community in France, if he had not received a suitable indemnity by the
end of May 1346. Relations between the crown and the republic seem to
have remained at a very low ebb over the course of the next few years.^147
The Fall of the House of EuWalter’s need for French assistance against Florence tied him very
closely to Philip VI in the next phase of the Hundred Years’War
(1341–7). During this phase, the principal theatre of conflict expanded
to encompass almost all of northern France. Naturally enough, this
meant that there was a great deal for the constable, Raoul III of Eu,
and for his son and namesake, the count of Guînes, to do. Both fought in
Brittany under the leadership of the heir to the French crown, Duke John
of Normandy, when the latter was sent there after the beginnings of the
Breton succession dispute in 1341.^148
Soon after Walter returned to France, in the mid-1340s, a particularly
interesting development took place. Walter’s first wife, Beatrice of
Taranto, had died several years earlier. Walter now wedded Jeanne of
Eu, the daughter of his kinsman, Raoul III.^149 So far as we can see, this is
thefirst and only intermarriage that took place between the various
branches of the house of Brienne. This just makes it all the more ironic,
then, that this match failed where so many others had succeeded, in that
it did not produce the male heir that was so desperately needed. Instead,
it produced two daughters, Jeanne and Margaret. It appears that they
both died young and were buried in the abbey of Beaulieu.^150
In fact, it was another marriage that ushered in the period of crisis and
catastrophe for the house of Eu. On 18 January 1345, Raoul III was in
Paris for the wedding of King Philip’s younger son, the duke of Orléans.
At a tournament held the next day, the ageing Raoul entered the lists,
and was fatally injured by a lance thrust to the stomach.^151 His son and
heir, Raoul IV, was already a maturefigure. As we have seen, he had been
serving as count of Guînes since his grandmother’s death in 1331.
Perhaps it was Raoul IV’s reassuring experience in war, as well as his
(^147) De Sassenay,Brienne, 233–5.
(^148) See esp.The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel,chs. 47, 52.
(^149) A wide range of possible candidates have been suggested for the precise date of the
marriage. See Roserot,Dictionnaire, introductory vol., part 3, no. 3;Europäische
Stammtafeln: Neue Folge, iii, part 4, tables 682–3; and‘Le testament de Gauthier VI
de Brienne, duc d’Athènes’, ed. A. C. A. de Marsy, inRevue de Champagne et de Brie
150 (1877), 5.
151 See the discussion in Roserot,Dictionnaire, introductory vol., part 3, no. 3, p. 129.
See the brief summary in Lebailly,‘Le connétable d’Eu et son cercle nobiliare’, 43.
The Fall of the House of Eu 173