Chronique de la Pucelle
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The Chronique de la Pucelle or Chronicle of Cousinot was composed by Guillaume Cousinot, seigneur de Montreuil, the son of the Guillaume Cousinot who was chancellor to the duc d'Orléans. The younger Cousinot is a major contemporary source for the episode of the Hundred Years' War that featured the career of Joan of Arc. The Geste des Nobles is an excerpt, with some identical passages.
The discrete careers of father and son were separated, but identified as uncle and nephew, by the first editor of the Chronique, Auguste Vallet de Vireville (1859), then were identified as father and son by M. Boucher de Molandon.
The father, Guillaume I Cousinot, was a distinguished avocat at the Parlement de Paris at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1408 he was selected by Valentine of Milan to defend the memory of her late husband Louis I de Valois, Duke of Orléans, assassinated the previous year by Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy; Cousinot rose to the occasion and became a chief counsellor to the house of Orléans, for which his worldly goods were confiscated during the eclipse of the Orléans faction by Jean Sans Peur. Shortly before Agincourt, Charles d'Orléans, soon to be made captive, appointed Cousinot his chancellor; Cousinot administered the affairs of the duchy during Charles' interminable captivity in England. Eventually Charles VII Cousinot for his losses, with lands in Beauce and an hôtel in Orléans. The elder Cousinot was the author of the Geste des Nobles an historical survey that begins with the distant, legendary origins of France and gains historical credibility with the reign of John II of France and carries the career of Joan of Arc as far as Troyes, where the narrative breaks off, suddenly and inexplicably, before the coronation of Charles VII.
The younger Guillaume studied at the University of Orléans, and in the footseps of his father was a counsellor to the king, maÎtre des requêts in the king's household, and président of the Dauphiné. He bought the seigneurie of Montreuil, near Vincennes. An administrator and trusted diplomat of Charles and Louis XI, his career was even more prominent than that of his father. He was taken prisoner by the English after an embassy to Scotland, and was ransomed by Charles VII.
The present Chronique de la Pucelle received its modern title from its nineteenth century editors.
External links
- "La chronique de la Pucelle" The basis for this article.
- Medieval Sourcebook: Joan of Arc: Letter to the King of England, 1429 Translated by Belle Tuten from Auguste Vallet de Vireville, ed. Chronique de la Pucelle, ou Chronique de Cousinot... (Paris: Adolphe Delahaye) 1859:281-283.
