Plague, War, and Social Change in the “Long”Fourteenth Century 229with Pedro “the Ceremonious” of Aragon, the latter en-
couraged an uprising of Castilian nobles under the lead-
ership of Enrique of Trastámara, Pedro the Cruel’s
half-brother. Enrique and his Aragonese ally then
sought assistance from France.
They received it in part because of a phenomenon
that surfaced for the first time after the peace of
Bretigny. The practice of paying troops had created a
class of men whose only trade was war and who, after a
generation of fighting, had no place in civilian society.
For them peace was a catastrophe that forced them to
become beggars or bandits. Most, understandably,
chose the latter. Roaming the countryside, often in
their original companies, they lived by systematic pil-
lage and extortion reinforced by the threat of murder,
arson, and rape.
The new French king, Charles V, was happy to dis-
patch a multinational contingent of these people to
Spain under the command of Bertrand Duguesclin. Pe-
dro of Castile responded by calling in the English un-
der Edward of Woodstock, known as the Black Prince.
The eldest son of Edward III and the winning comman-
der at Poitiers, he repeated his triumph at Nájera in
- The Castilian war dragged on until 1398 when
Enrique was able to kill Pedro with his own hands and
gain the throne. Because Enrique had won with the aid
of the Castilian aristocracy, he was forced to confirm
and extend their privileges, thereby guaranteeing that
his successors would be faced with internal disorder.
His victory was a defeat, not only for Pedro, but also
for the state-building ideals he represented.
An aftereffect of the Spanish war was the pretext
for reviving Anglo-French hostilities. To pay for his
Castilian adventure, the Black Prince so taxed his sub-
jects in Guienne that they appealed to Charles V for
help. The war that followed was far less dramatic than
the first. Charles adopted a strategy of attrition, avoid-
ing battle whenever possible and using the tactical skills
of Duguesclin to harry and outmaneuver the English.
By 1380 the English presence in France had been
greatly reduced, but both kingdoms were at the limit of
their resources. Fighting did not end completely. The
next thirty-five years may be characterized as a period
of military stalemate and internal disorder in both
countries.
The last stage of the war began when Henry V of
England invaded the continent in 1415. Ambitious and
new to the throne, he sought to take advantage of the
civil war then raging in France. The French king,
Charles VI, had gone mad. His brother, the duke of
Orleáns, was named regent, thereby arousing the envy
of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Burgundy was
perhaps the most powerful of the king’s relatives. His
appanage—estates granted to members of the ruling
family—included the rich duchy of Burgundy and most
of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands. He was
probably wealthier than the king. John arranged the as-
sassination of Orleáns in 1407 only to see another rival,
Count Bertrand VII of Armagnac, installed in his place.
In the struggle that followed, Burgundy tried to ally
himself with England, drawing back when he perceived
the extent of Henry’s ambitions. The English king saw
that John would do nothing to defend Charles VI or his
Armagnac supporters.
The English invasion was an immediate success.
Using a variant of the tactics developed at Crécy and
Poitiers, Henry crushed the French at Agincourt on
October 25, 1415. Alarmed by the magnitude of the
French defeat, Burgundy began to rethink his position,
but he, too, was assassinated in 1419 by soldiers in the
pay of the Armagnacs. His son, Philip, whose nickname
“the Good” belied a ferocious temper, sought revenge
by allying Burgundy once again with England.
The French king was virtually isolated. In 1420 he
was forced to ratify the treaty of Troyes, which disin-
herited his son, the future Charles VII, in favor of
Henry V. When Charles VI and Henry both died in
1422, Henry’s infant son, Henry VI of England, was
proclaimed king of France with the English duke of
Bedford as regent. The proclamation aroused great in-
dignation in much of France where Charles of Valois
was accepted as the rightful king. Charles, unfortu-
nately, was not an inspiring figure. Inarticulate, physi-
cally unimpressive, and only nineteen years old, he
retired with his supporters to Bourges where he quickly
developed a reputation for lethargy and indecision. The
task of galvanizing public opinion fell to an extraordi-
nary woman, Joan of Arc.
Joan was an illiterate peasant from the remote bor-
der village of Domrémy. When she came to Charles in
March 1429 she was probably no older than twenty but
had already achieved local fame for her religious vi-
sions. She told him that “voices” had instructed her to
raise the English siege of Orleáns, and Charles, who
probably thought that he had little to lose, allowed her
to go. The result was electrifying. By the time she ar-
rived, the English had decided to give up, but the
French did not know this. The apparently miraculous
appearance of a young woman, dressed in armor and
with her hair cut like a man’s, was thought to have
been the reason for the subsequent English retreat,
and it created a sensation. The relief of Orleáns, which