Also known as Jeanne d'Arc, Joan the Maid, the Maid of Orléans and the Maid of Lorraine, Joan was a simple peasant girl who claimed to hear the voices of saints telling her she must help the Dauphin gain the throne of France. This she did, though whether it was through her leadership or through her use by others as a pawn is still debated. Nevertheless her dedication to her Ideals and her Faith set an excellent example of Chivalry.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan of Arc led the troops to victory over the English. Joan continued fighting the enemy in other locations along the Loire. Fear of troops under her leadership was so formidable that when she approached Lord Talbot's army at Patay, most of the English troops and Commander Sir John Fastolfe fled the battlefield. Fastolfe was later stripped of his Order of the Garter for this act of cowardice. Although Lord Talbot stood his ground, he lost the battle and was captured along with a hundred English noblemen and lost 1800 of his soldiers.

In 1430 Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing. Joan was told that for a woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn't yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 Joan was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.