Hello and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. On today's episode, we are talking about Joan of Ark. Joan of Ark is a name that many people have heard and a lot of people don't know that much about. It's an amazing and frankly, miraculous story. One of the most improbable stories of all time is what I think, as I have read in history, I have never.

a story like this of someone who should have been nowhere near the levers of power. She was a a French girl. She was a peasant girl from the middle of nowhere, and she eventually rises to, she calls herself the chef, the gale, the, uh, the, essentially like the commander in chief, the leader of the armed forces, and completely turns the.

Of a war. It's an incredible story, , about persistence, about vision. It's a story that forces us to reckon with the divine, I think, which is really interesting. Uh, it's a story of a great woman and the difficulties and the contradictions that that entailed in medieval Europe. It is both a great war drama.

And at the same time, it's a shockingly small and personal story about a 16 year old girl and her convictions and beliefs, and I also think it's a masterclass on how to motivate others and how to inspire them in a cause. I have loved learning about this story and I think you'll love it too.

Before we get started, I want to give a quick shout out to Ellie May, who convinced me that this was a story worth telling and helped me with the research and writing on this.  She's great. You can find her on Twitter at l underscore limay. I've linked her Twitter profile in the show notes, so go give her a follow and let's do it.

Let's dive in to the story of Joan of Arc after this word from our sponsors.

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I'd like to start out by giving some context on the times that Jonah Arc lived in and the war in which she became a player. I think unless you understand the broader conflict, it's difficult to understand how strange, uh, it was that this, this girl kind of appears in the middle of this war and, and does what she does.

So let, let's start off with the basics. England had been trying to invade France for a long time. , and that might seem funny because  ,  our story will, will take place in the early 14 hundreds. And at the time, England was a country of about 2 million people and France was a country of about 20 million.

And so it seems backwards that this country that's a 10th of the size is trying to invade this, this much larger country.  , but there had been a longstanding claim of the English Kings to the French throne and that was because, uh, the two royal families intermarried quite.

and also because, uh, England was sort of economically ascendant at this time. There were, there were some larger forces that led them to punch above their weight, you could say, to be more powerful than they should have been given the raw manpower that was available to them.

And then in the very early 14 hundreds, uh, something happens that destabilizes France a little bit.  There's this guy, king Charles, king Charles the sixth,  and he ascends to the throne. His father dies early, so he's only 11 years old.  And so what happens is the French kingdom starts to be pulled apart by, uh, his uncles, by these dukes.

So you can think of Dukes as like governors, right? They're below the king. They control large amounts of territory, um, but not the entire kingdom. And so they start to empty. The coffers of France start to take power for themselves.

 And so Charles grows up in troubled times and grows up with a lot of stresses, a lot of people fighting over him, and, uh, and surrounded by a lot of violence and instability. And perhaps because of a consequence of that,  uh, Charles, the.   goes crazy.

And I mean, crazy, crazy. So there are a number of incidents, uh, in one,  he thinks he's made of glass, and so he tries to have,  a contraption made for him with iron bars to help hold them together so that he won't accidentally shatter in another.  He claims to not know his family. He, he looks at his wife and says, who is this in?

He, he starts to believe that everyone around him is, uh, is plotting to kill him. And so he goes on a killing spree. He, he kills five people before he is restrained five people in his court who are kind of part of his retina and, and around him.

And so, um, that leads to some instability as well, because he is not fit to rule. And what that means is that there are other people in the court who are vying to kind of be the power behind the king, right? They're vying to be the person who really controls the kingdom of France for whatever reason.

This guy Charles, again, this is Charles the sixth. He is known as, uh, Charles. The  Charles the well.  Apparently he was a very nice and agreeable guy. People loved him when he was lucid. I don't know that even when he was lucid, he was a great leader, but he was very likable.

He's, He was well liked if, if not necessarily well respected. ,  but that's not the only nickname he had. The Well Beloved. He's also known as Charles the Mad, unsurprisingly.

Now I mentioned some of these divisions. There are two main camps, Orleans  and Burgundy. Okay? And these are two of the more powerful regions in France.   and so it's complicated. I won't get into all of it, but you know, the people from the Orlene, the, the, the Orlene family I guess you could call them, are marrying into the royal family and trying to take certain positions and trying to control France.

And the people from the Burgundy family are doing the same.

And at first there are kind of rules in terms of how far people can take things. Uh, but then the Duke of Burgundy kind of breaks the rules. And so one night, Lewis of Orleans. The Duke of Orleans. Uh, so the, the head of this Orleans family, I guess you could say, uh, is walking through Paris one night and some bandits come out of the shadows and club him to death.

Really gruesome and really brutally, I think they they strike so hard. At one point, his, his left hand or left arm is nearly taken. .

and it's very obvious to everyone that these were not just some random bandits. These were men sent by the Duke of Burgundy to do his dirty work.

And so this basically spills over into Civil War. At first, it's kind of a cold civil war. It's just minor skirmishes, uh, but it moves more and more towards an actual real civil war. And so the King of England, whose name is Henry the fifth. takes a look at this and says, okay, there are serious divisions within France.

Now is a good time to take advantage and press my claim to be the King of France.

And so in 1415, he sails from England to Normandy

which is a region in Northern France.

and starts by besieging, a city called Har Fluer.  They are successful eventually and take the city of Harlo, but it takes much longer than it should have. And in the meantime, the siege is not done particularly well.

They dam a river and it floods and it causes a lot of disease and dysentery in English camp. So yes, they take their immediate goal, which is the city of Harlo, but it basically takes the entire summer, the entire campaign season, and at the end of.  Half their troops aren't able to to fight anymore because they, they all have dysentery.

But King Henry can't really just take this one city and turn around and go back to England with his tail between his legs. So he decides that he is going to march through Normandy to the city of Colay,  which is at the time English controlled. And so that will prove, look, I can march my troops through France, through Normandy.

I'm really in control here. Uh, even though he wasn't, it's kinda a fool hearted decision. And as he's doing this march through Normandy, the French troops show up

and the, uh, the camps of Orleans and Burgundy have put aside their differences and they've all come together to form this joint French army to attack the English who were in their territory.

And they catch up to the English army , Near a town called Acor,  and this is one of the most famous battles of all time. The English essentially have no knights. They're outnumbered at least two to one. The numbers are a little disputed.

They are cut off from all their supplies. There's just, they have no chance. Right.  Yet they win somewhat miraculously,

I would love to break it down some other time. Maybe I'll do an episode on Henry the fifth.  , but this lends some credence people to start to say, oh wow, maybe this Henry, the fifth guy, you know, is really destined to be that guy, destined to be the the King of France, and he's able to lead his troops to Colay and go back to England now.

It was kind of such a debacle that he had to take a few years off from this invasion of France and kind of regroup and raise more troops. And in the meantime, while Henry is gone,

the civil War between the Burgundians and, uh, and the guys from Orleans resumes. Um, the actual, the side from Orleans comes to be known as the Armon yachts after a, a count who's, who's with them and ends up kind of being important in, in all of it. So that, that's the important thing to know is that we're in France, there's kind of this threat looming of England, and there's the Armon Ys and the Burgundians.

So when Henry II returns to France, he doesn't have any trouble landing and getting his troops established. Uh, one chronicler wrote quote, no one did anything about it because all the French lords were angry with each other because the prince was at odds with his father on account of the Duke of Burgundy who was with the king.

Okay? So that's the basic balance of power. The King, king Charles, the mad, was with the Burgundians.  His son the Prince who was called the Dohan, was with the Armon yachts. And now King Henry is in, uh, is in France as well.  And so for a time there are these shifting alliances.

So anytime someone starts to get too much power, then the other two sides will sign a truce and start to work with each other. And it's interesting because, you know, there's this propaganda, especially the French really hate each other, these burgundians and these Armon Ys cuz it's a civil war, right?

They can't believe they have betrayed one another. Uh, at one point the Armon yacht propaganda calls John the Duke of Burgundy quote, the dearest and well beloved lieutenant of Lucifer. King of hell.  And then like weeks later, they sign a truce with him, right? . So it's, they can vacillate very quickly between, okay, we're working with you and you are literally the most well beloved lieutenant of Lucifer, the devil.

Well, finally, the English are getting too powerful. Henry I fifth was an amazing leader and a powerful military commander. And so he's making some real headway. And so the arm yachts and the burgundians can see, okay, we need to set aside our differences and team up for the good of France and defeat the English.

So they come together for a peace agreement. They start to hammer it out. The only thing that's left is to really seal it, to do the handshake right? And say, okay, we're doing this. So they set up a handshake deal. It's a very complicated affair because,  everyone is sort of scared of assassination. And so, , the do fan who is, again, that's the French word they used to mean prince.

