Branches of the Luxembourg tree extended from the west to the east of Christendom, as far as Bohemia and Hungary; and it had produced six queens, an empress, four kings, and four emperors. A scion of a younger branch of this illustrious house and himself a but poorly landed cadet, Jean de Luxembourg, had with great labour won his spurs in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. When he held the Maid to ransom, he was thirty-nine years of age, covered with wounds and one-eyed.[425]
That very evening from his quarters at Coudun the Duke of Burgundy caused letters to be written to the towns of his dominions telling of the capture of the Maid. "Of this capture shall the fame spread far and wide," is written in the letter to the people of Saint-Quentin; "and there shall be bruited abroad the error and misbelief of all such as have approved and favoured the deeds of this woman."[426]
In like manner did the Duke send the tidings to the Duke of Brittany by his herald Lorraine; to the Duke of Savoy and to his good town of Ghent.[427]
The survivors of the company the Maid had taken to Compiègne abandoned the siege, and on the morrow returned to their garrisons. The Lombard Captain, Bartolomeo Baretta, Jeanne's lieutenant, remained in the town with thirty-two men-at-arms, two trumpeters, two pages, forty-eight cross bowmen, and twenty archers or targeteers.[428]
CHAPTER VIII
THE MAID AT BEAULIEU—THE SHEPHERD OF GÉVAUDAN
HE tidings that Jeanne was in the hands of the Burgundians reached Paris on the morning of May the 25th.[429] On the morrow, the 26th, the University sent a summons to Duke Philip requiring him to give up his prisoner to the Vicar-General of the Grand Inquisitor of France. At the same time, the Vicar-General himself by letter required the redoubtable Duke to bring prisoner before him the young woman suspected of divers crimes savouring of heresy.[430]