A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [102]
Popular sentiment showed itself at once against lords returning to raise their ransoms. They were so “hated and blamed by the commoners,” reports Froissart, that they had difficulty in gaining admittance to the towns and sometimes even to their own estates. Peasants of a village in Normandy belonging to the Sire de Ferté-Fresnel, seeing their seigneur come riding through with only a squire and a valet and without his sword, raised the cry, “Here is one of the traitors who fled from the battle!” They rushed upon the three riders, pulled the lord from his horse, and beat him up. He returned a few days later, better armed, to take vengeance, killing one villager in the process. Though this small outburst was quickly crushed, it was an omen. Many seigneurs returned to face gibes or sudden hostility and had trouble raising the traditional aid for the lord’s ransom. To find the funds, many were forced to sell all their furnishings or free their serfs for payment. A residue of ruined knights was a by-product of Poitiers.
The cry of “Traitor!” was not a local voice only, but a bewildered people’s explanation of the inexplicable. It was the eternal cry of conspiracy, of stab in the back. How else could the great King of France have been taken and the great host of French chivalry defeated by a handful of “archers and brigands” except by betrayal? 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.
The “Complaint” has only praise for Jean II, who fought to the end with his little son beside him. In public opinion he became a hero. However inept as sovereign and captain, his personal valor, poignantly emphasized by the “little son,” glorified him in the eyes of his subjects and gave France a focus for the recovery of honor. The “Complaint” hopes that God will send “good men of great power” to avenge the defeat and bring back the King, and concludes significantly:
If he is well advised, he will not forget
To lead Jaque Bonhomme and all his great company
Who do not run from war to save their lives!
After the citizens of Poitiers had buried the bodies outside, the Mayor proclaimed mourning for the captured King and forbade celebration of any feast day or festival. In Languedoc the Estates General prohibited for the space of a year, so long as the King was not delivered, the wearing of gold, silver, or pearls, ornamented or scalloped robes and hats, and entertainment by minstrels and jongleurs. The Dauphin and his brothers, though judged unfavorably in comparison with young Philip, were not included in the blame of the nobles. Charles on his return to Paris “was received with honor by the people, grief-stricken by the capture of his father the King.” They felt, according to Jean de Venette, that somehow he would bring about the King’s release “and the whole country of France would be saved.”
Why the flight? Why the defeat? To Villani in Italy the extraordinary event seemed