Joan of Arc
The Maid of Orléans
In the spring of 1429, a seventeen-year-old girl from a village in Lorraine rode into the besieged city of Orléans at the head of a relief column, and everything changed. Her name was Jehanne d'Arc — Joan of Arc — the daughter of a farmer, a child who had never held a sword. For three years she had been hearing voices: Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret, commanding her to drive the English from France and bring the uncrowned Dauphin to his coronation. She had walked across hostile territory to find the Dauphin's court, convinced veteran soldiers and suspicious churchmen to arm her, and now she stood at the gates of a city that had been under siege for seven months. She would lift that siege in nine days. In three months she would crown a king. In two years she would be dead.
“I do not fear men-at-arms; my way has been made plain before me.”
c. 1412–1431
Born in Domrémy-la-Pucelle, a village in the Duchy of Bar on the frontier between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Executed on May 30, 1431, in the Old Market Square of Rouen, aged approximately nineteen. In the approximately two years between her arrival at the Dauphin's court in March 1429 and her execution, she altered the course of the Hundred Years' War and became the most famous woman in Europe.
9
The siege of Orléans had begun on October 12, 1428. English and Burgundian forces had surrounded the city for seven months, cutting its supply lines, and French morale had collapsed. Joan arrived on April 29, 1429. By May 8, the English had abandoned all their fortifications and retreated. Nine days from her entry to the raising of the siege — the first significant French military success in a generation.
17
Joan was seventeen years old when she led the relief of Orléans and the subsequent Loire campaign that destroyed English field armies at Patay on June 18, 1429. She had never received military training. Her tactical instinct — aggressive, decisive, constantly forward — was the opposite of the cautious French commanders who had been losing the war for decades. Veteran captains who initially mocked her followed her orders within weeks.
19
Captured by Burgundian forces at Compiègne on May 23, 1430, sold to the English, tried for heresy before a church court presided over by the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon — a French collaborator with English interests — condemned, and burned alive on May 30, 1431. Twenty-five years later, Pope Calixtus III reopened the case and nullified the verdict. In 1920, she was canonised. The English had burned a saint.
The teenage peasant girl who heard the voices of saints, led France to victory, and was burned at the stake at nineteen
Defining Events
The Siege of Orléans
Orléans was the last significant city on the Loire still loyal to the Valois cause. If it fell, the road to the south would be open and Charles VII's claim to the throne would be finished. Joan arrived with a supply convoy on April 29, entered the city that evening to scenes of mass rejoicing — the populace pressing around her horse, trying to touch her armour and her banner — and immediately began pressing the hesitant commanders to attack. On May 4, the French stormed the English fortress of Saint-Loup without her orders, and she rode out in fury at being left behind. She fought with them, drove them on, and the English garrison was killed or taken. Four more fortifications fell in the following days. On May 7, Joan was struck in the neck by an English crossbow bolt. She pulled it out herself, prayed, returned to the fighting. The English commanders, watching from the walls of the Tourelles, reportedly stopped fighting and stared. By May 8, the siege was over.
The Coronation at Reims
After Orléans, Joan insisted on marching directly to Reims — 300 kilometres through hostile Burgundian-held territory — for the coronation of Charles VII. Every military advisor said it was impossible. Joan disagreed. The Loire campaign of June 1429 cleared the path: Jargeau fell on June 12, Beaugency on June 16, and the English field army was destroyed at Patay on June 18, where the English commander John Fastolf fled the battlefield and Sir John Talbot, the most feared English captain in France, was taken prisoner. City after city submitted without a fight as the French army advanced. Troyes opened its gates on July 9. Reims admitted them on July 16. On July 17, in the great Gothic cathedral where the kings of France had been crowned for six centuries, Charles VII was anointed with the holy oil. Joan stood at his side throughout the ceremony, her banner raised, weeping.
The Trial and the Flames
The trial at Rouen was not a fair proceeding but an inquisition designed to reach a predetermined verdict. Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had fled his diocese after Joan's victories and owed his hopes of professional recovery entirely to English patronage. He presided over a court of French ecclesiastics assembled to condemn a French prisoner to an English execution. The interrogations lasted from January to May 1431. Joan faced them alone, without counsel, without access to the papers being compiled against her. She was questioned about her voices, her male dress, her claims of divine authority. Her answers were frequently remarkable — precise, fearless, occasionally devastatingly sharp. On May 24, she signed an abjuration and her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. On May 28, she was found wearing male clothes again — whether by choice or because her female clothes had been taken from her remained disputed at her rehabilitation trial. On May 30, she was burned alive. Her last word was the name of Jesus.
