JOAN D'AKC The Maid of Orleans Burnt at Rouen 30 May 1430 An authentic portrait engraved exclusively for the Court Magazine. VOL XVIII N. 88 of the series of ancient portraits. Nn, Carey street Lincoln's Inn London. MEMOIR OF JEANNE D'ARC, (CALLED LA PUCELLE;) OR THE MAID OF ORLEANS. Illustrated with a Full-length Portrait, engraved from an illuminated Monstrelet, in the Library of the British Museum. event No other episode in the annals of France excites so much wonder and interest, as the arrival of Jeanne d'Arc, the peasant maid of Lorraine, in the French campher virtues, her noble deeds and cruel death. So extraordinary an gave birth to the strangest conjectures; some, partaking of the enthusiastic and mysterious character of those times, believed her to be actually inspired by supernatural revelation, and regarded her as an instrument selected to work out the secret designs of an inscrutable Providence; others, less disposed to believe in the direct intervention of the Deity in worldly affairs, have considered her enthusiasm merely as the effect of an exaltation of patriotic and religious sentiments, intimately blended in a mind as simple as it was pure and elevated. Of the many writers who have detailed the first public appearance of this nobleminded peasant girl at the head of the courtiers, and warrior-knights of France an appearance which produced the most momentous consequences in relation to the fate of that kingdom, Voltaire and Hume have shown themselves singularly careless in the study of facts, holding too in utter disdain every act of mental exaltation—as superstition. Horrified at the various scourges which avarice and ambition on the one hand, together with ignorance on the other, had heaped upon the mass of mankind during the middle ages, they have been, oftentimes, equally unjust towards men and things, by not unfrequently refusing to recognise virtue when associated with enthusiasm, which they regarded as an overheated state of mind, and little short of evil. A spirit of calm and independent research was an indispensable requisite for investigating the affairs of an epoch in which, every moment, the sublime was mixed up with the ridiculous-ignorance, superstition, heroism, and patriotism presenting themselves by turns and often confounded strangely with each other. Before entering upon that which more directly concerns the personality of the subject of our memoir, it will be a requisite task rapidly to review the state of France at the moment of the appearance of Jeanne d'Arc upon the perilous stage on which she enacted so conspicuous and memorable-yet so brief-a part. The reign of Charles VI. of France was one of the most disastrous epochs in that nation's history. Never had so many calamities simultaneously befallen it. Upon the death of the unhappy Charles VI., the infant, Henry V. of England, was proclaimed, and the Duke of Bedford took the title of Regent. The Parliament, the provost of merchants, the échevins (sheriffs) of the University, were compelled to take the oath of usurpation; none were exempt from having it administered to them; the priests and the inhabitants of the cloister were not even excepted. Certain burgesses of Paris, however, boldly withstood its imposition, but their devotion to the son of Charles VI. was punished by subjecting them to the endurance of most horrible tortures, and, henceforward, terror held sway over every mind, and every head bowed submissively to the yoke. The most powerful vassals of the King of France the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany-were allied to the English, carrying on the war, conjointly, with them. Desolation reigned on all sides: in towns, nought else was thought of save the best means of fortifying and defending them. In the open country, many were the domains left wholly uncultivated, over whose surface waved briars and brushwood, in lieu of golden harvests: hence that popular tradition that the "woods had been brought into France by the English.” The conquerors hesitated not to partition amongst themselves towns as well as provinces. The Duke of Bedford held Anjou and Maine; the Duke of Gloucester, Champagne; the Earl of Salisbury, le Perche. The English further demanded that the lands bestowed upon the Church by the piety of the faithful should be given up to them; and, finally, the castles of the barons who had remained faithful to the French king became possessed by the English barons. In order that this system of usurpation might be extended throughout the kingdom, even the English soldiers were allowed to retain possession of whatever fell into their hands. But the sum of evils under which the unhappy land groaned has yet to be told. The most desolating of all others for France was, that victory had redoubled the courage, and mightily increased the power of the English, so that the armies of the invader were rendered more formidable than ever when led into battle. On the part of the King few were the towns and fortresses now her own; and such as they were, with disheartened troops and defenders, the only force with which the French could oppose the enemy consisted of hastily levied troops, chiefly draughts formed from the wrecks of armies depressed by constant defeat. Then it was that the disastrous battles of Crevant and Verneuil filled up the measure of brimming woe. Such, therefore, was the situation of unhappy France in the second year of Charles the Seventh's reign; and the acts of that young monarch fall now naturally under our observation. Charles VII., proclaimed, on the death of his father, king, in the