Antoine de Chabannes
Antoine de Chabannes | |
---|---|
Count of Dammartin, Lord of Puisaye, etc. | |
Born | 1408 Charlus-le-Pailhoux |
Died | Dammartin-en-Goële | December 25, 1488
Buried | Dammartin-en-Goële (body); Saint-Fargeau (heart) |
Noble family | House of Chabannes |
Wife | Marguerite de Nanteuil (ca. 1422-1475) |
Issue | Jean de Chabannes (1462-1503); Gilbert, Jeanne, Jacqueline, Anne (dates unknown); Jacques, Hélène, Marie (illegitimate) |
Father | Robert de Chabannes |
Mother | Alix de Bort |
Antoine de Chabannes (1408–1488), from 1439
His reputation has been tainted by his late-1430s freebooting
Family and early life
The Chabannes were an aristocratic family established in the Limousin since the 13th century.[3] Antoine's father Robert de Chabannes, lord of Charlus-le-Pailhoux (now in Saint-Exupéry-les-Roches), died at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and his elder brother Etienne de Chabannes died at the Battle of Cravant in 1423, where 15-year-old Antoine fought as well.
Following this succession of events, the family estates went to his brother Jacques de Chabannes. Antoine was left to assemble properties and titles on his own, which he kept doing throughout his long life.
Service to Charles VII
Antoine de Chabannes was involved from a young age in the intrigues and fights of the embattled king
By 1428, 20-year-old Antoine de Chabannes fought alongside Joan of Arc in battles including Jargeau, Patay (where he led the vanguard and was wounded), and the Siege of Compiègne where Joan was captured in May 1430.[5] In the meantime he had participated in the March to Reims and attended the epic coronation (sacre) of Charles VII, on 17 July 1429.[6]
In the summer of 1429, Charles VII made him bailiff of Troyes, and in 1432, Captain of Creil, a stronghold loyal to Charles surrounded by hostile territory. In 1434, he was wounded in a bold attack on Old Talbot near Beaumont-sur-Oise.[4] On 12 November 1437, he was with Charles VII at the latter's ceremonial entry into Paris, a major symbolic moment following the 1435 Treaty of Arras that put an end to the most chaotic period of the Hundred Years' War.[7]
He spent most of the late 1430s leading his own band of soldiers, as one of the most prominent
On 20 September 1439 Antoine de Chabannes married Marguerite de Nanteuil, Countess of Dammartin-en-Goële, to whom he had been recommended by the king.[9] The marriage brought him the County of Dammartin as her dowry, as well as the barony of Le Thour in Champagne and the lordship of Marcy in Nivernais.[10]
In 1440, he was one of the leaders of the
Antoine de Chabannes eventually broke with Louis in September 1446, by revealing to Charles VII the Dauphin's intrigues against Pierre de Brézé, and beyond against the king himself.[7][11] This episode led to Louis's temporary banishment to the Dauphiné, upon which Louis swore that he would "take revenge against those who threw me out of my house", meaning Chabannes.[4]
In 1449, he was with the king in the reconquest of Normandy, and in 1451 fought in Guyenne where he reconquered from the English the Château de Blanquefort near Bordeaux, nominally part of Marguerite de Nanteuil's dowry but out of her family's hands for 160 years.[4] That castle was retaken by England later in 1451, and reconquered again by Chabannes in 1453. Charles VII confirmed his ownership of it in 1455 but Louis XI took it back in 1466.[6]
Also in 1451, Antoine de Chabannes was appointed to chair the committee that investigated and led to the downfall of
In October 1453, he received the command of soldiers of his brother Jacques, who had died from his wounds at the Battle of Castillon. He then led a campaign in 1454 against John V, Count of Armagnac on the king's behalf, jointly with Jean Bureau, for which he was awarded a number of lands in Rouergue and Languedoc including the lordship of Sévérac.[4] In 1455-56 he was sent to Lyon, Savoy and the Dauphiné to put an end to the Dauphin Louis's machinations, prompting the latter's flight to the court of Burgundy.[11] In 1458, he and Jean d'Aulon jointly led a successful embassy to Duke Louis of Savoy and Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy to avert war between France and them both. in 1461, he stayed with Charles VII at the Château de Mehun-sur-Yèvre until the king's death on July 22.[4]
Service to Louis XI and Charles VIII
On succeeding Charles VII in 1461,
The ever-resourceful Chabannes, however, managed to escape from the Bastille in early March 1465 and joined the so-called
In 1468, Chabannes decisively refused to demobilize the royal troops assembled in
In the early 1470s he led royal military campaigns together with
In the spring of 1479, Louis XI relieved him of his military command, even though he kept his pension and other titles, and was still occasionally called for advice. In 1483, some of his domains in
