A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Bonet reflected the growing dismay at the “great grief and discord” caused by daily violation of this principle. Monks like himself and poets like Deschamps deplored openly the conduct of war not because they were necessarily more sensitive than other men but because they were articulate and accustomed to commit ideas to writing. With no illusions about chivalry, Bonet wrote that some knights were made bold by desire for glory, others by fear, others by “greed to gain riches and for no other reason.” When The Tree of Battles, dedicated to Charles VI, appeared in 1387, he did not suffer for its truths. On the contrary, he was invited to court and appointed to pensions and positions. Like other prophets, his fate was to be honored—and ignored.

  * The name Sicily remained attached to the Kingdom of Naples, causing confusion which should be resolutely ignored.

  * In 1388 Giovanni de Mussi of Piacenza stated that a household of nine with two horses required a minimum income of 300 florins a year. In 1415 a wealthy Italian citizen spent 574 florins on his marriage celebration. A well-paid artisan at about this time earned approximately eighteen florins a year.

  Chapter 20

  A Second Norman Conquest

  While Coucy was still in Avignon, his diplomatic talents were assigned the delicate task of informing Pope Clement of the proposed marital alliance of the King of France to a house on the other side of the schism. The prospective bride was Elizabeth of Bavaria—or Isabeau, as she became known by the French equivalent of her name—a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty and a granddaughter to Bernabò Visconti. Bavaria, like all the German states, had remained in obedience to Urban, to the bitter disappointment of Charles V. A German marriage was nevertheless important to give weight against England, especially since Richard II was negotiating to marry Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the late Emperor.

  Bavaria was the most powerful and flourishing of the German states, and the Wittelsbachs the wealthiest of the three families—the others being the Hapsburgs and the Luxemburgs—which at different times occupied the imperial throne. A Wittelsbach alliance was so desirable that Bernabò Visconti married no fewer than four of his children to scions of that house. Taddea, the second of these, bringing a dowry of 100,000 gold ducats, married Duke Stephen III of Bavaria, who, though he ruled jointly with two brothers, possessed every quality of the autocrat to excess. Reckless, prodigal, ostentatious, amorous, restless without a tournament or a war, he was well suited to a Visconti daughter, and when she died after twelve years of marriage, her sister Maddalena, with another dowry of 100,000 ducats, took her place. Isabeau, product of the first union, was in 1385 a pretty, plump fifteen-year-old German maiden destined for a lurid career.

  Her marriage to Charles VI was first broached when her uncle, Duke Frederick, came to share in the pleasures of French chivalry at the siege of Bourbourg. He learned that a condition of betrothal to the King of France was that the prospective bride be examined in the nude by ladies of the court to determine if she were properly formed for bearing children. Conveyed to his excitable brother, the proposal was indignantly rejected. What if she should be sent back? Duke Stephen demanded, and instantly tossed aside the offered crown. The alliance, however, was tactfully pursued by his uncle, Albert of Bavaria, ruler of Hainault-Holland, and by the Duke of Burgundy on the occasion of the famed double wedding of their sons and daughters. Stephen’s consent was obtained by arranging that Isabeau should be sent to France on pretext of a pilgrimage, although Stephen warned his brother, who was to escort her, that if he brought her back, “You will have no more bitter enemy than I.”

  Rumors of the planned marriage, on reaching Milan, provoked the most sensational coup of the age—the ousting of Bernabò by his supposedly quiet and retiring nephew Gian Galeazzo. Bernabò’s marriage policy had for some time been cutting into Gian Galeazzo’s sovereignty, owing to Bernabò’s habit of giving away, as dowries, Visconti territories or their revenues to which the nephew had equal title—and without consulting him. The prospect of Bernabò’s granddaughter on the throne of France, and a renewed prospect of Bernabò’s daughter Lucia on the throne of Naples, threatened to cut into Gian Galeazzo’s French support. Lucia reappeared when the Duchesse d’Anjou, who had never ceased nagging her French relatives to try once more for Naples, succeeded in obtaining a tentative promise “in favor” of the attempt, and accordingly sent for Lucia to complete the proxy marriage to her son. This combination of circumstances propelled Gian Galeazzo to action.

