We hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed and worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances of the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering the men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of the mail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain. Half a hundred war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of "Witch, Devil, Ribaude," and names still more insulting to her purity, could not silence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ran through such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. /De par Dieu, Rendez vous, rendez vous, au roy de France/. If as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspect of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. While the boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and what beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot.
The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing to discourage them, as the fight raged on. Few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, "by the grace of God and the good luck of the Maid." But towards the evening Jeanne herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; she seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a still greater misfortune befell: her standard-bearer was hit, first in the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. What happened to the banner, we are not told; Jeanne most likely herself caught it as it fell. But at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strength failed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where she lay, refusing to quit the place. Some say she managed to slide into the dry ditch where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attempts to carry her away, and some add that while she lay there she employed herself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make it passable. It is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, to go on and Paris would be won. She had promised, they say, to sleep that night within the conquered city; but this promise comes to us with no seal of authority. Jeanne knew that it had taken her eight days to free Orleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success in the more formidable achievement. But she was at least determined in her conviction that perseverance only was needed. She must have lain for hours on the slope of the outer moat, urging on the troops with such force as her dauntless voice could give, repeating again and again that the place could be taken if they but held on. But when night came Alen?on and some other of the captains overcame her resistance, and there being clearly no further possibility for the moment, succeeded in setting her upon her horse, and conveyed her back to the camp. While they rode with her, supporting her on her charger, she did nothing but repeat "/Quel dommage!/" Oh, what a misfortune, that the siege of Paris should fail, all for want of constancy and courage. "If they had but gone on till morning," she cried, "the inhabitants would have known." It is evident from this that she must have expected a rising within, and could not yet believe that no such thing was to be looked for. "/Par mon martin/, the place would have been taken," she said in the hearing one cannot but feel of the chronicler, who reports so often those homely words.
Thus Jeanne was led back after the first day's attack. Her wound was not serious, and she had been repulsed during one of the day's fighting at Orleans without losing courage. But something had changed her spirit as well as the spirit of the army she led. There is a curious glimpse given us into her camp at this point, which indeed comes to us through the observation of an enemy, yet seems to have in it an unmistakable gleam of truth. It comes from one of the parties which had been granted a safe-conduct to carry away the dead of the English and Burgundian side. They tell us, among other circumstances, --such as that the French burnt their dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make them a horror to their neighbours,--that many in the ranks cursed the Maid who had promised that they should without any doubt sleep that night in Paris and plunder the wealthy city. The men with their safe-conduct creeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which had fallen on their own side, and furtively to count the fallen on the other--who were delighted to bring a report that the Maid was no longer the fountain of strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces--are sinister figures groping their way through the darkness of the September night.
Next morning, however, her wound being slight, Jeanne was up early and in conference with Alen?on, begging him to sound his trumpets and set forth once more. "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entire camp, in the commotion of the reveillé, while each man looked to his weapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of the September morning, greeting the new friends and brothers-in-arms who had come in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than that of yesterday, the mode of attack. Jeanne would not confess that she felt her wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. And all were in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away, and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. Were the men-at-arms perhaps less amenable? Were they whispering to each other that Jeanne had promised them Paris yesterday, and for the first time had not kept her word? It would almost require such a fact as this to explain what follows. For as they began to set out, the whole field in movement, there was suddenly seen approaching another party of cavaliers-- perhaps another reinforcement like that of Montmorency? This new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediate attendants, the Duc de Bar and the Comte de Clermont,[1] always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from St. Denis with orders from the King. These orders were abrupt and peremptory--to turn back. Jeanne and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and Paris at their feet! There must have burst forth a storm of remonstrance and appeal. We cannot tell how long the indignant parley lasted; the historians do not enlarge upon the disastrous incident. But at last the generals yielded to the orders of the King--Jeanne humiliated, miserable, and almost in despair. We cannot but feel that on no former occasion would she have given way so completely; she would have rushed to the King's presence, overwhelmed him with impetuous prayers, extorted somehow the permission to go on. But Charles was safe at seven miles' distance, and his envoys were imperious and peremptory, like men able to enforce obedience if it were not given. She obeyed at last, recovering courage a little in the hope of being able to persuade Charles to change his mind, and sanction another assault on Paris from the other side, by means of a bridge over the Seine towards St. Denis, which Alen?on had constructed. Next morning it appears that without even asking that permission a portion of the army set out very early for this bridge: but the King had divined their project, and when they reached the river side the first thing they saw was their bridge in ruins. It had been treacherously destroyed in the night, not by their enemies, but by their King.
