Joan of Arc

by Regine Pernoud

  This entry into the town took place on Sunday, July 10th, after negotiations carried on under the aegis of Jean Leguisé, bishop of Troyes, whom later, in gratitude, the King was to ennoble.

  On July 12th the army resumed its march; on the 14th it was before Châlons. But as the royal advance towards Rheims became more and more decided, so hesitations in the towns diminished. Thus although the people of Châlons had hastened to send the news from Troyes to the people of Rheims, and to declare (it may simply have been a matter of form to cover them in case of an expected attack by the English): “That they had the intention of holding out and resisting with all their strength on meeting with the said enemies,” that is the Dauphin’s people, yet when the royal herald, Montjoie, appeared with letters from this same Dauphin, the bishop of Châlons, Jean de Montbéliard, went out in person to meet Charles VII and delivered over to him the city keys. On the same day Charles made his entry into the town, and all the chroniclers agree that the inhabitants were joyous at his coming.

  At Châlons occurred a moving encounter: already the roads were busy with groups of people making their way from all the towns to which Charles had written announcing his coronation and sacring; among them, as may well be imagined, the people of Domremy were not the last to come running; for was it not to one of their number, still known to them as Jeanette, that the whole astonishing progress was due? Jean Moreau, her godfather, recalls this encounter in his deposition: “In the month of July, I went to Châlons, for it was said that the King was going to Rheims to have himself crowned. And there I found Joan and she gave me a red coat (veste) which she was wearing.” (R.69)

  Among her fellow townsmen was Domremy’s “Burgundian”, Gérardin d’Epinal: “I saw her afterwards at Châlons,” he said, “with four from our town, and she said that she feared nothing excepting treason.” (R.81)

  And at last the final stage, Rheims itself, the town of the sacring of Kings.

  Simon Charles: “The King went out of Troyes with his army and made for Châlons and thereafter for Rheims. As he was afraid that he might experience resistance at Rheims, Joan said to him, ‘Doubt not; for the burgesses of Rheims will come out to meet you’; and before they drew near to the city of Rheims, the burgesses came over to him (se rendirent; surrendered). The King feared resistance from them of Rheims, for he had no artillery nor machines for a siege if they showed themselves rebellious. And Joan told the King to advance boldly and to fear nothing, for if he would advance courageously he would recover all his kingdom.” (R.105)

  It was in the castle of Sept-Saulx, an enormous dungeon built in the twelfth century by the ancestors of the archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres, that Charles VII received a deputation of the city’s notables who came to offer him “full and entire obedience as to their sovereign”. On the evening of the same day, July 16th, he made his entry into the town to cries of “Noel! Noel!” uttered by the population. The coronation and sacring were performed on the morrow.

  For Joan this ceremony had a decisive importance. One of the King’s councillors recalled this at the Trial of Rehabilitation.

  François Garivel: “When Joan was asked why she called the King ‘dauphin’ and not ‘king’ she said that she would not call him ‘king’ until he had been crowned and consecrated at Rheims, in the town where she had made up her mind to take him.” (R. 106)

  On this point, however, she was only giving expression to what was commonly believed in her day: it was the sacring which made the King. And this argument took precedence of all strategic considerations, and alone explains the armed ride through Anglo-Burgundian country with the constant risk of coming up against the garrison forces which had remained in the towns, or roving bands of free-lances. Once crowned the King would be King indeed. Whereas, in his going out he had been obliged to halt and negotiate terms before each town, on his return he would meet with no obstacles. Wherever he appeared he was to find that his rights were recognized at once; and city gates opened to him as he approached. The English, likewise, felt, and felt cruelly, the effects of the new situation created by Charles’s sacring. They attempted to counter it by bringing the boy-King Henry VI to France (April 23, 1430), and, six months after Joan’s death, crowning him not, indeed, at Rheims, now loyal to Charles, but in Paris (December 16, 1431). It was a pointless gesture, however, since for the mass of the French people Charles VII was thenceforth the Lord’s anointed, legitimate heir to the kingdom.

