The Problem of Jeanne d’Arc
IN 1410-12 France was in the most dreadful condition that has ever affected any nation. For nearly eighty years England had been at her throat in a quarrel which to our minds simply exemplifies the difference between law and justice; for it seems that the King of England had mediæval law on his side, though to our minds no justice; the Black Death had returned more than once to harass those whom war had spared; no man reaped where he had sown, for his crops fell into the hands of freebooters. Misery, destitution, and superstition were man’s bedfellows; and the French mind seemed open to receive any marvel that promised relief from its intolerable agony. Into this land of terror was born a little maid whose mission it was to right the wrongs of France; a maiden who has remained, through all the vicissitudes of history, extraordinarily fascinating, yet an almost insoluble problem. It is undeniable that she has exercised a vast influence upon mankind, less by her actual deeds than by the ideal which she set up; an ideal of courage, simple faith, and unquenchable loyalty which has inspired both her own nation and the nation which burnt her. When the English girls cut their hair short in the worst time of the war;[3] when the French soldiers retook Fort Douaumont when all seemed lost: these things were done in the name of Joan of Arc.
The actual contemporary sources from which we draw our ideas are extraordinarily few. There is of course the report of the trial for lapse and relapse, which is official and is said not to be garbled. It is useful, not only for the Maid’s answers, which throw a good deal of light on her mentality, but for the questions asked, which appear to give an idea of reports that seem to have been floating about France at the time. The only thing which interested her judges was whether she had imperilled her immortal soul by heresy or witchcraft, and from that trial we shall get few or no indications of her military career or physical condition, which are the things that most interest modern men. About twenty years after her execution it occurred to her king, who had repaid her amazing love and self-sacrifice with neglect, that since she had been burnt as a witch it followed that he must owe his crown to a witch; moreover, her mother and brother had been appealing to him to clear her memory, for they could not bear that their child and sister should still remain under a cloud of sorcery. King Charles VII, who was now a great man, and very successful as kings go, therefore ordered the case to be reopened, in which course he ultimately secured the assistance of the reigning Pope. Charles could not restore the Maid to life, but he could make things unpleasant for the friends of those who had burned her; and so we have the so-called Rehabilitation Trial, consisting of reports and opinions, given under oath, from many people who had known her when alive. As King Charles was now a great man, some of the clerics who had helped to condemn her crowded to give evidence in the poor child’s favour, attributing the miscarriage of justice in her case to people who were now dead or hopelessly unpopular; some friends of her childhood came forward and people who had known her at the time of her glory; and, perhaps most important, some of her old comrades in arms rallied round her memory. We thus have a fairly complete account of her battles, friendships, trials, character, and death; if we read this evidence with due care, remembering that more than twenty years had elapsed and the mentality of mediæval man, we may take some of the statements at their face value. Otherwise there is absolutely no contemporary evidence of the Maid; Anatole France has pricked the bubble of the chroniclers and of the Journal of the siege of Orleans. But there is so much of pathological interest to be found in the reports of the trials that I need no excuse for a brief study of them in that respect.
The record of the life of Jeanne d’Arc is all too short, and the main facts are not in dispute. It is the interpretation of these facts that is in dispute. She was born on January 6th, 1412; the year is uncertain. Probably she did not know herself. In the summer of 1424 she saw a great light on her right hand and heard a voice telling her to be a good girl. This voice she knew to be the voice of God. Later on she heard the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, of St. Catherine, and of St. Margaret. St. Michael appeared first, and warned her to expect the arrival of the others, who came in due course. All three were to be her constant companions for the rest of her life. At first their appearances were irregular, but later on they came frequently, especially at quiet moments. Sometimes, when there was a good deal of noise going on, they appeared and tried to tell her something, but she could not hear what they said. These she called her Council, or her Voices. Occasionally the Lord God spoke to her himself; Him she called “Messire.”
As Jeanne grew more accustomed to her heavenly visitors they came in great numbers, and she used to see vast crowds of angels descending from heaven to her little garden. She said nothing to anybody about these unusual events, but grew up a brooding and intensely religious girl, going to church at every possible opportunity, and apparently neglecting her ordinary duties of looking after her father’s sheep and cattle. She learned to sew and knit, to say her Credo, Paternoster, and Ave Maria; otherwise she was absolutely ignorant, and very simple in mind and honest. She was dreamy and shy; nor did she ever learn to read or write.
