ABSTRACT
French have troubie realizing the importance of Joan of Arc in our history. Coming in the middle of the Hundred Years War, her epic lasted hardly more than two years, and from that we must deduct an entire year, from May 1430 to May 1431, when Joan was in prison. The impact of this peasant girl from the Lorraine may have been short and sudden, but the consequences of her character were decisive. She secured the survival of a France that was cut in two both by internal discords, such as the disputes between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, and by methodical English invasion. One thread, however, runs through them all, and that is the commitment to those institutions of chivalry that permeated manners and inspired courtly poetry. Joan appeared when confusion was at its height. Students and academics deliberately took the side of the power supported by the Burgundians, and Paris was occupied.
