France

The kingdom of France, populated up until the Black Death of 1348-9 by 12-16 millions souls and including up to the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) the Ile-de-France together with the apanages of Normandy, Anjou, Bourbon, Champagne, Valois, Auvergne and Languedoc, plus a number of important fiefs such as the counties of Blois, Nevers and Foix, and (from 1349) Montpellier and the Dauphiné; diminished from 1354 by the growing activity and influence in the Cotentin and other parts of Normandy of the king of Navarre, Charles of Evreux, and by English conquests resulting in an enlarged duchy of Guyenne (essentially Gascony; will become the principality of Aquitaine) stretching from the borders of the great and at times pro-English duchy of Brittany to the Pyrenees (save for the neutral county of Béarn) and eastwards to embrace the Poitou, Limousin and Rouergue (on the border with the Languedoc); Ponthieu and Guines are also in English hands. The French re-conquest under Charles V and Du Guesclin progressively drives the English from the realm, leaving them (by 1370-80) the ports of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bordeaux and Bayonne, and a much-reduced Aquitaine. Brittany returns to French allegiance from 1365 onwards (Treaty of Guérande).

England

Island kingdom bounded to the west by the Marcher lordships and the (still contested) principality of Wales conquered by Edward I; English lordships included parts of modern south Wales (from southern Pembrokeshire through Swansea, Cardiff and on towards Gloucester in England); bounded to the north by the kingdom of Scotland, to the east by the North Sea and to the south by the Channel; included Somerset, Devon and Cornwall to the south-west. Population up to the Black Death of 1348-9 approximately 4 million souls.

King Charles IV of France (d. 1328)

Charles was born at Creil on 18 June 1294 as the third son of King Philip IV of France and Jeanne of Navarre. In January 1308 he was married to Blanche of Burgundy. He was made count of La Marche in 1314. He succeded as king of France and king of Navarre on 3 January 1322, after the death of his elder brother, Philip V, and was crowned on 11 February in Rheims. In May of the same year his marriage was annulled and he then married Marie of Luxemburg on 21 September 1322. She gave birth to a son in March 1324, but the infant died soon after, and Marie survived him only by a few days. Charles married a third time, to Jeanne of Évreux, on 5 July 1324. When he died, on 1 February 1328, he had only one living child, a daugther Marie from his third marriage. The children born out of his first two marriages had died in childhood and so had the first daugther from his third marriage. The queen, Jeanne of Évreux, however, was pregnant when her husband died, and she give birth to a posthumous daughter, called Blanche. He was the last king of France of the direct Capetian line. As Charles died without male offspring, he was succeeded to the throne of France by Philip VI of Valois, the son of his maternal uncle Charles de Valois.

France

The kingdom of France, populated up until the Black Death of 1348-9 by 12-16 millions souls and including up to the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) the Ile-de-France together with the apanages of Normandy, Anjou, Bourbon, Champagne, Valois, Auvergne and Languedoc, plus a number of important fiefs such as the counties of Blois, Nevers and Foix, and (from 1349) Montpellier and the Dauphiné; diminished from 1354 by the growing activity and influence in the Cotentin and other parts of Normandy of the king of Navarre, Charles of Evreux, and by English conquests resulting in an enlarged duchy of Guyenne (essentially Gascony; will become the principality of Aquitaine) stretching from the borders of the great and at times pro-English duchy of Brittany to the Pyrenees (save for the neutral county of Béarn) and eastwards to embrace the Poitou, Limousin and Rouergue (on the border with the Languedoc); Ponthieu and Guines are also in English hands. The French re-conquest under Charles V and Du Guesclin progressively drives the English from the realm, leaving them (by 1370-80) the ports of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bordeaux and Bayonne, and a much-reduced Aquitaine. Brittany returns to French allegiance from 1365 onwards (Treaty of Guérande).

Blanche of Burgundy, queen of France (d. 1326)

Daughter of Odo V, count of Burgundy, and Mahaut, countess of Artois. First wife of king Charles IV of France, to whom she was married in 1308. Some manuscript versions of Froissart’s Chronicles mistakenly describe her as daughter of the count of Artois, when in fact she was the daughter of the countess of Artois, daughter and heir of Robert II, count of Artois.

Odo V, count of Burgundy (d. 1303)

He married his second wife, Mahaut of Artois, in 1285 and had four children from her, including two daughters who survived into adulthood, Jeanne and Blanche. He died on 17 March 1303 in the war against Flanders.

The reading ‘conte de Bourgoingne’ is found in only six manuscripts of Book I (Austin 48, Chantilly 873, Oxford, Laud misc. 745 and Paris, BnF, mss. fr. 2647, 2677 and 6471). Although it is historically correct, as Blanche was indeed the daughter of Odo V, count of Burgundy, this particular variant is likely to be the result of a scribal correction applied to the text of the textual ancestor to these manuscripts, which probably had the erroneous reading ‘conte d’Artois’. The latter variant is in fact found in most of the manuscripts of the ‘A’ redaction, and in particular in the textual family to which also these six manuscripts belong. The original authorial reading ‘contesse d’Artois’ (a reference to Blanche’s mother, Mahaut, countess of Artois) is found in other manuscripts of the ‘A’ redaction, as well as in the witnesses of the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘Amiens’ redactions.