Transcript

Joan of Arc: The Teenager Who Led an Army

From The Rest Is History · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 7 min · 11,764 words · 119 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Joan of Arc: The Teenager Who Led an Army", an episode of The Rest Is History published January 5, 2026 (1 h 7 min, about 11,764 words). It mentions 18 people, works and ideas, including Henry V, Joan, Jonavar, Duke of Bedford, St. Michael.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Jonavar, Henry V, Christine Deison, Duke of Bedford
  2. – 20:00: Henry V
  3. – 30:00: Henry V, Champagne, Pierre Koson, Duke of Bedford
  4. – 40:00: Duke of Bedford, Henry V, Jonavar
  5. – 50:00: St. Michael, Champagne, Henry V, Jonavar
  6. – 1:00:00: St. Michael, Margaret of Antioch, St. Katherine of Alexandria, Vocular
  7. – 1:06:38: Henry V, Jonavar

Notable quotes from "Joan of Arc: The Teenager Who Led an Army"

  • Are in 15th century France for perhaps the most exciting story we've ever done on the show. It's the story of Jonavar, the woman who saved France. The woman who stamped her…
    about Jonavar · at
  • That poem was written by a French woman, a French woman, one of the most remarkable women according to Tom Holland in medieval history. So she's often described as the first…
    about Tom Holland · at
  • Won the Hundred Years War that you know we ended the last series about it with Ashinor and Henry V and his great victories and now this is going to be the great turnaround in French history.
    about Henry V · at
  • But as a kind of supernatural enemy right sorceress a witch. Yeah. So here is the Duke of Bedford who was the regent for his infant nephew Henry V 6th during this period and…
    about Duke of Bedford · at
  • Essentially a puppet of the Duke of Burgundy. He is in the city of Tua in Champagne which is kind of southeast of Paris. Henry V joins Philillip and Charles V 6th there and…
    about Champagne · at
  • So he is a very distinguished churchman and he goes by the name of Pierre Koson.
    about Pierre Koson · at
  • Region. all the dophanist strongholds fall, all except one. And this is a fortress called Vocular, which is very formidable. has a large garrison, and it's under the command of a nobleman from Lraine by the name of Robert Dodricor.
    about Vocular · at
  • Seems who are the particular focus of her devotion and the first of these is really unsurprising it's St. Michael, who is the great warrior, archangel, the captain of heaven…
    about St. Michael · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Henry V — Person · 20 mentions · first at
  • Joan — Person · 10 mentions
  • Jonavar — Person · 6 mentions · first at
  • Duke of Bedford — Person · 4 mentions · first at
  • Charles VI — Person · 3 mentions
  • Pierre Koson — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Tom Holland — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Christine Deison — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Often described as the first professional female writer in Western history. Her name was Christine Deison.
  • Robert Dodricor — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Formidable. has a large garrison, and it's under the command of a nobleman from Lraine by the name of Robert Dodricor.

Concepts & topics

  • St. Michael — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
  • St. Katherine of Alexandria — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So I guess to Joan, they are emblems of courage and independence. and one of them, St. Katherine of Alexandria, again, it's not just Joan who's devoted to her. She's probably…
  • Margaret of Antioch — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Brilliant. And then the other one is I have to admit I'm not familiar with her work, and that is Margaret of Antioch.

Places & events

  • Champagne — Place · 3 mentions · first at
  • Domi — Place · 3 mentions
  • Vocular — Place · 2 mentions · first at
  • Olio — Place · 2 mentions
  • Olon — Place · 2 mentions
  • Lorraine — Place · 1 mention · first at
    It is, dare I say, liinal. It's on the frontier between two different places, Champagne and Lorraine. The river MS runs through it. And the fact that it's on a frontier is…

Full transcript with timestamps

Hello. Today on the rest is history, we are in 15th century France for perhaps the most exciting story we've ever done on the show. It's the story of Jonavar, the woman who saved France. The woman who stamped her personality onto all Europe, the peasant girl who rose from obscurity to lead the French armies against the English. It's an unbelievably dramatic and exciting story, and we will be delving into the mystery. Was Joan really a witch or was she really inspired by the saints and messengers from God? Find out.

Just a little girl, only 16 years old. Isn't this something miraculous? Wielding her weapons as though they weighed nothing at all. Indeed, she seems to have been raised for just such a moment. So strong she is and resolute. Her enemies stumble in flight before her. Not one of them can stand up to her. And all this she does before the gaze of the world. She drives her foes out of France. She recaptures castles and towns. Never has anyone seen such formidable deeds. Not hundreds, not thousands of men can compare with her of our brave and able warriors. She is the chief captain. Neither Ector nor Achilles can rival her prowess. But it is God who has wrought this God who leads her on.

So that's a poem written in July 1429. It would astound people to know that that poem was written by a French woman, a French woman, one of the most remarkable women according to Tom Holland in medieval history. So she's often described as the first professional female writer in Western history. Her name was Christine Deison. She was born in Venice actually. So maybe I should have done given her a little bit of an Italian uh lilt, but she came when she was four years old. So

yeah. So she came to France. her father was appointed the court astrologer, wasn't he? So he was the Anthony Scaramucci because he's a big fan of astrology. She was the Anthony Scaramucci or he the father was the Anthony Scaramucci of medieval history. And then in 1389 her husband dropped dead of the plague, Christine. She had three small children and a mother and a niece to support and she turned to writing poetry and in those days actually you could make money by writing poetry. So good for her. She made a fortune. Yeah,

she was prolific on a kind of San Brookian scale. So, um, in 1405, she boasted that between the years 1399 and the present year, I have compiled 15 major works.

Oo, that's good. But Dominic, that extract from the poem that you just read, that was the last poem she ever wrote. Um, she wrote it in uh 1429 and it celebrated a girl who was even more famous, even more remarkable than she was. a girl that Christine called Laapusel the maid, but who is best known today as of course Joan of Ark. Joan of Ark. So the most famous woman in medieval history, one of the most celebrated women who's ever existed, one of the fa most famous characters from medieval history of any gender who's existed. So if you think about um you've made you got got a list here of all the people who've written songs about her Leonard Cohen, Madonna, Kate Bush, Arcade Fire, Little Mix, The Cranberries. You mentioned one of my favorite bands, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. They actually wrote two, Jonavar and Maid of Allians.

Yeah. And they're both excellent. Yeah. Very good. And actually, one of them begins Little Catholic Girl. So quite like Christine's poem. I don't know whether they were influenced by her.

