Season 1, Episode 140

Violant sends supplies to the mercenary leaders who decided to go around the Crown of Aragon on their way to Castile.

Episode 140

Today’s Document

Sourcing: Violant must have considered the extortionate behavior of the mercenaries particularly unwelcome in the moment of Joan’s health crisis and what might also have been a crisis in the finances of the monarchy
Contextualization: as in the other episodes about the mercenaries journeying from France to Castile, the context for this document is the One Hundred Years War; mercenary companies were a notorious drain on the resources of lands they traveled through
Corroboration: this episode is a continuation of the story of the mercenary company discussed in Episode 80 and Episode 108.
Close-Reading: with ‘la Reyna’ at the end of the document, along with the probata ‘domina regina mandavit mihi,’ this looks like a letter that Violant herself crafted

This document commissions a chamberlain and his squire to accompany the mercenaries, ensuring that they keep to their word not to enter the territory of the Crown of Aragon.
The document obscures any extortion by making the value of the gifts vague.

Did Violant decide to accept an extortion by the mercenaries?
What exactly was the value of the ‘vituales e otras cosas’ that Violant sent to the mercenaries?
How much involvement did Joan have in the decisions regarding the Crown of Aragon’s response to the mercenaries?
Did these particular mercenaries have a fearsome reputation?

The transcription and translation of this document was carried out by my OpenClaw pipeline.

Allmand, C. T. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300-c. 1450. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Goodman, Anthony. John of Gaunt: the exercise of princely power in fourteenth-century Europe. Routledge, 2014.
Fancy, Hussein Anwar. The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. The University of Chicago Press, 2016.