Jeanne must have delighted to hear tell of such miracles, or others like them, and to see so many weapons hanging from the chapel walls. She must have been well pleased that the saint who visited her at all hours and gave her counsel should so manifestly appear the friend of poor soldiers and peasants cast into bonds, cages and pits, or hanged on trees by the _Godons_. She prayed in the chapel and heard two masses.[466] [Footnote 466: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 75.] CHAPTER V THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS FROM THE 12TH OF OCTOBER, 1428, TILL THE 6TH OF MARCH, 1429 Since the victory of Verneuil and the conquest of Maine, the English had advanced but little in France and their actual possessions there were becoming less and less secure.[467] If they spared the lands of the Duke of Orleans it was not on account of any scruple. Albeit on the banks of the Loire it was held dishonourable to seize the domains of a noble when he was a prisoner,[468] everything is fair in war. The Regent had not scrupled to seize the duchy of Alencon when its duke was a prisoner.[469] The truth is that by bribes and entreaties the good Duke Charles dissuaded the English from attacking his duchy. From 1424 until 1426 the citizens of Orleans purchased peace by money payments.[470] The _Godons_, not being in a position to take the field, were all the more ready to enter into such agreements. During the minority of their half English and half French King, the Duke of Gloucester, the brother and deputy of the Regent, and his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of the Kingdom, were tearing out each other's hair, and their disputes were the occasion of bloodshed in the London streets.[471] Towards the end of the year 1425 the Regent returned to England, where he spent seventeen months reconciling uncle and nephew and restoring public peace. By dint of craft and vigour he succeeded so far as to render his fellow countrymen desirous and hopeful of completing the conquest of France. With that object, in 1428, the English Parliament voted subsidies.[472] [Footnote 467: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 190. Alain Chartier, _L'esperance ou consolation des trois vertus_, in _Oeuvres_, p. 271. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 14.] [Footnote 468: _Mistere du siege_, line 497.] [Footnote 469: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 21, 22.] [Footnote 470: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 255. _Chronique de l'etablissement de la fete_ in the _Trial_, vol. v, p. 286. Le Maire, _Histoire et antiquites de la ville et duche d'Orleans_, Orleans, 1645, in 4to, pp. 129 _et seq._ Lottin, _Recherches historiques sur la ville d'Orleans_, Orleans, 1836-1845 (7 vols. in 8vo), vol. i, p. 197.] [Footnote 471: Joseph Stevenson, _Letters and Papers_, Introduction, vol. i, p. xlvii. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 17.]