The Eighteen Christian Centuries

It is like going back to the time of the Crusades to turn our eyes from the end of this century to the beginning, so great and essential is the change that has taken place. Yet it is necessary, having given the general view of the condition of affairs, to descend to certain particulars by which the progress of the history may be more vividly defined. And of these the principal are the battle of Agincourt, the relief of Orleans, the invention of Guttenberg, and the achievement of Columbus. These are fixed on, not for their own intrinsic merits, but for the great results they produced. Agincourt unfeudalized France; Joan of Arc restored man’s faith in human virtue and divine superintendence; printing preserved forever the conquests of the human intellect; and the discovery of America opened a new world to the energies of mankind.

We must return to the state of France when the Duke of Orleans was so treacherously slain by the ferocious Duke of Burgundy in 1407. For a time the crime was successful in establishing the murderer’s power, and the Burgundians were strengthened by obtaining the custody of the imbecile king, Charles the Sixth, and the support of his infamous consort, Isabeau of Bavaria. But authority so obtained could not be kept without plunging into greater excesses. So the populace were let loose, and no man’s life was safe. In self-defence—burning with hatred of the slayer of his son-in-law and betrayer of his country—the Count of Armagnac denounced the dominant party. |A.D. 1411.|Burgundy threw himself into the arms of England, and was only outbidden in his offers of submission by the Armagnacs in the following year. Each party in turn promised to support the English king in all his claims, and before he set foot in France he already found himself in possession of the kingdom. |A.D. 1413.|Many strong places in the South were surrendered to him as pledges of the fidelity of his supporters. The whole land was the prey of faction and party hate. The Church had repudiated both Pope and Council; the towns were in insurrection in every street; and Henry the Fifth was only twenty-six years of age, full of courage and ambition, supported by the love and gratitude of the national Church, and anxious to glorify the usurpation of his family by a restoration of the triumphs of Cressy and Poictiers. He therefore sent an embassy to France, demanding his recognition by all the States as king, though he modestly waived the royal title till its present holder should be no more. He declared also that he would not be content without the hand of Catharine, the French king’s daughter, with Normandy and other counties for her dowry; and when these reasonable conditions, as he had anticipated, were rejected, and all his preparations were completed, he threw off the mask of negotiation, and sailed from Southampton with an army of six thousand men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand archers. A beautiful sight it must have been that day in September, 1415, when the enormous convoy sailed or rowed down the placid Southampton water. Sails of various colours, and streamers waving from every mast, must have given it the appearance of an immense regatta; and while all France was on the watch for the point of attack, and Calais was universally regarded as the natural landing-place for an English army, the great flotilla pursued its course past the Isle of Wight, and struck out for the opposite coast, filling up the mouth of the Seine with innumerable vessels, and casting anchor off the town of Harfleur. Prayers for its success ascended from every parish in England; for the clergy looked on the youthful king as their champion against all their enemies,—against the Pope, who claimed their tithes, against the itinerant monks, who denied and resisted their authority, and against the nobles, who envied them their wealth and territories. And no wonder; for at this time the ecclesiastical possessions included more than the half of England. Of fifty-three thousand knightly holdings on the national register, twenty-eight thousand belonged to mother Church! Prayers also for its success were uttered in the workshops and markets. People were tired of the long inaction of Richard the Second’s time, and longed for the stirring incidents they had heard their fathers speak of when the Black Prince was making the “Mounseers” fly. For by this time a stout feeling of mutual hatred had given vigour to the quarrel between the nations. Parliament had voted unexampled supplies, and “all the youth of England was afire.”

