Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: French History
[00:00:00]
Intro
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 598, cinq cent quatre-vingt-dix-huit.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: The Joan of Arc Story
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with my good friend Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks, who brings her storytelling talents and deep research to the life of Joan of Arc.
From a devoted, enlightened, perhaps a bit stubborn, who knows, teenager in a small Lorraine village, to the battlefields at Orléans, to her betrayal, and her execution at [00:01:00] age 19. This is the full story, and it is remarkable.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support.
If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consult, I wrote eight VoiceMap tours of Paris, I do day trips around the southwest of France, and everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing, and it helps the show.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss the Paris Airbnb crackdown. Paris is a highly desirable city, both as a destination and as a place to live and work, and yet it’s really hard to find a place to live for French people who, or whoever, wants to move to Paris.
The city wants to tackle this problem aggressively, and you need to know about it [00:02:00] because it will affect those of you who use Airbnb in Paris.
I’ll also discuss the many places I’ll be visiting in the next couple of weeks on my second long road trip through France for this year.
Joan of Arc
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie Sargent: Oh, we’re going to talk about Joan of Arc, Jeanne d’Arc, at last. We have mentioned her so many times on the podcast. Everybody’s heard of Joan of Arc, right?
Elyse Rivin: Everybody’s heard of her.
Annie Sargent: And we never heard Elyse tell us all about her story, and I just, I want to hear the story. I mean, I’ve been listening to a book about her as well, and about the Hundred Year War, because really the two go together.
Elyse Rivin: Absolutely.
Annie Sargent: But today we’re going to do Joan of Arc, okay? We’re not going to go deep into the Hundred Year War because…
Elyse Rivin: No, we just, we have to do a little bit of background info for [00:03:00] people to even understand why she became important, but really, you take it, just take it globally because the, what’s fascinating is there really was this woman, and she really did do these things that are legendary. And she really did die at the age of 19. But the context and who she was, I did a whole lot of reading. I found all these websites that are devoted to her or are devoted to the history of all of this.
There’s a newspaper that’s from the northeast up in the Lorraine, which is the northeast part of France. And they had done a whole study about it, and one of the websites I found was information that’s not usually published in relation to her, so it was interesting little facts, and it makes her real.
Statues and Legacy
Annie Sargent: The other thing that makes her real is that there’s a statue of her in a lot of churches in France. Even a lot of cities in France have a grand Joan of Arc on a horse [00:04:00] somewhere.
Elyse Rivin: She has to be on a horse.
Annie Sargent: Well, she doesn’t have to be. I’ve seen her actually in Béziers, she stands atop of her bûcher.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, God. Okay.
Annie Sargent: Where they burned her. There’s a few places that’s by the church in Béziers.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, where we did, that’s right.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, there’s one in Nice as well.
Elyse Rivin: And in Rouen.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
How did Joan of Arc become so famous?
Annie Sargent: So anyway, she, for someone who had such a brief life, she really, you know, everybody knows about her. So why? How did it become so?
Elyse Rivin: Well, I think it, first of all, Joan of Arc was, her name was Jeanne, pronounced and written in the old French, I was about to say Old English, the old French way. Her family name was Arc, but D- was d’Arc, D-A-R-C, and now we say Joan of Arc, and that has to do with what happened during her life and the end of her life.
She is known as the heroine [00:05:00] of France, and talking about statues, I looked up some of this information. There are over 20,000 statues of her in France. That is enormous.
Not just in churches. There are, like here in Toulouse, there’s a huge statue of her on her horse with her banner and her sword. There was a flourishing, I would dare say industry of Joan of Arc statues in the second half of the 19th century because it was, she became a symbol of national patriotism.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: That has to do with, of course, with what was going on in France in the 19th century, which was major upheavals about just every 10, 15 years. And so she became a kind of rallying point and a central point for the idea of being proud of being French.
France at War
Elyse Rivin: But who she was in reality, she was born in the year 1214 (Oops Elyse meant to say 1412), which seems, I’m sure to most people, like an ancient, ancient, ancient [00:06:00] long time ago.
But in the history of France is actually not even that long ago. The big thing to know at, is that at the moment of her birth, France was cut up into many small kingdoms. And there was a small kingdom that belonged to the King of France, based in Paris, but there were other kingdoms that were as powerful and as rich, and one of them was the Kingdom of Burgundy, run by the Dukes of Burgundy. And the English, thanks to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had married the English king a couple of centuries back, and the descendants thereof, were constantly claiming a good chunk of France as theirs.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. That’s how the Hundred Year War started is with the English saying, "Oh, this is our stuff."
Elyse Rivin: This is our stuff, you know. I mean, we’re talking about genealogy and lineage and of course lots of intermarriages anyway.
Annie Sargent: And the Hundred Year War was not one continuous war. It’s, was a lot of, [00:07:00] you know, 15 years of this and 10 years of that and 5 years of that. But it was always about the English saying that France belonged to them pretty much.
Elyse Rivin: And at the moment of her birth in 1412, parts of her family had actually suffered at the hands of the English invasions, which were starting to be basically pretty much all over what we now call France. They had already retaken almost all of western France, and they were allied with the Dukes of Burgundy who wanted the throne of France for themselves.
So the regions in the center, from Paris going down towards the south, towards the Pyrenees, and a little bit of what is now the Lorraine area, if you’ve been to Nancy, which is very beautiful and all of that, all of that was the Kingdom of France, but they were getting squeezed in, basically. They were on the east, they had the Burgundians who were claiming the throne because of being the descendants of the brother of the king. And on the [00:08:00] west, pretty much all the way up and down, you had the English who’d already retaken a good chunk of what is now France.
