by Ed West
Instead attention turned to a fourteen-year-old girl with impeccable lineage, Margaret of Anjou.
TEARS AREN’T A WOMAN’S ONLY WEAPON.
The War of the Roses was dominated by two figures, a man and woman who would inspire two of the main characters in Westeros, Margaret of Anjou and Richard of York.
While the kingdom may have had a weakling on the throne, offended by nudity and dressed in a hair shirt, the queen who would share his bed was anything but. Formidable, beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, Margaret of Anjou was feared by her enemy Edward of York more “than all the princes of the House of Lancaster combined,” according to one chronicler.13 A correspondent of John Paston wrote: “The Quene is a grete and stronge labourid woman, for she spareth noo peyne to sue hire thinges to an intent and conclusion to hir power.”14 Arrogant and haughty, she kept a great household, with five female attendants and ten “little damsels.”
Christine de Pizan wrote that “it is the duty of every princess and high-born lady . . . to excel in goodness, wisdom, manners, temperament and conduct, so that she can serve as an example on which other ladies and all other women can model their behaviour.” The wise queen must also learn to cope with the failings of the men around her; their drunkenness, their vanity, lechery, and violence. De Pizan advised ladies with husbands who “conduct themselves abominably” to “bear all this and to dissemble” for responding harshly will gain them nothing.15 She also insisted that a high-born woman requires knowledge of law, accounting, warfare, and various other important matters for the kingdom, adding: “The lady who lives on her estates must be wise and must have the courage of a man . . . She must know the laws of warfare so that she can command her men and defend her lands if they are attacked.” Inevitably it was a task too much for Margaret, despite her best efforts.
Margaret’s curse was to be stuck with a weak husband and to be a strong woman at a time when such people were called “viragos,” an insulting term for masculine women. Like Cersei, Margaret wanted to take a man’s role in government and to be respected for being better suited to it.
Born in Lorraine in north-eastern France, Margaret was the eldest of ten children to Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine, and “Good King” Rene. She was of solid blue blood, descended from King Jean II, as well as being the niece of Marie, the Queen of France. Margaret’s father was in theory the Duke of Lorraine through his wife, as well as King of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem as well as Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence, Duke of Bar, Count of Piedmont and king of Hungary. None of these titles amounted to anything in reality, and Rene endured a lifetime of military defeats during ill-thought-out adventures trying to claim them.
Many noble women led their estates and acted as regents for young sons because their men were away, or incompetent. Margaret’s family was no different, and she learned at the feet of her grandmother Yolande de Aragon. Yolande had married Duke Louis of Anjou, from a branch of the French royal family who had controlled Sicily for many years, but after her husband’s premature death she ruled in his place. Later when her son was away fighting for his various titles, she took his place at home too. The formidable Yolande played a prominent role in defeating the English in Maine and Anjou, alongside Joan of Arc, and became something of a surrogate mother to Dauphin Charles. Yolande also organized a network of mistresses for high-ranking men within the royal court and came to play a leading political role as a result. Margaret had lived with her grandmother for four years and it was here that she learned the art of ruling.
She endured much suffering. When Margaret’s father was captured by the Burgundians, after yet another failed expedition, he was only released in exchange for two of his sons sent as hostages; one of them, sixteen-year-old Louis, then died in captivity from pneumonia.
Margaret was dark-haired and described as “handsome” rather than classically beautiful, although Chastellain, a Flemish chronicler of the time, said she was “a very fair lady, altogether well worth the looking at.”16 It was Suffolk who arranged the marriage and it was Suffolk who stood in for the king when he took the fourteen-year-old’s hands at Tours cathedral in the prescence of King Charles in 1444.
