A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  To conceal my heart.

  The plaintive note (or perhaps more sympathy than Christine pretended) loosened the purses of nobles and princes—whose status was reflected in patronage of the arts—and enabled Christine to undertake studies for a flow of didactic prose works, many of them adapted or translated from other authors, as was the common practice of the time. No subject deterred her: she wrote a large volume on the art of war based on the Roman classic De re militari by Vegetius; a mythological romance; a treatise on the education of women; and a life of Charles V which remains an important and original work. Her own voice and interest are strongest when she writes about her own sex, as in La Cité des dames on the lives of famous women of history. Though translated from Boccaccio’s De Claris mulieribus, Christine makes it her own in the prologue, where she sits weeping and ashamed, wondering why men “are so unanimous in attributing wickedness to women” and why “we should be worse than men since we were also created by God.” In a dazzling vision, three crowned female figures, Justice, Faith, and Charity, appear to tell her that these views of the philosophers are not articles of faith “but the mists of error and self-deception.” They name the women of history who have excelled—Ceres, donor of agriculture; Arachne, originator of spinning and weaving; and various heroines of Homeric legend, the Old Testament, and Christian martyrology.

  In a passionate outcry at the close of the century in her Epistle to the God of Love, Christine again asks why women, formerly so esteemed and honored in France, are now attacked and insulted not only by the ignorant and base but also by nobles and clergy. The Epistle is a direct rejoinder to the malicious satire of women in Jean de Meung’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose, the most popular book of the age. A professional writer with a master’s degree in Arts from the University of Paris, Jean de Meung was the Jonathan Swift of his time, a satirist of the artificial conventions in religion, philosophy, and especially chivalry and its central theme of courtly love. Nature and natural feeling are his heroes, False Seeming (hypocrisy) and Forced Abstinence (obligatory chastity) his villains, whom he personifies as mendicant friars. Like the clerics who blamed women for men’s desires, or like the policeman who arrests the prostitute but not the customer, Jean de Meung, as a male, blamed women for humanity’s departure from the ideal. Because courtly love was a false glorification of women, he made women personify its falsity and hypocrisy. Scheming, painted, mercenary, wanton, Meung’s version of woman was simply the male fantasy of courtly love in reverse. As Christine pointed out, it was men who wrote the books.

  Her protest was to provoke a vociferous debate between antagonists and defenders of Jean de Meung in one of the great intellectual controversies at the turn of the century. Meanwhile her melancholy flute still sounded in poetry.

  It is a month today

  Since my lover went away.

  My heart remains gloomy and silent;

  It is a month today.

  “Farewell,” he said, “I am leaving.”

  Since then he speaks to me no more.

  It is a month today.

  As shown by the sumptuous bindings of surviving copies, her works were in large demand by wealthy nobles. At the age of 54 she retired to a convent in grief for the condition of France. She lived for another eleven years to write a poem in praise of the figure who, to posterity, stands out above all others of her time—another woman, Joan of Arc.

  Fixed as they were in the pattern of female nature conceived for them by men, it was no accident that women often appeared among the hysterical mystics. In the uncontrollable weeping of English Margery Kempe there is a poignancy that speaks for many. She began to weep while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when “she had such great compassion and such great pain at seeing the place of Our Lord’s pain.” Thereafter her fits of “crying and roaring” and falling on the ground continued for many years, once a month or a week, sometimes daily or many times a day, sometimes in church or in the street or in her chamber or in the fields. The sight of a crucifix might set her off, “or if she saw a man or beast with a wound, or if a man beat a child before her, or smote a horse or other beast with a whip, if she saw it or heard it, she thought she saw our Lord being beaten or wounded.” She would try to “keep it in as much as she could, that people might not hear it to their annoyance, for some said that a wicked spirit vexed her or that she had drunk too much wine. Some banned her, some wished her in the sea in a bottomless boat.” Margery Kempe was obviously an uncomfortable neighbor to have, like all those who cannot conceal the painfulness of life.

