ed enterprises which the chiefs of the regular armies
considered impossible. Stephen de Vignolles, celebrated under the name
of La Hire, resolved to succor the town of Montargis, besieged by the
English; and young Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, joined him. On
arriving, September 5, 1427, beneath the walls of the place, a priest was
encountered in their road. La Hire asked him for absolution. The priest
told him to confess. "I have no time for that," said La Hire; "I am in a
hurry; I have done in the way of sins all that men of war are in the
habit of doing." Whereupon, says the chronicler, the chaplain gave him
absolution for what it was worth; and La Hire, putting his hands
together, said, "God, I pray Thee to do for La Hire this day as much as
Thou wouldst have La Hire do for Thee if he were God and Thou wert La
Hire." And Montargis was rid of its besiegers. The English determined
to become masters of Mont St. Michel au peril de la mer, that abbey built
on a rock facing the western coast of Normandy and surrounded every day
by the waves of ocean. The thirty-second abbot, Robert Jolivet, promised
to give the place up to them, and went to Rouen with that design; but one
of his monks, John Enault, being elected vicar-general by the chapter,
and supported by some valiant Norman warriors, offered an obstinate
resistance for eight years, baffled all the attacks of the English, and
retained the abbey in the possession of the King of France. The
inhabitants of La Rochelle rendered the same service to the king and to
France in a more important case. On the 15th of August, 1427, an English
fleet of a hundred and twenty sail, it is said, appeared off their city
with invading troops aboard. The Rochellese immediately levied upon
themselves an extraordinary tax, and put themselves in a state of
defence; troops raised in the neighborhood went and occupied the heights
bordering on the coast; and a bold Breton sailor, Bernard de Kercabin,
put to sea to meet the enemy, with ships armed as privateers. The
attempt of the English seemed to them to offer more danger than chance of
success; and they withdrew. Thus Charles VII. kept possession of the
only seaport remaining to the crown. Almost everywhere in the midst of a
war as indecisive as it was obstinate local patriotism and the spirit of
chivalry successfully disputed against foreign supremacy the scattered
fragments of the fatherland and the throne.

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