The Life of Joan of Arc Part 85

For eight months the town of Lagny had been subject to King Charles and governed by Messire Ambroise de Lore, who was energetically waging war against the English of Paris and elsewhere.[1949] For the nonce Messire Ambroise de Lore was absent; but his lieutenant, Messire Jean Foucault, commanded the garrison. Shortly after Jeanne's coming to this town, tidings were brought that a company of between three and four hundred men of Picardy and of Champagne, fighting for the Duke of Burgundy, after having ranged through l'ile de France, were now on their way back to Picardy with much booty. Their captain was a valiant man-at-arms, one Franquet d'Arras.[1950] The French determined to cut off their retreat. Under the command of Messire Jean Foucault, Messire Geoffroy de Saint-Bellin, Lord Hugh Kennedy, a Scotchman, and Captain Baretta, they sallied forth from the town.[1951]

[Footnote 1949: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp. 334, 335. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 110, 111. F.A. Denis, _Le sejour de Jeanne d'Arc a Lagny_, Lagny, 1894, in 8vo, pp. 3 _et seq._]

[Footnote 1950: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 384. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, pp. 120, 121. Perceval de Cagny, p. 173.]

[Footnote 1951: Jean Chartier, _loc. cit._ Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, vol. i, p. 117. P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 38, note.]

The Maid went with them. They encountered the Burgundians near Lagny, but failed to surprise them. Messire Franquet's archers had had time to take up their position with their backs to a hedge, in the English manner. King Charles's men barely outnumbered the enemy. A certain clerk of that time, a Frenchman, writes of the engagement. His innate ingeniousness was invincible. With candid common sense he states that this very slight numerical superiority rendered the enterprise very arduous and difficult for his party.[1952] And the battle was strong indeed. The Burgundians were mightily afraid of the Maid because they believed her to be a witch and in command of armies of devils; notwithstanding, they fought right valiantly. Twice the French were repulsed; but they returned to the attack, and finally the Burgundians were all slain or taken.[1953]

[Footnote 1952: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 121.]

[Footnote 1953: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 384.]

The conquerers returned to Lagny, loaded with booty and taking with them their prisoners, among whom was Messire Franquet d'Arras. Of n.o.ble birth and the lord of a manor, he was ent.i.tled to expect that he would be held to ransom, according to custom. Both Jean de Troissy, Bailie of Senlis,[1954] and the Maid demanded him from the soldier who was his captor. It was to the Maid that he was finally delivered.[1955]

Did she obtain him in return for money? Probably, for soldiers were not accustomed to give up n.o.ble and profitable prisoners for nothing.

Nevertheless, the Maid, when questioned on this subject, replied, that being neither mistress nor steward of France, it was not for her to give out money. We must suppose, therefore, that some one paid for her. However that may be, Captain Franquet d'Arras was given up to her, and she endeavoured to exchange him for a prisoner in the hands of the English. The man whom she thus desired to deliver was a Parisian who was called Le Seigneur de l'Ours.[1956]

[Footnote 1954: H. Jadart, _Jeanne d'Arc a Reims_, p. 61.]

[Footnote 1955: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 158.]

[Footnote 1956: _Ibid._, pp. 158, 159.]

He was not of gentle birth and his arms were the sign of his hostelry.

It was the custom in those days to give the t.i.tle of Seigneur to the masters of the great Paris inns. Thus Colin, who kept the inn at the Temple Gate, was known as Seigneur du Boisseau. The hotel de l'Ours stood in the Rue Saint-Antoine, near the Gate properly called La Porte Baudoyer, but commonly known as Porte Baudet, Baudet possessing the double advantage over Baudoyer of being shorter and more comprehensible.[1957] It was an ancient and famous inn, equal in renown to the most famous, to the inn of L'Arbre Sec, in the street of that name, to the Fleur de Lis near the Pont Neuf, to the Epee in the Rue Saint-Denis, and to the Chapeau Fetu of the Rue Croix-du-Tirouer. As early as King Charles V's reign the inn was much frequented. Before huge fires the spits were turning all day long, and there were hot bread, fresh herrings, and wine of Auxerre in plenty. But since then the plunderings of men-at-arms had laid waste the countryside, and travellers no longer ventured forth for fear of being robbed and slain. Knights and pilgrims had ceased coming into the town. Only wolves came by night and devoured little children in the streets.

There were no f.a.gots in the grate, no dough in the kneading-trough.

Armagnacs and Burgundians had drunk all the wine, laid waste all the vineyards, and nought was left in the cellar save a poor piquette of apples and of plums.[1958]

[Footnote 1957: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 71, 72. Sauval, _Antiquites de Paris_, vol. i, p. 104. A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. 118. H. Legrand, _Paris en 1380_, Paris, 1868, in 4to, p. 65.]

