Sent home to think again

In 1266, while civil war was still raging in England, a much more obscure conflict blew up on the southern borders of Gascony. This region had long been a bone of contention: the duchy of Gascony was held by the Plantagenet king-dukes of England, but the kingdoms south of the Pyrenees had their own designs on it. In 1244 Theobald ‘the Troubadour’ of Navarre had attempted to invade Gascony, but was sent packing by the English seneschal, Nicholas de Molis.

Almost twenty years later, Theobald’s successor Theobald II decided to have another go. He was handed the opportunity by Henry III’s distractions in England and Wales, though Theobald arguably left it a bit late. The ideal time to invade Gascony was in 1264-5, when Henry was Simon de Montfort’s captive. After the battle of Evesham in August 1265 Henry was a free man again, though he still had plenty of work to do in England.

Over the winter months of 1265, Theobald worked on luring the nobles of southern Gascony away from Henry’s allegiance. Many of these nobles had blood ties to the royal families of Navarre and Castile, and their loyalty to the English regime was always suspect. In December 1265 Theobald gained the homage and fealty of the Count of Comminges and the Count of Astarac. He also intrigued with the ever-troublesome Gaston VII Moncada, Viscount of Béarn. In return for supporting his claim to the county of Bigorre, Theobald persuaded Gaston to betroth his daughter Constance to the king’s brother, Henry the Fat. Henry’s nickname suggests he wasn’t exactly love’s young dream, but then Constance didn’t have much say in the matter.

In the summer of 1266, even as Henry laid siege to Kenilworth in England, the Navarrese launched their invasion. Theobald’s army laid siege to the castle of Lourdes (pictured), strategically placed to guard the seven valleys of the Lavedan in the Pyrenees. Meanwhile his partisans clashed with Henry’s supporters in the sea-port of Bayonne. The lord Arnaud-Guillaume, another Gascon noble with Navarrese connections, opened the gates of his castle of Grammont to the enemy.

 

The situation was rescued by the king of France, Louis IX, whose intervention forced the warring parties to agree to a truce on 19 December. Jean de Grailly, a Savoyard knight in the Lord Edward’s household, also played an important role. Jean had been permitted to settle in Gascony in 1262, and in February 1267 he negotiated a new marriage contract between Constance and Henry of Almaine, the English king’s nephew. This effectively severed Gaston de Béarn’s alliance with Navarre, and sent King Theobald home to think again.

 

 

The would-be King of Scots

Another snippet from my work in progress, this time on the death of Floris V of Holland, would-be King of Scots and unwise recipient of French gold. 

"At the same time Edward took drastic steps to bring Holland back into his coalition. His first response to the defection of Count Floris had been to impose a trade embargo on Holland. In the spring he entered into a conspiracy with certain Dutch noblemen. Floris was unpopular with many of his own nobles, principally Gijsbrecht van Amstel, Hermann van Woerden and Gerard van Velzen. The Duke of Brabant, Floris’s rival for the profits of the English wool trade, was also involved. Van Velzen had some personal grudge against Floris, and within a few years rumours circulated that Floris had raped his wife. It is not possible, on the basis of currently available source evidence, to establish the truth of this accusation. However, the story was mentioned as rumour in Lodewijk van Velthelm’s continuation of Maerlants Spiegel historiael (circa 1315), and manuscript A of a Dutch rhyming chronicle, van de Rijmkroniek (circa 1330-1340).

The conspiracy against Floris was organised by Jan de Cuyck, an important envoy and diplomat in English service. Their plan was to kidnap Floris and smuggle him over to England, where he would be forced to break the alliance with Philip or resign his title to his anglophile son, John. In June 1296 Floris was captured by the conspirators while out hunting and imprisoned at Muiden castle, near Amsterdam. News quickly spread of the incident. On 27 June, when they tried to move their captive to a safer place, the conspirators were confronted by an angry mob. They panicked, stabbed Floris multiple times and left him to die in a ditch.

Edward’s involvement in the kidnapping is scarcely beyond doubt. The organiser, Jan de Cuyck, was in receipt of a payment of 200 l.t. per year from the king, and Edward stood to profit from Floris’s removal. The murder appears to have been a mistake, done on the spur of the moment, but it served Edward’s purpose just as well. He had the dead man’s son, John, in his custody, and within a few months would use him to renew the Dutch alliance."

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.