21.London’s Common Gallows, on which most common criminals were executed, were at Tyburn. They stood approximately on the site of Marble Arch and were in use till the middle of the eighteenth century.
22.These robes appear in the inventory drawn up a few years later when Robert of Artois’ possessions were seized.
23.Watriquet Brasseniex, known as de Couvin from the name of his native village near Namur in Hainaut, was minstrel to all the great Valois houses. He acquired considerable celebrity for the lays he composed between 1319 and 1329. His works were preserved in handsome illuminated manuscripts, which were executed under his personal supervision for the princesses of the time.
24.The official year began at Easter, but the feast of the New Year was traditionally celebrated on January 1st, when people exchanged good wishes and presents.
25.The number of serving-men in the household, both noble and plebeian, the livrées du roi as they were called, increased enormously under Philippe VI; it would seem that for every function that existed under Philip the Fair, there were three or four under the first Valois. Among the names of the clerks attached to the King’s person, that is to say the members of his private office, are to be found Robert Mulet, Seigneur de la Bruyère, Robert le Coq, Jacques la Vache, Hugues de Pommard, Simon de Bucy, Pierre des Essarts, Geoffroy de Fleury – and this list is far from exhaustive.
It was the same with the chamberlains, pages and cupbearers among whom were Michel de Recourt, Robert Frétard, Trouillard d’Usages, Vidame du Mans, Thibaud de Mathefelon, Jean de Beaumont, Hérouart de Belleperche, Pierre Trousseau, Jean d’Andresel, and many more.
Many of these people moreover, besides their functions in the King’s service, also held administrative appointments in the Council, Parliament, the Exchequer or the Chancellory.
The clerks were all clergy, having often entered the Church less from vocation than in order to acquire the education necessary for such employment.
26.Queen Jeanne the Lame would go to any lengths to gratify her hatred for any of her husband’s friends, counsellors or servants.
When she wanted to get rid of the Marshal Robert Bertrand, known as the Knight of the Green Lion, she sent a letter ‘in the King’s name’ to the Provost of Paris, ordering him to arrest the Marshal for treason, and to send him to the gallows of Montfaucon forthwith. She sealed the letter with her husband’s private seal, which she had stolen from him when he was asleep. The Provost was the Marshal’s intimate friend; he was astounded by the order, which had been preceded by no trial of any kind. Instead of sending Robert Bertrand to Montfaucon, he took him straight to the King, who welcomed him warmly, embraced him and could not make out why his visitors were so concerned. When they showed him the warrant, he realized at once that it had been issued by his wife, and he took her, says the chronicler, into a room apart and beat her so severely with a stick ‘that he nearly killed her’.
Bishop Jean de Marigny was also very close to becoming a victim of Jeanne the Lame’s criminal tendencies. Though he was unaware of it, he had managed to displease her. On his return from a journey into Guyenne, the Queen pretended to welcome him with a great show of friendship, and to take the weariness from his limbs had a bath prepared for him in the palace. The Bishop, seeing no urgent necessity, at first refused to bathe; but the Queen insisted and told him that her son Jean, Duke of Normandy (the future Jean II), was going to take a bath too. She accompanied him to the baths. The two baths had been made ready; the Duke of Normandy inadvertently made for the bath intended for the Bishop and was about to get into it, when his mother stopped him with a show of panic. Her demeanour caused considerable surprise and Jean of Normandy, who was a great friend of Marigny, immediately suspected a trap. He seized a dog that happened to be prowling about and threw it into the bath; upon which the dog died. When King Philippe VI heard of the incident, he beat her once again ‘with torches’.
As for the Hôtel de Nesle, Philippe had given it to his wife in 1332, two years after he had bought the house from the executors of Mahaut’s daughter’s will. This was Jeanne of Burgundy, the Widow, who had been left it by her husband Philippe V.
As a result of a clause in Jeanne’s will, the proceeds of the sale, a thousand livres in cash, plus an income of two hundred livres, were put to the founding and maintaining of a school which was set up in part of the property. This is the origin of the famous Collège de Bourgogne; it is also the basis for the confusion in the popular mind between the two sisters-in-law, Marguerite and Jeanne of Burgundy. The debauching of schoolboys of which Marguerite was accused, and which existed only in the popular imagination, can also be explained in this way.