Undoubtedly they were. So she's a pop icon, isn't she? because she's a teenage girl, she's a rebel, she's an outsider. Well, she's doing things that teenage girls shouldn't shouldn't do. And I think that understanding of her, that tradition, it begins with Christine, who is the author of the very first poem ever written about Joan because you know that bit you read, what is Christine celebrating? She's celebrating the fact that, as you implied, the English are losing and the French are winning. But more than that, she is celebrating the sheer mad glorious improbability of what she's describing that a little girl only 16 years old is leading an army into battle and what is more winning. Yeah.

And the extraordinary thing I mean a couple of extraordinary things. She's so young. She's a girl and she is a peasant girl. And to give people a sense who don't know anything about Jonavar, we're in the 15th century. It's the hundred years war. England have had it all their own way so far. Well, a lot of it their own way. It looks like the English have won the Hundred Years War that you know we ended the last series about it with Ashinor and Henry V and his great victories and now this is going to be the great turnaround in French history.

And as you say in your notes, Tom, it feels like something less from the pages of history than from the pages of either fantasy, George RR Martin or something or indeed a fairy tale. Yeah, because this is a girl who claims that she has been ordered by supernatural voices to save France. And she puts on male dress and she rides to the distant court of the king. And the king amazingly agrees to meet her and is persuaded by her that she has this god-given mission to defeat the king's enemies and to see him crowned. and she then rides in armor like a knight um at the head of a great army. She liberates the famous city of Olon on the river from a siege. She then leads the king through enemy territory and she does indeed succeed in crowning him in a distant cathedral in a city set amid hostile territory. She is then captured. She's put on trial. She's convicted of heresy and notoriously she is burnt to death. And it is one of, if

not the most extraordinary stories in the whole of history. And I think we're so familiar with it that perhaps you need to kind of do a deep dive to remind yourself of just how astonishing the story is. And the thing is that even the greatest of historians have struggled to make sense of her to make sense of her story. So um I I have you read the the waning of the middle ages.

Yeah. Johan Heisinger. Yeah. It was so great Dutch historian and published in 1919 and in his study of 15th century Burgundy and Northern France um he pointedly omitted Joan even though she is probably the most famous character uh from that period and this wasn't because he thought that she was unimportant but absolutely the opposite. So he he wrote about it years later why he had admitted Joan. I knew that she would have torn the book I visualized in my mind completely out of balance. What kept me from introducing her in it was a sense of harmony. That and a vast and reverent humility. And he said of her that she is a figure more beautiful than any other nation possesses. And that's a Dutchman.

That's a Dutchman. But of course, not everybody has agreed with that verdict, have they Tom? Because even at the time there were a lot of people who well in fact especially at the time there were a lot of people who took a very different view of Lepel the maid of Olon. Um and chief among them were people we've already mentioned who were of course the English. So they absolutely loathed and indeed feared her didn't they as not merely a you know a normal mortal enemy but as a kind of supernatural enemy right sorceress a witch. Yeah. So here is the Duke of Bedford who um was the the the regent for his uh infant nephew Henry V 6th during this period and he's summing up the maid uh only a week after Christine Depan had completed her poem and he his take is very different to Christine's Bedford says of her she's a loose infamous and immoral woman dressed as a man and he can't leave it alone because 5 years later he's still at it

um and he is directly blaming the decline of English fortunes in France on this monstrous sorceress, a disciple and limb of the fiend called the pusel that used false enchantment and sorcery. And the reason he is uh simmering, smoldering with rage is that this you know her life and her rise to prominence coincides with the turning point in this longunning struggle between England and France in the um 14th and 15th centuries that comes to be called the hundred years war. We've done, you know, a longunning series on it, couple of seasons, haven't we? We're now coming to the decisive moment. And that's one reason why Christine Deisan celebrates Joan so much, is that, as Christine puts it, Joan will cast down the English for good, for this is what God wishes. And this really is a turning point in the history of the sort of intermingle relations between England and France.

And I'm sorry to say, I have to warn our listeners, is I don't normally agree with trigger warnings, but in this case, I do. the English will not come off well in this story.

So, this is basically Theo Heaven. It's four episodes of the English behaving both badly and losing. Uh, and Dominic, I I'm sure you would join with me in dedicating this series to Theo on that account. So, it's the story of how the English come to lose once and for all the Hundred Years War. But I think before that, we should cheer our English listeners up by repreing everything that had gone right for England. So, how they had come to invade France, how they'd come to conquer a lot of it. Um, how they came to seem actually on the verge of winning the war outright. Obviously, the English, unlike Joan, unlike Christine, do not think they're the baddies. They think that the French throne rightfully belongs to their king and that a succession of astonishing victories has comprehensively demonstrated the fact that God agrees with this because otherwise if the English were not justified invading

France, God wouldn't have allowed them to win so many victories over the French. A crucial point here is that um England is much smaller and much less populous and much less rich than France. So England is the underdog. I think when we started the Hundred Years War series, we compared it to Ukraine versus Russia. You know, one one giant one beer and a much smaller country that has actually in this case launched a preemptive strike basically as a defensive measure and has enjoyed extraordinary success beyond the wildest dreams. you know, you would think of England's kings and and England has done very well and and two kings in particular. So, one is Edward III, the victor of Cressy and Poier, the great kind of Royster Doyster of English history, and the other is Henry V. So, he has won a tremendous victory at the battle of Azinor, but then he dies. So, the point of his success, at the point

at his peak, right, he's become he's the dominant figure in France, isn't he? Yeah. He's the leading military figure in the whole of Europe. And if you want to hear the story of Henry V, uh we did a series on it a year or so ago and that is episodes 487 and the next three. But it's not just the the military genius of Henry that had enabled England to impose itself against all the odds on France. So it also has a very elaborate centralized framework of government. Um, and this means that under an effective king, the English state is able to kind of raise taxes and recruit troops and provision armies much more effectively than the French king can because in France um, the kingdom is kind of divided up into all kinds of different dukedoms and counties and so on. The other advantage that Henry V has in invading France is an incredibly effective military machine and its strength lies in infantry rather than

the cavalry that the French tend to prefer. Uh and it's a kind of mix of men at arms and long bowmen and long bows traditionally are seen by the English as absolutely what gives them the cutting edge. So a generation later, Sir John Forscu, kind of leading analyst of of the age, he says, "The power of England standeth most upon our poor archers."

And the great demonstration of this was in uh 1415 Azenor when the French uh slaughtered as if they were cattle. According to one English chronicle, the French high command, the cream of the nobility, decapitated, loads of them perish on the battlefield. McKe figure who we'll be coming back to an important somebody to to remember the Duke of Anson. So he was the commander of the second of the two French divisions and he had all these holdings in Normandy which now passed to his six-year-old heir and they are now very vulnerable, aren't they? So people should remember that that six-year-old heir he will be featuring later in this story. Um, and also as well as the slaughter, there are maybe up to 2,000 French noblemen are captured. And the most distinguished of these is the French king's nephew, the Duke of Olio, because his title is one of the highest ranking in France. He gets taken to England where he is

destined to spend years and years in captivity. And again we mention him because the city of Olior and the duke family of Olior will be playing a key role in Joan's story.

