Assassination of Louis I, Duke of Orléans

The assassination of Louis I, Duke of Orléans took place on November 23, 1407 in Paris, France.

During the reign of Charles V, French generals like Bertrand du Guesclin steadily regained territory previously lost to the English in the Hundred Years' War. At the same time England was suffering from serious political disturbances and border threats at home. These two factors led to a truce being declared in 1389 in the Hundred Years' War.

Beginning in 1392 new king of France, Charles VI, experienced bouts of madness and often had to be confined. Whenever he was incapacitated France was ruled by a regency council composed of the grandees of the kingdom presided over by Queen Isabeau. With the death of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, political power shifted away from his son, John the Fearless, to the king's brother, Louis of Orléans, who was rumoured to have had a relationship with the queen. Louis had the Burgundians expelled from the council and took the lion's share of the royal treasury, which he used to break up the Duke of Burgundy's territorial possessions of Flanders and the Duchy of Burgundy by purchasing the Duchy of Luxembourg.

His authority thus weakened, John the Fearless decided he must kill his rival.

On November 23, 1407, the Duke of Orleans went to visit Queen Isabeau, who had given birth a little earlier, at the Hôtel Barbette on the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in Paris.

Thomas de Courteheuse informed him that King Charles VI awaited his urgent presence at the Hôtel Saint-Paul.

Upon his departure, he was stabbed by about fifteen masked thugs led by Raoulet d'Anquetonville, who was a henchman of the Duke of Burgundy. The valets and guards that escorted him were unable to protect him. The Duke of Burgundy had the support of the Parisian and University populations, which he had known how to win over by promising the establishment of an ordinance like that of 1357. Able to seize power, he could publicly confess to the assassination. Far from hiding it, John the Fearless had a eulogy of tyrannicide written by the theologian Jean Petit, an academic at the Sorbonne.

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