Later on the voices told her to go into France, and God would help her to drive out the English. She continually appealed to her father that he should send her to Vaucouleurs, where the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt would espouse her cause. Ultimately he did so; and at first Robert laughed at her. He was no saint; in his day he had ravaged villages with the best noble in the land; and he was not convinced that Jeanne was really the sent of God that she claimed. When she returned home she found herself the butt of Domremy; nine months later she ran away to Vaucouleurs again, and found Robert more helpful. He had for some time felt sympathy with the dauphin Charles, and had grown to detest the English and Burgundians; and he now welcomed the supernatural aid which Jeanne promised; she repeated vehemently that God had sent her to deliver France, and that she had no doubt whatever that she would be able to raise the siege of Orleans, which was then being idly invested by the English.
Robert sent her to the Dauphin, who lay at Chinon. He was no hero, this Dauphin, but a poverty-stricken ugly man, with spindle-shanks and bulbous nose, untidy and careless in his dress, and for ever blown this way and that by the advice of those around him. Weak, and intensely superstitious, he would to-day have been the prey of every medium who cared to attack him; he received Jeanne kindly, and ultimately sent her to Poitiers to be examined as to possible witchcraft by a great number of learned doctors of the Church, who could be relied upon to discern a witch as soon as anybody.
She was deeply offended at being suspected of witchcraft, and was not so respectful to her judges as she might have been; occasionally she sulked, and sometimes she answered the reverend gentlemen quite saucily. She is an attractive and very human little figure at Poitiers as she moves restlessly upon her bench, and repeatedly tells the doctors that they should need no further sign than her own deeds; for when she had relieved Orleans it would be obvious enough that she was sent directly from God. At Poitiers she had to run the gauntlet of the inevitable jury of matrons, who were to certify to her virginity, because it was well known that women lost their holiness when they lost their virginity. The matrons and midwives certified that she was virgo intacta; how the good ladies knew is not certain, because even to-day, with all our knowledge of anatomy and physiology, we often find it difficult to be assured on this point. However, there can be little doubt that they were correct; probably they were impressed with Jeanne’s obvious sincerity and purity of mind. All women seem to have loved Jeanne, which is a strong point in her favour. The spiritual examination dragged on for three weeks; these poor doctors were determined not to let a witch slip through their hands, and it speaks well for their patience and good temper, considering how unmercifully Jeanne had “cheeked” them, that they ultimately found that she was a good Christian. Any ordinary man would have seen that at once; but these gentlemen knew too much about the wiles of the Devil to be so easily influenced; and it was a source of bitter injustice to Jeanne at her real and serious trial for her life that she was unable to produce their certificate.
The Dauphin took her into his service and provided her with horse, suit of armour, and banner, as befitted a knight; also maidservants to act propriety, page-boy, and a steward, one Jean d’Aulon. All that we hear of d’Aulon, in whose hands the honour of the Maid was placed, is to his credit. A witness at the Rehabilitation Trial said that he was the wisest and bravest man in the army. We shall hear more of him. Throughout the story, whenever he comes upon the scene we seem to breathe fresh air. He was the very man for the position, brave, simple-hearted, and passionately loyal to Jeanne. There is no reason to doubt that in spite of his close companionship with her there was never any romantic or other such feeling between them; he said so definitely, and he is to be believed. His honour came through it all unstained; and he let himself be captured with her rather than desert her. It is clear from his evidence that the personality of the Maid profoundly affected him. After Jeanne’s death he was ransomed, and was made seneschal of Beaucaire.
Jeanne was enormously impressed by her banner, which was made by a Scotsman, Hamish Power by name; she described it at her trial.
“I had a banner of white cloth, sprinkled with lilies; the world was painted there, with an angel on each side; above them were the words ‘Jhesus Maria.’” When she said “the world” she meant God holding the world up in one hand and blessing it with the other. Later on she does not seem very certain whether “Jhesus Maria” was above or at the side; but she is very certain that she was tremendously proud of the artistic creation—yes, “forty times” prouder of her banner than of her sword; even though the sword was from St. Catherine herself, and was the very sword of Charles Martel centuries before. When the priests dug it up without witnesses and rubbed it their holy power cleansed it immediately of the rust of ages.
