THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC By Andrew Lang Pictures By J. Jellicoe 1906 [Illustration: 0004] [Illustration: 0006] TO ANGELA COTTRELL-DORMER Dear Angela, May I dedicate this little book to you, who are already a friend of the Maid? As you grow up you will meet certain wise people who will tell you that there was never any such person as Joan of Arc, or that, if she ever lived, she was mad, or an impostor. If you ask them how they know that, they will probably reply that Science is the source of their information. You can then answer that you prefer to begin with History, and ask these wise people if they have read even so much as Monsieur Quicherat’s five volumes containing the Trial of Joan, and the evidence of her friends and enemies who knew her in her lifetime? As the books are in Latin and Old French, the people who speak about Joan disrespectfully have not read them, and do not know what they are talking about. “_They say: What say they? Let them say!_” Affectionately yours, A. LANG. THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC CHAPTER I. THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC |JOAN OF ARC was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if ali that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive. She was burned to deach when she was only nineteen: she was not seventeen when she first led the armies of France to victory, and delivered her country from the English. Joan was the daughter of a poor man, in a little country village. She had never learned to read, or write, or mount a horse. Yet she was so wise that many learned men could not puzzle her by questions: she was one of the best riders in France; one of the most skilled in aiming cannons, and so great a general that she defeated the English again and again, and her army was never beaten till her King deserted her. She was so brave that severe wounds could not stop her from leading on her soldiers, and so tender-hearted that she would comfort the wounded English on the field of battle, and protect them from cruelty. She was so good that her enemies could not find one true story to tell against her in the least thing; and she was so modest that in the height of her glory she was wishing to be at home in her father’s cottage, sewing or spinning beside her mother. Joan, who was born at Domremy, in the east of France, on January 6, 1412, lived in a very unhappy time. For nearly a hundred years the kings of England had been trying to make themselves kings of France, just as they had been trying to make themselves kings of Scotland. Perhaps they might have succeeded, if they had confined themselves to one conquest at a time. But they left Scotland alone while they were attacking France, and then Scotland sent armies to help the French, as at other times the French sent armies to help Scotland.