Medieval France · 1412–1431

Who Was Joan of Arc?

The voices and the mission

Joan was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a village on the edge of a kingdom in pieces. The Hundred Years' War had gone catastrophically for France: the English king held Paris and the north, his ally Burgundy held more, and the disinherited heir Charles — the "Dauphin" — governed a rump state south of the Loire, unable even to reach Reims, where French kings were traditionally crowned. Into this despair came a farmer's daughter who said that since age 13 she had heard the voices of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret commanding her to drive out the English and have the Dauphin crowned.

Whatever one believes about the voices — faith, and historians have proposed everything from inner conviction to neurological causes, with no consensus — the historical record of what followed is solid. In early 1429 the 17-year-old talked a garrison commander into an escort, crossed 500 km of enemy territory dressed as a soldier, and won an audience with Charles at Chinon. After weeks of examination by theologians at Poitiers, desperate times prevailed: she was given armor, a banner, and a place with the army marching to relieve Orléans.

Orléans: nine days that turned a war

Orléans was the keystone: if it fell, the English could sweep south and perhaps end French resistance altogether. The city had been under siege for six months when Joan arrived on 29 April 1429. What she brought was not tactical genius — the professional captains handled maneuvers — but something the demoralized army had entirely lost: certainty. Soldiers who believed God had sent a maiden to save France fought like it. She insisted on attack where the captains counseled caution, was wounded by an arrow at the storming of the fort of Les Tourelles, and returned to the line within hours. On 8 May 1429, nine days after her arrival, the English abandoned the siege.

The impossible had happened, and it snowballed. In June the French crushed an English field army at Patay — the reverse of Agincourt. In July, Charles marched through reconquered territory and was crowned King Charles VII at Reims with Joan standing beside the altar, banner in hand. In five months, an illiterate teenager had reversed the momentum of a war that was older than her grandparents.

Capture, trial, and the fire

Joan's star fell as fast as it rose. Charles, now crowned, preferred diplomacy; Joan preferred fighting, and in May 1430 she was captured in a skirmish at Compiègne by Burgundian troops, who sold her to the English. The king she had crowned made no serious attempt to ransom or rescue her — a stain on Charles VII that history has never washed out.

The English needed more than her death; they needed her discredited, for if Joan was a fraud, so was Charles's coronation. So she was tried not as a prisoner of war but as a heretic, before a church court at Rouen presided over by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, an English partisan. For three months the illiterate 19-year-old fenced with the finest legal minds available — the transcript, which survives, is one of history's most extraordinary documents. Convicted of heresy, with her male dress and refusal to submit her voices to the court's judgment among the charges, she was burned in the Rouen marketplace on 30 May 1431. She asked for a cross; an English soldier reportedly tied two sticks together and handed it to her. Her ashes were thrown in the Seine so no relics could remain.

From heretic to saint

The verdict outlived its authors poorly. Once Charles VII retook Rouen, a papal inquiry — the "rehabilitation trial" of 1455–56 — reheard the case with over a hundred witnesses, found the original trial riddled with procedural fraud and coercion, and declared Joan innocent. The war she had turned ended in 1453 with the English holding only Calais.

Since then, Joan has been claimed by nearly everyone: the Church canonized her in 1920, making her Saint Joan; France made her a national symbol; writers from Shakespeare to Shaw to Twain (who called his Joan book his best work) kept retelling her. Nineteen years of life, seventeen months of action — and one of the most documented, most disputed, and most astonishing careers in medieval history.

Frequently asked questions

How old was Joan of Arc when she died?

About 19. Born around 1412, she began her mission at 17, and was executed in Rouen on 30 May 1431. Her entire public career — from leaving her village to her death — lasted barely two and a half years.

Did Joan of Arc actually fight in battle?

She carried her banner rather than a sword in combat and said at trial she had never killed anyone. But she was physically present in the assaults, advised on artillery placement (contemporaries praised her eye for it), was wounded at least twice, and her presence demonstrably transformed the army's morale and aggression.

Why was Joan of Arc really executed?

Politically: to destroy the legitimacy she had given Charles VII's coronation. Legally, the pro-English church court convicted her of heresy — her refusal to submit her voices to its judgment and her wearing of men's clothing served as the formal grounds. The 1456 rehabilitation trial exposed the proceedings as rigged, and in 1920 the Church canonized her.