Some confusion exists regarding the nature of Joan’s departure from Sully. One version of events is that Joan took her retinue out for a ride and kept going, in the direction of Compiegne. If this is what happened, her unauthorized departure from the court was nothing less than treason. Another view is that Charles knew of her departure and was willing to let her take her chances on her own. Whatever the truth of it, Joan left the French court and renewed her efforts to drive the English out of France.
Joan made no secret of her identity as she rode. Between Sully and Lagny her retinue was augmented by the troops of a mercenary captain named Bar-thelemy Baretta. By the time she reached Lagny on March 29, she had a small army at her back. There she and her troops engaged with an Anglo-Burgundian force of 300 to 400 men led by a Burgundian named Franquet d’Arras. Joan herself captured Franquet. She still had his sword when she was captured several weeks later. Because Franquet had been terrorizing the town of Senlis, the town leaders asked Joan to turn him over to them. At first Joan refused. She wanted to exchange Franquet for one of her sympathizers who was a prisoner at Paris. When she learned that the man she wanted to ransom was dead, she gave Franquet to the people of Senlis. He was tried and executed as “a murderer, a thief, and a traitor.” This incident would be used against her at her trial on the grounds that she had violated the Burgundian’s rights as a prisoner of war.
At Easter, Joan was at the town of Melun, where her voices warned her that she would be captured “before St. John’s day [June 24].” As Joan moved toward Compiegne, King Charles and Archbishop Regnault finally realized that they’d been duped in their dealings with Philip of Burgundy. A letter dated May 6 publicly acknowledged their mistake. Regnault and Louis of Bourbon traveled to Compiegne to assist in its defense. On May 14, Bourbon and Regnault were again in Joan’s company, guests at a reception given by the town in Joan’s honor. As yet, Compiegne was not completely besieged; Joan and the others hoped to stage an attack from Soissons on the Burgundian rear, so on May 18, Joan, Bourbon, and Regnault took about 400 men to the French town of Soissons, which had recently returned to French possession. The governor, Jean Bournel, was uncooperative. Although he did admit Joan and the other leaders, he would not permit their troops to enter the town. Joan and her colleagues returned to Compiegne without his help. Not long afterward, Bournel sold Soissons back to the duke of Burgundy for 4,000 gold saluts.
After her lack of success at Soissons, Joan rode to Crepy-en-Valois to gather reinforcements. When she returned to Compiegne on the night of May 22, English and Burgundian troops surrounded the town. Somehow she managed to lead 300 to 400 men past the enemy and into the town. On the morning of May 23, having had little to no sleep, Joan armed for what would be her last military offensive:
She mounted her horse, armed as would a man, and adorned in a doublet of rich cloth-of-gold over her armor. She rode a grey steed, very handsome and very proud, and displayed herself in the armor and manners that a captain who led a large army would. And in that state, with her standard raised high and blowing in the wind, and accompanied by many noble men, around four hours before midday, she charged out of the town.
Hearing of her capture, Regnault de Chartres remarked that she had deserved it because of her vanity in dress:
An archer, a rough and very sour man, full of much spite because a woman, who so much had been spoken about, should have defeated so many brave men, as she had done, grabbed the edge of her cloth-of-gold doublet, and threw her from her horse flat to the ground.
Chroniclers on both sides testified to Joan’s courage. Here is how French chronicler de Cagny described her capture:
The captain of [Compiegne], seeing the great multitude of Burgundians and English about to enter the bridge, for fear that he would lose the place, had the bridge raised and the gate shut. And thus the Maid remained closed outside and a few of her men with her. When the enemy saw this all tried hard to capture her. She resisted very strongly against them, and in the end had to be taken by five or six together, the one putting his hand on her, the others on her horse, each of them saying, ‘surrender yourself to me and give me your promise. . .’.
This is how Burgundian chronicler Chastellain described the event:
Then the Maid, surpassing the nature of a woman, took on a great force, and took much pain to save her company from defeat, remaining behind as the leader and as the bravest of the troop.
When Joan’s captors took her to the tent of John of Luxembourg, Duke Philip hurried to have a look at her. Although Philip’s chronicler Monstrelet was present, he did not record what was said.
Joan was a fighter. She nearly escaped from her first prison, so Luxembourg took her to his own home at Beaurevoir. She was lodged in a tower but had a lot of contact with three sympathetic ladies: Luxembourg’s wife, his stepdaughter, and a wealthy spinster aunt from whom he hoped to inherit. The aunt was godmother to Charles VII and was much opposed to turning Joan over to the English. On one occasion she turned away the chief English emissary, Pierre Cauchon bishop of Beauvais. Unfortunately for Joan, the aunt was called away by a death in her family and she herself died on the journey. When news of her advocate’s death reached Beaurevoir, Joan leapt from a tower described as from 40 to 60 feet high. Amazingly, she survived. Joan’s response when she was questioned about the incident during her trial suggests that she was trying to kill herself:
I had heard say that all they of Compiegne down to the age of seven years were to be put to fire and to blood, and I preferred to die rather than live after such destruction of good people, and that was one of the causes of my leaping. And the other was that I knew that I was sold to the English and I would rather have died than to be in the hands of the English, my adversaries.
At the first news of Joan’s capture on May 23, Pierre Cauchon set to work to have her turned over to the Inquisition to be tried as a heretic, instead of permitting her to be treated as a prisoner of war. After the death of Luxembourg’s aunt, events moved swiftly. Joan was sold to the English for a sum of 10,000 livres tournais. (Money was reckoned in various forms at the time: livres, ecus, saluts, etc. Perhaps the best way to indicate the extraordinary amount the English were willing to pay for Joan is to compare her price with the usual ransom amounts demanded for war captives of different ranks. Yeomen and archers were occasionally ransomed, but because they were worth only a few livres at best, it was less trouble to kill them than to keep them alive while waiting for the money. Preposterous ransoms were often demanded for kings and princes of the blood. Joan’s friend the duke of Alenqon was held for a ransom of 240,000 livres. The duke of Orleans, held for 20 years without ransom, was finally released for a payment of 360,000 livres. A typical ransom for an ordinary knight, however, started at about 300 livres.)
Some historians suggest that Charles VII was deterred by his advisers from trying to ransom or rescue Joan from the English. The only possible indication that a rescue may have been attempted is a receipt dated March 14, 1431, for the payment of 2,000 livres tournais for an unspecified expedition into Normandy led by the Bastard of Orleans.
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