A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [226]
The assassin’s hand was certainly hired by the English, possibly to remove a focus of agitation on the Welsh border, or, as contemporaries believed, in reprisal for the miserable death in prison of the Captal de Buch, originally captured by Owen. If so, it was a surprisingly dishonorable blow upon an unarmed man, as recognized by the English captain inside besieged Mortagne to whom Lambe reported his deed. “He shook his head and beheld him right felly and said, ‘Ah, thou has murdered him.… But that this deed is for our profit … we shall have blame thereby rather than praise.’ ” On the French side, Charles V, though terribly angered, did not altogether regret the removal of Owen, a freebooter not guiltless of nefarious deeds of his own. His murder reflected a new kind of animosity growing out of the war. Suborned assassination within the brotherhood of knights was an innovation of the 14th century.
Halfway through the Normandy campaign Coucy had been sent to strengthen the defense of the frontier with Flanders, where new dangers threatened. The Count of Flanders, whose boyhood loyalty had been so strongly French when he ran away from Isabella, had long since been brought by economic interests to favor the English. He appeared as a threat when he gave asylum to the Duke of Brittany, who had repudiated French vassalage and rejoined the English. King Charles now decided to rid himself of the problem of Brittany once and for all by confiscating the dukedom from Montfort on grounds of “felony” toward his sovereign. In the belief that most Breton nobles were pro-French, he planned to unite the dukedom with the crown of France under Montfort’s rival Jeanne de Penthièvre, but instead of suppressing the Breton nest of hornets, he succeeded only in arousing it.
In December 1378, at a ceremonial Court of Justice with the King seated in “royal majesty,” Montfort was tried before the peers of the realm—in absentia, since he ignored the summons. The twelve lay and twelve ecclesiastical peers of France were an elastic body in which successive barons of Coucy sometimes figured and sometimes did not. Froissart specifically refers to Enguerrand VII as a “peer of France,” and on this occasion he was one of four barons seated “on the fleur de lys” along with the peers of royal blood and a superabundance of eighteen prelates including four “mitred” abbots. The royal usher, after summoning Montfort aloud three times—at the entrance to the chamber, at the Marble Table in the courtyard, and at the gate of the palace—duly reported back that “he is not there.” The Procurator then read the indictment, citing the Duke’s treasons, crimes, “injuries and vexations,” including the murder of the priest sent to summon him. (After the Visconti fashion, Montfort had the messenger drowned in the river with the summons tied around his neck.) Following a juridical argument at enormous length of the rights and claims to the dukedom, Montfort’s title was declared null, and the King announced Brittany’s union with the crown.
Charles’s error was at once made clear by a rebellious outburst in the independent-minded duchy, even among the pro-French party. The endless quarrel came alive again, and since Montfort was conniving with the Count of Flanders and both of them with England, Charles feared the possibility of a new invasion across the northern frontier. In this situation, the domain of Coucy guarding the northern gateway came into focus.
In February 1379 the King sent his Treasurer, Jean le Mercier,