Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/525

The Castle of Coucy, near Laon. 479 Enguerrand VI., who married Catherine, daughter of Leopold, Duke of Austria. This baron took part in the defence of his pro- vince against Edward III., and fell at the battle of Crecy, in 1346, leaving his son an infant. Enguerrand VII., better known in England as Ingelram de Coucy, was one of the greatest and most powerful barons of his race and age, and, in a warlike age, celebrated as a military leader. He com- menced his pubUc life by a war of extermination against the insur- gent Jacquerie. He was then one of the hostages in England for King John, and there married Isabel, daughter of Edward III., became a Knight of the Garter (39th on the list), and in 1366 was created Earl of Bedford. The effect, perhaps the price, of these honours was his neutrality in the war between France and England. He claimed the duchy of Austria, and raised 60,000 condottieri to support his rights, but in this he was unsuccessful. After the death of Edward III. he returned the insignia of the Garter to his successor, and took part with France. Upon Du Guesclin's death, he was offered, and declined, the sword of Constable of France, but became governor of Picardy. His advice to the king was to anticipate the English attacks. His second wife was a daughter of the Duke of Lorraine. In 1382, he composed, by fair words, the insurrection of the Maillotins, at Paris. In Picardy he was scarcely less lenient. Doutard, one of their leaders, he sentenced to death, but at the gallow's foot he was pardoned, by the custom of Picardy, because a woman from the crowd consented to marry him, — a singular legal juxtaposition of hanging and matrimony. Enguerrand took part in the campaign of Charles VI. against Ghent, in which Van Artevelde was killed ; and in the following year, after putting down an insurrection at Paris, he joined the war in Flanders, where he won the high approbation of Froissart. He then went to Italy, and fought at the battle of Arezzo, for which he received the charge of Grand Butler of France. Shortly afterwards, he was prominent in the military and naval preparations for a descent upon England, and seems to have commanded a division of the fleet, and to have been driven upon the coast of Scotland. In 1390 he took part in the African expedition, landing at Car- thage. The closing act of his life w^as the unsuccessful crusade against Sultan Bajazet, upon his invasion of Hungary, and the battle of Nicopolis in 1396, when Enguerrand was defeated and made prisoner, and so died in 1397, aged 57, the last male of the second line of the Sires of Coucy. Upon his death, Louis Duke of Orleans obtained possession of the Coucy estates, under cover of a purchase from the heir female. Upon the death of Louis, in 1465, Duke Charles succeeded, and upon his accession to the throne of France as Louis XII., in 1498, Coucy became Crown property, and ceased to retain any individuality, or to be the seat of an independent family. As an appanage of the Crown it was granted to the successive families of