A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Such was the Third Estate of Paris, from the poorest workman to the richest magnate, whom Marcel tried to mobilize in his struggle against the Dauphin. To make him submit, the Provost began to use the threat of strikes and popular violence. When the Dauphin tried to raise money by another devaluation of the coinage, arousing the wrath of Paris, “the Provost ordered all guilds and trades throughout the city to stop work and everyone to arm.” Forced to cancel the edicts and left without funds, the Dauphin had no recourse but to recall the Estates and return to Paris to meet with them.

  At this session, lasting a month from February to March 1357, all the proposed reforms, formulated in writing, were presented in a Grand Ordinance of 61 articles, the Magna Carta of the Third Estate. Written in French rather than Latin as if to emphasize a new voice, the ordinance set forth an ideal of “Good Government” as if its framers were trying to implement Lorenzetti’s delectable vision under that name painted a few years earlier in Siena. In the painted city, citizens in gowns of gentle colors go harmoniously about their business, and mounted men-at-arms pass them by in mutual tolerance and benignity. In a distraught time, the Grand Ordinance was grasping for the same order and decency.

  The framers had devised not a grand new scheme of government but rather a set of corrections of existing abuses into which were tossed three political fundamentals. These provided that the monarchy could levy no tax not voted by the Estates, that the Estates General had the right to assemble periodically at their own volition, and that a Grand Council of Thirty-six, twelve from each estate, was to be elected by the Estates to advise the crown.

  The purge of King Jean’s councillors was reaffirmed and the members of the new Grand Council “were abjured to forgo the habit of their predecessors of coming late to work and working very little.” All officials were to be at work “every day at sunrise”; they were to be well paid, but lose their pay if they failed to appear early in the morning. The currency was not to be altered without the consent of the Estates, royal and princely expenditures were to be reduced, judicial cases in Parlement were to be speeded up, provincial bailiffs were not to hold two offices or engage in commerce, the summons to military service was to be issued only under specific conditions, nobles were not to leave the country without permission, and their private wars were sternly forbidden. Justice and charity for the poor were to be expedited, their property was not to be confiscated without just price, and their vehicles for never more than one day; the right of villagers to assemble and take arms against robbery and force was affirmed. Finally, the Estates undertook to raise taxes sufficient to pay 30,000 soldiers for one year, but the money was to be administered by the Estates, not through the crown.

  Resisting and procrastinating, the Dauphin refused to sign the ordinance until he was browbeaten into it by Marcel’s technique of bringing mobs released from work into the streets, increasing in numbers each day, and encouraged to shout, “To arms!” By this treatment the Dauphin’s signature was obtained under the title of Regent, which the Estates required him to assume so that he could commit the monarchy. The new Council of Thirty-six was installed, while the ousted councillors hastened to Bordeaux to inform King Jean. Just before he was carried off to London, the King repudiated his son’s signature and the entire ordinance.

  During the summer of 1357 neither the Dauphin nor the Council was able to govern effectively while both sought support from the provinces. By making a royal progress through the country to show kingship still functioning, Charles had more success than Marcel. When the Estates reconvened in April with very few nobles present, it was clear that the nobility, resenting the terms of the Grand Ordinance, was withdrawing support. The reform movement was in trouble. Outside Paris the breakdown of authority was reaching catastrophe.

  Its catalyst was the brigandage of military companies spawned by the warfare of the last fifteen years. These were the Free Companies who “write sorrow on the bosom of the earth” and were to become the torment of the age. Composed of English, Welsh, and Gascons released after Poitiers by the Black Prince, as soldiers customarily were to avoid further payment, they had acquired in the Prince’s campaigns a taste for the ease and riches of plunder. Along with German mercenaries and Hainault adventurers, they gathered in groups of twenty to fifty around a captain and moved northward to operate in the area between the Seine and the Loire and between Paris and the coast. After the truce of Bordeaux they were joined by the forces of Philip of Navarre, by leftovers from the Duke of Lancaster’s forces, and by experienced Breton captains and men-at-arms, masters of the art of exploiting a region. The refrain of the chronicles, arser et piller (burning and plundering), follows their kind down the century.

