From Macmillan's Magazine. THE LAST FIGHT OF JOAN OF ARC. çon. "The fair duke," for whom, says his retainer Perceval de Cagny, "THE maiden, beyond the nature of Joan would do more than for any other woman, endured to do mighty deeds, man, had been the Maid's companion and travailed sore to save her company in arms from the taking of Jargeau to from loss, remaining in the rear as she the failure at Paris, from May to Septhat was captain, and the most valiant tember, 1429. They were then sepaof her troop; there where fortune rated by Charles the Seventh and his granted it, for the end of her glory, and favorite La Trémouille. In 1456 the for that the latest time of her bearing duke deposed on oath that Joan had a arms.' "" This gallant testimony to the knowledge of war, of the handling of valor of Joan of Arc on the fatal day troops, and of artillery, equal to that of beneath the ramparts of Compiègne a captain of thirty years' standing. (May 23rd, 1430) is from the pen of This opinion struck M. Marin with the contemporary George Chastellain, a surprise, and in maturer life he began Burgundian and hostile writer. It may to study the Maid as a strategist and be taken as the text of some remarks tactician. The popular idea of Joan on the last fight of the Maiden, and on (as in Lord Stanhope's essay) regards her character and conduct. her as simply a brave girl, crying ForJoan has just been declared "vener-ward! and herself going foremost. But able" by the Church, a singular compliment to a girl of nineteen, but the first of the three steps towards canonization. The Venerable Joan may become the Blessed Joan, and finally Saint Joan of Arc. But, by a curious accident.one of her most devoted admirers, Monsieur Paul Marin, captain of artillery in the French service, has recently published some reflections on Joan's last fight, which may be serviceable to the advocatus diaboli. If that unpopular personage is to pick a hole in the saintliness of the Maiden, it is in Captain Marin's works that he will find his inspiration. The captain would be the last of men to slur the purest of memories, nor does he regard himself as having done so; he writes in the interests of historical truth. Nevertheless the advocatus diaboli will take a different view of the matter in hand, which amounts to this question: did Joan, on one occasion at least, proclaim that by direct promise of St. Catherine she was commissioned to do a feat in which she failed; and did she, later, at her trial by the Inquisition, equivocate on this point ? 1 In his first volume Captain Marin tells us how he was impressed in his youth by a remark of the Duc d'Alen 1 See Jeanne d'Arc, Tacticienne et Stratégiste, par Paul Marin, Capitaine d'Artillerie. Paris, LIVING AGE. 1889-90. VOL. II. 103 history acknowledges the military value of her plans, and these Captain Marin set about examining in the case of her last campaign on the Oise. His books, however, really treat less of Joan's tactics than of her character, and are of less service to her saintly than to her military reputation. We may examine, in company with Captain Marin, the Maid's last months of active service. After Easter, 1430, Joan's own desire was to go into the Isle of France, and renew her attack on Paris. For this, at least, we have her own statement at her trial, March 3rd, 1431.2 She was asked whether her "counsel" bade her attack La Charité, where she failed for lack of supplies. She made no answer as to her "counsel" 99 "voices; or she said that she herself wished to go into France, but that the captains told her it would be better first to attack La Charité.3 Thwarted in her wish, whether that wish was or was not suggested mystically, Joan made an attempt on Pont-l'Evêque, where she was defeated by the stout resistance of a handful of English, and she made another effort by way of Soissons, in which she was frustrated by treachery. 2 Quicherat, Procès, i. 109. 8 After Easter, 1430, when her "voices" daily predicted her capture, the Maid generally accepted such plans as the generals preferred, distrusting her own judgment. So she said in her trial, on March 14, 1431. The object of both movements was to embourg; he was not sold by Joan. cut off the communications of the Duke However, Monstrelet, himself a conof Burgundy by seizing a bridge on the victed robber, says (like the other BurOise, and thus to prevent him from gundians) that Joan cruelly condemned besieging Compiègne. That city, at Franquet to death. The chivalrous the time as large as Orleans, had been highwaymen stood by each other. If a many times besieged and sacked. It knight was to be punished for theft and had yielded amicably to the Maid in murder, the profession of arms was in August, 1429, and the burghers were an ill way. Joan's deposition before determined to be true to their king for her judges