Joan Of Arc's Victories And Martyrdom
The Creation of French Nationalism
Edward III and the Edward, the Black Prince
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, France, as a kingdom, suffered such misfortunes that it almost disappeared. The first part of the Hundred Years War with England had ended with France recovering all the territory won by Edward III and the Black Prince after their many victories, of which Crecy and Poitiers were the greatest. By the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, only the cities of Bordeaux, Bayeux and Calais remained in English hands and a wise monarch, Charles V, ruled the country.
But he was succeeded by a son, Charles VI, who went mad and a civil war broke out between two great nobles, the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans, the King’s brother. It ranged, roughly, the men of Picardy, Flanders and Burgundy against western France, and France south of the Loire. The Burgundians represented mercantile France, the country which traded with England and the North; the Armagnacs, as the followers of the Duke of Orleans were called, feudal France and the national tradition.
The Battle of Agincourt, 15th century miniature
Then in 1415 Henry V invaded France and won the great battle of Agincourt. The Burgundians allied themselves with him, and the powerful city of Paris was Burgundian in sympathy. Henry V married the mad King’s daughter Catherine and it was agreed that he, and not the Dauphin, the French king’s eldest son, should succeed to the throne of France. The Dauphin, whose mother, Isabeau of Bavaria hated him and had allied herself with the Duke of Burgundy, fled across the Loire where he held a small court at Chinon. Isabeau had even declared that her son was illegitimate and, therefore, not the real heir to the throne.
Charles, the Dauphin, was not at this time of his life an inspiring figure. He was young, plump, bandy-legged, usually dressed in padded velvet, for he hated the cold, with a thick bulbous nose. He seemed to live for the small pleasures of petty intrigues of his court and not to want to fight for his inheritance. Though some brave soldiers such as Dunois and the Duke of Alencon were with him, he was inclined to take the advice of unworthy favourites and do nothing. When Henry V had died before the mad Charles VI, the kingdom was disputed between the Dauphin and the infant English king at Windsor, Henry VI.
France, a much more civilized country than England, with many more great cities and a much richer trade with Italy and the East, had never been held together by royal authority, as England had been under the Norman and Angevin kings, and by a national Parliament which checked the royal power but also supported it against rebellion by barons.
If the King was weak, France fell to pieces, and the links between the feudal north and the great southern towns, such as Toulouse or Marseilles which were more like Italian cities, disappeared. England, for a short time and in a less serious form, was to know something similar to the Burgundian-Armagnac civil war in the Wars of the Roses which broke out in the second half of the century.
Parts of France, particularly Picardy, Normandy and Brittany and large tracts of south-western France, were completely desolated by the foreign and civil wars which had been lasting since around 1360. ”There is no more heard throughout France la Doulce the sound of cock or hen”, wrote a chronicler of the north. People took to living in caves and to cannibalism, and it is said that the very farm animals, when they heard the alarm bells ring from the churches, rushed for shelter spontaneously. The armies which fought each other had no respect for the people and indeed the many mercenary troops, Swiss, German and Scottish who fought for the Dauphin or the Duke of Burgundy, were often not paid and lived off the country. More and more people left the land for the free cities, for these with their strong walls and towers could resist invaders and freebooters.
Painting, c.1485. Artist's interpretation; the only portrait for which she is known to have sat has not survived.
So there was dreadful suffering in parts of France, though in regions untouched by war, particularly the cities, prosperity was increasing. But all the country suffered not only from political uncertainty but from a grave moral crisis. Christendom was falling to pieces. The Turks had reached the Adriatic and the pest raged in Venice. There were two Popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. Strange superstitions abounded; stories were rife of comets dripping blood, of the lamp of the Sacrament changing from red to blue, of the whore of Babylon appearing in the cities of Italy and France. Religious feeling was, however, still intensely powerful and this helps to explain why Joan of Arc’s voices and her claims to divine inspiration were to count as much as her devotion to the true King of France, the Dauphin, and her love of country.
Joan of Arc was born at Domremy in Lorraine, near to Vaucou-leurs, a town which owed allegiance to the Dauphin in spite of its being surrounded by Burgundian territory. Her father was a small farmer, Jacques d’Arc, and Joan was one of five children, two sons and three daughters. Her mother Isabel was a woman of strong character. Joan took her part in the workings of the farm. From earliest youth she seems to have been high spirited, physically vigorous and extremely pious.
One summer day in 1424 she was lying in a meadow, resting after a race she had been running with her friends, when someone told her she was wanted at home. However, she had not been sent for and whilst, surprised, she dawdled in the garden on her way back; she had the first of her many visions. The visions seemed to be, first of all, a perception of a strong light, not that of common day, which was, in her own words, deep and kind, near her, and then of a voice speaking out of the light, “Tres bien et bellement”. The visions, at first, were not frequent, happened both at noon in the fields or at night and the purpose of the heavenly voices seemed merely to tell Joan that she was the servant of God and must hold herself ready to do his bidding. She soon lost all fear of these voices and came to love them. Later, she came to know one voice as that of St Michael, the Archangel, and then occasionally other voices as those of St Margaret and St Catherine. The voices became always a little more positive telling her that she had a great work to do and would be upheld by God. St Michael began to tell her that she was to leave father, mother and friends and to serve the Kingdom of France as a soldier and leader of men.
