Dan Snow's History Hit - Joan of Arc

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the age of 19. It is safe to say that few teenagers have had as big an impact on Anglo-French history as Joan of Arc. Joining the podcast to talk about this remarkable figure is the author and historian Juliet Barker making her podcast debut! She guides Dan through Joan's rise from an ordinary peasant to the figurehead of the French army, her remarkable strength of character her faith, her military role and ultimately her capture, trial and execution. 

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. On May the 30th, 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake 690 years ago today when this podcast is first broadcast. She was 19 years old. Few teenagers have had as big an impact on Anglo-French history as Joan of Arc. And to talk about this remarkable woman, I'm joined by Juliet Barker, a remarkable historian. Years ago, I read her book on Agincourt, her book on the English attempted conquest of France, and I've been a devoted follower of Juliet ever since. She appears on this podcast, as you'll hear, her first time ever on a pod. So this is her debut. I'm honoured that Juliet Barker is debuting

on this pod. And I'm sure some of my competitors do listen to this pod. She'll be snapped up soon and she'll start appearing elsewhere. But you know what? Good, because she's brilliant. She needs to get as wide an audience as possible. So we're about to talk Joan of Arc. Before I do so, if you are interested in medieval history this period, you can check out Eleanor Janneger's wonderful series on medieval lives over on historyhit.tv. You simply go to History Hit, the world's best history channel. You sign up to a subscription. You get access to Netflix for history, all those hundreds of hours of documentaries, hundreds of pods. It's a wonderful thing. And because we're still marking the 80th anniversary of the sinking of Bismarck,

if you use the code BISMARCK at checkout until tonight, the night of Sunday the 30th, you get 50% off the first three months. So I urge you to go and do that. Use the code BISMARCK. But in the meantime, everyone, here is Juliet Barker talking Jeanne. Juliet Barker, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. My very first podcast.

Well, I cannot believe this is your first podcast. What a coup for us. This is great. I read your books with such fascination the minute they came out. Joan of Arc, if it wasn't well attested, you'd think the story was almost made up. It does sometimes feel like that, isn't it? She's such an iconic figure and someone that, in a way, you feel is very relatable because she's this young girl and she's doing wonderful things. But on the other hand, there is such a broad stretch of acres between her times and ours that in many ways we can't understand how and why she got where she did at the time and how and why she was so successful. And I think this has been the thing that's really interested people for so long.

For me, the great interest in her really is that she is probably the best documented life that we have of a young medieval girl who isn't a noble woman. She's the daughters of peasants. She comes from a very humble background. And yet here she is involved in the major events of her time. And not only that, but her life is documented in such detail. So tell us, quite apart from her future as a military commander, what do we know about her childhood? She had a very ordinary peasant upbringing.

She lived in a little village called Don Rémy, which was on the borders of France in Lorraine, that sort of area that was always disputed and still has been disputed for many centuries since. She was surrounded by lands that belonged to the Duke of Burgundy or owed allegiance to the Duke of Burgundy. And she's brought up in the midst of civil war because throughout, from before she was born, actually, France had been torn apart by this war between the Duke of Orléans and his followers who were known as the Armagnacs and the Duke of Burgundy, who were the Burgundians. And little Don Rémy was a tiny village, but it was a little Armagnac enclave surrounded by Burgundians. And so she was very much

at the forefront of the war that was going on throughout this period. So you think she may have been a victim of that war? You think she should have had direct experience of violence? We know that she had that experience, yes. Burgundian soldiers regularly raided into the area. Her village had to pay for protection from a local castellan to keep the Burgundians off their lands. We know that soldiers came and raided several times, burnt the village down, destroyed the village. In 1428, which is literally the year before she becomes this iconic figure who goes off to France to meet her king, the village is actually attacked and sacked by Burgundian soldiers. I mean, it's a common experience throughout France. And in one way, that makes her a very sympathetic figure

for others of her class, because she went through exactly what everybody else did. because she went through exactly what everybody else did. So this young woman was no naive provincial innocent. She was likely to have been a deeply traumatised survivor of war and perhaps war crimes. I suspect so. It was always said that her father had said that he dreamt that she was going to be taken off by soldiers, that she would leave the village with soldiers.

