The Story of Rouen

by Theodore Andrea Cook

There was some murmuring among the crowd during this long ceremony; for while Jeanne was alive the English soldiery dared attempt nothing fresh; and they only saw in her refusals to "abjure" an immediate reason for handing her over from the ecclesiastical justice to the secular, whose ways were swifter. But merely burning Jeanne would not have been enough. She had to confess her sins, to disavow her mission, to be received into the bosom of the Church and pardoned, and then—to be discovered in fresh crime. One of the consequences of her "abjuration" was that she was wearing woman's dress that very afternoon. Two days afterwards (on Sunday) the ecclesiastics heard that she had changed to masculine attire again. They rushed to the castle to verify the "relapse" they were so ardently expecting, but the English soldiers drove them out again, being very tired by this time of their unintelligible delays. On May 28th Pierre Cauchon questioned her, and she said that if they kept their word, to free her and let her hear mass, she would keep hers and change her dress, but that among men a man's dress suited her best.[55] Asked if she had heard her "voices" again—a deliberate trap to secure the certainty of proved "relapse"—she replied, "God has told me by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret of the pity and the betrayal that I have wrought in making abjuration to save my life, and that I lost my soul to save my life." To this the clerk added the fatal comment, "Responsio Mortifera." Jeanne realised now what her "abjuration" had really meant. The fear that had inspired it had passed, and she boldly reaffirmed her mission and her faith. It was all her judges needed. "Farewell," cried Pierre Cauchon to Warwick and his English who waited in the castle-yard, "be of good cheer, for it is done."

By orders of the meeting of the 29th of May, already mentioned as held in the Chapelle des Ordres, Martin Ladvenu and Jean Toutmouillé came to her cell early in the morning of the next day, and announced that she was to be handed over to the Secular Justice and burnt. "Hélas!" she cried, with all the natural terror of a woman, "me traite-t-on si horriblement et cruellement, qu'il faille que mon corps net et entier, qui ne fut jamais corrompu, soit aujourd'hui consumé et rendu en cendres!" She then confessed to Ladvenu, and after some discussion the sacred elements were brought to her, without any of the usual ceremonial accompaniments, and she received them with deep devotion.

The last scene in her life now drew near. That you may understand it, you must realise that the present Place du Vieux Marché has little except its name in common with the Vieux Marché where Jeanne was burnt. The map I have reproduced from Jacques Lelieur's plan of 1525 will show you very much what it was like in the fifteenth century (see [map F]), and will prove not only that it was far smaller in extent, but that many buildings round it then have now disappeared without a trace of them remaining. In this old map the "Rue Massacre" must be understood as representing that part of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge which extended from the Porte Massacre (see [p. 135]) to the Place du Vieux Marché. When you stand in the Vieux Marché now, if you imagine that the houses of the Rue Cauchoise extended across the open square to the beginning of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, you may realise how much less space there was in the fifteenth century. In those days, too, it must be remembered that what is now the Place Verdrel was called the Marché Neuf, and that the old Marché aux Veaux has now become quite wrongly the Place de la Pucelle. How this mistake arose will soon be clear.

M. Charles de Beaurepaire's untiring researches have established from recorded documents every house that stood round the Vieux Marché. The map shows that the Church of St. Sauveur (now vanished) stood near the Rue du Vieux Palais and the Rue de la Pie, with its apse turned towards the Grosse Horloge. Within its cemetery was erected the scaffolding beyond the east end of the church on which Jeanne's judges stood at her execution. Near it was another stage at the end of the Market-Hall, and in sight of both was the place where she was burnt, marked by the "Escharfaut," recorded by Lelieur, and known to have been in the same place since 1233. It was well within the view not only of the judges but of a crowd in the Vieux Marché and the Rue Cauchoise, and its place is commemorated by the tablet you can now read at the corner of the new Market-Hall.

The mistake of the "Place de la Pucelle" arose because a monumental fountain was erected there for the first time, when Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, who really started the waterworks of Rouen on a proper basis, used the Fontaine St. Filleul for the benefit of the Quartier Cauchoise. The pipe was brought into the Marché aux Veaux because the level of the ground permitted a better fall for the water, and the town took advantage of the opportunity to turn the new fountain into a memorial of Jeanne d'Arc. The actual spot where she was burnt was never marked at all, until the tablet of to-day was set up; for although the "Procès de Réhabilitation" decreed that the scene of her execution should be consecrated with a cross, that cross was placed on the point of the wall of the Cemetery of St. Sauveur, which was nearest to her scaffold; and this for the very good reason that the English (if for no other motive) would not allow another "sanctuary" (as all crosses were in the fifteenth century) to be erected so near to the cemetery which was already holy ground itself. It was this commemorative cross which was replaced by the Fountain of St. Sauveur just before the larger monumental fountain was erected in the more convenient (though less appropriate) situation of the Marché aux Veaux, now the Place de la Pucelle.