  The loss of the King and of so many nobles eased their opportunity. In the year after the truce they swelled, merged, organized, spread, and operated with ever more license. Seizing a castle, they would use it as a stronghold from which to exact tribute from every traveler and raid the countryside. They would spy out a good town at one or two days’ journey “and go by covert ways day and night and so enter the town unknown in the morning and set fire on some house; then they of the town would think it was done by some men of war and so fly away out of the town; and then these brigands would break up coffers and houses and rob and take what they list and fly away when they had done.”

  They imposed ransoms on prosperous villages and burned the poor ones, robbed abbeys and monasteries of their stores and valuables, pillaged peasants’ barns, killed and tortured those who hid their goods or resisted ransom, not sparing the clergy or the aged, violated virgins, nuns, and mothers, abducted women as enforced camp-followers and men as servants. As the addiction took hold, they wantonly burned harvests and farm equipment and cut down trees and vines, destroying what they lived by, in actions which seem inexplicable except as a fever of the time or an exaggeration of the chroniclers.

  Companies of this kind had existed since the 12th century and proliferated especially in Italy, where the nobility, more urban than elsewhere, left the profession of arms increasingly to mercenaries. Led by professional captains, the companies, sometimes numbering 2,000 to 3,000, were composed of exiles, outlaws, landless or bankrupt adventurers, Germans, Burgundians, Italians, Hungarians, Catalans, Provençals, Flemish, French, and Swiss, often splendidly equipped on horse and foot. In mid-century the outstanding captain was a renegade prior of the Knights of St. John called Fra Monreale, who maintained a council, secretaries, accountants, camp judges, and a gallows, and could command a price of 150,000 gold florins from Venice to fight Milan. In the single year of 1353 he extorted 50,000 florins from Rimini, 25,000 from Florence, and 16,000 each from Pisa and Siena. Invited to Rome by the revolutionary Cola di Rienzi, who wanted his wealth, Monreale overconfidently entered alone, was seized, tried as a public robber, and executed. He went to the block magnificently dressed in brown velvet embroidered in gold and had his own surgeon direct the ax of the executioner. Unrepentant at the end, he declared himself justified “in carving his way with a sword through a false and miserable world.”

  The most damaging aspect of the companies was that in the absence of organized armies they filled a need and became accepted. Philip VI, on learning how effectively a captain known only as Bacon had surprised and seized a castle, bought his services for 20,000 crowns and made him usher-at-arms, “ever well horsed, appareled and armed like an earl.” Another, named Croquart, starting as a “poor page” in the Breton wars, rose by prowess to become a captain of brigands worth 40,000 crowns whose military repute caused him to be chosen as one of the English side in the Combat of Thirty. Afterward King Jean offered him a knighthood, a rich wife, and annual pay of 2,000 livres if he would enter the King’s service. Preferring his independence, Croquart refused.

  More brigand than mercenary, the companies in France, though basically English, attracted French knights ruined by the ransoms of Brittany and Poitiers who now shared in the ravaging of their own country. Lesser nobles reduced in
revenue, younger sons and bastard sons, made themselves captains and found in the companies a living, a path to fortune, a way of life, a vent for the restless aggression once absorbed by the crusades.

  The most notorious of the French was Arnaut de Cervole, a noble of Périgord called the “Archpriest” because of a clerical benefice he had once held. Wounded and captured at Poitiers, he had been released on paying his ransom, and on return to France in the anarchic months of 1357 made himself commander of a band which called itself frankly enough Società dell’ acquisito. In collaboration with a lord of Provence named Raimond des Baux, the band grew to an army of 2,000 and the “Archpriest” into one of the great evildoers of his time. In the course of a raid Cervole launched through Provence in 1357, Pope Innocent VI felt so insecure in Avignon that he negotiated for immunity in advance. Cervole was invited to the papal palace, “received as reverently as if he had been the son of the King of France,” and after dining several times with the Pope and cardinals, was given a pardon for all his sins—a regular item in the companies’ demands—and the sum of 40,000 écus to leave the area;

