This penalty, like all other penalties, save death and mutilation, lay within the power of ecclesiastical judges. They inflicted it so frequently that in the early days of the Holy Inquisition, the Fathers of the Council of Narbonne said that stones and mortar would become as scarce as money.[901] It was a penalty doubtless, but one which in character and significance differed from the penalties inflicted by secular courts; it was a penance. According to the mercy of ecclesiastical law, prison was a place suitable for repentance, where, in one perpetual penance, the condemned might eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction.

How foolish was he, who by refusing to enter that prison or by escaping from it, should reject the salutary healing of his soul! By so doing he was fleeing from the gentle tribunal of penance, and the Church in sadness cut him off from the communion of the faithful. By inflicting this penalty, which a good Catholic must needs regard rather as a favour than a punishment, my Lord the Bishop and my Lord the Holy Vicar of the Inquisition were conforming to the custom, whereby our Holy Mother Church became reconciled to heretics. But had they power to execute their sentence? The prison to which they condemned Jeanne, the expiatory prison, the salutary confinement, must be in a dungeon of the Church. Could they send her there?

Jeanne, turning towards them, said: "Now, you Churchmen, take me to your prison. Let me be no longer in the hands of the English."[902]

Many of those clerics had promised it to her.[903] They had deceived her. They knew it was not possible; for it had been stipulated that the King of England's men should resume possession of Jeanne after the trial.[904]

The Lord Bishop gave the order: "Take her back to the place whence you brought her."[905]

He, a judge of the Church, committed the crime of surrendering the Church's daughter reconciled and penitent, to laymen. Among them she could not mourn over her sins; and they, hating her body and caring nought for her soul, were to tempt her and cause her to fall back into error.

While Jeanne was being taken back in the cart to her tower in the fields, the soldiers insulted her and their captains did not rebuke them.[906]

Thereafter, the Vice-Inquisitor and with him divers doctors and masters, went to her prison and charitably exhorted her. She promised to wear woman's apparel, and to let her head be shaved.[907]

The Duchess of Bedford, knowing that she was a virgin, saw to it that she was treated with respect.[908] As the ladies of Luxembourg had done formerly, she essayed to persuade her to wear the clothing of her sex. By a certain tailor, one Jeannotin Simon, she had had made for Jeanne a gown which she had hitherto refused to wear. Jeannotin brought the garment to the prisoner, who this time did not refuse it. In putting it on, Jeannotin touched her bosom, which she resented. She boxed his ears;[909] but she consented to wear the gown provided by the Duchess.

CHAPTER XIV

In the outer court of the castle they found some hundred men-at-arms, who welcomed them with threats and curses.[910] These fellows did not yet understand that the judges had conducted the trial so as to bring honour to old England and dishonour to the French. They did not realise what it meant when the Maid of the Armagnacs, who hitherto had obstinately persisted in her utterances, was at length brought to confess her impostures. They did not see how great was the advantage to their country when it was published abroad throughout the world that Charles of Valois had been conducted to his coronation by a heretic. But no, the only idea these brutes were capable of grasping was the burning of the girl prisoner who had struck terror into their hearts. The doctors and masters they treated as traitors, false counsellors and Armagnacs.[911]

In the castle yard is Maître André Marguerie, bachelor in decrees, archdeacon of Petit-Caux, King's Counsellor,[912] who is inquiring what has happened. He had displayed great assiduity in the trial. The Maid he held to be a crafty damsel.[913] Now again he desired to give an expert's judgment touching what had just occurred.

"That Jeanne is to be seen dressed as a man is not everything," he said. "We must know what motives induced her to resume masculine attire."

Maître André Marguerie was an eloquent orator, one of the shining lights of the Council of Constance. But, when a man-at-arms raised his axe against him and called out "Traitor! Armagnac!" Maître Marguerie asked no further questions, but speedily departed, and went to bed very sick.[914]

The next day, Monday the 25th, there came to the castle the Vice-Inquisitor, accompanied by divers doctors and masters. The Registrar, Messire Guillaume Manchon, was summoned. He was such a coward that he dared not come save under the escort of one of the Earl of Warwick's men-at-arms.[915] They found Jeanne wearing man's apparel, jerkin and short tunic, with a hood covering her shaved head. Her face was in tears and disfigured by terrible suffering.[916]

She was asked when and why she had assumed this attire.

