Late Middle Ages · Europe · War

1430

Joan of Arc Captured at Compiegne

May 23, 1430

Covering a retreat across a drawbridge, the Maid was pulled from her horse by a Burgundian archer and sold to the English for ten thousand livres. Charles VII, whose throne she had saved, made no attempt to ransom her. She was twenty years old. Her trial at Rouen would become history's most famous miscarriage of justice, its transcript a haunting record of teenage defiance.