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- [00:00]
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- [00:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
I went to her lodging to see her and she sent for wine. And she told me that we would soon drink wine in Paris. It seemed to me a gift from heaven that she was there and that I was seeing and hearing her. She left Cels on Monday at the hour of vespers alongside a great body of armed men. I saw her mount her horse, arrayed all in white armour, with only her head bare and holding a small axe. The great black charger was very restive at her door and would not let her mount. Lead him, she said, to the cross which is in front of the church. And there she mounted the horse, standing still as if he had been bound. Then turning towards the church which was close by, she said in a beautiful feminine voice, you priests and people of the church make processions and prayers to God for us. Then turning to the road, forward, forward, she said. Her unfolded standard was carried by a page. She had her small axe in her hand and by her side rode a brother who had joined her eight days before. So that's a letter written on 8 June 1429 by a soft, tender hearted young nobleman, Guy de Laval. He's writing to his mother and he is pumped. He is so full of excitement because he has just seen the heroine of the hour, Joan of Arc and Dominic.
- [02:20]
Tom Holland
How beautifully you conveyed her feminine voice there.
- [02:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed that.
- [02:25]
Tom Holland
As though she'd been brought back to life.
- [02:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
So a month has gone by since this extraordinary moment in the history of France and French military achievements, the liberation of Orleans. So to remind listeners, Orleans had been under siege for six months by the English. It had been on the verge, it seemed, of surrender. Had the English taken it, they would have been able to cross the river Loire and advance deep into south central France. But in the nick of time, the siege had been broken, the English had been driven back, and the banner of the House of Valois, the ancient line of French kings, still flies over Orleans. So, Tom, various people have taken some credit for this achievement and you can take us through them. But of course, one above all is the subject of this podcast.
- [03:19]
Tom Holland
Yes. So various French captains, as you said, had definitely played their part in this great draft. So there was Jean the Bastard of Orleans, illegitimate half brother of the wretched Duke of Orleans, who was languishing in the Tower of London, had been there ever since the Battle of Agincourt, where he'd been captured. You know, he is his team, Orleans on the scene, very battle hardened, very shrewd, very well connected, despite the fact he's illegitimate, he's cousin to the French king, to Charles vii. Then there's Etienne de Vignoles, better known as La Hire, the Wrath of God. Man of very humble origins, had his legs crushed by a chimney of a pub falling on top of it, but still very feared, very charismatic, the great warlord of his day. And then there is this Guy, Gilles de Rais, a Breton nobleman with a particular taste for guerrilla warfare. And Guy de Laval knew him very well because Guy's brother was married to the daughter of Gilles de Rais.
- [04:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, and there's another side to Gilles de Rais, isn't there, which we perhaps won't go into immediately, but perhaps there's a shadow over his reputation.
- [04:32]
Tom Holland
We may be coming to that in due course, anyway. But at the time, there is no blot on the escutcheon of Gilles de Rais or any of the other French captains, because in the wake of the miracle of Orleans, they have come to think of themselves as brothers in arms. And they have an incredible glamour now. And this is why Guy de Laval has joined them. He wants a bit of it himself. He wants to join this band of brothers. However, none of these warlords, none of these captains, is the person who most glamorously, most stirringly embodies the miracle of Orleans. It's not the bastard, it's not La Hire, it's not Gilles de Rais. It's a teenage girl. And the sense of her charisma is palpable in the spirit of devotion with which Guy de Laval has described this person to his mother.
- [05:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, I saw her mount her horse, arrayed all in white armour, with only her head bare and holding a small axe. And you can sense here the influence of the kind of Arthurian chivalric romances that were so popular in the 15th century. And she's effectively. It's as though one of the books they love, one of the stories or the songs that troubadours sing has come to life, isn't it?
- [05:50]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So this, of course, is Joan of Arc. And it's absolutely astonishing that only months before, you know, she'd been a peasant in a kind of homespun dress and now she is like Sir Lancelot. She's transformed herself into a kind of flower of chivalry and she's won the heart and the admiration of these very battle hardened men. So, you know, the bastard La Hire Gilles de Rais, you know, it's astonishing. And she'd done it because she was very courageous. She'd shown tremendous zeal, she'd shown enormous, a kind of a real sense of what it would take to defeat the English, to relieve the siege. But I think also she embodied something that is completely exceptional because Joan of Arc, through the entire sweep of medieval history is someone exceptional. And this is a kind of instinctive genius for display and image. She's kind of the medieval David Bowie on steroids. She understands how to project herself.
- [07:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
But just on this, right? I mean, actually, you know, she's a woman. A sort of Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga might be as good a parallel. But just on this she is drawing not just on the religious iconography and whatnot, but she is very clearly drawing on the tradition of the chivalric romances. And she's playing a part. I mean, the point about performance I think is really important. She is consciously or unconsciously playing a part that people know will inspire knights and get them excited and all of this sort of stuff. I mean, there is a definite element of spectacle about the Joan of Arc phenomenon.
- [07:46]
Tom Holland
Yeah, I mean, I suspect this isn't kind of, you know, calculation, it's expression of what is in her heart. But what is in her heart has been massively influenced, I think, by the romances that we know that she listened to when she was growing up. And clearly she has dreams of chivalry. The mad thing is, is that, you know, she's not a young man, she's a young woman. She's not only dared to live these dreams out, but she has persuaded hard bitten noblemen to share in them, to see her, a peasant girl, as a nobleman. And Marina Warner, whose book I've already cited, is brilliant on this. So Marina Warner writes, Joan was the personification of mobility. She accepted neither her peasant birth nor her female condition. None of the limitations society had provided for her circumscription. Instead, in an age of chivalry, she assumed its most successful guise and dressed herself and comported herself like a knight born to the role.
- [08:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
But the thing is, of course, she is not a knight, she's a woman. And I mean, this is the paradox of her, isn't it, that she's playing a male part, a traditionally male part, and she's surrounded by men, but, I mean, she's not pretending to be a man. Right. She doesn't cast off her feminine identity at all, but she actually draws on it. And it's the fact that she is. Surely that's what gives her part of the sort of, as it were, supernatural or divine power, is the fact that she is setting herself outside the conventional gender norms. No. So people see her as a woman apart.