She replied: "'Tis but now that I have donned man's dress and put off woman's."

"Wherefore did you put it on and who made you?"

"I put it on of my own will and without constraint. I had liefer wear man's dress than woman's."

"You promised and swore not to wear man's dress."

"I never meant to take an oath not to wear it."

"Wherefore did you return to it?"

"Because it is more seemly to take it and wear man's dress, being amongst men, than to wear woman's dress.... I returned to it because the promise made me was not kept, to wit, that I should go to mass and should receive my Saviour and be loosed from my bonds."

"Did you not abjure, and promise not to return to this dress?"

"I had liefer die than be in bonds. But if I be allowed to go to mass and taken out of my bonds and put in a prison of grace, and given a woman to be with me, I will be good and do as the Church shall command."

"Have you heard your Voices since Thursday?"

"Yes."

"What did they say unto you?"

"They told me that through Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret God gave me to wit his sore pity for the treachery, to which I consented in abjuring and recanting to save my life, and that in saving my life I was losing my soul. Before Thursday my Voices had told me what I should do and what I did do on that day. On the scaffold my Voices told me to reply boldly to the preacher. He is a false preacher.... Many things did he say that I have never done. If I were to say that God has not sent me I should be damned. It is true that God has sent me. My Voices have since told me that by confessing I committed a great wickedness which I ought never to have done. All that I said I uttered through fear of the fire."[917]

Thus spake Jeanne in sore sorrow. And now what becomes of those monkish tales of attempted violence related long afterwards by a registrar and two churchmen?[918] And how can Messire Massieu make us believe that Jeanne, unable to find her petticoats, put on her hose in order not to appear before her guards unclothed?[919] The truth is very different. It is Jeanne herself who confesses bravely and simply. She repented of her abjuration, as of the greatest sin she had ever committed. She could not forgive herself for having lied through fear of death. Her Voices, who, before the sermon at Saint-Ouen had foretold that she would deny them, now came to her and spoke of "the sore pity of her treachery." Could they say otherwise since they were the voices of her own heart? And could Jeanne fail to listen to them since she had always listened to them whenever they had counselled her to sacrifice and self-abnegation?

It was out of obedience to her heavenly Council that Jeanne had returned to man's apparel, because she would not purchase her life at the price of denying the Angel and the Saints, and because with her whole heart and soul she rebelled against her recantation.

Still the English were seriously to blame for having left her man's clothes. It would have been more humane to have taken them from her, since if she wore them she must needs die. They had been put in a bag.[920] Her guards may even be suspected of having tempted her by placing under her very eyes those garments which recalled to her days of happiness. They had taken away all her few possessions, even her poor brass ring, everything save that suit which meant death to her.

To blame also were her ecclesiastical judges who should not have sentenced her to imprisonment if they foresaw that they could not place her in an ecclesiastical prison, nor have commanded her a penance which they knew they were unable to enforce. Likewise to blame were the Bishop of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor; because after having, for the good of her sinful soul, prescribed the bread of bitterness and the water of affliction, they gave her not this bread and this water, but delivered her in disgrace into the hands of her cruel enemies.

When she uttered the words, "God by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret hath given me to wit the sore pity of the treason to which I consented," Jeanne consummated the sacrifice of her life.[921]

The Bishop and the Inquisitor had now to proceed in conformity with the law. The interrogatory however lasted a few moments longer.

"Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine?"

"Yes, and they come from God."

"Tell us the truth touching the crown."

"To the best of my knowledge I told you the truth of everything at the trial."

"On the scaffold, at the time of your abjuration, you did acknowledge before us your judges and before many others, and in the presence of the people, that you had falsely boasted your Voices to be those of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret."

"I did not mean thus to do or to say. I did not deny, neither did I intend to deny, my apparitions and to say that they were not Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. All that I have said was through fear of the fire, and I recanted nothing that was not contrary to the truth. I had liefer do my penance once and for all, to wit by dying, than endure further anguish in prison. Whatsoever abjuration I have been forced to make, I never did anything against God and religion. I did not understand what was in the deed of abjuration, wherefore I did not mean to abjure anything unless it were Our Lord's will. If the judges wish I will resume my woman's dress. But nothing else will I do."[922]

Coming out of the prison, my Lord of Beauvais met the Earl of Warwick accompanied by many persons. He said to him: "Farewell. Faites bonne chère." It is said that he added, laughing: "It is done! We have caught her."[923] The words are his, doubtless, but we are not certain that he laughed.

