Joan of Arc | Peasant, Warrior, Saint
After years of one humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the Dauphin Charles granted Joan's urgent request to be equipped for war and placed at the head of his army, his decision must have been based in large part on the knowledge that every orthodox, every rational option had been tried and had failed. Only a regime in the final straits of desperation would pay any heed to an illiterate farm girl who said that the voice of God was instructing her to take charge of her country's army and lead it to victory.
- Stephen W. Richey, Joan of Arc: A Military Appreciation -
Arrows filled the sky above the battlefield and rained down on the French knights as they slogged through mud in heavy armor. Their effect was devastating, and hundreds of France’s noblest men fell screaming as the English longbowmen poured fire into their ranks. The French commander urged his men forward, while at the other end of the field the King of England, Henry V, watched the battle with a smile on his scarred face. Soon, the English celebrated their great triumph at Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day. It was perhaps the high-point in the long war between the two countries that had begun nearly a hundred years earlier over who would sit on the throne of France. England stood on the threshold of victory, and as its soldiers tended the wounded and drank to their fallen, no one in Henry’s army could know that a three-year-old girl living far to the southeast would one day turn the tide of war against them.
The “Maid of Orléans”
In the village of Domrémy there lived a peasant family, the Darcs. The patriarch, Jacques, farmed his land and worked in the town as a tax collector to earn extra money. His wife, Isabelle Romée, was a devout Catholic who raised their daughter Jeanne (“Joan” in English) to serve God and spin wool—the typical work for peasant girls in that region. When she was thirteen, Joan began to have what she described as visions from God of several saints coming to her. Each of them commanded her to lead the armies of France in battle against the English foe and travel with the heir to the throne to Reims, the historic site of French coronations. Three years later, Joan traveled to a nearby garrison and spoke to its commander, the knight Robert de Baudricourt. He dismissed her visions, but two of his men were inspired by the young woman’s words and convinced their leader to meet with her a second time. She predicted that France would be defeated in a battle near Orléans, and when word reached the garrison several days that her prophecy had come true, Baudricourt became convinced she was hearing the voice of the Almighty.
Joan traveled to the royal court at Chinon in the company of Baudricourt’s men. Since they were moving through hostile territory, she wore men’s clothing as a disguise—a decision that later played a role in her ultimate fate. She carried a letter from Baudricourt to present to the Dauphin, the title by which the uncrowned King Charles was then known. Word had reached Chinon of this peasant visionary before she arrived at the court, and the Dauphin decided to test her when she appeared before him. Rather than meeting her seated at the head of the court, he disguised himself and stood with the other nobles when she entered the room. However, Joan immediately identified him in the crowd, bowed low, and spoke in a clear voice, “God give you a happy life, sweet king.” The Dauphin and his guest then conversed privately, where Joan revealed she knew secrets about him that he had only spoken of to God. He became convinced that the Lord had sent Joan to him to save France.
Joan, an illiterate peasant girl, then faced the task of becoming a soldier. She trained with the Dauphin’s best men, and the heir had a suit of white armor made for her. She also had banners made that bore the “fleur de lis” and the double cross of Lorraine, both enduring symbols of French power and resistance to overwhelming odds. One afternoon, in a discussion about the weapons Joan would carry into battle, she said she had received a vision. She took several knights to the Church of St. Catherine of Fierbois and found a rusted sword in a small room behind the altar. Beneath the rust were five crosses on a perfect blade. After having it cleaned and a scabbard made, Joan carried it at her side in many of her most famous battles—though most historians believe she never used it to kill an opponent. Eventually, the sword was lost, and at her trial she refused to tell her accusers where it was. Several legends sprang up about the Sword of St. Catherine; the most famous was that it had belonged to Charles Martel, hero of Tours and grandfather of the legendary Charlemagne. Many doubt this claim, but it certainly lends another touch of destiny to Joan’s incredible life.
The Dauphin intended to send a relieving force to the besieged city of Orléans and gave Joan permission to travel with the army. She rode at the head of the column, and there were whispers that the long-prophesied “armored maiden” who would lead France to victory had arrived. According to the historian Cousinot de Montreuil, the woman who now called herself La Pucelle, “the Maiden,” sent a message to the English commander at Orléans: “Begone, or I will make you go.” She reached the city with her escorts and the Dauphin’s troops and spent a few days boosting morale by talking to the weary defenders and sharing her visions with them. Once the French moved to drive the English away from Orléans, Joan’s presence on the battlefield became a source of great comfort for the men-at-arms. Though the noble officers often mocked her privately and refused to allow her to speak at councils of war, she remained convinced that her role would be decisive in the coming days. And it was—though historians still debate how much Joan helped France turn the tide of the Hundred Years’ War at Orléans, those who saw here on the battlefield, resplendent in her borrowed armor, shouting words of encouragement and urging her comrades forward in the name of God insisted that the “Maid of Orleans” had won the first victory in many years and reversed the disaster of Agincourt a decade earlier.
