A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

From headquarters at Péronne on the Somme, Coucy issued a general summons to all knights and squires of Artois and Picardy.

Parties of French knights kept close to the English line of march to hamper foraging, and this proximity opened tempting opportunities for combat.

When the countryside was stripped, the English demanded food from the towns under threat of attack.

In this manner Buckingham advanced to Burgundy, where 2,000 French knights and squires had assembled in a mood to throw off the King’s restraints and fight.

At the Loire the French had gathered the advantage in numbers. Coucy and his companions were determined, “whether the King willed it or not,” to give battle before the English crossed the Sarthe into Brittany. Meanwhile Charles, negotiating while the armies marched, had persuaded the city of Nantes, key to Brittany and pro-French, not to admit the English and to declare loyalty to France without reference to Montfort.

Moved by litter to his favorite château of Beauté on the Marne, Charles sent for his brothers and brother-in-law—excepting Anjou, whom he hoped to keep at a distance from the Royal Treasury—and prepared to make dispositions for the journey of his soul.

The King suffered physically in his last days, but his mental anguish was heavier. Two things weighed on his conscience: his part in the schism and the questionable legality of his taxation.

In his own time the unknown author of the allegory Songe du Vergier (Dream of the Woodsman) branded as tyrants all princes who burdened their subjects with “taxes impossible to bear,” and theologians warned rulers that they should cancel all exactions and make restitution to great and small if they hoped for salvation.

At the door of death in the Middle Ages, the trembling traveler, more often than not, felt required to repudiate what he had done in life.

He announced the terms of an ordinance to “abate and abolish” the hearth taxes,

Sovereigns before him had been known to cancel taxes and return subsidies illegally exacted, and deathbed donors regularly made restitutions and established foundations that, if carried out, would bankrupt their families.

He died on September 16, 1380, and his last ordinance was proclaimed the next day.

Finally told by Montfort that he must leave, he and his companions took ship for England in March 1381.

“Finally told by Montfort that he must leave, he and his companions took ship for England in March 1381. Except for individual knighthoods and ransoms and some fruits of pillage collected en route, Buckingham and his fellows had accomplished no military purpose, “to their great discomfort and the discomfort of the whole English nation.””

Both nations under boy kings now suffered the rule of ambitious and contending uncles who, wearing no crown, exercised power without responsibility. War receded; internal stress reached the bursting point.