Part Two: Joan of Arc Was Even Cooler Than I Thought

Margaret finishes talking with Molly Conger about two women who changed the course of history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that sometimes you can listen to visions
in your head, put on armor, and change the world.
I'm your host, Martha Kiljoy, and my guest today is
Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, also on Cool
Zone Media, comes out every Thursday. How are you.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm doing great. I can't wait to find out how
these visions work out. I know, and I think, you know,
I think it will be much harder to do that today.
People really frown on it.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's true. I almost and then there was like, oh no,
there's enough with Joan of Arc. Eventually I might do
this whole episode about there's a bunch of these women
mystics at this time, who like, in order to have
any kind of influence over their own lives, are like,
I'm a mystic, I've been sent by God, and they
I think they believe it right, But like there's all

(00:55):
of these ways that people learn to I don't know,
take charge of their own life. Like she's a commoner
from encircled town in a civil war. Like she's not
set up for history books.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
You know, nobody's gonna listen to Joan, but they might
listen to.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
God exactly much like we listen to our producer Sophie Hi.
Sophie Hi, and we all say hi to Rory are
audio engineer, Hi, Rory Hi, Rory Hi Ri. And our
theme music was written for Spyon Woman. And this is
part two of a two parter about John of Arc.
You probably figured that out from the title. Otherwise, Hello,

(01:33):
and welcome to the very first episode of Cool People
Did Cool stuff You've ever listened to? And good luck.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
This is a solid jumping end point if you don't
care about context.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, I'm trying so hard. I've been like trying to
watch movies out of order, the kind of movies that
people watch out of order, right, like Marvel movies or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh you mean, like the movies out of sequence like
in the Sea. I think you meant like like starting
in the middle of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Oh no, no, no, no, but like like movies, like like
a normal person can sit down and watch Aliens without
watching Alien right, No, I gotta surf in the beginning. Yeah,
I absolutely do too, And I'm trying to break myself
of it, but it keeps not working. I keep being like, oh,
I'm gonna do this, and then I'm like, Nope, I
gotta go back.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
No, I need the context, I need the chronology. When
I started writing a story, I start with a little timeline.
I'm like, okay, well, when the guy was born, it's
probably the beginning of the time. Like, no, it's not
I need to go I need to go back.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Oh, I'm gonna love your podcast, yep, and uh okay. So,
speaking of movies, there's this movie from the nineties I
really like. It's called The Anchoris either. Have you ever
seen The Anchoris?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
No? But I know it doesn't end well for an anchorus.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
It depends on their what they want. But you know,
so you've heard of anchorites. That was gonna be my
follow up question.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
There's the they're usually like nuns or friars, right, like
holy people. People have a holy order, a religious order,
who are walled into their cell and they just live
out their days in prayer. Yep, in their tiny little
prayer jail.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah. But it's like voluntary, right.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Right, It is a calling that this is a very
pious act, that you are removing yourself from the world.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, And so that's why I'm like, I don't want
to say it doesn't end well for them, because it's
like they did what they wanted.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
They do die in there though, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
But you know what happens to us, not in a self.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I'm just wondering how the poop gets out.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I think there's a bucket. There's like a slot where
a food goes in and out and stuff, and like
people come up and talk to you and things. You know.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Oh, you can receive visitors. That's good.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, Well, if you want watch a movie about it,
there's a movie called The Anchors. Anchorites were holy people
medieval Europe who would have themselves bricked into rooms and
churches in order to read and write and pray without
World Aid distractions. The first English language book written by
a woman that we know about is called Revelations of
Divine Love and it was written by an Anchorite named

(03:59):
Julian of No Which and I am not yet enough
of a weird theology nerd to have any fucking clue
what that book is about. I've tried. I do not
know what it is about. But in the nineties movie,
the plot is that there's this woman and she really
doesn't want to get married, so she becomes an anchorite

(04:19):
one of.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
The best ways to not have to get a husband.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
And so this is kind of one of the core
of my argument this week. Women denied power other power
in Patriarchal's medieval society exerted some power over their life
through magic, whether they're the magical underground of poisoners, or
whether through like anchortes or mystics with visions like our
young Jeanette, and I don't think this makes their belief

(04:43):
in magic less sincere. The obsession with virginity and Christianity
is like buy and Lord really bad, right. This has
not done us a lot of favors. But God told
me I can't fuck is a pretty good way to
exert some control over your marital state.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
That's a get out a fuck free car baby.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yep. Absolutely so. When Jeanette was thirteen, which is the
legal age of marriage for girls at the time, I say,
as if it's supposed to be like shocking, but that's
like roughly what Red State people want at this point anyway.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
So it's legal in Tennessee, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah? I think so. Probably her parents start setting her
up for marriage, but she started having visions and as
soon as she started having visions, she promised the angels
that were visiting her that she would keep her virginity
for quote, as long as it should please God, like
until they told her otherwise.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
I mean, it's good to keep your options open. Like
the angel could come back, the message could change.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
I know, you meet the right guyer girl like you know.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
And you can't break a promise to an angel.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
No, be a really bad idea.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, so the wedding's off. She has been saved by
the ominous voice at the corner of her vision, accompanied
by a brightness. She described it. Soon Saint Michael, the archangel,
told her that she would lead an army and aid
of the true King of France. It is uncertain. I
am uncertain as to whether or not she would have

(06:17):
already have heard this rumor this like, Hey, you know,
a virgin's gonna come and lead the armies of France
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Don't know, right, Like, people are obviously hearing about it
because some of these other mystics are showing up to
audition for it. But like when is sort of far
flung village where people can't read, Like, are they receiving
these rumors.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
The rumors are absolutely getting there. I just don't know
the chronology here. She absolutely knows these rumors before she
goes right.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Right, but are but are the influencing the early days
of the visions? I guess we don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Right exactly, That's what I don't. I don't know. Someone
might know soon. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, which is
a perfectly good name for a saint. We're soon talking
to her about all of this as well.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
In the visions. Yeah, in visions, Okay, she's not receiving visitors.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
No. By the time she was sixteen, England was preparing
a further assault into what was left of France, and
the visions became more insistent. They're like, hey, what are
you doing. You gotta get on this, like you're gonna
lead an army. We gotta guess. So done. They told
her to go to France, and they told her to
go to this specific captain named Robert with a whole

(07:28):
long French last name, at a nearby fort who would
help her get to the default. So she talked to
her uncle, well like cousin, one of her parents cousins
about taking her to this forts and like next town
over or something. She finds Robert and the voices tell
her which guy is her guy? Right, She's like, oh no,
that's Robert, which is a trick she pulls later too.

