The Gold Rose: An Edward of Angoulême timeline
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I have a tree update planned after the next post, which looks to be "Carcassonne" from the early vote.
Battle of Carcassonne
Battle of Carcassonne
The Battle of Carcassonne was fought on 3 October 1389 between an Anglo-Gascon army led by Henry of Bolingbroke, 3rd earl of Derby, and a French force under the command of Louis II, duke of Bourbon. The battle was forced after the English raided deep into French territory and were then cut off from Gascony by Bourbon. The encounter was a turning point in the Caroline War and one of the greatest showdowns in the Hundred Years War.
Background
English monarchs had held lands and titles in the kingdom of France since the Norman Conquest, making them vassals of the French crown since 1066. This created an awkward feudal dynamic in which English kings were often the most powerful figures in France, but subordinate to the kings of France, while they were also equals to the kings of France as kings in their own right. At their height in the 12th century, the English controlled roughly the western half of France, but lost the duchy of Normandy and the counties of Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou in the early 13th century, keeping only the duchy of Gascony and part of the duchy of Aquitaine. They lost much of the rest of Aquitaine and part of Gascony in wars in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Gascony was thus at the center of the Hundred Years War from the war's start in 1337.
English victory in the Edwardian War led to the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, which enormously expanded their position in southwestern France. They quickly lost these gains when the Caroline War broke out in 1369, with the French reconquering most everything by 1375, when a truce was agreed for two years. A new French offensive in 1377 fell short of completing the reconquest. In the early 1380s, the dysfunction that followed the death of King Charles V of France allowed the English to go on the offensive and take control of Saintonge. They were unable to follow up on that success, though, and another truce was agreed in 1383, lasting until 1385.
Hostilities between England and France were renewed in 1385, but fighting in and around Gascony was a local affair, as the French twice tried and failed to invade mainland England rather than continue the war in the south. The region only received attention from the English in late 1386, when King Edward V of England appointed his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, 3rd earl of Derby, lord lieutenant of Aquitaine in the Coronation Parliament.
Part of Bolingbroke's brief was to bring King Charles II of Navarre into a new alliance with England, but Bolingbroke arrived shortly after the king's gruesome death. Bolingbroke was then left to his own devices, as England was preoccupied by war in the Low Countries and with Scotland. His top priority through 1387 and 1388 was keeping the routier companies from selling their allegiance to Jean III, count of Armagnac, the lieutenant governor of Languedoc. Armagnac was fundraising to raise an army and dogging routier captains to sign up with him, similar to what he had done in the months leading up to Gaston's Rebellion. Fearing that Gascony had become the target of Armagnac's ambition, Bolingbroke spent the better part of two years bribing and charming the routiers to maintain their English sympathies.
Prelude
Scottish hostility over the summer of 1388 forced Edward V to call off an expedition to the Low Countries, which the English had been planning for more than a year. The news reached Bordeaux in late August. Bolingbroke, who had been making the case for a southern campaign in letters and through Gascon representatives for at least a year by this time, set sail for London at once.
On 10 September 1388, Edward V issued summons for a parliament after having completed a three-week punitive campaign to Scotland. It assembled six weeks later, on 22 October, in Cambridge. The scale of the English victory at Newcastle wowed the assembly, but reports that the king's continental alliances were falling apart sowed doubts about the war with France. Since the beginning of the year, an alliance with the duke of Brittany had been made and already betrayed, the king of Bohemia had proven useless, the duke of Guelders was looking to make peace with French-allied Brabant, and the king of Naples, who was Edward's father-in-law, had died in Provence. The king and parliament had worked remarkably well together since Edward had declared his majority in late 1384, and tax revenue had flowed freely in the years since. Now, though, questions arose as to how exactly the war could be won. Bolingbroke was eager to offer his own opinion in the Lords, and Aquitaine finally rose to the top of the royal agenda.
On 3 November, King Charles VI of France convened a great council at Reims and dissolved the regency that had been leading the kingdom in his name, taking personal control of the royal government. The young king brought many of his father's councilors back to power, then left them to their own devices. Charles did not directly involve himself in the administration of affairs, and his opinions were easily influenced by those in his trust, but there were matters that were dear to him personally and that he pushed onto the agenda. At the top of the list were the schism in the church and the advances of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans. Charles had comparatively little interest in the war with England, which made him open to a negotiated peace. His new council encouraged his instincts in this area and a new round of talks was organized.
Anglo-French meetings had become regular events at the small village of Leulinghem over the course of the 1380s, but conference after conference had run aground on the same intractable set of issues. The English expected negotiations that opened there in late December 1388 to be more of the same, but instead found the French open to discussing a host of issues that had long been off-limits. English ambassadors had to ask to recess in January 1389 to seek new orders from their king. Edward was presiding over a great council at Westminster, planning to personally lead the expedition to Aquitaine, when the embassy returned from the continent. Edward put his campaign plans on hold, as it seemed that a diplomatic breakthrough was at hand. Talks continued through the winter, but hit a snag in the spring.
Charles loved the grandeur of kingship and celebrated his emancipation from his uncles with a series of feasts and festivals, at which he lavished his friends and family. First, he raised his brother, Louis, from the relatively poor dukedom of Touraine to the far greater dukedom of Orléans. Then, he restored his cousin, King Charles III of Navarre, to the counties of Évreux and Longueville, and gave Charles III his freedom after spending nearly six years as a noble prisoner in Paris. In the early spring, the French king personally knighted his other cousin, Louis II, duke of Anjou, and pledged to lead an army into Italy to help realize Louis's claims to the kingdom of Naples and end the schism. This pledge brought talks between England and France to an abrupt end, as the new King Ladislao of Naples, who Louis was looking to depose, was Edward's brother-in-law. English ambassadors stormed out of Leulinghem in protest.
On 4 May 1389, Edward issued orders for an army to muster at Southampton. Plans for the king to lead the campaign himself were abandoned and the size of the army was cut by more than half to help speed along the embarkation, hoping to make up for time wasted at Leulinghem. Bolingbroke, as lord lieutenant of Aquitaine, was given the honor of command. He sent word to Bordeaux that preparations be made for his arrival. Meanwhile, Charles VI took steps to stamp royal authority on the south of France.
On 18 May, Charles informed his uncle, Jean, duke of Berry, who was governor of Languedoc, that a new royal commission was being set up to evaluate the work of the governorship. It was a terrifying prospect for the duke, whose interest in the office was entirely in the funds it provided him. Languedoc had only been a piggy bank to him, its funds going toward the construction and reconstruction of Berry's own castles and palaces or the purchase of expensive art and literature. Charles planned to make his first appearance in Languedoc that fall so that he could hear the commission's findings in person. It was no secret what it would recommend to the king, though, as several administrative and military reforms were ordered before the end of the month. The king went over Berry's head to fire the count of Armagnac, who was the nephew of the duke's late wife, from the lieutenant governorship and put Louis of Sancerre, marshal of France, in the role instead. Another of the king's uncles, Louis II, duke of Bourbon, became lieutenant of the marches, a new position that took control of the front with Gascony away from Berry entirely. One of the king's favorites, Enguerrand VII, lord of Coucy, took over the war effort in Limousin. Coucy led an aggressive campaign against Geoffroy Tête-Noire, one of the most terrifying routier captains in France, and captured the Breton mercenary in July. Charles issued an edict declaring the routiers outlaws, not enemy combatants, and a terrible example was made of Tête-Noire. He was horrifically tortured, then executed. His head was mounted outside the walls of Ventadour, a castle he had once controlled, as were those of two of his nephews who had fought under him. The routiers could no longer expect to simply ransom themselves and then return to raiding and pillaging the French countryside.
An English army about 2,000 strong set sail from Southampton on 20 July. Its roster of captains was a mix of the king's young brothers-in-arms, as he called members of the Order of the Bath, and England's most experienced veterans. These included John de Mowbray, 1st earl of Nottingham, Sir Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, Sir Ralph Neville, heir to the earldom of Cumberland, John Devereux, 1st baron Devereux, Sir Bernard Brocas, and Sir Thomas Trivet. They landed in Bordeaux 11 days later.
