Over the course of the next two decades, Charles would be at the center of no less than ten different plots to dispossess the French Valois rulers, with the disastrous result that by A.D. 1379 , Charles had been stripped of all of his French possessions, and barely held on to his crown.
93
POPE URBAN VI
Crazy Like a Pope
(CA. A.D. 1318–1389)
He lacked Christian gentleness and charity. He was naturally arbitrary and extremely violent and imprudent, and when he came to deal with the burning ecclesiastical question of the day, that of reform, the consequences were disastrous.
—Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes
An orphan from the back alleys of Naples who rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church through a combination of intelligence, hard work, austerity, and honesty, Bartolomeo Prignano became Pope Urban VI to the cheers of the Roman mob, who had called for a return to having Italian popes (“or else!”) after seventy years of French ones.
The only problem was that becoming Urban VI apparently drove the previously mild-mannered Bartolomeo Prignano nuts.
Urban immediately began scolding the very cardinals who had elected him about the need for reform, including discouraging them from accepting gifts, such as cash annuities, from foreign dignitaries (a common practice in the moldering swamp of corruption that was the late medieval church hierarchy). Needless to say, this went over about as well as a fart in church.
Part of the problem was that Urban had never been a cardinal, only an archbishop, and some of the cardinals who had been passed over were naturally prone to be resentful.
A number of these cardinals (all of them French) met at Anagni and invited the pope to meet with them to discuss their concerns. Smelling a rat—it was entirely possible the cardinals would kidnap him, cart him off to France, and force him to reign at Avignon—Urban stayed away. So these same French cardinals took the extraordinary step of excommunicating him and nominating one of their number (Robert of Geneva) as Clement VII, who came to be called the anti-pope. The church was broken apart in a schism and stayed that way until A.D. 1417.
Having helped to cause the rift, Urban would not live to see it healed. During the twelve years of his pontificate he attempted (mostly futilely) to reassert the secular authority of the pope in the Italian peninsula. Most of the nobles there had grown used to running their own shows with minimal church interference during the seventy years that the papacy had been centered at Avignon. They resented Urban’s attempt to turn back the clock.
By A.D. 1385, Urban found himself bottled up by opposing forces during a long siege in the Italian town of Nocera. While there, he imprisoned five of his cardinals for disloyalty. Dragging them along when he finally got clear of Nocera, Urban eventually sentenced these unfortunate men to death, having all but one of them either sewn up in burlap sacks and tossed into the sea or buried alive.
Four years later Urban joined these same men in death, leaving a divided Christendom and a chaotic situation in Italy.
Crazy bastard.
Golden Rule
Before becoming pope, Archbishop Prignano was in charge of the collection of tithes for most of Italy. So he knew where the gold was collected from, where it was taken, and how it was spent. In the course of doing this job, he developed an uncanny head for business, something rare in late medieval church officials.
94
HENRY IV OF ENGLAND
Why You Should Be Nice
to Your Relatives
( A.D. 1366–1413)
King Henry would never have been king . . . if his cousin Richard had treated him in the friendly manner he ought to have done.
—Jean Froissart, Chronicles
The son of John of Gaunt (himself the younger son of King Edward III), Henry Bolingbroke, who held the titles duke of Hereford and earl of Derby, was a peer of the realm, a cousin of the current King Richard II, and an accomplished military man by the time he was suddenly exiled by the king in A.D. 1398. Richard went on to seize all of Bolingbroke’s lands the following year, dispossessing him utterly and leaving him nearly penniless. Before he was finished, Bolingbroke would famously make Richard pay for this insult when he usurped the throne in A.D. 1399, deposing the king and having himself crowned as Henry IV.
One of the Lords Appellant, a group of powerful nobles who pulled a power play and forced the then-underage King Richard II to dismiss some of his more tyrannical government ministers, Henry incurred Richard’s wrath. Added to this smoldering resentment was Richard’s nagging suspicion that Henry had designs on his crown.
But Henry was such a successful general in Richard’s service (trained by two of the best generals of the Middle Ages: his own father, John of Gaunt, and his uncle, Edward the Black Prince) that his accomplishments couldn’t be ignored. Richard made him a duke in A.D. 1397, but, alarmed at Henry’s increasing popularity, banished him the very next year. When John of Gaunt died in A.D. 1399, Richard seized all of his lands before Henry could inherit them.
That was the last straw for Henry. He returned from exile in France at the head of a tiny force of 300 men. At first he said that he was only interested in securing his inheritance. That changed, however, when thousands began to flock to his banner.
Within weeks, Richard, who at first cowered in hiding in Wales, was deposed and thrown into prison by Henry, who had himself crowned as King Henry IV. Having surrendered and agreed to abdicate in return for having his life spared, Richard was initially treated well. But once a plot to murder Henry came to light, Henry agreed that Richard was too dangerous alive, and murdered him by starving him to death, sometime in early A.D. 1400.
Henry thought such a move would secure the throne, but he was very much mistaken. Reigning for another thirteen years, he put down rebellion after rebellion until his health broke, and he was forced to look on nearly powerless as his son, Henry, prince of Wales (later King Henry V), took the reins of the kingdom, paving the way for his own subsequent and even more violent reign.
