Amadeus VI of Savoy

When Aymon, Count of Savoy, died in 1343, his successor, his son Amadeus, was only nine years old. Two cousins were assigned as co-regents. Those cousins, Amadeus III of Geneva and Louis II of Vaud, agreed that neither would make a decision without the other's agreement. Their decisions also could be reviewed by the council of nobles.

The arrangement was very sensible and politic. There was another cousin, however, who tried to throw a wrench into the works. Joan of Savoy had tried to claim the County of Savoy for herself after the death of her father, Edward. Edward was succeeded by Aymon, but Joan thought she should have succeeded her father even though Savoy was governed by Salic law. She was acknowledged at the time as having a point, but was convinced to renounce her claim and cause no trouble in exchange for an annual pension.

Now, with a nine-year-old in power, she renewed her claim. Two years after Amadeus became count, she received a similar deal, renouncing the claim in exchange for a yearly allowance of 5000 livres.

Amadeus was educated in and enjoyed the arts of war, reading both the classical era work on war, De Re Militari, and the more recent De Regimine Principum, concerning the morality of ruling temporally. He was also devout, taking a vow of fasting that was so strict that he endangered his health and had to ask Pope Clement VI to release him from the vow.

In 1348, the Black Death was sweeping over Europe, and Savoy was not spared. As was often the case in times of disaster, Jews were blamed. Savoyan nobles tried to protect them, putting some in locked towers for protection. Savoyan courts tracked down those responsible for killing Jews, executing some and fining others.

Amadeus was nicknamed the "Green Count." On his 19th birthday in 1353, a series of tournaments were held. He appeared with a green silk tabard over his armor and green plumes on his helmet. He was accompanied into the lists by 11 green-clad knights, each led by a lady dressed in green who led the knight's horse by a green cord. Green became a popular color for him and his court after that. (Green was difficult to produce before the 1700s and the discovery of new chemicals. To get green, you had to dye fabric first yellow, and then blue. To have a lot of green showed extravagance.)

Tomorrow we'll look at his adult life.

Gascony/Aquitaine

North of the Pyrenees in what we now think of as southwestern France is an area the Romans called Aquitania from the Latin aqua, "water," because of the many rivers flowing from the Pyrenees. We think. The people living there were the Ausci, mentioned by Caesar (whose men conquered it in the 50s BCE), and so the name of the land might have come about to mean "the land of the Ausci."

Skipping a few centuries and some Roman name and border changes, we find the Royal Frankish Annals refer to the "Wascones" in the area. The w=g linguistic link (William=Guillaume, warranty=guarantee, warden=guardian) that we find suggests that the Wascones turned into Gascons; hence the name Gascony.

In 1152, Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine. Aquitaine was by this time a much larger area that included the Duchy of Gascony, and was now in the hands of the kings of England. Henry's grandson, Henry III, personally went to the Duchy of Gascony to look into mismanagement by the not-always-faithful-to-Henry Simon de Montfort. While in the area, Henry arranged the marriage of his son Edward (later King Edward I) to Eleanor of Castile, half-sister of Alfonso X who had been making claims on Gascony, since it was adjacent to his own territory. Alfonso renounced his claims as part of the marriage contract, and aided Henry in dealing with rebels living in the Pyrenees.

Even today Gascony is France's most rural area; then it was so little populated that Edward I decided it needed peopling, and he sent his men to create villages called bastides so that the land was not going to waste.

In 1328, when King Charles IV of France died, his nearest male relative was the son of his sister Isabella, King Edward III of England. Having the English king inherit the throne of France—although perfectly legal according to Salic Law—did not sit well with France, and so they ruled against it. Edward objected, the Hundred Years War began, and in 1453 Gascony became permanently French.

I want to offer a brief biography of Edward I next.

Childebert I

Childebert was the third of the four sons of Clovis I, who united all the Frankish tribes in Gaul for the first time, and then had it divided up again at his death (511 CE) among his sons. Childebert's brothers were Theuderic I, Chlodomer, and Clothar I. In the division, Childebert received Paris and everything to the north to the English Channel coast and west to Brittany and its coast.

The brothers joined in 523 to war against Godomar of Burgundy and his brother, Sigismund. (Clovis had defeated Godomar's father in 500, forcing Burgundy to pay tribute.) Godomar escaped the first encounter, but Chlodomer took Sigismund prisoner. Godomar rallied the Burgundians and regained his lost territory, but Chlodomer executed Sigismund. Fighting continued for a decade until 534 when Godomar was killed and Burgundy taken over.

Sadly for Chlodomer, he was killed in the final battle. Childebert and Clothar did not want his kingdom of Orléans to be divided among his three children, so they conspired to eliminate them. The eldest two were killed; the youngest escaped to a monastery. Childebert annexed Orléans and Chartres.

Future military campaigns gained him Geneva and Lyons. The king of the Ostrogoths ceded Provence to the Franks in 535; Childebert's share of the spoils were Arles and Marseilles.

He also invaded the Iberian Peninsula on behalf of his sister, Chrotilda. She had been married to King Amalaric of the Visigoths. (A purely political move: Amalaric's father Alaric II had been killed by Chrotilda's father, Clovis I. This marriage was supposed to cease national hostilities; it did nothing to assuage personal hostility.) She was Catholic; he pressured her to convert to the heretical Arianism. Gregory of Tours writes that he even beat her until she bled, and she sent a bloody towel to her brother.

Childebert attacked Amalaric, who fled but was assassinated. He brought his sister home, but she died along the way; he buried her in Paris next to their father. He also brought back the tunic of St. Vincent of Saragossa, patron of vintners, sailors, and brickmakers.

Childebert expanded his boundaries and built more religious structures than any of his brothers. He died on 13 December 558, leaving two daughters, who according to Salic Law could not inherit. His territory went to his younger brother Clothar I.

Here's a question: if Burgundy was already paying tribute to Gaul, was the war against Godomar necessary? Necessary, no; but motivated by a powerful force: a mother's wishes. I also left out a crucial and related detail regarding the disinheriting of Chlodomer's sons. I'll explain tomorrow.