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By Root 1607 0

and an official with the title of Visitor General of Royal Property to survey the barony of Coucy with instructions “to look and advise and report the estate of the said seigneur.” In March, after receiving Mercier’s report, Charles went himself on a week’s tour of Coucy-le-Château and other castles and towns of the domain. Evidently ailing, the King watched from his litter the “joyous chase of deer” in hunts organized in his honor. Whether Enguerrand was present to welcome his sovereign is nowhere recorded, and the absence of mention suggests he may have been in the north assembling forces for defense, or in Normandy at the siege of Cherbourg.

The King was, however, accompanied by the court poet Eustache Deschamps, who immediately produced a ballade extolling the marvels of the barony. A master of the verbal acrobatics of the French verse of his time, yet a realist and satirist at heart, Deschamps described himself as the “King of Ugliness” with the skin of a boar and the face of a monkey. He had entered royal service from humble birth as a simple messenger, advancing to usher-at-arms, bailiff, and châtelain of royal properties and, in the next reign, Steward of Water and Forests and ultimately Général des finances. Ready to turn out poetry for any occasion—a total of 1,675 ballades, 661 rondeaux, 80 virelais, 14 lays, and miscellaneous pieces—he now described in verse the “strongholds for men of valor” in Coucy’s many castles of St. Gobain, St. Lambert and La Fère, the parks of Folembray, the lovely manor St. Aubin, the falcons’ chase of herons, the famous donjon:

Who would know a land of great delight

Where lies the heart of the realm of France,

With fortress strong of marvelous might,

Tall forests and lakes of sweet plaisance,

Songs of birds, parks orderly as a dance,

Must to Coucy turn his steps.

There he will find the nonpareille

Whence comes the cry, “Coucy à la merveille!”

It has been surmised that Charles had in mind the eventual purchase of Coucy, placing the crown in control of the greatest stronghold of the north. Purchase of great fiefs was not unprecedented; Coucy himself had thus indirectly acquired Soissons. Yet how he might have been adequately compensated for so great an estate or why he would be expected to comply with the King’s desire remains obscure. The fact that he had no son and only a single female heir, the other being irrevocably English, may have been a consideration.

The marriage of Marie, sole heiress to the barony, was then being negotiated. At thirteen she was one of three candidates, along with Yolande de Bar, a niece of the King, and Catherine of Geneva, a sister of Pope Clement, who were prospects for the recently widowed son of the King of Aragon. Such places were not left empty for long. Eight days after the death of his wife, the Spanish prince dispatched envoys to Coucy, to the Duc d’Anjou as Yolande’s uncle, and to the Count of Geneva, with instructions to arrange matters as soon as possible with any one of the three. When Yolande was chosen, Marie afterward married Yolande’s brother Henri de Bar, eldest son of the Duc de Bar and of Marie de France, sister of Charles V. Alliance with the heir to a great duchy on the borders of Lorraine maintained the high level of the Coucys’ marital connections.

Whether Enguerrand was influenced by this new royal connection or by pride in his success in Normandy, he created at this time his own Order of Chivalry called, in the grand manner of the Coucys, the Order of the Crown. As indicated by Deschamps, who celebrated the order in a poem, the Crown was meant to symbolize not only grandeur and power but the dignity, virtue, and high conduct that surround a king. The points of its circle were the “twelve flowers of authority”: Faith, Virtue, Moderation, Love of God, Prudence, Truth, Honor, Strength, Mercy, Charity, Loyalty, and Largesse “shining on all below.” After 1379, Coucy’s seals display a patterned background of tiny crowns and a standing figure holding a crown—with some now uncertain significance