The Arc of leadership

Like Don Quixote, Joan of Arc has inspired numerous creations in the form of plays, movies, stories, paintings, statues and interpretations. For a leader who roused an entire nation from despondency and defeatism, spurred it on to fight and eventually drive away a foreign presence, and united a nation, there are few parallels in history to Joan. She is a pure leader, par excellence.

We have adopted Bernard Shaw’s masterpiece play Saint Joan for our interpretation. In this play, we are taken through the main events of her life: her meeting Charles, the Dauphin (the uncrowned King), leading an army to lift the siege of Orleans, crowning Charles as the King of France, the betrayal of Joan by the King and others, her trial and eventually her being burnt at the stake. There is a delightful epilogue that beautifully sums up many aspects of Joan’s character.

Power of vision

Joan’s tryst with her destiny starts from a very young age, where she witnessed the brutality of English occupiers against the villagers in her village of Domrimi. She combined great pity that gave her passion and conviction, and a great intellect that gave her clarity of reason.

She seems to have had some spiritual experiences that led her to believe that God was communicating to her to lead France, throw out the English and crown the Dauphin as the King. She also wondered why France was always losing, and concluded that they had no cause to fight for, nor did they have a proper, trained, disciplined army. She saw herself as a unifier of all France under one King, and God had chosen her to accomplish this mission.

Passion as an engine of leadership

Joan’s passion is in evidence throughout the play. As a peasant girl, she gains an audience with the commander of a local castle, and then the Dauphin himself, and convinces the latter that it’s possible to lift the siege of Orleans. The Dauphin’s scepticism is brusquely brushed aside by her.

“I will put courage into thee,” she says, and the Dauphin, left with no better choice, decides to back Joan. She is given the overall control of the army, and she infuses the army with a new hope, a new courage and a new confidence.

“Who is for God and His Maid? Who is for Orleans with me?” says Joan, and the entire assembly of knights shout back: “To Orleans!” She lives among the soldiers, dressing as they do, eating what they eat, and always leading from the front, an exemplar par excellence.

When wounded badly by an arrow, she gets the arrow pulled out and is back at the front, leading a newly inspired French army. The English are defeated and the siege of Orleans is lifted. It’s a miracle.

But what is a miracle? Miracles are events that create faith. Joan’s story is an example of what faith in one’s mission, once generated, and an unbridled passion to achieve it against all odds, can accomplish. Like Don Quixote, she has a noble vision, and great discipline. But unlike Quixote, she has her foot firmly on the ground.

Role of faith

Faith, it is said, can move mountains. After all, what Joan accomplished could have technically been accomplished by any of the military commanders. The army was there; so were the weapons. What she put in was faith: faith in one’s cause, confidence in one’s success.

Creating faith is a hallmark of a leader. How does one create it? Writers have attributed this ability to that intangible, indefinable “charisma”. But in reality it may be simpler than that: it may be total conviction of one’s own cause and position.

Confidence and enthusiasm are contagious. Joan could as well have said: “I know who I am”. To herself, and to the Frenchmen at that time, she was the Messenger of God, nothing short of it, and she wouldn’t compromise her position in her trial. The same was the case with Jesus, as so movingly portrayed in the recent movie The Passion of Christ.

If Joan’s success shows one aspect of faith, her trial brings out another aspect. She failed to see the opposition from vested interests she was fuelling: the Church whose authority as the sole interpreter of God, and the feudal chiefs for whom the King was merely the first among equals.

Passion and vision also bring about cataclysmic changes in the established order. That was why she had to burn, and though after death, she could be rehabilitated, “if you could bring her back to life, they would burn her again within six months” — such are the perils of leadership.

There wasn’t any doubt that the trial was an entirely political one, steeped in religious terms. Yet the Church was on the whole fair, given its own articles of faith and gave her a reprieve — by asking her to confess.

Which she did, perhaps hoping that once free, she can complete her mission, only to learn that she wasn’t to be set free, but would remain a prisoner of the Church for life. Now her mission was in danger. She tore up her confession, and virtually forced the Church to burn her. If she had lived, perhaps France wouldn’t have been united.

Her martyrdom shows a leadership dilemma to choose between oneself and one’s ideals. Joan perished, but “her heart would not burn”. Her death infused a fresh spirit among the French, who succeeded in driving out the English. She became “the soul of France”. True leadership sometimes requires sacrifice of oneself so that the ideal may survive.

As is given in the epilogue of the play, what won was always the Maid’s way. The Messenger could never be silenced. True leaders leave behind legacies of ideals and ideas — some accomplished and some not so. But the accomplishment itself is immaterial. “It’s the memory and the salvation that sanctify the cross, not the cross that sanctifies the memory and the salvation.”

(All quotes are from the play Saint Joan)