A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  The nobility felt “bitter despair,” according to the Monk of St. Denis, and “affliction reigned in all hearts.” Black garments appeared everywhere, and Deschamps wrote of “funerals from morn to eve.” Prayers and tears filled the churches, with sorrow the more intense because the dead had received no Christian burial and the lives of the survivors were feared for. Mourning and lament spread through Burgundy, where so many families suffered a loss. On January 9, a day of solemn services for the dead in the capital and the provinces, “it was piteous to hear the tolling of the bells in all the churches of Paris.” Hardly had the English marriage been celebrated and the burden of the old war lifted at last when rejoicing was stifled, as if God did not wish to allow mankind cause for joy.

  The ladies of France sorrowed grievously for their husbands and lovers, “especially,” says Froissart, always concerned for his patron, “the Dame de Coucy, who wept piteously night and day and could take no comfort.” Probably at the suggestion of her brothers, the Duc de Lorraine and Ferry de Lorraine, who came to console and advise her, she wrote on December 31 to the Doge of Venice begging him to aid in arranging the ransom of her husband. Two envoys—Robert d’Esne, a knight of Cambresis with five attendants, and Jacques de Willay, châtelain of St. Gobain, one of the Coucy properties—were dispatched separately, expressly to arrange the deliverance of Coucy and Henri de Bar. They were sent and their expenses paid by Louis d’Orléans, rather than by the Dame de Coucy. With communications no faster than a man could travel, there could be no word for many months.

  The problem of arranging ransom was riddled with anxiety because of the unfamiliarity of dealing with a sovereign outside Christendom, of whom only the worst might be expected. On the advice of Jacques de Helly, who reported the Sultan’s exorbitant passion for the accoutrements of the hunt, a convoy of magnificent gifts, especially selected to appeal to him, was assembled to accompany the Duke’s ambassadors. Twelve white gerfalcons, of a rare and costly species of which Gian Galeazzo reportedly sent two to the Sultan every year, were escorted each by its own falconer, together with falconers’ gauntlets embroidered with pearls and precious stones. Ten handsome horses and ten hounds, caparisoned in the arms of Burgundy and conducted by grooms in the Duke’s white-and-scarlet livery, were to make the journey to Turkey, along with saddles of rich work inscribed in “Saracen letters and flowers of overseas,” saddle draperies with buckles in the form of golden roses, fine scarlet cloth of Reims believed unknown in the Orient, and, as a subtle compliment to Bajazet, tapestries of Arras depicting the history of Alexander the Great, from whom he claimed to be directly descended. All this was dispatched with the King’s chamberlain, an experienced diplomat, and three noble ambassadors, officials of Burgundy, who departed on January 20, 1397, to negotiate the ransom. In haste to keep his oath to the Sultan, Jacques de Helly had already hurried on ahead with letters for the prisoners.

  Reconciliation with Gian Galeazzo because of his known influence at the Ottoman court had suddenly become all-important. The ambassadors were directed to travel via Milan and convey to Gian Galeazzo, whose first wife had been a princess of France, the King’s belated grant of the right to add the fleur-de-lys to the Visconti escutcheon, and to make every effort to obtain his help. Meanwhile, the first relay of envoys, sent in early December, had reached Venice, where they learned of the defeat and were endeavoring to make their way to the prisoners. Venice, whose interest in maintaining her trade in the Levant made her the link with the Moslem world—and something less than a wholehearted combatant in the crusade—served throughout as the center for news, travel arrangements, cash, and credit.

  In Burgundy and Flanders the Duke’s tax-collectors swarmed again. Hardly recovered from financing the crusade, his subjects were now required to salvage the survivors. The traditional aid for the lord’s ransom was demanded from every town and county, plus a contribution from the clergy. The Duke met with bargaining and resistance and had to accept less than he asked for. The sums were not cash but payments to be drawn from revenues extending over months and years. Some were still being levied and disputed three years later. The cry, “Money! Money!”, wrote Deschamps, resounded through his lifetime. Now and again, he says, the commoners, driven to distraction, rise and kill the tax-collectors, then, astonished by their success, collapse again, to be hounded once more by nobles with swords and lawyers with documents, crying in threatening voices, “Sà, de l’argent! Sà, de l’argent!”