Okay. So Ashenor tremendous victory. Two years later Henry V comes back to France and he cuts a sway through Normandy. One of the places that he uh systematically absorbs is um Alonso, which as we described has fallen to this six-year-old heir. Yeah. So, he's lost all his inheritance basically.

Exactly. By 1419, Henry um has taken Rule, the chief city of Normandy. He now commands the upper river Sen. That means that basically Paris is vulnerable. And not only has Henry got the wind in his sales, but the French are in utter chaos and shambles, aren't they? Because basically France has descended into anarchy.

Yeah. So proficient a commander though Henry is, there is no way, I think, that he could have um been as successful as he turned out to be, had France been ordered, had it not been racked essentially by a really, really violent civil war. And it is so French that the rival factions in the civil war, one of them is named after probably France's greatest wine growing region and the other is named after Brandy. So it's it's Burgundy against Armenyak. And it's Burgundy because the greatest of all the dukes in France is the Duke of Burgundy. Um and at the time of Henry V's invasion, this is a guy called John the Fearless. He has loads of holdings in the east of France, including obviously Burgundy. So he's a vassel of the French king, but he also has loads of holdings in the low countries. And so he's also a vassel of the Holy Roman Emperor. And that means that he kind of has an independence from

France that other noblemen in the kingdom tend not to have. Uh and this provokes all kinds of envy and resentment. None of these rival peers individually can compare with the authority of the Duke of Burgundy. But if they all gang up, then they are kind of, you know, they measure up to him. And the guy who takes the lead in kind of forming them into a posy is a guy called the Count of Armenyac. And so this is why you get these two rival factions, the Beagandians and the Armenyaks. And they start kind of tearing each other to pieces. Um, and to begin with, it looks like the Armeniacs have the the the the upper hand. And this is because they hold two cards. The first, they hold Paris, so the capital of France.

The Duke of Burgundy and his supporters have been expelled from the capital, but they also have the backing of the DOA, so the heir to the French throne. He's a guy called Charles. He's 16 years old. He's very sickly. He's very moody. He has no great self-confidence. He has very spindly legs and essentially I think even at the age of 16 he has a slight look of Vladimir Putin only with very rubbery lips.

And the reason that he's been cast in the spotlight is his father has gone completely mad, hasn't he?

Yes. So Charles V 6th. So then there's a big twist, isn't it? An amazing twist. I remember seeing um an illustration of this when I was a was a boy of all these kind of sort of illustrated book about all this stuff and I loved it. So, Burgundian troops in 1419 get into Paris. They batter the count of Armeniac to death. They they carve his what is his cross, his sultire from his coat of arms into his flesh. That's a nice detail. There's then a huge pogrum of the Armeniacs, the doofan, the heir to the French throne. Basically, young Vladimir Putin. He has to be smuggled out of Paris and he sets up a court in Bourj in central France which is south of the Lir. So that's the context while Henry V from England he think yeah it's all his Christmases come at once. Yeah, he's advancing from the from the north and actually he gets to the city's gates, doesn't he? Not long after this, a few months after this in August 1419

and then there's another amazing twist, which is the head of the beagandians, John the Fearless, and the DOA agree to meet and this is one of my favorite summit meetings in all history. Yes. And it is one of the most notorious episodes and consequential episodes in French history. Yeah. So this this summit is held on the 10th of September on a bridge at Montru which is some 50 mi southeast of Paris. So essentially between Paris and Bourge. So it's you know it's kind of neutral territory. And the bridge again is designed to be a neutral space. The problem is it all goes wrong because John the Fearless the Duke of Burgundy is assassinated

by the Dofan's men. Right. So it seems and certainly whether the DOA personally is responsible for it or not. Um the son of the Duke of Burgundy who is now the Duke of Burgundy himself, Philillip, who is known as Philip the Good, he blames the DOA for the murder of his father. Um and this means that the blood feud between the beandians and the Armeniacs is now absolutely entrenched to the degree that Philip the Good, you know, his his his father's body is bleeding. Rather than combine with the DOA against Henry V and the English, Philip the Good now goes to Henry V and he signs up to an English alliance.

Craig, this is a twist. So the result of this basically is that things are looking terrible for the French because the Burgundians and the English have joined forces and so the following May basically the French they kind of have to yield to the inevitable don't they? Well the king does so so Charles the 6th who is by this point kind of a wraithlike spectre completely mad and so therefore essentially a puppet of the Duke of Burgundy. He is in the city of Tua in Champagne which is um kind of southeast of Paris. Henry V joins Philillip and Charles V 6th there and they draw up a treaty and by the terms of this treaty Charles V 6th remains on the French throne until he dies. Henry will rule as his regent and he will marry Charles the 6th's daughter Katherine.

Mhm. On the death of Charles V 6th the French crown will pass to Henry and his heirs. So Henry of Lancaster. to the house of Lancaster and the House of Lancaster will take the place on the French throne of Charles V 6th's own dynasty the house of Valwis and once England and France have come under the rule of the house of Lancaster they will be separate kingdoms but they will be joined under one crown and there will be peace and amity and all will be well and this is the plan this is one of the questions we're asked most often at live shows and and bonus episodes of the rest is History Club.

What would have if Henry the Fifth had lived? Would England and France had become one kingdom? And in a way, I think this series answers that question.

Yeah, I think it does. But in the meanwhile, obviously for the DOA, Charles the six's son, who's now just been disinherited, this is terrible news because he's been publicly condemned by his own father as a murderer. You know, he's he's been bumped off the the the line of inheritance. Um, and he has no prospect really of defeating Henry V. Partly because Henry V is the greatest warrior of the age, but also because the DOA can't risk himself in battle because without him, the House of Valawa really would be extinct. There is no one else to to to keep the the Valwa line going.

And then things get even worse because on the 6th of December 1421, Henry and his new bride, so the sister of the Dair, Catherine, Catherine gives Henry V not just a child, but a son whom they'd call with great originality Henry, the future Henry V 6th.

