The powerful Coucy dynasty was defined by its formidable ancestral home, the five-towered castle of Coucy in Picardy. The castle’s central keep, or donjon, was the largest in Europe, a symbol of baronial power that challenged the authority of the French monarchy itself. The Coucys, who held one of France’s four great baronies, scorned titles and adopted a motto reflecting their immense pride: “Not king nor prince, duke nor count am I; I am the lord of Coucy” (4).

The dynasty’s history was marked by ambition and ferocity. Enguerrand I engaged in brutal private wars and scandalous affairs. His son, Thomas de Marle, was a notoriously vicious lord who tortured prisoners and was excommunicated by the Catholic Church. In contrast, the 13th-century Enguerrand III, called the Great, channeled the family’s excess into building, completing the magnificent castle of Coucy in just seven years. His ambition was seen as a direct challenge to the crown. His successor, Enguerrand IV, was a cruel tyrant whose execution of three young squires led King Louis IX to establish a legal precedent that subjected nobles to royal justice.

By the 14th century, the Coucys were among the most powerful nobles in a society structured into three estates: the clergy who prayed for all, the nobility who fought for all, and the commoners who worked for all. The nobility’s function was militaristic; its identity was tied to the sword, the horse, and the practice of arms. This warrior class, which ranged from great lords to poor knights, was theoretically tasked with protecting the other estates and upholding justice. In reality, the nobles were often the primary agents of disorder, pursuing war for glory and profit.

The 14th century began under a pall of crisis long before the bubonic plague arrived. A climatic shift, now known as the Little Ice Age, led to crop failures and the Great Famine of 1315-16, causing widespread starvation. A series of political and religious calamities followed, beginning with French King Philip IV’s assault on Pope Boniface VIII over the papacy’s temporal authority. This conflict resulted in the papacy’s forced move from Rome to Avignon, France, where it became increasingly corrupt and materialistic. Under a succession of French popes, spiritual offices, pardons, and dispensations were sold for profit, undermining the Church’s moral authority and fueling popular discontent. In 1320, the misery of the rural poor erupted in the Pastoureaux, a mass movement of shepherds and rootless poor who marched south, attacking Jews and lepers, and were finally suppressed by papal excommunication and force.

This era of institutional decay also saw King Philip IV suppress the Knights Templar, a powerful monastic military order. Accusing them of heresy and sorcery, Philip used torture to extract confessions, seized their wealth, and had their leaders burned at the stake in 1314. Legend held that the Grand Master cursed the king and his descendants from the pyre. Following Philip’s death, his three sons died in quick succession without male heirs, ending the Capetian dynasty in an apparent manifestation of the curse. The French throne passed to a cousin, Philip VI of the house of Valois. This transition, however, created a rival claim from King Edward III of England, whose mother was Philip IV’s daughter. This succession dispute, combined with long-standing conflict over English-held territories in France, laid the groundwork for the Hundred Years’ War. Amid these tensions, Enguerrand de Coucy VI married Catherine of Austria in 1338, and their son, Enguerrand VII, was born in 1340.

Medieval childhood was marked by a comparative lack of emotional investment, likely a psychological defense against staggering infant mortality rates. Children who survived past age seven were treated as miniature adults. A noble boy’s education began at age eight, when he was sent to another lord’s castle to serve as a page. There, he learned riding, fighting, and courtly manners. At 14, he became a squire, beginning an intense combat training regime.

The medieval worldview was shaped by the Christian faith, which saw life on earth as a brief passage toward salvation. History was finite, beginning with Creation and ending with the Second Coming. Knowledge was acquired through sermons, allegorical tales, and an increasing number of manuscripts. The culture of the nobility was governed by the code of chivalry, a system intended to fuse martial prowess with Christian virtue. In theory, a knight was sworn to defend the weak, uphold justice, and serve God. The ideals of chivalry included prowess (skill in combat), loyalty, and largesse (generosity). Tournaments served as the primary stage for displaying these virtues, evolving into spectacular but often deadly sporting events.

The romantic aspect of chivalry was “courtly love” (62), an idealized, extra-marital devotion to a lady that was meant to ennoble the knight and inspire him to greater deeds. This code was largely an illusion. While it shaped outward manners, it was a thin veneer over the nobility’s underlying greed, violence, and sensuality. After his father, Enguerrand VI, was killed in the war against the English at about the time of the Battle of Crécy in 1346—though whether in that or another engagement is uncertain—the young Enguerrand VII’s upbringing was steeped in this contradictory culture. His mother also died a few years later, leaving him an orphan.

The Hundred Years’ War began with a series of English military successes that exposed the weaknesses of French chivalry. The English army’s primary advantage was the longbow, a revolutionary weapon with superior range and rapidity compared to the French crossbow. At the naval Battle of Sluys in 1340, a combined force in which longbowmen dominated, the English armament destroyed the French fleet, giving England command of the English Channel.

The war was fought over English claims to the French throne and, more concretely, sovereignty over the wine-rich region of Guienne. The conflict was also extended through proxy wars in Brittany, where a brutal war of succession raged between a French-backed and an English-backed claimant, and in Flanders, the center of Europe’s textile industry, where the ambitious merchant Jacob van Artevelde gained control of an insurrection and attached his fortunes to an English alliance. He was eventually slain by a mob after using Flemish funds to finance Edward’s war and proposing to replace the Count of Flanders’ heir with an Englishman. Louis de Male of Flanders subsequently escaped an English-forced betrothal to Princess Isabella by fleeing on a hawking trip to France, leaving Isabella unmarried for years until she met Enguerrand VII.

In 1346, Edward III launched a major invasion of France. His army plundered its way through an unprepared Normandy, advancing to the outskirts of Paris. At the Battle of Crécy, the French knights, preoccupied by arrogance and a chaotic desire for personal glory, launched a disastrous and disorganized cavalry charge directly into the disciplined ranks of English longbowmen. The result was a slaughter that decimated the French nobility. Rather than pursuing the defeated French king, Edward marched north and laid siege to the port of Calais. After a brutal year-long siege that starved its inhabitants into submission, the city fell in 1347. The capture of Calais gave England a permanent and strategic foothold in France, ensuring the war would continue for generations. A truce was signed, but not before the conflict had introduced a new level of organized pillage and civilian suffering, setting a grim precedent for the decades to come.