It means he's the heir to the throne.  So the dohan at this time is still just a boy. And again, you have these kind of paws, right? So the King, king Charles, the mad is with the burgundians. But he's not making any decisions. He's essentially like their mascot. They keep him around as a form of legitimacy.

Look, the king is with us, but the king's not making any decisions. Similarly, the Prince, the dohan is with the Armon Ys, but he's also not really making any decisions at this point. He's just a boy. He's doing whatever they tell him, but he's a sign of legitimacy. Look, we have the, the heir to the throne.

The future of France is with us. And so the Dohan, who is a young man, is supposed to meet with, uh, John the Duke of Burgundy,  and they have it all set out that they're going to cross a bridge meet in the middle of the bridge. You have 10 men stand here. I have 10 men stand here, and they kind of do it on, uh, they do it on Armonk territory.

So the DFA is really the one who's in charge. And so they do this, they all come together, there's a handshake deal, and in order to kind of,  seal it, the Duke of Burgundy kneels down before the Dohan. And as he does so,  One of, uh, the Armon yachts, one of the do defense men  takes up his ax and caves in the Duke of Burgundy's head, kills him with his ax, and then people swarm him and start stabbing him for good measure.

And so this was payback, uh, because this is the same guy, the Duke of Burgundy, who had previously killed the Duke of Orleans, had had those people in in Paris come and, and hack at him with clubs and, and, and kill him.  And so they're paying him back, right? This is very Game of Thrones type stuff. But in some ways, this killing was worse than, uh, than what John the Duke of Burgundy had done previously because, You know, you can think of it like a mob hit, right?

There's such a thing as a fair mob hit. What, what's okay to do and what's not okay to do? And what's okay to do is get a guy when he's in the street, but what's not okay to do is take someone in your protection, lie to them, say, it's okay, we're gonna make a deal. And then under those auspices, have him killed.

There, there were sort of expectations and customs around hospitality and breaking those was a big no-no. And so the burgundians are very, very upset after, uh, after this assassination. They already would've been upset after an assassination, but this seems particularly gross and egregious and evil.

And so  the burgundians are like, forget it, we're going with the English and so we've got the Armon Ys on one side who include really most of France. And then we've got Burgundy, which is a smaller part of France, but honestly some of the most prosperous, um, some of the richest parts of France. And they're teamed up with the English. And these two sides are about to start fighting.

The Burgundians in the English come together and they have Henry the fifth, who's the King of England, Mary, uh, a princess, the daughter of Charles the mad.  And so this brings a lot of legitimacy because if, if Henry is able to have a son with this woman that makes him obviously the king of England, but also have a really, really strong claim to France as well, even stronger than Henry the fifth  So they've got a strong claim  and they've

got an amazing leader in Henry the fifth as well. He's great on the battlefield. Great. In the throne room, you know, five tool player as they say in the N F L. The guy can do everything. I, uh, I, I could do an episode on, on Henry fifth. I, I probably will. Shakespeare already did,  and.  and the English and Burgundians are winning as long as he's around. He does leave and go back to England for a while. He leaves his brother Thomas in charge. Thomas really messes things up and he charges into the fray, immediately gets himself killed and loses a major battle. So Henry the fifth has to come back, and when he comes back, now he's got a son.

Uh, he, he was able to, to father a son with this princess of France. And so this kid is like the most anticipated child of all time in Western Europe.  They call him Henry the sixth. And this kid has more claims in England and France than anyone has ever had. He's born into more power than than a person ever has been.

And it seems clear to me that if things had gone on like this, Henry the fifth  is going to keep winning battles. . He's gonna make quick work of the Armon Ys. All the momentum is with him, and he's gonna be the King of England and France, and he's gonna leave those thrones to his son.

They would've won, but he dies of dysentery.

This is one of these sliding doors, moments, but now things get more complicated

because again, the next king is just an infant. So,  Whereas before you had the Armon Ys who are really divided, they don't have a, a great leader because, you know, their king is, uh, is just a young man and can't lead yet. And you have the English and the Burgundians who are led by King Henry the fifth. This really strong leader.

Now, the English and the Burgundians are led by committee as well. And so also don't have as strong of leadership.  

And so the, it seems like the Armon Ys have a little bit more of a chance now.  . But in the immediate wake of the death of Henry the fifth, his brother, who's called the Duke of Bedford, takes over as a, as the head guy of England in France.

And he's not as flashy. He's not as spectacular as his brother Henry, but the Duke of Bedford is the ultimate, get the job done guy. He's just very, very competent. So he takes charge of the forces, . He leads them at a battle with the Armon Ys called The Battle of Ver Nu.  And once again, the French outnumber the English should win and they lose spectacularly.

And so now they've got like half the country under, under their rule.

They actually take Paris, which is symbolically very important because it's the capital and, and the heart of France.  And they're winning. They're pushing further and further South And the English are gonna take control of basically all the heartland, the main parts of France.   and to add to that, they're already losing and now there's start to be some inviting, some, some civil wars within the arm side. So what's going really, really poorly English. Move in and besiege the city of Orleans.

And that's important because the thing though was still holding them back from fully being able to take over all of France was this river, the Lair River. And so the, the Armon Ys could still hold the English back, uh, along the lair cuz it's difficult to cross. But Orleans is one of these cities that sits right on the lair.

And so if they can take it, that is a crossing that's going to put them right in the middle of, of the Armon y territory. Since they didn't control Paris anymore, the Dohan had moved his capital to a city called Borjas and it's a pretty straight shot from Orleans to bs.

So they're gonna be in, in big, big trouble if England is able to take the city of Orleans. There is a arm commander named the Bastard of Orleans. So his brother, or his half-brother, I should say, was actually the Duke of Orleans. But he had been captured by the English back at the Battle of Acor. And so he was still being held prisoner now, like a decade later in England.

So the bastard of Orleans, um, , takes some French troops and tries to relieve the siege, uh, on his home city, uh, uh, the city of Orleans.

And they attack,  and the archers take out all these nights. The bastard of Orleans is injured in the foot. Uh, many French Knight are either killed or captured. And so the bastard of Orleans has to literally and figuratively limp back and say, uh, I, I failed to relieve the siege.

And so it looks like it's only a matter of time until Orleans is going to be taken.  That is the gateway to Armon y territory.

Armon Ys have a bunch of infighting still. There's not good relations between their own forces. They're really on their heels.  It looks like  the English are just one strong campaign from taking it all.

These Armon y Pretenders people are calling 'em the Kingdom of Borges, which is supposed to be an insult, right? Because their capital isn't even in Paris. It's in this other city. So this kingdom of Borges looks like it'll fall with the faintest push.

And then 11 days later, a peasant girl named Joan walks into the court of the Dohan, Charles the seventh,  and she changes everything.   And I'll be telling you the rest of her story after this quick break to hear from another one of our sponsors.

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 📍  Joan had no last name. Now we know her as Joan Novak. But the time she was just Joan. She was from a small remote village called Do Remi in the very far northeast of France.  She was a peasant girl. All her family were peasants. She had a very normal upbringing. She sows, she spins wool, she cares for goats. She's very religious.  

And at age 12 she hears a voice. She thinks it comes from behind her. She looks around, she doesn't see anyone, and the voice begins to speak to her and to tell her things, things that she should do.  Eventually this voice becomes two voices and then three voices. The voices identify themselves. They are that of St.

Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret Saints that she was familiar with and were important in the Catholic cannon.  They tell her to do things, never evil or bad things the things that they tell her to do are simple. The things that you would expect a young girl to do. She's to listen to her mother, she's to always pray.

She's to obey the commandments that she learns in church, and so that's what she does,  

but eventually their instructions change and they give her this plan of what we she needs to do. She is going to end this war. She's going to eject the English from France and restore the Dohan, the prince, to the throne of France. And here's how she's gonna do this. She's going to go to the Dohan, she's gonna present herself to him.

She's gonna lead the French forces. She's gonna leave the siege of Orleans,  and then she's going to march the Armon Yk forces to the city of ROMs. And, um, this city rams, it looks like it's spelled reams. Ah, I hate, I hate French pronunciation so much. You know why I hate French pronunciation?  I hate them because  if you mispronounce something in Spanish, that sounds fine. You're supposed to say taco. You say taco. Well, it's kind of stupid sounding whatever,  but in French, if you mispronounce anything, you sound so stuck up.

You really went for it. You were like, oh, bok. Aww.  Oh, I was trying to sound soft, fancy saying, blog it the way I'm supposed to say it. And then if you get it wrong, it's just like, oh man, you tried to be fancy and you messed up. I love France. I love French culture. I love their history and everything they've been able to accomplish.

