Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc), also known as the Maid of Orleans (French: La Pucelle d'Orléans; Domrémy, c. 1412-Rouen, May 30, 1431), was a young peasant girl who is considered a heroine of France for her role during the final phase of the Hundred Years War. Joan claimed to have seen visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Catherine of Alexandria, who instructed her to assist Charles VII in freeing France from English rule in the final period of the Hundred Years' War. Charles VII, who had not yet been crowned, sent Joan to the siege of Orleans as part of a relief army, and it was there that she gained great fame because the siege was lifted only nine days later. Other quick victories allowed Charles VII to be crowned King of France at Reims. This long-awaited event raised French morale and paved the way for their final victory.
On May 23, 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and tried by Bishop Pierre Cauchon on various charges, and found guilty, was burned at the stake in Rouen by Duke John of Bedford on May 30, 1431, when she was about 19 years of age.
In 1456 an inquisitorial tribunal authorized by Pope Callistus III examined her trial, annulled the charges against her, declared her innocent and named her a martyr. In the 16th century they made her a symbol of the Catholic League and in 1803 she was declared a national symbol of France by decision of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Joan of Arc is one of the nine secondary patron saints of France and has remained a prominent popular and cultural figure since the time of her death thanks to the fact that many writers, artists and composers have been inspired by it.
Historical context
Controlled by Henry VI of England Controlled by Felipe III of Burgundy Controlled by Carlos VII of France
Main battles Batalla de Azincourt, 1415 Royal fortress of Chinon, 1429 March to Reims, 1429
The Hundred Years' War had begun in 1337 as a dispute over the inheritance of the French throne, interspersed with occasional periods of relative peace. Almost all of the fighting had taken place in France, and the English army's use of destructive scorched-earth tactics had devastated the French economy. The population of France had still not recovered its numbers prior to the Black Death pandemic of the mid 14th century and its merchants were cut off from foreign markets. Before the appearance of Joan of Arc, the English had nearly achieved their goal of a dual monarchy under English control, and the French army had not achieved any major victories for a generation. In the words of historian Kelly DeVries, "The kingdom of France was not even a shadow of what it had been in the 13th century."
The French king at the time of Joan's birth, Charles VI, suffered from psychotic episodes that often made him unable to rule. His brother Luis, Duke of Orleans, and his cousin Juan Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, competed for the regency of France and the guardianship of the children heirs to the throne. This dispute included accusations that Louis was having an extramarital affair with the queen, Isabella of Bavaria, and that John the Fearless had kidnapped the heirs to the throne. The conflict came to a head with the assassination of the Duke of Orleans. in 1407 by order of the Duke of Burgundy. This assassination started a civil war. The young Charles of Orleans succeeded his father as duke and was placed in the custody of his father-in-law, Bernard, Count of Armagnac. His faction became known as the "Armagnac" faction, and the opposing party led by the Duke of Burgundy was called the "Burgundy faction".
Henry V of England took advantage of these internal divisions when he invaded the kingdom in 1415, winning a resounding victory at Azincourt on October 25 and subsequently capturing many cities in northern France during a campaign in 1417. In 1418, Paris it was taken by the Burgundians, who massacred the Count of Armagnac and some 2,500 of his followers. The future French king, Charles VII, assumed the title of Dauphin, the heir to the throne, at the age of fourteen, after the deaths. of his four older brothers. His first significant official act was to sign a peace treaty with the Duke of Burgundy in 1419, but this ended in disaster when Armagnac supporters murdered John the Fearless during a meeting under the guarantee of protection of Carlos. The new Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, blamed Charles for the assassination and sided with the English, whereupon the Allied forces conquered much of France.
In 1420, the Queen of France, Elizabeth of Bavaria, signed the Treaty of Troyes, allowing Henry V to marry Charles VI's daughter Catherine of Valois, granting the succession to the throne of France to the heirs of Henry and effectively disinheriting Charles. This arrangement revived suspicions that the dauphin was the illegitimate product of Elizabeth's rumored affair with the late Duke of Orléans and therefore not the son of Charles VI. Henry V and Charles VI died within two months of each other in 1422, leaving an infant, Henry VI of England (the only child of Henry V and Catherine of Valois), as nominal monarch of both realms, although the Dauphin also claimed his right to the throne. Henry V's brother, John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, became regent.
Just before Joan of Arc came on the scene in 1429, the English had nearly achieved their goal of an Anglo-French dual monarchy. Henry V's brothers John of Lancaster and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had continued the English conquest of France. Almost all of northern France and some parts of the south-west were under Anglo-Burgundian control. The English controlled Paris and Rouen, while the Burgundian faction controlled Reims, the traditional place of coronation for French kings. This was crucial, because none of the contenders for the crown had yet been enthroned, and being enthroned at Reims would help legitimize their claim to the throne.
Since 1428 Orléans had been besieged by the English, one of the few cities still loyal to Charles VII and an important target, since it occupied a strategic position on the banks of the Loire River and was the last major obstacle to dominating the rest of France. No one was optimistic about the city's resilience. For generations there were prophecies in France that promised that the nation would be saved by a virgin from the "borders of Lorraine", "that she would work miracles", and "that France will be lost by a woman [Elizabeth of Bavaria] and then she will be restored by a virgin".
Biography
Name and early years
At her trial, Joan testified that she was about 19 years old, which implies that she thought she was born around 1412. Joan was illiterate and it is thought that her letters were dictated by her to scribes and signed with the help of others. Joan was the daughter of Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, residents of Domrémy, a village that was then in the French part of the Duchy of Bar. Her parents owned twenty hectares of land and also his father supplemented his work as a farmer with a minor position as a village official, collecting taxes and running the local guard. They lived in an isolated area of eastern France that remained loyal to the French crown despite being surrounded by protected land. Burgundian.
