her own visions had dictated. These involved all the
rest. Errors were now less important; and doubtless it had now become more
difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what _were_ errors. The
noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of
clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to
move his arms with effect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning
for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of
his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it
impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an
irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst the uncles of Henry
VI., partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which
they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to
forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and whilst they laughed,
she _did_ it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital
oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it effectually, was--to
vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch.
That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was
the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless
they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind, by
associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of
the invader was broken.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for
France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost,
all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of successes so giddy?
Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in
the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her
feelings by the pity which she had every where expressed for the suffering
enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite
with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus
opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect
the captive or the wounded--she mourned over the excesses of her
countrymen--she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English
soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual,
as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti onso suo, aut
quemquam interficere." She sheltered the English,