Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans
In the spring of 1429, a seventeen-year-old peasant girl from Domrémy in Lorraine named Jeanne d'Arc presented herself to the Dauphin Charles at Chinon, claiming divine visions directing her to drive the English from France. Against considerable scepticism, she was given armour and placed at the head of a relief force sent to the besieged city of Orléans, the last significant obstacle to English control of the Loire valley. Between 4 and 8 May 1429, her presence transformed French morale: the army lifted the siege in nine days. She then led a lightning campaign of victories along the Loire and escorted Charles to Reims, where he was crowned King Charles VII of France on 17 July 1429 in a ceremony of immense symbolic power. Joan was captured by Burgundian forces in 1430, sold to the English, and burned at the stake in Rouen in May 1431 after a politically charged ecclesiastical trial. The momentum she had given France, however, proved irreversible. Her trial was posthumously annulled in 1456 and she was canonised in 1920.
- Year: 1429 CE
- Category: Military
