A Distant Mirror (90 page)

The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were “inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.”

At this moment, England’s old ally, the Duke of Brittany, addicted as ever to feuding, suddenly re-opened his quarrel with France. Discarding a vassal’s loyalty, he became more and more contentious and presumptuous, minting money bearing his own image, and assuming other rights of independent sovereignty. The French were anxious to bring him to submission before the date of the parley with the English, knowing that otherwise their uncovered flank would put them at a disadvantage.
Coucy
, one of the few persons acceptable to the irascible Duke, arranged for him to meet with the King and Council at Tours. Montfort came up the Loire attended by a suite of 1,500 knights and squires, in a convoy of five ships armed with cannon. For three months, from October to December 1391, the effort dragged on. Half slippery, half intransigent, Montfort could not be brought to terms. As a last resort, the King’s daughter Jeanne, barely a year old, was offered in marriage to Montfort’s son as the only means of attaching Brittany. The same solution had notably failed in the recent past to attach Charles of Navarre. With no great grace, after concluding the arrangement, Montfort went home “conserving all his hate.”

While at Tours, Coucy was caught up in an affair that was to have bitter if posthumous irony for himself. It happened that the only son and heir of Count
Guy de Blois died, leaving an enormous estate devoid of dynastic heirs. The limitless acquisitiveness of Louis d’Orléans focused at once on the property, which lay between his own domains of Touraine and Orléans. He and the King and Coucy rode over together from nearby Tours to visit the bereaved, and also bankrupt, father. Count Guy was the former fellow hostage in England who, to buy his liberty, had transferred his property of Soissons through King Edward to Coucy. Wild spending had since dissipated his great wealth; overeating and drinking had left him and his wife “overgrown with fatness” so that the Count could no longer mount his horse and had to be carried to the hunt in a litter. Given to fits of rage, he had once, in what appears to have been a 14th century habit, killed a knight with his dagger. Now he was old, sick, and childless, surrounded by swarms of quarreling would-be heirs.

Coucy had much influence with Count Guy, besides holding a lien on his property deriving from money still owed on the Soissons transaction. As
“un grand traitteur”
(an accomplished negotiator), he was chosen by both parties to evaluate the estate and arrange its sale to Louis d’Orléans. Sale of dynastic property for cash was considered something of a disgrace. If Coucy was reluctant to act in such a matter—and there is no evidence that he was—he was handsomely, almost too handsomely, compensated by Louis for his services. When he succeeded in reducing Blois’ asking price of 200,000 francs for his lands in Hainault by 50,000, or 25 percent, Louis paid him back the difference. At the same time, Louis acquitted Coucy of the debt of 10,000 florins loaned to him for the Tunisian campaign, “in consideration to our said cousin of the many and great services he has rendered to us.” For the entire Blois estate Louis paid 400,000 francs from his wife’s dowry, becoming thereby a territorial proprietor on a level with his uncles.

Froissart, who had been in the service of Guy de Blois before the days of the empty purse, delivered himself of the stern and rather surprising judgment that “The Sire de Coucy was greatly to blame in this matter.” Perhaps he meant that Coucy should not have made money out of a transaction which Froissart considered ignoble. The worshiper of a caste often upholds higher ideals for it than its members. In the ultimate irony, Coucy’s own domain after his death was to follow Blois’ into Orléans’ hands.

Rarely if ever at home, Coucy resumed his duties as Lieutenant-General in Auvergne and Guienne in January 1392, and came north again in March to accompany the King to the great parley at Amiens. In happy omen just before the parley, a son was born to Charles and Isabeau, their fifth child, of whom the two eldest were already dead. Paris celebrated in great emotion as bells pealed and bonfires flamed in the public squares. People filled the churches to thank God for a Dauphin and afterward sang and danced in the streets, where tables loaded with wine and food were set out for them by noble ladies and wealthy bourgeois. The object of their joy was to die at the age of nine, as were four more sons before one of the puny progeny survived to become the feckless Dauphin eventually crowned as Charles VII by Joan of Arc.

