The King Without a Kingdom

by Maurice Druon

  ‘We will crush these evil folk at Breteuil,’ said John II proudly when his army was finally able to set off. There are seventeen leagues from Chartres to Breteuil. The king wanted to cover them in one single march. Already, from noon onwards, it seems that stragglers began falling behind. When the army finally reached Breteuil, exhausted, Lancaster was there no more. He had taken the citadel, seized the French garrison and set up in its place a robust defence under the command of a good Navarrese leader, Sanche López, with whom he also left a year’s supply of provisions.

  Quick to console himself, King John exclaimed: ‘We will hack them to pieces at Verneuil; won’t we, my sons?’ The dauphin didn’t dare say what he confided to me later, namely that it seemed to him absurd to pursue one thousand men with near fifteen thousand. He didn’t want to appear any less assured than his younger brothers who all, including the youngest, Philip, only fourteen years old, modelled themselves on their father and played the ardent fighters.

  Verneuil, on the banks of the River Avre; one of the gateways to Normandy. The English cavalcade had gone through there like a raging torrent the day before. Its inhabitants saw the French army arrive like a river in spate.

  Messire of Lancaster, aware of what was sweeping towards him, was more than wary of pushing on towards Paris. Taking the spoils he had taken en route, as well as a good number of prisoners, he cautiously set off again on the westbound road. ‘For Laigle,41 for Laigle, they have left for Laigle,’ indicated the villeins. Upon hearing this, King John felt singled out by divine attention. You can see why. But no, Archambaud, not because of the Eagle. Ah! You are there now. Because of the Spinning Sow, Monsieur of Spain’s murder, there, where the crime was perpetrated, exactly where the king arrived to carry out his punishment. He didn’t allow his army to sleep more than four hours. At Laigle, he would catch up with the English and the Navarrese, and it would be the hour, at last, of his vengeance.

  Thus, on the ninth of July, having made a stop at the threshold of the Spinning Sow, long enough to bend his poleyn42 of iron, a strange spectacle for the army to see, a king in prayer and in tears on the doorstep of an inn! He at last caught sight of Lancaster’s lances, two leagues out of Laigle, on the edge of the Forest of Tuboeuf. All of this, my nephew, had happened just three days before the time when I was told of it.

  ‘Lace up your helmets, get in battle order,’ cried the king.

  Then, for once in agreement, the constable and the two marshals intervened. ‘Sire,’ declared Audrehem roughly, ‘you have seen how keen I always am to serve you.’ ‘And me too,’ said Clermont.

  ‘But it would be folly to engage the enemy straight away. You mustn’t ask of your troops a single stride more. You have given them no respite for four days, and this very day you have led them more hurriedly than ever. The men are out of breath, just look at them; the archers have bloodied feet and if they didn’t have their pikes to hold themselves up, they would collapse right here on the road.’ ‘Ah, always the rank and file that slow everything down!’ said John II irritated. ‘Those on horseback fare little better,’ retorted Audrehem. ‘A good many mounts have withers wounded by their loads, and many others limp, that we have been unable to re-shoe. The armoured soldiers, going so in this heat, have bloodied arses. Don’t expect anything from your banners,43 before they have had a rest.’

  ‘Besides which, sire,’ added Clermont, ‘look at the territory we would be attacking in. Before us we have a dense forest, where Messire of Lancaster has hidden. He will easily be able to get his party out, while our archers become tangled up in the thicket and our lances charge tree trunks.’

  King John had a moment of ill humour, cursing his men and the circumstances that foiled his will. Then he made one of those surprising decisions for which his courtiers call him The Good, so that their flattery may be repeated to him.

  He sent his two first equerries, Pluyan du Val and Jean of Corquilleray, to the Duke of Lancaster to take his challenge to him and call him to battle. Lancaster was stationed in a clearing, his archers set out before him, while everywhere scouts observed the French army and staked out escape routes and fallback paths. The blue-eyed duke thus saw arrive before him, escorted by several men-at-arms, the two royal equerries who bore on the shafts of their lances pennons decorated with fleurs-de-lis, and who blew into their horns like tournament heralds. Flanked by Philip of Navarre, John of Montfort and Godfrey of Harcourt, he listened to the following speech, delivered to him by Pluyan du Val.