And people have interpreted that since then as being, you know, she was going to go to France and become the figure that we all know today. But in actual fact, I suspect it's probably that he just feared she would be carried off and raped and abducted by marauding soldiers, which was a common theme of her life. But the interesting thing is she also had the ordinary things that went on in village life. Her mother taught her the standards of the faith, how to say her paternoster and the credo. She was brought up to sew and to weave in the household. She was a domestic. She knew know that from a very young age. She went regularly to the church in the next village and was heavily involved in village life and the life of faith. When do we get the first clue that she is going to step on to a bigger stage? When did she become politicised, if that's the right word?

Politicised, if that's the right word. I think politicised sums it up because that is what her entire career is. It's politicised by one side or the other. I think she really steps onto the stage in about 1428 when she goes over to the neighbouring town of Vauclure, which is a castle that was held by one of the René d'Anjou's captains, Robert de Baudricourt. And she goes there with the express purpose of telling him that she wants to be taken to see the king of France, to give him a message from God. And he sends her packing. He sends her off with a flienerier, not once, but twice.

And he tells the people who've brought her that they ought to give her a good hiding and take her home again. The third time she goes, he gives in. But what's really interesting is that by that stage, she's become a figure that people recognize in Vauclure. The people there rally around her. And for instance, they give her a place to stay. They provide her with clothing. They provide her with gifts, and they're on her side. And already you can see that she has this appeal to the ordinary man and woman who is suffering, as her family had suffered in the wars that were tearing France apart. I was reading a wonderful book together on the various crises of the 17th century, and you get in these periods of extraordinary hardship and turmoil,

you do get these kind of messianic figures emerging. Listening to you talk about, maybe it's not that strange that these traumatised communities look towards, you find it in China, you find it in the Middle East in that period, that you look towards these people who appear to be sort of touched by God. And so maybe it's not that surprising that someone like this emerges in this terrible period. Well, that's something that really interests me because I always thought she was a one-off. And what you immediately discover is that actually there were

many other examples of women, and they're nearly all women, who were just like her. Women who were excluded from the church by their sex, they're not allowed to be part of the church in terms of priesthood, but women who nevertheless see visions and are holy women. There were lots of women at this time, holy women who came from humble backgrounds and who came to speak to power. And they came to see the king or to the biggest religious figure that was in the area to try and bring a peace to that war-torn country. And you see it with all sorts of saintly figures like Bridget of Sweden, for instance. In France itself, there was a lady called Marie Robin, Eden, for instance. In France itself, there was a lady called Marie Robin, who came from the south of France, went to see the King of France and told him what for and what he should be doing to restore

peace. But in one of her visions, she said that she has been presented with a great heap of armor. And she was absolutely terrified because she thought she was going to have to put it on. armour. And she was absolutely terrified because she thought she was going to have to put it on. But her vision told her that she would not worry because she was not going to wear this armour. There was going to be another woman, a Pucelle, a young maiden who would come after her, who would wear that armour and would save France. And this is only a few years before Joan makes her appearance on the scene. Wow, I didn't realise Joan had her own John the Baptist. That's very exciting. She did, yeah. So she gets listened to. Is that the critical moment, that first nobleman finally saying,

come on then, you painful person, I'll take you along and we can meet some bigwigs. I think that's the important first step, because he is a councillor and privy to René d'Anjou and to a court party that was very taken up. These were the people who supported Marie-Robin as well. And the same party is forever putting forward these messianic figures who will save France. And they are the war party. They're the ones who want to continue the war at all costs. Whereas particularly the Dauphin, but also a number of people around him were anxious to get peace and they wanted to sue for peace with the Burgundians. But because this terrible conflict that had gone on between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, there was a huge court party that was committed to fighting to the death.

