Last modified: 2003-01-18 by ivan sache
Keywords: hundred years' war | guerre de cent ans | charles vii | joan of arc | jeanne d'arc | cross (white) |
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The Hundred Years' War is the generic name given to a succession of Anglo-French conflicts. The troubles started when Edward III of England, grand-son of King of France Philippe IV le Bel, claimed the throne of France.
Edward III attacked France and defeated King Philippe VI de Valois in Crécy (1346), and seized Calais (1347). Philippe VI's successor, Jean II le Bon, was defeated and captured in Poitiers (1356), and had to sign the treaty of Brétigny (1360), by which a quarter of the Kingdom of France was annexed by England.
During the second half of XIVth century, King of France Charles V and Constable Du Guesclin expelled the English from most of France. In 1380, only Guyenne and Calais were still under English control.
Under the reign of Charles VI, the civil war between the House of Orléans and Duke of Burgundy, as well as Charles VI's insanity, helped the English to reconquer the lost territories. After the battle of Agincourt (1415), the treaty of Troyes imposed the deposition of Charles VI and the regency of King of England (1420).
In 1429, Joan of Arc seized Orléans and crowned King Charles VII in Reims. She was caught in Compiègne and burnt at the stake in Rouen in 1431. However, the English were defeated in Formigny (1450) and Castillon (1453), and expelled from France. They only kept Calais, which was given back to France in 1558 only.
Ivan Sache, 22 December 2001
Jeanne was not canonised until 1920, so there is no question of
her flag being associated with sainthood -- at least not officially.
The white cross and fleur de lis of France are attributed to her and
Charles VII. She approached the King with her vision and plan for
liberating France from the English, and thereafter led her troops in
battle with a personal heraldic standard. She carried it personally
and did not actually fight. After relieving the siege of
Orléans in May 1429 , she carried
her standard at the coronation of King Charles at Reims. She was
apparently carrying it when she was wounded at the St. Honoré
gate of Paris in September 1429.
I am not sure how much of this is legend, or if anybody really knows
what the standard looked like. (I have seen representations that were
almost all white, and others that contained a lot of colour.) It
allegedly contained the words "Jesus, Maria" and fleurs de
lis, and perhaps other religious motifs like angels. The white
cross(whether or not it was included on her standard) was intended to
be a contradiction of the English red cross, meaning that England was
subject to France and not vice versa, and the multiple fleurs de lis
represented the unity of the disparate parts of France.
You can see three renditions of Joan's banner here. The text strikes me as a somewhat crude religious apologetic and historically unreliable. It states that no contemporary likeness of Joan drawn from life exists, Anyway, the line drawing showen on that page was drawn in 1429 by Clément de Fauquebergue, scribe of the Parliament of Paris, as a margin doodle in his entry in the chronicle for the siege of Orléans. It is the only portrait of Joan from her lifetime, but Clement never met her and did it from his imagination.
At her trial in 1431, Joan described the banner in her own
words:
"I had a banner of which the field was sprinkled with lilies; the
world was painted there, with an angel at each side; it was white of
the white cloth called boccassin; there was written above it,
I believe, 'JHESUS MARIA;' it was fringed with silk."
I don't think any other reliable evidence of the banner survives, so it is pretty much up to artistic interpretation. Some of her relics were allegedly preserved, but what purported to be her banner was burned during the French Revolution.
"Mrs. Oliphant" in Jeanne d'Arc (1926) interestingly
writes:
"A repetition of this banner, which must have been copied from age to
age, is to be seen now at Tours." (p. 62).
I have found no more recent corroboration that such a banner existed,
nor a description of it as it allegedly existed in 1926.
Mary Milbank Brown in The Secret History of Jeanne d'Arc
(1962) depicts the crest from the coat of arms of Charles du Lys
(1612), which shows a waist-up figure of Joan on the helm with a
sword in one hand, and her banner in the other. The banner is very
different from other depictions in that it is a true vexillum
- with at the top a seated Virgin Mary flanked by two angels, two
fleurs de lys above the angels, and three fleurs de lys in the field
below this scene.