  The King of France is coming at the head of an immense army, while the duke has but a small one. Therefore, he suggests to the duke that they confront each other the following day, with the same number of knights on either side, one hundred, or fifty, or even thirty, in a place to be agreed upon and according to all the rules of honour.

  Lancaster courteously received the proposal of the king ‘who claims to be of France’, but was not any less reputed everywhere for his chivalry. He assured them he would consider the matter with his allies, whom he pointed to, as it was too serious to decide upon alone. The two equerries believed they could infer from these words that Lancaster would give his answer the following day.

  It was upon this assurance that King John ordered his battle tent to be raised and fell straight into a deep sleep. And for the French the night was that of a snoring army.

  In the morning, the Forest of Tuboeuf was empty. One could see that someone had been there but no sign was any longer to be seen of either Englishman or Navarrese. Lancaster had cautiously withdrawn his people to Argentan.

  King John II gave free reign to his contempt for these dishonourable enemies, good for nothing but pillaging when no one was before them, and who slip away at the first signs of combat. ‘We wear the star on our hearts, whereas the garter flaps around their calves. This is what sets us apart. They are the knights of flight.’

  But did he contemplate giving chase to them? The marshals suggested casting the freshest banners out on Lancaster’s trail; to their surprise, John II ruled out the idea. One would have said that he considered the battle won from the moment the enemy had failed to take up his challenge.

  So he decided to return to Chartres to disband his army. In passing, he would take back Breteuil.

  Audrehem pointed out to him that the garrison left behind at Breteuil by Lancaster was considerable in number, well commanded and well entrenched. ‘I know the stronghold, sire; it will not easily be taken.’

  ‘So why did our people let themselves get dislodged from there?’ replied King John. ‘I will conduct the siege myself.’

  And that, my nephew, is where I met with him, in the company of Capocci, on the twelfth of July.

  2

  The Siege of Breteuil

  KING JOHN GREETED us armed for war, as if he were going to launch the attack within the next half-hour. He kissed the ring, asked for news of the Holy Father, and, without listening to the answer, rather long-winded and florid, into which Niccola Capocci had launched himself, he said to me: Monseigneur of Périgord, you are arriving just in time to witness a fine siege. I know your family, its unfailing valour, its expertise in the arts of war. Your family has always served the kingdom most nobly, and if you were not prince of the Church, you would likely be marshal of my army. I wager that here you will find enjoyment.’

  This manner of address was directed only to me, and compliments on my kinship displeased Capocci, who is not of noble lineage; he saw fit to declaim that we were not there to marvel at exploits of war, but to speak of Christian peace.

  I knew at that point that things would not go at all well between my co-legate and the King of France, particularly as the latter had given my nephew Robert of Durazzo the warmest of welcomes, questioning him about the court of Naples and his aunt, Queen Joan. It must be said that he was most handsome, my Robert, superb bearing, rosy face, silky hair, grace and strength combined. And I saw stir in the king’s eye that spark which usually shines in men’s gazes when a beautiful woman p
asses by. ‘Where will you be taking up your quarters?’ he asked. I told him that we would make ourselves comfortable in a nearby abbey.

  I observed him closely, and found him rather aged, thickerset, heavier, his chin more ponderous beneath his thin beard, of an insipid yellow. He had acquired the habit of tossing his head back, as if he were bothered at the collar or the shoulder by some filings in his shirt of steel.

  He wanted to show us the camp, where our arrival had produced quite a stir of curiosity. ‘Here is His Holy Eminence Monseigneur of Périgord who has come to visit us,’ he said to his knight bannerets, as if we had come specially to bring him heavenly aid. I distributed the benedictions. Capocci’s nose grew longer and longer.

  The king was very keen to introduce me to his chief of engineering44 to whom he seemed to attach more importance than to his marshals or even his constable. ‘Where is the archpriest? Has anybody seen the archpriest? Bourbon, bring me the archpriest … And I wondered how the nickname of archpriest could have possibly been earned by the captain who commanded machines, mines and gunpowder artillery.

