Battle of Taillebourg
The Battle of Taillebourg by Eugène Delacroix, 1837
| date | July 21, 1242 |
|---|---|
| place | between Taillebourg and Saintes |
| output | French victory |
| Peace treaty | Treaty of Paris (1259) |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
England & Poitevine barons |
|
| Commander | |
|
|
|
The Battle of Taillebourg was a military clash in High Medieval France between the King of France and the King of England . It also formed the decisive climax of a military conflict between the two kings, which took place in 1242 and 1243 mainly in the French province of Saintonge , which is why it is often referred to as the Saintonge War (English: Saintonge War ). The battle took place on June 21 and 23, 1242 between Taillebourg and Saintes in what is now the Charente-Maritime department and ended with a victory for the French army.
prehistory
At the beginning of the 13th century, the French rule complex of the Plantagenet dynasty , who were also kings of England, was crushed by King Philip II August in the Franco-English War . The Plantagenets lost Normandy as well as Anjou , Maine and Touraine . With a victory in the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, King Philip II was able to repel the attempt by Plantagenet Johann Ohneland to recapture the lost territories. In a campaign in 1224 (→ Franco-English War from 1224 to 1225 ), King Louis VIII was also able to conquer the county of Poitou and most of Gascony. In a counter-campaign, the English were able to regain control of Gascony in 1225. From 1227 the young English King Henry III planned. , the son of Johann Ohneland, started a new campaign to recapture his father's possessions. However, his French campaign of 1230 failed completely. The so-called Angevin Empire of the Plantagenets came to an end.
Nevertheless, Heinrich III. unwilling to acknowledge his family's losses. After the French King Louis IX in June 1241 . Having installed his brother Alfons as Count of Poitou, he immediately planned a new counter-attack in the face of this provocation. The discontent of several French noblemen, mostly former vassals of the Plantagenets, should also favor the company. The mediation by Heinrich's mother, Isabella von Angoulême , who was married to Count Hugo X of Lusignan for the second time, played a key role . Hugo was a notorious opportunist and formerly an opponent of the Plantagenets himself. Soon he became the head of an opposition of Poitevin nobles against the French crown and was ready to ally with his stepson. The alliance was concluded in Pons in 1241 , the English king was represented there by his Seneschal of Gascon. The conspirators also joined Lusignan's son-in-law, Count Raimund VII of Toulouse , and with him most of the princes of southern France who wanted to regain their positions of power lost by the Albigensian Crusade .
In January 1242, Heinrich III appointed. the Parliament of Westminster , but either of realism because they rated the king the bad odds correctly, or lack of interest, because they had little claim to the Poitou itself, the magnates were only willing the Scutage to pay for the campaign. They refused to approve a tax going beyond this, referring to the ceasefire with France that was still in force. Henry III. However, he was not dissuaded from his goal. During his absence he appointed the Archbishop of York Regent of England, ordered that 15 head-high candles should be lit at the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey and appointed Queen Eleanor and her uncles, but not his brother, in the event of his death Richard of Cornwall as regent for the underage heir to the throne Edward . He could spend about £ 35,000 on the campaign, almost half of which was paid for by taxing the Jews. Although seven English earls accompanied him, his army consisted of barely 200 knights, about half of whom came from his household, and the rank and file that went with them. After a pilgrimage to the east of England, the king and his army left Portsmouth on May 9, 1242 on a comfortably furnished ship for the Poitou.
Outbreak of war
By this time the conflict between the renegade vassals of the French king and their overlord had already begun. Hugo X. von Lusignan had already openly refused at Christmas 1241 to pay homage to Alfonso of Poitiers as Count of Poitou. He opened his rebellion publicly by burning down the Count's house in Poitiers . King Louis IX von France then called his army in Chinon on April 28th , which he wanted to lead against the rebels together with his brother, Count Alfons. On May 13, 1242, Heinrich III landed. at Royan on the coast of the Saintonge. Only on May 20 they reached Pons , where Heinrich III. initially waited for further developments. He hoped to negotiate with which Louis IX. should buy his departure, or for further reinforcements from England. To do this, he tried to win more allies. He became engaged to Richard of Cornwall to Sancha , daughter of Count Raimond of Provence and a younger sister of his wife Eleanor. Count Raimund VII of Toulouse had also been interested in marrying her, but he was now able to marry Margerethe von Lusignan, a daughter of Hugo X of Lusignan, and thus enter into a marriage alliance with the Lusignans.
