There is but one of her and no more in all the astonished world.
With the permission of the reader I will retain her natural and beautiful name.To translate it into Joan seems quite unnecessary.
Though she is the finest emblem to the world in general of that noble,fearless,and spotless Virginity which is one of the finest inspirations of the medi?val mind,yet she is inherently French,though France scarcely was in her time:and national,though as yet there were rather the elements of a nation than any indivisible People in that great country.Was not she herself one of the strongest and purest threads of gold to draw that broken race together and bind it irrevocably,beneficially,into one?
It is curious that it should have been from the farthest edge of French territory that this national deliverer came.It is a commonplace that a Borderer should be a more hot partisan of his own country against the other from which but a line divides him in fact,and scarcely so much in race--than the calmer inhabitant of the midland country who knows no such press of constant antagonism;and Jeanne is another example of this well known fact.It is even a question still languidly discussed whether Jeanne and her family were actually on one side of the line or the other."Il faut opter,"says M.Blaze de Bury,one of her latest biographers,as if the peasant household of 1412had inhabited an Alsatian cottage in 1872.When the line is drawn so closely,it is difficult to determine,but Jeanne herself does not ever seem to have entertained a moment's doubt on the subject,and she after all is the best authority.Perhaps Villon was thinking more of his rhyme than of absolute fact when he spoke of "Jeanne la bonne Lorraine."She was born on the 5th of January,1412,in the village of Domremy,on the banks of the Meuse,one of those little grey hamlets,with its little church tower,and remains of a little chateau on the soft elevation of a mound not sufficient for the name of hill--which are scattered everywhere through those level countries,like places which have never been built,which have grown out of the soil,of undecipherable antiquity--perhaps,one feels,only a hundred,perhaps a thousand years old--yet always inhabitable in all the ages,with the same names lingering about,the same surroundings,the same mild rural occupations,simple plenty and bare want mingling together with as little difference of level as exists in the sweeping lines of the landscape round.
The life was calm in so humble a corner which offered nothing to the invader or marauder of the time,but yet was so much within the universal conditions of war that the next-door neighbour,so to speak,the adjacent village of Maxey,held for the Burgundian and English alliance,while little Domremy was for the King.And once at least when Jeanne was a girl at home,the family were startled in their quiet by the swoop of an armed party of Burgundians,and had to gather up babies and what portable property they might have,and flee across the frontier,where the good Lorrainers received and sheltered them,till they could go back to their village,sacked and pillaged and devastated in the meantime by the passing storm.Thus even in their humility and inoffensiveness the Domremy villagers knew what war and its miseries were,and the recollection would no doubt be vivid among the children,of that half terrible,half exhilarating adventure,the fright and excitement of personal participation in the troubles,of which,night and day,from one quarter or another,they must have heard.
Domremy had originally belonged[1]to the Abbey of St.Remy at Rheims --the ancient church of which,in its great antiquity,is still an interest and a wonder even in comparison with the amazing splendour of the cathedral of that place,so rich and ornate,which draws the eyes of the visitor to itself,and its greater associations.It is possible that this ancient connection with Rheims may have brought the great ceremony for which it is ever memorable,the consecration of the kings of France,more distinctly before the musing vision of the village girl;but I doubt whether such chance associations are ever much to be relied upon.The village was on the high-road to Germany;it must have been therefore in the way of news,and of many rumours of what was going on in the centres of national life,more than many towns of importance.Feudal bands,a rustic Seigneur with his little troop,going out for their forty days'service,or returning home after it,must have passed along the banks of the lazy Meuse many days during the fighting season,and indeed throughout the year,for garrison duty would be as necessary in winter as in summer;or a wandering pair of friars who had seen strange sights must have passed with their wallets from the neighbouring convents,collecting the day's provision,and leaving news and gossip behind,such as flowed to these monastic hostelries from all quarters--tales of battles,and anecdotes of the Court,and dreadful stories of English atrocities,to stir the village and rouse ever generous sentiment and stirring of national indignation.They are said by Michelet to have been no man's vassals,these outlying hamlets of Champagne;the men were not called upon to follow their lord's banner at a day's notice,as were the sons of other villages.There is no appearance even of a lord at all upon this piece of Church land,which was,we are told,directly held under the King,and would only therefore be touched by a general levy /en masse/--not even perhaps by that,so far off were they,and so near the frontier,where a reluctant man-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape,as the unwilling conscript sometimes does now.