William Tyler
The Late Middle Ages: Will France Become England or England Become France?

William Tyler - The Late Middle Ages: Will France Become England or England Become France?

- Thank you very much and welcome from me to all of you who are listening. We continue with French history. Just to remind you that I have on my blog, put in a piece about the period we’re talking about, and I’ve also put on some books which I haven’t already mentioned. So, our story today begins in the year 1328. Charles the Fourth of France died without a male heir. Edward the Third of England claims a throne through his French mother, Isabella, whom the English disliked enormously and called her Isabella, the She-Wolf. She was responsible for the murder of her husband, Edward the Second, while she carried on an affair with her boyfriend, Roger Mortimer. Edward the Third took the throne in a coup d'etat. And in 1328 on Charles the Fourth’s death, he claimed the throne of France through his mother Isabella, who was a daughter of Philip the Fourth. However, the French nobility were having nothing to do with an English king claiming the French throne, and they proclaimed instead Philip the Sixth, who was a nephew of Philip the Fourth. Well, they crowned him at Reims. The nobility of France described Philip the Sixth in French as natif du Royaume, a native of the kingdom. In other words, we’re not having an Englishman! Although, of course, you’ll remember that in the Middle Ages, our aristocracy was still very Norman French. And Edward the Third would have spoken French as his first language, not English. And this is the prelude to what we call the Hundred Years War between France and England. What was it? A struggle to see who would gain the crown of England. Sorry! Who would gain the crown of France.

If the English gained it, well, the two countries would, to all intents and purposes, be merged into one, in which England dominated. If the French won, well, we were destined, and that is of course what happened, we were destined to be rivals all the way through to 1815 and the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. But we have to go back a little bit. We have to go forward a little, from 1328 to 1329. Edward the Third, according to feudal rules of succession, should pay homage to Philip the Second for the land that he owned in Aquitaine, which you can see on your map. But Philip refuses to give him, when he does homage, he refuses to allow him the revenues of Aquitaine. Relations between the two kings and therefore the two countries deteriorate. And Philip the Sixth then takes action into his own hands and occupies Aquitaine in 1337. Edward the Third immediately repudiates homage to Philip, claims the French throne, and the Hundred Years War begins in that year of 1337. The moment is caught by Shakespeare in his play, “Edward III.” And we read this from Act one, Scene one, this is Edward speaking: Tell him, the Crown that he usurps, is mine. And where he sets his foot, he ought to kneel. ‘Tis not a petty dukedom that I claim; the Dukedom of Aquitaine; It is not a petty dukedom that I claim but all the whole dominion of the realm. Which if with grudging he refuse to yield, I’ll take away those borrowed plumes of his, and send him naked into the wilderness.

Well, in Shakespeare’s England, that sort of tremendously over-the-top nationalism played very well with the audiences in the Globe in London. So war begins in 1337. The Hundred Years War was not a continuous war. There were gaps in it. It had periods of time in which there was no war. Most notably, during the Plague or the Black Death in the end of the 1340s, and the beginning of the 1350s. It also wasn’t a hundred years. It actually lasted 116 years until the French finally won in 1453. However, if you were brought up on an Anglophile history, Canadians and Australians of my age I think probably were, and certainly, of course, we were here in Britain, then we were told, well, at school, that we had great victories. The great victory of the Black Prince at Crecy in 1346, and even greater victory of Henry the Fifth against all odds at Agincourt in 1415. And then the history stopped. We went on to something else. Why? Well, because we actually subsequently lost by 1456, only 40 years on from the victory at Agincourt. But our school history firmly stopped the Hundred Years War, at least mine did And I guess yours did as well, in 1415 with Agincourt. We weren’t told that in the end the French won the Hundred Years War in 1456. Moreover, we were told nothing about the war crimes, as we would say today, of the English. This is John Julius Norwich giving two examples of this. First of all, he writes in this way, “Invading armies,”- He’s writing of the time around Crecy in the 1340s. “Invading armies, writes John Julius Norwich in his book on France, "Invading armies seldom behave well towards local populations, but the English army seemed to have been worse than most. The French countryside was ravaged, villages laid waste.

At Origny, the local convent was burnt to the ground and the nuns subjected to wholesale rape.” But what sticks in the French gullet, even today, is the aftermath of, not Crecy, but the aftermath of Agincourt. And this is what John Julius Norwich writes: With victory already assured at Agincourt, Henry the Fifth gave the order which in the eyes of French posterity has constituted the darkest stain on his reputation. Only the highest ranking noblemen, for whom valuable ransoms could be expected were to be spared. So you capture me and you put a price on my head and my family are desperate to get me home and somehow or other raised the money. So if you’re a noble, you’re okay. But he goes on to say this: All other prisoners, Henry ordered, were to be instantly put to death. What prompted such a reaction, utterly contrary as it was, to all the traditions of warfare? Well the English argue that they thought there was going to be an attack from the rear. And thus to prevent them losing the battle at the final moment, they massacred the troops. I think that doesn’t actually wash. Many of the English refused point-bank to obey their king, even after he’d threatened to hang all those who held back. At last, Henry was obliged to designate 200 of his own archers specifically for the task. Such, alas, was the aftermath of the victory that has gone down as one of the most glorious in English history. It emphasises the point that each nation teaches its children its history that it wants to teach, that puts their nation in the best light. I think many people today realise that that is not so. That what is important is to discover the truth and to look it firmly in the face. And as far as I can tell, my belief is that this was a appalling massacre that was almost unheard of at the time that the English perpetrated at Agincourt. Not surprising that the French still remember it.