And so she is born in a time when people in her family have been killed because of these battles, and everybody is aware of the fact that there is this fighting going on.
Myths About Her Childhood
Elyse Rivin: And she was born into a family, a lot of the legend, a popular legend has to do with imagining her as this incredibly poor little person, this little shepherdess.
She was not a shepherdess ever, and she was not from an extremely poor family. Her family was actually a landowning family. They were certainly not rich. They were what were known as well-to-do peasants, which is a kind of strange contradiction, but that is exactly what they were.
Annie Sargent: Right, and her father was, like, the spokesperson for the village.
Elyse Rivin: For the village.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, so he was, like, you know, he was well-spoken and well-known.
Elyse Rivin: He was a, what we would call a kind of lower middle-class family. It was, that’s what it was. She was born in the village of [00:09:00] Domrémy, which is now in the department of the Vosges.
It’s close to where I actually lived for a year about 30 years ago. It’s a tiny little town. At the time, it was part of this region that was being fought over not only by the English and the French, but there was the whole, the Germans that were fighting over this area, too. So she was born into a place and a time when war was everywhere. It’s very interesting because I think it had a lot to do with it. And she was the fourth of five children, and apparently even though she didn’t have any formal education, she knew how to write a teeny little bit. She was not highly educated, but she was not out in the fields. She was helping her mom. She actually was being brought up to help take care of things in a more domestic kind of way, but she was not a shepherdess. The shepherdess came afterwards as a mythology because to be a shepherdess was considered to be very pure and very innocent to be out in the field with the sheep, and apparently that was not something she even liked to [00:10:00] do. She even wrote about it and said that she preferred being with her mother in the house learning domestic chores than actually going out in the fields with the animals. So this is the context in which she is born. And there isn’t really very much about her early childhood except that she had a strong character, that they say that there’s lots of documentation about what happened to her from a certain point on, and even testimony while she was alive that she developed a very strong will and very strong character.
Voices and Vows
Elyse Rivin: And at the age of 13, without really saying why, she announced to her parents that she would never marry, that she did not want to get married. And she started to have visions, and she started to hear voices.
Annie Sargent: Right. So hang on, hang on, because her father had actually promised her to a young man in a nearby village.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, he wasn’t even a young man. And, no, in fact, this is part of what happens afterwards is that this is why she even starts to become famous. [00:11:00] She finds out after she’s made this announcement to her parents that she, number one, doesn’t want to get married. She wants to stay pure and virginal. She wants to devote her life to God, but she does not say she wants to become a nun, which I find really interesting. But she says that she hears voices and that the voices are telling her that her mission in life is to help the French kick out the English.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, and in so many words, she just said.
Elyse Rivin: She just says that. I mean, and so she’s obviously has heard things. She has to be aware of what some of, and, you know, without going into to fine details, she’s aware of what the political situation is, and she becomes obsessed. She says that her mission in life is to help the French take back all their land and to kick out the English, and she even is quoted as saying she doesn’t hate the English. God doesn’t hate the English. God loves the English if [00:12:00] they’re back in their own land, but that they should- and there’s a quote from her saying that.
Breaking the Engagement
Elyse Rivin: She says, you know… And so what happens is, unbeknownst to her, her parents arrange a marriage as she’s about to turn 14 with a guy who’s actually a bit older, which unfortunately was probably the case in general anyway. So if she was 14, he was probably 28, you know, something like that.
Annie Sargent: Yikes.
Elyse Rivin: But who was of the same standing, social standing, and she does something that is absolutely… This was one of the things that I found the most amazing. She takes, she tells her parents that she will not get married. She refuses. She will never get married. And when they tell her that it is her duty as a child to do so, she goes to the local priests, and she tells them that she is pure, virginal, that her mission in life is to, with God, help the French kick out the English, and that she wants to break [00:13:00] the engagement, which is a contract that has actually been signed. And they go to the bishop of the area, and she has a trial.
Annie Sargent: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: She actually has a trial.
An ecclesiastic trial.
Annie Sargent: Ecclesiastic trial.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I had a hell of a time figuring out how to write that word, let me tell you. You know, it’s just…
Annie Sargent: You can’t write it, and I can’t say it.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, you can’t say it. And you know what? She does such a good job of convincing them of her intentions and her desire to stay pure that they allow her to break the engagement contract. And I have a picture that I’m going to send you so we can post it with the podcast of the plaque that announces the breaking of this engagement by the church, that she has been legally released from this engagement that she has to this guy.
Annie Sargent: All right.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, so this is somebody with a determination and a will that is absolutely really remarkable, [00:14:00] you know?
Annie: Well, I mean, at the time, and she was very young…
Elyse Rivin: She was very young.
Annie: … to be that determined about what your future was going to be is amazing.
Elyse Rivin: And what’s interesting too is that a lot of the different documents I was reading say it is a fact too that at that particular moment in history, when I say moment, I don’t mean just 1412, but that time period, there were many, many, many young women, which really pre-puberty and puberty, were having visions.
Annie: Oh.
Elyse Rivin: This was interesting sociologically. Like, there was … It was a troubled time. There was war, there was plague, and it was a very troubled time. And so it was apparently not that uncommon to have somebody, especially around that age, announce that they saw things, that they had visions and that they heard voices. So she was not considered to be that strange, to be honest, you know?
Annie: Huh.
