I’m in La Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, inside the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. One of those dukes was Philip the Good. He’s still known by that name, even though he’s the guy who turned Joan of Arc — the Maid of Orléans — over to the English during the Hundred Years War. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The museum has an awesome collection of gear from the 13th and 14th centuries. And if you’ve been reading along, perhaps you’ve figured out that they did a LOT of fighting back those days. Wicked fighting, too.
The museum has a nice collection of axes, daggers, long pointy things, and all kinds of implements especially designed to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the unfortunate recipient.
However, all was not lost for said recipient, since it’s likely they were wearing a suit of armor designed to fend off all those pointy implements. The museum has a nice display of real suits of armor from back in the day, too. It’s hard to imagine actually wearing one.
14th Century France, Enter Joan of Arc
But we still have unfinished business in 14th century France. The English, allied with Philip the Good, the current Duke of Burgundy, had conquered just about all of France. The Treaty of Troyes decreed that the heir to the French throne would be the English king’s son, and that the “real” heir to the throne, called the “Dauphin,” was out of luck.
The English had laid siege to the last remaining French stronghold — the fortified city of Orléans. The Dauphin, Charles VII, ran what was left of France from the city of Chinon. A teenage girl — Joan of Arc — managed to convince the Dauphin and his staff that she had a direct line to The Man upstairs. She told them she’d had a vision telling her to go and lead troops to save Orléans. She convinced them that she was the real deal.
When Joan arrived on the scene, Orléans had been under siege for six months. The situation was looking grim. But after Joan arrived, the French started making forays out to attack the English. Long story short, nine days later the English had been whupped at Orléans.
Orléans had been saved, for the moment at least, but much of the rest of country was still held by the English. And thanks to the Treaty of Troyes, the current heir to the French throne was still the wrong guy!
Vive Le Roi!
The English regrouped, expecting the re-energized French to try to take back Paris. The French fooled ‘em and went to the city of Reims instead, taking back town after town along the way. They even laid siege to the city of Troyes, where the infamous treaty had been signed. The city surrendered after only four days.
The huge cathedral at Reims is where all French kings had traditionally been crowned, so the day after they arrived, the French held a big coronation ceremony and crowned the Dauphin King of France. That would let everyone know what they thought of the Treaty of Troyes, eh?
The French had the momentum now, and their next task was to go and take back Paris. As usual, Joan was in the thick of it, and in the attack on Paris she took a hit in the leg by an arrow from an English crossbow. Yikes! You know that’s gotta hurt!
But there was worse to come. After taking back Paris, when the French were routing the English and Burgundians out of their remaining strongholds, Joan was captured by Burgundian forces. Guess who turned her over to the English? Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy.
Show-Trial in Rouen
The English put on a show-trial to convict Joan as a heretic so they could have an excuse to burn her at the stake. The trial was well-documented, making the evidence of the corrupt prosecutors part of history forever.
In the most famous part of the trial, the English prosecutors asked Joan a trick question, designed so that any answer she gave would prove her guilty. They asked her if she knew she was in God’s grace. If she said “yes,” she was a heretic, because Church doctrine stated that no human can know that. If she answered, “no,” then she was guilty of the crimes she was charged with.
You wanna know how she answered? She said, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”
Well, the prosecutors had no idea what to do with that answer, other than go back to the drawing board. In one account of the trial, the word used to describe them after Joan’s answer was “stupefied.” Score one for Joan.
But there was no way she was getting out of those rigged proceedings. The English burned her at the stake. The date was May 30th, 1431. It took another 20 years for the English to be routed out of France, putting an end to the Hundred Years War.
Saint Joan of Arc — The Maid of Orléans
Not long thereafter, the Church conducted a retrial, concluded what everyone knew – that the English trial had been fixed — and declared Joan innocent. It’s said that because of the great interest in her story, but also because of the two trials, more research has been done and more is known about Joan of Arc than any other figure from the Middle Ages. And when the testimony, documents, and details of her story are all put together, it’s beyond amazing. In 1920, she was canonized as Saint Joan of Arc.
To be continued…
The featured image is an amazing painting by Jan Matejko titled “The Maid of Orléans.” It depicts Joan of Arc’s entrance into Reims in 1429. It’s housed in the National Museum, Poznań, Poland.
