A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

On regaining the throne, King Jean’s first effort to cope with his country’s tormentors proved to be another Poitiers in miniature. To stem the “Great Company” of Tard-Venus who were overrunning central France, he had hired one of their own kind, the “Archpriest,” Arnaut de Cervole, and, in addition, dispatched a small royal army of 200 knights and 400 archers under the Count of Tancarville, lieutenant of the region, and the renowned Jacques de Bourbon, Count de la Marche, a great-grandson of St. Louis, who had saved King Philip’s life at Crécy. Both had been wounded and captured at Poitiers without having their appetite for offensive warfare in the least diminished. On April 6, 1362, against the advice of Arnaut de Cervole, the two valorous knights ordered an attack at Brignais, a height held by the Tard-Venus near Lyon. The brigands let loose an avalanche of stones upon the royal host, cracking helmets and armor, felling horses, and shattering the attack as the English archers had done at Poitiers.