On January 6, probably in the year 1412, Jeanne d’Arc was born in Domremy, a little village in Lorraine, the great duchy which lies on the eastern frontier of France. Jeanne’s father was a hard-working peasant. He owned horses and cattle and was one of the most respected inhabitants of his village. There were no village schools in those days and Jeanne never learnt to read and write. Her mother taught her the creed and her prayers, as well as sewing and the work about the house. Like other peasant girls she ploughed and worked in the fields and took care of the cattle. She played with the other children, and used to dance and weave garlands with them. Best of all she loved to go into the little church and pray, so that sometimes the other children laughed at her for her piety. She used to nurse the sick, and would even lie all night upon the hearth in order to give up her bed to some poor person.

France was at that time in a very troubled state. The whole land was divided into two parties, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. The Burgundians had made friends with the English, who under Henry V. had conquered great part of France. Henry V. was dead, but his little son, Henry VI., had been crowned King of France, and his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, held Paris and many other towns in the north of France for him. The true King of France, Charles VII., had not been crowned yet, and many people still called him the Dauphin, the name by which the eldest son of the King of France used to be called. He was quite young, of a slow and lazy disposition, and had lost heart, and did not know how to meet the difficulties which surrounded him. News of the sad state of France must often have reached Domremy, brought by travellers of all kinds, pedlars, pilgrims, and wandering friars, who carried the news in those days as the newspapers do now.

When Jeanne was about thirteen, at noon one summer’s day, she was in her father’s garden, when she suddenly saw a strange light and heard a voice speaking to her. She was filled with fear and wondered what this could mean. But she believed that it was the voice of God that she heard, and after hearing it thrice, she knew it to be the voice of an angel. Twice or thrice a week she used to hear the voice. It told her to be good and to go often to church, and it also told her that she must go into France. Sometimes there were several voices, and she thought they were the voices of the Archangel Michael and of the Saints Margaret and Catherine. Sometimes she saw their visible shapes, Michael in armour, the Saints crowned with fair crowns. Their voices were beautiful, gentle, and sweet, and a delicate fragrance accompanied them. We cannot explain these visions. Jeanne herself believed that she saw and heard the Saints, and that they guided her in all she had to do. After she had seen them, she grew still more devout in her prayers, but though again and again the voices told her to go into France, she waited from three to four years wondering what this could mean, and speaking to no one of the voices. In 1428, they told her to go to the governor of the neighbouring town, Vaucouleurs, and ask him for an armed escort into France, that she might save the town of Orleans, which was besieged by the English. She answered, “I am a poor girl, who cannot ride or be a leader in war.” But at last the day came when she felt that she could not resist the voices any more. She did not tell her father and mother, but she asked permission to visit a married cousin who lived near Vaucouleurs. Then she persuaded her cousin’s husband to take her to see the governor. The governor was a blunt, rough soldier, not at all likely to believe in Jeanne’s mission. He could not be expected to think that an ignorant girl of sixteen could save France, and he seems only to have laughed at her. She went home not discouraged but quite clear in her mind that next year she would save the Dauphin, and take him to be crowned at Rheims, the city where the French kings had always been crowned.

In 1429 once more she went to Vaucouleurs. It was long before she could get the governor to listen, but her determination never wavered. She said, “I must be with the king by mid-lent if I wear my legs down to the knees.” We do not know what at last prevailed upon the governor to let her go, but she found two men who believed in her mission who undertook to lead her to the king, and with them and their two servants she was allowed to start. By the advice of one of these friends, she decided to travel in a man’s dress. She wore a tunic, with breeches and boots, and a page’s cap. The people of Vaucouleurs gave her a horse. Her friends gathered to see her off, begging her not to go, and urging the dangers of the journey. But she answered, “The way is made clear before me. I have my Lord who makes the path smooth to the gentle Dauphin, for to do this deed I was born.”

Jeanne met with no difficulties on her journey right across France to Chinon, where the king was. At first he would not see her, but at last she was brought into his presence, where he sat surrounded by fifty knights in a hall blazing with fifty torches. No one told her which was the king, but she knew neither fear nor doubt. One who was there says that she came forward with great humility and simplicity, and spoke to the king: “Most noble Lord Dauphin, I come from God to help you and your realm.” The king drew her apart and spoke to her for a long time. She told him that she would drive away the English from before Orleans, and that she would lead him to be crowned, and she told him other things which were kept secret between him and her; what they were she would never tell.

