A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [165]
In Alsace, Coucy had contracted with the Count of Montbéliard, at a price of 21,000 francs, for his aid against the Hapsburg Dukes. In a manifesto to the towns of Strasbourg and Colmar, he disclaimed any hostile intention against them and stated the case of his inheritance. Thereafter, as the evidence dims, it is clear only that the project aborted. Some say that the Dukes of Austria recruited a powerful enemy of Montbéliard to immobilize his forces, others that Coucy was recalled by an urgent message from Charles V on September 30 requiring his service in the war against England. Forced to a decision, he was evidently able to make an acceptable case for his neutrality to the King, for at that point he vanishes, and for the next two years, except for a single reference, his history is blank.
The single reference places him in Prague, from where he dated a legal document of January 14, 1370, endowing an annuity of 40 marks sterling drawn from his English revenues on his senseschal, the Chanoine de Robersart. A journey to Prague would have been a natural effort to enlist the Emperor’s influence upon the Hapsburgs in behalf of his inheritance. Froissart was later to say that Coucy had “oftentimes” complained of his rights to the Emperor, who acknowledged their justice but professed inability to “constrain them of Austria, for they were strong in his country with many good men of war.”
After a documentary hiatus of 22 months, the next piece of evidence places Coucy in Savoy, where from November 1371 he was actively engaged with his cousin the Green Count against that nobleman’s inexhaustible supply of antagonists. In 1372–73 both together fought in Italy in the service of the Pope against the Visconti.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, power had moved out of Italy, leaving political chaos in a land of cultural wealth. Italy’s cities throve in art and commerce, her agriculture developed greater skills than elsewhere, her bankers accumulated capital and a monopoly of finance in Europe, but the incessant strife of factions and the rending struggle for control between papacy and empire, Guelf and Ghibelline, brought Italy to the age of despots out of a craving for order. City-states, once the parents of republican autonomy, succumbed to Can Grandes, Malatestas, Visconti, who ruled by no title but force. Servile to tyrants—except for Venice, which kept its independent oligarchy, and Florence its Signoria—Italy was compared by Dante to both a slave and a brothel. No people talked more about unity and nationhood, and had less, than the Italians.
Partly as a result of these conditions foreign condottieri found a ready foothold in Italy. Bound by no loyalties, serving for gain rather than fealty, they nourished wars for their own benefit and protracted them as long as they could, while the hapless population suffered the effects. Merchants and pilgrims had to engage armed escorts. City gates were shut at night. The prior of a monastery near Siena moved all his possessions two or three times a year into the walled town “for fear of these companies.” A merchant of Florence, passing by a mountain village taken over by brigands, was set upon and though he cried aloud for help and the whole village heard him, no one dared come to his aid.
Yet even when roads are lawless and assault is normal, ordinary life has the same persistence as the growth of weeds. The great maritime republics of Venice and Genoa still brought to Europe the cargoes of the East, the Italian network of banking and credit still buzzed with invisible business, the weavers of Florence, the armorers of Milan, the glassblowers of Venice, the artisans of Tuscany still pursued their crafts under red-tiled roofs.
In mid-14th century the central