A Distant Mirror (84 page)

On the great day of the
Queen’s entry, the procession advanced along the Rue St. Denis, the main boulevard leading to the Châtelet and to the Grand Pont over the Seine. It was a ladies’ day, with the duchesses and great ladies riding in richly ornamented litters escorted on either side by noble lords. Coucy escorted his daughter Marie and her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Bar, while his wife rode in another litter. The robes and jewels of the ladies were masterpieces of the embroiderers’ and goldsmiths’ arts, for the King wanted every previous
ceremonial to be outdone. He had ordered the archives of St. Denis consulted for details of the coronations of ancient queens. The Duke of Burgundy, always a gorgeous dresser, needed no help; he wore a doublet of velvet embroidered with forty sheep and forty swans, each with a pearl bell around its neck.

Twelve hundred bourgeois led by the Provost lined the avenue, in gowns of green on one side of the street and gowns of crimson on the other. Such crowds of people had gathered to watch “as seemed that all the world had been there.” Houses and windows the length of the Rue St. Denis were hung with silks and tapestries, and the street itself covered with fine fabrics “in such plenty as if they cost nothing.”

Entering Paris through the Porte St. Denis, the procession passed under a heavenly sky of cloth stretched over the gate, filled with stars, beneath which children dressed as angels sang sweetly. Next on the way was a fountain spouting red and white wines, served by melodiously singing maidens with golden cups; then a stage erected in front of the Church of Ste. Trinité, on which was performed the
Pas Saladin
, a drama of the Third Crusade; then another firmament full of stars “with the figure of God seated in majesty”; then “a gate of Paradise” from which descended two angels with a crown of gold and jewels which they placed on the head of the Queen with appropriate song; then a curtained enclosure in front of St. Jacques within which men played organ music. At the Châtelet a marvelous mock castle and field of trees had been erected as the scene of a play dramatizing the “Bed of Justice.” Its theme was the favorite popular belief that the King was invested with royalty in order to maintain justice in favor of the small against the great. Amid a flurry of birds and beasts, twelve maidens with naked swords defended the White Hart from the Lion and the Eagle.

So many wonders were to be seen and admired that it was evening before the procession crossed the bridge leading to Notre Dame and the climactic display. High on a tightrope slanting down from the tower of Notre Dame to the roof of the tallest house on the Pont St. Michel, an acrobat was poised with two lighted candles in his hands. “Singing, he went upon the cord all along the great street so that all who saw him had marvel how it might be.” With his candles still burning, he was seen all over Paris and for two miles outside. The return of the procession from the cathedral at night was lighted by 500 torches.

The coronation and other festivities were thick with cloth of gold, ermine, velvets, silks, crowns, jewels, and all the gorgeous glitter that might dazzle the onlookers. A grand banquet was held in the same hall
in which Charles V had entertained the Emperor, followed by a similar pageant (using what may have been the same props) showing the Fall of Troy with castles and ships moving about on wheels. At the high table with the King and Queen were seated only prelates and eight ladies, including the Dame de Coucy and the Duchess of Bar. The King wore his golden crown and a surcoat of scarlet furred with ermine which, considering that it was August, gave point to Deschamps’ advice about light clothing in summer. Such was the crowding and heat of the hall that the Queen, who was seven months pregnant when she went through these five days of continuous ceremony in mid-August, nearly fainted and the Dame de Coucy did faint, and one table of ladies was overthrown by the press of people. Windows were broken open to let in the air, but the Queen and many ladies retired to their chambers.

The hot weather affected the tournaments too; so much dust was raised by the horses’ feet that the knights complained, but the Sire de Coucy as usual “shone brilliantly.” The King ordered 200 barrels of water to lay the dust, “yet next day they had dust enough and too much.”

Forty of the leading bourgeois of Paris presented the King and Queen with gifts of jewels and vessels of gold in the hope of remittance of taxes. Carried by two men dressed as ancient sages, the gifts were enclosed in a litter covered by a fine silk gauze through which the sparkle of jewels and gleam of gold could be seen. This imaginative presentation was less persuasive than it deserved to be. Two months later, when the King left for a tour of the south to display his newfound sovereignty to the people and seek to relieve their oppressions, taxes were raised in Paris as soon as he left to pay for the cost of the Queen’s entry and for the new journey, which in turn proved so sumptuous that it resulted not in lowered but in increased taxes. In a manipulation of the currency to aid the cost, the circulation of small silver coins of four pence and twelve pence, which were the common cash of the people, was forbidden in Paris, depriving the poor for two weeks of the means to purchase food in the market place. Who can say whether two weeks of hunger and anger weighed heavier in the balance than the miraculous vision of the acrobat on his tightrope and the fountains of running wine?

Chapter 22

C
oucy 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,

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.