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By Root 1376 0

Count of Soissons, a nephew of both Philip VI and Charles de Blois of Brittany, who despite his great family and connections, had so far been unable to buy his liberty. As the price of his release, an arrangement was now reached by which, with the consent of King Charles of France, he ceded his county of Soissons to Edward, who in turn presented it to Coucy in lieu of the £4,000 provided by Isabella’s dowry. The great domains of Coucy and Soissons, constituting a sizable portion of Picardy, were now joined in the hands of a son-in-law of the King of England. With a territorial title diluting the once proud austerity of the Coucy motto, Enguerrand was now Count of Soissons, and as such returned with his wife and daughters to France in July 1367.

* If the unit was the Flemish ell of 27 inches, the coverlet would have measured 17 by 18 feet; if it was the English ell of 45 inches, the dimensions would have been 28 by 30 feet.

* In one 14th century illuminated manuscript, Pride was a knight on a lion, Envy a monk on a dog, Sloth a peasant on a donkey, Avarice a merchant on a badger, Gluttony a youth on a wolf, Ire a woman on a boar, and Luxury (instead of the standard Lechery) a woman on a goat.

* Judging by the diverse spelling of proper names on either side of the Channel, pronunciation of the common language must have been close to mutually unintelligible. Chaucer’s Prioresse spoke French

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.

Chapter 10

Sons of Iniquity

In the seven years of Coucy’s absence in England, the havoc wrought by the Free Companies, spreading through France, Savoy, Lombardy, and the papal dominions, had become a major fact of European affairs. Not a passing phenomenon nor an external force, the companies had become a way of life, a part of society itself, used and joined by its rulers even as they struggled to throw them off. They ate at society from within like Erysichthon, the “tearer up of earth,” who, having destroyed the trees in the sacred grove of Demeter, was cursed by the goddess with an insatiable appetite and finally devoured himself attempting to satisfy his hunger.

Discipline and organization made the companies more useful as fighting forces than knights bent on glory and unacquainted with the principle of command. Rulers employed them, as when Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, contracted with one of the worst of the captains to crush the partisans of an opponent by use of terrorism within his own dominions. Whether employed or living by adventure, they made pillage pay the cost. Life by the sword became subordinate to its means; the means became the end; the climate of the 14th century succumbed to the brute triumph of the lawless.

In France during the transfer of territories, despite the renewed orders of King Edward, many bands refused to demobilize or evacuate their fortresses. Discharged from regular employment, like bees from a broken hive, they created small hives around a particular captain and joined the host of Tard-Venus. Finding mercenary employment combined with brigandage profitable, they spread, attracting into their ranks those who quickly relapse into lawlessness when the social contract breaks down. While the lower ranks came from the debris of town and country and from the cast-offs of every occupation including the Church, the leaders came from the top—lords who found a life of gain by the sword irresistible, or losers of the knightly class whom the companies themselves had uprooted. Unable to live adequately off ruined lands, they joined the mercenaries rather than follow a life without the sword. “Unbridled in every kind of cruelty,” in the words of the Pope’s excommunication in 1364, they seemed to defenseless people like another plague, to be attributed to the planets or God’s wrath.

In France they were called écorcheurs (skinners) and routiers (highwaymen), in Italy condottieri from the condotta or contract that fixed the terms of their employment as mercenaries. They extorted a systematized income from vulnerable towns