  A curious fellow indeed was the one who came to us, built upon long bow-legged limbs enclosed in steel greaves and cuisses45; he looked as if he were walking on lightning. His belt, tightly fastened over his leather surcoat, gave him the appearance of a wasp. Large hands with black nails that he held at a distance from his body, because of the metal cubitières46 that protected his arms. A rather shifty face, scrawny, with high cheekbones, drawn-out eyes, and the mocking expression of someone who is always ready for a quarter of a sol47 to volunteer himself to take another’s life. And to top it all, a Montauban hat, with a wide brim, entirely made of iron, pointed forward above the nose, with two slits to enable him to look out through when he lowered his head. ‘Where were you, archpriest? We were looking for you,’ said the king, and then for my attention: ‘Arnaud of Cervole, Sire of Vélines.’

  ‘Archpriest, at your service, Monseigneur Cardinal,’ added the other one in a mocking tone that I didn’t like at all.

  And all of a sudden I remember, Vélines is not far from us, Archambaud, of course, close to Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, on the borders of Périgord and Guyenne. And the fellow had indeed been archpriest, an archpriest with neither Latin nor tonsure, of course, but archpriest nonetheless. And of where? But naturally of Vélines, his little fief, he had claimed the presbytery for himself, collecting seigniorial dues as well as the ecclesiastical revenues. The only cost to him was to employ a true cleric, a pittance, to assure the work of the Church continued … until the Pope Innocent stripped him of his benefice, as all the other commendams of the sort, at the beginning of his pontificate. ‘The flock must be guarded by a shepherd …’ what I was telling you the other day. So, vanished into thin air the archpriesthood of Vélines! I had to look into the affair, one amongst one hundred others of the sort, and I knew that the court of Avignon was not uppermost in the lad’s heart. For once, I must say, I was in full agreement with the Holy Father. This Cervole wasn’t going to make things easy for me either, I could see straightway.

  ‘The archpriest did fine work in Évreux, and the town has once more become ours,’ the king told me, to set off his powderman in a good light.

  ‘What’s more, it is the only one you have recovered from the Navarrese, sire,’ put in Cervole with quite a nerve.

  ‘We will do the same with Breteuil. I want a handsome siege, like that of Aiguillon.’

  ‘Except that you have never taken Aiguillon, sire.’

  Gad, I said to myself, the man is well established in court to speak with such frankness.

  ‘It is because, alas, I wasn’t left enough time,’ said the king sadly.

  One had to be the archpriest … I have started to call him the archpriest too, since everyone names him thus, one had to be that man to throw down his iron helmet and murmur, before his sovereign: ‘The time, the time … six months …’

  And one had to be King John to cling stubbornly to the belief that the Siege of Aiguillon, conducted by him in the same year that his father was crushed at Crécy, represented a model of military art. A ruinous and interminable undertaking. He ordered a bridge to be built to approach the fortress, and in such a well-chosen place that the besieged destroyed it six times. Complicated machines had to be brought from Toulouse at great expense and with great slowness, and for a perfectly inexistent result.

  Oh well! It was upon this strategy that King John established his glory, in his own eyes, and justified his experience. In truth, he was determined to settle his grudge with fate, take his revenge for Aiguillon, ten years on, and prove that his methods were the right ones; he wanted to leave in the memory of nations the imprint of a great siege.

  And that is why, neglecting to pursue an enemy he could have defeated without too much trouble, he put up his war tent before Breteuil. Again addressing the archpriest, who was well versed in the new skill of destruction by gunpowder, one could have thought that he had resolved to mine the castle’s walls, as had been done at Évreux. But no. What he asked of his Master of Engineering was to erect assault contraptions which would allow his men to enter by going over the walls. And the marshals and the captains listened, full of respect, to the king’s orders and busied themselves accomplishing them. As long as a man is in command, be he the worst of fools, there are people around him committed to the belief that he commands well.