The king seemed to those who were watching to rejoice at what he heard, but he was always slow to move. He had to wait and consult many people and test the Maid in many ways to find out whether he might trust her, before he would let her do as she wished. In vain Jeanne prayed and wept, longing to be allowed to bring help to the people of Orleans. She was taken to the city of Poitiers and questioned by learned men. She was so bothered by their many questions that when one asked, “Do you believe in God?” she answered, “More firmly than you do.” It was six weeks before it was decided that she might be trusted, and allowed to go to Orleans. Then a suit of steel armour was made for her. She wished to wear a special sword which she said that her voices had told her would be found behind the altar at a little church near Tours. It was found as she had said, covered with rust, which however came off easily when they began to clean it. The people of Tours gave her two splendid sheaths, one of red velvet and one of cloth of gold for the sword. In her hand she carried her standard, which was white, with angels painted on it and the motto “Jesus Maria.” She never used her sword and never killed any one herself. Several men were chosen as her attendants and her two brothers joined her.

When Jeanne was with the army, twice every day she gathered the priests who were there round her banner, and they prayed and sang hymns; men learnt to behave better for her presence. As she neared Orleans, Dunois one of the chief men in the French army, came out to meet her, and said that he was right glad of her coming. With him she made her way into Orleans past the English army. She entered the city by night lest the crowd should be too great; but many bearing torches came to meet her, and men, women, and children pressed lovingly around her. Her business now was to attack the forts which the English had built outside the town. But before she would allow this to be done, she insisted that the English should thrice be summoned to depart in peace. In her clear young voice (she was only seventeen) she cried to them across the river, and they shouted back insulting words saying they would burn her if they caught her. But just as Jeanne’s coming had filled the French soldiers with new hope and courage, so it had terrified the English. They did not dare attack that slim figure in shining armour. At last the French from the other side began to attack the English forts. Jeanne, worn out, was resting on her bed, she did not know that the fighting had begun. But suddenly she woke with a cry saying that she must go against the English. Quickly her armour was buckled on, she sprang on her horse and was off. On the next five days there was fighting with the English, except on Ascension day, when Jeanne would not allow any one to go out. On the last day, the chief of the English forts was attacked and Jeanne led the attack. At noon as she mounted the first scaling ladder set against the wall, an arrow struck her shoulder, piercing her armour. She shrank and wept, but she barely paused to have her wound stanched, and went back to the front. When the sun was sinking and men doubted whether the fort could be taken, her voice was heard crying, “Doubt not, the place is ours.” Her faithful followers rallied round her, and one seized her standard and dashed forwards. “Watch,” Jeanne said, “till the tail of my standard touches the wall.” When it did she said, “Then enter: all is yours.” The last terrible assault carried all before it, and the fort was won. When Jeanne saw close at hand the terrors of war, she knelt weeping and praying for the souls of her enemies. Her first act was to go to the church and give thanks, after that she had her wound dressed.

A few days after this glorious victory, Jeanne went with Dunois to visit the Dauphin. Her good sense, which was one of the causes of her wonderful success, made her wish to press on to Rheims; besides her voices had told her that she would only have one year in which to do her work, and she was eager to get on. But the Dauphin hesitated and listened to other advice. “Noble Dauphin,” Jeanne pleaded, “hold not such long and wordy councils, but come at once to Rheims and be worthily crowned.” She could not persuade him to make haste, and the next month she spent in taking other places from the English. A young noble saw her at that time and wrote to his mother: “To see her and hear her speak, she seems a thing wholly divine.”

At last her persistence was rewarded, and the Dauphin agreed to march to Rheims. The towns on their way yielded to him, or rather to Jeanne; it was she who ever filled her friends with courage and her foes with fear. Rheims opened its gates to them, and preparations were at once made for the coronation. When Charles was crowned in the great cathedral, the Maid stood next him with her standard in her hand, and when all was over she knelt, embracing his knees and weeping for joy, saying, “Gentle King, now is accomplished the will of God, who decreed that I should raise the siege of Orleans and bring you to this city of Rheims to receive your solemn sacring, thereby showing that you are the true king, and that France should be yours.” In less than three months she had accomplished what she had set out from her village to do.

