Saint Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc, Saint (1412?–31), French heroine of the Hundred Years War. A peasant girl from Domremy, Lorraine, she heard “voices” telling her to liberate France from the English. Given command of a small force by the Dauphin (later Charles VII), she inspired it to victory at Orléans in 1429. She stood beside the Dauphin when he was crowned Charles VII that year and joined him in his unsuccessful siege of Paris. Captured at Compiégne (1430), she was tried for heresy by an ecclesiastical court of French clerics who sympathized with the English, and burnt at the stake. The verdict was posthumously reversed in 1456, and she was canonized in 1920.

See also: Hundred Years War.