ty with which she passed through the brutal
warriors of a mediaeval camp. It was her care for her honour that led her
to clothe herself in a soldier's dress. She wept hot tears when told of
the foul taunts of the English, and called passionately on God to witness
her chastity. "Yield thee, yield thee, Glasdale," she cried to the English
warrior whose insults had been foulest as he fell wounded at her feet;
"you called me harlot! I have great pity on your soul." But all thought of
herself was lost in the thought of her mission. It was in vain that the
French generals strove to remain on the Loire. Jeanne was resolute to
complete her task, and while the English remained panic-stricken around
Paris she brought Charles to march upon Reims, the old crowning-place of
the kings of France. Troyes and Chalons submitted as she reached them,
Reims drove out the English garrison and threw open her gates to the king.

[Sidenote: Capture of Jeanne]

With his coronation the Maid felt her errand to be over. "O gentle King,
the pleasure of God is done," she cried, as she flung herself at the feet
of Charles and asked leave to go home. "Would it were His good will," she
pleaded with the Archbishop as he forced her to remain, "that I might go
and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers: they would be so
glad to see me again!" But the policy of the French Court detained her
while the cities of the North of France opened their gates to the
newly-consecrated king. Bedford however, who had been left without money
or men, had now received reinforcements. Excluded as Cardinal Beaufort had
been from the Council by Gloucester's intrigues, he poured his wealth
without stint into the exhausted treasury till his loans to the Crown
reached the sum of half-a-million; and at this crisis he unscrupulously
diverted an army which he had levied at his own cost for a crusade against
the Hussites in Bohemia to his nephew's aid. The tide of success turned
again. Charles, after a repulse before the walls of Paris, fell back
behind the Loire; while the towns on the Oise submitted anew to the Duke
of Burgundy, whose more active aid Bedford had bought by the cession of
Champagne. In the struggle against Duke Philip Jeanne fought with her
usual bravery but with the fatal consciousness that her mission was at an
end, and during the defence of Compiegne in the May of 1430 she fell into
the power of the Bastard of Vendome, to be sold by her captor into