Joan and her band of soldiers headed north to Compiègne, but it took them nearly two months to get there because they stopped to skirmish with whatever English and Burgundian resistance they met with along the way. At least two of these encounters were successful: in April, Joan managed to liberate the town of Melun from its small English garrison and soon afterward put to rout a platoon of Burgundians, capturing their captain outside of Senlis. However, by the time she arrived in Compiègne on May 14, 1430, the duke of Burgundy, bankrolled by his English brother-in-law, had managed to put together a substantial army and had already taken the small town of Choisy-au-Bac, just outside the city.
Joan was not alone in her desire to defend Compiègne from the machinations of Philip the Good. Charles had already dispatched Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Reims, and the count of Vendôme to see what could be done to assist the city. The archbishop of Reims in particular cannot have been pleased to have Joan and her force turn up unannounced, but he had no choice but to accept her presence. To the citizens of Compiègne, who were on record as “resolute to undergo every risk for themselves, their children, and their infants, rather than be exposed to the mercy of the duke [of Burgundy],” Joan was still the Maid of Orléans, the holy woman who had delivered the king to his coronation at Reims, the Messenger who was celebrated throughout France for her famous deeds, and they welcomed her among them as a sign of divine favor.
For two days, Joan and her men assisted in maneuvers at Choisy-au-Bac intended to free the town from the Burgundians. These sorties were easily repelled by the enemy, who eclipsed the local forces in terms of both heavy artillery and numbers. To try to marshal more support, Regnault de Chartres and the count of Vendôme, accompanied by Joan and her mercenaries, left Compiègne for Soissons on May 18. However, when they did not receive the sort of welcome they were hoping for—the captain of Soissons refused to allow Joan’s soldiers to come inside the gates, and later handed the town to the duke of Burgundy without a fight—the archbishop and the count understood that the cause was lost. The next day they fell back south of Reims, but were apparently unable to convince Joan to join them, and she and her men instead returned secretly to Compiègne in the early morning of May 23. It was to be a fateful decision on Joan’s part. This could well have been what Regnault de Chartres meant when he complained later that she would not take counsel.
No sooner had Joan and her men arrived than they were enlisted by a local commander to help aid in an assault against Margny, which had recently been taken by the Burgundians. Margny was across the Oise River just to the north of Compiègne; it was reached by a drawbridge from the city. That very afternoon, Joan, dressed in her armor, “with a doublet of rich cloth-of-gold over her breastplate,” as reported by a Burgundian chronicler, charged out of the city on a large gray steed and led a force of knights, the size of which is unknown (it was stated only that she was “well-accompanied by many noble men”), across the bridge to begin an attack on the outpost. Twice Joan and her men fell upon Margny and twice they were repulsed; she was regrouping for a third drive when the sounds of the battle reached John of Luxembourg, one of Philip the Good’s leading generals, who sounded the alarm. Immediately, reinforcements arrived “and more assistance flowed towards the Burgundians than they needed”; the duke of Burgundy himself galloped toward Margny.
The knights accompanying Joan, fearing that they would soon be overwhelmed, fell back on Compiègne in a panic. Everyone rushed to the drawbridge at once; only Joan kept her head and worked to protect her men. Even the Burgundian chronicler was impressed: “The Maid, going beyond the nature of womankind, performed a great feat and took much pain to save her company from loss, staying behind like a chief and like the most valiant member of the flock,” he reported. However, when the captain of the city saw that a large number of enemy soldiers were bearing down on Compiègne, he abruptly raised the drawbridge to prevent their penetrating the gate, leaving Joan and a small party of attendants alone and unguarded in the fields outside the city’s walls. They were soon surrounded by Burgundian soldiers, at which point “an archer, a rough man and a sour [one], full of spite because a woman of whom so much had been heard should have overthrown so many valiant men, dragged her to one side by her cloth-of-gold cloak and pulled her from her horse, throwing her flat on the ground; never could she find recourse or succour in her men, try though they might to remount her,” wrote the Burgundian chronicler, Georges Chastellain. At almost the same moment, a nobleman in service to Philip the Good rode up and demanded that Joan surrender to him.
Recognizing that she had no other choice, Joan reluctantly yielded.
• • •
The capture of Joan of Arc at Compiègne.
THE IMPORTANCE of Joan’s capture was perceived instantly by all involved. Beyond the question of ransom, what did it mean that God had allowed her, his stated Messenger, to be taken? Just whose side was God on? The English “were very joyous at it, more than had they taken five hundred combatants,” while the French at Compiègne were “doleful and wroth at their losses, and above all had great displeasure at the taking of the Maid,” wrote Chastellain. The duke of Burgundy himself hurried to interview her and later sent a letter around to all of his territories, advising them that “by the pleasure of our blessed Creator, the woman called the Maid has been taken; and from her capture will be recognized the error and mad belief of all those who became sympathetic and favorable to the deeds of this woman…. Render homage to our Creator, who through His blessed pleasure has wished to conduct the rest of our enterprises on behalf of our lord the king of England and of France.” The knight to whom she had surrendered could not believe his luck: “more joyful than if he had had a King in his hands,” he made haste to whisk her off the battlefield and inside the stronghold of Margny for safekeeping.
