[Transcript]
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Season 4 Supplemental, 2000 Years of Anglo-French Relations, part II
Welcome back for part 2 of our brisk jaunt through 2000 years of history. If you missed last week’s episode, we covered the history of England and France from their days as Roman provinces, up until the late 1200s, when Philip III was on the throne of France and Edward I had just inherited the kingdom of England.
The 14th century is where things really start to get heated in the ongoing rivalry between England and France, so let’s pick up where we left off.
In 1274, after Edward I had been King of England for about two years, he finally arrived in England. He focused at first on his neighbors sharing the Isle of Britain with England, namely, Wales and Scotland. Wales had been quasi-independent for some time, but its lords were intermittently doing battle with English lords over the centuries.
In 1282, Edward I asserted dominance over Wales, and from that time forward, it was essentially a province of England. In 1301 the king’s eldest son, also named Edward, was invested as the Prince of Wales, a title that had previously been claimed by a native Welshman. The tradition continues to this day. After Queen Elizabeth II died and Charles, Prince of Wales became King Charles III, his eldest son William was invested as the Prince of Wales. If the monarchy lasts long enough to see William crowned as William V, his eldest son George will become the Prince of Wales. And so on, and so forth.
With Wales under the English boot, Edward I turned to Scotland, which was far more of an independent country than Wales, and had its own monarchy. When the line of succession failed in 1290, Edward asserted overlordship and had himself recognized as “lord superior” by the Scottish guardians of the realm. This kicked off several decades worth of fighting between the Scots and the English, and is the plot of the movie Braveheart. If you’ve seen it, Edward I is the evil, old English king played by Patrick McGoohan. The Scots turned to the French, already England’s traditional foe, for help with their struggle against Edward I.
Edward I didn’t live to see the Scots subdued. He died in 1307, and his son succeeded him as Edward II. Edward II had a French wife, Isabella, who was the daughter of King Philip IV of France. She was married to Edward in 1308, when she was only 12 (the minimum canonical age at which a girl could be married). Edward was 24 at the time. Isabella was driven, ambitious, and intelligent—qualities that were not exactly admired in women at the time. The fact that her nickname in England was the She-Wolf of France probably tells you what you need to know about the English attitude toward her.
Edward II was a notoriously weak king. He had none of the martial skill of his father, and he allowed himself to be influenced by sycophantic supporters (some of whom were his lovers, because Edward II was either gay or bisexual, which definitely wasn’t accepted during this time period).
To make a very long story incredibly short, Isabella eventually deposed Edward II with the help of her lover, Roger Mortimer, one of the most powerful barons in England. They kept Edward prisoner, installed Isabella’s son Edward on the throne as Edward III, and eventually probably killed Edward II. (I say probably because there’s still some uncertainty surrounding his eventual death, but it’s more likely than not that he was assassinated.)
This happened in 1327. Previously, in 1314, the English had been soundly defeated by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn. Once Isabella and her lover, Mortimer, came to power, they negotiated peace with the Scots, signing the Treaty of Northampton in 1328, which recognized Robert Bruce as King of Scotland and renounced any claims of English overlordship. It was a huge win for Scotland but a humiliation for England.
Edward III was a little bit like the second coming of his grandfather, Edward I. He was only a child when his mother installed him on the throne, and she dominated him during his youth. But once he came of age, he was incredibly strong-willed and successful in battle. When he took power for himself in 1330 at age 18, he disavowed the Treaty of Northampton and war between England and Scotland started back up again. The French inserted themselves into the conflict once again by offering refuge to the Scottish king David II in 1334. By the way, Edward III also had Roger Mortimer executed and imprisoned his mother, Isabella, for a short time. He eventually let her out of prison, but she lived the rest of her life essentially under house arrest.
Meanwhile, the English sovereign was still required to pay homage to the French sovereign for holding Gascony/Aquitaine. The Capetian line of kings in France went through a rough patch in the early 1300s. Four kings in a row died between 1314 and 1328: first Philip IV and then each of his three sons, none of whom had any male heirs. When the last of these, Charles IV, died without a living son, the line of succession was thrown into question for the first time since 987 when Hugh Capet had become king.
