A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [274]
In the year of marriages, 1385–86, Coucy attended the wedding at Dijon of his Hapsburg relative and recent enemy, Duke Albert III, to a daughter of Philip the Bold. This was the year of the historic victory at Sempach when Swiss pikemen defeated the Hapsburgs, and it maybe that Coucy’s presence at Dijon for the wedding was connected with the Hapsburgs’ desire for his support. In any event, his quarrel with his mother’s family was apparently made up. “They ended always by accommodating,” in the words of the discoverer of the document.
The Scottish fiasco failed to discourage French designs for the offensive. On the contrary, the design was now enlarged to a full-scale invasion of England, a true penetration, perhaps a second Norman Conquest. There was a strong body of sentiment which held that only a military victory by the French could finish off the war and assure the supremacy of the French Pope. Besides, England was known to be in great discord, and the nobility no longer united in support of the King but deeply disaffected. The Duke of Burgundy was initially the sponsor of the invasion plan, but when the decision was taken in April 1386, the Royal Council voted for it unanimously. Many were the same men who had served Charles V, but his controlling sense of the art of the possible was gone. Out of the “heap of ruins” after Poitiers, Charles had learned the discipline of adjusting ambitions to possibilities; his son’s reign was to be spent unlearning it as fast as possible. A folie de grandeur, or just such “fantasies of omnipotence” as define megalomania, overtook the French as a distraught century was drawing to its close.
“You are the greatest King living with the greatest number of subjects,” Burgundy told his nephew, “and it has occurred to me many times why we do not make this passage to England to crush the great pride of these English … and make this great enterprise one of eternal memory.” When shortly after Easter the Duke of Lancaster left England with a large force in 200 ships to conquer the throne of Castile, the French opportunity was at hand. Information about each other’s movements was known through French and English fishermen, who, ignoring hostilities, came to each other’s aid at sea and exchanged catches, keeping trans-Channel communication open.
The French invasion fleet was planned to be the greatest “since God created the world.” The original army that Clisson and Coucy were to have led to Scotland was to be the invasion force, swollen to awesome proportions. Chroniclers write in terms of 40,000 knights and squires, 50,000 horses, 60,000 foot soldiers, figures which were meant to be more impressive than precise. Preparations for Scotland had been well under way before the Flemish interruption and were now renewed in a colossal burst of activity. Money, as always, came first. A sales tax of 5 percent plus 25 percent on beverages had already been levied throughout the kingdom for the Scottish campaign, bringing in 202,000 livres. It was now renewed, as it was to be repeatedly, never bringing in enough.
Ships were hired or purchased from every part of Europe from Prussia to Castile, while French shipyards worked day and night. The 600 ships assembled in the previous year were more than doubled and the sight they made in the mouth of the Scheldt was “the greatest of its kind ever seen.” Buonaccorso Pitti, the ubiquitous Florentine, saw 1,200 ships of which 600 were combat vessels mounted with the