The Executioner's Knife; Or, Joan of Arc

The steed, as white as snow, was for the martial virgin.
For her was the armor of battle as brilliant as silver.
But for whom the royal crown?
Gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin
From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of oaks."

PART III

ORLEANS

CHAPTER I

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1429

In one week the martial Maid, inspired by the love for her people and country, vanquished the English, triumphant since the battle of Poitiers, more than seventy years before, when John II and the coward nobility of France took to their heels. In one week the brave daughter of the people accomplished what for over seventy years had proved beyond the strength of the most illustrious captains. The week has been called The Week of Joan Darc.

Night had set in, but it was a balmy night of spring, and anyone on the evening of April 29, 1429, who stood on the street leading to the Banier Gate, one of the gates of the town of Orleans, would have thought it was bright day. All the windows, at which the inhabitants crowded, were illuminated with lamps. To the light of these was joined that of torches with which a large number of armed bourgeois and artisans had furnished themselves and were ranged in a double row along the full length of the thoroughfare for the purpose of keeping back the crowd. The courage of these town soldiers had been severely tested by the perils of the siege which they had long sustained single handed, having at first refused to admit into the city the companies of soldiers that consisted of insolent, thievish and ferocious mercenaries. However, after many a brave attempt, and seeing their numbers reduced from day to day under the shot and fire of the besiegers, the townsmen of Orleans had found themselves compelled to accept and support the mercenary bands of Lahire, of Dunois, of Xaintrailles and of other professional captains, who hired themselves and their men for cash to whomsoever paid for their services. They were dangerous auxiliaries, ever drawing in their train a mob of dissolute women who were themselves no less thievish than the English.

Accordingly, often had the councilmen of Orleans – resolute citizens, who bravely led their militia to the ramparts when these were assailed, or outside of the city when they made a sally – had lively disputes with the captains on the score of the misconduct of their men, or of their timidity in battle. These men, to whom arms was a trade, not having as the inhabitants themselves, families, property, their own hearths, to defend, were not particularly anxious about the speedy raising of the siege, well quartered and paid as they were by the town. It was, accordingly, with inexpressible impatience that the people of Orleans awaited the arrival of Joan Darc. They relied upon her help to drive the English from their redoubts, and to free themselves from the heavy burden of the French captains.

A compact crowd of men, women and children, held back by a military cordon, filled the two sides of the thoroughfare, at the end of which the residence of Master James Boucher, the treasurer, was situated, and was even more brilliantly illuminated than any other. Presently the hum of the multitude was silenced by the loud and rapid peals from the belfry of the town hall, together with the roar of artillery, announcing the arrival of the Maid. The faces of the citizens, until recently sad and somber, now breathed joy and hope. All shared and expressed the opinion that the virgin girl of Lorraine, prophesied by Merlin, was coming to deliver Orleans. She was announced to be of divinely dazzling beauty, brave and instinct with a military genius that struck even Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, all of them renowned captains at the time defending the city for pay, when on the previous day they met her at Blois. Two of their equerries, who had ridden ahead into Orleans during the day, reported the marvel, which spread from mouth to mouth, and they announced the entry of Joan Darc for that evening.

Everywhere on her passage from Chinon to Blois, the equerries added, her march had been a continuous ovation, in which she was greeted by the joyful cries of the peasants, who for so long a time had been exposed to the ravages of the enemy, and was acclaimed by them as their redeeming angel sent by God. These, and similar accounts that were rife, revived the confidence of the townsmen. The crowd was especially dense in the neighborhood of the residence of Master James Boucher, where the heroine was to lodge.