Because of the Salic Law, a daughter of a king could not inherit the throne. But it was an open question whether a man could claim the French throne by way of his mother. The reason this was important is that Edward III’s mother was Isabella of France, who had been the daughter of French King Philip IV, and was the sister of the three most recent kings of France.
The nobles of France decided that a man could not, in fact, claim the throne through his mother. Therefore, they settled on Charles IV’s closest male relative, his cousin, Philip, who became Philip VI and established the House of Valois. In a fun twist, Charles IV’s wife Joan was actually pregnant when he died, and obviously no one knew whether it was a boy or a girl. Until Queen Joan gave birth, Philip merely served as regent. But then Joan gave birth to a girl, and Philip was promptly declared king and crowned at Reims in May 1328.
Every time a new French monarch was crowned, all the king’s vassals were required to pay homage for their territories. Apparently being called to do this four times in 14 years was too much for Edward III, and in 1337, he officially claimed the throne of France by right of his mother, Isabella of France. And this is what started a little thing called The Hundred Years’ War. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
The Hundred Years’ War actually lasted a little longer than a hundred years. It was waged off and on from 1337 until 1453, and it is the foundation of the bitter hatred between the French and English. They had been adversaries, as I hope I’ve made clear, for several hundred years already. But The Hundred Years’ War really cemented them as mortal enemies.
We definitely do not have time to do a deep dive into The Hundred Years’ War, so I’ll just start with this summary of some highlights by Ralph A. Griffiths in Chapter 4 of The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain:
“To begin with, the wars (for this was a disjointed series of conflicts rather than one war) were fought by sieges in northern France in 1338-40; then there was more intensive campaigning by pincer movements through the French provinces of Brittany, Gascony, and Normandy in 1341-7 (resulting in the English victory at Crécy and the capture of Calais). This was followed by bold marches or chevauchées by Edward III’s eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, from Gascony in 1355-6 (culminating in the great victory at Poitiers) and by the king himself in 1359 to Rheims, the traditional coronation seat of French kings. The renewal of war in Castile (1367) inaugurated a period of more modest and fitful campaigning in Portugal, Flanders, and France itself, with both sides gradually exhausting themselves.”
The battles weren’t contained to the Continent though, and the French sacked several port cities in England in the 1360s and 1370s. There was a great deal of financial damage to England as well. Wars have to be paid for, and the way to pay for war is via taxes. The lucrative wine and wool trades were also disrupted by the war. As Ralph Griffiths writes, “The financial outlay was prodigious and tolerated so long as the war was successful; but as the margin of England’s military advantage narrowed after 1369, so the government resorted to newer and more desperate expedients, including poll taxes.”
One of the many lulls in The Hundred Years’ War was due to the outbreak of plague, the great Black Death that began in 1348. By the time it was finished, around one-third of the population of Europe had died. King Philip VI of France died in 1350, but not of plague. He was succeded by his son John, who became John II. In 1356, King John was captured by Edward the Black Prince at the battle of Poitiers, a monumentally humiliating turn of events for the French. John was taken to London, and France was in the hands of John’s 19-year-old son Charles.
In 1360, after making no further gains in the war, England and France signed the Treaty of Bretigny, which released King John on payment of a staggeringly high ransom, and confirmed English control of Gascony, Poitou, Calais, La Rochelle, and other towns and counties. In exchange, Edward agreed to renounce his claim to the French throne, as well as claims to Normandy, Maine, and Anjou. King John died in 1364, and his son succeeded him as Charles V. The Hundred Years’ War was quiet for the rest of the 14th century.
In 1377, Edward III died, after a stunningly long 50-year reign. Unfortunately, his son and heir, the Black Prince, had died the year before. This left the prince’s 10-year-old son, Richard, as the heir to the throne. Richard ascended as Richard II in 1377, but a council was set up to rule in his name. In 1389, when Richard was 22, he declared himself old enough to rule in his own name, and in 1396 he married Isabelle of Valois, a daughter of King Charles VI of France. This marriage sealed a treaty between England and France, and further cemented the temporary lull in hostilities during The Hundred Years’ War.
King Charles V of France had died in 1380 and was succeeded by his son, Charles VI, who was only 11 at the time. A regency council ruled in his name until he came of age, but when he was 23 years old, in 1392, it became very apparent that the king was suffering from some sort of mental illness. He had periods of lucidity, which prevented him from being removed as king, but he was incapable of governing, so another regency council was installed, consisting of Charles’s wife, Queen Isabeau, and his uncles, Philip the Duke of Burgundy and Louis the Duke of Orléans.
England had its own succession crisis in 1399 when Richard II was deposed without having a male heir. For nearly 200 years, since the death of King John in 1216, the English throne had passed from father to son or grandson. And now, much like in France when the Capetian line failed, the throne was going to pass to a cousin.
Richard II had been the son of Edward III’s eldest son, the Black Prince. But Edward III had four other sons who lived to adulthood: Lionel, Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of Lancaster; Edmund, Duke of York; and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. To make things extra confusing, men with titles were generally referred to by their title, so John was known simply as Lancaster and Edmund was known as York, etc.. Lancaster’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, claimed the throne after Richard II was deposed, thus establishing the House of Lancaster. He became Henry IV.
Meanwhile, France was on the verge of devolving into civil war due to battles between King Charles VI’s uncles, the Dukes of Burgundy and Orléans. When the Duke of Burgundy died in 1404 and was succeeded by his son John the Fearless, John promptly assassinated his uncle the Duke of Orléans. The new Duke of Orléans was only 14 when he inherited his assassinated father’s title, but he vowed to avenge his father’s death.
And this was the situation in France when, over in England, Henry IV died in 1413 and his son succeeded him to the throne as Henry V. Henry V thought it was a great time to take advantage of the disarray in the French royal house, so he sent an envoy to the French court with a list of outrageous demands: give him the French crown, give him back Normandy, Maine and Anjou, give him properties in Burgundy, finish paying the ransom from when King John was captured back in 1356, and give him the French king’s daughter Catherine as his wife. Naturally, the French said no to all of this, which was just fine by Henry, because he really just wanted an excuse to kick-start The Hundred Years’ War again.
In August 1415, the English landed at Harfleur in France and began a siege that lasted five weeks. They succeeded in subduing the town, but at the cost of nearly one-third of the English army, thanks to disease. In this depleted state, the English army headed for Calais, which was 150 miles away through hostile terrain. They met the French army in October near Agincourt and pulled off a surprising victory. It was surprising because the English were tired and bedraggled, and the French were fresh and energetic. And the French outnumbered the English quite dramatically. But after a week of rain, the field where the battle took place was a quagmire, and the French cavalry literally sank into the mud before being mowed down by the English archers. It was another disgraceful loss for the French, but at least this time their king wasn’t captured. I mean, he was still insane and of no real use to anyone, but at least he was safe.
Many French nobles lost their lives at Agincourt, but not John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, who had kept himself and his troops far from the battle. So much for the nickname. John marched on Paris, declared himself protector of the insane Charles VI, and caused the king’s son and heir to flee. But things didn’t end well for old Fearless. In 1419, he was assassinated while attending a meeting with the heir to the throne (known in France as the Dauphin). The new Duke of Burgundy was Philip the Good, and in 1420, he entered into a very fateful treaty with England, called the Treaty of Troyes.
Under its terms, the Burgundians allied themselves with England. The Duke of Burgundy’s sister Anne was to be married to Henry V’s brother, the Duke of Bedford. But more importantly, King Charles VI’s daughter Catherine was to be betrothed to Henry V’s infant son, and that child would be made the legitimate successor to the French throne when Charles VI died.
In 1422, King Henry V of England and King Charles VI of France died within a few months of each other, making Henry’s son Henry VI of England and Henry II of France, a truly stunning turn of events, especially considering that young Henry was not even a year old yet.
