The Life of Joan of Arc | Page 4

the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave dissensions which had occurred during the last week. From the 8th of May the diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts borrowed from Chartier, from Berry, and from the rehabilitation trial. The episode of the big fat Englishman slain by Messire Jean de Montesclère at the Siege of Jargeau is obviously taken from the evidence of Jean d'Aulon in 1446; and even this plagiarism is inaccurate, since Jean d'Aulon expressly says he was slain at the Battle of Les Augustins.[23]
[Footnote 20: Journal du siège d'Orléans (1428-1429), ed. P. Charpentier and C. Cuissart, Orléans, 1896, 8vo.]
[Footnote 21: The oldest copy extant is dated 1472 (MS. fr. 14665).]
[Footnote 22: Journal du siège d'Orléans (1428-1429), p. 87. Trial, vol. iv, p. 162, note.]
[Footnote 23: Journal du siège, p. 97. Trial, vol. iii, p. 215.]
The chronicle entitled La Chronique de la Pucelle,[24] as if it were the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled Geste des nobles Fran?ois, going back as far as Priam of Troy. But the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added to. This was done after 1467. Even if it were proved that La Chronique de la Pucelle is the work of Cousinot, shut up in Orléans during the siege, or even of two Cousinots, uncle and nephew according to some, father and son according to others, it would remain none the less true that this chronicle is largely copied from Jean Chartier, the Journal du Siège and the rehabilitation trial. Whoever the author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no very high praise can be given to a fabricator of tales, who, without appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory circumstances. La Chronique de la Pucelle ends abruptly with the King's return to Berry after his defeat before Paris.
[Footnote 24: Chronique de la Pucelle, or Chronique de Cousinot, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1859, 16mo. (Bibliothèque Gauloise).]
Le Mystère du siège[25] must be classed with the chronicles. It is in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some have attempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify this poem of 20,529 lines with a certain mistaire[26] played on the sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their conclusions from the following circumstances: the Maréchal de Rais, who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in Duke Charles's city expending vast sums[27] there from September, 1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its municipal funds "a standard and a banner, which had belonged to Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles and their capture from the English."[28] From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in 1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take "the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles" to mean a mystery rather than a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the certain mistaire of 1435 as indicating a representation of that siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even then we must examine whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us.
[Footnote 25: Mystère du Siège d'Orléans, first published by MM. F. Guessard and E. de Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to, according to the only manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican Library.--Cf. étude sur le mystère du siège d'Orléans, by H. Tivier, Paris, 1868, 8vo.]
[Footnote 26: Trial, vol. v, p. 309.]
[Footnote 27: The Abbé E. Bossard and de Maulde, Gilles de Rais, Maréchal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue (1404-1440), 2nd edition, Paris, 1886, 8vo, pp. 94-113.]
[Footnote 28: Un estandart et bannière qui furent à Monseigneur de Reys pour faire la manière de l'assault comment les Tourelles furent prinses sur les Anglois Mistère du siège, p. viii.]
Among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is the Maréchal de Rais. Hence it has been concluded that the mystery was written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which effect was given above the Nantes Bridge, on October 20, 1440. How, indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death