At seventeen she lifted the siege of Orléans; at nineteen she was burned — then became France.
Joan of Arc (c.1412–1431) — Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans — was the French peasant girl who, claiming divine voices, persuaded the dauphin Charles to give her an army, lifted the English siege of Orléans in 1429, and turned the Hundred Years’ War decisively in France’s favor.
Captured by Burgundian allies of England in 1430, she was tried for heresy by a pro-English church court and burned at the stake in Rouen at nineteen. Rehabilitated in 1456 and canonized in 1920, she is France’s national heroine — claimed by monarchists, republicans and the far right alike.
Born around 1412 in Domrémy to peasant farmers, Joan began hearing — by her account — the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret at thirteen, telling her to support the uncrowned dauphin Charles and drive the English from France. In 1429 she convinced the local commander to escort her to Chinon, where she persuaded Charles himself.
Given armor, a banner and a small force, she reached Orléans in April 1429. The siege — strangling France’s last great Loire stronghold for six months — collapsed in nine days. She was wounded by an arrow, returned to the fight, and the English withdrew. In July, Charles was crowned Charles VII at Reims with Joan holding her banner beside him: the political masterstroke that made him a king instead of a pretender.
In May 1430 she was captured at Compiègne by Burgundian troops and sold to the English for 10,000 livres. The trial at Rouen was political theater in ecclesiastical dress: Bishop Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English partisan, charged her with heresy, witchcraft and cross-dressing — the male clothing she wore for protection among soldiers.
The transcript — one of the most complete medieval trial records — shows a nineteen-year-old out-arguing theologians for months. Condemned when she resumed male dress, she was burned on May 30, 1431. The English had killed the girl; they could not kill what she had done.
Twenty-five years later, her mother’s petition forced a retrial: in 1456 the Church annulled the verdict, declaring the 1431 trial tainted by fraud. But Joan’s afterlife was political long before it was holy — Shakespeare made her a witch, Voltaire mocked her, the Revolution claimed her as the people’s daughter, Napoleon as a national symbol.
Canonized in 1920, she is now beyond any single faction’s grasp: feminist icon, Catholic saint, military heroine, far-right emblem. The peasant girl who heard voices remains the most argued-over teenager in European history — because France keeps finding itself in her.
