Charles d'Albret. Le connétable d'AzincourtParution d'ouvrage

Pierre Courroux, Newton International Fellow de la British Academy à l'Université de Southampton, est chercheur associé au laboratoire ITEM.
Collection Scripta Mediaevalia (36), Editions Ausonius
Bordeaux, 2019 - 342 p. 25 €
First cousin of King Charles VI, godfather of the future King Charles VII and Constable of France, Charles I d’Albret (1368-1415) was one on the prominent figures of the Kingdom of France at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. His birth was the result of the alliance between the Valois and the Albret that allowed the recapture of Aquitaine by the French ; his death at the forefront of the French army at Agincourt – a battle he probably never desired – marked the beginning of a dark era for the kingdom. Actually, the story of his life often overlap this of Charles VI’s France, from the lights of chivalry to the gloom of the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians. For the powerful Gascon family of the Albret, he is a first height. Through his action, the lands of his family expanded in Dreux, in Périgord and in Berry. Even in Gascony, he organised and administered the disorganised lordships of his forebears as a true principality. Yet nowhere his political action was more influencial than at the king’s court. None among his forefathers ever played such a role in the kingdom of France, and none among his descendants would outdo him before the 16th century, whith Henry IV, born as him of a marriage between Bourbon and Albret. For six centuries, no historian ever recounted in detail the Constable’s life. Bringing it to light, we wish to provide new insights into his time, thanks to inedited documents from the king’s and the Albret’s archives, but also with the stories of the chroniclers and with the poets (as Christine de Pisan) who mentioned his deeds.