12
Among the problems most feared by any ruler in the medieval world – and later – was serious division among his subjects. A divided society, as Christ had proclaimed, could not long survive. Conflict was a threat to peace which every prince hoped to avoid.1 It was for this reason that steps had long been taken, with mixed success, to ban and prevent private war in the lands over which French kings ruled. Over centuries, men came to accept that only the ruler might wage war with proper authority.2 And, as if in conscious search of ways of resolving disputes when these arose (as they inevitably did), the late Middle Ages witnessed the development of legal procedures leading to compromises and negotiated settlements between those who sought to resolve their differences through the law.3 The responsibilities of rulers to work actively for peace was causing them to take a firm lead and to show by example that society need not, indeed should not, live in conflict, but in harmony and justice.
1 Many of the royal letters cited in the pages which follow begin with a ‘scene-setting’ description of the rifts and divisions in French society which it is the king’s wish and duty to heal. The measures being taken by him are intended to bring unity and justice (‘bonne concorde et justice’) to all under his rule.2 As late as 1449 Charles VII was obliged to emphasise that no one ‘can or ought to assemble men and take to arms … nor maintain men-at-arms … without our authority … and if anyone does the contrary, he becomes a traitor … and an enemy of the public weal’ (Cited by S. H. Cuttler, The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France (Cambridge, 1981), p. 198).3 ‘Above all, and this from necessity as much as from choice, the king preferred private arrangements that served his political interests to general methods’ (R. Boutruche, ‘The Devastation of Rural Areas during the Hundred Years War and the Agricultural Recovery of France’, The Recovery of France in the Fifteenth century, ed. P. S. Lewis (New York: London, 1972), p. 39). See n. 32, below.
In the mid-fifteenth century the kingdom of France was emerging from a lengthy period of war against England whose kings had pretensions to the crown of France. Since the 1340s, in their attempts to translate claims into reality, the English had invaded the country several times. Most recently, under Henry V and his son Henry VI, they had conquered and occupied Normandy and much of northern France. The years of war and occupation had ended in 1450 when Charles VII had finally regained control of the duchy of Normandy through military force.
Nonetheless, in the early fifteenth century, the serious failings of the monarchy had allowed, not to say encouraged, civil war between the followers of the dukes of Burgundy on the one hand, and those who favoured the duke of Orléans and the count of Armagnac, on the other: hence the names ‘Burgundians’ and ‘Armagnacs’ given to those who supported the rival groups. At the very core of the troubles (in addition to strong personality conflicts) lay a struggle for control of the monarchy, weakened by the poor mental health of Charles VI, as well as for the control of the country’s towns, above all Paris. The plight of the capital, so well reflected in the pages of the so-called Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris,4 was at times desperate as it changed hands between the parties, frequently suffered virtual blockade by surrounding garrisons, and witnessed the horrors of the massacre of Armagnac supporters by their Burgundian rivals in the spring of 1418. There can be no doubt about the rivalries and divisions created in Paris and elsewhere by the internecine civil conflicts of these years. It was these which the English to a certain extent came to control while they occupied the capital between 1420 and 1436, but to which they, in their turn, were also to contribute.
4 Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris 1405–1449, ed. A. Tuetey (Paris, 1881); Ibid, ed. C. Beaune, (Paris, 1990). See also the English translation, A Parisian Journal, 1405–1449, trans. J. Shirley (Oxford, 1968), to which reference will be made in what follows.
The two conflicts, one among Frenchmen, the other between Frenchmen and Englishmen (including Gascons) shared an important characteristic. In each, property lying in territory controlled by one side but whose owners had fled to live in that of the other was confiscated as punishment and was often given as reward to supporters of the party in power. This practice had already been in evidence in Paris when the Armagnacs seized the capital in 1413; the roles would be reversed in 1418. In Normandy, the English followed suit. Lands and estates belonging to Normans and others who refused to accept English rule and fled their homes, only to be declared rebels, were confiscated by the English and granted either to Frenchmen ready to accept the English presence and live under their rule, or to Englishmen encouraged to settle by the authorities. It was such a policy that the English followed in Paris, too, where many confiscated houses were granted to Englishmen or to Frenchmen of Burgundian sympathies who shared the government and administration of the capital.5
5 For Normandy, see C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450. The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford, 1983), chs 3 & 4; R. Massey, ‘The Land Settlement in Lancastrian Normandy’, Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. T. Pollard (Gloucester and New York, 1984), pp. 76–96; R. Massey, ‘Lancastrian Rouen: Military Service and Property Holding, 1419–49’, England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London and Rio Grande, 1994), pp. 269–286; P. Cailleux, ‘La présence anglaise dans la capitale normande: quelques aspects des relations entre Anglais et Rouennnais’, La Normandie et l’Angleterre au Moyen Age, ed. P. Bouet and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2003), pp. 265–276. For Paris, see Guy L. Thompson, Paris and its People under English Rule. The Anglo-Burgundian Regime, 1420–1436 (Oxford, 1991), ch. 5.
