WI no vision of Jeanne D'arc, Orleans falls

I appreciate the comments, guys, but don't hold your breath. I would still love to write a TL, but I don't do stuff like this by half-measures. If I were to write a TL I would want to make it ridiculously detailed, and I would want it all to be pretty much written and completed (at least in note form) before I wrote my first chapter. When I was doing my research I found that I was spending ages just trying to decide things like what local government would look 300 years down the line and what instruments would be used to pass instructions on the battlefield, and what costumes would be worn by those musicians. I spent about a week trying to utterly rewrite the book on military tactics. After about 6 weeks I just burned myself out.

I'll bear your kind wishes in mind in future but honestly a TL is mammoth project for me to be working on, and it'll be some time before I get the energy needed to launch into it again.

Anyway, I don't want to just post about me so here's an answer to the question at hand.

here is a possible scenario, England gains France, but loses England

There is a second, more serious peasant's revolt and England becomes a republic.

This can be done if French once again becomes the language of the courts.

I'm not so sure about this. Peasant rebellions didn't work that way. It was, in this era, deeply ingrained in the peasants of most of Europe that society needed Kings to rule and that the average subject was simply not gifted with the ability to handle government themselves. Sure, Parliament often tried to force its way in, claiming that it could make decisions too, but only a couple of years before Henry IV died he decided to humour them when they got too aggressive and simply stepped back from all government and told Parliament "alright, tell me what to do", taking a careful wager that they would find things harder than they expected. Within months he was proven completely correct, Parliament found itself dealing with all the problems he had been grappling with but with Henry giving them complete jurisdiction they could no longer blame him when things went wrong, and they just fell apart. Within the year they essentially went back on bended knee and admitted that they had been wrong to think that they could do his job, and after that Parliament was a lot more supplicant for a while (though they did agitate over some other things for a while).

But that was Parliament, and Parliament in this era were all gentry, who had their own social ambitions and so on, and who would never associate with the peasantry. To the peasants, the problem was that there were so many rich nobles who did no work but hung on the King's coat tails giving him advise. Even if it was clearly not true, the peasants were too afraid to blame the King - let's not forget that the Catholic church taught them every Sunday that the King was appointed by God and to go against his word was tantamount to heresy - and only ever sought to use the nobles as scapegoats. Most of the time all they actually rioted over was a single tax - and tax was technically the fault of Parliament, not the King - and so their demands were little more than "let us not pay this year".

Even the most left-wing idealist in this era basically envisages the perfect society as one in which the cities were abolished and every citizen in the country was of equal status, all working in farming and other village vocations, with the King a wise and generous man who managed the business side of the country so that the common man could live his life in peace. There was never going to be a revolution to kill the King and create a republic, not in the 1400s.
 
Jeanne D'arc

Is it assumed that most of France will fall to the English/Burgundians if the siege of Orleans is successful? Could it make the remaining French rally around the Dauphin, the son of Charles VII ? I was thinking in terms of what occured in Spain after the fall of Toledo.
 

Razgriz 2K9

Banned
More or less, though it depends on who's left that is still loyal to the Dauphin, in this case Louis de Valois (Louis XI)
 
1 - Yes, England had little support among the nobility, Burgundy aside. But it did have more support than many give it credit for in the Second and Third Estates.

I feel obligated to air a gripe here--Falastur means First and Third Estates here. The Second Estate is the nobility. First Estate is the clergy.

Yes, I know, something of a detour--I wouldn't have even said anything if I didn't see the mistake repeated so often on this site.
 
Is it assumed that most of France will fall to the English/Burgundians if the siege of Orleans is successful? Could it make the remaining French rally around the Dauphin, the son of Charles VII ? I was thinking in terms of what occured in Spain after the fall of Toledo.

Eh, yes and no. In the pre-Joan of Arc era, and even in the time she was active, the Dauphin was far too...shall we say, "cautious"...to act aggressively against the English. It was the reverses that Joan caused (or more accurately, the strengthened military position they gave him) and the upsurge of nationalist fervour amongst the peasantry that goaded him into becoming the more active leader that he should have been from the start. Given no Joan of Arc mythos he will likely never emerge from his shell.

