A French national heroine, accused of 70 crimes and burned at the stake at only 19. Joan of Arc certainly had an unusual adolescence compared to most of us: wars, thrones, and the occasional visions of God… made even more complicated by sexism and the betrayal of a King. Not exactly your typical coming-of-age story. Unless yours also involved saving a nation as a teen.
When Joan of Arc was born around 1412, France had been fighting England for 75 years. The situation wasn’t looking good for France: England had taken control much of the French territory, and not one French ruler had secured their crown.
There were prophecies circulating around town, with one apparently coming from the wizard Merlin, saying that a maiden would come
out of an ancient forest to rescue France. But how was this Joan of Arc’s business anyway? She was but one of the many illiterate
peasant girls who barely knew how to write her own name, let alone saving a whole nation.
But Joan was also kind of special. When she was 12, she began hearing voices and experiencing visions: signs from God delivered by
angels and saints, accompanied by a bright light and the sound of bells.
They told her to merely attend church and live piously at first, but when she grew older, the mission became a serious one: they instructed her to save France from the invading English, and to establish the dauphin Charles, the uncrowned heir to the French throne, as the country’s rightful king.
At the time, the crown of France was in dispute between the dauphin Charles and the English king Henry VI. The dauphin’s cause was increasingly hopeless because Reims, the traditional place for the investiture of French kings, was well within the territory held by his enemies.
Joan took on the mission regardless.
She persuaded a local government leader to escort her through English-held territory to meet and convince the dauphin to let her lead his armies and help him regain the throne.
The dauphin questioned Joan at first, so he set up a test: when Joan was ushered in, the dauphin wasn’t sitting on his
royal chair; one of his friends was lounging there, while the dauphin himself was hiding in the crowd. But Joan picked out the dauphin
immediately amidst the many courtiers, speaking directly to him: she was too good.
As you could imagine, the dauphin believed Joan’s claim that God had chosen her to lead. He ordered the army to take back the city
of Orléans, accompanied by 17-year-old Joan.
The latter fought as a man: she cropped her hair short and donned a suit of white armour. It didn’t take along after that for Joan to help the French troops secure victory in March 1429.
The dauphin took back his crown a few months later, becoming the King Charles VII that we all know.
That wasn’t the end of the story, however. After winning a few more battles, Joan was eventually captured in one and held captive for more than a year. She was accused, amongst some other 70 charges, of witchcraft and, most notably, the crime of dressing as a man. Indeed, what’s a more cliché way to sentence a woman to death?
And why am I not even surprised that the newly crowned King Charles VII couldn’t even be bothered to come to Joan’s aid? Thanks for nothing, Your Majesty?
So, in the end, Joan was burned at the stake at 19. Why does this sort of death sound so familiar?
People usually say that Joan fought because she believed that she was acting under divine guidance.
And then some say that she was but one of the crazy women: migraines, bipolar disorder, brain lesions… take your pick. Probably just one of those neurological and psychiatric conditions that trigger hallucinations and delusions.
Others say that she contracted bovine tuberculosis from drinking unpasteurised milk, which can also cause seizures and dementia.
By all means, no one believes that she was actually just courageous. Or maybe ambitious. A fearless fighter who was just bold and adventurous. She did things that not many of us would dare to do, so, my fellow men-children, won’t we just let a courageous woman be?
French vocabulary:
We have never lacked women who fight: long before the story of Joan of Arc, Mulan was another young girl who fought as a man. Perhaps what we really need, then, is a world that allows women to fight as women.
