A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  The first problem, as always, was finance. In 1394 Burgundy demanded an aid of 200,000 livres from Flanders, impoverished though it was by the years of civil war. Strenuous bargaining by the Flemish reduced the sum to 130,000, enough to initiate preparations of unsurpassed luxury in garments if not weapons. In January 1395 the Duke sent a second Tremoille brother, Guillaume, to inform Sigismund that an official request to the King of France for help would be favorably received.

  Four imposing Hungarian knights and a bishop reached Paris in August. They told the court that Sultan Bajazet was assembling an army of 40,000 in order to subject Hungary to the fate of Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Serbia, and that unless the French sent help, the King of Hungary would soon be reduced to the last distress. They told how the cruel Turks held Christians in dungeons, carried off children to be converted to Islam, despoiled maidens, spared no one and nothing from sacrilege. Their King had given battle several times with unhappy result against this fearful and powerful enemy. However painful was such an admission, “the fate of Christians obliges us to say it.” King Sigismund implored help “in the name of kinship and the love of God.”

  The English marriage having been arranged, King Charles was able to reply that, “as chief of the Christian Kings,” it devolved upon him to prevent Christianity from being trampled underfoot by the Sultan and to punish his effrontery. Enthusiasm was general. Comte d’Eu, now Constable of France, and Boucicaut, now Marshal, proclaimed it the duty of every man of valor to undertake battle against the “miscreants,” the word generally used for Moslems as for peasants and laborers, indicating contempt. Loaded with gifts and assurances of help, the Hungarian envoys returned, spreading word of the French crusade on their way through Germany and Austria and arranging provisions for its passage.

  On his return from Italy, two months after the Hungarians’ visit, Coucy found the court in great excitement over the crusade, and lost no time in taking the cross. After the habit of his kind, he never stayed home if he could help it. Burgundy, Orléans, and Lancaster had all withdrawn from the enterprise, owing to the negotiations with England which required their presence—or from reluctance to leave the vicinity of the throne. But the house of Burgundy remained in control in the person of the Duke’s eldest son, Jean de Nevers, aged 24 and not yet a knight, whom his father proposed to put in nominal command. The predestined Cain (in Michelet’s phrase) to his cousin Louis d’Orléans’ Abel, the Count of Nevers showed few signs as yet of the decisive character that was to appear after his father’s death. As Duke, he would be known as Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless), meaning, it would seem, that he did not fear to do evil. Married at fourteen in the famous double wedding, he was already the father of two. Undersized, with a large head, hard features, graceless manners, and inelegant dress, he was the opposite in everything except ambition of his superb and charming cousin Louis. “Nature,” wrote Michelet, “seemed to have fashioned him on purpose to hate the Duc d’Orléans.”

  While Nevers’ royal blood and position gave éclat to the cause, his father recognized the need of more responsible leadership, which he evidently did not expect from either Constable d’Eu or Marshal Boucicaut, who were both under 35. He turned to Coucy as elder statesman and the most experienced warrior—since Clisson’s disgrace—in the realm.

  Since he had first marched at fifteen against the English, and at eighteen hunted down the Jacquerie, the range of Coucy’s experience had extended over an extraordinary variety of combat, diplomacy, government, and social and political relationships. As son-in-law of Edward III, holding double allegiance to two kings at war, his position had been unique. He had seen war as captain or one of the top command in eleven campaigns—in Piedmont, Lombardy, Switzerland, Normandy, Languedoc, Tuscany, northern France, Flanders, Guelders, Tunisia, Genoa; he had commanded mercenaries, and fought as ally or antagonist of the Count of Savoy, Gregory XI, Hawkwood, the Visconti, the Hapsburgs, the Swiss, Navarrese, Gascons, English, Berbers, the Republic of Florence, and nobles of Genoa. As diplomat he had negotiated with Pope Clement VII, the Duke of Brittany, the Count of Flanders, the Queen of Aragon, with the English at peace parleys, and the rebels of Paris. He had had one temperamental and extravagant wife eight years his senior, and a second approximately thirty years his junior. He had served as adviser and agent of the two royal Dukes, Anjou and Orléans, as Lieutenant-General of Picardy and later of Guienne, as member of the Royal Council, as Grand Bouteiller of France, and had twice been the preferred choice for Constable. He had known and dealt with every kind of character from the ultra-wicked Charles of Navarre to the ultra-saintly Pierre de Luxemburg.

