A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [252]
At daybreak both sides advanced, the French shouting the war cries of many absent seigneurs to make their numbers seem larger. Again Clisson suffered unrestrained agonies of anxiety, bewailing his inability to cross over with all his army. In the event, when the clash came, the long French spears tipped with Bordeaux steel outreached the Flemings’ weapons, pierced their thin mail, and gained the ascendancy. Peter van den Bossche was struck down, wounded in head and shoulder, but was carried to safety. While the Flemings fought in despair and village bells rang to summon help, the French finished repair of the bridge. Clisson’s force thundered across, routed the defenders, and completed the capture of Comines. Flemings were chased and killed in streets and fields, in mills and monasteries where theysought shelter, and in neighboring towns. In a moment the pillagers were scouring the country and finding rich plunder, for—trusting in the Lys—the Flemings had not removed their goods or cattle to the walled towns.
Upon the King’s entry into Comines, the upper bourgeois of Ypres and neighboring towns overthrew Artevelde’s governors and sent deputies to the French with terms of surrender. On their knees before Charles VI, twelve rich notables of Ypres offered to turn over their town to him permanently in return for peaceful occupation. The King was pleased to accept at a price of 40,000 francs, which was immediately pledged. Malines, Cassel, Dunkirk, and nine other towns followed suit at a further payment of 60,000 francs. Although the terms of surrender supposedly exempted towns from pillage, the Bretons could not be restrained. Rather than encumber themselves with furs, fabrics, and vessels, they sold their loot cheap to the people of Lille and Tournai, “caring only for silver and gold.” Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
At Ghent, some fifty miles to the north, Philip van Artevelde summoned from the vicinity every man capable of bearing arms, assuring them they would defeat the French King and win independent sovereignty for Flanders. For months his envoys had been pressing England, but though a herald had come with terms of a treaty, no ships filled with soldiers followed. Even so, he had another ally: winter was closing in. If he had fortified his position and stayed on the defensive, he could have left it to winter and scarcity to defeat the invaders. But the threat of an internal rising by the Count’s party which might turn over Bruges to the French forced Artevelde into action, even though he still held the principal citizens of Bruges as hostages. Perhaps he was moved not by fear but overconfidence; perhaps he simply miscalculated.
Armed with bludgeons and iron-pointed staves, with large knives in their belts and iron caps on their heads, a formidable force of “40,000” or “50,000” Flemings (in reality, probably under 20,000) was collected, led by 9,000 of Ghent on whom Philip relied most. Carrying the banners of towns and trades, they marched south to meet the enemy. Scouts reported their approach to the French, who took up a position between the hill and the town of Roosebeke a few miles from Passchendaele, where history held another bloodshed in waiting for 1916. As an Urbanist, Louis de Male was forced by the French to withhold his division from the order of battle so they should not have to fight alongside a heretic and schismatic. In rain and cold the King’s army awaited the conflict impatiently, “for they were very discomfited at being out in such weather.”
At the final war council on the eve of combat, an extraordinary decision was taken: that Clisson should resign his office for the day of battle to be near the King’s person, and be replaced as Constable by Coucy. Very agitated and pleading that he would be thought a coward by the army, Clisson begged the King for a reversal. The bewildered boy, after a