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History Nugget: The TWO women who saved France during the Hundred Years War [1]

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Date: 2023-05-01

For anyone with even a cursory grasp of history, if you say “woman who saved France,” I think many people will immediately think of Joan of Arc.

Patron Saint of France, Joan was the 17-year-old peasant mystic woman who appeared out of nowhere to lead the French Army out of certain defeat back to glory, Also known as the Maid of Orleans, she is widely regarded as having been unjustly burned at the stake for witchcraft by the invading English and is a symbol of French national pride.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that it wasn’t one woman who saved France—it was two women. And the epic story of “the Maid of Orleans” was the only story the second woman wanted you to know.

The woman who worked out of the shadows, and is arguably the true architect of France’s salvation during the Hundred Years War, was Yolande of Aragon. This is her story.

The Final Phase of the Hundred Years War

The Hundred Years War began in 1337 when an open conflict broke out between English King Edward III and the French King Phillip VI.

Unlike his ancestors, Edward III refused to pay homage to Philip the VI, instead claiming via complicated inheritance laws that Edward was not only King of England, but also the rightful King of France. Most historians believe that Edward did not seriously think he was going to take over the Kingdom of France, but that it was a bargaining chip to further expand his influence and rights in France.

This was the start of the 100 years war. The war went through a series of “phases” as either the English or the French were dominant in various periods—usually owing to a particularly able monarch.

The Edwardian Phase (Edward III (ENG) beats up the French) 1337-1360

First Peace 1360-1369

The French Resurgence (Phillip V (FRA) beats back the English) 1369-1389

Second Peace 1389-1415

Henry V Almost conquers France 1415-1422

Joan of Arc 1429-1430

French Victory 1453

As you can see with the extremely general timeline above, the war wasn’t fought continuously, but involved 2 major peace treaties that ended fighting for a substantial period. A peace treaty was signed in 1389 that acknowledged French control over much of France.

Henry V, Warrior-King

The territorial situation was largely unchanged since 1389 when Henry V of England became the new King of England and resumed the war in 1415.

English territory in gray

Three major developments greatly aided a series of incredible English victories and catastrophic French defeats.

First, the French King Charles VI went mad in 1391, quite literally. He went into periods of deep insanity where he was unable to distinguish reality from hallucinations, and even in periods of lucidity was uncertain of his own faculties and could be easily manipulated. Powerful French lords began taking advantage of the weak crown, and helping themselves to the state coffers, bankrupting the central government. The central government was devoid of any central leadership.

Second, internal rivalries between high-ranking French lords antagonized the powerful Duke of Burgundy to the point of triggering a civil war. The Burgundians eventually side with Henry, bringing one of the richest and most powerful lords in France to the English side.

Third, Henry V was a military genius who won virtually every battle he fought even when deeply outnumbered. Most famously, he crushed a much larger French army at Agincourt.

Agincourt (1415) was devastating not only for the fact the main French field army had been destroyed, crippling French military ability for over a decade.

French nobles had split into elements loyal to the royal family, and elements that were less enthusiastic. Most of the nobles and knights who participated in the Battle of Agincourt were the King’s strongest supporters.

In the middle of an uncertain battle, having captured the vanguard of the French Nobility’s failed charge, Henry V made the ruthless decision to execute all of his captives. In the Middle Ages, while commoners could expect mutilation or execution upon capture, nobles were almost always ransomed back for large quantities of money. This was often a huge source of revenue for a victorious army.

But Henry chose to kill his captives, and an entire generation of the military and political leaders closest to the French crown was wiped out. And French resistance to Henry essentially collapsed with it, and the Mad King Charles VI was unable to rally anyone to his defense.

Prince Charles (Future King Charles VII)

Mad King Charles VI had numerous children, including 5 sons. The youngest of these was Charles, born in 1403. As a fifth son, few expected he would be the future King.

Charles was promised to the daughter, Marie, of the powerful Louis II, Duke of Anjou when he was just 9 years old. He would spend much of his adolescent years politically close to the Duke’s family, who strongly backed the Royal House.

Charles’ eldest two brothers had already passed away years ago, but in quick succession, the Dauphin (crown prince) Louis passed away in Dec. 1415 of a sudden illness. The new Dauphin, John, died less than 14 months later, also of a sudden illness. Some accused the powerful Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, of poisoning them.

The Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, had been steadily expanding his political influence. Burgundian forces openly fought with nobles loyal to the King, and John the Fearless shocked the French nobility by ordering the murder of his rival, the Duke of Orleans—who was the King’s younger brother.

Burgundian forces captured Paris in 1418, and the now Dauphin Charles feared for his life and fled the capitol. John the Fearless now took over the role of “protector” of the insane King, and cultivated a close relationship with the Queen. Rumors abounded that John the Fearless was sleeping with the Queen, although historians remain split on whether this rumor was true.

With this significant baggage, the young Dauphin Charles, just 16 years old, began negotiations with the Duke of Burgundy. While the Burgundians had taken advantage of the Crown’s weakness due to the English invasion, at this point the Burgundians had no formal alliance with the British. It was clear that the Crown needed the Duke of Burgundy’s help to fight the English, or at a minimum to stay neutral.

The Dauphin’s political career went off to the worst start possible. In a meeting in 1419, the Dauphin’s men broke diplomatic protocol and murdered the Duke of Burgundy. John the Fearless’ adult son and heir, Phillip became the new Duke of Burgundy and immediately vowed bloody vengeance for the murder of his father. The Burgundians joined forces with the English..

By 1420, Henry had gained so much territory and the French Royal Court was in such a bind, Queen Isabeau was ready to strike a deal. Queen Isabeau had a strong influence over the French court due to her husband’s madness, and she directed the King to sign the Peace of Troyes, which disinherited the King’s heir, Charles, allowed Henry V to marry Catherine of Valois (the French King’s daughter) and recognized Henry V and his heirs as the rightful successors to the French throne.

Only the fortress-city of Orleans stood between Henry’s advancing armies and the last strongholds loyal to the French King .

English held territory in gray, Burgundian territory in dark gray.

With the English and Burgundians approaching, the Dauphin Charles fled to the last place he felt safe: to the lands of his fiancée's mother. South, to the lands of Yolande of Aragon.

Yolande of Aragon

Yolande was born as a literal princess—her father was John I, King of Aragon. In fact, she had what was viewed as a legitimate legal claim to rule 4 kingdoms: Aragon, Sicily, Naples and Jerusalem. However, much of this was simply legal and theoretical, as by her adulthood, her family controlled none of these lands.

However, Yolande was married to the powerful Duke of Anjou, Louis II. Louis controlled the rich and strategically important north-central Duchy of Anjou (west of Orleans), and vast territories and numerous castles in southern France as well.

The marriage was a happy one, and Yolande gave birth to six children, including her daughter Marie. Marie was promised to Prince Charles when both were just 9 years old, although nobody imagined Charles would some day be King of France.

Louis had legal claims to the Kingdom of Naples as well, and spent much of his life unsuccessfully fighting to control the Kingdom. This left Yolande to rule the vast domains of her husband in his place. Yolande quickly proved to be a highly able political thinker and administrator, and she became a well-known and influential supporter of the French crown.

She also developed a very motherly relationship with her future son-in-law, Prince Charles, who was relatively neglected by his biological mother (the Queen Isabeau) and a strong bond of affection and trust formed between the two.

From 1415 or so onwards, Louis II (Yolande’s husband) was frequently ill, and thus luckily missed Agincourt but died in 1417, leaving Yolande as the de facto ruler of the Duchy.

The stakes of Yolande’s daughter’s marriage rose incalculably when Charles became the Dauphin Charles upon the deaths of his older brothers in 1417. Yolande immediately began maneuvering to protect and strengthen the Dauphin’s political position.

But it was in 1420 when Yolande became the de facto leader of the Dauphin’s faction.

The signing of the Treaty of Troyes that disinherited the Dauphin Charles, and recognized Henry V as the legitimate next ruler of France, was obviously a catastrophe for Charles.

Yolande began rallying support for the Dauphin, arguing that due to the King’s madness, the King is incapable of entering into a legal agreement due to his mental infirmity. Yolande also began to cast the Queen Isabeau, who had become a clear political enemy to her own son Charles, as a wicked adulterer who had abandoned her husband and children to the English to save herself.

While these measures only garnered slight support for the Dauphin, they did prevent a total collapse of his position.

When the Dauphin Charles arrived seeking Yolande’s protection, he was greeted warmly. Charles would be wedded to Marie the following year, cementing his relationship with Yolande’s family.

Meanwhile, Henry V married his French princess, produced an heir (the future Henry VI) and the 35-year-old Henry simply was waiting for the 54-year-old Mad King Charles to die. Charles VI was increasingly frequently ill during this time, and it seemed Henry V’s coronation would be imminent.