[Footnote 1958: _Piquette_, a sour wine or cider, made from the residue of grapes or apples. A kind of second brewing (W.S.). _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 150, 154, 156, 187. Francisque-Michel and Edouard Fournier, _Histoire des hotelleries, cabarets, hotels garnis_, Paris, 1851 (2 vols. in 8vo), vol. ii, p. 5.]

The Seigneur de l'Ours, whom the Maid demanded, was called Jaquet Guillaume.[1959] Although Jeanne, like other folk, called him Seigneur, it is not certain that he personally directed his inn, nor even that the inn was open through these years of disaster and desolation. The only ascertainable fact is that he was the proprietor of the house with the sign of the Bear (_l'Ours_). He held it by right of his wife Jeannette, and had come into possession of it in the following manner.

[Footnote 1959: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p.

117.]

Fourteen years before, when King Henry with his knighthood had not yet landed in France, the host of the Bear Inn had been the King's sergeant-at-arms, one Jean Roche, a man of wealth and fair fame. He was a devoted follower of the Duke of Burgundy, and that was what ruined him. Paris was then occupied by the Armagnacs. In the year 1416, in order to turn them out of the city, Jean Roche concerted with divers burgesses. The plot was to be carried out on Easter Day, which that year fell on the 29th of April. But the Armagnacs discovered it.

They threw the conspirators into prison and brought them to trial. On the first Sat.u.r.day in May the Seigneur de l'Ours was carried to the market place in a tumbrel with Durand de Brie, a dyer, master of the sixty cross-bowmen of Paris, and Jean Perquin, pin-maker and brasier.

All three were beheaded, and the body of the Seigneur de l'Ours was hanged at Montfaucon where it remained until the entrance of the Burgundians. Six weeks after their coming, in July, 1418, his body was taken down from gibbet and buried in consecrated ground.[1960]

[Footnote 1960: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 71, 72. A.

Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. 118, note 1.]

Now the widow of Jean Roche had a daughter by a first marriage. Her name was Jeannette; she took for her first husband a certain Bernard le Breton; for her second, Jaquet Guillaume, who was not rich. He owed money to Maitre Jean Fleury, a clerk at law and the King's secretary.

His wife's affairs were not more prosperous; her father's goods had been confiscated and she had been obliged to redeem a part of her maternal inheritance. In 1424, the couple were short of money, and they sold a house, concealing the fact that it was mortgaged. Being charged by the purchaser, they were thrown into prison, where they aggravated their offence by suborning two witnesses, one a priest, the other a chambermaid. Fortunately for them, they procured a pardon.[1961]

[Footnote 1961: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, pp.

119-123.]

The Jaquet Guillaume couple, therefore, were in a sorry plight. There remained to them, however, the inheritance of Jean Roche, the inn near the Place Baudet, at the sign of the Bear, the t.i.tle of which Jaquet Guillaume bore. This second Seigneur de l'Ours was to be as strongly Armagnac as the other had been Burgundian, and was to pay the same price for his opinions.

Six years had pa.s.sed since his release from prison, when, in the March of 1430, there was plotted by the Carmelites of Melun and certain burgesses of Paris that conspiracy which we mentioned on the occasion of Jeanne's departure for l'ile de France. It was not the first plot into which the Carmelites had entered; they had plotted that rising which had been on the point of breaking out on the Day of the Nativity, when the Maid was leading the attack near La Porte Saint-Honore; but never before had so many burgesses and so many notables entered into a conspiracy. A clerk of the Treasury, Maitre Jean de la Chapelle, two magistrates of the Chatelet, Maitre Renaud Savin and Maitre Pierre Morant, a very wealthy man, named Jean de Calais, burgesses, merchants, artisans, more than one hundred and fifty persons, held the threads of this vast web, and among them, Jaquet Guillaume, Seigneur de l'Ours.

The Carmelites of Melun directed the whole. Clad as artisans, they went from King to burgesses, from burgesses to King; they kept up the communications between those within and those without, and regulated all the details of the enterprise. One of them asked the conspirators for a written undertaking to bring the King's men into the city. Such a demand looks as if the majority of the conspirators were in the pay of the Royal Council.

In exchange for this undertaking these monks brought acts of oblivion signed by the King. For the people of Paris to be induced to receive the Prince, whom they still called Dauphin, they must needs be a.s.sured of a full and complete amnesty. For more than ten years, while the English and Burgundians had been holding the town, no one had felt altogether free from the reproach of their lawful sovereign and the men of his party. And all the more desirous were they for Charles of Valois to forget the past when they recalled the cruel vengeance taken by the Armagnacs after the suppression of the Butchers.

