Joan of Arc had even yet done but half her work.  Neither Charles nor Henry had been crowned.  That the crown should be placed on Charles’s head was what she still had to accomplish.  Though we have always spoken of him as “King,” he was not so in reality until this had been done.  He was strictly but the Dauphin.  Bedford wished much that young Henry should be crowned; for let Charles once have the holy crown on his brow, and the oil of anointing on his head, and let him stand where for hundreds of years his fathers had stood to be consecrated kings of France, in the Cathedral of Rheims, before his people as their king, any crowning afterwards would be a mockery.  Charles was now with the Court of Tours.  Rheims was a long way off in the north, and to get there would be a work of some difficulty; yet get there he must, for the coronation could not take place anywhere else.  Joan went to Tours, and, falling before him, she begged him to go and receive his crown, saying, that when her voices gave her this message she was marvelously rejoiced.  Charles did not seem much rejoiced to receive it.  He said a great deal about the dangers of the way, and preferred that the other English posts on the Loire should be taken first.  It must have been very trying to one so quick and eager as Joan to deal with such a person, but, good or bad, he was her king.  She was not idle because she could not do exactly as she wished; she set out with the army at once.

The news flew onwards.  The inhabitants of Chalons and of Rheims rose and turned out the Burgundian garrisons.  The king’s way to Rheims was one triumph, and, amidst the shouts of the people, he entered Rheims on the 16th of July.  The next day Charles VII was crowned.  The visions of the Maid had been fulfilled.  By her arm Orleans had been saved, through her means the king stood there.  She was beside the king at the high altar, with her banner displayed; and when the service was over, she knelt before him with streaming eyes, saying, “Gentle king, now is done the pleasure of God, who willed that you should come to Rheims and be anointed, showing that you are the true king, and he to whom the kingdom should belong.”

All eyes were upon her as the savior of her country.  She might have secured every thing for herself; but she asked no reward, she was content to have done her duty.  And of all that was offered her, the only thing she would accept was that Domremy should be free forever from any kind of tax.  So, until the time of the first French Revolution, the collectors wrote against the name of the village, as it stood in their books, “Nothing, for the Maid’s sake.”

Joan of Arc said that her work was done.  She had seen her father and her uncle in the crowd, and, with many tears, she begged the king to let her go back with them, and keep her flocks and herds, and do all as she had been used to do.  Never had man or woman done so much with so simple a heart.  But the king and his advisers knew her power over the people, and their entreaties that she would stay with them prevailed.  So she let her father and her uncle depart without her.  They must have had enough to tell when they reached home.