Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And DeathOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
France -- History; Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431
We have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary laws
at once of chivalry and of honest warfare. Jeanne had been captured as
a general at the head of her forces. She was a prisoner of war. Such
a prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in no
bodily danger. He is worth more alive than dead--a great ransom
perhaps--perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishment
of everything it was intended to gain: at least he is most valuable to
exchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. It was like
taking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outrage
deeply resented by his captor and unjustified by any law. It was true
that Jeanne herself had transgressed this universal custom but a little
while before, by giving up Franquet d'Arras to his prosecutors. But
Franquet was beyond the courtesies of war, a noted criminal, robber, and
destroyer: yet she ought not perhaps to have departed from the military
laws of right and wrong while everything in the country was under the
hasty arbitration of war. No one, however, so far as we know, produces
this matter of Franquet as a precedent in her own case. From the first
moment of her seizure there was no question of the custom and privilege
of warfare. She was taken as a wild animal might have been taken, the
only doubt being how to make the most signal example of her. Vengeance
in the gloomy form of the Inquisition claimed her the first day. No such
word as ransom was breathed from her own side, none was demanded, none
was offered. Her case is at once separated from every other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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