THE VOICES
JOAN OF ARC
Admonished by an angel to liberate France by the sword. From the painting by J. E. Lenepveu
The girl against whom these vindictive and hysterical charges were made was of peasant origin, not yet twenty years of age, and knew not A from B. She had come to her cruel end because from the time she was thirteen she had heard Voices—the Voices of saints—which she never had doubted had come from God and had never failed to obey, though the orders they gave her were so extraordinary that they had at the beginning filled her with terror. She had wept and pled her youth, her ignorance, her unfitness for the mission on which they would send her.
It was an amazing mission; nothing less than to save France from the clutches of England. Her instructions were detailed. She was to go to the governor of a nearby town and ask for an escort to conduct her to Charles VII, who called himself king of France, though he had never been crowned. She was to go to Charles and announce herself as sent by God to raise the siege of Orléans and to conduct him to Rheims (Reemz), where he was to be crowned. The English in the end were to be driven from all France, the Voices assured her.
To Joan of Arc this mission was of supremest importance. She lived in the path of war, and, like many a Belgian, a French, or a Polish girl of today, she had seen her village sacked, her family and her friends obliged to flee saving what they could. Domrémy lived in constant danger of the Burgundian allies of England and of all the pitiless riffraff war breeds. Joan was an ardent patriot and suffered with her country; she loved her king too, looking on him as sent of God. To rescue him was the noblest work which one could be given. After the first revolt she accepted the call without misgivings. It was not for her to question Voices sent by God.
The key to the career of Joan of Arc is this unfaltering confidence. She did things from the start utterly preposterous by human standards of conduct. What more unlikely of success than that the governor of a tormented district should turn over for the asking to a child of seventeen, of whom he had never heard, an escort to take her to the king of the land! yet the governor of Vaucouleurs (vo-koo-lurr) did this: not on the first or second asking, to be sure, but on the third, and Joan had never doubted that she would get her escort—"the Voices had told me it would be thus."