A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl named

  Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village wheelwright

  and cart-maker, who wished to see him because she was commanded to

  help the Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing,

  and bade them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so much about

  her lingering in the town, and praying in the churches, and seeing

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  visions, and doing harm to no one, that he sent for her, and

  questioned her. As she said the same things after she had been

  well sprinkled with holy water as she had said before the

  sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there might be something in

  it. At all events, he thought it worth while to send her on to the

  town of Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought her a horse,

  and a sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As the

  Voices had told Joan that she was to wear a man's dress, now, she

  put one on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to

  her heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two

  squires. As to her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his

  niece in wonder until she was out of sight - as well he might - and

  then went home again. The best place, too.

  Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon,

  where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the Dauphin's

  presence. Picking him out immediately from all his court, she told

  him that she came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and

  conduct him to his coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he

  pretended so afterwards, to make the greater impression upon his

  soldiers) a number of his secrets known only to himself, and,

  furthermore, she said there was an old, old sword in the cathedral

  of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the

  blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered her to wear.

  Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, but when the

  cathedral came to be examined - which was immediately done - there,

  sure enough, the sword was found! The Dauphin then required a

  number of grave priests and bishops to give him their opinion

  whether the girl derived her power from good spirits or from evil

  spirits, which they held prodigiously long debates about, in the

  course of which several learned men fell fast asleep and snored

  loudly. At last, when one gruff old gentleman had said to Joan,

  'What language do your Voices speak?' and when Joan had replied to

  the gruff old gentleman, 'A pleasanter language than yours,' they

  agreed that it was all correct, and that Joan of Arc was inspired

  from Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put new heart into the

  Dauphin's soldiers when they heard of it, and dispirited the

  English army, who took Joan for a witch.

  So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, until she

  came to Orleans. But she rode now, as never peasant girl had

  ridden yet. She rode upon a white war-horse, in a suit of

  glittering armour; with the old, old sword from the cathedral,

  newly burnished, in her belt; with a white flag carried before her,

  upon which were a picture of God, and the words JESUS MARIA. In

  this splendid state, at the head of a great body of troops

  escorting provisions of all kinds for the starving inhabitants of

  Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered city.

  When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out 'The Maid

  is come! The Maid of the Prophecy is come to deliver us!' And

  this, and the sight of the Maid fighting at the head of their men,

  made the French so bold, and made the English so fearful, that the

  English line of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions

  were got into the town, and Orleans was saved.

  Joan, henceforth called THE MAID OF ORLEANS, remained within the

  walls for a few days, and caused letters to be thrown over,

  ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the

  town according to the will of Heaven. As the English general very

  positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about the

  will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter with his soldiers,

  for they stupidly said if she were not inspired she was a witch,

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  and it was of no use to fight against a witch), she mounted her

  white war-horse again, and ordered her white banner to advance.

  The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers upon the

  bridge; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them. The fight was

  fourteen hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with her own

  hands, and mounted a tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow

  in the neck, and fell into the trench. She was carried away and

  the arrow was taken out, during which operation she screamed and

  cried with the pain, as any other girl might have done; but

  presently she said that the Voices were speaking to her and

  soothing her to rest. After a while, she got up, and was again

  foremost in the fight. When the English who had seen her fall and

  supposed her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the strangest

  fears, and some of them cried out that they beheld Saint Michael on

  a white horse (probably Joan herself) fighting for the French.

  They lost the bridge, and lost the towers, and next day set their

  chain of forts on fire, and left the place.

  But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the town of

  Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid of Orleans

  besieged him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the white banner

  scaled the wall, she was struck upon the head with a stone, and was

  again tumbled down into the ditch; but, she only cried all the

  more, as she lay there, 'On, on, my countrymen! And fear nothing,

  for the Lord hath delivered them into our hands!' After this new

  success of the Maid's, several other fortresses and places which

  had previously held out against the Dauphin were delivered up

  without a battle; and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the

  English army, and set up her victorious white banner on a field

  where twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead.

  She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when

  there was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as the first part of

  her mission was accomplished; and to complete the whole by being

  crowned there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this,

  as Rheims was a long way off, and the English and the Duke of

  Burgundy were still strong in the country through which the road

  lay. However, they set forth, with ten thousand men, and again the

  Maid of Orleans rode on and on, upon her white war-horse, and in

  her shining armour. Whenever they came to a town which yielded

  readily, the soldiers believed in her; but, whenever they came to a

  town which gave them any trouble, they began to murmur that she was

  an impostor. The latter was particularly the case at Troyes, which

  finally yielded, however, through the persu
asion of one Richard, a

  friar of the place. Friar Richard was in the old doubt about the

  Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her well with holy water,

  and had also well sprinkled the threshold of the gate by which she

  came into the city. Finding that it made no change in her or the

  gate, he said, as the other grave old gentlemen had said, that it

  was all right, and became her great ally.

  So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans, and

  the Dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes believing and sometimes

  unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the great cathedral of

  Rheims, the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in a

  great assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who with her white

  banner stood beside the King in that hour of his triumph, kneeled

  down upon the pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, that what

  she had been inspired to do, was done, and that the only recompense

  she asked for, was, that she should now have leave to go back to

  her distant home, and her sturdily incredulous father, and her

  first simple escort the village wheelwright and cart-maker. But

  the King said 'No!' and made her and her family as noble as a King

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  could, and settled upon her the income of a Count.

