Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500

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Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 50

by Jeffrey Anderson


  The marriage was concluded in May 1444 at the cathedral in Tours, at a ceremony where the earl of Suffolk acted as proxy for Henry VI, and would be followed by a two-year truce. Margaret then made a procession through Normandy, and was hosted at Rouen by Suffolk’s wife Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the author, whose rise to the nobility showed the social mobility available for clever people in the 15th century. Margaret finally arrived in England in April 1445 and was formally married to Henry in person.24

  King René’s Culture Wars

  One reason for the delay was that Margaret first attended the wedding celebrations of her sister Yolande to Ferry de Vaudémont in Nancy in February 1445. This was marked by the first of the three great tournaments that René held from 1445–1449, and far from being an example of René’s frivolity or lack of seriousness, this was absolutely central to his political programme. René is one of the greatest cultural figures of the 15th century, but we must look in more detail at the purpose behind this activity.

  René was involved in a high-stakes cultural war with Philip the Good of Burgundy and Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon. In this context, his chivalric romances, tournaments, pageants and, most importantly, his chivalric order, were the opposite of useless luxuries; rather they were essential components in his assertion of his right to rule and his bid for support from other nobles. Philip the Good held many tournaments, as well as establishing the chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430, which are always taken as demonstrations of his power and authority, and it was with this that René had to compete.

  René had earlier shown his ability to use this kind of propaganda in Naples. On 31 December 1441, although René had lost almost all the Regno besides Naples itself to Alfonso, he held an elaborate pageant in the Castel Nuovo. This was based on a dialogue by the Roman poet Lucian, in which Scipio Africanus, Hannibal and Alexander the Great appeared at the gate to the Elysian Fields, and argued before King Minos about who was the greatest warrior. Victory went to Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal. The moral to the tale was revealed to the audience, which was this: Alfonso was an old man who fought against the Church in the way that Hannibal had fought against Rome, but René was young, prudent, just and a friend of truth and the Church.25 It is easy to argue that René should have been organizing the defence of Naples instead of holding pageants, but that it precisely what he was doing. The only way to defend Naples was to muster the Neapolitan nobles, and by allegorically demonstrating his superiority to Alfonso, René was making his pitch for their support.

  For his daughter Yolande’s wedding in Nancy, René held a tournament where he jousted dressed as Godfrey of Bouillon. There could hardly be a more resonant figure: Godfrey was the only near contemporary among the ‘Nine Worthies’, but much more importantly he was recognized as the first king of Jerusalem (though he had refused to be crowned), a title now held by René; he had been the duke of Lorraine, another title now held by René; and he was a hero of the First Crusade. This was relevant because, although we have not heard much about Crusades since Nicopolis in 1396, the current pope was calling for a Crusade and Philip the Good of Burgundy had expressed interest. René’s appearance as Godfrey of Bouillon, and the appearance of Charles VII – who also attended the wedding – under the arms of the Lusignans, heroic Crusaders and kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, was a direct riposte to Philip. Both René and Charles VII were unwilling to undertake any Crusade with the Hundred Years War ongoing (though René owned a copy of Joinville’s Life of Saint Louis, and was obviously interested in the movement), but their iconography at the tournament was a response to Philip’s Crusading credentials.26

  Philip doesn’t seem to have taken offence – or perhaps he didn’t take the point – since in July 1445 he released René from the rest of his ransom, amounting to 80,600 écus, meaning that René had paid just over three-quarters of his initial ransom.27 This was not a bad bargain for Philip, and as René was now the King of England’s father-in-law as well as the King of France’s brother-in-law it did no harm to Philip to make this concession. René was finally out from under the crippling ransom payments that had dogged him for ten years, and although he would remain chronically short of funds, at least now his revenues could be directed towards his own projects instead of into Burgundian coffers.

