JOAN OF ARC.* THE history of Joan of Arc has
been treated of more or less well in a number of French books ; but there was room in England for a book like Lord Ronald Gower's, which embodies the last results of French research in a pleasant and fairly critical narrative. Lord Ronald's strong point is that he has told the story of the life simply and well. Perhaps he might have given us a little more in the way of elucidation. Even those who accept the theory of Joan's high character as firmly as Lord Ronald, find much in her life that is difficult to explain ; and in proportion as she is admired, does it become hard to understand why she was so shamefully deserted by the French of her own side, and so barbarously handled by the French of the English and Burgundian factions.
The modern reconstructors of history arc never satisfied with an obscure origin for their heroes. It is now assumed, and Lord Ronald accepts the theory, that Joan of Arc's father was a landowner of some importance, with an income of £200 a year, and holding the highest offices below that of mayor in the village. The family may have had alternations of fortune ; but the patent ennobling them hints that they were in the condition of serfs ; and the neighbours who were called upon to give evidence in the process of rehabilitation habitually describe the parents as "labourers." So, again, with Joan herself, She did not keep pigs, as Pope Pius II.— otherwise an intelligent critic—was informed ; nor was she maid-of-all-wok at an inn, as the Burgundian 3fonstrelet says ; but neither was she brought up like the daughter of a wealthy yeoman, as Lorsl Ronald rather implies. Men and women who had workea with her testified that she did all kinds of farm-work, from ploughing to shepherding, and * .700/11 Of Arc, By Lord Ronald Gower. London : John 0. Nimmo. when she was not wanted in the fields, sat at home and spun and sewed. What all agree upon is that she was quiet and re- served, disinclined to join in the village sports, and eminently pious. Modern science would partly derive her tendency to see visions from conditions of her health which have acci- dentally come down to us ; but the best explanation is probably found in the circumstances of the times. To a believer of those days, the intervention of the saints in a. kingdom's need, and their apparition to counsel or direct, were events in the highest degree possible and likely. As a. Bishop of the age put it in an argument Lord Ronald has reproduced, and which can hardly be bettered, it is a great test of Joan's sincerity that she obeyed the voices, not only when they urged her on to certain victory, but when they held out the promise of defeat, captivity, and death. We may therefore dismiss, on this ground alone, the theory of the Burgundian, Wavrin, that she was a political tool, trained by politicians, and worked by them, till they thought the time had come that she might safely be discarded. Indeed, if we knew less than we do of Joan's high character, this theory would be untenable; for the evidence is conclusive that, while a few blunt soldiers, like Dunois and the Duke of Alencon, regarded Joan with something like the modern sentiment of veneration, and supported her loyally, politicians and political soldiers hated her cordially, as an outsider, who eclipsed their influence, and who could not be worked into their combinations.
The first difficulty, however, is to understand why there was a party at the French Court which espoused Joan's cause in the beginning. True Royalists were scarcely to be found. All were justified in disbelieving in Charles ; all knew that they might make good terms with Burgundy or England ; and some probably thought that their position as feudal nobles would be strongest, if France were dismembered. The small party, headed by the Princess Dowager, who were for fighting to lie bitter end, would be inclined to try what Joan could do for them, but without much faith in her. There was, however, one reason that may well have weighed with statesmen of all opinions. In the French wars of Edward III.'s time, the signal incompetence of the French nobles had provoked a Jacquerie, the peasants turning with one accord to mas- sacre and plunder, as they learned to despise the soldierly qualities of their military caste. The danger of this recur- ring must have been ever present to French statesmen of those times; and it may well have seemed politic to stimulate a popular movement, which, if it was successful, saved the Monarchy, and if it failed, left the peasantry cowed and spiritless. This accounts fairly well for the recognition ac- corded to Joan by a Court in which very few believed in her. It helps to explain also why Joan met with so little grati- tude when she succeeded beyond all expectation. Soldiers in all times have been supremely jealous of volunteers ; but the medireval captain, being also a baron, felt that the viotories of a peasant-girl, who trusted her own insight and set aside the advice of officers, were bound to have a had in- fluence on the popular imagination. The Duke of Aleneon said of her twenty years later, that she acted with as much know- ledge and capacity as if she had been twenty or thirty years trained in the art of war. Besides the feeling of caste and the professional feeling, there would also be the jealousy of success, which is one of the most disastrous of French charac- teristics. The history of wars waged by Napoleon's Generals, whenever they had to depend upon one another, is one of constant failures, arising from their envy of one another,— St. Cyr misleading his superiors, Bernadotte refusing to assist Augereau, Ney marching away from Sault, who in tarn had left Victor to be repulsed. Joan would have been hated as a man ; as a woman, eclipsing men, she was insufferable.
