But if in the campaign of May and June she showed the wonderful military genius to which so many competent witnesses bear testimony, in the weary winter of the same year she shows a clearness and depth of statesmanship scarcely less astonishing. In moments of national peril there are always “wise” men who think that further resistance is foolish and even criminal. Alfred had to deal with such time-servers. So had Bruce, and so later on had Washington. Jeanne with a sore heart found herself clogged and impeded by these prudent men. Foremost amongst them was the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres. His programme was one of reconciliation. The Duke of Burgundy was to become the ally of France, and as such was to act as negotiator and intermediary for a lasting peace between Henry VI. and Charles VII. Poor Charles was weary of the war, and lent a ready ear to the accommodator. In vain Jeanne warned him of the folly of these plans. To strike, and strike quickly, at Paris was her advice. Halting and hesitating, Charles consented. An army was placed at her disposal, but, just as victory seemed sure, she was ordered to desist, and Burgundy so duped the French King that he was allowed to go through the French lines into Paris, ostensibly to treat for peace, but in reality, as the event proved, to put himself under Bedford’s orders, and to hold Paris as lieutenant for the Regent and ally of the King of England. Had Jeanne’s advice been followed this shameful treason could never have come about. She had known and felt that the hatred of the Duke of Burgundy and his house against Charles VII. was too deep and too rooted to be pulled up in a moment. For twenty years France had been distracted by the factions of Burgundy and Orleans struggling for control. Fire and water were not more opposed. Burgundy looked to England, and Orleans to France. We must not too hastily condemn these factions. Nations in the modern sense had not fully arisen. The State was everything. Whether a great Anglo-French monarchy sitting in Paris ruled over France, England, Ireland, and Wales, or a more domestic French line only ruled over France itself, was a question on which upright men might well take opposite sides. Jeanne’s special merit was that she saw the possibility of a great French nation, self-centred, self-sufficient, and she so stamped this message on the French heart that its characters have never faded. Ecclesiastics, on the other hand, with their conception of a Universal Empire and a Universal Church, thought little of National aspirations or claims. To them, anything which would allay the bitter rivalries of France and England naturally appealed, seeing, as they did, in such a change the promise of a return to the days before the Babylonian captivity at Avignon, and the bringing of all peoples into ready submission to Peter’s chair. Jeanne’s greatness is nowhere more manifest than in her willing loyalty to the Church and “our lord the Pope,” while claiming for France absolute national independence. Herein she stands alone. Dante’s two swords (wielded by Pope and Emperor) were lethal to national life. To the spiritual sword Jeanne bowed, but to no Emperor or King other than the anointed King of France could the loyalty of a French heart be due.
The winter of 1429 was spent in controversies of which the opposing principles of imperialism and nationality are the true keys. In the early spring, Jeanne, who had bravely stood by the national cause, and heartened all who withstood the party of compromise and surrender, saw only too clearly that for the time the French hopes of success had given way. That brave night ride to relieve Compiègne was in many respects a meeting of fate half way. No doubt, she defied augury, but signs of impending disaster multiplied; and when she fell into the hands of the Burgundians, she must have felt that while her own agony began, the cause of France might well gather more strength from her example as a sufferer, than from her futile struggle against cowardice and treason. Into one short year her whole astounding public career is crowded; Orleans, Patay, Troyes, Rheims, Paris, Compiègne; glory, exaltation, wreckage, and captivity. But France was at the end of it a conscious nation with an anointed King, and the work of deliverance was assured.
The Trial and Rehabilitation.
The English had felt sorely the humiliations of the year 1429. In Bedford’s report to the King’s Council in London he told of those who were struck with fear by the incantations of this “limb of the fiend” who had startled them from their security; and proclamations were issued against those who in terror of the Maid deserted the army. Now that she, who had worked such mischief to them, was in their hands, betrayed by her own countrymen,[[1]] they wreaked vengeance upon her without stint.
The story of her prison life is a record of shame to her gaolers. Chained, mocked at, threatened, and insulted, her serenity never failed. She was in God’s hand, and she bowed to His will.
Months of suffering and anxiety passed over her before her captors made up their minds as to the course they would take to bring about her death under the semblance of legal execution. If she could be convicted by an ecclesiastical court of crimes against the faith, her condemnation would redound to the fair fame of England and the pious[[2]] House of Lancaster, while covering the French and their sovereign with confusion as the allies and associates of a minister of hell.
Pliant churchmen were at hand to give countenance and help in this undertaking—bishops full of zeal and loyalty for our sovereign lord Henry VI., by the grace of God King of France and England.
The worst of these servile churchmen was the wretched Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. Many other prelates were Cæsar’s friends, but he sits exalted in solitary infamy. He came to the Burgundian camp and claimed his victim in the name of Bedford, Regent of France for the English King. Had Jeanne been detained by the Burgundians, it is impossible to believe that Charles VII. would not have procured her release. Had she been held as a prisoner of war by the English, it is very likely that the shame of holding a woman captive in their hands would have made it possible to arrange for her ransom. But once charged with heresy and taken out of the hands of the Burgundians such hopes and chances were closed. Still, as an ecclesiastical prisoner she would have been entitled to counsel and guidance by religious persons, the Church offering admonition before preferring grave charges of rebellion against any of her children. But this would render her punishment uncertain. Grave doctors of the law and eminent churchmen had at Poitiers, after long inquiry, declared her worthy of trust and they might do so again.
Therefore it was determined that she should be held in a lay prison though charged with an ecclesiastical offence. Cut off in this way from all spiritual help and instruction, she was to be brought, when the process was ripe, before a well-chosen court bent on her destruction, and ready to entangle her in questions which might entrap her into erroneous or heretical statements.
And once more we are confronted, if we try to rationalise her life and put away all belief in inspiration, with the amazing problem as to where and how this untutored girl drew her stores of logic, law, and theology.