- [09:17]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Or she's fusing the most potent expressions of what is male and female. So we've said how, you know, how she's. She buys into the show and the glamour of knighthood, but she also instinctively understands that there are deep reserves of spiritual power that women particularly are able to. To channel. So, you know, she is absolutely not trans. She. She does not want to change her sex. She never claims. She never pretends to be male. She always calls herself Jean la Pucelle. Jean Joan the Maid. And what she's doing there is drawing on all the traditions that are associated with the. The body of a virgin girl.
- [10:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [10:03]
Tom Holland
You know, this. She's casting it as the very essence of her identity. And so she is male in the most martial way. It's possible to be male, but she is female in the holiest way, it is possible to be female. And it's this fusion that is so unique, and that makes Joan such a completely exceptional person in the, you know, the sweep of medieval European history.
- [10:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
So we compared her before a couple of times to another person we've done on the show, Catherine of Siena. But Catherine of Sienna draws almost exclusively on kind of female archetypes.
- [10:35]
Tom Holland
Well, she's the bride of Christ, isn't she?
- [10:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Joan is a bit different. And in the first episode, you talked about her obsession with St. Michael, the kind of, you know, a patron saint, a warrior saint and so on. The Captain of Heaven, all of that, the leaders of the archangels and St. Michael, I mean, you might say a very male figure. But is he. Because he's a little bit amorphous, isn't he?
- [11:02]
Tom Holland
Well, he's an angel, and so he's sexless.
- [11:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [11:06]
Tom Holland
Angels do not have sex in any sense. Right, okay.
- [11:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Wow. That's a. That's a very niche. A very niche hobby.
- [11:16]
Tom Holland
And so he's neither male. He's, you know, he's not female. He is. He is. He's kind of more than that. And Michael, as we said, had become the emblem of French Resistance, and Joan has now become the emblem of French resistance. And although the comparison I don't think, is ever overtly made by Joan's contemporaries, there is a hint of this kind of sexless character that they see her as possessing in the way that her companions in arms repeatedly speak of her as someone who is attractive, but who nevertheless never provokes sexual desire in them. So here is Jean Dollon, her squire, who wrote after. After she had died, although she was a young girl, beautiful and shapely, and when helping to arm her or otherwise, I have often seen her breasts. And although sometimes when I was dressing her wounds, I have seen her legs quite bare, and I have gone close to her many times, and I was strong, young and vigorous in those days. Never, despite any sight or contact I had with the maid, was my body moved to any carnal desire for her, nor were any of her soldiers or squired moved in this way. And I think it's important for Joan's comrades, her male comrades, to emphasize that she is a maid, that her virginity is the marker of her holiness, and that this holiness, in turn, is the evidence that she is what she says she is. A messenger sent from God, right?
- [12:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
And there's no sense that any of the captains, Orleans, you know, when she's berating them and all of that kind of thing, when she is haranguing them about bad decisions and stuff, there's no sense that any of the captains doubt her and say, who is this flipping, jumped up peasant girl, you know, who claims to be sent by God or any of the knights or any of these people that they. They collectively, you know, choose to believe, do they? Or are there any skeptics?
- [13:10]
Tom Holland
Of course there are skeptics, and of course that it takes time for Joan to persuade them that what she represents is something that they should be buying into. But the proof is in the pudding. You know, she prayed, the wind changed. She suggested that the English should be attacked. They attacked the English. It works out. Orleans is liberated. The miracle stands for itself. She's done exactly what she said she would do. And this is why people like Guy de Laval, whose kind of enthusiastic description of Joan we began this show with. That's why they're buying into it. You know, there's this electric sense of excitement that everything she had said was true, that God is on the side of French arms, that everything that had seemed terrible has now been raised up and is kind of illumined by this splendor, this sense of glory, this sense of kind of wonder and the miraculous. And that's what Guy and loads of other People are buying into. I mean, it's interesting because effectively Joan's liberation of Orleans is the only miracle that she has performed. So in that letter that you read, Guy describes how, you know, her horse is a bit frisky and Joan says, take it over to the cross. And then the horse calms down as though there's a hint of the miraculous there. But, I mean, it's pretty feeble stuff. And Joan herself, you know, she repudiates all this. She always said, and this again is a massive point of difference between her and other female visionaries or indeed, you know, visionaries, full stop. They're laying claim to all kinds of miracles. Joan doesn't do that. You know, there are lots of people who want her to be a miracle worker, who want her to perform miraculous healings or whatever. She doesn't.
- [14:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, even the relief of Orleans, Yeah. I mean, it's not really a supernatural miracle. I mean, it's. I mean, sieges are often relieved. I mean, sure, the French thought they were going to lose and actually they ended up winning, and they're delighted by that. But you don't need to resort to supernatural explanations for why they were able to rout the English. I mean, that's.
- [15:06]
Tom Holland
Well, Dominic, you, you, you don't. But that is, that is the one miracle that Joan says that she has performed. And I guess you would say it was a miracle that the relief of Orleans was performed by a peasant girl. I mean, that does seem really stunning. And people buy into the fact that that is properly miraculous. But there isn't really anything else because Joan wants the focus to be entirely on the mission that she has been given by her voices.
- [15:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right?
- [15:29]
Tom Holland
And that mission was to relieve Orleans. And that was the test, and she has passed it. And so her claim to have been sent from God is now widely accepted by basically everyone on the French side.
- [15:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Not least the man that she is serving, who is the dauphin. So even Joan still calls him the dauphin, don't they? Everybody calls him the Dauphin, you know, the titular Charles vii, because he won't really become king or be accepted as king. So he's driven back the English and gone into Reims and been crowned, because Reims, 80 miles northeast of Paris in English held territory. This is the place where for generations, French kings have been crowned. Millennium, you need to get there. And Charles has been hanging around for seven years since the death of his father in 1422, hoping desperately he can get to Reims and be crowned. And there seems no prospect of it whatsoever. And Joan has promised him not only that she will relieve Orleans, but that she will crown him in Reims and drive out the English with him. So he must now be thinking, well, she's done number one. What about number two and number three?