Meantime the siege of Harfleur dragged its slow length along. Succours were expected by the gallant garrison, but succour never came. Proclamations had indeed been issued, summoning the ban and arrière ban of France, and knights were assembling from all quarters to take part in the unavoidable engagement. But the counsels at head-quarters were divided. The masses of the people were not hearty in the cause, and the men of Harfleur, at the end of the fifth week of their resistance, sent to say they would surrender “if they were not relieved by a great army in two days.” “Take four,” said Henry, wishing nothing more than a decisive action under the very walls. But the time rapidly passed, and Harfleur was once more an English town. Henry might look round and triumph in the possession of streets and houses; but that was all, for his usual barbarity had banished the inhabitants. The richer citizens were put to ransom; all the rest were driven from the place,—not quite naked, nor quite penniless, for one petticoat was left to each woman, and one farthing in ready money. Generosity to the vulgar vanquished was not yet understood, either as a Christian duty or a stroke of policy. But courage, not unmixed with braggadocio, was still the character of the time. The English had lost many men from sickness during the siege. No blow had been boldly struck in open field, and a war without a battle, however successful in its results, would have been thought no better than a tournament. All the remaining chivalry of France was now collected under its chiefs and princes, and Henry determined to try what mettle they were of. He published a proclamation that he and his English would march across the country from Harfleur to Calais in spite of all opposition; and, as the expedition would occupy eight days at least, he felt sure that some attempt would be made to revenge so cutting an insult. He might easily have sent his forces, in detachments, by sea, for there was not a French flag upon all the Channel; but trumpets were sounded one day, swords drawn, cheers no doubt heartily uttered, by an enthusiastic array of fifteen thousand men, and the dangerous march began. It was the month of October, the time of the vintage: there was plenty of wine; and a French author makes the characteristic remark, “with plenty of wine the English soldier could go to the end of the world.” When the English soldier, on this occasion, had got through the eight days’ provisions with which he started, instead of finding himself at Calais, he was only advanced as far as Amiens, with the worst part of the journey before him. The fords of the Somme were said to be guarded; spies came over in the disguise of deserters, and told the king that all the land was up in arms, that the princes were all united, and that two hundred thousand men were hemming them hopelessly round. In the midst of these bad news, however, a ray of light broke in. A villager pointed out a marsh, by crossing which they could reach a ford in the stream. They traversed the marsh without hesitation, waded with difficulty through morass and water, and, behold! they were safe on the other side. The road was now clear, they thought, for Calais; and they pushed cheerily on. But, more dangerous than the marsh, more impassable than the river, the vast army of France blocked up their way. Closing across a narrow valley which lay between the castle of Agincourt and the village of Tramecourt, sixty thousand knights, gentlemen, and man-at-arms stood like a wall of steel. There were all the great names there of all the provinces,—Dukes of Lorraine, and Bar, and Bourbon, Princes of Orleans and Berri, and many more. Henry by this time had but twelve thousand men. He found he had miscalculated his movements, and was unwilling to sacrifice his army to the point of honour. He offered to resign the title of King of France and to surrender his recent conquest at Harfleur. But the princes were resolved not to negotiate, but to revenge. Henry then said to the prisoners he was leading in his train, “Gentlemen, go till this affair is settled. If your captors survive, present yourselves at Calais.” His forces were soon arranged. Archers had ceased to be the mere appendages to a line of battle: they now constituted almost all the English army. All the night before they had been busy in preparation. They had furbished up their arms, and put now cords to their bows, and sharpened the stakes they carried to ward off the attack of cavalry. At early dawn they had confessed to the priest; and all the time no noise had been heard. Henry had ordered silence throughout the camp on pain of the severest penalties,—loss of his horse to a gentleman, and of his right ear to a common soldier. |A.D. 1415.|The 23d of October was the great, the important day. Henry put a noble helmet on his head, surmounted by a golden crown, sprang on his little gray hackney, encouraged his men with a few manly words, reminding them of Old England and how constantly they had conquered the French, and led them to a field where the grass was still green, and which the rains had not converted into mud; for the weather had long been unpropitious. And here the heroic little army expected the attack. But the enemy were in no condition to make an advance. Seated all night on their enormous war-horses, the heavy-armed cavaliers had sunk the unfortunate animals up to their knees in the adhesive soil. Old Thomas of Erpingham, seeing the decisive moment, completed the marshalling of the English as soon as possible, and, throwing his baton in the air, cried, “Now, Strike!” A great hurrah was the answer to this order; but still the French line continued unmoved. If it had been turned into stone it could not have been more inactive. Ranged thirty-two deep, and fixed to the spot they stood on, buried up in armour, and crowded in the narrow space, the knights could offer no resistance to the attack of their nimble and lightly-armed foes. A flight of ten thousand arrows poured upon the vast mass, and saddles became empty without a blow. There came, indeed, two great charges of horse from the flank of the French array; but the inevitable shaft found entrance through their coats of mail, and very few survived. Of these the greater part rushed, blind and wounded, back among their own men, crashing upon the still spell-bound line and throwing it into inextricable confusion. Horse and man rolled over in the dirt, struggling and shrieking in an undistinguishable mass. Meanwhile the archers, throwing aside their stakes and seizing the hatchets hanging round their necks, advanced at a run,—poured blows without