A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [257]
Strangely, in view of his role in removing the gates, Coucy retained a favorable image in Paris. A saying was recorded among the people that “the Sire de Coucy had not feared to remonstrate with the King and tell him that if he destroyed his own country he would be reduced to plying the workman’s spade.” The prophecy picturing the King doing a peasant’s work captured the public mind and was to have a long and curious fife.
The authority of the lions was regained in full. Paris did not recover a Provost of Merchants for thirty years; Rouen never recovered the liberties it had enjoyed before the Harelle. Where insurgency had won momentary control, it was because of the absence of organized and ready forces of public order. The state had no arrangements for meeting revolution, although, by contrast, the role of suppression was as formalized as a ceremonial rite.
Except in Ghent, insurgency could not retain a grip because it, too, had no prepared role and its ranks were divided. The poor provided the explosive force, but became the agents of the merchant class, whose interests were not theirs. The towns themselves failed in their aim because they were each other’s enemies. Ghent maintained its struggle for two more years until, on the death of Louis de Male, its liberties were restored by the Duke of Burgundy to consolidate his heritage. Elsewhere, communal liberties and autonomy were lost or reduced. The process that had operated in Etienne Marcel’s revolt continued: to the extent that the towns lost, the monarchy gained, while through financial support the crown increasingly made partners of the nobility.
After the storm, the lower class was seen as more dangerous, more suspect. It gained recognition as a dynamic rather than passive section of society, by some in fear, by others in sympathy. “Therefore the innocent must die of hunger with whom these great wolves daily fill their maw,” wrote Deschamps. “This grain, this corn, what is it but the blood and bones of the poor folk who have plowed the land? Wherefore their spirit crieth on God for vengeance. Woe to the lords, the councillors and all who steer us thus, and woe to all who are of their party, for no man careth now but to fill his bags.”
The wave of insurrection passed, leaving little change in the condition of the working class. Inertia in the scales of history weighs more heavily than change. Four hundred years were to elapse before the descendants of the Maillotins seized the Bastille.
* The hotel, called Rieulet or Nieulet in some contemporary manuscripts, was located in the now non-existent Rue St. Jean-en-Grève, which ran from the present Hôtel de Ville to the Rue de Rivoli. The residence was listed as sold to Raoul de Coucy, “conseiller du Roi,” in 1379, probably an error for Enguerrand, who in a charter of 1390 referred to it as “nôtre hostel à Paris.”
Chapter 19
The Lure of Italy
The lure of a foothold in Italy exerted the same pull on the French as a foothold in France exerted on the English. From the time the Duc d’Anjou crossed the Alps in 1382, the Angevin claim to the Kingdom of Naples drew France southward, creating a habit of intervention that was to persist on and off for 500 years. Its pattern was laid at the start, when Anjou’s expedition encountered misfortune almost at once and sent repeatedly throughout the year 1383 for reinforcement under the Sire de Coucy.
Angevins had ruled the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily since Charles of Anjou, younger brother of St. Louis, had been placed on the throne by papal influence in 1266. Sicily was absorbed by Aragon at the end of the century, but the Angevin dynasty retained the mainland portion, covering the entire lower half of Italy south of Rome, the largest domain on the peninsula.* Flourishing in commerce and culture, it enjoyed