Joan by Donald Spoto

Author:Donald Spoto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

BEFORE THE SUMMER of 1429 was over, the representatives of Philip of Burgundy were quietly negotiating with the Duke of Bedford about a hypothetical price to be paid for handing over Joan of Arc if she could be captured. There was something almost fateful about her, the English decided, something that seemed to be the devil’s own work. She must be a witch to have accomplished so much, to have secured such loyalty from troops—and witches must be eliminated from the world. Precisely at this point in the fifteenth century, belief in witchcraft reached a pitch of frenzy hitherto unknown: religious folk were terrified of those considered witches, and clergymen were hunting down countless innocent women in the belief that they consorted with or were tools of demonic powers.

A great deal had to be demonstrated, however. And Joan could not be put on trial and executed by an English court merely for succeeding in battle and routing English plans. She would have to be condemned by an ecclesiastical court for reasons of witchcraft and heresy; alas, an ecclesiastical court favorable to England and ready to accept cash and favors for the deed would be readily available.

Joan read the prevailing winds, believed that her task for France was complete, and wanted to go home. “I wish it were God’s will for me to go away now,” she said to Dunois in August, “and to lay down my armor and return to serving my parents by looking after the flocks with my sister and brothers, who would be so happy to have me at home.” Poignantly, Joan spoke of her “sister and brothers” and life at home as it had been before her brothers joined her in battle and her sister died.

Although she had spent only five months in royal circles and two months in the thick of warfare, she understood that now her real troubles would begin, and she longed to avoid them. In Reims, her farewell to her family as they returned to Domrémy must have been difficult for them all; now more than ever, she missed life at home. Disillusionment followed disappointment from the summer of 1429 to the spring of 1430, for Joan had made it possible for Charles to be anointed king, and now he was the most acute source of her regret. Not that she would have reversed the coronation, and not that she lamented any moment of battle, but Charles preferred not to face the unpleasant realities at hand, and Joan preferred to confront them promptly.

Apparently she was of two minds. On the one hand, she became ever more anguished and depressed over the apathy of the king and the foolish and often treacherous counsel he heeded—hence her wish to return to Domrémy. But on the other hand, she saw how much might be done, with proper troops, to effect a rapid departure of the English from French soil. Most of all, she grew angry and impatient at the king’s inclination to grasp at every diplomatic straw thrown at him by the wily Philip of Burgundy.

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