Several months later she was brought over to England in a storm, setting foot in Hampshire, and after time spent at the many royal palaces along the Thames, the king took her to London where her new subjects declared her the savior of the two kingdoms. And yet Margaret and Henry’s union was described as “marriage of fire and milk.”17 Like her predecessor Isabella condemned as a “she-wolf of France,” she was tasked with an insurmountable burden in bringing order to a realm disintegrating under an unfit king. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga lamented that Margaret was “married at 16 to an imbecile bigot”18 and while in later centuries Henry VI was regarded as a saint he was undoubatbly “pious, ineffectual and periodically deranged.”19 Even if he was not a bad man, the country could not tolerate a mad king.
The marriage was cursed, at any rate, being part of a peace treaty in which the English agreed to hand over Maine in 1448, viewed as a humiliation. Though it had been Henry’s initiative, Suffolk was blamed.
Humphrey, now a fringe figure, had not even been invited to the 1445 peace negotiations, but such was the unpopularity of the treaty that when it became public knowledge his subsequent reputation as a martyr and hero was born even before his death. For then, in February 1447, Suffolk had arranged for his enemy to be arrested on trumped-up charges of treason, only for Humphrey to be found only five days later, dead, most likely from a stroke. Cardinal Beaufort expired just two months later.
Humphrey’s career had ended in failure, and all the achievements of his brother Henry V would crumble to dust. His great legacy was his library, which on his death he donated to the university of Oxford—becoming “Humfrey’s Library,” the oldest reading room at the Bodleian Library.
32
A CLASH OF STEEL
The gods know the truth of my innocence. I will have their verdict, not the judgment of men. I demand trial by combat.
—TYRION LANNISTER
At Christmas 1386, a dramatic duel was fought between two Norman noblemen, Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris. Held in the center of Paris and watched in hushed silence by the great and the good, the contest became one of the most famous and brutal examples of the medieval system of justice—trial by combat.
The two men had once been friends, but earlier that year de Carrouges had accused Le Gris of raping his wife Marguerite, who had subsequently become pregnant. Only one person in the crowd that day could know for certain which of the men was telling the truth, but one thing was sure—one of them was going to die, for whomever lost the duel was deemed guilty in the eyes of God. The two men fought for more than their lives and honor, however, for if de Carrouges lost the fight then his wife Marguerite, watching from the sides, would be deemed a false witness and so would suffer the fate reserved for women accused of such a heinous crime—burning to death.
Jean de Carrouges was much older than his wife, and older men are always in fear of being cuckolded. He was a brave and ferocious warrior but also a difficult man, and he was suspected of being abusive to Marguerite—and at the very least it was a marriage lacking in love and compassion. He was also from a grand, more established family but now losing out to his newly risen rival, and the former friends fell into a dispute over land.
De Carrouges descended from a semi-mythical Count Ralph, who had fallen in love with a sorceress and met her for illicit love near a fountain in a forest—until his wife turned up one night with a dagger. The following day he was found dead and she escaped suspicion despite having a red mark on her face; soon she gave birth to their son, a boy called Karle who, the day he turned seven, developed the same red stain on the very spot. He became known as Karle le Rouge and for seven generations the family bore the red mark as their insignia, noted warriors who fought for the kings of France.
After his first wife and son had died, de Carrouges left for Scotland to f
ight the English and on his return married the young Marguerite de Thibouville, from a noble family that had nonetheless become disgraced after siding with the House of Plantagenet. Her inheritance brought him into conflict with his former friend Le Gris, who had also become the subject of his jealousy because of the favor the king had bestowed on him. The dispute relating to de Thibouville land had escalated into a lawsuit, but at a feast in 1384 they had resolved their argument, and the older man introduced Le Gris to his wife, whom he asked to kiss on the lips.
Le Gris, a tough soldier with an eye for the ladies, had grown wealthy while his neighbor was up beyond the wall. He was a big man, strong and intimidating, and in the bitter winter of 1386, while de Carrouges was in Paris, his rival arrived at his castle where he forced himself on Marguerite—or so she told her husband. De Carrouges, denied a trial by the local lord, journeyed to the capital to appeal to the king, but instead of demanding a criminal trial offered a duel instead.