Nine o'clock struck from the tower of the Church of St. Croix. Almost at the same instant the sound of trumpets was heard at a distance. The music approached slowly, and presently the brilliant light of the torches revealed a cavalcade riding in. The little page Imerguet and the equerry Daulon marched ahead, the one carrying the pennon, the other the white standard of the warrior maid, on which two azure-winged angels were painted holding in their hand a stalk of lilies in blossom. Behind them followed Joan Darc, mounted on her white charger, caparisoned in blue, while she herself was cased in a light plate armor of iron that resembled pale silver – a complete suit, leg-pieces, thigh-pieces, and coat of mail, arm-pieces and a rounded breast-plate that protected her virginal bosom. The visor of her casque, wholly raised, exposed her sweet and handsome face, set off by her black hair cut round at the neck. Profoundly moved by the acclamations that the good people of Orleans greeted her with, and which she received as a homage to her saints, a tear was seen to roll down from her large black eyes, adding to their brilliancy. Already familiarized with the handling of a horse, she elegantly guided her mount with one hand, while with the other she held a little white baton, the only weapon that, in her horror of blood, she wished to use in leading the soldiers to battle. Behind her rode Dunois, accoutered in a brilliant suit of armor, ornamented in gold; behind these came, mixed among the councilmen of Orleans, Marshal Retz, Lahire, Xaintrailles and other captains. Among the latter was the Sire of Gaucourt, leading a reinforcement of royal troops to Orleans and invested with the command of the town. With a sinister look, and hatred in his heart, the sire meditated dark schemes. Equerries and bourgeois deputations from the town brought up the rear of the train, which soon was pressed upon from all sides by so compact a mass that for a moment Joan Darc's steed could not move a step. Enraptured at her beauty and at her carriage at once so modest and yet so martial, men, women and children contemplated her with delirious joy and covered her with blessings. Some were even carried to the point of wishing to kiss her spurred boots half covered with the scales of her leg-pieces. As much touched as confused, she said naïvely to Dunois, turning towards him:

"Indeed, I will not have the courage to protect myself against these demonstrations, if God does not himself protect me."[57 - Proceedings of the Rehabilitation, vol. III, p. 84.]

At that moment one of the militiamen who held a torch approached the Maid so closely in order to obtain a better view of her that he involuntarily set fire to the fringe of the standard borne by Daulon. Fearing the flag was in danger, Joan uttered a cry of fright, clapped the spurs to her horse before which the crowd rolled back, and approaching the equerry at a bound seized the burning banner, smothered the flames between her gauntlets and then gracefully waved it over her casque,[58 - Proceedings of the Rehabilitation, vol. III, p. 80.] as if to reassure the people of Orleans, who might construe the accident into an evil omen. Such was the presence of mind and the horsemanship displayed by Joan on the occasion that the enraptured crowd broke out into redoubled acclamations. Even the mercenaries, who, not being on guard that night upon the ramparts, had been able to join the crowd, saw in the Maid an angel of war and felt stronger; like the archer of Vaucouleurs, it seemed to them that, led to battle by such a charming captain, they were bound to vanquish the enemy and avenge their previous defeats. Dunois, Lahire, Xaintrailles, Marshal Retz, all of them experienced captains, noticed the exaltation of their mercenaries, who but the day before seemed wholly discouraged; while the Sire of Gaucourt, perceiving the to him unexpected influence that the Maid exercised, not upon the Orleans militiamen merely, but upon the rough soldiers themselves, grew ever somberer and more secretly enraged.

Joan was slowly advancing through a surging mass of admiring humanity towards the house of James Boucher, when the cavalcade was arrested for a moment by a detachment of armed men that issued from one of the side streets. They were leading two English prisoners, and were headed by a large-sized man of jovial and resolute mien. The leader of the squad was a Lorrainian by birth, who had long lived in Orleans and was called Master John. He had well earned the reputation of being the best culverin-cannonier of the town. His two enormous bomb-throwers, which he had christened "Riflard" and "Montargis," and which, planted on the near side of the bridge on the redoubt of Belle-Croix, ejected unerring shot, caused great damage to the English. He was feared and abhorred by them. Our merry cannonier was not ignorant of their hatred, his cannons seemed to be the objective point for the best aimed bolts of the enemy's archers. He, accordingly, at times amused himself by feigning to be shot dead, suddenly dropping down beside one of his culverins. On such occasions his fellow townsmen engaged at the cannons would raise him and carry him away with demonstrations of great sorrow, that were echoed by the English with counter-demonstrations of joy. But regularly on the morrow they saw again Master John, in happier trim than ever,[59 - Journal of the Siege of Orleans, vol. IV, p. 105.] and ever more accurate and telling with the shot from Riflard and Montargis. A few days later he would again repeat the comedy of death and the miracle of resurrection. It was this jolly customer who headed the squad that was leading the two prisoners to jail. At the sight of the warrior maid, he drew near her, contemplated her for a moment in rapt admiration, and reaching to her his heavy gloved hand said with considerable pride:

"Brave Maid, here is a countryman of yours, born like yourself in Lorraine; and he is at your service, together with Riflard and Montargis, his two heavy cannons."

