A Distant Mirror (79 page)

All excuses for postponement now came to one—waiting for the Duc de Berry. His non-arrival was a sign that the invading spirit was not in fact unanimous, that doubts and conflicting interests were struggling behind the scenes, that a peace party represented by Berry was opposing itself to the war party.

Berry was too absorbed in acquisition and art to be interested in war. He lived for possessions, not glory. He owned two residences in Paris, the Hôtel de Nesle and another near the Temple, and built or acquired a total of seventeen castles in his duchies of Berry and Auvergne. He filled them with clocks, coins, enamels, mosaics, marquetry, illuminated books, musical instruments, tapestries, statues, triptychs painted in bright scenes on dazzling gold ground bordered with gems, gold vessels and spoons, jeweled crosses and reliquaries, relics, and curios. He owned one of Charlemagne’s teeth, a piece of Elijah’s mantle, Christ’s cup from the Last Supper, drops of the Virgin’s milk, enough of her hairs and teeth to distribute as gifts, soil from various Biblical sites, a narwhal’s teeth, porcupine’s quills, the molar tooth of a giant, and enough gold-fringed vestments to robe all the canons of three cathedrals at one time. Agents kept him apprised of curiosities, and when one reported a “giant’s bones” dug up near Lyon in 1378, he at once authorized purchase. He kept live swans and bears representing his chosen device, a menagerie with apes and dromedaries, and rare fruit trees in his garden.
He ate strawberries with crystal picks mounted in silver and gold, and read by candlelight from six carved ivory candle-holders.

Like most affluent lords, he had a good library of classics and contemporary works; he commissioned translations from the Latin, bought romances from booksellers in Paris, and bound his books in precious bindings, some in red velvet with gold clasps. He commissioned from renowned illuminators at least twenty Books of Hours, among them two exquisite masterpieces, the
Grandes Heures
and
Très Riches Heures
. His pleasure was to see illustrated his favorite scenes and portraits, including his own. Delicate multiple-towered cities and castles, rural occupations, knights and ladies in garden, hunt, and banquet hall, clad in garments of surpassing elegance, ornamented the prayerbooks. The Duke himself usually appears robed in the pure sky blue, whose pigment was so precious that two pots of it were listed in an inventory of Berry’s “treasures.”

Berry introduced the newly invented pedal organ into his churches and bought a new jacket for four livres so that his cornettist who played so beautifully might perform a solo before Charles V. He had gold and pearls ground together for a laxative, and during enforced idleness when he was bled to relieve the effects of gluttony and an apoplectic tendency, he played at dice, his favorite pastime. In one game with knightly companions, he wagered his coral prayer beads for forty francs. Accompanied by his swans, bears, and tapestries, he moved continually from one of his castles to another, carrying half-finished works of art by artists at one place to be completed by those at another, taking part in local processions and pilgrimages, visiting monasteries, enjoying wine harvests in autumn, and sending home to the Duchess on one occasion in June new peas, cherries, and 78 ripe pears. He collected dogs, always searching for more, no matter how many he had, and when he heard of an unusual variety of greyhound in Scotland, obtained a safe-conduct from Richard II to allow four couriers on horseback to make the round trip to bring him back a pair.

The funds to gratify his tastes were wrung from the people of Auvergne, and of Languedoc when he was its governor, by the heaviest taxation in France of his time, sowing the hatred and misery that resulted in the insurrection of Montpellier and his own recall. Punishment of the Tuchin rising in 1383, when he was again governor in place of Anjou, was his most lucrative opportunity. Instead of death sentences on the leaders, he sold pardons and imposed on the communes an enormous fine of 800,000 gold francs, four times as much as the whole of Languedoc had been able to collect for the ransom of Jean II.
It was to be paid for by an unprecedented tax of 24 francs per hearth. Unchastened and unchanged, Berry was to go on spending for thirty more years until he had ruined his lands to pay his expenses and died insolvent in 1416 at the age of 76.

