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Joan of Arc
1412 - 1431
The French national heroine Joan of Arc led a troop of French
soldiers and served as a temporary focus of French resistance to
English occupation in the last phase of the Hundred Years War.
The life of Joan of Arc must be considered against the
background of the later stages of the Hundred Years War
(1339-1453). The war, which had begun in 1339 and continued
intermittently till the 1380s, had caused severe hardship in
France. In 1392 the insanity of the French king, Charles VI, had
provided the opportunity for two aristocratic factions to
struggle for control of the King and kingdom. The leader of one
of these, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, finally assumed
control, and both factions appealed for help to England. Henry V
of England invaded France on the Burgundian side in 1415 and
inflicted a shattering defeat upon the French at Agincourt in
the same year. The English and Burgundians entered Paris in
1418, and the murder of John the Fearless in 1419 strengthened
Burgundian hatred for the Armagnac faction.
In 1420 Charles VI, Henry V, and Philip the Good of Burgundy
agreed to the Treaty of Troyes, according to which Henry was to
act as regent for the mad Charles VI, marry Charles's daughter,
and inherit the throne of France on Charles's death. The treaty
thus disinherited Charles VI's son, the Dauphin Charles (later
Charles VII). Charles VI also implied that the Dauphin was
illegitimate. In 1422 both Henry V and Charles VI died, leaving
Henry VI, the infant son of Henry, as king of both kingdoms.
Henry VI, through his regent, the Duke of Bedford, ruled
uncontested in Normandy and the Île-deFrance. The Duke of
Burgundy followed an independent policy in the territories he
was assembling to the north and east of France. The Dauphin was
reduced to holding the south of France, threatened with Anglo-Burgundian
invasion, and taunted with the title "King of Bourges," from
which city he ineffectively ruled what was left of his kingdom.
He was in perpetual fear that the key city of Orléans, the
gateway to his lands, might be captured by the English. In the
autumn of 1428 the English laid siege to Orléans. Charles,
dominated by the infamous favorite Georges de la Tremoille,
naturally apathetic, and lacking in men and money, could do
nothing. By the spring of 1429 the city appeared about to fall
and with it the hopes of Charles VII.
Early Life
Joan was born to a peasant family in Domrémy, a small town near
Vaucouleurs, the last town in the east still loyal to Charles
VII. "As long as I lived at home," she said at her trial in
1431, "I worked at common tasks about the house, going but
seldom afield with our sheep and other cattle. I learned to sew
and spin: I fear no woman in Rouen at sewing and spinning."
Some time in 1425 Joan began to have visions - "When I was
thirteen, I had a voice from God to help me govern myself." The
voice was that of St. Michael, who, with St. Catherine and St.
Margaret, "told me of the pitiful state of France, and told me
that I must go to succor the King of France." Joan twice went to
Robert de Baudricourt, the captain of Vaucouleurs, asking for an
escort to Charles VII at Chinon. The third time she was granted
an escort, and she set out in February 1429, arriving 11 days
later at Chinon. She was immediately examined for orthodoxy and
2 days later was allowed to see the King.
A contemporary described her: "This Maid … has a virile bearing,
speaks little, shows an admirable prudence in all her words. She
has a pretty, woman's voice, eats little, drinks very little
wine; she enjoys riding a horse and takes pleasure in fine arms,
greatly likes the company of noble fighting men, detests
numerous assemblies and meetings, readily sheds copious tears,
has a cheerful face…" Joan appears to have been robust, with
darkbrown hair, and, as one historian succinctly remarked, "in
the excitement which raised her up from earth to heaven, she
retained her solid common sense and a clear sense of reality."
She was also persuasive. In April 1429 Charles VII sent her to
Orléans as captain of a troop of men - not as leader of all his
forces. With the Duke d'Alençon and Jean, the Bastard of Orléans
(later Count of Dunois), Joan relieved the city, thus removing
the greatest immediate threat to Charles and for the first time
in his reign allowing him a military triumph.
Her Mission
Although Charles VII appears to have accepted Joan's mission -
after having had her examined several times at Chinon and at the
University of Poitiers - his attitude toward her, on the whole,
is ambiguous. He followed her pressing advice to use the respite
provided by the relief of Orléans to proceed to his coronation
at Reims, thereby becoming king in the eyes of all men. After a
series of victorious battles and sieges on the way, Charles VII
was crowned at Reims on July 18, 1429. Joan was at his side and
occupied a prominent place in the ceremonies following the
coronation. From the spring of 1429 to the spring of 1430,
Charles and his advisers wavered on the course of the war. The
choices were those of negotiation, particularly with the Duke of
Burgundy, or taking the military offensive against English
positions, particularly Paris. Joan favored the second course,
but an attack upon Paris in September 1429 failed, and Charles
VII entered into a treaty with Burgundy that committed him to
virtual inaction. From September 1429 to the early months of
1430, Joan appears to have been kept inactive by the royal
court, finally moving to the defense of the town of Compiègne in
May 1430. During a skirmish outside the town's walls against the
Burgundians, Joan was cut off and captured. She was a rich
prize. The Burgundians turned Joan over to the English, who
prepared to try her for heresy. Charles VII could do nothing.
