Historic Bubbles

The king recovered and recalled Madame de Chateauroux.

Some time after my return from Europe in 1874, I read in the New York World a notice of the marriage in Paris of a Spanish nobleman with a Miss Stuart who the account said was a descendant of the duke of Berwick and of James II. It was added that the bride’s family were once known as the Fitzjameses, but that they had subsequently taken the name of Stuart as more indicative of their royal extraction.

So it seems the Berwick branch of the Churchills was extant twenty years ago, and we hope is extant still, though its existence may not be known to Lord Alfred.

The Captivity of Babylon

Towards the close of the thirteenth century, a poor hermit named Pietro da Morrone who had starved himself into the highest state of sanctity, was raised to the Apostolic throne with the title of Celestin V. One of the qualities which at that time recommended a candidate for the papacy, was that he should be moribund, that his days should be numbered; and this explains the rapidity with which the popes succeeded one another. During one year of that century, the year 1276, four successive pontiffs reigned.

Celestin V. knew nothing of the world nor of business; and it was thought that the cares of his high office, would soon finish him. But his anchorite life had agreed with his constitution; his diet of parched peas and pure water had left him with a sound digestion; and he showed no readiness to depart this life so that somebody else might be pope. It was necessary to hasten matters. How this was done is uncertain; but it is said that one of his cardinals scared the poor old hermit off his throne by telling him of imaginary plots for his assassination. Celestin abdicated, and the scaring cardinal, Benedetto Gaetano usurped his seat as Boniface VIII.; and when this lofty prelate rode to the Lateran, mother of churches, to celebrate his accession, two kings, James of Sicily and Andrew of Hungary walked like grooms at his horse’s head, and then waited on him at the table like common domestics. A pope in those days was a demi-god.

The Church at that time interfered with all the affairs of life. If a man had to sustain the validity of his father’s will or of his own marriage, he had to do it before ecclesiastical tribunals. If he died intestate the Church administered on his property. Even the calendar was ecclesiastical, and the year began not on the first of January or the first of any other month, but at Easter; so that portions of March and April belonged now to the old year and now to the new. In fine, canon, that is church law was the only law.

In contrast to this, was the trifling physical force the pontiffs could exercise. The States of the Church were small in extent; the battallions they could put in the field were few in number; and from time to time some impious prince instigated by the devil, would snap his fingers at this ghostly puissance; and then the world would be startled at the disparity between the real and the pretended power of Rome. But it was like a glimpse of the landscape a dark night by a flash of lightning: it hardly served as a land-mark; pope and prince would come to an understanding, and the spell remain unbroken.

Boniface who was perhaps the haughtiest of the successors of Saint Peter, was soon made to feel this instability. Albert son of Rudolph of Hapsburg, was elected to succeed his father on the imperial throne. Boniface was not satisfied. What did he know about these Hapsburgs? They were new, parvenu, and one was enough. He put forth a bull commanding Albert on pain of excommunication, to deliver up the imperial crown to Adolfus of Nassau.

A papal bull is a roll of parchment on which are inscribed in latin the behests of the pontiff, and to which is suspended by a ribbon, a globular leaden seal. It is this seal which gives it the name of bull, from the latin bulla, whence is also derived our word bowl.

Albert of Hapsburg had a priest read to him the document, for he could not read it himself, and after pondering, resolved to do differently—that is differently from what the bull required. He tied the parchment to his horse’s tail, and in that guise rode into the battle of Spires where he slew with his own right hand, his rival Adolfus of Nassau.

Boniface after some bitter moments of reflection, did the wisest thing possible. He rescinded the bull and received Albert back into the bosom of the church. Indeed the return of the prodigal son was so welcome that some years later Boniface issued another bull giving to Albert the kingdom of France, without however showing him how he was to get it.

The power of the papacy had culminated in the hundred years between Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., and was now on the decline. To this downward tendency Boniface shut his eyes; but we can assure ourselves of that tendency by considering the different success of those two pontiffs Innocent at the beginning of the thirteenth century and Boniface at the end, in dealing with two able kings of France.

Philip II. called Philip Augustus, the rival of the English Richard-the-lion-hearted, was the cotemporary of Innocent III. Philip had married a Danish princess named Ingerburge. The chronicles say she was young and handsome; but Philip fell none the less in love with Agnes de Méranie the daughter of a Flemish nobleman.

He applied to the pope for a divorce so that he might marry Agnes. Innocent refused. Philip then took the matter into his own hands and decreed his own divorce. Innocent excommunicated him and laid his kingdom under interdict.

A dreadful word that of Interdict! No churches open, no bells rung, no mass, no confession, no marriages, no funerals, no religious rites whatever except baptism and extreme unction—the ushering in and the ushering out of life.

This deprivation settled down like a pall upon that ignorant and superstitious age, and the people would not endure it. They revolted and Philip succumbed: he sent away the beloved Agnes and took back the hated Ingerburge. Such was the fortune of Philip Augustus in measuring himself against the Church. We shall now see how his descendant another Philip, sped, a century later, in a contest with the same power. Philip IV. called Philip-the-fair, Philip-the-handsome, was grandson of Louis IX., Saint Louis, the Marcus Aurelius of the middle ages. Philip had inherited all the talents and none of the virtues of his grandfather: he was true to no obligation and troubled with no scruples. Boniface had become aware of the dangerous character of the French king, and he sought to propitiate him by canonising his grandfather who thus escaped from purgatory and became a saint in Heaven; and no king ever deserved the promotion better. But Philip was not to be bought by so unsubstantial a favor: he was much less sentimental than rapacious and he seized the papal revenues. The clergy from time immemorial had paid to the Holy See tithes and first fruits. Philip being in need of money, ordered that those stipends be paid to him, promising to account for them to Boniface. The pope rejected the arrangement with just indignation. High words followed, and he issued the bull Clericos laicos, forbidding the clergy in France and elsewhere to pay any taxes to the State, and commanding them to pour all their contributions directly into the Apostolic treasury. Philip resisted. Edward I. of England did the same; but Boniface did not take the same measures against Edward, that he did against Philip. Perhaps he feared the vigor and capacity of the English king, unconscious that the man he was defying was at least as able, and was the less scrupulous of the two.

Philip not only forbade his clergy to pay tithes and other taxes to the pope, but he prohibited the export of money from the kingdom for any purpose whatsoever. Boniface retaliated by excommunicating Philip and laying France under interdict. At the same time he declared that the kings of the earth were subject to him in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. None of his predecessors had gone so far: not Gregory VII., not Innocent III. had risked so dangerous a piece of arrogance; and it proved the ruin of Boniface. Philip was too sagacious not to see the advantage this false step gave him. His kingdom under the ban of the Church, himself excommunicate, he resolved to make common cause with that people who, in a more benighted age, had fallen away from his ancestor. He convoked the States-General; and this is the first time that famous assembly was called together.

