superior, a court of higher authority. Imagine it! No, the case could
not properly be tried again. Cauchon could not properly preside in
this new court, for more than one reason:
Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her
domicile, which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed
judge was the prisoner’s outspoken enemy, and therefore he was
incompetent to try her. Yet all these large difficulties were gotten
rid of. The territorial Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial
letters to Cauchon–though only after a struggle and under
compulsion. Force was also applied to the Inquisitor, and he was
obliged to submit.
So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this
reservation: if the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her
back again! Ah, dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and
friendless child? Friendless, indeed–it is the right word. For she
was in a black dungeon, with half a dozen brutal common soldiers
keeping guard night and day in the room where her cage was–for
she was in a cage; an iron cage, and chained to her bed by neck
and hands and feet. Never a person near her whom she had ever
seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was, indeed,
friendlessness.
Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan
and CompiЉgne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of
Burgundy. Yet this very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to
go and show his face to Joan in her cage. He came with two
English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was a poor reptile. He
told her he would get her set free if she would promise not to fight
the English any more. She had been in that cage a long time now,
but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted scornfully:
“Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the
power nor the will to do it.”
He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan,
and she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash,
saying:
“See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I
know that the English are going to kill me, for they think that
when I am dead they can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never
get it.”
This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he–now think of it–he a
free, strong man, she a chained and helpless girl–he drew his
dagger and flung himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized
him and held him back. Warwick was wise. Take her life in that
way? Send her to Heaven stainless and undisgraced? It would
make her the idol of France, and the whole nation would rise and
march to victory and emancipation under the inspiration of her
spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than that.
Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than
two months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for
any odds and ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that
might be usable against Joan, and carefully suppressing all
evidence that came to hand in her favor. He had limitless ways and
means and powers at his disposal for preparing and strengthening
the case for the prosecution, and he used them all.
But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut
up in those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help.
And as for witnesses, she could not call a single one in her
defense; they were all far away, under the French flag, and this
was an English court; they would have been seized and hanged if
they had shown their faces at the gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner
must be the sole witness–witness for the prosecution, witness for
the defense; and with a verdict of death resolved upon before the
doors were opened for the court’s first sitting.