Extraordinary measures were taken to ensure that no quarrels arose between French and English retinues to disrupt the parley. The Council ordered French subjects on pain of death to abstain from all insults and provocative remarks or challenges to, or even talk of, combat. No one was to go out at night without a torch; any page or varlet who
provoked a quarrel in a tavern was to earn the death penalty. Four companies of 1,000 guards each were to keep watch day and night to prevent assemblies with potential for trouble. If the fire bell rang, they were not to move from their posts but leave it to the regular fire companies to answer the alarm. The English were to be received with “greatest honors,” treated with utmost courtesy, and entertained free of cost. Innkeepers were not to demand money from them but submit their accounts to the royal exchequer for payment.

These precautions expressed the French desire less for peace per se than for a settlement that would open the way to the
Voie de Fait
and to crusade. On the English side, the Dukes of Lancaster and York showed a similar sentiment, but the absence of Gloucester left an ominous hole. In recognition of Coucy’s influence, the English Dukes had brought his daughter Philippa with them, no doubt hoping thereby to win his support for their terms. Philippa had expressed an ardent desire to see the father she barely knew, and Coucy had much joy in the meeting. His daughter “travelled in good state, but like a widow who had enjoyed little pleasure in her marriage.”

In the presence of Charles seated on his throne, the parley opened at Eastertime in the utmost ceremony and grandeur, as if to support the great burden of its outcome. Lancaster knelt three times on his approach to the throne in the ritual of homage and was welcomed by the King with affectionate words, and by Burgundy and Berry with the kiss of peace. The splendor of the Duke of Burgundy was never more marvelous. He wore black velvet embroidered on the left sleeve with a branch of 22 roses composed of sapphires and rubies surrounded with pearls. On another day he wore a crimson velvet robe embroidered on each side with a bear in silver whose collar, muzzle, and leash sparkled with jewels. The great French lords, including Coucy, each gave a banquet for the English on successive nights at which knightly courtesies were exchanged and old acquaintances renewed.

Not all the precautions, free meals, and luxurious surroundings were enough to gain a peace. The parley lasted two weeks, but both parties knew it was useless. The English demand for more than a million francs in arrears on Jean’s ransom was met by the French claim for an indemnity of three million for war damages on their soil. They went so far as to scale down their demand for the return of Calais to a demand that the city and walls be razed to make the place unusable. The English refused, considering that as long as they held Calais, “they wore the key to France on their belt.” The sovereignty of Aquitaine was disputed as ever. Even when the French finally offered to pay the arrears on Jean’s ransom and guarantee peaceable possession if not
sovereignty of Aquitaine, in return for the razing of Calais, the English held back. They were not sure they wanted peace. When Charles urged the cause of the crusade, they said, as so often before, that they had no powers to conclude definitive terms, but would report back to their King. One more of the countless peace parleys came to nothing. Once more the truce was extended for yet another year. How hard it was to end a war.

Whether from disappointment or natural causes, King Charles fell ill in the midst of the parley, suffering from high fever and transports of delirium. Removed from Amiens to the quiet surroundings of the episcopal palace at Beauvais, where he was carefully nursed, he soon recovered, and by June had resumed hunting and his other pleasures. No ill omens were attached to the sudden strange illness, although they might well have been.

32. Papal palace at Avignon as it would have appeared in the 14th century. Engraving by Israel Sylvestre, c. 1650
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illustration credit 23.1
)

33
.
14TH CENTURY COINS
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illustration credit 23.2
)

34. A Sienese army of 1363 depicted in the area where Coucy’s campaign took place twenty years later. Fresco by Lippo Vanni, 1373, in the Sala del Mappamondo, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
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illustration credit 23.3
)

THE SWISS CAMPAIGN
35. The Gügler enter Switzerland under the flags of Coucy and England
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illustration credit 23.4
)