El labrador y la serpiente

En una ocasión el hijo de un labrador dio un fuerte golpe a una serpiente, la que lo mordió y envenenado muere. El padre, presa del dolor persigue a la serpiente con un hacha y le corta la cola. Más tarde el hombre pretende hacer las paces con la serpiente y ésta le contesta "en vano trabajas, buen hombre, porque entre nosotros no puede haber ya amistad, pues mientras yo me viere sin cola y tú a tu hijo en el sepulcro, no es posible que ninguno de los dos tenga el ánimo tranquilo".

Mientras dura la memoria de las injurias, es casi imposible desvanecer los odios.

Esopo

lunes, 11 de mayo de 2020

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY BY: DAVID GREEN (XI)


CHAPTER 8
WOMEN AND WAR
POWER AND PERSECUTION
1429

A certain Pucelle [maiden] named Joan has entered into the kingdom of France. She only arrived when the kingdom was on the verge of complete ruin, and at the moment when the sceptre of the realm ought to have passed to a foreign hand. This young girl accomplishes actions which appear more divine than human.[1]
Jean Dupuy, Collectarium historiarum, 1429
A young girl arrived in the city of Orléans on 29 April 1429, riding at the head of a French army. On that Friday the outlook seemed very bleak for the people of Orléans and for King Charles VII of France, still commonly known as the dauphin. Despite the death of Henry V in 1422, two months before the demise of his father-in-law Charles VI, the English position had not collapsed. Indeed, it had strengthened in the intervening years. Under the ministrations of John, duke of Bedford, and with the continuing, if now faltering support of the duke of Burgundy, the territorial boundaries of the Dual Monarchy in France had been driven south to the Loire. Orléans was all that seemed to stand in the way of a major advance into the so-called kingdom of Bourges, where the dauphin’s authority was recognised. Yet by early May, within a week of Joan of Arc’s arrival, the English had withdrawn. Within two months English garrisons had been forced from Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency and an army commanded by John Talbot, Thomas Scales and John Fastolf had been crushed in battle at Patay.
Bolstered by these successes Joan led an expedition that penetrated deep into Anglo-Burgundian territory and which culminated with Charles VII’s coronation at Reims on 17 July 1429. This proved to be the high point of her brief, almost miraculous life. Thereafter her career stuttered, an assault on Paris failed, leaving Joan wounded and increasingly distanced from the royal court. When Charles agreed to a brief truce with England her talents were redirected against lesser prey, namely the mercenary captain Perrinet Gressart. During the winter of 1429–30 she fought a series of incidental campaigns before leading a small force against an Anglo-Burgundian offensive advancing along the River Oïse. In the course of this, forces under the command of Jean, count of Luxembourg, lieutenant of the duke of Burgundy, captured Joan at Compiègne on 14 May 1430. She was ransomed first to the English and then handed over to the Church to be tried. Then, after a protracted trial, she was executed for heresy by being burned at the stake.
Joan of Arc provides a fascinating example of a woman at war in the later Middle Ages. She was and remains an extraordinary and extraordinarily seductive figure. Her career and experiences were unique and, consequently, far from representative. Nonetheless, her remarkable intervention in the Hundred Years War reveals so much about changing attitudes to women in a period when female roles were scrutinised and re-evaluated in wholly new ways. One of those delighted and fascinated by Joan and her astonishing intervention at the siege of Orléans was Christine de Pizan, herself a remarkable figure. Arguably the first female professional author, Christine was hugely significant, and her ‘Song of Joan of Arc’ was merely the last in a long list of important works[2]. She wrote extensively and on diverse subjects ranging from guides for rulers (‘mirrors for princes’) and works of political theory to military manuals. Many of these works were directly inspired by the Hundred Years War and were intended to ameliorate the suffering of the French people. Her patrons included dukes Philippe and Jean of Burgundy, Louis of Guienne (then the dauphin), and Marie of Berry, duchess of Bourbon. She wrote a biography of Charles V and dedicated works to Charles VI and Jean, duke of Berry. Christine remains, though, most famous for her works directed at women, some of which suggested how they should conduct themselves, their affairs and their estates in the midst of war while their menfolk were away on military service[3]. By the end of the fourteenth century this set of circumstances had become commonplace: the protracted nature of the Hundred Years War meant women were often required to take charge of affairs that had typically been seen as inherently masculine.
As this suggests, the position of women in later medieval society was transformed during the course of the Hundred Years War. But war was not the only factor bringing about that change. The carnage of the Black Death also played a highly significant role and, for a while, it helped reposition women within the workforce. War and plague, those twin forces of Apocalypse, worked shoulder to shoulder, therefore, to affect women’s lives in the later Middle Ages. Together these forces brought about major social and economic change not only because of the appalling number of casualties but also because of their impact on the gender balance in the general population. More men than women died in war and the Black Death struck down males more frequently than females. Children also suffered more than adults and male children most of all, especially in the terrible plague outbreaks that struck from 1361 onwards, the so-called ‘malaise des enfants’.[4]
The physical and psychological impacts of war and plague were horrific and often seemed horrifically inexplicable. Yet, for a time, their consequences benefited those oppressed groups that survived them. The implications of these influences were profound and contributed to a major redefinition of the status of and roles played by women in France and England. Indeed, the century after the Black Death first struck (the century of the Hundred Years War) has typically been seen as something of a golden age for women when they gained greater social, economic and political autonomy. There were new opportunities to travel, a better chance to choose one’s husband; one could marry later in life or indeed not marry at all. Such prospects were hugely beneficial although they could, collectively, exaggerate the already dreadful impact of war and plague. Later and fewer marriages, for example, could lower the birth rate which, allied with repeated outbreaks of plague, did nothing to restore the population.
War and plague created a socio-economic environment that improved women’s opportunities to enter a growing range of professions, increased the value of their labour and gave them the chance to invest in land and property. Many were able to move away from their manors and offer their services elsewhere: the shortage of men provided unique opportunities for female workers, especially in those urban areas to which women migrated. Previously restricted, for the most part, to textile and cloth-making industries, women now found employment in a new range of businesses, as smiths, tanners, carpenters, brewers and tilers. Some of these professions were directly connected with the war effort. Women made scabbards for swords and knives, they sharpened tools and some worked in the arms trade (making chain mail and fletching arrows). Indeed, women were actively engaged at the centre of the English arms industry. While Walter of Bury, Edward III’s smith at the Tower of London, was absent in France during the Crécy campaign of 1346, his mother Katherine carried on his work at the forge. Later, in Henry V’s reign, Margaret Merssh also worked alongside her husband William, the king’s smith, making fetters and manacles.[5]
Peasant women had, of course, always worked – in the fields alongside their menfolk, especially at harvest time – just as townswomen helped their husbands in business. Their work, however, had always been viewed as less valuable than that done by men. This continued to be the case despite the plague’s impact: women did gain a higher standard of living and better working conditions over the period of the Hundred Years War but they faced continuing prejudice. As this suggests, the picture of a golden age for women may be a little too rosy: attitudes to women remained discriminatory; fighting continued to be more highly regarded than child-bearing; ploughing more important than spinning.[6] Women’s wages increased but they did not rise to a level equivalent to men’s, and nor were these gains maintained in the longer term. In the mid to late fifteenth century a deep economic recession, population growth and a slump in demand for various goods revived social pressures on women which they proved unable to resist. Any benefits for women gained in the golden age did not outlast the Hundred Years War as they had neither been institutionalised nor given legal status.[7]
War, then, was not responsible for all the major changes to the condition and position of women in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Women were, however, responsible for the Anglo-French war, at least in one sense. The Hundred Years War was fought, ostensibly, over the question of female rights, and whether women could bequeath power and authority to their children. After 1328 Anglo-French relations became increasingly tense because of a dispute that centred on the nature of female power. When Charles IV of France died that year without a male heir the issue of whether a claim to the French throne could be passed down the female line became crucial. Could Edward III of England succeed to the French throne by virtue of the fact that his mother, Isabella, had been the late king’s sister? For the English this claim remained a crucial diplomatic weapon throughout the war, even (perhaps especially) at those times when it was clear that they had no way of making it good. The situation in France was completely reversed; the security and legitimacy of the Valois dynasty relied on the total renunciation of such an assertion, and royal apologists launched a series of campaigns to ‘prove’ the absurdity, indeed the impossibility that a mother could bequeath power to her children. In order to make this case a range of biblical, classical and legal authorities were marshalled. Aristotle, for example, had claimed that males were naturally superior to females, a belief St Paul had reinforced. Medical theories also stated that women were inferior to men and subject to intemperate moods which made them unsuitable to rule and capable only of managing domestic affairs. The key element in the Valois legal arsenal was, however, Salic law, which the royal historiographer and monk Richard Lescot (1329–58) conveniently ‘rediscovered’ in the middle of the fourteenth century. Composed originally in the reign of Clovis, this was redeveloped in the context of the Hundred Years War to justify the exclusion of women from the royal succession and, thereby, invalidate the claims to the French Crown asserted by Edward III, Charles of Navarre and their successors.[8]
Such a (misogynistic) position aligned closely with wider social opinions[9]. As a result, despite changing circumstances after the Black Death, women continued to be barred from most civic and public offices and were routinely excluded from positions of power. Women’s social position remained marked by a structured inferiority to men of their own ‘class’ in terms of inheritance, property ownership, economic opportunities, access to education, legal rights and enjoyment of formal political power[10]. In such an environment the tenets of Salic law found a receptive audience.
