Joan of Arc’s Loire Campaign: The English Tide Recedes

After lifting the siege of Orleans in 1429, Joan of Arc and her experienced captains moved to mop up English resistance in the Loire Valley. Sir John Fastolf and his Burgundian allies at Patay were the main targets of their advance.

This article appears in: October 2012

By William Welsh None of those present at the war council held on July 18, 1429, at Beaugency in central France seemed to object to the peculiar sight of an armor-clad young woman advising some of the greatest military captains of the age on how to proceed with the campaign to crown the Dauphin Charles king of France. Prone to dithering, the French commanders owed much of their current success to the persistence and impatience of the Maid of Domremy, who considered it her mission to raise the s