy has declared that Jeanne has been suffered to be taken because of her pride and her rich raiment, and because she had acted after her own will and not followed the commands laid upon her by God.”
So this young impostor, soon to show of what shoddy stuff he was made and to expiate his folly by a violent death at the hands of the English, was readily received in the place of the Maid by the volatile Court, and Jeanne was almost entirely forgotten.
One Archbishop, he of Embrum, alone stood forth in her defence. “For the recovery of this girl,” he writes boldly to the King, “and for the ransom of her life, I bid you spare neither means nor money, howsoever great the price, unless you would incur the indelible shame of most disgraceful ingratitude!”
But Charles cared nothing at all for the fate of the Maid who had given him the whole devotion of her loyal heart, and who, in her darkest hour of trial and approaching death, still held to it that he was the “noblest Christian in the world.”
Jeanne had been led into the camp of Jean de Luxembourg on the eve of May 23rd. Two days later the news was known in Paris, and the very next day a courier rode forth from the city to the Burgundian bearing a letter written by the University of Paris, then an ecclesiastical rather than an educational body, and in close touch with the Inquisition, whose business it was to investigate all charges of sorcery or heresy. This letter, written without a moment’s delay, suggestive indeed, in its almost indecent haste, of the temper of a cat who has long watched the hole of a mouse and sees its victim at length in the grip of a passing grimalkin, demanded that “the said Jeanne be brought as prisoner before us with all speed and surety, being vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy, that proceedings may be taken against her before and in the name of the Holy Inquisition and with the favour and aid of the doctors and masters of the University of Paris, and other notable counsellors present there.”
A formidable array indeed to consider the matter of one little unlearned maiden who could neither read nor write. And the strangest thing of all is that she, most devout and pious of the daughters of the Catholic Church, should be the object of that Church’s suspicion and distrust. We can but find one explanation. Jeanne was to find no royal road to the bliss that awaited her in a future life, and she was spared no humiliation in this one; and just as of her Divine Master it was said by His own people, “He is a Samaritan and hath a devil,” so by her own countrymen and those of her own most fervent Faith was she to be judged a heretic and a witch.
The Maid was, of course, far too valuable a prisoner to be handed over in this summary fashion to the ecclesiastical authorities. After being kept for a few days in the camp at Clairoix, she was sent by de Luxembourg to his strong castle of Beaulieu, where she was treated as a prisoner of war and allowed for a while to retain d’Aulon as her squire.
Here she remained for a fortnight, refusing steadfastly to give her parole, and determined indeed to make her escape at the earliest opportunity. She had as yet lost none of her fine courage, though harassed by depressing reports of the condition of her “good friends” at Compiègne.
“That poor town of Compiègne that you loved so much,” said d’Aulon to her one day; “by this time it will be in the hands of the enemies of France.”
“Not at all!” flashed forth the Maid; “the places which the King of Heaven has put in the hands of the gentle King Charles through me will not be retaken by his enemies.”
A few days later, perhaps because the dread of this weighed upon her mind, she made her first effort to escape, slipping in her girlish slightness between two of the laths which were nailed across the door of her room, and hoping, it would seem, to lock her warders up within the guard-room, and so be free. But she was caught by a gaoler in the passage, and taken back at once.
Probably because of this attempt, she was sent to the Castle of Beaurevoir, forty miles away, where she remained till the end of September. In some ways this might have been the most bearable part of her captivity, for she was in the charge of three good and gentle ladies, the aunt and wife of Jean de Luxembourg, and his step-daughter Jeanne de Bar.
All good women fell in love with the Maid at first sight, and these were no exceptions to the rule. Woman-like, they wished to pet her, to dress her in soft feminine attire, and looked with horror on her rough, travel-stained boy’s clothes. But on this point Jeanne was firm. “She could not do this without leave from God,” she said. “It was not yet time.”
The whole question of the dress was made much of at her trial, as we shall see. One of her most understanding chroniclers says she regarded man’s attire as the “symbol of her resolute adherence to her mission.” It is more than likely too that she knew it was the best protection she could have among rough men-at-arms, some of whom were still her gaolers, even in the peaceful shades of Beaurevoir. Besides, the idea of escape was always present in her mind, and more so than ever here, where disquieting rumours came very frequently concerning the siege of Compiègne.
A report that, if the city were taken, all those over seven years of age were to be massacred seems to have made her desperate. She determined to make a leap for liberty from the tower where she was imprisoned, and this in spite of her Voices who bade her “bear these things gladly, since God would help them of Compiègne.” With girlish impatience she replied, “Since that is so, I too would be with them.” Then came a mysterious intimation that she would not be delivered “till she had seen the King of England.” “I have no wish to see him,” she cried, “and I would rather die than be in English hands.”
The thing preyed upon her mind. “I would rather die than live after such a massacre of good people, and that was one of the reasons for my leap from the tower of Beaurevoir.” So she told her judges, and leap she certainly did, and falling about sixty feet was picked up stunned and bleeding, but with unbroken bones.
She came to herself very sad and humble. She said she “was comforted by Saint Catherine who bade her confess and pray God’s pardon for having leaped.” But what cheered her most was the intimation from the same source that Compiègne should have succour before Martinmas.
