duke of Bedford. Meanwhile, with Charles VI dead the same year, Charles VII, the
French “dauphin,” or crown prince, was disheartened by defeats. Only in 1429 did
his mood change: Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), a sixteen-year-old peasant girl from
Domrémy (part of a small enclave in northern France still loyal to the dauphin),
arrived at Chinon, where Charles was holed up, to convince him and his theologians
that she had been divinely sent to defeat the English. As she wrote in an audacious
letter to the English commanders, “The Maid [as she called herself] has come on
behalf of God to reclaim the blood royal. She is ready to make peace, if you [the
English] are willing to settle with her by evacuating France.”^6
In effect, Jeanne inherited the moral capital that had been earned by the Beguines
and other women mystics. When the English forces laid siege to Orléans (the prelude
to their moving into southern France—see Map 8.3), Jeanne not only wrote the letter
to the English quoted above but was allowed to join the French army. Its
“miraculous” defeat of the English at Orléans (1429) turned the tide. “Oh! What an
honor for the feminine sex!” wrote the poet Christine de Pisan (c.1364–c.1431),
continuing,
It is obvious that God loves it
That all those vile people,
Who had laid the whole kingdom to waste—
By a woman this realm is now made safe and sound,
Something more than five thousand men could not have done—
And those traitors purged forever!^7
Soon thereafter Jeanne led Charles to Reims, deep in English territory, where he was
anointed king. Captured by Burgundians in league with the English in 1430, Jeanne
was ransomed by the English and tried as a heretic the following year. Found guilty,
she was famously burned, eventually becoming a symbol of martyrdom as well as
triumphant French resistance.
In fact it took many more years, indeed until 1453, for the French to win the war.
One reason for the French triumph was their systematic use of gunpowder-fired
artillery: in one fifteen-month period around 1450, the French relied heavily on siege
guns such as cannons to capture more than seventy English strongholds. Diplomatic
relations helped the French as well: after 1435, the duke of Burgundy abandoned the