27.The lance-rest (fautre or faucre) was a hook fixed to the brest-plate of the armour in such a way that it supported the wooden shaft of the lance and prevented its recoil at the moment of impact. Till the end of the fourteenth century it was fixed immovably; but later was hinged or sprung to prevent its projection being an embarrassment when fighting with a sword.
28.Edward III’s secret stay in France at Saint-Christophe-en-Halatte lasted four days, from April 12th to 16th, 1331.
29.The King-at-Arms was the master of ceremonies and presided over all the formalities of a tournament.
30.The Tolomei Company was the most important of the Sienese companies after the Buonsignori. It had been founded by Tolomeo Tolomei, the friend or at any rate the familiar of Alexander III, Pope from 1159 to 1181, who was himself Sienese and the opponent of Frederick Barbarossa. The Tolomei Palace in Siena was built in 1205. The Tolomei were often bankers to the Holy See; they established their business in France about the middle of the thirteenth century, first in the fairs in Champagne and then in a number of branch houses, of which Neauphle was one, with the head office in Paris.
When Philippe VI issued his decrees and many of the Italian businessmen were imprisoned for three weeks, having to purchase their liberty at very high rates, the Tolomei left secretly, taking with them all the funds deposited by other Italian companies and by their French clients, which created considerable difficulties for the French Treasury.
31.The ‘remonstrances’ had been carried to very great lengths since John of Luxemburg, to oblige Philippe VI, had organized a coalition and was threatening the Duke of Brabant with invasion of his territory. The Duke of Brabant preferred to expel Robert of Artois, but not without taking advantage of the occasion to negotiate a satisfactory alliance in the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of the King of France. As for the King of Bohemia, he received as a reward for his intervention an agreement to the marriage of his daughter Bonne of Luxemburg with the heir to France, Jean of Normandy. She was, therefore, after Marie of Luxemburg who had been sister to King John and the wife of Charles IV, the second daughter of Luxemburg-Bohemia to be Queen of France within two generations.
32.On October 2nd, 1332. The oath Philippe VI demanded from his barons was one of loyalty to the Duke of Normandy. Since he had not himself been the direct heir to the throne but had come to it by choice of the peers, Philippe VI reverted to the tradition of the elected monarchy of the first Capets, who had always had their eldest sons recognized by the peers as heir to the throne. This tradition continued till Philip Augustus.
33.Old King Robert the Bruce, who was a leper, and had held Edward II and Edward III in check so long, had died in 1329, leaving his crown to a boy of seven, David Bruce. David’s minority was an opportunity for the different factions to renew their quarrelling. To ensure his safety, young David was taken by barons of his party to the refuge of the Court of France, while Edward III supported the claims of a French noble of Norman origin, Edward de Baliol, who was related to the ancient Scottish kings and was agreeable to the crown of Scotland being placed under English suzerainty.
34.Jean Buridan, born about 1295 at Béthune in Artois, was a disciple of William of Occam. His learning in philosophy and theology gained him a considerable reputation; at the age of thirty or thirty-two he beca
me Rector of the University of Paris. His controversy with old Pope John XXII, and the schism that nearly resulted from it, served merely to increase his fame. In the latter part of his life he retired to Germany where he taught principally in Vienna. He died in 1360.
The part attributed to him by popular imagination in the affair of the Tower of Nesle was pure fantasy and, indeed, only made its first appearance in the writings of two centuries later.
35.In the Exchequer accounts are to be found the following payments made in the first months of 1337: in March, an order to pay Robert of Artois 200 pounds as a gift from the King; in April, a gift of 383 pounds, another of 54 pounds, and the grant of the castles of Guildford, Wallingford and Somerton; in May, the grant of an annual pension of 1,200 marcs sterling; in June, the payment of 15 pounds due by Robert to the Bardi Company, etc.
36.If it were not that historical fact compels its acceptance, the novelist would hesitate at so absurd and unlikely a coincidence. Nor did the presentation of Edward III’s defiance, which legally began the Hundred Years War, put a term to the strange fate of the Tower of Nesle as the scene of tragedy.
