Jeanne's husband Olivier de Clisson was executed in Paris on charges of treason, an event that triggered her transformation into a vengeful pirate lord.
On August 2, 1343, Olivier IV de Clisson, husband of Jeanne de Belleville, was executed in Paris on the orders of King Philip VI of France. Olivier had been arrested on suspicion of colluding with the English during the Breton War of Succession, part of the broader Hundred Years' War, though evidence for the charge was thin and many considered the trial a sham.
His body was displayed on a gibbet at Les Fourches de Paris, and his head was sent to Nantes to be displayed on a spike as a warning to other nobles. Jeanne, who was left widowed with young children, was reportedly taken to view her husband's severed head, an act that hardened her resolve for vengeance.
This execution is the pivotal event of Jeanne's life story: it is cited by chroniclers and later historians as the direct catalyst that turned a noblewoman into one of history's most notorious female pirates. The brutal and public nature of the execution, intended to intimidate Breton nobility loyal to England, instead produced one of the most extraordinary tales of retribution in medieval history, as Jeanne would go on to sell her lands, raise a private fleet, and wage a personal war of revenge against the French crown.
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