Joan of Arc

YOUNG CHARACTERS IN HISTORY/ BY PROFESSOR WILLARD DONE, PRESIDENT OF THE LATTER-DAY saints' college, salt LAKE CITY.

IV.

JOAN OF ARC. France has produced some of the most unique characters in history. The mingled Teutonic and Celtic blood has im- parted enough tenacity on the one hand and enough brilliance on the other, to make the French people pre-eminent in many lines of effort. The military and administrative genius of Napoleon has been briefly outlined. The mathematical abil- ity of Vauban and Descartes; the erratic, though brilliant, ed- ucational ideas of Rousseau; the governmental power of Charlemagne; the dramatic workmanship of Moliere and Sardou; the novelist's skill of Dumas and Daudet; and the art of Millet and Bonheur, represent but a few landmarks in the wide extended field of consummate genius covered by the French. Standing out in perfect distinctness, different from all other historic characters, and excelling all others in the power of mingled enthusiasm and firmness, is the French peasant girl, Joan of Arc. So strikingly French is she, indeed, that historians among her countrymen declare that no other na- tion could have produced such a character. However that may be, it is safe to say that no other nation has produced *In the January number, in the first article on Napoleon, a quotation was ascribed to Wendell Phillips, for which credit should have been given to Charles Phillips, the Irish barrister. —W. D.

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such a one. The elements in her character which have ren- dered her unique, will be briefly traced. One of the purposes of these sketches is to show whether the subjects of them have fulfilled in advanced life the prom- ises of youth, or overcome its weaknesses. To Joan of Arc this test can not be applied, for she finished her work and her ashes were scattered to the winds when scarcely more than nineteen years had passed over her. The one promise of her childhood she fulfilled by the one great, heroic act of her maidenhood. Her youth, as a part of herself, being canonized in the hearts of her countrymen, they are proud to speak of her as la Fucelle, the maid of Orleans. Her chief weakness, her enthusiastic zeal, was the main element of her strength; fortunate it was that she did not overcome it. Jeanne D'Arc as she is known in France (though in this article the English name Joan will be used) was born about the year 1410, in the village of Domremy, eastern France. Her father, a poor shepherd, could give her no more than a mere subsistence; of education she had none. This fact may have been fortunate rather than otherwise, for her mind was left free and virgin for strange impressions, and the planting of the seed destined to spring into a full fruition of mingled martyrdom and glory. The humble oc- cupation of a shepherd girl was the element in which she could best grow so as to meet the needs of France. It is necessary for us to know what those needs were, in order to understand Joan's peculiar youthful thought and feelings. She was born during the progress of the devastat- ing, cruelly destructive Hundred Years' War, between France and England; and grew up in the midst of the scenes incident to it. During her early youth, the issue was between Henry VI. of England and the Dauphin, son of Charles VI. (afterwards Charles VII. of France), both of whom were claimants for the French crown. In support of Henry's claim, the English invaded France, and were supported by many of the "border-folk" (the Burgundians) within a few miles of Joan's own village. While actual war did not come into her immediate experience at this time, yet its echoes dis- turbed her, and tales of its horrors were not infrequent to her.

She grew up with the cries of distracted France sounding in

her ears. The dauphin was weak and pleasure-loving, and failed to assert his right to the throne, partly because he had been led to doubt his own legitimacy. He lay in his court, dallying with pleasures both innocent and guilty, while the English forces fought their way from the north toward the heart of his kingdom. His generals were brave, but profligate, and their excesses weakened their efforts by destroying all discip- line. City after city was taken by the English, and to the cries of the French for succor no satisfying answer could be wrung from the dissolute prince. What France needed, there- fore, was a leader for her armies and inspiration for her king. Both were to come from the same source, and that a most un- likely, though not unexpected one. France had been betrayed by a woman, the mother of the dauphin; her deliverance was to be wrought through a woman, a virgin from the peasantry. All the qualifications for such a deliverer were found in the peasant girl Joan, developed in her from early childhood by the vicissitudes of France. Among the qualifications needed were perfect purity of thought, word, and action, in- tense religious zeal, strength of will, great personal bravery, unbounded enthusiasm, and magnetic control over rude natures. These qualities developed in order, and came to her assistance in time of greatest need. In none of them was she found wanting while her mission lasted, except momentarily, when terror overcame her and forced her to display woman's natural weakness. Her purity from early girlhood to the time of her death, was beyond the shadow of doubt. Her shyness prompted her to avoid the society of other youthful villagers, and seek the solitude and sacredness of her own thoughts. This tendency continued through her later girlhood at Domremy, and prompted her to repel the matrimonial advances of young men of her village, since she considered herself devoted to the cause of France's deliverance. But most wonderful of all was the preservation of her purity during the ten-fold perils of her marches and military campaigns. A journey of one hun- dred and fifty leagues in the company of men and without a