Timeline
Born in Domrémy
Jehanne was born in the village of Domrémy, in the Barrois region of Lorraine, on the eastern frontier of France — a place that knew the Hundred Years' War not as an abstraction but as a recurring catastrophe of burned crops and displaced families. Her father, Jacques d'Arc, was a village headman and farmer of modest means; her mother, Isabelle Romée, was reputed to be a woman of unusual piety. Domrémy itself was divided: the village lay on the border between Valois-loyal France and Burgundy-controlled territory, and the war ran through its daily life.
The First Voices
Around the age of twelve or thirteen — Joan was precise about the age at her trial — she began to hear voices. She identified them eventually as Saints Michael, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch. They came in her father's garden, sometimes at noon, sometimes at dusk, accompanied by light. At first they gave her general instruction: be good, go to church, fast often. Then, gradually, the commands became specific. She must go to France. She must find the Dauphin. She must drive the English from the kingdom. For years she resisted, afraid, convinced she was wrong about what she was hearing. The voices grew more insistent.
First Approach to Vaucouleurs
Joan walked to the nearby garrison town of Vaucouleurs and asked Robert de Baudricourt, the Valois military governor, for an escort to take her to the Dauphin's court at Chinon. He dismissed her and told her uncle, who had accompanied her, to take her home and box her ears. She went home. The voices grew louder. In July 1428, English and Burgundian forces raided Domrémy, burning it to the ground. The inhabitants fled. Joan and her family returned when the soldiers left. The destruction of her village seems to have hardened something in her.
Baudricourt Relents — The Journey to Chinon
Joan returned to Vaucouleurs in January 1429, more certain and more forceful. She told Baudricourt that the Dauphin's armies had just suffered a catastrophic defeat — the Battle of the Herrings, near Rouvray — before the news had reached the town. When the messenger arrived days later confirming what she had said, Baudricourt's resistance collapsed. He provided her with an escort of six men-at-arms. Dressed in male clothes, her hair cut short, she rode through Burgundian-held territory for eleven days to reach Chinon. She arrived on March 6, 1429.
The Recognition at Chinon
The Dauphin Charles — thin, ungainly, deeply insecure about his legitimacy, rumoured even by his own mother to be illegitimate — attempted to test her. He disguised himself among his courtiers and placed another man in his seat. According to all accounts, Joan went straight to him. She told him privately something that no one else could have known — what she said has never been revealed, but it shook him visibly. She told him his throne was legitimate, that he was the true king of France, and that God had sent her to crown him. Charles, who had no military options remaining, decided to listen.
Examined at Poitiers
Before Charles would give Joan armour and an army, his council sent her to Poitiers for three weeks of examination by theologians and church doctors. They questioned her on doctrine, on her voices, on her virginity (which was confirmed by a committee of matrons). Joan was impatient and direct. When one theologian said that if God wished to drive out the English, He had no need of soldiers, she replied: 'The men-at-arms will fight, and God will give the victory.' The examiners found nothing heretical. Charles gave her armour, a warhorse, her own household, and joint command of the relief army bound for Orléans.
Orléans — The Siege Lifted
Joan entered Orléans on April 29 and immediately clashed with the cautious Jean de Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans, who commanded the garrison. She wanted to attack at once; he wanted to wait for reinforcements. She won. Between May 4 and May 8, the French stormed and took every major English fortification around the city — Saint-Loup, Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, the Augustins, the Tourelles on the Loire bridge. Joan was struck by a crossbow bolt on May 7, prophesied it beforehand, and returned to the assault after her wound was dressed. On the morning of May 8, the English commanders formed their men into battle order outside the city — and then marched away. The siege was over.
The Loire Campaign — Patay
Joan insisted on following up the relief of Orléans with an immediate offensive to clear the Loire valley and open the road to Reims. Charles's council argued for caution. Joan prevailed. In three weeks, French forces under her direction took Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency. On June 18, at Patay, the French cavalry caught the English archers before they could drive their defensive stakes into the ground — a reversal of Agincourt — and destroyed the English field army. Sir John Talbot was captured. John Fastolf fled the field with his reputation in ruins. Resistance to the march on Reims collapsed.
The Coronation at Reims
Charles VII was crowned King of France in Reims Cathedral on July 17, 1429, with Joan standing at his side, her banner raised. She had told her voices, weeks earlier, that once the coronation was done, she would like to go home to her village and her parents and her sheep. The voices told her she must remain in France. After the ceremony, she knelt at Charles's feet and wept. Witnesses said the entire court wept with her. She was seventeen years old. She had done what she set out to do. What followed was less clear, and more dangerous.
The Failed Assault on Paris
Joan pushed for an immediate assault on Paris, held by the Burgundians and their English allies. Charles's council resisted; the king was already negotiating with the Duke of Burgundy, for whom Paris was a crucial bargaining chip. The assault on September 8 was badly organised and half-hearted. Joan led the attack on the Saint-Honoré gate, was struck by a crossbow bolt in the thigh, and had to be carried from the ditch. The assault was abandoned. Charles ordered a retreat. Joan had been wounded twice and had won every engagement in which she was allowed to fight; now she was being held back by the man she had crowned.
