Durant's S O C
Vol VI The Reformation
Pgs 81-86
JOAN OF ARC. 1412-31
In 1422 the repudiated son of Charles VI had himself proclaimed king as Charles VII. In her desolation France looked to him for help, and fell into deeper despair. This timid, listless, heedless youth of twenty hardly credited his own proclamation, and probably shared the doubts of Frenchmen as to the legitimacy of his birth. He was fearfully religious, heard three Masses daily, and allowed no canonical hour to pass without reciting its appointed prayers. In the interval he attended to a long succession of mistresses, and begot twelve children upon his virtuous wife. He pawned his jewels and most of the clothes from his back, to finance resistance to England, but he had no stomach for war, and left the struggle to his ministers and his generals. When the English moved south to lay siege to Orléans (1428), no concerted action was taken to resist them, and disorder was the order of the day. Orléans lay at a bend in the Loire; if it fell, all the south, now hesitantly loyal to Charles VII, would join the north to make France an English colony. North and south alike watched the siege, and prayed for a miracle.
Even the distant village of Domremy, half asleep by the Meuse on the eastern border of France, followed the struggle with patriotic and religious passion. Men and women there, as generally throughout rural France, thought of the English as devils who hid their tails in their coattails. Someday, said a prophecy in the village, God would send ‘a pucelle,’ a virgin maid, to save France from these demons, and end the long Satanic reign of war. The wife of the mayor of Domremy whispered these hopes to her goddaughter Joan.
Joan’s father, Jacques d’Arc, was a prosperous farmer, and probably gave no mind to such tales. Joan was noted among these pious people for her piety. One day, when she had been fasting, she thought she saw a strange light over her head, and that she heard a voice saying, “Jeanne, be a good obedient child. Go often to Church.”. During the next five years her “voices” as she called the apparitions, spoke many councils to her. At another time the voice said: “Daughter of God, thou shalt lead the Dauphin to Reims that he may there receive worthily his anointing” and coronation. If the holy oil should be poured upon his head France would unite behind him and be saved.
After a long and troubled hesitation Joan revealed her visions to her parents. Her father was shocked at the thought of an innocent girl undertaking so fantastic a mission; rather then permit it, he said, he would drown her with his own hands. To further restrain her he persuaded a young villager to announce that she had promised him her hand in marriage. She denied it, and to preserve the virginity that she had pledged to the saints, as well as to obey their command, she fled to an uncle, and prevailed upon him to take her to Vaucoulers ( 1429) There Captain Baudricourt advised the uncle to give her a good spanking, and restore her to her parents; but when Joan forced her way into his presence, and firmly declared she was sent by God to help king Charles save Orléans, the bluff commandant melted and even while thinking her charmed by devils, sent to Chinon to ask the king’s pleasure. Royal permission came, Baudicourt gave the Maid a sword, the people bought her a horse, and six soldiers agreed to guide her on the long journey. Perhaps to discourage male advances she donned a masculine and military garb, and cut her hair like a boy’s.
After travelling 450 miles in eleven days she came to the king and his council. Listening to her story and still doubtful, Charles sent her to Poitiers to be examined by the pundits there. They found no evil in her, and commissioned some women to enquire into her virginity, and on that delicate point they too were satisfied. For like the Maid, they held that a special privilege belonged to virgins as the instruments and messengers of God.
Dunois, in Orléans, had assured the garrison that God would soon send someone to their aid. Hearing of Joan, he half believed his own hopes, and pleaded with the court to send her to him at once. They consented, gave her a black horse, clothed her in white armour, put in her hand a white banner embroidered with the fleur-di-lis of France, and dispatched her to Dunois. It was not hard to find entry into the city ( April 29, 1429) The English had not surrounded it entirely.. The people of Orléans hailed Joan as the Virgin incarnate, accompanied her to church, prayed when she prayed, wept when she wept. At her command the soldiers gave up their mistresses, and struggled to express themselves without profanity; one of their leaders, La Hire, found this impossible, and received from Joan a dispensation to swear by his baton. It was this Gascon condottiere who uttered the famous prayer: “Sire God, I beg Thee to do for La Hire what he would do for Thee wert Thou a captain and La Hire a God.”
Joan sent a letter to Talbot, the English commander, proposing that both armies should unite as brothers, and proceed to Palestine to redeem the Holy Land from the Turks; Talbot thought that this exceeded his commission. Some days later, a part of the garrison, without informing Dunois or Joan, issued beyond the walls and attacked one of the British bastions. The English fought well, the French retreated; but Dunois and Joan, having heard the commotion, rode up and bade their men renew the assault; it succeeded, and the English abandoned their position. On the morrow the French attacked two other forts and took them, the Maid being in the thick of the fight. In the second encounter an arrow pierced her shoulder; when the wound had been dressed she returned to the fray. Meanwhile the sturdy cannon of Guillaume Duisy hurled upon the English fortress of Les Tourelles balls weighing 120 pounds each. Joan was spared the sight of the victorious French slaughtering 500 Englishmen when the stronghold fell. All France rejoiced, seeing in the “Maid of Orléans” the hand of god; but the English denounced her as a sorceress, and vowed to take her alive or dead.
Acclaimed as inspired and holy by half of France Joan almost forgot now to be a saint, and became a worrior. She was strict with her soldiers, and deprived them of the consolations that all soldiers hold as their due; and when she found two prostitutes accompanying them she drew her sword and struck one so manfully that the blade broke and the woman died. She followed the King and his army in an attack on Paris. Their assault failed, they suffered 1500 casualties, and cursed Joan for thinking that a prayer could silence a gun. She retired with her detachment to Compiègne, but before reaching safety, she was dragged from her horse and was taken as a captive to John of Luxembourg ( May 24, 1430). A bribe of 10,000 crowns was offered to John which after much agonizing, he accepted. Joan was handed over in chains, and her trial began on February 21, 1431, and continued till May 30. [ with much debate and soul searching]. On 31 May a few of the judges convened and sentenced her to death.
That morning the faggots were piled high in the market place of Rouen. The Maid was brought in a cart, accompanied by an Augustinian monk, Islambart, who befriended her to the last at peril to his life. The English soldiers snatched her from the priests. The faggots were lighted, Joan invoked her voices, her saints and Christ, and was consumed in agony.
In 1455 Pope Calixtus, at the behest of Charles VII, ordered a re-examination of the evidence; and in 1456 ( France by now victorious ) the verdict of 1431 was declared unjust, and void.
In 1920 Benedict XV numbered the Maid of Orléans among the saints of the Church.
