It required courage animated by a lofty sense of duty when, at the height of the persecution, the Dominican, Pierre de la Palu, one of the foremost theologians of the day, voluntarily appeared before the papal commission in Paris to say that he had been present at many examinations where some of the accused confessed the charges and others denied them, and it appeared to him that the denials were worthy of confidence rather than the confessions.[347] As time wore on the conviction as to their innocence strengthened. Boccaccio took their side. St. Antonino of Florence, whose historical labors largely influenced opinion in the fifteenth century, asserted that their downfall was attributable to the craving for their wealth, and popular writers in general adopted the same view. Even Raynaldus hesitates and balances arguments on either side, and Campi assures us that in Italy, in the seventeenth century, they were regarded by many as saints and martyrs. At length, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the learned Du Puy undertook to rehabilitate the memory of Philippe le Bel in a work of which the array of documentary evidence renders it indispensable to the student. Gürtler, who followed him with a history of the Templars, is evidently unable to make up his mind. Since then the question has been argued pro and con with a vehemence which promises to leave it one of the unsettled problems of history.[348]

Be this as it may, Philippe obtained the object of his desires. After 1307 his financial embarrassments visibly decreased. There was not only the release from the obligation of the five hundred thousand livres which he had borrowed of the Order, but its vast accumulations of treasure and of valuables of all kinds fell into his hands and were never accounted for. He collected all the debts due to it, and his successors were still busy at that work as late as 1322. The extensive banking business which the Templars had established between the East and the West doubtless rendered this feature of the confiscation exceedingly profitable, and it is safe to assume that Philippe enforced the rule that debts due by convicted heretics were not to be paid. Despite his pretence of surrendering the landed estates to the pope, he retained possession of them till his death and enjoyed their revenues. Even those in Guyenne, belonging to the English crown, he collected in spite of the protests of Edward, and he claimed the Templar castles in the English territories until Clement prevailed upon him to withdraw. The great Paris Temple, half palace, half fortress, one of the architectural wonders of the age, was retained with a grip which nothing but death could loosen. After the property had been adjudged to the Hospitallers, in May, 1312, by the Council of Vienne with Philippe’s concurrence, and he had formally approved of it in August, Clement addressed him in December several letters asking his assistance in recovering what had been seized by individuals—assistance which doubtless was freely promised; but in June, 1313, we find Clement remonstrating with him over his refusal to permit Albert de Châteauneuf, Grand Preceptor of the Hospital, to administer the property either of his own Order or that of the Temple in France. In 1314 the General Chapter of the Hospital gave unlimited authority to Leonardo and Francesco de Tibertis to take possession of all the Temple property promised to the Order, and in April an arrêt of Parlement recites that it had been given to the Hospital at Philippe’s special request, and that he had invested Leonardo de Tibertis with it; but there was a reservation that it was liable for the expenses of the imprisoned Templars and for the costs incurred by the king in pushing the trials. This was a claim elastic both in amount and in the time required for settlement. Had Philippe’s life been prolonged it is probable that no settlement would have been made. As it was, the Hospitallers at last, in 1317, were glad to close the affair by abandoning to Philippe le Long all claim on the income of the landed estates which the crown had held for ten years, with an arrangement as to the movables which virtually left them in the king’s hands. They also assumed to pay the expenses of the imprisoned Templars, and this exposed them to every species of exaction and pillage on the part of the royal officials.[349]

In fact, it is the general testimony that the Hospitallers were rather impoverished than enriched by the splendid gift. There had been a universal Saturnalia of plunder. Every one, king, noble, and prelate, who could lay hands on a part of the defenceless possessions had done so, and to reclaim it required large payments either to the holder or to his suzerain. In 1286 the Margrave Otto of Brandenburg had entered the Order of the Temple and had enriched it with extensive domains. These the Margrave Waldemar seized, and did not surrender till 1322, nor was the transfer confirmed till 1350, when the Hospital was obliged to pay five hundred silver marks. In Bohemia many nobles seized and retained Templar property; the chivalrous King John is said to have kept more than twenty castles, and Templars themselves managed to hold some and bequeath them to their heirs. Religious orders were not behindhand in securing what they could out of the spoils—Dominicans, Carthusians, Augustinians, Celestinians, all are named as participators. Even the pious Robert of Naples had to be reminded by Clement that he had incurred excommunication because he had not surrendered the Templar property in Provence. In fact, he had secretly sent orders to his seneschal not to deliver it to the Archbishops of Arles and Embrun, the commissioners appointed by the pope, and before he was finally obliged to make it over he realized what he could from it. Perhaps the Hospital fared better in Cyprus than elsewhere, for when the papal nuncio, Peter, Bishop of Rhodes, published the bull, November 7, 1313, the Templar possessions seem to have been made over to it without contest. In England, even the weakness of Edward II. made a feeble attempt to keep the property. Clement had ordered him, February 25, 1309, to make it over to the papal commissioners designated for the purpose, but he seems to have paid no attention to the command. After the Council of Vienne we find him, August 12, 1312, expressing to the Prior of the Hospital his surprise that he is endeavoring under the color of papal letters to obtain possession of it, to the manifest prejudice of the dignity of the crown. Much of it had been farmed out and alienated to Edward’s worthless favorites, and he resisted its surrender as long as he dared. When forced to succumb he did so in a manner as self-abasing as possible, by executing, November 24, 1313, a notarial instrument to the effect that he protested against it, and only yielded out of fear of the dangers to him and his kingdom to be apprehended from a refusal. It may be doubted whether his orders were obeyed that it should be burdened with the payment of the allowances to the surviving Templars. He succeeded, however, in getting a hundred pounds from the Hospitallers for the London Temple; and in 1317 John XXII. was obliged to intervene with an order for the restitution of lands still detained by those who had succeeded in occupying them.[350]