When she arrived at Orleans she found the English carrying on a leisurely blockade by means of a series of forts between which cattle and men could enter or leave the city at will. The city was defended by Jean Dunois, Bastard of Orleans. The title Bastard implies that he would have been Duc d’Orleans only that he had the misfortune to be born of the wrong mother. There have been several famous bastards in history, and the kindly morality of the Middle Ages seems to have thought little the worse of them for their misfortune. It is only fair to state that there is some doubt as to whether Jeanne was sent in command of the army, or the army in command of Jeanne; indeed, all through her story it is never easy to be certain whether she was actually in command, and Anatole France looks upon her as a sort of military mascotte rather than a soldier. Nor has Anatole France ever been properly answered. Andrew Lang did his best, as Don Quixote did his best to fight the windmills, but Mr. Lang was an idealist and romanticist, and could not defeat the laughing irony of M. France. Indeed, what answer is possible? Anatole France does not laugh at the poor little Maid; he laughs through her at modern French clericalism. Nobody with a heart in his breast could laugh at Jeanne d’Arc! Anatole France simply said that he did not believe the things which Mr. Lang said that he believed; he would be a brave man who should say that M. France is wrong.
When she reached Orleans a new spirit at once came into the defenders, just as a new spirit came into the British army on the Somme when the tanks first went forth to battle—a spirit of renewed hope; God had sent his Maid to save the right! In nine days of mild fighting, in which the French enormously outnumbered the English, the siege was raised. The French lost a few score men; the English army was practically destroyed.
Next Jeanne persuaded the Dauphin to be crowned at Rheims, which was the ancient crowning-place for the French kings. In this ancient cathedral, in whose aisles and groined vaults echoed the memories and glories of centuries, he was crowned; his followers standing around in a proud assembly, his adoring peasant-maid holding her grotesque banner over his head; probably the most extraordinary scene in all history. After Jeanne had secured the crowning of her king, ill-fortune was thenceforth to wait upon her. She was of the common people, and it was only about eighty years since the aristocracy had shuddered before the herd during the Jacquerie, the premonition of the Revolution of 1789. Class feeling ran strongly, and the nobles took their revenge; Jeanne, having no ability whatever beyond her implicit faith in Heaven, lost her influence both with the Court and with the people; whatever she tried to do failed, and she was finally captured in a sortie from Compiêgne in circumstances which do not exclude the suspicion that she was deliberately sacrificed. The Burgundians held her for ransom, and locked her up in the Tower of Beaurevoir. King Charles VII refused—or at any rate neglected—to bid for her; so the Burgundians sold her to the English. When she heard that she was to be given into the hands of her bitterest enemies she was so troubled that she leaped from the tower, a height of sixty or seventy feet, and was miraculously saved from death by the aid of her friends—Saints Margaret and Catherine. It is easier to believe that at her early age—she was then about nineteen or possibly even less—her epiphyseal cartilages had not ossified, and if she fell on soft ground it is perfectly credible that she might not receive worse than a severe shock. I remember a case of a child who fell from a height of thirty feet on to hard concrete, which it struck with its head; an hour later it was running joyfully about the hospital garden, much to the disgust of an anxious charge-nurse. It is difficult to kill a young person by a fall—the bones and muscles yield to violent impact, and life is not destroyed.
Jeanne having been bought by the English they brought her to trial before a court composed of Pierre Cauchon, Lord Bishop of Beauvais, and a varying number of clerics; as Anatole France puts it, “a veritable synod”; it was important to condemn not only the witch of the Armagnacs herself but also the viper whom she had been able to crown King of France. If they condemned her for witchcraft they condemned all her works, including King Charles. If Charles had been a clever man he would have foreseen such a result and would have bought her from the Duke of Burgundy when he had the chance. But when she was once in the iron grip of the English he could have done nothing. It was too late. If he had offered to buy her the English would have said she was not for sale; if he had moved his tired and disheartened army they would have handed her over to the University of Paris, or perhaps the dead body of one more peasant-girl would have been found in the Seine below Rouen, and Cauchon would have been spared the trouble of a trial. Therefore we may spare our regrets on the score of some at least of King Charles’s ingratitudes. It is possible that he did not buy her from the Burgundians because he was too stupid, too poor, or too parsimonious; it is more likely that his courtiers and himself began to believe that her success was so great that it could not be explained by mortal means, and that there must be something in the witchcraft story after all. It could not have been a pleasant thing for the French aristocrats to find that when a little maid from Domremy came to help the common people, these scum of the earth suddenly began to fight as they had not fought for generations. Fully to understand what happened we must remember that it was not very long since the Jacquerie, and that the aristocratic survivors had left to their sons tales of unutterable horrors.
However, Jeanne was put on her trial for witchcraft, and after a long and apparently hesitating process—for there had been grave doubts raised as to the legality of the whole thing—she was condemned to death. Just before the Bishop had finished his reading of the sentence she burst into tears and recanted, when she really understood that they were even then preparing the cart to take her to the stake. She said herself, in words which cannot possibly be misunderstood, that she recanted “for fear of the fire.”
The sentence of the court was then amended; instead of being burned she was to be held in prison on bread and water and to wear woman’s clothes. She herself thought that she was to be put into an ecclesiastical prison and be kept in the charge of women, but there is nothing to be found of this in the official report of the first trial. As she had been wearing men’s clothes by direct command of God her sin in recanting began to loom enormous before her during the night; she had forsaken her God even as Peter had forsaken Jesus Christ in the hour of his need, and hell-fire would be her portion—a fire ten thousand times worse than anything that the executioner could devise for her. She got up in the morning and threw aside the pretty dress which the Duchess of Bedford had procured for her—all women loved Jeanne d’Arc—and put on her war-worn suit of male clothing. The English soldiers who guarded her immediately spread abroad the bruit that Jeanne had relapsed, and she was brought to trial for this contumacious offence against the Holy Church. The second trial was short and to the point; she tried to show that her jailers had not kept faith with her, but her pleadings were brushed aside, and finally she gave the responsio mortifera—the fatal answer—which legalized the long attempts to murder her. Thus spoke she: “God hath sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented to abjure and save my life! I have damned myself to save my life! Before last Thursday my Voices did indeed tell me what I should do and what I did then on that day. When I was on the scaffold on Thursday my Voices said to me: ‘Answer him boldly, this preacher!’ And in truth he is a false preacher; he reproached me with many things I never did. If I said that God had not sent me I should damn myself, for it is true that God has sent me; my Voices have said to me since Thursday: ‘Thou hast done great evil in declaring that what thou hast done was wrong.’ All I said and revoked I said for fear of the fire.”
To me this is the most poignant thing in the whole trial, which I have read with a frightful interest many times. It seems to bring home the pathos of the poor struggling child, and her blind faith in things which could not help her in her hour of sore distress.
Jules Quicherat published a very complete edition of the Trial in 1840, which has been the basis for all the accounts of Jeanne d’Arc that have appeared since. An English translation was published some years ago which professed to be complete and to omit nothing of importance. But this work was edited in a fashion so vehemently on Jeanne’s side, with no apparent attempt to ascertain the exact truth of the judgments, that I ventured to compare it with Quicherat, and I have found some omissions which to the translator, as a layman, may have seemed unimportant, but which, to a doctor, seem of absolutely vital importance in considering the truth about the Maid. These omissions are marked in the English by a row of three dots, which might be considered to mark an omission,—but on the other hand might not. Probably the translator considered them too indecent, too earthly, too physiological, to be introduced in connexion with the Maid of God. But Jeanne had a body, which was subject to the same peculiarities and abnormalities as the bodies of other people; and upon the peculiarities of her physiology depended the peculiarities of her mind.
Jean d’Aulon, her steward and loyal admirer, said definitely in the Rehabilitation Trial, in 1456:—
“Qu’il oy dire a plusiers femmes, qui ladicte Pucelle ont veue par plusiers foiz nues, et sceue de ses secretz, que oncques n’avoit eu la secret maladie de femmes et que jamais nul n’en peut rien cognoistre ou appercevoir par ses habillements, ne aultrement.”
I leave this unpleasantly frank statement in the original Old French, merely remarking that it means that Jeanne never menstruated. D’Aulon must have had plenty of opportunities for knowing this, in his position as steward of her household in the field. He guards himself from innuendo by saying that several women had told him. Jeanne’s failing to become mature must have been the topic of amazed conversation among all the women of her neighbourhood, and no doubt she herself took it as a sign from God that she was to remain virgin. It is especially significant that she first heard her Voices when she was about thirteen years of age, at the very time that she should have begun to menstruate; and that at first they did not come regularly, but came at intervals, just as menstruation itself often begins. Some months later she was informed by the Voices that she was to remain virgin, and thereby would she save France, in accordance with a prophecy that a woman should ruin France, and a virgin should save it. Is it not probable that the idea of virginity must have been growing in her mind from the time when she first realized that she was not to be as other women? Probably the delusion as to the Voices first began as a sort of vicarious menstruation; probably it recurred when menstruation should have reappeared; we can put the idea of virginity into the jargon of psycho-analysis by saying that Jeanne had well-marked “repression of the sex-complex.” The mighty forces which should have manifested themselves in normal menstruation manifested themselves in her furious religious zeal and her Voices. Repression of the sex-complex is like locking up a giant in a cellar; sooner or later he may destroy the whole house. He ended by driving Jeanne d’Arc to the stake. That was a nobler fate than befalls some girls, whom the same giant drives to the streets; nobler, because Jeanne the peasant was of essentially noble stock. Her mother was Isabel Romée—the “Romed woman”—the woman who had had sufficient religious fervour to make the long and dangerous pilgrimage to Rome that she might acquire the merit of seeing the Holy Father; Jeanne herself made a still more dangerous pilgrimage, which has won for her the love of mankind at the cost of her bodily anguish. Madame her mother saved her own soul by her pilgrimage, and bore an heroic daughter; Jeanne saved France by her courage and devotion to her idea of God. And this would have been impossible had she not suffered from repression of the sex-complex and seen visions therefore.
Another remarkable piece of evidence has been omitted from the English translation. It was given by the Demoiselle Marguerite la Thoroulde, who had taken Jeanne to the baths and seen her unclothed. Madame la Thoroulde said, in the Latin translation of the Rehabilitation Trial which has survived: “Quod cum pluries vidit in balneo et stuphis [sweating-bath] et, ut percipere potuit, credit ipse fore virginem.”
That is to say, she saw her naked in the baths and could see that she was a virgin! What on earth did the good lady think that a virgin would look like? Did she think that because Jeanne did not look like a stout French matron she must therefore be a virgin? Or did she see a strong and boyish form, with little development of hips and bust, which she thought must be nothing else but that of a virgin? That is the explanation that occurs to me; and probably it also explains Jeanne’s idea that by wearing men’s clothes she would render herself less attractive to the mediæval soldiery among whom her lot was to be cast. An ordinary buxom young woman would certainly not be less attractive because she displayed her figure in doublet and hose; Rosalind is none the less winsome when she acts the boy; and I should have thought that Jeanne, by wearing men’s clothes, would simply have proclaimed to her male companions that she was a very woman. But if the idea be correct that she was shaped like a boy, with little feminine development, the whole mystery is at once solved. It is to be remembered that we know absolutely nothing about Jeanne’s appearance[4]; the only credible hint we have is that she had a gentle voice.
In the Rehabilitation Trial several of her companions in arms swore that she had had no sexual attraction for them. It is quaint to read the evidence of these respectable middle-aged gentlemen that in their hot and lusty youth they had once upon a time met at least one young girl after whom they had not lusted; they seem to consider that the fact proved that she must have come from God. Anatole France makes great play with them, but it would appear that his ingenuity is in this direction misplaced. Is it not possible that Jeanne was unattractive to men because she was immature—that she never became more than a child in mind and body? Even mediæval soldiery would not lust after a child, especially a child whom they firmly believed to have come straight from God! It must be remembered that to half of her world Jeanne was unspeakably sacred; to the other half she was undeniably a most frightful witch. Even the executioner would not imperil his immortal soul by touching her. It was the custom to spare a woman the anguish of the fire, by smothering her, or rendering her unconscious by suddenly compressing her carotids with a rope before the flames leaped around her. But Jeanne was far too wicked for anybody to touch in this merciful office; they had to let her die unaided; and afterwards, so wicked was her heart, they had to rescue it from the ashes and throw it into the Seine. Is it conceivable that men who thought thus would have ventured hell-fire by making love to her? Yet more—it is quite possible that she had no bodily charms whatever; we know nothing of her appearance. The story that she was charming and beautiful is simply sentimental legend. Indeed, it is difficult not to become sentimental over Jeanne d’Arc.
A noteworthy feature in her character was her Puritanism. She prohibited her soldiers from consorting with the prostitutes that followed the army; sometimes she even forced them to marry these women. Naturally the soldiers objected most strongly, and in the end this was one of the causes that led to her downfall. Jeanne used to run after the prohibited girls and strike them with the flat of her sword; in one case the girl was killed. In another the sword broke, and King Charles asked, very sensibly, “Would not a stick have done quite as well?” This is believed by some people to have been the very sword of Charles Martel which the priests had found for her at St. Catherine’s command, and naturally the soldiers, deprived of their female companions, wondered what sort of a holy sword could it have been which could not even stand the smiting of a prostitute? When people suffer from repression of the sex-complex the trouble may show itself either by constant indirect attempts to find favour in the eyes of individuals of the opposite sex, or sometimes by actually forbidding all sexual matters; Puritanism in sexual affairs is often an indication that all is not quite well with a woman’s subconscious mind; nor can one confine this generalization to one sex. It is not for one moment to be thought that Jeanne ever had the slightest idea of what was the matter with her; the whole of her delusions and Puritanism were to her quite conscious and real; the only thing that she did not know was that her delusions were entirely subjective—that her Voices had no existence outside her own mind. Her frantic belief in them led her to an heroic career and to the stake. She did not consciously repress her sex; Nature did that for her.
Women who never menstruate are not uncommon; most gynæcologists see a few. Though they are sometimes normal in their sexual feelings—sometimes indeed they are even nymphomaniacs or very nearly so—yet they seldom marry, for they know themselves to be sterile, and, after all, most women seem to know at the bottom of their hearts that the purpose of women is to produce children.
But there is still more of psychological interest to be gained from a careful reading of the first trial. It is possible to see how Jeanne’s unstable nervous system reacted to the long agony. We had better, in order to be fair, make quite certain why she was burned. These are the words uttered by the good Bishop of Beauvais as he sentenced her for the last time:—
“Thou hast been on the subject of thy pretended divine revelations and apparitions lying, seducing, pernicious, presumptuous, lightly believing, rash, superstitious, a divineress and blasphemer towards God and the Saints, a despiser of God Himself in His sacraments; a prevaricator of the Divine Law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, erring on many points of our Faith, and by these means rashly guilty towards God and Holy Church.”
This appalling fulmination, summed up, appears to mean—if it means anything—that she believed that she was under the direct command of God to wear man’s clothes. To this she could only answer that what she had done she had done by His direct orders.
Theologians have said that her answers at the trial were so clever that they must have been directly inspired; but it is difficult to see any sign of such cleverness. To me her character stands out absolutely clearly defined from the very beginning of the six weeks’ agony; she is a very simple, direct, and superstitious child struggling vainly in the meshes of a net spread for her by ecclesiastical politicians who were determined to sacrifice her to serve the ends of brutal masters. She had all a child’s simple cunning; when the Bishop asked her to repeat her Paternoster she answered that she would gladly do so if he himself would confess her. She thought that if he confessed her he might have pity on her, or, at least, that he would be bound to send her to Heaven, because she knew how great was the influence wielded by a Bishop; she thought that she might tempt him to hear her in the secrets of the confessional if she promised to repeat her Paternoster to him! Poor child—she little knew what was at the bottom of the trial.
She sometimes childishly boasted. When she was asked if she could sew, she answered that she feared no woman in Rouen at the sewing; just so might answer any immature girl of her years to-day. She sometimes childishly threatened; she told the Bishop that he was running a great risk in charging her. She had delusions of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. She said that the faces of Saints Catherine and Margaret were adorned with beautiful crowns, very rich and precious, that the saints smelled with a sweet savour, that she had kissed them, that they spoke to her.
