Her doubts and misgivings as to her own unfitness she put aside as impertinences, when assured of her divine mission. No shadow of spiritual inflation or egotism is to be seen in all these things. Rather she held by the belief that her very unworthiness in the world’s eye was the cause of her being chosen as a simple instrument in the hands of the Lord.
Her uncle led her to Vaucouleurs in 1428; Robert de Baudricourt, whom she believed she was told to see, declined to give ear to her stories; but Jean de Metz, whose evidence is of absorbing interest, tells us how he was overcome and won over to her by her compelling earnestness and faith. She came to Chinon with a small escort, and she and her guard had to travel mostly by night to avoid the Burgundians. “At Chinon,” says Jean de Metz, “she had to submit to long inquiries.”
The Dauphin was naturally loath to take a step so full of peril, and indeed so fraught with the danger of ridiculous failure, without grave, anxious, and searching investigation. He wished Jeanne to appear at Poitiers before the prelates and lawyers of Parliament. At Poitiers she was subjected to the closest examination, and in the end convinced the lawyers and churchmen of her good faith and the reality of her visions and voices. The Archbishop of Rheims, following “Gamaliel in the Council of the Jews,” advised the Dauphin not to spurn the proffered help; and Charles, who had been already impressed by the “revelations,” took the Archbishop’s advice, and placed his forces and his fortune in her hands, trusting to divine help and succour. The armies of France were in marked contrast to those of England. French nobles had quasi-regal power in their dominions, and only fitfully followed the royal arms. In England, from the Conquest, the King was supreme lord of all, and every one owed direct and immediate allegiance to him. The English armies, unlike the French feudal array, were made up of peasants and artisans and adventurous young men seeking a career, and, in the last resort, as we know from Falstaff, of losels and waifs and ne’er-do-wells. Whether Lord Melville’s famous saying that “the worst men make the best soldiers” be or be not accepted, it seems true enough that for aggressive wars at any rate the reckless bravery of adventurers goes very far. And Henry’s army, composed as it was of English, Welsh, and Irish, was in truth an army of intrepid condottieri, intrepid to a fault, but lacking the chivalrous feelings which with all their drawbacks the feudal system and the knightly organisations tended to evolve.
Hardened and seasoned by years of warfare, the English in 1429 were without serious opposition or check in their movements and attacks. No French army kept the field. The King’s authority was flouted. The Duke of Burgundy was openly for the English cause. The Duke of Brittany and Lorraine wavered from side to side. Money had run out, and the last chance of success was staked in a bold throw on the strange promises of the young country girl.
The evidence given by competent witnesses shows us clearly the magnitude of her achievements during the months of May, June, and July, 1429: the relief of Orleans; the victory of Patay; the capture of Troyes; and the triumphal march to Rheims, completing her work by the consecration of Charles in the old Cathedral, which had seen so many of his predecessors anointed and crowned within its walls.
But the marvel is that these stupendous achievements were not the results of mere enthusiasm, great and potent though that was, but of settled, farseeing skill and prudence on the part of Jeanne, joined to a strength of soul and purpose which multiplied the strength of the army tenfold.
Like Cromwell she “new-modelled” the army. The licentious gaiety of the feudal warrior had to give way to the sobriety and seemliness which became a Christian camp. The voluptuary and the blasphemer had to amend their lives. To revels succeeded prayers and fasts and vigils. Yet never for a moment did this great amendment degenerate into formalism or hypocrisy. Like all great souls she awakened latent good and drove vice abashed from her presence without any conscious spiritual superiority in herself. Men were ashamed to be base in such a presence. Nor did she ever become a law unto herself, as the “illuminated” are so apt to be; rather she was more than ever observant of all the duties and claims and observances of ordinary religious obligation, being ever in heart the simple maid whom the Lord for His own mysterious purpose, and without any merit of hers, had chosen for a mighty task.
These great qualities won for her the ready submission of the soldiers, while her name and fame brought levies of ardent volunteers, from all sides, eagerly contending for the glory of serving under such a leader. Her frame was hardy and enduring. She wore armour night and day for a week at a time. She ate sparingly and drank hardly at all, moistening a crust in wine, or, greatly fatigued, tasting a little as a restorative. While her woman’s nature showed itself in her burst of tears when dishonouring names were flung at her by some brutal English soldiers, or when she screamed at the sharp and sudden pain of the wound she received, still there always came a quick moral reinforcement which restored her serene fortitude in the midst of indignities and perils.
Writers have differed and must go on differing with regard to the scope of her mission and the waning of her powers after the coronation of Rheims. If she dictated the letter to Henry VI. in which the words occur, “body for body you will be driven out of France,” we may, by connecting this saying with her famous letter to the Hussites—in which she threatened to chastise them, “Saracens” that they were, when her work was done and France cleared of her enemies—and from other scattered phrases as well, come to the conclusion that in her belief France was to be wholly freed, and freed by her as agent of the Lord. But the letter to Henry VI. is of doubtful authority, and her appeal to Charles after the coronation to be allowed to return to her father and mother, supported by contemporary authority, seems to show that she looked upon her work as done, and the great outburst of weeping in the Cathedral was in all likelihood the sob of satisfied piety and patriotism, whose cares were at an end and whose task was fulfilled even to fruition.
This seems the true view, with which also the latest French students agree. Yielding to entreaty she threw herself further into the national struggle. She was still brave, still magnetic and inspiring, but no longer to herself or to others the sword in the hand of God.