A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Moderate parties on both sides, led by Coucy for the crown and Jean de Marès for the city, still worked for a settlement. Their combined eloquence and influence gained the people’s consent to a tax of 80,000 francs to be collected by their own receivers and distributed directly to troops on active service, untouched by royal uncles or treasurers. Paris was to receive in exchange a general pardon and the King’s written promise that the aids would not be used as a precedent for new taxes, and that he would hold no malice against Paris in the future. If any trust in a royal pardon still remained, it was because of a quality of sacredness in an anointed king and a profound need to perceive him—as opposed to the lords—as the people’s protector.

  At this moment Ghent’s startling victory over the Count of Flanders intervened, frightening the propertied class and giving the court urgent reason to settle with Paris. With Anjou gone to Italy and Berry dispatched as Governor of Languedoc, the Duke of Burgundy was in control, and his dominant purpose now was to employ French force for the retrieval of his heritage in Flanders. Terms with Paris were hastily concluded.

  The King re-entered the capital only for a day, to the great displeasure of the citizens. Rouen erupted again when tax-collectors set up their tables in the Cloth Hall but the rising was quickly suppressed bythe royal governor with the aid of an armed galley in the river. Southern France too was in turmoil, spread by bands of dispossessed peasants and vagabond poor. The Monk of St. Denis called them the désespérés and crève-de-faim (the hopeless and starving), but locally they were called the Tuchins. Some say the name derives from tuechien (kill-dog), meaning people reduced to such misery that they ate dogs as in times of famine; others, that it derived from touche, meaning, in the local patois, the maquis or brush where the dispossessed took refuge.

  Through the uplands of Auvergne, as well as in the south, the Tuchins, in bands of 20, 60, or 100, organized a guerrilla warfare against established society. They preyed upon the clergy—hated for their tax exemptions—ambushed travelers, held lords for ransom, attacking all, it was said, who did not have callused hands. Like the Mafia of Sicily, they originated out of misery to prey upon the rich, but, on becoming organized, were used by the rich in local feuds and brigandage. Towns and seigneurs hired them in their war against the crown’s officers, who were called the “eaters.” The unrest in Languedoc was to reach the force of insurrection in the following year.

  In all these evils, the upper class felt the rising tide of subversion. The rioters of Béziers in Languedoc were reported in a plot to murder all citizens having more than 100 livres, while forty of the plotters planned to kill their own wives and marry the richest and most beautiful widows of their victims. The English peasants seemed to one chronicler “like mad dogs … like Bacchantes dancing through the country.” The Ciompi were “ruffians, evil-doers, thieves … useless men of low condition … dirty and shabby,” and the Maillotins were viewed as their brothers. The weavers of Ghent were credited with intent to exterminate all good folk down to the age of six.

  The source of all subversion, the focus of danger, was seen to lie in Ghent.

  Conscious of all that hung upon the outcome, the French prepared for an offensive in strength in Flanders. Rebellion of the lower class against the upper, danger of an English alliance with Artevelde, the hostile allegiance of Flanders to the Urbanist cause in the schism were involved. Coucy was among the first designated for the army, which he joined with a retinue of three other knights banneret, ten knights bachelor, 37 squires, and ten archers, subsequently enlarged to 63 squires and 30 archers. His cousin Raoul, Bastard of Coucy, son of his uncle Aubert, was his second in command, though listed as a squire. In the sullen atmosphere, it took six months before an adequate and well-equipped force was assembled, and it was November before the march began. Many advised against starting on the edge of winter, but anxiety to forestall the English carried the enterprise forward through days of rain and leaden cold.

  The army’s strength, wildly and variously reported at figures up to 50,000, probably numbered about 12,000—large enough to require foot soldiers, as was often necessary, to cut down hedges and trees to widen the line of march.

