sight of the Maid fighting at the head of
their men, made the French so bold, and
made the English so fearful, that the English
line of forts was soon broken, the troops and
provisions were got into the town, and
Orleans was saved.

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 to be
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
warhorse, 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, he said, as the
other grave old gentlemen had said, that it
was all correct, 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 agreat 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 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 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 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,