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Documentary, Joan of Arc: God's Warrior
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00:00On the 8th of May 1429, the town of Orléans in France erupted in celebration.
00:17For seven long months it had been under siege by the English, but now, after just four days of
00:23fighting, the town had been liberated, and the people of Orléans knew they had witnessed
00:31a miracle.
00:37The speed of their liberation was astonishing enough, but what confirmed it as a miracle
00:43was the identity of their liberator.
00:46She was a peasant girl, and she was just 17.
00:48Her name was Joan.
00:54She was a truly extraordinary figure, a female warrior, in an age that believed women couldn't
01:00fight, let alone lead an army.
01:03Take care what you do, for in truth I am sent by God, and you put yourself in great danger.
01:10These are Joan's own words, recorded in a contemporary manuscript.
01:14Six centuries after her death, her words transport us back into her life and times.
01:24To understand Joan's story, we need to explore a world where God and the devil are real.
01:30Today, we're more aware than we've been, perhaps for centuries, of the power of faith
01:35to drive people to do extraordinary things, for good or ill.
01:39And in a world where God's will is at work, anything is possible.
02:09Over the centuries, Joan has become an icon to almost everyone.
02:17To the left and the right, to Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists.
02:22She's captured the imagination of novelists, playwrights, artists and musicians, and her fame
02:39has spread all over the world, taking her from France to Hollywood.
02:43I've been studying the medieval world for almost 30 years, and I feel pretty confident
02:56in saying she's had more pop songs written about her than anyone else from the Middle Ages.
03:02But for all the images of Joan that have been created since her death, only one picture of
03:08her survives, which was made in her own lifetime.
03:12And it's here, a drawing, almost a doodle, in the margin of the records of the Paris Parliament.
03:19It shows what a remarkable and troubling figure Joan was.
03:24The clerk knew that the army at Orléans had a young woman with them, who was carrying a banner
03:29and a sword.
03:31But he'd never seen her.
03:32Either he didn't yet know, or couldn't quite believe, that Joan actually, shockingly,
03:38had short hair and wore male armour.
03:42Instead, he's made her look as a woman should, with long hair, modestly wearing a dress.
03:52But while there's only this one faint image of Joan, unusually for anyone in the Middle Ages,
03:58let alone a low-born woman, a great deal was written about her by her contemporaries.
04:04Even more importantly, her own words have reached us through the centuries with an astonishing
04:09strength and clarity.
04:12And one of the most remarkable and revealing documents of all is the transcript of Joan's
04:17trial for heresy in 1431.
04:19This is the most detailed record that survives from any medieval trial, and through it, we
04:30can hear Joan's own voice.
04:34Here, she describes the first time she heard a message from God when she was just 13 years
04:40old.
04:41At first, I was very afraid.
04:51The voice came at midday in the summertime in my father's garden.
04:58The voice came from the right-hand side towards the church, and I seldom hear it without a light.
05:03The light comes from the same side as the voice, but all around there is a great light.
05:07It seemed to me to be a worthy voice, and I believe it was a voice sent from God.
05:13Once I heard the voice three times, I knew it was the voice of an angel.
05:24We might ask, was Joan mad or ill?
05:27But for the people of the Middle Ages, the issues were entirely different.
05:31They knew that angels and demons did communicate with people of completely sound mind.
05:36The problem wasn't how to explain Joan hearing voices that weren't there.
05:41The problem was how to tell whether the voices came to her from God or the devil.
05:51Joan received her first vision when she was living with her family in Domremy, a small
05:56village in the east of France.
05:58But the France that Joan was born into wasn't nearly as peaceful as it looks now.
06:04It was a country torn apart by war.
06:08For generations, England and France had been fighting in what we call the Hundred Years' War.
06:14Land, including the countryside where Joan lived, was fought over by the two sides.
06:19And the English even claimed the crown of France.
06:24During Joan's childhood, France was very much on the back foot.
06:29In 1415, when she was three, the French suffered a dreadful defeat at the hands of Henry V on the battlefield of Agincourt.
06:36The French army vastly outnumbered the English, but as the flower of the French nobility advanced, they were mown down by a barrage of English arrows.
06:50History has attributed the English victory at Agincourt to the supremacy of their archers.
06:54But at the time, the French saw it differently.
06:57For the people who were there, the explanation for this astounding victory was the will of God.
07:07Henry claimed that God was on the English side, but the French knew that couldn't be right.
07:12So how were they to explain this bloody defeat?
07:16Perhaps it was God's punishment for their sins, because France was convulsed in civil war.
07:22The old king, Charles VI, was mad and incapable of ruling.
07:25Two factions, known as the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, were fighting for control of his government.
07:35In the medieval world, everything came down to God.
07:39Whose side was he on?
07:42Just five years after Agincourt, France was so bitterly divided that the Burgundians were prepared to believe that God did back the English and made an alliance with them.
07:51But Joan and her family supported the Armagnacs, led by the French king's son, the Dauphin, and believed God was with them.
08:01And so the civil war went on.
08:04For eight years, defeat followed defeat, until the Dauphin and his Armagnac supporters were pushed back, south of the great curve of the River Loire.
08:13For Joan, as for the rest of the people of France, the war was a frightening reality.
08:21Her home, Domremy, was an Armagnac village surrounded by English and Burgundian territory.
08:26At one point, the village was attacked by enemy soldiers, and Joan, her family and friends, had to take refuge for a few days in a nearby town.
08:38So perhaps it's no surprise that when Joan began to hear voices, they talked about the war.
08:44They said she must go to the Dauphin.
08:46He would give her an army, and then she must drive the English out of France and lead the Dauphin to his coronation.
08:52Joan wasn't unique in claiming to hear heavenly voices.
09:07She wasn't the only person in 15th century France who came forward with a message from God.
09:13What was remarkable was what Joan's voice was telling her to do, to fight and to lead.
09:19This was an impossible proposition.
09:24Joan was young, she was poor, and she was female.
09:27And to put her mission into action, she had to reach the Dauphin across more than 250 miles of enemy territory.
09:34Surely it couldn't be done.
09:36At some point during 1428, Joan managed to reach here, the town of Vaucouleur, a little more than 10 miles north of Domremy, which housed the nearest garrison loyal to the Dauphin.
09:51But its captain sent her away with a flea in her ear.
09:54The girl was clearly a fantasist.
09:57Her family, he said, should take her home and give her a few slaps.
10:00But Joan wouldn't give up.
10:06Word of her mission began to spread.
10:08And when she came back to Vaucouleur in February 1429, the captain agreed to send her to the Dauphin's court.
10:15What had happened to change his mind?
10:23The evidence isn't at all clear.
10:25When Joan eventually set off from Vaucouleur, the people here gave her a horse and an outfit of men's clothes to keep her safe on her dangerous journey.
10:35Clearly, they believed in her.
10:36But that wouldn't be enough to secure access to the Dauphin himself.
10:42We can't be sure exactly what happened, but there is one more clue.
10:47One of the six men who were given the job of escorting Joan was a messenger from the Dauphin's court.
10:53It seems that someone there had heard of Joan's claims, and now the Dauphin wanted to hear more.
10:58Like all medieval leaders, the Dauphin knew that his authority was bestowed on him by God.
11:08He went to Mass twice a day and looked for signs of God's will in the world around him, wherever they came from.
11:15The truth is, the Dauphin was also desperate.
11:18And it had to be said that by now anything, even the ravings of a peasant girl, was worth a try.
11:28As Joan set out on her perilous journey to the Dauphin's court in Chinon, the situation for the Armagnacs was getting worse.
11:37For five months, the English had been besieging Orléans, a key Armagnac stronghold on the River Loire.
11:45If Orléans fell, the Dauphin's lands in the south of the kingdom would lie open to English attack.
11:50On the 12th of February 1429, a skirmish between the two sides ended in a massacre.
11:59More than 400 of the Dauphin's soldiers died that day.
12:03The English casualties numbered just four.
12:08The Dauphin was here in his fortress at Chinon when he heard the terrible news.
12:13He redoubled his prayers, but the siege went on.
12:20And then, just 11 days after the massacre, a little band of six armed men, dusty from the road, arrived here at his great castle of Chinon.
12:40With them rode a girl, dressed as a boy, her dark hair cut short.
12:45She'd come, she said, with a message from God.
12:54Amid the luxury and ceremony of the Armagnac court, this village girl dressed as a boy was an extraordinary sight.
13:02And her message was as startling as the girl herself.
13:05If the Dauphin would give her an army, she would save his kingdom and bring him his crown.
13:10But the Dauphin had a problem.
13:16Her words were intoxicating and terrifying at the same time.
13:20If the Dauphin put his faith in a false prophet sent by the devil, his kingdom of France would be lost forever.
13:27But if he rejected a true prophet, the result would be equally disastrous.
13:33Could Joan really have been sent by God?
13:35How to tell whether visions came from God or the devil was a hot topic of theological debate.
13:51The greatest contemporary French theologian, a man named Jean Gerson, had even written a book on the subject.
13:58This is a 15th century copy of Gerson's work, De Probatione Spirituum, On the Proving of Spirits.
14:09It's a kind of manual to guide investigators through the process of establishing whether visions might truly have come from God.
14:16It offers a helpful Latin checklist which sets out the basics of the examination.
14:22Ask who, what, why, to whom, what kind, whence.
14:26In other words, ask what the nature of the visions shows about where they might come from,
14:32and what the nature of the person having the visions suggests about how authentic they might be.
14:43So 17-year-old Joan was questioned for three weeks by the best theologians Armagnac France could muster.
14:52From the outset, Joan deeply troubled these men.
14:56Her message was shocking enough.
14:59She dared to say that she'd been sent to make war on the English, despite the fact that God hadn't made women to be soldiers.
15:08But what's more, she wore men's clothes, and the Old Testament said that a woman in men's clothing was an abomination unto the Lord.
15:16But one person who doesn't seem to have been anxious, remarkably enough, was Joan herself.
15:24Here she was, an uneducated village girl, on her own, hundreds of miles from home, being questioned for weeks by courtiers and clerics.
15:33It should have been a profoundly intimidating situation.
15:36But in all the contemporary accounts of what Joan did and said, there's no sign of fear or doubt.
15:43The essence of her message was, God has sent me.
15:47I know what I need to do.
15:48Let me go and do it.
15:50And it was Joan's certainty that offered a way out of the problem she posed.
15:57The theologians could find no fault with her conduct.
16:01But they needed a sign, they said, to prove that her voices truly came from heaven.
16:06They asked how she would carry out her promise to take the Dauphin to be crowned at the ancient cathedral of Reims,
16:13given that the besieged town of Orléans lay directly in the way.
16:17Joan's answer was simple.
16:19She would raise the siege herself.
16:21Suddenly, for the Dauphin and his court at the great fortress of Chinon, everything was clear.
16:36Orléans would be a test of Joan's mission.
16:40If she succeeded, it would be a sign from God that everything she claimed was true.