This actually happened, and Compiègne remained in the King’s hands.
There now comes upon the scene the man who was to be the Maid’s worst enemy, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. From the first, as representative of the University of Paris rather than of the Catholic Church in that part of France, Cauchon had set himself to track down the Maid to her destruction. It was his representations that caused her to be removed from her kind guardians at Beaurevoir, and that stirred the English to offer blood-money to de Luxembourg as the price of “Jehanne la Pucelle, said to be a witch, and certainly a military personage, leader of the hosts of the Dauphin.”
The money, six thousand francs, was raised from a tax upon the estates of Normandy, and paid over by Bedford to Luxembourg, who turned a deaf ear to the earnest prayers of his womenkind on Jeanne’s behalf.
For a brief space, while these transactions were being carried on, the Maid, now imprisoned at Crotoy, had great comfort in the spiritual administrations of a priest, one Nicolas de Guenville, a fellow-prisoner and loyalist Frenchman, who, after hearing her confession and giving her Holy Communion, declared her to be a most devout Catholic Christian.
From Crotoy she was passed over into the hands of the English, and, in spite of the outcry of the Paris doctors of divinity, taken by them in November to Rouen and imprisoned in a strong and ancient castle of the days of Philip Augustus. Here she was placed “in a dark cell, fettered and in irons.” No kindly women were now her guardians, but rough and brutal English archers, to whom she was merely a witch who had brought disgrace upon their arms, and who thought it no shame to bully and ill-use a helpless young girl.
The Earl of Warwick was in command of the Castle, and the most absurd precautions were taken by him to prevent any attempt at escape. Indeed, the whole story of this part of her imprisonment would lead us to think that it was some wild and savage beast they needed to cage and bar and fetter rather than a child of eighteen, already weakened by six months of captivity. All hope of escape must have now faded from her mind, but one can but think she still expected a rescue, if not a ransom, from those for whom she had fought so well in the days of freedom.
Only a few leagues away, at Louvain, her old comrade La Hire was stationed, and he was joined there by Dunois, her friend and favourite, a few months later. But we get no hint of any attempt at rescue from there, while from the south, where Charles was still dawdling about from castle to castle, not the smallest sign of interest, far less of pity or distress on her account, is to be seen. It was as though France, her “bel pays,” for which she had fought and striven and bled, had utterly forgotten her very existence. Who can say that, if she ever realized the fact, it was not the bitterest drop in that cup of sorrow which she was yet to drain to the dregs?
The story of that five months’ captivity in the castle of Rouen is even more tragic than its sequel.
A citizen of Rouen, who managed to gain admission to her cell, saw her chained by the feet to a heavy log of wood, and was told that, when asleep, she was ironed by the legs with two pairs of heavy fetters locked to the bed. She still wore her boy’s clothes, but in place of the courteous d’Aulon, her room was shared day and night by three English archers, while two more kept guard outside.
Even the horrors of the actual trial must have been a welcome respite from such an existence. For Jeanne, we must realize, had always shown herself singularly self-respecting and instinctively refined in nature; and the rude jests, the coarse laughter, nay, the evil advances of these low-class soldiers, not to speak of their constant presence, must have been nothing less than the extremity of torture to her pure and modest spirit.
But this was not all that the Maid had to suffer before the actual trial began. Other visitors than the inquisitive citizen of Rouen were to enter her dark cell. One of these was no less a person than Jean de Luxembourg, her captor, who was brought into the place by the Earl of Warwick, together with another English lord, apparently only with the intention of harassing and worrying the girl.
De Luxembourg pretended he had come to ransom her. “Jeanne,” said he, with mock gravity, “I will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear arms against us any more.”
But the Maid’s spirit was not yet broken.
“It is well for you to jest,” she flashed back, “but I know you have no such power. I know that the English will kill me, believing, after I am dead, that they will be able to win all the kingdom of France; but if they were a hundred thousand more than there are, they shall never win the kingdom of France.”
Enraged at these words, the English lord who accompanied the Duke drew his dagger and would have struck her, had not Warwick intervened, not from any instinct of humanity, one fears, but to reserve her for a darker fate.
Another and more dangerous visitor was one who came to her as a fellow-countryman from the marches of Lorraine, and a prisoner like herself. By an act of charity so unusual that Jeanne might well have suspected treachery, her guards left the girl alone with this man, in order that they might talk freely together. He led her on with ease to converse of the old days at Domrémy, that seemed now so remote, though it was but two years since she had left the place, of the oak wood, and the pleasant meadows and of her Voices as they had been heard by her in those spots.
His kind face soothed and encouraged the girl, especially when he spoke of her approaching trial, telling her that no harm could come to her. She little knew that he was a spy in the pay of Cauchon, in reality a canon of Rouen Cathedral, and that every word of her conversation with him had been recorded by the Bishop himself and the Earl of Warwick, who, with two notaries, had been listening at a peep-hole contrived in the wall of her cell.
One marvels that the very innocence of her remarks did not touch their hearts. One of the notaries indeed strongly protested against evidence obtained in this way and refused to record it. That her judges should stoop to such a trick shows the weakness of their case against the Maid.