  Everybody knows Joan’s famous reply to the question touching the coronation at Rheims: “Why was your standard more carried in the church at Rheims at the consecration of the King than those of other captains?”

  Joan: “It had borne the burden, it was quite right that it receive the honour (il avait été à la peine, c’était bien raison qu’il fût à l’honneur).”

  After having described the sacring, one chronicler shows us Joan kneeling before the King “and embracing him round the legs, said to him whilst shedding copious tears: ‘Gentle King, now is done God’s pleasure, Who willed that I raise the siege of Orleans and that I bring you to this city of Rheims to receive your holy sacring, showing that you are true King and him to whom the kingdom of God should belong.’ And causing great pity in those who beheld her.” (J.S.O. 186)

  Among the witnesses of this scene were two who must, surely, have been more moved by that than the rest: her father and mother. The Rheims city account books mention their presence, and note that the municipality undertook to pay their expenses at the inn, the Ane rayé, where they put up.

  COMMENTARY

  This chapter raises no particular difficulties from the historical point of view. For the coronation ceremony reference may be made to the well-known work of J. de Pange, Le Roi très chrétien, Paris, 1949. We gave some details on this matter in our own work, written in collaboration with M. Rambaud, Telle fut Jeanne d’Arc, Paris, Fasquelle, 1957, pp. 160, et seq. Recourse may also be had to Henri Godart’s Jeanne d’Arc à Reims, Rheims, 1887.

  Curiously enough an attempt has been made to put forward the view that family affection played no part in Joan’s life. The authentic texts prove the contrary. We may begin with those which show us two of Joan’s brothers, Pierre and Jean, going to join her in Tours and taking their part in her feats of arms; one of them at least was to remain with her up to and including the time of her imprisonment. This was Pierre; Jean, on the other hand, cuts a rather sorry figure in history, for his principal aptitude seems to have been in exploiting his sister’s renown for his own ends. These two persons are very carefully studied in Grosdidier des Mattons’ Le Mystère de Jeanne d’Arc, Paris, 1935.

  But there are very numerous small pointers to the affection in which Joan held her family: she was fond of kissing the ring which her parents had given her, “for her pleasure and for the honour of her father and mother”. She was homesick for her family (see her remark, reported by Dunois, in the next chapter). Nor did she fail to write to ask forgiveness from her people after she had left them. Moreover her affection extended to the whole village, as witness the only favour she asked of the King after the coronation: exemption from taxes for the people of Greux-Domremy.

  Reciprocally, her parents’ affection for her is manifest in all sorts of ways: her father’s remarks after having dreamed “that with soldiers would depart Joan his daughter”; that maternal solicitude which, sent to her, from Puy, Brother Jean Pasquerel who became her confessor; their coming to Rheims for the coronation. And then there is, of course (see Chapter 10), that pathetic supplication uttered by Isabelle Ramée when pleading with the judges who had been appointed to investigate the evidence for rehabilitation, “I had a daughter, born in legitimate wedlock. . . .”

  Guy de Laval’s letter brings out a small point which is worth commenting on: Joan’s sending of “a very small ring of gold” to Duguesclin’s widow. Joan, at a time when she was aware that she herself was renewing the exploits of a hero whose popularity was such that he knew that “all the girls of
France” would spin for his ransom, and who had crystallised the kingdom’s resistance when, on a former occasion, it had nearly failed, thus paid homage to his memory. And contemporary folk legend was soon to assimilate her to the “nine preux chevaliers”* and make of her a tenth.

  * Or, “we must all help each other”, i.e., instead of quarrelling.

  * The word is, of course, beau. One wonders if there was a touch of hostility, of “Ah, my fine constable”. But the epithet seems to have been a common courtesy.