The States-General were the general estates, that is all the estates of the nation. They consisted of four elements: the crown, the nobility, the clergy and the common people. It is customary however to name only the last three. To Philip is also due the reorganisation of the French parliaments into the form they retained down to the revolution. The parliaments were at first the occasional conferences of the sovereign with his nobles; then they grew into some degree of permanence, and combined judicial functions with political. When Philip introduced the States-General, he deprived the parliaments of their legislative functions, and constituted them courts of law civil and criminal. To them however, and especially to the parliament of Paris, was left the prerogative of registering the royal edicts. This registry at first was solely to publish them; but it grew into a usage indispensable to their validity, and thus became a check upon the executive; so that the monarchy of the old régime was not quite an absolute one.

These first States-General met in the Church of Notre Dame; and the third estate, that is the common people, filled nearly half the building. The towns only were represented: they had become too wealthy to be longer overlooked. The country people came in at a later day.

Philip laid before this assembly two documents: one that the pope had discharged at him; the other a copy of the one he had flung back at the pope. They are so short and spirited that I venture to insert them: “Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Philip king of the Franks. Fear God and keep his commandments. Know that thou art subject to us as well in the temporal as in the spiritual; that the collation of benefices and prebends belongs not to thee; that if thou guardest the vacant benefices, it is to reserve the fruits for the successors; that if thou conferrest them upon any body, we declare the collation void; and we revoke it if executed, pronouncing all those who think otherwise heretics.”

To him the King:—“Philip by the grace of God, king of the French, to Boniface who calls himself Pope, little or no salutation. May thy great fatuity know that we are subject to nobody for the temporal; that the collation of churches and prebends belongs to us by our royal right; that the fruits thereof are ours; that the collations made by us are valid; that we will maintain their possessors with all our power; and that we pronounce those who think otherwise fools and madmen.”

It is just to say that the authenticity of the missive of Boniface, is disputed, though Hallam considers it genuine. It set forth nothing more than the pope had already avowed. At all events it put the case clearly before the assembly. A committee of the Third Estate, after much pondering, came and knelt before the throne in the middle of the church, and rendered the following verdict in which you will observe they had caught the tone of their master:—“It is an abomination that Boniface like the blackguard that he is should interpret so ill the words of Scripture: what thou shall bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven; as if it meant that if he put a man in prison in this world, God would put him in prison in the next.” Philip had this profound state paper turned into latin, and sent to the pope; and this document as well as Philip’s missive, is still in the archives of the Vatican.

The clergy alone hesitated to stand by the king. They asked time to deliberate. Philip would allow them not an hour. You are Frenchmen, cried he; from whom do you hold your benefices, from me your king, or from the Neapolitan Benedetto. They answered: from the king. They then begged leave to send a deputation to Rome to explain matters; and Philip refused. As for the excommunication and interdict, the king ordered them burnt by the common hangman; and woe to the priest who dared shut his church, or tie up his bell-rope, or stop marrying or confessing or saying mass! The days of Philip-the-handsome were not the days of Philip-the-august.

This triumph at home might well have satisfied Philip; but he still followed up Boniface in his own domain with pitiless energy. He accused him not only of having defrauded Celestin of his throne, but of having poisoned him, and what was still worse, of heresy; and he sent orders to his agent in Italy, William of Nogaret, to seize his sacred person.

Nogaret in conjunction with Sciarra Colonna the chief of the Ghibbeline faction, gathered together a few soldiers and surprised Boniface at his residence at Agnani. The pontiff supposed they intended to kill him. He put the dalmatica on his shoulders and the crown on his head, and sat like Papirius awaiting the blow. Colonna cried out to him to abdicate, as he had driven Celestin to abdicate. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, replied the old man, I will die his vicar![3]

But it was not their purpose to put him to death: no such merciful end was to be his. They held him three days a prisoner, treating him with a mockery of respect; and then the populace of Agnani, perceiving that the Ghibbelines were but a handful, rose and delivered him from his captors. But the unexampled outrage had overthrown his reason, and he died a maniac. The terrible Philip had hounded his enemy into his grave; but even there he did not leave him in peace, as we shall see.

The bishop of Ostia was chosen pope with the name of Benedict XI. Philip demanded that the bull of excommunication be annulled, and himself restored to full communion with the Church. Benedict complied; and thus was completed this first triumph of the temporal over the spiritual. Philip still claimed to be a true son of the Church; but he had shaken off her authority and he now proceeded to put his foot on her neck. It is to this degenerate grandson of a sainted king, that the Church of Rome owes that day of humiliation which forms the title of this paper.

Benedict XI. was as moribund as usage required; and in less than a year he laid down his pontificate and his life together. There now dawned upon Philip a scheme no less bold and sacriligious than that of owning and possessing both pope and papacy. He interfered to prevent an election till his own man could come to the fore; and for more than a year the Church was without a head. Then having by bribery and intimidation, obtained control of the sacred college, he made them choose Bertrand de Goth, bishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. Popes, you observe, change their names when they put on the tiara. This custom though ancient has not always existed: Saint Peter for example did not change his.[4]

There was a secret bargain between Clement and Philip by which the former was to pay the price of his elevation. There is discussion whether it related to the removal of the Holy See or to the destruction of the Templars. As Philip needed the pope’s aid in both these enormities which have cast such a lurid glory or glare on his reign, perhaps he bargained for both.

Clement V. after having been crowned at Lyons, established his seat at Avignon on the left bank of the Rhone, and thus began the Captivity. As it was followed by the Great Schism or Schism of the West, more than a century was to pass before the Church, always called Catholic, Apostolic and Roman, was to be wholly reinstated in the Eternal City.

Philip’s old enemy had died demented, and in that collapse of intellect, the last rites of the Church either had not been administered or had proved fruitless. He had gone where Hamlet’s father went, unhouseled unaneled, till his sins could be burned and purged away; and a smart anathema in due form from that Church which rules the dead and the living, might send him prone to the pit. Boniface had canonised Philip’s grandfather, and that soul in purgatory had thus become a saint in Heaven; and now Philip was invoking a rescript of different import, to despatch his grandfather’s benefactor in the other direction. Such are the possible vicissitudes of another life.

Philip instituted regular proceedings against the dead pope, accusing him of every manner of impiety and wickedness, and Clement was forced to give ear to it, but though Philip’s creature, he remembered the throne he sat upon, and was loath to dishonor it by blasting the memory of one of his predecessors; so he gained time: he heard testimony and took counsel; and then he heard more testimony and took more counsel. He whispered to Philip that if Boniface was the unhallowed wretch they supposed, he was already damned, and they were losing their time; and Philip finally let the matter drop.

It were well for the memory of these two potentates if the attempt to dislodge Boniface from purgatory, were the greatest wrong they undertook. We now come to one of the foulest crimes in history: one in which the king was principal and the pope accessory.

