THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR WAS AN INTERMITTENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN England and France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, over who was the proper successor to the French crown and several other less pressing disputes. Despite the name, it actually lasted more than one hundred years, starting in 1337 and ending in 1453. Toward the end of the period, spirits intervened in the conflict so dramatically that they have earned a prominent place in every history of the late Middle Ages. Their channel was a rustic French girl named Jehanne. Today, she is best known in the English-speaking world as Joan of Arc.
Joan was born on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1412, in the village of Domrémy, in northeastern France. Her parents were peasant farmers, Jacques and Isabelle d’Arc, who worked fifty acres of land along the upper Meuse valley. Her birth date has a certain significance, for the baby grew into a likeable and pious child who worked diligently and went to church often. She developed a special devotion to the Virgin Mary and took to bringing candles in her honor to the Notre Dame de Bermont chapel. A fellow villager recalled her as “greatly committed to the service of God and the Blessed Mary.” Another added that she helped the sick and gave alms to the poor.1 In the summer of 1424, while in her father’s garden, she heard “a voice from God” and was very much afraid.2
The voice, which she believed was sent by the Almighty to help guide her behavior, came at a complex and turbulent time in French history. The crown of France was in dispute between the Dauphin Charles (later Charles VII), son and heir of the Valois king Charles VI, and the Lancastrian English king Henry VI. Henry’s armies were in alliance with those of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and were occupying much of the northern part of the kingdom. Joan’s village lay on the turbulent frontier between lands controlled by the Dauphin and those occupied by Henry and Philip. Her father had already pooled resources with another farming family in order to rent the Château de I’lle, an island fortress on the Meuse that he hoped would provide a sanctuary for the villagers and their livestock.
Joan’s voice in the garden came from the direction of the Church of St. Rémy close to her home. It was accompanied by a light and she quickly decided it was the voice of an angel. The exact sequence of events, as given in Joan’s own account,3 is a little confused at this point, but it appears that the initial communication turned into a full-blown vision of the archangel Michael, who was, among other things, a patron saint of the Royal French Army. With him came “many angels from heaven” seen by Joan as if physically present. The archangel told her Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret would soon come to her and that she was to obey them in what they told her to do, since they were acting on God’s order. After he delivered the message and left, she broke down in tears: she wanted to go with the angels back to their celestial abode.
The experience proved to be the first of many. Voices, which she understood to be those of the promised saints, came to her two or three times a week. Initially, they simply told her to be good and attend church regularly but then, to Joan’s dismay, the messages became political. She was instructed to travel into the territories loyal to the Dauphin and raise the siege laid on the city of Orléans. To this end, she was first to visit the town of Vaucouleurs where the garrison commander Robert de Baudricourt would provide her with troops. Joan protested that she did not know how to lead men into war, nor even how to ride a horse; besides, at age twelve, she was far too young for such an undertaking. She ignored the insistent voices and continued to do so for four years, but the spirits persevered.
Joan’s visions did not exactly change her—she had always been a conservative, well-behaved, churchgoing girl—but they intensified her piety to an extraordinary degree. While her friends were singing and dancing, Joan would take herself off to church, where she spent hours in prayer. She went frequently to confession and worked hard in her home and in her father’s fields. She ignored the other girls when they told her she had become “too pious.” Meanwhile, all around her, the political situation continued to deteriorate. By the spring of 1428, it seemed as if the English would soon overrun the southern half of France. Joan decided she could no longer procrastinate. The time had come to obey the spirit voices. She was just sixteen years of age.
On May 13, Joan traveled to the village of Burley-le-Petit to visit her uncle, Durand Lassois.4 After she settled in for an eight-day stay, the real purpose of her visit became evident. She told him she needed to visit Vaucouleurs and he agreed to take her. Once in Vaucouleurs, she went searching for the garrison commander, Robert de Baudricourt. Although she had never seen him before, one of her voices pointed him out. Joan bravely marched up to him and told him she needed to go to the Dauphin to ensure he would be crowned as the rightful king of France. De Baudricourt was not impressed. He told Lassois to take her home and “give her a good slapping.” Joan withdrew and returned reluctantly to Domrémy.