Charles VI’s eldest son, the Dauphin, was now claimed by some to be the rightful king of France as Charles VII. And here’s where a young lady you may have heard of enters the scene: Joan of Arc. To make a long story incredibly short, in the spring of 1429, Joan instigated a meeting with Charles VII having been guided to do so by heavenly voices. The English were laying siege to Orléans, and Joan convinced Charles that they could successfully lift the siege, which they did in May 1429. Charles was then officially crowned as King Charles VII at Reims, which was the historic and traditional site of French coronations. But the country was still in disarray, and the Burgundians were still allied with the English.
In April 1430, nine-year-old King Henry VI was brought to Calais by his uncle the Duke of Bedford. And in December 1431, Henry was crowned king of France in Paris, at Notre Dame Cathedral. He was the only English king to ever be crowned King of France. Henry did not remain in France long, and he had little support from the people or nobility of France. In fact, by 1435, even the Burgundians had soured on their English alliance. They made peace with Charles VII, and in 1436, Charles entered Paris to officially begin his reign as King of France.
The remainder of The Hundred Years’ War did not go well for the English. After the deaths of King Henry V and the Duke of Bedford, and especially after the defection of their Burgundian allies and the official installation of King Charles VII in France, the English people grew tired of the enormous costs of defending territories in Continental France. In 1445, Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, who was a niece of the French Queen, but that failed to produce a lasting peace.
In 1449, the French invaded Normandy, defeating the English at Rouen and Formigny. By the end of 1450, Normandy was fully occupied by the French. Then the French turned their attention to Gascony/Aquitaine, which had been English since 1154 when Eleanor of Aquitaine’s husband Henry became King Henry II of England. In 1453, at the battle of Castillon, the French defeated the English and reclaimed Gascony. It was a brutal loss for the English, and left them with only Calais. This was the last real military engagement of The Hundred Years’ War.
Many of the English blamed the Lancastrians in general, and Henry VI in particular, for the loss of their Continental holdings. Henry VI had some sort of mental breakdown after the defeat at Castillon, which left him incapacitated for 17 months.
This was the beginning of what’s known as the Wars of the Roses. It was essentially a civil war between the House of Lancaster (represented by the red rose) and the House of York (represented by the white rose). If you recall what I said earlier in this episode, King Edward III’s sons were the Dukes of Clarence, Lancaster, York, and Gloucester. Those sons of King Edward were all dead now, but the titles lived on in their heirs. When the Duke of Lancaster’s son Henry Bolingbroke claimed the throne and became Henry IV, there was an equally good claim to the throne by the Earl of March, who was a descendent of the Duke of Clarence, who was the older brother of the Duke of Lancaster.
Through a complicated series of dynastic intermarriages that I absolutely don’t want to get into, by the time of Henry VI’s mental breakdown, the current Duke of York, named Richard, had a claim to the English throne going back to his ancestor Edmund, Duke of York, fourth son of Edward III, AND a claim going back to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III. So by some complicated dynastic math, that trumped Henry VI’s claim, which went back to Edward III’s third son, John, Duke of Lancaster.
To simplify another incredibly complicated series of events, a number of battles took place between various factions. Richard the Duke of York was killed in battle, but his son, Edward Duke of York claimed the English crown in 1461. King Henry VI, his wife Margaret, and their young son were all on the run. Henry was captured and imprisoned in 1465, but Margaret and the boy found refuge first in Scotland and then in France.
Meanwhile, in 1461, King Charles VII of France died and was succeeded by his son, Louis XI. Margaret (who, remember, was a niece of the French dowager queen, and therefore a cousin of Louis XI), enlisted the aid of the French, and along with some of the most powerful nobles of England, staged another coup and deposed Edward IV. So Henry VI was reinstated to the throne in 1470.
But Edward IV was still at large, and he turned to his allies in Burgundy. Edward invaded England in 1471, killed the powerful Earl of Warwick in battle, and captured Queen Margaret. Henry and Margaret’s son was also killed in the battle (he was 18 by this point), and then Henry VI was murdered later the same night, leaving Edward IV once again king, but this time without the threat of the deposed king hanging over his head. Edward IV reigned in England until 1483.
No doubt the French were all delighted to help sow the seeds of disarray in England. If the English were fighting themselves, they didn’t have time to think about fighting the French. But the French weren’t exactly sitting quietly on their side of the Channel. As you’ve probably surmised from all the times that the Duke of Burgundy has allied himself with the English in one way or another, Burgundy was the chief Continental rival of the King of France.
