A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [332]
Dour and suspicious, Gloucester resisted every proposal. He complained that the French used ambiguous language, filled with “subtle cloaked words of double understanding” which they turned and twisted to their advantage—such words as Englishmen did not use, “for their speech and intent is plain.” Already the stereotype of the crafty Frenchman and bluff Englishman was operating. At Gloucester’s insistence, the English required that all proposals be reduced to writing so that they could carefully examine any wording which they found obscure or susceptible of two constructions. Then they would send their clerks to learn how the French understood it, and afterward require it to be either amended or removed, thereby lengthening procedures tediously.
Here was a real cause of difficulty in peace-making. Although English lords were French-speaking, the language was acquired, not native, and they did not feel secure in it. So great a noble as the first Duke of Lancaster, who wrote the Livre des sainctes médecines, says of his work, “If the French is not good I should be excused, because I am English and not well versed in French.” Gloucester made the language problem an excuse for dragging his heels and delaying agreement, but mistrust of the French was real. Ever since Charles V’s manipulation of the clauses of the Treaty of Brétigny, the English had approached—and balked at—settlements in fear of being gulled.
To influence Gloucester by his divine mission and eloquence, Robert the Hermit was summoned to the conference by Burgundy. In passionate words the holy man begged the Duke, “For the love of God, do not longer oppose the peace.” While the war of English and French tore Christianity apart, Bajazet and his Turks advanced. The duty of Christians, he pleaded, was to unite against the infidel.
“Ha, Robert,” replied Gloucester, “I wish not to prevent a peace, but you Frenchmen use so many colored words beyond our understanding that, when you will, you make them signify war or peace as you shall choose … dissembling always until you have gained your end.” Nevertheless, Gloucester had to subdue his intransigence in deference to the wishes of the royal nephew he despised. Short of an agreement on Calais, permanent peace was still elusive, but some progress was made in that the truce was extended for four years, during which various disputed territories were to revert to either side, clearing the way for final settlement.
In June, while the last clauses were being argued, madness again engulfed the King of France. Like the illness at Amiens foreshadowing his first attack, the second seizure coincided with a peace parley. Perhaps impatience at the long-drawn-out proceedings was a disturbing factor. This time the insanity returned more seriously than before and lasted for a longer period of eight months. For the rest of his life, which was not to end until 1422, thirty years after the first attack, Charles was intermittently mad, with remissions just often enough to preclude any stable government and to exacerbate the power struggle around a half-empty throne. In these thirty years the vicious contest between the factions of Orléans and Burgundy and the successors of each was to bring back the English and reduce France to a state as shattered and helpless as in the aftermath of Poitiers.
In the fit of 1393 the King’s spirit “was covered by such heavy shadows” that he could not remember who or what he was. He did not know he was King, that he was married, that he had children, or that his name was Charles. He displayed two pronounced aversions: for the fleur-de-lys entwined with his own name or initials in the royal coat-of-arms, which he tried to deface in rage wherever he saw it, and for his wife, from whom he fled in terror. If she approached him, he would cry, “Who is that woman the sight of whom torments me? Find out what she wants and free me from her demands if you can, that she may follow me no more.” When he saw the arms of Bavaria, he danced