the little village, "like heralds of a new joy", rejoiced in her birth by crowing long before dawn, as some later believed a different type of dawn. ( www.joan-of-arc.org)
             In the French society, at this time, faith in God and the Church was an important part of everyday life. Most of the daily life consisted of going to church. They believed that men were inherently fallible, that their purpose on earth was not for gratification but salvation, and that the Church was the best hope for salvation. They believed that the Church was given the authority to guide man to salvation by Jesus. They also believed that people would often receive divine revelations from God. God would guide people in there lives.(Paine 12)
             As a child Joan spent most of her time in the forests and strawberry fields of the Meuse River valley, far away from the northern regions where the political situation was growing steadily worse. In May of the year 1413 Paris was subjected to many weeks of violence during an anti-Royalist revolt which was engineered by the Duke of Burgundy, carried out by a butcher named Simon Caboche, and pushed by a young clergyman and Burgundian partisan named Pierre Cauchon, whom Joan would later encounter in a terrible meeting. War with England again began in August of 1415 when Henry V invaded Normandy and defeated the French Royal army near the little village of Agincourt on October 25th. These losses severely weakened the French aristocracy and Royalist party. Burgundy who was extremely alarmed at the magnitude of the French defeat began to rethink his position, but soldiers in the name of the Armagnacs assassinated him in 1419. Philip, Burgundy's son, whose nickname was "the Good"!
             , had a bad temper and sought revenge by allying Burgundy with the English once more.
             While all this fighting and war was going on, the d'Arc family continued to farm their 50-some acres of land near the Meuse. ...