A Distant Mirror (74 page)

The blight of the 14th century descended after the good King’s death. Robert’s talents petered out in his granddaughter and successor, Joanna, whose four ill-fated efforts to bolster the female succession by marriage brought turmoil culminating in the schism. The conflict of popes made Naples a battlefield. When Joanna opted for Clement and, at his instigation, named Anjou her heir, the furious Urban declared her deposed as a heretic and schismatic and crowned another Angevin descendant, Charles, Duke of Durazzo, as rightful King of Naples. Elevated from an obscure Albanian principality to a great Mediterranean kingdom, this prince took the throne as Charles III.

A small, fair-haired man said to resemble Robert in courage and geniality as well as love of learning, Charles of Durazzo did not let his good nature inhibit his struggle against Joanna. Within two months he had defeated her forces, established himself in the Castel Nuovo, and imprisoned the Queen in the hope of coercing her to appoint him her heir and thus legitimize his conquest. To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. When Joanna refused to acknowledge him and Anjou entered Italy on his way to her aid, Charles did not hesitate. He had the Queen strangled in prison and her corpse exposed in the cathedral for six days before burial so that no doubt should be left of her death.

Anjou came by way of Avignon, where he, in turn, was crowned King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, including Provence, by Pope Clement, and his rival, Charles of Durazzo, was simultaneously excommunicated. Despite his persuasive arts, Anjou had been unable during the insurrections in France to collect enough funds to take him all the way to Naples and had tried in vain to persuade the Royal Council to finance his venture as a national war. Now, as sovereign of Provence, he minted huge quantities of coin and enriched his troops by allowing them freedom to loot his new subjects on the pretext of punishment for their recent rebelliousness. He collected additional money and forces from Pope Clement and was joined in his enterprise by that energetic nobleman, Amadeo, the Green Count of Savoy, who contributed 1,100 lances at a cost to Anjou of 20,000 ducats a month.

Replenished and leading an army of 15,000 “
gorged with booty,” Anjou crossed into Lombardy followed by 300 pack mules and unnumbered baggage wagons. The Green Count’s equipment included an enormous green pavilion ornamented with twelve shields bearing the arms of Savoy in red and white, an emerald silk surcoat embroidered with the red-and-white device, twelve saddle-and-bridle sets all in green, and four others ornamented with “Hungarian ribbon knots” for his immediate retinue, and green shoes, hoods, and tunics for his pages.
When, before leaving, certain of his barons objected to the venture on various grounds, he silenced them, saying with unhappy clairvoyance, “I will fulfill what I have promised even if it means my death.” Many notable lords joined under his banner “for love of the prowess and largesse they admired in him.”

In Milan, Visconti wealth supplied the largest portion of Anjou’s funds just as it had a very large portion of his father’s ransom, in exchange for the same kind of goods. Anjou’s seven-year-old son, Louis, was offered in betrothal to Bernabò’s daughter Lucia. For the prospect of a daughter as future Queen of Naples, Bernabò paid 50,000 florins—roughly equivalent to the annual income of about 100 bourgeois families
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—plus an additional sum from Gian Galeazzo. Anjou was using every means to collect resources adequate for the fitting display of a king en route to his kingdom.

In plumed helmets and sumptuous pomp, loaded with gifts and honors, he and Amadeo and their knights left Milan, followed by such numbers of men and wagons as “seemed like an army of Xerxes.” They headed east for the difficult route down the Adriatic coast, because Florence, which opposed both Anjou and Durazzo, did not want the embarrassment—nor the pillaging—of their passage and had raised 6,000 men to block the road through Tuscany. According to the Monk of St. Denis—who, like his fellow monk Walsingham, took a sour view of marauding dukes—Anjou and his nobles flattered themselves that through them the Lilies of France would spread afar “the sweet perfume of glory.” As they rode, they celebrated their enterprise in song and verse and “fabulous recitals” of French valor.

