The teenage girl of African and Polish origin chosen to be this year's Joan of Arc at the city of Orleans' annual celebration of the French icon has come under attack from outraged far-Right trolls on social media.

Mathilde Edey Gamassou will be at the centre of the week-long event that starts late April, during which she will parade through the town on horseback, kitted out in medieval armour and brandishing a sword.

The French have for the past 600 years feted the peasant girl-turned-war commander as a national heroine for helping drive the English out of France.

But Joan of Arc is particularly venerated by the French far-Right as a symbol of national resistance, and every year Front National leaders place a wreath at her statue in Paris at the start of their traditional May Day parade.

The announcement earlier this week that Ms Gamassou, whose father is from Benin and whose mother is Polish, from among 250 girls in Orleans to depict Joan of Arc was met with a flurry of angry posts on Twitter and on far-right websites.