Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/192

 120 WORKMEN AND HEROES into the most wild excesses. Joan prayed and pleaded to be allowed to go again into combat, and finally the king allowed her to do so ; but such success at tended her, and such enthusiasm seized upon her soldiers, that the jealous favon lies of the king were alarmed. They resolved to prevent any further triumphs for her, but to pretend great friendship and admiration meanwhile. The king was influenced to bestow honors and titles upon her family, and to present her two brothers, who had fought in the army, with swords of silver ; all of which Joan received coldly and with indifference, for meantime she was suffer- ing such agony as only so brave and valiant a soul could suffer in being kept from her duty. After four months of this galling life, Joan could not fail to see that she was the victim of a jealous plot. What suffering to a nature so honest and self-sacri- ficing as hers, to discover that the king for whom she had achieved such miracles, was a coward and a hypocrite, unworthy of her respect and faith. But it was surely this knowledge which actuated Joan to take a few bravf men, and without orders from the king, to go in aid of William de Flavy, coin mander of the fortress of Compiegne, who was in distress. She set out, and on the evening of May 24th, headed an attack upon the English. She fought nobly and well, but before the close of the combat, she was obliged to sound a retreat, and as she was attempting to escape through the half-closed city gate, an English archer came up behind and pulled her to the ground. Joan of Arc was a prisoner. The joy of the English was overwhelming the despair of the French correspondingly great ; and that despair gave place to anger when it was learned that William de Flavy, the man whom she had tried to de- fend, had betrayed her into the hands of the English because he was jealous of her. This man's wife slew him when she learned of his base act, and was par- doned for the crime when she told its cause. In all the cities which Joan had delivered from English control, public prayers and processions were ordered ; people walked barefooted and bareheaded, chanting the Miserere, in the streets of Tours. She was imprisoned first at Beaurevoir, then in the prison of Arras, and from there she was taken to Le Crotoy. It was customary in those days to exchange prisoners taken in arms, or to ransom them ; but the English had suffered such loss and defeat through Joan that they determined she should die. Their only way to do this without publicly dishonoring themselves, was to ac- cuse her of being a witch, and to compel the " religious" tribunal of her own land to become her murderer. During the first six months of her captivity Joan was treated humanely ; but the defeat of the English at Compiegne awoke anew the superstitions of the Eng- lish, who believed that, though a prisoner, she exercised her spell upon the army ; and she was taken to Le Crotoy, and cast into an iron cage with chains upon her wrists and ankles. After being starved, insulted, and treated with the most hell- ish brutality in prison for nearly ten months, the saviour of France was brought before a tribunal of men, all of them her enemies. There were three days of this