On the morrow, Tuesday the 29th, he assembled the tribunal in the chapel of the Archbishop's house. The forty-two assessors present were informed of what had happened on the previous day and invited to state their opinions, the nature of which might easily be anticipated.[924] Every heretic who retracted his confession was held a perjurer, not only impenitent but relapsed. And the relapsed were given up to the secular arm.[925]

Maître Nicholas de Venderès, canon, archdeacon, was the first to state his opinion.

"Jeanne is and must be held a heretic. She must be delivered to the secular authority."[926]

The Lord Abbot of Fécamp expressed his opinion in the following terms: "Jeanne has relapsed. Nevertheless it is well that the terms of her abjuration once read to her, be read a second time and explained, and that at the same time she be reminded of God's word. This done, it is for us, her judges, to declare her a heretic and to abandon her to the secular authority, entreating it to deal leniently with her."[927]

This plea for leniency was a mere matter of form. If the Provost of Rouen had taken it into consideration he also would have been excommunicated, with a further possibility of temporal punishment.[928] And yet there were certain counsellors who even wished to dispense with this empty show of pity, urging that there was no need for such a supplication.

Maître Guillaume Erard and sundry other assessors, among whom were Maîtres Marguerie, Loiseleur, Pierre Maurice, and Brother Martin Ladvenu, were of the opinion of my Lord Abbot of Fécamp.[929]

Maître Thomas de Courcelles advised the woman being again charitably admonished touching the salvation of her soul.

Such likewise was the opinion of Brother Isambart de la Pierre.[930]

The Lord Bishop, having listened to these opinions, concluded that Jeanne must be proceeded against as one having relapsed. Accordingly he summoned her to appear on the morrow, the 30th of May, in the old Market Square.[931]

On the morning of that Wednesday, the 30th of May, by the command of my Lord of Beauvais, the two young friars preachers, bachelors in theology, Brother Martin Ladvenu and Brother Isambart de la Pierre, went to Jeanne in her prison. Brother Martin told her that she was to die that day.

At the approach of this cruel death, amidst the silence of her Voices, she understood at length that she would not be delivered. Cruelly awakened from her dream, she felt heaven and earth failing her, and fell into a deep despair.

"Alas!" she cried, "shall so terrible a fate betide me as that my body ever pure and intact shall to-day be burned and reduced to ashes? Ah me! Ah me! Liefer would I be seven times beheaded than thus be burned. Alas! had I been in the prison of the Church, to which I submitted, and guarded by ecclesiastics and not by my foes and adversaries, so woeful a misfortune as this would not have befallen me. Oh! I appeal to God, the great judge, against this violence and these sore wrongs with which I am afflicted."[932]

While she was lamenting, the doctors and masters, Nicolas de Venderès, Pierre Maurice and Nicolas Loiseleur, entered the prison; they came by order of my Lord of Beauvais.[933] On the previous day thirty-nine counsellers out of forty-two, declaring that Jeanne had relapsed, had added that they deemed it well she should be reminded of the terms of her abjuration.[934] Wherefore, according to the counsel of these clerics, the Lord Bishop had sent certain learned doctors to the relapsed heretic and had resolved to come to her himself.

She must needs submit to one last examination.

"Do you believe that your Voices and apparitions come from good or from evil spirits?"

"I know not; but I appeal to my Mother the Church."[935]

Maître Pierre Maurice, a reader of Terence and Virgil, was filled with pity for this hapless Maid.[936] On the previous day he had declared her to have relapsed because his knowledge of theology forced him to it; and now he was concerned for the salvation of this soul in peril, which could not be saved except by recognising the falseness of its Voices.

"Are they indeed real?" he asked her.

She replied, "Whether they be good or bad, they appeared to me."

She affirmed that with her eyes she had seen, with her ears heard, the Voices and apparitions which had been spoken of at the trial.

She heard them most frequently, she said, at the hour of compline and of matins, when the bells were ringing.[937]

Maître Pierre Maurice, being the Pope's secretary, was debarred from openly professing the Pyrrhonic philosophy. He inclined, however, to a rational interpretation of natural phenomena, if we may judge from his remarking to Jeanne that the ringing of bells often sounded like voices.

