iscover
therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. Their severity has
had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few
printer's errors. What flatterers could better have gratified "the
proud weakness of my heart?"[1]

PARIS, _January, 1909_.

[Footnote 1: "_De mon coeur l'orgueilleuse faiblesse_," Racine,
_Iphigenie en Aulide_, Act i, sc. i.--(W.S.)]

INTRODUCTION

My first duty should be to make known the authorities for this
history. But L'Averdy, Buchon, J. Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville,
Simeon Luce, Boucher de Molandon, MM. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Lanery
d'Arc, Henri Jadart, Alexandre Sorel, Germain Lefevre-Pontalis, L.
Jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various
documents for the life of Joan of Arc. I refer my readers to their
works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature,[2] and
without entering on any new examination of these documents, I will
merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use I have
chosen to make of them. They are: first, the trial which resulted in
her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her
rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers.

[Footnote 2: Le P. Lelong, _Bibliotheque historique de la France_,
Paris, 1768 (5 vols. folio), II, n. 17172-17242. Potthast,
_Bibliotheca medii aevi_, Berlin, 1895, 8vo, vol. i, pp. 643 _seq._ U.
Chevalier, _Repertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age_, Paris,
8vo, 1877, pp. 1247-1255; _Jeanne d'Arc, bibliographie_, Montbeliard,
1878 [selections]; _Supplement au Repertoire_, Paris, 1883, pp.
2684-2686, 8vo. Lanery d'Arc, _Le livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc,
bibliographie raisonnee et analytique des ouvrages relatifs a Jeanne
d'Arc_, Paris, 1894, large 8vo, and supplement. A. Molinier, _Les
sources de l'histoire de France des origines aux guerres d'Italie, IV:
Les Valois, 1328-1461_, Paris, 1904, pp. 310-348.]

First, in the trial[3] which resulted in her condemnation the
historian has a mine of rich treasure. Her cross-examination cannot be
too minutely studied. It is based on information, not preserved
elsewhere, gathered from Domremy and the various parts of France
through which she passed. It is hardly necessary to say that all the
judges of 1431 sought to discover in Jeanne was idolatry, heresy,
sorcery and other crimes against the Church. Inclined as they were,
however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the