Joan of Arc

She was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a small village in north-eastern France, the daughter of farming peasants. She could not read or write. By any ordinary measure, her life would be spent in the fields and the home — and history would never have learned her name. But France in those years was a country torn apart. For nearly a century it had been locked in what later generations would call the Hundred Years' War, a long and bitter struggle with England over land and, above all, over the French crown itself.

The crown was the heart of the dispute. An earlier treaty had handed the succession to the English king, pushing aside the French heir — the Dauphin, Charles. Much of northern France, including the city of Reims where French kings were traditionally crowned, was held by the English and their Burgundian allies. Charles, uncrowned and unsure of himself, controlled only the south, and his enemies mockingly called him the "King of Bourges."

Into this hopeless situation walked a teenage girl with an extraordinary claim. From the age of about thirteen, she said, she had been hearing voices — those of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. They told her she had been chosen by God to drive the English out of France and to see the Dauphin crowned as the rightful king. She did not doubt them for a moment. She was certain she would do exactly what they had told her.

Astonishingly, she got her audience. In early 1429 she travelled to the castle of Chinon and convinced the Dauphin to give her a chance — partly, it seems, because she was able to pick him out from his courtiers even though he had disguised himself to test her. She had cropped her hair, dressed in men's armour, and demanded to be sent to the besieged city of Orléans. To a court that had run out of options, this strange, fearless girl began to look less like a madwoman and more like a sign from heaven.

At Orléans she was less a general than a symbol — but what a symbol. Carrying her white banner rather than a sword, she gave the exhausted French army something it had not felt in years: belief. Within days the siege that had held for months was broken, and on 8 May 1429 the English withdrew. The victory electrified France. She then pressed Charles to march on Reims through enemy territory, insisting he was going to be crowned there as the voices had promised.

And he was. On 17 July 1429, in Reims cathedral, Charles was anointed and crowned King Charles VII, with Joan standing close by, holding her banner. A peasant girl had made a king. For a few short months, everything she had predicted had come true, and she stood at the height of her fame.

Triumph did not last. In May 1430, while defending the town of Compiègne, she was captured by Burgundian soldiers. Her own king, the man she had crowned, did nothing to ransom her. Instead the Burgundians sold her to the English for a large sum of money, and her enemies finally had her where they wanted her.

They could not punish her simply for defeating them, so they put her on trial for heresy at Rouen — accusing her, among other things, of falsely claiming to speak for God and of wearing men's clothing. The court was led by clergymen loyal to the English, and the outcome was never really in doubt. After months of questioning, she was condemned. On 30 May 1431, she was burned at the stake in the marketplace at Rouen. She was only about nineteen years old.

But her story did not end there. In 1456, a second hearing examined the case again and nullified the original verdict, declaring the trial unjust and her conviction void. Over the centuries that followed, the illiterate village girl became one of the most powerful symbols France would ever know — and in 1920, nearly five hundred years after her death, the Church canonised her as a saint. The enemies who burned her are long forgotten; the girl they tried to erase echoes louder than ever.