Joan of Arc, St (c. 1412–1431)

Illustration of Joan of Arc from La Prophetie de Merlin. She led French troops to victory over the English in 1429, but was captured, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.

French military leader who inspired the French at the Siege of Orléans 1428–29 and at the Battle of Patay, north of Orléans, in 1429. As a young peasant girl, she was the wrong age, class, and gender to engage in warfare, yet her ‘heavenly voices’ instructed her to expel the English, who had occupied northern France during the Hundred Years' War, and secure the coronation of Charles VII of France. Because of her strength of character, she achieved both aims. Her subsequent attempt to take Paris was overambitious, however, and she was captured in May 1430 at Compiègne by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. She was found guilty of witchcraft and heresy by a tribunal of French ecclesiastics who supported the English, and burned to death at the stake in Rouen on 30 May 1431.

daughter of a prosperous farmer. She sought out Charles VII, then dauphin, at Chinon, northwestern France, and assembled a large army. After her success in relieving Orléans, she became known as the Maid of Orléans. She was canonized in 1920.

Charles made no attempt to save her when she was captured, but after the recapture of Normandy he instituted a retrial, held between 1450 and 1456, that exonerated her. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71, Joan experienced a revival as a military figurehead.