340.] [Footnote 896: Le P.Marcellin Fornier, _Histoire des Alpes, Maritimes ou Cottiennes_, vol.ii, pp.

315 _et seq._] To summon the English and French to take the cross together, was to proclaim that after ninety-one years of violence and crime the cycle of secular warfare had come to an end.

It was to bid Christendom return to the days when Philippe de Valois and Edward Plantagenet promised the Pope to join together against the infidel.
But when the Maid invited the English to unite with the French in a holy and warlike enterprise, it is not difficult to imagine with what kind of a reception the _Godons_ would greet such an angelic summons.
And at the time of the siege of Orleans, the French on their side had good reasons for not taking the cross with the _Coues_.[897] [Footnote 897: In all extant copies of the Letter to the English, except that of the Trial, at the passage "you may come" [_Encore que pourrez venir_] the text is completely illegible.] The learned did not greatly appreciate the style of this letter.

The Bastard of Orleans thought the words very simple; and a few years later a good French jurist pronounced it coarse, heavy, and badly arranged.[898] We cannot aspire to judge better than the jurist and the Bastard, both men of erudition.

Nevertheless, we wonder whether it were not that her manner of expression seemed bad to them, merely because it differed from the style of legal documents.