JOAN OF ARC 



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JOAN OF ARC 



BANNER AND STANDARD 

 (a) Joan of Arc's banner; 

 (&) her standard. 



was mounted on a charger at the head of the 

 French troops. For many weary years France 

 had been divided against itself. English kings 

 had fought un- 

 ceasingly for pos- 

 session of the 

 French throne, 

 and France had 

 taken sides for 

 and against them. 

 The rough cap- 

 tains and soldiers 

 of King Charles 

 acknowledged no 

 final authority, 

 not even that of 

 the king himself, 

 but they bent the 

 knee to this 

 young girl. Fired by her . courage and high 

 enthusiasm, they marched on Orleans and 

 raised the siege. They defeated the English 

 in four other engagements and then marched 

 to Rheims, where Charles was crowned king 

 of France, Joan standing at his side, in that 

 cathedral which was damaged almost five 

 hundred years later by German gun fire in the 

 War of the Nations. 



The Great Leader Captured. This ended her 

 mission, and Joan wished to return to the little 

 hamlet where she was born, but Charles refused 

 to consent to this. Not again, however, did 

 the valiant girl leader know victory. In lead- 

 ing the attack on Paris, a shining mark in her 

 armor for the English arrows, she was badly 

 wounded, and on May 23, 1430, was cap- 

 tured by the Burgundians, French soldiers 

 who were allied with the English. They sold 

 her to the English for 16,000 francs (a sum 

 slightly exceeding $3,000). 



The English were not satisfied with her mere 

 capture. Their fear of her was great, because 

 of the adoration with which the French people 

 regarded her. They were determined that she 

 should die. So, after a long imprisonment, 

 during which the young girl suffered untold 

 humiliation and insult, Joan was tried as a 

 witch and a heretic, because -she had said that 

 her mission had been revealed to her in visions 

 from heaven. She was condemned to be 

 burned at the stake. 



Died a Martyr's Death. Ten thousand men 

 stood in the market place at Rouen on May 

 30, 1431, and saw Joan of Arc face her terrible 

 death with unfaltering courage. And "ten 

 thousand men wept" at the dreadful sight. An 

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English soldier or two tried to laugh, but one 

 of the secretaries of the English king said, as 

 he turned from the terrible scene, "We are 

 undone; we have burned a saint." The final 

 taunt of the English was to refuse her ashes 

 burial. They were gathered up and thrown 

 into the Seine River. In 1456 the young 

 martyr was formally pronounced innocent of 

 the charges brought against her, and in 1902 

 she was beatified by Pope Pius X, which means 

 that she was made a saint in the Roman Catho- 

 lic Church. 



Her Memory Lives. There is scarcely a 

 figure in all history that makes a greater ap- 

 peal to the imagination than does this simple 

 country girl. Many are the historical biogra- 

 phies that have been written about her short 



HER NEWEST STATUE 



Erected on Riverside Drive, New York City, in 

 1915. The pedestal was made in part from 

 eighteen tons of stone brought from the dungeon 

 at Rouen, from which Joan was led forth to mar- 

 tyrdom. The statue is of bronze, twenty-five feet 

 in height, and weighs 8,000 pounds. It was the 

 work of Anna Vaughn Hyatt. Her niece, Clara 

 Hunter Hyatt, posed in armor for the figure. The 

 total cost was $35,000, raised by popular sub- 

 scription. 



life, and she is the subject of innumerable 

 poems and stories, plays, pictures and statues. 

 Schiller and Lomet wrote tragedies based on 

 her life; there is an historical drama by T, Tay- 