(07:48):
It's like one of her. She does a couple things
that are like like most like miracles of saints are
kind of like magic tricky, right, and this is an
example of one of them. She's like, oh no, that's Robert,
that's my guy.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
She is she cold reading?

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, she's either very good at cold reading or getting
visions that help her be very good at cold reading whatever.
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Again, that isn't that how magic works?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah. She walks up and she's like, Hi, God told
me you should take me to the king, who will
give me command of all of his troops and I
will lead them to victory and he will be crowned
King of France. And she's like a little girl, she's
sixteen yem yeah, And Robert's like, go home, kid, and
then cuffs her, which I think means slaps her across
the face. So she goes home. Soon she doesn't have

(08:32):
a home because the war. Her family is evacuated to
a nearby walled city. The war continues to go badly.
The city of Orleans was under siege by the winter
of fourteen twenty eight to fourteen twenty nine, and English
propaganda is that the Deafont is actually a bastard and
that is a bo it had him by someone else.
And by now the defallt is starting to be like,

(08:54):
oh shit, maybe that's true. Maybe that's why I'm losing
every battle, because if I was really king, I would
just win, right, Like.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
That's why I don't have God's favor.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, And so he's thinking about going into exile.
He's I mean, he's a fucking coward, right like that.
This just comes up again and again he's like, oh,
I should run away, and Yolanda is like furious that
he's a piece of shit coward. He's married her daughter,
and Jeanette our young Joan of Arc is having visions
two to three times a week telling her to get

(09:24):
the fuck to France and lift the siege of Orleon.
And one of the things that comes up is that
there's like a bunch of times where she kind of
like knows some stuff about battles that she's cold reading,
but there's no way she would know right, because the
news couldn't have reached by the time that she was
saying certain things to somebody will have to walk there. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(09:48):
So she goes back to Robert. She goes back to
that town, hangs out for a couple of weeks and
like builds up friends in the town, and then goes
to Robert and begs her case and he refuses her again.
But at this point p pople in the town are
starting to believe her and one of two things, and
I actually think both things happen at the same time. First,

(10:08):
public opinion in the town is overwhelmingly like, come on, Robert,
bring the virgin mystic to the king so that she
can save France. Isn't that your fucking job here? Second,
Robert's lord and friend is Yolanda's son, and Yolanda had
been sending messengers out being like find us the prophesied maid, please,
we need our prophesies made hello.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
So it's not a surprise to him that the fulfillment
of the prophecy could show up, right.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
I just picture them like, hello, are you even trying?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Robert? So Robert on January twenty ninth, fourteen twenty nine,
decides to test Joan. Johan is going to get tested
so many times.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Oh God doesn't like you when you do that.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Oh really, Okay.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
We're not supposed to doubt the prophecy when it is
told to you, like there's this is not in the
actual Bible, it's in more of the acker full stories.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
But when Mary goes to the midwife and says, you know,
like I'm about to do virgin birth up in here, right,
and the midwife is like, yeah, that's bullshit, and so
she you know, performs in an examination as a midwife
would do on a pregnant woman. And so when she
reaches her hand in there to check to say, like,
you're not a virgin, I can tell her hand blackens
and withers away because she doubted.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh shit, yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
They shouldn't let that one in. That's a good one.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, well that's just going to happen to Joan. But
that's not the first test. Because people treat religion kind
of like a science at this point. Right, They're like, look,
we know a lot of people are faking it. We
need to figure out who's faking it who's not, you know,
And they've got some ideas about how that's done. There's
actually this whole thing about how for a little while,

(11:47):
the Catholics weren't into burning witches and all the Protestants
were because Catholics didn't believe in witchcraft. That was just
superstitious nonsense.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
I mean, it's right in the Bible that if you
believe in the power of Christ, like witchcraft can't get you. Yeah, okay,
like you're safe, it's fine. And so a priest shows
up to make sure that she's not possessed. Like the
whole thing that they're trying to do is make sure
that these are not demonic but angelic you know visions. Yeah,
you definitely got to check that first.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, And so of course they run a very you know,
classic test, which is a priest shows up and she
kneels in front of the priest and doesn't like bursts
into flames. So clearly not demonic a plus. And so
she's off and the whole village comes together to help
her get ready for her journey, and there's all these
arguments about why she wears men's clothes, and there's all

(12:35):
these people trying to be like, nah, it's because of this, now,
it's because of that, you know, whether or not she
had agency and her decision around men's clothes, right, I
distrust most of the way that most historians talk about
the choice of crossing gender lines in old timey world.
But they ask her what clothes she wants, and she
says she wants men's clothes for the journey, after all,

(12:58):
men's clothes are more practical, and she sleeping in the
company of men, and she had to keep up appearances
as a virgin, so she can't be seen as like,
she can't be like Red as a slut.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
She can't look enticing, right.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, And that seems to be an overall agreement. It's like, well,
she wore a dress, she would have gotten raped, but
so she wore pants and then she wasn't raped. Is
like not just the subtext, but the regular text of
a lot of her next chunk of her life. It's
not that she disguised herself as a man. Everyone knew
who she was, but she's taking on man as a

(13:31):
gender role and not trying to pass this was and
wasn't socially acceptable. And that's this part is necessarily interesting
to me. It's really messy.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
It's because it's more like iconography than gender performance, right,
Like she is going to battle, and that is I
don't know, that is a certain kind of performance. But
she's not pretending to be a man.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well okay, so she's not pretending to be a man,
but she is. She's not yet in armor or anything, right,
she's just in traveling clothes. So she's dressing as a
boy pretty much. And she cuts her hair into a
bowl cut, which I'm officially neutral on, and they give
her a sword, which I'm officially positive about. Everyone should
have a sword. This podcast is brought to you by
a big sword or small sword. This isn't even an