What, then, had these conflicts done to France, and what problems had they created for the future? In the first half of the fifteenth century France was a country divided by loyalties and allegiances, as well as by the presence of an English occupant. Charles VII, whose authority extended only over the centre and the south of the divided country, tried to reassert the power of the crown, and to insist on the obligation of all loyal Frenchmen to give him their allegiance as their true lord. Weakened by civil conflict, relying upon the support of the Armagnac faction during the early years of his reign (a fact which underlined that he was not king of all Frenchmen), bitterly at odds with the Burgundians who had established an alliance with the English, the king sought to regain the areas over which he had lost control and to re-establish his authority as king recognised by all Frenchmen. The first years had been difficult, but hope had been raised in 1429 when Joan of Arc, having helped to defeat the English at the siege of Orléans, had led Charles to his coronation at Reims. Crowned and anointed, Charles was now undoubtedly stronger, and in the ensuing years the military conflict began to turn slowly in his favour. At Arras, in 1435, he managed to be reconciled formally with Philip, duke of Burgundy, who, abandoning his alliance with England, acknowledged Charles as king of France. Some months later, a French army appeared outside Paris; within a short time the demoralised English had surrendered, and Paris became once again the capital of a legitimate France. It was at this stage that the problems associated with what would prove to be the long process of ending and healing the ‘times of divisions’ (‘temps des divisions’), as they were called, and of winding down the war, began.
In fact, the need to find solutions to a particular problem created by war and occupation had already been acted upon by Charles VII at the time of his coronation in 1429, when talks had taken place with Burgundian representatives regarding the return of land, under the terms of a general pardon, to those who had held them before hostilities had begun. However, a vital factor had been ignored or forgotten. If this simple plan were acted upon, would not those loyal to the king risk incurring financial loss if their estates were returned to them in their current, often rundown, condition? Anxious to give momentum to his campaign, Charles issued what became known as the Edict of Compiègne which decreed the return of confiscated lands in the condition in which they had been left in the past. All current holders of such lands, even those who had come to them quite legally in the intervening years, were to be ousted.6 This was more than simply a proclamation that measures to re-establish peace would have to be taken, and that the crown was accepting responsibility for doing this. In 1429 Charles’s aim was the publication of an overtly political manifesto, at once a claim to sovereignty in France and a partisan move aimed at rewarding those who had remained faithful to him and to his cause. But its approach had been unsubtle, its proposed terms not fully considered. What would Burgundian beneficiaries of grants think of it all, for it was largely at their expense that the king’s followers stood to gain? Yet, imperfect as it certainly was, it signalled that consideration had been given to the future when war might end, and France would once again be a united country. A start, at least, had been made.
6 A. Bossuat, ‘The Re-establishment of Peace in Society during the Reign of Charles VII’, The Recovery of France, ed. Lewis, pp. 67–68.
However, at the great international congress held at Arras in the summer of 1435, while Charles and Philip of Burgundy were outwardly reconciled, the difficulty of making lasting peace between them was underlined by one clause in the treaty which concerns us here. The general terms agreed between France and Burgundy, which were to the advantage of the latter, and would be the cause of future disputes between Philip and Charles and their respective heirs, Charles the Bold and Louis XI, included a clause which stated that while ‘each one of either side should return to his own’, all lands and ecclesiastical benefices which were to be accepted in their current state and condition, not as set out in the Edict of Compiègne, in the condition in which they had been in former, often better, times. Furthermore, no compensation for losses could be demanded. Not being in a political or military position to impose their view which, in any event, years of economic loss resulting from constant war would have made it impossible to put into effect, the French had accepted this clause, in spite of its direct contravention of the conditions set out in the edict of 1429, to be included. They could hardly do otherwise.7
7 E. Cosneau, Les grands traités de la guerre de Cent Ans (Paris, 1889), p. 146 (cl.35).
It was in April 1436 that the first major attempt to achieve conciliation within a large community was attempted. The scene was Paris, the occasion the capture of the nation’s capital from the English by forces fighting for Charles VII, now assisted by the Burgundians and their sympathisers living there. The king’s ‘moderation’8 referred to by a recent historian of Paris may have been influenced by that factor. The vocabulary of official documents, later reflected in the writings of the chroniclers, specifically emphasised the king’s wish and intention not to wreak vengeance. All acts of treason were to be forgotten, and a general pardon (‘absolucion generalle’), whose language emphasised the need to forget past events and to encourage all to be united as loyal subjects in the king’s ‘grace and goodwill’ (‘bonne grace et bienveillance’),9 was published. Behind this lay the presumption that the Parisians had come under enemy rule in spite of themselves, rather than out of choice. They were not to be held responsible for the ambiguous, not to say treasonable, position in which they had lived for the past eighteen years, and were certainly not to be treated as ‘collaborateurs’ in the modern sense of the word. The king, furthermore, undertook to be generous (‘liberal’) towards those who had sustained losses in his service.
8 J. Favier, Nouvelle histoire de Paris. Paris au XVe siècle, 1380–1500 (Paris, 1974), p. 237.9 Histoire de Chares VII, roy de France, ed. D. Godefroy (Paris, 1661), p. 796.