The Spanish peninsula had been excepted from the operation of the bull transferring the property to the Hospital, but subject to the further discretion of Clement. As regards the kingdom of Majorca he exercised this discretion in 1313 by giving King Sancho II. the personal property, and ordering him to make over the real estate to the Hospital, under condition that the latter should be subject to the duties which had been performed by the Temple. Even this did not relieve the Hospitallers from the necessity of bargaining with King Sancho. It was not until February, 1314, that the lands on the island of Majorca were surrendered to them in consideration of an annual payment of eleven thousand sols, and an allowance of twenty-two thousand five hundred sols to be made on the mesne profits to be accounted for since the donation was made. All profits previous to that time were to remain with the crown. No documents are extant to show what was done on the mainland, but doubtless there was a similar transaction. In addition to this the pensions of the Templars assigned on the property were a heavy burden for many years.[351]

In Aragon there was less disposition to accede to the papal wishes. Constant struggle with the Saracen had left memories of services rendered, or sharpened the sense of benefits to come from some new Order devoted wholly to national objects, which could not be expected of a body like the Hospitallers, whose primary duty was devotion to the Holy Land. The Templars had contributed largely to all the enterprises which had enlarged the boundaries of the kingdom. They had rendered faithful service to the monarchy in the council as well as in the field; to them was in great part attributed the rescue of Jayme I. from the hands of de Montfort, and they had been foremost in the glorious campaigns which had earned for him the title of el Conquistador. Pedro III. and Jayme II. had scarce had less reason for gratitude to them, and the latter, after sacrificing them, naturally desired to use their forfeited property for the establishment of a new Order from which he might expect similar advantages, but Clement’s engagements with the Hospitallers were such that he turned a deaf ear to the king’s repeated representations. On the accession of John XXII., however, matters assumed a more favorable aspect, and in 1317 Vidal de Vilanova, Jayme’s envoy, procured from him a bull authorizing the formation of the Order of Nuestra Señora de Montesa, affiliated to the Order of Calatrava, from which its members were to be drawn. Its duties were defined to be the defence of the coasts and frontier of Valencia from corsairs and Moors; the Templar property in Aragon and Catalonia was made over to the Hospitallers, while the new Order was to have in Valencia not only the possessions of the Temple, but all those of the Hospital, except in the city of Valencia and for half a league around it. In 1319 the preliminaries were accomplished, and the new Order was organized with Guillen de Eril as its Grand Master.[352]

In Castile Alonso XI. retained for the crown the greater part of the Templar lands, though, along the frontier, nobles and cities succeeded in obtaining a portion. Some were given to the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava, and the Hospitallers received little. After an interval of half a century another effort was made, and in 1366 Urban V. ordered the delivery within two months of all the Templar property to the Hospitallers, but it is safe to assume that the mandate was disregarded, though in 1387 Clement VII., the Avignonese antipope, confirmed some exchanges made of Templar property by the Hospitallers with the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava.[353] Castile, as we have already seen, was always singularly independent of the papacy. In Portugal, as mentioned above, the property was handed over as a whole to the Order of Jesus Christ.

In the Morea, where the Templar possessions were extensive, Clement had, as early as November 11, 1310, exercised rights of proprietorship by ordering his administrators, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Patras, to lend to Gautier de Brienne, Duke of Athens, all the proceeds which they had collected, and all that they might collect for a year to come.[354]

Thus disappeared, virtually without a struggle, an organization which was regarded as one of the proudest, wealthiest, and most formidable in Europe. It is not too much to say that the very idea of its destruction could not have suggested itself, but for the facilities which the inquisitorial process placed in able and unscrupulous hands to accomplish any purpose of violence under the form of law. If I have dwelt on the tragedy at a length that may seem disproportionate, my apology is that it affords so perfect an illustration of the helplessness of the victim, no matter how high-placed, when once the fatal charge of heresy was preferred against him, and was pressed through the agency of the Inquisition.

