The Maid of Orléans
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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 young woman without a soldier’s training. At her trial she dated the first voice to about thirteen and named Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret, commanding her to drive the English from France and bring the uncrowned Dauphin to his coronation. She had travelled with an escort 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 July she would stand at Charles’s coronation. In two years she would be dead.
“If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God keep me there.”
c. 1412–1431
Born in Domrémy-la-Pucelle, a village near the Meuse in a frontier region with overlapping French and Barrois jurisdictions. 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 forces and their allies fortified the approaches and disrupted supply routes for seven months, though the siege never sealed every route into the city. 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 — a major reversal after repeated French defeats.
17
At about seventeen, Joan joined experienced captains in the relief of Orléans and the Loire campaign. Her confidence, presence and pressure for action mattered, but command was shared and victories depended on soldiers, artillery and supplies. At Patay, the French vanguard struck the decisive blow while Joan was behind it.
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. A papally authorized nullification court annulled the verdict in 1456. 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 a crucial Valois stronghold on the Loire. Its fall would threaten Charles’s remaining territories without automatically ending his claim. 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. Further English positions on the south bank fell or were abandoned in the following days. On May 7, Joan was wounded near the neck and shoulder by an arrow or crossbow bolt. She pulled it out herself, prayed, returned to the fighting. Later testimony gave her return an important place in the renewed assault. 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. The route exposed the army to resistance and supply problems; the council debated how to use its victories. Joan disagreed. The Loire campaign of June 1429 cleared the path: Jargeau fell on June 12, the garrison at Beaugency agreed surrender on June 17, 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. The advance combined military pressure and negotiation. Auxerre supplied the army without full submission; Troyes agreed terms on July 9 and admitted Charles on July 10. 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 proceedings began with preparations in January; questioning of Joan started on February 21 and continued into May. 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
At her trial Joan said she was about thirteen when she first heard a voice, and was frightened. She identified them eventually as Saints Michael, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch. She placed the first experience in her father’s garden at about noon in summer, 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 the summer of 1428, raiding forces threatened Domrémy and its inhabitants fled. Joan and her family returned when the soldiers left. The displacement of her family 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. Later accounts associated his change of mind with Joan’s claimed foreknowledge of the Herrings defeat of February 12. That story cannot be placed before her January arrival, and it does not establish his sole motive. He provided her with six companions. Dressed in male clothes, her hair cut short, she rode through Burgundian-held territory for eleven days to reach Chinon. She reached Chinon around late February or early March 1429; the precise dating is disputed.
The Recognition at Chinon
Joan met Charles at Chinon and presented her mission. In her trial testimony she said she recognized him among others by the counsel of her voice. Later versions developed a public recognition test, but the familiar scene of a disguised king is not established by all accounts. The private sign remained disputed; Charles sought further examination of her claims at Poitiers.
Examined at Poitiers
Before Charles would authorize Joan’s role in a relief force, 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 a place alongside experienced captains in the relief force 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, French forces seized or cleared key English positions, including Saint-Loup, Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, the Augustins and the Tourelles. Other English works remained until the besiegers withdrew. Joan was wounded near the neck and shoulder on May 7, later saying her voices had foretold the wound, 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. French forces took Jargeau and Beaugency and captured the bridge at Meung-sur-Loire; Meung’s castle was not taken in that attack. 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. The victory strengthened the army’s position in the negotiations and threats that opened the road to Reims.
The Coronation at Reims
Charles VII was crowned King of France in Reims Cathedral on July 17, 1429. Joan was present with her standard; questioned at Rouen about its place in the ceremony, she said it had shared the labour and deserved to share the honour. Later accounts described her kneeling before Charles in tears. The coronation strengthened his claim without ending the English one, and at about seventeen she faced a mission whose military and political future remained uncertain.
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. The defeat challenged confidence in her mission and exposed the limits of her influence over royal policy. La Charité would bring another unsuccessful siege later that year.
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 entered John of Luxembourg’s custody before the English obtained her for ten thousand livres. No successful ransom or rescue followed; the evidence cannot establish every private initiative or motive at Charles’s court.
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. Before Rouen she attempted escape at Beaulieu and later jumped from the tower at Beaurevoir, surviving with injuries. The exact height should not be treated as a measured fact. 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 — an unusually extensive record of a medieval woman under questioning, mediated by notaries, translation and judicial procedure.
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. The May 28 record gives convenience among men and broken promises about custody and worship as her reasons, while later witnesses described removal of female clothes and threats from guards. She also reaffirmed her voices and said fear of fire had led to 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. Later witnesses described a small cross of sticks which she held against her breast, and a church crucifix held up before her. 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. The inquiry collected testimony in 1455–1456 from people who had known her in childhood, on campaign and in captivity. 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 faced a rival English claim, civil division and military reverses. He authorized Joan’s mission after examination and was crowned at Reims in July 1429. Their policies later diverged, especially over Paris and negotiations with Burgundy. No successful rescue followed her capture, but his private intentions are not fully recoverable. He died in 1461, thirty years after Joan, after royal forces recovered most English-held territory; Calais remained English.
Jean de Dunois
Jean de Dunois — the illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans — was a leading captain in the city’s defence. 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. His testimony credited her confidence and influence in several decisive moments; it did not make every engagement a victory or erase the other captains’ work. He continued to serve Charles VII after Joan’s death and died in 1468.
The Legacy of Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc accomplished more in two years than most monarchs accomplish in a lifetime. She helped lift a siege that threatened a crucial Valois stronghold. 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 Burgundian capture brought her into English custody, and an ecclesiastical trial at Rouen ended in execution. No successful rescue came from the court she had served.
What remains is the trial transcript: an extensive record of her answers mediated by scribes and judicial procedure, 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 whose conviction helped make two extraordinary successes possible, without ending the war or protecting her from captivity.
Read an imagined account of her experience in the first-person ePub — beginning in the garden at Domrémy, when the light first came and the voice said her name.
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