There is no space here to go into the details of Joan’s trial, which produced numerous depositions and reports that give us a wealth of detail about her life and actions, and her death at the stake in the marketplace in Rouen on 30 May 1431, but she was subsequently exonerated by the pope and canonized in 1920. Although her entire public career, from her arrival in Chinon until her death in Rouen, had lasted only two years, for most people today she is probably the best-known figure in the Hundred Years War. Historians take pains to state that Joan did not ‘win’ the war for the French, and some argue that her career was a failure since she failed to take Paris and didn’t accomplish much militarily beyond raising the siege of Orleans, which in any event had been planned by others before her appearance. All this may be true, but what is also true is that before Joan, the English armies had been virtually invincible, and had they taken Orleans there is no reason to believe they wouldn’t also have taken Anjou and driven the Dauphin from Bourges. By whatever means, Joan changed the momentum of the war. More importantly, she secured the coronation of Charles VII, which was absolutely vital to healing the breach between the Armagnacs and Burgundians and turning Charles VII – almost in spite of himself – into a leader who could win the war. This was her true accomplishment.
King René’s Early Career
When he joined Joan in the attack on Paris, René at the age of twenty finally became involved in the war. He immediately established his profile as an English enemy, because his uncle Cardinal Louis of Bar had done homage to Henry VI as king of France, and also claimed to have done so on behalf of René as his heir. René quickly repudiated this and wrote to the Duke of Bedford to defy him in highly courteous, but very definite, terms.10 René was already in a difficult position with neighbouring Burgundy, and his open avowal of Charles VII did not help matters.
René might be blamed for not doing more to help rescue Joan, but in fact he had a legitimate excuse. Cardinal Louis had died in 1430, making René Duke of Bar. On 25 January 1431, Duke Charles of Lorraine also died, making Isabelle of Lorraine duchess, and as her husband René should have been duke of Loraine. However, Antoine de Vaudémont, a son of the previous duke’s younger brother, took a course we have seen so frequently, and denied that the duchy could pass to a woman. The duchy broadly supported Isabelle and René, and in April René demanded a formal submission from Antoine or he would confiscate his property. Antoine refused, and in May René attacked the town of Vaudémont, but in the meantime Antoine had secured aid from the Duke of Burgundy and was in turn attacking Bar.
This was possibly the most fateful moment of René’s life, which influenced everything that followed. On 2 July 1431, René met the combined Vaudémont-Burgundian army at Bulgnéville and suffered a disastrous defeat, René himself being wounded and captured. René was sent to the Duke of Burgundy, as Yolanda of Aragon’s standing at court and his near relation to Charles VII made him a valuable hostage. Philip of Burgundy demanded an enormous ransom and the renunciation of Lorraine, and negotiations dragged on for nearly a year. René was eventually released in April 1432 in exchange for his sons Jean and Louis.
René had failed in battle, but now that he was free he found greater success with diplomacy. Lorraine, like Provence, was not part of France and belonged to the Empire. René appealed to his feudal overlord, who was none other than King Sigismund of Hungary, crowned Emperor in 1433. In 1434 Sigismund duly ruled in favour of Isabelle and René, and their title to Lorraine was confirmed.11
Unfortunately for René, this only offended Philip of Burgundy and he demanded that René return to prison, famously sending him a message that consisted of a single word: return.12 Philip was perfectly within his rights to hold René until he paid his ransom, proving Marie of Blois’s wisdom in holding back a large sum until her death in case Louis II needed to be ransomed, and René had enormous difficulty raising the money. Although Philip had acted lawfully, contemporaries believed it was unusual and unfair to hold a ‘prince of the blood’ of France without allowing him to pledge his word and leave prison in order to raise his ransom (presumably forgetting that René’s grandfather Louis I had immediately broken his word in a similar situation).
