Enguerrand VII. De Coucy

Enguerrand VII. De Coucy KG (also outdated Ingelram von Coucy ) (* around 1339 ; † February 18, 1397 in Bursa , Turkey ) was the last lord of Coucy in Picardy (northern France), from 1367 Count of Soissons and thus peer of France and also an English peer and knight of the Order of the Garter .

Coat of arms of Enguerrands VII. De Coucy.

Life

First years

Enguerrand VII. Was the son of Enguerrand VI. de Coucy and Katharina von Habsburg († 1349), daughter of Duke Leopold I of Austria . He became a half-orphan at the age of seven after his father died in 1346 while fighting England at the Battle of Crecy . The royal council Jean de Nesle was entrusted with the guardianship over him, the military leadership of the Barony Coucy took over the field captain Mathieu de Roye. His uncle Jean de Coucy became his teacher in the war trade. In 1349 his mother and her second husband also died when the first great wave of plague swept through Europe.

Coucy experienced his first military service in 1355 when he was in a royal army in Picardy against an English army under the Duke of Lancaster and King Edward III. moved from England . In all likelihood, a year later he was also in the French army, which suffered a devastating defeat against the English under the " Black Prince " in the battle of Maupertuis . In 1358 Coucy put down the uprising of the peasants ( Jacquerie ) in his barony and supported King Charles the Evil of Navarre against the Dauphin Karl . After Navarre had allied themselves with the citizen leader Étienne Marcel , he switched to the side of the Dauphin, for whom he destroyed the castle of the bishop of Laon, Robert le Coq .

Between France and England

In the peace treaty of Brétigny in 1360, among other things, the placement of forty hostages of the French high nobility for the release of King John II , who had fallen into captivity at Maupertuis, was agreed. Coucy was among the hostages. In the English captivity, which expressed itself for the French hostages in ongoing courtly festivities, he made the acquaintance of Jean Froissart and Geoffrey Chaucer, among others .

1363 received Coucy from King Edward III. returned all English possessions which his great-grandmother, Christine de Lindsay, had once brought to the Coucy family, but which had been confiscated by the English crown at the outbreak of the Hundred Years War . Apparently Edward III tried to pull the powerful lords of the hinterland of Calais on his side or at least to take a neutral stance towards France. The climax of this token of favor was Coucy's wedding to the eight-year-old king's daughter Isabella at Windsor Castle on July 27, 1365.

This marriage earned him not only an enormous dowry, but freedom as well. In November 1365 he traveled to France again with his wife to inspect his possessions there. In April 1366 his first daughter was born in Coucy Castle . On his return to England he was accepted as a knight in the Order of the Garter and on May 11, 1366 appointed Earl of Bedford . Among the French hostages was Guido II of Châtillon , Count of Blois and Soissons, who was unable to pay for his large ransom. Instead, in 1367, with the consent of the French king, he exchanged his county Soissons with King Edward III. for his freedom, Eduard in turn immediately passed the county on to Coucy, who in return waived his wife's dowry. Around this time his second daughter was born, who was baptized in the name of her maternal grandmother, Queen Philippa .

Coucy returned to France in July 1367. In order to curb the increasing rural exodus of the peasants and thus keep the yields of his lands stable, he abolished serfdom in all of his possessions . In the spring of 1369, the Hundred Years War flared up again with King Charles V declaring war on England. As a vassal of France and the son-in-law of the King of England, Coucy stood between the fronts and therefore decided not to take part in the battles that followed. Instead, he led a small troop to Alsace in September 1369 in order to fight for property claims that he had inherited from his mother, but which he received from his Habsburg cousins Albrecht III. and Leopold III. were withheld. Despite the support of the Count of Montbéliard , the undertaking was unsuccessful, and as early as the spring of 1370 Coucy appeared at the court of Emperor Charles IV in Prague , from whom he asked in vain for support in his cause.

General of the Papal League

In 1371, Coucy placed himself as a military leader in the service of his related Count Amadeus VI. of Savoy . This was the military leader of a league of Pope Gregory XI. directed against the ruler of Milan , Bernabò Visconti . Together with the German mercenary leader Anachino Baumgarten, he successfully horrified Asti in 1372 , which was besieged by the young Gian Galeazzo Visconti and the mercenary leader John Hawkwood .