Due to inconsistent records and differing contemporary customs, Joan of Arc's birth name is not known for certain. Joan of Arc did not come from a place called Arc, but was born and raised in the village of Domrémy, on what was then the north-eastern border of the Kingdom of France. All of her signatures appear in the form Middle French Jehanne with no last name. In modern French, her name is always translated as Jeanne d'Arc, reflecting spelling changes due to the evolution of the language over time. Her given name is also sometimes transliterated as "Jeanneton" or "Jeannette", and Juana may have dropped the diminutive suffix -eton or -ette in his teens.
The surname de Arco is a translation of d'Arc, which in turn is an approximation in 18th century French XIX to the name of his father, Jacques d'Arc. Apostrophes were never used in French surnames of the 15th century, which sometimes leads to confusion between place names and other names that they begin with the letter D. According to the Latin records, which certainly reflect a difference, it is more likely that his father's name was Darc. The transliteration was also phonetic and the original records present his last name in at least nine different forms, such as Dars, Day, Darx, Dare, Tarc i>, Tart, or Dart.
To further complicate matters, surnames were not universal in the 15th century and surname inheritance did not follow necessarily modern patterns. Juana testified at her trial that the local custom in her native region was for girls to use her mother's surname. Juana's mother was known as Isabelle Romée and as Isabelle de Vouthon, and both versions had slight variations in the way the first and last names were written in different documents. No record of Joan's life survives to show that she used her mother's or her father's surname, but she often referred to herself as la Pucelle, which roughly translates to "the Maiden." Before the mid-19th century, which was when Jeanne d'Arc and Joan of Arc became the standard form, literature and artistic works referring to her often describe her as la Pucelle or the Maid of Orleans. His hometown has been renamed Domrémy-la-Pucelle to reflect that tradition.
There were various Burgundian military raids during Joan's childhood. By 1419, warfare had begun to affect the region. In 1425, the village's cattle were stolen by a non-aligned brigand named Henri D'Orly. In 1428, the region was sacked by a Burgundian army at the command of Antoine de Vergy, who burned down the villa and destroyed its crops.
Joan had her first vision during this time. She testified that when she was thirteen, around 1425, a figure she identified as Saint Michael the Archangel, surrounded by angels, appeared to her in her father's garden. the vision, she reported crying because she wanted to be taken away with them. Throughout her life, she continued to have visions of Saint Michael, as well as the virgin Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. In 1428, a young man of her village claimed that she had broken a promise of marriage. The case was brought before an ecclesiastical court in the city of Toul and denied.
According to Joan's later testimony, it was around this period that her visions told her that she should leave Domrémy to go help Dauphin Charles. She was to drive out the English and bring the dauphin - the crown prince - to the French throne - to Reims for his coronation as king. She stated that the first time she heard a voice she felt a great sensation of fear and that it came from the side of the church, usually accompanied by a great clarity. According to her words, she cried when they left because they were so beautiful.
In early 1428, the English had been laying siege to Orléans and cut it off almost entirely from the rest of Charles' territory by capturing many of the small towns with bridges spanning the Loire River. Orléans' fate was critical to the survival of the kingdom of Armagnac because its strategic position along the Loire made it the last obstacle to an assault on the rest of Charles's territory. In May 1428, at the age of 16, Joan asked a relative named Durand Lassois to to take her to the nearby town of Vaucouleurs, where she asked the garrison commander, Robert de Baudricourt, for an armed escort to take her to the Court of Armagnac at Chinon. Baudricourt's sarcastic reply did not deter her. She returned the following January and her request was refused once more, but she did win the support of two of Baudricourt's soldiers: Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy. According to Jean de Metz, she told him "I must be at the King's side... there will be no help for the Kingdom but my own. I would rather have continued spinning [wool] at my mother's side...however, I must go and do this, for my Lord wants me to do it." Meanwhile, she was summoned to Nancy under the safe-conduct of Charles II, Duke of Lorraine, who was sick and thought that Juana might be able to cure him. Ella Juana did not offer him any cure and instead she reprimanded the duke for living with her lover.
Under the auspices of Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy, Baudricourt agreed to a third audience with Joan in February, around the time the English captured a relief convoy en route to Orleans at the Battle of the Herrings. During the meeting Joan predicted the French defeat in battle, several days before the messengers arrived reporting the French debacle. According to the Journal du Siége d'Orléans, which portrays Joan as A miraculous figure, she learned of the battle through "divine grace" while tending her herds in Lorraine and used this revelation to convince Baudricourt to bring her before the dauphin. Metz and de Poulengy's enthusiastic support of Joan, as well as his personal conversations with Baudricourt, convinced him to allow her to go to Chinon to have an audience with the Dauphin. Joan traveled with a small escort of six soldiers. She chose to wear men's clothing, which was provided to her by their escorts and the people of Vaucouleurs.
Ascent
Robert de Baudricourt granted Joan an escort to visit Chinon after news from Orléans confirmed his prediction of defeat. She made the journey through the hostile territory of Burgundy disguised as a soldier, a fact that would later lead to her being accused of "transvestite", although her escorts saw it as a logical precaution. Two of the members of that escort would affirm some time later that they and other people from Vaucouleurs gave him that outfit and suggested that he wear it.
Juana's first meeting with Charles took place at the Royal Court in the city of Chinon in late February or early March 1429, when she was 17 and he was 26. Juana told him that she had she had come to lay siege to Orléans and to take him to Reims for his coronation. After appearing at Court, she made a great impression on Charles during their private conference, but Charles and his council needed more certainty. At the time Carlos's mother-in-law, Yolanda de Aragón, was planning to finance a relief expedition to the beleaguered city of Orleans. Juana asked permission to travel with the army and wear protective armor, which was provided to her by the Royal government. The peasant girl depended on her donations to equip herself with armor, a horse, a sword, a banner, and the rest of the accoutrements of her entourage. Historian Stephen W. Richey explains the royal court's attraction to this young commoner by noting that they perhaps saw her as the only source of hope for a regime that was close to collapse:
After years of a humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the dolphin Carlos agreed to Juana's urgent request to be equipped for the war and put to the head of his army, his decision must have been based on knowing that any orthodox or rational decision had already been proved and failed. Only a desperate regime would pay attention to an illiterate girl who claimed that God's voice was ordering her to take over the army of her country and bring him to victory.
