MED0014 – Joan of Arc at the Siege of Orléans

Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans, 1429

By the autumn of 1428 Orléans was the last major stronghold held by Charles VII’s party on the Loire. Its fall would have opened the road south to the English and in all likelihood ended the war. The siege lasted more than six months and was never a complete encirclement: the English, too few to close the perimeter, held a ring of bastilles around the city, which allowed supply convoys through and, in the spring, a relieving army.

A young woman in a council of war

Joan reached Orléans on 29 April 1429. Her military role has been argued over for six centuries: she did not command in any technical sense and did not direct siege operations, but her presence altered the temper of a demoralised army and pushed the captains towards offensive action rather than waiting. Even hostile chronicles concede the effect. On 7 May, wounded in the shoulder by a bolt before the Tourelles bastille, she returned to the fighting the same day; the position fell that evening.

What the painting shows

Giuseppe Rava reconstructs the equipment of a man-at-arms of the early fifteenth century: full plate harness, sallet or bascinet, and thrusting weapons suited to a well-armoured opponent. Joan wore a white harness supplied at Tours, of the same type as the captains around her — which explains why contemporary accounts dwell so much on her recognisable figure with the banner in hand.

What followed

The English raised the siege on 8 May. In the following months the Loire campaign and the victory at Patay reopened the road to Reims, where Charles VII was crowned in July — the political objective Joan had pursued from the start. Captured at Compiègne in 1430, handed to the English and tried at Rouen, she was burned in 1431. The nullification trial of 1456 overturned the sentence.

Orléans in memory

The city has commemorated the lifting of the siege every 8 May since 1430, making it one of the oldest civic observances in Europe still kept. It is also why the episode holds a place in the French national narrative with no equivalent in English or Italian historiography.