The Anglo-French peace of 1396 was a diplomatic settlement between France and England, reinforced by a royal marriage and accompanied by an alliance for a crusade against the Turks. It marked a striking turn from prolonged conflict toward cooperation, though the personal and political promises attached to it proved fragile.

Background and Calls for Peace

France and England were engaged in peace talks, urged on by Robert the Hermit, a Norman squire who said he had received a vision during a storm at sea while returning from Palestine. He visited both royal courts to convey that God wanted the kings to end their lengthy war and heal the schism in the church. The account sets this religious appeal alongside a practical pressure: the growing Ottoman threat was also drawing the kingdoms closer.

Marriage and Alliance

In March 1396, the two kingdoms cemented a twenty-eight-year peace through a royal marriage between Richard II and Isabelle, the daughter of Charles VI. The match joined a twenty-nine-year-old king to a six-year-old princess. The book underscores the disparity rather than presenting the marriage as a partnership between equals: Richard and Isabelle would never consummate it.

By the time of the betrothal, France and England had also allied themselves in a great crusade intended to save Christendom from the Turks. The peace therefore did not simply suspend hostilities; it redirected cooperation toward a shared military and religious cause.

Limits and Aftermath

The marriage did not secure a lasting personal bond or an uncomplicated political future. Richard was deposed just three years later, and the royal couple’s marriage remained unconsummated. Those outcomes stand in tension with the settlement’s twenty-eight-year term and its promise of a durable rapprochement.

The peace appears in the narrative as an unusual convergence of religious exhortation, dynastic arrangement, and strategic necessity. Robert the Hermit’s message framed peace as a divine demand, while the Ottoman threat gave the kingdoms a shared reason to act. Yet the very marriage chosen to embody that accord joined a grown king and a child, making visible the distance between the agreement’s grand political design and the lives bound to it.