Joan of Arc: God's Warrior (2015) Movie Script
On the 8th of May 1429,
the town of Orleans in France
erupted in celebration.
For seven long months,
it had been under siege by the English,
but now, after just four days of fighting,
the town had been liberated.
And the people of Orleans knew
they had witnessed a miracle.
The speed of their liberation
was astonishing enough.
But what confirmed it as a miracle
was the identity of their liberator.
She was a peasant girl,
and she was just 17
Her name was Joan.
She was a truly extraordinary figure,
a female warrior in an age
that believed women couldnt
fight, let alone lead an army.
Take care what you do for in truth,
I am sent by God and you
put yourself in great danger.
These are Joans own words,
recorded in a contemporary manuscript.
Six centuries after her death,
her words transport us
back into her life and times.
To understand Joans story,
we need to explore a world
where God and the devil are real.
Today, were more
aware than weve been,
perhaps for centuries,
of the power of faith
to drive people to do
extraordinary things for good or ill.
And in a world where
Gods will is at work,
anything is possible.
Over the centuries Joan
has become an icon
to almost everyone,
to the left and the right,
to Catholics and Protestants,
traditionalists and feminists.
Shes captured the
imagination of novelists,
playwrights, artists and musicians,
and her fame has
spread all over the world,
taking her from France to Hollywood.
Ive been studying the medieval
world for almost 30 years,
and I feel pretty confident in saying
shes had more pop
songs written about her
than anyone else from the Middle Ages.
But for all the images of
Joan that have been created
since her death,
only one picture of her survives
which was made in her own lifetime.
And its here, a drawing,
almost a doodle,
in the margin of the records
of the Paris parlement.
It shows what a remarkable
and troubling figure Joan was.
The clerk knew that the army at Orleans
had a young woman with them
who was carrying a
banner and a sword.
But hed never seen her.
Either he didnt yet know,
or couldnt quite believe,
that Joan actually,
shockingly, had short hair
and wore male armour.
Instead, hes made her
look as a woman should,
with long hair,
modestly wearing a dress.
But while theres only this
one faint image of Joan,
unusually for anyone in the Middle Ages
let alone a lowborn woman,
a great deal was written about
her by her contemporaries.
Even more importantly, her own words
have reached us through the centuries
with an astonishing strength and clarity.
And one of the most remarkable
and revealing documents of all
is the transcript of Joans
trial for heresy in 1431.
This is the most detailed
record that survives
from any medieval trial.
And through it,
we can hear Joans own voice.
Here, she describes the first time
she heard a message from God
when she was just 13 years old.
At first, I was very afraid.
The voice came at
midday in the summer time
in my fathers garden.
The voice on my right
side towards the church
and I seldom hear it without a light.
The light comes from the
same side as the voice,
but all around, there is a great light.
It seemed to me to be a worthy voice,
and I believe that the
voice was sent from God.
Once I heard the voice three times,
I knew that it was the voice of an angel.
We might ask, was Joan mad or ill?
But for the people of the Middle Ages,
the issues were entirely different.
They knew that angels and
demons did communicate
with people of completely sound mind.
The problem wasnt how to
explain Joan hearing voices
that werent there,
the problem was how to tell
whether the voices came to her
from God or the devil.
Joan received her first vision
when she was living with
her family in Domremy,
a small village in the east of France.
But the France that Joan was born into
wasnt nearly as
peaceful as it looks now.
It was a country torn apart by war.
For generations, England and France
had been fighting in what we
call the Hundred Years War.
Land including the
countryside where Joan lived
was fought over by the two sides.
And the English even
claimed the crown of France.
During Joans childhood,
France was very much on the back foot.
In 1415, when she was three,
the French suffered a dreadful defeat
at the hands of Henry V on
the battlefield of Agincourt.
The French army vastly
outnumbered the English,
but as the flower of the
French nobility advanced
they were mown down by a
barrage of English arrows.
History has attributed the
English victory at Agincourt
to the supremacy of their archers
but at the time,
the French saw it differently.
For the people who were there,
the explanation for
this astounding victory
was the will of God.
Henry claimed that God
was on the English side,
but the French knew
that couldnt be right.
So how were they to
explain this bloody defeat?
Perhaps it was Gods
punishment for their sins
because France was
convulsed in civil war.
The old king, Charles VI,
was mad and incapable of ruling.
Two factions known as the
Burgundians and the Armagnacs
were fighting for control
of his government.
In the medieval world,
everything came down to God.
Whose side was he on?
Just five years after Agincourt,
France was so bitterly divided
that the Burgundians
were prepared to believe
that God did back the English
and made an alliance with them.
But Joan and her family
supported the Armagnacs,
led by the French
Kings son, the dauphin,
and believed God was with them.
And so the civil war went on.
For eight years, defeat
followed defeat, until the dauphin
and his Armagnac
supporters were pushed back,
south of the great
curve of the river Loire.
For Joan, as for the rest
of the people of France,
the war was a frightening reality.
Her home, Domremy,
was an Armagnac village
surrounded by English
and Burgundian territory.
At one point the village was
attacked by enemy soldiers
and Joan, her family and
friends had to take refuge
for a few days in a nearby town.
So perhaps its no surprise
that when Joan began to hear voices,
they talked about the war.
They said, she must go to the dauphin.
He would give her an army
and then she must drive
the English out of France
and lead the dauphin to his coronation.
Joan wasnt unique in claiming
to hear heavenly voices.
She wasnt the only person
in 15th century France
who came forward with
a message from God.
What was remarkable
was what Joans voice
was telling her to do.
To fight and to lead.
This was an impossible proposition.
Joan was young,
she was poor, and she was female
and to put her mission into action,
she had to reach the dauphin
across more than 250 miles
of enemy territory.
Surely, it couldnt be done.
At some point during 1428,
Joan managed to reach here,
the town of Vaucouleurs,
a little more than 10
miles north of Domremy,
which housed the nearest
garrison loyal to the dauphin.
But its captain sent her
away with a flea in her ear.
The girl was clearly a fantasist,
her family, he said,
should take her home
and give her a few slaps.
But Joan wouldnt give up.
Word of her mission began to spread.
And when she came back to
Vaucouleurs in February 1429,
the captain agreed to send
her to the dauphins court.
What had happened
to change his mind?
The evidence isnt at all clear.
When Joan eventually
set off from Vaucouleurs,
the people here gave her a horse
and an outfit of mens clothes
to keep her safe on
her dangerous journey.
Clearly, they believed in her.
But that wouldnt be
enough to secure access
to the dauphin himself.
We cant be sure exactly what happened
but there is one more clue.
One of the six men who were
given the job of escorting Joan
was a messenger from
the dauphins court.
It seemed that someone there
had heard of Joans claims
and now the dauphin
wanted to hear more.
Like all medieval leaders,
the dauphin knew
that his authority was
bestowed on him by God.
He went to mass twice a
day and looked for signs
of Gods will in the world around him
wherever they came from.
The truth is the dauphin
was also desperate
and it had to be said that, by now,
anything, even the
ravings of a peasant girl
was worth a try.
As Joan set out on her perilous journey
to the dauphins court in Chinon,
the situation for the
Armagnacs was getting worse.
For five months, the English
had been besieging Orleans,
a key Armagnac
stronghold on the river Loire.
If Orleans fell,
the dauphins lands in the south
of the kingdom would lie
open to English attack.
On the 12th of February 1429,
a skirmish between the two
sides ended in a massacre.
More than 400 of the
dauphins soldiers died that day.
The English casualties
numbered just four.
The dauphin was here
in his fortress at Chinon
when he heard the terrible news.
He redoubled his prayers
but the siege went on.
And then, just 11 days
after the massacre,
a little band of six armed men,
dusty from the road,
arrived here at his
great castle of Chinon.
With them rode a girl, dressed as a boy,
her dark hair cut short.
She had come, she said,
with a message from God.
Amid the luxury and
ceremony of the Armagnac court,
this village girl dressed as a boy
was an extraordinary sight.
And her message was as
startling as the girl herself.
If the dauphin would give her an army,
she would save his kingdom
and bring him his crown.
But the dauphin had a problem.
Her words were intoxicating
and terrifying at the same time.
If the dauphin put his
faith in a false prophet
sent by the devil,
his kingdom of France
would be lost forever.
But if he rejected a true prophet,
the result would be equally disastrous.
Could Joan really
have been sent by God?
How to tell whether visions
came from God or the devil
was a hot topic of theological debate.
The greatest contemporary
French theologian,
a man named Jean Gerson,
had even written a book on the subject.
This is a late 15th century
copy of Gersons work,
De Probatione Spiritum,
On the Proving of Spirits.
Its a sort of manual
to guide investigators
through the process of establishing
whether visions might
truly have come from God.
It offers a helpful Latin checklist
which sets out the
basics of the examination.
Ask who, what, why,
to whom, what kind, whence?
In other words, ask what the
nature of the vision shows
about where it might come from
and what the nature of the person
having the visions suggests
about how authentic they might be.
So 17-year-old Joan was
questioned for three weeks
by the best theologians
Armagnac France could muster.
From the outset Joan
deeply troubled these men.
Her message was shocking enough.
