d de
Monstrelet was the most eminent.

Less well known chroniclers on the national side, such as Philip de
Bergame, an Augustinian monk, on the other hand exaggerate the deeds
of the Maid. None of these chroniclers' writings can be called
histories of Joan of Arc. Nor in the following (the sixteenth)
century, did such writers as Du Bellay and Haillon do more than allude
to Joan of Arc; the first in his _Instructions sur le fait de la
guerre_, and the second in his book on the _Affaires de France_.

Haillon had written disparagingly of the heroine. It had the effect of
raising the ire of that learned scribe William Postel, who wrote that
the actions and renown of Joan of Arc were as necessary to maintain as
the Bible itself. With Postel the celebrated jurisconsult Stephen
Pasquier was quite in accord, and in his work called _Recherches sur
la France_, he writes that 'never had any one saved France so
opportunely or so well as did this Maid.' In 1576 a book was published
by the magistrates of Orleans relating to the siege of their town, in
which all honour was given to the heroine for the part she had taken
in its delivery. In the preface to that book the following sentiment
is expressed:--'It is a lamentable fact that the Maid, respected by
all other nations, the English alone excepted, finds amongst her
countrymen writings to injure her memory by people who are greater
enemies to the honour of France than those who are strangers to that
country.'

It should be noted that as early as the year 1534 the famous early
chronicler Polydore Virgile, Italian by origin, wrote a voluminous
history of England in twenty-six books, and treated the Maid's mission
as one inspired by divine influence, severely blaming her judges for
their inhuman conduct towards her.

In 1610 a book was published discussing the origin of the family of
the Maid of Orleans; a work of little value. In 1612 one of the
descendants of a brother of Joan of Arc--Charles du Lys--published a
slight work called _Traite sommaire sur le nom, les armes, la
naissance et la parente de la Pucelle et de ses freres_. In that same
year the first history of Joan of Arc was published, also by a
descendant of one of her brothers, John Hordal. This book was in
Latin; it was entitled '_The History of Joan of Arc, that very noble
heroine_.' Soon after an elaborated work, based on this book, was
produced by Edmond Richer, a doctor of theology in Paris.

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