A Duke Murdered in the Streets of Paris

this podcast and make an appearance. I don't want to spoil more than that, but if you like this podcast, I really think you'll like it. It's called Immortality, a love story, let's see. Other than that, if you want to support our show, you can do that at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. We have merch that I've linked in the episode description and as always, just thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Paris, fourteen o seven.

On a cold November night, Jacquette Griffard was putting her baby to bed on the top floor of their house on the Ruviet de tomp around her residents of the city were settling in, Torches were extinguished, and doors were being barred against the chilled night air. From the street below her, Jacques could hear the clip clap of a mule's hoofs She peered out of her window and saw a small party traveling toward her, a nobleman at its center, singing merrily. She watched the group for a minute and

then turned back to her baby. Suddenly she heard a cry from the street. Kill him, Kill him, A man shouted. Jacquette ran back to the window and looked down in horror as a group of masked men emerged from the shadows and set upon the nobleman and his party. A man in a red hood swung his axe at the nobleman, severing his hand and knocking him to the ground. The noblemen looked frantically around him. Two of his attendants had abandoned him in their fright, another two had been carried

away by their spook horse. Two more had tried to defend their lord, only to be brought down by the mob. The nobleman was alone, surrounded by assailants. Blood gushed from the stump of his wrist as he crouched pitifully on the ground. What is this, he pleaded, What are you doing? The masked men said nothing, just closed in, slashing him with their swords and axes. They meant to kill him, but they took their time with it, dealing the nobleman painful,

not fatal blows. Blood sprayed the street. Jacquette stood frozen at her window, holding her baby as one man raised his axe and brought it down on the nobleman's head, splitting his skull nearly in half, sending part of his brain into the gutter. Shocked out of her silence, Jacquet screamed from her second story window. Murder, murder. She didn't know it then, but she had just witnessed one of the worst crimes of medieval France, a brutal act that

would lead to civil war. Because the noblemen who now lay dead in the street, oozing blood, missing teeth and a hand and part of his brain was Louis, Duke of Orleans, brother of the King of France. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. Close relatives of royals are often powerful figures in society, but rarely more so than during the reign of King Charles the sixth of France. Since thirteen ninety two, Charles had suffered bouts of severe

mental illness, rendering him unable to rule. For more on Charles's specific problems, including periods of believing he was made of glass, you can listen to our episode Charles, the Beloved, the Mad, the Fool. You might recall a sad story we talked about in that episode from before Charles's descent into madness, where he and some of his men dressed

up as wild men for a costume ball. Unfortunately, their costumes were extremely flammable, and when the king's brother leaned in with a torch to get a better look at them, the men went up in flames. The king survived, but four of his friends did not. Years later, the king would fall into the madness that incapacitated him as a ruler.

During the king's absences, control of the country fell to his closest relatives include his uncles, the Dukes of Barry, Burbant and Burgundy, and his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, who happened to have been the one with the torch leaning in on that fateful night during the ball of the Burning Men. For most of the thirteen nineties. The most prominent of these men controlling France was the Duke

of Burgundy, a man called Philip the Bold. A commanding character, Philip had earned his nickname thanks to his bravery in battle when he was just fourteen. Now middle aged, Philip controlled unparalleled wealth and land, and used his position on the King's Council as his uncle to take even more. Philip wasn't alone in this self interested approach to ruling. Being on the King's Council gave all of the dukes the power to enrich themselves, and they didn't hesitate to

do so. Many of them had served on Charles's Regency Council during the first years of his reign, since the king had been crowned at the young age of eleven, and they had suffered during the years between charles coming of age and his first episode of mental illness, a period during which Charles, as a lucid king, brought on new advisers who advocated for a more equitable distribution of wealth.