In Paris, but in a quarter no longer fashionable and which therefore you have not visited, is a congeries of shops where everything is sold by the penny worth. It is called the Temple from the building that once stood there. In the last century it served as a prison. Louis XVI. was kept there before his execution. In London there is a Temple church; and we hear of lawyers of the middle and inner temple. All these sites take their name from having been occupied by the commanderies or convents of the Knights-Templar an order of fighting monks founded in the twelfth century at Jerusalem, to guard the Holy Sepulchre. As monks they made vows of chastity and poverty; as soldiers, never to decline combat at whatever odds. But as years rolled on they forgot one of their vows: they became rich and riches made them haughty without however letting down at all their soldierly discipline and valour. They were respected and feared throughout Europe. The head of the order called the Grand-master was, according to Voltaire, equal in dignity to a king. Their chief commandery was the one in Paris on the spot where needles are now sold by the paper, and thread by the skein; and it formed a kind of imperium in imperio little to the taste of Philip IV. But a still graver fault was their wealth. Philip had begun the quarrel with Boniface by pocketing his tithes, and he sought an issue of the same character with the knights. But in order to get their money it was necessary to destroy them, or at least to destroy their organisation: they were the best soldiers in France; and desperately would they defend their persons and their pockets if the chance were afforded them. So Philip used craft, the only weapon he wielded better than they. He invited the Grand-master, Jacques Molay, to be god-father to one of his children, and treated him as an equal. Never did the standing of the order seem higher.

Suddenly at the dead of night, a band of Philip’s ruffians in numbers to defy resistance, burst into the Temple, captured the knights and threw them into prison; and Clement issued a bull abolishing the order. But he was not allowed to stop there: Philip obliged him to appoint an ecclesiastical commission to try the Templars. He accused them of spitting upon the Cross, which was blasphemy, and of a still darker crime, one so dark that he could name it only in a whisper, namely baphometry. And what, you ask, is baphometry? The word had a dreadful sound. The people were horror-stricken when told that the knights were guilty of baphometry, and cried out away with them! Philip when asked to explain, crossed himself and said that baphometry was the worship of graven images, of horrid idols sculptured by the devil’s own hand; and he produced those idols in evidence; and those idols are still to be seen in European museums. Whether the devil was really the artist has not been ascertained; the idols themselves are hideous enough to justify the worst; but to the mere lay understanding they seem to be nothing more than odd and ugly bits of bric-a-brac which the knights may have kept as curiosities. They denied having committed either blasphemy or baphometry, and were put to torture. Some of them suffered in obdurate silence; others among whom was the Grand Master himself, to win a respite from torment, confessed having worshipped bric-a-brac. But a short relief brought back their fortitude: they retracted their confession and defied the tyrant. But it was all the same whether they confessed or denied: the putting in of the idols themselves as testimony was conclusive and the knights were condemned.

The Church of Rome has always professed great horror of shedding human blood; so the Templars were sentenced not to the block and the axe, but to the stake, and fifty-nine of them were burned alive near the gate of Saint Antoine: the rest were banished.

It is said that as the flames gathered around the Grand Master he summoned the pope to meet him at the bar of God in forty days, and the king in one year. They both came to time.

There is a mystery about the death of Philip. Some say his horse ran away with him hunting, and crushed him against a tree; others that when the year had rolled round, the spirit of Jacques Molay beckoned to him, and he came.

In point of talents, Philip-the-fair was one of the greatest of monarchs: the reconstruction of the parliaments, the States-General, the removal of the Holy See, the destruction of the Templars, were the work, good or bad, of no common head or hand.

Edward II. of England married Philip’s daughter, and Philip’s ability and rapacity seemed to descend less to his three sons who succeeded him one after the other on the throne of France, than to his English grandson Edward III.

Boniface in his last ravings, had cursed Philip and his progeny; and the sceptre soon departed from them. But Boniface being crazy, had failed to put the malediction in due canonical form; and Time took advantage of the irregularity to reverse it as follows:—All three of Philip’s sons left daughters only. The male line of Philip having thus run out, the Salic law came in play, and gave the crown to the son of Philip’s brother Charles of Valois. That son was Philip VI. But Philip-the-fair had married Jane queen of Navarre; and their eldest son Louis X. inherited both the crown of France and that of Navarre. After the death of Louis’s posthumous son who lived and reigned just five days, and won a niche in history as John the first, Navarre not being subject to the Salic law, fell to Louis’s daughter Jane who married the Count of Evreux. From that marriage was descended Jane d’Albret queen of Navarre who married a riotous scamp, Antony of Bourbon, descended in direct male line from the youngest son of Saint Louis. The son of Antony and Jane was Henry of Navarre, and while he was still young, the House of Valois having been extinguished by the assassination of Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Henry IV. became king of France. Thus did Time lay the curse of Boniface; but it took two centuries and a half to accomplish it.

If you will pardon further digression, I will say a word about those names Bourbon and Valois which you meet so often in history:—In spite of our notions about womens’ rights, we common folks are reconciled to see the wife take the name of the husband, even when we suspect that it is not he who is master of the house. Royalty has sometimes departed from this wholesome rule:—Robert of Clermont the youngest son of Louis IX., Saint Louis, married the heiress of the house of Bourbon. Instead of calling his wife Madame de Clermont, he called himself Monsieur de Bourbon; and they were the progenitors of the family which came to the throne in the person of Henry IV. Henry’s right to the crown of France, was through his father the riotous Antony, and to the crown of Navarre, through his mother Jane who was not riotous but pious.

Another way in which surnames have been acquired to the blood royal, is by the escheating of male fiefs to the crown by the extinction of male heirs. Thus the estates of Valois fell to the crown, and were bestowed by Philip III. on his second son Charles brother of Philip-the-fair. This Charles was the father of Philip VI. first king of the house of Valois.

Strictly speaking these poor kings had no family names at all—that is none in the sense that Smith and Brown are family names; and when Louis XVI. was arraigned before those cut-throats of the Convention, and called to answer to the name of Louis Capet, he refused, saying that his name was Louis of France. And in the archives of the Convention, is still to be found the inscription of a sum of francs expended to bury the Widow Capet. Widow Capet was Marie Antoinette, Mary of Lorraine, the descendant of Rudolph of Hapsburg, the daughter of a line of emperors, the wife of Louis of Bourbon, the queen of France. Widow Capet![5]

To return to the Captivity. On the death of Clement V. the cardinals made an effort to rescue the pontificate from French domination, and for two years there was no pope; but the French party prevailed, and the bishop of Fréjus was chosen who took the name of John XXII. He immediately confirmed the French ascendancy by appointing six new French cardinals. It was during his reign that began the quarrel between the Holy See and the Visconti a powerful Lombard family from which were descended the later Valois kings, and from which they derived their fatal claim to the Milanese. John XXII. not only excommunicated Matteo Visconti the head of the family, but he added an edict advertising him, his wife and children for sale as slaves. There were no bids, because the Visconti were pugnacious and would not have made good household servants. His son Marco beat the pope’s army at Vavrio on the Adda, and drove him back to France. But he came not bootless home like Bolingbroke. He had plundered Italy from end to end. Though he did not succeed in turning the Visconti into cash, there were found in his coffers after his death, twenty-five millions of florins in gold, in jewels and in plate.

