When Jeanne d'Arc was born life was hard and dangerous in Domremy. The villagers were hard put to it to protect themselves against fierce knights and noblemen who rode at the head of marauding bands to steal and plunder at will. The peasants had to look on sadly, with no hope of redress, when brutal men at arms drove off their sheep, or tossed the torch into their cottages--and as there was little to choose between friend and foe, the villagers stood guard in the tower of a nearby monastery, and gave the alarm when any soldiers approached the town.
Domremy, however, was no worse off in these respects than other towns and villages in that far time. And it must not be thought that the village folk were wholly without pleasures. Roses grew along the walls of their cottages, wine flowed from their vineyards, and there were village festivals and dances in which they loved to take part. Although they could not read or write, their priests instructed them in the history of the Church and its mighty power, and in the lives of the Saints and Martyrs and their teachings--how those that obeyed the Church and its priests were blessed, while those that broke its laws must surely enter the dismal fires of Hell. There were also bands of players who acted the religious stories taught by the priests in so vivid a manner that the peasants were thrilled and delighted; and while their cottages were bare and poor, their church was glorious with gold, rich with embroidery and bright with candle light that gleamed upon the carven, painted figures of the Saints that they adored.
It had been prophesied in France that from a forest near Domremy there would come a maid who would deliver the country from the perils that beset it--and when Jeanne d'Arc was a little girl the times seemed ripe indeed for the appearance of such deliverer. A great war had been raging between France and England; the English had captured many French towns and laid claim to the crown itself; the French King, Charles the Sixth, was quite mad; his Queen had leagued herself with the enemies of France, and her son, Prince Charles, who was called the Dauphin, had been compelled to flee to escape the English and the Burgundians.