  His equal among the English was Sir Robert Knollys, “the man of few words,” whom Froissart judged “the most able and skillful man-at-arms in all the companies.” He too had risen from the ranks in the Breton wars and fought with the Thirty, gaining knighthood along the way. After service with Lancaster he remained to plunder Normandy with such skill and ruthlessness that he amassed in the year 1357–58 booty worth 100,000 crowns. During the next two years he established himself in the valley of the Loire, where he gained control of forty castles and burned and sacked from Orléans to Vézelay. In a raid through Berry and Auvergne his company left a trail of ravaged towns whose charred gables were known as “Knollys’ miters.” Such was the terror of his name that at one place, it was said, people threw themselves into the river at word of his approach.

  Upon his informing King Edward that all the strongholds he had captured were at the King’s disposal, Edward—who was pleased to share, like other rulers, in the benefits of banditry—handsomely pardoned Knollys for activities that violated the truce. Knollys was ultimately to earn high command and military renown on a level with Chandos and the Black Prince. In truce and war he passed back and forth from brigandage to service under the crown without missing a beat or changing his style. At the end of his career he retired with “regal wealth” and great estates to become a benefactor of churches and founder of almshouses and chantries. The French wrote him down as Sir Robert Canole, who “grievously harmed France all the days of his life.”

  In the anarchy after Poitiers, knights and brigands became interchangeable, bringing added popular hatred upon the estate of the sword, though not necessarily disrepute among their own kind. The “young, bold and amorous” Eustache d’Aubrecicourt, a knight of Hainault and companion of the Prince at Poitiers, turned brigand with such élan and material success that he won the love of the widowed Countess of Kent, a niece of the Queen of England and Hainault-born like himself. She sent him horses, gifts, and passionate letters which excited him to ever bolder if not more chivalrous exploits. He fastened a savage grip upon Champagne and part of Picardy until he was captured when French knights at last organized in defense. Greedy as he, they let him be ransomed for 22,000 gold francs, so that he promptly renewed his warfare. In command of 2,000 freebooters, he organized a traffic in seized castles, which were sold back to their owners at lucrative prices. In some way understandable to the 14th century, his use of the sword for robbery and murder carried no quality of dishonor to Isabelle of Kent, who was to marry her now wealthy hero in 1360.

  In response to French complaints that the English companies were violating the truce, King Edward ordered them to disband, but his orders were neither meant nor taken seriously. While peace terms were still being negotiated, he was quite willing to let the companies keep up pressure on France. No less averse to fomenting trouble was Charles of Navarre. Though still in prison, he had agents, including his brother Philip, active in his behalf. Where the Navarrese joined forces with the English, the ravages were worst—deliberately so, some thought, as a means of applying pressure for Charles’s release.

  For defense against the companies, villages made forts of their stone churches, surrounding them with trenches, manning the bell towers with sentinels, and piling up stones to throw down upon the attackers. “The sound of church bells no longer summoned people to praise the Lord but to take shelter from the enemy.” Peasant families who could not reach the church spent nights with their livestock on islands in the Loire or in boats anchored in mid-river. In Picardy they took refuge in underground tunnels enlarged from caves dug at the time of the Norman invasions. With a well in the center and air holes above, the tunnels could shelter twenty or thirty people with space around the walls for cattle.

  At daylight the lookouts peered from the bell towers to see if the bandits had gone and they could return to the fields. Country families hastened with their goods to take refuge in cities, monks and nuns abandoned their monasteries, highways and roads were unsafe, robbers rose up everywhere, and enemies multiplied throughout the land. “What more can I say?” writes Jean de Venette in his catalogue of miseries. “Thence-forward infinite harm, misfortune and danger befell the French people for lack of good government and adequate defense.”

