The Life of Joan of Arc

Chapter 1

CHILDHOOD

From Neufchteau to Vaucouleurs the clear waters of the Meuse flow freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes of alder and willow. Now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are suddenly lost to sight underground. In the summer the river is a lazy stream, barely bending in its course the reeds which grow upon its shallow bed; and from the bank one may watch its lapping waters kept back by clumps of rushes scarcely covering a little sand and moss. But in the season of heavy rains, swollen by sudden torrents, deeper and more rapid, as it rushes along, it leaves behind it on the banks a kind of dew, which rises in pools of clear water on a level with the grass of the valley.

This valley, two or three miles broad, stretches unbroken between low hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples, and birches. Although strewn with wild-flowers in the spring, it looks severe, grave, and sometimes even sad. The green grass imparts to it a monotony like that of stagnant water. Even on fine days one is conscious of a hard, cold climate. The sky seems more genial than the earth. It beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil landscape. Then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a kind of chaos. Fogs come down thick and clinging. The white light mists, which in summer veil the bottom of the valley, give place to thick clouds and dark moving mountains, but slowly scattered by a red, cold sun. Wanderers ranging the uplands in the early morning might dream with the mystics in their ecstasy that they are walking on clouds.

Thus, after having passed on the left the wooded plateau, from the height of which the chteau of Bourlmont dominates the valley of the Saonelle, and on the right Coussey with its old church, the winding river flows between le Bois Chesnu on the west and the hill of Julien on the east. Then on it goes, passing the adjacent villages of Domremy and Greux on the west bank and separating Greux from Maxey-sur-Meuse. Among other hamlets nestling in the hollows of the hills or rising on the high ground, it passes Burey-la-Cte, Maxey-sur-Vaise, and Burey-en-Vaux, and flows on to water the beautiful meadows of Vaucouleurs.[147]

[Footnote 147: J. Ch. Chappellier, tude historique et gographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Di, 1890, in 8vo. . Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1894, in 18mo.]

In this little village of Domremy, situated at least seven and a half miles further down the river than Neufchteau and twelve and a half above Vaucouleurs, there was born, about the year 1410 or 1412,[148] a girl who was destined to live a remarkable life. She was born poor. Her father,[149] Jacques or Jacquot d'Arc, a native of the village of Ceffonds in Champagne,[150] was a small farmer and himself drove his horses at the plough.[151] His neighbours, men and women alike, held him to be a good Christian and an industrious workman.[152] His wife came from Vouthon, a village nearly four miles northwest of Domremy, beyond the woods of Greux. Her name being Isabelle or Zabillet, she received at some time, exactly when is uncertain, the surname of Rome.[153] That name was given to those who had been to Rome or on some other important pilgrimage;[154] and it is possible that Isabelle may have acquired her name of Rome by assuming the pilgrim's shell and staff.[155] One of her brothers was a parish priest, another a tiler; she had a nephew who was a carpenter.[156] She had already borne her husband three children: Jacques or Jacquemin, Catherine, and Jean.[157]

[Footnote 148: This may be inferred from vol. i, p. 46, of the Trial. But Jeanne did not know how old she was when she left her father's house (Trial, vol. i, p. 51). I have ignored the letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, p. 116, vol. v, of the Trial. It is quite unauthentic and is too much in the manner of a hagiologist. See post, p. 468, note 1.]

[Footnote 149: Darc (Trial, vol. i, p. 191; vol. ii, p. 82). Dars (Simon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, p. 360). Day (Trial, vol. v, p. 150). Daiz (furnished by M. Pierre Champion). This document appears to justify the pronunciation Jeanne d'Arc. Concerning the orthography of the name d'Arc, cf. Lanry d'Arc, Livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc, notes 647-657.]

[Footnote 150: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 208. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1878, in 8vo, p. 185; Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, Orlans, 1879, in 12mo, p. x, passim. Boucher de Molandon, Jacques d'Arc, pre de la Pucelle, Orlans, 1885, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 151: See post, pp. 57, 451, 452.]