Elyse Rivin: But what wound up [00:15:00] being so remarkable was that she carried out what she said she was going to do.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Path to the Dauphin
Elyse Rivin: So after she breaks the engagement, she’s on bad terms with her parents, and she goes to stay with a cousin. This is all in the region, if people have been up in that area around Nancy, it’s very bucolic. It’s just very nice area around there. She goes to stay with this cousin who has contacts with a local duke, because everything is, you know, there’s these little dukedoms just about everywhere. She says to this cousin that she wants to find a way of being introduced to the court where the Dauphin, who is … Now, the Dauphin in French is the, is the-
Annie: The heir to the throne.
Elyse Rivin: … the heir to the throne who has not yet been crowned king, right?
Annie: Right, right.
Elyse Rivin: And this is Charles VII, and he is, he’s actually nine years older than her, so he’s young as well. He’s not exactly her age, but he’s certainly still young.
And [00:16:00] she, I mean, I can imagine her cousin’s going, "Oh, no, you’re, are you out of your mind?" You know, "Who do you think you are that you can be taken to the king?" And the king, sorry, the Dauphin, Charles VII-
Annie: Right, right.
Elyse Rivin: … is not in Paris. He is actually hiding in another city because of all of the fighting with the English, and the English by this time had taken Orleans.
And Orleans is on the Loire River, and it is considered to be a royal city with a huge chateau. And they are on the cusp of attacking and taking Paris. The English have really advanced that far.
And this man, Jean de Beaumont, she gets him, she convinces him to take her to this other nobleman, and this nobleman is the Duke of Luxembourg, I mean, this is not the Luxembourg we up there, it’s just that was his title, who is in fact someone who has entry to the court. And she convinces them.
Annie: How?[00:17:00]
Elyse Rivin: Who knows how she actually does this, but she convinces them that she knows how to help Charles VII be crowned King of France, and that once he is crowned King of France, the English will have to accept the fact that he is the king. They cannot take the kingdom, because what they want to do is put Henry VI on the French throne.
Annie: Right. Right.
Elyse Rivin: There’s Henry V and VI, and there’s Charles VI and VII. I mean, there’s, you know. And she manages to convince them. I can’t even imagine what she does to convince them. But they say that she was strong-willed, very rigid actually. She wasn’t exactly the most pliable kind of human being, but so determined that she manages to convince this Jean de Luxembourg to take her to the court in the town, in fact, it was Bourges, where Charles VII was basically hiding, because he was not just not yet crowned king, [00:18:00] but he was a pretty wishy-washy guy.
Annie: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: He wasn’t exactly the strongest person in terms of personality. He didn’t, he wasn’t a great warrior. His father had been, his father, the king, was schizophrenic. Charles VI was somebody who was really, really, really mentally ill, and everybody knew it. And so, basically, it was the court around him that ran everything.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah, that would not be good, like, mm.
Elyse Rivin: Right, and so what happened was that his own mother betrayed him, that is betrayed Charles VII, and signed a contract, probably for a lot of money, with the English, allowing the English to take over the throne of France.
Annie: Dang.
Elyse Rivin: So this is really about betrayal, a real absolute betrayal.
Now, Joan of Arc doesn’t know any of this. She just knows that the English are advancing and are really likely to take Paris if [00:19:00] Charles VII doesn’t get his act together and create enough of an army.
Annie: And she had probably never set foot in Paris.
Elyse Rivin: Never. I don’t, never. Never.
Annie: She just knew this stuff without-
Elyse Rivin: She just knew this stuff.
Annie Sargent: … yeah.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Court Test and Conviction
Elyse Rivin: So the story is, and of course this is part of the mythology about her that gives her an aura, and who knows if it’s true or not, is that Jean de Luxembourg takes her to where Charles VII is. And Charles VII has been told about her because everybody’s impressed by her wherever she goes. I mean, I know we did a podcast about Bourges where they talk about women coming up to her, admiring her.
Apparently, she was not always that nice, because when she saw women who were out in the streets as street walkers, she had a stick that she took with her when she was on her horse, and she would beat them.
She would hit- (laughing) She would hit them on their backs, and she would give them these sermons about, you know, stopping their evil ways and everything. I mean, she was, you know…
Annie Sargent: She was pretty rigid.
Elyse Rivin: She was pretty rigid.
Annie Sargent: [00:20:00] Well, and she was also very religious. I mean, obviously.
Elyse Rivin: She was clearly very, very religious. But it’s interesting that her piety was obsessively focused on the king.
Annie Sargent: Right, she was focused on political religion.
Elyse Rivin: Right. This is why it’s interesting she didn’t decide to go into a nunnery or do anything like that. I mean, she wasn’t praying to the Virgin Mary, she was praying to Saint Michel and to Saint Catherine. And I’m not sure about Saint Catherine, Catherine is I think, it’s Marie’s mother, I think, I’m not sure. But Saint Michel was a warrior saint, you know? I mean, he was… he had a sword. This is the kind of person she was.
So the story is that Jean de Luxembourg takes her to this facsimile of a court where Charles VII, who is a young man, has decided that he is going to not sit on the throne, but mix in with the crowd, and they’re going to test her to see if she can see or feel who the Dauphin is, because that’s going to be a sign that she’s [00:21:00] legitimate in her ability to-
Annie Sargent: Oh, okay
Elyse Rivin: … she keeps announcing to everybody that she knows what to do to help Charles VII take over the throne.
Annie Sargent: So will she even recognize him among all these other guys, okay?
