OOC: Thank you all for your warm welcomes! I look forward to living up to your expectations.
One year prior, in the ducal palace...
Duke Phillippe, seated at the ducal desk, shares the ducal internal monologue with Nestor, the ducal butler.
"Well, it's been over a hundred years, Nestor."
"Oui, mon duc."
"Which means that the Hundred Years war should be ending any day now."
"Bien sur, mon duc."
“Also, the French are no longer wetting themselves at the sight of longbows, so they’ll probably be able to overwhelm the English with numbers."
“Ca fait du bon sens, mon duc.”
"And then they’ll probably want to get even for the time that I quit my job as a vassal and invaded their country to deliver my resignation letter."
"Absolument, mon duc."
"I need to find a way to make the Valois respect my authoritah, or it will be back to listening to the Duke of Foix ramble on about his stupid azaleas at the Annual Vassal's Conference again."
"A fate worse than le mort, mon duc. Speaking of, I was forced to dismiss the gardener this morning for an indiscretion with two of the milkmaids atop the davenport in your third-best sitting room."
"...I should probably hire some professional advisors."
"Bonne idee, mon duc."
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Duke Phillippe pulled out his conveniently located dossier of every male aged 30 and up who had been seen dispensing wisdom somewhere in his domain and sent forth pages to invite them in for interviews. Benoit de Semur had such a commanding presence that Duke Phillippe had to restrain himself from jumping up and saluting; he was hired on the spot. Phillippe Le Corgne, a partner at a white-clog law firm in Antwerpen, got the diplomat’s job over a bespectacled fellow who was way too excited about something called “trade steering.” Duke Phillippe felt he had some strong momentum going into the interviews for his chancellor’s position.
“So…M. Dufay…what do you think is the most important trade good produced in my Grand Duchy, and how do you propose to improve production?”
“It’s definitely motets, and I think we need to emphasize keeping each of the vocal parts a quarter-octave separate to ensure the best results.”
“M. Binchois, how to do you plan to crack down on tax evasion?”
“I will write a Mass, simple and easy to perform, and yet so deep and soulful that tax evaders will weep for their sins, confess them freely in the streets, and pay what they owe fourfold.”
“M. Ockghem…is that a zither?”
“Oui.”
“WHAT MADE YOU THINK IT WAS APPROPRIATE TO BRING A ZITHER TO A JOB INTERVIEW?”
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Duke Phillippe ultimately decided to leave his Chancellor’s position vacant for the moment, at least until the pool of candidates was something other than a bunch of layabout starving artists who all looked the same. He summoned Le Corgne and de Semur for his first-ever cabinet meeting.
Phillipe Le Corgne has joined the party!
Benoit de Semur has joined the party!
“Alors, monsieurs, here is our problem. France is big and we’re little. They’re right and we’re wrong, at least within the context of feudal law. I can only hope that we’re smart and they're dumb. How can we preserve ourselves?”
de Semur didn’t miss a beat. “We should invade France.”
Duke Phillippe blinked.
De Semur contined. “They’re still distracted by the English, at least a little. We should profit from this.”
Le Corgne spoke up. “The Aragonese and Castillans won’t be too happy to have a strong and united France on their border. I think we might be able to talk them into helping us help them help themselves.”
Duke Phillippe blinked again. “Well,” he finally managed to say, “That sounds much better than anything I’ve come up with so far. I think I just got more done in three minutes than I have in the last four years of me bouncing my ideas off of nobody but the butler.”
“Tres correcte, mon duc.”
“Nestor, what are you doing in here?”
“This bookshelf has some very persistent dust, mon duc.”
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Duke Phillippe leaned back in his chair. Le Corgne had suggested forging a claim to Champagne – easy enough. In any pile of old parchments there would be something that suggested that someone had a claim on whoever owned that particular stack of parchments. The nuts and bolts of making good on that claim, however, would require some thought to figure out.
He stared at his map. If he was going to claim Champagne, he was honor-bound to seize Champagne. But since he was fighting the French, he would be just as honor-bound to seize Paris. Splitting the army in two would be an unfortunate necessity – and if one half were attacked, they would have to hold out for a week or so. Which meant that they would both need a general leading them.
“Nestor! Go get the messengers. It looks like I will be doing more interviews today.”
