An old French poem, The Vows of the Heron, attributed the
outbreak of the Hundred Years war to the malign influence of a
certain Count Robert of Artois. "He began the war and the
terrible strife" is the theme of the poem. At a court dinner
at Windsor, after a hawking expedition in which Count Robert's
falcon had captured a heron, "the most cowardly of birds,
because it is afraid of its own shadow," the count had the
heron roasted, placed on a platter and offered by a young lady
to the English king and his nobles, charging them with cowardice,
because they were afraid to claim Edward's rightful inheritance
of the crown of France and appealing to them to vow on the heron
to enter France in the king's quarrel. In answer to this appeal
the king declared his intention of claiming his crown and each
knight vowed to do some deed of gallantry for his king and his
ladylove.
Robert, a disinherited claimant to the county of Artois, was an
exile from France, where he had, so it was charged, murdered some
his relatives, forged documents and, what was worse, used sorcery
in seeking the death of the king. He threads in and out of the
history, romance and poetry of the time and certainly exercised
a fascination over the young King Edward III. He finally lost
his life at Crécy, fighting on the English side, but it
is unlikely that he had much to do with precipitating the war
between England and France.
The causes of the Hundred Years war were more deep-seated than
any personal ambitions, and, although it may be contended that
no war was ever absolutely unavoidable, it would have required
more wisdom and self-control than Edward III or Philip of Valois
possessed to resist the progress of so nearly obvious a destiny.
The war was a natural outcome of the conditions of the time. The
unstable feudal equilibrium between the French and English kings,
the difficult position of Scotland, sailors' disputes, the struggle
for the wool market, the influence of foreign adventurers, the
latent ambition of Edward III to gain the French crown, and the
rising spirit of nationalism all combined to bring about a more
serious and prolonged conflict than any which had previously troubled
the relations between England and France.
The wars of Edward I and Edward II with France were in the main
feudal contests fought with feudal levies. But with Edward III
there began a long series of national invasions of France. The
meaning of feudal law was in question and itself became a cause
of the war. There were also atrocities and border incidents which
disturbed life in southern France, though barbarism was seldom
so unbridled on land as at sea and was often transfigured by romance
and legend. In addition there were rivalries in the wine trade
of Bordeaux and the wool staple in Flanders. Nor must the ambitious,
precocious personality of the young English king--a monarch at
fourteen, a husband at fifteen, a commander in the field at sixteen,
a father at seventeen--be lost sight of as a factor in the outbreak
of the war. I am not going to give you a blow by blow account
of the course of the war--the text does that well enough. Instead
I would like to concentrate on one of the most important aspect
of that war, which the text seems to ignore.
During the latter part of the war there were repeated manifestations
of the increasing influence of that intangible but powerful force
which in its higher forms we call patriotism, in its lower a more
or less narrow nationalism. The English in their endeavor to conquer
France were not only attacking a larger and more populous country,
but were struggling against a current of increasing strength,
the French sentiment of national separateness and unity. Neither
the French nor the English, probably, were aware of the growth,
perhaps not of the existence of this force, but it was nevertheless
a potent one. There are many evidences of it. One is the successive
defection of England's French allies. The early foreign alliances
proved to be of no value. Except for the assistance given France
by the Castilian navy and a certain amount of diversion from the
side of Scotland, the war was fought between the French king and
his native supporters on the one side and the English king and
those French princes who took his side on the other.
These French adherents of the English king ultimately left him,
drawn away by the attraction of their own nationality. Four of
them-Brittany, Normandy, Acquitaine, Burgundy, their princes or
the influential classes of their people-were at one time or another
effective supporters of the English king. One after another they
were lost to his cause. If the steps by which these defections
took place should be traced it will be seen that in each case
an assertion of nationalism was the fundamental cause. But the
real surge of national feeling must be sought not so much among
rulers and among the great, as among the middle and even the lower
classes, the permanent reservoir of primitive emotions. It was
the peasant girl, Joan of Arc. who represented most fully and
awakened most effectively the passion of patriotism in fifteenth
century France. The story is a familiar one.
