A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Although Anjou had proclaimed his intention to “promote the fate of the Church by the force of chivalry”—that is, by force of arms—he failed to exert that force against Urban. Leaving the coast at Ancona to cross the Apennines early in September, he bypassed the road to Rome, although a bold effort might have taken the city at this time. Agents had brought word that Hawkwood’s White Company, promised for Urban’s defense, had been held back by Florence for her own protection. Instead, against the advice of Amadeo of Savoy, Anjou took the lower road for Naples, and as the army passed through defiles and across gorges, between peaks “that touched the sky,” calamity overtook them. Highland brigands, pulled by strings from Naples, attacked the baggage train and the rear guard escorting the treasure, with the result that Anjou arrived at Caserta, within a day’s march of Naples, very much poorer than when he set out. Reconnoitering terrain in advance was not part of medieval warfare because it was not part of tournaments. The clash was everything.

  By this time it was November. On entering Neapolitan territory, Anjou had stopped for a week at Aquila to partake in welcoming ceremonies offered by partisans of his cause. The delays in his progress allowed time for Hawkwood, released by Florence, to come to his opponent’s aid. Now in need of a quick decision, Anjou sent the traditional challenge to Durazzo demanding a time and place of battle. Charles III proved elusive. Fortified in Castel Nuovo, he counted on outlasting Anjou and exhausting his resources until he could be easily beaten and any territory he had meanwhile taken, regained. Professing himself overjoyed to accept Anjou’s challenges, Charles kept him on the move, forcing him into the expense and fatigue of marches toward a combat that vanished at every approach.

  In deepening anxiety by Christmastime, Anjou made a will and Amadeo, giving up hope of victory, proposed a negotiated peace. In return for Anjou relinquishing his claim to Naples, Charles of Durazzo was to relinquish his claim to Provence and give Anjou safe passage to the coast for return to France. Charles III rejected the terms. An arranged battle of ten champions on either side was then agreed upon and, as usual when the stakes were important, did not take place.

  In February of 1383 an epidemic spread among the army in the mountains above Naples, carrying off large numbers, among them Amadeo of Savoy, at the age of 49. On March 1, a dreary year away from the snows of Savoy, the splendid green career came to an end. Hurriedly summoned, Anjou wept helpless tears at the deathbed.

  Foiled and hungry, the Angevin forces retreated to the heel of Italy. All that remained of the kingly treasure was used to buy provisions. Anjou’s gold and silver plate brought little money and even his nuptial crown, which he had brought to serve at his coronation, had to be sold. The resplendent hauberk embroidered in gold, worn over his armor, went too, and he wore in its place a simple cloth with fleur-delys painted in yellow. In place of the delicate meats and pastries he was accustomed to, he ate rabbit stew and barley bread. As the months went by, starving pack animals could not move and war-horses, “instead of pawing the ground and whinnying with pride, languished with lowered heads like common beasts.”

  Ever since he had left Paris, Anjou had been bombarding the Council by letter and messenger to fulfill its promise to finance a supplementary campaign against Naples under the command of Enguerrand de Coucy. While still in Avignon, he had urged his agent in Paris, Pierre Gérard, to make every effort to engage Coucy. No money was to be paid to him until he had committed himself in writing to join Anjou, but Gérard was instructed “always to proceed with this seigneur as graciously as possible.” Pope Clement urgently supported Anjou’s pleas to the crown, reporting “superb” offers from various parts of Italy and every promise of success, and expressing his deep chagrin at the refusal of the French Council to aid an enterprise on which the health of the Church depended. Nevertheless, Anjou was left dangling through the year of Roosebeke. Not until after the suppression of Paris, when the Treasury had been replenished by fines, was the crown ready to fulfill its promise. By this time Amadeo was dead and the “army of Xerxes” huddled in misery at Bari.

  Coucy was ready and eager to go to Anjou’s aid. He was in constant consultation in Paris with Anjou’s chancellor, Bishop Jean le Fèvre, and repeatedly asked to know if Le Fèvre had obtained a positive reply from the King. At last, in April 1383, the Council agreed to give Anjou 190,000 francs, of which 80,000 represented aids levied on his own possessions. Just at that moment, England in a last infirmity of war hunger, launched yet another invasion. All energies were turned to meet it, and all men-at-arms, by order of the Duke of Burgundy, were prohibited from leaving the kingdom. Coucy’s expedition was frustrated. An army was indeed organized, not for Italy but once again for Flanders where the English had seized Dunkirk.

