Themes and issues

Abstract

Joan of Arc was born in about 1412 or 1413 in the village of Domrémy on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne in what is now North-Eastern France. During her childhood, the country around her home was repeatedly ravaged by rival armies during the later stages of the Hundred Years War between England and France. The war had begun in 1337 when Edward III of England laid claim to the French crown through his mother, Isabella of France, but it had its origins in territorial disputes stretching back over two centuries. Events tended to favour the English who won two great victories: Crécy, under Edward III in 1346, and Agincourt, under Henry V in 1415. After Agincourt the Burgundians formed an alliance with the English, and in 1428 their united army, which already controlled large areas of Northern France, laid siege to Orleans as a first step to the conquest of the South.