Without describing the exact form of her apparitions, Jeanne said they came to her in a great multitude and were very tiny. She believed in them no longer, being fully persuaded that they had deceived her.

Maître Pierre Maurice asked about the Angel who had brought the crown.

She replied that there had never been a crown save that promised by her to her King, and that the Angel was herself.[938]

At that moment the Lord Bishop of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor entered the prison, accompanied by Maître Thomas de Courcelles and Maître Jacques Lecamus.[939]

At the sight of the Judge who had brought her to such a pass she cried, "Bishop, I die through you."

He replied by piously admonishing her. "Ah! Jeanne, bear all in patience. You die because you have not kept your promise and have returned to evil-doing.[940] Now, Jeanne," he asked her, "you have always said that your Voices promised you deliverance; you behold how they have deceived you, wherefore tell us the truth."

She replied, "Verily, I see that they have deceived me."[941]

The Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor withdrew. They had triumphed over a poor girl of twenty.

"If after their condemnation heretics repent, and if the signs of their repentance are manifest, the sacraments of confession and the eucharist may not be denied them, provided they demand them with humility."[942] Thus ran the sacred decretals. But no recantation, no assurance of conformity, could save the relapsed heretic. He was permitted confession, absolution, and communion; which means that at the bar of the Sacrament the sincerity of his repentance and conversion was believed in. But at the same time it was declared judicially that his repentance was not believed in and that consequently he must die.[943]

Brother Martin Ladvenu heard Jeanne's confession. Then he sent Messire Massieu, the Usher, to my Lord of Beauvais, to inform him that she asked to be given the body of Jesus Christ.

The Bishop assembled certain doctors to confer on this subject; and after they had deliberated, he replied to the Usher: "Tell Brother Martin to give her the communion and all that she shall ask."[944]

Messire Massieu returned to the castle to bear this reply to Brother Martin. For a second time Brother Martin heard Jeanne in confession and gave her absolution.[945]

A cleric, one Pierre, brought the body of Our Lord in an unceremonious fashion, on a paten covered with the cloth used to put over the chalice, without lights or procession, without surplice or stole.[946]

This did not please Brother Martin, who sent to fetch a stole and candles.

Then, taking the consecrated host in his fingers and presenting it to Jeanne, he said: "Do you believe this to be the body of Christ?"

"Yes, and it alone is able to deliver me."

And she entreated that it should be given to her.

"Do you still believe in your Voices?" asked the officiating priest.

"I believe in God alone, and will place no trust in the Voices who have thus deceived me."[947]

And shedding many tears she received the body of Our Lord very devoutly. Then to God, to the Virgin Mary and to the saints she offered prayers beautiful and reverent and gave such signs of repentance that those present were moved to tears.[948]

Contrite and sorrowful she said to Maître Pierre Maurice:[949] "Maître Pierre, where shall I be this evening?"

"Do you not trust in the Lord?" asked the canon.

"Yea, God helping me, I shall be in Paradise."[950]

Maître Nicolas Loiseleur exhorted her to correct the error she had caused to grow up among the people.

"To this end you must openly declare that you have been deceived and have deceived the folk and that you humbly ask pardon."

Then, fearing lest she might forget when the time came for her to be publicly judged, she asked Brother Martin to put her in mind of this matter and of others touching her salvation.[951]

Maître Loiseleur went away giving signs of violent grief. Walking through the streets like a madman, he was howled at by the Godons.[952]

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when Brother Martin and Messire Massieu took Jeanne out of the prison, wherein she had been in bonds one hundred and seventy-eight days. She was placed in a cart, and, escorted by eighty men-at-arms, was driven along the narrow streets to the Old Market Square, close to the River.[953] This square was bordered on the east by a wooden market-house, the butcher's market, on the west by the cemetery of Saint-Sauveur, on the edge of which, towards the square, stood the church of Saint-Sauveur.[954] In this place three scaffolds had been raised, one against the northern gable of the market-house; and in its erection several tiles of the roof had been broken.[955] On this scaffold Jeanne was to be stationed, there to listen to the sermon. Another and a larger scaffold had been erected adjoining the cemetery. There the judges and the prelates were to sit.[956] The pronouncing of sentence in a religious trial was an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For the place of its pronouncement the Inquisitor and the Ordinary preferred consecrated territory, holy ground. True it is that a bull of Pope Lucius forbade such sentences to be given in churches and cemeteries; but the judges eluded this rule by recommending the secular arm to modify its sentence. The third scaffold, opposite the second, was of plaster, and stood in the middle of the square, on the spot whereon executions usually took place. On it was piled the wood for the burning. On the stake which surmounted it was a scroll bearing the words:

