For six months the English had besieged Orléans, the key to the whole of southern France. Then a seventeen-year-old peasant girl from Domrémy, who said saints had told her to save France, persuaded the uncrowned king to give her armour, a horse and a banner. On this rainy night she rode into the city with a supply convoy, and the starving people pressed so close to touch her that a torch set her banner alight. Nine days later the siege was broken. The words are imagined.