Joan of Arc

French military leader and heroine. Inspired and directed by religious visions, she organized the French resistance that forced the English to end their siege of Orléans (1429). The same year she led an army of 12,000 to Rheims and had the dauphin crowned Charles VII. Captured and sold to the English by the Burgundians (1430), she was later tried for heresy and sorcery and was burned at the stake in Rouen. She was canonized in 1920.