WE are now coming to a period in the history of France when woman, though she may not play a part either more prominent or more honorable, will be a centre of universal interest to the subjects of France and of England. Much ink and much fluid of a brighter hue and a more precious quality will be shed in the war between the lawyers and the soldiers of France on the one hand, and those of England on the other; and all to establish the legal status of woman in the eyes of the French law. The great question is: Shall the succession to the crown of France be governed by the laws and customs prevailing in many other countries and in a large part of France itself, whereby women are entitled to inherit equally with men; or shall the ancient law of the Salian Franks apply, the Loi Salique, "let no part of the Salian land pass into the hands of a woman"? Since the question has been argued by many a scholiast and many a historian and settled for all time by the arms of Frenchmen defending their right to rule France as seemed best to them, we shall give but small attention to the niceties of the legal argument; but an exposition of the principal facts seems essential.
The argument of the French lawyers was that the Salian land was now represented by domains of the crown; and since the protection of the Salian land necessitated the guardianship of a man, a fortiori must the guarding of the kingdom demand the power of the sword rather than the gentler distaff. Feeling that we owe some apology for clothing in figurative language the simple statement that no woman could wear the crown of France, none more apt can we find than a literal transcription of one of the arguments used by the French lawyers, which suggested the unfortunate distaff. It ran thus: In the Gospel of Saint Matthew (6: 28) one reads: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet 'I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Now France was the kingdom of the lily, witness the fleur-de-lis upon the royal arms; lilies, according to Scripture, are gloriously arrayed, though they cannot spin: ergo, the kingdom of the lily should never pass to the distaff.
There were of course arguments of more weight than this, which we have ventured to present merely for the sake of its quaintness, characteristic as it is of the day when tireless pedants were wont to debate in this fashion all things in heaven and on earth. Closer study of the Salic law itself, nevertheless, was not reassuring to the adherents of France; for there they found one of the formulas of Marculf proving that, from the days of the Merovingian kings, the terre salique, the allodial land, could be inherited by a woman. This ancient act reads: "To my dear daughter: It is among us a custom ancient but impious that sisters shall not share with their brothers in the heritage of the paternal land. I have considered that you all came to me alike from God, that you should therefore find an equal share of love in me, and, after my death, enjoy equally the heritage of my worldly goods. For these reasons, my sweet daughter, I constitute you by this letter a legitimate and equal co-heir with your brothers in all my estate, in such sort that you shall share with them not only the acquired property but the allodial land." In the abstract, therefore, as much could be said for as against the claims of a woman to succeed to the crown of France. There could be no question, however, that the long established custom of the kingdom had excluded women, and that this exclusion had operated to the great profit of the kingdom, by keeping it under the stronger rule of men, and more still by preventing it from passing under the control of foreign princes who had married French princesses. As a French constitutional lawyer has remarked: "France is the only one of the great states of Europe where we see the crown remaining for more than eight centuries in the same family.... It is to the Salic Law that France owes the long persistence of the Capetian dynasty."
In the first half of the fourteenth century it was a danger of exactly the kind alluded to above that menaced the kingdom of France: a foreign prince claimed the throne as his heritage through his mother. In order to understand the absolute futility of the claim made by Edward III. of England, based on the alleged rights of his mother, Isabelle de France, daughter of Philippe le Bel, it is necessary only to recall that both Isabelle's brothers, Louis le Hutin and Charles le Bel, had left daughters who would have had prior rights if any woman could have inherited. The potent reasons of public polity which would also have absolutely excluded Isabelle and Edward III. have been mentioned above, and are stated in a different way by Froissart. He says that after the death of Charles IV., "the twelve peers and all the barons of France would not give the realm to Isabel the sister (of Charles IV., Louis X., and Philippe V.), who was queen of England, because they said and maintained, and yet do, that the realm of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a woman, and so consequently not to Isabel, nor to the king of England her eldest son: for they determined the son of the woman to have no right nor succession by his mother, since they declared the mother to have no right: so that by these reasons the twelve peers and barons of France by their common accord did give the realm of France to the lord Philip of Valois, nephew sometime to Philip le Beau king of France." Then, as all the world knows, ensued the great wars between France and England of which Froissart tells with such evident enjoyment of deeds of valor and splendid martial pageants; for, he says, "sith the time of the good Charlemagne, king of France, there never fell so great adventures."
The history of the Hundred Years' War is quite beyond the scope of this volume; but let us be humble camp followers of the great armies that march across Froissart's pages, where perchance we may find some women as amazons, as heroines, or as pitiful victims in this sanguinary and ruinous conflict.
The first woman whom we note in this period, Jeanne de Montfort, was a veritable heroine of the wars, one known to us, through the enthusiastic record of Froissart, as an amazon, but hardly known at all as a woman. The only really interesting part of her career is that occurring during the wars in Brittany, and so we shall begin her history with these events. Marguerite, or Jeanne,--as she was called, perhaps because her husband's name was Jean,--de Montfort, wife of the Count de Montfort, was sister to the Count of Flanders. The countess, whom we shall call Jeanne, was already a matron when events in her husband's native Brittany called for his and her presence there. For generations, Brittany had been ruled by a line of princes who were regarded by the native population with far greater affection and respect than any king of France could inspire; for they were of an ancient house, associated with all the poetic legends of the land which, poets tell us, had been of the domain of the noble King Arthur. Half of Brittany was rather inclined to sympathy with France, owing to admixture of French blood, while the other half, Bretagne bretonnante, clung to the Celtic traditions and to those of England, the land once dominated by their race across the channel; but Bretons of any part of Brittany were Bretons first and always; the allegiance to their dukes was paramount; that to the King of France was quite an afterthought.
