Part 3 (2/2)

Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy?

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this. There was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls, viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, ”_Chevalier, as-tu donne au cochon a manger_!” Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say--”_Ma fille as-tu donne au cochon a manger_?” to saying ”_Pucelle d'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys_?” There is an old English copy of verses which argues thus:--

”If the man, that turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies-- Then 'tis plain the man had rather Have a turnip than his father.”

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be wished.

But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result is--that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France.

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the t.i.tle of Virgin, or _Pucelle_, had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stones about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period; for, in such a person, they saw a representative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the popular heart.

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the Dauphin (Charles VII.) amongst three hundred lords and knights. I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I admire not stage artifices, which not _La Pucelle_, but the Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's _leger-de-main_, such as may be seen every day for a s.h.i.+lling. Southey's ”Joan of Arc” was published in 1796. Twenty years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her detection of the Dauphin. The story, for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this:--_La Pucelle_ was first made known to the Dauphin, and presented to his court, at Chinon: and here came her first trial. She was to find out the royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures. Failing in this _coup d'essai_, she would not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself--and, as the oracle within had told her, would ruin France. Our own sovereign lady Victoria rehea.r.s.es annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. She ”p.r.i.c.ks” for sheriffs. Joanna p.r.i.c.ked for a king. But observe the difference: our own lady p.r.i.c.ks for two men out of three; Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady of the islands and the orient!--she _can_ go astray in her choice only by one half; to the extent of one half she _must_ have the satisfaction of being right. And yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit--that now and then you p.r.i.c.k with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court--not because dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so,) but because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features--how should _she_ throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress? Nay, even more than any true king would have done: for, in Southey's version of the story, the Dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy with royalty,

----”on the throne, I the while mingling with the menial throng, Some courtier shall he seated.”

This usurper is even crowned: ”the jeweled crown s.h.i.+nes on a menial's head.” But really, that is ”_un peu fort_;” and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the Dauphin himself, were not grazing the s.h.i.+ns of treason. For the Dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself, but, at most, a _pet.i.t ecu_, worth thirty pence; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion in France. The same notion as to the indispensableness of a coronation prevails widely in England. But, certainly, it was the Dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna.

For, if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond Orleans? And above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above his compet.i.tor the English boy? Now was to be a race for a coronation: he that should win _that_ race, carried the superst.i.tion of France along with him. Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets. We are illegal blockheads; so thoroughly without law, that we don't know even if we have a right to be blockheads; and our mind is made up--that the first man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims, is the man that is baked into a king. All others are counterfeits, made of base Indian meal, damaged by sea-water.

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a juvenile pupil in divinity, before six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, Book III., in the original edition of his ”Joan of Arc”) she ”appall'd the doctors.” It's not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that surgeon would a.s.suredly feel bothered, who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v.

354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility; 1st, because a piracy from Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the Creation:_ now a piracy _a parte post_ is common enough; but a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries, would (according to our old English phrase[5]) drive a coach-and-six through any copyright act that man born of woman could frame. 2dly, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial; for Southey's ”Joan” of A. Dom. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets, that she never in her life attended--1st, Ma.s.s; nor 2d, the Sacramental table; nor 3d, Confession. Here's a precious windfall for the doctors; they, by snaky tortuosities, had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew, (which every D. D. or S.T.P. is said to carry in his pocket,) for the happiness of ultimately extracting from Joanna a few grains of heretical powder or small shot, which might have justified their singeing her a little. And just at such a crisis, expressly to justify their burning her to a cinder, up gallops Joanna with a brigade of guns, unlimbers, and serves them out with heretical grape and deistical round-shot enough to lay a kingdom under interdict. Any miracles, to which Joanna might treat the grim D. Ds. after _that_, would go to the wrong side of her little account in the clerical books. Joanna would be created a _Dr_. herself, but not of Divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry would be--”Miss Joanna, in acct. with the Church, _Dr._ by sundry diabolic miracles, she having publicly preached heresy, shown herself a witch, and even tried hard to corrupt the principles of six church pillars.” In the mean time, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials.

The very best witness called from first to last deposes that Joanna attended these rites of her Church even too often; was taxed with doing so; and, by blus.h.i.+ng, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw G.o.d in forests, and hills, and fountains; but did not the less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories.

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness.

If the reader turns to that divine pa.s.sage in _Paradise Regained_, which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing within himself--

”Oh, what a mult.i.tude of thoughts arise!” &c.

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that should carry her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of _France Delivered_ to the eternal kingdom.

It is not requisite, for the honor of Joanna, nor is there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of _action_. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story: the intellectual part is, the saintly pa.s.sion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's ”Joan of Arc,” (which however should always be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort,) that, precisely when her real glory begins, the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter;--this might have been done--it might have been communicated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself, in the same way that Virgil has contrived to acquaint the reader, through the hero's mouth, with earlier adventures that, if told by the poet speaking in his own person, would have destroyed the unity of his fable. The romantic interest of the early and _irrelate_ incidents (last night of Troy, &c.) is thrown as an affluent into the general river of the personal narrative, whilst yet the capital current of the _epos_, as unfolding ihe origin and _incunabula_ of Rome, is not for a moment suffered to be modified by events so subordinate and so obliquely introduced. It is sufficient, as concerns _this_ section of Joanna's life to say--that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province of England; and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained.

Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening _La Pucelle_ used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the Dauphin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France.

She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset, on the 29th of April, she sang ma.s.s on Sunday, May 8, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June, she fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the 9th of July, she took Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month, she carried the Dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th, she crowned him; and there she rested from her labor of triumph. What remained was--to suffer.

All this forward movement was her own: excepting one man, the whole council was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from earth. Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted; and the worst error, that she committed, was to lend the sanction of her presence to counsels which she disapproved. But she had accomplished the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were now less important; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself to p.r.o.nounce authentically what _were_ errors. The n.o.ble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free s.p.a.ce around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst the uncles of Henry VI., partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and whilst they laughed, she _did_ it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it effectually, was--to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch.

That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind, by a.s.sociating it with power given from h.e.l.l, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was broken.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of successes so giddy?

Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had every where expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the wounded--she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen--she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. ”Nolebat,” says the evidence, ”uti onso suo, aut quemquam interficere.” She sheltered the English, that invoked her aid, in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus:--on the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her task was done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place, which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a broken prayer that G.o.d would return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more.

It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to seek for rest, and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind, that for _her_ no such prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong from this time.

She herself had created the _funds_ out of which the French restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness their development, or their prosperous application. More than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compeigne, whether through treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day, she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English.

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favor of the English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. _Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be_, were the words that sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M.

Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this Bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But it does not better the case for his countryman; that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a catspaw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its h.e.l.lishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy flas.h.i.+ng intellect, quick as G.o.d's lightning, and true as that lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own head; using the terrors of their power for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; nay, (which is worse,) using the blandishments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of grat.i.tude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked judges! Barbarian jurisprudence! that, sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice; sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and dust, ”Would you examine me as a witness against myself?” was the question by which many times she defied their arts.

Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions which not one of themselves could have answered without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and it makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as ”weighty,” whereas it is but a varied expression of rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked: as though heavenly counsels could want polyglott interpreters for every word, or that G.o.d needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ or suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied G.o.d, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one laugh horribly. Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said, that, for a less cause than martyrdom, man and woman should leave both father and mother.

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. n.o.body had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M.

Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly.

Joanna had a two-fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called _home-sickness_; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness, and in chains, (for chained she was,) to Domremy. And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her, and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery; the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds, which _she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul, which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to herself--these words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next day, perhaps in some n.o.bler generation may rise again for my justification.

Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in Paris, and for more than justification.

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