A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [300]
Shortly afterward he may have gone to Spain to arrange with the King and Queen of Aragon for the marriage of their daughter, Yolande, aged eight, to Louis II of Anjou. Froissart’s account of this mission, which was designed to gain an ally in the Angevin quest of the crown of Naples, is a hopeless tangle of what could and could not have occurred. He states that Coucy escorted Anjou to an actual marriage, which in fact did not take place until 1400, and he sets the scene amid many other discrepancies of time and place. Nevertheless, a marriage contract was indeed concluded in 1390, and Coucy would have been the natural choice to negotiate it. The Duchesse d’Anjou had consistently sought his influence in her cause ever since her husband’s death; moreover, Coucy was related by marriage and well known to the Queen of Aragon, who was the former Yolande de Bar, his son-in-law’s sister. He had also served as proxy in young Louis’ previous marriage to Bernabò Visconti’s daughter, which had been neatly annulled when Bernabò fell from power.
In Froissart’s version, the Duchesse d’Anjou entreated Coucy to escort her son to Spain and he “cheerfully agreed” to undertake the journey. Twelve-year-old Louis took leave of the Pope and his mother in tears, for “their hearts were wrung at the separation and it was uncertain when they should meet again.” Coucy and his charge rode by land to Barcelona (250 miles or more from Avignon or 200 from Toulouse) and on their arrival the Queen of Aragon was “particularly pleased to see the Sire de Coucy” and thanked young Louis of Anjou for bringing him, saying that “everything would be the better for it.” All this is natural enough although it probably did not happen; the fog of elapsed time has closed down over the facts.
If indeed he went to Spain, Coucy would have seen a country on the edge of turmoil. The peninsula below the Pyrenees was now experiencing the tail of the storm of insurrections that had swept through Europe a decade before. The long civil wars between Pedro the Cruel and his half-brother Enrique had trailed the ineluctable wake of pillage, oppression, and taxes. Social anatagonism found vent against the Jews, who so regularly in history become a microcosm of the world’s larger ills. In Spain their role had been more prominent and prosperous than elsewhere. Pedro the Cruel had employed them extensively as advisors and agents, besides keeping a Jewish mistress, and his preference was made a theme of Enrique’s accusations until Enrique emerged the victor. Then he too used the Jews’ financial services.
Popular hatred was inflamed by agitators who raised fears of the Jews’ increasing influence and demanded cancellation of debts owed to Christ-killers. Given a religious motive, economic fear can rise to fury. A fanatic Archdeacon, Ferran Martínez, preached a version of Hitler’s final solution. In 1391 murder, seizure of property, and forcible conversion of the Jews began, and this taste of violence soon turned into general insurrection against the clergy and propertied class, culminating in four days of terror in Barcelona. Protection of the Jews was denounced by the populace as treason to Christendom. Gradually, the rulers regained the upper hand, but aggression against the Jews had been too overt and physically damaging to be repaired. They were rendered vulnerable, and Spain susceptible, to the final expulsion one hundred years later.
Coucy is recorded again in Toulouse on January 5, 1390, and on January 28 appeared