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Jean de Béthencourt: Norman Noble, Crusader, and Conqueror of the Canary Islands

Jean de Béthencourt (1362–1425), Baron of Saint-Martin-le-Gaillard, was a Norman noble, soldier, and explorer whose career spanned the Hundred Years’ War, crusades against North African corsairs, and the conquest of the Canary Islands. His life reflected the turbulence of late medieval France, as shifting alliances, piracy, and overseas expansion shaped his rise to prominence.

I. Early Life and Feudal Struggles in Normandy (1362–1387)

• Born in Grainville-la-Teinturière, Normandy, Jean was the son of Jean III de Béthencourt and Marie de Bracquemont.
• His father, a supporter of King Charles V, fought under Bertrand du Guesclin against Charles II of Navarreand was killed in May 1364 at the Battle of Cocherel.
• Following his father’s death, the Château de Grainville was demolished in 1365, part of royal efforts to dismantle fortresses that could be used by rebellious lords.
• In 1377, at age fifteen, Béthencourt entered the service of Louis I, Duke of Anjou, beginning a long military and courtly career.

II. Service to the House of Valois and Expeditions in North Africa (1387–1391)

• Between 1387 and 1391, he held the honorary position of chancellor to Louis de Valois, Duke of Touraine(later Duke of Orléans).
• In 1387, King Charles VI of France authorized the rebuilding of the Château de Grainville, restoring Béthencourt’s territorial power.
• As lord of Grainville, he held seven parishes and rights over all trade crossing his land, first as a vassal of Olivier du Guesclin, son of Bertrand du Guesclin.
• Later, during Henry V’s conquest of Normandy (1417–1419), he was forced to acknowledge English overlordship, though he likely engaged in piracy against both French and English vessels during periods of instability.

III. The Mahdia Crusade (1390) and First Encounters with the Canaries

• In 1390, Béthencourt joined the Mahdia Crusade, an expedition organized by Genoese merchants and led by Louis II, Duke of Bourbon, against the Barbary corsairs of Tunis.
• The campaign, presented as a "crusade," offered participants prestige, a moratorium on debts, immunity from lawsuits, and papal indulgences.
• However, the French knights were unprepared for the terrain, lacked siege equipment, and suffered from internal quarrels, leading to a negotiated withdrawal.
• During this campaign, Béthencourt likely first heard of the Canary Islands, where merchants spoke of orchil lichen, a rare dye highly valuable for the textile industry.

IV. The Conquest of the Canary Islands (1402–1405)

• Seeking economic opportunities in the dye trade, Béthencourt planned an expedition to the Canary Islands, which at the time were frequented by merchants and Spanish pirates.
• To fund his venture, he sold property in Paris for 200 gold francs and secured a 7,000-pound loan from his uncle, Robert de Bracquemont, the French ambassador to Castile, by mortgaging his estates.
• According to Louis Moréri, King Henry III of Castile had entrusted the conquest of the islands to Bracquemont, who then delegated the mission to Béthencourt.
• Accompanied by Gadifer de La Salle, whom he had met in service under the Duke of Orléans, Béthencourt set sail for the Canaries in December 1401.

V. Legacy and Impact

• Béthencourt’s conquest of the Canaries marked the beginning of European expansion into the Atlantic, preceding Portugal’s and Spain’s later colonial endeavors.
• His expedition combined feudal ambition, economic opportunity, and religious justification, foreshadowing later European imperial ventures.
• His rule over the islands was later challenged and disputed, leading to his eventual withdrawal from direct governance in favor of Castilian control.

Jean de Béthencourt’s career reflects the shifting dynamics of late medieval Europe, where knightly service, piracy, crusading, and overseas conquest blended in the pursuit of power, wealth, and prestige.

The Canary Islands, known to the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, are mentioned in a number of classical sources.

For example, Pliny the Elder describes a Carthaginian expedition to the Canaries, and they may have been the Fortunate Isles of other classical writers.

King Juba, the Roman protégé, had dispatched a contingent to reopen the dye production facility at Mogador in the early first century.

That same naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, using Mogador as their mission base.

When the Europeans began to explore the islands they encountered several indigenous populations living at a Neolithic level of technology.

The history of the settlement of the Canary Islands is still unclear, but linguistic and genetic analyses seem to indicate that at least some of these inhabitants shared a common origin with the Berbers of northern Africa.

The precolonial inhabitants will come to be known collectively as the Guanches, although Guanches had originally been the name for the indigenous inhabitants of Tenerife.

Jean de Béthencourt had set sail from La Rochelle on May 1, 1402 with two hundred and eighty men, mostly Gascon and Norman adventurers, including two Franciscan priests (Pierre Bontier and Jean le Verrier, who will narrated the expedition in Le Canarien) and two Guanches who had been captured in an earlier Castilian expedition and have already been baptized.