  In May 1385 he sent a message to his uncle saying that he was about to make a pilgrimage to the Madonna del Monte near Lago Maggiore and would be glad to meet with him outside Milan. His proposal seemed natural enough because Gian Galeazzo, though “subtle in intellect and wise in the ways of the world,” was very devout, carrying a rosary and accompanied by monks wherever he went, and greatly concerned with penance and pilgrimage. He also relied on astrologers to select propitious moments for his decisions, and once refused to discuss a diplomatic matter at a particular time because, as he wrote his correspondent, “I observe astrology in all my affairs.” These tastes and his apparent fear of his uncle, shown by doubling his guard and having all his food tasted, caused Bernabò to regard him with contempt. When a courtier, suspicious of Gian Galeazzo’s message, warned of a possible plot, Bernabò scoffed. “You have little sense. I tell you I know my nephew.” At age 76, after a lifetime of bullying, he was both overconfident and careless. Gian Galeazzo’s plan depended on just that.

  With two of his sons, but otherwise unprotected, Bernabò rode to the rendezvous outside the gates. Gian Galeazzo, accompanied by a large bodyguard, dismounted, embraced his uncle and, while holding him tightly, called out an order in German, upon which one of his generals, the condottiero Jacopo del Verme, cut Bernabo’s sword belt while another, crying “You are a prisoner!”, seized his baton of office and took him in custody. Immediately Gian Galeazzo’s forces galloped through Milan and occupied its strong points. Because of his reasonable government of Pavia, the populace was ready to welcome him as a deliverer, and greeted him with cries of “Viva il Conte!” followed by their first thought on removal of the tyrant, “Down with taxes!” To smooth the transition, Gian Galeazzo allowed the mob to sack Bernabò’s palace and burn the tax registers. He reduced taxes as one of his first measures and made up the difference from Bernabò’s hoard of gold. Legitimacy or its appearance was supplied by summoning a Grand Council to endow him with formal dominion and by sending a legal transcript of Bernabò’s crimes to all states and rulers.

  The Milanese state was now controlled by a single ruler who was to loom ever larger as time went on. Bernabò’s sons were neutralized, in the case of one by life imprisonment, in the case of the second by his own worthlessness, and by a lifetime pension for the third and youngest. The towns of Lombardy submitted uneventfully, and the tyrant himself was locked up in the fortress of Trezzo, where in December of the same year he died, supposedly poisoned by order of the usurper. Bernabò was buried in Milan with honors although without the baton of office, and his equestrian statue, already made at his design, was erected as he had planned.

  The fall of the modern Tarquin amazed the world, with echoes reaching into the Canterbury Tales, where it is related in the “Monk’s Tale” how “Thy brother’s son … within his prison made thee to dye.” Not the least of the consequences was to implant in the shallow if implacable heart of Isabeau of Bavaria a relentless desire for revenge upon Gian Galeazzo who had deposed, if not murdered the grandfather she had doubtless never known. Since the usurper was to emerge as one of the major figures of Europe and she as Queen of France, the results were grave and far-reaching.