16:45If she failed, Orléans would still be under siege, just as it was now.
16:52And the Dauphin would know for sure that her promises were nothing but a delusion.
16:57And so the theologians reached their verdict.
17:01The Dauphin, they said, should not prevent her from going to Orléans with his soldiers,
17:05but should have her escorted there honorably, placing his faith in God.
17:12And now that the decision had been made,
17:14preparations for the task ahead began in earnest.
17:19There were soldiers to muster and supplies to collect.
17:23Clark scoured the archives for prophecies that might foretell Joan's coming.
17:28And Joan herself asked the Dauphin to send to the nearby town of Fialbois
17:32for a sword that she said lay hidden there in the church of St Catherine.
17:36Sure enough, and to everyone's amazement, the sword was found where she predicted.
17:44The symbolism was lost on no one.
17:48Christian warriors from King Arthur to Charlemagne carried holy swords.
17:52And this one, appropriately, came to Joan from St Catherine, the patron saint of young virgins.
17:59How did Joan know where the sword was?
18:04She said her voices had told her.
18:06So was this her first miracle?
18:09Well, that's one way of reading the evidence.
18:12On the other hand, she had stopped in Fialbois on her way here.
18:15And St Catherine's Church was a place where, over the years, soldiers had left many offerings, including their swords.
18:22But however Joan had come to know about this sword in particular,
18:26the point was that Joan herself and her supporters believed it was miraculous proof of her mission.
18:32The Dauphin ordered a fine suit of armour to be specially made for her slender frame,
18:48and a banner for her to carry into battle, made of shining white silk,
18:53with a painted Christ flanked on either side by angels.
18:56During these weeks of preparation, Joan had a chance to practice riding a horse among soldiers,
19:04to get used to her armour, and to find out more about the war she had come to fight.
19:11But she was no less impatient than when she'd first arrived at Chinon.
19:15And now she sent her first challenge to the English.
19:23The challenge came in the form of a letter.
19:25Joan couldn't write, so she dictated it to a clerk,
19:29and its text survives here in the transcript of her trial.
19:33Joan's fearlessness is unmistakable.
19:36The village girl from Domremy speaks for God,
19:39so she has no hesitation in addressing the King of England,
19:42le Roi d'Angleterre.
19:46Restore to the maid who is sent here by God, the King of Heaven,
19:50the keys to the fine towns that you have taken and violated in France.
19:53King of England, if you do not do this, I am the military leader,
19:58and wherever I find your men in France, I will make them leave,
20:01whether they want to or not.
20:03And if they do not obey, I will have them killed.
20:07With her challenge dispatched,
20:18Joan and her military convoy set off along the River Loire towards Orléans.
20:23On the 26th of April, Joan approached the town itself,
20:30and for the first time, the English army at Orléans set eyes on the teenage girl in armour.
20:34To the English, a girl in men's clothes riding among soldiers could only be a whore
20:44and a sign of the Dauphin's desperation.
20:47But to the people of besieged Orléans, she was a saviour.
20:51Come to rescue them.
20:52The English had too few troops to enforce a total blockade round Orléans,
21:00and Joan was able to slip into the town on the eastern side.
21:05She was welcomed like an angel from God, one of the townsmen said,
21:10and delirious crowds reached out to touch her as she rode through the streets.
21:13But while Joan smiled at the hopeful crowds,
21:18privately, she was incandescent with fury.
21:24She wanted to attack the English,
21:26but the Dauphin was still so unsure of what form her miracle might take
21:30that he'd ordered her soldiers back to their base.
21:34So she found herself inside the besieged town,
21:37with no army to break the siege, as she'd promised.
21:39Joan was left kicking her heels,
21:46climbing the town walls to shout to the English
21:48that they should surrender to God.
21:50All she got in return was abuse.
21:53Did she really think, they jeered,
21:55that they should give themselves up to a woman and her pimps?
22:00The Dauphin's captain was in a fix.
22:03The people of the town expected Joan to save them,
22:06but without an army she could do nothing.
22:08So he slipped out of the town
22:10and rode to the Dauphin to beg him to send the soldiers back.
22:15It took him four days, but his argument was irrefutable.
22:20How could God send a sign
22:21if Joan had no way of putting her mission to the test?
22:27By the 4th of May, Joan had her soldiers,
22:30and at last the battle for Orléans could begin.
22:33Joan led her men from the front,
22:48carrying her banner and urging them on.
22:52Medieval warfare was brutal and bloody,
22:54and for the first time she saw death in battle at first hand.
22:58That night her mood was sombre,
23:04and the next day she wrote again to the English enemy,
23:07demanding their surrender.
23:10She attached the letter to an arrow
23:12and had it fired into the English camp.
23:14When it dropped to the ground,
23:16the shouts could be heard in the distance.
23:18News from the Armagnac whore!
23:20But for all the abuse they hurled her way,
23:28after two more days of fighting,
23:30the English were rattled.
23:31And finally, on the 7th of May,
23:34their day of reckoning had come.
23:36The decisive Battle of Orléans was fought here,
23:39where the English held a fortified tower known as the Tourelle.
23:42If Joan could take the Tourelle,
23:51the English hold on Orléans would be broken.
23:55Once again, Joan was up at dawn.
23:58She said her prayers and then led her men into battle.
24:03English missiles rained down from the ramparts
24:06as the Armagnac soldiers hurled themselves into the fight.
24:09Hours passed, but still Joan urged them on,
24:17until an arrow caught her between the neck and shoulder.
24:20As they saw her staggering and bloodied,
24:22the Armagnacs faltered.
24:24Was this the moment when God would disown the maid?
24:27But a flesh wound couldn't stop Joan's mission.
24:30She brandished her banner
24:31and pressed forward into the ditch at the foot of the tower.
24:34As her soldiers followed her into the attack,
24:40sudden fear gripped the English.
24:43Their captain lost his footing
24:44and toppled fully armed into the river.
24:48As he drowned, panic spread among his men.
24:52And by sundown, Joan had won a famous victory.
24:55After seven months of siege,
25:01the maid had freed Orléans in just four days.
25:05Who could doubt Joan now?
25:07This was proof that God intended her to pursue her mission.
25:11And as she and the Dauphin's other captains
25:13prepared to drive the English from the Valley of the Loire,
25:16news of her miracle began to spread.
25:19Just three days after the battle,
25:29an Italian merchant in Bruges wrote to tell his father in Venice
25:33what this maiden shepherdess had done.
25:36It seems, he said,
25:37that she may be another St Catherine come down to earth.
25:40Meanwhile, Joan herself was growing into her new stature.
25:50In February, she had been a simple village girl.
25:53Now it was June,
25:55and a young nobleman who met her was dazzled by her charisma,
25:58by the presence of one sent by God.
26:01It seemed to me a gift from heaven that she was there, he said,
26:05and that I was seeing and hearing her.
26:10And Joan's determination to pursue her mission was stronger than ever.
26:15Orléans had been her test,
26:17and victory her sign.
26:19Now came her true purpose,
26:21to crown the Dauphin,
26:23and to drive the English out of France forever.
26:29For centuries,
26:31French kings had been crowned in the great cathedral at Reims,
26:34and Joan was determined to see her Dauphin crowned there too.
26:37But Reims lay more than a hundred miles northeast of Orléans,
26:44in the heart of English and Burgundian France.
26:47It had been years since the Dauphin had even thought of riding to war in person.
26:52Now, the maid was going to take him deep into enemy territory.
27:01Joan and the Dauphin rode at the head of the biggest army he could muster.
27:05And the combination of thousands of soldiers with Joan's implacable will driving them on
27:11proved irresistible.
27:18Joan's momentum was unstoppable.
27:22Some towns held out for a few days.
27:24Others opened their gates straight away.
27:26On the 16th of July, 1429,
27:32just two and a half weeks after leaving the Loire Valley,
27:36Joan, the Dauphin, and the Armagnac army arrived in Reims.
27:41At last, the Dauphin could be crowned as the most Christian king of France.
27:46Here, in the cathedral in Reims,
27:48was kept a flask of holy oil
27:50that had been sent from heaven to France's first Christian king
27:54almost a thousand years before.
27:57Every French king since then had been anointed with it
28:00during the sacred ritual of his coronation.
28:03And now, the Dauphin would be no exception.
28:05A coronation would usually take weeks of preparation,
28:23but there was no time to lose.
28:26The Dauphin's servants worked through the night,
28:28and at nine the very next morning,
28:31he entered this sacred space
28:33to receive his crown from God.
28:34Just four months earlier,
29:00the Armagnac cause had been at its lowest ebb.
29:02Now the Dauphin had been anointed and crowned
29:05as King Charles VII of France.
29:08And beside him stood Joan the Maid
29:10in her shining armour with her banner in her hand.
29:13When the ceremony was over, she knelt at his feet.
29:17Noble king, she said.
29:18God's will is done.
29:29It was a triumph,
29:31but Joan's mission was far from finished.
29:36Joan wanted to drive the English out of France forever.
29:40To do this,
29:41she needed to unite the country
29:42under the newly crowned king,
29:44and France was still divided by civil war.
29:48The Burgundians under the Duke of Burgundy
29:51looked to the King of England as their sovereign.
29:53So Joan wrote to the Duke
29:56to ask him to acknowledge her king
29:58as the rightful King of France.
30:01I bring you word from the King of Heaven
30:03that you will win no battle against loyal Frenchmen.
30:07And all those who wage war against the Holy Kingdom of France
30:10wage war against King Jesus,
30:12the King of Heaven and the whole world.
30:14Know surely that however many men you bring against us,
30:17they will win nothing at all.
30:18And great sorrow will be the result of the great battle.
30:23The Duke of Burgundy didn't deign to respond
30:26to this presumptuous letter.
30:29Any change in his position would be on his own terms,
30:32not those of a peasant girl.
30:33As for Joan's king,
30:37he was in a stronger position
30:39than he could have dreamed of just a year earlier.
30:42And behind the scenes,
30:43courtiers from both sides
30:44were beginning to make diplomatic overtures.
30:48But Joan had no interest in compromise.
30:52She was doing God's work,
30:54and the mission he'd given her was not yet complete.
30:56With all the certainty of faith and youth,
31:05she was still only 17,
31:06she saw the world in black and white.
31:09If the Duke of Burgundy would not submit to her king,
31:12he'd find her ready to fight.
31:15The kingdom's capital remained in Burgundian hands.
31:18It was time for another miracle.
31:20Just as Joan had taken Orléans,
31:22now she would take Paris.
31:26Reluctantly, Joan's king agreed to give her the chance.
31:33But Paris was a very different challenge from Orléans.
31:36It was the most heavily fortified city
31:38west of Constantinople.
31:45This is one of the few remaining sections
31:47of the massive walls that surrounded Paris.
31:50There were fortified towers and gun placements
31:53on top of the walls,
31:54which lay behind an immense ditch
31:56that encircled the whole city.
32:00And it was defended by English soldiers
32:02and native Parisians
32:04who hated the Armagnac whore
32:06every bit as much as the people of Orléans
32:08had welcomed her as a delivering angel.
32:10But Joan didn't hesitate.
32:16As always, her strategy was simple.
32:19Attack in the name of God.
32:22And the day of the assault could only be a good omen.
32:25The 8th of September,
32:27the holy feast day of the Nativity of the Virgin.
32:29As at Orléans, she led the way into the Great Ditch,
32:38brandishing her banner while a storm of arrows and stones
32:41rained down from above.
32:42After hours of brutal fighting,
32:50Joan called urgently to the enemy soldiers on the walls above.
32:54Surrender quickly in the name of Jesus.
32:58For if you do not surrender before nightfall,
33:00we will come in there by force, whether you like it or not,
33:03and you will be put to death without mercy.
33:05Shall we, you bloody tart, came the response,
33:11and a crossbow bolt ripped through her thigh.
33:19Joan staggered and fell.
33:21Her standard bearer took an arrow in the face
33:23and died beside her.
33:26She didn't stop shouting for her soldiers to continue the attack,
33:29even when the trumpets sounded the retreat
33:31and she was carried, bleeding from the field of battle.
33:35Joan wanted to continue the fight, to attack the next day,
33:39but her king wouldn't allow it.
33:41He'd given her just one day to take the great city of Paris.
33:45It was an impossible task,
33:47but this had been her chance and she'd failed.
33:51She was distraught.
33:53How could she, how could anyone,
33:55understand what had happened?
34:05Was this a sign that God had abandoned the Armagnac cause?
34:12For Joan's king, that was unthinkable.
34:15It was far more likely that God had abandoned Joan.
34:20Heaven's help had brought triumph at Orléans and Reims.
34:23Perhaps now, God expected the king to help himself.
34:26And if diplomacy was the way forward,
34:30then Joan's determination to fight
34:31was fast becoming a liability.
34:35By the end of September, a six-month truce was agreed,
34:39a breathing space for the Armagnacs
34:40and the Burgundians and their English allies.
34:43And Joan had little choice but to limp back
34:46to the safety of the Armagnac lands south of the Loire.
34:49After the failure of her attack on Paris,
34:55it suddenly becomes hard to trace Joan's movements.
35:00We do know that she was sent on some minor skirmishes,
35:03but it seems as though the king didn't quite know what to do with her.
35:06If Joan were no longer performing miracles,
35:09then what place did a woman have in an army?
35:12Perhaps he hoped that the maid might choose this moment
35:15to retire gracefully from the public stage.
35:17But Joan herself had no doubts,
35:21whatever anyone else might think.
35:23Her mission still stood.
35:28And when the truce expired in the spring of 1430,
35:31she was ready to fight, wherever she had the chance.
35:36In May, news reached Joan that the Duke of Burgundy
35:39had attacked the Armagnac town of Compiègne,
35:41north of the capital.
35:44Undeterred by the fact that she no longer
35:46had the clear support of her king
35:48or a royal army of thousands,
35:50Joan believed that God still wanted her
35:52to complete her mission.
35:54So she rode here to Compiègne
35:56with a group of loyal followers.
36:00Joan arrived under cover of darkness
36:02on the night of the 22nd of May.
36:04The next morning, she called for her banner
36:09and gathered her little band of soldiers
36:12to attack the enemy outside the gates.
36:17Joan rode out across the bridge
36:19and charged at the Burgundians.
36:24She drove her men on and on,
36:26calling out that God was with them.
36:28But another detachment of enemy soldiers
36:34closed in behind her
36:35and cut her off from the bridge.
36:39Surrounded by the enemy,
36:41Joan was pulled from her saddle.
36:47Now, she was a prisoner.
36:48This was not how Joan's mission
36:52was supposed to end.
36:54And for the Armagnacs,
36:55the fault could only lie
36:56with Joan herself.
36:58Charles was still the true king,
37:00anointed by God.
37:02But Joan, they said,
37:03had become too proud and willful.
37:05And so God had allowed her to be taken.
37:08Keeping the Armagnac faith
37:10meant abandoning Joan to her fate.
37:13But what would that fate be?
37:15The Burgundians and the English
37:25wanted Joan to be discredited
37:27for all to see.
37:28But deciding what to do with her,
37:30who should try her
37:31and on what charges,
37:33was no simple matter.
37:34It took months.
37:36And for all that time,
37:37Joan was kept in captivity
37:39and ignorance.
37:45These were Joan's darkest days.
37:48She knew that God had sent her
37:49to save France from the English
37:50and the false French
37:52who supported them.
37:54But now God had delivered her
37:55into the hands of those same enemies.
37:57What did it mean?
37:59Perhaps God meant her to help herself.
38:02During the long months of her captivity,
38:04Joan tried and failed to escape.
38:07And then, seeing no other way out,
38:09she jumped from the window of the tower
38:11in which she was locked.
38:12She survived the fall,
38:14but her injuries took some time to heal.
38:16And she was still a prisoner.
38:21In December 1430,
38:23Joan was taken to Rouen in Normandy,
38:26the capital of English France.
38:28It would be here that she would be tried
38:30and her fate decided.
38:34What happened next was carefully written down.
38:37And we can follow it all,
38:39word for word,
38:40through the transcript of her trial.
38:45Joan's fame was so great
38:47that the eyes of the world
38:48were on this case.
38:51Joan was put on trial by her enemies,
38:53but she wasn't accused of war crimes.
38:56This was a show trial about faith,
38:58a process designed to get at the truth
39:00as her enemies saw it,
39:02to demonstrate that God was not on Joan's side.
39:06And for us, it's an astonishing source.
39:09Through this unique text,
39:10we can trace,
39:12question by question and answer by answer,
39:14the interrogations to which Joan was subjected.
39:17It takes us right into the courtroom.
39:22Her main interrogator
39:23was a man named Pierre Cochon.
39:27He had supported the Burgundian cause
39:29since the beginning of the Civil War,
39:31and he was a loyal counsellor
39:33of the English King of France.
39:38But Cochon was also a bishop.
39:41For him,
39:42this wasn't just a matter of politics.
39:45It was a matter of faith.
39:47Cochon's faith was as strong as Joan's.
39:53He wanted to prove that Joan was a heretic,
39:56that she deviated dangerously from church doctrine.
40:00And if he could get her to admit her guilt,
40:03he might even save her soul from eternal damnation.
40:06On the 21st of February, 1431,
40:12Cochon was ready.
40:14At eight that morning,
40:17Joan was brought from her cell
40:18to face a panel of judges.
40:19The might of the church
40:21was ranged against her.
40:23Silence fell,
40:25and suddenly she was there,
40:27a girl dressed as a boy
40:29with her hair cut short.
40:31Forty-two men of the church
40:33were gathered there with Cochon
40:34to hear her speak.
40:36She was the only woman in the room,
40:38by far the least educated,
40:39and the youngest by years.
40:41But she'd got used to all that
40:43since leaving Dom Remy.
40:45Joan's judges might be ready,
40:46but so was she.
40:47And the words they spoke
40:55were all recorded in the trial transcript.
41:01Will you swear an oath,
41:02touching the Holy Gospels,
41:04to tell the truth about the things we ask you
41:06that concern the faith
41:07and all other things that you know?
41:10I don't know what you want to question me about.
41:12Perhaps you might ask me things
41:13I will not tell you.
41:16For both sides,
41:17her revelations from God
41:18were the heart of the matter.
41:21Those she said
41:21she had only ever told her king,
41:24and she wouldn't speak of them now.
41:28Cochon's first day of questions
41:29yielded very little,
41:31and the second day
41:32started the same way.
41:34I took an oath for you yesterday.
41:36That should be enough.
41:38I advise you to swear,
41:40for no one who is questioned
41:41in a matter of faith,
41:42not even a prince,
41:43can refuse to take an oath.
41:45You burden me too much.
41:47In the end,
41:50she swore a limited oath,
41:52and the questions started slowly and carefully,
41:55moving backwards and forwards
41:57through her story.
41:59Often she answered,
42:00but sometimes,
42:01from one question to the next,
42:03she blankly refused.
42:04Was it well done to attack the city of Paris
42:09on a holy feast day?
42:10Move on.
42:13But as the judges
42:14waved their web of questions around her,
42:17gradually,
42:17little by little,
42:19something began to shift.
42:21They wanted to prove
42:22that her revelations were false,
42:24but Joan,
42:25who was back on the battlefield,
42:26even if this was a different kind of war,
42:29wanted to prove that they were true.
42:31So now,
42:32despite her protests,
42:34she began to talk
42:35about her messages from God.
42:38The voice came at midday
42:39in the summertime
42:40in my father's garden.
42:42The voice came from my right-hand side
42:44towards the church,
42:45and I seldom hear it without a light.
42:48The light comes from the same side as the voice,
42:50but all around,
42:51there is a great light.
42:53It seems to me to be a worthy voice,
42:55and I believe it to be a voice sent from God.
42:59And once she'd begun,
43:01the thread was there to be pulled.
43:04Bit by bit,
43:05as they asked and asked again,
43:07she began to offer up more details
43:09of the voice she heard.
43:11And on the fourth day of the trial,
43:12what she said was extraordinary.
43:16Is the voice that speaks to you
43:17the voice of an angel
43:18or the voice of a saint?
43:20Or does it come directly from God?
43:22It is the voice of St. Margaret and St. Catherine,
43:26and their forms are crowned
43:27in beautiful crowns,
43:28very rich and very precious.
43:30Which was the first voice
43:32that came to you
43:33when you were thirteen or so?
43:35It is St. Michael that came before me,
43:37and he wasn't alone,
43:38but well attended by the angels from heaven.
43:41Did you see St. Michael and the angels
43:43bodily and really?
43:45I saw them with my bodily eyes
43:47just as I see you.
43:48And when they left me,
43:49I wept,
43:50and truly wished they had taken me with them.
43:52This was exactly what Koshon wanted to hear.
43:57The church accepted that angels and demons
44:00could be seen by humans,
44:02but it was a tricky thing
44:03to know which was which.
44:05After centuries of debate,
44:07the theological principle accepted by the church
44:09was that an angel was not a physical being,
44:12but a spiritual one.
44:14So the more real physical details Joan described,
44:17the more like a demon her vision sounded.
44:21But Joan stood no chance
44:23of understanding this scholarly argument.
44:25And as she tried to demonstrate
44:27the truth of her visions
44:28by adding more and more detail,
44:30she damned herself in the eyes of her judges.
44:33Cochon was inching closer to proving that Joan's messages
44:44came from the devil,
44:45not from God.
44:46But he wanted more.
44:49It was time for a change of tactics.
44:52For a week,
44:53Joan was left to wait in her cell,
44:55alone with her English guards,
44:57her feet chained even when she slept.
44:59Then there was a knock at the door.
45:04The interrogations would continue,
45:06but now the court had come to her.
