Part 2

The chief authority for the reign of Henry VIII is contained in the _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII_, edited by Brewer and Gairdner. This gigantic work, containing more than 20,000 closely printed pages, is probably the greatest monument of English scholarship; the prefaces to the different volumes are remarkable for their learning and delightful literary style. Froude’s history is charming and brilliant as are all his writings, but is now rather out of date, and is marred by his hero-worship of Henry and his strong Protestant bias. He sums up absolutely against Anne, and, after reading the letters which he publishes, I do not see how he could have done anything else. He believes her innocent of incest, however, and doubtless he is right. Let us acquit her of this crime, at any rate. A. F. Pollard’s _Life of Henry VIII_ is meticulously accurate, and is charmingly written; he thinks it impossible that the juries could have found against her and the court have convicted without the strongest evidence, which has not survived. P. C. Yorke sums up rather against her in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; but S. R. Gardiner thinks the charges too horrible to be believed and that probably her own only offence was that she could not bear a son. Professor Gardiner had evidently seen little of psychological medicine, or he would have known that no charge is too horrible to believe. The “Unknown Spaniard” of the _Chronicle of Henry VIII_ is an illiterate fellow enough, but no doubt of Anne’s guilt appears to enter his artless mind; he probably represents the popular contemporary view. He says that he took his stand in the ring of gentlemen who witnessed the execution. He gives an account of the arrest of Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet--the first English sonneteer--and the _ipsissima verba_ of a letter which Wyatt wrote to Henry, narrating how Anne had solicited him even before her marriage in circumstances that rendered her solicitation peculiarly brazen and shameless. That Henry should have pardoned him seems to show that the real crime of Anne was that she had contaminated the blood royal; a capital offence in a queen in almost all ages and almost every country. Before she became a queen Henry was probably complaisant enough to Anne’s peccadilloes; but afterwards--that was altogether different. “There’s a divinity doth hedge” a queen!

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, writing seventy years later, narrates the ghastly story with very little feeling one way or the other. Apparently the legend of Anne’s innocence and Henry’s blood-lust had not yet arisen. The verdict of any given historian appears to depend upon whether he favours the Protestants or the Catholics. Speaking as a doctor with very little religious preference one way or the other, the following considerations appeal strongly to myself. If Henry wished to get rid of a barren wife--barren through his own syphilis!--as he undoubtedly did, then Mark Smeaton’s evidence alone was enough to hang any queen in history from Helen downward, especially if taken in conjunction with the infamous stories related by the “Unknown Spaniard.” Credible or not, these stories show the reputation that attached to the plain little Protestant girl who could not provide an heir to the throne--the sort of reputation which mankind usually attaches to a woman who, by unworthy means, has attained to a high position. Why should the King and Cromwell, both exceedingly able men, gratuitously raise the questions of incest and promiscuity and send four innocent men to their deaths absolutely without reason? Why should they raise all the tremendous family ill-will and public reprobation which such an act of bloodthirsty tyranny would have caused? Stern as they were they never showed any sign of mere blood-lust at any other time; and the facts that Anne’s father and uncle both appear to have concurred in the verdict, and that, except for her own denial, there is not a word said in her favour, seems to require a great deal of explanation.

We can thoroughly explain her conduct by supposing that she was afflicted by hysteria and nymphomania. There are plenty of accounts of unhappy women whose cases are parallel to Anne’s in the works of Havelock-Ellis and Kisch. There is plenty of indubitable evidence that she was hysterical and unbalanced, and that she passionately longed for a son; and it is simpler to believe her the victim of a well-known and common disease than that we should suppose the leading statesmen of England and nearly the whole of its peerage suddenly to be affected with blood-lust. It has been suggested that Anne, passionately longing for a son and terrified of her husband’s tyrannical wrath, acted like one of Thomas Hardy’s heroines centuries later and tried another lover in the hope that she would gratify her own and Henry’s wishes. This course of procedure is probably not so uncommon as some husbands imagine and would satisfy the questions of our problem but for Anne’s promiscuity and vehemence in solicitation. If her sole object in soliciting Norreys was to provide a son, why should she have gone from man to man till the whole Court seems to have been ringing with her ill fame?

Her spasms of violent temper after her marriage, her fits of jealousy, her foolish arrogance and insolence to her friends, are all mental signs which go with nymphomania, and the fact that her post-nuptial incontinence seems to have begun while she was still in the puerperal state after the birth of her only living child seems highly significant. It is not uncommon for sexual desire to become intolerable in nervous and puerperal women. The proper place for Anne Boleyn was a mental hospital.