Under the Treaty of Troyes, T-R-O-Y-ES, signed between Charles the Sixth of France and Henry the Fifth, the victor at Agincourt in 1420, Charles the Sixth, well, simply, disinherited the dauphin. The dauphin, the heir apparent in France. And said that on his death, Henry the Fifth would inherit the throne of France. And to ensure this alliance held, Charles the Sixth married his daughter, Catherine, Fair Kate of Shakespeare’s play, to Henry the Fifth. The dauphin wasn’t having any of it and took up a sword against the confident-winning English after Agincourt. On the 31st of August, 1422, Henry the Fifth died, leaving his son, Henry the Sixth, a mere babe in the arms of his French mother. And if Henry the Sixth or those fighting on behalf of Henry the Sixth such as his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, could defeat the dauphin, then this baby would be both king of England and king of France. Well, less than two months after Henry the Fifth’s death, Charles the Sixth dies and that question now becomes a real one. Henry the Sixth, the English claim, by the Treaty of Troyes, is king of France. The dauphin claims that he is the king of France. So the war continues. And worse is in store for the English, for now arises a charismatic French teenage girl, Joan. Joan of Arc, as we call her. She’s a sort of 15th century French equivalent of Greta Thunberg. If you think Greta Thunberg, then think Joan of Arc.

She leads the fight against seeing Charles the Sixth as a bit of a weakly really. And she puts- She puts some sort of iron in his soul, which doesn’t particularly work. But she tries. But she herself leads the French army to victory. She’s charismatic. She gets Charles crowned as king of France in Reims, as Charles the Seventh, king of France. But. There’s always a but in these stories. And Jeremy Black writes about this particular but. And Black writes this: Joan was captured by the Burgundians. The Burgundians are the allies of the English. And you can see Burgundy, the Duke of Burgundy’s territory on your map. Joan was captured by the Burgundians, handed over by them to their allies, the English, tried for heresy, and burned to death in the marketplace in Rouen in 1431. She later in the 20th century to be made by the Vatican a saint, Saint Joan. But the resistance had charged anew and that change was sustained. In 1435, crucially, the Burgundians abandoned Henry the Sixth. France regained Paris in 1436. And the English divided at home were outmanoeuvred politically and military, although in part, this was a matter of relative success. But Charles the Seventh had to face rebellions of his own nobility in 1437. The English government, acting on behalf of Henry Sixth, seek a compromise with France. And Henry Sixth married Margaret of Anjou in 1445. And ceded territory, in return for Margaret’s hand in marriage, to Charles the Seventh of France. But he didn’t settle the conflict. It did not settle the outcome.

There are still two men claiming to be kings of France. Charles the Seventh and Henry the Sixth. And in England, we’re moving inexorably towards civil war in the Wars of the Roses. England is in a bad state at this time. It needed not a child, it needed a vigorous young man with intelligence and brains if we were ever to hold on to our lands in France. Now on your map is the largest extent of English-held lands in France, the grey part. The dark part is where the French held. And the story of mediaeval France is how France, the kings of France, gradually exerted control over English-held France and over the great lords of France. And this is really coming by the end of the 1440s and into the 1450s. And I read here a piece which I think, is just a short piece which I think is worth reading. If I can find the right book. Well, handy if I had the right book, wouldn’t it? This is John Julius Norwich: Normandy was recovered in 1450 following a French victory. Guienne was recovered in 1453. Bordeaux was surrendered by the English in October, 1453, at which point the English only held Calais. They had lost all their mediaeval possessions in France. The French still had a large part of France to get hold of, which was Provence, never in the English hands. There’s a French Count of Provence. But the Count of Provence died in 1486 with Louis the 11th of France as his heir. So France gained Provence without a fight. They simply inherited it.

So you can say that by 1486, we can really talk about France for the first time in the way that we look at France in a modern atlas. France is now France. England holds Calais, which you all know we are going to lose in the reign of Mary Tudor in the 1550s. She is said to have died with Calais on her heart, written on her heart. Well, the Hundred Years War has finally ended, but not, not lasting eternal peace between France and England. That doesn’t come until 1815. And following 1815, given one or two hiccups, we are allies of France against France’s other enemy, Germany to the north in the 20th century in the two World Wars. I said a little earlier that the war, the Hundred Years War was not continuous. And I mentioned the Black Death in the late 1340s, which disrupted the war. They simply didn’t have enough men fit enough to fight on either side. It is estimated according to contemporary French chroniclers who lived through the Black Death that France lost a third of its population. Modern historians think it could be as high as 50%. And the same figures actually also apply in England. It’s somewhere between a third and a half of the population died. The population of France was some 16 million before the Black Death. And thus the population fell to something in the order 8 to 11 million after the Black Death. And that has consequences which we’ll talk about in a moment. So where did the Black Death come from? Well, it came from the East.

It specifically to France came on Italian Genoese ships to the Port of Marseille. And then it spread. But it originated much further east than Italy. It originated in Mongolia. And it is believed that it was in Mongolia where the Black Death actually began with the marmots in Mongolia, who infected the rats, and the rats have fleas, and it’s the fleas that jump onto humans and spread the Black Death. It arrived in Marseille in 1347, and it razed throughout France until 1352, moving from south to north. And in 1348, it crossed the channel to Dorset in England, to a little village called Melcombe Regis and spread through England. It didn’t reach Scotland. And it is said that the Scots said, “Oh well, you know why we haven’t got it. It’s because the English are so awful, so immoral, that God is punishing them. Of course we are quite different.” And then in 1349, of course, it reached Scotland. Because at the time they had no idea how it spread, no idea of its cause. And they thought it was a judgement of God brought upon the peoples of Europe because of their immorality. That’s what they thought. Well, we know different. And if any of you’ve been to Mongolia on holiday, you will have had a jab against the Plague or Black Death. It was recurring after the 1340s and '50s, it recurred periodically. And many of you know of the Plague of London in 1665. And it reached Marseille. For the last time, it was the last major outbreak in Europe, which surprise, surprise, was again in Marseille, as late as 1720. One of the interesting things about history, the history of medicine, is that we really advance not at all or hardly at all from the ancient world of the Greeks right through to, well, I was going to say the 19th century, but at least the mid-18th century, there were no advancements.