She dared to say that
shed been sent to make war
on the English despite the fact
that God hadnt made
women to be soldiers.
But whats more,
she wore mens clothes,
and the Old Testament
said that a woman
in mens clothing was an
abomination unto the Lord.
But one person who doesnt seem
to have been anxious remarkably
enough was Joan herself.
Here she was,
an uneducated village girl,
on her own,
hundreds of miles from home,
being questioned for weeks
by courtiers and clerics.
It should have been a
profoundly intimidating situation.
But in all the contemporary
accounts of what Joan did
and said, theres no
sign of fear or doubt.
The essence of her message was,
God has sent me.
I know what I need to do.
Let me go and do it.
And it was Joans certainty
that offered a way out of
the problem she posed.
The theologians could find
no fault with her conduct,
but they needed a sign, they said,
to prove that her voices
truly came from heaven.
They asked how she
would carry out her promise
to take the dauphin to be crowned
at the ancient cathedral of Reims,
given that the besieged town of Orleans
lay directly in the way.
Joans answer was simple.
She would raise the siege herself.
Suddenly, for the dauphin and his court
at the great fortress of Chinon,
everything was clear.
Orleans would be a
test of Joans mission.
If she succeeded,
it would be a sign from God
that everything she claimed was true.
If she failed, Orleans
would still be under siege,
just as it was now, and the
dauphin would know for sure
that her promises were
nothing but a delusion.
And so the theologians
reached their verdict.
The dauphin, they said,
should not prevent her
from going to Orleans with his soldiers
but should have her
escorted there honourably
placing his faith in God.
And now that the
decision had been made,
preparations for the task
ahead began in earnest.
There were soldiers to
muster and supplies to collect.
Clerks scoured the
archives for prophecies
that might foretell Joans coming.
And Joan herself asked
the dauphin to send
to the nearby town of
Fierbois for a sword
that she said lay hidden there
in the Church of St. Catherine.
Sure enough,
and to everyones amazement,
the sword was found
where shed predicted.
The symbolism was lost on no one.
Christian warriors,
from King Arthur to Charlemagne,
carried holy swords.
And this one appropriately
came to Joan from St. Catherine,
the patron saint of young virgins.
How did Joan know
where the sword was?
She said her voices had told her.
So was this her first miracle?
Well, thats one way of
reading of the evidence.
On the other hand,
she had stopped in Fierbois
on her way here and St.
Catherines Church
was a place where over the years,
soldiers had left many offerings,
including their swords.
But, however Joan had come to know
about this sword in particular,
the point was that Joan herself
and her supporters believed
it was a miraculous proof of her mission.
The dauphin ordered a fine suit of armour
to be specially made
for her slender frame,
and a banner for her to carry into battle,
made of shining white silk
with a painted Christ flanked
on either side by angels.
During these weeks of preparation,
Joan had a chance to practice
riding a horse among soldiers,
to get used to her armour
and to find out more
about the war she had come to fight.
But she was no less impatient
than when she had
first arrived at Chinon.
And now, she sent her first
challenge to the English.
The challenge came
in the form of a letter.
Joan couldnt write,
so she dictated it to a clerk
and its text survives here,
in the transcript of her trial.
Joans fearlessness is unmistakable.
The village girl from
Domremy speaks for God,
so she has no hesitation in
addressing the king of England.
Restore to the maid,
who is sent here by God,
the king of heaven,
the keys to the fine towns
that you have taken
and violated in France.
King of England, if you do not do this,
I am the military leader
and wherever I find your men in France,
I will make them leave,
whether they want to or not
and if they will not obey,
I will have them killed.
With her challenge dispatched,
Joan and her military convoy
set off along the river
Lorie towards Orleans.
On the 26th of April,
Joan approached the town itself
and for the first time,
the English army at Orleans
set eyes on the teenage girl in armour.
To the English, a girl in mens clothes
riding among soldiers
could only be a whore
and a sign of the dauphins desperation.
But to the people of besieged Orleans,
she was a saviour, come to rescue them.
The English had too few troops
to enforce a total
blockade round Orleans
and Joan was able to slip into
the town on the eastern side.
She was welcomed
like an angel from God,
one of the townsmen said,
and delirious crowds
reached out to touch her as
she rode through the streets.
But while Joan smiled
at the hopeful crowds,
privately, she was
incandescent with fury.
She wanted to attack the English.
But the dauphin was still so unsure
of what form her miracle might take
that hed ordered her
soldiers back to their base.
So she found herself
inside the besieged town,
with no army to break the
siege as shed promised.
Joan was left kicking her heels,
climbing the town walls
to shout to the English
that they should surrender to God.
All she got in return was abuse.
Did she really think, they jeered,
that they should give
themselves up to a woman
and her pimps?
The dauphins captain was in a fix.
The people of the town
expected Joan to save them
but without an army,
she could do nothing.
So he slipped out of the
town and rode to the dauphin
to beg him to send the soldiers back.
It took him four days but his
argument was irrefutable.
How could God send a sign,
if Joan had no way of
putting her mission to the test?
By the 4th of May,
Joan had her soldiers, and at last,
the battle for Orleans could begin.
Joan led her men from the front,
carrying her banner and urging them on.
Medieval warfare was brutal and bloody
and for the first time,
she saw death in battle at first hand.
That night her mood was
sombre and the next day,
she wrote again to the English enemy
demanding their surrender.
She attached the letter to an arrow
and had it fired into the English camp.
When it dropped to the ground,
the shouts could be
heard in the distance.
News from the Armagnac whore.
But for all the abuse
they hurled her way,
after two more days of fighting,
the English were rattled.
And finally, on the 7th of May,
their day of reckoning had come.
The decisive Battle of
Orleans was fought here,
where the English held a fortified tower
known as the Tourelles.
If Joan could take the Tourelles,
the English hold on
Orleans would be broken.
Once again Joan was up at dawn.
She said her prayers and
then led her men into battle.
English missiles rained
down from the ramparts
as the Armagnac soldiers
hurled themselves into the fight.
Hours passed,
but still Joan urged them on
until an arrow caught her
between her neck and shoulder.
As they saw her
staggering and bloodied,
the Armagnacs faltered.
Was this the moment when God
would disown the Maid?
But a flesh wound
couldnt stop Joans mission.
She brandished her banner
and pressed forward into the
ditch at the foot of the tower.
As her soldiers followed
her into the attack,
sudden fear gripped the English.
Their captain lost his
footing and toppled,
fully armed, into the river.
As he drowned,
panic spread among his men.
And by sundown,
Joan had won a famous victory.
After seven months of siege,
the Maid had freed
Orleans in just four days.
Who could doubt Joan now?
This was proof that God
intended her to pursue her mission.
And as she and the
dauphins other captains
prepared to drive the English
from the valley of the Loire,
news of her miracle began to spread.
Just three days after the battle,
an Italian merchant in Bruges
wrote to tell his father in Venice
what this maiden
shepherdess had done.
It seems,, he said,
that she may be another St.
Catherine come down to Earth.
Meanwhile Joan herself was
growing into her new stature.
In February, she had
been a simple village girl.
Now, it was June and
a young nobleman
who met her was
dazzled by her charisma,
by the presence of one sent by God.
It seemed to me a gift from
heaven that she was there,
he said, and that I was
seeing and hearing her.
And Joans determination
to pursue her mission
was stronger than ever.
Orleans had been her test,
and victory her sign.
Now came her true purpose.
To crown the dauphin
and to drive the English
out of France forever.
For centuries, French
kings had been crowned
in the great cathedral at Reims
and Joan was determined
to see her dauphin
crowned there too.
But Reims lay more
than a hundred miles
northeast of Orleans,
in the heart of English
and Burgundian France.
It had been years since the dauphin
had even thought of
riding to war in person.
Now, the Maid was
going to take him deep
into enemy territory.
Joan and the dauphin rode at
the head of the biggest army
he could muster.
And the combination of
thousands of soldiers
with Joans implacable
will driving them on,
proved irresistible.
Joans momentum was unstoppable.
Some towns held out for a few days,
others opened their gates straight away.
On the 16th of July 1429,
just two and a half weeks
after leaving the Loire valley,
Joan, the dauphin and the
Armagnac army arrived in Reims.
At last, the dauphin could be crowned
as the most Christian king of France.
Here in the cathedral in Reims
was kept a flask of holy oil,
that had been sent from heaven
to Frances first Christian king
almost a thousand years before.
Every French king since
then had been anointed with it
during the sacred ritual of his coronation
and now, the dauphin
would be no exception.
A coronation would usually
take weeks of preparation,
but there was no time to lose.
The dauphins servants
worked through the night
and at nine the very next morning,
he entered this sacred space
to receive his crown from God.
Just four months earlier,
the Armagnac cause had
been at its lowest ebb.
Now, the dauphin was
anointed and crowned
as King Charles VII of France.
And beside him stood Joan
the Maid in her shining armour
with her banner in her hand.
When the ceremony was over,
she knelt at his feet.
Noble king, she said,
Gods will is done.
It was a triumph.
But Joans mission was far from finished.
Joan wanted to drive the
English out of France forever.
To do this she needed
to unite the country
under the newly crowned king
and France was still divided by civil war.
