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So Lodovico Moro, "that hero of patience and cunning," as Michelet calls him, at length attained his object, and found himself sole Regent of Milan.
The French historian, Michelet, whose Histoire Romaine would have been invaluable if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men.
In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them.
"Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself, "ten thousand men wept;" and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition.
Michélet is too well known as a truly Republican historiographer and truly humane and noble writer, and the former volumes of this history have been too long before the public, to require for this volume a particular recommendation. It begins with the last décade of the sixteenth century, and concludes with the year 1626.
He announces a still greater triumph: "I believe I have effectually suppressed old women. They will no longer be met with." M. Michelet has not seen the columns of some of our weekly newspapers. These are scales from the husk of his book, which, with all its fantasies, is a generous plea for woman. Wise persons may safely read it, though they be not Parisians.
M. Michelet will have her to be a Champenoise, and for no better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be a Champenois. These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a mixed race, representing the cis and the trans.
Now, I affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word "thought" applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La Pucelle; here is England defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles, every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness; that Joanna was a woman; ergo, that she was liable to such a weakness.
Hamlet only stabbed a silly old councillor behind the arras; Charles of Orleans trampled France for five years under the hoofs of his banditti. The miscarriage of Hamlet's vengeance was confined, at widest, to the palace; the ruin wrought by Charles of Orleans was as broad as France. Michelet, iv. App. 179, p. 337. Yet the first act of the young duke is worthy of honourable mention.
Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M. Michelet viz, to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanour on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorise me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness.
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