Upon her arrival on the scene, Joan effectively turned the protracted Anglo-French conflict into a religious war, a new course that was not without its risks. Charles's advisers were concerned that if Juana's orthodoxy—that she was not a heretic or a sorceress—was not proven beyond doubt, the dauphin's enemies could easily claim that her crown was a gift from the devil. To avoid this possibility, the Dauphin ordered an investigation of her background and a theological examination in Poitiers to verify her morality and ensure her orthodoxy. In April 1429, the commission of inquiry declared her "a girl of irreproachable life, a good Christian, possessed of the virtues of humility, honesty, and simplicity." The Poitiers theologians did not come to a decision on the matter. of his divine inspirations, but they agreed that sending her to Orléans might be of use to the king and would show whether her inspiration was of divine origin. They informed the Dauphin that there was a "favourable presumption" about the divine nature of his mission. This convinced Carlos, but they also declared that he had the obligation to put Juana to the test. Thus, they affirmed that "to doubt her or abandon her without suspecting evil would be to repudiate the Holy Spirit and be unworthy of God's help". They recommended that the peasant woman's statements be corroborated by seeing if she could lift the siege of Orleans as she had predicted.
She was then sent to Tours, where she was physically examined by a group of women led by Carlos's mother-in-law, Yolanda de Aragón, who verified her virginity. After the examinations, the dauphin commissioned a silver armor for her, she received a banner of her own design, and was brought a sword found under the altar in the church of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois. Around this time, Joan began to call herself "Jeanne the Pucelle» (Joan the maiden), emphasizing her virginity, which was a sign of her mission.
Prior to Joan's arrival at Chinon, the strategic situation on the Armagnac side was poor but not hopeless. The Armagnac troops were prepared to survive a prolonged siege at Orléans. The Burgundians had recently withdrawn from the siege following disagreements over territory, and the English were hesitant to continue it. Still, the Armagnac leaders' morale was falling and they were losing hope.
Before she joined the siege, Joan had dictated a letter to the Duke of Bedford warning him that she was sent by God to expel him from France. In the last week of April, Joan set out from Blois as part of a loaded army of supplies to help Orléans. The effect of Joan's presence on the morale of the Armagnac army was immediate.
Joan arrived in the besieged city of Orléans on April 29, 1429, meeting with the commander John of Dunois, head of the ducal family of Orléans on behalf of her captive half-brother. Orléans was not completely isolated in the meantime, Dunois was able to usher her into the city, where she was greeted with great enthusiasm. Joan was initially treated as merely a morale-boosting figure, raising her banner on the battlefield. No orders were given to her. formal and was excluded from councils of war, and was not informed when the army engaged the enemy. However, Joan quickly gained the faith of the Armagnac troops, who believed that she could lead them to victory. Over time, some of the Armagnac commanders began to accept her advice. Thus, Dunois's decision to exclude her did not prevent her presence at most councils and battles.
The true participation and military leadership of Juana continues to be a matter of historiographical debate. On the one hand, she stated that she carried her banner in battle and had never killed anyone, preferring her banner "forty times" better than a sword; in fact, the army was always led by a nobleman, such as the duke. from Alençon. On the other hand, many of these nobles went so far as to claim that Joan had a profound effect on their decisions because they accepted her advice often in the belief that it was divinely inspired. In any case, historians agree that the French army he scored important victories during the brief time Juana was with him.
Military campaigns
Orleans
Joan of Arc's appearance in Orleans coincided with a sudden change in the pattern of the siege. During the five months prior to her arrival, the defenders had attempted only one offensive assault that had ended in defeat. However, on May 4 the French of the Armagnac faction went on the offensive, attacking the Bastille of Saint-Loup, an outlying fortress. Joan was not informed of the attack. Once she heard of it, she rode with her banner to the battle site, about a mile east of Orleans. She arrived just as the Armanac soldiers were retreating after a failed assault. Her appearance gave impetus to the soldiers, who launched another assault and captured the fortress.No combat was fought on May 5 as it was Ascension Day, a Christian solemnity that Juana considered too holy for combat. Instead, she ordered a scribe to write a letter to the English warning them to leave France. She had the letter tied to an arrow that was shot by a crossbowman.
Armagnac troops resumed their offensive on May 6, capturing a second fortress called Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, which they found abandoned. As English troops moved out to oppose the advance, a swift cavalry charge forced them to retreat. return to their strongholds, apparently without a fight. Although the Armagnac commanders wanted to stop, Joan urged them to launch an attack against an English fortress built around a monastery and called les Augustins, which was successfully captured. After the capture of les Augustins, the Armagnac commanders wanted to consolidate their victories, but Joan once again called for immediate offensive action. That night, the Armagnac troops held positions on the south bank of the river before attacking the main English fortress, "Les Tourelles", on the morning of May 7. Joan was recognized by contemporaries as the heroine of the combat, during the which was wounded by an arrow that stuck between her neck and shoulder while holding her banner in the trench in front of "Les Tourelles". Despite everything, she returned later to encourage the troops in a final assault that achieved the surrender of the fortress. The English withdrew from Orléans the next day, ending a siege that had lasted nearly seven months.
