Cross-dressing may have helped her maintain her virginity by deterring rape [326] and signaling her unavailability as a sexual object; [327] scholars have stated that when she was imprisoned, wearing men's clothes would have only been a minor deterrent to rape as she was shackled most of the time. Public heresy was a capital crime, [242] in which an unrepentant or relapsed heretic could be given over to the judgment of the secular courts and punished by death. On 23 May 1430, Joan accompanied an Armagnac force which sortied from Compiègne to attack the Burgundian camp at Margny, northeast of the town. Less than a decade after her rehabilitation trial, Pope Pius II wrote a brief biography describing her as the maid who saved the kingdom of France.

In July 1428, the English had started to surround Orléans and had nearly isolated it from the rest of Charles's territory by capturing many of the smaller bridge towns on the Loire River. In July, Domrémy was raided by Burgundian forces [61] which set fire to the town, destroyed the crops, and forced Joan, her family and the other townspeople to flee. The Duke of Burgundy began to reclaim towns which had been ceded to him by treaty but had not submitted. Five days after she first picks up a sword, she can take on an armoured knight who has done nothing but train with such weapons since childhood. Her Joan is a riotous tomboy, a hot-headed adolescent and a decidedly unsaintly soldier – and is all the more inspiring for it.Although Joan's cross-dressing was used to justify her execution, the church's position on it was not clear.

Even so, when de Conte was but five, his native village was devastated and his family massacred by a Burgundian raiding party. After Joan's execution, her role in the Orléans victory encouraged popular support for her rehabilitation. After the coronation, Joan requests permission to attack Paris, saying that the move would cripple the English forces. At Poitiers, when she was asked to show a sign demonstrating this claim, she replied that it would be given if she were brought to Orléans. Jeanne D'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, As Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents.In graceful prose, occasionally over-seasoned with similes, and using the present tense, the language of the eternal now, Chen suspends Joan in a liminal space where her historical visceral reality, her agency and the mystery of her unearthly gifts can coexist. Essay on the Trial of Jeanne d'Arc, Dramatis Personae, Biographical Sketches of the Trial Judges and Other Persons Involved in the Maid's Career, Trial and Death". In this moving account by master storyteller Michael Morpurgo, Joan of Arc’s extraordinary story is brought to life as never before. Both narratives are exceptionally well written, and although I have very limited knowledge of the subjects, they kept me riveted.