Joan of Arc: The Girl Who Crowned a King

Joan described her parents to her judges in March 1431. She said they took great care to keep her safe and kept her under strict control. She said her mother had often told her about a dream her father had: that Joan would go off with soldiers. She said the dream came more than two years after she first heard the voices. According to her mother, Joan said, her father told her brothers that they should drown her if it happened. If they did not, Joan said her mother told her, he would do it himself. She said both her parents almost lost their senses when she left for Vaucouleurs. She said she obeyed them in all things except in leaving home; afterwards she wrote to them, and they forgave her. In another answer, she named a different exception: a court case at Toul over a marriage.

Robert de Baudricourt commanded Vaucouleurs for Charles, the only royal officer in a region that mostly favoured the Burgundians. Joan first stayed with Durand Laxart, whom the trial record calls her uncle, for about eight days. She then asked Laxart to take her to Vaucouleurs. The first meeting with Baudricourt took place in May 1428, around the Christian feast of the Ascension. At the 1456 retrial, Laxart testified that Baudricourt told him to take her home to her father.

The English army that laid siege to Orléans had been marching towards Angers, according to the city of Orléans. Orléans was protected by a wall with towers and wide ditches. The English first took the Tourelles, the fortified towers at the southern end of the bridge over the Loire. The English then built small earth forts, called bastilles, to cut the main roads into the city. The International Joan of Arc Society calls Orléans the gateway to the Loire.

Before Joan left Vaucouleurs, the Duke of Lorraine sent for her, and she went to see him at Nancy. She told her judges she asked the duke to send his son and some men to escort her. She also said she would pray for his health. The escort that left Vaucouleurs included Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy and their servants. A royal messenger, Colet de Vienne, and an archer called Richard also rode with her. On the way, she heard Mass in the main church at Auxerre, she later said. From Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, she sent word to Charles asking to see him. The sources disagree on the dates: the city of Orléans gives 13 to 23 February, and another chronology gives 22 February to 4 March.

Joan told her judges she reached Chinon around noon and stayed at an inn, then went to the castle to see Charles after dinner. According to the city of Orléans, Charles received her coldly at first, because she had no proof of her mission. The dates of the first meeting differ. The International Joan of Arc Society gives 25 February, and another chronology gives 6 March. In the trial record, she said only that her voice showed her which man was the king. She refused to tell her judges what sign she gave Charles.

The churchmen questioned Joan at the house of Jean Rabateau, where she was staying. At her trial, she said the churchmen of her own side found nothing but good in her mission. In his testimony for the retrial, Raoul de Gaucourt said the clergy decided there was “nothing evil in her deeds nor in her words”. At her trial in 1431, she often told her judges to send to Poitiers, where she had already been examined.

The letter opens with the words “Jhesus Maria”. The letter is addressed to the King of England and to the Duke of Bedford, who governed English-held France for the king. The letter also names English commanders at Orléans, including John Talbot and Thomas, Lord Scales. The judges read the letter aloud at Joan’s trial in 1431 and copied it into the record. The International Joan of Arc Society calls it her first letter of challenge to the English.

The convoy from Blois reached the Loire opposite Chécy. Boats from Orléans were meant to load the supplies, but the wind blew the wrong way. According to the city of Orléans, Joan told Dunois she had a better adviser than he did, and the wind then changed. In his 1456 testimony, Dunois said she told him the help she brought came “from God Himself”. Dunois, the king’s cousin, was then known as the Bastard of Orléans. That evening, she entered the city by the Burgundy Gate. She stayed in the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer to the Duke of Orléans. Every year, Orléans marks the arrival with a procession on the evening of 29 April at the Burgundy Gate.

Dunois had left Orléans to fetch the rest of the royal army, and returned on 4 May. That day, with Joan present, the French took Saint-Loup, an English fort to the east of the city. The Augustins was an English fort south of the river. The next day was Ascension Day, and there was no fighting. The story of the gate comes from Simon Charles, who testified in 1456 that Raoul de Gaucourt had told him about it. On 6 May, the French took the Augustins, which left the French free to attack the Tourelles.