  Led by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, the English raid was the fruition of Urban’s effort for a “crusade” against schismatic France. It began in scandal and was to end in fiasco. The moral harm done to papal obedience in England by the methods of financing the “crusade” outweighed anything the papacy could have gained, even with success. Friars as papal agents were endowed with “wonderful indulgences” and extra powers to sell or, worse, to refuse absolution “unless the people gave according to their ability and estate.” Even the sacrament was at times withheld from parishioners who refused an offering to the crusade. Gold, silver, jewels, and money were collected, especially, according to Knighton, “from ladies and other women.… Thus the secret treasure of the realm, which was in the hands of women, was drawn out.” Protest was re-invigorated and evoked one of Wyclif’s last tracts, “Against Clerical Wars.” Lollard preachers denounced “these worldly prelates … chief captains and arrayers of Satan’s battles to exile good life and charity.” Because of the false nature of the absolutions, they said, “No tongue may tell how many souls go to hell by these cursed captains and Anti-Christs’ jurisdictions and censures.”

  Norwich was a prelate not merely martial but actively bellicose. Though a bishop, he was described by Walsingham as “young, unbridled and insolent … endowed neither with learning nor discretion, experienced neither in preserving nor bestowing friendship.” By the time he had gathered sufficient funds and a force of about 5,000, his intended allies in Ghent were sadly subdued. He succeeded, however, after landing at Calais, in quickly taking Gravelines, Dunkirk, and Bourbourg on the Flemish coast. After laying siege to Ypres without success, he turned his attentions to Picardy, then defended by Coucy as Captain-General. Norwich withdrew without a fight when half his force under the veteran Sir Hugh Calveley refused to follow him farther. A greatly superior French army having now taken the field, Norwich hurriedly shut himself up in Bourbourg while Calveley made for Calais. “By my faith,” said that veteran captain in disgust, “we have made a most shameful campaign; none so poor or so disgraceful ever issued out of England.” Such was the result, he said, of believing “this Bishop of Norwich who wished to fly before he had wings.”

  A huge French army settled down in August to the siege of Bourbourg, entertaining each other and visiting foreign knights in jousts and festivities of competitive splendor and valorous exploits designed “to raise the fame of their antique nobility.” In these activities Coucy made an impressive showing, especially for his equestrian style. Mounted on a beautiful horse and leading several others caparisoned in all the heraldic arms belonging to his house, “he rode from side to side in the most graceful manner to the delight of all who saw him, and all praised and honored him for his great air and fine presence.” Four months passed pleasurably before Bourbourg in very different mood from the fight against the commoners of the year before. The French exhibited no ardor for assault and, at the approach of winter, allowed the affair to be brought to an end through some tricky mediation by the Duke of Brittany. Norwich was bought off and went home to deficit and disgrace. England’s military repute, already declining for a decade, sank further, supplying moralists with a text against the injustices and oppressions of men of the sword. “God’
s hand is against them,” said Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, “because their hand is against God.”

  Although the belligerents could not know it, the Norwich invasion was destined to be the last of the century, though not of the war. Combat faded without bringing settlement between England and France any closer. Parleys began as usual after the siege of Bourbourg, but could agree on nothing better than a nine months’ truce signed in January 1384. Coucy was not this time one of the negotiators because he was engaged in a private war on behalf of his future relative, the Duc de Bar, his daughter’s prospective father-in-law, who very promptly paid him 2,000 francs to cover his expenses. Marie’s marriage to Henri de Bar was afterward celebrated in November.

  All this time the Duchesse d’Anjou and her husband’s chancellor, Jean le Fèvre, were imploring the Council to deliver the promised aid. Anjou’s situation now was needier than ever because he had been robbed by one of his own nobles of 80,000 to 100,000 francs collected for him by his wife (or, according to other versions, borrowed from the Visconti). The robber, who ten years later was to commit another crime of historic consequence, was Pierre de Craon, a knight of noble birth and large estates who had accompanied the Duke to Italy. Sent by Anjou to fetch the money, Craon returned via Venice where he dissipated most of it in extravagant parties, gambling, and debauchery, supposedly from a desire to display himself in a style suitable to the sovereign he represented. He kept what was left and did not rejoin the Duke.