Henry VIII’s case, along with those of his children, deserve a paper to themselves. Henry himself died of neglected arterio-sclerosis just in the nick of time to save the lives of better men from the executioner; Catherine Parr, who married him probably in order to nurse him--it is possible that she was really fond of him and that there was even then something attractive about him--succeeded in outliving him by a remarkable effort of diplomatic skill and courage, though had Henry awakened from his uræmic stupor probably her head would have been added to his collection. On the whole, one cannot avoid the conclusion that his conduct to his wives was not all his fault. They seem to have done no credit to his power of selection. The first and the last appear to have been the best, considered as women.

Inexorable Nemesis had avenged Catherine. The worry of the divorce left her husband with an arterial tension which, added to the royal temper, caused great misery to England and ultimately death to himself; and her mean little rival lay huddled in the most frightful dishonour that ever befell a woman. Decidedly there is something Greek in the complete horror of the tragedy.

The Problem of Jeanne d’Arc

In 1410-12 France was in the most dreadful condition that has ever affected any nation. For nearly eighty years England had been at her throat in a quarrel which to our minds simply exemplifies the difference between law and justice; for it seems that the King of England had mediæval law on his side, though to our minds no justice; the Black Death had returned more than once to harass those whom war had spared; no man reaped where he had sown, for his crops fell into the hands of freebooters. Misery, destitution, and superstition were man’s bedfellows; and the French mind seemed open to receive any marvel that promised relief from its intolerable agony. Into this land of terror was born a little maid whose mission it was to right the wrongs of France; a maiden who has remained, through all the vicissitudes of history, extraordinarily fascinating, yet an almost insoluble problem. It is undeniable that she has exercised a vast influence upon mankind, less by her actual deeds than by the ideal which she set up; an ideal of courage, simple faith, and unquenchable loyalty which has inspired both her own nation and the nation which burnt her. When the English girls cut their hair short in the worst time of the war;[3] when the French soldiers retook Fort Douaumont when all seemed lost: these things were done in the name of Joan of Arc.

The actual contemporary sources from which we draw our ideas are extraordinarily few. There is of course the report of the trial for lapse and relapse, which is official and is said not to be garbled. It is useful, not only for the Maid’s answers, which throw a good deal of light on her mentality, but for the questions asked, which appear to give an idea of reports that seem to have been floating about France at the time. The only thing which interested her judges was whether she had imperilled her immortal soul by heresy or witchcraft, and from that trial we shall get few or no indications of her military career or physical condition, which are the things that most interest modern men. About twenty years after her execution it occurred to her king, who had repaid her amazing love and self-sacrifice with neglect, that since she had been burnt as a witch it followed that he must owe his crown to a witch; moreover, her mother and brother had been appealing to him to clear her memory, for they could not bear that their child and sister should still remain under a cloud of sorcery. King Charles VII, who was now a great man, and very successful as kings go, therefore ordered the case to be reopened, in which course he ultimately secured the assistance of the reigning Pope. Charles could not restore the Maid to life, but he could make things unpleasant for the friends of those who had burned her; and so we have the so-called Rehabilitation Trial, consisting of reports and opinions, given under oath, from many people who had known her when alive. As King Charles was now a great man, some of the clerics who had helped to condemn her crowded to give evidence in the poor child’s favour, attributing the miscarriage of justice in her case to people who were now dead or hopelessly unpopular; some friends of her childhood came forward and people who had known her at the time of her glory; and, perhaps most important, some of her old comrades in arms rallied round her memory. We thus have a fairly complete account of her battles, friendships, trials, character, and death; if we read this evidence with due care, remembering that more than twenty years had elapsed and the mentality of mediæval man, we may take some of the statements at their face value. Otherwise there is absolutely no contemporary evidence of the Maid; Anatole France has pricked the bubble of the chroniclers and of the Journal of the siege of Orleans. But there is so much of pathological interest to be found in the reports of the trials that I need no excuse for a brief study of them in that respect.

The record of the life of Jeanne d’Arc is all too short, and the main facts are not in dispute. It is the interpretation of these facts that _is_ in dispute. She was born on January 6th, 1412; the year is uncertain. Probably she did not know herself. In the summer of 1424 she saw a great light on her right hand and heard a voice telling her to be a good girl. This voice she knew to be the voice of God. Later on she heard the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, of St. Catherine, and of St. Margaret. St. Michael appeared first, and warned her to expect the arrival of the others, who came in due course. All three were to be her constant companions for the rest of her life. At first their appearances were irregular, but later on they came frequently, especially at quiet moments. Sometimes, when there was a good deal of noise going on, they appeared and tried to tell her something, but she could not hear what they said. These she called her Council, or her Voices. Occasionally the Lord God spoke to her himself; Him she called “Messire.”

