Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, vol 2 | Page 9

of Patay was won.
Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying that awful field, lost in thought. Presently
she said:
"The praise is to God. He has smitten with a heavy hand this day." After a little she lifted
her face, and looking afar off, said, with the manner of one who is thinking aloud, "In a
thousand years--a thousand years--the English power in France will not rise up from this
blow." She stood again a time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped generals, and
there was a glory in her face and a noble light in her eye; and she said:
"Oh, friends, friends, do you know?--do you comprehend? France is on the way to be
free!"
"And had never been, but for Joan of Arc!" said La Hire, passing before her and bowing
low, the other following and doing likewise; he muttering as he went, "I will say it
though I be damned for it." Then battalion after battalion of our victorious army swung
by, wildly cheering. And they shouted, "Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live forever!"
while Joan, smiling, stood at the salute with her sword.
This was not the last time I saw the Maid of Orleans on the red field of Patay. Toward the
end of the day I came upon her where the dead and dying lay stretched all about in heaps
and winrows; our men had mortally wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to
pay a ransom, and from a distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to
the place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her dying enemy in
her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft words, just as his sister might
have done; and the womanly tears running down her face all the time. [1]
[1] Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: "Michelet discovered this story in the
deposition of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Conte, who was probably an eye-witness of
the scene." This is true. It was a part of the testimony of the author of these "Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc," given by him in the Rehabilitation proceedings of 1456. --
TRANSLATOR.


Chapter 31
France Begins to Live Again
JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be free.
The war called the Hundred Years' War was very sick to-day. Sick on its English

side--for the very first time since its birth, ninety-one years gone by.
Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought? Or shall we not rather
judge them by the results which flowed from them? Any one will say that a battle is only
truly great or small according to its results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is the truth.
Judged by results, Patay's place is with the few supremely great and imposing battles that
have been fought since the peoples of the world first resorted to arms for the settlement of
their quarrels. So judged, it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few just
mentioned, but stand alone, as the supremest of historic conflicts. For when it began
France lay gasping out the remnant of an exhausted life, her case wholly hopeless in the
view of all political physicians; when it ended, three hours later, she was convalescent.
Convalescent, and nothing requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring her back to
perfect health. The dullest physician of them all could see this, and there was none to
deny it.
Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series of battles, a
procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts stretching over years, but only one
has reached it in a single day and by a single battle. That nation is France, and that battle
Patay.
Remember it and be proud of it; for you are French, and it is the stateliest fact in the long
annals of your country. There it stands, with its head in the clouds! And when you grow
up you will go on pilgrimage to the field of Patay, and stand uncovered in the presence
of--what? A monument with its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations in all times have
built monuments on their battle-fields to keep green the memory of the perishable deed
that was wrought there and of the perishable name of him who wrought it; and will
France neglect Patay and Joan of Arc? Not for long. And will she build a monument
scaled to their rank as compared with the world's other fields and heroes? Perhaps--if
there be room for it under the arch of the sky.
But let us look back a little, and