At the time when he was waited for at the Scheldt, he was 46, vain, pleasure-loving, obstinate, a prey to parasites, mediocre in mind and spirit, redeemed from vulgarity only by his love and fostering of beauty. Perhaps that lifelong passion was a reaction to his own ugly, coarse-grained features, which he perversely emphasized; the pug-nosed face appears on plates, seals, cameos, tapestries, altar panels, stained-glass windows, Books of Hours. According to a popular verse, the Duke wished to surround himself “only with
snub-noses at his court.”

Berry did not appear at the Scheldt until October 14. By that time the days were growing shorter and colder, the Channel rougher. Meantime in mid-September, disaster smote the portable town. Loaded aboard 72 ships, it was on the way from Rouen to the Scheldt when the convoy was attacked by an English squadron out of Calais and three of the French ships were captured, along with the master carpenter in charge of construction. Too big to enter Calais, two of the ships were towed to England and their sections of the town exhibited in London to the awe and rejoicing of the English. For the French the loss was a portent.

The Monk of St. Denis, never at a loss for omens, reported clouds of crows carrying lighted coals which they deposited on thatched barns, as well as one of the terrible storms which appear regularly at all dark moments of his chronicle and, in this case, tore up the tallest trees by their roots and destroyed a church by a thunderbolt. On the day after Berry finally arrived, the elements, “seemingly angered by the delay,” flung the sea into an uproar and raised waves “like mountains” that shattered the ships and were followed by such rains as seemed that God was sending a new Flood. Many supplies, not yet loaded, were ruined.

Three weeks of indecision passed without action. In November the captains of 150 of the invasion ships submitted a list of reasons why embarkation was by now impossible: “Truthfully, the sea is cursed: item, the nights are too long; item, too dark [and through a long string of “items”], too cold, too rainy, too
fresques
. Item, we need a full moon; item, we need wind. Item, the lands of England are perilous, the ports are perilous; we have too many old ships, too many small ships, we fear the small ships may be swamped by the great ships.…” The
unrelieved negatives hint at justification for a decision already taken.

The whole immense enterprise with all its investment in ships, arms, men, money, and provisions was called off, at least for the winter. The grand army disintegrated and departed, perishable supplies were sold to the Flemings below cost, the remainder of the portable town was given by the King to the Duke of Burgundy, who used it for construction in his own domain. Across the Channel, the English celebrated.

That Berry had “no wish to go to England” himself and did not wish the expedition to go was recognized at the time. Sentiment for a negotiated peace was growing on both sides, though always opposed by a war party in each country. Especially the mercantile estate wanted to end
this “useless war,” and many who recognized that it was getting nowhere argued for peace as a step toward ending the schism and uniting two great Christian kings against the Turks. Whether or not Berry thought in these terms, he was certainly concerned about the money absorbed by war, and he had been in communication with the Duke of Lancaster, who would have liked his country to be at peace with France in order to free him to pursue his ambitions in Castile. Under pretext of a peace parley, Berry and Lancaster had had a meeting earlier in the year from which both had emerged looking pleased, and a year later Berry, as a widower, negotiated to marry Lancaster’s daughter, although that came to nothing.

Philip the Bold, even at the risk of leaving the kingdom in control of his brother, could have sailed without him if his will had matched the bold motto flying from his masts. But he feared the risk of a rising in Flanders if he left. The banners proclaiming “I don’t wait” were hauled down and he waited after all. At the same time the Royal Council too developed doubts of military success. Long before the portents of barn-igniting crows and tree-uprooting storms, a report from Avignon mentioned “the great debate as to whether the King will invade or not.”

The true determinant was probably reluctance at the water’s edge. Crossing the Channel was an uncertain thing at best, and worse against “the terrible west wind” of the late season. Above all loomed a hostile beachhead on the other side. Facing that hazard, potential invaders, after making preparations as grandiose as those of 1386, have backed away—Napoleon for one, Hitler for another. Throughout the war in the 14th century the English had allied beachheads in Flanders, Normandy, or Brittany at their disposal, or their own ports at Calais and Bordeaux. Lacking that advantage, the French had never launched more than punitive raids with no attempt to hold land. In either direction
no successful invasion of a hostile beachhead was ever carried out between 1066 and 1944.