At Chinon, Joan had declared that she was sent by God. At Poitiers, when asked to produce a sign to prove this claim, Joan had promised that she would provide a sign if she were taken to Orléans. The lifting of the siege was interpreted by many people as that sign, which earned him the support of prominent clerics such as the Archbishop of Embrun Jacques Gelu, and the theologian Juan Gerson, who wrote treatises in support of the maiden after meeting these events. To the English, by contrast, this peasant girl's ability to defeat their armies was considered proof that the Devil possessed her; British medievalist Beverly Boyd noted that this accusation was not just propaganda, but a belief sincere among the English, because the idea that God was supporting the French through Joan did not benefit the Anglo-Saxon occupiers at all.
Loire Campaign
The sudden victory at Orleans also gave rise to many new plans for a military offensive. Joan insisted that the Armagnac troops move without delay to Reims to crown the dauphin. Joan persuaded Charles VII, who allowed her to accompany the army under the command of Duke John II d'Alençon, who worked collaboratively with Joan and regularly followed his advice; furthermore, the Dauphin gave his permission for a plan to recover nearby bridges over the Loire River to be carried out as a prelude to a general advance towards Reims, in whose cathedral his consecration as King of Reims would be celebrated. France. It was a bold plan because Reims was almost twice as far away as Paris and reaching the city meant advancing deep into enemy territory. The Duke of Alençon accepted Joan's advice on the strategy to follow. Other commanders, such as Juan de Orleans, had been impressed by her exploits during the siege and became supporters of the young peasant girl. The Duke of Alençon claimed that Joan had saved her life by warning him that a cannon from the Jargeau wall was about to fire on him.
Political debates over strategy, as well as the need to recruit additional soldiers, delayed the start of the campaign to liberate the Loire villages. Armagnac troops reached Jargeau on June 11, and forced the English to retreat behind the town walls. Juana sent a message to the English asking for their surrender but they refused. Juana favored a direct assault on the city walls, which was done the next day. Juana's helmet was struck by a rock while she was standing. under the city walls. By the end of the day the city had been captured. The Armagnacs took few prisoners and many of the English who surrendered were executed. The Armagnac army advanced towards Meung-sur-Loire. On June 15 they seized control of the town's bridge, and the English garrison withdrew to a castle on the north bank of the Loire. Most of the army continued along the south bank of the Loire to besiege the Beaugency castle.
Meanwhile, the English army from Paris under the command of Sir John Fastolf had joined the Meung garrison and was marching along the north bank of the Loire to take relief to Beaugency. Fastolf, the English garrison at Beaugency, surrendered on June 18. The main English army withdrew from the Loire Valley and headed north that day, joining Fastolf's unit. Juana urged the Armagnacs to go out in pursuit and thus both armies collided southwest of the town of Patay. The battle of Patay can be compared to that of Azincourt (1415) but with the opposite outcome. The French vanguard attacked a unit of English archers who had been arranged to block the road. The archers were routed and this decimated the main body of the English army, most of whose commanders were killed or captured. Fastolf managed to escape with some soldiers, but became the scapegoat for the humiliating English defeat. The French suffered minimal losses.Although Joan arrived on the battlefield too late to take part in the decisive action, her encouragement to pursue the English made victory possible.
Reims and Paris
Following the destruction of the English army at Patay, some Armagnac leaders advocated an invasion of English-held Normandy. Joan, however, continued to insist that Charles be crowned. The Dauphin agreed, and the army left Gien on June 29 and marched on Reims. The advance was almost unopposed. The city of Auxerre, which was under Burgundian control, submitted its unconditional surrender to him on July 3, after three days of negotiations, as did other cities that crossed the road such as Saint Fargeau, Mézilles, Saint Florentin and Saint Paul. Troyes, the city where the treaty that had tried to disinherit Charles VII was signed, had a small garrison of English and Burgundian troops and was the only city to put up a brief resistance. When the army arrived there, it was already short of food, but it was lucky that a wandering friar named Brother Richard, who had been preaching the end of the world in the city for some time, had convinced the inhabitants to plant beans, which ripen quickly. By the time the starving soldiers arrived they had food to feed themselves. After four days of negotiation, Juana ordered artillery to be placed at points in the city and ordered the soldiers to fill the city's moat with wood. Fearing an assault, Troyes negotiated the terms of surrender.
Reims opened its gates to the army on July 16, 1429. Charles, Joan, and the army entered at night, and Charles VII's coronation took place the following morning. Juana occupied a place of honor in the ceremony, announcing that God's will had been fulfilled.
Although Joan and the Duke of Alençon urged a speedy march to Paris, the Royal Court preferred to negotiate a fifteen-day truce with Duke Philippe of Burgundy, who promised that he would try to arrange for Paris to be handed over to the Armagnacs while negotiations for a more definitive peace continued. Philip, however, violated the purpose of the agreement by using it as a delaying tactic to bolster the defense of Paris. Despite pressure from Joan and the Duke of Alençon, divisions at Charles's court and peace negotiations with Burgundy led to a slow advance.
The French army passed through several towns near Paris during the interim, accepting the surrender of several of them without a fight. On August 15, the Duke of Bedford led an English force to meet Charles VII's army in battle de Montépilloy from a fortified position that the Armagnac commanders considered too strong to storm. Joan personally rode in front of the English positions in an attempt to provoke them into attacking. The English refused, and the battle was stalemate, a clash of indecisive outcome. The English withdrew the next day. The Armagnacs continued their advance, and their assault on Paris occurred on 8 September. In the course of the same Juana received a leg wound from a crossbow bolt, despite which she remained in a trench until one of her commanders moved her to a safe place.
The next morning, the army received a royal order to withdraw. The Armagnacs suffered 1,500 casualties. Most historians blame the Grand Chamberlain of France Georges de la Trémoille for the political missteps that followed the coronation. In September, Charles disbanded the army and Joan was forbidden to work together with him again. the Duke of Alençon.
