Joan of Arc

Born c. 1412

Died 1431

French military leader and martyr

F ew people ever make history, and a person who does so in his or her teens is extremely rare. Joan of Arc, who came to prominence at the age of seventeen, never lived to see twenty. In less than three years, however, she turned the tide of a century-long conflict, and proved that a girl could lead men to victory.

Joan claimed to hear voices, which she said came from the saints, giving her wisdom from God. Whatever the source of her knowledge, she was uncannily wise beyond her years, and she might have led France to greater and greater victories if she had not been captured by her nation's enemies. Under trial as a heretic, her prophetic gift was turned against her as evidence that she was doing the Devil's work, not God's, and she was burned at the stake. The verdict of history, however, rests on the side of Joan.

The Hundred Years' War

When Joan was born in about 1412, France had been locked in a war with England for more than seventy-five years. The conflict would drag on throughout her lifetime and beyond, becoming known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), even though it actually lasted for 116 years.

Most of the war was fought in France, which was devastated not so much by the fighting itself—there were few actual battles during the Hundred Years' War—but by English raids on French towns. Then, in 1415, when Joan was about three years old, the English under King Henry V scored a major victory at Agincourt (AH-zhin-kohr).

After Henry died in 1422, regents who ruled England in the name of his infant son Henry VI continued the attacks. In 1428 they began a siege, or sustained assault, on the city of Orléans (ohr-lay-AWN).

Voices and visions

Joan was born in about 1412 in Domremy (doh[n]ray-MEE), a village in the prosperous region of Champagne. Her family, despite later legends maintaining that she grew up in poverty as a shepherd girl, were in fact successful farmers.

So many tales would surround Joan's life that it was sometimes difficult to separate out the facts. For instance, artists often depicted her as possessing a physical beauty that matched her purity of spirit, but this was probably not the case. Contemporary records make no mention of her appearance (had she been a great beauty, presumably these records would have mentioned it) except to note that she was strongly and solidly built.

One thing that is known, because Joan reported it herself, was that when she was about thirteen, she began hearing voices and seeing visions. The priests at her trial would later accuse her of receiving messages from demons, and some modern scholars dismiss the voices and visions as the product of mental illness. Joan, however, claimed that she was hearing from God through the voices of long-deceased saints.

On her way to meet the king

As the siege of Orléans wore on, Joan came to believe that the voices had a special message for her. It was her destiny to save France from the English, and to do that, she needed to get the king's approval to lead an army into battle. At some point, her father tried to arrange her marriage to a local youth, but Joan had made a vow to remain a virgin, committed to Christ, and she refused.

Knowing that her father would not permit her to seek out the king, she convinced her uncle to help her get an audience with one of the local authorities. It is hard to imagine how Joan, a seventeen-year-old girl in a world where even grown women were expected to stay away from men's affairs, got anyone to take her seriously.

Finally, however, she had an opportunity to meet with Sir Robert de Baudricourt roh-BAYR; BOH-dri-kohr), who was at first amused and then impressed by her determination. In early 1429, he arranged for her to meet with the king.

Gaining Charles's trust

In fact the king, Charles VII, had yet to be crowned. By the standards of what was required to be a king in medieval times, he was a timid figure, and later his unwillingness to make a stand would cost Joan dearly. On meeting him, Joan announced boldly that she had come to raise, or end, the siege and lead him safely to the town of Reims (RAM), the traditional place where French kings were crowned or consecrated.

Given his lack of resolve, Charles was particularly hesitant to take her claims seriously, and he forced her to undergo a series of tests concerning her faith. These tests included lengthy questioning by priests, who wanted to make sure that she was hearing from God. She passed all the tests, as she would later point out when she was brought up on charges of witchcraft.

In time Charles agreed to send her into battle, and she acquired a distinctive suit of white armor, probably made to fit a boy. As for a sword, legend holds that she told one of the king's men that he would find a specially engraved sword buried beneath the altar in a certain church—and he did. Whatever the truth of this story, it was yet another item brought up against her later as "proof" that Satan had given her special insight.

Victory after victory

To the English troops at Orléans, the sight of Joan in her white armor leading a tiny French force must have looked the way David did to Goliath in the biblical story. But just as the future king of Israel killed the giant, Joan was to lead her force to victory over a much stronger opponent. First she led the capture of the English fort at Saint Loup outside Orléans, and in a series of skirmishes, she forced the English to lift the siege. She was wounded both on the foot and above the breast, but she stayed in the battle until they had victory.

Two weeks later, Joan, claiming she had been healed by the saints, was ready to go back into action. By now she was the most popular person in France, and soldiers who had previously scorned the idea of a woman leading them into battle became zealous followers. They took the village of Patay on June 18, 1429, and their victory led a number of towns to switch their allegiance from England to France.

Joan informed Charles that he should next march on Reims, but he did not immediately heed her advice. After he relented and they began moving toward the city, they were stopped at Troyes TRWAH), an English stronghold that they seemingly could not conquer. With supplies running out, the men were starting to grow hungry, but Joan urged them not to give up the siege, telling the troops that they would have victory in just two more days. Once again she was proven right, and on July 17, 1429, Charles was crowned in Reims with Joan standing nearby.

Trouble on the horizon

Charles and the leaders of the French army never fully accepted Joan into their confidence and often excluded her from strategy meetings. In many cases they would seek her advice after having met amongst themselves, only to discover that they should have asked her in the first place.

