CHAPTER 4
MAKING
PEACE
BLESSED
ARE THE PEACEMAKERS
1396
Those
who want war and follow the camps and are eager for spoils and thirsting for
loot are like the vulture who eats men and follows the camps of war.[1]
John
Gower, Vox Clamantis
After
Charles V’s formal confiscation of the principality of Aquitaine in 1369, the
reversal of English military and political fortunes was dramatic. Almost
everything gained as a consequence of the great victories at Crécy (1346) and
Poitiers (1356), which the treaty of Brétigny (1360) had, seemingly, confirmed,
was lost by about 1372. But the English hold on south-west France, though
weakened, was not entirely broken, and in 1380 Charles V and his principal
military commander and constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, both died –
the successors to these architects of the French revival were not men of the
same calibre. The English, however, could not take advantage of this to strike
back. The turmoil of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 rocked Richard II’s minority
government and the king himself soon had to face a personal threat from a group
of magnates known as the Appellants (1386–87). In such difficult circumstances
significant elements at the French and English courts began to seek a peaceful
resolution to the Anglo-French war. In particular, although militant voices
remained strident in some quarters, both kings wished for peace (at least when
Charles VI was sufficiently lucid to express an opinion). But the development
of a peace policy was not solely the result of royal initiatives; by the later
fourteenth century a social climate had developed in which calls for a
diplomatic solution to the Hundred Years War resounded. The conflict had taken
a heavy toll in lives and taxation; trade had been disrupted and crops
destroyed. The military aristocracy – those ‘flowers of chivalry’ – had begun
to be viewed by some as little better than warmongers who revelled in killing,
pillage and brutality. In short, around the end of the century an almost
palpable sense of war-weariness pervaded England and France.
The
negotiations of the 1390s, which Richard II and Charles VI sponsored and which
led to the truce of 1396, were far from the first of their kind. The Hundred
Years War was framed and, somewhat perversely, caused by a series of peace
treaties. These agreements often did more harm than good: in the long term they
perpetuated hostilities rather than resolving them. In the thirteenth century
diplomatic ‘solutions’ to Anglo-French antagonism had tended to exacerbate
rather than reduce tension. The treaties of Le Goulet (1200) and of Paris
(1259) shaped the political contours of Anglo-French relations until the
outbreak of war in 1337 and they created an untenable relationship that made
war almost inevitable. Similarly, the major treaties that punctuated the
conflict, particularly that of Brétigny and then Troyes (1420), solved little
and soon gave new momentum to the conflict. As this pattern suggests, finding a
resolution was far from easy; the divisions between England and France were
evermore difficult to bridge as the war progressed and mutual hostility became
a way of life. The arguments at the heart of the struggle began to reflect
fundamental political differences and these became increasingly entrenched as
the war went on.
In
addition, the Hundred Years War involved powers other than France and England,
and they each had their own agendas and antipathies that required resolution.
Scotland’s entangling alliance with France from 1295 (the Auld Alliance)
heightened Anglo-French tensions, while Edward III’s support in the 1330s for
the Disinherited (those nobles who fought against Robert the Bruce and had been
deprived of their lands) and Edward Balliol, the rival claimant to the Scottish
throne, drove David II into French exile and ensured that the central area of
Anglo-French contention – the issue of sovereignty in the duchy of Gascony –
could not be addressed without reference to similar problems in Scotland[2]. The Franco-Scottish
accord, therefore, fuelled the war from its outset, and continued to influence
policy and attitudes on both sides of the border and both sides of the Channel
long after 1337.[3]
A
similar situation developed in the Iberian Peninsula. Castile took on
particular significance after the English treaty with King Pedro ‘the Cruel’ in
1362, which the subsequent Franco-Trastamaran alliance (1368) contracted with
Pedro’s half-brother sought to counter.[4] In Brittany and
Flanders, too, succession disputes offered the English and French potential
political advantage should the side they supported win out. A number of smaller
national and regional disputes, therefore, became subsumed under the chaos of
the Hundred Years War and these entanglements made the struggle yet more
intractable. As it unfolded the war acquired new dimensions and intricacies: it
became multinational, of increasing political complexity, and fought in an ever
greater number of theatres, not only geographical but also legal and
theoretical. Any effective resolution would have to take account of all these
variables.
Although
the Hundred Years War began in 1337, England and France had been at war on
numerous occasions in the recent and more distant past. Hostilities had been
common since the Norman Conquest and they gathered intensity when English
continental expansion conflicted with the growing power of the Capetian
monarchy towards the end of the twelfth century. The subsequent fragmentation
of the ‘English’ Angevin Empire laid the groundwork for many of the disputes
fought over during the Hundred Years War. Those disputes were reshaped and
given diplomatic form first in the treaty of Le Goulet and later the treaty of
Paris. Soon after his accession in 1272, Edward I began to look for ways to
redefine his relationship with his French overlords, Philippe III (r.1270–85)
and Philippe IV (r.1285–1314). Edward questioned the precise nature of the
agreement his father Henry III had reached in 1259. He was concerned, in
particular, with the form of homage that his father had paid for the duchy of
Gascony. The English claimed that the duchy was an allod: that it
was not held by liege homage of the French Crown, and hence that Edward had all
but sovereign rights to Gascony. Meanwhile Louis IX’s successors were stressing
their own sovereignty throughout the entirety of France (including Gascony). In
such circumstances the political status quo was placed under extreme pressure.
Resolutions were explored and occasionally found to specific disputes, but the
underlying issues were not, indeed could not, be addressed without recourse to
arms. When the succession dispute was added to the explosive mix already
created by French ambitions in Flanders, England’s claim to sovereignty in
Scotland, and finally by the case of Robert d’Artois, the firebreak could not
hold.
The
outbreak of war in 1337 might not, however, have been any different from those
conflicts that followed earlier confiscations of Gascony by Philippe IV
(r.1294–99) and Charles IV (r.1324–25), and it could, in theory, have ended
equally swiftly. Certainly there was far from universal support for the war in
either country. Demands began to be made for a resolution in both England and
France while the struggle was still in its infancy. The nature, though, of
these demands differed significantly between the two countries and they would
change further as the war progressed.
Despite
a welter of propaganda designed to garner support for Edward III’s campaigns,
criticism of the war started early in England. It focused chiefly on the weight
of the new economic burdens and was expressed in various works of popular
literature such as the ‘Song against the King’s Taxes’ from the late 1330s
(‘Now runs in England year after year, the fifteenth, and thus brings harm to
all’), the ‘Song of Husbandman’ c. 1340 (‘the bailiff summons up misery for us
and thinks he does well’), and Wynnere and Wastoure from the
late 1340s (‘You destroy all my goods with your strife and violence/With
feasting and wassailing on winter nights/With extravagant spending and arrogant
pride’). Then, in 1381, criticism of taxation exploded into the Peasants’ Revolt.
