Talk:Philippe-Alexandre Le Brun de Charmettes

deleted passages

Are quotations from a review and from the introduction to the History. Irrelevant there, but I will save the passages here.

Includes Epitre au Comte Ed. de V... sur le Libéralisme - Epitre aux libéraux sur leur manière de gouverner la France - Epitre à Mr. Montalivet sur la peur - Epitre à Mr de Chateaubriand sur sa dernière brochure.

Joan of Arc

A contemporary review

In a first extract [...] we expressed in the author's own words the indignation by which he was transfixed, considering the indifference of the French writers to interesting details that could offer the history of a heroine to whom the safety of France is due. In this extract we will summarize the research he made to demonstrate this ingratitude. The historian collected information on her early years at Vaucouleurs, a small old town in Champagne (France), near its hamlet of Domremi, where Jeanne d'Arc was born(*). He got the details of her heroic life from the interrogations at the time of her infamous prosecution, in her answers to the interrogations, in the many depositions taken in the course of the case; in Joan of Arc's letter to the regent and the generals who made up the government of Orleans, and which are referred to in the judgment and in the town chronicle; in another letter which she wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, the original of which, filed in the exchequer before the revolution, is still in the prefecture records; and finally in an answer she made on August 22, 1427 in an undated letter to the Count of Armagnac. The letter and the answer are referred to in the judgment. The historian has set out or carefully described these authentic and original items to shed some light on their contents by subjecting them to a judicious criticism as the base of the narrative. The only historical work which it has used for certain facts is the handwritten history of Joan of Arc by Edmont Richer, the only historian to whom it gives credit in theological aspects. It is thanks to the great work of Mr. Le Brun de Charmettes delivered himself that it took the feather with confidence, and which must inspire it to its readers. In subsequent articles we will report some most remarkable or interesting features of its narration.

(*) History leads us to believe that the surname of her father Jacques came from the the small town of Arc en Barois, near Selonds, where he was born.

Anne97432 20:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The author's point of view

(From the preface) If this heroine whose story I am going to tell had lived in ancient Greece or Rome, the likes of Xenophon, Plutarch or Livy would have carefully recorded all the details of her life; Phidias's chisel or Apelles's paintbrush would have told us about her looks; many monuments on the banks of the Aegean or the Tiber would glorify her, next to the ruins of those that, many centuries later, tell us the feats of Miltiades, Themistocles, Scipio and Æmilius Paulus. Joan of Arc saved France: but the only monument that celebrated her memory, at the entrance of Orléans, was built by her King very late (1), and was brought down, under the rule of the last Valois, not by France's enemies, but - would you believe it? - by Frenchmen, by mad fanatics who forgot they had a homeland, and thereby showed they did not deserve one (2). Shortly afterwards, it was repaired (3), but then forgotten again for thirty years, far away from posterity (4), and at last reinstated by a grateful city (5). This monument has long since been abandoned (6). May its replacement last longer!

(1) In 1458. Le Maire, Histoire d’Orléans.
(2)   In 1567, calvinists used a cannon to destroy the statue of Joan of Arc on the Orléans bridge. Ibid.
(3) In 1570. Ibid.
(4) In 1745. Essais historiques sur Orléans. Orléans, 1778, Pag. 108 et 109.
(5) In 1771. Essais historiques, etc.
(6) In 1793. Jeanne d’Arc, Recueil historique par M. Chaussard.