Divine military strategy that changed the arc of history

Happy Sunday!
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​Domrémy-la-Pucelle sits in the Vosges region of northeastern France—a village so small that even today it barely troubles the mapmakers.

Fewer than a hundred inhabitants are scattered along the River Meuse, hemmed in by oak woods, cultivated fields and pocket-sized vineyards.

In 1412 it was simply Domrémy, a frontier settlement caught in the crossfire of a conflict that had dragged on for 75 years.

The Hundred Years’ War between England and France was raging. Domrémy found itself in a region hotly contested between the Anglo-Burgundian alliance and the Dauphin, the future French king Charles VII.

In that year, a peasant farmer from Domrémy, Jacques Darc, and his wife Romée had a daughter. Her name was Jeanne.

Out of Curiosity

The Hundred Years’ War is a misnomer. It actually lasted 116 years, not as a single continuous campaign but more a string of bruising flare-ups, broken by long truces while both sides caught their breath and replenished their arrow stocks.

It began in 1337, during an era when English-held fiefdoms sprawled across southwestern France. At the high‑water mark, English lands would swell to roughly a third of modern-day France.

Tension had heightened back in 1328 when the French King Charles IV died without a male heir. England’s King Edward III claimed the French throne as Charles IV’s nephew through his mother, Isabella.

The French magnates, displaying the sort of selective reasoning that would make a modern lawyer proud, insisted that the crown could not pass through a woman.

They later justified this under the mantle of Salic Law—an ‘ancient principle’ that was retrofitted to block claims like Edward’s.

Instead, the crown passed to Philip VI, Charles IV’s cousin. War was inevitable from that point, but was triggered in 1337 when the emboldened Philip tried to confiscate Edward III’s French territory, Aquitaine.

And so the Hundred Years’ War had begun.

Jeanne’s parents raised five children in an era when surviving itself was an achievement.

Life in medieval Domrémy was grim enough. Homes ran to one or two rooms with dirt floors, made grimmer still by the livestock often sharing the space.

Most villagers were subsistence farmers who handed over roughly a third of their earnings to the local lord and the church. Peasants worked the fields from dawn to dusk. If they made it to forty-five, they counted themselves fortunate before dysentery or plague caught up with them.

Women could add childbirth to that list.

The typical diet was bread, watery stew (or pottage) and a little bit of cheese. Meat was a luxury reserved for feast days. Entertainment ran to Church festivals, the occasional wedding and swapping stories about whose cow had died most dramatically.

Joan grew up like any other village girl. She tended sheep and spun wool. Staying alive mattered more than reading or writing, which nobody bothered with anyway.

She was also exceptionally pious—though so were half the village, there was little else to distract them. But at thirteen, something changed. Jeanne (known today by the English ‘Joan’) started hearing voices.

At first, the voices offered Joan general spiritual guidance. Over time, though, the messages grew more specific.

It turned out that Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had strong opinions about French military strategy. The saints urged her to rise up and drive the English out of France.

Joan kept these celestial briefings to herself until she was seventeen. Then the voices insisted she could wait no longer.

Out of Curiosity

Despite great victories at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), English lands had been eroded by the French so that only Aquitaine and an area around the port of Calais remained.

However, Henry V’s glorious victory at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) and the subsequent Anglo-Burgundian alliance sealed in the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, reversed English misfortunes.

By the time Joan had turned 17, the Anglo-Burgundian camp once again held swathes of northern and western France—including Paris.

After two years of trying, Joan finally persuaded the local garrison commander to give her safe passage to Chinon in February 1429.

There she would present herself to the Dauphin—the heir-apparent son of Charles the Mad, who had disinherited him in favour of Henry V and his heirs.

Even in the territory the Dauphin controlled, he couldn’t be anointed king: Anglo-Burgundian forces held Reims, where French kings had been crowned for centuries.

For a teenage peasant girl in 1425, this would be quite the career pivot.

Through what must rank among history’s greatest sales pitches, Joan convinced the Dauphin to let her lead troops to Orléans where the English had held the city under siege for nearly six months.

French morale was low. The situation looked hopeless.

Then Joan arrived in white armour, carrying a banner emblazoned with the names of Jesus and Mary. She didn’t so much command the troops as inspire them into a religious frenzy.

She was Joan…. Joan d’Arc.

When the French launched their attack on Les Tourelles in May 1429, the fighting was brutal. Joan was in the thick of it, armed with nothing but her banner. On the third day, an arrow punched through her shoulder between neck and collarbone.

She was carried from the field. But when Joan overheard the commanders discussing retreat, she hauled herself up, returned to the fight and rallied the troops again.

The next day, the English siege broke. The victory at Orléans on 8 May 1429 became the stuff of legend.

