Joan of Arc - Maid of Heaven (original) (raw)
The Maid of France
Being The Story Of The Life And Death of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc)
CHAPTER 16
THE CAMPAIGN OF DUPES
The shadow fell across the path of the Maid and of de Laval, d'Alengon, and the rest of her friends, on the very day of the coronation (July 17). It had been intended that the King should on July 18 march against Paris. Bedford knew this, as we saw, and announced the fact to the English Council in London. On July 17, at Reims, Pierre de Beauvais sent the same tidings to the Queen of France and her mother.
But on this very day of July 17 came to Reims an embassy from the Duke of Burgundy, professedly to negotiate peace. Beauvais announced the arrival of the embassy; Pope Pius II describes it in his Memoirs. The Maid herself had been anxious for peace with Burgundy ; with the English there could be no peace, she said, till they returned to their own country. Her ideas on that subject were perfectly clear; not so those of her King and his foolish advisers. They were the dupes of a dream about peace with England. Jeanne had written to the Duke on June 27, and her letter had been slighted ; she dictated another letter to him from Reims on the day of the coronation. " Jeanne the Maid desires you, High and redoubtable Prince, in the name of the King of Heaven, her rightful Lord, to make a long, good, and assured peace with the King of France. . . . Prince of Burgundy, in all humility I pray, implore, and beseech you to make war no more on the holy kingdom of France. ... All those who fight against the holy kingdom of France fight against the Lord Jesus, King of Heaven and of the whole world. ... I pray and beseech you with joined hands, war not against us. . . ." The Joan of Arc of Shakespeare may be more eloquent, but not more earnest.
"See, see the pining malady of France;
Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds,
Which thou thyself hast given her woful breast!
Oh, turn thy edged sword another way;
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help!"
The Duke was not the man to heed the Maid, and the peace which she desired was a fatal diplomatic deception. Charles wasted four days at Reims with the Burgundian envoys (till July 21), while Cardinal Beaufort on July 15 was marching his 3500 Englishmen from Calais to Paris. Bedford had hastened from Paris to meet them. Already the Duke of Burgundy was concentrating and equipping forces to hold Paris against the King: he acknowledged, on July 8, the receipt of 20,000 livres tournois from the English Council. On July 14 he had the old story of the murder of Jean sans Peur raked up in a great assembly in Paris ; the populace was stirred to hatred of Charles VII ; the Duke lamented his bereavement, and all swore loyalty to Bedford. Three days later the Duke's envoys were pretending to make peace with Charles VII at Reims ! It seems incredible that King and Council could be deceived by such open dissimulation. Burgundy was concentrating his army near Amiens. By July 25, Bedford and his English army had entered Paris. Burgundy, while pretending to make peace, was sending to Bedford recruits from Picardy.
Three invaluable days had been stolen by Burgundy, and the unhappy assembly of a Convention at Arras, for Franco-Burgun- dian negotiations in August, had probably been mooted. At this Convention, or later, airy promises were held up to Charles. England might come into the peace, and restore to France the captive Due d'Orl^ans ! It appears that French forces had extorted a delayed capitulation from Evreux, the key of Normandy, in June-July; but the French delays, and the expeditious tactics of Bedford, ruined this opportunity, itself due, probably, to the energy of the Constable and La Hire.
Leaving Reims, then, on July 21, the King and the Maid, after the traditional journey to St. Marcoul, where Charles touched for "the King's evil" (scrofula), entered Soissons on July 23. " The Maid," says de Cagny, " caused the King to advance on Paris." Meanwhile the important town of Compiegne, north- east of Paris, a place as strong as Orleans, had been summoned (July 22-25) and was negotiating its surrender, as was Chateau Thierry, ten leagues south of Paris, a town valuable for its fortified bridge across the Marne. A network of rivers surrounded the army, and to secure the bridges was all important. Yet from Soissons the army, under the deplorable influence of the King's favourites, was to beat a retreat towards his beloved lurking-places on the Loire. They had every intention of deserting the great enterprise, already rendered more arduous by the English reinforcement of Paris.