[Footnote 152: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 378 et seq.]

[Footnote 153: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 191, 208; vol. ii, p. 74, note 1. Armand Boucher de Crvecoeur, Les Rome et les de Perthes, famille maternelle de Jeanne d'Arc, Abbeville, 1891, in 8vo. Lanry d'Arc, Livre d'or, notes 1278-1308.]

[Footnote 154: Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Romeus. G. de Braux, Jeanne d'Arc Saint-Nicolas, Nancy, 1889, p. 8. Revue catholique des institutions et du droit, August, 1886. E. de Bouteiller, Nouvelles recherches, p. xii. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 43.]

[Footnote 155: Probably before Jeanne's birth. "My surname is d'Arc or Rome," said Jeanne (Trial, vol. i, p. 191). Thus she indiscriminately assumes either her father's or her mother's surname, although she says (Trial, vol. i, p. 191) that in her country girls are called by their mother's surname.]

[Footnote 156: Trial, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1879, pp. 3-20. Ch. du Lys, Trait sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parent de la Pucelle d'Orlans et de ses frres, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1857, p. 28. E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc considre au point de vue Franco-Champenois, Troyes, 1893, in 8vo, p. 101.]

[Footnote 157: The order of the births of Jacques d'Arc's children is extremely doubtful (Trial, index, under the word Arc).]

Jacques d'Arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish church, dedicated to Saint Remi, the apostle of Gaul.[158] There was only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. It is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism pronounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer for girls than for boys.[159] We do not know whether Messire Jean Minet,[160] the parish priest, pronounced it over the child in all its literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs of the Church's invincible mistrust of woman.

[Footnote 158: Trial, vol. ii, p. 393, passim. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, vol. xvi, p. 357.]

[Footnote 159: A. Monteil, Histoire des Franais, 1853, in 18mo, vol. ii, p. 194.]

[Footnote 160: Trial, vol. i, p. 46. Jean Minet was a native of Neufchteau.]

According to the custom then prevailing the child had several godfathers and godmothers.[161] The men-gossips were Jean Morel, of Greux,[162] husbandman; Jean Barrey, of Neufchteau; Jean Le Langart or Lingui, and Jean Rainguesson; the women, Jeannette, wife of Thvenin le Royer, called Roze, of Domremy; Batrix, wife of Estellin,[163] husbandman in the same village; Edite, wife of Jean Barrey; Jeanne, wife of Aubrit, called Jannet and described as Maire Aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of Bourlmont; Jeannette, wife of Thiesselin de Vittel, a scholar of Neufchteau. She was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of books. Among the godmothers there are mentioned also the wife of Nicolas d'Arc, Jacques' brother, and two obscure Christians, one called Agnes, the other Sibylle.[164] Here, as in every group of good Catholics, we have a number of Jeans, Jeannes, and Jeannettes. St. John the Baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the 24th of June, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and contracts of all kinds. In the opinion of certain ecclesiastics, especially of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette, Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child was named Jeannette. That was the name by which she was known in the village. Later, in France, she was called Jeanne.[167]

[Footnote 161: J. Corblet, Parrains et marraines, in Revue de l'art chrtien, 1881, vol. xiv, pp. 336 et seq.]

[Footnote 162: Simon Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, proofs and illustrations, li, p. 98.]

[Footnote 163: Ibid., p. clxxix, note.]

[Footnote 164: Cf. Trial, index, under parrains and marraines. It is not always possible to assign to these personages the names they bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are introduced.]

[Footnote 165: Relation du greffier de La Rochelle, in the Revue Historique, vol. iv, p. 342. Cf. Eustache Deschamps, ballad 354, vol. iii, p. 83, ed. Queux de Saint Hilaire.]

[Footnote 166: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74-388; vol. v, pp. 151, 220, passim.]

