Joan of Arc – Witch or Saint?

A brief introduction

Joan of Arc is a figure that has baffled many historians because her life is full of miracles that cannot really be explained rationally. All of this, combined with her being a French icon second only to “Marianne,” makes her a particularly fascinating figure.

Dr. Alon Klibanov, a military historian and expert on the history of France, tells us its story in a fascinating hour and a half lecture that you can listen to immediately. If you prefer to read further, below is a summary of the lecture that contains its important details.

Hence, Dr. Klibanov has permission to speak.

The Hundred Years' War

Before we begin to tell the story of Joan of Arc, we must give a brief overview of The Hundred Years' War During which she appeared on the stage of history.

In order to understand this war, it is necessary to go back to 1328. In that year, King Charles IV of France (4-1294) died without a male heir, and the main branch of the Capetian dynasty came to an end (if you would like to read more about the events that led to this, you are invited to read Dr. Orna Lieberman’s article The Migdal Nell Affair: Acts of Adultery in the Royal Court).

The two main contenders for the French crown were Philip of Molois, nephew of Philip IV, father of Charles IV, the recently deceased king, and Edward III of England, son of Charles IV's sister Isabel.

Ultimately, Philip, Count of Valois, was elected King of France thanks to the Salic Law, which prevented women from inheriting the French crown, and became King Philip VI (6-1328). Edward, King of England, did not accept the evil decree and in 1350 declared war on the King of France. Although France was considered the most powerful country in Europe at the time, the King of England managed to defeat it at the Battle of Crecy (1337) and the Battle of Poitiers (1346), during which the King of France, John II (1356-2), was captured.

The King of England and his son Edward the “Black Prince” managed to do this through the use of the longbow, which made a name for itself in the army of the King of France, and through war tactics, which managed to take the sting out of the cavalry, on which the French army relied. The result of all these victories was the conquest of vast territories in France, to the point that it seemed that the King of England might fulfill his plan and become a kind of emperor dominating the territories of England and France.

However, in 1377 the wheel turned. Edward the Black Prince died of dysentery and his father, Edward III, died a year later. In their place, Richard II (2-1378), a very young and weak king, came to power. At the same time, a few years earlier, King Charles V (1399-5), known as “the Wise,” came to power in France and, together with his minister of war Bertrand de Guequin They manage to expel the English from most of the territories they conquered.

And so, at the end of the 14th century, it seemed that the war between England and France was going to end, but it turned out that this was only the first half of the struggle...

The Hundred Years' War – Second Round

In 1380, Charles V and Bertrand de Gueclain died and King Charles VI (5-6) ascended the throne of France. In 1380, the king suffered his first bout of madness and the Kingdom of France entered an era of political instability. Into this political vacuum, the Dukes Burgundy and the Duke of Orléans, who compete with each other for both the queen's love and actual control of the kingdom.

In 1407, the Duke of Burgundy, “Jean the Fearless,” managed to assassinate the Duke of Orléans on one of the streets of Paris (you can read about this in the article The murder on Barbet Street that almost destroyed France). However, in 1419, the Count of Armagnac manages to get his revenge and murder him on the Montreux bridge (a suburb of Paris). Since the Count, who was the head of the Orléans faction in the kingdom, was supported by the King of France, the son of the murdered Duke of Burgundy decides to go over to the English side.

As a result of this and the Battle of Agincourt, which took place about 4 years before the murder of the Duke of Burgundy and during which King Henry V of England (5-1413) defeated the French army, France reached the worst situation it had ever been in. The King of England managed to convince the defeated King of France, whose kingdom was being torn apart by noble rebellions, to give him his daughter Catherine. It was also decided that the son born of this match would become King of France upon the death of Charles VI.

In 1421, Henry V and his wife Catherine of Molois had a son, who was also named Henry. Shortly afterwards, Henry V and Charles VI died one after the other and the new king (Henry VI) was proclaimed King of France. Although Charles VI had a son (Charles VII), he was a weak and unsympathetic man and seemed unwilling to fight for his kingdom. Thus, he found himself ruling a small part of France and was nicknamed “King of Bourges,” after the small town inLoire valley There he sat.

And then, when all seems lost and it seems that France will become an English province, appears on stage Joan of Arc!

The story of Joan of Arc

Jeanne was born in 1412 or 1413 in the town of Domrémy in the region Lorraine To Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle de Roma. The reason we don't know the exact year of her birth is that a few years after she was born, the armies of the Duke of Burgundy invaded the village and burned the church where the book in which all the births and deaths were recorded was located.

She begins her career like any other peasant girl, helping in the household and in the fields. However, in 1425, while walking in the fields of the village, Saint Michel, Saint Marguerite and Saint Catherine appear to her, calling her to expel the English from her homeland and crown the King of France. These visions return again and again and Joan of Arc flees to the provincial town of Vaucouleurs in order to find allies who will help her achieve her goal. There, after quite a few efforts, she manages to convince one of the military commanders to instead provide her with an armed escort to the castle of Chinon, where Charles VII was living at the time.

Joan of Arc manages to pass through the lands of the Duke of Burgundy and evade his army and the English armies through a series of miracles, and eventually she arrives at the castle of Chinon. Charles VII decides to test her strength and dresses one of his courtiers in royal attire, while he walks to the end of the room. When Joan of Arc enters the hall, she is not confused, she walks past the pretender to the king, reaches Charles VII and kneels before him.

The stunned king agrees to give Joan of Arc armor, a sword, and an army, which she leads to the besieged city of Orleans, one of the most strategically important cities in the Loire Valley. She addresses the English commander, who is besieging the city, and demands that he leave France in order to save his own life and the lives of his soldiers. After the commander responds with disdain to her appeal, Joan of Arc's army attacks the English and miraculously, despite being smaller than the English army, manages to defeat them and lift the siege. There, Joan of Arc earns the nickname that will accompany her to this day: "The Virgin of Orleans."

