ggested to calm her distressed mind. But nothing
could reconcile Jeanne to captivity; she felt that she was in danger of
falling into the hands of the English, and she yearned for an
opportunity to succor Compiegne. In one of her attempted escapes she
threw herself from a high tower, though her conscience warned her
against the sin of self-destruction. Hurt in the fall, she was unable to
make good her escape, and was taken and nursed back to health by the
ladies of Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, the great ones of the earth were haggling over the price
which should be paid for their victim, and Charles VII. made no effort
to save her. Jean de Luxembourg sold her to Philippe de Bourgogne, and
he treated with the English representative. This representative has had
heaped upon his head the contemptuous anathemas of historians, both
French and English; nor is he undeserving of the most severe phrases yet
coined to express reprobation. Pierre Cauchon--it is a wonder so few
have thought of the swinish suggestiveness of the very name--was merely
a time-serving priest whose shameless policy of intrigue had already got
him made Bishop of Beauvais, and would soon, he fondly hoped, give him
the archbishopric of Rouen. In furtherance of his ambitious projects he
had become thoroughly English, and fawned upon the rich Cardinal
Winchester; but though Winchester nominated him to the archbishopric,
neither the Pope nor the cathedral chapter of Rouen would consent to
receive him as archbishop. Cauchon, as Bishop of Beauvais, claimed the
right to try the heretical sorceress who had been captured on the
borders of the diocese. In the same document in which he preferred this
claim he made offers, on behalf of the English, to buy his victim. A
king's ransom, ten thousand livres in gold, was offered for Jeanne, and
as refusal would have involved not only the loss of this sum, but the
loss of English friendship, the Duke of Burgundy sold his captive, who
was delivered up to the ecclesiastical authorities and the English party
in November, 1430.

Under the barbarous customs then in vogue it would not have been
impossible for the English to put her to death under military law; the
inviolability of prisoners of war was by no means an established
principle among the nations. But La Pucelle's death alone would not
suffice; she must first be discredited in the eyes of the world; it must
be shown that the consecration of Charles VII. had been effected with