(14:15):
ad transition. I just want everyone to have a sword.
You'll know I'm a millionaire when I start a charity
of swords for trans people. Anyway. Yeah, no, the iconography thing,
it's like it's it's true, right, It's like it is
more of a social role, you know. And later she's
gonna get burned at the stake for wearing men's clothes,
but all the people in the village are like, well, yeah,

(14:37):
you can be like riding a horse and shit, so
of course you're gonna fucking dress in men's clothes, you know,
because it like is and isn't socially acceptable. At the
same time, there's not a like monolithic view of gender
ever any time in history, it's my argument.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
And I imagine we know less too about how poor
people were living and how they were performing gender. Like obviously,
in court we know a lot about the way people
performed roles in the way they dressed, and what fashion
was and what the culture was. But I don't know
that we know what people were doing in the village.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
We know a lot less, and often sometimes when we
do know, it's through things like her court transcripts. You know,
so they had to cross enemy territory in order to
do this, right, because she's like kind of in a
little island, and for eleven days because they had to
walk everywhere in order to reach the court of the Daufont.
And when she gets there and so this is like
already kind of miraculous that she makes it there, frankly,

(15:33):
and the court is divided about how to handle her,
and it's just divided in general. You have Yolanda and
her faction and they're trying to sway the Daufall one way,
and then you have this other faction that's like, no,
you're right be a coward and fuck all these women,
they're meaningless. Why would you talk to them? You know?
The invitation of Joan of Arc to court was basically

(15:55):
a power play by Yolanda, but the defont granted her
an audience in the end, and as another test, he
like didn't hang out on his throne, but was in
the crowd and she had to pick him out and
she does, and there's like people argue about how she
did this, you know, could have been divine revelation. I
bet that wasn't that hard. No, yeah, I had a
really big nose.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
But also the behaviors in court are so ingrained in
these people that even if everyone's pretending he's not the king,
there's there's body language. Yeah you know which guy is
the king?

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah. So she finds the king and it's like holy shit.
And then she supposedly whispered to him a secret that
only he and God would have known about. Oh and
historians speculate on what the secret was. The most likely
thing is that she was like, I know, you're the
true son of your father and the true heir of
the throne or whatever, like something he wanted to hear,

(16:49):
you know.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Right, like a total big secret that you couldn't just
make up.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, it also could have been something fantastical, miraculous, but
she's good at reading people. This is a big part
of it.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
No, they love to reveal the revelations after the secret
has been proven true, so you could reverse engineer, like
the Yeah, the third revelation of the of the apparition
of Our Lady of Fatima was revealed. This is stupid.
Our Lady of Fatima was a Marian apparition that appeared
to these children. It was supposedly gave the children three revelations,
and the first two revelations were revealed, and the third

(17:20):
one was a secret. It's okay. Drove a lot of
people insane. It caused a lot of problems. And then
after the attempted assassination of the pope in the eighties,
they were like, oh yeah, wow, she predicted that.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, totally, Like that's cheating, that's cheating. Yeah, you can't,
you can't backwards it. But this works on the king.
The King is sold, he turns like one eighty. He's
like down in the dumps. He's like, I'm going to
die in exile and I'm not the real king and
I'm a bastard and all I got to do is
live in a fancy, rich court and be in charge

(17:53):
for a long time. This sucks.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
He just needed someone to believe in him.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
And here is a virgin sent by God and the
king turns the fuck around. He goes from despair and
pondering exile to being like, hell, yeah, I got an army.
Let's fucking go down to visit these advertisers. Just see
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Speaker 3 (18:19):
Hopefully it's a horse so we don't have to walk
to the next battle.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, and her back, and now it's time for more
trials of Joan of Arc. The next one they put
her through is they take her to field and they
give her a lance and a horse and are like, hey,
you any good with this? And she was like, yeah,

(18:43):
I'm pretty good at it, and they were like sick great.
Which is actually kind of interesting because she didn't grow
up knowing how to ride a horse. She had about
two or three weeks in that town to learn, like
everything she was learning, like, she's genuinely fucking special.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
You know, I believe you could figure out how to
ride a horse. It's not like really that complicated, but
using a lance, that's I imagine that's a more specialized
skill that you can't just pick up by looking at it.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, like I have, I have complicated feelings about the
nature of divinity, but like she's genuinely something special, you know.
I mean, or she was incredibly middle she like barely
did it. I mean I don't think she like showed
up and was like, I'm the best. I don't even
need a training montage, you know. But like she proved

(19:33):
herself competent, Like how low were the expectations? Yeah, who
fucking knows. And then they had the women of the
house to a physical exam to confirm her virginity, and
she passed this test as well.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
They should have done that before the horse thing.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
I know, right, that's the thing is, I'm like, she
just rode on a horse for eleven days, like, but
this test was supervised by Ulanda. I suspect she's passed
it no matter what.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
We got a finger on this skin.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah. Then they send her for another test, a theological test,
and they put her in front of a bunch of theologians,
and she's really bratty with them. They're like asking her
like do you believe in God? And she's like, yeah,
better than you do.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Eh yeah, Like oh, you can read a book while
I'm talking to God.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's that's pretty much her vibe. Like she's like, hello,
Saint fucking Michael, the archangel has told me to do
this shit. Are you gonna get out of my fucking
way or what again?

Speaker 3 (20:29):
With less cussing, like I don't need to be able
to read.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah. They found her to be sent by God and
not the devil, so she has proven herself to be
a virgin sent by God who can wield a lance.
So they're like, all right, go lift the siege of
or Leon. Yeah, no big, here's a suit of armor.
You can design your own standard. She designed some shit
with Jesus on a throne holding the hand of an

(20:55):
angel with a Florida lee, and.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
That's a little busy for a flag. Honestly, I'm not
to criticize she's doing her best, but it is an
all right stance.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
I mean like that they were like those days, the
flags were more like what can we fucking cram onto this?
You know, there's a lot of flags that still have
the weird like, and now here's a drawing and she'd
been given a sword on her first eleven days. I
can't remember I included that. Now she gets like a
fucking magic sword.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
There's a couple versions of this story. The one in
the history book is like, there's a blessed relic that
is buried behind the altar of a church that has
been brought back from the Crusades. And then if you
read like a Catholic saint hagiography whatever, it'll be like
no one knew the sword was there. And she's like, oh,

(21:45):
let me go get this sword from this place. I've
never been real quick. God told me there's a sword here,
you know. So she pulls up an ancient sword, and
now she has a fucking magic sword.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
That goes pretty hard. I choose to believe that.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
I yeah, I like it. It works for me. And
she gets a personal retinue, including two of her brothers
who have been sent for and I think that's really sweet.
It's actually a whole family affair going on. She's like,
you know, it's like always the stories where the kid
goes off to go save the kingdom and you like
never hear from the family again.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
But like her family believed in her.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I like that they really did. Her parents are going
to come up later in the story too, Oh good. Yeah,
and she's pretty sure that she's about to die. Well yeah,
she tells the king, I will last a year no longer,
Like this is not the kind of adventure you survive.

(22:40):
The siege of Orleon was a nasty thing, like sieges are,
because they're where you starve people to death. It had
been going on for six months. The English had tried
a regular assault, but they've been repulsed, and so they
were just trying to starve everyone out. Only the eastern
gate of the city was under control of the defenders,
and so the only supplies getting in or on horseback

(23:02):
through like small groups of smugglers on horseback. And this
isn't like one of three or four gates. There's like
a fuck ton of gates in the city. It's been
a while looking at a map of this. So there's
like one spot that the English aren't able to like
set up a little fort outside of right, So people
are starving. This little trickle of smugglers isn't enough. I
want to read the fiction of the smuggler. I like

(23:22):
these like small stories, right, because like I.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Want to know all these little guys on the side.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, that'll be your spin off show, the not shitty
weird guys of history, you know, just the.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Guy in the background of the photos.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, totally. On the day of the Herrings, the Defenders
had tried to hijack supplies intended for the Siegers, but
despite outnumbering the English, they lost. There's a lot of
despite outnumbering the English, the French lost during this stage
of the war. It's kind of their vibe.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
They're having a rough go.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah. While this new army that Yolando is gathering was
over in nearby Blua, and so this is where Joan
went with her retinue in her banner. She is not
the overall military commander of this operation, and that is
for the best because she doesn't know shit about shit.
This is her first battle.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
I mean, I think even with God in your ear,
your first time is just hard.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yep. There's a man named the Bastard of Orleon, okay,
and he is the overall commander. And he's the bastard
son of the Duke of Orleon, who's still alive, but
he's been in a prison in England ever since the
fucking we shoot you full of arrows mud Pit adventure.
And the Bastard of Orleans was a sensible and popular

(24:44):
commander and he's actually he's pretty cool. Later he's gonna
like and we'll get to it. And in terms of
strategy and overall command, he is the one who won
this battle. But he would not have without Joan. And
that was the part that surprised me, not because I like,
don't in her, but because like she's presented as a
fucking mascot. You know, this is a winnable battle. The

(25:07):
French had slightly more troops in the English. Probably English
historians like to be like, we were totally outnumbered, and
the French historians are like, no, it was our side
who was outnumbered. I can't do a French accent. I'm
sorry everyone, I'm not sorry.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Probably better that we don't.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, but the English had a series of forts built
around the city of Orleans, and they also had the
morale and they like and they're not starving, Yeah, they're
not starving. Well, the people in the city are starving
and they're going to show up at like some of
the later battles. But their early battles. They're like, hey,
we're just some starving people. Later, hundreds of militia from
the city are going to help. But England has been

(25:42):
steamrolling France and so they're actually overconfident and they don't
really have enough people to sustain this siege. They're like, ah,
couple thousand people. The French have basically fucking given up.
They're French. Their flag is a white flag. Isn't there
some joke around that?

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, So the relief army set off from Blue and
they rolled out like it was a holy crusade. There's
priests walking in front of the army the whole road
to Orleon. She forbade swearing and pillaging, and she sent
away the sex workers who the camp followers.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Oh, the boys probably hated that.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah, she was popular among the soldiers, and I'm surprised.
They're like, what our three favorite things about war you
have taken away from us?

Speaker 3 (26:25):
But the only thing that makes walking to war bearable.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, And Joan was like, all right, we have an army,
let's attack them from the north in a very straightforward
manner until they are all dead. And this is like
pretty much her entire life for military strategy. She later
gets a little bit cannier.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Just go straight into it.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, God's on my side.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
The Bastard of Orleon is like, whoops, instead of doing
your plan, I took us to the wrong side of
the river figure plan. Sorry, I guess we have to
do the smart thing where we attack one fort.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
That's so tactful of him to not hurt her feel
I know, he was very nice about it, like, don't
tell her her plans bad.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, And they attacked one of the forts and they won,
and in large part they won, and I spent a
while reading about it. But whatever, a sudden change in
the wind changed the way that like boats were moving
on the river, and shit, right.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Well God did that.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's what the Bastard of Orlean believes. And he's like, oh,
Joan of Arc, who's not of Arc yet, Joan has
brought about divine intervention and we've won. So at this
point in the story, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's
a mascot's great. I love her, but you know, whatever,
you know, And they take this fort temporarily, they managed
to resupply the city. They ride into town and everyone

(27:43):
in Orleon knows who Joan is at this point, and
they treat her like a saint five hundred years too early.
And Joan of Arc climbs up on the battlements and
shouts at the English basically like go away or God
will drive you out. And the English are like, yeah,
we're we're gonna like rape you, and shit, they're not nice.
They said a lot of not nice stuff to her.

(28:05):
And then the battle continued over the coming days, and
then Joan of Arc, Okay, all of our tactical ideas
at this point are just shit. Most of them are like,
let's gather up all the people and then attack them
with our people until we beat all their people and
then we win.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
I mean that's kind of how Cellos.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, and the Master of Oorleon is like ignoring her.
But what Joan of Arc did which won the battle,
and this battle is pivotal to winning the war. Although
later she's gonna like actually do commander shit. She offers
morale in really extreme ways. In war, the single worst
thing is a route, right, like in a medieval fight. Honestly,

(28:44):
a lot of modern fights, most people don't die when
both sides are like peeppew hit you with a sword.
You know, that's the that's how war sounds. And most
people die when people give up and start running away,
and then you just shoot them all in the back,
or if it's the Middle Ages, you ride them down
with your cavalry and hit them in the back with swords.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
And that's just such a big distraction if you have
to turn around. Yeah, you know, you're not focusing on
the battle, guys.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, come on. The French army is on the verge
of a route trying to take this fort. And then
they like kind of look over and they're like, man,
there is a seventeen year old girl with a sword
in the middle of this battle with a banner with
God on it. Who the fuck are we to run?
She's not running. God is with us. And they turn