Of more note was the fact that Philip treated René quite cruelly, which again was contrary to the practice of the time. René was held in a tower in the castle of Dijon under close guard, and when the Milanese ambassador visited him he was surprised to find that René was held under such harsh conditions, noting also that René had a long beard, turning him almost into the caricature of a neglected prisoner.13
It is not at all clear what would have happened to René had not outside events moved very quickly. At the end of 1434, René’s brother Louis III died in Italy, and René was now Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence. Months later, Queen Johanna II also died, having designated René as her heir, making him King of Sicily and Jerusalem as well. Johanna’s sad story is summed up most poignantly by her tomb, on which was written: ‘Here lies the body of Joanna II by the grace of God queen of Hungary, Jerusalem and Sicily, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Bavaria, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Romania, Bulgaria, countess of Provence, Forcalquier and Piedmont.’14 All these titles were completely empty and she reigned only in Naples, and even there not undisputedly. Even more pitifully, a fire in 1757 destroyed the church where she was buried and not even her tomb survives. Perhaps the most accurate epithet of all for Johanna II is from a biography of 1980 that calls her the ‘queen of straw’, a powerless figure buffeted between rival factions with little authority of her own.
From his position as son of Yolanda of Aragon, brother-in-law of Charles VII and Duke of Lorraine and Bar, René had now become a king twice over, plus ruler of an additional duchy and the county of Provence. This only made him more valuable as a hostage and Philip demanded a greater ransom, but fortunately for René, 1435 was a momentous year for another reason. After constant negotiations with Yolanda of Aragon among many others, Philip of Burgundy was ready to make peace with Charles VII and the Armagnacs. There was a peace conference at Arras between Charles VII, Philip and the English, but English inflexibility over Henry VI’s rights as king of France was the sticking point. Charles VII would have considered letting Henry hold Normandy and Gascony as his vassal, but the English refused to countenance any acknowledgement of Charles as king of France. The conference ended without agreement between the three parties, only for Charles and Philip immediately to make their own agreement, and Philip recognized Charles as king.
This was the death knell for the English in France, but it also meant Charles VII had considerable influence in securing René’s release. This was accomplished, but not without sweeping concessions. By the treaty of Lille of 1437, René agreed to pay Philip 400,000 écus and cede Philip some of his lands that bordered Burgundy and Flanders. Inevitably there was a marriage alliance, and René’s heir Jean of Calabria married Philip’s niece Marie of Bourbon. She brought a dowry of 150,000 écus, of which two-thirds went towards René’s ransom, and René would owe instalments of 100,000 écus in May 1437 and1438, and a further 100,000 when he took his throne in Naples. René also agreed to a marriage alliance between his daughter Yolande of Bar and Ferry de Vaudémont, son of René’s rival Antoine, to unite the claimants to Lorraine.15
This latter marriage was a great success, because Ferry de Vaudémont became a key ally and would serve René and Jean of Calabria faithfully until he died in 1470 on the campaign to conquer Aragon. Yolande of Bar, about whom we know little, does have an interesting cultural presence, since Tchaikovsky’s final opera, Iolanta, is about her. The opera is based on the play by the Danish poet Henrik Hertz, King René’s Daughter, in which René is a gentle and loving father who, somewhat bizarrely, protects his blind daughter by keeping her blindness from her so it won’t make her unhappy, and houses her in a beautiful garden until a suitor can be found who won’t reveal to her that she is blind. Entirely unexpected in an operatic setting is the ending, when Iolanta’s blindness is cu
red and she marries Ferry de Vaudémont. The opera’s determinedly upbeat tone and happy ending are a pleasing grace note to the undoubtedly positive moments of René’s long reign.
King René in Naples
Sadly René had no such happy ending in reality. Alfonso of Aragon had never forgotten his adoption by Johanna II, and in the turmoil of her final years Johanna first re-adopted Alfonso, then repudiated him again in a final testament of 1435 in which she spoke compellingly of his ingratitude and obnoxious behaviour, and definitively adopted René as her heir before she died.16 René could do nothing from his Burgundian prison, and Alfonso immediately attacked Gaeta in May 1435 and then seized the key castles in Naples. However, the possibility of Aragonese domination of Naples, and thus most of Italy, as well as their other possessions in the Mediterranean, threatened Genoa, and a Genoese fleet defeated Alfonso at Ponza on 5 August and captured him. Now both claimants to the throne were in prison, but Isabelle of Lorraine arrived in Naples in October 1435 and took charge of the kingdom, although the Aragonese continued to hold the Castel Nuovo and the Castel dell’Ovo. As was so often the case with prisoners, the Genoese had no use for Alfonso and gave him to the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti.
