THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE _Cettelle ne vient pas de la terre; elle est envoyée du ciel._ Thus it is that a contemporary, a great politician and satirist, Alain Chartier, expresses his convictions regarding the Maid of Orléans. To Christine de Pisan, too, she seemed, as we have seen, a messenger from God. It was a time when all good patriots wept, when the fair land of France was a prey to the spoiler, when Armagnac, Bourguignon, and hated Saxon roamed at will over the land and laid it waste. In one of Alain Chartier's political satires, _Le Quadriloge invectif_, the three estates of the realm nobles, clergy, commons are in turn appealed to by La France, to "have pity of their common mother." The commons, or _Peuple_, replies: "It is the labor of my hands that feeds and clothes these cowardly loafers, and they oppress me with famine and the sword.... They live upon me, and I am slowly dying under them.... The banners of the host are raised, they say, against our enemies, but no deeds are done except against me." It was a complaint but too true, as was that in Chartier's _Livre de I'Espérance_: "The nights are too short for the shameless pleasures (of the gentlemen at court), and the days too short for sleeping.... It would seem that noble estate means no more than license to do wrong and yet go unpunished." In this disregard of the moral law as well as of patriotic duties the dauphin himself led the way. One hardly knows what verdict to pass upon this man, for his character was a blend of qualities that might have made greatness and that yet resulted in nothing but meanness, littleness of soul, and ingratitude. It is not the acid meanness of Louis XI, his son, for that had a purpose; what in Louis XI was true vinegar, sharp and biting, had not yet gone through the full process of fermentation in Charles VII. and was simply a fluid evil to the taste, with no useful properties. Reared at a court where pleasure was the only law, under the evil influence of Isabeau de Bavière--whenever she thought to trouble herself about him--and, later, of the savage and unscrupulous Bernard d'Armagnac, who wished to retain power for himself and hence debauched the young prince, it is not surprising to find Charles a libertine, and one easily controlled by any favorite who happened to be in the ascendant. As a boy of sixteen he had been made an accomplice, whether constructively guilty or not of the actual crime, in the murder of Duke Jean de Bourgogne. At nineteen he was proclaimed King of France by his handful of followers, while the victorious English were proclaiming Henry VI. in Paris (1422). Defeat followed defeat for his armies, owing partly to the demoralization of the troops, partly to the inability of the leaders to maintain any sort of discipline among the bands of half savage men at arms from Gascony, Brittany, Scotland, and even Italy and Spain. Yet for most of the disasters, Charles himself was to blame,