Around this time, however, condemnation of warfare was acquiring a new
dimension; it began to extend from complaints about the financial costs of the
war to grievances over its social implications[5]. Writers in the late
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries became deeply troubled by the
behaviour of those who made war, with soldiers and their motivations for
fighting and, in England, perhaps even with war itself.
In
France, since the war was waged on home soil, such considerations were muted –
the struggle with England was almost always considered just. Consequently, the
calls for peace made by French men and women tended to take a different form.
In the early stages of the conflict writers such as Jean de Venette stressed
the pity of war, and the suffering it caused, especially for the peasantry. As
he showed, conditions in 1356, following Jean II’s defeat and capture at the
battle of Poitiers, were particularly difficult:
From
that time on all went ill with the kingdom and the state was undone. Thieves
and robbers rose up everywhere in the land. The nobles despised and hated all
others and took no thought for the mutual usefulness and profit of lord and
men. They subjected and despoiled the peasantry and the men of the villages. In
no way did they defend their country from its enemies. Rather they did trample
it under foot, robbing and pillaging the peasants’ goods. [As a consequence]
the country and the whole land of France began to put on confusion and mourning
like a garment.[6]
Venette’s
was not a lone voice; the poet Petrarch provides an Italian perspective on
events in France and the harm the nation and its people were forced to endure.
He described a country ravaged by war: deserted, broken and barely
recognisable. In 1359, he recorded, ‘Everywhere was grief, destruction and
desolation, uncultivated fields filled with weeds, ruined and abandoned houses
… In short wherever I looked were the scars of defeat.’[7]
The
Reims campaign of 1359–60 brought the first phase of the Hundred Years War to a
conclusion – a somewhat pallid hiatus – and it was marked with the treaty of
Brétigny–-Calais. In addition to Jean II’s kingly ransom the treaty provided
Edward III with an enlarged Gascony in return for his renunciation of both the
French throne and his claim to Normandy and other Angevin territories. The king
of France, meanwhile, offered to abandon his claims to sovereignty and ressort (the
right to hear appeals over judicial decisions) in all Edward III’s lands.
However, both parties agreed to postpone signing these ‘renunciation clauses’
(the cest assavoir clauses) until various lands and castles
had changed hands. In the event those clauses were never sealed. For the next
few years, certainly until Jean II’s death in 1364, relations remained
remarkably amicable. Edward III created the principality of Aquitaine out of
the enlarged Gascony and granted it to his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince.
Although technically illegal, the English exercised sovereign rights in the new
lordship and Jean II made no move to interfere. In return Edward ceased to
style himself king of France in official documents although he continued to use
the fleur-de-lys on the English royal arms.
The
political tide, however, soon began to turn against the English following
Charles V’s accession in 1364 and because of the deteriorating situation in
Aquitaine. The new Valois regime exploited the widespread disgruntlement with
the Black Prince’s regime, caused in part by the enormous expense of the
Castilian venture (1367–68). The Brétigny settlement of 1360 had suited few of
the French nobility forced to bow to English authority in the new principality,
and in 1368 Charles took the opportunity to test his authority and to hear
appeals against the Black Prince’s administration[8]. The war
resumed almost immediately and the territories ceded in 1360 were, nearly as
quickly, back in Valois hands. For the remainder of the 1370s the English
position in France continued to deteriorate, albeit more slowly, and the French
were able to strike back, raiding the southern English coastal towns. In the
1380s, however, following the deaths of Charles V and du Guesclin, the French
advance stalled. Like the Englishchevauchées, French naval attacks
brought disruption and fear but few major political gains. When plans for a
major invasion of England in the middle years of the decade failed, a stalemate
set in.
It was
in this context that Charles VI and Richard II began to negotiate and it was at
this time that some of the most resonant calls for peace were made by some of
the most significant English writers of the age – William Langland, Geoffrey
Chaucer and John Gower among them. All these men questioned the war’s purpose
and its conduct to varying degrees and some became increasingly disenchanted
with the conflict as it progressed. Langland’s opinions, for example, grew more
condemnatory as he revised the three texts of Piers Plowman (c.1370–1377/9)
and he declared that ‘peace was the most precious of virtues’.[9] Chaucer’s writings
also show a growing disillusionment with the war, its conduct and particularly
with the role of the military aristocracy. ‘The Tale of Melibee’, the chivalric
parody ‘Sir Thopas’ and the ‘Parson’s Tale’ reflect his belief that although
war might be necessary to redress certain material wrongs, it inevitably caused
a disproportionate level of spiritual and physical destruction. As a result, in
the world about him Chaucer saw only ‘treason and envy, poison, manslaughter
and murder’[10].
Of all
those Englishmen writing in opposition to the war at this time John Gower was
the most passionate. In the decade between writing his long poems Mirour
de l’omme (The Mirror of Man, c.1376–78) and Confessio
Amantis (The Lover’s Confession, c.1386–93), Gower shifted from
a grudging acceptance of the case for the war with France to a position that
might be described, awkwardly, as one of militant pacifism. In Confessio
Amantis he wrote:
If
charity be held in awe,
Then
deadly wars offend its law:
Such
wars make war on Nature too;
Peace
is the end her laws pursue –
Peace,
the chief gem of Adam’s wealth;
Peace
which is all his life and health.
But in
the gangs of war there go
Poverty,
pestilence and woe,
And
famine, and all other pain
Whereof
we mortal men complain …
For it
is war that brings to naught,
On
Earth, all good that God has wrought:
The
church is burnt, the priest is slain;
Virgin
and wife, vile rapes constrain …[11]
In a
society that, traditionally, viewed struggle as both endemic and natural,
perhaps even necessary, Gower condemned all bloodshed between Christians. He
took this position for a variety of reasons but chief among them, as he also
argued in his third major poem,Vox Clamantis (The Voice of One
Crying, c.1377–81), was his belief that by this stage the war was being
fought solely for the benefit of the knightly aristocracy: any national
interest had been lost to their individual and collective greed. Those who
should have maintained law, order and justice now sowed only discord and
destruction.[12] A
number of the clergy shared this view, including Thomas Brinton, Richard
FitzRalph and John Bromyard, who wrote in Summa Predicantium:
For
victory in battle is not achieved by the size of one’s army but by the help of
God. Yet now, alas, princes and knights and soldiers go to war in a different
spirit; with their cruel actions and desire for gain, they incline themselves
more to the ways of the devil than to those of God … nor do they fight at the
expense of the king or of themselves, but at that of the Church and of the
poor, despoiling both.[13]
It was
not only orthodox clerics who opposed the war. John Wyclif expressed his
increasing fury in a series of works. Wyclif first became concerned with the
subject in 1375 when seeking to reconcile the reality of warfare with the fifth
of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (De Mandatis Divinis –
‘On the Divine Commandments’). Soon after, he became convinced that such
conflicts were pointless (De Civili Dominio – ‘On Civil Lordship’,
c.1375), and by 1378 he saw those who perpetrated war needlessly, particularly
the mercenary Free Companies, as ‘hateful to God’. By this stage England’s war
in France had become ‘the sin of the kingdom’. Wyclif grew even more indignant
when planning was underway for Bishop Despenser’s 1383 crusade to Flanders. He
argued in De Cruciata (‘On Crusade’, 1382) that the offer of
indulgences, remission from sins and the chance of martyrdom made the papacy
culpable of promoting an inherently corrupt endeavour.[14]
In
France, as the fourteenth century drew to a close, calls for peace were also resounding.
