The King Without a Kingdom

by Maurice Druon

  Where are we now? Brunet! The name of this town? And Poivres, have we passed Poivres? Ah! Good, it is ahead of us. I have been told that its church is worth seeing. I might add that all these churches in Champagne are most beautiful. It is a land of faith.

  Oh! I don’t regret having seen the camp in Chartres, and I would have liked you to have seen it too. I know; you have been excused from the army in order to stand in for your sick father … and somehow keep the English chevauchée in check outside Périgord. It may have saved you from laying at rest today under a tombstone in a monastery in Poitiers. Can one ever know? It is for Providence to decide.

  So, imagine Chartres: sixty thousand men, at the very least, camped on the vast plain that looks down onto the cathedral and its spires. One of the biggest armies ever assembled, if not the biggest, in the history of the kingdom. But separated into two distinct parts.

  On one side, lined up in handsome rows in their hundreds, the tents of silk or canvas mingled with the colours of the banners and the knights. The movement of the men, horses and carts produced a great swarming of colour and steel under the sun, as far as the eye could see; traders in arms, harnesses, wine and food had set up their stalls on wheels on this side, as well as the brothel keepers bringing cartloads of girls under the watchful eye of the King of the Ribald … whose name I still can’t recall.

  And then, a good distance away, well separated, as in the images of the Last Judgement, on one side, Paradise, on the other … Hell, those on foot, camped on cut wheat, with no other shelter than a canvas sheet held up by a stake, and that was when they had thought of bringing one; a gigantic populace spread out randomly, weary, filthy, idle, gathered in tribes by their lands of origin and not much good at obeying their makeshift chiefs. Besides, what orders would they have obeyed? They were scarcely given any tasks to carry out, they were commanded to perform no manoeuvres. All these people had to do, their only occupation, was to hunt for food. The smartest went to pilfer from the knights, or pillage the farmyards of the neighbouring hamlets, or poach. Behind each talus could be seen three beggars sitting on their heels around a roasting rabbit. Sudden scrambles erupted to get to the carts that handed out barley bread, at irregular hours. What was regular however was the king’s visit, every day, amongst the ranks of the foot soldiers. He inspected the most recent arrivals, one day those from Beauvais, the next those from Soissons, the day after those from Orléans and Jargeau.

  He was accompanied by, hear this, his four sons, his brother, the constable, the two marshals, John of Artois, Tancarville, who else … a horde of equerries.

  One time, which turned out to be the last time, you will see why, he invited me as if he were doing me a great honour. ‘Monseigneur of Périgord, tomorrow, should it please you to follow me, I will take you with me on the inspection.’ I was still expecting to come to an agreement with him on the few proposals, vague as they were, that might be passed on to the English, to hang the beginnings of a negotiation on. I had suggested that the two kings entrust deputies to draw up the list of all the points of contention between the two kingdoms. That alone would be enough for four years of discussions.

  Or, I would seek another, quite different approach. We would pretend to ignore the disputes and would commit to preliminary talks about preparations for a common expedition to Constantinople. The important thing was to begin discussions.

  So I went dragging my red robe through this vast flea-ridden squalor that was camped out on the Beauce. I choose my words well: flea-ridden, as upon my return Brunet had to search me for lice. I couldn’t very well push away the miserable wretches who came to kiss the hem of my robe! The smell was even more offensive than at Breteuil. A big storm had broken the night before and the foot soldiers had slept on the sodden ground; their rags and tatters steamed in the morning sun, and they stank to high heaven. The archpriest, who walked before the king, stopped. He really took up a lot of room, the archpriest! And the king stopped, as did all of his company.

  ‘Sire, here are those from the provostship of Bracieux in the bailiwick of Blois, who arrived yesterday. They are pitiful.’ With his mace, the archpriest pointed to forty or so ragged rogues, muddy, hirsute. They hadn’t shaven at all for ten days; as for washed, don’t even think of it. Any disparity in their clothing merged into a greyish hue of grime and earth. Some had holes in their shoes; some went barefoot; others had only rags wrapped around their legs. They straightened up to make a good impression; but they had a worried look in their eyes. Indeed, they had not expected to see the king himself suddenly appear before them, surrounded by his gleaming escort. And the beggars from Bracieux huddled together. The curved blades and the hooked spikes of a few voulges or halberds56 stuck up above them like thorns out of a miry faggot.