"Jehanne, who hath caused herself to be called the Maid, a liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic."[957]

The square was guarded by one hundred and sixty men-at-arms. A crowd of curious folk pressed behind the guards, the windows were filled and the roofs covered with onlookers. Jeanne was brought on to the scaffold which had its back to the market-house gable. She wore a long gown and hood.[958] Maître Nicolas Midi, doctor in theology, came up on to the same platform and began to preach to her.[959] As the text of his sermon he took the words of the Apostle in the first Epistle to the Corinthians:[960] "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." Jeanne patiently listened to the sermon.[961]

Then my Lord of Beauvais, in his own name and that of the Vice-Inquisitor, pronounced the sentence.

He declared Jeanne to be a relapsed heretic.

"We declare that thou, Jeanne, art a corrupt member, and in order that thou mayest not infect the other members, we are resolved to sever thee from the unity of the Church, to tear thee from its body, and to deliver thee to the secular power. And we reject thee, we tear thee out, we abandon thee, beseeching this same secular power, that touching death and the mutilation of the limbs, it may be pleased to moderate its sentence...."[962]

By this formula, the ecclesiastical judge withdrew from any share in the violent death of a fellow creature: Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.[963] But every one knew how much such an entreaty was worth; and all were aware that if the impossible had happened and the magistrate had granted it, he would have been subject to the same penalties as the heretic. Things had now come to such a pass that had the city of Rouen belonged to King Charles, he himself could not have saved the Maid from the stake.

When the sentence was announced Jeanne breathed heart-rending sighs. Weeping bitterly, she fell on her knees, commended her soul to God, to Our Lady, to the blessed saints of Paradise, many of whom she mentioned by name. Very humbly did she ask for mercy from all manner of folk, of whatsoever rank or condition, of her own party and of the enemy's, entreating them to forgive the wrong she had done them and to pray for her. She asked pardon of her judges, of the English, of King Henry, of the English princes of the realm. Addressing all the priests there present she besought each one to say a mass for the salvation of her soul.[964]

Thus for one half hour did she continue with sighs and tears to give expression to the sentiments of humiliation and contrition with which the clerics had inspired her.[965]

And even now she did not neglect to defend the honour of the fair Dauphin, whom she had so greatly loved.

She was heard to say: "It was never my King who induced me to do anything I have done, either good or evil."[966]

Many of the bystanders wept. A few English laughed. Certain of the captains, who could make nothing of the edifying ceremonial of ecclesiastical justice, grew impatient. Seeing Messire Massieu in the pulpit and hearing him exhort Jeanne to make a good end, they cried:

"What now, priest! Art thou going to keep us here to dinner?"[967]

At Rouen, when a heretic was given up to the secular arm, it was customary to take him to the town hall, where the town council made known unto him his sentence.[968] In Jeanne's case these forms were not observed. The Bailie, Messire le Bouteiller, who was present, waved his hand and said: "Take her, take her."[969] Straightway, two of the King's sergeants dragged her to the base of the scaffold and placed her in a cart which was waiting. On her head was set a great fool's cap made of paper, on which were written the words: "Hérétique, relapse, apostate, idolâtre"; and she was handed over to the executioner.[970]

A bystander heard her saying: "Ah! Rouen, sorely do I fear that thou mayest have to suffer for my death."[971]

She evidently still regarded herself as the messenger from Heaven, the angel of the realm of France. Possibly the illusion, so cruelly reft from her, returned at last to enfold her in its beneficent veil. At any rate, she appears to have been crushed; all that remained to her was an infinite horror of death and a childlike piety.

The ecclesiastical judges had barely time to descend and flee from a spectacle which they could not have witnessed without violating the laws of clerical procedure. They were all weeping: the Lord Bishop of Thérouanne, Chancellor of England, had his eyes full of tears. The Cardinal of Winchester, who was said never to enter a church save to pray for the death of an enemy,[972] had pity on this damsel so woeful and so contrite. Brother Pierre Maurice, the canon who was a reader of the Æneid, could not keep back his tears. All the priests who had delivered her to the executioner were edified to see her make so holy an end. That is what Maître Jean Alespée meant when he sighed: "I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman to be."[973] To himself and the hapless sufferer he applied the following lines from the Dies iræ:

But none the less he must have believed that by her heresies and her obstinacy she had brought death on herself.

