Biography of Joan of Arc
by: Allen Williamson
| Upcoming Joan of Arc Dates: | * 15 August 1429 : Battle of Montpilloy |
| * 8 September 1429 : Attack on Paris |
| * 10 September 1429 : Charles VII orders withdrawal from Paris |
| * 21 September 1429 : Charles VII's army was disbanded at Gien |
| * 4 November 1429 : St-Pierre-le-Moutier was taken. |
| * late November 1429 : La-Charite-sur-Loire was besieged. |
Joan of Arc was born on January 6th around the year 1412 to Jacques d'Arc
and his wife Isabelle in the little village of Domremy, within the Barrois
region (now part of "Lorraine") on the border of eastern France.
The events in France during these years would set the stage for
Joan's later life and the circumstances surrounding her death.
While the French remained divided into warring factions, diplomats
failed to extend the truce with England. King Henry V, citing his family's old claim to the French throne,
promptly invaded France in August of 1415 and defeated an Armagnac-dominated French
army at the battle of Agincourt on October 25th.
Joan indicated that it was around 1424, when she was twelve, that she began to
experience visions which she described as both verbal communication as well as visible figures of saints and
angels which she could see and touch. Her own testimony as well as a Royal document say that on at
least two occasions specific other persons could see the same figures.
The rest of northern France was less successful. Charles gradually lost the allegiance of all the towns north
of the Loire River except for Tournai in Flanders and Vaucouleurs, near Domremy. Since
Paris had been controlled by the opposite faction since 1418, his court was now located in the city
of Bourges in central France, hemmed in by hostile forces on
nearly every side: pro-English Brittany to the northwest,
English-occupied Normandy to the north, the Burgundian hereditary
domains of Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, and Charolais
to the northeast and east; and the English hereditary domain of Aquitaine to the southwest.
In 1428 the situation became critical as the English gathered troops for a campaign
into the Loire River Valley, the northern
perimeter of Charles' dwindling territory. The city of Orleans on the Loire now became the primary focus.
It was at this moment that an unexpected turn of events began to unfold.
Joan of Arc said that for some time prior to 1428 the saints
in her visions had been urging her to "go to France" (in its original feudal sense - the direct Royal domain)
and drive out the English and Burgundians, explaining that God supported Charles' claim to the throne,
supported Orleans' captive overlord Duke Charles of Orleans,
and had taken pity on the French population for the suffering they had endured during the war.
She embarked on the latter course in May of 1428, not long before large English reinforcements
landed in France for deployment in the Loire Valley. Joan arranged for a family relative, Durand Lassois, to
take her to see Lord Robert de Baudricourt, who had remained loyal to the Armagnacs
despite his status as a vassal of the pro-Burgundian Duke of Lorraine.
Baudricourt refused to listen to her, and she returned home.
Shortly after her return, in July of 1428 Domremy found itself
in the path of a Burgundian army led by Lord Antoine de Vergy, forcing the
villagers to take refuge in the nearby city of Neufchateau until
the troops had passed. Vergy's army laid siege to Vaucouleurs
and induced Baudricourt to pledge neutrality.
A few months later on October 12th, Orleans was placed under siege by an English army
led by the Earl of Salisbury. The eyewitness accounts and other 15th
century sources say that the situation for Charles was rather hopeless
by that stage. His treasury at one point was down to less than "four
ecus"; his armies were a motley collection of local contingents and foreign mercenaries;
and he himself, according to
the surviving accounts, was torn with doubt over the validity of his
cause - since his own mother, cooperating with the English, had
allegedly declared him illegitimate in order to deny his claim to the
throne. Now Orleans, the last
major city defending the heart of his territory, was in the grip of an
English army.
After eleven days on the road, Joan of Arc arrived at Chinon around March 4th
and was brought into Charles' presence, after a delay of two days,
by Count Louis de Vendome. There are many eyewitness accounts of this event. Lord Raoul
de Gaucourt, a Royal commander and bailiff of Orleans, recalled that
"...she presented herself before
his Royal majesty with great humility and simplicity, an impoverished little shepherd
girl, and ... said to the King: 'Most illustrious Lord Dauphin [i.e.,
heir to the throne], I have come and am sent in the name of God
to bring aid to yourself and to the kingdom.'" The accounts
indicate that she convinced Charles to take
her seriously by telling him about a private prayer he had made
the previous November 1st during which he had asked God to aid him
in his cause if he was the rightful heir to the throne, and to punish
himself alone rather than his people if his sins were responsible for
their suffering. She is said to have related the details of this prayer
and assured him that he was the legitimate claimant to the throne.
