long as d’Aulon, who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse.  “She yielded and gave her parole to Lyonnel, batard de Wandomme,” says another; but Jeanne herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reserving to herself the right to escape if she could.  In that dark evening scene nothing is clear except the fact that the Maid was taken, to the exultation and delight of her captors and to the terror and grief of the unhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms,—­and with its sons and champions by hundreds dying under the English lances and in the dark waves of the Oise.

The archer or whoever it was who secured this prize, took Jeanne back, along the bloody road with its relics of the fight, to Margny, the Burgundian camp, where the leaders crowded together to see so important a prisoner.  “Thither came soon after,” says Monstrelet, “the Duke of Burgundy from his camp of Coudon, and there assembled the English, the said Duke and those of the other camps in great numbers, making, one with the other, great cries and rejoicings on the taking of the Maid:  whom the said Duke went to see in the lodging where she was and spoke some words to her which I cannot call to mind, though I was there present; after which the said Duke and the others withdrew for the night, leaving the Maid in the keeping of Messer John of Luxembourg”—­to whom she had been immediately sold by her first captor.  The same night, Philip, this noble Duke and Prince of France, wrote a letter to convey the blessed information: 

“The great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and brought to the knowledge of all, that they may see the error of those who could believe and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman.  We write this in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and that you may thank God our Creator.  Pray that it may be His holy will to be more and more favourable to the enterprises of our royal master and to the restoration of his sway over all his good and faithful subjects.”

This royal master was Henry VI. of England, the baby king, doomed already to expiate sins that were not his, by the saddest life and reign.  The French historians whimsically but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on Philip’s part, and on that of his contemporaries in general, to the score of the English, which is hard measure, seeing that the treachery of a Frenchman could in no way be attributed to the other nation of which he was the natural enemy, or at least, antagonist.  Very naturally the subsequent proceedings in all their horror and cruelty are equally put down to the English account, although Frenchmen took, exulted over as a prisoner, tried and condemned as an enemy of God and the Church, the spotless creature who was France incarnate, the very embodiment of her country in all that was purest and noblest.  We shall see with what spontaneous zeal all France, except her own small party, set to work to accomplish this noble office.