May 23 in Military History — On This Day

⚔️📍 Compiègne, France1430

Joan of Arc Captured at Compiègne

Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundian forces allied with England during a sortie from Compiègne. She was pulled from her horse by an archer and taken prisoner, eventually sold to the English for 10,000 livres.

Joan's capture ended her military career; after a politically motivated trial for heresy, she was burned at the stake at age 19, becoming one of history's most enduring martyrs.

Outcome

Joan captured; burned at the stake May 30, 1431

Battle of Heiligerlee

William of Orange's brothers Louis and Adolf lured a Spanish force into boggy ground near the monastery of Heiligerlee and destroyed it. Aremberg was killed; so was Adolf of Nassau, the first of William's brothers to die for the revolt. It was the first Dutch victory of the war and it was won by terrain — the tactic the Dutch would rely on for eighty years.

Conventionally the opening battle of the Eighty Years' War, and a false dawn. Heiligerlee raised hopes of a general rising that never came; within two months Alba had annihilated the same army at Jemmingen and the rebellion of 1568 was over. The date is still Dutch national memory — the monastery ruin marks where the war began.

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Defenestration of Prague

Protestant Bohemian nobles, outraged by the Catholic Habsburgs' curtailment of their religious freedoms, marched to Prague Castle and threw three Catholic royal governors out of a third-floor window. The Catholics survived — Catholics claimed angels bore them up; Protestants noted they landed in a pile of refuse — but the act ignited a revolt that would consume Europe for thirty years.

The Defenestration was the spark that lit the Thirty Years' War. It signaled open Bohemian rebellion against Habsburg authority and framed the coming conflict as both religious and constitutional. The incident became a symbol of Protestant defiance against Catholic imperial power.

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Battle of Ramillies

Marlborough delivered the most complete tactical victory of his career in under ninety minutes. Attacking Villeroi's army along a curved front near Ramillies, Marlborough exploited the interior lines his position gave him — secretly shifting troops from his right to his center and left while fixing the French right with a feint. The French center and left collapsed under concentrated Allied pressure. Villeroi's army disintegrated into a rout that became a catastrophe.

Ramillies produced the greatest territorial gains of the war for the Alliance. Within weeks, the Spanish Netherlands — modern Belgium — fell to Marlborough almost without further fighting. Louvain, Bruges, Antwerp, and Brussels opened their gates. Louis XIV was forced to recall Villeroi and place Vendôme in command.

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