Gone Medieval - Deadly Rivalry: Armagnac vs. Burgundy

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

What starts as a shocking street murder in Paris turns into one of the most vicious civil wars in medieval Europe?Dr Eleanor Janega is joined by Professor Justine Firnhaber-Baker to unravel the blood-soaked conflict between Burgundy and the Armagnacs, a struggle triggered by assassination, fuelled by propaganda, and made more dangerous by a mad king, a divided court and a war-torn France.They explore the brutal killing of Louis of Orleans, John the Fearless’s rise as a populist strongman, the shocking revenge killings that followed, and how all of it opened the door for Henry V and Agincourt.MOREBattle of AgincourtListen on AppleListen on Spotify Joan of ArcListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit to watch Eleanor's documentary on Joan of Arc as well as hundreds of hours of original films, with a new release every week PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here.

On a dark and dank November E in the year 1407, a predatory and pleasure-loving nobleman rides through the back streets of Paris. As befitting his status, he's surrounded by a posse of guards lighting the way with crackling torches. The Duke sings to himself, turning over the events of the evening in his mind. A pleasurable audience with the Queen. But in the dark shadows ahead, lurks a terrifying fate. As the entourage passes through the Barbette Gate, the Duke is seized upon by a band of cutthroat assassins.

Their face is concealed by blood-red hoods. Shouting, kill him, kill him. They drag him from his horse. sever his hand from his wrist and cleave his head in two, leaving his brains to spill upon the dusty cobbles below. Long after the last threads of the Duke's life had frayed away, they continued to beat him mercilessly, as if they were beating a mattress, one witness said.

And then they slunk off into the night, as swiftly as they had appeared. Naturally, any cold-blooded murder on the streets of medieval Paris came as a shock. But this victim was no ordinary nobleman. He was Louis I, the Duke of Orleans, brother to the mad king Charles VI, the France, an effective regent of the realm. Retribution seemed inevitable. There was just one hitch.

The murder had been ordered by Louis' own cousin, John the Fearless. And so, in the wake of this grisly familial hit job, medieval France plunged into the flames of civil war. The factions of Burgundy and Orleans, later known as the Armagnacs, battled one another for nearly 30 years, all while the forces of English king Henry V, ran rampant across the French countryside, and rooted the flower of French chivalry at the Battle of Ashenb. I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga, and this is Gone Medieval. Today we're unpicking one of the most compelling and blood-soaked episodes in French history. It's a story of assassinations, civil war, butchered bodies, and severed heads kicked through the streets of Paris, all at the very moment England returned to exploit France's

collapse from within. To help me explore it all, I'm thrilled to be joined by Justine Féin. Finn Harbor Baker, Professor of History at the University of St. Andrews, and author of The House of Lillies, the dynasty that made medieval France. Dostin, welcome back to God Medieval. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. So nice to see you, Eleanor. Listen, you say that you are happy to be here, but unfortunately, I've dragged you on to try to talk about one of the most complex. It's so complex of the late medieval period. And so I think by the time of this, you're you will be lucky to escape by clutches.

Well, I'm going to do my best to bring some clarity to what is a very confusing period of French history. And English history, actually. It's interesting how much England is going to come into this. Well, you said it yourself. All right. So I think this is so complex. I think we have to start with the biggest possible question. And so that is, what is the civil war between the Burgundians and the Armagnac?

Because this is, as you say, this hugely consequential thing, not just for the French, but for the English in the 15th century, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's start with just dates, first of all. We can date the civil war. You might want to start at the beginning of hostilities in 1410, or you might want to move backward to 14.7 with the assassination of the Duke of O'Leon by the Duke of Burgundy. You could, however, move even further back into the 1390s when the Duke of O'Leon is really budding heads against the Duke of Burgundy's father, also a Duke of Burgundy. And so sometime between the, let's say, 1396-ish, And 1410, the civil war is getting going and really breaks out in 1410. But then the end of it doesn't really come until 1435 with a treaty at the city of Aras between the third Duke of Burgundy that we're going to talk about and the then-king

of France, Charles the 7th. And in between that period ending in 1435, you've got the Battle of Ajoncourt, the invasion of Henry V, you've got the establishment for a bright little moment there of what looks like is going to be the double monarchy of England and France. We'll talk about why that doesn't happen. So it's this really big chunk of time in. which the Kingdom of France is divided against itself under these two factions called the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. Now, okay, so we've got the time. Now, Burgundian and Armagnac. So, listeners will have already heard me talk about the Duke of Burgundy. And we've got three dukes of Burgundy here, right? We've got Philip the Bold, who starts out budding heads with

Louis of Orleans in the 1390s. We've got his son, John the Fearless, who upon Philip the bold's death in 1404 takes over and then assassinates Louis of Orleans. And then you've got Duke Philip the good of Burgundy who will start raining in 1419. Now, the big enemy, as you've heard, is this Duke of Orleans who gets killed in 1407. So where do we get Armagnac from? Well, that is a faction.

