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 doctors; but as far as its attributes consisted it was a body secular, and holding an independent position owing to its many privileges. The University was a political as well as an ecclesiastical body, supreme under the Pope above the whole of the Gallican Church. Although divided into two parties through the war then raging between England and France, its judicature was greatly influenced by the Church. It was a matter of certainty that the Doctors of Theology who sat in the University of Paris, and who were all, or nearly all, French by birth, would favour the English, and give an adverse decision to that of those French ecclesiastics who had examined into Joan's life and character when assembled at Poitiers, and who then considered her to be acting under the influence and with the protection of the Almighty.