But man,  the French language xes me. It exes me. Uh, so ROMs, I guess is how I'm supposed to pronounce it. Um, and so th this is the ancient city where Kings of France are always anointed.  And so up to this point, the Dohan has not been able to be anointed in, in rums in the city. And so,  In a way he's illegitimate.

You know, it's like if you're American, you, you say that you've been elected president, but you're never able to go to the capitol and swear on the Bible the way you're supposed to. Um, the, the ceremony hasn't been completed.

So for some people, this is a, a real point of contention that yet this can't be the legitimate king because he's never been to rums, he's never been anointed, he's never done the stuff you're supposed to do when you become king. So  this is her plan.  Go to the Dohan, lead his forces,  relieve Orleans.

Go to Rums. . So at first she tries to go to some local officials and they totally blow her off. They're like, okay, crazy. 16 year old girl.  , you cannot go see the K, the literal person that we think is the King of France. No.  And uh, but then she goes kind of to the peasantry. She goes on a public campaign, starts telling people about her visions and these things that she's seeing and hearing, and so she starts to get a little more popular.

Then she gets a meeting with the local Duke, again, who's kinda like a governor, the Duke of Lorraine. And so finally she gets referred and she's able to go see the Dohan

and he and his court  inspector listen to her, decide we're gonna check her out and see if she's legit.  And to their surprise, everyone is very impressed by this girl. Her conduct is without fault. She seems to be very pious. She seems to be very polite. She seems to have her wits about her. She speaks lucidly.

She has a real plan. She speaks very clearly and very eloquently about these visions she's had and what she's here to do. And she has this very strong conviction that, that she needs to do it. And so people are kind of taken aback by this woman, but, but still kind of, I mean, what are you supposed to do? A peasant girl just walked into your court.

We're all impressed, but are we really gonna do this? Are we really gonna do what she says? Are we really gonna make war strategy based on the word of this girl?  It's uh, it's kind of a testament to their desperation that they even consider it,   and so they go to their court clergy to, to the priests of the realm and they say, how do we know if this girl's real or not?

How do we know if she's really sent from God?  And they think about it, they test her and they say, okay, we, we have some tests for her. The first is we need to test her spiritual integrity. So they ask her questions about her belief. Does she know the important prayers? Um, does she believe in the Catholic church?

And they do this kind of mini inquisition and she passes with flying colors. They say, okay, we need to do a physical inspection. So they have some women physically inspector to make sure that she is a virgin. Doesn't sound like a good time, but she is. She passes that test as well. and they say, okay, well she needs to pass one more test, which is this.

We essentially just need to test the stuff she's saying. , give her a mission and if she completes it, if she's able to do what she says needs to be done, then I guess she's legit.

And so they say, okay, we're gonna give this, this woman, the task of, of relieving the siege of Orleans. Well, no one else has been able to do it. We'll give her a go. Why not?

And so now against all odds, this woman, Joan, is given a suit of armor. She's given a horse, she's given a sword,

She also gives herself a nickname.

She starts to call herself the maid. Now the maid is an interesting nickname cuz it essentially means the virgin. It doesn't actually mean virgin cuz Virgin means virgin. But the maid is a young woman of a certain age who is hit puberty. So she's an adult, but she's not yet married. so  she's a virgin, but she's a virgin of a, of a certain age.

Right. , the, the age that, that Joan is. But by calling herself the maid,  She's definitely invoking the image, the idea of the Virgin Mary. She's making implicit connection and implicit comparison between herself and the virgin Mary.

And so, , when people hear this, this is like this very prophetic,  title. She, she, she's the maid. I mean, it's great branding if nothing else.

She starts to dress like a man. She cuts her hair short like a man. So she will look more like a soldier. She comes up with her own,  flag that says Jesus Mary on it, uh, and, and has a cross on it and other things, , to, to signify that she's on this holy mission.

And the first thing she does is she sends a letter to the King of England.  And this is what it says.

It starts by saying, Jesus Mary, it's invoking their names cuz that's who she represents.  And then says, king of England, render account to the king of heaven of your royal blood.

Return. The keys of all the good cities which you have seized to the maid. She is sent by God to reclaim the royal blood and is fully prepared to make peace if you'll give her satisfaction. That is you must render justice and pay back all that. You have taken King of England if you do not do these things.

I am the commander of the military. I'm the chef Dega. I am, I am the commander in chief. Which is amazing. She's already claiming this. And in whatever place I shall find your men in France. I will make them flee the country whether they wish to or not, and if they will not obey the maid, I will have them all killed.

She comes sent by the king of heaven body for body to take you out of France. And the maid promises and certifies to you that if you do not leave France, she and her troops will raise. A mighty outcry has not been heard in France in a thousand years and believe that the king of heaven has sent her so much power that you will not be able to harm her or her brave army to you.

Archer's, noble companions in arms and all people who are before Orleans, I say to you in God's name, go home to your own country. If you do not do so, beware of the maid and of the damages you'll suffer. Do not attempt to remain for you Have no rights in France, from God, the king of heaven and the son of the virgin Mary.

It is Charles the rightful heir to whom God has given France, who will shortly enter Paris in a grand company. If you do not believe the news written of God in the maid, then in whatever place we may find you, we will soon see who has the better right God or you.

Uh, and then she addresses herself to the actual commander, um, in France, she says, duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of France for the King of England, the maid asks you not to make her destroy you. If you do not render her satisfaction, she and the French will perform the greatest feat ever done in the name of Christianity

I mean,  wow. You really have to respect the audacity of a 16 year old girl to write the King of England and his regent. , uh, like the most powerful force in the world, maybe not quite, maybe, you know, there's the Holy Roman empire. They're probably more powerful. But, you know, one of the most powerful people in the world, certainly one of the three or four most powerful people in Europe, to write him and say, Hey, beat it out of France.

Or I the maid, I'm gonna kill you, kill your men, kick you outta France.  Amazing, uh, . I mean, and of course this makes ripples, this makes waves. Uh, the English are outraged. Um, and everyone in France, whether they side with the Armon yachts or whether they side with the burgundians is at the very least very intrigued by this.

They wanna see what comes of it.

So she goes to relieve the siege of Orleans, and she's paired with, uh, as a general the bastard of Orleans. So remember, this is the guy who. Um, is the younger brother of the Duke of Orleans. , so this is his hometown and, uh, since the Duke of Orleans is still imprisoned, he has sort of claimed to be the commander of this area.

And they form a kind of funny relationship.  The bastard of Orleans is, uh, commander's commander. , he's fought in battles all his life and so he's all about using strategy and being smart about how they attack. He's just had this sort of embarrassing defeat at the battle of the herrings.  And Joan has one move in her play book and that move is attack head on and let God win the victory for us.

And so they  and so they're constantly sort of bargaining of Jonah saying, okay, great. Let's attack and ambassador of Orleans saying, okay, well, um, what if we instead, you know, waited for some reinforcements and, uh, they have this kind of push pull. So at first they head to Orleans.  And they bring all these supplies, the English aren't able to cut them off.

So they march into the city, uh, with these supplies, and then the Bastard of Orleans leaves with all his men. He leaves, and Joan of Ark is, is left in Orleans with these supplies.  And she's outraged. , they, they say they're gonna come back later, uh, with, with even more supplies and, and better supplies so that they can have better attack. And she's like, no, God has promised us we're gonna win. We should attack now.  And so she's able to exert some pressure. The men come back in relatively short order.

And so she gets her, her assault that she wants the English are not just kind of set up in camps, but they've actually made fortifications around the city of Orleans. And there are a number of different forts. And so the first thing they do is assault. ,  one of these kind of smaller fortified positions.

And Joan is in her gleaming armor. She has her white banner. She doesn't actually carry her weapon into battle, and she doesn't actually fight. She never kills a person in her life, but she marches at the front and encourages her men on and says, go attack, attack, attack. God is with us. God will give us victory.

And they win this first little victory. It's just one of these little mini forts around the city of Orleans,  but it's the first French victory in a long time. And the people of Orleans have just watched this 16 year old peasant girl lead the French to their first victory in forever. And so there's this incredible enthusiasm, and there's enthusiasm in the men too.

And so, uh, they start to get some momentum. So then they attack another one of these little forts and they're able to overtake it as well. And so now there is a big fort, uh, the, the kind of main English fortification and. , they have archers, they have lots of men. They have, you know, decently high walls.

And so, you know, this one you can't just take head on. But, uh, Joan says, no, here we go, full on frontal attack on this sport. Let's go.

And in this attack, uh, she's injured,  she gets struck with an arrow between her neck and her shoulder, and she gets it treated. And she says, no, it's just a flesh wound. And so she goes right back up to the front lines and says, keep going, keep going. And this really excites the men to see Joan who just had an arrow in her shoulder, comes back and is cheering us on again.