What happens when Joan is then, it's a bit like a sort of gangster film, Leia Kate. What happens when she arrives at the next Leia? Does she start to meet some really, really important aristocrats? She does. But what's interesting is when she leaves, she does dress as a man. For the first time, we're told that she puts on male clothing. She rides by night with a little group of people to support her. And what's interesting is that one of But in fact, she had a royal herald with her, so they knew she was coming. And she was brought to Chinon, where the Dauphin was staying, and was actually brought into his presence. And to do that, she needed somebody on the inside who was going to pave the way for her. And I'm pretty sure it's the Angevin party, the Dukes of Anjou and their supporters. You've mentioned the Burgundians, you've mentioned the war going on with them,

you haven't mentioned the English yet, so where do they come into it, the dastardly English? Well, France had been at civil war since virtually the beginning of the 15th century, and Henry V, the King of England, had seized the opportunity to play these two parties off against each other to revive his claim, first of all, to the Duchy of Normandy. And that's why he went into France in 1415 and fought the Battle of Agincourt, and then went back two years later and conquered the whole of Normandy. So he added that to his treasure chest, as it were, and he already still owned a large part of what we know as Gascony, because he'd inherited that. So the English all had acquired, at the expense of

the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, a huge tranche of France. In the meantime, because of the political situation, because the two French sides hated each other so much, Henry was able to ensure that he married the daughter of the then King of France, who was mad and thought he was made of glass and that if he sat down, he would break. The two of them married and the Dauphin, the last surviving heir of the King of France, Charles VI, was literally, legally dispossessed of his lands in favour of Henry V, who was chosen as the future heir of the King of France. And so you've got all these parties milling around together. And it's one side playing off the other side all the time. And usually it's the Burgundians and the English on one side with

the Armagnacs against the other, because the Dauphin had murdered the Duke of Burgundy in 1419. They'd met on a bridge at Montereau to agree a peace treaty, and the Dauphin's men surrounded the Duke of Burgundy and murdered him on the bridge. And a monk actually said that the English entered France through the skull of the Duke of Burgundy. Quite a colourful phrase, but quite apt. And so when Joan goes to meet the Dauphin, Henry V obviously dead by that stage. Yes.

Usefully, his infant son is on the throne. So it's the English that are the immediate threat, is it? Yes, I suppose so. Yes, yes, it is. The English are in league with the Burgundians. They've got a strong alliance there because Henry V wants to get as much as he can of France. The Duke of Burgundy's want to do everything they can to suppress the Dauphin and his supporters. So when she goes to Dauphin in Chisinau, the English and the Burgundians are sort of the same enemy, actually. If you listen to Dan Snow's history,

I'm talking to Juliet Parker about Joan of Arc. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. Tell me what happens when Joan gets to the Royal Court and actually does meet the Dauphin. It's quite extraordinary. There are all sorts of legends about what happened. But basically, she said that she marched in there and showed a sign to the Dauphin that proved that she had been sent by God. But nobody knows what that sign was. She didn't tell anybody. And it's likely, again, that the fact that she actually recognised him amongst his courtiers was because she'd been fed information by the Angevins who were supporting her. The Dauphin's mother-in-law was a mother of René d'Anjou. So all these parties are very closely linked in together. Juliet, you're giving the impression that God did not intervene in this case.

Where's the miracles? How do you solve a problem like Joan of Arc? She was absolutely convinced that she had been sent by God. She never shifted from that position. And her self-belief and her belief that God was dictating what she should do and where she should go is absolute. And it's an amazing conviction. And she clearly believes quite without question that she has this mission to go to the Dauphin, to tell him that she needs to retake Orléans and then later to be crowned King of France at the Cathedral in Reims. But what's interesting is that even the king, even the Dauphin, don't really accept her at her word.

It would be too easy to make fools of themselves if they put this young peasant girl in front of an army and told her to go and take Orléans. So he puts her before a big set of clergy who examine her and they come up with a recommendation that they think that she is good, that she is pious, that she is a genuine Catholic. And they say that in view of the gravity of the times, which I think is the key phrase in this, their advice is that he should give her a go, and that he should let her prove herself by going off to Orléans where she is going to perform this great wonder. So depending on your view of things, you might see this when she does go off to Orléans and relieves the long siege of Orléans, then people did see it at the time as being miraculous, little short of miraculous. But what's interesting again about this is that they set her

