August 28, 2024 • 36 mins
This pirate lived in the 13th century and was connected to some major events in British and French history. During his lifetime he was so notorious that people would tell kids that if they were bad Eustice the Monk would come to take them away.
Research:
- "Battle of Sandwich." Britannica Library, Encyclopædia Britannica, 15 Feb. 2024. libraries.state.ma.us/login?eburl=https%3A%2F%2Flibrary.eb.com&ebtarget=%2Flevels%2Freferencecenter%2Farticle%2FBattle-of-Sandwich%2F641336&ebboatid=9265899. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.
- Burgess, Glyn. “Two Medieval Outlaws: Eustice the Monk and Fouke Fitz Waryn.” D.S. Brewer. St. Edmundsbury Press. 1997.
- Cannon, Henry Lewin. “The Battle of Sandwich and Eustace the Monk.” The English Historical Review , Oct., 1912, Vol. 27, No. 108 (Oct., 1912). Via JSOTR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/550984
- Carpenter, D.A. “Eustice the Monk.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 9/23/2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37400
- Isaac, Steven. “The Battle of Sandwich.” Medieval Warfare , SEP / OCT 2017, Vol. 7. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48578184
- Kelly, Thomas E., Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren. “Eustache the Monk: Introduction.” from: Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/eustache-the-monk-introduction
- Lehr, Peter. “Eustace the Monk: Banditry, Piracy and the Limits of State Authority in the High Middle Ages.” Historical Sociology. Vol. 34, Issue 3. September 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/johs.12347
- McGlynn, Sean. “Scourge of the Seas.” Medieval Warfare , 2012, Vol. 2, No. 6. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48578143
- Wright, Thomas. “Essays on subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions, and history of England in the Middle Ages.” London : J.R. Smith. 1846. https://archive.org/details/essaysonsubjects02wrig/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. It's been quite a while
since we had an episode on a pirate and also,
I really could have sworn that we had just a
ton of pirate episodes in the catalog. It feels in
my mind like a very frequent theme. Turns out, looking back,
there are not that many, relatively speaking, today's pirate and outlaw.
(00:38):
Lived in the thirteenth century and was connected to some
major events in British and French history, but he just
really doesn't have the name recognition today that someone like
Blackbeard or Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, or thanks in
part to the TV show Our Flag Means Death Steed Bonnet.
I'm so sad that show was canceled me too. This
(01:03):
is about Eustace the Monk. Sometimes it is spelled cche
at the end, almost as though it would be pronounced
to rhyme with mustache. During his lifetime, he was so
notorious and feared that in areas around the English Channel,
people would tell their kids that if they were bad,
Eustace the monk would come and take them away.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
He's like the lost Crampus and Friends character. A lot
of what we know about Eustace the Monk comes from
a biography by an anonymous poet from Picardy in what
is now France. This book was written in Old French
with some Picard dialect as a little more than twenty
three hundred verses in rhymed couplets. There is one known
(01:49):
copy of it today, which is in the collection of
the National Library of France.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So the earliest this biography could have been written is
the year twelve twenty three, and it definitely existed by
twelve eighty four. It was probably written in the earlier
part of that time span, and that means the events
it describes were in the fairly recent past. It's possible
the author could have talked to people who knew Eustace
(02:16):
or lived through various events that he was connected to,
or the author could have had some kind of personal
experience with all of this. Various details in the biography
can be corroborated through other historical sources, including some official documents,
so parts of this biography probably pretty accurate. But though
(02:38):
we're calling it a biography, it's not a straightforward biography,
It's a medieval romance. As a genre, medieval romances are
known for their fantastic adventures. The most well known medieval
romances today are the ones that also focus more on
tales of heroism and chivalry and courtly love. Think of
all the various stories involving King Arthur and his knights.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
For example.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Eustace, on the other hand, is an outlaw and a
pirate whose behavior can really be the opposite of chivalrous,
like propositioning a sergeant well disguised as a woman and
then loudly passing gas and blaming it on his horse's saddle.
Get that incident goes on for much longer than that
one sentence. The Romance of Eustace the Monk has some
(03:26):
parallels with the Romance of Reynard the Fox. The characters
in Reynard the Fox are anthropomorphized animals, but there are
some similarities between Eustace and the trickster character of Renard.
There are also some moments in the romance of Eustace
the Monk that are almost identical to things that happen
in the Romance of fuch Fitzwaren. This was another real
(03:49):
person and one of Eustace's contemporaries. It's not really clear
whether this overlap came from the authors of each of
these kind of being inspired by each or copying from
each other, or if the common scenes among them are
more like literary tropes that were just in heavy use
at the time and are probably in lots of other
(04:11):
stories that just haven't survived until today.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Regardless, nearly two thirds of the Romance of Eustace the
Monk is focused not on the wars and the monarchs
and the details that can be more readily substantiated, but
on the period when he was living as an outlaw
in the forest of the Boulonnais in northern France. It's
a series of very dramatic sketches that involve a lot
of trickery and theft and disguises and narrow escapes, some
(04:38):
of which really defy reality. So this biography includes details
that were probably true, details that might have been true,
and things that were almost certainly made up for the
sake of and entertaining stories, and sometimes it's really tough
to pick those apart. Eustace was definitely a real person,
though born around the year seventy, he was the son
(05:02):
of a minor noble named Budwin Busque or Buscit. They
lived in the County of Bologna, which was in northern
France along the coast of the English Channel. Boudoin was
a vassal of Renaud de de Martin, count of Bologna,
and since Eustace was of the nobility, he probably trained
as a knight, and at some point he also learned
(05:24):
to be a seafarer, although the timeline on that is
not really clear. According to the Romance of Eustace the Monk,
Eustace went to Toledo and what's now central Spain to study
sorcery or necromancy. The romance claims he spent an entire
summer and winter in an underground chamber there, studying black magic,
(05:45):
including meeting with the devil himself. A nineteenth century essay
by Thomas Wright, who was an antiquarian and an editor
of medieval literature, summed up with the Devil, allegedly foretold
about Eustace's later life as quote, he should live to
war against nobles and princes, and that he should not
die until he had been concerned in many commotions, after
(06:07):
which he should be killed on the sea.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
This trip to Toledo is one of the moments in
the Romance of Eustace the Monk that really can't be substantiated,
not even just the part about talking to the devil.
There's not really any evidence that he went to the
Iberian Peninsula at all, but Toledo did have a reputation
and a lot of Europe for being home to all
(06:30):
kinds of sorcerers and magicians and underground schools of witchcraft.
We also don't really know where the idea of his
studying sorcery came from, like whether this was a rumor
about Eustace that was circulating during or after his lifetime,
or whether it was something that the author of this
romance included to kind of spice up the story and
(06:52):
also offer an explanation of what he was up to
during a gap in the timeline between when he was
born and the next thing we know happened, along with
explaining how he became such a cunning and ruthless man.
As an example of stuff from the biography that can't
really be substantiated and definitely sounds very fictional. On the
(07:14):
way back from Toledo, Eustace was traveling with some of
his fellow students of sorcery, and they stopped in the
town of Montferrand today that's Clermont Ferrand in central France.
