BY ANDREW LANG THE MAID OF FRANCE: being the Story of the Life and Death of Jeanne d'Arc. With 3 Maps and 3 Portraits. 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. Cheap Edition. With 3 Maps, Crown 8vo. 65. net. A MONK OF FIFE: A Story of the Days of Joan of Arc. With 13 Illustrations by SELWYN IMAGE. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART. With Photogravure Plate and 15 other Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 6s. 6d. net. PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART, the Young Chevalier. With Photogravure Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. THE KING OVER THE WATER. By A. SHIELD and ANDREW LANG. With 4 Portraits and 3 other Illustrations. 8vo, 15s. net. SHAKESPEARE, BACON, AND THE GREAT UNKNOWN. With 8 Illustrations. 8vo, 9s, net. SIR WALTER SCOTT AND THE BORDER MINSTRELSY. 8vo, 5s. net. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA THE MAID OF FRANCE BEING THE STORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JEANNE D'ARC BY ANDREW LANG NEW EDITION PRINTED WITHOUT ALTERATION FROM LAST EDITION WITH THREE MAPS LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA PREFACE JEANNE D'ARC, during her nineteen years of life, was a cause of contention among her own countrymen, and her memory divides them to the present day. In her life she was of course detested as a witch and heretic by the French of the Burgundian faction. After her death, her memory was distasteful to all writers who disbelieved in her supernormal faculties, and in her inspiration. She had no business to possess faculties for which science could not account, and which common sense could not accept. To-day, the quarrel over her character and career is especially bitter. If the Church canonises her, the Church is said, by the "Anticlericals," to "confiscate" her, and to stultify itself. Her courage and her goodness of heart are denied by no man, but, as a set-off against the praises of the "clericals," and even of historians far from orthodox, her genius is denied, or is minimised; she is represented as a martyr, a heroine, a puzzle-pated hallucinated lass, a perplexed wanderer in a realm of dreams; the unconscious tool of fraudulent priests, herself once doubtfully honest, apt to tell great palpable myths to her own glorification, never a leader in war, but only a kind of mascotte, a "little saint," and a béguine-in breeches ! It has appeared to me that all these inconsistent views of the Maid, and several charges against her best friends, are mainly based on erroneous readings of the copious evidence concerning her; on mistakes in the translating |