Monstrelet––a Burgundian Chronicler––so writes of her.
CHAPTER XXV
In Prison Cells
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“It was fit that the savior of France should be a woman. France herself is a woman. She has the fickleness of the sex, but also its amiable gentleness, its facile and charming pity, and the excellence of its first impulses.” Michelet. “Joan of Arc.” |
There were shouts of triumph and exultation as the Maid was led back over the causeway to Margny. The sun had long since set, and the dusk was dying down into darkness. All along the causeway the earth was stained with blood, and sown with broken swords, scraps of armour, and the dead of friend and foe united now in the peace of mortality. Jeanne was too great a prize for a mere archer to claim, so Jean de Luxembourg bought her immediately from the man, allowing him to retain her hucque of crimson cramoisie, her saddle cloth, and horse with caparisons. Then she was taken to his camp at Clairoix.
Thither came also the great Duke of Burgundy from his 333 camp at Coudon, eager to see the girl who had almost uprooted the dominion of the English in France. Thither also assembled the English and Burgundians from the other camps in numbers, with cries and rejoicings over the taking of the Maid. Had a great victory been won the effect could not have been greater. It broke the spell. The Maid was human, like other women. So they were “as joyous as if they had taken five hundred prisoners, for they feared her more than all the French captains put together.”
Several times Philip of Burgundy had expressed a wish to see Jeanne the Maid, especially after receiving her letters summoning him to his rightful allegiance. Now as he found her sitting calmly in the quarters to which she had been committed, he could not forbear an exclamation of surprise at her youth and loveliness.