Joan of Arc: The Martyr (Part 4)

We trace Joan of Arc’s final arc from the coronation that completes her mission to the courtroom and fire that turns her into a symbol no one can control. We follow how politics, law, and belief collide in Rouen, and why trying to erase Joan only makes her immortal. 

Transcript

Mission Completed Then Purpose Frays

Paris Assault And The First Failure

Compiegne Capture And Charles’s Betrayal

SPEAKER_00 0:03

There she stands on a platform in the marketplace. Joan is bound to a wooden stake. She's 19 years old. And she wears a long white shift. The garment they dress condemned heretics in before execution. It is May 30th, 1431. In the city of Rouen, in France. Joan's hair has grown back since they shaved it during the trial. Around her neck hangs a placard listing her crimes. Heretic, relapse, apostate, idolatry. The platform is built high enough that the crowd or maybe 10,000 people can see her clearly. English soldiers who've been guarding her for a year are positioned around the square, controlling the French population of Rouen, who are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Joan. The Bishop of Buff, Pierre Cochon, stands nearby reading the final condemnation. He has spent four months conducting this trial. Now he's about to watch it culminate in an execution. Joan is praying, out loud so that the crowd can hear. She asks for forgiveness. She asks God to have mercy on her accusers. She asks for a cross. An English soldier, moved by something he sees in her face, breaks two sticks and ties them together with cord. He hands this makeshift cross to Joan. She takes it, kisses it, holds it against her chest. A French priest named Martin Latvenue has brought a processional cross from the nearby church. He holds it up so that Joan can see it while the flames rise. This is supposed to be justice. Joan has been tried by a church court, found guilty of heresy, handed over to secular authorities for punishment. The English are burning her because she led French armies against them. The Burgundians support this because Joan made them look weak. French church authorities conducting the trial are doing it because Joan claimed direct communication with God that bypassed her authority. Joan is about to die, but she's still claiming that the voices were real. She's had months in prison to recant. Trial gave her every opportunity to save herself by admitting she made it all up. Two weeks ago, facing the prospect of burning, she briefly recanted and then took it all back. Joan asks for the cross to be held where she can see it through the smoke. Father Latvinu positions himself as close to the flames as he can stand, holding the cross high. The execution takes about one hour. The flames are kept hot enough to kill, slow enough to make the comdend suffer visively as a warning to others. Joan calls out for Jesus repeatedly. The crowd watches in stunned silence. The English soldiers watch. The church officials watch. When it is over, the executioner later testifies that he found Joan's heart intact among the ashes. A detail that, whether true or symbolic, spreads through France like wildfire. Joan the warrior is dead. Joan the maid has passed on. Joan the martyr has just been born. This is part four of the Joan of Arc story. The martyr. You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes? Well, I'd argue you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history. Not just to highlight Rio or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA. Those defining moments that shaped everything that came after. Those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, Paul, and this is Double Helix, Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries through their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations. We dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that make countries who they are today. Before we begin, I want to make a small correction to some French pronunciation in case some of you are being driven insane by my mispronunciation. The French general, Etienne de Vignolet, whom I have been referencing throughout the episodes as La Hira, is actually pronounced La Ia. He was a loyal captain for King Charles the Seventh and fought major battles, including the Battle of Pate, as I mentioned in the last episode, and was one of Joan of Arc's closest companions. So there you have it. The name should be pronounced La Ia, not La Hira. Okay, so let me back up and show you how we get from the coronation at Ron's to the execution platform at Rouen. Because this is about more than military defeat. This is about what happens when the voices that have guided you start to be wrong, or maybe more accurately, when the mission they gave you runs out and you keep fighting anyway. That was Joan's mission. Crown the king at Ron. And it is complete. A sensible person would declare victory and go home. Joan is many things, but she's never been sensible in that way. She has a higher mission. She wants to take Paris. At a meeting in Chateau de Saint-Denis in September of 1429, the arguments between Charles and Joan explode. Charles is now crowned king of France. He secured his legitimacy. And now his newly appointed advisors are telling him that the smart move is to negotiate with the English and the Burgundians from a position of strength. Make peace, consolidate the gains, avoid risking everything on another military campaign. Joan, however, is arguing for the opposite. Paris is the capital, the symbolic