← THIS IS HISTORY — A DYNASTY TO DIE FOR
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Oh, hello, strangers. I'm Alice Fraser, your guide to the galaxies, goblins, dungeons and dystopias we'll be hurling ourselves into in a weekly hero's journey through realms unknown, into the dark but sensual heart of all our favorite speculative fictions. We'll navigate the wild realms created by brilliant authors, filmmakers, game designers and more. New episodes drop every week on your podcast app or on YouTube. Do not resist the call to adventure, Chosen One. Join me for realms unknown. The crowd begins to murmur as the door creaks open and a blindfolded woman is led out into the square. Since early this morning, they've been gathering here outside the Hotel Denel in Paris, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most notorious criminal in France. And now she's here. Although she's thin, pale, covered with bruises and walks with a limp, she's still heavily manacled and the shackles on her legs scrape along the hard ground. Her guards keep her moving in the direction of a stout wooden stake that's been driven into the ground. As she nears it, the murmuring grows in volume and people start shouting insults. Screams. Someone. Murderer. Escron yells Another Cheat alle. Cries a third. Go to the devil. It's October 1331, and Jeanne de Deviant has been in prison for 15 months. In that time, she's been tortured into confessing a catalogue of heinous crimes. Now she's going to pay for them. So what are these crimes? Well, top of the list is poisoning a famous noblewoman named Mao, Countess of Artois, and her daughter Jean. The dead women were supposedly given spiked wine, felt sick and went to bed, after which, the poison they'd drunk started leaking out of their mouths, noses and ears. Their bodies became covered with white and black spots. After that, it was curtains. Then there's the serious crime of forgery. Jeanne is a master of cooking up fake documents. She's said to have produced false paperwork relating to her victim's county of Artois, a rich, semi independent county snuggled between Flanders and France, with a coastline opposite England. The phony documents make it look like Artois rightfully belongs to Mao's nephew, Robert. But the plot has been rumbled. Robert is on the run. And Jeanne, well, she's tied to a stake in Paris, about to meet her fate. With the prisoner secured, the executioner and his assistant start piling up bundles of tinder sticks around her feet. Priests chant and the cries of the crowd settle down into an expectant mawkish buzz. Then the executioner steps forward. He has a burning torch in his hand. When he touches it to the dry wood around Jeanne de Divion's feet, it catches straight away. The flames crackle and the smoke billows. Then the taunts of the crowd begin again, drowning out the poor woman's dying screams. In just a few minutes, it's all over. But the legacy of this brutal execution in Paris will long outlive those who witnessed it. Because while Jeanne de Divion is dead, her partner in crime, Robert, has made a clean getaway. In France, he's a dead man walking. But in England, where he'll end up, he will influence the Plantagenet King Edward III into making a decision that will change his and all his subjects lives forever. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment. This IS History Season 6 of 8 A Dynasty to Die For Episode 3 the Hundred Years War in the Middle Ages, when the French King is captured and put into the Tower of London, France goes into full blown anarchy. If only they'd had access to Indeed, they could have found the perfect replacement king straight away and saved the country from total meltdown. That's because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Indeed sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. That makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than than non sponsored jobs. So while it's too late for medieval French revolutionaries, it's the perfect time for you to get your job seen by the right people Fast. And listeners of this show will get a 100 pound sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com dynasty, just go to Indeed.com dynasty right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com dynasty terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Say you want to get your Edward III on and make your own range of kickass squad jackets and matching merch and make money at the same time. There's only one place to go. That's the sound you'll hear when you make another sale on Shopify. It's the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. It doesn't have to be squad jackets. It can be anything. Art, plants, health or beauty. Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business however you want to sell. Shopify has you covered with a shopfront ready POS system and it works with social media marketplaces too like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. It's time to get serious about selling and get Shopify today. Sign up for a pound one per month trial period at shopify.co.uk thisishistory all lowercase go to shopify.co.uk thisIshistory to take your business to the next level today. Shopify.co.uk ThisIshistory when we look back at history from the distance of centuries, it's human nature to draw lines between events, to link them one to the other in a great chain of cause and effect. And that instinct is especially strong when we're dealing with complicated things like wars. In the case of the Hundred Years War, the conflict that's going to loom over this season of this podcast and much of next Season two, the Hunt for Causes and Reasons the why is especially strong. What could spark a struggle that lasts for 116 years and drags in almost every realm in Western Europe in some way? That's a question historians have been wrestling with for generations, but it's a question that had people in the 14th century scratching their heads too. And if pressed for an answer, a lot of those 14th century observers would point their fingers at Robert of Artois running away from France in the aftermath of Jeanne de Divion's death and ending up in the kingdom of Edward III of England. Because Robert's vanishing act coincides with other key events that set England and France on a collision course. So bear with me as I untangle the various crossing wires that lead to an explosion unlike anything seen before. This is what we know about what happened. Robert has to flee from France because there's a warrant out for his arrest. Once he's across the border, the French king Philip VI has Robert's family arrested and imprisoned and then tries to use his international political clout to have Robert run out of every safe house he finds on the continent. Quick side note that this is quite a switch up from Philip. This King Philip of France is a strange fish. He's quite grand, but he seems to be plagued by a streak of imposter syndrome. He can be a bit of a ditherer, and he's not very confident. Robert is actually his brother in law and has for some years been the French king's best mate and top advisor. But even Philip doesn't feel that he can protect the guy from serious crimes like murder and forgery. And maybe he has a point. Anyway, long story short, Robert has to get somewhere. He feels Philip won't be able to touch him, and he sets his sights on Edward III's England. He travels in disguise to Edward's court in the spring of 1334, begs for asylum and gets it. Edward takes an instant liking to Robert, who at about 50 is much older than him, but is charismatic and fun, loves hunting and riding and is the life and soul of the party. Besides Robert's general bonhomie, Edward likes the fact that he's well connected in France and Flanders. What's more, he sees Robert as a good tit for tat, counterweight to a certain David II of Scotland, AKA Davy the altershotter, the teenage King of Scots who's fled to France, where he's being put up in comfortable fashion by King Philip. So Edward lets Robert hang out at court, gives him some cash and a house to live in and makes a fuss of him. He has Robert of Artois, King Philip has David of Scotland. And so the stage is set for a showdown. It all kicks off properly in 1336. At this point, tensions have been rising for a while in Scotland. Edward's puppet, King Edward Balliol, can't keep order and he's been booted off the throne again. Philip has been funding the anti Balliol cause on the grounds that France and Scotland are allies, and he's been sending troops and supplies into Scotland. This is a real middle finger in Edward's direction. And Edward decides he isn't going to stand for it. He decides to give Philip a taste of his own medicine by funding France's enemies in Flanders. Tit meet tat. Philip doesn't like this, so he decides to up the ante. He formally demands that Edward hand Robert of Artois back to him to face justice for his crimes. Edward understandably refuses. So Philip goes back to the playbook and picks out a move that has been a classic in Anglo French relationship since the days of Henry iii. That's right, Gascony. Philip says he's going to confiscate the highly valuable English territory in southwest France. And for good measure, he's also going to land a huge army in Scotland and put David the altershitter on the throne, where he belongs. So now it's Edward's move. Does he give back his new pal Robert to make Gascony safe? The way the story is told a few years later, Robert helps Edward to make up his mind in an incredibly dramatic and entertaining way. The tale is almost certainly apocryphal, but it's too good not to repeat here. It's written down in a poem known as the Vows of the Heron. According to this, one day, Robert goes out hunting with a bird of prey. His falcon takes down a heron which is thought to be a super cowardly bird because it screeches and makes a big fuss when it dies. Robert figures this is a sign, so he takes the dead heron to London and gives