A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  To ensure a foolproof case for canonization, the hearings on Pierre’s qualifications lasted six months and took evidence from 72 witnesses on 285 different articles. As Witness Eight in the first week, Coucy testified from personal knowledge, telling how, when Pierre went to take possession of the Bishopric of Metz, he had required the men-at-arms of his brother, Count Waleran de Pol, to evict the Urbanist clerics who held the episcopal property. When Waleran demanded to be reimbursed from the revenues of the bishopric, Pierre had said he would rather die than bind the lands of the Church, whereupon such discord arose between the brothers that Coucy himself had to take custody of the Church property until a settlement could be reached. He added that he had known Pierre from childhood and marveled at his piety, nor had he ever seen at Avignon a youth of such virtue.

  All the roll of witnesses was not enough. Whether Clement’s own unholiness quailed before a question of sainthood or he hesitated for some other reason, he let the process lapse, and his own reputation as Anti-Pope kept it from being revived for 140 years. Pierre de Luxemburg was ultimately beatified but not canonized in 1527.

  In company with the King and court, Coucy returned to Paris via Dijon, where the Duke of Burgundy was prepared to “dissemble”—as he did everything—in a very grand manner, with a view to restoring himself to favor. An entire book has been written about the festivities, liveries, banquets, tournaments, gifts, and costs of this occasion, but amidst the accumulating troubles of the 14th century these extravaganzas recur so regularly that astonishment fades.

  Incidental to displaying political status, such festivities must have supplied economic stimulus. For the King’s visit to Burgundy, tailors, embroiderers, goldsmiths, armorers, and all trades and crafts received orders for goods and services. The Duke alone ordered 320 new lances to present to competitors. All the towns of Burgundy which the King would visit en route received funds for cleaning and decorating and even repaving streets and squares. Dijon itself, with its forest of spires and bell towers and chimneys fitted with iron grills to keep storks from nesting, its narrow twisting streets and taverns of ill repute, had to begin by clearing away animal ordure. Dogs, cats, pigs, and sheep wandered freely through its dark wooden arcades, the pigs especially contributing to the filth and smells. Voracious feeders, quarrelsome and “unsociable,” they were the subject of constant complaints for biting and, in one case, eating a child, for which the guilty animal was executed by hanging. Regulations prohibiting the keeping of pigs in the city and the disposal of their ordure in the river had little effect.

  Because there was no hall large enough to accommodate all the guests, a gigantic tent requiring 30,100 ells of cloth was ordered to cover the palace courtyard. Thriftily, after the event, the cloth was cut up and sold in lots. The amount of fabric consumed for blue satin draperies to be hung in all the ducal rooms, for 300 gowns of silk and damask for attending ladies, and as many doublets of parti-colored velvet and satin for the knights, must have emptied Flanders. How many needlewomen were employed to embroider the draperies with the Duke’s “Il me tarde” entwined with his wife’s initials against a background of azure doves perched in a forest of orange and lemon trees? How many carpenters and laborers found work razing walls, cutting down trees, flattening the ground, and constructing covered grandstands for three days of tournaments in February weather? When the host alone had thirty war-horses on hand for the events, the total number would have required an army of grooms and stable hands. Jongleurs, actors of miracle plays, acrobats, and animal trainers flocked to the town to entertain the people while the nobles jousted.

  Coucy, even at fifty, was a—or possibly the—prize-winner of the tournament, receiving a pearl-and-sapphire clasp from the Duchess in reward. In the farewell exchange of gifts (and careful account was kept of the price tag of each), Burgundy upstaged the King by giving him a more expensive present than the King gave to the Duchess. The ceremonies concluded with singing and dancing by the ladies and damsels, “for love of the King, the Duc de Touraine [Orléans], the Duc de Bourbon and the Sire de Coucy.”