center of France. As long as the English hold Paris, Charles's authority is incomplete. She wants to assault the city immediately. While French momentum is strong and English morale is broken. Charles listens to both sides and makes a choice that reveals where his priorities truly lie. Besides with his advisors, he negotiates a truce with the Duke of Burgundy, another temporary ceasefire that Joan sees as a strategic mistake. And when Joan pushes for Paris anyway, Charles gives her permission but withholds the full support she needs to succeed. We are now just outside of Paris on September 8th, 1429. The assault on Paris happens in the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, symbolically important to Joan, militarily disastrous in execution. The French attacked the Port Saint-Henri, one of the city's main gates. Joan is, as usual, at the front with her banner. This time, however, the magic fails. The Parisian garrison is well prepared and had weeks to strengthen defenses while Charles negotiated his truce. The city population, far from welcoming Joan as a liberator, fights alongside the English and the Burgundians to defend their city. This is the reality of the Hundred Years' War that Joan's divine mission sometimes obscure. For many French people, the question of which side to support comes down to politics rather than spiritual calmness. Joan takes a crossbow bolt through the thigh, and she refuses to withdraw. Her commanders literally have to drag her away from the walls as night falls and the assault collapses. It is the first time Joan has led an attack that fails completely, and it changes something fundamental in how people begin to see her. That night, Joan wants to resume the attack in the morning. Charles orders a withdrawal. The army marches away from Paris, and Joan, wounded, frustrated, watching her influence with the king crumble, realizes that something has shifted. The king she crowned is now making decisions that contradict her voices. There's nothing she can do about it. The next few months become a slow deterioration of Joan's position. Charles disbands much of the army for winter. Joan is effectively sidelined, given nominal military authority but kept away from major decisions. She spends the winter in relative inactivity. You can feel her growing desperate to recapture the clarity of purpose that she had before Ronce. By the spring of 1430, the fighting resumes, but it's different now. Joan is now leading a small operation, defensive actions, campaigns that feel more like holding territory than conquering it. The voices that used to give her such specific guidance, take Orleans, crown the king at Ronz, have gone quiet or vague. Joan is still fighting, but she's fighting without the certainty that made her unstoppable. Let me take you to the moment that ends Joan's military career. It is May 23rd, 1430, in Compagne. Compion is a French-held town under siege by Burgundian forces. Joan leads a relief force to help the garrison, and it starts well. The French make a sortie from the city, engage the Burgundians, push them back. Joan is at the front again with her small company of soldiers. Then the Burgundians counter-attack with reinforcements. The French retreat towards the city gates. And here's where military discipline completely collapses. The garrison commander, afraid the Burgundians will force their way in, orders the gates closed while Joan and her rearguard are still outside. Joan is cut off. She's surrounded by Burgundian soldiers who spend a year hearing stories about the maid of Orleans. An archer named Lionel de Wandon pulls her off her horse. Joan surrenders to him, probably expecting to be ransomed like any capture noble commander. Joan is a peasant. This is an extraordinary military capture. When word reaches the English that Joan has been captured, there's genuine celebration in their camp. This is the girl who broke Orleans, who crowned Charles at Reims, who's been claiming God fights for France. The English won her tried for heresy and witchcraft. They want to prove that French victories came from demonic rather than divine sources. They want to delegitimize everything Joan accomplished by destroying her spiritually before executing her physically. The Duke of Burgundy, who technically captured Joan, is willing to sell her to the English. Joan's value as a prisoner is enormous. Ransoming her to Charles would bring in money, but giving her to the English brings political favor with more powerful allies. And what about Charles? Charles, the King Joan crowned, the king she fought for, the king she dragged to Ron's against his political instincts. Charles makes no serious attempt to ramsen her. The man who owes her his crown lets her be sold to his enemies for 10,000 libres. This is where Joan's story becomes almost unbearably sad. She gave everything up for Charles. When she needed him to return even a fraction of that loyalty, he looked the other way. Politically, it makes sense. Joan had become more of a liability than an asset. Her divine mandate is questioned. Ransoming her might look weak, but morally, humanly, is a betrayal that echoes through the centuries. The English move Joan to Rouen, the capital of English-occupied France. She's imprisoned in a castle with a chain guarded by English soldiers rather than women, as church law requires for a female prisoner. And then they begin the trial that will determine whether Joan is a saint or a witch.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

