The Maid of Orleans

A peasant shepherd girl, guided by visions and heavenly voices, leaves her rural home to accept a divine commission, rallying forces to lift a decisive siege and secure a coronation. Her battlefield triumphs give way to political ingratitude, a fateful choice to remain in service, capture by enemies, a corrupt ecclesiastical trial, and execution as a heretic. Woven through these events is a romantic subplot about an abduction and its daring rescue that lightens the close. The narrative combines pastoral reverie, military episodes, courtroom drama, and martyrdom into a concise, historically oriented life portrait.