Joan of Arc
Introduction
Joan of Arc! Her story is so incredible that it looks like a fairy tale. And maybe this is what they think it must be, those who only vaguely know about her. But she is real. She did exist. She did become at seventeen—seventeen!—the commander of the royal army of France, at a time in the Middle Ages when women were strictly confined to domestic chores.
Indeed, difficult to believe. How could it happen? And, further, how could this totally inexperienced girl conduct herself creditably as the head of the army, to the extent of being accepted as their leader by tough, battle-tested veterans? In less than one year, despite avoidable delays due to the Kings indecision, she won major victories and did put the English in a precarious situation from which they would never be able to recover. This is why she earned the title of Liberator of France even though she died quite a long time before the English were finally vanquished.
Such an extraordinary story, happening at a time, in the high Middle Ages, around 1430, when recording of facts was. not particularly precise, could have been by now shrouded in some mystery by default of much hard evidence. But something remarkable happened, as a result, unfortunately, of the terrible fate that befell her—she was burned at the stake as heretic. We have the official records of her trial. Moreover — and, again, remarkably — she was rehabilitated thirty years later, an exceptional event which resulted in a large amount of testimonies from still live witnesses, which have been very precisely recorded.
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It reads like a legend, but a legend it is not: Joan of Arc has really been that extraordinary, that exceptional being, the like of whom has not been seen before her short life and, certainly, not after.
his monograph presents extracts from a book written by the well known American writer Mark Twain. How this author's life was itself radically changed because of Joan of Arc is described in a Foreword by author Nina Rosenstein to a recent new publication of Twain's book:
More than five hundred years later, this indomitable young woman stepped out of history and changed the life of a poor, uneducated printer's apprentice named Samuel Clemens. Sam was walking home from work one gusty day in the mid-1850s when a sheet of paper swirled around his feet. To fifteen- year-old Sam, the seamier side of life in his Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri—where card sharks, drunks, and hustlers roamed the water- front—had always been much more interesting than schooling and reading. But this single page from a book about Joan of Arc was intriguing, and Sam hurried home, demanding to know whether Joan of Arc was a real person. "I had never been a reader of books," he said many years later, "but from that time I read every history I could get hold of." The voracious reader became an accomplished writer, and today we know Samuel Clemens by his pen name, Mark Twain.
The purity and clarity and force of Mark Twain's youthful adoration of Joan of Arc remained with him for the rest of his life, although it did not take literary shape until almost forty years after that first, windblown encounter. By then, Mark Twain was internationally renowned as a humorist, satirist, storyteller, and lecturer. He spent twelve years
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researching the well-documented history of Joan of Arc, whom he described as "the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced." Her story is remarkable for the amount of written historical record that exists dating back to her own century — documents, letters, transcripts from her trial.
Twain wanted to present a fair picture, so he pored over both French and English accounts and records. Even then his lifelong passion for Joan did not flow easily into his pen. "There are some books that refuse to be written ... because the right form for the story does not present itself." Twain started the book six times before he found the right form —a memoir by an on-the-scene eyewitness, Joan of Arc's own page and secretary, Louis de Come. History gives us the name Louis de Come, the real-life page who transcribed Joan of Arc's dictated letters, accompanied her in battle, and was later called to testify at her trial. Mark Twain's fictionalized de Conte spent his whole life with Joan—he grew up in Joan of Arc's village of Domremy as her childhood friend and confidante, accompanied her into battle, and was with her even up to the moment of her death. Mark Twain then added yet another layer to his story—a fictitious "translator" of de Conte's fictional memoirs. Through Louis de Conte we share the intensity of Twain's subjective devotion to Joan of Arc, whose radiance and purity were modeled on Twain's own beloved daughter Susy. Through the scholarly interjections of the translator, Jean Francois Alden, we confront Mark Twain's impressive research — and more objective scholarly tone.
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This "translator", as invented by Twain, offers his own devoted description of Joan in a Translator's Preface:
... the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, judged by all of them, it is still flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutallest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest and fine and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honourable in an age which had forgotten what honour was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true in an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a daunt- less courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in
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mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both...
The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking with any recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal. Cesar carried conquest far, but he did it with the trained and confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself ; and Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a trained soldier, and he began his work with patriot battalions inflamed and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon them by the Revolution—eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long accumulation of monotonous defeats ; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse, and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE, which she bears to this day.
With Joan of Arc, it looks as if the Spirit of the nation of France manifests itself for the first time powerfully. She saves a
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dying nation, literally: the French were truly disheartened, their combative capacity lost, final defeat seemed imminent. Suddenly, miraculously, Joan appears on this disastrous scene, she seems to incarnate France, of which she speaks so tenderly, she ignites patriotic fervour in defeated men. The mere sight of her is enough to rally soldiers again and again to fight till victory is obtained. This was like the momentous birth of the French Nation which, so far, had been more like an assemblage of provinces than a unified country. Of course it will still take quite a bit of time till the French monarchs would manage to truly unify France, but the seeds of patriotism were spectacularly sown through Joan of Arc and they will blossom in due course.