The Constable Raoul de Brienne, Count d’Eu, was living in the Hôtel de Nesle when he was arrested in 1350 on the order of Jean the Good. He was condemned to death and beheaded.
And it was from this house that Charles the Bad, King of Navarre (the grandson of Marguerite of Burgundy) took up arms against the House of France.
Later, Charles VI, the Mad, gave it to his maniacal wife, the sinister Isabeau of Bavaria, who handed France over by treaty to the English, and denounced her own son, the Dauphin, as illegitimate.
Hardly had the Hôtel de Nesle been given to Charles the Bold by Charles VII, when the latter died, and Charles the Bold took up arms against the new King, Louis XI.
The monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés then occupied it temporarily.
Francis I gave part of it to Benvenuto Cellini, but since the Provost of Paris objected, Cellini had to resort to force to gain occupation of it.
Henri II installed a mint in it. The Monnaie de Paris is still on the site, by which the great extent of the property and buildings may be judged.
Charles IX sold the house to pay his Swiss guards. It was bought by the Duke of Nevers, Louis of Gonzaga, who had it demolished and built the Hôtel de Nevers on the site; and it was at this time that the Tower was pulled down.
Mazarin acquired the Hôtel de Nevers and built on the site of the old buildings the Collège de Quatre Nations, which still exists, and is today the home of the Institut de France.
37.Henry de Burghersh seems to have been a sort of English Talleyrand of the Middle Ages; he was an extremely able man and knew how to make himself indispensable to each successive prince. He had, too, a sense of the right moment at which to abandon the powerful of yesterday to join those of tomorrow. He had served King Edward II and had been sent by him to Queen Isabella to persuade her to return from her exile in France. He had joined Isabella and Mortimer as soon as they disembarked in England, and Mortimer had appointed him Chancellor. He suffered only a temporary eclipse at Mortimer’s downfall. In 1334 Edward III recalled him to be Treasurer, having meanwhile consistently sent him on embassies abroad. It was he who was fundamentally responsible for organizing the great coalition of the English, the Germans and the Flemish against France. As with Talleyrand, moral integrity was not the outstanding feature of his character; on the other hand, he had a high and effective regard for the real interests of his country.
38.Queen Isabella still had another twenty years to live, but she took no further part in affairs. The daughter of Philip the Fair died on August 23rd, 1358, at Hertford Castle and was buried in the Franciscan Church of Newgate in London.
39.L’Eclus was not the last battle France lost on equal terms through making poor use of her forces. We have seen equally remarkable examples of the folly of the strategists in our own day. Though the contrary has continually been asserted to excuse the defeat of 1940, the French army at the time was equipped with as many tanks as the German army, and their fire-power was equivalent if not superior to the German. The French High Command was responsible for the defeat by its conception of the tactical use of tanks, despite notable warnings. With a gap of six centuries – L’Eclus in June 1340, Flanders in June 1940 – the same ridiculous obstinacy was responsible for similar results. The breed of Béhuchets is a tenacious one, but it never conquers anything but staffs.
40.In spite of political struggles, risings, and rivalry between social classes or with neighbouring cities, all of which were the common lot of the Italian republics at this period, Siena nevertheless was at the height of its prosperity and fame, both in commerce and in the arts, during the fourteenth century. Between the occupation of the town by Charles of Valois in 1301 and its conquest by Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, in 1399, its only real disaster was the Black Death in 1347–8.
41.‘I am now living in France, in the Babylon of the West, amid everything that is most hideous under the sun, on the banks of the untamed Rhône, which is like the Cocytus or the Acheron of Tartarus, where reign the Fisherman’s successors, who were once poor, but have forgotten their origin. Instead of saintly solitude, one is confounded to find a gathering of criminals and bands of infamous satellites on every hand; instead of austere fasting, there is luxurious feasting; instead of pious pilgrimage, a cruel lewd idleness; instead of the bare feet of the apostles, the fast steeds of thieves, white as snow, apparelled in gold, lodged in gold, eating gold, and soon to be shod with gold. In short, it makes one think of the kings of the Persians or the Parthians, whom one must worship and can visit only with an offering of gifts …’ (Letter V).