  In Brusa, Coucy had not fared well. Some accounts say that he fell into a deep chagrin and melancholy which nothing could lighten, that he insisted he would never see France again, that after so many adventures this was destined to be his last. His appraisal was realistic enough, more likely grounded in physical illness from wounds or disease in harsh conditions than in “mourning for the victory of Anti-Christ over the Christians,” as suggested by L’Alouëte, first historian of the Coucy dynasty. At 56, he was not old, even though it is generally considered that old age came early in the Middle Ages. In fact, while a large proportion of the population died early, those who lived into their fifties and sixties were not venerable in body and mind nor considered so. Life-expectancy charts may reflect statistics, but not the way people see themselves. According to an anonymous poem of the mid-14th century, life’s span was 72 years, consisting of twelve ages corresponding to the months of the year. At 18, the youth begins to tremble like March with the approach of spring; at 24, he becomes amorous as the blossoming of April, and nobility and virtue enter his soul along with love; at 36, he is at the summer solstice, his blood as hot as the sun of June; at 42, he has acquired experience; at 48, he should think of harvesting; at 54, he is in the September of life when goods should be stored up; age 60, the October of life, is the onset of old age; 66 is dark November when all green withers and dies and a man should think on death, for his heirs are waiting for him to go if he is poor and waiting more eagerly if he is rich; 72 is December, when life is as mournful as winter and there is nothing left to do but die.

  Coucy had led an extraordinarily active life, never at rest, never pausing after one task before undertaking the next. He showed no signs of age or slackening when he undertook the crusade nor when he led the brilliant foray against the Turks on the day before the battle—the only successful French action of the campaign. Then came the disaster in a battle launched against his advice, defeat in an enterprise of which he had been given the guidance, the ghastly spectacle of his comrades and dependents slaughtered before his eyes, the shame and hardships of an ignoble captivity, the remoteness from home, uncertainty of rescue, and fear of a captor not bound by the rules. As one whose life, though anything but soft, had been singularly fortunate, Coucy was not conditioned for so much misfortune. Perhaps he recognized in the Battle of Nicopolis a profound failure of knighthood, and sensed in its outcome a time to die.

  On February 16, 1397, preparatory to death, he drew up at Brusa his last will, or, more precisely, a lengthy codicil to a previous will. By this time he may have been removed from prison to better quarters under provisional liberty guaranteed by the rich and noble Francesco Gattilusio, Genoese Lord of Mitylene (Lesbos)—Coucy’s “relative,” according to Froissart. One of the independent lords of the Aegean islands called the Archipelago, Gattilusio was a man of influence at the Ottoman court who, even without kinship, might well have given surety for a great French baron well known in Genoa. The Christian powers of the Archipelago under the shadow of the advancing Turks were acutely affected by the defeat at Nicopolis. The blow to the prestige, not to mention to the arms, of Christianity undermined their position, and the spectacle of prominent Christian nobles imprisoned and perhaps dying in infidel hands was a disturbing one for them. It was in their interest to secure a release, and reports of the prisoners’ misery excited their pity. One merchant of the Archipelago, Nicholas of Aenos, sent a gift of fish, bread, sugar, and linens from his wife in addition to a loan of money. One can only hope that, by courtesy of Gatt
ilusio, Coucy in his last days was not lodged on bare stone.

  “Sound of mind but infirm of body, and considering that nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour,” Coucy drew up his lengthy codicil in Latin, probably by the hand of Geoffrey Maupoivre, who was a Master of Arts as well as of Medicine. In the care and precision and nature of these instructions and their reflection of what was on a man’s mind in his last hours, there is no better mirror of the Middle Ages.

  “First and above all,” he directs burial in France according to the terms of his previous will (which had specified burial of his body at Nogent and of his heart at his foundation of Ste. Trinité in Soissons). At the very end of the codicil, as if reminded of possible difficulties in embalming and transporting the body to France, he charges his executors with the return of his bones and heart, without fail. At a time when official belief insisted that the body was carrion and the after-life of the soul all that mattered, the extreme concern shown for every detail of disposal of the physical remains was remarkable.

