第84章 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH(3)

Joan,henceforth called THE MAID OF ORLEANS,remained within the walls for a few days,and caused letters to be thrown over,ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the town according to the will of Heaven.As the English general very positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about the will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter with his soldiers,for they stupidly said if she were not inspired she was a witch,and it was of no use to fight against a witch),she mounted her white war-horse again,and ordered her white banner to advance.

The besiegers held the bridge,and some strong towers upon the bridge;and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them.The fight was fourteen hours long.She planted a scaling ladder with her own hands,and mounted a tower wall,but was struck by an English arrow in the neck,and fell into the trench.She was carried away and the arrow was taken out,during which operation she screamed and cried with the pain,as any other girl might have done;but presently she said that the Voices were speaking to her and soothing her to rest.After a while,she got up,and was again foremost in the fight.When the English who had seen her fall and supposed her dead,saw this,they were troubled with the strangest fears,and some of them cried out that they beheld Saint Michael on a white horse (probably Joan herself)fighting for the French.

They lost the bridge,and lost the towers,and next day set their chain of forts on fire,and left the place.

But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the town of Jargeau,which was only a few miles off,the Maid of Orleans besieged him there,and he was taken prisoner.As the white banner scaled the wall,she was struck upon the head with a stone,and was again tumbled down into the ditch;but,she only cried all the more,as she lay there,'On,on,my countrymen!And fear nothing,for the Lord hath delivered them into our hands!'After this new success of the Maid's,several other fortresses and places which had previously held out against the Dauphin were delivered up without a battle;and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the English army,and set up her victorious white banner on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead.

She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when there was any fighting)to proceed to Rheims,as the first part of her mission was accomplished;and to complete the whole by being crowned there.The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this,as Rheims was a long way off,and the English and the Duke of Burgundy were still strong in the country through which the road lay.However,they set forth,with ten thousand men,and again the Maid of Orleans rode on and on,upon her white war-horse,and in her shining armour.Whenever they came to a town which yielded readily,the soldiers believed in her;but,whenever they came to a town which gave them any trouble,they began to murmur that she was an impostor.The latter was particularly the case at Troyes,which finally yielded,however,through the persuasion of one Richard,a friar of the place.Friar Richard was in the old doubt about the Maid of Orleans,until he had sprinkled her well with holy water,and had also well sprinkled the threshold of the gate by which she came into the city.Finding that it made no change in her or the gate,he said,as the other grave old gentlemen had said,that it was all right,and became her great ally.

So,at last,by dint of riding on and on,the Maid of Orleans,and the Dauphin,and the ten thousand sometimes believing and sometimes unbelieving men,came to Rheims.And in the great cathedral of Rheims,the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in a great assembly of the people.Then,the Maid,who with her white banner stood beside the King in that hour of his triumph,kneeled down upon the pavement at his feet,and said,with tears,that what she had been inspired to do,was done,and that the only recompense she asked for,was,that she should now have leave to go back to her distant home,and her sturdily incredulous father,and her first simple escort the village wheelwright and cart-maker.But the King said 'No!'and made her and her family as noble as a King could,and settled upon her the income of a Count.

Ah!happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans,if she had resumed her rustic dress that day,and had gone home to the little chapel and the wild hills,and had forgotten all these things,and had been a good man's wife,and had heard no stranger voices than the voices of little children!

It was not to be,and she continued helping the King (she did a world for him,in alliance with Friar Richard),and trying to improve the lives of the coarse soldiers,and leading a religious,an unselfish,and a modest life,herself,beyond any doubt.Still,many times she prayed the King to let her go home;and once she even took off her bright armour and hung it up in a church,meaning never to wear it more.But,the King always won her back again-while she was of any use to him-and so she went on and on and on,to her doom.

When the Duke of Bedford,who was a very able man,began to be active for England,and,by bringing the war back into France and by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith,to distress and disturb Charles very much,Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the Voices said about it?But,the Voices had become (very like ordinary voices in perplexed times)contradictory and confused,so that now they said one thing,and now said another,and the Maid lost credit every day.Charles marched on Paris,which was opposed to him,and attacked the suburb of Saint Honore.