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Even for the 14th century, this reasoning, in the face of political realities, seemed extreme. Jean’s Council and the prelates and barons of France “conseled him sore to the contrary” and told him his plan was “a great folly,” but he insisted, saying that if “good faith and honor were to be banished from the rest of the world, they should still be found in the hearts and words of princes.” He departed a week after Christmas, crossing the Channel in midwinter.

His going was an amazement to his contemporaries. Jean de Venette, who loved neither kings nor nobles, suggested he went back for “causa joci” (reasons of pleasure). Historians have offered him every excuse: that he returned to avert war, or, counting on personal relations, to persuade Edward to reduce the ransom, or persuade him to call off the renewed hostilities of the King of Navarre. If these were his reasons, none was accomplished. If it was honor that took him back, what of kingship? What did he owe to the kingdom that needed its sovereign, to the citizens who were being squeezed of their last penny to pay his ransom, to the memory of Ringois of Abbeville? Who can say what made Jean return? Perhaps it was no medieval reason, but the human tragedy of a man who, knowing himself inadequate for the task he was born to, sought the enforced passivity of prison.

He arrived in London in January 1364, was greeted with lavish entertainments and processions, fell ill of an “unknown malady” in March, and died in April, aged 45. Edward gave him a magnificent funeral service at St. Paul’s during which 4,000 torches each twelve feet high and 3,000 candles each weighing ten pounds were consumed. Afterward his body was returned to France for burial in the royal basilica of St. Denis. King Jean had found the permanent passivity of the grave.

A million florins were still owed on his ransom, leaving the hostages unreleased. Some used the safe-conducts given them from time to time and did not return, despite repeated summonses. Some bought their freedom from Edward with shares of their own territories. Others simply disappeared, by one means or another. Anjou’s younger brother, Jean, Duc de Berry, managed so shrewdly and made so many excuses while on leave that he retained liberty and honor too. Matthieu de Roye, on the other hand, perhaps because his reputation as a fighter kept him well guarded, was still a hostage after twelve years. Enguerrand de Coucy was to be released under special circumstances in 1365.

Chapter 9

Enguerrand and Isabella

Isabella of England, second child and eldest daughter of King Edward and Queen Philippa, was the favorite of her father, whose marriage diplomacy on her behalf had five times failed to produce results. Since the last failure, when she was nineteen, she had been allowed to live independently, an over-indulged, willful, and wildly extravagant princess who was 33 in 1365, eight years older than Enguerrand de Coucy.

As a baby she had lain in a state cradle, gilded and crested, lined with taffeta, and furnished with a coverlet made of 670 skins although she was born in June. A special dressmaker appointed to the infant made her a robe of Lucca silk with four rows of “garnitures” edged with fur to wear at her mother’s relevailles, or first reception after the birth. The Queen for the occasion wore a robe of red and purple velvet embroidered with pearls, and received the court reclining on a state bed equipped with a gigantic spread of green velvet measuring seven and one half by eight ells* and embroidered with an all-over pattern of merman and mermaid holding the shields of England and Hainault. All her ladies of the chamber and the whole of her household, from chancellor and treasurer down to kitchen maid, wore new clothes ordered for the occasion. Ostentation was the duty of princes.

The first three royal children—Edward, Isabella, and Joanna—had their own household together, with their own chaplains, musicians, a noble governor and governess, three