Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the chateau of
Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of
Compiegne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The
university of Paris and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but
English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a
martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her
trial may do so in the pages of Mr. Douglas Murray's translation of
the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the
eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but
nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the
subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by
the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors.
"The English burnt her," says a Venetian merchant, "thinking that
fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord
that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster
after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died,
Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled, and Queen Isabella
went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and
in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the
cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little
strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English
crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic
Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of
intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the
atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te
Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris for her capture, another, a very
different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her
rehabilitation," says Mr. Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the
mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their
humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the
triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some
emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the
Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many
joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one
great cry for justice broke from the multitude."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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