The Maid at War
Their defeat at Orléans forced the English to begin withdrawing from the valley of the Loire River south of Paris, and the French pursued with their new heroine in the ranks. The army of John, Duke of Alençon, moved from Orléans toward the Loire bridges, and he regularly took Joan’s advice during the march. He later credited her with saving his life by warning him about coming enemy fire while besieging a small town, and Joan was hit in the helmet by a hurled English stone the next day. Joan and Alençon successfully captured all brides across the Loire, effectively cutting the English troops south of the river off from reinforcement or escape. They then began to move toward the ancient city of Reims, where the Dauphin was now planning to be crowned. French cavalry slaughtered a contingent of famed English longbowmen near Patay in what the historian Kelly DeVries described as “Agincourt in reverse.” Joan received much of the credit for the victory, though she and most of the army was too far away to engage the enemy. Enemy-held towns gave up without a fight as the army moved toward Reims, and the Dauphin was crowned King Charles VII on July 17, 1429, with Joan, Alençon, and his other courtiers in attendance. The war had clearly turned.
At least for the moment. King Charles led his army toward Paris to reclaim the capital, and the attack began on September 8th. The king gave Joan command of the forces leading the charge, but she was wounded in the thigh by a crossbow bolt and taken from the field. The people of Paris joined their English and Burgundian occupiers in fighting their rightful king, fearing that Charles’ troops would destroy the city. After four hours of bitter fighting around the west gate of Paris, the king sounded the retreat. Joan recovered from her wound and returned to the field as the army cleared French lands south of the Loire River. Her star continued to rise with the people of France, especially after she rallied her men personally and captured the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier. In December 1429, at the age of seventeen, Joan and her family received noble titles, and the Maid of Orléans became known as Jeanne d’Arc, or “Joan of Arc.”
During the winter of 1429-30, Charles signed a short truce with the English, leaving Joan with little to do. She got involved in religious controversies with the Hussites, followers of the Bohemian reformer (and forerunner to Martin Luther) Jan Hus, writing letters that condemned them for heresies against the Church and papacy. She even wrote a letter to King Henry VI of England asking him to withdraw his troops from France and then join her in invading Bohemia to stamp out the Hussite radicals. The request went unanswered, and when the truce ended in the spring of 1430, she returned to the battlefield to resume what her followers now called her “crusade.”
King Charles’ coronation had changed the political situation in France. When he was the uncrowned Dauphin, many French noble families opposed his claim to the throne; the largest of these was the House of Burgundy, which controlled much of western France along the modern border with Germany and Belgium. After the coronation at Reims, Charles could now claim legitimacy as the next descendant from Hugh Capet to sit on the throne, and many minor nobles returned to him. The Burgundians continued to resist, but its grasp on small towns across northern France soon weakened as garrison commanders watched the king’s armies approach. This was the case in the town of Compiègne, later made famous for the Franco-German armistices of 1918 and 1941. Compiègne was legally a possession of Philip, duke of Burgundy, and he wrote a letter to its pro-Charles garrison demanding its transfer to Burgundian troops. The town’s governor, Guillaume de Flavy, agreed initially but then reversed himself when he learned that Joan and Alençon were approaching. The Burgundians then laid siege to the city in mid-May, but the garrison held long enough for Joan to arrive to perform her usual task of rallying the soldiers.
On the morning of May 23rd, Joan’s troops attacked out of Compiègne toward the nearby town of Soissons. They could not break through the Burgundian line, and she sent word to Compiègne asking for reinforcements, which arrived in the early afternoon. But the Burgundian forces were too strong, and over Joan’s objections, the other field commanders urged a retreat. They formed a rearguard, led by Joan, to protect the rest of their forces from the advancing enemy. As the last troops entered Compiègne, Governor Flavy ordered the gates closed before the rearguard could reach it—they were cut off with no means of escape. Scholars debate whether this was incompetence or treachery on Flavy’s part, but all blame him for what happened next. The Burgundians surrounded Joan and her men, and one soldier shouted for her to surrender. She refused, and then another managed to get around her horse and pull her to the ground. The Maid of Orléans then surrendered to a Burgundian nobleman and was imprisoned at Beaurevoir Castle, about sixty miles northeast of Compiègne.