castle of Espailli, became acquainted with the miseries attendant upon human grandeur ere he had tasted the pompous delights of sovereignty and sway. The English called him, out of mockery, the king of Bourges. Certain traditions, the falsity of which modern history has fully detected, and which, are now in consequence, available only for the romance writer, have accused Charles VII. of having forgotten, amidst uninterrupted festivity, his country's perils and misfortunes. To such a state of misery, however, was this prince soon reduced, that on the birth of his son he was unable to pay the baptismal fees, his treasurer having only four crowns in his coffers! The failing with which he was, unhappily, too truly, chargeable, was indolence of character and the culpable weakness and enervation which he manifested in a position wherein all energy was needed. For whilst an usurping enemy possessed skilful generals and well-trained troops, the affairs of Charles VII. and his kingdom were governed by unprincipled courtiers and heartless favor ites; a species of pest from which royal personages are no more exempt in the time of adversity, than in the period of prosperity. So entirely did these minions seem to occupy themselves with devouring the last spoils of royalty, that it might have been imagined they were really retained in the pay of the English. For, instead of seeking to inspire their prince with the noblest sentiments fitting for such great and pressing emergency, their sole solicitude was to keep aloof from about his person those bravehearted men who were still in arms, whose uppermost thought was only of laying down their lives in the cause of their unhappy sovereign. Charles VII. was pinched with the absence of every thing he wanted, and he could not even procure provisions, clothing and arms, for the small number of soldiers who still fought under his banners. Accordingly, he was obliged to summon the Scots to his aid, and from the want of other generals capable of assuming such important command, the Earl of Douglas was placed at the head of his troops, Charles having promised the province of Berri to the Scots as a reward for their services, if they helped him to recover his kingdom: a sad bargaining, which, nevertheless, speaks volumes regarding the manifold troubles with which the king then found himself beset. The affairs of France were at their lowest ebb when the English commenced the siege of Orleans, which, under then existing circumstances, was the most important place in the kingdom. The enemy had collected together a numerous and well-disciplined army, and but one final blow seemed needed to consummate the ruin of the "land of the lilies," and the English were by no means unmindful of their long chain of victories. It was then, indeed, the settled conviction of all Europe that France could no longer, except by a miracle, be saved. The city of Orleans, in which was concentrated the last strength of the kingdom, heroically at first sustained the siege; the patriotic spirit with which the populace of the place, as well as the soldiery, had hastened to its defence, testified to the enemy that the last struggle would be a terrible one; but the defeat at Rouvray, in the action commonly known under the name of the Battle of Herrings,* by Sir John Fastolffe, speedily destroyed every little vestige of hope which remained. The inhabitants of the besieged city saw themselves, to quote the words of an old chronicle, " in great doubt and danger of being lost," when suddenly "they heard that a maiden was coming from before the king, the which talked hardily of causing the siege of the said city of Orleans to be raised." Such, then, was the miracle destined to be wrought for the preservation of France, and we will now, by a slight chronological retrospection, trace the singular history of the young maid reserved for so high and remarkable a destiny. Between Neufchâteau and Vaucouleurs, in a smiling valley watered by the Meuse, there lived, at that epoch, in the hamlet of Domremy, a young peasant girl named Jeannette, or Romée; the latter name being that of her mother, she bore it conformably to the custom of the country. Her father, Jacques d'Arc, was born at SeptFonts, near Montierender in Champagne, and for many years had dwelt in the hamlet of Domremy. Isabette, or Isabelette Romée, the wife of Jacques, was a native of Vatern, situate at a short distance from Domremy. The whole wealth of Jacques d'Arc and his wife consisted of a few sheep and a small field, but the scanty produce obtained from culturing the latter, added to that from the flock, was nevertheless sufficient for their subsistence. They were a simple-hearted, hospitable and pious couple, of rigid probity and unpretending demeanour, and were regarded with sentiments of consideration and esteem by all their neighbours.