up in terms of how they sent her there. They provided her with armor. They provided her with a banner that when you read the heraldry of it, had her saints on it. She had St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who were the saints who spoke to her all the time. She had them on the banner. St Margaret, who were the saints who spoke to her all the time. She had them on the banner. And she was taught to ride a great war horse. This is a village girl. She would not have been able to ride a war horse. So they set her up to look like the image of this girl who was going to fulfil the prophecy of the girl from Lorraine who was going to come and rescue France. This is the bit that I find, maybe I'm being sexist, but she does seem to have led the armies herself, doesn't she? I mean, what role did she play when she went

to Orléans? Great siege going on. Was she a sort of flag bearer? Was it a morale booster? Or was she making operational decisions? No, she wasn't. And that's what's really interesting about it again, is that she didn't make the operational decisions. There were lots of experienced captains in the Dauphin's army. They valued her morale boosting powers. And I think they believed in her too. They said that when she came towards Orléans, she was at the head of a column that was bringing in supplies for the relief of the town. And the wind was in the wrong direction, so the boats couldn't get up. But as she came up, the wind changed. And so the boats were able to sail in to Orléans.

So there were these signs and wonders. And the people of Orléans were just so grateful that somebody had come and inspired them again after such a long siege, that they really took her to their hearts. But what you find is that the French commanders go back because they've done what they wanted to do, which is get this relief column in. Some of them then decide to attack one of the bastions. They don't tell Joan, she's asleep in bed. And the squire comes up and wakes her up and says, listen, look what's going on.

And so she rushes out with her banner and she's always at the forefront, but she never takes those decisions. And I think that's really critical because, yes, she inspired them. What she was was terribly headstrong, but she was always at the forefront of battle. She went in with her standards so that all the soldiers could see that she was at the forefront. And she was a really genuinely inspirational figure. She was in the thick of the fight.

I mean, she was wounded, wasn't she? Several times, yes, not just at Orléans, but also outside Paris too. And that, again, tells you something about the stamina of the girl. She's only a teenager, don't forget. This is the thing that you tend to forget about her. And she was extraordinary in the way that she was committed because she believed she was doing what God wanted her to do. However you see her, you can't get around that. Some people think she was deluded.

that some people think she was deluded. A lot of churchmen later on would suggest that, in fact, she was being deceived, that devils had come to her rather than angels, as she claimed. But there is no question that Joan herself believed that her visions were directly from God. When do we start to see her through her enemy's sources? When do we start to see her from the English or the Burgundian angle? Is there a fear there, a curiosity? It's really odd. You'd expect, wouldn't you, that if she's made such an impact on the French at Orléans, that the English would be hugely alarmed at the arrival of this person. You have to remember that one of the reasons that Henry V was so successful was because his victories at Agincourt and the way he conducted himself made people believe that he had God on his side. So suddenly you get this young virgin,

and that's very important because the virginal figure is critical to the whole Christian theology of the perfect innocent. They get this young pucelle, this virgin, coming along and inspiring the French. You'd have thought that the English would have really been terrified. And the really interesting thing is you don't hear anything at all about her in English sources. We're told by some of the French sources that the English shouted abuse at her when they saw her manning the barricades, as it were. But that's about as much as we know. And she's hardly mentioned in English sources. It's really strange. To be fair to her, she delivers. She defeats the English several times.

The Dauphin is crowned in reams, so she delivers. She did deliver, but not quite as the Dauphin had hoped. The Dauphin, in his own way, still wanted peace because he knew that there was no hope for the kingdom unless he could make peace with the Duke of Burgundy and restore himself as the key figure. And so when Joan, in her usual rashness after the siege of Reims, she wants to go straight off, let's go and hit the Burgundians in Paris, the great capital. Straight off, let's go and hit the Burgundians in Paris, the great capital. So she goes charging off to Paris and promptly fails at the siege of Paris. Not only that, she comes back to court.

