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In the underground portion of a tower at Crotoy, still to be seen, although the upper part has disappeared, facing the sea, is a door-way, which local tradition points out as that of the dungeon of Joan of Arc. Crotoy, or Le Crotoy, is on the coast of Picardy, a little to the north of Abbeville. In the fifteenth century it was a place of some warlike importance, especially to the English.
Besides these were seventeen others, named Caval, Columbel, Cormeilles, Crotoy, Duchemin, Dubesert, Garin, Gastinel, Ledoux, Leroy, Maguerie, Manzier, Morel, Morellet, Pinchon, Saulx, and Pasquier de Vaux, who became Bishop of Meaux, Evreux, and Lisieux. In all, nine-and-twenty canons of Rouen.
Several towns, amongst others, Melun, Crotoy, Meaux, and St. Riquier, offered an obstinate resistance to the attacks of the English and Burgundians. On the 23d of March, 1421, the dauphin's troops, commanded by Sire de la Fayette, gained a signal victory over those of Henry V., whose brother, the Duke of Clarence, was killed in action.
Thus would the English army and people be avenged, and the French King's crown and prerogative suffer an irreparable damage. From Beaurevoir, Joan of Arc was first taken to the town of Arras, thence to Crotoy, where, about the 21st of November, she was handed over to the English.
Patent Rolls, 1345-48, especially PP. 473-526. For the vast force gathered later, see Wrottesley and Morris, U.S. The French made a great effort, both by sea and land, to relieve Calais. On June 25 Northampton went out with his ships as far as the mouth of the Somme, where off Le Crotoy he won a naval victory which made the English command of the sea absolutely secure.
For the last dreary month of that winter she was sent to the fortress of Crotoy on the Somme, for what reason we are not told, probably to be more near the English into whose hands she was about to be given up: again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with the Burgundians and not with the English.
The possession of Crotoy and the mouth of the Somme would have now rendered it easy for the English monarch to have transported his troops to England, and to have returned triumphant after the accomplishment of his extraordinary and most successful march through France.
At Crotoy she had once more the solace of female society, again with much pressing upon her of their own heavy skirts and hanging sleeves. A fellow-prisoner in the dungeon of Crotoy, a priest, said mass every day and gave her the holy communion. And her mind seems to have been soothed and calmed.
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.
Asked, if he was naked, she answered, "Do you think God has nothing to clothe him with?" Asked, if he had hair, she answered, "Why should it have been cut?" She said further that she had not seen the blessed Michael since she left the castle of Crotoy, nor did she see him often. At last she said that she knew not whether he had hair or not.
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