Charles VII.
The raising of the siege of Orleans was quickly followed by the decisive battle of Patay in which Talbot, the English commander, was wounded and taken prisoner together with a large part of the English army. The way now lay open to Rheims. Thither marched the victorious French forces under Joan of Arc carrying with them the perplexed and irresolute Dauphin. In the cathedral at Rheims, July 17, 1429, with all the solemn ceremonies of the coronation of kings, this weakling was crowned Charles VII. of France.
Perhaps as the son of an imbecile sire and Isabeau of Bavaria, Charles VII. couldn’t help being what he was. So in the shadow of that comfortable Lombrosian theory we leave without reproach the man whom, in the good sunlight of common sense and honest manhood, we should scathingly reproach as dastard and ingrate.
After the crowning of Charles at Rheims, Joan desired to withdraw from the king’s service and go back to Domremy. She declared that her work was done; she, moreover, maintained that her Voices no longer urged her to remain in the field, or pointed out unerringly just what she should do. Du Nois and La Hire prevailed upon her to remain with the army.
Joan was wounded in an unsuccessful attack upon Paris. And the following spring in a sortie at Compeigne Joan was taken prisoner by the Burgundians and subsequently sold to the English.
Joan was cast into prison at Rouen. Here the indignities to which she was subjected, as related by her biographers, are almost incredible. The apathy of the fickle French towards their late “deliverer sent from Heaven”, and the dastardly indifference of Charles VII. during her imprisonment and throughout her trial and death form a conspicuous page in the black book of Human Ingratitude.
Et tu, Brute! (And thou too, O Brutus!) cried Cæsar as he fell pierced, indeed, with twenty-three wounds, but slain at the sight of his beloved Brutus among the murderers. That was death in death. And if my enemy had done this to me, verily, I could have borne it. But thou, my friend and my familiar!—This agonizing cry—shrieked so that all the world may hear by Cæsar, Wolsey, Joan—rises in bitter silence in many a heart. Only those we love have power to wound us; and we stand defenceless, unresenting, dim-wondering, yet loving. Nancy of the slums under the murderous blows of Bill Sykes, Cæsar as he gazes at Brutus, Joan of Arc blessing Charles VII. from her Calvary of flames—shine as radiant silhouettes of human nobility on the somber overshadowing background of human ingratitude.