The complete ascendancy Joan of Arc had won in France in two months from the time of her first interview with the king lasted from the fall of Orléans to the coronation of Charles at Rheims, on July 17, 1429. The march which proceeded the crowning was most of it through land which the English held. There were sieges and battles, dangers and escapes. It was managed by the Maid with a calm authority, an unwavering reliance on her Voices, which lifted her even in the minds of her most cynical associates quite out of the ranks of human leaders. She was a greater general than them all. She foresaw all, she never feared nor hesitated--and she a girl of seventeen! She must be of God! And when finally the impossible had been accomplished, and, in spite of English, Burgundians, and the plotters, Charles was crowned, there were few of the French who even secretly denied her claim. How could they when all she foretold promptly came true? It was by the success or failure of their prophesying that men of those days judged largely whether one came from God or not. It was because she told the governor of Vaucouleurs of a distant battle on the day it occurred and days before the news could reach him that he finally yielded to her demands for an escort. It was because she selected the king from a throng in which he mingled and told him that which no one but he knew that he accepted her. She had said that she would be wounded at Orléans--and she was. She had warned a wicked fellow that he would be dead shortly--and he was. Who could deny the holy origin of such a Maid? Certainly not the average man or woman of the fifteenth century; certainly not the loyal and devout French she succored. As for the English who fled before her, they acknowledged her powers; but they declared them to be of the devil--as was natural, since they were the sufferers! [Illustration: THE PALACE AT CHINON The ruins of the Hall] [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC From the painting by J. Ingres] THE CHARACTER OF JOAN But outside of her divine guidance and her unquestionable military and political genius, Joan of Arc had human qualities calculated to make even the roughest of men love and respect her. Peasant though she was, she was beautiful to see. This fresh, untouched young girl with the flame of inspiration in her eye and the authority of the divine in her bearing, clad in her pure-white armor and mounted on a warhorse as spirited as the best of them, must have been a sight to stir the heart.