To prevent a rescue attempt, she was quickly transferred to John of Luxembourg’s castle of Beaulieu-les-Fontaines, north of Noyon. Charles’s enemies need not have worried; to think that the king, who had been unwilling to take action on his own to relieve Orléans, or even to organize a decent army to defend Compiègne, would suddenly find the energy to raise a force strong enough to deliver a single prisoner was hardly creditable. Even a ransom agreement was unlikely. Charles, who had a war to prosecute and who had had to disband his army after Paris because he could not afford to pay his soldiers, was not going to throw away good money on Joan just so that she could come back to court and bother him again.* The king’s distance from his former seer may be measured by the letter Regnault de Chartres wrote to the people of Reims in the immediate aftermath of Joan’s capture. Joan, he wrote, “had become full of pride due to the rich garments she had begun to wear. She had not been doing what God had commanded her but her own will.”
Neither would Yolande of Aragon have seriously entertained the thought of trying to deliver Joan from her captivity. By this time, the queen of Sicily had withdrawn from the royal court and was living at her castle in Saumur, where she could focus her energies in support of the duke of Alençon’s campaign to free the important city of Le Mans in Maine, of which she was duchess. The previous year she had spent heavily on the expedition to resupply Orléans, and her finances had not yet recovered, for whatever income was derived from the county of Provence was reserved for the use of her eldest son, Louis III, in his campaign to win the kingdom of Naples. Nor would she have considered it her place to purchase Joan’s freedom; ransom money was too precious to be wasted on anyone outside of the immediate family. This she had learned from Marie of Blois on her mother-in-law’s deathbed. With one son at war in Italy and another fighting for the king of France, Yolande knew to preserve her assets.
But even if she had had the resources to free Joan it is unlikely that the queen of Sicily, or any member of her family, would have done so. Because Joan claimed to have appeared by the order of God, to interfere in her fate would have been akin to questioning a divine imperative. Familiar as she was with Jean of Arra
s’s romance, Yolande would have remembered the passage where Raymondin cried out over a sin committed by one of his sons and Melusine expressly reminded him that “God’s will is inscrutable; the judgments of God are so secret that no human being can understand them.” If God had decreed that Joan be captured, He must have done so for a reason; similarly, if she was to be freed, the angels, and not the queen of Sicily, would be responsible. And there was no telling that it might not be God’s will that she remain a prisoner. Melusine had, after all, been betrayed by Raymondin in the end and fated to suffer.
And, in fairness to both Charles and Yolande, despite Joan’s captivity, neither had reason to believe that the Maid was in any particular danger. Future generations have the advantage of hindsight, but what would befall Joan was unprecedented at the time. The medieval military code as regards capture, ransom, and imprisonment was dictated by the time-honored rules of chivalry. If during a battle a member of the nobility fighting for one side voluntarily surrendered to a member of the nobility on the other—and Joan, who understood the protocol, had made sure to do this—then that person was taken unharmed. A ransom would be set, and if that ransom was raised, the captive would go free; if not, he would remain unmolested in the castle of the lord who had claimed him until such time as it could be raised, or a prisoner swap arranged, or a peace treaty signed. Imprisonment was uncomfortable, certainly, but not life-threatening. Moreover, it happened all the time—both the duke of Alençon and the count of Vendôme, for example, had been captured in battle and spent some time in a cell, and they were none the worse for it. Of course, these rules did not apply to the foot soldiers or the members of the lower classes who risked their lives in battle, but Charles had taken care of that by ennobling Joan the previous December.
And for the first several months of Joan’s captivity, this version of events played out exactly according to etiquette, and she was treated like an ordinary knight. Soon after being transferred to the castle at Beaulieu she tried to break out (and almost succeeded), but this was not due to maltreatment. “I have never been a prisoner in any place but I would try to escape from it. Being in that castle, I had shut up my keepers in the tower, excepting the porter who saw me and encountered me. It seems to me that it did not please God that I should escape that time,” she later told her inquisitors, referring to this incident. Nor was she punished for the attempt, although as a further precaution she was moved even farther into Burgundian territory afterward, to another of John of Luxembourg’s strongholds, the castle of Beaurevoir. However, here too she was treated with respect, and even kindness. She was shut up in a tower room but was never shackled, and she was allowed the society of John of Luxembourg’s wife and aunt for company. These two ladies tried gently to persuade her to put off her male attire and adopt women’s clothing, and although Joan refused, she clearly held them in great esteem. “The demoiselle of Luxembourg and the lady of Beaurevoir offered me a woman’s dress or the stuff to make one, asking me to wear that habit, and I answered that I had not permission from God and that it was not yet time…. Had it been that I was to wear women’s clothes, I should have done so more willingly at the request of those women than of any other woman in all France excepting my queen,” she later testified.