Duelling was now rare, increasingly seen as a relic from a former age, but the king loved the idea, and Le Gris accepted. The accused claimed that at the time of the rape he was with a squire called Jean Beloteau, who unfortunately at this time was arrested while in Paris—for a different rape. Le Gris could have used benefit of clergy to avoid punishment, yet he wanted to win back his reputation, and the disputed land, too, and Paris’s Parlement* too agreed to the duel, which was set for November 27, 1386 at the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champ.
Trial by battle was something of an aristocratic luxury, and to the low born torture was the favored method of justice (not favored by them, obviously). Le Gris’s servant Adam Louvel, who was accused of assisting in the rape, was “put to the question” to test if he was telling the truth, as were Marguerite’s minions.
Such was the excitement around the duel that King Charles even delayed the event so that he could be back in time. The day before the trial his young son died but instead of mourning, the king—six years before his first mental breakdown—ordered for parties to be held, with the combat a centerpiece of the festivities. Marguerite de Carrouge had also given birth to a son shortly before the battle, although whether a true-born de Carrouges or a bastard conceived of rape she could not know.
On the day of the fight thousands of people arrived at the Abbey before dawn, in a state of great excitement, including children, who were regularly taken to watch executions, whether it be “burnings, beheadings, hangings, drownings, live burials, and other cruel punishments.”1
All except for one figure, alone and dressed in black—Marguerite. If it went wrong for her then she would be taken straight to Montfaucon, the grizzly place of execution at the northern edge of Paris, and “a city of the dead unto itself.” This grim hillside was the “the notorious destination of murderers, thieves, and other condemned felons” recognizable to all by its giant forty feet high gallows with heavy crossbars large enough to fit eighty corpses: “Here live criminals with ropes already around their necks were forced up a ladder and hanged,” while beside them the corpses of those who had endured drawing and quartering were beheaded.2
De Carrouges had been weak with a fever in the preceding weeks, and the sickness reappeared that very morning. His opponent was much bigger, and had a better horse and weapons, and armor. The accuser would have to depend on skill and speed if he was to kill the larger man who had raped his wife.
De Carrouges walked out first, repeating the charges against Le Gris, who was then knighted so that the men might be of equal standing when they fought. This was done with three taps on the shoulder with the flat of the sword: “In the name of God, of Saint Michael, and Saint George, I make thee a knight; be valiant, courteous and loyal.”
This was a battle for honor, and for God’s favor, and men fighting duels were banned from using any sort of charms or spells or other occult tricks, on pain of death. This was not a game, and between them there was no tilt-fence, as there was now in a joust; both men carried a longsword, axe, and a long dagger, and were protected by heavy plate armor.
Before combat began, de Carrouges went over to his wife. “Lady on your evidence I am about to hazard my life in combat with Jacques Le Gris,” he told her. “You know whether my cause is just and true.”
“My lord, it is so, and you can fight with confidence, for the cause is just,” she replied. They then kissed.
Silence now descended, and it was decreed that anyone who interfered by entering the arena would be executed and anyone who dared even to “speak, gesture, cough, spit” would lose a hand or property.3 Instead people would watch these deadly fights in total silence, “scarcely able to breathe.”
Before a duel, the two combatants would join their left hands to show that their bond was one of hostility, as opposed to handshakes of peace made on the right. Mounting their horses, each fighter was a mountain of muscle, bone, and armor, and “the combined weight of horse, man, armor, and lance put nearly a ton of galloping momentum” behind a charge.4 At high speed a lance could go clean through shield and armor and into soft flesh.
The two men launched at each other, in their first clash both hitting the other square on the shield with their lances, both almost knocked to the ground. De Carrouges and Le Gris were each back on their horses but managed to hold their grip and returned for a second charge. This time both men tipped their lances higher, aiming for the head, in almost perfect symmetry gathering speed as they headed straight for each other. They crashed, steel against steel so hard the crowd could see sparks, but both men remained on their horses, their strong frames taking the blows.
A third charge came, and the two opponents struck at each other “with great violence” so that both of their steel lance-tips smashed into the other man’s shield once again. This time the lances were shattered and pieces of splinter flew in all directions.