The Burgundians under
the Duke of Burgundy
looked to the King of
England as their sovereign.
So Joan wrote to the Duke to
ask him to acknowledge her king
as the rightful King of France.
I bring you words
from the king of heaven,
that you will win no battle
against loyal Frenchmen,
and all those who wage war
against the holy kingdom
of France wage war
against King Jesus, the king of heaven
and of the whole world.
Know surely that however
many men you bring against us,
they will win nothing at all,
and great sorrow will be
the result of the great battle.
The Duke of Burgundy didnt deign
to respond to this presumptuous letter.
Any change in his position
would be on his own terms,
not those of a peasant girl.
As for Joans king,
he was in a stronger position
than he could have
dreamed of just a year earlier
and behind the scenes,
courtiers from both sides
were beginning to make
diplomatic overtures.
But Joan had no interest in compromise.
She was doing Gods work
and the mission he had given
her was not yet complete.
With all the certainty of faith and youth,
she was still only 17.
She saw the world in black and white.
If the duke of Burgundy
would not submit to her king,
he would find her ready to fight.
The kingdoms capital
remained in Burgundian hands.
It was time for another miracle.
Just as Joan had taken Orleans,
now she would take Paris.
Reluctantly, Joans king
agreed to give her the chance.
But Paris was a very different
challenge from Orleans.
It was the most heavily fortified city
west of Constantinople.
This is one of the few
remaining sections
of the massive walls
that surrounded Paris.
There were fortified
towers and gun placements
on top of the walls,
which lay behind an immense ditch
that encircled the whole city.
And it was defended by English
soldiers and native Parisians
who hated the Armagnac whore
every bit as much as
the people of Orleans
had welcomed her
as a delivering angel.
But Joan didnt hesitate.
As always, her strategy was simple.
Attack in the name of God.
And the day of the assault
could only be a good omen.
The 8th of September, the holy feast day
of the Nativity of the Virgin.
As at Orleans, she led the
way into the great ditch,
brandishing her banner while
a storm of arrows and stones
rained down from above.
After hours of brutal fighting,
Joan called urgently
to the enemy soldiers
on the walls above.
Surrender quickly
in the name of Jesus.
For if you do not
surrender before nightfall,
we will come in there by
force whether you like it or not
and you will all be put
to death without mercy.
Shall we, you bloody tart?
came the response,
and a crossbow bolt
ripped through her thigh.
Joan staggered and fell.
Her standard-bearer
took an arrow in the face
and died beside her.
She didnt stop shouting to her soldiers
to continue the attack
even when the trumpets
sounded the retreat
and she was carried,
bleeding from the field of battle.
Joan wanted to continue the
fight, to attack the next day,
but her King wouldnt allow it.
Hed only given her just one day
to take the great city of Paris.
It was an impossible task
but this had been her chance
and she had failed.
She was distraught.
How could she?
How could anyone
understand what had happened?
Was this a sign that God had
abandoned the Armagnac cause?
For Joans king, that was unthinkable.
It was far more likely that
God had abandoned Joan.
Heavens help had brought
triumph at Orleans and Reims.
Perhaps now, God expected
the king to help himself.
And if diplomacy was the way forward
then Joans determination to fight
was fast becoming a liability.
By the end of September,
a six-month truce was agreed,
a breathing-space for the Armagnacs
and the Burgundians
and their English allies.
And Joan had little
choice but to limp back
to the safety of the Armagnac
lands south of the Loire.
After the failure of her attack on Paris,
it suddenly becomes hard
to trace Joans movements.
We do know that she was
sent on some minor skirmishes
but it seems as though
the king didnt quite know
what to do with her.
If Joan were no longer
performing miracles,
then what place did a
woman have in an army?
Perhaps they hoped that the
Maid might choose this moment
to retire gracefully from the public stage.
But Joan herself had no doubts,
whatever anyone else might think.
Her mission still stood.
And when the truce
expired in the spring of 1430,
she was ready to fight
wherever she had the chance.
In May, news reached Joan
that the duke of Burgundy
had attacked the Armagnac
town of Compiegne,
north of the capital.
Undeterred by the
fact that she no longer
had the clear support of her king
or a royal army of thousands,
Joan believed that God still wanted her
to complete her mission.
So she rode here to Compiegne
with a group of loyal followers.
Joan arrived under cover of darkness
on the night of the 22nd of May.
The next morning she
called for her banner,
and gathered her little band of soldiers
to attack the enemy outside the gates.
Joan rode out across the bridge
and charged at the Burgundians.
She drove her men on and on,
calling out that God was with them.
But another detachment
of enemy soldiers
closed in behind her and
cut her off from the bridge.
Surrounded by the enemy,
Joan was pulled from her saddle.
Now, she was a prisoner.
This was not how Joans
mission was supposed to end.
And for the Armagnacs,
the fault could only lie
with Joan herself.
Charles was still the true
king, anointed by God.
But Joan, they said,
had become too proud and wilful
and so God had
allowed her to be taken.
Keeping the Armagnac faith
meant abandoning Joan to her fate.
But what would that fate be?
The Burgundians and the English
wanted Joan to be
discredited for all to see.
But deciding what to do
with her, who should try her
and on what charges
was no simple matter.
It took months and for all that time,
Joan was kept in
captivity and ignorance.
These were Joans darkest days.
She knew that God had
sent her to save France
from the English and the false
French who supported them.
But now, God had delivered her
into the hands of those same enemies.
What did it mean?
Perhaps God meant her to help herself.
During the long months of her captivity,
Joan tried and failed to escape
and then, seeing no other way out,
she jumped from the
window of the tower
in which she was locked.
She survived the fall
but her injuries took some time to hill
and she was still a prisoner.
In December 1430, Joan was
taken to Rouen in Normandy,
the capital of English France.
It would be here that she would be tried
and her fate decided.
What happened next
was carefully written down
and we can follow it all, word for word,
through the transcript of her trial.
Joans fame was so great
that the eyes of the world
were on this case.
Joan was put on trial by her enemies
but she wasnt accused of war crimes.
This was a show trial about faith,
a process designed to get at the truth
as her enemies saw it,
to demonstrate that God
was not on Joans side.
And for us, its an astonishing source.
Through this unique text, we can trace,
question by question
and answer by answer,
the interrogations to
which Joan was subjected.
It takes us right into the courtroom.
Her main interrogator was a
man named Pierre Cauchon.
He had supported
the Burgundian cause
since the beginning of the civil war
but he was a loyal counsellor
of the English King of France.
But Cauchon was also a bishop.
For him, this wasnt
just a matter of politics,
it was a matter of faith.
Cauchons faith was as strong as Joans.
He wanted to prove
that Joan was a heretic,
that she deviated dangerously
from Church doctrine.
And if he could get her to admit her guilt,
he might even save her
soul from eternal damnation.
On the 21st of February 1431,
Cauchon was ready.
At eight that morning,
Joan was brought from her
cell to face a panel of judges.
The might of the church
was ranged against her.
Silence fell,
and suddenly she was there,
a girl, dressed as a boy,
with her hair cut short.
42 men of the church were
gathered with Cauchon
to hear her speak.
She was the only woman in the room,
by far the least educated
and the youngest by years.
But shed got used to that
since leaving Domremy.
Joans judges might be
ready but so was she.
And the words they
spoke were all recorded
in the trial transcript.
Will you swear an oath,
touching the holy gospels,
to tell the truth about
the things we ask you
that concern the faith and all
other things that you know?
I dont know what you
want to question me about.
Perhaps you might ask
me things I will not tell you.
For both sides,
her revelations from God
were the heart of the matter.
Those, she said,
she had only ever told her king.
And she wouldnt speak of them now.
Cauchons first day of
questions yielded very little.
And the second day
started the same way.
I took an oath for you yesterday,
that should be enough.
I advise you to swear,
for no one who is questioned
in a matter of faith, not even a prince,
can refuse to take an oath.
You burden me too much.
In the end, she swore a limited oath
and the questions started
slowly and carefully,
moving backwards and
forwards through her story.
Often she answered, but sometimes,
from one question to the next,
she blankly refused.
Was it well done to
attack the city of Paris
on a holy feast day?
Move on.
But as the judges wove their
web of questions around her,
gradually, little by little,
something began to shift.
They wanted to prove that
her revelations were false.
But Joan who was
back on the battlefield,
even if this was a different kind of war
wanted to prove that they were true.
So now, despite her protests,
she began to talk about
her messages from God.
The voice came at midday,
in the summer time
in my fathers garden.
The voice came from my right
hand side towards the church
and I seldom hear it without a light.
The light comes from the
same side as the voice
moved around where
theres a great light.
It seems to me that itd be a worthy voice
and I believe it to be
a voice sent by God.
And once she had begun,
the thread was there to be pulled.
Bit by bit, as they
asked and asked again,
she began to offer up more
details of the voice she heard.
And on the fourth day of the trial,
what she said was extraordinary.
Is the voice that speaks
to you the voice of an angel
or the voice of a saint or does
it come directly from God?
It is the voice of St.
Margaret and St. Catherine.
And their forms are
crowned in beautiful crowns,
very rich and very precious.
