“In some obscure sense, Joan is France.”

The Counterrevolutionary and Royal Army of America

~ "For Our Lady. For the Monarchy."

by Walter Adams

“Before Joan appeared, France was a depressed place, which was on the verge of falling under foreign domination…

The dearth of leaders in the Armagnac ranks points to the most serious thing lacking in France before Joan came to the scene: a sense of nationhood. At the turn of the 15th century, there was no real kingdom of France – at least as we conceive of a kingdom. France, at that time, was a series of counties, duchies, and baronies, and the people of France were loyal to their counts, dukes, and barons…

All of this changed after Joan appeared. With Joan’s arrival, the Armagnac’s lost their fear. They emerged from their depression. Thousands upon thousands of men flocked to her side to help her throw off the yoke of foreign domination…

 In some obscure sense, Joan is France. That is why the French have rallied under her banner for the 550 – odd years that separate us from her death, despite the radical changes that the nation has undergone since then.

Joan’s quest, by her own admission, was divinely inspired. Joan claimed to have done nothing as far as the liberation of France was concerned, which was not commanded by God. This implies that God wanted France to belong to the French – that he wanted France to be a nation. This is a very strong claim, which would surely make even the most ardent of French atheists grin with delight still today.

But Joan’s claim that God wanted France to be a nation implies that nationhood itself can be sacred. It suggests that there is a divine order behind what the modern mind tends to consider coincidental unities of peoples. It implies that the evolution of society has a goal to which it tends; that there is a divine plan behind human history.”

From Chapter 13, pps, 164-172.

This girl… was sent for the liberation and consolation of the King and Kingdom… And in the service of God she liberated the kingdom from the hands of the English, with God compassionately cooperating, as one can piously believe. (Elie de Bourdeillest, the Bishop of Perigueux, who was one of Joan’s judges), P. 169