Certain women – queens, abbesses and noblewomen, for instance – did, however, wield considerable authority and there are numerous examples of women living long, self-reliant and politically important lives, although often only after they were widowed. Furthermore, the examples of Christine de Pizan, Margery Kempe and Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’ do suggest a certain shift in attitudes; certainly, they give the lie to the chivalric image of the woman who was only complete if she had a male defender. Circumstances in the Hundred Years War also forced women to take an active political role and many became deeply involved in the struggle. Indeed, some women were instrumental in shaping the way the conflict unfolded. Of these, royal women were most conspicuous, and throughout the war queens, naturally, played important roles both practical and symbolic. Some queens might be little more than pawns – their marriages arranged to secure alliances, treaties or truces; their primary function being to provide an heir to carry on the conflict. Others, however, became key figures in the war effort, often as diplomats and intercessors. A queen had a vital place in the socio-political hierarchy and many became much more active at the heart of government than tradition dictated. This might be caused by the absence of a king. Such circumstances redefined a queen’s position and purpose, and many kings were absent regularly from the centre of power during the Hundred Years War – on campaign, diplomatic missions or in captivity. Queens might also have to face different sorts of absences: Isabeau of Bavaria and Margaret of Anjou, for example, were required to take the reins of power during the periods of madness suffered by their respective husbands – Charles VI and Henry VI.
Women of less eminent status also shaped the war; some of these, while not queens, were close to the king nonetheless. Alice Perrers and Agnès Sorel as mistresses to Edward III and Charles VII respectively gained considerable influence – ‘soft power’ – for which they were much maligned. Other women played important military roles. Noblewomen such as Jeanne de Montfort (c.1295–1374), Agnes Dunbar (1312–69) and Julienne du Guesclin (1330–1404) marshalled troops and/or took up arms themselves, and many more were required to protect their homes. Christine de Pizan advised women to become familiar with weapons and military strategy in order better to defend themselves and their estates. Alongside this military role women also became increasingly politically aware as the Hundred Years War progressed. This was especially so in major urban centres in which information was most abundant and propaganda distributed most assiduously. To take one admittedly exceptional example, in 1414, according to the Parisian Bourgeois, over four thousand women attended the bonfire rallies in Paris held to celebrate the Armagnac attack on the Burgundian city of Soissons.[11] In these ways and others the roles of women were reshaped, if only temporarily, over the course of the war. The all-encompassing nature of the struggle meant women could not avoid being caught up in Anglo-French hostilities; the impact upon them was often devastating but also, on occasion, empowering.
The queen played a central but intrinsically problematic role in later medieval France and England. There was something almost subversive about a woman filling an important office at the heart of an intensely patriarchal political system. This became increasingly complicated by the nature of the Hundred Years War. The very existence of the Valois monarchy was a testament to the French claim that women could not (and should not) rule in France. Nonetheless, queens on both sides of the Channel had important responsibilities throughout the war and not only as figureheads. As Christine de Pizan remarked:
… whilst we’re on the subject of queens … If you recall Queen Joan, wife of Charles IV … think about the fine way she ran her court and exercised justice and the virtuous manner in which she lived her own life. Of no prince has it ever been said that he maintained the rule of law and safeguarded his lands and powers better than this lady did … The same could be said of Queen Blanche, the late wife of King Jean [II], who retained control of her lands and enforced law and order[12].
This situation was not entirely new. It had not been uncommon for French queens to serve as regents in earlier years. Blanche of Castile (d.1252), mother to (St) Louis IX, had set the standard for this role and almost from the outset of the war her successors were required to take on the office. In 1338 Philippe VI ordered that his wife, Jeanne of Burgundy (1293–1348), should serve as regent should he, at any stage, be occupied elsewhere. A very active politician, Jeanne was ‘like a king [who] caused the destruction of those who opposed her will’. She led a Burgundian faction at court and because of her patronage many of her countrymen found high office during Philippe’s reign[13]. Similarly, after his first bout of madness, Charles VI ensured his queen, Isabeau of Bavaria (1385–1422), would play a major role in government if he succumbed again or died. He appointed her principal guardian of the dauphin and granted her a position on the regency council. After the turn of the century she became one of the chief mediators in the ever more bitter struggle between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. Then in 1403, when Charles’s ongoing madness necessitated a more permanent solution, she led the regency council. Her position, however, became increasingly difficult as the civil war progressed and she was forced, finally, to agree to the treaty of Troyes and the disinheritance of her son, Charles (VII).[14]
Isabeau’s mediatory role was one commonly expected of a queen on both sides of the Channel. Various commentators, Christine de Pizan among them, argued that the queen should serve as a stabilising force in the nation, providing a balance in relations between the king and his people, both commoners and nobles. This was explicit in the French coronation ceremony, which made it clear that with her accession a queen accepted the obligation to act as an intercessor on behalf of the people. The coronation ceremony also demonstrated the unique character of female royal power, showing that although women could not hold temporal authority in their own right, a queen should exercise certain political functions. In token of these she received a sceptre and a ring symbolising her responsibility to be just and combat heresy; she also had the right to pardon certain criminals[15].
It was in such an intercessory role, one shaped by the politics of the Hundred Years War, that Jeanne d’Évreux, third wife of King Charles IV, and Blanche d’Évreux, second wife of Philippe VI (nicknamed Belle Sagesse or ‘Beautiful Wisdom’), acted on several occasions. Twice they intervened on behalf of Charles II, king of Navarre (Blanche’s brother). In 1354 they helped obtain a pardon from Jean II for Charles’s involvement in the murder of Charles de la Cerda, the constable of France (also known as Charles d’Espagne), and in 1357 they helped to reconcile Charles to the dauphin (the future Charles V), then serving as regent due to King Jean’s imprisonment in England[16]. Yolande of Aragon (d.1442), Charles VII’s mother-in-law and wife to Louis II d’Anjou, also worked as a mediator throughout the civil war, seeking a rapprochement between the houses of Armagnac and Burgundy. Yolande also stage-managed many of Joan of Arc’s early meetings with Charles VII and ensured she had (and was seen to have) the necessary political and theological credentials. Yolande organised Joan’s official introduction to the French king and recognised that she needed a suitably orthodox and virtuous reputation. It was Yolande who made certain that Joan’s virginity was clearly established, and it was she who instigated the process of ‘training, outfitting [Joan] as a knight, giving her a background knowledge of politics and the military situation, and spreading prophecies [which] were essential to her successes in 1429’.[17]
Yolande managed to acquire a remarkable degree of political autonomy, but when acting as an intercessor a queen did not always act independently; she could be ‘played’ for the king’s advantage. She might serve as a vehicle for reconciliation, providing an opportunity for a king to show mercy when a masculine sense of honour would otherwise demand vengeance or punishment. Her pleas allowed men to be gracious without losing face[18]. This may well have been the case during one of the most famous intercessory scenes of the war, at Calais in 1347. Then, Jean Froissart recorded, the heavily pregnant Queen Philippa begged her husband Edward III for clemency for the six burghers of the town whom the king had decided would take personal (and fatal) responsibility for the cost and length of the siege that had taken a good deal of the sheen from his victory at Crécy the previous year. Seemingly moved by her pleas, after all others had failed, Edward handed the condemned men over to his wife to do with as she pleased. They were fed, clothed, given six nobleseach and then permitted to go on their way. This dramatic episode may have been deliberately contrived to enhance the king’s reputation, to emphasise his clemency, which could not be guaranteed if similar circumstances arose again, and to heap further humiliation on his enemies. Whether or not her intercession was feigned, and there is no doubt that the chronicler overemphasised Philippa’s pregnancy, the queen’s role was vital to the (staging of the) event[19].
In a similar fashion Anne of Bohemia, Richard II’s queen and Philippa’s successor, was often cast in the role of intercessor. During the Merciless Parliament (1388) she pleaded with the Appellants for the lives of certain condemned men who had sided with the king. Later she interceded, on this occasion in vain, for the life of Sir Simon Burley, the king’s favourite, and in 1392 she petitioned her husband to show mercy to the Londoners, who had given offence by refusing to make him a loan[20].
