A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [255]
Afterward, when the French attempted a parley, Ghent, as “hard and proud” as if it had won the victory, refused absolutely to yield to the Count of Flanders but only to the direct suzerainty of the King of France. The Count, and more especially Philip of Burgundy, the heir apparent, rejected that arrangement. By this time at the end of December it was too late to begin a siege. Having restored authority in the rest of Flanders, though they failed to convert it to Pope Clement, the French were ready to go home. They had business to settle with Paris.
In the first week of January 1383 the royal army halted outside Paris and sent for the Provost and magistrates to assure the capital’s submission. With armed forces at hand, and strengthened by the victory of Roosebeke, the crown had greater authority than in the year before, and was prepared to use it. Breton and Norman companies were deployed in a semi-circle around Paris, champing on the brink of pillage. A huge force of Parisians, in a desperate show of the strength which they had long prepared, marched out armed with crossbows, shields, and mallets and assumed battle formation beyond Montmartre. Warily, the crown sent a delegation including the Constable and Coucy to appraise their strength and ask why they advanced thus combatively. The commoners replied that they wished the King to view their strength, which, being very young, he had never seen. They were sternly ordered to return and lay down their arms if they wished the King to enter Paris. Subdued since the verdict of Roosebeke, their spirit did not match their show; they turned back without resistance. The royal army was nevertheless notified to appear in the guise of war, not peace—that is, in armor—for the entry into Paris.
Coucy and Marshal Sancerre were sent to open the city by taking down the solid gates from their hinges and removing street chains. The gates were thrown into the streets that the King might ride over them—“to trample the pride of the city,” as the Monk of St. Denis sadly acknowledged. Alarm and anger rose among the citizens, who posted guards at night and said, “There will be no peace yet. The King has destroyed and pillaged the land of Flanders and he will do the same in Paris.” To dampen trouble, heralds proclaimed to the people that no sack nor harm would come to them. On the day of entry, the bourgeois, represented by the Provost of Merchants, the magistrates, and 500 notables, came forward in festival clothes in the ritual plea for pardon. As they knelt, the King and his nobles, Coucy among them, flanked by men-at-arms with lances poised, rode past them through the shorn gates into the city.
Men-at-arms were immediately posted at all bridges and at squares where the people were accustomed to gather. Houses where soldiers were to lodge were required to keep their doors open. Everyone possessing arms was ordered to bring them in a sack to the Louvre, from where they were removed to Vincennes.
Arrests began at once, with special attention to the bourgeois notables, in whom the crown recognized its real opponents. Jean de Marès and Nicolas de Flament were among 300 substantial citizens arrested. Two rich merchants, a draper and a goldsmith, were executed at once, and thirteen more within a week. Nicolas de Flament, spared in 1358, went to the block now. All the bourgeois who had served in the city militia during the revolt were summoned one by one before the Council to be sentenced to heavy fines. Free to take revenge, the King’s government continued to impose convictions, fines, and executions for the next six weeks. “They cut off heads,” recorded the Ménagier de Paris, “three and four at a time,” to a total of