Seventeen-year-old Joan of Arc entered Orléans at nightfall, having convinced the dauphin Charles to let her join the relief effort against the English siege that had gripped the city for months. Her arrival, amid a cheering crowd bearing torches, galvanized French morale. Within days, French forces broke the siege entirely, turning the tide of the Hundred Years' War and beginning Joan's meteoric rise from peasant visionary to national icon.
The city of Orléans had been under siege since October 1428, its fall considered by many a near-certainty that would open the road to complete English domination of France. Joan of Arc, a teenage peasant girl from Domrémy claiming visions from Saint Michael and other saints, had spent months convincing skeptical clergy and the dauphin Charles of her divine mission before finally being allowed to accompany a relief convoy.
She entered the city on the evening of April 29, riding in white armor, according to chroniclers, with the Bastard of Orléans, Jean de Dunois, at her side. The convoy's arrival was as much psychological as military—Joan's presence electrified a garrison and populace exhausted by six months of siege warfare.
Within a week and a half, French forces would take the offensive, capturing key English strongpoints and forcing a full withdrawal by May 8. The victory made Joan a legend overnight and set in motion the campaign that would see Charles VII crowned at Reims. She would be captured within a year, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake in 1431—but her ride into Orléans marked the moment France began to believe it could win.