By this time the devastation of the nation and the failure of the nobility to
defend the realm had become familiar refrains. The brutality inflicted by
soldiers on all sides was recognised and lamented. Honoré Bonet pleaded with
his readers, arguing that ‘Valiant men and wise … who follow arms should take
pains, so far as they can, not to bear hard on the simple and innocent folk but
only on those who make and continue war and flee peace.’[15] Christine de Pizan,
driven by similar concerns, advocated the need for Roman-style military
discipline among French troops and argued that no ‘honour can accrue to a
prince in killing, overrunning, or seizing people who have never borne arms nor
could make use of them, or poor innocent people who do nothing but till the
land and watch over animals’.[16]
But in
the main, although the devastation of war was deplored, the calls for peace
made by French writers took on a different character from those in England.
This was perhaps an inevitable consequence of the war being conducted, for the
most part, on French soil, and the threat it posed to French social and
political structures. For Christine de Pizan, as for Jean Gerson, peace was
vital but conditional – it should be accepted only on honourable terms. As a
result there seems to be comparatively little criticism of war per se in France
– at least not of war with England – and to use Christine’s words, although
‘many great wrongs, extortions and grievous deeds are committed [which] may
well seem to some detestable and improper … the evils committed are the result
… of the evil will of people who misuse war’.[17] For many French
writers, therefore, war was a necessary prelude to peace, and peace would only
be secured once the English withdrew voluntarily or after they had been driven
out of France. As Jean Juvénal des Ursins noted in 1435, ‘For war is only made
in order to have peace; make strong war and you will have peace by subjugating
your enemies.’[18]
It is
hardly surprising that European intellectuals wrote extensively on the
conjoined subjects of war and violence – the conditions demanded it. A
persistent conflict waged in the heart of Christendom, atrocities perpetrated
by both sides with depressing regularity and changes to the basic fabric of the
state wrought by taxation and bureaucratic innovations led to philosophical,
moral and religious debate, posturing, confusion and indignation. The Church
tried to lead this debate and it was closely involved in a number of schemes
that sought a resolution to the conflict. The Avignon popes inundated European
courts and individual power brokers with letters seeking such a resolution. In
addition, prior to 1378, successive popes and their agents called numerous
peace conferences – there were meetings at Avignon (1344–45), Calais (1347,
1372), Guines (1354), Bruges (1373, 1375–76) and elsewhere. The first of these
was presided over by Clement VI and six cardinals (although there were only two
cardinals for the latter stages of the discussion). The discussions took the
form of informal and brief bilateral meetings between the papacy and the
English and French delegations. Only on two occasions did all sides come
together for a plenary meeting.[19]
In
seeking to fulfil its spiritual responsibility to promote peace throughout
Christendom the Church also tried to prevent specific battles. In 1356 Cardinal
Talleyrand de Périgord made a series of rather pitiful efforts, riding
frantically between the forces of Jean II and the Black Prince in a forlorn
attempt to avert the battle of Poitiers[20]. That these efforts
did not succeed may be attributed in part to the English belief, held with some
justification, that the Avignon papacy was little more than a puppet of the
Valois monarchy[21].
The Church also used the spiritual weapons in its armoury to try and
prevent hostilities in a more direct fashion, especially when those hostilities
came close to Avignon – a case in point being the excommunication of du
Guesclin and various other members of the Free Companies in 1368.[22]
Regardless
of its partiality, real or perceived, the Church as a whole and its members in
England and France in particular became deeply concerned with the war and its
conduct. Many churchmen came to believe – and expressed those beliefs in
writings and sermons – that the war had degenerated from a just conflict into a
killing spree motivated less by right and honour than by bloodlust and the
chance to plunder. Such derogatory feelings about the conduct of the war soon
fed into a wider debate concerning social order and the social responsibilities
which nobles and, indeed, kings neglected when they took up arms. This was an
unfair criticism of Richard II and Charles VI. Both were more than amenable to
the idea of an Anglo-French truce. In Richard’s case this was not a policy he
pursued because of any inherent pacifism but because it allowed him to explore
political and military opportunities elsewhere. In this sense the brief truce
secured in 1396 proved disastrous for Richard since it allowed him to lead an
expedition to Ireland, and so he was absent from the kingdom when Henry
Bolingbroke launched his campaign in July 1399. This led to the king’s
deposition in September of that year, the beginning of the Lancastrian dynasty
under Bolingbroke as Henry IV and a massive renewal of the war effort by Henry
V. This was not what either England or France had had in mind when negotiations
opened in the 1390s.
England’s
initial bargaining position in these discussions was extreme. Richard’s
ambassadors demanded Aquitaine in full sovereignty, as defined in the treaty of
Brétigny, along with Calais and Ponthieu, and the arrears of Jean II’s ransom
plus further reparation payments. The agreement would be secured by a marriage
between King Richard and Charles VI’s daughter, Isabella; their eldest son would,
in time, receive Normandy, Anjou and Maine as an independent apanage.