Although Anjou had proclaimed his intention to “promote the fate of the Church by the force of chivalry”—that is, by force of arms—he failed to exert that force against Urban. Leaving the coast at Ancona to cross the Apennines early in September, he bypassed the road to Rome, although a bold effort might have taken the city at this time. Agents had brought word that Hawkwood’s White Company, promised for Urban’s defense, had been held back by Florence for her own protection. Instead, against the advice of Amadeo of Savoy, Anjou took the lower road for Naples, and as the army passed through defiles and across gorges, between peaks “that touched the sky,” calamity overtook them. Highland brigands, pulled by strings from Naples, attacked the baggage train and the rear guard escorting the treasure, with the
result that Anjou arrived at Caserta, within a day’s march of Naples, very much poorer than when he set out. Reconnoitering terrain in advance was not part of medieval warfare because it was not part of tournaments. The clash was everything.

By this time it was November. On entering Neapolitan territory, Anjou had stopped for a week at Aquila to partake in welcoming ceremonies offered by partisans of his cause. The delays in his progress allowed time for Hawkwood, released by Florence, to come to his opponent’s aid. Now in need of a quick decision, Anjou sent the traditional challenge to Durazzo demanding a time and place of battle. Charles III proved elusive. Fortified in Castel Nuovo, he counted on outlasting Anjou and exhausting his resources until he could be easily beaten and any territory he had meanwhile taken, regained. Professing himself overjoyed to accept Anjou’s challenges, Charles kept him on the move, forcing him into the expense and fatigue of marches toward a combat that vanished at every approach.

In deepening anxiety by Christmastime, Anjou made a will and Amadeo, giving up hope of victory, proposed a negotiated peace. In return for Anjou relinquishing his claim to Naples, Charles of Durazzo was to relinquish his claim to Provence and give Anjou safe passage to the coast for return to France. Charles III rejected the terms. An arranged battle of ten champions on either side was then agreed upon and, as usual when the stakes were important, did not take place.

In February of 1383 an epidemic spread among the army in the mountains above Naples, carrying off large numbers, among them Amadeo of Savoy, at the age of 49. On March 1, a dreary year away from the snows of Savoy, the splendid green career came to an end. Hurriedly summoned, Anjou wept helpless tears at the deathbed.

Foiled and hungry, the Angevin forces retreated to the heel of Italy. All that remained of the kingly treasure was used to buy provisions. Anjou’s gold and silver plate brought little money and even his nuptial crown, which he had brought to serve at his coronation, had to be sold. The resplendent hauberk embroidered in gold, worn over his armor, went too, and he wore in its place a simple cloth with fleur-delys painted in yellow. In place of the delicate meats and pastries he was accustomed to, he ate rabbit stew and barley bread. As the months went by, starving pack animals could not move and war-horses, “instead of pawing the ground and whinnying with pride, languished with lowered heads like common beasts.”

Ever since he had left Paris, Anjou had been bombarding the Council by letter and messenger to fulfill its promise to finance a supplementary
campaign against Naples under the command of Enguerrand de Coucy. While still in Avignon, he had urged his agent in Paris, Pierre Gérard, to make every effort to engage Coucy. No money was to be paid to him until he had committed himself in writing to join Anjou, but Gérard was instructed “always to proceed with this seigneur as graciously as possible.” Pope Clement urgently supported Anjou’s pleas to the crown, reporting “superb” offers from various parts of Italy and every promise of success, and expressing his deep chagrin at the refusal of the French Council to aid an enterprise on which the health of the Church depended. Nevertheless, Anjou was left dangling through the year of Roosebeke. Not until after the suppression of Paris, when the Treasury had been replenished by fines, was the crown ready to fulfill its promise. By this time Amadeo was dead and the “army of Xerxes” huddled in misery at Bari.

Coucy was ready and eager to go to Anjou’s aid. He was in constant consultation in Paris with Anjou’s chancellor, Bishop Jean le Fèvre, and repeatedly asked to know if Le Fèvre had obtained a positive reply from the King. At last, in April 1383, the Council agreed to give Anjou 190,000 francs, of which 80,000 represented aids levied on his own possessions. Just at that moment, England in a last infirmity of war hunger, launched yet another invasion. All energies were turned to meet it, and all men-at-arms, by order of the Duke of Burgundy, were prohibited from leaving the kingdom. Coucy’s expedition was frustrated. An army was indeed organized, not for Italy but once again for Flanders where the English had seized Dunkirk.

