Jeanne de Clisson (c. 1300–1359) was a Breton noblewoman who turned privateer against the French crown after her husband, Olivier IV de Clisson, was beheaded in Paris on August 2, 1343, on a treason charge that contemporaries widely regarded as unjust. She sold her remaining lands, raised several hundred men for reprisal raids in Brittany, then sailed to England, where she fitted out three warships — said to have been painted black with red sails — and spent roughly the next decade attacking French shipping in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Crews of captured vessels were typically killed outright, with a survivor or two deliberately spared to carry word of the attack back to the French court. She later supported English operations during the Hundred Years’ War before settling into a quieter later life in Brittany, remarrying the English commander Sir Walter Bentley in 1356; she died in 1359. Some details of her early biography, including the precise sequence of her earlier marriages, vary between sources.
Jeanne de Clisson