[Footnote 167: Ibid., vol. i, p. 46. Henri Lepage, Jeanne d'Arc est-elle Lorraine? Nancy, 1852, pp. 57-79.]

She was brought up in her father's house, in Jacques' poor dwelling.[168] In the front there were two windows admitting but a scanty light. The stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden side sloped almost to the ground. Close by the door, as was usual in that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm tools covered with rust and mud. But the humble enclosure, which served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a wealth of pink and white flowers.[169]

[Footnote 168: Trial, vol. v, pp. 244 et seq. Jacques d'Arc's house doubtless looked on to the road; the Du Lys, or rather the Thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer existing. The shields which ornamented its faade have been placed upon the door of the building now shown as Jeanne's house. What is represented as Jeanne's room is the bakehouse (. Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 74). See an article by Henri Arsac in L'cho de l'Est, 26 July, 1890. A whole literature has been written on this subject (Lanry d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 330 et seq.).]

[Footnote 169: mile Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, passim.]

These good Christians had one more child, the youngest, Pierre, who was called Pierrelot.[170]

[Footnote 170: Trial, vol. v, pp. 151, 220.]

Fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, Jeanne grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober. She lived in perfect liberty. Among hard-working peasants the children are left to themselves. Isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well with the village children.

A little neighbour, Hauviette, three or four years younger than she, was her daily companion. They liked to sleep together in the same bed.[171] Mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and spin at Jacques d'Arc's house. She helped Jeanne with her household duties.[172] Taking her distaff with her, Jeanne used often to go and pass the evening at Saint-Amance, at the house of a husbandman Jacquier, who had a young daughter.[173] Boys and girls grew up as a matter of course side by side. Being neighbours, Jeanne and Simonin Musnier's son were brought up together. When Musnier's son was still a child he fell ill, and Jeanne nursed him.[174]

[Footnote 171: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 417: "Jacuit amorose in domo patris sui."]

[Footnote 172: Ibid., p. 429.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid., p. 408.]

[Footnote 174: Ibid., p. 423.]

In those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know their letters. A few years earlier Matre Jean Gerson had counselled his sisters, peasants of Champagne, to learn to read, and had promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[175] Albeit the niece of a parish priest, Jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at Maxey there was a school attended by boys from Domremy.[176]

[Footnote 175: E. Georges, Jeanne d'Arc considre au point de vue Franco-Champenois, p. 115. De La Fons-Mlicocq, Documents indits pour servir l'histoire de l'instruction publique en France et l'histoire des moeurs au XV'ieme sicle, in the Bulletin de la Socit des Antiquaires de la Morinie, vol. iii, pp. 460 et seq.]

[Footnote 176: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65-66. (Item: je donne Oudinot, Richard et Grard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de Marcey dessoubz Brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept psaulmes.) (Item: I give to the boys, Oudinot, Richard, and Grard, scholars of the school-master at Marcey below Brixey, twelve crowns to pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) The will of Jean de Bourlmont, 23 October, 1399, in S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, document in facsimile xiii.]

From her mother she learnt the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and the credo.[177] She heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. That was her whole education. On holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's sermon.[178]

[Footnote 177: Trial, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's Monuments de la Monarchie Franaise, vol. iii, the second miniature, the "Douze prils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).]

As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a man.[179]

[Footnote 179: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]

The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows. Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]

[Footnote 180: Trial, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, p. lij.]

But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She swore neither by God nor his saints; and to assert the truth of anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the bells rang for the Angelus, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On Saturday, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill, barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth the clear waters of the Saint-Thibault spring, which cure fevers and heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown, with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. She worked miracles. Jeanne used to visit her with her sister Catherine and the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. And as often as she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[183]

[Footnote 181: Trial, vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 182: Ibid., vol. i, p. 423.]

