Life Summary of Joan of Arc (Jehanne D’arc)

"Joan was a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind that she finds no equal in a thousand years." - Sir Winston Churchill, from his book "The Birth of Britain".

Anno Domini 1412

IN the night of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th) at the end of the medieval Christmas season, in the year 1412 during the final waning period of relative peace secured by the Truce of Leulinghen, a baby was born to Jacques Darc (or "d'Arc") and his wife Isabelle in the village of Domrémy. She was christened Jehanne ("Joan"), apparently after her mother's sister Jehanne Lassois, or her godmothers Jehanne Royer, Jehanne de Viteau, and Jehanne "the wife of Mayor Aubéry". Lord Perceval de Boulainvilliers later claimed that the roosters of the village, "like heralds of a new joy", hailed her birth by crowing long before dawn, as if to announce a different type of dawn.

Her childhood was spent among the forests and strawberry-covered fields of the Meuse river valley, during a period of increasing trouble for the Kingdom of France. The throne at that time was occupied by the fourth king of the Valois dynasty, Charles VI (aka Charles "the Mad" or Charles "the Well-Beloved"), whose frequent delusional periods rendered him unable to govern. The monarchy was therefore placed in the hands of several members of the Royal family (the Dukes of Orléans, Burgundy [Bourgogne], Berri, and Bourbon, plus Queen Isabel), and this warm extended family had become embroiled in a vicious civil war after Duke Louis of Orléans was assassinated on the orders of his cousin Duke Jean-sans-Peur ["John the Fearless"] of Burgundy in 1407. France would henceforth be divided between the Orléanist (or Armagnac) faction and their Burgundian rivals. In May 1413, when Jehanne was still a baby, the conflict produced the Cabochien Revolt in Paris, a bloody uprising engineered by the Duke of Burgundy, led by a prominent Parisian butcher named Simon Caboche, and encouraged by a 42 year old clergyman and Burgundian partisan named Pierre Cauchon, whose pro-English sympathies would later lead him to commit his other best-known crime, Jehanne's conviction in 1431.

War with England was renewed in 1415, when Jehanne was three, after negotiators failed to extend the Truce of Leulinghen. Citing his family's old claim to the French throne, King Henry V of England invaded Normandy in August of that year, quickly gaining the port city of Harfleur and subsequently defeating the French Royal army, dominated by Armagnac leaders, near the little village of Aginçourt on October 25th in one of the most lopsided battles of the long war. Although the English may have been outnumbered by nearly eight to one, their losses are estimated to have been no more than about 500 whereas the French may have lost up to 10,000 (about a fourth of their army), including as many as three Dukes, five Counts, 92 Barons, and hundreds of lesser lords. The victory, greeted with joyous celebrations in England, was widely attributed to Henry V's piety. On the French side the battle produced shocked disbelief as word of the defeat slowly spread throughout the kingdom. King Charles is said to have exclaimed, "We are all lost and overthrown!" and shortly entered another of his "absent" periods. The aged Duke Jean de Berri lost generous numbers of his younger relatives and subsequently died, worn out and dismayed, eight months later. And the 50 year old Christine de Pisan, court writer and poet for the French Royal family, fell into a depression and finally entered a convent three years later when Paris came under occupation. She would not emerge from obscurity to write her final poem until a certain farmer's daughter began to reverse the tide of the war.

Aginçourt decimated the French aristocracy and severely weakened the Armagnac faction. Among the many nobles captured during the battle was Duke Charles d'Orléans himself, who was widely looked upon by both sides as a leader of prime importance - so much so that Henry V forbade him to be ransomed, thereby dooming Charles to serve 25 years as a prisoner of war. Jehanne would later take a special interest in this duke, who, she said, was especially loved by God.

(Although Henry himself often said that God had used the battle as a means of punishing the French aristocracy for their decadence. This explanation was one that he especially enjoyed giving to his French prisoners, a hobby that never seemed to weary him.)

Against this turbulent backdrop the members of the d'Arc family continued to farm their 50-some acres of land near the Meuse. Historians have long commented about the surprising amount of detailed information available about Jehanne's childhood, information which was somewhat paradoxically provided for us by an event which took place over 20 years after her death: when the English were finally driven from the site of her trial (Rouen) in November of 1449, steps were taken to launch an appeal of her case, generally referred to as the Rehabilitation Trial.

During the long course of this appeal 115 witnesses were questioned by the Inquisition, including 22 of the villagers who had known her during her early years; movingly, some of them still referred to her by her childhood nickname, "Jhenette" ("little Joan"). According to these witnesses, she had been a dutiful child who helped her parents with the chores along with her other siblings: her three older brothers Jacquemin, Jean, and Pierre, and her sister Catherine. One of her godfathers, a farmer named Jean Moreau from the nearby village of Greux, later recalled that "she was such a good girl that almost everyone in Domrémy loved her". A group of her former childhood companions, or others of approximately the same age, also testified; these were: Hauviette [by then the wife of Gerardin de Sionne], Mengette [the wife of Jean Joyart], Simonin Musnier, Isabelette d'Epinal, Michel Lebuin, Gerard Guillemette, Jean Jaquard, Jean Waterin, and someone listed in the transcript merely as "Colin, son of Jean Colin of Greux", who is believed to have married Catherine; these people remembered her as a "good, simple, sweet-natured girl" who "worked gladly" and "went to church gladly and often", especially to a chapel called Notre Dame de Bermont, to which she and Catherine would bring candles in honor of the Virgin Mary. "She was greatly committed to the service of God and the Blessed Mary," said Colin, "so that because of her devotion the other boys and I, who was young then, would laugh at her." Simonin Musnier remembered that "she helped those who were ill and gave alms to the poor, as I saw, because I was ill when I was a boy and Jehanne consoled me."

