skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset, on the 29th
of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8, 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 labor of triumph. 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 labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted;
and the worst error, that she committed, was to lend the sanction of her
presence to counsels which she disapproved. But she had 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. She had made it
impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an
irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst 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 whilst they laughed,
she _did_ it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital