for greatness can be passed in the genes from parents to child, or if it can be developed in a child by parental example, then Joan was well-served in both her parents.74
High intelligence under stress is necessary in a military leader. The strongest unambiguous evidence of Joan’s s amazing powers of mind comes from the transcripts of her trial for heresy. From January to May 1431, over sixty of the most learned clerics in English-occupied France subjected her to an almost daily barrage of questioning. Illiterate Joan had no one to represent her or speak for her but herself. After being pushed to mental exhaustion in court each day, she was pushed to physical and emotional exhaustion each night by sadistic prison guards who mocked her and sexually molested her.75
The learned clerics sought to trap Joan with trick questions of theology so that her own answers would condemn her. The illiterate peasant answered with such consistent brilliance that she made the clerics look like fools. She forced the mastermind of these odious proceedings, Bishop Cauchon, to move the trial from public chambers to closed chambers. Amazingly, Joan’s superb answers found their way into the official record thanks to court scribes who sympathized with her.76 These pages, still intact in the archives today, are Joan’s self-portrait.
For example, Joan was asked if the saints who she claimed appeared to her hated the English. The trick in this question was that if Joan said "yes," she would be claiming that saints of the Church hated a people, who, in 1431, were still every bit as Catholic as the French. If she said "no," then she would destroy the credibility of her own mission to make war on the English. Joan adroitly answered of her saints ‘They love that which God loves and hate that which God hates."77 In another instance, she was asked if she was or was not in God’s grace. If she said that she was, the clerics were ready to hound her for the sin of presuming to know God’s mind. If she said that she was not, she condemned herself. She replied, speaking of being in God’s grace, "If I am not, may God bring me to it; if I am, may God keep me in it." The brilliance of this answer stunned the court.78 At still another point, she refused to answer a question because, she said, she had already answered the same question a week before. The scribe instantly said that she was mistaken. Joan challenged him to search back through the pages of the trial record. The scribe did so -- and Joan was proven right. With a spunk that was incredible under the circumstances, she jokingly told the scribe that if he made such a mistake again, she would pull his ears.79
Joan’s brilliance at her trial does not have a direct bearing on her skill as a military commander. Still, the ability to think quickly and creatively under conditions of horrific stress is essential in a successful leader of forces in battle. Joan’s conduct at her trial proves that she had gray matter in abundance to quickly master the rudiments of the art of war with no prior training
D’Alençon’s testimony (supported by Jean Chartier’s chronicle) that Joan was "magnificent" in placing the artillery may be misleading to people with no military experience.80 Magnificence in "placing" the artillery is not the same thing as magnificence in operating the artillery. A modern-day general does not need to know the complex "switchology" of operating the ballistic computer of a state-of-the-art tank. The specially trained crewmen of the tank are paid to have that skill. The general only needs to know the capabilities and limitations of that tank in doing damage to the enemy as he moves and places that tank, like a chess piece, on the chessboard of the battlefield. Likewise, Joan did not need to learn the technical minutiae of how to mix gunpowder for her artillery. Rather, she quickly had to grasp how the big guns should be positioned on the battlefield to do the most damage to the enemy -- for example, by shooting at the corners of square castle towers and at the center of round castle towers.81 Joan had the in