That guy's got a squint

Detail of a miniature of the Comte de Bar and his men invading Champagne in summer 1297 on behalf of Bar's father-in-law, Edward I. Taken from the Grandes Chroniques de France, compiled between the 13th-15th century.

The image is probably late 14th century, as Bar's men are wearing the style of armour from that time. In 1297 they would have worn much less plate and bucket helms instead of visored helms. As for the sabatons and gorgets and pauldrons, don't even get me started. The droit de seigneur is upside down, the jupons clash with the haketons, the grass is too green, the sky is a funny colour, and that guy fourth from the right has got a squint. Unacceptable. Up with this sort of thing I put will not.

The League of Franche-Comté (2)

The League of Franche-Comté (2)

On 8 February 1297 Adolf of Nassau, King of Germany, assembled the nobles of Burgundy at Koblenz. These were Jean de Chalon-Arlay and his associates, those men who had refused to accept the count of Burgundy’s sale of his inheritance to the king of France, Philip le Bel. Instead they were loyal to the Holy Roman Empire and wished to hold their fiefs direct from Adolf.

Adolf rewarded his followers with lands taken from those Burgundians loyal to France. The count of Bar, Henri III, was given the fief of Guyot de Jonveille, and those confiscated from Jean de Bourgogne as far as Conflans in the châtellenie of Vesoul. In revenge Philip confiscated Bar’s townhouse in Paris and gave his lands in France to Charles of Valois. Tit-for-tat.

Two days earlier Henri had received subsidies from his father-in-law, Edward I, brought by the bishop of Coventry and Jean de Berwick. He was therefore a key member of the Anglo-German-Burgundian alliance against the French. On 6 May, he gave to Guillaume de Remoiville, one of his vassals, the land of Maxey-sur-Vaise on the express condition that Guillaume fought the king of France.

The League of Franche-Comté (1)

Otto IV, Count of Burgundy (1248-1302). His highly personalised style of armour is derived from a series of sketches commissioned by his wife for Otto's tomb in 1312, a decade after his death. The tomb hasn't survived, but the sketches have, so it appears Otto really did wear a metal lizard on his head.

Described as of weak character, spendthrift and debauched (sounds like fun), Otto had little interest in being a count and in 1295 sold Burgundy to Philip IV for a lump sum of 100,000 livres tournois and an annual fee of 10,000 livres in rents. This enabled him to live as Philip's pensioner at the French court, and be as debauched as he pleased with zero responsibility.

When the nobles of Franche-Comté (eastern Burgundy) learned that Otto had flogged his inheritance - and hence their independence - to the king of France, they formed a solemn league and covenant and declared they would never swear homage to Philip or his heirs, or give up their rights to the French crown.

A minor and pathetic figure

The town hall of Molières, a commune in the Tarn-et-Garrone department in the Occitanie region in southern France. 

Between 1286-94 Molières was held by Bertrand de Panissau, a knight of Périgord who also served the Plantagenet king-duke of Gascony as bailiff of Monpazier. When war with France broke out in 1294, Bernard and his family were taken prisoner by the French, only to escape and join the hundreds of Gascon exiles who fled to England.

Bernard, unkindly described as a ‘minor and rather pathetic figure’ by Charles Bémont, petitioned Edward I for compensation in May 1297. To boost his plea, he claimed to have mustered 4000 sergeants in English service service at Roquepine, Molières, Lalinde and Monpazier. He begged the king-duke for the writing-office of the provost of Ste Foy-la-Grande in the Agenais to be granted for life to one of his two sons, both unbeneficed clerks.

Edward declared himself ‘well content’ with Bernard’s service, and waived the need for proof of his claims. He was provided with compensation for his losses and eventually re-granted the bailliwick of Molières until he could recover his lands. Even then, the war had left Bernard so impoverished he would have sunk into destitution without an extra royal grant of 50 livres tournois. This sorely-tried individual vanished from the record in 1308; one of the many middling and lesser Gascon gentry who fell victim to the French occupation of 1294-1303.

No French please, we're Gascons

On 11 July 1302 the French suffered a shock defeat at Courtrai in Flanders, otherwise known as the Battle of the Golden Spurs. This was one of the great medieval battles nobody ever talks about (well, not very often…), since it showed how an army of mailed knights could be exterminated in open battle by urban militia on foot.

The news of the battle quickly reached Gascony, where much of the duchy had been under French occupation for eight years. At Bordeaux, the chief city and centre of the wine trade, it inspired the citizens to rise up and drive out the French garrison. Their ringleader was one Arnaud Caillau, who hated the French with a pathological intensity. When his fellow citizens tried to appeal to the king of France, he said to them:

“Why do you appeal from us to the French? We will kill you, and the king of France has so many things to do with the Flemings that he will not help you, and if a war begins and you are appellants, the English king will conquer Normandy and you will gain nothing unless you give up your appeal”.