And you think of the advancements in medicine in our own lifetimes, everything is speeded up. But for centuries, medicine remained extraordinary. I mean, there were extraordinary things that people took to get themselves rid of the Black Death. None of them worked. Although the Italians discovered, the Venetians discovered, that if they, um, stopped ships or ships’ crews from coming ashore… They began with 30 days, that they couldn’t come ashore for 30 days. They then couldn’t come ashore for 40 days. They were put on an island and kept there. 40 days gives us the English word quarantine. And quarantine, of course, was a way through the problem. But at the time they didn’t know. This was a discovery. I mean, we now are told that some of the discoveries of how we are now dealing with COVID are applicable to other things as well. In particular maybe, I read a report that, maybe there can be a breakthrough in cancer treatment as a result of what we’ve learned in the COVID epidemic. And certainly, quarantine was the one thing that we learned through the Black Death. Would you just excuse me a moment? I’ve got somebody drilling and I can’t cope. Jen? Jennifer, can you ask someone to stop drilling?

• [Jennifer] Okay, I’ll go downstairs and I’ll say- Tell them .

• I’ve sent my other half downstairs to say, could they… They’re not meant to drill in these flats after five o'clock. So we’re in our rights to say. So this Black Death was a dreadful thing that swept across Europe. It was appalling. The ship that landed at Marseille actually went along the coast, unbelievably spreading it as it went along. The following year another part, another strain of the Black Death came directly to France by land. Again from Italy, and again from Genoa. Genoa is a great trading port with France. So, of course, there’s a lot of trade. And with the trade comes the Black Death. Well, the Church said it was a judgement of God, but ordinary people said, “Hang on, hang on. There’s nothing wrong with us. We are not immoral. So there must be another cause.” And they said in France, there are groups of people poisoning the wells and it’s the water from the wells that is causing the Black Death. Well, the truth of the matter is that they weren’t, of course, doing that. And it was just finding a scapegoat. And so they accuse all sorts of people. They accused beggars, they accused pilgrims, the people who are moving about spreading it. They accused invalids, of all people. But it won’t surprise many of you listening that in the end, they focused on the Jews. Antisemitism rife in mediaeval Europe. So it’s the Jews that are poisoning the wells.

And a very odd thing happened. Pope Clement the Sixth said, “You cannot, you cannot punish and persecute Jews. It’s nothing to do with the Jews. This is your immorality that has brought God to visit this plague on us. It’s nothing to do with the Jews.” That’s a very strange moment, if you like, in the history of mediaeval antisemitism. Moreover the Pope, Clement the Sixth, said, “All Jews across Europe are under my protection. They are not to be persecuted.” In terms of France, we have very, very scarce information about what happened to Jews during the Black Death. But we do know that there were some appalling incidents of mass murder of Jews. But actually it’s not perhaps so surprising because at the moment of the Black Death, Jews had been banned from France. So there was a limited number of Jews in France. But nevertheless those that were, were badly persecuted. They also said, “Well, you see, it must be the Jews because they aren’t getting sick like us.” Now, I’m sorry we aren’t in a classroom and I can ask you the question, why should that be? Why should the Jews not have caught the Black Death in as many numbers as the Christians were catching it? There has to be a reason, doesn’t there? Well, Cecil Jenkins in his book on France is very clear. And he says, well, what he writes is this, that the Jews didn’t catch Black Death because they were clean, because of ritual washing, which Christians didn’t do. Most mediaeval men and women, particularly the lower classes, were filthy.

You remember it was said of Queen Elizabeth the First that she had a bath, it either is she had a bath once a month, and some say it was that she had a bath once a year, whether she needed it or not, they said of Elizabeth. So you can imagine the state of ordinary people, it was foul. But Jews were not. And cleanliness, cleanliness is next to godliness, as the Victorians would say. And it certainly helped keep the Black Death at bay. There’s some add some facts about the Black Death. It’s estimated by French historians that Paris had about 200,000 inhabitants at the time of the Black Death. But by the end of it, by the start of it, 200,000; by the end of it, anywhere between 50 and 80,000 of that 200,000 were dead, buried in pits. They had to forego normal Christian burial and just dig big holes in the ground and throw the bodies in. Exactly the same as London did in the Great Plague of 1665. One record says in Paris: In the parish of the Church of Saint-Germain where we had figures, the mortality rate went up 50-fold. 50-fold! One French historian has written, Paris took two centuries to recover its population level to 14, 1560. Now in England, it took 200 years also. Oh, the 340- Well, 250 years. It took the same time in France, roughly 1350 through to about 1600. The same figure is given in England for the whole of England. This was a figure only for France. And France as a whole, whole of France, didn’t recover its pre-Black Death population until the time of the revolution in 1789, about 180, 170-odd years after England had recovered. Now why? Why is interesting?

We can explain Paris as only taking 200 years. Because many people in the rural France went to Paris to find work. Because in the aftermath of the Black Death, much of agricultural France lay bare. They did so in England as well. But our population recovered and France’s did not recover. And the reason I think is simply food. That there were recurring famines in France, whereas here in England there were not. And so we were better fed. The term of, hardly abuse, but the term of fun that the French use of the English, of les roast beef, has some historical basis in fact. Now we’ve done, we- Scientists have done much more research on the Black Death. When I was at school, we were told it was a bubonic plague. And we were told what happened. You came up in great blotches, buboes of black. They were horrible. And it was swollen and painful lymph nodes. They would appear under the arms first. They turned black, burst, and oozed. And in about half the cases, that was fatal. But it also had a second strain, which scientists now call the pneumonic plague. Bubonic, and the pneumonic. The pneumonic hit the lungs. And that could spread more easily between people. Well, were we not all told in all our countries not to cough over people, during the COVID epidemic to wear masks? It was the lungs, that the pneumonic plague. And there was virtually no hope of surviving that. You lived on average about three days once you caught it. But just think how bad COVID would have been if we had lived in the squalor of the Middle Ages.

