Part 3 (2/2)
Indeed as we come to recognise how vigorous is the determinism controlling the actions of these visionaries, we are astonished to find the human machine, when impelled by the same mysterious agent, performing its functions with inevitable uniformity. To this group of the religious Jeanne belongs. In this connection it is interesting to compare her with Saint Catherine of Sienna,[80] Saint Colette of Corbie,[81] Yves Nicolazic, the peasant of Kernanna,[82] Suzette Labrousse, the inspired woman of the Revolution Church,[83] and with many other seers and seeresses of this order, who all bear a family likeness to one another.
[Footnote 80: _Acta Sanctorum_, 1675, April, iii, 851.]
[Footnote 81: _Ibid._, March 1, 1532.]
[Footnote 82: Le Pere Hugues de Saint-Francois, _Les grandeurs de Sainte Anne_, Rennes, 1657, in 8vo; L'abbe Max Nicol, _Sainte-Anne-d'Auray_, Paris, Brussels, s.d., in 8vo, pp. 37 _et seq._ M. le Docteur G. de Closmadeuc has kindly lent me his valuable work, as yet unpublished, on Yves Nicolazic, which is characterised by the same exactness of information and of criticism as are to be found in his studies of local history.]
[Footnote 83: _Recueil des ouvrages de la celebre Mademoiselle Labrousse, du Bourg de Vauxains, en Perigord, canton de Ribeirac de la Dordogne, actuellement prisonniere au chateau Saint-Ange, a Rome_, Bordeaux, 1797, in 8vo; E. Lairtullier, _Les femmes celebres de 1789 a 1795_, Paris, 1842, in 8vo, vol. i, pp. 212 _et seq._; Abbe Chr.
Moreau, _Une mystique revolutionnaire Suzette Labrousse_, Paris, 1886, in 8vo; A. France, _Susette Labrousse_, Paris, 1907, in 12mo.]
Three visionaries especially are closely related to Jeanne. The earliest in date is a vavasour of Champagne, who had a mission to speak to King John; of this holy man I have written sufficiently in the present work. The second is a farrier of Salon, who had a mission to speak to Louis XIV; the third, a peasant of Gallardon, named Martin, who had a mission to speak to Louis XVIII. Articles on the farrier and the farmer, who both saw apparitions and showed signs to their respective kings, will be found in the appendices at the end of this work.[84] In spite of difference in s.e.x, the points of similarity between Jeanne d'Arc and these three men are very close and very significant; they are inherent in the very nature of Jeanne and her fellow visionaries; and the variations, which at a first glance might seem to separate widely the latter from Jeanne, are aesthetic, social, historical, and consequently external and contingent. Between them and her there are of course striking contrasts in appearance and in fortune. They were entirely wanting in that charm which she never failed to exercise; and it is a fact that while they failed miserably she grew in strength and flowered in legend. But it is the duty of the scientific mind to recognise common characteristics, proving ident.i.ty of origin alike in the n.o.blest individual and in the most wretched abortion of the same species.
[Footnote 84: Vol. ii, Appendices ii and iii.]
The free-thinkers of our day, imbued as they are, for the most part, with transcendentalism, refuse to recognise in Jeanne not merely that automatism which determines the acts of such a seeress, not only the influence of constant hallucination, but even the suggestions of the religious spirit. What she achieved through saintliness and devoutness, they make her out to have accomplished by intelligent enthusiasm. Such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and erudite Quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of the Maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy. This point was not without its drawbacks. It led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous exaggeration of Jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of attributing military talent to her and to the subst.i.tution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel.
The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. Unfortunately the Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the Catholic Church down the ages. In their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. So much so that in a search for the most curiously travestied of all the Jeannes d'Arc we should have been driven to choose between their miraculous protectress of Christian France, the patroness of officers, the inimitable model of the pupils of Saint-Cyr, and the romantic Druidess, the inspired woman-soldier of the national guard, the patriot gunneress of the Republicans, had there not arisen a Jesuit Father to create an ultramontane Jeanne d'Arc.[85]
[Footnote 85: Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, 5 vols. in large 8vo, Paris, 1894-1902. Writing of this book in a study of _L'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, 1902, pp. 7 and 8, note), Canon Ulysse Chevalier, author of a valuable _Repertoire des sources du moyen age_, displays boldness and sound sense. ”From the dimensions of these five volumes,” he says, ”one might expect this work to be the fullest history of Jeanne d'Arc; it is nothing of the sort. It is a chaos of memoranda translated or rendered into modern French, reflections and arguments against free-thought as represented by Michelet, H. Martin, Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, and Joseph Fabre. Two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's tone: _The Pseudo-theologians, executioners of Jeanne d'Arc, executioners of the Papacy_ (vol. i, p. 87); _The University of Paris and the Brigandage of Rouen_ (p. 149). The author too often judges the fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. Is he quite sure that if he had been a member of the University of Paris in 1431 he would have thought and p.r.o.nounced in favour of Jeanne, and in opposition to his colleagues?”]
