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Geoffroi de Charny
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Geoffroi de Charny
Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1306 – 19 September 1356) was the third son of Jean de Charny, the lord of Charny (then a major Burgundian fortress), and Marguerite de Joinville, daughter of Jean de Joinville, the biographer and close friend of France's King Louis IX. A renowned knight who fought on the French side during the early years of the Hundred Years' War, Charny wrote a semi-autobiographical poem, The Book of Geoffroi de Charny, and a set of questions on chivalric matters for the short-lived Company of the Star, France's counterpart to England's Order of the Garter. Although a prose treatise called the Book of Chivalry has also long been accredited to him, recent findings indicate this to have been more likely by his son of the same name, Geoffroi II de Charny, who died in 1398. Charny is also widely associated with the first known showings of the Shroud of Turin, though there are now doubts that he was responsible for these.
He took part in a successful crusading expedition to Smyrna in 1344 and shortly after his return from this King Philip VI appointed him a royal councillor and bearer of the Oriflamme, the sacred battle-standard of France. This role, one in which he continued under King Jean II, made its holder an automatic target for enemy forces on a battlefield, and it was thus that he met his end during the closing moments of the Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356.
Geoffroi de Charny was one of Europe's most admired knights during his lifetime, with a widespread reputation for his skill at arms and his honour. The Tournai-based abbot-chronicler Gilles le Muisit wrote of him: a vigorous soldier, expert in weaponry and much renowned both overseas and here. He has taken part in many wars and in many mortal conflicts, in all of them conducting himself with probity and with nobility'.
Because Geoffroi de Charny was a third son, he did not inherit the lordship of Charny, which on the death of his father and his eldest brother Dreux went to Dreux’s daughter Guillemette’s husband Philip de Jonvelle. From the two literary works of which Charny is the certain author, he seems to have needed to earn a living competing in jousts and tourneys at public tournaments, pursuits in which he became expert. When he married his first wife Jeanne de Toucy in 1336 he possessed no fief of his own, hence on the muster lists that record his participations in the early campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War he is repeatedly described as based at the Toucy family fief of Pierre-Perthuis.
In 1342, Charny led a cavalry charge at the Battle of Morlaix in Brittany which foundered due to a cleverly disguised trap laid by the English. Taken captive, Charny was transported to Goodrich Castle in England as the prisoner of Richard Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot, who according to an English letters patent of October 1343 allowed him to return to France “to find the money for his ransom". Having earlier performed some valuable services for Dauphin Humbert II de Viennois, for which he had been promised revenues from the Dauphiné town of Saint-Marcellin, Charny urgently sought full payment of these, only to be baulked at every turn because of Humbert’s chronic bankruptcy. During the summer of 1344 he rode far to the south of France to confront Humbert face-to-face, but Humbert merely issued further irredeemable money orders, following which, instead of returning home, Charny seems to have boarded a sailing ship bound for the east, a voyage that he very graphically describes in his Book of Geoffroi de Charny poem.
The next that Charny is heard of is as a crusader, taking part in the capture of the harbour fortress of Smyrna on 28 October 1344, a papally-sponsored assault by fast galleys which took the defending Turks by surprise. He was one of a very select band of knights led by Edouard de Beaujeu whom Avignon Pope Clement VI, on learning of their efforts from his on-the-spot legate Patriarch Henri d’Asti, specially commended for their bravery. Although there is a common supposition that Charny accompanied the ineffectual crusade to Smyrna led by Dauphin Humbert during the years 1345-7, this supposition derives from a misreading of a passage in the Militia Passionis Jhesu Christi of Philippe de Mézières. In actuality Mézières specifically listed Charny as having been with Beaujeu and other ‘brave knights’ on what is now known to have been the earlier, militarily successful Smyrna crusade of 1344. Furthermore there is reliable contemporary documentation that Charny was already back in France when Humbert’s slow-moving crusade reached Smyrna in the spring of 1346.
Following Charny’s return to France, he joined a siege of the town of Aiguillon in the country’s south-west, from which in August 1346 he was sent posthaste northwards to try to prevent an invading Flemish army from capturing the strategically vital town of Béthune. This assignment he achieved with conspicuous success, in marked contrast to his king, Philip VI, who after being heavily defeated by England’s King Edward III at the battle of Crécy, went on to lose the port of Calais likewise. In 1347 King Philip appointed Charny a royal councilor and bearer of the Oriflamme, later also making him responsible for protecting France’s northern border and for trying to recapture Calais from the English.
In 1349 Aimery of Pavia, a Lombard mercenary who held the keys to one of the gates of Calais, secretly offered to help Charny recapture the town in return for payment of a huge bribe. Having procured the requisite sum, Charny led a daring night-time assault only to discover that Aimery had double-crossed him by pre-warning England’s King Edward III. Charny duly found himself once again a prisoner, chafing in an English jail for over a year before the newly succeeded King Jean II paid off the huge ransom that was demanded for his release. Shortly after his return to France Charny found the castle where Aimery was staying, captured him, and carried him off to his military base at Saint-Omer, where he ordered him to be publicly executed as a traitor to the sworn word. As noted by historian Richard Kaeuper: "To show that all this was a private matter and not a part of the business of war (there was currently a truce), Charny took possession only of Aimery himself, not his castle." Because his first wife had died, most likely during the Black Death of 1348/9, without producing a male heir, Charny remarried circa 1354, his second wife being Jeanne de Vergy, a very young woman (for she would live on to 1428), who bore him a son named Geoffroi after his father.
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Geoffroi de Charny
Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1306 – 19 September 1356) was the third son of Jean de Charny, the lord of Charny (then a major Burgundian fortress), and Marguerite de Joinville, daughter of Jean de Joinville, the biographer and close friend of France's King Louis IX. A renowned knight who fought on the French side during the early years of the Hundred Years' War, Charny wrote a semi-autobiographical poem, The Book of Geoffroi de Charny, and a set of questions on chivalric matters for the short-lived Company of the Star, France's counterpart to England's Order of the Garter. Although a prose treatise called the Book of Chivalry has also long been accredited to him, recent findings indicate this to have been more likely by his son of the same name, Geoffroi II de Charny, who died in 1398. Charny is also widely associated with the first known showings of the Shroud of Turin, though there are now doubts that he was responsible for these.
He took part in a successful crusading expedition to Smyrna in 1344 and shortly after his return from this King Philip VI appointed him a royal councillor and bearer of the Oriflamme, the sacred battle-standard of France. This role, one in which he continued under King Jean II, made its holder an automatic target for enemy forces on a battlefield, and it was thus that he met his end during the closing moments of the Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356.
Geoffroi de Charny was one of Europe's most admired knights during his lifetime, with a widespread reputation for his skill at arms and his honour. The Tournai-based abbot-chronicler Gilles le Muisit wrote of him: a vigorous soldier, expert in weaponry and much renowned both overseas and here. He has taken part in many wars and in many mortal conflicts, in all of them conducting himself with probity and with nobility'.
Because Geoffroi de Charny was a third son, he did not inherit the lordship of Charny, which on the death of his father and his eldest brother Dreux went to Dreux’s daughter Guillemette’s husband Philip de Jonvelle. From the two literary works of which Charny is the certain author, he seems to have needed to earn a living competing in jousts and tourneys at public tournaments, pursuits in which he became expert. When he married his first wife Jeanne de Toucy in 1336 he possessed no fief of his own, hence on the muster lists that record his participations in the early campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War he is repeatedly described as based at the Toucy family fief of Pierre-Perthuis.
In 1342, Charny led a cavalry charge at the Battle of Morlaix in Brittany which foundered due to a cleverly disguised trap laid by the English. Taken captive, Charny was transported to Goodrich Castle in England as the prisoner of Richard Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot, who according to an English letters patent of October 1343 allowed him to return to France “to find the money for his ransom". Having earlier performed some valuable services for Dauphin Humbert II de Viennois, for which he had been promised revenues from the Dauphiné town of Saint-Marcellin, Charny urgently sought full payment of these, only to be baulked at every turn because of Humbert’s chronic bankruptcy. During the summer of 1344 he rode far to the south of France to confront Humbert face-to-face, but Humbert merely issued further irredeemable money orders, following which, instead of returning home, Charny seems to have boarded a sailing ship bound for the east, a voyage that he very graphically describes in his Book of Geoffroi de Charny poem.
The next that Charny is heard of is as a crusader, taking part in the capture of the harbour fortress of Smyrna on 28 October 1344, a papally-sponsored assault by fast galleys which took the defending Turks by surprise. He was one of a very select band of knights led by Edouard de Beaujeu whom Avignon Pope Clement VI, on learning of their efforts from his on-the-spot legate Patriarch Henri d’Asti, specially commended for their bravery. Although there is a common supposition that Charny accompanied the ineffectual crusade to Smyrna led by Dauphin Humbert during the years 1345-7, this supposition derives from a misreading of a passage in the Militia Passionis Jhesu Christi of Philippe de Mézières. In actuality Mézières specifically listed Charny as having been with Beaujeu and other ‘brave knights’ on what is now known to have been the earlier, militarily successful Smyrna crusade of 1344. Furthermore there is reliable contemporary documentation that Charny was already back in France when Humbert’s slow-moving crusade reached Smyrna in the spring of 1346.
Following Charny’s return to France, he joined a siege of the town of Aiguillon in the country’s south-west, from which in August 1346 he was sent posthaste northwards to try to prevent an invading Flemish army from capturing the strategically vital town of Béthune. This assignment he achieved with conspicuous success, in marked contrast to his king, Philip VI, who after being heavily defeated by England’s King Edward III at the battle of Crécy, went on to lose the port of Calais likewise. In 1347 King Philip appointed Charny a royal councilor and bearer of the Oriflamme, later also making him responsible for protecting France’s northern border and for trying to recapture Calais from the English.
In 1349 Aimery of Pavia, a Lombard mercenary who held the keys to one of the gates of Calais, secretly offered to help Charny recapture the town in return for payment of a huge bribe. Having procured the requisite sum, Charny led a daring night-time assault only to discover that Aimery had double-crossed him by pre-warning England’s King Edward III. Charny duly found himself once again a prisoner, chafing in an English jail for over a year before the newly succeeded King Jean II paid off the huge ransom that was demanded for his release. Shortly after his return to France Charny found the castle where Aimery was staying, captured him, and carried him off to his military base at Saint-Omer, where he ordered him to be publicly executed as a traitor to the sworn word. As noted by historian Richard Kaeuper: "To show that all this was a private matter and not a part of the business of war (there was currently a truce), Charny took possession only of Aimery himself, not his castle." Because his first wife had died, most likely during the Black Death of 1348/9, without producing a male heir, Charny remarried circa 1354, his second wife being Jeanne de Vergy, a very young woman (for she would live on to 1428), who bore him a son named Geoffroi after his father.
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