Unsurprisingly, the French did not agree. What emerged from the discussions was
a settlement that reflected contemporary political realities. A truce of
twenty-eight years was concluded, secured by Richard’s marriage to the
six-year-old Isabella of France in 1396 along with a substantial dowry.[23]
Although
Richard chanced his arm, in the 1390s there was considerable support for a
longer-lasting settlement. That it could not be secured was due to three major
problems: Charles VI’s madness, Richard’s deposition, and the refusal of the
Gascons to accept John of Gaunt as lord of Aquitaine. This last element had
formed a major part in the negotiations after the English realised their initial
terms would not be accepted. The scheme’s failure indicates the problems of
securing a negotiated settlement in a politically and culturally divided
France. A proposal was explored to resolve the perennial problem of the duchy
of Aquitaine by granting it to a senior member of the English royal house who
would hold it on behalf of the French Crown. However, in response to the
suggestion that Gaunt might govern Aquitaine as a Valois vassal,
representatives from the duchy visited Richard II and ‘claimed that they never
had been nor never would be governed by any man other than the king of England
or his heir’.[24]
The
failure of the 1396 truce can also be attributed to the changing complexion of
French domestic politics. Tensions were building between the houses of
Orléans/Armagnac and Burgundy as each sought to gain power in the political
vacuum that Charles VI’s madness had created. In the early fifteenth century
this would lead to a fully fledged civil war. When it erupted the
Armagnac-Burgundian struggle altered the nature of the peace discourse in
France radically. Christine de Pizan argued passionately for the need to
resolve the conflict, stating that ‘Every kingdom divided in itself will be
destroyed, and every city or house divided against its own good cannot endure.’[25] She wrote
extensively on the subject; both the Lamentation on the Evils of the
Civil War (1410) and theBook of Peace (1413), composed
during the tumult following Louis d’Orléans’s assassination in November 1407,
were pleas for peace in a period of disastrous political upheaval. According to
her, Louis of Guienne, the dauphin, was charged by God with the task of
staunching this wound from which France was dying.[26]
Louis
of Guienne was the third son of Charles VI to hold the title of dauphin, and he
too predeceased his father, dying in December 1415. Continuing uncertainty over
the succession did little to calm the political ferment, and Henry V took full
advantage of this by renewing the war in 1415, capturing Harfleur and
orchestrating the extraordinary victory at Agincourt. The continuing
vicissitudes of the French civil war, which lasted from Louis d’Orléans’s
assassination in 1407 until the Congress of Arras in 1435, emphasise the
political complexities of this period and hence the problems that had to be
overcome before a resolution to the wider Anglo-French conflict could be
achieved. Indeed, for those caught up in the struggle it might be difficult to
determine who the enemy truly was. Certainly, the anonymous writer known as the
Parisian Bourgeois was often unsure whether Englishmen or dauphinists posed the
greater threat to his security and to that of his city. In 1430 he wrote, ‘Not
a man of all those now under arms, whichever side he belongs to, French or
English, Armagnac or Burgundian … will let anything escape him that is not too
hot or too heavy … if God does not take pity on France she is in great danger
of being entirely destroyed.’[27]
Depending
on where he or she happened to live, a French peasant could be threatened by
English soldiers, French noblemen, Navarese, Burgundians, Bretons, Castilians
or any number of mercenaries and écorcheurs. In such circumstances
making peace was extremely difficult. Individuals and communities were often
required to negotiate their own peace agreements with different parties
independently of central concerns and policies. Negotiations might be
compelled in extremis: mercenary and official forces on both sides
offered communities ‘peace’ in return for patis. French lordships
and principalities negotiated with England without the agreement of the French
Crown. So, for example, during the late 1350s communities in the Nièvre in
central France paid local troops ‘fat, cheeses, eggs and other victuals and
necessities in order to be able to live peacefully in their homes and go about
their work without constant threat and fear’. Local agreements were made by all
and sundry during the Armagnac-Burgundian war.[28]
The
presence of the Free Companies was another complicating factor that made a
long-term peace settlement particularly difficult to secure. One reason the
major treaties failed to resolve the war was that peace with England did not
always bring peace to the French people: indeed, mercenary forces tended to be
brutally disruptive in France during periods of truce. The end to official
hostilities left the Free Companies out of work and they maintained themselves
by exploiting local populations. If soldiers were not paid they ‘had nothing
but what they could get by murder and by kidnapping men of all conditions, and
women too and children’.[29] After the
treaty of Brétigny, Charles V and du Guesclin sought to solve this problem and
use the Free Companies for French advantage in the Castilian civil war – an
action that served only to complicate further the political dynamics of the
Hundred Years War. Later Charles VII took a different approach to the same
problem by co-opting mercenary troops and incorporating them into his permanent
army. Even in the service of the state, however, they remained a threat to
national stability.[30]
The
Free Companies also caused more theoretical problems. Certain authors, such as
Jean Froissart, described the exercise of arms as intrinsically ennobling. For
them, those who were bellatores were by their very nature
noble. Froissart’s account of the deeds of the mercenary captain the Bascot de
Mauléon (‘a good soldier and a great captain’) shows this clearly. Froissart
could not always distinguish between independent mercenary activity and
legitimate warfare waged on princely authority. He could not help but view the
depredations of the Free Companies as part of the cultural orbit of chivalry.[31] For others, however,
mercenary activity reflected a widespread degeneracy that brought the conduct
of all those fighting in the Anglo-French war into question. For Philippe de
Mézières, by the 1390s, the English had gone too far:
It may
be said, sadly enough, that the valiant chivalry of England, while obeying the
divine order to punish sin for about sixty years, has been changed and made
into an iron needle or goad, so sharp that it has forced souls without number
to burn in hell; and the Black Boars, pitiless towards their Christian
brothers, under pretence of prowess and worldly valour … have sharpened their
tusks against the chief cities of Spain, France and elsewhere.[32]
Philippe
de Mézières was the best known of those in France calling for a resolution to
the war. A scholar, soldier, mystic, royal adviser, incessant traveller,
prolific author and a champion of the crusade, Philippe made a desperate plea
for peace in the Anglo-French struggle. In his 1395 ‘Letter’ to Richard II, he
described the war as one of the wounds of Christendom that had to be healed;
another was the Great Schism, and he saw the two as closely connected[33]. This was certainly
true: the papacy should have taken a leading role in efforts to resolve the
Anglo-French war as the Avignon popes had sought to do, although without
success. The Schism prevented such attempts as both sides recognised the
authority of a different pope. De Mézières used the image of the Black Boars
regularly throughout the ‘Letter’ to indicate the most war-mongering aspects of
the English military aristocracy – those who had perpetrated the most violence
and damage in France, those who stood most resolutely in the way of peace.[34]
De
Mézières, of course, did not seek peace for its own sake but to clear the way
for a crusade. He was not the first. Crusading was a consistent theme,
underpinning many formal peace negotiations, and it lay at the heart of
numerous peace overtures made during the war and in negotiations prior to 1337.
Peace between England and France, it was argued, would allow a joint operation
to take place against the enemies of Christendom. The discussions that led to
the treaty of Paris in 1259 had considered just such a possibility.[35] Then, in the 1290s,
Edmund of Lancaster, Edward I’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, recorded that the king
sought a settlement in the Anglo-French war ‘for the peace of Christendom and
the furtherance of the crusade’.[36] The fall of Acre,
the last crusader state, in 1291 had increased the need for such an expedition.