And if we had no proper vaccination against it. We all would. Well, we would have lost a third, a half of the people. Absolutely the same. And it changed, the plague changed, in the way that COVID has changed. So, a lot of people have died. A lot of peasants have died. And for the first time in the Europe of the feudal system, strongly controlled by the 20%, also 10% of aristocrats, 10% entrepreneurs, business people, tradesmen; 10% aristocrats; 80 to 90% were peasants. And now there are a few of them. And they could make demands. In England, it led to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, where people were arguing that they must have freedom to work wherever they wanted. And England introduced subsequently the so-called Statute of Labourers, which allowed you to work. And so here am I on a farm and I’m the only one left. And the farmer offers me a farthing more an hour, or a day or whatever. And I say, “Get lost!” because the farmer down the road has offered me an extra ha'penny because he also doesn’t have people. And then we said, “I’m not sticking with this. I’ve had farming. I’m going to find a job.” And you went to a city and a town to be apprenticed. Because many of the masters were dead, the apprentices were dead. And if you were an apprentice, you had the chance, if your master had a daughter and no son, that’s the sort of app apprenticeship you wanted. A master with an attractive daughter and no son. So you chatted her up, married her, inherited the business. There was a real opportunity in England, not in France.

It looked as though France was going the same way as England. And there was a revolt in 1358 called the Jacquerie. J-A-C-Q-U-E-R-I-E, Jacquerie. Named after simply the French boy’s name, man’s name, Jacque. And Jacque was used like we would use the term like Tom or Dick or Harry. It was just a name, a generic name for a man; Jacque. And so as these peasants revolted, virtually all men, it was called the Jacquerie. And it was described by the French chronicler of the time, Jean Froissart. And Jean Froissart says: Certain people of the common villages, without any head or ruler, assembled together. In other words, the lord has died. So there’s no one around. In the beginning, they passed not a hundred in number. They said how the noblemen of the realm of France, knights and squires, shamed the realm. And that it should be a great wealth to destroy them all. And each of them said it was true, and said all with one voice, “Shame have he that cloth not his power to destroy all the gentlemen of the realm!” In other words, this is a working class revolution. We will have our own rights now! It’s an extraordinary moment in European history, in France, in England, in particular with the Peasants Revolt here in England and the Jacquerie in France saying, “We’re not going to be dominated by these aristocrats. We’re not going to be held in the feudal system, really pushed down with no or very, very few rights. And Froissart goes on: Thus they gathered together without any other counsel, and without any armour saving with staves and knives, and so went to the house of any knight dwelling thereby, and broke into his house and slew the knight and his lady and all his children great and small and burnt his house.

The rebellion spread across the whole of France. It was a extraordinary moment. And Jeremy Black writes this: The Jacquerie reflected the pressures on the rule economy and the desperation caused. The suppression of the Jacquerie by noble forces was in the end particularly brutal with many thousands of peasants slaughtered. And that moment of potential, might even use the word democracy, freedom, for the 80, 90% of the population. Didn’t work in France. It worked in England. It worked in England. Because, I think, it worked here, because trade in all its aspects was taking off in England by the end of the 14th century. We see the development of towns and cities. And being a relatively small country compared to France, people could walk to a big town or a big city pretty well in a day and find work. Now what about the peasants? Who were they? Well, we said they’re 80 to 90% of the population in France. Not much different in England either. A bit less. There were three categories of peasants. There were slaves. Now, if I’ve got a slave, I can do with him or her, whatever I want. It’s like owning a book. I can tear the book up, I can burn the book. I do what I like with the book. No one’s going to stop me. And so you could with a slave.

Now slavery died out in England shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066. It’s really difficult, well, impossible, to put a date or particular moment in time. It simply disappeared from the records. In France, in France, it continued on. But by legislation, slavery was banned in 1315, roughly 200 years after it had disappeared in England. Now, that left a second group of peasants who were not slaves but serfs. Now serfs were tied to a particular piece of land. They weren’t owned by the lord. In a sense, you could say, they were owned by the land. They could not leave the land. If the lord sold to another lord, they went with the land. They went with the land. They were in effect slaves in all but name. They had certain rights. But, of course, it depended upon your own lord if those rights were enforced. In 1318, Phillip the Fifth of France attempted to abolish serfdom. But it didn’t really- It didn’t really die out. Serfdom continued in France right into the 16th century. Whereas here, it pretty well died out within 50 years. There was no legislation, it simply died out after the Black Death. Because the feudal system broke at the time of the Black Death. In France, as well as in England. But in France, and this is why the history of England and France in the modern day is different; in France, they held on to what is often called a bastard feudal system, the seigneurial system. And that was an extraordinary thing. Seigneurialism, let me spell that. It’s one of these very difficult words, I think. S-E-I-G-N-E-U-R, seigneurism, I-S-M. A bastard feudalism dominated rural France and dominated rural France until the revolution of 1789. And what did it do?

