Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

“ Cauchon then continued: 'If, Joan, you now refuse to speak the truth, you will be put to the torture. You see before you the instruments which are prepared, and by them stand the executioners, who are ready to do their office at our command. You will be tortured in order that you may be led into the way of truth, and for the salvation of your body and soul, which you by your lies have exposed to so great a peril.'
It was at this terrible juncture that Joan showed her indomitable spirit more clearly than at any moment since her capture. ”

“ Joan was then in her seventeenth year, and, although nothing but tradition has reached us of her looks and outward form, it is not difficult to imagine her as she rides out of that old gate, a comely maid, with a frank, brave countenance, lit up by the flame of an intense enthusiasm for her country and people. There can be no doubt that by her companions in arms—rough soldiers though most of them were—she was held in veneration; they bore testimony to their feelings by a kind of adoration for one who seemed indeed to them more than mortal. ”

“ The English gave names of French towns to these huge towers which threatened Orleans on every side; one they named Paris, another Rouen, and one other they called London.
The thirty thousand men, women, and children within the city walls were now beginning to suffer from the horrors of a long siege. In the town disturbances broke out, and the cry of treachery was heard—that sure precursor of the fears of the strong that the hardships of the siege would undermine the patriotism of their weaker citizens. ”

“ When the news was known that the English under Talbot and Fastolfe had been beaten, and that the great commander for so many years the terror of France had been made a prisoner, and that these mighty deeds had been accomplished by the advanced guard of the French army under the inspiration of the Maid of Orleans, the whole country felt that the knell of doom of the English occupation in France had rung. ”

“ After the battle, and while the prisoners were being marched off by the French, Joan was distressed to see the brutality with which those captives unable to pay a ransom were treated. One poor fellow she saw mortally wounded by his captors. Flinging herself from her saddle, she knelt by the side of the dying man, and, having sent for a priest to shrive him, she remained by the poor fellow's side and attended to him to the end, and by her tender ministrations helped him to pass more gently over the dark valley of death. ”

“ When people would avow that such works as she had carried out had never been done in former times, she would simply say: 'My Saviour has a book in which no one has ever read, however learned a scholar he may be.'
In all things she was pure and saint-like, and her wonderful life, as Michelet has truly said of it, was a living legend. Had she not been inspired by her voices and her visions to take up arms for the salvation of her country, Joan of Arc would probably have lived and ended her obscure life in some place of holy retreat. ”

“ Down into the ditches rushed the French, and up the sides of the glacis; scaling-ladders were placed against the walls, to which the men upon them clung like a swarm of bees. The defenders met them with showers of arrows and shot, and hurled them back with lance and hatchets. Constantly beaten back, they returned as constantly to the charge. For six hours this fight lasted, and weariness and discouragement fell on the French. Joan, who had been all these hours in the thick of the engagement, seeing her men were losing heart, redoubled her efforts ”

“ No poet's fancy has spun from out his imagination a more glorious tale, or pictured in glowing words an epic of heroic love and transcendent valour, to compete with the actual reality of the career of this simple village maiden of old France: she who, almost unassisted and alone, through her intense love of her native land and deep pity for the woes of her people, was enabled, when the day of action at length arrived, to triumph over unnumbered obstacles, and, in spite of all opposition, ridicule, and contumely, to fulfil her glorious mission. ”

“ A panic was created by this attack among the French troops, and a sauve qui peut ensued, both foot and horse dashing back in confusion towards Compiègne, and when they reached the river either taking refuge in the boats or on the redoubts near the bridge. Mixed among this panic-stricken crowd of fugitives came the English in hot pursuit, followed by the Burgundians.
Carried away by the throng of frightened soldiers, Joan was among the last to leave the field, and to those who cried to her to make her escape she answered that all might yet be saved, and urged her men to rally. ”