- [16:36]
Tom Holland
Yeah, absolutely. And in the weeks that follow the relief of Orleans, he kind of really sets his shoulder to the wheel in an attempt to try and help her fulfill these other two prophecies. So the relief force that had been sent to Ulnior, that had been disbanded almost immediately after the relief of the city, basically because there aren't any funds left to keep it in the field. The Dauphin's treasury is empty. And that, again, is part of the miraculous quality of the relief of Orlior. You know, it's come. Despite the fact that the Dauphin effectively is bankrupt in the wake of the relief of All Nior, the Dauphin is now confident that men will answer his call and not expect to be paid, because now they will do it, because, you know, they are following a miraculous virgin God.
- [17:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
That really. That really would be a miracle if they want to fight and not be paid.
- [17:28]
Tom Holland
That is what turns out to be the case, because by early June, some 5,000 men have assembled at Sells, which is this small town south of Loire between Tours and Orleans. And among them, of course, was Guy de Laval. So he's kind of typical of, you know, he's expressive of why these people are now ready to fight for the Dauphin in a way that they hadn't been before and not expect to be paid for it.
- [17:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [17:54]
Tom Holland
And in fact, Guy de Laval, to fund this campaigning, he had been forced to sell lands. So not only is he not being paid, he's actually, you know, he's. He's short of a few estates or two. Now, among the various nobles and captains of France, as we mentioned in the previous episode, there is one who, right from the beginning, has been a massive Joan fan. And this is the Duke of Alenon, Jean, who's only 20, but has been appointed by the Dauphin to serve as commander in chief of this expeditionary force that has been recruited. Joan herself, even though in her letters she described herself as a captain of men, she has no official rank, but she doesn't actually need one. And the dauphat gives instructions to Alencon that he is to act in all matters by her advice. And as it turns out, the campaign is an amazing success. And Joan's advice again turns out to be incredibly effective. And just as they had been humiliated at Orleans, so now a succession of English commanders find themselves very much coming second best when they come up against Joan and her men.
- [19:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
So let's. Should we go through these campaigns? So first of all, this place called Jargeau and that's upriver from Orleans, it's a bridging point. The Duke of Suffolk is there and he's there and he and his men are completely battered by French artillery, aren't they? The French have a bombard called the Shepherdess which is named after Joan. And you know, the artillery does its work, the keep collapses and then Joan and co storm the city walls. She's waving her banner, fight hard and God will fight hard with you. God has doomed the English and the English end up being taken prisoner, including the Duke of Suffolk. So that's a massive blow for the English. And the Duke of Suffolk behaves splendidly, doesn't he? He does sportingly. He knights the person who takes him prisoner, which I think is tremendous, or.
- [19:54]
Tom Holland
You might say snobbishly because he doesn't want to be captured by someone who's not a knight. Yeah. So that's the Duke of Suffolk taken prisoner and he of course had been in command at Orleans. But one week later, there's an even more crushing blow for the English to endure because this time it's the turn of Talbot, Sir John Talbot, the great Lawrence Dalalio of the English, to be taken prisoner. And he suffers a crushing defeat. Not in, you know, he's, he's not defending a town, he's in the open. And this is a pitched battle of the kind that the English ever since Agincourt have pretty much taken for granted that they are bound to win. But now they lose. 2000 Englishmen are killed. You know, this is a loss of manpower that they can't really afford. But of course, even more damagingly perhaps is the fact that they have lost this reputation for invincibility. And again, you know, this redounds massively to Joan's credit and she goes to the Dauphin and she says, look, we've had these twin victories. Two of your enemies are now prisoner Suffolk and Talbot. God is clearly with you. Now we must seize the moment. We must advance beyond the safe zone of the Loire and we must go deep into enemy held territory. And our target must be a place some 130 miles to the north of the Loire, beyond Paris. And this is of course the holy city of Reims.
- [21:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
And this is a really, really sort of dodgy undertaking for a couple of reasons. First of all, you know, it's 130 miles away. They're not going to have time to organize a supply train. They're going to have to move very fast for that reason. And because of that, because they're not going to be able to take supplies, they are going not going to be able to take artillery either, which means they're not going to be able to lay siege to her house. There can't be a protracted siege. But as always, Joan says, oh, God will provide. And the Dauphin believes her.
- [21:58]
Tom Holland
And God does provide, because on the 5th of July, the Dauphin, his army with Joan, they arrive before the walls of Troyes, and this is the principal city of Champagne. And of course, it is where the Dauphin had been disinherited by his father by the terms of the peace treaty that the lunatic Charles VI had signed with Henry V and the Duke of Burgundy. And the Duke of Burgundy exercises a very strong influence on the city. The council is loyal to the Duke, to Philip the Good. And so when the Dauphin appears before the walls of the city, the council refuses to surrender. But Joan is not daunted or put off by this at all. And she tells the Dauphin, my voices have told me that within four days I will lead you into Troyes, despite the fact, as you mentioned, Dominic, that the French have no artillery. So how on earth is this going to happen? So what Joan does, she, she rides on her horse round the walls of the city and she commands her men to fill the ditches that surround the walls with brushwood. And the townsmen, so not the members of the council, the general, the kind of everyday people in the city, they gather on the walls and they look down and they see Joan and they see her men blocking up the ditches and they get more and more nervous. And to quote Helen Castor in her book on Joan, after four days of fear and deepening uncertainty, the sight of these preparations for an assault led by the miraculous maid finally shattered the town's resistance. So even before Joan and her forces attack, the people of Troyes are so spooked that they've decided to surrender and they force the council to do this. And so, just as Joan had prophesied, the Dauphin rides into the city and Joan is there with him, carrying her great silken white banner.