  Not surprisingly, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy sent for him and said, “Sir, we know well that above all other knights of France you are the most used and expert in all things, wherefore dearly we require that you would be companion to our son on this voyage and his chief counselor.”

  “Monseigneur and you, Madame,” Coucy replied, “I will go, firstly for devotion to defend the faith of Jesus Christ; secondly, in that you do me so much honor as to give me charge of Monseigneur Jean your son. I shall acquit myself of the charge in all things to the best of my power.” But, he added, he would prefer to be excused of the charge and let it be conferred rather on Comte d’Eu and Comte Jacques de la Marche, both related by blood to Nevers. (As a D’Artois, D’Eu shared the blood of the Valois, which was the chief reason he was Constable, while De la Marche, youngest of the crusaders, “without beard or moustache,” was a Bourbon.)

  “Sire de Coucy,” answered the Duke, “you have seen much more than these two and know better the ordaining of an army in strange countries than either our cousin D’Eu or De la Marche, therefore we charge you and pray you to execute our request.” Coucy bowed, saying, “Your prayer is my command,” and agreed to accept if he had the aid of Guy and Guillaume de Tremoille and Admiral de Vienne. Clearly he, too, with unhappy percipience, had no great confidence in the younger men.

  Because the problem of command was to be crucial in the outcome of the crusade, Burgundy’s effort to name a “chief counselor” is significant, whether or not Froissart’s report of the interview is verbatim. Writing history in terms of direct speech was a license medieval chroniclers allowed themselves. So did Thucydides. If we accept Pericles’ speech to the Athenians, we need not balk at Burgundy’s to Coucy. It has been questioned on the ground that Coucy’s name does not appear as “chief counselor”—or at all—in the final list of Nevers’ primary counselors, which consisted of the two Tremoilles and Odard de Chasseron, all of the Burgundian court, together with Philippe de Bar and Admiral de Vienne. Coucy, D’Eu, Boucicaut, De la Marche, and Henri de Bar made up a separate list whom Nevers could consult “when it seemed good to him.” As an arrangement for the governance of a military campaign, this had flaws. It may reflect some sparring between Nevers and his father; more fundamentally, it reflects the absence of a concept of unity of command.

  Emptied of occupation by the peace with England, knights took the cross with alacrity “to escape idleness and employ themselves in chivalry.” Some 2,000 knights and squires are said to have joined, supported by 6,000 archers and foot soldiers drawn from the best available volunteers and mercenary companies. Just as he had set a record for opulence at the double wedding, Burgundy now determined that the equipment for his son’s debut in war should be the most resplendent ever. Nevers’ personal company of 200 were supplied with new livery of a “gay green,” with 24 wagonloads of green satin tents and pavilions, with four huge banners painted with the crusade’s emblem—a figure of the Virgin surrounded by the lilies of France and the arms of Burgundy and Nevers. Pennons for lances and tents, tabards for the trumpets, velvet saddle blankets and heraldic costume for twelve trumpeters were all embroidered with the same emblems in gold and silver, many encrusted with jewels and ivory. Kitchen equipment was made especially for the campaign as well as pewter tableware of forty dozen bowls and thirty dozen plates. Four months’ wages in
advance had to be paid before departure. The cost of all this outran the money raised from Flanders. New taxes were levied on all Burgundy’s domains, including the traditional aid for knighting of the eldest son and for overseas voyage. Payment in lieu of participation in the crusade was exacted even from old men, women, and children. For further needs en route, the Duke negotiated loans from municipalities, tax farmers, Lombards, and other bankers.

  Competitive splendor governed the preparations. Coucy’s costs were covered in part by Louis d’Orléans, who paid him the remaining 6,000 livres due for the Genoa campaign in a flat sum, plus 2,000 to his son-in-law Henri de Bar and the expenses for seventeen knights and squires of Louis’ household who were to follow Coucy’s banner.

