Joan of Arc (15 page)

The king, in view of his necessity and that of his kingdom, and considering the continuous prayers of his poor people to God and to all other lovers of peace and justice, should not turn away nor reject the Maid who says she is sent by God to give him help, even conceding that her promises consist only of human works.
¹

The theological wording means that the ‘necessity’ in which the king finds himself is the need for salvation. This may involve material salvation, but the emphasis is on the peace and justice that the Maid may bring to those who pray. The way she will achieve her aims, however, is purely human and material. Those who examined Joan knew that she was committed to war, unless the English and their allies withdraw from the lands that were not theirs by right; but it was a special kind of war. It was a moral commonplace that a war of self-defence is just; and this right of self-defence could cover attempts to recover what had been unjustly taken away, in this case parts of the land of France. But Joan did not see her war as merely a just war. It was also in some sense a holy war, as the king held France from God as a sacred trust. This was not quite like struggling to regain Christ’s lands, which was the business of a Crusade, but it was analogous to crusading. It is not surprising that once her work in France was accomplished, Joan thought of crusading against the Hussites in Bohemia.
²

The résumé concludes with a recommendation on the immediate action to be taken:

The king, in view of the testing carried out on the said Maid, so far as he can, and that no evil is found in her, and considering her answer, which is to give a divine sign at Orléans; seeing her constancy and perseverance in her purpose, and her instantaneous requests to go to Orléans to show there the sign of divine help, must not prevent her from going to Orléans with her men-at-arms, but must have her led there in good faith, trusting in God. For doubting her or dismissing her without appearance of evil, would be to repudiate the Holy Spirit, and render one unworthy of God’s help, as Gamaliel stated in a council of Jews regarding the apostles.
³

The reference to Gamaliel, the Pharisee who advised caution to the Jews who condemned the early preaching of St Peter and St John, makes clear that at least some Poitiers theologians, being of the party of Gerson, were familiar with his persistent researches into the art of the discernment of spirits. In her trial at Rouen, Joan was wronged partly because correct inquisitorial procedure was not followed and partly because her judges chose to see certain aspects of her behaviour, notably her decision to wear men’s clothes, as inherently heretical. The fundamental point at issue, however, was her willingness to trust her voices rather than what her judges told her she should believe. Her voices did not teach her any doctrine opposed to the Catholic faith, and, if they did, then it was the opinion of the leading theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, that such questions should be referred to the pope. But her judges refused to allow her appeal to the pope. In so doing they were arrogating to themselves the right to decide the doctrine of the Church.

In the nullification process, the new judges concerned themselves largely with matters of procedure. It was more prudent to declare that the verdict of the Rouen court was unsafe than to defend the right of certain women to wear men’s clothes, which many clerics would have found shocking in fact, even if defensible in principle. But it was hard to deny that if Joan should not have been condemned, the overriding reason for that view was that a devout Christian has a duty to obey the Holy Spirit. As one of the theological consultants wrote, ‘they who are led by the private law are moved by the spirit of God and are not under the public law, because where the spirit is, there is liberty’.
⁴

Between Joan’s first examination by clerics at Poitiers in March 1429 and the nullification in 1456 of her condemnation by clerics at Rouen in May 1431 there had been a theological sea change. In 1456 it was clear that in certain rare cases the clergy had to learn to be sensitive to the workings of the Spirit in private individuals, and that included the laity and, worse still, lay women. Further, the surest sign that the Spirit was working in an unusual person was that person’s holiness of life; and many of the witnesses to Joan’s life attested to her holiness.

There was another consequence of the nullification. Joan always claimed that her mission was to restore the kingdom of France to France’s rightful king. She did not live to see this happen, but by 1456 it was hard to deny that Charles VII, anointed and crowned for a sacred charge, was God’s chosen to be King of France. After the raising of the siege of Orléans and subsequent victories in the Loire valley, Joan had seemed to be the person who had saved France for its sacred king. Another 450 years elapsed before she was considered to be the girl who had saved France and a saint of the Catholic Church.

