7. The Coronation of Charles VII. and the Capture of the Maid. 1429—1430.—The Maid followed up her victory. She had at her side brave and skilful warriors, such as La Hire and the Bastard of Orleans, the illegitimate son of the murdered Louis of Orleans, and with their help she pressed the English hard, driving them northwards and defeating them at Patay. She insisted on conducting Charles to Reims, and he, indolently resisting at first, was carried away by her persistent urgency. Hostile towns opened their gates to her on the way, and on July 17 she saw with chastened joy the man whom she had saved from destruction crowned in the great cathedral of Reims. For her part, she was eager to push on the war, but Charles was slothful, and in a hurry to be back to the pleasures of his court. When she led the troops to the attack of Paris, she was ordered back by the king, and the army sent into winter quarters. In the spring of 1430 the Maid was allowed again to attack the English, but she had no longer the support which she had once had. Many of the French soldiers were meanly jealous of her, and were vexed when they were told that they owed their victories to a woman. On the other side the Duke of Burgundy was frightened by the French successes into giving real aid to Bedford, and on May 23, in a skirmish before Compiègne, her countrymen doing nothing to save or to rescue her, the Maid was taken by Burgundian soldiers. Before the end of the year her captors sold her to the English, who firmly believed her to be a witch.
8. The Martyrdom at Rouen. 1431.—The English had no difficulty in finding an ecclesiastical court to judge their prisoner. Even the French clergy detested the Maid as having appealed to supernatural voices which had not been recognised by the Church; and in spite of an intelligent and noble defence she was condemned to be burnt. At the stake she behaved with heroic simplicity. When the flames curled round her she called upon the saints who had befriended her. Her last utterance was a cry of "Jesus!" An Englishman who had come to triumph hung his head for shame. "We are lost," he said; "we have burnt a saint!"
9. The Last Years of the Duke of Bedford. 1431—1435.—The English gained nothing by their unworthy vengeance. Though the personal presence of the Maid was no longer there to encourage her countrymen, they had learnt from her to cherish that 'pity for the realm of France' which had glowed so brightly in her own bosom. It was in vain that towards the end of 1431 Bedford carried the young Henry, now a boy of ten years, who had already been crowned in England the year before, to be crowned at Nôtre Dame, the cathedral of Paris. The Parisians were disgusted by the troop of foreigners which accompanied him, and their confidence was shaken when Bedford sent the king back to England as not venturing to trust him amongst his French subjects. In 1432 the armies of Charles VII. stole forwards step by step, and Bedford, who had no money to pay his troops, could do nothing to resist them. The English Parliament, which had cheerfully voted supplies as long as there seemed a prospect of conquering France, hung back from granting them when victories were no longer won. In 1433 Bedford was again forced to return to England to oppose the intrigues of Gloucester, who, though he had lost the title of Protector when the young king was crowned, had thrown the government into confusion by his intrigues. When Bedford went back to France in 1434 he found the tide running strongly against him. Little more than Paris and Normandy were held by the English, and the Duke of Burgundy was inclining more and more towards the French. In 1435 a congress was held at Arras, under the Duke of Burgundy's presidency, in the hope that peace might be made. The congress, however, failed to accomplish anything, and soon after the English ambassadors were withdrawn Bedford died at Rouen. If so wise a statesman and so skilful a warrior had failed to hold down France, no other Englishman was likely to achieve the task.
10. The Defection of Burgundy. 1435.—After Bedford's death the Duke of Burgundy renounced his alliance with the English and entered into a league with Charles VII. In 1430, by the death of the Duke of Brabant, he inherited Brabant, and in 1436 he inherited from the faithless Jacqueline Hainault, Holland, Zealand, and Friesland (see p. [308]). He thus, being already Count of Flanders, became ruler over well-nigh the whole of the Netherlands in addition to his own territories in Burgundy. The vassal of the king of France was now a European potentate. England had therefore to count on the enmity of a ruler whose power of injuring her was indeed serious.
11. The Duke of York in France. 1436—1437.—Bedford's successor was the young Richard, Duke of York, whose father was that Earl of Cambridge who had been executed at Southampton (see p. [301]); whilst his mother was Anne Mortimer, the sister of the Earl of March. As the Earl of March had died in 1425, the Duke of York was now, through his mother, the heir of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and thus, if hereditary right was to be regarded, heir to the throne. That a man with such claims should have been entrusted with such an office shows how firmly the victories of Henry V. had established the House of Lancaster in England. Disputes in the English Council, however, delayed his departure, and in April 1436, before he could arrive in France, Paris was lost, whilst the Duke of Burgundy besieged Calais. England, stung by the defection of Burgundy, made an unusual effort. One army drove the Burgundians away from before Calais, whilst another under the Duke of York himself regained several fortresses in Normandy, and in 1437 Lord Talbot drove the Burgundians behind the Somme.