Chevauchée
The army that arrived in Gascony on 31 July was mostly English, but had a large Welsh contingent. It was mostly made up of archers, with only between 500 and 600 of the men being fully-kitted men-at-arms. A day after their arrival, 1 August, Bolingbroke convened a war council of the army's captains, important Anglo-Gascon lords, and routiers who had come to support the campaign. Their plan was to sweep through Agenais, which had been hotly contested since the early 1380s, and lay waste to the count of Armagnac's lands south of the Garonne before raiding Languedoc. It would demonstrate the might of the English just ahead of Charles VI's arrival in the region.
In addition to the 2,000 men from England and Wales, Bolingbroke and the local lords drew at least 1,000 more from across Gascony and 2,000 routiers came to fight for the English. The routiers were not only lured by the promise of plunder, but the French crown's aggressive and effective campaign against Geoffroy Tête-Noire had practically driven the mercenaries into Bolingbroke's arms. Two weeks were spent unloading horses and stores from the English ships and, on 15 August, Bolingbroke marched out from Bordeaux with more than 5,000 men at his back.
The Anglo-Gascon army entered Agenais unopposed. The French had conquered the county in 1374, but it had become the focus of fighting between local lords following the English consolidation of Gascony in the late 1370s and reconquest of Saintonge in the early 1380s. Agenais was completely devastated by the local war. Its decline can be seen in the account books of the bishops of Agen. Beginning in 1383, notes of non-payment of rents from tenants who had "utterly abandoned" their land began to appear, as did non-payments resulting from lands that were "charred and ruined," "devastated by war," or "wasted by the English." A truce between the kings of England and France between 1383 and 1385 had no effect on the local war, where raids and reprisals continued unabated. Local French lords were unable to resist a force the size of the one Bolingbroke led in summer 1389, though. Small and poorly-defended positions were quickly abandoned. Bolingbroke passed by larger and better-defended places, either taking bribes to leave them unmolested or destroying all the surrounding land. The Gascon routier captain Armand of Caumont controlled several river crossings in the area. His support for Bolingbroke's campaign in 1389 allowed the English to cross the various rivers in Agenais and enter the lands of Armagnac with ease.
On 23 August, the Anglo-Gascon army entered Armagnac. Bolingbroke divided his forces three ways and spread them out along a 30-mile front. Armagnac had acted quickly to defend his own territory, emptying the countryside of food and people. He had reinforced all his own castles and principal towns. Left with nothing to plunder, the English satisfied themselves by burning every farm and village in their path. The columns of smoke could be seen for miles in every direction.
On 3 September, the English passed through the western reaches of Armagnac and into Languedoc. The land here was wide open to them. Armagnac, no longer lieutenant governor, did not bother himself with the defense of the region. The new lieutenant governor, Sancerre, would have done, but was bogged down fighting with the routiers in Angoumois, where he had focused most of his energies since the English reconquest of Saintonge years earlier. Leaderless, the people of Languedoc were exposed to attack. Towns were sacked, their leaders taken for ransom, and wealth stolen. Bolingbroke continued on to Toulouse, arranging his army outside the city's walls as if he were preparing an assault. It was a bluff. It worked, though. Toulouse had strong walls, but was unprepared for a siege. It lacked the supplies to tide it over until outside help could arrive and its leaders were not willing to gamble with their lives. Instead, townsmen coughed up 40,000 écus (£20,000) to buy a truce with the English.
Bolingbroke moved east from Toulouse, toward Béziers, determined to strike further into French territory than even the Black Prince had in his famed 1355 campaign.
French counterattack
On 17 August, the king of France hosted a lavish wedding for his brother, Louis, duke of Orléans, at the royal castle of Melun, southeast of Paris. Orléans was marrying Valentina Visconti, the daughter of the lord of Milan. The two had been betrothed in 1387, but the lord of Milan was reluctant to see his only surviving child off to France before he had a son to secure the succession. The duke of Burgundy, who was Charles and Orléans's uncle and also regent of France until 1388, did not object to a delay since the girl's dowry was to include the county of Vertus in Champagne, a region in which Burgundy had his own competing interests. The lord of Milan finally had a son around the same time Burgundy's regency had been toppled, allowing Charles to finalize the marriage. He organized a terrific celebration, but it was ruined by news of Bolingbroke's chevauchée, which reached Melun in the midst of the revelry.
Charles took the news of the English campaign badly. He had seen his own wedding spoiled in 1385, when the rebels of Ghent and their English auxiliaries captured the town of Damme, disrupting French plans to invade England that summer. Now the English were spoiling not just his brother's wedding, but his fall tour of Languedoc too. Charles wanted to lead the response himself, but his councilors were able to convince him that it would take too long to raise an army worthy of his command. The task was given to the king's uncle, the duke of Bourbon, instead. Orléans, an ambitious young man, joined Bourbon to get his first taste of war.
Bourbon quickly raised 600 knights from his own lands and called upon every man-at-arms that the crown could spare from Orléans to Poitiers. The lord of Coucy and marshal of France were ordered to end their campaigns in Limousin and Angoumois, respectively, and rendezvous with Bourbon in Auvergne. Local lords were called upon with great urgency. Armagnac brought 1,500 men to Bourbon's side. As many as 3,000 were raised by the other barons combined. The count of Foix pledged to bring 2,000, but ultimately never joined the campaign. All combined, Bourbon had an estimated 10,000 men when he crossed the Tarn.
On 20 September, Bolingbroke moved away from Béziers, which was too well protected by high walls and wide ditches to seriously threaten. He instead turned toward Carcassonne, one of the wealthiest cities in the south of France. The English discovered a French scouting party as they approached Carcassonne on 30 September. They ambushed and interrogated the outriders, learning that Bourbon's army sat only about 16 miles west, at Prouille. Bolingbroke, whose men were still stretched out along a 30-mile front to raid the land, called the Anglo-Gascon army together at once.
Bolingbroke met with his captains early on the morning of 1 October. They saw no good option. Bourbon's position at Prouille cut off their most direct route to Bordeaux and they deemed it too dangerous to return the way they had come, through Armagnac and Agenais, as it had far too many river crossings against which the French could pin them. Their only other way home was south, along the Pyrenees, but this promised slow movement over rough terrain, which would also have little food to forage. This left them with only one option: choosing a site and offering battle. A messenger was sent to Bourbon's camp later that day.
Bourbon was one of the most renowned knights in France. He had struggled with the Fabian strategy that his brother-in-law, King Charles V of France, had deployed against the English in the 1370s and relished the chance to meet his enemy on the field. He sent his answer to Bolingbroke the following morning.
On 2 October, the English moved into the hills southwest of Carcassonne. Sir Bernard Brocas, who was a veteran of Crécy, Poitiers, and Nájera, helped to identify the position and oversaw preparations for battle. Barricades were formed with carts laden with booty, pits and trenches were dug to hamper the French advance, and stakes driven into the ground to protect the archers. Put together, the defenses formed a bottleneck that the English hoped would blunt the enemy's numerical advantage. The French drew up in battle formation no more than three miles away. More messages were exchanged, but neither Bourbon nor Bolingbroke had any real interest in a truce and both armies settled in for an uneasy night's sleep. Indeed, the English had already arrayed for battle and slept in defensive positions.
Battle
The English army had three main divisions, each a mix of archers and men-at-arms, plus a reserve force of around 800 men. All but the reserve fought dismounted. The English left was commanded by the earl of Nottingham, who was supported by the energetic and experienced Sir Thomas Trivet, who had seen action at the 1380 Battle of Estella and had served the English in Gascony for more than a decade. The center was led by Bolingbroke, who was supported by Brocas. Archambaud of Grailly, captal de Buch, who led the English and Navarrese to victory at Estella, took the right. The reserve was left to Sir Ralph Neville.
The French army was roused shortly before dawn on the morning of 3 October. Its men were arrayed for battle and marched to about a quarter-mile from the English position. Bourbon had organized the men into three divisions. The vanguard was led by Sancerre, the marshal of France. The king's brother, Orléans, officially led the second division, but the lord of Coucy, who was a veteran of countless campaigns, was effectively the prince's chaperone. Bourbon himself led the final division.
