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The ordeal of the prisoners, many of them wounded, on the 350-mile march to Gallipoli was cruel. Stripped of clothing down to their shirts, in most cases without shoes, with hands tied, beaten and brutalized by their escorts, they followed on foot at their captors’ heels over the mountain range and down onto the plain. To nobles equestrian almost from birth, the indignity of the barefoot trek was as great as the physical suffering. At Adrianople the Sultan paused for two weeks. The next stage took the march across the great, empty, treeless plain stretching, as if without horizon, toward the Hellespont. Not a bush nor shelter nor person was to be seen. The sun blazed down by day; when it set, the winds were chill and the October nights cold. In alien hands, uncared for and barely fed, crushed by defeat and fearful of the Sultan’s intentions, the prisoners were in circumstances more dire than they had ever known.

Coucy, eldest of the captives, never before a prisoner nor a loser—in which he was virtually unique for his time—survived only by a miracle, not a metaphoric miracle but one of faith. Clad only in a “little jacket,” with bare legs and the final indignity of no head covering, he was on the point of collapse from cold and exhaustion. Believing himself about to die, he prayed for aid to Notre Dame of Chartres. Though the cathedral was not of his province, the Virgin of Chartres was highly renowned as having been seen in person and known to have performed miracles.

“Suddenly, where there had been no one seen along the road stretching far over flat country, a Bulgarian appeared who was not of a people favorable to us.” The mysterious stranger carried a gown and hat and heavy cloak which he gave to the Sire de Coucy, who put them on and was so restored in spirit by this sign of heavenly favor that he found new vigor to continue the march.

In gratitude, Coucy was to leave 600 gold florins in his last will to Chartres Cathedral, which was duly paid after his death by Geoffrey Maupoivre, a physician who accompanied the crusade, shared the captivity, witnessed the miracle, and served as Coucy’s executor. He recorded the circumstances for the chapter of Chartres in order that they might know the origin of the unexpected gift.

At Gallipoli the nobles among the captives were kept in the upper rooms of the tower, while the 300 common prisoners—the boy Schiltberger among them—who were the Sultan’s share of the booty were held below. The worst of the harsh conditions was deprivation of wine, the Europeans’ daily drink throughout their lives. When the ship bearing Sigismund from Constantinople passed through the Hellespont less than half a mile from shore, the Turks, unable to challenge it at sea, lined up their prisoners at the water’s edge and called mockingly to the King to come out of his boat and deliver his comrades. Sigismund had in fact made overtures from Constantinople to ransom his allies, though they had cost him the war, but his means were depleted and the Sultan knew there was more money to be had from France.

Clinging to Europe’s farthest edge, the prisoners could see the fatal shores of Troy across the straits where the most famous, most foolish, most grievous war of myth or history, the archetype of human bellicosity, had been played out. Nothing mean nor great, sorrowful, heroic nor absurd had been missing from that ten years’ catalogue of woe. Agamemnon had sacrificed a daughter for a wind to fill his sails, Cassandra had warned her city and was not believed, Helen regretted in bitterness her fatal elopement, Achilles, to vent rage for the death of his friend, seven times dragged dead Hector through the dust at his chariot wheels. When the combatants offered each other peace, the gods whispered lies and played tricks until they quarreled and fought again. Troy fell and flames consumed it, and from that prodigious ruin Agamemnon went home to be betrayed and murdered. Since then, through some 2,500 years, how much had changed? The romance of Troy was a