But this relatively benign state of affairs did not last. A conspiracy was afoot between two seemingly unrelated but nonetheless powerful entities—the University of Paris and the regency government—that would make a sham of all of the carefully constructed laws of chivalric behavior that governed prisoners of war. As a result, a nineteen-year-old girl would be subjected to treatment so barbaric, so inhumane, that its cruelty and horror still register today with an immediacy that belies the slow passage of many centuries.
* Too late the English recognized their error and the next year brought the young Henry VI to France to try to get him anointed at Reims as well—an enterprise at which they were unsuccessful, forcing him to be crowned instead in Paris at Notre Dame by the cardinal of Winchester on December 17, 1431. This ceremony did not fare well by comparison, being more English than French, and lacking the usual amenities expected by the general population. “The food was shocking, no one had a good word to say for it. Most of it, especially what was meant for the common people, had been cooked the previous Thursday, which seemed very odd to the French—the English were in charge of all this,” sniffed a Parisian eyewitness.
* Charles was notoriously stingy in these matters. Much later, when the English finally agreed to ransom the duke of Orléans, the king refused to contribute so much as a sovereign to free his cousin and the money had to be paid by others.
CHAPTER 11
The Trial
of
Joan of Arc
You say that you are my judge. Consider well what you are about, for in truth I am sent from God, and you are putting yourself in great danger.
—Joan of Arc, in response to an inquisitor’s question
at her Trial of Condemnation, 1431
HE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS was without question the most distinguished and influential school of theology in fifteenth-century Europe. Those of its students who managed to survive the grueling course of study—six years of preparatory work in the general arts followed by a further nine years under the exacting tutelage of the faculty of theology—were more or less assured a lucrative path to prominence among the priesthood. An institution as vast and complex as the medieval Church had a never-ending need for competent officials to tend to the administration of its many benefices, and the best of these positions—canon, dean, bishop, archbishop, cardinal—were disproportionately populated by masters of theology from the University of Paris. As these ecclesiastic appointments all boasted an income stream or “living” that was pocketed by their administrators, masters of theology could also hope to attain great wealth in addition to eminence. Naturally, there was considerable competition for the better assignments—the larger and more prestigious the diocese, the more profitable the living. Moreover, those who succeeded in ascending to the upper regions of the Church hierarchy could expect to hold positions of authority in the courts of secular princes as well. High-ranking ecclesiastics and masters of theology were in great demand as ambassadors and counselors, and were royally rewarded for their efforts with gifts of money or additional benefices. This symbiotic convergence of Church and state ensured that the University of Paris functioned as a political institution as much as an academic one—perhaps more so.
Consequently, the school and its various officials did not stand coolly above the civil passions that gripped the rest of the kingdom. Rather, the masters of theology had played a prominent role in the war since its inception. As in the general population, some of its members had favored the Armagnac position while others supported the Burgundians. The fortunes of each side had risen and fallen with the pace of the conflict, and with the triumph of Henry V, the Armagnac masters, even those who were revered for their erudition, had been forced to flee Paris and had taken refuge with Charles, who made use of their services. Similarly, the remaining masters, all Burgundian partisans, welcomed the English occupation and threw the full force of the university behind Henry V and his successors.
As might be expected, the influence of the Maid on the course of the war, her hold on the public consciousness, and in particular her assertion that she came as a messenger from God aroused the extreme umbrage of those Burgundian masters who now controlled the theological faculty. This ire had become further inflamed when some of their former colleagues, the exiled Armagnac masters acting for Charles, had examined Joan at Poitiers and approved her mission, in effect declaring her to be a prophetess. The crowning blow had fallen when, immediately following the raising of the siege of Orléans, the great Armagnac theologian Jean Gerson, a former chancellor of the university and the most esteemed academician of the period, published a prodigiously learned monograph on the subject of the Maid, in which, citing the relevant cases of Divine Law, he asserted that Joan was not fo
rbidden from assuming male attire. His thesis was subsequently reinforced by the archbishop of Embrun, another Armagnac scholar, who justified Joan’s wardrobe as not only necessary to her occupation but required as, in her case, being constantly in the presence of warriors, it was a matter of decency. It was at this point that the question of the divine nature of Joan’s mission was raised to the level of a faculty disagreement, and the University of Paris was a place that took its faculty disagreements very seriously. In the previous century, a chancellor had been hauled up on charges before the pope and ultimately dismissed from his post over a dispute arising from the order of seating preference at the annual end-of-term banquet.
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