CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 21716, 31 May 1932, Page 6

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

WAS JOAN BURNT? How often in these later days has the ~-orld been ready to believe reports that prominent people whose deaths have oeen announced, are really alive, hiding behind convenient obituary notices. Hector Macdonald was a case in point. Years after his death, he was reported to have been seen by Winston Churchill in China acting as instructor to the armies there, and in the Great War, of course, he was credited with fighting for the Germans as General Mackensen. Nero, after his death, was reported to have fled to Greece as a singer, and quite a large number of people in Rome awaited the return of the red-headed Emperor. It is not surprising, therefore, to read that for many years people in France did not believe that Joan of Arc was actually burnt at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431. As a matter of fact it is stated that the archives of the city of Mentz contain records of her arrival there in 1436, her identification of her brothers, and her marriage to Robert d’Armoise, knight. In the archives of the city of Orleans, the treasurer’s account includes the record of fragments to her brother, Jean de Lys in 1436. that he might visit her, and there is also in the year 1439 a. record of fragments by the treasurer for banquets in connection with a welcome to Robert d’Armoise and Jeanne. At that time, too, a fragment of 210 livres, according to the records, was made to Jeanne d’Armoise in recognition of her services to the city in the siege. It has been urged, of course, that Jeanne d’Armoise was an imposter and that Joan’s brothers participated in the frauds. The story that a criminal was burnt in her place was prevalent in France fo. some years after 1431, and quite a number of women were punished as imposters; but there is no record of any such punishment having been visited on Jeanne d’Armoise, not even in Orleans where Joan must have been known personally to many. Quite a number of French antiquaries in comparatively recent times, accepted the theory that she was kept in prison until after the Duke of Bedford’s death in 1435, and was then liberated. An interesting puzzle and one which the historians have never completely discredited—in fact it is difficult to see how they could at this distance. — CRITICUS.