A Teenager Who Changed History

Joan of Arc accomplished in weeks what French armies had failed to achieve in years — and was burned at the stake at nineteen for it.

• Lifted the siege of Orleans in nine days and escorted Charles VII to his coronation at Reims, legitimizing his claim to the throne
• Convicted in a politically rigged trial, then declared innocent by a papal investigation in 1456
• Canonized as a saint in 1920, she remains France's most enduring national symbol

Her legacy has since been claimed by an extraordinary range of movements — monarchists, republicans, feminists, Catholics, and nationalists have all invoked her name.