Battle of Nouy
| date | August 21, 1044 |
|---|---|
| place | near Nouy, France |
| output | Victory of the Count of Anjou |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| unknown | unknown |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
unknown |
The Battle of Nouy was a military clash in medieval France between the Count of Anjou and the Counts of Blois and Champagne. The battle took place on August 21, 1044 near Nouy, halfway between Tours and Amboise .
prehistory
Since the Capetians took over the throne in the 10th century, the French kingship had steadily lost power over its vassals. The dominion of the kings, the crown domain , was in fact limited to the territory of the Île de France and was besieged by the territories of the Counts of the House of Blois from the early 11th century . In the west it was the counties Blois , Chartres , Châteaudun and Tours , in the east the counties Meaux and Troyes ( Champagne ).
King Heinrich I intended to free himself from this clasping and allied himself with the Count of Anjou , Gottfried II Martel . The king took advantage of the already existing hostility between Anjou and Blois, who had been competing for supremacy in western New Austria for generations . After Count Theobald III. von Blois opposed the royal authority several times since 1040, the king declared it forfeited to the county of Tours and transferred it to Gottfried von Anjou, who was able to occupy large parts of Touraine , with the exception of the city of Tours.
Course of the battle
In August 1044 Theobald crossed the Cher in the south of the Touraine and united with the army of his brother Stephen II of Champagne , who came to him from Amboise. At Courçay they put several hundred of Gottfried's men to flight. Then they turned against the castle of Loches where they freed several of their followers who were held there by Gottfried. Gottfried, who had been besieging Tours for a year, immediately gathered an army and marched against his enemies to confront them at Nouy. He hit Stephan in the flood and was able to take Theobald and several of his knights prisoner.
The exact course of the battle is not known, only the chronicler Rodulfus Glaber gives details. The warriors of Blois were unable to fight because they were bound together with chains. With the support of Saint Martin von Tours , Gottfried was also able to beat his opponents, as they had previously robbed religious institutions that were dedicated to the saint. Furthermore, Gottfried could allegedly capture over 1700 Knights of Blois without having to shed their blood.
consequences
The only beneficiary of this battle was the Count of Anjou, because Theobald von Blois renounced his claims to Tours as the price of his freedom. This county should now remain with Anjou and thus later belong to the domain of the Plantagenets (see: Angevin Empire ).
The House of Blois gave up its power politics in the West, but was able to maintain its centers there around Blois and Chartres . In the years that followed, the dynasty shifted its center of power to the east, to Champagne, where it continued to be a major power factor in the 12th century.
The kingship itself could not take advantage of these changes, its power remained limited to the Île de France. Not until the 13th century under the kings Philip II and Louis IX. it could successively break the power of the Anjou-Plantagenet and Blois-Champagne houses.
source
- John France: Rodulfus Glaber: The Five Books of the Histories (Oxford, 1989)