  The King, now fourteen, rode with the army accompanied by his uncles Burgundy, Bourbon, and Berry and the foremost lords of France—Clisson, Sancerre, Coucy, Admiral de Vienne, the Counts de la Marche, d’Eu, Blois, Harcourt, and many notable seigneurs and squires. The scarlet Oriflamme, reserved for urgent occasions or war against the infidel, was carried for the first time since Poitiers to emphasize the character of holy war—which was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that if the enemy was Urbanist, so was the King’s ally Louis of Flanders. Unpopular in any case because of his dealings with the English, Louis was coldly treated throughout the campaign.

  Hostility lay at the army’s back. French towns and populace, sympathetic to Ghent, withheld or hampered supplies and continued to resist the payment of aids. The Duke of Burgundy, if not the King, was denounced aloud. In Paris, the Maillotins swore on their mallets an oath of collective resistance to tax-collectors. They began to forge helmets and weapons at night, and plotted to seize the Louvre and the great hôtels of Paris so that these could not be used as strongholds against them. They were restrained from action, however, by the counsel of Nicolas de Flament, a cloth merchant who had been associated with Etienne Marcel in the killing of the two Marshals in 1358. He advised waiting until it was seen whether the men of Ghent prevailed; then the right moment would come. At the same time, commoners rioted at Orléans, Blois, Châlons, Reims, Rouen, voicing such sentiments as showed that “the Devil was entered into their heads to have slain all noblemen.”

  On reaching the river Lys at the border of Flanders, the royal army found the bridge across to Comines destroyed by the enemy and all boats removed. The river’s banks were marshy and muddy; 900 Flemings waited on the other side under the command of Artevelde’s lieutenant, Peter van den Bossche, standing with battle-ax in hand. Coucy had advised crossing farther east at Tournai so as to be in contact with supplies from Hainault, but Clisson had insisted on the more direct route and was now greatly vexed, acknowledging that he should have taken Coucy’s advice.

  While foragers were sent for timber and fence rails to repair the bridge, a party of knights was guided to three sunken boats, which were hauled up and rigged by ropes to both banks at a spot concealed from the Flemings. By this means, nine at a time, an adventurous force of knights and squires was ferried across while the main force diverted the Flemings’ attention by fire of crossbows and “bombards” or small portable cannon. Fearing to be discovered, yet determined “to gain reputation as valiant men-at-arms,” the adventurers, joined by Marshal Sancerre, continued crossing until 400 had reached the other side. No varlet was permitted to accompany them.

  Deciding to seize Comines at once, they buckled their armor, raised their banners, and marched into the open in battle formation, to the extreme anxiety of the watching Constable, whose “blood began to tremble in fear for them.” “Ah, by St. Ives, by St. George, by Our Lady, what do I see over there? Ha, Rohan! Ha, Beaumanoir! Ha, Rochefort, Malestroit, Lavalle,” Clisson cried, naming each banner as he recognized it. “What do I see? I see the flower of our army outnumbered! I would rather have died than witnessed this.… Wherefore am I Constable of France if without my counsel you put yourself in this adventure? If you lose, the fault shall be laid to me and it shall be said that I sent you thither.” He proclaimed that all who wished should now join the force on the other side and issued frantic orders to hasten repair of the bridge. With darkness falling, the Flemings were ordered by their leader not to attack, and the French for the same reason halted. Unsheltered in a cold wind, with their feet in mud and rain running down their helmets, they remained in armor through the night, keeping up their spirits by staying alert against attack.

  At daybreak both sides advanced, the French shouting the war cries of many absent seigneurs to make their numbers seem large
r. Again Clisson suffered unrestrained agonies of anxiety, bewailing his inability to cross over with all his army. In the event, when the clash came, the long French spears tipped with Bordeaux steel outreached the Flemings’ weapons, pierced their thin mail, and gained the ascendancy. Peter van den Bossche was struck down, wounded in head and shoulder, but was carried to safety. While the Flemings fought in despair and village bells rang to summon help, the French finished repair of the bridge. Clisson’s force thundered across, routed the defenders, and completed the capture of Comines. Flemings were chased and killed in streets and fields, in mills and monasteries where theysought shelter, and in neighboring towns. In a moment the pillagers were scouring the country and finding rich plunder, for—trusting in the Lys—the Flemings had not removed their goods or cattle to the walled towns.

