Joan Captured at Compiègne: France's Heroine Falls

Burgundian soldiers pulled a teenage girl off her horse outside Compiegne, and France lost the most extraordinary military leader of the medieval world. Joan of Arc was captured on May 23, 1430, during a sortie against Burgundian forces besieging the city. She was 19 years old and had been fighting for barely 14 months, but in that time she had reversed the entire trajectory of the Hundred Years' War. Joan had arrived at the court of the Dauphin Charles in early 1429, a peasant girl from Domremy claiming divine visions told her to drive the English from France. Against all reason, Charles gave her armor and an army. She broke the English siege of Orleans in nine days, then led a campaign through the Loire Valley that culminated in Charles's coronation at Reims Cathedral on July 17, 1429. No military commander in the war had achieved anything comparable. At Compiegne, Joan led a sortie against Burgundian positions but was cut off when the town's drawbridge was raised behind her. Whether the garrison commander deliberately abandoned her or simply panicked remains debated. The Burgundians sold her to their English allies for 10,000 livres. The English turned her over to a church tribunal at Rouen, where Bishop Pierre Cauchon orchestrated a trial designed to produce a conviction. Joan was interrogated for months, denied legal counsel, and charged with heresy and wearing men's clothing. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was 19 years old. Twenty-five years later, a papal court overturned the conviction. In 1920, the Catholic Church canonized her as a saint. Joan of Arc became France's national heroine and one of the most analyzed figures in Western history, debated by historians, theologians, psychiatrists, and filmmakers for six centuries.