 His enemies later described Southey's as holding Jacobin belief and claimed he supported the extremism of Robbespierre, when his sympathies laid to a larger extent with the Girondins that were replaced by the Jacobins.However, the poem is still subversive since it described a French patriot fighting against the English that parallels the strife during Southey's time.The figure of Joan of Arc represents both a common person and a child that was free from society's corruption.