March 7, 2023 • 43 mins
When King Charles VI of France suffered from severe mental illness, a council ruled in his place. And on that council was his brother, Louis of Orleans, and his uncle, Philip of Burgundy. As they vied for power, their rivalry would turn bloody, and ultimately, set France on the path to Civil War.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hey, this
is Dana Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. I am
so excited that my novel Immortality is now I'm pretty
(00:21):
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It's a story of a young woman in regency London
and a lot of historical characters that I've covered on
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I've linked in the episode description and as always, just
thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Paris, fourteen o seven.
(01:05):
On a cold November night, Jacquette Griffard was putting her
baby to bed on the top floor of their house
on the Ruviet de tomp around her residents of the
city were settling in, Torches were extinguished, and doors were
being barred against the chilled night air. From the street
below her, Jacques could hear the clip clap of a
(01:28):
mule's hoofs She peered out of her window and saw
a small party traveling toward her, a nobleman at its center,
singing merrily. She watched the group for a minute and
then turned back to her baby. Suddenly she heard a
cry from the street. Kill him, Kill him, A man shouted.
(01:49):
Jacquette ran back to the window and looked down in
horror as a group of masked men emerged from the
shadows and set upon the nobleman and his party. A
man in a red hood swung his axe at the nobleman,
severing his hand and knocking him to the ground. The
noblemen looked frantically around him. Two of his attendants had
(02:11):
abandoned him in their fright, another two had been carried
away by their spook horse. Two more had tried to
defend their lord, only to be brought down by the mob.
The nobleman was alone, surrounded by assailants. Blood gushed from
the stump of his wrist as he crouched pitifully on
the ground. What is this, he pleaded, What are you doing?
(02:34):
The masked men said nothing, just closed in, slashing him
with their swords and axes. They meant to kill him,
but they took their time with it, dealing the nobleman painful,
not fatal blows. Blood sprayed the street. Jacquette stood frozen
at her window, holding her baby as one man raised
(02:56):
his axe and brought it down on the nobleman's head,
splitting his skull nearly in half, sending part of his
brain into the gutter. Shocked out of her silence, Jacquet
screamed from her second story window. Murder, murder. She didn't
know it then, but she had just witnessed one of
(03:17):
the worst crimes of medieval France, a brutal act that
would lead to civil war. Because the noblemen who now
lay dead in the street, oozing blood, missing teeth and
a hand and part of his brain was Louis, Duke
of Orleans, brother of the King of France. I'm Danish
(03:40):
schwartz and this is noble blood. Close relatives of royals
are often powerful figures in society, but rarely more so
than during the reign of King Charles the sixth of France.
(04:01):
Since thirteen ninety two, Charles had suffered bouts of severe
mental illness, rendering him unable to rule. For more on
Charles's specific problems, including periods of believing he was made
of glass, you can listen to our episode Charles, the Beloved,
the Mad, the Fool. You might recall a sad story
(04:22):
we talked about in that episode from before Charles's descent
into madness, where he and some of his men dressed
up as wild men for a costume ball. Unfortunately, their
costumes were extremely flammable, and when the king's brother leaned
in with a torch to get a better look at them,
the men went up in flames. The king survived, but
(04:44):
four of his friends did not. Years later, the king
would fall into the madness that incapacitated him as a ruler.
During the king's absences, control of the country fell to
his closest relatives include his uncles, the Dukes of Barry,
Burbant and Burgundy, and his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans,
(05:07):
who happened to have been the one with the torch
leaning in on that fateful night during the ball of
the Burning Men. For most of the thirteen nineties. The
most prominent of these men controlling France was the Duke
of Burgundy, a man called Philip the Bold. A commanding character,
Philip had earned his nickname thanks to his bravery in
(05:28):
battle when he was just fourteen. Now middle aged, Philip
controlled unparalleled wealth and land, and used his position on
the King's Council as his uncle to take even more.
Philip wasn't alone in this self interested approach to ruling.
Being on the King's Council gave all of the dukes
(05:50):
the power to enrich themselves, and they didn't hesitate to
do so. Many of them had served on Charles's Regency
Council during the first years of his reign, since the
king had been crowned at the young age of eleven,
and they had suffered during the years between charles coming
of age and his first episode of mental illness, a
period during which Charles, as a lucid king, brought on
(06:13):
new advisers who advocated for a more equitable distribution of wealth.
These policies had won Charles the love of his subjects,
but not long after he first fell ill in thirteen
ninety two, they were reversed by the Dukes, who resumed
their earlier program of raiding the treasury and using their
(06:35):
ill gotten gains to bribe government officials. France was in
a precarious position given it to ongoing war with England
at this point, whereabout sixty years into the Hundred Years War,
but instead of seriously defending their country, the Dukes used
the war as a pretext for raising taxes and reaping
(06:56):
the profits. By the late thirteen ninety the Dukes were
all enormously rich, that is, except for the King's brother Louie.
Unlike their uncles, Louis had struggled to assert himself in
the Royal Council. He was also disliked by much of
French society, especially because of his role as guy who
(07:17):
brought a torch to party with flammable costumes. In general,
the French saw Louis as a reckless, greedy womanizer with
an unhealthy interest in the occult. The perception wasn't too
far off base. Louie loved to gamble, throw extravagant parties,
investigate the dark arts, and seduce married noblewomen. He was
(07:39):
even rumored to have a private portrait gallery consisting of
nude paintings of his conquests. In one particularly notorious, possibly apocryphal,
incident of debauchery, Louie was said to have invited a
nobleman to his palace. When the man arrived, Louis took
him into a room which had a naked woman lying
(08:02):
on the bed, her face covered by a veil. Louie
asked the nobleman to judge how beautiful his mistress was.
The horrified man quickly realized that the veiled naked woman
was his wife. Pretty rude of Louis, and if I
had to weigh in, probably a pretty good way of
making enemies. But Louis was also a savvy politician. He
(08:25):
knew that he had one major advantage over his uncle's
his close relationship with his brother, the King. Louie and
Charles had been inseparable since childhood, when their parents' early
deaths had made them reliant on one another. The King
was also fond of Louie's Italian wife, Valentina Visconti, too fond,
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some thought, leading to Valentina's exile from court in thirteen
ninety six due to her rumored witchcraft. Stories For another time,
and soon the tide would change, Louis, not his uncle's,
would become the dominating force on the King's council. The
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transition began in thirteen ninety nine, when an epidemic of
plague exploded in Paris. Louie stayed in the city with
the king, even as other dukes retreated to their country.
Estates This period of constant companionship cemented the brother's relationship forever.
Louie began to receive royal grants, increasing his territory and
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his treasury immensely. With his new resources, he executed a
political shake up, filling the government with his allies, and
as his power grew, Louie's public reputation underwent a makeover.
He became more discreet in his affairs, more mature in
his interests. A man who had once been criticized for
(09:55):
his inappropriate fondness for the finer things was now praised
for his excellent taste. He wasn't extravagant with his money,
he was just generous with it, courtiers exclaimed, as they
conveniently benefited from said generosity. For many As the historian
Jonathan Sumpton writes, Louie was quote the kingly figure that
(10:19):
Charles the sixth might have been less impressed by the
new Louis was Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who saw his
influence wayne as Louise waxed. By Philip's death in fourteen
oh four, Louis had all but supplanted him as the
most powerful man on the Council and perhaps the kingdom.