[Footnote 183: Trial, index, at the word Bermont. Du Haldat, Notice sur la chapelle de Belmont, in the Mmoires de l'Acadmie Stanislas de Nancy, 1833-1834, p. 96. . Hinzelin, Chez Jeanne d'Arc, p. 95. Lanry d'Arc, Livre d'or, p. 330.]

A mile and a quarter west of Domremy was a hill covered with a dense wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. Wolves were the terror of the countryside. The village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [chenu] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician.

[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, Histoire des Franois, vol. i, p. 91.]

[Footnote 185: Trial, index, under the words Bois Chesnu.]

At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187] If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fes-Notre-Seigneur, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. By making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as goddesses.[189] It was quite true. Goddesses as much feared and venerated as the Parc had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men. But, fallen long since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. They were invited to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next the mother's. At these festivals they ate alone and came and went without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements for fear of displeasing them. It is the custom of divine personages to go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]

[Footnote 186: Ibid., index, under the words Fontaine des Groseilliers.]

[Footnote 187: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 et seq.]

[Footnote 188: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]

[Footnote 189: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

[Footnote 190: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390, 404, 450.]

[Footnote 191: Wolf, Mythologie des fes et des elfes, 1828, in 8vo. A. Maury, Les fes au moyen ge, 1843, in 18mo, and Croyances et lgendes du moyen ge, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]

Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the highroad to Neufchteau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many names. It was called l'Arbre-des-Dames, l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames, l'Arbre-des-Fes, l'Arbre-Charmine-Fe-de-Bourlmont, le Beau-Mai.[195]

[Footnote 192: Richer, Histoire manuscrite de Jeanne d'Arc, ms. fr. 10,448, fols. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 193: For tree worship, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in La tradition, 15 March, 1889.]

[Footnote 194: Trial, vol. ii, p. 422.]

[Footnote 195: Ibid., index, under the words Arbre des Fes.]

Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been seen under l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames. In the old days, when Berthe was spinning, a lord of Bourlmont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's godmothers, who was a scholar at Neufchteau, had heard this story, which closely resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree. Some believed they did, others thought they did not. Batrix, another of Jeanne's godmothers, used to say: "I have heard tell that fairies came to the tree in the old days. But for their sins they come there no longer."[198]

[Footnote 196: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 197: Ibid., p. 404, passim. Simple Crayon de la noblesse des ducs de Lorraine et de Bar, in Le Brun des Charmettes' Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i, p. 266. Jules Baudot, Les princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar de la famille des Valois, first part. Mlusine, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, p. 121.]

[Footnote 198: Propter eorum peccata, in the Trial, vol. ii, p. 396. There is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.]

This simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of God and that the priest had driven them away. Jean Morel, Jeanne's godfather, believed the same.[199]

[Footnote 199: Trial, vol. ii, p. 390.]

Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to l'Arbre-des-Fes and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.[200] For the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St. John.[201]

[Footnote 200: Trial, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 201: Ibid., p. 390. Bergier, Dictionnaire de thologie, under the word Conjuration.]

My Lord Aubert d'Ourches held that there had been no fairies at Domremy for twenty or thirty years.[202] On the other hand there were those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.

[Footnote 202: Trial, vol. i, p. 187.]

Yet another of Jeanne's godmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her goddaughter. And Aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circumspect.[203]

[Footnote 203: Ibid., pp. 67, 209.]

In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[204] Fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.[205]

[Footnote 204: Ibid., pp. 178, 209 et seq.]

[Footnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for Jeanne's opinion of them, see Trial, index, under the word Fes.]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church "Ltare Sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning Ltare Jerusalem,--the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at l'Arbre-des-Fes.[206] They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlmont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlmont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the Well-Dressing at Domremy, see Trial, index, under the word Fontaine.]

[Footnote 207: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 et seq. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and l'Arbre-des-Fes.[209]

[Footnote 209: Ibid., pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of l'Arbre-des-Fes. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder. One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]

[Footnote 210: Trial, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]

To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[211]

[Footnote 211: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 434.]

Close by l'Arbre-des-Dames, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.