Bourbon devised the plan of attack. He had studied the French failures of the Edwardian War and ordered the first division to fight dismounted, as cavalry charges against English longbowmen had too often been the downfall of the French in battle. The most well-armored men in the army were put under Sancerre's command and were to march uphill on foot, flanked by crossbowmen from nearby Carcassonne. The attack was meant to disperse the English archers. This would allow for cavalry charges by the second and third divisions to crush the dismounted Engishmen before they could retreat.
Sancerre was a brave man. He would have known that the English longbowmen were capable of inflicting heavy casualties upon the French vanguard, despite their heavy armor. The longbowmen had a greater rate of fire and the English position gave them both a range that the French crossbowmen could not match when firing uphill and the time to aim their shots, which was a luxury that the advancing French would not enjoy. Sancerre thus needed his men to move quickly.
The French trumpets sounded by midmorning and Sancerre advanced. The sky turned dark as they came within 1,000 feet of the English, a storm of arrows blotting out the sun. Their progress was not quick. The weight of their armor, the slope of the hill, the ditches dug by the English, the barrage of arrows beating against them—they slowed French movement to a crawl. The men-at-arms had fine armor, but even this had weak points. The crossbowmen had even less protection and were massacred. The screams of dying men filled the air and terror swept across the French line, which became disorganized as the men moved around the trenches dug into the ground and stepped over the dead. Still, Sancerre pressed on.
Nottingham recalled the archers on the English left, as the French first reached the front line there. The fighting was intense, but the lack of French cavalry allowed the longbowmen to redeploy outside of their defensive positions without fear of being ridden down. The French were already exhausted by the march uphill and dispirited by the slaughter that had come with it. The new onslaught of English arrows broke them and they began to retreat. In a sign of just how disorganized the French advance had become, Nottingham had already won the initial exchange on the English left before fighting had begun on the right. Nottingham held his men in formation as the attack began on the center and right, though, as he feared that he would be massacred by a French cavalry charge if he moved to help Bolingbroke or Grailley.
Action came later on the English center and right, but it was far more serious when it did. Sancerre was at the front line by this time and held his men-at-arms in sustained fighting for some time. English archers rushed in with side arms as a fierce melee developed on the right. The French inflicted very heavy casualties on the English and were on the cusp of breaking the English line when Sancerre fell. The marshal's death shattered the morale of the French fighting on the front line and the assault suddenly ground to a halt. The English rallied and the survivors of Sancerre's division ran for their lives.
The commanders of the second and third French divisions could not have known how close Sancerre had come to victory. French captains rushed messages to one another, but Orléans was arrogant and bold. In a rush for glory, he ordered a charge as soon as he saw the first division had begun to retreat. He did not wait for the order to reach Coucy, who was at the other end of the line.
Orléans's cavalry charge had to deal not only with the obstacles that Sancerre's infantry advance had, but also with the fact that the hill was now littered with dead bodies and crowded with retreating Frenchmen. The cocksure prince ordered that the fleeing men be run down for their cowardice. A storm of arrows rained down on his men soon after he did. Panicked horses threw their riders to their deaths or fled in terror. The scene soon repeated itself, as Coucy followed with the rest of the division. It was a disaster.
Five hundred yards away from the action, Bourbon ordered his men to prepare an assault. Accounts differ as to whether the duke still thought the battle could be won or whether he was simply looking to save his nephew. Either way, dissension in the ranks kept him from taking action. Several of the Franco-Gascon lords serving under him fled the field when they received word that Bourbon wanted to attack, not willing to throw their lives away on a suicide run. Armagnac urged Bourbon to reconsider a third assault. Heated, the duke declared Armagnac a coward, to which Armagnac proclaimed Bourbon a fool and withdrew his men as well. Bourbon was left with too few men to mount an effective charge. He watched his nephew fight from a distance, cursed the cravens who had abandoned him, and then he too retired.
The English ground down Coucy and Orléans's men for more than an hour before it became clear to them that the French third division was melting away across the field. No longer threatened by another charge, Bolingbroke ordered Neville to bring the reserve in for an attack on the French on the right flank. Neville smashed into Orleans's men and triggered a chaotic retreat. Bolingbroke ordered the baron Devereux to take a large contingent of dismounted men back to their horses and ride down the retreating French. The lord of Coucy dispatched 10 knights to find the duke of Orléans and get him to safety, but they failed. Both Orléans and Coucy were among the estimated 1,600 prisoners taken by the English. They were lucky not to be among the 3,000 Frenchmen dead on the field that day.
Aftermath
The English held their hilltop position through the day, aware that a sizable number of Frenchmen had not taken part in the battle and fearing that Bourbon may yet regroup and launch another attack. They settled in for the night once it was clear that the threat had passed, needing the time to tend to the wounded and negotiate the parole of their prisoners.
Bolingbroke agreed to pay 25,000 francs (£4,167) to the knight who had taken Orléans in battle and paid another 10,000 francs (£1,667) for Coucy. He allowed the rest to be paroled by their captors, assuming that they could negotiate a fair sum for their release, as the number of prisoners was far too great to move them all to Bordeaux. It is impossible to calculate the total receipts from all prisoners ransomed after the battle, as paroles were negotiated on a case-by-case basis between captors and captives, but historians estimate that at least 600,000 francs (£100,000) were paid to the victorious Anglo-Gascons by the various French who were captured on the field. This does not include the fortunes that were made from stripping the dead of their fine armor, weaponry, and other belongings.
On 4 October, the English set out for Bordeaux. Their progress was slow, as their carts were overflowing with treasure and they had to bring along scores of prisoners who had not yet been able to secure their parole. Messengers reached the city in a matter of days. One reported directly to the mayor while the other set sail for London. The Anglo-Gascon army was welcomed into the city with great fanfare on 28 October. Two weeks later, Bolingbroke was called home by the king. He set sail with his two high-profile prisoners as soon as possible, eager to make the voyage before the Bay of Biscay was gripped by its famously treacherous winter weather. A caretaker administration was established and Bolingbroke secured passage on a merchantman scheduled to depart just days after his orders arrived.
Sir John Trailly, seneschal of Aquitaine, assumed control of English operations. The treasury in Bordeaux was flush with cash following the summer campaign, as tens of thousands of francs had been extracted from cities like Toulouse and French lords in Agenais. It was more than enough to keep the garrisons along the front with France paid, allowing Trailey to establish Fronsac as a base for forward operations and launch attacks into Angoumois and Périgord. Agenais was ripped apart by violence as its local lords again went to war. Anglo-Gascon lords had made major inroads in the area since the early 1380s, but two of England's most powerful partisans—Grailly and Florimont of Lesparre, lord of Lesparre—fell out over the sharing of paroles of prisoners from Carcassonne. Their discord kept the English from effectively coordinating attacks on French lords in the area and froze the situation in Agenais.
English response
Bolingbroke landed at Plymouth on 19 November and moved toward London at once. Edward V rode west to meet his cousin at Reading. It was a mark of extraordinary honor that the king would go to meet him instead of the other way around. They traveled together to the capital, Orléans and Coucy in tow.
Edward paid Bolingbroke £20,000 for Orléans and Coucy. It was Coucy's second stint as an English royal prisoner, having been one of 40 noble hostages given to England to secure the release of King Jean II of France in the 1360s. Coucy married Isabella, the daughter of King Edward III of England, during his first captivity. He was subsequently showered with gifts and lands. He would get no such treatment now, as Coucy's wife had passed years earlier. His daughter, Philippa of Coucy, countess of Oxford, had lived in England since 1376, and she was close with her cousin, the king, but her father was almost a stranger to her. As a result, Philippa visited him at the Savoy Palace, which was his gilded prison, but made no real effort to help secure his release. Coucy was ultimately ransomed for 100,000 francs (£16,667) in 1390. Orléans's price would take a great deal more negotiation, as the duke became a bargaining chip in a series of talks to finally bring the war to an end.
