Joan, a simple farm girl, managed to secure an audience with the French king-in-waiting and convinced him to put her in charge of his army, claiming she was hearing directly from God. Quite possibly out of sheer desperation, the king agreed and Joan proceeded to win battle after battle, eventually turning the tide of war and allowing the king to be coronated.
Joan was later captured by the English, tried in what was essentially a kangaroo court and sentenced to death. The actions by the English were largely politically motivated as the heresy trial was designed to discredit the recently coronated French king.
By the time of her death at the age of 19, Joan had become a national symbol of triumph, so much so that the executioners were instructed to burn the remains of her body three more times and dump the ashes in the river for fear that somebody may create holy relics from her remains.
In fact, until 2008, it was thought that a bone fragment kept at the Museum of Art and History in Chinon was actually a relic from Joan's body. The fragment of rib bone was found in a bottle in 1867 in a Paris pharmacy bearing the label "Remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc, virgin of Orleans", but when tested was revealed to be a fragment of a sixth century BC Egyptian mummy.
How the mummy bone arrived in the bottle in Paris is anyone's guess!
