Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, as Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents
History
Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, as Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents
Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431 -- Trials, litigation, etc.
When Jeannette was at Vaucouleurs, I saw her dressed in a red dress,
poor and worn; she lived at the house of one named Henri Leroyer. “What
are you doing here, my friend?” I said to her. “Must the King be driven
from the kingdom; and are we to be English?” “I am come here,” she
answered me, “to this royal town,[123] to speak to Robert de
Baudricourt, to the end that he may conduct me or have me conducted to
the King: but Robert cares neither for me nor for my words.
Nevertheless, before the middle of Lent, I must be with the King—even if
I have to wear down my feet to the knees! No one in the world—neither
kings, nor dukes, nor the daughter of the King of Scotland,[124] nor any
others—can recover the kingdom of France; there is no succour to be
expected save from me; but, nevertheless, I would rather spin with my
poor mother—for this is not my proper estate: it is, however, necessary
that I should go, and do this, because my Lord wills that I should do
it.” And when I asked her who this Lord was, she told me it was God.
Then I pledged my faith to her, touching her hand, and promised that,
with God’s guidance, I would conduct her to the King. I asked her when
she wished to start. “Sooner at once than to-morrow, and sooner
to-morrow than later,” she said. I asked her if she could make this
journey, dressed as she was. She replied that she would willingly take a
man’s dress. Then I gave her the dress and equipment of one of my men.
Afterwards, the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs had a man’s dress made for
her, with all the necessary requisites; I also procured for her a horse
at the price of about sixteen francs. Thus dressed and mounted, and
furnished with a safe-conduct from the Sieur Charles, Duke de Lorraine,
she went to visit the said Lord Duke. I accompanied her as far as Toul.
On the return to Vaucouleurs, the first Sunday in Lent,[125] which is
called ‘Dimanche des Bures’—and it will be, if I mistake not,
twenty-seven years from that day to the coming Lent[126]—I and Bertrand
de Poulengey, with two of my men, Colet de Vienne, the King’s Messenger,
and the Archer Richard, conducted the Maid to the King, who was then at
Chinon. The journey was made at the expense of Bertrand de Poulengey and
myself. We travelled for the most part at night, for fear of the
Burgundians and the English, who were masters of the roads. We journeyed
eleven days, always riding towards the said town of Chinon. On the way,
I asked her many times if she would really do all she said. “Have no
fear,” she answered us, “what I am commanded to do, I will do; my
brothers in Paradise have told me how to act: it is four or five years
since my brothers in Paradise and my Lord—that is, God—told me that I
must go and fight in order to regain the kingdom of France.” On the way,
Bertrand and I slept every night by her—Jeanne being at my side, fully
dressed. She inspired me with such respect that for nothing in the world
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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