John V of Armagnac

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Jean V d'Armagnac (1420-1473), vicomte de Lomagne while his father lived, the next-to-last comte d'Armagnac of the older branch, was the controversial son of Jean IV of Armagnac and Princess Isabel of Navarre, an emblem of 15th century aristocratic violence, treachery and indiscipline, a wildman from one of the most powerful virtually independent feudalities of the southwest. A contemporary chronicler described him:

"Fire ran in his veins. He was as violent in his desires as imperious in his actions. His physical aspect was not seductive: short and stocky of stature, even pot-bellied, but gifted with great bodily strength. His neck was short, sumounted with an acne-pocked ("bourgeonné") visage, with squinty eyes, crowned by a shock of red hair,"

the last a decided imperfection in contemporary standards [1].

He bedded his own sister Isabelle, ten years his junior, whom the chronicler Mathieu d'Escouchy accounted one of the great beauties of France and whose betrothal to Henry VI of England had been under consideration. When word got out that two boys had been born in the castle of Lectoure, the couple promised to reform their behavior. But within a few months Jean solemnized the incestuous union by claiming to have obtained a papal dispensation from Pope Callixtus III. A daughter was born.

Other serious breaches ensued: Jean refused to seat a bishop of Auch selected by the king and assented to by the pope, installing a bastard half-brother of his in the see. Events came to a first head in May 1455. Authorities were alerted, and a brief was issued for Jean's arrest, when an investigation revealed that he had forced a forged dispensation out of Antoine d'Alet, Bishop of Cambrai, a magistrate in the court of Rome. Tried in absentia in 1460 before a parlement of Charles VII, he was condemned, and forces were sent to capture him but he escaped punishment by fleeing to his cousins of Aragon. Though he pled his case in Rome, the couple were separated and the sons declared bastards and eliminated from inheritance.

Within a few years a new king of France, Louis XI, unwisely reinstated Jean in his domaines, where Jean rashly undid his father's acts and broke faith with his promises. Betraying Louis, Armagnac was part of the league that called themselves Bien public and threatened Paris at the head of 6000 mounted men. in 1469, Louis responded, under the pretense that Jean was treating with ambassadors from England, and sent an army to rout him. Jean fled to Spain, only to reappear in 1471 in the train of the king's rebellious brother, the duc de Guyenne. Louis had him besieged in his stronghold of Lectoure and put to death by Jean Jouffroy, the fighting bishop of Albi, in 1473 [2].

Jean remarried shortly before he was assassinated, but his only legitimate child from this union (with Jeanne de Foix) was stillborn, and the comté of Armagnac passed, first fruitlessly to his younger brother Charles, and in 1497 to his cousin of the cadet branch, Armagnac-Nemours.

His union with Isabelle produced three offspring:

  • Rose (or Mascarose) d'Armagnac, who wed Gaspard II de Villemur, seigneur of Montbrun [3].
  • Jean d'Armagnac (died in 1473), called the "Bâtard d'Armagnac", comte de Comminges, maréchal of France.
  • Antoine d'Armagnac, called the "Bâtard d'Armagnac"

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