The peasants, the free peasants, that’s the third category of peasants, serfs and slaves, forget about them; it’s now peasants who are free. The peasants were obliged to provide their lord with dues paid in cash or paid in produce, or paid in labour. One French historian has written: Where the system was strongest, the lord could hold a seigneurial court within his estate and passed legal judgments on peasants. And there were over 70,000 at its height in France. Could not happen in England. You went to a king’s court. The seigneur could also, in France, demand the corvee, C-O-R-V-E-E, the corvee. Now the corvee required each male peasant to provide several days of unpaid labour for the lord’s, seigneur’s work. He could be asked to work on the land to bring in crops, he could be asked to amend fences of the lord. He could be asked to amend roads and bridges or to repair the lord’s house. Nothing like that existed in England. This is part of the bastard feudal system. In some areas of France, a flour mill was owned by the lord; the great press was owned by the lord. And if anyone else wanted to use it, they had to pay the lord money. And in some places, only the lord could own males pigs or male cattle. So if the free peasants wanted to breed, to have a stud, they had to pay for it. None of that exists here in England. That is a big difference.

Why is it a difference? Because in 1789 in rural France, when everything gets blown up in the revolution, that is what they’re attacking, the seigneurial system; the lords keeping this bastard feudalism of mediaeval France into the late 18th century. And the way that it collapsed in the 18th century, so different from the way that it sort of simply died in England by about 1400, meant the history of English democracy and the history of French democracy part company. We part company largely because of the Black Death. Now I was never taught this at school, but it’s absolutely central to understanding the problems that Britain had in the European Union, for a start. We had abandoned feudalism by about 1400. The French continued this bastard, seigneurial feudalism up to 1789. It’s only the revolution that gets rid of it. So I’ve said something about war, I’ve said something about the plague, and I’ve said something about peasants. And it struck me that some of you might want to know about the Jews of France in this mediaeval period. And the story the Jews of France is, of course, entangled with European mediaeval antisemitism, of course, but it’s also a story of ups and downs. Ups and downs. Because Jews get blamed. Well, they get blamed because they’re charging interest usually on bank loans. And people don’t like paying off the loans. So they make all sorts of accusations, which we’re very familiar with, such as the blood libel against Jews to get rid of them. And having got rid of them, they then find that their economy is in trouble.

And so they invite them back again. Remember in the English stories more of you will be familiar with then the French, when Cromwell brings the Jews back in the end of the 1650s, he doesn’t do so on moral grounds. He does so on economic. He needs the Jews of Antwerp’s cash and their links to European cash. That’s what he’s doing. Oh, he dresses it up, that Christ can’t come again until there are Jews in every country of Europe or country of the world. Yeah, but that’s flannel. He wants the money. It’s always the money. And the trouble began in France for Jews in 1181 when the king of the time, Philip Augustus, threw Jews out of France. And then in 1198, nearly just under 20 years later, he brings Jews back. Why? Because the French economy is in trouble, that’s why! And so they come back in again. So that illustrates this out and in. And, of course, there’s always the Church’s argument that Jews were Christ killers. Louis the Ninth of France, who become Saint Louis, he is against the Jews because of usury. He condemned loans of interest. And he wanted to get rid of them, and does get rid of them. And moreover, it’s a nasty pogrom. In 1248 in Paris, they burnt some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other Jewish works. Louis went on crusade and was captured. And in 1251, the French decided to form an army in northern France to go and rescue the king captured by Muslims. But it was rather a long way to go to the Holy Lands and Palestine so why go there when you’ve got handy Jews in northern France?

Let’s just kill them instead. Because one of the worst aspects of the crusades, the war against Islam, is it also becomes a war against Jews because there aren’t Muslims to murder and massacre in Europe but there are Jews! And there are a number of examples in France and Germany of armies being created to go to the Holy Land to fight Islam and instead simply stay where they are and massacre their own Jews. And that is what happened in 1251 in France. And then comes the order from the Pope that Jews must be identifiable. And they introduced in the late 1260s, legislation in France which says that Jews must wear a red felt or cloth cut in the form of a wheel, four fingers in circumference, which has to attach the outer garment on their chest and on their back. And so the story simply goes on throughout the Middle Ages until in 1394, the Jews are finally expelled from France by Charles the Sixth September, 1394. It’s a similar story to all other European countries. And as all of you know, it’s an appalling story. It’s an appalling story here in England and in France. And we’re not through with appalling Jewish stories in France. We’re a long, long way, away from the Dreyfus affair, but we will come to that in due course. Now, I painted a picture of France, which I think is a picture of mediaeval Europe really. There’s very little difference between the countries.

I’ve noted the most important difference, which is the response to the Black Death in England and France. But we also note that the Church is a universal church at this state in Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church. And the Catholic Church dominates so much. There’s a book written in the 14th century by a French shepherd, and in that book he tells about castrating the sheep. And he says you can’t undertake castrating unless you’ve been to confession and confessed your sins. And then oddly, washed your mouth out with garlic. Now, what? I don’t understand that at all. But the business about having to be clean before you castrate the sheep, shows you the power of the Church. I mean, the same is true about the Church and women after childbirth. The Church controlled so many things and was so powerful. And the Church remains powerful in France right through to the revolution of 1789. Whereas in England, of course, by that time, we are Protestant in the Reformation and the Church’s hold on the country is far less than the Catholic Churches in France. So we’re beginning to see in the Middle Ages, and the end of the Middle ages, some of the differences that emerge between France and England. After all, because of the conquest of 1066 by the Duke of Normandy, we don’t have an English king who as his first language is English until Henry the Fourth opens parliament in 1400. 1066 to 1400, all the kings of England had as their first language, Norman French.

Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth’s predecessor who was murdered on Henry the Fourth’s orders, Richard the Second was so disliked in England because he was so dandified, which they associated with France. They even said that unlike the English, if he blew his nose, he used a handkerchief. Whereas everybody knew in England, if you blew your nose, you did it on your sleeve. So he must be a bit odd. But by 1400, by 1400, we are English. Now both countries by the end of the Middle Ages are one, but England is more of a nation state than France, largely, as we said last week, because of geography. And we had been since Saxon times. But France has been put together in a most awkward way really for the French kings to achieve. And by 1486 in the acquisition of Provence, the French kings have done it. And that lays the way forward in a France that didn’t embrace Protestantism, had no revolution as we did in the 17th century caused by Protestantism, but continued with a conservative Catholicism and a conservative rural economy, a very conservative economy in agriculture with less trade than in England. France, France was headed, despite the fact that it has, which we will come to in due course, the era of Louis the 14th, inevitably is going towards a revolution. Very different from the 17th century revolution in England.

