A royal family feud turned France into a bloody battlefield for twenty-eight years
The Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War was not merely a dynastic struggle between two branches of the French royal family. It was a clash of economic systems and political visions that paralyzed France during the Hundred Years' War, ultimately forcing the nation to choose between internal unity and English domination.
The conflict ignited in 1407, rooted in the mental instability of King Charles VI and the resulting power vacuum. Two factions emerged: the House of Orléans, led by the king's brother Louis I, and the House of Burgundy, led by John the Fearless. While Louis relied on royal treasury funds, John represented the interests of Flanders and the merchant class, whose livelihoods depended on English wool. Their rivalry escalated from courtly maneuvering to open violence when John orchestrated the assassination of Louis on a Paris street in November 1407.
This murder shattered the peace, launching a twenty-eight-year civil war. John the Fearless justified the killing as a necessary act of tyrannicide, securing support from the Parisian population and the university. In response, the Armagnacs—named after their new leader Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac—recruited brutal mercenary bands known as the Écorcheurs. The war turned increasingly desperate as both sides courted English intervention, with the Armagnacs even ceding territory to Henry IV to prevent an Anglo-Burgundian alliance. The chaos allowed Henry V to exploit French divisions, culminating in the devastating French defeat at Agincourt in 1415.
The cycle of vengeance reached a grim milestone in 1419 when John the Fearless was himself assassinated during a meeting with the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. This act pushed the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, into a formal alliance with the English, leading to the 1420 Treaty of Troyes, which effectively disinherited the French crown. It was not until 1435 that Charles VII, following the momentum of Joan of Arc’s 1429 campaign, secured the Treaty of Arras. By granting Philip the Good significant concessions, Charles finally ended the civil war, allowing France to consolidate its strength and eventually expel the English from all continental holdings except Calais by 1453.
Source: Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War
