Perhaps it was when passing through Fierbois that Joan may have been told of the existence in its church of the sword which so conspicuously figured in her later story, and was believed to have been miraculously revealed to her.
A letter was despatched from Fierbois to Charles at Chinon, announcing the Maid's approach, and craving an audience. At length, on the 6th of March, Joan of Arc arrived beneath the long stretch of castle walls of the splendid old Castle of Chinon.
That imposing ruin on the banks of the river Vienne is even in its present abandoned state one of the grandest piles of mediæval building in the whole of France. Crowning the rich vale of Touraine, with the river winding below, and reflecting its castle towers in the still water, this time-honoured home of our Plantagenet kings has been not inaptly compared to Windsor. Beneath the castle walls and the river, nestles the quaint old town, in which are mediæval houses once inhabited by the court and followers of the French and English kings.
When Joan arrived at Chinon, Charles's affairs were in a very perilous state. The yet uncrowned King of France regarded the chances of being able to hold his own in France as highly problematical. He had doubts as to his legitimacy. Financially, so low were his affairs that even the turnspits in the palace were clamouring for their unpaid wages. The unfortunate monarch had already sold his jewels and precious trinkets. Even his clothes showed signs of poverty and patching, and to such a state of penury was he reduced that his bootmaker, finding that the King was unable to pay him the price of a new pair of boots, and not trusting the royal credit, refused to leave the new boots, and Charles had to wear out his old shoe-leather. All that remained in the way of money in the royal chest consisted of four gold 'écus.' To such a pitch of distress had the poor King, who was contemptuously called by the English the King of Bourges, sunken.
Now that Orleans was in daily peril of falling into the hands of the English, and with Paris and Rouen in their hold, the wretched sovereign had serious thoughts of leaving his ever-narrowing territory and taking refuge either in Spain or in Scotland. Up to this time in his life Charles had shown little strength of character. His existence was passed among a set of idle courtiers. He had placed himself and his broken fortunes in the hands of the ambitious La Tremoïlle, whose object it was that the King should be a mere cipher in his hands, and who lulled him into a false security by encouraging him to continue a listless career of self-indulgence in his various palaces and pleasure castles on the banks of the Loire. Charles had, indeed, become a mere tool in the hands of this powerful minister. The historian Quicherat has summed up George de la Tremoïlle's character as an avaricious courtier, false and despotic, with sufficient talent to make a name and a fortune by being a traitor to every side. That such a man did not see Joan of Arc's arrival with a favourable eye is not a matter of surprise, and La Tremoïlle seems early to have done his utmost to undermine the Maid's influence with his sovereign. From the day she arrived at Chinon, if not even before her arrival there—if we may trust one story—an ambush was arranged by Tremoïlle to cut her off with her escort. That plot failed, but her capture at Compiègne may be indirectly traced to La Tremoïlle's machinations.
Those who have visited Chinon will recall the ancient and picturesque street, named La Haute Rue Saint Maurice, which runs beneath and parallel with the castle walls and the Vienne. Local tradition pointed out till very recently, in this old street, the stone well on the side of which the Maid of Domremy placed her foot on her arrival in the town. This ancient well stone has recently been removed by the Municipality of Chinon, but fortunately the 'Margelle' (to use the native term) has come into reverent hands, and the stone, with its deeply dented border, reminding one of the artistic wells in Venice, is religiously preserved.
Chynon, petit ville,
Grande renom.
Its renown dates back from the early days of our Plantagenets, when they lived in the old fortress above its dwellings: how Henry III. died of a broken heart, and the fame of Rabelais, will ever be associated with the ancient castle and town. Still, the deathless interest of Chinon is owing to the residence of the Maid of Domremy—as one has a better right to call her than of Orleans—in those early days of her short career, in its burgh and castle. In or near the street La Haute Rue Saint Maurice, hard by a square which now bears the name of the heroine, Joan of Arc arrived at noon on Sunday, the 6th of March.
It would be interesting to know in which of the old gabled houses Joan resided during the two days before she was admitted to enter the castle. Local tradition reports that she dwelt with a good housewife ('chez une bonne femme'). According to a contemporary plan of Chinon, dated 1430, a house which belonged to a family named La Barre was where she lodged; and although the actual house of the La Barres cannot be identified, there are many houses in the street of Saint Maurice old enough to have witnessed the advent of the Maid on that memorable Sunday in the month of March 1430. Few French towns are so rich in the domestic architecture of the better kind dating from the early part of the fifteenth century as that of Chinon; and now that Rouen, Orleans, and Poitiers have been so terribly modernised, a journey to Chinon well repays the trouble. Little imagination is required to picture the street with its crowd of courtiers and Court hangers-on, upon their way to and from the castle above; so mercifully have time and that far greater destroyer of things of yore dealt with this old thoroughfare.