And so this means that the House of Lancaster now has an heir. And so a lot of people in France, it's important to if we stop the clock there, December 1421. France is in anarchy. The English have um taken advantage, taken Paris, all of this. Henry is the regent now. He has he expects to be king. He has a son ready. If you're sitting there in France, you look at this and you say, "Well, this is how it's going to be and this is God's plan. This is obviously what God wants." And so when people work with Henry, they're not doing so because they're, you know, proto Marshall Paintans or something. They're they're not, it's not a question of sort of cowardly collaboration. It's because they genuinely look at the situation. They say, "This is all part of the divine workings out of, you know, of of God's intention for the world." I think also there's a certain grudging respect for Henry V. He's a serious person. Um, you

know, he this is a guy who could kind of lick a crumbling kingdom into shape. But also, I think for lots of people in France who decide to back the House of Lancaster, it's not really about the English at all. It's about what your identity is in the Civil War. So, if you back the Armeniacs, you're never going to accept this. But if you are a Begian sympathizer, then you absolutely are. So, in a sense, it's it's it's simultaneously the Hundred Years War and the civil war between the Beandians and the Armens have become interfused. And this is what this is explains why so many people in France are willing to accept the house of Lancaster as a legitimate replacement for the House of Valwis. And Theo has actually made a good point in the chat, which is that, you know, the the English and French ruling classes are so similar, you know, in their devotion to the ideas of chivalry, in their devotion to kind of

the stuff about courtly love, you know, the use of French, all of that stuff that it doesn't necessarily feel like you're you're accepting the rule of kind of foreign barbarians, right? I'm not sure that is entirely true because this is the first um century really in which the English aristocracy are not speaking French as their native language.

Oh, interesting. So, it it is noted as something exceptional when an English aristocrat speaks very good French as we will see.

Here's a quick question then. In other words, if this had happened a century or two earlier, the outcome might have been different.

It might indeed. But as it is, there are obviously lots of very distinguished, very clearthinking Frenchmen who are prepared to accept the House of Lancaster. And just, you know, plucking at random an example, let's look at one. So he is a very distinguished churchman and he goes by the name of Pierre Koson. Uh he'd been born in in Aras um city to the north of Paris where by ancient tradition the kings of France were always crowned. This is where Clovis, the very first king of the Franks to accept Christianity, had been baptized.

Koshaw had then gone to Paris to study at the the university there, which is the greatest center for theology in the whole of Europe. Um, and there as a student, he had become a very enthusiastic partisan of the Beandian cause. Hates the Armeniacs. He's appointed the bishop of Bet, which is a city in Champagne about 50 mi northwest of Paris. So his his center of gravity is very much that kind of region Paris and the region between Paris and the low countries where Burgundy you know has it has his center of gravity and Koshaw is very very devoutly convinced that only the Anglo Bagandian alliance has any prospect of stabilizing France and so he goes full in and I think it is unfair to think of you know you mentioned Marshall Pa this is not a vichist policy I I I think in in the context of the time it's entirely understandable.

A quick note for listeners, they should remember this bloke Pierre Koson and his support for this alliance and his role in this story. Just keep him in your heads as you listen to this series because he will play a very very significant role in the way that if you're reading a detective story and it's mentioned in chapter 2 that there's a gun on the mantle piece, you can be fairly confident that gun is going to go off at some point.

He's going to go off. So Koshaw is kind of representative of those who um side with the House of Lancaster. Obviously there are lots in France who think this is appalling, a disgrace, a humiliation. And one of them is Christine Depah, very loyal to the royal family. You know, she'd been raised in the court. And she is so upset by what what has happened that this incredibly articulate, prolific poet just falls silent. And in 1418 she retires to an abbey where her daughter was a nun and she never she doesn't write anything else. Um so there are lots of other people who are recording the horrors of the age. So the you know the hunger, the brutality, the wolves padding through the outskirts of Paris, all this kind of stuff. But Christine is so appalled. It's like she's gone into a kind of catatonic shock. Doesn't doesn't speak at all.

But then Tom, there's there are more twists in this very uh George R. Martin style story. So first of all, August 1422, Henry V dies unexpectedly young.

Yes. So he never sits on the French throne. And then the guy who is on the French throne, this sort of mad puppet, Charles V 6th, he dies 2 months after that. So now they're out of the equation. the the new king of France according to the treaty will be Henry V's infant son I of France or Henry V 6th of England but he's a baby so what now for the English well they're not going to give up on Henry V's dream and there is a deep personal sense of obligation to Henry V you know all the hard men of the in the English government had fought with him had been at Azenor in Normandy.

They are absolutely committed to basically to fulfilling this treaty that Henry had done so much to to draw up. And this is where the Duke of Bedford who we have already mentioned before comes in. John of Lancaster, the Duke of Bedford. He is Henry V's younger brother. He is therefore the uncle of Henry V 6th. And in France he is going to serve the infant Henry V 6th as regent. So effectively in France he is now the head of this kind of Anglo Beagandian alliance

and he is a proper person right he's not some I mean he is people may be anticipating because they know the English are going to lose he's a waste of space not at all he is an experienced captain he's a sensible guy he's he's scary he's he ticks every box

yeah so there's a churchman in Ru which along with Paris is one of the kind of the two major centers of English power in France. And this churchman says of of Bedford, "Wise and generous at once feared and loved." And there's a brilliant observation by Jonathan Sumption in the last of his um enormous volumes on the hundred years war. And he says that um Bedford maintained a standing army in France to quote Sumption, something which England would not have a gain until the time of Oliver Cromwell. And there is something slightly of Cromwell I think

robust about Bedford. He's very robust. He's also a very civilized man. So it's noted that he speaks good French. He's a great patron of French churches, of French artists. He's married to the sister of Philip the Good Anne. So he has a French wife. Um so he is absolutely able to keep the French administration on side because even though most of the military are English, the civilian government is French. And this and and the fact that Bedford is so impressive. This is why people like Koshaw are so happy to serve him.

It's the best rule of France ever had. Tom, meanwhile, what if the DOA um or in fact Charles the 7th as he now properly is if you're backing the House of Alwis, but the thing is nobody is calling him Charles the 7th. They're all still calling him the Dofair because he seems an insubstantial figure still. And so I think the Doofan recognizing this has been doing his best to to try and balance that out. So he's got a he's got himself a queen. So he has married um a girl called Marie and she is the daughter of a very very impressive woman. She's called Yolond and she is the Daaja Duchess of Onju. So the Onans I mean they're a very serious dynasty.

And she's probably the most formidable woman in the kingdom. So she's described by by one fan as the wisest and most beautiful princess in Christendom. she's seen all the other princesses.

Well, I think I mean I think she she clearly is a very smart woman and she is she's famously gorgeous. Um and she's a very keen supporter of the Armenyaks and so that's why she has swung behind the DOA um given the DOA uh her daughter to be his wife and in July 1423 she is absolutely delighted when her daughter gives the DA a son who is called Louie. And now Yoland is all in. I mean, she really wants to see her grandson, king of all France. And so you have, you know, the you've got the infant Henry V 6th, you've got the infant Louie as as um Charles the 7th's son, the House of Lancaster, the House of Falwa. Both have everything to play for. So let's fast forward a few years because this doesn't change straight away. So if we go forward seven years, right? So to 1429, so at the end of the 1420s.