On the subject of Jeanne's sincerity I have raised no doubts. It is impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she received her mission from her voices. But whether she were not unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. What we know of her before her arrival at Chinon comes to very little. One is inclined to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (_en commende_).[86] Such a term she had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for her.
[Footnote 86: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 456.]
She must have a.s.sociated with priests who were faithful to the cause of the Dauphin Charles, and who desired above all things the end of the war. Abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service discontinued.[87] Those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that they saw the Treaty of Troyes failing to establish it, looked for the realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the English. And the wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself called to ride forth and fight, but that in ”her great pity” she announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and coronation of the King, at a time when the n.o.bles of the two countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected nor desired the war ever to come to an end.
[Footnote 87: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres hopitaux en France vers le milieu du xv'ieme siecle_, Macon, 1897, in 8vo.]
The mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and to which she consecrated her life, was doubtless extraordinary, marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in human affairs. Jeanne d'Arc arose in the decline of the great Catholic age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities, manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of men. And of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries G.o.d's servants perform wondrous works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy with fire and sword; Saint Francis of a.s.sisi for the nonce founds poverty as an inst.i.tution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of n.o.bles and bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with G.o.d's aid, to re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power inst.i.tuted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new Joash s.n.a.t.c.hed from death for the salvation of the holy people?
Thus did pious French folk, in the year 1428, regard the mission of the Maid. She represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by G.o.d.
There was nothing incredible in that. When she announced that she had received revelations touching the war from my Lord Saint Michael, she inspired the men-at-arms of the Armagnac party and the burghers of the city of Orleans with a confidence as great as could have been communicated to the troops, marching along the Loire in the winter of 1871, by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or an improved form of cannon. What was expected from science in 1871 was expected from religion in 1428, so that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Orleans would as naturally employ Jeanne as Gambetta would resort to the technical knowledge of M. de Freycinet.
What has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they const.i.tuted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the banished members of the University, men deeply involved in political affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very impatient to regain possession of their property. They were directed by the cleverest man in the King's Council, the Duke Archbishop of Reims, the Chancellor of the kingdom. By the ceremoniousness and the deliberation of their inquiries, they drew upon Jeanne the curiosity, the interest, and the hopes of minds lost in amazement.[88]
[Footnote 88: O. Raguenet, _Les juges de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, membres du Parlement ou gens d'eglise?_ in _Lettres et memoires de l'Academie de Sainte-Croix d'Orleans VII_, 1894, pp. 339-442; D.
Lacombe, _L'hote de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers, maitre Jean Rabateau, President au Parlement de Poitiers in Revue du Bas-Poitou_, 1891, pp.
46-66.]
The defences of the city of Orleans consisted in its walls, its trenches, its cannon, its men-at-arms, and its money. The English had failed both to surround it and to take it by a.s.sault. Convoys and companies pa.s.sed between their bastions. Jeanne was introduced into the town with a strong relieving army. She brought flocks of oxen, sheep, and pigs. The townsfolk believed her to be an angel of the Lord. Meanwhile the men and the money of the besiegers were waxing scant. They had lost all their horses. Far from being in a position to attempt a new attack, they were not likely to be able to hold out long in their bastions. At the end of April there were four thousand English before Orleans and perhaps less, for, as it was said, soldiers were deserting every day; and companies of these deserters went plundering through the villages. At the same time the city was defended by six thousand men-at-arms and archers, and by more than three thousand men of the town bands. At Saint Loup, there were fifteen hundred French against four hundred English; at Les Tourelles, there were five thousand French against four or five hundred English.
By their retreat from Orleans the _G.o.dons_ abandoned to their fate the small garrisons of Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency.[89] The Battle of Patay gives us some idea of the condition of the English army. It was no battle but a ma.s.sacre, and one which Jeanne only reached in time to mourn over the cruelty of the conquerors. And yet the King, in his letters to his good towns, attributed to her a share in the victory.
Evidently the Royal Council made a point of glorifying its Holy Maid.
[Footnote 89: Mr. Andrew Lang (_La Jeanne d'Arc de M. Anatole France_, p. 60) misreads this pa.s.sage when he takes it to mean that the English withdrew their garrisons from these places. That their ultimate surrender became inevitable after the English retreat from Orleans is what the writer intends to convey.--W.S.]
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