There is no man so hard-hearted that, if he had been in Limoges on that day, and had remembered God, he would not have wept bitterly at the fearful slaughter which took place. More than 3,000 persons, men, women, and children, were dragged out to have their throats cut. May God receive their souls, for they were true martyrs.
What does this account reveal about the nature of late medieval warfare and its impact on civilian populations?
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By 1374, the French had recovered their lost lands, although France itself continued to be plagued by “free companies” of mercenaries who, no longer paid by the English, simply lived off the land by plunder and ransom. Nevertheless, for the time being, the war seemed over, especially when a twenty-year truce was negotiated in 1396.
RENEWAL OF THE WAR In 1415, however, the English king, Henry V (1413–1422), renewed the war at a time when the French were enduring civil war as the dukes of Burgundy and Orléans (or-lay-AHN) competed to control the weak French king, Charles VI (1380–1422). In the summer of 1413, Paris exploded with bloody encounters. Taking advantage of the chaos, Henry V invaded France in 1415. At the Battle of Agincourt (AH-zhen-koor) (1415), the French suffered a disastrous defeat, and 1,500 French nobles died when the heavy, armor-plated French knights attempted to attack across a field turned to mud by heavy rain. Altogether, French losses were 6,000 dead; the English lost only three hundred men.
Henry went on to reconquer Normandy and forge an alliance with the duke of Burgundy, which led Charles VI to agree to the Treaty of Troyes (TRWAH) in 1420. By this treaty, Henry V was married to Catherine, daughter of Charles VI, and recognized as the heir to the French throne. By 1420, the English were masters of northern France (see Map 11.2).
The seemingly hopeless French cause fell into the hands of Charles the dauphin (heir to the throne), the son of Charles VI, who, despite being disinherited by the Treaty of Troyes, still considered himself the real heir to the French throne. The dauphin governed the southern two-thirds of French lands from Bourges. Charles was weak and timid and was unable to rally the French against the English, who in 1428 had turned south and were besieging the city of Orléans to gain access to the valley of the Loire. The French monarch was saved, quite unexpectedly, by a French peasant woman.
MAP 11.2 The Hundred Years’ War. This long, exhausting struggle began in 1337 and dragged on until 1453. The English initially gained substantial French territory, but in the later phases of the war, France turned the tide, eventually expelling the English from all Continental lands except the port of Calais.
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What gains had the English made by 1429, and how do they correlate to proximity to England and the ocean?
View an animated version of this map or related maps on the CourseMate website.
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JOAN OF ARC Joan of Arc was born in 1412 to well-to-do peasants from the village of Domrémy in Champagne. Deeply religious, Joan experienced visions and came to believe that her favorite saints had commanded her to free France and have the dauphin crowned as king. In February 1429, Joan made her way to the dauphin’s court, where her sincerity and simplicity persuaded Charles to allow her to accompany a French army to Orléans. Apparently inspired by the faith of the peasant girl, the French armies found new confidence in themselves and liberated Orléans, changing the course of the war. Within a few weeks, the entire Loire valley had been freed of the English. In July 1429, fulfilling Joan’s other task, the dauphin was crowned king of France and became Charles VII (1422–1461). In accomplishing the two commands of her angelic voices, Joan had brought the war to a decisive turning point.
Joan did not live to see the war concluded, however. She was captured by the Burgundian allies of the English in 1430. Wishing to eliminate the “Maid of Orléans” for obvious political reasons, the English turned Joan over to the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft. In the fifteenth century, spiritual visions were thought to be inspired by either God or the devil. Because Joan dressed in men’s clothing, it was easy for her enemies to believe that she was in league with the “prince of darkness.” She was condemned to death as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of nineteen. To the end, as the flames rose up around her, she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her (see the Film & History feature). Twenty-five years later, a church court exonerated her of these charges. To a contemporary French writer, Christine de Pizan (kris-TEEN duh pee-ZAHN) (see “Christine de Pizan”), Joan was a feminist heroine. In 1920, she was made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Joan of Arc. Pictured here in a suit of armor, Joan of Arc is holding aloft a banner that shows Jesus and two angels. This portrait dates from the late fifteenth century; there are no known portraits of Joan made from life.
Musée de l’Histoire de France aux Archives Nationales, Paris//© Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY
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The Trial of Joan of Arc (1431)
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END OF THE WAR Joan of Arc’s accomplishments proved decisive. Although the war dragged on for another two decades, defeats of English armies in Normandy and Aquitaine ultimately led to French victory. Important to the French success was the use of the cannon, a new weapon made possible by the invention of gunpowder. The Chinese had invented gunpowder in the eleventh century and devised a simple cannon by the thirteenth century. The Mongols greatly improved this technology, developing more accurate cannons and cannonballs; both spread to the Middle East by the thirteenth century and to Europe by the fourteenth.
