Joan of Arc: the Maid of Orleans

Joan of Arc is unlike any other figure in French military history. A teenage peasant girl who could not read, she rose in the darkest hour of the Hundred Years War, said she was sent by God to save France, and in a single year helped turn the war. Within two more years she was dead, burned by her enemies, and centuries later made a saint.

The voices and the king

Born around 1412 at Domremy¹, Joan said that from childhood she heard the voices of saints urging her to drive the English from France and see the dauphin crowned. In 1429, with the French cause near collapse, she persuaded the future² Charles VII to give her troops and a place with his army.

Orleans and the coronation

Her moment came at Orleans, the key city besieged by the English. Carrying her banner at the head of the French, Joan turned despair into fury; in days the siege was broken³, a turning point in the long war. She pressed on to clear the road to Reims, where in July 1429 Charles VII was crowned king with Joan¹ at his side, exactly as she had promised.

Capture and the stake

In 1430 Joan was captured by the Burgundians¹, allies of the English, and sold to her enemies. Tried for heresy by a court that served English interests⁴, she was condemned and burned at the stake at Rouen in 1431, still a teenager. A later church inquiry cleared her name, and in 1920 she was made a saint¹.

Joan was not a tactician in the mould of a marshal; her weapon was the fierce spirit she gave a beaten army. Meet the soldiers' generals among the great commanders of France.