A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [322]
When it was learned that Clisson’s will, dictated after the attack, left a fortune of 1,700,000 francs, not counting lands, the uncles’ jealous rage at finding themselves outdone in the rewards of avarice knew no bounds. Such a fortune—greater than the King’s, they let it be known—could have come from no honest source. The public was ready enough to believe it, for Rivière and Mercier, too, had amassed fortunes from government service and were generally disliked as both arrogant and venal. All these strifes and rancors festered behind the unstable King as he clamored for war.
The Council approved the campaign; the uncles, left out of the decision but bound to join the King, were augmented in their hatred of the ministers. “They dreamed of nothing but how to destroy them.” The King, accompanied by Bourbon and Coucy, left Paris on July 1, moving westward by slow stages as knights and their retinues came up to join the march. Charles’s ill health required protracted stops, and further delay was caused by waiting for the uncles. Hoping to forestall the war, they dallied and procrastinated, putting Charles in a frenzy of impatience. Scarcely eating or drinking, he was in Council every day, harping on the insult to him through his Constable, upset at any contradictions, refusing absolutely to be swerved from punishing the Duke of Brittany. Discord, arriving with Burgundy and Berry, spread to the army, where knights disputed the rights and wrongs of the enterprise. In reply to a second demand for Craon’s surrender, Montfort again denied knowing anything about him. Charles, although declared “feverish and unfit to ride” by his physicians, would wait no longer.
In the heat of mid-August the march began from Le Mans on the borders of Brittany. On a sandy road under blazing sun, the King, wearing a black velvet jacket and a hat of scarlet velvet ornamented with pearls, rode apart from the others to avoid the dust. Two pages rode behind, one carrying his helmet, the other his lance. Ahead rode the two uncles in one group, and Louis d’Orléans with Coucy and Bourbon in another. As the party passed through the forest of Mans, a rough barefoot man in a ragged smock suddenly stepped from behind a tree and seized the King’s bridle, crying in a voice of doom, “Ride no further, noble King! Turn back! You are betrayed!” Charles shrank in alarm. Escorts beat the man’s hand from the bridle but because he appeared no more than a poor madman did not arrest him, not even when he followed the company for half an hour crying betrayal in the King’s ears.
Emerging from the forest, the riders came out on an open plain at high noon. Men and horses suffered under the sun’s rays. One of the pages, dozing in the saddle, let fall the King’s lance, which struck the steel helmet carried by his companion with a loud clang. The King shuddered, then, suddenly drawing his sword, spurred his horse to a charge with the cry, “Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!” Wheeling and charging, he struck at anyone within reach.
“My God,” cried Burgundy, “the King is out of his mind! Hold him, someone!” No one dared try. Warding off the blows but unable to strike back against the King’s person, they milled around in horror while Charles rushed wildly against this one and that until he was exhausted, panting, and drenched in sweat. Then his chamberlain, Guillaume de Martel, whom he much loved, clasped him from behind while others took his sword and, lifting him from his horse, laid him gently on the ground. He lay motionless and speechless, staring