ce,
following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to
Charles.

[Footnote 93: The statue was mutilated at the expulsion of the English
in 1446 and was destroyed in the fire of 1618.]

CHAPTER IX

_Jeanne d'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_

The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her
story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of
Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast _moult
noblement_, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered
Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to
Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noel, noel!_"

The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North
France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to
the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of
Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the
English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of
Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal
banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name,
by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of
national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were
now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent,
licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of
Bourges."

The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored
village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which
may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty,
ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her
destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek
safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans,
the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English
hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of
a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn
coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the
royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd
August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her
voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her
attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was
foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jeal