The Parisian ‘solution’ reflected Charles’s growing confidence that events were now turning in his favour.10 Military considerations influenced what would otherwise be regarded as political decisions. There was no purpose in provoking resistance or outright opposition which might hinder the momentum of the military tide now running in his favour. The king had to be ready to make concessions. Those who preferred to continue serving the English were allowed to leave. When the Valois Parlement was restored to Paris early in 1437, several of its members were chosen from appointees of the Anglo-Burgundian regime of the previous years, a good example of the ‘honest peace, accord and reconciliation’ which made it possible that this institution – and others – ‘should be restored, re-established and allowed to function in our town of Paris and its neighbourhood in the way it had done before the divisions and for a long time before’.11 For example, Jean de Longueil, appointed lieutenant civil of the Châtelet by the English in 1431, was still in possession of the same office nearly thirty years later.12 Others, too, continued to serve the new administration. Such were the signs of the moderation which inspired the king as he reasserted his authority over the capital.
10 Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, ed. F.-A. Isambert et al. (29 vols, Paris, 1822–33), VIII, pp. 832–834.11 ‘… bonne paix, accord & reconciliation … sont remises, restablies, tenues et exercées en nostredict ville de Paris, ès lieux, ainsi & par la maniere qui avant lesdictes divisions avoient acoustumé estre tenues & exercées d’ancienneté’ (Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race (22 vols, Paris, 1723–1849), XIII, p. 229. [Hereafter Ordonnances….]).12 Favier, Paris au XVe siècle, p. 238.
This pragmatic approach to the employment of personnel on both sides of the political divide was to be followed by guidelines issued by the crown on the validity of legal decisions made in the Parlement of Paris during the years 1418 to 1436. Writing from Poitiers, where the rival Valois Parlement had sat for the past fourteen years, on 15 March 1436 (a date which anticipated the capture of Paris by some weeks, and which therefore strongly suggests a policy which was premeditated rather than spontaneous) Charles VII admitted that in the preceding years many had obeyed the English king ‘both in the exercise and administration of justice as well as in other ways, as if he had been their sovereign Lord’. This was true of Burgundian supporters who were now ‘reconciled, returned and reunited with us and to our obedience’.13 Having been asked to declare valid those judgements made in the part of France outside his control since 1418, the king set out the reasons which encouraged him and his council to accede to the request. Scarcely in a position to act otherwise, Charles none the less made the best use of necessity. Wishing, he wrote, to live ‘in harmony and justice’, yet without implying recognition of the jurisdiction and authority of the English, and certainly without prejudice (real or implied) to himself or to any supporters, he agreed that the judgements made by ‘those who called themselves judges’14 outside his effective jurisdiction between persons living in those parts should be regarded as valid, although this was not to apply to cases involving persons residing within his jurisdiction. From this decision it was logical to allow those responsible for these judgements to remain in their positions. The compiler of the register of the Parlement criminel marvelled at the ease with which the transition took place, in which few incidents occurred, and for which all should thank ‘the sweet Jesus … for the goodness and kindness which, in his mercy, he has shown today in this town’ which had enabled the events to take place ‘without the shedding of blood or any violence or incidents … or at least very few … which all creatures must regard as the work of divine not human action’.15 The continuity of the proceedings of the Parlement were an indication of the fact that all sides saw the provision of justice as a necessary function of state which could not be halted or delayed, even in these most unusual times.
13 ‘… reconciliez envers nous & reduiz & reunis à nous et à nostre obéissance’ (Ordonnances, XIII, p. 216).14 Ibid, XIII, p. 217.15 Journal de Clément de Fauquembergue, gréffier du Parlement de Paris, 1417–1435, ed. A. Tuetey (3 vols, Paris, SHF, 1903–15), III, pp. 194–195.
The future was to bring further evidence of the continuity, one might say the development, of such a policy. At an assembly held with certain princes of the blood at Nevers in March 1442, the king was asked to appoint good counsellors, and to be reconciled to some of the highest nobility who, it was claimed, had sustained huge losses of land to the English while supporting their king against them. The terms used to present these petitions are instructive: ‘that he should appoint to his council notable God-fearing persons who have not adopted extreme positions with regard to the divisions of the past’, to which the king replied that in choosing counsellors ‘he has had no regard to these divisions which he has chosen to forget’.16 To the request that he should be fully reconciled with several dukes, among them Orléans, Alençon, Vendôme and Nevers, the reply given was that the king had been as ‘generous’ as he could be to those lords of the blood and others who had suffered losses in his service. A reference later in the document to ‘peace and reunion’ (‘paix et réunion’) supports the view that, outwardly at least, it was official royal policy to encourage reconciliation between the parties in what still remained a disunited and war-torn country.
16 ‘Qu’il luy plais eslire en son grant conseil gens notables, crémans Dieu, et non extremes ou passionés ès divisions passées … Le roy n’a eu regard aux divisions passées … et les a et tient pour oubliées’ (Chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, ed. L. Douët-d’Arcq (6 vols, Paris, SHF, 1857–62), VI, p. 40. Variant texts in Recueil général, ed. Isambert (IX, 109), and Chronique de Mathieu d’Escouchy, ed. G. du Fresne de Beaucourt (3 vols, Paris, SHF, 1863–64), III, p. 77.
