Jean Fouquet's portrait of Charles VII (Louvre); c.1450
Charles VII (1403-1461) was twenty-six years old at the time Jeanne came to see him.
As far as we can learn he was then a prince of sad countenance, extremely pious, and had grown very timid because of the excesses of his partisans who had dishonored his cause by murdering Jean sans Peur [Duke of Burgundy] on the bridge of Montereau. Charles, who had left Paris after the revolution of 1418, lived in Berry and Touraine "immured and shut up in castles, foul places and manors with little rooms," as Jouvenel des Ursins wrote, keeping himself "beyond the river Loire," far from the seat of war and the frontier provinces.
Very cautious, rather indolent and secretive, and greatly in need of money, the King was ruled by those who could procure resources for his treasury; he was a very temperate man, but lacking in will-power. It was only in his middle age that he gave himself to pleasure and to women.
In Jeanne d'Arc's time, it is certain that the King was like a sleepwalker. The question "Quare obdormis, domine?" was the refrain of the strong and fine letter of Jouvenel, who had a very especial authority in that time, since he took part in the council of 1430, "where he was often summoned" (Bibl. Nat. ms. fr. 16259)
Charles VII has often been accused of ingratitude to Jeanne, who had him crowned at Reims. He was certainly mistaken in believing in the sincerity of the Burgundian truce, and in not attempting to take Paris in September, 1429. In brief, Charles VII did not see an immediate advantage in prosecuting energetically the conquest of his kingdom.
He did not know how to profit by all the consequences of the national movement that was aroused by Jeanne's advent. Abandoned in this fashion, the Maid could not but run the risks of every captain of the time, without the benefit of the power of being ransomed from implacable enemies.
But it is not just to pretend that Charles VII did nothing to get her out of the hands of her enemies. In the Morosini correspondence we find, under the date of December 15, 1430, that the news that the Maid had fallen into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy was so widespread that Charles, informed of it, had sent an embassy to Philippe te Bon to say to him that if there was nothing he could offer him to induce him to set her free, then he would exact vengeance for her upon his men that he had captive.
Under the date of June 21 , 1431, correspondents of the same banker affirm that "The English wished to burn her (Jeanne) as a heretic, in spite of the Dauphin of France who tried to bring threatening forces against the English." The King felt a "very bitter grief" upon the death of Jeanne, "promising to exact a terrible vengeance upon the English and women of England."
These last words show sufficiently what was felt and said by the good people of France. We know, too, that during the winter of 14301431, La Hire, master of Louviers, made frequent expeditions into the neighborhood of Rouen, and that he worried the English government. In March, 1431, an expedition against Rouen by Dunois was paid for by the King. Another attempt was made against the Chateau d'Eu.
It does not appear that before Charles's entrance into Rouen that anything could have been done towards Jeanne's rehabilitation. This is not surprising if one remembers the unfortunate and decisive influence that Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, had upon the King. The Archbishop had the temerity to disavow the Maid publicly. It is also welt to remember that in the address that Jean Jouffroy made before Pope Pius 11 in 1459, he declared that it was in order to manage Charles, Jeanne's admirer, that he had not objected more than he had to his making use of her.
Pius II, who had for informers the University men of Bâle and Jean Jouffroy, declared that he had found nothing reprehensible in her save her wearing men's clothing. Charles, he knew, "bore very bitterly the death of the Maid." It is true that Charles considered himself attainted in honor by Jeanne's conviction, and that he ordered the first steps in the revision of her Trial.
Charles VII was represented kneeling, turned toward Jeanne d'Arc at the foot of the crucifix and the Virgin, in the first monument raised in Jeanne's memory, on the bridge at Orléans at the end of the Fifteenth Century.
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