The next step in Joan of Arc's plans was to crown Charles VII as king in Reims Cathedral, where it was customary to crown all French kings. In an impressive military campaign in which she easily captured the cities of Auxerre and Troyes from the English and the Duke of Burgundy, she arrived in Rennes on July 7, 16. Charles VII was crowned shortly afterwards, and Joan of Arc and her family were given a title of nobility as a reward for their actions.

The fall of Joan of Arc

The coronation in Reims was the pinnacle of Joan of Arc's career, but from that point on the miracles ended. After the coronation, she turned with her army toParis But there in the battle near the gate of Saint Honore (The 8rd District (Today's) She was injured. It later turned out that she had predicted this injury, which turned out to be a relatively minor and superficial one, and had told her friends about it before it happened. However, she also predicted that her end was approaching and that she did not have much time left to try to drive out the English.

In May 1430, Joan of Arc heard that the Burgundians were besieging the city of Compiègne and she marched with her army to the city to help its inhabitants lift the siege, as she had done before at Orléans. However, in the ensuing battle, the Burgundians had the upper hand and Joan of Arc's army fled inside the city walls. Because she was in the rear of the force, she did not manage to enter the city before the gate closed, and she was captured by the Burgundians on May 23.

The Burgundians, who realize what treasure they have fallen into, negotiate with the English for money to hand it over to them, and ultimately do so for the considerable sum of 10,000 pounds. The English transfer it to the city of Rouen, whichNormandy, which functioned as the de facto capital of their French territories, and are beginning to prepare for a show trial in which she will be accused of heresy.

And what about Charles VII, you ask? He didn't lift a finger to try to free her from the Burgundians, and he could have done so by paying a higher ransom...

The trial was entrusted to Bishop Pierre Cauchon, who gathered around him a number of clergymen who supported the English and the Burgundians (a large number of whom came, by the way, fromSorbonne (Because Paris was occupied by the English at the time.) Although Joan of Arc was illiterate, she managed to amaze the judges and investigators with the answers she gave to their questions, answers that only an expert in theology could give.

Since Joan of Arc did not break down and did not incriminate herself, Cauchon was forced to resort to a trick. He promised her that if she would sign a statement in which she renounced some of her actions, D'Arc signed the document and a few days later she suddenly discovered that her clothes had disappeared from her locker and in their place were men's trousers and a shirt. Since it was very cold and because she did not want to be seen naked, she put on these clothes, thus violating the details of the agreement she had signed.

Cauchon immediately took advantage of this and the trial resumed. Joan of Arc was convicted of heresy and sentenced to be burned at the stake in the market square of Rouen. She was executed on May 30, 1431, and it is said that moments before she was burned she asked to kiss the cross. An English soldier took a number of twigs, fashioned a cross from them, put it on a spear, and held it to Joan of Arc's lips. Shortly after this, Joan of Arc died and her body was burned twice, before being thrown into the Seine River, so that no part of her would become a sacred item among her supporters.

The end of the Hundred Years' War

The execution of Joan of Arc failed to change the dynamics of the expulsion of the English from France, only to delay it slightly. In the following years, the English began to slowly lose the territories they had conquered, for several reasons:

• Internal instability, which arose as a result of their King Henry VI losing his sanity (he inherited Charles VI's illness through his mother, who was the daughter of the King of France).
• Charles VII managed to separate the Burgundians from the English through the Treaty of Arras, signed in 7, causing them to lose an important ally.
• Some time after the death of Joan of Arc, another powerful woman entered the life of the King of France, named Agnes SorelAgnes, who became the first official mistress of the King of France, encouraged Charles VII to adopt a more aggressive policy against the English and even helped him finance an artillery corps that would become the best in Europe.
• The memory of Joan of Arc and her brutal execution instilled a fighting spirit among French soldiers. This spirit helped them win quite a few battles against the English.

Thus, following a series of successful military campaigns, Charles VII succeeded in 7 in expelling the English from almost all of France (except Calais), and in 1453 the Treaty of Piquiny was signed, officially ending the Hundred Years' War (which actually lasted 1473 years).

Joan of Arc becomes a saint and a French symbol

The trial, which was conducted with the blessing of Pope Calixtus III, was conducted by various theologians, and in the end, Joan of Arc was declared righteous and her sentence was overturned.

The annulment of the trial results and Joan of Arc's fight against the English made her a French symbol, and during the 19th century, attempts began to make her a saint of the Catholic Church. These attempts bore fruit, and in 1920 Pope Benedict XV declared her a saint, after quite a few miracles had been recorded in her name over the previous years.

As a result, statues of Joan of Arc “flood” France today and can be found in a very large part of the churches there. However, her most famous statue is not in a church but rather on Rue de Rivoli in Paris, not far fromThe Louvre Museum.

As you can see, this statue is gilded, but few know that those responsible for it were none other than the Germans during World War II. In this way, they hoped to endear themselves to the city's residents and drive a wedge between them and their English allies, against whom Joan of Arc fought. As you know, it didn't work out so well.

And so today, Joan of Arc continues to be a symbol that has rarely succeeded in uniting French society, which is divided between right and left. The reason for this is that the right sees her as a model of patriotism (which is why many right-wing demonstrations take place near her statue on Rue de Rivoli). On the other hand, the left sees her as both a feminist symbol and a symbol of a woman from a low social class who succeeded where the king and the nobility failed.

In days of distress and tension on the streets of France, Joan of Arc managed to unite the country's citizens around her image, another miracle! Perhaps we will also record the same conference that the saint brought about?