Although both King and nobles vied in paying honours to Joan of Arc, it was from the common people, from the heart of the nation, that she received what seems to have amounted to a feeling approaching adoration. Wherever she passed she was followed by crowds eager to kiss her feet and her hands, and who even threw themselves before her horse's feet. Medals were struck and worn as charms, with her effigy or coat-of-arms struck on them. Her name was introduced into the prayers of the Church.
Joan, although touched by these marks of affection, never allowed the people, as far as in her power lay, to ascribe unearthly influence to her person. When in the course of her trial the accusation that the people had made her an object of adoration was brought as a proof of her heresy, she said: 'In truth I should not have been able to have prevented that from being so, had God not protected me Himself from such a danger.'
CHAPTER IV[ToC]
THE CAPTURE.
We must now glance at the movements of the English since the deliverance of Orleans and their defeat at Patay, and the French King's coronation.
What proves the utter demoralisation of the English at this time is that the Regent Bedford was not only afraid of remaining in Paris, but had also taken refuge in the fortress of Vincennes. He was so poor that he could not pay the members of Parliament sitting in Paris. Like other bodies receiving no pay, the Parliament declined to work. So restricted were all things then in Paris that when the child-king (Henry VI.) was brought from London to be crowned there, not enough parchment could be found on which to register the details of his arrival.
For want of a victim to assuage his ire, the Regent disgraced Sir John Fastolfe, whom he unknighted and ungartered, in order to punish him for the defeat at Patay; and he wrote that the English reverses had been caused by 'a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchantements and sorcerie.'