Louis XI was known as le Rusé (the Cunning) and as l’araignée universelle (the universal spider)—hardly the most complimentary nicknames. Charles, the Duke of Burgundy, had dreams of turning Burgundy into an independent kingdom, but Louis was determined not to let that happen. They were essentially at war with each other in the early 1470s, until Charles was killed in a battle with the Duke of Lorraine. Because Charles had no male heirs, the territory of Burgundy reverted to the French crown. So in the end Louis won.
And Louis won doubly via a treaty with Edward IV of England in 1475. After Burgundy supported Edward’s invasion of England and overthrow of Henry VI, Edward decided to press his advantage and also claim the crown of France. He figured that France’s enemy Burgundy would support him in this, but he was wrong. When Edward invaded France in 1475, Duke Charles refused to let him pass through Burgundian territory to reach Reims. But Louis was more than happy to negotiate with Edward.
At Picquigny, the two monarchs met—one of the few times in history when the English king and the French king actually met face-to-face, I might add. They agreed to a seven-year truce, Louis paid Edward to drop his claim to the French throne, Louis also paid a ransom to free his cousin, the former Queen Margaret, from her imprisonment in England, and they agreed that Edward’s daughter Elizabeth would marry Louis’s son and heir Charles when Elizabeth was old enough.
And that was the official end of The Hundred Years’ War. It ended with bribery, rather than military victory.
The marriage between Edward’s daughter Elizabeth and the heir to the French throne, Charles, never happened. Charles was actually already betrothed to a young lady named Margaret of Austria (whom he also did not marry) so I don’t know what Edward and Louis were thinking when they signed that treaty. Elizabeth would eventually be married to a young man named Henry Tudor, and that brings us to the second phase of the Wars of the Roses.
Edward IV died in 1483, leaving his 12-year-old son Edward as his heir. But young Edward V was not to reign for long. In June his uncle, Richard, Duke of York, imprisoned Edward and his younger brother in the Tower of London, where they died under suspicious circumstances, almost certainly murdered at the order of their uncle. Richard claimed the crown for himself, becoming Richard III.
This did not sit well with the rest of the English nobility and great landed magnates. The rebellion was led primarily by two factions: (1) the Duke of Buckingham, who was a descendant of Edward III’s fifth son, Thomas the Duke of Gloucester; and (2) Henry Tudor, who was the great-great grandson of Edward III’s third son, John the Duke of Lancaster. But he was descended from Lancaster via his mother, who was Lancaster’s great-granddaughter from his second marriage. All those Henrys who made up the Lancastrian dynasty had been descended from the Duke of Lancaster’s first marriage. So the Tudor family was a separate branch off the Lancaster tree, if that makes sense.
To once again simplify an incredibly complex series of events, Henry Tudor killed King Richard III in August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth and declared himself king. If Richard hadn’t already killed his nephews, the sons of Edward IV, maybe one of them would have been restored to the Crown. But they were dead. And Richard’s only son was dead. And Henry had the support of Edward IV’s widow, the former queen, and her powerful family. So Henry Tudor became King Henry VII and kicked off the Tudor dynasty.
A few months after being crowned king, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, the only surviving child of Edward IV. This had all been part of the plan, and it united the houses of York and Lancaster (even though Henry was technically a Tudor and only distantly a Lancaster). And with that the Wars of the Roses were over.
Coincidentally, King Louis XI had also died in 1483, but it did not throw France into a succession crisis. He was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII, who spent most of his reign invading various Italian principalities and accomplishing very little. But when he died in 1498, he had no heirs, because all of his children had predeceased him. So the French throne passed to Louis, Duke of Orléans, a second cousin of Louis XI. Louis of Orléans became Louis XII, establishing the Orléans branch of the House of Valois.
And this seems like a good spot to leave off for this week. Next week we’ll wrap up this little detour into European history and we’ll finally see how England and France went from bitter enemies to allies. But first we have to get through at least five more wars.
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull.
