about the adjacent
country, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which had
opened their gates to the King. Thus while Charles gave no attention
to anything beyond the Loire, and kept his chief champion there, as it
were, on the leash, permitting no return to the most important field
of operations, almost all that had been gained was again lost upon the
banks of the Seine. This was the state of affairs when Jeanne returned
humbled and sad from the abandoned siege of La Charite. Her enemy's
counsels had triumphed all round and this was the result. Individual
fightings of no particular account and under no efficient organisation
were taking place day by day; here a town stood out heroically, there
another yielded to the foreign arms; the population were thrown back
into universal misery, the spring fields trampled under foot, the
villages burned, every evil of war in full operation, invasion
aggravated by faction, the English always aided by one side of France
against the other, and neither peace nor security anywhere.

This was the aspect of affairs on one side. On the other appeared a
still less satisfactory scene. Charles amusing himself, his counsellors,
La Tremoille, and the Archbishop of Rheims carrying on fictitious
negotiations with Burgundy and playing with the Maid who was in their
power, sending her out to make a show and cast a spell, then dragging
her back at the end of their shameful chain: while the Court, the King
and Queen, and all their flattering attendants gilded that chain and
tried to make her forget by fine clothes and caresses, at once her
mission and her despair. They were not ungrateful, no: let us do them
justice, for they might well have added this to the number of their
sins: mantles of cloth of gold, patents of nobility were at her command,
had these been what she wanted. The only personal wrong they did
to Jeanne was to set up against her a sort of opposition, another
enchantress and visionary who had "voices" and apparitions too, and who
was admitted to all the councils and gave her advice in contradiction
of the Maid, a certain Catherine de la Rochelle, who was ready to say
anything that was put into her mouth, but who had done nothing to prove
any mission for France or from God. We have little light however upon
the state of affairs in those castles, which one after another were the
abode of the Court during this disastrous winter. They were safe enough
on the other side of the L