On August 1, Charles crossed the Marne at Chateau Thierry. He did not march on Compiegne, ready as it was to receive him, or through the plains of the Valois, by Crepy and Senlis ; he turned due south, towards his dear Loire, as he would have fallen back on the Loire from Troyes if the Maid had not terrified Troyes into a capitulation. He stayed at Chateau Thierry from July 29 to August 1 : on the last day of July, " in favour and at the request of our beloved Jeanne the Maid," he granted remission of taxation to her native villages, Domremy and Greux. This boon endured into the reign of Louis XV.
"Turning first the flank then the rear of his army towards Paris, dragging with him the despairing Maid, the King headed for the Loire." On August 2 he was at Frovins, and might hope to secure, for his southward retreat, the bridge of Bray, above Montereau. Hereabouts he dawdled till August 5 or 6.
The Maid's emotions are expressed in a letter to Reims, dated "August 5, on the Paris road." She tries to reassure the folk of Reims, in face of the fears naturally caused by the southward march of the King, deserting his own cause, and leaving Reims, Soissons, and other cities at the mercy of Burgundy. " Dear and good friends, good and loyal Frenchmen, the Maid sends you news of her . . . never will I abandon you while I live. True it is that the King has made a fifteen days' truce with the Duke of Burgundy, who is to give up to him the town of Paris peacefully on the fifteenth day."
The date of this armistice and promise is unknown. Could Charles and his advisers, dupes as they were, be so easily gulled by the Duke of Burgundy; and if they did expect him to surrender Paris in a few days, why were they heading for the Loire ? Or did they tell a false tale to the Maid merely for the purpose of soothing her ? She was not always an easy dupe, as she showed in the case of the concealed tactics of a feint on St. Laurent, at Orleans ; nor was she deceived now. " Although the truce is made, I am not content, and am not certain that I will keep it. If I do, it will be merely for the sake of the King's honour, and in case they do not deceive the blood royal, for I will keep the King's army together and in readiness, at the end of the fifteen days, if peace is not made." She did that. She bids the people of Reims to trust her, to be of good heart, and to let her know if there are traitors among them.
She takes a very high tone, as the accredited emissary of Heaven. Every one told her that she had brought the army together (as, in fact, she was the cause of its gathering) ; and though it was the King's army, she speaks as if she were superior in authority. In fact, it was she, with the young knights who loved and stood by her, that did keep the army together. If her tone seems too high, let us remember that she was only a girl of seventeen, and that, apart from her intercourse with heavenly beings, her successes had been unparalleled, while her ideas were those of sound common sense : military and political tactics alike dictated a march on Paris; but the first principles of war were disregarded by her deluded King. It has been asserted that "the army was starving, and found no supplies in these ravaged plains and pillaged cities. Want of food caused the preparations to retreat and regain Poitou." But " food never failed while the Maid was in the field during this campaign," says a contemporary. The explanation of the designed retreat thus explains nothing, and nothing in the character of Charles's master, La TremoTlle, makes it improbable that he had been bought by the Duke of Burgundy, with whom his kinsfolk were in close relations. As for the Duke, far from intending to hand over Paris to the King, he was aiding Bedford, as we saw, both with men and money, and "calling in great armed levies of his subjects and allies."
The tactics of the Maid were the only right tactics : no inspiration was needed to conceive them. But she could not save her King against his will, nor would she raise her standard against his will. By August 3, Reims had taken alarm, had learned that Charles meant to desert the path to Paris, and on August 4, Reims sent the news to Chalons and Laon.
It is an extraordinary proof of the casual ways of war in the fifteenth century, that little or no attention was being paid to the fortifications of Paris. Ever since Pathay (June 18) the city had lain open to a coup de main. Bedford had shown a fretting anxiety ; his letters to the English Privy Council reveal it, especially his letter of July 16. But it is not till the first week of September that the Journal of a clerkly Burgundian in Paris (usually called the Bourgeois de Paris) contains an entry of a really serious beginning made in strengthening the gates and the outworks or boulevards.
From Paris, on August 3, Cardinal Beaufort, with his personal attendants, set out on the return to Rouen. The journey, if the French leaders had shown the slightest energy in sending out mounted patrols, ought to have brought Beaufort into their hands. On August 4, Bedford assumed the offensive defensive, and led the Cardinal's crusaders against the French army in Brie. By the dawn of August 6, Charles, indisposed to meet Bedford, was in the neighbourhood of Provins, intending to cross the Seine by the bridge of Bray. But, during the night, Bedford's men had occupied the bridge-head with a strong Anglo-Burgundian force. The party of Jeanne, including Rene, Due de Bar, who had joined the King, the Comte de Vendome, and Guy de Laval, were glad that the retreat to the Loire was cut off, " for the determination to retreat was contrary to their will and desire," and to the tactics of "the other captains and leaders."