After passing Cape Finisterre, they put in to Cadiz, where he finds some of his sailors so frightened that they refuse to continue the voyage.

Of the eighty crew with which he set out, Béthencourt sails on with fifty-three.

He arrives at Lanzarote, the northernmost inhabited island.

While Gadifer de la Salle explores the archipelago, Béthencourt leaves for Cádiz, where he acquires reinforcements at the Castilian court.

At this time a power struggle has broken out on the island between Gadifer and Berthin de Berneval, another officer, who sows dissent between the Béthencourt’s Normans and the Gadifer’s Gascons.

Local leaders are drawn into the conflict and scores die in the first months of Béthencourt's absence.

During this time, ...

...Gadifer manages to conquer Fuerteventura and to explore other islands.

Peace is restored to the troubled island of Fuerteventura only with the return of Béthencourt in 1404.

De la Salle and Béthencourt found the city of Betancuria (as capital of the island) in 1404.

Béthencourt receives the title King of the Canary Islands, but still recognizes Henry as his overlord.

This marks the beginning of the Spanish Empire.

Béthencourt also establishes a base on the island of La Gomera, but it will be many years before the island is truly conquered.

The natives of La Gomera, and of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and La Palma, will resist the Castilian invaders for almost a century.

Bethencourt is defeated by the aboriginals of the island of Gran Canaria (Canarios) in the battle of Arguineguin at the south of the island, acquiring the title of “Great.

He dies in 1422, and is buried in the church of Grainville-la-Teinturiere in Normandy.

The initial exploitation of the timber and raw materials of Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands had ended, and it rapidly became clear that the most profitable use of the new territories would be sugar production.

The labor involved is heavy, and Europeans refuse to work as more than supervisors.

The solution has been to bring in slaves from Africa.

The first enslaved Africans brought to Portugal had arrived in 1441 from northern Mauritania, the fruits of the expedition commanded by Lançarote de Freitas.

The maritime town of Lagos is the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of the two hundred and thirty-five enslaved Berbers—the Mercado de Escravos, which opens in 1444.

Lançarote's second Lagos fleet is just one of several that set out from Portugal for the Arguin banks in August, 1445 (or 1446).

Caught by bad weather, Lançarote arrives at Cape Blanc with only nine ships still together, the remaining having strayed off.

He proceeds to the northern end of the Arguin banks, anchoring in at ilha das Graças (possibly Madeleine island or Pelicans island).

There, Lançarote was met by one of his missing ships, Vicente Dias, who had gone on ahead to Arguin island and stumbled across a small fleet of three Lisbon ships, headed by Dinis Eanes de Grã, who had preceded them and devastated the remaining settlements on the northern end of the bay, taking some one hundred captives.

At Grã's suggestion, Lançarote's fleet, now thirteen strong (only Palançano's fusta remains unaccounted for) attacks Arguin island again, taking four captives, then heads to the southern end of Arguin Bay, taking fifty-seven captives at Tider and an additional five somewhere further down (possibly around Cape Timris).

The element of surprise being gone and the bulk of the population having already evacuated the coast, Lançarote's captives are principally Sanhaja Berber tribesmen who had decided to stay and put up a fight.

Dissatisfied with the meager number of captives and realizing that Arguin Bay is too thoroughly deserted to yield up any more, Lançarote decides to take his fleet south to raid the Wolof lands of Senegal, which had been discovered (but not yet raided) by Nuno Tristão and Dinis Dias the previous year.

However, not all his ships are up for the journey, several of them running short on supplies.

As a result, Lançarote partitions his fleet, taking only six or seven caravels with him, sending the remaining ships back to Lagos under the command of Soeiro da Costa (a few of which will conduct an unauthorized slave raid on the Canary islands of La Palma and Gomera on their way home).

A Portuguese expedition may have attempted to colonize the Canary Islands as early as 1336, but there is not enough hard evidence to support this.

The Castilian conquest of the islands had begun in 1402, with the expedition of French explorers Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle, nobles and vassals of Henry III of Castile, to Lanzarote.

From there, they had conquered Fuerteventura (1405) and El Hierro.

Béthencourt had received the title King of the Canary Islands, but still recognized King Henry III as his overlord.

Béthencourt had also established a base on the island of La Gomera, but it will be many years before the island is truly conquered.

The natives of La Gomera, and of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and La Palma will resist the Castilian invaders for almost a century.

Maciot de Béthencourt in 1448 sells the lordship of Lanzarote to Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator, an action that is not accepted by the natives nor by the Castilians.

Despite Pope Nicholas V ruling that the Canary Islands are under Portuguese control, a crisis swells to a revolt that will last until 1459 with the final expulsion of the Portuguese.