Name-dropping:
Joan of Arc (like “Joan of Arcadia” without the “-adia”) (c. 1412–1431).
French girl who, in spite of being a female in a sexist world, and in spite of being thought insane by many who encountered her, and in spite of being a little kid from a peasant family, basically turned the tide of the Hundred Years’ War (which a total of 10 French and British kings had failed to do).

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Joan of Arc can be useful when people start talking about the question of whether women should be allowed in combat. But she’ll also come in handy if you’re ever at a cocktail party and begin to hear invisible voices. Don’t freak out. Stay calm. You could be going crazy, or you could be just a couple years away from tremendous success and renown. Followed by, um, a horrible execution.

The Basics
In a time when French peasants had few rights, and French peasant women had even fewer, a teenage Joan of Arc somehow managed to meet the king of France and convince him to let her lead the French royal army into battle.

When Joan was born, the internal strife within France caused the nation to periodically forget that they were engaged in the Hundred Years’ War with England. In all that chaos, it’s no wonder the English king, Henry V, began grabbing huge chunks of French territory for himself. Joan was by all accounts a quiet, pious child. Then, around the age of 13, she started hearing voices. The Archangel Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret began conversing with Joan, telling her that she needed to drive the English out of France. The rational Joan listened to these voices for about three years before finally approaching a commander at the local fort and asking him to take her to King Charles, because the Archangel Michael had told her that she could defeat the English.

There’s no record of the commander’s exact response to Joan’s request, but we imagine it was something along the lines of “Tu es très crazy.” But a few months later, she returned to the same commander, and this time—improbably—he believed her. He gave her an escort of six soldiers, who apparently dressed her in male clothes and brought her through enemy territory to the king.

Amazingly, the king soon grew to trust young Joan. He gave her permission to take a small band of soldiers to the city of Orléans, where her orders were to try to end the English siege of the city. In the first week of May, 1429, Joan won a series of battles against the English, who soon abandoned their attack on Orléans. Suddenly, no one in France thought Joan was crazy. By June, the French were routing the English: At the Battle of Patay (not Pâté), 2,200 English soldiers died compared to just 20 Frenchmen. Joan desperately wanted to move on and take Paris, but Charles was slow to act. When the assault on Paris fi nally did begin, Joan suffered an arrow to the breast, and the attack failed.

On May 23, 1430, Joan was captured by a captain named John of Luxembourg, who handed her over to the British in exchange for what would today amount to several hundred thousand dollars. Accused of heresy in a show trial, Joan was convicted on the grounds that her voices could not possibly come from God, since clearly God wanted the English to control France. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, but remained a faithful Christian to the last. Among her final words were “Hold the cross high so that I may see it through the flames.”

Extra Credit:
SECRET SIGNS
Joan of Arc never allowed her troops to fight on Sunday. In fact, she might have further routed the English at the Battle of Orléans, except that the clever Brits started their retreat on a Sunday. And she’s the heretic?

One of the enduring mysteries of Joan’s story is why, exactly, Charles VII chose to trust her. He dressed in disguise on the day she visited the palace, and Joan immediately picked him out of the crowd— but Charles never really trusted Joan until she shared with him a “secret sign.” Some historians believe that Joan told Charles she was aware of his worry that he might have been born illegitimately. Joan then assured him his birth was legitimate, which made Charles so happy that he sent her off to war. After her arrest, though, he did
nothing to save her.

Conversation Starters
◆ Throughout his later years, Samuel Clemens did not consider The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or even Life on the Mississippi to be his greatest literary accomplishments. Instead, he believed that his fictionalized history Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc would be remembered as his best book. Twain was mistaken, though. Overly serious and written in a maudlin style, the book is rarely read, even by Twain fans.

◆ Widely admired for its theological sophistication, the canceled CBS show Joan of Arcadia featured a young woman named Joan who talks to God and takes action to make the world a better place. Its replacement, The Ghost Whisperer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, is about a girl who talks to ghosts. Why the change? According to CBS chief Les Moonves, “I think talking to ghosts may skew younger than talking to God.”

◆ Throughout her military career and even during her imprisonment by the English, Joan preferred wearing men’s clothes.

◆ Joan has long been the patron saint of France, but it seems that she might have also become the unofficial patron saint of artsy indie-rock bands suffering from perennial depression. She’s been mentioned in songs by Silverfish, Catatonia, and Garbage, among others. Our favorite Joan of Arc namedropping occurs in “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” by the Smiths: “And now I know how Joan of Arc felt, as the flames rose to her Roman nose and her Walkman started to melt.”