The case of the learned theologian, Jean Petit, Doctor of Sorbonne, is of no great historical importance, but it is worth noting as an example of the use made of the charge of heresy as a weapon in political warfare, and of the elastic definition by which heresy was brought to include offences not easily justiciable in the ordinary courts.

Under Charles VI. of France the royal power was reduced to a shadow. His frequently recurring fits of insanity rendered him incapable of governing, and the quarrels of ambitious princes of the blood reduced the kingdom almost to a state of anarchy. Especially bitter was the feud between the king’s brother, Louis, Duke of Orleans, and his cousin, Jean sans Peur of Burgundy. Yet even that age of violence was startled when, by the procurement of Jean sans Peur, the Duke of Orleans, in 1407, was assassinated in the streets of Paris—a murder which remained unavenged until 1419, when the battle-axe of Tanneguy du Châtel balanced the account on the bridge of Montereau. Even Jean sans Peur felt the need of some apology for his bloody deed, and he sought the assistance of Jean Petit, who read before the royal court a thesis—the Justificatio Ducis Burgundiæ—to prove that he had acted righteously and patriotically, and that he deserved the thanks of king and people. Written in the conventional scholastic style, the tract was not a mere political pamphlet, but an argument based on premises of general principles. It is a curious coincidence that, nearly three centuries earlier, another Johannes Parvus, better known as John of Salisbury, the worthiest representative of the highest culture of his day, in a purely speculative treatise had laid down the doctrine that a tyrant was to be put to death without mercy. According to the younger Jean Petit, “Any tyrant can and ought properly to be slain by any subject or vassal, and by any means, specially by treachery, notwithstanding any oath or compact, and without awaiting judicial sentence or order.” This rather portentous proposition was limited by defining the tyrant to be one who is endeavoring through cupidity, fraud, sorcery, or evil mind to deprive the king of his authority, and the subject or vassal is assumed to be one who is inspired by loyalty, and him the king should cherish and reward. It was not difficult to find Scriptural warrant for such assertion in the slaying of Zimri by Phineas, and of Holofernes by Judith; but Jean Petit ventured on debatable ground when he declared that St. Michael, without awaiting the divine command and moved only by natural love, slew Satan with eternal death, for which he was rewarded with spiritual wealth as great as he was capable of receiving.[355]

That this was not a mere lawyer’s pleading is shown by the fact that it was written in the vernacular and exposed for sale. Doubtless Jean sans Peur circulated it extensively, and it was doubtless convincing to those who were already convinced. It might safely have been allowed to perish in the limbo of forgetfulness, but when, some six years later, the Armagnac faction obtained the upper hand, it was exhumed from the dust as a ready means of attacking the Burgundians. Jean Petit himself, by opportunely dying some years before, escaped a trial for heresy, but in November, 1313, a national council was assembled in Paris to consider nine propositions extracted from his work. Gérard, Bishop of Paris, and Frère Jean Polet, the inquisitor, summoned the masters of theology of the University to give their opinions, which solemnly condemned the propositions. The council debated the question with unwearied prolixity through twenty-eight sessions, and finally, on February 23, 1314, it adopted a sentence condemning the nine propositions to be burned as erroneous in faith and morals, and manifestly scandalous. The sentence was duly executed two days later on a scaffold in front of Nôtre Dame, in presence of a vast crowd, to whom the famous doctor, Benoist Gencien, elaborately explained the enormity of the heresy. Jean sans Peur thereupon appealed to the Holy See from this sentence, and John XXIII. appointed a commission of three cardinals—Orsini, Aquileia, and Florence—to examine and report. Thus Jean Petit had succeeded in becoming a European question, but in spite of this a royal ordonnance on March 17 commanded all the bishops of the kingdom to burn the propositions; on March 18, the University ordered them burned; on June 4 there was a royal mandate to publish the condemnation; on December 4 the University came to the royal court and delivered an oration on the subject, and on December 27 Charles VI. addressed a royal letter to the Council of Constance asking it to join in the condemnation. Evidently the affair was exploited to the uttermost; and when, on January 4, 1315, the long-delayed obsequies of the Duke of Orleans were performed in Nôtre Dame, Chancellor Gerson preached a sermon before the king and the court, the boldness of which excited general comment. The government of the Duke of Orleans had been better than any which had succeeded it; the death of the Duke of Burgundy was not counselled, but his humiliation was advocated; the burning of Petit’s propositions was well done, but more remained to do, and all this Gerson was ready to maintain before all comers.[356]