cessation on casque and shield, completing the destruction among the crowded multitudes which their own disorder had begun; and, as the same cause which hindered their advance prevented their retreat, they sat the hopeless victims of a false position, and were slaughtered without an attempt made to resist or fly. The fate of the second line was nearly the same. Henry, forcing his way with sword and axe through the living barrier of horse and cavalier, led his compact array to the glittering body beyond. There the mêlée became more animated, and prowess was shown upon either side. But the rear-guard, warned by previous experience, took flight before the middle lines were pierced, and Henry saw himself victor with very trifling loss, and only encumbered with the number of the slain, and still more with the multitude of prisoners. Almost all the surviving noblemen had surrendered their swords. They knew too well the fate of wounded or disarmed gentlemen even among their countrymen, and trusted rather to the generosity of the conqueror than the mercy of their own people. Alas that we must again confess that Henry was ignorant of the name of generosity! Alarmed for a moment at the threatening aspect of some of the fugitives who had resumed their ranks, he gave the pitiless word that every prisoner was to be slain. Not a soldier would lift his hand against his captive,—from the double motive of tenderness and cupidity. To tell an “archer good” to murder a great baron, the captive of his bow and spear, was to tell him to resign a ransom which would make him rich for life. But Henry was not to be balked. He appointed two hundred men to be executioners of his command; and thousands of the young and gay were slaughtered in cold blood. Was it hideous policy which thus led Henry to weaken his enemy’s cause by diminishing the number of its knightly defenders, or was it really the result of the fear of being overcome? Whichever it was, the effect was the same. Ten thousand of the gentlemen of France were the sufferers on that day,—a whole generation of the rich and high-born swept away at one blow! It would have taken a long time in the course of nature to supply their place; but nature was not allowed to have her way. Wars and dissensions interfered with her restorative efforts. Six-and-thirty years were yet to be spent in mutual destruction, or in struggles against the English name; and when France was again left free from foreign occupation, when French chivalry again wished to assume the chief rule in human affairs, it was found that chivalry was out of place; a new state of things had arisen in Europe; the greatest exploit which had been known in their national annals had been performed by a woman; and knighthood had so lost its manliness that, when prosperity and population had again made France a powerful kingdom, the silk-clad courtiers of an unwarlike monarch thought it good taste to sneer at the relief of Orleans and the mission of Joan of Arc!

Six years after Agincourt, the English conqueror and the wretched phantom of kingship called Charles the Sixth descended to their graves. |A.D. 1421.|Military honour and patriotism seemed utterly at an end among the French population, and our Henry the Sixth, the son of the man of Agincourt, succeeded in the great object of English ambition and was recognised from the Channel to the Loire as King of France. In the Southern provinces a spark of the old French gallantry was still unextinguished, but it showed itself in the gay unconcern with which the Dauphin, now Charles the Seventh, bore all the reverses of fortune, and consoled himself for the loss of the noblest crown in Europe by the enjoyments of love and festivity. Perhaps he saw that the whirligig of time would bring about its revenges, and that the curse of envious faction would vex the councils of the conquerors as it had ruined the fortunes of the subdued. The warriors of Henry still remained, but, without the controlling hand, they could direct their efforts to no common object. The uncles of the youthful king speedily quarrelled. The gallant Bedford was opposed by the treacherous Glo’ster, and both were dominated and supplanted by the haughty prelate, the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester. Offence was soon taken at the presumption of the English soldiery. Religious animosities supervened. The Churches of England and France had both made successful endeavours to establish a considerable amount of national independence, and the French bishops, who had withdrawn themselves from the absolutism of Rome, were little inclined to become subordinate to Winchester and Canterbury. A court gradually gathered round the Dauphin, which inspired him with more manly thoughts. His feasts and tournaments were suspended, and, with his hand on the hilt of his sword, he watched the proceedings of the English. These proceedings were uniformly successful when restricted to the operations of war. They defeated the men of Gascony and the reinforcements sent over by the Scotch. They held a firm grasp of Paris and all the strong places of the North, and cast down the gauntlet to the rest of France by laying siege to the beautiful city of Orleans in the winter of 1428. |A.D. 1428.|Once in possession of the Loire, they would be able at their leisure to extend their conquests southward; and all the loyal throughout the country took up the challenge and resolved on the defence of the beleaguered town. The English must have begun by this time to despise their enemy; for, in spite of the greatness of the stake, they undertook the siege with a force of less than three thousand men. To make up for the deficiency in numbers, they raised twelve large bastions all round the walls, exhausting the troops by the labour and finding it impossible to garrison them adequately when they were finished. It seems that Sebastopol was not the first occasion on which our soldiers were overworked. To surround a city of several thousand inhabitants, strongly garrisoned, and with an open country at its back for the supply of provisions, would have required a large and well-directed force. But the moral effects of Agincourt, and even of Cressy and Poictiers, were not yet obliterated. Public spirit was dead, and very few entertained a hope of saving the doomed place. Statesmen, politicians, and warriors, all calculated the chances of success and decided against the cause of France. But in the true heart of the common people far better feelings survived. They were neither statesmen, nor politicians, nor warriors; but they were loyal and devoted Frenchmen, and put their trust in God.