When John III., Duke of Brittany and a descendant of that Pierre Mauclerc who caused such serious trouble to Blanche de Castille, died without issue in 1341, he left the succession to his duchy in a very uncertain state. He himself had intended that the ducal crown should go to his niece, Jeanne de Penthièvre, the wife of Charles de Blois, rather than to Jean de Montfort, who was only a half-brother on the mother's side. To the ordinary mind it would seem that Jean de Montfort had at least a reasonable claim; but the Count de Blois was a nephew of Philippe VI., who would therefore throw all his influence against the family of Montfort, long allied in one way or another with England.
Both Montfort and his wife realized that if the succession were left to the adjudication of the French Court of Peers, their claim would receive no consideration. Supported in his bold act by the ambitious and courageous Jeanne, the Count de Montfort, immediately after his half-brother's death, "went incontinent to Nantes, the sovereign city of all Bretayne," where his liberal promises and general fair conduct won him the confidence of the citizens, so that "he was received as their chief lord, as most next of blood to his brother deceased, and so (they) did to him homage and fealty. Then he and his wife, who had both the hearts of a lion, determined with their counsel to call a court and to keep a solemn feast at Nantes at a day limited, against the which day they sent for all the nobles and counsels of the good towns of Bretayne, to be there to do their homage and fealty to him as to their sovereign lord."
While the new duke and duchess were waiting and hoping for a large accession of Breton knights on the day appointed for doing homage, the duke heard of a large treasure collected by the late duke and stored at Limoges. Leaving Jeanne at Nantes, he took a small body of knights and went to Limoges, where he was favorably received, and secured the treasure, with which he returned to Nantes in time for the appointed day of homage. But the Breton nobles were not at all inclined to flock to his banner and hail him as rightful duke, only one knight, Hervé de Leon, appeared to do homage; and though seven out of nine bishops, and the burgesses of Nantes, Limoges, and some other towns, had declared for Montfort, his position was by no means secure. Nevertheless, he and Jeanne held their little court with what state they could, and determined to use the treasure taken from Limoges to pay for the defence of their duchy, hiring mercenaries, "so that they had a great number afoot and a-horseback, nobles and other of divers countries." With the aid of these forces,--not always required, for some places were quite ready to receive him as their lord,--Montfort took certain towns and fortresses, such as Brest, Rennes, Hennebon, and Vannes.
Charles de Blois, baffled by the promptness and activity of Montfort and appalled at the rapidity with which the latter was making himself actual if not rightful Duke of Brittany, appealed to the King of France, presenting the claim of his wife, Jeanne de Penthièvre. Montfort, summoned to appear before the French court, went first to England and did homage to Edward III. for Brittany. Returning to France, he obeyed the summons of Philippe, and went to Paris with a splendid retinue, says Froissart, of four hundred horse, leaving his countess to keep watch for him in Brittany. The show of force with which Montfort presented himself before the king did not have the effect of intimidating the latter, if it had been so intended, and Montfort moderated his tone in the interview with Philippe, denying positively that he had sworn fealty to Edward III., and merely urging his rights as nearest of kin to the late Duke of Brittany. Philippe appointed a day for the meeting of the Court of Peers to sit in judgment on the claims of the two heirs, and forbade Montfort to leave Paris during the next fifteen days. Montfort saw, from the reception accorded him by the crafty Philippe, that his case was already judged; "he sat and imagined many doubts"; if he remained in Paris and the verdict of the Peers went against him there was the certainty of arrest and imprisonment until he should have made an accounting for the treasure seized at Limoges and delivered up all the towns he had captured. Therefore he determined upon the course that would at least give him a chance of active resistance if the worst came to the worst; he fled from Paris secretly, and was with his wife in Nantes before the king was aware that the bird had flown. The event justified his distrust, for on September 7, 1341, the Court of Peers adjudged the duchy of Brittany to Jeanne de Penthièvre and Charles de Blois.
By the aid and counsel of his wife Montfort gathered his forces and garrisoned the towns he had taken, while Charles de Blois led a French army against him and soon had him beleaguered in Nantes. The events of this siege would not concern us, since the Countess Jeanne was not in Nantes, were it not for the peculiar interest attaching to certain episodes and the light they throw upon the remarkable character of Charles de Blois. This man was reputed a saint in his own day, so much so that, under Pope Urban V., an inquiry was held and a favorable report made but never acted upon for a formal canonization. We learn some most curious things from The Life and Miracles of Charles, Duke of Brittany, of the House of France, in regard to what was in those days considered evidence of saintliness. "He confessed himself morning and evening, and heard mass four or five times daily.... Did he meet a priest, down he flung himself from his horse upon his knees in the mud.... He put pebbles in his shoes." When he prayed he beat himself in the breast till he turned black in the face. Next his skin he wore a coarse garment of sackcloth, and "he did not change his sackcloth, although full of lice to a wonder; and when his groom of the chambers was about to clean the said sackcloth of them, the lord Charles said: 'Let be; remove not a single louse;' and said they did him no harm, and when they stung him he remembered his God." Truly, at such a price salvation would seem dear to many of us! Yet the history of the early Church is full of saints whose fanaticism assumed this extraordinary type, the predilection for bodily filth. With all this piety, Charles de Blois was unrelentingly cruel and even immoral; for he began the siege of Nantes by cutting off the heads of thirty knightly partisans of Montfort and throwing them over the walls, and when he himself lay dead on the battlefield "a bastard son of his, called Sir Jean de Blois, was slain by his side."