- [23:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
So another tremendous victory. And if I can just pause the narrative for a second. So obviously, for understandable reasons, you want this to be as glamorous and exciting a story as possible. So you are kind of playing up the miraculous elements and, and amazing triumphs against the odds that are only explicable by Jones extraordinary charisma and blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah. However, a skeptic might say that you actually gave the game away, not in this series, but in the very first series we ever did about the Hundred Years War where you pointed out a great length and very convincingly that the English were always, you know, France is richer, more powerful, more populous, all of this. And in, in a way the English so called triumphs in the Hundred Years War were always illusory. And you could argue that the English were always massively overextended, that it was always, I mean, I remember when you used, in the old days, when you used to diss Henry V, you used to say you thought he was a bad king because he hugely extended the England in a campaign in France, they couldn't possibly win in the long run, that one day, eventually they would be driven back. And I suppose in a way you could say, of course, Joan is really important to this story, but even if you take her out of it, you could argue that this would have happened at some point anyway, that the English were never going to be able to hold onto all this territory. They're hugely outnumbered in terms of demography. France. One day France will get its act together under a charismatic leader of some kind, and that, that's what lies behind this story. The kind of geopolitical, the strategic realities of the Hundred Years War.
- [25:23]
Tom Holland
Okay, so just, I mean, two points to that. The first is that what Joan is doing is turning the needle on French morale.
- [25:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [25:33]
Tom Holland
A crucial part of, of English success, why they have been able to dominate, certainly northern France, despite really not having that many men, is the mystique of Agincourt, the sense that they are invincible and Joan effectively has destroyed that mystique. The second thing that the specific issue of Troyes and why they surrender, it's not the English who are the enemy in Troyes, it's the Duke of Burgundy, Burgundian, and the Dofat is there as the representative of the bitter, bitter enemy of the Burgundians, the Armagnacs. So in that sense, the surrender really is, I think, extraordinary and a tribute certainly to the mystique of Joan.
- [26:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [26:17]
Tom Holland
And I think it would be churlish to discount the impact that she personally had in persuading the Burgundian elements within Troyes to surrender.
- [26:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
The charismatic leader matters. But if you imagine it as a video game, as a board game, the French ultimately always have more cards. And when they finally work out how to play those cards, they will win.
- [26:44]
Tom Holland
I mean, we're kind of slightly off piste here, but I think that had Orleans fallen, had the English advanced into the south, had they captured Bourges, had the Dauphin fled, had they been able to establish a kind of very loose sovereignty over the whole of France, it would still have been impossible for them to hold France. That in the long run France was just too preponderant, too strong relative to England for that ever to have happened. But I do think that the fact that Orleans is relieved and that Charles, his war captains and the men who have rallied to his banner find that when they go out deep into English and Burgundian held France, actually everything falls to pieces. The whole stack of cards falls to pieces. They wouldn't have done that without Joan.
- [27:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [27:30]
Tom Holland
I mean, it may be that Joan is, I mean, she is effectively kind of calling her enemy's bluff.
- [27:35]
Sponsor/Announcer
But.
- [27:35]
Tom Holland
But you know, it took a peasant girl ignorant of war to do that. And that is an astonishing story. And it's not surprising, I think, that for her supporters she is an incredibly potent and glamorous figure. And for her enemies, she is a figure of dread, someone who seems to have exercised witchcraft.
- [27:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
So I've taken you slightly off the narrative. Let's get back to the narrative. So basically, with the fall of Troy, the road to Khas lies open and the English and the Burgundians are never going to be able to organize themselves to get an army in the way in time. And this is tremendous news for the Dauphin.
- [28:12]
Tom Holland
Well, just to pick up on that, in the wake of Ornio, the battle at Patay, English forces are depleted. They could send for more forces to come from England and in due course they will. But for now there aren't the forces to oppose the advance on Reims. And Joan would not have known that. As you know, she doesn't have the military sensibility to understand that, but I think that she has a kind of gut feeling this is our moment, God is with us, and she turns out to be right. Perhaps for the wrong reasons.
- [28:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right. So let's get to the Dauphin and the narrative. So The Dauphin, by the 16th of July, he is 12 miles outside Khas, at a place called Set so. And all is looking good. So dignitaries from Reims arrive and they offer their submission to him. And that afternoon, the 16th of July, the Archbishop of Reims, who has been exiled from the city for more than a decade, he goes into the city and then that evening he is followed by the Dauphin, Joan at his side. What an amazing scene. That must have been incredible for French partisans to see the Dauphin and Joan arriving in the city at Last after all this time.
- [29:22]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And the sinister figure of Gilles de Rais meanwhile, who's been writing with them, he has headed out to The Abbey of St. Remy, the guy who had baptized Clovis almost a thousand years before. And this was oil that had been brought down from heaven by a dove. And it was kept in the holy ampulla, which was a vial of Roman glass. And this is what you had to use to anoint the king. He gets it, comes back. So that's ready for the day. Unfortunately the, the regalia of Charlemagne. So he a sword, a crown and so on. This is in the Abbey of St. Denis just outside Paris and that is still under English occupation, so they can't get that. But blacksmiths are sent to work, you know, a makeshift crown is produced and so basically everything is ready to go. Needs must, the coronation can go ahead. And so it begins the following morning, 9 o'. Clock. It's the 17th of July, 1429. Charles the Dauphin approaches the high altar. The Duke of Alenon is waiting for him. The Duke of Alenon Knights Charles. Charles is then presented to God. He's touched with oil, the holy oil that has been brought from the Abbey of St. Remy. And he's then crowned by the Archbishop of Reims. And throughout the ceremony, Joan is by the side of the Dauphin holding her beautiful white banner. And when the coronation has been completed, she falls to her knees before the Dauphin and she tells him, noble king, God's will is done. And then she breaks down in tears.
- [31:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, tear jerking scene. And meanwhile the new the king, as I guess we should call him, Charles vii. He's granting all sorts of favors, isn't he? So fan favorite Gilles de Rais is made a Marshal of France. Guy de Laval, future aristo, who we heard from at the beginning, he's a count. The bastard of Orleans is there, that bloke, the wrath of God is there, Rene of Anjou is there. All these characters and actually Joan's family are there too. So this is a signal honor for them. I mean they've basically, I mean they were respectable peasants, but they were peasants nonetheless. And now here they are at the coronation of the King and being put.