And so they push forward again and they take this big fort,  and the next day all the English troops who are, are left kind of line up to see what'll happen. The French bring out their, their forces, and uh, the English chicken out and leave. And so in a matter of just a few days, this 16 year old girl, Joan, from who knows where little town in the middle of nowhere is able to do what all the knight and commanders in Armen y France had not been able to do.

She had relieved this threat and for the moment  squashed the existential threat that the English had posed to Armen y France. To me, when I look at kind of what happens at the siege of Orleans, it shows the power  of small victories. When you have a big.  . So when you have a big vision, small victories can take on prophetic overtones.

You know, I remember that when I started my podcast,   I really believed, and I really believed that it could be one of the biggest podcasts in the world. I don't know why. I just believed in myself. I believed that it had the power to be this. And so when I saw myself go from 100 listeners to 200 listeners, that's nothing.

That's a small victory. And yet when you have that big belief,  all of a sudden it's like, look, it's happening. Right? The thing I said was gonna happen is happening. And so when you don't have that big vision, then a little victory's, just a little victory. It's a hundred listeners, who cares. But when you do have that big vision, it's like, hmm, we doubled the number of listeners that we, that we had in the first three months.

And so I do think it's because Joan was telling everyone,  we are going to completely eject the English from France.  , we're gonna take the dohan to ROMs, we're gonna anoint him, uh, and we're gonna go to Paris. She had this big vision, and so when she starts winning these first little victories, she starts getting this momentum.

People start getting behind her, and that's what's le letting her now have big victories. So now, after this victory at Orleans, now the arm yacht priest say, okay, well we tested her spiritual knowledge check. We tested her virginity check, and we gave her a mission, and she completed it. Guess what? This, this girl is really sent by God.

Congrats. And, and so now she's having this magical effect. People wanna see her. People want to be by her. You know, there's this one night guide to Laval who says, it seemed to me a gift from heaven that she was there and that I was seeing her and hearing her,  and, and so she has this like taman effect.

People just wanna be around her.

and one of the effects that this has, you know, so for example, I told you that there had been these internal fractures, these internal conflicts within the camp of the arm yachts. Well, there's this guy, uh, named the count of Al, and he had kind of been on the outs. And so, , they didn't want him marching with the army.

He didn't really wanna march with everyone else cause they had, you know, they had this fractured relationship. , he hears about all this and he comes and joins up with everyone else and they're like, all right,  you can come . We're, we're all in a line. We're all going in the same direction. We're all rowing in the same direction.

We all know what we're doing. We can put aside our petty differences now. And so this momentum starts to build.

they need to take a few cities on the way to ROMs that are stand between them and, and this this city that they're hoping to go to.  And so on the first one, once again, they show up to the fortifications Jones says, guess what? Frontal assault, we're gonna take it right now. They go, once again, a stone is thrown at her, hits her in the head, knocks her out.

She gets up a minute later and says, I'm good. And she shouts to her Men, keep going, and they keep going with the frontal assault. And once again, they take another city.

So they keep going. They take a couple more cities, and then the English army finally catches up to them at a place called Patay. And so there's gonna be this battle, the English and the French lineup and the English are trying to do kind of the same thing that they did at Acor.

So they send some archers into the woods, uh, kind of to the side of the battle, and they're going to ambush the French as they, as they come to attack the English. And after they get ambushed by all these archers, then the English will charge and they'll knock 'em back and kill 'em.

But as these ambushes are getting set a stag, a male deer pops out of the middle of nowhere and it scares some English archers. Some of them let out a call

and it notifies the French to their position. So these, uh, French nights immediately charge these English archers who have to turn and run, uh, cuz they didn't have the element of surprise that they were hoping for.

And this battle of patee, uh, turns into a route. The French are overwhelmingly victorious. They kill a bunch of English men and they suffer almost no casualties. And this is the first major kind of open field battle victory that the French have had in a long time.  One of the burgundians, who's with the English, they, they were their allies.

One of the burgundians, a knight says, quote, by the renowned of Joan the maid, the hearts of the English were greatly changed and weakened. And they saw, as it seemed to them, that fortune was turning her wheel harshly against them.  So once again, there's this idea of momentum. There's this idea that the English had this just feeling of victory, that things were always going their way.

And now for the first time, things are not going their way. Things are going the opposite way,  as you said. I love that. I love that saying fortune was turning her wheel harshly against them.

And she's providing consensus of leadership. Even though all the decisions aren't being made by Joan, in fact, most of the decisions are not being made by Joan. They're sort of mediated by her, right? She agrees on all of them. And the fact that Joan is behind whatever is decided gets everyone else on board and the discussion is over Once, once Joan is on board, she knows that she's not an experienced commander.

She recognizes her limits a little bit, but at the same time, she's also always pushing these generals who are more experienced to say, guys,  we always attack. We have the help of God on our side. And so we go forward and we straightforwardly are marching towards prompts to, to anoint this king

And, and one example of how she does this kind of gets consensus is, you know, some after this victory, some people are saying, well, great, we already have the English on the run. Let's just go attack them. Well, let's go attack their headquarters and, uh, kick 'em out of France entirely. And she says, no. The important thing is that we're marching to rums.

We.  Getting Charles the dohan to be anointed  because that's how things are supposed. That's what God wants. You're supposed to be the anointed king. And, and then we're gonna kick the English outta France. And so everyone agrees with that. Everyone goes along with their plan as they get closer to ROMs.

Some of the cities along the way start surrendering with very little pretext of opposition.  , the last city before they get there is choice. And it is a pretty big city. And she writes them a fiery letter and says, you know, you, same thing, she kinda said, the King of England, better surrender.

Now we have the true born king of France, yada yada ya. And Troy turns them down. Troy says, uh, no, we're not surrendering to you.  And so the generals kind of decide, okay, well.  We don't know. This is actually like a pretty big city and we don't know that we actually have the manpower to, to take it.

And Joan says, stop being idiots.  We're gonna keep doing what we've been doing. You guys still don't get it. God is on our side. We're going to assault choice. We're going to climb the walls and we're gonna win as God intends. And then we're going to ROMs and we're gonna crown Charles. This is what we've been doing the entire time and we're not gonna stop now.

And so they prepare for this great assault and they don't even have to do it. When, uh, when the citizens of Troys see that the arm yucks are very serious about this, that they really are going to assault them. They say, okay, a little, little too rich for our blood. And they surrender  after surrenders. They write to the city of ROMs and they say,  Hey guys, we surrendered.

We think you should probably do the same. And uh, and so the city of ROMs says, okay, fair deal. And so they also surrender. They open the gates and. The Armon yachts are able to enter the city.

The environment is kinetic, as they might say,

in military terms. They can't just hang around for forever,

so they have to arrange this anointing ceremony, uh, relatively quickly. They do,

and so the king rides into the cathedral. Uh, they literally open the doors and he, he, he takes his horse into the cathedral in his armor and everything. He gets off and he is anointed by the archbishop.  , and as he's anointed, who is standing right next to him, but Joan, Joan, lapel, Joan the maid joan, the, the messenger from God standing there in her armor, holding her white banner.

It, it is just amazing. You know, this has been a peasant girl. A year ago, less than a year ago, she was just some girl from nowhere. And here she is standing next to  the, the man who's being anointed, the King of France, and, and she's the one who's right there because it's her initiative that made this happen.

The Archbishop says his prayers, he burns incense, and then he anos the dohan with holy oil. He touches his breasts, his shoulders, his.  And then finally his head. And when he touches his head, everyone in the cathedral shouts Noel.  Afterward, Joan Nes at the feet of Charles and says, noble king, God's will is done.

And she begins to weep uncontrollably.  she had done it. She had carried out her mission  exactly as the voices had told her to, and it went exactly how she thought it would.

Things have completely turned. Now, um, people are now looking for excuses to side with the Armon yachts if they can. They've got this amazing woman  , the maid who, who looks like a messenger from God. He's been anointed, they've won a few battles. Uh, everyone wants to, to be on board.  The Duke of Burgundy is even ambivalent for a number of reasons.

There's some complications with the English and, and things are turning against him. And so he's starting to send out feelers of guys. Can we have some maybe peace treaties, uh, between us, maybe a little bit of ceasefire,  we, we agree not to fight each other on, on our own lands.

We'll only fight each other on the lands that are controlled by, by English, France, that kind of thing. So it's been four months. In four months, Charles has gone from, you know, ready to flee Bouris and go further south and basically abandoning France.  And then four months later he's being anointed.

Um, he's looking like, uh, victory is en route. And they turn from the city of Rems where he has just been anointed  and they start marching toward Paris.  Now at this time, it seems to me  that the voices sort of abandon Joan. They're no longer giving her as clear of instructions at this time.

She starts describing it more as she's coming to them with questions and seeking their approval. She's kind of coming with her own plants.

There isn't the same very clear mission that she had before. Before it was go to Orleans, relieve the siege, and then go and anoint the king. Now there's just more, the more nebulous kick the English out of France, but, but there's not exactly as clear of a picture of how to do this.  So they go to Paris.

The English forces and the Armon Yk forces have sort of a showdown, but no one wants to risk a big battle. So, , , the English kind of just go back north into Normandy and the French surround Paris  now Joan has been able to lead all these frontal assaults and just by sheer force of will take all of these cities.

But Paris is different. Paris is the most fortified city in western Europe. It has very strong walls, it has natural defenses. It's got this river, Much of the, of the key part of the city is an island in the middle of the sand river. , so it, it's very different environment. But Joan doesn't know different environments.

She doesn't know different tactics. And so she says, uh,  We're we're leading, uh, frontal assault. Again, the Dohan and all of his commanders think this is not a good idea. but she goes ahead with it anyway.  So they come up to the walls and, uh, she's leading this attack. And as they come up to the, as they get right to the foot of the wall, she yells, surrender to us quickly in the name of Jesus for if you do not surrender before nightfall, we will come in there by force, whether you like it or not, and you'll all be put to death.

And there's a long silence. And then someone yells, shall we? You bloody tart.

And then a crossbo bolt comes flying through the air and rips through her thigh.  And, um, they make a kind of a show of trying to assault the walls, uh, but it fails very easily. And they drag Joan away from the walls with this arrow through her thigh, and she's bleeding profusely.

And even as she's bleeding and she's literally being carried away by her own men away from the walls, she's saying the entire time, no, no, no. Paris can be taken. You must assault. But no one listens to her and peop and they retreat from the walls of Paris.

Uh, the Duke of Bedford soon returns to Paris with more troops.

And so the, uh, the French, the Armon Ys, uh, returned to Borges to their capitol  despite Jones complaints,  and now it's, it's interesting. She has given  the French, the Armon Ys new hope. She has completely turned the tide to the war.

They were on their last breath. They, they really were about to, to be knocked out. And now things are back to even, but she has lost one battle,   or not even lost a battle, but she has failed, , to take one city. And her spell is kind of broken for some reason after this. She's, uh, she's now a liability.

,  she's not undefeated. She's not undefeatable, she's not invincible anymore.  And so the Armon Ys kind of have to decide what to do with her, and they decide, all right, we're gonna kind of. Put her in some sideshows, uh, send her to some unimportant places where she can't make any trouble and she can stop trying to boss us around and tell us what to do.

So she goes and relieves a few SGEs and takes a few towns with her same tactics.

And then there is a Armin y city that is being besieged by Burgundians. And she comes and does her normal thing. She says they're the burgundians, they're gonna take the city charge and they make a frontal assault. Unbeknownst to her, there were some hidden English forces that had been outta sight.

And once they charge and are engaged with the burgundians, the English come from behind and begin to surround them and others retreat and try to escape this encircling movement by the English, but she does not retreat. She won't retreat. She says, keep pushing forward. We're gonna win anyway.

And uh, eventually she's abandoned by almost everyone in her army. And eventually she's pulled off her horse and she's captured

now the Dohan and all the Armon yachts, they have the position that this woman was sent by God. But the reason she got captured by the English was she got a little too big for her britches. She stopped listening to good advice. She got too willful. She was trying to dictate to the man who had now been anointed the King of France to the Dohan.

And that's why she was captured. She fell from God's grace because she was too headstrong. And so they kind of have hung her out to dry. They say, yeah, she was, she was sent by God, but she's not anymore.  And so the Burgundians are actually the ones who capture her and they hand her over. They actually don't hand her over.

They sell her to the English. They were always looking for a deal. And so she's captured by the English,  and this is really, I think it must have been a crisis for, of faith for her. She, she can't believe that her plan is not going exactly how she thought it would. So she's moved a couple times from Castle to Castle to different prisons, and at one of these, she tries to jump out the window.

She said she wasn't trying to kill herself, she was trying to escape, but she knew that there was a, a chance that she would die and didn't care. She would rather die than be imprisoned by the English any longer.  But she doesn't escape. She just injures herself, probably breaks a leg.

And so now she's put under more strict scrutiny  and so the Burgundians and the English bring in a bunch of priests to conduct a trial to find out if she really was sent by God. And of course, if these priests are being brought in by the English and Burgundians, you might imagine that they have a, a certain viewpoint that they're bringing into the matter.   And so this trial consists of of bringing Joan the maid into a, a courtroom for basically a full day every day for weeks and examining her and cross-examining her day after day, trying to trip her up, trying to catch her in contradictions.

And their hope is that they will be able to lay out a case of why she is a false prophet and heretical.

And why the anointing of of King Charles that she was able to accomplish is illegitimate because it was caused by this witch, this horrible woman.  And more than that,  their hope is not only that they can prove it, you know, if they prove that, then they can burn her at the stake as a, as a witch.

But they don't want to burn her at the stake. Frankly, what they want  is for her to renounce her visions and miracles and prophecies and say, I was wrong. Because then  they can say to King Charles, look, even the person who got you anointed is saying it's not legitimate. Everyone knows you're not the real king, right?

So they are both trying to trip her up, catch her in lies, prove that she's this horrible woman, but also convince her  to renounce what she has been saying, renounce that she has seen visions renounce, that she has heard the voices of these saints.  . So they conduct this long and very loyally cross-examination.

They keep very detailed records. Uh, so you can read it, you can read everything that happened. And it's amazing actually because you can  get this glimpse at the real Joan.

And in fact, that's one of the things I love most about this. And there's this book, it's called Joan of Arc by herself and her witnesses. That brings in a lot of the testimony of Joan and also the testimony of, of people who knew her  from her time in Domi and after. And it's a, it's a great book.

, I recommend it. Thank you to my cousin Mackey who, uh, who gave it to me and, uh, kind of sent me on this journey as well of, of thinking and wanting to, to research and, and write about Jonah Ark. So, um,  As you read these transcripts of these cross examinations and how Joan responds to them,  she comes across as extremely intelligent, lucid, clever, defiant, and full of conviction, full of true belief in what she has seen and hurt.

She seemed in control. Even though she's imprisoned, she's surrounded by all these men who are hostile to her, who are trying to get her killed.  She'll often answer, I answer that elsewhere. You know,  I'll ask her a question, I already told you that. Uh, spare me that and pass the question. She would often say,  on the second day of questioning, they tell her to, uh

on the first day, they ask her to take an oath of integrity, an oath of honesty that she'll tell the truth,  takes the oath. The second day they come to her and say, all I want you to take the oath again, that you'll be honest. And she says, quote, I took an oath for you yesterday. That should be quite enough for you.

They ask her again and she says, you burdened me too much.  So she's very much like it. It does frankly remind me of, um,  of Jesus in front of pil. You know, she's not answering when she doesn't want to answer. She's very much in control of the situation, and she's full of conviction.  Another time they ask her if the people of Dom Rammi where she's from, were Armon Ys or Burgundians, and she responded.

I knew only of one Burgundian there, and I could have wished his head cut off, however, only if it pleased God, and so she had many funny and uh, and clever answers. She even challenged her accusers at one point she told the bishop who was questioning her. You say that you are my judge.

Take care of what you do for in truth, I am sent by God and you put yourself in great danger.

The fact that the trial went on for 16 days is both evidence of the thoroughness of the prosecution, that they wanted to make sure that they were laying out a solid case, but it's also evidence of the deafness of her answers that it took them so long to get the answers that they were looking for because she was, she was smart in the way that, that she was answering.

She said that the voices, and again, these, these are the voices in her head of St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael, that the voices she claimed told her to answer with boldness and that everything would be okay.

But in the end, how could it be? Okay? This was not a court in any real sense. It wasn't objective. There was no question in their head of what the outcome might be. This court was convened specifically to convict her.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion

and convict her. They did. They convicted her of,  well, let me just read from, from the pronouncement.  It's quite the rap sheet quote. Let her be pronounced and declared. A.  A soothsayer, diviner, false prophets, invoker and conjure of evil spirits. Superstitious. Engaged in and practicing the magic arts, evil thinking in and about our Catholic faith schismatic wavering.

And Inconstant in the articles of the faith sacrilegious idolatrous apostate from the faith, evil speaking and evil doing blaspheming God and his saying, scandalous seditious, a disturber of peace and an obstacle to it. Inciting wars, cruelly thirsting for human blood and encouraging its shedding, unholy, forsaking the decent and reserve of her sex, a heretic or at least a vehemently suspected of heresy.

Wow. Again, that is quite the accusation.  So they start off with 70 accusations in total, actually, and in the end they whit it down to 12 official accusations that they think that they sh can really get her on. And so the, the examination, the the questioning comes to an end and they read her these 12 accusations and they tell her if she's convicted that she'll be burned at the stake.

