The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed to
receive the King. Strange as it seems to say so Paris was bitterly,
fiercely English at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to be
taken into account as the most important in the whole matter. There was
no answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliary
force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. The
populace perhaps might be indifferent: at the best it had no feeling on
the subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the King. During the time
of Bedford's absence the city felt itself to have "no lord"--_ceux de
Paris avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n' y avoit_. It was believed
that Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their
desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and
hopeless defence than to submission. The Duke of Bedford, governing in
the name of the infant Henry VI. Of England, was their seigneur, instead
of their natural sovereign. It is a fact which to us seems scarcely
credible, but it was certainly true. There seems to have been no feeling
even, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal;
nothing of the kind. Paris was English, holding by the English kings who
had never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of its
party. It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions.
In the _Journal du Bourgeois de Paris_--who was no _bourgeois_ but a
distinguished member of that university which held the Maid and all her
ways in horror--Jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism
and of France is spoken of as "a creature in the form of a woman." How
extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it is
almost impossible to believe! Paris is France nowadays to many people,
though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in the
early part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly English, not
by compulsion even, but by habit and policy. Perhaps the delays, the
hesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors are thus rendered
more excusable than by any other explanation.

In the meantime it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings of
this vacillating army without a map. If the reader should trace its
movements, he would see what a stumbling and devious course it took as
of a man blundering in the dark. From Rheims to Soissons the way was
clear; then there came a sudden move southward to Chatea