Trial and examination of the Accused, sometimes by torture.
Sentence.
This Procedure was carefully observed in the case of Jeanne. The process ex officio, beginning in January, with the suppressed Domremy Enquiry, comprised the Six Public and Nine Private Examinations, and ended with the drawing up of the Seventy Articles, the Act of Accusation, on March 26th. The Process in Ordinary began on March 27th, with the reading of the Seventy Articles and Jeanne’s examination upon them. She was brought into the Torture Chamber on May the 9th; but the decision of the greater number of the Assessors being against the use of extreme measures, nothing was done. The Sentence was read on May 24th, condemning her to perpetual imprisonment.
Of the legality of the Trial there were grave doubts, expressed both at the beginning and also later on, when some opportunity had been given by the Public Examinations for those not absolutely prejudiced against the Accused, to form an opinion as regards the impartiality of the Judges. On the first day, Houppeville, whose testimony was given in full at the Rehabilitation, was present in Court; but, having dared to express his opinion that the action to be undertaken was fraught with some danger, he was afterwards refused admission, and was sent for by the Bishop to be reprimanded. As he was not in the Diocese of Beauvais he refused submission; but his appeal to his own Chapter at Rouen was disregarded, and he was thrown into prison, from which he was only released some days later through the intervention of the Abbot of Jumièges.
Lohier, a celebrated legal authority, who was present in Rouen during the earlier part of the Examination, expressed his opinions to the Bishop at some length, stating that the whole Trial was absolutely worthless: (1) on account of its form, (2) that the Assessors were not at liberty to hold their own views, the Trial being in the Castle and therefore not in open Court, (3) that no opportunity was given to the party of the French King to speak for themselves, (4) that Jeanne herself was allowed no Counsel,[[228]] nor had proper documents been prepared to support the Accusation. The Bishop, furious at this interference, summoned a meeting at his house to discuss the matter, and announced his decision to take no notice of the opinions thus expressed, but to continue as before. On the following day, Lohier left Rouen, remarking to the Registrar of the Trial: “It seems to me they act more from hate than aught else: and for this reason I will not stay here, for I do not wish to be in it.”
Massieu, the Usher of the Court, afterwards stated that Jeanne had asked for Counsel, and had been refused; but there is no reference to any such request in the message he gives from her at the time of her citation.[[229]]
The Bishop’s violent resentment at any interference is noted by more than one witness; and, indeed, the whole conduct of the Trial may be not inaptly described in the words of one of the Assessors, Maître Grouchet: “all was violence in this affair.”
The Trial itself was held in the Castle of Rouen, where Henry VI. had just been spending Christmas in state.
At the First Session, in the Castle Chapel, the noise and disturbance were so great that it was decided that future Sessions should be held in a smaller room, and from this time the Court met in the Ornament Room, opening from the Great Hall. Two Englishmen kept the door.[[230]]
The Meetings of May 19th and May 29th, preliminary to the closing of the First and Second Processes, respectively were held outside the Castle in the Chapel of the Archiepiscopal Manor, possibly with a view to giving an air of greater publicity to the proceedings. The room in which the instruments of torture were exhibited to Jeanne is on the ground-floor of the only part of the old Castle now standing, called the Great Tower. The smaller tower, in which Jeanne’s prison was situated, was still in ruins until the beginning of the present century, and went by the name of the Tower of La Pucelle; but it has now entirely disappeared.