We are told by M. Blaze de Bury of an ancient custom which we do not find stated elsewhere. A platform was erected, he tells us, outside the choir of the cathedral to which the King was led the evening before the coronation, surrounded by his peers, who showed him to the assembled people with a traditional proclamation: "Here is your King whom we, peers of France, crown as King and sovereign lord. And if there is a soul here which has any objection to make, let him speak and we will answer him. And to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of the Holy Spirit if you have nothing to say against it." The people replied by cries of "Noel, Noel!" It is not to be supposed that the veto of the people of Rheims would have been effectual had they opposed: but the scene is wonderfully picturesque. No doubt Jeanne too was there, watching over her King, as she seems to have done, like a mother over her child, at this crisis of his affairs.

That night there was little sleep in Rheims, for everything had to be prepared in haste, the decorations of the cathedral, the provisions for the ceremonial. Many of the necessary articles were at Saint Denis in the hands of the English, and the treasury of the cathedral had to be ransacked to find the fitting vessels. Fortunately it was rich, more rich probably than it is now, when the commonplace silver of the beginning of this century has replaced the ancient vials. Through the short summer night everyone was at work in these preparations; and by the dawn of day visitors began to flow into the city, great personages and small, to attend the great ceremonial and to pay their homage. The greatest of all was the Duke of Lorraine, he who had consulted Jeanne about his health, husband of the heiress of that rich principality, and son of Queen Yolande who was no doubt with the Court. All France seemed to pour into the famous town, where so important an act was about to be accomplished, with money and wine flowing on all hands, and the enthusiasm growing along with the popular excitement and profit. Even great London is stirred to its limits, many miles off from the centre of proceedings, by such a great event; how much more the little mediaeval city, in which every one might hope to see something of the pageant, as one shining group after another, with armour blazing in the sun, and sleek horses caracoling, arrived at the great gates of the Archeveche: and lesser parties scarcely less interesting poured in in need of lodging, of equipment and provisions; while every housewife searched her stores for a piece of brilliant stuff, of old silk or embroidery, to make her house shine like the rest.

Early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of the Archbishop's house. Four splendid peers of France, in full armour with their banners, rode through the streets to the old Abbey of Saint Remy—the old church which Leo IX. consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day—to fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of consecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven. These noble messengers were the "hostages" of this sacred charge, engaging themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it was restored to its appointed guardians. This vow having been made, the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the cathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in the flashes of their armour. This procession was met half-way, before the Church of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd.

The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest. We hear nothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good uncle who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durand who was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne's life in her childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d'Arc still stood aloof, dour, as a Scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter's intimacy with all these fine people, and in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less than shame to such rugged folk. And there were his two sons who would take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace he was more at home than with Jeanne. What the Maid had to do on the morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home talk with her relations. She who felt herself commissioned not only to lead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part in her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke of Burgundy. She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God's will were French. It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip of Burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the breach which had torn France in two:

JHESUS, MARIA.

High and redoubtable Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Jeanne the Maid requires on the part of the King of Heaven, my most just sovereign and Lord (mon droicturier souverain seigneur), that the King of France and you make peace between yourselves, firm, strong and that will endure. Pardon each other of good heart, entirely, as loyal Christians ought to do, and if you desire to fight let it be against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, supplicate, and require, as humbly as may be, fight no longer against the holy kingdom of France: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and on the part of the gentle King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, having respect to his honour, and upon your life that you never will gain a battle against loyal Frenchmen and that all those who war against the said holy kingdom of France, war against the King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world and my just and sovereign Lord. And I pray and require with clasped hands that you fight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor your subjects; but believe always however great in number may be the men you lead against us, that you will never win, and it would be great pity for the great battle and the blood that would be shed of those who came against us. Three weeks ago I sent you a letter by a herald that you should be present at the consecration of the King, which to-day, Sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of July, is done in the city of Rheims: to which I have had no answer, nor even any news by the said herald. To God I commend you, and may He be your guard if it pleases Him, and I pray God to make good peace.

Written at the aforesaid Rheims, the seventeenth day of July, 1429.

When the letter was finished Jeanne put on her armour and prepared for the great ceremony. We are not told what part she took in it, nor is any more prominent position assigned to her than among the noble crowd of peers and generals who surrounded the altar, where her place would naturally be, upon the broad raised platform of the choir, so excellently adapted for such ceremonies. Her banner we are told was borne into the cathedral, in order, as she proudly explained afterwards, that having been foremost in the danger it should share the honour.

But we have no right to suppose that the Maid took the position of the chief actor in the pageant and stood alone by the side of Charles, as the exigencies of the pictorial art have required her to do. When, however, the ceremony was completed, and he had received on his knees the anointing which separated him as king from every other class of men, and while the lofty vaults echoed with the cries of Noel! Noel! by which the people hailed the completed ceremony, Jeanne could contain herself no longer. The object was attained for which she had laboured and struggled, and overcome every opponent. She stepped forward out of the brilliant crowd, and threw herself at the feet of the now crowned monarch, embracing his knees. "Gentle King," she cried with tears, "now is the pleasure of God fulfilled—whose will it was that I should raise the siege of Orleans and lead you to this city of Rheims to receive your consecration. Now has He shown that you are true King, and that the kingdom of France truly belongs to you alone."

Those broken words, her tears, the cry of that profound satisfaction which is almost anguish, the "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," which is so suitable to the lips of the old, so poignant from those of the young, pierced all hearts. It is added that she asked leave to withdraw, her work being done, and that all who saw her were filled with sympathy. It was no doubt the irresistible outburst of a heart too full; and though that fulness was all joy and triumph, yet there was in it a sense of completed work, a rending asunder and tearing away from life, the end of a wonderful and triumphant tale.

There is a considerable controversy as to the precise meaning of that outburst of emotion. Did the Maid mean that her work was over, and her divine mission fulfilled? Was this all that she believed herself to be appointed to do? or did she expect, as she sometimes said, to bouter the English out of France altogether? In the one case she ought to have relinquished her work, and in not doing so she acted without the protection of God which had hitherto made her invulnerable. In the other, her "voices," her inspiration, must have failed her, for her course of triumph went no farther. It is impossible to decide between these contending theories. She did speak in both senses, sometimes declaring that she was to take Paris, sometimes, her intention to bouter the English out of the kingdom. At the same time she betrayed a constant conviction that her office had limitations and must come to an end. "I will last but a year," she said to the King and to Alencon. The testimony of Dunois seems to be the best we can have on this point. He says in his deposition, made many years after her death: "Although Jeanne sometimes talked playfully to amuse people, of things concerning the war which were not afterwards accomplished, yet when she spoke seriously of the war, and of her own career and her vocation, she never affirmed anything but that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead the King to Rheims to be crowned."

If this were so was she wrong in continuing her warfare, and did she place herself in the position of one who goes on her own charges, finding the mission from on high unnecessary? Or in the other case did her inspiration fail her, or were the intrigues of Charles and his Court sufficient to balk the designs of Heaven? We prefer to think that Jeanne's commission concerned only those two things which she accomplished so completely; but that in continuing the war, she acted only as a well inspired and honourable young soldier might, though no longer as the direct messenger of God. She had as much right to do so as to return to her distaff or her needle in her native village; but she became subject to all the ordinary laws of war by so doing, exposed herself to be taken or overthrown like any man-at-arms, and accepted that risk. What is certain is, that every intrigue sprang up again afresh on the evening of that brilliant and triumphant ceremonial, and that from the moment of the accomplishment of her great work the failure of the Maid began.

These intrigues had been in her way since her very first beginning, as has been seen. At Orleans, in the very field as well as in the council chamber and the presence, everything was done to balk her, and to cross her plans, but in vain; she triumphed over every contrivance against her, and broke through the plots, and overcame the plotters. But after Rheims the combination of dangers became ever greater and greater, and we may say that no merely human general would have had a chance in face of the many and bewildering influences of evil. Charles who was himself, at least at this period of his career, sufficiently indolent and unenterprising to have damped the energies of any commander, was, in addition, surrounded by advisers who had always been impatient and jealous of the interference of Jeanne, and would have cast her off as a witch, or passed her by as an impostor, had that been possible, without permitting her to strike a blow. They had now grudgingly made use of her, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her action where they had no power to restrain it: but they were as little friendly, as malignant in their treatment of the Maid as ever, and more hopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able to shake her off and pursue their fate in their own way.