It was in this mood that Gerson went to Constance as head of the French nation. In his first address to the council, March 23, 1415, he urged the condemnation of the nine propositions. The trial of John XXIII., the condemnation of Wickliff and of communion in both elements, and the discussion over Huss for a while monopolized the attention of the council, and no action was taken until June 15. Meanwhile Gerson found an ally in the Polish nation. John of Falckenberg had written a tract applying the arguments of Jean Petit to the slaying of Polish princes, of which the Archbishop of Gnesen had readily procured the condemnation by the University of Paris, and the Polish ambassador joined Gerson in the effort to have both put under the ban. On June 15, Andrea Lascaris, Bishop of Posen, proposed that a commission be appointed to conduct an inquisition upon new heresies. Jean Petit was not alluded to, but it was understood that his propositions were aimed at, for the only negative vote was that of Martin, Bishop of Arras, the ambassador of Jean sans Peur, who asserted that the object of the movement was to assail his master; and he further protested against Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, who was put on the commission with Orsini, Aquileia, and Florence, as well as two representatives of the Italian nation and four each of the French, English, and German. On July 6, after rendering judgment against Huss, the council condemned as heretical and scandalous the proposition Quilibet tyrannus, which was virtually the first of the nine condemned in Paris. This did not satisfy the French, who wanted the judgment of the University confirmed on the whole series. During the two years and a half that the council remained assembled, Gerson was unwearied in his efforts to accomplish this object. These heresies he declared to be of more importance than those of Huss and Jerome, and bitterly he scolded the fathers for leaving the good work unfinished. Interminable was the wrangling and disputation, appeals from Charles VI. and the University on the one side, and from the Duke of Burgundy on the other. John of Falckenberg was thrown into prison, but nothing would induce the council to take further action, and the affair at last died out. It is difficult for us at the present day to understand the magnitude which it assumed in the eyes of that generation. Gerson subsequently felt himself obliged to meet the jeers of those who reproached him with having risked a question of such importance before such a body as the council, and he justified himself by alleging that he had acted under instructions from the king and the University, and the Gallican Church as represented in the province of Sens. Moreover, he argued, when the council had manifested such zeal in condemning the Wickliffite doctrines and in burning Huss and Jerome, he would have been rash and unjust to suppose that it would not have been equally earnest in repressing the yet more pernicious heresies of Jean Petit. To us the result of greatest interest was its influence on the fate of Gerson himself. On the dissolution of the council he was afraid to risk the enmity of the Duke of Burgundy by returning to France, and gladly accepted a refuge offered him in Austria by Duke Ernest, which he repaid in a grateful poem. He never ventured nearer home than Lyons, where his brother was friar of a convent of Celestinian hermits, and where he supported himself by teaching school till his death, July 14, 1429.[357]

Criticism would doubtless ere this have demonstrated the meteoric career of Joan of Arc to be a myth, but for the concurrent testimony of friend and foe and the documentary evidence, which enable us with reasonable certainty to separate its marvellous vicissitudes from the legendary details with which they have been obscured. For us her story has a special interest, as affording another illustration of the ease with which the inquisitorial process was employed for political ends.

In 1429 the French monarchy seemed doomed beyond hope of resuscitation. In the fierce dissensions which marked the reign of the insane Charles VI. a generation had grown up in whom adherence to faction had replaced fidelity to the throne or to the nation; the loyalists were known not as partisans of Charles VII., but as Armagnacs, and the Burgundians welcomed the foreign domination of England as preferable to that of their hereditary sovereign. Paris, in spite of the fearful privations and losses entailed by the war, submitted cheerfully to the English through the love it bore to their ally, the Duke of Burgundy. Joan of Arc said that, in her native village, Domremy on the Lorraine border, there was but one Burgundian, and his head she wished were cut off; but Domremy and Vaucouleurs constituted the only Armagnac spot in northeastern France, and its boys used to have frequent fights with the Burgundian boys of Marey, from which they would be brought home wounded and bleeding. Such was the all-pervading bitterness of discord throughout the kingdom.[358]

