But short-lived was the glory; no, I will not say that, let me rather remark that short-lived was the worldly splendor of the chivalrous my-lady countess. She had rendered all the service she could, when she fell wounded before Paris, and was basely abandoned for a while by her own party. She was rescued, ultimately, by D’Alençon, but only to be more disgracefully abandoned on the one side, and evilly treated on the other. When as a bleeding captive she was rudely dragged from the field at Compiègne; church, court, and chivalry, ignobly abandoned the poor and brave girl who had served all three in turn. By all three she was now as fiercely persecuted; and it may safely be said, that if the English were glad to burn her as a witch, to account for the defeat of the English and their allies, the French were equally eager to furnish testimony against her.
Her indecision and vacillation after falling into the hands of her enemies, would seem to show that apart from the promptings of those who had guided her, she was but an ordinary personage. She, however, never lost heart, and her natural wit did not abandon her. “Was St. Michael naked when he appeared to you?” was a question asked by one of the examining commissioners. To which Jeanne replied, “Do you think heaven has not wherewith to dress him?” “Had he any hair on his head?” was the next sensible question. Jeanne answered it by another query, “Have the goodness to tell me,” said she, “why Michael’s head should have been shaved?” It was easy, of course, to convict a prejudged and predoomed person, of desertion of her parents, of leading a vagabond and disreputable life, of sorcery, and finally, of heresy. She was entrapped into answers which tended to prove her culpability; but disregarding at last the complicated web woven tightly around her, and aware that nothing could save her, the heart of the knightly maiden beat firmly again, and as a summary reply to all questions, she briefly and emphatically declared: “All that I have done, all that I do, I have done well, and do well to do it.” In her own words, “Tout ce que j’ai fait, tout ce que je fais, j’ai bien fait, et fais bien de le faire;” and it was a simply-dignified resume in presence of high-born ecclesiastics, who did not scruple to give the lie to each other like common ploughmen.
She was sentenced to death, and suffered the penalty, as being guilty of infamy, socially, morally, religiously, and politically. Not a finger was stretched to save her who had saved so many. Her murder is an indelible stain on two nations and one church; not the less so that the two nations unite in honoring her memory, and that the church has pronounced her innocent. Never did gallant champion meet with such base ingratitude from the party raised by her means from abject slavery to triumph; never was noble enemy so ignobly treated by a foe with whom, to acknowledge and admire valor, is next to the practice of it; and never was staff selected by the church for its support, so readily broken and thrown into the fire when it had served its purpose. All the sorrow in the world can not wash out these terrible facts, but it is fitting that this sorrow should always accompany our admiration. And so, honored be the memory of the young girl of Orleans!
After all, it is a question whether our sympathies be not thrown away when we affect to feel for Jeanne Darc. M. Delepierre, the Belgian Secretary of Legation, has printed, for private circulation, his “Doute Historique.” This work consists chiefly of official documents, showing that the “Maid” never suffered at all, but that some criminal having been executed in her place, she survived to be a pensioner of the government, a married lady, and the mother of a family! The work in which these documents are produced, is not to be easily procured, but they who have any curiosity in the matter will find the subject largely treated in the Athenæum. This “Historical Doubt” brings us so closely in connection with romance, that we, perhaps, can not do better in illustrating our subject, than turn to a purely romantic subject, and see of what metal the champions of Christendom were made, with respect to chivalry.
THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY
AND HE OF ENGLAND IN PARTICULAR.
“Are these things true?
Thousands are getting at them in the streets.”
Sejanus His Fall.
I can hardly express the delight I feel as a biographer in the present instance, in the very welcome fact that no one knows anything about the parentage of St. George. If there had been a genealogical tree of the great champion’s race, the odds, are that I should have got bewildered among the branches. As there is only much conjecture with a liberal allowance of assertion, the task is doubly easy, particularly as the matter itself is of the very smallest importance.
The first proof that our national patron ever existed at all, according to Mr. Alban Butler, is that the Greeks reverenced him by the name of “the Great Martyr.” Further proof of a somewhat similar quality, is adduced in the circumstance that in Greece and in various parts of the Levant, there are or were dozens of churches erected in honor of the chivalrous saint; that Georgia took the holy knight for its especial patron; and that St. George, in full panoply, won innumerable battles for the Christians, by leading forward the reserves when the vanguard had been repulsed by the infidels, and the Christian generals were of themselves too indolent, sick, or incompetent, to do what they expected St. George to do for them.