On the 6th of March 1429 a young girl presented herself at the
court of the dauphin in Chinon, declaring that she was sent by
the King of Heaven to free Orleans, long under siege by the English,
to take the dauphin to be crowned as his fathers had been at Rheims
and to drive the English out of France. The court of the dauphin
was an inhospitable place for the reception of such a message.
It was a gathering of defeatist nobles and demoralized soldiery
around a lazy prince. Charles had been called King of France by
his adherents since the death of his father in 1422, but had done
little to make that title a reality. He seemed satisfied to loiter
away his time by passing from one of his chateaux to another in
the Loire country which almost alone remained in his obedience.
He was supported by a phantom government while the English captured
one province after another and finally besieged Orleans, the only
remaining military barrier of independent France.
After some opposition Joan was allowed to deliver her message
to the dauphin in person. She may even then have awakened in him
some credence. Sent to the kitchen, her simple and unquestioning
faith in her mission soon found acceptance among the servants,
and spread higher and higher till it captured the imagination
of some of the younger nobles and men of war. She was sent to
Poitiers to be examined by the bishop for any indication of sorcery,
and on her return was able to rouse the dauphin to some degree
of activity. He ordered the preparation of a body of troops and
its dispatch under some old officers to the relief of Orleans.
Joan, to her great delight, was allowed to go along, provided
with a horse, a man's armor and a banner on which she had her
motto inscribed, "Jhesus Maria." She did not know how
to read or write, but in accordance with her belief in her mission
she dictated letters to the English regent and other leaders commanding
them in "the Name of the King of Heaven" to abandon
the cities they had captured, to leave the government of the country
to its true rulers, and to withdraw with their troops and followers
from France.
Arrived before Orleans she was able, with a little party, to enter
the city from the river side, for the place had never been completely
invested. Among the garrison and the inhabitants of the city she
revived the spirit of confidence which led to a series of successful
sorties by the French, the capture of several of the English positions,
and after three days to the abandonment by the English of their
seven-month siege. The "Maid of Orleans" Joan of Arc
has been called ever since.
Two or three victories for the French in the open field followed.
Joan then returned to Chinon and urged the reluctant dauphin to
make the journey to Rheims to he crowned. The opposition of many
of tee nobles, jealous of her leadership or incredulous of success,
and Charles' own indolence and indecision held him back, but the
will of Joan and the activity of the forward party ultimately
gained the ascendancy. On June 29, 1429,
little more than three months after the Maid's appearance at court,
Charles, accompanied by an army of 12,000 men, set out over the
250 miles of the Orleanais and Champagne to the old royal coronation
city. En route one city after another, Troyes, Sens, Chalons,
opened their gates, while the English-Burgundian garrisons withdrew.
Other towns far to the north, Compiègne, Laon, sent offers
to receive them, and on the I7th of July the dauphin was formally
crowned as Charles VII, King of France, in the cathedral at Rheims.
Once they were again in the Loire country king and court sank
back into apathy. Joan was given permission, but no support, for
an advance on Paris. She suffered the bitterness of her first
defeat and received a slight wound in an unsuccessful attempt
upon the walls, and thereupon returned to the south to be cured
and to pass a restless winter of inaction. Compiègne, so
often captured and recaptured, was now being held by the French
against the assaults of a Burgundian force, and in March Joan
with a small body of troops slipped away from the court, gained
entrance to Compiègne and joined the garrison in a sortie
against the besiegers. By some mischance she failed to get back
with the other troops when the gates were shut on their return,
was seized in the mêlèe by a Burgundian soldier,
and came eventually as a prisoner into the hands of the Duke of
Burgundy. There were a dozen possibilities by which the King of
France could have obtained her release; ransom-all prisoners were
objects of repurchase in those days; a threat of retaliation upon
English and Burgundian prisoners; a resumption of negotiations
for peace with Joan as a pawn. All these methods were available,
but Charles made no move and Joan was soon betrayed, for a price,
to the English, carried to Rouen and thrown into prison.
