Philip “The Fortunate” (1328-1350)
The House of Valois begins with Philip of Valois, or Philip VI (“The Fortunate”), who marks an underwhelming start to a new dynasty. Per John Julius Norwich, “The Capetians had been on the whole excellent kings. They had steadily built up France, transforming it from a Carolingian custard into a nation. Philip, however, perhaps conscious that he was not of royal birth – his father Charles of Valois, a younger brother of Philip IV, had striven all his life to gain a throne for himself but had never succeeded – seemed principally interested in matters of feudal prestige, particularly where they concerned the young Edward III who was, curiously enough, his nearest male relative” (67). After being summoned by Philip to pay homage for Aquitaine, Edward offered such vague, ambiguous words that it became a subject of contention between the two kings for years to come. Edward believed himself to be the rightful heir to the French throne –he maintained that as a nephew of the late king, he had a better claim per the Salic law than Philip as a mere cousin of the king. Thus, from Edward’s coronation onward, he prepared for war (but only after defeating the pesky traitor, Roger Mortimer, who was busily enriching himself with castles and titles before he was finally hanged at Tyburn, his body left swinging from the gallows for two full days).
At first, relations were fairly cordial between England and France, however the areas of Aquitaine and Flanders remained in dispute. The latter was due to England’s principal product –wool—which was used in the successful Flemish weaving industry. Flanders, under the rule of Louis de Nevers, was subject to Philip but privately loyal to Edward. The next conflict came with Count Robert of Artois who claimed he had been wrongfully dispossessed of his lands, and in attempting to recover them, he resorted to forgery and fled to England. But when Philip demanded the extradition of Robert, Edward refused (for Robert had become a valuable advisor by that point). In response, Philip confiscated Aquitaine and Edward called upon Philip to surrender the throne of France. It was the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War.
However, the Hundred Years’ War was hardly one singly contiguous war, but rather a series of conflicts waged between 1337 and 1453 by the House of Plantagenet and the House of Valois over control of France. Edward established his base with family members at Antwerp before invading French territory in 1339 and utterly massacring the local population –ravaging the countryside, laying waste to villagers, and burning convents before raping all the nuns. Such was the sheer viciousness of the English. A single chivalric combat was agreed to until Philip, perhaps acting on the advice of his uncle Robert of Anjou King of Naples (a noted astrologer), had second thoughts and returned to Paris. Then in 1340, Flanders recognized Edward’s claim to the French crown, and the battle turned to a naval conflict across the channel. Despite being significantly outmanned, Edward’s fleet prevailed at the Battle of Sluys and utterly decimated the French Navy with the use of archers. This was the era of the ascendant English longbowman –first embraced by Edward’s grandfather Edward I “Longshanks” during his campaigns in Wales. At any rate, it was said that the fish drank so much French blood in the harbor that they were granted the power to speak French.
At any rate, fighting continued on and off for five years, before the English made landing in 1346 about ten miles north of Utah Beach, where centuries later the American 4th division would land on D-Day on June 6, 1944. From here, the English destroyed several unwalled towns before the French Army came to the rescue at Rouen and both armies then faced off in August at Crecy, twelve miles north of Abbeville on the little River Maye. Here, the French Army consisted 8,000 men, supplemented by 4,000 hired Genoese crossbowmen and more mercenaries from Poland and Denmark, while it was Edward (and his son the Black Prince) who were to prove victorious in a resounding victory. After a day and night of fighting, morning fog lifted to reveal nearly a third of the French Army destroyed –and the English continued their bloody warpath, slaying unasuming churchmen and civilians alike. Under the cover of nightfall, King Philip managed to slip away to the castle of Labroye. Then in 1347, England conducted an extensive siege and conquest of Calais (the city would not be reconquered until the mid-16th century).
Shortly thereafter in 1348, the Black Death struck and within ten years it killed approximately one-third of all people living between India and Iceland.
