Joan is so well known now that it is surprising to see how little interest she aroused between the end of her own century and the beginning of the nineteenth. She was never entirely ignored, though, as this series of histories show. Orléans has loved Joan nearly uninterruptedly since she led the Armagnac forces in lifting the siege of the town and Micqueau's Aureliae Vrbis Memorabilis ab Anglis Obsidio, Anno 1428 (left) makes much of her role. Hordal's Heroinae Nobilissimae (right) is even more laudatory, and firmly establishes Joan as a national heroine and a supporter of the King.

In Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, Dite la Pucelle d'Orleans (left) Lenglet Dufresnoy displays the rationalism of his time: he depends on original documents and says outright that he does not believe in Joan's voices as external, although he praises this "enthusiasm, this heroism, this burning spirit." Chaussard's Jeanne d'Arc: Recueil Historique et Complet (right) is was written with an aggressively nationalistic and anti-clerical tone - in his annotated bibliography of original documents and early accounts related to Joan, he also raises a number of questions, including, "Was Joan a tool of the Church or of the court?" and "Is it true that this tragedy took place only as a prelude in France to the horrible inquisition, a path of fire and blood?"