I understand it's made out of grapes. Yeah. Yes, it's like, yeah, do you like wine or do you like liquor? So the Arminiacs come into it when the count of Arminiac marries his daughter to the son of the murder. Duke Louis of O'Leon in 1410. And this is what forms the Armagnac faction. The Count of Armagnac, a guy named

Bernard V. Bernard V. 7th marries his 11-year-old daughter to the eldest son of the assassinated Duke of Louis of O'Leon in 1410. And because Bernard the 7th is such a strong personality, the name he gives the faction's name comes from him. And because his soldiers are known to be so cruel, people start calling everybody on the side of this faction, the armeniacs. Why, I suppose, the big question that is, why do they find each other to be enemies, right? Like, because it's, listen, here you are in theory over in Burgundy. You've got this incredibly wealthy dutchy, which, you know, you know, has been argued we can even call an empire at a point in time. And then you've got like the Dukes of Orleans. They're not exactly down on their luck. And you do have kind of a buffer zone between the two areas.

So why on earth do they fall out to begin with? Okay. So this has to do with the Crown of France. And it has to do with getting your hands on the Crown of France's resources. So the King of the King of France. France is quite powerful. And because of the Hundred Years' War, the Crown of France has started to be able to collect a lot of taxes. Now, we know that those taxes are used for the army against England. They are also used in order to pay the princes, particularly the princes of

royal blood pensions. This sounds a lot like corruption to us, but what the princes are supposed to do with those pensions is to do things like raise troops to fight against England, right? But so a lot of money comes from the crown. And that was okay for a while because the king was quite strong under the reign of Charles V, who dies in 1380. And he worked very well together with his brothers. But his son, Charles VI, first comes to the throne as a minor, and then he goes mad in 1392. And at that point, Philip the bold of Burgundy, who was the brother of the previous king Charles V, and so the uncle of the new king, Charles X, takes over the government. He'd been really in charge of the minority government as well.

And now that Charles is, Charles VI's is mad, he basically takes over running the kingdom of France for his royal nephew. However, Charles the 6th has a brother. His brother is Louis of Orleans. Okay? Louis of Orleans, he's 20 years old when his brother goes mad. and he thinks that he really ought to have an equal say in the government, along with his uncle, Philip the Bold of Burgundy. The Duke of Oldillon, it sounds smaller than the Duchy of Burgundy, and it is in terms of territory.

But the Duke of Orleans is equal to Philip the Bold of Burgundy in terms of royal blood. And so they rub up against each other real hard across the 1390s up until Philip the Bold's death in 1404. And there is a moment actually when Philip the Bold marches on Paris and it looks like Civil War is going to break out. But they are more or less able to keep a balance of power between them. But when Philip the Bull dies, his heir, a guy named John eventually called John the Fearless, doesn't have that same connection to the crown. And so he instantly loses half his money. And he doesn't have nearly the same prestige of Louis de Orleans.

So his ability to kind of go in there and grab royal resources and say, I should have a say over what's happening to the king is much less than that of that his father, Philip the Bolts, had been. That's ultimately why he decides to kill Louis of William. So is this the catalyst of the war, you know, or is it, I mean, I suppose it's been brewing for a long time. But when you have this incredibly powerful, wealthy family, in their opinion, suddenly deprived. of money that kind of shoots them out on their way. And I mean, I suppose from John's perspective, this is, that's like a real issue in terms of money. And then from Louis' perspective, to be fair, it's not like they hadn't been marching troops around before.

I mean, should they have seen this coming or is this like odd that it kicks off in this way? The assassination? Yeah. is surprising. I mean, you have to remember that in 1399, so only eight years before, Henry IV had basically had usurped the throne and basically had Richard the second starve to death, right? You know, his hands weren't actually bloody, but everybody knew. Assassinations, they did happen. There were actually quite a few of them across the 14th century. there will be more of them in the 15th century.

This was pretty shocking, though. And actually, John the Fearless had to run away immediately once he got found out. And basically, he couldn't keep it to himself. He actually confessed it. And then having confessed it, he was like, wait a minute. And he runs for Burgundy because he's really... Who's fearless now? Okay.

