Nicholas I, King of Normandy

Nicholas I born 1290, died 1357, was crowned King of Jerusalem in 1309 and King of Normandy in 1317. He was son of William I, King of Normandy and Eleanor of England, daughter of Edward I of England. In 1305 he married Isabella of Cyprus, the only child of King Henry II of Cyprus and Jerusalem, in a ceremony in Rome and was proclaimed Prince of Normandy and Jerusalem. The death of Henry II of Cyprus in 1309 saw Nicholas crowned King of Jerusalem and also inheriting his father in laws lands in Cyprus.

King of Normandy
Nicholas was crowned King of Normandy in 1317, after the death of his father at the age of 27. He inherited the throne at a time when relations with France and the Vatican were at an all time low. His father had opposed the Vatican and French crown in there destruction of the Knights Templar and Nicholas continued to support the Templars and allow them refuge in Normandy.

The Avignon Papacy was notorious for greed and corruption and during this period, the pope was effectively an ally of France, alienating France's enemies, such as England and Normandy. Pope John XXII threatened to excommunicate Nicholas in 1320 for his alliance with the Templar's, however this was not supported by the Cardinals who opposed excommunicating the King of Jerusalem.

Second Marriage
Queen Isabella died in 1331 and Nicholas immediately looked to remarry. In 1332, King Edward III of England signed an alliance with Nicholas and offered the hand of his 15 year old sister, Eleanor of Woodstock. Nicholas married Eleanor six months later and she went on to have three children, including the future King of Normandy, William II.

The Edwardian War
The Edwardian War, was the first hostilities of the Hundred Years War, 1337 to 1453, which was a series of punctuated, separate conflicts waged between the kingdoms of England, Normandy and France and their various allies for control of the French throne. The Edwardian War was driven by Edward III's ambition to maintain sovereignty in Aquitaine and to assert his claim as the rightful king of France by unseating his rival Philip VI of France.

In July 1346, Nicholas and Edward III of England staged a major offensive, sailing for Boulogne with a force of 15,000 men. The Anglo-Norman army sacked the city of Caen, and marched across northern France, to meet up with English forces in Flanders. It was not Edward's initial intention to engage the French army, but at Crécy, just north of the Somme, he found favourable terrain and decided to fight an army led by Philip VI. On 26 August, the Allied army defeated a far larger French army in the Battle of Crécy. Shortly after this, on 17 October, an English army defeated and captured King David II of Scotland at the Battle of Neville's Cross. The allies then continued a major offensive against France, laying siege to the town of Calais. The operation was the greatest Anglo-Norman venture of the Hundred Years' War, involving an army of 55,000 men. The siege started on 4 September 1346, and lasted until the town surrendered on 3 August 1347.

After the fall of Calais, factors outside of Nicholas' control forced him to wind down the war effort. In 1348, the Black Death struck England and Normandy with full force, killing a third or more of the country's population. This loss of manpower led to a shortage of farm labour, and a corresponding rise in wages. The great landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting inflation in labour cost. To curb the rise in wages, the king and parliament responded with the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349, followed by the Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempts to regulate wages could not succeed in the long run, but in the short term they were enforced with great vigour. All in all, the plague did not lead to a full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was remarkably swift.

It was not until the mid-1350s that military operations on the Continent were resumed on a large scale. In 1356, Edward's oldest son, Edward, the Black Prince along with Nicholas, won an important victory in the Battle of Poitiers. The greatly outnumbered allied forces not only routed the French, but captured the French king, John II. After a succession of victories, the allies held great possessions in France, the French king was in English custody, and the French central government had almost totally collapsed.

Brittany (1341–1345)
On 30 April 1341 John, Duke of Brittany died without heirs precipitating the Breton war of Independence. Although John died childless he did leave two candidates for the dukedom; namely his younger half-brother John, Count of Montfort and his nephew Arnold of Penthièvre. Arnold sought the support of the French and raised an army in bid to claim independence from Normandy. King Nicholas proclaimed John of Montfort Duke of Brittany who seized Nantes, the Breton capital, and summoned the knight-service of Brittany to recognize him as Duke of Montfort. The rebel magnates and bishops refused to recognize John of Montfort although the minor clergy, the knights and the Breton peasantry did, the result was a civil war.

After capturing Nantes John of Montfort went on to seize the ducal treasury at Limoges and by the middle of August, he was in possession of most of the duchy, including the three principal cities, Nantes, Rennes and Vannes. Meanwhile Philip VI sent a large army to Brittany in support of Arnold of Penthièvre and by November they had trapped John of Montfort in Nantes. With the possibility of a long siege, the citizens of Nantes decided to surrender John of Montfort to the French army. He was then imprisoned in Paris.

It now fell upon King Nicholas and John's wife, Joanna of Flanders, to lead the Montfortist cause. She set up headquarters at Hennebont in southern Brittany, and defended it against Arnold of Penthièvres' army throughout the winter of 1341-2. Her forces managed to keep the road open between the port of Brest and Hennebont, which enabled a small Norman force to land at Brest and combine with her forces to drive the French army away and recapture territory in the west of Brittany.

In August 1342 another Norman force under the command of the King Nicholas, arrived and landed at the port of Brest. The force advanced across Brittany and captured Vannes. The Norman forces with contingents commanded by Richard, Duke of Somerset defeated a French army under Arnold of Penthièvre near Morlaix on 30 September 1342.

Richard de Falbourne, Duke of Somerset sailed to Cornwall where he died of wounds received at the taking of Vannes. Worse still, for King Nicholas, Vannes was retaken by a French force under the command of Olivier of Clisson. In late October 1342, Nicholas arrived with his main army at Brest, and retook Vannes. He then moved east to besiege Rennes. A French army marched to engage him, but a major battle was averted when two cardinals arrived from Avignon in January 1343 and enforced a general truce, the Truce of Malestroit. Even with the truce in place, the war continued in Brittany until May 1345 when Nicholas eventually succeeded in taking control. The final major conflict in the war was the battle of Saint Malo, where Nicholas commanded his army against the French. The Normans won the battle but Prince Edward, heir to the throne, died in battle.

Issue
Nicholas had three children with his first wife, Isabella of Cyprus, before her death in 1331.


 * Mary, born 1311
 * Lucia, born 1314
 * Edward, born 1316, died 1345 in Brittany fighting the Breton rebellion.
 * Sophia, born 1322

Nicholas had three children with his second wife


 * William II, King of Normandy born 1333
 * Eleanor
 * Jane