  Soon after Charles’s return to Paris, his promise to think of nothing but reuniting the Church was put aside in favor of Genoa’s alluring enterprise against the Kingdom of Barbary. Here was a ready-made adventure with no need of the serious political maneuvering required in the papal cause. Crusade, even if it had little to do with the cross, gave prestige to the participants, not to mention the privilogium crucis allowing a moratorium on their debts and immunity from lawsuit. While “the fire of valor enflamed all hearts,” certain cautions were observed: the Council limited the number of knights who could leave the country to 1,500, and none could go without the King’s leave. All who joined were to equip themselves at their own expense and recruit no followers from outside their own domains.

  Louis d’Orléans, bent on replacing his uncle of Burgundy as the dominant figure of the realm, wanted the command and showered gifts on influential nobles in the hope of acquiring it. His uncle exerted enough influence to keep it from him, on the grounds of Louis’ youth and inexperience, thus adding more fuel to their rivalry. Burgundy had too many interests at stake at home to want to leave the country; Berry was out of favor and not a warrior. The Duc de Bourbon, eager to find glory in the footsteps of St. Louis, who had died on the shores of Tunis in his last crusade, was accordingly chosen, with Coucy as second in command.

  In the gesture of a great prince, Coucy established a church and monastery before his departure. Since the religious life was acknowledged as superior to the secular, the founding of a religious institution was a way of partaking in the extra merit of the Church. Besides, as the Duke of Burgundy said when he founded a Carthusian monastery at Champmol in 1385, “For the soul’s salvation nothing suffices like the prayers of pious monks.”

  Coucy chose the Célestin Order, whose extremities of renunciation had made it so paradoxically the favorite of a nobility steeped in worldliness. Was the preference indeed paradox, or was it spiritual discomfort and a need for penitence in a life so far removed from the principles it professed? The duality of life under the Christian faith showed itself in Louis d’Orléans’ hastening from riches and pleasures and political intrigue to stony vigils in the Célestin cloister. Sharing the monks’ austerities relieved the pricking of self-disgust. Even the Count of Foix, a hard-headed materialist well acquainted with wrath, vainglory, and other sins, composed his own “Book of Prayers” in which he acknowledged the great suffering that results from coming to believe that “God no longer exists and that good and evil fortunes come from the nature of things, without God being there. After that comes death, the death of body and soul.”

  Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated. In this anxiety, Chaucer toward the end of his life, in his envoy to the Parson’s Tale, was moved to “revoke” his life’s work—The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and all the poems that were not pious—and to beg Christ to forgive him for writing these “worldly vanities … so that I may be one of those at the day of doom that shall be saved.” Christianity held a tragic power indeed if the need for salvation could lead a man to recant his own creation.

  The 13th century founder of the Célestin Order had as a youth chosen a hermit’s life in a cave in order to devote himself to God while achieving the most complete renunciation of self and nature compatible with life. He had spent sixteen hours a day in prayer, wearing a hair shirt and fasting on water and cabbage leaves through six “Lents” of forty days each during the year. Attracting disciples and fame, he succumbed to election as Pope Célestin V; then, in bitter repentance, and in an act unique for the papacy, resigned, to return to self-affliction and the search for God. The order named for him, growing in favor with popes and kings, was exempted from tithes and authorized to grant 200 years of indulgences to truly penitential persons who visited its convents on holy days.

  There is no evidence that Coucy made a
habit of visits to the Order and none at all to suggest that he was a man troubled in spirit. In all likelihood, his choice did not reflect any burden of anxiety so much as the fact that the greater austerities practiced by the Célestin monks gave greater assurance of salvation to their patrons.

  His charter, dated April 26, 1390, opens with the characteristic self-assurance of the Coucys: “Considering that the pilgrimage and the temporal and worldly goods of this transitory life are ordered among those who can, and know how, best to use and edify them, and to store up treasure for God who has loaned us these goods,” and for the purpose of perpetual prayers for himself, his present wife, his ancestors and successors and all knights and ladies of his Order of the Crown, he ordains and establishes a monastery for twelve monks of the Célestin Order on his property at Villeneuve on the banks of the Aisne outside Soissons.