(10:41):
This reversal did not sit well with Philip's son and heir, John,
Like his father, John was intelligent, ambitious, and determined, but
he lacked his father's legendary diplomatic skills. John was quick
to anger, constantly paranoid, and prone to violence. In the
(11:02):
cutthroat political environment of the Royal Council, these qualities would
both help and hurt him. He adopted a populist strategy,
casting himself as an opponent of the corrupt of indulgent
elites who raised taxes on the poor to feed their
expensive habits, a political class whose most viable representative was Louie,
(11:25):
Duke of or Lyons. To what extent John actually believed
in the principles he publicly proclaimed is difficult to know.
His tirades against the government handouts to the rich never
stopped him from accepting those same handouts, but he was
a genuinely skilled administrator and military leader, and the excesses
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and inefficiencies he saw in the French government must have
infuriated him. This conflict between John and Louie quickly escalated.
The French public, especially the Parisians, were sick of the
high taxes raised by the Royal Council. Simultaneously, the members
of the Royal Council were getting concerned at how much
(12:10):
power Louie had. In July fourteen oh five, things came
to a head when King Charles, briefly of sound mind,
agreed to summon an emergency council in Paris to address
the state of affairs. John, with his characteristic light touch,
decided to bring six hundred armed men with him to
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the meeting. Upon hearing of this, Louie rallied his own
troops and headed to the city. Battle lines were drawn
in the Royal Council, which was pretty evenly split between
the two men, but those lines were also being drawn
in Paris, where nearly all of the citizens supported John.
For months, France teetered on the edge of civil war,
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but war is expensive. The Dukes, who had allied themselves
with Louie and John eventually started to withdraw their men,
citing costs. Louie and John, despite their vast wealth, were
also feeling the financial burn. On October sixteenth, the men
reached a truce, vowing to keep the peace and be
(13:18):
brothers forever. Unsurprisingly, this happy moment did not last. To
prevent further power struggles of this sort, the Council was
recognized with Queen Isabeau, the King's wife, at its head.
The thought was that the Queen would be an impartial vote,
serving only the best interests of her husband and their kingdom.
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In reality, it put Isabeau in an impossible position and
gave Louie an advantage. Over the years, he and Isabeau
had formed a close relationship, which was sometimes rumored to
be romantic. Throughout fourteen oh five and fourteen oh six,
Louie and John may maintained a cordial, if chilly relationship,
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but they couldn't trust each other, and in April fourteen
oh seven, Louis struck a decisive blow against his rival
at a meeting attended by the King, the Dauphin, and
all of the major Royal Council members except for John,
who was not invited, the Council was once again reorganized.
John's allies were removed not just from the Council, but
(14:27):
also from the Treasury and Finance departments. When John learned
of this policy upon his arrival in Paris a week later,
there was nothing he could do. With the most important
government bodies now aligned against him, it was impossible for
John to access the money the crown had previously given
him to support his duchy. It was a dire state
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of affairs. Without money to administer his territory, John stood
to lose everything. It seemed he had only one course
of action, reconcile with Louie, who it appeared, had bested
him once and for all. Despite his stubbornness, John was
a clear eyed strategist. Louie was too powerful to be beaten,
(15:13):
So in November John agreed to a formal reconciliation organized
by their uncle, the Duke of Barry. He and Louie
went to Mass together on November twentieth and exchanged vows
of perpetual friendship. Louie, perhaps relishing his victory, seemed inclined
(15:34):
toward graciousness. The two men had a drink together on
November twenty second, and made plans to meet for dinner
later that week. Observers heaved a collective sigh of relief.
With these two great forces finally at peace, the whole
country could now rest easy, or so they thought, after
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that fatal ball of the Burning Man. Back in thirteen
ninety three, Louie had endowed a chapel at the Celestine
Priory in Paris as a part of his penance. Men
can contain multitudes. Along with his proclivity for beautiful women
and illicit stories of sorcery, Louie was also deeply religious.
(16:19):
He occasionally spent the night at the chapel, meditating and
praying in the small sleeping chamber he'd built for that purpose.
After one such night in November fourteen oh seven, according
to the seventeenth century historian Louis Bourier, Duke Louie woke
up panting in terror. He'd had a terrible nightmare, he
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told the prior, a dream of his own death. He
found himself, as he said, in a magnificent orchard filled
with gleaming fruit. But when he reached for the fruit,
the figure of death appeared before him, brandishing its Scythe
the black shrouded skeleton told Louie, I carry a way
both the young and the old. Louie blinked and found
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himself before the throne of God, waiting in agony for judgment.
Would it be heaven or hell? He would not find out,
at least not that night, because at the moment of judgment,
Louie awoke profoundly. Rattled by the dream. He hurried to
the Prior and begged to confess his sins. The Prior
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heard his confession and absolved him, but Louie could not
shake the dread the dream had imparted. It was a
strange time for Louie to be dreaming of his death.
After a number of tumultuous years, his political position was
more secure than ever. He had wealth, influence, and a
burgeoning relationship with his former enemy, John, Duke of Burgundy.
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But within the week Louie was dead. Though the Duke
may have predicted his own death and l saw it coming,
the people of France, noble and common alike, were shocked
and horrified by the brutal crime. The Duke of Orleans
may not have been the most popular figure, but certainly
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no one deserved to die like that. The government quickly
began an investigation, led by the Provost of Paris, Guillaume
de Tignonville, who the historian Eric Jagger describes in Blood
Royal as quote one of history's first detectives. De Tignonville
had no shortage of suspects. There were furious husbands of
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all the women Louis had seduced. There were angry Parisians
impoverished by louis policies. There were English spies who wanted
to weaken the country. There were the lesser lords whose
property Louis had absorbed in his pursuit of power. And
there were his political rivals, including of course John. But
John and Louis had recently reconciled, and the Duke of
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Burgundy seemed devastated by the death of his longtime enemy
turned newfound friend. He had helped escort Louis Coffin into
the Celestine Priory, where he wept through the funeral service,
so Tignonville had to look elsewhere. Fortunately, there was no
shortage of witnesses, including Jacquette, the young woman who had
(19:20):
watched the attack from her window. De Tignonville and his
staff interviewed them all. Soon a picture of the crime emerged,
and it was not one of random violence, but of careful,
premeditated murder. On the night of his death, Louis had
gone to visit Queen Isabeau at her residence, the Hotel Barbette.
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Two weeks earlier. Isabeau had lost a newborn son shortly
after his birth, and Louie visited regularly in an attempt
to keep her spirits up. At eight o'clock, a man
came to the house, announcing himself as a valet of
the king and declared that the king needed to speak
to his brother at once. Louis, along with his small
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traveling party, quickly departed, setting off down the Rue Vielle
de Tompre. At the intersection of the Rue des Rosiers,
he was attacked. After their deadly work was done, the
assailants fled, knocking out any lit torches they passed to
obscure their path and throwing col troops clusters of metal
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spikes meant to disable pursuing men or horses behind them.
Several observers claimed to have seen the men coming from
a house across the street from Jacquettes, and de Tignonville
later determined that the assassins had rented the home under
false names, using it as a base of operations. The
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assailants had begun their search for a house more than
five months earlier, hinting at the level of planning involved.
All of Paris watched d Tignonville's progress closely. The city
was on lockdown, with all all the gates leading out
tightly shut, and people were arming themselves, fearful that the
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murder was only the beginning of the bloodshed. After all,
Louis had been the closest thing they had to a
king at the time, given his brother's mental illness. Now
that Louis was dead, who would keep order in France?
The dukes of the Royal council were asking themselves the
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same question. On November twenty seventh, they summoned d'e Tignonville
to a meeting and asked him to report on his progress.
D'e Tignonville replied that he had learned many things, but
had not yet gathered enough evidence to conclusively identify the murderers.
To get to the truth, he told the assembled men
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he might need to search the royal residences, including their own.