Nantes was treacherously captured and Montfort treacherously seized and imprisoned by the holy Charles de Blois, who sent his rival to be confined in the tower of the Louvre at Paris. But the war was not over because the count was captured; there was still the countess to deal with, that lady, who, according to the enthusiastic Jean Froissart, "had the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. She was in the city of Rennes when her lord was taken, and howbeit that she had great sorrow at her heart, yet she valiantly recomforted her friends and soldiers, and showed them a little son that she had, called John, and said: 'Ah! sirs, be not cast down because of my lord, whom we have lost: he was but one man. See here my little child, who shall be, by the grace of God, his restorer (avenger) and who shall do well for you. I have riches in abundance, and I will give you thereof and will provide you with such a captain that you shall all be recomforted.' When she had thus comforted her friends and soldiers in Rennes, then she went to all her other fortresses and good towns, and led ever with her John her young son, and did to them as she did at Rennes, and fortified all her garrisons of everything that they wanted, and paid largely and gave freely, whereas she thought it well employed."
Jeanne herself was no mean strategist and captain, and she selected for herself and her young son the strong castle of Hennebon, on the coast of Brittany, where they passed the winter, she keeping up her connection with the various garrisons and making preparations to resist Charles de Blois when he should have reduced Rennes. The siege of this latter place was not ended until May, 1342, when the citizens surrendered the town and did homage to Charles de Blois, who was then left free to undertake the capture of Jeanne de Montfort and her son. "The Earl being in prison, if they might get the Countess and her son it should make an end of all their war." Accordingly, the French army laid siege to Hennebon, establishing as complete a cordon around it as they could by land, the sea side necessarily remaining open, since they had no fleet to blockade the port.
This siege of Hennebon is one of those romantic episodes of history learned or absorbed almost unconsciously in childhood, which lingers as a precious memory in the hearts of all who love the brave days of old. Even France could but forgive the fair and gallant Countess Jeanne, fighting so valiantly for the heritage of her husband; and whether in French or in English histories, we find a page or two reserved for Jeanne de Montfort, a picture of her, maybe, and all because the genius of Froissart has left us such a vivid narrative of the events at Hennebon. We shall tell the story, familiar to most of our readers, as nearly as possible in the style of Froissart.
"When the countess and her company understood that the Frenchmen were coming to lay siege to the town of Hennebon, then it was commanded to sound the watch-bell alarm, and every man to be armed and draw to their defence." After some preliminary skirmishes, in which the French lost more than the Bretons, Charles's army encamped for the night about Hennebon. Next day the siege began with minor attacks, followed on the third day by a general assault. "The Countess herself ware harness on her body and rode on a great courser from street to street, desiring her people to make good defence, and she caused damosels and other women to tear up the pavements of the streets and carry stones to the battlements to cast upon their enemies, and great pots full of quicklime."
"The Countess de Montfort did here a hardy feat of arms, and one which should not be forgotten. She had mounted a tower to see how her people fought and how the Frenchmen were ordered (i. e., disposed for the assault) without. She saw how that all the lords and all other people of the host were all gone out of their field to the assault. Then she bethought her of a great feat, and mounted once more her courser, all armed as she was, and caused three hundred men a-horseback to be ready, and went with them to another gate where was no assault. She and her company sallied out, and dashed into the camp of the French lords, and cut down tents and fired huts, the camp being guarded by none but varlets and boys, who ran away. When the lords of France looked behind them and saw their lodgings afire and heard the cry and noise there, they returned to the camp crying 'Treason! treason!' so that all the assault was left.
"When the Countess saw that, she drew together her company, and when she saw that she could not enter again into the town without great damage, she went straight away toward the castle of Brest, which is but three leagues from there. When Sir Louis of Spain, who was marshal of the host, was come to the field, and saw their lodgings burning and the Countess and her company going away, he followed after her with a great force of men at arms. He chased her so near that he slew and hurt divers of them that were behind, evil horsed; but the Countess and the most part of her company rode so well that they came to Brest, where they were received with great joy by the townspeople."
The astonishment and chagrin of the French knights upon hearing that the whole scheme had been conceived and actually carried out by a woman may well be imagined. They moved their scorched finery into other huts made of boughs, and prepared to capture the countess if she should return; but Jeanne was too good a captain to fall into the trap. Her faithful garrison in Hennebon, not knowing that she had reached Brest safely, were tormented by the misrepresentations of the besiegers, who told them they should never see her more. Five days of anxiety passed in this way, without any tidings of Jeanne. "The Countess did so much at Brest that she got together five hundred men, well armed and well mounted. And then she set out from Brest, and by the sunrising she came along by the one side of the host, and so came to one of the gates of Hennebon, the which was opened for her, and therein she entered and all her company, with great noise of trumpets and cymbals." Too late aware of the return of the valiant lady, the French nevertheless delivered another determined assault upon Hennebon, in which they lost more than did the defenders. Seeing the folly of confining all of his men to the siege of Hennebon, Charles de Blois drew off with part of his army and laid siege to Auray, while Louis of Spain and Hervé de Leon, now on the side of the French, were left in charge of the operations at Hennebon.