If fear was a reason, it was not acknowledged. The invasion was considered only postponed until the following year, when a smaller version was to be launched under the command of the Constable and Coucy. In March 1387
Charles VI paid a ceremonial visit to Coucy-le-Château, partly to discuss plans, as indicated by a surviving document which refers to provisions for the “army” that the Sire de Coucy will take “for going to England.” Doubtless also the King’s visit was in furtherance of the crown’s interest in Coucy’s domain. This time no court poet documented the occasion, but a petty crime committed in the course of the visit elicited one of the royal letters of pardon which are windows on the life of the poor.

One
Baudet Lefèvre, “a poor man with many children,” took from the castle two tin serving platters used for service of the King’s dinner, hid them under his tunic, and went to a hostel in the town, where he was seen by a sergeant of “our dear and beloved cousin, the Sire de Coucy,” who asked him, “What are you doing here?” Baudet replied, “I am warming myself.” As he was speaking, the sergeant saw the platters and arrested him. He was taken to prison in the castle, where he was also found to have taken a silver-gilt platter embossed with the royal mark. “In the prison he was like to have died, but that our pardon and grace was humbly begged, and since the said Baudet has always been a man of good life and honest speech with no other misdeeds on his record, we are pleased to grant him this grace and mercy,” and to quit, remit, and pardon the supplicant, now and in the future, by “our special grace and royal authority” of all offense, fines, civil and criminal punishment which he may have sustained, and restore him and his good wife to their goods, and to let this be known to all officers of justice of the region and their lieutenants or successors now or in the future.

That all this was required in the King’s name for the theft of three platters—and the word
theft
is not used in the document—suggests, beyond mere prolixity, the care taken to exhibit the King as protector of the poor.

In May, two months after the King’s visit, Coucy attended a meeting of the Royal Council with Admiral de Vienne, Guy de la Tremolile representing Burgundy, Jean le Mercier, the King’s minister, and others to confer on the renewed invasion of England. According
to the Monk of St. Denis, the “shameful” departure of the King and nobles from the Scheldt had caused a painful impression upon all Frenchmen, with the result that it was felt necessary to erase the impression by striking a powerful blow at England, and to “commit there all the excesses of an enemy upon an enemy.” Clearly the plan for conquest had receded to something more in the nature of a raid.

The expedition was to be split into two parts: one, commanded by the Constable, to leave from Brittany, and the other, commanded by the Admiral, Coucy, and Count Waleran de St. Pol, to leave from Harfleur in Normandy. Their objective was Dover. They were to take 6,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 crossbowmen, 6,000 “other men of war,” enough food for three months including hay and oats for the horses, and armor in good condition. Intentions were certainly genuine, for in June a vessel of the Sire de Coucy was loaded at Soissons on the Aisne with foodstuffs, plate, cooking equipment, linens, arms, and tents to be delivered at Rouen. Coucy, Vienne, and the others were at Harfleur at this time. Coastal raids from Calais led by the fiery Sir Harry Percy, called “Hotspur,” failed to halt preparations because Percy attacked northward in the wrong direction. The day for departure was fixed, all provisions loaded, every man given his wages for fifteen days, and “the journey so far forward that it was thought it could not be broken.”

Contriving as best they could to interfere, the English found their cat’s-paw this time in the chronic conspirator Jean de Montfort, Duke of Brittany. To determine where Montfort stood at any given time, as he tried to hold his balance between England and France, would have required the arts of a sorcerer. As parties of opposing policy developed within each country, his problem became more complicated and his deals ever more entangled. It is no wonder that, according to repute, he was a sovereign given easily to tears.

One constant in his sentiments was hatred of his fellow Breton and subject Olivier de Clisson, Constable of France. The feeling, which was mutual, did not preclude Montfort’s making a treaty with Clisson in 1381 by which, “in consideration of the perfect love and affinity we have for our dear and well-beloved cousin and vassal, Messire Olivier, Seigneur de Clisson, Constable of France … we promise to be a good, true, and beneficient lord to the said seigneur … and to guard well his honor and the state of his person.” Olivier promised reciprocal loyalties as vassal. Montfort’s love and affinity turned to seething rage when Clisson arranged a marriage between his daughter and Jean de Penthièvre, son of Montfort’s late rival Charles of Blois, and now heir to the duchy, since Montfort at that time had no sons.