The teenager who broke a siege in nine days

By 1429 the Hundred Years' War was going badly for France. English forces held much of the north, and the city of Orléans — the key to the south — had been under siege since the previous October.

Joan, a peasant girl from Domrémy in north-eastern France, believed that saints had told her to drive out the English and see the Dauphin crowned. She talked her way into his court at Chinon and, remarkably, was given armour, a banner and a place with a relief army.

She reached Orléans at the end of April. Within days the French went on the attack, capturing the English forts around the city one after another. Joan was hit in the shoulder by an arrow and returned to the fight. On 8 May the English withdrew.

In July the Dauphin was crowned Charles VII in Reims Cathedral, with Joan standing near the altar. A year later she was captured at Compiègne, sold to the English and tried for heresy. She was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431. She was about 19.

A retrial in 1456 overturned the verdict, and in 1920 she was declared a saint. Her career lasted barely two years — proof that the length of a life matters far less than what it is spent on.