On 17 July 1429, the Dauphin became Charles VII, crowned in Reims Cathedral, with Joan of Arc—the Maid of Orléans—standing close by, banner in hand.

At this point, Joan should have gone home. But she didn’t.

Joan fought on, leading an ill‑fated assault on Paris in September 1429. The attack failed and she was wounded again. Her voices, she claimed, had warned her she wouldn’t live long. They were right.

In May 1430, during a skirmish at Compiègne, Joan was captured by Burgundian troops who promptly sold her to the English.

The English wanted her dead, but they faced a problem. They needed an excuse that wouldn’t inadvertently create a martyr.

They needed to discredit her first, and by extension, Charles VII’s crown.

Joan of Arc’s trial started the following January in Rouen, the capital of English-occupied France. Her first public interrogation started 595 years ago this coming Saturday, 21 February 1431.

The proceedings were a masterclass in medieval legal gymnastics. Joan, still a teenager, faced a panel of dozens of theologians and legal scholars. She had no lawyer, no advocate, no one to advise her.

The charges ran from heresy and sorcery to what the judges treated as most damning of all: her stubborn insistence on wearing men’s clothing.

The theological heavyweights at the trial devoted serious energy to the trouser question: Were they heretical?

Joan pointed out that she was less likely to be assaulted in breeches than in a dress. The scholars were unconvinced by her pragmatic approach to fashion.

Despite the hopelessness of her situation, the Maid of Orléans held her own. When asked if she knew she was in God’s grace, she gave one of history’s most elegant non-answers:

It was a perfect response. Saying “yes” would be presumptuous heresy. Saying “no” would be an admission of sin.

Nonetheless, the verdict was never in doubt.

On 24 May 1431, faced with the threat of immediate execution by burning, Joan recanted. She signed a document—with a cross since she couldn’t write—renouncing her voices and exchanging her soldier’s clothes for a woman’s dress.

She was sentenced to perpetual confinement.

However, three days later, Joan appeared again in male attire, claiming that promises had been broken and she was 'still chained among men’. The court had no choice but to declare her a relapsed heretic.

On 30 May 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the Old Market Square in Rouen. She was nineteen years old.

Epilogue

The English hoped that in death, Joan would be discredited as a heretic—and, in the popular imagination, a witch—with her reputation destroyed.

They were to be sorely disappointed.

Twenty-five years later in 1456, Pope Callixtus III authorised a retrial. The original verdict was overturned. Joan was declared innocent, wrongly convicted by a corrupt court that served English interests rather than religious truth.

But the rehabilitation didn’t stop there.

In 1909, Joan was beatified by the Catholic Church. On 16 May 1920, she became Saint Joan of Arc.

The teenage peasant girl from Domrémy, who’d claimed to hear heavenly voices and led armies to victory, was now a patron saint of France. The trial designed to destroy her had ensured her immortality.

Joan of Arc’s trial for heresy stands as one of history’s great miscarriages of justice. France never forgot the Maid of Orléans. Neither has history.

Footnote

Historians generally agree that Joan existed, that she did convince the Dauphin to allow her to join the army and that she was present when the Siege of Orléans was lifted.

They also agree that she was captured, tried at Rouen and burned at the stake in 1431.

However, much of what we know about Joan’s inner world—the voices she heard, the visions she claimed, the reasoning behind her choices—comes from her own words in the trial record.

The nineteen-year-old had, after all, already proved herself remarkably adept at managing her own story. Was this a case of divine inspiration, or was Joan a propaganda tool of the Dauphin?

The finer details of her story may never be fully recovered, but even on the most cautious reading, Joan of Arc remains an extraordinary young woman whose presence and leadership were crucial to the lifting of the English Siege of Orléans.

Today, Joan of Arc is honoured as both Catholic saint and enduring symbol of France. Streets, squares, schools and churches bear her name. Annual festivals, processions and historical re-enactments keep her memory alive.

Various political factions have tried to claim her over the years. The memorials stand regardless, scattered across France’s civic landscape. In the end, though, she belongs to no faction. The voices told her to save France. She did. Everything else is commentary.

Out of Curiosity

Domrémy became Domrémy-la-Pucelle in 1578. The village was renamed to honour its most famous daughter—la Pucelle... 'the Maid'.

Dates with History

Last Sunday...

The gentleman on the left of the picture above is receiving his honourable discharge as a Pharmacist’s Mate in the US Navy from Navy Commander Louis A. Fey at Boston Separation Centre 80 years ago last Sunday, 8 February 1946.

His name was William Patrick Hitler.

William was born in Liverpool in 1911 to Adolf Hitler’s half-brother, Alois Hitler Jr.—making William Adolf’s nephew, or, to be precise, half-nephew.

He visited Germany several times in his twenties before settling there in 1933. He was hoping to ride his uncle’s rising political coattails, but their relationship soured as Adolf’s power hardened into dictatorship. By early 1939, William had seen enough and fled back to England.