Even the death of the brilliant Henry V., in 1423, had seemed to check in no degree the progress of the English arms. Under the able regency of his brother, the Duke of Bedford, seconded by such captains as Salisbury, Talbot, Scales, and Fastolf, the infant Henry VI. appeared destined to succeed to the throne of his grandfather, Charles VI., as provided in the treaty of Troyes. In 1424 the victory of Verneuil repeated the triumph of Agincourt. From Dauphiné alone three hundred knights were left upon the field, and but for the fidelity of the provinces won by the Albigensian crusades, Charles VII. would already have been a king without a kingdom. Driven beyond the Loire, he was known by the nickname of the Roi de Bourges. Vacillating and irresolute, dominated by unworthy favorites, he hardly knew whether to retreat farther to the south and make a final stand among the mountains of Dauphiné, or to seek a refuge in Spain or Scotland. In 1428 his last line of defence on the Loire was threatened by the leaguer of Orleans. He was powerless to raise the siege, and for five months the heroic city resisted till, reduced to despair, it sent the renowned knight, Pothon de Xaintrallies to the Duke of Burgundy to ask him to accept its allegiance. The duke was nothing loath, but the acquisition required the assent of his English ally, and Bedford scornfully refused—he would not, he said, beat the bush for another to win the bird. Two months more of weary siege elapsed: as the spring of 1429 opened, further resistance seemed useless, and for Charles there appeared nothing left but ignominious retreat and eventual exile.[359]

Such was the hopeless condition of the French monarchy when the enthusiasm of Joan of Arc introduced a new factor in the tangled problem, kindling anew the courage which had been extinguished by an unbroken series of defeats, arousing the sense of loyalty which had been lost in faction, bringing religion as a stimulus to patriotism, and replacing despair with eager confidence and hopefulness. It has been given to few in the world’s history thus to influence the destiny of a nation, and perhaps to none so obscure and apparently so unfitted.[360]

Born January 6, 1484, in the little hamlet of Domremy, on the border line of Lorraine, she had but completed her seventeenth year when she confidently assumed the function of the saviour of her native land.[361] Her parents, honest peasants, had given her such training as comported with her station; she could, of course, neither read nor write, but she could recite her Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo; she had herded the kine, and was a notable sempstress—on her trial she boasted that no maid or matron of Rouen could teach her anything with the needle. Thanks to her rustic employment she was tall and strong-limbed, active and enduring. It was said of her that she could pass six days and nights without taking off her harness, and marvellous stories were told of her abstinence from food while undergoing the most exhausting labor in battle and assault. Thus a strong physical constitution was dominated by a still stronger and excitable nervous organization. Her resolute self-reliance was shown when she was sought in marriage by an honest citizen of Toul, whose suit her parents favored. Finding her obdurate, he had recourse, it would seem with her parents’ consent, to the law, and cited her before the Official of Toul to fulfil the marriage promise which he alleged she had made to him. Notwithstanding her youth, Joan appeared undaunted before the court, swore that she had given no pledges, and was released from the too-ardent suitor. At the age of thirteen she commenced to have ecstasies and visions. The Archangel Michael appeared to her first, and he was followed by St. Catharine and St. Margaret, whom God had specially commissioned to watch over and guide her. Even the Archangel Gabriel sometimes came to counsel her, and she felt herself the instrument of the divine will, transmuting by a subtle psychical alchemy her own impulses into commands from on high. At length she could summon her heavenly advisers at will and obtain from them instructions in any doubtful emergency. In her trial great stress was laid upon an ancient beech-tree, near Domremy, known as the Ladies’ Tree, or Fairies’ Tree, from near the roots of which gushed forth a spring of miraculous healing virtue. A survival of tree and fountain worship was preserved in the annual dances and songs of the young girls of the village around the tree, and the garlands which they hung upon its boughs, but Joan, although she joined her comrades in these observances, usually reserved her garlands to decorate the shrine of the Virgin in the church hard by. Extreme religious sensibility was inseparable from such a character as hers, and almost at the first apparition of her celestial visitants she made a vow of virginity. She believed herself consecrated and set apart for some high and holy purpose, to which all earthly ties must be subordinate. When she related to her judges that her parents were almost crazed at her departure, she added that if she had had a hundred fathers and mothers she would have abandoned them to fulfil her mission. To this self-concentration, reflected in her bearing, is probably to be attributed the remark of several of her chroniclers, that no man could look upon her with a lascivious eye.[362]

At first her heavenly guides merely told her to conduct herself well and to frequent the church, but as she grew to understand the desperate condition of the monarchy and to share the fierce passions of the time, it was natural that these purely moral instructions should change into commands to bear from God the message of deliverance to the despairing people. In her ecstasies she felt herself to be the chosen instrument, and at length her Voices, as she habitually called them, urged her several times a week to hasten to France and to raise the siege of Orleans. To her parents she feared to reveal her mission; some unguarded revelation they must have had, for, two years before her departure, her father, Jacques Darc, had dreams of her going off with the soldiers, and he told her brothers that if he thought that his dreams would come true he wished they would drown her, or he would do it himself. Thenceforth she was closely watched, but the urgency of her celestial counsellors grew into reproaches for her tardiness, and further delay was unendurable. Obtaining permission to visit her uncle, Denis Laxart, she persuaded him to communicate her secret to Robert de Baudricourt, who held for the king the neighboring castle of Vaucouleurs. Her Voices had predicted that she would be twice repulsed and would succeed the third time. It so turned out. The good knight, who at first contemptuously advised her uncle to box her ears, at length was persuaded to ask the king’s permission to send the girl to him. She must have acquired a reputation of inspiration, for while awaiting the response the Duke of Lorraine, who was sick, sent for her and she told him that if he wished a cure he must first reconcile himself with his wife. On the royal permission being accorded, de Baudricourt gave to her a man’s dress and a sword, with a slender escort of a knight and four men, and washed his hands of the affair.[363]

