Joan of Arc Read online

  JOAN OF ARC

  JOAN OF ARC

  By Herself and Her Witnesses

  RÉGINE PERNOUD

  Translated from the French by Edward Hyams

  1994 edition with a new cover published by

  SCARBOROUGH HOUSE

  Lanham, MD 20706

  A SCARBOROUGH BOOK REISSUE 1982

  First Stein and Day Paperback edition 1969

  First published in the United States of America by

  STEIN AND DAY/ Publishers, 1966

  This translation copyright © Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd., 1964

  First published in the French language in 1962 as

  Jeanne d’Arc par elle-même et par ses témoins

  Copyright © 1962 by Editions du Seuil

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Pernoud, Régine, 1909-

  Joan of Arc by herself and her witnesses.

  “A Scarborough book.”

  Translation of: Jeanne d’Arc par elle-même et par ses témoins.

  Includes index.

  1. Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431. 2. Christian saints—France—Biography. I. Title.

  DC 103.P3783 1982 944′.026′0924 [B] 82-19312

  ISBN 13: 978-0-812-81260-2

  To the Reverend Daniel S. Rankin

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  The usual practice in translation is to try to put the work in question into good English while retaining as much as possible of the style and feel of the original. This may entail some departure from the most literal translation of the foreign language. I have not felt entitled to do much in that way with the fifteenth-century documents which Mlle. Pernoud has here put together to compose an absorbing narrative. Some of her witnesses spoke or wrote smoothly enough; in others there is an awkwardness, often an expression of personality or feeling, which it was clearly my duty to retain. I offer this brief explanation in order that not all the oddities of, for example, sentence construction be attributed by indignant critics and readers to me.

  E.H.

  INTRODUCTION

  “Tuesday, the tenth day of May, it was reported and publicly said in Paris that on the Sunday last the Dauphin’s people in great number had, after several and sustained assaults in arms, entered into the fortress held by William Glasdale and other English captains and men-at-arms of the King’s, with the sortie tower of the Orleans bridge across the Loire, and that on this day the other captains and men-at-arms laying siege (to Orleans) and holding the forts across the river from Orleans had departed from the said forts and raised the siege to go to the comfort of the said Glasdale and his companions and to combat the enemies who had in their company a Maid alone bearing a banner in the midst of the said enemies, if it be as they say.”

  This account is entered in one of the registers of the Parliament of Paris, which even now comprise one of the most impressive collections to be found in the National Archives (more than twelve thousand parchment registers forming Series X.1A, the earliest of which go back to the thirteenth century). On the date when it was written, Tuesday, May 10, 1429, the clerk to the Parliament was Clement de Fauquembergue, an exact and conscientious scribe, who had acquired the habit of setting down the principal news of the day as well as the minutes of trials, pleas and other judicial business which it was his job to record; so much is this the case that the series of registers kept by him forms a sort of official journal for his time.

  In the margin of his register, beside the above note, the clerk has drawn with his pen a little sketch; no more importance should be attributed to it than to the doodles with which we decorate the margins of our telephone books while waiting for a number; he had not seen Joan and knew no more about her than what he has told us; but this little drawing has nevertheless often had the honour of being reproduced in our time; and it is worthy of it, for it is the only effigy of the heroine, drawn during her lifetime, that we possess.

  The account in question is, for all its brevity, rich in meaning. Those whom Clement de Fauquembergue refers to as “the enemies” are the French. And if he, albeit clerk to the Parliament of Paris, calls them so, it is because at the time Paris had been for ten years in the hands of the occupying power, England. A brief reminder of the principal dates will be in place here: 1415, Agincourt—the French army wiped out, with seven thousand killed as against five hundred English, and 1,500 prisoners, including an illustrious member of the French royal family, Charles, Duke of Orleans. 1418, the English enter Paris with the complicity of the Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless; the King, Charles VI, is mad, and the Queen, the all too celebrated Isabeau of Bavaria, plotting with the enemy. Henry V of Lancaster, King of England, figures not only as victor but almost as God-sent, to chastise the French for the evil vices which reign in their midst. Speaking of the French when he visited Charles of Orleans imprisoned in the Tower of London, Henry was to say “God wished to punish them”. And indeed, and especially since 1392 when the King’s intermittent madness first became manifest and he handed the kingdom over to various members of his family, France’s rulers had shown only the worst possible kind of selfishness, taking advantage of the King’s condition to satisfy their personal ambitions and the rivalries of hatred which so soon arose among them.