  Such casual criminality against his lord seems close to incredible unless someone interested in Anjou’s failure and powerful enough to protect Craon from prosecution had put him up to it. That person could only have been the Duke of Burgundy, but that he would go so far as to ruin his brother seems far-fetched. When Craon returned to France, however, he did escape punishment through the protection of Burgundy to whose wife he was related.

  The honor of France, in the eyes of the King and Council, could not allow Anjou to languish in failure nor give that much comfort to Pope Urban. In the spring of 1384, after truce was concluded with England, and after Burgundy, on the death of his father-in-law, entered into possession of Flanders, Coucy’s campaign of rescue was launched at last. It was already late to save Anjou, but Coucy was not a captain to fly before he had wings. In the duel of arms and wits he was about to wage in the heart of Italy, he showed himself adroit, responsible, and gifted with that magic faculty of emerging invincible from surrounding disaster.

  In May before leaving, he founded, as he had before the Swiss campaign, a perpetual daily mass for himself and his successors, this time at the Abbey of St. Médard near Soissons, assuring him double coverage. Toward the cost of his expedition, the crown supplied 78,000 francs, of which 8,000 were to be repaid by the Pope. Another 4,000 was given to Coucy in compensation for the non-payment of aids promised him in the preceding year. He assembled an army estimated at 1,500 lances, amounting with foot soldiers and archers to a total of about 9,000 men. Miles de Dormans, the former Chancellor, who had been eager to go for the past year, joined with 200 lances. The bulk of the force was evidently made up by mercenaries, partly recruited in Avignon, where Coucy went first for consultations with Clement.

  In July he crossed the Alps by way of Mont Cenis bearing powers to conclude the marriage by proxy of Anjou’s son and Bernabò’s daughter. A message from Bernabò invited him to enter Milan with 200 of his highest-ranking companions, which Coucy, whether from pomp or caution, enlarged to 600. Welcomed “with much joy” by Bernabò outside the gates, they entered the city together, “but such was the great number of men that they broke the bridge.” This seems to have been Coucy’s only faux-pas and did not detract from opulent ceremonies and a daily parade of gifts during a visit that lasted two weeks.

  Two weeks was not too long to chart a course through the labyrinthine rivalries of Italy. The interrelationships of Venice, Genoa, Milan, Piedmont, Florence, and assorted despots and communes of northern Italy were constantly shifting. As soon as one power joined another against a third for that season’s advantage, all alliances and feuds changed partners as if in a trecento square dance. Venice feuded with Genoa, Milan played off one against the other and feuded with Florence and the several principalities of Piedmont, Florence feuded with its neighbors, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca, and formed various leagues against Milan; papal politics kept the whole mass quivering.

  Coucy’s first hazard lay underfoot in the mutual jealousy between Bernabò and his melancholy nephew Gian Galeazzo, who now ruled in Pavia since the death of his father in 1378. Subtle, secretive, and deceptively mild, Gian Galeazzo cultivated a public repute for timidity and a hidden will as strong and unprincipled as Bernabò’s. In later years when he was better known, Francesco Carrara of Padua said of him, “I know Gian Galeazzo. Neither honor nor pity nor sworn faith ever yet inclined him to do a disinterested deed. If he ever seeks what is good, it is because his interest requires it, for he is without moral sense. Goodness, like hate or anger, is for him a matter of calculation.” As an opponent, Carrara’s opinion was naturally inimical but not necessarily invalid; the character it ascribed to Gian Galeazzo anticipated by more than a century Machiavelli’s Prince.

  Gian Galeazzo resented and feared Bernabò’s intrusion on his own prior relationship with the French royal family. “Bernabò is making fresh alliances with France,” warned his mother. “If he becomes related, he will seize upon your sovereignty.” With his one remaining child against Bernabò’s well-filled stable, Gian Galeazzo could not match his uncle in alliances. If he could not match him, he could remove him, a cold alternative that from this moment—as was later recognized—began to take shape in his mind.

