People began to associate brigands with other foot soldiers, pillars, who served a
knight and foraged for supplies. Too often, these pillars looted and “pillaged” the local
property rather than following the legal procedure of levying appatis on the populace.
Especially in unfriendly territory, pillars were more inclined to obtain supplies by
outright theft than by observing legal niceties. The familiar military garb made it easy to
confuse them with those foot soldiers known as brigands.
As the word “brigandage” evolved, it acquired two dimensions. It came to refer to
violent, felonious conduct by undisciplined soldiers, but it also described similar behavior
by rural folk reduced to desperation by the soldier-brigands. This second type, the bandit-
brigands, could constitute a serious social uprising if assembled in sufficient numbers. In
a number of cases, they were called tuchins, a term associated particularly with disorders
in Languedoc in 1383–84.
Pillaging by soldiers was originally a symptom of poor discipline, but the problem of
discipline was soon eclipsed by that of pay. Increasingly, soldier-brigands tended to be
unpaid or unemployed troops—professional soldiers from abroad or uprooted petty
nobles from French border districts. They first became a major problem in the years
1357–69, a relative lull in the hostilities between England and France, when brigandage
helped to hasten the establishment and financing of a salaried royal army. Generally
operating as “freelance” companies, or routes, these routiers, as they were called, served
under colorful if bloodthirsty leaders like Seguin de Badefol, John Hawkwood, Arnaud
de Cervole, and Perrin Boias. They would occupy some stronghold and terrorize the
surrounding region until paid a large sum to leave and go elsewhere. Late in 1360,
Badefol and Hawkwood took Pont-Saint-Esprit on the Rhône and extorted a large sum
from the pope before leaving. In 1362, Badefol and Boias, cornered at Brignais near
Lyon, defeated a royal force.
The depredations of the routiers finally produced two responses by the French crown.
One was to pay them to go on a foreign expedition. The other was to establish a regular
salaried army that would provide steady employment for the best troops and could be
used to defeat or drive out the others. Both policies cost money, and they led the French
to pay high taxes in peacetime (when the danger of unemployed troops was always
worst).
These remedies brought some relief to the French countryside in the later 14th
century, but the fiscal and military system collapsed during the princely civil wars after
1400, and a new wave of brigandage became especially severe after the Franco-
Burgundian treaty of 1435. In this period, the companies were called écorcheurs
(“flayers”) and had such leaders as Rodrigo de Villandrando and Étienne de Vignolles. At
length, the crown restored internal order by resorting to the remedies first used in the
1360s: sending large numbers of troops on an expedition against the Swiss in 1444 and
then establishing a regular, paid force of men-at-arms (the Compagnies d’ordonnance) in
1445.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: APPATIS; BADEFOL, SEGUIN DE; BRIGNAIS; CERVOLE, ARNAUD
DE; LA HIRE; VILLANDRANDO, RODRIGO DE]
Denifle, Heinrich. La désolation des églises, monastères et hôpitaux en France pendant le guerre
de cent ans. 2 vols. Paris: Picard, 1897–99.
Guigue, George. Les Tard-Venus en Lyonnaise, Forez, et Beaujolais. Lyon: Vitte and Perrussel,
1886.
The Encyclopedia 277