  The future of the dynasty was but ill-ensured by a family showing clear symptoms of degeneracy: three dauphins, Charles, Louis and Jean, had died in succession between 1401 and 1417. Of Isabeau’s six sons, the dauphin referred to by Fauquembergue, the future Charles VII, born 1403, was to be the sole survivor. It was the period when, in a phrase current at the time, “there is great pity in the Kingdom of France”, given over to pillage, held to ransom by armed adventurers, ravaged by wars and by the epidemics which had followed one upon another for almost a century—since the Black Death in 1348.

  We come then to the Treaty of Troyes, May 21, 1420, which disinherited the Dauphin Charles in favour of England’s King, Henry V. On June 2nd following, Henry married a daughter of Charles VI and Isabeau, Catherine, whose sister Michelle was thereafter married to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Under their aegis there was established in France the so-called Double Monarchy—France and England united under the English crown; henceforth the lilies of France were quartered with the leopards of England in the royal arms.

  But only two years later, on August 31, 1422, Henry died suddenly in the pride of youth and victory. A few weeks later, on October 21, Charles VI, an old man at fifty-three, followed him into the grave. These deaths left the ten-month-old heir, Henry VI, who had been born to Henry V and Catherine, confronting the prince still known as the Dauphin—subsequently Charles VII. But their respective strengths were not equally balanced; under the regency of the infant King’s uncle, John, Duke of Bedford, England’s dominion was firmly established in the Ile-de-France and in Normandy. If the territory controlled by the English be joined to that of their ally, the Duke of Burgundy, then all the north and east of France was Bedford’s, whereas Charles was derisively called “The King of Bourges”. Charles had dug himself in south of the Loire, in country still loyal to him; but elsewhere only a handful of places still held out against Anglo-Burgundian pressure: Mont St. Michel, which, in the midst of its waters, held the enemy at bay for forty years; the town of Tournai; the little city of Vaucouleurs; and, above all, Orleans, which commanded the principal bridge over the Loire.

  It was, indeed, because Orleans represented, as it were, the boulevard of the invasion that the English were to attach so much importance to taking it. They were to send one of the most famous of their captains, Thomas Montague, Earl of Salisbury, to besiege the town (October 12, 1428), following a campaign during which, ha
ving made sure of their grip on Normandy and la Beauce, they proposed to lay hold of those parts beyond the Loire where they could hunt down the Dauphin Charles. Orleans was the indispensable crossing-place; the taking of Orleans would, therefore, be decisive. All this was happening against a background which is only too easy for those of us who lived through 1940–45 to understand: a France divided, rent in two, in which some had taken the side of the occupying power—they were called Burgundians—and others against—the Armagnacs. The latter were so called after Bernard d’Armagnac, Charles of Orleans’s father-in-law, who had, for a time, headed the resistance; the nickname also makes manifest the loyalty of Southern France to the lawful dynasty.

  The siege of Orleans was maintained but not pressed by a victorious invader who felt quite sure of himself. The town, reduced to starvation, had sent delegates to treat with the Duke of Burgundy, when the news broke like a peal of thunder: Orleans had been delivered. On Sunday, May 8, 1429, the English had raised the siege. How had this come about? Everyone was attributing the victory to the “Maid bearing a banner” mentioned by the clerk Clement de Fauquembergue. Who was she? Whence came she? What had been her life and exploits?

  To these questions, asked by her contemporaries as well as by us and to whom true answers were even more important, let the historic documents themselves make answer.