(29:34):
from a route to a victory, which is really fucking
rare and war and she is genuinely in the front lines,
riding with a lance, Like I feel so bad keeping
like and then I underestimated her, But it's because everything
I read felt like it was like the little quick
versions of her story, you know, Yeah, I feel like.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
There are of service level understanding I have of her
as a historical figure is very mascot like.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, but she is in the front lines, riding with
a lance, stabbing English people, and shit, I mean that's
very solid. At one point, she takes an arrow quote
above the breast and fights on, doesn't take it out,
just keeps fighting on while crying. She's just like pouring
tears as she's crying, and she's like killing motherfuckers with

(30:19):
a sword. So the French their morale would flag, and
then they'd look over and see this fucking crazy visionary
lady with an arrow in her chest, hacking away with
a sword with a banner with God on it, and
they're like, all right, will you probably do this?

Speaker 3 (30:35):
I mean I feel like that would be very motivational
for me.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, like fuck it, I'll follow her.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And what's wild to think about? I know, I kind
of brought this up earlier. This is why France is
the country that exists, because they believed in themselves. Because
Joan of Arc did this exact specific thing, at this time,
we might not have had the French Revolution, which fundamentally

(31:04):
changes the idea of how government works everywhere in the world,
not entirely for the better, but the like knock on
effects of this like blow my mind, you know, the
like butterfly flapping its wings. Effects of this battle.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Just goes to show you just do that weird thing. Yeah,
lean into it, go all the way. Who knows.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah. And the English had went from making fun of
Joan of Arc and now they are terrified of Joan
of Arc. They're like, the enemy has a fucking witch.
There is a sorceress attacking us, and we are all
going to die. The English are now outnumbered, the siege
is effectively broken. The like militia come out from the
city and join in the battles, and the English tears

(31:50):
down all their remaining forts. But instead of fucking off,
they like array themselves for battle, I mean like, I
will give it one less go fuck it, you know.
And the French army comes out of the city to
face them. But it's Sunday, uh oh, and Joan of
Arc is like, look, if they attack us, we can fight,

(32:12):
and if they don't, we can't. And people are all
like pissed, right, but they do it, and for hours
the two armies stare at each other down and then
the English turned tail and left. This is her first
like tactical thing she has done that saves probably a
couple thousand people's lives, you know. And she is seventeen

(32:33):
years old. So orly On is free. The bastard and
the maid go back to the defause court.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
He did not expect them to go back.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
No, no, like, And all the military advisers are like,
all right, stay at home, King, we'll begin a counter offensive,
but you stay here and stay safe. And Joan is like, well,
the voice has told me that you should go on
a perilous journey with the army to be crowned in
a more proper place, the city of Ron's and the

(33:07):
Dafaun's like, all right, fuck it, you're my angel, sent
by God. Let's go. Voices in your head said we
should do it. You brought me orle On. We're gonna
do it.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
I mean, so far, so good. You might as well
lean in.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah. He rallied his new and growing army. A bunch
of people switch sides after the victory of Orleon, basically
being like, oh, thank god, the Dafahnt isn't a coward.
We left because he was a piece of shit coward,
you know. And they marched out and they were claimed
a walled town from the English. Joan led the way
herself up scaling ladders banner in hand with the troops.
After her, she wore like a you know those like

(33:39):
medieval helmets that you'll see that have like kind of
like the wide brim that go all the way around.
Oh yeah, those are scaling walls helmets.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
That makes sense because they're shooting arrows down at you. Yeah,
so it's like protecting your neck and shoulders, I guess.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah. And what's cool is we have, like we probably
don't have much of her stuff that's like totally authentic.
We probably have one of her helmets, not a not
a wide helmet, but a little pointy French helmet.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
You really can't trust the Catholic Church on stuff like that,
you know what I mean? Like if every if every
splinter of the cross were real, it would have been
three hundred feet long.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
I know, well almost Like fortunately, right, Like she's not
a saint for like four hundred years.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Right, right, So they weren't. Like selling fake relics was
like I mean, after selling poison for husbands, fake relics
was a huge industry.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh yeah, same people are doing it too. You're like, ah, fuck,
I accidentally gave my husband a splinter of the true cross.
I meant to gave him arsenic.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah, like Saint Margaret had seventy six fingers, because that's
how many bones we have.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, as Margaret's, we got a lot of fingers. So
she takes this town banner in hand. Troops come up
after her. She's scaling the well. I don't know if
she's the first up, but she's like leading the way.
And at this point she's now an experienced military commander.
I think the bastard isn't coming with him at this point,
he like he survives and later he's gonna like lead
a rebellion against Charles the Seventh once Charles the Seventh

(34:58):
proves he sucks, but like.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
He's like really busy, like keeping his dad's house. Yeah, right,
he's got to go home door leon and do orleon stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah. And the tactics that she offers starts winning more
and more battles. And all of her tactics still rely
on like don't fuck around, let's just attack, let's do
decisive action, right, but she starts being smart about it.
And at one point the English shows up with reinforcements

(35:28):
with a ton of longbowmen, right, and this usually doesn't
go well for the French. At jones insistence, the French
army avoids another let's all die in the mud by
immediately sending cavalry. Like everyone wants say, all right, ready,
we got to get set up for battle. We got
to do the thing. And she's like, go.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Now, don't just stand there like a target.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
You are attacking now. And they storm up and they
slaughter the longbowmen before they have time to like set
up their like pikes into the ground to keep you know,
horses from attacking and shit.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
And they're heavy, Like it's like you have to get
in your little spa instead of your big heavy bow. Yeah,
so if you don't, just don't let them get on
top of you. Get in there smart.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah. This battle, the Battle of Patay, even more than
the Battle of Orleon, is what changed the face of
this war. The one hundred year War turns on Joan
of Arc as the commander ordering this attack, and two
thousand English soldiers lay dead, and the English courage failed,