Dunois leaned over towards Joan and said to her in a low voice:

"This worthy fellow is Master John, the ablest and most daring cannonier in the place. He is, moreover, very expert in all things that concern the siege of a town."

"I am happy to find here a countryman," said the Maid, smiling and cordially stretching out her gauntleted hand to the cannonier. "I shall to-morrow morning see how you manoeuvre Riflard and Montargis. We shall together examine the entrenchments of the enemy, you shall be my chief of artillery, and we shall drive the English away with shot of cannon – and the help of God!"

"Countrywoman," cried Master John in a transport of delight, "my cannons shall need but to look at you, and they will go off of themselves, and their balls will fly straight at the English."

The cannonier was saying these words when Joan heard a cry of pain, and from the back of her horse she saw one of the two English prisoners drop on his back, bleeding, with his scalp cut open by the blow of a pike that a mercenary had dealt upon his head, saying:

"Look well at Joan the Maid. Look at her, you dog of an Englishman.[60 - Trial and Condemnation of Joan of Arc, Vol. III, p. 74.] As sure as I have killed you, she will thrust your breed out of France!"

At the sight of the flowing blood, that she had a horror of, the warrior maid grew pale; with a movement more rapid than thought, and pained at the soldier's brutality, she leaped from her horse, pressed her way to the Englishman, knelt down beside him, and raising the unhappy man's head, called with tears in her eyes to the surrounding militiamen:

"Give him grace; the prisoner is unarmed – come to his help."[61 - Trial and Condemnation of Joan of Arc, vol. III, p. 72, the testimony of Louis Leconte.]

At this compassionate appeal, several women, moved with pity, came to the wounded man, tore up their handkerchiefs and bound up his gash, while the warrior maid, still on her knees, held up the Englishman's head. The wounded man recovered consciousness for a moment, and at the sight of the young girl's handsome face, instinct with pity, he joined his two hands in adoration and wept.

"Come, poor soldier; you need not fear. You shall not be hurt," said Joan to him, rising, and she put her foot into the stirrup that her little page Imerguet presented to her.

"Daughter of God, you are a saint!" cried a young woman with exaltation at the act of charity that she had just witnessed, and throwing herself upon her knees before the warrior maid at the moment that the latter was about to leap upon her horse she added: "I beseech you, deign to touch my ring!" saying which she raised her hand up to Joan. "Blessed by you, I shall preserve the jewel as a sacred relic."

"I am no saint," answered the warrior maid with an ingenuous smile. "As for your ring, touch it yourself. You are no doubt a good and worthy woman; your touch will be as good as mine."[62 - Trial and Condemnation of Joan of Arc, vol. III, p. 72, the testimony of Louis Leconte.]

So saying, Joan remounted her horse, to be saluted anew by the acclamations of the throng; even the most hardened soldiers were touched by the sentiments of pity that she had displayed towards an unarmed enemy. So far from taxing her with weakness, they admired the goodness of her heart and her generosity.

Master John frantically cheered his countrywoman, and the cries of "Good luck, Joan!" "Good luck to the liberator of Orleans!" resounded like the roll of thunder. Almost carried off its feet by the crowding mass of people, Joan's horse finally arrived with its inspired rider before the house of Master James Boucher. Standing at the threshold of his door with his wife and his daughter Madeleine near him, Master James Boucher awaited his young guest, and led her, together with the councilmen and captains, into a large hall where a sumptuous supper was prepared for the brilliant train. Timid and reserved, the Maid said to Master Boucher:

"I thank you, sir, but I shall not take supper. If your daughter will be kind enough to show me to the room where I am to sleep, and to help me take off my armor, I would be grateful to her. All I wish, sir, is a little bread moistened in water and wine – that is all I shall need; I shall immediately go to sleep. I wish to be awakened at early morning, to inspect the entrenchments with Master John the cannonier."[63 - Proceedings of the Rehabilitation, vol. III, p. 87.]

According to her wishes, the Maid retired, Master Boucher's daughter Madeleine showing her to her room. At first seized with fear of the inspired Maid, Madeleine was soon so completely captivated by her sweetness and the affability of her words, that she naïvely offered to share her room during her sojourn in Orleans. Joan accepted the offer with gladness, happy at finding a companion that pleased her so well Madeleine gently helped her to disarm and brought her her refection. Just before lying down to sleep Joan said to her:

"Now that I have met you and your parents, Madeleine, I feel all the happier that God has sent me to deliver the good town of Orleans."[64 - Proceedings of the Rehabilitation, vol. III, p. 124.]

