Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/383

 SAINT JOAN OF ARC

a child.&quot; And he advised that she be taken back to her village and have her ears boxed. But she said she must obey God, and would come again, and again, and yet again, and finally she would get the soldiers. She said truly. In time he yielded, after months of delay and refusal, and gave her the soldiers; and took off his sword and gave her that, and said, &quot;Go and let come what may.&quot; She made her long and perilous journey through the enemy s country, and spoke with the King, and convinced him. Then she was summoned before the Uni versity of Poitiers to prove that she was commis sioned of God and not of Satan, and daily during three weeks she sat before that learned congress un afraid, and capably answered their deep questions out of her ignorant but able head and her simple and honest heart; and again she won her case, and with it the wondering admiration of all that august com pany.

And now, aged seventeen, she was made Com- mander-in-Chief, with a prince of the royal house and the veteran generals of France for subordinates; and at the head of the first army she had ever seen, she marched to Orleans, carried the commanding fortresses of the enemy by storm in three desperate assaults, and in ten days raised a siege which had defied the might of France for seven months.

After a tedious and insane delay caused by the King s instability of character and the treacherous counsels of his ministers, she got permission to take the field again. She took Jargeau by storm; then Meung ; she forced Beaugency to surrender ; then

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