Hardly emerged from the plague, France moved toward a military debacle that was to release a flood of disruptive consequences and become a determining event in the life of Enguerrand de Coucy. The external agent was England, but the cause lay in the unsubdued autonomies of the seigneurial class, acted on by a King with a genius for misgovernment. Impolitic and impetuous, he never made a wise choice between alternatives and seemed incapable of considering consequences of an action in advance.
Though brave in battle, he was anything but a great captain. Without evil intent, he was to foster disaffection to the point of revolt and lose half his kingdom and his person to the enemy, thereby leaving his country leaderless to meet its darkest hour of the age.
Inheriting an empty treasury, Jean had no money with which to pay an army, and could not move without first replenishing his funds and adapting his military resources. On this suspicion, Jean had him beheaded upon his return to France without trial or public procedure of any kind. His next act made matters worse. Besides the prestige of military command second to the King, the Constableship had lucrative perquisites attached to the business of assembling the armed forces.
The episode was a divisive opening of the reign at a time when it most needed unity. He shared the Valois interest in arts and letters at least to the extent of commissioning French translations of the Bible and the Roman historian Livy and carrying books in his baggage when on campaign.
His taste for luxury extended to everything but ministers, for he inherited from his father and kept in office a shady group, neither capable nor honest, who were despised by the nobles because they were of common birth and hated by the bourgeois for their avarice and venality. One of them, Simon de Buci, president of Parlement and member of the Secret Council, twice overreached himself in some way that required successive pardons. Jean Poilevain, who was imprisoned for peculation, prudently obtained a letter of pardon before his case was judged.
