From Les Vigiles de Charles VII, a manuscript belonging to Martial d’Auvergne (1420-1508), an attorney of the Paris Parliament. Contemporaries held that had the English broken the spirit of Orléans, they would have gone on to take the crown of France. As it was, the Hundred Years’ War fizzled out in a series of humbling French victories in 1449-1453. The capture of Joan of Arc during the Siege of Compiègne in 1430 seemed a triumph, but her subsequent execution at the stake on May 30th, 1431, and Henry VI’s neglect of his loyal French allies, proved only that the English deserved to forfeit the divine favour that had seemed to follow them since the glory days of Edward III.
Part 1 of 2
DO right to the King of heaven, deliver to the Maid, who is sent here by God, the King of heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and destroyed in France. She is come hither from God to restore the royal blood. She is ready to make peace if you are willing to do right to her, and on condition that you will quit France and pay back that which you have taken there. And you, archers, comrades of war, gentlemen and others who are before the city of Orleans, go away to your own country, in God's name; and if you do not thus, await tidings of the Maid, who will, ere long, come to see you to your very great hurt.*
King of England,* if you do not thus, I am the chief of the war, and in whatever place I shall find your men in France, I shall drive them out, whether they will or no; and if they will not obey, I will have them all slain.
* Joan did come, and on May 8th, just nine days after her arrival among the Dauphin’s forces, the siege was lifted and the English driven off. It marked the start of a downturn in English fortunes in the Hundred Years’ War, which gathered speed until near-victory was changed into comprehensive defeat in 1453.
* This was Henry VI, who was seven at the time and not present at the siege. He came over in April 1430, and sat obediently throughout Joan’s travesty of a trial. In reply to the coronation of Charles VII as King of France at Rheims in 1429, Henry was ostentatiously crowned King of France at Notre Dame de Paris on the 16th of December, 1431, just after his ninth birthday. At that time, northern France was still in English hands, and after shrugging off a siege on September 3rd-8th 1429, Paris and her public remained defiantly loyal to the English kings until 1436.
Précis
From October 1428 to May 1429, the English laid siege to Orleans in pursuit of the French crown. Their claim was denied by a teenage girl named Joan of Arc, who wrote to the English captains ordering them in God’s name to leave Orleans and France, after making reparation for all their damage, or they would face her wrath. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
Clément de Fauquembergue, notary to the Parliament of Paris (a city at that time loyal to the English kings, Orléans being the northmost city under Charles VII and the House of Valois), drew this striking image of Joan of Arc into the margin of his record book on May the 10th, 1429, two days after the lifting of the Siege of Orléans. Fauquembergue had heard descriptions of ‘a maid alone holding a banner’ in the midst of the Dauphin’s forces, which he depicts as showing IHS, the first three letters of IHΣΟΥΣ, the Greek form of Jesus. At her trial two years later, however, Joan described her banner as white linen embroidered with silk, sown with lilies, a figure of the world, two angels at the side, and the words ‘Jesus, Mary’.
I AM sent here by God, the King of heaven, body for body, to drive you out of all France. And all who are willing to go I will receive to mercy. And do not have confidence in God, the King of heaven, son of the blessed Mary; for you shall not have the realm of France; but God, the King of heaven, wills that King Charles, the true heir, shall have it, and the Maid has revealed this to him. He shall enter Paris with a good company. If you will not believe the news that the Maid brings from God, in whatsoever place we find you we will attack you, and will make a greater slaughter than there has been in France in a thousand years, if you will not do right. And believe that the King of heaven will send more strength to the Maid than you can bring in all your assaults against her and her good soldiers. And it shall be clearly seen who has the best right from the King of heaven.*
* Contrary to the impression she gave, Joan’s belief that Charles VII and the House of Valois had the best right to the French crown was not widely shared. Charles’s realm was a relatively small region around Bourges, and much of France still honoured the Treaty of Troyes, signed in 1420 by Henry V and Charles VI, which had promised the crown to Henry and his heirs. But it is human nature to be flattered by attention; and it seemed to France that Henry VI was as indifferent as the Maid was passionate. French support for the English crown began to trickle away, and evaporated after 1435.
Précis
Joan told the English that if they obeyed her order to quit France, they would save their lives; but if they resisted, they would be resisting not only Charles VII, in her eyes the only rightful king, but God himself, and by her hand God would visit destruction on them wherever they may be in the land. (57 / 60 words)
