The Life of Joan of Arc Part 36

[Footnote 837: 9 March. _Journal du siege_, pp. 56, 57.]

[Footnote 838: _Journal du siege_, p. 64.]

In the beginning of March the besiegers saw approaching the Norman va.s.sals, summoned by the Regent. But they were only six hundred and twenty-nine lances all told, and they were only bound to serve for twenty-six days. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Scales, Pole, and Talbot, the English continued the investment works as best they could.[839] On the 10th of March, two and a half miles east of the city, they occupied without opposition the steep slope of Saint-Loup and began to erect a bastion there, which should command the upper river and the two roads from Gien and Pithiviers, at the point where they meet near the Burgundian gate.[840] On the 20th of March they completed the bastion named London, on the road to Mans. Between the 9th and 15th of April two new bastions were erected towards the west, Rouen nine hundred feet east of London, Paris nine hundred feet from Rouen. About the 20th they fortified Saint-Jean-le-Blanc across the Loire and established a watch to guard the crossing of the river.[841] This was but little in comparison with what remained to be done, and they were short of men; for they had less than three thousand round the town.

Wherefore they fell upon the peasants. Now that the season for tending the vines was drawing near, the country folk went forth into the fields thinking only of the land; but the English lay in wait for them, and when they had taken them prisoners, set them to work.[842]

[Footnote 839: Boucher de Molandon, _L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_, ch. ii. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 60, 107, 110, 112.]

[Footnote 840: _Journal du siege_, pp. 57, 58. Abbe Dubois, _Histoire du siege_, dissertation vi.]

[Footnote 841: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp. 265, 267. Morosini, vol.

iv, supplement xiii.]

[Footnote 842: _Journal du siege_, p. 58.]

In the opinion of those most skilled in the arts of war, these bastions were worthless. They were furnished with no stabling for horses. They could not be built near enough to render a.s.sistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. In short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the English reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. The Sire de Bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[843] In fact it was so easy to pa.s.s through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking cattle to the besieged. There entered into the town, on the 7th of March, six horses loaded with herrings; on the 15th, six horses with powder; on the 29th, cattle and victuals; on the 2nd of April, nine fat oxen and horses; on the 5th, one hundred and one pigs and six fat oxen; on the 9th, seventeen pigs, horses, sucking-pigs, and corn; on the 13th, coins with which to pay the garrison; on the 16th, cattle and victuals; on the 23rd, powder and victuals. And more than once the besieged had carried off, in the very faces of the English, victuals and ammunition destined for the besiegers and including casks of wine, game, horses, bows, forage, and even twenty-six head of large cattle.[844]

[Footnote 843: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, p. xxii; vol. ii, p. 44.]

[Footnote 844: _Journal du siege_, pp. 56, 62.]

The siege was costing the English dear,--forty thousand _livres tournois_ a month.[845] They were short of money; they were obliged to resort to the most irritating expedients. By a decree of the 3rd of March King Henry had recently ordered all his officers in Normandy to lend him one quarter of their pay.[846] In their huts of wood and earth, the men-at-arms, who had endured much from the cold, now began to suffer hunger.

[Footnote 845: Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 50, 58.]

[Footnote 846: Pierre Sureau's account in Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations, no. vi, pp. 45, 46.]

The wasted fields of La Beauce, of l'ile-de-France, and of Normandy could furnish them with no great store of sheep or oxen. Their food was bad, their drink worse. The vintage of 1427 had been bad, that of the following year was poor and weak--more like sour grapes than wine.[847] Now an old English author has written of the soldiers of his country:

"They want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves: Either they must be dieted like mules And have their provender tied to their mouths Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice."[848]

[Footnote 847: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 221, 222 _et seq._]

[Footnote 848: Shakespeare, _Henry VI_, part i, act i, scene ii.

According to M. G. Duval the first part of this play was adapted from one of Shakespeare's predecessors.]

A sudden humiliation still further weakened the English. Captain Poton de Saintrailles and the two magistrates, Guyon du Fosse and Jean de Saint-Avy, who had gone on an emba.s.sy to the Duke of Burgundy, returned to Orleans on the 17th of April. The Duke had granted their request and consented to take the town under his protection. But the Regent, to whom the offer had been made, would not have it thus.

