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Last modified: 2021-06-27 by ivan sache
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Jeanne Hachette's alleged banner, two renditions by Willemin (left) and Paris (right), respectively - Images by Ivan Sache, 22 January 2018
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The municipality of Beauvais (54,881 inhabitants in 2015, 3,331 ha) is
located 70 km north of Paris, 50 km south of Amiens and 70 km east of Rouen.
During his struggle against King of France Louis XI (1423-1483; reigned
1461-1483), Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1433-1477; reigned 1467-1477), assaulted Beauvais on 27 June 1472. In the second assault, a
young woman known as Jeanne Laisné repelled a Burgundian assaulter and
captured his banner; she was subsequently nicknamed Jeanne Hachette, for
hachette, "a small axe", the weapon she had used to hit the assaulter.
Warned by the bishop of Beauvais who could have escaped before the
assault, Louis XI sent troops from Paris and Rouen, forcing the
Burgundians to lift the siege on 22 July 1472.
Whether Jeanne Hachette was a genuine historical character or a personification of the heroic behavior of the women of Beauvais during the siege is still a matter of discussion among historians.
Ivan Sache, 22 January 2018
In June 1473, Louis XI prescribed the organization of a procession on
the day of St. Angadrême, stating that women shall march first, before
men and religious orders. The procession, now a people's festival, has
been organized every year since then in Beauvais.
In the modern festival, the Assault's Cortege is led by a young woman
portraying Jeanne Hachette, holding a big banner said to be a duplicate
of the Burgundian banner captured by Jeanne and deposited in the
Jacobines' church (photo,
photo,
photo,
photo,
photo,
photo,
photo,
photo). Once organized by the church, the municipality or the
tourism bureau of the town, the festival is now managed by the Amis des
Fêtes Jeanne Hachette"association (website), established in 1978.
Ivan Sache, 22 January 2018
Willemin's rendition
Jeanne Hachette's banner was illustrated in Monuments français inédits
pour servir à l'histoire des arts : depuis le VIe siècle jusqu'au
commencement du XVIIe : choix de costumes civils et militaires, d'armes,
armures, instruments de musique, meubles de toute espèce et de
décorations intérieures et extérieures des maisons / dessinés, gravés et coloriés d'après les originaux par N.-X. Willemin ; classés chronologiquement et accompagnés d'un texte historique et descriptif par André Pottier (1849). The work is a posthumous selection of plates made
by Nicolas Xavier Willemin (1763-1833; biography); an engraver, designer and
antiquarian, Willemin started his collection of plates in 1806. Mostly
interested in showing images, he hardly cared of the descriptive notices
that should have been appended to the plates. His friend André Pottier
(1799-1867), curator of the library of Rouen, rearranged the plates
according to the chronological order and added notices of his own.
Jeanne Hachette's banner, represented on plate No. 148 (image), as "drawn in
1812 after the original kept at the Beauvais Town Hall", is captioned
"Banner or standard captured from the Burgundians in 1472 by Jeanne
Laisné, aka Fourques, colloquially called Jeanne Hachette".
Ivan Sache, 22 January 2018
Paris' debunking
Paulin Paris (1800-1881), Professor of Medieval French Language and
Literature at the College de France from 1853 to 1872, pointed out
several inconsistencies in Willemin's rendition and provided evidence
that the banner had been mistaken as the flag captured by Jeanne
Hachette, proposing a more relevant interpretation (Explication du drapeau dit de Jeanne Hachette, conservé à l'Hôtel de Ville de Beauvais. Revue archéologique, 7, 92-95 [1850]). Paris based his analysis on three sources: a procès-verbal redacted in 1790 by Borel and du Coudray providing a detailed description of the banner, a
reduced-size reproduction of the banner on tracing paper, and the
original banner.
Probably fooled by the local tradition, Willemin misinterpreted the
banner as a Burgundian military standard, more or less inadvertently
"correcting" significant elements of the design to make them fit the
assumed Burgundian origin of the flag.
The main coat of arms placed in canton was represented by Willemin as a
shield "Argent an eagle sable an escutcheon quarterly azure three
fleurs-de-lis or and gules three castles or" (the colors, probably added
during the posthumous edition of Willemin's engravings, should not be
taken at their face value). The shield is orled by the Collar of the
Order of the Golden Fleece and surrounded by the Pillars of Hercules.
Paris explains that the shield is indeed divided in 16 small quarters,
which form four larger pieces; the first and fourth pieces are made of
the arms of Spain: "Gules a tower or (Castile) quartered sable a lion or
[sic] (León)". The second and third pieces are made of the arms of
Austria and Burgundy. The black eagle in the first and fourth quarter
belongs to Austria; the fleur-de-lis or orled in the second quarter
belongs to Burgundy modern, and the stripes of the third quarter belong
to Burgundy ancient.
Such arms, used by a prince bearing the titles of King of Spain,
Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, could not have appeared before
the unification of these titles by Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and his
son, Philip II (1527-1598).
The scroll placed beneath the shield contains another erroneous
rendition by Willemin, who "guessed" the motto as "Je l'ai empris",
conveniently, the motto of Charles the Bold [rather, "Je lay emprins" /
"Je lai emprins"]. The procès-verbal established in 1790, however,
states that "above the shield is a three-part scroll on which can be
distinctively read only the letters: PLVS QVE - TRE". This is, clearly,
Charles V's motto, which he used for the first time in 1536 whilst
returning from the Algiers expedition. Paris explains, quite wisely,
that the 1790 reading is slightly erroneous: the authors probably
misread "OVL" as "QVE".
Paris further adds that the banner could not have been designed earlier
than 1557, after the abdication of Charles V. Were it be used during the
reign of Charles V rather than Philip II, the shield would have been
surmounted by an Imperial, closed crown, and the eagle would have been
placed in the first piece or on an escutcheon.
The Gothic letters inscribed near the missing tails of the banner were
"read" by Willemin as "BURG [UNDIA]", yet another convenient element
supporting the Burgundian origin of the flag. Paris debunks this
reading, pointing out that an oval sign is placed above the assumed "U",
that the fourth letter ("G"), separated from the other ones should be
the initial of a second word, and that the writing is partially
surrounded by a double stripe shaped like the Collar of the Order of the
Garter. Paris' proposed reading of the writing is "Honi Q", therefore
"Honi qui", the first part of "Honi [soit] q[ui mal y pense]", the motto
of the Order of the Garter.
The smaller shield placed beneath the scroll, represented by Willemin as
"Argent a lion gules crowned or", is interpreted by Paris as the arms of
Flanders, then part of the Duchy of Burgundy.
In the middle of the flag, the two harquebushes crossed in saltire and
tied by a Burgundian firesteel are a straightforward representation of
the Cross of Burgundy.
The representation of St. Lawrence holding a griddle, the instrument of
his death, allowed Paulin Paris to propose an interpretation of the
banner that has nothing to do with the Beauvais assault.
On 10 August 1557, the feast day of St. Lawrence, an army composed of
50,000 Spanish, Flemish and Burgundian soldiers, and 8,000 to 10,000
English bowmen, as well, overwhelmed the French troops defending the
town of Saint-Quentin, capturing Constable Anne de Montmorency. As a
reward for the intercession of the saint, Philip II decided the building
of the griddle-shaped monastery-palace of San Lorenzo de El
Escorial, eventually completed in 1584. Paris believes that the banner, charged with Spanish, Flemish, Burgundian and English symbols and portraying St. Lawrence, was
specifically designed for a procession or a religious ceremony
celebrating the triumph of Saint-Quentin, nearly once century after
Jeanne Hachette's heroic act.
How the banner made its way to the Town Hall of Beauvais stirred Paris'
curiosity. In spite of claiming "Don't ask me how?", the scholar
proposes a quite far-fetched, but plausible hypothesis, which he
honestly called "conjectural and lacking any historical support". In
1558, the French troops seized the town of Calais from the Spaniards; a soldier from Beauvais could have found the commemorative banner hanging
in a church or anywhere else and brought it back to its hometown as a
trophy.
Ivan Sache, 22 January 2018
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