Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans

Philip the Good of Burgundy, who had taken on much of the burden of fighting for the English, dispatched his vassal, John of Luxembourg, to seize the town of Compiègne. On May 13, 1430, however, Joan moved first and entered Compiègne by surprise. In the early morning of May 23, she sallied against the Burgundians outside the town. Unaware that an English unit had moved between the town and her attacking force, she pressed on. The French within the town closed its gates, keeping out both friend and foe. Joan, fighting wildly, was pulled from the saddle by a Burgundian soldier. Her brother, Pierre, was also captured, and some 400 of her men were killed. The Burgundians sold the Maid to the English for 10,000 gold coins.

Tried as a heretic and witch in a procedure flagrantly violating the legal process of the era, she was offered women’s clothes in prison and then raped. Thereafter, male attire was the only clothing allowed her. Her male attire was then taken as ‘proof’ that she refused a church command that she dress as a woman, and in spite of the weakness of all other evidence against her, she was burned at the stake by the English at Rouen on May 30, 1431. Of the 42 lawyers at her trial, 39 had asked for leniency and an appeal to a higher church court not under the thumb of the English. Of scores of witnesses who claimed to know her personally, not one maligned her — and those witnesses were chosen by the prosecution, the Maid being denied a defense council.

Was la Pucelle neurologically handicapped, part of a royal plot, a fantasist, crazy, a saint or a con artist? Her trial revealed her to be uncommonly bright, forthright, courageous, without bitterness, yet aware that she had been abandoned by the king whom she had saved. Nevertheless, she had saved her nation, with an innate charisma matching that of England’s King Henry V. And in 1920, Joan of Arc was recognized as saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Every year on May 8 at Orléans, a pageant re-enacts Joan’s entry into the city, today a prosperous and attractive blend of old and new architecture. On the plaza her memory is commemorated in the statue known to American troops stationed there after World War II as ‘Joanie on the Pony.’