A Distant Mirror (92 page)

49. The Visconti device: a viper swallowing a man
,(
illustration credit 23.18
)

50. Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Pen drawing by Antonio Pisanello (1397–1455)
.(
illustration credit 23.19
)

51. Froissart offering his
Chronicles
to Charles VI. From Froissart’s
Chronicles,
c. 1450
.(
illustration credit 23.20
)

52. Gerson preaching at the Church of St. Bernard in Paris. From
Sermons sur la Passion,
illustrated by Baudoin de Lannoy, c. 1480
.(
illustration credit 23.21
)

53. Burean de la Rivière, statues from La Grange buttress, Cathedral of Amiens
.(
illustration credit 23.22
)

54. Cardinal Jean de La Grange, statues from La Grange buttress, Cathedral of Amiens
.(
illustration credit 23.23
)

55. Effigy of Guillaume de Harsigny at Laon
.(
illustration credit 23.24
)

56
.
DANSE MACABRE
Fresco in the Abbey of Chaise-Dien at Riom, 15th century
.(
illustration credit 23.25
)

57. Lamentation of the Virgin with St. John. From the
Rohan Hours,
c. 1420
.(
illustration credit 23.26
)

58. Massacre of the prisoners at Nicopolis. From Froissart’s
Chronicles,
Louis de Bruges copy, c. 1460
.(
illustration credit 23.27
)

59. Posthumous portrait of Coucy commissioned by the Celestin monastery of Villeneuve-les-Soissons two hundred years after his death
.(
illustration credit 23.28
)

60. Ruins of the
donjon
of Concy, after the German dynamiting of 1917
.(
illustration credit 23.29
)

61. Aerial view of Coucy-le-Château today
.(
illustration credit 23.30
)

Chapter 24

H
istory never more cruelly demonstrated the vulnerability of a nation to the person of its chief of state than in the affliction of France beginning in 1392.