Against their will the favourites of the King now found themselves marching nearer Paris, back to Chateau Thierry, and to Crepy-en-Valois and Ferte the people, says Dunois, came out to welcome their King with joyous cries of Noel! (August 10-11). According to a modern critic, "if the little saint (Jeanne) had listened at the doors of their unfurnished houses," she would have found them grumbling that "it was better to serve Saracens than Christians," so miserable was their condition, so wretched and ruined was their country. The records of the chapel of St. Catherine at Fierbois teem, indeed, with stories of the cruelties of war, during a century ; the veil is lifted, and forgotten miseries are displayed. But the people of the Valois may well have believed that the King and the Maid had come, as by miracle, to end their sorrows, which really were to stretch in front of them and their descendants, while the Royal was at war with the feudal power.
In any case, between Crepy and Ferte the Maid was riding between Dunois and the Archbishop of Reims. "Here is a good people," she said, being as hopeful as themselves. "Never have I seen any so glad of the coming of the noble King. Would that I, when my time comes, were so fortunate as to be buried in their country" ;--she that was never to receive" the dear, the desired embraces of our Mother Earth ! "
"Jeanne, in what place do you expect to die?" asked the Archbishop, who may have thought that she supposed herself to have had knowledge from her Counsel. Legends were current of a prophecy of her own that she would fall in battle in the Holy Land. Her only prediction as to herself was that she " would last but a year or little more," not that she would die. "Where God pleases," said she, who, had she known, would none the less have gone to meet her fate. " I know not the hour or the place more than you know. And would that it were God's pleasure that I might now lay down my arms and go back to serve my father and mother, in keeping their sheep, with my sister and my brothers, that would be right glad to see me. ,J
Two of the Maid's brothers had been with her since her military enterprise began, and we do not learn that she had a sister living, though at Ceffonds she had a brother and a sister-in-law, often styled " sister " in these days. The memory of Dunois must have been imperfect. She did not say (nor does Dunois make her say) that she thought her mission was ended. She never looked on it as ended ; could she have escaped from prison at any time in 143 1, she would have taken up arms again. But in that hour she wished that God's will had set her free to return to her father and mother. It was a natural and touching sentiment, which, among the thwarting delays of the politicians, may often have filled her heart. For more than a year, nay, for ever, she was engaged in one unceasing struggle against the disbelief and slackness of men ; often she was weary, often in prayer and in tears. But her tenacity was indomitable ; by mere force of will she had dragged her King to victory ; her will was perhaps the greatest marvel among the many marvellous endowments of this girl of seventeen.
The abjectly sluggish character of the King was at this time as far below as the energy of the Maid was above the ordinary level. He received from Bedford a letter of calculated brutality, charged with insults which might have fired the heart of a coward. Bedford had the insolence to accuse Charles of being the cause of all the misery in France, of all the wretchedness produced by the ground- less claims of England. He challenged the King to name a place of meeting, in the Brie country where both armies then were, or in the He de France. He addresses his royal enemy as, " you who were wont to style yourself Dauphin, and now call yourself King." He upbraids Charles with the crime of Montereau ; he reproaches him with leading about " defamed and superstitious folk, a woman without character and disorderly in her life, dressed like a man, and an apostate and mendicant friar"; (Brother Richard) " both, according to Holy Scripture, are hateful to God." The men of the House of Lancaster, who rose to the throne by robbery and murder, hoped to retain it by religious persecution. Perhaps no hypocrite is consciously hypocritical, and the thieves of two crowns were valiant men and deeply religious.