(36:32):
and the French fighting spirit is renewed. This does not
end the war. The war's going to drag on for
a long ass time longer. But this is like, this
is one of the most important decisive battles of the
entire thing that turns it around.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I mean, once you've been at it for a century,
I feel like if things are picking up the pace
a little bit, that's dramatic.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, totally. And the king kept wanting to chicken out
of this war, march to go get crowned, but every
time Joan forces him to keep going. They should go
up at towns under Burgundian control and we'll just be like, hey,
come out, I'm your king, be French again. And most
of the time they're like, yeah, all right, that sounds

(37:10):
all right.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
If they hadn't invented nationalism yet, so they're just I
mean they could take it or leave it.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, no, totally. So they make it to Ron's Charles
the seventh is crowned more properly, and Joan's parents are there.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Ah, how did they How did they get there?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
They cross fucking enemy territory with like a bunch of soldiers.
I assume there's a whole delegation.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
How did they know to even go? Like did someone
send them a letter?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah? I assume so they probably they probably set people right.
They were like, oh, go get Joan of ARC's parents.
You know, And as the king was crowned, Joan of
Arcs stood at his side holding her banner.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
That's kind of a big deal, I.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Know, but not as a big deal as his ads
selling the products with Kooper on Go.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
God told me that you have to buy the products.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
That's right, and we're back.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, it's a huge fucking deal, right, And this is
like going to change the way that people end up
talking about her later, like after she's burned at the
steak and he kind of like has to well, we'll
get to it later. But yeah, she's right there, like
standing beside him, and this is like a wild thing, right,
It's like, this isn't like old Viking times where lots

(38:35):
of women fought, you know, this is like true civilized France,
Catholic Land. And the coronation re establishes Charles the seventh
as the rightful heir to France. And now the war
isn't who's the rightful heir. Now the war is let's
kick out the invading English, who were not living up
to the Burgundian promises of populism in Paris every Christmas.

(38:58):
The French royalty had always feasted the commoners, but the
English occupiers were like, why would we give stuff to
poor people? That doesn't make any sense?

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Not a popular choice.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, and so the English are like, oh shit, we
better get our fucking our infant guy Henry the six
coronated in Ron's two, but they couldn't book the venue
because of the military occupation of the other side.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
And how old is their baby king?

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Oh, I don't know. In the end, he gets like
he's like ten soon, but I think right now he's
a baby. I'm not he's not in charge.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Well yeah, I would just in terms of like being sentient.
So he's just like a baby guy.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, yeah, he's the fucking mascot. So they do it
in Paris and this isn't as big of you think
Paris is a bigger deal because it's the capital and
they do it like fucking Notre Dame, right, But Ron's
is where like a old Louis guy got coronated, and
that's like who they're all claiming to be the rightful
heir of and shit, you know.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Right, you want to sort of claim the lineage.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, and when they do this, they piss off the
Parisians because they they do this coronation in a really
English fashion, which is to say, they didn't give fresh
food to the commoners. Instead, there was like some food
for the commoners and it had been cooked like Thursday.
I don't know what day of the coronation was, but
I know the food had been cooked Thursday, and it

(40:14):
was like several days later. And it backfired. People of
Paris were like, oh, y'all are English as hell? What
the fuck?

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Really, at least do our customs. If you're gonna pretend
to be the king of France, like, at least do
it in a French way.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, and give us some fucking decent food. This is
supposed to be like our day, right.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
There should be snacks.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
And this gets that one of the most interesting, messiest
lessons from medieval history, which is that monarchy and nobility
were often kinder to commoners than like the non noble
rich like the bourgeoisie. Right, like fuck a king, fuck
a monarchy. But the rule by the wealthy that replaced
royalty is not progress. And in the fourteen hundreds England

(40:58):
was slightly more like middle class in bourgeois and this
is the most obviously two two hundred years later in
the English Civil War, where like the rich kick out
the king and then are all a bunch of Puritan
assholes and like genocide the Irish and all this shit.
But like it's just this really interesting thing about how
nobles are better at populism than rich people are as
I guess what I would say, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Because it's sort of this paternalistic relationship.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, it was not good.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah, no, I mean, but it is if they have
this sort of.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Like that's my dad, He'll take care of me.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
I mean, they don't take they don't take great care
of them, but it's like these are our people. We've
been ordained by God to care for the land and
the people or whatever.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, totally. It's like the difference between like I'm going
to take care of my sheep that I want to
like take advantage of versus like, ah, I got enough sheep,
they'll fucking do whatever they want and maybe they'll all
get eaten by wolves. Who gives a shit. It's like
I don't want to be a sheep in either one
of those stories, you.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Know, right right, you die at the end regardless.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's not good. You get it. And things
get messier after all this new coronation shit, after his coronation.
Charles the Seventh is like, hey, let's call for a
truce in peace talks and this sounds nice, right, Like
that's usually the vibe try to end civil wars. But
Joe of Arc is like, no fucking attack Paris. What

(42:17):
the fuck are you talking about? And this is the
first time he doesn't listen to her, and it goes badly.
The other side is like, oh, yeah, totally, let's do
peace talks. That's totally what we're about. And so they
sign this like several week truce and they like use
that time to get thousands more nights across the English
channel to reinforce Paris.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
That's sneaky, that's not.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Honorable, I know. And so eventually the English are like, nah,
just kidding, fuck you, we were never gonna do peace,
and so Charles the Seventh marches on Paris. But now
Paris is defended as fuck. Paris is the largest city
in the western part of Europe, and it's you know,
the most fortified, and there's hundreds of thousands. It's like
bad right, let them dig in. Yeah, and like it's

(43:03):
a Burgundian city overall at this point, and so like
they're not even the people. I mean, the people of
Paris are like the underclass is kind of on the
side of Charles' seventh, but like the middle class and
shit are and it's like it's messy.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Because it's been years at this point, right that they've
held this area.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah, And so they have a big ass battle and
it is medieval as hell. There's cannonballs and arrows flying everywhere.
People are trying to dam up the moat with sticks
so they can build a bridge to climb the walls.
People are dying everywhere. Joan tries to rally the troops
to scare the enemy, but the Perusians are like, they
don't see her as an emissary of God or as

(43:41):
a scary witch. They're like, you're a provincial loser or Paris.
We don't like people from the countryside. And so they
shoot her in the fucking leg when she's trying to
do this big like we can do it, guys rallying cry,
and it takes her down. Unlike the arrow she takes
in the chest, which I think like probably just didn't
penetrate all that far, this one takes her out and

