A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [317]
The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were “inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.”
At this moment, England’s old ally, the Duke of Brittany, addicted as ever to feuding, suddenly re-opened his quarrel with France. Discarding a vassal’s loyalty, he became more and more contentious and presumptuous, minting money bearing his own image, and assuming other rights of independent sovereignty. The French were anxious to bring him to submission before the date of the parley with the English, knowing that otherwise their uncovered flank would put them at a disadvantage. Coucy, one of the few persons acceptable to the irascible Duke, arranged for him to meet with the King and Council at Tours. Montfort came up the Loire attended by a suite of 1,500 knights and squires, in a convoy of five ships armed with cannon. For three months, from October to December 1391, the effort dragged on. Half slippery, half intransigent, Montfort could not be brought to terms. As a last resort, the King’s daughter Jeanne, barely a year old, was offered in marriage to Montfort’s son as the only means of attaching Brittany. The same solution had notably failed in the recent past to attach Charles of Navarre. With no great grace, after concluding the arrangement, Montfort went home “conserving all his hate.”
While at Tours, Coucy was caught up in an affair that was to have bitter if posthumous irony for himself. It happened that the only son and heir of Count Guy de Blois died, leaving an enormous estate devoid of dynastic heirs. The limitless acquisitiveness of Louis d’Orléans focused at once on the property, which lay between his own domains of Touraine and Orléans. He and the King and Coucy rode over together from nearby Tours to visit the bereaved, and also bankrupt, father. Count Guy was the former fellow hostage in England who, to buy his liberty, had transferred his property of Soissons through King Edward to Coucy. Wild spending had since dissipated his great wealth; overeating and drinking had left him and his wife “overgrown with fatness” so that the Count could no longer mount his horse and had to be carried to the hunt in a litter. Given to fits of rage, he had once, in what appears to have been a 14th century habit, killed a knight with his dagger. Now he was old, sick, and childless, surrounded by swarms of quarreling would-be heirs.
Coucy had much influence with Count Guy, besides holding a lien on his property deriving from money still owed on the Soissons transaction. As “un grand traitteur” (an accomplished negotiator), he was chosen by both parties to evaluate the estate and arrange its sale to Louis d’Orléans. Sale of dynastic property for cash was considered something of a disgrace. If Coucy was reluctant to act in such a matter—and there is no evidence that he was—he was handsomely, almost too handsomely, compensated by Louis for his services. When he succeeded in reducing Blois’ asking price of 200,000 francs for his lands in Hainault by 50,000, or 25 percent, Louis paid him back the difference. At the same time, Louis acquitted Coucy of the debt of 10,000 florins loaned to him for the Tunisian campaign, “in consideration to our said cousin of the many and great services he has rendered to us.” For the entire Blois estate Louis paid 400,000 francs from his wife’s dowry, becoming thereby a territorial proprietor on a level with his uncles.
Froissart, who had been in the service of Guy de Blois before the days of the empty purse, delivered himself of the stern and rather surprising judgment that “The Sire de Coucy was greatly to blame in this matter.” Perhaps he meant that Coucy should not have