These policies had won Charles the love of his subjects, but not long after he first fell ill in thirteen ninety two, they were reversed by the Dukes, who resumed their earlier program of raiding the treasury and using their

ill gotten gains to bribe government officials. France was in a precarious position given it to ongoing war with England at this point, whereabout sixty years into the Hundred Years War, but instead of seriously defending their country, the Dukes used the war as a pretext for raising taxes and reaping the profits. By the late thirteen ninety the Dukes were all enormously rich, that is, except for the King's brother Louie. Unlike their uncles, Louis had struggled to assert himself in

the Royal Council. He was also disliked by much of French society, especially because of his role as guy who brought a torch to party with flammable costumes. In general, the French saw Louis as a reckless, greedy womanizer with an unhealthy interest in the occult. The perception wasn't too far off base. Louie loved to gamble, throw extravagant parties, investigate the dark arts, and seduce married noblewomen. He was even rumored to have a private portrait gallery consisting of

nude paintings of his conquests. In one particularly notorious, possibly apocryphal, incident of debauchery, Louie was said to have invited a nobleman to his palace. When the man arrived, Louis took him into a room which had a naked woman lying on the bed, her face covered by a veil. Louie asked the nobleman to judge how beautiful his mistress was. The horrified man quickly realized that the veiled naked woman

was his wife. Pretty rude of Louis, and if I had to weigh in, probably a pretty good way of making enemies. But Louis was also a savvy politician. He knew that he had one major advantage over his uncle's his close relationship with his brother, the King. Louie and Charles had been inseparable since childhood, when their parents' early

deaths had made them reliant on one another. The King was also fond of Louie's Italian wife, Valentina Visconti, too fond, some thought, leading to Valentina's exile from court in thirteen ninety six due to her rumored witchcraft. Stories For another time, and soon the tide would change, Louis, not his uncle's, would become the dominating force on the King's council. The transition began in thirteen ninety nine, when an epidemic of

plague exploded in Paris. Louie stayed in the city with the king, even as other dukes retreated to their country. Estates This period of constant companionship cemented the brother's relationship forever. Louie began to receive royal grants, increasing his territory and his treasury immensely. With his new resources, he executed a political shake up, filling the government with his allies, and as his power grew, Louie's public reputation underwent a makeover.

He became more discreet in his affairs, more mature in his interests. A man who had once been criticized for his inappropriate fondness for the finer things was now praised for his excellent taste. He wasn't extravagant with his money, he was just generous with it, courtiers exclaimed, as they

conveniently benefited from said generosity. For many As the historian Jonathan Sumpton writes, Louie was quote the kingly figure that Charles the sixth might have been less impressed by the new Louis was Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who saw his influence wayne as Louise waxed. By Philip's death in fourteen oh four, Louis had all but supplanted him as the most powerful man on the Council and perhaps the kingdom.

This reversal did not sit well with Philip's son and heir, John, Like his father, John was intelligent, ambitious, and determined, but he lacked his father's legendary diplomatic skills. John was quick to anger, constantly paranoid, and prone to violence. In the cutthroat political environment of the Royal Council, these qualities would

both help and hurt him. He adopted a populist strategy, casting himself as an opponent of the corrupt of indulgent elites who raised taxes on the poor to feed their expensive habits, a political class whose most viable representative was Louie, Duke of or Lyons. To what extent John actually believed in the principles he publicly proclaimed is difficult to know.

His tirades against the government handouts to the rich never stopped him from accepting those same handouts, but he was a genuinely skilled administrator and military leader, and the excesses and inefficiencies he saw in the French government must have infuriated him. This conflict between John and Louie quickly escalated. The French public, especially the Parisians, were sick of the

high taxes raised by the Royal Council. Simultaneously, the members of the Royal Council were getting concerned at how much power Louie had. In July fourteen oh five, things came to a head when King Charles, briefly of sound mind, agreed to summon an emergency council in Paris to address the state of affairs. John, with his characteristic light touch, decided to bring six hundred armed men with him to the meeting. Upon hearing of this, Louie rallied his own

troops and headed to the city. Battle lines were drawn in the Royal Council, which was pretty evenly split between the two men, but those lines were also being drawn in Paris, where nearly all of the citizens supported John. For months, France teetered on the edge of civil war, but war is expensive. The Dukes, who had allied themselves with Louie and John eventually started to withdraw their men, citing costs. Louie and John, despite their vast wealth, were