it to the royal chefs. He tells them to pluck it, roast it and serve it that night at dinner. When dinner time comes round, Robert stands up and makes a speech. He says that this heron is the most cowardly bird alive and only the most cowardly man in the room should be allowed to eat it. I'll be giving you all the shocking details of his exact words on the subscriber episode of this Is History plus this week. But to paraphrase, Robert says that this big fat coward is none other than Edward iii. Edward has a right to the crown of France through his mother, says Robert, and he's pussied out of claiming it. Never mind fiddling round with Gascony. Robert says Edward should be taking all of France, and Edward takes the bait. Which is how 116 years of trouble gets going. Economic reasons? No. Personal rivalry? Forget it. The poem known as the Vows of the Heron is crystal clear that this gigantic war is all down to Robert Scowding and a dead bird. He began the war and the terrible strife in which many knights were struck down dead, many ladies were made widows, and there were many orphans, and many fine seamen had their lives shortened, and many good women were forcibly corrupted, and a great many churches were burned and destroyed, and many more will be unless Jesus brings this to an end. But Jesus doesn't seem in any hurry to do that. In the Middle Ages, guarding your correspondence was fairly simple. If your seal had been broken, someone had snooped. Today it's a lot more complicated to protect our data and our communication. That's where ProtonMail comes in. ProtonMail is the world's largest secure email service. It can give you unparalleled email privacy through end to end encryption. That means only you and your recipient can access your message. It's a private and secure alternative to traditional email services. It provides safeguarding from hacking, surveillance, targeted ads, and it protects you against phishing attempts. I've been trying it out and it's a super simple interface. You can add multiple email addresses and it's got more data than I will ever use. Your data is yours. Keep it that way. With ProtonMail's Privacy first email service go to proton me thisishistory or simply click the link in the description to get started and receive a 38% discount. The Blast of the trumpet calls the meeting of The English lords in Parliament to order the most powerful men in the land have been gathering in church chambers at Westminster for the last couple of weeks to discuss the war that's looming between Edward and Philip. England and France. They've been getting their heads around the tangled issues. Who rules Scotland, who rules Gascony, how much support to show Robert of Artois and so on. They've been debating how to raise the money they'll need to do the fighting and defend the coast from Philip's enormous naval flight. Now, though, they all stop to listen as a royal servant gets up before them, clears his throat and unrolls a large piece of parchment covered in neat handwriting. In a loud voice which echoes around the high ceiling of the chamber, he starts to read. It is the chief mark of royalty that by a proper distribution of rank, honor and office, it buttresses itself by wise counsel and powerful men. Yet this realm has long suffered a serious decline in names, honours and titles of nobility. He reads. He goes on to explain that King Edward III has decided to do something about this. His argument is that there are many urgent problems facing England and in order to deal with them, England well, he needs a big injection of leaders worthy of command in a great war. That's why he's decided to do something unprecedented. In this Parliament held in March 1337, at the height of the crisis over Scotland and Gascony, Edward's raising up six men to be new English nobles. This is a huge cabinet reshuffle on a scale no one else has attempted before. Even more significant is who Edward is raising up. Four of them are veterans of the Nottingham castle raid which got rid of Roger Mortimer in 1330. There's Edwards, BFF Forever. William Montague, leader of the gang who's made Earl of Salisbury. Montague has been through the wringer fighting for Edward in Scotland since then and is missing an eye. William Clinton and Robert Ufford get the earldoms of Huntingdon and Suffolk. William de Boone becomes Earl of Northampton. Listeners with exceptionally sharp memories will recall that William de Boone was one half of a set of twins who were at Nottingham. But now he's flying solo. His brother, Edward de Boone died a hero's death fighting the Scots in 1334. Then comes family. Edward's cousin, Henry of Grosmont gets the earldom of Derby. Finally, there's Edward's six year old son, Edward of Woodstock, destined to be known as the Black Prince. He may still be of an age where he's more likely to build Lego castles than storm the walls of real ones. But he gets something really special to set him up for the future. He's handed Cornwall. And little Edward