RedHanded - ShortHand: Joan of Arc

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Jeanne D’Arc – the teenage girl guided by saintly voices to command actual French armies into actual military victories – is one of history’s best-known names. Not bad for a 13-year-old.But that's not all. This week, we take a speedy look through the bloody, Game-of-Thrones-topping madness that is the Hundred Years’ War, meet a mad king that’s convinced he’s made of glass, and find out how one girl changed the entire course of world history.

Hello, or should I say salue, bonjour. We, we, we. Welcome to shorthand, where we are covering another historical figure that probably you know the name of, know a bit about, to be honest, and quite understandably have concerns that she might not have been that well. Yes, I think definitely, top of mind for me. Suriti Bala, what were you doing at 13 years old? going to Disneyland again,

Mickey Mars's autograph. And if you haven't seen the live show, you miss the pictures. I was a very wholesome child, Hannah. What were you doing at 13? What year is that? Year 8. Year 9's the worst year.

Year 8 was okay. Yeah, something weird and wholesome. I was getting bullied and developing an eating disorder, I think. Hooray! Don't send your kids to single sex schools. Definitely don't. Unless they're boys who do better at single sex schools, girls don't. I don't care.

I think it's awful. It is awful. Don't send any of your kids to anything like that. I also did ballet, which didn't help. But my friends who've got a little girl were asking me about whether they think that they should put her in ballet. And I was like, well, it becomes problematic when you're much older. and also I took it far too seriously and also wasn't very good at it

so I pushed myself to a unreasonable limit but I would have done the same thing with like tidly winks like I just am that person so it didn't matter it wasn't ballet that did that to me that's just who I am but the father of this little girl is like well ballet just sexualises girls and I was like well and this is me and the mum agreeing on this

firstly ballet is almost entirely an all-female environment which has its own problems But secondly, she's going to get sexualized anyway. You're not... Not putting her in ballet isn't going to stop that from happening. I wouldn't have said, but I didn't do ballet. I don't know anything about ballet. But I wouldn't have said it's like the most sexualized.

No. Like, it's not like she's joining the fucking cast of cuties. Yes, exactly. It's not... It's not... Pageantry. No. The maker of who was French.

Oh! Well done. Your finest work. But whatever... we were doing. 13 is irrelevant and not very impressive at all. Because unless you were leading armies to world-changing military victories ordained by God himself, you haven't got shit on Joan of Arc. And that name is amongst the best known in history, particularly for women. So much so, in fact, that Joan is in danger of veering into folk legend, terror.

but the thing is, when it comes to Joan of Arc, it all actually happened. She really was an illiterate peasant girl who convinced the king that she'd been sent by God to march his troops into war. She really did cut her hair short and dress like a man, like Moulin, and lead real armies to real victories just when all hope was lost. The only thing we're not a hundred percent certain of are her trippy saintfield visions. We're not taking them away, we're just calling them into question. So, just who was the maid of Orleans? And just how did she do it?

This is the shorthand. So yes, Joan won a battle or two in the 15th century, and maybe that on its own might not blow you away, even though she was a teenage girl. But to really get a handle on just how incredibly important Joan of Arc was, and how influential her actions have been

on the entire global order to this day, we're going to need to brush up on the 100 years war. That's my least favourite war. Well, suck it up. Because by the time Joan received her first visions from God,

England and France were already knee-deep in the longest war. in history. My most hated fact about the 100 years war. How long do you think it was? Like, it's in the Simpsons. I can't remember. 116. That's the one. Just call it what it is.

Anyway, my most hated war started in 1337. Mine's World War I. I still don't know. Why? We're going to fall out in a minute. In 1337. There was a bit of a to do about who was the right for king of France. Edward the third of England thought that France was rightfully his and that he should rule both countries

together at the same time. And to be fair he was the next in line after Charles IV, the previous king. But crucially and mediaevally importantly only on his mum's side, weaker claim. The French said that women did not have the right to pass succession, and also they just really didn't want to have an English king. So they show someone French a little bit lower down the pecking order to take over Charles IV. Edward did not like that, so he started the war that lasted, not 100, 116 years. There were brief breaks during that over a century for truces, etc, and also quite a chunky pause when the black death wiped out

half of the population of Europe. But mostly, those little holidays aside, five generations of kings fought non-stop for over a hundred years over who got to rule France. So let's skip about 80 years of it to 1415 and the Battle of Agincourt.