Over the hideous tragedy of the Vieux Marché I have neither space nor inclination to linger. At nine o'clock on the 30th of May 1431 she left the château of Philip Augustus in woman's dress, wearing a mitre on which was written, "Hérétique, Relapse, Apostate, Idolatre," with Ladvenu and Massieu beside her, and seven or eight hundred men-at-arms accompanying them. She wept bitterly as she went, and the people wept to see her sobbing in the cart. Even Loyseleur was overcome by his remorse, and was bidden to leave Rouen. In the Vieux Marché she had first to listen to the sermon of Nicole Midi, who formally delivered her to the Secular Justice. The Bishop of Beauvais then pronounced her sentence of excommunication. When Jeanne rose to implore the pardon of the people and the prayers of the Church, insisting to the end on the sincerity of her cause and of her King, there was hardly even an English soldier who was not touched with some compassion after the six hours of her suspense. Massieu handed her a roughly-fashioned cross which she placed in her bosom. She begged Isambard de la Pierre to hold another before her eyes until the end. The delay of the ecclesiastics had been long, but the civil powers were short. "Do your duty" was the only sentence she heard in the short command[56] to the executioner. Then she wept again, crying, "Rouen, Rouen, mourrai-je ici, seras-tu ma maison? Ah Rouen, j'ai grand peur que tu n'aies à souffrir de ma mort." The slow flames mounted from the scaffold which had been built to burn her slowly, and with the last word, "Jesus," on her lips, she died.

Her ashes were cast into the Seine. They were scarcely cold before the rumour of her saintliness, and the miracles of her passing spread through Rouen and through France. Soon afterwards Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, died of apoplexy. Nicole Midi was struck with leprosy within a few days of her death. Loyseleur died suddenly at Bâle. The corpse of d'Estivet was found in a gutter outside the gates of Rouen.

Not a single attempt was made to rescue her in Rouen at the last, not a solitary effort had been made before to save her by the French. Judged by the Church, and appealing for fair hearing, Jeanne was not supported in her trial by a single French ecclesiastic. Not a single reference to her death occurs on subsequent occasions, when the Court of France had official opportunity to make it. An age still so strongly imbued with the principles of feudalism could not believe in that intense patriotism and worship of nationality which was as foreign to their instincts as was the doctrine of liberty of conscience. This peasant-girl personified them both. "Il y a ès livres de nostre Seigneur plus que ès vostres," she had said in her first questioning at Chinon; and laymen and ecclesiastics alike were unable to reconcile her with any scheme of philosophy they knew. In English writings there is no contemporary mention of her except a line in William of Worcester. Caxton's English Chronicles only give the lie that Shakespeare has preserved against her tainted purity. Thomas Fuller classed her with the Witch of Endor. It was not for twenty-four years that the very town which saw her martyrdom was moved to declare judicially her innocence. In the "Procès de Réhabilitation," begun on the first of June 1456, everyone who had known her came forward—too late—to testify to her innocence. On the seventh of July, in the presence of her brother and her mother's representative in the great hall of the palace of the Archbishop of Rouen, it was ordered that her memory should be publicly reinstated both in the Cemetery of St. Ouen and in the Vieux Marché.

The most astonishing thing in the whole story is, not that the prophecies were fulfilled, not what she did before her death, not even the memory of how she died, but the woman herself, and that is why I have reproduced as far as was possible, from the text of Quicherat's volumes, all that she is known certainly to have said and done in Rouen, as is recorded in the contemporary manuscripts which he has reproduced from the minutes of her "Trials." The donjon of the castle, where she stood before her judges, is for this reason the best memory of her that could possibly have been preserved. No other monument will ever be so appropriate, and in their patriotic and successful efforts to preserve this building, the citizens of modern Rouen have done much to wipe out the shame of other days. It preserves not merely the heroism of Jeanne. She had scarcely left it when the brave Xaintrailles was imprisoned within its walls, but he must have escaped or been exchanged very soon, for at the end of December in the same year he was fighting the English again at Lagny. In February of the following year, 1432, another famous name is connected with the donjon, for in that month Ricarville with scarcely a hundred men behind him was let in by Pierre Audebœuf, and killed every one of the English garrison except the Earl of Arundel, who was governor, with his immediate bodyguard.