A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [347]
In the Council, Arnaud de Corbie, the Chancellor, advised acceptance on the ground that the marriage bond would strengthen the English King against the war party in his own country. The interests of peace prevailed. In July, 1,200 French gentlemen escorted a formal English embassy led by Earl Marshal Nottingham to the Council table in Paris. Agreement was reached on a dowry for Isabelle of 800,000 francs but no lands, and on a truce of 28 years. For the first time, a truce was long enough to represent a genuine forswearing of belligerent will—at least on the part of the negotiators. That was the difficulty.
If the French on whose soil the war was fought had, on the whole, had enough, too many English, personified in the Duke of Gloucester, had not. They were galled by a sense of having been bilked out of the gains confirmed in the Treaty of Brétigny. They ached to get satisfaction and saw the marriage putting it off forever. Footloose knights and yeomen were still attracted by the warring way of life and its loot on the continent. The commons, suffering from disrupted commerce and oppressive taxes, may have wanted peace, but they did not like the French marriage. They feared Richard would give away too much to the French; there were mutterings about Calais, and disappointment if not suspicion at the choice of a child queen and continued uncertainty about an heir.
Because of Gloucester’s influence and popularity with the Londoners, Richard did not dare to conclude the alliance without his concurrence and that of his party. More than a year elapsed in the effort to obtain it. The French sent Robert the Hermit to add the weight of Heaven’s command for peace, and to impress upon the English the Turkish menace which the Hermit knew from his travels in Syria. A visionary, even if he traveled with seven horses at the expense of the French King, was not the best choice to influence Gloucester. When, at the climax of his peroration, the Hermit warned, “Surely, whoever is or will be against the peace shall pay dearly for it be he alive or dead,” Gloucester pulled him up with a sharp, “How do you know that?” Robert could only answer by “divine inspiration,” which left the Duke unimpressed. He remained “hard-hearted against the peace,” and by his words “condemned and despised greatly the Frenchmen.”
Richard worriedly told Count Waleran de St. Pol, who had accompanied the Hermit, that Gloucester was trying to influence the people against a peace, perhaps even to “raise the people against me, which is a great peril.” St. Pol, the hard-headed brother of saintly Pierre de Luxemburg, advised the King to win his uncle with fair words and great gifts until the marriage and peace were concluded. Then he could “take other counsel,” because then he would be strong enough to “oppress all rebels, for the French King if need be shall aid you; of this you may be sure.” The lubricator of politics was the same then as before and since. Richard promised Gloucester £100,000 and an earldom for his son worth £2,000 a year (which he later failed to make good) and, by various persuasions and pressures brought to bear by the Duke of Lancaster, secured a sullen acquiescence.
A proxy marriage and ratification of the truce were celebrated in Paris in March 1396, with Nottingham acting as proxy for the King. Nottingham now had occasion to meet the object of his esteem in entertainment if not in combat, for Coucy was one of those who acted as host to the English ambassadors during their three-week stay in the capital.