Part 119 (1/2)
The Lord Chancellor of England sent to the Emperor, to the Kings and to the princes of Christendom, letters in Latin; to the prelates, dukes, counts, lords, and all the towns of France, letters in French.[2586] Herein he made known unto them that King Henry and his Counsellors had had sore pity on the Maid, and that if they had caused her death it was through their zeal for the faith and their solicitude Christian folk.[2587]
[Footnote 2586: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 240, 243.]
[Footnote 2587: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 485, 496; vol. iv, p. 403.
Monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. cv.]
In like tenor did the University of Paris write to the Holy Father, the Emperor and the College of Cardinals.[2588]
[Footnote 2588: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 496, 500.]
On the 4th of July, the day of Saint-Martin-le-Bouillant, Master Jean Graverent, Prior of the Jacobins, Inquisitor of the Faith, preached at Saint-Martin-des-Champs. In his sermon he related the deeds of Jeanne, and told how for her errors and shortcomings she had been delivered to the secular judges and burned alive.
Then he added: ”There were four, three of whom have been taken, to wit, this Maid, Pierronne, and her companion. One, Catherine de la Roch.e.l.le, still remaineth with the Armagnacs. Friar Richard, the Franciscan, who attracted so great a mult.i.tude of folk when he preached in Paris at the Innocents and elsewhere, directed these women; he was their spiritual father.”[2589]
[Footnote 2589: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 270, 272. This sermon contains curious inaccuracies. Are they the fault of the Inquisitor or of the author of _Le Journal_?]
With Pierronne burned in Paris, her companion eating the bread of bitterness and drinking the water of affliction in the prison of the Church, and Jeanne burned at Rouen, the royal company of _beguines_ was now almost entirely annihilated. There only remained to the King the holy dame of La Roch.e.l.le, who had escaped from the hands of the Paris Official; but her indiscreet talk had rendered her troublesome.[2590] While his penitents were being discredited, good Friar Richard himself had fallen on evil days. The Vicars in the diocese of Poitiers and the Inquisitor of the Faith had forbidden him to preach. The great orator, who had converted so many Christian folk, could no longer thunder against gaming-tables and dice, against women's finery, and mandrakes arrayed in magnificent attire. No longer could he declare the coming of Antichrist nor prepare souls for the terrible trials which were to herald the imminent end of the world. He was ordered to lie under arrest in the Franciscan monastery at Poitiers. And doubtless it was with no great docility that he submitted to the sentence of his superiors; for on Friday, the 23rd of March, 1431, we find the Ordinary and the Inquisitor, asking aid in the execution of the sentence from the Parliament of Poitiers, which did not refuse it. Why did Holy Church exercise such severity towards a preacher endowed with so wondrous a power of moving sinful souls? We may at any rate suspect the reason. For some time the English and Burgundian clergy had been accusing him of apostasy and magic. Now, owing to the unity of the Church in general and to that of the Gallican Church in particular, owing also to the authority of that bright sun of Christendom, the University of Paris, when a clerk was suspected of error and heresy by the doctors of the English and Burgundian party he came to be looked at askance by the clergy who were loyal to King Charles. Especially was this so when in a matter touching the Catholic faith, the University had p.r.o.nounced against him and in favour of the English. It is quite likely that the clerks of Poitiers had been prejudiced against Friar Richard by Pierronne's conviction and even by the Maid's trial. The good brother, who persisted in preaching the end of the world, was strongly suspected of dealing in the black art. Wherefore, realising the fate which was threatening him, he fled, and was never heard of again.[2591]
[Footnote 2590: _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 473.]
[Footnote 2591: Th. Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_, vol. iv, pp. 103, 104. Monstrelet, ch. lxiii. Bougenot, _Deux doc.u.ments inedits relatifs a Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue bleue_, 13 Feb., 1892, pp. 203, 204.]
None the less, however, did the counsellors of King Charles continue to employ the devout in the army. At the time of the disappearance of Friar Richard and his penitents, they were making use of a young shepherd whom my Lord the Archbishop, Duke of Reims and Chancellor of the kingdom, had proclaimed to be Jeanne's miraculous successor. And it was in the following circ.u.mstance that the shepherd was permitted to display his power.
