for
helping his friends to the utmost in his power by furthering their
schemes and in ridding them of their prisoner once and for ever. The
bait held out by Winchester and Bedford was the Archbishopric of
Rouen, and eagerly did Cauchon seize his prey. What added to his zeal
was his wish to gratify base feelings of revenge on those who had
thrust him out of his Bishopric of Beauvais, and on her without whose
deeds he might have still been living in security in his palatial home
there.

After a consultation with the leaders of the University of Paris,
Cauchon arrived at the Burgundian camp before Compiegne on the 14th
of July, and claimed Joan of Arc as prisoner from the keeping of the
Duke of Burgundy. Cauchon justified his demand by letters which he had
obtained from the doctors of the University, and he made the offer in
the name of the child-king of England. The sum handed over for the
purchase of the prisoner was 10,000 livres tournois, equivalent to
61,125 francs of French money of to-day--about L2400 sterling. This
was the ordinary price in that day for the ransom of any prisoner of
high rank. Luxembourg, to his shame and that of his order, consented
to the sale on those terms, and Cauchon soon returned with the news of
his bargain to his English employers.

The whole transaction sounds more like what one might expect to have
occurred amongst an uncivilised nation rather than among a people who
prided themselves on their chivalry and their usages of fair-play in
matters relating to warfare. That a high dignitary of the Church, and
a countryman of Joan of Arc, should have bought her from a prince, the
descendant of emperors and kings, also a countryman of the heroic
Maid's, for English gold, is bad enough; and that the so-called 'good'
Duke of Burgundy should have been a silent spectator of the infamous
transaction, brands all the actors as among the most sordid and
meanest of individuals. But what is infinitely worse is the fact that
no steps appear to have been taken by Charles to rescue the Maid, or
to attempt an exchange of her for any other prisoner or prisoners.

Thus Joan of Arc, bound literally hand and foot, was led like a lamb
to the shambles, not a hand being raised by those for whom she had
done such great and noble deeds.

The University of Paris, whose decisions carried so great a weight in
the issue of the trial of the Maid of Orleans, consisted at this
period of an ecclesiastical body of doctor