After the negotiations with the French king went as expected without result, Henry III resigned. on June 8th officially the armistice with France and advanced from June 11th to 19th on Saintes . The further advance was, however, through lengthy negotiations with the lord of the castle of Taillebourg , Gottfried III. by Rancon . He had announced his readiness to change sides to the English king, but prevented his further advance through grueling negotiations. Henry III. then withdrew to Saintes on June 19. The French army had meanwhile marched through the Poitou towards Saintonge. It conquered Poitiers and several castles of the rebels such as Béruge, Frontenay, Saint-Gelais and Thoré on May 4th. Henry III. made another advance to Taillebourg and occupied the strategically important stone bridge over the Charente to stop the further French advance. On July 20, the French reached Taillebourg, on the right bank of the Charente, whose lord now again openly confessed to the French king.
The battle
It is unclear whether the attack of the superior French army on the bridge began on July 20th or 21st. The battle was more of a bitter engagement, with the French attacking the bridge by land and by boats manned by crossbowmen. The decision ultimately resulted in a boat and pontoon bridge built downstream by the French, over which the French could advance to the left bank of the Charente. Richard of Cornwall recognized the danger and advised his brother Henry III. for a quick retreat. As a respected crusader, Richard of Cornwall was able to negotiate a 24-hour armistice that enabled the English to withdraw, or rather to flee to Saintes. Henry III. should have even forgotten his crown. On July 22nd, Simon de Montfort and other English knights were able to repel a nightly French attack, but Heinrich III. could not hold Saintes with his weak strength. In order not to be trapped, he quickly withdrew to Bordeaux. Only one illness of the French king stopped the further persecution by the French army.
Further course of the war
On July 24th, Saintes surrendered to the French king and on August 1st, Blaye . Hugo X. von Lusignan and Heinrich's mother, Isabella, surrendered to the French king on August 1st because of their hopeless position, and the war for the Poitou was decided. Only the islands of Oléron and Ré could be held by the English as the remainder of the Poitou. The French army suffered only minor losses during the fighting. However, on the march back to Paris, a serious epidemic broke out, including King Louis IX. attacked. The defeat of the English king also meant the end of the rebellion of Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, which began in May 1242. His allies, the kings of Castile, Aragon and Navarre, then withdrew. In January 1243 Raimond of Toulouse had to submit to the French king at Montargis. From Bordeaux, Henry III. a sea blockade of several months against La Rochelle , but made no further advances. In January 1243 he hoped through a diplomatic mission to win Emperor Frederick II to a common alliance against France. But after this failed, he broke off the blockade in early March 1243. On April 5, 1243 he concluded with Louis IX. a ceasefire for a period of five years. Henry III. stayed in Gascony for several months before returning to England and returning to Portsmouth on October 9th.
consequences
Because of the failed campaign, Heinrich III avoided. major confrontations in the next few years. He did not undertake any further campaign against the French king, but extended the armistice by five years in 1248 and 1254. From 1252 to 1254 he had to put down an uprising in Gascony that was supported by the King of Castile. He was reconciled with Louis IX on this, and in view of the opposition to the nobility in England, he concluded the Treaty of Paris in 1259 , with which he renounced his claims to the lost lands of his father and received his remaining possessions in south-west France as a fiefdom of the French king. In addition, after the death of Alfonso von Poitiers, he was to get back the parts of the Saintonge south of the Charente. Alfons of Poitiers died in 1271 without male descendants, so that the Saintonge returned to Henry III. fell.
literature
- Jacques Le Goff : Louis the saint. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-91834-5
Individual evidence
- ^ HW Ridgeway: Henry III (1207-1272). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
- ^ Clifford J. Rogers: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, Volume 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010. p. 344
- ^ Robert Favreau: Saintonge, landscape . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 1261-1263.