Let’s start with the story most folks “know,” about the young, illiterate shepherdess and would-be saint.
In 1425, in the rural French village of Domrémy, 13-year-old Jehanne began hearing voices. At first, they instructed her simply to be pious. But with a divided France at war with England, the disinherited French heir to the throne (aka, the Dauphin) holed up with his supporters (the Armagnacs) in Chinon, and the English and their allies (the Burgundians) gaining territory, there was work to be done. Joan’s voices told her to obtain an army, lift the siege at Orléans, and lead the Dauphin to Reims to be crowned. On God’s orders, she was to unite the French, and drive the English out.
Around the age of 16, she set out to do just that. In May of 1428, Joan convinced her mother’s cousin to take her to Vaucouleurs. Somehow, Joan persuaded its captain (Robert de Baudricourt), to give her a horse and some men, so that she might travel — through enemy territory — to Chinon Castle. For the trip and task ahead, she cut her hair and dressed as a boy. At Chinon, Joan won over the Dauphin by correctly identifying him in the crowd, and sharing a “sign” that only God (and he) would know. That May, her army lifted the months-long Siege of Orléans, and on July 17th, 1429, the Dauphin was crowned in Reims.
Then the wheels came off. Joan was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, imprisoned, “tried,” and found guilty of heresy by a pro-English ecclesiastical court. In 1431, Joan was burned at the stake. The Dauphin did nothing. 25 years later, a rehabilitation trial would exonerate her posthumously. 460 years later, the Catholic Church dubbed her a saint.