When war between France and England resumed in 1369, Enguerrand de Coucy faced a “forked allegiance” (246). Bound by his marriage to an English princess and his fealty to the French king, he chose neutrality, departing to pursue a family inheritance claim in Alsace. He soon joined his cousin, Amadeus VI of Savoy, in Italy, becoming entangled in the Avignon papacy’s violent wars against the Visconti family of Milan. After Pope Gregory XI appointed him Captain-General of papal forces, Coucy launched the initial attack at the Battle of Montichiari in 1373, was beaten back, and was saved by Hawkwood’s intervention. Together, they won a surprise victory over the Visconti force nominally commanded by Gian Galeazzo. However, the campaign ultimately failed and Coucy returned to France in 1374.

During his absence, the tide of the war had turned. Under the shrewd leadership of King Charles V and his constable, Bertrand du Guesclin, France began a systematic recovery of its territories. England, meanwhile, suffered a series of destructive setbacks. Its greatest military leaders were lost: Sir John Chandos slipped during a skirmish and received a fatal sword wound; the Black Prince was incapacitated by illness after taking charge of a massacre at Limoges; and the Captal de Buch was taken prisoner. An enormous English army led by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, undertook a long and ruinous march of nearly 1,000 miles—taking the route through Champagne, Burgundy, and Auvergne—arriving in Aquitaine after five months with its forces decimated. By 1374, with its French holdings drastically reduced, England agreed to a truce.

With the truce of 1375 leaving thousands of mercenaries unemployed in France, King Charles V devised a plan to prevent the soldiers from pillaging his lands. He financed Enguerrand de Coucy to lead these companies on an expedition to Switzerland to press Coucy’s own inheritance claim against the Hapsburg dukes of Austria. The multinational army, which included notorious Breton companies, English knights, and the Welsh captain Owen of Wales, became known as the Gügler from the pointed hoods they wore.

After ravaging Alsace, Coucy led his forces across the Jura mountains and into the Aargau region of Swiss Hapsburg territory in the winter of 1375. There, his campaign met unexpected and fierce resistance. The Swiss peasants and townspeople, unwilling to be plundered, organized militias and inflicted a series of stunning defeats on the professional soldiers. Men of Entlibuch and Lucerne surprised a company at Buttisholz; the Bernese struck at Jens on Christmas night; and, on the night of December 26, the Bernese surrounded the Abbey of Fraubrunnen, where Owen of Wales was located, killing some 800 of his men before he escaped. Faced with a determined local population, a scorched-earth landscape, and the onset of a harsh winter, Coucy was forced into a miserable retreat, his army disintegrating from hunger and cold. Though the campaign was a military failure, it succeeded in its primary political objective of keeping the mercenary companies out of France for six months. Coucy returned to France, where Charles V had offered him the baton of Marshal of France, which Coucy felt obliged to decline because of his double allegiance. He was then assigned as a diplomat in peace negotiations with England.

Coucy arrived in England in April 1376 to find a nation in political crisis. Public anger over military failures, corruption, and high taxes culminated in the “Good Parliament,” which, for the first time in English history, impeached and removed corrupt royal ministers and the king’s avaricious mistress, Alice Perrers. The session exposed deep social and religious tensions. Landowners demanded stricter enforcement of the Statute of Laborers against a restive peasantry, while the Oxford theologian John Wyclif challenged the Church’s temporal wealth and power, finding a powerful, if opportunistic, ally in John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster.

The dying Black Prince lent his support to the Parliament’s reforms, largely to counter the ambitions of his brother Lancaster. However, the Prince’s death in June 1376 proved a turning point. As soon as Parliament was dismissed, Lancaster seized control of the government, nullified all its reforms, and imprisoned the Speaker of the Parliament, Sir Peter de la Mare. Coucy witnessed this turmoil firsthand before returning to France. The following year, King Edward III died and the ten-year-old Richard II ascended the throne. With his father-in-law gone, Coucy made his final choice. In August 1377, he formally renounced his homage to the English crown and his place in England’s Order of the Garter. His wife, Isabella, whose attachment to home and compulsive extravagance made the separation likely her choice, remained in England, effectively ending their marriage. Almost immediately, the French navy launched a series of destructive raids on England’s southern coast.

In the winter of 1377-78, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV paid a state visit to his nephew, King Charles V of France, an event of immense diplomatic and ceremonial importance. Enguerrand de Coucy was a key member of the noble escort. The visit was designed to display the power and legitimacy of the Valois dynasty, culminating in a series of magnificent processions, banquets, and entertainments in Paris. The climax was a lavish theatrical pageant—the first re-enactment of a historical event in this theatrical form—depicting the capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, intended to stir enthusiasm for a new holy war. While the political purpose of the visit was to secure an imperial alliance against England, the Emperor remained noncommittal. 

Beneath this glittering surface, however, society was wracked with spiritual anxiety. The Church’s worldliness and corruption fueled the rise of mystical and heretical sects, such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who sought a direct connection to God without the clergy. At the same time, a growing belief in magic, witchcraft, and demonology reflected a sense of a world governed by malign forces. A counter-current of rationalism was voiced by thinkers like Nicolas Oresme, a royal adviser and bishop who was dismissive of sorcery and astrology. Nonetheless, the Emperor’s visit showcased a monarchy projecting stability over a society beset by deep-seated fears and spiritual turmoil.

The Avignon papacy’s war to control its Italian territories intensified, marked by the 1377 massacre of the town of Cesena, ordered by the papal legate, Cardinal Robert of Geneva. Encouraged by the mystic Catherine of Siena, Pope Gregory XI finally returned the papacy to Rome that same year, only to die in March 1378. The subsequent papal election was held amid the threat of a Roman mob demanding an Italian pope. The terrified cardinals elected Bartolomeo Prignano, whom they believed—as their social inferior—to be governable and amenable to a return to Avignon. Once enthroned as Urban VI, however, papal power transformed him overnight into an abusive scourge of the cardinals, insulting them publicly and threatening their revenues.

Outraged, the French cardinals fled Rome. In September 1378, they declared Urban’s election invalid because it had been conducted under duress and elected their own pontiff: Robert of Geneva, known as the Butcher of Cesena, who took the name Clement VII. This act began the Papal Schism. Urban VI remained in Rome, while Clement VII, after failing to oust him by force, returned to Avignon. Christendom was split in two. France, Scotland, and—after heavy pressure from Charles V—the Spanish kingdoms supported Clement, while England, the Holy Roman Empire, and Flanders supported Urban. Each pope excommunicated the other and his followers, leaving every Christian in Europe under a sentence of damnation from one pontiff or the other. The schism undermined the spiritual authority of the Church, deepened political conflicts, and created a crisis of faith that would last for forty years. France’s Duc d’Anjou became Clement’s staunchest supporter, securing a promise of a kingdom in Italy in exchange for his military aid.