The little party started, February 13, 1429, on their perilous ride of a hundred and fifty leagues, in the depth of winter, through the enemy’s country. That they should accomplish it without misadventure in eleven days was in itself regarded as a miracle, and as manifesting the favor of God. On February 24 they reached Chinon, where Charles held his court, only to encounter new obstacles. It is true that some persons of sense, as we are told, recognized in her the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecy, “Descendet virgo dorsum sagittarii et flores virgineos obscurabit;” others found her foretold by the Sibyl and by the Venerable Bede; others asked her whether there was not in her land a forest known as the Bois Chênu, for there was an ancient prediction that from the Bois Chênu there would come a wonder-working maiden—and they were delighted on learning that it lay but a league from her father’s house. Those, however, who relied on worldly wisdom shook their heads and pronounced her mission an absurdity—in fact, it was charitable to regard her as insane. It shows, indeed, to what depth of despair the royal cause had fallen, that her pretensions were regarded as of sufficient importance to warrant investigation. Long were the debates. Prelates and doctors of theology, jurists and statesmen examined her for a month, and one by one they were won over by her simple earnestness, her evident conviction, and the intelligence of her replies. This was not enough, however. In Poitiers sat Charles’s Parlement and a University composed of such schoolmen as had abandoned the anglicized University of Paris. Thither was Joan sent, and for three weeks more she was tormented with an endless repetition of questioning. Meanwhile her antecedents were carefully investigated, with a result in every way confirming her good repute and truthfulness. Charles was advised to ask of her a sign by which to prove that she came from God, but this she refused, saying that it was the divine command that she should give it before Orleans, and nowhere else. Finally, the official conclusion, cautiously expressed, was that in view of her honest life and conversation, and her promising a sign before Orleans, the king should not prevent her from going there, but should convey her there in safety; for to reject her without the appearance of evil would be to rebuff the Holy Ghost, and to render himself unworthy the grace and aid of God.[364]

Two months had been wasted in these preliminaries, and it was the end of April before the determination was reached. A convoy was in preparation to throw provisions into the town, and it was resolved that Joan should accompany it. Under instructions from her Voices she had a standard prepared, representing on a white field Christ holding the world, with an angel on each side—a standard which was ever in the front of battle, which was regarded as the surest guarantee of success, and which in the end was gravely investigated as a work of sorcery. She had assigned to her a troop or guard, but does not seem to have been intrusted with any command, yet she assumed that she was taking the field as the representative of God, and must first give the enemy due notice of defiance. Accordingly, on April 18, she addressed four letters, one to Henry VI. and the others to the Regent Bedford, the captains before Orleans, and the English soldiers there, in which she demanded the surrender of the keys of all the cities held in France; she announced herself ready to make peace if they will abandon the land and make compensation for the damages inflicted, otherwise she is commissioned by God, and will drive them out with a shock of arms such as had not been seen in France for a thousand years. It is scarce to be wondered that these uncourtly epistles excited no little astonishment in the English camp. Rumors of her coming had spread; she was denounced as a sorceress, and all who placed faith in her as heretics. Talbot declared that he would burn her if she was captured, and the heralds who brought her letters were only saved from a similar fate by a determined threat of reprisals on the part of Dunois, then in command at Orleans.[365]