“ Joan of Arc's courage, firmness, and simplicity, accompanied by her transparent truth and pure fervent belief in her mission, impressed even her judges—and much more so those who had attended the public days of her trial as spectators. Now and again, after one of her straightforward and brave answers, which would expose and lay bare the malicious intention of the question, voices were heard to say in the great hall, 'Well spoken, Joan!' and an English knight was overheard to declare that, for his part, he regretted that such a courageous maid had not been born an Englishwoman. ”

“ The incident of the black charger standing so still beside the cross, and the figure of the Maid, mystic, wonderful, in her white panoply, with her head bare—that head which, in spite of no authentic portrait having come down to us, we cannot but imagine a grand and noble one—make up a living picture of historic truth, far above the fancies evolved out of the brains of any writer of fiction—for is it not romance realised? ”

“ What was still more surprising was, that all these things should have been accomplished at the instigation and by the direction of a Maid who only a few months before had been an unknown peasant in a small village of Lorraine. How had she been able not only to learn the tactics of a campaign, the rudiments of the art of war, but even the art itself? No one had shown in these wars a keener eye for selecting the weakest place to attack, or where artillery and culverin fire could be used with most effect, or had been quicker to avail himself of these weapons. ”

“ In the old fane of Saint Denis, the tomb-house of the long line of French kings, she solemnly placed her armour and arms at the foot of an image of the Holy Mother, near the spot where were kept the relics of the Patron Saint of France. By that act of humility she seemed to wish to show her abnegation of any further earthly victory by the aid of arms. ”

“ The great Revolution which swept so many shams away with its terrible breath, venerated, to its honour be it said, both the spirit of humanity displayed by the poet-philosopher and the spirit of patriotism that possessed the virgin heroine and martyr.
In 1795 appeared Southey's heroic play on Joan of Arc. That drama is more a glorification of the principles of the French Revolution than of Joan of Arc. There is no attempt made to follow out her history. ”

“ Ingres, in his striking picture of Joan of Arc, now in the gallery of the Louvre, represents her standing by the high altar, clad in her white panoply of shining steel, her banner held on high; below bows in prayer her confessor, the priest Pasquerel, in his brown robes of the Order of Augustin; and beyond stand her faithful squire and pages. The heroine's face is raised, and on it sits a radiant look of mingled gratitude and triumph. It is a noble idea of a sublime figure. ”

“ The day was Palm Sunday, and the great French historian Michelet has, with his accustomed skill and bright, vivid word-painting, in his short but incomparable Life of the heroine not only of France but of humanity, reminded his readers with what a longing Joan of Arc must, on that festival of joy and triumph, have yearned for the privilege 'to breathe once again the fresh air of heaven.' Daughter of the fields, born on the border of the woods, she who had always lived under the open sky had to pass Easter Day in a dark dungeon tower. ”

“ A stone from a catapult struck Joan on her helmet as she was in the act of mounting a ladder—she fell back, stunned, into the ditch, but soon revived, and rising, with her undaunted courage, she turned to hearten her followers, declaring that the victory would be theirs. In a few more moments the place was in possession of the French. Suffolk fled to the bridge which spanned the Loire: there he was captured. A soldier named William Regnault beat him to the ground, but Suffolk refused to yield to one so low in rank, and is said to have dubbed his victor knight before giving him up his sword. ”

“ We have now arrived at the turning-point of Joan of Arc's successes, and although the heroine is even more admirable in her days of misfortune and suffering than in those of her triumphs, when she led her followers on from victory to victory, the course of her brief life now darkens rapidly, and the approaching fate of the brave-hearted maiden is so terrible that it requires some courage to follow her to the very end, glorious as that end was, and bright with its sainted heroism. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, could be clearer than Winchester's argument. It was now only necessary that Joan of Arc should be at once placed on her trial as a sorceress and a witch—one who was in league with the evil one; and, when that had been satisfactorily proved, that she should publicly meet with the fate which a merciful Church had, in its infinite wisdom, ordained for such as she. Thus would the English army and people be avenged, and the French King's crown and prerogative suffer an irreparable damage. ”