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CHRONOLOGY The Hundred Years’ War
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Outbreak of hostilities
1337
Battle of Crecy
1346
Battle of Poitiers
1356
Peace of Bretigny
1359
Death of Edward III
1377
Twenty-year truce declared
1396
Henry V (1413–1422) renews the war
1415
Battle of Agincourt
1415
Treaty of Troyes
1420
French recovery under Joan of Arc
1429–1431
End of the war
1453
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The death of England’s best commanders and the instability of the English government under King Henry VI (1422–1471) also contributed to England’s defeat. By 1453, the only part of France that was left in England’s hands was the coastal town of Calais, which remained English for another century.
Political Instability
The fourteenth century was a period of adversity for the internal political stability of European governments. Although government bureaucracies grew ever larger, at the same time the question of who should control the bureaucracies led to internal conflict and instability. Like the lord-serf relationship, the lord-vassal relationship based on land and military service was being replaced by a contract based on money. Especially after the Black Death, money payments called scutage were increasingly substituted for military service. Monarchs welcomed this development because they could now hire professional soldiers, who tended to be more reliable anyway. As lord-vassal relationships became less personal and less important, new relationships based on political advantage began to be formed, creating new avenues for political influence—and for corruption as well. Especially noticeable as the landed aristocrats suffered declining rents and social uncertainties with the new relationships was the formation of factions of nobles who looked for opportunities to advance their power and wealth at the expense of other noble factions and of their monarchs as well. Other nobles went to the royal courts, offering to serve the kings.
The kings had their own problems, however. By the mid-fifteenth century, reigning monarchs in many European countries were not the direct descendants of the rulers of 1300. The founders of these new dynasties had to struggle for position as factions of nobles vi
ed to gain material advantages for themselves. As the fifteenth century began, there were two claimants to the throne of France, two aristocratic factions fighting for control of England, and three German princes struggling to be recognized as Holy Roman Emperor.
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FILM & HISTORY
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Joan of Arc (1948)
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Joan of Arc is one of history’s best-known figures. Already by the time of her death she was a heroine, and in the nineteenth century, the French made her into an early nationalist. The Catholic Church recognized her as a saint in 1920, and a dozen films have been made about her short life. Born into a peasant family in Domrémy, France, Joan believed that, beginning at age thirteen, she had heard the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret telling her that she would play an important role in the liberation of France from the English invaders. Joan made her way to the court of the dauphin, the heir to the French throne, who agreed to let her accompany the royal army to Orléans, where she supposedly played a major role in the liberation of the city. In keeping with her prophecies, she then accompanied the dauphin to Reims, where he was crowned as King Charles VII. Although the king sought to end the war by negotiation, Joan continued to fight until she was captured by the Burgundians, allies of the English. Sold to the English, she was put on trial as a heretic in a French ecclesiastical court dominated by the English. Worn out by questioning, she renounced her voices but shortly afterward recanted and reaffirmed them. The English authorities then burned her at the stake as a relapsed heretic. Historians agree on many facts about Joan but differ in interpreting them; so too do movie producers.
Joan (Ingrid Bergman) prepares for battle.
Sierra Pictures/The Kobal Collection
Based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, the 1948 film version of Joan’s story was directed by Victor Fleming. The movie follows the main historical facts that are known about Joan (Ingrid Bergman). Joan’s voices are accepted as an important part of a spiritually determined young woman: “What I am commanded to do, I do.” The film does deviate at times from the historical record: one member of the ecclesiastical court is shown opposing the trial, which did not happen. The dauphin ( José Ferrer) is presented as a weak individual who nevertheless accepts Joan’s offer of help. The movie ends in typical Hollywood fashion with a dramatic burning at the stake as Joan dies in a glorious blaze of heavenly sunbeams: “My victory is my martyrdom,” she proclaims at the end.
Joan (Milia Jovovich) rides into battle.
