We have now had glimpses of the impostor from 1436 to 1440, when she seems to have been publicly exposed (though the statement of the Bourgeois de Paris is certainly that of a prejudiced writer), and again we have found the impostor accepted by the paternal and maternal kin of the Maid, about 1449-1452. In 1452 the preliminary steps towards the Rehabilitation of the true Maid began, ending triumphantly in 1456. Probably the families of Voulton and du Lys now, after the trial began in 1452, found their jolly tennis-playing sister and cousin inconvenient. She reappears, NOT at Sermaise, in 1457. In that year King Rene (father of Margaret, wife of our Henry VI.) gives a remission to ‘Jeanne de Sermaises.’ M. Lecoy de la March, in his ‘Roi Rene’ (1875) made this discovery, and took ‘Jeanne de Sermaises’ for our old friend, ‘Jeanne des Ermaises,’ or ‘des Armoises.’ She was accused of ‘having LONG called herself Jeanne la Pucelle, and deceived many persons who had seen Jeanne at the siege of Orleans.’ She has lain in prison, but is let out, in February 1457, on a five years’ ticket of leave, so to speak, ‘provided she bear herself honestly in dress, and in other matters, as a woman should do.’
Probably, though ‘at present the wife of Jean Douillet,’ this Jeanne still wore male costume, hence the reference to bearing herself ‘honestly in dress.’ She acknowledges nothing, merely says that the charge of imposture lui a ete impose, and that she has not been actainte d’aucun autre vilain cas.* At this date Jeanne cruised about Anjou and the town of Saumur. And here, at the age of forty-five, if she was of the same age as the true Maid, we lose sight for ever of this extraordinary woman. Of course, if she was the genuine Maid, the career of La Pucelle de France ends most ignobly. The idea ‘was nuts’ (as the Elizabethans said) to a good anti-clerical Frenchman, M. Lesigne, who, in 1889, published ‘La Fin d’une Legende.’ There would be no chance of canonising a Pucelle who was twice married and lived a life of frolic.
*Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rene, ii. 281-283, 1875.
A more serious and discreet scholar, M. Gaston Save, in 1893, made an effort to prove that Jeanne was not burned at Rouen.* He supposed that the Duchess of Bedford let Jeanne out of prison and bribed the two priests, Massieu and Ladvenu, who accompanied the Maid to the scaffold, to pretend that they had been with her, not with a substituted victim. This victim went with hidden face to the scaffold, le visage embronche, says Percival de Cagny, a retainer of Jeanne’s ‘beau duc,’ d’Alencon.** The townspeople were kept apart by 800 English soldiers.*** The Madame de Luxembourg who entertained the impostor at Arlon (1436) was ‘perhaps’ the same as she who entertained the real Jeanne at Beaurevoir in 1430. Unluckily THAT lady died in November 1430!
*Jehanne des Armoises, Pucelle d’Orleans, Nancy, 1893.
**Quicherat, iv. 36.
***Quicherat, ii. 14, 19.
However, the Madame de Luxembourg who entertained the impostor was aunt, by marriage, of the Duke of Burgundy, the true Maid’s enemy, and she had means of being absolutely well informed, so the case remains very strange. Strange, too, it is that, in the records of payment of pension to the true Maid’s mother, from the town of Orleans, she is ‘mere de la Pucelle’ till 1452, when she becomes ‘mere de feue la Pucelle,’ ‘mother of the LATE Pucelle.’ That is to say, the family and the town of Orleans recognised the impostor till, in 1452, the Trial of Rehabilitation began. So I have inferred, as regards the family, from the record of the inquest of 1476, which, though it suited the argument of M. Save, was unknown to him.
His brochure distressed the faithful. The Abbe, Dr. Jangen, editor of ‘Le Pretre,’ wrote anxiously to M. P. Lanery d’Arc, who replied in a tract already cited (1894). But M. Lanery d’Arc did not demolish the sounder parts of the argument of M. Save, and he knew nothing of the inquest of 1476, or said nothing. Then arose M. Lefevre Pontalis.* Admitting the merits of M. Save’s other works, he noted many errors in this tract. For example, the fire at Rouen was raked (as we saw) more or less (admodum) clear of the dead body of the martyr. But would it be easy, in the circumstances, to recognise a charred corpse? The two Mesdames de Luxembourg were distinguished apart, as by Quicherat. The Vignier documents as to Robert des Armoises were said to be impostures. Quicherat, however, throws no doubt on the deed of sale by Jehanne and her husband, des Armoises, in November 1436. Many errors in dates were exposed. The difficulty about the impostor’s reception in Orleans, was recognised, and it is, of course, THE difficulty. M. Lefevre de Pontalis, however, urges that her brothers are not said to have been with her, ‘and there is not a trace of their persistence in their error after the first months of the imposture.’ But we have traces, nay proofs, in the inquest of 1476. The inference of M. Save from the fact that the Pucelle is never styled ‘the late Pucelle,’ in the Orleans accounts, till 1452, is merely declared ‘inadmissible.’ The fact, on the other hand, is highly significant. In 1452 the impostor was recognised by the family; but in that year began the Trial of Rehabilitation, and we hear no more of her among the du Lys and the Voultons. M. Lefevre Pontalis merely mentions the inquest of 1476, saying that the impostor of Sermaise (1449-1452) may perhaps have been another impostor, not Jeanne des Armoises. The family of the Maid was not capable, surely, of accepting TWO impostors, ‘one down, the other come on’! This is utterly incredible.
*Le Moyen Age, June 1895.
In brief, the family of Jeanne, in 1436,1449-1452, were revelling with Jeanne des Armoises, accepting her, some as sister, some as cousin. In 1439 the Town Council of Orleans not only gave many presents of wine and meat to the same woman, recognising her as their saviour in the siege of 1429, but also gave her 210 livres. Now, on February 7, 1430, the town of Orleans had refused to give 100 crowns, at Jeanne’s request, to Heliote, daughter of her Scottish painter, ‘Heuves Polnoir.‘* They said that they could not afford the money. They were not the people to give 210 livres to a self-styled Pucelle without examining her personally. Moreover, the impostor supped, in August 1439, with Jehan Luillier, who, in June, 1429, had supplied the true Maid with cloth, a present from Charles d’Orleans. He was in Orleans during the siege of 1429, and gave evidence as to the actions of the Maid at the trial in 1456.** This man clearly did not detect or expose the impostor, she was again welcomed at Orleans six weeks after he supped with her. These facts must not be overlooked, and they have never been explained. So there we leave the most surprising and baffling of historical mysteries. It is, of course, an obvious conjecture that, in 1436, Jehan and Pierre du Lys may have pretended to recognise the impostor, in hopes of honour and rewards such as they had already received through their connection with the Maid. But, if the impostor was unmasked in 1440, there was no more to be got in that way.*** While the nature of the arts of the False Pucelle is inscrutable, the evidence as to the heroic death of the True Maid is copious and deeply moving. There is absolutely no room for doubt that she won the martyr’s crown at Rouen.
*Quicherat, v. 155.
**Quicherat, v. pp. 112,113,331, iii. p. 23.