So the Dofa is still very much on the outside, isn't he? So he's still called the DOA because he basically doesn't he's not really the king of France. He hasn't been crowned because well, he hasn't been crowned in Rance is miles away in English held territory. There's no prospect of getting there.

And the English very much seem to have the upper hand, don't they? Yeah. And crucially, the English have maintained their reputation for military invincibility. So the DOA had actually gone north of the Lir which effectively constitutes the frontier between Lancastrian France and Valisa held France and he had tried to rest Normandy which is the central territory under English rule back from Bedford but it all goes disastrously wrong. Um so they the the the English and the French meet outside a town called Venai and 8,000 of the Dofans men are either killed or captured. um by the Duke of Bedford and his army. And among those who are captured is the young son of the Duke of Allen who had died at Azenor. This little boy, he's grown up.

He's now 15. It's his first battle and immediately he's been taken captive. Um and so this is terrible, but what's even worse is that Bedford now officially confiscates his duche. Uh and Bedford himself becomes the the Duke of Allen. And so effectively, I mean, this is terrible for Allosur because he's captive, you know, he needs to raise money for a ransom and all his land is gone. So it's he's he's in desperate straits.

So most of France now, north of the river Lir, so we're talking about sort of north central France, is now controlled by either the Duke of Bedford for the English or Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, right? And the the English are now thinking, do we drive south of the Lir? Um and actually the Duke of Bedford says to his captains, right, the next stage of the war is we will force our way across the Lir and we will take the fight to the Doofan, his sort of fly bitten, two bit capital of Bourge, and we'll finish this. Yes. And the key to essentially breaching the Lir, which at this point is much broader than it is today. I mean, it's a it's it's a serious barrier. Um so they essentially need to secure a really really strategically significant crossing point and the obvious place is Olio which is the northernmost settlement. So the L kind of curves northwards. Olio is at the the northernmost point of this curve and

therefore nearest to Paris which is under English control. And if the English can capture Olio then the road south will be open and they can follow it into the bowels of the kingdom of Bourge. And effectively Bedford hopes that would then be game over for the DOA. So preparations are made. Summer of um 1428 a huge English army disembarks at Calala. Evidence of the ability of the English state to kind of raise forces, something vastly in excess of of anything that the Dofan can do. And by November, English forces have constructed siege walls and and and fortifications around Olio with the goal of starving the city into submission.

And the English commander is a guy called William De Laapole who is the Earl of Suffukk. And he had been one of Henry's key commanders in the conquest of Normandy.

Another serious and formidable person. Absolutely. and with a particular talent for capturing cities because that was the main focus of the conquest of Normandy. They had to capture you know places like Ru and so on. Um he has two left tenants. One of them is the hard man of uh early 15th century England, a guy called John Tolbert who's an absolute animal. I mean he's

he's played by Ray Winston, is he not? Yeah, he's he's played by Ray Winston or the most kind of terrifying rugby player that you can imagine. Vinnie Jones. There's a part for Vinnie Jones.

Vinnie Jones. That's who he is. Well, he's not Vinnie Jones actually because he he is very aristocratic. So, I think rugby is slightly better. He's kind of posh, but you know, he'll rip your arm off.

He's He's played by Lawrence Dalio. Exactly. He's Lawrence Dallalio. And he has a younger uh partner in the command is a guy called Lord Scales. He's only 23, but he's also a very very hard man. I mean, he's killed a lot of his enemies already by this point.

He's played by Maroto. Yeah, I guess. I guess. Yeah. On the BBC. Yeah, exactly.

So, these are serious men. Olio is in serious straits. And by early 1429, basically everyone in Europe is thinking the English have got this. So, we have the record of a Venetian merchant in in uh Burgundy and he writes to um a family member in Venice. If the English take Olio, they will have no difficulty in making themselves lords of all France and sending the DOA packing to beg his bread at arms houses. And it looks like the city will fall because every French attempt to relieve the siege has been beaten off kind of almost disdainfully.

The DOA has exhausted his reserves both of of cash and of men. And as a result, people who previously had been backing him in the Lir Valley are starting to, you know, they sense where the wind is blowing and they're starting to kind of go over to the English. Meanwhile, around Olon, week by week, day by day, ever more siege lines are going up. The city seems doomed. There seems no prospect of relieving it in any way. And so effectively, if Olio is going to be saved for the house of Valwis, it is going to take a miracle. But Dominic, from where could such a miracle possibly come?

I don't think we've ever had a more exciting cliffhanger. Um, come back after the break and we will find out.

In my own village, they call me Janet. Since I came into France, I have been called Jean. Of my surname, I know nothing. I was born in the village of Don Remy. So that is the deposition given by the woman that we call Joon of Arc and she gave that on the 21st of February 1431 at a trial in Ru on charges of heresy. And we can tell a lot from the records of that trial and also a second inquiry which was staged by the French themselves in 1456 because that was trying to overturn the the completely legitimate verdict of that first trial and to rehabilitate Joan. But the records are very detailed, aren't they, Tom? And they have a sort of um they have an immediacy and a humanity that really brings her alive as a character.

Yeah. I mean, you've got to give all kinds of caveats and everybody who writes about Jonavar always does. So Joan's words in these records are rendered into Latin by the Clarks who are recording them. And obviously she is on trial for her life and she's an uneducated girl being pressed by very educated men who, let's face it, want to kill her. And even the witnesses at at her rehabilitation, they also have their own agenda. Um, lots of incentives to kind of tailor what they're reporting. So all of those caveats have to be borne in mind. But that said, we know about Joan and we can hear her in her own words in a way that is incredibly unusual for people from the Middle Ages.

Full stop. Well, especially young women from peasant background, you never hear from them.

Absolutely. Because that is what's really extraordinary. You know, we're not hearing a duke or a an abbot or a king talking. We're hearing a young peasant girl. And when you read the records of the of the trial, her personality completely shines through. She I I'm going to lay my cards on the table. Dominic, you may disagree, but she is witty. She is courageous. She's incredibly charismatic. And it's it's these records I think that have really burnished her story in the modern period.