As Jeanne grew more accustomed to her heavenly visitors they came in great numbers, and she used to see vast crowds of angels descending from heaven to her little garden. She said nothing to anybody about these unusual events, but grew up a brooding and intensely religious girl, going to church at every possible opportunity, and apparently neglecting her ordinary duties of looking after her father’s sheep and cattle. She learned to sew and knit, to say her Credo, Paternoster, and Ave Maria; otherwise she was absolutely ignorant, and very simple in mind and honest. She was dreamy and shy; nor did she ever learn to read or write.

Later on the voices told her to go into France, and God would help her to drive out the English. She continually appealed to her father that he should send her to Vaucouleurs, where the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt would espouse her cause. Ultimately he did so; and at first Robert laughed at her. He was no saint; in his day he had ravaged villages with the best noble in the land; and he was not convinced that Jeanne was really the sent of God that she claimed. When she returned home she found herself the butt of Domremy; nine months later she ran away to Vaucouleurs again, and found Robert more helpful. He had for some time felt sympathy with the dauphin Charles, and had grown to detest the English and Burgundians; and he now welcomed the supernatural aid which Jeanne promised; she repeated vehemently that God had sent her to deliver France, and that she had no doubt whatever that she would be able to raise the siege of Orleans, which was then being idly invested by the English.

Robert sent her to the Dauphin, who lay at Chinon. He was no hero, this Dauphin, but a poverty-stricken ugly man, with spindle-shanks and bulbous nose, untidy and careless in his dress, and for ever blown this way and that by the advice of those around him. Weak, and intensely superstitious, he would to-day have been the prey of every medium who cared to attack him; he received Jeanne kindly, and ultimately sent her to Poitiers to be examined as to possible witchcraft by a great number of learned doctors of the Church, who could be relied upon to discern a witch as soon as anybody.

She was deeply offended at being suspected of witchcraft, and was not so respectful to her judges as she might have been; occasionally she sulked, and sometimes she answered the reverend gentlemen quite saucily. She is an attractive and very human little figure at Poitiers as she moves restlessly upon her bench, and repeatedly tells the doctors that they should need no further sign than her own deeds; for when she had relieved Orleans it would be obvious enough that she was sent directly from God. At Poitiers she had to run the gauntlet of the inevitable jury of matrons, who were to certify to her virginity, because it was well known that women lost their holiness when they lost their virginity. The matrons and midwives certified that she was _virgo intacta_; how the good ladies knew is not certain, because even to-day, with all our knowledge of anatomy and physiology, we often find it difficult to be assured on this point. However, there can be little doubt that they were correct; probably they were impressed with Jeanne’s obvious sincerity and purity of mind. All women seem to have loved Jeanne, which is a strong point in her favour. The spiritual examination dragged on for three weeks; these poor doctors were determined not to let a witch slip through their hands, and it speaks well for their patience and good temper, considering how unmercifully Jeanne had “cheeked” them, that they ultimately found that she was a good Christian. Any ordinary man would have seen that at once; but these gentlemen knew too much about the wiles of the Devil to be so easily influenced; and it was a source of bitter injustice to Jeanne at her real and serious trial for her life that she was unable to produce their certificate.

The Dauphin took her into his service and provided her with horse, suit of armour, and banner, as befitted a knight; also maidservants to act propriety, page-boy, and a steward, one Jean d’Aulon. All that we hear of d’Aulon, in whose hands the honour of the Maid was placed, is to his credit. A witness at the Rehabilitation Trial said that he was the wisest and bravest man in the army. We shall hear more of him. Throughout the story, whenever he comes upon the scene we seem to breathe fresh air. He was the very man for the position, brave, simple-hearted, and passionately loyal to Jeanne. There is no reason to doubt that in spite of his close companionship with her there was never any romantic or other such feeling between them; he said so definitely, and he is to be believed. His honour came through it all unstained; and he let himself be captured with her rather than desert her. It is clear from his evidence that the personality of the Maid profoundly affected him. After Jeanne’s death he was ransomed, and was made seneschal of Beaucaire.

Jeanne was enormously impressed by her banner, which was made by a Scotsman, Hamish Power by name; she described it at her trial.

“I had a banner of white cloth, sprinkled with lilies; the world was painted there, with an angel on each side; above them were the words ‘Jhesus Maria.’” When she said “the world” she meant God holding the world up in one hand and blessing it with the other. Later on she does not seem very certain whether “Jhesus Maria” was above or at the side; but she is very certain that she was tremendously proud of the artistic creation--yes, “forty times” prouder of her banner than of her sword; even though the sword was from St. Catherine herself, and was the very sword of Charles Martel centuries before. When the priests dug it up without witnesses and rubbed it their holy power cleansed it immediately of the rust of ages.

