JOAN OF ARC. 353 military. The cutting of her hair, prohibited by the Apostle, was justified in the same manner.* For a few weeks after the coronation Joan was at the culmina- tion of her career. An uninterrupted tide of success had demon- strated the reality of her divine mission. She had saved the monarchy, and no one could doubt that the invader would shortly be expelled from France. Possibly she may, as has been repre- sented, have declared that all which God had appointed her to do had been accomplished, and that she desired to return to her parents and herd their cattle as she had been accustomed of old. In view of what followed, this was the only way to uphold the theory of divine inspiration, and such a statement inevitably formed part of her legend, whether it was true or not. In her subsequent failures, as at Paris and La Charite, Joan naturally per- suaded herself that they had been undertaken against the counsel of her Yoices, but all the evidence goes to prove that at the time she was as confident of success as ever. Thus a letter written from Reims on the day of coronation, evidently by a well-informed person, states that the army was to start the next day for Paris, and that the Pucelle had no doubts as to her reducing it to obedi- ence. Nor did she really consider her mission as ended, for she had at the commencement proclaimed the liberation of; Charles of Orleans as one of her objects, and on her trial she explained that she proposed either to invade England to set him frae or to capt- ure enough prisoners to force an exchange : her Yoices had prom- ised it to her, and had she not been captured she would have ac- complished it in three years.f
- Nider Formicar v. viii. — Rymer, X. 459, 472.— Gersoni Opp. Ed. 1488, liii.
T-Z. — M. de FAverdy gives an abstract of other learned disputations on the sub- ject of Joan (ubi sup. III. 212-17). t Chronique, p. 447.— Buchon, p. 524.— Pez, Thesaur. Anecd. VI. in. 237.— Proces, p. 484.— L'Averdy, III. 338. The popular explanation of Joan's career connected her good-fortune with a sword marked with five crosses on the blade, which she had miraculously dis- covered in the church of St. Catharine de Fierbois, and which she thenceforth carried. On the march to Reims, finding her commands disregarded as to the exclusion of prostitutes from the army, she beat some loose women with the flat of the blade and broke it. No smith could weld the fragments together; she was obliged to wear another sword, and her unvarying success disappeared. — Jean Chartier, pp. 20, 29, 42. III.— 23