He replied that he would be very sorry if after he had beaten the bush another should go off with the nestlings.[849] Therefore the offer was rejected. Nevertheless the emba.s.sy had been by no means useless, and it was something to have raised a new cause of quarrel between the Duke and the Regent. The amba.s.sadors returned accompanied by a Burgundian herald who blew his trumpet in the English camp, and, in the name of his master, commanded all combatants who owed allegiance to the Duke to raise the siege. Some hundreds of archers and men-at-arms, Burgundians, men of Picardy and of Champagne, departed forthwith.[850]

[Footnote 849: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 65.]

[Footnote 850: _Journal du siege_, pp. 69, 70. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 270. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 317 _et seq._ Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 19, 20, 21; vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 311. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 68 _et seq._ Boucher de Molandon, _L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 145.]

On the next day, at four o'clock in the morning, the citizens emboldened and deeming the opportunity a good one, attacked the camp of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils. They slew the watch and entered the camp, where they found piles of money, robes of martin, and a goodly store of weapons. Absorbed in pillage, they paid no heed to defending themselves and were surprised by the enemy, who in great force had hastened to the place. They fled pursued by the English who slew many.

On that day the town resounded with the lamentations of women weeping for a father, a husband, a brother, kinsmen.[851]

[Footnote 851: _Journal du siege_, p. 70.]

Within those walls, in a s.p.a.ce where there was room for not more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, forty thousand[852] were huddled together, one vast mult.i.tude agonised by all manner of suffering; depressed by domestic sorrow; racked with anxiety; maddened by constant danger and perpetual panic. Although the wars of those days were not so sanguinary as they became later, the sallies of the inhabitants of Orleans were the occasion of constant and considerable loss of life. Since the middle of March the English bullets had fallen more into the centre of the town; and they were not always harmless.

On the eve of Palm Sunday one stone, fired from a mortar, killed or wounded five persons; another, seven.[853] Many of the inhabitants, like the provost, Alain Du Bey, died of fatigue or of the infected air.[854]

[Footnote 852: Jollois, _Histoire du siege_, part vi, ch. i. Abbe Dubois, _Histoire du siege_, dissertation ix. Loiseleur, _Compte des depenses de Charles VII_, ch. v. Lottin, _Recherches historiques sur la ville d'Orleans_, vol. ii, p. 205. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 25, note 2.]

[Footnote 853: _Journal du siege_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 854: _Ibid._, p. 59.]

In the Christendom of those days all men were taught to believe that earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence are punishments for wrong-doing.

Charles, the Fair Duke of Orleans, good Christian that he was, held that great sorrows had come upon France as chastis.e.m.e.nt for her sins, to wit: swelling pride, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, l.u.s.t, and neglect of justice, which were rife in the realm; and in a ballad he discoursed of the evil and its remedy.[855] The people of Orleans firmly believed that this war was sent to them of G.o.d to punish sinners, who had worn out his patience. They were aware both of the cause of their sorrows and of the means of remedying them. Such was the teaching of the good friars preachers; and, as Duke Charles put it in his ballad, the remedy was to live well, to amend one's life, to have ma.s.ses said and sung for the souls of those who had suffered death in the service of the realm, to renounce the sinful life, and to ask forgiveness of Our Lady and the saints.[856] This remedy had been adopted by the people of Orleans. They had had ma.s.ses said in the Church of Sainte-Croix for the souls of n.o.bles, captains, and men-at-arms killed in their service, and especially for those who had died a piteous death in the Battle of the Herrings. They had offered candles to Our Lady and to the patron saints of the town, and had carried the shrine of Saint-Aignan round the walls.[857]

[Footnote 855: Charles d'Orleans, _Poesies_, edited by A.

Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1842, in 8vo, p. 176.]

[Footnote 856: Miniature in the MS. of the poems of Charles d'Orleans, in the British Museum, Royal 16 F. ii, fol. 73 v'o.]

[Footnote 857: _Journal du siege_, p. 43. Symphorien Guyon, _Histoire de la ville d'Orleans_, vol. ii, p. 43.]

Every time they felt themselves in great danger, they brought it forth from the Church of Sainte-Croix, carried it in grand procession round the town and over the ramparts,[858] then, having brought it back to the cathedral, they listened to a sermon preached in the porch by a good monk chosen by the magistrates.[859] They said prayers in public and resolved to amend their lives. Wherefore they believed that in Paradise Saint Euverte and Saint-Aignan, touched by their piety, must be interceding for them with Our Lord; and they thought they could hear the voices of the two pontiffs. Saint Euverte was saying, "All-powerful Father, I pray and entreat thee to save the city of Orleans. It is mine. I was its bishop. I am its patron saint. Deliver it not up to its enemies."