Which was the first
voice that came to you
when you were 13 or so?
It was St. Michael that came
before me and he wasnt alone
but well attended by
the angels from heaven.
Did you see St. Michael and
the angels bodily and really?
I saw them with my bodily eyes,
just as well as I see you
and when they left me,
I wept and truly wished they
had taken me with them.
This was exactly what
Cauchon wanted to hear.
The church accepted
that angels and demons
could be seen by humans.
But it was a tricky thing to
know which was which.
After centuries of debate,
the theological principle
accepted by the church
was that an angel was
not a physical being
but a spiritual one
so the more real,
physical details Joan described,
the more like a demon
her vision sounded.
But Joan stood no
chance of understanding
this scholarly argument.
And as she tried to
demonstrate the truth of her visions
by adding more and more detail,
she damned herself in
the eyes of her judges.
Cauchon was inching closer to proving
that Joans messages came
from the devil, not from God.
But he wanted more.
It was time for a change of tactics.
For a week, Joan was
left to wait in her cell,
alone with her English guards,
her feet chained even when she slept.
Then, there was a knock at the door.
The interrogations would continue
but now the court had come to her.
Cauchon had decided that he
would deny her a public stage.
Now, he and a handful of
colleagues would crowd her
in the confines of her own prison.
Here, surely, they would
make the pressure tell.
Cauchon believed that,
when Joan first went to her king,
she must have given him proof
of her heaven sent mission.
What sign did you give your king
when you came to him?
One that is fair and honourable
and most believable and good
and the richest that there is in the world.
Does the sign still exist?
It will last for a
thousand years and more.
The sign is in my kings treasury.
Is it gold or silver?
A precious stone or a crown?
I will not tell you
anything more about it.
No one could describe a
thing as rich as the sign is.
In any case,
the sign you need is that God
will deliver me from your hands
and it is the most certain
one he can send you.
Joans words make it
heartbreakingly clear
that she still believed
that help was coming,
that God would perform
another miracle and save her.
But Cauchon knew
he was getting closer.
He pushed again on
his next visit to her cell
and then again the next day.
And finally, she offered up her story.
She said that when
shed first been at Chinon,
after Easter in 1429,
an angel had come to bring
her king a crown of pure gold.
The angel have walked up the
stairs into the kings chamber,
with a company of other
angels that only Joan could see.
Joan had said to the king,
Sire, here is your sign, take it.
And this crown from God meant
that the kingdom of France
would be restored to him
if he would give Joan
soldiers and put her to work.
For Cauchon, this was a breakthrough.
An angel who could
physically walk upstairs,
speak to the kings court
and hand over a crown?
This must be the conjuring of the devil.
This, like her descriptions of her saints
was a story Joan had never told before.
Why was she telling it now?
Alone under interrogation,
she needed to vindicate her mission,
to give detailed proof of the
truth of what she claimed.
But for Cauchon, the devil
was literally in these details
and it was the details, in the end,
that proved what the
bishop already knew,
that Joan was guilty of heresy.
The punishment for heresy was clear.
She would be burned at the stake.
But there was a chance
that Joan might still live.
Cauchons hardest task lay ahead.
If he could persuade
Joan to admit her guilt,
he would save both her
life and her immortal soul.
For two weeks, Cauchon tried
everything to win Joan round.
Kind persuasion, reason and argument,
and eventually,
even the threat of torture.
Joan was led to a room in the castle
where terrible implements
were laid out, ready for use.
But Joan was unmoved.
In truth, if you were to
have me torn limb from limb
and my soul separated from my body,
I wouldnt tell you anything more.
And if I did tell you
anything else about it,
afterwards, I would always say
that you made me say it by force.
Cauchon knew that
Joan meant what she said.
He sent her back to her cell.
Time was running out.
The church had done its
work but it couldnt take a life.
The sentence would be
carried out by the English
and they were impatient to get on with it.
On the morning of the 24th of May 1431,
Joan was brought from
her prison in Rouen Castle
to this square in front of
the abbey of Saint-Ouen.
Here, in public, she would be sentenced
and then handed over
to the English authorities
to be burned.
Everyone would see
the fate of a heretic.
The whole of Rouen
had turned out to watch
as Joan was bound on a tall platform,
with the executioners cart standing by.
A sermon was preached,
and once again, Joan was asked
if she would submit to
Holy Mother Church.
Joan had been so sure
that God would rescue her
but still help hadnt come.
She needed to buy time.
But there was no more time.
Cauchon began to
read the final sentence
and suddenly, Joan raised her voice.
I wish to obey the
church and my judges.
The church says that my
visions should not be believed,
so I will not uphold them.
I submit to Holy Mother Church.
I submit.
There was uproar.
The Maid was recanting.
Cauchon asked if she was
ready to confess her sins.
And an official of the
court stepped forward
with a document
acknowledging her heresy
and a pen for her to sign it.
She made her mark on the paper.
It was done.
Now, Cauchon delivered
a different sentence.
Joan would live but she
would be kept in prison
for the rest of her life,
doing penance for the
sins she had committed.
Joan was bundled back to her cell.
Her submission was complete.
After more than two years
of dressing as a man,
she took off her male
clothes and put on a dress
and she bowed her
head so that her short hair
could be shaved off.
There could be no clearer
sign that her mission was over.
Cauchons work was done.
The Maids soul was saved
and now her misguided
claims could be safely forgotten.
That should have been it.
But there are more pages still to turn.
Here, on the 28th of May,
four days after the dramatic
events at Saint-Ouen,
Cauchon was called back to the castle.
It said that he found Joan habitu virile
dressed once again as a man
and her state of mind
was profoundly disturbed.
Here, the bishop questions her again
but all Joans calmness
and confidence are gone.
Now, her answers are tangled
and much harder to follow.
Something had
happened in those few days.
Later, witnesses suggested
that once she was
dressed in womens clothes,
shed been assaulted
or raped in her cell.
But what is clear above all
is the overwhelming distress she felt
at having given up on her
truth and denied her voices.
And what the cleric noted in
margin that we she said next
was the .
Her fatal reply.
God sent me word of the
great pity of my betrayal.
I have damned my soul to save my life.
If I said that God hadnt sent me,
then I would be damned
for I was truly sent by God.
My voices tell me I have done harm
by saying what I did was wrong.
Whatever I said and recanted,
I did it only through the fear of fire.
This time, Cauchon knew
there could be no going back.
Joan was a relapsed heretic.
She would be handed over
to the English to be burned.
Early in the morning of the 30th of May,
Cauchon and some of his fellow cleric
visited Joan for the last time.
Her life was now beyond hope,
but perhaps there was still a chance
that her soul could be saved
if she would finally tell the truth.
And this record of what Joan said
in the last hours of her life
is extraordinarily moving.
All her certainties have gone.
Rescue hasnt come.
She knows she will die.
And yet telling the truth
means she cant let go
of her voices and visions.
Is it true that you heard voices
and received apparitions?
Yes.
Whether they are good or evil
spirits, they appeared to me.
I heard the voices most of all
when the church bells rang in
the morning and the evening.
And the apparitions, the angels?
They came in a great
multitude as the tiniest things.
What of the angel who gave
the one you call your king a crown?
I was the angel.
I promised my king that if
he would put me to work,
I would see him crowned.
Over the centuries,
there have been as many
ways of reading Joans trial
as there are people to read it.
Its even been suggested
that this last conversation
on the morning of Joans
death is fabrication,
made up by Cauchon to
undermine her message.
But to me, theres a truthfulness to it.
Joans story of an
angel bringing her king
a golden crown doesnt
seem plausible to us
and it didnt to her judges either.
But if Joan was the angel,
and the crown her
promise of a coronation,
it makes much more
sense as a way for Joan,
alone among her enemies,
to make her mission real in the world.
But Joans truth and
Cauchons were incompatible.
And thats why Joan had to die.
Joan was brought here to
the marketplace in Rouen,
where a pyre had been prepared.
A cap was placed on her head
bearing the words relapsed
heretic, apostate, idolater.
Joan was tied to a
stake on a high scaffold
so that everyone could see her burn.
As the flames took hold,
she called the name of Jesus,
over and over again.
Once she was dead,
and her clothes had burned away,
the executioner raked back the fire
to show the crowd that
she was just a woman.
And then he stoked the flames,
so thered be nothing would
be left of her but ashes.
Joans body was gone
but her story wouldnt die.
Her belief in her visions and
her extraordinary courage
remained an inspiration.
By 1456, just 25 years after her death,
the political tide had turned.
France was reunited
under Joans Armagnac king
and Joans case was
heard in court once again.
This time, Joan was
found not guilty of heresy.
Since then, Joan has
become a legend and an icon.
In 1920, she was even made a saint.
Now, shes almost an empty vessel
into which we pour our
own preoccupations,
whatever they may be.
But if she becomes
all things to all people,
we risk losing the human being.
The girl who burned in this place
was a ferocious champion of
one side in a bloody civil war.
She was able to do what she did
to achieve what should
have been impossible
for someone of her class and sex
because she and all those around her
believed they were fighting a war
in which Gods will was at work.
