Jeanne Hachette
Though the Hundred Years’ War ended in 1453, France was in an utter mess after 116 years of fighting the English on home soil. The countryside was decimated leading to widespread hunger, the royal coffers had been depleted, and alliances made and unmade between one another and the English had created a host of enmities amongst powerful families. One such family, the House of Burgundy, had been sometime allies of the English, and were instrumental in the capture of the national hero, Joan of Arc, whom they sold to the invaders, and in 1465 waged war against the French King.
Tensions between the crown and Burgundy and their allies frequently erupted after this date. In 1467 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, supported by Edward IV of England amongst others, was moving against Louis King XI. One of his targets was the city of Beauvais, northern France. Charles’s army laid siege to Beauvais, greatly outnumbering the city’s paltry 300 soldiers, and instantly made their numbers tell. However, he did not reckon against a 26-year-old peasant woman, Jeanne Fourquet. Seeing a Burgundian soldier planting a flag on Beauvais’s battlements, she flung herself on him, and threw him in the moat.
Thenceforth known as Jeanne Hachette (‘Joan the Hatchet’), Fourquet bravely used her axe to hear down the Burgundian banner, and in so doing inspired the downhearted garrison, who eventually resisted the siege, successfully fighting off Charles’s troops. Fourquet’s courage saw Louis XI hold a procession in Beauvais in her honor, marry her to her lover, Colin Pilon, and grant her many gifts. A statue of Fourquet, hatchet in hand, was erected at Beauvais in 1851 (see above), and for centuries a religious procession took place in honor of her bravery. There was clearly something about 15th-century French peasant women.