A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [152]
When it came to removing the companies, a more practical method was through crusade in Hungary. The Emperor Charles IV, anxious to repel the Turks, came himself to Avignon with an offer to underwrite the costs of the journey and guarantee the revenues of Bohemia for three years to pay the mercenaries. His appearance at mass with Urban V on Whitsunday, Emperor and Pope sitting side by side, at peace for the first time in living memory, cast a spell of hope over the occasion. Urban announced that the tithes of the French clergy would be turned over to the King of France to enable him to finance his share of the enterprise. Despite all the promised money, and Paradise too—for excommunication would be lifted by crusade—the mercenaries viewed the prospect of Hungary with the greatest distaste, asking “why should they go so far to make war?” But pressed by the strength of sentiment for their departure and given Arnaut de Cervole, one of their own, as leader replacing Du Guesclin, some were persuaded. From various places, various bodies set forth in the summer of 1365 for a rendezvous in Lorraine within the Empire.
The rest was fiasco. The brigands’ terrible repute roused the population of Alsace to desperate resistance. Despite Arnaut’s assurances that he had no designs on the country and wanted only to water his horses in the Rhine, the citizens of Strasbourg refused to let them cross the bridge, and the Emperor was forced by his subjects to appear with an army to bar the way. The companies’ own reluctance more than the people’s resistance turned them back within a month. In the meantime a new enterprise had need of them in Spain.
The Anglo-French war had not really been ended in Brétigny; it had moved down to Spain to take sides in a struggle for the crown between Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, whose oppressions had aroused a revolt, and his illegitimate brother Don Enrique of Trastamare, eldest of his father’s ten bastards and leader of the opposition. The issue affected the balance of forces swirling around Languedoc, Aquitaine, and Navarre. Since Pedro was supported by the English and had furthermore abandoned and reputedly murdered his wife, who was a sister of the Queen of France, and since Don Enrique was the protégé of the French, whose accession would place an ally on an important throne, the struggle sucked in the former antagonists. Furthermore, Don Pedro was an enemy of the Pope, who had excommunicated him for refusing to obey a summons to Avignon to answer charges of wicked conduct.
The Spanish cockpit offered, under the guise of a crusade against the Moors of Granada, an ideal outlet and perhaps a grave for the companies. Du Guesclin as the appointed leader had persuaded twenty-five captains of the most dangerous companies, including Hugh of Calveley and Eustache d’Aubrecicourt and others who had been his opponents at Auray, to follow him to Spain. High pay was promised, but the men of the companies had no intention of crossing the Pyrenees without a grip on hard cash. The confrontation by which it was obtained, told with relish in Cuvelier’s epic, is a microcosm of the 14th century, even though it has been said of Cuvelier that “the tyranny of rhyme left him little leisure for accuracy.”
Marching to Avignon instead of directly to Spain, the companies camped within sight of the papal palace across the Rhône at Villeneuve. There the Pope sent a trembling cardinal to tell them “that I who have the power of God and all the saints, angels and archangels, will excommunicate the whole company if they do not go from hence without delay.