Page 296 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Joan of Arc. Pictured here in a fifteenth-century design for a window for the cathedral of Orl􏰀eans, Joan of Arc is seen in a suit of armor entering the city. There are no known portraits of Joan made from life.
free France and have the dauphin crowned king. In February 1429, Joan made her way to the dauphin’s court, where her sincerity and simplicity persuaded Charles to allow her to accompany a French army to Orl􏰀eans. Apparently inspired by the faith of the peas- ant girl, the French armies found new confidence in themselves and liberated Orl􏰀eans, changing the course of the war. Within a few weeks, the entire Loire valley had been freed of the English. Joan had brought the war to a decisive turning point.
But she did not live to see the war concluded. Cap- tured by the Burgundian allies of the English in 1430, Joan was turned over first to the English and then to the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft. In the fif- teenth century, spiritual visions were thought to be inspired either by God or the Devil. Because Joan dressed in men’s clothing, it was relatively easy to con- vince others that she was in league with the “prince of darkness.” She was condemned to death as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1431. To the end, as the
flames rose up around her, she declared “that her voices came from God and had not deceived her.” Twenty-five years later, a new ecclesiastical court exon- erated her of these charges, and five centuries later, in 1920, she was made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church (see the Film & History feature on p. 259). In the end, Joan of Arc’s accomplishments proved decisive.
END OF THE WAR Although the war dragged on for another two decades, defeats of English armies in Nor- mandy and Aquitaine led to French victory. Important to the French success was the use of the cannon, a new weapon made possible by the invention of gunpowder. The Chinese had invented gunpowder in the eleventh century and devised a simple cannon by the thirteenth. The Mongols greatly improved this technology, devel- oping more accurate cannon and cannonballs; both spread to the Middle East by the thirteenth century and to Europe by the fourteenth.
The death of England’s best commanders and the instability of the English government under King Henry VI (1422–1461) also contributed to England’s defeat. By 1453, the only part of France that was left in England’s hands was the coastal town of Calais, which remained English for another century.
Political Instability
The fourteenth century was a period of adversity for the internal political stability of European governments. Although government bureaucracies grew ever larger, at the same time the question of who should control the bureaucracies led to internal conflict and instability. Like the lord and serf relationship, the lord and vassal rela- tionship based on land and military service was being replaced by a contract based on money. Especially after the Black Death, money payments called scutage were increasingly substituted for military service. Monarchs welcomed this development because they could now hire
CHRONOLOGY The Hundred Years’ War
Outbreak of hostilities 1337 Battle of Cr􏰀ecy 1346
Truce 1396
War renewed by Henry V 1415 Battle of Agincourt 1415 French recovery under Joan of Arc 1429–1431 End of the war 1453
258 Chapter 11 The Later Middle Ages: Crisis and Disintegration in the Fourteenth Century
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