The report of the English regent that "a disciple and leme
of the fende called the Pucelle used false enchantments and sorcery"
measured the English fear of her influence and established the
English tradition that lasted to the time of Shakespeare. It was
to the English party a necessity of war that she should be removed
and her prestige destroyed. This was the work of the ecclesiastical
court which was appointed for her trial at Rouen under the residency
of the Bishop of Beauvais. For more than ten weeks in forty sessions
of this court--this ignorant girl was questioned, scolded, threatened,
led into what were intended to be verbal or logical traps. Of
no other trial of the fifteenth century have we a report approaching
this in detail and accuracy.
The record gives the questions put to her and her replies to them.
They are remarkably direct and full, not infrequently touched
with the native shrewdness of the French peasant, occasionally
resentful of repetition or of the incredulity of her hearers.
There emerges from the record the story of a sensitive child,
raised in simple piety, for whom the saints were as real as the
people she saw around her, and who saw St. Catherine, St. Michael
and other saints just as they were represented by their images
in the parish church. As she grew to adolescence the stories she
heard of tee ravages of the English in her country became part
of her general conception of warfare of the powers of evil.
What set her apart from other young girls--she grieved over it
in her testimony--was the intense conviction of her personal mission--the
voices of the saints told her she must herself go to the aid of
the dauphin. He had been appointed by God to rule France and it
was her duty to see that he was placed upon the throne. It was
this impulsion that brought her reluctantly and after overcoming
a long series of obstacles to Chinon, to Orleans, to Rheims, to
Rouen. The expulsion of the English, the rescue of France from
her enemies, was also part of her mission and of her strength.
It was her pure and vivid patriotism That gave her power. She
embodied the growing conception of a single, united France, free
under her king from foreign occupation or interference. It was
this mission that made her an important factor in the political
history of the time.
The trial at Rouen could end in but one way. She was in the hands
of those who could not afford not to destroy her. A moment of
weakness on Joan's part gave them the opportunity. wearied, frightened
by threats of torture and tempted by hopes of release, abandoned,
as she thought, by her "voices," she broke down, declared
herself an imposter, confessed that her voices had been feigned
and threw herself on the mercy of the court. Sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment, returned to a cell and subjected to neglect and
insult, she regained her courage, withdrew her confession and
sought peace in the reassertion of her guiding voices and the
reality of her mission. This was her end. She was summoned again
before her judges, declared a relapsed heretic and a sorceress,
and on the 30th of May l43l, she was burned at the stake in the
market place in Rouen.
The exclamation of the English soldier, "God forgive us:
we have burned a saint," was formally justified 375 years
later when St. Joan was canonized in a great ceremony at Rome.
Only ten years after her execution, however, the belated recognition
by Charles VII of the greatness of her services, rising patriotism
of France and the breach between England and Burgundy opened the
way for a review of her sentence. A new court was appointed, this
time at Paris and in the hands of the French king; the testimony
was reviewed, the conclusion of the earlier court reversed and
the Maid declared innocent.
The personality of Joan of Arc is interesting for its own sake,
particularly when it is placed against the false or declining
piety of so many others in her time. But her career also has a
deeper and wider significance. It is one of the earliest and best
indications of what is more and more impressed on you when you
study this period. It is in this time that we find embedded the
roots of one of the most powerful of the forces, whether good
or bad, that were to influence all modern history, the sense of
nationality, the response of peoples to the appeal of patriotism,
the united support by the whole people of a centralized government.
Basic source: Edward P. Cheyney, The Dawn of
a New Era: 1250 - 1453 (Harper & Brothers, 1936).