Page "Joan of Arc" Paragraph 3

The historian Kelly DeVries describes the period preceding her appearance in the following terms: " If anything could have discouraged her, the state of France in 1429 should have.

" The Hundred Years ' War had begun in 1337 as a succession dispute over the French throne with intermittent periods of relative peace.

Nearly all the fighting had taken place in France, and the English army's use of chevauchée tactics ( similar to scorched earth strategies ) had devastated the economy.

The French population had not recovered from the Black Death of the previous century and its merchants were isolated from foreign markets.

At the outset of Jeanne d ' Arc's appearance, the English had nearly achieved their goal of a dual monarchy under English control and the French army had not achieved any major victories for a generation.

In DeVries's words, " The kingdom of France was not even a shadow of its thirteenth-century prototype.