We are told by M. Blaze de Bury of an ancient custom which we do not find stated elsewhere. A platform was erected, he tells us, outside the choir of the cathedral to which the King was led the evening before the coronation, surrounded by his peers, who showed him to the assembled people with a traditional proclamation: "Here is your King whom we, peers of France, crown as King and sovereign lord. And if there is a soul here which has any objection to make, let him speak and we will answer him. And to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of the Holy Spirit if you have nothing to say against it." The people replied by cries of "No?l, No?l!" It is not to be supposed that the veto of the people of Rheims would have been effectual had they opposed: but the scene is wonderfully picturesque. No doubt Jeanne too was there, watching over her King, as she seems to have done, like a mother over her child, at this crisis of his affairs.
That night there was little sleep in Rheims, for everything had to be prepared in haste, the decorations of the cathedral, the provisions for the ceremonial. Many of the necessary articles were at Saint Denis in the hands of the English, and the treasury of the cathedral had to be ransacked to find the fitting vessels. Fortunately it was rich, more rich probably than it is now, when the commonplace silver of the beginning of this century has replaced the ancient vials. Through the short summer night everyone was at work in these preparations; and by the dawn of day visitors began to flow into the city, great personages and small, to attend the great ceremonial and to pay their homage. The greatest of all was the Duke of Lorraine, he who had consulted Jeanne about his health, husband of the heiress of that rich principality, and son of Queen Yolande who was no doubt with the Court. All France seemed to pour into the famous town, where so important an act was about to be accomplished, with money and wine flowing on all hands, and the enthusiasm growing along with the popular excitement and profit. Even great London is stirred to its limits, many miles off from the centre of proceedings, by such a great event; how much more the little medi?val city, in which every one might hope to see something of the pageant, as one shining group after another, with armour blazing in the sun, and sleek horses caracoling, arrived at the great gates of the Archevêché: and lesser parties scarcely less interesting poured in in need of lodging, of equipment and provisions; while every housewife searched her stores for a piece of brilliant stuff, of old silk or embroidery, to make her house shine like the rest.
Early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of the Archbishop's house. Four splendid peers of France, in full armour with their banners, rode through the streets to the old Abbey of Saint Remy --the old church which Leo IX. consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day-- to fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of consecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven. These noble messengers were the "hostages" of this sacred charge, engaging themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it was restored to its appointed guardians. This vow having been made, the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the cathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in the flashes of their armour. This procession was met half-way, before the Church of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd.
The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest. We hear nothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good uncle who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durand who was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne's life in her childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d'Arc still stood aloof, /dour/, as a Scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter's intimacy with all these fine people, and in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less than shame to such rugged folk. And there were his two sons who would take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace he was more at home than with Jeanne. What the Maid had to do on the morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home talk with her relations. She who felt herself commissioned not only to lead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part in her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke of Burgundy. She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God's will were French. It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip of Burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the breach which had torn France in two:
JHESUS, MARIA.
High and redoubtable Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Jeanne the Maid requires on the part of the King of Heaven, my most just sovereign and Lord (/mon droicturier souverain seigneur/), that the King of France and you make peace between yourselves, firm, strong and that will endure. Pardon each other of good heart, entirely, as loyal Christians ought to do, and if you desire to fight let it be against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, supplicate, and require, as humbly as may be, fight no longer against the holy kingdom of France: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and on the part of the gentle King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, having respect to his honour, and upon your life that you never will gain a battle against loyal Frenchmen and that all those who war against the said holy kingdom of France, war against the King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world and my just and sovereign Lord. And I pray and require with clasped hands that you fight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor your subjects; but believe always however great in number may be the men you lead against us, that you will never win, and it would be great pity for the great battle and the blood that would be shed of those who came against us. Three weeks ago I sent you a letter by a herald that you should be present at the consecration of the King, which to-day, Sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of July, is done in the city of Rheims: to which I have had no answer, nor even any news by the said herald. To God I commend you, and may He be your guard if it pleases Him, and I pray God to make good peace.
Written at the aforesaid Rheims, the seventeenth day of July, 1429.
When the letter was finished Jeanne put on her armour and prepared for the great ceremony. We are not told what part she took in it, nor is any more prominent position assigned to her than among the noble crowd of peers and generals who surrounded the altar, where her place would naturally be, upon the broad raised platform of the choir, so excellently adapted for such ceremonies. Her banner we are told was borne into the cathedral, in order, as she proudly explained afterwards, that having been foremost in the danger it should share the honour.
