A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [261]
A huge French army settled down in August to the siege of Bourbourg, entertaining each other and visiting foreign knights in jousts and festivities of competitive splendor and valorous exploits designed “to raise the fame of their antique nobility.” In these activities Coucy made an impressive showing, especially for his equestrian style. Mounted on a beautiful horse and leading several others caparisoned in all the heraldic arms belonging to his house, “he rode from side to side in the most graceful manner to the delight of all who saw him, and all praised and honored him for his great air and fine presence.” Four months passed pleasurably before Bourbourg in very different mood from the fight against the commoners of the year before. The French exhibited no ardor for assault and, at the approach of winter, allowed the affair to be brought to an end through some tricky mediation by the Duke of Brittany. Norwich was bought off and went home to deficit and disgrace. England’s military repute, already declining for a decade, sank further, supplying moralists with a text against the injustices and oppressions of men of the sword. “God’s hand is against them,” said Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, “because their hand is against God.”
Although the belligerents could not know it, the Norwich invasion was destined to be the last of the century, though not of the war. Combat faded without bringing settlement between England and France any closer. Parleys began as usual after the siege of Bourbourg, but could agree on nothing better than a nine months’ truce signed in January 1384. Coucy was not this time one of the negotiators because he was engaged in a private war on behalf of his future relative, the Duc de Bar, his daughter’s prospective father-in-law, who very promptly paid him 2,000 francs to cover his expenses. Marie’s marriage to Henri de Bar was afterward celebrated in November.
All this time the Duchesse d’Anjou and her husband’s chancellor, Jean le Fèvre, were imploring the Council to deliver the promised aid. Anjou’s situation now was needier than ever because he had been robbed by one of his own nobles of 80,000 to 100,000 francs collected for him by his wife (or, according to other versions, borrowed from the Visconti). The robber, who ten years later was to commit another crime of historic consequence, was Pierre de Craon, a knight of noble birth and large estates who had accompanied the Duke to Italy. Sent by Anjou to fetch the money, Craon returned via Venice where he dissipated most of it in extravagant parties, gambling, and debauchery, supposedly from a desire to display himself in a style suitable to the sovereign he represented. He kept what was left and did not rejoin the Duke.
Such casual criminality against his lord seems close to incredible unless someone interested in Anjou’s failure and powerful enough to protect Craon from prosecution had put him up to it. That person could only have been the Duke of Burgundy, but that he would go so far as to ruin his brother seems far-fetched. When Craon returned to France, however, he did escape punishment through the protection of Burgundy to whose wife he was related.
The honor of France, in the eyes of the King and Council, could not allow Anjou to languish in failure nor give that much comfort to Pope Urban. In the spring of 1384, after truce was concluded with England, and after Burgundy, on the death of his father-in-law, entered into possession