One reason for this was not far to seek.We have perhaps already sufficiently dwelt upon it.It was that France was not France at that dolorous moment.It was no unanimous nation repulsing an invader.It was two at least,if not more countries,one of them frankly and sympathetically attaching itself to the invader,almost as nearly allied to him in blood,and more nearly by other bonds,than any tie existing between France and Burgundy.This does not account for the hostile indifference of southern France and of the French monarch to Jeanne,who had delivered them;but it accounts for the hostility of Paris and the adjacent provinces,and Normandy.She was as much against them as against the English,and the national sentiment to which she,a patriot before her age,appealed,--bidding not only the English go home,or fight and be vanquished,which was their only alternative--but the Burgundians to be converted and to live in peace with their brothers,--did not exist.Neither to Burgundians,Picards,or Normans was the daughter of far Champagne a fellow countrywoman.
There was neither sympathy nor kindness in their hearts on that score.
Some were humane and full of pity for a simple woman in such terrible straits;but no more in Paris than in Rouen was the Maid of Orleans a native champion persecuted by the English;she was to both an enemy,a sorceress,putting their soldiers and themselves to shame.
I have no desire to lessen our[1]guilt,whatever cruelty may have been practised by English hands against the Heavenly Maid.And much was practised--the iron cage,the chains,the brutal guards,the final stake,for which may God and also the world,forgive a crime fully and often confessed.But it was by French wits and French ingenuity that she was tortured for three months and betrayed to her death.Aprisoner of war,yet taken and tried as a criminal,the first step in her downfall was a disgrace to two chivalrous nations;but the shame is greater upon those who sold than upon those who bought;and greatest of all upon those who did not move Heaven and earth,nay,did not move a finger,to rescue.And indeed we have been the most penitent of all concerned;we have shrived ourselves by open confession and tears.We have quarrelled with our Shakespeare on account of the Maid,and do not know how we could have forgiven him,but for the notable and delightful discovery that it was not he after all,but another and a lesser hand that endeavoured to befoul her shining garments.France has never quarrelled with her Voltaire for a much fouler and more intentional blasphemy.
The most significant and the most curious after-scene,a pendant to the remorse and pity of so many of the humbler spectators,was the assembly held on the Thursday after Jeanne's death,how and when we are not told.It consisted of "nos judices antedicti,"but neither is the place of meeting named,nor the person who presided.Its sole testimonial is that the manu is in the same hand which has written the previous records:but whereas each page in that record was signed at the bottom by responsible notaries,Manchon and his colleagues,no name whatever certifies this.Seven men,Doctors and persons of high importance,all judges on the trial,all concerned in that last scene in the prison,stand up and give their report of what happened there--part of which we have quoted--their object being to establish that Jeanne at the last acknowledged herself to be deceived.
According to their own showing it was exactly such an acknowledgment as our Lord might have been supposed to make in the moment of his agony when the words of the psalm,"My God,my God,why hast thou forsaken me?"burst from his lips.There seems no reason that we can see,why this evidence should not be received as substantially true.
The inference that any real recantation on Jeanne's part was then made,is untrue,and not even asserted.She was deceived in respect to her deliverance,and felt it to the bottom of her heart.It was to her the bitterness of death.But the flames of her burning showed her the truth,and with her last breath she proclaimed her renewed conviction.
The scene at the stake would lose something of its greatness without that momentary cloud which weighed down her troubled soul.
