tless extraordinary,
marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than
saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in
human affairs. Jeanne d'Arc arose in the decline of the great Catholic
age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities,
manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of
men. And of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to
the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? From the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries God's servants perform wondrous
works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy
with fire and sword; Saint Francis of Assisi for the nonce founds
poverty as an institution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends
merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and
bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it
impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with God's aid, to
re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power
instituted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new
Joash snatched from death for the salvation of the holy people?

Thus did pious French folk, in the year 1428, regard the mission of
the Maid. She represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by God.
There was nothing incredible in that. When she announced that she had
received revelations touching the war from my Lord Saint Michael, she
inspired the men-at-arms of the Armagnac party and the burghers of the
city of Orleans with a confidence as great as could have been
communicated to the troops, marching along the Loire in the winter of
1871, by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or
an improved form of cannon. What was expected from science in 1871 was
expected from religion in 1428, so that the Bastard of Orleans would
as naturally employ Jeanne as Gambetta would resort to the technical
knowledge of M. de Freycinet.

What has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party
made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring
at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into
evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world;
they constituted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the
banished members of the University, men deeply involved in political
affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very
impatient to regai