Most of the public knows that there was once, in the Middle Ages, such a war. Punctualists will hasten to point out that it actually lasted one hundred and sixteen years and that it was the longest war in human history.
Most of them will be associated with the war, except that it was fought on Israeli soil. FranceAnd that's about all they know about her, a brief incident in which a shepherd girl appeared, volunteered, and saved France. But the French betrayed her, handed her over to the enemy, and she was burned to death. Many also knew that she was a saint of the Catholic Church.
There are many cases of wars in human history that can, in retrospect, be said to have been inevitable. This is of course the case with World War I and perhaps also with World War II. Kissinger defined this in his “theory of crises.” A long and insoluble tension, a severe crisis must be created to motivate the parties to reach a solution. Even between married couples. It seems to me that this war was like that.
Sociologists have long established that wars have always been, except for religious wars, economic. I would add that since prehistoric man, human males, like other male mammals, have fought in the struggle for the right to impregnate as many females as possible. And perhaps this is also economic because he will have offspring to support and help with his economy. To this day.
Within the economic aspect, an important psychological factor that must be addressed is “inheritance.” We treat inheritance and receiving an inheritance quite naturally, and it also sounds quite natural because wherever there is property, there are family quarrels. The testator sees the transfer of his property as a kind of continuity for him when he is no longer here, and the recipient sees the acceptance of the inheritance as a sign that the testator saw it as his continuity.
Why did I mention this? Because the mental state in which the wall is when Joan of Arc It came to him because his mother spread rumors about him that he was not the true son of his father the king, and therefore unworthy of his heir, and that she, Isabel, signed the "Treaty of Troyes" of 1420 with Henry V that upon the death of Charles VI, her former husband, he, Henry, or his son and heir, would be kings of England and also reign in France!
Why a hundred years?
Why did the war last so many years? It seems that sometimes the pauses of years and each resurgence of fighting would perhaps deserve its own name, but it is called as if it were one war because the subject and reasons were the same - the regulation of relations between France and England in the French possessions.
The period of time was so long that in between there were internal wars within the states themselves, usually over the succession to power. For example, Henry IV deposed his cousin Richard II, not only because of the terror he had led in the kingdom in the last two years of his reign, but mainly out of anger and revenge for the latter having confiscated all the estates of John of Gaunt, Edward's father, and sent him, Edward, into exile for the rest of his days. In France during this period, struggles between the sick king and his brother, who wanted to be regent, and the Duke Burgundy Especially between the last two.
From the attempts of John of Gaunt in the fighting in France, when he was appointed by his nephew, Richard II, as the senior commander, to conquer territories, we can assess how the English soldiers and knights treated the fighting.
So many fell ill with dysentery, so many froze in the cold winters, from the mud in the wet, fertile soil, and from hunger. So many cursed and there were even cases of refusal of orders. So much so that John finally gave up his attempts and returned to London. This was after he had made a defensive alliance with Portugal, which continues to this day, an alliance in which he married his eldest daughter Philippa to the young King João I.
Were attempts at compromise made to reach a cessation of hostilities? It was precisely that same English king, the failed Richard II, who initiated a peace treaty in 1396 and was willing to give up territories and swear allegiance to the King of France, but the barons, who hated him so much, prevented him from doing so. When there is no trust in the ruler, even if and when he makes a good offer, they will almost automatically oppose it.
This is what happened during the Vietnam War - in 1969, Ho Chi Minh was willing to accept Johnson's offer of a $4 billion donation for the reconstruction of Vietnam, but before he could make any progress, he died and his heirs competed among themselves to see who was tougher, and so the war continued for another five and a half years.
Maine and Poitiers were ceded as part of the Treaty of Valois, which I already mentioned, in secret from the Parliament in London, as part of Catherine's marriage agreement with Henry V.
A good historian is concerned not only with the “what” but also, and most importantly, with the “why.” To learn from history, it is not enough to know that this and that happened, but to understand what the circumstances were, since it is impossible and forbidden to take an example from past events when the circumstances are different.
I will hardly touch on the stages of the war itself. I will only mention that it began in 1337 and ended in 1453. In fact, it was not a continuous war but a series of hostilities, including difficult battles such as the Battle of Crecy or the Battle of Agincourt, before which King Henry V delivered the famous speech attributed to Shakespeare.
the human factor
My goal is to illuminate both general aspects of this war, in the heart of the Middle Ages, when in the midst of it the terrible thing happened in 1348-9 that destroyed about half of the population of Europe, and personal aspects of some of the people who were involved in it.
