Chronicles

Froissart’s Chronicles is a 14th-century historical narrative modern historians consider an important primary source for medieval Europe, meaning it provides a contemporary or near-contemporary view of the author’s times. It covers the period from 1322 to 1400. This guide uses Geoffrey Brereton’s annotated version of Chronicles (Penguin, 1978), which primarily discusses events occurring in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Froissart discusses a wide range of subjects from a revolt in Flanders to English relations with the Irish, but the focus of the Chronicles is on the first part of the Hundred Years War between France and England.

Summary

Book One of the Chronicles begins with King Edward II being overthrown and killed by his wife Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. After Edward II’s son and successor Edward III comes to the throne, he seized power for himself, imprisoning his mother and having Mortimer executed. Because he inherited a strong claim to the French throne through his mother, Edward III declared himself the rightful king of France and began what would become known to historians as the Hundred Years War. Thanks in no small part to their archers, the English win a decisive and devastating victory over the French at the Battle of Crécy. Later, another “fierce and bloody” (139) struggle, the Battle of Poitiers, ends with the reigning king of France, Jean II, being captured and taken to England. Meanwhile, bands of mercenary troops who fought in the war and now found themselves without pay pillage the French countryside, which led in part to an outbreak of violent peasant unrest called the Jacquerie. After Jean II died in England, his son, the new king Charles V has the armies of France employ hit-and-run tactics rather than the direct confrontations traditionally favored in medieval combat. This turns the tide of the war in France’s favor.

In Book Two, Froissart turns to other events across Europe. First, there is the Great Schism, a conflict where there were two rival popes in Avignon and Rome with all the countries of Europe siding with one or the other. Then, peasant revolts broke out in England, with the peasants attacking London, looting aristocratic homes, and killing a number of officials, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. Finally, the Count of Flanders is overthrown by a middle-class revolt led by Philip van Artevelde. Since the king of France was allied to the Count of Flanders, a French army crushed Artevelde’s movement and restored the Count to power.

For Book Three, Froissart describes his stay at the court of Count Gaston Phoebus of Foix. There, he recounts stories told to him by the mercenary Bascot de Mauléon as well as tales of a knight who is brought foreign news by a spirit, a countess who fears her husband will suffer because of a bear he hunted, and a duel taking place in France.

For the fourth and final book, Froissart focuses on events in England. King Richard II’s uncle, John of Gaunt, attempts to invade the Spanish kingdom of Castile to press his claim to that kingdom’s throne but fails. In the meantime, corrupted by bad advisors, Richard II begins to reign like a tyrant, when “not even the greatest in England dared to criticize the King’s acts or intentions” (433). He is overthrown by a cousin he exiled, who becomes King Henry IV, and in the end, Richard II is killed under mysterious circumstances.