The next pope was Jacques Fournier, Benedict XII. and the next, Pierre Roger, archbishop of Rouen, called Clement VI. The Holy See had now been thirty years without a home of its own. It had resided as tenant at Avignon, and paid rent to the Angevine Kings of Naples, called Angevine from their founder Charles of Anjou brother of Saint Louis. The Angevines were a disreputable set, and Queen Jane the heiress at that period, was not the best of them. Clement VI. bought Avignon of Jane for eighty thousand florins in gold which Voltaire says he never paid. He made it up to her however, by a transaction in his own line, to the understanding of which we must look a little into Jane’s qualities and conduct. She was married four times, and neither time did she make a good wife. Her first husband Andrew of Hungary, she strangled; her second, Louis of Tarento, she poisoned; her third, James of Aragon, perished nobody knows how; her fourth, Otho of Brunswick, prudently kept away from her. At last, her cousin Charles of Durazzo dethroned her, and served her as she had served her first husband—that is choked her, and that was the end of Jane. Before this last culmination, the pope had pardoned her sins. They were as scarlet, and he made them white like snow; and when you reflect that the catalogue embraced the assassination of at least two husbands, you will admit that according to any reasonable tariff, the pontiff did not remain her debtor.

It was during the reign of Clement VI. that the citizens of Rome, sick of misrule, revolted and created Nicholas Rienzi tribune of the people, and thus conjured up a ghost of the ancient republic. At Rome you are still shown the house of Rienzi.

Like the rest, Clement played with his thunderbolts. He excommunicated Waldemar king of Denmark for having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land without his permission, which shows how hazardous it was in those days, to be pious on mere impulse and without due license from the Church.

Next came Innocent VI. and then Urban V. who was a Marseilles abbot. Urban undertook to be a great pope, but the Captivity was no time for great popes. Urban’s spiritual artillery seemed to have the same disagreeable property of recoil as that of our old friend Boniface VIII.

Petrarch then lived, and though he was a citizen of Avignon, he prayed night and morning for the rebuilding of the Roman pontificate. Listening to him, Urban went to Italy to recover if possible the patrimony of Saint Peter, or, if you insist, that of the Countess Matilda. He was confronted by that chronic enemy of the papacy, the Visconti. At that time the head of that house was one Bernabo who was if anything a little less bland in his way than his predecessors. After many high words, Urban lost his temper and let fly at Bernabo a major excommunication cursing him in eating and drinking and sleeping and in all the functions of life, and redoubling the anathema upon him wherever he might fetch up in the life to come. Bernabo seized the legate who brought the bull, and made him eat it—parchment, ribbon, leaden seal and all. What sauce was allowed him with this strange victual, and how he felt after supper, have not been handed down to us. Not content with that, the impious ruffian sent Urban word that it was he, Bernabo, who was pope in Italy, and emperor to boot; and that the Almighty himself dared do nothing there without his consent.

On Urban’s return to Avignon, a fresh humiliation awaited him. Peter-the-cruel king of Castile had an illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara who undertook to dethrone him. Henry obtained the aid of the famous French knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, and also of a band of mercenary soldiers called Free Companions who were not always distinguishable from free-booters. In their march toward Spain, they encamped one night on the bank of the Rhone opposite Avignon, and sent to the Holy Father praying that he would pardon their sins, bless their enterprise and give them some money. Urban granted them absolution and benediction; but he told them he had no money for them, and bid them be gone. They demanded forty thousand crowns in gold as the price of their departure. Urban launched at them a thunder-bolt as pregnant with disaster as the one he had discharged at Bernabo. Du Guesclin himself then sought an interview with his Holiness, and told him that he had no control over those marauders except on the field of battle, and that they were threatening to sack the papal palace. Urban, thoroughly frightened, recalled his curses and renewed his benedictions; but as his conscience would not allow him to take money out of the sacred treasury to give to such miscreants, he laid a tax on the citizens of Avignon, and they had to pay the sum demanded.

Gregory XI., nephew of Clement VI. was the next pope, and the last of the Captivity. He secured Avignon from being again put to ransom by the Free Companions by taking into his service a troop of them commanded by an Englishman named Sir John Hawkwood.

The Florentines had encroached upon the States of the Church; and Gregory, taking a leaf out of the book of John XXII., excommunicated them and advertised them for sale as slaves; but the Florentines proved to be no more merchantable than the Visconti.

Gregory went to Italy on the same errand as Urban V. and was no better received. He made however a solemn entry into Rome, and was on the point of being driven out, when he suddenly died there. Anybody may die suddenly in Rome; but trite as the event reads, Gregory’s not dying elsewhere brought about a state of things worse than the Captivity.

It was usage to hold the elective conclave in the town where the last pope had died, and the cardinals assembled in Rome. Out of the sixteen, eleven were Frenchmen. All the Avignon popes had been French either native or by adoption; and the conclave was on the point of choosing one more French pontiff when a Roman mob gathered around it and threatened, if the cardinals did not elect an Italian, to “make their heads redder than their hats”—that is to cut them off. Under this threat the cardinals chose the archbishop of Bari, a Neapolitan who was not even a cardinal. He took the name of Urban VI. and fixed his seat at Rome.

As soon as the cardinals could levy Free-Companions enough to defend them from the rabble, they met at Agnani the place where Boniface had been seized by the ruffians of Philip, and repudiating the previous election as having been made under duress, chose one of their number, Robert of Geneva who succeeded to the throne of Avignon under the name of Clement VII. Thus began what is called the Great Schism or Schism of the West.

The Church has never questioned the authority of the Avignon popes of the Captivity, but she has stigmatised those of the Schism as antipopes. At that time however, at least half of the Roman Catholic world cleaved to them. To the see of Avignon adhered France, Spain, Scotland, Poland and Sicily; to the see of Rome, England, Germany and Flanders. The Italians now acknowledged and now rejected the rule of the Roman incumbent, as faction and civil strife swayed them.

On the death of Clement VII., the Avignon cardinals elected Peter de Luna one of their number, who assumed the name of Benedict XIII.

No point of doctrine separated the two pontificates; they were kept asunder by party spirit alone; and everybody began to be tired of the scandal. An effort was made on both sides to put an end to it. The disciples of Avignon extorted from Benedict a promise to abdicate which he did not keep. Those of the Roman obedience also revolted and appealed to the Council of Pisa which put forth an edict deposing both popes and electing a new one. The other two refused to lay down their respective tiaras; and then christians, and I fear sinners too, beheld the spectacle of three popes at once, each fulminating bulls of excommunication and anathema against his two rivals. The Council of Constance then tried its hand. It seized John XXIII. the Roman pontiff who had also promised to resign and had not kept his word, and put him in prison. This so dishonored the name John that no pope has assumed it since, though it was the favorite before. Faction however still prevailed, and the two conclaves persisted in making separate elections.