Jeanne had hoped that the day after the coronation, the king would set out for Paris, which was in the hands of his enemies. But again there were delays; Charles consented to make a truce of fifteen days with his enemies. Jeanne’s good sense showed her what a mistake this was. Weary of the struggle, she longed that it might be God’s pleasure for her to lay down her arms and return to keep her father and mother’s sheep. But she would not leave her task. It was nearly six weeks before she was allowed to go against Paris, and she was so badly supported, that in spite of her great courage the attack failed. Once she stood all day in the ditch under the wall in the heat of the fire calling on the enemy to yield, till she was shot in the leg. Then when her men carried her under cover, though she could not move for her wound, she kept on crying out to them to charge, and telling them that the place was theirs if they would. But it was of no avail. Three days after the king decided to retreat and go back to the Loire. During most of the following winter there was little fighting, but in the spring once more Jeanne began to advance on Paris. It was then, one day in Easter week, that her voices told her that she would be captured before Midsummer day, adding that she must take all things well for God would help her. So they warned her every day, but never told her the hour of her captivity. Yet with this terrible fate before her, she rode on; she knew no turning back. A few weeks afterwards she was at Compiegne and led her men out against the enemy. They were surprised by an unexpected attack as they rode. Thrice Jeanne charged, and drove back the enemy, but more and more soldiers came up; most of Jeanne’s men fled, only a few faithful ones stayed with her. The enemy surrounded them and Jeanne was forced from her horse, and carried off. Great was the joy of the English and their French friend, the Duke of Burgundy, when they heard that Jeanne was a prisoner. She was in the hands of a French noble of the English party, and was treated as a prisoner of war, but her enemies planned to sell her to the English, who had always said they would burn her if they could get her. Meanwhile she was kept in the castle of Beaurevoir, and kindly treated by the ladies of the castle. They wished her to lay aside her man’s dress, but she refused, saying that she had not yet had leave from God. She did not feel that her mission was ended. She was much distressed by the stories that she heard of the sufferings of the people of Compiegne, the town which she was trying to relieve when she was taken prisoner. She longed to go and help them. She knew, too, that she was to be sold to the English and she dreaded falling into their hands. So one night she tried to escape by leaping from the tower, a height of sixty feet. She was found lying insensible in the ditch, but with no bones broken. She said afterwards that her voices had bidden her not to leap and had told her that Compiegne would be saved. Now the voices comforted her, bidding her beg God’s pardon for having leaped.

Jeanne soon recovered from her injuries, and Compiegne was indeed relieved, but the Maid was sold to the English after she had been some four months a prisoner. She was carried to several different places, and at last to Rouen, where she was imprisoned in the castle with rough, rude men to guard her. No woman was allowed to come near her; she was kept in chains, and night and day had to endure the company of the soldiers. It was because she still hoped that some way of escape might be shown her, that she would not give her promise not to try to escape. Had she done so, she might have been more kindly treated; but her great courage made her ready to bear anything, rather than give up the chance of going back to her task.

Jeanne was to be tried by the Church, because the plan of the English was to treat her as a witch inspired by devils. A French bishop, belonging to the English party, was the chief of her judges, and with him sat forty-three learned lawyers and clergy to judge the peasant girl of eighteen, before whom the English army had shrunk in terror. The Maid had already been nine months a prisoner when she was brought to trial. She appeared dressed in a black suit like a page, strong in her confidence in the guidance of God, and trusting in her voices to tell her what to answer. The judges could not make her swear to answer truthfully all their questions. She swore to speak the truth on certain subjects, but on others, chiefly on her private communications to the king, she said she would say nothing. First, for six long days she was questioned in the public court, the ignorant peasant girl alone amongst her enemies. She never faltered, her answers came quick and ready, though often her judges wearied her by going again and again over the same points. When they asked if she often heard her voices, she said that there was no day when she did not hear them, and she had great need of them. She described once how the voice had awakened her, and she had risen and sat on her bed with folded hands to listen and to give thanks for its coming. Always she showed that all that she had done had been done at the bidding of God. “I would rather have been torn in pieces by four horses than have come into France without God’s command,” she said. She stated confidently her belief that her king would gain the kingdom of France, adding that it was this revelation that comforted her every day. She never complained, and said that since it had pleased God to allow it, she believed that it was best that she should have been taken. She said that her voices encouraged her to bear her martyrdom patiently, for she would at last come to the heavenly kingdom. When she was asked what she meant by speaking of her martyrdom, she answered that she meant the pains she suffered in prison, and that she thought it probable she would have pains still greater to bear.