The two young friars preachers and the Usher Massieu accompanied Jeanne to the stake.

She asked for a cross. An Englishman made a tiny one out of two pieces of wood, and gave it to her. She took it devoutly and put it in her bosom, on her breast. Then she besought Brother Isambart to go to the neighbouring church to fetch a cross, to bring it to her and hold it before her, so that as long as she lived, the cross on which God was crucified should be ever in her sight.

Massieu asked a priest of Saint-Sauveur for one, and it was brought. Jeanne weeping kissed it long and tenderly, and her hands held it while they were free.[975]

As she was being bound to the stake she invoked the aid of Saint Michael; and now at length no examiner was present to ask her whether it were really he she saw in her father's garden. She prayed also to Saint Catherine.[976]

When she saw a light put to the stake, she cried loudly, "Jesus!" This name she repeated six times.[977] She was also heard asking for holy water.[978]

It was usual for the executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the Rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the Maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the Bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually high. Wherefore the executioner himself, hardened man that he was, judged her death to have been a terribly cruel one.[979]

Once again Jeanne uttered the name of Jesus; then she bowed her head and gave up her spirit.[980]

As soon as she was dead the Bailie commanded the executioner to scatter the flames in order to see that the prophetess of the Armagnacs had not escaped with the aid of the devil or in some other manner.[981] Then, after the poor blackened body had been shown to the people, the executioner, in order to reduce it to ashes, threw on to the fire coal, oil and sulphur.

In such an execution the combustion of the corpse was rarely complete.[982] Among the ashes, when the fire was extinguished, the heart and entrails were found intact. For fear lest Jeanne's remains should be taken and used for witchcraft or other evil practices,[983] the Bailie had them thrown into the Seine.[984]

CHAPTER XV

IN the evening, after the burning, the executioner, as was his wont, went whining and begging to the monastery of the preaching friars. The creature complained that he had found it very difficult to make an end of Jeanne. According to a legend invented afterwards, he told the monks that he feared damnation for having burned a saint.[985] Had he actually spoken thus in the house of the Vice-Inquisitor he would have been straightway cast into the lowest dungeon, there to await a trial for heresy, which would have probably resulted in his being sentenced to suffer the death he had inflicted on her whom he had called a saint. And what could have led him to suppose that the woman condemned by good Father Lemaistre and my Lord of Beauvais was not a bad woman? The truth is that in the presence of these friars he arrogated to himself merit for having executed a witch and taken pains therein, wherefore he came to ask for his pot of wine. One of the monks, who happened to be a friar preacher, Brother Pierre Bosquier, forgot himself so far as to say that it was wrong to have condemned the Maid. These words, albeit they were heard by only a few persons, were carried to the Inquisitor General. When he was summoned to answer for them, Brother Pierre Bosquier declared very humbly that his words were altogether wrong and tainted with heresy, and that indeed he had only uttered them when he was full of wine. On his knees and with clasped hands he entreated Holy Mother Church, his judges and the most redoubtable lords to pardon him. Having regard to his repentance and in consideration of his cloth and of his having spoken in a state of intoxication, my Lord of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor showed indulgence to Brother Pierre Bosquier. By a sentence pronounced on the 8th of August, 1431, they condemned him to be imprisoned in the house of the friars preachers and fed on bread and water until Easter.[986]

On the 12th of June the judges and counsellors, who had sat in judgment on Jeanne, received letters of indemnity from the Great Council. What was the object of these letters? Was it in case the holders of them should be proceeded against by the French? But in that event the letters would have done them more harm than good.[987]

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.[988] 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.[989]

In like tenor did the University of Paris write to the Holy Father, the Emperor and the College of Cardinals.[990]

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 Rochelle, still remaineth with the Armagnacs. Friar Richard, the Franciscan, who attracted so great a multitude of folk when he preached in Paris at the Innocents and elsewhere, directed these women; he was their spiritual father."[991]

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 béguines was now almost entirely annihilated. There only remained to the King the holy dame of La Rochelle, who had escaped from the hands of the Paris Official; but her indiscreet talk had rendered her troublesome.[992] 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 pronounced 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.[993]