"After hearing her", remembered one eyewitness, "the King appeared radiant".
However, Charles first wanted her to be examined by a group of theologians
in order to test her orthodoxy, and for that purpose she was sent to
the city of Poitiers about thirty miles to the south, where pro-Armagnac
clergy from the University of Paris
had fled after Paris and its university came under English control a decade earlier.
They questioned her for three weeks before granting approval
[click here to see the
official text of their conclusions]. A letter written by
a Venetian named Pancrazio Giustiniani comments that her ability to hold her own against the
learned theologians earned her a reputation as
"another Saint Catherine come down to earth", and this reputation began to spread.
While still at Poitiers
Joan told a clergyman named Jean Erault to record an ultimatum to the English
commanders at Orleans around March 22 [click here
to read the full text],
the first of eleven surviving examples of the letters
she dictated to scribes during the course of her military campaigns. This
ultimatum begins with the "Jesus-Mary" slogan which would become her
trademark, borrowed from the clergy known as "mendicants" - Dominicans,
Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians - who made up a large portion of
the priests in her army. She then goes on to inform the English
that the "King of Heaven, Son of Saint Mary" [i.e., Jesus Christ] supports Charles
VII's claim to the
throne, and repeatedly advises the English to "go away [back] to England"
("allez-vous-en en Angleterre") or she will "drive you out of France"
("bouter vous hors de France"). In place of a reply, the English would
detain the two men who delivered the message. She would find that more forceful
methods would be needed to convince the English to pull their troops out of
the Loire Valley.
The Army
After providing her with a suit of armor "made exactly for her body" (in
the words of one eyewitness), and a banner with a picture of "Our Savior"
holding the world "with two angels at the sides", on a white background
covered with gold fleurs-de-lis, they brought her to the army at Blois,
about 35 miles southwest of Orleans. It was
here that she began to reform the troops by expelling the
prostitutes from the camp (sometimes at sword point, according to several
eyewitnesses) and requiring the soldiers to go to church and confession,
give up swearing, and refrain from looting or harassing the civilian
population. One astonished eyewitness reported that she succeeded in forcing
a mercenary commander named Lord Etienne de Vignolles, known as "La Hire" (meaning
"anger" or "ire", a reflection of his inability to maintain an aristocratic calm) to confess
his sins to a priest.
Orleans
The army moved out from Blois around April 25th and arrived in stages at the
besieged city between April 29th and May 4th. A small force had come out to
meet them at Checy, five miles upriver from Orleans; but as there weren't enough
barges to transport the entire body of troops across the river, Joan of Arc herself
and a small group of soldiers were escorted into the city by Lord Jean d'Orleans
(better known by his later title, Count of Dunois),
the man in charge of the city's defense due to his status as the
half-brother of the Duke of Orleans. The rest of the army would arrive
later by a different route, its numbers greatly reduced by discouraged men
who decided to leave without the Maiden there to encourage them.
The remaining English positions
fell swiftly: on May 6th an attack was made against a fortified
monastery called the "Bastille des Augustins", which controlled the
southern approach to a pair of towers called Les Tourelles, at the
southern end of Orleans' bridge. Flanking these to the east was a
fortified church called St-Jean-le-Blanc, near which the English had been
bombarding the city with one of their largest cannons, called
"le Passe-volant".
The Loire Valley and Reims
The unexpected lifting of the siege led to the support of a number
of prominent figures. Duke Jean V of Brittany rejected his previous alliance
with the English and promised to send troops to Charles' aid.
The Archbishop of Embrun wrote a treatise [June 1429] declaring Joan
to be divinely inspired, and advised Charles to consult with her
on matters concerning the war.
The joy felt by Charles himself when he and Joan met again at
Loches on the 11th was neatly summed up in an account
by Eberhardt von Windecken:
"... Then the young girl bowed her head before the King as much as she
could, and the King immediately had her raise it again; and one
would have thought that he would have kissed her from the joy that
he experienced."
On the other side, the Duke of Bedford (the chief English commander
in France) reacted by calling up as many troops as possible
from English-occupied territory;
the Duke of Burgundy made plans to take a more active role in helping
his allies in the field, although as usual he demanded a modest
sum (250,000 livres) to help offset his costs.