One of the conspirators, Jaquet Perdriel, advocated the sounding of a trumpet and the reading of the acts of oblivion on Sunday at the Porte Baudet.

"I have no doubt," he said, "but that we shall be joined by the craftsmen, who, in great numbers will flock to hear the reading."

He intended leading them to the Saint Antoine Gate and opening it to the King's men who were lying in ambush close by.

Some eighty or a hundred Scotchmen, dressed as Englishmen, wearing the Saint Andrew's cross, were then to enter the town, bringing in fish and cattle.

"They will enter boldly by the Saint-Denys Gate," said Perdriel, "and take possession of it. Whereupon the King's men will enter in force by the Porte Saint Antoine."

The plan was deemed good, except that it was considered better for the King's men to come in by the Saint-Denys Gate.

On Sunday, the 12th of March, the second Sunday in Lent, Maitre Jean de la Chapelle invited the magistrate Renaud Savin to come to the tavern of _La Pomme de Pin_ and meet divers other conspirators in order to arrive at an understanding touching what was best to be done.

They decided that on a certain day, under pretext of going to see his vines at Chapelle-Saint-Denys, Jean de Calais should join the King's men outside the walls, make himself known to them by unfurling a white standard and bring them into the town. It was further determined that Maitre Morant and a goodly company of citizens with him, should hold themselves in readiness in the taverns of the Rue Saint-Denys to support the French when they came in. In one of the taverns of this street must have been the Seigneur de l'Ours, who, dwelling near by, had undertaken to bring together divers folk of the neighbourhood.

The conspirators were acting in perfect agreement. All they now awaited was to be informed of the day chosen by the Royal Council; and they believed the attempt was to be made on the following Sunday. But on the 21st of March Brother Pierre d'Allee, Prior of the Carmelites of Melun, was taken by the English. Put to the torture, he confessed the plot and named his accomplices. On the information he gave, more than one hundred and fifty persons were arrested and tried. On the 8th of April, the Eve of Palm Sunday, seven of the most important were taken to the market-place on a tumbrel. They were: Jean de la Chapelle, clerk of the Treasury; Renaud Savin and Pierre Morant, magistrates at the Chatelet; Guillaume Perdriau; Jean le Francois, called Baudrin; Jean le Rigueur, baker, and Jaquet Guillaume, Seigneur de l'Ours. All seven were beheaded by the executioner, who afterwards quartered the bodies of Jean de la Chapelle and of Baudrin.

Jaquet Perdriel was merely deprived of his possessions. Jean de Calais soon procured a pardon. Jeannette, the wife of Jaquet Guillaume, was banished from the kingdom and her goods confiscated.[1962]

[Footnote 1962: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 251, 253.

Falconbridge, in A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. 302, note 1. Sauval, _Antiquites de Paris_, vol. iii, p. 536.

Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 140.

Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 274 _et seq._]

How can the Maid have known the Seigneur de l'Ours? Possibly the Carmelites of Melun had recommended him to her, and perhaps it was on their advice that she demanded his surrender. She may have seen him in the September of 1429, at Saint-Denys or before the walls of Paris, and he may have then undertaken to work for the Dauphin and his party.

Why were attempts made at Lagny to save this man alone of the one hundred and fifty Parisians arrested on the information of Brother Pierre d'Allee? Rather than Renaud Savin and Pierre Morant, magistrates at the Chatelet, rather than Jean de la Chapelle, clerk of the Treasury, why choose the meanest of the band? And how could they look to exchange a man accused of treachery for a prisoner of war? All this seems to us mysterious and inexplicable.

In the early days of May, Jeanne did not know what had become of Jaquet Guillaume. When she heard that he had been tried and put to death she was sore grieved and vexed. None the less, she looked upon Franquet as a captive held to ransom. But the Bailie of Senlis, who for some unknown reason was determined on the captain's ruin, took advantage of the Maid's vexation at Jaquet Guillaume's execution, and persuaded her to give up her prisoner.

He represented to her that this man had committed many a murder, many a theft, that he was a traitor, and that consequently he ought to be brought to trial.

"You will be neglecting to execute justice," he said, "if you set this Franquet free."

These reasons decided her, or rather she yielded to the Bailie's entreaty.

"Since the man I wished to have is dead," she said, "do with Franquet as justice shall require you."[1963]

[Footnote 1963: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 158, 159.]

Thus she surrendered her prisoner. Was she right or wrong? Before deciding we must ask whether it were possible for her to do otherwise than she did. She was the Maid of G.o.d, the angel of the Lord of Hosts, that is clear. But the leaders of war, the captains, paid no great heed to what she said. As for the Bailie, he was the King's man, of n.o.ble birth and pa.s.sing powerful.