The besiegers had several large and powerful catapults, with which they so battered the walls of the town that the citizens "were sore abashed, and began to think of surrender." Among those in high place within Hennebon was the Bishop Guy de Leon, uncle of Hervé de Leon, who now held a parley with his nephew and agreed to use his influence toward bringing about a surrender. "The Countess was suspicious of some evil design the moment the Bishop returned to the castle, and she prayed the lords of Brittany not to play her false and abandon her, for God's sake; for that she was in great hopes that she would have succor from England before three days. Howbeit the Bishop spake so much and showed so many reasons to the lords that they were in a great trouble all that night. The next morning they drew to council again, so that they were near of accord to have given up the town, and Sir Hervé was come near to the town to have taken possession thereof. Then the Countess looked down along the sea, out at a window in the castle, and began to smile for great joy that she had to see the succors coming, the which she had so long desired. Then she cried out aloud and said twice: 'I see the succors of England coming.' Then they of the town ran to the walls and saw a great number of ships great and small coming towards Hennebon."
We heave a sigh of relief with Jeanne de Montfort; for our sympathies are always with those who fight the good fight. And all the poetry of chivalry is suggested in the scene that followed, a scene in whose enthusiasm and half hysterical joy we can partly sympathize, for we know that the siege of Hennebon will be raised and that the lady and her son will go free. The ships in the offing were, indeed, the long delayed reinforcements which Amaury de Clisson had gone to fetch from England and which contrary winds had kept at sea sixty days. Bishop Guy de Leon, in a rage because the surrender he had arranged was not to take place, at once left the castle, and went over to the enemy: not an irreparable loss, one would fancy, that counsellor who was ready to treat with the countess's enemies behind her back.
The departure of a lukewarm adherent could not mar the joy of the loyal defenders of Hennebon. "Then the Countess dressed up halls and chambers to lodge the lords of England that were coming, with much joy, and did send to meet them with great courtesy. And when they were a-land she came to them with great reverence and feasted them the best she might, and thanked them right humbly, for great had been her need. And all the company, knights and squires and others, she caused to be lodged at their ease in the castle and in the town, and the next day prepared a sumptuous feast for them."
The leader of the English forces which came to the relief of Hennebon was that chivalrous Sir Walter de Manny, known and loved by all admirers of Froissart and the Black Prince. This bold and doughty knight had no sooner tasted of the Countess Jeanne's good cheer than he began looking about him for some adventure that might profit her and her beleaguered garrison. The huge catapults erected by the French were still doing damage to the town, and one of these Sir Walter determined to put out of action. With the aid of some of the Breton knights a rapid sally was made, and the "engine" was pulled to pieces, there being but a handful of men in immediate proximity to defend it. But when the French knights saw what was happening and hurried to the rescue it behooved the English knights to beat a retreat. Nevertheless, Sir Walter de Manny cried: "Let me never more be loved by my dear lady, if I have not one bout with these fellows." So he and some others rode full tilt at the French knights, and then, says Froissart, with his love of a fight and of the comic, there "were several turned heels over head... and many noble deeds were done on both sides," till Sir Walter drew off his men and retired to the shelter of the castle walls. "Then the Countess descended down from the castle with a glad cheer and came and kissed Sir Walter de Manny and his companions, one after another, two or three times, like a valiant lady."
Neither the lady nor Sir Walter shall we blame for this kiss, given with no thought of unfaithfulness to the husband for whom she was fighting; it was sheer mad joy that inspired her, and the little incident is typical of the character of this good lady, so full-blooded, so staunch, so sturdy a warrior.
Temporarily worsted at Hennebon, Charles de Blois retired from before it and went to besiege and capture other places in Brittany. Jeanne de Montfort had not sufficient troops to make head against him in these enterprises, and had to look on from Hennebon while he took Dinan, Vannes, Auray, and other places, in spite of the diversions created by Sir Walter de Manny and the English allies. After the capitulation of Carhaix, Charles de Blois returned to the attack upon Hennebon, where he was joined by his lieutenant, Louis of Spain, disgruntled by a recent defeat at Quimperle inflicted by Walter de Manny. The siege was again fruitless, and, during a truce agreed upon between the combatants, the countess obtained a chance to enlist more active assistance.
Jeanne hurried over to England to implore more aid from Edward. At that time the great king was unworthily occupied in his pursuit of the Countess of Salisbury, in whose honor tournaments were held and magnificent feasts given in London. In these gayeties the Countess de Montfort must have shared with but a sad heart; for that heart was set upon securing aid to win back her husband's patrimony in Brittany, now all overrun by the adherents of Charles de Blois. At length Edward did grant her plea, and she set sail for Brittany with a force of men at arms under command of Robert d'Artois.
Louis of Spain, with a fleet of Genoese ships, was waiting for the English off the coast of Guernsey, where a great naval battle was fought. As the ships neared each other, the Genoese crossbowmen hailed arrows upon the English, who hastened to grapple. "And when the lords, knights, and squires came near together, there was a sore battle. The countess that day was worth a man; she had the heart of a lion, and in her hand she wielded a sharp glaive, wherewith she fought fiercely." The English had the better of this hand-to-hand contest, but both sides were glad to draw off in the night. The elements roused to battle, and a great tempest wrought much havoc among the ships. After having some of their stores captured and ships wrecked, the English "took a little haven not far from the city of Vannes, whereof they were right glad."