The position of Charles crowned King of France with all the traditional pomp, master of the Orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming in to swell his army day by day, and Paris itself almost within his reach, was very different from that of the discredited Dauphin at Chinon, whom half the world believed to have no right to the crown which his own mother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in folly to the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and trafficked with his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. The strange apparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken up and saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for a moment to be hateful to La Tremouille and his party; and Charles—though he seems to have had a certain appreciation of the Maid, and even a liking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith in her mission—was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, and probably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour with Heaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success: certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. But that she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantly apparent to them all. To keep her as a sort of tame angel about the Court in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart into the soldiers and frighten the English as she certainly had the gift of doing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. And they dared not let her go "because of the people," nor, may we believe, would Alencon, Dunois, La Hire, and the rest have tolerated thus the abandonment of their comrade. To dismiss her even at her own word would have been impossible, and it is hard to believe that Jeanne, after that extraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, could have gone back to her father's cottage of the village, though she thought she would fain have done so. If we are to believe that she felt her mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serve France and the King as seemed best.

And we have no evidence that her "voices" forsook her, or discouraged her. They seem to have changed a little in their burden, they began to mingle a sadder tone in their intimations. It began to be breathed into her mind though not immediately, that something was to happen to her, some disaster not explained, yet that God was to be with her. It seems to me that all the circumstances are compatible with a change in Jeanne's consciousness, from the moment of the coronation. It might have been a grander thing had she retired there and then, her work being accomplished as she declared it to be; but it would not have been human. She was still a power, if no longer the direct messenger from Heaven; a general, with much skill and natural aptitude if not the Sent of God; and the ardour of a military career had got into her veins. No doubt she was much more good for that, now, than for sitting by the side of Isabeau d'Arc at Domremy, and working even into a piece of embroidery for the altar, her remembrances and visions of camp and siege and the intoxication of victory. She remained, conscious that she was no longer exactly as of old, to fight not only against the English, but with intimate enemies, far more bitter, whom now she knew, against the ordinary fortune of war, and against that which is a thousand times worse, the hatred and envy, the cruel carelessness, and the malignant schemes of her own countrymen for whom she had fought.

This, so far as we can judge, appears to be the position of Jeanne in the second portion of her career; perhaps only dimly apprehended and at moments, by herself; not much thought of probably by those around her, the wisest of whom had always been sceptical of her divine commission; while the populace never saw any change in her, and believed that at one time as well as at another the Maid was the Maid, and had victory at her command. And no doubt that influence would have endured for some time at least, and her dauntless rush against every obstacle would have carried success with it, had she been able to carry out her plans, and fly forth upon Paris as she had done upon Orleans, carrying on the campaign swiftly, promptly, without pause or uncertainty. Bedford himself said that Paris "would fall at a blow," if she came on. It had been hard enough, however, to do that, as we have seen, when she was the only hope of France and had the fire of the divine enthusiasm in her veins; but it was still more hard now to mould a young King elated with triumph, beginning to feel the crown safe upon his head, and to feel that if there was still much to gain, there was now a great deal to be lost. The position was complicated and made more difficult for Jeanne by every advantage she had gained.

In the meantime the secret negotiations, which were always being carried on under the surface, had come to this point, that Charles had made a private treaty with Philip of Burgundy by which that prince pledged himself to give up Paris into the King's hands within fifteen days. This agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marching against Paris, delay which was Charles's invariable method, and which but for Jeanne's hardihood and determination, had all but crushed the expedition to Rheims itself. It was never with any will of his or of his adviser, La Tremouille, that any stronghold was assailed. He would fain have passed by Troyes, as the reader will remember, he would fain have delayed going to Rheims; in each case he had been forced to move by the impetuosity of the Maid. But a treaty which touched the honour of the King was a different matter. Philip of Burgundy, with whom it was made, seems to have held the key of the position. He was called to Paris by Bedford on one side to defend the city against its lawful King; he had pledged himself on the other to Charles to give it up. He had in his hands, though it is uncertain whether he ever read it, that missive of the sorceress, the letter of Jeanne which I have quoted, calling upon him on the part of God to make peace. What was he to do? There were reasons drawing him to both sides. He was the enemy of Charles on account of the murder of his father, and therefore had every interest in keeping Paris from him; he was angry with the English on account of the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Brabant, which interfered with his own rights and safety in Flanders, and therefore might have served himself by giving up the capital to the King. As for the appeal of Jeanne, what was the letter of that mad creature to a prince and statesman? The progress of affairs was arrested by this double problem. Jeanne had been the prominent, the only important figure in the history of France for some months past. Now that shining figure was jostled aside, and the ordinary laws of life, with all the counter changes of negotiation, the ineffectual comings and goings, the meaner half-seen persons, the fierce contending personal interests—in which there was no love of either God or man, or any elevated notion of patriotism—came again into play.

Jeanne would seem to have already foreseen and felt this change even before she left Rheims; there is a new tone of sadness in some of her recorded words; or if not of sadness, at least of consciousness that an end was approaching to all these triumphs and splendours. The following tale is told in various different versions, as occurring with different people; but the account I give is taken from the lips of Dunois himself, a very competent witness. As the King, after his coronation, wended his way through the country, receiving submission and joyous welcome from every village and little town, it happened that while passing through the town of La Ferte, Jeanne rode between the Archbishop of Rheims and Dunois. The Archbishop had never been friendly to the Maid, and now it was clear, watched her with that half satirical, half amused look of the wise man, curious and cynical in presence of the incomprehensible, observing her ways and very ready to catch her tripping and to entangle her if possible in her own words. The people thronged the way, full of enthusiasm, acclaiming the King and shouting their joyful exclamations of "Noel!" though it does not appear that any part of their devotion was addressed to Jeanne herself. "Oh, the good people," she cried with tears in her eyes, "how joyful they are to see their noble King! And how happy should I be to end my days and be buried here among them!" The priest unmoved by such an exclamation from so young a mouth attempted instantly, like the Jewish doctors with our Lord, to catch her in her words and draw from her some expression that might be used against her. "Jeanne," he said, "in what place do you expect to die?" It was a direct challenge to the messenger of Heaven to take upon herself the gift of prophecy. But Jeanne in her simplicity shattered the snare which probably she did not even perceive: "When it pleases God," she said. "I know neither the place nor the time."

It was enough, however, that she should think of death and of the sweetness of it, after her work accomplished, in the very moment of her height of triumph—to show something of a new leaven working in her virgin soul.

One characteristic reward, however, Jeanne did receive. Her father and uncle were lodged at the public cost as benefactors of the kingdom, as may still be seen by the inscription on the old inn in the great Place at Rheims; and when Jacques d'Arc left the city he carried with him a patent—better than one of nobility which, however, came to the family later—of exemption for the villages of Domremy and Greux of all taxes and tributes; "an exemption maintained and confirmed up to the Revolution, in favour of the said Maid, native of that parish, in which are her relations." "In the register of the Exchequer," says M. Blaze de Bury, "at the name of the parish of Greux and Domremy, the place for the receipt is blank, with these words as explanation: a cause de la Pucelle, on account of the Maid." There could not have been a more delightful reward or one more after her own heart. It would be a graceful act of the France of to-day, which has so warmly revived the name and image of her maiden deliverer, to renew so touching a distinction to her native place.

We are told that Jeanne parted with her father and uncle with tears, longing that she might return with them and go back to her mother who would rejoice to see her again. This was no doubt quite true, though it might be equally true that she could not have gone back. Did not the father return, a little sullen, grasping the present he had himself received, not sure still that it was not disreputable to have a daughter who wore coat armour and rode by the side of the King, a position certainly not proper for maidens of humble birth? The dazzled peasants turned their backs upon her while she was thus at the height of glory, and never, so far as appears, saw her face again.



CHAPTER VII — THE SECOND PERIOD. 1429-1430.

The epic so brief, so exciting, so full of wonder had now reached its climax. Whatever we may think on the question as to whether Jeanne had now reached the limit of her commission, it is at least evident that she had reached the highest point of her triumph, and that her short day of glory and success came to an end in the great act which she had always spoken of as her chief object. She had crowned her King; she had recovered for him one of the richest of his provinces, and established a strong base for further action on his part. She had taught Frenchmen how not to fly before the English, and she had filled those stout-hearted English, who for a time had the Frenchmen in their powerful steel-clad grip, with terror and panic, and taught them how to fly in their turn. This was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do, and not one of her promises had been broken. Her career had been a short one, begun in April, ending in July, one brief continuous course of glory. But this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. The messenger of God had done her work; the servant must not desire to be greater than his Lord. There have been heroes in this world whose career has continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. Our hearts follow them in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over they come into their kingdom and reap their reward the interest fails. We are glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but their happiness does not attract us like their struggle.