Gaumont/ The Kobal Collection/Jack English
The Messenger, directed by Luc Besson, presents a more contemporary and fictionalized approach to Joan (Milia Jovovich). The brutality of war is rendered in realistically bloody detail. Joan’s early life is reworked for the sake of the movie’s theme. The movie introduces revenge as a possible motive by having Joan witness the rape and murder of her sister by an English mercenary—she must kill the English to avenge her sister’s death. After this traumatic incident, her voices become more strident—God needs her for a higher calling and she must answer that call. Joan becomes both a divinely and a madly driven person. Joan convinces the dauphin (John Malkovich) to support her, but after he is crowned, he is quite willing to have her captured by the enemy to get rid of her. After her capture, Joan is put on trial, which is one of the most accurate sequences of the film. But in another flight of fancy, the movie shows Joan wrestling mentally with a figure (Dustin Hoffman) who acts as her conscience. She is brought to the horrible recognition that maybe she did not fight for God, but “I fought out of revenge and despair.” Besson raises issues that he does not resolve. Was Joan possibly mentally retarded or even insane? Were her visions a calling from God or a figment of her active imagination? Was she a devout, God-driven Christian or simply a paranoid schizophrenic? Nevertheless, whatever her motivations, she dies as heroically as Ingrid Bergman’s Joan, although considerably more realistically, as the flames are shown igniting her body at the end of the movie.
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Fourteenth-century monarchs of old dynasties and new faced financial problems as well. The shift to using mercenary soldiers left monarchs perennially short of cash. Traditional revenues, especially rents from property, increasingly proved insufficient to meet their needs. Monarchs attempted to generate new sources of revenues, especially through taxes, which often meant going through parliaments. This opened the door for parliamentary bodies to gain more power by asking for favors first. Although unsuccessful in most cases, the parliaments simply added another element of uncertainty and confusion to fourteenth-century politics. Turning now to a survey of western and central European states (eastern Europe will be examined in Chapter 12), we can see how these disruptive factors worked.
The Growth of England’s Political Institutions
The fifty-year reign of Edward III (1327–1377) was important for the evolution of English political institutions in the fourteenth century. Parliament increased in prominence and developed its basic structure and functions during Edward’s reign. Due to his constant need for money to fight the Hundred Years’ War, Edward came to rely on Parliament to levy new taxes. In return for regular grants, Edward made several concessions, including a commitment to levy no direct tax without Parliament’s consent and to allow Parliament to examine the government accounts to ensure that the money was being spent properly. By the end of Edward’s reign, Parliament had become an important component of the English governmental system.
During this same period, Parliament began to assume the organizational structure it has retained to this day. The Great Council of barons became the House of Lords and evolved into a body composed of the chief bishops and abbots of the realm and aristocratic peers whose position in Parliament was hereditary. The representatives of the shires and boroughs, who were considered less important than the lay and ecclesiastical lords, held collective meetings and soon came to be regarded as the House of Commons. Together, the House of Lords and House of Commons constituted Parliament. Although the House of Commons did little beyond approving measures proposed by the Lords, during Edward’s reign the Commons did begin the practice of drawing up petitions, which, if accepted by the king, became law.
After Edward III’s death, England began to experience the internal instability of aristocratic factionalism that was racking other European countries. The early years of the reign of Edward’s grandson, Richard II (1377–1399), began inauspiciously with the peasant revolt that ended only when the king made concessions. Richard’s reign was troubled by competing groups of nobles who sought to pursue their own interests. One faction, led by Henry of Lancaster, defeated the king’s forces and then deposed and killed him. Henry of Lancaster became King Henry IV (1399–1413). In the fifteenth century, factional conflict would lead to a devastating series of civil wars known as the War of the Roses.
The Problems of the French Kings
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, France was the most prosperous monarchy in Europe. By the end of the century, much of its wealth had been dissipated, and rival factions of aristocrats had made effective monarchical rule virtually impossible.
The French monarchical state had always had an underlying inherent weakness that proved its undoing in difficult times. Although the Capetian monarchs had found ways to enlarge their royal domain and extend their control by developing a large and effective bureaucracy, the various territories that made up France still maintained their own princes, customs, and laws. The parliamentary institutions of France provide a good example of France’s basic lack of unity. The French parliament, known as the Estates-General and composed of representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate (everyone else), usually represented only the north of France, not the entire kingdom. The southern provinces had their own estates, and local estates existed in other parts of France. Unlike the English Parliament, which was evolving into a crucial part of the English government,
the French Estates-General was simply one of many such institutions.
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A Feminist Heroine: Christine de Pizan on Joan of Arc
Christine de Pizan, France’s “first woman of letters,” was witness to the rescue of France from the hands of the English by the efforts of Joan of Arc and was also present at the coronation of Charles VII as king of France. Christine believed that a turning point had arrived in French history and that Joan—a woman—had been responsible for France’s salvation. She wrote a poem to honor this great occasion. The following stanzas are taken from her poem.
Western Civilization: Volume B: 1300 to 1815, 8th Edition Page 10