The first task of the countess and her allies was the capture of Vannes, which was accomplished without serious loss. Leaving Robert d'Artois with a garrison to hold this city, Jeanne and Walter de Manny went to loyal Hennebon, while English forces under the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury laid siege to Rennes. But Hervé de Leon and Olivier de Clisson, that rough and sturdy knight called "the butcher," recovered Vannes, during the defence of which Robert d'Artois was sorely wounded. He came to Hennebon to recover from his wounds, but grew worse, and finally returned to England, where he died. This ally of the Countess de Montfort was the same Robert d'Artois who had sought to deprive the Countess Mahaut of her heritage. He was a man of most unhappy character, and rested under the cloud of charges of forgery and other malpractices. To conclude briefly the part of his story which connects him with Mahaut d'Artois, we may recall the claim he made upon Artois just before Mahaut's death, based upon documents forged for him by the wicked Jeanne de Divion. When Jeanne was brought up to be interrogated, her whole story broke down the attempts to employ the black art against the king, which she ascribed to Mahaut, and the documents she had pretended to discover in the archives of Thierry d'Hireçon--all was shown to be but puerile fabrication. It was in vain for her to protest that she had acted in these things at the instigation of the wife of Robert d'Artois; she was burned as a witch and a forger. Robert, terrified by the unmasking of his complicity in the forgery, did not await his trial, but fled to Flanders and thence to England, while his wife, Jeanne de Valois, although she was the king's sister, was banished to Normandy. It was the utter wreck of the fortunes of the pair. We regret to find the name of Jeanne de Montfort linked with that of this pitiful, disgraced knight, whom people did not hesitate to accuse of having poisoned his aunt, Mahaut d'Artois, and her daughter, Jeanne, both of whom had died suddenly within a few months of each other.
The war was now to assume proportions far greater than had been at first contemplated; it was become a war between the two kingdoms, and in this greater drama we all but lose sight of Jeanne de Montfort. Michelet remarks that, with curious inconsistency, Philippe VI. was upholding in Brittany the right of the female line, while he denied that right in his own kingdom, and Edward III. espoused the right of the male line in Brittany and maintained that of the female in France. The inconsistency mattered not to either monarch; in each case merely a pretext was sought for increasing the dignity of his own crown.
Jean de Montfort, in whose behalf his countess had been conducting the war in Brittany, escaped from his prison in the Louvre in the spring of 1345, and made his way to England. Furnished with an army by Edward, he returned to Brittany, but was repulsed before Quimper, and died at Hennebon, in September, leaving his claims to his young son and their prosecution to his heroic widow. With the aid of the English, Jeanne continued the struggle, and had the usual fortunes of war, now victor, now vanquished, in a strife that came to be known as the war of the three ladies. The three ladies were Jeanne herself, Jeanne de Clisson, and Jeanne de Penthièvre. Jeanne de Clisson and her boy fled from the French to the Countess of Montfort, after Philippe VI., in 1345, had treacherously seized and executed Olivier de Clisson; Jeanne de Penthièvre was left, like Jeanne de Montfort, to support her own claims, for Charles de Blois, her husband, coming into Brittany and laying siege to the fortress of La Roche-Darien, had been surprised and captured by the Countess de Montfort at the head of her English troops. While he was held prisoner in England, Jeanne de Penthièvre made herself the head of her party, a leader in field and in council not unworthy to rival Jeanne de Montfort.
Fortune favored the cause of the house of Montfort, and Jeanne had the pleasure of seeing her son win first a temporary advantage, then a complete victory over the house of Blois. At the battle of Auray Charles was slain, and the treaty of Guerande, negotiated soon after (1364), finally recognized the young Jean de Montfort as Duke of Brittany, while Jeanne de Penthièvre had to content herself with the county of Penthièvre and the viscounty of Limoges. Brittany was weary of the war which had desolated the land from 1342 to 1364, and the battle of Auray had been the decisive struggle, in which both sides had determined to win or lose all.
Of the private character of Jeanne de Montfort we cannot speak with any degree of assurance, since the information we possess is very slight. Hume has ventured to characterize her as "the most extraordinary woman of the age," which is in some respects true enough. In those qualities admired by chivalry she was unquestionably an extraordinary woman; courageous and personally valiant, with a head to plan daring exploits and a heart to conduct her through the thick of the danger, impulsive and generous, a free-handed ruler, and an admirer of those deeds of chivalrous daring in others which she was only too ready to share herself. No Eleanor of Guienne have we here, masquerading in tinsel armor at the head of a troop of stage amazons, but a gallant lady charging her foes sword in hand. One cannot read her story without enthusiasm; and yet one would gladly know more of the woman before bestowing unreserved praise upon the countess "who was worth a man in the fight," and "who had the heart of a lion."
With all the brilliance and the heroism of these wars between England and France, the glory is not untarnished; for the very patterns of chivalry were too often guilty of most atrocious cruelties. Charles, the saintly Count of Blois, cutting off the heads of the Breton knights and throwing them over the walls of Nantes; Philippe VI. inviting the Bretons to a tourney, and then seizing and executing them; the Count de Lisle hurling from a catapult, over the walls of Auberoche, the miserable servant who had ventured to bear letters from the garrison through his lines; these, and more than these, are the sort of things one finds even in the pages of Froissart, who was so careful to conceal the unpleasant and to bring into the light of genius the chivalrous episodes in his chronicle of the wars. For the weak and the fallen there is little of pity; a word as some brave knight falls, a word of the sorrow of those dependent upon him, and on we go to fresh fields, fresh knightly exploits and pageants. Though the very spirit of chivalry is in the air, how little thought is given to woman! It is only the rare masculine qualities of a Jeanne de Montfort that can win her grudging notice from Froissart.
When such is the spirit animating the great chronicler of the age, it is rather remarkable that we find even three or four women winning such fame as to be remembered. The great war will in time bring forth the greatest heroine of France; yet it may be questioned whether Jeanne d'Arc would have received even fair treatment at the hands of Froissart, if the knight-chronicler had lived to see the glory of this wonderful peasant girl illumine all France. We may guess that Jeanne the saint, even Jeanne the valiant warrior (he loved warriors better than saints), would have been for him but Jeanne the peasant, the miserable child of some more miserable Jacques Bonhomme, to whom the courtly chronicler would have referred with contempt, scorn, or brutal hate.
