At the close of December Joan of Arc was taken across the river Somme, in a boat, to Saint Valery, and thence, strongly guarded, and placed on horseback, she was led along the Normandy coast by Eure and Dieppe to the place of her martyrdom.  On arriving at Rouen it was seriously debated by some of her captors whether or not she should be at once put to death.  They suggested her being sewn into a sack and thrown into the river!  The reason these people gave for summarily disposing of Joan of Arc without form or trial was that, as long as she lived, there was no security for the English in France.  As has already been noticed, those who commanded and sided with the English were desirous that Joan of Arc should be first branded as a witch and a sorceress, both by the doctors of the Church and by the State, before being put to death.

Arrived at Rouen, Joan of Arc was immured in the old fortress built by Philip Augustus.  One tower alone remains of the seven massive round towers which surrounded the circular castle.  Her jailers had the barbarity to place their prisoner in an iron cage, in which she was fastened with iron rings and chains, one at the neck, another at the hands, and a third confining the feet.  Joan was thus caged as if she were a wild animal until her trial commenced.  After that, she was chained to a miserable truckle bed.

A chronicler of that time, named Macy, tells the following story of an incident which, for the sake of English manhood, one trusts is untrue.  Among others who went to see Joan of Arc in her prison came one day the Earl of Warwick, with Lord Stafford and Ligny—­Joan’s former jailer.  The latter told her in a jeering way that he had come to buy her back from the English, provided she promised never again to make war against them.

‘You are mocking me,’ said Joan of Arc.  ’For I know that you have not the power to do that, neither the will.’  And she added, ’I know well that these English will kill me, thinking that by doing so they will reconquer the kingdom of France; but even if there were one hundred thousand Godons more in France than there are now, they will never again conquer the kingdom!’

On hearing these words Stafford drew his dagger, and would have struck her had not Warwick prevented the cowardly act.

Cauchon formed his tribunal of the following:—­

1.  John Graverent, a Dominican priest, D.D., Grand Inquisitor of France.  It was he who appointed John Lemaitre as judge in the trial of the Maid.  The following July this Graverent preached a sermon in Paris, in which he glorified the death of Joan of Arc.

2.  John Lemaitre, who represented the Inquisition on the trial.  He was a Dominican prior.  He appears to have been a feeble-minded creature, and a mere tool of Cauchon and Graverent.

3.  Martin Bellarme, D.D., another Dominican, and also a member of the Inquisition.

4.  John d’Estivet, surnamed ‘Benedicite,’ canon of Beauvais and Bayeux, was another of Cauchon’s creatures.  He acted the part of Procureur-General during the trial.  D’Estivet was a gross and cruel ecclesiastic, and it is somewhat satisfactory to know his end.  He was found dead in a muddy ditch soon after Joan of Arc’s death.  As M. Fabre justly says, ‘He perished in his native element.’