Brown claims that the King granted arms to Joan's brothers and
ennobled them with the name "du Lys". She writes about the 1612
crest:
"This armorial design ... is important because on it is preserved
what may be regarded as the authentic standard of the Maid, all
others having been legendized to misrepresent her true matriarchical
convictions. In this vexillum the figure of the Great
Matriarch, Isis-Maria, sits supremely alone on the throne, holding in
her left hand the vesicular representation of her organ of
generation, and in her right hand the symbol of the fleur-de-lis
which in ancient times was ever the bird. The two fleur-de-lis at the
top of her standard represent figuratively the two breasts;
primitively the ideograph for breast was merely the sign of the Greek
cross as tetrardic footprint of the dove or pigeon, placed over each
mammary protuberance. Immediately below, the two fleur-de-lis are
preserved in their ornithic significance as 'angels', that is, birds
in human winged form, kneeling in adoration to the Queen of Heaven.
The three fleur-de-lis in the lower half of the standard, omitted in
the other du Lysian coats-of-arms, represent the kingdom of the
Ile-de-France. The two sections of the banner symbolize (1) the
Church of Gaul of Virgin Mary-worship in superior position to (2) the
Kingdom of the Ile-de-France in subservient station, but with both
the ecclesial and thronal halves as one kingdom politically. The
later legendized standards of her proselytizing show God the Father
seated upon the throne supported by two masculine saints replacing
Goddess the Mother and her two angels." (p. 441)
Marina Warner in Joan of Arc (1981) implies that all this
is nonsense, writing:
"In 1612, a certain Jean du Lys petitioned the king, then Louis XIII,
that as the principal branch of the family of Joan of Arc had died
out, he might take over their coat of arms, the lilies of France. He
claimed that he bore the cadet branch's arms, a shield azure with a
golden bow, set with three arrows. This is the first mention anywhere
of any such armorial bearings, and when Louis allowed Jean du Lys to
quarter them with lilies, he authenticated in retrospect a coat of
arms that was entirely spurious. But then the claim itself was
hollow, since no descendants of Joan of Arc's brothers have ever been
traced by genealogists." (p. 194)
In other descriptions of the banner, it is said to include Jesus and Mary together, and Jesus alone holding in his hands the world.
In short, there does not seem to be a reliable reconstruction of Joan's banner even though her judges at her trial were obsessed with its possible heretical nature and alleged powers of witchcraft.
A rendition of the Ingres painting (XIXth century) of Joan at the coronation of Charles VII can be seen here. I don't know much about the painting, but I would guess that Ingres deliberately showed little detail of the banner rather than make a statement that could be interpreted as the definitive version.
T.F. Mills, 15 September 1998
![[Unidentified French banner]](../images/f/fr_cvii.gif)
by Ivan Sache
In the maedieval castle of La Roche-Guyon, located ca. 50 km west of Paris, are presented some illustrations of the eventful history of the place. La Roche-Guyon is located on the Seine river, close to the former border between the kingdom of France and the duchy of Normandy. It was the most important part of a fortification line built by the kings of France to protect Paris from invasions coming from the sea.
During the Anglo-French Hundred Years' War, the castle was
disputed between the belligerents, but was never captured but by
betrayal or negociation.
In 1449, the castle was given back by the English to his French owner
Guy de la Roche. An illustration from Vigiles du feu roi Charles
septième (Vigils of the late King Charles VII) shows the
French garrison entering the castle, holding very long forked
banners. The banners are horizontally divided green over red, and
have a thin white Greek cross near the hoist. The cross is not
exactly vertically centered, since its horizontal arms lies on the
red stripe.
Green, white and red were the colours of the livery of Charles VII
(1403-1461), a.k.a. the King of Bourges,
who was King of France in 1449. Therefore, the banners seen on the
plate might be related to Charles VII.
Ivan Sache, 19 August 2000