A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [111]
In the anarchy after Poitiers, knights and brigands became interchangeable, bringing added popular hatred upon the estate of the sword, though not necessarily disrepute among their own kind. The “young, bold and amorous” Eustache d’Aubrecicourt, a knight of Hainault and companion of the Prince at Poitiers, turned brigand with such élan and material success that he won the love of the widowed Countess of Kent, a niece of the Queen of England and Hainault-born like himself. She sent him horses, gifts, and passionate letters which excited him to ever bolder if not more chivalrous exploits. He fastened a savage grip upon Champagne and part of Picardy until he was captured when French knights at last organized in defense. Greedy as he, they let him be ransomed for 22,000 gold francs, so that he promptly renewed his warfare. In command of 2,000 freebooters, he organized a traffic in seized castles, which were sold back to their owners at lucrative prices. In some way understandable to the 14th century, his use of the sword for robbery and murder carried no quality of dishonor to Isabelle of Kent, who was to marry her now wealthy hero in 1360.
In response to French complaints that the English companies were violating the truce, King Edward ordered them to disband, but his orders were neither meant nor taken seriously. While peace terms were still being negotiated, he was quite willing to let the companies keep up pressure on France. No less averse to fomenting trouble was Charles of Navarre. Though still in prison, he had agents, including his brother Philip, active in his behalf. Where the Navarrese joined forces with the English, the ravages were worst—deliberately so, some thought, as a means of applying pressure for Charles’s release.
For defense against the companies, villages made forts of their stone churches, surrounding them with trenches, manning the bell towers with sentinels, and piling up stones to throw down upon the attackers. “The sound of church bells no longer summoned people to praise the Lord but to take shelter from the enemy.” Peasant families who could not reach the church spent nights with their livestock on islands in the Loire or in boats anchored in mid-river. In Picardy they took refuge in underground tunnels enlarged from caves dug at the time of the Norman invasions. With a well in the center and air holes above, the tunnels could shelter twenty or thirty people with space around the walls for cattle.
At daylight the lookouts peered from the bell towers to see if the bandits had gone and they could return to the fields. Country families hastened with their goods to take refuge in cities, monks and nuns abandoned their monasteries, highways and roads were unsafe, robbers rose up everywhere, and enemies multiplied throughout the land. “What more can I say?” writes Jean de Venette in his catalogue of miseries. “Thence-forward infinite harm, misfortune and danger befell the French people for lack of good government and adequate defense.”
A sympathizer of the Third Estate, Jean de Venette was a Carmelite prior and head of the Order in the 1360s at the time he was writing his chronicle. He blamed the Regent, who “applied no remedy,” and the nobles, who “despised and hated all others and took no thought for the mutual usefulness of lord and men. They subjected and despoiled the peasants and villagers. In no wise did they defend their country from its enemies. Rather did they trample it underfoot, robbing and pillaging the peasants’ goods” while the Regent “gave no thought to their plight.”
The nobles were to blame also, as Jean de Venette saw it, for discord among the Estates General which caused the Estates to abandon the task they had begun. “From that time on all went ill with the kingdom, and the state was undone.… The country and whole land of France began to put on confusion and mourning like