It was a bold request, one that these high ranking
dukes had every right to refuse, but they knew that
the stability of the government relied on uncovering the murderer.
One by one, they agreed to let De Tignonville search
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their homes. All of them agreed, that is, except for John,
Duke of Burgundy. At de Tignonville's request, he had gone pale.
As everyone awaited his answer, an awkward silence grew. Suddenly
John stood and beckoned for two of his uncles, the
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Dukes of Barry and Anjou, to join him in a
side room. Confused, the men agreed. Once they were out
of the council's hearing, John turned to his uncles and exclaimed,
I did it. By the tempting of the devil, I
did it. The Dukes were horrified and shocked. The Duke
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of Barry, who had facilitated Louis and John's reconciliation ceremony
only days earlier, cried, now I have lost two nephews.
But they agreed to keep John's confession quiet for the
moment in order to determine next steps. The Duke of
Anjou returned to the main room and adjourned the meeting.
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D'etignonville didn't know what John had said, but it's likely
he could guess it was the conclusion he had predicted.
His request to search the Duke's houses had been his
way of flushing John out. Despite the Duke's outward grief,
D'etignonville had quickly narrowed in on him after witnesses reported
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seeing the fleeing assassins wearing the Burgundian colors. The next morning,
Barry and Ajou called a meeting of the Royal Council.
They purposefully did not invite John, but he showed up anyway.
When Barry, shocked at John's boldness, turned him forcefully away,
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John was confused. He seemed to have taken Barry and
Jeu's silence the day before as a tacit approval of
his actions, but it wasn't. He stormed down the stairs,
bumping into another uncle, the Duke of Bourbond, who asked
where he was going. Furious and flustered, John allegedly yelled,
I'm going out to piss smooth move. In reality, John
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was fleeing Paris. His uncle's rejection revealed to him that
he was no longer safe, and indeed When the Duke
of Bourbond learned of John's confession from Barry and Aljoux,
he demanded to know why John had been allowed to leave. Quote.
This thing must be handled in the right way, he declared.
But it was too late. Somehow, John and his retinue
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had managed to slip through one of the city's closed gates,
and they were gone. Gone too were the actual killers,
retainers of John's who had been paid handsomely for their work.
By the beginning of December, John was safely back in
his own territories. In Paris, the Dukes were at a standstill.
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They were worried that sending men after John would provoke
in armed retaliation, leading to civil war. The king, however,
was in a period of good health and he was
more willing to act. On December tenth, Louis's widow, Valentina,
arrived in Paris after more than a decade in exile
remember her alleged witchcraft. She pleaded with King Charles for
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justice for her husband, and he agreed, declaring that he
would avenge Louis, But in early January he relapsed into psychosis.
The weak willed Dukes walked back his promises to Valentina
and instead decided to organize a conference with John set
for January. Emboldened by the lack of response from Paris,
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John decided to double down. He told his uncles in
December that he had been possessed by the devil when
he decided to murder Louis. Now he changed his tune,
shaping a shocking defense for himself in which he claimed
it was not the devil who inspired him to kill,
but God. At the conference on January twentieth, fourteen o eight,
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John astounded listeners by declaring that the murder had been
both righteous and necessary, given louise immoral character and abuses
of power, and John continued he would return to Paris
to make his case to anyone who wished to hear.
This was just what the other dukes had most feared. Paris,
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where Louise taxes had hurt thousands, was home to the
most receptive audience for John's arguments, and an inflamed populace
riled up with tales of justifiable murder was a recipe
for disaster. On February twenty eighth, fourteen o eight, John
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rode into Paris, despite warnings from the Royal Council. He
had brought hundreds of armed men with him. Thousands of
Parisians thronged the streets to witness his entrance, cheering him
on loudly. Despite all of the fans, John knew his
popularity wasn't universal. He quickly set about adding a fortified
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tower to his Paris mansion so he could sleep in safety.
And when he showed up at his public defense, a
carefully staged show trial that John himself had organized, he
was wearing chainmail under his fine robes. It was now
March eighth, and most of the high ranking citizens of
Paris had turned up at the Hotel Sainpo, the King's
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main residence, to hear John's attempt to justify his action.
Notably absent was the King, who was suffering another bad spell.
Presiding instead was the eleven year old d'au fin, who
sat alongside the dukes of Barry, Bourbon, Anjou, and Burgundy
himself on a bench at the front of the hall.
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John had enlisted Jean Petit, a theologian from the University
of Paris, to present his defense, and Petit came ready
to rumble. Standing in front of the crowd. Petit delivered
a shocking four hour long speech, which began with the
statement that it is quote permissible and meritorious to kill
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a tyrant, and the Duke of Orleans was a tyrant
end quote. Continued with an allegory in which Louis was
the devil and John the holy Avenger, and he moved
into allegations of witchcraft, including claims that Louis had used
demonic powers to create cursed swords with which to kill
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the king. He also outlined a variety of ways that
Louis had betrayed the king and the French, and concluded
with the statement that John deserved not just a royal
hardened for his act, but also quote love, honor, and riches.
When Petit finished, a stunned silence filled the hall. None
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of those present had expected John to be particularly repentant
for his crime, but no one had expected him to
actively argue he deserved to be rewarded for what he
had done. When Petit asked if John indorsed all he
had said, John replied that he did. Later, John would
have Petit's oration made into four costly, beautifully illuminated books
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titled The Justification of the Duke of Burgundy. Despite John's
satisfaction with Petit's speech, not everyone on Team Burgundy was
so enthusiastic. John Gearson, once an ally of John's, would
later write that the justification was quote text for damnation,
a treatise for death, a charter of dishonor, and a
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message from the pit of hell. The only person whose
opinion really mattered, though, was King Charles. The next day,
with the king briefly lucid, John and his allies pushed
Charles for a royal pardon, which the king granted. Charles
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also signed a document, likely drafted by John's team, that
empowered John to pursue and punish anyone who insulted him,
the fifteenth century equivalent of a license to kill. Unsurprisingly,
this outcome did not sit well with many nobles, especially
not Queen Isabeau or a Louise's widow Valentina. When John
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was forced to return to his lands to quell an
uprising in July, Valentina and Isabeau began plotting their revenge.
On July second, at a council meeting attended by the King,
John's royal pardon was revoked. Two months later, the women
hosted a show trial of their own, at which John
was denied, bounced for his treachery, and ordered to surrender
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to the King's justice. Meanwhile, John was decisively putting down
a rebellion in Liege. His commanding performance at the Battle
of Aute earned him the nickname John the Fearless, which
would stick with him for the rest of his life.
The battle also brought monetary reward in the form of
compensation paid by the newly defeated rebels. His newly energized
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army and his newly flushed treasury terrified the Orleanists. With
these resources, John might be able to take Paris, and indeed,
when John returned to Paris in November, he brought two
thousand troops with him. Afraid of war, the Royal Council
once again capitulated to John. They met little opposition. Valentina,
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her husband's greatest advocate, had died in December, and the
couple surviving children were still young. The oldest, Charles, the
new Duke of Orleans, was only fourteen, so it wasn't
hard for the royal counselors to push through their plan
for reconciliation. On March ninth, fourteen o nine, the Houses
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of Burgundy and Orleans met at the Chautre Cathedral to
reconcile the king. Slipping in and out of sanity, presided.
Speaking first, John declared that while he did not apologize
for having Louis killed, he did apologize for the pain
that this act had caused the king. The King accepted his,
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let's say, non apology. Now it was the Orleans brother's turn.
The boys were sobbing and had to be pushed to
recite their statement of pardon. It was humiliating for the
boys and horrifying too many onlookers. The Clerk of Parliament
wrote of the ceremony peace piece, and yet no peace.