  * The “neuf preux”, nine valiant knights—champions of French history. Bertrand Duguesclin was twice captured and ransomed, on the second occasion by the Black Prince.

  6

  FROM RHEIMS TO COMPIÈGNE

  “The French are come to Rheims where it is proper that all Kings of France be crowned, and there arrived the Dauphin, Saturday, 16th of this month; the town gates were opened to him without opposition and Sunday 17th he was crowned with great pomp. The ceremony lasted from the hour of tierce until Vespers.”

  It was thus that Morosini’s journal, to which we have already referred, summed up the events. (Ed. cit., pp. 10–11.) On the very day of the sacring itself, Joan sent to Philippe the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who had answered neither her invitation nor that of the King his cousin, the following letter:

  “High and redoubted prince, Duke of Burgundy, the Maid requires you, on behalf of the King of Heaven, my right and sovereign Lord, that the King of France and you make good firm peace which last long. Forgive each other with good heart entirely as must faithful Christians do. . . . I beg and require you with clasped hands that you make no battle nor war against us, you, your men, and your subjects, and believe assuredly that what number soever of men you bring against us, they will not win, and will be great pity at the battle and at the blood which will there be spilt of those who shall come against us.” (Q. iv, 127. Original in the Archives départementales du Nord.)

  It happened that on the same day emissaries from the duke arrived in Rheims, led by one of his intimates, David de Brimeu. There was reason to hope that the King would take advantage of the exceptionally favourable turn in his affairs to conclude that “good firm peace” which Joan was counting on.

  But no such thing; and in the course of the negotiations, from which Joan was carefully excluded and which were carried on in secret, Charles VII, henceforth King of France, concluded only a truce—of two weeks! This truce condemned the royal army to inaction; and in exchange the Duke made Charles the fantastic promise that he would hand over Paris to the King. In fact he, and Bedford with him, was simply seeking to gain time: Bedford had called for reinforcements from England immediately after the battle of Patay, and early in July three thousand five hundred knights and archers disembarked at Calais, raised, incidentally, with the funds collected for a crusade against the Bohemian heretics who were called Hussites. This army left Calais on July 15th for Paris where it arrived on the 25th.

  1 This bronze statuette of Joan on horseback was cast in the fifteenth century. It is now in the Cluny Museum.

  1a The bust of Charles VII from his tomb gives a rather less sulky impression of the man than the famous Fouquet portrait.

  1b Henry VI.

  2 Jean, Count of Dunois.

  3a The oldest miniature of Joan is from a manuscript executed in Arras in 1451 by Martin Le Franc, and called Le Champion des Dames. It depicts Joan, with lance and shield, in company with Judith who is holding Holofernes’ head.

  3b A miniature from a later manuscript of Le Champion des Dames, now in the Grenoble Municipal Library.

  4 This page of the official history of the siege of Orleans records the lifting of the siege on May 18, 1429. It was written by Clément de Fauquembergue, the scribe or greffier to the Parliament of Paris. In the margin he has scribbled a pen drawing of Joan from his imagination. It is the only pictorial representation of Joan done during her own life.

  5 The inquiry into the circumstances of Joan’s trial and condemnation which had been initiated by Charles VII was subsequently taken up by the Church. Its investigation was directed by Jean Bréhal who was appointed inquisitor of the Faith for France in 1452. This is a page from his “Summarium” of evidence.

  6 A fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish miniature of Joan from a manuscript book of poems by Charles of Orleans.

  7 The painting commissioned by the aldermen of Orleans and executed in 1581 was the prototype for much of the iconography during the next two centuries.

  Two frontispieces from Jean Hordal’s dissertation on Joan, published at Pont-à-Mousson in 1612; 8a clearly is a derivative version of the “Aldermen’s Painting”

  9 The Bull of Canonization, 1920.

  10 Joan’s last letter to the people of Rheims, March 28, 1430. The signature is in a different hand from the body of the letter. It may be an example of Joan’s own hand.

