Armagnacs

“ While the toils were thus closing in upon her, while she was being slowly cut off from crippled France, from Paris, where the citizens had nothing better to do than massacre the Armagnacs, Rouen sent hurriedly for help to the Duke of Burgundy. They only got brave words from his son, the Count of Charolais, who used all the taxes of the northern towns to fight against—not the English, but the Armagnacs. Paris showed a greater sympathy by instantly sending 300 archers and 300 of their own militia. ”

“ They spread over the city, shouting, “Our Lady of peace! Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for Burgundy! Let all who wish for peace take arms and follow us!” The people swarmed from the houses and followed them accordingly. The Armagnacs were surprised and seized with alarm. Tanneguy Duchatel, a man of prompt and resolute spirit, ran to the dauphin's, wrapped him in his bed-clothes, and carried him off to the Bastille, where he shut him up with several of his partisans. ”

“ My father, who saw the wars between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs told me that our family would never have come out safely if one of his grandfathers—his mother’s father—had not been a Goix, one of those famous butchers in the Market who stood by the Burgundians; whereas the other, the Lecamus, was for the Armagnacs; they seemed ready to flay each other alive before the world, but they were excellent friends in the family. ”

“ This town was defended by the brave Count de Bournonville, and at this siege the archers of England were found fighting against their fellow-subjects, the archers of Guienne. But the English very soon opened the gates to their countrymen from Bordeaux; the Armagnacs rushed in, and perpetrated one of the most frightful massacres in history. The rabble of Armagnacs appeared possessed with a demoniac frenzy, which sought the destruction of everything. Men, women, and children were massacred without mercy or discrimination. ”

“ The Armagnacs, for so the Orleanists were now called, thirsted for revenge, and for five years Paris was the scene of frightful atrocities as each faction gained the upper hand and took a bloody vengeance on its rivals. At length the infamous policy of an alliance with the English was resorted to. The temptation was too great for the English king, and in 1415 Henry V. met the French army, composed almost entirely of the Armagnacs, at Agincourt, and inflicted on it a defeat more disastrous than Crecy or Poitiers. The famous oriflamme of St. Denis passed from history in that fatal year of 1415. ”

“ It was said that she was acting the prophetess and uttering such words as: "In very deed this or that shall come to pass." "With the Armagnacs is a creature in woman's form. [Pg ii.60] What it is God only knows," they cried. They spoke of her as a woman of ill fame. [153] Among these enemies, there were those who filled them with even greater horror than pagans and Saracens—to wit: a monk and a maid. They all took the cross of Saint Andrew. [154]
While the Dauphin had been away at his coronation an army had come from England into France. The Regent intended it to overrun Normandy. ”

“ Chief was arrayed against chief, and mob against mob. The respectable portion of the citizens long made dumb with terror, took heart as the host of their plebeian tyrants began to direct their terrible energies against each other, and sent secretly to the Armagnacs. From being stout Burgundians thousands now declared openly for Orleans and his father-in-law; and when the Duke of Berri endeavoured to force on the city a heavy tax, to carry on the war against the Armagnacs, they rebelled resolutely. In vain were the master butchers employed to levy the hateful impost ”

“ From this time onward the Armagnac party, with the dauphin, afterwards King Charles VII., at its head, was the national party, while the Burgundians united with the English. This division in France continued until the treaty of Arras, on the 21st of September 1435. The rivalry of the Burgundians and Armagnacs brought terrible disasters upon France, and for many years afterwards the name of “Armagnacs” was bestowed upon the bands of adventurers who were as much to be feared as the Grandes Compagnies of the preceding age. ”

“ The King himself in his moments of sanity inclined to the side of Charles of Orleans and the Armagnacs; and it happened that just at the time when Henry V of England landed in Normandy and laid siege to Harfleur the Armagnacs controlled Paris. It was their faction therefore that raised an army and sent it northwards to oppose the invaders, while John of Burgundy stood aloof, for besides being unwilling to help the Armagnacs he was reluctant to embroil himself in a war with England, on whose wool trade the commercial fortunes of his Flemish towns depended. ”

“ Christine de Pisan, who was very loyal to the House of Valois, said: "In Paris there are many wicked. Good are there also and faithful to their King. But they dare not lift up their voices." [143]
[Pg ii.57]
It was common knowledge that in the Parlement and even in the Chapter of Notre-Dame were to be found those who had dealings with the Armagnacs. [144]
On the morrow of their victory at Patay, those terrible Armagnacs had only to march straight on the town to take it. They were expected to enter it one day or the other. ”

“ The rich burgesses lived in fear and peril. More than three hundred of them went off to Melun with the provost of tradesmen, who could no longer answer for the tranquillity of the city.” The Armagnacs, in spite of their general inferiority, sometimes got the upper hand, and did not then behave with much more discretion than the others. They committed the mistake of asking aid from the King of England, “promising him the immediate surrender of all the cities, castles, and bailiwicks they still possessed in Guienne and Poitou.” ”

“ On the 11th of June, Tannegui du Chastel made a sortie with 1,600 men from the Bastile, in the hope of recovering Paris; but he was driven back to his retreat, the people flinging down upon him and his followers at every step all kinds of missiles from their windows and roofs. The Armagnacs had killed a considerable number of poor people in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and now the mob, in their rage, fell on the Armagnac citizens, and massacred all they could find. Women, and even children, like demons in their fury, dragged the dead Armagnacs about the streets, mutilating ”