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Eugene de Damas was a member of the average nobility. He was lord and master of two villages and a minor market town in the Charolais. He had serfs, provosts, bailiffs, and a reeve who was drunk more often than not. He had a water mill, but thanks to some poorly written loan contracts signed with a nearby monastery by a distant ancestor who wanted to atone for his chronic fornication by shipping off to Egypt on the 7th Crusade, he was only allowed to use it every other Tuesday. On the feast day of St. Thomas he sat at the head of a table in the market square and ate bullock and drank ale until his belly groaned.
He was bored out of his friggin’ mind and had come to understand both his ancestor’s penchant for rounds of extramarital hide-the-andouille and his subsequent decision to go on a Crusade that led to him dying of heatstroke in an Egyptian prison.
So when a messenger came riding out of the woods and up to Eugene’s manor, he shoved one of his footmen out of the way and answered the door himself.
“Sieur Damas? The Duke of Burgundy would like to extend to you the opportunity to become –“
“Yes.”
“Sir, I haven’t even told you what he wants you to do.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Such loyalty.”
“Loyalty. Yes! Of course! Nobody more loyal than me.”
“Anyway, as you will see on this letter, you have been offered the opportunity to become a general in his grace’s armies.”
“Wonderful! When do I begin?”
“Sieur Damas, there are over three dozen people to whom invitations have been extended, and I will handing out the rest of these invitations over the coming days…”
“Nonsense!”
“Sir?”
“I’m the only man qualified for the job. Can’t you tell?”
“Sir, I do not get paid if I’m not utterly polite to you, but I want you to understand that is truly ridiculous, and I would deeply appreciate it if you shut your oversized pie-hole and let me get back to work.”
“No, really.
Regardez!” Damas showed the messenger what he kept in his trousers.
“Mon dieu! What the hell is that?!” The messenger’s face turned white, he wet himself, then spun around and passed out just like a dying sixteen-bit Link from
A Link to the Past.
Damas drug the messenger into his manor, relieved him of the stack of invitations, tossed them into the mill stream and rode off to Dijon with indecent haste.
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Later that day, Damas arrived outside the Ducal Palace in Dijon, having ridden nonstop from his manor. His horse keeled over and passed out. The sentries at the gate stared incredulously.
Damas barked at the sentries: “Quit yer lollygagging and salute! Can’t you see I’m your new general? Now take me to the Duke!” He waved the invitation at them. “Or you will find yourself standing guard outside the outhouse five minutes after my interview!”
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Upstairs, Duke Phillippe, Le Corgne and de Semur reviewed the fruits of their first two months of working together.
“The Aragonese and Castillians have both agreed to work with us,” said Le Corgne. “Have you chosen brides for the royal weddings?”
“Done and done,” said the Duke. “The youngest of the Trastamara sons in Aragon will be marrying my youngest daughter, and I’ve found a cousin for the Castillans. Now I just need to find a big enough lace collar for the special day.”
“Everyone looks good in huge lace collars,” agreed Le Corgne.
“Now we just need a general,” said Benoit de Semur, who, bored by diplomacy, was gazing out of the window. “I think the first candidate just arrived.”
de Damas was led into the room. “Bonjour, mon Duc, messieurs,” he addressed them. “I’m your new general.”
“We shall see,” said the Duke. “How do you plan to lead the army, if you’re given the chance to do so?”
“Firepower is the future, and the future is now,” said Demas. “Want to see what I keep in my trousers?”
Before anyone else could pick their jaws up off the floor, Demas had reached into his trousers and pulled out his weapon of choice, beaming at the room the entire time.
De Semur was the first to recover. “Did you…did you nail six pistols together with a long iron spike?”
Demas nodded, still beaming. “I call it the ‘six-shooter.’ I love it, because every minute I spend reloading is a minute I’m not shooting things. I plan to make these standard issue for the infantry.”
“We can, um, talk about that later. What are your thoughts on the French army?”
“Mon duc, when I was a young man, I was at Agincourt, and I suggested to one of the great marquises that our army was too tightly packed together to be effective against the English. And he laughed at me and told me to shut my damnfool vassal mouth. So to hell with them, sir.”
“Alright. You’ll begin your work tomorrow.”
Eugene de Damas has joined the party!
And thus was everything put in place for the war on France. Twelve months later, it was revealed that Duke Phillippe’s grandfather’s second cousin’s wife’s brother was second in line for the county of Champagne back in the early 1300s. With an ironclad claim in hand, everything was ready for Burgundy to extend the Hundred Years war…