Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/594

580 herself unable to cross the threshold, he beheld her march on calm and unmoved; and at once he pronounced her an angel, and all the people flocked round with admiring wonder. From that hour Friar Richard became a zealous ally of the king, though often relapsing into doubt of the maid and into bigoted opposition to her. He now, however, went on preaching to the people of the neighbouring towns to rise in defence of the king, and drive out the Burgundians. Chalons sent Charles the keys of the town, and on arriving at Rheims, he found that the people had risen at the approach of the celestial maid, had driven out the adherents of Bedford and Burgundy, and received him with open arms. A grand procession of priests waited to accompany the king and the maid into the city, and on the 15th of July, 1429, Charles and Joan, attended by all the chief officers, marched into the city, preceded by the banners of the Church, and amid the sound of its hymns. Two days after this, Charles VII. was crowned in the cathedral, as the maid had promised him.

Not one of the peers of France was present, for the pusillanimous conduct of the king, and the shameless reign of the favourite Tremoille, had disgusted them; but the people flocked round in joy, and anticipation of better days. They had unbounded faith in the maid, and wherever she appeared, it was said, they saw hosts of beautiful white butterflies hovering around her standard, and they knelt in devout awe of the sacred words and devices painted upon it. With that banner in her hand, Joan stood beside the king, while the archbishop placed the crown upon his head. When that was done she prostrated herself at his feet, embraced them with tears, and reminded him that there and then her mission was terminated. All that she had promised in the name of God, God had performed; her work, she declared, was done, and she implored permission to retire at once to her father's house, and her old way of life.

But in entering on so stupendous a mission as the salvation of the nation, an humble village girl like Joan had inevitably entered on the field of martyrdom. No person, however dignified by station or by talents, could, on the ground of a divine ordination, have long—however complete her success—stood safe amid the jealousies of courts and the meaner passions of human nature. From such a career there could be no retreat but through death. The same voices which she invariably avowed had called her to the enterprise, had pronounced her early doom. The enthusiasm of the multitude is short-lived; the envy and the hatred of the military chiefs, scarcely suppressed during the hour of triumph, were eternal in their nature. Before the victorious maid all their honours had been prostrated in the dust. In a few short months she had done what all their united talents and exertions had failed to do in a generation. She had snatched the prestige of invincibility from the English, and raised the spirit of France. That must be inevitably avenged.

Meantime she was too indispensable to the completion of the conquest of France. Charles resolutely refused to listen to her tears and prayers to be permitted to withdraw. But from that hour the maid was no longer the same. The spirit had departed from her. The voices ceased, and the clear, bold, and unerring judgment which had borne her on was gone. She was dejected, and full of distress. When importuned to direct what should next be done, she was uncertain and confused, which she never had been before. Acting now on her own suggestions, she ordered, doubted her orders, and retracted them. Again and again she declared, with tears and violent emotion, that she had nothing more to do, her work was finished, and she prayed for her dismissal. The officers did not neglect to make their advantage out of this. They treated her with harshness and undisguised insult. They encouraged the soldiers to call her foul names, and they did not hesitate to make the most infamous attempts on her honour, in order to ruin her influence for ever. These attempts Joan repelled with the fury of a woman who felt that she had deserved far different treatment. In all her camp life she had invariably kept female companions of the strictest character about her. She always had a female friend to share her bed; if during assaults that was impossible, she lay down in her complete armour. So jealous was she of her reputation, so inviolable in her adherence to her vow of chastity.

Sad and woeful was now the condition of the maid who had done such wonders for France. Bedford was exerting himself to the utmost to check this unexampled progress of the French. Cardinal Beaufort came over with 2,000 archers and 250 men-at-arms. Every means was used to fix the alliance of the wavering Burgundy, who, however, gave no essential assistance. He had withdrawn his garrisons from Normandy, and the constable had seized them. Bedford was compelled to march himself from Paris to recover them; and the maid, who had hung up her arms in the Church of St. Denis, at Rheims, as the sign that her mission was over, was induced by the king to assume them again. Once in her old panoply, her courage, if not her confidence, seemed to revive. She advised the monarch to march on Paris while Bedford was absent. She led the way, and Soissons, Senlis, Beauvais, and St. Denis opened their gates. At the assault on the Faubourg St. Honore, Joan was again wounded, and left in the ditch for hours. Charles, mortified at the repulse, retired in dudgeon to Bourges; and Joan, again hanging up her armour, implored her dismissal. Charles refused, and endeavoured to fix her in his interest by granting her a patent of nobility, with an income equal to that of an earl, and freed her native parish of Domremy from all taxation for ever. The unhappy maid went on; but her voices were gone, and she was no longer a safe oracle. During the winter, indeed. Friar Richard had brought forward his rival prophetess—one Catherine of Rochelle—who undertook, not to fight, but to raise money for the king, by preaching to the populace and revealing hidden treasures. Joan refused any connection with her, declaring that success lay at the point of the lance.

In May, 1430, Joan was sent to raise the siege of Compeigne, which was invested by the Duke of Burgundy. She fought her way into the city with her accustomed valour, but, in making a sortie, was deserted by her followers, and bravely fighting her way back to the city, just as she approached the gates, she was dragged from her horse by an archer, and, as she lay on the ground, she surrendered to the Bastard of Vendôme.

The news of the capture of the terrible maid flew like