What Was the Treaty of Troyes?
The Treaty of Troyes, signed on 21 May 1420 in the cathedral of Troyes, was the most ambitious diplomatic instrument of the Hundred Years’ War. By its terms, the mad King Charles VI of France, acting through his wife Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, recognised Henry V of England as regent and heir of France, contracted Henry to marry his daughter Catherine of Valois, and disinherited the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. The treaty was the political high point of the Lancastrian war effort, and it seemed, in 1420, to settle the fate of France in favour of the English. Within seven years, the political settlement had collapsed: Henry V died on 31 August 1422, Charles VI on 21 October 1422, and the Dauphin, repudiating the disinheritance, set up his own government at Bourges. The treaty that had promised a permanent settlement was, in the end, a temporary expedient.
The treaty is one of the most studied and most controversial documents of the period. The principal question is the authority of the queen-mother, Isabeau, to sign on behalf of a king who had been intermittently mad for nearly thirty years. The Burgundian faction, which produced the treaty, justified the queen’s authority by the necessities of the case; the Armagnac faction, which repudiated the disinheritance, treated the treaty as a Burgundian forgery. The historical question is more difficult: the king’s lucid intervals were real, the queen’s authority was constitutionally uncertain, and the legal validity of the treaty was, and remains, contested.
Background to the treaty
The Treaty of Troyes was the result of several years of successful English campaigning in France. The great English victory at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 had been followed by the methodical conquest of Normandy (1417–1419), the assassination of John the Fearless of Burgundy on the bridge of Montereau on 10 September 1419, and the subsequent alliance between the English and the new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. The English, despite their relatively small numbers, had demonstrated a military superiority that the French were unable to match, and the political chaos in France, marked by the rivalry between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, had made it difficult to mount an effective resistance.
The treaty was also the result of a long period of secret negotiations between the English and the Burgundians. The negotiations had been opened by the Burgundian faction in 1413, in the wake of the Cabochien revolt and the Burgundian seizure of Paris, and they had been interrupted by the political crises of the 1410s. The assassination of John the Fearless in 1419, on the bridge of Montereau, was the work of the Dauphin’s men, and it had the unintended consequence of driving the Burgundian faction into the English alliance. The negotiations were conducted in secret, and the Dauphin, the future Charles VII, was kept in the dark.
The terms of the treaty
The Treaty of Troyes had several major provisions:
- Recognition of Henry as regent and heir. Henry V was recognised as regent of France and as heir to the French throne. He would administer the government of France on behalf of the mad King Charles VI, and he would succeed to the French throne on Charles VI’s death.
- Disinheritance of the Dauphin. The Dauphin, the future Charles VII, was disinherited. He was specifically excluded from the succession, and he was declared illegitimate. The justification, in the text of the treaty, was that the Dauphin had committed crimes against the French crown by his conduct of the civil war.
- Marriage of Henry and Catherine. Henry V was to marry Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI. The couple’s children would inherit both the English and the French crowns.
- General peace. A general peace was to be established between England and France, and the long war was to be ended.
The treaty, on paper, was a triumph for English diplomacy. The English king would become the king of France, and the two kingdoms would be united under a single ruler. The treaty, however, depended on the survival of the two principals, and the deaths of Henry V on 31 August 1422 and Charles VI on 21 October 1422 would expose the weaknesses of the agreement.
The signing of the treaty
The treaty was signed on 21 May 1420 in the cathedral of Troyes. The ceremony was attended by a large number of French and English nobles, including Henry V, Queen Isabeau, the duke of Burgundy, the duke of Bourbon, the count of Armagnac, and a substantial delegation from the University of Paris. The English delegation was led by Henry V himself; the French delegation was led by Queen Isabeau, the wife of Charles VI, who was acting on behalf of her husband. The Dauphin, the future Charles VII, was not present at the signing.
The most controversial aspect of the treaty is the question of the queen’s authority. Isabeau had been a controversial figure for many years: she had been widely suspected of having been unfaithful to her husband, and her authority to sign such a momentous agreement on his behalf was questioned by many. The Burgundian faction, which produced the treaty, justified the queen’s authority by the necessities of the case; the Armagnac faction, which repudiated the disinheritance, treated the treaty as a Burgundian forgery. The historical question is more difficult: the king’s lucid intervals were real, the queen’s authority was constitutionally uncertain, and the legal validity of the treaty was, and remains, contested.
The disinheritance of the Dauphin
The disinheritance of the Dauphin was the most controversial aspect of the treaty. The Dauphin, the future Charles VII, was the legitimate son of Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria, and his exclusion from the succession was an act of political desperation. The Dauphin, however, refused to accept the terms of the treaty, and he set up his own government at Bourges, in central France. The Dauphin’s government, which would eventually be recognised as the legitimate government of France, was the basis for the French reconquest that followed.
The political consequences of the disinheritance were immediate. The Armagnac party, which supported the Dauphin, repudiated the treaty and continued the war. The Burgundian party, which supported the English alliance, accepted the treaty and was, in effect, a faction within the English party. The treaty did not end the war; it created a new war, between the Dauphin and the English-Burgundian alliance, in which the question of the French succession was now the principal issue.
The implementation of the treaty
The implementation of the treaty was more difficult than the signing. Henry V, now regent of France, was required to administer the government of the country on behalf of the mad Charles VI, and he was forced to deal with a number of complex political and military issues. The treaty was widely unpopular among the French, and the Dauphin’s refusal to accept its terms created a long period of political instability.
The French government was split between two factions: the Armagnacs, who supported the Dauphin, and the Burgundians, who supported the English alliance. The treaty was a victory for the Burgundian faction, and it was widely regarded as a betrayal by the Armagnacs. The Burgundian regime in Paris, supported by the English garrison, was expensive to maintain; the French merchants and tax-payers of the occupied towns were restive; the war continued in the south and east. The treaty, in effect, displaced the war from the field to the council chamber, without ending it.
The death of Henry V
The death of Henry V on 31 August 1422, of dysentery contracted at the siege of Meaux, was a serious blow to the English cause. Henry, who was only 36, was the one ruler who might have completed the conquest of France. His death left the English cause in the hands of his infant son, the future Henry VI, who was unable to maintain the conquests that his father had made. The death of Charles VI on 21 October 1422, seven weeks later, completed the crisis. The infant Henry VI was proclaimed King of France and England, but the Dauphin, repudiating the disinheritance, held the centre and south of France, and the war continued.
The historiography of the Treaty of Troyes is the work of several generations of historians. The 19th-century French historians — and, in particular, the editors of the Procès de Jeanne d’Arc — treated the treaty as a Burgundian forgery. The 20th-century historians — and, in particular, Contamine, Favier, and Sumption — treated it as a genuine instrument, contested in its legal validity but politically effective. The modern consensus, in the work of Anne Curry’s Agincourt: A New History (2005) and Jonathan Sumption’s Cursed Kings (2015), is that the treaty was the political high point of the English cause, and that its failure was the consequence of the deaths of Henry V and Charles VI, not of any defect in the treaty itself.