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female comrade, the dangers o£ her marches at the head of her forces; her necessary encampment in company with her officers and men; and worst of all, the insults she was forced to en- dure from her brutal captors during her imprisonment were safely passed. She died a virgin. Through her pre-eminent virtue she was able to check many abuses of the camp, driving away the female camp-followers, and leading the officers and men, through shame of conscience, to forsake dissoluteness and lead lives worthy of a Christian soldiery. One step from the path of virtue, even though taken under duress, would have robbed her of this moral power, and degraded her to a posi- tion of a despised woman of the camp. Her purity also de- prived her judges of a mighty weapon. They sought far and near for a stain upon her character, to prove her guilty of a league with evil spirits. The search brought out only stronger evidences of her virtue. Had they proved her guilty, they could have burned her without a qualm of conscience, as a woman witch; for according to the old superstition, only a who had forfeited her virginity could be in communion with evil spirits. Her religious zeal had been developed from early child- hood. She had been brought up almost in the shadow of the Arbre des Dames, a tree under whose branches, according to the old tradition, fairy spirits were wont to hold their solemn assemblies. For the imaginative girl it was but a step to the claim (whether true or false it is immaterial) that heavenly voices had sounded in her ears, bidding her to go to the rescue of distracted France; that she had seen heavenly visitors in their divine effulgence; Michael, the archangel, St Catharine, and St. Margaret, the last two the guardian saints of the Domremy church. Though she was only thir- teen years old when these apparitions first came to her, she adhered even in the face of inquisitorial pains, to the reality of her visions. She was impelled to an implicit faith which never deserted her, but became more and more sublime with the growth of her experience. During all her heroic labors she submitted herself to the guidance of the mysterious "voices" which came to her in time of need, and prompted every action. She manifested no spirit of rebellion against

her superiors in the church, and even when their questions were intended to entrap her into admissions which would cost her life, her answers were full of the essence of humble obedience to spiritual authority. Even her sword and her banner were sanctified to the service of God. When she came to the dauphin, Charles, she came in the name of the Lord, announced herself as the divinely appointed deliverer of France, recognized the prince, notwithstanding his disguises, though she had never seen him before, and overcame all ob- jections to her claim. In fact her zeal was irresistible. Un- der its influence, she surmounted all obstacles to the accomp- lishment of her destiny, until this zeal was exhausted and her mission completed. Whatever she attempted afterward, failed utterly. When she raised the siege of Orleans and saw the dauphin crowned as Charles VII. at Rheims, her en- thusiasm left her. She was no longer the saint, but a warrior; no longer the mild and gentle maid, but a leader of men to war; not one who shuddered at the elusion of blood, but one who spoke of her sword as "excellent for thrusting or cutting;" no longer mild, but stern and cruel in her treatment of dissolute camp-followers; no more the protectress of human life, but one who had given up a prisoner to death. In short she was no longer filled with the self-confidence which had enabled her to put down all opposition, but doubt and hesitancy had taken possession of her soul, and every im- portant effort failed through weakness. After the fatal day of her capture in the outposts of Paris, her religious zeal and enthusiasm changed to resigna- tion, and she entered with meekness on the path which led to her inevitable doom. Taken to Rouen and confined in an iron cage; accosted and treated as a witch; questioned on the most delicate matters; and, it must be said, prejudged to her doom, she preserved a calmness and humility which dis- played the saint. Cruel though the statement seems, it may be said that for the sake of her reputation in history, it was well that she was captured by her enemies before she could proceed farther in her military career and display the stern qualities whose threatened development has been referred to. Her demeanor under these trying ordeals is well illus-

