Civil War of the Armagnacs and Bourguignons
The civil war of the Armagnacs and Bourguignons was a conflict between 1410 and 1419 that devastated France, which was also involved in the Hundred Years War with England .
context
The roots of the civil war lie in the reign of King Charles VI. and its temporary mental illness, the background provided the Hundred Years War and especially its second phase from 1415 to 1435, but also the Western Schism (1378-1417).
Charles VI was incapable of governing at the latest since 1393 (see Bal des Ardents ) , so that the country has since been ruled by a Regency Council chaired by Queen Isabeau . The Duke of Burgundy , Philip the Bold , which is already the government of the Dukes heard during Karl's minority and marrying Isabeau had given, had great influence on the queen, but decreased after Isabeau Duke Louis d'Orléans turned from the it was believed that he became the queen's lover. After Philip's death in 1404, the Bourguignons , now headed by Duke Johann Ohnefurcht , continued to lose influence. While Ludwig von Orléans, the king's brother, received nine tenths of his income from the state treasury and was thus able to keep expanding his property, the remuneration of the Burgundian, whose father still received 200,000 livres a year, but only the The king's cousin was reduced to 37,000 livres.
Johann Ohnefurcht found it useful, given that Isabeau and Ludwig were extremely unpopular with the Parisian population, to gain the affection of the people. He proclaimed a reform program that would have cost him little, but which would have cost Ludwig a lot with his waste of state money. His demagogy earned him the support of the university and the parliament , which had already worked out reform proposals to resolve the schism and saw similarities between the church and the political problems.
In addition, Ludwig von Orléans sought a dispute with the English King Henry IV , which in turn Johann Ohnefurcht, who owned the County of Flanders and was very interested in good economic relations with England, could not tolerate: the Flemish wool industry based on English wool production would have come to a complete standstill due to an embargo .
In 1405 the conflict came to a head. A Burgundian army came so close to Paris that Isabeau and Ludwig had to leave the city. Johann seized the Dauphin Ludwig and made himself lord of the capital. The old Duke Johann von Berry , one of Charles VI's uncles, but also Ludwigs and Johannes, who had previously limited himself to increasing his fortune and occasionally acted as a mediator between the parties, now joined the Orleans party ' on.
A peace agreement was reached in October, but Johann Ohnefurcht had to find out that the income from his possessions was not enough to finance his policy. Gradually his power waned. On November 23, 1407 he had the thirty-five-year-old Louis of Orléans murdered by a group of about fifteen men when he left the Hotel Barbette on Rue Vieille du Temple after visiting the Queen . The conflict between the two parties now escalated into open war.
Civil war
The murder trial
The investigations carried out after the murder of Louis de Valois, duc d'Orléans, by Guillaume de Tignonville, Vogt of Paris, brought to light that Johann Ohnefaft was behind the act, which he also admitted; Johann left Paris and gathered jurists to justify himself - on March 8, 1408, the theologian Jean Petit defended the act before the summoned court as an act of resistance and as tyrannicide . On March 9, 1409, the Treaty of Chartres came to a peace treaty, in which the king pardoned the Duke of Burgundy, which seemed to end the hostilities.
The Armagnacs
The following year, was on 15 April 1410 in Gien the marriage of Charles of Orleans , Louis's son and successor, with Bonne, the daughter of Count Bernard VII. Armagnac and granddaughter of John of Berry, committed. This formed the occasion for a league against the Duke of Burgundy. This came out of Charles and Bernard, Duke John of Berry, Charles and Uncle Bernard's father, Ludwig II. , Duke of Bourbon and the Count of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis John I in. Other members of the league were the son of Jean I, Johann VI. , Duke of Brittany , the Count of Alençon John I , but also the theologian Jean Gerson , who was less concerned about the murder of Ludwig himself, but more about his justification by Jean Petit.
Bernard VII took over the leadership of the league, which has been called Armagnacs since then , and recruited soldiers in southern France. These gave the war a previously unknown brutality. At its height, it devastated the area around Paris and advanced to the Faubourg Saint-Marcel in the southeast of the city. The Treaty of Bicêtre of November 2, 1410, which officially ended the conflict, only allowed a respite until the next spring. In the spring of 1411, the Armagnacs began to plunder the Beauvaisis and Picardy .
The rule of the Bourguignons in Paris
On October 23, 1411, the Duke of Burgundy invaded Paris with an army of 60,000 men and attacked the Bretons allied with the Armagnacs, who withdrew to La Chapelle. On the night of November 8th to 9th, Johann without fear left the city with his soldiers through the Porte Saint-Jacques and marched on Saint-Cloud . There he managed to provide the Armagnac troops and defeat them completely. He then pursued Orléans and his allies and besieged them in Bourges until a royal army marched in front of the city on June 11, 1412. The Armagnacs had in the meantime (May 8, 1412) concluded an alliance treaty with the English. The Bourguignons had not been able to conclude similar negotiations. This treaty was repealed by the Treaty of Auxerre of August 22nd. In the Treaty of Auxerres, Armagnacs and Bourguignons undertook not to cooperate with foreign powers. Since the English landed in the Cotentin in September , their withdrawal had to be bought by the Treaty of Buzançais .
