Praguerie

Praguerie, revolt of princes and other nobles against Charles VII of France in 1440, named in allusion to similar contemporary movements in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia. As early as April 1437, a number of princes, who had been excluded from the royal council, had unsuccessfully plotted to reassert their influence. When the king issued an ordinance forbidding the raising or maintenance of troops without his permission (1439), the first of his great ordinances for military reform, mercenary captains who felt their livelihood threatened joined with the rebellious princes. Led by Charles I, Duke de Bourbon, and Jean II, Duke d’Alençon, with the 16-year-old dauphin (later Louis XI) as their figurehead, the rebels began the revolt in Poitou in February 1440. Soon outgeneraled by Constable de Richemont, they withdrew to Bourbon territory, where they were again defeated and in July made peace, on very generous terms, at Cusset.

Although the rebels proposed peace with England and a lessening of taxation, the towns and the people stood loyally by the king. An attempt to renew the Praguerie through an assembly at Nevers in 1442 was thwarted by Charles VII’s diplomacy.