Marie I de Coucy, Countess of Soissons - Legal Disputes

Legal Disputes

Marie's mother, Isabella, died in 1379, and her father remarried in February 1386, a girl about thirty years his junior. Her name was Isabelle, and she was the daughter of John I, Duke of Lorraine. They had one daughter, Isabel. Upon Enguerrand's death on 18 February 1397 in a Turkish prison at Bursa, Anatolia, five months after the ferocious Battle of Nicopolis, Marie inherited his title and became the suo jure Countess of Soissons. Near the end of that same year, she was widowed. Following the Battle of Nicopolis, her husband Henry was also taken prisoner and later ransomed. In October 1397, on the lengthy journey home to France, Henry of Bar died at the Crusaders' camp in Treviso after having contracted the plague during his sojourn in Venice. He was buried at the convent of the Celestines in Paris.

Marie disputed the wealthy de Coucy inheritance with her stepmother, with Marie claiming the entire inheritance, while Isabelle insisted upon receiving half. Neither lady yielded. The rich barony was described as "having castles of grandeur, with its 150 towns and villages, its famous forests, fine ponds, many good vassals, much great nobility and inestimable revenues". The women lived in mutual hostility, each in a separate castle of the domain, with her own captains and entourage of relatives, both ladies endlessly pursuing lawsuits. Marie was coerced by Louis d'Orléans into selling the barony to him in 1404. She brought at least eleven lawsuits against Orléans in an attempt to recover her property, but following a wedding feast which she had attended in 1405, Marie died suddenly. There were persistent rumours that she had been poisoned, but nothing could be proven to substantiate the allegations. Her son Robert continued the litigation, but eventually, the barony of Coucy passed to the French Crown.