She's up there with Emma Hamilton and Unity Mitford in your pantheon. So she's not an aristocrat like Unity Mitford. She, you know, she's not a cortisan like Emma Hamilton and she's kind of unique. So there's a brilliant book that I read when I was at a very impressionable age by Marina Warner. I think it came out in the early early 80s called Jonavar, the image of female heroism. And in in her introduction, Marina Warner says of Joan that you know what? She's not a queen. She's not a cortisan. She's not a beauty, not a mother, not an artist of one kind or another, nor until the extremely recent date of 1920 when she was canonized a saint. To reiterate, she is a female teenage peasant girl. And when we hear her speak, I think what we're also hearing all the more loudly is the silence of all those kind of numberless peasants from medieval christrysendom whose words no one ever thought to

record. So, this is very moving from you. I do find it a moving story. I find it a powerful story and I find the fact that we can hear her words, it is a crucial part of what makes this story so fascinating, I think. So let me just pledge to the listeners that I will suspend my natural skepticism and cynicism for at least the next 30 seconds. Let's talk about her family.

Well, I I mean you are going to have lots to be skeptical about. I mean there is no question about that.

Okay, brilliant. Love it. So let's talk about what we know. Let us start with her family. So we know that her father was called Jacqu Dark. Jack of Arc.

Yeah. And so that's where the the name Jean Dark comes from. Her mother is Isabelle. We know that her mother must have been pious because Joan says, "From my mother, I learned my Lord's Prayer, my Hail Mary, and my creed." And we know that she had a sister and three brothers, two of whom will feature in this story. And we've described them as peasants, but they're not the underclass. They're not the lowest of the low, are they? They are. And she's actually, it's often said she's a a shepherd girl. I mean, that's one of the most common things that people say about her, but she wasn't.

They were more respectable than that, right? No. And I think the idea that she's a shepherd um there are kind of biblical echoes there. That's why it suited people who were praising her to say it. But but Joan herself was having none of it. Um she she regarded shepherdesses with a great deal of snobbery.

Oh no, she's Virginia Wolf. So in her trial, she said, "I learned to spin and to sew. Um and uh she she challenged the women of Rumor to spin and sew better than her." And she does this because to be a seamstress, to be a spinner, a spinster is um you know, you're on a higher level than a shepherdess,

right? So she's from Dome Remy. And that the the location of this place is interesting and really important because it is, dare I say, liinal. It's on the frontier between two different places, Champagne and Lorraine. The river MS runs through it. And the the fact that it's on a frontier is important because it's basically drawn into the civil war by definition because the village is proof but the next village is proagandian and the villagers fight each other quite often don't they and people are badly wounded or even killed in the fighting between these two villages.

Yeah. And also Domi is on the front line of the English attempt to annex the region and pacify it completely. So as Joan is is growing up, there are more and more English raiding parties who are starting, you know, you can see them on the horizon, and they are fighting with rival companies who are loyal to the DOFA. And this notion of free companies, something we've talked about throughout our series on the Hundred Years War, these are kind of um semifreance bodies of men, lots of whom are are pretty criminal. Um and so it's very very frightening. It's kind of wild west situation, the bad guys galloping into town. And we know that this does happen to Domi um and to to uh to to other villages around. So when Jane was 11, her cousin was killed by um a cannonball that was fired into the church of a neighboring village where he' taken refuge and then the church in Domi itself is burnt down and most of

the village with it at least once. Um and so for Joan the ringing of church bells which are sounded when danger is threatening, you know, this would have been something with which she was very very familiar. So in the summer of 1428, so this is the same year that the English are landing um to to head down for the siege of Olio, an Anglo Beagandian army embarks on the systematic conquest of the region. Um all the dophanist strongholds fall, all except one. And this is a fortress called Vocular, which is very formidable. Um has a large garrison, and it's under the command of um a nobleman from Lraine by the name of Robert Dodricor.

And Debotricor has very good connections at the French court and specifically with the house of Onju. So that is Yolond and her dynasty. And um Deodricor is very brave but he's also brutal and unscrupulous. And you have to assume that basically you have to be brutal and unscrupulous if you're going to hold a fortress against the onslaught of of the English and the Burgundians.

All right. So that's the background. Um, so Joan has been growing up uh in Domini in this very violent, frightening, dangerous, divided landscape. And how does that shape her character, would you say? Well, I think that it leads her to identify the Dair as the kind of the ultimate guarantor of France's stability. I think she comes to have a sense that if only the Doofac could be put on his his throne and crowned and the English could be driven out, then everything would be fine. Um, and Marina Warner is brilliant on this in her book, Talking of Joan. She had a natural inclination for clear-cut situations with identifiable centers of authority. The king's supreme position and her magnetic attraction for it bear witness to this taste. She'd liked unity, organization, rallied groups. So she's basically a kind of working-class Tory. That's, you know, she that's what she wants. She wants order and she wants royal rule.

But she's also intensely pious. And again, you can see why, you know, you're growing up surrounded by this violence. And the sounding of the bells is what alerts you to danger coming. So I guess just subliminally, you would come to associate bells with the hope of safety, with the the prospect that warnings may be coming. And so bells seem to have been very very important to her to have played a very very strong role in her emotional and spiritual life. And so we know from the court records that um because a friend of hers recorded it um you know at her rehabilitation trial that once the sacra forgot to ring the bells for complain and Joan told him off and said go and go and ring them and if she was out in the fields and she heard the bells ringing she would always kneel. They have an immense significance for her. And I think that you said she's pious. I mean, she clearly is. But I think what the bells when she hears the

bells, she is being reminded and reassured that amid all the violence of the age, there is a link to God and his saints, and that they are close to her, they care for her, and that her prayers will be heard.

Okay. And she can't she can't read and write. She's illiterate. But you mentioned um God and his saints. She's pretty obsessed with some of these saints, isn't she? And she regards them I mean they we did an episode about um a long time ago about Katherine of Sienna about somebody a te another teenage girl whose proximity you know who had this almost obsessive this totally transcendent and dominating um fixation with you know the being the bride of Christ and all this kind of thing. And there's sometimes I think about Joan there's something similar again a teenage girl a sort of fixation in this case on the bo on the the personalities of three saints in particular there are certainly similarities uh and we'll maybe come to them later in the series with Katherine Sienna but I think there are also differences and the key one is that Joan unlike Katherine as we've said is illiterate and therefore she is

dependent on both stories and images and we know she loves stories she loves shavalic romance es for instance she's very familiar with these but she also loves stories of the saints and I don't think she she's unusual in her familiarity with them um the the leading saints the most famous saints are as familiar to children growing up in medieval Europe this time as kind of singers or sports stars would be to teenagers today but there are three it seems who are the particular focus of her devotion and the first of these is really unsurprising it's St. Michael, who is the great warrior, archangel, the captain of heaven, who in the book of revelation throws down Satan. And for the French, he is the great emblem of their resistance. So, we've said how Henry V conquered all of Normandy.

