Armagnac – Burgundian Civil War The Armagnac – Burgundian Civil War was a French civil war between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions from 1407 to 1435 . It occurred while France was already being ravaged by the Hundred Years ' War against the English and the wars surrounding the Western Schism of the papacy . Causes . The war ' s causes are rooted in the reign of Charles VI of France and a confrontation between two different economic , social and religious systems . On the one hand was France , very strong in agriculture , with a strong feudal and religious system , and on the other was England , a country whose rainy climate favoured pasture and sheep - farming and where artisans , the middle classes and cities were important . The Burgundians were in favour of the English model ( the more so since Flanders , whose cloth merchants were the main market for English wool , belonged to the duchy of Burgundy ) , while the Armagnacs defended the French model . In the same way , the Western Schism induced the election of an Armagnac - backed antipope based at Avignon , Pope Clement VII , opposed by the English - backed pope of Rome , Pope Urban VI . With Charles VI mentally ill , from 1393 , his wife Isabeau of Bavaria presided over a regency counsel , on which sat the grandees of the kingdom . The uncle of Charles VI , Philip the Bold , Duke of Burgundy , who acted as regent during the king ' s minority ( from 1380 to 1388 ) , was a great influence on the queen ( he had organized the royal marriage during his regency ) . This influence progressively shifted to Louis I , Duke of Orléans , the king ' s brother , and it was suspected , the queen ' s lover . On the death of Philip the Bold , his son John the Fearless ( who was less linked to Isabeau ) again lost influence at court . The other uncles of Charles VI were less influential during the regency , Louis II of Naples was otherwise engaged managing the kingdom of Naples and John , Duke of Berry , served as a mediator between the Orléans party ( what would become the Armagnacs ) and the Burgundy party , whose rivalry would increase bit by bit and in the end , result in a true civil war . To oppose the territorial expansion of the dukedom of Burgundy ( whose possessions included Flanders ) , the duke of Orléans acquired Luxembourg in 1402 . While Louis of Orléans , getting 90 % of his income from the royal treasury , bought lands and strongholds in the eastern " marche s " of the kingdom that the Burgundians considered their private hunting ground , John the Fearless ( lacking the fiery prestige of his father ) saw royal largess towards him drying up ( Philip received 200 , 000 livres per year , but John had to satisfy himself with 37 , 000 ) . The duke of Orléans , son - in - law of John Galéas Visconti and holding the title for more or less hypothetical fiefdoms in the peninsula , wanted to let Charles VI intervene militarily in his favor . What is more , it seems he wanted to let the Anglo - French truce break down , even so far as provoking Henry IV of England to a duel , which John the Fearless could not allow , since Flemish industry depended totally on imported English wool and would have been ruined by an embargo on English goods . The quarrel at first respected all forms of courtesy : John the Fearless adopted the nettle as his emblem , whilst Louis of Orléans chose the gnarled stick and the duke of Burgundy the plane or " rabot " ( distributing " rabotures " , or badges , to his supporters ) . Outbreak of the war . The king ' s brother , Louis of Orléans , " who whinnied like a stallion after almost all the beautiful women " , is accused of having wanted to seduce or worse , " esforcier " , Margaret of Bavaria , the duchess of Burgundy . Moreover , and even if it was only a rumor , this seducer was the queen ' s lover and – as Burgundian propaganda ran – the real father of Charles , the heir apparent ( the future Charles VII ) . Louis was certainly close to the queen and benefited from the benevolence of his brother the king , whenever he was out of crisis ; he thus succeeded in ousting the Burgundians on the counsel . Ousted from power and toyed with by Louis , this was too much for John the Fearless . Taking advantage of rising anger among the taxpayers , always under pressure in peacetime , and noting that their taxes serve to finance court festivities , John began to campaign for support , financing demagoguery ( promising , for example , tax cuts and state reforms , that is , a controlled monarchy ) . He thus won over the merchants , the small people and the university . John threatened Paris in 1405 with a demonstration of his power , but even this did not prove sufficient to restore his influence . He thus decided to get rid of his exasperating rival , having him murdered on rue Vieille du Temple in Paris on November 23 , 1407 , whilst he was leaving the queen ' s residence at Hôtel Barbette , a few days after she had given birth to her twelfth child . Thomas de Courteheuse then sent word to Louis that the king , Charles VI of France , urgently needed him at hôtel Saint - Paul . Leaving the Hôtel Barbette , Louis was stabbed by fifteen masked criminals led by Raoulet d ' Anquetonville , a servant of the duke of Burgundy . Louis ' s escort of valets and guards were powerless to protect him . John had the support of Paris ' s population and university , whom he had won over by promising the establishment of an ordinance like that of 1357 . Thus able to take power , he could thus also publicly acknowledge the assassination – far from hiding it , he publicized it in an elegy in praise of tyrannicide by the Sorbonne university theologian Jean Petit . The assassination thus finally unleashed a civil war that would last 30 years . Civil war . Intending to avenge his father , Charles of Orléans backed the enemies of the dukes of Burgundy wherever he could but even so , in 1409 , a peace concluded at Chartres seemed to bring an end to hostilities . However , on April 15 , 1410 , at the marriage of Charles ( Louis ' s son ) and Bonne d ' Armagnac at Gien , the Duke of Orléans , his new father - in - law and the grandees of France formed a league against John and his supporters . The marriage gave the Orleans faction a new head to replace Louis ( Charles ' s new father - in - law , Bernard VII , Count of Armagnac , who became the natural protector of the Duke and the Duke ' s mother , Valentina Visconti ) and a new name ( the Armagnac party ) . Other members of the leagues included the dukes of Berry , Bourbon and Brittany , as well as the counts of Alençon and Clermont . Bernard VII recruited warbands in the Midi that fought with unheard - of ferocity : the Écorcheurs . At their head , he ravaged the vicinity of Paris and advanced into the Saint - Marcel suburb . A new treaty , signed at Bicêtre on November 2 , 1410 , suspended hostilities , but both sides had taken up arms again as early as spring 1411 . In October 1411 , with an army 60 , 000 strong , the duke of Burgundy entered Paris and attacked the Bretons allied to the Armagnacs , who had retrenched at La Chapelle . He had to withdraw in the end but , in the night of 8 to 9 November , he left via the porte Saint - Jacques , marched across Saint - Cloud and decisively defeated the Écorcheurs . Then John the Fearless pursued the princes of Orléans and their allies to Bourges , which Orléans was besieging , but the royal army appeared in front of the city on June 11 , 1412 . Another peace was signed at Bourges on July 15 , 1412 and confirmed at Auxerre on August 22 . The English took advantage of the situation by punctually supporting the two parties or buying their neutrality . The Armagnacs concluded a treaty with Henry V of England in 1412 , to prevent an Anglo - Burgundian alliance , so they yielded Guyenne to him and recognized his suzeraineté over Poitou , Angoulême and Périgord . All the same , John the Fearless managed the English well , since an English wool embargo could ruin the cloth merchants of Flanders . In 1413 , John the Fearless supported the Cabochien Revolt that brought about a slaughter in Paris . The Parisian population , terrified , called on the Armagnacs for aid . Their troops retook the city in 1414 . When Henry V of England renewed hostilities in 1415 , the duke of Burgundy remained neutral , leaving Henry able to defeat the French army ( essentially provided by the Armagnacs ) , at the battle of Agincourt in October 1415 . On May 29 , 1418 , thanks to the treason of a certain Perrinet Leclerc and the support of the craftsmen and university , Paris was delivered to Jean de Villiers de L ' Isle - Adam , captain of a troop favouring the duke of Burgundy . On the following June 12 , Bernard VII and other Armagnacs were slaughtered by a mob . John thus became master of Paris once again , and so he entered into negotiations with the English in which he seemed willing to welcome the king of England ' s claim on the French throne . It thus became imperative for the Dauphin to negotiate a rapprochement with the Burgundians , again to avoid an Anglo - Burgundian alliance . John the Fearless , on his part , had become master of a large part of the kingdom after his capture of Paris , but his finances were at rock bottom . John was thus in favor of meeting the Dauphin , Charles VII of France , in order to sign up to an advantageous peace , so several meetings were thus organized . However , having set the precedent for assassinations , on September 10 , 1419 , John himself was murdered on the bridge at Montereau - Fault - Yonne , whilst in the town for an interview with Charles . The perpetrators were servants from the Armagnac faction , who feared that Charles might go over to the Burgundian political forms and views . This act prevented all appeasement , and thereby enabled a continuation of English military successes . Philip the Good , the new Duke of Burgundy , then entered into an alliance with the English ( who had always avoided his father ) , which resulted in the treaty of Troyes . This treaty declaimed Charles VII as a bastard son of Louis of Orléans rather than Charles VI ' s heir , thus leaving Charles VI with no legitimate male heir and married Charles VI ' s daughter , Catherine of Valois , to Henry V . The king of England thus received the crown of France and Charles VI was returned to the power he had had in 1392 , just before the onset of his madness . The treaty called for Henry to become regent over on what remained of Charles VI ' s lands in southeast France until Charles ' s death . His future legitimate grandson would become sovereign of France and England . As would be expected , this treaty was denounced by the Armagnacs , who reasoned " that the king belongs to the crown and not vice versa " . However , Henry V died first in August 1422 and Joan of Arc ' s intervention was thus needed for Charles VII to be legitimized by a divine act and crowned at Reims on July 17 , 1429 , over a year before the coronation of Henry V ' s successor ( the nine - year - old Henry VI of England ) on 16 December 1430 at Notre Dame de Paris . End of the War . Engaged in a patient reconquest of French territory , Charles VII wished to isolate the English from the Burgundians . In 1435 , he concluded the treaty of Arras with Philip the Good , recognizing Burgundy ' s independence . This agreement officially put an end to the war and allowed Charles VII to recapture practically all the English ' s continental possessions , leaving them in 1453 with Calais alone .