The horrors of war are not allowed on the scene in the chronicles from which we draw most of our information about Jeanne de Montfort; but it is pleasant to find in these same pages at least one recognition of the higher and better role of woman, as intercessor for the distressed. We allude, of course, to the famous and beautiful story of Philippa of Hainault saving the citizens of Calais, a story which we shall venture to sketch once more, in order to bring before our readers a famous character and a famous scene in history.
For eight months the English army had lain before Calais, while the king stubbornly persevered in his determination to reduce the town and the garrison as stubbornly determined to resist to the death. Edward had built for his camp a regular town about Calais, and starvation had at last reduced the citizens to the point of submission. Jean de Vienne, the commander of the garrison, parleyed with Edward's representatives, but no terms could be obtained; the absolute surrender of the entire garrison was demanded, with the threat of death for the bravest of them, or Edward would go on with the siege till there should be absolute necessity of yielding. To these terms Jean de Vienne nobly refused to consent. Walter de Manny and other knights pleaded with the king to be more merciful, if not out of kindness of heart then at least out of policy, for fear of reprisals on the part of the French. The peculiarly harsh and puerile conditions then proposed by Edward are well known: "Sir Walter de Manny, say then to the captain of Calais that the greatest grace that he and his shall find in me is that six of the chief burgesses of the town come out to me bareheaded, barefooted, and bare-legged, and in their shirts, with halters about their necks, and with the keys of the town and the castle in their hands. With these six will I deal as pleases me; the rest I will admit to mercy."
Jean de Vienne announced the terms to the citizens, and even he wept that he should have to bring them such cruel terms. "After a little while there rose the most rich burgess of the town, called Eustace de St. Pierre, and said openly: 'Sirs, great and small, great mischief it should be to suffer to die such people as be in this town, by famine or otherwise, when there is a means to save them.... As for my part, I have so good trust in our Lord God, that if I die in the quarrel to save the residue, that God would pardon me of all my sins; wherefore to save them I will be the first to put my life in jeopardy.'"
Beside the quiet heroism of this rich merchant of old Calais, what tinsel seems the glory of the best of Froissart's favorite knights! "King Edward may have been the victor,... as being the strongest, but you are the hero of the siege of Calais! Your story is sacred, and your name has been blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of patriotism and sacrifice, Eustace de Saint-Pierre shall be beloved and remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which stood before King Edward. What collar of chivalry is to be compared to that glorious order which you wear? Think,... how out of the myriad millions of our race, you, and some few more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and honour." Well does Eustace de Saint-Pierre merit the enthusiastic phrases which we have copied from one who was no historian, but a great man with a great heart William Makepeace Thackeray! For "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Heroism was contagious in those days as for all time, and the example of Eustace de Saint-Pierre was speedily followed by five of his fellow townsmen. Let us now pass to the heroine of the story, Queen Philippa. When the six burgesses, in their humble state, were led to the feet of the haughty and relentless Edward, all pleas were vain to save them, the king turning away in wrath even from the faithful Walter de Manny and commanding that the hangman be summoned. "Then the Queen, being great with child, kneeled down, and sore weeping said: 'Ah, gentle sir, sith I passed the sea in great peril I have desired nothing of you; therefore now I humbly require you in the honour of the son of the Virgin Mary and for the love of me that ye will take mercy of these six burgesses.' The King beheld the Queen and stood still in a study a space, and then said: 'Ah, dame, I would ye had been as now in some other place; ye make such request to me that I cannot deny you. Wherefore I give them to you, to do your pleasure with them.' Then the Queen caused them to be brought into her chamber, and made the halters to be taken from their necks, and caused them to be new clothed, and gave them their dinner at their leisure; and then she gave each of them six nobles, and made them to be brought out of the host in safeguard and set at their liberty."
A noble picture is this of the clemency of a woman where the prayers of men availed not; and we join Jean Froissart in honoring his royal patroness and mistress, "the most gentle Queen, most liberal and most courteous that ever was Queen in her days, the which was the fair lady Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England and Ireland." But it was not for her mercifulness alone or even in chief that Froissart admired her; he chiefly praises her because she was a woman warrior almost as determined and successful as Jeanne de Montfort, and had come to Calais fresh from her victories over the Scots, of which Froissart gives a careful and glowing account.
That France which had known queens good and bad, from Constance in the tenth to Blanche of Castille in the thirteenth century, was delivered over, toward the close of the fourteenth, to the hands of one of the worst women in her history. The woes of France under the rule of the mad King Charles VI. would have been enough to bear; but the Court of France was led in a veritable saturnalia by the licentious Queen Isabeau de Bavière. Once more, in Isabeau, we find a woman whose life-story cannot be told without at the same time telling much of the history of France; but it is not because the queen does anything good that we must tell of the government of the kingdom during her ascendancy; she does nothing but indulge her vulgar tastes for pleasure and debauchery, to satisfy which she would pawn France itself.
