But not yet was Joan's secret martyrdom at an end; it increased from day to day with her glory. Charles VII, that poltroon and ingrate prince, unnerved and plunged in ignoble effeminacy, was yet to cause the shepherdess of Domremy to undergo all the tortures and all the disappointments that a soul inflamed with patriotism can not choose but undergo when it has devoted itself to a prince whose baseness is equal to his selfishness and cowardice.
CHAPTER X.
THE KING CROWNED.
Immediately upon the raising of the siege of Orleans, Joan hastened to the Castle of Loches. The fame of her triumphs ran ahead heralding her approach. The gates of the palace flew open before her. She was told the King was closeted in his private cabinet with his council. Thither Joan walked resolutely, knocked at the door and intrepidly addressed Charles VII:
"Sire, pray do not hold such long conferences with these seigneurs. The siege of Orleans is raised. The good town is now restored to you. You must now march boldly to Rheims and be consecrated. The consecration will crown you King of France in the eyes of the French. The English will then be impotent against you."
The sound sense and political acumen of Joan traced to Charles VII in these few words the only path that wisdom dictated. His consecration at Rheims, a divine attestation of his contested rights, would impart in the eyes of the ignorant and credulous mass a powerful prestige to a royalty thus reconstituted, rehabilitated, rejuvenated and breaking forth in renewed splendor. The step was moreover a bold challenge flung at the English, whose King claimed also to be King of France, and the challenge had the proper threatening ring coming swiftly upon the victory of Orleans. But Joan had counted without the pusillanimity of a prince who doted on his idleness, who was jealous of his pleasures, who hated the bare thought of physical exertion, and who considered only his personal comfort. In order to be consecrated at Rheims he would have to mount on horseback and place himself at the head of the army. It would be necessary to confront considerable danger seeing that from Orleans to Rheims the whole country still was in the hands of the English.
"Go to Rheims! Why, the project is insane, criminal!" cried La Tremouille and the Bishop of Chartres. "Does it not endanger the life, at least the health of the King?"
And the sorry King joined his council:
"I, risk myself out of my Castles of Loches and Chinon! And do so when the English still are in possession of Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau and other strongholds on the frontier of Touraine! Why, at the first step that I take out of my retreat they will gobble me up!" and to himself he cursed his luck and wished the possessed Maid to the devil, seeing her more interested than himself in the honor of the crown.
Disappointed and grieved Joan hardly repressed her indignation. The brave Maid answered that if Charles's departure for Rheims only depended upon the capture of the strongholds held in Touraine by the English, she would capture these fortresses and drive the enemy so far, so very far that they could not then inspire the King with the slightest fear.[101] She then appointed Gien for their rendezvous, implored the King to meet her there in a week, and promised him that he would then be able to undertake the journey to Rheims without danger. The Maid forthwith left the court and rejoined the army.
On the 12th of June, 1429, Joan took the fortified town of Meung; on the 17th of the same month she captured Jargeau, and the next day Beaugency. In all these assaults the Maid displayed the same bravery, the same military genius that distinguished her at the siege of Orleans. At the capture of Jargeau she came near being killed. This second series of triumphs was crowned by the battle of Patay, where all the English forces were assembled under the command of Warwick and their most illustrious captains, most of whom were taken prisoner. At this bloody and hotly contested battle Joan showed herself the peer of the most famous captains by the boldness of her manoeuvres, the quickness of her eye, the use that she put the artillery to, by the enthusiasm that she knew how to fire her soldiers with, and by her imperturbable good nature. Just before the battle she said to the Duke of Alençon with a cheerfulness and terseness worthy of the best passages of antiquity: