be sufficiently proved.[1314]

[Footnote 1314: Le P. Ayroles, vol. iv, _La vierge guerriere_, pp. 240
_et seq._]

Jeanne maintained her resolution to go to Reims and take the King to
his anointing.[1315] She did not stay to consider whether it would be
better to wage war in Champagne than in Normandy. She did not know
enough of the configuration of the country to decide such a question,
and it is not likely that her saints and angels knew more of geography
than she did. She was in haste to take the King to Reims for his
anointing, because she believed it impossible for him to be king
until he had been anointed.[1316] The idea of leading him to be
anointed with the holy oil had come to her in her native village, long
before the siege of Orleans.[1317] This inspiration was wholly of the
spirit, and had nothing to do with the state of affairs created by the
deliverance of Orleans and the victory of Patay.

[Footnote 1315: "_Sed dicta puella semper fuit opinionis quod
opportebat ire Remis._" _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 12 (evidence of
Dunois).]

[Footnote 1316: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 20. _Journal du siege_, pp. 93,
94.]

[Footnote 1317: See _ante_, pp. 53 _et seq._]

The best course would have been to march straight on Paris after the
18th of June. The French were then only ninety miles from the great
city, which at that juncture would not have thought of defending
itself. Considering it as good as lost, the Regent shut himself up in
the Fort of Vincennes.[1318] They had missed their opportunity. The
French King's Councillors, Princes of the Blood, were deliberating,
surprised by victory, not knowing what to do with it. Certain it is
that not one of them thought of conquering, and that speedily, the
whole inheritance of King Charles. The forces at their disposal, and
the very conditions of the society in which they lived, rendered it
impossible for them to conceive of such an undertaking. The lords of
the Great Council were not like the poverty stricken monks, dreaming
in their ruined cloisters[1319] of an age of peace and concord. The
King's Councillors were no dreamers; they did not believe in the end
of the war, neither did they desire it. But they intended to conduct
it with the least possible risk and expenditure. There would always be
folk enough to don the hauberk and go a-plundering they said to
themselves; the taking and re-taking of towns must continue;
sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; to fight long