Yeah. John was somewhat fearful. But then he marches back in, like a few months later, and has a professor at the University of Paris do this really long justification for the murder where John Lefer, where he claims that Louis of Olion was a tyrant and it's good to kill tyrants. Therefore, it was good to kill Louis of Orleans. And so John Lefeel is kind of, decides to own this act, even though it's not even just an assassination. I mean, Louis Vuolillon was his cousin. It's kin-slaying. Okay. First of all, I just love the University of Paris in the 15th century. They're just like, yeah, I don't know. What does Burgundy want?

That's basically their entire ammo. Yeah. Well, they haven't this ideological connection to Burgundy. Burgundy keeps, the Dukes of Burgundy keeps saying they're going to do everything the University of Paris wants in terms of the government. Ideologically, Burgundy is like, we're going to let people have a say and the taxes are going to going to be low and we're going to get the corruption out of government. So John the Fearless is this terrible assassin, but he's also like presents himself as the good guy in terms of the government and really bringing morality back to government. It's really interesting. Okay, wait, wait, wait, let's back up very slightly though, because so absolutely John the Fearless gets Louis

assassinated. How does that play out? You know, how do you get to someone like, how do you get to someone, like the Duke of Orleans. Like, does Louis see this coming at all? Louis does not see it coming. Oh, it's a wonderfully, wonderfully dramatic situation. So, John had gotten really fed up for lots of little reasons that just build on top of each other. It's not just the money. It's also how Louis is dealing with the papal schism and how he is dealing with the English.

And in the spring of 1407, John is like, okay, I just got to kill him. So he actually hires some people to go and find a house in Paris that will be on Louis' regular routes through Paris and gets a gang of assassins together. But they can't find a house in June. Like, it's such a Parisian story. Like, you want to do this thing. You just cannot find anything to rent. I'll tell you, the more things change, right? It's still impossible.

So, yeah, so the Parisian real estate market, always a nightmare. But in November, they do find. They find a house very near to the Queen's residence. Now, here's something I haven't mentioned yet. It's rumored, and it is rumored even at the time, and these rumors become much more broad. broke later on that the Duke of O'Leon and the Queen, the Mad King's wife, are having an affair. Ah.

Yes. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later, but that's the rumor. Anyway, on the 23rd of November, Louis is coming home from the Queen's Palace. He's only got a couple of people with him. We know from a woman who was watching from a window above that he was singing to himself and playing with his glove. As he went down this dark alleyway with just a couple of people with him. And suddenly just assassins come from all over. They kill him.

They kill the people with him. They hack him to death so badly that one of his hands is cut off and his brain is on the pavement. Yeah. Oh, my God. And then they set everything on fire and they run off. Yeah, they run off back to John the Feelless's palace. So it's not like, don't worry. So the neighbors call the Prevo of Paris, which is like the chief inspector of Paris,

who starts an investigation. And the investigation leads like that right back to John the Fearless. And John the Fearless can't keep it to him. anyway. As I said, like, he spills the beans to his uncle, Duke John of Berri, and another of his cousins, the Duke of Anjou, and they're like, whoa, man, that's some serious stuff. And John's like, you know what the devil made me do it? That's before he decides to sing about tyranny. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So, here we go. John is just freaking out, and quite right, too, probably not ideal to have murdered. someone and then have everybody know. He's confessed everything. We've got the University of Paris backing it up

being like, oh, for sure, dog. Yeah. Absolutely. The Chancellor of the University of Paris is like, I don't know about that one. Yeah. Like, I mean, how does the rest of Paris react to this? Because it seems like not ideal

to have noblemen cutting each other down in the streets. No, but John the Fearless was really good at stirring up the crowd. And his father, Philip the Bold, had been pretty good at that, too. Both of them are really good at propaganda. And here's an interesting thing. This is just at the period when paper is becoming really available in northern France. You'd had it in southern France a lot before, but something you can make cheap copies really quickly, even before you've got the printing

press. So they do all this pamphleteering of why John the Fearless is so great, and and all the wicked things that Louis of Oleom did. And by the way, did you know that, like, maybe something's going on with the queen? And, you know, why your taxes are high, that's because Louis of Orleans wanted them high because he wanted to go conquer himself in Italian kingdom. Nothing good for you.

And have you seen the queen's headdresses? That's going to be costing you some money, too. So John the Fearless is, like, this popular candidate of, you know, low taxation and against all this princely excess. So there were a lot of people, I mean, when he comes back to Paris about four or five months after the assassination to hear this Parisian professor give this long speech about justifying the murder of Louis of Orleans. Like the Parisians are at their window shouting, yeah, John of Burgundy, this is great.