Elyse Rivin: And the story is, you know, that they bring her into this big room, hallway, whatever it is, and I don’t know if they say to her, you know, like, figure out who the king is or whatever. I don’t know how much they really lie to her. But she basically walks through the crowd and goes right over to him, you know?
Annie Sargent: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: That’s the story, okay?
Annie Sargent: Spooky.
Elyse Rivin: Spooky, right?
Armor and Army Plans
Elyse Rivin: So from then on, for the rest of the time that she’s actually actively engaged in things with him, he listens to her, and what happens is that they have these meetings together with his, interestingly, he was married by this time, his mother-in-law, who believed her, and said to him, Charles VII, "Listen to her, she’s going to help you get your [00:22:00] crown back, get your, get Paris back."
And so she says to him, "I am going to lead the army." Now, of course, this is, we’re talking about a 15, 16-year-old, right?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: She’s never, she’s not a warrior, and she’s a woman, but uh-uh, she’s dressed in men’s clothes.
Annie Sargent: Ah, yes. Didn’t somebody buy her an armor?
Elyse Rivin: They gave her. I don’t know specifically if somebody bought it. They gave her armor. They gave her a banner, you know, a standard with a banner.
Annie Sargent: I think she made her own banner, though.
Elyse Rivin: It’s possible.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s possible.
Annie Sargent: I think she made her banner, and would go around with this banner that had both God and the king, and then they gave her an armor as well.
Elyse Rivin: And she cut her hair.
Annie Sargent: Ah.
Elyse Rivin: Well, yeah.
Annie Sargent: She was anorexic.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, how do you know that? Well, there’s documentation of it. She was very small. She was just about five foot tall, and very, very thin, and they say, there are documents, there are all kinds of documents that exist about her.
Annie Sargent: That’s true. Her life is very well [00:23:00] documented, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s very well documented. They said she never hardly ate. She was hyperactive. She was skinny as could be. She basically was that kind of a person. I mean, this was like, this was-
Annie Sargent: A barrel of nerves.
Elyse Rivin: … nerves and obsession in life.
Victory at Orléans
Elyse Rivin: So she basically convinces Charles VII to organize an army, and there were three soldiers, I can’t even remember their names off the top of my head, but there were three knights who were noblemen, who become her guardian angels. They are the ones who are really loyal to her and protect her, and they help her convince Charles VII to create a good army this time with knights.
And she says to them, "I will lead the army, and my energy…" Basically, what she’s telling them is that she’s got this mission from God, that she is going to lead this army and help them win the battle with the English.
And of course, they, half of them, I’m sure, think that [00:24:00] she’s absolutely out of her mind. They don’t let her run, she’s not in front. In fact, when the battle actually happens, to take back Orléans, she’s not in the front. She’s actually been put in the back. She’s not going to really fight. She doesn’t kill anybody. But she is crying, she’s basically giving the, she’s pushing them to fight.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, with her voice. Like, she’s-
Elyse Rivin: With her voice, you know.
Annie Sargent: Encouraging them. But having somebody who is that determined and that sure of herself, probably just gave them a lot of assurance. Like, "Yeah, she knows what she’s doing. We’re doing this."
Elyse Rivin: It seems like that is actually what happened. So they do manage to take back Orléans. They push back the English, who were of course extremely surprised, because up until that point, he’s been pretty ineffectual and fighting against the English. And they have a huge army. They’re much better equipped than the French are, because the French are not really unified, whereas the English really are [00:25:00] unified, and so there’s the big difference in size of the armies and everything else. So they manage to take back Orléans.
Crowning at Reims
Elyse Rivin: And Charles VII at this point says, "We have taken Orléans. Let us continue on to Paris." And she says to him, "No."
And what’s interesting is, of course, this is the documentation, and of course a lot of it is from the time period, but it’s interesting that he actually even listened to her. She says to him, "No, no, no, you don’t continue fighting right now. Now that you have taken back Orléans, which is symbolic, you go immediately to Reims and be-
Annie Sargent: To be crowned.
Elyse Rivin: … to be crowned. And therefore, nobody can take away the kingdom from you anymore. You will be officially the king," because the, Charles VI, his father, has been dead for about a year by this point. And so he listens to her, and she accompanies him to the cathedral in Reims, where…
Annie Sargent: And we should say that Reims is where the vast majority of French kings were [00:26:00] crowned. Only two of them was, were crowned in Notre Dame, I think.
Elyse Rivin: I think.
Annie Sargent: The rest of them, 45 or something, were crowned in Reims.
Elyse Rivin: And why? Because that is where Charlemagne was crowned.
Annie Sargent: There you go.
Elyse Rivin: There you go.
Annie Sargent: Very important city.
Elyse Rivin: Very important city, right? So he goes with his entourage to Reims. He is crowned and is now officially King of France. This is now Charles VII, King of France. And guess what?
War Not Over Yet
Elyse Rivin: He says to her, "Okay, you’ve helped me become king. Now what can I do to help your family?" And she says to him, "No, no, no, you don’t understand. The fighting is not over. The English are still on the western side of what is now France. They haven’t left and gone back across the channel. They still have Aquitaine and Anjou and everything."
Annie Sargent: She’s not done with kicking out the English.
Elyse Rivin: Right, she’s not done.
King Wants Peace
Elyse Rivin: There’s a misunderstanding, if you want to call it that, between Charles VII and Joan of [00:27:00] Arc at this point, he says to her, "I don’t want to fight anymore. I am now king. That’s what my objective was.
Now I’m going to start negotiating and making treaties with the Burgundians, with the English. I’m done. I’m done. I’m not going to do any more fighting." And she says to him, "No, no, no. No, no, no. You have to keep on fighting. You have to kick out the English."
