I was faffing around on the BnF Gallica website this week (this is how all good stories start, naturally) and came across the Chronica Karoli Sexti by the ‘Religieux’ of Saint-Denis. For reasons which should be clear this passage, from volume 5, particularly stood out:
Dolorosa relacione audita, rex, duces quoque Guienne atque Biturie, gravi dolore perculsi et merore consternati debito, in lamenta se dederunt; gemitu et lacrimis, quas pre spiritus angustia cohibere nequeunt, dolorem protestantur. Non modo nobiles tunc presentes, sed et ceteri utriusque sexus longe lateque per regnum, excecrabile fatum attendentes, spculum suum infame et pudendum omnique posteritati perpetuo criminandum reputabant, et addebant: “O quam malignis diebus nati sumus, qui videre cogimur tantam confusionem et ruborem!” Ubique sane vidisses insignes dominas et domicellas pro olosericis auro textis vestes lugubres sumere, quarum nec siccis oculis querimonias attendisses, dum quedam venerabile fedus conjugii dissolutum, alie natos et consanguineos interfectos inconsolabiliter deflebant, cordialius tamen illos qui insignium proavorum preclaros titulos, in bellis solitos proclamari, sic obruendo in perpetuum extinctos reddiderunt.
[After hearing this sad news, the king and the Dukes of Guyenne and Berry were struck with grave sorrow, and fell into a deep melancholy. They showed their grief with groans and tears, which they were unable to control because of anguish. Not just the lords of the court, but all people of both sexes far and wide throughout the kingdom, thinking of this dreadful event, thought their century to forever besmirched and dishonoured to all posterity, and said, ‘Alas, in what an evil day were we born, we who are forced to behold such chaos and shame!’ Everywhere it was observed that noble women and girls changed their silk and cloth-of-gold for mourning garments, women whose laments could not be heard with dry eyes, as some wept bitterly for the loss of their husbands, others for their slaughtered sons and relatives, but above all for those who in their burial should consign the famous names of their noble ancestors, so often honoured in wars, to perpetual extinction.]
‘This story shall the good man teach his son.’
noon auctoritee 