• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2936 0

” for obvious political reasons, the English turned Joan over to the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft. In the fifteenth century, spiritual visions were thought to be inspired by either God or the devil. Because Joan dressed in men’s clothing, it was easy for her enemies to believe that she was in league with the “prince of darkness.” She was condemned to death as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of nineteen. To the end, as the flames rose up around her, she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her (see the Film & History feature). Twenty-five years later, a church court exonerated her of these charges. To a contemporary French writer, Christine de Pizan (kris-TEEN duh pee-ZAHN) (see “Christine de Pizan”), Joan was a feminist heroine. In 1920, she was made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

Joan of Arc. Pictured here in a suit of armor, Joan of Arc is holding aloft a banner that shows Jesus and two angels. This portrait dates from the late fifteenth century; there are no known portraits of Joan made from life.

Musée de l’Histoire de France aux Archives Nationales, Paris//© Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY

* * *

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1431)

* * *

END OF THE WAR Joan of Arc’s accomplishments proved decisive. Although the war dragged on for another two decades, defeats of English armies in Normandy and Aquitaine ultimately led to French victory. Important to the French success was the use of the cannon, a new weapon made possible by the invention of gunpowder. The Chinese had invented gunpowder in the eleventh century and devised a simple cannon by the thirteenth century. The Mongols greatly improved this technology, developing more accurate cannons and cannonballs; both spread to the Middle East by the thirteenth century and to Europe by the fourteenth.

* * *

CHRONOLOGY The Hundred Years’ War

* * *

Outbreak of hostilities

1337

Battle of Crecy

1346

Battle of Poitiers

1356

Peace of Bretigny

1359

Death of Edward III

1377

Twenty-year truce declared

1396

Henry V (1413–1422) renews the war

1415

Battle of Agincourt

1415

Treaty of Troyes

1420

French recovery under Joan of Arc

1429–1431

End of the war

1453

* * *

The death of England’s best commanders and the instability of the English government under King Henry VI (1422–1471) also contributed to England’s defeat. By 1453, the only part of France that was left in England’s hands was the coastal town of Calais, which remained English for another century.

Political Instability

The fourteenth century was a period of adversity for the internal political stability of European governments. Although government bureaucracies grew ever larger, at the same time the question of who should control the bureaucracies led to internal conflict and instability. Like the lord-serf relationship, the lord-vassal relationship based on land and military service was being replaced by a contract based on money. Especially after the Black Death, money payments called scutage were increasingly substituted for military service. Monarchs welcomed this development because they could now hire professional soldiers, who tended to be more reliable anyway. As lord-vassal relationships became less personal and less important, new relationships based on political advantage began to be formed, creating new avenues for political influence—and for corruption as well. Especially noticeable as the landed aristocrats suffered declining rents and social uncertainties with the new relationships was the formation of factions of nobles who looked for opportunities to advance their power and wealth at the expense of other noble factions and of their monarchs as well. Other nobles went to the royal courts, offering to serve the kings.

The kings had their own problems, however. By the mid-fifteenth century, reigning monarchs in many European countries were not the direct descendants of the rulers of 1300. The founders of these new dynasties had to struggle for position as factions of