Avignon still disputed preëminence with Rome; but after Benedict XIII. the popes of the Schism do not seem to have resided there, and the Schism itself became apparently more or less vagrant and interrupted. Benedict’s successor a Spaniard named Munoz who called himself Clement VIII. sold out his interest in the triple crown for a bishopric; and the Schism slept. It was awakened again by the Council of Bàle which undertook to depose the Roman pontiff Eugenius IV., on a charge of heresy, and to set up in his place the strangest member of a strange family—that of Savoy. The feudal chiefs of that house had been known as Counts. Owing to their love of fighting and their success at it, the Emperor had created them Dukes; and a scion of that pugnacious race now reigns over Italy. Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, tired of fighting, turned monk. With a few of his nobles he withdrew to a monastery where the whole party made such progress in holiness, that the Council of Bale raised Amadeus to the papacy with the title of Felix V., and scattered bishoprics and other preferments among the rest. Eugenius mocked at the Council and refused to quit, and for nine years more the Church was convulsed by rival popes. Eugenius died clinging to the keys to the last; and the Savoyard, weary of supra-mundane elevation, went back to his monastery, leaving Nicholas V. who had succeeded Eugenius, sole head of the Church. The Schism of the West was at an end: it had lasted off and on within a year as long as the Captivity.

For more than a century, Avignon had been a seat of the papacy; and when it ceased to be so it was still hallowed ground: secular dominion would no longer take root there; and the Holy See remained in possession and governed it. The Eternal City herself had been a warning. During the paralysis of papal authority there, she had been a prey to anarchy. The Orsini, the Colonnas and a score of minor brigands had desolated her pleasant places, and decimated her people.

Avignon was not to be put to such a trial. The Church still governed and order reigned. It is true that sometimes when the French kings waxed recalcitrant, they would drive out the pope’s lieutenant and seize the town; but they always repented them of the evil, and gave back the sacred city unharmed.

At last one hundred years ago, those sans culottes of the revolution dissolved that charm as they did many another.

The Second House of Burgundy

I propose to give some account of the foundation of that Second House of Burgundy. My authority is chiefly but not wholly Barante who takes for his motto: Scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum, and is none the less quoted by both English and French historians.

There were two Burgundies: the duchy still called Burgundy, and the county better known as La Franche Comté. The people of both were French; but while the duchy was a fief of France, the county was a fief of the Empire. And there were two great lines of Burgundian dukes: the first the Robertine descended from Robert king of France son of Hugh Capet; and the second, the Valois line descended from Charles of Valois brother of Philip-the-fair.

The last duke of the Robertine line was Philip de Rouvre, so called from the castle of Rouvre where he was born near Dijon. He inherited both Burgundies and Artois from his grandfather, his father having been killed at the siege of Aiguillon. Now this Philip de Rouvre, like some of my readers, is an interesting personage only by the woman he married; and to his wife rather than to him I ask your attention.

She was Margaret daughter of Louis de Mâle, count of Flanders, lord of Ghent, of Bruges, of Ypres and of other municipalities of the Low Countries. Margaret was his only child and heir. It was she who was destined to bring to the House of Burgundy, those first acquisitions in the Netherlands which were to draw the rest after them, and make the Spanish Hapsburgs counts of Flanders, of La Franche Comté, of Holland, of Hainault; dukes of Brabant, lords of Ghent, etc., an accumulation of titles by no means empty, such as the world had never seen before. In a word, Margaret of Flanders was to lay the foundation of the Belgic wing of the empire of Charles-the-fifth.

Margaret was very young when she married Philip de Rouvre, and not long after their espousals Philip died of the plague, leaving Margaret childless; and the great Robertine line which had worn the ducal coronet three centuries, was ended. How then was this childless widow to fulfil the destiny we have marked out for her?

We will leave her to ponder that problem, and take up our story at another point.

John of Valois king of France was called John II., though you have to look with a microscope into French history, to discover John I. No chapter bears his name at the head of it. (v. Captivity, page 62.) John II. was called John-the-good for no reason that history has explained. If he ever did anything that was good, it has shared the fate of the men who lived before Agamemnon. He was not even a good soldier for a king, though very pugnacious. His idea of military strategy was to shut down his visor, couch his lance and spur into the thickest of the fight.

In following up these tactics at the battle of Poictiers, he was knocked off his horse. He could not rise for the weight of his armor; so his attendants set him up on end, and he instantly began to lay about him again, on foot, with his accustomed fury. His eldest son the dauphin, seeing that the battle was lost, turned on his heel and ran away; and not only lived to fight another day but to rule France so well that he gained the name of Charles-the-wise. Not so Charles’ youngest brother Philip a boy of sixteen. He stood by his sire to the end; and as the enemy pressed in now on this side and now on that, he would cry out: Look out father, on the right! look out father on the left! and would throw himself in front, and play at cut and thrust like a gladiator.

But they might better have followed the example of the dauphin and run away; for they were soon borne to the ground and carried off prisoners to England. There they were graciously received by Edward III. and queen Philippa both of whom were related to their prisoners. Indeed John and Philippa were first cousins, both grandchildren of Charles of Valois.

After the battle of Poictiers, John gave to the brave boy who had stood by him, the name of Philip-the-bold; and a touch of that quality in England, confirmed the title. At dinner one day the cup-bearer poured out wine to Edward before he did to John. This was a double breach of etiquette: John was not only a guest, but he was the feudal superior, Edward owing him homage as duke of Aquitaine. Philip was so indignant at this slight to his father, that he jumped up and boxed the cup-bearer’s ears. Thou art indeed Philip-the-bold! exclaimed Edward more amused than vexed.

But the appellation was premature. Philip grew to be as prudent as he was brave. On the whole he resembled his brother Charles-the-wise more than he did his father the fighting John.

Philip was his father’s idol, and this idolatry was of grave portent to France. Though John had three older sons, he would have left to Philip the crown of France itself if the laws of the realm had permitted; but this being impossible he did the next worst thing.

At the death of Philip de Rouvre there was strife for the Robertine inheritance. Artois and La Franche Comté fell to Margaret of France daughter of Philip V. We shall meet this lady again. The duchy of Burgundy was claimed by king John and by Charles-the-bad, king of Navarre, both descended from the Robertines through females. On this footing the claim of Charles was the best; but John backed up his by pleading that Burgundy was a male fief, and that the male line being extinct, the duchy escheated to him as king of France. The only answer to this logic was the ultima ratio regum; but Charles-the-bad’s badness had so alienated his friends and allies, that he was in no condition for that species of arbitrement; so the bad claim of John-the-good prevailed over the good claim of Charles-the-bad, and the duchy of Burgundy was united to the crown.

