The Lives & Legacy of Extraordinary Women. Kate Dickinson Sweetser
must send her with an escort to the Dauphin. The captain laughed loudly and bade her go home and tend the cattle. She protested, but he only scoffed at her talk of her mission.
Joan, however, did not go home, but stayed in the town, and told those she met that she must go to the Dauphin because she was the maid who was to save France. She seemed an honest, gentle girl, and one by one people began to take an interest in her story and wonder if it could be true. One day a roystering soldier named John of Metz stopped at the house where she lived, and asked for her, thinking to make fun of her. "What are you doing here?" he demanded when she came to the door. "I have come," said Joan, "to a royal city to tell Robert of Baudricourt to send me to the Dauphin, but he cares not for me or for my words. Nevertheless, before mid-Lent, I must be with the Dauphin, though I have to wear my legs down to my knees. No one in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, nor king of Scotland's daughter, nor any one else can recover the kingdom of France without help from me, though I would rather spin by my mother's side, since this is not my calling. But I must go and do this work, for my Lord wishes me to do it." "Who is your Lord?" asked the soldier in surprise. "God," said Joan. The man was so much impressed by her words that he said he would take her to the Dauphin himself. He asked her when she wished to start. "Rather now than to-morrow, rather to-morrow than afterwards," Joan answered.
But even with the aid of this soldier and of the friends she had made who believed in her it was some time before Joan could persuade the captain to give her an escort. At last she told him of the visions and the voices and finally he let himself be persuaded. He gave her the men she wanted and she made ready to start on her journey to the Dauphin. She decided she had better dress as a young man, and her friends bought her the clothes she needed and a horse. She rode out of Vaucouleurs clad in the black vest and hose, and gray cloak of a squire, booted and spurred, with a sword at her side and her hair cut short and round, saucer fashion, as was the style. Six armed men went with her. She did not want to go, she longed to return to her mother and the simple folk of Domremy, but the voices kept saying over and over, "Go, Child of God, go forth to save France."
The Dauphin was at the castle of Chinon in Touraine. There Joan went, and begged him to listen to her. The news of the peasant girl who thought she was to rescue the land had already come to him and he was curious about her. He granted her an interview, but thinking to test her, hid himself among a group of courtiers. As she entered the room the voices told her which was Charles and she went straight to him. She dropped upon her knee before him. "Gentle Dauphin," she said, "I have come to you on a message from God, to bring help to you and to your kingdom." Then in answer to his questions, she told him how she had been directed to lead his army to the aid of Orleans.
The Dauphin was impressed, and bade her be cared for at the castle. Again she had to wait, but now the story of her visions and the prophecy that a peasant maid of Lorraine should save France had spread abroad and people began to put their faith in her. The common people were the first to be convinced, because they were by nature superstitious and found no difficulty in believing the marvelous stories that now began to be told about Joan; after them the captains and the soldiers were willing at least to pretend to believe in her because she would lead them against their enemies; and finally Charles VII himself, weak and disappointed king as he was, decided that Joan could at least do his cause no harm, and might do it good, and so gave his consent to her requests.
In a very short time then the simple girl of Domremy, only seventeen years old, was put at the head of the French army and rode north to raise the siege of Orleans. Clad in full armor, astride a white charger, sword at her side, she carried a banner which had been described to her by the mystic voices. The field of the banner was sown with the lilies of France, in the centre was painted God holding the world and on each side knelt an angel. The motto was "Jesus Maria." With this banner floating above her she rode to Orleans, and all the country people who saw her pass told their neighbors the old prophecy had come true.
By great good fortune Joan's army was able to enter the city of Orleans. There the warrior-maid was received with the utmost reverence, greeted as a deliverer sent by God, and hope revived in the people's hearts. She waited a short time, and then taking counsel with her generals planned an attack on the English outside the walls. Again fortune stood by her, the French were victorious, and the enemy were forced to retreat and so raise the siege.
Joan's first task was done. After an interval she set out upon the second, to crown the Dauphin in the city of Rheims. This meant a march through a part of France held by the enemy and the capture of many cities. Joan and her army accomplished the work, however, and the day came when Charles the Dauphin and the Maid of Orleans, as she was now called, entered the great cathedral of Rheims, and Joan heard her prince consecrated and proclaimed King of France. She had given her country new hope and strength and a king to look to.
Joan had now completed the two tasks for which she had left Domremy; her voices had spoken truly to her and she had done what they had commanded. She wanted to go home, enter her father's house again, and remain a peasant girl like her friends and share their simple life. But she had become too wonderful in the eyes of France for the people to let her do as she wished. They begged her to do more, and so she was persuaded to keep with the royal army and wage battle after battle with the English. For a time victory stayed with her, but finally one day at Compiègne she was cut off from her men by the enemy, surrounded and taken prisoner. The rest of her history is briefly told. She was put in prison at Rouen, tried for witchcraft, condemned and burned at the stake in 1431, when she was nineteen years old.
So it was that the peasant girl stirred France to hope by her wonderful deeds, and gave her life at the end for her country's sake. France made her a national heroine, the Catholic Church proclaimed her a Saint, and in all history there is hardly to be found so marvelous a story as that of the simple girl of Domremy, Joan of Arc, called the Maid of France.
VITTORIA COLONNA
The Girl of Ischia: 1490–1547
Vines had woven the walls of a little natural bower on a high cliff of the wooded, sea-swept island of Ischia off the coast of Italy. Beyond lay the bay of Naples, a deep blue glimmering with specks of gold, and still farther off stretched the white and brown and yellow roofs and walls of that sun-loved city. It was late afternoon, the hour of all the four and twenty when the city and the sea were most alluring to the eye. In the bower sat a woman and a golden-haired girl, and each was watching the colors shift and deepen in the broad breeze-touched bay.
"Is there anything else as lovely, Isabella?" asked the girl in time. "See yon handful of opals just tossed on the waves off Capua. How still it is! The woods have gone to sleep."
The woman smiled. "Peace to their slumbers. Yonder poor town of Naples has little time to rest! What with France and Spain, the Holy Father and the rest of them, the poor folk of Naples can scarce call their souls their own."
"Indeed 'tis like looking down from a nest upon a stormy plain," agreed the girl. "Here at least are few plottings and struggles."
She settled more comfortably, her head resting in the palm of her hand. Then, after a moment, she sat up again and, turning to her companion, laid a finger to her lips. Close to them, the other side of the network of wild vines, was the sound of footsteps and presently of voices.
"To the west, beyond this cliff, lies a beach," she heard a man's voice say, "where the Marquis Ferdinand and his teacher come to swim each day at this hour. We can hide in the bushes back of the shore and take them unarmed. The Orsini have offered an hundred ducats for the boy."
There followed a chuckle, and then another voice added: "'Tis an easy way to line my purse again."
"Softly then, softly," cautioned the first speaker, and crackling twigs marked their stealthy descent towards the sheltered beach.
The girl, alarm in her eyes, sat up straight. As soon as the crackling ceased she bent forward. "Didst hear, Isabella?" she whispered. "Didst hear yon plot? They wait for Ferdinand and Messer Florio to bathe beneath the cliff and then set on them. An