Final Victory Then Dismissal
Elyse Rivin: She convinces him to do one more big battle. It turns out to be a battle in the region of what’s called the Beauce, which is where all the big wheat fields are. It’s basically between Orléans and Paris.
And he wins in this battle again, and it’s one of those battles where they are extremely outnumbered by the English, but he manages because she gives him some interesting strategies, and these knights that are really loyal to her are really in charge of taking care of this battle. They manage to win this battle, and then he says to her, "This is it. I’m done. I’m done. You can go home. You can do whatever you want. I’m going to give your family honors." He creates a title for [00:28:00] her brother. He gives the family the title of d’Arc, so that they are suddenly minor nobles. He basically says "goodbye."
Annie Sargent: Huh.
Elyse Rivin: "Goodbye."
Joan Goes Rogue
Annie Sargent: And she does not go.
Elyse Rivin: And she does not go. And she does not go. And what happens is she starts to become a nuisance in the sense that she wants to keep fighting. She is obsessed. She starts to create a minor army with much fewer soldiers, with these three knights that are extremely loyal to her, and she goes into battle with them two or three times, and each time, a lot of loss, and each time she basically loses the battle.
Captured And Sold
Elyse Rivin: And then finally, one day, in the midst of one of these battles that are basically pretty much futile, she gets captured.
And this is in 1430.
Annie Sargent: So by now she’s, what, 18?
Elyse Rivin: She’s 18.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: And she is [00:29:00] captured, but she’s not captured by the English. She’s captured by Jean de Luxembourg, the same man who was the man who took her to see Charles VII.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Because he is now loyal to Charles VII. He is a nobleman who is part of the royalty of France, and what they want is to get rid of her and have her stop being basically a interference and trying to create some kind of peace situation. And so he actually takes her as a prisoner.
Annie Sargent: So it’s not just that Charles VII didn’t help her, but it was one of his vassals that captured her.
Elyse Rivin: That’s correct. She was betrayed by the French.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: And he ransoms her off.
Annie Sargent: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: And originally, they were going to just ransom her off because Charles VII wanted basically for her to just stop, in modern terms, just saying bugging [00:30:00] him, you know, just, "You’ve done your duty. I’m trying to give you honors so that you will be acknowledged. Now you can go away." But what happens is the English turn to Jean de Luxembourg, and they say, "We’ll take her off your hands, and we will pay you a fortune." And he accepts.
Annie Sargent: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: So for, I tried to figure out how much that would be in modern times, but there was absolutely no way. I couldn’t figure it out. They say it was 10,000 tournois. I have no idea what that would be today, but let’s assume it was about a million or something like that, right?
Annie Sargent: Good money.
Elyse Rivin: Good money, right? He gives her over to the English.
Now, you have to remember, we’re talking about the English who are in France, who are on the land of France, right? This is not the English in England, huh? And gets rid of her.
And Charles VII basically does not want to have anything to do with her anymore. And so what they, the English [00:31:00] do, in order to get rid of her, because she’s still vociferous, she’s still claiming all of the land for the French king. She still keeps her big mouth going and all the rest of it, and she wants to fight, and she doesn’t give up.
Rouen Witchcraft Trial
Elyse Rivin: And so they decide that they’re going to have another ecclesiastic trial, but this time she’s going to be tried for witchcraft and heresy.
And in order to do so, they have a bishop in the city of Rouen, who is actually on the English side. I mean, he’s a French bishop, because that, they all did speak French, but he’s actually in the hands of the English. He works for the English.
And he creates a group of bishops to create this trial, and some of them are from other parts of the country as well. I mean, they’d, not just all from Rouen and stuff like that. And for three, over three months, they put her on this trial where they ask her all these questions, and one of the things that they do, and this is not just [00:32:00] true of her unfortunately, but it was true of lots of people at the time, but it wound up being one of the reasons that she eventually got executed, they keep questioning why she was wearing men’s clothing.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: And why did she cut her hair, and what was the witchcraft that she was using, and why did she claim that she was a messenger of God when she was working with an army? And they tried in every way possible over months and months and months of questioning to get her to give trick questions to get her to answer in an incorrect way. And guess what happens? There are documents that actually describe day by day what the questioning and answering was. The end of months of this trial, the bishops turn around to this Bishop Cauchon.
Annie: Cauchon like a pig?
Elyse Rivin: But not written Cauchon. It’s C-A-U-C-H-O-N, but it’s pronounced Cauchon.
Yeah. And they say, "There’s nothing. She’s not a heretic. She’s not a witch. She has [00:33:00] answered correctly and piously and in the right way every single question that we have asked. There is nothing we can do to condemn her." How’s that? How’s that after months, right?
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: They’re, she’s kept in this horrible dungeon the whole time. And the English were so determined to get rid of her because they are sure that without her they can take back France, right?
Condemned For Clothing
Elyse Rivin: They say, "Well, if we can’t get her on witchcraft, we’re going to have to get her on something else." And so they spend some time conferring, and they decide that this time they’re going to accuse her of heresy for being someone who dresses as a man.
Annie: What?
Elyse Rivin: She got condemned to death for being dressed as a man.
Annie: That’s insane.
Elyse Rivin: They told her that a normal woman would not cut off her hair, would not [00:34:00] wear men’s clothing, and would not go into battle.
Annie: Well, yeah, but she was Joan of Arc.
