Jeanne dArc | Page 4

aim now that no one should be oppressed, that every man should have
justice as by the order of nature, was a thing unthought of. What
individual help did feebly for the sufferer then, the laws do for us now,
without fear or favour: which is a much greater thing to say than that
the organisation of modern life, the mechanical helps, the comforts, the
easements of the modern world, had no existence in those days. We are
often told that the poorest peasant in our own time has aids to existence
that had not been dreamt of for princes in the Middle Ages. Thirty
years ago the world was mostly of opinion that the balance was entirely
on our side, and that in everything we were so much better off than our
fathers, that comparison was impossible. Since then there have been
many revolutions of opinion, and we think it is now the general

conclusion of wise men, that one period has little to boast itself of
against another, that one form of civilisation replaces another without
improving upon it, at least to the extent which appears on the surface.
But yet the general prevalence of peace, interrupted only by occasional
wars, even when we recognise a certain large and terrible utility in war
itself, must always make a difference incalculable between the
condition of the nations now, and then.
It is difficult, indeed, to imagine any concatenation of affairs which
could reduce a country now to the condition in which France was in the
beginning of the fifteenth century. A strong and splendid kingdom, to
which in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy
of a united nation, had fallen into a disintegration which seems almost
incredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationality
which now illumines, almost above all others, the French nation. But
Frenchmen were not Frenchmen, they were Burgundians, Armagnacs,
Bretons, Provençaux five hundred years ago. The interests of one part
of the kingdom were not those of the other. Unity had no existence.
Princes of the same family were more furious enemies to each other, at
the head of their respective fiefs and provinces, than the traditional foes
of their race; and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of
patriotic resistance, one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to
side with the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own
flesh and blood than anything the alien could do.
When Charles VII. of France began, nominally, his reign, his uncles
and cousins, his nearest kinsmen, were as determinedly his opponents,
as was Henry V. of England, whose frank object was to take the crown
from his head. The country was torn in pieces with different causes and
cries. The English were but little farther off from the Parisian than was
the Burgundian, and the English king was only a trifle less French than
were the members of the royal family of France. These circumstances
are little taken into consideration in face of the general history, in
which a careless reader sees nothing but the two nations pitted against
each other as they might be now, the French united in one strong and
distinct nationality, the three kingdoms of Great Britain all welded into
one. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Scots fought on the

French side, against their intimate enemy of England, and if there had
been any unity in Ireland, the Irish would have done the same. The
advantages and disadvantages of subdivision were in full play. The
Scots fought furiously against the English--and when the latter won, as
was usually the case, the Scots contingent, whatever bounty might be
shown to the French, was always exterminated. On the other side the
Burgundians, the Armagnacs, and Royalists met each other almost
more fiercely than the latter encountered the English. Each country was
convulsed by struggles of its own, and fiercely sought its kindred foes
in the ranks of its more honest and natural enemy.
When we add to these strange circumstances the facts that the French
King, Charles VI., was mad, and incapable of any real share either in
the internal government of his country or in resistance to its invader:
that his only son, the Dauphin, was no more than a foolish boy, led by
incompetent councillors, and even of doubtful legitimacy, regarded
with hesitation and uncertainty by many, everybody being willing to
believe the worst of his mother, especially after the treaty of Troyes in
which she virtually gave him up: that the King's brothers or cousins at
the head of their respective fiefs were all seeking their own advantage,
and that some of them, especially the Duke of Burgundy, had cruel
wrongs to avenge: it will