And perhaps its there
in the possibilities that faith can create
and the violence it can bring,
that Joans world and ours,
dont seem so very far apart.
the town of Orleans in France
erupted in celebration.
For seven long months,
it had been under siege by the English,
but now, after just four days of fighting,
the town had been liberated.
And the people of Orleans knew
they had witnessed a miracle.
The speed of their liberation
was astonishing enough.
But what confirmed it as a miracle
was the identity of their liberator.
She was a peasant girl,
and she was just 17
Her name was Joan.
She was a truly extraordinary figure,
a female warrior in an age
that believed women couldnt
fight, let alone lead an army.
Take care what you do for in truth,
I am sent by God and you
put yourself in great danger.
These are Joans own words,
recorded in a contemporary manuscript.
Six centuries after her death,
her words transport us
back into her life and times.
To understand Joans story,
we need to explore a world
where God and the devil are real.
Today, were more
aware than weve been,
perhaps for centuries,
of the power of faith
to drive people to do
extraordinary things for good or ill.
And in a world where
Gods will is at work,
anything is possible.
Over the centuries Joan
has become an icon
to almost everyone,
to the left and the right,
to Catholics and Protestants,
traditionalists and feminists.
Shes captured the
imagination of novelists,
playwrights, artists and musicians,
and her fame has
spread all over the world,
taking her from France to Hollywood.
Ive been studying the medieval
world for almost 30 years,
and I feel pretty confident in saying
shes had more pop
songs written about her
than anyone else from the Middle Ages.
But for all the images of
Joan that have been created
since her death,
only one picture of her survives
which was made in her own lifetime.
And its here, a drawing,
almost a doodle,
in the margin of the records
of the Paris parlement.
It shows what a remarkable
and troubling figure Joan was.
The clerk knew that the army at Orleans
had a young woman with them
who was carrying a
banner and a sword.
But hed never seen her.
Either he didnt yet know,
or couldnt quite believe,
that Joan actually,
shockingly, had short hair
and wore male armour.
Instead, hes made her
look as a woman should,
with long hair,
modestly wearing a dress.
But while theres only this
one faint image of Joan,
unusually for anyone in the Middle Ages
let alone a lowborn woman,
a great deal was written about
her by her contemporaries.
Even more importantly, her own words
have reached us through the centuries
with an astonishing strength and clarity.
And one of the most remarkable
and revealing documents of all
is the transcript of Joans
trial for heresy in 1431.
This is the most detailed
record that survives
from any medieval trial.
And through it,
we can hear Joans own voice.
Here, she describes the first time
she heard a message from God
when she was just 13 years old.
At first, I was very afraid.
The voice came at
midday in the summer time
in my fathers garden.
The voice on my right
side towards the church
and I seldom hear it without a light.
The light comes from the
same side as the voice,
but all around, there is a great light.
It seemed to me to be a worthy voice,
and I believe that the
voice was sent from God.
Once I heard the voice three times,
I knew that it was the voice of an angel.
We might ask, was Joan mad or ill?
But for the people of the Middle Ages,
the issues were entirely different.
They knew that angels and
demons did communicate
with people of completely sound mind.
The problem wasnt how to
explain Joan hearing voices
that werent there,
the problem was how to tell
whether the voices came to her
from God or the devil.
Joan received her first vision
when she was living with
her family in Domremy,
a small village in the east of France.
But the France that Joan was born into
wasnt nearly as
peaceful as it looks now.
It was a country torn apart by war.
For generations, England and France
had been fighting in what we
call the Hundred Years War.
Land including the
countryside where Joan lived
was fought over by the two sides.
And the English even
claimed the crown of France.
During Joans childhood,
France was very much on the back foot.
In 1415, when she was three,
the French suffered a dreadful defeat
at the hands of Henry V on
the battlefield of Agincourt.
The French army vastly
outnumbered the English,
but as the flower of the
French nobility advanced
they were mown down by a
barrage of English arrows.
History has attributed the
English victory at Agincourt
to the supremacy of their archers
but at the time,
the French saw it differently.
For the people who were there,
the explanation for
this astounding victory
was the will of God.
Henry claimed that God
was on the English side,
but the French knew
that couldnt be right.
So how were they to
explain this bloody defeat?
Perhaps it was Gods
punishment for their sins
because France was
convulsed in civil war.
The old king, Charles VI,
was mad and incapable of ruling.
Two factions known as the
Burgundians and the Armagnacs
were fighting for control
of his government.
In the medieval world,
everything came down to God.
Whose side was he on?
Just five years after Agincourt,
France was so bitterly divided
that the Burgundians
were prepared to believe
that God did back the English
and made an alliance with them.
But Joan and her family
supported the Armagnacs,
led by the French
Kings son, the dauphin,
and believed God was with them.
And so the civil war went on.
For eight years, defeat
followed defeat, until the dauphin
and his Armagnac
supporters were pushed back,
south of the great
curve of the river Loire.
For Joan, as for the rest
of the people of France,
the war was a frightening reality.
Her home, Domremy,
was an Armagnac village
surrounded by English
and Burgundian territory.
At one point the village was
attacked by enemy soldiers
and Joan, her family and
friends had to take refuge
for a few days in a nearby town.
So perhaps its no surprise
that when Joan began to hear voices,
they talked about the war.
They said, she must go to the dauphin.
He would give her an army
and then she must drive
the English out of France
and lead the dauphin to his coronation.
Joan wasnt unique in claiming
to hear heavenly voices.
She wasnt the only person
in 15th century France
who came forward with
a message from God.
What was remarkable
was what Joans voice
was telling her to do.
To fight and to lead.
This was an impossible proposition.
Joan was young,
she was poor, and she was female
and to put her mission into action,
she had to reach the dauphin
across more than 250 miles
of enemy territory.
Surely, it couldnt be done.
At some point during 1428,
Joan managed to reach here,
the town of Vaucouleurs,
a little more than 10
miles north of Domremy,
which housed the nearest
garrison loyal to the dauphin.
But its captain sent her
away with a flea in her ear.
The girl was clearly a fantasist,
her family, he said,
should take her home
and give her a few slaps.
But Joan wouldnt give up.
Word of her mission began to spread.
And when she came back to
Vaucouleurs in February 1429,
the captain agreed to send
her to the dauphins court.
What had happened
to change his mind?
The evidence isnt at all clear.
When Joan eventually
set off from Vaucouleurs,
the people here gave her a horse
and an outfit of mens clothes
to keep her safe on
her dangerous journey.
Clearly, they believed in her.
But that wouldnt be
enough to secure access
to the dauphin himself.
We cant be sure exactly what happened
but there is one more clue.
One of the six men who were
given the job of escorting Joan
was a messenger from
the dauphins court.
It seemed that someone there
had heard of Joans claims
and now the dauphin
wanted to hear more.
Like all medieval leaders,
the dauphin knew
that his authority was
bestowed on him by God.
He went to mass twice a
day and looked for signs
of Gods will in the world around him
wherever they came from.
The truth is the dauphin
was also desperate
and it had to be said that, by now,
anything, even the
ravings of a peasant girl
was worth a try.
As Joan set out on her perilous journey
to the dauphins court in Chinon,
the situation for the
Armagnacs was getting worse.
For five months, the English
had been besieging Orleans,
a key Armagnac
stronghold on the river Loire.
If Orleans fell,
the dauphins lands in the south
of the kingdom would lie
open to English attack.
On the 12th of February 1429,
a skirmish between the two
sides ended in a massacre.
More than 400 of the
dauphins soldiers died that day.
The English casualties
numbered just four.
The dauphin was here
in his fortress at Chinon
when he heard the terrible news.
He redoubled his prayers
but the siege went on.
And then, just 11 days
after the massacre,
a little band of six armed men,
dusty from the road,
arrived here at his
great castle of Chinon.
With them rode a girl, dressed as a boy,
her dark hair cut short.
She had come, she said,
with a message from God.
Amid the luxury and
ceremony of the Armagnac court,
this village girl dressed as a boy
was an extraordinary sight.
And her message was as
startling as the girl herself.
If the dauphin would give her an army,
she would save his kingdom
and bring him his crown.
But the dauphin had a problem.
Her words were intoxicating
and terrifying at the same time.
If the dauphin put his
faith in a false prophet
sent by the devil,
his kingdom of France
would be lost forever.
But if he rejected a true prophet,
the result would be equally disastrous.
Could Joan really
have been sent by God?
How to tell whether visions
came from God or the devil
was a hot topic of theological debate.
The greatest contemporary
French theologian,
a man named Jean Gerson,
had even written a book on the subject.
This is a late 15th century
copy of Gersons work,
De Probatione Spiritum,
On the Proving of Spirits.
Its a sort of manual
to guide investigators
through the process of establishing
whether visions might
truly have come from God.
It offers a helpful Latin checklist
which sets out the
basics of the examination.
Ask who, what, why,
to whom, what kind, whence?
In other words, ask what the
nature of the vision shows
about where it might come from
and what the nature of the person
having the visions suggests
about how authentic they might be.
So 17-year-old Joan was
questioned for three weeks
by the best theologians
Armagnac France could muster.
From the outset Joan
deeply troubled these men.
Her message was shocking enough.
