nlike his brothers Charles V, Louis of Anjou, and Philip the Bold, John of France, duke of Berry, the third son of John the Good and Bona of Luxembourg, never played a major role in the political history of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, although his elder brother and his nephew Charles VI often entrusted him with important governmental duties.
This great lord, refined and fond of luxury, like all the princes of the Valois line, seemed to have no more consuming passion than the embellishment of his various residences, especially the hôtel de Nesles in Paris and the château of Mehun-sur-Yèvre in Berry, which he filled, as Charles V had done at the Louvre and Vincennes, with the most fabulous art collections of the age.
He was defeated and captured by the Black Prince at Poitiers (1356) and imprisoned in England. Released in 1360, he failed to raise the money for his ransom and returned to England (1364). In 1416, the sudden death of the duke whose last days were shrouded in grief after the French defeat at Agincourt. His son, Charles V, succeeded him.