History: and the king put Jacques Coeur on the floor

The heat radiates the gardens of the castle of Taillebourg, not far from La Rochelle, on the morning of July 31, 1451. The atmosphere is soft in the alleys of the park shaded by alders. Children’s laughter gives the air an almost unreal lightness. However, a disturbing calm reigns as the moat approaches.

Guards protect the entrance to the dungeon, as if something violent is brewing. Charles VII holds his council in one of the rooms of the castle. Jacques Coeur, the great treasurer of the kingdom of France, paces in the park while awaiting the end of this meeting of which he does not know the purpose.

“You don’t seem quiet, Messire,” murmurs Marc, his closest friend and advisor. Jacques does not answer. Since he saw the king shut himself up with his enemies Antoine de Chabannes, Antoinette de Maignelais and Guillaume Gouffier, he has had a bad feeling.

Leaving him, Charles VII had his bad look, that cunning and sad look he often saw in his time when his legitimacy was being challenged.

“What are you afraid of? Marc asks again. The king cannot do without you. “That’s what worries me,” whispered Jacques, under his brown turban which hides part of his face.

Charles VII had made him a powerful ally

In recent months, Jacques Coeur has felt his luck turning. The wildest rumors run about him: he would have poisoned Agnès Sorel, the king’s beloved mistress, who died almost a year ago. Everyone knows however how close they were, that she had even become a friend, and his protector. He owed it to him for having strengthened his closeness to the king, whose versatile and complex character sometimes remained impenetrable.

Since then, hatred and jealousy towards the big money manager have grown. Creditor of the king and of many great lords, he was too generous, too accommodating. We often want the heads of those who have done you good. But what worries more and more Jacques Coeur, it is the mistrust of Charles VII. The monarch saw very badly these words often heard at court: “The king does what he can, Jacques Coeur does what he wants.” “

Very close to him, Jacques feels anguish and feverishness invading his friend. “But all the same, he owes you his crown!” A few months ago, you lent him 200,000 ducats to complete the reconquest of Normandy against the English! How could he want your downfall? “

Jacques looks away, and lets himself be absorbed by the movement of the wind in the trees. He suddenly sees the story of his life unfold, since his birth in this house near the Saint-Pierre-le-Marché church, rue de la Parerie, in Bourges, where his father, a pelletier merchant, sold leathers. and furs, until his appointment as the great treasurer of the kingdom and his ennoblement.

After their first meeting in Bourges, his bond with Charles VII seemed indestructible to him. Perhaps because it had been tied in the middle of the Hundred Years War, when the kingdom was invaded by the English, before the young Dauphin was disinherited by his own father, Charles VI, for the benefit of Henri V from England ? Without his money, Charles VII would never have succeeded in reversing the situation, driving the English out of France, and thus winning the war.

He also remembers the distinctions and honors given to him by the king to crown his success and make him his most powerful ally. “He owes me a lot, but it is also true that, without this king, deemed weak, I would never have become the richest man in France. “

Jacques became interested in money very early on, refusing to settle for the only business he inherited from his father, as the eldest son. His talent propels him master of coins in 1436. He is then in charge of minting coins in Bourges. He is accused of cheating in the weight and the alloy used, but what man who wields the currency has not done so before him?

His appointment as the king’s treasurer in 1438 changed him from a wealthy merchant to an international trader. Having become a supplier of luxury goods to the king’s household, he acquired a fleet that rivaled that of Italian merchants. He set up a circuit between the East and France: his boats left Marseille to reach Alexandria, then Rhodes. He himself made some of these trips to the Mediterranean to represent the king to other nations.

Trafficking in spices, salt, wheat, wool, sheets, cloths, furs in the East, Italy, Spain, England, Flanders and the Baltic countries, he made enormous profits. He could then buy dozens of seigneuries, and build a magnificent hotel in Bourges. The sound of a door suffers the fate of his reverie, escaping from the open windows of the castle. A restlessness is felt.

Jacques Coeur hesitates. A doubt prevents him from fleeing. A question torments him. Is it really possible that the king wants his downfall? As he walks back and forth between the rows of trees under Marc’s dumbfounded gaze, five soldiers approach him: “Messire Jacques Coeur, please follow us, we are arresting you! “

A vague smile emerges on Jacques Coeur’s face, as if this news did not surprise him. “Under what pretext are you arresting me? “” Order of the king! The king does not need a reason for this. “

Escape and exile in Rome

A few months later, seated in his cell, Jacques Coeur rehashes recent events. He thinks of his wife, of his children. After being exonerated of the death of Agnès Sorel, he is now accused of having betrayed the king, of having lied, plotting, embezzling money.

While subjected to the question, he ended up confessing under torture everything his detractors held against him. He is condemned, for embezzlement, to pay a fine of 400,000 ecus and to prison until full payment of his debts. In the meantime, his property is confiscated.

In 1454, he escaped from the castle of Poitiers and took refuge in Rome. Pope Nicholas V proclaims his innocence. Pope Callistus III then entrusts him with the command of a fleet to support Rhodes against the Ottomans.

He died during the expedition, November 25, 1456, on the island of Chios, during a naval combat. King Louis XI, the unloved son of Charles VII, will return part of his property to the family of Jacques Coeur and rehabilitate the man whose motto has spanned the centuries: “A valiant heart, nothing impossible. “