A
rras was one of those Franco-Flemish towns that had grown rich on the textile trade, and was especially well known for its tapestries. In the 1430s it was one of several such towns in the lands of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and a fit meeting place for kings and grandees. Accordingly, from 4 August 1435 the town’s abbey of St-Vaast, or Vedast, was the setting for a conference meant to bring about a general peace between England, France and Burgundy. Two cardinals presided at the sessions. The pope, anxious to encourage Latin Christians to combine against the Turks, had sent one, the Council of Basel another.

The Duke of Burgundy, ever a man for gesture politics, was good at entertaining heralds in gorgeous costumes and hundreds of retainers, but less effective in achieving his grandiose ambitions. The English and the French representatives at the conference refused to be in the same room, even in the same chapel, and early in September the English walked out. One week later the English Regent, John Duke of Bedford died and was buried in the heart of English France, in Rouen Cathedral. A week later still, the French and Burgundians made terms. The French delegates, led by Philip’s brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and Arthur, Count of Richemont (who had once come to Joan’s aid) had much to offer Philip, who was preoccupied with the conquest of Holland and the pacification of Flanders. Towns he held without royal sanction, such as Auxerre, would be his; for a mortgage he could hold towns like Abbeville, Amiens and St-Quentin in the Somme valley; and in return, as a sign of his good intentions, Charles VII promised to make a formal apology for the murder of Philip’s father at Montereau. Some in Philip’s council argued vehemently that any quarrel with the English would be harmful for Flemish trade, but many councillors had been bribed, among them the chancellor, Nicolas Rolin.

While Philip indicated his willingness to resume the role of a Valois, Rolin commissioned a painting,
The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin
, from Jan van Eyck. Van Eyck lived in Bruges, in Flanders, while Rolin came from Autun, in Burgundy; and it was the union of the international commercial towns of the coastal county with the inland vineyards of the royal duchy that had made Philip incomparably rich.
¹
For the merchants of Bruges and Ghent, the Liverpool and Manchester of the day, it was vital to keep the sea lanes to England open. In the long run, the 1435 treaty probably did not promote the cause of either Flanders or of the dukes of Burgundy; it certainly weakened England, but for Charles VII and, briefly, for a subtle Burgundian like Rolin, it was a diplomatic triumph. Rolin behaved in a suitably pious way. In the foreground of van Eyck’s picture he kneels in prayer before a Madonna being crowned by angels, a scene that refers to his gift of a statue to his native cathedral, while in the middle distance on a bridge tiny figures re-enact the murder of Montereau. At the same time Rolin gives thanks and celebrates forgiveness. With a mixture of hypocrisy, calculation and fine feeling, the Burgundians – Joan’s captors – at last made possible the attainment of her ultimate goal: the expulsion of the English from France.

There were other ironies in the new situation. The policy of the Franco-Burgundian rapprochement had been the policy of Joan’s arch enemy at the French court, Georges de La Trémoïlle, but he had fallen from power in 1433, largely through the restoration to favour of Richemont, the man whom Joan had been criticised for dealing with. It can be argued that the Treaty of Arras did little more in the short-term for Philip the Good than to make him feel good. He was assured by the papal envoy Cardinal Albergati that he had done no dishonour to his English allies, whom he might attack only if they first attacked the French. Van Eyck had meticulously studied the cardinal’s patient features, as he had the harsh traits of Rolin; and like Rolin, his motives deserve close scrutiny. Both would benefit from the reconciliation, but, whereas Rolin was after riches, the cardinal was more idealistic: he hoped to save Constantinople. Those who thought like him were to suffer the worst form of disillusionment. The Treaty of Arras did not bring the Hundred Years War to a rapid end; instead it dragged itself on wearily till 1453, the year when Constantinople became Istanbul.

