The year 1392, twenty years before Jeanne’s birth.
The new ruler of France, King Charles VI – soon to assume the fitting sobriquet the Mad – of the Valois Dynasty, son of Charles the Wise. He perspires profusely, feels hot, breathes heavily. Halts his horse during a ride through the forests of Le Mans in Brittany. Then the accident of one of his men hitting a shield with a lance. The high-pitched noise startles the feverish monarch: Traitors! They wish to deliver me to my foes! His rattled Royal Highness unleashes his sword and murders two of his own pageboys before being detained and declared officially, undeniably insane. His German wife, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, is announced regent of France. Young, susceptible to the influence of various French nobles, and apparently sexually promiscuous. Duke Louis of Orléans and Duke Jean of Burgundy, the region’s mightiest feudal lords, compete for the queen’s affections. The Valois dynasty is clearly disintegrating, producing unhinged figures instead of grand patriarchs. The two dukes see their own families as France’s future masters.
1407
Charismatic and notorious womaniser the Duke of Orléans, rumoured to have seduced the queen, is set upon by fifteen masked men. Then left in a murky alleyway in Paris, in the gutter, with his head split open and his right hand cut off. His rival, the preposterously rich Duke of Burgundy, publicly accepts responsibility. Justification for the assassination: tyrannicide, for the good of the kingdom, to protect the court from the dead duke’s satanic charms. Hence the outbreak of clashes between the men-at-arms of the Duke of Burgundy and those of the slain nobleman. The queen panics. She’s frightened of thunder. And further deterioration of the king’s sanity – Charles the Mad now thinks he’s made of glass and won’t let anyone near him – and no one can prevent the eruption of a civil war between Burgundians and Orléanists. Atrocities, castles set on fire, children kidnapped. Many criticise the queen’s cowardice, blame her infidelities, her foreignness, her weight, her femininity. Most renowned writer and feminist Christine de Pisan’s quill races across reams of paper. She documents, challenges, bemoans the misery of France.
1413
In England, Henry V succeeds his father, the Lancastrian usurper of the English throne. Twenty-seven years old, a grotesquely scarred face. An extremely devout Christian, not at all the fun-loving, riotous youth of Shakespeare’s future play. Severe and frankly soulless. Muscular. Possibly a psychopath, probably a war criminal. Is never seen to smile. Must prove himself to the English nobility as their new ruler, as a real, mighty man. Or else his dynasty may be toppled just like the dynasty that his father toppled. Is keenly aware of the turmoils in France. Decides that the time has come to renew the claim to the throne of France. Raises an army of ten thousand men and assembles a fleet of 150 ships for the journey across the channel. Declares his benign intention to come to the rescue of my beloved France. English and Welsh nobles, gentlemen and peasants have been promised property in Normandy. The beautiful France has Europe’s most fertile soil and best wine. Its women are already the subject of Englishmen’s sordid fantasies. These men have never been more excited for any other mission. And King Henry is genuinely convinced that God is on England’s side. The Hundred Years’ War resumes.
1415
The English land in Normandy. Besiege Harfleur. King Henry’s personal names for the two largest cannons used for battering the city: ‘King’s Daughter’ and ‘London’. He pontificates: War without fire is bland like a sausage without sauce. English gunners bombard, conquer and march north. They take Calais. Their firepower surpasses the defenders’ expectations. Shocked by the speed and skill of the English aggression, French nobles reluctantly stop their quarrelling to fight the foreign invasion. Duke Charles of Orléans, son of the murdered Duke Louis, and Charles the Mad’s oldest son, the crown prince of France, lead the elite of French nobility under the Oriflamme, the heraldic banner of French knighthood. They gallop, intercept the English near a village, Azincourt to the French, Agincourt to the English.
