Joan of Arc Relieves Orléans

Also called: Siege of Orléans

In May 1429 a French army led by the peasant girl Joan of Arc lifted the English siege of Orléans, and Charles VII was crowned at Reims.

In 1428 the English and their Burgundian allies held northern France and besieged Orléans, the key crossing of the Loire. Joan, a girl from the village of Domrémy who said she heard the voices of God’s messengers, went to the Dauphin Charles, obtained an army and lifted the siege of Orléans on 8 May 1429. Driving back the English, she then brought Charles VII to be crowned in Reims Cathedral on 17 July.

Captured by the Burgundians in 1430 and handed over to the English, Joan was condemned as a heretic by a church court at Rouen and burned in 1431. Yet the patriotism she inspired turned the war in France’s favour. A retrial in 1456 cleared her name, and she was made a saint in 1920. In the same year (1429) the Nongsa jikseol (Straight Talk on Farming) was compiled in Joseon by order of King Sejong.