68.Llewelyn the Great Hangs William de Braose, Aber Garth Celyn , Wales May 2, 1230

William de Braose was hung from a tree — one of the chronicles says it was at Crogen, in Corwen. So, maybe one of the ancestors of one of the trees you see here. (Clearly, the castle that was here has been rebuilt; the building there now is much more recent. However! You can rent it, if you would like!

So, one day in 1230, William de Braose was over at Llewelyn the Great’s castle, and he was found in Llewelyn’s private chambers with Joan, who was Llewelyn’s wife. As well as the daughter of the King of England. Now, according to Welsh law, Llewelyn would then have been in his rights to beat William up, but instead, there was a trial, and William ended up being hung from some tree or other; two are in the running for being The Tree, but who knows. At any rate, messing around with the Queen did not carry the death penalty in Wales, but Llewelyn hung him anyway, and then wrote to his widow to see if she still wanted their children to get married. And she did, so they were. And what scandalizes Michelle most about all this is that the de Braoses and the relatives of Llewelyn were so intermarried that you don’t know what to call their various relations. Also, that William and Joan and Llewelyn were all middle aged and not teenagers and really there is no excuse for all this.

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67. Peter von Hagenbach is Convicted of War Crimes, Breisach, Germany 1474

The trial of Peter von Hagenbach, as depicted by Deibold Schilling the Elder (1485), Berner Chronik des Diebold Schilling des Älteren. This is a very careful and calm trial, and everybody is thinking hard and making careful judgements. That von Hagenbach had been tortured to the point that he had to be carried around in a wheelbarrow would have ruined the mood.

Laws regulating war crimes have existed since ancient times, and trials of people who have committed them have existed as well; the trial of Peter von Hagenbach wasn’t unusual for being a trial to judge whether he has violated laws of war when he was holding down Breisach for Charles the Bold; it was unusual because it was an international trial, and because part of the judgement included the decree that if soldiers are given orders they know to be wrong, they are culpable if they follow those orders. The trial would be cited as precedent for the Nuremberg trials after World War II. We discuss the trial, we discuss war crimes, and Michelle presents a children’s book which posits von Hagenbach as a hero to be emulated. We are both scandalized.

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66. Henry of Trastámara Massacres the Jews of Toledo, Toledo Spain, 1355

The Calle de Samuel Leví, in the medieval Jewish quarter of Toledo. Photograph by José Luis Filpo Cabana (Creative Commons, through Wikimedia).

Henry of Trastámara, of Henry of Castile, the Fratricidal, was not as friendly with the Jews of Spain as his half-brother, Pedro the Cruel, or Pedro the Just (depending on your interpretation of him) had been. He’s “The Fratricidal,” by the way, because he murdered his half-brother Pedro the Cruel or Just.  Henry wasn’t yet king in 1355 — that is, he hadn’t murdered his half-brother yet — but was at war with him, and wherever Henry took some power, Jews were murdered.  The massacre at Toledo was the beginning of his crimes against the Jews; Toledo was important as a center of Jewish intellectual and religious life in Spain. So we explain this, and the background, of course. And Michelle found a recipe for medieval Challah. So there’s that.

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65. King Lambert is Assassinated (or not), Marengo, Italy 898

Here, Lambert is the second from the left, in this illustration from the Chronicon Casauriense, a collection of chronicles, from the late 12th century. Lambert is here because he was one of the four kings who protected the Abbey of San Clemente, in Casauria. There’s a pretty small window when he could have done this, since he was only king for 4 years on his own, after his dad died. And his dad isn’t one of the four kings. Anyway. That’s what he looked like! Now you know.

After a short (he was 18 when he died) but eventful and busy life, Lambert, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor, was assassinated during a boar hunt. That’s one rumor. The other rumor is that he fell off his horse and died. Evidence? Witnesses? Nah, not really. But we both have an opinion on this, which is that a story that has a king sleeping on the ground during a boar hunt is fundamentally flawed, and we don’t buy it.  On the other hand, Michelle found two translations of the chronicle which tells us these rumors, so she had a very good time.

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64. Jeanne de Clisson takes up piracy, Brittany 1343

This dreadful illustration of the execution of Jeanne de Clisson’s husband Olivier comes from Flanders, a little over a hundred years later. After all this dreadfulness, the French put the bodies of the dead in gibbets, and stuck their heads on pikes over the gate. And then Jeanne gathered her men and started killing Frenchmen. (Exécution d’Olivier IV de Clisson, by Loyset Liédet)

In 1343, Olivier de Clisson, who had backed the wrong candidate for the then empty Duke of Brittany position, as far as the king of France was concerned, was invited to a tournament, and then seized and executed for treason without a trial.  This greatly angered his wife, Jeanne, so she gathered a troupe of men and harassed the French, becoming quite beloved by the English, who were fighting France, in the beginning of the Hundred Years War. She also became a pirate, more or less. At least, she was attacking French ships and slaughtering Frenchmen. We discuss the question of piracy and what it is, really; and Michelle laments having had only Disney princesses as role models, in her youth, since apparently Jeanne would have been a much better model of womanly behavior.

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63. The Children of Hamelin Disappear, Hamelin, Lower Saxony, 1284

In this Kate Greenaway illustration from the 1888 version of Robert Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (first published in 1842), one can see an accurate depiction of the pied piper, inexplicably not wearing the motley the poem’s title says he is wearing, luring away the children of the town of Hamelin because he is very angry about the town’s refusal to pay contracted wages. The children are also accurately depicted in their lovely late 18th century attire, which is just what they would have been wearing in 1284. This entire festival of anachronism is presented here because it terrified Anne when she was a child. Never got over those happy little children dancing off into an unknown oblivion.