Female political involvement at a high level was, therefore, frequent and significant in the first half of the Hundred Years War. This forced a number of authors, particularly in France, to reframe their dismissive attitudes to women. Misogyny had been at the core of Valois political doctrine for much of the fourteenth century; the claim to the throne which the Valois acquired in 1328 depended on disparaging women and scorning their ability to transmit, let alone wield political power. In the fifteenth century, however, given the frequent use of female regents and the prominent role played by queens and noblewomen, the more overt prejudice had to be tempered. It was replaced by a clear emphasis on Salic law, which provided a simple legal prohibition on women taking the throne. In addition, by this time, Valois propagandists were attributing a greater sacral nature to French kingship, and since a woman could not be consecrated as a priest, nor could she exercise power like a king.[21]
The dispute over the nature and character of female power which ignited the Hundred Years War began, in a sense, with a wedding. The union of Edward II and Isabella of France (1308), together with many of the royal marriages that followed, charts the struggle’s political trajectory. The marriages of successive kings of England – of Richard II to Isabella of France (1396), of Henry IV to Joan of Navarre (1403), Henry V to Katherine de Valois (1420) and Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou (1444) – were shaped by political ambition or necessity within the context of the conflict with France. A number of these marriages sealed treaties or truces in the war: the 28-year truce of Paris (1396), the treaty of Troyes (1420) and the truce of Tours (1444). Indeed, there were few marriages that English kings contracted during the period of the war which the conflict did not influence. The exceptions to this are easily explained. Edward III’s marriage to Philippa of Hainault pre-dated his accession and was shaped by the particular and peculiar circumstances of his mother’s need to secure support in her challenge to young Edward’s father. The other main exception, Richard II’s union with Anne of Bohemia in 1382, was the most distanced politically from the French war and the most criticised. After his accession in 1377 Richard was perhaps Europe’s most eligible bachelor and his court became deluged with offers from prospective fathers-in-law including Charles V of France, Charles of Navarre, Charles IV the Holy Roman Emperor, Robert II of Scotland and Duke Bernabo Visconti of Milan. Given the range of female suitors the final decision to marry Anne seems surprising. The political benefits gained from a link to the Holy Roman Empire are not and were not immediately apparent. Different forces, however, took precedence at this point in the war. Pope Urban VI played a major role in encouraging the union, and the outbreak of the Great Schism explains his eagerness. Urban hoped to unite his supporters in common cause against the (schismatic) Avignonese papacy: a marriage between England and the Holy Roman Empire seemed a useful mechanism to achieve this. Anne’s arrival, however, aroused little enthusiasm in England; rather it was roundly condemned. There were immediate complaints about the cost of the marriage alongside sly comments about the obvious financial advantages that could have been gained through an alliance with the Visconti. Indeed, there seemed little benefit of any kind to king or country through the king’s wedding to this little scrap of humanity. And the marriage itself certainly proved very expensive, especially as the embarrassingly small dowry agreed was never paid. Richard even ended up lending his impecunious brother-in-law 80,000 florins – roughly £12,000. But the couple soon developed a genuine affection for one another. They often travelled together; Richard only undertook one itinerary of the country without Anne. Certainly, when she died at Sheen, probably of plague, in 1394, the king was so distraught he had the palace demolished. Furthermore, it is possible that Richard’s second and ultimately fatal conflict with the Appellants only took place once Anne’s restraining influence disappeared. If so, Anne of Bohemia played a central role in the second half of the Hundred Years War – without the Lancastrian usurpation it would have been very different.[22]
Henry IV’s marriage to Joan of Navarre may also have been motivated, at least in part, by a strong mutual attraction. Henry had first married Mary Bohun (d.1394), a match very much in accordance with his status in 1381 as heir to the Lancastrian estates. His second marriage, to Joan in 1403, is explained by his then recent usurpation of the English throne. As the daughter of Charles ‘the Bad’ of Navarre and Jeanne de Valois (daughter of Jean II of France), and as the widow of Jean de Montfort of Brittany, Joan gave the new ruling dynasty a plethora of diplomatic advantages. Joan had often played this role; her father, ‘one of the most active and devious of European statesmen … like all medieval rulers, used his own children as diplomatic pawns’[23]. Joan had first been betrothed to Juan, heir to the kingdom of Castile, but when nothing came of this Charles arranged a marriage for her to the duke of Brittany. Before Jean IV’s death in 1399 she bore him eight children and then took on the responsibility of the ducal regency before her marriage to Henry. It was not, initially, a popular union in England or Brittany. A papal dispensation was required, which proved extremely awkward to arrange because of the ongoing Schism, and the Breton nobility were deeply concerned that the younger heirs to the duchy would relocate with their mother to England. Indeed, their wariness could not be assuaged and the children were forced to remain behind. Joan was suitably compensated, at least in financial terms. Henry gave her an immense dower – 10,000 marks – in addition to the queen’s traditional manors and castles of Woodstock, Langley, Rockingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Leeds. This more than generous provision eventually led to a dispute between Joan and her stepson, Henry V.
When ‘Prince Hal’ acquired the regency in 1410, Joan was again coming to political prominence because of the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war. Brittany had long been at odds with Burgundy and the queen’s son, Duke Jean V (1389–1442), was a staunch Armagnac supporter. After assuming the crown in 1413, Henry V took advantage of these divisions in France to reopen the war. This placed Joan in a difficult position. Brittany stood against England in 1415 at Agincourt where Joan’s son Artur de Richemont was captured and her son-in-law Jean d’Alençon was killed. Meanwhile, the expense of Henry’s French expeditions soon led him to cast a covetous eye on his stepmother’s wealth.
Henry V’s victory in 1415 changed the political landscape radically. The king’s ambitions in France expanded considerably and they became closely linked to his marriage. From the beginning of his reign Henry had placed a marriage with Charles VI’s daughter Katherine high on his list of diplomatic priorities. The subject was discussed at least as early as November 1413 and it became central to the negotiations in 1419–20 that resulted in the treaty of Troyes. This, clearly, was no love match and regardless of whether she had ‘witchcraft in her lips’ the marriage must have marked the beginning of a difficult and lonely transition for Katherine. Aged just eighteen, the new queen of England was thrust into a hostile environment as the symbolic representation of all Henry had fought for and won in France. Her new household, composed almost entirely of English personnel, reflected the new political reality. Her only French companions were three ladies-in-waiting and two maids. Katherine’s status, however, was not in question – her ceremonial entry into London was very grand and she sat in pride of place at the feast following her coronation. Given her position she required a substantial dowry, some 40,000 crowns. It seems more than fortuitous that at just this time the dowager queen’s dowry became available to Henry when his stepmother was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Joan of Navarre was neither tried nor convicted, but her fall from grace was immediate and precipitous. She spent the next several years confined in various castles, saving the Exchequer a more than convenient £8,000 a year. The incident indicates the potential vulnerability of even the most powerful of women.[24]
Joan was released from captivity a little before Henry’s death in 1422, which marked the end of her successor’s brief reign. Katherine (the new queen dowager) took charge of raising her infant son (Henry VI) until he was seven years old. She accompanied the young king on ceremonial events and diplomatic missions when and where his presence was necessary. She also found comfort with various members of the aristocracy. An affair with Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset became something of a scandal, and then at some point between 1428 and 1432 she secretly married Owen Tudor (c.1400–61). This became public not long before her death in 1437.[25]
Katherine’s successor, Margaret of Anjou, also came from France to England as part of a treaty in the Hundred Years War, albeit a treaty of a very different sort to that of 1420. Although significant during the last decade of the Hundred Years War, she gained real political prominence in her own right only after her husband’s mental collapse, which mirrored the decline of the English position in France. Margaret had been well schooled to seize and wield political power, having received a first-rate object lesson from her grandmother, Yolande of Aragon. Despite such august ancestors, she had been offered in marriage to Henry VI because she was a relatively minor figure in French royal society – a further indication of the changed political circumstances since 1420. Although she was Charles VII’s niece, her father René, duke of Anjou and count of Provence, had been personally and politically broken by his attempts to secure, first, his wife’s inheritance in Lorraine and, second, the kingdom of Naples. Given the political successes of the years since Joan of Arc’s intervention, Charles VII was now in a position to offer Henry the lesser prize of Margaret’s hand, rather than that of one of his daughters, and despite her meagre dowry the English had little choice but to accept. In the event the marriage only secured a truce (the truce of Tours, 1444) that lasted 23 months, and within eight years of the resumption of hostilities the Hundred Years War had been lost.[26]