It was this ideal which appears to have governed and directed the positive and seemingly consistent policy of Charles VII as he strove to reconcile his people to one another and towards the crown of which he was the living embodiment. In this matter, the king gave a strong lead, presenting himself as a figure ready to forgive and to forget events of the past, preferring to look to the future. This last point is important as the king and his counsellors had before them the daunting task of rebuilding France economically and socially, and of giving the country a future under the authority and leadership of the monarchy. There were limits to what could be done about events and decisions of the past generation or two, and there should be as few recriminations as possible. If blame for what had occurred had to be apportioned, then it could be laid firmly at the door the English who, having brought the war to France, had become the cause of that country’s divisions. Frenchmen loyal to the Valois dynasty could be praised for their fidelity; on the other hand, Frenchmen who had temporarily ‘gone English’ should be pardoned for having acted under the coercion of military force. In the final analysis, no distinction should be made between them. France should try to achieve a new beginning under a leader who showed virtues which, if inspired by Christian teaching, were also strongly political in character.
Christian influence upon the forming of political attitudes was best expressed, in terms of the needs of mid-fifteenth century France, in the writings and exhortations of Jean Juvénal des Ursins, once bishop of Beauvais, later archbishop of Reims and counsellor to the king. Tireless in his efforts to make Charles into a ‘most Christian king’, Jean Juvénal reiterated time and again that, for the sake of the common good, a king, while always striving for justice, should be ready to exercise the royal attribute of mercy. ‘Sire’, he wrote about 1440, ‘do not have regard to our faults committed in times past, nor to those of our relatives and ancestors nor to our failure to obey your orders, nor to have recognised early enough the obedience which we owed you … Alas, sire, you must be ready to show us mercy’.17 The law, he pleaded, should not always be applied to the letter; rather, the king should have some latitude in its application. Mercy should be shown to those who erred; this would bring credit to the ruler himself. Jean Juvénal was anxious that his king should rule with moderation. ‘Justice without mercy’, he wrote, ‘is simply harshness’; unlike others, a king is able to write ‘we remit and pardon’ rather than simply ‘we have punished’.18 His image was of a caring monarchy, readier to pardon than to exercise its rights and exact punishment to the full.
17 ‘N’ayez aucun regart a noz faultes du temps passé, ne a celles de noz parens et predecesseurs, car ce que n’avons pas obey a voz commandmens, et que nous n’avons pas assez tost congneu la vraye obeisance que nous vous devions … Hé, sire, il est de present temps que tu nous faces misericorde’ (Écrits politiques de Jean Juvénal des Ursins (Paris, SHF, 1978), I, pp. 373–374.18 ‘… justice sans misericorde, c’est severité. … remettons et pardonnons…’ (Ibid, II, p. 415).
The terms granted by the king’s commanders to the towns of Normandy, as these were recaptured from the English mainly in the course of the year 1449, constitute an interesting series of texts which enable us to observe royal policy in action as the war drew to its end. On 17 July, on the eve of the final ‘push’ towards reconquest (‘recouvrement’), the king authorised commissioners to grant favourable terms to the citizens of towns returning into his obedience.19 The military campaign was going so well that the commissioners felt obliged, as their predecessors had felt at the time of the capture of Paris in 1436, not to propose unacceptable conditions which, by provoking resistance, could delay the military advance. Time, or rather the lack of it, was on the side of the defenders who were thus able to gain favourable terms from the king who needed to make the greatest possible progress in the remaining summer months available to him before the campaign would have to be halted. Since it was already getting near to August, the last thing Charles wanted was to be compelled to spend time besieging towns and castles.
19 Ordonnances, XIV, pp. 59–61.
The form and content of the letters actually granted suggest that, when negotiations for surrender were taking place, the citizens’ representatives expressed concern about two matters in particular: that they might expect to pay a heavy penalty for their allegiance to the English over the past thirty years, and that their rights as property owners might be open to question or challenge. The views of those seeking re-admission into the French obedience gave the king the opportunity to emphasise that, even in the moment of success, the crown would not act in a triumphalist or vengeful way by exerting the maximum penalty from those who had lived in the enemy obedience. On the contrary, the people of Neufchâtel were told that, ‘wishing to draw our vassals and subjects to us and to treat them with love and kindness’ so as to encourage their future loyalty, the king was willing to ‘put behind him, pardon, suppress all memory of and put aside any wrongdoing in order to receive the people of the town into his good grace’.20 The texts of these letters are all different, but their contents are very similar in tone. At both a moral and a political level, Charles VII was trying to make the kingdom whole, to stabilise it, and to welcome back those who wished to live under his authority. Consequently, all who had turned their backs on the crown and had encouraged the enemy might now benefit from the king’s magnanimity; their treason (the term was not used but the concept was clearly there) and all other crimes against whomsoever committed would now be ‘regarded as never having happened’,21 and they would receive the royal pardon. The granting of a general pardon (‘abolicion generalle’), along with an undertaking not to permit royal prosecutors to pursue miscreants, and a promise to seek out and punish those who might try to avenge acts committed during the past years, constitutes further evidence of a forward-looking approach, important in making a conscious policy of conciliation succeed.
20 ‘… voulans nos vassaulx & subgects recueillir & retraire à nous, & iceulx traicter en toute amour & débonnaireté. … mectre en oubly, & icelles [choses] leur abolyr, pardonner, et remectre’ (Ibid, XIV, p. 65).21 ‘… repputez comme non faicts et non avenus’ (Ibid, XIV, pp. 66, 72).
