h. She appealed to the pope: they
rejected her appeal.

They asked her, why she put trust in her standard, which had been
consecrated by magical incantations: she replied that she put trust
in the Supreme Being alone, whose image was impressed upon it. They
demanded, why she carried in her hand that standard at the anointment
and coronation of Charles at Rheims: she answered, that the person who
had shared the danger was entitled to share the glory. When accused
of going to war, contrary to the decorums of her sex, and of assuming
government and command over men, she scrupled not to reply, that her
sole purpose was to defeat the English, and to expel them the kingdom.
In the issue, she was condemned for all the crimes of which she had
been accused, aggravated by heresy; her revelations were declared to be
inventions of the devil to delude the people; and she was sentenced to
be delivered over to the secular arm.

Joan, so long surrounded by inveterate enemies, who treated her with
every mark of contumely; browbeaten and overawed by men of superior
rank, and men invested with the ensigns of a sacred character, which
she had been accustomed to revere, felt her spirit at last subdued; and
those visionary dreams of inspiration, in which she had been buoyed up
by the triumphs of success and the applauses of her own party, gave
way to the terrors of that punishment to which she was sentenced.
She publicly declared herself willing to recant: she acknowledged the
illusion of those revelations which the church had rejected; and she
promised never more to maintain them. Her sentence was then mitigated:
she was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and to be fed during life
on bread and water.

Enough was now done to fulfil all political views, and to convince both
the French and the English, that the opinion of divine influence, which
had so much encouraged the one and daunted the other, was entirely
without foundation. But the barbarous vengeance of Joan's enemies was
not satisfied with this victory. Suspecting that the female dress, which
she had now consented to wear, was disagreeable to her, they purposely
placed in her apartment a suit of men's apparel; and watched for the
effects of that temptation upon her. On the sight of a dress in which
she had acquired so much renown, and which, she once believed, she
wore by the particular appointment of Heaven, all her former ideas and
passions revived; and she ventured in her soli