A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [267]
Mutual obligations were carried out. Florence paid 30,000 florins on November 15 and 17, Carraciolo surrendered on the 18th, Coucy evacuated Arezzo on the 20th. Avoiding the hostile populace he would have encountered by returning the way he had come, he crossed the mountains and returned along the eastern slope to Bologna, posting rear-guard units on the way to present the appearance of a victor’s return. At Bologna on Christmas Day he received the final payment in full. He re-entered Avignon in January 1385, adding a passage over the Alps in midwinter to a remarkably scatheless record.
Coucy’s gift, unusual for his time, was recognition of realities, as seen in the contrast between his conduct of an expeditionary force and Anjou’s. The quest for the crown of Naples—however harshly judged by critics after the fact—was not necessarily destined for catastrophe. Anjou had as good a chance as and a better claim than his opponent. What defeated him was a late start, poor generalship, and a waste of time and resources on the ceremonial display of kingship before the thing itself was in hand. If he had led a rapid and spartan advance with all energies and resources applied to the objective, the outcome could well have been different. But the “if” asks for a modern attitude in a medieval age.
The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century. The funds contributed by the crown and by Anjou himself, not to mention the sum stolen by Pierre de Craon, were squeezed from the people of France for a cause which could in no way, present or future, benefit them. This did not escape notice, nor soothe the popular mood. On hearing of Anjou’s death, a tailor of Orléans named Guillaume le Jupponnier, when “overcome with wine,” burst into a tirade in which can be heard the rarely recorded voice of his class. “What did he go there for, this Duke of Anjou, down there where he went? He has pillaged and robbed and carried off money to Italy in order to conquer another land. He is dead and damned, and the King St. Louis too, like the others. Filth, filth of a King and a King! We have no King but God. Do you think they got honestly what they have? They tax me and re-tax me and it hurts them that they can’t have everything we own. Why should they take from me what I earn with my needle? I would rather the King and all kings were dead than that my son should be hurt in his little finger.”
The record of the tailor’s case states that his words expressed “what others dared not say.” After arrest and imprisonment, he was pardoned by the Governor of Orléans.
Anjou’s widow, born Marie of Brittany, a daughter of the saintly if ruthless Charles of Blois and his unyielding wife, pursued the crown of Naples on behalf of her son Louis II with the same strenuous pertinacity as her parents had pursued the dukedom of Brittany, and with no better results. In a life-long contest against Charles of Durazzo and his son, Louis II was no more successful than his father had been. While Naples passed to the rule of Aragon and then to the Spanish Bourbons, the Angevins persevered in their claim for two centuries with all the undismayed persistence of royalty in pursuit of a crown denied.
The other French aim in Italy—imposing Clement by force-though never attempted by Anjou, was not abandoned. Rather it became an increasing obsession. In the meantime, madness shadowed Pope Urban as he quarreled fatally with Charles of Durazzo and was driven from Naples. Employing mercenaries, he rampaged through Italy in ceaseless disputes, besieged and besieging, captive and rescued, sputtering anathemas and excommunications, dragging behind him the six captive cardinals