Authors: Mary Gordon
Joan of Arc (11 page)
But was she ever really a knight? She refused ennoblement for herself, asking for it only for her brothers. Is it possible to say, then, that she fought like a knight but otherwise didn't behave like one?
This is not entirely surprising. Boys began their knightly training at the age of four. Joan started and finished this education in a matter of weeks. Perhaps because of this, like much else about her, Joan's relationship to chivalry and its code was erratic. She would probably have heard chivalric romances recited in Domrémy; Lorraine, her home province, was particularly devoted to the chivalric ideal. The crusader Godfrey of Boullion was a local hero in the area around Domrémy. He had sold his estates to raise funds for the crusade; he was elected king of Jerusalem but refused the title, preferring instead the saintly moniker Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri, defender of the Holy Sepulchre.
Joan may have admired some aspects of the chivalric idea, but her nature was unsuited to most of the ways it was expressed in her day. In
The Waning of the Middle Ages,
Johan Huizinga characterizes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an age weighted down by its devotion to embellishment and an increasingly and eventually debilitatingly complex set of behaviors. Eventually the excess capsized the medieval boat and sent passengers swimming (although not without the water wings of the past) to the Renaissance. The time could find its metaphor in shoes whose points were so long that the people wearing them tripped over them; chains had to be attached to the points so that the noble wearer could hold on to them. Headdresses were so high and heavy that they interfered with movement; doorways had to be raised to accommodate them. The multiplication of religious devotions erased effective piety. Literary conventions were so otiose that they strangled poetic expression. In opposition to all this, Joan consistently employed direct, plain speech and was devoted to practical outcomes. She identified with the aspects of chivalry that were most active: heroic self-sacrifice, forgetfulness of self to save others or in the defense of a great cause. But she had no time for forms or ceremonies that would slow her down.
The Waning of the Middle Ages,
Johan Huizinga characterizes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an age weighted down by its devotion to embellishment and an increasingly and eventually debilitatingly complex set of behaviors. Eventually the excess capsized the medieval boat and sent passengers swimming (although not without the water wings of the past) to the Renaissance. The time could find its metaphor in shoes whose points were so long that the people wearing them tripped over them; chains had to be attached to the points so that the noble wearer could hold on to them. Headdresses were so high and heavy that they interfered with movement; doorways had to be raised to accommodate them. The multiplication of religious devotions erased effective piety. Literary conventions were so otiose that they strangled poetic expression. In opposition to all this, Joan consistently employed direct, plain speech and was devoted to practical outcomes. She identified with the aspects of chivalry that were most active: heroic self-sacrifice, forgetfulness of self to save others or in the defense of a great cause. But she had no time for forms or ceremonies that would slow her down.
She was a master of symbols, but the symbols she chose were simple and easily read. Her banner bore the sign of the fleur-de-lis and the words “Jesus Maria.” What more straightforward evocation of religion and patriotism would be possible? Her symbolism was accessible to all, nobles and simples alike; it had nothing to do with knightly culture except that it was used in the service of war: Her pennant was a practical beacon as much as a sign. Her acts of chivalric generosity were usually simple and effective. She provided wine for the wedding of the daughter of the man who designed her standard; she made sure that Domrémy was exempt from taxes. Even her gifts were modest: She sent to the widow of her ideal knight, Guy de Laval, nothing more complex or costly than a plain gold ring.
Her attachment to knighthood was practical: Warfare was the only way she could imagine France's restoration, and war was waged by knights. She was not devoted to the ceremonies of knighthoodâshe ate very little, and without formality. She had no interest in courtship or the conventions of courtly love. Her interest was in the active life of battle. She was fond of knightly finery and accused of sumptuary vanity during her trial, but she never allowed her clothing to get in the way of its function. Or she did, once and tragically, when she was caught by the tails of her gold surcoat and dragged by them from her horse.
When some aspect of chivalry got in her way, she disregarded it. She seemed unattached to custom and tradition except when she could use it to further her military and political goals. She had no sympathy with the kind of empty gesture embodied in the actions of the English captain Suffolk when he was captured at Jargeau by an Auvergnat squire named Regnault, eager for the ransom that a great man like Suffolk would call forth. Suffolk asked if Regnault was a gentleman. Regnault said he was, whereupon Suffolk asked if he was a knight. Regnault answered that he was not. So Suffolk, unwilling to be taken prisoner by a man of a lower rank, knighted him on the spot, and then surrendered to him. Her habit of mind insisted that the thing is more important than the idea of the thing, the result more important than the gesture. In this she is far from the idealized abstraction that characterized the code of chivalry in the age in which she lived. She was a soldier and an effective mass communicator. In her organization of the values by which she decided her actions, she remained the “cowgirl” that her English enemies accused her of being.
