The Iron King (39 page)

Authors: Maurice Druon

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #General

BOOK: The Iron King

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5
. The methods used in the Middle Ages for dividing up the year were not the same as those in use today; moreover, they changed from country to country.
The official year began, in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, on Christmas Day; in Venice, upon the 1st March; in England, upon the 25th March; in Rome, at one time upon the 25th January and at another upon the 25th March; in Russia, at the spring equinox.
In France the official year began on Easter Day. This curious custom of taking a movable feast as the beginning of the year (this is what is known as the Easter style, or the French style, or the ancient style), led to the year varying in length from three hundred and thirty to four hundred days. Some years had two springtimes, one at the beginning and one at the end.
This ancient style is the source of infinite confusion and creates great difficulties in establishing exact dates; for, if one is not very careful, one can discover a date of decease earlier by several months than the marriage of the character concerned, or again battles which appear to have been fought after the treaty of peace.
According to the old manner of dating things, the end of the trial of the Templars took place in 1313, since the year 1314 did not begin till the 7th April.
It was only in December 1564, under the reign of Charles IX, the last but one of the Kings of the Valois dynasty, that the beginning of the official year was fixed on the 1st January.
Russia did not adopt this ‘new style’ till 1725, England in 1752, and Venice after the Napoleonic conquest.
All dates in this book are translated into the ‘new style’.

6
. The Palace of the Temple, its annexes and gardens and all the neighbouring streets, formed the quarter of the Temple which still bears that name. It was in its Great Tower that Louis XVI was confined during the revolution. He left it only to go to the guillotine. The Tower disappeared in 1811.

7
. The Sergeants-at-Arms (
sergents
) were junior functionaries whose duty it was to perform a variety of tasks connected with public order and the execution of justice. Their functions overlapped those of the doorkeepers (
huissiers
) and the mace-bearers (
massiers
). Part of their duty consisted in escorting or preceding the King, the Ministers, the leaders of Parliament and of the University. Under the reign of Charles IV, the youngest son of Philip the Fair, a certain Jourdain de I’Isle, a seigneur of Gascony, was executed for having, among more important crimes, impaled some of the King’s Sergeants-at-Arms upon their belilied staves.

8
. This concession, made to certain merchant corporations, of selling in the neighbourhood of, or even within, the sovereign’s habitation seems to come from the Orient. At Byzantium, it was the sellers of perfumes who had the right to erect their stalls before the entrance to the Palace, their essences being the most agreeable odour that was likely to reach the Imperial nostrils.
The Palace of Justice in Paris occupies the site of Philip the Fair’s palace; some of its buildings still date from that period.

9
. The Hôtel-de-Nesle and its Tower occupied the present site of the French Institute and part of the Mint. Its dimensions were much the same as those of the Louvre of the period.

10
. Paper made from cotton, which is thought to be a Chinese invention, and which originally was known as ‘Greek parchment’ because the Venetians had found it in use in Greece, made its appearance in Europe about the tenth century. Paper made from flax (or rags) was imported from the Orient somewhat later by the Spanish Moors. The first paper factories were established in Europe during the course of the thirteenth century. For reasons of strength and conservation, paper was never used for official documents to which were to be affixed depending seals.

11
. It was from these assemblies, first instituted under Philip the Fair, that the Kings of France derived the habit of resorting to national consultations which, later on, became known as États-Généraux and from which in turn issued, after 1789, the first parliamentary institutions.

12
. This little island, off the point of the Island of the Cité, owed its name to the numbers of Jews who were burned upon it. Joined to a second island, it forms today the garden of Vert-Galant.

13
. This child was to become the illustrious Boccaccio, author of
The Decameron
.

14
. Provosts were royal functionaries who united in themselves the duties which are today spread among Prefects and sub-Prefects, the Commanders of military subdivisions, Superintendents of Police, Collectors of Taxes, and various other agents of the national economy. It is enough to say that they were rarely loved. But already, at this period, in certain provinces, they were beginning to share their duties with ‘Receivers’ who raised the taxes, and with ‘Captains of Towns’ who were concerned with military affairs.

15
. The Orders in Council of Philip the Fair concerning the freeing of the serfs in certain bailiwicks and seneschalships. There will be more talk of these later on.

16
. Literally: ‘I wish you well.’ A euphemism for ‘I love you.’

17
. It was in the Castle of Clermont that Prince Charles, third son of Philip the Fair and future Charles IV, was born.

18
. The notion of time in the Middle Ages being much less precise than it is today, the ecclesiastical method of division into prime, tierce, nones and vesper was in general use.
Prime corresponded roughly to 6 o’clock in the morning. Tierce was applied to the later morning hours. Nones to midday and the middle hours. And vesper to all the rest of the day till the sun set.