In this letter, obviously written for the purpose of forcing Charles to fight in open field, or rather, perhaps, with the design of inducing him to repeat the wild charge of Rouvray against a fortified camp, Bedford certainly did nothing to increase the terrors of his own soldiers, as has been strangely argued. It has been said that Bedford transforms the Maid " into a superhuman creature, terrible, appalling, a phantom risen from hell, before whom the bravest might have turned pale." Bedford was not so foolish. He spoke of the Maid not as a phantom from hell, but as a dis- solute superstitious virago in male dress. In private, as when he much later (1433) addressed the English Government, he attributes the disasters of their armies to " unlawful doubt that they had of a disciple and lyme of the Fiend, called the Pucelle, that used false enchantment and sorcery. The which stroke and discomfiture not only lessened in great part the number of your people there" (at Orleans), " but as well withdrew the courage of the remnant in marvellous wise, and encouraged your adverse party and enemy to assemble them forthwith in great number." The English, since the beginning of May, had constantly assured the Maid that they would burn her whenever they could catch her. This threat merely increased her eagerness to meet that amiable and pious people at the closest possible quarters. " I cry, ' Go in among the English, and I go in myself!'" But her King was not to be stung by insults into any such valour.
Bedford wrote to Charles from Montereau, which he left on August 7, returning to Paris. The French army on August 13 was between Crepy and Paris; the English army lay between Paris and Dammartin. From August 14 to August 16 the forces faced each other, the English resting on Senlis, which they still held ; the French on the height of Mont£pilloy, on the road from Crpy to Senlis. On the evening of August 14, d'Alencon, Vendome, the Maid, and other captains, with some 6000 men, passed the night at Montepilloy. The English are reckoned at from 8000 to 9000. A few slight skirmishes resulted in the evening. Next day the French heard Mass in the fields (it was the day of the Assumption of the Virgin), and rode forth, expecting battle. La Hire led a force of cavalry, but they found the English in an entrenched and palisaded laager, with a river as a moat in the rear. Bedford, after all, was not anxious for a chivalrous engagement in fair field. He had the advantage of numbers as well as of a fortified position, and probably hoped to tempt the French to renew the gallant blunder of Rouvray. But the French were not so foolish as to attack a stronger force behind earthworks and palisades, nor could they tempt the English to leave their hold except by way of skirmishing.
"When the Maid saw that the English would not sally forth, she rode standard in hand to the front and smote the English palisade." They were not to be stung into action, and she with- drew the advanced guard to the main body of the French army. D'Alencon and she sent a message that they would retire and give the English a fair field to deploy in : the English did not accept the offer ; and probably Monstrelet refers to this when he says that she was always in two minds, on this occasion, now to fight, again, not to fight. How Monstrelet knew what was in her mind he does not inform us. In fact, Jeanne would fight in fair field, precisely as Talbot offered to fight the French, if they would come down from their hill, on the eve of Pathay. She would not ask a weaker force to charge the fortifications of a larger army. De Cagny, who describes the events, usually makes d'Alencon and the Maid the prominent personages. Chartier, the official chronicler, gives the command of the largest corps to d'Alencon and Vendome; Rene, Due de Bar, the Marshall de Rais and de Boussac also had commands; the advance guard, which alone was active, was led by the Maid, d'Albret, Dunois, La Hire, and other captains. The King was within view, ably protected by the heroic Charles de Bourbon and the corpulent La Tremoille. A great deal of smoke veiled the skirmishes, which ended at nightfall. James IV of Scotland, had he been where Charles was, would have fought the foremost in fight, and would have won a glorious death at the expense of a decisive defeat.
It has been suggested that the Maid was in two minds about fighting, because it was the Feast of the Assumption ! Men of the sword fought when they could, though the judges of the Maid hypocritically blamed her for attacking Paris during a festival of the Church.
Bedford next day led his army to Paris, and thence moved north to secure Greux, the key of Normandy, where French partisans, probably headed by the Constable, were active and dangerous (August 27). The King and the Maid, between August 18 and August 22, received the submission of Compiegne, Senlis, and Beauvais, driving out the Bishop, Pierre Cauchon, who soon took " a contented revenge." At this date Monstrelet places the pacific mission of the Archbishop of Reims to the Duke of Burgundy at Arras. The Archbishop was duped as usual, and time was wasted. But the cities gained by the Maid were never lost, and greatly endangered Paris.
At Compiegne, Charles dallied, and (August 28) involved himself in the tangles of truces with Burgundy. While consolidating his power in Normandy, Bedford left, to keep Paris, 2000 Englishmen, with his Chancellor of France, Louis de Luxembourg. The King's chief gain was Compiegne, which proved as tenaciously loyal, and as sharp a thorn in the side of the English, as Orleans. The people chose as commandant Guillaume de Flavy, who did his duty by them well ; but Charles preferred La TremoYlle, who, by one account, managed to fall off his horse in a skirmish at Mont^pilloy, and there unluckily escaped capture. De Flavy did the active work as commandant, La Tr^moille probably drew the lion's share of the pay.