That's not quite true because playing the role of Asterics's village in this scenario is Mosam Michelle, the the mount of St. Michael, the great monastery there on this island. And that is holding out against the English. And so the fact that it is dedicated to St. Michael, it emphasizes the way in which this warrior archangel is presumed by the French to be fighting on their side. And so the doofaca commissions two great standards, both of which show St. Michael trampling down the serpent, trampling down Satan. Um, and more specifically, and one of the reasons why Joan is definitely familiar with him, he's the patron saint of the region in which she is growing up. So St. Michael, very significant.

So you can see that. And then there's two female saints. And you can see why they would appeal to a teenage girl who perhaps well these are these are saints who are noted for their resistance, for their courage. Also, I found being harsh a little bit for their victimhood or their martyrdom, right? They're martyed rather than surrender their virginity. So I guess to Joan, they are emblems of courage and independence. Uh and one of them, St. Katherine of Alexandria, again, it's not just Joan who's devoted to her. She's probably the best loved saint of the age. And actually, Joan's sister, who died while she was still a girl, had been called Katherine,

right? And so, Katherine Alexandria, she was meant to be married to a pagan Roman emperor or something. She's broken on a wheel, hence the Catherine wheel, the firework, and everyone thinks she's brilliant. And then the other one is I I have to admit I'm not familiar with her work, and that is Margaret of Antioch.

Well, I'm very familiar with her because she was uh swallowed by a dragon and then regurgitated. Kiki,

she's become the patron saint of midwives and Sadi, my wife, of course, is a midwife. So, very big news here. But she's another saint who was martyed for refusing to surrender her virginity. So, that's clearly something that Joan is alert to. But also, there is a story of St. Margaret. She's so desperate to um you know, to learn the scriptures and so on that she enters a monastery disguised as a man.

Oh, a telling detail. Very telling detail. So just on this thing about the saints, I think this is massively important for uh listeners who are not super familiar with the world of um medieval christryendom to to get into their heads. The point of the saints for somebody like Joan who is as you said illiterate is that they occupy a space between the concrete physical very violent and brutal and dangerous world of 15th century Europe and the transcendent world the purity the order of heaven. They basically mediate between those two things don't they? And that's why for someone like her, they have such cosmic

immediate presence. Yeah. And and significance. They live in her heart as much as they do in her mind presumably.

Yeah. I think that the closeness of the heavenly order, the supernatural order is something that Joan, as she is growing up, completely takes for granted.

Other people take it for granted, too. But she is I mean by the fact the stuff about her kneeling when she hears the bells she is peculiarly pious do you think even before her first supernatural um um visitation

pious peculi peculiarly impressionable peculiarly imaginative peculiarly self-confident as well I think

okay um so I think a very distinctive little girl probably yeah I mean you're not really selling her to be honest as a playmate but um but actually the people she's playing with are very different from the uh other peasant children, right? Because when she's in 13 years old actually tellingly when she's basically entering adolescence, I think 1425, something happens. So tell us what happens. Well, she she described it herself in her trial. The voice first came at noon on a summer's day in my father's garden. And she specified that um this voice came from the direction of the village church. So that's where the bells would be rung from and that it was bathed in light. And Joan insisted to inquisitors who were very skeptical about it that right from the beginning she had understood this voice to be good and worthy and that it was a voice sent from God to guide her. And she never let go of that assertion of that conviction.

And in time she came to understand it as the voice not of God himself but of a of an angel. But she did not to begin with I think identify it with St. Michael specifically, nor with um Catherine, nor with Margaret. Although in the long run she would to begin with I don't think she had a sense. Well, we we will see because the question of what these voices are and what Jane thought the voices are is a is a complex and fascinating one and it will evolve I think over the course of her life. But what is absolutely clear is that she experiences it it as real and she essentially has conversations with this.

Initially, it's a voice, then it becomes voice, multiple voices, but she has conversations with these voices in the way that she has conversations with everyone else, namely in a kind of very forthright um and kind of firm manner. So, if if the voices tell her something that she doesn't agree with, she tells them that. Okay, that that is unusual because most people who hear voices um I mean, actually, madly, the last person we talked about hearing voices was one of the suspects in the Jack the Ripper case. But when people hear voices, they do what they they then do what the voice tells them. They don't argue back with the voices. And this is a contrast, as we'll come to between Joan and other female mystics of the age is that for Joan these you know, these are kind of like voices that you might hear through headphones or something. It's not entirely a mystic experience from her description of it.

It's literally like like you listening to Theo. Yeah. Quite like Well, yes. the messages that we get from Theo and these voices to begin with they offer her spiritual guidance but then increasingly they start to give her a political mission and over the course of of the months and then the years this mission comes to be clarified. So to begin with the voices are giving her a kind of vague instruction that she should go to the DOA and ride in front of him and drive the English out of France. Then it becomes more precise. She should lead the Doofa to Ras and have him crowned there. And then late in 1428, by which time the news of the siege at Olio will have ra reached Drei, she's told by the voices to ride to Olio and to break the English siege. And the voices, I mean, these are mad things to tell a teenage girl, but the voices say, "Well, don't worry. Um, you know, we will guide you.

we will support you um throughout this mission that we've given you and if you do as instructed then in the long run the whole of France will indeed be liberated from the English and this liberation will be the ultimate proof in the eyes of the world that you are indeed on a mission from God and you you mentioned that Joan you know um she answers back to the voices but she never doubts their veracity right she never questions whether the voices might be demons or she might be misled because they're good. She has a sense of them as good. She has total confidence in what the voices are telling her and she actually, again, I think it's interesting that she's just, you know, entered her teens. She takes a vow of chastity. So, she's going to protect her virginity. Her parents have lined up a fiance for her. She says, "You're out. I I'm not interested in you." And then we get to late 1428. So, you know, the

things are looking very dicey for the Doofan, the French cause. And this is the point when she decides, right, I'm going to do what the voice is telling me. I'm going to get stuck in and begin the work of driving out the English.

Yeah, but how do you begin? You're a peasant girl, you know, on the edge of things. Where are you going to go? Well, there's only one place you really can go, and that is Vocular, which is the the one fortress in the region that is still holding out for the DA under the command of Robert Bodrior. Um, and she tells her father, "This is what I'm going to go and do." Her father is appalled. I mean, he's already outraged that um, you know, she's turned down the man that that her father has chosen for her to marry. And also, he's been having these nightmares um, in which he sees Joan running away with men at arms. And the implication of that is that, you know, essentially he's worried that she is going to start misbehaving sexually, that she's going to run away with a soldier. So, she's now 16. What? She's about 16 years old. I mean, any father, you know, your 16-year-old daughter comes to you and says, "I'm basically

going to run off and like join the army and well, I'm I'm going to go I'm going to go to a fortress full of men."

Yeah. And, you know, and and and come up, tell them some cockenbull story. You'd be very very worried.