The Trial
Joan's trial was held in three parts. Technically it was an
ecclesiastical trial for heresy, and Joan's judges were Pierre
Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, and Jean Lemaitre, vicar of the
inquisitor of France; both were aided by a large number of
theologians and lawyers who sat as a kind of consulting and
advising jury. From January to the end of March, the court
investigated Joan's "case" and interrogated witnesses. The trial
itself lasted from April to nearly the end of May and ended with
Joan's abjuration. The trial was both an ecclesiastical one and
a political one (because Joan was kept in an English prison
rather than in that of the archbishop of Rouen and because the
English continually intervened in the trial). Joan was charged
with witchcraft and fraud, tested by being asked complicated
theological questions, and finally condemned on the grounds of
persisting in wearing male clothing, a technical offense against
the authority of the Church. Joan's answers throughout the trial
reveal her presence of mind, humility, wit, and good sense.
Apparently Joan and her accusers differed about the nature of
her abjuration, and 2 days after she signed it, she recanted.
The third phase of her trial began on May 28. This time she was
tried as a relapsed heretic, conviction of which meant "release"
to the "secular arm" that is, she would be turned over to the
English to be burned. Joan was convicted of being a relapsed
heretic, and she was burned at the stake in the marketplace of
Rouen on May 30, 1431.
Rehabilitation and Later Legend
From 1450 to 1456, first under the impetus of Charles VII, then
under that of Joan's mother, and finally under that of the
Inquisition, a reinvestigation of Joan's trial and condemnation
was undertaken by ecclesiastical lawyers. On July 7, 1456, the
commission declared Joan's trial null and void, thereby freeing
Joan from the taint of heresy. The Joan of Arc legend, however,
did not gather momentum, and then only intermittently, until the
17th century. The 19th and 20th centuries were really, as a
historian has called them, "the centuries of the Maid." In spite
of her legend, Joan was not canonized until May 16, 1920.
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Due to the extensive volume of eyewitness accounts which are
available to us, many historians have pointed out that the life
of Joan of Arc (Jehanne d'Arc or Darc in the original medieval
French) is one of the most thoroughly documented in pre-modern
history. This is a brief outline of that life.
The Early Years
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, in 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.
Although at the time she was born a shaky 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 regard with
special warmth). Their rivals, known as the "Burgundians", were
led by Duke John-the-Fearless of Burgundy. The forces of his
pro-English son, Philip "the Good", 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.
With the French divided into warring parties and negotiations to
renew the truce with England a failure, King Henry V invaded
France in August of 1415 after reviving his family's old claim
to the French throne. On October 25th an Armagnac-dominated
French army was cut to pieces by Henry's forces at the battle of
Agincourt. The English returned in 1417, conquering much of
northern France and gaining the support (in 1419) of the new
Burgundian Duke, Philip-the-Good, 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.
It was around 1424, when she was 12, that Joan said she began to
have visions of Saints Catherine and Margaret (two early
Christian martyrs) and St. Michael the Archangel (identified in
the Bible as the commander of Heaven's armies who led the war
against Satan). Michael had been chosen in 1422 as one of the
patron saints of the French Royal army (along with Saint Denis),
and had long been the patron of the fortified island of
Mont-St-Michel, which had been holding out against repeated
English assaults. The rest of northern France was less
successful: Charles gradually lost the allegiance of all the
important cities north of the Loire River except for Tournai in
Flanders and Vaucouleurs, near Domremy. With Paris under
occupation since 1418, his court was now located in the city of
Bourges-en-Berri 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 prepared
to attack the city of Orleans and thereby gain control over the
crucial valley of the Loire River, the northern perimeter of
Charles' dwindling domain. It was at this time, as Joan later
said, that she finally obeyed the orders of her saints to lead
an army against the English and Burgundians, explaining that God
had taken pity on the French for the suffering they had endured.
As a child, these visions had merely instructed her to "be good
[or pious], [and] 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.
She said she finally obeyed in May of 1428, and found a way for
a family relative, Durand Lassois, to take her to Vaucouleurs to
speak with the garrison commander, Lord Robert de Baudricourt,
who had remained loyal to the Armagnacs despite being 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 Jean 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 forced Baudricourt to pledge neutrality.
On October 12th Orleans was placed under siege by an English
army under 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.
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 a
French defeat near Rouvray, north of Orleans, when an army under
the Count of Clermont unsuccessfully tried to stop an English
supply convoy bringing food to the besiegers around Orleans.
When Baudricourt was informed of the disaster 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 laced tightly when camped in the fields 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
documents.
Chinon
After eleven days on the road, she 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, a poor 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 that he had made the previous November 1st in
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 30 miles to the
south, where pro-Armagnac clergy from the University of Paris
had congregated after Paris came under English occupation a
decade earlier. She was questioned for three weeks before they
gave her their approval [click here to see the official text of
their conclusions] and told Charles that he could grant her
titular command of an army - an arrangement which was
occasionally given to religious visionaries during the medieval
period. One account written by a Venetian notes 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 she 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. In this ultimatum
she begins with the "Jesus-Mary" slogan which would become her
trademark (borrowed from the Catholic 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 "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"]. The English, in
place of a reply, 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.
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.
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.
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 Orléans, this time having an archer deliver the
note with an arrow rather than risk losing another messenger.
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 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.
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.
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 line of 500 English archers
which 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 at
2,200 men, compared to only three casualties for the French -
the reverse of so many other battles during that war.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
She spent the rest of the winter at various Royal estates while
the English and Burgundians regrouped for a new campaign.
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.
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.
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.
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 Compiègne. 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.
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.
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.
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, it was for this reason
that she clung to her soldiers' outfit and kept the pants and
tunic "firmly laced and tied together" as a defense against
rape: the trial transcript says that she wore two layers of such
pants, both attached to the tunic with a total of over two dozen
cords, and many eyewitnesses said that this was now her only
means of defending 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.
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 she 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.
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
Bréhal, who had paradoxically been a member of an English-run
institution during the war. Bréhal 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.
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