  On July 27, 1365, at Windsor Castle, Isabella of England and Enguerrand de Coucy were married amid festivity and magnificence. The finest minstrels in the realm played for the occasion. The bride was resplendent in jewels received as her wedding present from her father, mother, and brothers, at a cost of £2,370 13s. 4d. Her dowry, considerably increased over the d’Albret marriage-portion, was an annual pension of £4,000. The King’s gift to Enguerrand was no less valuable: he was released from his role as hostage without payment of ransom.

  Four months later, in November, the couple received the King’s leave to return to France, evidently given with some reluctance, for the letter refers to a repeated request “to go into France to visit your lands, possessions and estates.” Isabella being already pregnant, the King’s letter promised that all children male or female born to her abroad would be capable of inheriting lands in England and considered “as fully naturalized as though they were born in the realm.”

  To the customary ringing of church bells vigorously pulled to induce the saints to ease labor, a daughter was born at Coucy in April 1366 and christened Marie. Before a month had passed, Isabella with husband and infant was hurrying back to England. A lady of rank and in delicate condition would travel in a four-wheeled covered wagon with cushioned seats, accompanied by her furniture, bed linen, vessels and plate, cooking pots, wine, and with servants going on ahead to prepare lodgings and hang tapestries and bed curtains. Even with such comforts, to brave the Channel crossing and the bumpy land journey with a newborn baby seems peculiar and reckless haste or a desperate affection for home. Throughout her married life, Isabella never put down roots at Coucy-le-Château, and instantly rushed back to her father’s court whenever her husband departed on some expedition. Perhaps she was unhappy in the great walled castle on the hill, or did not feel at home in France, or more likely could not live without the indulgence and royal surroundings of her youth.

  Edward’s determination to attach Coucy as firmly as possible to England was acted on as soon as Enguerrand and his wife returned. On May 11, 1366, the Chancellor informed the nobles and commons in Parliament, in the presence of Edward, “how the King had married his daughter Isabella to the Lord de Coucy, who had handsome estates in England and elsewhere; and for the cause that he was so nearly allied to him, it were fitting that the King should enhance and increase him in honor and name, and make him an earl; and thereupon he requested that advice and assent.” Lords and Commons duly consented, leaving to the King the choice of what lands and title to confer. Enguerrand was named to the vacant earldom of Bedford with a revenue of 300 marks a year, and as Ingelram,* Earl of Bedford, he appears thereafter in English records. To complete the honors, he was inducted into the Order of the Garter.

  At the same time Isabella received yet another £200 of annual revenues, which promptly disappeared down the bottomless drain of her expenditures. She seems to have been one of those people for whom spending is a neurosis, for within a few months of her return, the King paid £130 15s. 4d. to discharge her debts to merchants for silk and velvet, taffetas, gold cloth, ribands and linen, and another £60 to redeem a jeweled circlet she had pawned.

  Sometime before Easter of 1367, which fell on April 18, the Coucys’ second daughter was born in England, within a year of the first. Named Philippa for her grandmother the Queen, the infant received from her royal grandparents an elaborate silver service of six bowls, gilded and chased, six
cups, four water pitchers, four platters, and 24 each of dishes, salt cellars, and spoons costing a total of £239 18s. 3d.

  In further enlargement of his fortune, Enguerrand now acquired the equivalent of an earldom in France, helped thereto by the not disinterested hand of his father-in-law. A fellow hostage, and neighbor in France, was Guy de Blois et de Châtillon, Count of Soissons, a nephew of both Philip VI and Charles de Blois of Brittany, who despite his great family and connections, had so far been unable to buy his liberty. As the price of his release, an arrangement was now reached by which, with the consent of King Charles of France, he ceded his county of Soissons to Edward, who in turn presented it to Coucy in lieu of the £4,000 provided by Isabella’s dowry. The great domains of Coucy and Soissons, constituting a sizable portion of Picardy, were now joined in the hands of a son-in-law of the King of England. With a territorial title diluting the once proud austerity of the Coucy motto, Enguerrand was now Count of Soissons, and as such returned with his wife and daughters to France in July 1367.

