What French heroine was burned at the stake in 1431?

The French heroine burned at the stake in 1431 was Joan of Arc. Also known as Jeanne d’Arc, she was a teenage military leader who supported the French claimant Charles VII during the Hundred Years’ War against England and its allies.

Joan became celebrated after helping inspire the French victory at the siege of Orléans in 1429. Her success helped clear the way for Charles’s coronation at Reims, strengthening the legitimacy of the Valois claim to the French throne. She was captured near Compiègne in 1430 and handed over to an English-allied tribunal.

Joan was executed in Rouen on May 30, 1431, at about nineteen years old. The court condemned her for heresy, though a later retrial in 1456 overturned the verdict. The Catholic Church canonized her as a saint in 1920. The execution took place during the war, but Joan was not burned simply for being a military figure; the formal charge was religious heresy.