It is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those of this world. When they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph into sorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow the bleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love, and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure, which proves that our birthright too is of Heaven, however we may tarnish or even deny that highest pedigree. The chivalrous romance of that age would have made of Jeanne d'Arc the heroine of human story. She would have had a noble lover, say our young Guy de Laval, or some other generous and brilliant Seigneur of France, and after her achievements she would have laid by her sword, and clothed herself with the beautiful garments of the age, and would have grown to be a noble lady in some half regal chateau, to which her name would have given new lustre. The young reader will probably long that it should be so; he will feel it an injustice, a wrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward; it will seem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noble chevalier at hand to snatch that devoted Maid out of the danger that threatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her; and we can imagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash their teeth at the terrible and dishonouring thought that it was by English hands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished in the flames. For the last it becomes us(1) to repent, for it was to our everlasting shame; but not more to us than to France who condemned her, who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest, against the cruelty and wrong. But for her fate in itself let us not mourn over-much. Had the Maid become a great and honoured lady should not we all have said as Satan says in the Book of Job: Did Jeanne serve God for nought? We should say: See what she made by it. Honour and fame and love and happiness. She did nobly, but nobly has she been rewarded.

But that is not God's way. The highest saint is born to martyrdom. To serve God for nought is the greatest distinction which He reserves for His chosen. And this was the fate to which the Maid of France was consecrated from the moment she set out upon her mission. She had the supreme glory of accomplishing that which she believed herself to be sent to do, and which I also believe she was sent to do, miraculously, by means undreamed of, and in which no one beforehand could have believed. But when that was done a higher consecration awaited her. She had to drink of the cup of which our Lord drank, and to be baptised with the baptism with which He was baptised. It was involved in every step of the progress that it should be so. And she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. What else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl of eighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touch her, was a benediction? When she went forth from those gates she was going to her execution, though the end was not to be yet. There was still a long struggle before her, lingering and slow, more bitter than death, the preface of discouragement, of disappointment, of failure when she had most hoped to succeed.

She was on the threshold of this second period when she rode out of Rheims all brilliant in the summer weather, her banner faded now, but glorious, her shining armour bearing signs of warfare, her end achieved—yet all the while her heart troubled, uncertain, and full of unrest. And it is impossible not to note that from this time her plans were less defined than before. Up to the coronation she had known exactly what she meant to do, and in spite of all obstructions had done it, keeping her genial humour and her patience, steering her simple way through all the intrigues of the Court, without bitterness and without fear. But now a vague mist seems to fall about the path which was so open and so clear. Paris! Yes, the best policy, the true generalship would have been to march straight upon Paris, to lose no time, to leave as little leisure as possible to the intriguers to resume their old plots. So the generals thought as well as Jeanne: but the courtiers were not of that mind. The weak and foolish notion of falling back upon what they had gained, and of contenting themselves with that, was all they thought of; and the un-French, unpatriotic temper of Paris which wanted no native king, but was content with the foreigner, gave them a certain excuse. We could not even imagine London as being ever, at any time, contented with an alien rule. But Paris evidently was so, and was ready to defend itself to the death against its lawful sovereign. Jeanne had never before been brought face to face with such a complication. It had been a straightforward struggle, each man for his own side, up to this time. But now other things had to be taken into consideration. Here was no faithful Orleans holding out eager arms to its deliverer, but a crafty, self-seeking city, deaf to patriotism, indifferent to freedom, calculating which was most to its profit—and deciding that the stranger, with Philip of Burgundy at his back, was the safer guide. This was enough of itself to make a simple mind pause in astonishment and dismay.

There is no evidence that the supernatural leaders who had shaped the course of the Maid failed her now. She still heard her "voices." She still held communion with the three saints who, she believed devoutly, came out of Heaven to aid her. The whole question of this supernatural guidance is one which is of course open to discussion. There are many in these days who do not believe in it at all, who believe in the exaltation of Jeanne's brain, in the excitement of her nerves, in some strange complication of bodily conditions, which made her believe she saw and heard what she did not really see or hear. For our part, we confess frankly that these explanations are no explanation at all so far as we are concerned; we are far more inclined to believe that the Maid spoke truth, she who never told a lie, she who fulfilled all the promises she made in the name of her guides, than that those people are right who tell us on their own authority that such interpositions of Heaven are impossible. Nobody in Jeanne's day doubted that Heaven did interpose directly in human affairs. The only question was, Was it Heaven in this instance? Was it not rather the evil one? Was it sorcery and witchcraft, or was it the agency of God? The English believed firmly that it was witchcraft; they could not imagine that it was God, the God of battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courage out of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. It was the devil, and the Maid herself was a wicked witch. Neither one side nor the other believed that it was from Jeanne's excited nerves that these great things came. There were plenty of women with excited nerves in France, nerves much more excited than those of Jeanne, who was always reasonable at the height of her inspiration; but to none of them did it happen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy—up to that moment invincible,—flying from the field.

But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear and definite message for the Maid. Their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. "Fear not, for God will stand by you." She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. For the first time the Maid was often sad; she feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orleans and Rheims had been clear as daylight, her "voices" had said to her "Do this" and she had done it. Now there was no definite direction. She had to judge for herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. This of itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart. M. Fabre tells (alone among the biographers of Jeanne) that there were symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways during the moment of triumph. Her chaplain Pasquerel wrote a letter in her name to the Hussites, against whom the Pope was then sending crusades, in which "I, the Maid," threatened, if they were not converted, to come against them and give them the alternative of death or amendment. Quicherat says that to the Count d'Armagnac who had written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three then existent Popes was the real one, she is reported to have answered that she would tell him as soon as the English left her free to do so. But this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and M. Fabre seems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates: and the documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestioned authority. These, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshine of her perfect humility and sobriety; if indeed they are to be depended upon as authentic at all.

The day of Jeanne, her time of glory and success, was but a short one—Orleans was delivered on the 8th of May, the coronation of Charles took place on the 17th of July; before the earliest of these dates she had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle of preparation, before she was permitted to enter upon her career. The time of her discouragement was longer. It was ten months from the day when she rode out of Rheims, the 25th of July, 1429, till the 23d of May, 1430, when she was taken. She had said after the deliverance of Orleans that she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a later period, Easter, 1430, her "voices" told her that "before the St. Jean" she would be in the power of her enemies. Both these statements came true. She rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon the downward course, unable to carry out what she would, hampered on every hand, and not apparently followed with the same fervour as of old. It is true that the principal cause of all seems to have been the schemes of the Court and the indolence of Charles; but all these hindrances had existed before, and the King and his treacherous advisers had been unwillingly dragged every mile of the way, though every step made had been to Charles's advantage. But now though the course is still one of victory the Maid no longer seems to be either the chief cause or the immediate leader. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that little fighting was necessary, town after town yielding to the King, which reduced the part of Jeanne to that of a spectator; but there is a change of atmosphere and tone which seems to point to something more fundamental than this. The historians are very unwilling to acknowledge, except Michelet who does so without hesitation, that she had herself fixed the term of her commission as ending at Rheims; it is certain that she said many things which bear this meaning, and every fact of her after career seems to us to prove it: but it is also true that her conviction wavered, and other sayings indicate a different belief or hope. She did no wrong in following the profession of arms in which she had made so glorious a beginning; she had many gifts and aptitudes for it of which she was not herself at first aware: but she was no longer the Envoy of God. Enough had been done to arouse the old spirit of France, to break the spell of the English supremacy; it was right and fitting that France should do the rest for herself. Perhaps Jeanne was not herself very clear on this point, and after her first statement of it, became less assured. It is not necessary that the servant should know the designs of the master. It did not after all affect her. Her business was to serve God to the best of her power, not to take the management out of His hands.

The army went forth joyously upon its way, directing itself towards Paris. There was a pilgrimage to make, such as the Kings of France were in the habit of making after their coronation; there were pleasant incidents, the submission of a village, the faint resistance, instantly overcome, of a small town, to make the early days pleasant. Laon and Soissons both surrendered. Senlis and Beauvais received the King's envoys with joy. The independent captains of the army made little circles about, like parties of pleasure, bringing in another and another little stronghold to the allegiance of the King. When he turned aside, taking as he passed through, without as yet any serious deflection, the road rather to the Loire than to Paris, success still attended him. At Chateau-Thierry resistance was expected to give zest to the movement of the forces, but that too yielded at once as the others had done. The dates are very vague and it seems difficult to find any mode of reconciling them. Almost all the historians while accusing the King of foolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans give us a description of the undefended state of Paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on the part of Charles might have carried with little difficulty, during the absence of all the chiefs from the city and the great terror of the inhabitants; but a comparison of dates shows that the Duke of Bedford re-entered Paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on which Charles left Rheims three days only after his coronation, so that he scarcely seems so much to blame as appears. But the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters, naturally lead to mistakes of this kind.