† Jacques d'Arc had five children; three sons and two daughters; the eldest of his sons was named Jacquemin, the second Jean, the third Pierre, or Pierrelo. The daughter Jeannette became celebrated under the name of Jeanne d'Arc. Her sister's name has not been preserved. The most probable conjectures place the date of Jeanne's birth, in the year 1410. Her education was that suitable to a village girl. She could, indeed, neither read nor write, but she made, when occasion required it, a cross, and sometimes two at the top of the letters dictated by her. All her knowledge consisted simply in being able to sew and spin well. The youthful Romée learned from her mother's lips the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, the Credo, and the first principles of moral and Christian faith; and this maternal instruction served to foster and ripen an innate love of virtue, and reverence for things sacred. The various depositions comprised in the procès de revision, agree in exhibiting Jeanne to the world as good, simple-hearted, chaste, modest, temperate, patient, mild, prudent, industrious, fearing God, delighting in works of charity, attending the sick. During her childhood, an age at which the value of time is so readily forgotten, none of Jeanne's hours passed away unoccupied, and when freed from her daily labor she was sure to be found kneeling in prayer in a recess of the village church. So great was her timidity, that from the testimony of a credible witness, a single word would have been sufficient to cover her face with blushes. By other testimony it was further confirmed that there was not a better girl throughout Domremy, or the adjoining village of Greux or Gras. "I could fain have wished that heaven had bestowed upon me so good a daughter," are the words of a knightly witness. The commissioner sent by the English for the purpose of making inquiries respecting the early youth of Jeanne, reported that he had found no one act in her whole life," which he would not have desired to find in that of his own sister." The inquisitorial searches instituted both by her friends and her enemies, with a view So called, because the large convoy which Sir John Fastolffe was escorting, brought a great quantity of that kind of provisions, for the use of the English army during the Lent season. These particulars are gleaned from depositions contained in a procés de revision, collected during an enquiry made at Vaucouleurs by order of Charles VII. to ascertain every circumstance relating to Jeanne, previous to her departure for the court of Charles, at Chinon, have furnished history with very precious details of her early days at Domremy. The young maiden accompanied her father and brothers to the fields, participating with them in all their rustic occupationshoeing weeds, breaking clods of newly ploughed earth, gathering and binding harvest sheaves, and, frequently, driving the flocks to pasture. The domestic duties of her parental homestead had an equal share of her attention; in which must be included her labors at the spindle. On many occasions, whilst tending the sheep in the open fields, she had been seen to address her humble orisons to her maker—the ringing of the church bell at Domremy being the signal for her engaging in prayer. One witness who, in his youth, had been the bell-ringer at Domremy, deposed that Jeanne had often sharply reproved him, for not being punctual in ringing complies (the last act of evening worship in the Catholic Church), and the pious peasant girl promised to give him a few Lunes (a coin of Lorraine), if he performed his duties better for the future. Among other religious customs, observed by the youthful Jeanne, was that of making a pilgrimage every Saturday to the hermitage of Sainte Marie, Notre Dame de Bermont, situated at a short distance from Domremy. The offering of the young Romée, consisted of wax tapers, which she burned before the shrine of the Holy Virgin. Several ancient popular superstitions intermingle themselves with the narrative of the pastoral and religious life of Jeanne; and the district in which she was born, by its natural features, was well calculated to augment that devotional fervor, which, from even her tenderest youth, had gained the ascendant over all her other faculties. The surface of that romantic canton of France is covered with wide-stretching woods and gloomy forests. At half a league distant from Domremy, is the wood of Chenu, which the simple peasantry of those parts believed to be haunted by fairies, and which rose in sight of the dwelling of Jeanne d'Arc. Hard by this wood, not far from a pure and limpid spring, and upon the high road from Domremy to Neufchâteau, stood an antique and majestic beech tree, known from time immemorial, under the designations of Beau Mai, Arbre des Dames, and the Fairies' Tree :-those mysterious beings, it was affirmed, were wont to hold their revels in the adjacent glades, and dance in circles round the venerable tree, to the music of their own tiny voices. So soon as a convalescent peasant arose from his bed, he tottered forth to walk beneath the shadow of the Fairies' Tree, and those attacked with fever repaired to the spring, a draught of whose pure water was deemed the best restorative that could be administered. During the month of May, it was customary for the Lord of the domain with all his retinue, followed also by the youths, maidens and children of Domremy, to repair in great pomp to the haunted beech, which, upwards of two centuries later, Edmond Richer (the author of an unpublished history of the Maid of Orleans), beheld still vigorous and lending to those joyous annual meetings the wide-spreading shade of its "melancholy boughs," and to which, bouquets, garlands, and flower-crowns, were still suspended in gay profusion. Jeanne d'Arc, it appears, often visited the Fairies' Tree with the young village girls of her own age; but the flowers, which, on such occasions, she wove into garlands, were reserved to deck the image of our Lady of Domremy: Jeanne rarely joined her companions in the dance; her delight was to sing with them pious canticles of that picturesque spot. Mr. Southey, in his epic has the following exquisite passage descriptive of the Maid's favorite resort: There is a fountain in the forest called The Fountain of the Fairies': when a child |