It was a priceless acquisition: every dictate of prudence, of policy, of patriotism demanded that it should be sacredly kept: it was immediately thrown away by an act of fatuity which was the climax of the bad reign of John-the-good. John issued a patent creating his beloved Philip Duke of Burgundy, and ceding the duchy to him and to his heirs forever. Thus was founded in the person of Philip-the-bold, the famous second House of Burgundy.

We left a page or two ago, Margaret of Flanders duchess dowager of Burgundy, widowed and childless. She was still young, and if not quite handsome, any short-coming in that respect was made up by the provinces that were to fall to her from her father the Count Louis; and there came suitors a-plenty to offer consolation to her bereaved heart. Distinguished among these consolers were first, Edmund Langley fifth son of Edward III.; second, Philip of Valois the new duke of Burgundy. Edmund seemed to have the lead. He found a good ally in his mother Philippa who was herself half Valois as we have seen; but her heart was English: she hated her French cousins, and now put forth all her energy to win away from them this rich prize. She pleaded so well with count Louis that he consented to give his daughter to Edmund. But there was another woman who had something to say, namely Margaret of France the lady I had the honor of introducing to you a few moments ago. She was the mother of count Louis and grandmother of the young widow who was named after her. She was thoroughly French and hated her English cousins as cordially as Philippa hated her French ones; and she declared that not if she could prevent it, should her granddaughter marry that Plantagenet, that Cockney. She and her son held a stormy interview. Louis was long recalcitrant; but she finally used an argument to which he listened. She was in her own right countess of Artois and of La Franche Comté, and she threatened to cede those provinces to the crown, so that neither he nor his should ever possess one rood of them. Now Louis was in the prime of life and hoped to survive his mother, and to enjoy Artois and La Franche Comté with the rest of his princely inheritance, and there was nothing to do but to yield. He took back his word to Edmund, and gave it to Philip. But there was still another personage to consult. Edmund, Philip and Margaret were all related and not very remotely: they were all three great-great-grand children of Philip III. Canon law forbade the marriage of relations up to the seventh degree; and as nobody knew very well where the seventh degree was, the Church had simplified matters by declaring it to mean any relationship that could be traced. A papal dispensation was therefore necessary; and the case was referred to Urban V. who sat upon the throne of Avignon: it was for him to say in favor of which aspirant he would suspend the canon.

Some of you may think they ought have asked Margaret herself which of her admirers she loved best. The chronicles intimate that like a devout widow she was ready to take thankfully whatever husband the Holy Father should choose for her. Urban V. was a Frenchman, and it did not take him long to decide in favor of the French suitor; and in June 1369, Philip-the-bold and Margaret of Flanders were married at Ghent.

That no kind heart may be troubled about Edmund Langley, I will add that that unsuccessful swain went and manfully offered himself to a pretty Spanish girl, natural daughter of Peter-the-cruel; and a descendant of that loving pair sits at this moment on the throne of England.

Philip and Margaret had got as far as Bruges on their wedding tour when they were out of money, and it seems their credit was so poor that they could borrow none without security; so they had to pawn all their jewels to defray their way back to Paris.[6]

The bride and groom after a short stay at Paris, refitted the castle of Rouvre the birthplace and residence of Margaret’s first husband, the last of the Robertines. Behold then dame Margaret once more mistress of Rouvre, wedded to a second Philip, and a second time duchess of Burgundy. She could now solve the problem; and in pursuance of that worthy end, two years after her marriage, she brought forth a son. It was a wondrous infant: nothing short of the pope himself would do for its godfather; so that Gregory XI. successor of Urban, stood by proxy at the font, and called the boy’s name John; and as he grew up in the fear of neither God nor man, he become known as John-the-fearless.

John-the-good’s badness was ended; and his son Charles V. called the Wise, reigned. He was as unlike his foolish and fighting sire as possible. He was probably brave like the rest of his race, though he disclaimed any such virtue, and ran away at Poictiers; but he was passed master in the school of diplomacy.

The Plantagenets had inherited, as we have said, nearly one-third of France; and they coveted the rest. This covetousness was backed up by the English people who were ignorant enough not to see that they were fighting to degrade the crown of England to a mere apanage of the crown of France.

So long as the reign of the incapable John lasted, Edward III. had had his own way; but the prudence and adroitness of Charles, worked a change. Seconded by his brother Philip and by his constable Du Guesclin, he took without a battle, town after town, castle after castle, till Edward declared that the most formidable of his enemies was the one who did not fight. This new style of warfare was illustrated by the capture of La Rochelle. The castle was held by an English garrison, and to hold the castle was to hold the town. One day the chief magistrate asked the English commander to dinner. While at table, a forged despatch was brought to the Englishman. It was an order to march his garrison into the public square for a review. He had taken wine enough to be confident of his luck, so he obeyed the order. The townsmen who were watching for their chance, seized the castle and the garrison shut out of their stronghold and outnumbered, surrendered.

As a rule the Plantagenets waged these wars with a ferocity which contributed to their failure. But they were not Englishmen; and it is strange that English historians should accept their misdeeds as one element of national glory. Green says they were “English to the core.” Well, there was not one whole drop of insular blood in their veins: there was, to be sure, a fraction of a drop coming from Matilda daughter of the Malcolm of Macbeth and grandmother of the first Plantagenet king; and that was all. They were French Spaniards, and their pedigree was even more enriched with Moorish blood than with English.[7]

But there were some honorable exceptions to their usual behavior. The duke of Gloucester youngest son of Edward III. was besieging Troyes. A French knight named Micaille sent a challenge to any English knight to fight with him for the love of his sweetheart. These by-fights were often to settle precedence of beauty between respective sweethearts. A knight no sooner fell in love than he went swaggering about daring every other knight in love or out, to fight; and these combats were often mortal. An Englishman named Fitzwalter accepted the challenge. The lists were held in the English camp. Gloucester who was so learned on the subject of these duels that he wrote a treatise on them which still exists, laid down the rule that the lance should be addressed either to the shield or the helmet and not elsewhere. The Englishman’s horse was unruly and disturbed his aim, so that he took his adversary in the thigh, and inflicted an ugly wound. The duke pronounced the blow a foul one, and adjudged the victory to the Frenchman who had splintered his lance duly and truly against the buckler of his opponent. English surgeons dressed his wound, and English soldiers carried him back with honor to the French garrison.

Charles V. married Jane of Bourbon a princess of that youngest branch of the Capetiens which finally came to the throne. His nobles had made an earnest effort to have him instead of his brother Philip, marry Margaret of Flanders. Had he done so, Flanders, Artois and La Franche Comté would have fallen early to the French crown; and the history of the Valois dukes might have been as uninteresting as that of their predecessors the Robertines.

