448 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. The story of her exploits at court, in camp, in the field, is tamiliar to all the world. A thousand vulgar fictions obscure and degrade its essential truth. What this untaught girl did for her country was simply this : she brought to bear upon the armies of France the influence of what our own Western preachers would call a " power- ful revival of religion." From bands of reckless and dissolute plunderers, she made French soldiers orderly, decent, moral, and devout. Hope revived. She made the king believe in himself; she made the court believe in the cause. Men of faith saw in her the expected vir- gin savior : men of understanding perceived the advant- age to their side of having her thus regarded. She may, too (as some of her warrior comrades testified in later years), have really possessed some military talent, as well as martial ardor and inspiration. They said of her that she had good judgment in placing artillery. Later in her short public career she showed herself restless, rash, uncontrollable ; she made mistakes ; she incurred dis- asters. But for many months, during which France regained a place among the powers of Europe, she was a glorious presence in the army — a warrior virgin, in bril- liant attire, splendidly equipped, superbly mounted, nobly attended ; a leader whom all eyes followed with confiding admiration, as one who had been their deliverer, and was still their chief. The lowliness of her origin was an element in her power over a people who worshiped every hour a Saviour who was cradled in a manger. We can still read over the door of an ancient inn at Rheims, the Maison Rouge, this inscription : "In the year 1429, at the coronation of Charles VII, in this tavern, then called The Zebra, the father and mother of Jeanne Dare lodged, at the expense of the City Council." Her career could not but be brief. When she left home to deliver her country, she had lived, according to the
