rance, and to maintain themselves
there they depended on the help of the Duke of Burgundy, who
henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm.

They lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the
pacification of those they had already conquered. The very character
of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights
they asserted, which were founded on institutions common to the two
countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult
without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal
concurrence and friendship of the conquered. The Treaty of Troyes did
not subject France to England, it united one country to the other.
Such a union occasioned much anxiety in London. The Commons did not
conceal their fear that Old England might become a mere isolated
province of the new kingdom.[98] France for her part did not concur in
the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been
making war on these _Coues_[99] they had grown to hate them. And
possibly there already existed an English character and a French
character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the
Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the _Godons_[100] met
with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English
should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened
so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part
whatever in the work of deliverance? By no means. Hers was the nobler,
the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the
highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and
charming. The King's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she
served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her
party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by
striking fear into the English, who imagined her to be the devil.

[Footnote 98: See the deliberations of the Commons on December 2,
1421, in Brequigny, _Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des
cours de France et d'Angleterre_, Paris, 1847 (2 vols. in 4to), vol.
ii, pp. 393 _et seq._]

[Footnote 99: For the origin of this term see _post_, vol. i, p. 22
and note 2.--W.S.]

[Footnote 100: For the origin of this term see _ibid._ and note
1.--W.S.]

Our best historians cannot forgive the ministers and captains of 1428
for not having blindly obeyed the Maid. But that was not at all the
advice given at the tim