  Upon the King’s entry into Comines, the upper bourgeois of Ypres and neighboring towns overthrew Artevelde’s governors and sent deputies to the French with terms of surrender. On their knees before Charles VI, twelve rich notables of Ypres offered to turn over their town to him permanently in return for peaceful occupation. The King was pleased to accept at a price of 40,000 francs, which was immediately pledged. Malines, Cassel, Dunkirk, and nine other towns followed suit at a further payment of 60,000 francs. Although the terms of surrender supposedly exempted towns from pillage, the Bretons could not be restrained. Rather than encumber themselves with furs, fabrics, and vessels, they sold their loot cheap to the people of Lille and Tournai, “caring only for silver and gold.” Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

  At Ghent, some fifty miles to the north, Philip van Artevelde summoned from the vicinity every man capable of bearing arms, assuring them they would defeat the French King and win independent sovereignty for Flanders. For months his envoys had been pressing England, but though a herald had come with terms of a treaty, no ships filled with soldiers followed. Even so, he had another ally: winter was closing in. If he had fortified his position and stayed on the defensive, he could have left it to winter and scarcity to defeat the invaders. But the threat of an internal rising by the Count’s party which might turn over Bruges to the French forced Artevelde into action, even though he still held the principal citizens of Bruges as hostages. Perhaps he was moved not by fear but overconfidence; perhaps he simply miscalculated.

  Armed with bludgeons and iron-pointed staves, with large knives in their belts and iron caps on their heads, a formidable force of “40,000” or “50,000” Flemings (in reality, probably under 20,000) was collected, led by 9,000 of Ghent on whom Philip relied most. Carrying the banners of towns and trades, they marched south to meet the enemy. Scouts reported their approach to the French, who took up a position between the hill and the town of Roosebeke a few miles from Passchendaele, where history held another bloodshed in waiting for 1916. As an Urbanist, Louis de Male was forced by the French to withhold his division from the order of battle so they should not have to fight alongside a heretic and schismatic. In rain and cold the King’s army awaited the conflict impatiently, “for they were very discomfited at being out in such weather.”

  At the final war council on the eve of combat, an extraordinary decision was taken: that Clisson should resign his office for the day of battle to be near the King’s person, and be replaced as Constable by Coucy. Very agitated and pleading that he would be thought a coward by the army, Clisson begged the King for a reversal. The bewildered boy, after a long silence, consented, “for you see further in this matter than I do or those who first proposed it.”

  What lay behind the proposal is unspoken in the chronicles; the only clue is Clisson’s fit of anxiety at the Lys. In a man who could cut off fifteen heads without a twinge, it reflected unusual tension and must have persuaded his equally tense colleagues to turn to Coucy and the extreme expedient of changing Constables in midstream. Win or lose, fighting against other knights changed nothing fundamental, but in this fight the nobles felt their order itself endangered. The sentiment is reflected by Froissart in many variations of his statement that if the French King and “noble chivalry” had met defeat in Flanders, all nobles would have been “dead and lost in France” and “commoners would have rebelled in divers countries to destroy all the nobility.”

  Artevelde on the eve of battle now favored the defensive and advised standing in place against the enemy. He had the advantage of terrain, having taken up a good position on the hill, and he believed the French in their impatience and discomfort would grow reckless or careless or even turn back. He was overruled by men still in the pride of their earlier victory over the Count at Bruges and eager for a fight. Accepting the decision, Artevelde ordered the army to give no quarter and take no prisoners other than the King, “for he is but a child who acts only as instructed. We shall bring him to Ghent and teach him to speak Flemish.” As for tactics, he commanded the men to keep always in a compact body “so that none may break you,” and for greater solidarity to hold their weapons with arms intertwined. They were to confound the enemy with the heavy fire of the crossbows and bombards they had used at Bruges and then, advancing shoulder to shoulder, overcome the French line by the sheer weight and solidity of their ranks.