There was a touch of epigram about the girl, too. In speaking of her banner at Rheims, she said: “It had been through the hardships—it were well that it should share the glory.” And again, when the judges asked her to what she attributed her success, she answered, “I said to my followers: ‘Go ye in boldly against the English,’ and I went myself.” The girl who said that could hardly have been a mere military mascotte. Yet, in admitting so much, one does not admit that she may have been a sort of Amazon. As the desperation of her position grew upon her she began to suffer more and more from her delusions; while she lay in her dungeon waiting for the fatal cart she told a young friar, Brother Martin Ladvenu, that her spirits came to her in great numbers and of the smallest size. When despair finally seized upon her she told “the venerable and discreet Maître Pierre Maurice, Professor of Theology,” that the angels really had appeared to her—good or bad, they really had appeared—in the form of very minute things[5]; that she now knew that they had deceived her. Her brain wearied by her long trial of strength with the Bishop, common sense re-asserted its sway, and she realized—the truth! Too late! When she was listening to her sermon on the scaffold in front of the fuel destined to consume her, she broke down and knelt at the preacher’s knees, weeping and praying until the English soldiers called out to ask if she meant to keep them there for their dinner; it is pleasing to know that one of them broke his lance into two pieces, which he tied into the form of a cross and held it up to her in the smoke that was already beginning to arise about her.
Her last thoughts we can never know; her last word was the blessed name of Jesus, which she repeated several times. In public—though she had told Pierre Maurice in private that she had “learned to know that her spirits had deceived her”—she always maintained that she had both seen and believed them because they came from God; her courage was amazing, both physical and moral. She was twice wounded, but she said that she always carried her standard so that she would never have to kill anybody—and that in truth she had never killed anybody.
Her extraordinary accomplishment was due to the unbounded superstition of the French common people, who at first believed in her implicitly; it was Napoleon, a French general, who said that in war the moral is to the spiritual as three is to one; our Lord said, “By faith ye shall move mountains”; and it must not be forgotten that she went to Orleans with powerful reinforcements which she herself estimated at about ten to twelve thousand men. This superstition of the French was more than equalled by the superstition of the English, who looked upon her as a most terrifying witch: one witness at the Rehabilitation Trial said that the English were a very superstitious nation, so they must have been pretty bad. Indeed, most of the witnesses at that trial seem to have been very superstitious; one must examine their evidence with care lest one suddenly finds that one is assisting at a miracle.
She seems to have been hot-tempered and emphatic in her speech, with a certain tang of rough humour such as would be natural in a peasant girl. A notary once questioned the truth of something she said at her trial; on inquiry it was found that she had been perfectly accurate; Jeanne “rejoiced, saying to Boisguillaume that if he made mistakes again she would pull his ears.” Once during the trial she was taken ill with vomiting, apparently caused by fish-poisoning, that followed after she had eaten of some carp sent her by the Bishop. Maître d’Estivet, the promoter of the trial, said to her, ‘Thou paillarde!’ (an abusive term), ‘thou hast been eating sprats and other unwholesomeness!’ She answered that she had not; and then she and d’Estivet exchanged many abusive words. The two doctors of medicine who treated her for this illness gave evidence, and it is pleasing to see that they seem to have been able to rationalize a trifle more about her than most of her contemporaries. But, taken all through, her evidence gives the impression of being exceedingly simple and straightforward—just the sort of thing to be expected from a child.
It is noteworthy that a great many witnesses at the Rehabilitation Trial swore that she was “simple.” Did they mean that she was half-witted? Probably not. More probably it was true that she always wanted to spare her enemies, when, in accordance with the custom of the Hundred Years’ War, she should rather have held them for ransom if they had been noble or slain them if they had been poor men. To the ordinary brutal mediæval soldiery such conduct would appear insane. Possibly, of course, the term “simple” might have been used in opposition to the term “gentle.”
May I be allowed to give a vignette of Jeanne going to the burning, compiled from the evidence of many onlookers given at the Rehabilitation Trial? She assumed no martyresque imperturbability; she did not hold her head high in the haughty belief that she was right and the rest of the world wrong, as a martyr should properly do. She wept bitterly as she walked to the fatal cart from the prison-doors; her head was shaven; she wore woman’s dress; her face was swollen and distorted, her eyes ran tears, her sobs shook her body, her wails moved the hearts of the onlookers. The French wept for sympathy, the English laughed for joy. It was a very human child who went to her death on May 30th, 1431. She was nineteen years of age—according to some accounts, twenty-one—and, unknown to herself, she had changed the face of history.