  He endowed the monastery with 400 livres of annual income secured to the said Order by a copious variety of legal safeguards. And if at any time the income falls short of 400 livres, he specifies how the sum shall be made up so that the monks shall “peaceably possess the said revenues without any constraint of mortgage by us or our successors.” In any future disputes, the monks shall have “the counsel, comfort and aid of us and our officers of justice, our councillors and servants as if it were our own quarrel.” The Célestins evidently had a sharp lawyer working on the deed or else Coucy himself was taking great pains in the perpetual attempt of donors to outflank the future.

  The foundation remained very much on his mind in coming years. When the buildings were still unfinished after a certain time, he added another 200 livres of annual income to bring them to completion. Later still he made over to the Célestins a fine large mansion in Soissons belonging to the confrérie of Archers in order that the monks might have a place of shelter in time of war and be enabled to continue the monastic life, which, judging from another gift, had increased in comfort. Informed that the monks had not enough wine—which their predecessors had done without—Enguerrand arranged for them to buy a vineyard large enough to provide a sufficient annual supply. Owing to a failure to sign the charter for this gift before his death, the vineyard was to become one of the monastery’s several claims in an acrimonious suit against his heirs.

  The noblest of the kingdom assembled for the enterprise against Barbary, joined by knights from Hainault and Flanders as well as an English party from Calais headed by the Duke of Lancaster’s bastard son, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, progenitor of the Tudor line. Clisson the Constable stayed behind to guard the country and leave his opponent Burgundy no free hand. Otherwise the group included, besides Bourbon and Coucy, all the great names: Admiral de Vienne; Comte d’Eu, whose prominence was owed to family rank; Jean d’Harcourt VII; Philippe de Bar, brother of Coucy’s son-in-law; Geoffrey Boucicaut, brother of the more famous Jean; Yvain, bastard son of the Count of Foix; and a notable Gascon called the Soudic de la Trau, “one of the valiant knights of the world.”

  The King financed Bourbon to the extent of 12,000 francs and distributed more than 20,000 among the other lords. Bourbon borrowed another 20,000 from Louis d’Orléans, secured against the revenues of his estates. Coucy, who had just been paid 6,000 francs by the crown to cover his expenses in Avignon and Languedoc, and had borrowed 10,000 more from Louis d’Orléans, was “better supported than any” except Bourbon. He and Comte d’Eu brought, evidently between them, a following of 200 knights. Pope Clement gave a plenary indulgence, which was generous considering that his own purpose had been deflected, and perhaps overgenerous since it was supposed to apply only to a crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem. Indeed, except for Jerusalem, according to the honest Bonet, war “should not be made against unbelievers,” because God had made the world for all and “we cannot and ought not to constrain or force unbelievers to receive Holy Baptism or the Holy Faith.”

  The French party met their Genoese transports at Marseille, from where they sailed to Genoa to take on provisions, archers and foot soldiers, and the foreign knights. The knights and squires numbered between 1,400 and 1,500 and the total force probably about 5,000, not counting perhaps 1,000 sailors to man some forty galleys and twenty cargo ships. Bourbon, Coucy, Comte d’Eu and the valiant Soudic went ashore to be entertained by the Doge of Genoa, who presented them with gifts of spices, syrups, prunes of Damascus, and “other liqueurs good for sickness.” These did not make up for a shortfall in provisions. Bourbon had to supply an added 200 casks of wine, 200 flitch of bacon, and 2,000 chickens for the sick and wounded. Shortage of space required that many horses be left behind, which, to spare their upkeep, had to be sold at less than half their value. At the final moment, embarrassment arose as to which clergy should bless the fleet since Genoa and France acknowledged different papacies. For the convenience of war, allies might bridge the schism. In the end, two priests officiated, representing both popes.

  These difficulties overcome, the imposing armada that prepared to sail on July 1, 1390, was a thrilling spectacle and for long afterward a favorite subject of the illuminators. Needless to name the verbal illuminator who wrote, “What a beautiful thing it is to see this fleet with the emblazoned banners of different lords glittering in the sun and fluttering in the wind, and to hear, when the musicians blow their clarions and trumpets, the sound of those voices carried and echoed over the sea.”