In Paris, the Duke of Burgundy was able to strengthen his position at the same time by restoring the Prévôté des marchands, which had been abolished after the Maillotins uprising in 1382, in January 1412, including their old privileges, and buying the support of the well-organized butchers and small artisans with money and wine. A reform movement developed which led the Estates General to issue a decree on May 26, 1413, the coincidence of which with the Cabochian uprising (April 27 to August 2) became a symbol of the Burgundian triumph and ultimately the failure of the popular movement: The counter-uprising of the Parisians (August 2 to August 4) under Jean Jouvenel led to Johann fleeing the city (see also: Treaty of Pontoise )
The Armagnac dictatorship and the Battle of Azincourt
After the Parisians drove out the Cabochiens and Burgundians, Bernard d'Armagnac took control of the city and set up a dictatorship (1414).
When the English resumed hostilities a little later (1415), the Bourguignons remained neutral, especially since Bernard d'Armagnac did not want their presence in the French army. On October 25, 1415, the French were defeated by Henry V at the Battle of Azincourt , and a large part of the French ruling class was killed.
The expulsion of the Armagnacs
It was not until two and a half years later that the Armagnac rule in Paris was ended. Queen Isabeau defected to the Burgundians in February and, with the help of Burgundian experts, set up a counter-government in Troyes. On the night of May 28th to 29th, 1418 Paris was finally handed over to the Burgundian officer Jean de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam by opening the Porte de Buci with the support of the craftsmen and the university . Three days of murder and manslaughter followed with around 1,000 victims. The royal bailiff of the city, Tanneguy du Chastel , a partisan of the Armagnacs, just managed to get the 15-year-old Dauphin Karl, later King Charles VII , wrapped in a blanket out of the city. On June 12th, the Paris mob attacked the remaining Armagnacs, and now Bernard VII was among the victims.
The victory of the English
Both parties now entered into negotiations with the British. Johann Ohnefurcht offered the English king the French crown. For the Dauphin Karl it was now imperative to approach the Bourguignons in order to prevent their alliance with the English. Johann Ohnefurcht, on the other hand, who was still in financial difficulties, although he had a large part of the kingdom in his hand, agreed to a meeting with the Dauphin after a peace agreement that was favorable to him, which was followed by further appointments. On September 10, 1419, he was murdered at the last of these meetings on the bridge of Montereau-Fault-Yonne by Tanneguy du Chastel and Jean Louvet , also partisans of the Armagnacs, who rejected rapprochement between the two parties. This murder, which made that of Louis of Orléans forgotten, immediately put an end to the peace efforts.
Philip the Good , the new Duke of Burgundy, now formed the alliance with the English that his father had previously avoided. Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria submitted. In the Treaty of Troyes of May 21, 1420, Isabeau declared - also in the name of her no longer able to act husband - her son, the Dauphin Karl VII. For illegitimate and married her daughter Catherine with Heinrich V. That was at the same time by Charles VI. adopted, was awarded Normandy and Guyenne (without a future fiefdom obligation ) and was installed as regent of France in his new function as future heir and adopted son. Henry V thus became the de facto ruler of France; England and France were united in personal union. Charles VII was accused of the murder of Duke Johann Feart and ostracized.
Heinrich V died two years later (August 31, 1422), so that his son Heinrich VI, who was born a few months ago . (* December 6, 1421) became king of England and France that year. The Treaty of Troyes was rejected by Charles VII and the Armagnacs, while the English regent, the Duke of Bedford , carried it out on behalf of Henry VI. tried to enforce; the dispute culminated in the siege of Orléans , in which the intervention of Joan of Arc brought about the turning point in the Hundred Years War.
The end of the conflict
While the Burgundians pursued the Armagnacs until the 1930s, Charles VII tried to separate the English and the Burgundians. Philip the Good soon felt that he had won nothing in the whole dispute, but that everything fell to the English. These in turn, especially the Duke of Bedford, who had married a sister of Philip in 1423, noticed that the French were closer to the Bourguignons than to the English.
It was not until September 21, 1435 - coincidentally a week after Bedford's death - that Charles VII, meanwhile crowned King of France, and Philip the Good signed the Treaty of Arras , which officially ended the civil war. In this treaty, Charles recognized the independence of Burgundy and got his hands free to gradually take away their continental possessions from the English until they ruled only Calais in 1453 .
literature
- Jacques d'Avout: La Querelle des Armagnacs et des Bourguignons . Gallimard , Paris 1943, OCLC 609036952 .
- Robin Neillands: The Hundred Years War . revised edition. Routledge Chapman & Hall, London / New York NY 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-26130-2 .
- Joachim Ehlers : The Hundred Years War . Beck , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-56275-4 .
- Joachim Ehlers: History of France in the Middle Ages . Completely revised edition. Primus , Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-89678-668-5 .
- Bertrand Schnerb: Les Armagnacs et les Bourguignons. La maudite was . Paris 2001, ISBN 978-2-262-02732-2 .
- Simona Slanička: War of Signs. The visual politics of Johann without fear and the Armagnakisch-Burgundian civil war (= publications of the Max Planck Institute for History. Vol. 182) (At the same time: Basel, Universität, Dissertation, 1998) . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-35178-X .
Remarks
- ^ Robin Neillands: The Hundred Years War . revised edition. Routledge Chapman & Hall, London / New York NY 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-26130-2 , pp. 231 .