It's Yeah, it's very It's got some interesting modern parallels You know, it's one of the first real instances You can see of demagoguery And almost a cult of personality Okay, so on the one hand, we've got The people in the streets reading pamphlets

And loving all of this Burgundian escalation What do you do if you're in the Orlean fact? right? Like, it's a, you know, you had your patriarch murdered in the street and everyone's like, hell yeah, brother. Like, take him down. I mean, what do you say to that? Okay, so the Ollion family is, has got some handicaps because Louis of Ollion's oldest son, Charles of O'Leon, was a day shy of 13. when his father was assassinated. So there's not a lot he can do.

Louis-Vorlione's widow, however, a woman named Valentina Visconti is very active in trying to push for something to be done. And she does this, the whole performance of her own, throwing herself in tears before the king and demanding justice, And from now on, the Ollion family will only wear black. And they have these black flags with the justice emblazoned on them. So, yeah, so they're doing this whole performance of their own.

Oh. Yeah. And the king loves Valentine of Visconti. When he's crazy, he actually prefers her to his own wife. And there's a whole thing. But a lot of people think there's a lot of popular perception that Valian Valentina Visconti is actually an Italian witch, who is maybe responsible for the kings. This is also partly Burgundian propaganda, but Valentina Visconti is not that popular.

And again, the king is mad. So when Valentina is on her knees in front of him crying for vengeance, the king is like, yes, absolutely. That sounds very distressing. but nothing ever happened. Nothing ever becomes of it. And Valentina does not have a friend in the queen. The two have never gotten on well, which is because Valentina's father killed the queen's grandfather.

But that's another story. It's so messy. Oh, these people. Okay, wait, all right. Yeah. I guess my next question, next messy question. like this is where the Armaniacs get involved right like they come on to the scene at this point well why do they want to right because it's sort of like I mean sure the Orleong is traditionally pretty powerful house you've got these close ties to the king and everything but is this like one of these oh I sense an opportunity for more money or is this I sense an opportunity to mess with the Burgundians yeah that is an interesting question. Now, the count of Arminiak had actually been an ally of Louis of Orleans.

And that actually dates back to before John the Fearless's time. Armagnac had acknowledged Louis of O'Leon as the preeminent prince of the blood, which is interesting. And a phrase really designed to piss off Philip the Bolt, who was like, I am the preeminent prince of the blood, not Louis of Orleans. So there's this pre-existing alliance, and it is sealed with a number of marriage alliances that also involve the Duke of Brittany. And so there's a sort of reactivation of that alliance in 1410. Now, by this time, Valentina Visconti has died. So it is really just Charles of Orleans, who at that point is about 16, who are around to take this forward.

So at that point, Orleans is really weak and Arminiac kind of has to, it's Arminiac's faction to mold as he will, really. I mean, he is the most, it's not that he is the most powerful person there because he's only a count. And everybody else who signs up when the faction is formed are dukes. And actually, if you look at the treaty where they all sign, his signature is the last. He is the last in terms of preeminence. But he is the most forceful personality-wise. And also, he is a pretty decent general, which nobody else is. And they're all really quite too young. So the House of Bourbon signs on as well, but it's not the Duke of Bourbon at that point who signs on. It's his son.

The Duke dies soon thereafter, and so we get this new Duke of Bourbon, who is an enthusiastic Armagnac. And it also has to do with Armagnac's troops, who are, who just make a really big impression on everyone, partly because they don't speak French in the way that northern French. They speak oxytone, which is a different, a separate language from French. The northern people think that they're uncivilized, and they do spend quite a lot of time ravaging the countryside around Paris. So he makes a big impression. I mean, I guess that's fair enough to say, right?

Like, we've got these people who are able to kind of come into what is already a messy conflict and make it messier somehow, which is great. You know, so like, what's happening in this period? You know, we've got Paris sort of as the epicenter, I think we can say, for a lot of this fighting. You know, as you just say, they're kind of harrying around things. What is, would you say, the kind of. turning point for them to go from trying to win back control of Paris, like from, you know, basically the Burgundians, they've got this incredible propaganda campaign, as you say. And how do they say, okay, well, never mind, we're not even going to worry about like trying to win it back

to kind of like, we're attacking this. Like, I mean, this is quite a brutal maneuver and, and a big change in tactic, I would say. Well, the Burgundians have. have Paris. And Paris is very firmly on the Burgundian side. And the Arminiaks, so when hostilities break out, yes, Paris is at the epicenter of this. And both sides actually, in 1411, the Burgundians invite English troops in to help them. And then in 1412, the Armaniacs, it switches. And then in 1412, It's the Armagnacs who have English troops come in. Well, yeah, and they're different English troops because in 1411, it's Henry the 4th son, later Henry the 5th, who sends troops. And in 1412, it's Henry the 4th himself who sends troops, right?