as to Franquet d'Arras is a the future. The place was of immense model of straightforward boldness: 2 importance for the possession of Paris, "I consented to his death, if he had and Joan hurried to rescue it so soon as deserved it, as by his own confession she heard of the siege. The question he was a traitor, robber, and muris, did she try to animate the citizens derer." by a false tale of a revelation through St. Catherine, and, at her trial did she quibble in her answers to questions on this matter? The topic of dates is important. Joan says that she made her sortie, in which she was captured, on the afternoon of the day when she had entered Compiègne at dawn. This promptitude was in accordance with her character, and her system of striking swiftly. Her friend, De Cagny, is in the same tale; her enemies, the Burgundian chroniclers, put the interval of a whole day between her entry into Compiègne | and her sally. We can now estimate the impartiality of Monstrelet, a Burgundian routier, writing about the foe of pillage and of pillagers. Even he dares not stain his chronicle with the sale of Joan by his master Jean de Luxembourg. But he was outside Compiègne when Joan was taken, and should have known the dates. He did not, however, begin his history till ten years after the events. The question of dates may bẹ summed up briefly. The Burgundian chroniclers give Joan two days in Compiègne, and fix her capture on May 24th. De Cagny also dates it on the same day. But the Duke of Burgundy, writing to aunounce the taking of the Maid, an hour after that event, dates his letter May 23rd. This is conclusive, for the other authorities wrote many years after the occurrence. Again, William of Worcester gives the date of the Maiden's capture as May 23rd.1 So far, we have reason to trust the accuracy of Joan rather than that of her enemies. The first witness is Enguerran de Monstrelet, a retainer of that Judas, Jean de Luxembourg, who sold the Maid for ten thousand francs. In or about 1424 Monstrelet himself had robbed on the highway some peaceable merchants of Abbeville.1 Now just before the affair of Compiègne, Joan had defeated and taken a robber Burgundian chief, Franquet d'Arras. She wished to exchange him for a prisoner It is obvious, however, that Joan of her own party, but her man died. might have passed two days in ComThe magistrates of Senlis and Lagny piègne, as the Burgundian writers claimed Franquet as, by his own con- allege, yet might have delivered no fession, a traitor, robber, and mur-speech about St. Catherine; just as she derer. He had a trial of fifteen days, and was executed; Joan did not interfere with the course of such justice as he got. In one sense Franquet's position was that of Joan in English hands. But he was a robber; she always stopped pillage. She was sold by Lux 1 Quicherat, Procès, iv. 360. might conceivably have found time for such a speech in a single day. To understand the evidence for this speech, and indeed for all the incidents of her last sally, it is necessary to explain the situation of Compiègne. Here for the 2 Procès, i. 158. Procès, iv. 360, namely after 1440. first part of the problem we follow Quicherat.1 Compiègne is on the left bank of the Oise. A long, fortified bridge, with a rampart, connects it with the right bank. The rampart was guarded by a fosse, crossed by a pont dormant, which, I suppose, could not be raised like a drawbridge, though there are tales about "raising the drawbridge." On the right bank is a meadow, about a mile broad, walled in by la côte de Picardie. The plain being flat, and often flooded, a causeway leads from the bridge across the meadow. Three steeples are in sight, those of Margny at the end of the causeway, of Clairoix two miles and a half distant, and of Venette about a mile and a half away to the left. The Burgundians had a camp at Margny and another at Clairoix ; the English lay at Venette; the Duke of Burgundy was at Coudun, a league away, says Monstrelet. According to M. Quicherat, Joan's plan was to carry Margny and then Clairoix, and finally attack the Duke of Burgundy himself. Now it was five in the evening when Joan, rode through the gate, and past the fatal rampart that guarded the bridge. Captain Marin justly remarks (i. 176), that to attack Margny was feasible; it might be surprised, and its capture, cutting the Burgundians, was important; to attack Clairoix, at three times the distance, where the troops would have full warning, was an absurd blunder; to charge through the Burgundians at both places, and assail the duke himself, was a very wild project, with a handful of men, only five or six hundred. Believing, as he does, in Joan's tactics, he supposes that she merely meant to take and hold Margny, and so cut the Burgundians off from the English. With this purpose she moved late in the day, that the English, in their efforts to rejoin the Burgundians, might be baffled by the dark of night. If Joan had a larger scheme, she chose her hour ill, and, we may add, she had an inadequate force. 