Part 17

"Rather now than to-morrow; rather to-morrow than later," said Joan.

On the 6th of March, 1429, the devoted girl arrived at Chinon, in Touraine, where the king then was. She had journeyed nearly a hundred and fifty leagues, through a country that was everywhere a theatre of war, without harm or insult. She was dressed in a coat of mail, bore lance and sword, and had a king's messenger and an archer as her train. This had been deemed necessary to her safety in those distracted times.

Interest and curiosity went before her. Baudricourt's letters to the king had prepared him for something remarkable. Certain incidents which happened during Joan's journey, and which were magnified by report into miracles, added to the feeling in her favor. The king and his council doubted if it were wise to give her an audience. That a peasant girl could succor a kingdom in extremity seemed the height of absurdity. But something must be done. Orleans was in imminent danger. If it were taken, the king might have to fly to Spain or Scotland. He had no money. His treasury, it is said, held only four crowns. He had no troops to send to the besieged city. Drowning men catch at straws. The people of Orleans had heard of Joan and clamored for her; with her, they felt sure, would come superhuman aid. The king consented to receive her.

It was the 9th of March, 1429. The hour was evening. Candles dimly lighted the great hall of the king's palace at Chinon, in which nearly three hundred knights were gathered. Charles VII., the king, was among them, distinguished by no mark or sign, more plainly dressed than most of those around him, standing retired in the throng.

Joan was introduced. The story--in which we cannot put too much faith--says that she walked straight to the king through the crowd of showily-dressed lords and knights, though she had never seen him before, and said, in quiet and humble tones,--

"Gentle dauphin" (she did not think it right to call him king until he had been crowned), "my name is Joan the maid; the King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is king of France. It is God's pleasure that our enemies, the English, should depart to their own country; if they depart not, evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours."

What followed is shrouded in doubt. Some say that Joan told Charles things that none but himself had known. However this be, the king determined to go to Poitiers and have this seeming messenger from Heaven questioned strictly as to her mission, by learned theologians of the University of Paris there present.

"In the name of God," said Joan, "I know that I shall have rough work there, but my Lord will help me. Let us go, then, for God's sake."

They went. It was an august and learned assembly into which the unlettered girl was introduced, yet for two hours she answered all their questions with simple earnestness and shrewd wit.

"In what language do the voices speak to you?" asked Father Seguin, the Dominican, "a very sour man," says the chronicle.

"Better than yours," answered Joan. The doctor spoke a provincial dialect.

"Do you believe in God?" he asked, sharply.

"More than you do," answered Joan, with equal sharpness.

"Well," he answered, "God forbids belief in you without some sign tending thereto; I shall not give the king advice to trust men-at-arms to you and put them in peril on your simple word."

"In the name of God," replied Joan, "I am not come to Poitiers to show signs. Take me to Orleans and I will give you signs of what I am sent for. Let me have ever so few men-at-arms given me and I will go to Orleans."

For a fortnight the questioning was continued. In the end the doctors pronounced in Joan's favor. Two of them were convinced of her divine mission. They declared that she was the virgin foretold in ancient prophecies, notably in those of Merlin. All united in saying that "there had been discovered in her naught but goodness, humility, devotion, honesty, and simplicity."

Charles decided. The Maid should go to Orleans. A suit of armor was made to fit her. She was given the following of a war-chief. She had a white banner made, which was studded with lilies, and bore on it a figure of God seated on clouds and bearing a globe, while below were two kneeling angels, above were the words "Jesu Maria." Her sword she required the king to provide. One would be found, she said, marked with five crosses, behind the altar in the chapel of St. Catharine de Fierbois, where she had stopped on her arrival in Chinon. Search was made, and the sword was found.

And now five weeks were passed in weary preliminaries, despite the fact that Orleans pleaded earnestly for succor. Joan had friends at court, but she had powerful enemies, whose designs her coming had thwarted, and it was they who secretly opposed her plans. At length, on the 27th of April, the march to Orleans began.

On the 29th the army of relief arrived before the city. There were ten or twelve thousand men in the train, guarding a heavy convoy of food. The English covered the approach to the walls, the only unguarded passage being beyond the Loire, which ran by the town. To the surprise and vexation of Joan her escort determined to cross the stream.

"Was it you," she asked Dunois, who had left the town to meet her, "who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the river, and not the direct way, over there where Talbot and the English are?"

"Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest captains," he replied.

"In the name of God, the counsel of my Lord is wiser than yours. You thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves, for I am bringing you the best succor that ever had knight, or town, or city, and that is, the good-will of God and succor from the King of Heaven; not, assuredly, for love of me; it is from God only that it proceeds."

She wished to remain with the troops until they could enter the city, but Dunois urged her to cross the stream at once, with such portion of the convoy as the boats might convey immediately.

"Orleans would count it for naught," he said, "if they received the victuals without the Maid."

She decided to go, and crossed the stream with two hundred men-at-arms and part of the supplies. At eight o'clock that evening she entered the city, on horseback, in full armor, her banner preceding her, beside her Dunois, behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most distinguished citizens. The population hailed her coming with shouts of joy, crowding on the procession, torch in hand, so closely that her banner was set on fire. Joan made her horse leap forward with the skill of a practised horseman, and herself extinguished the flame.

It was a remarkable change in her life. Three years before, a simple peasant child, she had been listening to the "voices" in her father's garden at Domremy. Now, the associate of princes and nobles, and the last hope of the kingdom, she was entering a beleaguered city at the head of an army, amid the plaudits of the population, and followed by the prayers of France. She was but seventeen years old, still a mere girl, yet her coming had filled her countrymen with hope and depressed their foes with dread. Such was the power of religious belief in that good mediaeval age.

The arrival of the Maid was announced to the besiegers by a herald, who bore a summons from her to the English, bidding them to leave the land and give up the keys of the cities which they had wrongfully taken, under peril of being visited by God's judgment. They detained and threatened to burn the herald, as a warning to Joan, the sorceress, as they deemed her. Yet such was their terror that they allowed the armed force still outside the city to enter unmolested, through their intrenchments.

The warning Joan had sent them by herald she now repeated in person, mounting a bastion and bidding the English, in a loud voice, to begone, else woe and shame would come upon them.