230 Chapter 12
preserved the south of France for Charles, was followed
by a string of victories that led to the repudiation of the
treaty of Troyes and his coronation at Rheims in July.
All of this was popularly attributed to Joan who was
present throughout. She never commanded troops, but
her inspiration gave them confidence, and even civil-
ians, oppressed by a century of apparently pointless
warfare, were roused to enthusiasm.
Unfortunately for Joan, Charles was not quite the
fool he sometimes appeared to be. When she was cap-
tured by the English in 1430, he did nothing to secure
her release or to prevent her from being tried at Rouen
on charges of witchcraft and heresy. He no doubt pre-
ferred to take credit for his own victories and may
have regarded her popularity as an embarrassment.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Bedford was
determined to discredit her as an agent of the devil,
and she was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. Her
habit of dressing as a man was taken as evidence of di-
abolical intent. Twenty-five years later, in a gesture of
belated gratitude, Charles VII reopened the case and
had her declared innocent. The church made her a
saint in 1920.
Joan’s brief career offers a disquieting vision of
fifteenth-century attitudes toward women, but it was
a turning point for France. In 1435 Charles was recon-
ciled with Philip the Good of Burgundy, and by 1453
the English had been driven out of France in a series of
successful campaigns that left them with only the port
of Calais as a continental base.
Political Turbulence and Dynastic
Collapse: France, Castile, and England
Dynastic failures played a major role in continuing and
intensifying the Hundred Years’ War. In a system based
on heredity, the failure of a ruling dynasty to produce
competent heirs in a timely manner meant either a dis-
puted succession or a regency. The effect of a disputed
succession may be seen in the origins of the war itself,
in which the failure of all three of Philip IV’s sons to
produce heirs gave Edward III of England a pretext for
his quarrel with Philip of Valois, or in Castile, where a
similar failure by Pedro the Cruel encouraged the pre-
tensions of his half-brother Enrique.
Regencies occurred when the legitimate heir could
not govern by reason of youth or mental incapacity. An
individual regent or a regency council might be desig-
nated in the will of a dying monarch or by agreement
within the royal family, but these appointments were
almost always contested. The reason lay in the struc-
ture of European elites. Each branch of the royal family
and each of the great landholding clans were a center
of wealth, power, and patronage to which other ele-
ments of society were drawn by interest or by heredi-
tary obligation. Rivalries were inevitable, and the king’s
duty was to serve as a kind of referee, using his superior
rank to ensure that no one became an “overmighty sub-
ject.” Failure to perform this role in an adequate manner
was often equated with bad governance.
By these standards, no regency could be good. Re-
gents were usually either princes of the blood or con-
nected with a particular faction of the royal family.
They were partial almost by definition. Once installed,
they were in a position to use the wealth and power of
the crown to advance their factional interests while
threatening the estates and the lives of their rivals.
Those excluded from a regency often felt that they had
no alternative but to rebel, though their rebellions were
usually directed not at the semisacred person of the
king, but at his “evil counselors.” This happened in the
struggle between John the Fearless and the Armagnacs.
The result was a civil war and renewed English inter-
vention in France.
Other forms of dynastic failure had similar effects.
In some cases, adult, presumably functional, rulers be-
haved so foolishly that their subjects rebelled. Castile
in particular suffered from this ailment throughout
much of the fifteenth century. Juan II (1405–54) left the
government in the hands of Alvaro de Luna, a powerful
noble whose de facto regency factionalized the
grandees, the highest rank of Spanish nobles who were
not princes of the blood. Juan’s son, Enrique IV “the Im-
potent” was generally despised for his homosexuality,
his tendency to promote low-born lovers over the
hereditary nobility, and his failure to maintain order.
Faced with a monarchy they could neither support nor
respect, the great landholding families raised private
armies and kept the country in a state of near-anarchy
until 1479.
In England, the regency appointed during the mi-
nority of Richard II was accepted largely because the
social unrest that culminated in the revolt of 1381
forced the aristocracy to close ranks. When he came of
age, the favoritism and ineptitude of the young king
aroused such opposition that he was deposed and mur-
dered in 1399. Reflecting contemporary attitudes,
Richard, like Enrique IV of Castile, was accused of ho-
mosexuality. The reign of Henry VI—from 1422 to
1461 and 1470 to 1471—was even more chaotic than
that of Richard II. Coming to the throne as an infant,
Henry remained under the control of others throughout