France at this point was not doing so well. It had been at war with the English for decades. And on top of that, there was a small matter of their king. Charles the sixth, having totally lost the fucking plot. Charles had been unstable for a while, but he was now having full-on psychotic episodes, in which he couldn't remember his own name,

would refuse to wash or get dressed, and believed that his body was made of glass. This guy, I've read about him. I actually have it on my list for shorthand episodes to do on people who think they're made of glass. But that's for another day. So what else was he up to? Well Charles also wore clothing that was reinforced with iron rods

and said that if anyone touched him, it'd shatter into a million pieces. So yeah, basically, it's what's referred to as the glass delusion, which is a psychiatric disorder recorded in the 15th to 17th centuries. Basically, glass was pretty new back then and was regarded as a magical material, lending itself pretty nicely to psychiatric disorders. That is interesting, isn't it? Yeah, it's on the list.

Anyway, while Charles VIII was slowly descending further into a glass-stained madness. France broke into a pretty nasty civil war. They love those. Charles' brother, Louis, ding, ding, ding, fancied the throne for himself and started to gain influence in the South. And his lot became known as the Armagnacs.

And then, if you looked to the western sky, the Dukes of Burgundy had been steadily gaining power of their own, and they were taken land left, right and centre. So, with a civil war raging between the Aminacs and the Burgundians, and the king more worried about stray opera singers than invading forces, England saw its chance to strike. And they did, on the 25th of October 1415, English king Henry V, managed to lead a relatively small army to an astonishing victory near Calais.

For the French, that was bad. Back then, it was taken as an absolute fact that God decided the outcome of battles. So, having lost, the French had a lot of soul-searching to do, especially when the English started taking more and more of northern France for themselves. So the Amniaks and the Burgundians decided that they would have a little meet-up to try and smooth things over. and if you're conjuring Game of Thrones images in your head

hold on Did you watch that film The King with Timothy Shalamee? No. It's got him and Robert Patterson and it's just like it is good it's just like a very slow brooding

somebody who just like is obsessed with history made a very long film about the Battle of Ache and Corps it's good I but you've got to have like four hours of your life Timothy Shamma bin-gong, fine. Can't do Patson, man. Can't fuck with Paxson, can't do it. Don't make me.

I won't. So in 1419, on a bridge at Montereau in the north of France, the two groups met to resolve their differences. But it didn't get very far. You see, a few years before, Louis, the leader of the Armagnacs, had actually been killed on the streets of Paris by supporters of the Duke of Burgundy. So a few Armagnacs, who very much hadn't forgotten this, ran onto the bridge and plunged an axe into the Duke of Burgundy's face.

This was absolutely red wedding level explosive. Burgundy was now angry, directioned us and without a candidate for king. So Burgundy decided to back the English and team up to take those French pricks down once and for all. They figured out it was better that their king was a Brit than a guy who thinks he's made of glamour. his brother killed their duke. It's a fair and logical conclusion to come to. Uh-huh. So with the Burgundians on side, the English took Paris

and absolutely ransacked it to help the war effort. Paris was grim at this time, with homes being torn down for firewood, people starving to death in the street, and wolves stalking around to eat the corpses. The English had by this point claimed a third of the French territory. Soon afterwards, Henry V drew up a treaty saying that either he or his son would become the next king of France. This was approved by the Burgundians because of the whole axe thing, and the mad king, Charles I.

Henry V, it turned out, did die pretty soon after this was all agreed of dysentery, the medieval battlefield classic. And his son, Henry the sixth, surprised, was not the great. greatest tactician around, mostly owing to the fact that he was 10 months old when he was crowned the king. But the fight continued, led by various earls and dukes, and the English army went from strength to strength. If you're feeling lost, don't worry, we'll recap. We've got two warring sides. In the red corner, got England backed by the Burgundians. Their king is baby Henry the 6th, but the war is doing just fine

even though he's a baby. It's Timothy Chalamee. It's Timothy Chalemet. I wonder what he looked like as a baby. Angular. Yeah. Cut his mum coming out. And England, they have

most of northern and western France under their belts and they're advancing all the time. And then in the blue corner is Armagnac. Their choice for King is now Charles the 7th for son of Mr Glass, and we're going to refer to him as Doffin, which is the word for Prince or heir. That's Robert Patterson. Okay, boo. And the Arminoics have the south and the centre of

