Scott Alexander (author/host)

And then she reverted to the mean.

Not all the way, of course.

But Pattaya was a miracle, and the miracle didn't recur.

Her voices would tell her if other saints were fakes or not, and occasionally they'd start warning her that she'd be taken prisoner eventually.

But for military advice, they gave her no help, and without them she was merely a very good general.

When she finally got a chance to make her attack on Paris, it looked like she'd win, but the English negotiated another truce over her head, and Joan was a loyal vassal of her king, so that was that.

Her actual capture, in a minor skirmish with the Burgundians, with her leading the vanguard on the way to the attack and the rearguard on the way back, was an anticlimax, and while we have a witness, he politely declined to comment on the scene.

Footnote.

The Burgundians were paying his bills.

Conclude what you wish from this.

back to the text.

This left the Duke of Burgundy with the question of what to do with her.

The ethical thing to do by the laws of war would be to ransom her back, but that would also give the French back their best general, and so Duke Philip was somewhat reluctant to do that.

That reluctance was aided by the fact that Charles was mostly back to having a peace camp in the room with him instead of the war camp, and they viewed Joan's existence as a provocation to war all by itself.

Joan wasn't ransomed.

Instead, the Burgundians imprisoned her as a legitimate war captive for a while and then arranged for a prisoner transfer in exchange for moderate compensation, which is to say that they sold her to the English.

Footnotes here, the first about the peace camp being in the room with the king.

The situation would eventually be resolved years after Joan's death when the Constable of France, one of the leaders of the war party, just flat out illegally arrested his arch-nemesis de la Tromouille, head of the peace camp, and seized the status of the king's chief advisor for himself.

He got away with this with no consequences whatsoever.

The next footnote about Joan of Arc's presence being a provocation to war in and of itself...