And she says, quote, I will say nothing more to you about this. And if I saw the fire, I would say all that I am saying to now and would not act differently  again. They don't want to burn her. Actually, the best case scenario is that she recants. And so the next day they bring her into court and they have torturers standing there with their implements.

They've got their tongues and their blades and their scalpels and their knives, , they tell her,  you know, we might torture you for your own good because if by doing that we can get you to recant, it might save your soul. And she says, quote,  in truth, if you were to have me torn limb from limb and my soul separated from my body, I still won't tell you anything more.

, and if I did tell you anything else about this afterwards, I would always say that you had made me say it by force.  Her answer is so powerful that they put the implements away and decide not to torture her.  , but they do decide that there's nothing that can be done with her. I guess we're just gonna have to burn her.

And so the next day they take her out to the town square where there was a stake put in the ground surrounded by wood, and they take her to a scaffold, put her on top of it, and they read her her sentence. She was to be burned.  She looks around and she's searching.

The voices said she would be okay,  and she thought that she would be saved somehow. But she looked around, she could see that. no salvation was coming.  So as the final moment approached, for the first time. She vacillates. She equivocates. She says that she wants the pope to hear her trial.

If the pope himself says that she is schismatic, she's all these things, then she'll believe him.   and the English. Say, sorry, girl. That's not gonna happen. You're not gonna have your trial heard by the Pope, but you can recant your testimony here. And now  we, in fact, we've got the, the documentation all drawn up.

All you have to do is sign here.  She looks around  and she's hoping, she's hoping for her promised salvation that the voices told her was coming, but it doesn't come.  And finally she says, you know, I always just wanted to be a good Catholic girl, and, and I guess I'm willing to obey the church and her judges.

And so she, she signs this letter  and she's taken back to her prison cell.   Her men's clothes are taken from her and she's given, um, some rough women's clothes. Her head is shaved and she's told that she's going to spend the rest of her life in prison praying for forgiveness for her many crimes.

and that might have been how the story ended, but it's not  because the next day when her guards come to see her, Joan is back in her men's clothes. And that had been one of the points of the prosecution.  One of the things that made them so sure that she was evil was that she insisted on wearing men's clothes.

And so they say,  you know, why are you back in your men's clothes? One of the conditions of your forgiveness was that you  would continue to wear women's clothes.  And she has all these answers where she had been very lucid and, uh, and very clear before. Now she's, she's,

Jumbled, she's confused. She says, men were looking at me and, and. I didn't like the way they were looking at me in women's clothes. Uh, I, I like these clothes better anyway, and you told me that I could attend mass and, and, and I haven't been able to attend mass, and I hadn't understood my oath when I took it stark contradiction from the testimony she'd given earlier.

And the bishop hears this, and, uh, he looks at her and says, you've been hearing voices again, haven't you?  And she says, yes.  She says, the voices have told her that she had damned her soul to save her life.  They said she should have spoken boldly on the platform and died if she had to. They were angry telling her that if she denied that God had sent her, she'd be damned because she truly had been sent by God and she knew it.

And so she recants her retraction that she had signed only one day previously.  And that's it. That's the final straw. and so they tell her It's over.  Um, you're dead. There's no way to save your life.

Now,  you, you're going to be killed. But  there is still one more opportunity to save your soul if you tell us the truth about all this.  Um, before, before your death, we're gonna kill you this very day  

and she says she can't. Um, she, she can't deny that she has seen visions in heard voices and says whether they are good or evil spirits. They appeared to me.  She was then taken again to the public square. She was tied to the pi. People could see her lips moving as she prayed, ceaselessly.

In her last remaining moments,  her last words were Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.   And then the flames consumed her.   And so, and did the remarkable life of Joan. Joan, the maid.  She was 19 years old.

 Uh, next episode we will talk about what happened after all this with the war, uh, what her overall impact and legacy was, the attributes that made her great. But just briefly, before I end here, I want to explain  what I think was going on here because it can seem very confusing.

Um, cuz there's this question,  how do you explain these visions and voices? How do you explain her behavior here at the end? How do you explain her unwillingness to deny all this stuff? I mean,

you know, we live in a very cynical age and so I think  obviously the default assumption is  angels were not constantly appearing to her and telling her what to do. So what was really happening,  and it's interesting, I heard a podcast  a few months ago. Um, it's called the Martyr Made Podcast, and there was an episode on auditory hallucinations.

And these are people hearing voices.  And, um, in this podcast, the Martyr Made Podcast, they went through this Princeton study,  that was done on people who experienced auditory hallucinations, most of whom, but not all of whom are schizophrenic.  And they talked about, , what some of the common symptoms were, what, what people experienced when they experienced these, these hallucinations, when they heard these voices.

And as I listened to this podcast,  every single thing  that was common for these people is exactly what happened to Joan.  So for almost all of them, it started in adolescence that they heard voices for the first time. The first time they heard the voices, they were surprised. They thought it was a literal voice from outside their body.

, they heard them from different directions, but the majority of people heard the voices behind themselves as Joan did,

, it usually started with only one voice, but over 80% of them eventually ended up hearing multiple voices, and three was a very common number.

Now, we often associate this with schizophrenia. We often associate this with hostile or malevolent voices telling people to do horrible, evil things. Um, sometimes there, there are a couple cases of mass shooters who, who said that they heard voices and the voices told them to do it. Uh, but that's not always the case.

There are many people who experience auditory hallucinations who are not schizophrenic.  who, who are able to function and don't do evil things, and the voices don't tell them to do bad or evil things. And to me that seems to be the case here. This this is what we're looking at.  And I am, um, a person of faith.

I'm a religious man. Even more I would say I'm, I'm sort of,  I don't know, uh, mystical is a weird word. Uh, I'm just very open to different people's experiences and very open to,  there being more than what we understand with our limited human understanding.  

Science has progressed an, an astonishing amount in the time that humans have been on the earth. But the amount that we do not know  outweighs the amount that we do know,  an infinite amount. It's more than a million to one what we don't know, to what we do know.  And so when I.  See an experience like this where Joan is, I think obviously having auditory hallucinations, I don't count out the idea that it could be more than that as well.

To me, it's not a binary, it's not either angels or hallucinations. I think it could be both or neither. Something else I, I, I don't know.   But I do think that the experience of auditory hallucinations, um, explains exactly what Joan was going through,  and that is a way to understand it.

And whether they were hallucinations or angels or both, I strongly believe that Joan really did hear voices that she believed were external to herself, and she really had followed those voices to the best of her abilities for her entire life.   and those voices had led her to accomplish  some of the most remarkable things that a human has ever accomplished on this earth.

And, um, those voices led her to her death. And may, maybe that was supposed to be what happened because she would live on as a martyr. And, her example  continues to inspire to, to the current day.  Joan of Arc lived 19 short years, but in that time, she achieved the impossible.

Okay, that's it.  Um, sorry guys. Sorry to end on a  📍 downer, ,  but next time we'll be a little bit happier, I think, as we talk about her legacy. So, until next time, thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World.

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Part 2

Hello and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. This is part two of The Life of Joan of Arc. If you haven't listened to part one, go back and do that. On today's episode, we're going to go through what happened. In the war after jones death what happened between the french and the english Then i'm going to talk a little bit about her legacy I'm gonna do a little bit of character analysis and talk about what made her great And then i'm going to do a little bit of end notes going here and there talking about Other theories for why she heard voices why she's called of arc if that wasn't her last name And more random thoughts that are floating around in my brain about Joan.

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If you're selling your house, go to listwithclever. com and save yourself 10 grand. I know I will. Again, that is  listwithclever. com or just check the link in the show notes. And by the way, when you do use Clever, let them know that I sent you.  Okay, so after Joan's death. Things go poorly for the Armagnacs.

They were always feckless in war for the most part, except for when she was leading them. And that trend continues after her death. Henry VI, the young king of England, marches into Paris, which is a big deal.  And militarily, the Armagnacs suffer some setbacks. But the Armagnacs are kind of rescued by fate.

So, when Joan was leading The, the Armagnacs, the Burgundians and the English had been pulled closer together because all of a sudden these, these Armagnacs are having military victories. They're being successful. They're a real threat. And so this alliance is drawn tighter between the Duke of Burgundy and the English.

Well  now with, with Joan gone and things kind of settling back into their regular pattern, the Burgundians and the English  start to drift apart. And this is accelerated when Anne, who is the sister of the Duke of Burgundy and the wife of the Duke of Bedford. So this has been, uh, this really important political marriage that had cemented the two sides together when she dies.