France, but they are losing land day by day. So now everything, the whole war and the outcome of it and who gets to be the king, Orhinges on O'Leon. O'Leon is a city on the River Loire to the south of Paris. The English knew that if they could take the city and cross the river, then central France was theirs. And then they'd be on the home straight. So they sent huge forces of English and Burgundian soldiers to siege O'Leon. This siege carried on four months, and it was looking like the French would have to surrender. The Dauphin was losing hope.

They couldn't hold the English off forever. What he needed was a miracle. Luckily for him, in the small village of Domremy, a young peasant girl was visited by the Ark Angel Michael who told her that she would lead France to victory. Who asked you, Michael? Honestly, this girl's name was of course

Jonah Bach. Except, it was not. Jean-Duck, which was spelt D-A-R-C, and the initial D-E-R-C was assumed, probably by a stupid English person, to mean de, as in of. You have a lot of French names that have like de apostrophe.

But they are wrong. So, Joan's name was mistranslated somewhere along the way to Joan of Arc, like she was from a place called Arc, but actually there is no place called Arc. In reality, her surname was just pronounced Dark. Joan Dark is cooler.

There's cooler. Much cooler. Joan of the Night. Anyway, semantics aside. Joan grew up in a small Amniacong enclave surrounded by Burgundian territory in the west of France. So, war had been all around since she was very, very young. And through Joan's youth, a prophecy began to circulate in her village that told of an armed virgin who would come forth to save France.

Joan's family were illiterate peasants, but so was everyone. It's not like Joan was particularly poorer than anyone else. still expectations of her life didn't amount to much more than learning to sew and milking some cows and stuff Joan's family were very devout so was everyone but Joan it does have to be said even as a child was absolutely mad for Jesus so much so the children would tease her for her pick-me piety if Joan heard the church bells ringing she would drop to her knees and start praying which is even in medieval France very obnoxious.

But scoff all they might, the joke would soon be on them. Because one day the prophecy would come true. At the age of 13, Joan Dark, Joan of the night. Night Joan. Saw a light in her garden. She then heard voices, saying that God was with her. And soon she was seeing a series of saints, Michael. Margaret, Catherine and Gabriel.

They told her that God wanted her to lead an army against the English. They said that the Dofant, Charles V, was the rightful king, and that she would help the Armagnacs to drive the English into the sea. Joan vowed to remain a virgin for the rest of her life and set out to go find the king and let him know the plan. In most stories about Joan, the next step is that she arrives in front of the king, but it wasn't quite that easy.

Her first step was to go up to a soldier and say, take me to the king, to which he said, no. And so slightly deflated, Joan went home to regroup. But townsfolk had overheard the plucky young girl talking about how she could save France. And they were so desperate that they just about believed her. And words soon started spreading about her divine visions.

And soon enough, loads of people were on. on board were trying to get her in front of the king to see if this random teenage girl could maybe shift the dial. Yes, the war was going quite that badly. Yes, but in this particular time in history, 13 is middle-aged. And also, there was an entire children's crusade. Children marched across Europe to try and take the promised land back from the heathen. So, like, it's, yes, it is entirely ridiculous.

And I'm not saying that it happened every day. Fair, but it is not as nuts as it is now. Makes sense. As it would be now. Yeah, yeah. And word of this peasant girl reached a local duke, who happened to be quite friendly with the king's mother-in-law, Yolanda, and he passed on this news to her.

Yolanda was doing some serious behind-the-scenes PR for the Armagnac War effort. And she is the often-forgotten MVP of this entire story. So we're going to credit her, where others don't, because it was she who really appreciated how much this young peasant girl was firing everyone up. People were, for the first time in ages, getting pretty pumped up about the possibility of beating the English. And Yolanda, she thought it was worth a punt.

So Joan was escorted across enemy territory to the south. Since she knew the journey would be tough, Joan cut her hair short into a boyish bowl cut, and popped on a pair of trousers. Dialing down the girlishness was initially probably an effort to dodge, you know, sexual assaults on the way down. Plus, it's way easier to ride a horse in trousers.

