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Subject: Excerpt Of History
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 16:28:07 EDT
Joan of Arc
(1412-1431)
Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d'Arc, also called the Maid of Orleans, a
patron saint of France and a national heroine, led the resistance to the English
invasion of France in the Hundred Years War. She was born the third of five
children to a farmer, Jacques Darc and his wife Isabelle de Vouthon in the town
of Domremy on the border of provinces of Champagne and Lorraine. Her childhood
was spent attending her father's herds in the fields and learning religion and
housekeeping skills from her mother.
When Joan was about 12 years old, she began hearing "voices" of St. Michael,
St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to have been sent by God. These
voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the
English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her
hair, dress in man's uniform and to pick up the arms.
By 1429 the English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris
and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of
leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the
French throne.
Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin's forces, and then the dauphin
himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians,
she was given troops to command and the rank of captain.
At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous
victory over the English. She continued fighting the enemy in other locations
along the Loire. Fear of troops under her leadership was so formidable that when
she approached Lord Talbot's army at Patay, most of the English troops and
Commander Sir John Fastolfe fled the battlefield. Fastolfe was later stripped of
his Order of the Garter for this act of cowardice. Although Lord Talbot stood
his ground, he lost the battle and was captured along with a hundred English
noblemen and lost 1800 of his soldiers.
Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in Reims Cathedral.
At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king. Later, she
was ennobled for her services to the country.
In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near
Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the
ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of
Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her
insistence on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a woman to wear men's
clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because
her voices hadn't yet told her to change, as well as for protection from
sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan
was convicted after a fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she
was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old.
Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.
In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the
charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope
Benedict XV.
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