01.01.70

So it was to the Loire that the 17-year-old Joan, an illiterate peasant driven by some inexplicable combination of spiritual certainty and brazen self-assurance, travelled in March 1429 – arriving at Chinon to the south-west of Tours, where she talked her way into the presence of Charles and asked for an army.

That meeting took place in the great hall of a castle that survives only in ruins. But they're mighty ruins, with a handily close-by Jeanne d'Arc museum (one of many in the Loire towns) to complete the picture. With some licence.

Having won Charles around, Joan got her army and set off along the Loire which, then as now, was an unpredictable thoroughfare: sometimes in torrential flood, sometimes just trickling through grassy shallows. Crossing points were few and far between, so towns with bridges tended to attract most of the fighting. And exploring these today, you find that almost all of them have Jeanne d'Arc streets and statues, houses where she stayed and churches where she prayed. Passing through Tours, her first significant stop was Blois: a town filled with history from later periods and famous for an urban chateau with architectural features that weren't there in 1429, so Joan wouldn't have seen them as she marshalled her troops and had her standard blessed by the local prelate.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

by bhw

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Get extra cute and host a baby "shower" with an "Umbrella Baby Shower Theme"!

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