  First among the foreign allies were the Knights Hospitalers of Rhodes, who, since the decline of Constantinople and Cyprus, held the dominant Christian position in the Levant; secondly, the Venetians, who supplied a fleet; and on land, German princes of the Rhineland, Bavaria, Saxony, and other parts of the Empire who had been recruited by the Hungarians and joined the French corps en route. Adventurers from Navarre and Spain, Bohemia and Poland, where French heralds had proclaimed the crusade, joined individually. The Italian states were too engaged in their usual intramural hostilities to send contingents, and the supposed English presence of which so much has been made is imaginary. No record exists of the financing necessary to send an English force abroad, nor of the necessary royal permission to leave the country. Neither Henry of Bolingbroke nor other “son of the Duke of Lancaster” could have led an English contingent, since they and most of the leading English nobles were present at Richard’s marriage five months after the crusade’s departure. Sporadic mention of English participants can be explained by the presence of Hospitalers of the English “tongue” who joined their brothers of Rhodes. The question that remains is not whether the English were present but why they were absent. It may be that as the contention between King Richard and Gloucester grew more vehement, each wanted his partisans near at hand; or it may be that the animosity left by the long war had cut deeply into the old brotherhood of chivalry, leaving the English with no taste for a crusade under French leadership.

  Enthusiasm was not universal. Nevers’ father-in-law, Albert, Duke of Bavaria and Count of Hainault, was not impressed by the need to expel the Turks or defend the Faith. When his son, William of Ostrevant, with a following of many young knights and squires, expressed a strong desire to go, Duke Albert curtly told him his motive was “Vainglory” and asked what reason he had “to seek arms upon a people and a country that never did us any damage.” He said William would be better employed to use his forces for the recovery of family property unlawfully held by the neighboring lords of Frisia. Allowed a martial enterprise, William was happy to obey. The eastern frontier of Europe was far away and, given the communications of the time, the Turks seemed to most Europeans hardly more than a name.

  The papal schism did not incommode the venture. Boniface, the Roman Pope, to whom Hungary, Venice, and the Germans were obedient, had been actively preaching the crusade since 1394. He wanted the prestige, as his late rival Clement had wanted the prestige of sponsoring a saint. Pope Benedict of Avignon sponsored the French. At Burgundy’s request, he gave the customary plenary absolution to crusaders and special permission to take shelter with “schismatics” (the Greek Christians) and infidels.

  The departure from Dijon on April 30, 1396, was a superb spectacle which could not fail to lift the hearts of observers. At the fulfillment of his dream, Mézières, however, could not rejoice. The humility of pilgrims, he wrote, did not grace the great procession: “they go like kings, preceded by minstrels and heralds in purple and rich garments, making great feasts of outrageous foods,” and spending in one month more than they ought to in three. It would be the same as previous expeditions, ruined by extravagance and indiscipline, motivated by chivalry’s love “for one of the great ladies of the world—Vainglory.”

  The crusaders’ route took them via Strasbourg across Bavaria to the upper Danube and from there, using the river as transport, to rendezvous with the King of Hungary at Buda (Budapest). The joint armies would proceed from there against the Turks. Objectives, if vague, were not modest. After expelling the Turks from the Balkans, the crusaders planned to come to the aid of Constantinople, cross the Hellespont, march through Turkey and Syria to liberate Palestine and the Holy Sepulcher, and return after these triumphs by sea. Arrangements had been made for the Venetian fleet and galleys of the Emperor Manuel to blockade the Turks in the Sea of Marmora and for the Venetians to sail up the Danube from the Black Sea to meet the crusaders in Wallachia in July. As grandiose as the projected invasion of England and march on Rome, the program was unaffected by past frustrations. Nor had the siege of Mahdia, involving many of the same leaders, altered their contempt for the infidel as foe. The ranks of chivalry still believed that nothing could withstand their valor.

  Rules of discipline were decreed by a War Council of March 28, which provided that a noble causing disruption was to lose horse and harness, a varlet drawing a knife in a quarrel to lose his hand, anyone committing robbery to lose an ear. The larger question of obedience to command—which military ordinances since the time of Jean II had tried and failed to solve—was left untouched. The Council of March 28 added a final provision that was to be determining at Nicopolis: “Item, that [in battle] the Count and his company claim the avant garde.” Chivalry’s sense of itself required valor to be proved in the front line. Victory required more.