This is another example used by René’s detractors to show how ineffective he was. René languished in prison for years and did nothing but produce beautiful paintings on the walls of his cell (so the story goes), whereas Alfonso charmed Filippo Visconti to the point where he joined forces with the Aragonese and worked to put Alfonso on the throne of Naples.17 This version of the story is highly misleading, because it ignores the fact that Alfonso and Filippo had been allies for many years, only recently being at odds. From the moment he was placed into Milanese custody, Alfonso was treated as a guest, not kept in the harsh conditions René found in Dijon. Filippo was only one player in an incredibly fluid situation in Italy and needed support desperately, whereas Philip of Burgundy was the most powerful prince in France and needed nothing from René. The situations could not be more different, and it is no surprise that there were different outcomes. Alfonso was released without paying a ransom and resumed his fight for Naples with Milanese support, whereas René was crippled financially. One positive note was that the pope backed René, and as overlord of the kingdom recognized his claim over Alfonso’s.18
René was finally released in February 1437, but before going to Naples he raised as much money as possible in Lorraine, Bar and Anjou. Yolanda of Aragon took charge of Anjou and Provence, and René formally ceded Maine to his younger brother Charles, on condition that he reconquer it from the English.19 Although it was currently irrelevant since Maine was under English rule, it is notable that René was already allowing the breakup of the ‘greater Anjou’ that had been in existence since the time of Fulk V in the early 12th century.
René and Jean of Calabria arrived in Naples in May 1438. By July, René was ready to launch a campaign against Alfonso, who still held the major castles of Naples. Another blow to René’s cause was the fact that Francesco Sforza, the son of Muzio Attendolo Sforza who had been such a support – intermittently – to Johanna II and Louis III, offered to help René, but the Neapolitan commanders refused to work with him and so Sforza cheerfully supported Alfonso instead. Despite this, René was able to take the Castel Nuovo and the Castel dell’Ovo, and by 1439 controlled Naples completely.
Despite these victories, the outcome seemed inevitable for a very simple reason: René had no money, and Alfonso was wealthy. Alfonso was able to buy mercenary armies, the essential component of 15th-century warfare, and René was not. Why was René unable to find any allies against Alfonso? Part of the problem was the same one that Charles of Anjou had faced, which was that René was unequivocally French. The small Italian powers were too afraid of possible French interference in the peninsula to want René on the throne of Naples. Despite similar fears about Aragonese domination of the Mediterranean, Alfonso seemed a safer option.
By August 1440, René was aware that his position was crumbling, and although he managed to hold on for another two years, on 1 June 1442 Aragonese agents in Naples opened the gates to Alfonso’s forces. René desperately fought them in the streets, but to no avail, and by October 1442 all was lost. René returned to Provence and Alfonso sacked Naples, only making his formal entry into the city on 26 February 1443, which is commemorated by the triumphal arch he installed on the Castel Nuovo, literally imposing himself on the ‘Maschio Angioino’.20 A pathetic but brilliant touch by Alfonso was that the frieze on the triumphal arch, which shows his victory procession in Naples, has him seated on a throne with King René’s captured mantle draped over the back.21
Henry VI’s Angevin Marriage
René by no means gave up the fight after Alfonso took the kingdom, although on his return to Provence in October 1442 he almost immediately heard of the death of Yolanda of Aragon. She had lived nearly long enough to see her tireless work in support of Charles VII reach fruition.