The Hundred Years War did not only affect the marriages of kings and queens; the changing demands of the Anglo-French conflict also determined the marriages of lesser members of the English royal family. The flurry of alliances with Castile in the later fourteenth century is indicative of the growing importance of the Iberian Peninsula in the Hundred Years War. In 1371 John of Gaunt married Constanza of Castile (1354–94), daughter of Pedro the Cruel’s mistress, Maria de Padilla, and Edmund of Langley married her sister, Isabella (1355–92)[27]. The Black Prince had held Pedro’s daughters as surety for obligations which the deposed king of Castile accepted but never fulfilled when he sealed the treaty of Libourne in 1366. Gaunt’s marriage seems to have been amicable enough although he spent a good deal of time in the company of his mistress, Katherine Swynford. Isabella, contrastingly, seems to have found her husband rather dull. Certainly, she became the subject of scandalous rumours before her premature death in 1392 – she was only thirty-seven. She is reputed to have had an affair with Richard II’s half-brother, John Holland, first earl of Huntingdon and duke of Exeter (c.1352–1400). The never objective Thomas Walsingham described her as a ‘lady of sensual and self-indulgent disposition [who] had been worldly and lustful’.[28]
By contrast with the Plantagenets, the concerns of Valois monarchs lay with domestic matters, which reflects the different implications of the Hundred Years War in France. From 1328 onwards the need to secure the position of the Valois dynasty within France influenced successive royal marriages. Marriages were contracted with the aim of strengthening the position of the princes of the Blood Royal within France and extending the area under Valois control. This proved, eventually, to be a success, although the development of a series of semi-autonomous apanages posed a number of problems for the monarchy in the interim. The independence of certain territories, Burgundy in particular, came to pose a major threat. Philippe VI married first Jeanne of Burgundy and second Blanche d’Evreux-Navarre. Jean (II), as duke of Normandy, married Bonne of Luxembourg and then, as king, Jeanne de Boulogne. The second marriage ensured the king became jure uxoris (by right of his wife) count of Auvergne and Boulogne. Of Jean II’s eight children one, Marguerite, became a nun, and another, Isabelle, married Gian Galeazzo Visconti, but the remainder married within the French aristocracy or those close to it politically and geographically, such as members of the houses of Flanders and Navarre. The most significant marriage – that of the future king, Charles V – was to Jeanne of Bourbon[29]. The exception to this pattern is the union of Charles VI with Isabeau of Bavaria, which Philippe the Bold of Burgundy orchestrated chiefly to cement his own growing influence in the Low Countries.[30]
The outbreak of the civil war in France added a further dimension to the calculations that had to be made when arranging a royal marriage. On 18 December 1413 Charles (VII) was betrothed to Marie d’Anjou, daughter of Duke Louis II of Anjou and Yolande of Aragon. Charles’s elder brothers had been married to children of the house of Burgundy, but changing political conditions in the civil war made an alliance with the Angevins attractive. The match proved to be of great importance to the future dauphin: it furnished him with the personnel who would form his governing circle when he ‘acceded’ to the throne in such difficult circumstances in 1422.[31]
Lesser members of the French royal family, some already mentioned, were used to fashion or strengthen diplomatic links with or against the English as circumstances dictated and this was a policy that a number of France’s allies in the Hundred Years War also adopted. For example, in the 1440s a number of Stewart princesses – sisters of King James II of Scotland (r.1437–60) – were found French husbands or husbands with French links in order to strengthen the Auld Alliance. Isabella married François, duke of Brittany (1414–50). Her sisters, Mary and Annabella, married respectively Wolfaert van Borselen, Philippe of Burgundy’s admiral, and Louis, count of Geneva. In reality these matches proved of little political value. More significant was James II’s own marriage to Mary of Gueldres. Early in 1448 James wrote to Charles VII asking for assistance in finding a bride. The French king recommended sending an embassy to the Burgundian court to negotiate a marriage with the houses of Burgundy, Gueldres or Cleves. The resulting marriage formed part of the treaty of Brussels (1449), which renewed the Franco-Scottish alliance.[32]
If queens posed a problem in a patriarchal society, then women wielding power but holding a much less formal position raised even more questions. Throughout the period of the Hundred Years War royal mistresses received coruscating criticism for the power they exercised over kings. In turn the monarchs in question had opprobrium poured on them for permitting this unnatural state of affairs. Because the royal court was a domestic as well as political setting, domestic, personal and political concerns overlapped constantly. Within the court those who might manipulate or control access to the king, or who had the king’s ear in the council chamber or the bedchamber, had the potential to exert a great deal of power. A royal mistress could, therefore, manipulate policy and personnel in the court and so influence matters of wider political import. The loathing such influence might generate is especially evident in the case of Alice Perrers, Edward III’s mistress, who came to prominence around 1364, some five years before the death of Queen Philippa:
… there was a woman in England called Alice Perrers. She was a shameless, impudent harlot, and of low birth, for she was the daughter of a thatcher … elevated by fortune. She was not attractive or beautiful, but knew how to compensate for these defects with the seductiveness of her voice. Blind fortune elevated this woman to such heights and promoted her to a greater intimacy with the king than was proper, since she had been the maidservant and mistress of a man of Lombardy, and accustomed to carry water on her own shoulders from the mill-stream for the everyday needs of that household. And while the queen was still alive, the king loved this woman more than he loved the queen.[33]
So wrote Thomas Walsingham with characteristic venom. While there is no doubt that Alice Perrers was at the centre of much of the corruption and casual embezzlement which characterised Edward III’s court in the 1370s, she also became the chief scapegoat for the king’s decline. She may well have been of relatively humble origins but little can be said with certainty about her beauty or lack of it, her good fortune or of how she spoke. The monk from St Albans may not have been the best judge of such things, when he is to be trusted on the subject of Alice at all. He later argued that she was forced to rely on various potions and enchantments to seduce the king. Although she probably became the king’s mistress in or around 1364, the relationship did not become common knowledge until after Philippa’s death in 1369. Alice certainly took advantage of her relationship with the king to advance her own financial and business interests. This, no doubt, was a major cause of her unpopularity – by the time of the king’s death she had acquired some 50 manors and £20,000 in jewels[34]. Her significance in the context of the Hundred Years War lies in an event that took place a year earlier, in the Good Parliament of 1376. On this occasion the Commons launched its first major attack on the king’s ministers following a demand for taxation. In return for funds the Commons demanded a redress of grievances that centred on poor government by the king’s ministers and the pernicious influence of evil counsellors, including Alice herself. The allegations were widespread and damning and led to the first cases of impeachment in Parliament. Mistress Perrers was accused of embezzling funds worth between £2,000 and £3,000 a year since the time she first gained influence over the king. She was banished from court and the realm, although the king orchestrated her return by the end of the year.[35]
It was not always the case that a king’s mistress was criticised. In the case of Charles VI, who was provided with an official mistress in 1405 because his wife could no longer cope with the mad king’s sexual demands, the criticism fell on the queen. This formed a central element in the centuries-long character assassination of Isabeau of Bavaria: she was charged with abandoning her poor insane husband, taking advantage of his illness to seize control of France and of indulging in a life of decadence and iniquity.[36] It is hardly surprising that Isabeau could not cope: Charles VI’s madness, unlike that of his grandson Henry VI, was often violent and always unpredictable. He would foam at the mouth, howl like a wolf, run naked through the palace, eat from the floor and was prone to setting objects on fire, including the queen’s gowns, although only once he had urinated on them. Famously, at one stage he believed he was made of glass and his enemies wished to shatter him[37].
Female influence was particularly notable during the reign and at the court of Charles VII, and not only in the form of Joan of Arc. According to the Milanese ambassador the king was ‘entirely ruled by women’. In February 1425 Charles had taken into his protection the public whorehouse at Toulouse, but these were not the women the ambassador had in mind. Nor was it Marie d’Anjou, Charles’s queen. She played a very limited political role and, indeed, had little time for one between her 14 pregnancies. Four of her children died in the three years between 1436 and 1439, after which she habitually wore black and retreated into a life of devotion and domesticity. Charles’s mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon was, as we have seen, much more influential in shaping French politics than her daughter. Prior to her promotion of Joan of Arc, the dowager countess of Anjou had won Breton support for Charles VII and she also began to manipulate the strains in the Anglo-Burgundian alliance to his advantage.
Charles met another woman who proved to be extremely significant in his life soon after Yolande’s death in 1442. Agnès Sorel rose from a relatively lowly position in the household of Isabella of Lorraine, wife of René d’ Anjou, to become the king’s mistress. Charles became besotted with her in 1443 and she probably gave birth to his daughter, Marie, in the following summer. He showered Agnès with gifts, grants and lands, and her friends and relatives benefited greatly from her close association with the king; many secured offices within the royal household, some even found their way into the episcopacy. In this way Agnès acquired a good deal of political influence. For example, it was because of her that Pierre de Brézé came to prominence as a royal favourite. Already a successful soldier, he became the king’s chamberlain through Agnès’s support, and his decline from power followed her death on 9 February 1450. She was rumoured, without substantiation, to have been poisoned by Jacques Coeur, the royalargentier, whose remarkable personal wealth made him Charles VII’s key financier in the later phases of the Hundred Years War[38].