Because first of all, it is about people. It is said that Jeanne's appearance in the picture changed the military situation of France (if you can call her that) but that's it, not much. She liberated Orléans and therefore her victory there over the English is celebrated in this city especially, every May 8th. She activated, together with Gilles de Rais, guerrilla forces that operated differently from the operation of thousands of soldiers, she ordered the capture of important junctions. But the main change she caused was the same sentence she whispered in the ear of the Dauphin when she came to him to memorize, after her first journey from her home through the English lines. The sentence was "You are truly the son of King Charles VI, your father." I will return to him, his fears, his feelings and his terrible mother Isabelle.
Who is more French?
“The English wanted to take over France and stay in the provinces they had already conquered.” That is what most people know. Were the “English” really English and the “French” French?
Who was more French then - the House of Valois or the House of Plantagenet? The second.
The English had not conquered parts of France before the war. William the Conqueror, the Viking, Duke Normandy In northern France, he set out to fight for his inheritance as the grandson of Harold the Confessor, even if he was a bastard. He conquered in 1066 but remained Duke of Normandy.
He was succeeded by his daughter Matilda “the Empress”, and her son, Henry II, inherited both England and Normandy from her. From his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, Henry inherited the counties of Anjou, Maine and Poitiers. And when the young Henry “stole” the wife of Louis VII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the Pope approved the divorce, the Grand Duchy of Aquitaine passed to the English crown when they married.
Together with the estates I mentioned, a huge territorial contiguous area was created that included almost the entire western part of France. Henry II's grandfather, by the way, Fulco of Anjou, was the one who built our "Star of the Jordan" fortress.
In other words, England was in France in law, at least the feudal law that prevailed at that time, and the Normans were the ones who actually brought it to England. And they also brought with them the The French language. Yes-yes. England was the first country where English was an official language, not France where they spoke different local dialects.
France was not a perfect administrative unit but rather a collection of duchies and principalities. The king was usually “first among equals”, Primus inter Pares, but the Duchy of Burgundy was often stronger than him and we will return to it later. Since the whole of geographical France was considered the property of the heirs of Charlemagne, which was, moreover, the size of his kingdom, the kings of England agreed that by feudal law they were vassals of the King of France and owed him an oath of allegiance.
The causes of the outbreak of war
Edward III, one of England's greatest kings, rose to claim his right to succeed his grandfather, Philip IV, "the Fair," as his own mother was Isabella of Valois, Philip's daughter. Not only that, but he and his mother spent several beautiful years of his childhood at the court of his grandfather and uncles after his mother fled from her father, Edward II.
This is the same Philip, by the way, who supposedly eliminated the Templar Order that we know so well from the Crusader kingdom here and who expelled the Jews of France in 1306. He was cursed by Jacques de Molay from the flame in which he was set ablaze, near theVon Nef of today, because he would die that year, and so it did. He and the Pope who collaborated with him in the persecution of the Templars, Clement V of France. Philip himself, as well as his three sons who succeeded him one after the other, died, leaving no male heir, and Edward, as mentioned, claimed the crown.
Diplomatic marriages and their consequences
A separate chapter can only be written about those princesses who were sent by order from their countries to other landscapes, a completely foreign language, different customs, different foods, sometimes a different religion, without usually seeing their home and relatives again. Their role was to bear children for their husbands and sit in the shade as long as they took concubines for them (and this would affect the status of Agnes Sorel (in the French court).
A few, such as Isabella, who was also called "the She-Wolf," or Margaret of Anjou, daughter of René "the Good," who was the brother-in-law of Charles VII, wife of the weak King Henry VI, who essentially started the "War of the Roses" between the House of Lancaster and the "House of York," were brave, took part in the life of the kingdom, and even had a great influence on this life.
And what happened as a result - succession claims and wars. Such as Philip II of Spain becoming King of Portugal as the grandson of Manuel I, or the queen of the Count of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV "From Spain because his grandmother was Spanish, after the War of the Spanish Succession."
When we examine the marriages that occurred during this period, John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III and the richest and most powerful man in England, is the great-grandson of that Philip IV of France, and so are all the kings of England after him, to this day, as well (and the kings of Portugal were also descendants of Philip...).
The kings of Navarre are almost always linked to the French government by marriage, and so Henry IV, King of Navarre and the Huguenot, became King of France. Catherine, the sister of Charles VII, married Henry V as part of the Treaty of Troyes that I mentioned, was regent for her son Henry VI the Younger after his father's death from dysentery (a cursed disease that claimed many lives, including his son Edward the "Black Prince" and many soldiers on both sides) in 1422, and later from her came the House of Tudor, Henry VII and Henry VIII!
Amadeus IX of Savoy, for example, was a great-grandson of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, Margaret, Countess of Flanders, Jacques I, King of Cyprus, Amadeus VII of Savoy, and when he married Yolande de Molois, daughter of Charles VII, all his ancestors were related to these. And so on and so forth.
Various aspects during the war
During the Hundred Years' War, the involvement of the "barons," the upper nobility, in the affairs of the kingdom continued in England, following their rebellion against King John and his son Henry III. The peasants in France suffered most of all as the warring armies repeatedly passed through their fields, trampling the crops, plundering property, and raping the women and girls, as Joan of Arc wrote in her diary in her new book, "The Castle of the Pipes."
The peasants in England revolted in the second half of the 14th century due to the heavy taxes imposed on them, how easy it is, to cover the enormous expenses of the war. At the same time, so many times did the English forces go into battle and retreat and give up due to the lack of budget and even the ability to pay the soldiers their wages.
During the Hundred Years' War, English kings resorted to a division of forces that would later defeat both Napoleon and Hitler, occasionally returning to fight in Scotland or both Scotland and Wales, while fighting in France.
As for Scotland, the French constantly aided the Scots with equipment and warriors and even took King David II under their protection when he was under the custody of Robert the Bruce II. Scots served as loyal mercenaries for many French kings since then.
At the end of the war, the kingdoms emerged on their own and the kings consolidated their position. In England, the House of Tudor emerged from the “War of the Roses” and in France, Louis XII and XIII, up to the absolute rule of the “Sun King.”
Joan of Arc
The story of Joan of Arc has fascinated me since I was a teenager. The first thing that really bothered me was the betrayal of King Charles VII, whom she had troubled, convinced, and led through the English lines to the cathedral in Reims where she crowned him, standing next to him with her miracle, in her white armor and shouting, first, “Long live the King of France”! I wondered for many years how such a situation could happen, when there was nothing there.
Recently, and this is what led me to write the “Pipe Castle” books, I wondered to myself, this poor girl, the heroine who was sent to save her country from her father’s herd of cows grazing in the fields, wasn’t she just facing the English, she was facing a queen, she was facing the treacherous Burgundians. Is it correct to assume that she simply fell victim to many complex circumstances, which she may not have known about or even noticed in her life?
For example, the fact that Duke Philip of Burgundy did not see himself at all subordinate to the King of France and that when he married Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Flanders, he had to first take care of her citizens and obtain from the English a regular supply of sheep's wool for their textile industry? And this is one of the reasons why his soldiers handed her over to the English immediately when they captured her in the battle of Compiègne, on his orders.
She had indeed heard about Isabeau of Beauvais and her cousin when she was at the court of Queen Yolande of Anjou, grandmother of the Margaret I mentioned, but she could not understand the depth of the bad influence that Isabeau's wicked behavior had on her son's situation and the fate of France as a result.
Over the years, all sorts of conspiracy theories have been put forward about Jeanne. They said that she was indeed an impostor, they mentioned the fact that at the time of her “burning” the site was surrounded by a high wooden wall and the public was forbidden to approach, because in fact the body of another woman was burned. Some even found a woman who lived in some village, gave birth to children, saw grandchildren and received a monthly allowance from the royal court.
There is a logic to these things. When the duke lives in his palace in Chinon and his whole life is focused on parties, alcohol and courtesans while all of France is in a state of chaos, inParis With the Duke of Bedford, Henry V's brother, sitting and ruling France (albeit with great honesty!), it makes sense that someone or something would be resurrected, for example Gilles de Rais, perhaps together with the Duke of Alençon, both of whom were then captains, and take action.
It makes sense that they would send the simplest, most rustic girl and not someone from the palace, a girl who only Saint Michael, the patron saint of soldiers, could convince to go out to save France. It makes sense that they would instruct her on how to ride a warhorse, how to give orders, how to recognize the king when she arrives (while it was Gilles who came out to meet her when she entered the hall posing as the king and she waved at him), and even where the remains of Saint Catherine are buried.