By the time she was seventeen, in 1428, her visions now told her that she was to go to the court of the King of France. She went therefore to Vaucouleurs on the excuse of aiding a cousin in her pregnancy, and attempted to persuade the governor of the town, de Baudricourt, to send her to Chinon where she knew the Dauphin lived. She was unsuccessful and de Baudricourt threatened her with a strap or with being handed over to his men-at-arms. She went back to her family.
Joan of Arc at the Siege of Orléans
In October, 1428, the news reached Domremy of the siege of Orleans by the English. Orleans was the largest of the cities on the Loire which recognized the Dauphin and its loss would mean that the English could take possession of much of France south of the Loire.
Joan went again to de Baudricourt and this time persuaded him to send her to Chinon. Joan left on a horse subscribed for her by the people of the town, in the uniform of a page, with a sword given her by de Baudricourt. This was in February, 1429. She and some companions travelled mainly by night through hostile territory. They did not reach Chinon on the Loire until mid-March. Admitted to the court after a few days, Joan steered her way through the throng of young courtiers with their puffed-out sleeves and yard-long shoes, the women in their enormous padded head-dresses like the horns of demented heifers, and knelt before the Dauphin. Now the Dauphin had hidden himself among the crowd and left a young courtier of his own age on the throne. If she recognized him it would be a proof of her divine gift and of his legitimacy. She went straight to him, knelt before him and said in her clear, rather deep voice: “Gentle Prince, they call me Joan the Maid, the King of Heaven has sent me to you.”
It was not until April, 1429, that Joan of Arc with the Duke of Alencon and the most experienced Armagnac soldiers led an army from Blois to relieve Orleans. The Dauphin, impressed by her recognition of him, had sent her to an ecclesiastical court at Poitiers, where she was examined as to her visions. The priests at Poitiers shook their heads a little at her confident claim that God was directing her, direction could only come from the Church in their view, but found her visions harmless, and, in view of the enthusiasm which she appeared to have aroused already in the royal entourage and in the region, they considered it would be well to let her have her head.
Attention was devoted to the question of why she had dressed herself as a man, but the judges accepted her simple explanation: dressed as a woman, Joan often said, she could neither properly ride a horse nor carry a lance or sword and besides she would be more liable to assault. Another test awaited her after Poitiers. The Dauphin’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Sicily, a strong-minded woman, held court at Tours. Joan was sent there to be examined by the Queen and her matrons to see if she was a virgin. She was proclaimed a true and entire virgin and was known henceforward as the Maid.
Even before the triumphant relief of Orleans in which Joan showed quite remarkable skill and valour, the Maid had convinced the common people and soldiers with whom she came into contact that she had a divine mission. The Duke of Alencon became her devoted admirer and taught her the use of arms. After the release of Orleans, the people of the city became convinced she was a saint and when her name resounded in the streets of Lyons and distant Toulouse and in all loyal cities, Joan of Arc supplied that essential impulse to the supporters of the Dauphin which alone led the people to victory against great odds.
The French crushing the English. The English, however, did not fight on horseback
Town after town on the Loire, in Burgundy and in Normandy, opened its gates to the legitimate king. After the battle of Patay, in which the French captured the Earl of Suffolk, the tide seemed to be turning against the English. The English captains, even though France was only half a foreign land, seemed discouraged and the soldiers discontented and half-hearted in battle. The Dauphin, still unwarlike, was persuaded to go to Reims, which fell without a blow. He was anointed king with the sacred oil of the Cathedral, the final proof of legitimacy. Joan, in white armour, with her white banner, knelt beside him in the Cathedral, and among the congregation was her mother and brothers. It was the supreme moment of her career. Her voices had told her to relieve Orleans and have the King crowned in Reims. She had obeyed and succeeded.
Lacking the backing of the King of France, she and D’Alencon failed to take Paris. History was to be determined by the miracle of the Maid but not to be hurried. Joan at her trial stated that, after her troops had captured Melun from the Burgundians and whilst the bells of the town were pealing for the victory, she was standing in the moat when she became aware of the sudden warmth and stillness of her voices and St Margaret and St Catherine spoke to her. This time they came with a solemn warning. Before the next feast of St John in May, it was then April; she was to be taken prisoner. On 23 May, before the walls of Compiegne, she was taken prisoner in an unnecessary skirmish with Burgundian troops. She was sold by her captor to the English for ten thousand gold francs.