By the following October, the predicted siege of Orléans had begun. The city was surrounded by some four thousand English troops and was in imminent danger of falling by the winter months. In January 1429, with her spirit voices becoming more and more insistent, Joan again made plans to visit Vaucouleurs. She told her parents she was going to help Durand Lassois’s wife, arranged for him to collect her, and, while en route to his home, persuaded him to take her to Vaucouleurs instead. There she stayed with family friends, Henri and Catherine le Royer. Once safely installed, she began to pester Robert de Baudricourt again, but he continued to ignore her. Nonetheless, Joan’s reputation had begun to spread. She had taken to calling herself the Maid, frequently quoted an old prophecy that a virgin would be the salvation of France, and spoke freely of her voices and her mission. As a result, she was summoned to the sickbed of the Duke of Lorraine, who thought the devout young visionary might be able to cure him. Instead, Joan gave him a brisk lecture about his sins and offered to pray for his health if he would have his son and some men escort her to the Dauphin. The pro-English Duke declined but may have been taken by her boldness, as he gave her four francs. Joan returned to Vaucouleurs where her voices encouraged her to persevere with Robert de Baudricourt. She approached him twice and was twice turned down. Her voices predicted he would accede to her requests if she tried a third time. The prediction proved accurate. De Baudricourt authorized that she be escorted to the Dauphin’s court at Chinon and even gave her a letter of recommendation.
By now Joan had developed friendships in Vaucouleurs. An escort was quickly put together and Joan was supplied with some made-to-measure male clothing, spurs, greaves, sword, and a horse.5 The party then took to the road. Joan predicted that if they met soldiers on the way, God would clear a route for them, for this was what she had been born to do.
After a long, arduous journey, Joan was eventually escorted into a packed audience hall at Chinon. Her reputation had preceded her. There were more than three hundred men-at-arms milling around and the Dauphin had withdrawn to the end of the chamber to test her powers. But her voices proved up to the occasion and guided her directly to him. She introduced herself as Jehanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maiden), assured him that he was the rightful heir to the throne of France, and predicted that he would eventually be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims. Eyewitness accounts of the meeting suggest Charles was pleased enough with what he heard, but he was also a cautious man. Although she frequently evoked the name of God, he badly needed to know whether she was in genuine contact with the Almighty. Consequently he ordered that she be thoroughly examined by a committee of high-ranking clerics, prelates, and theologians to determine whether or not he should believe her. The examination took a little over three weeks, part of them spent in Poitiers. At one point, when asked to provide a (supernatural) sign of her bona fides, she told her questioner bluntly, “I did not come to Poitiers to produce signs; but send me to Orléans; I will show you the signs for which I was sent!”6 The type of signs she meant might be inferred from the contents of a letter she sent subsequently to the English commanders besieging Orléans. In it she told them she had been appointed by Christ to push them out of France.
In March 1429, the theologians at Poitiers handed down their verdict:
The King … must not prevent her [Joan] from going to Orléans with his soldiers, but must have her conducted honourably, trusting in God. For to regard her with suspicion or abandon her, when there is no appearance of evil, would be to repel the Holy Spirit and render himself unworthy of the aid of God.7
To celebrate the verdict, Joan’s voices found her a sword: the weapon, they said, would be discovered behind the altar of the church at St. Catherine-de-Fierbois; as indeed it was, rusting and buried in the ground. Clergy of the church cleaned it up and sent it to her. Although delighted by the gift, Joan never carried it into battle. Her only “weapon” was her personal banner depicting Christ holding the world, flanked by two angels and the names “Jesus” and “Mary.” That way, she claimed, she would not have to hurt anyone. To prevent hurt to her, the king ordered a full suit of burnished steel-plate armor, specially made to measure, at a cost of 100 livres-tournois. Two months later, Joan traveled to the town of Blois to collect provisions and meet up with her promised army, whom she doubtless disconcerted by issuing an immediate set of orders banning swearing and looting, while the regular attendance at Mass and confession became compulsory. Camp followers were sent packing and any soldier with a mistress was told to marry her or leave the camp. Once the provisions arrived, Joan and her men marched for Orléans.
