A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Having brought no battering rams to break down walls, the besiegers began construction of a huge assault tower on wheels. It was three stories high, to overtop Mahdia’s walls, and forty feet square with enclosed sides. Meanwhile, the defenders, suffering from the blockade, sent envoys to parley. Conducted before Bourbon and Coucy, who listened attentively to the speech as translated by a Genoese, the envoys asked why the French and English knights had come to make war on those who had not harmed them. They said they had troubled only the Genoese, which was natural among neighbors, for it had been customary “to seize mutually all we can from each other.”

  The answer required care to be sure of making a good case for a just war. Bourbon and Coucy consulted with twelve of the leading lords and, evidently on the assumption that infidels were ignorant, replied that they came to make war on the Saracens because they were unbelievers “with no creed of their own,” which made them enemies, and also to retaliate upon their forefathers “for having crucified and put to death the son of God called Jesus Christ.”

  “At this answer the Saracens did nothing but laugh, saying it was the Jews who had crucified Jesus Christ and not they.” The parley evidently ended there.

  Subsequently, a Berber and a Christian, meeting outside the walls, entered a dispute—probably not spontaneous, because the Berbers were looking for a way to take prisoners—on the relative merit of their religions. The Berber offered a challenge to decide the issue by the combat of ten champions from each side. Instantly responding, ten crusaders, including Guy and Guillaume de Tremolile, Geoffrey Boucicaut, and two English knights, presented themselves, while the camp buzzed in excited anticipation of the event. Only Coucy disapproved.

  “Hold your tongues, you who never consider consequences,” he said. “I see no advantage in this combat.” Suppose the Saracens were to send not knights but mere varlets, what honor or advantage would be gained in defeating them? Suppose the challenge were a ruse to seize Christian knights as prisoners, of which they had so far taken none? Such a fight could not take Mahdia, whatever its outcome. Moreover, a trial at arms, especially with an unfamiliar enemy, should never be accepted without great deliberation nor without authority of the Senior Council and full knowledge of the challengers’ identity by name and surname, rank and arms. Coucy rebuked the champions for indiscipline and for failure of the subordination to high command which ought to prevail in an army. In that concept he was ahead of his countrymen.

  Although his advice won many adherents, others supported Comte d’Eu and Philippe de Bar, who insisted that the challenge, having been accepted, could not be disavowed and that combat must ensue. Led by Geoffrey Boucicaut, who in his “overflowing pride” offered to fight with twenty against forty, the champions duly rode forth in their armor to the appointed time and place. A throng of their comrades accompanied them, increasing in numbers by the moment until virtually all the able-bodied were present, leaving the camp guarded only by the sick under the command of Coucy. Seeing such numbers, the Berber champions preferred not to appear.

  Intending to prevent the clash, doubtless on Coucy’s advice, the Duc de Bourbon hurries up on his mule, to find himself surrounded by several thousand excited warriors. Fearing that he will not be obeyed if he orders retreat, he decides to let the occasion govern. Beginning with an attack on the enemy camp, battle is joined and fiercely waged. The Christians harm but cannot destroy the greatly superior Saracen army, and, suffocating in their armor, themselves suffer many losses. They are bathed in sweat, gasping for breath through open mouths and dilated nostrils, devoured by thirst. The wounded breathe their last in the arms of their comrades; the exhausted sink to the ground to lie motionless. By twilight even D’Eu counsels retreat on the ground that if the Saracens charge the camp, “there is no one there but the Sire de Coucy with a few men and many sick; they could all be lost,” and the camp overrun.

  Accounts differ widely as to casualties: two knights and four squires, according to Bourbon’s biographer; no less than sixty, many of whom he names, according to Froissart. Whatever the number, they were lost in a pointless battle.

  Frustration compounded the physical miseries of a siege that had lasted two months without result. Talk of raising the siege was heard. Grumblers said that skirmishing could never take the town. For every one of the enemy slain, ten could take his place because the Saracens were in their own country. Winter was coming with long and cold nights, and suspicion rose that the Genoese, “who are rude people and traitors,” might desert, sailing away by night in their ships. Impatient at the long lapse in trade, the Genoese were indeed growing restless. They said they had expected the French to take Mahdia within two weeks but, as matters were going, they would never conquer the town, much less Tunisia, this year or next. Amid these doubts and discontents, a War Council was convened which agreed on a final major effort to take Mahdia by assault.

  The day was carnage. Resistance of the Saracen field army, led by the Sultan’s sons, was intense. Mahdia’s garrison, fighting “in the certitude of a glorious reward in the other world,” poured from the walls a shower of arrows, stones, and burning oil which succeeded in destroying the crusaders’ great assault tower. Men-at-arms on ladders climbed to the very brink of the walls to be toppled back. Despite the strongest assaults, which almost carried one of the city’s three gates, Mahdia could not be taken. The Berber field army was repelled, but, as so often in France, the walled city withstood its enemies.

