HST 355U - Late Medieval Europe, 1100-1450
John S. Ott (c2021, 2022)
Department of History
Portland State University
Reading Guide #7 : Background for

(1) Jean Froissart, Chronicles
(2) the Ordinance of Labourers and Response (1349)

Readings:

Jean Froissart (1337 - ca. 1405) was born in Valenciennes, a town in the French-speaking county of Hainaut, in what is now northern France. We know little about his early years. By 1362 he had entered service as a household clerk to Philippa of Hainaut, who had become Queen of England through her marriage to King Edward III. In that year he was in England, still riding high on its recent military triumph at Poitiers (1356). Froissart remained there until 1369, in royal service, when his patroness died. While in England, and after he left, he travelled widely: to Scotland (in 1365), Wales, Brussels, Brittany, Aquitaine and Bordeaux, and Italy, including Milan and Rome. He eventually settled back in Hainaut, and began to write the Chronicles at the request of Robert of Namur, who belonged to the comital family of Flanders. His later patrons included Guy de Châtillon, the Count of Blois (from 1382 or 1385-1391/2), and the count of Hainaut, Albrecht of Bavaria, and his son. He traveled back to England in 1395, but was disappointed by the state of chivalry he found there. He eventually returned to Hainaut where he seems to have finished his days in one of his clerical prebends.

The Chronicles were composed between 1369 and 1405; Froissart revised them multiple times, and they exist in several versions. They were neither his first nor his only work—he appears to have written a verse history of the war between France and England which he dedicated to Philippa, though it is now lost. The Chronicles cover the period from 1322 to 1400 in four books. For the earliest material, Froissart borrowed liberally and literally from an existing history written by Jean le Bel, a churchman from Liège whose work he admired. Le Bel's True Chronicles covered the period from 1290-1360, including the Jacquerie -- Froissart's description follows Le Bel's closely. Froissart's Chronicles was very popular; it survives in around 100 manuscripts across all versions of the text, making it a huge success in terms of medieval readership. By contrast, Le Bel's work -- the debt to which Froissart acknowledges -- survives in a single manuscript copy.

The Battle of Poitiers in west-central France, described in our excerpt, was fought in September 1356 between the forces of Edward, the Black Prince -- oldest son and heir of King Edward III of England (r. 1327-1377) -- and King John II of France (1350-1364). By the time the two armies met in battle, Edward had been campaigning on French soil for some six weeks. Despite being outnumbered roughly 2-to-1 by French forces, Edward's archers deployed the longbow to decisive effect; repeated French cavalry charges were turned back. The battle was a devastating setback for the French: in addition to sustaining many casualties, King John was captured in the thick of the battle along with his son, Philip. He remained a prisoner of the English for roughly two years. During that time a regency government, led by John's oldest son Charles, struggled to maintain order.

Froissart also had an eye for events other than chivalric deeds and battles; he reported in his Chronicles on the effects of the plague, on peasant movements, and on the fortunes of the Church as well. These passages should be read alongside his depiction of the aristocracy, and keeping in mind his patrons and audience.

The Ordinance of Labourers was passed in 1349 and revised/reissued in 1351 to address the shortage in labor brought on by the pandemic of 1347. Similar statutes were passed in France and elsewhere. They seem to have had little long-term effect, but are important historically as examples of early interventions to "manage" labor and set wages. The statutes were resented by a peasantry who found themselves in a strong position to extract concessions from landowners around wages, and who would go on to see their economic position steadily improve in the fourteenth century.