Joan's extremely unorthodox ways were bound to make her enemies, and not just on the English side. Many of the French remained uncomfortable with the idea of a female leader, and civilians as well as soldiers remarked scornfully about her habit of always wearing men's clothes. Nonetheless,

she had far more admirers than opponents among the French, and everywhere she went, crowds tried to touch her in the hopes that she could heal sicknesses—a gift she never claimed.

Then in September 1429, she failed to take Paris, and was wounded again, this time in the leg. Two months later, she failed to take another town. Meanwhile, she was growing restless with Charles's indecisiveness; therefore she set out to assist the fortress at Compiegne kawn-pee-AN) in the northeast, which was under attack. It was to be her last military campaign.

Capture and trial

During a battle in May 1430, Joan was captured by John of Luxembourg, who was loyal to the Duchy of Burgundy. Burgundy, a large state to the north of France, was in

William Wallace

Like Joan, William Wallace (c. 1270–1305), subject of the 1995 Academy Award–winning film Braveheart, led a heroic struggle against the English on behalf of his people. As with Joan, his fight was to end in his own trial and execution—but he, too, would remain a powerful symbol.

A minor Scottish nobleman from the western part of the country, William grew up in a time when his land faced severe oppression from the English. In his early twenties, he became the leader of a rag-tag guerrilla army that set out to oppose them.

With the support of the lower classes and the lesser nobility—but not the greater nobles, who favored coexistence with their English masters—William led what was called the Rising of 1297. They scored a major victory against the armies of King Edward I at Stirling Bridge on September 11, but were badly defeated at Falkirk on July 22 of the following year.

In the wake of Falkirk, William fled the country, going to France and Italy in hopes of gaining support for a new campaign against Edward. He never obtained it, and on August 5, 1305, after he had returned to Scotland, one of his former lieutenants turned him over to the English.

William was tried for war and treason, and as with Joan, the results of the trial were a foregone conclusion. Dragged by horses to the gallows, he was hanged and then disemboweled his intestines were removed). Edward ordered William's severed head to be placed on display on London Bridge, and sent his body in pieces to be displayed at four castles around Scotland. His move backfired, however: the murder of William became a rallying cry for the Scots, who soon raised a much more formidable effort against England.

turn allied with the English, to whom they gave her after receiving a handsome payment. The English were thrilled, and immediately handed her over to Peter Cauchon koh-SHAWn), bishop of Beauvais (boh-VAY), for trial. Neither Charles nor any of the other French leaders made any significant effort to rescue her.

The legal proceedings that followed represented a ghastly miscarriage of justice, even by medieval standards. Because she was charged with heresy, or defying church teachings, she should have been confined in a jail controlled by the church, where she would have had female guards. Instead, she was thrown into a dungeon controlled by the civil authorities in the town of Rouen rü-AN), and there she was guarded by five of the most brutish soldiers the English could muster.

Her trial wore on for months and months, and Cauchon's tactics failed to wrangle a confession from Joan. He and the other interrogators could never successfully tie her to witchcraft, and eventually the charges were whittled down to a claim that she was not cooperating with the trial. Scrambling to find a case, Cauchon emphasized her wearing of men's clothing as evidence of her disloyalty to the church. Finally on May 24, 1431, he managed to bully the exhausted Joan into signing a statement that she was guilty of a wide range of crimes. She even agreed to wear women's clothing.

The martyrdom of Joan

Cauchon had led Joan to believe that after signing the statement, she would be moved to a church prison. Instead, he had her thrown back into the dungeon. Realizing that she would never get out alive, she made a final act of protest by putting on men's clothing again. Now Cauchon had her where he wanted her: not only was she a heretic, but she had gone back to her heresy after recanting, or disavowing, it.

On May 30, Joan's death sentence was read aloud in the town square of Rouen. Her captors were so eager to see her killed that, in another breach of law—the church had no power to pass a death sentence in France—they immediately hauled her off to her execution. She was tied to a pole, and branches were heaped around her; then the fire was lit, and Joan was burned at the stake.

The English and their French allies—most of those involved in the trial were her countrymen—were so afraid of Joan and her alleged witchcraft that they arranged to have her ashes thrown in the River Seine nearby. And indeed Joan did exert a force after her death: her efforts contributed significantly to France's final victory in 1453.

By that time there was a massive movement to reverse the sentence against Joan. In 1456, a commission directed by Pope Calixtus III declared that the verdict against her had been wrongfully obtained. Joan soon became one of the most widely loved and admired figures in Europe, and in 1920, she was declared a saint.

For More Information

Books

Bull, Angela. A Saint in Armor: The Story of Joan of Arc. New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishers, 2000.

Bunson, Margaret and Matthew. St. Joan of Arc. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1992.

Hodges, Margaret. Joan of Arc: The Lily Maid. Illustrated by Robert Rayevsky. New York: Holiday House, 1999.

Madison, Lucy Foster. Joan of Arc. Retold by Christine Messina, illustrations by Frank Schoonover. New York: Children's Classics, 1995.

Nardo, Don. The Trial of Joan of Arc. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1998.

Web Sites

"Joan of Arc" 1452–1519). [Online] Available http://www.phs.princeton.k12.oh.us/Public/Lessons/enl/sudz2.html (last accessed July 26,2000).

ScotWeb's Scottish History Online Magazine. [Online] Available http://www.clan.com/history/mainframe.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"The Trial of Scotsman William Wallace, 1306." World Wide Legal Information Association. [Online] Available http://www.wwlia.org/ukwall.htm (last accessed July 26, 2000).

William Wallace: The Truth. [Online] Available http://www.highlanderweb.co.uk/wallace/index2.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).