Elyse Rivin: But she was Joan of Arc. And so second time around, they go through the whole thing again with a whole bunch of bishops. It was the same Monsignor Cauchon, but I don’t know if the other bishops were the same. And this time, whether it was because they paid off some of the bishops or what, I don’t know, but this time they do condemn her.
Annie: Mm.
Elyse Rivin: They condemn her for heresy and for inappropriate behavior for a woman, which tends to be towards witchcraft. There’s a nuance of this. And they make her sign a statement, which she most likely could not actually read anyway, which basically says that she swears that she will never wear men’s clothes again. She will let her hair grow out. She will get married. She will have children. She will become a normal woman. She will become a normal human being, and that in the [00:35:00] case that that is what she does, that she would be liberated. So she signs this paper, and there is copies of her signature. You can actually see it on internet, copies of her signature. She’s naive.
Annie: Mm.
Elyse Rivin: She’s really naive.
Annie: She believes that they’re going to let her go.
Elyse Rivin: She believes that they’re going to let her go, and obviously she doesn’t have anybody helping defend her. Not particularly strong defense, right? They put her back in prison, and the documents say obviously they tricked her, because they took the document she signed. They changed the wording of it. They added some things to it. And then a few days later, they come to see her in the prison cell, and she’s wearing men’s clothes.
Annie: Oh.
Elyse Rivin: Now, what I read, I spent two days going back and forth reading all these documents. It is assumed that what happened is that somebody, after having her sign this paper, put the clothes in the cell, [00:36:00] and she just put them on because they were in the cell.
Annie: Maybe she didn’t have a choice?
Elyse Rivin: … She may not have had a choice. She probably assumed that if they gave those clothes to her that they were going to take her and bring her somewhere else some time afterwards.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s impossible to know. But this is how the English got her, and so they said, "Now we have proof that you are a heretic, and you are being condemned and being an imposter, impersonating a man."
Imagine, this is a woman after all these centuries who was actually killed because, not because she was fighting to take back the throne, which of course is the real reason, but because she was impersonating a man.
Annie Sargent: That is insane.
Burned At The Stake
Elyse Rivin: They build a pyre outside, and there is a big crowd.
Annie Sargent: That’s in Rouen.
Elyse Rivin: In Rouen, on the 31st of May of 1431, and she is burned alive.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And she’s burned in three times. [00:37:00] There’s, like, a whole ritual that goes involved with it. She asks for a cross. She asks for her banner. She says that she has lived and died in the name of God and for helping the French king, and she is burned, and she is burned alive. I mean, it’s probably one of the most excruciating ways of dying ever, you know?
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And her ashes, because she is convicted of heresy, are scattered, and that is the end of Joan of Arc.
Annie Sargent: Well, but not really because her life, I mean, her memory has gone on, and people were clearly taken by this personality and this amazing young person.
Exoneration And Sainthood
Elyse Rivin: So this is what happens 25 years later.
Annie Sargent: because they made her a martyr, so now she’s-
Elyse Rivin: When? In 1456, 25 years later, the new pope, pope named Callixtus III, he exonerates her-
Annie Sargent: Oh!
Elyse Rivin: … Of heresy. [00:38:00] He exonerates her of ever having been a witch, of ever having done anything bad. And so in her posthumous existence, she has entered into a period of sacrament, which eventually, eventually, of course, in the 19th century, leads her to be proposed for sainthood.
What’s really fascinating is not only is she exonerated 25 years later, but the crowds loved her. The women loved her everywhere, and she became instantly a folk hero of the population in general. And so she was never forgotten by the population in general. But what happened was, politically, she was basically put to rest, and it’s only in the post-revolutionary time, in the beginning of the 19th century, when there is a move to bring back a notion of the pride in the king and royalty, [00:39:00] that she’s brought back to public life, basically.
And there’s a writer who writes a book about her, who has found all this documentation and writes a book about her, and it’s from that point on that she has become so very, very famous. Now, the problem is she was given sainthood in 1920, so it took, it took a long time, let’s face it. You know, it took a very long time.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, but I mean, do they, do they claim that she performed miracles or?
Elyse Rivin: I went online to understand the difference between sacrament and sainthood. A sacrament is when you have performed one miracle, and sainthood is when you can be proven to have done more than one thing that is a sacrament. It’s very ambiguous to me.
National Symbol Politics
Elyse Rivin: The biggest thing that has happened, and why are there 20,000 statues today, is because starting in the middle of the 19th century, she became, she was used politically as a symbol of French nationalism. And starting with the war against the Prussians [00:40:00] in 1870, she became this, the image of being proud of being French.
Annie Sargent: Well, yeah. Now it was about kicking out the Prussians.
Elyse Rivin: Yes. That was about kicking out the Prussians. The problem is, ever since then, so we’re talking about for the last 150 years, she has gone back and forth and been used by every political group imaginable as a symbol, as a symbol of getting rid of the foreigners, or it’s a symbol of being proud of being French, or… So she’s been recuperated by absolutely everybody, every group, from left to right.
Annie Sargent: Right, because she’s famous. Everybody knows her name. Everybody knows that she was pretty great.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
And of course, in the 19th century, there were a whole lot of people of the very conservative wing of the Catholic Church who claimed her as theirs, but now she’s basically up… I mean, she’s up for grabs. Let’s put it that way.
Annie Sargent: Right. She’s the patron saint of France.
Elyse Rivin: She’s the patron saint of France.
Annie Sargent: People who pray, I’m sure, pray to her,
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: … to make our country better, I guess, [00:41:00] is what it is.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know. I mean, but what I find absolutely amazing is she really did do these things. She really did exist.
