Saturday, December 2, 2017

The Good Wife?

Hmmm. Never know what Twitter will bring your way.



Jeanne de Clisson's husband was Olivier de Clisson.

Wikipedia has a more detailed account but the tweet is a reasonably accurate summary. Jeanne de Clisson was clearly no snowflake and suffered no inclination towards victimhood.
On 19 January 1343, the Truce of Malestroit was signed between England and France. Under the perceived safe conditions of this truce, Olivier and fifteen other Breton lords were invited to a tournament on French soil, where he was arrested, taken to Paris, tried by his peers and on 2 August 1343, executed by beheading at Les Halles.
In the year of our Grace one thousand three hundred and forty-three, on Saturday, the second day of August, Olivier, Lord of Clisson, knight, prisoner in the Chatelet of Paris for several treasons and other crimes perpetrated by him against the king and the crown of France, and for alliances that he made with the king of England, enemy of the king and kingdom of France, as the said Olivier ... has confessed, was by judgement of the king given at Orleans drawn from the Chatelet of Paris to Les Halles ... and there on a scaffold had his head cut off. And then from there his corpse was drawn to the gibbet of Paris and there hanged on the highest level; and his head was sent to Nantes in Brittany to be put on a lance over the Sauvetout gate as a warning to others.
This execution shocked the nobility as the evidence of guilt was not publicly demonstrated, and the process of exposing a body was reserved mainly for low-class criminals. This execution was judged harshly by Froissart and his contemporaries.

Jeanne took her two young sons, Olivier and Guillaume, from Clisson to Nantes, to show them the head of their father at the Sauvetout gate.

Jeanne, enraged by her husband's execution, swore retribution against the French King, Philip VI, and Charles de Blois. She considered their actions a cowardly murder.

Jeanne then sold the de Clisson estates, raised a force of loyal men and started attacking French forces in Brittany.

Jeanne is said to have attacked a castle occupied by Galois de la Heuse, one of the officers of Charles de Blois, massacring the entire garrison with the exception of one individual.

Jeanne also attacked another garrison at Château-Thébaud, about 20 km south east of Nantes and a former post under control of her husband.

With the English king's assistance and Breton sympathizers, Jeanne outfitted three warships. These were painted black and their sails dyed red. The flagship was named My Revenge. The ships of this Black Fleet then patrolled the English Channel hunting down French ships, whereupon her force would kill entire crews, leaving only a few witnesses to transmit the news to the French King. This earned Jeanne the moniker "The Lioness of Brittany". Jeanne continued her piracy in the channel for another 13 years.

Jeanne is also said to have attacked coastal villages in Normandy and have put several to sword and fire. In 1346, during the Battle of Crecy, south of Calais, in northern France, Jeanne used her ships to supply the English forces.

After the sinking of her flagship, Jeanne with her two sons were adrift for five days, her son Guillaume died of exposure. Jeanne and Olivier were finally rescued and taken to Morlaix by Montfort supporters.

In 1356, Jeanne married for a fourth time to Sir Walter Bentley, one of King Edward III's military deputies during the campaign. Bentley had previously won the battle of Mauron on 4 August 1352 and was rewarded for his services with "the lands and castles" Beauvoir-sur-mer, of Ampant, of Barre, Blaye, Châteauneuf, Ville Maine, the island Chauvet and from the islands of Noirmoutier and Bouin.

Jeanne finally settled at the Castle of Hennebont, a port town on the Brittany coast, which was in the territory of her de Montfort allies, where she died in 1359.

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