It is natural that the French historians should exhaust themselves in explanation of this fatal change of policy. Quicherat, who was the first to bring to light all the most important records of this period of history, lays the entire blame upon La Tremo?lle, the chief adviser of Charles. But that Charles himself was at heart equally guilty no one can doubt. He was a man who proved himself in the end of his career to possess both sense and energy, though tardily developed. It was to him that Jeanne had given that private sign of the truth of her mission, by which he was overawed and convinced in the first moment of their intercourse. Within the few months which had elapsed since she appeared at Chinon every thing that was wonderful had been done for him by her means. He was then a fugitive pretender, not even very certain of his own claim, driven into a corner of his lawful dominions, and fully prepared to abandon even that small standing ground, to fly into Spain or Scotland, and give up the attempt to hold his place as King of France. Now he was the consecrated King, with the holy oil upon his brows, and the crown of his ancestors on his head, accepted and proclaimed, all France stirring to her old allegiance, new conquests falling into his hands every day, and the richest portion of his kingdom secure under his sway. To check thus peremptorily the career of the deliverer who had done so much for him, degrading her from her place, throwing more than doubt upon her inspiration, falsifying by force the promises which she had made-- promises which had never failed before,--was a worse and deeper sin on the part of a young man, by right of his kingly office the very head of knighthood and every chivalrous undertaking, than it could be on the part of an old and subtle diplomatist who had never believed in such wild measures, and all through had clogged the steps and endeavoured to neutralise the mission of the warrior Maid. It is very clear, however, that between them it was the King and his chamberlain who made this assault upon Paris so evident and complete a failure. One day's repulse was nothing in a siege. There had been one great repulse and several lesser ones at Orleans. Jeanne, even though weakened by her wound, had sprung up that morning full of confidence and courage. In no way was the failure to be laid to her charge.
But this could never, perhaps, have been explained to the whole body of the army, who had believed her word without a doubt and taken her success for granted. If they had been wavering before, which seems possible--for they must have been, to a considerable extent, new levies, the campaigners of the Loire having accomplished their period of feudal service,--this sudden downfall must have strengthened every doubt and damped every enthusiasm. The Maid of whom such wonderful tales had been told, she who had been the angel of triumph, the irresistible, before whom the English fled, and the very walls fell down--was she after all only a sorceress, as the others called her, a creature whose incantations had failed after the flash of momentary success? Such impressions are too apt to come like clouds over every popular enthusiasm, quenching the light and chilling the heart.
Jeanne was thus dragged back to St. Denis against her will and every instinct of her being, and there ensued three days of passionate debate and discussion. For a moment it appeared as if she would have thrown off the bonds of loyal obedience and pursued her mission at all hazards. Her "voices," if they had previously given her uncertain sound, promising only the support and succour of God, but no success, now spoke more plainly and urged the continuance of the siege; and the Maid was torn in pieces between the requirements of her celestial guardians and the force of authority around her. If she had broken out into open rebellion who would have followed her? She had never yet done so; when the King was against her she had pleaded or forced an agreement, and received or snatched a consent from the malevolent chamberlain, as at Jargeau and Troyes. Never yet had she set herself in public opposition to the will of her sovereign. She had submitted to all kinds of tests and trials rather than this. And to have lain half a day wounded outside Paris and to stand there pleading her cause with her wound still unhealed were not likely things to strengthen her powers of resistance. "The Voices bade me remain at St. Denis," she said afterwards at her trial, "and I desired to remain; but the seigneurs took me away in spite of myself. If I had not been wounded I should never have left." Added to the force of these circumstances, it was no doubt apparent to all that to resume operations after that forced retreat, and the betrayal it gave of divided counsels, would be less hopeful than ever. These arguments even convinced the bold La Hire, who for his part, being no better than a Free Lance, could move hither and thither as he would; and thus the first defeat of the Maid, a disaster involving all the misfortunes that followed in its train, was accomplished.
Jeanne's last act in St. Denis was one to which perhaps the modern reader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had a certain melancholy meaning. Before she left, dragged almost a captive in the train of the King, we are told that she laid on the altar of the cathedral the armour she had worn on that evil day before Paris. It was not an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the wars. And if she had been about to renounce her mission it would have been easily comprehensible. But no such thought was in her mind. Was it a movement of despair, was it with some womanish fancy that the arms in which she had suffered defeat should not be borne again?--or was it done in some gleam of higher revelation made to her that defeat, too, was a part of victory, and that not without that bitterness of failure could the fame of the soldier of Christ be perfected? I have remarked already that we hear no more of the white armour, inlaid with silver and dazzling like a mirror, in which she had begun her career; perhaps it was the remains of that panoply of triumph which she laid out before the altar of the patron saint of France, all dim now with hard work and the shadow of defeat. It must have marked a renunciation of one kind or another, the sacrifice of some hope. She was no longer Jeanne the invincible, the triumphant, whose very look made the enemy tremble and flee, and gave double force to every Frenchman's arm. Was she then and there abdicating, becoming to her own consciousness Jeanne the champion only, honest and true, but no longer the inspired Maid, the Envoy of God? To these questions we can give no answer; but the act is pathetic, and fills the mind with suggestions. She who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature to have the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. Jeanne had entered into that cloud when she offered the armour, that had been like a star in front of the battle, at the shrine of St. Denis.[2] Hers was now to be a sadder, a humbler, perhaps a still nobler part.