But she jumped from the tower and remained almost unharmed, except for a slight injury to her hand. No one could have prepared or taught her that. There is no such thing. And her answers at the trial conducted by the scoundrel Pierre Cauchon, with forty other clergymen he recruited, who bombarded her with endless questions, simultaneously, until she stopped speaking and ordered them to ask one by one. This is what she told in her diary. She pointed to them with her fingers. One and another. Her answers, and the trial protocol, are within everyone's reach, detailing how she bravely stood up to them.
I am not an expert on miracles and I certainly will not pretend to even try to explain them. I accept them as they are. That was the case until proven otherwise. It was clearly an exception. It has happened and is happening all over the world. People who are considered to be completely untalented suddenly rise up and demonstrate, when the opportunity presents itself, the special skill they possess.
I don't know what the saints instructed her in or whether it was just an inner voice that made her think the saints were speaking to her. But she learned very quickly, after only three weeks with Queen Yolanda, to read and write, and it was Gilles who trained her and guided her in war.
Gilles' story is also special and deserves a longer write-up. In my next book, “The Persecuted of the Kingdom,” I will detail more about how a Marshal of France is persecuted, accused of alchemy, and ends up on the ropes with his legacy as “Bluebeard"!
Jeanne's main act was, as I wrote, that she whispered to the duke that he was the son of his father the king and that he was therefore entitled to be crowned in Reims. This was not easy because France was under a treaty of Troyes in which the duke's mother had promised that the kingdom would pass into the hands of the English kings.
Jean convinced him that she was a “private force” not subject to the contract his mother had signed, and therefore she was entitled to invite him to come with her and she was responsible and would be “blamed” if they came to him with claims. This was one of the reasons for the English’s urge to burn her, beyond the “shame” she had caused them – a country girl, leaving the herd she had been tending and coming, without any military experience, and defeating them!
It was obviously difficult for men, feudal lords, knights, to accept this quietly. But it was not only that. When two kings, Henry VI of England who had already been crowned as such under the regents of his mother, and Charles VII of France, who had been crowned in Reims by its archbishop, recognized themselves, at least, as kings of France, it was necessary to annul Charles's coronation.
This could be done by declaring her a witch by the court established by Couchon, and even more so by declaring her to have been aided by the devil himself! But since the devil does not come into contact with virgins, her condition must be annulled as such. This was the reason Couchon himself tried to rape her in the tower of Rouen, and so did the English soldiers sent for this mission, and they failed, as she recounted in her diary.
Queen Elizabeth
And I will continue in more detail about that wicked woman, Isabeau of Bavaria. And perhaps I will begin with the murder of my grandfather, Bernabéu Visconti, ruler of Milan, by his nephew Jean Gallazzo Visconti in 1385. Isabeau, at the age of 15, was married in a diplomatic marriage to Charles VI, King of France, by her father Stephen III, Duke of Bavaria, in the same year.
It is said that although they were married by “matchmaking,” love blossomed between them, she was a loyal and supportive wife and a partner in court affairs. However, four years later, Valentina Visconti, the daughter of the murderer, arrived at court and was married to the king’s brother, Louis I, her cousin (both grandsons of Jean II of France), the Duke of Orléans. Since they lived in a palace in Paris, Valentina was younger and more beautiful, Isabelle banished her from Paris on the pretext that “she could not live under the same roof with the daughter of the one who murdered her beloved grandfather.”
King Charles VI fell ill in 1392 with unexplained fits of madness and Isabel began to behave debauchedly at the palace. His uncle, Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, demanded to be regent. The king's brother Louis Orléans claimed that he should be the regent. Enmity arose between the two until the envoys of John I, Philip's son, who succeeded him in 1404, Louis was assassinated in 1407.In the hostilities, Orléans prevailed, and the Duke of Burgundy allied himself with the English to assist him.
I mention two facts - one is that at that time the "schism" prevailed in the church, that is, there were two popes - Urban VIII in Rome and Clement VII in Auigny. Second, Henry V then took advantage of the internal struggles in France and invaded Normandy. On his way from Honfleur on the coast to join his forces in Calais, he was stopped by the French but he defeated them in a big way thanks to his archers, in the famous Battle of Agincourt, which I have already mentioned, in October 1415.
With the murder of Louis of Orléans, who had been Isabeau's lover while they were together in the palace in Paris, Isabeau moved to the court of his murderer and even became his mistress. However, she signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 on behalf of France, while her husband was in a fit of madness, ignoring the rights of her own son.