As was often the case with royal mistresses, Agnès was criticised for the power she exercised, over everything from politics to fashion. Jean Juvénal des Ursins suggested that because of her influence the court became a place of ‘whoredom and ribaldry’ where women wore clothing through which one could see their ‘nipples and breasts’ (one of Agnès’s breasts was displayed in Jean Fouquet’s extraordinary Melun Diptych, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, c.1450). She was said to have encouraged the ladies of the court to follow her example and wear ‘great furred trains, girdles and other things … displeasing to God and the world’[39]. Such criticism, though, was commonplace. Clothing was a regular cause of concern for secular and ecclesiastical commentators. Immoderate dress had been held accountable for every disaster from the French defeat at Poitiers to the return of the Black Death. According to the chronicler John of Reading, the plague manifested divine wrath brought on by those who wore their hose so tight they could not kneel down to pray. The Goodman of Paris (the author of a text written between 1392 and 1394 by an elderly Parisian merchant for his new bride) urged his young wife to dress with ‘great care’ and without ‘too much frippery’.
Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent (the Black Prince’s wife and mother to Richard II), seems to have become a sartorial icon in Aquitaine and many followed her style of dressing in tight-fitting garments of silk and ermine with low-cut necklines and wearing pearls and precious stones in her hair. Not unlike her husband’s political and courtly regime, Joan’s fashionable excesses delighted some and scandalised others. A Breton lord, Jean de Beaumanoir, noted he wanted his wife to dress as ‘an honest woman’ and not adopt the ‘fashions of the mistresses of the English or the Free Companies’. He was ‘disgusted by those women who follow such a bad example, particularly the princess of Wales’[40]. Whether this was a reflection of her wardrobe or her sexual reputation is difficult to judge, since the stolid Philippa of Hainault also spent very significant amounts on fashion and jewellery – £20,000 over the last ten years of her life. It was after all expected that a queen should use her appearance to enhance the regal image. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Joan developed a ‘reputation as a sexual libertine’, and references made by contemporaries to her as the ‘virgin of Kent’ may have been somewhat sarcastic.[41]
Queens (and dowager queens) might, very occasionally, find themselves involved in the practicalities of warfare. For those of lesser status it could be a more immediate and pressing concern. Throughout the Middle Ages women had always been involved in war. Usually this was in a civilian capacity: sometimes wives and female servants accompanied their husbands and masters on campaign, and there may well have been substantial numbers of female camp followers who cared for the troops, washing clothes, finding and preparing food and tending wounds. Some women were also involved in other, less conventional activities. It seems likely that brothels existed in some expeditionary forces; they were certainly common in Italy in this period[42]. Henry V commanded that ‘open and common strumpets’ should not be permitted in his army. And in the 1420s Thomas Montague, fifth earl of Salisbury, drew up ordinances for an expedition to Maine that included a clause ‘For women that use Bordell [brothel] the which lodge in the Host’, which suggests prostitutes continued to gather around armies – this decree aimed to prevent them lodging in the camp. These ordinances were not passed for moral reasons, as with the regulations enforced in Joan of Arc’s armies where prostitutes were also forbidden, but to maintain order and discipline. There was also a fear, common to both sides, that women could be employed as spies[43].
While references to women playing a formal military role are less frequent, they are not unknown[44]. Women were undoubtedly involved in a range of military activities during the war, and aristocratic women’s responsibilities might extend beyond the domestic milieu. In 1335 Edward III wrote to Margaret, widow of Edmund, earl of Kent; to Marie de St Pol, widow of Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke; and to Joan, wife of Thomas Botetourt. The king, who was then fighting in Scotland, commanded these women to gather trusted advisers together in London to ‘treat and ordain on the safe custody and secure defence of our realm and people, and on resisting and driving out the [French] foreigners’ who Edward believed were massing troops and ships for an invasion. The women were then ordered to ‘arm and array your people … to repel powerfully and courageously the presumptuous boldness and malice of our same enemies … if those enemies invade’.[45] In this case, although women were not consulted directly on military matters, their social position was such that they were expected to take responsibility for the defence of the realm while their husbands were elsewhere.
More commonly, aristocratic women took responsibility for protecting their own estates during a husband’s or son’s absence. It was for this reason that Christine de Pizan, drawing on the writings of Vegetius (in the later Roman Empire), Giles of Rome and Honoré Bonet, counselled that an aristocratic woman
ought to have the heart of a man, that is, she ought to know how to use weapons and be familiar with everything that pertains to them, so that she may be ready to command her men if the need arises. She should know how to launch an attack or to defend against one, if the situation calls for it. She should take care that her fortresses are well garrisoned.[46]
There are numerous examples of women following such advice – knowingly or unknowingly – and it is clear that such a role was expected: certain women, clearly, needed to be prepared to organise the protection of their property. Agnes of Dunbar (‘Black Agnes’) successfully coordinated the defence of Dunbar Castle against the English in 1338, holding out for five months. According to Sir Walter Scott, she also had her maids dust the walls where the missiles from the siege engines struck[47]. Jeanne, wife of Jean, the future duke of Brittany, played a critical role in the siege of Hennebont (1342) during the Breton civil war. When Charles of Blois, the rival claimant to the duchy, laid siege to the town, Jeanne led the defence, riding through the streets urging the townsfolk to take up arms, encouraging women to ‘cut short their kirtles [gowns]’ and carry ‘stones and pots full of chalk to the walls’, so that they might be thrown down on their enemies. The countess then rode out armed at the head of 300 horsemen to charge the French camp before setting it on fire and returning to Hennebont to defend it from another assault.[48] Julienne du Guesclin, said to be Bertrand’s sister, may have taken an even more active role while defending her convent against an attack on Pontorson in Normandy in 1427. She is said to have donned her brother’s armour and assisted with hurling back the scaling ladders as the English attacked, delaying them so that they were trapped against the walls when her brother returned[49].
While this specific incident is likely to be apocryphal, women clearly did play important roles in the defence of towns, villages, farms and castles – stone-throwing, occasionally handling weapons and in many auxiliary roles. Hence, according to Thomas Walsingham, in 1404 when Dartmouth was under attack from French raiders, the townswomen ‘laid low the enemy, inflicting dire damage with the missiles from their slings. And so several Frenchmen were killed or captured by women.’[50] Women in the besieged city of Orléans in 1428–29 are also recorded as assisting with the defence, carrying items such as water and oil, fat, lime and ashes; some were engaged more actively and pushed the attackers from the walls.[51] Such actions would seem to be at odds with expected female behaviour in this period. However, contemporaries could explain and condone female military activity if it took place within the domestic sphere – if a woman protected her home she followed a natural inclination. As Giles of Rome said:
If we consider birds that live from rapine, such as sparrow hawks, goshawks, and eagles, the females have larger bodies, bolder hearts, and greater strength than the males. The names of all those birds are feminine and the males are worthless compared to the females. Since we see that among other animals both males and females fight, it would seem that the city would be especially ordained according to nature if both women and men were ordained to the practice of war, since it seems that this is especially in accord with the natural order, in which both we and the other animals take part.[52]
Joan of Arc, however, took such behaviour far beyond the domestic sphere and so polarised opinions from the beginning of her career. She was the most notable woman to take up arms in the Hundred Years War and arguably in the entirety of the Middle Ages. Born around 1412 in Domrémy in eastern France, Joan came from wealthy peasant stock. Aged thirteen she began to receive visions and hear the words of saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret, who charged her with driving the English from France and seeing the dauphin Charles crowned king. That a girl from such a background should even countenance taking on such monumental tasks is astonishing; that she succeeded is almost beyond belief. In May 1428 she made her way to her local castle of Vaucouleurs, which was under the command of one Robert de Baudricourt. Initially (and understandably) he was extremely sceptical and rebuffed her, but Joan’s persistence and her growing support among the local townspeople eventually won him over and early in the following year he sent her under escort to meet Charles VII at Chinon.
