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By Root 1604 0

in the form of appatis, a forced tribute to buy freedom from attack, of which the terms were put in writing by clerks. They drew into their service from ordinary life notaries, lawyers, and bankers to handle their affairs, as well as clerks, blacksmiths, tanners, coopers, butchers, surgeons, priests, tailors, laundresses, prostitutes, and often their own legal wives. They dealt through regular brokers who sold their plunder, except for particular arms or luxuries they wished to keep, such as jewels and women’s gowns or steel for swords or, in one case, ostrich plumes and beaver hats. They became installed in the social structure. When Burgundy was occupied by the “Archpriest” Arnaut de Cervole in 1364, young Duke Philip treated him with respect, calling him his adviser and companion, and making over to him a castle and several noble hostages as security until he could raise 2,500 gold francs to buy his departure. To raise the sum, Philip adopted the usual expedient of taxing his subjects, another cause of bitterness against the lords.

Bertucat d’Albret, of the same family as Isabella’s rejected bridegroom, was one of the notable great lords who were more pillard than seigneur. Years later, in old age, he sighed for the days “when we would leap upon rich merchants from Toulouse or La Riolle or Bergerac. Never did a day fail to bring us some fine prize for our enrichment and good cheer.” His friend and fellow Gascon, Seguin de Badefol, often called “King of the Companies,” replaced the five hats in his father’s coat-of-arms with five bezants, or gold coins, indicating his major interest. Aimerigot Marcel, who after thirty years as a brigand was to end on the scaffold, boasted of his takings in silks from Brussels, skins from the fairs, spices coming from Bruges, rich fabrics from Damascus and Alexandria. “All was ours or ransomed at our will.… The peasants of Auvergne supplied us in our castle, bringing wheat and flour and fresh bread, hay for the horses, good wine, beef and mutton, fat lambs and poultry. We were provisioned like kings. And when we rode forth the country trembled before us.”

Popular hatred credited the companies with every crime from eating meat in Lent to committing atrocities upon pregnant women which caused death to unborn and unbaptized children. Three quarters of France was their prey, especially the wine-growing areas of Burgundy, Normandy, Champagne, and Languedoc. Walled towns could organize resistance, turning back the violence upon the countryside, which was repeatedly devastated, creating a vagabond population of destitute peasants, artisans seeking work, priests without parishes.

The companies did not spare churches. “Insensible to the fear of God,” wrote Innocent VI in a pastoral letter of 1360, “the sons of iniquity … invade and wreck churches, steal their books, chalices, crosses, relics and vessels of the divine ritual and make them their booty.” Churches where blood had been spilled in combat were considered profaned and prohibited from sacramental use until they had gone through a long bureaucratic process of reconciliation. Nevertheless, papal taxes continued, and incumbents of ruined benefices were often reduced to penury, and deserted, not infrequently to join their persecutors. “See how grave it has become,” mourned Innocent in the same letter, “when those charged with divine grace … participate in rapine and despoliation, even in the shedding of blood.”

With clergy and knights joining the sons of iniquity, the average man felt himself living in an age of rapine and powerless to control it. “If God Himself were a soldier, He would be a robber,” said an English knight named Talbot.

One chain still held: the necessity of absolution. Fear of dying without it was so ingrained that ghosts were believed to be the souls of the unshriven who had returned to seek absolution for their sins in life. No matter how far the brigands had separated themselves from other rules, they insisted on the formula if not the substance of forgiveness. In theory a man who met death in a “just war” would go