  A sympathizer of the Third Estate, Jean de Venette was a Carmelite prior and head of the Order in the 1360s at the time he was writing his chronicle. He blamed the Regent, who “applied no remedy,” and the nobles, who “despised and hated all others and took no thought for the mutual usefulness of lord and men. They subjected and despoiled the peasants and villagers. In no wise did they defend their country from its enemies. Rather did they trample it underfoot, robbing and pillaging the peasants’ goods” while the Regent “gave no thought to their plight.”

  The nobles were to blame also, as Jean de Venette saw it, for discord among the Estates General which caused the Estates to abandon the task they had begun. “From that time on all went ill with the kingdom, and the state was undone.… The country and whole land of France began to put on confusion and mourning like a garment because it had no defender or guardian.”

  Grief and wrath pervade too a Latin polemic called “Tragic Account of the Miserable State of the Realm of France” by an obscure Benedictine monk. Ashamed for once-proud France which let her King be captured “in the heart of the kingdom” and led without interference to captivity on foreign soil, he raised the crucial question of military discipline. “Where did you study [the art of war]? Who were your teachers? In what was your apprenticeship?” he asks the knights. “Was it while fighting under the banners of Venus, sucking sweetness like milk, abandoned to delights …” and so on in this vein until he suddenly concludes with the practical question, “Can the military art be learned in the games and hunts in which you pass your youth?”

  The friar has censure left over for the common people, “whose belly is their God and who are the slaves of their women,” and for the clergy, who receive the worst scolding of all. They are sunk in luxury, gluttony, pomp, ambition, anger, discord, envy, greed, litigation, usury, and sacks of silver and gold. Virtues die, vices triumph, honesty perishes, pity is stifled, avarice pervades, confusion overwhelms, order vanishes.

  Was this merely the traditional monastic tirade upon the world, or a deeper pessimism that begins to darken the second half of the century?

  King Jean’s release was still unsettled. While treating the royal captive with elaborate honor, Edward was determined to squeeze from his triumph every last inch of territory and ounce of money that France could be made to yield. The great King of France, snatched from the field of Poitiers, was an extraordinary prize. Jean’s entry into London as the Black Prince’s prisoner in May 1357 occasioned one of the greatest celebrations ever seen in England and “great solemnities in all churches marvelous to think of.” Such was the curiosity to see the French King that the pr
ocession took several hours to cross the town to the palace of Westminster. As the center of attention among the thirteen other noble prisoners, Jean was dressed in black “like an archdeacon or a secular clerk,” and rode a tall white horse alongside the Prince on a smaller black palfrey. Past houses hung with captured shields and tapestries, over cobblestones strewn with rose petals, the procession moved through fantasies of pageantry that were the favorite art of the 14th century. In twelve gilded cages along the route, the goldsmiths of London had stationed twelve beautiful maidens, who scattered flowers of gold and silver filigree over the riders.

  The éclat of the noble prisoners added chivalric distinction to the English court. Christmas and New Year’s of the first winter were celebrated with extra pomp, including a splendid tournament held at night under torchlight. Housed in the Savoy, the new palace of the Duke of Lancaster, Jean was at liberty to receive visitors from France and enjoy all the pleasures of court life, although assigned a guard to prevent his escape or attempted rescue. Languedoc sent a delegation of nobles and bourgeois with a gift of 10,000 florins and the assurance that their lives, goods, and fortunes were dedicated to his delivery. Even Laon and Amiens sent money. The mystique of kingship possessed his subjects more than its responsibilities concerned the King.

  In France’s miserable hour, his accounts show expenses for horses, dogs, and falcons, a chess set, an organ, a harp, a clock, a fawn-colored palfrey, venison and whale meat from Bruges, and elaborate wardrobes for his son Philip and for his favorite jester, who received several ermine-trimmed hats ornamented with gold and pearls. Jean maintained an astrologer and a “king of minstrels” with orchestra, held a cockfight, commissioned books with fine bindings, and sold horses and wine he had received as gifts from Languedoc. The success of this venture led him to import more of both from Toulouse for sale as a profitable business. Reading through Jean’s accounts in the archives 500 years later, Jules Michelet, France’s most vivid if not most objective historian, said they made him sick.