HBICs of history » Joan of Arc
Joan (1412-1431) was a French military heroine. She was a peasant girl who from an early age believed she heard the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret. When she was about 16, her voices began urging her to aid France’s dauphin (crown prince) and save France from the English attempt at conquest in the Hundred Years’ War. Dressed in men’s clothes, she visited the dauphin and convinced him, his advisers, and the church authorities to support her. With her inspiring conviction, she rallied the French troops and raised the English siege of Orléans in 1429. She soon defeated the English again at Patay. The dauphin was crowned king at Reims as Charles VII, with Joan beside him. Her siege of Paris was unsuccessful, and in 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. Abandoned by Charles, she was turned over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen, controlled by French clerics who supported the English, and tried for witchcraft and heresy (1431). She fiercely defended herself but finally recanted and was sentenced to life imprisonment. When she again asserted that she had been divinely inspired, she was burned at the stake.