[Footnote 212: Atropa Mandragor, female mandragora, main de gloire, herbe aux magiciens. Trial, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 236.]

The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]

[Footnote 213: Trial, vol. i, p. 209.]

When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.[214]

[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. Trial, vol. ii, pp. 74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. xviii et seq.; 7, 8, 10, passim. C. Gilardoni, Sermaize et son glise, published at Vitry-le-Franois, 1893, 8vo.]

Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[215]

[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, Jeanne d'Arc cuyre, Paris, 1901, 12mo, p. 28.]

At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's house.[216]

[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, La famille de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 9 and 10. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. xlv et seq.]

With regard to feudal overlordship the village of Domremy was divided into two distinct parts. The southern part, with the chteau on the Meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of Bourlmont and was in the domain of the castellany of Grondrecourt, held in fief from the crown of France. It was a part of Lorraine and of Bar. The northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was subject to the provost of Montclaire and Andelot and was in the bailiwick of Chaumont in Champagne.[217] It was sometimes called Domremy de Greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of Greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of Vaucouleurs.[218] The serfs of Bourlmont were separated from the king's men by a brook, close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence called, so it is said, the Brook of the Three Springs. Modestly the stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then rushed down a rapid incline into the Meuse, opposite Jacques d'Arc's house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of Champagne and of France.[219] So far we may be fairly certain; but we must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. In 1429 King Charles' council was uncertain as to whether Jacques d'Arc was a freeman or a serf.[220] And Jacques d'Arc himself doubtless was no better informed. On both banks of the brook, the men of Lorraine and Champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship. Although they were subject to different masters they formed none the less one community closely united, one single rural family. They shared interests, necessities, feelings--everything. Threatened by the same dangers, they had the same anxieties.

[Footnote 217: E. Misset, Jeanne d'Arc champenoise, Paris, s.d. (1894), 8vo. Concerning the nationality of Joan of Arc there is a whole literature extremely rich, the bibliography of which it is impossible to give here. Cf. Lanry d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 295 et seq.]

[Footnote 218: Trial, vol. i, p. 208.]

[Footnote 219: P. Jollois, Histoire abrge de la vie et des exploits de Jeanne d'Arc, Paris, 1821, engraving I, p. 190. A. Renard, La patrie de Jeanne d'Arc, Langres, 1880, in 18mo, p. 6. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, supplement with proofs and illustrations, pp. 281, 282.]

[Footnote 220: Trial, vol. v, p. 152.]

Lying at the extreme south of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, the village of Domremy was between Bar and Champagne on the east, and Lorraine on the west.[221] They were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that Count of Vaudmont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the whole of Christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the Lorraine Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. Unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who, subsisting on plunder, was especially given to the Lorraine custom of marauding. He was of the same way of thinking as that English king who said that warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings without mustard.[222] One day, when he was besieging a little stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the Damoiseau set fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.[223]

[Footnote 221: Colonel de Boureulle, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, Saint-Di, 1890, in 8vo, 28 small engravings. J. Ch. Chappellier, tude historique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, 2 plans; C. Niob, Le pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Mmoires de la Socit acadmique de l'Aube, 1894, 3d series, vol. xxxi, pp. 307 et seq.]

[Footnote 222: Juvnal des Ursins, in the Collection Michaud et Poujoulat, col. 561.]

[Footnote 223: A. Tuetey, Les corcheurs sous Charles VII, Montbliard, 1874, vol. i, p. 87.]