Some ten days later the convoy started under command of Gilles de Rais and the Maréchal de Sainte-Sevère. Joan had promised that it should meet with no opposition, and faith in her was greatly enhanced when her words proved true. Although it passed within one or two bow-shots of the English siege-works, and though there was considerable delay in ferrying the cattle and provisions across the Loire into the city, not an attempt at interference was made. The same occurred with a second convoy which reached Orleans May 4, to the surprise of the French and the disgust of the Parisians, who watched the affair from a distance, and were unable to understand the paralysis which seemed to have fallen on the English arms. Joan had impatiently awaited these last reinforcements, and urged immediate offensive measures against the besiegers. Without consulting her, on the same day an assault was made on one of the English works on the other side of the Loire. Her legend relates that she started up from slumber exclaiming that her people were being slaughtered, and, scarcely waiting for her armor to be adjusted, sprang on her horse and galloped to the gate leading to the scene of action. The attack had miscarried, but after her arrival on the scene not an Englishman could wound a Frenchman, and the bastille was carried. Hot fighting occurred on the following days. On the 6th she was wounded in the foot by a caltrop, and on the 7th in the shoulder by an arrow, but in spite of desperate resistance all the English works on the farther bank of the Loire were taken, and their garrisons slain or captured. The English loss was estimated at from six thousand to eight thousand men, while that of the French was not over one hundred. On the 8th the English abandoned the siege, marching off in such haste that they left behind them their sick and wounded, their artillery and magazines. The French, flushed with victory, were eager to attack them, but Joan forbade it—“Let them go; it is not the will of Messire that they should be fought to-day; you will have them another time”—and by this time her moral ascendency was such that she was obeyed. So marvellous was the change in the spirit of the opposing forces, that it was a common remark that before her coming two hundred English would rout five hundred Frenchmen, but that afterwards two hundred French would chase four hundred English. Even the unfriendly Monstrelet admits that after the raising of the siege of Orleans there was no captain who so filled the mouths of men as she, though she was accompanied by knights so renowned as Dunois, La Hire, and Pothon de Xaintrailles. The Regent Bedford, in writing to the English council, could only describe it as a terrible blow from the divine hand, especially “caused of unleyefulle doubte that thei hadde of a Desciple and Lyme of the Feende called the Pucelle that used fals Enchauntements and Sorcerie.” Not only, he says, were the English forces diminished in number and broken in spirit, but the enemy was encouraged to make great levies of troops.[366]

In the chronic exhaustion of the royal treasury it was not easy for Charles to take full advantage of this unexpected success, but the spirit of the nation was aroused and a force could be kept spasmodically in the field. D’Alençon was sent with troops to clear the Loire valley of the enemy, and took Joan with him. Suffolk had fortified himself in Jargeau, but the place was carried by assault and he was captured with all his men who were not slain. Then want of money caused a return to Tours, where Joan earnestly urged Charles to go to Reims for his coronation: she had always claimed that her mission was to deliver Orleans and to crown the king; that her time was short and that the counsel of her Voices must not be disregarded, but prudence prevailed, and it was felt that the English power in the central provinces must first be crushed. A second expedition was organized. Beaugency was besieged and taken, and on June 18 the battle of Patay gave some slight amends for Agincourt and Verneuil. After feeble resistance the English fled. Twenty-five hundred of them were left upon the field, and large numbers were captured, including Talbot, Scales, and others of note. Thus in little more than six weeks all the leading English captains were slain or in captivity, except Fastolf, whose flight from Patay Bedford avenged by tearing from him the Order of the Garter. Their troops were dispersed and dispirited, their prestige was gone. It was no wonder that in all this one side recognized the hand of God and the other that of the devil. Even the Norman chronicler, P. Cochon, says that the English would have abandoned France if the regent would have allowed it, and that they were so dispirited that one Frenchman would chase three of them.[367]

A letter written from the court of Charles VII. to the Duke of Milan three days after the triumph of Patay, recounting the marvels of the previous weeks, shows how Joan was regarded and how rapidly her legend was growing. At her birth the villagers of Domremy were joyously excited, they knew not why, and the cocks for two hours flapped their wings and uttered a song wholly different from their ordinary crowing. Her visions were described in the most exaggerated terms, as well as her personal prowess and endurance. The relief of Orleans, the capture of Jargeau, Mehun-sur-Loire, and Beaugency, and the crowning mercy of Patay were all attributed to her: hers was the initiative, the leadership, and the success; no one else is alluded to. We are told, moreover, that she was already predicting the deliverance of Charles of Orleans, a prisoner in England for fifteen years, and had sent a notice to the English to surrender him.[368]

It could no longer be doubted that Joan was under the direct inspiration of God, and when at Gien, on June 25, there was a consultation as to the next movement, though Charles’s councillors advised him to reduce La Charité and clear the Orleannais and Berri of the enemy, it is no wonder that he yielded to Joan’s urgency and gave his assent to a march to Reims. The enterprise seemed a desperate one, for it lay through a hostile country with strong cities along the road, and the royal resources were inadequate to equipping and provisioning an army or providing it with siege-trains. But enthusiasm was rising to fever heat, and human prudence was distrust of God. Volunteers came pouring in as soon as the king’s intentions were noised abroad, and gentlemen too poor to arm and mount themselves were content to serve as simple archers and retainers. La Trémouille, the royal favorite, thinking his own position endangered, caused the services of multitudes to be rejected, but for which, it was said, an army sufficient to drive the English from France could readily have been collected. On went the ill-conditioned forces. Auxerre, though not garrisoned, refused to open its gates, but gave some provisions, and in spite of Joan’s desire to take it by assault the king went forward, induced, it was said, by La Trémouille, who had received from the town a bribe of two thousand livres. At Troyes there was a strong English and Burgundian garrison; it could not be left behind, and the army encamped before it for five or six days, with no artillery to breach its walls. There was neither money nor victual, and the only subsistence was ears of corn and beans plucked in the fields. The situation was discouraging, and a council of war under the impulse of the Chancellor Renaud de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, advised retreat. Joan was sent for and declared that within two days the town would surrender. She was given the time she asked, and at once proceeded to gather material to fill the trenches, and to mount some small culverins. A panic seized the inhabitants and they demanded to surrender; the garrison was allowed to march out, and the city returned to its allegiance.[369]