45:11Cochon had decided
45:12that he would deny her a public stage.
45:16Now he and a handful of colleagues
45:17would crowd her
45:18in the confines of her own prison.
45:21Here, surely,
45:22they would make the pressure tell.
45:25Cochon believed that
45:26when Joan first went to her king,
45:28she must have given him proof
45:30of her heaven-sent mission.
45:34What sign did you give your king
45:36when you came to him?
45:39One that is fair and honourable
45:41and most believable and good,
45:43and the richest that there is in the world.
45:46Does the sign still exist?
45:48It will last for a thousand years and more.
45:50The sign is in my king's treasury.
45:54Is it gold or silver?
45:56A precious stone or a crown?
45:57I will not tell you anything more about it.
46:00No one could describe a thing
46:01as rich as the sign is.
46:04And in any case,
46:06the sign you need
46:08is that God will deliver me from your hands.
46:11And it's the most certain one
46:12that he can send you.
46:17Joan's words make it heartbreakingly clear
46:19that she still believed
46:21that help was coming,
46:22that God would perform another miracle
46:24and save her.
46:27But Cochon knew he was getting closer.
46:29He pushed again on his next visit to her cell,
46:32and then again the next day.
46:35And finally, she offered up her story.
46:37She said that when she'd first been at Chinon
46:41after Easter in 1429,
46:44an angel had come
46:45to bring her king a crown of pure gold.
46:49The angel had walked up the stairs
46:51into the king's chamber
46:52with a company of other angels
46:53that only Joan could see.
46:56Joan had said to the king,
46:57And this crown from God
47:03meant that the kingdom of France
47:04would be restored to him
47:05if he would give Joan soldiers
47:07and put her to work.
47:11For Cochon, this was a breakthrough.
47:14An angel who could physically walk upstairs,
47:17speak to the king's court,
47:19and hand over a crown?
47:20This must be the conjuring of the devil.
47:24This, like her descriptions of her saints,
47:26was a story Joan had never told before.
47:29Why was she telling it now?
47:32Alone under interrogation,
47:34she needed to vindicate her mission
47:36to give detailed proof
47:38of the truth of what she claimed.
47:41But for Cochon,
47:42the devil was literally in these details.
47:45And it was the details in the end
47:47that proved what the bishop already knew,
47:49that Joan was guilty of heresy.
47:56The punishment for heresy was clear.
48:01She would be burned at the stake.
48:03But there was a chance
48:05that Joan might still live.
48:08Cochon's hardest task lay ahead.
48:10If he could persuade Joan to admit her guilt,
48:13he would save both her life
48:15and her immortal soul.
48:17For two weeks,
48:19Cochon tried everything to win Joan round.
48:22Kind persuasion,
48:24reason and argument,
48:25and eventually even the threat of torture.
48:29Joan was led to a room in the castle
48:30where terrible implements were laid out,
48:33ready for use.
48:34But Joan was unmoved.
48:36In truth,
48:38if you were to have me torn limb from limb
48:40and my soul separated from my body,
48:42I wouldn't tell you anything more.
48:44And if I did tell you anything else about it,
48:45afterwards I would always say
48:47that you made me say it by force.
48:52Cochon knew that Joan meant what she said.
48:55He sent her back to her cell.
48:57Time was running out.
48:59The church had done its work,
49:01but it couldn't take a life.
49:04The sentence would be carried out by the English,
49:06and they were impatient to get on with it.
49:10On the morning of the 24th of May, 1431,
49:14Joan was brought from her prison in Rouen Castle
49:16to this square in front of the Abbey of Saint-Ou-en.
49:20Here, in public,
49:22she would be sentenced
49:23and then handed over to the English authorities
49:25to be burned.
49:27Everyone would see the fate of a heretic.
49:29The whole of Rouen had turned out to watch
49:37as Joan was bound on a tall platform
49:39with the executioner's cart standing by.
49:43A sermon was preached,
49:45and once again Joan was asked
49:47if she would submit to Holy Mother Church.
49:51Joan had been so sure that God would rescue her,
49:54but still help hadn't come.
49:56She needed to buy time.
49:59But there was no more time.
50:02Cochon began to read the final sentence,
50:05and suddenly Joan raised her voice.
50:08I wish to obey the church and my judges.
50:11The church says my visions are not to be believed,
50:13so I will not uphold them.
50:14I submit to Holy Mother Church.
50:19I submit.
50:26There was uproar.
50:28The maid was recanting.
50:30Cochon asked if she was ready to confess her sins,
50:33and an official of the court
50:34stepped forward with a document
50:36acknowledging her heresy
50:37and a pen for her to sign it.
50:40She made her mark on the paper.
50:43It was done.
50:44Now, Cochon delivered a different sentence.
50:50Joan would live,
50:51but she would be kept in prison
50:52for the rest of her life,
50:54doing penance for the sins she had committed.
50:58Joan was bundled back to her cell.
51:01Her submission was complete.
51:03After more than two years of dressing as a man,
51:06she took off her male clothes
51:07and put on a dress,
51:09and she bowed her head
51:10so that her short hair could be shaved off.
51:12There could be no clearer sign
51:16that her mission was over.
51:20Cochon's work was done.
51:22The maid's soul was saved,
51:23and now her misguided claims
51:25could be safely forgotten.
51:27That should have been it.
51:30But there are more pages still to turn.
51:34Here, on the 28th of May,
51:36four days after the dramatic events at Saint-Houen,
51:39Cochon was called back to the castle.
