bid._, pp. 40-50. D. Godefroy, _Histoire de Charles
VII_, Paris, 1661, fol. pp. 369-474.]

Jean Chartier,[14] precentor of Saint-Denys, held the office of
chronicler of France in 1449. Two hundred years later he would have
been described as historiographer royal. His office may be divined
from the manner in which he relates Jeanne's death. After having said
that she had been long imprisoned by the order of John of Luxembourg,
he adds: "The said Luxembourg sold her to the English, who took her to
Rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long
delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of Rouen, without a
trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing
the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and
received the body of Our Lord, as beseemeth a good catholic."[15] When
Jean Chartier says that the English burned her without trial, he means
apparently that the Bailie of Rouen did not pronounce sentence.
Concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse
and relapse he says not a word; and it is the English whom he accuses
of having burnt a good Catholic without a trial. This example proves
how seriously the condemnation of 1431 embarrassed the government of
King Charles. But what can be thought of a historian who suppresses
Jeanne's trial because he finds it inconvenient? Jean Chartier was
extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of
Catherine's sword and in Jeanne's loss of power when she broke it;[16]
he records the most puerile of fables. Nevertheless it is interesting
to note that the official chronicler of the Kings of France, writing
about 1450, ascribes to the Maid an important share in the delivery of
Orleans, in the conquest of fortresses on the Loire and in the victory
of Patay, that he relates how the King formed the army at Gien "by the
counsel of the said maid,"[17] and that he expressly states that
Jeanne caused[18] the coronation and consecration. Such was certainly
the opinion which prevailed at the Court of Charles VII. All that we
have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or
whether the King of France may not have deemed it to his advantage to
owe his kingdom to the Maid. She was held a heretic by the heads of
the Church Universal, but in France her memory was honoured, rather,
however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the
leaders of the army. The servic