In December 1372, Coucy was appointed by the Pope as commander-in-chief of the papal troops in Lombardy . In the following year he united his troops at Parma with those of John Hawkwood, who had meanwhile changed to the papal side to march with him against Milan. They intended to be with the army of the Count of Savoy, Amadeus VI. to unite, but Bernabò Visconti prevented this by damming the Oglio . At Montichiari , near Brescia , Coucy and Hawkwood therefore had to face a superior army under Gian Galeazzo Visconti, which they surprisingly routed. A union with Savoy was nevertheless impossible, which is why they withdrew to Bologna , whereby Coucy could not prevent the sacking of Mantua by Hawkwood's mercenaries.

In Bologna, the League army was finally able to unite with Savoy, and together in August 1373 the siege of Piacenza began. This failed due to adverse weather conditions and an increasing decimation of the army by a new wave of plague. After the Count of Savoy fell ill, the army and with it the papal league disbanded. Coucy had himself dismissed from his service by the Pope in 1374, probably also because he was no longer able to pay his wages.

The Gugler War

Ruins of Coucy around 1860, drawing by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

In November 1374 Coucy was back at his home castle. He was made Marshal of France by King Charles V , but given his relationship with England, Coucy refused the office, but received a marshal's pensions. He campaigned with the king for the release of the captal de Buch , but this failed because in his friendship with the "black prince" he refused to swear allegiance to the French king.

In 1375 Coucy received extensive financial support from the royal government for another war against his Habsburg cousins. To this end, the mercenary companies that had kept the country in turmoil since the armistice of Bruges were subordinate to him . Several knights from England and even one hundred Teutonic knights also joined the campaign that followed . Duke Leopold III. ordered the cities of Alsace and Jura to prepare for defense and to burn fields. When Coucy advanced into Alsace in November 1375, an advance force of unscrupulous mercenaries had already ravaged and plundered the country and destroyed several monasteries. Enguerrand marched into Aargau and reached Basel on November 25 , the bishop of which allowed him free passage through his area.

The mercenaries, known as “ Guglers ” because of their dome-shaped helmets , marched into the Aare area, plundering and pillaging and drew the anger of the local population. Serious losses were inflicted on the mercenary troops in night fighting. They suffered a decisive defeat on 24/25. December 1375 by Entlebuch troops near Buttisholz and in the following days by the resistance organized by the city ​​Berners near Ins and Fraubrunnen . Because of these defeats and also because of the cold weather, Coucy started his journey home to France without having achieved any of his war aims. At Wattweiler he closed on January 13, 1376 with Leopold III. a peace in which he received the fief of the fallen Count of Nidau including the city of Büren , in return he dropped all other claims. Ultimately, however, this was not a gain, since the Habsburg cessions in the Swiss Seeland fell to the cities of Bern and Solothurn the following year , without Coucy being able to do anything about it.

Contribution to France and involvement in the Hundred Years War

Back at home, Coucy received the order from King Charles V in the spring of 1376, together with the Maréchal de Sancerre, to fight those mercenaries whom he had previously led against Habsburg and who were now devastating the Champagne. During this time, his friends are said to have persuaded him to become "French", that is, to give up his ties to England, especially since the armistice with England negotiated in Bruges was about to expire.

In April 1376 Coucy was back in England, where he witnessed the unrest surrounding the church reformer John Wyclif . It is not known whether he took a seat as an English peer in the “ Good Parliament ” that was convened shortly thereafter . With his wife he was then on the deathbed of his brother-in-law Edward of Woodstock, the "black prince". Even before Coucy returned to France in the autumn of the same year, his father-in-law, King Edward III, was stricken with a serious illness from which he died a little later. Back in France, Coucy is said to have advised King Charles V to invade England, according to Froissart, since the island kingdom was unable to defend. Obviously Coucy finally sided with France: his daughter became a lady-in-waiting to the queen, he himself a member of the royal council, and he took on the first diplomatic missions directed against England in Flanders.

In 1377 Coucy conducted direct negotiations in Montreuil, Calais and Boulogne with English envoys, including Geoffrey Chaucer, to extend the armistice. However, the English turned down several offers, especially not wanting to do without Calais. On August 26, 1377, Coucy made a letter to King Richard II renouncing all possessions and titles that he owned in England, since he had become "a good and true French". In fact, this also meant the end of his marriage to Isabella, who stayed in England with her younger daughter.

