Autobiography of Mark Twain (42 page)

7. Then she
wanted
_^
wished
_^
to march at once upon Paris,
_^
to
_^
take it, and
_^
to
_^
drive the English out of France. She was hampered in
all the
_^
every
_^
way
that treachery and the King’s vacillation could devise, but she forced her way to Paris at last, and
_^
there
_^
fell badly wounded in a successful assault upon one of the gates. Of course her men lost heart at once—she was the only heart they had
. T
hey fell back. She begged
to be allowed
_^
permission
_^
to remain at the front, saying victory was sure: “I will take Paris now or die!” she
said
_^
cried
_^
. But she was removed from the field by force, the King ordered a retreat, and actually disbanded his
army. In accordance with a beautiful old military custom
Joan
_^
Jeanne
_^
devoted her silver armour and hung it up in the Cathedral of St. Denis.
Its
_^
Her
_^
great days were over.

8. Then, by command, she followed the King and his frivolous Court
and endured
_^
enduring
_^
a gilded captivity for a time, as well as her free spirit could; and whenever inaction became unbearable she gathered some men together and rode away
and
_^
to
_^
assault
ed
_^
and capture
_^
a stronghold
and captured it.
At last in a sortie against the enemy, from Compiègne on the 24th of May, (when she was
turned
_^
now
_^
eighteen), she
was herself
,
_^
herself was
_^
captured
after a gallant
fight.
_^
struggle.
_^
It was her last
battle
_^
fight
_^
. She was to follow the drums no more.

9. Thus ended the briefest epoch-making military career
_^
known
_^
in history. It lasted only a year and a month, but it
found
_^
restored to
_^
France an English province, and furnishes the reason that France is France to-day and
not an English
_^
no longer a
_^
province
yet.
_^
of her rival.
_^
Thirteen months! It was indeed a short career; but in the
_^
ensuing
_^
centuries
that have since elapsed
five hundred millions of Frenchmen have lived and died
blest by
_^
under
_^
the benefactions it conferred
; and so
_^
So
_^
long as France shall endure, the mighty debt must grow. And France is
grateful; we often hear her say it. Also
_^
not ungrateful. She, however, is
_^
thrifty: she
_^
still continues to
_^
collect
the Domremy taxes.

II
.

IN CAPTIVITY
.

1.
Joan
_^
Jeanne
_^
was fated to spend the
rest
_^
remainder
_^
of her life behind bolts and bars. She was a prisoner of war, not a criminal, therefore hers was recognized as an honourable captivity. By the rules of war she
must be
_^
should have been
_^
held to ransom, and a fair price could not
be refused, if
_^
have been refused, had it been
_^
offered.
John
_^
Jean
_^
of Luxemburg paid her the just compliment of
requiring
_^
demanding
_^
a prince’s ransom for her
. I
n
that
_^
those
_^
day
that phrase represented a definite sum—61,125 francs. It was of course supposable that either the King or grateful France or both would fly with the money
and
_^
to
_^
set their fair young
benefactor
_^
benefactress
_^
free. But this did not happen.
In
_^
During
_^
five
and a half
months
_^
and more
_^
neither King nor country stirred a hand nor offered a
penny
_^
sou
_^
. Twice
Joan
_^
Jeanne
_^
tried to escape. Once by a trick she succeeded for a moment, and locked her jailor in behind her; but she was discovered and caught
; in
_^
In
_^
the other case she let herself down from a tower sixty feet high
but her rope was too short and she
got
_^
sustained
_^
a fall that
_^
wholly
_^
disabled her
and
she could not get away.
_^
so prevented her escape.
_^