The Maid and the Queen (19 page)

Charles, despite having earlier agreed to implement the war policies recommended by his councillors and the general assembly, hesitated. He was terrified of losing, and this fear manifested itself in the form of an obsession with the possibility that he might be illegitimate. As part of a propaganda campaign to win the allegiance of their French subjects, the English had circulated a poster depicting in verse and images Henry VI’s lineage, tracing the child’s genealogy back to the great French king Louis IX. (Louis IX had later been deified Saint Louis; everyone in France, from the lowest peasant to the most exalted aristocrat, knew and revered Saint Louis.) The poem that accompanied this exceedingly clever and persuasive pictorial representation stressed the legitimacy of Henry V’s son to the French crown. “How
this Herry in the eight degree / Is to seint Lowrys sone and very heire /… For to possede by enheritaunce / Crownes two of englond and of Fraunce,” the poet charged with this task wrote. The implication, of course, was that Charles was
not
legitimate—that he was instead the bastard son of Louis, duke of Orléans, by Isabeau of Bavaria, an accusation that Isabeau herself strenuously denied, and that the chronicler Jean Chartier accused the En glish of spreading deliberately, after which, he wrote, the queen “never again had joy in her heart.”

Although the taint of Charles VII’s illegitimacy would follow him throughout the centuries, the bulk of the evidence sustains the theory that he was in fact the son of the king of France. Disapproval of Isabeau’s relationship with the duke of Orléans was not even hinted at by any chronicler until 1405, and Charles was conceived in 1402, when Isabeau’s fidelity to her husband was never questioned. Moreover, based upon the date of his birth, February 22, 1403, modern science is able to pinpoint the period of Charles’s conception as occurring between May 30 and June 1, 1402. The Monk of Saint-Denis specifically stated that “at the beginning of the month of June [1402]” the duke of Burgundy was apprised of the recovery of the king from one of his psychotic episodes. However, the duke of Burgundy was at this time in his northern territories, which meant that it would have taken a messenger at least a few days, if not a week, to transmit this information to him, so Charles VI had likely recovered by the last week in May. To prove that he was healthy again, the king would have once more begun sleeping with his wife, an action that resulted in Charles VII.

But no matter how many times Yolande assured him that he was legitimate—“you are the son of a king,” she had told him repeatedly over the years—Charles continued to be racked by the fear that he was not legally heir to the kingdom, and so was fated to have his armies lose to the English. Even worse, egged on by Georges de la Trémoïlle, who was at his most influential when the king was faltering, instead of launching a counterattack, Charles instead began to toy with the idea of fleeing the kingdom as a means of avoiding disgrace or capture. One of Charles’s chamberlains later reported that in 1428, Charles went into his private chapel and silently prayed, “saying nothing, but begging God in his heart that if he were indeed the true heir of the blood and noble house of France, and the kingdom lawfully his, God would protect and defend him; or at least grant him grace to be spared death or captivity, and escape to Spain or Scotland, whose kings
had long been brothers in arms and allies of the kings of France; hence he had chosen them as his last refuge.”

To have her son-in-law abandon the kingdom was the worst possible scenario, not simply for her daughter Marie but for Yolande herself. If the king fled, the English army would march uncontested into his territory and the queen of Sicily would lose all her lands and castles and estates in Anjou and Saumur. This was unacceptable. And she knew all about his plan. Charles might have thought that he was keeping his prayers to himself, but the sentiments he professed to express only to God would hardly have been mysterious to those around him, particularly his wife and mother-in-law. Yolande had eyes and ears all over the court; many of the domestics who waited upon the king had initially been in service with the queen of Sicily or a member of her family and remained loyal to her. Not that spies were particularly necessary in this instance; the idea of escaping to Scotland, for example, was one that had already been openly broached by Charles’s advisers. As early as April 1428, Charles had sent ambassadors to try to arrange a marriage between his young son Louis and the daughter of the Scottish king as a means of further enabling this option. So widespread were the reports of Charles’s Scottish project that Joan herself mentioned Scotland in a chance conversation with a man who was at the time a complete stranger to her. “I must be at the King’s side, though I wear my feet to the knees. For indeed there is nobody in all the world, neither king nor duke, or daughter of the King of Scotland, nor any other who can recover the kingdom of France,” she said.