The stakes were clear—Yolande would either defeat the English and restore her son-in-law to his place on the throne, or the English and Burgundians would split everything she had amongst them.

Fortunately for Yolande, Henry V died suddenly of an illness in 1422, just 2 months before Mad King Charles VI died. Instead of facing the military genius warrior king, the English would be nominally led by the infant king Henry VI. Henry VI was declared King of England and France, a title English Kings would at least nominally claim for the next 5 centuries.

Charles made a competing claim to be the King of France, but the traditional location for coronations was the city of Rheims—in British-occupied territory. Charles’ inability to be coronated further degraded his legitimacy in the eyes of the French nobility.

Due to Henry VI’s infancy, the English began appointing various nobles to take over administration of the sprawling lands of the English crown. But the reorganization of the English’s political and military structure that previously orbited so completely around the late Henry V took some time to stabilize, and this bought Yolande valuable time.

Yolande’s Strategy

Since the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 and the English claim to the French Throne challenged what Yolande saw as her son-in -law’s birthright, the political battlelines of the next King of France were drawn.

The knights and nobles of France largely fell along a spectrum, favoring Charles (France), favoring Henry VI (England) or remaining neutral. A noble might choose neutrality out of a sense of political prudence (joining a faction might expose them to attacks without assistance).

But Yolande believed, likely rightly, that many in the nobility favored Charles, but remained neutral out of fear that he had no chance to win.

So Yolande embarked on a strategy that aimed to accomplish 3 things

Preserve the crown’s resources (especially money) for one decisive blow,

Diplomatically disrupt the English by pulling discontent English allies to the French side.

Rally French nobles and knights around the Crown when the counteroffensive starts.

First, Yolande began accumulating the crown’s funds, and contributing much of her own Duchy’s revenues to the crown. Over the next nine years, she carefully maintained the crown’s resources to accumulate a massive war chest to fund one decisive strike.

Second, Yolande began making diplomatic forays to discontent English allies. In particular, she targeted Bretons in the Brittany Region in northwestern France. The Bretons had switched sides in the conflict several times throughout the war, but were allied with the English. Yolande persuaded John VI Duke of Brittany to break his alliance with the English and support Charles’ bid for the French crown.

Yolande also persuaded the highly regarded soldier and commander, Breton Arthur de Richemont to switch his allegiance to the French. She would see de Richemont appointed as Constable of France, making him the de facto commander of the French forces, and he would be given the command of the counterattack in 1429.

The last piece—rallying the French nobility and knights to Charles’ cause and restoring the morale of the French armies—was an inscrutable problem. To restore morale in the nobility and his armies, Charles would need to win a great victory. To win a great victory, Charles would need the support of the nobility and knights who believed in his cause.

Yolande looked to a popular legend and prophesy,

Finding Joan of Arc

Yolande sought to take advantage of a widely known prophesy that earned popular appeal. There were several versions, attributed variously to Marie Robine of Avignon, the wizard Merlin, and several similar chronicles that stated: “France would be ruined by a woman, and restored by an armed virgin from Lorraine.”

The origins of the “virgin who saves France” prophesy can be traced back to the 1380s, almost 50 years prior to the events of Joan of Arc, but the prophecy really began gaining popular traction in 1420. Those who were favorable to Charles’ claim to the French throne began identifying Queen Isabeau as the “woman who ruins France.”

The second piece of the prophecy became integral to Yolande’s plans.

What is interesting is that histories of the time note that Joan was not the first woman to appear at the French Court claiming to be the “maiden of Lorraine” from the prophesy. She was not the second or third. Between 1422 — 1429, historian Nancy Goldstone identified no less than seventeen instances where women came to the French Court claiming to be the prophesized maiden.

Further intriguingly, Yolande personally interviewed every “candidate” before they could be brought before Charles, including Joan. Joan was the first woman to be approved by Yolande as fit to be presented to Charles.

While no contemporary documentation exists as to Yolande’s intentions, a fairly straightforward and natural conjecture is that Yolande was looking for the “right” maiden to serve her purposes.

Yolande needed a way to demonstrate that Charles was the rightful claimant to be King of France. In the absence of other conventional methods to rally the nobility, Yolande likely chose the popular half-century-old prophecy as a way to show “divine favor” for Charles’ cause.

