A Distant Mirror (78 page)

Possibly stimulated by all the weddings,
Coucy’s remarriage at the age of 46 to a girl some thirty years his junior took place in February 1386. The bride was Isabelle, daughter of the Duc de Lorraine, “a very beautiful demoiselle of the noble and great generation of the house of Blois.” She had been considered as a bride for the King during the interval when Stephen of Bavaria was recalcitrant, and was described
as “of the King’s age or very close,” which would have made her sixteen to eighteen. Charles had been “near agreed” to the match until the Bavarian proposal was revived.

Little is known of the second Isabelle de Coucy except that after the marriage Enguerrand undertook a vast renovation of the castle from which it is possible (though not obligatory) to deduce that he did it to please a young and beautiful bride.

Following the marriage, a new northwest wing almost as grandiose in scale as the renowned
donjon
was added to the castle, along with many domestic improvements.
^*
The new wing housed a grand banquet hall measuring 50 by 200 feet, called the Salle des Preux or Hall of the Nine Worthies, the heroes of history most admired in the Middle Ages. They were three ancients—Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; three Biblical Jews—Joshua, King David, and Judas Maccabeus; three Christians—King Arthur, Charlemagne, and the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon. An adjoining hall 30 by 60 feet, was dedicated to the feminine worthies, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Penthisilea, and other legendary queens. Each hall had an immense mantled chimney at either end, a high vaulted ceiling, and wide arched windows which let in broad bands of sunlight, unlike the narrow slits in the older walls. A raised tribune from which great personages and their ladies, separated from the crowd, could view the dances and entertainments was built into the Salle des Preux. Behind it stood the row of Nine Worthies in bas-relief, “carved by a hand so fine,” wrote an admirer, “that if my eyes had not been witness I would never have believed that leaves and fruits and grapes and other delicate things could have been so perfectly fashioned in hard stone.”

Among other additions were a fireplace and chimney for the lady’s boudoir, now tucked into an angle between the new wing and the old; an indoor tennis court with carved wooden ceiling; a new stable in the lower court; parapets extended the length of the terraces; a double-arched space beneath the terrace to keep wood for fuel; a kennel with latrines “to make room for Bonniface and Guedon to lie”; a water tank six feet by eight and sixteen feet deep to supply water by four large stone conduits to the kitchens. New wooden ceilings were installed in the
donjon
, roofs throughout the castle were re-covered, gargoyles and gutters cleaned, and the windows of the upper chamber “which the Dame de Coucy’s monkey had damaged” repaired.

Craftsmen of every specialty were hired—a carriage-maker to cut down the carriage brought from Lorraine by the new Dame de Coucy, which was too wide for the gates and had to be reduced by a foot; wood-carvers to panel the ceilings of the Eagle Chamber and the oratory and dressing room of the Sire de Coucy, and to make two extension leaves for the banquet table for the new hall; iron-workers to replace old keys, locks, bolts, and hinges, in particular to make a new lock for the casket in the oratory of the Seigneur; plumbers to weld the kitchen sinks and drainage pipes; painters from Paris to decorate the walls and “to redress the white-and-red hoods of the Coucy livery with new quilting.”

Much of the non-rented land, it appears from the accounts, was in vineyards, requiring considerable expense in planting, cultivating, and harvesting, and producing considerable income for the Seigneur. Other expenses went for the wages of bailiffs and tax-collectors, offerings to the chaplains of two chapels, charges for curing fish, replenishing livestock, cutting wood, mowing and haying the fields, providing the clothes and equipment of the Seigneur and his retinue. Coucy’s journeys to Soissons and other places show him generally accompanied by about eighty mounted knights, squires, and servants, and an astronomer, Maître Guillaume de Verdun, to carry out “certain necessities for him.”

The second marriage like the first was not very prolific, which may reflect something about Enguerrand’s marital relations or merely his prolonged absences. No son to carry on the dynasty and maintain the great barony was born, and only one daughter. Named Isabelle for her mother, she ultimately married the second son of the Duke of Burgundy. At an unknown date, probably some years later, the much desired son was finally born to Enguerrand—out of wedlock. Named Perceval and known as the Bastard of Coucy, he married in 1419 which suggests that he was the product of a late liaison. The identity of his mother is a blank. She may have been a rival of Coucy’s wife or a substitute during his later tenure in the south as Lieutenant-General of Guienne. Evidently she was of some importance in Coucy’s life, or he felt pride in a son, or both, because he acknowledged paternity and endowed Perceval with the seigneurie of Aubermont, a fief of the lordship of La Fère. The Bastard could thereafter call himself Sieur de Coucy and Seigneur d’Aubermont.