John II “The Good” (1350-1364)
In 1350, King Philip VI died and was succeeded by his son, John II “The Good” –“…an incorrigible and impecunious romantic, whose dreams of chivalric derring-do were to betray him again and again.” He led a variety of battles against the Black Prince in France, and in 1346, they met again in Poitiers and, as in Crecy, the French lacked longbowmen and thus were completely destroyed. The Black Prince, the teenage dauphin, captured King John II, though he treated him with the utmost respect and honor as he escorted the king to London. Under the Treaty of Brétigny, the king was released in order to raise funds for his ransom while his son Louis was to be kept at Calais, however in 1363, Louis escaped, much to his father’s chagrin. Against his advisor’s pleas, King John decided to voluntarily return to England as the honorable thing to do –”if good faith were banned from the Earth, she ought to find asylum in the hearts of kings.” He left his son Charles Duke of Normandy as regent of France in his absence, but within only a few months, John was found dead of “an unknown illness.” He was given a magnificent funeral at St. Paul’s at Edward’s urging before his body was returned to France.
Charles V “The Wise” (1364-1380)
Charles V “The Wise” succeeded his father in 1364. “The former dauphin, now Charles V, may not have possessed all his father’s sense of honour, but was a far more intelligent man and a far better king” (81). His most substantial achievement was instituting a standing paid army to support the long-neglected peasantry in the Middle Ages.
Charles VI “The Mad” & “The Beloved” (1380-1422)
He was succeeded by his son Charles VI in 1380 who was quickly revealed to be “hopelessly insane.” He began his reign at the age of eleven while a Council of Regents was entrusted with official duties, among the twelve regents was the king’s uncle Philip (“The Bold”) Duke of Burgundy, and Louis Duke of Orleans –two mutually hostile noblemen.
At any rate, King Charles’s paranoid lunacy first began to show signs when he was twenty-three in 1392 while riding through a forest with his knights. A young page accidentally fell asleep and dropped his royal lance leading the young king to suddenly leap up in a berserk fit and start murdering his own knights while shouting, “Forward against the tritors! They want to deliver me to the enemy!” From that time forward, he was periodically visited by bouts of insanity –sometimes he forgot who he was and had no idea he was king, other times he believed he was St. George, or that he was entirely made of glass and risked being shattered at any moment. While Charles could not be legitimately removed from his throne, it was obvious that a new regency would need to be appointed for the remainder of his reign. A new council was presided over by Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, alongside her likely lover, Louis Duke of Orleans (some of the queen’s twelve children may have been the result of Louis’s notorious debauches). Duke Philip was understandably irate at all of this, but after his death in 1404 revenge would be left to his son John “The Fearless” as open conflict broke out between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans until Louis of Orleans was murdered by a pack of assassins on the streets of Paris. He was succeeded by his fourteen-year-old son Charles of Orleans who vowed vengeance upon the House of Burgundy.
No one was more delighted by a civil war in France than Henry V of England when he succeeded his father in 1413. He sent his uncle Thomas Beaufort to issue a proclamation of absurd demands upon the King of France –the annexation of Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and all other demands agreed to in the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 as well as half of Provence through the castles of Beaufort and Nogent through the Lancastrian inheritance of his grandfather John of Gaunt; the immediate payment of all arrears owed by France for the ransom of John II (1.6 million gold crowns); the hand of Princess Catherine with a dowry of 2 million crowns; and of course, the crown itself. France, being wholly unprepared for war, attempted to negotiate these demands, but Henry simply used it as a pretext for war in the hopes of gaining his much-desired French crown.
