Ten Girls from History

E-text prepared by Emmy, D Alexander, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

JOAN OF ARC
Author of Ten Boys from History, Ten Girls from Dickens, Boys and Girls from Thackeray, Boys and Girls from George Eliot. NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1912
Copyright, 1912, by DUFFIELD & CO.
As in the Ten Boys from History, so in this companion volume, the plan has been to call attention to the lives of girls who achieved some noteworthy success during youth, and in whose character courage was the dominant trait.
Many authorities have been consulted in the re-telling of these stories, and in their presentation more attention has been paid to accuracy of historic fact than to the weaving of interesting romances, in the hope that this volume may be used as an introduction to the more detailed historical documents from which its sketches are taken.
K. D. S.

THE peaceful little French village of Domrémy lies in the valley of the river Meuse, at the south of the duchy of Bar, and there five hundred years ago was born the wonderful Maid of France, as she was called; she who at an age when other girls were entirely occupied with simple diversions or matters of household importance was dreaming great dreams, planning that vast military campaign which was to enroll her among the idols of the French nation as well as among heroes of history.
On the parish register of an old chapel in the village of her birth can still be seen the record of the baptism of Jeanette or Jeanne d'Arc, on the sixth of January, 1412, and although her father, Jacques d'Arc, was a man of considerable wealth and importance in the small community of Domrémy, yet even so neither he nor any of the nine god-parents of the child—a number befitting her father's social position—could forecast that the child, then being christened, was so to serve her country, her king, and her God, that through her heroic deeds alone the name of Jacques d'Arc and of little Domrémy were to attain a world-wide fame.