In 1284, the children of Hamelin disappeared. Unless you translate the Latin differently, and they all died. Over the centuries, the story of what happened to them would get more and more intricate. Was there a Pied Piper involved? Probably not, though there may have been a musician. Were there rats? Nah. They don’t show up in the stories for a few hundred years. But something happened, as the Hamelin chronicles tell us. What the hell it was we don’t know. We explain the possible fates of the children of Hamelin, as invented over the centuries, and Michelle raves about the ways in which the town of Hamelin is currently cashing in on the legend. 

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62. Leopold of Austria Kidnaps Richard the Lionheart, Near Vienna, Austria 1192

The legends surrounding Leopold’s kidnapping of Richard the Lionheart are many. Nobody’s surprised by this. He WAS found, in an inn. Why? Oh, he was wearing his royal signet ring. Or, he had given gloves with royal insignia to some boy who was showing them off. We like to think that all his men were acting like he was the King of England, out of habit. But found he was. Despite, as later legend tells us, trying to disguise himself as the servant turning the spit. In this engraving from the early 17th century, we can see one version of why this might not have worked. Copper Enrgraving by Matthäus Merian the Elder, from: Johann Ludwig Gottfried, Historische Chronica, Frankfurt, 1630, p.559. Colourised later

Capturing an enemy and holding them for ransom, in the middle ages, wasn’t necessarily a crime. However, kidnapping a fellow crusader was not ok, since the pope has said that all the crusaders were supposed to treat each other well (by not capturing their lands and goods while they were off fighting, or kidnapping them and holding them for ransom), and also, there’s a difference between holding a fellow noble for ransom and kidnapping the king of England. To be truthful, as far as medieval crimes go, this one isn’t very criminal — just sort of dumb, and tacky, but it gives a chance to discuss the rehabilitation of Richard’s reputation (he wasn’t a horrible king! he was ok!) and the importance of historical fiction. 

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61. King John Starves Maud and William de Braose to Death, Corfe Castle, Dorset, England 1210

Here we see St. Maelog’s Cross, which is the very stone that Maud de Braose threw across the River Wye, when she got annoyed at it because it fell out of her apron onto her toe, when she was carrying stones to build Hay Castle, which she did all by herself all in one night. This is especially impressive since the stone had been in the churchyard of St. Maelog for at least 100 years before Maud threw it over the river. (St. Maelog’s Church, Llowes, Powys)

In 1210, King John of England left Maud de Braose and her son William in Corfe Castle and let them starve to death, either because Maud had been shirty with one of his messengers, or because John owed William money and didn’t want to pay it back, or because, well, who knows.  John was like that.  Maud, on the other hand, had, before getting thrown into the dungeon at Corfe Castle, had impressed the Welsh by defending a castle against them, and, apparently, or at least the Welsh said so, magically building a castle in one night all by herself. In this episode, we discuss the horrible badness of King John, and why it’s not a good idea to learn history from Disney movies.

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60. Jacques le Gris Rapes Marguerite de Carrouges, Normandy, January 1386

This illustration of a judicial trial by combat is a German illustration from 1540 of a trial in Germany in 1409. So, it’s a few decades later than the French trial of 1386, and it’s in Germany, not France, and the combatants have no horses, and the dueling site is in a town square rather than the grounds of a monsastery. Other than those things, though, this is totally an accurate representation of our subject. ( Bayrische Staatsbibliothek Cod. icon. 393 — Jörg Breu der Jüngere and Paulus Hector Mair)

In 1386, Marguerite de Carrouges accused Jacques le Gris of having raped her, and though the French Parliament could not come to an agreement as to whether or not le Gris was guilty, we know that he was, because Marguerite’s husband Jean killed le Gris in a trial by combat, so that’s settled. Although le Gris’ descendants would keep trying to convince everybody that actually somebody else raped her.  The evidence for this was either nonexistent or unconvincing. The case is currently known both because of the 2004 book The Last Duel, by Eric Jager, which was then made into a 2021 film, The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott. We discuss the historical record of the crime and the trials, and Michelle discusses the film (Spoiler Alerts!), which, as usual, she has a lot of opinions about. Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t actually the last French judicial duel. Near the end though, and the title is great!

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59. Bran Ardchenn, King of Leinster, and his wife Eithne are Assassinated, Cell Cúile Duma, Ireland May 6, 795

The Book of Leinster, held at Trinity College, Dublin (this is f. 53) has lots and lots of information, of various sorts, and includes Irish Annals, which tell you such interesting things as, for example, the death of Bran and Eithne. They were burned to death! That’s it. That’s really all we know. The page above doesn’t have anything to do with Bran and Eithne, but it does give you an excellent example of why we said the illustrations in the manuscript are not as good as the illustrations in The Book of Kells. On the other hand, what illustrations are.

The Irish Annals are full — full, we tell you — of detailed histories of the kings of Ireland.  Only mostly the details are their names, how long they ruled, and how they died. Though Bran Ardchenn and Eithne were burned to death in a church, we don’t know more than that. In this episode, we discuss early Irish history, the Book of Leinster, and Anne’s annoyance at not knowing exactly how Bran and Eithne died. Because “burned to death” doesn’t really explain much.

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