  * If the unit was the Flemish ell of 27 inches, the coverlet would have measured 17 by 18 feet; if it was the English ell of 45 inches, the dimensions would have been 28 by 30 feet.

  * In one 14th century illuminated manuscript, Pride was a knight on a lion, Envy a monk on a dog, Sloth a peasant on a donkey, Avarice a merchant on a badger, Gluttony a youth on a wolf, Ire a woman on a boar, and Luxury (instead of the standard Lechery) a woman on a goat.

  * Judging by the diverse spelling of proper names on either side of the Channel, pronunciation of the common language must have been close to mutually unintelligible. Chaucer’s Prioresse spoke French

  After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

  For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.

  Chapter 10

  Sons of Iniquity

  In the seven years of Coucy’s absence in England, the havoc wrought by the Free Companies, spreading through France, Savoy, Lombardy, and the papal dominions, had become a major fact of European affairs. Not a passing phenomenon nor an external force, the companies had become a way of life, a part of society itself, used and joined by its rulers even as they struggled to throw them off. They ate at society from within like Erysichthon, the “tearer up of earth,” who, having destroyed the trees in the sacred grove of Demeter, was cursed by the goddess with an insatiable appetite and finally devoured himself attempting to satisfy his hunger.

  Discipline and organization made the companies more useful as fighting forces than knights bent on glory and unacquainted with the principle of command. Rulers employed them, as when Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, contracted with one of the worst of the captains to crush the partisans of an opponent by use of terrorism within his own dominions. Whether employed or living by adventure, they made pillage pay the cost. Life by the sword became subordinate to its means; the means became the end; the climate of the 14th century succumbed to the brute triumph of the lawless.

  In France during the transfer of territories, despite the renewed orders of King Edward, many bands refused to demobilize or evacuate their fortresses. Discharged from regular employment, like bees from a broken hive, they created small hives around a particular captain and joined the host of Tard-Venus. Finding mercenary employment combined with brigandage profitable, they spread, attracting into their ranks those who quickly relapse into lawlessness when the social contract breaks down. While the lower ranks came from the debris of town and country and from the cast-offs of every occupation including the Church, the leaders came from the top—lords who found a life of gain by the sword irresistible, or losers of the knightly class whom the companies themselves had uprooted. Unable to live adequately off ruined lands, they joined the mercenaries rather than follow a life without the sword. “Unbridled in every kind of cruelty,” in the words of the Pope’s excommunication in 1364, they seemed to defenseless people like another plague, to be attributed to the planets or God’s wrath.

  In France they were called écorcheurs (skinners) and routiers (highwaymen), in Italy condottieri from the condotta or contract that fixed the terms of their employment as mercenaries. They extorted a systematized income from vulnerable towns in the form of appatis, a forced tribute to buy freedom from attack, of which the terms were put in writing by clerks. They drew into their service from ordinary life notaries, lawyers, and bankers to handle their affairs, as well as clerks, blacksmiths, tanners, coopers, butchers, surgeons, priests, tailors, laundresses, prostitutes, and often their own legal wives. They dealt through regular brokers who sold their plunder, except for particular arms or luxuries they wished to keep, such as jewels and women’s gowns or steel for swords or, in one case, ostrich plumes and beaver hats. They became installed in the social structure. When Burgundy was occupied by the “Archpriest” Arnaut de Cervole in 1364, young Duke Philip treated him with respect, calling him his adviser and companion, and making over to him a castle and several noble hostages as security until he could raise 2,500 gold francs to buy his departure. To raise the sum, Philip adopted the usual expedient of taxing his subjects, another cause of bitterness against the lords.

