Henry was assured in the near future of the full possession of the
French throne, to the exclusion of the Dauphin. Henry received with
the daughter of Charles VI. the Duchy of Normandy, besides the places
conquered by Edward III. and his famous son; and of fourteen provinces
left by Charles V. to his successor only three remained in the power
of the French crown. The French Parliament assented to these hard
conditions, and but one voice was raised in protest to the
dismemberment of France; that solitary voice, a voice crying in a
wilderness, was that of Charles the Dauphin--afterwards Charles VII.
Henry V. had fondly imagined that by the treaty of Troyes and his
marriage with a French princess the war, which had lasted over a
century between the two countries, would now cease, and that France
would lie for ever at the foot of England. Indeed, up to Henry's
death, at the end of August 1422, events seemed to justify such hopes;
but after a score of years from Henry's death France had recovered
almost the whole of her lost territory.

There is nothing in history more strange and yet more true than the
story which has been told so often, but which never palls in its
interest--that life of the maiden through whose instrumentality France
regained her place among the nations. No poet's fancy has spun from
out his imagination a more glorious tale, or pictured in glowing words
an epic of heroic love and transcendent valour, to compete with the
actual reality of the career of this simple village maiden of old
France: she who, almost unassisted and alone, through her intense love
of her native land and deep pity for the woes of her people, was
enabled, when the day of action at length arrived, to triumph over
unnumbered obstacles, and, in spite of all opposition, ridicule, and
contumely, to fulfil her glorious mission.

Sainte-Beuve has written that, in his opinion, the way to honour the
history of Joan of Arc is to tell the truth about her as simply as
possible. This has been my object in the following pages.

On the border of Lorraine and Champagne, in the canton of the
Barrois--between the rivers Marne and Meuse--extended, at the time of
which we are writing, a vast forest, called the Der. By the side of a
little streamlet, which took its source from the river Meuse, and
dividing it east by west, stands the village of Domremy. The southern
portion, confined within its banks and watered by its stream,
contained a little fort