A Distant Mirror (38 page)

As he turned toward Paris in March, Edward learned with fury and vows of vengeance of a savage French raid carried out in that month on Winchelsea, on the south coast of England. Its ultimate object was the rescue of King Jean, which would have spared France his ruinous ransom. As originally planned, the raid was also intended, by “making a show of remaining there,” to frighten the English into withdrawing forces from France in self-defense. Costs were raised by the major towns. A bold ship captain named Enguerrand Ringois of Abbeville, renowned for his courage and indomitable character at the
siege of Calais, was chosen as naval commander. The land forces, numbering 2,000 knights, archers, and foot soldiers from Picardy and Normandy, suffered from the usual absence of single command. They were led by a triumvirate of nobles who were at odds with each other. Pierre des Essars, the man who had disposed of Etienne Marcel, led a body of Parisian volunteers.

Rumor preceding the attack had caused Jean to be moved on March 1 from Lincolnshire to a castle nearer London and subsequently to the Tower of London itself. Despite reconnoitering of the coasts, the French, misled by false information, landed on the south coast on March 15. Seizing Winchelsea without difficulty, they made no effort to establish a foothold, but plunged into the usual frenzy of pillage, murder, and rape, including massacre of a group of citizens attending mass in the church. While alarm flew over the countryside, the French sacked the neighboring town of Rye, then met and repelled a hastily assembled force of 1,200 English who came against them. Fearing greater reinforcements, they decided against the “show of remaining there” and, returning to the beachhead after a 48 hours’ invasion, re-embarked in the light of the burning town.

England was thrown into a panic by news that the enemy were “riding over the country, slaying, burning, destroying and doing other mischief,” and that worse might be expected “unless they be speedily and manfully opposed.” While that proved unnecessary, the panic left a persistent fear of invasion that was to exert some restraint on future activities against France. Otherwise the raid, bravely planned and badly led, accomplished nothing except to provoke Edward’s wrath and reprisals on discovering that the French could act as viciously in his realm as the English did in France.

Surrounding Paris early in April, the English sent heralds to challenge the defenders to battle, but the Dauphin, relying on Marcel’s improved fortifications, forbade any response. After a week of burning and killing outside the walls failed to provoke a fight, Edward turned away, baffled as he had been at Reims, though not yet ready to give up. He took the road for Chartres, not for the coast. For the past two months papal legates had been shuttling between the Dauphin and the English, attempting to reopen negotiations, always blocked by Edward’s refusal to reduce his terms. The Dauphin himself had sent envoys with peace proposals. Seeing “how the realm could not long endure the great tribulation and poverty” the English were inflicting, “for the rents of the lords and churches were nigh lost in every part,” he and his Council offered to settle on the basis agreed to in 1358 before Edward had raised his demands. The Duke of Lancaster advised
Edward to accept, for if he persisted he might have to make war “all the days of your life” and might “lose in one day what it has taken us twenty years to win.”

The anger of the heavens supported the Duke. On Monday, April 13, a “foul dark day” of mist and bitter cold, as the army camped on the approach to Chartres, a violent hailstorm struck with the force of a cyclone, followed by cloudbursts of freezing rain. Horses and men were killed by the prodigious hailstones, tents were torn up by the wind, the baggage train was dragged through mud and floods, and scores died of the fearful cold, “wherefor unto thys day manye men callen it
Black Monday.” In half an hour Edward’s army took a beating that human hands could not have inflicted and that could hardly be taken as other than a celestial warning. Black Monday brought to a head all the faults of the six months’ campaign—the vulnerability of the English army, the foiling of decisive battle, the incapacity to take a major walled town or capital city, the vaguely perceived knowledge, of which Lancaster had a glimmer, that France could not be conquered by pillage, nor by siege, town by town, fortress by fortress. In the long run, this was what would condemn the war to drag on for a hundred years—the fact that, short of a fluke like the capture of a king at Poitiers, medieval armies had no means of achieving a decisive result, much less unconditional surrender.

Yielding to Heaven’s warning and Lancaster’s counsel, Edward appointed commissioners to treat with the French on revised peace terms. They met at the little village of Brétigny about a league’s distance from Chartres, where the twenty years’ war was at last brought to an end-as it then seemed.