(44:03):
Yolanda's son dragged her out of the moat she'd fallen into,
and they all retreated, and seeing their mystics struck down
took the spirit out of the people, and the whole
attack fails. It probably would have failed anyway, and this
is the end of her having favor at court.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
That's awfully fickle.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oh, they're super fickle. There's this thing where like again,
most of the narratives I've heard around this is like, oh,
her straightforward tactics working early on, but when she tries
it in pair, she loses, and then she loses again,
and you know, as if she's a bad commander. No,
she wanted to attack Paris before it was defended.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
And that might have worked.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
And the other failures that she has I'll get to,
but it's because she loses favor. She has shunned, she
has shunted out of the limelight. Yolanda is also kind
of out of the limelight now because, like Jones, her
guy right and Yolanda's main rival, comes more to power,
and so they send Joan to try and siege a
town that they know she can't in the middle of winter,

(45:01):
barely any soldiers. They are not sending any reinforcements or
food or money or anything right, and she fails because
she can't do it, and now she's disgraced, and the
king he makes her a noble at this point in
order to save face, and now she becomes Joan of
Arc like now she has a title, and the imprisoned

(45:24):
Duke of Orleans somehow sends her red dress covered in rubies,
presumably through the Bastard of Orleon, and basically everyone, at
least the king is hoping that she's going to hang
up the sword and armor and just shut up and
be a lady, right.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
Not our girl, Joan. No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
No, She's not going to shut up and be a lady.
Despite having like basically no support from the king, she
keeps fighting the fucking English. She has her tiny personal retinue,
including one brother. I don't know what happened to the
other brother, it probably wasn't good. And she has two
hundred Italian mercenaries and she just goes around. She's conquering
towns and shit, she knows the size of her on
fucking force. She's winning battles. Then she's valiantly defending the

(46:06):
retreat of her nights across a drawbridge when the guy
in charge of the town ditches her by raising the
drawbridge with only her and a few nights outside, and
she's surrounded by the English and captured. Oh shit, So
she never failed as a military commander. She was abandoned.

(46:28):
That's so sad, I know. And most of the versions
of the story of Joan of Arc focused now on
like what I try not to just like constantly talk
shit on everyone else who's told a story that I'm telling,
but I'm like particularly bitter with this particular one. You know,
there's good stories and very smart stories. People want to
talk about the theological stuff and things like that, and

(46:49):
that's interesting, right, So people focus less on her military
career more in her like torture and trial, and I'm
going to focus less on those.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
I think it's with a lot of stories like this,
the learst best kept, most well maintained records that we
have are from the court and from the church, and
in this case, it was yep, the Church's canonical court, right,
so like yep, that's who was writing it down, yep.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
And so yeah, like almost everything we have of like
direct quotes from her and stuff absolutely comes from court.
And it is an interesting court room drama. I would
absolutely watch like just the court movie, and it probably
exist was a million of Mard movies. I just haven't
seen them. But like, so she sold to the English.
This does not transport her to England. She's like in
just English controlled France, you know. And they put her
on trial for heresy, not by the English crown but

(47:36):
by the Catholic Church. Her charges include wearing men's clothes,
acting on demonic visions, and saying only God can judge me,
not you clerics here on earth, instead of submitting to
the church.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Okay, well, this is just truly unfair because we already
checked if the visions were demonic, I know, you know
what I mean, Like we weren't just acting on her word,
like some guys checked. Yeah, like she's already been acquitted
of the demon thing.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, and the trial is a show trial, Yeah, no doubt.
It fails to meet even the Catholic Church's standards for inquisitions.
This is actually part of why it was like kind
of easy ish for the church to later be like no,
just kidding, She's totally fine. Is that? Like actually some
of the clerics were like, hey, you can't do this,
and they were like arrested in shit, you know, so

(48:25):
there were some people who tried to like stand up
for what they perceived as justice in their inquisition, which
is not a word that has a good record. But
then again, that's how people are going to look at
the modern prison industrial complex. They'll be like, and then
this judge thought that it was like good to put
someone in jail for marijuana, and everyone's gonna be like,
oh my god, you know, jail arbaric, barbarous. Anyway, at

(48:50):
the beginning of the trial, Joan is defiant and well
spoken and clever. She has like proved theological shit that
she has no way of knowing, right, she doesn't have
any traditional education. And there's a whole thing where demonic
visions are embodied, like if Jesus shows up and he's
like and he can like touch you and you can
like put your finger in that wound, you know, that's

(49:10):
the devil.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
I don't know that they've been consistent about this over time.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
No I am no I every expectation they were not.
But in the early fourteen hundreds, this is the way
the Catholic Church did it. If it's not embodied as
a chance of being proper in divine and slowly as
the months wear on, she's beaten down. She's like, oh,
Charles is gonna save me. I got him crowned, you know,

(49:37):
like it's just a matter of time.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Yeah, Like did you forget your girl?

Speaker 2 (49:41):
No, he's a fickle, cowardly fuck. In the end, she
signs a document saying she's sorry in exchange for not
being killed. She's like, I won't wield weapons or wear
men's clothes, and she got life in prison instead of
burned at the stake.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Wow, it's a lot like the modern federal court system.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
And they left men's clothes in her cell to kind
of try and trap her, and she said later that
she wore them because she wanted to address as a
man when you have mail guards.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Right, this is the same reason as before. Right, It's
like this is a safety and practicality consideration, right, And
like that's completely possible.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
I also think it is completely possible that she preferred
to present in mail attire. Right. And then she said
that the angels had come and chastised her for for
swearing them out of fear, and that you should not
act out of fear, and so she would never forswear
them again. She would not deny that God had spoken
to her, so they burned her at the stake on

(50:41):
May thirtieth, fourteen thirty one. She asked for a cross,
and an English soldier made one from a stick and
gave it to her, and she held it against her chest.
And after she burned her ashes were thrown into the
river so they could never become relics.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Which tells me they were thinking, like, not everybody is
going to agree with what we did here, right, if
you are thinking ahead to making sure there's no finger
bones to put in a glass case in the cathedral, Yeah,
you know, you might be wrong.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
You know, you're the baddie.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
You might be wrong.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
And part of the reason that this later gets thrown out,
this whole case gets thrown out, is because like even
though all of almost all the clerics are French, out
of like the like hundred or whatever fucking inquisitors, almost
all of them are French, they're almost all English aligned, right,
and it is not a neutral trial. And it was like,
according to the Church's own doctrine, she should have been
tried impartially, you know, send her to Rome, yeah, I mean,

