where the ceremony of his consecration was performed and compleated: but being afterwards taken prisoner by the English, they carried her to Roan, where they iniquitously accused her of sorcery, tried her in the ordinary form, and condemned her to be burnt for a witch. LXXXII. I gave some account of this extraordinary woman in the Sixteenth Discourse of my first volume, where I hinted it merely as a conjecture of my own, that, in all probability, the divine impulse the French attributed to her, and still persist in attributing, and the witchcraft imputed to her by the English, were both equally false. But now I find my conjecture is supported and confirmed by a celebrated historian, in consequence of which, what I advanced as a supposition, wears the face of an authentic information. This historian, is Monsieur Du Haillan, who affirms, that all the feats of Joan d’Arc, which have been so much admired, were the effects of political artifice; without the least intervention, either of divine inspiration or diabolical compact. According to this author, three French noblemen, whom he names, were the contrivers and managers of the whole business. These (after disclosing to her the most private secrets of the court, and instructing her largely in all she had to do and say, in order to make it appear as if she knew things by divine inspiration; and that all her actions were effected by divine impulse) made use of her, thus instructed, as the most effectual means to animate the dejected king and his dispirited troops. He adds, that some people affirmed, that although they called her a maid, she was no such thing, but the concubine of one of the three lords; but whether this was so or not, I presume, they pitched upon her preferable to any other woman, from having observed her to be endowed with an excellent capacity, a clear and penetrating head, and a heart proportioned to the dangers of so great an undertaking. Gabriel Naudé, in his book intitled _Strokes of Policy_, adopts the sentiment of Du Haillan, and quotes Justus Lipsius, and Monsieur Langei, as being of the same opinion; and adds, that other authors, both French and strangers, adopt it. By this development, the famous Joan d’Arc is divested of any pretensions to being miraculously inspired, but not degraded from the rank of a heroine. SECT. XXXVII. _Prester John._