After the Dauphin's joyful reunion with the saint, she convinced
him to take an army north to Reims to be
crowned, as custom required. This was no simple task,
since Reims at that time lay deep within enemy-held territory;
in order to open a way for a northward campaign, the Royal army
first set about the job of clearing out the remaining English
positions in the Loire Valley, with the Duke of Alencon being
given command of the venture.
The army's first target was Jargeau, ten miles to the southeast of
Orleans. At least 3,600 armored troops, plus an unknown number of
lightly-armed 'commons', were present for duty.
The town was reached on June 11th; the main assault came the next day
after an artillery bombardment in which Jargeau's largest tower
was felled by a large cannon from Orleans nicknamed "La Bergere" ("the Shepherdess"),
presumably named after the saint herself. The latter's role was
also crucial: carrying her banner up front with the troops, she
was hit in the helmet with a stone but
immediately got back on her feet and encouraged the soldiers to
storm the ramparts by shouting: "Friends, friends, up! Up! Our Lord has condemned the English".
[In the archaic French of the 15th century: "Amys, amys, sus! Sus!
Nostre Sire a condempne les Angloys"] The fortifications were
taken, and the English were driven back across Jargeau's bridge.
The survivors surrendered.
The March to Reims
When Charles met his commanders after this victory, the decision
was made to press on northward to Reims. Gathering the army together
at Gien on the Loire, both Charles and Joan began sending out
letters
requesting various cities and dignitaries to send
representatives to the coronation.
The Royal army finally moved out from Gien on the 29th, after a
delay which caused Joan much distress. The Burgundian-held city
of Auxerre was reached the next day, and an agreement with the city
leaders was worked out after three days of negotiations: the army
was allowed to buy food, and Auxerre agreed to pay the same
obedience to Charles as Troyes, Chalons, and Reims chose to do.
The next stop was Troyes, garrisoned by 500-600 Burgundian
troops.
Reims followed suit after Joan counseled
Charles to "advance boldly"; and at last
the Dauphin was poised to receive the crown which had been denied
him years earlier.
The Siege of Paris
On July 17th, the day of the coronation, Joan sent a letter
to the Duke of Burgundy asking why
he didn't bother to show up for the coronation and proposing that
he and Charles should "make a good firm lasting peace.
Pardon each other completely and willingly, as loyal Christians
should do; and if it should please you to make war, go against
the Saracens." (The Islamic Saracens,
frequently at war with Christendom, were one of her preferred targets
for legitimate military action).
Although the Duke himself stayed away, his emissaries had arrived in
Reims on the day of the coronation and began negotiations which resulted in a
15-day truce being declared - not exactly the "good, firm, lasting peace"
that Joan wanted, and in fact such a short truce immediately following in the
wake of Charles' triumph could serve only to give the English and
Burgundians time to regroup.
Charles followed up this treaty by taking his army on a city-by-city
tour of the Ile-de-France, accepting the loyalty of each in turn.
Near Crepy-en-Valois, Joan was quoted as saying that she now
hoped that God would permit her to return to her family's home.
The army of the Duke of Bedford was nearby, however - Bedford
had recently sent off a challenge to Charles VII asking him to
meet the English at "some place in the fields, convenient and
reasonable" for a showdown. The place turned out to be the
village of Montpilloy just southwest of Crepy, where the two armies
clashed on August 14th and 15th, with Joan herself going so far as
to lead a charge against the English fortified positions to try to
draw them out; but
only a prolonged series of skirmishes took place, and
both armies withdrew on the night of the 15th.
The French went back to Crepy, and then proceeded on to Compiegne
to the northwest. At the same time negotiations with the
Burgundians were getting underway, with the positions of the two
parties oddly reversed: while French armies were rapidly advancing,
the French delegation was offering sweeping concessions, bargaining
as if they were on the losing side. On the 21st a treaty was signed
providing for a four-month truce designed to prevent the Royal army
from continuing its offensive, coupled with the added provision
that several towns should be handed over to the Duke of Burgundy.
A peace conference was promised for the spring, although the
documents show that the English were preparing to launch an offensive
around the same time.