The Hundred Years' War continued that same year with raids by the French fleet under Admiral de Vienne on the English coast. Coucy himself fought under the command of Duke Louis von Anjou against the English in Gascony . In December 1377 he led the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Cambrai until his solemn entry into Paris. By the end of 1378 he and the Bureau de la Rivière conquered all possessions of Charles the Evil of Navarre in Normandy , especially Évreux . On this campaign Coucy made friends with the Breton captain Olivier de Clisson , with whom he formed a brotherhood in arms. He was then one of the four judges who convicted Duke John V of Brittany for felony .

In 1379 Coucy founded the "Order of the Crown", his own knightly order, which was lyrically celebrated by Eustache Deschamps and in which women could also be accepted. In the same year his wife died in England.

Bertrand du Guesclin died the following year , and Coucy was appointed by King Charles V as his successor for the office of connétable , the highest office that the crown had to bestow. But Coucy declined the appointment for some unknown reason, recommending his friend Olivier de Clisson. Instead, he was appointed captain-general of Picardy, which was soon sacked by the Earl of Buckingham . Philip II , the Duke of Burgundy, assembled an army in Troyes , but did not attack the English on the express orders of the King. Instead, he arranged a knightly duel with ten knights on either side in front of the city, one of the French knights was Coucy. The battle ended in a draw and the Earl of Buckingham moved on to the Loire and from there towards Brittany .

On September 16, 1380, Coucy was one of the faithful at King Charles V's deathbed in Beauté . He then concluded the second treaty of Guérande in January 1381 with Duke John V of Brittany, in which the duke was reconciled with France. The Earl of Buckingham reached Brittany shortly afterwards and had to withdraw to England in the face of closed cities without having achieved any success.

Flanders and Italy

Coucy took part on November 4, 1380 at the coronation of the still underage King Charles VI. in Reims . He retained his place on the royal council and maintained a good relationship with the ruling dukes , the king's uncles, even though they were enemies with one another. He unsuccessfully advised the Duke of Anjou against a train to southern Italy in order to conquer the Kingdom of Naples there. But the duke wanted to win a crown and to finance this project he reintroduced several tax systems in January 1382, which King Charles V had abolished shortly before his death. This measure immediately led to violent uprisings by the citizens in several cities in northern France, who took over rule in Paris with the uprising of the Maillotins . Together with the Duke of Burgundy, Coucy made several attempts to mediate with the Parisians to end the uprising.

In Flanders , too, the cities under the leadership of Ghent rose against the Count of Flanders, who in turn asked his son-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy, for help. The Duke pulled together the entire royal army to save his future inheritance, Coucy took part in this campaign with three standard knights and ten knights. The Flemings under their leader Philipp van Artevelde were taken on September 27, 1382 in the battle of Roosebeke . On the eve of the battle, the French council of war is said to have decided to remove the Connétable Clisson from his office for a day, since he was supposed to remain with the king as a guard, who was unable to fight because of his immaturity. Instead of him, Coucy was to lead the French troops into battle as connétable. Clisson, however, was able to dissuade the young king from this decision with the objection that this would earn him a reputation for cowardice forever, which should not be done to him. Ultimately, Clisson led the knights in battle, but Coucy earned the fame nonetheless, since he, together with the Duke of Bourbon, commanded the decisive attack on the Flemings that led to the death of Artevelde and the victory of the French. The victory at Roosebeke led to the collapse of the uprisings in France. With the Maréchal de Sancerre, Coucy lifted the gates of Paris from their hinges without resistance in order to be able to guarantee an unhindered entry of the king.

Coucy then intended to move to southern Italy, where the Duke of Anjou was on the verge of failure with his campaign. However, the company was stopped by another attack by the British. In the winter of 1383 the Bishop of Norwich had occupied the coastal city of Dunkirk ; only in January 1384 could an armistice be negotiated with him. This was also England's last attack on France in the fourteenth century; the Hundred Years War came to a standstill for the next thirty years. Coucy then took part in a private feud of the Duke of Bar, to whose heir son he married his daughter.