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 circumstance 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.[994] In the July and August of this same year, at Senlis and at Beauvais, my Lord of Reims, Chancellor of France and the Maréchal 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.[995] A Maid had reconquered them, now he intended a lad to hold them. With this object he employed the little shepherd, Guillaume, from the Lozère Mountains, who, like Saint Francis of Assisi 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 Maréchal de Boussac, the Captains La Hire, Poton, and others.[996]

The shepherd Guillaume, whom they believed to be sent of God, was at their head, riding side-saddle and displaying the miraculous wounds in his hands, his feet, and his left side.[997]

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 Maréchal 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.[998]

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 passion 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.[999] 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[1000] 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.[1001]

He had been a prisoner for four months when King Henry VI, who was nine years old, came to Paris to be crowned in the church of Notre Dame with the two crowns of France and England. With high pomp and great rejoicing he made his entrance into the city on Sunday, the 16th of December. Along the route of the procession, in the Rue du Ponceau-Saint-Denys, had been constructed a fountain adorned with three sirens; and from their midst rose a tall lily stalk, from the buds and blossoms of which flowed streams of wine and milk. Folk flocked to drink of the fountain; and around its basin men disguised as savages entertained them with games and sham fights.

From the Porte Saint-Denys to the Hôtel Saint-Paul in the Marais, the child King rode beneath a great azure canopy, embroidered with flowers-de-luce in gold, borne first by the four aldermen hooded and clothed in purple, then by the corporations, drapers, grocers, money-changers, goldsmiths and hosiers. Before him went twenty-five heralds and twenty-five trumpeters; followed by nine handsome men and nine beautiful ladies, wearing magnificent armour and bearing great shields, representing the nine preux and the nine preuses, also by a number of knights and squires. In this brilliant procession appeared the little shepherd Guillaume; he no longer stretched out his arms to show the wounds of the passion, for he was strongly bound.[1002]

After the ceremony he was conducted back to prison, whence he was taken later to be sewn in a sack and thrown into the Seine.[1003] Even the French admitted that Guillaume was but a simpleton and that his mission was not of God.[1004]

In 1433, the Constable, with the assistance of the Queen of Sicily, caused the capture and planned the assassination of La Trémouille. It was the custom of the nobles of that day to appoint counsellors for King Charles and afterwards to kill them. However, the sword which was to have caused the death of La Trémouille, owing to his corpulence, failed to inflict a mortal wound. His life was saved, but his influence was dead. King Charles tolerated the Constable as he had tolerated the Sire de la Trémouille.[1005]

The latter left behind him the reputation of having been grasping and indifferent to the welfare of the kingdom. Perhaps his greatest fault was that he governed in a time of war and pillage, when friends and foes alike were devouring the realm. He was charged with the destruction of the Maid, of whom he was said to have been jealous. This accusation proceeds from the House of Alençon, with whom the Lord Chamberlain was not popular.[1006] On the contrary, it must be admitted, that after the Lord Chancellor, La Trémouille was the boldest in employing the Maid, and if later she did thwart his plans there is nothing to prove that it was his intention to have her destroyed by the English. She destroyed herself and was consumed by her own zeal.

Rightly or wrongly, the Lord Chamberlain was held to be a bad man; and, although his successor in the King's favour, the Duc de Richemont, was avaricious, hard, violent, incredibly stupid, surly, malicious, always beaten and always discontented, the exchange appeared to be no loss. The Constable came in a fortunate hour, when the Duke of Burgundy was making peace with the King of France.

In the words of a Carthusian friar, the English who had entered the kingdom by the hole made in Duke John's head on the Bridge of Montereau, only retained their hold on the kingdom by the hand of Duke Philip. They were but few in number, and if the giant were to withdraw his hand a breath of wind would suffice to blow them away. The Regent died of sorrow and wrath, beholding the fulfilment of the horoscope of King Henry VI: "Exeter shall lose what Monmouth hath won."[1007]

On the 13th of April, 1436, the Count of Richemont entered Paris. The nursing mother of Burgundian clerks and Cabochien doctors, the University herself, had helped to mediate peace.[1008]

Now, one month after Paris had returned to her allegiance to King Charles, there appeared in Lorraine a certain damsel. She was about twenty-five years old. Hitherto she had been called Claude; but she now made herself known to divers lords of the town of Metz as being Jeanne the Maid.[1009]