Annie Sargent: Right, because the Hundred Year War was won decisively by the French in the end. The English never got to take the French crown. France is France, and England is England. And there’s nothing, you know, there was a lot of animosity for a long, long time between the French and the English, but it worked out for both countries. Like, we don’t need to be one and the same.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Different is good.
Legacy And Farewell
Elyse Rivin: She really was, in her very short life, a pivotal person in the French being able to hold onto the kingdom and create what became a unified country. After her death, Charles VII went on to have a very long reign. He was king for 39 years, which is really a long time.
Annie Sargent: Was he a snake to other people in his life?
Elyse Rivin: No, [00:42:00] apparently. Well, I don’t think he was the most brilliant a king, but he signed treaties with the Burgundians. He brought the Armagnacs and all of the people in the south into the kingdom.The English made treaties. I mean,there were skirmishes. The 100 Years War officially ended in 1450, officially. And she was basically exonerated of all her sins in 1456.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: It’s really interesting, you know. The English went back across the channel for the most part. I mean, you know, there were little pockets, you know, that they were still claiming around Anjou and around Bordeaux, which they still claim, you know.
Annie Sargent: What? They still claim?
Elyse Rivin: Sure they still claim it, you know.
Annie Sargent: What?
Elyse Rivin: Yep. Uh, uh, I mean, but she really was the person in whatever the strangeness of her person as a human being with her visions and her voices, who mobilized the French to keep the country.
Annie Sargent: She captured their attention, and she was able to [00:43:00] capture their desire to get something done about the situation which they were suffering under. Because if your county or wherever you are living is constantly being threatened by another kingdom, going through and saying, "Oh, you belong to us instead," you know, I’m sure some of these people ended up paying tax to, or helping out, more than one king, which was … I mean, it was hard enough being, you know, living in the Middle Ages. A lot of these people had very little to their name. I mean, they were working hard, but that was about it. Once you stopped working hard, you were in abject poverty, and so it would have been really, really difficult. And it’s amazing that she captured people’s imagination and inspired them to kind of… il faut se ressaisir.
You know? You have to, just don’t give up.
Elyse Rivin: Just keep on going.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, keep going, keep doing your stuff. But it’s really terrible [00:44:00] that the king did not, you know…
Elyse Rivin: He used her.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: He used her. Just think of this. 20,000 statues of Joan of Arc exist, more, well, 20,000, maybe it’s 20,001, who knows?
800 biographies have been written, that are biographies, that are non-fiction. Hundreds of books have been inspired by her life that are fiction. There have been over 40 films. There have been operas. There’s theater. There are songs. All of this inspired by a little person who died at the age of 19 in the year 1431.
Annie Sargent: That’s surprising, yeah. And the king has long, I mean, long forgotten.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, long forgotten.
Annie Sargent: If you ask a French person, ‘Name the king that Joan of Arc helped bring back to the throne," I think you will have probably one out of 1,000 who knows.
Elyse Rivin: Who knows right. Exactly. [00:45:00] Exactly. And the only reason I know is because I did all this research that I had to do, and I finally went, "Oh, maybe this one will stay in my mind for a few days," you know? Seriously.
Annie Sargent: I mean, I’m always surprised. It doesn’t matter how small the church is, there is typically something dedicated to Joan of Arc. It doesn’t have to be a big statue, whatever. Could be a small painting. It could be a small side chapel or something.
But she is everywhere in France, so she really had a strong, I don’t know, she marked our culture in a very strong way, and the name Jeanne deserves to be used, continue to be used. It’s a nice name. It’s a good name.
Elyse Rivin: It’s a very nice name.
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Elyse Rivin: Yes.
Annie Sargent: So to all the Jeannes out there, yeah, you have a lot to live up to.
Elyse Rivin: You do.
Annie Sargent: Pick up a banner and go, woman!
Elyse Rivin: Go. [00:46:00] And don’t be afraid of wearing men’s clothes, you know?
Annie Sargent: That is insane as well. Men’s … What is it with people and clothing? Like?
Elyse Rivin: Well, in the Middle Ages, I mean, let’s face it, we’re talking about hundreds of years when, women, as soon as you were non-conformist in terms of anything in your behavior, your attitude, your clothing, your appearance, you were accused of being a witch.
Annie Sargent: I would have been accused of being a witch 100 times over because I’ve not worn very feminine clothing for a long time, and, you know, I’m a heavy woman, so you’d think, "Oh, she’s a guy."
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. But she was very frail. She was very slim.
Elyse Rivin: She was very frail. She was, you know, she was this little thing. She probably weighed, you know, 50 kilos.
She was just, she was a ball of energy. The documentation, there’s real documentation of all the trials, which is really interesting, and they say that at first she was really afraid, [00:47:00] but she never gave in to admitting to something that she didn’t think was the truth, you see. And so in the end, she died very courageously. I mean, it’s a horrendous way to die, but she died very courageously.
Annie Sargent: Thank you so much, Elyse, for bringing this woman to life. I really enjoyed this recording. You know, every time we do a big historical thing, you come through. You know your stuff.
Elyse Rivin: I have to say, you know, I thought I knew, but boy, this was fascinating to really read about. And I will give you the picture of a plaque about her getting out of this contract marriage which we’re going to post with the podcast.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, because back then, really if you were a woman, you didn’t have a choice. You had to get married. Your father said, "Marry this guy," and you had to marry this guy.
Elyse Rivin: That’s right.
Annie Sargent: She figured out how not to do that.
Elyse Rivin: She figured out how not to do that.