Captured at Compiègne
In May 1430, Joan was commanding a small force attempting to relieve the town of Compiègne, which was under Burgundian siege. She led a sortie from the town gates on May 23. The sortie failed; the French retreated inside, and in the confusion Joan was left outside the walls when the drawbridge was raised. A Burgundian archer seized her by her gold-embroidered coat and pulled her from her horse. She was handed to the Duke of Burgundy, then sold to the English for ten thousand livres — the ransom of a king. Charles VII made no effort to save her.
Imprisonment and Trial
Joan was held in the castle of Bouvreuil at Rouen throughout the winter of 1430–1431, kept in an English military prison — men's quarters, chained at night, guarded around the clock by male soldiers — while the ecclesiastical trial was prepared. She twice attempted to escape: once jumping from a tower at Beaurevoir Castle, falling seventy feet and surviving, injuring herself severely. The trial began in January 1431. Seventy charges were eventually reduced to twelve. She was questioned on her voices, her male dress, her refusal to submit to the judgment of the Church. Her answers fill hundreds of pages of trial transcript — the most detailed personal testimony to survive from any medieval woman.
Abjuration — and Relapse
Taken to a platform in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen on May 24, with the instruments of execution before her and the sentence of death about to be read, Joan signed an abjuration — a renunciation of her claims to divine voices, her male dress, her defiance of the Church's authority. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. What happened next remained disputed at the rehabilitation trial: she was returned to her cell, and within days she was found wearing male clothes again. She told the court she had resumed her dress because her female clothes had been taken from her. Whatever the truth, she also said her voices had reproached her for the abjuration. She was declared a relapsed heretic.
Burned at the Stake
Joan of Arc was burned alive in the Old Market Square of Rouen on the morning of May 30, 1431. An English soldier made a small cross from two sticks and held it up for her to see as the flames rose. She asked for a crucifix and held it against her chest. Her last word was the name of Jesus. The executioner, Geoffroy Thérage, later said he feared greatly for his soul. The ashes were thrown into the Seine so that no relics could be gathered. She was approximately nineteen years old.
Rehabilitation
Twenty-five years after her execution, Pope Calixtus III authorised a retrial. Joan's mother, Isabelle Romée, appeared before the court in Paris. Over two years, 115 witnesses were questioned. The verdict of 1431 was annulled in its entirety on July 7, 1456. The trial of Rouen was found to have been conducted in fraud, calumny, and iniquity. Her memory was formally rehabilitated. She was canonised in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. The Feast of Joan of Arc is celebrated in France on May 30.
Key Figures
Charles VII of France
Charles VII was everything Joan was not: irresolute, dependent on his advisors, terrified of military action, and shadowed by rumours of illegitimacy that had paralysed his claim to the throne. When Joan arrived at Chinon in March 1429, he had almost given up. She gave him back his nerve. She told him he was the true king of France, made him believe it, and then proved it by winning. He repaid her with almost nothing. When she was captured at Compiègne, he made no effort to ransom or rescue her. He outlived her by thirty-two years, reigned until 1461, and eventually reconquered all of France from the English — the kingdom Joan had begun to win for him at Orléans.
Jean de Dunois
Jean de Dunois — the illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans — was the military governor of Orléans and the best French commander of his generation. He had been defending the city for seven months when Joan arrived. He was sceptical of her, then astonished by her, then devoted. He testified at her rehabilitation trial with a detailed and affectionate account of her military genius, her physical courage, and her certainty. He described how she had told him exactly where to place his troops and exactly when to advance, and how the outcomes had consistently proved her right. He fought for France until 1468 and is buried at Châteaudun. He never forgot her.
The Legacy of Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc accomplished more in two years than most monarchs accomplish in a lifetime. She lifted a siege that was about to end the Valois claim to France. She marched through hostile territory, defeated English field armies, and crowned a king in the most sacred cathedral in France — all before her eighteenth birthday. Then she was sold, tried, and burned by the people her victories had benefited, and the man she had crowned made no effort to save her.
What remains is the trial transcript: hundreds of pages of her own words, her answers under interrogation, her defiance and her doubt and her absolute certainty that what she had heard was real. She was not educated, not politically sophisticated, not militarily trained. She was a farmer's daughter from a border village who said God had spoken to her — and who then, astonishingly, did everything she said God had told her to do.
Read her own account of it in the first-person ePub — beginning in the dark garden at Domrémy, when the light first came and the voice said her name.
Get the Full First-Person Biography
Read Joan of Arc's story told in their own voice — 8 chapters of cinematic, first-person narrative.