What was lacking in all this was a clear sense of legal consistency. We have already observed that the terms agreed at Arras in 1435 relating to the condition in which properties should be returned to their original owners contradicted those set out in the Edict of Compiègne of 1429. The terms granted to the towns of Normandy added further to the confusion. Probably to ensure or, in places which had offered no resistance to the French king’s army, to reward a rapid surrender, the interests of those in possession at the time appear to have been recognised once again at the expense of those loyal to the king. Confirmed in possession of their rights and revenues, the ‘possessioners’ were the beneficiaries of the policy of granting general amnesties even though the Edict of Compiègne would not have come down in their favour. To add to the confusion, the Edict was to be confirmed by the king at Montbazon on 28 October 1450. The text of the accompanying letter emphasised his desire to ‘ensure and maintain good peace and union among our subjects, so that they will no longer recall their conflicts nor the evils and difficulties associated with time of war and division which our kingdom has experienced’.22 All judgements made in the courts, including the Parlement, contrary to the terms of the Edict were declared void; the law was to be observed, a decision which suggests that the courts knew or suspected that non-legal considerations, such as military necessity, had influenced earlier decisions. The text of the Edict favouring those loyal to the king was registered by the Parlement for the first time only on 15 February 1451, a royal letter hinting strongly that the court had hitherto been reluctant to take the step, perhaps because of the legal difficulties which it might create for the future. In Rouen, the news of the confirmation caused confusion, as it appeared ‘to be greatly to the prejudice of several notable persons in this region of Normandy and beyond and even several from this city, as it seemed to be in complete contravention of certain things granted by the said lord in the terms of surrender and pardon granted by the said lord to this city’.23 Attempts were to be made to secure letters from the king which would ensure that the terms of surrender of November 1449 were in no way affected by this recent development. On 8 April the delegation reported that the people of the city assembled ‘in large numbers’. Its members were thanked for their work; but the record does not tell us whether they achieved what they had set out to do.
22 ‘… tenir & garder bonne paix & union entre noz subgetz, sans ce qu’ilz aient cause de remembrer les ungs contre les autres, les maulx & inconvéniens faiz & perpetrez durant les guerres & diivisions qui ont esté en nostredit royaume’ (Ibid, XIV, p. 105).23 ‘… grandement preiudicier pluseurs notables personnes de ce pays de Normendie et d’ailleurs, et meme pluseurs de cette ville, et qu’ilz estoient directement contre aucunes choses accordées par ledit seigneur par le traictié, composicion [et] abolicion de ceste ville de Rouen, puis naguere fait et donné par icellui seigneur’. Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, Délibérations de la Ville, 1448–53, MS A. 7, fos. 90v, 91 and 114. Local Reaction to the French Reconquest of Normandy (1449–50). The Example of Rouen. See infra pp. 155–168, (currently).
This, however, was not the end of the story. The Parlement, reluctant to judge solely on legislation without being able to consider each case separately, and aware that war and years of occupation by the English had created complex problems which were beyond the capability of any single legislative text to resolve, preferred to consider its judgements in accordance with its age-old practices which did not necessarily lead to what might appear as consistency of judgement. Moreover, in July 1454 it published and registered the terms of an amnesty granted by the king to the citizens of Rouen in November 1449, emphasising that it did so without prejudice to the declaration on the Edict of Compiègne made by the king at Montbazon on 28 October 1450. It is clear that the Parlement was intent upon securing maximum freedom for itself in the matter of resolving the sometimes complex legal implications of royal ordinances such as the Edict of Compiègne.24
24 Bossuat, ‘Re-establishment of peace’, pp. 78–80. On the part played by accords and by the judges of the Parlement in the judicial processes of this period, see C. Gauvard, ‘Justification and Theory of the Death Penalty at the Parlement of Paris in Late Medieval France’, War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France, ed. C. Allmand (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 190–208.
At the local level, too, the Edict was not always the basis of arrangements made between those returning to reclaim their inheritances and those in possession whom they could challenge by virtue of its terms. The evidence of local legal records suggests that many compromise agreements, or accords, were reached between parties, often leaving in possession the persons in actual control of the property concerned, although they may have made some kind of financial arrangement in order to achieve this. Such compromises, rather than the rigid application of the law expressed in the Edict of Compiègne, were encouraged by a number of factors. One was the long absence in the Valois obedience of those upon whom rights had devolved, persons who may have settled elsewhere in France and had little inclination to return to a society from which they had been absent, in many cases, for more than thirty years. Nor were they always in a position to provide deeds or other legal proof of the validity of their claims. Economic factors, too, discouraged supporters of the king from pursuing these claims: the costs of litigation could be high, while regular references to the need for repairs suggest that the physical condition of the estates to which they laid claim was not always sound and the profits to be made might not be high; furthermore, there were often debts to be paid, and these, too, might be considerable. In brief, the encouragement to return given by the terms of the Edict, while a factor likely to lead to a degree of legal stability and so to a greater determination to exploit the land by those who saw themselves as its legal owners, did not always prove to be advantageous to those concerned. Cheaper than going to law, arbitration was a procedure often more likely to find practical solutions than decisions handed down by the courts. It was a device much used in these times as France sought to come to terms with the difficult legacy of the divisions caused by war.25
25 On this, see Bossuat, ‘Re-establishment of Peace’; C. Allmand, ‘The Aftermath of War in Fifteenth-Century France’, Histor y, 61 (1976), 344–357; Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, ch. 11.
