The Hundred Years' War Begins (1337-1429)

The morning mist clung to the fields of northern France in 1337, much as it had for centuries before. But this year would mark the beginning of a conflict that would transform not just the landscape, but the very nature of European society. The Hundred Years' War—a name coined by nineteenth-century historians for a series of conflicts spanning 116 years—would leave no life untouched, from the highest nobility to the humblest peasant tilling the soil.

Seeds of Conflict: Beyond Simple Nationalism

To understand the war that would shape Joan of Arc's world, we must first dispel a common misconception: this was not a clash between two clearly defined nations. France and England as we know them today did not exist in 1337. Instead, we find a complex web of feudal obligations, family ties, and regional loyalties that transcended what we might consider national boundaries.

The immediate cause centered on succession. When Charles IV of France died in 1328 without a male heir, two claimants emerged: Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI, and Edward III of England, grandson of Philip IV of France through his mother. Edward's claim, though genealogically strong, faced the barrier of French custom that barred inheritance through the female line. Yet this dynastic dispute was merely the spark that ignited long-smoldering tensions.

The real roots ran deeper. The English crown held vast territories in France—a legacy of Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry II in 1152. The duchy of Aquitaine, stretching across southwestern France, made the English king one of the most powerful vassals of the French crown. This created an inherently unstable situation: how could the king of England bow as a vassal to the king of France?

Economic interests intensified these tensions. Flanders, with its prosperous cloth-making cities, depended on English wool but owed political allegiance to France. When French pressure threatened to disrupt this vital trade, Flemish merchants looked favorably upon English claims. The wine trade from Bordeaux, the salt trade from the Bay of Bourgneuf, and control over Channel shipping routes all added material substance to dynastic ambitions.

The Human Cost: Voices from the Margins

While chroniclers recorded the deeds of princes, the war's greatest burden fell upon those whose names history rarely preserves. Tax records, court documents, and archaeological evidence help us reconstruct their experiences—a picture far removed from chivalric romance.

Consider Marie, a peasant woman from Picardy, whose story emerges from fragments in manorial records. In 1346, her village lay in the path of Edward III's chevauche��a raid designed to devastate the countryside and provoke the French into battle. The English army, needing supplies and seeking to demonstrate French royal impotence, systematically destroyed crops, burned buildings, and scattered livestock. Marie's family fled to the nearby forest, returning to find their home in ashes and their fields trampled. The lord's steward's records note she petitioned for reduction in rent, "her husband being slain and her oxen taken by the English brigands."

Marie's experience was multiplied thousands of times across France. Modern archaeological excavations reveal hastily buried coin hoards—desperate attempts to preserve family wealth from raiders. Pollen analysis shows dramatic shifts in land use as cultivated fields reverted to woodland, their farmers dead or fled. In some regions, population dropped by over 40% through a combination of warfare, famine, and disease.

The war created a vicious cycle. Armies needed supplies, so they plundered. Plundering drove farmers from their land, reducing agricultural production. Reduced production meant higher prices and more desperate soldiers, who plundered more extensively. Traditional seasonal patterns of warfare broke down as desperate commanders kept forces in the field year-round, seeking resources wherever they could find them.

The Rise of the Routiers

Among the war's most devastating innovations was the routier—the professional soldier who made war his trade. As truces interrupted formal campaigns, discharged soldiers formed "free companies" that continued fighting on their own account. These bands, sometimes numbering in the thousands, recognized no authority save their own commanders and the promise of plunder.

The testimony of Brother Jacques, a Franciscan friar writing in 1365, captures the terror they inspired: "These evil men, calling themselves companions, respect neither God nor man. They enter churches during Mass, seizing chalices from the very altar. They torture priests to reveal where parish treasures are hidden. Women and girls dare not venture beyond their walls, and even within, safety is uncertain."

The routiers represented a breakdown of the traditional social order. Many were younger sons of minor nobility, denied inheritance by primogeniture and seeking fortune through their swords. Others rose from common stock, achieving through violence what birth had denied them. Their companies operated as proto-corporations, with written contracts, share systems for distributing plunder, and even primitive insurance schemes for wounded members.