But I have to talk to you before I finish about culture in the 12th and 13th centuries in France. The 12th and 13th centuries in Italy and in France and a bit in England, but England is not a, England has always been a cultural desert. It was called the Little Renaissance. The Renaissance is the 16th century, end of the 15th, 16th century coming from Italy. But this is the Little Renaissance. And we see things happen. Architecture changes from Romanesque architecture to Gothic architecture. And imported. Most of these ideas were imported into England. France also established universities. Paris in 1150, Montpelier in 1220, Toulouse in 1229 and Orleans in 1235. In other words, four mediaeval universities. England had two, Oxford and Cambridge. And only had two right through to the early 20th century. Ain’t it extraordinary? We are in this country backward in terms of education and we’re backward in terms of culture. And the writings in this Little Renaissance of the 12th and 13th century in France was remarkable. Not ecclesiastical writing, but secular. Secular vernacular literature. The chanson de geste, chivalric romance, and the troubadours from Provence. All those love poems and, oh, it was a cultured- But only for the top 10, 15% of the population.

There was even a musical revival based upon the Church of Notre Dame in Paris. Culture is one of the things the English associate with France. And culture was very much on the agenda in the Little Renaissances of the 12th and 13th century. Now, I’ve got about a minute to finish. And when I was preparing this, I thought, I don’t how to finish this. I’ve gone over all sorts of things, which I hope some of it was interesting. And I decided to give voice to one of the 80 to 90% of the peasants. And it was the peasant I mentioned just now, the Mediaeval Shepherd. He’s a man called Jean de Brie. And he wrote a book called "Le Bon Berger,” the Good Shepherd, published in English as “The Mediaeval Shepherd.” I put it on your book list. You can buy a copy of it. It’s not easy reading. And if you happen to be a sheep farmer, then read it. But I was reading and I thought, well, I won’t tell you about the castrating of the sheep and the role of the Church but at the end, he writes a poem. And the poem had two interesting things to say about people like me trying to teach history. He’s talking about teaching shepherdy to a new generation. But I think it applies equally to historians like me: The fool can teach the wise man, so don’t expect me to be absolutely on top of everything. The fool can teach the wise man. And then secondly, a text may have many interpretations. In other words, your view of some of the things I’ve said where it’s a matter of opinion, may not agree with mine. But that’s exactly what in 1379, a man who began as a humble shepherd, he went up the scale a bit, but he began as a humble shepherd, in his book on shepherdy says that every text can have many interpretations and a fool can teach a wise man. So wise men and women, that’s where I finish tonight. But I think there might be some questions to ask. Oh yes, there are. Hang on.

Q&A and Comments:

Right! Phil says, lovely weather for ducks. Yes, it is. Oh no, these aren’t ducks! They’re dodos. It’s an Oxford University tie because of the dodo in the museum.

“Agincourt was not expected by the English,” says Ed, “to be successful as they had less soldiers and have marched for weeks. Only the rain, the muggy field, and English with mercenary archers with better technology played into Henry the Fifth’s hands.” Yeah, they weren’t all mercenary archers. Many of the archers were Welsh. And when they’d fired their arrows, lay on the ground and took their knives out to slice the horses of the French cavalry.

Ed said, “I wish, or we wish, that Greta Thunberg was as effective as Joan of Arc.” Oh what a wonderful comment.

Q: What was the heresy of Joan of Arc?

A: Well, she heard voices, the voices of saints in heaven telling her what to do.

What? To a girl? She was a teenage, 19 when she died. To a girl? Bad enough it’d been to a man, but to a girl? Unthinkable! “Heresy!” they shouted, “A witch!” they shouted. But you could use those sorts of charges against anyone.

Anita said, “It’s at the bottom of the”- Oh, sorry. She’s obviously answered somebody’s question. Oh, right!

Adrian, well done. Jews were less affected by the Black Death because they changed clothes and bedding once a week. The Torah tells to drink from moving water, not from stagnant wells. Yep, I mean, it was just that the Jews were far cleaner in every way than the Christians. You mean they changed their clothes once a week? I mean, I change, I’m about to change my clothes for winter but once a week?

“The ritual washing of hands,” says Adril. Absolutely true.

Ed says, “Jews still have to wash hands and say the birkat. I’m sorry, I probably pronounce that wrong. I apologise. And not get distracted in- Oh, oops. Not get distracted, um, and not get distracted into doing anything else like talking until the blessing on eating, before eating bread.

Hazel says: Niall Ferguson’s book, "Doom,” has a lot of fascinating information about the spread and reach of the Black Death. There are lots of books on the Black Death, and oddly enough, none that I can discover on France, specifically, in English.

The feudal system ended due to the lack of serf who died in the Black Death. Workers now could demand wages. Exactly! That’s why, um- That’s exactly what happened in England. But in France, they held onto it with the seigneurial system.

Q: Did the nobility die in as great a number as the peasantry?

A: Oh, that’s a very good question. No one, like, as far as I know, I’ve never seen any figures on that. But basically, it didn’t spare anyone. And, um, the Pope in Avignon managed to go into the countryside and saved himself. And there are royalty that died but perhaps not so many. They were able to escape into the countryside and pretty well, therefore, go into quarantine. There was a lovely anecdote. Who was it? Dennis. There’s a lovely anecdote about the late British politician journalist, Woodrow Wyatt. When he was mocked by a Frenchman about his strange surname, he replied it is W as in Waterloo, Y as in Ypres, A as in Agincourt, T as in Trafalgar, twice. I hadn’t heard that. Denis, that’s fantastic! I shall now remember that. I shall use it.

