A contemporary polemic in verse called “Complaint of the Battle of Poitiers” explicitly charges,
A contemporary polemic in verse called “Complaint of the Battle of Poitiers” explicitly charges, The very great treason that they long time concealed Was in the said host very clearly revealed. The author, an unknown cleric, accuses certain persons of having by “their cupidity sold secrets of the Royal Council to the English” and, on being discovered and “kicked out of the Council by the King,” of conspiring to destroy him and his children. The flight of these false men, “treacherous, disloyal, infamous and perjured,” was a planned betrayal; in them the nobility was dishonored and France too. They have denied God; they are men of pride, greed and haughty manners, Of bombast and vainglory and dishonest clothes, With golden belts and plumes on their heads And the long beard of goats, a thing for beasts. They deafen you like thunder and tempest. The beard complained of, originally a mark of penitence, had lately been worn in narrow forked style as a worldy fashion and now became an object of satire linked with running away.
