Back Aa

Women of History

Close

<h3>JOAN OF ARC.</h3> [BORN 1412. DIED 1431.] DE QUINCEY. <ANTIMG src="images/iw.jpg" alt="W" width-obs="70" height-obs="69" class="floatl" />HAT is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that, like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea, rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right-hand of kings? Daughter of Domr�my, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long! This pure creature—pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious—never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from the belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, according to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at Domr�my, a village on the marshes of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vancouleurs. The situation, locally, of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead, in its upper chambers, was hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt, in Joanna's childhood, had re-opened the wounds of France. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe—these were chords struck from the mysterious harp of the time; but these were transitory chords. By her own internal schisms, the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever heal. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way, and she left her home for ever, in order to present herself at the dauphin's court. It is not requisite for the honour of Joan, nor is there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of action. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. But she, the child that at nineteen had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind, when standing on the pinnacle of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings, by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. She sheltered the English that invoked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus:—On the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her triumphal task was done, her end must be approaching. Next came her trial. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France, shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will; but I acknowledge you can do one thing as well as the best of us men—a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo—you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him, with her last breath, to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. <div class="figcenter p4"> <ANTIMG src="images/i039.jpg" width-obs="230" height-obs="58" alt="Decoration" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2