Once the French were gone, Arnaud turned over Bordeaux to the English. A grateful Edward I made him Mayor of Bordeaux and receiver of the customs of the wine trade. This meant that all the profits passed through his hands, and probably stayed there. Arnaud showed his hatred of the French on other occasions. When confronted by a French lawyer, he tore out the man’s tongue and murdered him on the spot. When a French envoy came to Bordeaux, he made the man stand on a table and then tipped him out of a window, breaking both limbs. This particular Gascon clearly did not see himself as a part of a greater France.

As an aside, the quote above implies that Gascons such as Arnaud thought the English could still reconquer Normandy. This was never on the cards - Henry III, Edward I and Edward II had no ambitions in this vein - but their subjects in Gascony seem to have regarded it as a possibility.

The pic is of Flemish infantry, taken from the Florentine ‘Nuova Cronica’ and uploaded to Wikicommons, public domain.

Valour and courage

Enrique of Castile (1230-1303) was a younger brother of Alfonso X, King of Castile, and hence a brother-in-law of Edward I. His career shows the importance of Anglo-Castilian relations at this time.

Arms of Enrique of Castile

In his youth, after a failed plot against Alfonso, Enrique was obliged to seek refuge in England. He arrived in 1256 and was welcomed by Henry III; in return Enrique offered to lead troops to conquer Sicily on Henry’s behalf, but this plan fell through. In 1259 Enrique left England and ended up in Africa, where he took service with the Hafsid Emir of Tunisia, Muhammad al-Mustansir. To the shock of his Christian comrades, Enrique adopted the customs and dress of the Hafsid court. A sort of medieval Laurence of Arabia.

Enrique then made his way to Italy, where he fought against Charles of Anjou at the Battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268. He was captured and taken to Apulia in Sicily, where Charles had him exhibited to the public in a cage, loaded down with iron fetters. Outraged Castilian troubadors urged Edward I to secure Charles’s release. One of them, Austorc de Segret, warned the English king that if he failed, he would forfeit the respect of the French:

“Now Edward will need valour and courage if he wants to avenge Henry, who was unparalleled in wisdom and knowledge, and he was the very best of his kin. But if he now stays shamed in this matter, the French over here will leave him neither root nor branch nor well-armed forces, if his worth is stripped of merit”.

The Battle of Tagliacozzo

Another, Cerverí de Girona, called upon Edward to avenge Don Enrique and make war on his captors. The king preferred diplomacy, and spent the next 23 years lobbying for Charles’s release. At last, in 1291, Charles II of Sicily agreed to let his elderly prisoner go. The charter of release, which is held at the archives of Napoli, states that Charles explicitly agreed to do this at Edward’s request. Enrique’s release came too late for Eleanor, who had died the previous year.

Enrique must have been tough. He had survived decades of brutal imprisonment, and went home to serve as regent of Castile. The old man was suitably appreciative of his rescuer’s efforts: when the Anglo-French war broke out in 1294, he dispatched hundreds of knights of Castile to aid the English.

More bribes required

“Politics, politics, politics - yes!”, as Mel Brooks once said.

In June 1298 the diplomats of England and France laid their competing claims to Gascony before the pope, Boniface VIII. Philip IV brought against his vassal, Edward I, a charge of treason for having waged open war against him, his liege lord. As a result he demanded Gascony, his vassal’s fief, as a forfeit. The English lawyers responded that Gascony had always been held of the French crown as allod (freehold), not a fief, and that Philip had failed to uphold his side of the feudal contract, as set out by the Treaty of Paris. Therefore he had forfeited his lordship.

 Both arguments were bogus. Philip had deliberately provoked war by denying Edward a safe-conduct and breaking his sworn word in council. Equally, there is no proof that Gascony had ever been held as freehold of the French crown. But this was war and politics, and the lawyers on both sides happily lied through their teeth.

Count Guy of Flanders, Edward’s ally, sent a warning to his sons in Rome:

“You should know that the Roman court is very grasping, and that anyone who wants to do business there must make many gifts and promises and pledges.”

In other words, the papacy was corrupt as hell, and if you wanted anything from the pope it was best to turn up loaded with bribes.

Boniface VIII

It didn’t help that Pope Boniface VIII was one of the most eccentric characters to sit on St Peter’s Chair. At first he welcomed the Flemings, but then changed his attitude. Boniface wanted peace between England and France, and to that end was prepared to sacrifice Flanders.

Count Guy of Flanders

The Flemish envoys went to their English colleagues and asked for help. Edward I’s agents made it clear the English would send no more troops or money to Flanders, but were prepared to try and put diplomatic pressure on Boniface. On 25 June 1298 Guy’s sons and the English envoys had an audience with the pope, in which the head of the English deputation asked for Flanders to be included in the peace. Boniface erupted and declared that he would not risk anything for the sake of Flanders, and that if Count Guy regretted entrusting his affairs to the papacy, he could go take a running jump.

Clearly, more bribes were needed.