Campaign against Perrinet Gressard
In October, Joan was sent as part of an army to attack the territory of Perrinet Gressart, a mercenary who had served the Burgundians and English. The army then besieged Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, which fell after Joan encouraged a direct assault on November 4. The army then tried unsuccessfully to take La-Charité-sur-Loire in November and December. On December 29, Juana returned to court upon learning that she and her family had been ennobled by Charles VII as a reward for her actions.
Capture
In the following months, a truce with the English that had been negotiated before the attack on Paris was in force and lasted until Easter 1430. Joan therefore turned her attention to other matters. On March 23 In 1430 he dictated a threatening letter to the Hussites, a splinter group that had broken with the Catholic Church on various doctrinal points and had defeated several earlier crusades sent against them. Joan's letter promised to "remove their madness and filthy superstition, by taking away their heresy or their lives". Joan, who was an ardent Catholic who hated all forms of heresy, also sent a letter challenging the English to leave France and march with her to Bohemia to defeat the Hussites, a proposal that received no response.
The truce with England quickly came to an end. This March, the Duke of Burgundy had begun to claim towns that had been ceded to him by treaty but had not submitted to him. Many of these towns were in areas that the Armagnacs had recaptured in the course of the previous months..Compiègne was one of the cities that refused to submit and prepared for a siege. Joan set out with a company of volunteers to help the city.
In April, Joan reached the town of Melun, which had driven out its Burgundian garrison. As Joan advanced, her modest army grew larger as other commanders joined her. Joan's troops advanced as far as Lagny-sur-Marne and won a battle against an Anglo-Burgundian army commanded by the mercenary Franquet d'Arras. d'Arras was captured, and Joan consented to his execution rather than demand ransom. Joan's forces finally reached Compiègne on 14 May. After a series of defensive raids against the Burgundian besiegers, Joan she was forced to disband most of her forces because they had become too difficult to hold in the surrounding countryside. Joan and some 400 of her remaining soldiers entered the city.
On 23 May 1430 she was with an army force that attempted to attack the Burgundian camp at Margny, north of Compiègne, when she was ambushed and captured. As her troops retreated towards the nearby fortifications before In the advance of a force of 6,000 Burgundians, Joan remained with the rear, which was surrounded by the enemy and she was thrown from her horse by an archer. She agreed to surrender to a Burgundian nobleman named Lionel de Wandomme, a member of the unit of John of Luxembourg. Luxembourg promptly transferred her to his castle at Beaulieu-les-Fontaines near Noyes. After her first attempt to escape, she was transferred to the castle of Beaurevoir. She made several attempts to escape from her, in one of which she jumped from the 70-foot tower in which she was confined and landed on the soft earth of a dry moat. After this escape attempt, she was transferred to the Burgundian city of Arras, where the English negotiated with Burgundian allies for the transfer of custody of her. Bishop Pierre Cauchon de Beauvais, a supporter of the English, took the lead in these negotiations and her subsequent trial. The final agreement called for the English to pay the sum of 10,000 Touraine livres for the delivery of the maiden.
The English took Juana to the city of Rouen, which was their center of operations in France. Historian Pierre Champion notes that the French of the Armagnac faction attempted to rescue her several times by launching military offensives towards Rouen while she was imprisoned there. One campaign took place during the winter of 1430–1431, another in March 1431, and another in late May, shortly before her execution; all to no avail. Champion also cites sources from the 15th century which say that Charles VII threatened revenge on the Burgundian troops who they had captured her and "the English and the women of England" in retaliation.
Judgment
Joan was tried for heresy on 9 January 1431 in Rouen. Joan's captors downplayed the secular aspects of her trial by submitting it to an ecclesiastical court, but the trial was politically motivated. Englishmen like the Burgundians were glad that Joan had been eliminated as a military threat, fearing her for her apparent supernatural powers that undermined the morale of the troops. In addition, she posed a political threat. Joan testified that the voices she heard had ordered her to defeat the English and crown Charles, and it was argued that her success was proof that Joan was acting in the name of God. If left unchallenged, her testimony would invalidate the English claim of govern France and would disavow the University of Paris, which supported a dual monarchy ruled by an English king.
The verdict was an obvious and foregone conclusion. Joan's guilt could be used to compromise Charles's legitimacy claims, showing that he had been consecrated for the actions of a heretic. More than two-thirds of the clergymen who participated at the trial they were associated with the University of Paris, and the majority were pro-Burgundians and pro-English. And the trial was overseen by English commanders, including the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Warwick. Bishop Pierre Cauchon acted as ordinary judge of the trial. The English subsidized the cost of the trial, including paying Cauchon and Jean Le Maître, who represented the Inquisitor of France, for their participation. In the words of the British medievalist Beverly Boyd, the English Crown intended this trial to be "a ploy to dispose of a strange prisoner of war with the utmost embarrassment to her enemies."
The legal proceedings began on January 9, 1431 in Rouen, the seat city of the English occupation government. The procedure was suspect on several points, which would later lead to criticism of the court by the chief inquisitor who investigated the trial after the war. Cauchon attempted to follow proper inquisitorial procedure, but the trial had many irregularities. Joan should have had been in the hands of the Church during the trial and guarded by women. Instead, she was imprisoned by the English and guarded by ordinary soldiers in the service of the Duke of Bedford. Contrary to canon law, Cauchon had not established Joan's infamy before proceeding to the trial process. Juana was not read the charges against her until well after her interrogations began. Interrogation procedures were below inquisitorial standards, subjecting Juana to lengthy interrogations without legal advice. There is evidence that the trial records were falsified.