The Maid knelt down at the head of her bed, did her devotions for the night, invoked her two patron saints, implored them with a sigh to bestow their blessings upon her mother, her father and her brothers, and was soon plunged in peaceful sleep, while Madeleine long remained awake, contemplating the sweet heroine in silent admiration.

CHAPTER II

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1429

Just before daybreak, and punctual to his appointment made the previous evening, Master John the cannonier was at James Boucher's door. Immediately afterwards, Joan opened the window of her room, which was on the first floor, and looked out upon the street which still was dark. She called down:

"Oh, Master John, are you there?"

"Yes, my brave countrywoman," answered the Lorrainian, "I have been waiting for you."

Joan soon left the house and joined the cannonier. She had not resumed her full armor of battle, but had merely put on a light iron coat of mail which she wore under her coat. A hood took the place of her casque. Her baton was in her hand, and on her shoulder was flung a short mantle in which she meant to wrap herself on her return, in order to prevent being recognized and thus becoming the object of popular ovations. She asked Master John to make with her the rounds of the town outside the ramparts, in order to inform herself on the strength of the enemy's entrenchments. Joan departed with her guide, traversed the still deserted streets, and issuing by the Banier Gate, started on her excursion.

Twelve formidable redoubts, called "bastilles," surrounded the town from the side of the Beauce and the side of the Sologne districts, and only slightly beyond range of the town's cannon. The most considerable of these hostile fortifications were the bastille of St. Laurence to the west, of St. Pouaire to the north, of St. Loup to the east, and of St. Privé, of the Augustinians and of St. John-le-Blanc to the south and on the other side of the Loire. Furthermore, and opposite to the head of the bridge, which, on the side of the besieged, was protected by a fortified earthwork, the English had raised a formidable castle, flanked with frame towers, called by them "tournelles." All these redoubts, manned with large garrisons, were surrounded with wide and deep moats, besides a belt of palisades planted at the foot of thick earthworks that were crowned with platforms on which were placed culverins and ballistas intended to hurl bolts into the town or upon its sallying forces. The bastilles, raised at distances of from two to three hundred fathoms from each other, completely encircled the town, and cut it off from the roads and the upper river.

Joan Darc minutely questioned the cannonier upon the manner in which the English fought in the redoubts, which she frequently approached with tranquil audacity in order to be able to judge by herself of the besiegers' means of defence. During the examination, she came near being struck by a volley of bolts darted at her from the bastille of St. Laurence. She was in no wise frightened, but only smiled at the sight of the projectiles that fell a few paces short of her. Joan, astonished the cannonier no less by her calmness and bravery than by the relevancy of her observations. Her every word revealed surprising military aptitude, and a quick and accurate eye. Among other things, she said to the cannonier, after having inquired from him what were the tactics hitherto pursued by the besieged, that it seemed to her the better way was, not to attack all the redoubts at once in general sallies as had hitherto been done, but to concentrate all the troops upon one point, and in that manner attack the bastilles one after another with the certainty of carrying them, seeing that they could hold but a limited number of defenders, while in the open field nothing could limit the number of the assailants; their combined mass could be three and four times superior to the garrison of each redoubt taken separately. Finally, by a number of other observations Joan revealed the extraordinary intuition that has ever been the mark of great captains. More and more astonished at such a martial instinct, the cannonier cried:

"Well, countrywoman, in what book did you learn all that?"

"In the book that our Lord God inspires me to read. That book is ever open before me," naïvely answered Joan.[65 - Proceedings of the Rehabilitation, vol. III, p. 110.]

