Barbara Tuchman would have us know that the second half of the fourteenth century was not the best of times in Europe. The bubonic plague first struck in 1350 and then reappeared every ten years or so thereafter. The initial episode eliminated about a third of the population of Europe. Incredibly, the plague is eventually upstaged in Tuchman’s book by the general bad behavior of the remaining population. It was a time of unending senseless violence and oppression. I had read A Distant Mirror many years ago and remembered being stunned by how swiftly and relentlessly the plague had cut down entire families, towns, and cities. But I hadn’t remembered the endless wars, feuds, battles, and campaigns that killed off many of the lucky survivors of the great pestilence. I think that must have been because the mayhem was so consistent, so widespread, so … ordinary. No individual or event stands out. Bad behavior is Tuchman’s great subject: people betraying, deceiving, and destroying each other. The plague stands out by contrast because it was not motivated by greed, treachery, or envy.
Ours is a more peaceful time because we have governments and laws that at least limit the amount of violence and brutality in the world. We may not feel that we live in the best of times, but consider how the great majority the world’s billions live their lives unmolested, with shelter and enough to eat. We have electricity and antibiotics. In the fourteenth century, Europe was transitioning to nation states, but was still controlled by royal families—and the Catholic Church. Thus you had various kings, dukes, popes, and cardinals plotting and making war against each other. To finance these campaigns, these worthies levied tax after tax on the merchant and peasant classes. The concentration of wealth was extreme, and much of it was put to use to ravage the very people who had funded it. Armies swarmed across the countryside, stealing the food of whatever towns and villages were in their path, and killing and raping many residents for good measure. In many ways, they treated their ostensible enemies better than they treated the townspeople who were unlucky enough to be in their way. High-ranking enemies were an economic resource who could be ransomed for substantial sums; many of them were likely blood relatives in any case and thus worthy of a certain deference.
Tuchman likes to give us lists, perhaps because this is the kind of information that makes up much of the documentary evidence that has survived for six centuries. Here is a short selection from a much longer inventory of the possessions of the Duc de Berry, a brother of the King of France and one of four such brother/dukes who controlled—or rather, owned—the majority of the country:
Berry was too absorbed in acquisition and art to be interested in war. He lived for possessions, not glory. He owned two residences in Paris, the Hôtel de Nesle and another near the Temple, and built or acquired a total of seventeen castles in his duchies of Berry and Auvergne. He filled them with clocks, coins, enamels, mosaics, marquetry, illuminated books, musical instruments, tapestries, statues, triptychs painted in bright scenes on dazzling gold ground bordered with gems, gold vessels and spoons, jeweled crosses and reliquaries, relics, and curios. He owned one of Charlemagne’s teeth, a piece of Elijah’s mantle, Christ’s cup from the Last Supper, drops of the Virgin’s milk, enough of her hairs and teeth to distribute as gifts, soil from various Biblical sites, a narwhal’s teeth, porcupine’s quills, the molar tooth of a giant, and enough gold-fringed vestments to robe all the canons of three cathedrals at one time. Agents kept him apprised of curiosities, and when one reported a “giant’s bones” dug up near Lyon in 1378, he at once authorized purchase. He kept live swans and bears representing his chosen device, a menagerie with apes and dromedaries, and rare fruit trees in his garden. He ate strawberries with crystal picks mounted in silver and gold, and read by candlelight from six carved ivory candle-holders.
It’s interesting to note how wealth in the fourteenth century took the form of discrete objects, rather than as a bank balance. When we read today that some software tycoon is worth a hundred billion dollars, it’s hard to relate that to what ordinary people have or to translate that into the objects that ordinary people want to buy: things like cars, houses, or boats. In this regard, Donald Trump, with his penchant for putting his name in gold at the top of buildings around the world, has more in common with the Duc de Berry than he does with Warren Buffet.
The underclasses who underwrote this extravagance were not unaware of how they were being exploited. There were frequent insurrections, against Berry and others like him. The people participating in these insurrections must have known that they would be slaughtered when they were put down, as they inevitably were. They participated because everything had been taken from them—there had nothing to put in the scales to balance their hatred. The Duc of Berry, at least, was less bloodthirsty than many of his peers: where they would set an example by burning or beheading defeated insurgents by the hundreds or thousands, he would spare the life of anyone who could afford to pay a hefty fine.
Berry is just one of a seemingly endless parade of bad people that Tuchman leads before us. An individual named Robert of Geneva provides a good illustration of fourteenth century realpolitik:
With the fury of a conqueror defied, Cardinal Robert determined to set an example by atrocity and found his occasion at Cesena, a town near the east coast between Ravenna and Rimini. When the Bretons who were quartered there seized supplies without paying for them, they provoked an armed rising of the citizens. Swearing clemency by a solemn oath on his cardinal’s hat, Cardinal Robert persuaded the men of Cesena to lay down their arms, and won their confidence by asking for fifty hostages and immediately releasing them as evidence of good will. Then summoning his mercenaries, … he ordered a general massacre “to exercise justice.” Meeting some demurral, he insisted, crying “Sangue et sangue!” (Blood and more blood), which was what he meant by justice. He was obeyed. For three days and nights beginning February 3, 1377, while the city gates were closed, the soldiers slaughtered. “All the squares were full of dead.” Trying to escape, hundreds drowned in the moats, thrust back by relentless swords. Women were seized for rape, ransom was placed on children, plunder succeeded the killing, works of art were ruined, handicrafts laid waste, “and what could not be carried away, they burned, made unfit for use, or spilled upon the ground.” The toll of the dead was between 2,500 and 5,000.
Robert of Geneva became known as the “Butcher of Cesena” and was later elected Pope Clement VII.
Wading through these decades of massacres, plagues, mad kings and debauchery was one Enguerrand VII, Sire de Coucy and Count of Soissons. Coucy was one of the richest men in France, and possessor of a mighty fortress 50 miles north of Paris. Skilled as both a soldier and a diplomat, Coucy was present at many of the century’s key events. For Tuchman, he stands in contrast to the general dementia of the time. Coucy was no saint, but he was intelligent and practical, qualities scarcer in the 1300s than saintliness. Most of the assorted dukes, princes, and counts of the day still put great stock by notions of chivalry that eschewed planning, prudence, and strategy. To their minds, a lord should always be at the front of the attack, the first into battle. This led to a lot of dead and captured lords—the King of France was even captured on one occasion by the English. What do you do with a captured king? You hold him for a king’s ransom, of course. Funds were raised by—what else?—new taxes.
I have not read other books by Barbara Tuchman, but I infer that a consistent theme for her is ironic contempt for the foolishness of powerful men. In The Guns of August, she wrote about the leaders of early 20th century Europe who started the First World War for no good reason. Another of her books is titled, plainly enough, The March of Folly. I think I would enjoy any of her books because ironic contempt, when done well, is extremely entertaining. But I suspect that just about any century, including the current one, could be savaged in this manner. Folly is everywhere, and in every one. We might not even be able to guess all the things about our times that will earn the contempt of our distant offspring, though we could at least get the list started for them.
Maybe a century like the 14th is what it takes to send civilization off in a new direction. Energy was no longer flowing effectively through the old channels—crusade, chivalry, feudalism. Church. Within a hundred years of the end of this century, ships would be sailing new oceans and both the Renaissance and the Reformation would be underway. I don’t know enough to draw the lines that connect the dysfunctional 14th century to the European rebirth, but I’m sure it can be done, in fact, it probably has already been done by somebody.