At this point the city was cut off on three sides by a chain of fortresses, some built from the ground up by the English, some the result of fortifying and occupying existing buildings. To reach the city itself, the Dauphin’s army was obliged to cross the Loire, but this proved problematic since the transport barges were hindered by a high wind. Joan reassured her fellow commanders and a city representative sent to meet her that God himself had taken pity on Orléans, at which point the wind changed and the barges became operational. Joan was ferried across past the English positions and entered the city after nightfall, but there were not enough boats to transport the whole of her army, so less than half of her men accompanied her.
Now safely ensconced in Orléans, Joan sent a second letter to the English telling them to leave. Against the rules of war, the English imprisoned one of the two heralds who delivered her message and sent the other back with a response that berated Joan as a herder of cows and a bawd. Joan decided to try again in person and went to a spot within shouting distance of the English positions. There she called on the commander to surrender, in the name of God. The commander responded by threatening to burn her.
The following day (May 1) was a Sunday—the “truce of God” during which all fighting was temporarily suspended. Two of Joan’s commanders took the opportunity to try to retrieve the remainder of her army, only to discover that without the inspiration of her presence, significant numbers had deserted. Joan herself used the truce to make another shouted appeal for an enemy surrender but was once again met with abuse. Three days later, the remainder of her army arrived, bringing supplies and reinforcements into Orléans with no opposition from the English. But this proved little more than the lull before the storm. A fresh English army was spotted marching to reinforce the besiegers and, while Joan was asleep, one of the Orléans commanders launched a fifteen-hundred-strong attack against an enemy position, the fortress of St. Loup. It proved impossible to hide anything from Joan’s voices, however, since they woke her with instructions to attack the English. Her only problem was whether to attack the approaching army or one of the English fortresses. In the end, the decision was made for her when she learned of the fighting at St. Loup. The French attack on the fortress was not going well, but Joan’s appearance made all the difference. The troops of Orléans rallied strongly at the sight of her standard, English morale collapsed, and within three hours the fort had fallen. By then, 114 of the English were dead and 40 taken captive. Joan instructed her men to attend confession and thank God for their victory. She then prophesied that the siege of Orléans would be lifted within five days. It proved a wholly accurate prediction.
The day following the fall of St. Loup, May 5, was another “truce of God” (the Feast of the Ascension) and Joan seized the opportunity to write a further letter to the English demanding their retreat. This time, rather than risk losing another herald, she had it shot into the English positions tied to an arrow. Despite their defeat at St. Loup, the English remained defiant. On May 6, hostilities began again, with a French attack on two of the remaining English fortresses. The English abandoned the first of them without a fight, quickly withdrawing to the second, a fortified monastery known as Le Bastille des Augustins. French commanders hesitated, then called off the attack. Joan appeared on horseback and insisted on leading the troops forward again. Her assault succeeded, the Bastille fell, and the few English survivors retreated hastily to their main fortification, les Tourelles.
With the French army now camped outside les Tourelles, Joan had another disagreement with her military commanders. They wanted to withdraw to Orléans and await reinforcements. She told them that having taken council from the Lord, she wanted them to attack at dawn. Once again she had her way. Morning found her at the head of her army, despite the fact that she had prophesied she would be wounded in the battle. The prediction came true after breakfast, as she was helping the men raise a scaling ladder. An English archer shot her between shoulder and neck, so that she was flung off her feet with the arrow protruding from her back. Her soldiers carried her to safety and suggested she use magic to heal the wound, but Joan refused, claiming that to do so would be a sin and against God’s will. Military surgeons then stanched the bleeding by packing the wound with cotton soaked in a mixture of olive oil and bacon fat. According to Joan’s later testimony, Saint Catherine appeared then to comfort her.
Demoralized by the wounding of their leader, the French commanders decided to call off the attack. Joan was dismayed when she learned of the decision and asked them to wait a little before retreating. She then rode off into a nearby vineyard where she remained for fifteen minutes deep in prayer. When she returned, she predicted that when the wind blew her banner against the wall of the fortress, it would fall at once to the French assault. She then rode out in sight of the English, who were completely demoralized by her unexpected reappearance. Her own troops attacked again with renewed ferocity, a soldier called out that Joan’s banner had touched the wall, and the fortress fell to a pincer movement that met with little real resistance. French troops returned to Orléans to the sound of church bells and citizenry singing “Te Deum Laudamus” (“We Praise Thee, O God”). The following day, the English abandoned their siege.