So this also has to do with hostilities over in England. The Burgundians then kind of overreach. and there is a revolution in Paris called the Kabocian Revoltz in 1413, that finally the University of Paris gets to do all these things it wants to do, right? And there's this big reform ordinance. But they are in an alliance with the butchers of the city. It's called after one of the names of one of the butchers, Kabosh, the Kaboshian. And they sort of start such a reign of tangents.

terror that John the fearless loses credibility and has to leave Paris. And then the Armagnac's take over for five years until there is an anti-Armniac uprising in 1418. And the Count Bernard VIII of Armagnac actually gets killed in this uprising and they actually flay him and leave him out on the street. And no, it's like really, really bloody. Like literally people are kicking around heads, severed heads in the street like they are footballs. my lord. Yeah. No, it is really, all this, during the Civil War, France goes into free fall in a moral way as well as politically and all the rest of it. Like people are doing things they really would have been surprised to have to see themselves doing. Yeah. Okay. And of course, between 14,

13 and 1418, what happens? Well, Ajonkour. Yeah. Yeah. Right? So Ajauncourt is 1415. The invasion of Henry V in which he, for a brief moment, wins the 100 years war, is happening in the midst of all of this and is really only able to happen because of this civil war. Now, it's not for sure that John the Fearless was in on the Ajan Corps invasion. I think there wasn't a formal agreement. actually. But a lot of Arminiacs got killed at the Battle of Ajeancourt and John Lefieless himself was not there. Charles of Wollignon, in fact, gets captured

in the Battle of Achencourt and does not come back to the kingdom for like 30 years, over 30 years? I think that this is an incredibly important point, right? Because there is this tendency. You know, I think a big way that a lot of people relate to

the Burgundy Armagnac Civil War is by hearing snippets of it if you're reading about the end of the Hundred Years' War or indeed like the rise of Joan of Arc, right? Yeah. Because you understand that there is this whole thing going on

in the background and you know, the Burgundians are really after Joan and so that's sort of how how people know. But I mean fundamentally the reason why the English have done so well at this point in time isn't because of some sort of like incredible English superiority. I think much has made quite often, for example, of English Bowman,

who are excellent. I'm not saying that they aren't. But it really helps if like a large part of the kingdom of France is simply just like not showing up to the battlefield. Right. Yeah. Angkor could have gone the other way. Henry didn't want to fight Ashancourt. He's actually trying really hard to get from Arfluur, which is a port on the Norman coast that had taken him.

a good six weeks of bombardment and starvation to subdue, but it cost him like half his men. They're sick. They don't have enough supplies. They're trying for a quick march to Calais because they can't stay in Harfleur because it's destroyed and he's got to leave a garrison there anyway to keep the French just from taking it back. The French are massing this huge army near Rouen. And the French are really confident that they have the numbers. to make this happen. And in fact, they sort of force Henry away from where he wanted to march, because he wants to go a straight shot. And they divert him. It takes him like three times as long to get anywhere near Calais as he wanted to go. But the battlefield is not a good shape for the French.

They are disorganized. And yeah, the archers. I mean, Anne Currie. who's a very well-respected military historian of this period of the Hundred Years' War. So, yeah, it's the archers. Shout out. Shout out to the archers. We love them. Yeah, I mean, there are like tens of thousands of arrows a minute hitting the French in the first phase of that battle. And even when they do push further, once the archers have to stop shooting, because they run out veras eventually. The archers have put pikes in front of them. And then as the French push further in, the battlefield becomes narrower and narrower. So they start just not even being able to move.

And they get crushed against one another. The land is very soft and mushy underfoot. So it's bad for cavalry. I mean, everything's kind of against them. So there's this big smashing battle at which again John the Fearless does not show up to I'll tell you who wasn't getting arrowed is John the Fearless right you know yeah yeah well and he made his air

the future Duke Philip the Good also not go and Philip the Good claims to have regretted this for the rest of his life that he was prevented from seeking glory at Agencourt but you know yeah sure bro yeah I don't think that glory would have been what he got out of so we've got this

these incredible things that are happening within the Hundred Years' War, like on the side, right? Like, just a cheeky little Battle of Agincourt over here, and that's not even the main event as far as the Burgundians are concerned, right? And eventually we get them retaking control of Paris in about 1418, right? Like, John the Fearless, he's back, baby. Yep, John the Fearless is back. But at this point in time, like the Armaniacs still mad.

and we do have the English, I think it's fair to say, running a bit of amok in Western France? So how does John get his hooks back into Paris? Oh, well, I mean, when the Parisians do this uprising, this anti-Armniac uprising in 1418, you know, after they've killed all the Burgundians and suspected Burgundians and people who weren't even Burgundians, they're like, John, come back.