We have already observed that Charles VII’s relations with his great nobility constituted one of the major political problems faced by the king in the middle years of his reign. One whose case proved particularly difficult was Jean II, duke of Alençon, many of whose lands had been overrun by the English and who, taken prisoner at the battle of Verneuil in 1424, had been obliged to alienate others to pay the ransom needed to secure his freedom. Out of favour since 1440, he had unsuccessfully sought financial help from the king. Later, out of malice (so a royal clerk was to claim),26 he began to plot with the English with the intention of helping them return to Normandy, hoping to regain for himself the places he had lost. Such was the core of the accusations levelled against him when, after enquiries lasting some two years had been made, he was finally brought to trial at Vendôme in September 1458.
26 M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (London, 1974), p. 174.
The occasion may best be contextualised by considering the king’s reaction to other treasonable acts perpetrated against him in these years. Generally speaking, Charles VII demonstrated a firmness of purpose, tempered by leniency towards the higher nobility. In meeting the challenge to his authority posed by the princes at this time; ‘clemency was a distinct characteristic of his rule’.27 Those who opposed him were largely reprieved and pardoned, in some cases even returned to favour. So John IV, count of Armagnac who, among other crimes against the royal authority, had flirted with the English, was nonetheless pardoned.28 Alençon’s crime, however, was more serious; in his case many appear to have favoured the death penalty. By contrast what proved significant was the king’s lack of vindictiveness towards the accused. At his trial the representative of the duke of Burgundy was allowed to plead for clemency.29 Another plea was entered by Alençon’s father-in-law, Charles, duke of Orléans who, taken at Agincourt in 1415, had spent the next twenty-five years in English captivity,30 while Jean Juvénal des Ursins, also present, composed his ‘Exortation faicte au Roy’ as a plea for mercy to be shown to Alençon. The king, he claimed, had pardoned many others individually or through general pardons; would he not do the same for a prince of the blood? He would gain greater credit from such an act of mercy than from seeing the law take its course.31 Although Alençon was sentenced to die, Charles VII reduced the sentence to imprisonment during his pleasure. In a very public case he had preferred mercy to the weight of the law.
27 Cuttler, Law of Treason, p. 196.28 Ibid, pp. 202–203.29 Ibid, pp. 103–104.30 Ibid, p. 105; P. Champion, Vie de Charles d’Orlé ans, 1394–1465 (Paris, 1911), pp. 542–548.31 Écrits politiques, II, 421–422.
By the time Alencon’s trial had taken place further events had occurred by which we may judge the degree of reconciliation being achieved in France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War. The first was the conquest of Guyenne, which followed upon the recovery of Normandy in 1450. By the summer of 1451 superior military force had won Charles VII the city of Bordeaux and, with it, control of most of Guyenne. Historians are generally agreed that, since Guyenne had never taken the oath of allegiance to the king or to his predecessors, it could not be accused of treason and treated accordingly. As such, the terms granted to its urban populations were favourable: a general pardon32 for those who chose to enter the French king’s obedience and the confirmation of privileges were the most important and the most normal. The agreement made in June 1451 between the Three Estates of the Bordelais and the king’s representatives was likewise moderate in tone and content. The terms granted by Charles VII were generous; Gascon liberties and immunities were to be respected. People would be free to leave the king of France’s jurisdiction if they wished. However, if they chose to stay and took the oath of allegiance, they would benefit from a general pardon, fiscal concessions, the continuation of trade (vital for the economic prosperity of the region), access to justice33 and a new currency to be minted in Bordeaux, the king undertaking to pay any profits from this operation into the local economy. Charles VII was doing his best to forget the past and to win over new subjects.
32 ‘… metre en oubly & tout pardonner et abolir’ (Ordonnances, XIV, 176–177. Jean de Wavrin maintained that the places taken by agreement could equally well have capitulated to assault, had the king not had other ideas: ‘… le roy, de sa benignité, voulloit que len les prensist par composition afin de obvier à leffusion de sang humain et destruction de son pays et du peuple quy estoit enclose es dites villes et forteresses’ (Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne … par Jehan de Waurin… ed. W. and E. Hardy (5 vols, London, RS, 1891), V, p. 165).33 M. Vale, ‘France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420–1461)’, New Cambridge Medieval History VII, ed. C. Allmand (Cambridge, 1998), VII, p. 402. A ‘cour souveraine’ was functioning by 1452, although thereafter it met only twice, in 1456 and 1459 (G. Hubrecht, ‘Jurisdictions and Competences in Guyenne after its Recovery by France’, in The Recovery of France, ed. P. Lewis, pp. 88–89. A sovereign parlement would be established in Bordeaux in 1462.