It shows of how little account the Bourbons were at that time, that the king’s marriage was looked upon as a sort of misalliance; and the duke of Bourbon Queen Jane’s brother was not admitted to a share in the government because his estates were not considered ample enough.

Charles-the-wise died after a reign of sixteen years during which he had found a remedy for all the misrule of his father except the alienation of Burgundy: that was beyond cure; but as Philip was always true to his brother and to France, it was not yet that the evil was apparent.

Charles was succeeded by his son Charles VI. who was but eleven years old; and duke Philip became regent. Philip’s two brothers were nominally joined with him in the regency; but they were unworthy scions of royalty, the one intent only on filling his pockets, the other on filling his belly; so that in effect the whole power rested with Philip. The duke of Bourbon the young king’s uncle again sought a share in the government, and was again denied. Such at the close of the fourteenth century, were the ancestors of Louis XIV. haughtiest of monarchs.

Duke Philip led the young monarch to Rheims to be crowned. He was to be knighted first, so the boy in obedience to the law of chivalry, sat up all night in the cathedral, watching his arms, ready to meet face to face the caitiff who should attempt to steal them. In the morning the sword Joyeuse, sword of Charlemagne, was girded to his loins. His uncle the duke of Anjou bestowed the accolade and pronounced him a belted knight. The archbishop of Rheims poured on his head oil from the sacred vase a dove had brought to Saint Rémi for the baptism of Clovis, and pronounced him an anointed king.

The attention of Philip was soon called to the affairs of his father-in-law Count Louis. Some years before, a brewer of Ghent named Jacob Van Artevelde had headed a sedition and erected himself into a sort of tribune of the people. Queen Philippa who was by birth a Fleming and liked to meddle with Flemish business, was his patron. Like a true politician she had deigned to stand godmother to the brewer’s son, and to have him named Philip after herself. The father Jacob Van Artevelde like his cotemporary Rienzi, was put to death by the populace he had sought to befriend; and this son now a man grown, was residing at Ghent a prosperous gentleman.

Philip Van Artevelde has been much apotheosised by English poets and dramatists: sober history hardly bears out the deification. Under a tranquil exterior he hid an eager and ruthless ambition which was only waiting its opportunity; and that opportunity was at hand. The inhabitants of Bruges had obtained from Count Louis permission to cut a canal to the Scheldt so as to go to sea that way. The citizens of Ghent remonstrated saying that themselves only had a right to go to sea by the Scheldt. The remonstrance proving fruitless they fitted out a band of ruffians who slew the men digging the canal. Count Louis sent a messenger to Ghent demanding reparation: they killed the messenger.

Thus far the case was not beyond adjustment: there were more men to dig canals; and the count had more messengers; but the Ghenters incontinently went to a length which put them out of the pale of forgiveness. Count Louis had just finished the beautiful castle of Vandelhem. All the resources of architecture and of art had been lavished upon it. It was his boast, his pride, his bawble. He confessed that he prized it beyond all else on earth. The Ghenters broke into Vandelhem and left it a ruin. War was inevitable.

The head mischief maker of Ghent was Peter Dubois called by the Dutch, Vandenbosche. He recalled to Van Artevelde the noble career of his father, and told him that the prestige of his name was all that was needed for the success of the revolt. He found a willing listener, but misled by the gentle manners of Van Artevelde, he expressed a fear that he might not be equal to the rough work, and dwelt on the necessity of showing no mercy to the Brugian faction. Van Artevelde assured him that if blood was all there should flow enough of it; and the two conspirators having come to an understanding, levied their troops.

Van Artevelde to get his hand in, cut the heads off of twelve burgesses of Ghent who had taken part against his father, and applied the same discipline to the syndic of the weavers who was in favor of law and order. Count Louis not to be outdone in barbarity, took the town of Grammont which favored the insurgents, and put to the sword men women and children. The bishop of Liége and the duke of Brabant interfered, and a conference was held. Two deputies of Ghent met two deputies of the count; and preliminaries were adjusted. When the Ghentian pacificators returned, Dubois and Van Artevelde met them at the town-hall. How dare you treat for peace! cried Dubois, and he ran his man through with his dagger, while Van Artevelde despatched the other.

The two chieftains now resolved on a master stroke, the capture of Bruges. Count Louis hastened to intercept them. His force was superior to theirs; but Van Artevelde made a stirring speech to his men showing them that victory was their only chance even for life. He seized a convent of monks and compelled them to confess the soldiers and administer the communion, and thus prepare them to fight to the death. They won the obstinate battle which followed and took Bruges. The count fled through the town, the enemy at his heels. He dodged down an obscure street and into an obscure lodging where a woman a true Brugian who hated the Ghenters, put him to bed in the garret with her children till the pursuit was over.

The count appealed for aid to his son-in-law duke Philip. The latter gentleman was not well pleased to see his wife’s patrimony wasted by brewers of beer, so he levied an army in France and marched into Flanders. The king who was now fourteen and whose blood was on fire at the sound of a trumpet, insisted on accompanying the expedition. They met the insurgents at Rosebeke near Ypres. Van Artevelde and Dubois flushed with their previous success, were confident of victory. Van Artevelde himself issued the order that no quarter be given. Slay every Frenchman, cried he, except the young king! Bring him to Ghent and we will teach him to speak Flemish.

But they had left out of their reckoning one factor which perhaps oftener than any other determines the fate of battle. Duke Philip though himself a good captain, was prudent enough not to trust to his own soldiership when better was at hand. He had put his army under the command of Oliver de Clisson constable of France, the worthy successor of Du Guesclin. The stubborn courage of the Netherlanders was of no avail against the skill with which De Clisson directed his legions; and at the close of a bloody day the men of Ghent were routed.

At night-fall as the king, the duke, the count and the constable were walking over the field of battle, picking their way among the slain, a dying soldier raised his arm and pointed to a heap of dead bodies close by. They dragged aside alternate Frenchman and Fleming till they came to all that remained of Philip Van Artevelde. He had died like a soldier where the fight was the hottest. Dubois escaped wounded to England.

Charles-the-wise when dying had counselled his brother of Burgundy to marry the young king to a German princess in order to strengthen alliance with the Empire. Stephen duke of Bavaria had a daughter named Isabella; and the duchess Margaret together with her friend and gossip the duchess of Brabant resolved to make the match. Isabella was fourteen. She was handsome enough, but she was an uncouth tomboy and dressed in a style that was anything but French. The duchess of Brabant took her in hand, and by much discipline of her own seconded by a French dancing-master and a French dressmaker, succeeded in breaking this romping Rhinelander into some semblance of polite behavior. She was presented to the king who was now seventeen. She knelt at his feet with perfect grace: he raised her up and made a common-place remark, and she said just the right thing in reply. She had been made to rehearse the whole scene beforehand, in the king’s absence. He was charmed with her beauty and her manners, and he fell in love with her and married her. She turned out to be a veritable Messalina and did what she could to add to the misfortunes of France.