In 1380, died the wise though unlovely Charles V., leaving the kingdom temporarily free from the English and in just that nice state of balance between recuperation and ruin when a little thing would suffice to turn the scale either way. His son and heir was a boy of twelve, already madly fond of pleasure, already filling his weak head with fantastic tales of chivalry and romantic devotion to such sturdy warriors as Du Guesclin, whom he could never hope to rival. His reign begins in a dream--a dream of his meeting a fantastic flying hart, which he took for his emblem. The dream goes on, in mad festivities encouraged by Philippe le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, who had chief charge of the boy. This Philippe--that same brave son of King John whom we see at Poitiers fighting by his father's side--was a great man, though not lovable; he was too acute a politician to be altogether admirable. In one of the grand shows arranged for the boy king on the occasion of the double marriage of the son and the daughter of Philippe de Bourgogne to the daughter and the son of Duke Alberic of Bavaria, the Duchess of Brabant, whom Froissart calls a woman "full of good counsel," suggested to the king's uncles that it would be well to find a wife for the young king in the same powerful family now allied to the house of Burgundy. Nothing could have better suited the plans of Philippe de Bourgogne, who accordingly sent portrait painters to reproduce the charms of the respective candidates for the hand of the king, and from the portraits selected Isabeau de Bavière, daughter of Etienne II. and a princess of the great Italian family of Visconti.
The young Isabeau, whose portrait showed her to be the most beautiful of the princesses to be chosen from, was brought into Brabant by her uncle, under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint John of Amiens, while the Duke of Burgundy at the same time found an excuse for conducting Charles to Amiens, without giving him the slightest hint of the purpose of the journey. Isabeau was presented to the king by the Duchesses of Brabant and Bourgogne, and kneeled low before him, lifting up her sweet girlish face to him in lieu of speaking in a tongue as yet unknown to her. Then Charles took her by the hand, raised her and looked at her pensively; "and in this look the sweet thought of love did enter into his heart." After the ladies had withdrawn from the royal presence, the Sire de la Rivière, an old minister of Charles V., asked the king: "Sire, what think you of this young lady? shall she remain with us?" "By my faith, yes," replied Charles, "we wish no other, for she pleases us." There was no tarrying for elaborate ceremonies, fond as the king was of them; Charles insisted on an immediate wedding. He and the young German princess were married on July 17, 1385, four days after this first interview. The bride was but fourteen, and the groom not quite seventeen; it was one of those infamous child marriages of which the history of Europe is too full.
Isabeau de Bavière was already of a slothful habit, to be roused only by her love of amusement, to purchase which neither she nor her young husband would spare anything. Luxury and wild extravagance in dress, in entertainments, even in funerals, was characteristic of the age; the whole kingdom gave itself up to extravagance and debauchery; existence was one mad revel, with no thought of who should pay the piper; all must dance and caper as if bitten by the tarantula. The very costumes are wild: "Here (we see) men-women comically tricked out, and effeminately trailing on the ground robes twelve ells long; there, others, whose figures are distinctly defined by their short Bohemian jackets and tight pantaloons, though with sleeves floating down to the ground; here, men-beasts, embroidered all over with animals of every kind; there, men-music, pricked all over with notes, from which one could sing before or behind; while others placarded themselves with a scrawl of signs and letters, which, no doubt, said nothing good.... Rational beings did not hesitate to disguise themselves in the satanic, bestial shapes which grin down upon us from the eaves of churches. Women wore horns on their heads, men on their feet the peaks of their shoes were twisted up into horns, griffins, serpents' tails. The women, above all, would have made our spirits (of the age of Saint Louis) tremble; with their bosoms exposed, they haughtily paraded high above the heads of the men their gigantic hennin (the peaked and horned headdress) with its scaffolding of horns, requiring them to turn sideways and stoop as often as they went in or out of a room."
With all this outlandish fashion of dress the young queen was in perfect accord; and the life of the court was one succession of brilliant entertainments, wicked in their sensuality no less than in their waste of the revenues of a kingdom already impoverished by long wars. During the early years of her presence--we cannot call it her rule--in France, Isabeau took no part in politics; neither did her husband, for that matter, since he left the government in the hands of his uncles, chief of whom was Philippe de Bourgogne. We shall therefore have little to record at first beyond some of the more noteworthy of the doings at the court.
The first of these, and one of the most scandalous, occurred in May, 1388; and the occasion which it was intended to celebrate merits some attention from those who would appreciate the utter incapacity of Charles VI. even at this period. To understand the circumstances we must go back to the time when Charles V. lay dying, and his brother, Louis, Duke of Anjou, waited in an adjoining room till the breath should be out of the king's body. When the king was really dead, out came Louis to seize upon the plate and other movables of value. Hearing that Charles had concealed a considerable treasure in the walls of his palace at Melun, and being unable to discover the hiding place, this affectionate brother sent for the treasurer of the late king, and uttered the grim threat: "You will find that money for me, or off goes your head." The executioner was there with his ax--the treasure was found; and Louis carried it off to squander it in prosecuting his claims to the throne of Naples. Now he was dead, and his two sons were about to leave France to continue the fight for Naples. So far from remembering with resentment the enormous sums formerly stolen from him by this very family, Charles VI. must needs squander more in a splendid show to celebrate the knighting of the princes of Anjou.
That ceremony in which the young soldier of God swore to defend the right, with all the solemn and impressive ritual that the Church could devise to sanctify and dignify his act, was to be turned into a vile debauch. In the ancient abbey of Saint-Denis, beside the tombs of the great dead who had glorified France, were lodged "the Queen and a bevy of illustrious ladies." Monastery or no monastery, the monks must harbor these fair guests, whom all the rules of their order would have rigidly excluded. Says the chronicle of a monk of Saint-Denis: "To gaze on their exceeding beauty you would have said it was a meeting of the heathen goddesses." And so they were, heathen goddesses, with a lawless Venus at their head. But the festival, be it remembered, was a religious one; we go "to hear mass every morning." The religious services over, the day was given up to magnificent tourneys and rich banquets, and the nights to balls, masked balls, "to hide blushes." For three days and three nights was this revel maintained, the mad Bacchanals scrupling not to defile even the most sacred places by their orgies, which the presence of the king and queen rather encouraged than checked. It was the queen herself, indeed, who loved all this. One does not wonder that people began to whisper that she had already shown more than decorous affection for her brother-in-law, the brilliant Louis d'Orléans; in the pervigilium Veneris, the "wake of Venus," as they called the balls at Saint-Denis, who could say what might have happened?
