Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
All this forward movement was her own: excepting one man, the whole council
was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from earth. Her
supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion
by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of
soldiers, and of all who lived by labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted;
and the worst error, that she committed, was to lend the sanction of her
presence to counsels which she disapproved. But she had accomplished the
capital objects which her own visions had dictated. These involved all the
rest. Errors were now less important; and doubtless it had now become more
difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what _were_ errors. The
noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of
clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to
move his arms with effect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning
for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of
his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it
impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an
irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst the uncles of Henry
VI., partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which
they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to
forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and whilst they laughed,
she _did_ it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital
oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it effectually, was--to
vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch.
That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was
the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless
they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind, by
associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of
the invader was broken.
But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for
France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost,
all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of successes so giddy?
Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in
the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her
feelings by the pity which she had every where expressed for the suffering
enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite
with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus
opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect
the captive or the wounded--she mourned over the excesses of her
countrymen--she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English
soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual,
as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti onso suo, aut
quemquam interficere." She sheltered the English, that invoked her aid, in
her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle,
so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded
herself, her elation expressed itself thus:--on the day when she had
finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her task was done, her
end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place, which
seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it
would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears,
as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half
fantastic, a broken prayer that God would return her to the solitudes from
which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more.
It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every
human heart to seek for rest, and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it
was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that
she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for
ever, had long since persuaded her mind, that for _her_ no such prayer
could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to
the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong from this time.
She herself had created the _funds_ out of which the French restoration
should grow; but she was not suffered to witness their development, or
their prosperous application. More than one military plan was entered upon
which she did not approve. But she still continued to expose her person
as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a
sortie from Compeigne, whether through treacherous collusion on the part
of her own friends is doubtful to this day, she was made prisoner by the
Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English.
Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence,
was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold
to English interests, and hoping, by favor of the English leaders, to
reach the highest preferment. _Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be,
Cardinal that mayest be_, were the words that sounded continually in his
ear; and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown,
and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M.
Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this Bishop was but an agent
of the English. True. But it does not better the case for his countryman;
that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the
persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in
the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a catspaw. Never from the
foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid
open in all its beauty of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh,
child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all
around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning,
and true as that lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard
Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and
making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not
humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the
horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself; seducing
him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own head; using the
terrors of their power for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope;
nay, (which is worse,) using the blandishments of condescension and snaky
kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude those whom they had
failed to freeze into terror? Wicked judges! Barbarian jurisprudence! that,
sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet
failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice; sit ye humbly and
with docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore your webs of
cruelty into shreds and dust, "Would you examine me as a witness against
myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their arts.
Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any
business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges
against her. General questions were proposed to her on points of
casuistical divinity; two-edged questions which not one of themselves could
have answered without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as
then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of
self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican that pressed her with an
objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax every one of its
miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read the
Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and it makes one blush for him, as a
philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as "weighty," whereas
it is but a varied expression of rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer
to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as
shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what
language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked: as though
heavenly counsels could want polyglott interpreters for every word, or that
God needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then
came a worse devil, who asked her whether the archangel Michael had
appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose
poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ or
suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God,
who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his
servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the
disappointment of her judges makes one laugh horribly. Others succeeded
by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that greater
Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the
power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said, that, for a less
cause than martyrdom, man and woman should leave both father and mother.
On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl
fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was not
poison. Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M.
Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would
gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly.
Joanna had a two-fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the
complaint called _home-sickness_; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and
its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness, and in
chains, (for chained she was,) to Domremy. And the season, which was the
most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. That
was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls it; the other was
weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw that
everybody hated her, and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted
creatures that would have pitied her profoundly as regarded all political
charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had
dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the
misery; the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without
so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance
(where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of
escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that she
would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire
by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager
loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds, which
_she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could
not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul, which taught her
to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught
her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to
misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around
the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But
the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to
herself--these words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next
day, perhaps in some nobler generation may rise again for my justification.
Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in Paris, and for more than
justification.
Woman, sister--there are some things which you do not execute as well as
your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether you will
ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a
Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last
is meant--not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an
infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the
four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from
dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you _can_ create
yourselves into any of these great creators, why have you not? Do not ask
me to say otherwise; because if you do, you will lead me into temptation.