Another notable marriage a year later, that is in 1387, was that of the king’s brother Louis duke of Orleans with his cousin Valentina daughter of Galeazzo Visconti lord of Milan. The Visconti were rich, and a million of florins went to the dowry of Valentina. This marriage too brought disaster a century later when the great-grandson of Louis and Valentina, in attempting to recover the patrimony of the Visconti, was led captive to Madrid.

The constable De Clisson, the victor of Rosebeke, had a bitter enemy in John de Montfort duke of Brittany. One night in Paris, De Clisson returning from an entertainment given by Louis and Valentina, was suddenly attacked and knocked senseless into the doorway of a baker’s shop. The baker dragged him in and sent for a surgeon. The king himself who was fond of the constable, came to see him. The blow was not fatal; and De Clisson had recognised his assailant. It was a well known myrmidon of the duke of Brittany. The king vowed vengeance. His uncle of Burgundy tried to pacify him and to persuade him to leave the matter to him; but the king was not to be pacified; and duke Philip was obliged to follow him into Brittany with an armed force.

It was the first week in August, and the heat was intense. The king in order to suffer less from the dust, was riding separate from the rest. Suddenly he wheeled his horse and crying out Death to the traitors! charged upon the nearest of his followers. They all scattered till one of them, a tall trooper, pounced on him from behind and pinioned him. He was stark mad; and during the rest of his long and calamitous reign his reason returned only at intervals.

The king’s malady arrested the expedition against De Montfort; and De Clisson who recovered from his wound, was left to be his own avenger. He was not slack about it; and if he was not so powerful as his adversary, he was the better soldier, so between them both they stirred up a civil war of such dimensions, that the duke of Burgundy who was again regent was obliged to interfere. Dame Margaret his duchess was related to the Montforts, so as he valued peace at his own fire-side he thought best to proceed with caution. He sent to his cousin of Brittany a few puncheons of the finest Burgundy wine, and followed himself with a retenue of archers and men-at-arms. De Montfort relished the wine more than he did the visitors: the latter looked suspiciously like an armament, and he promised to keep the peace.

The rest reads like romance and yet is history. De Clisson received from the duke of Brittany, from the man who had plotted his assassination, a message offering reconciliation, and inviting him to a personal interview. The constable was not to be caught with chaff. He answered that he would come provided the duke’s eldest son was put in his hands as a hostage. To his astonishment the boy, the heir of the Montforts, was sent to him. The meeting took place, and John de Montfort and Oliver de Clisson were friends ever after; and years later when the duke went to Paris to marry this boy to the king’s daughter, he left de Clisson in charge of his domains and his household.

These were the days of the Great Schism, the days of two rival popes Urban VI. and Clement VII. and the division of Christendom into two factions, the Urbanists and the Clementists. (See Captivity of Babylon.)

The king had displayed some excellent and even brilliant qualities; and his sudden insanity drew forth expressions of sympathy from all parts of Europe. As to its cause opinions differed. The clergy of England and Flanders who were Urbanists, preached that it was because the king upheld the schismatic pope of Avignon; the clergy of France and Spain who were Clementists, that it was because the king had not invaded Italy and deposed the schismatic pope of Rome. The laity were convinced that the king was bewitched, and they even pointed out the wicked persons who had done it. Among these was the duchess Valentina whom the king regarded with brotherly affection. The evidence against her was that she was an Italian: were not all the Italians sorcerers and necromancers? Hermits and other holy men far and near were summoned to exorcise the king and cast the devil out of him. One cross-grained philosopher, half ecclesiastic half physician, with a scepticism that did not belong to the fourteenth century, maintained that Charles was neither bewitched nor bedevilled; that the schism had nothing to do with it; that the clergy were a pack of fools and the people brute beasts; that it was simply a case of mental breaking-down from over excitement and dissipation. The Church had received such rough handling from Philip-the-fair, that it dared not interfere; and this sciolist was left to flaunt his unbelief in the faces of the devout.

The duke of Burgundy’s oldest son John, god-son of the pope, was now twenty-five. He was small of stature but well knit and vigorous and a good soldier. Burning for glory he led a detachment of French and Flemings to the aid of the king of Hungary against the Turk Bajazet. They were successful in a skirmish and took some prisoners. To these they offered the choice either to turn Christians or to be slain. A French monk was sent who exhorted them long and earnestly; but they did not understand French, and consequently gave no evidence of conviction and conversion: they were put to death accordingly. The battle of Nicopolis followed, where the Christians were totally defeated. John and some of his comrades were brought before Bajazet who reminded them of their cruelty to their own prisoners, and ordered the heads to be struck off of all except John and one or two others for whose ransom he expected large sums. Legend says that a soothsayer warned Bajazet not to kill John of Burgundy; that that Frankish prince was destined to be more fatal to his brother misbelievers than all the Turks in Asia Minor.

The duke when he heard of his son’s captivity, laid a tax on his dominions and sent the required ransom to Bajazet who dismissed John with the remark that whenever he chose to come again on the same errand, he might count on the same welcome.

Good and pious churchmen all over Europe had tried in vain to put an end to the strife between two rival pontiffs who missed no occasion to curse each other in all those awful formulas provided for the heretical and reprobate; and the secular powers had at last taken the matter up.

The king had had a long season of being rational; and the duke of Burgundy thought it a favorable time for a conference between the king and the emperor on the state of the schism. The duke as a Frenchman, leaned toward the see of Avignon, but he kept it to himself because Dame Margaret being a Fleming, was of the other persuasion. Rheims the capital of Champagne was chosen as the place of meeting. It was a bad choice as we shall see.

Wenceslas emperor of Germany was a reformer who believed in the high hand and the out-stretched arm. On one occasion suspecting the fidelity of his wife, he summoned her spiritual director, and commanded him to divulge what he had heard from her lips at the confessional. The priest refused. The emperor ordered him sewed up in a sack and thrown into the Moldau; and the empress had to look for another confessor. But the emperor had one failing: he was by spells convivial, and then he was sometimes as delirious as the king of France himself.

It was in the autumn of 1397 that these two high consulting parties arrived at Rheims. The emperor was followed by his landgraves, his margraves, his burgraves and other grave gentlemen who talked German together so gravely that you would have sworn they understood each other. The king escorted by the duke of Burgundy, came with equal splendor. Charles was beginning to show symptoms of returning wildness; but that only made him all the more bent on the interview. Wenceslas on his part, had so strengthened his mind with the delicious wines of Champagne that he was ready to deal with a score of schisms.

They met, they conferred, they argued, they disputed, they quarrelled, they shouted. They called each other schismatics, heretics, traitors, liars, thieves, assassins, till their respective attendants were fain to bear them bodily forth, the one raving drunk, the other raving crazy.