And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vend"me, and Compiegne was saved and the siege raised.  This was a disaster to the Duke of Burgundy.  He had to save money now.  It was a good time for a new bid to be made for Joan of Arc.  The English at once sent a French bishop—­that forever infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais.  He was partly promised the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed.  He claimed the right to preside over Joan’s ecclesiastical trial because the battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese.  By the military usage of the time the ransom of a royal prince was 10,000 livres of gold, which is 61,125 francs—­a fixed sum, you see.  It must be accepted when offered; it could not be refused.

Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from the English—­a royal prince’s ransom for the poor little peasant-girl of Domremy.  It shows in a striking way the English idea of her formidable importance.  It was accepted.  For that sum Joan of Arc, the Savior of France, was sold; sold to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed and thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made holiday sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago, what a Frenchman’s face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing but his back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she had taught to respect French valor, new-born in her nation by the breath of her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance able to stand between English triumph and French degradation.  Sold to a French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French nation standing thankless by and saying nothing.

And she—­what did she say?  Nothing.  Not a reproach passed her lips.  She was too great for that—­she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all is said.

As a soldier, her record was spotless.  She could not be called to account for anything under that head.  A subterfuge must be found, and, as we have seen, was found.  She must be tried by priests for crimes against religion.  If none could be discovered, some must be invented.  Let the miscreant Cauchon alone to contrive those.

Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial.  It was in the heart of the English power; its population had been under English dominion so many generations that they were hardly French now, save in language.  The place was strongly garrisoned.  Joan was taken there near the end of December, 1430, and flung into a dungeon.  Yes, and clothed in chains, that free spirit!