The Maid and the Queen
Read The Maid and the Queen Online
Authors: Nancy Goldstone
T
HE
M
AID AND THE
Q
UEEN
A
LSO BY
N
ANCY
G
OLDSTONE
Four Queens
The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe
The Lady Queen
The Notorious Reign of Joanna I,
Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily
WITH
L
AWRENCE
G
OLDSTONE
The Friar and the Cipher
Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of
the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World
Out of the Flames
The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy,
and One of the Rarest Books in the World
Warmly Inscribed
The New England Forger and Other Book Tales
Slightly Chipped
Footnotes in Booklore
Used and Rare
Travels in the Book World
The Secret History
of
Joan of Arc
Nancy Goldstone
VIKING
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi— 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Nancy Goldstone, 2012
All rights reserved
Illustration credits appear on pages 281–282.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Goldstone, Nancy Bazelon.
The maid and the queen : the secret history of Joan of Arc / Nancy Goldstone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
EISBN: 9781101561294
1. Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412–1431. 2. Yolande d’Aragon, Queen, consort of
Louis II, King of Naples, d. 1442. 3. France— History— Charles VII, 1422–1461.
4. Christian women saints— France— Biography.
5. Nobility— France— Biography. 6. Louis II, Duke of Anjou, 1377–1417.
I. Title. II. Title: Secret history of Joan of Arc.
DC104.G65 2012 944’.0260922— dc23 [B] 2011037605
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Bembo Std MT
Designed by Amy Hill
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For Larry, always
ONTENTS
C
HAPTER
1 The Kingdom of the Gay Science
C
HAPTER
3 The Mad King of France
C
HAPTER
7 The Angels Speak to Joan
C
HAPTER
8 Joan Meets the Dauphin
C
HAPTER
10 Capture at Compiègne
C
HAPTER
11 The Trial of Joan of Arc
C
HAPTER
12 Of Politics and Prisoners
C
HAPTER
13 The Queen Takes Control
C
HAPTER
15 The Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc
Genealogy: The Extended Royal House of France in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
M
APS
France and the Surrounding Duchies, c. 1430
Orléans Under Siege and Surrounded by the English Bastilles, 1429
I
LLUSTRATIONS
Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans.
A queen awards prizes at court.
Raymondin breaks his vow and spies on Melusine on a Saturday.
Charles VI suffers his first psychotic episode, attacking his own men.
Yolande of Aragon and her husband, Louis II, escort ten-year-old Charles out of Paris.
The Burgundians massacre the Armagnacs in Paris.
The earliest surviving image of Joan of Arc, doodled in the margin of a manuscript.
Portrait of the man Joan of Arc called the dauphin, the future Charles VII.
Joan addresses Charles at the royal court.
Joan raises the siege of Orléans.
The coronation of Charles VII at Reims.
The capture of Joan of Arc at Compiègne.
The French battle the English in the final stages of the Hundred Years War.
René at home in his castle at work on a book of chivalry.
Charles VII parades triumphantly into Paris.
Stained glass window of Yolande of Aragon at the cathedral in Le Mans.
N
OTE ON
S
OURCES
T
HOSE UNFAMILIAR
with the study of medieval history may wonder how it is possible to write with any certainty about events that occurred so long ago. Fortunately, the fifteenth century boasted a stunning wealth of primary source material that has survived to the present day. There is Joan’s own extensive testimony, and that of her inquisitors, from her Trial of Condemnation, as well as the depositions from the many eyewitnesses who knew the Maid and who were actively involved in the events of the Hundred Years War, which were recorded in the judicial proceedings associated with her rehabilitation. There are also numerous extant works by chroniclers of the period and a significant trove of government reports, letters, royal proclamations, and accounts. For those interested, this evidence is cited at the back of the book in the form of detailed chapter notes and biblio graphy.
All of which is a long way of saying that, as provocative and even astonishing as it sometimes may appear, what you are about to read actually happened.
I
NTRODUCTION
The town of Blois, on the banks of the Loire, twenty-five miles southwest of Orléans, April 1429
— The narrow streets of this small provincial city, ordinarily quiet, were suddenly crowded with traffic. Wagons piled high with foodstuffs and other provisions jostled for space with lordly knights on horseback and commoners laden with sheaves of grain. Cattle, sheep, and other livestock, some tethered to carts, others herded into hastily erected pens, spilled into the surrounding fields, filling town and countryside alike with the clamor of their bleats and bellows. Within the city’s walls an army was massing, the last stragglers of foot soldiers and crossbowmen trickling in to join the convoy of supplies while they awaited their orders.
The kingdom of France— as represented by the dauphin, the heir to the throne— had been invaded by England. The dauphin’s position was extremely precarious. Over the last few years, the French army had sustained a series of losses so devastating that the English now held most of the northwest portion of the realm, including the all-important capital city, Paris. The dauphin’s forces, by contrast, had been pushed back and were primarily concentrated in the territory south of the Loire. Perpetually on the defensive, the French troops, from the commanders down to the lowest common soldiers, were exhausted and demoralized. An aura of hopelessness had settled over the dauphin’s court like a black robe of mourning.