The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed to receive the King. Strange as it seems to say so Paris was bitterly, fiercely English at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to be taken into account as the most important in the whole matter. There was no answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliary force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. The populace perhaps might be indifferent: at the best it had no feeling on the subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the King. During the time of Bedford's absence the city felt itself to have "no lord"—ceux de Paris avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n' y avoit. It was believed that Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and hopeless defence than to submission. The Duke of Bedford, governing in the name of the infant Henry VI. Of England, was their seigneur, instead of their natural sovereign. It is a fact which to us seems scarcely credible, but it was certainly true. There seems to have been no feeling even, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal; nothing of the kind. Paris was English, holding by the English kings who had never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of its party. It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions. In the Journal du Bourgeois de Paris—who was no bourgeois but a distinguished member of that university which held the Maid and all her ways in horror—Jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism and of France is spoken of as "a creature in the form of a woman." How extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it is almost impossible to believe! Paris is France nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly English, not by compulsion even, but by habit and policy. Perhaps the delays, the hesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors are thus rendered more excusable than by any other explanation.

In the meantime it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings of this vacillating army without a map. If the reader should trace its movements, he would see what a stumbling and devious course it took as of a man blundering in the dark. From Rheims to Soissons the way was clear; then there came a sudden move southward to Chateau-Thierry from which indeed there was still a straight line to Paris but which still more clearly indicated the highroad leading to the Orleannais, the faithful districts of the Loire. This retrograde movement was not made without a great outcry from the generals. Their opinion was that the King ought to press on to conquer everything while the English forces were still depressed and discouraged. In their mind this deflection towards the south was an abandonment at once of honour and safety. An unimportant check on the way, however, gave an argument to the leaders of the army, and Charles permitted himself to be dragged back. They then made their way by La Ferte-Milon, Crepy, and Daumartin, and on this road the English troops which had been led out from Paris by Bedford to intercept them came twice within fighting distance of the French army. The English, as all the French historians are eager to inform us, invariably entrenched themselves in their positions, surrounding their lines with sharp-pointed posts by which the equally invariable rush of the French could be broken. But the French on these occasions were too wise to repeat the impetuous charge which had ruined them at Crecy and Agincourt, and the consequence was that the two forces remained within sight of each other, with a few skirmishes going on at the flanks, but without any serious encounter.

It will be more satisfactory, however, to copy the following itineraire of Charles's movements from the Chronicle of Perceval de Cagny who was a member of the household of the Duc d'Alencon, and probably present, certainly at all events bound to have the best and most correct information. He informs us that the King left Rheims on Thursday the 21st of July, and dined, supped, and lay at the Abbey of St. Nanuol that night, where were brought to him the keys of the city of Laon. He then set out on le voyage a venir devant Paris.

"And on Saturday the 23d of the same month the King dined, supped and lay at Soissons, and was there received the most honourably that the churchmen, burghers and other people of the town were capable of: for they had all great fear because of the destruction of the town which had been taken by the Burgundians and made to rebel against the King.

"Friday the 29th day of July the King and his company were all day before Chateau-Thierry in order of battle, hoping that the Duke of Bedford would appear to fight. The place surrendered at the hour of vespers, and the King lodged there till Monday the first of August. On that day the King lay at Monmirail in Brie.

"Tuesday the 2d of August he passed the night in the town of Provins, and had the best possible reception there, and remained till the Friday following, the 5th August. Sunday the 7th the King lay at the town of Coulommiers in Brie. Wednesday the 10th he lay at La Ferte- Milon, Thursday at Crespy in Valois—Friday at Laigny-le-Sec. The following Saturday the 13th the King held the field near Dammartin-en-Gouelle, for the whole day looking out for the English: but they came not.

"On Sunday the 14th August the Maid, the Duc d'Alencon, the Count de Vendosme, the Marshals and other captains accompanied by six or seven thousand combatants were at the hour of vespers lodged in the fields near Montepilloy, nearly two leagues from the town of Senlis—The Duke of Bedford and other English captains with between eight and ten thousand English lying half a league from Senlis between our people and the said city on a little stream, in a village called Notre Dame de la Victoire. That evening our people skirmished with the English near to their camp and in this skirmish were people taken on each side, and of the English Captain d'Orbec and ten or twelve others, and people wounded on both sides: when night fell each retired to their own quarters."

The same writer records an appeal in the true tone of chivalry addressed to the English by Jeanne and Alencon desiring them to come out from their entrenchments and fight: and promising to withdraw to a sufficient distance to permit the enemy to place himself in the open field. The French troops had first "put themselves in the best state of conscience that could possibly be, hearing mass at an early hour and then to horse." But the English would not come out. Jeanne, with her standard in her hand rode up to the English entrenchments, and some one says (not de Cagny) struck the posts with her banner, challenging the force within to come out and fight; while they on their side waved at the French in defiance, a standard copied from that of Jeanne, on which was depicted a distaff and spindle. But neither host approached any nearer. Finally, Charles made his way to Compiegne.

At Chateau-Thierry there was concluded an arrangement with Philip of Burgundy for a truce of fifteen days, before the end of which time the Duke undertook to deliver Paris peaceably to the French. That this was simply to gain time and that no idea of giving up Paris had ever been entertained is evident; perhaps Charles was not even deceived. He, no more than Philip, had any desire to encounter the dangers of such a siege. But he was able at least to silence the clamours of the army and the representations of the persistent Maid by this truce. To wait for fifteen days and receive the prize without a blow struck, would not that be best? The counsellors of the King held thus a strong position, though the delay made the hearts of the warriors sick.

The figure of Jeanne appears during these marchings and counter-marchings like that of any other general, pursuing a skilful but not unusual plan of campaign. That she did well and bravely there can be no doubt, and there is a characteristic touch which we recognise, in the fact that she and all of her company "put themselves in the best state of conscience that could be," before they took to horse; but the skirmishes and repulses are such as Alencon himself might have made. "She made much diligence," the same chronicler tells us, "to reduce and place many towns in the obedience of the King," but so did many others with like success. We hear no more her vigorous knock at the door of the council chamber if the discussion there was too long or the proceedings too secret. Her appearances are those of a general among many other generals, no longer with any special certainty in her movements as of a person inspired. We are reminded of a story told of a previous period, after the fight at Patay, when blazing forth in the indignation of her youthful purity at the sight of one of the camp followers, a degraded woman with some soldiers, she struck the wanton with the flat of her sword, driving her forth from the camp, where was no longer that chastened army of awed and reverent soldiers making their confession on the eve of every battle, whom she had led to Orleans. The sword she used on this occasion, was, it is said, the miraculous sword which had been found under the high altar of St. Catharine at Fierbois; but at the touch of the unclean the maiden brand broke in two. If this was an allegory(2) to show that the work of that weapon was over, and the common sword of the soldier enough for the warfare that remained, it could not be more clearly realised than in the history of this campaign. The only touch of our real Maid in her own distinct person comes to us in a letter written in a field on that same wavering road to Paris, dated as early as the 5th of August and addressed to the good people of Rheims, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was the meaning of the delay, and whether she had given up the cause of the country. There is a terse determination in its brief, indignant sentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering and purposeless campaign:

"Dear and good friends, good and loyal Frenchmen of the town of Rheims. Jeanne, the Maid, sends you news of her. It is true that the King has made a truce of fifteen days with the Duke of Burgundy, who promises to render peaceably the city of Paris in that time. Do not, however, be surprised if I enter there sooner, for I like not truces so made, and know not whether I will keep them, but if I keep them, it will be only because of the honour of the King."

While Jeanne and her army thus played with the unmoving English, advancing and retiring, attempting every means of drawing them out, the enemy took advantage of one of these seeming withdrawals to march out of their camp suddenly and return to Paris, which all this time had been lying comparatively defenceless, had the French made their attack sooner. At the same time Charles moved on to Compiegne where he gave himself up to fresh intrigues with Philip of Burgundy, this time for a truce to last till Christmas. The Maid was grievously troubled by this step, moult marrie, and by the new period of delay and negotiation on which the Court had entered. Paris was not given up, nor was there any appearance that it ever would be, and to all the generals as well as to the Maid it was very evident that this was the next step to be taken. Some of the leaders wearied with inaction had pushed on to Normandy where four great fortresses—greatest of all the immense and mysterious stronghold on the high cliffs of the Seine, that imposing Chateau Gaillard which Richard Coeur-de-lion had built, the ruins of which, white and mystic, still dominate, like some Titanic ghost, above the course of the river—had yielded to them. So great was the danger of Normandy, the most securely English of all French provinces, that Bedford had again been drawn out of Paris to defend it. Here then was another opportunity to seize the capital. But Charles could not be induced to move. He found many ways of amusing himself at Compiegne, and the new treaty was being hatched with Burgundy which gave an excuse for doing nothing. The pause which wearied them all out, both captains and soldiers, at last became more than flesh and blood could bear.