‘Today Avignon is no longer a city, but the country of ghosts and phantoms; and to sum it up in a word, it is the sink of every crime and every infamy; it is the hell of the living prophesied by David …’ (Letter VIII).
‘I know from experience that there is here no piety, charity, faith, or respect, no fear of God, nothing saintly, just, equitable or sacred, in fact nothing human … Welcoming hands, cruel actions; angel voices, devilish deeds; sweet chanting, hearts of steel …’ (Letter XIV).
‘It is the only spot on earth where reason has no place, where everything happens at hazard and without reflection, and of all the plagues of this place, of which there are an infinite number, the most harassing is that it is full of snares and grapnels, so that when one thinks to escape one finds oneself yet more strictly bound and chained. Moreover, there is no light and no guide … And, to quote Lucan, “it is a black night of crime” … You would not think these were people, but particles of dust blown hither and thither by the wind …’ (Letter XVI).
‘Satan looks on laughing at this spectacle and takes pleasure in the unequal dance, sitting as arbiter between the decrepit old men and the young girls … Among them [the cardinals] there was a little old man capable of fecundating no matter what animal; he was as lascivious as a goat or as whatever there may be which is more lascivious and more stinking than a goat. Whether it was that he was afraid of rats or ghosts, he dared not sleep alone. He considered that there was nothing more melancholy or unfortunate than to be celibate. He officiated to Hymen every day, though he had long passed his seventieth year and had at the most seven teeth left …’ (Letter XVIII). (Petrarch: Letters without Title, to Cola di Rienzi, Tribune of Rome, and others.)
Bibliography
For the benefit of the many readers whose interest in the last of the Capet kings of the direct line has been aroused by The Accursed Kings, a list of the principal sources on which this historical panorama has been based is given below.
This bibliography has been drawn up by Pierre de Lacretelle.
Chroniclers
FRENCH
Les grandes chroniques de France.
Les chroniques de Saint-Denis.
Chronique parisienne anonyme.
Chroniques des quatre premiers Valois.
The
continuator of Guillaume de Nangis.
Pierre Cochon: Chronique normande.
Geoffroy de Paris: Chronique métrique.
Jehan le Bel: Les vrayes chroniques.
Jean Froissart: Les Chroniques.
ENGLISH
Adam of Murimuth: Chronica sui temporis.
William of Malmesbury: De gestis regum anglorum.
Holinshed: Chronicles of England.
Contemporary Sources
Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France (Publ 1770 et seq).
Itinéraires des Rois de France (Recueil des Historiens de la France XVIIIe et XIXe siècles).
Calendar of Close rolls (for the reigns of Edward II and Edward III). London 1893–1900.
Archives of the Record Office.
Rymer, Thomas: Foedera, conventiones, litterae, acta publica inter reges Angliae et alias … (Vol II, London, 1739).
General
Anselme, le Père: Histoire générale de la maison de France et des grands officiers de la couronne (1726–33).
Cokayne, J. E.: Complete peerage of England (London, 1893–1900).
Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1885–1901).
Giry, A.: Manuel de diplomatique (1894).
Berty, A.: Topographie historique du vieux Paris (1888 et seq).
Calmette, J.: Le monde féodal (1934).
Deprez, E.: Les préliminaires de la guerre de Cent Ans (1902).
Lafaurie, J.: Les monnaies des rois de la France (Vol I, 1951).
Franklin, A.: Les rois et les gouvernements de France (1960). Les rues et les cris de Paris au Moyen Age (1874).
Viollet le Duc, E. E.: Dictionnaire de l’architecture au Moyen Age. Dictionnaire du mobilier de la France au Moyen Age.
Enlart, C.: Manuel d’architecture française au Moyen Age (Vol III: Le costume).
Lacroix, P.: L’ancienne France (1886). Les Arts au Moyen Age (1869). Moeurs, usages et costumes au Moyen Age (1873). Vie militaire et religieuse au Moyen Age (1873). Science et Lettres au Moyen Age (1877).
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