A great council met at Westminster in January 1390. Edward's uncle, the duke of Gloucester, argued for a new assault on France that summer. Not for the first time, the king pushed back his uncle's hawkishness. He was, and always had been, more interested in peace than war with fellow Christians. Contradictory reports of an Ottoman campaign against the Serbs had reached the west. The sultan had been killed in battle, but so had the prince of Serbia. The exiled King Levon V of Armenia, who had lost his kingdom to the Mamluks in the mid 1370s and lived as a guest of the French king since the mid 1380s, had arrived in England at Christmas 1389 in the hope of reconciling England and France. It was Levon's second such mission and he was just as persuasive in 1389 as he had been years earlier. To Gloucester's dismay, Edward informed the council that he was authorizing an embassy to negotiate a two-year truce.
French response
Charles VI received word of the French defeat at Carcassonne within a day or two of the battle, though he would not learn the fate of his brother, Orléans, until 10 October. The whole direction of the government changed when he did. He canceled plans to attend the coronation of his cousin, the duke of Anjou, as king of Naples. The king's tour of Languedoc, which was supposed to follow the coronation in Avignon, was canceled too. Charles stayed near Paris so that he could better follow events as they unfolded.
The French king's decision to remain in the Île-de-France was kept from his wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, who was heavily pregnant. She was not informed of the battle or of Orléans's capture. The young couple had produced only a daughter and a short-lived son by 1389, which made Orléans heir presumptive to the throne, and there were fears that the news would cause the queen undue stress. Hopes for a son were high, as it would displace Orléans in the line of succession and weaken England's diplomatic advantage. These hopes were dashed on 9 November, when a girl, named Isabelle, was born.
Peace with England shot to the top of the French agenda after the birth of the princess. There was no real support for continuing the war. The king was obsessed with war, but he dreamt only of crusade. His chief councilors, the marmousets, had drawn up a financial reform plan that required ending the massive war expenditures. The king's powerful uncle, the duke of Burgundy, who had been a leading war hawk in the mid 1380s, now favored a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Every leading church official in France had condemned the violence, and their denunciations of war between Christians grew more severe by the day. Hopes for a new conference were low, as the French believed that Edward V would push his advantage in the south after Carcassonne. To their surprise, he welcomed talks.
On 3 March 1390, the English and French met once more at Leulinghem. Talks picked up where they had left off a year earlier. Both sides were keen to secure a longer-term truce and ensure that it was enforced in trouble spots, chiefly the march of Gascony. The legal status of the routier companies thus became a major sticking point. The English could not guarantee the good behavior of the companies, who fought independently, but who could be counted on to support English operations when it benefited them. A compromise was reached in which the routiers would be allowed to determine their own status. On 18 March, a three-month suspension of hostilities along the lines as the 1383-85 truce was agreed. In this time, the routiers would have the opportunity to draw up written declarations of their support for Edward as king of France, and thus fall under the protection of a future, longer truce, so long as they could abide by its terms. Those who chose to fight on as independent companies would be declared bandits by both England and France, and neither side would act to protect these from the other. The routiers who chose to remain free companies may still grow rich from pillaging the countryside, but doing so was now more dangerous than it had ever been before, as France was committed to their eradication.
On 18 June, three months to the day after the short ceasefire was agreed, a two-year truce was sealed. It included every routier captain who had declared their allegiance for Edward, formally bringing dozens of positions great and small under English control. Those who did not sign on became targets for French commanders in the area, who began rooting out the companies with a new zeal. Even more importantly, the truce included a schedule for future meetings in hopes of brokering a permanent peace. Now that the young kings of England and France, neither of whom wanted to continue the fighting, were in control of events, there was a sense that the conflict could at last be resolved. An announcement that the queen of England was with child further boosted the confidence of the English, who now dreamt of sealing a permanent peace by wedding a prince of Wales to the French princess Isabelle. They were to be disappointed when, on 14 November 1390, Queen Giovanna gave birth to a girl, named Joan. Negotiations for a lasting peace continued without talk of a royal marriage. The war would resume in 1392, when after months of tensions resulting from the War of the Fuxéen Succession, talks collapsed after an assassination attempt was made on one of the French king's favorites.
Impact
The truce negotiated by the English and French in the aftermath of the Battle of Carcassonne had a ripple effect that spread out across western Europe and beyond. The first and most direct consequence of the truce was the collapse of the duke of Anjou's cause in Naples. The war for the Neapolitan throne was primarily an outgrowth of the Western Schism. Pope Clement VII of Avignon was desperate to take control of Naples, which he saw as necessary for conquering Rome and thus reuniting the church. By 1390, though, Clement had already funded two failed crusades to Italy, at enormous expense. The pope had been counting on French men and materials, as well as 300,000 francs pledged by the French king, to help support a third campaign, but the loss of the king's brother and heir at Carcassonne had put the French crown on the line for Orléans's ransom and it could no longer afford an Italian adventure. Once again, the Angevin cause was left entirely to Clement, who postponed his 1390 plans and then began talks with the king of Aragon in search of outside support, but this too had difficulties.
The break of hostilities between England and France, combined with France's renewed effort to eradicate the routiers, breathed new life into an old scheme from the count of Armagnac—buying the companies out of their positions. Armagnac had attempted this twice before, abandoning the first when he lost interest in Gaston's Rebellion and stymied in the second by Bolingbroke's efforts in the years before Carcassonne. Now, the free companies who had passed on English overlordship were feeling the full power of the French crown bearing down on them. Perhaps regretting their decision to not formally join the English cause, many of these companies now signed on with Armagnac, who then declared himself king of Majorca and announced plans to invade Aragon with his new mercenary army. This set off the Roussillon War.
Armagnac's quixotic campaign to Aragon was only part of the violence that England and France began to export now that the two countries were not fighting one another. On 20 March 1390, only two days after the English and French had agreed to a short truce so that they could begin reclassifying the routiers, Levon V proposed that Charles VI and Edward V launch a joint crusade. It was far too early for any discussion of a campaign led by the two kings, but Levon's call to arms caught the imagination of the duke of Bourbon, who proposed leading a lower-ranking mission to demonstrate the goodwill between England and France. Ambassadors from the merchant republic of Genoa were already seeking support against Muslim pirates who operated out of Mahdia in North Africa. An Anglo-French crusade to conquer or destroy the city would spiritually unite the two kingdoms. It was an immediate sensation. It initially drew the support of both kings, but the project fell apart when Bolingbroke's name appeared on the list of men who were seeking safe conduct to Marseilles, from where the crusade was being launched. The king of France petulantly refused to permit the man who had captured his brother to travel through France. It shattered the goodwill nature of the mission and the English contingent dropped out.
English interest in crusade did not end with Mahdia, though. Bolingbroke and others who had planned to participate in the campaign simply looked elsewhere for adventure. They had two options. The first was Prussia, which had long been a destination for English crusaders. The second was Portugal, where a crusade against the sultanate of Morocco was being prepared. In this, the most lasting legacy of the peace that followed the Battle of Carcassonne was not the decline in the violence that had torn apart southern France over two decades, but the exportation of that violence to the rest of the world, and in particular, beyond the borders of western Christendom. A revival of the crusading movement had been underway for some time by 1390, but the long war between England and France, which had drawn in Brittany, Castile, Flanders, Guelders, Naples, Portugal, and Scotland at different times, had kept the nobility of western Europe too preoccupied to venture too far abroad. That now began to change.
The Battle of Carcassonne was fought on 3 October 1389 between an Anglo-Gascon army led by Henry of Bolingbroke, 3rd earl of Derby, and a French force under the command of Louis II, duke of Bourbon. The battle was forced after the English raided deep into French territory and were then cut off from Gascony by Bourbon. The encounter was a turning point in the Caroline War and one of the greatest showdowns in the Hundred Years War.
Background
English monarchs had held lands and titles in the kingdom of France since the Norman Conquest, making them vassals of the French crown since 1066. This created an awkward feudal dynamic in which English kings were often the most powerful figures in France, but subordinate to the kings of France, while they were also equals to the kings of France as kings in their own right. At their height in the 12th century, the English controlled roughly the western half of France, but lost the duchy of Normandy and the counties of Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou in the early 13th century, keeping only the duchy of Gascony and part of the duchy of Aquitaine. They lost much of the rest of Aquitaine and part of Gascony in wars in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Gascony was thus at the center of the Hundred Years War from the war's start in 1337.
