The Captivity of John II, 1356-60

The Royal Image in Later Medieval England and France

Neil Murphy

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349949885
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137532947
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

This book provides a systematic analysis of the innovations that occurred in the display of royal power during John II's four years in English captivity. Neil Murphy shows how the French king's competition with Edward III led to a revolution in the presentation of the royal image, manifesting through developments to the sacral character of the French monarchy, lavish displays of gift giving, and the use of courtly display. Showing that the Hundred Years War was not just fought on the battlefields of France, this book unravels how the war played out daily in the competition for status between Edward III and John II.

© The Author(s) 2016

Neil MurphyThe Captivity of John II, 1356-60The New Middle Ages10.1057/978-1-137-53294-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Neil Murphy¹

(1)

Department of Humanities, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Abstract

This chapter begins with an examination of the historiography of the captivity of John II. It shows that historians have often portrayed John’s time in captivity as the most disastrous years of pitiable reign, with his behaviour in England being seen in an especially negative light. Yet John’s time in captivity was the catalyst for a number of innovations in the presentation of the royal image which had lasting consequences in both England and France. After providing an analysis of the primary sources upon which the book is based (particularly the Valois monarch’s household accounts), the introduction concludes by establishing the chronology of John’s time in English captivity.

Keywords

Household accountsHistoriographyCharles VChroniclesPoitiers

End Abstract

John II (‘the Good’) spent one third of his reign in captivity. While he was not the only king of France to be taken in battle (Saint Louis was captured at Fariskur in 1250 and Francis I at Pavia in 1525), the repercussions of his capture at Poitiers were the undoubtedly the most significant. According to Raymond Cazelles, the battle had ‘incalculable consequences’ (‘conséquences incalculables’), while Georges Minois has recently pronounced that its effects were so severe that ‘it is permissible to think that it would have been better for King John to have been killed at Poitiers rather than taken prisoner’ (‘il est permis de penser qu’il eut mieux valu que le roi Jean soit tué que fait prisonnier à Poitiers’). ¹ Certainly, John’s capture at Poitiers triggered a series of events that destabilised his kingdom, including: the reforming programme of the Estates of Languedoil, Charles of Navarre’s release from prison, the major peasant revolt known as the Jacquerie and Étienne Marcel’s ‘Parisian Revolution’. In addition to these political crises, France was suffering from widespread economic and social turmoil in the mid-1350s, as a result of two decades of war with England, the depredations of the free companies and the impact of the Black Death. It is for these reasons that J. B. Henneman has observed that the reign of John II is associated with ‘the great disasters in French history’. ²

While the years following Poitiers were undoubtedly filled with calamities, John II played a secondary role in his government’s response to these events because he was in captivity and unable to rule his kingdom effectively. As his eldest son, Charles, was left to contend with these crises, historians have overwhelmingly approached the events of the later 1350s from the dauphin’s perspective. It is revealing that two of the best accounts of these years are found in Roland Delachenal’s and Françoise Autrand’s biographies of Charles V, both of which give limited treatment to John’s actions in captivity. ³ While Raymond Cazelles studied the reigns of John II and Charles V together in Société politique, noblesse et couronne, he says little about John’s time in England beyond showing how the Valois monarch’s efforts to try and rule his kingdom from captivity harmed his son’s position in France. ⁴ Likewise, Henneman focuses on the impact John II’s capture at Poitiers had on France (particularly through the raising of his ransom) and he does not deal with the French king’s actions in England. ⁵ The events of the later 1350s are typically seen to belong to the reign of Charles V rather than that of his father. For Autrand these years were ‘for Charles, the passage from childhood to adulthood’ (‘pour Charles, le passage de l’enfance à l’âge adulte’), while Delachenal found that the experiences Charles gained during the four years of his father’s captivity formed ‘a decisive influence’ (‘une influence décisive’) on his style of rule as king. ⁶

