In France, the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453)
had been dragging on for nearly a century.
The English claimed the French throne through descent.
Most of France was occupied or disputed, wintry.
At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Henry V
of England had crushed a much larger French army
with the longbow. The English controlled northern France
including Paris. The dauphin Charles VII had no army.
Orléans was besieged by the English in 1428-1429.
If it fell, all central France would be lost.
The dauphin's cause appeared doomed. His court lived
in exile at Chinon, demoralized, at cost.
Into this came a peasant girl from Domrémy
in Lorraine, aged seventeen, named Jeanne d'Arc.
She had been hearing voices since age thirteen —
Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, a shark
of divine commission telling her to go to the dauphin,
drive the English from France, and see Charles crowned
at Reims (the traditional coronation site now in
English-held territory). She believed; she obeyed the sound.
She persuaded the local commander to escort her to
the dauphin at Chinon. She recognized Charles though
he was disguised among his courtiers. She told him
something private that only God would know.
He was convinced, or convinced enough to let her try.
She was given armor, a banner, a small force, and
sent to Orléans. She arrived in April 1429.
Within nine days the siege was broken by her hand.
The English retreated. She then led the army to take
Reims, escorting Charles there through English-held territory.
On July 17, 1429, Charles VII was crowned at Reims,
with Jeanne standing beside him at the ceremony.
This was the turning point of the war. From this moment,
the French gradually pushed the English back.
Jeanne had single-handedly — in the estimation of many —
changed the course of the Hundred Years' War by her attack.
But her luck ran out. At the siege of Compiègne
in 1430, she was captured by Burgundian forces (allies
of the English). She was sold to the English for 10,000
francs. She was tried for heresy by a Church court, she cries.
The trial was a political trial dressed as ecclesiastical.
The main charge was wearing men's clothing — armor.
She answered with remarkable theological sophistication
for a supposedly illiterate peasant girl, a farmer.
She was condemned and burned at the stake in Rouen
on May 30, 1431, at age nineteen. Her ashes were thrown
in the Seine. An English soldier who watched her die
reportedly said, "We are lost; we have burned a saint."
Twenty-five years later, Charles VII ordered a retrial
which posthumously cleared her name. Five centuries later,
in 1920, the Catholic Church canonized her. She became
the patron saint of France, the "Maid of Orléans," grater.
She is one of the most extraordinary figures in history.
A teenage peasant girl who led armies, negotiated with
kings, predicted battle outcomes, changed the course of
a war and a nation's destiny, all in the space of two years.
Whether her voices were divine revelation, or
psychological phenomenon, or something else — her
historical effect is undeniable. She did what no one
thought possible. She is the proof that miracles can occur.
(Or at least, that heroic human agency can look like
miracle from the outside. She was one teenager. And yet.)
In 1453, the year Constantinople fell, the Hundred
Years' War ended with French victory at Castillon.
The English were expelled from France except for Calais.
The France that Jeanne had saved became the modern nation.
Stand.