also feeling the financial burn. On October sixteenth, the men reached a truce, vowing to keep the peace and be brothers forever. Unsurprisingly, this happy moment did not last. To prevent further power struggles of this sort, the Council was recognized with Queen Isabeau, the King's wife, at its head. The thought was that the Queen would be an impartial vote, serving only the best interests of her husband and their kingdom. In reality, it put Isabeau in an impossible position and

gave Louie an advantage. Over the years, he and Isabeau had formed a close relationship, which was sometimes rumored to

be romantic. Throughout fourteen oh five and fourteen oh six, Louie and John may maintained a cordial, if chilly relationship, but they couldn't trust each other, and in April fourteen oh seven, Louis struck a decisive blow against his rival at a meeting attended by the King, the Dauphin, and all of the major Royal Council members except for John, who was not invited, the Council was once again reorganized. John's allies were removed not just from the Council, but

also from the Treasury and Finance departments. When John learned of this policy upon his arrival in Paris a week later, there was nothing he could do. With the most important government bodies now aligned against him, it was impossible for John to access the money the crown had previously given him to support his duchy. It was a dire state of affairs. Without money to administer his territory, John stood

to lose everything. It seemed he had only one course of action, reconcile with Louie, who it appeared, had bested him once and for all. Despite his stubbornness, John was a clear eyed strategist. Louie was too powerful to be beaten, So in November John agreed to a formal reconciliation organized by their uncle, the Duke of Barry. He and Louie went to Mass together on November twentieth and exchanged vows of perpetual friendship. Louie, perhaps relishing his victory, seemed inclined

toward graciousness. The two men had a drink together on November twenty second, and made plans to meet for dinner later that week. Observers heaved a collective sigh of relief. With these two great forces finally at peace, the whole country could now rest easy, or so they thought, after that fatal ball of the Burning Man. Back in thirteen ninety three, Louie had endowed a chapel at the Celestine Priory in Paris as a part of his penance. Men

can contain multitudes. Along with his proclivity for beautiful women and illicit stories of sorcery, Louie was also deeply religious. He occasionally spent the night at the chapel, meditating and praying in the small sleeping chamber he'd built for that purpose. After one such night in November fourteen oh seven, according to the seventeenth century historian Louis Bourier, Duke Louie woke up panting in terror. He'd had a terrible nightmare, he

told the prior, a dream of his own death. He found himself, as he said, in a magnificent orchard filled with gleaming fruit. But when he reached for the fruit, the figure of death appeared before him, brandishing its Scythe the black shrouded skeleton told Louie, I carry a way both the young and the old. Louie blinked and found himself before the throne of God, waiting in agony for judgment.

Would it be heaven or hell? He would not find out, at least not that night, because at the moment of judgment, Louie awoke profoundly. Rattled by the dream. He hurried to the Prior and begged to confess his sins. The Prior heard his confession and absolved him, but Louie could not shake the dread the dream had imparted. It was a strange time for Louie to be dreaming of his death. After a number of tumultuous years, his political position was

more secure than ever. He had wealth, influence, and a burgeoning relationship with his former enemy, John, Duke of Burgundy. But within the week Louie was dead. Though the Duke may have predicted his own death and l saw it coming, the people of France, noble and common alike, were shocked and horrified by the brutal crime. The Duke of Orleans may not have been the most popular figure, but certainly

no one deserved to die like that. The government quickly began an investigation, led by the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, who the historian Eric Jagger describes in Blood Royal as quote one of history's first detectives. De Tignonville had no shortage of suspects. There were furious husbands of all the women Louis had seduced. There were angry Parisians impoverished by louis policies. There were English spies who wanted to weaken the country. There were the lesser lords whose

