Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans
A teenage peasant girl relieved the siege of Orléans in nine days in May 1429 and had the king of France crowned eleven weeks later. She was about seventeen, from Domrémy on the Lorraine frontier, and had been hearing voices she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret since she was thirteen, telling her to drive the English from France. The situation she walked into was close to lost. The English and their Burgundian allies held Paris and everything north of the Loire, the treaty of 1420 had disinherited the dauphin Charles, and Orléans was the last crossing point on the river. She got an escort from a local captain on her third attempt, crossed 500 kilometres of enemy country in eleven days in men's clothing, and identified Charles at Chinon in a court where he had hidden himself among his courtiers — which is the story, at least. The theologians at Poitiers examined her for three weeks and concluded that nothing improper had been found. She arrived at Orléans on 29 April and the siege was lifted on 8 May, after assaults she urged forward and in one of which she was shot through the shoulder. Charles was crowned at Reims on 17 July with her standing beside him. She was captured at Compiègne in May 1430, sold to the English, tried by a French ecclesiastical court on charges that turned on her clothing, and burned at Rouen in May 1431. The verdict was annulled in 1456 and she was canonised in 1920.
- Year: 1429 CE
- Category: Military
