(a) - France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420–1461)

Summary

in 1521, Francis I of France visited Dijon, where he was shown the skull of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. The Carthusian monk who accompanied the king was alleged to have said ‘my lord, that’s the hole through which the English entered France’. He was referring to the wounds sustained by the duke from the axe-blows which felled him on the bridge at Montereau in September 1419. The shadow of that assassination fell over much of the succeeding period, which saw a profound crisis of Valois monarchy in the face of English invasion and French civil war. John the Fearless’s death was clearly a product of the internal strife which had plagued the higher echelons of French society since the murder of Louis of Orleans by his Burgundian enemies in 1407. Henry V’s successes were partly based upon his ability to exploit the internal divisions of the French nobility to his own ends. The Valois monarchy’s very survival was for a time thrown into question and it was not until the late 1430s and 1440s that positive signs of recovery were clearly visible.