1 Apperçus Nouveaux. p. 85; Paris, 1850. Let us now hear what the Burgundian historians have to say as to Joan's speech in Compiègne before the sally. First, Monstrelet, who was present at Coudun where Joan was taken before the duke on May 23rd, says nothing at all! Next we have Lefèvre de SaintRémi, who was sixty-seven when he began to write his "Mémoires " in 1460, thirty years after the events; he was king-at-arms of the Burgundian Order of the Fleece of Gold. M. Quicherat praises his account of the sortie, as among the best and most complete. Lefèvre declares that the Maid was in Compiègne for two nights and a day, and on the second day publicly announced that she had a revelation from St. Catherine, assuring her that she would discomfit the Burgundians. She had the gates closed, she assembled the people, she cried that, "God, through St. Catherine, bade her sally out that day, that she would defeat the enemy, and capture, slay, or drive in rout the duke and all his men, and that this was indubitable. About two o'clock the Maid sallied forth." To ourselves it is plain that, in the opinion of Lefèvre, and of Chastellain (to be quoted next), Joan announced the defeat and capture of the duke for that day: "Qu'elle yssist ce jour allencontre de ses ennemis et qu'elle desconfiroit le duc; et seroit prins de sa personne.” That she should issue forth that day, against her foes, and that she would defeat the duke, who, for his part, would be taken prisoner; these are clearly meant as immediate, not remote, results of the sally. If Joan made these predictions, she cannot have meant merely to hold Margny; and so Captain Marin's praise of her strategy is misapplied. He can only take refuge in a denial that the capture was prophesied for that day. Either M. Marin, therefore, is wrong in his estimate of the Maid's strategy, or this account of her prophecy is incorrect. The Maid, we conceive, is to catch or kill the duke that day. Now any attempt at such a feat, with such a force as Joan's, was mere recklessness, far beyond her gallant and resolute charge at Orleans in 1429. The duke was a league away with all his army; | went out with her at four in the after- This, on the face of it, is absurd. If all who could carry clubs went out, it is odd that Monstrelet says nothing of The next evidence is that of George such a strange levy en masse. ProbaChastellain. To this accomplished bly the five hundred were men-at-arms, rhetorician Lefèvre sent the memoirs exclusive of the mob. That mob, men which he began in 1460. These Chas- and women, did sally later, after Joan tellain used; he had also Monstrelet was taken, and carried a Burgundian before him; had he other sources ? redoubt. Quicherat thought he had no personal To our mind, Chastellain writes as a knowledge of Joan's last year. Pon- rhetorician, certainly in his phrase, tus Heuterus (1583) says that Chastel-"tout ce qui povit porter bastons," and lain claims to have seen Joan several probably in his account of the fantomtimes. Captain Marin reposes great meries about St. Catherine, and the faith in Chastellain, because he is prophecy of taking the duke captive. called elegans et exactus, and because of the well-merited praise given to the style of the official Burgundian historiographer. Captain Marin also lays stress on Chastellain's fine description event, but never said a word of these of "the end of the glory of the Maid "facts. Thus we regard Chastellain's (already quoted) as a proof of his fair- theory of Joan's two days in ComNow we venture to hold that piègne and his date (May 24th) as the differences between Chastellain's wholly wrong, contradicted both by version and those of Lefèvre and Mon- | Joan and by the letter of the Duke of strelet, are mainly differences of style. Burgundy. His tale of a military mob By a curious coincidence the present is peculiarly his own; his fantommeries writer, in an account of Joan's last are an improvement in sarcastic force sally, hit on the same piece of rhetoric on Lefèvre, and that is all. as Chastellain himself, without having read that author. Chastellain was a writer aiming of set purpose at a style; the other chroniclers were plain men. ness. He has adopted these from Lefèvre, On this question of fantommeries we now turn to Joan's own evidence, given on March 10th, 1431. As to the value of her evidence, in general, we Chastellain, then, says that the Maid must remember that she refused to entered Compiègne by night. She her- depone on oath to matters "not conself says that she entered" at the secret nected with the trial, or with the Cathhour of morning." He adds, that after olic faith." Her