But we have no right to suppose that the Maid took the position of the chief actor in the pageant and stood alone by the side of Charles, as the exigencies of the pictorial art have required her to do. When, however, the ceremony was completed, and he had received on his knees the anointing which separated him as king from every other class of men, and while the lofty vaults echoed with the cries of No?l! No?l! by which the people hailed the completed ceremony, Jeanne could contain herself no longer. The object was attained for which she had laboured and struggled, and overcome every opponent. She stepped forward out of the brilliant crowd, and threw herself at the feet of the now crowned monarch, embracing his knees. "Gentle King," she cried with tears, "now is the pleasure of God fulfilled--whose will it was that I should raise the siege of Orleans and lead you to this city of Rheims to receive your consecration. Now has He shown that you are true King, and that the kingdom of France truly belongs to you alone."
Those broken words, her tears, the cry of that profound satisfaction which is almost anguish, the "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," which is so suitable to the lips of the old, so poignant from those of the young, pierced all hearts. It is added that she asked leave to withdraw, her work being done, and that all who saw her were filled with sympathy. It was no doubt the irresistible outburst of a heart too full; and though that fulness was all joy and triumph, yet there was in it a sense of completed work, a rending asunder and tearing away from life, the end of a wonderful and triumphant tale.
There is a considerable controversy as to the precise meaning of that outburst of emotion. Did the Maid mean that her work was over, and her divine mission fulfilled? Was this all that she believed herself to be appointed to do? or did she expect, as she sometimes said, to /bouter/ the English out of France altogether? In the one case she ought to have relinquished her work, and in not doing so she acted without the protection of God which had hitherto made her invulnerable. In the other, her "voices," her inspiration, must have failed her, for her course of triumph went no farther. It is impossible to decide between these contending theories. She did speak in both senses, sometimes declaring that she was to take Paris, sometimes, her intention to /bouter/ the English out of the kingdom. At the same time she betrayed a constant conviction that her office had limitations and must come to an end. "I will last but a year," she said to the King and to Alen?on. The testimony of Dunois seems to be the best we can have on this point. He says in his deposition, made many years after her death: "Although Jeanne sometimes talked playfully to amuse people, of things concerning the war which were not afterwards accomplished, yet when she spoke seriously of the war, and of her own career and her vocation, she never affirmed anything but that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead the King to Rheims to be crowned."
If this were so was she wrong in continuing her warfare, and did she place herself in the position of one who goes on her own charges, finding the mission from on high unnecessary? Or in the other case did her inspiration fail her, or were the intrigues of Charles and his Court sufficient to balk the designs of Heaven? We prefer to think that Jeanne's commission concerned only those two things which she accomplished so completely; but that in continuing the war, she acted only as a well inspired and honourable young soldier might, though no longer as the direct messenger of God. She had as much right to do so as to return to her distaff or her needle in her native village; but she became subject to all the ordinary laws of war by so doing, exposed herself to be taken or overthrown like any man-at-arms, and accepted that risk. What is certain is, that every intrigue sprang up again afresh on the evening of that brilliant and triumphant ceremonial, and that from the moment of the accomplishment of her great work the failure of the Maid began.
These intrigues had been in her way since her very first beginning, as has been seen. At Orleans, in the very field as well as in the council chamber and the presence, everything was done to balk her, and to cross her plans, but in vain; she triumphed over every contrivance against her, and broke through the plots, and overcame the plotters. But after Rheims the combination of dangers became ever greater and greater, and we may say that no merely human general would have had a chance in face of the many and bewildering influences of evil. Charles who was himself, at least at this period of his career, sufficiently indolent and unenterprising to have damped the energies of any commander, was, in addition, surrounded by advisers who had always been impatient and jealous of the interference of Jeanne, and would have cast her off as a witch, or passed her by as an impostor, had that been possible, without permitting her to strike a blow. They had now grudgingly made use of her, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her action where they had no power to restrain it: but they were as little friendly, as malignant in their treatment of the Maid as ever, and more hopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able to shake her off and pursue their fate in their own way.
The position of Charles crowned King of France with all the traditional pomp, master of the Orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming in to swell his army day by day, and Paris itself almost within his reach, was very different from that of the discredited Dauphin at Chinon, whom half the world believed to have no right to the crown which his own mother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in folly to the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and trafficked with his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. The strange apparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken up and saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for a moment to be hateful to La Tremouille and his party; and Charles--though he seems to have had a certain appreciation of the Maid, and even a liking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith in her mission--was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, and probably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour with Heaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success: certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. But that she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantly apparent to them all. To keep her as a sort of tame angel about the Court in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart into the soldiers and frighten the English as she certainly had the gift of doing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. And they dared not let her go "because of the people," nor, may we believe, would Alen?on, Dunois, La Hire, and the rest have tolerated thus the abandonment of their comrade. To dismiss her even at her own word would have been impossible, and it is hard to believe that Jeanne, after that extraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, could have gone back to her father's cottage of the village, though she thought she would fain have done so. If we are to believe that she felt her mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serve France and the King as seemed best.