In the spring of 1384 Coucy set out to rescue the Duke of Anjou. The French crown provided him with 78,000 livres, an army of 1,500 lances and around 7,000 infantrymen. First he marched to Avignon to coordinate with Pope Clement VII , who was recognized by France , since the Anjous case in Italy was also against Pope Urban VI. was directed (see: Occidental Schism ). In July he crossed the Alps over the Mont-Cenis- Pass, only to be invited to Milan by his former enemy Bernabò Visconti. Coucy had received from Anjou, among other things, a power of attorney to marry his heir son to a daughter Visconti in a long distance marriage. During this time Coucy received alliance offers from several Italian city-states, including Florence , which was actually opposed to Anjou and Pope Clement VII. Despite the granting of free passage through the national territory of Florence, the march turned out to be problematic, especially because of the looting committed by Coucy's mercenaries. In order to gain a firm base, he intended to take the city of Arezzo , which Florence had recently appropriated. He asked Florence and Siena to pay tribute, which only Siena paid. Florence, on the other hand, raised a civil army, which Coucy interpreted as a hostile act. In order to lull the Florentine governor of Arezzo into safety, Coucy first marched in the direction of Cortona , but quickly turned his army around again in order to appear before Arezzo on September 29. There he divided his army into two divisions; while the first distracted the city's defenders with the noise of battle, the second circumvented the city walls in order to enter the city through a poorly guarded back gate. He succeeded in conquering Arezzo by hand, only the citadel of the city still held out against him.

At this point the Duke of Anjou had been dead for nine days. He died of King Charles III. isolated from Naples in Bari , the remnants of his army disbanded. Without knowing it, Coucy's position vis-à-vis Florence had deteriorated. With the Florentine mercenaries under John Hawkwood returning from Naples, Coucy was in turn included in Arezzo, while Florence tried with Pope Urban VI. to forge a league of Italian states against the "schismatics" from France. Coucy tried to counter his threatened isolation with diplomatic means by offering Siena a sale of Arezzo for 20,000 gold florins, knowing that the Florentines had always been enemies of Siena. Since Milan also refused an alliance with Florence, a stalemate arose, from which Florence wanted to break free from Coucy by buying Arezzo. After Florence had paid him 40,000 gold florins and granted him free passage to the Mediterranean coast, Coucy withdrew from Arezzo on November 20th. Although he had been appointed viceroy of Naples by Anjou in his will as the viceroy of Anjou's underage son, he immediately withdrew to his homeland, as a successful conquest of the kingdom was out of the question. In January 1385 he reached Avignon again, where he was tied to bed for four months because of a broken leg after a riding accident.

At the royal court

While still in Avignon, Coucy was authorized by the royal council to arrange a mediation for the marriage of the king with a daughter of the Duke of Bavaria with Pope Clement VII . On July 13, 1385, he rejoined the royal court in Amiens . An invasion of England from Scotland was planned, for the purpose of which troops had already set out under the Amiral de Vienne. Coucy was to follow with another contingent, but this plan had to be dropped after the Flemings revolted again and occupied the port city of Damme , where the invasion fleet was supposed to gather. In February 1386 Coucy married Isabella, 30 years his junior and daughter of Duke John I of Lorraine , a second marriage . Presumably for her he had Coucy Castle thoroughly renovated, including the castle windows, which had been damaged by his first wife's monkey. In addition, he added another wing with a 15 by 70 meter ballroom, a covered tennis court and a large tank that was supposed to supply the castle kitchens with water via pipes. After his own wedding, he was a guest in Dijon at the wedding of his relative Duke Leopold (IV) of Austria , son and nephew of his former opponents, Dukes Albrecht (III.) And Leopold (III.) Of Austria, with a daughter of the Duke of Burgundy.

Then Coucy participated in another landing company on the English coast; his ship was sunk by a Portuguese sailor on the way to the assembly point at the Scheldt estuary. He contributed five knights, sixty-four squires and thirty archers to the army. Ultimately, the invasion had to be canceled due to the hesitant behavior of the Duke of Berry , who only joined the army in October 1386 when the harsher weather prevented the fleet from leaving. The invasion was postponed until the coming year for the time being; until then Coucy was able to receive the king in the spring of 1387 at his castle. Then the invasion was resumed. This time the armed forces were divided into two contingents, the first of which was to be led by the Connétable de Clisson from Brittany to England and the other by Coucy, the Amiral de Vienne and the Count of Saint-Pol from Harfleur to Dover . The invasion failed this time, however, because of the Duke of Brittany, who had been leading a private feud against Clisson for years and who was imprisoned with a ruse, presumably encouraged by England. The Connétable could be released from captivity, but the royal court was now split over the question of the Duke's punishment. The king's uncles supported the Duke of Brittany, while the king, Coucy, Vienne, Rivière and the young Prince Louis sided with Clisson. Coucy was sent to Brittany to carry out the punitive action. However, he succeeded in persuading the warlike duke, after two interviews, to travel to Paris to ask the king to apologize, to return his property to the Connétable de Clisson and to pay compensation for the injustice suffered. This act earned Coucy the admiration of his fellow men; the king gave him a valuable French Bible from the royal library.

After that Coucy was appointed commander of an army with which he marched against the Duke of Geldern , who had previously declared war on the French king. The campaign was not very glorious and was ended after an apology from the Duke of Geldern. Responsibility for the conflicts in the Netherlands was mainly attributed to the Duke of Burgundy, which King Charles VI. 1388 took the opportunity to end the guardianship government of his uncles in order to take over the government business himself. Coucy was careful in the royal council to be on good terms both with Prince Louis, who later became Duke of Orléans, and with the Duke of Burgundy, who was at war with him. An unpleasant encounter ensued with the Earl of Oxford , who was invited to the French court. Oxford had been the husband of Coucy's second daughter, but lived from this in open separation, which offended Coucy's honor. At his urging, Oxford was soon banned from France again. Coucy received further proofs of favor from the king, such as the appointment as grand bouteiller and the privilege of holding three fairs a year in Coucy.

In June 1389, France succeeded in negotiating a further three-year armistice with England. During the negotiations Coucy was challenged by the Earl of Norfolk to a knightly duel, not because of personal enmity, but because of an honor shown to him, since Coucy also enjoyed the reputation of an impeccable knight in England, against which to compete was an honor. But Coucy declined the challenge for unknown reasons, presumably so as not to endanger the negotiations with thoughtless actions. In order to supervise the armistice in Aquitaine , he was appointed lieutenant general there. In 1389 he took part in Queen Isabeau's coronation celebrations in Paris and took part in the tournaments that were held.

Crusade to Africa, coup d'état and campaign against Genoa

In 1389 Coucy accompanied the king on an inspection trip to the Languedoc with an interim visit to Pope Clement VII in Avignon. In Toulouse , the king received an embassy from the Republic of Genoa , which asked him for military support against the Berber pirates on the North African coast. In order to make this enterprise popular with the French knighthood it should be declared as a crusade ( crusade against Mahdia ). The Duke of Bourbon was made Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Coucy his deputy. First he traveled back to his homeland, in Dijon he successfully took part in a tournament of the Duke of Burgundy. Before beginning the crusade, he donated a monastery (Saint-Trinité) and a church to the order of the Cölestines on April 26, 1390 in Villeneuve near Soissons on the Aisne . From Marseilles , the French knights first set out for Genoa, where the army embarked on Genoese galleys. On July 1, 1390, the crusaders landed on the coast of Tunisia near Mahdia , Coucy led an advance command and was the first to step onto the beach. The siege of Mahdia turned out to be full of privation and poorly prepared. It is true that any direct Berber attack could be repulsed in the open, but it was not possible to overcome the city fortifications. After nine weeks of siege, Genoa made a peace with the ruler Mahdias and the Duke of Bourbon led the crusade, which was ultimately just a knightly adventure, back home. Coucy was the last to leave African soil. In October they reached Genoa and after a six-week country trip across the Alps, Coucy and Bourbon moved into Paris.

Back in royal service, Coucy and Bureau de la Rivière led negotiations with the Duke of Lancaster and the Duke of Gloucester for a lasting peace between England and France in 1391 , which, however, were unsuccessful due to Gloucester's rigid stance. He then mediated for several months in Tours between the rebellious Duke of Brittany and the king. After an inspection in Aquitaine, he took part in further peace talks with England in Amiens in 1392. On this occasion he met his daughter Philippa again, whom he hardly knew.

