th many other similar rumors, augmented the renown
and influence that she now rapidly acquired.

The state of public feeling in France was now favorable to an
enthusiastic belief in a divine interposition in favor of the party that
had hitherto been unsuccessful and oppressed. The humiliations which had
befallen the French royal family and nobility were looked on as the just
judgments of God upon them for their vice and impiety. The misfortunes
that had come upon France as a nation were believed to have been drawn
down by national sins. The English, who had been the instruments of
heaven's wrath against France, seemed now, by their pride and cruelty,
to be fitting objects of it themselves.

France in that age was a profoundly religious country. There was
ignorance, there was superstition, there was bigotry; but there was
_faith_--a faith that itself worked true miracles, even while it
believed in unreal ones. At this time, also, one of those devotional
movements began among the clergy in France, which from time to time
occur in national churches, without it being possible for the historian
to assign any adequate human cause for their immediate date or
extension. Numberless friars and priests traversed the rural districts
and towns of France, preaching to the people that they must seek from
heaven a deliverance from the pillages of the soldiery and the insolence
of the foreign oppressors.

The idea of a providence that works only by general laws was wholly
alien to the feelings of the age. Every political event, as well as
every natural phenomenon, was believed to be the immediate result of a
special mandate of God. This led to the belief that his holy angels and
saints were constantly employed in executing his commands and mingling
in the affairs of men. The Church encouraged these feelings, and at the
same time sanctioned the concurrent popular belief that hosts of evil
spirits were also ever actively interposing in the current of earthly
events, with whom sorcerers and wizards could league themselves, and
thereby obtain the exercise of supernatural power.

Thus all things favored the influence which Jeanne obtained both over
friends and foes. The French nation, as well as the English and the
Burgundians, readily admitted that superhuman beings inspired her; the
only question was whether these beings were good or evil angels; whether
she brought with her "airs from heaven or blasts from hell." This
question seemed