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.because it was thedesire and the will of God. Plans for retreat were abandoned.The nextday Troyes surrendered and the French continued on to Reims.By my staff, I want to see Paris closer than I have until now.Fromthe day of Charles coronation on July 17, 1429, the moment of Joan ssecond great triumph, her star began to fall.But she did not, as yet, knowit.She probably knew nothing either about the shaky alliances that the The War and Joan of Arc 67dukes of Burgundy had entered into with the kings of England since be-fore she was born.All such agreements, of course, were contracted outof pure self-interest.After the murder of John the Fearless at Montereau,John s son Philip the Good had signed an alliance with England evenafter a memorandum his councilors drew up honestly noted that, as theprincipal vassal of the French crown,  it was his duty to protect, notalienate it. 14 Although Philip s military support to the English was al-ways handsomely paid, his loyalty was always in question.As the murder at Montereau receded from Philip s memory, he foundhis loyalty to the English increasingly burdensome.But the day ofCharles coronation, as Joan was drafting a reproachful letter to Philipfor failing to appear at the ceremony and failing to reconcile his differ-ences with Charles as a prelude to peace with England, Philip was spend-ing the week in Paris making public appearances with Bedford.AmongBedford s not-so-subtle efforts to re-cement the relationship with Philipwas a dramatic reenactment of the murder at Montereau.Clearly, nei-ther the king nor Joan knew of Philip s double-dealing.Through Joan s efforts, Charles was able to validate his kingship atReims and be reabsorbed into the line of his ancestors.Bedford, not tobe outdone by the French, organized Henry VI s English coronation infewer than four months.Held at Westminster on November 6, 1429, theattempt to mount a ceremony on a French scale was unmistakable.Theceremony included borrowings from a coronation book, or ordo, com-posed for Charles V, which Bedford obtained from the royal library of theLouvre, then in Anglo-Burgundian hands.Henry was anointed with sa-cred oil brought by the Virgin, England s answer to the miraculous oil ofClovis.A pastry decoration at the banquet depicted Henry VI flankedby Saint Edward and Saint Louis, in recognition of Henry s dual ances-try and his saintly French forebears.15 Joan must not have known any-thing of this, however apparent her influence.In the meantime, the day of Charles VII s coronation, while Philip theGood was in Paris, his envoys arrived in Reims to begin secret negotiationswith Charles for a Franco-Burgundian peace.First came a two-week truce,which greatly displeased Joan when she heard about it.Next came a moreextensive truce, signed in secret on August 28, 1429, and Charles in-creasing reluctance to sustain Joan or the military campaign.In a letter shewrote to the inhabitants of Riom, on November 9, 1429, Joan asked foremergency gunpowder and war material.In another letter, to the people Figure 10.Capture of Joan of Arc at Compiègne.Courtesy Bib-liothèque nationale de France, Paris. The War and Joan of Arc 69of Reims, on March 28, 1430, Joan was forced to acknowledge that  manywicked people were trying to betray the city and  install the Burgundi-ans. Doing her best to encourage her friends in Reims, Joan reported thatBreton soldiers were about to join the royal forces.But by now she was tilt-ing at windmills.Insufficiently equipped and minimally supported, she wascaptured at Compiègne on May 23, 1430, pulled from her horse by anarcher who tugged at her cloth-of-gold huque (see Figure 10).After beingtried and condemned as a relapsed heretic by an Anglo-Burgundian courtat Rouen, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431.On December 2, 1431, the young Henry VI made his royal entranceinto Paris.The pageantry included representations of the Nine MaleWorthies, a popular grouping of ancient warrior heroes.More unusualwere the Nine Female Worthies, all Amazons.At the coronation twoweeks later, Philip the Good was not in attendance.Yet it would be fourmore years before the reconciliation between Charles VII and his cousinPhilip a mandatory step before the English could be driven out ofFrance would take place [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]

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