  ‘Sire,’ continued the archpriest, ‘there are thirty-nine of them, when there should be fifty. Eight have halberds, nine are equipped with swords, of which one is very poor. Just one possesses both a sword and a halberd. One of them has an axe, three have iron bars and another is armed with only a dagger; the rest have nothing at all.’

  I would have wanted to laugh if I hadn’t wondered what drove the king to waste his time and that of his marshals, counting rusted swords. That he should be seen once, so be it, it was a good thing. But every day, every morning? And why invite me to this paltry inspection?

  I was surprised then to hear his youngest son, Philip, cry out in the artificial tone that youths have when trying to pass themselves off as mature men: ‘It is certainly not with such levying that we will win great battles.’ He is only fourteen years old; his voice was breaking and he didn’t quite fill his chainmail shirt. His father stroked his son’s forehead as if congratulating himself on having fathered such a wise warrior. Then, addressing the men from Bracieux, he asked: ‘Why are you not better equipped with weaponry? Tell me, why? Is this how one shows up for my army? Haven’t you received orders from your prevost?’

  At that moment, a strapping lad who was trembling a little less than the others, perhaps the one who bore the only axe, stepped forward to answer: ‘Sire, our master the prevost ordered each of us to arm ourselves according to our condition. We equipped ourselves as best we could. Those who have nothing, that is their condition, it doesn’t allow them anything better.’

  King John turned to the constable and the marshals, bearing the look of those who are satisfied when events prove them right, even when it is to their detriment. ‘Yes, another prevost who has not done his duty. Send them back, like those from Saint-Fargeau, like those from Soissons. They will pay the fine. Lorris, you note that down.’

  Because, as he explained to me a moment later, those who failed to show up for inspection, or who came without weapons, or who were unable to fight, were bound to pay reparations. ‘The fines owed by all these pedestrians will provide me with what I need to pay my knights.’

  A fine idea which must have been put into his head by Simon de Bucy, and which he had made his own. This is why he had called up the arriere-ban,57 and why he counted with a kind of rapaciousness the detachments he was sending back to their homes. ‘What use would I have for this rank and file?’ he said to me again. ‘It is because of these foot soldiers that my father was defeated at Crécy. These menials on foot slow everything down and prevent us from riding as we should.’

  And everyone approved, except, I must say, the dauphin, who seemed to have a comment on the tip of his tongue, but kept it to himself.

  Was that to say that on the other side of the camp, with the banners, horses and armour, everything was going wonderfully? In spite of the repeated notifications, and in spite of the fine regulations which stipulated that knights banneret and captains should inspect their men, weapons and mounts twice a month without warning in order to be always ready to make a move, and which prohibited changing chiefs or retiring without permission, ‘for fear of losing all wages and being punished without mercy’, in spite of all that, a good third of the knights had not turned up. Others, o
bliged to equip a company of twenty-five lances or more, presented only ten. Shirts of broken chainmail, dented iron hats, dried-out saddlery that could fall apart at any moment. ‘Ahem, messire, how could I provide for myself? I still haven’t received a penny of my wages, and it is almost more than I can do to maintain my own armour.’ People fought to re-shoe their horses. Chiefs wandered through the camp looking for stray troops, passing stragglers looking, more or less, for their chiefs. From one troop to the next they pilfered as they went, a piece of wood, a bit of leather, the awl or the hammer that they needed. The marshals were beset with complaints, and their heads resounded with the harsh words the angry knight bannerets traded. King John wanted to hear nothing of it. He was counting the pedestrians who would pay reparations.

  He was about to head off for the inspection of those from Saint-Aignan, when six men-at-arms arrived, riding through the camp at full trot, their horses white with foam, their own faces streaming, their armour dusty. One of them stepped down heavily, asked to speak to the constable, and having got close to him said: ‘I am in the service of Messire of Boucicaut, of whom I bring you news.’

