The House of Joan of Arc at Domremy in 1419
Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to l’Arbre-des-Fées and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.200 For the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St. John.201
My Lord Aubert d’Ourches held that there had been no fairies at Domremy for twenty or thirty years.202 On the other hand there were those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.
Yet another of Jeanne’s godmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her goddaughter. And Aubrit’s wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circumspect.203
In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.204 Fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.205
Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,—called by the Church “Lætare Sunday,” because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning Lætare Jerusalem,—the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at l’Arbre-des-Fées.206 They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlémont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlémont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.207
At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.208 Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.
Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and l’Arbre-des-Fées.209
In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of l’Arbre-des-Fées. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree’s branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder. One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.210
To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.211
Close by l’Arbre-des-Dames, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,212 not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.
The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.213
When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother’s side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.214
Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.215
At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet’s house.216
With regard to feudal overlordship the village of Domremy was divided into two distinct parts. The southern part, with the château on the Meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of Bourlémont and was in the domain of the castellany of Grondrecourt, held in fief from the crown of France. It was a part of Lorraine and of Bar. The northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was subject to the provost of Montéclaire and Andelot and was in the bailiwick of Chaumont in Champagne.217 It was sometimes called Domremy de Greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of Greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of Vaucouleurs.218 The serfs of Bourlémont were separated from the king’s men by a brook, close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence called, so it is said, the Brook of the Three Springs. Modestly the stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then rushed down a rapid incline into the Meuse, opposite Jacques d’Arc’s house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of Champagne and of France.219 So far we may be fairly certain; but we must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. In 1429 King Charles’ council was uncertain as to whether Jacques d’Arc was a freeman or a serf.220 And Jacques d’Arc himself doubtless was no better informed. On both banks of the brook, the men of Lorraine and Champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship. Although they were subject to different masters they formed none the less one community closely united, one single rural family. They shared interests, necessities, feelings—everything. Threatened by the same dangers, they had the same anxieties.
Lying at the extreme south of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, the village of Domremy was between Bar and Champagne on the east, and Lorraine on the west.221 They were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that Count of Vaudémont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the whole of Christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the Lorraine Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. Unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of Vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who, subsisting on plunder, was especially given to the Lorraine custom of marauding. He was of the same way of thinking as that English king who said that warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings without mustard.222 One day, when he was besieging a little stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the Damoiseau set fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.223
In 1419 this baron was making war on the brothers Didier and Durand of Saint-Dié. It matters not for what reason. For this war as for every war the villagers had to pay. As the men-at-arms were fighting throughout the whole castellany of Vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of Domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. At Domremy there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.224 Belonging to this castle was a chapel of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the dwelling of the Lords of Bourlémont, was commonly called the Fortress of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. But soon after Jeanne d’Arc’s birth she married a Lorraine baron, Henri d’Ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of Ogiviller and at the ducal court of Nancy. Since her departure the fortress of the island had remained uninhabited. The village folk decided to rent it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the plunderers. The renting was put up to auction. A certain Jean Biget of Domremy and Jacques d’Arc, Jeanne’s father, being the highest bidders, and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between them and the representatives of Dame d’Ogiviller. The fortress, the garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain, were let to Jean Biget and Jacques d’Arc for a term of nine years beginning on St. John the Baptist’s Day, 1419, and in consideration of a yearly rent of fourteen livres tournois225 and three imaux of wheat.226 Besides the two tenants in chief there were five sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was Jacquemin, the eldest of Jacques d’Arc’s sons.227
The precaution proved to be useful. In that very year, 1419, Robert de Saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers Didier and Durand at the village of Maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be seen opposite Greux, on the other bank of the Meuse, along the foot of wooded hills. The two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the victorious Damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. Among these prisoners was the Squire Thiesselin de Vittel, whose wife had held Jacques d’Arc’s second daughter over the baptismal font. From one of the hills of her village, Jeanne, who was then seven or a little older, could see the battle in which her godmother’s husband was taken prisoner.228
Meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of France. This was well known at Domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.229 Thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of Duke John of Burgundy on the Bridge at Montereau, when the Dauphin’s Councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the Rue Barbette. These Councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the Bridge brought their young Prince very low. There followed the war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. From this war the English, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held Guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,230 sucked no small advantage. But Guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at Domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of France. On the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the English had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my Lord Philip, son of the late Duke John. They occupied Normandy, Maine, Picardy, l’Île-de-France, and Paris the great city.231 Now in France the English were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. Not that they were really more wicked than other nations.232 In Normandy, their king, Henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. But war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. The English were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. They were ridiculed in various ways. Playing upon their name in Latin and in French, they were called angels. Now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. They denied God, and their favorite oath Goddam233 was so often on their lips that they were called Godons. They were devils. They were said to be coués, that is, to have tails behind.234 There was mourning in many a French household when Queen Ysabeau delivered the kingdom of France to the coués,235 making of the noble French lilies a litter for the leopard. Since then, only a few days apart, King Henry V of Lancaster and King Charles VI of Valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before God, the Judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. The castellany of Vaucouleurs was French.236 Dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later Joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. But how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? How can we really believe that the peasants of Domremy were loyal to the Dauphin Charles, their lawful lord, while the Lorrainers of Maxey, following their Duke, were on the side of the Burgundians?
Only the river divided Maxey on the right bank from Domremy. The Domremy and Greux children went there to school. There were quarrels between them; the little Burgundians of Maxey fought pitched battles with the little Armagnacs of Domremy. More than once Joan, at the Bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.237 It is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the Burgundians. Nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. For centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.238 Insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. The peasants of Domremy, Greux, and Maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. They had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies.
In 1429 the English occupied the bailiwick of Chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in Bassigny. Messire Robert, Lord of Baudricourt and Blaise, son of the late Messire Liébault de Baudricourt, was then captain of Vaucouleurs and bailie of Chaumont for the Dauphin Charles. He might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in Lorraine. In the spring of this year, 1420, the Duke of Burgundy having sent an embassy to the Lord Bishop of Verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by Sire Robert in league with the Damoiseau of Commercy. To avenge this offence the Duke of Burgundy declared war on the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of English and Burgundians.239
In 1423 the Duke of Lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one Étienne de Vignolles, a Gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of La Hire,240 which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages.
While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne’s cousin-german,241 was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar.
Jacques d’Arc was then the elder (doyen) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.242
Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.243 On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d’Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two gros from each complete household and one from each widow’s household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.244
The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.245 Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles’s brother-in-law, René d’Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.246
At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.247 It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.248
Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.249 All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.250
One day in the summer of 1425, there fell upon the villages of Greux and Domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name Henri d’Orly, known as Henri de Savoie. This time the island fortress was of no use to the villagers. Lord Henri took all the cattle from the two villages and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues251 away to his château of Doulevant. He had also captured much furniture and other property; and the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one place; wherefore he had part of it carried to Dommartin-le-Franc, a neighbouring village, where there was a château with so large a court in front that the place was called Dommartin-la-Cour. The peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. Happily for them, at the news of this pillage, Dame d’Ogiviller sent to the Count of Vaudémont in his château of Joinville, complaining to him, as her kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of Greux and Domremy. The château of Doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty of the Count of Vaudémont. As soon as he received his kinswoman’s message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to recapture the cattle. This man-at-arms, by name Barthélemy de Clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of war. He found the stolen beasts in the château of Dommartin-le-Franc, took them and drove them to Joinville. On the way he was pursued and attacked by Lord d’Orly’s men and stood in great danger of death. But so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at Joinville, bringing the cattle, which the Count of Vaudémont caused to be driven back to the pastures of Greux and Domremy.252
Unexpected good fortune! With tears the husbandman welcomed his restored flocks and herds. But was he not likely to lose them for ever on the morrow?
At that time Jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. War everywhere around her, even in the children’s play; the husband of one of her godmothers taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german Mengette killed by a mortar;253 her native land overrun by marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off; nights of terror, dreams of horror,—such were the surroundings of her childhood.