51:42It says that he found Joan Habituverilli,
51:46dressed once again as a man,
51:47and her state of mind was profoundly disturbed.
51:51Here, the bishop questions her again,
51:53but all Joan's calmness and confidence are gone.
51:57Now, her answers are tangled
51:59and much harder to follow.
52:02Something had happened in those few days.
52:05Later, witnesses suggested that
52:07once she was dressed in women's clothes,
52:09she'd been assaulted or raped in her cell.
52:12But what's clear above all
52:15is the overwhelming distress she felt
52:17at having given up on her truth
52:19and denied her voices.
52:22And the clerk noted in the margin
52:24that what she said next
52:25was the responsio mortifera,
52:28her fatal reply.
52:33God has sent me word
52:34of the great pity of my betrayal.
52:36I have damned my soul to save my life.
52:39If I had said that God hadn't sent me,
52:43then I would be damned,
52:44for I was truly sent by God.
52:47My voices tell me I have done harm
52:50by saying what I did is wrong.
52:54Whatever I said and recanted,
52:56I did only through the fear of fire.
53:01This time, Cochon knew
53:03there could be no going back.
53:05Joan was a relapsed heretic.
53:06She would be handed over to the English
53:09to be burned.
53:11Early in the morning of the 30th of May,
53:14Cochon and some of his fellow clerics
53:16visited Joan in her cell
53:17for the last time.
53:19Her life was now beyond hope,
53:22but perhaps there was still a chance
53:23that her soul could be saved
53:25if she would finally tell the truth.
53:28And this record of what Joan said
53:30in the last hours of her life
53:32is extraordinarily moving.
53:34All her certainties are gone.
53:37Rescue hasn't come.
53:39She knows she'll die.
53:41And yet telling the truth
53:42means she can't let go
53:44of her voices and visions.
53:45Is it true that you heard voices
53:57and received apparitions?
54:00Yes.
54:03Whether they were good or evil spirits,
54:05they appeared to me.
54:09I heard the voices most of all
54:10when the church bells rang
54:12in the morning and the evening.
54:13And the apparitions?
54:16The angels?
54:18They came in a great multitude
54:20of the tiniest things.
54:23What of the angel who gave
54:25the one you call your king a crown?
54:29I was the angel.
54:34I promised my king
54:35that if he put me to work
54:36I would see him crowned.
54:37Over the centuries
54:49there have been as many ways
54:50of reading Joan's trial
54:52as there are people to read it.
54:54It's even been suggested
54:55that this last conversation
54:57on the morning of her death
54:58was a fabrication
54:59made up by Cauchon
55:01to undermine her message.
55:03But to me
55:04there's a truthfulness to it.
55:06Joan's story of an angel
55:08bringing her king
55:09a golden crown
55:10doesn't seem plausible to us
55:12and it didn't to her judges either.
55:15But if Joan was the angel
55:16and the crown
55:17her promise of a coronation
55:19it makes much more sense
55:21as a way for Joan
55:22alone among her enemies
55:24to make her mission
55:25real in the world.
55:27But Joan's truth
55:28and Cauchon's were incompatible
55:30and that's why Joan had to die.
55:33Joan was brought here
55:43to the marketplace in Rouen
55:45where a pyre had been prepared.
55:48A cap was placed on her head
55:50bearing the words
55:52relapsed heretic
55:53apostate
55:54idolater.
55:55Joan was tied to a stake
56:10on a high scaffold
56:12so that everyone
56:13could see her burn.
56:18As the flames took hold
56:20she called the name of Jesus
56:21over and over again.
56:23Once she was dead
56:26and her clothes
56:26had burned away
56:27the executioner
56:28raked back the fire
56:30to show the crowd
56:30that she was just a woman.
56:33Then he stoked the flames
56:34so there'd be nothing
56:36left of her but ashes.
56:48Joan's body was gone
56:49but her story wouldn't die.
56:52Her belief in her visions
56:54and her extraordinary courage
56:56remained an inspiration.
57:00By 1456
57:01just 25 years after her death
57:04the political tide had turned.
57:07France was reunited
57:08under Joan's Armagnac king
57:09and Joan's case
57:11was heard in court
57:12once again.
57:14This time
57:14Joan was found
57:15not guilty of heresy.
57:17Since then
57:20Joan has become
57:21a legend
57:22and an icon.
57:24In 1920
57:24she was even
57:25made a saint.
57:28Now
57:29she's almost
57:30an empty vessel
57:31into which we pour
57:32our own preoccupations
57:33whatever they may be.
57:38But if she becomes
57:39all things
57:39to all people
57:40we risk losing
57:42the human being.
57:42the girl who burned
57:44in this place
57:45was a ferocious champion
57:46of one side
57:47in a bloody civil war.
57:50She was able to do
57:51what she did
57:52to achieve what should
57:53have been impossible
57:54for someone of her class
57:55and sex
57:56because she
57:57and all those around her
57:59believed they were
57:59fighting a war
58:00in which God's will
58:01was at work.
58:02And perhaps
58:04it's there
58:05in the possibilities
58:06that faith
58:07can create
58:07and in the violence
58:09it can bring
58:10but Joan's world
58:11and ours
58:12don't seem
58:13so very far apart.
58:27Helen returns
58:28here tomorrow
58:28on BBC4
58:29to investigate
58:30the lives
58:31of Matilda
58:31and Eleanor
58:32of Aquitaine
58:33in She-Wolves
58:34England's early queens
58:36here at 10.30.
58:38Next and part
58:39of the hear her season
58:40snatches
58:41moments
58:41from women's lives.
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