Meanwhile, King Charles remained at Compiegne. On
the 23rd Joan and the Duke of Alencon left on their own
initiative with a body of troops and made their way to the region around Paris,
arriving at St-Denis on the 25th and sending out skirmishers "up to the
gates of Paris" over the next several days. A brief siege began on
September 8th, but Joan was hit in the
thigh that day by a crossbow dart while trying to find a place for her troops
to cross the city's inner moat. She was carried back against her will, all the
while urging on another assault. No further attack would be forthcoming: on
the 9th the army was ordered back to St-Denis, where the King was located by
that point; when he learned that the commanders were thinking of
crossing back to Paris by a bridge constructed on the orders of
the Duke of Alencon, Charles ordered the bridge destroyed. On the
13th the troops began the discouraging march back to the Loire. On September 21st
the army, by then back at Gien, was disbanded. The Duke of Alencon's
squire and chronicler, Perceval de Cagny, summed up this event
with the terse and bitter statement: "And thus was broken the will of
the Maiden and the King's army." Like many of those who had served
in that army, Cagny tended to feel that the disastrous policies promoted by
the Royal counselors - most blamed Georges de la Tremoille in particular -
had fatally undermined Joan's successes.
The commanders were dispersed to their own estates or former
areas of operations. When the Duke of Alencon, preparing a campaign
into Normandy, asked that Joan of Arc be allowed to join him, the
Royal court refused.
Winter
During this period of inactivity, Joan was moved
around to various residences of the Royal court, such as at Bourges
and Sully-sur-Loire. The next military venture, albeit a fairly
small one, was the attack against Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, which
was captured on November 4. Jean d'Aulon, Joan's squire and bodyguard,
remembered that the initial assault was a failure and the soldiers
in full retreat, except for Joan herself and a handful of men clustered
around her. He rode up to her and told her to fall back with the
rest of the army, but she refused, declaring that she had "fifty-thousand"
troops with her. Shouting for the army to bring up bundles for
filling in the town's moat, she initiated a new assault which took
the objective "without much resistance", according to the astonished
d'Aulon.
The siege of La Charite was a dismal failure: the weather was
chilly by that point in the year; the army had "few men"; the
Royal court did little to provide support for the troops ("the King",
according to Cagny, "made no diligence to send her food supplies nor
money to maintain her army"). The
army withdrew after a month, abandoning their artillery.
The month of March 1430 saw a flurry of letters being sent out by
Joan, all of them dictated in the town of Sully-sur-Loire. Two of
these, on the 16th
and 28th,
went to the citizens
of Reims, assuring them that she would aid them in the event of
a siege. On March 23rd she sent an ultimatum
to the Hussites, addressed
as "the heretics of Bohemia", warning that she would lead a
crusading army against them unless they "return to the Catholic faith
and the original Light".
In late March or early April Joan of Arc finally
took the field again with her small group (her
brother Pierre, her confessor Friar Jean Pasquerel, her bodyguard Jean d'Aulon,
and a few others), escorted by a mercenary unit of about 200 troops
led by Bartolomew Baretta of Italy. They headed for Lagny-sur-Marne, where
French forces were putting up a fight against the English. It was
here, in the midst of war, that she was credited with helping to save an
infant: according to her own testimony, she
and other virgins of the town were praying in a church on behalf of
a dead baby, that it might be revived
long enough to baptize it; she said the baby came
to life, yawned three times, and was hastily baptized before it died again.
Meanwhile, the Burgundian army was on the move despite all the
promises of peace; and on May 6th Charles VII and his counselors
finally admitted that the Royal Court had been manipulated by
the Duke, "...who has diverted and deceived us by truces and otherwise",
as Charles wrote in a letter on that date.
The Trial
After four months spent as a prisoner in the chateau
of Beaurevoir, Joan was transferred to the English in exchange for
10,000 livres, an arrangement similar to the standard practice in other cases of prisoner transfers between
members of the same side, such as when Henry V had paid his nobles for transferring their
prisoners to him after the battle of Agincourt.
Pierre Cauchon, a longtime supporter of
the Anglo-Burgundian faction, was given the job of procuring her
and setting up a trial. He had been given many such tasks in the past:
a letter from Duke John-the-Fearless of Burgundy, dated
26 July 1415, authorized Cauchon to bribe Church officials at the Council of
Constance in order to influence the Council's ruling concerning a murder
which the Duke had ordered. They now needed someone
who was willing to engineer a murder under the guise of an Inquisitorial
trial, and Cauchon again got the job.