English victory in the Edwardian War led to the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, which enormously expanded their position in southwestern France. They quickly lost these gains when the Caroline War broke out in 1369, with the French reconquering most everything by 1375, when a truce was agreed for two years. A new French offensive in 1377 fell short of completing the reconquest. In the early 1380s, the dysfunction that followed the death of King Charles V of France allowed the English to go on the offensive and take control of Saintonge. They were unable to follow up on that success, though, and another truce was agreed in 1383, lasting until 1385.
Hostilities between England and France were renewed in 1385, but fighting in and around Gascony was a local affair, as the French twice tried and failed to invade mainland England rather than continue the war in the south. The region only received attention from the English in late 1386, when King Edward V of England appointed his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, 3rd earl of Derby, lord lieutenant of Aquitaine in the Coronation Parliament.
Part of Bolingbroke's brief was to bring King Charles II of Navarre into a new alliance with England, but Bolingbroke arrived shortly after the king's gruesome death. Bolingbroke was then left to his own devices, as England was preoccupied by war in the Low Countries and with Scotland. His top priority through 1387 and 1388 was keeping the routier companies from selling their allegiance to Jean III, count of Armagnac, the lieutenant governor of Languedoc. Armagnac was fundraising to raise an army and dogging routier captains to sign up with him, similar to what he had done in the months leading up to Gaston's Rebellion. Fearing that Gascony had become the target of Armagnac's ambition, Bolingbroke spent the better part of two years bribing and charming the routiers to maintain their English sympathies.
Prelude
Scottish hostility over the summer of 1388 forced Edward V to call off an expedition to the Low Countries, which the English had been planning for more than a year. The news reached Bordeaux in late August. Bolingbroke, who had been making the case for a southern campaign in letters and through Gascon representatives for at least a year by this time, set sail for London at once.
On 10 September 1388, Edward V issued summons for a parliament after having completed a three-week punitive campaign to Scotland. It assembled six weeks later, on 22 October, in Cambridge. The scale of the English victory at Newcastle wowed the assembly, but reports that the king's continental alliances were falling apart sowed doubts about the war with France. Since the beginning of the year, an alliance with the duke of Brittany had been made and already betrayed, the king of Bohemia had proven useless, the duke of Guelders was looking to make peace with French-allied Brabant, and the king of Naples, who was Edward's father-in-law, had died in Provence. The king and parliament had worked remarkably well together since Edward had declared his majority in late 1384, and tax revenue had flowed freely in the years since. Now, though, questions arose as to how exactly the war could be won. Bolingbroke was eager to offer his own opinion in the Lords, and Aquitaine finally rose to the top of the royal agenda.
On 3 November, King Charles VI of France convened a great council at Reims and dissolved the regency that had been leading the kingdom in his name, taking personal control of the royal government. The young king brought many of his father's councilors back to power, then left them to their own devices. Charles did not directly involve himself in the administration of affairs, and his opinions were easily influenced by those in his trust, but there were matters that were dear to him personally and that he pushed onto the agenda. At the top of the list were the schism in the church and the advances of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans. Charles had comparatively little interest in the war with England, which made him open to a negotiated peace. His new council encouraged his instincts in this area and a new round of talks was organized.
Anglo-French meetings had become regular events at the small village of Leulinghem over the course of the 1380s, but conference after conference had run aground on the same intractable set of issues. The English expected negotiations that opened there in late December 1388 to be more of the same, but instead found the French open to discussing a host of issues that had long been off-limits. English ambassadors had to ask to recess in January 1389 to seek new orders from their king. Edward was presiding over a great council at Westminster, planning to personally lead the expedition to Aquitaine, when the embassy returned from the continent. Edward put his campaign plans on hold, as it seemed that a diplomatic breakthrough was at hand. Talks continued through the winter, but hit a snag in the spring.
Charles loved the grandeur of kingship and celebrated his emancipation from his uncles with a series of feasts and festivals, at which he lavished his friends and family. First, he raised his brother, Louis, from the relatively poor dukedom of Touraine to the far greater dukedom of Orléans. Then, he restored his cousin, King Charles III of Navarre, to the counties of Évreux and Longueville, and gave Charles III his freedom after spending nearly six years as a noble prisoner in Paris. In the early spring, the French king personally knighted his other cousin, Louis II, duke of Anjou, and pledged to lead an army into Italy to help realize Louis's claims to the kingdom of Naples and end the schism. This pledge brought talks between England and France to an abrupt end, as the new King Ladislao of Naples, who Louis was looking to depose, was Edward's brother-in-law. English ambassadors stormed out of Leulinghem in protest.
On 4 May 1389, Edward issued orders for an army to muster at Southampton. Plans for the king to lead the campaign himself were abandoned and the size of the army was cut by more than half to help speed along the embarkation, hoping to make up for time wasted at Leulinghem. Bolingbroke, as lord lieutenant of Aquitaine, was given the honor of command. He sent word to Bordeaux that preparations be made for his arrival. Meanwhile, Charles VI took steps to stamp royal authority on the south of France.
On 18 May, Charles informed his uncle, Jean, duke of Berry, who was governor of Languedoc, that a new royal commission was being set up to evaluate the work of the governorship. It was a terrifying prospect for the duke, whose interest in the office was entirely in the funds it provided him. Languedoc had only been a piggy bank to him, its funds going toward the construction and reconstruction of Berry's own castles and palaces or the purchase of expensive art and literature. Charles planned to make his first appearance in Languedoc that fall so that he could hear the commission's findings in person. It was no secret what it would recommend to the king, though, as several administrative and military reforms were ordered before the end of the month. The king went over Berry's head to fire the count of Armagnac, who was the nephew of the duke's late wife, from the lieutenant governorship and put Louis of Sancerre, marshal of France, in the role instead. Another of the king's uncles, Louis II, duke of Bourbon, became lieutenant of the marches, a new position that took control of the front with Gascony away from Berry entirely. One of the king's favorites, Enguerrand VII, lord of Coucy, took over the war effort in Limousin. Coucy led an aggressive campaign against Geoffroy Tête-Noire, one of the most terrifying routier captains in France, and captured the Breton mercenary in July. Charles issued an edict declaring the routiers outlaws, not enemy combatants, and a terrible example was made of Tête-Noire. He was horrifically tortured, then executed. His head was mounted outside the walls of Ventadour, a castle he had once controlled, as were those of two of his nephews who had fought under him. The routiers could no longer expect to simply ransom themselves and then return to raiding and pillaging the French countryside.
An English army about 2,000 strong set sail from Southampton on 20 July. Its roster of captains was a mix of the king's young brothers-in-arms, as he called members of the Order of the Bath, and England's most experienced veterans. These included John de Mowbray, 1st earl of Nottingham, Sir Ralph Stafford, heir to the earldom of Stafford, Sir Ralph Neville, heir to the earldom of Cumberland, John Devereux, 1st baron Devereux, Sir Bernard Brocas, and Sir Thomas Trivet. They landed in Bordeaux 11 days later.
Chevauchée
The army that arrived in Gascony on 31 July was mostly English, but had a large Welsh contingent. It was mostly made up of archers, with only between 500 and 600 of the men being fully-kitted men-at-arms. A day after their arrival, 1 August, Bolingbroke convened a war council of the army's captains, important Anglo-Gascon lords, and routiers who had come to support the campaign. Their plan was to sweep through Agenais, which had been hotly contested since the early 1380s, and lay waste to the count of Armagnac's lands south of the Garonne before raiding Languedoc. It would demonstrate the might of the English just ahead of Charles VI's arrival in the region.
In addition to the 2,000 men from England and Wales, Bolingbroke and the local lords drew at least 1,000 more from across Gascony and 2,000 routiers came to fight for the English. The routiers were not only lured by the promise of plunder, but the French crown's aggressive and effective campaign against Geoffroy Tête-Noire had practically driven the mercenaries into Bolingbroke's arms. Two weeks were spent unloading horses and stores from the English ships and, on 15 August, Bolingbroke marched out from Bordeaux with more than 5,000 men at his back.
