Like Soissons, like Lâon, like Bourges even, Rheims has carried down to modern times the remains of that prestige which must always attach to a royal city, even though the royalty have long ago departed from it. It moreover brings us once again to the story of Joan the Maid. It is the scene of her mission's fulfilment, of France's triumph, of the beginning of that monarchy which Louis XI. established in its complete form and which the later Bourbons wrecked; and here, when the crown is safe on her king's head and Charles VII. has his own again, does Joan ask her reward--permission to return to her flocks in the fields of Domrémy. And but that this boon was too simple to grant, Joan's story might have ended with this, her greatest triumph, instead of in the market-place at Rouen.
After the relief of Orléans, Joan had captured Jargeau and Beaugency, and defeated the English in a great fight at Patay, in which Talbot, the English leader, was taken prisoner. Having cleared these last obstacles from Charles's path, she now set forth to tell him that all was ready and to persuade him to make all speed to Rheims. Speed, however, was what the Dauphin either could not or would not make; and it is always the most unsatisfactory part of the history of Joan the Maid that when she had pressed on, scarcely resting by night or day, to win back his kingdom for him, Charles seemed in no hurry to enter upon his honours, but preferred dawdling with his favourites in Touraine; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he was persuaded to ride to Rheims with Joan. Selfish indulgence, foolish favouritism, petty jealousies--were such things as these to stand in the path from which the Maid had swept all other barriers? Joan, however, was resolute. In hopes of rousing him she withdrew her army into the country, and this retreat had the desired effect. Charles the Laggard allowed himself to be brought into Rheims, and on July 17 Joan, banner in hand, stood by his side in the cathedral while the Archbishop anointed him with the holy oil and crowned him Charles VII. of France. Here, so far as Rheims is concerned, the story of Joan is at an end.
Two papal councils were held at Rheims, in the days when the Gallican Church was rising to its highest power, though it had not yet gone so far as to resent the yoke of the Papacy. Pope Leo IX. in 1049 entered the city in full state to consecrate for Abbot Heremas his newly-built monastery of Saint Remi, and followed up the consecration by convoking a vast synod composed of nearly every prelate in Europe, archbishops, bishops, abbots, clergy, and laity from every quarter, who sat at Rheims for six days; but their business seems to have been connected only with the usual canonical laws. The later council, which took place in 1119 and was presided over by Calixtus, appears to have occupied itself chiefly with quarrels between Henry of England and Louis of France on matters not even ecclesiastical. It further confirmed the Truce of God which had been imposed at Caen sixty years before, and patched up a peace between the two kings, after an interview between Henry and Calixtus at Gisors, in which the English king took care to make his case good before the Pope and to represent that all his incursions upon the territory of Louis had been made solely from religious motives.