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By Root 1690 0

not old, even though it is generally considered that old age came early in the Middle Ages. In fact, while a large proportion of the population died early, those who lived into their fifties and sixties were not venerable in body and mind nor considered so. Life-expectancy charts may reflect statistics, but not the way people see themselves. According to an anonymous poem of the mid-14th century, life’s span was 72 years, consisting of twelve ages corresponding to the months of the year. At 18, the youth begins to tremble like March with the approach of spring; at 24, he becomes amorous as the blossoming of April, and nobility and virtue enter his soul along with love; at 36, he is at the summer solstice, his blood as hot as the sun of June; at 42, he has acquired experience; at 48, he should think of harvesting; at 54, he is in the September of life when goods should be stored up; age 60, the October of life, is the onset of old age; 66 is dark November when all green withers and dies and a man should think on death, for his heirs are waiting for him to go if he is poor and waiting more eagerly if he is rich; 72 is December, when life is as mournful as winter and there is nothing left to do but die.

Coucy had led an extraordinarily active life, never at rest, never pausing after one task before undertaking the next. He showed no signs of age or slackening when he undertook the crusade nor when he led the brilliant foray against the Turks on the day before the battle—the only successful French action of the campaign. Then came the disaster in a battle launched against his advice, defeat in an enterprise of which he had been given the guidance, the ghastly spectacle of his comrades and dependents slaughtered before his eyes, the shame and hardships of an ignoble captivity, the remoteness from home, uncertainty of rescue, and fear of a captor not bound by the rules. As one whose life, though anything but soft, had been singularly fortunate, Coucy was not conditioned for so much misfortune. Perhaps he recognized in the Battle of Nicopolis a profound failure of knighthood, and sensed in its outcome a time to die.

On February 16, 1397, preparatory to death, he drew up at Brusa his last will, or, more precisely, a lengthy codicil to a previous will. By this time he may have been removed from prison to better quarters under provisional liberty guaranteed by the rich and noble Francesco Gattilusio, Genoese Lord of Mitylene (Lesbos)—Coucy’s “relative,” according to Froissart. One of the independent lords of the Aegean islands called the Archipelago, Gattilusio was a man of influence at the Ottoman court who, even without kinship, might well have given surety for a great French baron well known in Genoa. The Christian powers of the Archipelago under the shadow of the advancing Turks were acutely affected by the defeat at Nicopolis. The blow to the prestige, not to mention to the arms, of Christianity undermined their position, and the spectacle of prominent Christian nobles imprisoned and perhaps dying in infidel hands was a disturbing one for them. It was in their interest to secure a release, and reports of the prisoners’ misery excited their pity. One merchant of the Archipelago, Nicholas of Aenos, sent a gift of fish, bread, sugar, and linens from his wife in addition to a loan of money. One can only hope that, by courtesy of Gattilusio, Coucy in his last days was not lodged on bare stone.

“Sound of mind but infirm of body, and considering that nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour,” Coucy drew up his lengthy codicil in Latin, probably by the hand of Geoffrey Maupoivre, who was a Master of Arts as well as of Medicine. In the care and precision and nature of these instructions and their reflection of what was on a man’s mind in his last hours, there is no better mirror of the Middle Ages.

“First and above all,” he directs burial in France according to the terms of his previous will (which had specified burial of his body at Nogent and of his heart at his foundation of Ste. Trinité in Soissons).