On this date in 1429...

[Deep13]

...the French army under the command of Jeanne D'Arc raised the English seige at Orleans and reversed the tide of French losses in the Hundred Years War. Two years earlier Jeanne D'Arc was an illiterate peasant girl of perhaps 15 years who may never have even seen a soldier before. By 1429 she was commander in chief of the French Army and was charged with reclaiming France for the French crown. Her tactics are best described as aggressive, direct, violent and reckless. Her men followed her because they believed that she was directed by God to deliver France from her enemies.

The next year she was captured. Jeanne was betrayed by the king she installed and after an illegal trial was burned at the stake in English-occupied Rouen on May 30, 1431. Following the French victory in W.W. I, she was cannonized in 1920 as St. Jeanne D'Arc, matron saint of France and of the French army.

http://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_short_biography.html

[Squatch]

1. As the flames rose to her Roman nose and her Walkman started to melt

Quick...name the band!

[SteppingRazor]

2. The Smiths ... c'mon, gimme a tough one!

;)

[Squatch]

3. OK...try this one

If you are a chucky
Nobody chucky from me
If you are a chucky, a chucky
Nobody chuck from me, Yea

:evilgrin:

[SteppingRazor]

5. Huh ... I dunno.

:shrug:




:P

[Squatch]

6. LOL. Damn. I was trying to be sneaky.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Ever notice how much stock we put in the victors?

Joan of Arc's a great hero because the French slaughtered the English at Orleans ... but in the exact same war, Henry V is a hero because he slaughtered the French at Agincourt.

Who's the bad guys here?

[Deep13]

7. To the French, Henry V was the butcher of Agincourt.

There is no reason why France needed an English king beyond Hank's own ego. I find the justification for the invasion given at the beginning of Shakespeare's play to ring pretty hollow.

[bleedingheart]

8. aside from Shakespeare...

the reason the English were intent on ruling France was because most of the English nobility were of Norman extraction then throw in the fact that Eleanor of Aquitaine brought to the English throne a good chunk of what is now French soil...Henry II was basically king of England and a fairly large portion of what is today France..

The problem was that to rule England you needed to be in England and to rule the English holdings in France...you needed to be in France...and trusting siblings to govern in your stead wasn't always a good idea.

So over time the French took the land from the English through marriage and conquest..but even so, the English monarchs persisted in pursuing their claims to "their lands" in France.