Joan of Arc

By the late 1420s the English and their Burgundian allies hold northern France, and the Dauphin Charles is uncrowned. Joan, a girl from the village of Domrémy, wins an audience with him, receives a company of soldiers, and comes to besieged Orléans; the city is freed within days. That same summer Charles is crowned at Reims after the old custom. A year later Joan is captured, tried by a church court at Rouen and burned as a heretic; a quarter of a century on, the verdict is annulled. The turning of the Hundred Years' War is sealed in France's favour.