In the aftermath of the relief of Orleans and Charles VII’s coronation, and despite Joan’s execution in 1431, French morale was at a high. The English retaliated by arranging Henry VI’s coronation as king of France at Notre Dame in Paris on 16 December 1431 (he had been crowned king of England in 1429), but this backfired spectacularly. The king’s uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, arranged the coronation and mismanaged it so badly that it became a factor in the defection of the Burgundians and permanently alienated the Parisians. Beaufort committed every possible mistake: the coronation service was performed according to the English rite rather than the French, the Bishop of Paris was given only a minor role and no prisoners were pardoned or taxes abolished. The overriding impression was of meanness, and the chronicler known as the Bourgeois of Paris reported that ‘Paris had seen merchants’ marriages which had been “of more profit to the jewellers, goldsmiths and other purveyors of luxury than this coronation of a King, with all its jousts and Englishmen.”’22 Henry and his advisers immediately departed Paris, leaving the French in no doubt that he was not really their king.
As importantly, the Duke of Bedford died in 1435, just before Philip of Burgundy finally repudiated the English alliance. Bedford had a genuine love for France and was well respected in Normandy, one factor in the duchy’s willingness to remain under English control for so long. The loss of Bedford and the Burgundian alliance was a fatal blow to the English presence in France, and in February 1436 the Dauphin’s forces entered Paris.23 Although turmoil erupted in Normandy and there was skirmishing throughout the duchy, the English commanders, notably John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, known as the ‘English Achilles’, who was the final great English commander in the war, withstood the onslaught.
Still, the English found themselves in the same situation as King John when he had tried to defend Normandy, or King René in Naples: there was simply no money. England had grown tired of paying for the endless war, especially as for years there had been no iconic victory with its associated plunder and ransoms. In large part due to King John’s initial loss of the Angevin Empire and his son’s attempts to retake it, Parliament in England now had a significant say in how their money would be spent. There was no benefit in the war for English taxpayers, and although they now considered Normandy as part of English territory and would be horrified when it was finally lost, they were not willing to subsidize its defence.
Thus René’s return in 1442 came at a good moment for France, though joining in the final years of the Hundred Years War was a distraction from his goal of retaking Naples. Although they had not made much headway in Normandy, the French now attacked Gascony, foreshadowing the war’s conclusion when England would lose not only its gains in the war (except Calais), but the lands it held before the war began. Worse for the English, they in turn were discovering the difficulties of being ruled by a mentally incompetent king. Henry VI was now twenty, and it had become clear that he had much more in common with his mad grandfather Charles VI than his father, the hero Henry V.
Exactly as had happened in France, the court was split into factions, which would ultimately lead to civil war.
In 1444 the situation was so desperate that the English sought a truce, and as Henry VI was of the right age, the obvious solution was a marriage alliance. France was willing to listen, since it now had the upper hand and could demand significant concessions. The natural course of action would be to marry Henry to one of Charles VII’s daughters, linking the warring factions directly. However, Henry still claimed to be king of France, and Charles would never consent to form a marriage alliance with a usurper who failed to renounce his claim. Both sides still desired a peace treaty, so the bride would have to come from a different family.
René’s daughter Margaret of Anjou fulfilled the requirements perfectly. René’s status as titular king of Sicily and Jerusalem, as well as all his other titles both real and nominal, gave Margaret the proper rank to marry a king. Forming an alliance with Anjou, a contested border land adjacent to English Normandy, was attractive to the English. Finally, René was essentially penniless despite his high-flown titles, and the lack of a substantial dowry rendered Margaret less threatening than a more substantial heiress might have been. Margaret’s dowry in fact consisted only of 20,000 francs and a worthless Angevin claim to Majorca and Minorca. More importantly, she renounced any rights to Angevin territories, since the death of René and her brothers might have allowed Henry VI to claim them. René was Charles VII’s brother-in-law, and René’s brother, Charles of Maine, was Charles VII’s closest companion. The Angevin connection to the crown thus remained very strong, and it is not surprising that Charles VII would look to Anjou for the marriage alliance with England. It is also not coincidental that the concession France sought from the English would be the return of Maine to the Angevins.
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 49