A peasant-girl, eighteen years of age, born and bred in a little village called Domremy, in Lorraine, was famous for her religious faith and simplicity of character. Her name was Joan d’Arc,—a dreamy enthusiast, believing with full heart all the legends of saints and miracles with which the neighbourhood was full. She rested, also, with a sort of romantic interest on the personal fortunes of the young discrowned king, who had been unjustly excluded by foreigners from his rights and was now about to lose the best of his remaining possessions. She walked in the woods and heard voices telling her to be up and doing. She went to pray in the dim old church, and had glorious visions of angels who smiled upon her. One time she saw a presence with a countenance like the sun, and wings upon his shoulders, who said, “Go, Joan, to the help of the King of France.” But she answered, “My lord, I cannot ride, nor command men-at-arms.” The voice replied, “Go to M. de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs: he will take thee to the king. Saint Catharine and Saint Marguerite will come to thy assistance.” There was no voluntary deception here. The girl lived in a world of her own, and peopled it out of the fulness of her heart. She went to Vaucouleurs: she saw M. de Baudricourt. He took her to Poictiers, where the Dauphin resided, and when she was led into the glittering ring an attempt was made to deceive her by representing another as the prince; but she went straight up to the Dauphin and said to him, “Gentle Dauphin, my name is Joan the Maid. The King of Heaven sends to you, through me, that you shall be anointed and crowned at Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France.” All the court was moved,—the more pure-minded, with sympathy for the girl, the more experienced, with the use that might be made of her enthusiasm to rouse the nation. Both parties conspired to aid Joan in her design; and, clothed in white armour, mounted on a war-horse, holding the banner of France in her hand, and waited on by knights and pages, she set forth on her way to Orleans. It was like a religious procession all the way. She prayed at all the shrines, and was blest by the clergy, and held on her path undismayed with all the dangers that occurred at every step. At length, on the 30th of April, she made her entry into Orleans. Her coming had long been expected; and, now that it had really happened, people looked back at the difficulties of the route and thought the whole march a miracle. Meantime Joan knelt and gave thanks in the great church, and the true defence of Orleans began. Into the hard-pressed city had gathered all the surviving chivalry of France,—Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, La Hire, Saintrailles, rough and dissolute soldiers, yet all held in awe by the purity and innocence of the Maid. With Joan at the head of the column of assault, the English intrenchments fell one after another. In spite of wounds and hardships, the peasant-girl pushed fearlessly on; the knights and gentlemen could not decline to follow where she led the way; and ten days after her arrival old Talbot and Falstaff gathered up the fragments of their troops and made a precipitate retreat from the scene of their discomfiture. But there was not yet rest for the dreamer of Domremy. She hurried off to the Dauphin. “Gentle Dauphin,” she said, “till you are crowned with the old crown and bedewed with the holy oil, you can never be King of France. Come with me to Rheims. There shall no enemy hurt you on the way.” The country through which they had to pass was bristling with English castles and swarming with wandering troops. Yet the counsel which appeared so hardy was in fact the wisest that could be given. The faith in the sanctity of coronations was still strong. Whoever was first crowned would in the eye of faith be true king. Winchester was bringing over the English claimant. All France would be startled at the news that the descendant of St. Louis was beforehand with his rival; and the march was successfully made. |July 17, 1429.|“Gentle king,” said Joan, kneeling after the ceremony, and calling him for the first time King,—“Gentle King, Orleans is saved, the true king is crowned. My task is done. Farewell.” But they would not let her leave them so soon. The people crowded round her and blest her wherever she appeared. “Oh, the good people of Rheims!” she cried: “when I die I should like to be buried here.” “When do you think you shall die?” inquired the archbishop,—perhaps with a sneer upon his lips. “That I know not,” she replied: “whenever it pleases God. But, for my own part, I wish to go back and keep the sheep with my sister and brothers. They will be so glad to see me again!” But this was not to be.

