A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [357]
Coucy did not travel with the main body because he was detached on a mission to the lord of Milan. Angry at the removal of Genoa from his sphere of influence, Gian Galeazzo was maneuvering to prevent its transfer of sovereignty to the King of France. Coucy was sent to warn him that his interference would be regarded as a hostile act. More than Genoa was behind the quarrel. Gian Galeazzo had turned against France, bitterly if not openly, because his beloved daughter Valentina was being subjected to a campaign of slander charging her with bewitching or poisoning the King. The vicious rumors were the work of Queen Isabeau, who wanted Valentina out of the way, perhaps from jealousy of her influence with the King, or to facilitate her own affair with Orléans, or as part of Isabeau’s perpetual machinations with Florence against Milan, or something of each. Whispered in the taverns and markets, among a public ready to believe ill of the Italian foreigner, the rumors grew so rampant that mobs shouting threats gathered before Valentina’s residence. Louis d’Orléans made no effort to defend his wife, but rather complied with Isabeau’s objective by removing Valentina from Paris on the excuse of her safety. She was left to live in exile thereafter at her country residence at Asnières on the Seine, where, twelve years later, she died.
Valentina’s removal occurred in April, the month of the crusade’s departure, and was not taken lightly by her adoring father. He threatened to send knights to defend his daughter’s honor, but his contemporaries believed he did more than that. For revenge upon France, he was said to have notified Bajazet of the crusaders’ plan of campaign and to have kept him closely informed of its progress. The charge against Gian Galeazzo was probably a product of French animosity and the search for someone to blame after the appalling dénouement, but it could also have been true. A Visconti did not shrink from revenge, especially not the man who had so coolly dispatched his uncle to prison and death.
It is not impossible that Coucy may have inadvertently revealed the crusaders’ plan of campaign to his host in Pavia. Gian Galeazzo was a strange, cheerless, secretive prince who would have concealed his paternal feelings. With regard to Genoa, however, Coucy’s intervention was successful; sovereignty was duly transferred to the King of France in the following November. Coucy, accompanied by Henri de Bar and their followers, left Milan in May for Venice, where he requisitioned a ship from the Venetian Senate on May 17 to take him across the Adriatic. He embarked on May 30 for Senj (Segna), a small port on the Croatian coast. Evidence is lacking of his route thereafter, but the choice of Senj would indicate that he and his party traveled to Buda by the most direct way, a journey of some 300 miles through wild, rugged, and dangerous country.
He reached the rendezvous before Nevers, who was in no hurry. Stopping along the upper Danube for receptions and festivities offered by German princes, Nevers and his gorgeous companions in green and gold did not reach even Vienna until June 24, a month behind the vanguard under D’Eu and Boucicaut. A fleet of seventy vessels with cargo of wine, flour, hay, and other provisions was dispatched from Vienna down the Danube while Nevers enjoyed further festivities offered by his sister’s husband, Leopold IV, Duke of Austria. After borrowing from his brother-in-law the huge sum of 100,000 ducats, which took time to arrange, Nevers finally arrived in Buda at some time in July.
Sigismund welcomed his allies with joy not unmixed with apprehension. Although the Hungarian nobles had taken the cross with enthusiasm, their loyalty to him was not perfect, and he foresaw difficulties in the problem of a combined march and a coordinated strategy with the visitors. The French were not disposed to take advice, and the habits of pillage and brigandage, grown routine in the last fifty years of warfare, had already been exhibited on their march through Germany.
Strategy