  Bertucat d’Albret, of the same family as Isabella’s rejected bridegroom, was one of the notable great lords who were more pillard than seigneur. Years later, in old age, he sighed for the days “when we would leap upon rich merchants from Toulouse or La Riolle or Bergerac. Never did a day fail to bring us some fine prize for our enrichment and good cheer.” His friend and fellow Gascon, Seguin de Badefol, often called “King of the Companies,” replaced the five hats in his father’s coat-of-arms with five bezants, or gold coins, indicating his major interest. Aimerigot Marcel, who after thirty years as a brigand was to end on the scaffold, boasted of his takings in silks from Brussels, skins from the fairs, spices coming from Bruges, rich fabrics from Damascus and Alexandria. “All was ours or ransomed at our will.… The peasants of Auvergne supplied us in our castle, bringing wheat and flour and fresh bread, hay for the horses, good wine, beef and mutton, fat lambs and poultry. We were provisioned like kings. And when we rode forth the country trembled before us.”

  Popular hatred credited the companies with every crime from eating meat in Lent to committing atrocities upon pregnant women which caused death to unborn and unbaptized children. Three quarters of France was their prey, especially the wine-growing areas of Burgundy, Normandy, Champagne, and Languedoc. Walled towns could organize resistance, turning back the violence upon the countryside, which was repeatedly devastated, creating a vagabond population of destitute peasants, artisans seeking work, priests without parishes.

  The companies did not spare churches. “Insensible to the fear of God,” wrote Innocent VI in a pastoral letter of 1360, “the sons of iniquity … invade and wreck churches, steal their books, chalices, crosses, relics and vessels of the divine ritual and make them their booty.” Churches where blood had been spilled in combat were considered profaned and prohibited from sacramental use until they had gone through a long bureaucratic process of reconciliation. Nevertheless, papal taxes continued, and incumbents of ruined benefices were often reduced to penury, and deserted, not infrequently to join their persecutors. “See how grave it has become,” mourned Innocent in the same letter, “when those charged with divine grace … participate in rapine and despoliation, even in the shedding of blood.”

  With clergy and knights joining the sons of iniquity, the average man felt himself living in an age of rapine and powerless to control it. “If God Himself were a soldier, He would be a robber,” said an English knight named Talbot.

  One chain still held: the necessity of absolution. Fear of dying without it was so ingrained that ghosts were believed to be the souls of the unshriven who had returned to seek absolution for their sins in life. No matter how far the brigands had separated themselves from other rules, they insisted on the formula if not the substance of forgiveness. In theory a man who met death in a “just war” would go straight to Heaven if he had repented of his sins, but a knig
ht guilty of the sin of rapine would have to prove penitence by restitution of his gains. Making no pretense of just war, much less given to restitution, the companies were content to extort absolution by force, like a bag of gold. When negotiating ransoms or quittances with their captives, even those they had maimed or tortured, they would make it a condition of release that the victims solicit absolution for them or urge the Pope to lift his excommunication.

  Innocent’s successor, Urban V, issued two Bulls of Excommunication in 1364, Cogit Nos and Miserabilis Nonullorum, which were supposed to have the effect of prohibiting any cooperation with or provisioning of the companies, and which offered plenary indulgence to all who died in combatting them. If the ban disturbed the brigands, it did not restrain them.

  The outstanding professional among the Tard-Venus, one whom Coucy was destined to meet in combat, was Sir John Hawkwood, who first appeared by name as leader of one of the companies besieging Avignon in 1361. His origin was the kind that sent many into the companies. As the second son of a minor landowner and tanner by trade, he left home when his elder brother inherited the manor along with £10, six horses, and a cart, leaving the younger son landless with a portion of £20 10s. Listed among the English army in France in the 1350s, Hawkwood was “still a poor knight who had gained nothing but his spurs” when he joined the Tard-Venus after Brétigny. He was then about 35. By the time he was diverted by papal gold from Avignon to Italy, he commanded the White Company of 3,500 mounted men and 2,000 foot whose white flags and tunics and highly polished breastplates gave the company its name. On their first appearance in Lombardy they spread terror by their fury and license, and as time went on, “nothing was more terrible to hear than the name of the English.” They gained the reputation of perfidi e scelleratissimi (perfidious and most wicked), although it was conceded that “they did not roast and mutilate their victims like the Hungarians.”