In the year of marriages, 1385–86, Coucy attended the wedding at Dijon of his Hapsburg relative and recent enemy, Duke Albert III, to a daughter of Philip the Bold. This was the year of the historic victory at Sempach when Swiss pikemen defeated the Hapsburgs, and it may
be that Coucy’s presence at Dijon for the wedding was connected with the Hapsburgs’ desire for his support. In any event, his quarrel with his mother’s family was apparently made up. “They ended always by accommodating,” in the words of the discoverer of the document.

The Scottish fiasco failed to discourage French designs for the offensive. On the contrary, the design was now enlarged to a full-scale invasion of England, a true penetration, perhaps a second Norman Conquest. There was a strong body of sentiment which held that only a military victory by the French could finish off the war and assure the supremacy of the French Pope. Besides, England was known to be in great discord, and the nobility no longer united in support of the King but deeply disaffected. The Duke of Burgundy was initially the sponsor of the invasion plan, but when the decision was taken in April 1386, the Royal Council voted for it unanimously. Many were the same men who had served Charles V, but his controlling sense of the art of the possible was gone. Out of the “heap of ruins” after Poitiers, Charles had learned the discipline of adjusting ambitions to possibilities; his son’s reign was to be spent unlearning it as fast as possible. A
folie de grandeur
, or just such “fantasies of omnipotence” as define megalomania, overtook the French as a distraught century was drawing to its close.

“You are the greatest King living with the greatest number of subjects,” Burgundy told his nephew, “and it has occurred to me many times why we do not make this passage to England to crush the great pride of these English … and make this great enterprise one of eternal memory.” When shortly after Easter the Duke of Lancaster left England with a large force in 200 ships to conquer the throne of Castile, the French opportunity was at hand. Information about each other’s movements was known through French and English fishermen, who, ignoring hostilities, came to each other’s aid at sea and exchanged catches, keeping trans-Channel communication open.

The French invasion fleet was planned to be the greatest “since God created the world.” The original army that Clisson and Coucy were to have led to Scotland was to be the invasion force, swollen to awesome proportions. Chroniclers write in terms of 40,000 knights and squires, 50,000 horses, 60,000 foot soldiers, figures which were meant to be more impressive than precise. Preparations for Scotland had been well under way before the Flemish interruption and were now renewed in a colossal burst of activity. Money, as always, came first. A sales tax of 5 percent plus 25 percent on beverages had already been
levied throughout the kingdom for the Scottish campaign, bringing in 202,000 livres. It was now renewed, as it was to be repeatedly, never bringing in enough.

Ships were hired or purchased from every part of Europe from Prussia to Castile, while French shipyards worked day and night. The 600 ships assembled in the previous year were more than doubled and the sight they made in the mouth of the Scheldt was “the greatest of its kind ever seen.” Buonaccorso Pitti, the ubiquitous Florentine, saw 1,200 ships of which 600 were combat vessels mounted with the “castle” for archers. The French nobles, counting on recouping expenses from booty and ransoms in England, spared nothing in competitive splendor of gilded prows and silvered masts and sails striped with cloth of gold and silk. Admiral de Vienne commissioned a Flemish artist, Pierre de Lis, to paint his flagship red, adorned with his arms. Philip of Burgundy’s black ship was decorated with the coats of arms of all his possessions, and flew silken banners bearing his bold device “
Il me tarde,”
meaning approximately “I don’t wait,” repeated in gold on the mainsail. Coucy’s ship, “one of the most sumptuous of the fleet … very large and richly decorated,” met an unfortunate fate in the Seine, where it was moored. It was seized with two other ships in a daring raid up the river by a Portuguese admiral acting as an ally of the Duke of Lancaster.