She shouldn't have been able to do what she did. Ride at the head of an army. Lead men into battle. Be victorious. A year earlier, she hadn't known how to ride a horse. She'd practiced by riding on the backs of her father's cattle. She taught herself to ride in the few weeks she lived at Neufchâtel, while she worked at the tavern of La Rousse, when her family was fleeing the Burgundians. She had never worn armor, and the armor weighed sixty poundsâ a much heavier burden on the body of a short woman than on the body of a tall man. She did what she did beside men who had trained for it since early childhood. She had never studied tactics. She had never even seen a battle. But she knew she was a warrior; her voices told her she would lead men to victory. She harbored no doubts.
How is such achievement explicable? Joan reached a level both of physical prowess and of courage that was enormously against all odds. Can this kind of achievement properly be called miraculous? Or is it just an event that is very unlikely? What is the relationship between what we are able to comfortably call genius and what we are unwilling to call miraculous?
She was fearless and tireless, and her courage never flagged. Among men at arms, she was her happiest.
It couldn't last, at least in part because she had never been officially ennobled.
Her Violence: “A Bloodthirsty Wench”?Joan's voices led her not into a convent or to a hermit's cave but into battle. Her métier was violence. Yet her attitude toward the realities of warâshed blood, torn fleshâis difficult to pin down. Like so much else about her, it seems contradictory and uneven. There is the girl who weeps at both French and English carnage, who cradles an English soldier's head in her lap and hears his confession before he dies. There is the accused prisoner who swears that she never killed a man. Can that be possible? And if it is, what does it say about her as a warrior? Marina Warner questions whether her role as warrior, given this evidence, was more ceremonial than actual.
What did she like about war? Or about going to battle? When questioned during her trial, she said she loved “her standard forty times more than her sword.”
7
She herself bore her standard during an attack, she said, in order to avoid killing anyone. And she added that she had never killed anyone at all. But she bragged that her sword was good for giving (in different translations) “good slashes,” “good buffets and good swipes,” or “good clouts.” Is it possible that she could have slashed, buffeted, swiped, and clouted men who were wielding their swords at her and have killed no one? Possible but not likely; and anyone with pride in her sword knows what it's capable of and why she has it in her hand.
7
She herself bore her standard during an attack, she said, in order to avoid killing anyone. And she added that she had never killed anyone at all. But she bragged that her sword was good for giving (in different translations) “good slashes,” “good buffets and good swipes,” or “good clouts.” Is it possible that she could have slashed, buffeted, swiped, and clouted men who were wielding their swords at her and have killed no one? Possible but not likely; and anyone with pride in her sword knows what it's capable of and why she has it in her hand.
What does it mean to call yourself a
chef de guerre
but to arrange things so that you never have to kill anyone? What did she think she was about? What did she think a soldier's business was? Soldiers are, after all, in the killing business, not in the standard-bearing business.
chef de guerre
but to arrange things so that you never have to kill anyone? What did she think she was about? What did she think a soldier's business was? Soldiers are, after all, in the killing business, not in the standard-bearing business.
So was it that she liked action and the company of men of action, that she liked danger and the escape from and survival of it? That she liked being obeyed, that she liked the attention that came with being in armor, carrying a standard at the head of a group of soldiers? That she loved display and the elaborate dress that such display required and was expert in the art of both? She made herself, by her white armor, her cloak in the Orléans colors, her short gold jacket, desirably visible, and the sight of her inspired her troops. She reveled in this power. Is she different from other soldiers in forgetting that the enterprise that allows her to dress up and to parade involves butchery?
Was she so intent upon the idea of a France united under Charles, the French king, that she forgot the bloodshed involved? It is important to remember that fifteenth-century warfare was much less distant and abstract than its modern counterpart. Vita Sackville-West notes that, in comparison to modern warfare,
the personal element was much more dominant for each man concerned. He was in no danger of being suddenly blown to bits by an unseen gun a couple of miles away. . . . The men who ordered his fate were not vague tiny figures sticking pins into a map at a distant GSQ. On the other hand, he was quite likely to be tumbled backwards off a ladder by the fist of an enemy thrust against his face, and the men in the highest positions of command were equally likely to be fighting by his side, as sweaty, gasping and exhausted as he.