After a failed assassination attempt was carried out on the Connétable de Clisson in Paris, the king declared a war against the Duke of Brittany, who was accused of complicity. Coucy took part in the campaign, which had to be stopped abruptly when the king went mad for the first time in August 1392. To help the king, Coucy, among others, had his doctor, Guillaume de Harsigny, come to the court. Although the king recovered within a few days, this time was enough for his uncles to carry out a coup d'état. They neutralized the court party around de la Rivière and Ludwig von Orléans and removed Clisson from his office. Coucy was not affected by the purges, he was even commissioned by the Duke of Burgundy to besiege Clisson in his castle Montlhéry , but who escaped in time to his possessions in Brittany. Coucy was offered the office of connétable again from Burgundy, but he turned it down.

Coucy made a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Liesse near Laon with the recovered king and then invited him to his castle, where several festivals were celebrated together with the Duke of Burgundy. On January 24, 1393 Coucy went to Savoy to regulate the government there after the death of Count Amadeus VII . In his absence, the king fell into a permanent state of absent-mindedness after a masquerade on the Bal des Ardents turned into tragedy. Until the king's death in 1422, France was divided in a power struggle between the Dukes of Burgundy and Orléans, which would eventually favor the return of the English.

Coucy stayed largely out of French politics in the years that followed. After arranging the situation in Savoy, he submitted a plan to Pope Clement VII to help him return to Rome. Gian Galeazzo Visconti had promised his support for this, but the project failed due to the reluctance of the Pope. Coucy then placed himself in the service of the Duke of Orléans, from whom he was commissioned to move to Italy in order to establish a rule of the Duke over Genoa , supported by the exiled families of the Spinola , Grimaldi and Doria . He took his headquarters in Asti, and with the support of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, he recruited a mercenary army with whom he wanted to end the rule of the bourgeois party around Doge Antoniotto Adorno in Genoa. However, a league formed against him, consisting of Florence and the Duke of Burgundy, which wanted to prevent the Duke of Orléans from gaining power. Queen Isabella, who hated her brother-in-law, persuaded the king to buy all the rights to Genoa from his brother, placing the city under French rule. Coucy had to make a peace with the Doge, but this was broken immediately by attacking Savona , an ally of Coucy . Coucy was badly wounded while defending the city. The siege was finally ended in August 1395 and he was able to return to France, where he was generously compensated by the Duke of Orléans for his expense and damage.

Crusade and death

In March 1396, Coucy witnessed the solemn long-distance marriage between Princess Isabella and King Richard II of England . However, he did not take part in the meeting of the kings of France and England on the border with Calais in August that year, where he could have seen his daughter Philippa again, who was in the English retinue.

In the spring of 1395, the Duke of Burgundy promised the Hungarian King Sigismund military support in the fight against the Ottomans advancing into the Balkans . Due to the power struggle in France, however, the duke considered canceling the company until his son, Count Johann von Nevers , agreed to take over the leadership of the crusade. Coucy was asked by the Duke to accompany his son as a military advisor; he said yes. Several German knights, the Italian Maritime Republic of Venice, Navarrese and Castilians, and the Knights of St. John of Rhodes joined the last great crusade of the French knighthood . On April 30, 1396, the procession began from Dijon, via Strasbourg through Bavaria, following the Danube to Buda , where the army united with the Hungarians. Coucy did not travel with the army, he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Milan to appease Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had conspired against France since the Duke of Orléans rejected his daughter. By preventing the ruler of Milan from annexing Genoa, Coucy was able to successfully complete his mission in November 1396.

With his son-in-law, Heinrich von Bar , he crossed the Adriatic Sea from Venice and landed in Senj . Despite the detour, they reached the Hungarian capital Buda before Nevers. In the joint council of war, Coucy was, like almost all French, a proponent of an offensive action against the Turks, while King Sigismund advised the defensive. The French were able to prevail and the march towards Constantinople began. On September 12, 1396 they reached the city of Nicopolis , which they immediately besieged. While the knights gave themselves in the camp drinking, Coucy was the first of the Sultan's army of Bayezid I discovered. With his division of five hundred lances , he lay in an ambush and in a surprise attack put the vanguard of the Turks to flight. This success earned him the admiration of the knights, but also the envy of the Connétable d'Eu , who felt passed over in fame. About the further tactical approach Coucy got into a dispute with the Connétable, Coucy supported the plan of King Sigismund, first to let the Wallachian infantry march against the enemy. The Connétable and the younger knights around Boucicaut, however, demanded an immediate horseback attack .

