Joan of Arc

Ronald Sutherland Gower

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• Publié par: suib
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 13
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joan of Arc, by Ronald Sutherland Gower This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Joan of Arc Author: Ronald Sutherland Gower Release Date: October 24, 2005 [EBook #16933] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN OF ARC *** Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) TOUR COUDRAY—CHINON. ToList JOAN OF ARC BY LORD RONALD GOWER, F.S.A. A TRUSTEE OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS SEVEN ETCHINGS AND THREE PHOTO-ETCHINGS LONDON JOHN C. NIMMO 14 KING WILLIAM STREET STRAND , MDCCCXCIII DEDICATION. My mother had what the French call a culte for the heroine whose life I have attempted to write in the following pages. It was but natural that one who loved and admired all that is good and beautiful and high-minded should have a strong feeling of admiration for the memory of Joan of Arc. On the pedestal of the bronze statue, which my mother placed in her house at Cliveden, are inscribed those words which sum up the life and career of the Maid of Orleans:— 'La grande pitié qu'il y avait au royaume de France.' Thinking that could my mother have read the following pages she would have approved the feeling which prompted me to write them, I inscribe this little book to her beloved memory. R.G. ARCACHON, November 29. PREFACE. The authors whose works I have chiefly used in writing this Life of Joan of Arc, are—first, Quicherat, who was the first to publish at length the Minutes of the two trials concerning the Maid—that of her trial at Rouen in 1430, and of her rehabilitation in 1456, and who unearthed so many chronicles relating to her times; secondly, Wallon, whose Life of Joan of Arc is of all the fullest and most reliable; thirdly, Fabre, who has within the last few years published several most important books respecting the life and death of Joan. Fabre was the first to make a translation in full of the two trials which Quicherat had first published in the original Latin text. Thinking references at the foot of the page a nuisance to the reader, these have been avoided. The subjects for the etched illustrations in this volume have been kindly supplied by my friend, Mr. Lee Latrobe Bateman, during a journey we made together to places connected with the story of the heroine. R.G. LONDON, January, 1893. CONTENTS. Page CHAPTER I. THE CALL 1 CHAPTER II. 39 70 100 CHAPTER V. 138 242 CHAPTER VII. 253 THE DELIVERY OF ORLEANS CHAPTER III. THE CORONATION AT RHEIMS CHAPTER IV. THE CAPTURE IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL CHAPTER VI. MARTYRDOM THE REHABILITATION APPENDIX. I. JOAN OF ARC IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH HISTORY II. JOAN OF ARC IN POETRY 289 301 FRENCH BIBLIOGRAPHY ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY 311 320 INDEX 323 List of Illustrations (SEVEN ETCHINGS, THREE PHOTO-ETCHINGS). TOUR COUDRAY—CHINON FRONTISPIECE CHINON STREET IN CHINON HALL OF AUDIENCE—CHINON TOUR D'HORLOGE—CHINON WEST PORTAL—RHEIMS INTERIOR—RHEIMS FIFTEENTH-CENTURY HOUSES—COMPIÈGNE TOUR DE LA PUCELLE—COMPIÈGNE ST. OUEN—ROUEN To face page To face page To face page To face page To face page To face page To face page To face page To face page 16 20 28 32 80 96 112 128 224 JOAN OF ARC. CHAPTER I. THE CALL. Never perhaps in modern times had a country sunk so low as France, when, in the year 1420, the treaty of Troyes was signed. Henry V. of England had made himself master of nearly the whole kingdom; and although the treaty only conferred the title of Regent of France on the English sovereign during the lifetime of the imbecile Charles VI., Henry was assured in the near future of the full possession of the French throne, to the exclusion of the Dauphin. Henry received with the daughter of Charles VI. the Duchy of Normandy, besides the places conquered by Edward III. and his famous son; and of fourteen provinces left by Charles V. to his successor only three remained in the power of the French crown. The French Parliament assented to these hard conditions, and but one voice was raised in protest to the dismemberment of France; that solitary voice, a voice crying in a wilderness, was that of Charles the Dauphin—afterwards Charles VII. Henry V. had fondly imagined that by the treaty of Troyes and his marriage with a French princess the war, which had lasted over a century between the two countries, would now cease, and that France would lie for ever at the foot of England. Indeed, up to Henry's death, at the end of August 1422, events seemed to justify such hopes; but after a score of years from Henry's death France had recovered almost the whole of her lost territory. There is nothing in history more strange and yet more true than the story which has been told so often, but which never palls in its interest—that life of the maiden through whose instrumentality France regained her place among the nations. No poet's fancy has spun from out his imagination a more glorious tale, or pictured in glowing words an epic of heroic love and transcendent valour, to compete with the actual reality of the career of this simple village maiden of old France: she who, almost unassisted and alone, through her intense love of her native land and deep pity for the woes of her people, was enabled, when the day of action at length arrived, to triumph over unnumbered obstacles, and, in spite of all opposition, ridicule, and contumely, to fulfil her glorious mission. Sainte-Beuve has written that, in his opinion, the way to honour the history of Joan of Arc is to tell the truth about her as simply as possible. This has been my object in the following pages. On the border of Lorraine and Champagne, in the canton of the Barrois—between the rivers Marne and Meuse—extended, at the time of which we are writing, a vast forest, called the Der. By the side of a little streamlet, which took its source from the river Meuse, and dividing it east by west, stands the village of Domremy. The southern portion, confined within its banks and watered by its stream, contained a little fortalice, with a score of cottages grouped around. These were situated in the county of Champagne, under the suzerainty of the Count de Bar. The northern side of the village, containing the church, belonged to the Manor of Vaucouleurs. In this part of the village, in a cottage built