Well indeed should Charles seek an alliance with the king of Scotland and get on his knees and beg God for assistance. The assault on Orléans was a blow meant to wound emotionally as much as militarily, a symbol of the futility of his efforts. Apprehensive that the return of the popular duke of Orléans might lead to further uprisings in France, the regency government had refused to set a ransom figure on him, and so thirteen years after Agincourt, the duke was still a prisoner of the English. To have a royal prince of once-mighty France held in captivity for so long was disgraceful enough, but for his captors to take advantage of his absence to seize and perhaps occupy his birthright was, at least to the common people, unthinkable. And yet throughout the winter of 1428 and into the early months of 1429, the king remained completely immobilized. It was as though Charles was waiting, yearning—begging—for a sign from God to tell him who he was and what to do.

The frustration Yolande of Aragon experienced at the king’s obstinacy must have been overpowering. She had struggled to raise and supply a strong army and Charles refused to use it! And the English were within months, or perhaps even weeks, of taking Orléans! Desperate to shake him from his lethargy, the queen of Sicily was forced to intervene once again.

Around this time—the date was not specifically recorded—a royal messenger named Colet de Vienne was quietly dispatched to the court of Lorraine. Subsequent events would prove that he was not ordered away by the king, as Charles was unaware of his whereabouts or his role in the drama that would later unfold. Most likely, then, the messenger was sent under the guise of a routine family communication between Yolande (or Queen Marie, acting for her mother) and her son, as no one else of note at court would have had business in Lorraine. But Colet de Vienne’s errand was anything but ordinary.

The king needed the confidence that God was with him in order to pursue the military policy she favored? Very well, Yolande of Aragon would arrange to have his prayers answered.

B
Y THE WINTER
of 1428, the crisis was so acute that the French clergy was enlisted to organize regular weekly processions in the hopes that a public display of piety would find favor with God and lead to “the prosperity of the king’s arms.” In response, Joan’s voices became even more urgent and they again told her to approach Robert de Baudricourt, this time with a new mission. “The voice told me, twice or thrice a week, that I, Joan, must go away and that I must come to France and… that I should raise the siege laid to the city of Orléans,” she later told her inquisitors. “And me, I answered it that I was a poor girl who knew not how to ride nor lead in war.” Sometime in either December 1428 or early January 1429, Joan again enlisted the aid of her cousin and went to Vaucouleurs. She did not try to approach Robert de Baudricourt immediately as she had done previously, but instead took up residence at the home of a husband and wife, Henri and Catherine Le Royer, who owned a house in the town. By this time, Joan was convinced that she was the virgin referred to in the prophecy and made no secret of her belief or the reason for her visit. “At the time when Joan sought to leave the town she had been in my house for a period of three weeks,” Catherine Le Royer later testified. “And it was then that she sent to have speech with the lord
Robert de Baudricourt that he take her to that place where the Dauphin was. But the lord Robert would not. And when Joan saw that Robert would not take her, she said—I heard her—that she must go to the place where the Dauphin was: ‘Have you not heard it said that it has been prophesied that France shall be lost by a woman and restored by a virgin from the Lorraine marshes?’ I remembered having heard that and I was stupefied… and after that I believed in her words and with me many others,” Catherine said.

This was Robert’s second refusal to take Joan, but it was not nearly as scornful or vehement as his first rejection. During the three weeks she spent in Vaucouleurs, Joan had begun gathering support for her mission. Those she lived with were so impressed by her speech, her piety, and her passion—and so in agreement with her views that the siege of Orléans ought to be lifted and Charles crowned at Reims and restored to his hereditary position as king of France—that they offered to take her themselves. Together with Durand Laxart and another man from Vaucouleurs, Jacques Alain, Joan started out on her own to reach Charles’s court. But she soon thought better of it and returned to Vaucouleurs, telling her companions that it was “not thus that they should depart.” Still, the attempt was an indication that public opinion in the town had shifted enough in her favor to give Robert de Baudricourt pause.