  These projects were René’s further great tournaments, and that they were part of a political programme is demonstrated by their locations: the first had been in Lorraine, the next was in Anjou and the last in Provence. For his tournament in Anjou in June 1446, René held the Emprise de la Joyeuse Garde at his mother’s favourite chateau of Saumur. ‘Joyeuse Garde’ was Sir Lancelot’s castle where the lovers Tristram and Iseult met and thus had an explicitly erotic theme, and the tournament duly included a wooden castle guarded by real lions from René’s menagerie.28

  We know that René was already drawn to the unusual; even in 1429 before he gained any of his titles and was only heir to Bar, he was served by a dwarf jester known as ‘petit fou’ (‘little fool’) and a servant from Morocco, who gained considerable (and unwelcome) attention as he walked through the streets of Metz.29 René went on to employ another dwarf known as Triboulet, who is commemorated in a medal by the notable Renaissance sculptor Francesco Laurana (who sculpted Alfonso V’s triumphal arch in Naples), and also in an extraordinary manuscript illumination showing René sitting despondently with the recently deceased Triboulet, who lies in a coffin wrapped in his shroud as the Grim Reaper enters the room. René was known to be fond of wearing ‘Moorish’ clothes and armour, and continued to be attended by many Moorish servants later in his reign.30 René’s passion for all things Moorish extended to Moorish dancing, which some sources say he introduced to Europe; it swept through European courts and thence to England, where it became ‘Morris’ dancing.

  René’s love for the exotic particularly extended to animals, and his menagerie at Angers was known to contain four lions as well as leopards and ostriches. The city of Florence offered him one of its lionesses in 1442, and a keeper was killed by a lion in 1463. Accounts mention a dromedary at Angers, and René’s tailor in Provence was known to have prepared costumes for René’s monkeys, for an elephant and for ‘another beast, called “the tiger”’.31

  We can see by the variety and intensity of his interests that, despite the undoubted political impact these actions would have had, this was part of René’s character. Although he was not the host, René participated in, and was the champion of, the ‘Emprise de la gueule de dragon’ (the Enterprise of the Dragon’s Mouth) near Chinon in June 1446, where he dressed in black and carried a black shield covered in gold tears, a tribute to his younger son Louis who had just died. Such theatricality may strike us as unfeeling, but René lived his life very publicly and this kind of display would have been his tribute to a beloved son.

  When René held his third great tournament, the Pas d’armes de la bergiere (Passage of arms of the Shepherdess), at Tarascon in Provence, on 3 June 1449, he highlighted the presence of his son-in-law Ferry de Vaudémont, who took the top prize, as a means of integrating the next generation from Lorraine into his wider territorial ambitions. This was much more a pageant than a tournament, with a shepherdess tending sheep outside a cottage and two knights dressed as shepherds defending her.32

  The End of the Hundred Years War

  These tournaments took place during a truce in the Hundred Years War, after Le Mans and the rest of Maine were surrendered by the English in 1448, and the truce had been continued until 1450. Charles VII had used the time since the initial truce in 1444 wisely, establishing the first standing army in France and giving France its first military advantage in the war. Previously, well-organized English troops – who had to be organized because they were crossing the Channel to another country – had been opposed by scratch levies defending their homes or thrown into the field without much stake in the outcome, but now the French forces were properly managed. They had also finally found an artillery soluti
on to counter the English longbows, in the form of superior cannon and the first type of handguns, which although still clumsy could be effective when used from behind walls. We know the reason for the new French superiority in artillery: the Bureau brothers, Jean and Gaspard, professionals who had worked their way up in the French administration, had created an efficient artillery force capitalizing on all the recent technological advances.33

  When hostilities resumed, René was in the forefront. The English broke the truce in early 1449 and Charles launched an invasion of Normandy. Now the previously loyal Normans knew they had nothing to hope for from England – which was well on its way to a civil war – and many surrendered to the French immediately. On 10 November 1449, when Charles VII ceremonially entered Rouen, René was on his left and Charles of Maine on his right. An English attempt at a counterattack was brushed aside at the Battle of Formigny in April 1450, and by August the capture of Caen and Cherbourg meant Normandy had been entirely retaken, leaving the English nothing except Calais and Gascony. René took a great deal of credit for the success in Normandy and was at the height of his power and influence.34

