she threw herself into the fortress of Compiegne, which she bad herself won for the French king in the preceding autumn, and which was now besieged by a strong Burgundian force.
She was taken prisoner in a sally from Compiegne, on the 24th of May, and was imprisoned by the Burgundians first at Arras, and then at a place called Crotoy, on the Flemish coast, until November, when for payment of a large sum of money, she was given up to the English, and taken to Rouen, which then was their main stronghold in France.
"Sorrow it were, and shame to tell
The butchery, that there befell."
And the revolting details of the cruelties practised upon this young girl may be left to those whose duty, as avowed biographers, it is to describe them.[1] She was tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal on the charge of witchcraft, and on the 30th of May, 1431, she was burnt alive in the market-place at Rouen.
- ↑ The whole of the "Procès de Condemnation et de Réhabilitation de Jeanne D'Arc" has been published in five volumes, by the Société de L'Histoire de France. All the passages from contemporary chroniclers and poets are added; and the most ample materials are thus given for acquiring full information on a subject which is, to an Englishman, one of painful interest. There is an admirable essay on Joan of Arc, in the 138th number of the "Quarterly."
