Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d'Arc, also called the Maid of Orleans, a patron saint of France and a national heroine, led the resistance to the English invasion of France in the Hundred Years War. She was born the third of five children to a farmer, Jacques d'Arc and his wife Isabelle in the town of Domremy on the border of provinces of Champagne and Lorraine. Her childhood was spent attending her father's herds in the fields and learning religion and housekeeping skills from her mother. Both parents were intensely pious.
When Joan was about 12 years old, she began to hear "voices" of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, believing them to have been sent by God. These voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her hair, dress in man's uniform and to pick up the arms.
By 1429, the English, with the help of their Burgundian allies, occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry V of England was claiming the French throne.
Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin's forces, and then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops to command and the rank of captain. At the battle of Orleans Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English. She continued fighting the enemy in other locations along the Loire. Later, Joan persuaded the dauphin that he should be crowned Charles VII. At the coronation she was given a place of honor next to the king.
In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen to be tried for witchcraft, heresy and for wearing male clothing, which was considered an offense against the church. Joan was convicted and on May 30, 1431 she was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.
In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.

Joan of Arc, a peasant girl, changed the course of history by turning the tide of the Hundred Years War. No person of the Middle Ages, male or female, has had more written about them than Joan of Arc. She has been portrayed as a saint, a heretic, a religious zealot, a seer, a psychologically demented teenage, a proto-feminist, an aristocratic wanna-be, the savior of France and even as a Marxist liberator.
But she was first and foremost a military leader. The author quotes original sources (which he translated himself with footnotes in the back) showing how she became a soldier without a sword or armor or even a horse – but he puts it into the context of the period - neither did many military leaders. She practiced her horsemanship and the use of the sword, she learned how to sign her name (she never learned to read or write) and she achieved her goal – to unify unoccupied France.
Although uneducated in the ways of arms and armies, she seemed to understand what made men fight and to inspire them to victory.
"Joan of Arc was a soldier, plain and simple." The author contends that if this simple fact is understood, her other characteristics also become explained… AND "if one an understand Joan’s military purpose and character, one can understand France's’ reversal of the Hundred Years War.
No other book has been devoted to Joan of Arc’s capabilities as a military leader despite being the central reason for her fame or infamy. That is what this book does