They didn't have any local currency, so at first the
tavern keeper's wife refused to serve them. Then she tried
to charge them double because they were using foreign coins,
(07:35):
so Eustace cast a spell that made her take all
of her clothes off and release all of the tavern's
wine from the barrels. Other people in town ran up
to see what the commotion was about, and they started
taking their clothes off too. Then Eustace's party tried to leave,
and the townspeople gave chase. One of his traveling companions
(07:56):
was an old man, and this old man cast a
spell that caused a huge river to appear and divide
them from their pursuers, And then he cast another spell
that made the townspeople back on the other side of
the river all start fighting each other. Once Eustace felt
like he'd gotten sufficient retribution for their earlier treatment at
the tavern, he threw some grain on the ground, which
(08:19):
caused everything to go back to normal, including making the
wine go back into the barrels.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Of course, there's no backup documentation for that whole incident,
but sources do generally agree that Eustace became a monk.
He likely joined the Benedictine order at the abbey of
Saint sam Man near Calais, But again most of the
details of his time as a monk come from the
romance in the words of that nineteenth century essay on
(08:46):
him quote, when Eustace took on himself the religious habit,
he laid aside none of his former unholy practices. The
whole abbey was troubled by his conjurations, and he turned
everything upside down, caused the monks, as the story informs us,
to fast when they ought to have been eating, and
when they ought to have worn their shoes, to go barefoot,
(09:08):
one thousand errors he led them into when they ought
to have been gravely performing the holy services.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Eustace later left the monastery, and there are two different
accounts of why.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Neither of them is.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
That the other monks got sick of him using black
magic to just continually disrupt their religious community. The Chronica
Majora by Benedictine monk Matthew Parris, was first published in
twelve fifty nine and it says that Eustace's father, Buduin Buscuaye,
died and then Eustace was the only surviving heir. His
(09:44):
father probably did die sometime around eleven ninety. His name
shows up as a witness in various legal documents before
eleven ninety, but then not afterward. Eustace could not inherit
that estate as long as as he was a monk,
so he renounced the order. If this is what happened, though,
(10:05):
if he left the order so that he could get
this inheritance, some of the details are wrong because Eustace
seems to have still had surviving brothers. There's not I mean,
that's possible. Maybe that like his mother remarried and had
children with somebody else, but he has brothers who show
up in the historical record later on.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
The other explanation is also connected to the death of
Eustace's father, and that's that Eustace left the order so
that he could try to get revenge on the man
who killed him. Boudoin had some kind of dispute with
Hanphoi de Harris and Jin, possibly over control of a fifdom.
This escalated into a physical altercation in which Boudoin struck
(10:48):
Hanphoi and Hanfoix retaliated, either by killing him or by
arranging an ambush in which someone else killed him. Eustace
petitioned Renault de de Martin for justice, leading to a
judicial duel to settle the matter. Hanphoas's champion was another
man named Eustace Eustace de Marquise. Eustace the Monk's champion
(11:10):
was his cousin Monsier, who was killed in the duel,
making Hanphois the victor.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And even though Eustace's petition to Reynald de de Martine
did not work out in his favor, he later entered
the count's service. By twelve oh three, Eustace had become
rend Seneschal, but his time in this role did not
go all that smoothly. Based on what we know, and
we'll get to that after a sponsor break. Eustace the
(11:48):
Monk's life up to this point, as we have told
it so far, has had a fair amount of silliness.
But before we go on, we need to set up
some more serious context for what was happening between England
and France, because that is going to be a recurring
part of the rest of the episode. England was being
ruled by the Plantagenets also known as the Angevints or
(12:11):
the House of Anjou, depending on who's describing them and
exactly when we are talking about, and France was being
ruled by the Capitian dynasty. The Plantagenets controlled most of
what's now England, as well as parts of Ireland and Wales,
and thanks to various marriages and inheritances going back to
(12:32):
the later part of the twelfth century, the Plantagenets also
were controlling about half of what's now France, with this
combined territory later described as the Angevin Empire.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
In eleven ninety nine, English King Richard the First also
known as Richard the Lionheart, died without a direct heir.
He had previously named his nephew Arthur as his successor,
but then changed his selection to his brother John, also
known as John Lackland. John had previously tried to take
control of England while Richard was imprisoned during the Third Crusade.
(13:07):
But Richard had a few reasons for making this switch
in spite of all that. One is that Arthur was
still a child while John was in his early thirties.
Another is that after some convoluted and failed attempts to
create an alliance between the Plantagenets and the Kapecians. Young
Arthur had wound up being fostered in the court of
Philip the Second of France. He's also called Philip Augustus.
(13:30):
Of course, this meant that Philip Augustus supported Arthur's claim
to the English throne. Among other things, an English king
who had been fostered in French court might pave the
way for the French to regain control of some of
that territory.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeaes switcheroo was confirmed, and near the very end of
the of Richard the first life, after he had been
shot with a crossbow bolt, and that had become gangrenous,
and it was clear that he was dying, so to
get back to Eustace. While he was in the service
of Renaud de de Martines, Renaud was supporting Philip Augustus's
efforts to retake this territory in France by force. And
(14:09):
we don't know the full story of all of Eustace's service,
but one portion of it did not go all that
well for him or for Renaud. Eustace had been ordered
to oversee the improvement of a road that was going
to help strengthen communication between Bologna and Calais. This road
was going to be on land that belonged to Baldwin,
(14:30):
Count of Guineas, who was opposed to the whole project,
because this improved road was going to improve that connection,
but it was going to cut off some of his
own access routes. This led to a standoff between Eustace
and Baldwin, with Baldwin finally showing up with men to
confront Eustace's workforce. Eustace's workers fled, and while it doesn't
(14:52):
seem like anybody was killed in this altercation, some of
those workers were captured, and Baldwin also seized all of
their tools and materials.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Eustace left Renault's service in twelve oh four, or perhaps
a little later, and according to the Romance of Eustace
the Monk, this traced back to his dispute with han
Foi de Harris engine as Seneschal. Eustace was managing Reynauld's
accounts and han Foix raised all kinds of suspicions that
Eustace was mishandling Reynauld's money. Renault eventually summoned Eustace to
(15:25):
his castle to answer these charges, but instead of answering
that call, Eustace fled, burning down Renauld's mills on his
way out. According to the romance, after this, Eustace spent
some time as an outlaw, hiding out in the woods
of Boulonnai, trying to both humiliate Renault and rob him
at every opportunity.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
This probably was a real dispute Eustace and Reynauld. Probably
we were fighting with each other, but the account of
it in the Romance of Eustace the Monk is very colorful.
This is also the longest part of the Row Romance,
set up at the top of the show. This part
of the romance has some parallels with Reynard the Fox
(16:06):
and the Romance of fu Fitzwarren, especially this part of it.
