Biography of Joan of Arc by: Allen Williamson. These provide us with vivid eyewitness accounts from the people who knew her; correspondence from the commanders; the letters she herself dictated to scribes; and minuscule details such as the amount of oats bought for her horses and the names of many of the rank-and-file soldiers in the army. Her life is therefore reasonably well documented. This is a brief outline of that life; click here for a much longer version.
Joan of Arc was born on January 6th around the year to Jacques d'Arc and his wife Isabelle in the little village of Domremy, within the Barrois region now part of "Lorraine" on the border of eastern France. The events in France during these years would set the stage for Joan's later life and the circumstances surrounding her death. Although at the time of her birth a truce was still in effect between France and England, an internal war had erupted between two factions of the French Royal family which would make it easier for the English to re-invade.
One of his supporters, a pro-Burgundian clergyman and English advisor named Pierre Cauchon, would later arrange her conviction on their behalf. While the French remained divided into warring factions, diplomats failed to extend the truce with England.
King Henry V, citing his family's old claim to the French throne, promptly invaded France in August of and defeated an Armagnac-dominated French army at the battle of Agincourt on October 25th. The English returned in , gradually conquering much of northern France and gaining the support in of the new Burgundian Duke, Philip III, who agreed to recognize Henry V as the legal heir to the French throne while rejecting the rival claim of the man whom Joan would consider the rightful successor, Charles of Ponthieu later known as Charles VII , the last heir of the Valois dynasty which had ruled France since Joan indicated that it was around , when she was twelve, that she began to experience visions which she described as both verbal communication as well as visible figures of saints and angels which she could see and touch.
Her own testimony as well as a Royal document say that on at least two occasions specific other persons could see the same figures. She identified these visions as St. Catherine [of Alexandria], St. Margaret [of Antioch], the Archangel Michael, occasionally Gabriel, and large groups of angels on some occasions.
