Joan of Arc Born: The Peasant Who Saved France

She was a farmer's daughter from Domremy, a village in northeastern France so small it barely appeared on maps. At thirteen, Joan said she heard voices in her father's garden: St. Michael, St. Catherine, St. Margaret, telling her to drive the English out of France and see the Dauphin crowned king. At seventeen, she talked her way past skeptical local officials, traveled through enemy territory, and somehow persuaded the uncrowned Charles VII to give her an army. She arrived at the besieged city of Orleans in April 1429, and within nine days the English had retreated. She had no military training. She carried a banner, not a sword, into battle. Soldiers who had been losing for years followed her because she was fearless under fire, wounded by an arrow at Orleans and returning to the fight the same day. She escorted Charles to Reims for his coronation in July 1429, walking beside his horse. With that done, her military campaigns stalled. She was captured by Burgundian forces at Compiegne in May 1430 and sold to the English for 10,000 livres. Charles made no effort to ransom her. Her trial at Rouen lasted five months. It was run by Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, who had English political loyalties. The charges included heresy, witchcraft, and wearing men's clothing. She was nineteen years old, illiterate, and defending herself against trained theologians without legal counsel. She handled their questions with a directness that rattled them. Asked if she believed she was in God's grace, a trick question designed to convict her either way, she answered: "If I am not, may God put me there; if I am, may God keep me there." She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, in the marketplace at Rouen. She was nineteen. The verdict was overturned in 1456, twenty-five years after her death, in a rehabilitation trial ordered by Charles VII. She was canonized as a saint in 1920.