🕯️ Charlotte Bouchet was born in Orléans. The exact year is unknown. Around 1420, by most estimates. Her father Jacques Bouchet was treasurer to Charles, Duke of Orléans. Her mother's name was never recorded. She had siblings, but their traces are faint as well.
The house stood near the Renart Gate. Solid, built of stone. A residence befitting a duke's treasurer. Tapestries hung in the main hall, it is said.
When Charlotte was eight or nine, the air of the city changed.
October 1428. The English army laid siege to Orléans.
Enemy banners rose beyond the walls. Cannon fire echoed every night. Citizens began rationing food. Bread grew lighter. Meat disappeared. Smiles faded from the faces of the adults.
Charlotte was young. She could not have grasped the full meaning of war. But her mother's trembling hands, her father's late returns, the warnings not to look at the dead in the streets — these things, surely, she remembered.
Winter came. The city shrank further. English forts ringed the walls. The bridge over the Loire was broken. Supply lines had long since failed.
Just before spring, strangers began appearing at the Bouchet house. Soldiers. Jean de Metz. Bertrand de Poulengy. Names she had never heard. They were waiting for someone.
⚔️ A strange rumor spread. A maiden from Lorraine, guided by divine voices, was coming to save Orléans. Her father emptied the warmest, safest room in the house. Charlotte imagined a saint. A towering figure radiating an untouchable light. A knight from the old tales.
April 29, 1429. The savior broke through the English siege and entered the city at last.
Orléans erupted as if the veil of night had been torn open — a near-madness of joy. People reached out toward the miracle, weeping, crying out. But beneath the red glow of the torches, the savior looked nothing like Charlotte had imagined. The face revealed under the heavy helmet was that of a seventeen-year-old girl, young to the point of paleness.
🛏️ Her father, anxious for the safety of so precious a guest, instructed Charlotte to share her bed. After the crowds outside had quieted, in the stillness of the room, Charlotte met the bare face of the hero for the first time. Stripped of her iron armor, Jeanne was simply an older girl, covered in bruises.
The daily life of the saint who had wrought a miracle was painfully austere. Jeanne ate almost nothing. A sip of watered wine, a few pieces of bread. At night, she lay prostrate on the cold floor, motionless in prayer.
One night, Charlotte asked into the darkness — "Aren't you afraid?"
Jeanne turned her head slowly. "I am." Her voice was low and calm. "But the voices guide me. It is what I must do."
🔥 Cannon fire sounded against the walls in the distance. Jeanne pulled on her armor and rode out. Within days she had broken the English forts ringing the city, one by one. An arrow struck her shoulder. She was carried back to the Bouchet house, weeping, they say. She was, after all, only seventeen.
She did not stay long. On the day she rode for the front, she placed an old grey cap on her young roommate's head. That was her farewell.
Afterward, Jeanne went to Reims. Charles VII received his coronation. The following year, Jeanne was captured at Compiègne.
At the trial in Rouen in 1431, she said — "My name is Jeanne, and in Domrémy they called me Jeannette."
She was burned at the stake in Rouen. She was nineteen. They called her a witch.
🕊️ "At night I slept alone with her. I never saw or heard anything in her words or deeds that was wrong. She was simple, humble, and chaste."
Charlotte testified concerning her — Jeanne d'Arc.
No comments:
Post a Comment