, and for the moment the
soft little shepherdess has disappeared from your view. This untaught
country-damsel, unused to dictating anything at all to anybody,
much less documents of state to kings and generals, poured out this
procession of vigorous sentences as fluently as if this sort of work had
been her trade from childhood:

JESUS MARIA King of England and you Duke of Bedford who call yourself
Regent of France; William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and you Thomas
Lord Scales, who style yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford--do
right to the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid who is sent by God the
keys of all the good towns you have taken and violated in France. She
is sent hither by God, to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to
make peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying
for what you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and
otherwise, who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own
land in God's name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to
see you to your very great hurt. King of England, if you do not so, I
am chief of war, and whenever I shall find your people in France, I will
drive them out, willing or not willing; and if they do not obey I will
slay them all, but if they obey, I will have them to mercy. I am come
hither by God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to put you out of
France, in spite of those who would work treason and mischief against
the kingdom. Think not you shall ever hold the kingdom from the King of
Heaven, the Son of the Blessed Mary; King Charles shall hold it, for God
wills it so, and has revealed it to him by the Maid. If you believe not
the news sent by God through the Maid, wherever we shall meet you we
will strike boldly and make such a noise as has not been in France these
thousand years. Be sure that God can send more strength to the Maid than
you can bring to any assault against her and her good men-at-arms; and
then we shall see who has the better right, the King of Heaven, or
you. Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays you not to bring about your own
destruction. If you do her right, you may yet go in her company where
the French shall do the finest deed that has been done in Christendom,
and if you do not, you shall be reminded shortly of your great wrongs.

In that closing sentence she invites them to go on crusade with her
to rescue the Holy Sepulcher. No answer had been returned to this
proclamation, and