This Side Toward Enemy

by Patrick McDermott

Reference Notes

Supplement

Military service is long periods of boredom interupted by utter terror. For those boring times, this supplementary reading for my book This Side Toward Enemy might help fill the hours. For your further reading and research, I have placed Olive Drab links to more information or to Amazon.com where you can research or buy the source material.

In the text, I've Americanized and modernized the spelling; in the notes pages, it's left in the original.—PMcD

These are the Reference notes. Here is the Text of this chapter.

Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World

by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, M.A.

Reference Notes for CHAPTER IX.

Joan of Arc’s Victory Over The English at Orleans, A.D. 1429.

When, after their victory at Salamis, the generals of the various Greek states voted the prizes for distinguished individual merit, each assigned the first place of excellence to himself, but they all concurred in giving their second votes to Themistocles.

Plutarch, Vit. Them. 17.

“In sooth, the estate of France was then most miserable. There appeared nothing but a horrible face, confusion, poverty, desolation, solitarinesse, and feare. The lean and bare labourers in the country did terrifie even theeves themselves, who had nothing left them to spoile but the carkasses of these poore miserable creatures, wandering up and down like ghostes drawne out of their graves. The least farmes and hamlets were fortified by these robbers, English, Bourguegnons, and French, every one striving to do his worst; all men-of-war were well agreed to spoile the countryman and merchant. Even the cattell, accustomed to the larume bell, the signe of the enemy’s approach, would run home of themselves without any guide by this accustomed misery.”

De Serres, quoted in the notes to Southey’s Joan of Arc.

The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid masonry was taught Europe by the Turks, a few years after wards, at the memorable siege of Constantinople.

The occasional employment of artillery against slight defenses, as at Jargeau in 1429, is no real exception.

His eldest daughter was named by her parents Jeannette, but she was called Jeanne by the French, which was Latinized into Johanna, and anglicised into Joan.

“Respondit quod in partibus suis vocabatur Johanneta, et postquam venit in Franciam vocata est Johanna.”--Proces de Jeanne D’Arc, vol i. p. 46.

She was naturally of a susceptible disposition, which diligent attention to the legends of saints, and tales of fairies, aided by the dreamy loneliness of her life while tending her father’s flocks

Southey, in one of the speeches which he puts in the mouth of his Joan of Arc, has made her beautifully describe the effect; on her mind of the scenery in which she dwelt:

               “Here in solitude and peace
My soul was nurst, amid the loveliest scenes
Of unpolluted nature. Sweet it was,
As the white mists of morning roll’d away,
To see the mountain’s wooded heights appear
Dark in the early dawn, and mark its slope
With gorse-flowers glowing, as the rising sun
On the golden ripeness pour’d a deepening light.
Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook
To lay me down, and watch the floating clouds,
And shape to Fancy’s wild similitudes
Their ever-varying forms; and oh, how sweet,
To drive my flock at evening to the fold,
And hasten to our little hut, and hear
The voice of kindness bid me welcome home!”

The only foundation for the story told by the Burgundian partisan Monstrelet, and adopted by Hume, of Joan having been brought up as servant at an inn, is the circumstance of her having been once, with the rest of her family, obliged to take refuge in an auberge in Neufchateau for fifteen days, when a party of Burgundian cavalry made an incursion into Domremy. (See the Quarterly Review, No. 138.)

“At the age of thirteen, a voice from God came near to her to help her in ruling herself, and that voice came to her about the hour of noon, in summer time, while she was in her father’s garden. And she had fasted the day before. And she heard the voice on her right, in the direction of the church; and when she heard the voice she also saw a bright light.”

Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. i. p. 52.

she herself believed that her Voices inspired her when she addressed the King

Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. i. p. 56.

Numberless friars and priests traversed the rural districts and towns of France, preaching to the people that they must seek from Heaven a deliverance from the pillages of the soldiery, and the insolence of the foreign oppressors.

See Sismondi vol. xiii. p. 114; Michelet, vol. v. Livre x.

Joan appeared at the camp at Blois, clad in a new suit of brilliant white armour, mounted on a stately black war-horse, and with a lance in her right hand, which she had learned to wield with skill and grace.

See the description of her by Gui de Laval, quoted in the note to Michelet, p. 69; and see the account of the banner at Orleans, which is believed to bear an authentic portrait of the Maid, in Murray’s Handbook for France, p. 175.

A page carried her banner, which she had caused to be made and embroidered as her Voices enjoined. It was white satin strewn with fleur-de-lis

Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. i. p. 238.

“I used to say to them, ‘Go boldly in among the English,’ and then I used to go boldly in myself.”

[Id. ib., ibid] Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. i. p. 238.

“The Englishmen, perceiving that they within could not long continue for faute of vitaile and pouder, kepte not their watche so diligently as thei were accustomed, nor scoured now the countrey environed as thei before had ordained. Whiche negligence the citizens shut in perceiving, sente worde thereof to the French captaines, which with Pucelle in the dedde tyme of the nighte, and in a greate rayne and thunders, with all their vitaile and artillery entered into the citie.”

Hall, f. 127.

“They did so,” says the old chronicler of the siege, “for they obeyed her marvellously.”

Journal du Siege d’Orleans, p. 87.

“And alle thing there prospered for you til the tyme of the Siege of Orleans, taken in hand, God knoweth by what advis.

“At the whiche tyme, after the adventure fallen to the persone of my cousin of Salisbury, whom God assoille, there felle, by the hand of god as it seemeth, a great strook upon your peuple that was assembled there in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadde beleve, and of unlevefulle doubte, that thei hadde of a disciple and lyme of the feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchantments and sorcerie.

“The whiche strooke and discomfiture not oonly lessed in grete partie the nombre of your peuple there, but as well withdrewe the courage of the remenant in merveillous wyse, and couraiged your adverse partie and ennemys to assemble them forthwith in grete nombre.”

Rymer, Vol. x. p. 403.

She wished to return to her peasant home, to tend her parent’s flocks again, and to live at her own will in her native village.

“Je voudrais bien qu’il voulut me faire ramener aupres mes pere et mere, et garder leurs brebis et betail, et faire ce que je voudrois faire.”

she believed herself doomed to perish in little more than a year; but she still fought on as resolutely, if not as exultingly as ever.

“Des le commencement elle avait dit, ‘Il me faut employer: je ne durerai qu’un an, ou guere plus.”— Michelait v. p. 101.

And the revolting details of the cruelties practiced upon this young girl may be left to those, whose duty as avowed biographers, it is to describe them.

The whole of the “Proces de Condamnation at de Rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc” has been published in five volumes, by the Societe de l’Histoire de France. All the passages from contemporary chroniclers and poets are added; and the most ample materials are thus given for acquiring full information on a subject which is, to an Englishman, one of painful interest. There is an admirable essay on Joan of Arc, in the 138^th number of the Quarterly.

Let him read of the Heavenly Voice, by which Socrates believed himself to be constantly attended; which cautioned him on his way from the field of battle at Delium, and which from his boyhood to the time of his death visited him with unearthly warnings.

See Cicero, de Divinatione, lib. i. sec. 41; and see the words of Socrates himself, in Plato, Apol. Soc.

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