A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [110]
The most damaging aspect of the companies was that in the absence of organized armies they filled a need and became accepted. Philip VI, on learning how effectively a captain known only as Bacon had surprised and seized a castle, bought his services for 20,000 crowns and made him usher-at-arms, “ever well horsed, appareled and armed like an earl.” Another, named Croquart, starting as a “poor page” in the Breton wars, rose by prowess to become a captain of brigands worth 40,000 crowns whose military repute caused him to be chosen as one of the English side in the Combat of Thirty. Afterward King Jean offered him a knighthood, a rich wife, and annual pay of 2,000 livres if he would enter the King’s service. Preferring his independence, Croquart refused.
More brigand than mercenary, the companies in France, though basically English, attracted French knights ruined by the ransoms of Brittany and Poitiers who now shared in the ravaging of their own country. Lesser nobles reduced in revenue, younger sons and bastard sons, made themselves captains and found in the companies a living, a path to fortune, a way of life, a vent for the restless aggression once absorbed by the crusades.
The most notorious of the French was Arnaut de Cervole, a noble of Périgord called the “Archpriest” because of a clerical benefice he had once held. Wounded and captured at Poitiers, he had been released on paying his ransom, and on return to France in the anarchic months of 1357 made himself commander of a band which called itself frankly enough Società dell’ acquisito. In collaboration with a lord of Provence named Raimond des Baux, the band grew to an army of 2,000 and the “Archpriest” into one of the great evildoers of his time. In the course of a raid Cervole launched through Provence in 1357, Pope Innocent VI felt so insecure in Avignon that he negotiated for immunity in advance. Cervole was invited to the papal palace, “received as reverently as if he had been the son of the King of France,” and after dining several times with the Pope and cardinals, was given a pardon for all his sins—a regular item in the companies’ demands—and the sum of 40,000 écus to leave the area;
His equal among the English was Sir Robert Knollys, “the man of few words,” whom Froissart judged “the most able and skillful man-at-arms in all the companies.” He too had risen from the ranks in the Breton wars and fought with the Thirty, gaining knighthood along the way. After service with Lancaster he remained to plunder Normandy with such skill and ruthlessness that he amassed in the year 1357–58 booty worth 100,000 crowns. During the next two years he established himself in the valley of the Loire, where he gained control of forty castles and burned and sacked from Orléans to Vézelay. In a raid through Berry and Auvergne his company left a trail of ravaged towns whose charred gables were known as “Knollys’ miters.” Such was the terror of his name that at one place, it was said, people threw themselves into the river at word of his approach.
Upon his informing King Edward that all the strongholds he had captured were at the King’s disposal, Edward—who was pleased to share, like other rulers, in the benefits of banditry—handsomely pardoned Knollys for activities that violated the truce. Knollys was ultimately to earn high command and military renown on a level with Chandos and the Black Prince. In truce and war he passed back and forth from brigandage to service under the crown without missing a beat or changing his style. At the end of his career he retired with “regal