And it's funny, it's funny because John doesn't come back immediately. He has been hanging out in the city of Tro, in Champagne, with the Queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, for the last year. And they have set up a sort of like shadow government there. And so they hear about this uprising and they sort of slowly make their way back to Paris over the course of the summer. because they are not real sure that this is a safe place for them either. And it takes a while for John the Fearless to take control and to get the Parisians to stop massacring people.

It probably helps that, I don't know if it helps or hurts, but there's also a massive wave of plague that starts just after the massacre. So I think that quiet and quiets people down as well. Yeah, but bigger fish to fry. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so there's a lot happening there. So Joan comes back. He gets Paris.

He, it's not very clear what he wants to do next. Because there is another player on the scene at this point. I'm so sorry listeners, but there's a new person, a new character to keep track of, and this is the Dofon. Hey. The Dofons' name is Charles the 7th,

who will be known by the time of his death as the very victorious. Okay, Charles the 7th becomes Dofant in the spring of 1418 when two of his previous older brothers have died in fairly quick succession after Ajauncourt. The brothers had basically been pawns of John the fearless, or close enough,

and both had tried to fight free of that, but not managed it. Charles is married to the Duke of Anjou's daughter, and he has been raised at the court of Anjou and the House of Enjou in French history. these are called the Engavans, which is confusing to an English audience because the Engavans are like Kings of England, right? So if I accidentally say Engiven, I mean the House of Anjou. The Dofant-Charles has been raised in Anjou by a Duke and a Duchess who have burned their bridges with the Burgundians. And they're not really on the Armaniac side. They're on their own. side, but their own side is anti-Burgundian. And so they sort of become the face of the

Arminac faction. And the Dofam Charles is basically an Arminac. He is sort of surrounded by hardcore, by even some old servants of the assassinated Duke, Louis of Olion. These are his core people. John the Fearless would like to get his hooks into the dophoon Charles. The dofon Charles wants to stay out of that scenario, which did not end well for his brothers. And the people around him hate John the fearless. Hate John the fearless.

Think that John the fearless ought to die. And indeed, that is what they do. Right. Okay. Okay, because can you explain this whole situation to me? Because John the Fearless decides, yeah, hey, what's up? Why don't I meet the Delphonse on a bridge in September 1419? Like, why does he do this?

Because it seems to me that it would just be kind of dangerous to meet up with these people who are like, oh, yeah, that's cool. I think that you should be stabbed, you know? Okay, so they had already come to one treaty in the summer, that summer. in the summer of 1419, because John the Fearless is sort of friends with Henry V, but he's also like, wait a minute, this might not work out for me. And a thing that is important to remember about the Dukes of Burgundy is that they are also French princes. And that is a really important thing to them.

I mean, if you look at John the Fearless's coat of arms, the lilies of France are on there very prominently because he's really proud of his French blood. So watching Henry V, who, one, is English and two, is the son of a usurber, right? That's, watching him dismember the kingdom, that doesn't feel so good for Duke of Burgundy. Yeah, yeah.

So they're going to make friends, right? They're going to make friends. and finalize this treaty the Defons people say why don't you come down to Montreux which is this little city south of Paris you can get there on

like one of the one of the inner city suburban lines today the area day will take you there two euros and they're going to meet on in the middle of a bridge which okay sounds kind of crazy except that a lot of medieval treaties are agreed in the middle of

a bridge. The idea being that both sides can retreat quickly and you can't bring a whole army. You know, it's a sort of place which is equally dangerous for both. Yeah, and it keeps numbers small. We're just... Yeah. And everybody on both sides takes a solemn oath to be on really good behavior. It's going to be all good, right? Except that there's a structure in the middle of the bridge. And it's really not clear whether the structure was already there or, whether it was built specifically for the occasion. And the structure has doors that lock from either side.

Ah. And John the Fearless's people are like, are you sure about this, John? This is, and John's like, no, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. So they go in, and the doors are locked behind John the Fearless's people. And John goes and kneels in front of Charles. And Charles says some nice words. and John says some nice words.