Joan was held at the fortress of Crotoy before being brought
to Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. Although
Inquisitorial procedure required suspects to be held in a Church-run prison, and female prisoners to be
guarded by nuns rather than male guards (for obvious reasons), Joan was held in
a secular military prison with
English soldiers as guards. According to several eyewitness accounts, she complained that these men tried to rape
her on a number of occasions, for which reason she clung to her soldiers' clothing and
kept the hosen, hip-boots and tunic "firmly laced and tied together" with dozens of cords - her only means of
protecting herself against rape, since a dress didn't offer any such protection. The tribunal
eventually decided to use this against her by charging that it violated
the prohibition against cross-dressing, a charge which intentionally ignored the
exemption allowed in such cases of necessity by medieval doctrinal sources such as the "Summa Theologica" and "Scivias". The eyewitnesses said that Joan
pleaded with Cauchon to transfer her to a Church prison with women to
guard her, in which case
she could safely wear a dress; but this was never allowed.
The trial included a series of hearings from February 21st
through the end of March 1431. Normally, Inquisitorial tribunals were supposed to
hear witness testimony against the accused and base any verdict upon such testimony, but in this case
the only witness called was the accused herself. The trial assessors, as a number of them later admitted,
therefore resorted to trying to manipulate her into saying something
that might be used against her. There were other profound deviations from lawful procedure. As many historians have pointed out, the
theological arguments put forward by Cauchon and his associates are
mostly a set of subtle half-truths,
not only on the "cross-dressing" charge but also concerning
issues such as the authority of the tribunal: standard Inquisitorial
procedure required such tribunals to be overseen by non-partisan
judges, otherwise the trial could be automatically rendered null and void. Similarly, the accused was allowed to appeal to the Pope. The
eyewitnesses said Joan repeatedly asked for both of these rules to be honored, but this was never
granted. They stated that she had submitted to the
authority of both the Papacy and the Council of Basel, but the latter was
left out of the transcript on Cauchon's orders and the former was entered in a form which distorted her statements on the matter.
The dispute between Joan and her judges
therefore largely revolved around the legitimacy of the tribunal
as an impartial jury of the Church Universal, and medieval
ecclesiastic law is on her side. [click here
for more information about this issue].
The scene of her execution is vividly described by a number of
those who were present that day. She listened calmly to the sermon
read to her, but then broke down weeping during her own address,
in which she forgave her accusers for what they
were doing and asked them to pray for her. The accounts say
that most of the judges and assessors themselves, and a few of the
English soldiers and officials, were openly sobbing by the end of it.
But a few of the English soldiers were becoming impatient, and one
sarcastically shouted to the bailiff Jean Massieu, "What, priest, are you
going to make us wait here until dinner?" The
executioner was ordered to "do your duty".
They tied her to a tall pillar well above the crowd. She
asked for a cross, which one sympathetic English soldier
tried to provide by making a small one out of wood. A crucifix was
brought from the nearby church and Friar Martin Ladvenu
held it up in front
of her until the flames rose. Several eyewitnesses recalled that she
repeatedly screamed "...in a loud voice the holy name of Jesus,
and implored and invoked without ceasing the aid of the saints of
Paradise". Then her head drooped, and it was over.
Jean Tressard, Secretary to the King of England, was seen returning
from the execution exclaiming in great agitation, "We are all ruined,
for a good and holy
person was burned." The Cardinal of England himself and the Bishop of
Therouanne, brother of the same
John of Luxembourg whose troops had captured Joan, were said to have
wept bitterly. The executioner, Geoffroy Therage,
confessed to Martin Ladvenu and Isambart de la Pierre afterwards, saying
that "...he had a great fear of being damned, [as] he had burned a
saint." The worried English authorities tried to put a stop to
any further talk of this sort by punishing those few who were willing to
publicly speak out in her favor: the legal records show a number of prosecutions during the following days.
It would not be until the
English were finally driven from Rouen in November of 1449, near the
end of the war, that the slow process of appealing the case would
be initiated. This process resulted in a posthumous acquittal by an Inquisitor
named Jean Brehal, who had paradoxically been a member of an English-run
institution during the war. Brehal
nevertheless ruled that she had been convicted illegally and without
basis by a corrupt court operating in a spirit of "...manifest malice against the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed heresy". The Inquisitor and other theologians consulted for the
appeal therefore denounced Cauchon and the other
judges and described Joan as a martyr,
thereby paving the way for her eventual beatification in 1909 and
canonization as a saint in 1920, by which time even
English writers and clergy no longer showed the opposition that their
predecessors had. During World War I, in the midst of
the canonization process and a period of French-English detente,
Allied soldiers would pay tribute to the
heroine by invoking her name on battlefields not far from her own.