Women in Wartime: Agency and Adaptation

The war years forced women into new roles, challenging—if temporarily—traditional gender boundaries. With men absent on campaign, women managed estates, negotiated with tax collectors, and organized local defense. Town records from Orleans, Reims, and other cities show women contributing to municipal defense funds, maintaining watch on walls, and even participating in sieges.

Christine de Pizan, writing in 1410, offered practical advice to women of all social classes navigating wartime. To noblewomen, she counseled: "If your husband is taken prisoner, you must become the man, taking in hand the management of your servants and revenues." For common women, her advice was equally practical: "Learn to recognize the worth of merchandise, to bargain well, and to understand when times favor buying or selling."

The war also created new categories of female experience. Camp followers—women who accompanied armies providing services from cooking to nursing—formed essential support networks. While moralists condemned them as prostitutes, evidence suggests more complex realities. Many were soldiers' wives or widows, others were merchants capitalizing on mobile markets, and some were refugees with nowhere else to go.

Religious women found their contemplative lives disrupted but their services more essential than ever. Convents became refuges for displaced women and children, hospitals for wounded soldiers, and negotiation spaces where their perceived neutrality could facilitate prisoner exchanges or local truces. The account books of the Abbey of Poissy record sisters ransoming kidnapped neighbors, hiding village valuables, and mediating between hostile forces.

Economic Transformation and Social Mobility

Paradoxically, the devastation created opportunities for survivors. The demographic crisis caused by war, famine, and plague (which struck in 1348) led to labor shortages. Peasants who survived could demand better terms from desperate landlords. Rural workers fled to towns offering freedom and higher wages. Traditional bonds of serfdom weakened as lords competed for scarce workers.

Urban artisans found new markets in military equipment. The records of Jean le Bon, an armorer in Paris, show his workshop expanding from two assistants in 1340 to fifteen by 1360. His son, born a craftsman, died a wealthy merchant with rural estates and a purchased patent of minor nobility—a social rise impossible in peacetime.

The war accelerated monetary changes already underway. The need to pay soldiers led to increased taxation and new forms of revenue collection. The French crown's periodic debasement of coinage to fund campaigns created inflation that eroded traditional fixed obligations. A peasant whose ancestors owed unchanging rent suddenly found the real burden much lighter, while nobles dependent on fixed revenues grew poorer.

Regional Variations: A Patchwork of Experiences

The war's impact varied dramatically by region. Guyenne, under relatively stable English rule, often prospered from military spending and expanded wine trade. Normandy, changing hands repeatedly, suffered devastating cycles of conquest and reconquest. The Ile-de-France, heart of royal power, experienced periodic raids but also benefited from defensive investments.

Brittany fought its own war of succession within the larger conflict, with local nobles using French and English support to pursue regional ambitions. The Burgundian lands played all sides, their dukes building an independent power base while nominally serving French kings. These regional variations remind us that medieval people identified primarily with their local communities and lords, not abstract nations.

The testimony of merchants reveals these complex loyalties. Guillaume Cade, trading between London and Bordeaux, held property in both kingdoms and considered himself subject to whoever controlled his current location. His surviving letters show more concern with safe passages and trading privileges than royal allegiances. Such pragmatic attitudes were common among those whose livelihoods depended on crossing fluid frontiers.

Innovation in Violence: The Changing Face of War

The Hundred Years' War witnessed revolutionary changes in military technology and tactics. The English longbow, deployed en masse by trained peasant archers, could pierce aristocratic armor at two hundred yards. At Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), French noble cavalry charged repeatedly into arrow storms, suffering catastrophic defeats that shook the foundations of chivalric warfare.

These defeats had profound social implications. If a common-born archer could kill a duke, what became of divinely ordained hierarchy? The French response included both practical adaptations—developing plate armor and their own missile troops—and ideological retrenchment, insisting ever more strongly on noble military preeminence even as reality contradicted it.

Gunpowder weapons appeared increasingly after 1400. While early cannons were cumbersome and unreliable, they could breach walls that had stood for centuries. The security of stone fortifications crumbled along with the social order they represented. By Joan of Arc's time, artillery trains were essential components of siege warfare, operated by specialized technicians whose skills commanded high prices regardless of birth.