While the King and his circle were negotiating with Burgundy the strange truces to be later described; while Vendome was taking in the city of Senlis, which Bedford did not attempt to defend, "The Maid was in sorrow for the King's long tarrying at Compiegne; and it seemed that he was content, in his usual way, with the grace that God had done him, and would make no further enterprise,'' says the d'Alencon chronicler.
We can penetrate the counsels of the King, always afraid to fight, always hoping to buy off the Duke of Burgundy. It was the policy of the Archbishop of Reims, and for that matter of the Maid, to detach from the English cause the great feudatory of France, the Duke of Burgundy, to make peace between all French subjects. It was the policy of Burgundy to balance the powers of France and England, and to increase his own territories at French expense. It was the policy of La Tre^moi'lle to keep Charles in his own hand : therein lay his safety from his many foes. But as Burgundy was aiding England in every way, a secure peace with him could only be obtained " at the point of the lance."
The day before Jeanne left Compiegne for the attack on Paris, a fatal incident occurred. She received a letter from the Comte d'Armagnac, asking her advice as to who was the genuine Pope. She ought to have answered this question as she had answered the medical inquiries of the Due de Loraine, '* It is not in my province." Martin v was Pope, but d'Armagnac had a private scheme for backing a successor of the anti-Pope Benedict XIII, and had been recently excommunicated by Martin. It may be that d'Armagnac thought to cover his return to Martin by the approval of the Maid, who had no time to consider his letter of explanation, but dictated a reply with her foot in the stirrup. The Comte had mentioned three possible Popes ; if Jeanne had a clerical secretary (she had one Mathelin Raoul, a clerk, but a fighting man, wearing armour), he could have told her that only Martin was genuine. But she answered that she could give no solution of the problem at the moment, nor till she was at peace in Paris or elsewhere. He must then send a messenger, " And I will let you know in whom you must believe, after I have knowledge from the Counsel of my sovereign Lord the King of Heaven." Jeanne dictated her reply hastily and without reflection.
Her judges could, and later they did, find her guilty of extreme presumption. The clerks held that the Church knew who was the true Pope, and Jeanne had no right to pretend to private information from Heaven. Her intention, no doubt, was merely to return a civil reply to a great prince, but the appearance of her words was valuable to her enemies. At her trial, when asked whom she took to be true Pope, she asked " Are there two Popes?" She remembered little about her letter, and had said other things to Armagnac's messenger, whom the soldiers were anxious to drown, probably because he was wasting their time. Her mind was full of warlike projects. She therefore said to the Due d'Alencon, as she had said at Orleans before the attack on Meun, " My fair Duke, make ready your men and the men of the other captains, for, by my staff {par mon martin), I wish to see Paris nearer than I have seen it yet." This lady's oath {par mon martin) is often put in the Maid's lips by the d'Alencon chronicler, d'Cagny, who, dictating his chronicle seven years later, relied on comparatively recent memories, his own and those of his chief and their friends : probably, too, he had information from d'Aulon.
On August 23, dAlencon and the Maid, with a fair company of men-at-arms, left the King at Compiegne and joined hands with Vendome and the force which had secured Senlis. On August 26 they reached St. Denys, the city of the patron saint of France, whose name was the warcry of France, whose cathedral was the burial-place of her kings, and contained one of the two heads of the Martyr. Either head might be regarded with devotion, neither was held to be necessarily more authentic than the other. We are reminded of the several lace caps, each believed by its proprietor to have been worn by Charles I at his execution. In the Abbey of Saint Denys lay, unless Bedford had removed it to safer quarters, the crown of Charlemagne. At St. Denys, which was deserted by people of Anglo-Burgundian opinions, the Maid stood godmother to two little Armagnacs, holding them at the font. When the Maid had fixed her headquarters at St. Denys, the King ruefully departed from Compiegne to Senlis ; " it seemed that he was advised against her and the Due d'Alencon and their company." It appears that Bedford now withdrew the English garrison of Paris, leaving the town in Burgundian hands.
