Part 71 (2/2)

78.]

For the moment the Duke of Bedford's most serious grievance against Charles was that he was accompanied by the Maid and Friar Richard.

”You cause the ignorant folk to be seduced and deceived,” he said, ”for you are supported by superst.i.tious and reprobate persons, such as this woman of ill fame and disorderly life, wearing man's attire and dissolute in manners, and likewise by that apostate and seditious mendicant friar, they both alike being, according to Holy Scripture, abominable in the sight of G.o.d.”

To strike still greater shame into the heart of the enemy, the Duke of Bedford proceeds to a second attack on the maiden and the monk. And in the most eloquent pa.s.sage of the letter, when he is citing Charles of Valois to appear before him, he says ironically that he expects to see him come led by this woman of ill fame and this apostate monk.[1645]

[Footnote 1645: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 341, 342.]

Thus wrote the Regent of England; albeit he had a mind, subtle, moderate, and graceful, he was moreover a good Catholic and a believer in all manner of devilry and witchcraft.

His horror at the army of Charles of Valois being commanded by a witch and a heretic monk was certainly sincere, and he deemed it wise to publish the scandal. There were doubtless only too many, who, like him, were ready to believe that the Maid of the Armagnacs was a heretic, a wors.h.i.+pper of idols and given to the practice of magic. In the opinion of many worthy and wise Burgundians a prince must forfeit his honour by keeping such company. And if Jeanne were in very deed a witch, what a disgrace! What an abomination! The Flowers de Luce reinstated by the devil! The Dauphin's whole camp was tainted by it.

And yet when my Lord of Bedford spread abroad those ideas he was not so adroit as he thought.

Jeanne, as we know, was good-hearted and in energy untiring. By inspiring the men of her party with the idea that she brought them good luck, she gave them courage.[1646] Nevertheless King Charles's counsellors knew what she could do for them and avoided consulting her. She herself felt that she would not last long.[1647] Then who represented her as a great war leader? Who exalted her as a supernatural power? The enemy.

[Footnote 1646: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 324; vol. iii, p. 130. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388.]

[Footnote 1647: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 99.]

This letter shows how the English had transformed an innocent child into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of h.e.l.l causing the bravest to grow pale. In a voice of lamentation the Regent cries: The devil! the witch! And then he marvels that his fighting men tremble before the Maid, and desert rather than face her.[1648]

[Footnote 1648: _Ibid._, vol. iv, pp. 206, 406, 444, 470, 472. Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. iv, p. 141. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique anglaise_.]

From Montereau, the English army had fallen back on Paris. Now it once again came forth to meet the French. On Sat.u.r.day, the 13th of August, King Charles held the country between Crepy and Paris. Now the Maid from the heights of Dammartin could espy the summit of Montmartre with its windmills, and the light mists from the Seine veiling that great city of Paris, promised to her by those Voices which alas! she had heeded too well.[1649] On the morrow, Sunday, the King and his army encamped in a village, by name Barron, on the River Nonnette on which, five miles lower down, stands Senlis.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 246, 298. Letter from Alain Chartier in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 131 _et seq._]

[Footnote 1650: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 344, 345. Perceval de Cagny, pp. 161, 162.]

Senlis was subject to the English.[1651] It was said that the Regent was approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Saint Pol. With him were the crusaders of the Cardinal of Winchester, the late King's uncle, between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with the Pope's money to go and fight against the Hussites in Bohemia. The Cardinal judged it well to use them against the King of France, a very Christian King forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: ”_Ores, vienne la Belle!_”[1653] By these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the Maid of the Armagnacs she would find her work cut out.

[Footnote 1651: Flammermont, _Histoire de Senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans_ (1405-1441), in _Memoires de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris_.]

[Footnote 1652: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 101, 102.

_Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 328. _Journal du siege_, p. 118.

Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 453. Morosini, vol. iii, pp.

188, 189; vol. iv, appendix xvii. Rymer, _Foedera_, July, 1429.

Raynaldi, _Annales ecclesiastici_, pp. 77, 88. S. Bougenot, _Notices et extraits de ma.n.u.scrits interessant l'histoire de France conserves a la Bibliotheque imperial de Vienne_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 1653: Now, come forth Beauty (W.S.). _Le Livre des trahisons de France_, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, in _La collection des chroniques belges_, 1873, p. 198.]

Captain Jean de Saintrailles, the Brother of Poton, observed the English first when, marching towards Senlis, they were crossing La Nonnette by a ford so narrow that two horses could barely pa.s.s abreast. But King Charles's army, which was coming down the Nonnette valley, did not arrive in time to surprise them.[1654] It pa.s.sed the night opposite them, near Montepilloy.

[Footnote 1654: Perceval de Cagny, p. 162. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 102. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 329. _Journal du siege_, pp. 119, 120.]

On the morrow, Monday, the 15th of August, at daybreak, the men-at-arms heard ma.s.s in camp and, as far as might be, cleared their consciences; for great plunderers and wh.o.r.emongers as they were, they had not given up hope of winning Paradise when this life should be over. That day was a solemn feast, when the Church, on the authority of St. Gregoire de Tours, commemorates the physical and spiritual exaltation to heaven of the Virgin Mary. Churchmen taught that it behoves men to keep the feasts of Our Lord and the Holy Virgin, and that to wage battle on days consecrated to them is to sin grievously against the glorious Mother of G.o.d. No one in King Charles's camp could maintain a contrary opinion, since all were Christians as they were in the camp of the Regent. And yet, immediately after the _Deo Gratias_, every man took up his post ready for battle.[1655]

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