She's been wounded and they sideline her completely. And then they send her off to a siege of a local castle where there was a Burgundian mercenary. She fails there again. where there was a Burgundian mercenary, she fails there again. Now, once you start failing, you're undermining your own role as God's agent on earth, but you're also undermining the Dauphin and his claim to be supported by God too. And she becomes a bit of an embarrassment. She's so sidelined. I mean, they make generous gestures. They make her a noble woman. They help her parents and give them pensions, that sort of thing. They invite her parents to see the Dauphin crowned at Reims,

which is a wonderful touch, I think. But basically, they don't want to let her near any other military attacks at all, because they're worried that she'll fail again. And that's what happens. She goes off, she leaves court without the royal permission, which was absolutely a treasonable offence to do so. And she goes off without the king's knowledge. And she goes off to Compiègne and gets into that town and starts to defend it. Comes charging out later in the day because she's leading another of her famous rallies where she brings everybody to attack the Burgundian forces here and is promptly captured. She falls off her horse, she's captured and she's taken by the Burgundians, not by the English. The Burgundians then sell her to the English.

She was ransonable because she was a military figure. And it's then at that point that the English or the Burgundians with them take over. And this whole process of what do you do with a saint or a putative saint, certainly a holy woman? What do you do with someone like that, who is so headstrong that she won't listen to any advice, won't do anything other than attack, has no knowledge really of military skills. Her solution to everything is just to go charging in. And that's what makes her successful some of the time, but not all the time. What do you do with someone like that? It's very difficult. And the English could have put her in prison, like they did with many of the great French noblemen who spent years and years in prison

as prisoners of war. They could have just done that with her. But they decided, mistakenly in my belief, that they needed to undermine her claim to be speaking the voice of God. And so they handed her over to the church to be tried to see if she was a genuine person who was blessed by God or whether, in fact, she was, as they suspected, a heretic. blessed by God, or whether in fact she was, as they suspected, a heretic. What's interesting there, though, is that the Parisian, the University of Paris, which played a massive role in all this, had asked for her to be sent to them. They said that she was a witch and a sorceress. They said that shortly after she'd tried to attack Paris, and they were all frightened to death that she was going to come again. So the University of Paris is very much at the forefront of this. And they are the ones who lead the prosecution, organise the trial of Joan of Arc. So after a slight up and down trial, she is found guilty and she's condemned to death.

Yes, inevitably, really. The wonderful thing about the trial, from a historian's point of view, not from hers, is that you do hear her voice coming over. And the way that she behaves is quite remarkable. There's 131 Burgundian clergymen there, professors of sacred theology, professors of sacred law, all focusing on interrogating her and trying to trip her up and she doesn't allow them to do so and because of her self-confidence her self-belief her belief that her saints are with her and that she is speaking with god's voice she doesn't let them override her or terrify her into submission and, they run through the story of her whole life.

She dismisses as just sort of rubbish when they try and throw in suggestions that she was used witchery or sorcery. And she is quite brusque, just pass on, not prepared to say anything. My saints don't say that I should tell you about that. And it made them very difficult for them to interrogate her formally. But eventually what they do get out of her is this fact that she admits quite freely is that she is speaking directly through her saints to God. And that is something that the church could not accept. If you were speaking to your saints, she could see them, she said, physically, bodily. Then that is all contrary to church teaching at the time. You had to allow the church to speak for you and interpret. And what they say continually

is, did you go and speak to a priest about this? Did you consult the bishop? Did you consult other clergymen? And she says, no, my saints told me to do this. And it put her in a position which effectively meant that she was breaching the rules of the faith. She became an apostate and a heretic. And this is a time when there are so many people who are being burnt at the stake. It's a terrible period of persecution. And many of those people were of the same belief as Joan that they could speak direct to God or to the saints without the intervention of the church. And it's such a threat to the church's power, and they don't like it. And so they jump on all these people. Why does the church burn people rather than chop their heads off?

