Coucy reached the age of fifty in 1390. He was now the leading noble, apart from the King’s brother and maternal uncle, in the royal entourage, relied on equally for political mission and military command. He held official positions as Captain-General of Auvergne and Guienne and member of the Royal Council, but his adventures in his fiftieth year carried him far beyond these assignments.
When in September 1389 Charles VI set out with his brother Louis and his uncle Bourbon to confer with the Pope in Avignon and exhibit kingship in Languedoc, Coucy commanded the royal escort. The purpose of the journey was, first, to work out with Pope Clement a means of regaining sole control of the papacy, and, second, to mend the crown’s fences in Languedoc, alienated by the oppressions of the Duc de Berry. Delegates from the south had told the King on their knees and in tears of the “crushing tyranny” and “intolerable exactions” of Berry’s officers. Unless the King acted, they said, the 40,000 people of Languedoc who had already fled to Aragon would be followed by many more.
Now that there was truce with England, Charles was advised by Rivière and Mercier to make the journey in order to learn how his subjects were governed and make himself more beloved by them, for the sake of funds “of which he had great need.” At 22, the age at which his father had been a mature ruler, Charles VI was a shallow youth, spending what he did not have in a cascade of largesse. Efforts of Treasury officials to stem the flow by writing alongside the names of recipients, “He has had too much” or “He should repay,” were in vain.
Burgundy and Berry were greatly vexed to be informed by the King that they were not to accompany him on the journey but must remain on their own estates. Knowing that the order originated with Rivière and Mercier, and that the King was going to “hold inquisitions” on those who had governed Languedoc, they consulted together and agreed that they must “dissemble this affront,” but that the time would come “when those who have advised it shall repent of it.” As long as they remained united, they told each other, others “cannot do us any injury for we are the greatest personages in France.” “Such,” writes Froissart in unblushing reconstruction, “was the language of these two dukes.”
From Lyon, the King and his party continued the journey to Avignon by boat down the Rhône, a more comfortable form of travel than horseback. On such trips the royal suite would fill several boats including one with a room containing two fireplaces for the King, and others with kitchens and offices and a supply of plate and jewels to pawn for cash if necessary on the voyage. Charles’s passage down the rushing Rhône must have included many stops to make himself known to towns en route, for the trip took nine days. Organized welcome was not very different then than now. As many as a thousand children dressed in the royal colors were stationed on wooden platforms to wave little flags “and make heard, as the King rode by, loud acclamations in his honor.”
On October 30, clad in scarlet and ermine, Charles made his entry into the papal palace, where he was met by Clement and 26 cardinals, and attended a splendid banquet with all his party. He presented the Pope with a blue velvet cope embroidered in pearls in a design of angels, fleur-de-lys, and stars. Empty purse or not, “he wished to be spoken of even in foreign countries for the magnificence he displayed.”
With no footing except in French support, Clement’s papacy would have vanished like smoke, and the ruinous schism brought to an end, if the French had made that their object. But they did not. To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states. States function only in terms of what those in control perceive as power or personal ambition, and both of these wear blinkers. To impose Clement on Italy by power politics or force of arms had never been feasible. It was Urban of Rome, crazy or not, and afterward his successor who had popular support as the true Pope. Ignoring the obvious, and the disparity between goal and means, the French pursued their aim with the blind persistence that amounts to frivolity.
In conferences with Clement, Charles VI and his counselors proposed to open his way to Rome and assist him to gain control of Italy by establishing Louis of Orléans in a revival of the cloudy Kingdom of Adria in the north, and Louis II of Anjou in the equally unattained Kingdom of Naples and Sicily in the south. To this end, Louis II, brought to Avignon by his tireless mother, was given a grand coronation as King of Naples and Sicily (including Jerusalem). Coucy, again chosen for grace and splendor on these occasions, performed the ceremony of serving the boy King on horseback, along with the Count of Geneva, brother of Pope Clement.
Hardly were these arrangements completed when news was received that the Roman Pope, Urban the terrible, had been dead for three weeks and his seat filled in haste and secrecy by the election of a Neapolitan cardinal, Piero Tomacelli, as Boniface IX. Rome no more than Avignon was prepared to give up its claim in favor of a negotiated solution. Given no chance to take advantage of Urban’s death, the French and Clement now agreed to pursue the problem of removing Boniface. Charles VI promised that on his return to France he would “give attention to no other thing until he had restored the Church to unity.”