Following Louis XI's death, Antoine de Chabannes was back in favor under the young Charles VIII, who on 23 October 1483 reappointed him captain and governor of Sévérac. At the Estates General in Tours, in February 1484, he was sitting on the bench to the king's right, together with Jean IV de Rieux and Louis II de la Trémoille.[4] In 1485, he further increased his domains by purchasing the barony of Courtenay, just north of the Puisaye. In his last years, he lived mainly in his castles of Dammartin-en-Goële and Saint-Fargeau, with occasional Parisian stays in his hôtel de Beautreillis, part of the former royal palace of Hôtel Saint-Pol whose name survives in the Rue Beautreillis. He was again made Military governor of Paris by the regent Anne of France. He maintained an active written correspondence with the king, who appears to have valued his advice.[9]
Death and legacy
Antoine de Chabannes died on Christmas Day 1488. He was buried in the collegiate church of Our Lady (Collégiale Notre-Dame) in Dammartin-en-Goële, which he had built from 1480, following a wish he had made in 1463 while imprisoned in the Bastille, on the site of a chapel that had been destroyed during the War of the Public Weal. The church had been consecrated by the Bishop of Meaux on 18 February 1488, less than a year before Chabannes's death.[6]
The still-extant monumental tomb displays an idealized youth portrait of him as a
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Antoine de Chabannes's tomb in Dammartin
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Arms of Antoine de Chabannes on his tomb
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Commemorative plaque of the 1804 restoration
Chabannes's heart and innards were buried separately in the church of Saint-Ferréol in Saint-Fargeau, at the core of his domains in Puisaye, where his wife had been buried in 1475. Until the 17th century, the corresponding location inside the church was adorned with a small monument and an epitaph that read "Antoine de Chabannes, / Mort suis sans trahison / Mais bien aimant raison / Conte et aussi grant mestre. / Dieu me mettre en bon estre ! / J'aimai loyauté / Qui m'a toujours porté, / Tant qu'au monde ait esté ; / D'ennemi non vaincu / D'ans IIIIxx [80] j'ai vescu, / On le sait, de trois roys non reprint. / Sur ce point, Dieu m'a print." The metal chest that contained the heart was later relocated to a chapel within the same church, in which Antoine de Chabannes's son had also erected an equestrian statue of him, probably destroyed in 1793.[4][15]
He was succeeded as Count of Dammartin-en-Goële by his only surviving son John (Jean de Chabannes), born in 1462, who had already been calling himself Lord of Saint-Fargeau since 1470.
In popular culture
Antoine de Chabannes features in Le Spectre de Châtillon, a 1855 novel by Élie Berthet.[4]
He is portrayed as a devious military governor of Paris in the 1956 film The Vagabond King.
Notes
- ^ Charles Pinot Duclos (1745). Histoire de Louis XI. Paris: Frères Guerin & Prault.
- ^ Claude Villaret (1769). Histoire de France. Vol. XVII.
- ^ Etienne Pattou (2011). "Maison de Chabannes" (PDF). Racines et histoire.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Comte Henri de Chabannes (1894). Histoire de la Maison de Chabannes. Vol. II. Dijon.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "Antoine de Chabannes". Famille de Chabannes La Palice.
- ^ a b c Didier Guillois (2014). "Antoine de Chabannes : écorcheur, traitre et serviteur des lis de France" (PDF). Fédération des Sociétés Savantes & Culturelles Deux-Sèvres.
- ^ a b c H. Noël-Cadet (January–June 1914), "Antoine de Chabannes (1408-1488), sa Famille et ses Souvenirs, à Dammartin-en-Goële (deuxième partie)", Bulletin de la Société scientifique historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, Brive
- ^ a b Loïc Cazaux (30 October 2013). "Antoine de Chabannes, capitaine d'écorcheurs et officier royal : fidélités politiques et pratiques". Youtube.
- ^ a b c H. Noël-Cadet (January–June 1915), "Antoine de Chabannes (1408-1488), sa Famille et ses Souvenirs, à Dammartin-en-Goële (suite et fin)", Bulletin de la Société scientifique historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, Brive
- ^ Jean Le Clerc (1907). Cronique Martiniane. Paris: Honoré Champion. p. 39.
- ^ a b c Marquis de Certaines (1980), "Les Chabannes, Mille ans d'histoire 980-1980", Famille de Chabannes La Palice, Nevers
- ^ Joseph Vaesen; Bernard de Mandrot (1908), Lettres de Louis XI, roi de France, publiées d'après les originaux pour la Société de l'histoire de France, vol. X, Paris, p. 349-350
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Anniina Jokinen (2007). "Louis XI, King of France (1423-1483)". Luminarium.
- ^ Gustave Constant (1935), "Chanoine Paul Fiel, Le Chapitre du Latran et la France, Paris, A. Picard, 1935", Revue d'Histoire de l'Eglise de France, Paris: 248-250
- ^ Françoise van Zon-Bourgeois (24 October 2016). "Une bien curieuse visite à l'église de St Fargeau". Histoire et patrimoine de Saint-Fargeau.