What Was the Dauphin in the Hundred Years' War?

The Dauphin was the heir apparent to the French throne, and the title took its name from the Dauphiné, a region in southeastern France that was incorporated into the French royal domain in 1349. The title became a permanent part of the French royal succession in 1349, when Humbert II, the last independent dauphin of Viennois, sold his territories to Philip VI of France on the condition that the heir apparent to the French crown would forever after bear the title Dauphin. The most famous dauphin of the Hundred Years’ War was Charles, the future Charles VII, who was heir apparent from 1415 and disinherited by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420.

Origin of the title

The Dauphiné was a strategically important territory, lying in the Rhône valley between Provence and Savoy, and the title Dauphin had been held by the lords of Viennois since the 12th century. Humbert II, the last independent dauphin, was in financial difficulty and politically compromised. On 16 March 1349 he sold the Dauphiné to Philip VI. The agreement specified that the heir apparent of the French king would bear the title in addition to his other honours. The first French heir apparent to use the title was Charles, the future Charles V, who became dauphin when his father acceded to the throne in 1350.

The Dauphin in the Edwardian and Caroline phases

The dauphins of the late 14th century were the eldest sons of the French king and played only a secondary role in the public life of the kingdom. Charles V was dauphin from 1350 to 1356, the period of his father’s captivity. John, the future John II, was briefly dauphin between 1350 and the death of his elder brother Charles in 1361, and the next dauphin was the future Charles VI, who was dauphin from 1364 until his accession in 1380. The dauphins of this period were not the principal military or political actors of the war; that role was reserved for the constable, the marshals, and the dukes.

The Disinherited Dauphin

The role of the dauphin was transformed by the Treaty of Troyes of 21 May 1420. Charles, the eldest surviving son of Charles VI, had been dauphin since 1415, on the death of his elder brother Louis at the siege of Harfleur. The treaty, signed by his father in one of his lucid intervals, disinherited him and recognised the English king Henry V as heir to the French throne. The grounds alleged by the treaty — that Charles was the fruit of an adulterous liaison between Queen Isabeau and the duke of Orléans — are demonstrably false, and modern scholarship treats them as Tudor-style propaganda. The treaty was, in effect, an act of political war by the Burgundian faction against the Armagnac faction, ratified by a king who was, on the best reading, mentally unfit to consent.

The disinherited dauphin refused to accept the treaty. He established his government at Bourges and was supported by the Armagnac nobility, by the duke of Armagnac, by Jean, comte de Dunois, and by the bulk of the royal administration that had not fled to the Burgundian side. His “kingdom of Bourges” — the duchies of Berry, Bourbonnais, and Auvergne, the Lyonnais, and the parts of Poitou and Touraine south of the Loire — was, in 1420, a small part of France. The derisive English title “King of Bourges” stuck.

The Dauphin and Joan of Arc

The dauphin’s position was transformed in 1429 by the intervention of Joan of Arc. Joan, a peasant girl from Domrémy, made her way to the dauphin’s court at Chinon in March 1429 and persuaded him to give her command of a small army. The army relieved the Siege of Orléans on 8 May 1429, won the Loire campaign in June, and escorted the dauphin to Reims, where he was crowned Charles VII on 17 July 1429. The coronation at Reims — in the traditional crowning-place of the French kings — was the political act that confirmed Charles as king in the eyes of the loyal French. Joan’s own mission ended with the coronation, although she remained with the army until her capture at Compiègne on 23 May 1430.

The king of Bourges becomes Charles VII

Charles ruled from Bourges until 1437, when he entered Paris on 12 November of that year, twelve days after Henry VI’s regent, the duke of York, had withdrawn. The political work of the Bourges years was substantial. The Estates-General of Orléans in 1439 granted the permanent taille, the basis of Charles VII’s military power. The companies of ordonnance were established in 1445, the standing artillery train under Jean and Gaspard Bureau in 1445–1453. By 1453, the English held only Calais in France. The dauphin of 1420 had, by patient political work, become the architect of the final victory.