JOAN OF ABC (Fr. JEANNE D'ARC), the MAID OF ORLEANS, was the daughter of respectable peasants, and was b. in 1412, in the village of Domremy, in the depA•tment of Vosges, France. She was taught, like other young women of her station in that age, to sew and to spin, but not to read and write. She was distinguished front other girls by her greater simplicity, modesty, industry, and piety. When about thirteen years of age she believed that she saw a flash of light, and heard an unearthly voice, which enjoined her to be modest, and to be diligent in her religious duties. The impression made upon her excitable mind by the national distresses of the time soon gave a new character to the revelations which she supposed herself to receive, and when fifteen years old she imagined that unearthly voices called her to go and fight for the dauphin. Her story was at first rejected, as that of an insane person; but she not only succeeded in making her way to ,the dauphin, but in persuading him of her heavenly mission. She assumed male' attire and warlike equipments, and with a sword and a white banner she put herself at the head of the French troops, whom her example and the notion of her heavenly mission inspired with new enthusiasm. On April 29, 1429, she threw her self, with supplies of provisions, into Orleans, then closely besieged by the English, and from the 4th to the 8th of May made successful sallies upon the English, which resulted in their being compelled to raise the siege. After this important victory the national ardor of the French was rekindled to the utmost, and Joan became the dread of the pre viously triumphant English. She conducted the dauphin to Rheims, where he was crowned, July 17, 1429, and Joan, with many tears, saluted him as king. She now wished to return home, deeming her mission accomplished; but Charles importuned her to remain with his army, to which she consented. Now, however, because she no longer heard any unearthly voice, she began to have fearful forebodings. She continued to accompany the French army, and was present in many conflicts, till, on May 24, 1430, she threw herself, with a few troops, into Compiegne, which the Burgunalan forces besieged; and being driven back by them in a sally, was taken prisoner and sold by the Burgundian officer to the English for a smn of 10,000 francs. Being conveyed to Rouen, the head-quarters of the English, she was brought before the spiritual tribunal of the biShop of Beauvais as a sorceress and heretic; and after a long trial, accompanied with many shameful circumstances, she was condemned to be burned to death. She recanted
her alleged errors at the stake, and expressed penitence, in the hope of having her pun ishment commuted into perpetual imprisonment. But this did not accord with the views of those in whose power she now was. Words which fell from her when sub jected to great indignities, and her resumption of male attire when all articles of female dress were carefully removed from her, were made grounds of concluding that she had relapsed, and she was again brought to the stake, on May 30, 1431. and burned. Her family, who had been ennobled upon her account, obtained, in 1440, a revisal of her trial; and in 1456 she was formally pronounced to have been innocent.
Few facts in history scent better authenticated than the death of "the Maid "at Rouen in 1431, and yet grave doubts have been raised on the point. There was a popu lar belief at the time that some one had been executed in the place of Joan; and many pretended Maids appeared, who, however, were punished as impostors. But a father Vignier, in the 17th c., found among the archives of Metz a paper purporting to be written at the time, and giving an account of the arrival at Metz, on May 20, 1436, of the Maid Jeanne, who was at once recognized by her two brothers, and was subsequently married to a Sheer do Hermoise. Nignier afterwards found in the family muniment chest of a M. des Armoise, in Lorraine, a contract of marriage between "Robert des Armoise, Knight, with Jeanne D'Arey, surnamed the Maid of Orleans." In addition to this there was found, in 1740, among the archives of the Maison de Ville of Orleans, under the dates 1435-80, a record of• certain payments to a messenger bringing letters from Jeanne the Maid, and also to her brother John du Lils or Lys. (De Lys was the name by which the family of D'Arc was ennobled.) A subsequent entry, Aug. 1, 1439, records a gift on the part of the council of the city for services rendered by her at the Quicherat's Condamnation et Mhabilitation de Jeanne d' Are (1850); Delo pierre's Doute Ristorique (1855); Wallon's d' Arc (1867); Molaudon's Premiere Expedition de Jeanne d' Are (1874).