  CONTENTS

  Translator’s Note

  Introduction

  1. Origins and Childhood

  2. Vocation and Departure

  3. Joan Before the Dauphin

  4. Orleans

  5. The Road to Rheims

  6. From Rheims to Compiègne

  7. The Trial of Condemnation

  8. Death

  9. Rehabilitation

  Index

  LIST OF PLATES

  Following Page 128

  1.

  Bronze statuette of Joan on horseback

  1a.

  Bust of Charles VII from his tomb

  1b.

  Henry VI

  2.

  Jean, Count of Dunois

  3a.

  The oldest miniature of Joan

  3b.

  A late miniature of Joan

  4.

  Page of the official history of the siege of Orleans

  5.

  A page from Bréhal’s inquiry into Joan’s trial

  6.

  A fifteenth-century miniature of Joan

  7.

  A painting of Joan commissioned by the aldermen of Orleans

  8a

  and b. Two frontispieces from Jean Hordal’s dissertation on Joan

  9.

  The Bull of Canonization, 1920

  10.

  Joan’s last letter to the people of Rheims

  11.

  Two folios from a letter by the Duke of Bedford

  12.

  A miniature of Joan’s mother, Isabelle Romée

  13.

  Joan is brought to the Dauphin

  14.

  Joan in the presence of the Dauphin at Chinon

  15.

  Siege warfare

  16.

  Joan drives out the camp followers

  17.

  The siege of Orleans

  18.

  The siege of Dreux

  19.

  Charles VII receiving his crown from Archbishop Regnault

  20.

  Joan directing her troops

  21.

  Joan is captured

  22.

  Joan’s trial

  JOAN OF ARC

  1

  ORIGINS AND CHILDHOOD

  Question: Swear to tell the truth concerning what will be asked you touching the faith and what you shall learn.

  JOAN: Of my father, of my mother, and of all that I have done since I arrived in France, I will willingly swear. . . .

  Joan, on her knees and with both hands on the book, a missal, swears that she will speak the truth about all that is asked of her.

  Question: What are your names and surnames (surnoms)?

  JOAN: In my town they called me Jeannette, and since I came to France I have been called Joan. As for my surname, I know of none.

  Question: Where were you born?

  JOAN: I was born in the town of Domremy which makes one with Greux. It is in the place of Greux that the principal church is.

  Question: The names of your father and mother?

  JOAN: My father was called Jacques d’Arc and my mother Isabelle.

  Question: Where were you baptised?

  JOAN: In the church of Domremy.

  Question: Who were your godfathers and godmothers?

  JOAN: One of my godmothers was called Agnes, another Jeanne, another Sibille; one of my godfathers was called Jean Lingue, another Jean Barre; I had many other godfathers and godmothers, as I have heard my mother say.

  Question: Who was the priest who baptised you?

  JOAN: Master Jean Minet, to the best of my belief.

  Question: Is he still alive?

  JOAN: Yes, I think so.

  Question: How old are you?

  JOAN: As far as I know, about nineteen years old. And it was from my mother that I learnt Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Credo. Nobody taught me my belief, if not my mother. (C38–41)

  Question: Did you learn any trade in your youth?

  JOAN: Yes, to sew linen cloths and to spin; for spinning and sewing let me alone against any woman in Rouen. . . . When I was in my father’s house, I busied myself with the housework.

  Question: Did you confess your sins every year?

  JOAN: Yes, and to my parish priest*; and when he was unable I confessed to some other priest with his permission. Once or twice or thrice, as I think it was, I confessed to begging friars; that was in the town of Neufchâteau. And I received the sacrament of the Eucharist at the feast of Easter.

  Question: Did you receive this sacrament of the Eucharist at feasts other than Easter?

  JOAN: Pass over that. (C46)

  The evidence here given by Joan herself was confirmed by the folk of Domremy who had known her from her infancy or childhood.