Signed May 8, 1360, the Treaty of Brétigny covered a maze of legal and territorial details in 39 articles, five letters of confirmation, and multiple rhetoric as eternal as lawyers. Basically it was a return to the original settlement of 1358. King Jean’s ransom was put back to 3 million gold écus and Edward’s excess territorial demands were abandoned, to that extent marking his last campaign as a failure and a waste. But the basic cession of Guienne and Calais to the King of England free of homage was confirmed, plus the transfer of other territories, towns, ports, and castles between the Loire and the Pyrenees and in the region of Calais, representing in all about a third of France, the largest gain ever recorded in western Europe up to that time. Edward renounced the crown of France and all territorial claims not granted in the treaty.

To ensure fulfillment, the earlier provision for forty hostages representing the greatest in the realm was renewed, again including Enguerrand
de Coucy. As lord of the greatest stronghold in northern France and a center of resistance to the English, he was deliberately selected in the belief that the peace would be better kept if such men were hostages.

The group was headed by the four “Fleurs-de-Lys” or royal princes—namely, the King’s two sons, Louis and Jean (future Ducs d’Anjou and de Berry); his brother, the Duc d’Orléans; and the Dauphin’s brother-in-law, Louis II, Duc de Bourbon. The Counts d’Artois, d’Eu, de Longueville, d’Alençon, de Blois, de St. Pol, d’Harcourt, de Grandpré, de Braisne, and other
grands seigneurs
and notable fighters including Matthieu de Roye, Coucy’s former guardian, made up the list. King Jean was to be returned as far as Calais, where he would remain until a first payment of 600,000 écus was made on his ransom and a preliminary transfer of territories had taken place. He would then be liberated with ten of his fellow prisoners from Poitiers and replaced by forty hostages of the Third Estate—the real source of money—four from Paris and two from each of eighteen other towns. Thereafter, sovereignty of towns and castles was to be transferred, and the remainder of the ransom paid, 400,000 at a time, in six installments at six-month intervals, with one fifth of the hostages released upon each delivery.

The Treaty of Brétigny was “too lightly given to the great grief and prejudice of the kingdom of France” in the judgment of the anonymous chronicler of the
Quatre Valois
, of whom nothing is known except that he was a citizen of Rouen. Fortresses and good towns were given up, he wrote, that “could not have easily been conquered,” which was true enough, but the treaty was excused on the ground that it was necessary to deliver the King.

Delivering France from the companies was even more urgent. In an appendix to the treaty, Edward forbade on pain of banishment any further acts against the peace by English men of war, but there was no firm intent behind the provision and it brought France no surcease. In fact the Treaty of Brétigny opened the period of the companies’ greatest flourishing, as a swarm of newly discharged soldiers in groups labeled the
Tard-Venus
(Late-Comers) scavenged on the heels of their predecessors and gradually swelled the ranks of the mercenary armies.

Efforts to raise the ransom were stretched to the extreme. Towns, counties, and noble domains assessed themselves, among them the house of Coucy, which contributed 27,500 francs. Sales taxes of twelve pence in the pound were levied on Paris and the surrounding country, to be paid by nobles and clergy and “all persons capable of paying.” When returns were meager, recourse was had to the Jews, who were invited
back on a grant of twenty years’ residence for which they were to pay twenty florins each on re-entry and seven florins annually thereafter.

Jean himself sold his eleven-year-old daughter Isabelle in marriage to the nine-year-old son of the rich and rampant Visconti family of Milan for 600,000 gold florins. The alliance of the King of France with an upstart Italian tyrant was almost as great a wonder as the defeat of Poitiers. To obtain the princess, Galeazzo Visconti, the bridegroom’s father, offered half the money cash down and half in return for a territorial dowry. The marriage was to take place in July, immediately following betrothal as was customary, but had to be postponed when the princess fell ill of a fever. What anxiety must have hovered over a daughter’s sickbed, on which so much gold depended!

At that time the plague had re-appeared what was to be a major recurrence in the following year. After escaping to country villas for the summer months while thousands died in Milan and corpses rotted in sealed houses, the Visconti brothers returned as the plague abated, and sent throughout Italy for jewels, silks, and gorgeous raiment in preparation of the wedding. Guests were assured it “would be the greatest that Lombardy had ever seen.” The French princess, having recovered, was dispatched to Milan via Savoy regardless of risk, and duly married in mid-October in festivities of “imperial” luxury lasting three days. A thousand guests with all their retainers converged upon the city for the occasion. The opulent show put on by the Visconti—and paid for by their subjects—only underlined what was widely seen as a humiliation for France. “Who could imagine,” wrote Matteo Villani, considering the greatness of the crown of France, “that the wearer of that crown should be reduced to such straits as virtually to sell his own flesh at auction?” The fate of the King’s daughter seemed to him “truly an indication of the infelicity of human affairs.”