  Two folios from the letter John, Duke of Bedford, wrote to Henry VI, including the passage quoted on page 101: “And alle thing there prospered for you . . .”

  12 The sixteenth-century manuscript of Diane de Poitiers contains a transcription of the rehabilitation proceedings, and this fine miniature, done from imagination, of Joan’s mother, Isabelle Romée.

  13 Joan is brought to the Dauphin (Vigils of Charles VII).

  14 Joan in the presence of the Dauphin at Chinon.

  15 Siege warfare.

  16 Joan drives out the camp followers (Vigils of Charles VII).

  17 The Siege of Orleans (Vigils of Charles VII).

  18 Siege of Dreux (Vigils of Charles VII).

  19 Charles receiving his crown from Archbishop Regnault (Vigils of Charles VII).

  20 Joan directing her troops during the attack on Paris.

  21 Joan is captured (Vigils of Charles VII).

  22 Joan’s trial. Bishop Cauchon is seated in the high-backed chair.

  The negotiations were a fraud practised on the King; they were, likewise, a betrayal by him of Joan and all who were animated by her spirit.

  It must here be recalled how it was that the House of Burgundy had come to rely upon the English alliance, beginning in 1416 immediately after Agincourt. The duke—at that time John the Fearless—was dominated by his rivalry with the House of Orleans; it will be remembered that in 1407 he had had Louis, Duke of Orleans, assassinated. In 1418 John the Fearless had made himself master of Paris from which the Dauphin Charles had only escaped with great difficulty. An unbridgeable gulf had finally opened between Charles and the House of Burgundy when John the Fearless himself was assassinated on the bridge of Montereau (10 September 1419). He and the Dauphin—the future Charles VII—had met there to negotiate, it was hoped, a peace between Armagnacs and Burgundians; the negotiations having come to nothing, the two parties were withdrawing when, for some unknown reason, a dispute broke out, swords were drawn, and one of them struck the Duke of Burgundy on the brow. Since when his son, Philippe the Good, had resumed his policy of alliance with England. He it was who had dictated the signing of the Treaty of Troyes in the following year. His great aspiration was to play honest broker between England and France, and he missed no opportunity of making both sides feel his enormous strength: the possessions of this man, who was called “the grand-duke of the West”, extended from the Alps to the North Sea; apart from Burgundy itself, his possessions included the country known as the County of Burgundy, i.e. Franche-Comté; Flanders, Artois and a part of the Ardennes; and nearly all present-day Belgium and Holland—Brabant, Limbourg, Hainaut, Zeeland, Frisia, etc.

  Charles VII was still under the influence of his favourite La Trémoille, whose kinsman Jean de la Trémoille was in very good odour at the Burgundian court. This influence, combined with that of Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Rheims, was used to make Charles think solely in terms of diplomatic action, negotiation at any cost. To make peace with Burgundy was the general wish; not least of Joan who “with clasped hands” implored Philippe to make peace as we have seen. But she was well aware
that they ought not to be satisfied with misleading promises; the peace she asked for was “a good, firm one”, and she knew that they would not get such a real peace excepting by virtue of courage and by proving their valour on the field of battle. Charles, on the other hand, preferred to make do with ridiculous promises which coddled his natural apathy; he hoped to conquer by diplomacy, and did not perceive until it was too late that he himself had been the Burgundian’s dupe. From this it was that stemmed the ambiguity of his conduct from this point in his career.

  His want of resolution was betrayed by the itinerary chosen for the return from the coronation; a glance at the map will show his goings and comings, his sudden changes of direction which were a torment to Joan and her followers, whose one idea was to make straight for Paris and take advantage of the general uncertainty and of the confusion in the Anglo-Burgundian ranks. But in signing the truce the King had signed away his chance, and without anything to show for it. Yet he should surely have been animated by the complete change in the spirit of the people which the sacring at Rheims had brought about: