In order to put an end to this doubtful condition of events and of minds, the Duke of Bedford determined to aim a grand blow at the national party in France and at her king.  After Paris and Rouen, Orleans was the most important city in the kingdom; it was as supreme on the banks of the Loire as Paris and Rouen were on those of the Seine.  After having obtained from England considerable re-enforcements commanded by leaders of experience, the English commenced, in October, 1428, the siege of Orleans.  The approaches to the place were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one with another were constructed around the walls.  As a set-off, the most valiant warriors of France, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the Marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men.  Several towns, Bourges, Poitiers, and La Rochelle, sent thither money, munitions, and militia; the states-general, assembled at Chinon, voted an extraordinary aid; and Charles VII. called out the regulars and the reserves.  Assaults on the one side and sorties on the other were begun with ardor.  Besiegers and besieged quite felt that they were engaged in a decisive struggle.  The first encounter was unfortunate for the Orleannese.  In a fight called the Herring affair, they were unsuccessful in an attempt to carry off a supply of victuals and salt fish which Sir John Falstolf was bringing to the besiegers.  Being a little discouraged, they offered the Duke of Burgundy to place their city in his hands, that it might not fall into those of the English; and Philip the Good accepted the offer, but the Duke of Bedford made a formal objection:  “He didn’t care,” he said, “to beat the bushes for another to get the birds.”  Philip in displeasure withdrew from the siege the small force of Burgundians he had sent.  The English remained alone before the place, which was every day harder pressed and more strictly blockaded.  The besieged were far from foreseeing what succor was preparing for them.

This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village in the valley of the Meuse, between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of simple tillers of the soil, “of good life and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother, or driving afield her parent’s sheep, and sometimes, even, when her father’s turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune,” was fulfilling her sixteenth year.  It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette.  She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree:  but dancing she did not like.  She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, and she