THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Torn apart by the Hundred Years War, 15th-century France was desperate for a miracle. Half the country wished to throw in its lot with the English; the rest was led by an ineffectual and unenthusiastic Dauphin, whose own mother had joined the pro-English side against him. Where could he turn to for help?

The answer lay deep in the countryside of Lorraine, where an illiterate, 17-year-old peasant girl had been told by the saints that it was her destiny to save France. Dressed in men's clothes, she rode to the Dauphin and convinced him that she could defeat the English at the siege of Orléans and, spurred on by celestial voices, she did just that. To the adoring French, her powers clearly came from God; to the infuriated English they were from the devil, and they did not rest until she had been tried as a witch and burnt at the stake.