Chapter 1: How did Joan of Arc prepare to meet the Dauphin?
King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the Kingdom of France, you, William Paul, Count of Suffolk, John Talbot, and you, Thomas Lord Scales, who call yourselves Lieutenants of the said Duke of Bedford, make satisfaction to the King of Heaven. Surrender to the maid who is sent here by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken
violated in France. She has come here by God's will to reclaim the kingdom for its rightful king. She is perfectly ready to make peace if you are willing to grant her satisfaction by abandoning France and paying for what you have held. And you, archers, men at war, gentlemen and others who are before the town of Oléon, get going back to your own country in the name of God.
And should you not do so, then expect tidings from the maid, who will come to see you shortly to your very great arm. King of England, if you do not do so, I am a captain of war, and in whatever place I meet your people in France, I shall compel them to depart, whether they want to or not. And if they refuse to obey, then I will have them all put to death.
I am sent here by God, the King of Heaven, to drive you out of France.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Joan face on her journey to Orléans?
So that's one of the most remarkable letters in history. And it was dictated, not written, dictated, on the 22nd of March, 1429, by an illiterate peasant girl to the King of England and his captains who were in France. And these captains, since the previous October, 1428,
had been laying siege to the city of Orléans on the River Loire, the lynchpin of the front line between the English and Dauphin-held possessions in France. Now, by the spring of 1429, the city of Orléans seemed about to fall. And if it did fall, then the English would be able to drive a stake into the heart of their enemy's holdings and possibly
bring an end at last to the noble crusade of the Hundred Years' War. But this peasant girl, Tom, had other ideas. Now, who on earth is she? Who are we talking about?
Chapter 3: What was the significance of the shrine at Sainte Catherine de Fierbois?
Well, she is, of course, it will stun our listeners to learn, Joan of Arc, or as she called herself, Jeanne Lapucelle, the maid. And in our previous episode, we described her background, we described her childhood. She'd been born in a village called Domremy on the war-torn eastern margins of France.
She's a peasant girl, and so by definition, she hasn't learned to ride a horse, she's not practiced in the handling of arms. But then at the age of 13, she hears a voice that she says has come from heaven, and these are soon to become voices in the plural. And by 1428, These voices are telling her to lead an army to Orléans and to break the English siege, and so she obeys.
She sets out on this mission in February 1429. She has a horse, she's riding it, and she sets off on what is a very long and dangerous journey. through territory infested by bandits and men at arms, partisans of the hostile Duke of Burgundy.
Chapter 4: How did Joan convince the Dauphin to trust her?
And it's an astonishing mission. And the one thing we've not done is to describe Joan, to make her come alive for our listeners. So give us a sense of how she looked, what you'd have seen if you looked up from your job, as you would undoubtedly have been doing, Tom. You'd have been tilling the fields had you lived in the Middle Ages because you're a man of the soil, horny-handed son of toil.
You're not cut out for life as a cleric. So you'd have been working probably quite near the bottom of the social spectrum. And you'd have looked up and you'd have seen this person passing. What would you have seen? The descriptions of Joan are kind of scanty and not entirely reliable, but she seems to have been dark-haired, and she has cut this hair, cropped it short in the style of a knight.
Someone who knew her well, her future squire, described her as being beautiful and well-formed, and she does seem to have been attractive.
Chapter 5: What was the state of Orléans during the siege?
But she is not dressed as a woman. She is dressed as a man. And specifically, she is wearing hose. She's wearing britches. And these are both tightly knotted into a kind of a gray doublet. And this is obviously to guard herself against sexual assault. And over this doublet, she wears a black tunic and she has a black cloak. She also has a hat. It's made of wool. Again, it's black.
Chapter 6: How did Joan's presence affect the morale of the French soldiers?
And she's pulled this over her hair. As we said, she's riding a horse, even though she had never ridden one before. And it seems that over the course of this journey, she becomes actually a very good horsewoman. She's got a sword by her side, the marker of a knight. And in her train, she has two pages and four men at arms. I mean, it's a long old journey, 250 miles.
And they ride mostly by night, presumably to avoid detection and to avoid bandits and Burgundians. And they cross the Loire. And it takes them 10 days, and then finally they reach a shrine, Sainte Catherine de Fierbois. And what's the point of this shrine?
Chapter 7: What strategies did the French employ to relieve Orléans?
Why this shrine in particular? Well, it's sacred to Saint Catherine, who we know from later records is very important to Joan. But Saint Catherine at Fierbois is also very important to prisoners of war who have escaped from the English. Mm-hmm. they see the St. Catherine in this shrine as their particular patron. And so there are all kinds of fetters that they've hung up to mark their liberation.
And so it's a very Joan place to make a halt. And at this shrine, she dictates a letter to the man who she has come to see, the man that she acknowledges as being the rightful king of France.
Chapter 8: What were the outcomes of the battles at Les Tourelles?
And this is Charles of Valois. So he is the son of the previous king, Charles VI. He is the heir to the ancestral dynasty that has been sitting on the throne of France and which has been replaced by the House of Lancaster, the English dynasty. And he's not Charles VII yet.
I mean, he should be Charles VII, but everyone calls him the Dauphin because they think the English have the upper hand and that he's basically, you know, he's doomed to fail, right? Well, I mean, legally, if you're a supporter of Charles, he is Charles VII. But he is widely called the Dauphin, I think, for a number of reasons. He doesn't have a kingly air. He's physically unprepossessing.
People who've seen the first series of Blackadder, he looks a bit like that. More germainly, he lives under the shadow of a terrible crime, notorious crime, which is the murder at a peace summit back in 1419 of John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, who had been the most powerful nobleman in France. He's got holdings that are not just in the east of France, but in the Low Countries as well.
It was this murder that had driven the son of John the Fearless, Philip, who is the good, to enter his alliance with the English. As you said, the Loire is the marker between these kind of two rival zones of influence. South, the Dauphin, Charles VII, as he legally is, that's where he essentially still can draw on support.
But north of the Loire, northern France is effectively now an Anglo-Burgundian condominium. Right. So one other important point about the Dauphin, though. The Dauphin hasn't been crowned, has he? No. So tradition holds that French kings should be crowned in the cathedral in Reims. But Reims is in English territory.
And until he can get to Reims and be crowned, people will not accept him as the rightful king of France. That's about right, isn't it? Correct. And this is a big problem to which Joan has a solution. And she wants to meet the Dauphin so that she can present this solution to him. Right. And Charles, at this point, is in a great castle called Chinon, which is south of the Loire, not far.
It's about 20 miles from Firbois, where the shrine of Saint Catherine is. And when he receives the letter from this illiterate peasant girl, He says, okay, fine, I will meet you. Despite the fact that plenty of his advisors are advising against it, saying, what if she's a crank? What if she's a fraud? What if she's worse? What if she's a sorceress?
Because the news has come that this girl is dressed as a man, and this is strictly against biblical injunctions. So to people who are worried about the possibility that Joan might be a sorceress, The fact that she's wearing male clothing is a kind of warning sign. But Charles overrules this advice and agrees that, yeah, I will see this extraordinary person.
And part of this, presumably, is because he's really up against it. He has nothing to lose. If Orléans falls, this is a disaster for him. The English will pour across the River Loire into the south. So there's that element to it.
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