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trated by her reply to one of her prosecutor's questions: "Do you know yourself to be in the grace of God?" he asked. "If I am not in the grace of God," she replied, "I pray God that it may be vouchsafed to me; if I am, I pray God that I may be preserved in it." Her last companion was a priest, the crucifix was the last objectshe looked upon, and she died with the name of Jesus on her lips. Her intense religious zeal and her humility in the midst of troubles completely changed the opinion of the English regarding her. At the time of her capture she was, in their view, a demon, prompted in her work by evil spirits. When she died, one of the English officers is said to have exclaimed, "We are lost; we have burned a saint!" And a rude soldier who fulfilled a vow by casting a faggot on her funeral pile just as she died, declared that he saw a dove fly out of her mouth with her last sigh. In spite of his com- rade's attentions, he died of despair. It is a remarkable fact in this connection that although she was put to death on a charge arising out of religious bigotry, she proved herself "true to death" to her childhood's faith. Though betrayed by her countrymen and deserted by her king, she had no word of censure, but defended them against all assaults. Her strength of will was so great as to stand every test. If she felt her "voices" urging her onward, nothing could check her. Her officers, in a council of war, had decided upon a line of action different from her determination. "You have been to your council," she said, "and I to mine. Be assured that the council of God will hold good, and that the council of men will perish." In spite of their vehement arguments, she remained firm in her determination, and carried her point. But perhaps the most striking exemplification of her strength of will occurred at the time of her departure for the camp. Parents, priests, officers, soldiers, and even the king attempted to dissuade her, but she all opposition and placed overcame herself at the head of the army. "Daughter! go forward; I will be thy helper — gp!" said the voices; and "feeling so joy- ful as is wondrous to tell," she went in answer to the man- date. The greatest test of personal bravery is to go into un-

familiar scenes of danger without flinching. Actual warfare was most unfamiliar to the young girl. True, in her Domremy home in early womanhood, she had several times given up her room to wounded soldiers and had attended them with gentle skill; but it was vastly different to see the soldiers re- ceive their wounds and be among them as they fell. Yet she rushed into such dangers boldly and cheerfully, always acting as van-guard in an attack and rear-guard in retreat. Some of the acts of heroism performed by this maid of eighteen would have done honor to a veteran of the wars. It was this insensibility to danger which caused her to remain too long as a guard to her party, on the day of her capture. Seeking their own safety they left her in the hands of her enemies. Her enthusiasm was the direct result of her religious zeal, and has already been treated. Whether listening to the promptings of her mentors, or following their urgings to the front of battle; whether leading an army or disciplining a camp; whether bending in humility before her king, or urging him to act the man for his country's sake; whether driving the English before her in terror, or being burned by them as a witch, she preserved her enthusiastic faith in her own mis- sion, and never for a moment doubted its justice and its in- spiration. Her command over the rude natures of her associates was noarvellous. When she arrived in the camp, she found a drunken, licentious, profane rabble, guilty of all sins and possessed of no graces. Before she had been there a month, order had come out of chaos and the camp had become a scene of daily prayer and praise. Even the leaders were transformed by the magic of her presence. Discipline was quickly developed through this religious improvement, in a manner equaled only in the case of Cromwell's famous "Ironsides." Under the influence of this new spirit of fervor and discipline, Joan's army was able to enter Orleans, sorely beleagured by the English, and raise the siege. Under its guidance her party took town after town, until Charles was conducted in safety to the cathedral city, Rheims, and crowned in triumph. The relief of Orleans gave to her the proud title, "Maid of Orleans;" the crowning of the dauphin at Rheims secured to

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him the permanent title, king of France, by forestalling similar action in behalf of the English Henry. But if her influence over rude natures was great in her hours of triumph, what was it at her death? As the flames mounted the high scaffold, on which she had been placed, in order that no one might, by a sword-thrust, end her sufferings, her woman's weakness asserted itself only for a moment. As the pain deepened, and the flesh began to shrivel, the spirit asserted its freedom, and the maid became a martyr. No revilings,no complainings, but the spirit of patient resigna- tion, marked her closing moments; and the men whom noth- ing but this scene could satisfy, turned from it, their eyes quenched with tears. No more an enemy was she to them; no more a demon in woman's guise; no more their poor, de- spised victim; but, triumphant in her patient sufferings, she overmastered them, their hatred and their vengeance, and secured a perpetual dominion over the hearts of men. Says Michelet: "There have been many martyrs; history shows us numberless ones, more or less pure, more or less glorious. Pride has had its martyrs; so have hate, and the spirit of controversy. No age has been without martyrs militant, who no doubt died with a good grace when they could no longer kill. Such fanatics are irrelevant to our subject. The sainted girl is not of them; she had a sign of — her own goodness, charity, sweetness of soul. <'May new France never forget the saying of old France, 'Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good!' To be and to keep so, amidst the injuries of man and the severity of Providence, is not the gift of a happy nature alone, but it is strength and heroism. To preserve sweetness and benevolence in the midst of so many bitter disputes, to pass through a life's experiences without suffer- — ing them to touch this internal treasure is divine. They who persevere, and so go on to the end, are the true elect. And though they may even at times have stumbled in the difficult path of the world, amidst their falls, their v/eaknesses, and * their infancies, they will not the less remain children of Godl