d with the emblems of the
nobility, of the clergy and of the _tiers etat_, but lamentably soiled
and torn, adjuring the three orders not to permit her to perish.
"After the bond of the Catholic faith," she says to them, "Nature has
called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native
land, and for the defence of that lordship under which God has caused
you to be born and to live."[135] And these are not the mere maxims of
a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. On the hearts of
humble Frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth.
"Must the King be driven from his kingdom, and must we become
English?" cried a man-at-arms of Lorraine in 1428.[136] The subjects
of the Lilies, as well as those of the Leopard, felt it incumbent
upon them to be loyal to their liege lord. But if any change for the
worse occurred in the lordships to which they belonged, they were
quite ready to make the best of it, because a lordship must increase
or decrease, according to power and fortune, according to the good
right or the good pleasure of the holder; it may be dismembered by
marriages, or gifts, or inheritance, or alienated by various
contracts. On the occasion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which seriously
narrowed the dominions of King John, the folk of Paris strewed the
streets with grass and flowers as a sign of rejoicing.[137] As a
matter of fact, nobles changed their allegiance as often as it was
necessary. Juvenal des Ursins relates in his Journal[138] how at the
time of the English conquest of Normandy, a young widow was known to
quit her domain with her three children in order to escape doing
homage to the King from beyond the seas. But how many Norman nobles
were like her in refusing to swear fealty to the former enemies of the
kingdom? The example of fidelity to the king was not always set by
those of his own family. The Duke of Bourbon, in the name of all the
princes of the blood royal, prisoners with him in the hands of the
English, proposed to Henry V that they should go and negotiate in
France for the cession of Harfleur, promising that if the Royal
Council met them with refusal they would acknowledge Henry V to be
King of France.[139]

[Footnote 134: A. Thomas, _Le mot "Patrie" et Jeanne d'Arc_ in _Revue
des Idees_, July 15, 1906.]

[Footnote 135: _Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier_, published by
Andre Duchesne, Paris, 1642, in 4to, p. 410.]

[Footnote 136: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 436.