Jeanne once more was driven to take the initiative. Already on one occasion she had forced the hand of the lingering Court, and resumed the campaign of her own accord, an impatient movement which had been perfectly successful. No doubt again the army itself was becoming demoralised, and showing symptoms of falling to pieces. One day she sent for Alencon in haste during the absence of the ambassadors at Arras. "Beau duc," she cried, "prepare your troops and the other captains. En mon Dieu, par mon martin,(3) I will see Paris nearer than I have yet seen it." She had seen the towers from afar as she wandered over the country in Charles's lingering train. Her sudden resolution struck like fire upon the impatient band. They set out at once, Alencon and the Maid at the head of their division of the army, and all rejoiced to get to horse again, to push their way through every obstacle. They started on the 23d August, nearly a month after the departure from Rheims, a month entirely lost, though full of events, lost without remedy so far as Paris was concerned. At Senlis they made a pause, perhaps to await the King, who, it was hoped, would have been constrained to follow; then carrying with them all the forces that could be spared from that town, they spurred on to St. Denis where they arrived on the 27th: St. Denis, the other sacred town of France, the place of the tomb, as Rheims was the place of the crown.

The royalty of France was Jeanne's passion. I do not say the King, which might be capable of malinterpretation, but the kings, the monarchy, the anointed of the Lord, by whom France was represented, embodied and made into a living thing. She had loved Rheims, its associations, its triumphs, the rejoicing of its citizens. These had been the accompaniments of her own highest victory. She came to St. Denis in a different mood, her heart hot with disappointment and the thwarting of all her plans. From whatever cause it might spring, it was clear that she was no longer buoyed up by that certainty which only a little while before had carried her through every danger and over every obstacle. But to have reached St. Denis at least was something. It was a place doubly sacred, consecrated to that royal House for which she would so willingly have given her life. And at last she was within sight of Paris, the greatest prize of all. Up to this time she had known in actual warfare nothing but victory. If her heart for the first time wavered and feared, there was still no certain reason that, de par Dieu, she might not win the day again.

At St. Denis there was once more a cruel delay. Nearly a fortnight passed and there was no news of the King. The Maid employed the time in skirmishes and reconnoissances, but does not seem to have ventured on an attack without the sanction of Charles, whom Alencon, finally, going back on two several occasions, succeeded in setting in motion. Charles had remained at Compiegne to carry out his treaty with Burgundy, and the last thing he desired was this attack; but when he could resist no longer he moved on reluctantly to St. Denis, where his arrival was hailed with great delight. This was not until the 5th of September, and the army, wrought up to a high pitch of excitement and expectation, was eager for the fight. "There was no one of whatever condition, who did not say, 'She will lead the King into Paris, if he will let her,'" says the chronicler.

In the meantime the authorities in Paris were at work, strengthening its fortifications, frightening the populace with threats of the vengeance of Charles, persuading every citizen of the danger of submission.

The Bourgeois tells us that letters came from "les Arminoz," that is, the party of the King, sealed with the seal of the Duc d'Alencon, and addressed to the heads of the city guilds and municipality inviting their co-operation as Frenchmen. "But," adds the Parisian, "it was easy to see through their meaning, and an answer was returned that they need not throw away their paper as no attention was paid to it." There is no sign at all that any national feeling existed to respond to such an appeal. Paris—its courts of law, Parliaments (salaried by Bedford), University, Church—every department, was English in the first place, Burgundian in the second, dependent on English support and money. There was no French party existing. The Maid was to them an evil sorceress, a creature in the form of a woman, exercising the blackest arts. Perhaps there was even a breath of consciousness in the air that Charles himself had no desire for the fall of the city. He had left the Parisians full time to make every preparation, he had held back as long as was possible. His favour was all on the side of his enemies; for his own forces and their leaders, and especially for the Maid, he had nothing but discouragement, distrust, and auguries of evil.

Nevertheless, these oppositions came to an end, and Jeanne, though less ready and eager for the assault, found herself under the walls of Paris at last.

(1) "The English, not US," says Mr. Andrew Lang: and it is pleasant to a Scot to know that this is true. England and Scotland were then twain, and the Scots fought in the ranks of our auld Ally. But for the present age the distinction lasts no longer, and to the writer of an English book on English soil it would be ungenerous to take the advantage.

(2) It is taken as a miraculous sign by another chronicler, Jean Chartier, who tells us that when this fact came to the knowledge of the King the sword was given by him to the workmen to be re-founded—"but they could not do it, nor put the pieces together again: which is a great proof (grant approbation) that the sword came to her divinely. And it is notorious that since the breaking of that sword, the said Jeanne neither prospered in arms to the profit of the King nor otherwise as she had done before."

(3) "It was her oath," adds the chronicler; no one is quite sure what it means, but Quicherat is of opinion that it was her baton, her stick or staff. Perceval de Cagny puts in this exclamation in almost all the speeches of the Maid. It must have struck him as a curious adjuration. Perhaps it explains why La Hire, unable to do without something to swear by, was permitted by Jeanne in their frank and humorous camaraderie to swear by his stick, the same rustic oath.



CHAPTER VIII — DEFEAT AND DISCOURAGEMENT. AUTUMN, 1429.

It was on the 7th September that Jeanne and her immediate followers reached the village of La Chapelle, where they encamped for the night. The next day was the day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a great festival of the Church. It could scarcely be a matter of choice on the part of so devout a Catholic as Jeanne to take this day of all others, when every church bell was tinkling forth a summons to the faithful, for the day of assault. In all probability she was not now acting on her own impulse but on that of the other generals and nobles. Had she refused, might it not have been alleged against her that after all her impatience it was she who was the cause of delay? The forces with Jeanne were not very large, a great proportion of the army remaining with Charles no one seems to know where, either at St. Denis or at some intermediate spot, possibly to form a reserve force which could be brought up when wanted. The best informed historian only knows that Charles was not with the active force. But Alencon was at the head of the troops, along with many other names well known to us, La Hire, and young Guy de Laval, and Xantrailles, all mighty men of valour and the devoted friends of Jeanne. There is a something, a mist, an incertitude in the beginning of the assault which was unlike the previous achievements of Jeanne, a certain want of precaution or knowledge of the difficulties which does not reflect honour upon the generals with her. Absolutely new to warfare as she was before Orleans she had ridden out at once on her arrival there to inspect the fortifications of the besiegers. But probably the continual skirmishing of which we are told made this impossible here, so that, though the Maid studied the situation of the town in order to choose the best point for attack, it was only when already engaged that the army discovered a double ditch round the walls, the inner one of which was full of water. By sheer impetuosity the French took the gate of St. Honore and its "boulevard" or tower, driving its defenders back into the city: but their further progress was arrested by that discovery. It was on this occasion that Jeanne is supposed to have seized from a Burgundian in the melee, a sword, of which she boasted afterwards that it was a good sword capable of good blows, though we have no certain record that in all her battles she ever gave one blow, or shed blood at all.

It would seem to have been only after the taking of this gate that the discovery was made as to the two deep ditches, one dry, the other filled with water. Jeanne, whose place had always been with her standard at the immediate foot of the wall, from whence to direct and cheer on her soldiers, pressed forward to this point of peril, descending into the first fosse, and climbing up again on the second, the dos d'ane, which separated them, where she stood in the midst of a rain of arrows, fully exposed to all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the ramparts above, testing with her lance the depth of the water. We seem in the story to see her all alone or with her standard-bearer only by her side making this investigation; but that of course is only a pictorial suggestion, though it might for a moment be the fact. She remained there, however, from two in the afternoon till night, when she was forced away. The struggle must have raged around while she stood on the dark edge of the ditch probing the muddy water to see where it could best be crossed, shouting directions to her men in that voice assez femme, which penetrated the noise of battle, and summoning the active and desperate enemy overhead. "Renty! Renty!" she cried as she had done at Orleans—"surrender to the King of France!"

We hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed and worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances of the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering the men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of the mail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain. Half a hundred war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of "Witch, Devil, Ribaude," and names still more insulting to her purity, could not silence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ran through such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. De par Dieu, Rendez vous, rendez vous, au roy de France. If as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspect of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. While the boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and what beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot.

The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing to discourage them, as the fight raged on. Few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, "by the grace of God and the good luck of the Maid." But towards the evening Jeanne herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; she seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a still greater misfortune befell: her standard-bearer was hit, first in the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. What happened to the banner, we are not told; Jeanne most likely herself caught it as it fell. But at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strength failed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where she lay, refusing to quit the place. Some say she managed to slide into the dry ditch where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attempts to carry her away, and some add that while she lay there she employed herself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make it passable. It is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, to go on and Paris would be won. She had promised, they say, to sleep that night within the conquered city; but this promise comes to us with no seal of authority. Jeanne knew that it had taken her eight days to free Orleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success in the more formidable achievement. But she was at least determined in her conviction that perseverance only was needed. She must have lain for hours on the slope of the outer moat, urging on the troops with such force as her dauntless voice could give, repeating again and again that the place could be taken if they but held on. But when night came Alencon and some other of the captains overcame her resistance, and there being clearly no further possibility for the moment, succeeded in setting her upon her horse, and conveyed her back to the camp. While they rode with her, supporting her on her charger, she did nothing but repeat "Quel dommage!" Oh, what a misfortune, that the siege of Paris should fail, all for want of constancy and courage. "If they had but gone on till morning," she cried, "the inhabitants would have known." It is evident from this that she must have expected a rising within, and could not yet believe that no such thing was to be looked for. "Par mon martin, the place would have been taken," she said in the hearing one cannot but feel of the chronicler, who reports so often those homely words.

Thus Jeanne was led back after the first day's attack. Her wound was not serious, and she had been repulsed during one of the day's fighting at Orleans without losing courage. But something had changed her spirit as well as the spirit of the army she led. There is a curious glimpse given us into her camp at this point, which indeed comes to us through the observation of an enemy, yet seems to have in it an unmistakable gleam of truth. It comes from one of the parties which had been granted a safe-conduct to carry away the dead of the English and Burgundian side. They tell us, among other circumstances,—such as that the French burnt their dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make them a horror to their neighbours,—that many in the ranks cursed the Maid who had promised that they should without any doubt sleep that night in Paris and plunder the wealthy city. The men with their safe-conduct creeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which had fallen on their own side, and furtively to count the fallen on the other—who were delighted to bring a report that the Maid was no longer the fountain of strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces—are sinister figures groping their way through the darkness of the September night.

Next morning, however, her wound being slight, Jeanne was up early and in conference with Alencon, begging him to sound his trumpets and set forth once more. "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entire camp, in the commotion of the reveille, while each man looked to his weapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of the September morning, greeting the new friends and brothers-in-arms who had come in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than that of yesterday, the mode of attack. Jeanne would not confess that she felt her wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. And all were in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away, and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. Were the men-at-arms perhaps less amenable? Were they whispering to each other that Jeanne had promised them Paris yesterday, and for the first time had not kept her word? It would almost require such a fact as this to explain what follows. For as they began to set out, the whole field in movement, there was suddenly seen approaching another party of cavaliers—perhaps another reinforcement like that of Montmorency? This new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediate attendants, the Duc de Bar and the Comte de Clermont,(1) always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from St. Denis with orders from the King. These orders were abrupt and peremptory—to turn back. Jeanne and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and Paris at their feet! There must have burst forth a storm of remonstrance and appeal. We cannot tell how long the indignant parley lasted; the historians do not enlarge upon the disastrous incident. But at last the generals yielded to the orders of the King—Jeanne humiliated, miserable, and almost in despair. We cannot but feel that on no former occasion would she have given way so completely; she would have rushed to the King's presence, overwhelmed him with impetuous prayers, extorted somehow the permission to go on. But Charles was safe at seven miles' distance, and his envoys were imperious and peremptory, like men able to enforce obedience if it were not given. She obeyed at last, recovering courage a little in the hope of being able to persuade Charles to change his mind, and sanction another assault on Paris from the other side, by means of a bridge over the Seine towards St. Denis, which Alencon had constructed. Next morning it appears that without even asking that permission a portion of the army set out very early for this bridge: but the King had divined their project, and when they reached the river side the first thing they saw was their bridge in ruins. It had been treacherously destroyed in the night, not by their enemies, but by their King.

It is natural that the French historians should exhaust themselves in explanation of this fatal change of policy. Quicherat, who was the first to bring to light all the most important records of this period of history, lays the entire blame upon La Tremoille, the chief adviser of Charles. But that Charles himself was at heart equally guilty no one can doubt. He was a man who proved himself in the end of his career to possess both sense and energy, though tardily developed. It was to him that Jeanne had given that private sign of the truth of her mission, by which he was overawed and convinced in the first moment of their intercourse. Within the few months which had elapsed since she appeared at Chinon every thing that was wonderful had been done for him by her means. He was then a fugitive pretender, not even very certain of his own claim, driven into a corner of his lawful dominions, and fully prepared to abandon even that small standing ground, to fly into Spain or Scotland, and give up the attempt to hold his place as King of France. Now he was the consecrated King, with the holy oil upon his brows, and the crown of his ancestors on his head, accepted and proclaimed, all France stirring to her old allegiance, new conquests falling into his hands every day, and the richest portion of his kingdom secure under his sway. To check thus peremptorily the career of the deliverer who had done so much for him, degrading her from her place, throwing more than doubt upon her inspiration, falsifying by force the promises which she had made—promises which had never failed before,—was a worse and deeper sin on the part of a young man, by right of his kingly office the very head of knighthood and every chivalrous undertaking, than it could be on the part of an old and subtle diplomatist who had never believed in such wild measures, and all through had clogged the steps and endeavoured to neutralise the mission of the warrior Maid. It is very clear, however, that between them it was the King and his chamberlain who made this assault upon Paris so evident and complete a failure. One day's repulse was nothing in a siege. There had been one great repulse and several lesser ones at Orleans. Jeanne, even though weakened by her wound, had sprung up that morning full of confidence and courage. In no way was the failure to be laid to her charge.

But this could never, perhaps, have been explained to the whole body of the army, who had believed her word without a doubt and taken her success for granted. If they had been wavering before, which seems possible—for they must have been, to a considerable extent, new levies, the campaigners of the Loire having accomplished their period of feudal service,—this sudden downfall must have strengthened every doubt and damped every enthusiasm. The Maid of whom such wonderful tales had been told, she who had been the angel of triumph, the irresistible, before whom the English fled, and the very walls fell down—was she after all only a sorceress, as the others called her, a creature whose incantations had failed after the flash of momentary success? Such impressions are too apt to come like clouds over every popular enthusiasm, quenching the light and chilling the heart.

Jeanne was thus dragged back to St. Denis against her will and every instinct of her being, and there ensued three days of passionate debate and discussion. For a moment it appeared as if she would have thrown off the bonds of loyal obedience and pursued her mission at all hazards. Her "voices," if they had previously given her uncertain sound, promising only the support and succour of God, but no success, now spoke more plainly and urged the continuance of the siege; and the Maid was torn in pieces between the requirements of her celestial guardians and the force of authority around her. If she had broken out into open rebellion who would have followed her? She had never yet done so; when the King was against her she had pleaded or forced an agreement, and received or snatched a consent from the malevolent chamberlain, as at Jargeau and Troyes. Never yet had she set herself in public opposition to the will of her sovereign. She had submitted to all kinds of tests and trials rather than this. And to have lain half a day wounded outside Paris and to stand there pleading her cause with her wound still unhealed were not likely things to strengthen her powers of resistance. "The Voices bade me remain at St. Denis," she said afterwards at her trial, "and I desired to remain; but the seigneurs took me away in spite of myself. If I had not been wounded I should never have left." Added to the force of these circumstances, it was no doubt apparent to all that to resume operations after that forced retreat, and the betrayal it gave of divided counsels, would be less hopeful than ever. These arguments even convinced the bold La Hire, who for his part, being no better than a Free Lance, could move hither and thither as he would; and thus the first defeat of the Maid, a disaster involving all the misfortunes that followed in its train, was accomplished.

