THE circumstances which attended the capture of Joan of Arc are differently told by the French chroniclers. They all agree, however, that the event happened at Compeigne. The narrative

which we find in the first edition of Holinshed is almost entirely taken from that of Hall. In the second edition we have an abstract of the details of the Chroniques de Bretagne.' The poet has departed from the literal exactness of all the accounts. We give the passage from Holinshed:

"After this the Duke of Bourgoyne, accompanied with the Earls of Arundel and Suffolk, and the Lord John of Lutzenburg, besieged the town of Compeigne with a great puissance. This town was well walled, manned, and victualled, so that the besiegers were constrained to cast trenches, and make mines, for otherwise they saw not how to compass their purpose. In the mean time it happened, in the night of the Ascension of our Lord (A. 1430), that Poyton de Saintreyles, Joan la Pucelle, and five or six hundred men of arms, issued out by the bridge toward Mondedier, intending to set fire in the tents and lodgings of the Lord Bawdo de Noyelle. At the same very time,

Sir John de Lutzenburg, with eight other gentlemen, chanced to be near unto the lodgings of the said Lord Bawdo, where they espied the Frenchmen, which began to cut down tents, overthrow pavilions, and kill men in their beds; whereupon they with all speed assembled a great number of men, as well English as Burgoynions, and courageously set on the Frenchmen, and in the end beat them back into the town, so that they fled so fast that one letted another, as they would have entered. In the chase and pursuit was the Pucelle taken with divers other, besides those that were slain, which were no small number."

The mode in which the author of this play has chosen to delineate the character of Joan of Arc, in the last act, has been held to be a proof that Shakspere was not the author. It will be our duty to treat this subject at length in another place; but we would here observe that, however the dra matist may have represented this extraordinary woman as a sorceress, and made her accuse herself of licentious conduct, he has fallen very far short of the injustice of the English chroniclers, who, no doubt, represented the traditionary opinions of the

English nation. Upon her first appearance at Orleans she was denounced by Bedford in his letter to the king of France as "a devilish witch and satanical enchantress." After the cruel revenge which the English took upon their captive, a letter was written in the name of Henry to the Duke of Burgundy, setting forth and defending the proceedings which had taken place at Rouen. The conclusion of this letter marks the spirit of the age; and Hall, writing more than a century afterwards, affirms that the letter is quite sufficient evidence that Joan was an organ of the devil: "And because she still was obstinate in her trespasses and villainous offences," says the letter of Henry, "she was delivered to the secular power, the which condemned her to be burnt and consumed her in the fire. And when she saw that the fatal day of her obstinacy was come, she openly confessed that the spirits which to her often did appear were evil and false, and apparent liars; and that their promise which they had made to deliver her out of captivity was false and untrue, affirming herself by those spirits to be often beguiled, blinded, and mocked. And so, being in good mind, she was by the justices carried to the old market within the city of Roan, and there by

the fire consumed to ashes in the sight of all the people." The confession in the fourth scene, which is so revolting to us, is built upon an assertion which the dramatist found in Holinshed. Taken altogether, the character of Joan of Arc, as represented in this play, appears to us to be founded upon juster views than those of the chroniclers; and the poet, without any didactic expression of his opinion, has dramatically made us feel that the conduct of her persecutors was atrocious. That in a popular play, written two hundred and fifty years ago, we should find those tolerant, and therefore profound, views of the character of such an enthusiast as Joan of Arc by which she is estimated in our own day, was hardly to be expected. From her own countrymen Joan of Arc had an equally scanty measure of justice. Monstrelet, the French chronicler, does not hesitate to affirm that the whole affair was a got-up imposture. The same views prevailed in France in the next century; and it is scarcely necessary to observe that Voltaire converted the story of the Maid into a vehicle for the most profligate ribaldry. Long after France had erected monuments to Joan of Arc her memory was ridiculed by those who claimed to be in advance of public opinion.

The narrative of the wooing of Margaret of Anjou by Suffolk is thus given by Holinshed:"In the treating of this truce, the Earl of Suffolk, extending his commission to the uttermost, without the assent of his associates, imagined in his fantasy that the next way to come to a perfect peace was to move some marriage between the French king's kinswoman, the Lady Margaret, daughter to Regner Duke of Anjou, and his sovereign lord King Henry. This Regner Duke of Anjou named himself King of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, having only the name and style of those

realms, without any penny profit or foot of possession. This marriage was made strange to the earl at first, and one thing seemed to be a great hindrance to it, which was, because the King of England occupied a great part of the duchy of Anjou, and the whole county of Maine, appertaining (as was alleged) to King Regner. The Earl of Suffolk (I cannot say) either corrupted with bribes, or too much affection to this unprofitable marriage, condescended and agreed that the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine should be delivered to the king, the bride's father, demanding

*

*

*

*

for her marriage neither penny nor farthing, as who would say that this new affinity passed all riches, and excelled both gold and precious stone. But although this marriage pleased the king and others of his counsel, yet Humfrey Duke of Gloucester, protector of the realm, was much against it, alleging that it should be both contrary to the laws of God and dishonourable to the prince if he should break that promise and contract of marriage made by ambassadors, sufficiently thereto instructed, with the daughter of the Earl of Arminack, upon conditions, both to him and his realm, as much profitable as honourable. But the duke's words could not be heard, for the earl's doings were only liked and allowed. * The Earl

*

of Suffolk was made Marquis of Suffolk, which marquis, with his wife and many honourable personages of men and women, sailed into France for the conveyance of the nominated queen into the realm of England. For King Regner, her father, for all his long style, had too short a purse to send his daughter honourably to the king her spouse." In the fourth scene we find

"That peaceful truce shall be proclaim'd in France." By this was probably intended the truce of 1444, which lasted till 1449. It was in that year that Charles VII. poured his troops into Normandy, and that Rouen, "that rich city," as Holinshed calls it, the scene of the English glory and the English shame,-was delivered to the French.