Similarly, the prospect of a crusade to Spain or the Holy Land had forestalled
the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. When that possibility evaporated, and
with the transference of the Valois crusade fleet from Marseilles to the Norman
ports in the summer of 1336, war with England soon followed.[37]
Crusading
remained a potent ideal in the later Middle Ages, and for at least the first
half of the Hundred Years War a number of efforts were made to launch a major
European campaign.[38] The efforts of the
papacy and those of Peter of Cyprus (1360s) and de Mézières (1390s) were
particularly notable.[39] However, the failure
of these projects, particularly the disaster at Nicopolis in 1396, when the
Ottomans crushed a Franco-Burgundian and German army, and the longevity of the
Anglo-French war, saw a redirection of some of that crusading zeal. The war
channelled the crusading impulses of many among the English and French
chivalric classes away from the infidel and towards their neighbours: a form of
‘sanctified patriotism’ emerged on both sides of the Channel[40]. The crusades had
previously formed a potential area for negotiation; in the fifteenth century
crusading ideology served as a catalyst for the fighting. It is also the case
that the expedition to Hungary in 1396 (the Nicopolis crusade), although it
ended calamitously, played an important part in the emergence of Burgundy as a
European power. In this expedition Philippe the Bold acted independently of
France as ruler of a new semi-autonomous political power. The expansion of
Burgundian authority, which the Nicopolis expedition demonstrated, further
complicated Anglo-French relations not only because of Burgundy’s role in the
civil war but because of Burgundian ambitions for statehood and independence
within France.[41]
The
Great Schism and the defeat at Nicopolis, therefore, added hugely to the
difficulties in achieving a resolution to the conflict: international
cooperation became increasingly problematic thereafter, and, to complicate
matters still further, the Hundred Years War started to take on a new
character. The war began to be viewed as a struggle between chosen peoples.[42] Aspects of this were
already evident; they can be seen, for example, in Louis I d’Anjou’s commission
of the ‘Apocalypse’ tapestries at Angers around 1373, which reflect the
unprecedented catastrophes of the English chevauchées and
recurring plague. The English were portrayed as monstrous and demonic but, like
the forces of the Apocalypse, the tapestries suggest they would be defeated
with God’s help.[43]
By contrast, the author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti compared
the English army at Agincourt to the Israelites, and Henry V to both King David
and Judas Maccabeus.[44] In France the
extraordinary intervention of Joan of Arc exacerbated such attitudes. She seems
to have viewed her own campaign as a crusade and one that might continue after
the English had been defeated or withdrawn. In her ‘Letter to the English’ (22
March 1429) Joan claimed she had come ‘from God to reclaim the blood royal’.
She was ‘very ready to make peace’ if the English would make suitable
reparations, but if they did not retreat she would ‘have them all killed [since
she had] been sent here by God the King of Heaven to drive [them] out of
France’. If, however, the English did ‘not bring destruction upon [themselves
then they might] still join her company, in which the French will do the
fairest deed that has ever been done for Christianity’[45] – they would
recapture the Holy Land.
Joan’s
intervention certainly gave Christine de Pizan hope that peace really could be
achieved on honourable terms. In 1417, when Christine wrote her Prison
de la vie humaine for Marie de Berry after the disaster of Agincourt,
she had given up all hope that peace could ever be brought to France under the
Valois monarchy. But there were grounds for optimism once again by the time she
wrote the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (completed 31 July 1429).[46]
In
England, for contrasting reasons, the deteriorating situation after Joan’s
intervention also renewed interest in a settlement. Henry V’s triumphs had
galvanised the war effort in Parliament and the country at large: the lavish
celebrations after Agincourt in 1415 are testament to this. Fabulous and
outlandish entertainments and decorations were prepared when the king returned
in triumph from France. The citizens of London constructed giant figures on
London Bridge: one, a man who
… held
like a champion, a great axe in his right hand and, like a warder, the keys of
the city hanging from a baton in his left. At his side stood a figure of a
woman … wearing a scarlet mantle … and they were like a man and his wife who …
were bent upon seeing the eagerly awaited face of their lord … And all around them,
projecting from the ramparts, staffs bearing the royal arms and trumpets,
clarions, and horns ringing out in multiple harmony embellished the tower [on
the bridge], and the face of it bore this choice and appropriate legend
inscribed on the war: Civitas Regis Iustice.
There
were turrets bearing heraldic emblems and insignias, statues of St George,
tapestries, choirboys dressed as angels, a company of older men dressed as the
Apostles and others as prophets; flocks of small birds were released as the king
passed by. Maidens sang to the returning king as if he were David returning
from the slaying of Goliath.[47] Later, in 1419,
there was dancing in the streets of London when news arrived of the capture of
Rouen. Henry V’s victories and the Burgundian alliance led to the treaty of
Troyes in 1420 and the chance of a permanent resolution. However, like previous
agreements, the treaty only led to further conflict. Indeed, it did not result
in any period of peace at all. The treaty of Troyes was far more ambitious than
the Brétigny settlement of 1360. It did not seek merely to transfer various
French territories to English sovereign control. Rather King Henry sought to
gain sovereignty over all France and seize the French throne. Through his
marriage to Charles VI’s daughter Katherine he would change the line of
succession, thereby avoiding a conflict with Salic law. Henry became Charles’s
son and heir: the aging, deluded king retained his title but with Henry serving
as regent: on Charles’s death he would take the Crown.
This
scheme depended on the disinheritance (and political disappearance) of the
dauphin, who proved not to be amenable to such an idea. As a consequence,
rather than bringing peace to France the treaty led to the nation’s partition
between the Anglo-Burgundian north and the dauphinist south (the so-called
kingdom of Bourges). Henry V, therefore, had only a little while to enjoy his
triumph. He found time to return to England to witness his new bride’s
coronation but returned to campaign in France almost immediately. Then, while
besieging Meaux near Paris in 1422, he contracted dysentery – he died three
months later.
This,
also, did little to encourage peace. Thomas Montague, earl of Salisbury
(1388–1428), triumphed at Cravant in Burgundy in July 1423, and John, duke of
Bedford (1389–1435), was victorious at Verneuil (‘a second Agincourt’) in
Normandy in August 1424. England was determined not to squander the late king’s
military inheritance. Nonetheless, while Henry himself had been lauded to the
skies, the cost of his military ventures had started to become unpopular.
Almost immediately after the reconquest Parliament indicated its reluctance to
subsidise the defence of Normandy. Concerns over royal expenditure in France
encouraged the decision to ensure a clear governmental division between the
nations (the Dual Monarchy), which had been expressed in the treaty of Troyes.