Click here
for a longer biography.
What's New:
Copyright (c) 2002 - 2024 Allen Williamson. All rights reserved.
he extensive 15th century sources that have
survived concerning the life and military campaigns of
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc in modern French, Jehanne Darc in medieval French) include the transcript of her trial in 1431,
the posthumous investigations of her case (1450 and 1452) and postwar appeal (1455-1456), as well as many
letters, chronicles, and thousands of military records. These provide us with vivid eyewitness accounts from the
people who knew her; correspondence from the commanders; the letters she herself dictated to scribes; and
minuscule details such as the amount of oats bought for her horses and the names of many of the rank-and-file
soldiers in the army.
Her life is therefore reasonably well documented.
This is a brief outline of that life; click here
for a much longer version.
Although at the time of her birth a truce was still
in effect between France and England, an internal war had erupted
between two factions of the French Royal family which would make it easier for
the English to re-invade. One side, called the "Orleanist" or
"Armagnac" faction, was led by Count Bernard VII of Armagnac and
Duke Charles of Orleans, whom Joan would later say was greatly beloved by God. Their rivals,
known as the "Burgundians", were led by Duke John-the-Fearless
of Burgundy. The forces of his son, Philip III, would later capture Joan and
hand her over to the English. One of his supporters, a
pro-Burgundian clergyman and English advisor named Pierre
Cauchon, would later arrange her conviction on their behalf.
The English returned in 1417, gradually conquering much of northern France
and gaining the support (in 1420) of the new Burgundian Duke,
Philip III, who agreed to recognize Henry V as the legal heir to
the French throne while rejecting the rival claim of the man whom Joan would
consider the rightful successor, Charles of Ponthieu (later known as
Charles VII), the last heir of the Valois dynasty which had ruled
France since 1328.
She identified these visions as St. Catherine [of Alexandria], St. Margaret [of Antioch],
the Archangel Michael, occasionally Gabriel, and large groups of angels on some occasions.
Various authors have speculated on the significance of these personages. The
only one with a definite relevance to the military situation would be the Archangel Michael, who had
been chosen in 1422 as one of the patron saints of the French Royal army (with Saint Denis)
and had long served as patron of the fortified island of
Mont-Saint-Michel, which had withstood an ongoing siege or blockade since 1418 and would
successfully resist continued English efforts until the truce of 1444 finally brought a respite.
She said that during her childhood these visions had merely instructed her to "be good [or pious], to go
to church regularly"; but over the next several years they had persistently
called for her to go to the local commander at Vaucouleurs to obtain
an escort to take her to the Royal Court.
This was the situation facing his government, by that point
located in the city of Chinon on the Vienne
River, when Joan was finally granted Baudricourt's permission, after her third
attempt, to go with an escort to speak with Charles. One account says that
she convinced Baudricourt by accurately predicting an Armagnac defeat on 12 February 1429 near the village of
Rouvray-Saint-Denis several miles north of Orleans. In this latest disaster, an army under the Count of Clermont
took heavy losses while unsuccessfully attempting to stop an English supply convoy bringing food
to their troops at the siege. When Baudricourt received confirmation of the predicted
defeat he promptly arranged for an armed
escort to bring Joan through enemy territory to Chinon. Following the
standard procedure, her escorts dressed her in male clothing, partly as
a disguise in case the group was captured (as a woman might be raped if
her identity were discovered), and partly because such clothing had
numerous cords with which the long boots and trousers could be tied to the tunic,
which would offer an added measure of security. The eyewitnesses said
she always kept this clothing on and securely tied together when encamped with soldiers, for safety and
modesty's sake. She would call herself "La Pucelle" (the maiden or
virgin), explaining that she had promised her saints to keep her virginity
"for as long as it pleases God", and it is by this nickname
that she is usually described in the 15th century documents.
Her arrival had another valuable effect on the army: men who would otherwise
have refused to serve Charles' defeated cause now began to volunteer for
the campaign, as word that a saint was now at the head of the army began to
change minds.
On May 4th the rest of her troops made it into the city, and
a few hours later an assault was launched against an English-held fortified church
called Saint Loup, about a mile east of Orleans. The surviving accounts
say that the position was carried after Joan rode up with her
banner, encouraging the troops up and over the ramparts. The English
casualties totaled 114 dead and 40 captured. Her role in this engagement would
become typical: sources from both factions quote her as saying that she
preferred to carry her banner into battle (rather than a weapon, as is sometimes
supposed), since, as she explained, she
didn't want to harm anyone; and there are many eyewitness accounts
which repeatedly describe her encouraging the troops to greater
efforts by placing herself in the same danger that they themselves faced.
