63. Jeanne de Clisson and the Black Fleet
Update: 2020-10-29
Description
“If I don’t kill a man every now and then, they forget who I am.” – Blackbeard, 18th century English pirate
BOO! It’s spooky season, so I’m bringing you a chilling tale of piracy, treachery, and blood-soaked revenge. This week, we’re digging into the very beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, when a bunch of scheming men had their plans ruined by scheming women. We’ll learn about the War of Breton Succession, a.k.a. a teensy conflict that managed to explode into an international proxy war. Despite the strictures of medieval society, Breton women were claiming thrones, leading armies into battle, and taking to the high seas. Jeanne de Clisson, furious widow, turned her rage into a lifelong search for vengeance, and we are definitely going to dig into the gory details.
Episode 63: “Jeanne de Clisson and the Black Fleet”
Jeanne de Clisson, lady pirate:
<figure id="attachment_2653" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2653" style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
<figcaption id="caption-attachment-2653" class="wp-caption-text">Medieval portrait of Jeanne de Clisson</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_2654" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2654" style="width: 815px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
<figcaption id="caption-attachment-2654" class="wp-caption-text">See the organizational splendor of the Hundred Years War.</figcaption></figure>Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to the Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and I have to make a confession: I am a scared little baby. Whenever Halloween comes back around, I remember how much I hate scary movies, scary stories, and generally anything that causes anxiety in any way. My most sacred October ritual is watching Practical Magic while giving myself an autumnal manicure. If you’re the kind of person watching movies like The Exorcist, Get Out, or Night of the Living Dead, I salute you, I respect you, but I do not understand you! But this year, I’m going outside my comfort zone to bring you some genuinely spooky content, starring one of the wildest ladies in the French history books. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a little angry vengeance right now, a little hellraising. So today, change out of your day pajamas and into a black veil, light a pillar candle and sharpen your swords. Piracy is our only option.
In 1328, the French King Charles IV did a very inconsiderate thing: to the great inconvenience of everyone in Western Europe, he died without leaving a male heir. No sons, no brothers, not even any useful old uncles. It’s never a good idea for a king to die without a line of succession, but Charles really couldn’t have chosen a worse time. He’d spent his entire reign squabbling with his mortal enemies, the English, and now they’d be making a play for his throne. The fight for Charles’s crown would waste everyone’s time, money, and lives for the next five generations, with everyone picking sides, double-crossing one another, then picking the other side, and then double crossing one another again. The fight was so epic, so complicated, and ultimately so, so stupid that George R.R. Martin would use it as the inspiration for Game of Thrones. And just like Game of Thrones, it has a sad trombone sound of an ending. The Hundred Years’ War eventually became something like white noise: a constant clash going on in the background, all while Europe lurched its way through the Middle Ages, wrestling with big questions about God, death, and what it means to be human. One of the most important questions Europe tackled during this time had grave implications for the war itself: what to do about women? Can’t live with ‘em, can’t make heirs if you send ‘em all to a nunnery. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, rascally women kept scuppering the plans of powerful men. They were claiming thrones, leading armies into battle, sleeping with the enemy, dying in childbirth when men needed them to live, surviving the bubonic plague when men needed them to die, and in at least one extremely memorable occasion, taking to the high seas for a blood soaked reign of terror. This week, join me for an extra-spooky examination of the life of the lady pirate, Jeanne de Clisson, the Lioness of Brittany.
In the year 1322, Charles IV inherited his older brother’s crown and his older brother’s nemesis. In the 14th century, the area we know as “France” was a motley assortment of territories, some of them more obedient to the crown than others. Ever since Guillaume, duc de Normandie, sailed across the Channel to conquer England in 1066, the kings of England had laid claim to various duchies and land holdings too close to Paris for comfort. For example, the beautiful, profitable duchy of Aquitaine used to belong to the French crown, until Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced the king of France and married the king of England. But the English kings were getting uppity. As the duke of Aquitaine, the King of England was supposed to bend the knee to the King of France, or so the King of France said, conveniently enough. In 1291, the English king, Edward I, stopped paying tribute to Charles’s father, Philip. Philip insisted on treating Edward like a duke, not a fellow king. If you can believe it, this caused offense. After a bunch of fighting, it was agreed: King Philip would allow Edward I to marry Philip’s sister, Margaret, in exchange for Edward returning the territory of Gascony to France for a little while, as a show of obedience. After a while, the king of France would return Gascony, and all would be well. But it was a trick! Edward handed Gascony over to Philip, and Philip refused to hand it back. As you can imagine, Edward I didn’t take it well, and England began sharpening her swords against the French. But Philip’s victory was short-lived: while he racked up victories against his overseas enemies, trouble was brewing back home.<
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