while accusing the King of foolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans give us a description of the undefended state of Paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on the part of Charles might have carried with little difficulty, during the absence of all the chiefs from the city and the great terror of the inhabitants; but a comparison of dates shows that the Duke of Bedford re-entered Paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on which Charles left Rheims three days only after his coronation, so that he scarcely seems so much to blame as appears.  But the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters, naturally lead to mistakes of this kind.

The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed to receive the King.  Strange as it seems to say so Paris was bitterly, fiercely English at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to be taken into account as the most important in the whole matter.  There was no answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliary force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside.  The populace perhaps might be indifferent:  at the best it had no feeling on the subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the King.  During the time of Bedford’s absence the city felt itself to have “no lord”—­ceux de Paris avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n’ y avoit.  It was believed that Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and hopeless defence than to submission.  The Duke of Bedford, governing in the name of the infant Henry VI.  Of England, was their seigneur, instead of their natural sovereign.  It is a fact which to us seems scarcely credible, but it was certainly true.  There seems to have been no feeling even, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal; nothing of the kind.  Paris was English, holding by the English kings who had never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of its party.  It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions.  In the Journal du Bourgeois de Paris—­who was no bourgeois but a distinguished member of that university which held the Maid and all her ways in horror—­Jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism and of France is spoken of as “a creature in the form of a woman.”  How extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it is almost impossible to believe!  Paris is France nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly English, not by compulsion even, but by habit and policy.  Perhaps the delays, the hesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors are thus rendered more excusable than by any other explanation.