Lighter-hearted activities engaged the King while these matters were being resolved. He and his brother Louis and young Amadeus of Savoy, son of the late Green Count, “being young and giddy,” spent every night in song and dance with the ladies of Avignon, who warmly praised the King for the many fine presents he lavished on them. The Pope’s brother acted as master of the revels. The most memorable of the entertainments was a literary competition on an issue of courtly love: whether fidelity or inconstancy brings the greater satisfaction. Embodied in a group of poems called the Cent Ballades, the symposium originated among four ardent young knights, including Boucicaut and Comte d’Eu, a cousin of the King, who had been thrown together while on a recent venture in the Holy Land. While temporarily imprisoned in Damascus, the four had passed the time by a debate in verse, and on returning via Venice in time to join the gathering at Avignon, had invited responses from noble friends and princes.
Louis d’Orléans contributed a ballad, as did Guy de Tremolile, Jean De Bucy, a follower of Coucy’s, and another Bastard of Coucy named Aubert. He was Enguerrand’s former squire and first cousin, a son of his father’s brother, subsequently legitimized by Charles VI after Enguerrand’s death. Nothing is known of him except that Deschamps describes him as one of his “persecutors” among a group overfond of wine. Although Enguerrand’s friends and adherents entered the competition, he himself did not, which is perhaps a minor clue to personality.
Before the advent of the printing press, literature was enjoyed like chamber music in groups. The audience for the Cent Ballades heard the case for fidelity made in the name of an elderly knight representing Hutin de Vermeilles, a real individual known for loyalty in love and respect for women. Hutin’s argument is the traditional one that faithful love surpasses mere “delectation of the body” because it improves the lover, generates courtesy to all women for love of one, and enhances the warrior’s prowess in his desire to rejoice the heart of his beloved. Love makes him more valiant in siege, raids, ambush, in vanguard or defense, pilgrimage to Jerusalem or crusade against the Turks. The case for Falsity, in turn, was made in the name of a woman called La Guignarde, who stresses the joys of promiscuity and the dangers of a serious liaison. “All lovers” are then called upon to judge the dispute.
Although a majority of the noble versifiers declare for Hutin and Loyalty, some are ambiguous. The Duc de Berry, who had just married his twelve-year-old bride, felicitates himself on having “escaped love” and recommends talking Fidelity and practicing Falsity. The same tone is taken by the Bastard of Coucy, who breathes passionate devotion and eternal love in each of his stanzas, and ends each with the refrain,
Aussi dist on, mais il n’en sera riens.
(So they say, but it comes to nothing.)
His is the most cynical of the ballads. Of the others, some are candid, some satirical, some ambivalent, a few serious but none expresses anything deeply felt, as they would have had the subject been knighthood. Courtly love was an accustomed game, not a motivating ideal to which men desperately clung and for which, like the knights who held the lists of St. Ingelbert, they staked their lives.
Moving on to Languedoc, Charles VI and his court made ceremonial progress through Nîmes, Montpellier, Narbonne to Toulouse, feted so grandly through richly decorated streets “that it was a marvel to see.” Processions of all groups and classes, each in appropriate robes, welcomed him, and tables were set out at which the people could eat and drink. The King’s larder was supplied by his subjects: at one town he was presented with a troop of sheep and twelve fat oxen as well as twelve hunting horses hung with silver bells. Meanwhile, his ministers inquired into conditions, ordered reforms, and lifted the heaviest taxes.
Royal intervention staged its greatest gesture at Béziers in the punishment of Berry’s chief officer, the hated Bétizac. Secret inquiries of the King’s ministers had disclosed many “atrocious acts and such great extortions as made the whole country cry out against him.” Upon arrest and interrogation, Bétizac insisted that all the moneys, amounting to three million francs, had been duly paid over to the Duc de Berry and accounted for. His papers when seized appeared to confirm him. His conduct did not appear to warrant the death penalty, for, as certain of the investigators said, “How can he help it if the sums have been extravagantly spent … for this Duc de Berry is the most covetous man alive.” Others disagreed, saying Bétizac had so impoverished the people “that the blood of these poor creatures cries out against him.” He should have remonstrated with the Duke or, failing to restrain him, have informed the King and Council.
News of Bétizac’s arrest brought a flood of public complaints showing how much he was hated by the people, and, at the same time, haughty letters from Berry acknowledging that all Bétizac had done had been done at his orders. Although the King wanted the Governor put to death, the Council was embarrassed to find judicial grounds for doing so, since his superior, Berry, had been appointed by the crown.