- [31:38]
Tom Holland
Up at public expense. So it's. Yeah, it's incredible. Her father, her brothers, her godfather. And Charles is the king, as we'll call him from now on. I mean he is very keen to show the marks of favor. So at the end of July he announces that Jones Village, Domre Me will be exempt in perpetuity from taxes.
- [31:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
Wow.
- [32:00]
Tom Holland
And then A few months after that, in December, incredibly, he announces the ennoblement of Joan, her family, all the descendants of her family. And again, this is something that in perpetuity, it will last right the way up to the French Revolution. They return their nobility and, you know, you would have to say, I think maybe even you, Dominic, that these honors are very worthily given, that the coronation of Charles VII simply wouldn't have happened without Joan, and that it proves, as Joan had always said it would. It proves to be an event of colossal significance in the history of the Hundred Years War, because Charles's legitimacy has now essentially been proclaimed to the world. The stain of that crime at the Bridge of Montreux, the murder of the Duke of Burgundy. It's effectively been washed clean. And so now all of Christendom is holding its breath to see how the English, how the Burgundians, servants of a rival king of France, Henry of Lancaster. How are they going to respond, Connie?
- [33:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, we will find out after the break.
- [33:11]
Sponsor/Announcer
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- [33:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
I am, mighty Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Joan the maid calls upon you, by the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, that you and the King of France should make a good and lasting peace, forgive one another entirely in good faith, as loyal Christians should do. And if you wish to make war, then do so against the Saracens. Oh, Joan of Arc there totally lets herself down and throws away all the goodwill that she's built up in two and a half episodes by this absolute. She wants to attack the Middle East. That's poor. Theo would not approve of that.
- [34:24]
Tom Holland
Well, but also she also wants to attack the Hussites. So she wants to have a crack at the Czechs.
- [34:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, come on. Come on. This is absolutely shocking.
- [34:34]
Tom Holland
Yeah, but, Dominic, of course, what she's doing there is trying to patch things up between Charles VII and the greatest peer in France, the Duke of Burgundy. And she writes that letter on the very day of Charles VII's coronation in Reims. And this is because she finds it puzzling and frustrating that Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, the most senior of all the peers in France, hadn't opted to come to the ceremony because he's a. He's a French nobleman of the Blood Royal. Why is he not there? Why is he not rallying to the French cause? Why is he busy fighting other Frenchmen?
- [35:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Hold on, does she genuinely not know? I mean, surely she must know that there's the Almanac, Burgundian Civil War.
- [35:16]
Tom Holland
I do not think that she is entirely inhabiting the dimension of conventional geopolitics. I think she feels that God's hand is evident in everything that's happened and that therefore the Duke of Burgundy should accept that and should knuckle down and should repent of all his previous errors. I think that's her feeling.
- [35:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
The Duke of Burgundy is a smart guy, right? Philip the Good. And I mean, now that he sees that the tide is turning in the.
- [35:44]
Tom Holland
War, he's a mercurial man. Yeah.
- [35:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
He would be an absolute dope if he didn't start thinking, maybe the English aren't going to win this after all. And I could think about changing sides.
- [35:55]
Tom Holland
Well, I think he'd certainly been thinking that before Charles launched his march towards Arrheims. And in fact, that was one of the reasons why many of his advisors said, look, don't go for it, because we've got a real chance here of patching things up with the Duke of Burgundy. And if we invade all his territories and, you know, seize towns that are kind of loyal to him, then we'll really crash that opportunity. And actually, that is what happens, because Philip is very alarmed by the fact that Charles VII is now in Reims and has taken Troyes and all this kind of thing. And so one week before Charles's coronation in Reims, Philip had travelled to Paris, where the Duke of Bedford, the regent for Henry of Lancaster, was installed. And there they renew the peace treaty between England and Burgundy. Now, it is true, as you said, Philip's a very smart and shrewd operator. So even as he is signing that, renewing that treaty with the English, he is also sending an envoy to Charles who arrives in the wake of the coronation, kind of saying, well, you know, should we at least have negotiations? And they do. But ultimately, Philip just cannot bring himself to let bygones be bygones. You know, he sees Charles VII as the guy who had sponsored the murder of his father.
- [37:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. It's not wrong.
- [37:18]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And he just can't bring himself to do it. And so, despite the coronation of Charles VII at Reims, the Anglo Burgundian Pact hold. Philip's alliance with Bedford remains secure.
- [37:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay, so let's go to the Duke of Bedford. So the Duke of Bedford we've described him, he's the main English commander in France. He's basically the person that Henry V has, has given power. You know, after Henry V's death, he is the person who holds the reins of power and he's a very serious person and he's looking at this situation basically in the course of what, three months?
- [37:50]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [37:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
His position in France has begun very swiftly to erode. You know, he thought he was going to breach the Loire and prosecute the war into south central France. Now he's lost Orleans. Two of his key captains, Suffolk and Talbot, have been taken prisoner. Champagne has been lost. So that's their sort of eastern flank of Paris. And this business in Reims is a disaster for the English cause because the Dauphin has been crowned and the English claimant to the throne of France, Henry of Lancaster, Henry vi is still only a very little boy, and a very dreamy and pious little boy at that. Not marshal at all. So what does the Duke of Bedford do now? I guess first of all, he tried. He has to try and work out what on earth has gone wrong.
- [38:36]
Tom Holland
Yeah, well, he needs to find someone to blame and Bedford himself has no doubt who to blame, and that is Joan, because he fails that she is a witch and that she has deployed sorcery to undermine his administration.
- [38:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [38:57]
Tom Holland
And he sees her as a harlot, as a whore. People who listen to our previous episode may remember that whore was the word that was constantly being used by the English when they addressed Joan. You know, this is a girl who dresses herself as a man and has run away with men at arms, you know, is in the middle of a huge army. So clearly she is a whore, in their opinion, and yet she has the nerve to call herself the pucelle, the virgin, the maid.