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Far from assuaging the Orleans supporters or Orleanists, the Treaty
of chartra recommitted them to revenge. The young Charles of
Orleans began to recruit allies, including the powerful Count Bernard
of Armagnac, whose daughter he would eventually marry in Paris.
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John was inadvertently helping Charles cause through a series of
short sighted, poorly executed, and tactless political moves. Through the
fall of fourteen o nine, John alienated nearly all the
most powerful dukes of the Council Charles and his party
eagerly welcomed these discontented dukes. In April fourteen ten, the
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Orleanists vowed to raise an army against John. In response,
John started mustering his own troops. By fourteen eleven, the
Orleanists and the Burgundians were engaged in a full blown
civil war. I'll note here that histories of the time
usually refer to the Orleanists as Armagnacs, thanks to the
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central role at this point of the Count of Armagnac,
but we'll keep calling them for the sake of this
episode the Orleanists, so you know. These are the men
who supported the deceased Duke of Orleans and then his
young son, the new Duke of Orleans, for more than
two years. The civil war devastated the cities and countryside
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around Paris. Civilians were just as likely to be killed
as soldiers. Towns were burned and homes looted. The two
parties would occasionally pause to draw up some sort of
unsatisfactory treaty, which would quickly be broken. It seemed like
the war would never end, but in mid fourteen thirteen,
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something crucial shifted. Parisians, longtime supporters of John, began to
turn against him. They blamed him for the war, which
was winning their businesses and cutting off the city's food supply.
Pro or Leanist sentiment rose, and then, in a fitting
moment for this Satan filled saga, a flyer began appearing
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all around Paris, addressed from the dark Lord himself. It
was a thank you letter of swords, in which Lucifer
the quote King of Hell, Prince of the Shadows, master Regent,
guardian and governor of all the devils in Hell, expressed
his gratitude for the service of his quote dearist and
(35:33):
well loved lieutenant and Proctor General in the West, John
of Burgundy. There's not much you could do to contest
an endorsement from Satan, and John saw quite literally the
writing on the wall. He had lost Paris. On August
twenty third, he once again fled the city. Outside of
(35:54):
the ongoing fighting, the French had to worry about the English.
Both the Indians and the Orleanists had requested French assistance
in the Civil War, giving the new English King Henry
the Fifth a clear picture of the internal French turmoil.
He knew it was the perfect opportunity to strike, and
(36:15):
in fourteen fifteen, he did, taking the city of Harfleur
after a relatively short siege. The French, already ravaged by
years of civil war, did their best to resist, bringing
a massive force to face the English at Agincourt in
late October. But maybe you know this story already. The
(36:37):
French forces weren't enough. The English annihilated the French in
one of history's most famous defeats. Charles of Orleans, leader
of the Orleanists, was captured by the English at Agincourt
and spent the next twenty five years as a prisoner
in England. John of Burgundy, by contrast, had failed to
(36:58):
show at the battle, even as the country fought off
the English. The infighting continued. In fourteen eighteen, John retook Paris,
executing a bloody coup which left hundreds dead. But eventually
even he could not deny the threat the English represented.
(37:19):
If the French wanted to repel their foreign enemies, they
needed to unite internally. John began negotiations with the teenaged
d'aufins of France, who had created a shadow Orleanist government
in Borges following John's capture of Paris. The Daufis seemed
amenable to the idea of a truce, but his advisers,
(37:40):
middle aged men who had spent the past decade fighting
for the Orleanist cause, were not as enthusiastic. Nonetheless, negotiations progressed,
and a treaty of reconciliation was drawn up in July
fourteen nineteen. The Duke and the Daufins planned to formalize
the treaty on the bridge at Montereau in September. A
(38:03):
special enclosure was built in the center of the bridge
for the meeting, with heavy wooden doors on each side.
The men would each enter from one side, accompanied by
only ten companions. All were to be unarmed, though they
were allowed to wear armor. Of course. Each man also
brought hundreds more armed men to wait just outside the enclosure,
(38:25):
just in case. At five o'clock on September tenth, fourteen nineteen,
John the Fearless entered the enclosure through his side of
the bridge. He wore scarlet robes and dripped with jewels.
The Daufin was already waiting for him. Removing his hat,
John knelt before the prince and greeted him. The Daufint
(38:45):
bade him to stand, telling him he had spoken well.
For a moment, the promise of peace hung over the bridge.
But then the Daufin looked to his advisers, and one
of them yelled, kill. Kill. The door on the Dauphin's
side of the enclosure swung open, and armed men flooded in.
(39:06):
They swarmed the Duke, swinging at him with axes and swords,
brutally wounding him before they struck the final blow. The
parallels to Louise's murder were intentional. One of the killers,
a devoted Orleanist, almost severed John's hand. As the Duke
tried to defend himself, he shouted, you cut off my
(39:27):
master's hand, and I shall cut off yours. On the
other side of the bridge, the Duke's troops were desperately
trying to get into the enclosure, but they were brought
down by the Dauphin's archers, who had appeared on the
river banks. There was nothing they could do anyway. The
Duke was dead. The Dauphin's men stripped his body of
its finery and threw it in a wooden coffin, which
(39:50):
was eventually buried at a nearby church. The assassination of
John of Burgundy was a victory for the Orleanists, but
ultimately a tremendous tragedy for France. The Civil War reignited
more fiercely than before, and eventually led John's son, the
new Duke of Burgundy, to ally himself with the English
(40:12):
instead of the French for more than fifteen years. The
whole country suffered immensely in the all out war that followed,
and though cause and effect is a tricky business to
trace in history, it's hard to imagine that things would
have played out exactly the same way had not the
Duke of Burgundy's men set out on a dark Parisian
(40:35):
night to kill their master's mortal enemy. But in a
classic case of two wrongs don't make a right, it's
equally hard to imagine that France would have been so
terribly affected by the English had it not been for
the killing of John of Burgundy. More than a century
after John's death, in fifteen twenty one, King Francis of France,
(40:56):
who was in fact Louise's great great grand and son,
was presented with the Duke's skull by a Burgundian monk Sire.
The monk is alleged to have said, pointing to a
wound in the skull. By that whole the English entered France.
(41:18):
That's the story of the assassination of Louis of Orleans.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit more about the legendary rivalry between Louis
and John of Burgundy. Although John and Louie's rivalry eventually
(41:42):
reached murderous proportions, it also had its pettier moments. Take
their emblems, for example, Like all good royals, each man
had selected a symbolic image to represent themselves, which they
had embroidered on their clothes and engraved on their armor
and carved into their castles. For his emblem, Louie chose
(42:03):
a wooden club. In response, John made his emblem a
carpenter's plane capable of shaving down, say, a wooden club.
After the murder, some Parisians were said to have remarked,
the knotty club has been planed. And then there were
their mottos. When John and Louie had nearly gone to
(42:24):
war against one another in the summer of fourteen oh five,
their troops had paraded around carrying banners emblazoned with their
leader's respective mottos Louis read I want it or I
challenge him, depending on the translation, but I want it
is a fair translation, and John's you might be able
(42:45):
to guess it. His banners read I have it. Noble
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
(43:07):
from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwartz.
Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick,
Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder, and Laurie Goodman. The show is
produced by rema Il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thayne
and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
(43:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hey, this
is Dana Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. I am
so excited that my novel Immortality is now I'm pretty
(00:21):
sure officially out in the world, and it would mean
the world to me if you went out and ordered
a copy, or found one, or gave it as a gift.
