rom Fife stood by her to the end.[1]

To understand Joan's history it is necessary to say, first, how we come
to know so much about one who died so many years ago, and, next, to
learn how her country chanced to be so wretched before Joan came to
deliver it and to give her life for France.

[Illustration: 'The Fairy Tree']

We know so much about her, not from poets and writers of books who lived
in her day, but because she was tried by French priests (1431), and all
her answers on everything that she ever did in all her life were written
down in Latin. These answers fill most of a large volume. Then, twenty
years later (1550-1556), when the English had been driven out of
France, the French king collected learned doctors, who examined
witnesses from all parts of the country, men and women who had known
Joan as a child, and in the wars, and in prison, and they heard her case
again, and destroyed the former unjust judgment. The answers of these
witnesses fill two volumes, and thus we have all the Maid's history,
written during her life, or not long after her death, and sworn to on
oath. We might expect that the evidence of her friends, after they had
time to understand her, and perhaps were tempted to overpraise her,
would show us a picture different from that given in the trial by her
mortal enemies. But though the earlier account, put forth by her foes,
reads like a description by the Scribes and Pharisees of the trial of
Our Lord, yet the character of Joan was so noble that the versions by
her friends and her enemies practically agree in her honour. Her
advocates cannot make us admire her more than we must admire her in the
answers which she gave to her accusers. The records of these two trials,
then, with letters and poems and histories written at the time, or very
little later, give us all our information about Joan of Arc.

Next, as to 'the great pitifulness that was in France' before Joan of
Arc came to deliver her country, the causes of the misery are long to
tell and not easy to remember. To put it shortly, in Joan's childhood
France was under a mad king, Charles VI., and was torn to pieces by two
factions, the party of Burgundy and the party of Armagnac. The English
took advantage of these disputes, and overran the land. France was not
so much one country, divided by parties, as a loose knot of states,
small and great, with different interests, obeying greedy and selfish
chiefs rather than the king. Joan cared