Now, in a little French village there was living a poor peasant girl, a shepherdess, called Joan of Arc. As she watched her flocks of sheep, she had wonderful visions. She heard voices calling to her, telling her she was the one who must lead the French armies and save France from England. She went to the prince’s nobles and told them her visions. But they did not put any faith in her or her visions, and they did not believe she was able to do the things she thought she could.
To test her, however, they dressed up another man as the prince and put him on the throne while the prince stood at one side with the nobles. Then they let Joan into the room. When Joan entered the royal hall, she gave one look at the man who was seated on the throne and dressed up as prince. Then without hesitating she walked directly past him and went straight to the real prince. Before him she knelt and said, “I have come to lead your armies to victory.” The prince at once gave her his flag and a suit of armor, and she rode out at the head of all the army and had him crowned king.
Joan of Arc at the stake.
The French soldiers took heart again. It seemed as if the Lord had sent an angel to lead them, and they fought so hard and so bravely that they won many battles.
The English soldiers, however, thought that it was not the Lord but the devil who had sent Joan and that she was not an angel but a witch, and they were very much afraid of her. At last, the English made her prisoner. The French king, whom she had saved, in spite of all she had done for him, didn’t even try to save her. Now that things were going his way, he didn’t like to have a woman running things, and the soldiers didn’t like to have a woman ordering them around, and they were glad to be rid of her.
The English tried her for a witch, judged her guilty of being a witch, and then they burned her alive at the stake.
But Joan seemed to have brought the French good luck, to have put new life into their armies, for from that time on, France increased in strength, and after more than a hundred years of fighting at last drove the English out of the country. In one hundred years of fighting hundreds of thousands of people had been wounded and crippled and blinded and killed, and after it all England was no better off, just the same as when she started—all the fighting all for nothing.
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