It's a story of a young woman in regency London
and a lot of historical characters that I've covered on
this podcast and make an appearance. I don't want to
spoil more than that, but if you like this podcast,
I really think you'll like it. It's called Immortality, a
(00:43):
love story, let's see. Other than that, if you want
to support our show, you can do that at patreon
dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. We have merch that
I've linked in the episode description and as always, just
thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Paris, fourteen o seven.
(01:05):
On a cold November night, Jacquette Griffard was putting her
baby to bed on the top floor of their house
on the Ruviet de tomp around her residents of the
city were settling in, Torches were extinguished, and doors were
being barred against the chilled night air. From the street
below her, Jacques could hear the clip clap of a
(01:28):
mule's hoofs She peered out of her window and saw
a small party traveling toward her, a nobleman at its center,
singing merrily. She watched the group for a minute and
then turned back to her baby. Suddenly she heard a
cry from the street. Kill him, Kill him, A man shouted.
(01:49):
Jacquette ran back to the window and looked down in
horror as a group of masked men emerged from the
shadows and set upon the nobleman and his party. A
man in a red hood swung his axe at the nobleman,
severing his hand and knocking him to the ground. The
noblemen looked frantically around him. Two of his attendants had
(02:11):
abandoned him in their fright, another two had been carried
away by their spook horse. Two more had tried to
defend their lord, only to be brought down by the mob.
The nobleman was alone, surrounded by assailants. Blood gushed from
the stump of his wrist as he crouched pitifully on
the ground. What is this, he pleaded, What are you doing?
(02:34):
The masked men said nothing, just closed in, slashing him
with their swords and axes. They meant to kill him,
but they took their time with it, dealing the nobleman painful,
not fatal blows. Blood sprayed the street. Jacquette stood frozen
at her window, holding her baby as one man raised
(02:56):
his axe and brought it down on the nobleman's head,
splitting his skull nearly in half, sending part of his
brain into the gutter. Shocked out of her silence, Jacquet
screamed from her second story window. Murder, murder. She didn't
know it then, but she had just witnessed one of
(03:17):
the worst crimes of medieval France, a brutal act that
would lead to civil war. Because the noblemen who now
lay dead in the street, oozing blood, missing teeth and
a hand and part of his brain was Louis, Duke
of Orleans, brother of the King of France. I'm Danish
(03:40):
schwartz and this is noble blood. Close relatives of royals
are often powerful figures in society, but rarely more so
than during the reign of King Charles the sixth of France.
(04:01):
Since thirteen ninety two, Charles had suffered bouts of severe
mental illness, rendering him unable to rule. For more on
Charles's specific problems, including periods of believing he was made
of glass, you can listen to our episode Charles, the Beloved,
the Mad, the Fool. You might recall a sad story
(04:22):
we talked about in that episode from before Charles's descent
into madness, where he and some of his men dressed
up as wild men for a costume ball. Unfortunately, their
costumes were extremely flammable, and when the king's brother leaned
in with a torch to get a better look at them,
the men went up in flames. The king survived, but
(04:44):
four of his friends did not. Years later, the king
would fall into the madness that incapacitated him as a ruler.
During the king's absences, control of the country fell to
his closest relatives include his uncles, the Dukes of Barry,
Burbant and Burgundy, and his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans,
(05:07):
who happened to have been the one with the torch
leaning in on that fateful night during the ball of
the Burning Men. For most of the thirteen nineties. The
most prominent of these men controlling France was the Duke
of Burgundy, a man called Philip the Bold. A commanding character,
Philip had earned his nickname thanks to his bravery in
(05:28):
battle when he was just fourteen. Now middle aged, Philip
controlled unparalleled wealth and land, and used his position on
the King's Council as his uncle to take even more.
Philip wasn't alone in this self interested approach to ruling.
Being on the King's Council gave all of the dukes
(05:50):
the power to enrich themselves, and they didn't hesitate to
do so. Many of them had served on Charles's Regency
Council during the first years of his reign, since the
king had been crowned at the young age of eleven,
and they had suffered during the years between charles coming
of age and his first episode of mental illness, a
period during which Charles, as a lucid king, brought on
(06:13):
new advisers who advocated for a more equitable distribution of wealth.
These policies had won Charles the love of his subjects,
but not long after he first fell ill in thirteen
ninety two, they were reversed by the Dukes, who resumed
their earlier program of raiding the treasury and using their
(06:35):
ill gotten gains to bribe government officials. France was in
a precarious position given it to ongoing war with England
at this point, whereabout sixty years into the Hundred Years War,
but instead of seriously defending their country, the Dukes used
the war as a pretext for raising taxes and reaping
(06:56):
the profits. By the late thirteen ninety the Dukes were
all enormously rich, that is, except for the King's brother Louie.
Unlike their uncles, Louis had struggled to assert himself in
the Royal Council. He was also disliked by much of
French society, especially because of his role as guy who
(07:17):
brought a torch to party with flammable costumes. In general,
the French saw Louis as a reckless, greedy womanizer with
an unhealthy interest in the occult. The perception wasn't too
far off base. Louie loved to gamble, throw extravagant parties,
investigate the dark arts, and seduce married noblewomen. He was
(07:39):
even rumored to have a private portrait gallery consisting of
nude paintings of his conquests. In one particularly notorious, possibly apocryphal,
incident of debauchery, Louie was said to have invited a
nobleman to his palace. When the man arrived, Louis took
him into a room which had a naked woman lying
(08:02):
on the bed, her face covered by a veil. Louie
asked the nobleman to judge how beautiful his mistress was.
The horrified man quickly realized that the veiled naked woman
was his wife. Pretty rude of Louis, and if I
had to weigh in, probably a pretty good way of
making enemies. But Louis was also a savvy politician. He
(08:25):
knew that he had one major advantage over his uncle's
his close relationship with his brother, the King. Louie and
Charles had been inseparable since childhood, when their parents' early
deaths had made them reliant on one another. The King
was also fond of Louie's Italian wife, Valentina Visconti, too fond,
(08:46):
some thought, leading to Valentina's exile from court in thirteen
ninety six due to her rumored witchcraft. Stories For another time,
and soon the tide would change, Louis, not his uncle's,
would become the dominating force on the King's council. The
(09:09):
transition began in thirteen ninety nine, when an epidemic of
plague exploded in Paris. Louie stayed in the city with
the king, even as other dukes retreated to their country.
Estates This period of constant companionship cemented the brother's relationship forever.
Louie began to receive royal grants, increasing his territory and
(09:33):
his treasury immensely. With his new resources, he executed a
political shake up, filling the government with his allies, and
as his power grew, Louie's public reputation underwent a makeover.
He became more discreet in his affairs, more mature in
his interests. A man who had once been criticized for
(09:55):
his inappropriate fondness for the finer things was now praised
for his excellent taste. He wasn't extravagant with his money,
he was just generous with it, courtiers exclaimed, as they
conveniently benefited from said generosity. For many As the historian
Jonathan Sumpton writes, Louie was quote the kingly figure that
(10:19):
Charles the sixth might have been less impressed by the
new Louis was Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who saw his
influence wayne as Louise waxed. By Philip's death in fourteen
oh four, Louis had all but supplanted him as the
most powerful man on the Council and perhaps the kingdom.
(10:41):
This reversal did not sit well with Philip's son and heir, John,
Like his father, John was intelligent, ambitious, and determined, but
he lacked his father's legendary diplomatic skills. John was quick
to anger, constantly paranoid, and prone to violence. In the
(11:02):
cutthroat political environment of the Royal Council, these qualities would
both help and hurt him. He adopted a populist strategy,
casting himself as an opponent of the corrupt of indulgent
elites who raised taxes on the poor to feed their
expensive habits, a political class whose most viable representative was Louie,
(11:25):
Duke of or Lyons. To what extent John actually believed
in the principles he publicly proclaimed is difficult to know.