The Maid on Trial
The French people were shocked at Joan of Arc’s capture, and many wondered if God had abandoned them. After an escape attempt, in which she jumped from her 70’ tall tower, the Burgundians moved her to a more secure prison in Arras, even further from French troops. The Duke of Alençon and King Charles tried to negotiate her release from the Burgundians, but the English did as well and were willing to pay far more. Duke Philip of Burgundy’s vassal, John of Luxembourg, who held Joan at Arras, finally agreed to sell her to the English for the amount of 10,000 livres (about $60,000 today). Joan’s new captors moved her to Rouen, their headquarters in northern France. King Charles tried on at least three occasions to send troops into the city to rescue Joan, but each failed. He then pledged to “exact vengeance” on the Burgundians for capturing France’s heroine and also on the English and their women. But nothing could be done, and Joan remained trapped in her enemy’s hands.
The trial of Joan of Arc is one of the most interesting moments in history. The English were determined to convict her of heresy to discredit her many accomplishments on the battlefield, and they worked tirelessly to verify every fact and claim made by Joan and her many supporters. As a result, the Maid of Orléan’s life is one of the best-documented before the French Revolution. English agents traveled to Paris, Chinon, Domrémy, and other sites associated with the accused to collect evidence and interview eyewitnesses. There is more factual proof to either support or deny the assertions made about her than there are for men like Martin Luther or George Washington!
The trial began on January 9, 1431, and the eighteen-year-old woman stood before a board of English clergymen and lawyers for examination. They questioned her about her early life, personal habits, and relationships with men. After six weeks gathering evidence, the court then conducted six interrogation sessions lasting from February 21st to March 3rd. Prosecutors then probed her for more information in her prison cell for another week. The interrogators asked her about every event of her young but remarkable life, confronted her about her visions from God, and demanded she tell them where she had learned the military skills she had used with such devastating effect on the battlefield. In every case, Joan answered her accusers calmly and clung to her faith in God for strength and deliverance. Some members of the tribunal began to wonder if she were truly what she claimed to be, an agent of the Almighty, but the more radical inquisitors were unconvinced. However, to ensure she would be convicted of heresy, they added a charge of crossdressing as a way to prove she was guilty—after all, she had regularly worn men’s clothing on her first journey to Chinon, on the battlefield, and even while in prison. Legal scholars continue to debate the merits of the English claims against Joan, and many believe them to be less than convincing even by the dubious standards of those days.
On May 24, 1431, the court showed Joan the scaffold outside the cathedral of Rouen where she would be burned if she persisted in her heresies. Facing immediate death, she broke and signed an abjuration. The document renounced her visions from God and pledged that she would wear only women’s clothing for the rest of her life. Then, four days later, she renounced her abjuration and put on men’s clothes again—a relapse of heresy, the punishment for which was death. Two days later, on March 30th, English soldiers tied Joan of Arc to a pillar in the market square of Rouen. Two French priests held a crucifix atop a long pole before her face, and she was then burned to death. The English displayed her body to the crowd and then burned it twice more to make it absolutely clear to everyone who witnessed it that the Maid of Orléans was dead. The French historian Régine Pernoud quotes Joan’s executioner, Geoffroy Thérage as later saying he feared “to be damned for he had burned a holy woman.”
The Maid’s Legacy
France ultimately triumphed in the Hundred Years’ War two decades after Joan of Arc’s death. King Charles VII, known as “the Victorious” to his countrymen, retained the throne, crushed the Burgundians, and expelled the English from the European continent except for a small outpost at Calais on the Channel coast. After the war, Joan was retried on the orders of Pope Calixtus III after receiving a petition from France’s inquisitor-general who had defended her and another from her mother Isabelle. This court declared Joan innocent on the charge in July 1456.
Joan of Arc continued to be a source of inspiration to the French nation in times of crisis. Women looked on her as a model of bravery and action in a country (and a world) that saw them as second-class members of society. French warships bore her name at various points in the nation’s history, and political parties of the left and right used her image and her life in propaganda literature and artwork. She was also canonized as as saint in the Roman Catholic Church in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.
Probably her most famous posthumous role in French history came in the Second World War. In the hour of France’s greatest national crisis, General Charles de Gaulle adopted part of her legend in his quest to portray himself as the French people’s savior. After the armies of Nazi Germany had crushed France into the dirt and humiliated them in an armistice signed at Compiègne, de Gaulle formed the Free French organization and continued the war as part of the Allied Powers. He used a flame to symbolize the enduring spirit of resistance of the nation and called on the people to imitate Joan of Arc as they worked to undermine Adolf Hitler’s tyrannical rule of their country. In a conversation with his friend Brendan Bracken during the Second World War, Churchill commented on de Gaulle’s similarity to Joan of Arc. He said, “You may have your single cross to bear, but I have the double cross of Lorraine.” “But,” Bracken replied, “Remember Winston…he thinks of himself as the reincarnation of St. Joan.” Churchill then quipped, “Yes, but my bishops won’t burn him!”
