Webinar: Traumatic Repercussions: Warfare and Disability in the French Countryside

March 7, 2024  – Sasha PFAU (Hendrix College, Arkansas, USA) – Traumatic Repercussions: Warfare and Disability in the French Countryside.

In four letters of remission from 1424, some residents of a town in the diocese of Bayeux explained to the English government of France how they had banded together to attack two English men in November of 1417, shortly after Henry V’s army had overtaken Caen. Their requests for pardon were written against the background of national events, where shifting loyalties on the level of the realm had repercussions in local communities. Between 1417 and 1424 the political landscape in France had transformed. Fundamental questions about the very constitution of the French realm, French identity, and the relationship between the French and the English were at stake. With an English king on the throne, actions that might in other contexts have appeared as a commendable and heroic defense of the village against enemies of the realm, were construed as the murder of loyal soldiers and subjects of the king. These conflicts over changing identities and shifting boundaries between enemy and friend were relatively common in this period. This presentation will consider the traumatic repercussions of warfare in the French countryside, focusing particularly on the way remission seekers characterized their responses in terms of mental stress, trauma, and illness.