His tirades against the government handouts to the rich never
stopped him from accepting those same handouts, but he was
a genuinely skilled administrator and military leader, and the excesses
(11:48):
and inefficiencies he saw in the French government must have
infuriated him. This conflict between John and Louie quickly escalated.
The French public, especially the Parisians, were sick of the
high taxes raised by the Royal Council. Simultaneously, the members
of the Royal Council were getting concerned at how much
(12:10):
power Louie had. In July fourteen oh five, things came
to a head when King Charles, briefly of sound mind,
agreed to summon an emergency council in Paris to address
the state of affairs. John, with his characteristic light touch,
decided to bring six hundred armed men with him to
(12:31):
the meeting. Upon hearing of this, Louie rallied his own
troops and headed to the city. Battle lines were drawn
in the Royal Council, which was pretty evenly split between
the two men, but those lines were also being drawn
in Paris, where nearly all of the citizens supported John.
For months, France teetered on the edge of civil war,
(12:55):
but war is expensive. The Dukes, who had allied themselves
with Louie and John eventually started to withdraw their men,
citing costs. Louie and John, despite their vast wealth, were
also feeling the financial burn. On October sixteenth, the men
reached a truce, vowing to keep the peace and be
(13:18):
brothers forever. Unsurprisingly, this happy moment did not last. To
prevent further power struggles of this sort, the Council was
recognized with Queen Isabeau, the King's wife, at its head.
The thought was that the Queen would be an impartial vote,
serving only the best interests of her husband and their kingdom.
(13:40):
In reality, it put Isabeau in an impossible position and
gave Louie an advantage. Over the years, he and Isabeau
had formed a close relationship, which was sometimes rumored to
be romantic. Throughout fourteen oh five and fourteen oh six,
Louie and John may maintained a cordial, if chilly relationship,
(14:03):
but they couldn't trust each other, and in April fourteen
oh seven, Louis struck a decisive blow against his rival
at a meeting attended by the King, the Dauphin, and
all of the major Royal Council members except for John,
who was not invited, the Council was once again reorganized.
John's allies were removed not just from the Council, but
(14:27):
also from the Treasury and Finance departments. When John learned
of this policy upon his arrival in Paris a week later,
there was nothing he could do. With the most important
government bodies now aligned against him, it was impossible for
John to access the money the crown had previously given
him to support his duchy. It was a dire state
(14:50):
of affairs. Without money to administer his territory, John stood
to lose everything. It seemed he had only one course
of action, reconcile with Louie, who it appeared, had bested
him once and for all. Despite his stubbornness, John was
a clear eyed strategist. Louie was too powerful to be beaten,
(15:13):
So in November John agreed to a formal reconciliation organized
by their uncle, the Duke of Barry. He and Louie
went to Mass together on November twentieth and exchanged vows
of perpetual friendship. Louie, perhaps relishing his victory, seemed inclined
(15:34):
toward graciousness. The two men had a drink together on
November twenty second, and made plans to meet for dinner
later that week. Observers heaved a collective sigh of relief.
With these two great forces finally at peace, the whole
country could now rest easy, or so they thought, after
(15:57):
that fatal ball of the Burning Man. Back in thirteen
ninety three, Louie had endowed a chapel at the Celestine
Priory in Paris as a part of his penance. Men
can contain multitudes. Along with his proclivity for beautiful women
and illicit stories of sorcery, Louie was also deeply religious.
(16:19):
He occasionally spent the night at the chapel, meditating and
praying in the small sleeping chamber he'd built for that purpose.
After one such night in November fourteen oh seven, according
to the seventeenth century historian Louis Bourier, Duke Louie woke
up panting in terror. He'd had a terrible nightmare, he
(16:40):
told the prior, a dream of his own death. He
found himself, as he said, in a magnificent orchard filled
with gleaming fruit. But when he reached for the fruit,
the figure of death appeared before him, brandishing its Scythe
the black shrouded skeleton told Louie, I carry a way
both the young and the old. Louie blinked and found
(17:04):
himself before the throne of God, waiting in agony for judgment.
Would it be heaven or hell? He would not find out,
at least not that night, because at the moment of judgment,
Louie awoke profoundly. Rattled by the dream. He hurried to
the Prior and begged to confess his sins. The Prior
(17:26):
heard his confession and absolved him, but Louie could not
shake the dread the dream had imparted. It was a
strange time for Louie to be dreaming of his death.
After a number of tumultuous years, his political position was
more secure than ever. He had wealth, influence, and a
burgeoning relationship with his former enemy, John, Duke of Burgundy.
(17:50):
But within the week Louie was dead. Though the Duke
may have predicted his own death and l saw it coming,
the people of France, noble and common alike, were shocked
and horrified by the brutal crime. The Duke of Orleans
may not have been the most popular figure, but certainly
(18:12):
no one deserved to die like that. The government quickly
began an investigation, led by the Provost of Paris, Guillaume
de Tignonville, who the historian Eric Jagger describes in Blood
Royal as quote one of history's first detectives. De Tignonville
had no shortage of suspects. There were furious husbands of
(18:35):
all the women Louis had seduced. There were angry Parisians
impoverished by louis policies. There were English spies who wanted
to weaken the country. There were the lesser lords whose
property Louis had absorbed in his pursuit of power. And
there were his political rivals, including of course John. But
John and Louis had recently reconciled, and the Duke of
(18:58):
Burgundy seemed devastated by the death of his longtime enemy
turned newfound friend. He had helped escort Louis Coffin into
the Celestine Priory, where he wept through the funeral service,
so Tignonville had to look elsewhere. Fortunately, there was no
shortage of witnesses, including Jacquette, the young woman who had
(19:20):
watched the attack from her window. De Tignonville and his
staff interviewed them all. Soon a picture of the crime emerged,
and it was not one of random violence, but of careful,
premeditated murder. On the night of his death, Louis had
gone to visit Queen Isabeau at her residence, the Hotel Barbette.
(19:42):
Two weeks earlier. Isabeau had lost a newborn son shortly
after his birth, and Louie visited regularly in an attempt
to keep her spirits up. At eight o'clock, a man
came to the house, announcing himself as a valet of
the king and declared that the king needed to speak
to his brother at once. Louis, along with his small
(20:03):
traveling party, quickly departed, setting off down the Rue Vielle
de Tompre. At the intersection of the Rue des Rosiers,
he was attacked. After their deadly work was done, the
assailants fled, knocking out any lit torches they passed to
obscure their path and throwing col troops clusters of metal
(20:24):
spikes meant to disable pursuing men or horses behind them.
Several observers claimed to have seen the men coming from
a house across the street from Jacquettes, and de Tignonville
later determined that the assassins had rented the home under
false names, using it as a base of operations. The
(20:44):
assailants had begun their search for a house more than
five months earlier, hinting at the level of planning involved.
All of Paris watched d Tignonville's progress closely. The city
was on lockdown, with all all the gates leading out
tightly shut, and people were arming themselves, fearful that the
(21:05):
murder was only the beginning of the bloodshed. After all,
Louis had been the closest thing they had to a
king at the time, given his brother's mental illness. Now
that Louis was dead, who would keep order in France?
The dukes of the Royal council were asking themselves the
(21:27):
same question. On November twenty seventh, they summoned d'e Tignonville
to a meeting and asked him to report on his progress.
D'e Tignonville replied that he had learned many things, but
had not yet gathered enough evidence to conclusively identify the murderers.
To get to the truth, he told the assembled men
(21:48):
he might need to search the royal residences, including their own.
It was a bold request, one that these high ranking
dukes had every right to refuse, but they knew that
the stability of the government relied on uncovering the murderer.