Still, it became her signature look, and the new androgynous vibe, beautiful, holy, but fierce and brave, would inspire France for centuries to come. Because if she loses her virginity, she can't fulfill the prophecy, can she? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, let's get to the Dofran, Charles the 7th.

He's up in his castle, feeling absolutely cooked. The French are facing almost certain defeat. But he's also a superstitious fella. So when his mother-in-law says that she's got a potential sign from God, well, oh, Charles here, well, he's all is. He's out of ideas. He really is. He's scraping the barrel, as it is. When you start taking counsel from a teenage girl, you're out of ideas.

When you start taking counsel from your mother-in-law, you're out of ideas. It's all true. In one telling of this story, story, Yolanda and the king gave Joan a test before she was even allowed to appear before him. Joan entered a room to see a man sat on a throne wearing golden clothes. And everyone's like, aren't you going to say hello to the dover? And Joan says this is not the dover. It's Millhouse.

Yes, obviously, we're in 1429. No one knew what their rulers looked like, so very difficult to recognise them. Anyway, the guards don't drop it and they say, Yes it is. I can't believe that you're not bowing. But Joan insists that it is not the dauphin. And then she turns her back on the man in gold clothes and goes into the crowd of onlookers. And she looks them all up and down.

And when she gets to one man, she says he is the real dofarin. And then she takes a knee and he's like, yeah, fair fucks, that's me. I am the dofarm well done. So everyone is agreed that it's a pretty good start for Knight Joan. Mm-hmm. Joan then went on to tell Charles that she'd been sent by God to lead the French army against the English and to take him to his rightful coronation.

Now, like we said, the dauphin was superstitious and also desperate, and his little switcheroo trick had worked a charm. Plus, they needed something fresh, something to inspire the troops. They'd been steadily losing for ten years. Maybe a new spiritual leader could be just the ticket. it. But many of the clergy were not so short. So Charles summoned France's foremost theologians to review the sincerity of Joan's faith. First they checked she was a virgin. Tick. Then she was subjected to three weeks of spiritual scrutiny. Long story short, she passes. And then they make her a commander

in the French army at the age of 13. So now, if they hadn't already been... All eyes were on, O'Leon. The first and most pressing mission for the Armagnacs was to get the Brits out. As we said, if the Burgundians took O'Leon, then they had a great chance of taking the rest of the country to. Also, the Dauphin really wanted to be crowned king in a very specific cathedral in Rem, which Aureon just happened to be on the way to. But, may we remind you, O'Leon had been under siege by the Burgundians for seven months by now. Still, Armagnac was all pumped up about his new champion. Joan arrived riding

a white horse in shining armour and leather charge. The Burgundians were tired, they'd been siege in, and they were unprepared. When the Armagnac stormed the city led by Joan, running on pure charisma and energy and an absolute certainty that they would win, they fucking did. I'd After seven months, the siege was lifted in just four days of fighting, just as God had ordained. And Joan kept the winds coming, leading armies into battle after battle, and coming out victorious every time. And every one of those wins brought them closer to Rem. Until finally, on the 17th of July 1429, Charles I.7th was crowned at Rem Cathedral. The prophecy had come true.

A god-fearing teenage girl had led the troops into battle, and Charles was king. But there was one more prize that Joan was after, before she hung up her chain mail for good. She was coming for Paris. On the way, many of the towns surrendered to the Armagnac forces without a fight, especially when Joan would ride out solo, out to the English armies, trying to provoke them to attack and forcing them to retreat. Paris, though, didn't go quite as well. Even though they had God on their side, the arminacs were pushed back,

and when Joan was shot in the thigh with an arrow, she was carried from the battlefield. That happened in September. The following May, after recovering, one would have thought, Joan had a go at seizing Compiench, a town just north of Paris, but it was hopeless. Joan was taken prisoner by the Burgundians and they swiftly sold her on to the grubby English. And I cannot say this in bold enough.

The English fucking hated Joan of Arc. Like we said, God decided the outcomes of all wars. So the English had had a lot of explaining to do after Joan kept kicking their asses on the battlefield. It's quite embarrassing, yeah it is. especially since they'd been outfought and outsmarted by a teenage girl. But now they had her. She was put on trial.

