A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [296]
Forty of the leading bourgeois of Paris presented the King and Queen with gifts of jewels and vessels of gold in the hope of remittance of taxes. Carried by two men dressed as ancient sages, the gifts were enclosed in a litter covered by a fine silk gauze through which the sparkle of jewels and gleam of gold could be seen. This imaginative presentation was less persuasive than it deserved to be. Two months later, when the King left for a tour of the south to display his newfound sovereignty to the people and seek to relieve their oppressions, taxes were raised in Paris as soon as he left to pay for the cost of the Queen’s entry and for the new journey, which in turn proved so sumptuous that it resulted not in lowered but in increased taxes. In a manipulation of the currency to aid the cost, the circulation of small silver coins of four pence and twelve pence, which were the common cash of the people, was forbidden in Paris, depriving the poor for two weeks of the means to purchase food in the market place. Who can say whether two weeks of hunger and anger weighed heavier in the balance than the miraculous vision of the acrobat on his tightrope and the fountains of running wine?
* The original—“M’a souvent le poing fouci/De beaux florins a rouge escaille”—is obscure, but may refer to the fact that coins of good value, not worn or clipped, were often put in a bag tied at the top and sealed with colored wax, in this case a “red seal.”
Chapter 22
The Siege of Barbary
Coucy reached the age of fifty in 1390. He was now the leading noble, apart from the King’s brother and maternal uncle, in the royal entourage, relied on equally for political mission and military command. He held official positions as Captain-General of Auvergne and Guienne and member of the Royal Council, but his adventures in his fiftieth year carried him far beyond these assignments.
When in September 1389 Charles VI set out with his brother Louis and his uncle Bourbon to confer with the Pope in Avignon and exhibit kingship in Languedoc, Coucy commanded the royal escort. The purpose of the journey was, first, to work out with Pope Clement a means of regaining sole control of the papacy, and, second, to mend the crown’s fences in Languedoc, alienated by the oppressions of the Duc de Berry. Delegates from the south had told the King on their knees and in tears of the “crushing tyranny” and “intolerable exactions” of Berry’s officers. Unless the King acted, they said, the 40,000 people of Languedoc who had already fled to Aragon would be followed by many more.
Now that there was truce with England, Charles was advised by Rivière and Mercier to make the journey in order to learn how his subjects were governed and make himself more beloved by them, for the sake of funds “of which he had great need.” At 22, the age at which his father had been a mature ruler, Charles VI was a shallow youth, spending what he did not have in a cascade of largesse. Efforts of Treasury officials to stem the flow by writing alongside the names of recipients, “He has had too much” or “He should repay,” were in vain.
Burgundy and Berry were greatly vexed to be informed by the King that they were not to accompany him on the journey but must remain on their own estates. Knowing that the order originated with Rivière and Mercier, and that the King was going to “hold inquisitions” on those who had governed Languedoc, they consulted together and agreed that they must “dissemble this affront,” but that the time would come “when those who have advised it shall repent of it.” As long as they remained united, they told each other, others “cannot do us any injury for we are the greatest personages in France.” “Such,” writes Froissart in unblushing reconstruction, “was the language of these two dukes.”
From Lyon, the King and his party continued the journey to Avignon by boat down the Rhône, a more comfortable form