Led by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, the English raid was the fruition of Urban’s effort for a “crusade” against schismatic France. It began in scandal and was to end in fiasco. The moral harm done to papal obedience in England by the methods of financing the “crusade” outweighed anything the papacy could have gained, even with success. Friars as papal agents were endowed with “wonderful indulgences” and extra powers to sell or, worse, to refuse absolution “unless the people gave according to their ability and estate.” Even the sacrament was at times withheld from parishioners who refused an offering to the crusade. Gold, silver, jewels, and money were collected, especially, according to Knighton, “from ladies and other women.… Thus the secret treasure of the realm, which was in the hands of women, was drawn out.” Protest was re-invigorated and evoked one of Wyclif’s last tracts, “Against Clerical Wars.” Lollard preachers denounced “these worldly prelates … chief captains and arrayers of
Satan’s battles to exile good life and charity.” Because of the false nature of the absolutions, they said, “No tongue may tell how many souls go to hell by these cursed captains and Anti-Christs’ jurisdictions and censures.”

Norwich was a prelate not merely martial but actively bellicose. Though a bishop, he was described by Walsingham as “young, unbridled and insolent … endowed neither with learning nor discretion, experienced neither in preserving nor bestowing friendship.” By the time he had gathered sufficient funds and a force of about 5,000, his intended allies in Ghent were sadly subdued. He succeeded, however, after landing at Calais, in quickly taking Gravelines, Dunkirk, and Bourbourg on the Flemish coast. After laying siege to Ypres without success, he turned his attentions to Picardy, then defended by Coucy as Captain-General. Norwich withdrew without a fight when half his force under the veteran Sir Hugh Calveley refused to follow him farther. A greatly superior French army having now taken the field, Norwich hurriedly shut himself up in Bourbourg while Calveley made for Calais. “By my faith,” said that veteran captain in disgust, “we have made a most shameful campaign; none so poor or so disgraceful ever issued out of England.” Such was the result, he said, of believing “this Bishop of Norwich who wished to fly before he had wings.”

A huge French army settled down in August to the siege of Bourbourg, entertaining each other and visiting foreign knights in jousts and festivities of competitive splendor and valorous exploits designed “to raise the fame of their antique nobility.” In these activities Coucy made an impressive showing, especially for his equestrian style. Mounted on a beautiful horse and leading several others caparisoned in all the heraldic arms belonging to his house, “he rode from side to side in the most graceful manner to the delight of all who saw him, and all praised and honored him for his great air and fine presence.” Four months passed pleasurably before Bourbourg in very different mood from the fight against the commoners of the year before. The French exhibited no ardor for assault and, at the approach of winter, allowed the affair to be brought to an end through some tricky mediation by the Duke of Brittany. Norwich was bought off and went home to deficit and disgrace. England’s military repute, already declining for a decade, sank further, supplying moralists with a text against the injustices and oppressions of men of the sword. “God’s hand is against them,” said Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, “because their hand is against God.”

Although the belligerents could not know it, the Norwich invasion
was destined to be the last of the century, though not of the war. Combat faded without bringing settlement between England and France any closer. Parleys began as usual after the siege of Bourbourg, but could agree on nothing better than a nine months’ truce signed in January 1384. Coucy was not this time one of the negotiators because he was engaged in a private war on behalf of his future relative, the Duc de Bar, his daughter’s prospective father-in-law, who very promptly paid him 2,000 francs to cover his expenses. Marie’s marriage to Henri de Bar was afterward celebrated in November.

All this time the Duchesse d’Anjou and her husband’s chancellor, Jean le Fèvre, were imploring the Council to deliver the promised aid. Anjou’s situation now was needier than ever because he had been robbed by one of his own nobles of 80,000 to 100,000 francs collected for him by his wife (or, according to other versions, borrowed from the Visconti). The robber, who ten years later was to commit another crime of historic consequence, was Pierre de Craon, a knight of noble birth and large estates who had accompanied the Duke to Italy. Sent by Anjou to fetch the money, Craon returned via Venice where he dissipated most of it in extravagant parties, gambling, and debauchery, supposedly from a desire to display himself in a style suitable to the sovereign he represented. He kept what was left and did not rejoin the Duke.

Such casual criminality against his lord seems close to incredible unless someone interested in Anjou’s failure and powerful enough to protect Craon from prosecution had put him up to it. That person could only have been the Duke of Burgundy, but that he would go so far as to ruin his brother seems far-fetched. When Craon returned to France, however, he did escape punishment through the protection of Burgundy to whose wife he was related.