A country, a judicial system, a state: the defining foundations of a nation. Under these three supreme artisans of the idea of France, the country emerged from the age of potentiality. Self-aware, France was establishing itself in the western world as an indisputable, and soon to be pre-eminent, reality.
With twenty-two million inhabitants, its borders well guarded, an army that could be called up quickly, feudal lords kept at heel, constituencies perfectly controlled, roads safe, trade flourishing; what other Christian country could compare itself to France, and which would not be envious of it? The people complained of course, feeling controlled by a hand they considered too firm; later they would moan a good deal more when delivered up to hands too soft or too deranged.
With the death of Philip the Fair, suddenly the idea of France cracked. The long succession of good fortune was broken.
The three sons of the Iron King followed each other on the throne without leaving male descent. We have previously told the story of the dramas the court of France went through as its crown was repeatedly auctioned to the most ambitious bidder.
Four kings committed to the grave in the space of fourteen years; more than enough to fill minds with dismay! France was not used to rushing to Rheims quite so often. It was as if the Capetian family tree had been struck by lightning in its very trunk. And to see the crown slip into the hands of the Valois branch, the troubled branch, would reassure no one. Ostentatious, impulsive, enormously presumptuous princes, all form and no substance, the Valois imagined that all they had to do was smile to make the kingdom happy. Their predecessors mistook themselves for France itself. They mistook France for the idea they had of themselves. After the curse of rapid demise came the curse of mediocrity.
The first of the Valois, Philip VI, called ‘the found king’, in other words the upstart, had a ten-year period during which he might have been able to secure his power base, but then, at the end of this time, his first cousin Edward III of England resolved to open the dynastic feud; he declared himself entitled king of France, which allowed him to rally, in Flanders, Brittany, Saintonge and Aquitaine, all those who had grounds for complaint with the new regime, including leaders of towns and feudal overlords. Faced with a more effective monarch, the Englishman would most probably have continued to dither.
But Philip of Valois was incapable of warding off impending danger and no more capable of defeating it when it came; his fleet was annihilated at the Battle of Sluys because its admiral had been selected for his ignorance of the sea; and the king himself was guilty of letting his cavalry charge trample their own infantry, carnage he saw with his own eyes when roaming through the battlefield the night after the Battle of Crécy.
When Philip the Fair introduced taxes that the people would hold against him, it was in order to build up France’s defences. When Philip of Valois demanded even higher taxes, it was simply to pay the price of his defeats.
Over the last five years of his reign, exchange rates were adjusted one hundred and sixty times; the currency lost three quarters of its value. Foodstuffs, ruthlessly taxed, reached astronomic prices. An unprecedented inflation made the towns increasingly angry.
When misfortune seems to circle on cruel wings above a country, everything gets confused, and any natural disaster, let alone one of the worst in history, adds further insult to the injury of human error.
The plague, the Great Plague, having originated far away in Asia, hit France; no other part of Europe was hit harder. The streets of towns became places where the dying lay, the suburbs open graves. Here a quarter of the population succumbed, there a third perished. Entire villages were wiped out, and all that was left of them were dilapidated houses open to the winds on a wasteland of neglect.
Philip of Valois had a son that the plague, alas, was to spare.
France was to sink yet deeper into distress and ruin; this ultimate descent was to be the work of John II, erroneously called the Good.
This lineage of mediocre monarchs came close to cleaving apart the system that since the Middle Ages had trusted nature to produce within one and the same family the bearer of the sovereign’s power. Are peoples any more likely to win in the lottery of democracy than in the haphazardness of genetics? Crowds, assemblies, even select councils are no less likely to be in error than nature; and anyway, Providence has always been miserly with greatness.
The Cardinal of Périgord thinks …
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN pope. How can I fail to think again and again that thrice I held the tiara in my hands; three times! As much for Benedict XII and for Clement VI as for our current pontiff, it is I who decided, as the battle drew to a close, on whose head the tiara was placed. My friend Petrarch calls me pope-maker, not such a great maker, after all, as it was never upon my own head that the tiara would be set. Enfin, it is God’s will. Ah! What a strange thing is a conclave! I believe I am the only cardinal alive to have seen three of them. And maybe I will see a fourth, if Innocent is as ill as he makes out.
What are those rooftops yonder? Yes, I recognize them, Chancelade Abbey, in the Valley of Beauronne. The first time, admittedly, I was too young. Thirty-three, the age of Christ crucified: this fact was being whispered all over Avignon as soon as it was known John XXII (Lord, guard his soul in Your holy light; he was my benefactor) would never recover. But the cardinals weren’t going to elect the youngest of the brothers in their midst; and it was most reasonable of them, I willingly confess. For this high office one needs the experience I have since been able to gather. Even so, I already possessed enough to know not to fill my head with vainglorious illusions. Whispering untiringly in the Italians’ ears that never, ever would French cardinals vote for Jacques Fournier, I contrived to bring their votes upon his head, and get him elected unanimously. ‘You have elected an ass!’ was the thanks he shouted at us upon hearing his name proclaimed. He knew his own inadequacies. No, not an ass; but no more a lion either. A good general of the Order, who had long exercised authority at the head of the Carthusian monks and expected to be obeyed. But from there to rule over the whole of Christendom, too meticulous, overzealous, constantly prying. Overall, his reformations had done more harm than good. Only with him, one could be absolutely certain that the Holy See would not return to Rome.1 On that he was solid as a rock, and that was the most important thing.
The second time, during the conclave of 1342 … ah! The second time, I would have been in with a fighting chance if only … if Philip of Valois hadn’t wished to elect his chancellor, the Archbishop of Rouen. We in Périgord have always obeyed the French crown. Furthermore, how could I possibly have continued to be head of the French party if I had dared oppose the king? Besides, Pierre Roger was a great pope, without a shadow of doubt the best I have served. One only has to see what Avignon has become under him, the palace he built, and the influx of men of letters, scholars and artists. And he succeeded in buying Avignon outright. I personally took care of that negotiation with the Queen of Naples; I can safely say that it was my work. Eighty thousand florins, it was nothing, a beggarly sum. Queen Joan had less need for money than for indulgences for all her successive marriages, not to mention her lovers.
They must have put new harnesses on my