Ep. 18. Joan of Arc: The Girl Who Crowned a King and Saved a Nation

06/19/22 • 117 min

Heroes and Legends Documentary Channel Podcast

Joan of Arc; the Maid of Orleans; Jeanne D'Arc, Jehanne la Pucelle: she goes by many names. A provincial French peasant girl, barely in her teens, living in relative poverty, illiteracy and complete subordination during a time of total war and medieval brutality. Imagine this traumatised though deeply pious child having visions of angels and saints, and being commanded by them to seek out the dauphin (the French word for Crown Prince) and convince him to let her lead his demoralised army and liberate their kingdom from a powerful enemy. Most people then, as now, would have thought her at best, mentally ill. But so determined was she to carry out her mission, that no amount of opposition, discrimination or humiliation was going to stand in her way. Never taking NO for an answer, she eventually got her audience with the dauphin, she also got her army, and with it, proceeded to blaze her way across France, inspiring troops and civilians alike to fight on against overwhelming odds and turn the tide of war against England finally in their favour; always leading from the front and being herself seriously wounded on multiple occasions. This naïve teenager would soon wipe out the celebrated army of English longbowmen that had so humiliated her country at Crecy and Agincourt, such that it would take a generation for them to appear in force again on any battlefield. She would live to see her king, Charles VII crowned, only to suffer capture, a show trial and a horrible demise at the hands of the English; based entirely on her being a woman daring to participate in a man’s world.
#joanofarc, #jeannedarc, jehannedarc, #hundredyearswar, #orléans, #orleans, #history, #documentary, #heroesandlegends, #girlpower

Support the show

Support the show

Previous Episode

Ep. 17. Thomas Paine: The Forgotten Father of Western Democracy

Thomas Paine was a plain talking, big thinking common man - self educated in matters of science, philosophy, activism and political theory. His pamphlets and books inspired ordinary people throughout the colonies of America to stand up for their rights and throw off the yoke of British domination. Soon after, these books were smuggled into France, where they inspired the Third Estate to agitate for the guarantee of their natural rights. Eventually, this grass roots activism would lead to the overthrow of the French Monarchy in the French Revolution, where Paine would be granted honorary citizenship, a seat in its parliament and a voice in the drafting of the French Republic's constitution. He would eventually go on to write on many issues of social justice, including abolition, universal suffrage, aged care, education, welfare, healthcare and anti-corruption in government. This occasionally made him a target of powerful people, and despite his heroic status, he was eventually marginalised and forgotten. Overshadowed by the major players who used his tireless campaigning to their advantage, Paine died in obscurity and poverty, having transformed the landscape of democracy across three continents, and was the source of many of our greatest achievements in civil discourse and progress over the last 250 years.
#thomaspaine, #americanhero, #democracy, #frenchrevolution, #documentary

Support the show

Next Episode

Ep. 19. The Incredible Journey of Medieval Adventurer Ibn Battuta

When most people are asked to name an epic traveller from history, they usually come up with names like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Magellan, or any number of other well-known European explorers and adventurers that come to mind. Very few could name an explorer or traveller outside the realm of medieval and renaissance Europe, despite the obvious reality that there was at the same time, an enormous, incredibly diverse and highly interconnected parallel world outside their own relatively isolated domain, in which the Islamic faith had established networks of sultanates and empires extending from the Westernmost edge of Africa, all the way to China.
This was a world in which newly conquered peoples were only just starting to assimilate the Arab Islamic culture, adopting – and adapting - this new faith to their own tastes and styles in an organic process of fusion that few Westerners ever credit other cultures as being capable of. What if I told you that around the same time of the celebrated Marco Polo, there was a young Muslim adventurer, who travelled 5 times as far. From his homeland in Morocco, through the middle East, doing numerous side-trips- north into Russia, with Mongol khans of the Golden Horde and Ilkhanate and Genoese traders, and then south again to India's Tughlaq Sultanate and South East Asia, dwelling in the court of mighty Sultans as well as hermits in lonely caves. He would go on to loop the middle East and Mediterranean and then sail down the mysterious East coast of Africa only to weave his way back north and on to modern Indonesia, Malaya and on to Yuan Dynasty China. Regularly stopping for months at a time to study and work under the greatest teachers of the day, on his journey, he would meet mystics and maniacs, firewalkers and killer elephants; princes and pirates. He would marry and divorce ten times; win and lose several fortunes; undertake the sacred Hajj 5 times; outrun the bubonic plague; and after a quarter of a century eventually make his way home, only to travel across the Sahara into deepest Africa.
He would go on to recount his journey, the people he met and the cultures he encountered in rich and vivid detail, in a precious book that would eventually make him a hero throughout the entire Islamic world, and a household name, much as Marco Polo is to us. If this sounds like a rollicking adventure worth exploring, then join us, as we dive into the life and times of Ibn Battuta (بْنُ بَطُّوطَةُ) - pilgrim, intellectual, adventurer, hustler and all out freeloading tourist whose exploits across 40 modern countries over thirty years held the record for the longest individual journey until the advent of the jet-age, making Marco Polo’s journey look like a Contiki tour.
#ibnbattuta #rihlah #traveller #documentary #history #islam #medieval
To access a pdf copy of Prof Gibb's translation of Ibn Battuta's "Rihla" please visit our resource section at www.heroesandlegends.com.au

Support the show