- [39:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [39:29]
Tom Holland
So clearly she's a witch. And that being so, it is vital that she is captured and that her witchcraft is demonstrated to the satisfaction of Christendom as a whole. Because if that happens, then the right of Henry of Lancaster to the French throne will be spectacularly reinvigorated.
- [39:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [39:47]
Tom Holland
And just as Germanely, the claim of Charles VII to the throne will be hopefully kneecapped, fatally. Because you can't rule if you, you know, you depend on your coronation on a witch.
- [40:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [40:01]
Tom Holland
So. So this is the plan. And Bedford is not alone in his conviction. Basically everyone in the English regime and in the court of Burgundy pretty much hold to this opinion.
- [40:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
And they don't do it cynically. They genuinely think she's a witch, right?
- [40:19]
Tom Holland
Yeah, I think they genuinely think it.
- [40:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
This isn't Just policy.
- [40:22]
Tom Holland
Yeah, yeah. And what they're doing there is that they, like, like Charles VII and the people who admire Joan are paying acknowledgment to the sheer weirdness and improbability of everything that she's done. So to quote Marina Warner, the English side believed in Joan the Maid more than the French, and they had to, because if it's not the fault of Joan, then there are systemic problems with their regime that they don't really want to face up to.
- [40:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, well, the problems that we talked about earlier on, the overextension and the fact that basically victory is probably beyond them whatever they do, and no one wants to admit that, so it becomes easier to blame it all on witchcraft.
- [41:02]
Tom Holland
Right, right. But also, I mean, it is a tribute to the renown of Joan that this is taken very seriously, that if they can capture her, then, you know, that everything will be put back on. Back on a straight course.
- [41:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now, the good news for Bedford and for patriotic listeners to this podcast is that it's at precisely this point in the wake of Charles coronation that Joan's star, which has been very high, as high as it could possibly be, you get the first signs that it's just beginning to dim, don't you?
- [41:32]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Up to this point, everything that she has said she will do, she has done. But by early September, so that's a month or so after the coronation in Reims, she and the Duke of Alenon, who you know, her biggest fan among the ranks of the French captains, they arrive before the gates of Paris, and in the opinion of Joan, Paris is ripe for the plucking. And she says, you know, I have been assured by my voices that if we attack it in a full throated way, the city will fall. And the reason for this is that it's pretty isolated. Champagne has effectively, at least the major cities in Champagne have been conquered by Charles vii. So among them is a city called Beauvais, dominated by a towering cathedral, but only half finished. And for one man in the circle of the Duke of Bedford, this is a particular humiliation. And this man is a guy we've. We've already met. We met him in the first episode. He is called Pierre Cauchon and he's the Bishop of Beauvais.
- [42:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
And he's the guy who thought the English are going to win, and he'd thrown his lot in with the English and he thought, you know, they're going to win, and that's God's will.
- [42:43]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And now he has lost his. His. The. The city that is probably his sea to the French, and more specifically to this fiend in female form, this sorceress, this witch. And so he, like Bedford, has particular cause now to view Joan in a very, very dark light. And he, no less than Bedford, is desperate for her to be captured and hopefully to have her. Her wickedness exposed.
- [43:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
And actually, events start to play into his hands, don't they? They do, because, what is it, 8th September, Joan launches this great attack on Paris. Now, some listeners may be thinking, you know, the relief of Orleans, very famous. How come the liberation of Paris isn't so famous? Well, there's an answer, isn't there? Because this does not go according to plan for Joan.
- [43:35]
Tom Holland
It does not. I mean. I mean, she attacks with a very, very small number of men. Charles VII is very sceptical that she can take Paris and has refused basically, to join her. And so it all goes wrong. The end of the assault. 500 of her men are left dead or dying before the walls of the city. The man carrying her standard is hit in the eye by a crossbow bolt. So it's very Harold at the Battle of Hastings. And Joan herself has to be stretchered from the walls after she gets hit in the thigh. This is obviously a massive embarrassment. You know, she'd said she would capture Paris and now she hasn't.
- [44:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Tom Holland
Joan implies this is basically because Charles VII didn't. Trust me. You know, if everyone had piled in, we would have got it. And she may well have been right about that. Actually. Paris kind of was quite vulnerable, maybe a full force, but, you know, a gamble, because Paris is the best defended city, basically west of Constantinople. I mean, its fortifications are enormous. But also there is this whole issue of the Civil war which has always been bubbling away. The mass of people in Paris are very pro Burgundian, and Charles VII is, you know, I mean, he's on the Armagnac side. Yeah. And so all these circumstances combine to explain it, but there's also one additional factor which is used to explain Joan's failure to capture Paris. This is actually quite damaging to her, and this is that the 8th of September is the birthday of the Virgin Mary. And it is therefore seen as very disrespectful of Joan to have launched an attack on that day. Yeah. So that casts a slight aspersion on the notion of her. Her Holiness.
- [45:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I suppose you could argue. I mean, again, if you're being just sort of strictly empirical about it, she's gambled and gambled and gambled, and one day, you know, it won't work. You compared her with. In the previous episode, you mentioned her basball quality, which for people who don't know, it's the England cricket coach who just believes in constant aggression and attacking, even in the face of overwhelming odds. And you know that sometimes that works and it's brilliant. And then sometimes you're Tom Holland and you go to watch a test match and it only takes two days because England have shamed themselves. And that's basically the siege of Paris.
- [45:43]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And I think in the wake of this, even though her fame across Europe remains absolutely constant, people think she's this incredible wonder. People can't stop talking about her. She's this massive celebrity. I think at the Charles is caught. There is a sense that perhaps something has changed. And this is basically because she's done what she said she'd do. She said that she would relieve Orleans. She's done it. She said that she would take Charles to Rance and crown him, and that she's done as well. Basically. What is there left for her to do?
- [46:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
They don't need her. They don't need her anymore.