property Louis had absorbed in his pursuit of power. And there were his political rivals, including of course John. But John and Louis had recently reconciled, and the Duke of Burgundy seemed devastated by the death of his longtime enemy turned newfound friend. He had helped escort Louis Coffin into the Celestine Priory, where he wept through the funeral service, so Tignonville had to look elsewhere. Fortunately, there was no shortage of witnesses, including Jacquette, the young woman who had

watched the attack from her window. De Tignonville and his staff interviewed them all. Soon a picture of the crime emerged, and it was not one of random violence, but of careful, premeditated murder. On the night of his death, Louis had gone to visit Queen Isabeau at her residence, the Hotel Barbette. Two weeks earlier. Isabeau had lost a newborn son shortly after his birth, and Louie visited regularly in an attempt

to keep her spirits up. At eight o'clock, a man came to the house, announcing himself as a valet of the king and declared that the king needed to speak to his brother at once. Louis, along with his small traveling party, quickly departed, setting off down the Rue Vielle de Tompre. At the intersection of the Rue des Rosiers,

he was attacked. After their deadly work was done, the assailants fled, knocking out any lit torches they passed to obscure their path and throwing col troops clusters of metal spikes meant to disable pursuing men or horses behind them. Several observers claimed to have seen the men coming from a house across the street from Jacquettes, and de Tignonville later determined that the assassins had rented the home under

false names, using it as a base of operations. The assailants had begun their search for a house more than five months earlier, hinting at the level of planning involved. All of Paris watched d Tignonville's progress closely. The city was on lockdown, with all all the gates leading out tightly shut, and people were arming themselves, fearful that the murder was only the beginning of the bloodshed. After all, Louis had been the closest thing they had to a

king at the time, given his brother's mental illness. Now that Louis was dead, who would keep order in France? The dukes of the Royal council were asking themselves the same question. On November twenty seventh, they summoned d'e Tignonville to a meeting and asked him to report on his progress. D'e Tignonville replied that he had learned many things, but had not yet gathered enough evidence to conclusively identify the murderers.

To get to the truth, he told the assembled men he might need to search the royal residences, including their own. It was a bold request, one that these high ranking dukes had every right to refuse, but they knew that the stability of the government relied on uncovering the murderer. One by one, they agreed to let De Tignonville search their homes. All of them agreed, that is, except for John, Duke of Burgundy. At de Tignonville's request, he had gone pale.

As everyone awaited his answer, an awkward silence grew. Suddenly John stood and beckoned for two of his uncles, the Dukes of Barry and Anjou, to join him in a side room. Confused, the men agreed. Once they were out of the council's hearing, John turned to his uncles and exclaimed, I did it. By the tempting of the devil, I

did it. The Dukes were horrified and shocked. The Duke of Barry, who had facilitated Louis and John's reconciliation ceremony only days earlier, cried, now I have lost two nephews. But they agreed to keep John's confession quiet for the moment in order to determine next steps. The Duke of Anjou returned to the main room and adjourned the meeting. D'etignonville didn't know what John had said, but it's likely he could guess it was the conclusion he had predicted.

His request to search the Duke's houses had been his way of flushing John out. Despite the Duke's outward grief, D'etignonville had quickly narrowed in on him after witnesses reported seeing the fleeing assassins wearing the Burgundian colors. The next morning, Barry and Ajou called a meeting of the Royal Council. They purposefully did not invite John, but he showed up anyway. When Barry, shocked at John's boldness, turned him forcefully away,

John was confused. He seemed to have taken Barry and Jeu's silence the day before as a tacit approval of his actions, but it wasn't. He stormed down the stairs, bumping into another uncle, the Duke of Bourbond, who asked where he was going. Furious and flustered, John allegedly yelled, I'm going out to piss smooth move. In reality, John

was fleeing Paris. His uncle's rejection revealed to him that he was no longer safe, and indeed When the Duke of Bourbond learned of John's confession from Barry and Aljoux, he demanded to know why John had been allowed to leave. Quote. This thing must be handled in the right way, he declared. But it was too late. Somehow, John and his retinue had managed to slip through one of the city's closed gates,

