It would be a very fitting conclusion to the story of Joan of Arc if one could say that she was the direct cause of the end of the Hundred Years War and the expulsion of the English from most of France. Unfortunately, she was not. The fact that the war did not end until twenty-three years after her capture indicates that she did not have such an impact. Most modern historians of the conflict place far more weight on the Congress of Arras, which met in 1435, and the political turmoil and bad military leadership brought about by the weak rule of Henry VI, both during his minority and when he had reached adulthood, as causes for the war’s resolution.
But, certainly Joan had an influence on both of those events. After all, had she not desired to mend the rift between Philip the Good, who switched sides from the English to the French at the Congress of Arras?1 It could be argued that her victories influenced the peace process both because they showed the weakness of English troops and because they gave hope to the Burgundians that their French cousins were more capable warriors than they had previously believed. Yet, having established that link, it must be noted that if Joan did influence Philip to switch sides, this did not occur immediately, as the Congress did not even meet until six years after her capture. It also appears that the conference and the new alliance formed after it were prompted more by the diplomatic efforts of men like Georges de la Trémoïlle, than military efforts by generals like Joan. Finally, it must be recognized that even having both the French and Burgundians together against the undermanned English, thus turning all the resources of ‘France’ to the purpose of ridding the continent of English control, did not bring a quick end to the war. It was fourteen years after the Congress of Arras before Normandy was free from English control and seventeen years before Gascony was returned to the French. Not only did the Franco-Burgundian alliance not bring about a quick end to the war, but the Burgundians could not even conquer the town of Calais in the wake of the Arras congress in 1436. Besieging the English town, Philip discovered what the English had found out at Orléans, the French at Paris, and even the Burgundians at Compiègne – that well-fortified sites during the Middle Ages were difficult to defeat, even in an age of gunpowder weapons.2
As for Joan’s influence on the turmoil of Henry VI’s reign, she must be given some credit for destabilizing the English military leadership. Simply capturing and holding for ransom the likes of John Talbot, Thomas Scales, and William de la Pole, while, at the same time, discrediting John Fastolf, meant that the English had very few other military leaders to call upon. That John of Lancaster, the duke of Bedford, regent of the boy-king, and head of the English forces in France, had to take the field himself against Joan at Paris certainly indicates this. But the curious feature of medieval ransoms was that captured generals were eventually released, and, once freed, were able to continue their previous military leadership without legal or chivalric hindrance. (The French, too, had profited from such a system, with Arthur de Richemont, Jean, duke of Alençon, Jean, the Bastard of Orléans, and others able to fight beside Joan, despite previously having been captured by the English.) Thus, by the beginning of 1430 Pole had been set free, by the middle of 1430 Scales had, and by 1433 Talbot had also gained his freedom. All returned to military leadership positions, and all fought with some success against the French until the end of the war. Moreover, it does not seem that the weakness of military leadership in France solely effected the political turmoil in England, for the resulting conflict there – what would later be called the Wars of the Roses – did not begin until close to the end of the Hundred Years War. And while loss of English lands, titles, and authority in France certainly affected what occurred in England between 1450 and 1485, there is justifiable suspicion over whether Joan, who had burned nearly twenty years previously, could have, even indirectly, caused Henry VI’s problems then and there.
So, if Joan did not directly influence the ending of the Hundred Years War, why is she so celebrated? No doubt the partiality of her trial and the nature of her execution had something to do with her celebrity, but other individuals, men and women, were tried and burned for supposed heresy, and not honored with sainthood, let alone with the number of statues, pieces of artwork, literature, and legends awarded to the Maid’s memory. Joan’s renown is attached to her military ability, to the skill she had in leading men into battle against great odds and possible death. This made the greatest influence on her time. For, not long after her death, French military leaders, some she had fought with, and some not recorded as ever participating in her engagements, began to adopt similar tactics to those that she had employed. Her policy of direct engagement/frontal assault was a costly method of winning military contests. But, in the long run, it was more effective in wresting France from the English than any other tactic. As other French generals started to use it, they, too, began to be victorious. Even before Joan died, La Hire captured, by direct assault, the important English-held fortification of Château-Gaillard.3 La Hire performed this tactic well, as did Ponton de Xantrailles, Arthur de Richemont, and the Bastard of Orléans. Richemont’s siege of Meaux in 1439 was aided by direct engagement (while he also wisely refused to fight with Talbot’s relief army).4 So were the 1440 capture of Pontoise by the same leader, this time assisted by La Hire and Xantrailles;5 the successful 1442 siege of La Réole by the newly ransomed Charles of Orléans and La Hire;6 the 1449 conquest of Rouen, by Lord Dunois, formerly the Bastard of Orléans; the recapture of Harfleur in December 1449 and Honfleur in January 1450, both by Jean Bureau, a new leader who had risen through the ranks from gunner to general;7 the reconquest of the remainder of Normandy in 1450 by Richemont, Dunois, Bureau, and others;8 the victory of the battle of Formigny in April 1450 by Richemont;9 the removal of the English from Gascony in 1450–3;10 and, finally, Jean Bureau’s victory in the last battle of the Hundred Years War, Castillon, in July 1453.11 Almost all these conflicts were decided because the French military leaders followed Joan’s prescribed tactics. Perhaps they, too, now believed that, should their soldiers die in battle, they would go to heaven. Or perhaps they simply reckoned that they would ultimately save more lives were they to sacrifice a few initially in acquiring a quick victory. These were not blood-thirsty individuals. Undoubtedly, all deaths in this last phase of the Hundred Years War, French or English, saddened the leaders who caused them, as much as they had saddened Joan. Yet, it may have been one of the last of these deaths which symbolized what had happened since the brief phase of the war fought by Joan of Arc. John Talbot, Joan’s old adversary and later earl of Salisbury, at the advanced age of eighty, led the English troops into defeat for the last time at the battle of Castillon, and was killed fighting among them. One wonders if among his last thoughts was the Maid, who had been his avid enemy so many years before, and who, just maybe, had ushered in his demise over twenty years later by changing French military history.