Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Reims and chancellor of the kingdom, supported the policy of detaching the English from the Burgundians. On Aug. 23 Joan left the king at Compiegne, and arrived at Saint Denis on the 26th. On the 28th an armistice was signed between France and Burgundy. On Tuesday, Sept. 8, Joan, at the head of the royal forces, made an assault on the Porte Saint Honore at Paris. It failed. Joan was wounded in the thigh by an arrow, but they had to drag her from the field by force. Since the king of France had disbanded his army, she had now to rejoin the court and remain there practically inactive. In Oct. 1429, however, she took part in the capture of Saint Pierre le Moustier. At La Charite, which was held by Perrinet Gressart for the duke of Burgundy, she suffered a reverse. In recognition of what she had done for France she was ennobled on Dec. 29, 1429, and her village was exempted from taxation.
The truce with Burgundy, which was to last till Easter, was drawing to a close. Philip the Good had moreover succeeded in persuading Bedford to promise him Champagne in return for allowing recruitment by the English among his subjects. As a counter stroke to the coronation of Charles VII., the English were preparing to bring to France the young King Henry VI. The Anglo-Burgundian allies made a great effort to ensure the safety of Paris by repossessing themselves of the neighbouring towns. Compiegne was their first objective.
Joan, who followed these plans attentively, decided to bring help to her "good friends" of Compiegne. Leaving Sully-sur-Loire where she had been in the care of la Tremouille, she set out, with a few companions but no official instructions. She passed from Melun to Lagny and Senlis and, after a brisk series of skirmishes, arrived at Compiegne, which she entered without resistance on May 23. The town was commanded by Captain Guillaume de Flavy. The Burgundian camp was at Margny opposite the bridge head; the forces of the veteran Burgundian, Jean de Luxembourg were at Clairoix, and the English, under Montgomery, at Venette. Towards five o'clock in the afternoon, Joan, Poton the Burgun dian, and some other captains with four or five hundred men made a sortie over the bridge against the Burgundian camp. Their men fell to looting, and were driven back into the town. Flavy had the draw-bridge raised in order to secure their retreat. Joan, who had charged the enemy in an attempt to save her comrades, was left outside, and was taken prisoner, together with her brothers and Jean d'Aulon. Her captor was an archer in the service of the Bastard of Wandomme. She was taken to the Bur
gundian camp, and interviewed by Philip the Good, while the Bastard was ordered to surrender his prisoner to his chief, Jean de Luxembourg.
Bedford realized the importance of destroying the influence of the Maid on the people by whom she was regarded as a saint; he hoped in this way to discredit the king, whom she had awak ened from his lethargy. The English did not wish summarily to execute her, as they could have done, but to defame her by condemnation in a spiritual court. Both the university of Paris, which was strongly Burgundian, and the vicar-general of the inquisition wrote as early as May 26 to the duke of Burgundy to ask that Joan should be surrendered to the ecclesiastical court. The English had from the outset announced their intention of burning her alive if they could get hold of her; but members of the university and French lawyers took the first practical steps to send her on her way to the stake. A letter from Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Reims, to the people of the city, who loved the Maid, shows that no grief was felt in the king's council over her capture; on the contrary, the bishop of Embrun was alone in exhorting Charles to make every effort to recover her. The king did, in fact, nothing at all. On July 14 Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, who had been driven from his bishopric by French soldiers, appeared at Jean de Luxembourg's camp before Compiegne ; he was an ambitious man who hoped to obtain the vacant see of Rouen, and whose sole desire was to serve his masters. He asked to be allowed to judge the prisoner, and maintained that Henry VI. had the right to redeem any prisoner of war for an indemnity of ten thousand livres.
Joan was taken first to Beaulieu, then to Beaurevoir to the castle of the Luxembourgs. She thought of nothing but the people of Compiegne, and after a long consultation with her "voices" made an attempt to go to their assistance by jumping from the tower. She injured herself, but not seriously. She was then taken to Arras, in Burgundian territory. Jean de Luxembourg decided to sell her to the English, and she was moved to Crotoy. On Nov. 21 the university of Paris accused Cauchon of lack of zeal, and urged that, for the glory of God, Joan should be tried in Paris. The English then decided to take her to Rouen, their military centre in France. She was imprisoned in a tower of the castle of Philip Augustus, chained in a dark cell, under the guard of John Gray and William Talbot, in the charge of the earl of Warwick.