and they were gone. Gone too were the actual killers, retainers of John's who had been paid handsomely for their work. By the beginning of December, John was safely back in his own territories. In Paris, the Dukes were at a standstill. They were worried that sending men after John would provoke in armed retaliation, leading to civil war. The king, however, was in a period of good health and he was

more willing to act. On December tenth, Louis's widow, Valentina, arrived in Paris after more than a decade in exile remember her alleged witchcraft. She pleaded with King Charles for justice for her husband, and he agreed, declaring that he would avenge Louis, But in early January he relapsed into psychosis. The weak willed Dukes walked back his promises to Valentina and instead decided to organize a conference with John set for January. Emboldened by the lack of response from Paris,

John decided to double down. He told his uncles in December that he had been possessed by the devil when he decided to murder Louis. Now he changed his tune, shaping a shocking defense for himself in which he claimed it was not the devil who inspired him to kill,

but God. At the conference on January twentieth, fourteen o eight, John astounded listeners by declaring that the murder had been both righteous and necessary, given louise immoral character and abuses of power, and John continued he would return to Paris to make his case to anyone who wished to hear.

This was just what the other dukes had most feared. Paris, where Louise taxes had hurt thousands, was home to the most receptive audience for John's arguments, and an inflamed populace riled up with tales of justifiable murder was a recipe for disaster. On February twenty eighth, fourteen o eight, John rode into Paris, despite warnings from the Royal Council. He had brought hundreds of armed men with him. Thousands of Parisians thronged the streets to witness his entrance, cheering him

on loudly. Despite all of the fans, John knew his popularity wasn't universal. He quickly set about adding a fortified tower to his Paris mansion so he could sleep in safety. And when he showed up at his public defense, a carefully staged show trial that John himself had organized, he

was wearing chainmail under his fine robes. It was now March eighth, and most of the high ranking citizens of Paris had turned up at the Hotel Sainpo, the King's main residence, to hear John's attempt to justify his action. Notably absent was the King, who was suffering another bad spell. Presiding instead was the eleven year old d'au fin, who sat alongside the dukes of Barry, Bourbon, Anjou, and Burgundy himself on a bench at the front of the hall.

John had enlisted Jean Petit, a theologian from the University of Paris, to present his defense, and Petit came ready to rumble. Standing in front of the crowd. Petit delivered a shocking four hour long speech, which began with the statement that it is quote permissible and meritorious to kill a tyrant, and the Duke of Orleans was a tyrant

end quote. Continued with an allegory in which Louis was the devil and John the holy Avenger, and he moved into allegations of witchcraft, including claims that Louis had used demonic powers to create cursed swords with which to kill the king. He also outlined a variety of ways that Louis had betrayed the king and the French, and concluded with the statement that John deserved not just a royal hardened for his act, but also quote love, honor, and riches.

When Petit finished, a stunned silence filled the hall. None of those present had expected John to be particularly repentant for his crime, but no one had expected him to actively argue he deserved to be rewarded for what he had done. When Petit asked if John indorsed all he had said, John replied that he did. Later, John would have Petit's oration made into four costly, beautifully illuminated books

titled The Justification of the Duke of Burgundy. Despite John's satisfaction with Petit's speech, not everyone on Team Burgundy was so enthusiastic. John Gearson, once an ally of John's, would later write that the justification was quote text for damnation, a treatise for death, a charter of dishonor, and a message from the pit of hell. The only person whose opinion really mattered, though, was King Charles. The next day, with the king briefly lucid, John and his allies pushed

Charles for a royal pardon, which the king granted. Charles also signed a document, likely drafted by John's team, that empowered John to pursue and punish anyone who insulted him, the fifteenth century equivalent of a license to kill. Unsurprisingly, this outcome did not sit well with many nobles, especially not Queen Isabeau or a Louise's widow Valentina. When John was forced to return to his lands to quell an uprising in July, Valentina and Isabeau began plotting their revenge.

