uary 1429, the governor finally relented to Joan and sent her to Chinon with a small escort. Upon arriving at Chinon, she presented herself to Charles with her hair cut short and wearing a man’s clothes, though she made it clear to all that she was in fact a girl. By April, she persuaded Charles to provide her with a horse, a suit of armor, and weapons, and to place her at the head of the army marching to rescue Orléans. Upon arriving at Orléans, she proceeded to lead the army in an astounding series of victories that reversed the tide of the war. She was seventeen years old. In July 1429, she led the army and the timid Charles deep into English-occupied territory to the great cathedral at Rheims where France’s kings had been crowned for generations. With Joan in armor at his side, Charles received the crown. After thus becoming fully king, Charles sought to undercut Joan’s influence in any way he could. To Joan’s rage, he opened negotiations with the English and Burgundians and disbanded the army while much of France was still under hostile occupation. Joan continued to make war on her own as the independent captain of a small band of mercenaries. It was in this capacity that she was taken prisoner by enemy soldiers at the Siege of Compiègne in May, 1430. A church court of English-sponsored clerics convicted her of heresy and she died at the stake in May, 1431, at the age of nineteen. Charles resumed military operations and succeeded in driving the English from France by 1453, thus winning the Hundred Years’ War. In 1456, the Church revoked Joan’s conviction for heresy and proclaimed that she had been a good Christian and Catholic. The Church canonized her as a saint in 1920.2
Whatever people since Joan's time have tried to make of her, one thing remains unassailably true: her impact on history, all the political, ideological, and social changes that she knowingly or unknowingly jump-started, derive from her success in the realm of action. Everything in her legacy flows from her being in a shining suit of armor, astride a great war-horse, brandishing her banner and shouting "Follow me!" to an army of soldiers who adored her. She was a military leader. But what kind of military leader was she? Was she nothing more than a charismatic, but naive, inspirational mascot who was cynically used by the real military leaders to rally their demoralized troops? Or was she a true commander who made decisions and gave orders? Respectfully setting aside voices from God for the moment, how did an illiterate seventeen-year-old peasant girl with no military training lead an army that had known nothing but humiliation and defeat to sudden, repeated, and decisive victories?
Before attempting to answer how Joan did what she did as a military leader, it is first necessary to reach a conclusion as to what she did. Modern scholars disagree on the "what" before they even get to the "how." Edouard Perroy, in his book The Hundred Years War, implies that Joan was nothing but an inspirational figurehead, a sort of all-army "cheerleader."3 Frances Gies, in her Joan of Arc: The Legend and the Reality, specifically cites Perroy in order to take issue with him. She maintains that Joan was a true war captain who listened and spoke in war councils, who advocated courses of action, and who made decisions and gave orders.4
Any attempt to find where the truth lies between the poles of Perroy and Gies must of course return to the firsthand sources. In the case of Joan of Arc, scholars are richly blessed by the great volume and detail of the accounts of Joan by those who knew her personally -- accounts that have been kept scrupulously intact to this day. Most of what we know about Joan comes from the transcripts of her two trials. In 1431, Joan, at that time a prisoner of war of her English enemies, was subjected to a Church trial for heresy. The trial was a political sham, conducted by turncoat French clerics who were partisans of the English and who were dependent on English support to maintain their privileged positions. To no one’s surprise, they found Jo