Footnotes
[1]Neufchâteau and Domremy are both in the department of Vosges, France. The former is a town with about 4000 population; the latter, a village, famous as the birthplace of Joan of Arc.
[2]One of the witnesses at the trial of Joan of Arc said: “There is a tree called by us the ‘Fairy Tree.’ Every year the young girls and youths of Domremy come to walk there on the Lætare Sunday. Jeanne the Maid went there like all the other girls, and did as they did. Though she hung garlands on the boughs of the ‘Fairy Tree,’ she liked better to take them into the parish church and lay them on the altars of Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine.”
[3]The river Meuse flows through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, a distance of 500 miles, and empties into the North Sea.
[4]Vaucouleurs is a town of about 3000 population. It was from there Joan of Arc started on her expedition to save France.
[5]Bois de Chêne, or Wood of Oaks, is the name of the forest upon the edge of which is Domremy, Joan of Arc’s native village.
[6]Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc or Darc) was born at Domremy, Jan. 6, 1412, and died May 30, 1431. Her father was Jacques d’Arc, and her mother Isabelle Romée, illiterate laborers, but of good repute. She had three brothers,—Jacques, Pierre, and Jean,—and a sister Catharine.
[7]This spring, in the depositions of the witnesses at Joan’s trial, is always called the “Well of the Thorn.”
[8]Charles the Sixth was born at Paris in 1368, and died in 1422. He reigned forty-two years, but became deranged in 1392, and the Duke of Orleans, his brother, gained the ascendancy. It was his Queen, Isabella, who prepared the way for the treaty of Troyes, which was to make Henry the Fifth of England King of France on Charles’s death.
[9]After the derangement of his brother, Louis assumed the regency in opposition to the Duke of Burgundy. He was assassinated by the latter in 1407.
[10]Henry the Sixth was crowned King of France in 1430, but lost all his French possessions except Calais, owing to the successes of Joan of Arc. The Duke of Bedford was his uncle.
[11]Chinon, a town in the department of Indre-et-Loire, France, was a royal residence from the twelfth century to the reign of Henry the Fourth. In its great hall Charles the Seventh first saw Joan of Arc.
[12]La Hire, one of Charles the Seventh’s most distinguished generals, was born about 1390, and died at Montauban in 1443.
[13]One of the ancient governments in Southern France. Toulouse was its capital.
[14]Agnes Sorel was born in Touraine about 1409, and died in 1450.
[15]A town in the department of Nord, France, famous for the manufacture of cambrics, which take their name from it.
[16]Robert of Baudricourt was the governor of Vaucouleurs.
[17]Gien is in the department of Loiret, and thirty-eight miles in a direct line from Orleans. Its principal industry is the manufacture of faience.
[18]Joan called him “Dauphin” because she did not consider him a king until he was crowned.
[19]The doubt which was thrown upon the King’s legitimacy greatly weighed upon his spirits. This doubt Joan removed. Her words to him are thus reported: “On the part of my Lord, I tell thee thou art true heir of France and son of the King, and he sends me to lead thee to Rheims to the end thou may’st receive thy crown and thy coronation if thou wilt.”
[20]Poitiers is the capital of the department of Vienne, and is famous not alone for its university, but for its cathedral and the Temple de St. Jean, the oldest Christian structure in France.
[21]The Duke d’Alençon was a relative of the King, and had been held prisoner by the English for three years. He was released upon the promise of a heavy ransom.
[22]The Duke of Bedford, an English general and statesman, was John Plantagenet, third son of Henry IV, and at this time regent of France. He was conspicuous in the prosecution of Joan of Arc.
[23]Joan of Arc, testifying at her trial, said: “I had a banner of which the field was sprinkled with lilies; the world was painted there, with an angel at each side; it was white, of the white cloth called bocasine; there was written above, I believe, ‘Jhesus, Maria’; it was fringed with silk. Because the Voices had said to me, ‘Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven,’ I had this figure of God and of two angels done. I did all by their command.”
[24]Count Jean Dunois, called the “Bastard of Orleans,” was born in 1402, and died in 1468. He was the natural son of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and Mariette d’Enghien, and at this time was in command at Orleans.
[25]It was after the victory at Patay that Joan of Arc declared that the English power in France would not recover from the blow in a thousand years.
[26]Tradition says that Clovis and all his successors for nine centuries were anointed with this oil.
[27]Joan’s enemies subsequently reproached her for this, saying it was pride that moved her to take her banner to the ceremony. She only replied that it had shared the pain; it was right it should share the honor.
[28]Compiègne, a town in the department of Oise, forty-five miles northeast of Paris, and famous as a royal residence. Its palace was rebuilt by Louis XV., and fitted up sumptuously by Napoleon I.
LIFE STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Translated from the German
by George P. Upton
Beethoven Mozart Maid of Orleans William Tell
60 cents each