We are in Rome February of 1431.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It is at the trial where Joan's story becomes less about military history and more about how power uses law to destroy what it can't defeat on the battlefield. The English can't admit that a teenage peasant girl beat their armies through legitimate military skill. Then French victories become meaningless and English defeats become understandable. The trial is conducted by Pierre Cochon, the Bishop of Bebaugh. He's French, but he's politically aligned with the English and the Burgundians. He's also smart, educated and determined to convict Joan through proper legal processes. This won't be a show trial with a predetermined verdict. It will be a real trial with real arguments that happen to be rigged against the defendant in ways that ensure the outcome. At this point, Joan is 19 years old, still illiterate, imprisoned and facing some of the best theological minds in France. She has no lawyer, she has no advocate. She's interrogated for hours at a time, asked complex theological questions designed to trap her, subjected to legal maneuvering, she has no training to counter. And she's remarkable. The trial transcripts survive to this day. We can read them. And what's striking is how often Joan's simple, direct answers cut through the theological complexity her interrogators throw at her. They ask whether she knows if she's in God's grace. It's a trap question. She says yes, she's guilty of presumption, claiming knowledge of God's will. If she says no, she's admitting the voices might be demonic. So Joan responds. If I am not, may God put me there. If I am, may God keep me there. Theologically perfect, completely unanswerable. They ask about her male clothing, the charge that will ultimately condemn her. Joan explains the practical reasons protection, modesty, the need to be taken seriously as a military commander. But she also says something more important. God told her to wear it. If the voices are divine, then her male clothing is divinely mandated. If the voices are demonic, then she's a heretic. The entire trial hinges on the sources of those voices. They also ask about the voices themselves. Dozens of questions. What do they sound like? What language do they speak? What do they look like? Are they naked? Do they have hair? Joan answers some questions and refuses others. I will not tell you everything. I have not leave to reveal everything. Think about that for a second. Joan is on trial for her life, and she's still maintaining that some of what the voices told her is private, between her and God. That's either genuine religious conviction or the most stubborn adherence to a delusion that's been encountered in historical records.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Interrogation goes on for months. January, February, March, April. They're trying to break her.

Recantation Relapse And The Pyre

SPEAKER_00 17:23

They try to torture her or threaten her. The records are unclear. They use isolation, they use the constant presence of hostile English guards who make her feel unsafe. They bring in sympathetic clergy who encourage her to confess. Hoping a gentle approach will work or force failure. They try everything. But Joan holds out. That is, until May 24th, 1431, when they finally break her. They bring Joan to the cemetery and roar. There's a large crowd. This is meant to be public. One holds church officials reading out of Joan's crimes and heresy. The other holds a pyre ready to be lit. The message is clear. Joan, after months of resistance, finally breaks. She signs a document or makes a mark on one that says that she can't write, that recants her visions, admits her voices were false, promises to submit to church authority and stop wearing male clothing. The crowd erupts, and some are relieved. They didn't want to see her burn, some are disappointed. The church officials commute her sentence to life imprisonment. Joan is taken back to her cell, dressed in female clothing, the recantation requires, and then something happens at the trial records glows over, but that determines everything that follows. Either take away her female clothing or assault her. The records are deliberately vague. What is clear is that Joan finds herself in a situation where wearing male clothing again becomes necessary for her safety, or perhaps it is her only option. Three days later, the judge returns to find Joan as in male clothing again. According to church law, this makes her a relapsed heretic. Someone who recants and then returns to the heresy and has committed the worst possible offense. There is only one penalty for someone who does such a thing death by burning. Reading between the lines of the record, I believe that Joan realized that recanting was worse than dying. She spent two years claiming God's poke to her, fighting battles based on the belief that the voices were speaking to her, crowning a king because the voices told her to. She ended her life by admitting it was all false, and everything that she'd accomplished meant nothing. Better to die claiming truth than to live having admitted to lies. She says, I would rather do my penance at once by dying.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

She tells him I would rather do this than endure any longer the suffering of imprisonment.