But Yolande needed someone who was the right person for the cause—someone who would not immediately be exposed as a fraud, who could be a believable banner carrier, and have a credible appearance of holiness.

The combination of factors that met Yolande’s needs was likely quite exclusive, which probably explains why she went through 16 different women before finding the right candidate.

This isn’t to say that Joan of Arc did not turn out to be quite a remarkable figure.

Yolande probably did not anticipate that Joan would wear armor and ride out near the vanguard of the army, that Joan would take battlefield wounds on two separate occasions and continue to lead the French Armies with immense physical bravery.

She also probably didn’t anticipate that this teenaged peasant girl would defy her own chosen generals and cause conflicts in strategy, or that once captured she would martyr herself to become one of the most legendary figures in medieval history.

But Yolande was likely looking for a devout, charismatic, well-spoken and intelligent and persuasive figure who could play the part of the “maiden who saves France.”

Joan’s intended symbolic role can be seen in the way she has little influence (at least initially) upon the tactics and strategy of the French counteroffensive.

Joan’s first mission was to relieve the siege of Orleans. The English had organized a major siege of the city in late 1428, and the city was surrounded by 1429. Joan led a relief force that was able to enter the city, whereupon she was tasked with distributing food and salaries to the soldiers in the city to raise morale until a plan of counterattack was prepared.

Joan inspirational effect was certainly real. Several thousand ordinary citizens of Orleans turned out wanting to assist in the defense of the city—which the commanders reportedly did not want (by this point, the Hundred Years War was fought almost exclusively by professional armies) but Joan would lead the citizen militia herself in the coming battles.

But Joan did not command the army. For example, Joan urged an immediate attack on the largest English Bastille of St. Laurent on the North bank of the river Loire, but the French commanders reasoned the siege could be lifted by securing the more weakly defended south bank—a strategy they then employed to great effect.

Once the southern bank was cleared and the English lifted the siege, Joan believed the next step should be to march on Rheims to permit the coronation of the King, but the French Commanders believed (correctly) that much of the English army remained intact, and unless the English army was driven back and defeated first, they would simply resume the siege. The French commanders overruled Joan’s suggestions.

Later one, as Joan’s popularity and legend grew, she would begin to gain more say in the operations of the French army (likely much to Yolande’s chagrin), but it’s clear from the initial campaign what Yolande intended for Joan to be: a banner carrier, a walking advertisement for Charles’ legitimacy.

Yolande shaped her own legacy

The success of the counteroffensive of the French with Joan had succeeded in saving Orleans, leading the French soldiers in a rapid campaign through the Loire including a decisive field victory at Patay, liberating Rheims and seeing the coronation of Charles as Charles VI.

The counteroffensive culminated in the unsuccessful attempt to retake Paris, but many French nobles and knights rallied to Charles VI’s cause, leading to the momentum and strength that would see the French almost completely expel the English from French soil by 1453.

Joan would take part in only the first 11 months of the French resurgence, being captured by Burgundian soldiers and handed to the British in 1430. When Joan refused to recant her claims to divine guidance in leading the liberation of France, Joan was burned as a witch and she had firmly cemented her status as one of the most remarkable figures in medieval history and a symbol of the French nation.

Charles VII and his heirs would point to Joan as the reason for France’s deliverance and proof of divine favor for their rule of France.

This is most likely exactly what Yolande wanted.

Despite being one of the wealthiest women in France, and a towering figure in Charles VII’s court for nearly 40 years, Yolande likely chose to fade into the background.

When Joan’s sudden victory is without reason or cause, it emphasized a story of divinely ordained success that strengthened the legitimacy of Charles VII. If Yolande were to emphasize her own role in Charles’ triumph, it would diminish the “miracle” that was the change of France’s fortunes that were delivered by the Maid of Orleans.

The motherly love that Yolande showed to Charles VII is well documented. Yolande never commissioned a chronicle of her own career, and almost everything we know of her were mentions of her brilliance and power in other people’s histories. Yolande gave Charles VII a powerful gift—by allowing herself to be obscure, she turned Charles VII into a prince made king by God’s intervention.

The 20th century French writer Jehanne d'Orliac wryly observed “[Yolande] is mentioned in passing because she is the pivot of all important events for forty-two years in France, [while Joan [of Arc] was in the public eye only eleven months.”

For those interested in further reading on this topic, I heartily recommend Nancy Goldstone’s “The Maid and the Queen.”

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