  Public opinion in England was outraged by the loss of Normandy; as early as January 1450 Parliament had accused the Duke of Suffolk of treason and he was murdered as he tried to flee to Calais. Jack Cade raised a rebellion in Kent and entered London in July, though this was crushed by a force that included many of the former captains from Normandy. Worse was to come, as the French moved directly from Normandy to Gascony. By the end of 1450 many cities had fallen, and Bordeaux was captured in June 1451, essentially securing Gascony for France.

  Yet this last outpost of the old Angevin Empire had no particular allegiance to France, and some resented the French invasion. Lord Talbot led a force to Gascony in late 1452, and the English retook Bordeaux and much of the county. Charles VII sent an army to meet them, and on 17 July 1453 Talbot led part of his army against a French artillery encampment near Castillon commanded by Jean Bureau. It was the opposite of Crécy and Agincourt: the English launched a frontal attack on a well-defended French position and were slaughtered by the French guns. Talbot was killed, the English army disintegrated and Bordeaux surrendered on 19 October 1453.35

  This was not the only momentous event of 1453. The Byzantine Empire, fatally weakened by the Fourth Crusade and which had been threatened by the Ottoman Turks for so long, was now in dire straits and consisted of little more than Constantinople itself. The Ottomans were ready for the final assault and in the spirit of Fulk Nerra had planted aggressive forward fortifications to cut off the Bosphorus from the north and strangle the city, notably the ‘Fortress of Europe’ (Rumeli hisarı, also known as Boğazkesen, which can mean the ‘strait-cutter’ or also the ‘throat-cutter’), one of the most impressive castles remaining in Europe. Needless to say, the frantic appeals to western leaders by the last Byzantine Emperor in the years leading up to the Empire’s fall were futile: France and England were in no position to help, Italy was in chaos and most of the other western powers were involved in these disputes one way or another. After a prolonged siege, on 29 May 1453 the Ottomans took the city, ending the Byzantine Empire.

  1453 is the traditional date given for the end of the Hundred Years War, although the English monarchs continued to claim the throne of France and bore the French fleurs-de-lis on their arms until 1802. England retained Calais until 1558 and monarchs down to Henry VIII intermittently launched raids to ‘retake’ their kingdom. For our purposes, the most important consequence of the war’s end was the turmoil into which it threw England, and its impact on Margaret of Anjou.

  Origins of the English Civil War: Lancaster and York

  It was already clear that Henry VI was not a competent king, but defeat in the Hundred Years War put a new level of pressure on the English court. Henry VI’s gentleness, unworldliness and pliability were constantly remarked upon by contemporaries, qualities eminently unsuitable for a king. We remember that Eleanor of Aquitaine accused Louis VII of being more like a monk than a king, but Louis managed to remain politically effective as well as pious, whereas Henry VI failed in every duty of a monarch. That put Margaret in an interesting position. She had been raised in Anjou, where King René’s wife and mother administered the duchy during his imprisonment, and she knew that her mother had gone to Naples to establish René’s claim to the throne and rule the kingdom for him until his release from prison. For a queen to play a role as regent would not seem unnatural to her, should it be required. The situation in England was about to require this, and much more, as two powerful relatives began to compete for control of the government.

  The first was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Henry VI’s own line came through Edward III’s son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, but Somerset was also a descendant of John of Gaunt through the retrospectively legitimized offspring of his later marriage to Katherine Swynford. Somerset was thus part of the royal family, but not a direct rival to Henry. More importantly, Somerset had been involved in the French wars, and though he had personally surrendered Rouen to the French and was implicated in the widely perceived mismanagement of the war, he was intimately connected to royal government.

