CHAPTER IX
Jeanne d'Arc—Paris under the English—End of the English Occupation
The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast moult noblement, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "Noël, noël!"
The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal banner at Melun, crying—"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were now called to rally!—a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent, licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of Bourges."
The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty, ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English hands—the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when she was carried away to St. Denis at whose shrine she hung up her arms—her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria."
Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the château of Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The university of Paris and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her trial may do so in the pages of Mr. Douglas Murray's translation of the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors.
"The English burnt her," says a Venetian merchant, "thinking that fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died, Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled, and Queen Isabella went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris for her capture, another, a very different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her rehabilitation," says Mr. Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one great cry for justice broke from the multitude."
The story of Paris under the English is a melancholy one. Despite the coronation of the young king at Notre Dame and the rigid justice and enlightened policy of Bedford's regency, they failed to win the affection of the Parisians. Rewards to political friends, punishments and confiscations inflicted on the disaffected, the riotous and homicidal conduct of some of the English garrison, the depression in commerce and depreciation of property brought their inevitable consequences—a growing hatred of the English name.[95] The chapter of Notre Dame was compelled to sell the gold vessels from the treasury. Hundred of houses were abandoned by their owners, who were unable to meet the charges upon them. In 1427 by a royal instrument the rent of the Maison des Singes was reduced from twenty-six livres to fourteen, "seeing the extreme diminution of rents."
Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d'Eguiller, we learn that he and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our "late very dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon," were drinking one night at ten o'clock in a tavern where hangs the sign of L'Homme Armé.[2] Hot words arose between them and some other tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter, and William of the Blancs Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the servants—Robin the Englishman, Guiot d'Eguiller and one Guillaume. The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and snatching Guiot's sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the house. He only gave one "cop," but it was enough, and there was an end of Friar Robert.
A certain Gilles, a povre homme laboureur, went to amuse himself at a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the Porte St. Honoré, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel's wife concerning some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, "and in his anger cursed God our Creator." This came to the bishop's ears, and Gilles was cast for blasphemy into the bishop's oven, as the episcopal prison was called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds' weight before the image of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame.
The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446. Three years before that date, a goldsmith was at déjeuner with a baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade, of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The goldsmith[96] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times. Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands leagued with them. Jean Trolet's loose tongue cost him dear, but the general unrest which this incident illustrates burst forth in plot after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened by some citizens to the Duke of Richemont, Constable of France, who, with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of Ville gagnée! the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo in 1815.