One by one, they agreed to let De Tignonville search
(22:10):
their homes. All of them agreed, that is, except for John,
Duke of Burgundy. At de Tignonville's request, he had gone pale.
As everyone awaited his answer, an awkward silence grew. Suddenly
John stood and beckoned for two of his uncles, the
(22:31):
Dukes of Barry and Anjou, to join him in a
side room. Confused, the men agreed. Once they were out
of the council's hearing, John turned to his uncles and exclaimed,
I did it. By the tempting of the devil, I
did it. The Dukes were horrified and shocked. The Duke
(22:51):
of Barry, who had facilitated Louis and John's reconciliation ceremony
only days earlier, cried, now I have lost two nephews.
But they agreed to keep John's confession quiet for the
moment in order to determine next steps. The Duke of
Anjou returned to the main room and adjourned the meeting.
(23:13):
D'etignonville didn't know what John had said, but it's likely
he could guess it was the conclusion he had predicted.
His request to search the Duke's houses had been his
way of flushing John out. Despite the Duke's outward grief,
D'etignonville had quickly narrowed in on him after witnesses reported
(23:34):
seeing the fleeing assassins wearing the Burgundian colors. The next morning,
Barry and Ajou called a meeting of the Royal Council.
They purposefully did not invite John, but he showed up anyway.
When Barry, shocked at John's boldness, turned him forcefully away,
(23:56):
John was confused. He seemed to have taken Barry and
Jeu's silence the day before as a tacit approval of
his actions, but it wasn't. He stormed down the stairs,
bumping into another uncle, the Duke of Bourbond, who asked
where he was going. Furious and flustered, John allegedly yelled,
I'm going out to piss smooth move. In reality, John
(24:19):
was fleeing Paris. His uncle's rejection revealed to him that
he was no longer safe, and indeed When the Duke
of Bourbond learned of John's confession from Barry and Aljoux,
he demanded to know why John had been allowed to leave. Quote.
This thing must be handled in the right way, he declared.
But it was too late. Somehow, John and his retinue
(24:42):
had managed to slip through one of the city's closed gates,
and they were gone. Gone too were the actual killers,
retainers of John's who had been paid handsomely for their work.
By the beginning of December, John was safely back in
his own territories. In Paris, the Dukes were at a standstill.
(25:03):
They were worried that sending men after John would provoke
in armed retaliation, leading to civil war. The king, however,
was in a period of good health and he was
more willing to act. On December tenth, Louis's widow, Valentina,
arrived in Paris after more than a decade in exile
remember her alleged witchcraft. She pleaded with King Charles for
(25:26):
justice for her husband, and he agreed, declaring that he
would avenge Louis, But in early January he relapsed into psychosis.
The weak willed Dukes walked back his promises to Valentina
and instead decided to organize a conference with John set
for January. Emboldened by the lack of response from Paris,
(25:50):
John decided to double down. He told his uncles in
December that he had been possessed by the devil when
he decided to murder Louis. Now he changed his tune,
shaping a shocking defense for himself in which he claimed
it was not the devil who inspired him to kill,
but God. At the conference on January twentieth, fourteen o eight,
(26:14):
John astounded listeners by declaring that the murder had been
both righteous and necessary, given louise immoral character and abuses
of power, and John continued he would return to Paris
to make his case to anyone who wished to hear.
This was just what the other dukes had most feared. Paris,
(26:37):
where Louise taxes had hurt thousands, was home to the
most receptive audience for John's arguments, and an inflamed populace
riled up with tales of justifiable murder was a recipe
for disaster. On February twenty eighth, fourteen o eight, John
(26:59):
rode into Paris, despite warnings from the Royal Council. He
had brought hundreds of armed men with him. Thousands of
Parisians thronged the streets to witness his entrance, cheering him
on loudly. Despite all of the fans, John knew his
popularity wasn't universal. He quickly set about adding a fortified
(27:22):
tower to his Paris mansion so he could sleep in safety.
And when he showed up at his public defense, a
carefully staged show trial that John himself had organized, he
was wearing chainmail under his fine robes. It was now
March eighth, and most of the high ranking citizens of
Paris had turned up at the Hotel Sainpo, the King's
(27:46):
main residence, to hear John's attempt to justify his action.
Notably absent was the King, who was suffering another bad spell.
Presiding instead was the eleven year old d'au fin, who
sat alongside the dukes of Barry, Bourbon, Anjou, and Burgundy
himself on a bench at the front of the hall.
(28:06):
John had enlisted Jean Petit, a theologian from the University
of Paris, to present his defense, and Petit came ready
to rumble. Standing in front of the crowd. Petit delivered
a shocking four hour long speech, which began with the
statement that it is quote permissible and meritorious to kill
(28:29):
a tyrant, and the Duke of Orleans was a tyrant
end quote. Continued with an allegory in which Louis was
the devil and John the holy Avenger, and he moved
into allegations of witchcraft, including claims that Louis had used
demonic powers to create cursed swords with which to kill
(28:49):
the king. He also outlined a variety of ways that
Louis had betrayed the king and the French, and concluded
with the statement that John deserved not just a royal
hardened for his act, but also quote love, honor, and riches.
When Petit finished, a stunned silence filled the hall. None
(29:09):
of those present had expected John to be particularly repentant
for his crime, but no one had expected him to
actively argue he deserved to be rewarded for what he
had done. When Petit asked if John indorsed all he
had said, John replied that he did. Later, John would
have Petit's oration made into four costly, beautifully illuminated books
(29:34):
titled The Justification of the Duke of Burgundy. Despite John's
satisfaction with Petit's speech, not everyone on Team Burgundy was
so enthusiastic. John Gearson, once an ally of John's, would
later write that the justification was quote text for damnation,
a treatise for death, a charter of dishonor, and a
(29:58):
message from the pit of hell. The only person whose
opinion really mattered, though, was King Charles. The next day,
with the king briefly lucid, John and his allies pushed
Charles for a royal pardon, which the king granted. Charles
(30:18):
also signed a document, likely drafted by John's team, that
empowered John to pursue and punish anyone who insulted him,
the fifteenth century equivalent of a license to kill. Unsurprisingly,
this outcome did not sit well with many nobles, especially
not Queen Isabeau or a Louise's widow Valentina. When John
(30:39):
was forced to return to his lands to quell an
uprising in July, Valentina and Isabeau began plotting their revenge.
On July second, at a council meeting attended by the King,
John's royal pardon was revoked. Two months later, the women
hosted a show trial of their own, at which John
was denied, bounced for his treachery, and ordered to surrender
(31:03):
to the King's justice. Meanwhile, John was decisively putting down
a rebellion in Liege. His commanding performance at the Battle
of Aute earned him the nickname John the Fearless, which
would stick with him for the rest of his life.
The battle also brought monetary reward in the form of
compensation paid by the newly defeated rebels. His newly energized
(31:27):
army and his newly flushed treasury terrified the Orleanists. With
these resources, John might be able to take Paris, and indeed,
when John returned to Paris in November, he brought two
thousand troops with him. Afraid of war, the Royal Council
once again capitulated to John. They met little opposition. Valentina,
(31:52):
her husband's greatest advocate, had died in December, and the
couple surviving children were still young. The oldest, Charles, the
new Duke of Orleans, was only fourteen, so it wasn't
hard for the royal counselors to push through their plan
for reconciliation. On March ninth, fourteen o nine, the Houses
(32:13):
of Burgundy and Orleans met at the Chautre Cathedral to
reconcile the king. Slipping in and out of sanity, presided.