  Ill fortune was encountered almost at once when a furious storm off Elba dispersed the fleet and caused a delay of nine days before all were collected again at the rendezvous at Malta. In the last week of July the fleet sailed up to Mahdia, located on the downward curve of the north African coast 100 miles south and east of Tunis. The walled town stood at the center and highest point of a narrow mile-long peninsula, its well-fortified harbor defended by a chain and towers equipped with stone-hurling machines.

  The invaders decided to send ashore a landing party under Coucy, to act as advance guard and distract the enemy while the main party landed next day. With the young and excitable Comte d’Eu as associate leader, Coucy’s party of 600 to 800 men-at-arms supported by Genoese archers set forth in beach landing craft powered by oars. As the rowers thrust their vessels over the calm sea, the waters, partaking of the pathetic fallacy long before its time, “seemed to delight in bearing these Christians to the shores of the infidels.” Landing craft usually carried up to twenty horses, whose riders mounted while on board and, with helmet down and lance in hand, landed through wide doors at the stern, charged the enemy, and if pursued, rode back aboard their vessel, which was then rowed out to sea again.

  Coucy was the first ashore and drew up his party in battle formation to meet attack. None came. Warned of the coming invasion and believing his force inferior in arms to the Christians, the Berber Sultan Abou-’l-Abbas had decided to allow a landing without risking a fight. Thereafter, avoiding general battle, he would let the invaders wear themselves out against stone walls under the August sun while keeping them constantly harassed by glancing attacks until exhaustion, heat, failing supplies, and inability to bring up reinforcements defeated their efforts. It was the same strategy that Charles V had devised against the English, and that many times since then had served the defense well.

  Confident of victory over the despised infidels, the crusaders established their camp of bright-colored tents before the city, with Bourbon’s pavilion flying the fleur-de-lys at the center and the Genoese crossbowmen on the wings. They could blockade Mahdia by sea and by land across the waist of the peninsula, but the city had stored up some provisions and had access to fresh water through underground canals. Shaped like a triangle, it harbored a large population and a garrison of 6,000, supposedly in underground living quarters. Knowing that if Mahdia fell, the Christians could march unobstructed to the conquest of Tunisia, the Sultan had strengthened Mahdia’s defenses at all points and called upon the aid of neighboring kings to assemble a field army in the hinterland.

  For three days no move interrupted the invaders’ siege p
reparations until on the third evening the Berbers suddenly poured with fierce yells from the fortress. Thanks to an alert system of guards around the Christian camp, they were thrown back, leaving 300 dead. The city resumed its silent resistance while the Christians, to prevent the horsemen from again dashing in, erected a four-foot-high barrier of stakes held together by rope, with crossed oars and lances serving as cover for archers, and guards posted every 120 feet.

  From a distance the sound of drums and clarions signaled the approach of the Saracens’ relief army, reported to number 40,000. Camping behind the city, they ventured no major offensive but kept up a series of stinging raids on swift horses, descending on the Christians when the sun was hottest, forcing them into combat in their heavy armor. The Europeans were “almost burned up” inside their steel while the Berbers wore cuirasses of quilted cloth or leather. If pursued, they dispersed rapidly, only to regroup and pursue the enemy, who, burdened by armor, lost many dead. Almost every day and sometimes at night for the next six to seven weeks, the skirmishes continued.

  Genoese ships supplied the Christian camp by sea with provisions from Sicily and Calabria, but deliveries were irregular, leaving privation during the gaps. The heavy wine imported by the Genoese caused lethargy. Heat and thirst, wounds and fevers, and illness from bad water—the same conditions, except for plague, suffered by the crusade of St. Louis—preyed upon the besiegers. Swarms of insects as well as the impregnability of the town depressed their spirits. They tried to ration provisions and to encourage one another. “The Sire de Coucy in particular,” according to loyal Froissart, “looked after the welfare of the poorer knights and squires whereas the Duc de Bourbon was indifferent, and sat cross-legged in front of his pavilion requiring everyone to address him through a third person with many reverences, not caring whether the lesser knights were embarrassed. The Sire de Coucy, by contrast, put them at ease. He was kind to all and behaved more graciously than the Duc de Bourbon who never conversed with the foreign knights and squires in the agreeable manner of the Sire de Coucy.”