Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[229] Thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge at Montereau, when the Dauphin's Councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,[230] sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l'Île-de-France, and Paris the great city.[231] Now in France the English were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[232] In Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath Goddam[233] was so often on their lips that they were called Godons. They were devils. They were said to be coués, that is, to have tails behind.[234] There was mourning in many a French household when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the coués,[235] making of the noble French lilies a litter for the leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.[236] Dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the side of the Burgundians?
Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.[237] It is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[238] Insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux, and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies.
In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt and Blaise, son of the late Messire Liébault de Baudricourt, was then captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles. He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of English and Burgundians.[239]
In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one Étienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of La Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages.
While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar.
Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (doyen) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242]
Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two gros from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.[244]
The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, René d'Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246]
At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248]
Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250]