As king of France, Henry could, it was argued, find the money to pay for French
expenditure out of French resources[48]. Thus, even before
the setbacks of 1429 the war effort was pursued in some quarters in England
with diminishing enthusiasm. As Adam Usk stated in an entry in his chronicle
for 1421:
Yet I
fear, alas, that both the great men and the money of the kingdom will be
miserably wasted on this enterprise. No wonder then, that the unbearable
impositions being demanded from the people to this end are accompanied by dark
– though private – mutterings and curses, and by hatred of such extortions.[49]
As
always, taxation remained unpopular. Despite this, although many did not wish
to pay for the war they did not necessarily want peace with France. With the
exception of a brief period in the 1390s an official peace policy rarely proved
popular in England, and even then there had been strident voices of protest
among the nobility. The situation in the 1440s was not dissimilar, except that
the English, in a political sense, now had much more to lose. Henry VI became
convinced of the need for peace, and he was willing to accept terms that fell
far short of those agreed in the treaty of Troyes. The English position had
deteriorated sharply following the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1428 and still
further with the Congress of Arras in 1435. Worsening economic conditions
exacerbated by the costs of the king’s religious and educational projects made
Parliament increasingly unwilling to fund military operations[50]. Some, indeed,
argued that an end to the Anglo-French war offered a number of political and
economic advantages. Richard II had hoped to use peace with France as a means
to extend English authority in Britain and Ireland. In a similar fashion the
author of the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1436) argued that
an end to French hostilities (while retaining Calais) would permit the
redirection of English resources in order to exercise control of the sea, and
so maintain trade and national security: ‘Cherish merchandise,’ he wrote, ‘keep
the Admiralty, that we be masters of the Narrow Sea.’[51]
Following
this diplomatic change of heart in London, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk
(1396–1450), a key member of the king’s council and steward of the household,
brokered the truce of Tours in May 1444. The agreement secured nothing more
than two years of peace sealed by a marriage between Henry VI and Margaret, a
younger daughter of René, duke of Anjou and count of Provence (1409–80).
Henry’s government employed John Lydgate (c.1370–c.1450), the poet and prior of
Hatfield Regis, as a spokesman to justify the truce[52]. Lydgate, who had
often discovered patrons among the Lancastrian regime, probably did not find
this a difficult commission; his ‘A Praise of Peace’, written prior to 1443,
stated:
All
war is dreadful, virtuous peace is good,
Strife
is hateful, peace the daughter of pleasure,
In
Charlemagne’s time there was shed much blood,
God
send us peace between England and France;
War
causes poverty, peace causes abundance,
And
between both might it the more increase,
Without
feigning, fraud, or variance,
Between
all Christians, Christ Jesus, send us peace.[53]
Charles
VII chose Margaret carefully: she was not a direct blood relation of the royal
house, which could have strengthened the Lancastrian claim to the French
throne, although the marriage did provide Henry with a useful link to a
powerful family at the Valois court. The union, however, was of greater benefit
to the king of France. He faced considerable opposition at home from various
dissident noble houses, and England’s alliance with Anjou meant Henry could not
forge ties with one of those families. For Charles, the marriage was a means to
control domestic threats to his power, which now appeared more serious than
those posed by England. Meanwhile Henry and the earl of Suffolk believed,
wrongly, that the marriage would provide the means for future negotiations and
a permanent resolution of the war.[54]
The
truce of Tours was welcomed in some circles in England and Normandy; however, a
powerful faction led by the king’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester
(1390–1447), opposed it vigorously and remained determined to continue the
struggle. Henry VI ploughed on regardless. Without consulting key figures in
the nobility the king tried to extend the duration of the settlement by
offering, in 1445, to surrender the county of Maine to Charles VII. Again,
Henry hoped to extend the truce and so gain time to negotiate a permanent
resolution. It may be that in earlier negotiations the earl of Suffolk had
suggested the possibility that Maine could be sacrificed, but Henry’s actions
provoked fury[55]. Maine
was a buffer to Normandy and several captains refused, initially, to hand their
castles over to the French. It took until 1448 for the surrender to take place.
Soon afterwards the captains’ fears were realised. Henry and Suffolk had
gambled that the truce and the surrender of Maine would lead to negotiations
for a longer peace – they were wrong. In common with earlier agreements the
truce of Tours provoked rather than resolved hostilities. In August 1449
Charles VII launched the campaign that began the reconquest of Normandy. In England
in 1450 this precipitated Cade’s Rebellion and the murder of Suffolk, the man
commonly seen as ‘the architect of [Henry VI’s] … ill-conceived policy of peace
at any price’.[56] Jack
Cade and his rebels demanded punishment for those responsible for the surrender
of the duchy. The response revealed that while the English people had no wish
to spend a great deal of money on the war, they did not want peace with France
either, certainly not peace at any price. In his letter of 1450 to John Paston,
John Gresham lamented ‘Today it is told Cherbourg is gone and we have now not a
foot of land left in Normandy.’[57] Soon afterwards
Gascony was lost, first in 1451 and finally in 1453.
However,
although the Hundred Years War ended in 1453, Anglo-French hostilities resumed
soon after. As early as 1468 Edward IV was planning an expedition to France; he
continued to make alliances with French principalities hostile to the Valois –
with Brittany in 1472 and Burgundy in 1474; and a year later an English army
returned to France forcing Louis XI (r.1461–83) to negotiate the treaty of
Picquigny.[58] This,
however, was a different sort of conflict – the loss of Gascony changed the
nature of Anglo-French hostilities yet again, just as they had changed
regularly over many years previously. By the later fifteenth century the sheer
length of the war created an intrinsic barrier to any resolution; it had
reshaped the national characters of England and France, establishing a
tradition of war and an identity defined by mutual hostility.
The
attempts to secure peace in the Hundred Years War were determined in large
measure by the respective personalities of the kings of England and France.
Just as the treaty of Paris held strong for a time because of the personal
relationship between Henry III and Louis IX, so a resolution would never have
been possible during the reigns of Edward III and Charles V. The culture of the
Valois and Plantagenet courts reflected the interests and priorities of their
rulers. Consequently, the longest cessation of hostilities during the Hundred
Years War followed the truce of Paris in 1396 when both Richard II and Charles
VI were keen to secure some form of resolution. The truce foundered with
Richard’s deposition and in the political turmoil which Charles’s madness created.
That turmoil put paid to any idea of peace. In France, powerful factions led by
the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy struggled for control. Orléans’s
assassination in 1407 set the stage for a further conflict that would be fought
within the greater struggle of the Hundred Years War.
[1] The Major Latin
Works of John Gower, ed. E. W. Stockton (Seattle, WA, 1962), 207–8 (Vox
Clamantis, Bk 5, ch. 8).
[2] J. Campbell, ‘England,
Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century’, The Wars
of Edward III, ed. C. J. Rogers (Woodbridge, 1999), 207–30; G. Templeman,
‘Edward III and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War’, ibid.,
233, 245.
[3] A. Grant, Independence
and Nationhood: Scotland, 1306–1469 (Edinburgh, 1984), 32–57; K. Daly,
‘The Vraie cronicque d’Escoce and Franco-Scottish Diplomacy:
An Historical Work by John Ireland?’, Nottingham Medieval Studies,
35 (1991), 106–33.
[4] Anglo-Castilian treaty
(1362): TNA E30/191; A. Goodman, ‘England and Iberia in the Middle Ages’, England
and her Neighbours, 1066–1453, ed. Jones and Vale, 85–91; Russell, English
Intervention, 1–11, 127; L. J. A. Villalon, ‘Spanish Involvement in the
Hundred Years War and the Battle of Nájera’, Hundred Years War,
I: A Wider Focus, ed. Kagay and Villalon, 53–6.
