She had made it
impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in
an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of
Henry VI, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very
impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any
French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought;
and, while they laughed, _she_ did it. Henceforth the single
redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never
_could_ have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint the
coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not
malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving
principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged
the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it
with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader
was broken.
But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for
France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often
_have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle
of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of
her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had
manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had
everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy.
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