If Talbot and Suffolk had been foiled and vanquished by Dunois and La Hire, they would have accepted their defeat as one of the mischances of war. A knightly hand ennobles the blow it gives. But to be humbled by a woman, a peasant, a prophetess, an impostor,—this was too much for the proud stomachs of our steel-clad countrymen. But far worse was it in the eyes of our stole-clad ecclesiastics. Apparitions of saints and angels vouchsafed to the recalcitrant Church of France!—voices heard from heaven denouncing the claims of the English king!—visible glories hanging round the head of a simple shepherdess! It was evident to every clergyman and monk and bishop in England that the woman was a witch or a deceiver. And almost all the clergymen in France thought the same; and after a while, when the exploit was looked back upon with calmness, almost all the soldiers on both sides were of the same opinion. Nobody could believe in the exaltation of a pure and enthusiastic mind, making its own visions, and performing its own miracles, without a tincture of deceit. It was easier and more orthodox to believe in the liquefaction of the holy oil and the wonders wrought by the bones of St. Denis: so, with a nearly universal assent of both the parties, the humbled English and delivered French, the most heroic and most feminine of women was handed over to the Church tribunals, and Joan’s fate was sealed. Unmanly priests, whose law prevented them from having wives, unloving bishops, whose law prevented them from having daughters,—how were they to judge of the loving heart and trusting tenderness of a girl not twenty years of age, standing before them, with modesty not shown in blushes but in unabated simplicity of behaviour, telling the tale of all her actions as if she were pouring it into the ears of father and mother in her own old cottage at home, unconscious, or at least regardless, of scowling looks, and misleading questions, directed to her by those predetermined murderers? No one tried to save her. Charles the Seventh, with the oil of Rheims scarcely dried upon his head, made no attempt to get her from the hands of her enemies. The process took place at Rouen. Magic and heresy were the crimes laid to her charge; and as generosity was magic in the eyes of those narrow-souled inquisitors, and trust in God was heresy, there was no defence possible. Her whole life was a confession. First, she was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and to resume the dress of her sex. Then she was exposed to every obloquy and insult which hatred and superstition could pour upon her. A gallant “Lord” accompanied the Count de Ligny in a visit to her cell. She was chained to a plank by both feet, and kept in this attitude night and day. The noble Englishman did honour to his rank and country. When Joan said, “I know the English will procure my death, in hopes of getting the realm of France; but they could not do it, no, if they had a hundred thousand Goddams more than they have to-day;” the gallant visitor was so enraged by those depreciating remarks, and perhaps at the nickname thus early indicative of the national oath, that he drew his dagger, and would have struck her, if he had not been hindered by Lord Warwick. Another gentleman, on being admitted to her prison, insulted her by the grossness of his behaviour, and then overwhelmed her with blows. It was time for Joan to escape her tormentors. She put on once more the male apparel which she had thrown off, and sentence of death was passed. On the 30th of May, 1431, in the old fishmarket of Rouen, the great crime was consummated. |A.D. 1431.|The flames mounted very slowly; and when at last they enveloped her from the crowd, she was still heard calling on Jesus, and declaring, “The voices I heard were of God!—the voices I heard were of God!” The age of chivalry was indeed past, and the age of Church-domination was also about to expire. The peasant-girl of Domremy wrote the dishonoured epitaph of the first in the flame of Rouen, and a citizen of Mentz was about to give the other its death-blow with the printing-press.