There were daily skirmishes with the forces in Paris, now in one place and now in another. The Maid reconnoitred the great town daily, searching with dAlencon for a point of assault, while d'Alencon implored the King to come to St. Denys, going to him again and again. It was of the first necessity that he should show himself before his capital ; but he evaded the duty. Meanwhile, on August 28, at Compiegne, an armistice had been concluded between Charles and the Duke of Burgundy : the English had the right of adhering to it if they chose. The Duke was allowed to take under his safeguard all Picardy adjacent to his own northern marches, from the Oise to the sea. Charles had leave to attack Paris, but the Duke might aid the English with Burgundian forces in the town. This is an unintelligible arrangement, the King of France sanctioning the Duke in keeping him, for the sake of England, out of his own capital. But Charles hoped that he had bribed Burgundy with the loan of the town of Compiegne,--which refused to be lent.
The armistice of Compiegne (August 28) was to last till Christmas Day, and was later prolonged till mid-March or mid-April 1430. Charles, we repeat, actually tried to place Compiegne in the hands of Burgundy during the truce, because " he desired to gratify the said Duke, and withdraw him from the English alliance." The Archbishop of Reims and the rest of Charles' advisers could not induce the people of Compiegne to submit to this proposal. We see the facility of the King and his advisers, ready to purchase the goodwill of Burgundy and the security of his English allies on any terms, even permitting him to hold and defend Paris. In this treaty " Burgundy played the part of cunning trickster; France, the part of dupe." Monstrelet, the Burgundian chronicler avers that Charles had only to present himself at Quentin, Corbie, Amiens, and Abbeville, and many other towns and castles, and to be welcomed by the majority of the inhabitants. Yet these towns were included in the armistice of Compiegne. Never were mortals so easily beguiled as the King and his favourites. They may have hoped that the possession of Compiegne by Burgundy would estrange Bedford from him, as the offer of Orleans, in March-April, had so done to some extent. But Compiegne would not play into their hands.
To explain the Burgundian motives, it is shown that, had Bed- ford remained in Paris with his English garrison, the people hated the English so much that they would have surrendered to Charles. They might not have found it so easy to do that ; but, Paris being in Burgundian hands, and the strongest civic party being Burgundian, they would resist their enemies, " the Armagnacs."
It may be argued that these astonishing surrenders by Charles, this deliberate rejection of the impetus lent to loyal Frenchmen by the events since May, were intended to lead up to a congress for a general peace,--a congress at which England would be represented, while Burgundy would be favourable to France. But any such successful pacification was a far wilder dream than those which visited the Maid at Domremy. Actual inspiration could not speak words more true than she uttered before her judges. "As to peace with the English, the only peace possible is their return to their own country in England, ad patriam suam in Anglia" There is more in the books of my Lord than in the books of the clerks " ; and this part of the books of the Lord was legible to those who knew not A from B. The counsellors of Charles could not read in them. "What advantage could King Charles find in recognising the rights of his cousin of Burgundy over Paris ? We cannot see that clearly," says an historian who does not favour the wisdom of the Maid. The wise were easy dupes ; later, as we shall find, Charles told the people of Reims that (where Jeanne had been in the right, in July 1429) he had been fooled till May 1430. In Paris it was supposed that, on August 13, Bedford resigned the Regency of France to Burgundy, while retaining the Governorship of Normandy. In fact, Burgundy was, on October 13, 1426, made Lieutenant of Paris and of many other cities for Henry VI.
After August 28 the King of France, to conciliate the Duke of Burgundy, recognised him as holding Paris against the Maid, while the Maid was allowed to attack Paris. Her victory in these circumstances would have been a miracle, and an event most untoward for her King, whose sole aim was to conciliate the Duke of Burgundy. Charles, therefore, prevented the accomplishment of the miracle. Among the many marvels of the year 1429, the diplomacy of Charles VII was, perhaps, the most abnormal.
Of course, all parties to these strange treaties were trying to deceive each other. The more warlike members of the Council of Charles may have trusted to the chance of a military miracle: Paris might fall in a day, like the Tourelles at Orleans: only one day was allowed for the storming of Paris ! The inner circle of the Council clearly thought that no sacrifice was too great to offer at the shrine of Burgundy, and they did offer the Maid and her prestige. The evidence for all this is irrefutable. Moreover, during the weeks passed in being mocked and deceived, the money for the support of the army was wasted.
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