While historians have written sympathetically about the dauphin because of the difficulties he had to contend with during these years, they have been scathing in their criticism of John II. In his Histoire de France, Louis-Pierre Anquetil wrote that ‘the reign of King John is one of history’s most disastrous’ (‘le règne du roi Jean est un des plus désastreux que l’histoire presente’). ⁷ The events of John’s reign undoubtedly seemed especially pitiful to Anquetil because his Histoire (written at Napoleon’s request) was first published in 1805, the year of Austerlitz, when France, triumphant in Europe, crushed the Holy Roman Empire and even considered invading Britain. From the early twentieth century, historians began to attribute many of the disasters that befell France in the 1350s to defects in John II’s character. Roland Delachenal labelled him a ‘mediocre sovereign’ (‘mediocre souverain’), while Alfred Colville found that he had ‘mediocre intelligence’ (‘une intelligence médiocre’). ⁸ Likewise, in his influential La guerre de cent ans (published in 1945 after another disastrous period of French history, when military defeat had again led to foreign occupation), Édouard Perroy found that ‘at a tragic moment in its history, the crown of France was worn … by a mediocrity’ (‘à un moment tragique de son histoire, la couronne de France fût portée … par un médiocre’), while Richard Vaughan noted in his 1962 study of Philip the Bold that John II was reckoned to be ‘amongst the worst of medieval French kings’. ⁹ Raymond Cazelles challenged the typically negative view of John II’s character in his 1974 article ‘Jean II le Bon: Quel homme? Quel roi?’. While Cazelles presented John as an ‘innovative king’ (‘roi innovateur’) who was responsible for many of the achievements that had been erroneously credited to his son, he largely omitted John’s four years in captivity from his study. ¹⁰ This is a considerable oversight because, as I show in this book, the developments John II made to the presentation of the royal image during this period deserve to rank high amongst the achievements of his reign.

Historians are overwhelmingly negative about John II’s time in England, which they rate as the most pitiful years of a disastrous reign. John is typically cast as a negligent monarch who squandered his subjects’ money in the pursuit of his own personal pleasures at the Plantagenet court. For Jules Michelet, the captive French king enjoyed ‘the insolent courtesy of the English’ (‘de jouir bonnement de l’insolente courtoisie des Anglais’), while Françoise Autrand writes that John ‘from his gilded prison of Windsor … did little either for his son or for the honour of the Crown of France’ (‘de sa prison dorée de “Windesores” … ne faisait pas grand-chose ni pour son fils ni pour l’honneur de la couronne de France’). ¹¹ For Delachenal, John ‘young still, carefree, insouciant, passionate for hunting, had the freedom to satisfy his desires’ (‘jeune encore, insouciant, passionné pour la chasse, il avait tout latitude pour donner satisfaction à ses gouts’), while the duke of Aumale (who edited the first set of the household accounts detailing John’s time in England—see below) stated that ‘with little concern for the miseries of his kingdom … he especially loved pleasure’ (‘assez peu préoccupé des misères de son royaume … il aimait surtout le plaisir’). ¹² Historians generally portray John as filling his time with frivolous pastimes as ‘he waited for the hour of his release’ (‘il attendit l’heure de la déliverance’). ¹³ Recently, Jonathan Sumption has stated that John ‘kicked his heels’ in England while waiting to return to France. ¹⁴ Even sympathetic accounts of John II’s reign view his actions in captivity as of little importance and divorced from the practice of kingship. ¹⁵

In contrast, this book shows that the activities John II pursued during his captivity were of the utmost importance to his struggle with Edward III. John’s innovations in the presentation of the royal image, which came as a result of the conditions of his captivity, also had a wider impact on the fashioning of Valois power during the fourteenth century. Historians customarily state that courtly display blossomed under Charles V because of his achievements in restoring the French monarchy’s power after the catastrophe of his father’s reign. For Robert Knecht, the Valois court was ‘a “theatre of magnificence” for which Charles V laid down certain rules’, while David Loades has called the reign of Charles V the ‘apogee’ of the French court. ¹⁶ In his influential study of pre-modern European courts, A. G. Dickens even compared the magnificence of the court of Charles V with that of Louis XIV. ¹⁷ In this book, I demonstrate that the developments which took place to the presentation of Valois power during Charles V’s reign have been overstated and that he has been credited for initiatives which should be attributed to his father. Rather than being a product of the military and diplomatic successes of Charles V’s reign, it was the conditions of his father’s captivity that spurred on the major developments that took place in the construction of the royal image during this period. It was John rather than Charles who played the formative role in establishing the French court as the leading court in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century.

The perception that Charles V’s reign was the golden age of the medieval French court is partly a consequence of the lack of work on the early Valois French court. While there are numerous books on the Renaissance Valois court, beyond the work by Élisabeth Lalou and Jules Viard on household ordinances, historians have paid little attention to the reigns of the first two Valois monarchs. ¹⁸ While Malcolm Vale compares the courts of England,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. John II and the Display of Plantagenet Power, 1356–58
• 3. Constructing the Royal Image
• 4. The French Royal Household in Captivity
• 5. Conclusion
• Backmatter