By this point, there was no longer any lingering doubt that Joan was inspired by God, nor that she was almost single-handedly responsible for the breaking of the Orléans siege. Buoyed up by their success, the French quickly embarked on a series of campaigns aimed at rolling back the remaining English positions along the Loire. More clashes followed in other locations, with more successes for the French until, in June 1429, the decisive battle was fought at Patay and the entire English army put to rout, breaking its long stranglehold on the country. After a period of hesitation, the Dauphin finally marched on Reims and was there crowned King Charles VII later in the month, finally fulfilling Joan’s initial prediction. He declined, however, to march on Paris—the one move that, if successful, would have established him securely on the throne. Instead, he pulled back to the Loire and disbanded his armies on September 22. But the wars were far from over and Joan, now a national heroine, took part in several more actions, all of them successful until, on May 23, 1430, her luck finally ran out. Leading a sortie against Burgundian troops laying siege to Compiègne, she was eventually outflanked by English reinforcements and compelled to retreat. In typical fashion, she held back to protect the rear guard as they crossed the River Oise. Minutes later she was unhorsed and, unable to remount, gave herself up. She was taken first to Margny, where she met with the Duke of Burgundy, then was sent by his ally John of Luxembourg to a castle in Vermandois. She tried to escape, so he sent her to an even more remote castle where she jumped from the top of a tower into the moat. Although knocked unconscious, she was not seriously injured, and when she recovered she was taken to Arras, the center of the Artois region in northern France and a town loyal to Burgundy. From there, John of Luxembourg sold her for 10,000 francs to Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, a supporter of the English who put her on trial in Rouen. The charge was heresy, the judges were Cauchon himself and Jean Lemaître, the Vice-Inquisitor of France.8
On February 21, 1431, Joan of Arc was taken before her judges and promptly proved as defiant as she had ever been with her military commanders. She demanded to attend Mass,9 insisted she was morally free to attempt an escape, and refused to divulge any details of her conversations with the Dauphins.10 One consequence of her stubbornness was that she was chained to a wooden block and watched day and night by guards assigned to her cell. She faced a total of seventy charges, including those of prophecy, disobeying commands of the church, endorsing her letters with divine names, and wearing male clothing. After a staunch defense, the original seventy charges were reduced to twelve, which were then forwarded for consideration to various eminent theologians in Rouen and Paris.
While the deliberations were in progress, Joan fell ill and clearly thought she was dying. (She asked to confess, to receive Holy Communion, and to be buried in consecrated ground.) Her captors reacted by threatening her with torture if she continued to evade the question of obedience to the Church, but she remained so stubborn that they eventually voted 10 to 3 that torture would be useless. On May 23, she was finally informed that if she persisted in her heresies, she would be turned over to the secular authorities—the ecclesiastical equivalent of a death sentence. The following day, she was taken to the graveyard at the church of Saint-Ouen for the sentence to be formalized. She asked leave to appeal to the pope, but her request was ignored. As her judges began to read the document that would transfer her to secular power, she recanted and declared she would do everything the Church required of her. She then signed an official form of abjuration and was formally condemned to life imprisonment. A few days later, Joan again put on men’s clothes, then told her captors that the voices of Saints Catherine and Margaret had censured her for the treason of her abjuration. On May 29, her judges agreed unanimously to hand her over to civil authority. The following morning, she was taken to the Place du Vieux-Marché and burned at the stake. Her last request was for a crucifix to be held high so she could see it as she burned.
Her beliefs were eventually vindicated. On his entry into Rouen in 1450, Charles VII belatedly ordered an inquiry into the trial. Two years later the cardinal legate Guillaume d’Estouteville made a second, more thorough, investigation. In 1455, Pope Calixtus III instituted proceedings that revoked her sentence. Joan was canonized by Pope Benedict XV on May 16, 1920. Spirit guidance had made her a saint, and its influence reverberated down the corridors of time.
Guided by her spirit voices, Joan of Arc chose to be burned alive rather than recant their teaching.