Like Eustace and fuch Fitzwarren, both have their horses shoes
put on backward so people will think they're traveling in
the opposite direction based on the tracks they left. They
both disguise themselves as charcoal burners, that is, somebody who
(16:27):
makes and sell charcoal, and people in that role typically
were just covered in charcoal dust. Because of the nature
of the work. There are a lot of chases and escapes,
and there's speculation that Eustace the Monk or fuch Fitzwarren,
or both of them may have been inspirations for the
character of Robin Hood From.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Time to time. Eustace's exploits as an outlaw also touched
on the bigger political situation in France. When Philip Augustus
visited the region, Reynauld's men acted as his rear guard
and Eustace's force, not because he had any issue with
Philip Augustus, but because he wanted to mess things up
for Renaud. Renaud managed to capture Eustace after Eustace's saddle
(17:10):
slipped while he was being pursued, causing him to fall
off his horse. We don't know if it made a
farting sound or not. Some of Eustace's allies convinced Renaud
to send Eustace to Philip Augustus to stand trial rather
than just executing him himself. But those same allies came
to Eustace's rescue while he was being transported and got
(17:31):
him to the border of Boolinais. From there, Eustace fled
to England, and once he arrived, he pledged his service
to King John.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
As we said earlier, we don't know exactly when Eustace
trained to be a seafarer, but it had happened already
by the time he got to England. King John put
him in control of a fleet of ships. There's documentation
of eight of them, but the Romance puts that number
at thirty. Eustace attacked the King's enemy and was part
(18:00):
of English efforts to retake Normandy, which England had lost
to France in twelve oh four. The term privateer and
letters of mark these things were still centuries away, but
that's basically what Eustace was doing. He was acting as
a maritime mercenary at the behest of the king. King
(18:21):
John was reportedly so impressed with Eustace that he built
him a palace in London as a thank you gift,
but there's no documentation of this palace actually existing. As
he fought for the King, Eustace was also acting more
like a pirate, operating out of the Channel Islands and
attacking the King's allies as well. He built a stronghold
(18:44):
on the island of Sark and treated the whole island
as his own property. At various points, John had to
smooth things over with various barons and other high ranking
people after Eustace attacked their ships. Eventually, Eusas made so
many any English enemies, and any time he needed to
visit the King, he had to do so with a
letter of safe passage, and these are on record as
(19:08):
being issued in May of twelve oh six and April
of twelve oh seven. And Eustace reportedly made so much
money through piracy that he tore down that undocumented palace
that John had built for him and replaced it with
a bigger, better one, also undocumented. Unsurprisingly, Eustace's relationship with
(19:29):
King John eventually soured one John understandably got tired of
having to pay off or otherwise placate people who Eustace
and his fleet attacked or harassed. Eustace was also probably
tired of the King constantly getting on his case about
how he should stop attacking the King's allies, and then
in twelve twelve, the King also informed the Sheriff of
(19:52):
Nottingham that Eustace owed a debt of twenty marks and
that he had a deadline to pay it. When Eustace
failed to pay the debt by the deadline, the sheriff
seized all of his lands for unclear reasons, though this
consequence did not really stick. The king allowed Eustace to
start occupying those lands again, but John did also imprison
(20:15):
some of Eustace's men, possibly including one of his brothers,
and he took Eustace's daughter and possibly also his wife hostage.
We really don't know anything about his wife or children,
aside from scattered mentions of their existence in various documents.
The final straw seems to have come sometime after May
(20:38):
of twelve twelve, when Renauld did de Martesse switched sides,
leaving France and pledging his fealty to King John. Either
Eustace could not stand the idea of fighting on the
same side as Renaud, or Renaud worked to turn King
John against him. It's possible that it was more the latter,
because there's some indication that Eustace stayed in john service
(21:00):
until twelve fourteen, rather than leaving as soon as Renaud
showed up. According to the romance, when Eustace left his service,
King John had his daughter burned and then killed. After
returning to France, Eustace allied with Philip Augustus and worked
particularly closely with Philip's son, Prince Louis later King Louis
(21:22):
the eighth. Eustace became an admiral in the French Navy,
and one of his assignments was to try to retake
the Channel Islands from England. Control of the Channel Islands
went back and forth between England and France during this
whole period. He also fought against England's efforts to retake
Normandy from the French. This conflict between England and France
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became known as the Anglo French War of twelve thirteen
to twelve fourteen. As it went on, England didn't manage
to retake its lost possessions in France, and France started
preparing for a direct invasion of Inga, with Eustace transporting
knights and siege weapons to support that planned invasion. This
conflict also went beyond England and France, drawing in other
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kingdoms and the Holy Roman Empire. The last major battle
in this particular war between England and France was the
Battle of Mouvin, which ended in a French victory. The
French at this battle captured Renault de de Martines, and
he remained in prison until his death in twelve twenty seven,
(22:31):
at the age of about sixty one.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Although the Anglo French War ended with the Truce of
Chinol in twelve fourteen, it did not take long for
England and France to be at war again. More on
that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The English losses in the Anglo French War fed into
long standing tension between the English monarch and the barons,
or the landowners who made up the nobility. This included
disputes over things like taxes and administrative issues, and those
questions about who Richard the First's successor should be had
(23:16):
contributed to a lack of confidence in the monarchy. John's
reputation as king was really not good, and after the
Anglo French War, the barons were also angry about the
loss of nearly all of England's territory in France. Same time,
there were also disputes between the crown and Pope Innocent
(23:39):
the Second. The Pope excommunicated King John in twelve oh nine,
although that was later rescinded. Efforts to resolve these issues
and to try to prevent a civil war in England
ultimately led to the creation of the Magna Carta in
June of twelve fifteen. The Magna Carta or Great Charter,
outlined the rights and freedoms of the barons and of
(24:01):
the Church, as well as outlining limits of power for
the monarch. Some of its clauses also outlined basic civil rights,
such as no freeman shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled,
or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against,
except by the lawful judgment of his peers and the
(24:22):
law of the land.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
That's one of the four clauses of the Magna Carta
that are still in effect today. The Magna Carta is
considered to be one of the most important and influential
legal documents in English history, and it's one that people
who have studied English history in any way have probably
at least heard of.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
There's some speculation that those sieged weapons that Eustace had
transported on behalf of Prince Louis of France, which we
talked about before the break. There's speculation that those were
a factor in King John agreeing to the terms of
the Magna Carta. John was hoping to prevent the possibility
of the dissatisfied barons. Basically inviting the French to invade England.
(25:05):
Knowing that the French already had siege weapons ready to go,
might have been a motivating factor for King John in this.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
But John's attempt to prevent a civil war and a
French invasion did not work out. The barons didn't think
it was likely that the King would actually uphold the
terms of the Magna cartam and then Pope Innocent the
third declared that he didn't have to. So some of
these barons rose up against the king and invited Prince
Louis of France to invade England and try to take over,
(25:35):
and this came to be known as the First Baron's War.
When Prince Louis crossed the Channel on May twentieth, twelve sixteen,
it was against the wishes of both his father and
the Pope. Pope actually excommunicated him over it. He also
crossed the Channel aboard Eustace's flagship. Meanwhile, the rebelling barons
(25:56):
in England took control of parts of the country, including
the Tower of London. Then King John died of dysentery
on October twelfth, twelve sixteen. His son Henry the Third
was his successor, but Henry was only nine years old.
Henry's regent, William Marshall, took over the defense of England,
and he was much more effective at it than John
(26:17):
had been. He started driving the French back, and eventually
Louis had to return to France to regroup and to
get reinforcements. But as the French tried to leave England
via the town of Wenchelsea, they were trapped by a blockade.
The townspeople had sabotaged the mills there, so the French
had plenty of grain but no easy way to grind
(26:38):
it into something edible. They lived for a while on forage, nuts,
and flour that they did manage to grind themselves by hand.
It's not totally clear whether Eustace was with Louis when
his army became trapped in Wenchelsea, or if Eustace managed
to sneak through that blackade. The sources are contradictory on
(26:59):
that detail. But Eustace eventually built a perrier, which is
kind of like a trebochet, to attack the blockading ships,
and he also built a large fortification on one of
the ships that was trapped in the harbor. Although the
English captured this fortified ship. The French were eventually relieved
by a force that arrived from Artois, and they were
(27:20):
able to get out of Winchelsea and return to France.
The French returned to England with still more reinforcements, but
faced another defeat at the Battle of Lincoln also called
the Battle of Lincoln Castle in May of twelve seventeen.
But they returned yet again, this time with a plan
to try to sail a fleet up the River Thames
to London. They faced an English force commanded by Hubert
(27:43):
de Burgh at the Battle of Sandwich on August twenty fourth,
twelve seventeen.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
This was really very early in the history of nautical
warfare in this part of Europe. Most ocean vessels in
this part of the world generally stuck very close to
the coasts. They carried armies that were going to fight
once they were on land, and so the ships would
try to outmaneuver or outrun one another to get to
(28:09):
the land where the fighting was going to happen. The
ships themselves weren't really equipped to fight other ships at sea,
so those huge warships armed with cannons firing broadside volleys
at one another those were still centuries away. Instead, sailors
might try to board enemy ships and take them over,
(28:30):
possibly with the support of archers or various types of weaponry,
but eventually the battles were always winding up on land.
The Battle of Sandwich was the first battle in the
history of Northern Europe to be fought entirely at sea.
The details of how this battle played out are sketchy,
and details from various sources are contradictory, possibly because there
(28:53):
were a lot of things happening all at once. The
English fleet was only about half the size of the
French fleet, but the French ships were heavily laden with cargo,
including siege weapons, knights, and horses, so they couldn't maneuver
very well. The French ships were also downwind of the English,
who came at them from behind, and this made it
possible for the English to throw powdered lime at the
(29:15):
French without being affected by it themselves. That lime blinded
the enemy sailors, so they couldn't effectively fight back or
control their ships. Once the English caught up to the
now disabled French ships, they cut down their sails, which
fell on and around those blinded sailors. The English force
also focused its attention on Eustace's flagship. Specifically, it was
(29:40):
one of the ones that was carrying siege weapons, so
its cargo was particularly valuable in the context of this war. Plus,
the English hoped if they defeated this flagship, the rest
of the French fleet would just scatter or surrender. There's
also an English account of the battle that puts a
magical spin on this, saying that Eustace had enchanted his
(30:01):
ship to be invisible to the English and so they
were only able to see it once he had been killed.
In the end, focusing on Eustace worked out for the English.
They successfully boarded Eustace's ship, where he was found hiding
in the bilge or in the hold, depending on what
account you read, and he tried to buy his freedom,
but was beheaded on the spot, dying at the age
(30:24):
of about forty seven. The French effort really fell apart
after that. This was a pivotal moment in the history
of this part of Europe, in addition to its place
in the history of naval warfare and of British naval power.
The Battle of sandwhich was a decisive defeat for the French.
None of the English ships were lost, while sixty five
(30:46):
of eighty French ships were captured. Other ships were sunk,
and estimated four thousand French sailors died at the Battle
of Sandwich and thirty six French knights were captured. The
battle was over, Eustace's head was taken to Canterbury and
paraded around on display at the end of a lance,
(31:07):
The Romance of Eustace the Monk ends with quote no
man can live long who spends his days doing ill.
Louis also abandoned his claim to the English throne after
this defeat, and that defeat also effectively ended the First
Baron's War. The war formally ended with the Treaty of
(31:27):
Kingston Lambeth in September of twelve seventeen. There's no surviving
copy of this treaty, so we don't have all of
its language, but its terms did include that Prince Louis
would order Eustace's brothers to return control of the Channel
islands they were occupying to England. Louis also abandoned all
(31:48):
claims to the English throne under the terms of the treaty,
but received ten thousand marks and then the Pope later
lifted Louie's excommunication. Twenty fourth, when the Battle of Sandwich
took place, is also the feast of Saint Bartholomew, and
in some accounts of the battle, Saint Bartholomew appeared bolstering
(32:09):
or comforting the English force. After the battle, the people
of Sandwich used the spoils to build a chapel dedicated
to Saint Bartholomew, and houses for the poor and aged,
and a hospital, and it became a tradition for the
townspeople to quote make a solemn procession to the aforesaid
hospital with tapers in their hands every year on Saint Bartholomew's.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Day, that is Eustace the Monk. I have a little
bit of listener mail. Bring it on.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
This listener mail is from Janine who wrote after we
talked about Connie Willis in the behind the scenes of
our episode on the Doomsday Book, and Janine wrote, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I just listened to your episode on
Doomsday Book and Tracy's plug for Connie Willis's Doomsday Book
and the behind the scenes and had to comment I
(33:04):
loved Doomsday Book and all of Connie Willis's time traveling
historians of Oxford Books. I read Doomsday Book for the
first time ages ago, but I did reread it in
twenty twenty during lockdown, and it was definitely something. Mostly
it was just a real sense of familiarity, but there's
one scene that stood out. There's a group of Americans
(33:25):
visiting Oxford when the city is locked down, and they
complain vociferously about how they need to move on with
their tour and this kind of lockdown would never happen
in America, and the main character thinks, yes, this is
why thirty million Americans died during the pandemic, referring to
a global pandemic that happens in twenty eighteen. In the books,
(33:47):
Doomsday Book was published in nineteen ninety two. Connie Willis
was extremely prescient and oof that one really hit home
in December of twenty twenty. Anyway, still an excellent book
and worth the reread, but it certainly is an experience
reading it in a post pandemic world. I have sent
pictures of my cats before, but I've attached to another
(34:07):
couple as pet tacks because they remain extremely cute. Here's
the two of them cuddling together, and also my friendliest
cat on her favorite perch, my shoulder. Thanks for the podcast.
Love catching up when I'm doing chores around the house.
Thank you for this email, Jeanine. Like I said in
that behind the scenes, it's been so long since I
read Doomsday book, I did not remember that detail.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I think I have read all of the books.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
In that series, but it's possible that there's one that
was written after I had read the others that I
did not pick up.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I feel like that's.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Something I heard about at one point and I was like,
I should I should get that, and then have not
done it. These cat pictures, let's.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Look Katie's keys.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh my goodness. We have a like a black cat
and a kind of orange just tabby cat, and they
are curled up together so cute. One is basically on
top of the other. Sometimes mine will do this, but
(35:14):
sometimes something that has started happening at my house is
Opel will be asleep in the old office chair that
I can't get rid of because it's the cat's chair now,
and on ex will decide she wants to be up there,
and she'll just basically go ahead and jump on up
directly on top of her sisters.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, And sometimes they work it out and they curl
up together and it's incredibly cute. But yesterday when this happened,
ople was like, Nope, I'm not doing this today. She
got down and went somewhere else. A cat perched on
a shoulder. I love this. This is something that happens
at my house often. If I let a cat into
the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth and I bend
(35:58):
over to spit out the toothpaste, kitty Kat will take
that opportunity to jump directly onto my back. Anyway, thank
you for these adorable pictures and this email about Connie
Willis's doomsday book. If you'd like to send us a note,
we're at History podcast atiheartradio dot com and you can
(36:18):
subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app, which is
now searchable by episode, or wherever you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(36:42):
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. It's been quite a while
since we had an episode on a pirate and also,
I really could have sworn that we had just a
ton of pirate episodes in the catalog. It feels in
my mind like a very frequent theme. Turns out, looking back,
there are not that many, relatively speaking, today's pirate and outlaw.
(00:38):
Lived in the thirteenth century and was connected to some
major events in British and French history, but he just
really doesn't have the name recognition today that someone like
Blackbeard or Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, or thanks in
part to the TV show Our Flag Means Death Steed Bonnet.
I'm so sad that show was canceled me too. This
(01:03):
is about Eustace the Monk. Sometimes it is spelled cche
at the end, almost as though it would be pronounced
to rhyme with mustache. During his lifetime, he was so
notorious and feared that in areas around the English Channel,
people would tell their kids that if they were bad,
Eustace the monk would come and take them away.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
He's like the lost Crampus and Friends character. A lot
of what we know about Eustace the Monk comes from
a biography by an anonymous poet from Picardy in what
is now France. This book was written in Old French
with some Picard dialect as a little more than twenty
three hundred verses in rhymed couplets. There is one known
(01:49):
copy of it today, which is in the collection of
the National Library of France.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So the earliest this biography could have been written is
the year twelve twenty three, and it definitely existed by
twelve eighty four. It was probably written in the earlier
part of that time span, and that means the events
it describes were in the fairly recent past. It's possible
the author could have talked to people who knew Eustace
(02:16):
or lived through various events that he was connected to,
or the author could have had some kind of personal
experience with all of this. Various details in the biography
can be corroborated through other historical sources, including some official documents,
so parts of this biography probably pretty accurate. But though
(02:38):
we're calling it a biography, it's not a straightforward biography,
It's a medieval romance. As a genre, medieval romances are
known for their fantastic adventures. The most well known medieval
romances today are the ones that also focus more on
tales of heroism and chivalry and courtly love. Think of
all the various stories involving King Arthur and his knights.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
For example.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Eustace, on the other hand, is an outlaw and a
pirate whose behavior can really be the opposite of chivalrous,
like propositioning a sergeant well disguised as a woman and
then loudly passing gas and blaming it on his horse's saddle.
Get that incident goes on for much longer than that
one sentence. The Romance of Eustace the Monk has some
(03:26):
parallels with the Romance of Reynard the Fox. The characters
in Reynard the Fox are anthropomorphized animals, but there are
some similarities between Eustace and the trickster character of Renard.
There are also some moments in the romance of Eustace
the Monk that are almost identical to things that happen
in the Romance of fuch Fitzwaren. This was another real
(03:49):
person and one of Eustace's contemporaries. It's not really clear
whether this overlap came from the authors of each of
these kind of being inspired by each or copying from
each other, or if the common scenes among them are
more like literary tropes that were just in heavy use
at the time and are probably in lots of other
(04:11):
stories that just haven't survived until today.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Regardless, nearly two thirds of the Romance of Eustace the
Monk is focused not on the wars and the monarchs
and the details that can be more readily substantiated, but
on the period when he was living as an outlaw
in the forest of the Boulonnais in northern France. It's
a series of very dramatic sketches that involve a lot
of trickery and theft and disguises and narrow escapes, some
(04:38):
of which really defy reality. So this biography includes details
that were probably true, details that might have been true,
and things that were almost certainly made up for the
sake of and entertaining stories, and sometimes it's really tough
to pick those apart. Eustace was definitely a real person,
though born around the year seventy, he was the son
(05:02):
of a minor noble named Budwin Busque or Buscit. They
lived in the County of Bologna, which was in northern
France along the coast of the English Channel. Boudoin was
a vassal of Renaud de de Martin, count of Bologna,
and since Eustace was of the nobility, he probably trained
as a knight, and at some point he also learned
(05:24):
to be a seafarer, although the timeline on that is
not really clear. According to the Romance of Eustace the Monk,
Eustace went to Toledo and what's now central Spain to study
sorcery or necromancy. The romance claims he spent an entire
summer and winter in an underground chamber there, studying black magic,
(05:45):
including meeting with the devil himself. A nineteenth century essay
by Thomas Wright, who was an antiquarian and an editor
of medieval literature, summed up with the Devil, allegedly foretold
about Eustace's later life as quote, he should live to
war against nobles and princes, and that he should not
die until he had been concerned in many commotions, after
(06:07):
which he should be killed on the sea.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
This trip to Toledo is one of the moments in
the Romance of Eustace the Monk that really can't be substantiated,
not even just the part about talking to the devil.
There's not really any evidence that he went to the
Iberian Peninsula at all, but Toledo did have a reputation
and a lot of Europe for being home to all
(06:30):
kinds of sorcerers and magicians and underground schools of witchcraft.
We also don't really know where the idea of his
studying sorcery came from, like whether this was a rumor
about Eustace that was circulating during or after his lifetime,
or whether it was something that the author of this
romance included to kind of spice up the story and
(06:52):
also offer an explanation of what he was up to
during a gap in the timeline between when he was
born and the next thing we know happened, along with
explaining how he became such a cunning and ruthless man.
As an example of stuff from the biography that can't
really be substantiated and definitely sounds very fictional. On the
(07:14):
way back from Toledo, Eustace was traveling with some of
his fellow students of sorcery, and they stopped in the
town of Montferrand today that's Clermont Ferrand in central France.
They didn't have any local currency, so at first the
tavern keeper's wife refused to serve them. Then she tried
to charge them double because they were using foreign coins,
(07:35):
so Eustace cast a spell that made her take all
of her clothes off and release all of the tavern's
wine from the barrels. Other people in town ran up
to see what the commotion was about, and they started
taking their clothes off too. Then Eustace's party tried to leave,
and the townspeople gave chase. One of his traveling companions
(07:56):
was an old man, and this old man cast a
spell that caused a huge river to appear and divide
them from their pursuers, And then he cast another spell
that made the townspeople back on the other side of
the river all start fighting each other. Once Eustace felt
like he'd gotten sufficient retribution for their earlier treatment at
the tavern, he threw some grain on the ground, which
(08:19):
caused everything to go back to normal, including making the
wine go back into the barrels.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Of course, there's no backup documentation for that whole incident,
but sources do generally agree that Eustace became a monk.
He likely joined the Benedictine order at the abbey of
Saint sam Man near Calais, But again most of the
details of his time as a monk come from the
romance in the words of that nineteenth century essay on
(08:46):
him quote, when Eustace took on himself the religious habit,
he laid aside none of his former unholy practices. The
whole abbey was troubled by his conjurations, and he turned
everything upside down, caused the monks, as the story informs us,
to fast when they ought to have been eating, and
when they ought to have worn their shoes, to go barefoot,
(09:08):
one thousand errors he led them into when they ought
to have been gravely performing the holy services.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Eustace later left the monastery, and there are two different
accounts of why.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Neither of them is.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
That the other monks got sick of him using black
magic to just continually disrupt their religious community. The Chronica
Majora by Benedictine monk Matthew Parris, was first published in
twelve fifty nine and it says that Eustace's father, Buduin Buscuaye,
died and then Eustace was the only surviving heir. His
(09:44):
father probably did die sometime around eleven ninety. His name
shows up as a witness in various legal documents before
eleven ninety, but then not afterward. Eustace could not inherit
that estate as long as as he was a monk,
so he renounced the order. If this is what happened, though,
(10:05):
if he left the order so that he could get
this inheritance, some of the details are wrong because Eustace
seems to have still had surviving brothers. There's not I mean,
that's possible. Maybe that like his mother remarried and had
children with somebody else, but he has brothers who show
up in the historical record later on.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
The other explanation is also connected to the death of
Eustace's father, and that's that Eustace left the order so
that he could try to get revenge on the man
who killed him. Boudoin had some kind of dispute with
Hanphoi de Harris and Jin, possibly over control of a fifdom.
This escalated into a physical altercation in which Boudoin struck
(10:48):
Hanphoi and Hanfoix retaliated, either by killing him or by
arranging an ambush in which someone else killed him. Eustace
petitioned Renault de de Martin for justice, leading to a
judicial duel to settle the matter. Hanphoas's champion was another
man named Eustace Eustace de Marquise. Eustace the Monk's champion
(11:10):
was his cousin Monsier, who was killed in the duel,
making Hanphois the victor.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And even though Eustace's petition to Reynald de de Martine
did not work out in his favor, he later entered
the count's service. By twelve oh three, Eustace had become
rend Seneschal, but his time in this role did not
go all that smoothly. Based on what we know, and
we'll get to that after a sponsor break. Eustace the
(11:48):
Monk's life up to this point, as we have told
it so far, has had a fair amount of silliness.
But before we go on, we need to set up
some more serious context for what was happening between England
and France, because that is going to be a recurring
part of the rest of the episode. England was being
ruled by the Plantagenets also known as the Angevints or
(12:11):
the House of Anjou, depending on who's describing them and
exactly when we are talking about, and France was being
ruled by the Capitian dynasty. The Plantagenets controlled most of
what's now England, as well as parts of Ireland and Wales,
and thanks to various marriages and inheritances going back to
(12:32):
the later part of the twelfth century, the Plantagenets also
were controlling about half of what's now France, with this
combined territory later described as the Angevin Empire.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
In eleven ninety nine, English King Richard the First also
known as Richard the Lionheart, died without a direct heir.
He had previously named his nephew Arthur as his successor,
but then changed his selection to his brother John, also
known as John Lackland. John had previously tried to take
control of England while Richard was imprisoned during the Third Crusade.
(13:07):
But Richard had a few reasons for making this switch
in spite of all that. One is that Arthur was
still a child while John was in his early thirties.
Another is that after some convoluted and failed attempts to
create an alliance between the Plantagenets and the Kapecians. Young
Arthur had wound up being fostered in the court of
Philip the Second of France. He's also called Philip Augustus.
(13:30):
Of course, this meant that Philip Augustus supported Arthur's claim
to the English throne. Among other things, an English king
who had been fostered in French court might pave the
way for the French to regain control of some of
that territory.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeaes switcheroo was confirmed, and near the very end of
the of Richard the first life, after he had been
shot with a crossbow bolt, and that had become gangrenous,
and it was clear that he was dying, so to
get back to Eustace. While he was in the service
of Renaud de de Martines, Renaud was supporting Philip Augustus's
efforts to retake this territory in France by force. And
(14:09):
we don't know the full story of all of Eustace's service,
but one portion of it did not go all that
well for him or for Renaud. Eustace had been ordered
to oversee the improvement of a road that was going
to help strengthen communication between Bologna and Calais. This road
was going to be on land that belonged to Baldwin,
(14:30):
Count of Guineas, who was opposed to the whole project,
because this improved road was going to improve that connection,
but it was going to cut off some of his
own access routes. This led to a standoff between Eustace
and Baldwin, with Baldwin finally showing up with men to
confront Eustace's workforce. Eustace's workers fled, and while it doesn't
(14:52):
seem like anybody was killed in this altercation, some of
those workers were captured, and Baldwin also seized all of
their tools and materials.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Eustace left Renault's service in twelve oh four, or perhaps
a little later, and according to the Romance of Eustace
the Monk, this traced back to his dispute with han
Foi de Harris engine as Seneschal. Eustace was managing Reynauld's
accounts and han Foix raised all kinds of suspicions that
Eustace was mishandling Reynauld's money. Renault eventually summoned Eustace to
(15:25):
his castle to answer these charges, but instead of answering
that call, Eustace fled, burning down Renauld's mills on his
way out. According to the romance, after this, Eustace spent
some time as an outlaw, hiding out in the woods
of Boulonnai, trying to both humiliate Renault and rob him
at every opportunity.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
This probably was a real dispute Eustace and Reynauld. Probably
we were fighting with each other, but the account of
it in the Romance of Eustace the Monk is very colorful.
This is also the longest part of the Row Romance,
set up at the top of the show. This part
of the romance has some parallels with Reynard the Fox
(16:06):
and the Romance of fu Fitzwarren, especially this part of it.
Like Eustace and fuch Fitzwarren, both have their horses shoes
put on backward so people will think they're traveling in
the opposite direction based on the tracks they left. They
both disguise themselves as charcoal burners, that is, somebody who
(16:27):
makes and sell charcoal, and people in that role typically
were just covered in charcoal dust. Because of the nature
of the work. There are a lot of chases and escapes,
and there's speculation that Eustace the Monk or fuch Fitzwarren,
or both of them may have been inspirations for the
character of Robin Hood From.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Time to time. Eustace's exploits as an outlaw also touched
on the bigger political situation in France. When Philip Augustus
visited the region, Reynauld's men acted as his rear guard
and Eustace's force, not because he had any issue with
Philip Augustus, but because he wanted to mess things up
for Renaud. Renaud managed to capture Eustace after Eustace's saddle
(17:10):
slipped while he was being pursued, causing him to fall
off his horse. We don't know if it made a
farting sound or not. Some of Eustace's allies convinced Renaud
to send Eustace to Philip Augustus to stand trial rather
than just executing him himself. But those same allies came
to Eustace's rescue while he was being transported and got
(17:31):
him to the border of Boolinais. From there, Eustace fled
to England, and once he arrived, he pledged his service
to King John.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
As we said earlier, we don't know exactly when Eustace
trained to be a seafarer, but it had happened already
by the time he got to England. King John put
him in control of a fleet of ships. There's documentation
of eight of them, but the Romance puts that number
at thirty. Eustace attacked the King's enemy and was part
(18:00):
of English efforts to retake Normandy, which England had lost
to France in twelve oh four. The term privateer and
letters of mark these things were still centuries away, but
that's basically what Eustace was doing. He was acting as
a maritime mercenary at the behest of the king. King
(18:21):
John was reportedly so impressed with Eustace that he built
him a palace in London as a thank you gift,
but there's no documentation of this palace actually existing. As
he fought for the King, Eustace was also acting more
like a pirate, operating out of the Channel Islands and
attacking the King's allies as well. He built a stronghold
(18:44):
on the island of Sark and treated the whole island
as his own property. At various points, John had to
smooth things over with various barons and other high ranking
people after Eustace attacked their ships. Eventually, Eusas made so
many any English enemies, and any time he needed to
visit the King, he had to do so with a
letter of safe passage, and these are on record as
(19:08):
being issued in May of twelve oh six and April
of twelve oh seven. And Eustace reportedly made so much
money through piracy that he tore down that undocumented palace
that John had built for him and replaced it with
a bigger, better one, also undocumented. Unsurprisingly, Eustace's relationship with
(19:29):
King John eventually soured one John understandably got tired of
having to pay off or otherwise placate people who Eustace
and his fleet attacked or harassed. Eustace was also probably
tired of the King constantly getting on his case about
how he should stop attacking the King's allies, and then
in twelve twelve, the King also informed the Sheriff of
(19:52):
Nottingham that Eustace owed a debt of twenty marks and
that he had a deadline to pay it. When Eustace
failed to pay the debt by the deadline, the sheriff
seized all of his lands for unclear reasons, though this
consequence did not really stick. The king allowed Eustace to
start occupying those lands again, but John did also imprison
(20:15):
some of Eustace's men, possibly including one of his brothers,
and he took Eustace's daughter and possibly also his wife hostage.
We really don't know anything about his wife or children,
aside from scattered mentions of their existence in various documents.
The final straw seems to have come sometime after May
(20:38):
of twelve twelve, when Renauld did de Martesse switched sides,
leaving France and pledging his fealty to King John. Either
Eustace could not stand the idea of fighting on the
same side as Renaud, or Renaud worked to turn King
John against him. It's possible that it was more the latter,
because there's some indication that Eustace stayed in john service
(21:00):
until twelve fourteen, rather than leaving as soon as Renaud
showed up. According to the romance, when Eustace left his service,
King John had his daughter burned and then killed. After
returning to France, Eustace allied with Philip Augustus and worked
particularly closely with Philip's son, Prince Louis later King Louis
(21:22):
the eighth. Eustace became an admiral in the French Navy,
and one of his assignments was to try to retake
the Channel Islands from England. Control of the Channel Islands
went back and forth between England and France during this
whole period. He also fought against England's efforts to retake
Normandy from the French. This conflict between England and France
(21:46):
became known as the Anglo French War of twelve thirteen
to twelve fourteen. As it went on, England didn't manage
to retake its lost possessions in France, and France started
preparing for a direct invasion of Inga, with Eustace transporting
knights and siege weapons to support that planned invasion. This
conflict also went beyond England and France, drawing in other
(22:10):
kingdoms and the Holy Roman Empire. The last major battle
in this particular war between England and France was the
Battle of Mouvin, which ended in a French victory. The
French at this battle captured Renault de de Martines, and
he remained in prison until his death in twelve twenty seven,
(22:31):
at the age of about sixty one.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Although the Anglo French War ended with the Truce of
Chinol in twelve fourteen, it did not take long for
England and France to be at war again. More on
that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The English losses in the Anglo French War fed into
long standing tension between the English monarch and the barons,
or the landowners who made up the nobility. This included
disputes over things like taxes and administrative issues, and those
questions about who Richard the First's successor should be had
(23:16):
contributed to a lack of confidence in the monarchy. John's
reputation as king was really not good, and after the
Anglo French War, the barons were also angry about the
loss of nearly all of England's territory in France. Same time,
there were also disputes between the crown and Pope Innocent
(23:39):
the Second. The Pope excommunicated King John in twelve oh nine,
although that was later rescinded. Efforts to resolve these issues
and to try to prevent a civil war in England
ultimately led to the creation of the Magna Carta in
June of twelve fifteen. The Magna Carta or Great Charter,
outlined the rights and freedoms of the barons and of
(24:01):
the Church, as well as outlining limits of power for
the monarch. Some of its clauses also outlined basic civil rights,
such as no freeman shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled,
or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against,
except by the lawful judgment of his peers and the
(24:22):
law of the land.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
That's one of the four clauses of the Magna Carta
that are still in effect today. The Magna Carta is
considered to be one of the most important and influential
legal documents in English history, and it's one that people
who have studied English history in any way have probably
at least heard of.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
There's some speculation that those sieged weapons that Eustace had
transported on behalf of Prince Louis of France, which we
talked about before the break. There's speculation that those were
a factor in King John agreeing to the terms of
the Magna Carta. John was hoping to prevent the possibility
of the dissatisfied barons. Basically inviting the French to invade England.
(25:05):
Knowing that the French already had siege weapons ready to go,
might have been a motivating factor for King John in this.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
But John's attempt to prevent a civil war and a
French invasion did not work out. The barons didn't think
it was likely that the King would actually uphold the
terms of the Magna cartam and then Pope Innocent the
third declared that he didn't have to. So some of
these barons rose up against the king and invited Prince
Louis of France to invade England and try to take over,
(25:35):
and this came to be known as the First Baron's War.
When Prince Louis crossed the Channel on May twentieth, twelve sixteen,
it was against the wishes of both his father and
the Pope. Pope actually excommunicated him over it. He also
crossed the Channel aboard Eustace's flagship. Meanwhile, the rebelling barons
(25:56):
in England took control of parts of the country, including
the Tower of London. Then King John died of dysentery
on October twelfth, twelve sixteen. His son Henry the Third
was his successor, but Henry was only nine years old.
Henry's regent, William Marshall, took over the defense of England,
and he was much more effective at it than John
(26:17):
had been. He started driving the French back, and eventually
Louis had to return to France to regroup and to
get reinforcements. But as the French tried to leave England
via the town of Wenchelsea, they were trapped by a blockade.
The townspeople had sabotaged the mills there, so the French
had plenty of grain but no easy way to grind
(26:38):
it into something edible. They lived for a while on forage, nuts,
and flour that they did manage to grind themselves by hand.
It's not totally clear whether Eustace was with Louis when
his army became trapped in Wenchelsea, or if Eustace managed
to sneak through that blackade. The sources are contradictory on
(26:59):
that detail. But Eustace eventually built a perrier, which is
kind of like a trebochet, to attack the blockading ships,
and he also built a large fortification on one of
the ships that was trapped in the harbor. Although the
English captured this fortified ship. The French were eventually relieved
by a force that arrived from Artois, and they were
(27:20):
able to get out of Winchelsea and return to France.
The French returned to England with still more reinforcements, but
faced another defeat at the Battle of Lincoln also called
the Battle of Lincoln Castle in May of twelve seventeen.
But they returned yet again, this time with a plan
to try to sail a fleet up the River Thames
to London. They faced an English force commanded by Hubert
(27:43):
de Burgh at the Battle of Sandwich on August twenty fourth,
twelve seventeen.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
This was really very early in the history of nautical
warfare in this part of Europe. Most ocean vessels in
this part of the world generally stuck very close to
the coasts. They carried armies that were going to fight
once they were on land, and so the ships would
try to outmaneuver or outrun one another to get to
(28:09):
the land where the fighting was going to happen. The
ships themselves weren't really equipped to fight other ships at sea,
so those huge warships armed with cannons firing broadside volleys
at one another those were still centuries away. Instead, sailors
might try to board enemy ships and take them over,
(28:30):
possibly with the support of archers or various types of weaponry,
but eventually the battles were always winding up on land.
The Battle of Sandwich was the first battle in the
history of Northern Europe to be fought entirely at sea.
The details of how this battle played out are sketchy,
and details from various sources are contradictory, possibly because there
(28:53):
were a lot of things happening all at once. The
English fleet was only about half the size of the
French fleet, but the French ships were heavily laden with cargo,
including siege weapons, knights, and horses, so they couldn't maneuver
very well. The French ships were also downwind of the English,
who came at them from behind, and this made it
possible for the English to throw powdered lime at the
(29:15):
French without being affected by it themselves. That lime blinded
the enemy sailors, so they couldn't effectively fight back or
control their ships. Once the English caught up to the
now disabled French ships, they cut down their sails, which
fell on and around those blinded sailors. The English force
also focused its attention on Eustace's flagship. Specifically, it was
(29:40):
one of the ones that was carrying siege weapons, so
its cargo was particularly valuable in the context of this war. Plus,
the English hoped if they defeated this flagship, the rest
of the French fleet would just scatter or surrender. There's
also an English account of the battle that puts a
magical spin on this, saying that Eustace had enchanted his
(30:01):
ship to be invisible to the English and so they
were only able to see it once he had been killed.
In the end, focusing on Eustace worked out for the English.
They successfully boarded Eustace's ship, where he was found hiding
in the bilge or in the hold, depending on what
account you read, and he tried to buy his freedom,
but was beheaded on the spot, dying at the age
(30:24):
of about forty seven. The French effort really fell apart
after that. This was a pivotal moment in the history
of this part of Europe, in addition to its place
in the history of naval warfare and of British naval power.
The Battle of sandwhich was a decisive defeat for the French.
None of the English ships were lost, while sixty five
(30:46):
of eighty French ships were captured. Other ships were sunk,
and estimated four thousand French sailors died at the Battle
of Sandwich and thirty six French knights were captured. The
battle was over, Eustace's head was taken to Canterbury and
paraded around on display at the end of a lance,
(31:07):
The Romance of Eustace the Monk ends with quote no
man can live long who spends his days doing ill.
Louis also abandoned his claim to the English throne after
this defeat, and that defeat also effectively ended the First
Baron's War. The war formally ended with the Treaty of
(31:27):
Kingston Lambeth in September of twelve seventeen. There's no surviving
copy of this treaty, so we don't have all of
its language, but its terms did include that Prince Louis
would order Eustace's brothers to return control of the Channel
islands they were occupying to England. Louis also abandoned all
(31:48):
claims to the English throne under the terms of the treaty,
but received ten thousand marks and then the Pope later
lifted Louie's excommunication. Twenty fourth, when the Battle of Sandwich
took place, is also the feast of Saint Bartholomew, and
in some accounts of the battle, Saint Bartholomew appeared bolstering
(32:09):
or comforting the English force. After the battle, the people
of Sandwich used the spoils to build a chapel dedicated
to Saint Bartholomew, and houses for the poor and aged,
and a hospital, and it became a tradition for the
townspeople to quote make a solemn procession to the aforesaid
hospital with tapers in their hands every year on Saint Bartholomew's.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Day, that is Eustace the Monk. I have a little
bit of listener mail. Bring it on.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
This listener mail is from Janine who wrote after we
talked about Connie Willis in the behind the scenes of
our episode on the Doomsday Book, and Janine wrote, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I just listened to your episode on
Doomsday Book and Tracy's plug for Connie Willis's Doomsday Book
and the behind the scenes and had to comment I
(33:04):
loved Doomsday Book and all of Connie Willis's time traveling
historians of Oxford Books. I read Doomsday Book for the
first time ages ago, but I did reread it in
twenty twenty during lockdown, and it was definitely something. Mostly
it was just a real sense of familiarity, but there's
one scene that stood out. There's a group of Americans
(33:25):
visiting Oxford when the city is locked down, and they
complain vociferously about how they need to move on with
their tour and this kind of lockdown would never happen
in America, and the main character thinks, yes, this is
why thirty million Americans died during the pandemic, referring to
a global pandemic that happens in twenty eighteen. In the books,
(33:47):
Doomsday Book was published in nineteen ninety two. Connie Willis
was extremely prescient and oof that one really hit home
in December of twenty twenty. Anyway, still an excellent book
and worth the reread, but it certainly is an experience
reading it in a post pandemic world. I have sent
pictures of my cats before, but I've attached to another
(34:07):
couple as pet tacks because they remain extremely cute. Here's
the two of them cuddling together, and also my friendliest
cat on her favorite perch, my shoulder. Thanks for the podcast.
Love catching up when I'm doing chores around the house.
Thank you for this email, Jeanine. Like I said in
that behind the scenes, it's been so long since I
read Doomsday book, I did not remember that detail.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I think I have read all of the books.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
In that series, but it's possible that there's one that
was written after I had read the others that I
did not pick up.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I feel like that's.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Something I heard about at one point and I was like,
I should I should get that, and then have not
done it. These cat pictures, let's.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Look Katie's keys.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh my goodness. We have a like a black cat
and a kind of orange just tabby cat, and they
are curled up together so cute. One is basically on
top of the other. Sometimes mine will do this, but
(35:14):
sometimes something that has started happening at my house is
Opel will be asleep in the old office chair that
I can't get rid of because it's the cat's chair now,
and on ex will decide she wants to be up there,
and she'll just basically go ahead and jump on up
directly on top of her sisters.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, And sometimes they work it out and they curl
up together and it's incredibly cute. But yesterday when this happened,
ople was like, Nope, I'm not doing this today. She
got down and went somewhere else. A cat perched on
a shoulder. I love this. This is something that happens
at my house often. If I let a cat into
the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth and I bend
(35:58):
over to spit out the toothpaste, kitty Kat will take
that opportunity to jump directly onto my back. Anyway, thank
you for these adorable pictures and this email about Connie
Willis's doomsday book. If you'd like to send us a note,
we're at History podcast atiheartradio dot com and you can
(36:18):
subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app, which is
now searchable by episode, or wherever you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(36:42):
favorite shows.
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Holly Frey
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