When Joan arrived there, however, not all at the Valois court in exile were well disposed towards her. Regnaut de Chartres, archbishop of Reims, was especially suspicious. For a churchman, a woman who had not taken the veil and who claimed to have regular, direct contact with the divine was troubling at the very least. She was examined physically to ensure her virginity – this proved she was not in league with the devil – and examined theologically to establish her orthodoxy. However, others at court recognised her potential value. The precise reasons why Charles VII and Yolande of Aragon saw fit to trust or at least make use of Joan remain uncertain. Charles is reported to have been delighted by what Joan said to him in private at their first meeting, and he may have been convinced that she had, indeed, been sent by God to deliver him the crown and the kingdom. Yet it was also fortuitous that Joan’s appearance coincided with the circulation of a number of political prophecies, which suggested the nation would be saved from the ravages of the English by a maiden. Her arrival may, consequently, have provided Charles with a wonderful opportunity to campaign for political and military support throughout the country. Or it may simply be the case that all other means the dauphinists had tried had, essentially, failed. Although Artur de Richemont (younger son of Jean V, duke of Britanny, and Joan of Navarre) had enjoyed some minor successes (for example, at Pontorson in 1427), Charles’s forces had not experienced a significant victory since Baugé. Charles, therefore, took this opportunity to prepare a force to send to the relief of Orléans, and he presented Joan with arms, armour, a horse and a banner of her own design. Her impact at Orléans was immediate and astounding, and she contravened nearly every contemporary gender stereotype. This would bring about both her triumph and her execution.
From the outset of her political career – if so it can be called – Joan (or perhaps her supporters) recognised that she needed to present a particular image in order to be taken seriously by both the French army and the English. Consequently, it appears that she was educated in various martial skills prior to her arrival at Orléans. Fortunately, she had a natural aptitude for riding and using a lance and sword. She also learned a good deal about troop dispositions and the use of artillery. By the time she appeared at Orléans, Joan had been crafted into an ideal figure to shape political opinion – the virgin on horseback, leading her troops, clad in armour, bearing a standard and wielding a sword. This striking image proved extraordinarily effective in the short term, but it was also inherently dangerous, and it is not surprising that after she had secured his coronation Charles began to distance himself from Joan and made no great effort to secure her release after she was captured at Compiègne in May 1430.[53]
In 1431 English military commanders wrote a letter to churchmen, nobles and urban communities in France describing Joan’s activities:
It is commonly reported everywhere how the woman who had called herself Jehanne la Pucelle, a false prophetess, had for more than two years, against divine law and the estate of her sex, dressed in men’s clothes, a thing abominable to God … and presumptuously boasted that she often had personal and visible communication with St Michael and a great host of angels and saints of Paradise … She dressed herself also in arms worn by knights and squires, raised a standard, and in very great outrage … demanded to have and carry the very noble and excellent arms of France, which she entirely obtained, and carried in many conflicts and assaults … In such a state she went to the fields and led men-at-arms and commanded great companies to commit and exercise inhuman cruelties in shedding human blood, in causing popular seditions and disturbances, inciting them to perjuries and pernicious rebellions, false and superstitious beliefs, in disturbing all free peace and renewing mortal war, in permitting herself to be worshipped and revered by many as a holy woman, and working other damnable things … which in many places are recognised always to have greatly scandalised almost all of Christianity.[54]
Central and intrinsic to Joan’s image were her clothing and her military role, both of which contravened contemporary expectations of women. For a woman to fight, apart from in exceptional circumstances, was to usurp a fundamental aspect of masculinity. In Joan’s case her youth and humble background compounded this transgression. Defence of one’s property, such as Christine de Pizan advocated, could be seen as an extension of female domesticity. However, Joan took the battle to her enemies and, in addition, flaunted (and flouted) many characteristics of chivalry and knighthood – her horse, clothing, weapons and the armour given her by Charles VII. Yet she also referred to herself as ‘La Pucelle’, meaning a ‘young, female virgin’, perhaps a ‘maiden or maid’, and her maidenhead had been established. It had been important, politically and symbolically, to prove Joan’s virginity in order for her to fulfil the requirements of the various prophecies. Furthermore, virginity had powerful spiritual connotations that imbued Joan with a certain sacred power and gave her a degree of self-determination not available to married women. This also was awkward in a woman who had not taken the veil. These elements, taken together, made for a deeply incongruous mix and raised dangerous questions about Joan’s position in society. In the end it would be her transvestism that resulted in her execution: it was an abomination according to the church court, and her actions were portrayed as a wilful contravention of divine law.[55]
Through her capture and execution Joan became merely the most notorious victim of the Hundred Years War. Although few women took part in major battles, they were far from immune from the war’s worst excesses. The war affected women’s lives in many ways; not least it caused the absence of fathers, brothers, lovers and husbands on military campaigns. Such absences, if not permanent, might last for months. It is hardly surprising that the image of the woman who ‘weeps and waits’ became common in many contemporary works. After the disaster of Agincourt, Christine de Pizan wrote La prison de la vie humaine (The Prison of Human Life), a letter dedicated to Marie de Berry, duchess of Bourbon, whose husband had been taken captive in the battle. The letter was written to console the women of France mourning the dead and those held prisoner. As Christine put it, she sought
to find a remedy and a cure for the grievous illness and infirmity caused by a bitter heart and sad thoughts … among so many honourable women struck by … the many deaths or captivity of those close to them, such as husbands, children, brothers, uncles, cousins, and other relatives and friends.[56]
The children Christine mentioned also suffered in the course of the war and played a part in it too. They also lost fathers and brothers; they endured the depredations of war, English chevauchées, mercenary attacks, French coastal raids and all the panoply of devastation. Some children also fought, participating in military expeditions and battles. The Black Prince was sixteen when he fought in the vanguard at Crécy (1346). Froissart suggests that he was ‘too young to bear arms but [his father, Edward III] had him with him on his ship, because he much loved him’.[57] John of Gaunt was only ten when he found himself on board ship during the naval battle of Winchelsea (1350). This seems almost inexplicable. Jean II’s son, Philippe, was fourteen when he was captured alongside his father at Poitiers (1356) – his service there resulted in his nom de guerre, Philippe the Bold. Many less eminent children also found themselves in the forefront of the conflict. Boys were instructed in arms from a young age – in England especially in the use of the longbow – and many went on campaign. Presumably they were a common sight. In 1415 Henry V prohibited the participation of children under the age of fourteen in the Agincourt expedition, which suggests that in the past youngsters had regularly been involved.[58]
Children and women also suffered some of the worst excesses of war. Following the French victory at Cassel in 1328, men, women and children were put to the sword as an act of revenge for the Flemish victory at Courtrai more than twenty years previously[59]. At Caen in 1346, Epernay, and Vailly-sur-Aisne in 1358 and Beauvais in 1359, Jean de Venette described the abuse, capture and murder of women during mercenary raids and English chevauchées.[60] Accounts of the revolt of the Jacquerie were similarly violent. Various chroniclers recounted horrific scenes of the capture, murder and rape of noblewomen. Peasants were described as having ‘killed, slaughtered and massacred without mercy all the nobles whom they could find … and, what is still more lamentable, they delivered the noble ladies and their little children upon whom they came to an atrocious death’.[61]
This suggests that women might also be victims of war in a particular fashion – as victims of rape. While it is likely that men too were raped, no evidence survives concerning this. There is evidence, however, that boys were forced to serve as pages for military companies and it is not unlikely that, as such, some were compelled to provide sexual services. The rape of women was, as letters of remission indicate, appallingly common and committed by all sides. Martial Soubout, who served with the routier captain Guiot de Pin in the 1360s, admitted that rape was customary ‘amongst the men of the Companies’; and the Parisian Bourgeois recounted, among several incidents, the actions of the Armagnacs at Le Mans in 1428 where ‘they plundered, stole, raped women and girls, and did to those who thought them friends all the harm that anyone could do to an enemy’.[62] Women were also vulnerable during longer periods of occupation when they could fall prey to garrison forces. Evidence is abundant of women being forced to leave their homes and being held prisoner in fortresses by soldiers: one account tells of a woman held in the castle of Saint Fargeau for five years. More commonly soldiers broke into houses: Jean le Comté, a member of the French garrison at Falaise in 1372, made a practice of throwing husbands out of their homes for a night while he abused their wives.[63]
