Entering the city after
sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8th, for the
entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she
fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the
9th of July she took Troyes by a _coup-de-main_ from a mixed
garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she
carried the dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th she crowned him;
and there she rested from her labour of triumph. All that was to be
_done_ she had now accomplished; what remained was--to
_suffer_.
All this forward movement was her own; excepting one man, the whole
council was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from
earth. Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong
contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of
women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. Henceforward she
was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the
sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve.
But she had now accomplished the capital objects which 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.
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