Almost immediately, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst invited him to the United States to lecture about life inside Nazi Germany and his infamous uncle Adolf.

When war broke out that September, William found himself stranded. The lecture tour became permanent emigration. He had tried to join the British forces before leaving, but was turned down over security concerns. Now the FBI showed similar reservations.

William’s breakthrough came when he wrote directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, petitioning to fight “against tyranny and oppression”.

The letter worked, though it took until 6 March 1944 before William was finally sworn into the US Navy as a pharmacist’s mate.

Adolf Hitler’s nephew was now fighting against the Third Reich.

William spent the rest of the war on active duty with the fleet, serving close enough to the fighting to earn a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound.

After this photo was taken, William Patrick Hitler changed his last name to Stuart-Houston, settled on Long Island and lived quietly until his death in 1987.

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Tuesday...

The Polish Franciscan friar Maximilian Kolbe had spent two years hiding Jews and Polish refugees at his monastery near Warsaw, between 1939 and 1941.

At least 3,000 Jews and Poles had passed through Kolbe’s monastery before the Gestapo came for him. Eighty-five years ago this Tuesday, 17 February 1941, Maximilian Kolbe was arrested and taken to Pawiak prison in Warsaw. By May, he’d been transferred to Auschwitz.

Within months of arriving at Auschwitz, a prisoner from Kolbe’s block escaped—or was believed to have escaped. The SS, never ones for proportionate responses, imposed their rule that ten men would starve to death as punishment for the one man’s escape.

When one of the ten selected, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out for mercy in the name of his wife and children, Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward to take his place.

Kolbe survived more than two weeks in the starvation bunker, praying as the others died around him. When the SS ordered the cell cleared on 14 August 1941, a handful of prisoners were still alive, Kolbe among them. They were killed by lethal injection.

Forty-one years later, in October 1982, Franciszek Gajowniczek stood in St. Peter’s Square to witness Pope John Paul II canonise Maximilian Kolbe.

Talk to me...

Some of you signed up for The Breezer through platforms where you couldn't leave your first name. So, when I send out the newsletter each week, it feels like writing a personal letter to someone without putting their name at the top of the page. It's not doing my OCD any good at all!
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If I haven't opened this newsletter with your name, feel free to drop me an email at steve@battingthebreeze.com; just enter your first name in the Subject and send.
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(If you want to tell me any more about yourself at the same time that would be amazing too.)
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Thanks, Steve

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Question of the Week

Who was the world‑famous British ballerina, born Margaret Hookham, who was briefly jailed in Panama in 1959 for helping her diplomat husband plot a coup, and then returned to the stage as the Royal Ballet’s prima ballerina?

Clue: She was the longtime dance partner of Rudolf Nureyev.
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And Finally…

Grace Bedell was born in New York in 1848. When she was 11 years old, she wrote a letter to the unbearded Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the forthcoming presidential election, urging him to grow whiskers. ​ She wrote:

Grace had encouraged Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard, which, of course, he did.

​ One hundred and sixty-five years ago tomorrow, 16 February 1861, Abraham Lincoln stopped his train at Westfield, New York, on the way to Washington, D.C., to thank Grace in person.

That beard is the key feature of the iconic image of Abraham Lincoln remembered today. Quite an achievement for an 11-year-old girl.​

Thank you for joining me. Have a great week!

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Steve

HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

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Question of the week… answer

The longtime dance partner of Rudolf Nureyev was English ballerina Margot Fonteyn.

As a child I was fortunate enough to see Margot Fonteyn dance at the Pavilion in Bournemouth. I knew I was watching something important. Understanding why would take a few more years.

In 1959, she was briefly imprisoned in Panama for her part in a bungled attempt to overthrow the government, with considerable help from Cuba’s dictator, Fidel Castro.

I’m pretty sure regime change wouldn’t have been on the curriculum at ballet school.

It turns out that Fonteyn was supporting her Panamanian lawyer husband, Roberto Arias, who was subsequently shot in Panama City in 1964 and left quadriplegic.

Mounting medical bills forced Margot to continue dancing through arthritis into her 60s.

She danced her last formal pas de deux at the age of 66 as the Queen in The Sleeping Beauty in Miami with the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, 40 years ago this Wednesday, 18 February 1986.

Five years later, 35 years ago this coming Saturday, 21 February 1991, Margot Fonteyn died in Panama City at the age of 71.

Out of Curiosity

Margot Fonteyn’s final performance in Miami, 18 February 1986, fell on the same day that the original London production of the hit musical Evita gave its final show at the Prince Edward Theatre, closing after 3,176 performances.

Two women, two stories of entanglement in South American politics, though only one of them got a musical out of it.