  The Duke of Athens, with a sign, invited the messenger to make his report to the king. The messenger attempted a vague kneeling gesture, but his armour prevented him; the king excused him from such ceremony and urged him to speak.

  ‘Sire, Messire of Boucicaut is trapped in Romorantin.’

  Romorantin! The royal escort was for a moment struck dumb with surprise, as if astonished by lightning. Romorantin was just thirty leagues from Chartres, on the other side of Blois! They hadn’t imagined that the English could be so close.

  Because, during the time the Siege of Breteuil was drawing to a close, and Gaston Phoebus was being sent to jail, and the ban and the arrière-ban was slowly gathering in Chartres, the Prince of Wales had embarked upon his chevauchée, as you know better than anyone else, Archambaud, as you had to protect Périgueux … from Sainte-Foy and Bergerac, where he entered royal territory, and made his way north on the route we took, Château-l’Évêque, Brantôme, Rochechouart, La Péruse, causing all the devastation that we saw there. We were kept informed of his progress, and I must say that I was surprised to find the king revelling at Chartres while Prince Edward ravaged the country. He was believed to be, according to the latest news we had, somewhere between La Châtre and Bourges. It was thought he would continue to Orléans, and it would be there for certain that the king would do battle, cutting off his route to Paris. In view of which, nonetheless heeding caution, he had sent a party of three hundred lances under the command of Messires of Boucicaut, Craon and Caumont on a lengthy reconnaissance mission to the other side of the Loire to bring him back information. And he had received precious little of that. And then, suddenly, Romorantin! The Prince of Wales had thus cut across to the west …

  The king encouraged the messenger to continue.

  ‘First, sire, Messire of Chambly, whom Messire of Boucicaut had dispatched to reconnoitre the terrain, was caught near Aubigny-sur-Nère.’

  ‘Ah! Gris-Mouton has been taken,’ said the king, for that is how Messire of Chambly is nicknamed.

  Boucicaut’s messenger continued: ‘But Messire of Boucicaut didn’t find out soon enough, and that is how we ran into the English vanguard. We attacked them so stoutly that they beat a hasty retreat.’

  ‘As they usually do,’ said King John.

  ‘But they fell back on their reinforcements who were far greater in number than we, and they assailed us from all sides, so much so that Messires of Boucicaut, Craon and Caumont led us at speed to Romorantin, with the entire army of Prince Edward at our heels. They have shut themselves in; at the hour at which Messire of Boucicaut dispatched me, the English were beginning to lay a siege. That, sire, is what I have to tell you.’

  Silence fell once more. Then the Marshal of Clermont had a fit of anger. ‘Why the devil did they attack? This is not what we commanded them to do.’

  ‘Are you reproaching them for their valour?’ replied the Marshal of Audrehem. ‘They had flushed out the enemy, they charged.’

  ‘Fine valour indeed,’ said Clermont. They were three hundred lances, they saw twenty, and ran at them without further ado, believing that to be some great exploit. And then one thousand suddenly appear, and they flee in turn, running to hide in the first castle they come across. Now, they are totally useless to you. That is not valour, it is foolishness.’

  The two marshals continued to quarrel, as usual, and the constable let them. He didn’t like to take sides, the constable. He was a braver man in body than in mind. He preferred to be called Athens rather than Brienne, because of the previous constable, his beheaded cousin. And yet Brienne was his fief, while Athens was but a distant family memory, with no grounding in fact whatsoever any more, unless a crusade. Or perhaps, he had simply become indifferent with age. For a long time he had commanded, and commanded well, the armies of the King of Naples. He looked back wistfully on Italy, because he was nostalgic for his youth. The archpriest, holding back a little, mockingly observed the marshals’ argument. It was the king who put a stop to their discussion.

