WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

THE PEASANT MAID OF ORLEANS IN THE HANDS OF THE ENGLISH.

"Clad in white armour, the simple peasant maid, Joan of Arc, marched at the head of a troop of French horsemen to drive the English from Orleans. The enemies of France were scattered, but the heroic maiden was betrayed by some of her own countrymen and fell into the hands of the English, who burned her alive at Rouen, on May 30th, 1431."

The ungrateful king Charles, never once took up her cause, though it would have been well in his power to do so. The revision of the judgment, which took place 25 years later, at the command of Pope Calixtus III and ended in a complete vindication of Joan, can only partially reconcile the world to the ingratitude of the king.

"Sorrow it were, and shame to tell, the butchery that there befell."

And the revolting details of the cruelties practiced upon this young girl may be left to those whose duty, as avowed biographers, it is to describe them. She was tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal on the charge of witchcraft, and on the 30th of May, 1431, she was burned alive in the market-place at Rouen.

I will add but one remark on the character of the truest heroine that the world has ever seen: If any person can be found in the present age who would join in the scoffs of Voltaire against the Maid of Orleans and the Heavenly Voices, by which she believed herself inspired, let him read the life of the wisest and best man that the heathen nations produced.

Let him read of the Heavenly Voice by which Socrates believed himself to be constantly attended; which cautioned him on his way from the field of battle at Delium, and which from his boyhood to the time of his death, visited him with unearthly warnings, Let the modern reader reflect upon this and then, unless he is prepared to term Socrates either fool, or impostor, let him not dare to deride or vilify Joan of Arc.

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