The Mental World of War

To understand Joan of Arc's reception, we must grasp how contemporaries understood their war-torn world. Most saw conflict through apocalyptic lenses—divine punishment for sin requiring divine intervention for resolution. Chronicles record numerous prophecies, miraculous signs, and saintly interventions. The line between military strategy and religious ritual blurred as armies carried relics into battle and timed campaigns according to liturgical calendars.

Popular prophecies circulated predicting a virgin who would save France. These drew on biblical precedents—Judith, Deborah—and native traditions of female sanctity. The proliferation of such prophecies reflected desperate hopes for supernatural deliverance when human efforts seemed futile. They also reveal gender anxieties: if men had failed, perhaps God would work through the "weaker vessel" to demonstrate divine power.

The war generated new forms of documentation and memory. Towns commissioned chronicles recording their sufferings and deliverances. Families preserved letters from soldiers, creating archives of private experience. Churches inscribed names of battle dead, transforming religious spaces into memorial sites. This proliferation of written memory would later provide rich material for those seeking to understand—or mythologize—figures like Joan.

The State of France in 1429

By 1429, when Joan entered history, France faced its darkest hour. The Treaty of Troyes (1420) had legally disinherited the Dauphin Charles in favor of Henry V of England. Though Henry died in 1422, his infant son Henry VI was proclaimed king of both realms. English forces and their Burgundian allies controlled Paris, Normandy, and much of northern France.

Charles VII, derisively called "King of Bourges" after his provisional capital, ruled a rump state south of the Loire. His legitimacy was questioned—rumors of his bastardy circulated freely—and his resources dwindled. Multiple military disasters had discredited traditional leadership. The siege of Orleans, begun in October 1428, threatened to open southern France to English conquest.

Yet beneath apparent English triumph lay fundamental weaknesses. Occupying France required resources England could not indefinitely provide. The regency for young Henry VI created political instability. Most crucially, English rule never gained popular legitimacy. Tax records show systematic resistance, from evasion to outright refusal. Local officials appointed by English administrators faced assassination or intimidation.

This was the world awaiting Joan of Arc—a world where conventional solutions had failed, where social orders were in flux, and where desperate people might listen to an peasant girl claiming divine mission. The war had created conditions for her emergence: widespread suffering demanding explanation, social disruption enabling unusual mobility, and military innovation valorizing unconventional approaches.

Understanding this context helps us see Joan not as an inexplicable miracle but as someone whose extraordinary claims found reception in extraordinary times. The ground had been prepared by nearly a century of conflict that challenged every certainty of medieval life. In that disrupted soil, something unprecedented could take root and briefly flower, leaving seeds that would germinate long after the guns fell silent.

As we turn to examine the medieval worldview that shaped responses to Joan, we must remember this war-torn landscape. Every institution, belief, and social relationship existed under the pressure of unending conflict. The medieval synthesis of faith and society persisted, but cracks showed everywhere. Through those fissures, new possibilities emerged—including the possibility that a teenage peasant woman might speak for God and lead armies to victory.## Chapter 2: Medieval Society and Beliefs

To understand how a teenage peasant girl could convince princes and prelates that God had chosen her to save France, we must first immerse ourselves in the mental universe of the fifteenth century. This was a world where the veil between natural and supernatural seemed gossamer-thin, where social hierarchy appeared divinely ordained, and where every earthly event carried cosmic significance. Yet it was also a world of surprising flexibility, where mystical authority could challenge temporal power and where the extraordinary might erupt into ordinary life.

The Sacred Landscape

Medieval people inhabited a thoroughly sacralized world. Every village had its church, every crossroads its shrine, every season its religious observances. The liturgical calendar structured time as surely as the sun's passage marked the hours. In Joan's Domrémy, as across Europe, church bells called people to prayer, warned of danger, celebrated births, and mourned deaths. These bells did more than mark time—they sanctified it, creating rhythms of sacred observance that ordered daily life.

The physical landscape itself bore supernatural significance. Springs were blessed and associated with saints, often retaining pre-Christian sacred associations. Ancient trees became sites of pilgrimage, their longevity suggesting divine favor. Joan's own village boasted the "Ladies' Tree," a massive beech where young people danced at spring festivals and where, village tradition held, fairies had once appeared. Such blending of Christian and folk beliefs was universal, creating a rich spiritual ecology that church authorities alternately tolerated and condemned.

