Joan of Arc helped break the siege of Orléans, watched Charles VII crowned at Reims, and became one of the most famous figures in France.
Less than two years later, she was a nineteen-year-old prisoner on trial for heresy.
In Part II, we follow Joan from the failed assault on Paris to her capture at Compiègne, her desperate escape attempts, and the extraordinary trial that preserved some of her own words for history. We meet the clerics determined to dismantle her claims, hear Joan repeatedly turn their questions back on them, and explore the strange mix of politics, theology, warfare, and personal survival that ultimately led her to the stake at Rouen.
Why did Charles VII fail to get her back? What exactly were Joan’s mysterious “voices”? Why did her clothing become evidence against her? And how did an illiterate teenage prisoner manage to frustrate some of the most educated theologians in France?
This is the final chapter of Joan of Arc’s life—and the story of how the trial meant to destroy her helped preserve her voice for the next six hundred years.