Leprous Bastard?
Beginning in A.D. 1406, Henry IV began to exhibit symptoms of a wasting disease that may have been leprosy. At the time, people believed that leprosy was a punishment sent from God for egregious sin. Because Henry had executed the archbishop of York without trial on a charge of treason, there was widespread belief among his subjects that Henry’s disease was just such a punishment. By the end of his life, Henry agreed with them.
95
HENRY V OF ENGLAND
Don’t Let That Frat-Boy Act Fool Ya
( A.D. 1387–1422)
As you have kept the crown by the sword, so will I keep it while my life lasts.
—Henry, Prince of Wales (future King Henry V) to his father,
King Henry IV
Despite what you may have gleaned from watching Shakespeare’s play of the same name, King Henry V of England was not some dilettante, angst-ridden romantic initially acting out against daddy only to come to his senses on his father’s death, turn all vice to virtue, and become some sort of all-wise warrior-philosopher king.
What he was, in fact, was the strong-minded son of a strong-minded father, raised, as Philip of Macedon had raised Alexander, with kingship and conquest in mind. While it’s true that Henry had a wild youth, loved to party, and, upon becoming king, issued a decree that none of his drinking buddies were allowed to come within ten miles of him, it’s not as if the guy turned into King Arthur.
First and foremost, Henry was (like his father before him) a soldier. The young prince was leading successful military campaigns against Welsh rebels in the English marches while still in his early teens. Like Richard the Lion-Hearted before him, Henry had a talent for war.
Upon taking the throne at age twenty-six in A.D. 1413, Henry let it be known that he intended to declare war on France unless he was immediately acknowledged the rightful king of France and heir to the throne. Henry pushed his admittedly flimsy claim (it was through his great-great-g
randmother) because the French king, Charles VI, was apparently mad as a hatter. Henry’s demands got him a good laugh across the Channel for his trouble, and he invaded France in A.D. 1415.
Striking quickly and making use of the longbowmen whose long-range “artillery” gave the English forces a decided tactical advantage over their French adversaries, Henry and his tiny army destroyed a French army nearly four times their size at the Battle of Agincourt later that year. On that day alone, 5,000 French knights died in the mud, shot from their saddles as they charged the English lines, dead before they could come within striking distance of the enemy.
In A.D. 1420, Henry parlayed this and several subsequent victories into a peace treaty with the French that called for him to be named regent for the now hopelessly insane Charles VI, to marry Charles’s daughter, Catherine de Valois (more about her later), and to rule in the king’s name. Also by terms of the treaty, Charles’s son, the dauphin (“crown prince”), was dispossessed and disinherited.
Battle-Scarred Bastard
In A.D. 1403, while fighting with his father against the forces of the Northumberland rebel Percy family, the sixteen-year-old Prince Henry was hit in the face by an arrow, with the point left lodged in his head. Luckily, his father had one of the most skilled doctors of the age in his service at the time. The doctor treated the injury with honey, removed the arrowhead, then doused the wound with alcohol before stitching it up. Left alive (the mortality rate for this sort of wound was high in the fifteenth century) but badly scarred, Henry fared better than Henry Percy, leader of the rebels, who was also hit in the face by an arrow during the same battle and killed instantly.
A harsh treaty imposed on a large and resourceful country. Because he had the bad grace to die of dysentery within two years of forcing it on the French, Henry left behind an infant son incapable of ruling on his own, and utter chaos in France. The result would be another thirty years of war, with a cost of untold millions in coin and countless lives.
And that can all be laid at the feet of that glorious bastard, Henry V.
96
TOMAS DE TORQUEMADA
Grand Inquisitor, Closet Jew
( A.D. 1420–1498)
—The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honor of his order.
—Medieval chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo
Once synonymous with words like honor and duty, the name Torquemada is now pretty much associated with fanaticism and torture. And it’s all due to the actions of one energetic man: Tomas de Torquemada, grand inquisitor of Spain.
Born and raised in Valladolid, Torquemada began his life in religious service as a cook-monk in a Dominican monastery. Over the next several decades, he worked his way up through the order’s ranks until he was named the private chaplain of Isabella of Castile (the same queen who bankrolled Columbus’s voyage of discovery), and eventually grand inquisitor in A.D. 1483.
As such, Torquemada spearheaded the Spanish Catholic Church’s crusade to enforce purity of belief. In this, he did not focus on cradle Catholics, or unbelievers like Jews or Muslims. Instead, his passion was reserved for ensuring those who had converted (conversos) to Roman Catholicism remained good, orthodox Christians and didn’t backslide. And if he had to order a little waterboarding (they called it the “water cure”), or use of the strappado (a leather strap used to lash a person’s arms behind their back from which they were hung, causing intense pain and dislocation of one or both shoulders), or a turn of the rack, or the odd burning at the stake to ensure this result, then it must be God’s will, right?
There’s a trend among modern historians to try to rehabilitate Torquemada’s image, but the guy was a sadistic bastard, directly responsible for the torture of thousands, with many of his victims dying as a result of their interrogation. And more, he was an absolute hypocrite.