However, the return of the English to Bordeaux in October 1452, which necessitated a second French attempt to regain the city (successfully completed in October 1453), was to test severely previous French policy of conciliation. Giving ‘support’ (‘attrait et confort’) to the English was rebellion, since it involved the breaking of oaths and undertakings given only months earlier. The tone of the pardon eventually granted to the city revealed the king’s anger. Admitting that only a few individuals had actively supported the rebellion, and accepting that the majority were afraid of being punished for something for which they were not responsible, the king agreed to receive the people of Bordeaux into his grace and to grant them a pardon for acts committed against him. Nevertheless he withheld their earlier privileges, and exempted certain persons from the general pardon. However, heavy taxes were imposed on both buyers and sellers of wine as well as on other forms of trade on the river Garonne. There followed measures to restrict the wine trade on the river, and to limit the role played in it by the city of Bordeaux, while further curbs on the trade in other commodities was also imposed. With regard to its legal status, Bordeaux was maintained within the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris, to be visited every year or two by judges and others who, with local assistance, would judge appeals locally. A fine of 100,000 écus, imposed in 1451, was reduced to only 30,000 écus in response to a petition from the citizens of Bordeaux that the destruction caused by the English on their return to the city had made the raising of such a sum impossible.34
34 Ordonnances, XIV, pp. 270–275.
The contrast between the documents of June 1451 and of April 1454 could scarcely have been greater. Most significant were the measures, clearly intended to reduce the value of trade, in particular the wine trade, for which Bordeaux was the region’s centre and main beneficiary. This was a body blow, a punishment which, seemingly uncharacteristic, has tarnished a little the king’s reputation. What was important for Bordeaux (and Charles VII must have known it when planning the intended outcome of his punitive decision) was the decline of trade which resulted from the measure. The absence of English traders which followed not unnaturally at the end of the war, and which a king with good intentions would have taken into account, only exacerbated the commercial situation. This was allowed to continue until resolved eleven years later with the decision of Louis XI to permit the port to be opened up once more to wider commercial activity.35 Both the city and the royal coffers would benefit from the decision.
35 C. Allmand (ed). Society at War: The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Edinburgh, 1973; new edn Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 182–184.
Like Normandy, Guyenne had a problem with the Edict of Compiègne. Charles VII had entered the territory relatively ‘peacefully’ in 1451; but after the short-lived return of the English to Bordeaux in the following year the area had been reconquered by force, and an altogether tougher attitude taken toward its people. This gave some the opportunity of seeking to apply the terms of the Edict of Compiègne, attempts in which they were opposed by those who claimed that, issued a generation earlier (in 1429) for application in a France which, at that time, did not include Guyenne, it could not now be applied to that territory. Its significance for our purpose is twofold. First, legal records underline that the problems of the recovery of landed interests by individuals citing the Edict were not limited to the more northern parts of France, and that the future social peace of Guyenne was also threatened by conflicts arising out of the problems involving land.36 Secondly, the introduction into Guyenne, in the years following 1453, of French legislation and decrees (the Edict of Compiègne being one of these) was an unpopular development, underlining the fact Guyenne was now part of that much larger area where the law of France would be applied. While it did little to retard that eventual process, the introduction of ‘alien’ laws into a territory proud of its ancient customs and legal procedures just at the time when Normandy had been brought, once again, into the French kingdom was not always conducive to harmony and good relations between ‘conquerors’ and ‘conquered’.37
36 M. Vale, English Gascony, 1399–1453 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 221–225; R. Harris, Valois Guyenne (Rochester, NY, Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 101–102.37 Harris, Valois Guyenne, ch. 5.
A final example of the practical problems faced by the crown may be seen in the way in which the role of Joan of Arc in securing victory in the years 1428 to 1430 was treated a generation later. The apparent lack of any attempt to vindicate her for almost twenty years after her execution at Rouen in May 1431 has long been noted by historians. Even when her case was raised in 1450 in order ‘to know the truth’ about her trial and condemnation, it led nowhere. Although a brief enquiry was held in 1452 and was reopened in 1455 as an attempt to vindicate the honour of the Arc family, the process of rehabilitation, as it came to be known, closed with only the annulment of the sentence pronounced against her. Why, by contrast, was there no condemnation of the surviving judges and assessors? A number of reasons have been advanced: the delicate state at the time of France’s relations with the papacy; the reluctance to suggest that Charles VII’s victory against the English around 1450 had owed much to events involving Joan twenty years earlier. However the most convincing reason offered is the king’s unwillingness to raise the matter of ‘collaboration’ by a large group of leading clergy, mainly alumni of the University of Paris, ‘our very dear and much loved first-born daughter’,38 whose privileges the king had confirmed in May 1436, into an issue involving men who, since that day, had mostly demonstrated their allegiance to the crown France. In 1456 the process of rehabilitation pronounced on the verdict delivered by the court in Rouen in 1431. Significantly, because it could not afford to do so, it did not deal with the individuals concerned, particularly those who were still alive. That task would be left to history. In 1456, resurrecting certain aspects of the past would not help to bring about the restoration of harmony in society. Nevertheless, there was irony in the fact that Thomas de Courcelles, chosen to preach the sermon at Charles VII’s funeral in August 1461, had been involved in the decision to submit to torture the young girl who, many thought, had given impetus to the movement which had restored the king to the full exercise of his royal authority.39
38 ‘… nostre très-chère & très-aimée Fille première née, l’université de l’Éstude de Paris’ (Ordonnances, XIII, p. 219).39 On this matter see Vale, Charles VII, ch. 3.