- [46:20]
Tom Holland
They don't need her. But also, I mean, you know, by her own standards, those were the two things she set herself to do. She's done it. So what now? And it's obvious, I think, also to everyone at the court, that Joan really enjoys being, you know, a captain. She doesn't want to go back to her village. She doesn't want to take off her beautiful armor and her, you know, her rich furs and everything, and go back to her kind of peasant girl's dress. You know, that's not what she's about at all. And so all that winter, rather than return to Domremy, Joan is saying to the king, come on, let's keep going. Let's attack the English in Normandy. It'll be brilliant. We'll sweep them into the sea. Despite the fact that Charles is not going to do this because the English are very strong in Normandy. And again, this perennial problem. He doesn't have the money for it, you know, and money issues are not the. You know, that's not Joan's vibe at all. She's not worried about that.
- [47:13]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So basically, her vision and reality are coming into increasingly, you know, they're colliding with increasingly kind of destabilizing effect for her reputation at the court.
- [47:27]
Tom Holland
Right, right. I mean, I think that, you know, we've. We have this incredible description of her as someone from the court of King Arthur. She is operating in the dimension of Romance. Charles is operating in the dimension of reality. Spreadsheets and budgets and, you know, and the two don't really gel. And so. So by March 1430, Joan has had enough. And she thinks, well, if, if, if no one else is going to continue the war, then I'm going to do this myself. And so she. She raises a company of men, 200 men in all. And among them is her brother Pierre, who had joined her at rans. And basically she turns freelance. And Dominic, we've talked about these companies before, these free companies. They're bands of soldiers who, you know, might very easily seem to those who are attacked by them as bandits. And they had been a plague in France throughout the length of the Hundred Years War. And it seems to some that Joan, you know, this holy maid has now joined the ranks of the free companies. And this is a very, very bad look for her. Joan herself would absolutely have repudiated that. That charge. I mean, she would have said, well, I'm doing what Charles and his captains should have been doing. I'm taking the fight to the English. I'm taking the fight to the Burgundians. And to be fair to her, all that April, she and her company are roaming from flashpoint to flashpoint, supporting the French in their battles and their sieges against the Burgundians, roaming the badlands that now surround Paris, trying to prosecute the war. And in this spirit, on the 23rd of May, 1430, she arrives at a town called Compienne. And this is some 50 miles north of Paris. And it is under siege by the Duke of Burgundy, because Compien had owed loyalty to the Duke of Burgundy and had then switched its alliance to Charles vii. And so now the Duke of Burgundy is out for revenge, right? And Joan says, okay, I'm going to ride there and I'm going to try.
- [49:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
And relieve Compien Orleans style, style. And this. Now, not only does Joan say she's gonna do this, but she is acting on the advice of her voices. Cause her voices are still there. We haven't mentioned her voices for a while, but the voices are still giving her divine instructions, aren't they? And they say, charge across the drawbridge, attack the Burgundian siege positions. And you know what? You are going to capture the Duke of Burgundy himself. And at sunset, she launches this sortie, this 23rd of May, 1430. And talk us through how this attack goes, Tom.
- [50:03]
Tom Holland
Well, it doesn't go well. It gets beaten back by the Burgundians, and trumpeters sound the retreat. But Joan of course, you know, she's not a girl for a retreat. So rather than obey the summons, she stays on the edge of the battle. Of course, she's not fighting. Joan doesn't herself fight, but she is a splendid figure. She's resplendent in her white armor. She's got her silken banner aloft. She. Everyone in that battle, Burgundian as well as French, absolutely knows who she is. So eventually she, she, she heads back towards the. The drawbridge, towards the gate. But by now the guards in Compiegne are worried that the Burgundians will break in if they leave it open. So very reluctantly, they close the gates and they pull up the drawbridge. And Joan is now stuck on the wrong side of the moat. And so she's surrounded by a swarm of Burgundian soldiers. She's pulled down from her horse, she rises to her feet, she draws her sword, she looks around for a suitable person to surrender to. There's a Burgundian captain and she hands a sword over to him. And Jean La Pucelle is now a prisoner.
- [51:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy. Oh, he must be delighted.
- [51:16]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So we have a witness who sees him. He comes to, to inspect Joan and the witness says, I've never seen anyone so delighted. And that evening, after the. The Duke of Burgundy has been to.
- [51:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
To.
- [51:29]
Tom Holland
To look at Joan, he writes letters to all the towns in France and the Low Countries who might have been tempted to rebel against him. And he proclaims, you know, this glorious achievement. Joan's capture, we are certain, will everywhere be greeted as the most splendid news, for it clearly demonstrates the error and foolish credulity of all those who have let themselves be convinced by the deeds of, of this woman. And as it turns out, Jones captor is a servant of a particularly proficient Burgundian lord, a very loyal servant, not just of the Duke of Burgundy himself, but of Bedford and the. The English cause. This is. He's called John of Luxembourg. He has a, you know, he's, He's a very serious player, a very loyal servant of the Anglo Burgundian alliance. And so this is the person into whose hands Joan now passes. And Joan, of course, you know, she sees herself as a knight. She is of now of noble standing. She sees herself, therefore, as a prisoner of war whose treatment should be governed by the laws of war. And John of Luxembourg is not reluctant to buy into this because, of course, if Joan is a prisoner of war, is of noble standing, then he stands to make a Lot of money, a huge profit. He can, yeah, ransom her or sell her on for a large sum. But there are complications with this.
- [52:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right, because who's going to pay this ransom? Right. Well, you would think the obvious person is the man whose cause she has promoted for so long, who is Charles VII of France. But disappointingly, Charles vii, yeah, he. I reckon, you see, I reckon there's a part of him that thinks, thank God I've got rid of that. You know, she was becoming a bit of an albatross.
- [53:16]
Tom Holland
Bit of a nightmare.
- [53:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, a bit of a nightmare. I'm kind of glad that they've got her now and I don't want her back.