19
. Gautier d’Aunay left two sons, named Philippe and Gautier. One of his grandchildren was Master of the Household to King Charles V and King Charles VI, and one of his great-grandsons became, in 1413, Grand Master of Waters and Forests (Eaux et Forêts) of France.

20
. Agnes of France, daughter of Saint Louis, Duchess of Burgundy and mother of Marguerite of Burgundy, wife of Louis le Hutin.

21
. At this period, when the postal service had not yet been organised, official messages were carried by couriers. Sovereign princes, the Pope, and the great nobles and principal ecclesiastical dignitaries had each their own organisation of couriers who wore their livery. The royal couriers had a priority right to requisition an exchange of horses upon their road.

22
. This purchase tax (
maltote
) was a tax on purchases of a penny in the pound. It was this tax of less than .5 per cent, at a period when there was no tax on profits, which gave rise to riots and left in history the memory of a crushing financial measure.

23
. This poison must have been sulphocyanide of mercury. This salt, by combustion, gives off sulphuric acid fumes of mercury and hydrocyanic compounds which can produce an intoxication at once hydrocyanic and mercurial.
Nearly all the poisons of the Middle Ages had mercury, a favourite material of alchemists, as their base. The name Pharaoh’s Serpent (
serpent de Pharaon
) later became the name of a children’s toy, in the composition of which this salt is used.

24
. Philip the Fair may be considered as the first Gallican King.
Boniface VIII, by the bull ‘Unam Sanctam’, had declared: ‘that every human creature is subject to the Roman Conclave and this submission is necessary to his salvation.’
Philip the Fair constantly fought for the independence of the civil power in temporal affairs. Charles of Valois, his brother, was on the contrary resolutely ultramontane.

25
. The Cathares were the members of a religious sect which found many adherents, particularly in the South of France, at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century.
The Cathares, divided into Perfectionists (
Parfaits
) and Believers (
Croyants
), professed indifference to the physical body and earthly life; they encouraged sterility and honoured suicide; they refused to look upon marriage as a sacrament and nursed a solid enmity for the Church of Rome. They were declared heretics; Pope Innocent III launched a crusade against them which is known as the Albigensian Crusade and which was conducted in the most savage manner by the famous Simon de Montfort. A true religious civil war, it ended with a treaty signed in Paris in 1229.
Guillaume de Nogaret’s father and mother belonged to the Cathares.

26
. Created towards the middle of the thirteenth century, the
bourgeoisie du roi
were a particular category of subjects who, having the right to the King’s justice, were freed, either from their subjection towards an overlord, or from their obligations to reside in a particular town, and owed allegiance only, wherever they might be in the kingdom, to the central power. Under Philip the Fair this institution increased in scale. One might say that the
bourgeoisie du roi
were the first French citizens to have a legal system similar to that of modern times.

27
. The English word ‘budget’ was adopted in France to designate the state’s accounts only in the nineteenth century; but this use of it was but a return to the French language, for the term ‘budget’ came from the word
bougette
which designated the little purse that the Norman lords, who conquered England, wore at their belts.

28
. City Centre. The ‘Parloir aux Bourgeois’ has become the Hôtel-de-Ville of Paris and was upon the same site.

29
. From the documents and reports of ambassadors, which still exist, it is possible to conclude that Philip the Fair died of a haemorrhage which did not affect the motor part of the brain. The aphasia at the start may have been due to a temporary oedema following the haemorrhage. The persistence of thirst, his difficulty in moving and his torpor may have been due to a lesion in the region of the base of the brain. He had a fatal relapse on the 26th or 27th November.

30
. This cross was encrusted with pearls, rubies and sapphires. It was attached to a shaft of chased silver gilt. In the centre of the cross a little crystal container allowed a fragment of the ‘True Cross’ to be seen. It was taken to the Monastery of Poissy, as was the heart of Philip the Fair. This heart was, according to those who saw it, so small ‘that it might be compared to that of a newborn child or a bird.’
In the reign of Louis XIV, on the night of July 4th 1695, lightning struck the monastery church and almost completely burnt it down. Philip the Fair’s heart and the Templars’ Cross were destroyed.

ALSO BY MAURICE DRUON

The Accursed Kings

The Iron King

The Strangled Queen

The Poisoned Crown

The Royal Succession

The She-Wolf

The Lily and the Lion

The King Without a Kingdom

HarperCollins
Publishers

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First published in Great Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis 1956

Century edition 1985

Arrow edition 1987

Published by Harper
Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
2013

Maurice Druon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007491254

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

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