But it was a bloody field, for slaughter of fugitives who were not valuable followed. Jeanne had never seen such a massacre, and "she had great compassion on the victims." Meeting a Frenchman who was brutally using a prisoner she flung herself from her horse, indignant that he should be subjected to such treatment, and seating herself beside him lifted his bleeding head upon her lap. Sending for a priest that he might have the last comforts of religion she comforted him with womanly tenderness until he died. Jeanne wanted the English out of France. She fought them that she might achieve that end. She had steeled herself to the necessity of war, but pity was always enthroned in her heart. A wounded enemy appealed to her tenderness as much as one of her own countrymen would have done. And so ended a great week of wonders. Between June eleventh and eighteenth the Maid had delivered three strong towns from the English, and routed them in open field. All the Loire and the waterway was now in the power of France. But it was not Alençon, nor Dunois, nor the French generals who had secured the victories. It was the dauntless girl, the peasant maid in whom was more of the divine than human--she who after a scarce month of war bore herself like the "most skilled captain in the world who all his life has been trained to war"[12]--this girl of seventeen who bade fair to be the best soldier of them all. ------ [12] De Termes. CHAPTER XXII THE CULMINATION "_Along this square she moved, sweet Joan of Arc,-- With face more pallid than a day-lit star Half-seen, half-doubted; while before her, dark Stretched the array of war._" MARIA LOWELL. The next day, which was Sunday, Jeanne and her men returned to Orléans in triumph, and were "nobly received." The streets were crowded with people who were wild with joy at sight of the Maid, and who gave her a tempestuous welcome. They formed processions and went to the churches, where "they thanked God and the Virgin Mary and the Blessed Saints of Paradise for the mercy and honor which Our Lord had shown to the King and to them all, and saying that without the Maid such marvels could not have been done."