In modern conflicts rape has often been used as a weapon of war, and perhaps this was also the case in the Hundred Years War. Like pillage, it may have served as a means of asserting dominance in enemy (or sometimes ‘friendly’) territory. If so, there is no evidence that this was officially endorsed. It is possible, however, that sex was seen as one of the potential benefits of war, and a form of plunder. Assaults on the body politic of one’s enemy might easily become equated with an assault on their physical bodies. Changing legal attitudes to rape in the later Middle Ages might also encourage such thinking. The English Statute of Westminster (1275) ‘downgraded’ rape from a felony to a trespass: it was no longer to be punished with loss of life or limb but by a fine or imprisonment. The crime also became closely associated with abduction, and in legal terms the concern shifted away from the women affected directly and focused on the implications of rape for families – chiefly aristocratic families. While the Statute of Westminster II (1285) restored greater penalties for rape, these were rarely imposed. Consequently, by the late fourteenth century the distinction between rape (forced coition) and abduction had become blurred. This can be seen in literary works as well as in law. John Gower, for example, in Confessio Amantis, saw rape as an example of the sin of Avarice not Lechery – he depicted the rape of a shepherdess by a knight not as the abuse of the woman but as the theft of another man’s property. Consequently, in England in the later Middle Ages rape became a crime as much against a man (husband, father, and so on) as it was against a woman.[64] Within the context of the Hundred Years War English authorities might, tacitly, have viewed rape as an attack on property or viewed it as an act of domination, similar to the chevauchée, with its implication that the French could not defend their land and property.[65]
This, clearly, contradicted both military ordinances and the dictates of chivalry. For numerous authors of romances and chivalric chronicles the mistreatment of women made the darkest stain on one’s honour. For authors such as Froissart the mistreatment of women was utterly reprehensible, a quintessential act of dishonour. By comparison, those who protected women were the most worthy of praise. Thomas Malory would crystallise chivalric attitudes to women in the later Middle Ages in Le Morte d’Arthur. Malory makes it apparent that among a knight’s fundamental responsibilities was the defence of women. In the Morte, Malory’s knights swear an oath that requires them to pledge service to God, king, ladies and their fellow knights, and rape was described as the most dishonourable of acts and a betrayal of chivalric duty. It is clear, however, that the author’s main concern was with attacks on noblewomen.[66]
A number of knights took such advice to heart. When the English attacked the French at Caen in 1346, Froissart lauded the English commander Sir Thomas Holland, who rode into the town before it was captured: ‘He was able that day to prevent many cruel and horrible acts which would otherwise have been committed, thus giving proof of his kind and noble heart. Several gallant English knights who were with him also prevented a number of evil deeds and rescued many a pretty townswoman and many a nun from rape.’[67] Then, once the town was taken, another knight fighting for the English, Sir Godfrey Harcourt, commanded his men not to kill anyone or ‘violate any women’. By contrast, Froissart asserted that the foreign captains who were supposed to enforce the accord reached between the English and French in 1360 ‘despoiled many a damsel’, and also that roving bands of mercenaries terrorised the French countryside ‘without any cause … and violated and despoiled women, old and young, without pity, and slew men, women and children without mercy’.[68]
And yet despite chivalric prohibitions the laws of war suggested that in some circumstances rape was permissible. When he began the siege of Harfleur in 1415, Henry V had one of his heralds read to the townspeople an extract from Deuteronomy Chapter 20, which stated that a town which refused to capitulate abrogated all chance of mercy: all men would be put ‘to the sword, but the women and the children, the cattle and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you [the attackers] shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies’. This proved not to be their fate, however, and when the town capitulated the women and children along with the poorer inhabitants of the town (perhaps 2,000 people) were simply expelled. Furthermore, each was given a small sum of money and allowed to take with them what they could carry.[69]
Such actions were not uncommon. Women often received safe-conducts to leave conquered towns from both French and English, although they usually had to leave their homes swiftly and sometimes with few of their possessions. Following the reconquest of Normandy many of the displaced women who had crossed the Channel to be with their husbands were English. Others were French who had married English settlers for reasons of the heart or of the purse. Under these circumstances not all women were compelled to leave and nor were their husbands. A number of Englishmen, many of them soldiers, who had settled in France during the English occupation, married French women and remained with them once the war was over. John Edward, for example, the captain of La Roche-Guyon, married a French heiress. On the expulsion of the English from Normandy in 1449–50, he surrendered the fortress and offered his allegiance to Charles VII. Richard Merbury, captain of Gisors, acted similarly[70]. In this way female influence shaped individual destinies at the end of the Hundred Years War just as it had from the beginning.
Joan of Arc’s intervention at the siege of Orléans changed the balance of power in the Hundred Years War at a crucial stage. If the city had fallen to the English, the position of Charles VII would have been greatly weakened, perhaps fatally so. As it was, the relief of the city paved the way for Charles’s coronation in Reims and a very significant change in his authority and its appearance. The impression of English near invincibility established at Agincourt and reinforced in a succession of battles and campaigns had been undermined. Together these changes weakened the already fragile Anglo-Burgundian accord and laid the foundations for a rapprochement between Charles VII and Philippe the Good. When this was concluded at the Congress of Arras in 1435, it marked the beginning of the end of the Hundred Years War.

[1] Joan of Arc: La Pucelle, ed. and trans. C. Taylor (Manchester, 2006), 89.
[2] C. de Pizan, Le ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, ed. and trans. A. J. Kennedy and K. Varty (Oxford, 1997).
[3] See C. de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. R. Brown-Grant (Harmondsworth, 1999). Other major works include: ‘The Epistle of Othea’ (c.1399); ‘The Book of the Deeds of King Charles V, the Wise’ (1404); ‘The Book of the Body Politic’ (1405); ‘The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry’ (c.1410); ‘The Book of Peace’ (c.1412); ‘The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life’ (1415–18); ‘The Song of Joan of Arc’ (1429).
[4] J. Bolton, ‘The World Upside Down: Plague as an Agent of Economic and Social Change’, The Black Death in England, ed. W. M. Ormrod and P. Lindley (Stamford, 1996), 37–9, 51.
[5] S. Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages (New York, 1983), 191–2; H. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare (Basingstoke, 2004), 185 n. 86; H. Swanson, ‘The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late Medieval English Towns’, Past and Present, 121 (1988), 39; J. M. Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (Oxford, 1996); J. C. Ward, Women in England in the Middle Ages (London, 2006), 92; Barker, Agincourt, 92–3.
[6] S. H. Rigby, ‘Introduction: Social Structure and Economic Change in Late Medieval England’, A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. R. Horrox and W. M. Ormrod (Cambridge, 2006), 16–17; M. E. Mate, ‘Work and Leisure’, ibid., 276–7.
[7] S. Bardsley, ‘Women’s Work Reconsidered: Gender and Wage Differentiation in Late Medieval England’, Past and Present, 165 (1999), 3–16.
[8] C. Taylor, ‘The Salic Law, French Queenship, and the Defense of Women in the Late Middle Ages’, French Historical Studies, 29 (2006), 543 and n. 2, 548. Comments/treatises on Salic law following Richard Lescot’s rediscovery of the concept (The Laws of the Salian Franks, ed. and trans. K. Fischer Drew [Philadelphia, PA, 1991], 28–55) include Jean de Montreuil’s Traité contre les Anglois (1411), the Audite celi of Jean Juvénal des Ursins (1435), the Abrégé des chroniques de Franceby Noel de Fribois (1459) and the anonymous Grand traitis la loy salique (c.1464): see K. Daly and R. E. Giesey, ‘Noel de Fribois et la loi salique’, BEC, 151 (1993), 5–27.
[9] See, for example, the extremely misogynistic courtesy book written by Geoffrey de la Tour Landry in c.1380: The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. T.Wright (London, 1906).
[10] Rigby, ‘Introduction: Social Structure and Economic Change in Late Medieval England’, A Social History of England, ed. Horrox and Ormrod, 9–10.
[11] Parisian Journal, 88.
[12] C. de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, 31–2.
[13] Chronique des quatre premiers Valois, cited by Autrand, Charles V, 21. See also Small, Late Medieval France, 98.
[14] R. Gibbons, ‘Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess’, TRHS, 6th ser. 6 (1996), 54. Among Isabeau’s many children, a number died in infancy: Charles (d.1386), Charles (1392–1401), Philippe (d.1407), Louis of Guyenne (1397–1415). Jean, duke of Tourraine (1398–1417) preceded Charles (VII) as dauphin.
[15] Taylor, ‘Salic Law’, 555; L. L. Huneycutt, ‘Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos’, Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. J. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean (Chicago, IL, 1995), 126–46; J. C. Parsons, ‘The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England’, ibid., 147–77; A. Musson, ‘Queenship, Lordship and Petitioning in Late Medieval England’, Medieval Petitions, ed. Ormrod, Dodd and Musson, 158–63.
[16] Chronicle of Jean de Venette, 57–8, 69; Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens, 33–63.
[17] Taylor, The Virgin Warrior, 35, 42–3, 51, 55.
[18] P. Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts(Princeton, NJ, 1992), 95–119.
[19] Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens, 99–100; Rose, Calais, 20–2; J.-M. Moeglin, ‘Édouard III et les six bourgeois de Calais’, Revue Historique, 292 (1994), 229–67.
[20] Westminster Chronicle cited by A. K. McHardy, ed., The Reign of Richard II: From Minority to Tyranny, 1377–97 (Manchester, 2012), 227, 73–5; J. L. Leland, ‘Burley, Sir Simon (1336?–1388)’, ODNB (online edn, 2011).