  Next in importance was Ste. Trinité, his heaviest investment in salvation. He orders for the monastery “a notable silver cross weighing forty Paris marks [about 23 pounds], a silver censer, two cruets for water and wine for use in the Divine service, a silver ewer for washing the hands of the priest, a fine and notable silver-gilt chalice of fitting weight and workmanship for such a monastery, four pairs of ornaments for the priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, of which three shall be for ordinary use and the fourth for the solemnities of important holy days.”

  In the further interest of his soul, bequests follow to no fewer than 21 separate churches and chapels, including Notre Dame de Chartres, “who, as we firmly believe, made for us a visible miracle.” The other bequests range from 100 florins for the chapel of Pierre de Luxemburg at Avignon to 1,000 florins for Notre Dame de Liesse, where Coucyhad escorted Charles VI after his first attack of madness, plus 100 florins each to five separate chantries in Soissons for prayers for his soul, and 6,000 to his executors for further prayers at their discretion. The sum of 1,000 florins was to be distributed among the poor of Paris, the same to the poor of his own domain, and 800 bequeathed to the Hôtel Dieu in Paris.

  Unlike many nobles concerned with deathbed restitutions, Coucy evidently had no one he had wronged on his mind, but only some debts to be fulfilled. His only possessions at hand—a gown and a tapestry-are to be sold to pay his servants and to pay Abraham, “apothecary and merchant of Brusa,” for medicines. Debts incurred on the voyage are to be paid by means of jewels he has deposited in Venice. The King of France is asked to hold his lands in France to ensure that revenues will be collected and used for all legacies he has directed. Geoffrey Maupoivre and Jacques d’Amance, Marshal of Lorraine (the duchy of his wife’s family), are named executors, supplemented by Comte d’Eu, Boucicaut, and Guy de Tremoille for aid and counsel. These three together with Guillaume de Tremoille, Jacques de la Marche, and six other French knights witnessed and signed the document.

  Two days later, on February 18, 1397, Enguerrand VII, Sire de Coucy and Count of Soissons, died in Brusa.

  A whole man in a fractured time, he was the least compromised of his class and kind by brutality, venality, and reckless indulgence. His fellows have been well described by Clisson’s biographer as “in turn refined and barbaric, generous and bloody, knavish and chivalrous, above mankind in their courage and love of glory, beneath mankind in their hates, their furious follies, their duplicity and savage cruelty.” Coucy was distinct from most in being apparently immune from those furious follies. He saw his role steadily, accepted every responsibility but the constableship, remained sagacious in judgment, cool and capable in performance. In that steadiness, sagacity, and competence, and in commanding the respect and trust of all associates, he had many of the qualities of George Washington, short of leadership, which needs a cause to call it forth. If there have been mute inglorious Miltons in rural villages, presumably there have been unrealized Washingtons born in unpropitious times. The 14th century produced bourgeois leaders like the two Van Arteveldes, Etienne Marcel, Cola di Rienzi, but few from the noble class, partly because leadership was presupposed in the king, who, until the time of Charles V, personally led the nobles into battle. When Jean II was in captivity, the northern French nobles asked Charles of Navarre, because he was a king, to lead them against the Jacques. The nobility, however, had coherence only when it was threatened as a class. Otherwise, baronial interests were too sectional and habits of independence too strong to allow for a leader, even when the war against the English gradually built up a cause.

  Coucy’s English marriage set him apart during twelve crucial years. After his repudiation of England, following the death of his father-in-law, he began to emerge as a leading figure in the Normandy campaign and could have succeeded Du Guesclin as Constable if he had wanted to, but no concept of national leadership attached to that post, no body of public opinion or cohort of colleagues was asking to be led. The moment of what-might-have-been passed with the death of Charles V, and under the self-serving rule of the uncles, national purpose was frittered away. Enguerrand did not innovate nor rise above his time; he went with it, served it better than most, and died of its values. It was reduced by his going. “This Enguerrand VII,” wrote the biographer of Boucicaut, “was esteemed the seigneur of most merit of his time.”