Jeanne's last act in St. Denis was one to which perhaps the modern reader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had a certain melancholy meaning. Before she left, dragged almost a captive in the train of the King, we are told that she laid on the altar of the cathedral the armour she had worn on that evil day before Paris. It was not an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the wars. And if she had been about to renounce her mission it would have been easily comprehensible. But no such thought was in her mind. Was it a movement of despair, was it with some womanish fancy that the arms in which she had suffered defeat should not be borne again?—or was it done in some gleam of higher revelation made to her that defeat, too, was a part of victory, and that not without that bitterness of failure could the fame of the soldier of Christ be perfected? I have remarked already that we hear no more of the white armour, inlaid with silver and dazzling like a mirror, in which she had begun her career; perhaps it was the remains of that panoply of triumph which she laid out before the altar of the patron saint of France, all dim now with hard work and the shadow of defeat. It must have marked a renunciation of one kind or another, the sacrifice of some hope. She was no longer Jeanne the invincible, the triumphant, whose very look made the enemy tremble and flee, and gave double force to every Frenchman's arm. Was she then and there abdicating, becoming to her own consciousness Jeanne the champion only, honest and true, but no longer the inspired Maid, the Envoy of God? To these questions we can give no answer; but the act is pathetic, and fills the mind with suggestions. She who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature to have the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. Jeanne had entered into that cloud when she offered the armour, that had been like a star in front of the battle, at the shrine of St. Denis.(2) Hers was now to be a sadder, a humbler, perhaps a still nobler part.

It is enough to trace the further movements of the King to perceive how at every step the iron must have entered deeper and deeper into the heart of the Maid. He made his arrangements for the government of each of the towns which had acknowledged him: Beauvais, Compiegne, Senlis, and the rest. He appointed commissioners for the due regulation of the truce with Philip of Burgundy. And then the retreating army took its march southward towards the mild and wealthy country, all fertility and quiet, where a recreant prince might feel himself safe and amuse himself at his leisure—by Lagny, by Provins, by Bercy-sur Seine, where he had been checked before in his retreat and almost forced to the march on Paris—by Sens, and Montargis: until at last on the 29th of September, no doubt diminished by the withdrawal of many a local troop and knight whose service was over, the forces arrived at Gien, whence they had set forth at the end of June for a series of victories. It is to be supposed that the King was well enough satisfied with the conquests accomplished in three months. And, indeed, in ordinary circumstances they would have formed a triumphant list. Charles must have felt himself free to play after the work which he had not done; and to leave his good fortune and the able negotiators, who hoped to get Paris and other good things from Philip of Burgundy without paying anything for them, to do the rest.

We can imagine nothing more dreadful for the Maid than the months that followed. The Court was not ungrateful to her; she received the warmest welcome from the Queen; she had a maison arranged for her like the household of a noble chief, with the addition of women and maidens of rank to her existing staff, and everything which could serve to show that she was one whom the King delighted to honour. And Charles would have her apparelled gloriously like the king's daughter in the psalm. "He gave her a mantle of cloth of gold, open at both sides, to wear over her armour," and apparently did his best to make her, if not a noble lady, yet into the semblance of a noble young chevaliere, one the glories of his Court, with all the distinction of her achievements and all the complacences of a carpet knight. It was said afterwards, in the absence of any graver possibility of accusation, that she liked her fine clothes. The tears rise to the eyes at such a suggestion. She was so natural that let us hope she did, the martyr Maid whose torture had already begun. If that mantle of gold gave her a moment of pleasure, it is something to be thankful for in the midst of the dismal shadows that were already closing round her. They were ready to give her any shining mantle, any beautiful dress, even a title and a noble name if she would; but what the King and his counsellors were determined on, was, that she should no more have the fame of individual triumph, or do anything save under their orders.

Alencon, the gentle duke, with whom she had taken so much trouble, and who had grown into a true and noble comrade, made one effort to free his friend and leader. He planned an expedition into Normandy, where, with the help of Jeanne, he hoped to inflict upon the English a loss so tremendous, the destruction of their base of operations, that they would be compelled to abandon the centre of France altogether, and leave the way open to Paris and to the recovery of the entire kingdom; but the King, or La Tremoille, as the historians prefer to say, would not permit Jeanne to accompany him, and this hope came to nothing. Alencon disbanded his troops, everything in the form of an army was broken up—the short period of feudal service making this inevitable, unless new levies were made—and no forces were left under arms except those bands which formed the body-guard of the King. Nevertheless, there was plenty of work to be done still, and the breaking up of the French forces encouraged many a little garrison of English partisans, which would have yielded naturally and easily to a strong national party.

In the midst of the winter, however, it seemed appropriate to the Court to launch forth an expedition against some of the unsubdued towns, perhaps on account of the mortal languishment of Jeanne herself, perhaps for some other reason of its own. The first necessity was to collect the necessary forces, and for this reason Jeanne came to Bourges, where she was lodged in one of the great houses of the city, that of Raynard de Bouligny, conseiller de roi, and his wife, Marguerite, one of the Queen's ladies. She was there for three weeks collecting her men, and the noble gentlewoman, who was her hostess, was afterwards in the Rehabilitation trial, one of the witnesses to the purity of her life.

From this lady and others we have a clear enough view of what the Maid was in this second chapter of her history. She spent her time in the most intimate intercourse with Madam Marguerite, sharing even her room, so that nothing could be more complete than the knowledge of her hostess of every detail of her young guest's life. And wonderful as was the difference between the peasant maiden of Domremy and the most famous woman in France, the life of Jeanne, the Deliverer of her country, is as the life of Jeanne, the cottage sempstress,—as simple, as devout, and as pure. She loved to go to church for the early matins, but as it was not fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought Madame Marguerite to go with her. In the evening she went to the nearest church, and there with all her old childish love for the church bells, she had them rung for half an hour, calling together the poor, the beggars who haunt every Catholic church, the poor friars and bedesmen, the penniless and forlorn from all the neighbourhood. This custom would, no doubt, soon become known, and not only her poor pensioners, but the general crowd would gather to gaze at the Maid as well as to join in her prayers. It was her great pleasure to sing a hymn to the Virgin, probably one of the litanies which the unlearned worshipper loves, with its choruses and constant repetitions, in company with all those untutored voices, in the dimness of the church, while the twilight sank into night, and the twinkling stars of candles on the altar made a radiance in the middle of the gloom. When she had money to give she divided it, according to the liberal custom of her time, among her poor fellow-worshippers. These evening services were her recreation. The days were full of business, of enrolling soldiers, and regulating the "lances," groups of retainers, headed by their lord, who came to perform their feudal service.

The ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing Madame Marguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege, and thronged to visit her wonderful guest. They brought her their sacred medals and rosaries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions. Was she afraid of being wounded; or was she assured that she would not be wounded? "No more than others," she said; and she put away their religious ornaments with a smile, bidding Madame Marguerite touch them, or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she did it. She would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking with a laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom wore medals with her own effigy (if only one had been saved for us!) as there were many banners made after the pattern of hers. But cheerful as she was, a prevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life. On several occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attended her everywhere, of her death. "If it should be my fate to die soon, tell the King our master on my part to build chapels where prayer may be made to the Most High for the salvation of the souls of those who shall die in the wars for the defence of the kingdom." This was the one thing she seemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind. Her thoughts indeed were heavy enough. Her larger enterprises had been cruelly put a stop to: her companions-in-arms had been dispersed: she had been separated from her lieutenant Alencon, and from all the friends between whom and herself great mutual confidence had sprung up. Even the commission which had at last been put in her hands was a trifling one and led to nothing, bringing the King no nearer to any satisfactory end: and the troops were under command of a new captain whom she scarcely knew, d'Albert, who was the son-in-law of La Tremoille, and probably little inclined to be a friend to Jeanne. In these circumstances there was little of an exhilarating or promising kind.

