Black Rider presents The Diamond & the Thief – April 11
…and now on to the April edition of our minizine as if in a glass darkly.
In this edition Ali Alizadeh starts talking La Pucelle-blues straight outta Orléans.
Look homeward, angels!
Jeremy
The Black Rider
By Ali Alizadeh
Late-Medieval France. Six hundred years ago
not a nation-state republic with a tricolour flag
but a kingdom, two thirds the size of the modern
country, flanked by autonomous fiefdoms and duchies
comprising castles, fortresses, villages and towns
with timber-framed dwellings, muddy alleyways
and no subterranean sewers, no hospitals or restaurants
but prominent bluestone cathedrals, convents, belfries
and inns amid clusters of stunted, dark hovels. No
intimation of the coming industrialisation. Carriages
fastened to lethargic horses, monks on grey donkeys
and demure women side-saddling in long ochre gowns
mostly cotton. Laced cloaks and floral embroidery
indicate wealth. Noble faire ladies delight in
plumed conical headwear. Women of Gentry squeeze
their hair under tight-fitting caps. Peasant women
either cover their heads with nun-like veils
or, if unmarried, wear out their dry, tangled plaits;
coated with a pair of scabrous kirtle tunics worn
on top of each other. Men in leggings, pointy shoes
and, if wealthy, jackets with flowing sleeves and fox-
skin collars. Some carry swords. In the country they
brandish scythes, spit regularly, noisily. Can you see
this early, pre-Modern world? The Peasants, unlike their serf
Dark Ages ancestors, are Free Farmers, even privileged
due to population shortage; much needed by the Nobility
and the landed Gentry. Merchants and artisans also
prosper. Knights joust, hunt and drain flagons of wine, their
wives enjoy hand-copied, illustrated books of courtly
Romance and chivalrous love. Beautiful France,
the wealthiest realm in Western Christendom
thriving after the blights and chaos of her early history.
But unforeseen disaster: in 1392 King Charles VI
of Valois Dynasty, monarch of France perspires
profusely, feels hot, breathes heavily, halts
his horse during a ride through the forests of Le Mans
in Brittany. Then the accident of one of his men hitting
a shield with a lance. The high-pitched noise startles
the feverish King: “Traitors! They want to deliver me
to my foes!” His rattled Royal Highness unleashes
his sword and slices up two of his page boys before
being detained and declared officially, undeniably
unhinged. No, I’m not inventing any of this. His wife
Queen Isabeau announced regent but young, susceptible
to the influence of various Nobles. Duke Louis of Orléans
and Duke Jean of Burgundy, the region’s mightiest
feudal lords compete over the Queen’s affections. In 1407
charismatic Duke of Orléans, rumoured to have seduced
the Queen, found decapitated in a murky alleyway in Paris;
his rival Duke of Burgundy accepting responsibility
publicly. Justification of the assassination: tyrannicide
‘for the good of the Kingdom’ to protect the court from
the dead Duke’s ‘Satanic’ charm. Hence the outbreak
of clashes between the men-at-arms of the Duke of Burgundy
and those of the slain Nobleman. With the Queen terrified
and further deterioration of the King’s sanity, no one
can prevent the eruption of a factional war. There is news
of atrocities, castles set on fire, violated servants. Some
criticise the Queen’s cowardice, others advocate
the accession of a strongman to terminate hostilities
and restore order. Then from across the Channel
Henry V agile and energetic new King of England
declares his benign intention to come to the rescue of
‘his beloved France’. August 1415: English armies invade.
This is the scene of our epic: the English attack. They
overrun Normandy, besiege Harfleur. Their intrepid King
Henry’s pet names for the two largest cannons used for
battering the city: King’s Daughter and London. He
grunts: ‘War without fire, fucking bland like a sausage
without sauce’. Cherished English gunners bombard,
conquer and march north. They take Calais. Their firepower
surpasses the defenders’ expectations. Where is
France’s defence force? Shocked by the speed and skill
of the English aggression, French Nobles reluctantly
stop their quarrels to fight the illegal invasion. Duke
Charles of Orléans, son of the murdered Duke Louis and
the mad King’s oldest son, the current Dauphin, lead
the elite of French cavalry under the Oriflamme, the heraldic
banner of French Kingdom. They intercept the English near
a fort, Agincourt. 24 October, morning: Duke Charles signals
to the fanfare. The howls of trumpets and armoured horses
and metal-encased riders, couched lances, sharpened
swords. The muddy ground quakes – muddy, since
it rained copiously the previous night. Stationary, the stern
English bowmen. Their longbows supremely lethal
advanced ballistic weapons: ready to shoot Welsh arrows
at 200 feet per second at a force of 100 pounds per
arrow. French horsemen roll towards the English barbican
burdened by dynastic, reinforced steel Coats of Arms,
their steeds’ hooves bogged in the sludge of the battle-
field. They curse and glance at the flags of the up-and-coming
British Empire reverberating above the hill, the blood red Cross
of Saint George. King Henry grins, nods and gargantuan waves
of Welsh arrows dim the sky. Steel breast-plates and helmets
of proud French knights, perforated by the medieval equivalent
of machineguns. 5,000 of them shot dead. French army is erased.