“ They began their march, in consequence, towards Verberies, and crossed the river Oise by a new bridge, which they erected, and thence advanced for Paris. Those who had the guard of the king and the Parisians were not well pleased to hear of their being so near, and made every preparation to oppose their entrance to Paris. The Armagnacs, finding it impossible to succeed, managed so well with the inhabitants of St Denis that they were there admitted; and the princes lodged in the town, and the army in the adjacent fields and villages. ”

“ The Royalist Armagnacs were definitely abandoned, but, as we shall see, the unhappy town gained little in the crisis of her fate from her Burgundian sympathies.
During all these days of civic anarchy the English troops were steadily advancing to their goal. Though no predetermined plan is proved to have existed in the mind of Henry V., the movements of his army resulted in a very definite and successful campaign. ”

“ The young duke Charles of Orleans married the daughter of the Gascon count Bernard VII. of Armagnac, and presently formed alliances with the dukes of Berry, Bourbon and Brittany, and others who formed the party known as the Armagnacs (see Armagnac) , against the Burgundians who had gained the upper hand in the royal council. ”

“ There was a likelihood of obtaining food for the men-at-arms, especially if, as was hoped, the good towns supplied victuals. They were very wealthy; their barns overflowed with corn. While owing allegiance to King Henry, no bonds of affection united them to the English or to the Burgundians. They governed themselves. They were rich merchants, who only longed for peace and who did their best to bring it about. Just now they were beginning to suspect that the Armagnacs were growing the stronger party. These folk of Champagne had a [Pg i.394] clergy and a bourgeoisie who might be appealed to. ”

“ The Dauphin of France, afterwards Louis XI., at the head of a large army of the mercenary troops called Armagnacs, from the Counts D’Armagnac, two of their chiefs, advanced against Basle for the purpose of breaking up the council of the church then sitting there in defiance of the Pope, and to assist Frederic of Austria, the Emperor of Germany, in recovering the possessions in Switzerland which his ancestors had lost. ”

“ When peace was made between Burgundians and Armagnacs, the latter were obliged to break their261 alliance with the English king, whose troops under his second son, the Duke of Clarence, had ever since been ravaging Normandy, Picardy, and Maine, notwithstanding that the little Comte d’Angoulême, the youngest of the Orléans princes, had been given them as a hostage. They were also attacking some of the southern parts of France, and swore they would regain the duchy of Aquitaine, their ancient patrimony. ”

“ No Burgundian priest would baptise a little Armagnac. Why should he save an enemy's brat from damnation?
[Pg 201]
"The children played with the corpses in the streets. The body of the Constable and others lay for three days in the palace, a butt for the jests of the passers by. Some of them remembered to take a strip of skin from his back, so that he, too, might wear in death, the white emblem of the living Armagnacs." At last the stench forced them to throw all the debris into the tomberaux; thence, without priest or prayer, into an open ditch in the pig-market. ”

“ Had it not been for the archers, cross-bowmen and cannoneers posted at the bridge end by the Sire de Flavy, the bulwark would have been captured. The Burgundians had but twenty wounded and not one slain. [420] The Maid had not been very vigorously defended.
She was disarmed and taken to Margny. [421] At the tidings that the witch of the Armagnacs had been taken, cries and rejoicings resounded throughout the Burgundian camp. Duke Philip wished to see her. ”

“ Now during the Lent of 1429 there was circulated among the Armagnacs this prophecy, taken from a book of the prophecies of Merlin: "From the town of the Bois-Chenu there shall come forth a maid for the healing of the nation. When she hath stormed every citadel, with her breath she shall dry up all the [Pg i.177] springs. Bitter tears shall she shed and fill the Island with a terrible noise. ”

“ Burgundy was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city. In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death. ”

“ Wherever they marched, terror ran before them. They summoned the peasantry to bind on the white cross of Armagnac; he who refused lost arm, leg, or life itself, on the spot. This method of recruiting proved eminently successful, and the Count soon had a goodly army.
John the Fearless of Burgundy ("who," says a French writer, "might better have been called John the Pitiless, since the only fear he was without was that of God") was hardly less ferocious than his enemy. In one battle he slew some thousands of unarmed citizens: in another he massacred twenty-five thousand Armagnacs at one stroke. ”

“ Hither came the representatives of the various communes of the valley of the Neste to discuss their affairs, and decide their policy; for here, as in Lavedan, the people enjoyed great liberties, of which the Armagnacs did not care to deprive them. Cadéac occupies a hill surmounted by a feudal tower of the twelfth century. The church has an early north doorway, and sculptures let into the walls. ”

“ On the morrow, which was a Sunday, Enguerrand de Bournouville, with many valiant men at arms and archers, as well Picards as English, made a sally as far as La Chapelle, which the Armagnacs had fortified, and quartered themselves within it. On seeing their adversaries advancing, they mounted their horses, and a sharp skirmish ensued, in which many were unhorsed. Among those who behaved well, sir Enguerrand was pre-eminent. Near his side was John of Luxembourg, nephew to the count de St Pol, but very young. Many were wounded, but few killed. ”

“ During all the time that they had been making war on these Coués [99] they had grown to hate them. And possibly there already existed an English character and a French character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the Godons [100] met with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened so slowly. Does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part whatever in the work of deliverance? ”

“ This proclamation was published in the usual places, and some few, but in no great number, privately quitted the party of the Armagnacs, and returned to that of the king. Those that were disobedient, when taken by the royal officers, were in great danger of their lives. Several were publicly executed; and among them a knight, called sir Binet d’Espineuse, attached to the duke of Bourbon from being a native of the county of Clermont, suffered at Paris. ”