The Anglo-Gascon army entered Agenais unopposed. The French had conquered the county in 1374, but it had become the focus of fighting between local lords following the English consolidation of Gascony in the late 1370s and reconquest of Saintonge in the early 1380s. Agenais was completely devastated by the local war. Its decline can be seen in the account books of the bishops of Agen. Beginning in 1383, notes of non-payment of rents from tenants who had "utterly abandoned" their land began to appear, as did non-payments resulting from lands that were "charred and ruined," "devastated by war," or "wasted by the English." A truce between the kings of England and France between 1383 and 1385 had no effect on the local war, where raids and reprisals continued unabated. Local French lords were unable to resist a force the size of the one Bolingbroke led in summer 1389, though. Small and poorly-defended positions were quickly abandoned. Bolingbroke passed by larger and better-defended places, either taking bribes to leave them unmolested or destroying all the surrounding land. The Gascon routier captain Armand of Caumont controlled several river crossings in the area. His support for Bolingbroke's campaign in 1389 allowed the English to cross the various rivers in Agenais and enter the lands of Armagnac with ease.
On 23 August, the Anglo-Gascon army entered Armagnac. Bolingbroke divided his forces three ways and spread them out along a 30-mile front. Armagnac had acted quickly to defend his own territory, emptying the countryside of food and people. He had reinforced all his own castles and principal towns. Left with nothing to plunder, the English satisfied themselves by burning every farm and village in their path. The columns of smoke could be seen for miles in every direction.
On 3 September, the English passed through the western reaches of Armagnac and into Languedoc. The land here was wide open to them. Armagnac, no longer lieutenant governor, did not bother himself with the defense of the region. The new lieutenant governor, Sancerre, would have done, but was bogged down fighting with the routiers in Angoumois, where he had focused most of his energies since the English reconquest of Saintonge years earlier. Leaderless, the people of Languedoc were exposed to attack. Towns were sacked, their leaders taken for ransom, and wealth stolen. Bolingbroke continued on to Toulouse, arranging his army outside the city's walls as if he were preparing an assault. It was a bluff. It worked, though. Toulouse had strong walls, but was unprepared for a siege. It lacked the supplies to tide it over until outside help could arrive and its leaders were not willing to gamble with their lives. Instead, townsmen coughed up 40,000 écus (£20,000) to buy a truce with the English.
Bolingbroke moved east from Toulouse, toward Béziers, determined to strike further into French territory than even the Black Prince had in his famed 1355 campaign.
French counterattack
On 17 August, the king of France hosted a lavish wedding for his brother, Louis, duke of Orléans, at the royal castle of Melun, southeast of Paris. Orléans was marrying Valentina Visconti, the daughter of the lord of Milan. The two had been betrothed in 1387, but the lord of Milan was reluctant to see his only surviving child off to France before he had a son to secure the succession. The duke of Burgundy, who was Charles and Orléans's uncle and also regent of France until 1388, did not object to a delay since the girl's dowry was to include the county of Vertus in Champagne, a region in which Burgundy had his own competing interests. The lord of Milan finally had a son around the same time Burgundy's regency had been toppled, allowing Charles to finalize the marriage. He organized a terrific celebration, but it was ruined by news of Bolingbroke's chevauchée, which reached Melun in the midst of the revelry.
Charles took the news of the English campaign badly. He had seen his own wedding spoiled in 1385, when the rebels of Ghent and their English auxiliaries captured the town of Damme, disrupting French plans to invade England that summer. Now the English were spoiling not just his brother's wedding, but his fall tour of Languedoc too. Charles wanted to lead the response himself, but his councilors were able to convince him that it would take too long to raise an army worthy of his command. The task was given to the king's uncle, the duke of Bourbon, instead. Orléans, an ambitious young man, joined Bourbon to get his first taste of war.
Bourbon quickly raised 600 knights from his own lands and called upon every man-at-arms that the crown could spare from Orléans to Poitiers. The lord of Coucy and marshal of France were ordered to end their campaigns in Limousin and Angoumois, respectively, and rendezvous with Bourbon in Auvergne. Local lords were called upon with great urgency. Armagnac brought 1,500 men to Bourbon's side. As many as 3,000 were raised by the other barons combined. The count of Foix pledged to bring 2,000, but ultimately never joined the campaign. All combined, Bourbon had an estimated 10,000 men when he crossed the Tarn.
On 20 September, Bolingbroke moved away from Béziers, which was too well protected by high walls and wide ditches to seriously threaten. He instead turned toward Carcassonne, one of the wealthiest cities in the south of France. The English discovered a French scouting party as they approached Carcassonne on 30 September. They ambushed and interrogated the outriders, learning that Bourbon's army sat only about 16 miles west, at Prouille. Bolingbroke, whose men were still stretched out along a 30-mile front to raid the land, called the Anglo-Gascon army together at once.
Bolingbroke met with his captains early on the morning of 1 October. They saw no good option. Bourbon's position at Prouille cut off their most direct route to Bordeaux and they deemed it too dangerous to return the way they had come, through Armagnac and Agenais, as it had far too many river crossings against which the French could pin them. Their only other way home was south, along the Pyrenees, but this promised slow movement over rough terrain, which would also have little food to forage. This left them with only one option: choosing a site and offering battle. A messenger was sent to Bourbon's camp later that day.
Bourbon was one of the most renowned knights in France. He had struggled with the Fabian strategy that his brother-in-law, King Charles V of France, had deployed against the English in the 1370s and relished the chance to meet his enemy on the field. He sent his answer to Bolingbroke the following morning.
On 2 October, the English moved into the hills southwest of Carcassonne. Sir Bernard Brocas, who was a veteran of Crécy, Poitiers, and Nájera, helped to identify the position and oversaw preparations for battle. Barricades were formed with carts laden with booty, pits and trenches were dug to hamper the French advance, and stakes driven into the ground to protect the archers. Put together, the defenses formed a bottleneck that the English hoped would blunt the enemy's numerical advantage. The French drew up in battle formation no more than three miles away. More messages were exchanged, but neither Bourbon nor Bolingbroke had any real interest in a truce and both armies settled in for an uneasy night's sleep. Indeed, the English had already arrayed for battle and slept in defensive positions.
Battle
The English army had three main divisions, each a mix of archers and men-at-arms, plus a reserve force of around 800 men. All but the reserve fought dismounted. The English left was commanded by the earl of Nottingham, who was supported by the energetic and experienced Sir Thomas Trivet, who had seen action at the 1380 Battle of Estella and had served the English in Gascony for more than a decade. The center was led by Bolingbroke, who was supported by Brocas. Archambaud of Grailly, captal de Buch, who led the English and Navarrese to victory at Estella, took the right. The reserve was left to Sir Ralph Neville.
The French army was roused shortly before dawn on the morning of 3 October. Its men were arrayed for battle and marched to about a quarter-mile from the English position. Bourbon had organized the men into three divisions. The vanguard was led by Sancerre, the marshal of France. The king's brother, Orléans, officially led the second division, but the lord of Coucy, who was a veteran of countless campaigns, was effectively the prince's chaperone. Bourbon himself led the final division.
Bourbon devised the plan of attack. He had studied the French failures of the Edwardian War and ordered the first division to fight dismounted, as cavalry charges against English longbowmen had too often been the downfall of the French in battle. The most well-armored men in the army were put under Sancerre's command and were to march uphill on foot, flanked by crossbowmen from nearby Carcassonne. The attack was meant to disperse the English archers. This would allow for cavalry charges by the second and third divisions to crush the dismounted Engishmen before they could retreat.
Sancerre was a brave man. He would have known that the English longbowmen were capable of inflicting heavy casualties upon the French vanguard, despite their heavy armor. The longbowmen had a greater rate of fire and the English position gave them both a range that the French crossbowmen could not match when firing uphill and the time to aim their shots, which was a luxury that the advancing French would not enjoy. Sancerre thus needed his men to move quickly.
