A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [198]
Isabella de Coucy, summoned from France in April by couriers on “business of extreme urgency,”* was at her father’s side when he died. Shortly before the end, she dispatched couriers to Coucy with news and “important questions” to be settled. On June 26, even before her father’s funeral, she requested and received permission to return to France, evidently with urgent matters to discuss.
The problem for Coucy was more than simply one of allegiance; it was aggravated by great revenues, by bonds of kinship of great importance in that day, and by the oath of fellowship in the Order of the Garter. To repudiate fealty, kinship, and fellowship was no light thing. Other lords, like the Captal de Buch and Clisson, had transferred their loyalty from one side to another, but they were generally Gascons or Bretons or Hainaulters who did not feel themselves basically French or English. Coucy’s own seneschal, the valiant Chanoine de Robersart, turned English while he was in England with Coucy in the 1360s. After swearing homage to Edward III, he coolly returned with Lancaster’s army to ravage Picardy, which a few years earlier he had fought with such verve to defend. He was, however, a native of Hainault.*
Plainly, Coucy could play no great part in his country’s affairs if he maintained neutrality as before. He not only needed to take sides; he doubtless wanted to take sides. National feeling had swelled in the years of French recovery. Writers gloried in the many cities of Picardy, Normandy, and Aquitaine retaken by Charles V. “Not Roland, not Arthur nor Oliver,” exclaims the knight in the Songe du Vergier, a political allegory of 1376, “ever did such deeds of arms as you have done by your wisdom, your power and your prayers!” (and, the author might have added, by Charles’s persuasive use of money). “When you came to the throne the horns and pride of your enemies reached up to heaven. Thanks to God, you have broken their horns and profoundly humiliated them.”
Out of the polarity of war, a sense of French nationhood developed against the foil of England. In a dialogue between a French and an English soldier written about 1370 by the future Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, the Englishman declares that Normandy at least should belong to England and that they are within their rights in this matter. “Hold your peace!” cries the Frenchman. “That is not true. You can hold nothing this side of the sea except by tyranny; the sea is and ought to be your boundary.” That was a new idea. Homage and dynastic marriages were still the form of loyalty, but country was becoming the determinant. No longer could a French noble like Harcourt have so guiltlessly joined and guided the English in invasion of his native land. No longer could Coucy straddle loyalty across the Channel.
Two months after King Edward’s death, Coucy addressed to Richard II a formal renunciation of “all that I hold of you in faith and homage.” Dated August 26, 1377, and presented to Richard by several lords and squires sent by Coucy to witness the delivery, the letter recalled the “alliance” he had had with “my most honored and redoubted lord and father, the King lately deceased (on whom God have mercy),” and continued:
Now it has happened that war has arisen between my natural and sovereign lord, on the one part, and you on the other, at which I grieve more than at anything that could happen in this world, and would it could be remedied, but my lord has commanded and required me to serve him, and acquit myself of my duty, as I am bound to do; whom as you know well I ought not to disobey; so I will serve him to the best of my power as I ought to do.
Wherefore, most honorable and puissant lord, in order that no one may in any wise speak or say a thing against me, or against my honor, I acquaint you with the aforesaid things and return to you all that I may hold from you in faith or homage.
And also,