"By my staff!" she exclaimed. "We are enough. I will go to my good friends at Compiegne (in France)." Thus, an 19-year-old young woman named Joan went off on May 23, 1430, with her army of 500 men to try to defeat the English invaders and their French sympathizers from Burgundy (also in France). "By nightfall she was a prisoner; a year later she died at the stake at Rouen," (The Maid of France Rides By: Compiegne, Where Joan of Arc Fought Her Last Battle, Celebrates Her Fifth Century, Inez Buffiington Ryan, National Geographic Magazine, November, 1932, p. 608.
A year and a half earlier, Joan, "a young peasant girl who, while tending her flocks, saw heavenly visions and heard heavenly voices bidding her rescue her Dauphin (king) and country," had started trying to reclaim large portions of France from the English (p. 608). At the time, the entire country of France was despondent and Charles had not yet been crowned king. After several of her astounding military victories against terrible odds, the king was crowned.
Many years after her death by fire, she was declared innocent, proclaimed a martyr, then canonized a Saint of the Catholic Church. I've always had a special fondness for St. Joan of Arc as she is my patron saint.
The town of Compiegne, and many other French towns where Joan fought, celebrates her last battle with the pageant of re-enactment every year. The 8-page color section in the article showed magnificent medieval costumes. Wouldn't it be fun to see this particular battle re-enacted!
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