A girl in a divided France
By the late 1420s France was deeply split. The English held Paris and much of the north, supported by Burgundy. The dauphin Charles, the son of Charles VI, controlled territory south of the Loire but had not been crowned and was widely doubted as a rightful king. In this setting, a teenager from the borderlands of Lorraine claimed that God had sent her to change the course of the war.
Who she was
Joan was born around 1412 in Domremy, a village on the edge of the Meuse valley, in a family of farmers, probably comfortable by village standards. Her father is recorded as a local official of some standing. The village lay in an area loyal to the French king while surrounded by Burgundian territory, so war and raids were part of her upbringing. She could not read or write, as was usual for a peasant girl.
By her own later account, she began hearing voices in her early teens, which she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. She said they told her to support the dauphin and drive the English from France. We know this mostly from her own answers at her trial, a key point for how we read the evidence.
Meeting the dauphin
In early 1429 Joan went to Vaucouleurs and persuaded a garrison commander to send her to Chinon, where Charles held his court. Contemporaries recorded that she was received there and questioned. She was then sent to Poitiers to be examined by theologians, who concluded that she was of good character, and that nothing in her conduct contradicted the faith. The dauphin’s circle may have been willing to try anything at a moment of crisis, but the clerical examination mattered, since a claim of divine mission needed to be tested.
She went to Orleans, which had been besieged by the English since late 1428. The city was lifted from siege on 8 May 1429, an event that gave the French cause a major lift. The question of how much Joan contributed to the practical military outcome is covered elsewhere on this site; what is clear is that the people of the time, French and English, believed she had mattered.
The coronation and afterward
A series of French successes followed in the summer, including the victory at Patay in June. Charles was crowned at Reims in July 1429 with Joan present, which fulfilled one of her stated aims. An attempt to take Paris that fall failed, and she was wounded. In the following months she was less effective, and some of the royal councillors seem to have been more cautious than she was. In May 1430, during fighting near Compiegne, she was captured by Burgundian forces. Charles did not attempt to ransom her. The Burgundians sold her to the English, who wanted her tried.
The trial at Rouen
The trial opened in early 1431 in English-controlled Rouen. It was an ecclesiastical court headed by Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, who was a supporter of the English cause. The charges centered on heresy and on whether her voices were from God or the devil, and also on her wearing male clothing. The proceedings are one of the best-recorded events of the period: a detailed record survives of her answers, which are often quick and sharp. Modern readers should keep in mind that the court had political pressure on it, and many scholars see the process as stacked against her. Like other heresy trials of the time, it was run by churchmen, though it also had a political purpose: if Joan was condemned, Charles’s coronation would be tainted by association with a witch or heretic.
Under pressure she signed a statement of submission, then returned to male clothing, which was treated as relapse. She was burned at the stake in Rouen on 30 May 1431, at about nineteen years of age.
Rehabilitation and reputation
Charles VII, after retaking Rouen in 1449, ordered an inquiry into the trial. In the 1450s a new process, authorized by the pope, heard many witnesses, including people who had known Joan in childhood and in the army, and in 1456 declared the earlier verdict invalid. Witnesses speaking decades after the events may have remembered her in a favorable light, and these records need the same care as the trial records.
For centuries she was remembered in France as a heroine, but her cult grew much stronger in the nineteenth century, when she became a national symbol. She was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 1920. Over time she has been claimed by many movements, which is itself a reason to separate the evidence from the legend.
Weighing the sources
The main evidence includes the trial transcript, the rehabilitation testimony, a few letters dictated in her name, and chronicles by writers on both sides. Some famous details, such as the sword she was said to have found, or the conversation she had with Charles, come from sources written later or from witnesses with reasons to embellish. It is safest to say what we know with confidence: she existed, she was at Orleans and Reims, she was captured and tried, and she was executed. How much she shaped events is a matter on which historians rightly disagree.