Joan of Arc

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

A doughty warrior follows, namely, 'noble et prudent Seigneur le chevalier Thibauld d'Armagnac, Sire de Thermes, Bailli de Chartres.' D'Armagnac was fifty years old; he had followed Joan of Arc all through her campaign, and, like Alençon, had a very high opinion of her military talents. At the close of his evidence, he says: 'In the manner of the conduct and ordering of troops, in that of placing them in battle array, and of animating the men, Joan of Arc had as much capacity for these things as the most accomplished captain in the art of war.'

After the soldier, the peasant. This peasant, or rather mechanic, is a coppersmith named Husson Lemaître. Lemaître hailed from Domremy. Being in the year 1456 at Rouen, he then and there gave his evidence. He had known Joan of Arc's family, and Joan too in her childhood; of all of them he spoke most highly.

Next comes 'honnête et prude femme demoiselle Marguerite la Tournelle,' the widow of Réné de Bouligny. It was at her house at Bourges that Joan lodged after the coronation at Rheims.

We now pass to an entirely different category of witnesses. These are the men who sat in the trial of the heroine. One can well understand the embarrassment shown by such folk in their replies to the questions they had to answer, and their wish if it were possible to turn the responsibility of their previous judgment on the heads of those who were no longer in this world to answer the charges made against them.

The first of these men is 'vénérable et savante personne Maître Thomas de Courcelles.' De Courcelles was only fifty-six in 1456, when called on to make his deposition as to the part he had played in the heroine's trial at Rouen, five-and-twenty years before. His evidence is full of the feeblest argument, and his memory appears to have been a very convenient one, as he repeatedly evades an answer by the plea of having forgotten all about the incident alluded to.

Next follows that 'vénérable et circonspecte personne, Maître Jean Beaupère'—a doctor of theology, and canon of Rouen, Paris, and Besançon. This circumspect person was now in his seventieth year. He laid most of the blame of Joan of Arc's death upon the English, and the rest on Cauchon. The English being away, and Cauchon dead, the circumspection of this doctor's evidence is evident.

We next have that of the Bishop of Noyon, John de Mailly. This bishop had been in the service of the English King, but had, when Charles became prosperous, returned to him. In 1456 he was aged sixty. An intimate of the Prince Cardinal of Winchester, and one of the foremost of the judges who condemned Joan of Arc to death, his deposition in 1456 is quite a study in the art of trying to convince people that black is white. He had shown some kind of feeling of humanity at the time of the martyrdom of the Maid, and had left that scene of horror early. To the memory of his old friend and colleague, Cauchon, he gives a parting kick by saying at the close of his examination that of one thing he was quite certain, and that was that Cauchon received money for the conduct of the trial from his friends, the English. But he might have now been reminded that he too had received some of this blood-money.

Next to appear is another French bishop, Monseigneur Jean Le Fèvre, Evêque in partibus de Démétriade. This prelate was in his seventieth year. At the time of Joan of Arc's trial he was professor of theology of the order of hermit monks of Saint Augustins. The Bishop had taken an active part in the trial and condemnation. Like his brother bishop, Le Fèvre enjoyed a very convenient memory, and had quite forgotten many things of importance which occurred during the trial in 1430. Nor did he even take part as a spectator in the martyrdom which he had helped to bring about—'I left before the end,' he said, 'not feeling the strength to see more.' Let that shred of humanity in the composition of priests like him be allowed before we entirely condemn them.

The next witness is also a Churchman, Peter Migiet, the prior of Longueville, aged seventy. He also had been one of Cauchon's crawling creatures. There is little of interest in his evidence, except the passage where he says that an English knight had told him that the English feared Joan of Arc more than a hundred soldiers, and that her very name was a source of terror to the foe. Although this sounds an exaggerated statement, it is not so, as is proved by an edict having been issued by the English Government in the May of 1430, in which English officers and soldiers who refused to enter France for fear of 'the enchantments of the Maid' were threatened with severe punishment. There is, moreover, an edict, bearing the date of December 1430, which was also issued by the English military authorities, describing the trial and the punishment by court martial of all soldiers who had deserted the army in France from fear of Joan of Arc.

After the above priests, on whom rests the infamy of having taken part in the death of the heroine, it is a relief to find the next witness, although a Churchman, a man of sufficient honesty and courage to have been one of those few who refused to take any part in the iniquitous proceedings connected with Joan of Arc's trial, and who suffered imprisonment owing to his unwillingness to carry out Cauchon's wishes. This worthy priest was named Nicolas de Houppeville, a doctor of theology, now in his sixty-fifth year.