• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

59. Posthumous portrait of Coucy commissioned by the Celestin monastery of Villeneuve-les-Soissons two hundred years after his death.(illustration credit 23.28)

60. Ruins of the donjon of Concy, after the German dynamiting of 1917.(illustration credit 23.29)

61. Aerial view of Coucy-le-Château today.(illustration credit 23.30)

Chapter 24

Danse Macabre

History never more cruelly demonstrated the vulnerability of a nation to the person of its chief of state than in the affliction of France beginning in 1392.

The circumstances that brought on the crisis arose from a struggle for power centering on the figure of Clisson, the Constable. As the main prop of the ministerial party, he was the object of the uncles’ political enmity as well as of the Duke of Brittany’s undying hatred. For as long as he retained the controlling military post with access to its immense financial advantages, and remained in partnership with the Marmosets and the King’s brother, the uncles saw themselves kept at a distance from power. The Duke of Brittany feared him as a rival in Breton affairs and hated him the more fiercely because he had failed to kill him when he had had the chance. In their common desire to destroy Clisson, the interests of Brittany and the King’s uncles met, and they maintained clandestine contact with each other.

Serving as a link between them was a Burgundian protégé, related to both the Duchess of Burgundy and the Duke of Brittany, the same sinister Pierre de Craon who had embezzled the Duc d’Anjou’s funds in the Naples campaign. Since then he had flouted a court order to reimburse Anjou’s widow, and had assassinated a knight of Laon but used his influence to secure a pardon. These derelictions had not prevented his finding favor in the royal circle of pleasure seekers. He evidently possessed the charm of wickedness. However, he angered Louis d’Orléans by informing his wife—apparently from an irresistible impulse to mischief—of an extra-marital passion which Louis had confided to him. Louis had even taken Craon to visit the beautiful, if too virtuous, lady who had resisted an offer of 1,000 gold crowns for her favors. On discovering Craon’s betrayal, Louis in a rage took the tale to the King, who compliantly banished the troublemaker. Craon claimed he was removed because he had tried to make Louis give up engaging in occult practices and consorting with sorcerers.

Burning with resentment, he took refuge with the Duke of Brittany, who was his cousin. In Craon the Duke found the agent for another attempt to ruin Clisson. Because Clisson was married to a niece of the Duchess d’Anjou, he automatically shared that family’s mortal enmity for Craon. On this basis Craon already suspected, and the Duke of Brittany easily persuaded him, that Clisson’s hand was behind his banishment—which may have been true. Clisson is said to have discovered secret correspondence between Craon and the Dukes. In any event, Craon now “breathed only for vengeance.”

On the night of June 13, 1392, having returned secretly to Paris, Craon waited in ambush at a street crossing where Clisson would pass on the way to his hôtel. With Craon in the darkness was a party of forty armored followers, enough to ensure overwhelming odds against an opponent in civilian circumstances. When a man really intended the death of a fellow noble, chivalry’s codes were surprisingly non-inhibiting. Rather than challenge his enemy to open combat, Craon preferred to strike in the dark. Judging by his record, he was a man without moral sense, but he was not alone. Montfort too had violated honor, loyalty, and every other principle of chivalry when he had kidnapped Clisson. Clisson himself was no Roland. In the lifetime of these men, under the disruptive effects of plague, brigandage, and schism, normal codes of conduct disintegrated.

Escorted by eight attendants with torches but unarmed for combat, Clisson was returning on horseback from a party given by the King at St. Pol. He was discussing