However, on the other hand it's a frequently forgotten factor that England was running out of money and patience for funding the war in France. English France itself was able only to contribute nominal sums - the (Paris) Parlement instituted a standing army of something like 9,000 men in 1435 but failed to pay them the following year leading to the rapid disbanding of said army; I don't believe it took part in any major actions - and so largely were only able to pay for their own administration and were never going to pick up the strain, especially when they governed so little land (see above - Normandy governed itself). The Dauphin would undoubtedly be in a weaker position post-Orleans and the English likely would be able to mop up and seize control of most of the rest of the Duchy (leading to an interesting position allegiance-wise, since the Duke was in English custody in London) but other than that I doubt that they would advance on the "French" at any greater rate than before. Perhaps the fall of Orleans would necessitate the Dauphin abandoning his erstwhile capital of Bourges, which was about as close to the front lines as Paris was, but other than that I still think it's entirely possible that the English would run out of money and the Burgundians would seek to "go neutral" and withdraw from the war before any final French collapse.

It was this situation that I was most uncertain with how to proceed on in my TL, too. I was strongly considering having a sort of stalemate, with neither side able to make a meaningful impact over a lengthy period, in my TL though I wasn't really happy with it. I did have ideas to on how to proceed but it never quite felt right.

I feel obligated to air a gripe here--Falastur means First and Third Estates here. The Second Estate is the nobility. First Estate is the clergy.

Yes, I know, something of a detour--I wouldn't have even said anything if I didn't see the mistake repeated so often on this site.

Dangit. You got me. Thanks for the heads-up, I'm sure I used to know that but it's one of those things that drifted away from my consciousness a while ago :/

here is a possible scenario, England gains France, but loses England

There is a second, more serious peasant's revolt and England becomes a republic.

This can be done if French once again becomes the language of the courts.

Sorry to come back to this post but this is something I meant to add to my previous post and forgot. The thing about French becoming the language of the courts is something of a misconception here. Henry V was the first English King to widely speak English to his subjects but the language of his court was still French. Sure, a few of the other nobles would have spoken English too and perhaps some discussions were held in it, but to keep up with the expected behaviour at court, French was still de rigeur. As for the law courts, Latin was still the language used to record passed judgements, and that didn't become English until the 17th or 18th centuries, I believe, though I could be wrong on that count.
 
it's entirely possible that the English would run out of money and the Burgundians would seek to "go neutral" and withdraw from the war before any final French collapse.
Considering that Philip the Good found himself at war with England a year after he made peace with the Dauphin OTL, I sincerely doubt that would be a good idea. A lot of trouble can be avoided by just remaining a nominal English ally in a HYW stalemate scenario.

Besides, Burgundy hardly ever seriously participated in the war to begin with. IIRC Philip the Good was mostly concerned with safeguarding his own territories and occasionally helping out England if they agreed to compensate him.


...This doesn't mean Philip wouldn't consider such a move, of course. He *did* sign the Treaty of Arras while expecting Charles to actually honour his part of the bargain, after all. :p
 
Considering that Philip the Good found himself at war with England a year after he made peace with the Dauphin OTL, I sincerely doubt that would be a good idea. A lot of trouble can be avoided by just remaining a nominal English ally in a HYW stalemate scenario.

Besides, Burgundy hardly ever seriously participated in the war to begin with. IIRC Philip the Good was mostly concerned with safeguarding his own territories and occasionally helping out England if they agreed to compensate him.


...This doesn't mean Philip wouldn't consider such a move, of course. He *did* sign the Treaty of Arras while expecting Charles to actually honour his part of the bargain, after all. :p

Things don't have to be so black and white as they sometimes appear to have been. It's possible for Burgundy to duck out of the war without going so far as to treat with the Dauphin behind England's back and end up switching allegiance. There are ways that the Duke can simply make himself non-aligned, even if many of them will anger the English. And the Burgundians may not have been the most active participant in the war, but what they did have in their favour was that they supplied most of the troops serving as English garrisons in northern France. That's a supply of men that the English simply can't do without.
 
Burgundy's best bet would probably be a series of truces without ever really signing a proper peace treaty of any kind. That way, they might get away with it, with a bit of luck.

The problem with Burgundian neutrality is that even if it doesn't lead to open war, it's still going to lead to some Anglo-Burgundian hostility...Which is not good at all for Flanders. Even if the English don't invade it as OTL, they might still squeeze it and make things very uncomfortable for the duke of Burgundy.
 

Razgriz 2K9

Banned
Do you think Burgundy may be still looking to become its own Kingdom later down the road, if Burgundy finds a way to sue for peace early?
 
Do you think Burgundy may be still looking to become its own Kingdom later down the road, if Burgundy finds a way to sue for peace early?
Sure, but an early peace wouldn't really change anything. Emperor Sigismund, who was Emperor all the way up to and a few years beyond the OTL Treaty of Arras, loathed Burgundy with a passion and would never even consider granting them a crown. It was only during the reign of Frederick III that negotiations for a crown actually started, and while the Imperials came with some reasonable proposals, Philip and Charles both seemed to want more than what they were offered, and so nothing came of the negotiations.
 
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