The war continued. Twenty days after Jeanne's death the English in great force marched to recapture the town of Louviers. They had delayed till then, not, as some have stated, because they despaired of succeeding in anything as long as the Maid lived, but because they needed time to collect money and engines for the siege.[2592] In the July and August of this same year, at Senlis and at Beauvais, my Lord of Reims, Chancellor of France and the Marechal de Boussac, were upholding the French cause. And we may be sure that my Lord of Reims was upholding it with no little vigour since at the same time he was defending the benefices which were so dear to him.[2593] A Maid had reconquered them, now he intended a lad to hold them. With this object he employed the little shepherd, Guillaume, from the Lozere Mountains, who, like Saint Francis of a.s.sisi and Saint Catherine of Sienna, had received stigmata. A party of French surprised the Regent at Mantes and were on the point of taking him prisoner. The alarm was given to the army besieging Louviers; and two or three companies of men-at-arms were despatched. They hastened to Mantes, where they learnt that the Regent had succeeded in reaching Paris. Thereupon, having been reinforced by troops from Gournay and certain other English garrisons, being some two thousand strong and commanded by the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, Salisbury, and Suffolk, and by Lord Talbot and Sir Thomas Kiriel, the English made bold to march upon Beauvais. The French, informed of their approach, left the town at daybreak, and marched out to meet them in the direction of Savignies. King Charles's men, numbering between eight hundred and one thousand combatants, were commanded by the Marechal de Boussac, the Captains La Hire, Poton, and others.[2594]
[Footnote 2592: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 3, 344, 348, 373; vol. iii, p.
189; vol. v, pp. 169, 179, 181. Dibon, _Essai sur Louviers_, Rouen, 1836, in 8vo, pp. 33 _et seq._ Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 246 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2593: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises de France vers le milieu du XV'e siecle_, vol. i, p. xvi.]
[Footnote 2594: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 132. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 433. Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 265.]
The shepherd Guillaume, whom they believed to be sent of G.o.d, was at their head, riding side-saddle and displaying the miraculous wounds in his hands, his feet, and his left side.[2595]
[Footnote 2595: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 272.]
When they were about two and a half miles from the town, just when they least expected it, a shower of arrows came down upon them. The English, informed by their scouts of the French approach, had lain in wait for them in a hollow of the road. Now they attacked them closely both in the van and in the rear. Each side fought valiantly. A considerable number were slain, which was not the case in most of the battles of those days, when few but the fugitives were killed. But the French, feeling themselves surrounded, were seized with panic, and thus brought about their own destruction. Most of them, with the Marechal de Boussac and Captain La Hire, fled to the town of Beauvais.
Captain Poton and the shepherd, Guillaume, remained in the hands of the English, who returned to Rouen in triumph.[2596]
[Footnote 2596: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 272.]
Poton made sure of being ransomed in the usual manner. But the little shepherd could not hope for such a fate; he was suspected of heresy and magic; he had deceived Christian folk and accepted from them idolatrous veneration. The signs of our Saviour's pa.s.sion that he bore upon him helped him not a whit; on the contrary the wounds, by the French held to have been divinely imprinted, to the English seemed the marks of the devil.
Guillaume, like the Maid, had been taken in the diocese of Beauvais.
The Lord Bishop of this town, Messire Pierre Cauchon, who had claimed the right to try Jeanne, made a similar claim for Guillaume; and the shepherd was granted what the Maid had been refused, he was cast into an ecclesiastical prison.[2597] He would seem to have been less difficult to guard than Jeanne and also less important. But the English had recently learnt what was involved in a trial by the Inquisition; they now knew how lengthy and how punctilious it was.
Moreover, they did not see how it would profit them if this shepherd were convicted of heresy. If the French had set their hope of success in war[2598] in Guillaume as they had done in Jeanne, then that hope was but short-lived. To put the Armagnacs to shame by proving that their shepherd lad came from the devil, that game was not worth the candle. The youth was taken to Rouen and thence to Paris.[2599]
[Footnote 2597: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, p. 248. De Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur les juges_, p. 43.]