“ The English, who probably thought his sermons insufferably long, or too much leavened with French sympathies, drove him out of Paris, and he had taken refuge at Troyes. The monk had heard much of Joan of Arc, and was eager to see and speak with her, but his enthusiasm was mixed with a religious and even superstitious fear in regard to the heroine. He was allowed to enter the royal precincts, and approached the Maid of Orleans with many a sign of the cross, and with sprinkling of holy water. Seeing the good man's terror, Joan told him to approach her without fear. ”

“ Here, unable to advance, but unwilling to retire, Joan of Arc and her followers were exposed to a murderous hail of shot, arrows, and other missiles. Sending for fagots and fascines to be cast into the moat, in order to enable a kind of bridge to be thrown across, while probing with the staff of her banner the depth of the water, Joan was struck by a cross-bow bolt, which made a deep wound in her thigh. Refusing to leave the spot, she urged on the soldiers to fill the ditch. ”

“ The little maid sometimes helped her father's labourers, and the idea has become general that Joan of Arc was a shepherdess; in reality, it was only an occasional occupation, and probably undertaken by Joan out of mere good-nature, seeing that her parents were well-to-do people. All that we gather of Joan's early years proves her nature to have been a compound of love and goodness. Every trait recorded of the little maid's life at home which has come down to us reveals a mixture of amiability, unselfishness, and charity. ”

“ Although divided into two parties through the war then raging between England and France, its judicature was greatly influenced by the Church. It was a matter of certainty that the Doctors of Theology who sat in the University of Paris, and who were all, or nearly all, French by birth, would favour the English, and give an adverse decision to that of those French ecclesiastics who had examined into Joan's life and character when assembled at Poitiers, and who then considered her to be acting under the influence and with the protection of the Almighty. ”

“ Well favoured by nature was the birthplace of Joan of Arc, with its woods of chestnut and of oak, then in their primeval abundance. The vine of Greux, which was famous all over the country-side as far back as the fourteenth century, grew on the southern slopes of the hills about Joan's birthplace. Beneath these vineyards the fields were thickly clothed with rye and oats, and the meadow-lands washed by the waters of the Meuse were fragrant with hay that had no rival in the country. ”

“ That a high dignitary of the Church, and a countryman of Joan of Arc, should have bought her from a prince, the descendant of emperors and kings, also a countryman of the heroic Maid's, for English gold, is bad enough; and that the so-called 'good' Duke of Burgundy should have been a silent spectator of the infamous transaction, brands all the actors as among the most sordid and meanest of individuals. But what is infinitely worse is the fact that no steps appear to have been taken by Charles to rescue the Maid, or to attempt an exchange of her for any other prisoner or prisoners. ”

“ There can be but little doubt that Joan had had for some time before she went to Compiègne a presentiment of her soon falling into her enemies' power. On the eve of the King's coronation at Rheims she said to her friends that what she alone feared was treason—a foreboding too soon, alas! to come true. She never, however, seems to have fixed on any particular period when the treason she dreaded would occur; and during her trial she acknowledged that, had she known she would have been taken prisoner during the sortie on the 24th of May, she would not have undertaken that adventure. ”

“ How could they put to death that poor child, who was such a good and such a simple Christian, and that too, so cruelly, without a reason—for surely they had not sufficient reason at any rate to kill her!'
Pasquerel could evidently not grasp the real reason for the part played by Cauchon in the execution of the Maid of Orleans, or imagine that in order to obtain an archbishopric his beloved Joan had been condemned by the Bishop of Beauvais to the flames. ”

“ It was not until the 25th of July that Winchester at length arrived with his army in Paris. Then Bedford breathed more freely, and left the capital with an army of observation to watch the movements of the French King.
It was now the earnest wish of Joan of Arc that Charles should march direct on Paris, and perhaps had he done so he might have entered that city with as little difficulty as he had entered Rheims; for if once the King of France had appeared in person, many of the wealthy citizens, as well as the majority of the common people, would have welcomed him. ”