Robert might have been the reigning power in Vaucouleurs, but like any knight he was also the vassal of a great lord, with whom he kept in regular contact and from whom he received military instructions. Robert was particularly close to his seigneur, and would later become his chamberlain and valued counselor. Robert de Baudricourt’s great lord was—Yolande of Aragon’s son René, the future duke of Bar and Lorraine.

René was now twenty years old, the father of two sons and a daughter. Both his uncle and his father-in-law were ailing—each would die within the next two years—and René was shouldering the brunt of the work associated with the administration of Bar and Lorraine. René had maintained his love of art and was still a devoted reader of romances and a loyal follower of the chivalric tradition, but he was also keenly aware of the conflict with England and the need to protect his duchies from encroachment. Robert de Baudricourt was one of his best men; he had been instrumental in holding the important fortress at Vaucouleurs. The two were in frequent communication. “The register of the Archives of La Meuse… bears trace of a regular correspondence between the Duke of Bar [René] and Baudricourt,” wrote the great French scholar Anatole France.

Robert, uncertain of what to do about Joan, who was rapidly developing a following as a seer or holy woman, must have apprised the court of Lorraine of her existence. Because on January 29, 1429, after receiving a dispatch from René, he suddenly subjected Joan to the first in a series of tests. To the great surprise of her hostess, Catherine Le Royer, the captain, accompanied by a priest, appeared at the Le Royers’ door one day—clearly something that had never happened before—and asked for Joan. “I saw Robert de Baudricourt, then Town Captain at Vaucouleurs, come into my house with Messire Jean Fournier,” Catherine later testified. “I heard him telling Joan that the latter, a priest, was wearing a stole, and that he had exorcised it in the Captain’s presence, saying that if there was any evil thing in her, she would draw back from them, and if there was something good, she would approach them. And Joan approached the priest, and gone onto her knees.”

The precaution of exorcism having been satisfied, a messenger from the court of Lorraine next appeared in Vaucouleurs seeking Joan. She was informed that the old duke—René’s father-in- law—was sick and wished to consult her about his illness; the messenger had brought with him a letter of safe conduct for her to the town of Nancy, where the duke was staying. This invitation must have been a cause for excitement among the townspeople, for Joan was suddenly the beneficiary of an outpouring of generosity. Especially, there was concern that her clothes were too shabby to appear before the duke or to protect her adequately from the rigors of a long journey in winter. “When Joan the Maid came to the place and town of Vaucouleurs, in the diocese of Toul, I saw her, dressed in poor clothes, women’s clothes, red,” reported Jean de Novellompont, another resident of the town. After Joan received the summons from the duke of Lorraine, “I asked her if she wanted to go in her own clothes,” Jean continued. “She replied that she would rather have men’s clothes. Then I gave her clothes and hose of my servants that she might don them. And that done, the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs had men’s clothes made for her and shoes and all things necessary to her and they delivered to her a horse which cost about sixteen francs. When she was dressed and had a horse, with a safe conduct from the Duke of Lorraine, the Maid went to speak with that lord and I went with her to the city of Toul.”

So the impetus to change her dress came not from Joan herself but from a kind supporter who was worried about the impression she would make if she went in her own garments. Nor did he find it strange that she chose to
clothe herself in men’s attire. Joan was going on a journey where, despite the safe conduct, she would be vulnerable to men-at-arms and other bandits; she would also be accompanied by men for the entire trip and would be forced to live and sleep beside them. Joan was a virgin and it was important that she remain so; the less temptation the better. Male apparel in this instance served as a practical form of protection.

Interesting too was the purchase of the horse. Since Joan did not protest when the people of Vaucouleurs provided her with a mount but simply thanked them and set off for Nancy, it must be presumed that by this time she had learned to ride. Her neighbors may even have helped her to master this skill, knowing that she would need it in the future to complete her mission. This may also perhaps explain why Joan waited three weeks or so before approaching Robert de Baudricourt the second time. She was already fascinated by soldiers and might have been using this interlude to observe the men in their military exercises so as to be able to emulate them. Certainly, if she had wished to acquaint herself with army behavior and tactics she could not have chosen a better venue than the fortress of Vaucouleurs.