It was their use of cannon that enabled Sultan Mehmet II to defeat the Greeks and Charles VII to drive out the English. Joan herself had been modern enough to see the advantages of guns. When talking about this method of warfare, Alençon had had to use the new French word,
artillerie
, for there was no equivalent term in Latin, the ancient tongue of learned men.
²

S
hortly after Joan of Arc’s death the English had a symbolic success. Days before Christmas 1431, on a dais whose steps were painted blue and which was studded with golden fleur-de-lis, young Henry was anointed King of France according to the English Sarum rite in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, by his uncle Cardinal Beaufort. The manner of the ceremony confirmed Joan’s view that in France the English were foreigners. Worse still, while the king was present, the cardinal insisted that Bedford resign as regent. This was not only an imperious but also a foolish act, for the Regent had many French admirers. The following year the tenuousness of the English hold on French land was revealed by the temporary capture of the Grosse Tour at Rouen and the conclusive capture of Chartres. At Lagny, too, the Bastard of Orléans beat off Bedford’s attack. Bedford’s position was further weakened by the death of his wife Anne of Burgundy, sister of Duke Philip, and he then annoyed Philip by marrying the wealthy Jacquetta de Luxembourg without first gaining the duke’s approval.

Bedford lacked the financial resources and manpower to prosecute war as vigorously as he wanted to. Although Talbot took numerous fortified towns in Normandy during 1434 – but not Mont-St-Michel – a peasants’ revolt briefly threatened Caen and Bayeux and the Estates of Normandy could not raise enough money for war. As Duke Philip was putting out feelers for a grand meeting of the main belligerents, Bedford lay dying in Rouen. Unwilling to compromise, Cardinal Beaufort had marched away from Arras in a huff, so ensuring that England was excluded from the peace.

The French army operated with new vigour. After Dieppe, Fécamp and Harfleur had fallen, and in February 1436 Joan’s former friend the Bastard of Orléans and Richemont invested Paris with 5,000 men. Whereas Joan’s frontal assault in 1429 had been beaten off, her former supporters now effectively starved the citizens until some let down ladders to invite the royalists in. When the youngest of Henry V’s brothers, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, repelled a Burgundian attack on Calais, the contrast between the royalists’ success and the Burgundians’ failure revealed how the power balance within France had shifted towards King Charles. In 1437, just under six years after Henry VI’s coronation there, Charles VII made a solemn entry into the cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Those who had united against Joan in 1429 during the siege of Paris and in 1431 during her trial in Rouen, were only too anxious to show that they welcomed her king into his capital. At St-Denis, her base in 1429, the provost of the merchants, the aldermen and some burgesses met the royal cortège. Charles was offered the keys of Paris; and provost and aldermen then ‘raised up a blue canopy covered with fleur-de-lis over the king, and thenceforth carried it above his head’. Further on, people dressed up as the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues rode before representatives of the Parlement, which had once ratified the Treaty of Troyes that deprived Charles of his throne. By four o’clock the king had reached the cathedral, to be greeted there by the clergy and representatives of the university, which had staked its reputation on Joan’s conviction for heresy. The prince, who by implication had accepted the advice of a witch and a sorceress, prayed as the undisputed king before the statue of Our Lady, venerated relics and heard the choristers singing the
Te Deum
in his honour. At that moment Joan’s assessment was proved sound.

Joan’s own case, however, was not clear. The English had still not left France. In 1440, the ransom of the Duke of Orléans was paid at long last and the noble poet, who from the Tower of London had asked for a beautiful robe to be sent to Joan as a token of gratitude, was freed. In 1441 Pontoise fell and the English were driven from the Île de France. During the mid-1440s there was a short truce, but war soon resumed: in 1448 the English had to evacuate Maine; in 1449 Charles VII invaded Normandy and took Rouen, its capital, and so enjoyed yet another
joyeuse entrée
; by the end of 1450 the French controlled the whole province. Guyenne collapsed in 1451 and two years afterwards its capital, Bordeaux, became French territory once more.

The dual monarchy controlled Paris for less than twenty years, from 1422 to 1437. The English had regained Normandy, a duchy that had been previously linked to their country for 150 years, and held it for just 30 years. A much more severe blow was struck by the loss of Guyenne, which had belonged to English kings since Richard I had inherited it from his mother. The Gascons much preferred the light rule of a far-off Englishman to the exacting commands of a French monarch, often nearby in the Loire valley; and the English wished to keep open the sea route to the southwest, for they had long acquired a love of claret that no other wine could satisfy.