A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [91]
In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal’s claws. Trumpets enhanced the excitement. Or a pig enclosed in a wide pen was chased by men with clubs to the laughter of spectators as he ran squealing from the blows until beaten lifeless. Accustomed in their own lives to physical hardship and injury, medieval men and women were not necessarily repelled by the spectacle of pain, but rather enjoyed it. The citizens of Mons bought a condemned criminal from a neighboring town so that they should have the pleasure of seeing him quartered. It may be that the untender medieval infancy produced adults who valued others no more than they had been valued in their own formative years.
Charles of Navarre by his outrageous act became the attraction for a growing group of nobles of northern France who were ready for a movement of protest against the Valois crown. The old condition of stress between barony and monarchy had been freshened by Philip’s and Jean’s violent reprisals against nobles whom they suspected of treachery, and by the military humiliations since Crécy. Landowners, hurt by the flight of labor and reduced revenue from their estates, tended to blame many of their troubles on the crown. They resented the financial pressures of the King and his despised ministers, and pressed for reform and more local autonomy. From his base in Normandy, Charles could become the focus of an adversary group, and he proclaimed that intention like a cock crowing.
“God knows it was I who with the help of God had Charles d’Espagne killed,” he announced in a letter to Pope Innocent VI. He described his murder of the Constable as a righteous response to affronts and offenses, and expressed his devotion to the Holy See and his solicitude for the Pope’s health. Charles was now prepared to offer himself as an agent of England in return for English aid to maintain his Norman possessions, and to this end he wanted to use the Pope as intermediary. In a letter to King Edward he wrote that by means of his castle and men in Normandy, he could do such harm to Jean II “as he shall never recover from,” and he asked that English forces in Brittany be sent to his support.
Throughout that year, 1354, the future course of the century swayed between pressures for peace and others for continuing the war. Pope Innocent VI, who was aged and sickly, was trying urgently to bring about a settlement because he heard the sound of the infidel pounding at the gates. In 1353 the Turks had seized Gallipoli, key of the Hellespont, and thereby entered Europe. Christian energies must be united against them, which would be impossible if France and England renewed their war.
Pressed by the Pope and by their empty treasuries, Edward and Jean had entered negotiations for a permanent peace which neither really wanted. Edward had used up his credit with the English people for a war that neither fighting nor diplomacy could bring to an end. The English Third Estate was finding that the costs outweighed the spoils. In 1352 Parliament limited the King’s powers of conscription. In April 1354 when the House of Commons was asked by the Lord Chamberlain, “Do you desire a treaty of perpetual peace if it can be had?” members unanimously cried, “Aye! Aye!”
On his side, Jean was trapped by fear of an arrangement between Charles of Navarre and England. Medieval intelligence channels