was reinstated in his ancient privileges. By the peace of Chartres (March 9, 1409) the king absolved him from the crime, and Valentina Visconti, the widow of the murdered duke, and her children pledged themselves to a reconciliation; while an edict of the 27th of December 1409 gave John the guardianship of the dauphin. Nevertheless, a new league was formed against the duke of Burgundy in the following year, principally at the instance of Bernard, count of Armagnac, from whom the party opposed to the Burgundians took its name. The peace of Bicêtre (Nov. 2, 1410) prevented the outbreak of hostilities, inasmuch as the parties were enjoined by its terms to return to their estates; but in 1411, in consequence of ravages committed by the Armagnacs in the environs of Paris, the duke of Burgundy was called back to Paris. He relied more than ever on the support of the popular party, which then obtained the reforming Ordonnance Cabochienne (so called from Simon Caboche, a prominent member of the gild of the butchers). But the bloodthirsty excesses of the populace brought a change. John was forced to withdraw to Burgundy (August 1413), and the university of Paris and John Gerson once more censured Petit’s propositions, which, but for the lavish bribes of money and wines offered by John to the prelates, would have been solemnly condemned at the council of Constance. John’s attitude was undecided; he negotiated with the court and also with the English, who had just renewed hostilities with France. Although he talked of helping his sovereign, his troops took no part in the battle of Agincourt (1415), where, however, two of his brothers, Anthony, duke of Brabant, and Philip, count of Nevers, fell fighting for France.
In 1417 John made an attack on Paris, which failed through his loitering at Lagny;[1] but on the 30th of May 1418 a traitor, one Perrinet Leclerc, opened the gates of Paris to the Burgundian captain, Villiers de l’Isle Adam. The dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI., fled from the town, and John betook himself to the king, who promised to forget the past. John, however, did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen, which had been besieged by the English, and on which the fate of the kingdom seemed to depend; and the town was taken in 1419. The dauphin then decided on a reconciliation, and on the 11th of July the two princes swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun. On the ground that peace was not sufficiently assured by the Pouilly meeting, a fresh interview was proposed by the dauphin and took place on the 10th of September 1419 on the bridge of Montereau, when the duke of Burgundy was felled with an axe by Tanneguy du Chastel, one of the dauphin’s companions, and done to death by the other members of the dauphin’s escort. His body was first buried at Montereau and afterwards removed to the Chartreuse of Dijon and placed in a magnificent tomb sculptured by Juan de la Huerta; the tomb was afterwards transferred to the museum in the hôtel de ville.
By his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, he had one son, Philip the Good, who succeeded him; and seven daughters—Margaret, who married in 1404 Louis, son of Charles VI., and in 1423 Arthur, earl of Richmond and afterwards duke of Brittany; Mary, wife of Adolph of Cleves; Catherine, promised in 1410 to a son of Louis of Anjou; Isabella, wife of Olivier de Châtillon, count of Penthièvre; Joanna, who died young; Anne, who married John, duke of Bedford, in 1423; and Agnes, who married Charles I., duke of Bourbon, in 1425.
See A. G. P. Baron de Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, (Brussels, 1835–1836); B. Zeller, Louis de France et Jean sans Peur (Paris, 1886); and E. Petit, Itinéraire de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (Paris, 1888). (R. Po.)
JOHN (1468–1532), called the Steadfast, elector of Saxony,
fourth son of the elector Ernest, was born on the 30th of June
1468. In 1486, when his eldest brother became elector as
Frederick III., John received a part of the paternal inheritance
and afterwards assisted his kinsman, the German king Maximilian
I., in several campaigns. He was an early adherent of
Luther, and, becoming elector of Saxony by his brother’s death
in May 1525, was soon prominent among the Reformers. Having
assisted to suppress the rising led by Thomas Munzer in 1525,
he helped Philip, landgrave of Hesse, to found the league of
Gotha, formed in 1526 for the protection of the Reformers. He
was active at the diet of Spires in 1526, and the “recess” of this
diet gave him an opportunity to reform the church in Saxony,
where a plan for divine service was drawn up by Luther. The
assertions of Otto von Pack that a league had been formed
against the elector and his friends induced John to ally himself
again with Philip of Hesse in March 1528, but he restrained
Philip from making an immediate attack upon their opponents.
He signed the protest against the “recess” of the diet of Spires
in 1529, being thus one of the original Protestants, and was
actively hostile to Charles V. at the diet of Augsburg in 1530.
Having signed the confession of Augsburg, he was alone among
the electors in objecting to the election of Ferdinand, afterwards
the emperor Ferdinand I., as king of the Romans. He was
among the first members of the league of Schmalkalden, assented
to the religious peace of Nuremberg in 1532, and died at Schweidnitz
on the 16th of August 1532. John was twice married and
left two sons and two daughters. His elder son, John Frederick,
succeeded him as elector, and his younger son was John Ernest
(d. 1553). He rendered great services to the Protestant cause
in its infancy, but as a Lutheran resolutely refused to come to
any understanding with other opponents of the older faith.
See J. Becker, Kurfürst Johann von Sachsen und seine Beziehungen zu Luther (Leipzig, 1890); J. Janssen, History of the German People (English translation), vol. v. (London, 1903); L. von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1882).
JOHN, DON (1545–1578), of Austria, was the natural son of
the emperor Charles V. by Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of
an opulent citizen of Regensburg. He was born in that free
imperial city on the 24th of February 1545, the anniversary of
his father’s birth and coronation and of the battle of Pavia,
and was at first confided under the name of Geronimo to foster
parents of humble birth, living at a village near Madrid; but in
1554 he was transferred to the charge of Madalena da Ulloa,
the wife of Don Luis de Quijada, and was brought up in ignorance
of his parentage at Quijada’s castle of Villagarcia not far from
Valladolid. Charles V. in a codicil of his will recognized Geronimo
as his son, and recommended him to the care of his successor.
In September 1559 Philip II. of Spain publicly recognized the
boy as a member of the royal family, and he was known at court
as Don Juan de Austria. For three years he was educated at
Alcalá, and had as school companions his nephews, the infante
Don Carlos and Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma. With
Don Carlos his relations were especially friendly. It had been
Philip’s intention that Don John should become a monk, but he
showed a strong inclination for a soldier’s career and the king
yielded. In 1568 Don John was appointed to the command of
a squadron of 33 galleys, and his first operations were against the
Algerian pirates. His next services were (1569–70) against the
rebel Moriscos in Granada. In 1571 a nobler field of action was
opened to him. The conquest of Cyprus by the Turks had led the Christian powers of the Mediterranean to fear for the safety of the Adriatic. A league between Spain and Venice was effected by the efforts of Pope Pius V. to resist the Turkish advance to the west, and Don John was named admiral in chief of the combined fleets. At the head of 208 galleys, 6 galleasses and a number of smaller craft, Don John encountered the Turkish fleet at Lepanto on the 7th of October 1571, and gained a complete victory. Only forty Turkish vessels effected their escape, and it was computed that 35,000 of their men were slain or captured while 15,000 Christian galley slaves were released. Unfortunately, through divisions and jealousies between the allies, the fruits of one of the most decisive naval victories in history were to a great extent lost.
This great triumph aroused Don John’s ambition and filled his imagination with schemes of personal aggrandizement. He thought of erecting first a principality in Albania and the Morea, and then a kingdom in Tunis. But the conclusion by Venice of a separate peace with the sultan put an end to the
- ↑ This incident earned for him among the Parisians the contemptuous nickname of “John of Lagny, who does not hurry.”