isn't made Earl of Cornwall. He's given the brand new title of Duke, a French title which has never been used in England before. Now, I appreciate that's a lot of names and titles. What matters isn't exactly who gets which one and what landed estates. The point is that in 1337, Edward is sending out a massive signal of intent. It's his Avengers team. Each of these men is expected to play a central role in the war that he sees coming down the line. What exactly Edward's going to do doesn't get a public airing for a while. In fact, it's not until January 1340 that he's ready to show his hand. But when he does, it's pretty spectacular. It happens in Flanders. Between 1337 and 1340, tensions have slowly ratcheted up between England and France without actually coming to a head. It's like the opening gambits of a chess game. Philip demands. Edward hands over the renegade Robert of Artois. Edward refuses. Philip announces he's confiscating Gascony. Edward responds by sending troops into Flanders. Philip sends ships to burn towns on England's south coast. This is all fairly regular warfare. But what happens in the Flemish town of Ghent on 26 Jan 13:40 Very much isn't. On that day, Edward announces that he's going to make a big speech. He has a stage erected in Ghent's market square and he gets all the townsfolk out into the cold to hear what he has to say. He gets up on stage. His queen Philippa, seven months pregnant, is alongside him. So are a whole load of his nobles and courtiers, along with many leaders of the independent towns of Flanders, who Edward has been giving military support to, or just outright bribing to be on his side. When everyone is set and ready, Edward makes his big reveal. It's a show, not a tell. All around the stage, all around the town, he unfurls banners showing a new brand identity for the Plantagenets. As the flags flutter in the winter air, there are gasps around the crowd. Ever since the days of Richard the Lionheart, the Plantagenet logo has been golden lions on a red background. Now everything is different. The lions are still there, but they've been quartered with gold fleur de lis on a blue background. Those are the colors of France. What does all this mean? Well, to put it simply, it means Edward is detonating a bomb under Anglo French relations. Nearly a decade ago, when he was a teenager and Roger Mortimer was ruling in his name, there was a succession crisis in France in which several relatives of the old iron king, Philip iv, all asserted the right to be the new king. Edward had a claim to the French crown through his mother, Queen Isabella, Philip IV's daughter. Mortimer registered that claim but never saw it through. And the teenage Edward went across the Channel and paid homage to Philip for Gascony, which seemed to show that he was recognising Philip as the rightful king. Now, in Ghent in 1340, Edward is hurling all of that into the dustbin of history. His flags tell a story, and a very simple one in his veins. He has the royal blood of the Plantagenets through his father, and the royal blood of the old French Capetian dynasty through his mother. That means he has the right to call himself King of England and King of France. He's going to fight for his right to have that claim recognised. And in the meantime, anyone who wants to rebel against Philip VI is welcome to come over to his side and fight for the rightful king. Through the spring of 1340, Edward sends proclamations out into France announcing that he is the new king and he's going to restore the good laws of the revered old Louis IX, the man he calls our predecessor, St. Louis. With this, a whole new phase of Edward's tussle with Philip VI begins. Edward's going to fight not as if these are two realms at war, but as if Philip is a rebel against his blood. Right. He's going to start that war not on French soil or even in the towns of Flanders, but on the high seas. Within months of his new flags being unfurled, Edward and his band of brothers are going to be thrown into the most dramatic and deadly sea battle seen in Plantagenet history. The Hundred Years War is on and the gloves are off. Next time on this Is History. If you can't wait for the next episode, it's already out over on this Is History. Plus alongside an additional subscriber only episode where I chat to producer Georgia about everything you just heard and much more. Yes. So this is according to a chronicle called Jeffrey Le Baker, who says that once the war starts, its sort of initial skirmishes, there are lots of kind of like diss tracks, I suppose you would call them now being written and like shot into. If there's a little sort of skirmish around a city, then this English archer is kind of shooting an arrow with a kind of insulting poem on it. And Geoffrey Le Baker does preserve some that really, they are quite hard to capture in translation. You can start a free trial by going to thisishistorypod.com or if you're on Apple Podcasts, click Try Free at the top of the page.