reasons were, first having rested there two nights (that of that she had a certain secret in comher entry and the next), the second day mon with the king; next, that her after she proclaimed certain folles fan- voices and visions were sacred things tommeries (wild spectral foolings). She to her; even among friends she spoke told the people that, by revelation of of them, as Dunois attests, with a God through St. Catherine, "He wished blush, and in no detail. Now on the her that very day to take up arms, and king's secret and on her voices Joan go forth to fight the king's enemies, was plied with endless questions, she, English and Burgundians, and that being but a girl, nearly starved (it was without doubt she would discomfit in Lent), and weakened by long capthem, and the Duke of Burgundy tivity in irons. Finally, as to the sewould be taken, and most of his people slain and routed.' Then the whole multitude, "all who could carry clubs," 1 i. 170, 171. "Il paraît difficile d'admettre l'ac complissement de ce troisième point." cret sign which she gave the king, she told an obvious parable, or allegory, intentionally mixing up the real event at Chinon, in March or April, 1429, with the scene of the coronation at STP ceptum de exeundo, she had no other 12 Rheims three months later. This innocent, and indeed open allegory she later confessed to as a mere parable, if we may trust Martin L'Advenu, the priest who heard her last confession. When set face to face with the rack, she announced that they might tear her limb from limb, but she would not speak, or, if she did, she would instantly contradict whatever might be Are we to accept the word of Joan, wrung from her.1 In her trial, when or the word of her murderers? Probvexed with these endless questions, ably they had some gossip to go on. she kept replying, "Do you wish me There was no confronting or crossto perjure myself?" To reveal the examination of witnesses. Into Comking's secret would have been to re-piègne the judges could hardly send veal his doubts of his own legitimacy, persons to collect evidence. Can the and not one word on this point was evidence have been that of her master wrung from Joan. For herself, she of the household, D'Aulon, of her "openly laid bare her conscience," brother, or of Pothon le Bourguignon, says Quicherat, made a clean breast of who were all taken with her? It is to it, as we have seen in her reply about be noted that Jean de Mailly, Bishop the death of Franquet d'Arras. This of Noyon, and Jean Dacier, Abbé of is a brief account of Joan as a witness, Saint Corneille, priests of the English necessary for the understanding of her party, were in Compiègne, it is said, at evidence about Compiègne. Does she the time of Joan's sortie, and afterconfess to any fantommeries there? wards sat among her judges. They The fact is that she never was asked if may have told a distorted tale to her she made a speech at Compiègne. discredit.8 She was asked on March 10th, "Did Captain Marin inclines to think that you make your sally by advice of your Chastellain is correct with his fantom'voices'?" Her answer, if not cate- meries, whether his theory of a two gorical, is touching. "In Easter week days' stay in Compiègne is right or not iast, she standing above the fosse of (ii. 58). If Joan was daily told by Melun, her voices, the voices of St. spiritual voices that she would be Catherine and St. Margaret, told her taken, is it likely, the captain asks, that she would be taken prisoner be- that she would have run the risk? He fore the feast of St. John, and that so thinks it improbable; he underrates it must be, and she was not to be Joan's courage. Captain Marin never amazed, but bear it with good will, and notices, we think, in this connection a that God would be her aid." And piece of coincident evidence. In the later, many a time, and almost daily," height of her triumph, between the she had the same message, but she rescue of Orleans and the crowning at knew not the day or the hour. Had Rheims, in the summer of 1429, the she known that day and that hour, she Duc d'Alençon sometimes heard Joan said, she would not have gone to Com- tell the king that "she would last but piègne. Asked whether she would one year, or little more, and therefore have gone had the voices bidden her he must employ her while he might." 4 and told her also that she would be D'Alençon gave this evidence on oath taken, she said that she would not have in 1456. Now Joan's year was over in gone gladly, but assuredly she would Easter week, 1430; there remained the have gone, "would have obeyed, what-"little more." In Easter week her ever might happen." On that evil day of Compiègne, "non habuit aliud præ 1 Procès, 1. 400. 2 Procès, i. 298. 3 Sorel, La Prise de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 179. Paris, 1889. Procès, ii. 99. |