And shortly thereafter, the Duke of Bedford dies. And so now the Burgundians say, you know what? Forget it. This isn't really working out with us. We're fighting with Armagnacs all the time. It's destroying our land. And they switched sides. And so now it truly is, instead of the English Burgundian alliance against the Armagnacs, with the Burgundians switching, it really is the English versus the French.

Which you all have probably been waiting for, so I've stopped saying all these weird names and talking in terms that you can understand. So, you know, just a couple years after Joan dies, the Burgundians switch, now you have the English against the French.  That doesn't mean that the English can't win. If they had had strong leadership.

Uh, maybe they still could have defeated, you know, both Armagnacs together, all the French united, but they didn't have strong leadership. Henry VI, this boy king, was not like his father, was not a strong leader. Uh, he, he was very compliant. He basically said yes to whoever was in front of him.  And so that means that English leadership is fractured between all these different advisors and Dukes and noblemen who are sort of trying to have their sway over this compliant King.

And so you have non unified leadership on both sides now. And so, uh,  Neither side is really progressing, but I guess inertia tends to favor the English being in control of England and the French being in control of France. So, eventually, all the English holdings in France are rolled back, including, in fact, The English holdings in Southern France in Gascony, which had not even been on the table, right?

And so, ironically, uh, just a few years after Joan of Arc's death,  she got her wish. Her vision was completed. The English were completely ejected from France. And I think it's important to note that that is her doing.  You know, it can be tempting to see her as a pawn, right? As the symbol used by the Armagnacs to, to come back and, and anoint their King and then used as a symbol by the English of, you know, the horrible heresy and the backwardness of, of the Armagnacs.

And so she's burned at the stake, but it's not true that she was a pawn in someone else's game. She was a mover and a shaker. She was a player herself. She, Imposed her will on the world again. It didn't happen exactly how she thought it would, but the Armagnacs were on the verge of losing  the English. If they took Orleans, that was it game over.

And she's the one that relieved that siege. And it was her idea. Nothing was going on before she shows up. And then, yes, it's true that her siege on Paris doesn't work. And there's not this dramatic removal of the English from France, maybe the way that she thought or hoped. But what did happen is that the English threat was relieved and so the same familiar stable battle lines could be drawn which Allowed things to progress in a way that eventually saw the the English out of France That never even has the chance to happen if Joan of Arc doesn't show up if she never shows up then the English probably take Orleans and and then kick him out of Borges and Armagnacs are gone.

Maybe control a rump state in southern France and And the English control France and who knows how the world would be different. So I think that's something that's important to remember is that, uh, Joan  was a strong willed woman who, who was able to impose that will on the world  after the French retake all France.

Joan's mother writes to King Charles and says, Hey, could we retry Joan? Obviously this trial was rigged. Obviously it was a kangaroo court. There was never even a shadow impartiality and it would be great to clear her name. And so they do. They conduct a second trial, and this one is every bit as thorough as the first trial, but obviously each has a slant.

So the first one is just trying to convict her of all these crimes of witchcraft and heresy. And the second trial, of course, is trying to exonerate her and show that she was actually a good woman. And it's really interesting. We know more about Joan than almost anyone else of the era because of this.

Because we have these two different courts. We take two very different approaches and it's like we got light coming at her from both directions. And so we get this real clear picture of who she is. It's just fascinating that it's not a king, it's not a duke, it's not the pope, but like  the person  who we have the most documentary evidence of.

Who we know the most about their personality, their childhood, their, their whole life is Joan. And I think that's wonderful. She comes across as a very interesting figure. One of the things that you see about Joan, as you read some of the testimonies from the people that she grew up with, was that this was not someone who was ambitious.

This was not someone that people expected. Would go on to accomplish great things and Joan herself, you know, said this, she said, although I would have rather remained spinning at my mother's side yet, I must go and I must do this thing for the Lord wills that I do so and everyone that knew her in Dome Remy kind of backed that up and said, yeah, I mean, she went to church, she spun, she worked hard.

She was not someone who drew attention to herself. Until all of this happened, which to me, again, kind of bears out that this was something she really believed this was not someone who was opportunistic, who was seeking to get famous, uh, or seeking riches or something like that. No, this was. A very sincere believer.

One of the other things that's interesting to me is in the second trial, they establish miracles, right? That attended her. And some of these miracles are what you would expect. So they're miraculous healings. The bastard of Orleans talks about. When they were lifting the siege at Orleans, they needed to row a boat across this river and the winds were against them.

And so they're getting worried because, uh, man, we're, we're sitting ducks in these boats and we can't get across the river. And the English are going to start shooting arrows at us. And as soon as Joan shows up, the wind changes and it's able to help blow these boats across the river. Right? So, uh, you have these sort of miracles that you would expect, I think.

And then there are miracles that I find. Uh, very interesting. Shall we say? So one is  her chastity and her modesty were very important. So this is someone who, you know, you got to think about the times, right? When  honestly womanhood.  Was seen especially in these contexts in a military context was seen as you know weak and effeminate  but also I think maybe a alien  and so For example, one of the miracles is that people say That she didn't have periods,  that she did not bleed every month.

Now, actually this might be true. I think it probably is true. One, because of the physical hardship that she was enduring on these long marches and  also because she ate very little and very rarely. And this is something I'll talk about later, but I think the conditions were there that it could be possible.

She did not have, um, yeah, menstrual periods for, for long periods of time while she was on these campaigns.  Other things that people mentioned was that she rarely had to pee. And again, this is another, this is a miracle because, you know, this is someone who's trying to maintain her modesty around all these men having to undress and go relieve yourself is going to be something that is, uh, difficult, uh, difficult to maintain your modesty while you're doing that.

And so they said that her, uh,  urinary continence was a miracle was, was unbelievable. You know, again, this is a funny miracle to me, but they considered it miraculous. Uh, other miracles that I find funny are a couple of people testified that,  you know, she'd be changing and taking off her armor and oops, I accidentally saw her legs or I accidentally saw her breasts and they'd say that they were nice legs, but I did not.

Feel any carnal desires. And this is evidence of a miracle. I mean, what kind of man would see these nice legs, uh, bare legs and, uh, and not feel carnal desires towards a woman. But, uh, but I didn't. And so this is, you know, this is a miracle, uh, more realistically, there are other people who, who said, you know, of course, when I first met her.

I regarded her as a woman, as a  potential object of desire, but that upon seeing her absolute conviction to God, that those thoughts kind of fled from them.  And I thought that was interesting that It was her conviction, her absolute rock solid belief  that is what made it possible for her to kind of overcome these base feelings and these prejudices that this is just a woman, something to be admired, something to be desired, but no, those ideas, those feelings kind of went out the window when they saw how strongly she believed in what she believed in.

And I think that's one of the things that's interesting about Joan. Is that she was sort of able to  overcome  her womanhood, her femininity, right? Like with this conviction, people saw past it. But at the same time, I don't think it's fair to say that she tried to be a man. I think she was able to use both.

Masculine and feminine energy to her advantage. She intertwined the two. Yes. She physically dressed as a man for protection. Um,  but she leaned into her traditionally female traits to help motivate the troops. She always referred to herself as La Pucelle. She referred to herself as the maid. And I think it was the fact that she was such a small, thin, young woman that made her such an effective leader.

Yeah, she was making it clear that she was relying on her faith in God and not on her physical strength and arms. And so in one way, she's sort of able to, to inhabit masculine energy a little bit in that she's able to overcome prejudices of the day, but at the same time, she's such an effective leader because she leans into her feminine energy.

It's what makes her seem kind of otherworldly and divine and sent by God. And, and I find that interesting. Okay. We're going to talk about. Uh, other theories for why she may have seen these visions and heard these voices after this quick break to hear a word from our sponsors.

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So if you're a founder who needs to raise money, go to CapitalE.  VC, book your consulting session, and have a chat with the team. And while you're there, let them know that I sent you. Again, that is capital E. That's capital, and then the letter Y at the end. Capital E dot V C.  Okay, so what are some other explanations that people have for why Joan may have seen these visions?

One is ergot poisoning. So ergot is this tiny fungus that can infect wheat, and it has a mild psychedelic effect. So it's essentially, um, One second you're eating bread or drinking beer and the next second you're tripping and this did happen It definitely can happen. There's a real phenomenon.  I think though when people propose this it's Oftentimes people who are really into psychedelics who try and see them in every historical event and so they'll tell you You know Jesus Mohammed Buddha All tripping on shrooms, the Greeks tripping on shrooms, Romans tripping on shrooms.

Um, and, and there's very, very little evidence  Joan had ergot poisoning. Um, for one, if she did, you know, she's eating the same bread, drinking the same beer, uh, as, as everyone around her, presumably. So how come everyone else wasn't having visions  for another, you know, this could happen once in a localized place, but.