Coucy was not immune to the hubris of the hour. His seal, attached to a receipt of October 1386 for payments connected with the invasion fleet, bears his arms combined with the royal leopard of England. Evidently he felt endowed with some permanent claim, perhaps in relation to his daughter Philippa, first cousin of the King of England. Coucy’s personal contingent in the invasion army numbered 5 knights, 64 squires, and 30 archers.

The wide bays and estuaries of the Scheldt provided a huge, sheltered gathering place for the armada, with communication by land and sea and by inland canals to Bruges. Day after day the parade of supplies came in—2,000 barrels to hold biscuit, timber to make carts, portable handmills to grind wheat, cannonballs of iron and stone from Reims, ropes, candles, lanterns, mattresses and straw pallets, urinals, shaving basins, laundry tubs, gangplanks for horses, shovels, pickaxes, and hammers. Clerks wrote a ceaseless stream of orders, purchasing agents scoured Normandy and Picardy, Holland and Zeeland, and as far as Germany and Spain for provisions—for wheat to make 2,000 tons of biscuit, for salt pork and bacon, smoked mackerel, salmon, eels, and dried herring, dried peas and beans, onions, salt, 1,000 barrels (or
four million liters) of French wine, and 857 barrels of wine from Greece, Portugal, Lepanto, and Rumania. The Duke of Burgundy ordered 101 beef cattle, 447 sheep, 224 hams, 500 fat hens, capons, and geese, containers of ginger, pepper, saffron, cinnamon, and cloves, 900 pounds of almonds, 200 of sugar, 400 of rice, 300 of barley, 94 casks of olive oil, 400 cheeses from Brie and 144 from Chauny.

Swords, lances, halberds, suits of armor, helmets “visored in the new fashion,” shields, banners, pennants, 200,000 arrows, 1,000 pounds of gunpowder, 138 stone cannonballs, 500 ramming prows for the ships, catapults, and flame-throwers were collected. Armorers hammered and polished, embroiderers worked on banners, bakers made ship’s biscuit, supplies were counted on delivery, packed, stored, and loaded into the holds. The roadsteads filled with cargo vessels, car-racks, barges, galleys, and galleons.

Of all the preparations, the most stupendous was the portable wooden town to protect and house the invaders upon landing. A huge camp enclosing a place for each captain and his company, it was virtually an artificial Calais to be towed across the Channel. Its dimensions epitomized the fantasy of omnipotence. It was to have a circumference of nine miles and an area of 1,000 acres surrounded by a wooden wall 20 feet high reinforced by towers at intervals of 12 and 22 yards. Houses, barracks, stables, and markets where the companies would come for their provisions were to be laid out along prearranged streets and squares.
William the Conqueror had brought a dismountable wooden fort to England in aid of his landing 300 years before, and similar devices had been used many times since, but nothing so daring in concept and size as this had ever before been attempted. Pre-fabricated in Normandy by the work of 5,000 wood-cutters and carpenters, supervised by a team of architects, it was to be packed and shipped in numbered sections, so designed that assembly at the beachhead could allegedly be accomplished in an unbelievable three hours. For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

At the Scheldt the port overflowed with nobles, functionaries, craftsmen, and servants of every degree, all of whom had to be housed and paid. The missing brilliance of the Count of Savoy was made up by his son Amadeus VII, called the Red Count, who entertained everyone, whether humble, middle, or great, and turned away no one from his table without a meal. Eustache Deschamps, too, was on hand as laureate for the occasion, writing confidently,

All the notable lords of France were present except the
Duc de Berry, whose delayed arrival caused misgiving.

Impatience for embarkation was rising. The nobles stayed at Bruges “to be more at their ease,” and every few days rode over to Sluys, where the King stayed, to learn if the day of departure had been decided. The answer was always tomorrow or next week or when the fog lifts or when the Duc de Berry comes. The mass of men crowded into the area was growing restless and disorderly. Many, including the poorer knights and squires, could not be paid, and the cost of living was going up as the local people raised prices. Knights complained that four francs could barely buy what formerly was worth one. The Flemings were sullen and quarrelsome, “for the common people bore a grudge in their minds for the battle of Roosebeke.” They said to each other, “Why the Devil does not the King of France pass over into England? Are we not in poverty enough?”—although they admitted that “the Frenchmen make us no poorer.”