Under church law, Bishop Cauchon had no jurisdiction over the case, owing his appointment to his partisan support of the English Crown, which financed the trial. The low level of evidence presented also violated the inquisitorial rules. The clerical notary Nicolas Bailly, who was commissioned to collect testimony against Juana, was unable to find adverse evidence, so the court lacked grounds to prosecute. By opening a trial anyway, the court also violated church law by denying Juana the right to legal counsel. Furthermore, the fact that all members of that court were pro-English clergy was contrary to the medieval Church's requirement that heresy trials be tried by an impartial or balanced group of clergy. After the opening of the first public hearing, Juana complained that all those present were enemies of her cause and asked that "ecclesiastics from the French side" be invited to have some balance, but her request was denied. In northern France, Jean Lemaitre, opposed the trial from the beginning, and several eyewitnesses later said that the English threatened his life to make him cooperate. Other clergymen participating in the trial also received threats so that they would not refuse to cooperate, as he he succeeded the Dominican friar Isambart de la Pierre.
During the trial, Juana displayed remarkable control. She was able to induce her interrogators to ask questions sequentially rather than simultaneously, refer to her records when appropriate, and end sessions when she requested. Trial witnesses were impressed by her prudence in answering the questions put to her. The trial files contain statements by Juana that witnesses later said astonished the court, as she was an illiterate peasant and, however, she was able to evade the theological traps that the court set for her. The most famous exchange in the transcript is an exercise in subtlety: "Asked if he knew he was in God's grace, he replied, 'If I'm not, may God put me there;' and if I am, may God keep me so. She would be the saddest creature in the world if she knew that she was not in his grace.” It was a trick question because church doctrine held that no one could be sure of God's grace. If she had answered yes, she would have been accused of heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. The court notary, Boisguillaume, later testified that when they heard her answer: "Those who questioned her were stunned."
To convince her to submit, they showed Juana the instruments of torture. When Joan refused to be intimidated, Cauchon met with a dozen assessors (clerical juries) to vote on whether she should be tortured. Most decided no.
Several members of the court later testified that important parts of the transcript were falsified to harm Juana. According to the inquisitorial guidelines, she should have been confined in an ecclesiastical prison under the supervision of female guards, that is, nuns. Instead, the English kept her in a secular prison guarded by her own soldiers. Bishop Cauchon denied Joan's petitions to the Council of Basel and the pope, who should have stopped her trial.In early May, Cauchon asked the University of Paris to deliberate on twelve articles summarizing the accusation of heresy. The twelve articles of accusation that summarized the conclusions of the court contradicted the judicial file, which had already been manipulated by the judges. The university approved the charges. On May 23, Juana was formally reprimanded by the court. Next, Joan was taken to the courtyard of the Saint-Ouen abbey church to be publicly condemned. When Cauchon began to read Juana's sentence, and under threat of immediate execution, the illiterate defendant agreed to submit and signed an abjuration document that she did not understand, after which the court replaced that abjuration with a different one in the official file of the case..
Allegation of cross-dressing
Heresy alone was a crime punishable by death '"`UNIQ--nowiki-00000345-QINU`"'250 '&# 34;`UNIQ--nowiki-00000346-QINU`"'if the offense was performed more than once. Having signed the abjuration, Juana could not be sentenced to death as an unrepentant heretic, but she could if she was convicted of relapse into heresy. Because the court sought to end Juana's life, they prepared an indictment for crime of cross-dressing, according to eyewitnesses. As part of her abjuration, Joan had to give up wearing men's clothing. She changed into a woman's dress and allowed her head to be shaved. However, she was kept in English custody rather than transferred to a prison. ecclesiastical. She was returned to her cell and kept in chains. Witnesses at the rehabilitation trial testified that Juana was subjected to ill-treatment and attempted rape, including one by an English nobleman, and that the guards placed clothing man in her cell, forcing her to wear it. Men's clothing could be buttoned in such a way as to deter guards from attempting a rape because of the difficulty of ripping off the garments. Juana was probably afraid of parting with those clothes because the judge would confiscate them and therefore she would be left without that protection.A woman's dress did not offer that security; indeed, a few days after her abjuration, she told a member of the court that "an important English lord had entered the prison and tried to take it by force". trying to avoid sexual abuse or, according to Jean Massieu's testimony, because the guards had taken away her dress and she had nothing else to wear.
Anyway, Cauchon was notified that Joan had returned to wearing men's clothing. He sent clergymen to admonish her to remain in her submission, but the English prevented them from visiting her.On May 28, Cauchon personally went to Joan's cell, along with other clergymen. According to the trial record, Juana said that she had returned to dressing in men's clothing because it was more appropriate for her to dress as a man while being detained with male guards, and that the judges had broken their promise to let her go to mass and release her from prison. their chains. She claimed that if they kept their promises to her and placed her in a decent prison, she would be obedient.
The fact that she returned to wearing men's clothing was interpreted by the court as a relapse into the crime of heresy due to cross-dressing, although the inquisitor who presided over the appeals court that examined the case after the war disagreed. Medieval Catholic doctrine held that cross-dressing should be evaluated based on context, as established by Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologica, which says that necessity would be a permissible reason for cross-dressing. This would include the use of clothing as protection against rape. In doctrinal terms, it was justified for Juana to have dressed as a page during her journey through enemy territory, also to wear armor in combat and men's clothing for protection in camps and in prison.. The Chronique de la Pucelle , in fact, recounts that this clothing deterred sexual abuse when camping with the soldiers, but that when he did not need military clothing, he put on feminine clothing. Members of the clergy who testified in the posthumous rehabilitation trial they claimed that she continued to wear men's clothing in prison to deter sexual abuse and rape.
Juana referred to the Poitiers court of inquiry when questioned about the matter. The files of that court are not preserved, but the circumstances suggest that the clergymen who composed it approved that practice.In addition, she continued to keep her hair short while she participated in military campaigns and when she was in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Juan Gerson, defended this practice, as did the inquisitor Jean Bréhal later during the rehabilitation trial.