- [53:21]
Tom Holland
Yes. And I think also the fact that Joan has been captured is also potentially very, very damaging. And so Charles doesn't comment on it, he never mentions Joan by word from this point on, and instead he hands over responsibility for the crisis to his chancellor, who is the Archbishop of Reims who had crowned him, and the Archbishop of Reims, who was also the guy who had led the investigation into Joan back in Poitiers before the siege of Orleans. He now basically operates as Charles spin doctor, and his take on Joan is that she'd gone rogue and that although her mission had indeed been blessed by God, she'd gone so off piste that she has now been undone by her own pride and folly. And God has therefore punished her by allowing her to be captured. And therefore, you know, that's it. God's washed his hands of her, basically.
- [54:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, you don't have to be incredibly cynical to believe that, though, do you? Because if you believe that her previous success was blessed by God, when things go wrong, that shows that she's misunderstood God's wishes and that God has abandoned her, surely. So you could think that quite sincerely.
- [54:36]
Tom Holland
I think you absolutely could. But it is obviously an embarrassment that this person who had sponsored the coronation of Charles VII has now demonstrably failed to maintain the favor of God. So I think, in Charles's opinion, let's just keep quiet about it. Let's just pretend it never happened. Let's just hope the whole business will go away now. It's not going to go away, because, of course, the goal of the Duke of Bedford is the precise opposite. He wants to make as big a fuss of Joan's capture as he possibly can. And I think that he feels that Jones capture has given him the opportunity to pluck from the very jaws of defeat an absolutely seismic propaganda victory. What he needs to do is basically so tarnish the coronation of Charles VII that people go back to saying he's an illegitimate king. And so Bedford by now is adopting a two pronged strategy to, to bring this about. Firstly, the month before Joan's capture, he had sent for the 8 year old Henry VI to come to Calais. And Bedford's plan is to have him crowned in Reims or at a pinch, Paris, and thereby erase the memory of Charles's coronation. This is his plan. There is a problem. Raz is still in enemy hands and Normandy is too unstable to risk the King traveling to Paris. So it's a bit like, you know, in the wake of the Iraq war, President Bush, you know, he could maybe land in Baghdad and stay in the Green Zone, but he couldn't venture out to Fallujah. There's the same issue with, you know, they can't guarantee Henry VI safety. And so instead he, he's left to kick his heels in Calais and it's all a bit embarrassing. And then suddenly Joan is captured. And now Bedford can see a second massive opportunity. The witch is in the hands of one of his allies and it is Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, within whose bishopric, crucially, Joan had been captured, who now steps up to the plate with a solution that he presents to Bedford. And he says to Bedford, look, you should buy Joan off John of Luxembourg, and then when Joan is in the hands of the English, hand her over to us, to the Church. And I, in my role as Bishop of Beauvais, will try her for heresy, for sorcery, for conjuring up demons, basically, for anything you want to mention, I can guarantee, because I know that she's a witch.
- [57:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [57:11]
Tom Holland
That she will be convicted. And when she is convicted, then the coronation of the Dofat will be revealed to the world to have been a literally satanic fraud.
- [57:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Just one quick point again. Is this cynicism, is this cynical policy?
- [57:29]
Tom Holland
No, it's not cynicism at all.
- [57:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
He genuinely, like, I think this is important to get across to people because I think there's a general perception that, oh, this was terribly manipulative and cynical, the trial of Joan and all this. But the English genuinely, genuinely sincerely think this woman quite clearly is a witch.
- [57:46]
Tom Holland
Yes. And the, the French servants of the Lancastrian regime think that as well.
- [57:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay.
- [57:51]
Tom Holland
Of course, I mean, that conviction is interfused with a desire to preserve the regime that they have committed themselves to serving. I mean, there's no question about that. But it's perfectly possible to believe that your own interests and the interests of God are one and the same. No.
- [58:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
I'm glad that we've proved the sincerity of the English. Let's continue.
- [58:11]
Tom Holland
So this strikes Bedford as a brilliant plan. Basically, everyone's a winner. John of Luxembourg is going to get his money.
- [58:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [58:18]
Tom Holland
The English are going to get their hands on the witch who has done their cause such, you know, lethal harm. And the Bishop of Beauvais has the opportunity to serve the Lord his God by getting rid of a witch.
- [58:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Brilliant.
- [58:31]
Tom Holland
So brilliant.
- [58:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
Everyone wins.
- [58:33]
Tom Holland
The only person who doesn't win, of course, is Joan. And she, when she is informed that she is going to be sold to the English, hurls herself from the window of the 60 foot tower in which John of Luxembourg has been keeping her.
- [58:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, my God. 60ft.
- [58:47]
Tom Holland
Somehow. I know, it's incredible. Somehow she survives the fall. I mean, something must have broken it. But she's very badly concussed, you know, I think she does damage to her liver. She's obviously badly injured and so it takes time for her to be nursed back to health. But the deal has been done and so Bedford can think. Brilliant. Now, at last we have a plan. So by July, sufficient in Normandy have sufficiently stabilized that Henry VI can now process from Calais to Rouen. And Rouen, which is the leading city in Normandy by this point, well, it is effectively the kind of the green zone for the English regime. It's the place that is absolutely secure. It is the Lancastrian stronghold. And so Henry arrives there and Bedford and the Lancastrian regime can be confident that he is safe and secure there. Then in September, Joan is formally delivered by John of Luxembourg to the English. He gets a massive payment. He's very happy about that. That November, Joan is taken to a fortress in the mouth of the Seine, while a military escort is recruited to escort her to Rouen. And finally, on the 23rd of December, so just before Christmas, she's under very heavy guard. She's loaded down with chains. She is brought through the gates into Rouen, a city she is destined never to leave. Because, Dominic, she has less than half a year to live.
- [60:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
Crikey. Well, just one episode to go to complete the story of Joan of Arc. And if you really can't wait, as I can't wait, then if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, you can hear that episode right now. If you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club and would like to join and to sample all of its incredible benefits, then head to thereestishory.com but what a cliffhanger. One episode to go. Tom Messi Au revoir.
- [60:46]
Tom Holland
Goodbye.