King Jean meanwhile had been waiting in English custody at Calais since July along with his youngest son, now called Philip the Bold. The surname of the future Duke of Burgundy was earned at a banquet given by King Edward for the prisoners of Poitiers, in the course of which the young prince jumped up from the table in a fury and struck the master butler, crying, “Where did you learn to serve the King of England before the King of France when they are at the same table?” “Verily, cousin,” commented Edward, “you are Philip the Bold.” In 1361, on the death of Philip de Rouvre, King Jean took over the duchy of Burgundy for his youngest son who was to make it a fateful inheritance.

On October 24, 1360, a first payment of 400,000 écus on Jean’s
ransom, collected mostly in the north, was delivered to the English at Calais. The Visconti gold was so entangled in complex financial deals, dowries, and exchanges between Jean and Galeazzo that it seems not to have assisted the ransom. Though less than the stipulated sum, the 400,000 was accepted, and the peace treaty, with some modifications, thereupon formally ratified as the Treaty of Calais. The signature of Enguerrand de Coucy as one of the chief hostages was added to the document. After jointly swearing with Edward to keep the peace perpetually according to the terms of the treaty, the two Kings parted, and Jean after four years’ imprisonment returned at last to his ravaged country.

Four days after his liberation, on October 30, the party of French hostages in the custody of King Edward and his sons sailed for England. Some were to stay for ten years, some to return in two or three, some to die in exile. Among their varying fates, Enguerrand’s was unique: he was to become the son-in-law of the King of England.

Immortality traveled with him across the Channel. Whether on the same ship or another of the convoy, a young clerk of bourgeois family from Valenciennes in Hainault was journeying to England to present an account he had written of the Battle of Poitiers to Queen Philippa of England, his countrywoman, in hopes of obtaining her patronage. By name Jean Froissart, aged 22 or 23, he succeeded in pleasing the Queen and, with her encouragement, began collecting material for the chronicle that was to make him the Herodotus of his age. Consciously the celebrator of chivalry, he wrote with intent that “the honorable and noble adventures and feats of arms, done and achieved by the wars of France and England, should notably be inregistered and put in perpetual memory.” Within those confines, no more complete and vivid chronicle exists. Crystallized in the “perpetual memory” Froissart achieved for them, the nobles of his time forever ride, brilliant, avaricious, valiant, cruel. If, as Sir Walter Scott complained, Froissart had “marvelous little sympathy” for the “villain churls,” that was a condition of the context.

The convoy carrying the hostages contained an extraordinary concentration of the primary actors of the day. Among them was another observer who had immortality to bestow. Humanity was Geoffrey Chaucer’s subject, and all of 14th century society—except the lowest—his scope. Twenty years old at this time, born in the same year as Enguerrand de Coucy, he had accompanied the English army to France as a member of the household of the King’s second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. While in a foraging party outside Reims, he had been captured by the French and ransomed by King Edward for £16,
which compared favorably with the £6 13s. 4d. paid in compensation for Lord Andrew Lutterall’s dead horse and with the £2 paid to ransom the average archer. No documentary evidence attests to Chaucer’s presence on the return voyage to England, but since the Duke of Clarence sailed with the hostages, it is more than likely that Chaucer, as a member of his retinue, accompanied him.

In due time Coucy was to meet and know Chaucer and become a friend and patron of Froissart, although there is nothing to show whether the three young men made contact during the voyage. Some time afterward, however, while eagerly observing everyone who might be material for his history, Froissart took notice of his future patron. At a court festivity in England when elaborate dances and singing preceded the banquet, he observed how “the young lord de
Coucy shined in dancing and caroling whenever it was his turn. He was in great favor with both the French and English, for whatever he chose to do he did well and with grace and all praised him for the agreeable manner in which he addressed everyone.” In the talents that a stylish young nobleman was supposed to show, Enguerrand was clearly an accomplished performer who, not surprisingly, attracted attention.