(51:39):
or just be like, hell, yeah, you rule, good job.
Keep the sword dresses a boy, gender's fake.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
God loves everyone, or just like send her back to
a little French village and move on.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah, totally like grow up. Yeah. Four years later, the
Burgundians made peace with Charles the Seventh and abandoned England.
Ten years after that, in fourteen fifty three, the French
finally kicked the English out of France, out of everywhere
except Klay. And since Joan had been important in getting
Charles the Seventh crowned, it was politically important that her

(52:12):
image be rehabilitated. So there was a second trial and
she was found innocent, and then in nineteen twenty she
was canonized, becoming again I believe, the only Catholic saint
who was killed by the Catholic Church. And yeah, I
think she's cool.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
She got a raw deal, man, She got a raw deal.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
She really did. She knew she was gonna right. She
was like, I only got a year, you know?

Speaker 3 (52:39):
But oh was she right? What was the timeline on that? She?

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Actually, I think she did outlast her own prediction because
she was seventeen when she said that, and she was
nineteen when she died. But she might have been because
her trial was dragged on for months. It might have
been about a year before she got caught.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
She might have been about right.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Yeah, and Charles the Seventh is the big fucker here, right, Like.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
He probably could have bargained for her back if he
was so inclined.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
I know. And there's this whole thing where they like
were really specifically worried about, Like there's the whole case
is like she's incredibly well guarded this whole time, right,
because they're like, fuck, he might come and raid to
try and get her free, and he never even tried.
There was no chance that that man would have done that, Like,
there was no part of his personality that was like

(53:25):
I should risk things for people who've risked things for me.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Like, especially because he'd already abandoned her at that point.
That's why she got abandoned.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, absolutely, she hadn't been fucking abandoned. Who fucking knows
how the story would go, no idea. And that's how
two women changed history by relying on slash, in Yolanda's case,
possibly fabricating visions. I'm pretty certain that Joan of Arc
genuinely saw what she saw, you know, Oh.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, no, I believe that, you know, on whatever level
these things can be true, but yeah, she was acting
out of sincere belief.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Yeah, how did things shake out for Yolando?

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Like she lived for another she live on into like
the fourteen forties and did a bunch of other political shit.
I like, I followed her story a little bit, and
I was like, yep, more back and forth of Nobles.
I'm good. And the Bastard of Orlean led a revolt
against Charles the Seventh when Charles the Seventh tried to
like centralize more power and be like, oh, it's the

(54:27):
King of friends, I should also be able to like
make everyone give do even more for me, And he
was like, I don't like that idea. And I'm the
Bastard of Orlean.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
See that's why you don't help kings. I know, that's
why you don't help kings man.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
That really is the moral of this story. Like there
is a version where Joan of Arc leads a peasant
army and it is like just my happiest dream utopia.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
You know, really, God should have sent you out into
the countryside instead.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah, absolutely, go lie to the king and get a
lot of swords so that people are fighting with more
than just like fucking flails from the field. Yeah, I
always want to know more about Joan of Arc and
now I do, and now we do. I was expecting
to be this one of those episodes where I'm like, eh,
I think she's fucking cool as hell.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
We need another one.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, just with better be the equivalent of that, like
fighting for like Biden or some shit, you.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Know, just sent by God to fight in the streets
for Joseph Robin at Biden.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah, God damn it. Anyway, thanks for listening, And if
people want to hear about more weird little now, I mean,
she's weird, but not in the way that I love
that we're having a public reckoning with the fact that
weird has more than one meaning, And people are like, no,
you can't use weird as a mean word for Republicans

(55:49):
because we're all weird, And You're like, did you know
that nowns can have multiple definitions or I guess adjectives
in this case, I think.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
The most succinct explanation I've seen is like, there's difference
between like weird aunt energy and weird uncle energy. Right, Like,
your weird aunt will let you smoke pot at her house,
you're weird uncle. You're not allowed to be alone with.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah, I have faith in some weird uncles having weird
on energy, Like exactly, it's gonna take you to the
horse races, you know, and like it'll be weird, but
everything's safe.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Yeah, Like there are different kinds of weird, Like Joan
was definitely a weird little guy, but not like the
weird little guys on my show, Right, those guys suck.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, unless you told the story from the Burgundian point
of view.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
A real villain.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, sent by God to fucking stab us all.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
It really took care of business on that one.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
But yeah, folks should check out your show on Thursdays.
And folks should check out my sub stack where I
post about lots of stuff.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
And pre order your book.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Oh yeah, and pre order my book called The Sapling Cage.
It comes out September twenty fourth from Feminist Press. Has
lots of stabbing, but probably less death overall because it's
a sort of young adultish book. You ever heard of
the genre crossover?

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Crossover to what?

Speaker 2 (57:16):
This is a genre called crossover of books. It's the
word for ya, books that everyone knows are actually going
to be mostly read by adults.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Oh okay, I get it again.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah, and it changes not only the way they're marketed,
but it actually gives you a lot more freedom in
terms of how you write them, not in terms of
it are being like more gore or whatever, but in
terms of like breaking from certain assumptions about ways that
certain characters behave and all of these other things. And
so The Sapling Cage is a crossover book that people
can check.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Out, and they should, they should preorder it.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Yeah, I want to plug that. We're making a lot
of progress on the Android AD free version of Cooler
Zone Media that's currently only available at Apple, and there's
like technical things that are happening that are actually happening,
and it should be done soon and then people will
be happy and nobody will be mad ever again, right,

(58:09):
how's that works?

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Yay? Okay? Cool?

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
Now that I'm a podcaster, people are asking me about that, Sophie,
and that is not my business.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I know. Like that's why we have producers, because podcasting
is incredibly hard and actually takes a team of people
to do it right anyway. But if you want to
hear it done right, you can listen to lots of
cool Zone Media podcasts, including this very one next week
when I talk about more cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
See you next week.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.