A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

any statement of fact about the Middle Ages may (and probably will) be met by a statement of the opposite or a different version. Women outnumbered men because men were killed off in the wars; men outnumbered women because women died in childbirth. Common people were familiar with the Bible; common people were unfamiliar with the Bible. Nobles were tax exempt; no, they were not tax exempt. French peasants were filthy and foul-smelling and lived on bread and onions; French peasants ate pork, fowl, and game and enjoyed frequent baths in the village bathhouses. The list could be extended indefinitely.

I have not attempted to translate various currencies into the equivalent of only one, such as livres or francs, because equivalency kept changing as did the gold or silver content of the coinage; moreover, real coins and money of account under the same name differed in value. I have, therefore, in each case, simply adopted the currency named by the document or chronicler, and would urge the reader simply to think of any given amount as so many pieces of money.

And when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms, For it is better to die than be vanquished and live.… I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout “On! On!” from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds, And groans of “Help me! Help me!” And when I see both great and small Fall in the ditches and on the grass And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts! Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities, But never give up war!

Horrid wounds were part of the calling. In one combat Don Pero Niño was struck by an arrow that “knit together his gorget and his neck,” but he fought on against the enemy on the bridge. “Several lance stumps were still in his shield and it was that which hindered him most.” A bolt from a crossbow “pierced his nostrils most painfully whereat he was dazed, but his daze lasted but a little time.” He pressed forward, receiving many sword blows on head and shoulders which “sometimes hit the bolt embedded in his nose making him suffer great pain.” When weariness on both sides brought the battle to an end, Pero Niño’s shield “was tattered and all in pieces; his sword blade was toothed like a saw and dyed with blood … his armor was broken in several places by lance-heads of which some had entered the flesh and drawn blood, although the coat was of great strength.”

three ladies who were exchanging opinions of their lovers discovered that the senior Jean le Maingre, Sire de Boucicaut, was the favorite of each, he having made love to all, telling each he loved her best. When they taxed him with his falsity, he was in no way abashed, saying, “For at that time I spake with each of you, I loved her best that I spake with and thought truly the same.”

military contingents were furnished by towns and districts according to number of hearths and the relative prosperity or poverty of the community. In some regions every 100 hearths were obligated to pay for one soldier for one year. In poorer districts the obligation might be one soldier for every 200 or 300 hearths. The number of effectives raised at this rate was not large: in 1337, for example, Rouen supplied 200 men, Narbonne 150 crossbowmen, Nîmes 95 men-at-arms.

a manorial autocrat of Leicestershire burned and razed the village of Noseley when the plague appeared there, to prevent its spread to the manor house. He evidently succeeded, for his direct descendants still inhabit Noseley Hall.

It was also, on the English side, a victory of generalship that made up for fatigue and inferior numbers. The Prince could give orders that were obeyed and, with moral leadership more secure than Jean’s, and battalion chiefs on whom he could rely, could control what happened. He kept himself where he could view the battle and direct movements, he was served by toughened, experienced soldiers, and he had two essentials for winning: no possibility of retreat and a will that goaded men to the last ounce of fight. As a commander, in Froissart’s words, he was “courageous and cruel as a lion.”

He went to the block magnificently dressed in brown velvet embroidered in gold and had his own surgeon direct the ax of the executioner. Unrepentant at the end, he declared himself justified “in carving his way with a sword through a false and miserable world.”

woman is “the confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest,” and—finally the key—“a hindrance to devotion.”

Examples of the terrible fate that meets carping and critical wives are cited by the Ménagier and also by La Tour Landry, who tells how a husband, harshly criticized by his wife in public, “being angry with her governance, smote her with his fist down to the earth,” then kicked her in the face and broke her nose so that she was disfigured ever after and “might not for shame show her visage.” And this was her due “for her evil and great language she was wont to say to her husband.”

Two Visconti ruled jointly in Lombardy—Galeazzo and his more terrible brother, Bernabò. Murder, cruelty, avarice, effective government alternating with savage despotism, respect for learning and encouragement of the arts, and lusts amounting to sexual mania characterized one or another of the family. Lucchino, an immediate predecessor, had been murdered by his wife, who, after a notable orgy on a river barge during which she entertained several lovers at once including the Doge of Venice and her own nephew Galeazzo, decided to eliminate her husband to forestall his same intention with regard to her.

life was not precious, for what was the body, after all, but carrion, and the sojourn on earth but a halt on the way to eternal life?

how in life the deceased had great nobility, lands, houses, treasure, silver and gold, but now of all bereft, with beauty gone and flesh wasted, he lies alone, reminding the passerby, Such as thou art, so once was I, As I am now, so shalt thou be.