anonymous (after Jean Malouel), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
We have previously examined the life of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
The second volume in Richard's Vaughan tetralogy continues with Philip's son and heir, John the Fearless (r. 1404-1419).
Today we continue.
For those who may not recall the Duchy of Burgundy was a curious patchwork of provinces spread across modern-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was stitched together not so much by conquest but through inheritance and marriage alliances. Philip the Bold had stacked the deck so to speak of many of the ruling houses across the Low Countries and even down to Savoy by marrying off his children and even grandchildren into these various principalities.
John the Fearless when he inherited the vast swathes of this novel Burgundian states alongside his brothers, who fortunately remained loyal and eager allies with their small patrimonies, was well set up for success. And despite rumors to the contrary, Philip the Bold's excessive spending and generosity did not embroil his widow and sons in debt, at least from Vaughan's point of view.
While conventional historians assume John the Fearless was born into crippling debt and forced to virtually declare bankruptcy to his father's many creditors, Vaughan points out the receipts and accounts of the family and duchy do not bear this out. Instead what seems most likely is that while the remaining family was quite vocal in their letters and correspondence and external appearances to be left destitute by their seemingly profligate father, it seems that through private records and other glimpses this was merely a facade to squirrel out of as many debts as possible, true to the legacy of their father.
John the Fearless, like Philip the Bold, was a man ahead of his time in his rather intense and frequent borrowings to finance a wide variety of enterprises including enforcing reforms or military action that would expand the Burgundian tax base. Like the modern state, the Burgundians dug themselves deeply into debt with the intention that their accumulated credits and assets would quickly outpace whatever debts they could not find a way out of.
And they sure did try to escape or equivocate on whatever they could. Vaughan provides a remarkable level of detail in ennumerating the strategies and tactics John the Fearless employed to default on his debts, transmute them into something else, swap them for favors, pay for them out of withheld wages for his servants, and a remarkably savvy array of other forms of fiscal legerdemain. The Burgundians were nothing if not crafty.
Yet John certainly had his differences from his father.
Temperamentally, John the Fearless is in Vaughan's view incredibly impetuous. This can be seen not only in tactics and strategy and firsthand correspondence but even in letters, proclamations, and edicts he would send out either in his name or when he pretended to speak on behalf of the invalid King of France.
This would lead most ironically to John the Fearless forcing his servants or allies to swear oaths that within a matter of weeks he would force them to seek dispensations or exemptions from. He forced them to break the very same oaths he had coerced upon them.
The impulsive behavior led to gambles that benefitted him most in the territorial acquisitions and gains he had in the Low Countries but perhaps also undermined him in the intrigue of French politics. More on that later.
Also unlike his father, John the Fearless was very active as a military prince. Philip the Bold preferred money and diplomacy, his only so-called military venture was sponsoring the Burgundian contingent of the underwhelming Crusade of Nicopolis. This in fact was led by John the Fearless and how he earned his epithet, though a smug historian may note it was perhaps more impulsivity than courage that characterized John's behavior on that campaign as well.
Yet John the Fearless was not lazy. Vaughan provides a very convincing accounts of the extremely methodical and equally unscrupolous ways by which John the Fearless played the game of power politics. Self-aggrandizement with respect to his subordinates, the common people, neighbors, neighboring princes, etc. Everything a pawn in the game.
Depending upon one's outlook, this view can either be reinforced or countered by the plethora of reforming efforts John the Fearless sought to implement both in lands under his direct control as well as in France or over Paris in his brief stints as the foremost prince there.
Reigning between 1404 and 1419, John the Fearless established a bureaucratic department within his lands explicitly for the development of cannon and artillery which he would leverage on his military ventures, to somewhat successful effect. He was deeply, personally involved in the review of cannon design and testing as well as building his own personal arsenal of such newfound weaponry to deploy during wartime. One does not associate a military department of artillery with the very start of the fifteenth century, so this is somewhat remarkable.
But now for the French theater.
While traditional historiography regards John the Fearless as a subversive and traitorous French prince who aided the English, Vaughan's primary thesis which he extends from the first volume is that the Burgundian House were not just French dukes. They possessed a pre-eminent European state much of whose borders lay outside the Kingdom of France.
So when they extracted funds, favors, and other tools from the French royal administration, they were doing this as saavy statesmen whose primary interest was their own state which was not France. While this may be true, I do not think Vaughan's thesis necessarily cancels out the fact French officials could justifiably view such extraction as treasonous.
Vaughan's organization of his material is a bit interesting here as he starts off the early chapters by talking about John the Fearless' early reign including an in-depth exploration of his bureaucratic apparatus up to point when John the Fearless fled Paris. He then diverts the next several chapters to topical themes about John the Fearless' reign as a whole before proceeding in the concluding two chapters to return to his biography and the closing years of his life and reign.
Taken as a whole though, there are several events which punctuate John the Fearless' life when it comes to French affairs.
As a reminder, France was undergoing what may loosely be referred to as its own War of the Roses from the end of the fourteenth century into the early fifteenth century. A factor which at least was not very much emphasized in the English storytelling of the Hundred Years War in my own early education.
Philip the Bold had the personal luck to be one of the most senior members of French royal administration with no sizable factional threat and a weak French crown which he could twist and bend as he pleased, such as sending French troops to put down one of his own internal rebellions outside France while also paying himself handsomely "consultant fees" for the trouble of organizing such a gesture.
Vaughan points out that when John the Fearless came of age and inherited his holdings from his father he was quick to put his foot in the door of French royal intrigue, but a new generation had risen up who vyed for influence over a king who underwent prolonged lengths of insanity.
While the conflict is most widely known as the Armagnac vs. Burgundian series of wars, there were several stages here.
When John the Fearless first inserted himself into the royal cabinet, Duke Louis of Orleans was among the first to devise a coalition to oppose him including the Duke of Berry and Duke of Bourbon.
It would make sense for Louis of Orleans to block John the Fearless' attempts to ingratiate himself to the king. He was after all King Charles VI's brother, and seeing some Burgundian outsider have a tight grip on the throne one's brother sits in may certainly rub one the wrong way.
Louis of Orleans was not without his own complexities though. He was notably fond of women of all extractions, including his brother the king's wife. This did not make him a sympathetic character for those involved in unfolding events.
As Louis seemed to be succeeding in freezing John the Fearless out, an unexpected twist occurred.
November 23rd 1407, Louis of Orleans was riding home at night in the streets of Paris. As he proceeded, a group of men emerged out of a nearby building and proceeded to stab him to death, before dispersing into the dark.