  The second player was Richard Duke of York, who in 1448 adopted the name ‘Plantagenet’ to link himself to the 12th-century kings of England, though oddly through their forebear Geoffrey Plantagenet, rather than one of the kings. It is entirely unclear why Richard chose this name rather than any other, or why this nickname for Geoffrey, which was attested in the 12th century, had gone unremarked for 300 years only to re-emerge now. Dr John S. Plant has suggested that the name might have had obscene connotations referring to Geoffrey’s procreative powers, so it might have remained as a familiar term to describe him, but not in polite circles or written sources, which was why it vanished from the records for so long only to reappear in a less prudish time.36 Linking oneself to a previous dynasty was not unusual, and we have seen how the Angevins of Naples adopted this strategy and named two sons Charles ‘Martel’ in reference to Charlemagne’s grandfather.

  Yet if Richard sought to connect himself to the previous English monarchy through a name, which name could he use? Henry I, Henry III, Edward II and Edward III didn’t have widely used epithets. William ‘the Conqueror’ was no use, and William II ‘Rufus’ and Edward I ‘Longshanks’ (or ‘Hammer of the Scots’, also unhelpful) had names based on physical characteristics. That left the Angevins, but Henry II was ‘FitzEmpress’, Richard was ‘the Lionheart’ and John was ‘Softsword’ or ‘Lackland’. Richard of York wasn’t the son of an Empress, John had only pejorative names and calling himself ‘Lionheart’ would seem presumptuous rather than impressive. If the name Plantagenet were still known, it might have been the only name from the old Angevin dynasty available to him.

  Why did Richard particularly wish to link himself to an earlier dynasty? He was descended from Edward III from both his mother and father, making him closer to the throne than Somerset, so why would he need to boost his royal credentials? The only reason would be to assert his claim, not over Somerset, but over Henry VI himself. By appealing back to the Angevins, Richard may have been emphasizing his claim of descent from a family that had successfully ruled England and France, most notably the lands that had just been lost by the current incompetent king.

  Margaret of Anjou in the ‘Wars of the Roses’

  In the initial contest between the two, Somerset emerged victorious, and the Duke of York retired to his estates while Somerset managed the king’s affairs. By summer 1453 Margaret was finally pregnant after seven years of marriage, so there was some cause for optimism. There was even news that the English forces had recaptured Bordeaux, and there was now a possibility that after the disaster in Normandy England might be able to restore its position from before the Hundred Years War, with the addition of Calais. Of course that was not to be: Lord Talbot had been killed at Castillon in July and France was completely victorious by October 1453. In August,
when Henry VI heard that Talbot had been killed and the war essentially lost, he fell into a catatonic state and became incapable of speech.37

  This episode of madness, as it was considered at the time, although in some ways it did not really change the king’s ability – or inability – to rule, was shocking and clearly had to be addressed. Matters were complicated, rather than helped, when Margaret gave birth to a son on 13 October. He was named Edward in honour of Edward the Confessor, and the presence of an heir threw up new permutations in the struggle for power. If Henry never recovered and died, Edward would become king, and a regent could then be appointed until his majority. But if Henry never recovered and lived, at what point could he be replaced by his son? What role might the queen play, now that her son was even more important than an heir would usually be, given his father’s madness?

  Margaret was not the only player in the drama. The Duke of York, on hearing of the king’s incapacity, arrived in London in November and asserted his right to govern the kingdom. His success in overthrowing those who surrounded Henry was demonstrated by the arrest and imprisonment of Somerset. Yet it was not clear on what grounds he had done this, and he was not unopposed. In January 1454, Margaret publicly claimed her right to rule the kingdom in her husband’s stead, publishing articles setting out the powers she would require to rule effectively. This was a bold attempt to take charge that must have owed much to Margaret’s upbringing by Yolanda of Aragon and Isabelle of Lorraine, who both stepped forward when their husbands were imprisoned or absent. But the nobles vying for power formally rejected Margaret’s claim, and instead in March 1454 instituted a council, led by York, to govern for Henry.

 

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