Yes, reader; carnage continues. By King Henry’s order
English archers slit the throats of wounded French
warriors on the field. The Codes of Chivalry for ‘humane
treatment of prisoners of combat’ annulled by the victorious.
With the most advanced siege engines and mammoth
projectiles, the English sack the cities of western France in
swift succession: Caen, Bayeux, Alencon and Cherbourg
and press on to the centre of the duchy of Normandy, Rouen,
a city the size of London. King Henry decides on ‘total
siege’: the city’s trade routes, food supplies, water conduits
blocked by the English. Hunger forces out the city’s poorest,
about 12,000. The English open fire: filled with arrows
thousands of frayed civilians fall and fester as the surviving
die of starvation and cold during the winter – one of the
worst mass killings of Medieval Europe. Some say 60,000
of Rouen’s 70,000 population perish until its gates creak
open to King Henry: Paris is now within his reach. There,
Europe’s greatest city, anxiety and horror. The ghastly English
are coming! King Charles still mad, incapacitated, the Queen
indecisive as ever. Adroit Duke of Burgundy acts: on 28 May
1418. To cleanse the French court of the rival faction of
the Duke of Orléans, Burgundian militias, execution squads
storm the Louvre Castle. The French Royal family escapes
the castle’s corridors and the city’s streets littered with 5,000
hanged, beheaded and naked corpses. Duke of Burgundy self-
declared as Regent of France and Master of Paris. But
the young Crown Prince, Dauphin Charles, lures the ruthless
power-hungry Duke to a secret parley on a bridge over
the Seine: the Burgundian warlord’s head is crushed with
an axe. This: the formal declaration of war between the French
Royal House and the powerful Duchy of Burgundy: English
invasion precipitates a horrific tribal, civil war in France.
The English call this the gifts of freedom and democracy
the Westminster System of Government, the brilliant
political model born of the Magna Carta, the curtailment
of the Monarch’s power through a Parliament. Their aim
they say, to liberate, democratise the oppressed French. But
they are all too aware that their own island lacks landmass for
a growing population. French soil alluvial, the most fertile
in Western Europe. In this pre-industrial Age of Agriculture
fruitful earth means ‘brown gold’. Hence the English name
the French an ‘inferior race’ – ‘frogs’. Such precious terrain
should be inhabited by superior and progressive Anglo-
Saxons, not the lazy, pleasure-seeking Latins. So the English
storm through northern France. Cities bombarded, civilians
starved, slaughtered. In Melun monks and Scottish ‘traitors’
executed without trial by King Henry. Governor of Meaux
hanged from an elm by the ‘benevolent’ conquerors. Thirty
miles from Paris in Montereau, sixteen French prisoners
beheaded by the English. Henry’s army at the gates of a Paris
governed by the rebel Duke of Burgundy. Will he resist
the predatory invaders? December 1419: Philippe, new Duke
of Burgundy meets with Henry V of England. He prostates
and proposes to form a coalition against the ‘terrorist’ Crown
Prince of France, murderer of the previous Burgundian
patriarch. Paris opens to the English. Hordes of exhausted
bowmen in round helmets and red surcoats emblazoned with
black crosses enter the streets, crowd the taverns and terrorise
women. May 1420: the Treaty of Troyes between King
of England, Duke of Burgundy and the terrified Queen of France.
French Princess Catherine given to the English King. Decreed that
their child will be the joint ruler of the Kingdoms of England
and France. Celebrations in London. Shame in Paris. King Henry
burps, rubs his hands, mutters: “Mission accomplished.”
Past editions shelf