Why does the church burn people rather than chop their heads off? It's a horrible passage. There's a passage in the Bible where they talk about reaping the fields and the wheat goes on one side and the chaff goes on the other and you pull up the tares in the field and you burn them. And people like Joan, people like the Lollards, people like the Hussite heretics in Bohemia, all these people are heretics. They are the tares in the church. And so they are the weeds that have to be pulled up and burnt. And that's why they do it. Cranky, and she's burnt. And then her ashes

are carefully swept up so they can't be the focus of her cult. Yes, the idea was supposed to be to prevent any of her ashes or bones or whatever becoming relics that could be venerated or feed a cult of Joan of Arc. And in that, they were completely successful. That did not happen. The only place that did... land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive

but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Not exactly worshipped, Joan, but respected her and honoured her was the city of Orléans, which for years and years and years afterwards

held a festival every year with parades they had in her honour. They invited her parents to come and live in Orléans, gave them a pension again, and they kept the legend of Joan of Arc going throughout all the years that followed on. What you might have expected to have happened was that the Dauphin, now Charles VII, would have said, I must do something to save her. He could easily have ransomed her. He could have got the Pope to intervene in the trial. He did nothing at all. And I think, again, this is one of the interesting things that suggests to me that he was uncomfortable with the very idea that he might have been crowned at Reims by this woman who had been condemned by the church officially as a

heretic and an apostate. And does that invalidate his coronation as king? That's obviously what a lot of people at the time hoped for, but it's not necessarily how others viewed it. And the first thing he does after Joan is burnt at the stake is they find somebody to replace her so they find William the shepherd boy from the Avern who bears the stigmata which are wounds the five wounds from the cross and it shows that he's a holy man and even the people that were supporting him said he was either a simpleton or insane but they put him at the front of their armies just like they'd done with Joan, and they brought him along. Only unfortunately for them, the English captured him very quickly, and he was disposed of very quickly before any sort of cult could develop around him.

The English had learned their lesson. It's interesting, the timing of Joan of Arc, perhaps because of her, perhaps right time, right place, it does represent the absolute turning of the tide of this section of the Hundred Years' War, doesn't it? I learned from reading your brilliant book. Orléans was the high watermark, wasn't it? In some senses, it was. Yes, the English never got any further in their conquest than Orléans. That was the furthest point south that they ever managed to push. The Dauphin retreated to his kingdom of Bourges, which was south of the Loire, but he was able to move steadily forward. It's 20 years, don't forget,

before the English are actually driven out of France. And it's nothing to do with Joan of Arc. It's all to do with the Burgundians being brought into the fold by Charles VII. He gets to do that reconciliation that he wanted to do. It's to do with Charles himself doing exactly what Henry V had done all those years ago, building up an army, making it professional, funding it properly, getting the latest artillery. And basically, it's about military tactics. And he takes back Normandy. He reconquers Normandy in just over a year, just as Henry V had done in the early 20s. So it's a complete reversal because the English

at that stage are all tearing each other apart because they're all at each other's throats with an infant on the throne. And Charles VII has managed to reunite France. And Joan's messianic figure then becomes very important because she's the one who'd been calling for the unification of France from the start. And so to build her image also built up Charles's own image too. Juliet Barker, I'm so glad this was your first podcast because you're on fire. This is clearly like beginner's luck or something because that was amazing.

I'd love to have you back on, talk about the Peasants' Revolt, some of your other books. Actually, I find the character of the Duke of Bedford extraordinary. I do too, yes. Henry V's brother, who almost succeeded in building a stable, enduring English kingdom in France. Fascinating. Yes, I think he's Henry V light. It's Henry V without the nastinesses about him. What is wonderful about Bedford, I think, is that he becomes a naturalised Frenchman in many ways.

He makes his home in France. He marries a French woman. He patronises the French arts and French music. He wants to be part of that culture in a way that Henry V wanted to conquer. And that's why I find Bedford so much more interesting as a person. Well, long-time listeners to this podcast will be bored of me saying this, but if Bedford had had his way, we'd be living in one glorious kingdom, which stretched from Carlisle to the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. And I would be happy, I'll tell you that much. Juliet Barker, you've made me very happy though. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

What's your most recent book you'd like everyone to buy? Conquest, which is the story of the creation of the English kingdom of France when Henry went back after Agincourt and won most of France back. Yeah, you've all heard of Agincourt, but you haven't heard of the actual campaign in which Henry did actually conquer great chunks of France. No, it's amazing. People don't remember that at all. And they don't realise that the English held France for over 30 years and that Henry and Henry VI's infant

son were recognised by many parties as the legitimate kings of France. Ah well, Franklin, it was almost a B. Thank you so much the end of this podcast. Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well. you