page_title: Orléans
section_title: High Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Orléans / History / High Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Les troupes françaises défont les Anglais et lèvent le siège d'Orléans en mai 1429.
context_page_description: Orléans is a prefecture and commune in north-central France, about 120 kilometres southwest of Paris. It is the capital of the Loiret department and of the Centre-Val de Loire region.
  Orléans is located on the Loire River where the river curves south towards the Massif Central. In 2017, the city had 116,685 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries. Orléans is the center of Orléans Métropole that has a population of 282,828 in 2016, the 20th largest in France. The largest metropolitan area has a population of 435,235.
  Île d'Orléans in Quebec, Canada is named after Orleans in France as are Orléans, Ontario and New Orleans, Louisiana.
context_section_description: The city was always a strategic point on the Loire, for it was sited at the river's most northerly point, and thus its closest point to Paris. There were few bridges over the dangerous river Loire, but Orléans had one of them, and so became – with Rouen and Paris – one of medieval France's three richest cities.
  On the south bank the "châtelet des Tourelles" protected access to the bridge. This was the site of the battle on 8 May 1429 which allowed Joan of Arc to enter and lift the siege of the Plantagenets during the Hundred Years' War, with the help of the royal generals Dunois and Florent d'Illiers. The city's inhabitants have continued to remain faithful and grateful to her to this day, calling her "la pucelle d'Orléans" (the maid of Orléans), offering her a middle-class house in the city, and contributing to her ransom when she was taken prisoner.
caption: 15th-century depiction of the French troops attacking an English fort at the siege of Orléans
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