30XS
410
JOAN
was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St.
Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to
speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to
her confessor, and constantl}' refused, at her trial, to
be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the
saints and to explain how she recognized them. None
the less, she told her judges: "I saw them with these
very eyes, as well as I see you. " Great efforts have
been made by rationalistic historians, and most re-
cently by M. Anatole France, to explain these voices
as the result of a condition of religious and hysterical
exaltation which had been fostered in Joan by priestly
influence, combined with certain prophecies current in
the country-side of a maiden from the bois chesnu
(oak wood), near which the Fairy Tree was situated,
who was to save France by miracle. But the base-
lessness of this analysis of the phenomena has been
fully exposed by Mr. Andrew Lang ("The Maid of
France", 1909, 25 sqq.) and other non - Catholic
writers. There is not a shadow of evidence to sup-
port this theory of priestly advisers coaching Joan in
a part, but much which contradicts it. Moreover,
unless we accuse the Maid of deliberate falsehood.
Hume of Joan of Arc, Domremt
(Actual Condition)
which no one is prepared to do, it was the voices which created the state of patriotic exaltation, and not the exaltation which preceded the voices. Her evidence on these points is clear.
Although Joan never made any statement as to the date at which the voices revealed her mission, it seems certain that the call of God was only made known to her gradually. But by May, 1428, she no longer doubted that she was bidden to go to the help of the king, and the voices became insistent, urging her to present herself to Robert Baudricourt, who com- manded for Charles VII in the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs. This journey she eventually accom- plished a month later, but Baudricourt, a rutlc and dis- solute soldier, treated her and her mission with scant respect, saying to the cousin who accompanied her: "Take her home to her father and give her a good whipping." Meanwhile the military situation of King Charles and his sujuiorters was growing more desperate. Orleans was invest eel (12 Octolier, 1428), and by the close of the year complete defeat seemed imminent, .loan's voices became urgent, and even threatening. It was in vain that she resisted, saying to them: " I am a poor girl; I do not know how to ride or fight." The voices only reiterated: "It is God who commands it." Yielding at last, she left Domremy in January, 1429, and again visited Vaucouleurs. Baudricourt was still sceptical, but, as she stayed on in the town, her per- sistence gradually made an impression on him. On 17 Feb. she announced a great defeat which had be- fallen the French arms outside Orl<'\ans (the Battle of the Herrings). As this statement was officially con- firmed a few days later, her cause gained ground.
Finally she was suffered to seek the king at Chinon,
and she made her way there with a slender escort of
three men-at-arms, she being attired, at her own re-
quest, in male costume — undoubtedly as a protection
to her modesty in the rough life of the camp. She
always slept fully dressed, and all those who were inti-
mate with her declared that there was something
about her which repressed every unseemly thought in
her regard. She reached Chinon on 6 March, and two
days later was admitted into the presence of Charles
VII. To test her, the king had disguised himself, but
she at once saluted him without hesitation amidst a
group of attendants. From the beginning a strong
party at the court — La Tr^moille, the royal favourite,
foremost among.st them— opposed her as a crazy vis-
ionary, liut a secret sign, communicated to her by her
voices, which she made known to Charles, led the king,
somewhat half-heartedly, to believe in her mission.
What this sign was, Joan never revealed, but it is now
most commonly believed that this "secret of the
king " was a doubt which Charles had conceived of the
legitimacy of his birth, and which Joan had been
supernaturally authorized to set at rest. Still, liefore
Joan could be employed in military operations she
was sent to Poitiers to be examined by a numerous
committee of learned bishops and doctors. The ex-
amination was of the most searching and formal
character. It is regrettable in the extreme that the
minutes of the proceedings, to which Joan frequently
appealed later on at her trial, have altogether per-
ished. .\ll that we know is that her ardent faith,
simplicity, and honesty made a favourable impression.
The theologians founil nothing heretical in her claims
to supernatural guidance, and, without pronouncing
ujion the reality of her mission, they thought that she
might lie safely employed and further tested.
Keturning to Chinon, Joan made her preparations for the campaign. Instead of the sword the king of- fered her, she begged that search might be made for an ancient sword buried, as she averred, behind the altar in the chapel of Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois. It was found in the very spot her voices indicated. There was made for her at the same time a standard bearing the words Jesus, Maria, with a picture of God the Father, and kneeling angels presenting a fleur-de-lis. But perhaps the most interesting fact connected with this early stage of her mission is a letter of one Sire de Rotslaer written from Lyons on 22 April, 1429, which was delivered at Brussels and duly registered, as the manuscript to this day attests, before any of the events referred to received their fulfilment. The Maid, he reports, said " that she would save Orleans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orleans would lie woiuided by a shaft but would not die of it, and that the King, in the course of the coming summer, would lie crowned at Rheims, together with other things which the King keeps secret". (See the facsimile in Wallon, "Jeanne d'Arc", p. 86.) Before entering upon her campaign, Joan summoned the King of England to withdraw his troops from French soil. The English commanders were furious at the audacity of the demand, but Joan by a rapid movement entered Orleans on 30 April. Her presence there at once worked wonders. By 8 May the English forts which encircled the city had all been capturefl, and the siege raised, though on the 7th Joan was wounded in the breast by an arrow. So far as the Maid went she wished to follow up these suc- cesses with all speed, partly from a sound warlike in- stinct, partly because her voices had already told her that she had only a year to last. But the king and his advisers, especially La Tr^moille and the Archbishop of Reims, were slow to move. However, at Joan's earnest entreaty a short campaign was l)egun upon the Loire, which, after a series of successes, ended on 18 J>me with a great victory at Patay, where the En- glish reinforcements sent from Paris under Sir John