  As for the archpriest … I had the impression that the archpriest didn’t care much about anything. The king wanted ramps, scaffolding, belfries; well, they were built for him, and payment was asked for accordingly. If this apparatus of old, this machinery from before the time of firearms, didn’t bring the expected result, the king would have only himself to blame. And the archpriest would let nobody tell him so; he had over King John an ascendancy that sometimes roughneck soldiers have over princes, and he didn’t hesitate to put it to good use, once the treasurer had organized his payment and that of his companions-in-arms.

  The little Norman town turned into an immense and cacophonous construction site. Entrenchments were dug all around the castle. The earth removed from the ditches was used to build assault platforms and ramps. The noise was but the sound of spades and cartage, the creaking of axles, the cracking of whips and swearwords. I felt like I had returned to Villeneuve.

  Axes rang out in the neighbouring forests. Certain villagers in the area did good business, if they were selling drinks. Others had the unpleasant surprise to suddenly see six valets demolish their barn in order to carry off the beams. ‘Service of the king!’ It was easily said. And with the pickaxes attacking the cob walls, and the ropes pulling on the half-timbering, soon, in a huge creaking sound, everything collapsed. ‘He could have gone and put himself somewhere else, the king, rather than sending us these wicked folk who take the very roofs from over our heads,’ said the yokels. They were beginning to find that the King of Navarre was a better master, and that even the presence of the English bore down less heavily upon them than the coming of the King of France.

  I thus stayed in Breteuil for a part of July, to the great displeasure of Capocci who would have preferred a stay in Paris. I too would have preferred it! And who sent to Avignon missives filled with acrimony in which he would spitefully have it understood that I enjoyed contemplating war more than working towards peace. And yet how, I ask you, could I have pushed for peace otherwise than by engaging in talks with the king, and where could I talk with him but at the siege that he refused to leave?

  He spent his days walking around the construction work in the company of the archpriest; he used his time verifying an angle of attack, worrying about an epaulement,48 and particularly watching the rise of the wooden tower, an extraordinary belfry on wheels in which a good many archers could be housed, with an arsenal of crossbows and fire darts, a machine the likes of which had not been seen since antiquity. It wasn’t enough just to build its floors; sufficient cowhides had to be found to cover this enormous scaffold; and then a
hard, flat path had to be built to push it along. But when the tower was ready, astonishing things would be seen!

  The king often invited me to supper, and there I could converse with him.

  ‘Peace?’ he would say to me. ‘But it is all I desire. You see, I am in the process of disbanding my army, only keeping on what I need for this siege. Wait until I have taken Breteuil, and immediately afterwards I will gladly make peace, to please the Holy Father. May my enemies put forward their proposals to me.’

  ‘Sire,’ I would say, ‘we would need to know which proposals you would be willing to consider …’

  ‘Those which would not be contrary to my honour.’

  Ah! It was no easy task! It was I, alas, who had to tell him, as I was better informed than he, that the Prince of Wales was gathering together troops in Libourne and at La Réole for a new chevauchée.

  ‘And you talk to me of peace, Monseigneur of Périgord?’

  ‘Precisely, sire, in order to avoid yet more misfortunes …’

  ‘This time, I will not allow the Prince of England to romp about in the Languedoc as he did last year. I will call up the army once again, for the first of August, in Chartres.’

  I was astonished that he should let his banners go just to recall them one week later. I revealed my true feelings on the matter, discreetly, to the Duke of Athens, to Audrehem … everyone came to see me and confided in me. No, the king dug in his heels, because he could save money, most unlike him, by first sending back the ban that he had called up the month before, to call them back again with the arrière-ban. Someone must have said to him, John of Artois perhaps, or another equally fine brain, that this way he would save a few days’ pay. But he would have fallen behind a month on the Prince of Wales. Oh! Yes, he really needed to make peace; and the longer he made it wait, the less it would be negotiable to his satisfaction.

  I got to know the archpriest better, and I must say the fellow amused me. Périgord brought him closer to me; he came to ask me to get his benefice back. And on what terms! ‘Your Innocent …’