[5] I. Aspin, Anglo-Norman
Political Songs (Oxford, 1953), 104–15; Wynnere and Wastoure,
ed. S. Trigg (London, 1990), ll. 265–7; N. Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms? Criticism
of Warfare in Late Fourteenth-Century England’, Fourteenth-Century
England, II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002), 131–45. See also B. L.
Bryant, ‘Talking with the Taxman about Poetry: England’s Economy in “Against
the King’s Taxes” and Wynnere and Wastoure’, Studies in
Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser. 5 (2008), 219–48, esp. 230.
[6] The
extract dates to 1356, after the French defeat at Poitiers and the capture of
King Jean II: Chronicle of Jean de Venette, 66.
[7] F. Petrarca, Le
familiari, ed. V. Rossi, 4 vols (Florence, 1933–42), IV, 138–9.
[8] T. Meron, ‘The
Authority to Make Treaties in the Late Middle Ages’, American Journal
of International Law, 89 (1995), 7–10.
[9] W. Langland, The
Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman: In Three Parallel Texts,
ed. W. W. Skeat, 2 vols (Oxford 1886; repr. 1965): A Text Passus, I, ll.137
(‘that loue is the leuest thing that vr lord asketh, and eke the playnt of
pees’); IV, 34ff; VI, 107–17: B Text, I, 150–6; III, 220ff.; B. Lowe, Imagining
Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Ideas, 1340–1560 (Philadelphia,
PA, 1997), 91–3.
[10] G. Chaucer, ‘The
Former Age’, in Lowe, Imagining Peace, 97–100; Saul, ‘Farewell to
Arms?’, 134.
[11] J. Gower, Confessio
Amantis, ed. and trans. T. Tiller (Harmondsworth, 1963), 145–6.
[12] J. Gower, The
Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols (Oxford,
1899–1902), III, 313 (Vox clamantis; Confessio amantis).
[13] J. Bromyard, Summa
Predicantium, 24, cited by R. Cox, ‘Natural Law and the Right of
Self-Defence according to John of Legnano and John Wyclif’, Fourteenth-Century
England, VI, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2010), 154.
[14] R. Cox, ‘Wyclif:
Medieval Pacifist’, History Today, 60 (2010), 26–7.
[15]
Bonet, Tree of Battles, 154.
[16] C. de Pizan, Book
of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, 171.
[17] C. de Pizan, Book
of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, 14.
[18] Jean Juvénal des
Ursins, Audite Celi (begun in May 1435 prior to the Congress
of Arras): Ecrits politiques, I, 93–281. Having witnessed the
impact of the war on his see of Beauvais, Jean Juvénal clearly hoped for peace:
see Taylor, ‘War, Propaganda and Diplomacy in Fifteenth-Century France and
England’, 81. Jean Juvénal, the author ofHistoire de Charles VI Roy de
France, served as bishop of Beauvais (1433–44), bishop of Laon (1444–49)
and archbishop of Reims (1449–73).
[19] F. Autrand, ‘The
Peacemakers and the State: Pontifical Diplomacy and the Anglo-French Conflict
in the Fourteenth Century’, War and Competition between States, ed.
P. Contamine (Oxford, 2000), 261–3 (regarding papal letters), 268–76 (on peace
conferences). For further discussion of the peace conferences, see
Plöger, England and the Avignon Popes, 203–9; E. Déprez, ‘La
conférence d’Avignon (1344): L’arbitrage pontifical entre la France et
l’Angleterre’, Essays in Medieval History Presented to T. F. Tout,
ed. A. G. Little and F. M. Powicke (Manchester, 1925), 301–20; B. Guillemain,
‘Les tentatives pontificales de médiation dans le litige franco-anglais de
Guyenne au XIVesiècle’, Bulletin philologique et historique
du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1957), 423–32; P.
Chaplais, ‘Réglements des conflits internationaux franco-anglais au XIVe siècle’, Le
Moyen Âge, 57 (1951), 169–302.
[20] Sumption, Trial
by Fire, 231–3, 236–8; Green, Battle of Poitiers, 43–5. The
cardinal was one of several individuals driven in his search for peace by the
possibility of a crusade: see C. Deluz, ‘Croisade et paix en Europe au XIVe siècle:
Le rôle du cardinal Hélie de Talleyrand’, Cahiers de recherches
médiévales, I (1996), 53–61.
[21] TNA SC 7/13/8; Wood,
‘Omnino partialitate cessante: Clement VI and the Hundred Years War’, Church
and War, ed. Shiels, 179–89; idem, Clement VI: The Pontificate and
Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989), 137–8.
[22] Vernier, Bertrand
du Guesclin, 129.
[23] BL
Cotton MS, Vitellius C XI, nos 2–3; J. J. N. Palmer, England, France
and Christendom, 1377–99 (London, 1972), 171–2; Sumption, Divided
Houses, 827–9; Saul, Richard II, 226–8; C. Phillpotts, ‘The
Fate of the Truce of Paris, 1396–1415’, Journal of Medieval History,
24 (1998), 61–80.
[24] Westminster
Chronicle, 1381–1394, ed. and trans. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford,
1982), 484. See further J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations,
1390–1396’, TRHS, 5th ser. 16 (1966), 81–94; Saul, Richard
II, 211–19. For events in Aquitaine, 2 March 1390 (the grant of the duchy
to John of Gaunt)–21 March 1395, see TNA E30/1232.
[25] C. de Pizan, The
Book of Peace, ed. K. Green, C. Mews and J. Pinder (University Park, PA,
2008), 63.
[26] C. de Pizan, The
Book of Peace, 59–60.
[27] Parisian Journal,
252.
[28] AN, JJ 104, no. 231:
cited by Wright, Knights and Peasants, 51–2; Autrand, ‘The
Peacemakers and the State’, 252–3.
[29] Parisian Journal,
290.
[30] B. Ditcham, ‘The
Employment of Foreign Mercenary Troops in the French Royal Armies, 1415–1470’,
unpub. PhD thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1979), 229–60.
[31] This can be seen
throughout the Chroniques, but is perhaps most notable in the
reminiscences of the mercenary captain, the Bascot de Mauléon: Froissart:
Chronicles, ed. and trans. Brereton, 280–94. G. Pépin, ‘Towards a Rehabilitation
of Froissart’s Credibility: The Non-Fictious Bascot de Mauléon’, The
Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century, ed. A. R. Bell and A. Curry
(Woodbridge, 2011), 175–90.
[32] De
Mézières, Letter to King Richard II, 14.
[33] De Mézières, Letter
to King Richard II, 93–7, 139.