On the following day she sent
her final ultimatum
to the English commanders at Orleans, this time having an archer
deliver the note with an arrow rather than risk losing another
messenger.
The French troops were sent over a pontoon bridge around
the hour of Tierce (9 a.m.), and induced the English to abandon
St-Jean-le-Blanc without a fight; the more substantial fortress of
Les Augustins was then assaulted, with the saint leading the initial
charge alongside La Hire. The fortress was then stormed
and overrun with few losses. This placed Les Tourelles within striking
range: during the course of the next morning's assault, Joan herself
was wounded by an arrow while helping the
soldiers set up a scaling ladder. It seems she stayed behind the
area of fighting for most of the day, but returned to the field
near dusk in order to encourage the demoralized troops to one final
effort which met with success. This proved to be decisive: the English
abandoned the siege the next day, and moved their remaining troops
off to Meung-sur-Loire and other positions along the river.
Orleans was the English high-water mark: never again
would they come so close to achieving a final victory against Charles,
who would soon be anointed as King Charles VII.
Beaugency was taken on the 17th after the English garrison negotiated an
agreement allowing them to withdraw. That evening the English troops at
Meung, reinforced by an army under Sir John Fastolf, offered battle to the
French but subsequently decided to fall back the next day, riding
northward in an effort to make it back to more secure territory.
The French pursued (goaded on by Joan, saying in effect that they should
use their "good spurs" to chase the enemy). The two armies clashed
south of Patay, where a rapid cavalry charge led by La Hire and
other nobles of the vanguard overran a unit of
500 English archers who had been set up to delay the French as
long as they could. Confusion among the main contingents of the
English army completed the rout, and the French cavalry swept their
opponents from the field.
The English heralds announced their losses as 2,200 men, compared
to only three casualties for the French - the reverse of so many
other battles during that war.
On July 4th, at St. Phal near Troyes, she sent a letter
to the citizens of the latter city asking them to declare themselves
for Charles, adding that "with the help of King Jesus", Charles will
enter all of the towns within his inheritance regardless of their wishes.
Troyes initially ignored the summons. While Charles' commanders
debated their next course of action, Joan of Arc told them to promptly
besiege the town, predicting they would gain it in three days
"either by love or by force". Lord Dunois remembered that she then
began ordering the placement of the troops, and did it so well that
"two or three of the most famous and experienced soldiers" could not
have done it better. Troyes surrendered the next
day without a fight. The Royal army entered on the 10th; by the
14th it had reached Chalons-sur-Marne to the north, which opened
its gates with greater promptitude than Troyes.
During the ceremony Joan of Arc stood near Charles, holding her banner.
The memorable words of one 15th century source describes the
scene: after Charles was crowned, Joan "wept many tears and said,
'Noble king, now is accomplished the
pleasure of God, who wished me to lift the siege of Orleans, and to
bring you to this city of Reims to receive your holy anointing, to
show that you are the true king, and the one to whom the kingdom of
France should belong.'" It adds: "All those who saw her were moved to
great compassion."
The next target was the town of La-Charite-sur-Loire. Since the army
was undersupported by the Royal court, she sent letters
off to nearby cities asking them to donate supplies. Clermont-Ferrand
responded by sending two hundredweight of saltpeter, an equal amount
of sulfur, and two bundles of arrows.
She spent the rest of the winter at various Royal estates while
the English and Burgundians regrouped for a new campaign.
Around Easter (April 22nd)
she was at Melun where, as she would later say, her saints had revealed to her
that she would be captured "before Saint John's Day" (June 24).
She had said at many points that capture and betrayal were her greatest
fears.
He would now order a damaging series of assaults on Burgundian
territory to the east, but in the northeast the Armagnacs were in trouble:
the Duke of Burgundy was now there in force. His strategy, based on an
elaborate document outlining his plans, called for the bridge at
Choisy-au-Bac to be taken, followed by the monastery at Verberie,
and then a methodical series of assaults to block all the supply
routes into Compiegne, which had refused to submit to him under the
terms of the agreement signed the previous year. Choisy-au-Bac was
taken on May 16; on the 22nd the Duke laid siege to Compiegne.