The problem was solved by finesse. Bétizac was privately informed that he would surely be sentenced to die and that his only hope was to declare himself a heretic. If he did, he would be handed over to the Church and sent for judgment to Avignon, where no one would dare condemn him because of the Pope’s dependence on Berry, the most powerful and zealous of his supporters. Believing what he was told, “because those in peril of their lives are much confused in mind,” Bétizac did as advised. He affirmed his guilt in errors of faith before the Bishop of Béziers, who, according to Church practice with confessed heretics, promptly handed him back to the civil arm for execution. Dragged to the stake in the public square, fastened by collar and chain and piled with faggots, Bétizac was burned and his bones hanged, to the joy of the populace. Berry was deprived of the lieutenancy of Languedoc and replaced by a team of royal reformers. The people of the province acclaimed the young King for his justice and voted him an aid of 300,000 francs.
Ambassadors from Genoa met the King at Toulouse, bringing a proposal for a “grand and noble enterprise” against the Berber Kingdom of Tunis. They wanted French chivalry to lead a campaign to suppress the Barbary pirates who, with the unofficial support of their sultan, harassed Genoese commerce, raided and plundered Sicily and the Mediterranean islands, and sold captured Christians in their slave markets. Assuming that France, since the truce with England, was free of inquietude, the Genoese felt that her knights, “having nothing to do, would be glad to join in the warfare.” The proposed objective was Mahdia,* the pirates’ main base and the best port on the Tunisian coast. With this great stronghold in Christian hands, the ambassadors told King Charles, the power of the Berber kings would be broken, and they could be destroyed or converted. Genoa offered to supply the necessary fleet, provisions, archers, and foot soldiers in return for the French combat arm—knights and squires only, no servants—led by a prince of the royal family to ensure a genuine commitment.
Given the infidel as enemy, the proposal was dressed in all the aura of a crusade, and doused in flattery. For her historic exploits against the infidels, said the ambassadors, the name of France was feared as far as India, enough in itself to halt Turks and Saracens.† The infidels, they warned, dominate Asia and Africa; they have entered Europe, they threaten Constantinople, frighten Hungary, occupy Granada. But supported by Genoa, a French campaign would be short, and the glory long. “A fine thing for your sovereignty,” they told Charles, “for you are the greatest King among Christians and have so much renown.”
The project was the scheme of that “very subtle man,” Antoniotto Adorno, Doge of Genoa, whose oppressions had raised an opposition party among his subjects. He hoped to blunt its threat by aiding the business enterprise of the republic, and gain at the same time a powerful ally in case of need. While French knights were excited by the prospect, ministers were cautious. Short of a permanent peace with England, they disapproved of sending French strength out of the country; and the question of leadership was bound to arouse jealousies. Pending further consultation, the Genoese had to go home without a firm answer.
While at Toulouse, Coucy joined the royal party in a hunt which almost resulted in the sorely needed portrait that would have left his face to history. The hunters lost their way in a forest as night fell. Riding deeper and deeper into the dark maze, they could find no way out until the King vowed that if he escaped this peril he would donate the price of his horse to the chapel of Notre Dame de Bonne Espérance in the cloister of Carmes in Toulouse. In response, light broke through the sky, a path was seen, and next day the King duly fulfilled his vow, later commemorated by a fresco in the cloister containing the only known contemporary representation of Enguerrand de Coucy. Unfortunately, it shows no face. In the copies that survived the demolition of the cloister in 1808, he is seen among seven nobles in the train of the King, each identified by his coat of arms. They are Louis d’Orléans, the Duc de Bourbon, Henri de Navarre, Olivier de Clisson, Philippe d’Eu, Henri de Bar, and, lastly, Coucy, the only one with his face turned away from the viewer as if deliberately mocking posterity.
Shortly afterward he may have gone to Spain to arrange with the King and Queen of Aragon for the marriage of their daughter, Yolande, aged eight, to Louis II of Anjou. Froissart’s account of this mission, which was designed to gain an ally in the Angevin quest of the crown of Naples, is a hopeless tangle of what could and could not have occurred. He states that Coucy escorted Anjou to an actual marriage, which in fact did not take place until 1400, and he sets the scene amid many other discrepancies of time and place. Nevertheless, a marriage contract was indeed concluded in 1390, and Coucy would have been the natural choice to negotiate it. The Duchesse d’Anjou had consistently sought his influence in her cause ever since her husband’s death; moreover, Coucy was related by marriage and well known to the Queen of Aragon, who was the former Yolande de Bar, his son-in-law’s sister. He had also served as proxy in young Louis’ previous marriage to Bernabò Visconti’s daughter, which had been neatly annulled when Bernabò fell from power.
