Jean II. Le Maingre

Miniature by an unknown master: Boucicaut in the adoration of St. Catherine. From the book of hours of the Maréchal de Boucicaut

Jean II. Le Maingre, called Boucicaut (German poetry: Marshal Johann, old French : Jehan le Meingre ; * August 28, 1366 in Poitiers , † 1421 in Yorkshire ) was Marshal of France .

He was a son of Jean I. Le Maingre , also called Boucicaut .

At the age of 12 he was a companion of Duke Louis II. De Bourbon on a Normandy campaign. At 16 he was the eve of the November 26, 1382, battle of roosebeke , the Knights defeated France. A year later he began the first of his major journeys, which would take more than twenty years of his life.

In 1384 he undertook his first trip to Prussia to assist the Teutonic Order in its war against the non-Christian Lithuanians . In winter he returned to Prussia .

After several campaigns against the Moors in the interior of Spain and against the Tolosans in the interior of France, Boucicaut accompanied the Duke of Bourbon again, this time to Spain, which had become a secondary theater in the 100 Years War .

He then traveled for two years through the Balkans and the Middle East, with his friend Renaud de Roye and later with Philip of Artois , a prince of royal blood and Count of Eu .

The armistice of Leulingen (1389-1392) had temporarily interrupted the war with England, so Boucicaut took part in the Tjosten von Saint-Inglevert (1390), only to set off a year later on his third trip to Prussia. Because of his extremely great services in the war against the pagans in Livonia and Prussia, he was on December 25, 1391 by King Charles VI. beaten to the " Maréschal de France " so to the " Marshal of France".

On December 23, 1393 he married Antoinette de Beaufort , Comtesse d ' Alais , daughter of Raymond Louis Roger , Comte de Beaufort, Viscount de Turenne, who died shortly after July 18, 1416 at Château d'Alais (see House Rogier de Beaufort )

In 1396 he was an important participant in the Franco-Hungarian military expedition against the Ottoman Turks , which suffered a heavy defeat on September 28, 1396 in the Battle of Nicopolis . He avoided execution because he was ransomed.

In 1399 he became the leader of a French expeditionary force that was supposed to assist Manuel II , Emperor of Byzantium , against the Ottomans. In view of his military skills and his knowledge of the East, he was appointed "Gouverneur de Jennes" - "Governor of Genoa ". Genoa had become part of the empire of Charles VI in 1396. assumed. He successfully fended off an attack by King Janus of Cyprus who was trying to recapture the city of Famagusta, which had been conquered by the Genoese . After a few fighting in the eastern Mediterranean, the Genoese shook off his rule as the representative of France in Genoa in 1409.

→ Main article: Book of hours by Jean de Boucicaut, Marshal of France

He returned to France and felt the rivalries between the houses of Burgundy and Orléans . He was finally captured by the English at the Battle of Azincourt in 1415 and died six years later in the English city of York .

literature

• Denis Lalande (ed.): Le Livre des faits du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Boucicaut, maréschal de France et gouverneur de Jennes (= Textes littéraires français. 331, ISSN  0257-4063 ). Edition critique. Droz, Geneva 1985.
• Denis Lalande: Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut. (1366-1421). Étude d'une biography héroïque (= Publications romanes et françaises. 184, ISSN  0079-7812 ). Droz, Geneva 1988, (French).
• Albert Châtelet: L'âge d'or du manuscrit à peintures en France au temps de Charles VI et les heures du Maréchal Boucicaut. Faton, Dijon 2000, ISBN 2-87844-040-4 (French).