24 October
Duke Charles signals for the fanfare. The howls of trumpets and armoured horses and riders encased in metal, couched lances, sharpened swords. The muddy ground quakes – muddy, since it had rained copiously the previous night. The stern English bowmen watch and wait. Their longbows ready to shoot arrows at two hundred feet per second, at a force of one hundred pounds per arrow. French horsemen roll towards the English position. Burdened by bulky steel suits of armour, their steeds’ hooves become bogged in the sludge of the battlefield. They curse and glance at the flags of the up-and-coming British Empire, the blood-red Cross of Saint George. King Henry lowers his fist and waves of arrows blacken the day. Steel breastplates and helmets of pompous French knights meet the medieval equivalent of machine-gun bullets. Five thousand of them shot dead. Prisoners have their throats slit and some are burnt alive. The French army is erased. King Henry is given the sobriquet ‘cutthroat’.
1417
With the most advanced siege engines and projectiles in Western Europe, the English sack the cities of western France in swift succession: Caen, Bayeux, Alençon and Cherbourg. They press on to the heart of the duchy of Normandy – Rouen. A city the size of London. King Henry decides on total siege: the city’s trade routes, food supplies, water conduits, blocked by the English. Hunger forces out the city’s poorest, about twelve thousand. The English open fire: filled with arrows, thousands of frayed civilians fall and fester. The surviving die of starvation and cold during the winter – one of the worst atrocities of the European Middle Ages. Possibly sixty thousand of Rouen’s seventy thousand population perish until its gates creak open to King Henry of England. Paris is now within his reach. There, in Europe’s greatest city, anxiety and horror. The English are coming. King Charles still mad, incapacitated. The queen, timid, needy and indecisive as ever. The Duke of Burgundy acts.
1418
To cleanse the French court of the rival faction of the Duke of Orléans, Burgundian militias – execution squads – storm the Louvre. The French royal family escape along the castle’s corridors. The city’s streets littered with five thousand hanged, beheaded, naked corpses. The Duke of Burgundy declares himself regent of France and Master of Paris. The young crown prince, Charles, lures the duke to a secret parley on a bridge over the Seine: the Burgundian warlord’s head is cut open with an axe. So, the formal commencement of civil war between the French crown prince and the powerful duchy of Burgundy. Burgundian emissaries are dispatched to start negotiations with the invading English in Normandy.
1419
The English are so pleased with their freedom and democracy, the Westminster system of government, the brilliant political model born of the Magna Carta, the curtailment of the sovereign’s power through a parliament. Their aim, they say: to liberate the oppressed French. But, of course, their own island lacks enough land for a growing population. English wool is to dominate the market. They have begun colonising Normandy and look forward to taking the rest of France. They start to name the French an inferior race – and soon, frogs. This precious terrain – and yes, its women’s valuable bodies – should be inhabited by intrepid, progressive Anglo-Saxons, not the lazy, conservative, Latinate Franks. The English storm through northern France. In Melun, monks executed without trial by King Henry. The governor of Meaux hanged from an elm by the supposedly benevolent conquerors. Thirty miles from Paris in Montereau, sixteen French prisoners are summarily beheaded by the English. King Henry’s army at the gates of Paris.
December
Philippe, the new Duke of Burgundy, meets with King Henry of England. He prostrates and proposes an alliance against the crown prince of France, his father’s murderer. Paris opens its gates to the English. Hordes of exhausted bowmen in round helmets and red surcoats. They enter the streets, crowd the taverns, and ogle, grope and assault the city’s women.
1420
The Treaty of Troyes between the king of England, the Duke of Burgundy and the terrified, bullied queen of France. French Princess Catherine given to the English king. It is decreed that their child will be the joint ruler of the kingdoms of England and France. Celebrations in London. Shame in Paris. King Henry burps, rubs his hands after an ale, then fucks the beautiful Catherine without interest. Without any of the courtship of Shakespeare’s Henry V. The peace treaty sanctions England’s annexation of France; brands the rightful heir to the French throne, Crown Prince Charles of Valois, a horrible, shocking criminal. A boy of seventeen, the youngest, only surviving son of his dying father, Charles the Mad. Young Charles is bookish, composed and rather ugly, a refugee in the south since the bloody capture of Paris by the Burgundians. Can he lead the resistance against the English? Will he reclaim his throne? And then, under Anglo-Burgundian pressure – perhaps threats – the queen declares him a bastard. She disinherits her own son from ruling the realm. France is given to the English.