Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle): Difference between revisions

Joan and her military victories tore into all these cross-ambitions. Her insistence upon taking the English and Burgundians on the field was entirely at odds with court machinations that sought negotiated settlements. For Joan, as long as the Burgundians were allied with the English they were equally the enemy. She told the Rouen court,<ref>Murray, p. 19</ref>    <blockquote>

While undermined by the French court in her continued war against the English and the Burgundians, Joan was right. After her death in 1431, her compatriot warriors, the Duc d'Alençon, La Hire<ref>He was captured by the Burgundians in 1430 but escaped or was ransomed soon after.</ref>, Jean Dunois and, of course, Artur de Richemont,<ref>His efforts were complicated by alliances of his brother, the Duke of Brittany, that at one point in the 1430s required de Richemont to fight briefly alongside the English.</ref> carried on the fight, raiding northern France, liberating towns, raising alarms, and menacing English and Burgundian holds. The raids challenged the alliance and opened the opportunity for the Congress of Arras that realigned the Burgundians to the French, and which was engineered by de Richemont himself. Absent the pressure of warfare that Joan brought on, there was no need for the English and the Burgundians to enter into the Congress of Arras in the first place.   

Historians have recognized this aspect of Joan's influence upon events, especially in the re-militarization of France under de Richemont after he expelled de La Trémoïlle from the French court. Arriving with his soldiers to Jargeau was his first ploy to regain power as Constable of France. By welcoming him, and forcing the general, d'Alençons, to accept his presence, it was Joan who put into place the dynamics that would lead to the reconciliation of Burgundy with France four years after her death. Yet long before the final defeat of the English, it was a key turning point, if not as important as Orléans and the crowning of Charles at Reims, the contingent events that allowed all the rest to happen.     

|+

!Date

Or, perhaps the turn against Joan     

A final possibility, which brings us into the ever dubious realm of "psychohistory"<ref>It was actually a thing in the 1970s, and, per its Wikipedia page, persists. (Find it yourself.)</ref>, which tries to understand the past by putting it on the sofa and asking about its darkest thoughts. At first it seems reasonable that much of the capitulation to the Burgundians that Charles VII had authorized was due to his deep sense of guilt over the "murder on the bridge" of John the Fearless. The King held, the theory goes, lingering baggage from the assassination of the Duke. <ref>Recalling that it was retribution for the 1407 assassination of Charles' uncle, the Duke of Orléans (and brother of Charles VI and whose heir was captured by the English in 1415 at Agincourt).</ref> The assassination launched the Armagnanc-Burgundian civil war<ref>The "war" may be understood to have started with the 1407 assassination of the Duke of Orléans. Following John the Fearless' murder, it turned into open warfare.</ref> and opened the door for the English, who were already on the move in northern France, to sign the Treaty of Troyes<ref>Making Henry V of England heir to the French throne.</ref> with Charles's weak and troubled father, Charles VI. So the history weighed upon the new King, we are told. If so, we must imagine a newly crowned and victorious King waking up the next day thinking himself unworthy of it all. It's not just doubtful, its nonsensical, much less unprovable. We know only from Joan what the "sign" was that she showed Charles back at Chinon, that it was a golden crown brought by angels. I'm thinking survivor guilt gets washed away pretty quickly by God's agents delivering an entire country to you.         

Joan, meanwhile, the day of the Coronation, affirmed the King's peace overtures to Burgundy, only with capitulation of any French lands he held, and with the advice that he'd do better to wage war against the "Saracens," which at that time would mean the Ottomans, than against the French:     

Great and formidable Prince, Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne the Virgin requests of you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, that the King of France and yourself should make a good firm lasting peace. Fully pardon each other willingly, as faithful Christians should do; and if it should please you to make war, then go against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, beg, and request as humbly as I can that you wage war no longer in the holy kingdom of France, and order your people who are in any towns and fortresses of the holy kingdom to withdraw promptly and without delay. And as for the noble King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, saving his honor; if you’re not opposed. And I tell you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, for your well-being and your honor and [which I affirm] upon your lives, that you will never win a battle against the loyal French, and that all those who have been waging war in the holy kingdom of France have been fighting against King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world, my rightful and sovereign Lord. And I beg and request of you with clasped hands to not fight any battles nor wage war against us – neither yourself, your troops nor subjects; and know beyond a doubt that despite whatever number [duplicated phrase]<ref>>> to confirm</ref> of soldiers you bring against us they will never win. And there will be tremendous heartbreak from the great clash and from the blood that will be spilled of those who come against us. And it has been three weeks since I had written to you and sent proper letters via a herald [saying] that you should be at the anointing of the King, which this day, Sunday, the seventeenth day of this current month of July, is taking place in the city of Rheims – to which I have not received any reply. Nor have I ever heard any word from this herald since then.  

Well informed by their spies and informants in France, the Rouen court knew all this. But they spun it to delegitimize Orléans and Reims, by associating those victories with her subsequent failures.  

== Saint or Servant of France? ==