How Martyrs Become Political Tools

Next Series Teaser And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 20:43

On May 29th, the court declares Joan a relapse heretic and hands her over to secular authorities for execution. The sentence will be carried out the next morning. Let me take you back to that morning, May 30th, 1431, at the Rouen marketplace. Joan spends the night praying. Father Martin Latvigneux stays with her. He's become sympathetic to Joan despite being assigned to her trial. He hears her confession, gives her communion, accompanies her to the platform in the marketplace. The fire is lit around nine in the morning. It takes about an hour for Joan to die. Throughout, she calls on Jesus. Crowd watches. Some are crying, some are silent. Some of the English soldiers later claim they saw a dove rise from the flames. Kind of detail that, true or not, becomes part of Joan's legend immediately. The executioner, a man Geoffrey Taraj, later testifies that he fears damnation for what he's done. I greatly fear to be damned, he tells anyone who will listen, for I have burned a saint. The word saint is going to be crucial here, because what the English thought they were doing by burning Joan was destroying her power as a symbol, they actually did, was create a martyr whose power would grow far beyond anything she accomplished in life. Think about what Joan represents in this moment. A peasant girl who claimed God spoke to her, who led armies, who crowned a king, who was tried by the church and executed by the English, who maintained her faith literally unto death, has become a story about how authentic belief threatens power, about how the powerless can challenge the powerful when backed by conviction, about how the church itself can be wrong when it chooses politics over truth. In 1920, nearly five hundred years after her execution, the Catholic Church canonizes Joan as a saint. Saint Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France. The church that burned her eventually makes her one of his most celebrated martyrs. So here's what makes Joan's execution in Rouen's marketplace the most consequential moment of her entire story. It transforms her from a military commander with a controversial divine mandate into a martyr whose meaning can be endlessly reinterpreted. The execution itself creates the symbol. Joan dies claiming the voices were real, maintaining her faith literally unto death. That act of defiance, using to save herself by recanting, choosing burning over apostasy, turns her into something that transcends the political and military circumstances of 1431. She becomes a story about conviction itself, about what it means to believe something so completely that you rather die than deny it. And here's what's fascinating about martyrdom as a political tool. Martyrs are more useful dead than alive. Living Joan is complicated. She's a peasant who challenges authority, a woman in armor who violates gender norms, a mystic whose voices sometimes say things that the church finds inconvenient, a military commander who wins battles but also fails at Paris. You can claim her for any cause you want because she's no longer around to object. Charles VII, the king who abandoned her to her fate, spends the next 20 years reconquering France from the English. In 1456, he orders a retrial that exonerates Joan completely. The 1431 verdict is overturned. Joan is declared innocent, a martyr, a victim of English injustice. Think about what Charles is doing here. He's not trying to help Joan. She's been dead for 25 years. He's building a symbol he can use. If Joan was a divinely inspired martyr who crowned him king, then his kingship carries divine legitimacy that no amount of political maneuvering can match. The Bourbon monarchy uses Joan to prove God chooses French kings. Napoleon uses her to prove French military genius and national destiny. The Third Republic uses her to prove ordinary citizens can change history. Vichy France uses her to justify collaboration as traditional French values. The resistance uses her to justify armed struggle against occupation. Same martyr, completely opposite meanings. French communists claim her as a peasant revolutionary. French nationalists claim her as a proof of ethnic French superiority. French feminists claim her as a woman who refused society's limits. The Catholic Church, which burned her, eventually makes her a saint. Joan becomes whatever France needs her to be in any given moment. And that's the power of martyrdom. It creates a symbol flexible enough to survive centuries of political transformation because the martyr herself is silent. She can't object when people claim her for causes she might have opposed. She can't clarify what she actually meant. She's frozen at 19, dying for beliefs she maintained to the end. And everyone after can project onto her the moments that bring whatever meaning serves their purposes. And so this is what Joan leaves behind. Not just a specific historical impact of crowning Charles VII or breaking the siege of Orleans, but a template for how martyrdom works in the national identity of a nation. The martyr who dies for the nation becomes infinitely reusable. Peasant who claims divine authority to challenge kings creates a pattern that shows up in revolutionary friends in the resistance in modern French political discourse about authentic national identity versus corrupt collaboration. And all of that starts with a 19-year-old girl burning in Rouen's marketplace, calling on Jesus while the flames rise, refusing to recant what she believed God told her. Next time, on Double Helix, we're taking on something even more challenging. The Israel-Gaza conflict. But we're not starting in 1948 or even 1917 with the Vaufour Declaration. We're going back nearly 2,000 years to 70 CE when Roman legions under Titus destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. We're examining how Hadrian's brutal suppression of the Barkova revolt in 135 CE created patterns of displacement and trauma that echoed through millennia. We're tracing how ancient catastrophes become embedded in collective memory, how exile and return shape national consciousness, and how conflicts that seem modern are actually playing out scripts written in the ancient world. Until then, thank you for listening. We will see you soon.