A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [135]
The King also had in mind a project of uniting to France the territory of Provence—which included Avignon—by marrying its Countess, Joanna, Queen of Naples, the most complicated heiress of the century. Halfway through an active connubial career, she was at this time twice a widow, once, as widely believed, by her own hand. Since Naples was a fief of the papacy, her marriage had to be approved by the Pope. As a Frenchman, Innocent VI was expected to be amenable.
Jean’s other project, crusade, was the supreme goal of this earnest and pious Pope who, for its sake, had tried so persistently to make peace between France and England. Worn out by ten years of discord and struggle to curb the worldliness of prelates, and finally by plague and brigands, Innocent died in September 1362, while Jean was on his way to Avignon. His successor, Urban V, though also a French native, saw the absorption of Provence by France as a threat to papal independence and disapproved the marriage. But he preached the crusade, actively supported by the titular King of Jerusalem, Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, who had arrived in Avignon to promote it.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem by this time was no more than a memory; the last European settlers of Syria had retreated to Cyprus, and Europeans now came only to trade. When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined. Holy war had lost its thrust with the lessening of European unity, with too frequent use of crusade against internal heretics, and lately with loss of population in the plague. The infidel, like the heretic, was still feared by Christianity as a figure of genuine menace. Crusade still had its devout propagandists, but as a common impulse the zeal had faded. For the Church it had become largely a device for raising money; for nobles and kings the tradition survived as part of the chivalric code and had recently received a new impulse from the threat of the Turks on the shores of Europe. The difficulty was that crusade now suffered from the same necessity as the state: no longer composed of self-financed volunteers, it required paid armies and money to pay them.
The Kings of Cyprus and France spent all winter and spring at Avignon discussing possibilities with the Pope. On Good Friday the crusade was proclaimed. Jean was named Captain-General and took the cross along with the Count of Tancarville and other companions of the recent battering at Brignais. That marked the peak of the enterprise. King Edward, on being visited by the King of Cyprus, excused himself “graciously and right sagely,” and after arousing no greater response at other courts of Europe, the King of Cyprus was forced to let crusade lapse for the present.
Having failed in his projects at Avignon, Jean was obliged to face the unpleasantness of home. He rode through his distressed realm at a leisurely pace, reaching Paris in July 1363. Here he found that the Regent and Council had disallowed the private treaty between the royal hostages and Edward, on the grounds that it gave too much away. Worse, the Duc d’Anjou had absconded, breaking his parole. Newly married before going as a hostage, he had gone to Boulogne to meet his wife, with whom he was said to be much in love, and refused to return to Calais. Jean considered his son’s act a “felony” upon the honor of the crown. Combined with arrears in ransom, cancellation of the “hostages’ ” treaty, to which he had assented, and non-fulfillment of other cessions, it brought his own honor into