The Tourelles was the fort at the southern end of the bridge over the Loire. The English had held the Tourelles since the start of the siege. The city of Orléans calls the assault violent. Joan was hit by an arrow during the fighting. At her trial, she said she was wounded in the neck at the bridge. In his testimony in 1456, Dunois said he wanted to order a retreat, but she asked him to wait. Dunois said she then prayed in a vineyard.

On Sunday 8 May 1429, the English ended the siege of Orléans. The siege had begun in October 1428. According to the city of Orléans, a Mass was said between the two armies while they stood in battle lines. After the English left, Joan led a procession through the city to give thanks. Orléans has held a festival for her almost every year since then.

After Orléans, the French army attacked English-held towns along the Loire. The French took Jargeau on 12 June, Meung on 15 June and Beaugency soon after. On 18 June, the French defeated the English army at Patay. The Duke of Alençon testified in 1456 that Talbot was brought before him after the battle. According to the city of Orléans, the victory cleared the way to Reims. Louis de Coutes, Joan’s page, testified in 1456 that the French captain La Hire led the front of the army that day. Coutes said this greatly annoyed her, because she had wanted to lead it herself.

French kings were traditionally crowned in Reims Cathedral. Joan had said she was sent to raise the siege of Orléans and to take Charles to Reims to be crowned. Before the march, Charles held his court at Loches, where she and Dunois went to meet him in May 1429. The army left for Reims on 29 June and soon reached Auxerre.

Troyes mattered to both sides. In 1420, the Treaty of Troyes removed Charles from the line to the French throne. The treaty passed the crown to the English king, Henry V, after the death of Charles’s father. In 1429, Troyes was held for the English and the Burgundians. Joan wrote to the people of Troyes before the army arrived. According to Dunois in 1456, Charles’s council was divided over whether to continue. Charles and Joan entered Troyes on 10 July, and the Anglo-Burgundian troops left.

The army reached Châlons on 14 July and Reims on 16 July. According to the city of Orléans, the coronation confirmed Charles’s right to the throne. Towns that had not accepted Charles now sent envoys to recognise him as king. Joan told her judges that her banner had stood fairly near the altar. She said she held the banner herself for a short time.

The Burgundians had taken Paris in 1418, and in 1429 the English and their Burgundian allies held the city. After the coronation, the royal army moved slowly towards the city. According to one chronology, the French and English met on 15 August at Montépilloy, where there was heavy skirmishing before the English withdrew towards Paris. The same chronology has Charles reaching Saint-Denis on 7 September. The attack failed. Joan later left her suit of white armour as an offering in the church at Saint-Denis, she told her judges.

After Paris, the royal army took Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier in November 1429, then failed to take La Charité-sur-Loire. Joan spent the rest of the winter at Sully-sur-Loire. In the spring of 1430, she rode north again. On 22 May, a Burgundian army besieged Compiègne. She was captured outside the walls the next day. The trial record names the Bastard of Wandomme as the man who captured her. Wandomme was a captain serving Jean de Luxembourg, a lord who fought for the Duke of Burgundy. After the capture, the duke himself, Philip the Good, came to see her, according to one chronology.

Joan was held first at Beaulieu, then, from the summer of 1430, at Beaurevoir, a castle of Jean de Luxembourg. At Beaurevoir, she jumped from a tower. At her trial, she said her voices had forbidden the jump. She said she jumped for fear of the English and because she wanted to help the people of Compiègne. Asked whether she had meant to kill herself, she said no: she had hoped to escape and not be delivered to the English. She said she was badly hurt, and the Burgundians found her alive. Meanwhile, Bishop Pierre Cauchon asked the Duke of Burgundy and Jean de Luxembourg to deliver her to the Church. The University of Paris also demanded a heresy trial. In November, she was moved through Arras to Le Crotoy, on the coast, where the English held her.