When Joan entered the town she was met by a Frère Richard, whom the people had sent to examine her and report what she was. The worthy friar, doubtful whether she was of heaven or hell, approached her cautiously, sprinkling holy water and making the sign of the cross, till she smiled and told him to come boldly on, as she was not going to fly away. This Frère Richard was a noted Franciscan preacher who had recently returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and in April had made the deepest impression on Paris with his eloquence. From April 16th to the 26th he had preached daily to audiences of five and six thousand souls, and had excited such a tempest of emotion that on one day a hundred bonfires were built in the streets into which men threw their cards and dice and tables, and women their ornaments and frippery. Over this man Joan obtained so complete a mastery that he devoted himself to her and followed her in her campaigns, using his eloquence to convert the people, not from their sins, but from their disloyalty to Charles. When the good Parisians heard of this they resumed their cards and dice to spite him. Even a tin medal with the name of Jesus which he had given them to wear was cast aside for the red cross of Burgundy. In the passion of the hour on both sides religion was but the handmaid of partisanship.[370]

After this the march to Reims was a triumphant progress. Chalons-sur-Marne sent half a day’s journey in advance to submit and took the oath of allegiance. At Septsaux the garrison fled and the people welcomed their king, while the Dukes of Lorraine and Bar came to join him with a heavy force. Reims was held for Burgundy by the Seigneur de Saveuse, one of the doughtiest warriors of the day, but the citizens were so frightened by the coming of the Pucelle, whose reported wonders had impressed their imaginations, that they declared for Charles, and Saveuse was obliged to fly. Charles entered the town on July 16, and was joyfully received. The next day, Sunday, July 17, he was crowned King of France. During the ceremony Joan stood by the altar with the standard: her judges on her trial seemed to imagine that she held it there for some occult influence which it was supposed to exercise, and inquired curiously as to her motive; when she answered simply, “It had been in the strife, it had a right to be in the honor.”[371]

Joan might well claim that her mission was accomplished. In little more than three months she had made the intending fugitive of Chinon a conquering king, to whom his flatterers gave the title of the Victorious. A few months more of such success would establish him firmly on the throne of a reunited France, and no one could doubt that success would grow more rapid if only with its own momentum. Negotiations were on foot with the Duke of Burgundy, which were expected to result in detaching him from the English cause. Joan had written to him some weeks earlier asking him to be present at the coronation, and on the day of the ceremony she addressed him another letter, summoning and entreating him to return to his allegiance. In a few days Beauvais, Senlis, Laon, Soissons, Château-Thierry, Provins, Compiègne, and other places acknowledged Charles as king and received his garrisons. There was universal exultation and a contagious delirium of returning loyalty. As he marched the peasantry would gather with tears in their eyes to bless him, and thank God that peace was at hand. All men admitted that this was Joan’s work. Christine de Pisan, in a poem written about this time, compares her to Esther, Judith, Deborah, Gideon, and Joshua, and even Moses is not her superior. A litany of the period contains a prayer recognizing that God had delivered France by her hand. A Burgundian chronicler tells us that the belief was general among the French soldiery that she was an envoy of God who could expel the English; even after the enthusiasm of the time had passed away Thomassin, who wrote officially in a work addressed to Louis XI., does not hesitate to say that of all the signs of love manifested by God to France, there has not been one so great or so marvellous as this Pucelle—to her was due the restoration of the kingdom, which was so low that it would have reached its end but for her coming. That she was regarded as an oracle of God on other subjects is seen in the application to her by the Comte d’Armagnac to tell him which of the three popes to believe in; and her acceptance of the position is shown by her answer, that when she is relieved from the pressure of the war she will resolve his doubts by the counsel of the King of all the world. If on the one hand her dizzy elevation turned her head to the extent of addressing threatening letters to the Hussites, on the other she never lost her kindly sympathy with the poor and humble; she protected them as far as she could from the horrors of war, comforted and supported them, and their grateful veneration shown in kissing her hands and feet and garments was made a crime to her by her pitiless judges.[372]

With all this it does not seem that Joan had any definite rank or command in the royal armies. Christine de Pisan, it is true, speaks of her as being the recognized chief—