  Ah! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, if she had resumed

  her rustic dress that day, and had gone home to the little chapel

  and the wild hills, and had forgotten all these things, and had

  been a good man's wife, and had heard no stranger voices than the

  voices of little children!

  It was not to be, and she continued helping the King (she did a

  world for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), and trying to

  improve the lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a religious,

  an unselfish, and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt. Still,

  many times she prayed the King to let her go home; and once she

  even took off her bright armour and hung it up in a church, meaning

  never to wear it more. But, the King always won her back again -

  while she was of any use to him - and so she went on and on and on,

  to her doom.

  When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man, began to be

  active for England, and, by bringing the war back into France and

  by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to distress and

  disturb Charles very much, Charles sometimes asked the Maid of

  Orleans what the Voices said about it? But, the Voices had become

  (very like ordinary voices in perplexed times) contradictory and

  confused, so that now they said one thing, and now said another,

  and the Maid lost credit every day. Charles marched on Paris,

  which was opposed to him, and attacked the suburb of Saint Honore.

  In this fight, being again struck down into the ditch, she was

  abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided among a heap of dead,

  and crawled out how she could. Then, some of her believers went

  over to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle, who said she

  was inspired to tell where there were treasures of buried money -

  though she never did - and then Joan accidentally broke the old,

  old sword, and others said that her power was broken with it.

  Finally, at the siege of CompiŠgne, held by the Duke of Burgundy,

  where she did valiant service, she was basely left alone in a

  retreat, though facing about and fighting to the last; and an

  archer pulled her off her horse.

  O the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that were sung,

  about the capture of this one poor country-girl! O the way in

  which she was demanded to be tried for sorcery and heresy, and

  anything else you like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by

  this great man, and by that great man, until it is wearisome to

  think of! She was bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten

  thousand francs, and was shut up in her narrow prison: plain Joan

  of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no more.

  I should never have done if I were to tell you how they had Joan

  out to examine her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and

  worry her into saying anything and everything; and how all sorts of

  scholars and doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her.

  Sixteen times she was brought out and shut up again, and worried,

  and entrapped, and argued with, until she was heart-sick of the

  dreary business. On the last occasion of this kind she was brought

  into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold,

  and a stake and faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a

  friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is very affecting to

  know that even at that pass the poor girl honoured the mean vermin

  of a King, who had so used her for his purposes and so abandoned

  her; and, that while she had been regardless of reproaches heaped

  upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him.

  It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her life,

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  she signed a declaration prepared for her - signed it with a cross,

  for she couldn't write - that all her visions and Voices had come

  from the Devil. Upon her recanting the past, and protesting that

  she would never wear a man's dress in future, she was condemned to

  imprisonment for life, 'on the bread of sorrow and the water of

  affliction.'

  But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, the

  visions and the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that

  they should do so, for that kind of disease is much aggravated by

  fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out

  of Joan that she considered herself inspired again, but, she was

  taken in a man's dress, which had been left - to entrap her - in

  her prison, and which she put on, in her solitude; perhaps, in

  remembrance of her past glories, perhaps, because the imaginary

  Voices told her. For this relapse into the sorcery and heresy and

  anything else you like, she was sentenced to be burnt to death.

  And, in the market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress which the

  monks had invented for such spectacles; with priests and bishops

  sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had the Christian

  grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous scene; this

  shrieking girl - last seen amidst the smoke and fire, holding a

  crucifix between her hands; last heard, calling upon Christ - was

  burnt to ashes. They threw her ashes into the river Seine; but

  they will rise against her murderers on the last day.

  From the moment of her capture, neither the French King nor one

  single man in all his court raised a finger to save her. It is no

  defence of them that they may have never really believed in her, or

  that they may have won her victories by their skill and bravery.

  The more they pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused

  her to believe in herself; and she had ever been true to them, ever

  brave, ever nobly devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who

  were in all th
ings false to themselves, false to one another, false

  to their country, false to Heaven, false to Earth, should be

  monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl.

  In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and grass grow

  high on the cathedral towers, and the venerable Norman streets are

  still warm in the blessed sunlight though the monkish fires that

  once gleamed horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a

  statue of Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the square

  to which she has given its present name. I know some statues of

  modern times - even in the World's metropolis, I think - which

  commemorate less constancy, less earnestness, smaller claims upon

  the world's attention, and much greater impostors.

  PART THE THIRD

  BAD deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind; and the English

  cause gained no advantage from the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For

  a long time, the war went heavily on. The Duke of Bedford died;

  the alliance with the Duke of Burgundy was broken; and Lord Talbot

  became a great general on the English side in France. But, two of

  the consequences of wars are, Famine - because the people cannot

  peacefully cultivate the ground - and Pestilence, which comes of

  want, misery, and suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both

  countries, and lasted for two wretched years. Then, the war went

  on again, and came by slow degrees to be so badly conducted by the

  English government, that, within twenty years from the execution of

  the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French conquests, the town of

  Calais alone remained in English hands.

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  While these victories and defeats were taking place in the course

  of time, many strange things happened at home. The young King, as

  he grew up, proved to be very unlike his great father, and showed

  himself a miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him - he

  had a great aversion to shedding blood: which was something - but,

  he was a weak, silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to

  the great lordly battledores about the Court.

  Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King,

  and the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most powerful. The

  Duke of Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensically accused of

  practising witchcraft to cause the King's death and lead to her