The air outside the walls of Vannes was thick with December fog and the stench of woodsmoke. In the trampled, freezing mud between the English and French siege lines, a transaction was taking place that would set all of France on fire.
An English mercenary captain stood in the mist, holding a surprisingly small leather purse. Across from him stood Olivier IV de Clisson.
In his early forties, broad-chested and built like a fortress, Olivier possessed the bearing of a seasoned predator who was entirely comfortable in a war zone. He wore the absolute height of 1340s aristocratic armor: a tightly fitted, mid-thigh pourpoint worn over a padded gambeson, contrasting with heavy, dark plate-and-chain armor on his shins and elbows. He looked pragmatic, confident, and utterly unprepared for the bureaucratic treachery that would soon undo him.
"The Earl of Stafford," the English captain said, gesturing to an English noble being led across the mud toward their lines. The captain tossed the leather purse. It landed with a pathetic, light clink at Olivier's armored boots. "And this silver. That is the sum of your ransom, Clisson. You are free to cross back to the French."
Olivier picked up the purse. He weighed it in his palm. It was a pittance—pocket change for a man who owned vast tracts of the Breton coastline, a towering château, and fleets of merchant ships. He had been captured just weeks ago while defending the city of Vannes. Now, the English were letting him walk away for a captured earl and a handful of silver.
Olivier smirked. He assumed he had simply gotten the better of a chaotic wartime negotiation. He turned his broad back on the English and walked toward the French camp, a soldier returning to his post.
He did not look back. If he had, he might have noticed that the English were smiling.
*
To understand the trap that had just snapped shut around Olivier de Clisson, you have to understand the map of 1342.
For five years, the English and the French had been tearing the continent apart in what would eventually be known as the Hundred Years' War. But in the rugged, salt-swept Duchy of Brittany, the massive geopolitical war had mutated into a vicious, intimate family feud.
In 1341, the Duke of Brittany had died without a direct male heir. Two rival factions immediately violently claimed his throne. The English King backed one claimant; the French King backed the other. Suddenly, the local Breton lords—the Marcher lords whose lands sat right on the border of France and Brittany—were forced to choose a side. Brother fought brother. Castles were besieged by the men who had built them.
Olivier had chosen the French faction. He had done his duty. Just a month prior, he had led thousands of men to recapture the city of Vannes for the French. When the English counter-attacked in the freezing December mud, Olivier had ridden out to repel them, fought fiercely, gotten cut off from his men, and was captured.
He was a good soldier. But the English commanders knew that a sword can only kill one man, while a well-placed rumor can shatter a dynasty.
Because Olivier was one of the wealthiest men in Brittany, his ransom should have been astronomical. By exchanging him for so little, the English deployed a devastating piece of psychological warfare. They were sending him back to his allies with a price tag that screamed collusion.
They knew someone on the French side would do the math.
*
From the edge of the French encampment, Charles de Blois was watching.
Twenty-three years old and chillingly devout, Charles was the French-backed claimant to the Breton throne. He stood in the damp fog wearing flawlessly tailored, skin-tight quilted armor with massive grande assiette armholes that allowed him a perfect, unimpeded sword swing. Down his front ran seventy tiny, closely spaced buttons, the silk patterned with dark ermine tails.
But beneath the pristine collar of high fashion, the rough, dark, scratchy texture of a blood-stained hairshirt was visible against his throat. Charles de Blois had sunken, permanently swollen eyes from weeping during his hours of nightly prayer. He possessed the quiet, terrifying serenity of a man who believed every atrocity he committed was ordered directly by God.
Charles watched Olivier de Clisson approach. He looked at the Breton lord's unbroken armor. He looked at the pitifully light purse of silver in Olivier's hand.
Why so cheap?
Because the ransom was so low, Charles's fanatical mind instantly discarded the truth of Olivier's battlefield capture. To Charles, there was only one logical explanation: Olivier de Clisson had intentionally thrown the defense of Vannes. He had cut a secret, treasonous deal with the English crown.
Charles did not confront Olivier in the mud. He did not ask for an explanation. A man who wears a hairshirt to mortify his own flesh does not offer the benefit of the doubt to others.
But Charles was only a Duke. To execute a man as powerful as Olivier de Clisson, he needed the absolute authority of the Crown.
*
Two hundred miles away, in the labyrinthine halls of the Louvre Castle in Paris, King Philip VI of France was waiting for a traitor to burn.
At forty-nine years old, Philip was mature, heavily burdened, and suffocating under the weight of his crown. His sharp eyes were framed by deep lines of bureaucratic stress and profound paranoia. He wore draped, heavy layers of opulent wealth—a sweeping, floor-length velvet mantle richly textured with embroidered heraldry over thick, pale ermine-fur trim. He carried no weapons, only a heavy gold signet ring that could sign away a thousand lives with a drop of hot wax.
Philip was a king desperate to project the absolute authority he secretly feared he lacked. He had inherited a contested throne. He was losing battles to the English. His taxes were draining the peasantry, his lords were whispering behind his back, and the borders of his kingdom were bleeding.
Philip VI did not need the truth. He needed a scapegoat. He needed a public, terrifying execution to remind the nobility of France that he was not a man to be crossed. If he could catch a powerful Marcher lord in a lie, he could make an example that would freeze the blood of every rebel in the country.
All the King needed was a name.
*
Back in the freezing fog outside Vannes, Olivier IV de Clisson walked past the French pickets, completely blind to the crosshairs painting his back. He called for his squires. He asked for hot wine and a fire. He was looking forward to returning to his massive estates, and to his brilliant wife, Jeanne.
From the shadows of a command tent, Charles de Blois wiped a tear from his permanently swollen eyes.
He had seen the light purse. He had made his decision.
Without a word to the man he had just condemned, Charles de Blois turned his horse from the front lines, pointing its head east. He was going to Paris, to whisper in the King's ear.