For six days she was publicly examined in court, and later, on nine other days, she was secretly examined in prison. During all this time, in spite of her constant entreaties, she was not allowed to hear Mass. On her way to the court she passed in front of a little chapel and she used to kneel to pray at the entrance till even this was forbidden. When at last her examination was finished, a long statement was drawn up in which Jeanne was declared to be a witch and a heretic and accused of many evil deeds. These accusations were sent to many learned men for their opinion, and all declared that Jeanne’s voices were either inventions or the work of the devil, and that she was a liar. Meanwhile her judges visited her in prison and exhorted her to submit and own that she had been deceived. It was nearly two months since the beginning of her trial. Long sermons were preached at her; she was confused by many questions, difficult for an ignorant girl to answer, and told that it was her duty to submit to the Church. Again and again she answered simply, “I submit to God my Creator.” She was ill and worn out with suffering and anxiety. But as she lay upon her bed in prison, she still answered bravely through her weariness, “Come what may, I will do or say no other thing.” For a week she lay in her chains, the rude soldiers always with her. Then again others visited her urging her to confess, but she said, “If I saw the fire lit, if I were in the flames, I would say no other thing.”

To the last she had hoped that deliverance would come somehow, but now it seemed to her that she was altogether deserted. On the 24th of May she was taken out to the stake in the market-place at Rouen, amongst a shouting crowd of hostile people. There a statement of the accusations against her was read out, and she said that she was willing to do as the Church ordered, and that since the doctors of the Church had decided that her visions and voices were not to be believed in, she would not defend them. She was bidden to sign a paper to this effect, and told that if she did so her life would be spared. We do not know what the paper was that at last Jeanne in her fear and weariness, consented to sign with her mark, and we do not know whether she understood what she signed. But a few days afterwards she said, “My voices have told me since that I greatly sinned in that deed, in confessing that I had done ill. What I said, I said in fear of fire.”

Jeanne was now handed over to the Church to spend her life in prison. She cried, “Here, some of you church folk, take me to your prisons, and out of the hands of the English.” But her judge sent her back to the same horrible prison with the English soldiers. A woman’s dress was brought her and she was bidden to wear it. For three days she lay in prison with her legs in irons and chained to a wooden beam. We do not know exactly what happened, but on the third day, it was announced that Jeanne was again wearing the man’s dress which she had sworn to her judges that she would not wear again. News was at once taken to the judges that she had relapsed, and they hurried to ask her the reason. She pleaded that it was more convenient to wear men’s dress among men, and said, “I would rather die than remain in irons. If you will release me, and let me go to Mass and lie in gentle prison, I will be good and do what the Church desires.” But there was no pity for her. It was decided that she must be given up by the Church to the English to be burnt. It is said that Jeanne cried piteously and tore her hair when she was told her fate. If so, she soon regained her courage. Her last desire was granted her; she was allowed to receive the sacrament. Then she was led out to the market-place, weeping as she went, so that she so moved the hearts of those who were with her and they also wept. She had to wait in the sight of a great crowd whilst a sermon was preached at her. When it was over, she humbly asked forgiveness of all and said that she forgave the evil that had been done her. Some who watched were moved to tears, but others were impatient to get away to dinner; so the bailiff said “Away with her.” Then Jeanne was led to the scaffold piled with faggots. She climbed it bravely, but asked for a cross to hold as she burnt. There was none for her, till an English soldier broke his staff and made a little cross and gave it her. She kissed it and cried to her Saviour for help. To the last she affirmed that she was sure that her voices had come from God and had not deceived her. As she was being chained to the stake, she said, “Ah, Rouen, I fear greatly that thou mayst have to suffer for my death.” Then as the smoke rose round her, she cried upon the Saints who had befriended her, and with a last strong cry “Jesus,” her head sank and she was free from her pain.

The story of Jeanne, the Maid of France, seems too wonderful to be true; but all that we know about her is taken from the words of those who knew and saw her, and from her own words at her trial, recorded not by her friends but by her enemies. It is by her own words that we know her best, and they show us her pure nature, her marvellous courage, her perfect devotion to the task given to her. We cannot explain what her voices were, but we know that she believed she heard them, and that somehow this simple peasant maid was taught how to save her king. She accomplished her task. It was she who gave the French courage in their hour of despair, and in the end the English were driven out of the land and Charles VII. became king of the whole of France.