She dared to say that
shed been sent to make war
on the English despite the fact
that God hadnt made
women to be soldiers.
But whats more,
she wore mens clothes,
and the Old Testament
said that a woman
in mens clothing was an
abomination unto the Lord.
But one person who doesnt seem
to have been anxious remarkably
enough was Joan herself.
Here she was,
an uneducated village girl,
on her own,
hundreds of miles from home,
being questioned for weeks
by courtiers and clerics.
It should have been a
profoundly intimidating situation.
But in all the contemporary
accounts of what Joan did
and said, theres no
sign of fear or doubt.
The essence of her message was,
God has sent me.
I know what I need to do.
Let me go and do it.
And it was Joans certainty
that offered a way out of
the problem she posed.
The theologians could find
no fault with her conduct,
but they needed a sign, they said,
to prove that her voices
truly came from heaven.
They asked how she
would carry out her promise
to take the dauphin to be crowned
at the ancient cathedral of Reims,
given that the besieged town of Orleans
lay directly in the way.
Joans answer was simple.
She would raise the siege herself.
Suddenly, for the dauphin and his court
at the great fortress of Chinon,
everything was clear.
Orleans would be a
test of Joans mission.
If she succeeded,
it would be a sign from God
that everything she claimed was true.
If she failed, Orleans
would still be under siege,
just as it was now, and the
dauphin would know for sure
that her promises were
nothing but a delusion.
And so the theologians
reached their verdict.
The dauphin, they said,
should not prevent her
from going to Orleans with his soldiers
but should have her
escorted there honourably
placing his faith in God.
And now that the
decision had been made,
preparations for the task
ahead began in earnest.
There were soldiers to
muster and supplies to collect.
Clerks scoured the
archives for prophecies
that might foretell Joans coming.
And Joan herself asked
the dauphin to send
to the nearby town of
Fierbois for a sword
that she said lay hidden there
in the Church of St. Catherine.
Sure enough,
and to everyones amazement,
the sword was found
where shed predicted.
The symbolism was lost on no one.
Christian warriors,
from King Arthur to Charlemagne,
carried holy swords.
And this one appropriately
came to Joan from St. Catherine,
the patron saint of young virgins.
How did Joan know
where the sword was?
She said her voices had told her.
So was this her first miracle?
Well, thats one way of
reading of the evidence.
On the other hand,
she had stopped in Fierbois
on her way here and St.
Catherines Church
was a place where over the years,
soldiers had left many offerings,
including their swords.
But, however Joan had come to know
about this sword in particular,
the point was that Joan herself
and her supporters believed
it was a miraculous proof of her mission.
The dauphin ordered a fine suit of armour
to be specially made
for her slender frame,
and a banner for her to carry into battle,
made of shining white silk
with a painted Christ flanked
on either side by angels.
During these weeks of preparation,
Joan had a chance to practice
riding a horse among soldiers,
to get used to her armour
and to find out more
about the war she had come to fight.
But she was no less impatient
than when she had
first arrived at Chinon.
And now, she sent her first
challenge to the English.
The challenge came
in the form of a letter.
Joan couldnt write,
so she dictated it to a clerk
and its text survives here,
in the transcript of her trial.
Joans fearlessness is unmistakable.
The village girl from
Domremy speaks for God,
so she has no hesitation in
addressing the king of England.
Restore to the maid,
who is sent here by God,
the king of heaven,
the keys to the fine towns
that you have taken
and violated in France.
King of England, if you do not do this,
I am the military leader
and wherever I find your men in France,
I will make them leave,
whether they want to or not
and if they will not obey,
I will have them killed.
With her challenge dispatched,
Joan and her military convoy
set off along the river
Lorie towards Orleans.
On the 26th of April,
Joan approached the town itself
and for the first time,
the English army at Orleans
set eyes on the teenage girl in armour.
To the English, a girl in mens clothes
riding among soldiers
could only be a whore
and a sign of the dauphins desperation.
But to the people of besieged Orleans,
she was a saviour, come to rescue them.
The English had too few troops
to enforce a total
blockade round Orleans
and Joan was able to slip into
the town on the eastern side.
She was welcomed
like an angel from God,
one of the townsmen said,
and delirious crowds
reached out to touch her as
she rode through the streets.
But while Joan smiled
at the hopeful crowds,
privately, she was
incandescent with fury.
She wanted to attack the English.
But the dauphin was still so unsure
of what form her miracle might take
that hed ordered her
soldiers back to their base.
So she found herself
inside the besieged town,
with no army to break the
siege as shed promised.
Joan was left kicking her heels,
climbing the town walls
to shout to the English
that they should surrender to God.
All she got in return was abuse.
Did she really think, they jeered,
that they should give
themselves up to a woman
and her pimps?
The dauphins captain was in a fix.
The people of the town
expected Joan to save them
but without an army,
she could do nothing.
So he slipped out of the
town and rode to the dauphin
to beg him to send the soldiers back.
It took him four days but his
argument was irrefutable.
How could God send a sign,
if Joan had no way of
putting her mission to the test?
By the 4th of May,
Joan had her soldiers, and at last,
the battle for Orleans could begin.
Joan led her men from the front,
carrying her banner and urging them on.
Medieval warfare was brutal and bloody
and for the first time,
she saw death in battle at first hand.
That night her mood was
sombre and the next day,
she wrote again to the English enemy
demanding their surrender.
She attached the letter to an arrow
and had it fired into the English camp.
When it dropped to the ground,
the shouts could be
heard in the distance.
News from the Armagnac whore.
But for all the abuse
they hurled her way,
after two more days of fighting,
the English were rattled.
And finally, on the 7th of May,
their day of reckoning had come.
The decisive Battle of
Orleans was fought here,
where the English held a fortified tower
known as the Tourelles.
If Joan could take the Tourelles,
the English hold on
Orleans would be broken.
Once again Joan was up at dawn.
She said her prayers and
then led her men into battle.
English missiles rained
down from the ramparts
as the Armagnac soldiers
hurled themselves into the fight.
Hours passed,
but still Joan urged them on
until an arrow caught her
between her neck and shoulder.
As they saw her
staggering and bloodied,
the Armagnacs faltered.
Was this the moment when God
would disown the Maid?
But a flesh wound
couldnt stop Joans mission.
She brandished her banner
and pressed forward into the
ditch at the foot of the tower.
As her soldiers followed
her into the attack,
sudden fear gripped the English.
Their captain lost his
footing and toppled,
fully armed, into the river.
As he drowned,
panic spread among his men.
And by sundown,
Joan had won a famous victory.
After seven months of siege,
the Maid had freed
Orleans in just four days.
Who could doubt Joan now?
This was proof that God
intended her to pursue her mission.
And as she and the
dauphins other captains
prepared to drive the English
from the valley of the Loire,
news of her miracle began to spread.
Just three days after the battle,
an Italian merchant in Bruges
wrote to tell his father in Venice
what this maiden
shepherdess had done.
It seems,, he said,
that she may be another St.
Catherine come down to Earth.
Meanwhile Joan herself was
growing into her new stature.
In February, she had
been a simple village girl.
Now, it was June and
a young nobleman
who met her was
dazzled by her charisma,
by the presence of one sent by God.
It seemed to me a gift from
heaven that she was there,
he said, and that I was
seeing and hearing her.
And Joans determination
to pursue her mission
was stronger than ever.
Orleans had been her test,
and victory her sign.
Now came her true purpose.
To crown the dauphin
and to drive the English
out of France forever.
For centuries, French
kings had been crowned
in the great cathedral at Reims
and Joan was determined
to see her dauphin
crowned there too.
But Reims lay more
than a hundred miles
northeast of Orleans,
in the heart of English
and Burgundian France.
It had been years since the dauphin
had even thought of
riding to war in person.
Now, the Maid was
going to take him deep
into enemy territory.
Joan and the dauphin rode at
the head of the biggest army
he could muster.
And the combination of
thousands of soldiers
with Joans implacable
will driving them on,
proved irresistible.
Joans momentum was unstoppable.
Some towns held out for a few days,
others opened their gates straight away.
On the 16th of July 1429,
just two and a half weeks
after leaving the Loire valley,
Joan, the dauphin and the
Armagnac army arrived in Reims.
At last, the dauphin could be crowned
as the most Christian king of France.
Here in the cathedral in Reims
was kept a flask of holy oil,
that had been sent from heaven
to Frances first Christian king
almost a thousand years before.
Every French king since
then had been anointed with it
during the sacred ritual of his coronation
and now, the dauphin
would be no exception.
A coronation would usually
take weeks of preparation,
but there was no time to lose.
The dauphins servants
worked through the night
and at nine the very next morning,
he entered this sacred space
to receive his crown from God.
Just four months earlier,
the Armagnac cause had
been at its lowest ebb.
Now, the dauphin was
anointed and crowned
as King Charles VII of France.
And beside him stood Joan
the Maid in her shining armour
with her banner in her hand.
When the ceremony was over,
she knelt at his feet.
Noble king, she said,
Gods will is done.
It was a triumph.
But Joans mission was far from finished.
Joan wanted to drive the
English out of France forever.
To do this she needed
to unite the country
under the newly crowned king
and France was still divided by civil war.