  Afterward, both sides were ready to end hostilities. The beleaguered Berbers, suffering invasion and blockade, had no advantage in prolonging war on their own soil. With their lighter arms and tactics, they could not hope for decisive victory in the field. The Genoese instigators of the enterprise were more than ready for withdrawal. While they negotiated terms with the Berbers, the invaders struck camp. Bright banners came down, tents were rolled up, withdrawal to the ships was completed nine weeks after the landing. “As you were the first to land, good cousin,” said Bourbon to Coucy, “I wish to be the last to embark”—a less exigent choice.

  The treaty concluded by the Genoese secured terms which the French were able to declare honorable, allowing them to depart without shame, if without victory. Indeed, at the last War Council held to discuss the terms, they convinced themselves they had done well. To maintain a siege for two months against three Saracen kings and a strong city, said the Soudic de la Trau, was a thing “as honorable as if I had been in three battles.” Other speakers gladly took his cue, and all, including Coucy, agreed to accept the terms.

  One more enterprise, the fourth since the Scottish fiasco, had ended in vain, not for lack of will or courage or fighting capacity, but from the headlong undertaking of a militarily impractical task. The strength of walls against men, the problems of siege to the besieger, the risks of overseas supply were as well known to knights as the inside of their helmets. They could have known the conditions of North Africa from the rout of St. Louis’ two crusades, regardless of the time elapsed; 120 years ago was but yesterday insofar as change was expected. Military carelessness had some excuse, however. In a period of poor communication, advance intelligence was usually lacking. Mahdia’s fortified strength could well have been unsuspected. Ignorance of the foe was a condition of the time; contempt for this foe, a condition of its mentality.

  Froissart claimed that knights said to him afterward, “If the Sire de Coucy had been in command, the result would have been different.” This is unlikely. Although lack of command structure played a part in the outcome, what principally vitiated the siege of Barbary was lack of a vital interest. When that was present, when the stakes were serious, as in the recovery of France under Charles V, a strategy compatible with its object was imposed, recklessness and improvidence disallowed. For the French, the Tunisian campaign was merely chivalric adventure with a religious overlay. What moved knights to war was desire to do deeds of valor augmented by zeal for the faith, not the gaining of a political end by force of arms. They we
re concerned with the action, not the goal—which was why the given goal was so rarely attained.

  In France, where no word had been received of the expedition’s fate, processions and prayers were held to implore God’s mercy on the crusaders who fought in His name. Charles VI visited Coucy-le-Château in September, perhaps to comfort the young Dame de Coucy in her anxiety, or to inspect again a property coveted by the crown and which might soon be lordless. Rejoicing was loud when news came of the crusaders’ return to Genoa in mid-October. More of the sick died there and others recovered slowly from their hardships. After a winter’s crossing of the Alps, it was another six weeks before Bourbon and Coucy reached Paris, followed from time to time by their companions.

  Interval and distance muted the truth. Despite a return without booty, ransom, or prisoners, they were greeted as if victorious (as were their opponents in Moslem halls). As far as France knew to the contrary, an impression of triumph over the infidel could prevail. There were no foreign correspondents in Tunisia to report, and no newspapers in France to publish, the frustrations of the campaign. Losses in killed and missing amounting to 274 knights and squires, or just short of 20 percent, left no negative impression; they were customary. In the end, France was admired for the undertaking, not least by Genoa, because the appearance of the French as her fighting allies sufficiently alarmed the Berbers to cause them for the present to reduce their piracy.

  Eager to hear all that had happened, King Charles questioned Bourbon and Coucy and the rest. Not the least discouraged by their accounts, he declared that as soon as peace could be made with England and within the Church, he would gladly go with a royal army to those parts “to exalt the Christian faith and confound the infidels.” Among the participants, memories of pain and futility faded, and when within a few years a new crusade was preached against the Turks, their attitude toward the foe was unchanged and their enthusiasm undeterred.

  * Called “Africa” or “Auffrique” by the Europeans of the time, and sometimes confused by them with Carthage, the ancient Tunis.

  † Saracen was a term used indiscriminately for all Moslems, whether Berbers, Arabs, Moors, or Turks.

  Chapter 23

  In a Dark Wood

  Undiscouraged by the equivocal result in Barbary, the French King and Council moved without pause to a more formidable venture: ending the schism by force of arms. The plan for a march on Rome to oust Pope Boniface and install Pope Clement was called the Voie de Fait, or Way of the Deed—that is, of force—as opposed to the Way of Cession, or voluntary mutual abdication of the popes, as advocated by the University. To march through Italy and take Rome by force was no less an undertaking than the invasion of England—so recently proved beyond French powers—but the policy-makers showed no hesitation. The Council took the decision at the end of November within a few days of Coucy’s and Bourbon’s return from Tunisia.

  The plan was presented to the King as a prelude to crusade. He could not in good conscience, his ministers told him, take the cross against the Turks until the Church was reunited. “We can envision nothing finer nor more reasonable for you than to go to Rome with the power of men-at-arms and destroy this anti-pope Boniface.… Nothing could better occupy you. We may hope that this anti-pope and his cardinals, when they realize that you are coming against them with a strong army, will surrender to your mercy.” After that grand consummation, the glowing prospect of continuing even to Jerusalem would be at hand.