The French trumpets sounded by midmorning and Sancerre advanced. The sky turned dark as they came within 1,000 feet of the English, a storm of arrows blotting out the sun. Their progress was not quick. The weight of their armor, the slope of the hill, the ditches dug by the English, the barrage of arrows beating against them—they slowed French movement to a crawl. The men-at-arms had fine armor, but even this had weak points. The crossbowmen had even less protection and were massacred. The screams of dying men filled the air and terror swept across the French line, which became disorganized as the men moved around the trenches dug into the ground and stepped over the dead. Still, Sancerre pressed on.
Nottingham recalled the archers on the English left, as the French first reached the front line there. The fighting was intense, but the lack of French cavalry allowed the longbowmen to redeploy outside of their defensive positions without fear of being ridden down. The French were already exhausted by the march uphill and dispirited by the slaughter that had come with it. The new onslaught of English arrows broke them and they began to retreat. In a sign of just how disorganized the French advance had become, Nottingham had already won the initial exchange on the English left before fighting had begun on the right. Nottingham held his men in formation as the attack began on the center and right, though, as he feared that he would be massacred by a French cavalry charge if he moved to help Bolingbroke or Grailley.
Action came later on the English center and right, but it was far more serious when it did. Sancerre was at the front line by this time and held his men-at-arms in sustained fighting for some time. English archers rushed in with side arms as a fierce melee developed on the right. The French inflicted very heavy casualties on the English and were on the cusp of breaking the English line when Sancerre fell. The marshal's death shattered the morale of the French fighting on the front line and the assault suddenly ground to a halt. The English rallied and the survivors of Sancerre's division ran for their lives.
The commanders of the second and third French divisions could not have known how close Sancerre had come to victory. French captains rushed messages to one another, but Orléans was arrogant and bold. In a rush for glory, he ordered a charge as soon as he saw the first division had begun to retreat. He did not wait for the order to reach Coucy, who was at the other end of the line.
Orléans's cavalry charge had to deal not only with the obstacles that Sancerre's infantry advance had, but also with the fact that the hill was now littered with dead bodies and crowded with retreating Frenchmen. The cocksure prince ordered that the fleeing men be run down for their cowardice. A storm of arrows rained down on his men soon after he did. Panicked horses threw their riders to their deaths or fled in terror. The scene soon repeated itself, as Coucy followed with the rest of the division. It was a disaster.
Five hundred yards away from the action, Bourbon ordered his men to prepare an assault. Accounts differ as to whether the duke still thought the battle could be won or whether he was simply looking to save his nephew. Either way, dissension in the ranks kept him from taking action. Several of the Franco-Gascon lords serving under him fled the field when they received word that Bourbon wanted to attack, not willing to throw their lives away on a suicide run. Armagnac urged Bourbon to reconsider a third assault. Heated, the duke declared Armagnac a coward, to which Armagnac proclaimed Bourbon a fool and withdrew his men as well. Bourbon was left with too few men to mount an effective charge. He watched his nephew fight from a distance, cursed the cravens who had abandoned him, and then he too retired.
The English ground down Coucy and Orléans's men for more than an hour before it became clear to them that the French third division was melting away across the field. No longer threatened by another charge, Bolingbroke ordered Neville to bring the reserve in for an attack on the French on the right flank. Neville smashed into Orleans's men and triggered a chaotic retreat. Bolingbroke ordered the baron Devereux to take a large contingent of dismounted men back to their horses and ride down the retreating French. The lord of Coucy dispatched 10 knights to find the duke of Orléans and get him to safety, but they failed. Both Orléans and Coucy were among the estimated 1,600 prisoners taken by the English. They were lucky not to be among the 3,000 Frenchmen dead on the field that day.
Aftermath
The English held their hilltop position through the day, aware that a sizable number of Frenchmen had not taken part in the battle and fearing that Bourbon may yet regroup and launch another attack. They settled in for the night once it was clear that the threat had passed, needing the time to tend to the wounded and negotiate the parole of their prisoners.
Bolingbroke agreed to pay 25,000 francs (£4,167) to the knight who had taken Orléans in battle and paid another 10,000 francs (£1,667) for Coucy. He allowed the rest to be paroled by their captors, assuming that they could negotiate a fair sum for their release, as the number of prisoners was far too great to move them all to Bordeaux. It is impossible to calculate the total receipts from all prisoners ransomed after the battle, as paroles were negotiated on a case-by-case basis between captors and captives, but historians estimate that at least 600,000 francs (£100,000) were paid to the victorious Anglo-Gascons by the various French who were captured on the field. This does not include the fortunes that were made from stripping the dead of their fine armor, weaponry, and other belongings.
On 4 October, the English set out for Bordeaux. Their progress was slow, as their carts were overflowing with treasure and they had to bring along scores of prisoners who had not yet been able to secure their parole. Messengers reached the city in a matter of days. One reported directly to the mayor while the other set sail for London. The Anglo-Gascon army was welcomed into the city with great fanfare on 28 October. Two weeks later, Bolingbroke was called home by the king. He set sail with his two high-profile prisoners as soon as possible, eager to make the voyage before the Bay of Biscay was gripped by its famously treacherous winter weather. A caretaker administration was established and Bolingbroke secured passage on a merchantman scheduled to depart just days after his orders arrived.
Sir John Trailly, seneschal of Aquitaine, assumed control of English operations. The treasury in Bordeaux was flush with cash following the summer campaign, as tens of thousands of francs had been extracted from cities like Toulouse and French lords in Agenais. It was more than enough to keep the garrisons along the front with France paid, allowing Trailey to establish Fronsac as a base for forward operations and launch attacks into Angoumois and Périgord. Agenais was ripped apart by violence as its local lords again went to war. Anglo-Gascon lords had made major inroads in the area since the early 1380s, but two of England's most powerful partisans—Grailly and Florimont of Lesparre, lord of Lesparre—fell out over the sharing of paroles of prisoners from Carcassonne. Their discord kept the English from effectively coordinating attacks on French lords in the area and froze the situation in Agenais.
English response
Bolingbroke landed at Plymouth on 19 November and moved toward London at once. Edward V rode west to meet his cousin at Reading. It was a mark of extraordinary honor that the king would go to meet him instead of the other way around. They traveled together to the capital, Orléans and Coucy in tow.
Edward paid Bolingbroke £20,000 for Orléans and Coucy. It was Coucy's second stint as an English royal prisoner, having been one of 40 noble hostages given to England to secure the release of King Jean II of France in the 1360s. Coucy married Isabella, the daughter of King Edward III of England, during his first captivity. He was subsequently showered with gifts and lands. He would get no such treatment now, as Coucy's wife had passed years earlier. His daughter, Philippa of Coucy, countess of Oxford, had lived in England since 1376, and she was close with her cousin, the king, but her father was almost a stranger to her. As a result, Philippa visited him at the Savoy Palace, which was his gilded prison, but made no real effort to help secure his release. Coucy was ultimately ransomed for 100,000 francs (£16,667) in 1390. Orléans's price would take a great deal more negotiation, as the duke became a bargaining chip in a series of talks to finally bring the war to an end.
A great council met at Westminster in January 1390. Edward's uncle, the duke of Gloucester, argued for a new assault on France that summer. Not for the first time, the king pushed back his uncle's hawkishness. He was, and always had been, more interested in peace than war with fellow Christians. Contradictory reports of an Ottoman campaign against the Serbs had reached the west. The sultan had been killed in battle, but so had the prince of Serbia. The exiled King Levon V of Armenia, who had lost his kingdom to the Mamluks in the mid 1370s and lived as a guest of the French king since the mid 1380s, had arrived in England at Christmas 1389 in the hope of reconciling England and France. It was Levon's second such mission and he was just as persuasive in 1389 as he had been years earlier. To Gloucester's dismay, Edward informed the council that he was authorizing an embassy to negotiate a two-year truce.
French response
Charles VI received word of the French defeat at Carcassonne within a day or two of the battle, though he would not learn the fate of his brother, Orléans, until 10 October. The whole direction of the government changed when he did. He canceled plans to attend the coronation of his cousin, the duke of Anjou, as king of Naples. The king's tour of Languedoc, which was supposed to follow the coronation in Avignon, was canceled too. Charles stayed near Paris so that he could better follow events as they unfolded.