Similarly, when questioned by Cauchon about her visions, Joan declared that she had been charged with adjuring out of fear, but that she would not deny them again. As Joan's abjuration had required her to deny the voices she heard, this was enough to condemn her for relapse into heresy and sentence her to death. The next day, forty-two advisors were summoned to decide Juana's fate. Two recommended that she be abandoned to the secular courts immediately. The remainder recommended that the abjuration be read to him and explained. In the end, all voted unanimously that Joan was a repeat heretic, and that she should be left to the secular power, the English, for punishment. Historian Beverly Boyd states that that judicial process was so "unfair" that transcripts of it were used in the XX century to canonize her.
Execution
On May 30, 1431, Joan was executed at the age of about nineteen. In the morning, she was allowed to receive the sacraments despite being excommunicated. Afterwards, she was taken directly to the Vieux-Marché (Old Market) in Rouen, where her sentence of death was publicly read to her. conviction. At this time, it should have been handed over to the competent authority, the bailiff of Rouen, for a secular conviction, but it was not. In her place, she was handed over directly to the English and tied to a tall plaster column to be executed at the stake Several eyewitnesses described the scene of her death. Tied to the tall pillar in the Vieux-Marché, she asked the friars Martin Ladvenu and Isambart de la Pierre to hold a crucifix before her. An English soldier made a small cross which she kissed and placed on her dress next to her chest.A processional crucifix was brought from the church of Saint-Saveur. She embraced him before his hands were tied and he was held before her eyes during his execution.
Once dead, the English scattered the embers to expose her charred body so no one would claim she had escaped with her life. They then burned her remains two more times to reduce them to ashes and prevent them from being collected as relics, after which her remains were thrown into the River Seine.The executioner Geoffroy Thérage would later say that he "feared to be cursed because he had burned a holy woman"..
Posthumous events and rehabilitation trial
Juana's execution did not change the military situation. His triumphs had raised the morale of the Armagnacs, and the English were unable to regain their momentum.The Hundred Years' War lasted another twenty-two years after Joan's execution. Charles VII retained legitimacy as King of France despite the rival coronation of Henry VI at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on 16 December 1431. Before England could rebuild military might and its The feared force of archers, badly decimated in 1429, lost their alliance with Burgundy with the signing of the Treaty of Arras in 1435. The Duke of Bedford died that same year and Henry VI became the youngest king in English history in rule without a regent. His weak leadership was probably the decisive factor in ending the long-running conflict in France. The war ended twenty-two years after Joan's death with a French victory at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, which led to the expulsion of the English from all of France except Calais.
Historian Kelly DeVries argues that Joan of Arc's aggressive use of artillery and frontal assaults influenced French tactics for the remainder of the war.
Retrial
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After the end of the Hundred Years War, a new posthumous trial was opened in the case of Joan of Arc. Joan's execution had created a political burden for Charles, implying that his consecration as King of France had been achieved through the actions of a heretic. On February 15, 1450, a few months after recapturing Rouen, Charles had ordered Guillaume Bouillé, theologian and former rector of the University of Paris, to open an inquiry. In a brief investigation, Bouillé interviewed seven witnesses to Joan's trial and concluded that Joan's trial as a heretic had been arbitrary. She had been a prisoner of war treated as a political prisoner, and she had been baselessly sentenced to death.Bouillé's report could not officially overturn the verdict, but it did open the way for the subsequent retrial.
In 1452, Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, papal legate and relative of Charles, and Jean Bréhal, newly appointed inquisitor of France, opened a second inquiry into Joan's trial. About twenty witnesses were interviewed by Bréhal, and the investigation was guided by twenty-seven articles describing the bias of Joan's trial. Immediately after the investigation, Guillaume d'Estouteville went to Orleans on June 9 and granted a indulgence to those who participated in the procession on May 8 and in the ceremonies in honor of Juana that commemorated the lifting of the siege.
The inquiry still lacked the authority to change the sentence of Joan's trial, but for the next two years d'Estouteville and Bréhal continued to work on the case. In 1454, Bréhal sent Pope Nicholas V a petition for Joan's mother, Isabelle Romée, and Joan's two brothers, Juan and Pedro. Bréhal presented a summary of his conclusions to theologians and lawyers in France and Italy, as well as to a professor at the University of Vienna, most of whom issued opinions favorable to Joan. Early in 1455, Pope Nicholas V died and Callixtus III became the new Pope. Callixtus granted permission for a "trial of rehabilitation," also known as a "trial of annulment," and appointed three commissioners to oversee the matter: Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Archbishop of Reims; Guillaume Chartier, Bishop of Paris; and Richard Olivier de Longueil, Bishop of Coutances. In turn, they chose Bréhal as inquisitor. The purpose was to investigate whether the conviction trial and its verdict had been carried out fairly and in accordance with canon law.
The trial began on November 7, 1455 in Notre Dame Cathedral, when Juana's mother publicly presented a formal petition for the rehabilitation of her daughter. During the rehabilitation trial, the statements of some 115 witnesses. This judicial process involved clergymen from all over Europe and respected the rules of a judicial procedure. A group of theologians analyzed the testimonies of the 115 eyewitnesses of the life and death of the maiden of Orleans, as a result of which Bréhal wrote a final summary in June 1456 in which he describes Joan as a martyr and the already late Pierre Cauchon as a heretic for having condemned an innocent woman in his pursuit of secular revenge. The technical reason for her execution had been a Biblical dress code.
The trial ended on 7 July 1456 in Rouen Cathedral. The court found the original trial unfair and misleading; Juana's abjuration, the execution, and its consequences were declared null and void. He reversed the sentence in part because the sentencing process had not considered the doctrinal exceptions to that restriction on women's clothing. To emphasize the court's decision, one of the copies of the Articles of Indictment was formally torn. The court decreed that a cross be erected in the place where Juana was burned.