On July second, at a council meeting attended by the King, John's royal pardon was revoked. Two months later, the women hosted a show trial of their own, at which John was denied, bounced for his treachery, and ordered to surrender to the King's justice. Meanwhile, John was decisively putting down a rebellion in Liege. His commanding performance at the Battle of Aute earned him the nickname John the Fearless, which would stick with him for the rest of his life.

The battle also brought monetary reward in the form of compensation paid by the newly defeated rebels. His newly energized army and his newly flushed treasury terrified the Orleanists. With these resources, John might be able to take Paris, and indeed, when John returned to Paris in November, he brought two thousand troops with him. Afraid of war, the Royal Council

once again capitulated to John. They met little opposition. Valentina, her husband's greatest advocate, had died in December, and the couple surviving children were still young. The oldest, Charles, the new Duke of Orleans, was only fourteen, so it wasn't hard for the royal counselors to push through their plan for reconciliation. On March ninth, fourteen o nine, the Houses of Burgundy and Orleans met at the Chautre Cathedral to reconcile the king. Slipping in and out of sanity, presided.

Speaking first, John declared that while he did not apologize for having Louis killed, he did apologize for the pain that this act had caused the king. The King accepted his, let's say, non apology. Now it was the Orleans brother's turn. The boys were sobbing and had to be pushed to recite their statement of pardon. It was humiliating for the boys and horrifying too many onlookers. The Clerk of Parliament wrote of the ceremony peace piece, and yet no peace.

Far from assuaging the Orleans supporters or Orleanists, the Treaty of chartra recommitted them to revenge. The young Charles of Orleans began to recruit allies, including the powerful Count Bernard of Armagnac, whose daughter he would eventually marry in Paris. John was inadvertently helping Charles cause through a series of

short sighted, poorly executed, and tactless political moves. Through the fall of fourteen o nine, John alienated nearly all the most powerful dukes of the Council Charles and his party eagerly welcomed these discontented dukes. In April fourteen ten, the Orleanists vowed to raise an army against John. In response, John started mustering his own troops. By fourteen eleven, the Orleanists and the Burgundians were engaged in a full blown

civil war. I'll note here that histories of the time usually refer to the Orleanists as Armagnacs, thanks to the central role at this point of the Count of Armagnac, but we'll keep calling them for the sake of this episode the Orleanists, so you know. These are the men who supported the deceased Duke of Orleans and then his young son, the new Duke of Orleans, for more than two years. The civil war devastated the cities and countryside around Paris. Civilians were just as likely to be killed

as soldiers. Towns were burned and homes looted. The two parties would occasionally pause to draw up some sort of unsatisfactory treaty, which would quickly be broken. It seemed like the war would never end, but in mid fourteen thirteen, something crucial shifted. Parisians, longtime supporters of John, began to turn against him. They blamed him for the war, which was winning their businesses and cutting off the city's food supply.

Pro or Leanist sentiment rose, and then, in a fitting moment for this Satan filled saga, a flyer began appearing all around Paris, addressed from the dark Lord himself. It was a thank you letter of swords, in which Lucifer the quote King of Hell, Prince of the Shadows, master Regent, guardian and governor of all the devils in Hell, expressed his gratitude for the service of his quote dearist and well loved lieutenant and Proctor General in the West, John

of Burgundy. There's not much you could do to contest an endorsement from Satan, and John saw quite literally the writing on the wall. He had lost Paris. On August twenty third, he once again fled the city. Outside of the ongoing fighting, the French had to worry about the English. Both the Indians and the Orleanists had requested French assistance in the Civil War, giving the new English King Henry the Fifth a clear picture of the internal French turmoil.

He knew it was the perfect opportunity to strike, and in fourteen fifteen, he did, taking the city of Harfleur after a relatively short siege. The French, already ravaged by years of civil war, did their best to resist, bringing a massive force to face the English at Agincourt in late October. But maybe you know this story already. The French forces weren't enough. The English annihilated the French in

one of history's most famous defeats. Charles of Orleans, leader of the Orleanists, was captured by the English at Agincourt and spent the next twenty five years as a prisoner in England. John of Burgundy, by contrast, had failed to show at the battle, even as the country fought off the English. The infighting continued. In fourteen eighteen, John retook Paris, executing a bloody coup which left hundreds dead. But eventually even he could not deny the threat the English represented.