On September 25, 1396, the French knights overran the first infantry line of the Turks in the battle of Nicopolis ; Coucy commanded the main force with Nevers, while the Connétable d'Eu led the way. In the intoxication of the fight, the knights immediately rushed on against the heavy Ottoman infantry, which they could only flee with high losses. Coucy and the Amiral de Vienne tried to establish an orderly battle formation and warned the knights to wait for the Hungarians to come. But they were put to flight by the Serbian knights allied with the Ottomans, while the French in their heavy armor stormed a hill on foot, on which they suspected the remains of the Turkish army. Instead, they were awaited there by the sultan's mounted reserve ( sipahi ), against whose attack they had no chance. The Amiral de Vienne was killed, Nevers, Eu, La Marche, Bar, Boucicaut and with them Coucy were captured. They escaped the massacre of the captured Christians ordered by the Sultan only because they promised a large ransom.

The prisoners, of which Coucy was the eldest, were initially locked in a tower in Gallipoli . Two months later, they were taken to Bursa in western Anatolia . There Coucy lived in provisional freedom in a house of Prince Francesco II Gattilusio of Lesbos , a vassal of the Sultan. His wife commissioned the Republic of Venice with Coucy's removal. Coucy fell ill and put down his will on February 16, 1397, his body should be buried in Nogent and his heart in his foundation Saint-Trinité near Soissons. He also determined donations to other religious institutions such as the Chartres Cathedral . He died two days later. His bones reached home in April 1397 and were buried as planned by the bishops of Laon and Noyon.

The biographer of Maréchal Boucicaut reported that Coucy was regarded as the "most deserving seigneur of his time".

Enguerrand VII de Coucy had been a patron of the historian Jean Froissart. The latter described him as the “most polite and eloquent gentleman in all of Christianity ... that was the reputation he enjoyed among all ladies and gentlemen in France, England, Germany and Lombardy and everywhere he was known, because he was in his He had traveled a lot and seen a lot, and he was naturally inclined to be polite. ”The oldest surviving first book of Froissart's chronicles from 1370 bears the coat of arms of the Sire of Coucy.

His eventful life forms the framework for Barbara Tuchman's Panorama A Distant Mirror .

progeny

From the marriage with Isabella of England:

• Marie de Coucy (April 1366 in Coucy; † 1405), mistress of Coucy and Countess of Soissons, ⚭ Heinrich von Bar ( House of Scarponnois )
• Philippa de Coucy (* 1367; † October 1411), ⚭ 1376 with Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford (divorced 1389)

From her marriage to Isabella of Lorraine:

• Isabel de Coucy († 1411), ⚭ 1409 with Philip of Burgundy , Count of Nevers ( House of Burgundy )

Illegitimate descendants:

• Perceval de Aubermont

His heir, Marie, sold the Barony of Coucy to the Duke of Orléans in 1400. His illegitimate but recognized son bequeathed his seigneurie to the Connétable Louis de Luxembourg , the husband of Coucy's granddaughter, which suggests that Perceval had no children of his own.

literature

• Barbara Tuchman : A Distant Mirror. The Calamitous 14th Century. Knopf, New York NY 1978, ISBN 0-394-40026-7
  • German: The distant mirror. The dramatic 14th century. Translated by Ulrich Leschak and Malte Friedrich, Claasen, Düsseldorf 1980, ISBN 3-546-49187-4 ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Enguerrand VII de Coucy, Sire de Coucy on thepeerage.com , accessed July 26, 2015.
2. ↑ See Beatrix Lang: The Gugler War. A chapter in the history of the dynasty in the run-up to the Sempach War. Universitätsverlag, Freiburg (CH) 1982, ISBN 3-7278-0266-9 (also: Freiburg (Switzerland), Univ., Diss.).

predecessor	Office	successor
Enguerrand VI.	Lord of Coucy 1346-1397	Marie
Guido II of Châtillon	Count of Soissons ( de iure uxoris ) 1367-1397	Marie
New title created	Earl of Bedford 1367-1377	Title expired