Canonization
In 1452, during the posthumous investigation into his execution, the Church declared that a pilgrimage to the celebration of a religious service in Orléans in his honor would allow attendees to obtain an indulgence, that is, the temporary remission of punishment for a sin.
In the 16th century, during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots, the Catholic League made Juana a symbol of their cause. When Félix Dupanloup was appointed Bishop of Orléans in 1849 he delivered a fervent eulogy on Joan of Arc that drew attention in both France and England, after which he led the efforts that culminated in the maiden's beatification in 1909. She was canonized as saint of the Catholic Church on May 16, 1920 by Pope Benedict XV in his bull Divina disponente.
Legacy
Joan of Arc became a semi-legendary figure for four centuries after her death. The main sources of information about her are her chronicles, such as the five original manuscripts of her sentencing judgment that appeared in ancient archives during the XIX . Shortly thereafter, historians also located the complete records of her rehabilitation trial, which contained sworn testimony from 115 witnesses, and the original French-language notes on the Latin transcript of the sentencing trial. Several contemporary letters also turned up, three of which bear Joan's uncertain handwriting signature, characteristic of someone who can barely write. This unusual wealth of primary sources has led Kelly DeVries to state that "No person from the Middle Ages, male or female, has been the subject of further study."
Joan of Arc came from a forgotten town and rose to fame as an illiterate teenage peasant girl. French and English kings had justified the interminable war through competing interpretations of hereditary rights, first in connection with Edward III's claim to the French throne and then Henry VI's. The conflict had been a legalistic dispute between two related royal families, but Juana transformed it with a religious dimension. In the words of historian Stephen Richey: "She turned what had been a mere dynastic dispute that did not matter to the common people, except for their own suffering, into a passionate people's war of national liberation."Richey also expresses the breadth of its later echo.:
"Those who were interested in her in the five centuries after her death tried to turn her into all kinds of things: demonic fanatic, spiritual mystical, naive and tragically manipulated tool of the powerful, creator and icon of modern popular nationalism, worshipped heroin, saint. She insisted, even when she was threatened with torture and sent to die in the bonfire, which was guided by the voices of God. With or without voices, their accomplishments leave the head of astonishment to anyone who knows their story."
From the poet Christine de Pizan (1364-1430) to the present day, women have regarded Joan as a positive example of a courageous and active woman. She moved within a religious tradition that believed that an exceptional person from any stratum of society could receive a divine call. Some of the most important help she received came from women: Charles VII's mother-in-law, Yolanda de Aragón, confirmed Juana's virginity and financed her expedition to Orleans. Joan, Countess of Luxembourg, aunt of the Count of Luxembourg who kept her imprisoned in Compiègne, eased her captivity conditions and was able to delay her delivery to the English. Eventually, Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford and wife of the Regent of England, declared Joan a virgin during pre-trial inquiries.
Three French Navy warships have been named after him, including a helicopter cruiser that was decommissioned in 2010. The far-right French political party Rally National regularly holds rallies in front of its statues, reproduces his image in party publications and uses as emblem a tricolor flame symbolic of his martyrdom. Political rivals of this party sometimes satirize their appropriation of his image. The National Festival of Joan of Arc and Patriotism has been celebrated in France every second Sunday in May since 1920.
Visions
The analysis of Juana's visions is not without its problems, since the main source of information on this topic is the transcript of the sentencing trial in which she defied normal court procedure and especially refused to respond all questions about your visions. The maiden complained that her testimony would conflict with a previous oath of confidentiality she had taken regarding meetings with her king. It is unknown how the preserved transcripts could be a manipulation by corrupt judicial officials or the half-truths she revealed to protect state secrets. Some historians sidestep speculation about the visions by assuring that Juana's conviction that she had received the God's call is more relevant than questions about the ultimate origin of the visions.
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In recent times, several scholars have tried to explain his visions from a psychiatric or neurological point of view, thus reaching hypothetical diagnoses such as epilepsy, migraines, tuberculosis or schizophrenia. No diagnosis has enjoyed consensus or academic support, since the Most historians argue that she did not show any of the objective symptoms that may accompany mental illnesses that have been suggested, such as schizophrenia. In fact, doctor Philip Mackowiak ruled out the possibility of schizophrenia and John Hughes, also a doctor, rejected that Juana suffered from epilepsy. Illness so severe that it would have disabled her from leading the active life she led. In response to another theory that Joan suffered bovine tuberculosis from ingesting unpasteurized milk, historian Régine Pernoud wrote, not without irony, that if drinking that milk produced the benefits Joan brought to the French nation, the government should stop the pasteurization.
Joan of Arc found favor at the court of King Charles VII, who accepted her as perfectly sane. The monarch was in fact familiar with the symptoms of her madness because her father, Charles VI, suffered from it. Charles VI was popularly known as 'Charles the Mad', and much of France's political and military decline during his reign could be traced to the power vacuum left by his bouts of madness. The fear that his son had inherited this evil could have influenced the attempt to disinherit him with the Treaty of Troyes (1420). Such stigma was so common that Charles VII's court was cautious and skeptical on the issue of mental health. Upon Joan's arrival in Chinon, Royal Councilor Jacques Gélu warned: "No one should lightly alter any policy because of to the conversation with a girl, a peasant... so susceptible to illusions; one should not make a fool of himself in the sight of foreign nations." In addition, Juana was cunning until the end of her days, so much so that in the court of rehabilitation they often marveled at her sagacity: «[The judges] often changed from one question to another, varying the subject, despite what to which she answered prudently and displayed a marvelous memory." Her subtle answers during cross-examination even forced the court to stop holding public sessions.