Joan was unwilling to let this city,
which had showed such courage in its defiance, fall unaided: reinforced
with 300 - 400 additional troops picked up at Crepy-en-Valois, on
the morning of the 23rd at sunrise she and her tiny army slipped into
Compiegne.
She apparently knew what was coming: according to the later statements
of two men who had, as young boys, been among a group of curious children
watching Joan pray in one of Compiegne's churches that morning, she
was much troubled in spirit and told the children to "pray for me,
for I have been betrayed." Later that day she was
among those leading a sortie against the enemy camp at Margny
when her troops were
ambushed by Burgundian forces concealed behind a hill called
the Mont-de-Clairoix. Having decided to stay with the rearguard
during the retreat, she and her soldiers were trapped outside
the city and pinned up against the river when the drawbridge was
prematurely raised behind them. Burgundian troops swarmed
around her, each asking her to surrender. She refused, and was
finally pulled off her horse by an enemy archer. A nobleman named
Lionel of Wandomme, in the service of John of Luxembourg,
made her his captive.
A Burgundian chronicler who was present, Enguerrand de Monstrelet,
wrote that the Armagnacs were devastated by Joan's capture, while
the English and Burgundians were "overjoyed, more so than if they had
taken 500 combatants, for they had never feared or dreaded any other
commander... as much as they had always feared this maiden up until that
day."
The garrison commander at Compiegne, Guillaume de Flavy, came under
immediate suspicion as a traitor, although his guilt was never
proved. Since the Royal Court at that time was divided into factions,
each of which routinely tried to eliminate any prominent leader who
was supported by their rivals, it would be likely that
a small group within the Court may have betrayed her. The evidence indicates that
Charles VII probably was not among the guilty, however, nor did he
abandon her, as is so often claimed: according to the archives
of the Morosini, who were in contact with the Royal Court, Charles VII
tried to force the Burgundians to return Joan in exchange for the
usual ransom, and threatened to treat Burgundian prisoners according
to whatever standard was adopted in Joan's case. The pro-Anglo-Burgundian
University of Paris, which later helped arrange her conviction, sent an
alarmed letter to John of Luxembourg reporting that the Armagnacs
were "doing everything in their power"
to try to get her back. Dunois and La Hire would lead four
campaigns during that winter and the following spring which seem to
have been designed to rescue her by military means.
These attempts failed, and the Burgundians refused to ransom her.
English government documents record in great detail the
payments made to cover the costs of obtaining Joan and rewarding the
various judges and assessors who took part in her trial [click here
to see some of these financial accounts], and we know that the clergy
who served at the trial were drawn from their supporters.
Some of these men later admitted that the English conducted the
proceedings for the purposes of revenge rather
than out of any genuine belief that she was a heretic. [click here
to see some of this testimony]
Early
in the trial an attempt was made to link her to witchcraft by claiming her banner
had been endowed with magical powers, that she allegedly poured
wax on the heads of small children, and other accusations of this sort, but these charges were
dropped before the final articles of accusation were drawn
up on April 5th. In one of the more curious bids to
discredit her, Cauchon objected to her use of the "Jesus-Mary" slogan
which, somewhat paradoxically, was used by the Dominicans who
largely ran the Inquisitorial courts. Her saints were dismissed as "demons", despite the transcript's own description that they had counseled her to "go regularly to Church" and maintain her virginity.
In the end, Cauchon would convict her on the cross-dressing
charge, which he utilized in a manner which gives an indication of
his character. According to several eyewitnesses - the trial bailiff
Jean Massieu, the chief notary Guillaume Manchon, the assessors
Friar Martin Ladvenu and Friar Isambart de la Pierre, and the
Rouen citizen Pierre Cusquel - after Joan had
finally consented to wear a dress, her guards immediately increased their
attempts to rape her, joined by "a great English lord" who
tried to do the same. Her guards finally took away her dress entirely
and threw her the old male clothing which she was forbidden to wear,
sparking a bitter argument between Joan and the guards that "went on
until noon", according to the bailiff. She had no choice but to
put on the clothing left to her, after which Cauchon
promptly pronounced her a "relapsed heretic" and condemned her to death.
Several eyewitnesses remembered that Cauchon came out of the prison
and exclaimed to the Earl of Warwick and other English
commanders waiting outside: "Farewell,
be of good cheer, it is done!", implying that
he had orchestrated the trap that the guards had set for her.
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