In 1870, Daumier drew a cartoon of soldiers filing past a monument of the fatherland, with the caption: 'Ceux qui vont mourir te saluent.' Wandering about quiet French churches, one always comes on a dusty tablet with a list of long-forgotten names, and the brief valediction: 'Morts pour la France'. Close to it very often stands Joan of Arc, in armour, sword in hand, as if pointing young men to the battlefield, to die for France, or whatever France has fought its wars for. It was tragically appropriate that she was canonised in 1920, just after a million men had died for France; she was wafted up to Heaven on a gale of high explosive and poison gas. A woman burned by the Inquisition for insubordination to Holy Church was not a person the Church could easily bring itself to honour, but towards the end of five centuries of waiting her promotion was rapid. She was made Venerable in 1903, a bizarre title for a girl of 19, and Beatified in 1909, when France was drifting towards war; drifting also into infidelity, which might be checked by a distinction conferred on the embodiment of French patriotism.

LRB 15 October 1981 | PDF Download