Her trial began at Rouen in January, 1431, before an ecclesiastical court. The English, who were determined that she should die whatever happened, preferred that she should be first condemned as a heretic and a witch by a French court. In Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, they had a clever ally. The court took some three months to draw up the preparatory case, after assembling all possible evidence about the Maid’s life. The majority of the court was thoroughly prepared to judge Joan a heretic but to give her a chance to abjure and pass the rest of her life in a women’s prison. Only Cauchon, and one or two of his confidants, knew that at all costs, and even if she abjured, she was to be burnt at the stake.
Joan interrogated in her prison cell by Cardinal Winchester.
On 24 May, 1491, Joan, grimy from her prison cell, stumbling in a long grey dress of a penitent, was led into the market-place of Rouen. There was a crowd of English soldiers and burgesses of Rouen in the square, as well as church dignitaries including the Bishop of Winchester, who had presided over the trial at a distance.
After a sermon and a short address by Cauchon explaining why the Church had cast her out, she was hoisted on to a high plaster erection and bound with small chains to a stake on the top of it. A high-pointed dunce’s cap with the words “Heretic, Relapsed Apostate” was put on her head; the executioners lit the lower faggots, smoke began to hide her from the crowd. A Dominican monk held a crucifix before her until he had to jump down for fear of being scorched. The executioners poured oil on the flames and vast clouds of sulphurous smoke hid her from the public.
It is probable that she died of asphyxiation rather than burning, for after a short time the flames were beaten down for a moment and, as was the custom, the body, high up on the stake, was shown to the crowd. It was still recognizably a female body, not yet more than charred. When the body was finally consumed, the executioner threw the unburnt heart and liver into the Seine.
The crowd, the majority of whom were eager to witness public executions and which had hooted Joan on her arrival in the square, seemed seized with fear. “We are lost, we have burnt a saint,” an English soldier is reported to have said. The dignitaries too left in some confusion of mind. Such was the death of Joan of Arc after a trial which had lasted five months.
By itself, the event did not appear at the time of great importance. The English had got rid of a sorceress who had helped their enemies and now could do so no more. Joan of Arc had finished her work the year before when she had seen the Dauphin crowned King of France at Reims. The King had not lifted a finger to save the Maid and it was scarcely a sufficient excuse to say that nothing he could have done could have saved her from English vengeance.
Joan’s martyrdom enhanced to an enormous degree the unconscious feelings her example had released in the people of France, a feeling which already had expression in the new vigour and confidence of the Dauphin’s armies in 1429 and 1430. Twenty-five years later public opinion in France demanded her rehabilitation and an ecclesiastical court in Paris annulled the findings of that of Rouen. The Pope formerly revoked the sentence. Her canonization was to wait for many years, until 1920 in fact.
This girl, who died at the age of twenty, possessed exceptional qualities. Brave and resolute, she could hold her own alike with courtiers and rough soldiers and her enthusiasm, backed by common sense, made her a leader of men in battle. She had one attribute of any military leader, a determination to be “up and at” the enemy and to pursue every chance relentlessly; if the King had been less cautious, her military fame would have been greater. She had, too, an extraordinary ready wit, and stood up to her learned judges at Rouen, frequently exposing them.
These qualities cannot be dissociated from her voices. It was because she believed she was doing the work of God that her self-confidence was effortless, that, for example, she could wear men’s dress and armour because they were practical necessities with the greatest naturalness. She never doubted for a moment that she was doing God’s work. “I come from the Kingdom of Heaven”, she would say. Her patriotism was religious and her great phrase, “Those who make war on the Holy Kingdom of France make war against Jesus the King,” was an inspiration in her time to all Frenchmen to rally round the monarchy and the Church, and still echoes the unconscious attitudes of Frenchmen to the mythical Being, France.
To the English and Burgundian faction, Joan’s voices came from the Devil and were a mockery of Holy Church. She was a witch and sorceress and her wearing of men’s clothes a sure sign that she was a loose woman. Many people to-day cannot accept that Joan’s voices were the direct guidance of God. Many people will deny the reality of supernatural intervention altogether, and even Catholics who do not deny it can ask themselves why should God and His Son have taken such a direct interest in the success of the Catholic French against the equally Catholic English.
But whatever views there may be about the voices, no one can deny the historical importance of Joan of Arc. Her words, “Frenchmen, divided Frenchmen, pardon each other with all your hearts,” appealed as magical common sense at a time of intense confusion and strife. Loyalty became something wider than the city ramparts or the confines of villages or region. No longer would knights or peasants ride, at the bidding of their powerful feudal overlords, anywhere, changing sides when the feudal overlord thought fit. First loyalty went to the King, not to Baron; to France, not to Burgundy or Brittany.
This new sentiment was born with remarkable strength because it was expressed and acted upon by the Maid of Orleans with such real fervour. Joan of Arc, by her triumph at Orleans and Reims, and by her shameful death in Rouen, was the creator of national feeling in France. Together with Louis XIV who gave nationalism a style, and the anonymous French Revolution which gave it a new universal content, Joan of Arc is the creator of French nationalism.