CHAPTER 4: Turning Point
The tide of the Hundred Years’ War, after decades of devastation, began to shift in the late 1420s. For years, English fortunes had soared, culminating in the Treaty of Troyes in 1420—a pact that named Henry V of England heir to the French throne. The French king, Charles VI, broken by madness, was sidelined; Paris fell under English control, its streets echoing with foreign boots. But beneath the surface, resistance smoldered. The dauphin Charles, disinherited and exiled, rallied loyalists in the south. France was fractured, its people weary, hungry, and desperate. The countryside lay scarred: villages torched, fields trampled into mud by armies, the air thick with the scent of smoke and rot.
Nowhere was the struggle more desperate than at Orléans. The city, battered and besieged, stood as the last major barrier to an English advance into the heartland of France. English forces, commanded by the steely John, Duke of Bedford, had encircled the city, their banners fluttering in the chill wind, the thunder of hammers as engineers raised wooden towers and siege engines along the perimeter. The defenders, gaunt and feverish, manned the battered walls as supplies dwindled. Inside Orléans, streets were choked with rubble. The stench of disease hung over crowded churches where the wounded and sick groaned on straw pallets. Rats scurried in the shadows, feasting on scraps. Each day, townspeople watched the horizon anxiously, scanning for any sign of relief. The city’s bells rang out warnings as English cannons boomed, stones and arrows raining down, splintering stone and bone alike.
On cold nights, the flickering fires of English camps could be seen beyond the walls, their smoke trailing into the dark sky. In the trenches, rain turned earth to sucking mud, boots and bodies alike lost in the mire. Frostbitten fingers struggled to notch arrows, and men shivered in damp cloaks, haunted by the cries of comrades struck down by disease as much as by steel. For those trapped inside, hunger gnawed with a cruel persistence; bread was rationed, and horses were slaughtered for food. Fear and exhaustion weighed heavily, yet surrender meant ruin.
Then, in 1429, a miracle appeared from the most unlikely of corners. A teenage peasant girl from Domrémy, Joan of Arc, arrived at the gates of Orléans, clad in borrowed armor and bearing a standard. Her very presence electrified the city. Chroniclers recorded how hope surged through the defenders; men who had resigned themselves to death now gripped their weapons with new resolve. Hope, once a distant memory, flickered anew on gaunt faces. The English, who had swept aside all resistance for years, hesitated for the first time.
The relief of Orléans was a whirlwind of violence and courage. Joan led sorties against the English lines, her courage contagious, the white folds of her banner visible amid the chaos of battle. The clangor of swords and the screams of the wounded filled the air. On muddy fields littered with spent arrows and broken shields, French soldiers pressed forward, following Joan’s lead. At the bastille of Les Tourelles, she was struck by an arrow, and for a moment, panic rippled through her followers. Yet Joan refused to leave the field. Blood seeped from her wound, staining her armor, but she rode again, urging the men onward. The English, unnerved by her resolve and the sudden ferocity of the French attacks, faltered. On May 8, 1429, the siege was broken. Bells pealed across France, and the spell of English invincibility was shattered.
The cost was immense. The fields around Orléans were strewn with the dead and dying. Mothers searched for sons among the fallen, the muddy ground streaked with crimson and black. Survivors staggered through the smoke, faces streaked with tears and grime. The French, though victorious, mourned their losses, aware that each triumph exacted a bitter price.
Yet the consequences rippled outward. Joan’s victories at Patay and elsewhere opened the road to Reims, where the dauphin was crowned Charles VII. The coronation was heavy with symbolism: in the great cathedral, sunlight filtered through stained glass onto the battered faces of those who had endured years of war. For many, the moment was overwhelming. Some wept openly, overcome by a sense of deliverance. The legitimacy of the French cause, so long in doubt, was affirmed. English garrisons, once seen as unassailable, now found themselves isolated as towns and castles switched allegiance. The war’s momentum had turned.
But triumph bred new dangers. Joan was captured by Burgundian allies of the English in 1430 and handed over. Her trial in Rouen was a spectacle of cruelty—shackled and alone, she faced learned men who twisted her words and demanded she recant. Flames licked the stake as she was condemned and burned. The execution, intended to break French morale, instead transformed her into a martyr. Her ashes scattered, her memory fueled resistance for years to come, her courage a rallying point for the oppressed.
Meanwhile, the English crown, weakened by the death of Henry V and the minority of Henry VI, descended into factional strife at home. The cost of endless war drained the exchequer, while discipline in the ranks collapsed. In English camps, men grumbled over unpaid wages and rotten provisions, their loyalty fraying. Across the Channel, Charles VII, emboldened by victory, reformed his armies, introducing standing companies of professional soldiers and new artillery that would soon batter down the walls of English-held towns. The French people, once bowed by defeat, now carried themselves with wary hope.
The end was not immediate. In the mud and blood of Normandy and Gascony, the English retreated before a rising French tide. Peasants, battered by years of famine and violence, watched as the invaders withdrew, leaving behind scarred land and ruined harvests. The war, once a distant thunder, now pressed on every doorstep.
With the martyr’s ashes scattered and the crown reclaimed, the world braced for the last spasms of violence—the agony before the peace. The Hundred Years’ War, twisted by suffering and heroism, neared its reckoning.