  At seventeen, Charles VI was an ardent, inconstant youth who rode nine courses in the lists at the tournaments in honor of the Burgundydouble wedding. His martial appetite had been encouraged by his uncles for the sake of war in their own interests. Physically, “nature seemed to have been prodigal in her gifts” to him. Above average height, robust in figure, wea
ring his blond hair to his shoulder, he was frank, energetic, gracious, carelessly and excessively generous, giving to anyone and everyone regardless of what was in his Treasury, lacking in steadiness or seriousness. During a hunt when he was thirteen, a deer was reportedly taken wearing a golden collar inscribed in “ancient characters”: Caesar hoc mihi donavit. Told that the deer must have been in the forest since the days of Julius Caesar “or some other emperor,” the boy King was so enchanted that he ordered all the royal plate and other furnishings to be engraved with a deer wearing a collar in the form of a crown. No less easily inflamed in amours, he was the victim, according to the Monk of St. Denis, of “carnal appetites,” and was equally quickly disenchanted. Instability trembled beneath outward health. His mother, Queen Jeanne, had suffered a phase of insanity in 1373, his heritage was a web of intermarriage, all his sisters but one had died before maturity.

  The charm of Isabeau and the delights of marriage were suitably dwelt upon by his various aunts and uncles at the resplendent double wedding of Burgundy’s son and daughter at Cambrai in April 1385. As a prince of great pretensions, Philip intended the ceremony to outshine any that had gone before. He borrowed the crown jewels from Charles VI, transported extra tapestries and special jousting horses from Paris, ordered special liveries made for the occasion of red and green velvet (the two most expensive colors), furnished all the ladies with gowns of cloth of gold, and supplied a thousand jousting lances for the tournament. Papal dispensations of consanguinity were obtained in duplicate, one from each Pope because the marriages spanned the schism. Gifts were distributed throughout festivities that lasted five days, and their cost was twice that of the clothes. The total cost was 112,000 livres, equal to one quarter the revenues of the Flemish-Burgundian state in a time of deep social anger and want.

  Isabeau reached France in July after being tutored for four weeks, at the court of her Wittelsbach relatives in Hainault, in French dress, etiquette, and flirtation. The meeting with Charles took place at Amiens, where the French court had moved owing to renewed war in Flanders. The King, in a fever of excitement, arrived on July 13, the same day that Coucy arrived from Avignon “in great haste with news of the Pope,” although what news is not recorded. Sleepless and agitated, Charles kept asking, “When will I see her?” and when he did, fell instantly enamored, gazing at the German girl with admiration and ardor. Asked if she was to become Queen of France, he replied forcefully, “By my faith, yes!”

  Isabeau understood nothing of what was being said because her lessons had apparently left her innocent of the French language except for a few words spoken in a thick German accent. Her manner, however, was alluring, and Charles’s impatience was such that the wedding followed hastily on July 17 to the accompaniment of numerous jokes about the hot young couple. “And if,” concluded Froissart, “they passed that night together in great delight, one can well believe it.” No such eager marriage was ever to sink to a sadder end, in madness, debauchery, and hate.

  After Venus, Mars. Even before the truce with England was due to expire in October, the Scots had sent envoys to ask for a French force to join them “and make so great a hole in England that it should never be recovered.” The pride of France welcomed the chance to show themselves not only strong enough to repel attack but ready to take the offensive. The English should be shown that they could not always be the aggressor but must “get accustomed themselves to being attacked”—in their own land, as Coucy had suggested to Charles V. Philip the Bold, who effectively controlled the government, arranged for Admiral de Vienne, “a knight of proven valor and a passion for glory,” to take an expeditionary force to Scotland and prepare the way for a larger force to follow, which would be led by Clisson, Sancerre, and Coucy. Then, together with the Scots, they would “boldly penetrate” over the border.

  Commanding eighty knights and a total force of 1,500 fully paid for six months in advance, Vienne crossed in the early summer of 1385, bringing a “free gift” of 50,000 gold francs to the King of Scotland and fifty suits of armor, including lances and shields, to his nobles. The Scottish envoys had indeed asked the French to bring equipment to arm a thousand Scots, which should have been a warning, but the realities of Scotland proved an unpleasant surprise. Castles were bare and gloomy with primitive conditions and few comforts in a miserable climate. The damp stone huts of clan chieftains were worse, lacking windows or chimneys, filled with peat smoke and the smell of manure. Their inhabitants engaged in prolonged vendettas of organized cattle-raiding, wife-stealing, betrayal, and murder. They had no iron to shoe their horses nor leather for saddles and bridles, which previously had been imported ready-made from Flanders.

