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Our new selection of Eustache Deschamps' poetry is available on the website here.

Eustache Deschamps (c1340-1406/1407) was a pupil and friend of Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orléans. He then travelled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V, involved in missions to Bohemia, Hungary and Moravia. In 1372 he was made an officer-at-arms to the king. He received many other important offices, was the king’s bailiff of Valois (Oise/Aisne), and afterwards of Senlis (Oise), squire to the Dauphin, and governor of Fismes (north-west of Reims). As well as his numerous ballads, rondels, lays and virelays, Deschamps wrote a short treatise on French poetry, L’Art de dictier et de fere chansons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx (1392) the first to define and illustrate the verse-forms. A contemporary of Chaucer, he provides the link between Machaut's generation and that of Christine de Pisan.