Heroes and Legends Documentary Channel Podcast
Heroes and Legends is a channel dedicated to exploring the lives and stories of great and inspiring individuals that have made an impact on history, culture or our way of life. Some of these may be little known to the wider world, even though they impacted significantly on the destinies of their own people. Others may have been condemned unfairly by history and deserve to have their contributions reviewed. We hope that by bringing their stories to light, we can all learn from their experiences, be inspired by them and enrich the tapestry of knowledge that exists outside the narrative of our own culture.
Heroes and Legends Documentary Channel Podcast
Ep. 18. Joan of Arc: The Girl Who Crowned a King and Saved a Nation
Joan of Arc; the Maid of Orleans; Jeanne D'Arc, Jehanne la Pucelle: she goes by many names. A provincial French peasant girl, barely in her teens, living in relative poverty, illiteracy and complete subordination during a time of total war and medieval brutality. Imagine this traumatised though deeply pious child having visions of angels and saints, and being commanded by them to seek out the dauphin (the French word for Crown Prince) and convince him to let her lead his demoralised army and liberate their kingdom from a powerful enemy. Most people then, as now, would have thought her at best, mentally ill. But so determined was she to carry out her mission, that no amount of opposition, discrimination or humiliation was going to stand in her way. Never taking NO for an answer, she eventually got her audience with the dauphin, she also got her army, and with it, proceeded to blaze her way across France, inspiring troops and civilians alike to fight on against overwhelming odds and turn the tide of war against England finally in their favour; always leading from the front and being herself seriously wounded on multiple occasions. This naïve teenager would soon wipe out the celebrated army of English longbowmen that had so humiliated her country at Crecy and Agincourt, such that it would take a generation for them to appear in force again on any battlefield. She would live to see her king, Charles VII crowned, only to suffer capture, a show trial and a horrible demise at the hands of the English; based entirely on her being a woman daring to participate in a man’s world.
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