Q: Carol says, “How and why did slavery disappear?”

A: We don’t know why slavery disappeared. It simply did. There were slaves in Saxon England because, we know that, of course, but specifically do we know it because the “Doomsday Book” tells us. The “Doomsday Book” produced in 1086. It simply died out. Now, one of the reasons given, which seems, I think is probably true, is the Normans. Remember that the Normans were Viking. Now in Normandy, there wasn’t slavery. Vikings didn’t keep slaves. In the north of England, there’s very little evidence of slavery, which is Viking England compared to southern England, Saxon. So it’s the effect of the Vikings through William of Normandy.

Sandy says, “Would that the heroes of the pandemic might have the same freedom of employment and remuneration as the survivors of the Black Death? Or maybe just hasn’t happened yet. Big system changes.”

Yes. David, you’re right.

Q: Was the seigneurial system transferred to the colonies?

A: Yes! The French took it with them. So you can blame the Quebecois.

I didn’t say that. Yes, they did. To what the French called New France in both America. But that was a limited importance. But particularly in Canada.

Catherine says, “My husband’s family fought on opposite sides at Agincourt. Cousin versus cousin, almost like a civil war.” Yes, of course. Because, I take it, Catherine, your family must be terribly posh on both the French and the English side. Because that would be why. They’d be aristocracy rather than- It’s not going to be people like me carrying their longbows into the battle. It’s going to be someone on a horse speaking very posh, and, “Oh my God, there’s my cousin! I’ll have to go and kill him.” A

bigail says, “In my 1970s history in England, I was taught that due to the Black Death killing so much of the population, the peasants can negotiate for better wages and freedom.” Absolutely right, that is absolutely what happened. But you have to look at the difference in France, that they held on to their seigneurial system.

Q: Do I have a reason for the attraction to dodos?

A: Um no. Well, only because I’m an Oxford man. Nothing else than that.

Q: Peter says, hello Peter, “The Christian world disapproved of usury, so how was it possible to borrow money for investment if loans were not available when Jews were expelled?”

A: Well very interesting, Peter, in the case of France. When they threw the, finally threw the Jews out, they still had the Knights Templar. Now, the Knights Templar were the big bankers of Europe. They did not charge interest. They merely charge what my bank calls an administrative fee, which just happened to be the same percentage amount as the interest charged by Jews. So the Christians got round it by not calling it usury. So yes, you’ve borrowed a hundred pounds off me, Peter. You now owe me 110 pounds. And you say, “But that’s usury!” “No,” I said, “it’s for the administrative costs that I’ve incurred.” That’s how they got round it. But the importance of your question is, the year after the French expelled all the Jews, they expelled the Templars too. And in expelling the Templars, they got the whole of Europe to ban the Templars. And in the end, the Pope disbanded the Knights Templar. And they said all sorts of things, rather like the things they said about Jews in terms of the blood libel, they said in terms of the Templars, that they were all homosexual. And oh, there was a whole range of things, all of which were largely untrue. But it was all so that people, in particular, the king of France and others, did not have to pay large amounts of money when they had borrowed so much from the Templars and from the Jews. So in this respect, it isn’t just a Jewish persecution, it’s a Templar persecution. They killed them, they burnt them. They burnt the leader of the Jews, oh, of the Templars in Paris, who put a curse on the monarchy of France. And they all said, when Louis the 16th was executed, guillotined, that it’d all come true.

Q: Was there an Inquisition in England?

A: No.

Q: If Jews had to wear special dress, could that separation be part of the reason why Jews died less in the Black Death?

A: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that- Actually, wearing the dress doesn’t continue. Some of these laws sound awful, but in practise, they were simply ignored. No, I don’t think so. I think all, everyone who’s talked about Jewish cleanliness, that’s the answer.

Alfred in the Yona, “Contemporary revolutions occurred in southern Europe. Consider the revolt of the wool workers in Tuscany, the result of the Ciompi in the 1378, but that led to the rise of the money class, the Medicis, among others; a new nobility.” Yes, and what happened in England is that these young men, and it’s men, moving into towns and cities, create a middle class. Now the middle class in England really takes off in Tudor England with Protestantism. But it began back here, as a direct result of the Black Death.

Mike says, “When the Normans came, many Anglo-Saxons went to Constantinople. Trade between Constantinople and England thrived.” Yes, they did. They went into service, many of them, as a Varangian Guard, as it was called, of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople. They also went to the north, they went to Scotland. They went to further north into sort of places like Norway.

Ronnie says, “French was a written language in 850, but English took till Chaucer.” No, that’s not true. Old English, which is Anglo-Saxon, was being written way, way back in times in 600s and 700s, Old English. When the Normans arrived, Old English, Saxon, and Norman, in roughly speaking 1300, the time of Chaucer, which you mentioned, merges into what is called Middle English. Middle English turns into Modern English under Shakespeare, and the Bible in English in the 16th century. So we move from Old English, to Middle English, to Modern English. And we still retain a large amount of French words. So one of the things that’s important is that in England- Why English is such a useful language internationally, is that there are so many words for the same thing, with slight differences in meaning. And that is because we have access to the Saxon word and to the Norman word. And it’s really a very interesting study. When things go wrong, we turn to Saxon. When we’re in love, we turn to Saxon. So when things go wrong, I drop a book on my- Oh, fucking hell! It’s Saxon. Pardon the language, but it’s Saxon. When I see my wife afterwards, I say, “Darling, what are we having for dinner this evening?” She’ll say, “What’s wrong with you?” But darling is an absolutely Saxon word. Other words, there are some very interesting differences. I haven’t time to go into them but they are very interesting. The Saxons didn’t have cultured words for food. They just had food, I think really. But we adopted French words. So we eat beef, boeuf. And not eat oxen. We eat, um, um, we eat pork, um, not pig. Le porc, the pig. We adopt French words for food.

