Both their respective namesake duchies of Orléans and Burgundy were held in the status of appanage, as none of its holders was first in the line of succession to the French throne.

Burgundy's constituent County of Flanders, with its clothing producers and merchants, significantly depended on the raw material import of English wool.

With Charles VI mentally ill from 1393, his wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, presided over a regency council, on which sat the grandees of the kingdom.

The uncle of Charles VI, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who acted as regent during the king's minority from 1380 to 1388, was a significant influence on the queen (he had organized the royal marriage during his regency).

While Louis of Orléans, getting 90% of his income from the royal treasury, bought lands and strongholds in the eastern marches of the kingdom that the Burgundians considered their private hunting ground, John the Fearless, lacking the fiery prestige of his father, saw royal largess towards him drying up; Philip received 200,000 livres per year, but John had to satisfy himself with 37,000.

The Duke of Orléans, son-in-law of Gian Galeazzo Visconti and holding the title for more or less hypothetical fiefdoms in the Italian Peninsula, wanted to let Charles VI intervene militarily in his favour.

The quarrel at first respected all forms of courtesy: John the Fearless adopted the nettle as his emblem, abd Louis of Orléans chose the gnarled stick and the duke of Burgundy the plane or rabot[clarification needed] (distributing "rabotures", or badges, to his supporters).

[1] The king's brother, Louis of Orléans, "who whinnied like a stallion after almost all the beautiful women",[attribution needed] was accused of having wanted to seduce or worse, "esforcier", Margaret of Bavaria, the duchess of Burgundy.

Louis was undoubtedly close to the queen and benefited from the benevolence of his brother, the king, whenever he was out of crisis; he thus succeeded in ousting the Burgundians on the counsel.

He thus decided to get rid of his exasperating rival, having him murdered on rue Vieille du Temple in Paris on 23 November 1407, while he was leaving the queen's residence at Hôtel Barbette, a few days after she had given birth to her twelfth child.

[1] Thomas de Courteheuse then sent word to Louis that the king, Charles VI of France, urgently needed him at hôtel Saint-Paul.

Leaving the Hôtel Barbette, Louis was stabbed by fifteen masked criminals[1] led by Raoulet d'Anquetonville, a servant of the Duke of Burgundy.

With the marriage of Charles and Bonne d'Armagnac at Gien in 1410, the Duke of Orléans, his new father-in-law and the grandees of France formed a league against John and his supporters.

A new treaty, signed at Bicêtre on 2 November 1410, suspended hostilities, but both sides had taken up arms again as early as spring 1411 In October 1411, with an army 60,000 strong, the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris and attacked the Bretons allied to the Armagnacs, who had retrenched at La Chapelle.

They, on high alert because they had heard that John intended to kidnap or attack the Dauphin, reacted swiftly when the Lord of Navailles raised his sword.

The agreement officially ended the war and allowed Charles VII to recapture practically all the English continental possessions, leaving them in 1453 with Calais alone.