The Burgundians under
the Duke of Burgundy
looked to the King of
England as their sovereign.
So Joan wrote to the Duke to
ask him to acknowledge her king
as the rightful King of France.
I bring you words
from the king of heaven,
that you will win no battle
against loyal Frenchmen,
and all those who wage war
against the holy kingdom
of France wage war
against King Jesus, the king of heaven
and of the whole world.
Know surely that however
many men you bring against us,
they will win nothing at all,
and great sorrow will be
the result of the great battle.
The Duke of Burgundy didnt deign
to respond to this presumptuous letter.
Any change in his position
would be on his own terms,
not those of a peasant girl.
As for Joans king,
he was in a stronger position
than he could have
dreamed of just a year earlier
and behind the scenes,
courtiers from both sides
were beginning to make
diplomatic overtures.
But Joan had no interest in compromise.
She was doing Gods work
and the mission he had given
her was not yet complete.
With all the certainty of faith and youth,
she was still only 17.
She saw the world in black and white.
If the duke of Burgundy
would not submit to her king,
he would find her ready to fight.
The kingdoms capital
remained in Burgundian hands.
It was time for another miracle.
Just as Joan had taken Orleans,
now she would take Paris.
Reluctantly, Joans king
agreed to give her the chance.
But Paris was a very different
challenge from Orleans.
It was the most heavily fortified city
west of Constantinople.
This is one of the few
remaining sections
of the massive walls
that surrounded Paris.
There were fortified
towers and gun placements
on top of the walls,
which lay behind an immense ditch
that encircled the whole city.
And it was defended by English
soldiers and native Parisians
who hated the Armagnac whore
every bit as much as
the people of Orleans
had welcomed her
as a delivering angel.
But Joan didnt hesitate.
As always, her strategy was simple.
Attack in the name of God.
And the day of the assault
could only be a good omen.
The 8th of September, the holy feast day
of the Nativity of the Virgin.
As at Orleans, she led the
way into the great ditch,
brandishing her banner while
a storm of arrows and stones
rained down from above.
After hours of brutal fighting,
Joan called urgently
to the enemy soldiers
on the walls above.
Surrender quickly
in the name of Jesus.
For if you do not
surrender before nightfall,
we will come in there by
force whether you like it or not
and you will all be put
to death without mercy.
Shall we, you bloody tart?
came the response,
and a crossbow bolt
ripped through her thigh.
Joan staggered and fell.
Her standard-bearer
took an arrow in the face
and died beside her.
She didnt stop shouting to her soldiers
to continue the attack
even when the trumpets
sounded the retreat
and she was carried,
bleeding from the field of battle.
Joan wanted to continue the
fight, to attack the next day,
but her King wouldnt allow it.
Hed only given her just one day
to take the great city of Paris.
It was an impossible task
but this had been her chance
and she had failed.
She was distraught.
How could she?
How could anyone
understand what had happened?
Was this a sign that God had
abandoned the Armagnac cause?
For Joans king, that was unthinkable.
It was far more likely that
God had abandoned Joan.
Heavens help had brought
triumph at Orleans and Reims.
Perhaps now, God expected
the king to help himself.
And if diplomacy was the way forward
then Joans determination to fight
was fast becoming a liability.
By the end of September,
a six-month truce was agreed,
a breathing-space for the Armagnacs
and the Burgundians
and their English allies.
And Joan had little
choice but to limp back
to the safety of the Armagnac
lands south of the Loire.
After the failure of her attack on Paris,
it suddenly becomes hard
to trace Joans movements.
We do know that she was
sent on some minor skirmishes
but it seems as though
the king didnt quite know
what to do with her.
If Joan were no longer
performing miracles,
then what place did a
woman have in an army?
Perhaps they hoped that the
Maid might choose this moment
to retire gracefully from the public stage.
But Joan herself had no doubts,
whatever anyone else might think.
Her mission still stood.
And when the truce
expired in the spring of 1430,
she was ready to fight
wherever she had the chance.
In May, news reached Joan
that the duke of Burgundy
had attacked the Armagnac
town of Compiegne,
north of the capital.
Undeterred by the
fact that she no longer
had the clear support of her king
or a royal army of thousands,
Joan believed that God still wanted her
to complete her mission.
So she rode here to Compiegne
with a group of loyal followers.
Joan arrived under cover of darkness
on the night of the 22nd of May.
The next morning she
called for her banner,
and gathered her little band of soldiers
to attack the enemy outside the gates.
Joan rode out across the bridge
and charged at the Burgundians.
She drove her men on and on,
calling out that God was with them.
But another detachment
of enemy soldiers
closed in behind her and
cut her off from the bridge.
Surrounded by the enemy,
Joan was pulled from her saddle.
Now, she was a prisoner.
This was not how Joans
mission was supposed to end.
And for the Armagnacs,
the fault could only lie
with Joan herself.
Charles was still the true
king, anointed by God.
But Joan, they said,
had become too proud and wilful
and so God had
allowed her to be taken.
Keeping the Armagnac faith
meant abandoning Joan to her fate.
But what would that fate be?
The Burgundians and the English
wanted Joan to be
discredited for all to see.
But deciding what to do
with her, who should try her
and on what charges
was no simple matter.
It took months and for all that time,
Joan was kept in
captivity and ignorance.
These were Joans darkest days.
She knew that God had
sent her to save France
from the English and the false
French who supported them.
But now, God had delivered her
into the hands of those same enemies.
What did it mean?
Perhaps God meant her to help herself.
During the long months of her captivity,
Joan tried and failed to escape
and then, seeing no other way out,
she jumped from the
window of the tower
in which she was locked.
She survived the fall
but her injuries took some time to hill
and she was still a prisoner.
In December 1430, Joan was
taken to Rouen in Normandy,
the capital of English France.
It would be here that she would be tried
and her fate decided.
What happened next
was carefully written down
and we can follow it all, word for word,
through the transcript of her trial.
Joans fame was so great
that the eyes of the world
were on this case.
Joan was put on trial by her enemies
but she wasnt accused of war crimes.
This was a show trial about faith,
a process designed to get at the truth
as her enemies saw it,
to demonstrate that God
was not on Joans side.
And for us, its an astonishing source.
Through this unique text, we can trace,
question by question
and answer by answer,
the interrogations to
which Joan was subjected.
It takes us right into the courtroom.
Her main interrogator was a
man named Pierre Cauchon.
He had supported
the Burgundian cause
since the beginning of the civil war
but he was a loyal counsellor
of the English King of France.
But Cauchon was also a bishop.
For him, this wasnt
just a matter of politics,
it was a matter of faith.
Cauchons faith was as strong as Joans.
He wanted to prove
that Joan was a heretic,
that she deviated dangerously
from Church doctrine.
And if he could get her to admit her guilt,
he might even save her
soul from eternal damnation.
On the 21st of February 1431,
Cauchon was ready.
At eight that morning,
Joan was brought from her
cell to face a panel of judges.
The might of the church
was ranged against her.
Silence fell,
and suddenly she was there,
a girl, dressed as a boy,
with her hair cut short.
42 men of the church were
gathered with Cauchon
to hear her speak.
She was the only woman in the room,
by far the least educated
and the youngest by years.
But shed got used to that
since leaving Domremy.
Joans judges might be
ready but so was she.
And the words they
spoke were all recorded
in the trial transcript.
Will you swear an oath,
touching the holy gospels,
to tell the truth about
the things we ask you
that concern the faith and all
other things that you know?
I dont know what you
want to question me about.
Perhaps you might ask
me things I will not tell you.
For both sides,
her revelations from God
were the heart of the matter.
Those, she said,
she had only ever told her king.
And she wouldnt speak of them now.
Cauchons first day of
questions yielded very little.
And the second day
started the same way.
I took an oath for you yesterday,
that should be enough.
I advise you to swear,
for no one who is questioned
in a matter of faith, not even a prince,
can refuse to take an oath.
You burden me too much.
In the end, she swore a limited oath
and the questions started
slowly and carefully,
moving backwards and
forwards through her story.
Often she answered, but sometimes,
from one question to the next,
she blankly refused.
Was it well done to
attack the city of Paris
on a holy feast day?
Move on.
But as the judges wove their
web of questions around her,
gradually, little by little,
something began to shift.
They wanted to prove that
her revelations were false.
But Joan who was
back on the battlefield,
even if this was a different kind of war
wanted to prove that they were true.
So now, despite her protests,
she began to talk about
her messages from God.
The voice came at midday,
in the summer time
in my fathers garden.
The voice came from my right
hand side towards the church
and I seldom hear it without a light.
The light comes from the
same side as the voice
moved around where
theres a great light.
It seems to me that itd be a worthy voice
and I believe it to be
a voice sent by God.
And once she had begun,
the thread was there to be pulled.
Bit by bit, as they
asked and asked again,
she began to offer up more
details of the voice she heard.
And on the fourth day of the trial,
what she said was extraordinary.
Is the voice that speaks
to you the voice of an angel
or the voice of a saint or does
it come directly from God?
It is the voice of St.
Margaret and St. Catherine.
And their forms are
crowned in beautiful crowns,
very rich and very precious.
Which was the first
voice that came to you
when you were 13 or so?