[Footnote 858: _Chronique de la fete_, in the _Trial_, vol. v, p.

297.]

[Footnote 859: Accounts of the Commune, _pa.s.sim_, in _Journal du siege_, pp. 210 _et seq._]

Then afterwards spoke Saint-Aignan: "Give peace to the people of Orleans. Father, thou who by the mouth of a child didst appoint me their shepherd, grant that they fall not into the hands of the enemy."

The inhabitants of Orleans expected that the Lord would not at once answer the prayers of the two confessors. Knowing the sternness of his judgments they feared lest he would reply: "For their sins are the French people justly chastised. They suffer because of their disobedience to Holy Church. From the least to the greatest in the realm each vies with the other in evil-doing. The husbandmen, citizens, lawyers and priests are hard and avaricious; the princes, dukes and n.o.ble lords are proud, vain, cursers, swearers, and traitors. The corruptness of their lives infects the air. It is just that they suffer chastis.e.m.e.nt."

That the Lord should speak thus must be expected, because he was angry and because the people of Orleans had greatly sinned. But now, behold, Our Lady, she who loves the King of the Lilies, prays for him and for the Duke of Orleans to the Son, whose pleasure it is to do her will in all things: "My Son, with all my heart I entreat thee to drive the English from the land of France; they have no right to it. If they take Orleans, then they will take the rest at their pleasure. Suffer it not, O my Son, I beseech thee." And Our Lord, at the prayer of his holy Mother, forgives the French and consents to save them.[860]

[Footnote 860: _Mistere du siege_, lines 6964 _et seq._]

Thus in those days, according to their ideas of the spiritual world, did men represent even the councils of Paradise. There were folk not a few, and those not unlearned, who believed that as the result of these councils Our Lord had sent his Archangel to the shepherdess. And it might even be possible that he would save the kingdom by the hand of a woman. Is it not in the weak things of the world that he maketh his power manifest?

Did he not allow the child David to overthrow the giant Goliath, and did he not deliver into the hands of Judith the head of Holophernes?

In Orleans itself was it not by the mouth of a babe that he had caused to be named that shepherd who was to deliver the besieged town from Attila?[861]

[Footnote 861: Aug. Theiner, _Saint Aignan ou le siege d'Orleans par Attila, notice historique suivie de la vie de ce saint, tiree des MSS.

de la Bibliotheque du Roi_, Paris, 1832, in 8vo.]

The Lord of Villars and Messire Jamet du Tillay, having returned from Chinon, reported that they had with their own eyes seen the Maid; and they told of the marvels of her coming. They related how she had travelled far, fording rivers, pa.s.sing by many towns and villages held by the English, as well as through those French lands wherein were rife pillage and all manner of evils. Then they went on to tell how, when she was taken to the King, she had spoken fair words to him as she curtsied, saying: "Gentle Dauphin, G.o.d sends me to help and succour you. Give me soldiers, for by grace divine and by force of arms, I will raise the siege of Orleans and then lead you to your anointing at Reims, according as G.o.d hath commanded me, for it is his will that the English return to their country and leave in peace your kingdom which shall remain unto you. Or, if they do not quit the land, then will G.o.d cause them to perish." Further, they told how, interrogated by certain prelates, knights, squires, and doctors in law, her bearing had been found honest and her words wise. They extolled her piety, her candour, that simplicity which testified that G.o.d dwelt with her, and that skill in managing a horse and wielding weapons which caused all men to marvel.[862]

[Footnote 862: _Journal du siege_, p. 46. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 278. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, p. 66.]

At the end of March, tidings came, that, taken to Poitiers, she had there been examined by doctors and famous masters, and had replied to them with an a.s.surance equal to that of Saint Catherine before the doctors at Alexandria. Because her words were good and her promises sure, it was said that the King, trusting in her, had caused her to be armed in order that she might go to Orleans, where she would soon appear, riding on a white horse, wearing at her side the sword of Saint Catherine and holding in her hand the standard she had received from the King of Heaven.[863]

[Footnote 863: _Journal du siege_, pp. 47, 48. P. Mantellier, _Histoire du siege_, pp. 61 _et seq._]