  When could he start? asked the King, immediately afire. He had been brought up under the ardent influence of Mézières, who had filled the court with his propaganda of crusade as France’s destiny and the saving of society. Charles’s advisers told him the campaign could begin at once, and plans were immediately set in motion. All the royal house were to be included; even the Duke of Brittany was invited because “they did not think it prudent to leave him behind.” He predicted unpleasantly that the enterprise would “end in words.”

  A huge force of 12,000 lances was agreed upon, with departure set four months hence in March 1391 from a rendezvous at Lyon. The King and his brother were to lead 4,000 lances; Burgundy, Berry, and the Constable each 2,000; Bourbon and Coucy each 1,000; all to receive three months’ pay in advance. The taxes required to raise such an army and maintain it in the field seem to have been lightly considered; financing the venture was as unrealistic as the Way of Force itself. When the Council met to authorize the rates, the usual omen in the form of a fearful storm made them hesitate. Was it God’s signal against imposing new burdens on an already overburdened people?

  The voice of the University spoke against the Voie de Fait more explicitly than lightning and thunder. In a stupendous twelve-hour sermon preached before the King and court on January 6, 1391, Jean Gerson, a young scholar already famed as a preacher, expressed the opposition. Twenty-seven years old and two years short of his doctorate in theology, Gerson was a protégé of the Chancellor Pierre d’Ailly, whom he was soon to succeed at the age of 31. As the struggle over the schism intensified, he was to become the foremost advocate of the supremacy of a Church Council over the Pope, and the most memorable French theologian of his age.

  Gerson was a man proof against classification or generalization. A mystic in faith, he was rational in practice. As a lover of the golden mean, he distrusted the devotional excesses of other mystics and visionaries. As a churchman, he was both conformist and non-conformist. Humane in ideas, he harshly opposed the early French humanists in the great debate over the Roman de la Rose. Despite his dislike of visionaries, especially female, he was to be, in the last year of his life, one of only two theologians willing to guarantee the authenticity of the voices of Joan of Arc. This was not because he was what moderns would call a liberal, but because he understood the intensity of her religious faith. He was a compendium and a reflector of the ideas and intellectual influences of his age.

  In earlier times he would have been a monk, but in the last hundred years the university had taken over from the monastery the main work of transmitting the knowledge of the past and pursuing it in the present. Entering the University of Paris at fourteen, Gerson had found theology and philosophy petrified in the arid syllogisms of the scholastics. In the great age of Aquinas, scholasticism had undertaken to answer all questions of faith by reason and logic, but reason had proved incapable of explaining God and the universe, and the effort faded, leaving only a hard shell of argument by logic, practiced, as Petrarch said in disgust, by “hoary-headed children.” When theybegin to “spew forth syllogisms,” he advised taking flight. Gerson, like others of his troubled time, craved something more meaningful for the soul and found the alternative in mystic faith and direct communion with God.

  He believed that society could be regenerated only through a renewal and deepening of faith in which “vain curiosity” had no place. Knowledge of God, he wrote, “is better acquired by penitent feeling than by intellectual investigation.” He took the same view of the supernatural, affirming the existence of demons and reproving those who scoffed for lack of faith and the “infection of reason.” Yet Gerson could not keep reason from breaking in. He scorned magic and astrologers’ superstitions, and recommended careful examination of visions before giving them credence.

  He disapproved of the Bible in the vernacular, yet, as a poet, teacher, and orator, he wrote many of his sermons and treatises in French so as to convey his meaning to simple minds and youthful understanding. Medieval educators in general spent much time composing sermons for children. Gerson in particular was concerned with their development, and uncommon in seeing them as persons distinct from adults. In a curriculum for Church schools, he urged the necessity of keeping a vigil lamp lit in the youngest children’s dormitory to serve as a symbol of faith and to give light when “natural necessity” required their rising during the night. Reformation of the Church, he warned, must begin with the right teaching of children, and reform of the colleges begin with reform of elementary schools.

  He a
dvised confessors to arouse a sense of guilt in children with regard to their sexual habits so that they might recognize the need for penitence. Masturbation, even without ejaculation, was a sin that “takes away a child’s virginity even more than if at the same age he had gone with a woman.” The absence of a sense of guilt about it in children was a situation that must be changed. They must not hear coarse conversation or be allowed to kiss and fondle each other nor sleep in the same bed with the opposite sex, nor with adults even of the same sex. Gerson had six sisters, all of whom chose to remain unmarried in holy virginity. Some powerful family influence was surely at work here from which this strong personality emerged.

  Sex was one factor in Gerson’s violent rejection of Jean de Meung’s Roman de la Rose. Meung’s celebration of carnal love, his satire of Chastity, his enthronement of Reason, his free-thinking skepticism, his anti-clerical bias were all anathema to Gerson. When Christine de Pisan voiced her attack on Jean de Meung in 1399 in her Epistle to the God of Love, Gerson supported it in a sermon with all the passion of the book-burner. He denounced the Roman de la Rose as pernicious and immoral: it degraded women and made vice attractive. If he had the only copy in existence, he said, and it were worth 1,000 livres, he would not hesitate to consign it to the flames. “Into the fire, good people, into the fire!”