[MR] Wikipedia: Assassination of John the Fearless

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

On this date in 1419, the Duke of Burgundy, John "The Fearless", was
assassinated while attending a parlay.

To understand how this came about, we must go way back. The King of France,
Charles VI, was "madder than a hatter", and had been essentially walled up
in his palace. France was run by a regency council, consisting of Princes
of the Blood, with Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold (John's daddy) being
head regent much of the time. Phil had made many enemies among the other
regents, and was especially opposed by the King's younger brother, Louis I,
 Duke of Orleans, who accused him of graft (probably true). When Phil died
in 1404, John assumed his father's ducal crown, and his seat on the council.

John took particular exception to his cousin Louis (and vice-versa), who
was one of the greatest letchers in France, and proud of it. There was
considerable suspicion that Louis was carrying on an affair with the Queen,
Isabeau of Bavaria, and was believed to be the actual father of the Dauphin
(later King Charles VII). According to some accounts, Louis made the
mistake of seducing, or raping, the wife of one of John's retainers. In
retaliation, John sent a group of thugs in his employ to kill Louis. They
caught up with him on 23 November 1407, coming out of the Queen's house,
and left his lifeless body in the Paris street. John never denied ordering
the hit, and justified it as "tyrannicide".

Louis' son Charles became the next Duke of Orleans. He whined to his
father-in-law, the very powerful Duke of Armagnac, and the combined houses
then engaged in a prolonged civil war against John and Burgundy. All this
was going on during the Hundred Years War with England, and John made a
loose alliance with the English. John kept his own troops out of the
disastrous 1415 Battle of Agincourt, where half the knighthood of France
was wiped out in two hours.

Charles, the Dauphin, enjoyed the support of the Orleans-Armagnac faction,
but had to appear neutral. In 1419 he summoned John to a parlay at the
Castle of Montereau. A special room had been built on the bridge leading to
the castle into which 10 each of the Armagnacs and Burgundians would settle
their differences before the Dauphin. About half of the Burgundians entered
and John in the lead bowed to the Dauphin. One of the Armagnac
supporters, Tanneguy
du Châtel, whipped an axe from beneath his cloak and whacked John in the
face. More Armagnac supporters rushed into the room from the castle side,
while the door on the Burgundian end was barred. The murder was over in
seconds, as the Dauphin watched impassively. The Burgundians who were with
John were overcome and taken prisoner, while the rest of his party had to
make a fighting retreat from the bridge, also dodging crossbow bolts from
Armagnac troops positioned in a nearby mill. The whole thing was a
carefully planned death trap, and it worked almost flawlessly.

The murder of John the Fearless essentially forced John's son, Philip the
Good (the next Duke of Burgundy) into the arms of the English. Although the
two sides did not fight side-by-side, they cooperated in many ways against
France. It was Philip's men who captured Joan of Arc, and then shopped her
to the English.

Tanneguy du Châtel and the other plotters were never prosecuted, and were
actually rewarded by the Dauphin Charles. For the rest of his life, Charles
is said to have exhibited a profound fear of crossing bridges.

In a fascinating coda to John's assassination, a later French king Francis
I was shown John's rather battered skull by a monk at the Burgundian
capital in 1521. The monk is reputed to have pointed to the axe wound and
told the king, "Here is the hole through which the English entered France."

The assassination is covered in detail at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_the_Fearless .

Yours Aye,


Mungo Napier, Burgundian Geek Extraordinaire
Continuing the crusade to keep Merry Rose relevant and in business.