Stick Theater Presents: (More Of) The Hundred Years' War!
---
This is the conspicuous link to Part One at the top of the post. Don't tell me in comments that you didn't see it, I swear to God I'll cry.
So, when we left off last time, it was 1360, and France was pretty much boned. And not in a sexy way.
The map looked kinda like this:
The Treaty of Bretigny had secured nine years of peace at the price of the Aquitaine, but with England looking so fucking smug all the time, obviously France had to try and get it back.
This time the war actually went okay for France! He had a king who didn't suck, he decided not to just run straight uphill towards the British longbows, and even without winning any major battles (in fact, there weren't any particularly interesting battles during the Caroline War, or else I'd have more stuff I could draw), by 1389 England was pretty much like "Fuck it" and gave most of France's territory back.
So then there was some more peace!
BUT WAIT!
Oh yes; somebody sexed up someone they weren't supposed to. This is kind of important, since it led to a civil war and very nearly the death of France, so let me explain.
So you had Charles V, who was pretty pimp.
Charles V had a brother, Yet-Another-Philip. Yet-Another-Philip was pretty cool too, I guess, but he had a nose you could use as a can opener. He was the Duke of Burgundy. Both of them had some kids. Skipping forward to the reign of Charles VI, here's the family tree, leaving out everybody who wasn't important:
Louis de Valois will be drawn with a perpetual boner, because that was a big part of his problem. John the Fearless gets a sporty red neckerchief, because, I dunno, I like neckerchiefs. (Also they weren't called Armagnacs yet. But shut up, I'm trying to talk here.)
Now, the Burgundians were pretty okay with the English. They were the main importers of English wool, and they favored the English societal structure--middle-class heavy, with a mercantile focus--over the French model, which was based on agriculture, faith, and feudalism.
The two sides of the family got along okay, for a while; Yet-Another-Philip was Charles VI's regent until he was old enough to take the throne, and when Charles VI went crazy--oh yeah, Charles VI went crazy:
(Yes, that's pretty much how it happened.)
Anyway, he went crazy, and his wife Queen Isabeau became the head of the regency council after that, and Yet-Another-Philip was her closest advisor. So that was all cool.
Unfortunately for everybody, Yet-Another-Philip's influence progressively lessened due to…well…
Okay, there's no PROOF that Queen Isabeau was all over the mad king's horndog brother like clingfilm on a steaming quiche, but it's what everybody believed at the time, and Louis de Valois did certainly enjoy the Queen's, nudge-nudge, "confidence."
Then Yet-Another-Philip died, and his son, John the Fearless, was like, "This sucks. My family has lost all influence because of Louis de Valois' conspicuous schlong."
Louis was also blowing through the Royal Treasury, spending hundreds of thousands of francs on parties, wine, parties, parties, gold-plated houses, and parties. This made him unpopular among People Who Paid Taxes, i.e., the rest of France.
Jury's out on how France himself felt about all this.
All this might have squeaked by as business as usual in France…and then Louis followed the inscrutable exhortations of his penis straight to the vagina of John the Fearless's wife, Margaret.
That thing was like a dousing rod for trouble, man.
So now the family tree looks like this:
Understandably I think, John the Fearless decided this was the last straw. After building up support amongst the nobles, he had Louis stabbed to death on the street by fifteen dudes with knives.
He then tried to take control of Paris. The royal side of the family didn't take too kindly to these shenanigans, and France rapidly descended into full-scale civil war.
Distantly, from across the Channel, you could hear the strangest sound…
Next time: Henry V! Agincourt! Joan of Arc! Castillon! Seriously, I'll finish it next time.
And here's a conspicuous link to Part Three!