In 1419 this baron was making war on the brothers Didier and Durand of Saint-Di. It matters not for what reason. For this war as for every war the villagers had to pay. As the men-at-arms were fighting throughout the whole castellany of Vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of Domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. At Domremy there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.[224] Belonging to this castle was a chapel of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the dwelling of the Lords of Bourlmont, was commonly called the Fortress of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. But soon after Jeanne d'Arc's birth she married a Lorraine baron, Henri d'Ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of Ogiviller and at the ducal court of Nancy. Since her departure the fortress of the island had remained uninhabited. The village folk decided to rent it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the plunderers. The renting was put up to auction. A certain Jean Biget of Domremy and Jacques d'Arc, Jeanne's father, being the highest bidders, and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between them and the representatives of Dame d'Ogiviller. The fortress, the garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain, were let to Jean Biget and Jacques d'Arc for a term of nine years beginning on St. John the Baptist's Day, 1419, and in consideration of a yearly rent of fourteen livres tournois[225] and three imaux of wheat.[226] Besides the two tenants in chief there were five sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was Jacquemin, the eldest of Jacques d'Arc's sons.[227]

[Footnote 224: Trial, vol. i, pp. 66, 215.]

[Footnote 225: In 1390 one livre tournois was worth 7 5s of present money; in 1488, 5. Cf. Avenel, Histoire conomique, 1894 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 226: "Imal," says Le Trvoux, "is a measure of corn used at Nancy." There are two imaux in a quarter, and four quarters in a ral, which contains fifteen bushels, according to the Paris measure.]

[Footnote 227: The Archives of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, collection Ruppes II, No. 28. The farm lease, dated 2nd of April, 1420, was first published by M. J. Ch. Chappellier in Le Journal de la Socit d'Archologie Lorraine, Jan.-Feb., 1889; and Deux actes indits du XV sicle sur Domremy, Nancy, 1889, 8vo, 16 pages. S. Luce, La France pendant la guerre de cent ans, 1890, 18mo, pp. 274 et seq. Lefvre-Pontalis, tude historique et gographique sur Domremy, pays de Jeanne d'Arc, in Bibliothque de l'cole des Chartes, vol. lvi, pp. 154-168.]

The precaution proved to be useful. In that very year, 1419, Robert de Saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers Didier and Durand at the village of Maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be seen opposite Greux, on the other bank of the Meuse, along the foot of wooded hills. The two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the victorious Damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. Among these prisoners was the Squire Thiesselin de Vittel, whose wife had held Jacques d'Arc's second daughter over the baptismal font. From one of the hills of her village, Jeanne, who was then seven or a little older, could see the battle in which her godmother's husband was taken prisoner.[228]

[Footnote 228: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 420-426. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, p. lxiv.]

Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[229] Thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge at Montereau, when the Dauphin's Councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,[230] sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l'le-de-France, and Paris the great city.[231] Now in France the English were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[232] In Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath Goddam[233] was so often on their lips that they were called Godons. They were devils. They were said to be cous, that is, to have tails behind.[234] There was mourning in many a French household when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the cous,[235] making of the noble French lilies a litter for the leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.[236] Dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the side of the Burgundians?

[Footnote 229: Linard, Dictionnaire topographique de la Meuse, introduction, p. x.]

[Footnote 230: Dom Devienne, Histoire de Bordeaux, pp. 98, 103. L. Bachelier, Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 1862, in 8vo, p. 45. D. Brissaud, Les Anglais en Guyenne, Paris, 1875, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 231: Ch. de Beaurepaire, De l'administration de la Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, Caen, 1859, in 4to; and tats de Normandie sous la domination Anglaise, vreux, 1859, in 8vo. De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. v, pp. 40-56, 261-286.]

[Footnote 232: Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, ed. Quicherat, vol. i, p. 27.]

[Footnote 233: La Curne, under the words Anglois and Goddons.]

[Footnote 234: Voragine, La lgende de Saint-Grgoire. Du Cange, Glossaire, under the word Caudatus. Le Roux de Lincy, Recueil de chants historiques franais, Paris, 1851, vol. i, pp. 300, 301. This oath is to be found current as early as Eustache Deschamps; it was still in use in the seventeenth century (Sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parent de la Pucelle, ed. Vallet de Viriville).]

[Footnote 235: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, ch. iii. Carlier, Histoire du Valois, vol. ii, pp. 441 et seq.]

[Footnote 236: Dom Calmet, Histoire de Lorraine, vol. ii, col. 631. Bonnabelle, Notice sur la ville de Vaucouleurs, Bar-le-Duc, 1879, in 8vo, 75 pages.]

Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.[237] It is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[238] Insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux, and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies.

[Footnote 237: Trial, vol. i, pp. 65, 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. 18 et seq.]

[Footnote 238: N. Villiaum, Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, 1864, in 8vo, p. 52, note 1.]

In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt and Blaise, son of the late Messire Libault de Baudricourt, was then captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles. He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of English and Burgundians.[239]

[Footnote 239: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, ch. iii.]

In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one tienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of La Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages.

[Footnote 240: Pierre d'Alheim, Le jargon Jobelin, Paris, 1892, in 18mo: glossary, under the word Hirenalle, p. 61, and the verbal communication of M. Marcel Schwob. Cronique Martiniane, ed. P. Champion, p. 8, note 3; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 270; De Montlezun, Histoire de Gascogne, 1847, in 8vo, p. 143; A. Castaing, La patrie du valet de coeur, in Revue de Gascogne, 1869, vol. x, pp. 29-33.]

While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar.

[Footnote 241: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. lxxiii, 87, note 1. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]

Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (doyen) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242]

[Footnote 242: Bonvalot, Le tiers tat d'aprs la charte de Beaumont et ses filiales, Paris, 1886, p. 412.]

Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual p*****t of two gros from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.[244]

[Footnote 243: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. lxxi et seq.]

[Footnote 244: Ibid., proofs and illustrations, li, p. 97.]

The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, Ren d'Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246]

[Footnote 245: De Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 16, 17.]

[Footnote 246: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, appendix, lxii.]

At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248]

[Footnote 247: Du Chesne, Gnealogie de la maison de Vergy, Paris, 1625, folio. Nouvelle biographie gnrale, vol. xlv, p. 1125.]

[Footnote 248: S. Luce, Domremy and Vaucouleurs, from 1412 to 1425, in Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, ch. iii.]

Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250]

[Footnote 249: Trial, vol. i, p. 66.]

[Footnote 250: Trial, vol. i, p. 66. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. 20.]

One day in the summer of 1425, there fell upon the villages of Greux and Domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name Henri d'Orly, known as Henri de Savoie. This time the island fortress was of no use to the villagers. Lord Henri took all the cattle from the two villages and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues[251] away to his chteau of Doulevant. He had also captured much furniture and other property; and the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one place; wherefore he had part of it carried to Dommartin-le-Franc, a neighbouring village, where there was a chteau with so large a court in front that the place was called Dommartin-la-Cour. The peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. Happily for them, at the news of this pillage, Dame d'Ogiviller sent to the Count of Vaudmont in his chteau of Joinville, complaining to him, as her kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of Greux and Domremy. The chteau of Doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty of the Count of Vaudmont. As soon as he received his kinswoman's message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to recapture the cattle. This man-at-arms, by name Barthlemy de Clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of war. He found the stolen beasts in the chteau of Dommartin-le-Franc, took them and drove them to Joinville. On the way he was pursued and attacked by Lord d'Orly's men and stood in great danger of death. But so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at Joinville, bringing the cattle, which the Count of Vaudmont caused to be driven back to the pastures of Greux and Domremy.[252]

[Footnote 251: A league is two and a half English miles (W.S.).]

[Footnote 252: S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc Domremy, pp. 275 et seq.]

Unexpected good fortune! With tears the husbandman welcomed his restored flocks and herds. But was he not likely to lose them for ever on the morrow?

At that time Jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. War everywhere around her, even in the children's play; the husband of one of her godmothers taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german Mengette killed by a mortar;[253] her native land overrun by marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off; nights of terror, dreams of horror,--such were the surroundings of her childhood.

[Footnote 253: E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-15.]