The French king's decision to remain in the Île-de-France was kept from his wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, who was heavily pregnant. She was not informed of the battle or of Orléans's capture. The young couple had produced only a daughter and a short-lived son by 1389, which made Orléans heir presumptive to the throne, and there were fears that the news would cause the queen undue stress. Hopes for a son were high, as it would displace Orléans in the line of succession and weaken England's diplomatic advantage. These hopes were dashed on 9 November, when a girl, named Isabelle, was born.
Peace with England shot to the top of the French agenda after the birth of the princess. There was no real support for continuing the war. The king was obsessed with war, but he dreamt only of crusade. His chief councilors, the marmousets, had drawn up a financial reform plan that required ending the massive war expenditures. The king's powerful uncle, the duke of Burgundy, who had been a leading war hawk in the mid 1380s, now favored a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Every leading church official in France had condemned the violence, and their denunciations of war between Christians grew more severe by the day. Hopes for a new conference were low, as the French believed that Edward V would push his advantage in the south after Carcassonne. To their surprise, he welcomed talks.
On 3 March 1390, the English and French met once more at Leulinghem. Talks picked up where they had left off a year earlier. Both sides were keen to secure a longer-term truce and ensure that it was enforced in trouble spots, chiefly the march of Gascony. The legal status of the routier companies thus became a major sticking point. The English could not guarantee the good behavior of the companies, who fought independently, but who could be counted on to support English operations when it benefited them. A compromise was reached in which the routiers would be allowed to determine their own status. On 18 March, a three-month suspension of hostilities along the lines as the 1383-85 truce was agreed. In this time, the routiers would have the opportunity to draw up written declarations of their support for Edward as king of France, and thus fall under the protection of a future, longer truce, so long as they could abide by its terms. Those who chose to fight on as independent companies would be declared bandits by both England and France, and neither side would act to protect these from the other. The routiers who chose to remain free companies may still grow rich from pillaging the countryside, but doing so was now more dangerous than it had ever been before, as France was committed to their eradication.
On 18 June, three months to the day after the short ceasefire was agreed, a two-year truce was sealed. It included every routier captain who had declared their allegiance for Edward, formally bringing dozens of positions great and small under English control. Those who did not sign on became targets for French commanders in the area, who began rooting out the companies with a new zeal. Even more importantly, the truce included a schedule for future meetings in hopes of brokering a permanent peace. Now that the young kings of England and France, neither of whom wanted to continue the fighting, were in control of events, there was a sense that the conflict could at last be resolved. An announcement that the queen of England was with child further boosted the confidence of the English, who now dreamt of sealing a permanent peace by wedding a prince of Wales to the French princess Isabelle. They were to be disappointed when, on 14 November 1390, Queen Giovanna gave birth to a girl, named Joan. Negotiations for a lasting peace continued without talk of a royal marriage. The war would resume in 1392, when after months of tensions resulting from the War of the Fuxéen Succession, talks collapsed after an assassination attempt was made on one of the French king's favorites.
Impact
The truce negotiated by the English and French in the aftermath of the Battle of Carcassonne had a ripple effect that spread out across western Europe and beyond. The first and most direct consequence of the truce was the collapse of the duke of Anjou's cause in Naples. The war for the Neapolitan throne was primarily an outgrowth of the Western Schism. Pope Clement VII of Avignon was desperate to take control of Naples, which he saw as necessary for conquering Rome and thus reuniting the church. By 1390, though, Clement had already funded two failed crusades to Italy, at enormous expense. The pope had been counting on French men and materials, as well as 300,000 francs pledged by the French king, to help support a third campaign, but the loss of the king's brother and heir at Carcassonne had put the French crown on the line for Orléans's ransom and it could no longer afford an Italian adventure. Once again, the Angevin cause was left entirely to Clement, who postponed his 1390 plans and then began talks with the king of Aragon in search of outside support, but this too had difficulties.
The break of hostilities between England and France, combined with France's renewed effort to eradicate the routiers, breathed new life into an old scheme from the count of Armagnac—buying the companies out of their positions. Armagnac had attempted this twice before, abandoning the first when he lost interest in Gaston's Rebellion and stymied in the second by Bolingbroke's efforts in the years before Carcassonne. Now, the free companies who had passed on English overlordship were feeling the full power of the French crown bearing down on them. Perhaps regretting their decision to not formally join the English cause, many of these companies now signed on with Armagnac, who then declared himself king of Majorca and announced plans to invade Aragon with his new mercenary army. This set off the Roussillon War.
Armagnac's quixotic campaign to Aragon was only part of the violence that England and France began to export now that the two countries were not fighting one another. On 20 March 1390, only two days after the English and French had agreed to a short truce so that they could begin reclassifying the routiers, Levon V proposed that Charles VI and Edward V launch a joint crusade. It was far too early for any discussion of a campaign led by the two kings, but Levon's call to arms caught the imagination of the duke of Bourbon, who proposed leading a lower-ranking mission to demonstrate the goodwill between England and France. Ambassadors from the merchant republic of Genoa were already seeking support against Muslim pirates who operated out of Mahdia in North Africa. An Anglo-French crusade to conquer or destroy the city would spiritually unite the two kingdoms. It was an immediate sensation. It initially drew the support of both kings, but the project fell apart when Bolingbroke's name appeared on the list of men who were seeking safe conduct to Marseilles, from where the crusade was being launched. The king of France petulantly refused to permit the man who had captured his brother to travel through France. It shattered the goodwill nature of the mission and the English contingent dropped out.
English interest in crusade did not end with Mahdia, though. Bolingbroke and others who had planned to participate in the campaign simply looked elsewhere for adventure. They had two options. The first was Prussia, which had long been a destination for English crusaders. The second was Portugal, where a crusade against the sultanate of Morocco was being prepared. In this, the most lasting legacy of the peace that followed the Battle of Carcassonne was not the decline in the violence that had torn apart southern France over two decades, but the exportation of that violence to the rest of the world, and in particular, beyond the borders of western Christendom. A revival of the crusading movement had been underway for some time by 1390, but the long war between England and France, which had drawn in Brittany, Castile, Flanders, Guelders, Naples, Portugal, and Scotland at different times, had kept the nobility of western Europe too preoccupied to venture too far abroad. That now began to change.
Where do we go from here? There are three options for the next update:
Also: Trees are updated through the latest update.
- Crusades of 1390: England, France, Portugal—Ceuta, Mahdia, Vilnius. Is this truly the revival of the crusader movement?
- Roussillon War: Is the count of Armagnac crazy like a fox, or just plain crazy?
- War of the Fuxéen Succession: The most powerful man in the Pyrenees is dead, creating a power vacuum that threatens to suck in all of his neighbors.
Also: Trees are updated through the latest update.
@material_boy ! AMAZING CHAPTER! Henry B is awesome!
Crusades have my vote! Hope edward and his italian wife have a son soon!
Crusades have my vote! Hope edward and his italian wife have a son soon!
Voted for the Crusades of 1390, bring back the crusading spirit of the High Middle Ages!! It was during these times that the most wildest and entertaining events happened. Hopefully the Rhoman/Byzantine Empire can take advantage of a renewed interest in crusades throughout Europe, IIRC Emperor Manuel II will be coming to power soon. The Imperial House of Palaiologos during the late Roman Empire just needed a bit more luck in not being completely conquered by the Turks.
Keep up the great work 👍👍👍
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Well, it might not be a Crecy or an Agincourt, but the Battle of Carcassonne is certainly a strong victory for the English, who now control the heir to the French throne! Long live Edward V!
Yes, I've almost caught up to about where your timeline started. I won't be getting to any 19th century great wars though
I vote for the revival of the epic of the Crusades, I am extremely curious to see what England can do for the Crusader cause in this period ( given that in Otl after Longshanks, there was no longer any chance of seeing London engaged in an expedition )
I mean a crusade going to be more interesting in my point of view rather than waging another war in Europe, Crusade allow the character to interact with other interesting character in the worldThis is ridiculous