She also received in her prison at Arras a clerk of Tournai, one Jean Naviel, charged by the magistrates of his town to deliver to her the sum of twenty-two golden crowns. This ecclesiastic enjoyed the confidence of his fellow citizens, who employed him in the town's most urgent affairs. In the May of this year, 1430, he had been sent to Messire Regnault de Chartres, Chancellor of King Charles. He had been taken by the Burgundians at the same time as Jeanne and held to ransom; but out of that predicament he soon escaped and at no great cost.
He acquitted himself well of his mission[504] to the Maid, and, it would seem, received nothing for his trouble, doubtless because he wanted the reward of this work of mercy to be placed to his account in heaven.[505]
Neither the capture of the Maid nor the retreat of the men-at-arms she had brought, put an end to the siege of Compiègne. Guillaume de Flavy and his two brothers, Charles and Louis, and Captain Baretta with his Italians, and the five hundred of the garrison[506] displayed skill, vigour, and untiring energy. The Burgundians conducted the siege in the same manner as the English had conducted that of Orléans; mines, trenches, bulwarks, cannonades and bastions, those gigantic and absurd erections good for nothing but for burning. The suburbs of the town Guillaume de Flavy had demolished because they were in the way of his firing; boats he had sunk in order to bar the river. To the mortars and huge couillards of the Burgundians he replied with his artillery, and notably with those little copper culverins which did such good service.[507] If the gay cannoneer of Orléans and Jargeau, Maître Jean de Montesclère, were absent, there was a shoemaker of Valenciennes, an artilleryman, named Noirouffle, tall, dark, terrible to see, and terrible to hear.[508] The townsfolk of Compiègne, like those of Orléans, made unsuccessful sallies. One day Louis de Flavy, the governor's brother, was killed by a Burgundian bullet. But none the less on that day Guillaume did as he was wont to do and made the minstrels play to keep his men-at-arms in good cheer.[509]
In the month of June the bulwark, defending the bridge over the Oise, like les Tourelles at Orléans which defended the bridge over the Loire, was captured by the enemy without bringing about the reduction of the town. In like manner, the capture of Les Tourelles had not occasioned the fall of the town of Duke Charles.[510]
HENRY VI
From a portrait in the "Election Chamber" at Eton, reproduced by permission of the Provost
As for the bastions, they were just as little good on the Oise as they had been on the Loire; everything passed by them. The Burgundians were unable to invest Compiègne because its circumference was too great.[511] They were short of money; and their men-at-arms, for lack of food and of pay, deserted with that perfect assurance which in those days characterised alike mercenaries of the red cross and of the white.[512] To complete his misfortunes, Duke Philip was obliged to take away some of the troops engaged in the siege and send them against the inhabitants of Liège who had revolted.[513] On the 24th of October, a relieving army, commanded by the Count of Vendôme and the Marshal de Boussac, approached Compiègne. The English and the Burgundians having turned to encounter them, the garrison and all the inhabitants of the town, even the women, fell upon the rear of the besiegers and routed them.[514] The relieving army entered Compiègne. The flaring of the bastions was a fine sight. The Duke of Burgundy lost all his artillery.[515] The Sire de Luxembourg, who had come to Beaurevoir, where he had received the Count Bishop of Beauvais, now appeared before Compiègne just in time to bear his share in the disaster.[516] The same causes which had constrained the English to depart, as they put it, from Orléans, now obliged the Burgundians to leave Compiègne. But in those days the most ordinary events must needs have a supernatural cause assigned to them, wherefore the deliverance of the town was attributed to the vow of the Count of Vendôme, who, in the cathedral of Senlis, had promised an annual mass to Notre-Dame-de-la-Pierre if the place were not taken.[517]
The Lord Treasurer of Normandy raised aids to the amount of eighty thousand livres tournois, ten thousand of which were to be devoted to the purchase of Jeanne. The Count Bishop of Beauvais, who was taking this matter to heart, urged the Sire de Luxembourg to come to terms, mingled threats with coaxings, and caused the Norman gold to glitter before his eyes. He seemed to fear, and his fear was shared by the masters and doctors of the University, that King Charles would likewise make an offer, that he would promise more than King Henry's ten thousand golden francs and that in the end, by dint of costly gifts, the Armagnacs would succeed in winning back their fairy-godmother.[518] The rumour ran that King Charles, hearing that the English were about to gain possession of Jeanne for a sum of money, sent an ambassador to warn the Duke of Burgundy not on any account to consent to such an agreement, adding that if he did, the Burgundians in the hands of the King of France would be made to pay for the fate of the Maid.[519] Doubtless the rumour was false; albeit the fears of the Lord Bishop and the masters of the Paris University were not entirely groundless; and it is certain that from the banks of the Loire the negotiations were being attentively followed with a view to intervention at a favourable moment.