For I swore early in life never to utter a falsehood, and, above all, a
sycophantic falsehood; and, in the false homage of the modern press towards
women, there is horrible sycophancy. It is as hollow, most of it, and it is
as fleeting as is the love that lurks in _uxoriousness_. Yet, if a woman
asks me to tell a faleshood, I have long made up my mind--that on moral
considerations I _will_, and _ought_ to do so, whether it be for any
purpose of glory to _her_, or of screening her foibles (for she _does_
commit a few), or of humbly, as a vassal, paying a peppercorn rent to her
august privilege of caprice. Barring these cases, I must adhere to my
resolution of telling no fibs. And I repeat, therefore, but not to be rude,
I repeat in Latin--
Excudent alii melius spirantia signa,
Credo equidem vivos ducent de marmore vultus:
Altius ascendent: at tu caput, Eva, memento
Sandalo ut infringas referenti oracula tanta.[6]
Yet, sister woman--though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a Michael
Angelo in your sex, until that day when you claim my promise as to
falsehood--cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of
admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of
us men--a greater thing than even Mozart is known to have done, or Michael
Angelo--you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die were goddesses
mortal. If any distant world (which _may_ be the case) are so far ahead
of us Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through their
telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we
ever treat them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or
Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Pooh! pooh! my friend: suggest something
better; these are baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their
own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are
nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we have to show them
is a scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there is a strong
muster in those fair telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who
happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep
at _us_. Telescopes look up in the market on that morning, and bear a
monstrous premium; for they cheat, probably, in those scientific worlds as
well as we do. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world
by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers,
whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the
morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published on that distant
world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the
garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the
widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the
morning air her head, turned gray prematurely by sorrow, daughter of Caesars
kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death?
How, if it were the "martyred wife of Roland," uttering impassioned
truth--truth odious to the rulers of her country--with her expiring breath?
How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth,
that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her
smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed
those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring,
follow the re-appearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet
thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals in
comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France? Ah!
these were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing people in distant
worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves,
because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the
strength of love, and to the fury of hatred, that burned within them at
such scenes; could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust
which rested in the catacombs of earth.
On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen
years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted
before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of
prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional
walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every
direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile "struck terror," says
M. Michelet, "by its height;" and, as usual, the English purpose in this is
viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining all
that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. On the circumstances of
the execution I shall not linger. Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity
of M. Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the English name, at
a moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna's personal
appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws
into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects,
though lying upon the high road, a very pleasing one. Both are from English
pens. Grafton, a chronicler but little read, being a stiff-necked John
Bull, thought fit to say, that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since
her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit.
Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more
important, and universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the
interesting character of Joanna's person and engaging manners. Neither
of these men lived till the following century, so that personally this
evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly believed as
he wished to believe; Holinshead took pains to inquire, and reports
undoubtedly the general impression of France. But I cite the case as
illustrating M. Michelet's candor.[7]
The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space
than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear
to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so
unspeakably grand. Yet for a purpose pointing, not at Joanna but at M.
Michelet,--viz., to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking
more highly of _La Pucelle_ than even her admiring countryman, I shall, in
parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold,
and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in
questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader ought
to be reminded that Joanna d'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial
of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of
_personal_ rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Caesar;
at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals
existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against
the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be,
therefore, anti-national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. What
was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately.
Now Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national
grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against _her_,
such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would
follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to
recant. No innocence could escape _that_. Now, had she really testified
this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but
the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of
torment. And those will often pity that weakness most, who, in their own
persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny
uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests
upon no _positive_ testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting
testimony to stem. And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems
to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer amongst
her _friends_ who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words
are, that, if she did not utter this word _recant_ with her lips, she
uttered it in her heart. "Whether, she _said_ the word is uncertain: but I
affirm that she _thought_ it."
Now, I affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word "_thought_"
applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating _La Pucelle_: here
is England defending her. M. Michelet can only mean, that, on _a priori_
principles, every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness; that
Joanna was a woman; _ergo_, that she was liable to such a weakness. That
is, he only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argument which
presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the
contrary, throw the _onus_ of the argument not on presumable tendencies of
nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded
by multitudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute
nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against
her? What else but her meek, saintly demeanor, won from the enemies, that
till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten
thousand men," says M. Michelet himself, "ten thousand men wept;" and of
these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by
cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her
angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier--who had sworn
to throw a faggot on her scaffold, as _his_ tribute of abhorrence, that
_did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly to turn away a penitent for
life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven
from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to
kneel at every shrine for pardon to _his_ share in the tragedy? And, if all
this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid
on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had
been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke
rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing
almost at her side. Wrapt up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger,
but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was
racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this
noblest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that would not
forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care
for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to God. That girl, whose
latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not
utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did
not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.
* * * * *
Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon a
down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike.
At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is
resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have
the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together
both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering
fast upon you two, Bishop and Shepherd girl--when the pavilions of life
were closing up their shadowy curtains about you--let us try, through the
gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.
The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she, from her dungeon, she,
from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered
her last dream--saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of
forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival, which
man had denied to her languishing heart--that resurrection of spring-time,
which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from _her_, hungering after
the glorious liberty of forests--were by God given back into her hands, as
jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps, (for
the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages,) was given back to her by God
the bliss of childhood. By special privilege, for _her_ might be created,
in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not,
like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This
mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the skirts even of
that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood, that she was to reckon for,
had been exacted; the tears, that she was to shed in secret, had been paid
to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had
been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold
she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of
death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had
died--died, amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies--died, amidst the
drums and trumpets of armies--died, amidst peals redoubling upon peals,
volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.