Which king killed joan of arc

Michael, St. Catherine, and St. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. In May , she traveled to Vaucouleurs, a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home. In January , she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.

Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl.

Charles furnished her with a small army, and on April 27, , she set out for Orleans, besieged by the English since October On April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of Orleans, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate.

She brought greatly needed supplies and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance. She personally led the charge in several battles and on May 7 was struck by an arrow.

After quickly dressing her wound, she returned to the fight, and the French won the day. On May 8, the English retreated from Orleans. During the next five weeks, Joan and the French commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over the English. On July 16, the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her standard: an image of Christ in judgment.

Joan, along with other commanders, pushed for this, but the king was hesitant. Nash-Marshall pointed out that the king actually agreed to a day truce with his enemies, a mere ruse, as it turned out, to give them time to fortify Paris. When the attack on Paris finally happened, the king was hesitant to commit the bulk of his forces to it and it ultimately failed.

Furthermore, it happened on Sept. The king made a truce with the Burgundians, the allies of the English, which was to last until Christmas. Furthermore, before winter set in, Charles VII disbanded his army. On Dec. Without the backing of the king, Joan was unable to launch any more major attacks. On May 23 one of these attacks failed, the enemy having sufficient warning to give chase to her much smaller force.

Although most of her soldiers managed to escape back to the town walls, Joan herself was captured by troops loyal to John, the Duke of Luxembourg. This marked the end of her military career and the beginning of her captivity. When Joan learned she was to be turned over to the English, she threw herself off a tower, apparently in an attempt to commit suicide. Between February 21 and March 24, , she was interrogated nearly a dozen times by a tribunal, always keeping her humility and steadfast claim of innocence.

Instead of being held in a church prison with nuns as guards, she was held in a military prison. Joan was threatened with rape and torture, though there is no record that either actually occurred. Frustrated they could not break her, the tribunal eventually used her military clothes against her, charging that she dressed like a man. On May 29, , the tribunal announced Joan of Arc was guilty of heresy.

On the morning of May 30, she was taken to the marketplace in Rouen and burned at the stake, before an estimated crowd of 10, people. She was 19 years old. One legend surrounding the event tells of how her heart survived the fire unaffected.

Her ashes were gathered and scattered in the Seine. King Charles VII ultimately retained his crown, and he ordered an investigation that in declared Joan of Arc to be officially innocent of all charges and designated a martyr. She was canonized as a saint on May 16, , and is the patron saint of France.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. In fact, France was experiencing a civil war. Henry V undoubtedly understood that the civil war made it an opportune time for his invasion. The division among the French traced back to the murder by John, the duke of Burgundy of his cousin, Louis, the duke of Orleans in , after a power struggle for influence with the king. Although they could unite to fight against their mutual invading enemy, the English, any sense of unity would be fleeting.

Within a month after the battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Burgundy fixed his efforts on taking control of the government of France, which remained largely in Armagnac hands as it controlled Paris and with it the king.

Neither side would make war against each other in the northern territories of France that lay under Burgundian control. So when the Burgundians captured Tours, they could claim authority to the throne of France through the queen, who they said spoke for her husband the king. In short, France was a country with two governments, one Armagnac-controlled and one run by Burgundians. King Charles VI of France. Over the next couple of years, things went from bad to worse. Henry returned to France with an army that swept inland from the coast.

Burgundians managed to make it through the gates of Paris and seize the royal residence of the king. Buildings were set on fire. Within a month, the Burgundians brought the exiled Queen Isabeau back to Paris. The only consolation for the Armagnacs was their success in getting year-old Charles, son of the king and heir to the throne, out of Paris—the dauphin still wearing his night clothes as they fled the city.

The Armagnac loyalists set up a new capital in Bourges, miles to the south of Paris. Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy. The English, meanwhile, had took Rouen and marched towards Paris from the west. With the English only 20 miles from Paris, and in September a meeting was arranged between John the Fearless of Burgundy and the dauphin Charles.

The meeting was set to take place at Montereau, on a bridge that spanned a river separating Burgundian and Armagnac held land. With only ten men each accompanying them, and after swearing oaths to not harm each other, the men faced each other in a wooden building constructed just for the meeting on the bridge.

But when John of Burgundy knelt before his prince, a axe was driven into his skull. With the assassination of the duke, any hope of a reconciliation between Burgundians and Armagnac supporters was lost. To the Burgundians, the dauphin Charles was a murderer and they could never owe him their allegiance. In , England and Burgundian-controlled France sealed a treaty. At the altar of the cathedral of Troyes, Charles recognized Henry as the rightful heir to his throne.

Now, Charles and Henry, his heir and regent of France, could together get rid of the dauphin and those pesky Armagnacs—or so it seemed. The Burgundians held a trial—of sorts—of the dauphin in January The dauphin, of course, failed to appear to answer the charges against him, including the murder of John of Burgundy. But he was found guilty, disinherited from the crown, and sentenced to exile from the realm.

The following year saw a series of battles and skirmishes between the English and Burgundian forces and the Armagnac rebels. As the fighting waged, lives went on and lives ended. The dauphin married in , and within months the dauphine was pregnant. That same year, King Henry died and was buried in Westminster. So did King Charles, at his royal residence outside of Paris.

In French practice, the coronation of a king could only happen with a sacred rite, involving anointing the new king with the sacred oil of Clovis, at the cathedral at Reims. The Holy Ampulla was housed there, eighty miles northeast of Paris. Getting to Reims meant travelling through hostile territory. The trip seemed impossible. The fighting dragged on between the France of the north, ruled from Rouen by the regent Bedford, and the France of the south, ruled from Bourges by Charles.

The natural boundary between the two Frances was the river Loire. In the fall of , the Armagnac-controlled city of Orleans, the northernmost town along the river Loire, came under siege.

Taking Orleans would mean for the English a gateway into Armagnac France. In early February of , they won a major battle near the village of Rouvray, thirteen miles from Orleans. The battle left over Armagnac soldiers dead and reopened supply lines to English soldiers mounting the siege of Orleans. The previous year, a young maid of about 16 years of age showed up in the Armagnac-controlled town of Vaucouleurs.

The maid, of course, would become known as Joan of Arc. Joan told the captain of the garrison that God had spoken to her and that she needed to share her message with the dauphin. At first she was sent away, but Joan came back.

On the second trip, in January , the duke of Lorraine agreed to listen to her story. Her story had spread and people were open to a visionary who could give hope of a way out of their current quagmire. Town inhabitants chipped in and provided a horse, riding clothes, and an escort to allow Joan to undertake the perilous mile journey through Burgundian-held lands from Vaucoulers to the royal court in Chinon.

The Castle of Chinon. The king and his court were intrigued. They put the question to leading Armagnac theologians. The first step was to test her virginity, because virgins—or so it was believed—were less likely to be recruited by the Devil.

A private examination by two women confirmed her virginity. Questioned about her faith and behavior by clerics, Joan appeared to be both a devout and a model of integrity. But still there were concerns, especially given her youth.