Why?
Because Tomas de Torquemada was Jewish!
Well, actually it was his great-grandparents who were. This according to a contemporary converso historian named Hernando de Pulgar, who wrote about Torquemada’s uncle Juan: “his grandparents were of the lineage of Jews converted to our holy Catholic faith.” In addition, at least one modern historian has asserted that one of Torquemada’s grandmothers was also a convert.
To top it off, late in life, this nasty bastard was the driving force behind the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain. There can be little doubt that numbered among the tens of thousands of Jews kicked out of Spain at Torquemada’s request were many of his own blood relatives!
During his own lifetime, Torquemada became the focus of such hatred on the part of the Spanish people that he never went anywhere without a retinue of at least fifty hired bodyguards. After he died in A.D. 1498, he was buried with honors in what had been a Jewish cemetery before he had it seized and converted into the cemetery of a Dominican monastery he ordered built on the spot.
In A.D. 1832, liberals with sort of sense ironic humor that Torquemada so obviously lacked dug up his bones and burned them. Fiery bastard.
What’s in a Name?
In one of history’s great ironies, Torquemada was the nephew of a reforming Dominican friar named Juan de Torquemada, who wrote several well-respected tracts about the importance of religious tolerance to a healthy Catholic Church. In fact, this Torquemada was a leading defender of conversos throughout Spain, the very people his nephew later targeted for torture!
97
LOUIS XI OF FRANCE
The Spider King
( A.D. 1423–1483)
If you can’t lie, you can’t govern.
—King Louis XI of France
The son of King Charles VII, who had been dispossessed and disinherited by King Henry V of England, Louis spent his childhood and early adulthood witnessing his father’s attempts to pry the English out of northern France (the king didn’t even own Paris at the time!). By the time he came to the throne at age thirty-eight, he had learned the hard lesson that the French nobility could not be trusted, since they usually had their own agendas when it came to the distribution of power, and that there was nothing to be gained by ever keeping his word to them.
So he didn’t.
Ever.
The result for the country of France turned out better than you might expect. Louis XI was the most successful king at adding territory to the realm since Philip Augustus, and wouldn’t see his equal again until the accession of Louis XIV during the seventeenth century.
Once he became king, Louis immediately set about breaking the power of the nobles in France. So when Philip the Good, senile ruler of the massive duchy of Burgundy, contacted him about wanting to go on crusade (it was the fifteenth century; the kingdoms of Western Europe hadn’t mounted a notable crusade in well over a century), Louis slyly offered to bankroll the enterprise, in return for a large slice of Philip’s duchy, and a rewrite of the duke’s will.
This brought Louis into conflict with Philip’s son, a violent fellow known alternately as Charles the Bold, Charles the Rash, and Charles the Terrible, depending on who was talking about him. Convinced that Louis was attempting to steal his inheritance (he was right), Charles rebelled against the king, convincing a large number of French, Dutch, and Flemish nobles to join him.
Louis lost battle after battle to Charles (who was a brilliant general), but was able to string out the conflict (just as Philip Augustus had done time and again with the kings of England) until he finally got lucky: Charles was killed at the Battle of Nancy in A.D. 1477, and with his father’s redrawn will still on the books, the duchy of Burgundy got split down the middle between his two heirs: Philip’s daughter and Charles’s old enemy, the Spider King himself, Louis of France.
Louis’s luck continued to hold: in A.D. 1481, four years after the death of Charles the Bold/Rash/Terrible, the king’s cousin (Charles IV, Duke of Anjou) died without living children, and the duke willed his large estate in southern France to the king. So when Louis himself died two year
s later at age sixty, he left his heirs a much-expanded France.
What’s in a Name?
Louis had many nicknames, including “le Prudent” and “the Spider.” He earned both of these, as he was better with money than his somewhat feckless father, and like Philip Augustus preferred to gain through intrigue rather than through the naked exercise of military power.
98
POPE ALEXANDER VI
Chastity, Schmastity, I’m the Pope and My Son’s Gonna Be a Cardinal
( A.D. 1431–1503)
Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world has ever seen. And if we do not flee, he will inevitably devour us all.
—Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici on hearing of the election
of Rodrigo Borgia as pope
One of the early Renaissance popes whose conduct exemplified the deep systemic corruption of the Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages, Alexander VI was a Borgia and is more famous today not for being pope, nor even for his many excesses, but for being father of the infamous Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia (yes, those Borgias).
Completely ignoring the prohibition against clergy having sex, Borgia had several mistresses, and at least four children by one of them, an Italian woman named Vanozza dei Cattanei. Elevating nepotism to an art form, he filled high-level papal government positions with family members (including his own son Cesare, whom he made a cardinal while still a teenager, even though the boy hadn’t spent a single day as a priest).
Spanish-born Rodrigo Borja (later changed to the Italian spelling of “Borgia”) followed his uncle to Rome when the latter became Pope Callixtus III in A.D. 1455. After that, his ascent through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was rapid, culminating in his being elected pontiff in A.D. 1492.
The Book of Ancient Bastards Page 19
