The enemy's soldiers soon left that part of the country and James of Arc and his neighbors were able to return to Domremy. They found the village burned, the church a pile of ruins, only the stone walls of their houses standing, the crops destroyed, their goods carried away. They still had their cattle, and they set to work to build new roofs for their homes and go on with their work. For the first time the children saw what war meant. Joan found the orchard where she had seen her first vision laid waste, and beyond it the blackened stones of what had been the church. She understood that what had happened there was happening all over France and began to realize that God had called her to the wonderful work of saving her countrymen. The voices spoke again, and now they began to tell her exactly what it was that she must do. Joan was now nearly seventeen, and Philippe, her old friend, was much in love with her and asked her to marry him. She was very fond of him, and liked him much better than she did any of the other youths of Domremy, but the voices told her that she must not marry, but must give all her thoughts to the great work which had been set her. Philippe entreated her to change her mind, but she would not. Little by little now she spoke to him and to her other friends of the messages Saint Michael and the other saints had sent her. In the autumn of 1428 the fate of France seemed trembling in the balance, bound up with the fate of the city of Orleans. The English army had just laid siege to that city, and if Orleans fell France was lost. The sovereign of France, Charles VII, was a weakling, and in the eyes of many French people not really their king, but only the heir to the throne, or Dauphin as he was called, because he had not yet been crowned and consecrated as king at the old city of Rheims. Rheims was in the hands of the English, but it must be taken from them, and Charles the Dauphin must be crowned and anointed there if he was to be King of France. One autumn day in 1428 the voices spoke again to the peasant maid of Domremy and gave her two commands; first to save Orleans from the English, and second to lead the Dauphin to Rheims and have him crowned king there. Naturally the tasks seemed impossible to Joan; she pleaded that she could not ride, knew nothing of war, and had never been out of the valley of the Meuse. The voices told her that she would be guided safely, and that first she must go to the village of Vaucouleurs and ask the captain, Robert of Baudricourt, for an escort to take her to the Dauphin. Moreover, she must not delay; she must save the city of Orleans.