Her mission was indeed accomplished: that is to say, if her mission consisted of the two great deeds which while at Chinon she had repeatedly assured her listeners she was born to accomplish. These were, first, to drive the English out of Orleans, and thereby deliver that town; the second, to take the King to Rheims, where he would receive his crown. The other enterprises, such as the wish to deliver the Duke of Orleans from his captivity in England, and then to wage a holy war against the Moslems, may be left out of the actual task which, encouraged by her voices, Joan had set herself to accomplish. But the two great deeds had now been carried out--and with what marvellous rapidity! In spite of all the obstacles placed in her path, not only by the enemies of her country, but by those nearest to the ear of the King, Orleans had been delivered in four days' time, the English host had been in a week driven out of their strongholds on the Loire, and defeated in a pitched battle! The King unwillingly, and with many of his Court opposed to the enterprise, after passing through a country strongly occupied by the enemy without having lost a man, had by the tact and courage of Joan of Arc been enabled to reach Rheims; and after this successful march he had received his crown among his peers and lieges, as though the country were again at peace, and no English left on the soil of France. What was still more surprising was, that all these things should have been accomplished at the instigation and by the direction of a Maid who only a few months before had been an unknown peasant in a small village of Lorraine. How had she been able not only to learn the tactics of a campaign, the rudiments of the art of war, but even the art itself? No one had shown in these wars a keener eye for selecting the weakest place to attack, or where artillery and culverin fire could be used with most effect, or had been quicker to avail himself of these weapons. No one saw with greater rapidity--(that rarest of military gifts)--when the decisive moment had arrived for a sudden attack, or had a better judgment for the right moment to head a charge and assault. How indeed must the knights and commanders, bred to the use of arms since their boyhood, have wondered how this daughter of the peasants had obtained the knowledge which had placed her at their head, and enabled her to gain successes and reap victories against the enemy, which until she came none of them had any hope of obtaining. They indeed could not account for it, except that in Joan of Arc was united not only the soul of patriotism and a faith to move mountains, but the qualities of a great captain as well. That, it seems to us, must have been the conclusion that her comrades in arms arrived at regarding the Maid of Orleans.