They locked axes several times, tired and worn out. Then Le Gris took a two-handed swing at his enemy, missing but instead driving the sharp axe into his horses’ neck, blood pouring out of the screaming animal, blood on the sand. De Carrouges managed to scramble clear, in turn maiming his enemy’s horse, disembowelling it but losing his axe in the process; he drew his sword. Both men paused to catch their breath.
The two enemies stabbed and thrust at each other, exhausted under the weight of the metal and the stress, both their bodies pumping adrenaline and their hearts racing.
There was sunlight on metal and de Carrouges was blinded for a split-second; he slipped and his enemy caught him in the right thigh. Blood shot out and streamed down his leg and a low groan came from the crowd. Leg wounds were extremely dangerous, and even if an artery was not ruptured—which would have been fatal—it was now a race against time before blood loss overcame him, fighting with sixty pounds of armor against a mountain of muscle. In the background his wife sank against the railing behind her.
“THERE’S NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD. NOT UNLESS WE MAKE IT.”
As the medieval historian Georges Duby wrote: “God lays a cruel burden on those he arms with the sword of justice.”5 It was not much fun for those at the other end of the sword, either, as the prisons of Paris were places where “ears were cut off, tongues ripped out, eyes gouged from their sockets” and “the genitalia of wives who had betrayed their husbands were cauterized with white-hot tongs.”6
Men were put to death by hanging and women by whipping, although burning was especially used against females. In France, homicide, treason, and rape were all punished by dragging the culprit through the streets and then hanging them. Arson and theft were also punishable by hanging, and sodomy with burning at the stake, while currency forgers were thrown into boiling water. Suicide was a crime, so the bodies of suicides were hanged, too. And yet people convicted of even quite serious assault usually escaped with a fine, this sort of regular everyday violence being seen as less of a threat. In contrast, a Parisian called Jean Hardi was burned at the stake for having sexual relations with a Jewish woman.
Justice was brut
al everywhere; Venetians were notorioius for their love of money, so stealing from the city’s treasury was punished by amputation of the right hand followed by hanging outside the treasury building. A man who let an outlaw or enemy of the city escape lost a hand and both eyes. Insulting the honor of Venice resulted in the tongue being cut out and perpetual banishment.
Punishments often fitted the crime. In 1382 Roger Clerk of London, who had “pretended to cure ailments with spurious charms, was sentenced to ride through the city with urinals hanging from his neck.”7 In Chester anyone brewing bad beer could be “put in the shit-seat,” the cathedra stercoris, a chair in which the buttocks were publicaly exposed to mockery. By the fifteenth century, the stocks were commonly used in England and France; although they have a somewhat comic air to modern eyes they were often lethal, as stones might crack someone’s skull, or they could suffocate.
Animals, too, were tried and condemned. A sow that killed an infant in the Rue Saint-Martin was hanged, and a pig that damaged a child’s face was sentenced to death by burning. A horse who killed a man and then escaped was “convicted of murder in absentia and hanged in effigy.”8
Justice systems had developed to end the cycle of feuding which otherwise plagued Europe in the early medieval period. In the north of England, a culture of blood feuds survived much longer than further south and in places like the Highlands longer still. Justice in Anglo-Saxon England was extracted through blood money, Wergild in old English (“man money”—the word were still survives in werewolf). This was the value of a man’s life, and the amount his family had to be compensated if he was killed or injured, depending on social status, race, and sex (Welshmen, women, and peasants were worth less). This is a system still practiced by the hill tribes of the Mountains of the Moon, who retain archaic cultural practises as well as Anglo-Saxon sounding names like Ulf and Dolf.
Under Alfred the Great the state began to take a fine too, and in the case of accidental death the object that caused the accident was ruled to be a gift to God—deodand, the money going to the king. Later, under the Normans and Angevins, the state took on responsibility for finding murderers, which was previously a private matter, although the vast majority of killers escaped.
