Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans (Campfire Story)

About six hundred years ago, France was losing a war. It had been going on so long that people later called it the Hundred Years' War. English armies held huge parts of France. The French king's son, Charles, hadn't even been crowned. And the English were laying siege to the city of Orléans, and if Orléans fell, France might fall with it.

In a little village called Domrémy, in the east of France, there lived a farm girl named Joan. She was the daughter of a farmer. She herded sheep, and she spun wool, and she went to church. She never learned to read or write.

When she was about thirteen, Joan said she began to hear voices. She said they were saints, and that they told her she had a mission: to drive the English out of France and see Charles crowned king.

For years she kept it to herself. Then, when she was sixteen, she walked to the nearest town with a French garrison and told the captain she needed to see Charles. He laughed and sent her home. She came back. He sent her home again. She came back again. The story goes that she told him the French had just lost a battle near Orléans, before the news had even arrived. When word came days later and proved her right, the captain gave her a horse, a sword and an escort.

She cut her hair short and dressed in men's clothes, for safety on the road, and rode for eleven days across enemy country to reach Charles. The story goes that, to test her, Charles hid himself among his courtiers and put someone else on his throne. Joan walked right past the throne and knelt in front of the real Charles.

Charles's advisers questioned her for weeks. In the end, they decided: France was so desperate, it was worth a try. They gave Joan a suit of white armor and a banner, and sent her with an army to Orléans.

The soldiers didn't know what to make of a seventeen-year-old girl. But Joan didn't hang back. She rode at the front. She told the soldiers to stop swearing and go to church. She carried her banner into battle so everyone could see it. When she was hit by an arrow in the shoulder, she pulled it out and went back into the fight. And the soldiers, who had been losing for years, began to believe they could win.

In nine days, the siege of Orléans was broken. The English had held it for months. People started calling Joan "the Maid of Orléans."

Then she led the army through English-held country all the way to the city of Reims, where French kings were always crowned, winning battle after battle. And in July of 1429, Joan stood beside the altar with her banner while Charles was crowned King Charles the Seventh of France. She had done exactly what she'd said she would do.

The next year, Joan was captured by enemies of the king during a battle, and sold to the English. King Charles didn't try to rescue her. The English put her on trial for heresy, with judges who wanted her found guilty. For months, the nineteen-year-old who couldn't read stood alone in front of dozens of learned men and answered their trick questions so cleverly that they were often left with nothing to say. But the trial was decided before it began. In May of 1431, Joan was put to death in the town square of Rouen. She was nineteen years old.

Twenty-five years later, another trial looked at her case again, and declared her innocent. And the war she'd turned around ended with the English driven out of almost all of France.

Today, Joan of Arc is a national hero of France, and a saint. There are statues of her in towns all over the world, usually on horseback, with her banner raised. And her story still asks the question it asked six hundred years ago: what could one young person do, if they believed in something enough to stand up for it, even when every grown-up in the room told them no?

Storyteller tips: focus on her persistence, going back to the captain again and again, and on her courage at the trial. Afterward, ask: what's something you believe in enough to keep asking for, even after people say no?