Charles VII Crowned: France Turns the Tide

A teenage peasant girl from Lorraine escorted a reluctant prince through English-held territory to the cathedral where French kings had been crowned for eight centuries, and the coronation she engineered on July 17, 1429, transformed the Hundred Years' War. Charles VII was anointed at Reims Cathedral with Joan of Arc standing nearby in full armor, holding her banner. The ceremony gave Charles the legitimacy he had lacked for seven years and rallied French resistance to English occupation. Charles's claim to the throne had been contested since the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, when his father, the mentally ill Charles VI, disinherited him in favor of England's Henry V. When both Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422, the English crowned the infant Henry VI as king of both England and France. Charles retreated south of the Loire, controlling roughly a third of his kingdom, while the Anglo-Burgundian alliance held Paris and most of northern France. French morale was shattered, and the siege of Orléans in 1428 threatened to extinguish the Valois cause entirely. Joan arrived at Charles's court in Chinon in March 1429, claiming divine voices had commanded her to lift the siege and see the Dauphin crowned. Despite skepticism, Charles allowed her to join the relief force. Joan's presence electrified the French army. The siege of Orléans was broken in nine days, and Joan led a lightning campaign up the Loire valley, winning engagements at Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency, and Patay in rapid succession. The road to Reims lay open, and Charles followed Joan's urging to march north immediately rather than consolidate his gains. The coronation at Reims carried enormous symbolic and legal weight. The cathedral had hosted every French coronation since 816, and the sacred oil used in the anointing ritual was believed to have been delivered by a dove from heaven for the baptism of Clovis. Once anointed, Charles was the legitimate king in the eyes of French law and the Catholic Church, regardless of English claims. Joan's mission was fulfilled, though her own fate was already darkening. Captured by Burgundian forces in May 1430, she was sold to the English and burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431. Charles made no effort to ransom her.