“ It is much to be regretted that no portrait of Joan of Arc exists either in sculpture or painting. A life-size bronze statue which portrayed the Maid kneeling on one side of a crucifix, with Charles VII. opposite, forming part of a group near the old bridge of Orleans, was destroyed by the Huguenots; and all the portraits of Joan painted in oils are spurious. None are earlier than the sixteenth century, and all are mere imaginary daubs. ”

“ Before starting, her host wished her to eat some fish, an 'alose,' which had just been brought to him. 'Keep it,' said Joan with a smile, 'till the evening, and I will bring with me a "Godon" who will, eat his share of it.' This sobriquet of 'Godon' was evidently the generic term for the English, as far back as the early years of the fifteenth century, and may have been centuries before the French designation for our countrymen.
Thus, full of spirits and with a brave heart, the Maid rode off to meet the foe. ”

“ One cannot help regretting that so great a writer should allow his Anglophobism to appear to such an extent in some of the pages of his work. Michelet attacks the entire English nation as if they had been individually and collectively guilty of Joan of Arc's death. ”

“ The shouts of the English soldiers on seeing the stag gallop by was the first sign the French had of the propinquity of their foes. A hasty council of war was held by the French commanders. Some were for delay and postponing the attack until all their forces should be united; and these, the more prudent, pointed out the inferiority of their force to that of the enemy, arguing that a battle under the circumstances, in the open country, would be hazardous. Joan of Arc, however, would not listen to these monitions. ”

“ Thomas Fuller appears not to have settled to his satisfaction whether Joan of Arc was a witch or a heroine.
In the seventeenth century we have only a handful of poor writers who have treated more or less badly of the Maid, such as Daniel, Martyn, and Sir Richard Baker. It is not until well into the eighteenth century that a man of letters appears capable of giving an unprejudiced and true history of the life of Joan of Arc: this historian is Guthrie, who published, between the years 1744 and 1751, a long history of England. ”

“ No victory of arms that Joan of Arc might have accomplished, had her career continued one bright and unclouded success, could have shown in a grander way the greatness of her character than her answers and her bearing during the entire course of her examinations before her implacable enemies, her judicial murderers. ”

“ A still more formidable enemy was the Chancellor of France, the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres; he and Tremoïlle worked in concert to undermine all the prestige which Joan's success in revictualling Orleans had caused at Court. The historian Quicherat, whose work on Joan of Arc is by far the most complete and reliable, considers this man to have been an astute politician, without any moral strength or courage. When with Joan of Arc, he seems to have shown firmness and even enthusiasm in her mission, but he sank into the rôle of a poltroon when her influence was withdrawn. ”

“ At the same time, Joan of Arc experienced some of the hardships of war when the country around Domremy was overrun by the enemy; and the little household of the Arcs had to fly for shelter to the neighbouring village of Châteauneuf, in Lorraine.
I will pass somewhat rapidly over the visions, or rather revelations—for, whatever doubts one may hold as to such heavenly messengers appearing literally on this earth, no man can honestly doubt that Joan believed as firmly in these unearthly visitants coming from Heaven direct as she did in the existence of herself or of her parents. ”

“ Joan also loved to mix in the crowd of poor citizens, and begged that the little children should be brought to her. Pasquerel, her confessor, was always told to remind Joan of Arc of the feast days on which children were allowed to receive the Communion, in order that she too might receive it with these innocents.
The army has probably ever been the home of high swearing: the expression in French of 'ton de garnison' is an amiable way of referring to that habit of speech; and we all know ancient warriors whose conversation is thickly larded with oaths and profanity. ”

“ On that day, Joan of Arc appears to have ceased to deny at any length the string of false evidence brought against her; she generally replied that she had already answered as to the crimes laid to her charge, or simply said, 'I refer myself to my Saviour.' Two of her answers are worth recording: the first, when accused of having been guilty not only of discarding the proper dress of her sex, but also of having acted the part of a man, she said: 'As to women's occupation there are plenty of them to occupy themselves with such things' ”