________________________________________________
Title: Of Joan Of Arc
Author: R. D. Cumming [
More Titles by Cumming]
Some people say the world is getting no better, but if we take a dip into history and consider the conditions which prevailed there from the earliest times up to only a few hundred years ago, we will find a race of human beings which in no wise resemble the present output except in form and stature. And our own forefathers--the people of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons who are to-day leading in the social world--were not one iota better throughout those pages than many of the smallest and most unpretentious of obscure tribes living here and there in ignorant, local isolation. One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people--the working classes--the backbone of the nation, so to speak--was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. The only virtue, in his estimation, was a strong arm--a large army to murder and destroy property. And the life of the historian must needs reflect that of the people. There is no doubt that in a great majority they were of a cruel, murderous nature. We get rare glimpses, however (at intervals of sometimes hundreds of years), of the doings, manners, and customs, likes and dislikes of the common people, that we can rely upon as authentic; the rest is poetry and legend, and, although typical, are relations of incidents that did not really occur.
There is no doubt that, although it has been withheld, there was a great deal of virtue, which blushed and bloomed unseen, amid all this blood and war.
As though by accident the historian who immortalized Joan of Arc has let slip a few words in connection with this heroine's early life that are more valuable to us than page upon page of some of our so-called history. "Jeanne d'Arc was the child of a laborer of Domremy, a little village on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domremy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees and sang songs to the good people who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but 'a good girl,' simple and pleasant in her way, spinning and sewing by her mother's side while the other girls went to the fields--tender to the poor and sick."
This is a little domestic scene of the year A.D. 1425, and how homelike and real and familiar it all is. What a sweet peace spot, among all the bloodshed and horror that was going on throughout France at that time.
Joan of Arc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in all history. She was born at Domremy, France, in 1412, and was executed in 1431. Before she had reached twenty this girl had practically freed France from the English, or at least put the country upon such a footing that a few years accomplished its freedom.
The superstitions of the times are no doubt responsible to a great extent for the success which was attained by this Maid of Orleans. "The English believed in her supernatural mission as firmly as the French did, but they thought her a sorceress who had come to overthrow them by her enchantments," and so on. The fact remains that this innocent peasant girl of eighteen years of age freed France from the English and accomplished things which no man of France at that time was able to do. Either the French generalship of the times was very incompetent or the army was very much demoralized--at all events they had been awaiting the advent of a leader who was both determined and fearless, for skill does not seem to have been a requisite--and this appeared in the person of Joan of Arc.
It is difficult to believe that an entirely inexperienced person of this kind could take charge of an army of ten thousand men and lead them to victory when the best trained generals of the time could do nothing and suffered defeat at every turn.
With the coronation of the King the Maid felt that her errand was over. "Oh, gentle king, the pleasure of God is done," she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles, and asked leave to go home. "Would it were His good will," she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, "that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be glad to see me again."
But the policy of the French court detained her. France was depending on one of its peasant girls for its very national existence. The humiliation of the thing should make all good Frenchmen blush with shame. So she fought on with the conviction that she was superfluous in the army, and a slave to the French court. It does not appear that she was even placed upon the payroll, or that she received reward of any kind for her services--and there were no "Victoria crosses" in those days. She fought on without pay; rendered all her services for nothing--perhaps for the love of the thing. During the defence of Compiegne in May, 1430, she fell into the hands of one Vendome, who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy sold her to the English--her remuneration for her self-sacrificing, voluntarily-given services.
And now comes the tragic part of a most pathetic story enacted out at a time when the name civilization, applied to the French and English, is a mockery. "In December she was carried to Rouen, the headquarters of the English, heavily fettered, and flung into a gloomy prison, and at length, arraigned before the spiritual tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, a wretched creature of the English, as a sorceress and a heretic, while the dastard she had crowned king left her to die." She was not even granted a legal, judicial trial.
Some say that her sentence was at one time commuted to perpetual imprisonment, which proves that there was a glimmer of humanity hid away in some corner of the world, knocking hysterically in its imprisonment for admission. "But the English found a pretext to treat her as a criminal and condemned her to be burned." And at this juncture it may be well to say that we have good reason to be proud of ourselves to-day, and ashamed of our ancestors.
"She was brought to the stake on May 30th, 1431. The woman's tears dried upon her cheeks, and she faced her doom with the triumphant courage of the martyr." During her last awful moments, as she left this world with the torture of the flames slowly consuming her body, what were the last impressions of this girl of nineteen who left home and happiness to free a people who allowed her to be thus tormented to death? "A court was constituted by Pope Calixtus III., in 1455, which declared her innocent and pronounced her trial unjust. And through the whole civilized world her memory is fittingly commemorated in statuary and literature." But this is poor consolation and does not undo the mischief. So far as Joan of Arc is concerned, she is still burning, scorching, suffering at that stake, and the world and the English are her torturers, still tormenting her, while the man she made king stands looking on indifferently, heartlessly. All the honor and statuary that ever had creation on this green earth cannot atone for this crime of "civilization" on the innocent. But it is only one blot of many with which the world moves on, branded indelibly to its unknown end; and beneath a pleasant exterior we know, but try to hide, those blots, with apologies for our ancestors. And yet some say the world is getting no better. Out of this chaos of blood, crime and heathendom we sprang with all our pride and greatness, and with such a record it behooves us to be rather humble than high-minded, for crime and disgrace are lying at our very door-step.
"The story of Joan has been a rich motive in the world of art, and painter and sculptor have spent their genius on the theme without as yet adequately realizing its simple grandeur."
[The end]
R. D. Cumming's short story: Of Joan Of Arc
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