The English had taken Rouen in 1419 after a long siege. Joan was brought to Rouen under English escort and arrived on 23 December 1430. She was kept in the castle. In 1456, Jean Massieu, an official of the court, testified that five English soldiers guarded her. Massieu said she was chained to a large piece of wood at night.

Pierre Cauchon was Bishop of Beauvais and a former master of the University of Paris. Cauchon had worked with the English and the Burgundians for years. Cauchon became Bishop of Beauvais in 1420. The court sat with Jean Le Maistre, the Rouen deputy of the Inquisitor, the Church’s official judge of heresy for the kingdom of France. According to the city of Orléans, Joan was charged with restarting the war and with wearing men’s clothes. According to the city, the charges also said her voices came from the devil.

The question came during the third public session, on Saturday 24 February 1431. Jean Beaupère, a professor of theology, questioned Joan for the court in the early public sessions. Her answer was written down in the official record of the trial. The answer appears in both the Barrett and Murray English translations of that record, with small differences in wording.

Joan’s standard was made for her at Tours in April 1429. She described it to her judges. It was white, with a field of lilies, an image of the world and two angels, and the words “Jhesus Maria”. She told her judges she carried the standard herself when she attacked, so that she would not kill anyone. She also said she had never killed anyone. The question about Reims came in a private session in her prison, near the end of the questioning. The judges later repeated the point in their list of charges.

In April 1431, the court’s 70 articles of accusation were reduced to 12 for experts to judge. On 9 May, the judges threatened Joan with torture in the great tower of Rouen Castle. On 23 May, the canon Pierre Maurice explained the charges to her and warned her. The next day, at Saint-Ouen cemetery, a preacher gave a public sermon against her before the sentence was read. She signed the recantation. She returned to the English prison, where she wore women’s clothes.

The sources do not agree on the day Joan wore men’s clothes again. One chronology gives Sunday 27 May, and another gives 28 May, the day the judges questioned her in prison. In 1456, the court official Jean Massieu testified that the guards removed her women’s clothes and left her only men’s clothes. Guillaume Manchon, one of the trial’s notaries, also blamed the guards. The trial record gives her own reasons.

On 30 May 1431, the Church judges delivered Joan to the non-religious authorities, who burned her the same day. She was burned alive in the Place du Vieux-Marché, the Old Market square of Rouen. She was about 19 years old. Eight days later, the English sent news of the execution to the rulers of Christian Europe. The judges’ sentence declared her a relapsed heretic.

In 1435, the Duke of Burgundy made peace with Charles at Arras, and the English lost their main ally in France. Paris opened its gates to Charles’s forces in 1436. By 1450, Charles had recaptured Rouen from the English. Charles VII ordered the inquiry in February 1450. The royal inquiry of March 1450 was led by Guillaume Bouillé. A larger inquiry by the Church followed in May 1452.

Pope Calixtus III gave permission in June 1455 for Joan’s mother and brothers to open an inquiry into her trial. The retrial opened in Paris on 7 November 1455. By order of the Pope, a court of lawyers and churchmen reconsidered the 1431 trial. Witnesses quoted in this story, including Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy and Dunois, testified in this trial.

The ruling was read in Rouen, the city where Joan had been tried and burned. The Archbishop of Reims announced the decision. The case had been brought by her mother and brothers, with the Pope’s permission. According to one chronology, the judges found that the 1431 trial had broken the rules of procedure. The ruling annulled the 1431 verdict but did not make her a saint. Her mother, Isabelle Romée, died in 1458.

After the French Revolution, Joan became a subject of debate in France. Monarchists saw her as a champion of the king, and republicans saw her as a victim of the priests. A formal request to make her a saint was made in February 1903. Pope Pius X gave her the title “Venerable” in 1904, and she was declared “Blessed” on 11 April 1909. According to the city of Orléans, the First World War reconciled the French of all sides around her as a symbol of resistance to occupation. Pope Benedict XV declared her a saint on 16 May 1920.