Why did God choose Joan of Arc and France's side in the Hundred Year's War?

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This is something that I always wondered. After all, the war did not start as a religious war. It was a war between two Catholic nations who had claims to the French throne. Moreover, the French monarchs had a history of causing trouble for the Catholic Church. King Phillip IV of France was responsible for kidnapping Pope Boniface VIII. He was also responsible for falsely accusing the holy order, the Knights Templar of heresy and burning them at the stake, so that he could confiscate their riches.

Also, during the Great Schism of the Catholic Church, England supported the legitimate Roman Popes while France supported the Avignon Antipopes. However by the time of Joan of Arc, the schism was over.

So I think there are two possible explanations for why God chose Saint Joan of Arc to save France.
  1. God supported the House of Valois claim to the French throne over the House of Plantagenet and considered Charles VII France’s true King.
  2. God initially did not care about the succession dispute but the English leaders were committing an abomination at the time of Joan of Arc, that made him chose her to punish them. Perhaps because Henry V violated the truce of 1396 and committed atrocities in France. Though by the time of Joan of Arc, Henry VI was ruling and he was only a child, so regents were ruling for him in England and France.
 
God also seemed to favour the English at Mons in ww1. Ie the angels of mons.

I don’t know about the Hundred Years’ War though.
 
Well it is clear that towards the end of the Hundred Years War, God sided with France because he chose Joan of Arc to save France. I think I found out why. In 1396 King Richard II of England and King Charles VI of France agreed to a 28 year truce. However in 1399 Henry of Bollingbroke usurped the crown deposing Richard II, and became King Henry IV. His son and successor Henry V violated the truce.
He initially called a great council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the following negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Brittany and Flanders, as well as Aquitaine. Henry would marry Princess Catherine, the young daughter of Charles VI, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Princess Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. By 1415 negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself.[2] In December 1414, the English Parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a “double subsidy”, a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the great council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed.[3]
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Henry V was also responsible for this atrocity.
Lower Normandy was quickly conquered and Rouen was cut off from Paris and besieged. This siege cast an even darker shadow on the reputation of the king than his order to slay the French prisoners at Agincourt. Rouen, starving and unable to support the women and children of the town, forced them out through the gates believing that Henry would allow them to pass through his army unmolested. However, Henry refused to allow this, and the expelled women and children died of starvation in the ditches surrounding the town.
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So those are probably reasons why God chose Joan of Arc to punish the English for their crimes.
 
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Well, she’s a saint and is enjoying Heaven now so it’s not that bad of a deal.
 
One reason (I am sure there were others), if France had been ruled by England up until the time of King Henry VIII, he would have destroyed Catholicism in France, just as he did in England.
 
God is omniscient. If France had fallen under British rule, it would have become Protestant over time. Not only would that have impacted evangelization during the colonial period, but the very existence of French-based Catholic organizations.
 
France , at least at a certain point in history, was Catholicism’s “fairest daughter”

French missionaries spread the Word throughout the New World

had Joan not rallied the troops, at least to the degree she which she was able before she took an arrow in her neck, France would’ve fallen and eventually become a protestant nation

God bless St Joan D’arc

martyr & patroness of France
 
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