Annie Sargent: Amazing. Thank you, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: You are welcome. Au revoir.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
[00:48:00]
Thank you, Patrons
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
I don’t have any special shout-out for new patrons this week because I’m on a road trip, and I’ve pre-recorded this section of the podcast.
But thank you so much, patrons. I love you all. I would not have been able to keep going with this podcast for almost 600 episodes without the predictability of a monthly income with Patreon, so thank you so much.
Please join them as well. You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, who you know is also a vital part of this podcast, go to [00:49:00] patreon.com/elysart.
France Trip Services
Annie: If you’re planning a trip to France and want expert help, I do itinerary consults. You can give me a rough plan, or we can work on something from scratch together. I also have custom day trips around the southwest of France in my electric car, and I have my self-guided tours of Paris in the VoiceMap app that people enjoy a lot, and I love doing those as well.
Podcast listeners get a discount on these tours when you buy directly from my website. And for any of these things, go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique for the details.
Paris Airbnb Crackdown
Annie: Let’s talk about the Paris Airbnb crackdown.
There was a record fine and a new mayor who is on a mission. So if you’ve been following the Airbnb situation in Paris, I’ve certainly talked about it here quite a bit, here’s an update worth paying attention to, [00:50:00] especially if you’re planning to stay in a short-term rental in Paris.
A Paris court just handed down what officials are calling the largest fine ever issued against a short-term rental operator in the city, €585,000.
That’s not a typo. It’s a little more than half a million euros. Here’s what happened.
Record Fine Explained
Annie: A real estate company bought a building in the 9th Arrondissement in 2022. That building had been social housing meant for people in difficult financial situations. By the end of 2023, the company had converted the entire thing into 11 Airbnb listings without going through the required legal process to change the building’s use.
They also failed to put registration numbers on some of their listings and refused to hand over documents when the city inspector [00:51:00] asked for them.
Those extra violations pushed the base fine of €444,000 up to 585,000 total. On top of that, the court ordered them to stop operating immediately, and if they don’t comply, they’re looking at €1,000 per unit per day.
That’s €11,000 a day for the whole building. The city’s deputy mayor for housing called it a big victory because this is not some individual renting out a spare bedroom.
This was a professional operation running 11 units at once.
New Law and Mayor
Annie: Now, context matters here. Paris estimates it has around 25,000 illegal short-term rentals right now. The city has been ramping up enforcement. Fines totaled €1.3 million across all of Paris in 2023, 2.4 million in 2024, and they were already close to a [00:52:00] million just in the first few months of 2026.
A new law passed in November 2024, the Echaniz-Le Meur law, is what’s been giving authorities more teeth to go after operators like this.
And now Paris has a new mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire was elected late March 2026, taking over from Anne Hidalgo, who decided not to run for a third term.
Grégoire was her deputy for years, so the political direction hasn’t changed dramatically. But he came in with a clear focus on the housing crisis and announced the creation of a dedicated housing protection brigade just days before this ruling came down, and that’s not a coincidence.
Traveler Booking Tips
Annie: What does this mean for you as a traveler? If you’re booking an Airbnb in Paris, you need to know that illegal listings are being taken down, and when they go down, they won’t always go down with advance warning to guests. You could have a confirmed [00:53:00] booking that simply disappears, poof, gone.
My strong recommendation, if you’re booking short-term rentals in Paris, is to verify that the listing has a registration number. It should be displayed on the listing itself. That’s required by law. No number, no booking.
And honestly, for a city with as much quality hotel stock as Paris at multiple price points, it might just be easier to skip the rental platforms entirely.
Road Trip Itinerary
Annie: By the time you hear this, I’ve already left on my second road trip of 2026.
I’ll be heading to Metz and will take many stops along the way. Clermont-Ferrand, where I’ll meet with Andrew Manns, who is a tour guide in this area and who was on episode 518 of the podcast. He’s going to show me around his home base, which is wonderful.
Next stop, Dijon, for just an afternoon and evening.
I have ideas for stops along the way there too, but my goal is to spend a few hours in Dijon, so we’ll see. Then I’ll head to [00:54:00] Nancy, where I’ll be for five nights, and it’ll be my base for day trips from there. I haven’t decided exactly where, but there are a lot of options around there.
Finally, three nights in Metz, where my husband will join me by plane and train. He has wanted to attend a Toastmasters competition in Metz. That’s what was the start of this whole trip of mine. But he decided to fly because he doesn’t have the time. He’s working the rest of the time, and his work does not involve
him, visiting France, unfortunately for him. Then on my way home from Metz, I’ll drive through the Costco in Mulhouse because I want to. We only have three Costcos in France so far, and I have seen two of them in Paris.
There’s one in Mulhouse I want to see it too, and I’m going to be really close to it. Then I’ll go to Besançon for one night and Le Puy-en-Velay for another night, and I’ll share a few updates with patrons as I go along. Perhaps I’ll post a few photos on [00:55:00] Facebook as well, and I will also talk about it in the newsletter in the next few weeks.
I feel very lucky that my job is essentially visit France, every part of France. I love it. I love it.
Newsletter and Credits
Annie: And if you want to join in that newsletter, you can go to a browser and do joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcript.
Next Episode Teaser
Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode about life between two worlds.
This is a couple who bought an apartment in Nice, sight unseen, and it worked great, and they are living part-time in both places. It’s a great story. You just have to hear it.
Final Goodbye
Annie: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and [00:56:00] copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:57:00] [00:58:00]
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Episode PageCategory: French History