And then Charles's people take out their weapons and hack John the Fearless to death. Ah. Yeah. Come on. Like, how many? Like, it's not subtle. There are too many people who act to death in this.

It's just like, wait, which one? Okay, all right, all right. Okay, so this has to be premeditated, right? Like, you're not, we don't have this weird, okay. Yeah, it's premeditated. Yeah, I mean, the, the, the Dauphoon claims, tries to claim that, oh, we got scared because it seemed like John the Fearless's people were about to attack us. But there is further evidence from the Dauphonse people later on that

actually they had decided to do this. That the Dauphin Charles knew about this and had agreed to it. This is premeditated. It was really dumb. It was so dumb. And Charles regretted it. And not just for moral reasons. I mean, politically, it was so stupid. Yeah, because there's repercussions for this, right? Like, you can't just kill the Duke of Burgundy. There's repercussions.

And the repercussions are that the Duchy of Burgundy, which had been, you know, a bit coy about its English sympathies before. Now it's like, okay, we will formally ally with Henry V. by the end of 1419, their formal allies, and the Dauphan's parents decide to disown him. So who's going to be King of France now? Who's going to be heir to the throne now? Henry V.

Less than a year after the murder at Montreux, the French and the English agree a treaty called the Treaty of Trois. Remember, I told you that the Queen and John the Fearless were hanging out down in Tuat and they had this shadow government set up. Yeah, so that's why I said Tuos. Henry marries the Dofant sister, Catherine. And that is going to be what happens when the Mad King Charles the Sixth dies. However, Henry V dies first, just a few months before Charles the Sixth.

Okay, so I want to talk about it. So I, because I used to force my students to learn this particular quote when I was teaching about King Francis I first in the 15th century. All right. Okay. So there's this story, possibly apocryphal, right, that at a point in time, there is a monk that goes up to King Francis I first when all of this is sorted out in 1515. And he says, he shows him the head of John the fearless, the skull of John the fearless. and he says, sire, this is the hole through which the English entered France. Do you think that that is the... Because I'm like a baby, the English were already here. Like, I don't...

But that's... I mean, I do think that that is probably the holes through which certain treaties were signed. Like, I think the treaty of Tuat got signed through the hole, but I'm not really sure that's how the English got in. Yeah, the English are already there. If the Dofant Charles had managed to reconcile with John the Fearless, that might have gone a different way, though. John the Fearless was a really good general.

You know, there could have been a pushback. And, you know, the English were never going to get to stay in France. You know, I mean, all of this falls apart eventually. And we'll talk about Joan Vark and all of that. but it was always going to fall apart. There's no way England could ever have held on to those conquests. They're just too expensive unless they had managed to somehow reconcile the population. But that wasn't ever going to happen.

I mean, it would have taken not just the military skill of Henry V. But I don't know, like the diplomatic skill of, I don't know, like a better nick or something, Who's the best diplomat you can ever think of? And some kind of like, England would have had to have had a martial plan for France. Like this isn't going to. Yeah, right? Like, it's just this. Yeah, yeah.

There are too many moving parts, and it is just to expend, and it is too logistically difficult. Maintaining a cross-channel empire is just really, really hard. My personal opinion is I think that Henry would have just moved to France and that I think that England would have become more French. That's my personal belief. Yeah, the English wouldn't have liked that though. I don't like anything.

Yeah, I mean, actually... Okay, wait. We can't, I can't take us off down the speculative history hole. Okay, hold on, hold on, okay. All right, listen. So, in theory we've got the Treaty of Troyes, but Henry VIII. But then Charles the 6th dies within a couple of months of each other. And so suddenly we've kind of got like the Dauphin is the king.

We got Charles the 7th and he's like, he's back. My dad can't be mad at me because he's dead. Henry V is dead. And then we kind of have this kind of slow grinding success over the 1420s and 30s. And that just kind of like is this what ends up being. the end of the Civil War, it's just kind of like too annoying and gravelly and slow? Okay, so there are a number of efforts at reconciling Charles, now Charles the 7th and Burgundy, now ruled by Philip the Good, over the 1420s.

And they come close a couple of times, but it's not until the military situation turns really definitively against the English that Burgundy decides to turn his back on the alliance. It is partly because the new King of France, Henry VI, who inherits as an infant, he has a pretty decent regent in France in the form of his uncle, Duke John of Bedford, and John of Bedford marries the sister of Philip the Good, and that's helpful.