Lord Ronald is hardly just to the French Churchmen on the English side, when he assumes that in their condemna- tion of Joan they were influenced only by the desire to curry favour, or by political partisanship. It is probable that most ecclesiastics of the day regarded Joan's supernatural preten- sions with suspicion, and believed that the devil was her real ally. Macaulay has, indeed, praised the sagacity with which the Church of Rome takes irregular enthusiasts into its ser- vice; but it does so after probation, and on condition that they renounce their own personal claims. Joan, devout as she was, declined to let any priest interfere or explain away her visions, and must have appeared to many as if she set up her divine mission against Church authority. Her resolute dis- belief in charms and her rejection of any pretence to super- natural power were in her favour; but her assumption of male dress was in flagrant violation of the canons and of Holy Writ.
As long as she was successful, the clergy of her own side gave her at most a doubtful allegiance ; when she failed, they fell from her, and the Bishop of Chartres probably spoke the feeling of all when he said publicly that her capture at Rheims was the judgment of God on her pride and fondness for gay apparel. Where this was the verdict of her own side, the Burgandians and English were naturally even more hos- tile. To them, the young girl who had rescued France from their best soldiers was a witch in league with the devil. The explanation was not only accepted at the time by men flushed with party excitement ; it sank so deep into the popular mind, that when, in 1450, Charles VII. applied to the Pope of the day for a trial to clear Joan's memory, he granted it, not from any tardy compunction or gratitude, but simply because his own title was weakened by the belief that he had received the crown from a witch.
When, however, this is admitted, the deep disgrace of the trial, though it becomes explicable, is hardly extenuated. Between Burgundians who sold the Maid of Orleans into certain death, Frenchmen who tried and condemned her, Englishmen who influenced the judges by bribes or threats, and the King of France who made no effort to save her, it is difficult to apportion the meed of infamy; but Charles VII, seems, on the whole, to deserve it most entirely. '' There does not exist in the documents of the time," says Lord Ronald Gower, "a trace of any negotiation, of the smallest offer, made to obtain her exchange by prisoners or by ransom, or of any wish to effect her release." Probably no ransom or exchange would have been accepted, but the threat of reprisals would certainly have secured the captive from bodily harm. The fact that the last days of her captivity were the worst, seems to show that her enemies were emboldened by the apathy of her friends. It is scarcely too much to say that no martyr—even in the ages when it became a fine art to suffer nobly—showed more straightforwardness in answers or more magnificent constancy than this French peasant-girl. Pressed by Church authority, and beset by the fear of personal outrage, she faltered for a little space, but recanted her submission again when she was admonished by the voices. To modern appre- hension she seems to have been thoroughly orthodox in all matters of faith as measured by the doctrine of those times. The Church of Rome has never denied the possibility of super- natural apparitions; and the offences of having her hair cut short and of wearing man's dress—for which there was sufficient reason—were, at most, matters for simple and not very rigid discipline. The difficulty was that the judges could not accept the voices without allowing Joan's cause to be hallowed. If St. Michael had taught her to understand "the great sorrow that was in the Kingdom of France," if St. Catherine and St. Margaret counselled her in her most important acts, then it fol- lowed that all who satin judgment on her were fighting against the saints. It is, perhaps, a little wonderful that the inquirers into supernatural intervention and miracles have rarely used Joan of Arc's history as a treasure-house of argument. Vol- taire sneered at the Miracle of the Holy Thorn, on the ground that it was not likely that God, who had constantly left the universal Church in time of need without a miracle, would work one in behalf of a small sect. Poor as this argument is, it could not be used against Joan of Arc. Her mission was to save what was then, on the whole, the first country in Christendom, from anarchy and barbarism. It is impossible to doubt that she was guided throughout the heroic years of her life, and down to its last day, by voices which she believed to come from heaven. The event seems habitually to have corresponded with their prediction, and she never lost faith in them. Her own life was adequate to any theory we may form of inspiration. Finally, the case for her and that against her were sifted with the utmost care in the Court that condemned her, and in the Court that pronounced her con- demnation unjust.
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