When she arrived at Orleans she found the English carrying on a leisurely blockade by means of a series of forts between which cattle and men could enter or leave the city at will. The city was defended by Jean Dunois, Bastard of Orleans. The title Bastard implies that he would have been Duc d’Orleans only that he had the misfortune to be born of the wrong mother. There have been several famous bastards in history, and the kindly morality of the Middle Ages seems to have thought little the worse of them for their misfortune. It is only fair to state that there is some doubt as to whether Jeanne was sent in command of the army, or the army in command of Jeanne; indeed, all through her story it is never easy to be certain whether she was actually in command, and Anatole France looks upon her as a sort of military _mascotte_ rather than a soldier. Nor has Anatole France ever been properly answered. Andrew Lang did his best, as Don Quixote did his best to fight the windmills, but Mr. Lang was an idealist and romanticist, and could not defeat the laughing irony of M. France. Indeed, what answer is possible? Anatole France does not laugh at the poor little Maid; he laughs through her at modern French clericalism. Nobody with a heart in his breast could laugh at Jeanne d’Arc! Anatole France simply said that he did not believe the things which Mr. Lang said that he believed; he would be a brave man who should say that M. France is wrong.

When she reached Orleans a new spirit at once came into the defenders, just as a new spirit came into the British army on the Somme when the tanks first went forth to battle--a spirit of renewed hope; God had sent his Maid to save the right! In nine days of mild fighting, in which the French enormously outnumbered the English, the siege was raised. The French lost a few score men; the English army was practically destroyed.

Next Jeanne persuaded the Dauphin to be crowned at Rheims, which was the ancient crowning-place for the French kings. In this ancient cathedral, in whose aisles and groined vaults echoed the memories and glories of centuries, he was crowned; his followers standing around in a proud assembly, his adoring peasant-maid holding her grotesque banner over his head; probably the most extraordinary scene in all history. After Jeanne had secured the crowning of her king, ill-fortune was thenceforth to wait upon her. She was of the common people, and it was only about eighty years since the aristocracy had shuddered before the herd during the Jacquerie, the premonition of the Revolution of 1789. Class feeling ran strongly, and the nobles took their revenge; Jeanne, having no ability whatever beyond her implicit faith in Heaven, lost her influence both with the Court and with the people; whatever she tried to do failed, and she was finally captured in a sortie from Compiêgne in circumstances which do not exclude the suspicion that she was deliberately sacrificed. The Burgundians held her for ransom, and locked her up in the Tower of Beaurevoir. King Charles VII refused--or at any rate neglected--to bid for her; so the Burgundians sold her to the English. When she heard that she was to be given into the hands of her bitterest enemies she was so troubled that she leaped from the tower, a height of sixty or seventy feet, and was miraculously saved from death by the aid of her friends--Saints Margaret and Catherine. It is easier to believe that at her early age--she was then about nineteen or possibly even less--her epiphyseal cartilages had not ossified, and if she fell on soft ground it is perfectly credible that she might not receive worse than a severe shock. I remember a case of a child who fell from a height of thirty feet on to hard concrete, which it struck with its head; an hour later it was running joyfully about the hospital garden, much to the disgust of an anxious charge-nurse. It is difficult to kill a young person by a fall--the bones and muscles yield to violent impact, and life is not destroyed.

Jeanne having been bought by the English they brought her to trial before a court composed of Pierre Cauchon, Lord Bishop of Beauvais, and a varying number of clerics; as Anatole France puts it, “a veritable synod”; it was important to condemn not only the witch of the Armagnacs herself but also the viper whom she had been able to crown King of France. If they condemned her for witchcraft they condemned all her works, including King Charles. If Charles had been a clever man he would have foreseen such a result and would have bought her from the Duke of Burgundy when he had the chance. But when she was once in the iron grip of the English he could have done nothing. It was too late. If he had offered to buy her the English would have said she was not for sale; if he had moved his tired and disheartened army they would have handed her over to the University of Paris, or perhaps the dead body of one more peasant-girl would have been found in the Seine below Rouen, and Cauchon would have been spared the trouble of a trial. Therefore we may spare our regrets on the score of some at least of King Charles’s ingratitudes. It is possible that he did not buy her from the Burgundians because he was too stupid, too poor, or too parsimonious; it is more likely that his courtiers and himself began to believe that her success was so great that it could not be explained by mortal means, and that there must be something in the witchcraft story after all. It could not have been a pleasant thing for the French aristocrats to find that when a little maid from Domremy came to help the common people, these scum of the earth suddenly began to fight as they had not fought for generations. Fully to understand what happened we must remember that it was not very long since the Jacquerie, and that the aristocratic survivors had left to their sons tales of unutterable horrors.