The English at least leave Burgundy alone to increase his own conquest, although there's a bit of a controtent when one of Henry the Six other uncles is fighting with Philip the Good over the County of Enno. but the alliance pretty much holds together until the military situation starts really firmly to go the other way. And at the same time, Charles manages to get himself properly crowned and anointed in the cathedral at Hance, which, you know, starts to look pretty convincing in a way that Henry, the sixth government, does not. So, and there are, and there are a number of other sort of friends and relatives of Philip the Good, including the Duke of Bourbon, saying, actually, you know, maybe it's time.

And by the time the treaty of Oroz is signed in 1435, I mean, it's been 16 years since the murder of John the Fearless. And actually, that treaty is declared, Philip the Good says he is going to make peace with Charles the 7th on the 16th anniversary of the murder at Montreux. So there's really a sort of people have to get to the point where they're ready to say, okay, this doesn't mean to me what it used to. I can move on from this. Things have changed enough.

Yeah, because, I mean, it does, you know, say what you will, it does need to kind of be addressed. Obviously, nobody likes their father being hacked to death. thought a bridge, do they? But it is 16 years later. I mean, I guess it depends on your relationship. I'm okay. Fair enough. I take it back. For some people, they're like, what do you talk about? That's the dream come true. You don't need to apologize. But it's, you know, I think that within this, you know, we do have an end where Philip the Good does have to say like, yeah, that's fine. We're going to sign this treaty. And it seems almost anti-climactic. You know,

what was, you know, we've gone from multiple people hack to death. We have people playing football with heads in the streets. We've got, you know, all this double dealing. And then you just basically get to this peace treaty in 1435 and it's like, yeah, never mind. Hooray, Treaty of Arrah. Anyway, like, we got, we got to go. It just seems so small in the face of everything that had happened. But, I mean, I suppose it just becomes too unwieldy. Like, this is a very expensive enterprise. You know, there have been English crawling all over the place, you know? It's very expensive.

Philip has other things he wants to do. He doesn't want to be propping up the Lancasterian double monarchy anymore. It doesn't sit with him well as a prince of the fleur-de-lis, which is, again, something he is very proud of. There's just not much reason to continue to do this. And Charles the 7th has made very clear that he is going to make it hurt for Philip the good. Even while they are at the conference of us and agreeing this, Charles has people in Burgundy lands burning things down. So they are, you know, Charles isn't at the conference.

Charles never goes anywhere. And he certainly, he and Philip, the good never meet. But even as all these ties of friendship are being renewed and so on, there's still quite a lot of

military inducements going on in the background. Well, Justine, I don't even know where to leave this because it's just a mess. It's just sort of like, here's a mess on the floor, but I don't know. Francis, safe under Charles the 7th.

Yeah, I mean, it takes a while. It takes a while, you know, it's almost another 20 years after that until you get to where we normally mark the end of the Hundred Years' War with the Battle of Castillon and the Surrender of Bordeaux in 1453. There's a lot that goes on after that. the princes do not behave themselves. Burgundy does not become a close friend of the crown. And actually, Philip the Good's son, Charles the Rash, is going to cause Charles the 7th son, Louis XVI's son, Louis XVI, all kinds of problems. Shouldn't have named him that.

It's a nominative determination. Here's your problem. I think that it's an interesting question, though, about why France can enter just utter freefall and then recover really fairly rapidly and very fully. I mean, France in the later 15th and early 16th centuries, you know, it's great. Charles makes France great again. And I think Oh, don't know, boo, boo, boo, yes.

I think that really the civil war has a lot to do. It looks like it's a fight among princes, but I think it has a lot to do, much more to do with the crown and the king. And both the, what happens when you have a state that's very institutionally strong because France has very strong institutions

but has very weak leadership because Charles the 6th is insane and then there is this problem of legitimacy, right? So all along there's this crisis of legitimacy. And so the real issue is like who is going to drive that train which is this very potentially power French state.

And the solution in medieval France is that the king drives that train. And they don't really come up with an alternative. Well, Justine, this has been a glorious mess. It has been a glorious mess. I hope that I have cleaned up at least a little bit here and there, but it is just a mess. I just think this is the cleanest way we can get to it. You know, there's no getting around it. It's very complex.

Thank you so much for attempting to guide us through it at any rate. You're so welcome. And thank you for giving me the opportunity. And I hope everyone out there is at least a little bit more, has somewhat better of a sense of what the Civil War means, even if it is just chaos. Thank you, Justine. Thank you so much to Justine once again for joining me.

And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in some of the topics we mentioned in this episode, you might want to go back and check out our past episodes on the Battle of Aschencore and Joan of Arc. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent documentary on the Trials of Joan of Art, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts.

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