8
8
Was she not like other soldiers in their necessary habit of radical compartmentalization, in her case in having to put away the girl who wept when she held the dying Englishman's head in order to see him as the enemy? She had no belief in diplomatic negotiations; she was impatient to the point of fury at the idea of truces and treaties with either English or Burgundians. She rejected the English offer to leave Jargeau if given a little time; eleven hundred men were killed that day. When she put Franquet d'Arras to death, five hundred of his men went with him. If she had gone along with her deal to exchange him, they, too, could have been spared.
Joan's beloved sword, the one found behind the altar of St. Catherine's Church at Fierbois, was rendered useless when she broke it over the back of a camp follower and it split in two. This put Charles into a panic; he took it as a bad omen that the sword, which had been read as a sign of divine approbation, had been shattered by Joan's rage at a common whore.
Boasting and TearsJoan's relationship to violence may be ambiguous, but there is one quality traditionally associated with soldiers that no one would hesitate in attributing to her. She was boastful.
Just after she had been examined at Poitiers, before she had done anything to prove her right to authority, she wrote to Bedford, the English regent, and to Suffolk and Talbot, the English high command. It was their first contact with her and the first thing they had heard about her except by rumor. The bravado of her tone is extravagant to the point of delusion:
Acknowledge the summons of the king of heaven. Render to the Maid here sent by God the king of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and violated in France. She is here come by God's will to reclaim the blood royal. She is very ready to make peace, if you will acknowledge her to be right, provided that France you return, and pay for having held it. And your archers, companions of war, men-at-arms and others who are before the town of Orléans, go away into your country, by God. And if so be not done, expect news of the Maid who will come to see you shortly to your very great injury. King of England, if you do not so, I am chief-of-war and in whatever place I attain your people in France, I will make them quit it willy-nilly. And if they will not obey, I will have them all slain; I am here sent by God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to drive you out of all France. And if they will obey I will be merciful to them. And be not of another opinion, for you will not hold the Kingdom of France from God, the King of Heaven, Son of St. Mary, but will hold it for King Charles, the rightful heir, for God, the King of Heaven so wills it, and that is revealed to him by the maid who will enter into Paris with a goodly company. If you will not believe the news conveyed by God and the Maid, in what place soever we will find you, we shall strike into it and there make such a great
hahay
that none so great has been in France for a thousand years, if you yield not to right. And believe firmly that the King of Heaven will send greater strength to the Maid than you will be able to bring up against her and her good men-at-arms, and when it comes to blows, it will be seen who has the better right of the God of Heaven. You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and requires of you that you cause no more destruction to be done. If you grant her right, still may you come into her company there where the French shall do the greatest feat of arms which ever was done in Christianity. And make answer if you wish to make peace in the city of Orleans. And if you make it not, you shall shortly remember it, to your very great injury.
9
hahay
that none so great has been in France for a thousand years, if you yield not to right. And believe firmly that the King of Heaven will send greater strength to the Maid than you will be able to bring up against her and her good men-at-arms, and when it comes to blows, it will be seen who has the better right of the God of Heaven. You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and requires of you that you cause no more destruction to be done. If you grant her right, still may you come into her company there where the French shall do the greatest feat of arms which ever was done in Christianity. And make answer if you wish to make peace in the city of Orleans. And if you make it not, you shall shortly remember it, to your very great injury.
9
The tone of this letter is remarkable in several ways. First, for its confident aggressiveness, particularly considering that it was dictated by an eighteen-year-old illiterate peasant and sent to the regent of England and his commanders. A sign of this confidence, and the mastery and understanding it provided Joan, is her imposition of the term “the Maid.” Her using the term “La Pucelle,” the Maid, was an inspired stroke. It put her into a mythical context; it erased the stigma of her social inferiority and transformed her from upstart to icon.
Stylistically, the letter has none of the elegant indirection, the de rigueur flattery, of chivalric communication. It is marked by inappropriate garrulousness: Points are made not just once but several times. She is not only setting conditions; she is reminding the English of her king's legitimacy and of the superior moral and spiritual position of her side. She is asserting herself not only as chief of war (a position that had not been given her by anyone in power) but as the emissary of God, the voice of the divine voice.
The letter is astonishing for its naïveté, for its implied expectations. Did she really believe that Bedford, Suffolk, and Talbot were going to read it and say, “Well, then, I guess we'd better pack it in?”
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