And with them comes also a knight, who relates how this victory has been won by the sudden appearance of an armed virgin, who scattered dismay and terror amongst their enemies. Shouts are heard from without, and Johanna enters. Here the course of history is followed in the account the maid gives of herself, and the proofs she affords of her divine mission.
At the opening of the second act, we find that Orleans has been relieved by the inspired Johanna. Talbot and Lionel, the English leaders, attribute the late defeat to the Burgundians; the Duke of Burgundy retorts. These angry chiefs are on the point of separating, and terminating their alliance, when the queen-mother Isabeau enters, and reconciles them. But when Isabeau, who, from her unnatural hatred to her son Charles, and a certain coarseness of temper, is altogether a very disagreeable personage, offers, woman against woman, to lead her own party against Johanna, they all unite in bidding her return forthwith to Paris. The army, they say, is dispirited when it thinks it fights for her cause—the cause of the mother against the son. Isabeau says:—
"Ye know not, weak souls, that ye are the rights
Of a wrong'd mother. I, for my part, love
Who honours me; who injures me, I hate;
And should this be my own begotten son,
He is for this more hateful. I gave life,
And I will take—if he, with shameless rage,
Scandal the womb that bore him. Ye proud nobles
Who war against my son, ye have no right
To pillage him. What injury has he done
To you? what duty violated?
Ambition and low envy spur ye on:
I, who begot him, have a right to hate."
While the English are still in their camp, little dreaming of surprise, the maiden rushes on them, conquers and disperses them. Here passes a scene between Johanna and Montgomery, a young Welsh knight, who begs for his life in a truly Homeric manner—pleading his youth, the anguish of his mother, and the sweet bride he had left upon the Severn. It is quite Homeric, professedly and successfully so, and therefore quite out of place. The Welsh knight speaks in a most unknightly strain. And the change of metre that is adopted assists in giving to the whole the air of a mere poetical exercise. The scene is not, however, without its purpose in the development of the character of the maid, because it shows how utterly she is at this time engrossed in her warlike mission; she is not a moment affected by the entreaties of Montgomery, and dooms him to death without pity.
The war still continues fatal to the English. Talbot is slain. In the next scene, the ghost of this warrior appears to Johanna, under the form of a black knight with the visor closed. The apparition lures her away from the heat of the contest, and then addresses to her this solemn warning:—
"Johanna d'Arc!
Up to the gates of Rheims hast thou been borne
Upon the wings of victory. Now pause.
Content thee with the fame that thou hast won.
Let fortune go, whom thou hast held in bonds,
Ere it in anger shall break loose from thee;
For never is it constant to the end."
Johanna, however, who can hear of nothing, and think of nothing, but of fighting for her country, and who has a particular detestation for this black knight, strikes at it with her sword. It vanishes with the appropriate accompaniments of thunder and lightning.
The apparition of the black knight has occasioned some embarrassment and discussion among the critics. It was at first quite plain that it was the ghost of Talbot; and when there was no longer any doubt on this head, it was not easy to decide what brought the ghost of Talbot there, and why he should give what, knowing as we do the history of Johanna, has the appearance of very sound advice. But in that lay the very snare of Satan. It was wise counsel that the devil, through this ghost, gave to Johanna; but it was worldly wise. It was well suited to some ambitious person engaged in a career of conquest. Had such a black knight appeared, for example, to Napoleon, on the eve of entering on his war with Russia, and warned him to furl his banner of conquest, it would have been a friendly and intelligent ghost, though we do not believe it would have been listened to for a moment. A human passion is stronger than a whole regiment of ghosts. But such advice addressed to Johanna, the missionary of heaven, who fought from duty, not ambition, could have no other effect than to infuse into her mind ideas of vain-glory and love of fame, a selfish regard to personal consequences, and a distrust of the protection of her divine mistress. The ghost of Talbot, therefore, was evidently in league with her enemies, the devils, in the insidious counsel it gave. But the counsel was rejected with disdain, and Johanna went on still victorious over all.
But the maiden next encounters a more pernicious apparition than the black knight. She contends with the gallant Lionel. Here, as elsewhere, she is the victor; she raises her sword to strike, but, fatally for her peace, she looks twice before she deals the blow. She cannot strike.
Now follows—but in vain for Johanna—the full accomplishment of her glorious enterprise, in the coronation of the king at Rheims. Contrary to the obligation of her high mission, she has received into her heart a human passion. Her peace is gone. Here the poet, in order to express the rapid alternations of feeling to which she is a prey, breaks from the even tenor of blank verse into a lyrical effusion of remarkable beauty and pathos. She is sought for to take her part in the ceremony of the coronation; it is now with a feeling of horror that she receives into her hands the sacred banner, which she had borne triumphantly to so many victories.