At this time, Jeanne's father and eldest brother were dead.[1010] Isabelle Romée was alive. Her two youngest sons were in the service of the King of France, who had raised them to the rank of nobility and given them the name of Du Lys. Jean, the eldest, called Petit-Jean,[1011] had been appointed Bailie of Vermandois, then Captain of Chartres. About this year, 1436, he was provost and captain of Vaucouleurs.[1012]

The youngest, Pierre, or Pierrelot, who had fallen into the hands of the Burgundians before Compiègne at the same time as Jeanne, had just been liberated from the prison of the Bastard of Vergy.[1013]

Both brothers believed that their sister had been burned at Rouen. But when they were told that she was living and wished to see them, they appointed a meeting at La-Grange-aux-Ormes, a village in the meadows of the Sablon, between the Seille and the Moselle, about two and a half miles south of Metz. They reached this place on the 20th of May. There they saw her and recognised her immediately to be their sister; and she recognised them to be her brothers.[1014]

She was accompanied by certain lords of Metz, among whom was a man right noble, Messire Nicole Lowe, who was chamberlain to Charles VII.[1015] By divers tokens these nobles recognised her to be the Maid Jeanne who had taken King Charles to be crowned at Reims. These tokens were certain signs on the skin.[1016] Now there was a prophecy concerning Jeanne which stated her to have a little red mark beneath the ear.[1017] But this prophecy was invented after the events to which it referred. Consequently we may believe the Maid to have been thus marked. Was this the token by which the nobles of Metz recognised her?

We do not know by what means she claimed to have escaped death; but there is reason to think[1018] that she attributed her deliverance to her holiness. Did she say that an angel had saved her from the fire? It might be read in books how in the ancient amphitheatres lions licked the bare feet of virgins, how boiling oil was as soothing as balm to the bodies of holy martyrs; and how according to many of the old stories nothing short of the sword could take the life of God's maidens. These ancient histories rested on a sure foundation. But if such tales had been related of the fifteenth century they might have appeared less credible. And this damsel does not seem to have employed them to adorn her adventure. She was probably content to say that another woman had been burned in her place.

According to a confession she made afterwards, she came from Rome, where, accoutred in harness of war, she had fought valiantly in the service of Pope Eugenius. She may even have told the Lorrainers of the feats of prowess she had there accomplished.

Now Jeanne had prophesied (at least so it was believed) that she would die in battle against the infidel and that her mantle would fall upon a maid of Rome. But such a saying, if it were known to these nobles of Metz, would be more likely to denounce this so-called Jeanne as an imposture than witness to the truth of her mission.[1019] However this might be, they believed what this woman told them.

Perhaps, like many a noble of the republic,[1020] they were more inclined to King Charles than to the Duke of Burgundy. And we may be sure that, chivalrous knights as they were, they esteemed chivalry wherever they found it; wherefore, because of her valour they admired the Maid; and they made her good cheer.

Messire Nicole Lowe gave her a charger and a pair of hose. The charger was worth thirty francs—a sum wellnigh royal—for of the two horses which at Soissons and at Senlis the King gave the Maid Jeanne, one was worth thirty-eight livres ten sous, and the other thirty-seven livres ten sous.[1021] Not more than sixteen francs had been paid for the horse with which she had been provided at Vaucouleurs.[1022]

Nicole Grognot, governor of the town,[1023] offered a sword to the sister of the Du Lys brothers; Aubert Boullay presented her with a hood.[1024]

She rode her horse with the same skill which seven years earlier, if we may believe some rather mythical stories, had filled with wonder the old Duke of Lorraine.[1025] And she spoke certain words to Messire Nicole Lowe which confirmed him in his belief that she was indeed that same Maid Jeanne who had fared forth into France. She had the ready tongue of a prophetess, and spoke in symbols and parables, revealing nought of her intent.

Her power would not come to her before Saint John the Baptist's Day, she said. Now this was the very time which the Maid, after the Battle of Patay, in 1429, had fixed for the extermination of the English in France.[1026]

This prophecy had not been fulfilled and consequently had not been mentioned again. Jeanne, if she ever uttered it, and it is quite possible that she did, must have been the first to forget it. Moreover, Saint John's Day was a term commonly cited in leases, fairs, contracts, hirings, etc., and it is quite conceivable that the calendar of a prophetess may have been the same as that of a labourer.