Jeanne D’arc: The Great Soul

Jeanne D’Arc: The Great Soul

By Mr Ghaz, September 3, 2010

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Jeanne D’Arc: The Great Soul 

The peasant girl who heard the voice of God, who roused a spineless prince and a cowed people, and freed her country from the conqueror’s yoke: that was Joan of Arc. The entire world knows her story, for Joan is one of world’s heroines; but the tale of Joan is one that is always worth the re-telling and here in this gallery of great lives, her example of faith and courage glows afresh in a brilliant setting.

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The town and castle of Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, housed, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the shadow of a royal court. Officers of state in threadbare garments kept up what dignity they could in decrepit dwellings, most of the furniture of which had been pawned by a queen in a faded, shabby dress, desperately trying to keep the wolf, in the shape of a host of creditors, from the door. Grasping courtiers who found nothing to grasp intrigued and grumbled and, one by one, took their chance to desert intrigued and grumbled and, one by one, took their chance to desert for more lucrative employment. And at the head of all this tragic establishment lurked an ungainly, cowering figure, a timid young man of poor physique, the as yet uncrowned Charles VII of France, scorned and bullied by everyone, tortured by doubts of his own legitimacy, expecting every moment to be driven even from his humble home at Chinon by the dreaded soldiers from across the Channel.

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Never had a monarch of France sunk so low. The victories of Henry V had made the English masters of all France north of the Loire, apart from the domains they already held in the south. The infant son of the dead conqueror had been proclaimed king in Paris, though he had not been anointed with the sacred oil of St. Remy, which alone could make him king in the eyes of France. The great Duke of Burgindy, richer and more powerful than many monarchs, had allied himself to the invaders. Crowning blow to Charles, his own mother, the German Isabeau, widow of the lunatic Charles VI, had also given her support to the English, and had declared that her son had not a drop of the royal blood in his veins – an assertion which those who knew Isabeau found no difficulty in believing.