While the Maid was thus examining the enemy's works and was meditating upon and maturing her plan of campaign, the Sire of Gaucourt, who had been appointed chief of the royal troops sent to Orleans, was meditating upon and maturing the dark plot of treason long before hatched by him together with his two accomplices of the royal council, the Sire of La Tremouille and the Bishop of Chartres. Early that morning Gaucourt visited the most influential captains. Envy and malice supplied the man's lack of acumen. Moreover, carefully instructed by La Tremouille, he appealed to the worst passions of these men of the sword. He reminded them of the frantic enthusiasm with which Joan was received by the populace, by the town militia, even by their own mercenaries. Did not they, celebrated warriors, feel humiliated by the triumph of the peasant girl, of that cowherdess? Were not the insensate expectations pinned upon the visionary girl an insult to their fame? Did they not feel wounded and angry at the thought that their companies until then dejected and discouraged, seemed inflamed with ardor at the bare sight of the seventeen-year-old girl, even before she had delivered her first battle? The insidious words found an echo in the perverse spirits of several of the captains. As has often been seen before and will be seen again in the future with people of the military trade, several of the captains gave a willing ear to the perfidious insinuations of Gaucourt, and agreed, if not openly to refuse their co-operation with the Maid, at least to thwart her designs, to prevent their successful execution, and ever to oppose her in the councils of war. Dunois and Lahire were the only ones who thought it would be "good policy" to profit by the exaltation that the Maid inspired in the people and even in the mercenaries; they were of the opinion that she should be seconded if she actually gave evidence of military genius. These views notwithstanding, the majority of the captains adhered to their ill will for the young girl of Domremy, of whom they were vilely jealous. Gaucourt augured well for his black designs without, however, as yet daring fully to reveal to his ready accomplices his infamous machination – to cause the Maid to fall into the hands of the English by leaving her in the lurch at a sally and raising the draw-bridge behind her – as, indeed, was one day to happen.

Back from her long excursion around the ramparts of Orleans in the company of Master John, Joan said to Gaucourt and other chiefs who called upon her, that she had consulted her voices and they advised a simultaneous attack on the next day, Sunday, by all the combined forces of the army upon the bastille of the Tournelles to the end of first of all freeing the head of the Orleans bridge, opening the roads from the side of Beauce for the entry of provisions, which the town began to run short of, and facilitating the entrance of the reinforcements that had been ordered from Tours and Blois. The captains crossed themselves at hearing the Maid, a daughter of God, propose such an enormity – to fight on Sunday! Would that not, they remonstrated with Joan, be to inaugurate her arms with a sacrilege? As to themselves, sooner should their hands shrivel than draw their swords on that day, a day devoted to rest and prayer! In vain did Joan cry: "Oh, sirs! He prays who fights for the welfare of Gaul!" The captains remained unshakable in their orthodoxy on the pious observance of the dominical rest. Much against her will Joan saw herself compelled to postpone the plan for Monday, but desirous of turning the postponement to account and avoiding all she could the effusion of blood that she had such a horror of, she requested her equerry Daulon to write at her dictation another and short letter to the English, the first one having been forwarded to them from Blois by a herald. The missive having been written and signed with her name, Joan attached to it her "cross in God" in the fashion of a counter-sign, placed the parchment in her leathern girdle-pouch and invited the captains to accompany her to the ramparts on the Loire that faced the bastille of the Tournelles, occupied by the English. The warrior maid wished once more to examine the important position, preparatorily to the Monday attack. The request was complied with, and several captains accompanied her, in the midst of a large concourse of people, of soldiers and of mercenaries, no less enthusiastic than the previous evening, to the gate of the little castle on the river. Joan advanced to the edge of the boulevard of the bridge, so near to the bastille of the Tournelles, that the voice of the besieged could be heard by the besiegers. A large number of the Orleans militiamen were on guard upon the embattled platform of their own entrenchment which was equipped with ballistas and other engines of war used in hurling bolts and large stones. Transported with joy at the sight of the Maid in their midst, the good people surrounded her and inquired with martial ardor and impatience: "When will the assault be?" She promised it for Monday, and ordered them to raise a white flag in order to propose a truce of an hour to the English at the Tournelles, to whom she desired to speak. The flag of peace rose in the air, the besiegers answered with a like signal that they accepted a momentary suspension of hostilities, and several of them appeared at the embrasures of their bastille, not yet aware of Joan's proximity. The Maid picked out a large arrow from one of the quivers that hung from each of the ballistas, pushed the iron through the parchment on which the missive that she had brought with her was written, and having thus securely fastened it, she gave the arrow to one of the cannoniers with the request to hurl it into the Tournelles. Stepping upon the parapet, Joan called out to the English:

"Stand aside that you may not be wounded by the arrow on which I have fastened the letter that I have written to you. Read it!"

The ballista was set in motion; the arrow whizzed through the air and carried into the enemy's encampment the missive of Joan, which ran as follows:

ALL OF YOU, MEN OF ENGLAND, WHO HAVE NO RIGHTS OVER THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE: —