  Coucy did not travel with the main body because he was detached on a mission to the lord of Milan. Angry at the removal of Genoa from his sphere of influence, Gian Galeazzo was maneuvering to prevent its transfer of sovereignty to the King of France. Coucy was sent to warn him that his interference would be regarded as a hostile act. More than Genoa was behind the quarrel. Gian Galeazzo had turned against France, bitterly if not openly, because his beloved daughter Valentina was being subjected to a campaign of slander charging her with bewitching or poisoning the King. The vicious rumors were the work of Queen Isabeau, who wanted Valentina out of the way, perhaps from jealousy of her influence with the King, or to facilitate her own affair with Orléans, or as part of Isabeau’s perpetual machinations with Florence against Milan, or something of each. Whispered in the taverns and markets, among a public ready to believe ill of the Italian foreigner, the rumors grew so rampant that mobs shouting threats gathered before Valentina’s residence. Louis d’Orléans made no effort to defend his wife, but rather complied with Isabeau’s objective by removing Valentina from Paris on the excuse of her safety. She was left to live in exile thereafter at her country residence at Asnières on the Seine, where, twelve years later, she died.

  Valentina’s removal occurred in April, the month of the crusade’s departure, and was not taken lightly by her adoring father. He threatened to send knights to defend his daughter’s honor, but his contemporaries believed he did more than that. For revenge upon France, he was said to have notified Bajazet of the crusaders’ plan of campaign and to have kept him closely informed of its progress. The charge against Gian Galeazzo was probably a product of French animosity and the search for someone to blame after the appalling dénouement, but it could also have been true. A Visconti did not shrink from revenge, especially not the man who had so coolly dispatched his uncle to prison and death.

  It is not impossible that Coucy may have inadvertently revealed the crusaders’ plan of campaign to his host in Pavia. Gian Galeazzo was a strange, cheerless, secretive prince who would have concealed his paternal feelings. With regard to Genoa, however, Coucy’s intervention was successful; sovereignty was duly transferred to the King of France in the following November. Coucy, accompanied by Henri de Bar and their followers, left Milan in May for Venice, where he requisitioned a ship from the Venetian Senate on May 17 to take him across the Adriatic. He embarked on May 30 for Senj (Segna), a small port on the Croatian coast. Evidence
is lacking of his route thereafter, but the choice of Senj would indicate that he and his party traveled to Buda by the most direct way, a journey of some 300 miles through wild, rugged, and dangerous country.

  He reached the rendezvous before Nevers, who was in no hurry. Stopping along the upper Danube for receptions and festivities offered by German princes, Nevers and his gorgeous companions in green and gold did not reach even Vienna until June 24, a month behind the vanguard under D’Eu and Boucicaut. A fleet of seventy vessels with cargo of wine, flour, hay, and other provisions was dispatched from Vienna down the Danube while Nevers enjoyed further festivities offered by his sister’s husband, Leopold IV, Duke of Austria. After borrowing from his brother-in-law the huge sum of 100,000 ducats, which took time to arrange, Nevers finally arrived in Buda at some time in July.

  Sigismund welcomed his allies with joy not unmixed with apprehension. Although the Hungarian nobles had taken the cross with enthusiasm, their loyalty to him was not perfect, and he foresaw difficulties in the problem of a combined march and a coordinated strategy with the visitors. The French were not disposed to take advice, and the habits of pillage and brigandage, grown routine in the last fifty years of warfare, had already been exhibited on their march through Germany.

  Strategy also had to be coordinated with the ardent crusader Philibert de Naillac, Grand Master of the Hospitalers, and with representatives of the Venetian fleet. The 44 ships of Venice, carrying the Hospitalers from Rhodes, sailed through the Aegean into the Sea of Marmora, and some of them continued into the Black Sea and up the Danube, without meeting hostile action. Inferior at sea, the Turks did not challenge them, nor did they in turn blockade the Turks in Asia, which suggests that Bajazet and a large part of his forces were already on the European side.