first siege in which any important use appears to have been made of artillery. And even at Orleans both besiegers and besieged seem to have employed their cannons merely as instruments of destruction against their enemy's men, and not to have trusted to them as engines of demolition against their enemy's walls and works. The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid masonry, was taught Europe by the Turks, a few years afterwards, at the memorable siege of Constantinople.* In our French wars, as in the wars of the classic nations, famine was looked on as the surest weapon to compel the submission of a well-walled town; and the great object of the besiegers was to effect a complete circumvallation. The great ambit of the walls of Orleans, and the facilities which the river gave for obtaining succours and supplies, rendered the capture of the town by this process a matter of great difficulty. Nevertheless, Lord Salisbury and Lord Suffolk, who succeeded him in command of the English, after his death by a cannon-ball, carried on the necessary works with great skill and resolution. Six strongly fortified posts, called bastilles, were formed at certain intervals round the town; and the purpose of the English engineers was to draw strong lines between them.

The occasional employment of artillery against slight defences, as at Jargeau in 1429, is no real exception.

During the winter, little progress was made with the entrenchments, but when the spring of 1429 came, the English resumed their works with activity; the communications between the city and the country became more difficult, and the approach of want began already to be felt in Orleans.

The besieging force also fared hardly for stores and provisions, until relieved by the effects of a brilliant victory which Sir John Fastolfe, one of the best English generals, gained at Rouvrai, near Orleans, a few days after Ash Wednesday, 1429. With only sixteen hundred fighting men, Sir John completely defeated an army of French and Scots, four thousand strong, which had been collected for the purpose of aiding the Orleannais, and harassing the besiegers. After this encounter, which seemed decisively to confirm the superiority of the English in battle over their adversaries, Fastolfe escorted large supplies of stores and food to Suffolk's camp, and the spirits of the English rose to the highest pitch at the prospect of the speedy capture of the city before them; and the consequent subjection of all France beneath their arms.

The Orleannais now in their distress offered to surrender the city into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who, though the ally of the Eng

VOL. II.

E

first siege in which any important use appears to have been made of artillery. And even at Orleans both besiegers and besieged seem to have employed their cannons merely as instruments of destruction against their enemy's men, and not to have trusted to them as engines of demolition against their enemy's walls and works. The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid masonry, was taught Europe by the Turks, a few years afterwards, at the memorable siege of Constantinople.* In our French wars, as in the wars of the classic nations, famine was looked on as the surest weapon to compel the submission of a well-walled town; and the great object of the besiegers was to effect a complete circumvallation. The great ambit of the walls of Orleans, and the facilities which the river gave for obtaining succours and supplies, rendered the capture of the town by this process a matter of great difficulty. Nevertheless, Lord Salisbury and Lord Suffolk, who succeeded him in command of the English, after his death by a cannon-ball, carried on the necessary works with great skill and resolution. Six strongly fortified posts, called bastilles, were formed at certain intervals round the town; and the purpose of the English engineers was to draw strong lines between them:

* The occasional employment of artillery against sli fences, as at Jargeau in 1429, is no real exception

She was naturally of a susceptible disposition, which diligent attention to the legends of saints, and tales of fairies, aided by the dreamy loneliness of her life while tending her father's flocks,* had made peculiarly prone to enthusiastic fervour. At the same time she was eminent for piety and purity of soul, and for her compassionate gentleness to the sick and the distressed.

*Southey, in one of the speeches which he puts in the mouth of his Joan of Arc, has made her beautifully describe the effect on her mind of the scenery in which she dwelt.

"Here in solitude and peace

My soul was nurst, amid the loveliest scenes

Of unpolluted nature. Sweet it was

As the white mists of morning roll'd away
To see the mountain's wooded heights appear
Dark in the early dawn, and mark its slope
With gorse-flowers glowing, as the rising sun
On the golden ripeness pour'd a deepening light.
Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook

To lay me down, and watch the floating clouds,
And shape to Fancy's wild similitudes
Their ever-varying forms; and oh, how sweet!
To drive my flock at evening to the fold,
And hasten to our little hut, and hear

The voice of kindness bid me welcome home."

The only foundation for the story told by the Burgundian partisan Monstrelet, and adopted by Hume, of Joan having been brought up as servant at an inn, is the circumstance of her having been once with the rest of her family obliged to take refuge in an auberge in Neufchâteau for fifteen days, when a party of Burgundian cavalry made an incursion into Domremy. (See the "Quarterly Review," No. 138.)

The district where she dwelt had escaped comparatively free from the ravages of war, but the approach of roving bands of Burgundian or English troops frequently spread terror through Domremy. Once the village had been plundered by some of these marauders, and Joan and her family had been driven from their home, and forced to seek refuge for a time at Neufchâteau. The peasantry in Domremy were principally attached to the house of Orleans and the dauphin; and all the miseries which France endured, were there imputed to the Burgundian faction and their allies, the English, who were seeking to enslave unhappy France.

Thus from infancy to girlhood, Joan had heard continually of the woes of the war, and had herself witnessed some of the wretchedness that it caused. A feeling of intense patriotism grew in her with her growth. The deliverance of France from the English, was the subject of her reveries by day, and her dreams by night. Blended with these aspirations were recollections of the miraculous interpositions of heaven in favour of the oppressed, which she had learned from the legends of her church. Her faith was undoubting; her prayers were fervent. "She feared no danger, for she felt no sin," and at length she believed herself to have received the supernatural inspiration which she sought.