In Froissart’s version, the Duchesse d’Anjou entreated Coucy to escort her son to Spain and he “cheerfully agreed” to undertake the journey. Twelve-year-old Louis took leave of the Pope and his mother in tears, for “their hearts were wrung at the separation and it was uncertain when they should meet again.” Coucy and his charge rode by land to Barcelona (250 miles or more from Avignon or 200 from Toulouse) and on their arrival the Queen of Aragon was “particularly pleased to see the Sire de Coucy” and thanked young Louis of Anjou for bringing him, saying that “everything would be the better for it.” All this is natural enough although it probably did not happen; the fog of elapsed time has closed down over the facts.
If indeed he went to Spain, Coucy would have seen a country on the edge of turmoil. The peninsula below the Pyrenees was now experiencing the tail of the storm of insurrections that had swept through Europe a decade before. The long civil wars between Pedro the Cruel and his half-brother Enrique had trailed the ineluctable wake of pillage, oppression, and taxes. Social anatagonism found vent against the Jews, who so regularly in history become a microcosm of the world’s larger ills. In Spain their role had been more prominent and prosperous than elsewhere. Pedro the Cruel had employed them extensively as advisors and agents, besides keeping a Jewish mistress, and his preference was made a theme of Enrique’s accusations until Enrique emerged the victor. Then he too used the Jews’ financial services.
Popular hatred was inflamed by agitators who raised fears of the Jews’ increasing influence and demanded cancellation of debts owed to Christ-killers. Given a religious motive, economic fear can rise to fury. A fanatic Archdeacon, Ferran Martínez, preached a version of Hitler’s final solution. In 1391 murder, seizure of property, and forcible conversion of the Jews began, and this taste of violence soon turned into general insurrection against the clergy and propertied class, culminating in four days of terror in Barcelona. Protection of the Jews was denounced by the populace as treason to Christendom. Gradually, the rulers regained the upper hand, but aggression against the Jews had been too overt and physically damaging to be repaired. They were rendered vulnerable, and Spain susceptible, to the final expulsion one hundred years later.
Coucy is recorded again in Toulouse on January 5, 1390, and on January 28 appeared in Avignon, where he testified at hearings in behalf of the canonization of a French saint. The candidate was the nobly born Pierre de Luxemburg, a youth of great sanctity and great family, recently deceased at seventeen, whose nomination was intended to enhance the status of the French Pope. Clement’s legitimacy could hardly be questioned if God had provided a saint within his sphere. Pierre’s name had been put forward under the highest auspices, first by the Duchesse d’Anjou in 1388, then by the new Chancellor of the University of Paris, Pierre d’Ailly, in the name of the King.
A son of the chaste and pious Count Guy de St. Pol, who had died of the plague as a hostage in England, and of Jeanne de Luxemburg of the same family as the late Emperor Charles IV, Pierre had been orphaned at three and rather precociously renounced the flesh in an oath of perpetual chastity at six. He was said to have imposed the same vow on a twelve-year-old sister and to have reproached his brother for laughing, on the ground that the Gospels recorded that Jesus had wept but not laughed. At eight he was an overgrown, hollow-chested ascetic, who was sent to study in Paris, where he practiced fasting and self-flagellation and demanded to enter the austere and currently fashionable Célestin Order. Opposed in this wish by his guardians, he regularly visited the Order to share its bread and water and sleep on the bare ground fully clothed without removing belt or shoes in order to be ready for prayers at midnight without losing time.
His remarkable piety combined with high birth won him appointment as a canon at nine, as archdeacon some years later, as Bishop of Metz at fifteen and Cardinal at sixteen. The red robe did not discourage his austerities or lonely orisons. His life was “nothing but humility” and “always he fled from the vanities and superfluities of the world.” He spent the greater part of the day and night in solitary prayer or in writing down his sins in a notebook by candlelight and confessing them twice a day to his chaplain. His urgency, like Catherine of Siena’s loquacity, was sometimes too much for the chaplain, who occasionally feigned sleep when he heard Pierre knocking on his door in the middle of the night.
The boy Cardinal developed a faculty for miraculous cures: he was credited with saving the Duchesse de Bourbon from labor pains lasting two weeks, healing wounds suffered in a tournament by Guy de Tremolile, resurrecting a steward of the Duc de Bourbon who had been felled by a thunderbolt, and outside this rather limited circle, restoring to health a poor workman who had been tortured by brigands. When he died of consumption and self-imposed rigors in 1387, he was buried by his wish in the paupers’ cemetery at Avignon, where his grave became an object of pilgrimage by the poor and sick, causing a “great marvel” at the visitations made there daily. Kings and nobles, including the Sire de Coucy, sent rich gifts and lamps of silver, and Froissart, who never missed the newsworthy, came to observe the crowds at the grave.
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 preparations 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.”
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 were 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.