with that knave of hearts
who was already famous. She was said to have had twelve traitors
beheaded.[1563] Such tales were real romances of chivalry. Here is one
of them:

[Footnote 1563: _Ibid._, pp. 144 _et seq._]

About two thousand English surrounded the King's camp, watching to see
if they could do him some hurt. Then the Maid called Captain La Hire
and said to him: "Thou hast in thy time done great prowess, but to-day
God prepares for thee a deed greater than any thou hast yet performed.
Take thy men and go to such and such a wood two leagues herefrom, and
there shalt thou find two thousand English, all lance in hand; them
shalt thou take and slay."

La Hire went forth to the English and all were taken and slain as the
Maid had said.[1564]

[Footnote 1564: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 150, 153.]

Such were the fairy-stories told of Jeanne to the joy of simple
primitive folk, who delighted in the idea of a maid slayer of giants
and remover of mountains.

There was a rumour that after the sack of Auxerre, the Duke of
Burgundy had been defeated and taken in a great battle, that the
Regent was dead and that the Armagnacs had entered Paris.[1565]
Prodigies were said to have attended the capitulation of Troyes. On
the coming of the French, it was told how the townsfolk beheld from
their ramparts a vast multitude of men-at-arms, some five or six
thousand, each man holding a white pennon in his hand. On the
departure of the French, they beheld them again, ranged but a bow-shot
behind King Charles. These knights with white pennons vanished when
the King had gone; for they were as miraculous as those white-scarfed
knights, whom the Bretons had seen riding in the sky but shortly
before.[1566]

[Footnote 1565: _Ibid._, pp. 166, 167.]

[Footnote 1566: Fragment of a letter on the marvels in Poitou, in
_Trial_, vol. v, pp. 121, 122. _Relation du greffier de La Rochelle_,
_op. cit._, p. 343.]

All that the people of Orleans beheld when their siege was suddenly
raised, all that Armagnac mendicants and the Dauphin's clerks related
was greedily received, accredited, and amplified. Three months after
her coming to Chinon, Jeanne had her legend, which grew and increased
and extended into Italy, Flanders, and Germany.[1567] In the summer of
1429, this legend was already formed. All the scattered parts of what
may be described as the gospel of her childhood existed.

[Footnote 1567: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 78, note 1. Eberhard W