This sacred geography extended to the human body. Medieval medicine intertwined physical and spiritual healing. Illnesses might stem from sin, demonic influence, or divine testing. Healing could come through herbs, prayer, pilgrimage, or saintly intervention. The boundaries between categories we now separate—religion and medicine, natural and supernatural—simply did not exist. When Joan spoke of Saint Michael touching her, contemporaries debated not whether such contact was possible but what it signified.

Visions and Mysticism

Joan's visions emerged within a rich tradition of medieval mysticism that particularly flourished among women. From Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century to Catherine of Siena in the fourteenth, female visionaries had claimed direct divine communication, often challenging ecclesiastical and secular authorities. These women navigated narrow paths between sanctity and heresy, their acceptance depending on complex negotiations of orthodoxy, political utility, and personal charisma.

The late medieval period witnessed what historians call the "democratization of mysticism." Where earlier visionaries typically came from aristocratic or monastic backgrounds, increasingly common people—artisans, merchants, even peasants—reported divine encounters. This reflected broader spiritual anxieties: the Great Schism (1378-1417) had seen multiple popes excommunicating each other, undermining institutional religious authority. The Black Death's devastation raised profound questions about divine justice. In this climate, direct divine communication offered certainty that institutions could not provide.

Female mysticism carried particular cultural weight. Women, barred from priesthood and formal theological education, could claim authority through direct divine inspiration. The weakness of their social position paradoxically became strength—God choosing the humble to confound the mighty resonated with biblical precedent. Yet this path carried dangers. The line between sanctioned visionary and condemned heretic was thin, often determined by political circumstances rather than theological consistency.

Joan's visions fit established patterns while displaying unique characteristics. Like other female mystics, she reported sensory experiences—hearing voices, seeing light, feeling physical touch. Her voices came from recognized saints—Michael, Margaret, and Catherine—not exotic or suspicious sources. Yet unlike contemplative mystics who sought union with divine through prayer and asceticism, Joan's voices demanded military action. This active, political dimension of her mysticism would prove both her making and unmaking.

Social Hierarchy and Divine Order

Medieval society conceived itself as divinely ordered hierarchy. The famous tripartite division—those who fight (nobles), those who pray (clergy), and those who work (everyone else)—was understood not as human convention but as God's plan for social harmony. Each order had its duties and privileges, its own path to salvation. Disrupting this order threatened not just political stability but cosmic balance.

Yet this theoretical rigidity coexisted with practical flexibility. The Hundred Years' War had already scrambled traditional categories. Nobles impoverished by war worked their own fields. Merchants enriched by military contracts bought noble titles. Peasant archers defeated aristocratic cavalry. The church itself was divided between rival popes, undermining claims to unified spiritual authority. In this context, Joan's boundary-crossing—a peasant who would lead nobles, a woman who would wear armor—was extraordinary but not unprecedented.

Gender roles, while strictly defined in theory, showed similar complexity in practice. Medieval thought, drawing on Aristotle and Scripture, portrayed women as naturally inferior—weaker in body, less rational in mind, more susceptible to diabolic influence. Yet the cult of the Virgin Mary exalted feminine spiritual power. Noble women exercised significant authority as regents and estate managers. Urban women participated in guild structures and commercial life. The gap between prescriptive literature and lived experience was substantial.

Joan navigated these contradictions skillfully. Her virginity aligned her with Mary and female saints. Her humble origins recalled Christ choosing fishermen as apostles. Her military mission could be justified through biblical precedents like Deborah or Judith. Most crucially, by claiming divine mandate, she placed herself outside normal social categories. She was not a woman usurping male roles but an instrument of God's will, exempt from usual restrictions.

Regional Identities and Emerging Nations

Understanding medieval identity requires abandoning modern national frameworks. A person from Joan's era would identify primarily with their village, lord, and region. The concept of "France" as unified nation existed mainly in royal propaganda and clerical writings. Most people spoke regional dialects, followed local customs, and knew little of distant provinces. The king in Paris was a remote figure, relevant mainly as ultimate source of justice and focus of prayers.

The Hundred Years' War, paradoxically, both reinforced and eroded these local identities. English occupation made "foreign" rule concrete and oppressive, fostering solidarity among the occupied. Royal taxation for war efforts created shared burden and common cause. The movement of armies spread news and ideas across regions previously isolated. Soldiers returning home brought tales of distant provinces, creating imagined communities broader than traditional local horizons.

