low
God's holy maid. Such an army was invincible; but whilst to the French
the maid was an instrument of the mercy of God, to the English she was
an emissary of hell and the forerunner of defeat. On May 7 she led the
storm of one of the English fortified posts by which the town was
hemmed in. After a sharp attack she planted her standard on the wall.
The English garrison was slain to a man. The line of the besiegers was
broken through, and Orleans was saved. On the 12th the English army
was in full retreat.

[Illustration: Fotheringhay Church, Northamptonshire. The contract for
building it, between Edward Duke of York, and William Horwod,
freemason, is dated September 24, 1434.]

7. =The Coronation of Charles VII. and the Capture of the Maid.
1429--1430.=--The Maid followed up her victory. She had at her side
brave and skilful warriors, such as La Hire and the Bastard of
Orleans, the illegitimate son of the murdered Louis of Orleans, and
with their help she pressed the English hard, driving them northwards
and defeating them at Patay. She insisted on conducting Charles to
Reims, and he, indolently resisting at first, was carried away by her
persistent urgency. Hostile towns opened their gates to her on the
way, and on July 17 she saw with chastened joy the man whom she had
saved from destruction crowned in the great cathedral of Reims. For
her part, she was eager to push on the war, but Charles was slothful,
and in a hurry to be back to the pleasures of his court. When she led
the troops to the attack of Paris, she was ordered back by the king,
and the army sent into winter quarters. In the spring of =1430= the
Maid was allowed again to attack the English, but she had no longer
the support which she had once had. Many of the French soldiers were
meanly jealous of her, and were vexed when they were told that they
owed their victories to a woman. On the other side the Duke of
Burgundy was frightened by the French successes into giving real aid
to Bedford, and on May 23, in a skirmish before Compiegne, her
countrymen doing nothing to save or to rescue her, the Maid was taken
by Burgundian soldiers. Before the end of the year her captors sold
her to the English, who firmly believed her to be a witch.

8. =The Martyrdom at Rouen. 1431.=--The English had no difficulty in
finding an ecclesiastical court to judge their prisoner. Even the
French clergy detested the Maid as having appealed to supernatural
voices which had not