  Jean Moreau, farmer of Greux, seventy years of age or thereabouts: “Jeannette, whom this concerns, was born at Domremy and baptised in the Church of Saint-Remy, a parish of that place. Her father was called Jacques d’Arc and her mother Isabelette, farmers, during their lifetime, at Domremy. From what I saw and knew, they were faithful Catholics and hard workers, of good repute and decent conversation, according to their condition; for several times I spoke with them. I was myself one of Jeanne’s godfathers; she had for godmothers the wife of Etienne Royer, and Beatrice, widow of Estellin dwelling in the town of Domremy, and Jeannette, wife of Tiercelin de Viteau, dwelling in the town of Neufchâteau. Jeannette, in earliest youth, was well and properly brought up in the faith and good conduct and so much so that nearly all the inhabitants of Domremy loved her. And Jeannette knew her belief, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, as little girls of her age know it.

  “Jeannette was of seemly converse so far as a girl of her condition can be, for her parents were not very rich. And in her youth and until the time when she left her father’s house, she went to the fields to plough and sometimes guarded the animals in the fields, and did women’s work, spinning and the rest. Jeannette would go often and of her own will to the church and to the hermitage of Notre Dame de Bermont near to the town of Domremy, when her parents thought that she was ploughing or working elsewhere in the fields. When she heard the bell toll for Mass while she was out in the fields, she came away to the town and to church to hear the Mass, as I have seen her do. I have seen her confess at Paschal (Easter) time and at the other solemn feasts; she confessed to Messire Guillaume Front, at that time priest of the parish church of St. Remy de Domremy.” (R.67–68)

  Simonin Musnier, farm-worker, about forty-four, a childhood playmate: “I was brought up with Joan the Maid next door to her father’s house. I know that she was goo
d, simple, pious, fearing God and his saints; she went often and of her own will to church and to sacred places, caring for the sick and giving alms to the poor; this I saw myself, for when I was a child I myself was sick and Joan came to comfort me. . . .” (R.76)

  Mengette or Marguerite, wife of Jean Joyart, forty-six or thereabouts, her friend: “My father’s house was almost adjoining Joan’s and I knew Joan the Maid, for often I span thread in her company and with her did other house tasks, day and night; she was brought up in the Christian religion and full of good ways,* as it seemed. She went of her own will and often to church and gave alms out of her father’s property (biens) and was so good, simple and pious that I and the other young girls would tell her that she was too pious. She worked with a will and busied herself with a multitude of tasks; she span, did the house work, worked at the harvest and sometimes, when the time came, took her turn to guard the animals as she span. She went readily to confession; I often saw her on her knees to the priest of the town.” (R.78)

  Hauviette, wife of Gerard de Sionne, about forty-five years old: “From my childhood I knew Joan the Maid who was born at Domremy to Jacques d’Arc and Isabelette, husband and wife, honest and decent farmers and true Catholics of good repute. I know this because I was often in company with Joan, and being her friend I went to her father’s house. I do not, however, remember her godmothers and godfathers, unless it be by what I heard said, for Joan was older than me by three or four years, or so it was said.

  “Joan was a good, simple and sweet-natured girl, she went often and of her own will to church and the sacred places and often she was ashamed because of people remarking how she went so devoutly to church. I have heard the priest who was there in her time say that she came often to confession. Joan busied herself like any other girl; she did the housework and span and sometimes—I have seen her—she kept her father’s flocks.” (R.77)

  Colin, son of Jean Colin of Greux, farmer, about fifty years old, her comrade: “Joan, from what I saw, was a good, simple, sweet-natured girl of good behaviour. She went readily to church, as I saw myself, for almost every Saturday afternoon Joan, with her sister and other women, went to the hermitage of Notre Dame de Bermont, bearing candles. She was very devout towards God and the Blessed Virgin, so much so that I myself, who was young then, and other young men, teased her. She worked with a will, watchful over feeding the animals, willingly caring for the animals of her father’s house, span, and did the housework. I have heard it said by Messire Guillaume Front, formerly the parish priest, that Joan was a good Catholic, that he had never met a better and had none better in his parish.” (R.75–76)