During the Hundred Years’ War, a teenage peasant girl who claimed to hear saints’ voices sparked a second French triumph over English forces. Danny Bird explores the battle that confirmed her destiny
THIS MONTH IN... 1429 ANNIVERSARIES THAT HAVE MADE HISTORY
On 18 June 1429, French and English forces clashed outside the village of Patay in the Loire Valley. Assured of victory by the ‘holy’ conviction of a teenage peasant girl, the French surprised their adversary, smashing through the English line and decimating their army. Although Joan of Arc was absent from the fray, her heaven-sent intuition seemed to have been proved genuine. Patay marked a turning point in the Hundred Years’ War, leading to events culminating in the crowning of the French dauphin as Charles VII at Reims just under a month later.
A DAUGHTER OF WAR
Born around 1412 in Domrémy, a small village in northeast France, Joan spent her childhood helping her father on their farm. She grew up amid the bloody turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War, which had rumbled on since 1337. Central to this conflict – one of the longest in European history – was a struggle between the kings of France and England for control of France.
By the time of Joan’s birth, war between the two countries had been raging for 75 years, beginning with a dispute over the French throne in 1337. The conflict quickly spread into the French countryside, where the English army’s ‘scorched earth’ tactics destroyed much of the country’s crops and caused widespread suffering for the peasantry.
The nation was divided in two: one faction – the Armagnacs – had sided with the dauphin Charles (the heir to the French throne), while the other – the Burgundians – had allied with the English, hoping to claim the French throne for the Duke of Burgundy. The people of Joan’s village of Domrémy, in northern France, found themselves in a precarious position, caught between the two opposing forces: they lived under Burgundian occupation, but were staunchly loyal to the dauphin, the man they believed to be the true future king. It was a conflicted situation that would have a profound effect on Joan’s future.
THE MAID OF ORLÉANS
At the age of about 13, Joan experienced a vision of St Michael. She later also claimed to have received visions of saints Margaret of Antioch and Catherine of Alexandria, whose voices, she said, spoke most clearly to her during the pealing of church bells. They revealed to Joan that it was her destiny to expel t
