Chronicles

Another story Froissart heard concerns the Count’s illegitimate brother, Peter of Béarn, who married the Countess of Biscay, a wealthy heiress from Castile. While hunting, Peter killed a bear with great difficulty and brought its body back as a trophy. After she saw the bear, the countess fainted and three days later asked to be allowed to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella in Spain. She was distressed because she remembered her father hunted a similar bear and heard a voice saying, “You hunt me although I mean no harm. You will come to an evil end” (278). Since then, the countess remained in Spain because she was convinced some terrible fate would befall her husband. Froissart reflects that the story is similar to the ancient Greek myth of Actaeon, who was changed into a stag by the goddess Diana, and wonders if the bear may have been a transformed knight.

Froissart befriended a Gascon squire and mercenary who went by the title the Bascot de Mauléon and who fought under the captain Captal de Buch. He recounted how he fought at the Battle of Poitiers, against the Jacquerie, joined Charles the Bad’s forces against the future King Charles V of France, and was part of a Free Company that sought work in Burgundy and northern Italy. Eventually, Mauléon was taken prisoner while serving under Charles the Bad. Luckily, his captor was Bourc de Caupenne, a cousin of his, who let him pay a ransom for his release. After that, Mauléon entered the service of an English knight, John Amery, and participated in the siege of the castle of Sancerre. In the fighting, John Aimery was killed, and their forces were captured. After going free again, he participated in the civil war in Castile and the Hundred Years War.

Afraid he was going to fall into poverty, Caupenne captured the town and castle of Thurie. Mauléon mentioned he was considering keeping Thurie or selling it to the Count of Armagnac or the Dauphin of Auvergne. Froissart then asked Mauléon about a captain he knew named Louis Roubart. Mauléon recounted to Froissart that Louis entered a rivalry with another soldier named Limosin over a woman. Louis had his servants flog and march Louis through town. In revenge, Limosin got Louis captured by a number of noblemen in punishment for his activities pillaging the countryside for the English. In the end, Louis was executed under the orders of the King of France.

Froissart recounts another story told to him by another squire, a nobleman named Raymond, Lord of Corresse. Raymond and a cleric entered a legal dispute over rights to church tithes. The cleric threatened Raymond, saying, “I am not as strong as you are in this country, but I would like you to know that as soon as I can I shall send you a champion who will frighten you more than I do” (297). Since then, Raymond’s castle had been tormented by strange, unexplainable knocking and banging and objects being broken.

Raymond found the source of the disturbances, a strange voice that identified itself as Orton, and convinced him to serve him instead of the cleric. From then on, Orton gave him news from even far-off countries like Germany and Hungary. However, Raymond never actually saw Orton since Orton delivered his news late at night. One night, Raymond forced Orton to promise to show himself the next day. Then, a sow appeared on Raymond’s estates, and he released his dogs on the pig, which fled. However, Raymond realized later that the sow may have been the form Orton appeared as, and afterward Orton never returned. Froissart speculates that the Count of Foix, who had an uncanny ability to know all foreign happenings, is served by a similar spirit.

Charles VI learned that John of Gaunt, one of Richard II’s uncles, was planning to invade Castile to press his own claim to that kingdom’s throne. Because Castile was a valuable ally of France, Charles VI planned to launch an invasion of England. The French prepared a large navy to cross the English Channel. The English population responded either through fear and prayers or with an eagerness to fight the French at home. However, the planned invasion was, in the end, postponed indefinitely.

In France, news spread of a trial by combat. A knight named Jean de Carrouges accused a squire, Jacques Le Gris, of sexually assaulting Carrouges’s young wife. Their overlord, the Count of Alençon, was “extremely fond of Jacques Le Gris” (312), so he sided with Le Gris, who denied committing the crime. After a trial proved inconclusive, the High Court of France allowed a trial by combat to take place where Carrouges challenged Le Gris to a public duel to prove Le Gris’s guilt. If Carrouges lost, however, his wife would have been found guilty of lying under oath and executed by being hanged and her body burnt. However, Carrouges won the duel, killing Le Gris, and Charles VI granted Carrouges a pension.