You'd be perturbed. So, the thing is Joan is a runaway. You know, she she deliberately ignores her father's orders and runs away to Vocal full of full of [snorts] of of violent soldiers and men. And she goes to Bodricor who's he's a quite unscrupulous person we've already said. So kind of quite a dangerous man. She goes to him and she explains her mission and he first time he says you're mad go away. Second time you're mad go away. She's still hanging around in Bocalure. She she's ignoring what Dod what do has said. So in January 1429, Debotric comes to the house in Vocalor where Joan has been staying and he has brought the local priest with him and he tells the priest, "This girl is possessed by an evil spirit. Exercise the evil spirit."

But Joan just kneels in front of the priest and reproaches the priest and says, "What are you doing? You've heard my confession. You know that I I'm literally on the side of the angels." And so the priest says, "Well, you know, she's she's not possessed. There's nothing I can do here." And so Joan stands up and she turns to um the Bodraor and a third time she says take me to the DOA. And this time the Bojacor relents and this might be on his own initiative or it might be that he has received word from his two regional overlords and these are a guy called Charles the Duke of Lraine and Rene of Anonju. And Renee Vonju is the second son of Yoland, the mother-in-law of the DOA. So why do these two guys who are serious people, you know, aristocratic people, power brokers, why on earth would they be encouraging what clearly Deodrior himself, another serious person, thinks is a sort of loony girl who's just got mad crackpot

ideas. Why do they indulge this? Well, Charles Lraine is is very ill at the time, and he's been brought word that there's this girl claiming a mission from God. And this isn't massively unusual. You know, every so often, it's usually girls, but sometimes boys as well, will appear claiming that they've got messages from God. And they are often capable of performing incredible miracles. And so, I think that Chancellor Lraine hopes that perhaps Joan will heal him. But Joan says, "No, I'm not going to do that. I, you know, I can't heal anyone." And that and in this again, she's unusual. The only thing she does miraculous is her mission. You know, she's not going around healing the sick or, you know, anything like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she dismisses it as nonsense. Why would I be able to heal anyone? Let's look what I can do. And Charles is not offended by this. In fact, he's rather impressed. Uh and he gives her some money and he gives her a horse because of course, she's going to need a horse if she's going to ride all the way to um the DOA who's in Shaolon, just south of the Lir, which is about 300 miles away. As for Rene Vonju, you know, we've said he's the brother of the Dofan's queen. He really has a stake in ensuring that the DOA stays in the fight and he may well think as Yoland may well have thought, well, you know, I mean, let's try. What have we got to lose?

I suppose. And there's probably also Do you think there's a slight element of like, come on, let's just get rid of her. Tell her to go.

No, I don't think so. You don't think so? You think they believe in it? I think they actively think we've got nothing to lose. She may be what she says she is. I I think they are very very interested in what Joan has to say because I think they're desperate. Debo definitely still has reservations because what happens now is a very controversial development in Joan's story. Joan says, "Okay, I'm going on this mission. I need male clothing if I'm going to go."

Right? And the Bodraor gives her male clothing, but we know from later source, which describes his reaction to it, that he handed this male clothing over only with the utmost repugnance to to quote the court records. And this isn't surprising because um the 15th century, it's fair to say, is not a transfriendly era. So crossdressing is seen as being an abomination unto unto God and that is because it is specifically condemned in the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. The woman shall not wear that which pertainth unto a man.

So we've said that Joan is very pious, but when she wants to, she's perfectly capable of ignoring a direct biblical dictate. So, I don't want to plunge into my skeptical amateur psychology too much straight away, but to say she's entered her teens, she's taken a vow of chastity, protecting her virginity is incredibly important to her, and she now says she wants to dress as a man. There are, you know, implications for this. Maybe, let's say, secular secular-minded listeners might draw implications from this about what is actually nagging at her. We should wait until we've told her whole story and listened to what she actually has to say at the trial before kind of trying to work out what might have been going on here. But I hear you, Dominic. I hear you. Anyway, so she she has her her her outfit of male clothes.

Um, she has her hair cropped into the kind of the, you know, the nightly pudding bowl that anyone who's seen the the painting of Henry V will recognize. She's got her horse. She's been given a sword, which um, anyone with nightly pretentions needs. Um, and Deboor has given her two pages and intriguingly four men at arms. So, her father's dream has come true.

Oh no, her father must be gutted. And of course, they are there to guard her because they are going to be riding across what is effectively bandit territory. Um, and this also is, you know, you could say, well, it's a sensible precaution for any girl who is going to ride 300 odd miles uh through a war zone to um disguise the fact that she is female. Although it has to be said that at no point does Joan ever justify her crossdressing in those terms and the clear implication which in time she will make explicit is that her voice has told her to dress in male clothes

that it's not a question of practicality and pragmatism. It's she never says that. She never says that. And the the the male clothing, as we will see in our next episode, serves for her. Well, we will tease out what it means to her, but it it is clearly something very very spiritually, psychologically symbolically significant to her. But why? What does it have to do with her mission? What are her voices? These are all questions that we will explore perhaps or we start exploring in our next episode when Joan arrives at the court of the DFA and reveals to the DOA the mission that she has been given by God. Very exciting and actually I have to say an absolutely fascinating story. I remember when you were researching this, Tom, you were saying to me, "This is one of the most intriguing stories done on the rest of history, and it's certainly panning out that way." So, if you want to find out

what happens when Joan arrives at the Doofan's court, whether she succeeds in saving Olio from the English, we're going to be telling the whole story in the next three episodes. And if you're a member of the rest history club, you can hear those episodes straight away. If you would like to start the new year on an inspiring and exciting note, then do join the rest is history club at the rest is history.com because we are planning all kinds of exciting uh benefits for you this year, not just the usual ad free listening and early access to series, but all sorts of thrilling bonus series to come for club members only. However, the key thing is Jonavar and what will happen next in her story.

And that is what we will be investigating next time. Ovoir of

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Joan of Arc: The Teenager Who Led an Army"?

In order: 0:00 Jonavar, Henry V, Christine Deison, Duke of Bedford; 10:00 Henry V; 20:00 Henry V, Champagne, Pierre Koson, Duke of Bedford; 30:00 Duke of Bedford, Henry V, Jonavar; 40:00 St. Michael, Champagne, Henry V, Jonavar; 50:00 St. Michael, Margaret of Antioch, St. Katherine of Alexandria, Vocular; 1:00:00 Henry V, Jonavar.

What is mentioned in this The Rest Is History episode?

18 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Henry V, Joan, Jonavar, Duke of Bedford, St. Michael, Champagne. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Joan of Arc: The Teenager Who Led an Army"?

The episode runs 1 h 7 min; the transcript is about 11,764 words in 119 timestamped sections.

More from The Rest Is History

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 9, 2026.