A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [281]
To this suggestion Montfort at last responded. He wanted no pledge nor guarantor, but 100,000 francs in cash and the handing over to his deputies of two towns and three castles, including Josselin, Clisson’s home, before the Constable would be released. Clisson had no choice but to sign the terms and remain incarcerated while Beaumanoir was sent to collect the money. “And if I should tell that such things happened and not tell openly the whole matter,” wrote Froissart, “it would be a chronicle but no history.”
As alarm at the Constable’s disappearance spread rapidly, it was widely believed that he had been put to death, and instantly assumed by all that the voyage to England was “lost and broken.” At Harfleur, Coucy, Vienne, and St. Pol had no thought of going ahead with the expedition without Clisson, even after it was known that he was alive. The Duke’s terrible deed absorbed all minds, and the insult to the King represented by the seizure of his Constable took precedence over an act of war against England. The expedition with all its ships, provisions, and men-at-arms was abandoned as before, so easily as to raise a question whether the interruption may not have been welcomed. If the coup was designed to frustrate the invasion, it was a total success, but not for Montfort, who lacked the granite will of Gian Galeazzo.
Like the schism in the Church, like the brigandage of knights, like the worldliness of friars, Montfort’s act was destructive of basic assumptions. It caused consternation. Knights and squires in anxious discussion said to each other, “Thereby no man should trust in any prince, since the Duke had deceived these noblemen.” What would the French King say? Surely there never was such a shameful case in Brittany or anywhere else. If a poor knight had done such a deed, he would be dishonored forever. “In whom should a man trust but in his lord? And that lord should maintain him and do him justice.”
On his release, Clisson, with only two pages, galloped straight for Paris in such a fury to obtain satisfaction that he is said to have covered 150 miles a day and to have reached the capital in 48 hours. The King, feeling his honor bound up with his Constable’s, was eager for reprisal, but his uncles, who still governed for him, were markedly less so. They seemed indifferent to Clisson’s losses, told him he should have known better than to accept Montfort’s invitation, especially on the eve of embarking against England, and dampened any suggestion of martial action against the Duke. On this issue the division in the government opened between the uncles on the one hand, and the Constable—supported by Coucy, Vienne, Rivière, Mercier, and the King’s younger brother Louis—on the other. Coucy insisted that the King must take cognizance and require Montfort to make restitution. The uncles, already jealous of Clisson’s influence over the King and his close relations with Coucy and Rivière, wanted no major effort that would enhance his prestige. In the midst of the struggle, another crisis erupted.
A brash young exhibitionist, the Duke of Guelders, delivered by herald an astonishing and insolent challenge to Charles VI, announcing himself an ally of Richard II and therefore an enemy prepared to defy “you who call yourself King of France.” His letter was addressed simply to Charles de Valois. This swaggering gesture by a petty German prince, ruler of a narrow territory between the Meuse and the