After sailing across the Channel, the soldiers on both sides were met with miserable cases of dysentery and limited food. Henry quickly conquered Harfleur and issued a challenge to the Louis the dauphin of France, the nineteen-year-old son of the mad King Charles, to a single combat fight to determine the true successor to Charles, but the dauphin was a known debauchee and he caught dysentery which killed him within the year (1415). By now, about a third of Henry’s army had succumbed to disease and thus marching on Paris was out of the question, but sill Henry pushed forward to Calais. The two armies met in the open country northwest of Arras, between the neighboring villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt. Things looked grim for Henry, England was greatly outnumbered, perhaps five or six to one, and his men were exhausted from two weeks of marching. Thus Henry attempted to sue for peace over Harfleur (an act which is often overlooked by historians and poets like Shakespeare) but it was mostly an effort to gain a day of rest for his soldiers. Then came a week of rain which finally let up on Friday October 25th, the Feast of St. Crispin, leaving the open field a waterlogged morass. On that day, dawning his surcoat with the three leopards of England with the fleur-de-lys of France and helmet encircled with gold, Henry took command of his army. Three waves of French soldiers slogged through mud toward the English, but each was quickly cut down by the superior English longbowmen and men-at-arms (somehow, despite the lessons of the past few battles, France still had not adopted the longbow) and largely saved by the weather, French soldiers began to turn tail and fled.
“It was at this point, with victory already assured, that the king gave the order which in the eyes of posterity has constituted the darkest stain on his reputation. Only the highest-ranking noblemen –for whom valuable ransoms could be expected—were to be spared; all other prisoners, he ordered, were to be instantly put to death. What prompted such a reaction, utterly contrary as it was to all the traditions of warfare? Was there, as it was later claimed, some sudden movement on the part of the French cavalry that led Henry to suspect an attack from the rear? It is possible, though no such attack was ever made. Many of his men refused point-blank to obey the order, even after he had threatened to hang all of those who held back; at last he was obliged to designate two hundred of his own archers specifically for the task. Such, alas, was the aftermath if the victory that has gone down as one if the most glorious in English history” (89).
By mid-afternoon the French losses were staggering. Some 20,000 men died, plus 7,000 deserters, and many noblemen were either killed or imprisoned. In contrast, English losses ran about 1,600 and the only two noblemen who died were the Earl of Suffolk (whose father died at Harfleur) and the Duke of York, who was overweight and apparently died of a heart attack.
“Given the state of the ground and the tactics chosen by the French, the victory at Agincourt was a foregone conclusion; but there were other reasons why the battle ended as it did. The English army was united under a single commander, who had already proved himself a superb leader of men and who himself fought like a tiger throughout the battle, personally saving the life of his brother the Duke of Gloucester. The French on the other hand were split, with none of their generals in undisputed control and their command structure, such as it was, riven by divided loyalties. Moreover – and this must be repeated, since to us in retrospect it seems well-night inexplicable – despite their experience at Crecy and Poitiers they had still not accepted the superiority of the longbow and were consequently powerless against the English archers. For this alone, they deserved to lose – though they certainly did not deserve the unspeakable brutality they suffered after their defeat” (90).
The loss at Agincourt only added fire to the flaming rivalry between the Burgundians and the House of Orleans (now known as Armagnacs). In May 1418, John “The Fearless” captured Paris and proclaimed himself protector of the mad king (while being careful not ally himself with the invading English), though the following year he was betrayed an assassinated by an ally of the dauphin. His son, Philip “The Good,” then continued the civil war on the side of England, promising Henry the hand of Charles VI’s daughter Catherine.
“France’s situation had never been more desperate. As a free nation, she had almost ceased to exist. The civil war showed no sigs of stopping: Burgundians and Armagnacs were still at each other’s throats. Through his marriage, Henry had become not only regent, but heir to the throne. The dauphin was effectively in exile at Bourges; Bedford was governor in Paris. And when, in 1422, Henry and Charles died within three months of each other, it was the eight-month-old Henry VI of England wo was proclaimed King of France” (91).
House of Valois
- Philip VI “The Fortunate” (1328-1350)
- John II “The Good” (1350-1364)
- Charles V “The Wise” (1364-1380)
- Charles VI “The Mad” “The Beloved” (1380-1422)
For this reading I used John Julius Norwich’s A History of France (2018), one of his final books before his death.