d avoided consulting
her. She herself felt that she would not last long.[1647] Then who
represented her as a great war leader? Who exalted her as a
supernatural power? The enemy.

[Footnote 1646: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 324; vol. iii, p. 130. Monstrelet,
vol. iv, p. 388.]

[Footnote 1647: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 99.]

This letter shows how the English had transformed an innocent child
into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of hell
causing the bravest to grow pale. In a voice of lamentation the Regent
cries: The devil! the witch! And then he marvels that his fighting men
tremble before the Maid, and desert rather than face her.[1648]

[Footnote 1648: _Ibid._, vol. iv, pp. 206, 406, 444, 470, 472. Rymer,
_Foedera_, vol. iv, p. 141. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique
anglaise_.]

From Montereau, the English army had fallen back on Paris. Now it once
again came forth to meet the French. On Saturday, the 13th of August,
King Charles held the country between Crepy and Paris. Now the Maid
from the heights of Dammartin could espy the summit of Montmartre
with its windmills, and the light mists from the Seine veiling that
great city of Paris, promised to her by those Voices which alas! she
had heeded too well.[1649] On the morrow, Sunday, the King and his army
encamped in a village, by name Barron, on the River Nonnette on which,
five miles lower down, stands Senlis.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 246, 298. Letter from Alain
Chartier in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 131 _et seq._]

[Footnote 1650: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 344, 345. Perceval de Cagny,
pp. 161, 162.]

Senlis was subject to the English.[1651] It was said that the Regent was
approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the Earl
of Suffolk, the Lord Talbot and the Bastard Saint Pol. With him were
the crusaders of the Cardinal of Winchester, the late King's uncle,
between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with
the Pope's money to go and fight against the Hussites in Bohemia. The
Cardinal judged it well to use them against the King of France, a very
Christian King forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch
and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a
captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a
white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was
suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in
fine letters