Although the transcript of the Condemnation Trial is unfortunately more readily available in translation, and this trial itself is the focus of a great number of movies and popular books, it is the transcript of the Rehabilitation trial which has provided historians with most of the details of her life, told in the testimony of the people who knew her best. The plotlines of the biographies and movies are ultimately derived from this testimony, albeit usually indirectly through secondary sources which quote portions of the transcript.

In her testimony at her own trial, Jehanne would say: "It was from my mother that I learned the Pater Noster (Our Father), the Ave Maria (Hail Mary), and the Credo (Apostles Creed)", and "to sew linen fabrics and to spin wool, and when it comes to spinning and sewing I fear no woman...". Catherine le Royer remembered that "she loved to spin wool, and spun well". She also loved to listen to the ringing of the church bells: Dominique Jacob, a priest of a nearby parish, remembered that "sometimes when they rang the bells for Compline [around 9 pm] in the village church, she would go down on her knees; and it seemed to me that she said her prayers with devotion." Jean Waterin similarly recalled that "when she was in the fields and heard the bell tolling she would go down on her knees". She sometimes chased down Perrin Drappier, the churchwarden at Domrémy, if he was remiss in performing his duties: "when I did not ring the bell for Compline she scolded me, saying that it was badly done; and then she promised to give me pieces of wool [or possibly "flat cakes"])" so that I would have the bells rung for Compline diligently".

War darkened this childhood, however. Henry V had returned in 1417, gaining important cities such as Caen and Rouen over the next several years: the latter fell in 1419 only after a six-month siege in which half the population died of starvation and disease. Although most of these deaths were unintentional and Henry V tried to discourage his troops from wanton looting and destruction, he himself had a cruel side to his personality: when someone once complained about the sacking of towns, he is said to have commented: "War without fire is worth nothing - like sausages without mustard." The cost of Henry's "mustard" was borne by the French. In some parts of northern France abandoned farms, vacated by the terrified populace, became overgrown with scrub and small trees. "The forests came back with the English" became a proverbial phrase.

With the French nobility - the traditional 'military caste' - taking a beating, and with the Armagnacs and Burgundians too busy with each other to halt the English, a popular French song of the era seems to spoof the plight of those Norman farmers who might wish to take up their poor weapons and try to drive out the English army themselves:

"Let each take his hoe, the better to uproot them. And if they do not wish to go, at least make a face at them. Do not fear to strike them, those big-bellied Godons [the standard slang term for English soldiers], for one of us is worth four of them, or at least he is worth three of them . . ."

The French have enjoyed many eras of glory, but this was not one of them.

A new leader was emerging at this time. Charles de Ponthieu, the young Dauphin [claimant to the throne] who would later become King Charles VII with Jehanne's help, was allied by this point with the Armagnacs; his mother the Queen was linked with the Burgundians. French loyalties were split between these two, Henry V, and various individual nobles who maintained their own policies or switched back and forth between the major factions. Sporadic fighting broke out throughout France and beyond.

In 1419, according to the surviving records, Jehanne's father pooled his money with another farm family to rent the use of a nearby fortress on an island in the Meuse, called the "Château de l'Ile", to serve as a secure sanctuary for the villagers and their livestock. On the wider stage of European politics, the same year witnessed the assassination of Duke Jean-sans-Peur of Burgundy by the Armagnacs, leading his successor Philippe-le-Bon ["Philip the Good"] to enter into full alliance with the English. A branch of the French Royal family was now willing to offer the throne to their English relatives.

In 1420, when Jehanne was eight, the Treaty of Troyes granted Henry V eventual title to the kingdom of France through marriage to Catherine de Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. Her brother the Dauphin Charles was disinherited, and France was divided between Henry V and the Duke of Burgundy. Among the men who helped negotiate the treaty was Pierre Cauchon, whose efforts were rewarded when his faction secured him appointment as Bishop of Beauvais, a position from which he would later prosecute Jehanne on behalf of the English. The appointment, as well as the later prosecution, was achieved with the help of his colleagues at the University of Paris, now filled with supporters of the Anglo-Burgundians after the others were expelled. The University's residual prestige within the Church would be put to use.

In 1422 Henry V and Charles VI died within two months of each other, leaving the infant Henry VI as the nominal ruler of both kingdoms. His regent in France, the Duke of Bedford, spent the next few years cementing alliances with the Dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, and engaging Armagnac forces in the field. The military situation swung in Bedford's favor with major victories at Cravant on July 31, 1423 and at Verneuil on August 17th of the following year, during which the Dauphin's Scottish allies were cut to pieces in a smaller-scale version of Aginçourt. The Scots lost some of their enthusiasm for the war after that point.

In the wake of defeat and frustration, demoralization set in within the Armagnac faction.

Around that time, perhaps in the summer of 1424, the young farm girl from Domrémy said she began to experience visions. She would later explain: "I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid. And this voice came, about the hour of noon, in the summer time, in my father's garden..."

A new chapter had begun for Jehanne and the various factions fighting for control of the Kingdom of France.