Antoine de Chabannes

Antoine de Chabannes (1408–1488), from 1439 Count of Dammartin (with a gap in 1463–1465), was a significant military and political figure of 15th-century France. An indefatigable fighter, during his long career he joined or led numerous military campaigns all over France and beyond. He served the Valois kings Charles VII, Louis XI and Charles VIII, but also participated in two aristocratic uprisings, the Praguerie against Charles VII in 1440 and the War of the Public Weal in 1465 against Louis XI. Associated early in his life with the Armagnac faction, he fought in Charles VII's campaigns against England, including those involving Joan of Arc, and (except for a troubled period in the early 1460s) also remained generally opposed to the Burgundians and their Habsburg successors. 18th-century scholar Charles Pinot Duclos described him as "one of the bravest men of his time, sincere, faithful, quick-tempered, a keen friend and implacable enemy" (un des plus braves hommes de son temps, sincère, fidèle, naturellement emporté, ami vif et implacable ennemi). called him "the most experienced general of his era" (le général le plus expérimenté de son siècle).

His reputation has been tainted by his late-1430s freebooting écorcheur raids and by his avidity in appropriating properties of the disgraced Jacques Coeur in the early 1450s, mainly the lordship of Puisaye which Coeur's successors tried to reclaim in legal procedures that extended beyond Chabannes's lifetime. His rule in Puisaye, however, coincided with the revival of that region following the ravages of the Hundred Years' War and the broader Crisis of the Late Middle Ages.

Family and early life

Arms of Antoine de Chabannes as appear on his tomb, quartering of Chabannes (de gueules au lion d'hermine, armé, couronné et lampassé d'or) and Dammartin (fascé d'argent et d'azur à la bordure de gueules), with escutcheon quartering of Toucy (d'or à trois pals de vair, au chef d'or chargé de quatre merlettes de gueules) and Sévérac (d'argent à quatre pals de gueules). In other occurrences, Antoine de Chabannes put the arms of the House of Châtillon, ancestors of his wife, in escutcheon.

The Chabannes were an aristocratic family established in the Limousin since the 13th century. 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 Charles VII, associating himself with commanders La Hire and Xaintrailles. He was captured at the Battle of Verneuil but, given his youth, was freed without ransom by the Duke of Bedford. He then served Duke Charles I of the House of Bourbon as a page until 1426. The contemporary chronique martinienne observes of him at that time that "he was inclined towards fighting and eager to acquire recognition and properties" (tant il avait le coeur aux armes et envie d'acquérir honneurs et biens).

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. In the meantime he had participated in the March to Reims and attended the epic coronation (sacre) of Charles VII, on 17 July 1429.

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.

He spent most of the late 1430s leading his own band of soldiers, as one of the most prominent écorcheurs as they were labeled in contemporary chronicles, especially Burgundian ones: literally "flayers", referring to their practices of robbing and ransoming. Many of his freebooting raids were directed at lands of the Duke of Burgundy such as Hainaut, Cambrésis and Charolais, typically condoned by the king despite the stipulations of the Peace of Arras. Antoine de Chabannes also fought for the Duke of Bourbon, who made him Captain of Chavroches in 1438, and as part of royal operations, such as the siege of Meaux in 1439 led by Constable of France Arthur de Richemont. He occasionally let himself and his troops be hired as mercenaries, most notably for Antoine de Vaudémont against René of Anjou in 1438-39. He also used castles of the Chabannes family as his bases, such as the where he kept the lord of Pesmes prisoner in 1439.

In 1440, he was one of the leaders of the Praguerie against Charles VII, and kept associating with the Dauphin Louis's actions in the following years, such as the Siege of Dieppe in 1442-43 and an expedition to support Sigismund of Habsburg against the Swiss, including the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs near Basel where he fought furiously. after he had forced him and other warlords of the Hundred Years' War to dismiss their bands of soldiers as he strived to establish a standing army. On that occasion, Antoine de Chabannes wore mourning clothes, telling the king that he was "taking life away from him by separating him from his soldiers" (Sire, vous m'ôtez la vie d'éloigner mes gens d'armes de moi, avec lesquels j'ai vécu vingt ans sans reproche et sans faire de faute). 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. On 29 August 1475, he attended the meeting of Picquigny between Louis XI and Edward IV of England, which undermined the Anglo-Burgundian alliance and marked the formal end of the Hundred Years' War. He then held the frontline stronghold of Le Quesnoy for more than a year. Louis XI, heowever, replaced him there with in June 1478 as part of a truce in which the king relinquished Hainaut to Maximilian, and episode that crystallized a new deterioration of Chabannes's relationship with the king.

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 Rouergue were granted by Louis to the Canons Regular of the Lateran, Chabannes was duly indemnified.

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.

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.

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. Antoine's direct male line became extinct at Jean's death in 1503. In 1554, the County of Dammartin was purchased by Constable Anne de Montmorency, and remained in the House of Montmorency, then (after the 1632 execution of Henri II de Montmorency, which also led to the Dammartin castle's destruction) of Bourbon-Condé until the French Revolution. The domains in Puisaye were soon divided between Saint-Fargeau, which went to the Houses of Anjou-Mézières and then of Bourbon-Montpensier, and Toucy, which remained in the local family of Prie. Other branches of the Chabannes family survive to this day.

In popular culture

Antoine de Chabannes features in Le Spectre de Châtillon, a 1855 novel by Élie Berthet.

He is portrayed as a devious military governor of Paris in the 1956 film The Vagabond King.