What Was the Role of the Duke of Burgundy in the Hundred Years' War?
The Duke of Burgundy was the most powerful noble in France, and his role in the Hundred Years’ War was decisive. The Burgundian dukes, who were theoretically vassals of the French crown, pursued a policy of dynastic aggrandisement that made them the indispensable partners of the English in the Lancastrian phase and the indispensable adversaries of the French in the Caroline and recovery phases. Without Burgundy, Henry V could not have conquered Normandy. Without Burgundy’s eventual reconciliation with the French crown at the Congress of Arras in 1435, the French could not have reconquered their kingdom. The war cannot be understood without the duchy.
The duchy of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries was a peculiar political entity. It was a duchy held of the French crown, with its own customary law and its own estates. It had been united with the Valois ducal line in 1363, when John II of France granted the duchy to his son Philip the Bold. Through a series of marriages, inheritances, and purchases, the Valois dukes of Burgundy accumulated a vast territorial complex that included the duchy of Burgundy, the county of Flanders, the duchy of Brabant, the county of Holland, the duchy of Luxembourg, and the free county of Burgundy (Franche-Comté). At its maximum extent, under Philip the Good, the Burgundian state stretched from the North Sea to the Jura.
The Burgundian inheritance
The Burgundian inheritance was assembled in three generations. Philip the Bold (1342–1404), the youngest son of John II of France, received the duchy of Burgundy in 1363 and married Margaret of Dampierre, heiress of Flanders, Artois, and Franche-Comté, in 1369. The combination of the duchy and the Flemish inheritance made the Burgundian state one of the most powerful in Europe. John the Fearless (1371–1419), Philip’s son, added the county of Burgundy and consolidated the inheritance. Philip the Good (1396–1467), John’s son, added the duchy of Brabant (1430), the duchies of Holland and Hainaut (1433), and the duchy of Luxembourg (1443), creating the largest territorial state in Western Europe outside France.
The duchy was, however, a personal union, not a unified state. The various territories had different customs, different laws, and different estates, and they were held together by the personal authority of the duke and by the chancery at Dijon (or Brussels, after 1430). The Burgundian state was an early form of the composite monarchy, and its politics were personal. The duke of Burgundy was, in the strict sense, a vassal of the French crown for the duchy of Burgundy and the county of Flanders; in practice, however, the duchy was an independent state, and the duke was the most powerful noble in Europe.
The Burgundian-Armagnac civil war
The political history of the Burgundian dukes was shaped by the long civil war between the Burgundian faction and the Armagnac faction, which divided France from 1407 to 1435. The war began on 23 November 1407, when John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, ordered the assassination of Louis, Duke of Orléans, the brother of King Charles VI, in the rue Vieille-du-Temple in Paris. The murder was the most consequential political crime of the 15th century. The Orléanais party, led by the count of Armagnac (hence “Armagnacs”), took up arms against the Burgundians, and France was divided into two armed camps.
The civil war was the necessary precondition of the English invasion of 1415. The French, divided by the Burgundian-Armagnac conflict, were unable to mount an effective resistance to Henry V’s campaign, and the great English victory at Agincourt was, in part, a consequence of the political chaos in France. The civil war continued through the 1410s and 1420s, and it was the principal obstacle to a unified French response to the English invasion. The political capital of the Burgundian dukes was, in this period, the duchy itself, and the dukes used the civil war to consolidate their hold on the French state.
The Treaty of Troyes
The most important single event in the history of the Burgundian dukes was the Treaty of Troyes of 21 May 1420. The treaty, signed in the cathedral of Troyes, was the result of long secret negotiations between the English and the Burgundians. By its terms, the mad King Charles VI, acting through his wife Isabeau of Bavaria, recognised Henry V as regent and heir of France, contracted Henry to marry Catherine of Valois, and disinherited the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. The treaty was the political high point of the Burgundian-English alliance, and it was the necessary precondition of the Lancastrian conquest of France.
The treaty depended, however, on the survival of the two principals. Henry V died of dysentery at the Château de Vincennes on 31 August 1422. Charles VI, the articles in this site date his death to 21 October 1422, outlived him by seven weeks. The infant Henry VI was proclaimed King of France and England, but the Dauphin refused the disinheritance and held the centre and south. John the Fearless had been assassinated in 1419, in his turn, on the bridge of Montereau, by the Dauphin’s men; the murder made the Burgundian-English alliance personal and irrevocable for the next generation.
The Congress of Arras
The Burgundian alliance with England began to break down in the 1420s and 1430s. The Burgundian state, which had been built on the personal authority of Philip the Good, was the principal beneficiary of the Lancastrian conquest, and the Burgundian regime in Paris was becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. The Burgundian merchants of Flanders, who had been the financial backbone of the English alliance, were growing tired of the war. The French, under Charles VII, were beginning to offer terms that the Burgundians could accept.
The Congress of Arras, which opened on 5 August 1435 and concluded on 21 September 1435, was the moment of the break. Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, agreed to a separate peace with Charles VII, recognised the French king as the legitimate king of France, and withdrew from the English alliance. The congress was attended by the cardinals of the pope (the newly elected Pope Eugenius IV was represented by Cardinal Niccolò Albergati), the French and Burgundian delegations, and a small English delegation that arrived too late to influence the proceedings. The English were not represented at the signing.
The Congress of Arras was a major turning point in the war. The English, who had been able to exploit the division between the French and Burgundians, were now forced to deal with a united France. The long English position in northern France, which had depended on Burgundian support, was now seriously weakened. The reconquest of Normandy in 1449 and of Gascony in 1451–1453 was the long consequence of the Congress of Arras. The death of John, Duke of Bedford, on 14 September 1435, only a week before the signing of the Treaty of Arras, was a symbolic moment: the most capable English commander of the war and the most able defender of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance died in the same month that the alliance was formally dissolved.
The legacy of the Burgundian role
The role of the Duke of Burgundy in the Hundred Years’ War was paradoxical. The Burgundian dukes were theoretically vassals of the French crown, and they used the resources of the French state to build a state that was, in practice, independent. The Burgundian alliance with England was the high point of the dukes’ independence, and the Treaty of Troyes was the most ambitious Burgundian political document. The Congress of Arras was the end of that ambition, and the duchy of Burgundy was finally reabsorbed into the French state in 1477, after the death of Charles the Bold at the Battle of Nancy and the extinction of the Valois-Burgundian line.
The historiography of the Burgundian role in the war is the work of three generations of historians. The French school — notably Contamine and Favier — treated the Burgundian alliance as the principal cause of the English success in the Lancastrian phase. The Burgundian school — Vaughan, in particular — emphasised the dynastic and personal character of the Burgundian state. The modern consensus, in the work of Malcolm Vale’s The Princely Court (2001) and the contributors to the Oxford Handbook of the Hundred Years’ War (2015, ed. Gribit), is that the Burgundian alliance was the political pivot of the Lancastrian phase, and that the Congress of Arras was the political precondition of the French reconquest.
The site treats the Burgundian role in the Lancastrian phase and in the role of the Duke of Burgundy long-tail article. The full Congress of Arras is treated in the cluster.