And why all this gossip, as a tribute to the memory of Hersgor? Because the revenge of Isabel Valentina, who died a year after her husband's murder, was not over. A truth that is difficult to understand, especially her behavior towards her son. As a child, she sent him, whoever Charles VII would be, to grow up in the palace of Yolande, Queen of Anjou, in Angers. There he grew up with her children, René, who would later become King of Naples and "King of Jerusalem," and Marie la Hoare, who was betrothed to him when he was ten years old. The vileness with which she took pride
Her acts of prostitution and her open insinuations that the Dauphin was not the son of Charles VI but of his brother, influenced, as I wrote, the spirit of the Dauphin and caused him to become inactive. This was despite the fact that all kings and nobles, before and after him, had concubines and from whom children were born, and there was a well-known rule: “Whoever I give birth to will be worthy of kingship and whoever you give birth to without me will not be worthy of it.” This was how they behaved for centuries.
Agnes Sorel
I mentioned Charles’s famous mistress, Agnes Sorel. He met her when she was an escort for his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, his wife’s sister, on a visit to her. Admired, he offered her a position at the palace as his wife’s companion and very quickly made her his “official mistress.” Queen Mary was wise enough to accept her as such.
Aeneas became the king's right-hand woman and encouraged him to continue fighting vigorously in England, following and continuing the victories of Joan of Arc and the new spirit this inspired in the soldiers. She was known in the field of fashion for two aspects - one for her dresses that revealed one breast, as she is depicted in paintings, and the first to use raw diamonds for decoration, even if they scratched her flesh badly.
She died at the young age of 28 in childbirth. One of her daughters was the mother of her legal husband. Diane de Poitiers, the famous mistress of Henry II of France before his wife Catherine de' Medici.
Charles VII
I will return to King Charles. He was not born to be king. Three of his older brothers would have been king of France if they had lived. He wandered as a child and a young man but, at the age of 17, he managed to organize assassins to murder his mother's lover, Jeanne "the Untouchable" of Burgundy. Both in revenge, perhaps, for his complicity in his mother's betrayal and because he was a friend of the English.
Just as Philip IV is called “the Beautiful,” Charles VII is called “the Victorious.” Contrary to the image he had created for himself before the arrival of Joan of Arc, he came to his senses and continued fighting, appointing good and capable people to run the kingdom. Thus, Burgundy was back on his side in 1435, four years after Joan’s rise to the stake. Ultimately, in 1453, the same year that Mehmet the “Conqueror” captured Constantinople, after the successful Battle of Castillon. Thanks to him, and thanks to England being in the midst of the “War of the Roses” between the “House of York” and the “House of Lancaster,” the Hundred Years’ War ended.
The question that perhaps must be asked at the end - how and why could Charles VII not save Joan of Arc from death? The Burgundians sold her to the English, and the latter, despite all their hatred for her and their desire to take revenge on her, were ready to strike back at the King of France, for the exact same amount - ten thousand pounds. And he refused to do so! So the preparations for her trial began.
Of course I have no answer. I can guess. Just as the English felt ashamed by Jean, so he felt it too, perhaps doubly so. That is clear. And it sometimes happens that a debtor is so ashamed of needing help that he begins to hate the one who helped him. I think Kishon wrote about it in one of his sketches. She understood this and wrote it in her diary.
The French army is after her and as long as she exists, he will remain in her shadow. Even if she enters a monastery and promises not to interfere in the affairs of the kingdom anymore, who knows, maybe in the future her supporters will rise up, take her out of there and rebel against him, as happened in England more than once? She must disappear from the face of the earth and even if she is declared a witch, no one will be able to cancel his coronation as king. She was not the only one present at the coronation. Gilles de Ray and Alençon stood by his side. That is the explanation I have.
How Jeanne became a saint
Oh, and how did she suddenly become a saint after 600 years, even though, through the efforts of her mother and sister Catherine, she was canonized after twenty years? I attribute this to the struggles in France between Charles X, the grandson of the Count of Chambord, and Louis of Orléans, the claimant to the throne, and who was about to become Napoleon III as emperor. The House of Orléans “haunted” her to strengthen itself. Later, Napoleon continued to engage in this, but the war of 1870-71 broke out. The subject was dropped and raised again at the beginning of the twentieth century until she was consecrated. In 1920.