  In the tension of the night before combat, Flemish guards reported shouts and clang of arms from the French camp, as if the enemy were preparing a night attack. Others thought it was “the devils of hell running and dancing about the place where the battle was to be because of the great prey they expected there.”

  On the morning of November 29, 1382, two hostile halves of society moved toward each other through a mist “so thick it was almost night.” With their horses held at the rear, the French advanced on foot and, contrary to custom, in silence without battle cries, all eyes on the dark mass ahead. Descending the hill in close order with staves upright, the Flemings appeared like a moving forest. They opened with a massive fire of crossbows and bombards, then charged with lowered staves and the force of “enraged boars.” The French plan was for the King’s battalion under the Constable to hold the center while two stronger wings—of which one was commanded by Bourbon and Coucy—closed in on the enemy from either side. Under the force of the Flemish charge, the French center gave way and in the turmoil the Bourbon-Coucy battalion found itself blocked.

  “See, good cousin,” cried Bourbon (as reported by his contemporary biographer), “we cannot advance to attack our enemies except through our Constable’s ranks.”

  “Monseigneur, you say true,” answered Coucy, here credited with devising a plan of action on the spot. “And it seems to me that if we were to advance as a wing of the King’s battalion and take the hill we should have a good day’s fight at God’s pleasure.”

  “Fair cousin, that is good advice,” Bourbon agreed, and so, as 14th century military history is written, they went up the hill and took the enemy from behind with terrible blows of lance, ax, and sword, and “whoever saw the Sire de Coucy break through the press and strike the Flemings, cutting and killing, he will forever remember a valiant knight.” In the respite afforded by this attack, the Constable’s battalion recovered and returned, along with the other wing, to the fray. Heavy battle-axes and maces cut through Flemish helmets with a noise “as loud as all the armorers of Paris and Brussels working together.” Compressed ever more tightly by the French, the Flemings were so squeezed against each other that the inner ranks could not raise arms or weapons; even breathing became difficult—they could neither strike nor cry out.

  As French lances pierced and axes hacked at the solid mass of bodies, many of whom lacked helmet or cuirass, the dead piled up in heaps. French foot soldiers, penetrating between the men-at-arms, finished off the fallen with their knives, “with no more mercy than if they had been dogs.” Under the attack of the Bourbon-Coucy wing, the Flemish rear turned and fled, throwing away their weapons as they ran. Philip van Artevelde, fighting in the front ranks, tried to rally them, but from his position could exercise no effective command. He lacked the
assurance of the Black Prince at Poitiers to retain control from a hilltop above the battle. Borne backward by the mass as the rout spread, he was trampled and killed under the feet of his own forces, as was his banner-bearer, a woman named Big Margot.

  Bourbon and Coucy, mounting their horses, led their battalion in pursuit of the fugitives, and in a fierce fight routed 3,000 Flemings from a wood where they had gathered for a final defense. The debacle was complete. While their battalion pursued and killed as far as Courtrai, Coucy and Bourbon rode back to Roosebeke, where the King “welcomed them joyously and praised God for the victory which, through their efforts, He had given.” The battle was over in the space of two hours. Many Flemish bodies were found without wounds, crushed to death under their companions’ pressure, but so many thousands were killed by French weapons that “the ground was inundated by blood.” The number of dead “miscreants” was reported in figures of fantasy, but agreement was general that few of the Flemish army survived. Fit only to be the “prey of dogs and crows,” the bodies were left unburied, so that for days afterward, the stench of the battlefield was insupportable.