It was St. Michael that came
before me and he wasnt alone
but well attended by
the angels from heaven.
Did you see St. Michael and
the angels bodily and really?
I saw them with my bodily eyes,
just as well as I see you
and when they left me,
I wept and truly wished they
had taken me with them.
This was exactly what
Cauchon wanted to hear.
The church accepted
that angels and demons
could be seen by humans.
But it was a tricky thing to
know which was which.
After centuries of debate,
the theological principle
accepted by the church
was that an angel was
not a physical being
but a spiritual one
so the more real,
physical details Joan described,
the more like a demon
her vision sounded.
But Joan stood no
chance of understanding
this scholarly argument.
And as she tried to
demonstrate the truth of her visions
by adding more and more detail,
she damned herself in
the eyes of her judges.
Cauchon was inching closer to proving
that Joans messages came
from the devil, not from God.
But he wanted more.
It was time for a change of tactics.
For a week, Joan was
left to wait in her cell,
alone with her English guards,
her feet chained even when she slept.
Then, there was a knock at the door.
The interrogations would continue
but now the court had come to her.
Cauchon had decided that he
would deny her a public stage.
Now, he and a handful of
colleagues would crowd her
in the confines of her own prison.
Here, surely, they would
make the pressure tell.
Cauchon believed that,
when Joan first went to her king,
she must have given him proof
of her heaven sent mission.
What sign did you give your king
when you came to him?
One that is fair and honourable
and most believable and good
and the richest that there is in the world.
Does the sign still exist?
It will last for a
thousand years and more.
The sign is in my kings treasury.
Is it gold or silver?
A precious stone or a crown?
I will not tell you
anything more about it.
No one could describe a
thing as rich as the sign is.
In any case,
the sign you need is that God
will deliver me from your hands
and it is the most certain
one he can send you.
Joans words make it
heartbreakingly clear
that she still believed
that help was coming,
that God would perform
another miracle and save her.
But Cauchon knew
he was getting closer.
He pushed again on
his next visit to her cell
and then again the next day.
And finally, she offered up her story.
She said that when
shed first been at Chinon,
after Easter in 1429,
an angel had come to bring
her king a crown of pure gold.
The angel have walked up the
stairs into the kings chamber,
with a company of other
angels that only Joan could see.
Joan had said to the king,
Sire, here is your sign, take it.
And this crown from God meant
that the kingdom of France
would be restored to him
if he would give Joan
soldiers and put her to work.
For Cauchon, this was a breakthrough.
An angel who could
physically walk upstairs,
speak to the kings court
and hand over a crown?
This must be the conjuring of the devil.
This, like her descriptions of her saints
was a story Joan had never told before.
Why was she telling it now?
Alone under interrogation,
she needed to vindicate her mission,
to give detailed proof of the
truth of what she claimed.
But for Cauchon, the devil
was literally in these details
and it was the details, in the end,
that proved what the
bishop already knew,
that Joan was guilty of heresy.
The punishment for heresy was clear.
She would be burned at the stake.
But there was a chance
that Joan might still live.
Cauchons hardest task lay ahead.
If he could persuade
Joan to admit her guilt,
he would save both her
life and her immortal soul.
For two weeks, Cauchon tried
everything to win Joan round.
Kind persuasion, reason and argument,
and eventually,
even the threat of torture.
Joan was led to a room in the castle
where terrible implements
were laid out, ready for use.
But Joan was unmoved.
In truth, if you were to
have me torn limb from limb
and my soul separated from my body,
I wouldnt tell you anything more.
And if I did tell you
anything else about it,
afterwards, I would always say
that you made me say it by force.
Cauchon knew that
Joan meant what she said.
He sent her back to her cell.
Time was running out.
The church had done its
work but it couldnt take a life.
The sentence would be
carried out by the English
and they were impatient to get on with it.
On the morning of the 24th of May 1431,
Joan was brought from
her prison in Rouen Castle
to this square in front of
the abbey of Saint-Ouen.
Here, in public, she would be sentenced
and then handed over
to the English authorities
to be burned.
Everyone would see
the fate of a heretic.
The whole of Rouen
had turned out to watch
as Joan was bound on a tall platform,
with the executioners cart standing by.
A sermon was preached,
and once again, Joan was asked
if she would submit to
Holy Mother Church.
Joan had been so sure
that God would rescue her
but still help hadnt come.
She needed to buy time.
But there was no more time.
Cauchon began to
read the final sentence
and suddenly, Joan raised her voice.
I wish to obey the
church and my judges.
The church says that my
visions should not be believed,
so I will not uphold them.
I submit to Holy Mother Church.
I submit.
There was uproar.
The Maid was recanting.
Cauchon asked if she was
ready to confess her sins.
And an official of the
court stepped forward
with a document
acknowledging her heresy
and a pen for her to sign it.
She made her mark on the paper.
It was done.
Now, Cauchon delivered
a different sentence.
Joan would live but she
would be kept in prison
for the rest of her life,
doing penance for the
sins she had committed.
Joan was bundled back to her cell.
Her submission was complete.
After more than two years
of dressing as a man,
she took off her male
clothes and put on a dress
and she bowed her
head so that her short hair
could be shaved off.
There could be no clearer
sign that her mission was over.
Cauchons work was done.
The Maids soul was saved
and now her misguided
claims could be safely forgotten.
That should have been it.
But there are more pages still to turn.
Here, on the 28th of May,
four days after the dramatic
events at Saint-Ouen,
Cauchon was called back to the castle.
It said that he found Joan habitu virile
dressed once again as a man
and her state of mind
was profoundly disturbed.
Here, the bishop questions her again
but all Joans calmness
and confidence are gone.
Now, her answers are tangled
and much harder to follow.
Something had
happened in those few days.
Later, witnesses suggested
that once she was
dressed in womens clothes,
shed been assaulted
or raped in her cell.
But what is clear above all
is the overwhelming distress she felt
at having given up on her
truth and denied her voices.
And what the cleric noted in
margin that we she said next
was the .
Her fatal reply.
God sent me word of the
great pity of my betrayal.
I have damned my soul to save my life.
If I said that God hadnt sent me,
then I would be damned
for I was truly sent by God.
My voices tell me I have done harm
by saying what I did was wrong.
Whatever I said and recanted,
I did it only through the fear of fire.
This time, Cauchon knew
there could be no going back.
Joan was a relapsed heretic.
She would be handed over
to the English to be burned.
Early in the morning of the 30th of May,
Cauchon and some of his fellow cleric
visited Joan for the last time.
Her life was now beyond hope,
but perhaps there was still a chance
that her soul could be saved
if she would finally tell the truth.
And this record of what Joan said
in the last hours of her life
is extraordinarily moving.
All her certainties have gone.
Rescue hasnt come.
She knows she will die.
And yet telling the truth
means she cant let go
of her voices and visions.
Is it true that you heard voices
and received apparitions?
Yes.
Whether they are good or evil
spirits, they appeared to me.
I heard the voices most of all
when the church bells rang in
the morning and the evening.
And the apparitions, the angels?
They came in a great
multitude as the tiniest things.
What of the angel who gave
the one you call your king a crown?
I was the angel.
I promised my king that if
he would put me to work,
I would see him crowned.
Over the centuries,
there have been as many
ways of reading Joans trial
as there are people to read it.
Its even been suggested
that this last conversation
on the morning of Joans
death is fabrication,
made up by Cauchon to
undermine her message.
But to me, theres a truthfulness to it.
Joans story of an
angel bringing her king
a golden crown doesnt
seem plausible to us
and it didnt to her judges either.
But if Joan was the angel,
and the crown her
promise of a coronation,
it makes much more
sense as a way for Joan,
alone among her enemies,
to make her mission real in the world.
But Joans truth and
Cauchons were incompatible.
And thats why Joan had to die.
Joan was brought here to
the marketplace in Rouen,
where a pyre had been prepared.
A cap was placed on her head
bearing the words relapsed
heretic, apostate, idolater.
Joan was tied to a
stake on a high scaffold
so that everyone could see her burn.
As the flames took hold,
she called the name of Jesus,
over and over again.
Once she was dead,
and her clothes had burned away,
the executioner raked back the fire
to show the crowd that
she was just a woman.
And then he stoked the flames,
so thered be nothing would
be left of her but ashes.
Joans body was gone
but her story wouldnt die.
Her belief in her visions and
her extraordinary courage
remained an inspiration.
By 1456, just 25 years after her death,
the political tide had turned.
France was reunited
under Joans Armagnac king
and Joans case was
heard in court once again.
This time, Joan was
found not guilty of heresy.
Since then, Joan has
become a legend and an icon.
In 1920, she was even made a saint.
Now, shes almost an empty vessel
into which we pour our
own preoccupations,
whatever they may be.
But if she becomes
all things to all people,
we risk losing the human being.
The girl who burned in this place
was a ferocious champion of
one side in a bloody civil war.
She was able to do what she did
to achieve what should
have been impossible
for someone of her class and sex
because she and all those around her
believed they were fighting a war
in which Gods will was at work.
And perhaps its there
in the possibilities that faith can create
and the violence it can bring,
that Joans world and ours,
dont seem so very far apart.