Speaking first, John declared that while he did not apologize
for having Louis killed, he did apologize for the pain
that this act had caused the king. The King accepted his,
(32:35):
let's say, non apology. Now it was the Orleans brother's turn.
The boys were sobbing and had to be pushed to
recite their statement of pardon. It was humiliating for the
boys and horrifying too many onlookers. The Clerk of Parliament
wrote of the ceremony peace piece, and yet no peace.
(33:00):
Far from assuaging the Orleans supporters or Orleanists, the Treaty
of chartra recommitted them to revenge. The young Charles of
Orleans began to recruit allies, including the powerful Count Bernard
of Armagnac, whose daughter he would eventually marry in Paris.
(33:21):
John was inadvertently helping Charles cause through a series of
short sighted, poorly executed, and tactless political moves. Through the
fall of fourteen o nine, John alienated nearly all the
most powerful dukes of the Council Charles and his party
eagerly welcomed these discontented dukes. In April fourteen ten, the
(33:44):
Orleanists vowed to raise an army against John. In response,
John started mustering his own troops. By fourteen eleven, the
Orleanists and the Burgundians were engaged in a full blown
civil war. I'll note here that histories of the time
usually refer to the Orleanists as Armagnacs, thanks to the
(34:06):
central role at this point of the Count of Armagnac,
but we'll keep calling them for the sake of this
episode the Orleanists, so you know. These are the men
who supported the deceased Duke of Orleans and then his
young son, the new Duke of Orleans, for more than
two years. The civil war devastated the cities and countryside
(34:28):
around Paris. Civilians were just as likely to be killed
as soldiers. Towns were burned and homes looted. The two
parties would occasionally pause to draw up some sort of
unsatisfactory treaty, which would quickly be broken. It seemed like
the war would never end, but in mid fourteen thirteen,
(34:50):
something crucial shifted. Parisians, longtime supporters of John, began to
turn against him. They blamed him for the war, which
was winning their businesses and cutting off the city's food supply.
Pro or Leanist sentiment rose, and then, in a fitting
moment for this Satan filled saga, a flyer began appearing
(35:13):
all around Paris, addressed from the dark Lord himself. It
was a thank you letter of swords, in which Lucifer
the quote King of Hell, Prince of the Shadows, master Regent,
guardian and governor of all the devils in Hell, expressed
his gratitude for the service of his quote dearist and
(35:33):
well loved lieutenant and Proctor General in the West, John
of Burgundy. There's not much you could do to contest
an endorsement from Satan, and John saw quite literally the
writing on the wall. He had lost Paris. On August
twenty third, he once again fled the city. Outside of
(35:54):
the ongoing fighting, the French had to worry about the English.
Both the Indians and the Orleanists had requested French assistance
in the Civil War, giving the new English King Henry
the Fifth a clear picture of the internal French turmoil.
He knew it was the perfect opportunity to strike, and
(36:15):
in fourteen fifteen, he did, taking the city of Harfleur
after a relatively short siege. The French, already ravaged by
years of civil war, did their best to resist, bringing
a massive force to face the English at Agincourt in
late October. But maybe you know this story already. The
(36:37):
French forces weren't enough. The English annihilated the French in
one of history's most famous defeats. Charles of Orleans, leader
of the Orleanists, was captured by the English at Agincourt
and spent the next twenty five years as a prisoner
in England. John of Burgundy, by contrast, had failed to
(36:58):
show at the battle, even as the country fought off
the English. The infighting continued. In fourteen eighteen, John retook Paris,
executing a bloody coup which left hundreds dead. But eventually
even he could not deny the threat the English represented.
(37:19):
If the French wanted to repel their foreign enemies, they
needed to unite internally. John began negotiations with the teenaged
d'aufins of France, who had created a shadow Orleanist government
in Borges following John's capture of Paris. The Daufis seemed
amenable to the idea of a truce, but his advisers,
(37:40):
middle aged men who had spent the past decade fighting
for the Orleanist cause, were not as enthusiastic. Nonetheless, negotiations progressed,
and a treaty of reconciliation was drawn up in July
fourteen nineteen. The Duke and the Daufins planned to formalize
the treaty on the bridge at Montereau in September. A
(38:03):
special enclosure was built in the center of the bridge
for the meeting, with heavy wooden doors on each side.
The men would each enter from one side, accompanied by
only ten companions. All were to be unarmed, though they
were allowed to wear armor. Of course. Each man also
brought hundreds more armed men to wait just outside the enclosure,
(38:25):
just in case. At five o'clock on September tenth, fourteen nineteen,
John the Fearless entered the enclosure through his side of
the bridge. He wore scarlet robes and dripped with jewels.
The Daufin was already waiting for him. Removing his hat,
John knelt before the prince and greeted him. The Daufint
(38:45):
bade him to stand, telling him he had spoken well.
For a moment, the promise of peace hung over the bridge.
But then the Daufin looked to his advisers, and one
of them yelled, kill. Kill. The door on the Dauphin's
side of the enclosure swung open, and armed men flooded in.
(39:06):
They swarmed the Duke, swinging at him with axes and swords,
brutally wounding him before they struck the final blow. The
parallels to Louise's murder were intentional. One of the killers,
a devoted Orleanist, almost severed John's hand. As the Duke
tried to defend himself, he shouted, you cut off my
(39:27):
master's hand, and I shall cut off yours. On the
other side of the bridge, the Duke's troops were desperately
trying to get into the enclosure, but they were brought
down by the Dauphin's archers, who had appeared on the
river banks. There was nothing they could do anyway. The
Duke was dead. The Dauphin's men stripped his body of
its finery and threw it in a wooden coffin, which
(39:50):
was eventually buried at a nearby church. The assassination of
John of Burgundy was a victory for the Orleanists, but
ultimately a tremendous tragedy for France. The Civil War reignited
more fiercely than before, and eventually led John's son, the
new Duke of Burgundy, to ally himself with the English
(40:12):
instead of the French for more than fifteen years. The
whole country suffered immensely in the all out war that followed,
and though cause and effect is a tricky business to
trace in history, it's hard to imagine that things would
have played out exactly the same way had not the
Duke of Burgundy's men set out on a dark Parisian
(40:35):
night to kill their master's mortal enemy. But in a
classic case of two wrongs don't make a right, it's
equally hard to imagine that France would have been so
terribly affected by the English had it not been for
the killing of John of Burgundy. More than a century
after John's death, in fifteen twenty one, King Francis of France,
(40:56):
who was in fact Louise's great great grand and son,
was presented with the Duke's skull by a Burgundian monk Sire.
The monk is alleged to have said, pointing to a
wound in the skull. By that whole the English entered France.
(41:18):
That's the story of the assassination of Louis of Orleans.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit more about the legendary rivalry between Louis
and John of Burgundy. Although John and Louie's rivalry eventually
(41:42):
reached murderous proportions, it also had its pettier moments. Take
their emblems, for example, Like all good royals, each man
had selected a symbolic image to represent themselves, which they
had embroidered on their clothes and engraved on their armor
and carved into their castles. For his emblem, Louie chose
(42:03):
a wooden club. In response, John made his emblem a
carpenter's plane capable of shaving down, say, a wooden club.
After the murder, some Parisians were said to have remarked,
the knotty club has been planed. And then there were
their mottos. When John and Louie had nearly gone to
(42:24):
war against one another in the summer of fourteen oh five,
their troops had paraded around carrying banners emblazoned with their
leader's respective mottos Louis read I want it or I
challenge him, depending on the translation, but I want it
is a fair translation, and John's you might be able
(42:45):
to guess it. His banners read I have it. Noble
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
(43:07):
from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwartz.
Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick,
Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder, and Laurie Goodman. The show is
produced by rema Il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thayne
and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
(43:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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