Nevertheless as an episode, few things had happened to Jeanne more memorable than the siege of St. Pierre-le-Moutier. The first assault upon the town was unsuccessful; the retreat had sounded and the troops were streaming back from the point of attack, when Jean d'Aulon, the faithful friend and brave gentleman who was at the head of the Maid's military household, being himself wounded in the heel and unable to stand or walk, saw the Maid almost alone before the stronghold, four or five men only with her. He dragged himself up as well as he could upon his horse, and hastened towards her, calling out to her to ask what she did there, and why she did not retire with the rest. She answered him, taking off her helmet to speak, that she would leave only when the place was taken—and went on shouting for faggots and beams to make a bridge across the ditch. It is to be supposed that seeing she paid no attention, nor budged a step from that dangerous point, this brave man, wounded though he was, must have made an effort to rally the retiring besiegers: but Jeanne seems to have taken no notice of her desertion nor ever to have paused in her shout for planks and gabions. "All to the bridge," she shouted, "aux fagots et aux claies tout le monde! every one to the bridge." "Jeanne, withdraw, withdraw! You are alone," some one said to her. Bareheaded, her countenance all aglow, the Maid replied: "I have still with me fifty thousand of my men." Were those the men whom the prophet's servant saw when his eyes were opened and he beheld the innumerable company of angels that surrounded his master? But Jeanne, rapt in the trance and ecstasy of battle, gave no explanation. "To work, to work!" her clear voice went on, ringing over the startled head of the good knight who knew war, but not any rapture like this. History itself, awe-stricken, would almost have us believe that alone with her own hand the Maid took the city, so entirely does every figure disappear but that one, and the perplexed and terrified spectator vainly urging her to give up so desperate an attempt. But no doubt the shouts of a voice so strange to every such scene, the vox infantile, the amazing and clear voice, silvery and womanly, assez femme, and the efforts of d'Aulon to bring back the retreating troops were successful, and Jeanne once more, triumphantly kept her word. The place was strongly fortified, well provisioned, and full of people. Therefore the whole narrative is little less than miraculous, though very little is said of it. Had they but persevered, as she had said, a few hours longer before Paris, who could tell that the same result might not have been obtained?

She was not successful, however, with La Charite, which after a siege of a month's duration still held out, and had to be abandoned. These long operations of regular warfare were not in Jeanne's way; and her coadjutor in command, it must be remembered, was in this case commissioned by her chief enemy. We are told that she was left without supplies, and in the depths of winter, in cold and rain and snow, with every movement hampered, and the ineffective government ever ready to send orders of retreat, or to cause bewildering and confusing delays by the want of every munition of war. Finally, at all events, the French forces withdrew, and again an unsuccessful enterprise was added to the record of the once victorious Maid. That she went on continually promising victory as in her early times, is probably the mere rumour spread by her detractors who were now so many, for there is no real evidence that she did so. Everything rather points to discouragement, uncertainty, and to a silent rage against the coercion which she could not overcome.

(1) Clermont it was who deserted the Scots at the Battle of the Herrings.

(2) Jeanne's arms, offered at St. Denis, were afterwards taken by the English and sent to the King of England (all except the sword with its ornaments of gold) without giving anything to the church in return: "qui est pur sacrilege et manifeste," says Jean Chartier.



CHAPTER IX — COMPIEGNE. 1430.

By this time France was once more all in flames: the English and Burgundians had entered and then abandoned Paris—Duke Philip cynically leaving that city, which he had promised to give up to Charles, to its own protection, in order to look after his more pressing personal concerns: while Bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacent country, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which had opened their gates to the King. Thus while Charles gave no attention to anything beyond the Loire, and kept his chief champion there, as it were, on the leash, permitting no return to the most important field of operations, almost all that had been gained was again lost upon the banks of the Seine. This was the state of affairs when Jeanne returned humbled and sad from the abandoned siege of La Charite. Her enemy's counsels had triumphed all round and this was the result. Individual fightings of no particular account and under no efficient organisation were taking place day by day; here a town stood out heroically, there another yielded to the foreign arms; the population were thrown back into universal misery, the spring fields trampled under foot, the villages burned, every evil of war in full operation, invasion aggravated by faction, the English always aided by one side of France against the other, and neither peace nor security anywhere.

This was the aspect of affairs on one side. On the other appeared a still less satisfactory scene. Charles amusing himself, his counsellors, La Tremoille, and the Archbishop of Rheims carrying on fictitious negotiations with Burgundy and playing with the Maid who was in their power, sending her out to make a show and cast a spell, then dragging her back at the end of their shameful chain: while the Court, the King and Queen, and all their flattering attendants gilded that chain and tried to make her forget by fine clothes and caresses, at once her mission and her despair. They were not ungrateful, no: let us do them justice, for they might well have added this to the number of their sins: mantles of cloth of gold, patents of nobility were at her command, had these been what she wanted. The only personal wrong they did to Jeanne was to set up against her a sort of opposition, another enchantress and visionary who had "voices" and apparitions too, and who was admitted to all the councils and gave her advice in contradiction of the Maid, a certain Catherine de la Rochelle, who was ready to say anything that was put into her mouth, but who had done nothing to prove any mission for France or from God. We have little light however upon the state of affairs in those castles, which one after another were the abode of the Court during this disastrous winter. They were safe enough on the other side of the Loire in the fat country where the vines still flourished and the young corn grew. Now and then a band of armed men was sent forth to succour a fighting town in the suffering and struggling Ile-de-France, always under the conflicting orders of those intrigants and courtiers: but within the Court, all was gay; "never man," as rough La Hire had said on an earlier occasion, "lost his kingdom more gaily or with better grace" than did Charles. Where was La Hire? Where was Dunois?—there is no appearance of these champions anywhere. Alencon had returned to his province. Only La Tremoille and the Archbishop holding all the strings in their hands, upsetting all military plans, disgusting every chief, met and talked and carried on their busy intrigues, and played their Sibyl—Sibylle de carrefour, says one of the historians indignantly—against the Maid, who, all discouraged and downcast, fretted by caresses, sick of inactivity, dragged out the uneasy days in an uncongenial world; but Jeanne has left no record of the sensations with which she saw these days pass, eating her heart out, gazing over that rapid river, on the other side of which all the devils were unchained and every result of her brief revolution was being lost.

At length however the impatience and despair were more than she could bear; the Court was then at Sully and the spring had begun with its longer days and more passable roads. Without a word to anyone the Maid left the castle. The war had rolled towards these princely walls, as near as Melun, which was threatened by the English. A little band of intimate servants and associates, her two brothers, and a few faithful followers, were with her. So far as we know she never saw Charles or his courtiers again. They arrived at Melun in time to witness and to take part in the repulse of the English, and it was here that a communication was make to Jeanne by her saints of which afterwards there was frequent mention. Little had been said of them during her dark time of inaction, and their tone was no longer as of old. It was on the side of the moat of Melun where probably she was superintending some necessary work to strengthen the fortifications or to put them in better order for defence, that this message reached her. The "Voices" which so often had urged her to victory and engaged the faith of heaven for her success, had now a word to say, secret and personal to herself. It was that she should be taken prisoner; and the date was fixed, before the St. Jean. It was the middle of April when this communication was made and the Feast of St. Jean, as everybody knows, is in the end of June; two months only to work in, to strike another blow for France. The "Voices" bade her not to fear, that God would sustain her. But it would be impossible not to be startled by such a sudden intimation in the midst of her reviving plans. The Maid made one terrified prayer, that God would let her die when she was taken, not subject her to long imprisonment; her heart prophetically sprang to a sudden consciousness of the most likely, most terrible end that lay before her, for she had been often enough threatened with the stake and the fire to know what to expect. But the saintly voices made no reply. They bade her be strong and of good courage: is not that the all-sustaining, all-delusive message for every martyr? It was the will of God, and His support and sustaining power, which we often take to mean deliverance, but which is not always so—were promised. She asked where this terrible thing was to happen, but received no reply. Natural and simple as she was, she confessed afterwards that had she known she was to be taken on any certain day, she would not have gone out to meet the catastrophe unless she had been forced by evident duty to do so. But this was not revealed to her. "Before the St. Jean!" It must almost have seemed a guarantee that until that time or near it she was safe. She would seem to have said nothing immediately of this vision to sadden those about her.

In the meantime, however, there were other adventures in store for her. From Melun to Lagny was no long journey, but it was through a country full of enemies in which she must have been subject to attack at every corner of every road or field. And she had not been long in the latter place which is said to have had a garrison of Scots, when news came of the passing of a band of Burgundians, a troop of raiders indeed, ravaging the country, taking advantage of the war to rob and lay waste churches, villages, and the growing fields wherever they passed. The troops was led by Franquet d'Arras, a famous "pillard," robber of God and man. Jeanne set out to encounter this bandit with a party of some four hundred men, and various noble companions, among whom, however, we find no name familiar in her previous career, a certain Hugh Kennedy, a Scot, who is to be met with in various records of fighting, being one of the most notable among them. Franquet's band fought vigorously but were cut to pieces, and the leader was taken prisoner. When this man was brought back to Lagny, a prisoner to be ransomed, and whom Jeanne desired to exchange for one of her own side, the law laid claim to him as a criminal. He was a prisoner of war: what was it the Maid's duty to do? The question is hotly debated by the historians and it was brought against her at her trial. He was a murderer, a robber, the scourge of the country—especially to the poor whom Jeanne protected and cared for everywhere, was he pitiless and cruel. She gave him up to justice, and he was tried, condemned, and beheaded. If it was wrong from a military point of view, it was her only error, and shows how little there was with which to reproach her.