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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