The Middle Ages are replete with adventurous men who sailed across the seas, conquered foreign kingdoms, and left their imprint upon history. One such warrior was Marshal Boucicaut. While hardly a conqueror, Boucicaut was certainly one of the most well-traveled and renowned soldiers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Known today as one of the finest examples of medieval chivalry, Boucicaut fought battles across Europe and the Middle East, from Spain and Lithuania to the Holy Land and Constantinople. Out of all his adventures, one of his most notable exploits was leading a French military mission to the Byzantine Empire at one of its darkest hours.
Born Jean II Le Meingre, Boucicaut (1366–1421) was a French noble, the son of Jean I Le Meingre. Jean I was a marshal, a high-ranking military officer in France. Both Jean I and Jean II became known as Le Boucicaut (“the Brave”), the nickname by which both are better known today. The younger Boucicaut served as a page at the court of Charles V (r. 1364–1380). He quickly followed in his father’s footsteps and became well educated in the art of war. Boucicaut served on his first military campaign, in Normandy, at the young age of twelve. He was knighted four years later and embarked on a series of adventures that would occupy the next two decades of his life.
Boucicaut ventured throughout Europe and participated in many of the most important campaigns in Europe during his lifetime, venturing from the wintry forests of Prussia to the humid plains of southern Spain to the walls of the great city of Constantinople. In 1384, Boucicaut joined the forces of the Teutonic Order in Prussia in their crusade against the pagan Lithuanians; he would rejoin this crusade twice more during his lifetime.
Shortly thereafter, Boucicaut was in Spain fighting the Moors in the Reconquista. Back at home, he served in the French armies warring with Toulouse before joining the French king’s expedition to the Spanish theater of the Hundred Years’ War. Taking a short break from warfare, Boucicaut then traveled through the Balkans, the Near East, and the Holy Land with two of his French noble friends. During a ceasefire between the English and the French in the Hundred Years’ War, Boucicaut even organized a jousting tournament between both sides at Saint-Inglevert, where Boucicaut himself reportedly unhorsed several of his opponents. In 1391, following Boucicaut’s third tour of duty with the Teutonic Order in Prussia, the French king Charles VI (r. 1380–1422) made Boucicaut a marshal of France, like his father before him.
Although Boucicaut had already visited the East in a personal capacity, his first major involvement in the region was as part of arguably the last great pan-European crusade, the Crusade of Nicopolis.
During the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had greatly expanded into Europe, effectively conquering most of the Balkans and becoming an Islamic military juggernaut. The Hungarian king Sigismund (r. 1387–1437) was concerned about this powerful new Muslim neighbor to its south, and Pope Boniface IX (r. 1389–1404), equally concerned, preached a new crusade against the Ottomans. Volunteers from across Europe joined the crusade, but the principal participants were the Hungarians and a contingent of French nobles.
When the estimated 12,000–16,000 crusaders gathered at the Hungarian capital of Buda, tensions quickly arose. King Sigismund cautioned the crusaders to wait for the Ottomans to march against them, so that the crusaders would be better rested when battle was joined. But the French argued that waiting for the army would be cowardly; the knights needed to courageously hunt down the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) and his army and defeat them in battle.
The crusader army sided with the French and marched into Ottoman-held Bulgaria. The campaign started off well. The Ottoman ally Ivan Sratsimir of Vidin surrendered to the crusaders. Sigismund also arranged the surrender of the fortress of Oryahovo, although the French broke the agreement and pillaged the town and massacred its inhabitants, a sign of the continued disagreements between the Hungarian and French factions.
The crusade reached its culmination in front of the city of Nicopolis. The crusaders lacked siege weapons, but the French, Boucicaut among them, insisted that, for courageous men, siege ladders alone would be sufficient. The crusaders – and especially the French – having written off Bayezid as a coward, they did not even set up proper reconnaissance; only the Hungarians ascertained that Bayezid was only a few dozen miles away.
Boucicaut, refusing to believe that Bayezid was coming, allegedly threatened to cut off the ears of anyone speaking about the Ottoman army approaching. French overconfidence contributed to the crusaders’ defeat. The French knights insisted on riding out at the head of the army, and although their charge initially broke Bayezid’s infantry, an Ottoman cavalry reserve cut off the knights and slaughtered or captured the French, including Boucicaut. The crusade had been an utter disaster.
Unlike the fates of many of the captured French, Bayezid spared Boucicaut’s life in exchange for a ransom instead of executing him. Following his adventures in the Balkans, Boucicaut returned to France. Despite the fact that his and his fellow French knights’ pride had certainly contributed to if not caused the rout of the crusade at Nicopolis, Boucicaut and his fellow survivors were welcomed back to France as heroes.
A Military Mission to Constantinople
Meanwhile, the situation for the Christians of the Balkans worsened. Bayezid blockaded Constantinople, like a noose around the Byzantine Empire’s neck. The empire’s days were seemingly numbered; it seemed inevitable that they would succumb to the sultan.
Pope Boniface urged Christendom to aid the Byzantines against the terrible Turkish sultan. Charles VI of France wanted to help the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425), perhaps in part because Charles was the overlord of Genoa, which had lucrative commercial enterprises and colonies in the remnants of the empire. Charles ordered Boucicaut to outfit and lead an army of 1,200 men to Constantinople to assist the emperor.
Boucicaut’s mission was not without precedent. Three decades earlier, Count Amadeo of Savoy had led a small Savoyard army for the Byzantines, fighting the Ottomans with some success, including recapturing Gallipoli. Boucicaut’s mission would not be the last either. The Genoese captain Giovanni Giustiniani Longo led 700 soldiers in defending Constantinople against the Ottomans in what would be the final battle of the Byzantine Empire.
Boucicaut, ever the example of chivalric bravery, was eager to return to the Balkans and face the Ottomans in battle yet again. Boucicaut was, in fact, a seemingly ideal ambassador for Charles; he had met Manuel before and he was somewhat familiar with Ottoman warfare, albeit only in defeat.
Along the way, Boucicaut gathered additional troops. With approximately 2,200 soldiers, he broke through the Turkish blockade and arrived in Constantinople in the summer of 1399. Excited crowds welcomed him, and Manuel honored him with the title of Grand Constable.
Boucicaut swiftly set to work. A joint expedition by Manuel and Boucicaut managed to capture the Ottoman fortress of Riva to the north of Constantinople, at the mouth of the Bosphorus. The capture of Riva was a significant morale boost for the beleaguered Byzantines. Boucicaut’s troops carried out operations around Constantinople for the rest of 1399, raiding Ottoman positions around the Bosphorus, even on the Anatolian coast.
But Boucicaut, experienced soldier that he was, quickly realized that his troops could not turn the Ottoman tide. He convinced Manuel that he needed to plead his case to King Charles in person. But before Manuel could leave, he had to appoint a regent in his stead. The obvious candidate was John VII Palaiologos (r. 1390), Manuel’s nephew and briefly emperor in his own right when he had rebelled against his grandfather, Manuel’s predecessor, John V Palaiologos (r. 1341–1391). Given this bad blood, Manuel and John were hardly on speaking terms. But Boucicaut, apparently more diplomatic now than he had been on the Nicopolis crusade, managed to get John to come to Constantinople and reconcile with the emperor. This also reduced tensions between Manuel and John’s partisans, who had been in civil conflict for a generation.
With John settled as regent, Boucicaut and Manuel sailed from Constantinople for France on December 10, 1399. They left a small contingent of around 100 French soldiers under one of Boucicaut’s lieutenants, Jean de Chateaumorand, in Constantinople to help the Byzantine defenders. After making landfall in Italy, Boucicaut went ahead to make arrangements in Paris while Manuel visited the Italian cities of Padua, Vicenza, Pavia, and Milan to gain support for the cause.
In June 1400, Manuel reached Paris, where he reunited with Boucicaut. At a royal audience in Paris, King Charles was sympathetic and promised an even larger expeditionary force under Boucicaut. But Charles, who was prone to fits of insanity, soon descended into a state of madness, and Manuel, deciding little could be done in Paris for the time being, went to England to seek the help of the English king. By February 1401, however, Manuel was back in Paris as the guest of Charles.
Manuel wrote to the kings of Portugal and Aragon for support, and, based on his contemporary letters to the future patriarch Euthymios and Demetrios Chrysoloras, it seems that Manuel was quite upbeat about the prospect of a Western European crusader fleet, led by Boucicaut, coming to save the empire.
A Chivalrous Knight
But despite the significant help Boucicaut gave to Manuel, he would never return to Constantinople. In 1401, in acknowledgement of his military exploits, Charles appointed Boucicaut governor of Genoa. He continued as he had for the past two decades, leading French-Genoese forces on campaigns as far afield as Cyprus, Tripoli, and Beirut. He even planned a raid on Alexandria. But for all of Boucicaut’s bluster and daring, it gained him little. The Venetians soundly defeated the French-Genoese fleet at the Battle of Modon in 1403, and in 1409 Genoa shook off French rule.
Today, Boucicaut is remembered as one of the finest examples of chivalry in late medieval Europe. He was certainly brave, and he fought against practically every pagan and Muslim neighbor of Christendom. A contemporary historian, Jean Froissart, described Boucicaut’s intense physical workout regime and martial vigor.
But in practical terms, his bravery, physical strength, and efforts achieved little. As relevant to the Byzantine Empire in particular, he was one of the French knights who pushed the foolhardy strategy that led to the disaster at Nicopolis. His military expedition to Constantinople provided a short-term morale boost, but little else.
Yet Boucicaut remembered his time in the empire and his close relationship with Manuel. After Boucicaut died, his tomb bore not the honors bestowed upon him by the French king, but the epitaph “Grand Constable of the Emperor and of the Empire of Constantinople.”
Michael Goodyear holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and an A.B. in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in Byzantine history. He has been published in a variety of academic and general-interest publications in law and history, including Le Monde diplomatique, World History Encyclopedia, and the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.
Top Image: Boucicaut praying to Saint Catherine from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut
By Michael Goodyear
The Middle Ages are replete with adventurous men who sailed across the seas, conquered foreign kingdoms, and left their imprint upon history. One such warrior was Marshal Boucicaut. While hardly a conqueror, Boucicaut was certainly one of the most well-traveled and renowned soldiers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Known today as one of the finest examples of medieval chivalry, Boucicaut fought battles across Europe and the Middle East, from Spain and Lithuania to the Holy Land and Constantinople. Out of all his adventures, one of his most notable exploits was leading a French military mission to the Byzantine Empire at one of its darkest hours.
The Origins of Boucicaut and His Early Adventures
Born Jean II Le Meingre, Boucicaut (1366–1421) was a French noble, the son of Jean I Le Meingre. Jean I was a marshal, a high-ranking military officer in France. Both Jean I and Jean II became known as Le Boucicaut (“the Brave”), the nickname by which both are better known today. The younger Boucicaut served as a page at the court of Charles V (r. 1364–1380). He quickly followed in his father’s footsteps and became well educated in the art of war. Boucicaut served on his first military campaign, in Normandy, at the young age of twelve. He was knighted four years later and embarked on a series of adventures that would occupy the next two decades of his life.
Boucicaut ventured throughout Europe and participated in many of the most important campaigns in Europe during his lifetime, venturing from the wintry forests of Prussia to the humid plains of southern Spain to the walls of the great city of Constantinople. In 1384, Boucicaut joined the forces of the Teutonic Order in Prussia in their crusade against the pagan Lithuanians; he would rejoin this crusade twice more during his lifetime.
Shortly thereafter, Boucicaut was in Spain fighting the Moors in the Reconquista. Back at home, he served in the French armies warring with Toulouse before joining the French king’s expedition to the Spanish theater of the Hundred Years’ War. Taking a short break from warfare, Boucicaut then traveled through the Balkans, the Near East, and the Holy Land with two of his French noble friends. During a ceasefire between the English and the French in the Hundred Years’ War, Boucicaut even organized a jousting tournament between both sides at Saint-Inglevert, where Boucicaut himself reportedly unhorsed several of his opponents. In 1391, following Boucicaut’s third tour of duty with the Teutonic Order in Prussia, the French king Charles VI (r. 1380–1422) made Boucicaut a marshal of France, like his father before him.
The Crusade of Nicopolis
Although Boucicaut had already visited the East in a personal capacity, his first major involvement in the region was as part of arguably the last great pan-European crusade, the Crusade of Nicopolis.
During the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had greatly expanded into Europe, effectively conquering most of the Balkans and becoming an Islamic military juggernaut. The Hungarian king Sigismund (r. 1387–1437) was concerned about this powerful new Muslim neighbor to its south, and Pope Boniface IX (r. 1389–1404), equally concerned, preached a new crusade against the Ottomans. Volunteers from across Europe joined the crusade, but the principal participants were the Hungarians and a contingent of French nobles.
When the estimated 12,000–16,000 crusaders gathered at the Hungarian capital of Buda, tensions quickly arose. King Sigismund cautioned the crusaders to wait for the Ottomans to march against them, so that the crusaders would be better rested when battle was joined. But the French argued that waiting for the army would be cowardly; the knights needed to courageously hunt down the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) and his army and defeat them in battle.
The crusader army sided with the French and marched into Ottoman-held Bulgaria. The campaign started off well. The Ottoman ally Ivan Sratsimir of Vidin surrendered to the crusaders. Sigismund also arranged the surrender of the fortress of Oryahovo, although the French broke the agreement and pillaged the town and massacred its inhabitants, a sign of the continued disagreements between the Hungarian and French factions.
The crusade reached its culmination in front of the city of Nicopolis. The crusaders lacked siege weapons, but the French, Boucicaut among them, insisted that, for courageous men, siege ladders alone would be sufficient. The crusaders – and especially the French – having written off Bayezid as a coward, they did not even set up proper reconnaissance; only the Hungarians ascertained that Bayezid was only a few dozen miles away.
Boucicaut, refusing to believe that Bayezid was coming, allegedly threatened to cut off the ears of anyone speaking about the Ottoman army approaching. French overconfidence contributed to the crusaders’ defeat. The French knights insisted on riding out at the head of the army, and although their charge initially broke Bayezid’s infantry, an Ottoman cavalry reserve cut off the knights and slaughtered or captured the French, including Boucicaut. The crusade had been an utter disaster.
Unlike the fates of many of the captured French, Bayezid spared Boucicaut’s life in exchange for a ransom instead of executing him. Following his adventures in the Balkans, Boucicaut returned to France. Despite the fact that his and his fellow French knights’ pride had certainly contributed to if not caused the rout of the crusade at Nicopolis, Boucicaut and his fellow survivors were welcomed back to France as heroes.
A Military Mission to Constantinople
Meanwhile, the situation for the Christians of the Balkans worsened. Bayezid blockaded Constantinople, like a noose around the Byzantine Empire’s neck. The empire’s days were seemingly numbered; it seemed inevitable that they would succumb to the sultan.
Pope Boniface urged Christendom to aid the Byzantines against the terrible Turkish sultan. Charles VI of France wanted to help the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425), perhaps in part because Charles was the overlord of Genoa, which had lucrative commercial enterprises and colonies in the remnants of the empire. Charles ordered Boucicaut to outfit and lead an army of 1,200 men to Constantinople to assist the emperor.
Boucicaut’s mission was not without precedent. Three decades earlier, Count Amadeo of Savoy had led a small Savoyard army for the Byzantines, fighting the Ottomans with some success, including recapturing Gallipoli. Boucicaut’s mission would not be the last either. The Genoese captain Giovanni Giustiniani Longo led 700 soldiers in defending Constantinople against the Ottomans in what would be the final battle of the Byzantine Empire.
Boucicaut, ever the example of chivalric bravery, was eager to return to the Balkans and face the Ottomans in battle yet again. Boucicaut was, in fact, a seemingly ideal ambassador for Charles; he had met Manuel before and he was somewhat familiar with Ottoman warfare, albeit only in defeat.
Along the way, Boucicaut gathered additional troops. With approximately 2,200 soldiers, he broke through the Turkish blockade and arrived in Constantinople in the summer of 1399. Excited crowds welcomed him, and Manuel honored him with the title of Grand Constable.
Boucicaut swiftly set to work. A joint expedition by Manuel and Boucicaut managed to capture the Ottoman fortress of Riva to the north of Constantinople, at the mouth of the Bosphorus. The capture of Riva was a significant morale boost for the beleaguered Byzantines. Boucicaut’s troops carried out operations around Constantinople for the rest of 1399, raiding Ottoman positions around the Bosphorus, even on the Anatolian coast.
But Boucicaut, experienced soldier that he was, quickly realized that his troops could not turn the Ottoman tide. He convinced Manuel that he needed to plead his case to King Charles in person. But before Manuel could leave, he had to appoint a regent in his stead. The obvious candidate was John VII Palaiologos (r. 1390), Manuel’s nephew and briefly emperor in his own right when he had rebelled against his grandfather, Manuel’s predecessor, John V Palaiologos (r. 1341–1391). Given this bad blood, Manuel and John were hardly on speaking terms. But Boucicaut, apparently more diplomatic now than he had been on the Nicopolis crusade, managed to get John to come to Constantinople and reconcile with the emperor. This also reduced tensions between Manuel and John’s partisans, who had been in civil conflict for a generation.
A Parisian Promise
With John settled as regent, Boucicaut and Manuel sailed from Constantinople for France on December 10, 1399. They left a small contingent of around 100 French soldiers under one of Boucicaut’s lieutenants, Jean de Chateaumorand, in Constantinople to help the Byzantine defenders. After making landfall in Italy, Boucicaut went ahead to make arrangements in Paris while Manuel visited the Italian cities of Padua, Vicenza, Pavia, and Milan to gain support for the cause.
In June 1400, Manuel reached Paris, where he reunited with Boucicaut. At a royal audience in Paris, King Charles was sympathetic and promised an even larger expeditionary force under Boucicaut. But Charles, who was prone to fits of insanity, soon descended into a state of madness, and Manuel, deciding little could be done in Paris for the time being, went to England to seek the help of the English king. By February 1401, however, Manuel was back in Paris as the guest of Charles.
Manuel wrote to the kings of Portugal and Aragon for support, and, based on his contemporary letters to the future patriarch Euthymios and Demetrios Chrysoloras, it seems that Manuel was quite upbeat about the prospect of a Western European crusader fleet, led by Boucicaut, coming to save the empire.
A Chivalrous Knight
But despite the significant help Boucicaut gave to Manuel, he would never return to Constantinople. In 1401, in acknowledgement of his military exploits, Charles appointed Boucicaut governor of Genoa. He continued as he had for the past two decades, leading French-Genoese forces on campaigns as far afield as Cyprus, Tripoli, and Beirut. He even planned a raid on Alexandria. But for all of Boucicaut’s bluster and daring, it gained him little. The Venetians soundly defeated the French-Genoese fleet at the Battle of Modon in 1403, and in 1409 Genoa shook off French rule.
Today, Boucicaut is remembered as one of the finest examples of chivalry in late medieval Europe. He was certainly brave, and he fought against practically every pagan and Muslim neighbor of Christendom. A contemporary historian, Jean Froissart, described Boucicaut’s intense physical workout regime and martial vigor.
But in practical terms, his bravery, physical strength, and efforts achieved little. As relevant to the Byzantine Empire in particular, he was one of the French knights who pushed the foolhardy strategy that led to the disaster at Nicopolis. His military expedition to Constantinople provided a short-term morale boost, but little else.
Yet Boucicaut remembered his time in the empire and his close relationship with Manuel. After Boucicaut died, his tomb bore not the honors bestowed upon him by the French king, but the epitaph “Grand Constable of the Emperor and of the Empire of Constantinople.”
Michael Goodyear holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and an A.B. in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in Byzantine history. He has been published in a variety of academic and general-interest publications in law and history, including Le Monde diplomatique, World History Encyclopedia, and the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.
Top Image: Boucicaut praying to Saint Catherine from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut
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