  Coucy’s death was not known in Paris for two months. Robert d’Esne and, after him, Jacques de Willay learned of it in Venice on their way east. Still unaware on March 31, Louis d’Orléans in great solicitude sent a clerk of Coucy’s estate to Turkey with clothing, having learned of the prisoners’ impoverished condition. In April, Willay brought back the embalmed heart and body (or bones; whether the actual body was buried in France has been disputed). Only then was the Dame de Coucy notified that her husband was dead. According to the biographer of Boucicaut who tends normally to rhapsodize, she so bewailed her loss “that it seemed that heart and life would leave her, and never more did she wish to marry again, nor allow mourning to depart from her heart.” A funeral of impressive grandeur was conducted by the Bishops of Noyon and Laon, the body (or other remains) being buried in an imposing tomb at Nogent, and the heart at Ste. Trinité, marked by a plaque showing an engraved heart superimposed over the Coucy arms. Deschamps wrote a dirge as if for a national event, lamenting “the end and death of Enguerrand the baron … mourned by every noble heart.”

  O St. Lambert, Coucy, La Fère,

  Marie, Oisy and St. Gobain,

  Weep for your lord, the good seigneur

  Who served so well his sovereign

  With prowess great in many lands …

  Who for the faith in Turkey died.

  Let us pray God to pardon him.

  In his day bright and beautiful,

  Wise, strong, and of great largesse,

  A true knight of labor hard

  And no repose; in his great house,

  He welcomed knights from morn to eve

  Who came to join his company.

  Preux and bold in Lombardy was he,

  He took Arezzo, city of renown,

  Made tremble Pavia and Milan.

  Let us pray God to pardon him.

  Many a heart is sad for him

  That none is left to bear his arms.…

  The stanzas continue, but, given an erratic meter combined with a rigid chain of only three rhymes winding through 55 lines, the charm of this and other 14th century French poetry is limited, and English, in any case, can do it no justice.

  Ransom for the remaining prisoners was finally arranged in June 1397 after prolonged negotiations by the Duke’s ambassadors at the Sultan’s court. The sum was fixed at 200,000 ducats or gold florins, approximately equal in value to French francs. Burgundy’s extravagant gifts misfired, it was said, convincing Bajazet that princes who could command such rare and precious things could pay very highly indeed. All the resources of the banking network were mo
bilized, chiefly under the direction of Burgundy’s chief purveyor and banker, Dino Rapondi, a native of Tuscany with headquarters in Paris and Bruges. So widespread was his commerce that his name was said to be known wherever there were merchants. Through him, the King and his uncles acquired precious books, silks, furs, tapestries, fine linen shirts and handkerchiefs, amber and unicorn’s horn and other curiosities. Rapondi advised raising the ransom money from the merchants of the Archipelago, who should be written to amiably and promised profit on the loans and credit they could arrange.

  Meanwhile, Boucicaut and Guy de Tremoille, released on provisional liberty to seek funds in the Levant, had reached Rhodes, where Tremoille, evidently in weakened condition, fell ill and died at Eastertime. The Knights of Rhodes, anxious like the merchants about Christian prestige, pawned the plate of their Order to raise 30,000 ducats for a down payment on the ransom. The King of Cyprus added 15,000, and various merchants and wealthy citizens of the Archipelago made loans amounting to 30,000. Sigismund had grandly offered to subscribe half the ransom, but as he was perennially short of money, the best he could do was assign 7,000 ducats of revenues owed him by Venice. More than half the total was underwritten on behalf of Burgundy by Gattilusio, Seigneur of Mitylene.

  On a down payment of 75,000, the prisoners were released on June 24 on their promise to remain in Venice until the entire sum was paid. One more of their number did not regain liberty. By a cruel justice, Comte d’Eu died on June 15, nine days before the release. Bajazet’s farewell to the others was not courtly. Addressing Jean de Nevers, he said he disdained to ask him for an oath not to take up arms against him in the future. “Raise what power thou wilt and spare not, but come against me. Thou shalt find me ever ready to receive thee and thy company in the field in plain battle … for I am ready to do deeds of arms and ever ready to conquer further into Christendom.” The Sultan then required the departing crusaders to witness the spectacle of his hunt conducted by 7,000 falconers and 6,000 huntsmen with hounds in satin blankets and leopards in diamond collars.