Her story does evoke a mystery, the mystery of divine intervention on earth. How else to explain what happened? Nobody can explain how a young peasant-girl who hardly moved from her village could know how to place artillery most effectively, as it is said in a testimony given during the trial of her rehabilitation. It can only be that she was a transparent instrument able to receive without distortion a knowledge coming from high, far beyond her normal consciousness. She was also able to make accurate prophecies, as it is precisely recorded in the official documents. In her sublime purity, she was totally devoted to the cause of God and prepared for any sacrifice, so that His will as she perceived it may be accomplished. The whole story does not make sense unless it is indeed a play of the Spirit. Truly, Joan's story is one where one can see what is rarely to be seen in such bright light, the divine trace in human events. It is as if a gigantic current of force, coming from unfathomable depths or heights, suddenly appears at the surface of the murky flow of human affairs. If one were to ask for a proof of the existence of the Divinity, the story of Joan of Arc could be seen as being as close as it could be of a compelling proof of a Something beyond.
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The beginning of the story: angel St Michael appears to
13-year old girl Joan of Arc, the daughter of a peasant,
and commands her to drive out the English from
France and to bring the king to be crowned...
The end of the story: after leading the French armies
to victory, the 19 year old Joan of Arc is condemned
to death for heresy and burned at the stake
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The Hundred-year war: disputed territories and main
troops movements from 1340 to 1453
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Historical background
The town and castle of Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, housed, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the French royal court. This was during the famous hundred-year war between France and England. The English were largely winning and a good deal of French territory was in their hand. The situation was grim, and it looked as if it would soon worsen. Orleans was under siege and would probably fall in the near future. The French king was an ungainly, cowering figure, a timid young man of poor physique, Charles VII of France, as yet uncrowned, tortured by doubts of his own legitimacy, expecting every moment to be driven even from his humble home at Chinon by the dreaded soldiers from across the Channel.
Charles VII, king of France
Never had a monarch of France sunk so low. The victories of the king of England Henry V, had made the English masters of all France north of the Loire, apart from the domains they already held in the south. After his death, his infant son had been proclaimed king in Paris, though he had not been anointed with the sacred oil of St. Remy which alone could make him king in the eyes of France. The great Duke of Burgundy, richer and more powerful than many monarchs, had allied himself to the invaders. In another devastating blow to Charles, his own mother, the German Isabeau, widow of the lunatic Charles VI had also given her support to the English, and had declared that her son had not a drop of the blood royal in his veins.
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At this moment, when all seemed lost, the miracle occurred. At a time when it appeared that at last, after the French people had already suffered all the miseries of the Hundred Years War, the English claim to rule France was close to become a complete reality, the Capetian dynasty was saved by the inspiration and courage of an illiterate peasant girl.
Her name was Jeanne d'Arc, and she was born in the year 1412, the daughter of a peasant proprietor—the most influential personage of the village of Domremy, on the Meuse. She was a pious child, unable to read or write, but proud of her skill in needlework, and able to help her father with his flocks and herds. Her home was in country partly French and partly Burgundian in sympathy, and she was from her earliest years familiar with the troubles that beset her native land.
When Joan was about thirteen, according to her own testimony, she began hearing voices from heaven. During the next three years, these voices will instruct Joan about the mission that she must undertake, that is to liberate France from the English invaders and make the King to be crowned at Rheims. At the beginning, Joan, quite naturally, pleaded ignorance and incapacity to accomplish such a gigantic task but was gradually made to accept that such is God's will and that He had chosen her as His instrument.
It seemed of course a wild and fantastic notion to her companions and her parents. But Joan had made up her mind, and nothing would stop her. In 1428, when she was sixteen, she visited in his castle Robert de Baudricourt, who held the town of Vaucouleurs for the dauphin, and demanded an escort to Chinon so that she could go and see the king. Robert was flabbergasted. He was a rough, simple soldier, not a man to be impressed by such a story that St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret had appeared to a peasant maid and entrusted her with the Herculean task of freeing France from its foreign invaders. In short, he told her not to be a little fool, and sent her home.
But Joan was convinced of the genuineness of her inspiration and no initial failure would daunt her. She tried again, and this time won over some of Baudricourt's followers, with the result
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Joan of Arc and Baudricourt (detail): Departure from
Vaucouleurs, by French painter Scherrer (1855-1916)
that he was prevailed upon to give her the escort she demanded. In January, 1439, dressed as a man, and with six followers, the maid set out for Chinon. The extracts from Joan of Arc by Mark Twain that we present here begin with Joan and her faithful companions waiting at Chinon to be received at a royal audience.
adapted from the chapter "Jeanne d'Arc" in 700 Great Lives,
edited by John Canning, Rupa 1984
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