Ed says, “France had a very strong Protestant force against Catholics post-Middle Ages violence, et cetera, under Catherine de’ Medici and her sons, until Henry the Fourth.” That’s the story I should be coming to.

I can’t answer, Nanette, your question about Jewish names, but I will come to that story in due course. And somebody else has, thank you, Joy, has answered it.

Yes, Irene, you’re right. It’s only in the 19th century, as I said, that we get a challenge to the monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge.

Q: How did a shepherd come to be literate?

A: Well, that’s a longer story than I’ve got time to tell. But he was taken up by his local lord. He became a, what we might describe as a secretary. Got promotions. He learned to read and write.

Q: Where do I place Chaucer in terms of English culture?

A: Oh, in terms of European mediaeval culture, very high. English culture is a bit of a oxymoron. No, I’m being very naughty. I’m pressing the wrong button. Where? How far can I go? I think I may have a few more that I can just get in.

Where are we? Thank you for liking the talk.

Mike says, “Words with intonations give a truer meaning. This is difficult from the written word.” Yeah, that’s an interesting thought, Mike.

Susan, “There’s so many interesting things people say that I wish we could go on for hours if not days.”

Q: Rosemary, “Understood why Jews’ useful when countries needed money, but otherwise are they usually just used as scapegoats?”

A: You could put it like that. I think it would be quite difficult to argue against that, although, yeah, I think it would be quite difficult to argue against that.

Yes, Judith, why I’m talking about England is because we’re familiar with English history and it gives us a reference point to look at French history. And, of course, today was very much English and French history.

Peter, I like that. I was always told the difference between English and French history, that in English history, Joan of Arc heard voices, in inverted commas; in French history, she merely heard voices. Well, yeah.

“Queen Isabella was,” says Claire, “was instrumental in the expulsion of Sephardic Jews.” It’s the Sephardic Jews in France, by the way.

There’s been a recent book on Sephardic cooking, French Sephardic cooking. I suspect some of you saw that being reviewed in the press. Oh! That’s interesting, Harriet.

Many Jews were less affected by the Black Death due to carrying a genetic variation which increased susceptibility to certain diseases such as Crohn’s. Now that, I don’t know. That is very- I told you, it’s a fool teaching wise people.

Q: Could it also be that as a community, Jews were not as integrated?

A: No, no, no. They all lived cheek by jowl anyhow. You couldn’t- No, no. I don’t think that’s true.

Norman says, “What I understand is, Louis the Ninth is so revered in France, it seems that his obsession with his Christian religion makes him a religious hero. But his antipathy towards Jews seems to be ignored even today.” Well yes, true. Can’t argue against that.

Q: Jeff. Oh, did I say- I’m sorry, Jeff. That’s Irene’s question. Did I say a universe in the 20th century?

A: I did, of course, mean the 19th century. Yes, absolutely right. Sorry, that was a slip of the tongue.

Q: Where did the slaves come from?

A: Well, you were born a slave. In terms of England, there were slaves which were slaves all the way through from Saxon England into Norman. But there was an import of slaves from Irish. Slaves were brought into the port of Bristol. And that’s horrible because Bristol is later the slave port in the age of the slave trade. But at that time, it was Irish. A Saxon house versus a Norman mansion.

Q: Will I do a session on the progression of the English language?

A: No. I’m sorry, Martin, I won’t. Because I’m outside of my comfort zone. But there may be someone who can do that, I will pass that on to Trudy.

Q: Any connection with many churches called the Home of the Good Shepherd?

A: No, it was, Christ was meant to be the shepherd of his flock, that’s all that comes from.

Thelma, um, thank you.

Oh, Helen says, “Stop denigrating English culture.” Well, that’s the educator in me. English education is hardly comparable to most of Europe, sadly. But that, you are absolutely right. Of course there’s Chaucer, of course there’s Shakespeare. There is English culture. It simply passes most people by. No, no, no. I have a- There’s a chip on my shoulder, you can say. You don’t have to take- What about Spenser, et cetera, Milton. Yes. All the-

And Ed says, “Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.” Yeah. No, they were using the language of the day. People knew what shepherds did. Shepherds looked after their flocks. And that is what God or a rightful king should do, to look after their people. Like a shepherd looks after his flock. Slaves were captured enemies. Not- Well, they could be. But yeah, they could be. Particularly if they weren’t Christian. So if there were Muslims captured in the Pyrenees area, yes they could be enslaved.

Jerry said, “Let’s replace the chips on shoulder.” If I didn’t have, if I didn’t say these things, you’d all have nothing to criticise. And you must have something to criticise, for goodness’s sake! If you don’t criticise my clothes, you can criticise, much better to criticise what I’ve said. But in truth, in truth, England has not been seen in the same light in European culture as France and Italy and Ancient Greece. That just is fact. It doesn’t mean to say we are culture-less. But if, as it’s always said, one historian said, if in 100 years’ time, people are asked, when all the countries in Europe have disappeared for one reason or another, what did England ever do for the world? And the answer is, it gave them cricket and football. And I think there’s a lot worse things that a country can give. But culture, it wouldn’t be high on the list of what the English themselves would say. But we won’t go down there.

• Thank you-

• Just enjoy my chip and get onto something else.

Thank you all so- I’ve got to finish. I’ve got to finish. Sorry! Thank you all for listening and thank you all for your wonderful comments, critical and otherwise. All welcome! Thanks very much indeed.