Language played a crucial role in these emerging identities. The French crown had long promoted Francien (Parisian French) as an administrative language, but regional tongues dominated daily life. English occupation zones developed their own linguistic politics, with English administrators attempting to impose their language on French subjects. This linguistic imperialism proved deeply unpopular, making language a marker of political allegiance. Joan herself spoke with a Lorraine accent that marked her regional origins throughout her career.

Religious identity intertwined with these emerging political consciousnesses. Saints were adopted as national patrons—Saint George for England, Saint Denis for France. Military victories were attributed to divine favor shown through these celestial champions. The war became increasingly conceived as spiritual conflict, with each side claiming God's endorsement. This sanctification of political struggle created the ideological space for Joan's mission—if God favored France, He might well send a messenger to ensure victory.

Popular Religion and Lived Faith

Beyond official church doctrine lay a vast realm of popular belief and practice. Medieval Christianity was syncretic, incorporating pre-Christian traditions, local customs, and practical magic into ostensibly orthodox framework. Every region had its particular saints, often unknown elsewhere, whose cults centered on specific needs—healing particular diseases, protecting certain crops, or intervening in specialized circumstances.

This localized religion emphasized material efficacy over theological sophistication. Saints were expected to deliver tangible benefits—healing sick children, ensuring good harvests, protecting from enemies. Failure to provide such benefits could result in abandoned cults, with statues thrown in rivers or shrines neglected. This transactional aspect of popular religion helps explain Joan's reception: her voices promised military victory, a concrete benefit that resonated with desperate populations.

Pilgrimage formed a central element of religious life, combining spiritual merit with social adventure. Major routes like the Camino de Santiago created international networks of hospitality and exchange. Local pilgrimages to regional shrines reinforced community bonds while allowing temporary escape from daily constraints. Joan's own journey from Domrémy to Chinon followed pilgrimage patterns, utilizing established networks of religious hospitality and safe passage.

Magic and religion intertwined inextricably in daily practice. Parish priests blessed fields, animals, and tools. Holy water was sprinkled on crops to ensure growth and ward off storms. Relics were carried in procession to end droughts or epidemics. The church officially distinguished between legitimate sacramental practice and illicit magic, but popular usage blurred these boundaries. When Joan's voices told her to recover a sword from behind the altar at Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, contemporaries saw nothing strange in supernatural knowledge of hidden objects—such revelations were part of their spiritual landscape.

Apocalyptic Expectations

The early fifteenth century seethed with apocalyptic anxiety. The Great Schism had shattered church unity. The Ottoman advance threatened Christendom's eastern borders. Social upheavals—peasant revolts, urban unrest, noble feuding—suggested fundamental disorder. Many saw these tribulations as signs of approaching End Times, when Antichrist would arise before Christ's return to judge the world.

Within this apocalyptic framework, the Hundred Years' War gained cosmic significance. Prophecies circulated predicting that a great monarch would arise to unify Christendom before the final battle with evil. Others spoke of a virgin who would save France in its darkest hour. These prophecies drew on biblical imagery—the Woman of Revelations, the Virgin Mary—while incorporating regional traditions and contemporary anxieties.

Joan's mission resonated with these expectations without fully embracing them. Her voices spoke of saving France, not ushering in the millennium. Yet her dramatic intervention in seemingly hopeless circumstances fit apocalyptic patterns of divine rescue at the darkest hour. Her insistence on immediate action—Crown the king! Drive out the English!—channeled diffuse apocalyptic anxiety into concrete political program.

The church's response to apocalyptic movements was ambivalent. Official theology discouraged speculation about End Times, but popular preaching often embraced apocalyptic themes. The line between orthodox prophet and heretical fanatic was thin and politically determined. Joan navigated this carefully, claiming specific divine mission while avoiding broader apocalyptic claims that might trigger ecclesiastical opposition.

Authority and Legitimacy

Medieval concepts of authority differed radically from modern ideas. Legitimacy derived from multiple sources—heredity, divine sanction, popular acclaim, effective governance—that might reinforce or contradict each other. A king ruled by God's grace but also by noble consent and customary law. The church claimed spiritual supremacy but depended on secular protection. These overlapping authorities created spaces for negotiation and challenge.