If the French wanted to repel their foreign enemies, they needed to unite internally. John began negotiations with the teenaged d'aufins of France, who had created a shadow Orleanist government in Borges following John's capture of Paris. The Daufis seemed amenable to the idea of a truce, but his advisers, middle aged men who had spent the past decade fighting

for the Orleanist cause, were not as enthusiastic. Nonetheless, negotiations progressed, and a treaty of reconciliation was drawn up in July fourteen nineteen. The Duke and the Daufins planned to formalize the treaty on the bridge at Montereau in September. A special enclosure was built in the center of the bridge for the meeting, with heavy wooden doors on each side. The men would each enter from one side, accompanied by only ten companions. All were to be unarmed, though they

were allowed to wear armor. Of course. Each man also brought hundreds more armed men to wait just outside the enclosure, just in case. At five o'clock on September tenth, fourteen nineteen, John the Fearless entered the enclosure through his side of the bridge. He wore scarlet robes and dripped with jewels. The Daufin was already waiting for him. Removing his hat, John knelt before the prince and greeted him. The Daufint bade him to stand, telling him he had spoken well.

For a moment, the promise of peace hung over the bridge. But then the Daufin looked to his advisers, and one of them yelled, kill. Kill. The door on the Dauphin's side of the enclosure swung open, and armed men flooded in. They swarmed the Duke, swinging at him with axes and swords, brutally wounding him before they struck the final blow. The parallels to Louise's murder were intentional. One of the killers,

a devoted Orleanist, almost severed John's hand. As the Duke tried to defend himself, he shouted, you cut off my master's hand, and I shall cut off yours. On the other side of the bridge, the Duke's troops were desperately trying to get into the enclosure, but they were brought down by the Dauphin's archers, who had appeared on the river banks. There was nothing they could do anyway. The Duke was dead. The Dauphin's men stripped his body of its finery and threw it in a wooden coffin, which

was eventually buried at a nearby church. The assassination of John of Burgundy was a victory for the Orleanists, but ultimately a tremendous tragedy for France. The Civil War reignited more fiercely than before, and eventually led John's son, the new Duke of Burgundy, to ally himself with the English

instead of the French for more than fifteen years. The whole country suffered immensely in the all out war that followed, and though cause and effect is a tricky business to trace in history, it's hard to imagine that things would have played out exactly the same way had not the Duke of Burgundy's men set out on a dark Parisian

night to kill their master's mortal enemy. But in a classic case of two wrongs don't make a right, it's equally hard to imagine that France would have been so terribly affected by the English had it not been for the killing of John of Burgundy. More than a century after John's death, in fifteen twenty one, King Francis of France, who was in fact Louise's great great grand and son, was presented with the Duke's skull by a Burgundian monk Sire. The monk is alleged to have said, pointing to a

wound in the skull. By that whole the English entered France. That's the story of the assassination of Louis of Orleans. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the legendary rivalry between Louis and John of Burgundy. Although John and Louie's rivalry eventually

reached murderous proportions, it also had its pettier moments. Take their emblems, for example, Like all good royals, each man had selected a symbolic image to represent themselves, which they had embroidered on their clothes and engraved on their armor and carved into their castles. For his emblem, Louie chose a wooden club. In response, John made his emblem a carpenter's plane capable of shaving down, say, a wooden club. After the murder, some Parisians were said to have remarked,

the knotty club has been planed. And then there were their mottos. When John and Louie had nearly gone to war against one another in the summer of fourteen oh five, their troops had paraded around carrying banners emblazoned with their leader's respective mottos Louis read I want it or I challenge him, depending on the translation, but I want it is a fair translation, and John's you might be able

to guess it. His banners read I have it. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwartz. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder, and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema Il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thayne and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

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