‘By this My Beard Which Hangs From My Face’: The Masculinity of the French Princes in the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War

Abstract

The Armagnac-Bourguignon civil war put the princely leaders of late-fourteenth and fifteenth-century France at centre stage. Considering their power struggles from the perspective of masculinity permits a gendered rereading of the political history of this period. In these circumstances, the masculinity of the princes became an important and in part conscious element amongst their strategies to assert their power. What comes first to the fore is the prince as a perfect soldier. Yet the possibilities did not end there, as is seen more clearly when princely masculinity is the object of attack, or in the conscious presentation of their masculinity with the aim of protecting their political position or undermining that of their opponents.