Joan's authority claims exploited these ambiguities brilliantly. She insisted she came from God, placing her outside normal hierarchies. Yet she also sought proper authorization—from Robert de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs, from theologians at Poitiers, from Charles VII at Chinon. She proclaimed divine mission while submitting to earthly examination. This dual strategy protected her from charges of presumption while maintaining her extraordinary claims.

The crisis of authority created by the Hundred Years' War made Joan's intervention possible. Traditional sources of legitimacy had failed—the king was uncrowned and doubtfully legitimate, nobles had proven militarily incompetent, the church was divided. In this vacuum, charismatic authority based on divine inspiration could gain hearing. Joan offered certainty when all else seemed doubtful, action when paralysis reigned.

Her gender paradoxically reinforced her authority. As a woman, she could not be suspected of personal ambition for power—she could never be king or noble or priest. As a virgin, she aligned with Mary and female saints whose intercessory power was universally acknowledged. As a peasant, she embodied the suffering of common people whose prayers might move God to mercy. Her very marginality became centrality in a world turned upside down.

The Power of Prophecy

Prophecy occupied a complex position in medieval culture. Biblical prophets provided models of divine communication, but distinguishing true from false prophecy challenged theologians and ordinary believers alike. The church claimed monopoly on interpreting divine will, yet popular prophets regularly emerged, especially during crisis periods. These prophets might support or challenge existing order, their reception depending on political circumstances as much as theological evaluation.

Female prophets faced particular scrutiny but also possessed particular advantages. Their exclusion from formal religious authority meant their claims necessarily came from extraordinary sources. The tradition of female sanctity—from Mary Magdalene through contemporary mystics—provided precedents for women bearing divine messages. Yet female prophecy also triggered anxieties about gender order and diabolic deception.

Joan's prophetic career shows sophisticated understanding of these dynamics. She began with private revelations, sharing them only with trusted confidants. She sought male authorization for public action. She submitted to theological examination, demonstrating orthodox belief and biblical knowledge despite illiteracy. She performed prophetic signs—identifying the disguised dauphin, finding the hidden sword—that authenticated her mission. Most importantly, she promised and initially delivered military success, the ultimate validation in desperate times.

The content of Joan's prophecies balanced specificity with flexibility. She proclaimed four primary missions: raise the siege of Orleans, crown the dauphin at Reims, drive the English from France, and rescue the Duke of Orleans from captivity. The first two, achieved dramatically, validated her divine mandate. The third provided ongoing justification for continued warfare. The fourth, unfulfilled in her lifetime, remained as future hope. This mix of achieved and pending prophecies maintained her authority while providing scope for continued action.

Conclusion: A World Ready for the Extraordinary

The medieval world that received Joan of Arc was neither credulous nor skeptical in modern terms. Rather, it was a world where multiple forms of authority competed and overlapped, where divine intervention was expected but required authentication, where social boundaries were firm but could be transcended through divine mandate. The Hundred Years' War had disrupted traditional certainties, creating space for extraordinary claims and extraordinary people.

Joan emerged at a unique historical moment when military desperation, political crisis, religious anxiety, and social disruption converged. Her voices offered divine solution to earthly problems. Her virginity and humility deflected challenges to her authority. Her initial successes validated her mission in the most concrete terms. She was both product and shaper of her world, embodying its contradictions while transcending its limitations.

Understanding this medieval context helps us see Joan neither as inexplicable miracle nor as modern figure projected backward. She was thoroughly of her time—a time when peasant girls might hear saints' voices, when divine will might override social convention, when military victory validated spiritual claims. That time would pass, and with it the cultural framework that made Joan possible. But in that brief moment, the extraordinary became possible, even necessary, and a teenage girl from Domrémy could reshape history.

As we turn to Joan's own story, we must keep this medieval world in mind—not as quaint backdrop but as living context that shaped every aspect of her experience. Her voices spoke in forms her world recognized. Her mission addressed crises her contemporaries felt urgently. Her authority drew on sources her society acknowledged, even as she challenged its fundamental assumptions. In this creative tension between tradition and innovation, conformity and disruption, Joan of Arc found the space to become who she was—and who history would remember her to be.# Part II: Joan's Journey