Arnaud de Cervole

Early career

Arnaud was born into the minor nobility in what is now the Lot-et-Garonne in the Périgord sometime around the year 1320. Even though a layman, he entered the church and became an archpriest, possessing the ecclesiastical fief of Velines in Dordogne; because of it he was called the Archpriest of Vélines (Archiprêtre de Velines). He was later deprived of his benefice by the archbishop of Bordeaux because he was mixing "with brigands and men of base extraction".

After his recovery and release, Arnaud de Cervole married a rich widow, Jeanne de Graçay who had several lordships in central France.

Bandit leader

After the capture of King John II, military action of the war between France and England came to a halt as negotiations began, with France also ceasing payment to Free Companies in their employment. In reaction, the mercenaries began pillaging the country for money, along with running protection rackets to extort villages. In 1357, Arnaud became the commander of the Great Company, a collection of other free companies joined which, at its height, had 2,700 men when most companies had only around a hundred. The individual companies that made up the whole elected their own captains, and the captains elected Arnaud as their commander.

Arnaud led his company into the untouched lands of Queen of Naples Jeanne d'Anjou, taking castles and pillaging villages. Their ultimate goal was taking Marseilles and they had pushed as far as Avignon, home of the Papacy, which caused Pope Innocent VI to open up negotiations. Arnaud and his men entered the city where he was received as if he was "the king of France's son". He met with the Pope and his cardinals several times, confessed his sins, and was paid forty thousand crowns [20,000 gold florins] to distribute among his company, after which Arnaud led his men out of the area, giving up all the territory they had conquered. Reconnaissance missions had led him to realise that taking Marseilles was unrealistic as the city was too populated, too well supplied and too well defended, and by April 1358, he was looking for a way to retreat. He had no ships to surround the port city, and the Queen's scorched earth policy meant that his besieging army would starve before the city did.

Return to royal service

Failed crusade and death

In 1365, the Duke of Burgundy offered to lead a major crusade against the Turks in Hungary in order to rid France of all the free companies. The crusade had the support of Pope Urban V who also wanted the companies operating in the Rhone Valley gone, but it never happened. The companies marched to Lyons, where they refused to cross into Italy and to eventually board ships set to sail to the east, and they all, except for Arnaud Great Company, dispersed. A fresh attempt was made in 1366 but supply problems caused discontent, with the company being unfed and unpaid. On 25 May 1366, Arnaud was murdered by his own men while in a dispute, as his army camped near Macon, before passing the Saône.

His lifetime of both private and royal service in battle had led Arnaud to amass a fortune by the time of his death.

In popular culture

Arnaud (as 'L'archprestre et ses Bretons') is mentioned repeatedly in Guillaume de Machaut's Le livre dou voir dit.

Arnaud (as Arnaut) appears as a character in Michael Crichton's novel Timeline and its film adaptation, where he is played by Lambert Wilson.

References

References

1. Consulter la biographie (rare) d'Aimé Cherest : L'Archiprêtre, épisodes de la guerre de cent ans au XIVe siècle, éd. Claudin, Paris 1879.
2. [http://www.usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh381/mercenaries.htm Fourteenth-Century Mercenaries].
3. Sumption, Jonathan. (1999). "Trial by Fire". Faber and Faber.
4. "14th-century mercenaries (Froissart; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages; Sumption, Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years' War II)". USNA.
5. Sumption (1999), p. 360
6. Françoise Autrand, Charles V, Fayard 1994, p. 499
7. [[Froissart's Chronicles]]
8. Françoise Autrand, Charles V, Fayard 1994, p. 501
9. Sumption (1999), pp. 523–4, 532–3