[21] Taylor, ‘Salic Law, French Queenship and the Defense of Women’, 553, 557–60.
[22] Westminster Chronicle, 25; Saul, Richard II, 83–4; idem, ‘Anne (1366–1394)’, ODNB (online edn, 2004).
[23] M. Jones, ‘Joan (1368–1437)’, ODNB (online edn, 2008).
[24] L. Hilton, Queens Consort: England’s Medieval Queens (London, 2008), 307–20.
[25] M. Jones, ‘Catherine (1401–1437)’, ODNB (online edn, 2008); C. Richmond, ‘Beaufort, Edmund, first Duke of Somerset (c.1406–1455)’, ibid. (online edn, 2008); R. A. Griffiths, ‘Tudor, Owen (c.1400–1461)’, ibid. (online edn, 2008); Allmand, Henry V, 66, 68, 131–2, 137, 140–1, 144–5; Wolffe, Henry VI, 45, 90.
[26] H. Castor, She-Wolves: The Women who Ruled England before Elizabeth (London, 2010), 301–402; H. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2003), 1–38.
[27] Estow, Pedro the Cruel, 265.
[28] St Albans Chronicle, I, 963; A. Tuck, ‘Edmund, First Duke of York (1341–1402)’, ODNB (online edn, 2008).
[29] Autrand, Charles V, 14–16; Delachenal, Charles V, I, 33–5.
[30] Vaughan, Philip the Bold, 44.
[31] Vale, Charles VII, 22–4.
[32] MacDougall, An Antidote to the English, 83–6; idem, ‘Mary (d.1463)’, ODNB(online edn, 2004).
[33] St Albans Chronicle, I, 43; cited by W. M. Ormrod, ‘Who was Alice Perrers?’, Chaucer Review, 40 (2006), 219.
[34] C. Given-Wilson, ‘Perrers, Alice (d.1400/01)’, ODNB online edn, (2008); W. M. Ormrod, ‘Alice Perrers and John Salisbury’, EHR, 123 (2008), 379–93; Ormrod, ‘Who was Alice Perrers?’, 219–29; J. Bothwell, ‘The Management of Position: Alice Perrers, Edward III, and the Creation of a Landed Estate, 1362–1377’, Journal of Medieval History, 24 (1998), 31.
[35] St Albans Chronicle, I, 12; G. A. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), 134–5, 137–8.
[36] Gibbons, ‘Isabeau of Bavaria’, 57–8; Adams, Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria, 113–48.
[37] Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue, 1–21; B. Guenée, La folie de Charles VI: roi bien-aimé(Paris, 2004), 23–36.
[38] Vale, Charles VII, 90–3, 129; P. Prétou, ‘Les poisons de Jacques Cœur’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales, 17 (2009), 121–40; P. Bernu, ‘Le rôle politique de Pierre de Brezé au cours des dix dernières années du règne de Charles VII (1451–1461)’, BEC, 69 (1908), 303–47.
[39] Cited by Vale, Charles VII, 94. See also C. Schaefer, ‘L’art et l’histoire. Étienne Chevalier commande au peintre Jean Fouquet le diptyque de Melun’, Art et architecture à Melun au Moyen Âge, actes du colloque d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie (Paris, 2000), 293–300.
[40] The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris c.1393, trans. E. Power (Woodbridge, new edn, 2006), 37; John of Reading, Chronica Johannis de Reading et anonymi Cantuariensis, 1346–1367, ed. J. Tait (Manchester, 1914), 166–8; Green, Edward the Black Prince, 118–19; S. M. Newton,Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365(Woodbridge, 1988); M. Dupuy, Le Prince Noir: Edouard seigneur d’Aquitaine (Paris, 1970), 200.
[41] V. Sekules, ‘Dynasty and Patrimony in the Self-Construction of an English Queen: Philippa of Hainault and her Images’, England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, ed. J. Mitchell (Stamford, 2000), 167; P. Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages(Leicester, 1998), 108–9; W. M. Ormrod, ‘“In Bed with Joan of Kent”: The King’s Mother and the Peasants’ Revolt’, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, ed. J. Wogan Browne et al. (Turnhout, 2000), 277–92.
[42] J. F. Verbruggen, ‘Women in Medieval Armies’, trans. K. DeVries, Journal of Medieval Military History, 4 (2006), 119; R. M. Karras, ‘The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England’, Signs, 14 (1989), 399–433.
[43] Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 148; A. Curry, ‘Soldiers’ Wives in the Hundred Years War’, Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen, ed. Coss and Tyerman, 205.
[44] M. McLaughlin, ‘The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe’, Women’s Studies, 17 (1990), 193–209.
[45] J. Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066–1500 (Manchester, 1995), 146–7.
[46] C. de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. S. Lawson (Harmondsworth, 1985), 129.
[47] F. Watson, ‘Dunbar, Patrick, Eighth Earl of Dunbar or of March, and Earl of Moray (1285–1369)’, ODNB (online edn, 2008).
[48] Sumption, Trial by Battle, 389–95. For a more sceptical view of her heroic role, see M. Jones, ‘The Breton Civil War’, Froissart: Historian, ed. J. J. N. Palmer (Woodbridge, 1981), 68–9.
[49] Dictionnaire de biographie Française (Paris, 1967), XI, 1,526.
[50] Chronica Maiora, trans. Preest, 331; St Albans Chronicle, II, 403.
[51] Taylor, The Virgin Warrior, 58.
[52] Giles of Rome, De Regimine Principum, Libri III, cited by J. M. Blythe, ‘Women in the Military: Scholastic Arguments and Medieval Images of Female Warriors’, History of Political Thought, 22 (2001), 253.
[53] Taylor, The Virgin Warrior, 19–21, 49–50; M. Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (Berkeley, CA, 1981), 185, 188–9.
[54] J. Quicherat, ed., Procès de condemnation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc dite La Pucelle, 5 vols (Paris, 1841–9), I, 489–93, trans. DeVries, Joan of Arc, 1.
[55] S. Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing and Identity during the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia, PA, 2002), 73–106; L. G. Edwards, ‘Joan of Arc: Gender and Authority in the Text of the Trial of Condemnation’, Young Medieval Women, ed. K. Lewis, N. Menuge and K. Phillips (Stroud, 1999), 139–40, 144; Joan of Arc, ed. and trans. Taylor, 46–9.
[56] C. de Pizan, The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life with An Epistle to the Queen of France and Lament of the Evils of the Civil War, ed. J. A. Wisman (New York, 1984), 3.
[57] A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (Harlow, 1992), 31.
[58] Curry, Agincourt: A New History, 207–9; Barker, Agincourt, 307–8.
[59] W. H. TeBrake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 1323–1328 (Philadelphia, PA, 1993), 33–4, 123.
[60] Chronicle of Jean de Venette, 40–1, 85–6, 93.
[61] Chronicle of Jean de Venette, 76; R. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973), 127.
[62] Wright, Knights and Peasants, 73.
[63] Parisian Journal, 223.
[64] Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. and trans. Tiller, 204–5; C. Saunders, ‘A Matter of Consent: Middle English Romance and the Law of Raptus’, Medieval Women and the Law, ed. N. Menuge (Woodbridge, 2000), 106, 109–10; K. Phillips, ‘Written on the Body: Reading Rape from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries’, ibid., 128, 138.
[65] I. Mast, ‘Rape in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and other Related Works’, Young Medieval Women, ed. Lewis, Menuge and Phillips, 103–4, 108; D. Wolfthal, Images of Rape: The ‘Heroic’ Tradition and its Alternatives (Cambridge, 1999), 64–5; A. Ramsay, ‘On the Link between Rape, Abduction and War in C. de Pizan’s Cité des dames’,Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the Fourth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow, 2002), 693–703.
[66] Sir Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. E. Vinaver and P. J. C. Field, 3 vols (Oxford, 3rd edn, 1990), I, 120; Saunders, ‘A Matter of Consent’, 118–19. Rape clearly had ‘class’ connotations. There was greater abhorrence at the rape of noble women and greater shock when noble men were the perpetrators. See, for example,La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, III, 9–10 (on the capture of Soissons where noblemen joined the ordinary soldiers in indiscrimate rape); and S. Painter, French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideals and Practices in Mediaeval France (Ithaca, NY, 1957), 141–6.
[67] Froissart: Chronicles, ed. and trans. Brereton, 75.
[68] J. E. Gilbert, ‘A Medieval Rosie the Riveter? Women in France and Southern England during the Hundred Years War’, The Hundred Years War, I: A Wider Focus, ed. Kagay and Villalon, 345–6.
[69] Gesta Henrici Quinti, 34, 54.
[70] Curry, ‘Soldiers’ Wives’, 201–3.

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