12th of May, 1431, she was taken from the prison under an escort of one hundred and twenty armed men. She was clad in female apparel, and upon her head was placed a paper crown, inscribed, "Apostate, heretic, idolatress." She was supported by two Dominican friars, and as she passed through the thronged streets, she exclaimed, "Oh, Rouen! Rouen! must thou be my last abode !" She uttered blessings on the people as she passed, and supplicated Heaven to have mercy upon her accusers, judges, and executioners. Seated upon the scaffold was the English cardinal of Winchester, the Bishop of Terouanne, Chancellor of France, Bishop of Beauvois, and the other judges. To these the heavily-fettered maiden was delivered; and she ascended the scaffold with her face bathed in tears. Her funeral sermon was then preached!—yes, in view of heaven, a professed ambassador of the meek and merciful Jesuspreached the funeral sermon of a living, weak, defenceless, innocent girl! and she was then handed over to the secular officers to be put to death. Before she descended to mount the fatal pile, she knelt down and prayed Heaven to forgive all. Nor was the ungrateful Charles forgotten in her last moments, and she invoked the blessing of Heaven upon him and her country. As she arose from her knees, one of the judges said, “take her away!" and the executioner, trembling like an aspen, advanced, received her from the guards, and led her to the funeral pile. She asked for a crucifix, which being given her, she kissed it, and pressed it to her bosom. The fagots were lighted, and in a few moments she was surrounded with flames. An awful silence pervaded the multitude, and no voice was heard but that of the dying martyr, whose lips, until seared by flames, uttered the name of Jesus, mingled with the groans which the violence of her anguish extorted from her.-By order of the Bishop of Winchester, her ashes were collected and thrown into the river. Thus died this extraordinary maiden at the age of nineteen years, to whom, Hume justly observed, "the more liberal and generous superstitions of the ancients would have erected altars." This last tragedy in the drama of her wonderful career, is an eternal stigma, not only on the two nations immediately concerned, but upon the age in which she lived; and the actors in the scene, however much they may be robed in sacerdotal dignity and reverence, should receive the execrations of the good in all ages, as fit brethren for the Neros and Caligulas of ancient Rome. Twenty years afterward her mother demanded and obtained a reversal of her sentence, and by the Bishop of Paris her character was fully cleared from every imputation of guilt of the crimes of which she was accused. At Orleans, Rouen, and various parts of France, monuments were erected to her honor; and by a bull of Pope Calixtus III., she was declared a martyr to her religion, her country, and her king |