  ‘And I myself think,’ he said, ‘that their setback serves our interests. As here the Englishman is fixed by a siege. And now we know where to run after him, so long as he is held up there.’ He then addressed the constable. ‘Gautier, get the army on their way tomorrow at first light. Split them into several different battalions that will cross the Loire at different points, where there are bridges, so as not to slow us down, while maintaining close contact between formations in order to regroup at the appointed place, beyond the river. As for me, I will cross at Blois. And we will attack the English army from the rear at Romorantin, or should they dare to leave, we will cut off all routes before them. Have the Loire guarded far beyond Tours, up to Angers, so that the Duke of Lancaster, who is coming from Norman country, will never be able to join the Prince of Wales.’

  He surprised his people, John II! Suddenly calm and in control, here he was giving clear orders and setting out routes for his army, as if he could see all of France before him. Bar the Loire near Anjou, cross it at Touraine, be ready either to descend towards Berry, or to cut off the route to Poitou and Angoumois … and after all of that, to Bordeaux and Aquitaine. ‘And may promptness be our business, so that surprise may play to our advantage.’ Everyone straightened, ready for action. A fine expedition was about to take place.

  ‘And send back all the rank and file,’ ordered John II. ‘Let us not endure another Crécy. With nothing but men-at-arms we will be five times stronger than these evil Englishmen.’

  In this way, because ten years earlier the archers and crossbowmen, inopportunely engaged, hampered the cavalry’s movements and made them lose a battle, this time King John was renouncing all infantry. And his banner leaders approved, as they had all been at Crécy and were still smarting from the defeat. Not to commit the same error was their biggest concern.

  Only the dauphin made so bold as to say: ‘In this way, my father, we will have no archers at all.’

  The king didn’t even deign to answer him. And the dauphin, who found himself close by me, said to me, as if looking for support, or not wanting me to take him for a fool: ‘The English put their archers on horseback. But nobody here, on our side would agree to giving horses to folk of the common people.’

  Look here, that reminds me … Brunet! If the weather tomorrow stays as mild as it is today, I will complete the stage, which will be short indeed, on my palfrey. I must get back in the saddle a little, before Metz. And besides, I want to show the people of Châlons, when I enter their town, that I can ride just as well as their mad Bishop Chauveau, who still hasn’t been replaced.

  5

  The Prince of Aquitaine

  AH! YOU FIND ME again rather incensed for this stretch of road that will take us to Sainte-Menehould. It is written that I shall not stop at a large town without hearing some news there that makes my blood boil. In
Troyes it was the pope’s letter. In Châlons it was the post from Paris. What did I learn? That the dauphin, almost a fortnight before setting out, had signed a mandate to adjust once more the value of the currency, further weakening it, of course. But for fear that the matter be badly received he put off its promulgation until after his departure, when he would be far enough away, five days’ ride, and it was only on the tenth of this month that the edict was published. In fact, he was afraid of facing up to his bourgeois, and so he outdistanced them like a stag. Really, flight is often his resource of choice! I don’t know who inspired him to this dishonourable subterfuge, if it was Braque or de Bucy; but its fruits have quickly ripened. The Prevost Marcel and the biggest merchants, furious, went at daybreak to give a piece of their mind to the Duke of Anjou, whom the dauphin had installed in his place in the Louvre; and the king’s second son, who is only eighteen years old and hasn’t a great deal of common sense, let them drag out of him a deferral of the edict, in order to avoid the rioting that threatened, until the return of the dauphin. Either the measure shouldn’t have been taken, which is the view I would have been inclined to, as it is a bad expedient, or it should have been adopted and imposed immediately. He is arriving, with his numbers strengthened, before his uncle the emperor, our Dauphin Charles, but with a capital whose council refuses to obey royal rulings!

  Who then, today, commands in the kingdom of France? We are entitled to wonder. This business, let us make no mistake about it, will have dire consequences. Because here Marcel has become sure of himself, in the knowledge that he has made the will of the crown bend, and he is inevitably supported by the bourgeois rabble, since he defends their purses. The dauphin played his Estates-General well, to leave them distraught at his departure; with this recent business, he loses all of his advantage. Admit that it is disappointing, really, to go to so much trouble, travelling all over, as I have been doing for half a year, in an attempt to improve the fate of princes who are so dead set on doing themselves harm!