[34] De Mézières, Letter
to King Richard II, 86–7, 92. On de Mézières’ role, see further Michael
Hanly, ‘Philippe de Mézières and the Peace Movement’, Philippe de
Mézières and his Age, ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Petkov, 61–82; A. Curry,
‘War or Peace? Philippe de Mézières, Richard II and Anglo-French
Diplomacy’, ibid., 295–320.
[35] Vale, Origins
of the Hundred Years War, 14.
[36]
Rymer, Foedera, I, ii, 794; Prestwich, Edward I, 328–9.
[37] Rymer, Foedera,
II, ii, 150, 153–4. Philippe VI formally took the cross at a great ceremony in
the Pré-aux-Clercs outside the abbey of St Germain (Paris) on 2 October 1333.
See C. J. Tyerman, ‘Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, EHR,
100 (1985), 25–52; E. Déprez, Les préliminaires de la Guerre de Cent
Ans. La Papauté, la France et l’Angleterre, 1328–1342 (Paris, 1902),
127–35; Sumption, Trial by Battle, 117–18, 132–3, 135–6, 155–8;
Vale, Origins, 257–8; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade,
17–19, 34.
[38] See, for example, M.
Keen, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade’, English
Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W.
Sherborne (London, 1983), 45–61; A. Luttrell, ‘The Crusade in the Fourteenth
Century’, Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Hale et al.
(London, 1965), 122–54.
[39] N. Housley, The
Avignon Papacy and the Crusades (Oxford, 1986). On the Alexandrian
crusade of 1365, see A. S. Atiya, ‘The Fourteenth Century’, A History
of the Crusades, III: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,
ed. K. M. Setton and H. W. Hazard (Madison, WI, 1975), 3–26; P. Edbury, ‘The
Crusading Policy of King Peter I of Cyprus’,The Eastern Mediterranean Lands
in the Period of Crusades, ed. P. M. Holt (Warminster, 1977), 90–105.
[40] N. Housley, ‘Pro
deo et patria mori: Sanctified Patriotism in Europe 1400–1600’, War
and Competition between States, ed. P. Contamine (Oxford, 2000), 221–8,
esp. 221–2; N. Housley, ‘France, England, and the “National Crusade”’,
1302–1386’, France and the British Isles in the Middle Ages and Renaissance:
Essays by Members of Girton College, Cambridge in Memory of Ruth Morgan,
ed. G. Jondorf and D. N. Dumville (Woodbridge, 1991), 183–98; Tyerman, ‘Philip
VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, 52.
[41] R. Vaughan, Philip
the Bold (Woodbridge, new edn, 2002), 59, 79.
[42] For
descriptions of the English in this fashion, see Gesta Henrici Quinti,
48, 151: ‘God Himself, gracious and merciful to His people’ (suo populo);
‘God’s chosen people’ (populum dei electrum). See further M. Harvey,
‘Ecclesia Anglicana, cui ecclesiastes noster christus vos prefecit: The Power
of the Crown in the English Church during the Great Schism’, Religion
and National Identity, ed. S. Mews (Oxford, 1982), 230; A. Curry, ‘War,
Peace and National Identity in the Hundred Years War’, Thinking War,
Peace and World Orders in European History, ed. A. Hartmann and B. Heuser
(London, 2001), 145.
[43] E. C. Caldwell, ‘The
Hundred Years War and National Identity’, Inscribing the Hundred Years
War in French and English Cultures, ed. D. N. Baker (Albany, NY, 2000),
238–41.
[44] Gesta Henrici
Quinti, 110, 120, 146.
[45] The ‘Letter’ was
circulated widely and copied into various Burgundian, French and German
chronicles: Joan of Arc: La Pucelle, ed. and trans. C. Taylor
(Manchester, 2006), 74–6; D. A. Fraoli, Joan of Arc: The Early Debate (Woodbridge,
2000), 58, 71, 74, 119.
[46] C. de Pizan, Ditié
de Jehanne d’Arc, ed. A. J. Kennedy and K. Varty (Oxford, 1977); C. de
Pizan, The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life; with An Epistle to the
Queen of France; and Lament on the Evils of the Civil War, ed. and trans.
J. A. Wisman (New York, 1984); C. de Pizan, The Book of Peace, 27.
[47] Gesta Henrici
Quinti, 100–12; Allmand, Henry V, 409–13; C. L.
Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford,
1913), 34.
[48] See C. Given-Wilson,
ed., ‘Henry V: Parliament of 1420, Text and Translation’, PROME,
items 1, 25. See also D. McCulloch and E. D. Jones, ‘Lancastrian Politics, the
French War, and the Rise of the Popular Element’, Speculum, 58
(1983), 100.
[49] The Chronicle of
Adam Usk, 1377–1421, ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), 271,
entry for 1421.
[50] G. L. Harriss,
‘Marmaduke Lumley and the Exchequer Crisis of 1446–9’, Aspects of Late
Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J. R. Lander, ed. J.
G. Rowe (Toronto, 1986), 143–78.
[51] The Libelle of
Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the use of Sea-power, 1436, ed. G. Warner
(Oxford, 1926). It has been suggested that Lydgate may have had a hand in
the Libelle’s composition: Griffiths, Reign of King Henry
VI, 236–7. See also J. Scattergood, ‘The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: The
Nation and its Place’, Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on
Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. H. Cooney (Dublin 2001), 28–49; S.
Rose, The Medieval Sea (London, 2007), 120; N. A. M.
Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, I: 660–1649 (London,
2004), 152.
[52] Lydgate’s Troy
Book (1420) and Siege of Thebes (c.1422)
referred to the treaty of Troyes and peace between England and France. Lydgate
wrote ‘On the Prospect of Peace’ prior to Suffolk’s mission to France to secure
a marriage alliance for Henry VI: Wright, Political Poems and Songs,
II, 209–15, and ‘On the Truce of 1444’, ibid., 215–20; McCulloch
and Jones, ‘Lancastrian Politics’, 112.
[53] Lydgate, ‘A Praise of
Peace’, ll.117–84: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N.
MacCracken (London, 1934), 786–91.
[54] Harriss, Shaping
the Nation, 576–7.
[55] B. M. Cron, ‘The Duke
of Suffolk, the Angevin Marriage, and the Ceding of Maine, 1445’, Journal
of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 92–3.
[56] J. Watts, ‘Pole,
William de la, First Duke of Suffolk (1396–1450)’, ODNB (online
edn, 2004).
[57] Paston Letters,
ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1872), I, no. 103; M. Keen, ‘The End of the Hundred
Years War: Lancastrian France and Lancastrian England’, England and her
Neighbours, ed. Jones and Vale, 297, 307.
[58] Rymer, Foedera,
V, iii, 65; M. A. Hicks, ‘Edward IV’s Brief Treatise and the
Treaty of Picquigny of 1475’, Historical Research, 83 (2009),
253–65.
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