And even though it was pretty clear to everyone, what the outcome would be of this trial, they took the whole thing very seriously. Joan was tried by a group of Burgundian French clerics at the English King's Castle in ruin. Seventy charges were initially brought, though these were later reduced down to 12 that they considered to be the strongest.

Their aim was to prove that Joan was committing heresy, so that the coronation of Charles could be shown definitively to be false. It wasn't just about saving face. They needed those holy receipts. So Joan was interrogated for months by clerics and theologians about the specifics of her visions, what she'd heard, seen and felt. And eventually they got her. Joan started to describe the faces of St. Michael and St. Catherine,

and the theologians suddenly had their proof. They all knew that saints and angels are just spiritual beings with no faces or voices. Joan was a fraud. And when they had what they needed, they burned her at the stake. Jones already quite short hair was shaved off totally, and she was burned alive in the centre of Roan.

The executioner had been told to wait until her clothes had burned off and rake away the fire to expose to the crowd that Knight Joan was just human after all. Once the fire died down, Joan's ashes were swept up and scattered in the river, so they couldn't be saved as holy relics.

So that was the end for Joan of Arc, who bravely accepted her fate and died at just 19. And as we said, her legacy was a lot more than a few military victories. After they lost Joan, their spiritual leader, the Arminiaks kept fighting, and they won the Hundred Years' War. The Burgundians had decided to hedge their bets and get behind the Arminacs after all, and in 1453, after 116, really boring years, four months, three weeks and four days of non-stop bloodshed, the English were chased out of France, apart from a little teeny weenie bit of Calais, And just like that, the longest military conflict in European history was over.

So, Joan of Arc had a huge part in helping France solidify its shaky, ever-changing borders, had a massive impact on European history, and in the transformation of both France and England into the nation-states we know today. Both countries became more centralized and gradually started defining themselves as global powers. They did a lot of this self-defining in opposition to each other. Pretty much all of the English-French cultural rivalry comes from stereotypes spread over the course of the following few centuries. The English thought that the French were pompous and snobbish.

So simple roast dinners and pubs and bucolic British pastimes were all the rage, especially because the English had been totally bankrupted by the war, and it was kind of all anyone could really afford at the time. Whereas the French thought that the English thought that the English, English were simple and uncivilised. They essentially invented oak cuisine and all restaurant culture as we know it. The poet Voltaire described England as a nation of 42 religions and only two sources. He's not wrong. We could go on. In 1920, 500 years after Joan of Arc's fiery death, she was canonised by the Catholic Church. Why did it take the big old Pope?

man so long to make Joan a saint. That's a tough one to answer. It's because a big group of Catholic clerics, who represent the Pope, interrogated Joan for months, and they ruled that she was guilty of 12 counts of heresy. Protestantism hasn't happened yet. They're all Catholics. So to make her a saint after burning her for being heretic, a bit of a U-turn. Bit awkward. Super awkward. I mean, they've got themselves out of more awkward. Even still, Jodovarque is the patron saint of France in its entirety, and in many ways, a national symbol. She was brave, and visions or no visions, she did have the strength of character to inspire a nation at its absolute bleakest.

And when it comes to national symbols, you could do a lot worse than a mentally ill teenage girl. I don't doubt that she was unwell. But I do think of... She got shit done. She got shit done. And also, whether she actually said this or not, I don't care. But there is a story where she's about to ride out to meet the English, right? And this woman's like, are you not afraid to approach these soldiers on your own?

And Joan just goes, I am not afraid. I was born to do this. And that's what you should say to yourself in the mirror every morning. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, you've all just got to believe in yourself. to the extent that Joan of Arc did. And if you get burned to death, at least you went out fighting.

Exactly. That is the only reason this podcast is here. Who the fuck did we think we were to start in this show? So you know what? I agree. Do it. Get shit done. Be not afraid.

Be not afraid, ye old peasants. That's it, guys. That is a very quick rundown of the incredibly, incredible life of Joan of Arc, aka Joan Dark, aka Joan of the Night, whatever you want to call her. She's yours. And we'll see you next Tuesday for another short hour. Goodbye.