  Accustomed to “tapestried halls, goodly castles, and soft beds,” the French asked themselves, “Why have we come hither? We never knew what poverty meant until now.” Their hosts were no better pleased with the visitors. They resented the luxury-loving French knights and welcomed them coldly. Instead of marching toward pitched battle with banners flying, they withdrew their forces when they learned that a large English army was advancing.

  Diverted by a new outbreak in Flanders, the French army of reinforcement did not come. During enforced idleness, Admiral de Vienne’s frustrated martial ardor turned to love; he engaged in a guilty amour with a cousin of the Scottish King which enraged his hosts “so that the Admiral was in danger of death.” Whether the final quarrel was over this issue or because the Scots insisted that the French should pay the cost of their visit, the Admiral in any case undertook to bear the cost personally, hurriedly hired a number of ships, and departed.

  Meanwhile, the party of Ghent, led by Artevelde’s successor Francis Ackerman, had seized Damme, the port of Bruges at the mouth of the Scheldt where the French reinforcements for Scotland were to have been launched. The attack was prompted by the English, who were suffering the usual terrors spread by rumors of a French invasion. A French army, bringing the King fresh from his marriage bed, marched north to besiege Damme and, though suffering much from the heat, from English archers, and from an outbreak of plague, recaptured it after a siege of six weeks.

  Punishment was savage, chiefly by the Burgundians, who burned and destroyed up to the gates of Ghent. Many prisoners, taken for ransom, were put to death to serve as an example. One of them at the block warned his executioners that “the King can kill men of strong heart, but though he exterminates all Flemings their dry bones will rise up to fight him again.” The point was borne in upon the Duke of Burgundy that alienation of his own subjects was not in his best interests. A peace settlement without further penalties or fines was concluded in December at Tournai and efforts made afterward to restore Flanders’ damaged commerce. But the harm done by decades of strife could not be undone; the great age of Flemish prosperity had passed.

  Possibly stimulated by all the weddings, Coucy’s remarriage at the age of 46 to a girl some thirty years his junior took place in February 1386. The bride was Isabelle, daughter of the Duc de Lorraine, “a very beautiful demoiselle of the noble and great generation of the house of Blois.” She had been considered as a bride for the King during the interval when Stephen of Bavaria was recalcitrant, and was described as “of the King’s age or very close,” which would have made her sixteen to eighteen. Charles had been “near agreed” to the match until the Bavarian proposal was revived.

  Little is known of the second Isabelle de Coucy except that after the marriage Enguerrand undertook a vast renovation of the castle from which it is possible (though not obligatory) to deduce that he did it to please a young and beautiful bride.

  Following the marriage, a new northwest wing almost as grandiose in scale as the renowned donjon was added to the castle, along with many domestic improvements.* The new wing housed a grand banquet hall measuring 50 by 200 feet, called the Salle des Preux or Hall of the Nine Worthies, the heroes of history most admired in the Middle Ages. They were three ancients—Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; three Biblical Jews
—Joshua, King David, and Judas Maccabeus; three Christians—King Arthur, Charlemagne, and the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon. An adjoining hall 30 by 60 feet, was dedicated to the feminine worthies, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Penthisilea, and other legendary queens. Each hall had an immense mantled chimney at either end, a high vaulted ceiling, and wide arched windows which let in broad bands of sunlight, unlike the narrow slits in the older walls. A raised tribune from which great personages and their ladies, separated from the crowd, could view the dances and entertainments was built into the Salle des Preux. Behind it stood the row of Nine Worthies in bas-relief, “carved by a hand so fine,” wrote an admirer, “that if my eyes had not been witness I would never have believed that leaves and fruits and grapes and other delicate things could have been so perfectly fashioned in hard stone.”