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Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans

Guided by what she thought were divine voices, Joan of Arc revived French fortunes in the Hundred Years' War.

By Don O'Reilly

In the marketplace within the gray walls of Rouen, Normandy, on May 30, 1431, in the shadows of the cathedral and guild shops, a harsh spectacle held the attention of the populace. A 19-year-old peasant girl was to be burned at the stake. A sign declared her "Jehanne, called la Pucelle, liar, pernicious, seducer of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, misbelieving the faith of Jesus Christ, braggart, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic."

To many in the crowd, however, she was the innocent would-be rescuer of France from a century of English invaders. Unwittingly, the English were bestowing upon her a martyrdom that would haunt them for the rest of their numbered days on French soil. However surprisingly successful her gallant but brief career in war had been, Joan would be far more dangerous to England after her death, transforming a century-long clash of avaricious and vacillating feuding lords into a holy war for national liberation.

The Hundred Years' War raged amid what was arguably the worst century in the history of Western civilization. In France, crop failures, civil wars, invasion, horrendous epidemics and marauding mercenary armies turned to banditry reduced the population by two-thirds.

The war began in earnest in 1346, when Edward III, King of England, invaded Brittany and marched on Paris. At Crécy, his army of 10,000 utterly routed twice their number of Frenchmen as English longbowmen annihilated squadrons of heavily armed French knights.

In 1348 the bubonic plague, the Black Death, devastated Western Europe, killing millions within 24 hours of infection. In England, a third of the population perished. The plague ravaged crowded, polluted castles and towns more than it did isolated villages. The Roman Catholic Church decreed that anyone confronted with persons sneezing or coughing, symptoms of the disease, should bless them and quickly decide to either flee or stay to assist. The best of the clergy stayed -- and many died. While papal decree condemned the idea that the source of the illness was Jews poisoning well water, common folk killed them anyway, as well as blaming other scapegoats -- witches, heretics and, if one was French, "les goddams Anglais" (a nickname referring to the English tendency to use profanity more readily than did the French).

Heavily taxed in order to pay the English ransom for their king and lords captured at Poitiers in 1356, the already oppressed French peasantry erupted into a revolt, known as the Jacquerie. The rebels torched castles, churches and towns. Meanwhile, unpaid foreign soldiers of fortune spread their own waves of terror as they pillaged the land. Because they slaughtered farmers' cattle, the English soldiers earned another nickname -- "boeuf-manges," or "beef-eaters."

In 1378, the struggle wracked the church with rival claimants to the papacy at Avignon and Rome, the former backed by France and the latter by England. Religious and political authority alike were in confusion.

By 1415, England's young King Henry V had demanded the crown of France and then had offered to settle for less, an offer few trusted. Henry V then invaded France, in violation of a previously signed treaty, and seized the port of Harfleur. His army reduced by disease, he retreated toward Calais. Attacked en route by the French at Agincourt, Henry's archers again annihilated the French knights, inflicting 7,000 casualties to England's 500. The English occupied all northwestern France, from the Atlantic to the Loire River, including Paris. When Henry V visited one of his prisoners, the Duke of Orléans, in the Tower of London, he told him, "You deserve to lose." The Frenchman agreed, as did a great many of his countrymen. Continued defeat and economic deterioration had left France in a state of passive denial that bordered upon political and military despair.

The most powerful duchy in France at the time was that of Burgundy, occupying most of the eastern region. When the dauphin, son of the mentally ill King Charles VI, had met with John of Burgundy to plan an alliance against the English, the dauphin rashly accused the Burgundian of treason because of his earlier inaction against the invaders. One of the dauphin's entourage then stabbed and killed the duke. That treacherous act only drove the Burgundians to ally with England. The dauphin, a brooding, irresolute man like his father, was reluctant to act any further; his attempt at diplomacy had failed, and his military strategy was threatened by the new enemy alliance. Besides, he was afraid of horses. France was reduced to the area south of the Loire, then called Armagnac.

On August 31, 1422, Henry V died of dysentery -- depriving the English of their most charismatic leader of the war -- and John, the Duke of Bedford, became regent for the 7-month-old King Henry VI. On October 22, Charles VI also died. None of his relatives appeared at his funeral, but the Duke of Bedford did. No sooner was the king's tomb closed than Bedford proclaimed his infant ward "Henry, by the Grace of God, King of England and of France."

Although the dauphin made a counterclaim to the French throne, he was paralyzed by his unwillingness to assert real leadership and his jealousy of any noble who did. Soon all France north of the Loire River was controlled by the English or Burgundians except for a few holdouts: Mont St. Michel, Tornai, Vaucouleurs in Lorraine, and Orléans.

What remained of France was saved by the Loire River. The English could not cross it without first reducing all French strongholds on its low, sandy shores. By autumn of 1428, the siege of the Loire citadel of Orléans had begun. The English fortified the southern access to the city's bridge, ignoring the need to complete their siege lines on the northern side of the river around the walled town.

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