What is the broad context of these attempts, largely successful, to achieve reconciliation in mid-fifteenth-century France? First, they may be seen as an essential part of restoring peace and order in a much divided kingdom which had experienced both civil conflict and occupation of part of its territory by the English. If there were to be peace which all desired, the past must be cast into oblivion, crimes pardoned, purges and witch hunts forbidden, the signs and symbols of factions and divisions outlawed, and the continuity of justice maintained. The policy of granting general pardons was both sensible and realistic; reassuring to those entering – or re-entering – the royal obedience was the promise that none would be allowed to rake up the ashes of the past. Further, the outlawing of the old party titles40 and party badges (the bende, or distinguishing sash, worn by the Armagnacs,41 the cross of St Andrew worn by the Burgundians) was a further step in the direction of banishing provocative and emotive political symbols from public life.42 The moderation of the language of official documents and following them, that used by the chroniclers corresponded to the king’s conciliatory approach. Persons recognising his sovereignty must be received ‘peacefully’, and none was in any way to be hounded or libelled.43 The king, at least, knew that, for the sake of the future, the past should be forgotten.
40 ‘Ever since France first heard the names “Burgundian” and, “Armagnac”, every crime that can be thought or spoken of has been committed in the kingdom of France, so that innocent blood cries for vengeance before God’ (Parisian Journal, p. 146).41 Ibid, p. 54, n. 1.42 Bossuat, ‘Re-establishment of Peace’, pp. 78, 365, nn. 42–43; P. S. Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity (London and New York, 1968), p. 75 for an example of the name ‘Armagnac’ being used as a term of abuse. It is striking, however, how the anonymous Parisian, normally no lover of the Armagnacs or of their treatment of his city and its people (see Parisian Journal, p. 54) refers no more to them as such after 1436, significantly returning to the term ‘Francoys’ which he had used in the period up to 1417, before the major divisions which rent the French nation became too apparent. The use of ‘Français’ was intended to indicate Charles VII as king of a less divided France.43 ‘… en quelque manière calumpnez’’ (Ordonnances, XIV, p. 77).
Secondly, we may see this way forward as part of the reassertion of royal authority in France, reflected in the growing effectiveness of the crown which, by 1453, had been re-emerging for a decade or more. In a country so recently divided, the monarchy was the only institution which could unite and give it a lead. It needed peace both to succeed and to bring it the benefits which would follow from that peace. Only the monarchy could successfully bring about the reconstruction of France, keep the nobility in its place, encourage (where necessary) the repopulation of towns and country, and stimulate trade and economic regeneration. In order to achieve all – or any – of these, the king had to demand that there be peace within the kingdom.
What may surprise is the apparent inconsistency of the law as a means of achieving peace. The Edict of Compiègne, for example, represented a ‘hard-line’ and partisan solution to the problems raised by returning populations expecting to be rewarded for their loyalty to the Valois cause. In practice, politics (in particular when it came to the reality of the bargaining which took place at city gates)44 dictated that concessions should be made to further the process of reconquest; the talking and bargaining between individuals who had legal cases to pursue could take place later. Generally, a pragmatic approach to practical problems was often more telling than a rigid application of a legal text or principle. However, two factors certainly helped to resolve a potentially divisive situation. First, not all who had a claim to press wished to make much of it in reality, in particular if difficulties arose or economic reasons did not make it worth their while spending time and money in the courts. Secondly the spirit of compromise, preached by (among others) Jean Juvénal des Ursins, and formalised in out-of-court settlements, or accords, negotiated by persons acting as arbitrators, must often have taken the bitterness out of what might have been acrimonious conflicts at law. Society, as well as individuals, benefited from such procedures.
44 The terms for the surrender of Lisieux were agreed ‘devant la porte de ladicte ville de Lisieux’ (Ibid, XIV, p. 64).
In 1444 Rolando Valenti, the Milanese humanist living in Bayeux in the service of Zenon da Castiglione, the town’s Italian bishop, wrote that the peace-making of the time must not be held up by the ‘hatred and injuries of past times’, nor by the ‘long-standing harshness of mind’ or ‘obstinate and rebellious spirits’ of certain individuals.45 Old hatreds, he was suggesting, existed; yet, overall, our sources tell us little about them.46 Sectional interests do not appear to have delayed the advances made towards unity by the kingdom of France in the second half of the fifteenth century. It was for the country as a whole that Charles VII ordered Masses of thanksgiving to be said annually on 12 August, the day of the capture of Cherbourg from the English.47 As Charles of Orléans expressed it in the oration delivered in favour of the duke of Alençon in 1458, ‘for a long time past none of your predecessors has held the kingdom so united in his grasp as you hold it now’.48 Uttered as part of a plea that mercy be shown to a man on trial for his life, these words were a recognition that reconciliation, although it had met challenges, had largely been successful.
45 ‘… odia et veteres iniurias … inveteratam animorum duriciam … obduratos et efferatos animos…’ (Bayeux, Bibliothèque Capitulaire, MS 5, fol. 12).46 See Bossuat. ‘Re-establishment of Peace’, pp. 70, 364, n. 9; Lewis, Later Medieval France, pp. 75–76; Thompson, Paris and Its People, pp. 236–239; Hubrecht, ‘Jurisdictions and Competences, p. 91.47 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 304–305.48 ‘… car, passé long temps, nulz de vos prédecesseurs n’ont eu le royaume si entire en leurs mains comme vous l’avez’ (Champion, Charles d’Orléans, p. 543).