A History of the Hundred Years War by Ephraim Emerton

Author:Ephraim Emerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ozymandias Press

IV.

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THE CIVIL WAR WAS ON. The nominal head of the Orléans party was now Charles, son of the murdered Louis, a youth of eighteen, but the real leader was Charles’s father-in-law, Bernard of Armagnac, from whom the party now takes its name. Territorially the Armagnacs became the party of the south and west, against the Burgundians in the north and east. The lesser barons ranged themselves under one or the other banner, and an irregular warfare, destructive to life and property but leading to no clear result, began. The utter lack of national feeling is shown by the zeal of both parties in bargaining with England. The “usurping” king, Henry IV of Lancaster, was only too glad to listen to overtures from any source that might seem to promise a recovery of the English lands in France and thus a gain in his prestige at home. At first Burgundy had the advantage and, with the help of English troops, succeeded in gaining Paris. Then an Armagnac coalition promised to regtore to England the duchy of Guienne with many royal fortresses if Henry IV would send troops to aid them against Burgundy. Then again, within a few months, the rival chiefs were entertaining and embracing each other at Auxerre and mutually promising to disavow their foreign alliances.

For a time the center of interest shifts to Paris, the financial heart of the nation and at critical moments the spokesman of the hard-working and tax-paying classes. Once again, in the face of the English peril, the government calls upon the Estates of the North, the Languedoïl, to help it out, and again this call is the signal for a new activity of the organized gilds. This time it is the butchers of Paris who take the lead in city affairs, deal as a political unit with John of Burgundy, and undertake to dictate terms to the government. Under the lead of one Simon Caboche they constitute a formidable rival to the constitutional Estates. Their demands were chiefly two: reform of the public administration and war with England; but, as generally happens, this demonstration by the lowest grade of society was only an opportunity for better-trained and more responsible reformers. Everything that happened at Paris between 1413 and 1416 is roughly called “Cabochien,” from the name of the butchers’ leader, but the really valuable things done were the work not of the Cabochiens themselves but of royal officials, jurists, and theologians, representing especially the University and the corporate government of the city. Such is, for example, the famous “Ordonnance Cabochienne “of May 26, 1413. The calling of the Estates was the signal for a flood of “grievances,” poured in from the provinces, from the University, and from the trades, in which the demand of the government for more money was met by counter demands for administrative reforms. There was money enough, it was declared; the only trouble was that the people who had it – the princes, officials, and all their tribe of followers – were not called upon to disgorge.

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