This is someone who's traveling all around France, she's not taking her bread with her. So she just gets ergot poisoning everywhere she goes. Because again, she continues to have these visions and hear these voices  throughout her life after adolescence. So I don't think that adds up at all, the ergot poisoning.

Other explanations are that maybe she had a brain tumor  that was causing Her to actually hear voices and fair enough. I mean, auditory hallucinations can be caused by brain tumors. If they impinge on a certain part of the brain, I also find that unlikely just because the onset of the voices was adolescence, which is very common for auditory, you know, normal auditory hallucinations that people have, it would be quite the coincidence.

If she just happened to start getting a brain tumor at this time. When people who have auditory hallucinations generally start to experience those hallucinations for the first time. So, the idea that she had a brain tumor, again,  you know, it's certainly possible, but it seems very unlikely to me, very, very unlikely.

Of course, there's another explanation that she just lied, that she was making this up. I don't find that likely for the reasons stated above.  She's willing to die for it. So generally you're not willing to die for a lie and that it matched all the symptoms of auditory hallucinations. Um, everyone around her thought that she was sincere.

Honestly, not even her enemies tried to  paint her as a, uh, as a charlatan. Or as someone who was in it for the fame, even they recognized her obvious sincerity and said that it was more likely that she was, you know, her demons, they took for granted that she really was hearing these things. So I also find it very unlikely that she was making things up, which brings me to the last and my favorite explanation for why she might've been hearing these voices, which is that it could have been caused by delirium.

from essentially, uh, anorexia.  And why is this my favorite explanation? Well, not because I think it's true. I obviously, I don't think it's true at all. I already told you what I think is true,  but because it points out something that I didn't bring up in episode one, which was that she was an extremely light.

Eater, which of course is, you know, one of my hobby horses, but like even more than most people I've talked about, Joan was known as a light eater. So she was just peckish at the dinner table. She ate very little, but she was also fasting all the time. So this is a common thing in many religions. If you've heard of Ramadan, this is when Muslims.

We'll fast from sunrise to sunset. So most of the middle of the day,  they will not eat any food.  And this is obviously not just Muslims. So, uh, Jesus was supposed to have fasted for 40 days. It was one of the miracles that he did. He didn't eat for 40 days. Uh, I think Moses did the same thing. And this is a practice in many religions that is supposed to bring you closer to God and help you have religious experiences, abstaining from food.

So Joan ate very little, very light eater and, uh, and fasted very frequently, uh, to the point where some people read backwards and think that she had some form of anorexia. Now, again, I don't think this is a good explanation at all for the voices that she heard because people don't talk about her as low energy.

Or delirious in any other sense of her life on the contrary, she was described as, uh, as a very energetic person who always wanted to be moving and doing so, uh, you know, I doubt she was an anorexic and I doubt that she was experiencing these things because she was delirious, but I do Love that this theory  Hits home the fact that she was such a light eater, which is of course a common attribute with with many many other great people  A couple other things to address one is why is she called joan of arc?

So she actually never called herself joan of arc. Um, the reason that people call her this She always called herself Joan LaPousselle, uh, she said she had no last name that she knew of. She was just Joan, which is, you know, typical peasant life at the time. Most peasants did not have last names. They're just, you know, Joan.

In fact, in her local village, they called her Jeannette, which I think is like a diminutive. It's like a familiar version of the name. But so why Joan of Arc? Well, it's because, uh, after King Charles was anointed, he decided to ennoble Joan and her family. So, so now they are not just peasants, they are nobility and the title that they are given, um, is Arc.

So they are now the, of Arc family. That was the. The title of nobility that they're given. So technically she was Joan of Arc. Now she wanted to emphasize her commitment to God and her special calling. She did not want to emphasize that she was now a noble woman. So she never called herself Joan of Arc.

Uh, she called herself still Joan LaPucelle, but that is why she's known as Joan of Arc to all of us is because, uh, ever after her family was the of arc family who had this, uh, you know, this deed, this, this title  is just a few other like little notes that I had. One is,  uh, it's interesting.  We know so much about Joan and we have the sort of objective descriptions of her.

Many mentioned her dark hair,  very few mentioned whether they think she is beautiful or not.  Um,  and so it's surprising that in the 1400s,  um,  That there's so few of these accounts regard her physical appearances. I mean, that's something that is rarely granted to female figures in history, right? And yet Joan was able to sort of be seen for who she was and the qualities that she contained on, on the inside.

Um, so I think that's interesting and part of that was the uniform. I think that's one of the reasons that she was so committed to wearing men's clothes and emphasizing her virginity is that she did not want to be sexualized. She wanted to be a symbol of something bigger and something more important.

Okay. And then I'll just finish off talking a little bit about her legacy. So  this second trial, uh, exonerates Joan sort of clears her name, but her status is sort of up in the air. Um, she's no longer an official heretic in, in the Catholic church, um, but neither is she an official hero either. You know, obviously the Pope just kind of wants to be politic.

These are two Catholic powers that are warring, the English and the French, and he doesn't want to offend anyone. So whatever the Pope is kind of happy to  not comment on this whole situation.  But over the years, Joan becomes a symbol of, of French nationalism and also in many ways a symbol of French Catholicism.

This is a woman who supposedly conducted miracles in the name of God. I think as far as the Catholic Church is concerned. It becomes a little easier for them to recognize her as a hero once the English become Protestant. So they're no longer a Catholic power. So the Catholic church is firmly aligned with France in any dispute or conflict between England and France.

And so in finally in 1920,  she's actually made a saint. She's canonized as a saint in the Catholic church. And now she is viewed as a, as a hero to Catholics. She's also viewed, of course, as a hero to the French. Uh, she's viewed as a very nationalistic figure. Interestingly, her legacy is sort of adopted by everyone.

Whether you are, you know, a revolutionary, a socialist, whether you're a reactionary, all of them have tried to use the mantle of Joan to support their cause. Napoleon himself commissioned a statue of Joan that read, The illustrious Joan proved that there is no miracle which French genius cannot accomplish.

When national independence is threatened. We will see if that is true. So there you have it in terms of my own personal takeaways. Um, one of the things that I took away is something I mentioned in Brigham young part two. Which was, uh, irrationality. You know, I, I thought Brigham Young made an irrational decision, but that's what made him a great leader.

You have certain values that you have to be almost irrationally committed to. And you can see that with Joan, that she has this commitment to French independence, to victory in the war and to following through on this, this vision that she has. It reminds me of, uh, this is going to seem like a weird comparison, but.

You know, her insistence that, no, we have to try and assault Paris. We have to try and take it against all the odds. Even when it seemed irrational, it seems foolhardy reminds me of the scene. If you listen to the Brigham Young episodes, uh, when the U S federal army is outside of Salt Lake city, and he is still insisting on the independence of, uh, of the Mormon people at the time.

And I think this is often true, you know, um, Steve jobs was the ultimate irrational leader, right? And essentially to me, that irrationality is again, I'm just so committed to these values that. There are certain things that I will not compromise on. Even the rational thing is to compromise a little bit, just a little compromise.

Who cares? Uh, another good example of this is the founder of Costco. So Costco is if you're not an American, this is a great big bulk buying discount buying. A store that we have here and they're known for their low, low, low prices. So you can find great, great deals at Costco. And this founder was committed to keeping great deals, keeping everything really cheap.

And one of the things about Costco is that they have this food court and you can go to the food court and you get this amazing deal, which is you can get a hot dog and a drink for a buck 50,  even now. Okay. So this founder comes up with this deal, you know, it's going to be. 1. 50 for a hot dog and a drink in 1985, 1985,  think about how much inflation has happened since 1985.

And so eventually in 2009. The cost of meat is getting so expensive, they come around and they say, all right, we, we really need to raise the price of this hot dog. We're losing our shirts on it. We're losing money on hot dogs. And the CEO says, and this is a quote, quote, if you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you.

Figure it out.  He later said, uh, I know it sounds crazy making a big deal about a hot dog, but we spend a lot of time on it. We're known for that hot dog. That's something you don't mess with.  And so he has this like total irrational commitment to this certain price point. And you can see the same thing in Steve Jobs when he says, okay, you know, the machine, the actual box for this Mac needs to have exactly 90 degree angles has to be perfect.

Can't be a degree off. Okay. Like that's irrational. But he had this commitment to physical perfection in their machines. And this thing that seems irrational  actually. Is what makes great leaders that they have certain values that they just don't compromise on. And you can see that with joan She just had these amazing values that she never compromised on and that's one of the things that i'm going to take away Is I need to identify myself are what are those values that i'm never going to compromise on And and stick to those and that's what makes you a great leader.

All right, I think that's it I think this is where i'm going to wrap it. Thanks for coming on this journey with me Um, so until next time thanks for listening to how to take over the world

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