  Meanwhile, he quietly paid his share of the subsidy for Anjou and prepared to welcome Coucy to Pavia. It was ten years since their encounter at Montichiari which had so confirmed Gian Galeazzo’s distaste for battle that he had never again taken the field. But Coucy did not appear in Pavia to renew the acquaintance, probably because Bernabò did not wish his nephew and the French envoy to meet.

  Agitation in northern Italy was intense at news of Coucy’s advent. Siena sent envoys secretly to Milan to bargain for support against Florence. Florence sent envoys to divert him from Tuscany by gracious words and protestations of friendship. Florentine diplomacy was conducted by the permanent chancellor, Coluccio Salutati, a cultivated scholar who could frame his foreign correspondence in elegant Latin rhetoric that reflected credit on the republic. The continuity of his office, which was equivalent to that of a chief administrator, gave him great influence, and the fact that his appointment was regularly renewed over a period of thirty years is evidence—given the turbulence of Florentine politics—of a man of remarkable political ability, not to say equanimity. His heart was in literature and the new humanism, but in the conduct of affairs he was efficient, diligent, learned, and genial, admired for his integrity and style. According to Gian Galeazzo, a state paper by Salutati carried in the political scales the weight of a thousand horsemen. This was Coucy’s opponent.

  In response to the Florentine greetings, Coucy was surpassingly gracious. “We met,” states the report probably written by Salutati, “with joyful embraces and greetings and he spoke reassuringly and peacefully to us. He called us not friends and brothers but his very fathers and masters.… Not only did he promise to abstain from hostility toward us, but he pledged to support us with his army in our own affairs.” Coucy had clearly learned the Italian manner. He assured the Florentines their fears were fanciful and promised to confine his passage to a strictly limited route. They accepted his assurances, perhaps less because they trusted them than because, with Hawkwood absent in Naples, they did not have an armed force capable of barring his way. Neutral but suspicious, they raised a company of 4,000 peasants and commoners to guard the route.

  Starting in August, Coucy crossed the Apennines and entered the land of the “Tuscan miracle” on the west. Cypress stood out against the rich blue sky, vineyards and s
ilver olive trees clung to the slopes. Between hills topped by castle or village, slow white oxen moved through a landscape hand-tended for 2,000 years. The French army penetrated harshly in a progress that was not the peaceful one Coucy had promised. To their stupor et dolor (shock and grief), as the Florentines afterward complained bitterly to the King of France, they learned “he was not the same toward us in his heart as he outwardly feigned.” Partly as a form of intimidation to remind Florence to stay neutral, partly to pay and provision his mercenaries, Coucy exacted tribute from towns, looted villages, even seized castles. Florence sent more envoys crying, “Peace! Peace!” and offering rich gifts and further assurance of neutrality if he would bypass Florentine territory. Coucy continued to answer soothingly, but force once employed quickly became rapine, difficult to restrain.

  “They not only stole geese and hens, robbed the dovecotes and made off with sheep, rams, and cattle,” according to the Florentine complaint, “they actually stormed our unarmed walls and undefended homes as if they were at war with us. They took people captive and tortured them and forced them to pay ransom. They killed men and women in cruel ways and set fire to their empty houses.”

  As Coucy advanced, Florence learned with dismay that he was in communication with the exiled lords of Arezzo, an ancient and important hill town forty miles to the southeast which the Florentines had long coveted and were preparing to annex. Its history dated back to the Etruscans, its famous red glazed pottery to the Romans; from its cluster of towers with belvederes and balconies, St. Francis in Giotto’s painting exorcised flying demons. In the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, its ruling family, the Tarlati, lords of Pietramala, had been overthrown in 1380, and the winning side, too weak to maintain control, had called in the help of Charles of Durazzo. He or his agents treated Arezzo as a conquered city subject to the usual sack and fines of inhabitants, who in consequence looked more favorably on Florence. After complex bargaining, the Florentines had all but concluded an arrangement to buy the city from Durazzo when Coucy’s intervention threatened to wreck all their hopes. They learned that the exiled lords of Pietramala had offered to assist him in capturing the city and that he had concluded a treaty with them to that effect. Coucy’s object was to gain a foothold for the Angevin cause and a position from which he could exert pressure on Florence for supplies. If he drew against himself Hawkwood’s company from Naples, the forces opposing Anjou would thereby be weakened.