The king attained his majority; in a sudden fit of impatience, he threw off the control of his uncles, till now the rulers of France, and set up his own government. The royal princes had not been good governors; each one was too intent upon his own interests to consider those of France; and accordingly France hated them, and hoped for better things from the young king and his sober government of humble counsellors. But Charles needed excitement; in lieu of war there were fetes, upon which he squandered money till the people groaned and the councillors trembled. Any excuse was sufficient for holding a fête. Of a sudden, Charles and Isabeau remembered that the queen had never been crowned and had never made a royal entry into Paris. The city was ordered to make unexampled preparations to receive Isabeau as queen; she had been living in Paris a good part of the time during the four years since her marriage, but that did not do away with the necessity for a formal introduction to the capital of her dominions.
With his usual love of the spectacular, Froissart gives us an account, covering many pages, of the reception of Isabeau. The Parisians dressed themselves in gay costumes of scarlet, and green, and gold, each vying with his neighbor and rivalling, as far as he dared, the gorgeousness of the courtiers and nobles. The fountains ran wine and milk, the balconies and windows were festooned with flowers and crowded with eager spectators, while musicians played before the doors of many houses and miracle plays were given on the street corners. On August 22nd, the young queen, hailed at every step by the acclamations of the throngs in the streets, and accompanied by a crowd of noble ladies borne in sumptuous litters, passed from Saint-Denis to Paris. At the Porte Saint-Denis there was a canopy representing "heaven, made full of stars, and within it young children apparelled like angels," and an "image of Our Lady herself," holding the infant Saviour. Two of the angels, let down from heaven by ropes, placed a golden crown upon Isabeau's head, singing: "Sweet lady amid the fleur-de-lis, are you not from heaven?"
"Then when the Queen and the ladies were passed by," having greatly admired this "high heaven richly apparelled with the arms of France, the device of the king," they proceeded along the street till they came to a place where was a fountain, "which was covered over with a cloth of fine azure, painted full of flower-de-luces of gold.... And out of this fountain there issued in great streams spiced drinks and claret, and about this fountain there were young maidens richly apparelled, with rich chaplets on their heads, singing melodiously: great pleasure it was to hear them. And they held in their hands cups and goblets of gold, offering and giving to drink all such as passed by; and the Queen rested there and regaled herself and regarded them, having great pleasure in that device, and so did all other ladies and damosels that saw it."
Passing onward to where stood the Church of Saint James, "all the street of Saint-Denis was covered over with cloths of silk and camlet, such plenty as though such cloths should cost nothing. And I, Sir John Froissart, author of this history, was present and saw all this and had great wonder where such number of cloths of silk were gotten; there was as great plenty as though they had been in Alexandria or Damascus; and all the houses on both sides of the great street of Saint-Denis were hanged with cloths of Arras of divers histories, the which was pleasure to behold."
At the "bridge of Paris," hard by Notre-Dame, fresh wonders awaited the queen. A master tumbler, from Genoa, "had tied a cord on the highest house of the bridge of Saint-Michael over all the houses, and the other end was tied on the highest tower in Our Lady's church. And as the Queen passed by, and was in the street called Our Lady's street, because it was late, this said master with two burning candles in his hands issued out of a little stage that he had made on the height of Our Lady's tower, and singing he went upon the cord all along the great street, so that all saw him and had marvel how it might be." This tumbler, dressed as an angel, gave another crown to Isabeau, and then mounting skyward disappeared through a slit in the canopy over the bridge, as if he were returning to heaven.
In the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Isabeau was crowned, saying, says Froissart,--not without an equivocation of which he himself was doubtless quite unconscious,--"what prayers she pleased." But the festivities were not over; we have omitted many a detail given by Froissart plays and dumb shows presenting indiscriminately the sacred histories of Scripture and the legends of French heroes, castles full of mock monsters, representations of the entire heavenly hierarchy and of the dream which had suggested to Charles the emblem of the flying hart. With gay balls at night and jousts and miracle plays by day, the celebration was continued for several days. The merchants of Paris presented to the queen and to Valentine Visconti, the new Duchess of Orléans, most costly jewels, rich sets of plate, in gold and silver, cups, and salvers, and dishes of gold, "whereat everyone marvelled greatly," and the royal pair were greatly pleased.
Who was to pay for all the display in this entry of the queen? The citizens of Paris had fondly hoped that, what with their show of loyal joy and their presents,--aggregating some sixty thousand crowns in gold,--the king would be pleased to remit certain oppressive taxes. On the contrary, it was the citizens of Paris who were compelled to pay for all this fine foolery. Charles departed from Paris a few days after the conclusion of his fête, leaving behind him an increased tax and an ordinance prohibiting, under penalty of death, the use of certain silver coins of small value; this latter restriction, which was intended to favor the circulation of his new and debased coinage, inflicted peculiar hardships upon the poor. Thus, Isabeau was already inflicting much misery upon the poor of that capital which had lavished so much upon her; and before we bestow our commiseration upon the miserable king in after days, it is well to remember the miseries of his subjects.
Life had been as yet but a dream for Charles and his queen; though France was rapidly going to ruin under their extravagant and heedless rule, could they not chase away care in revels surpassing any that France had yet seen? But the dream was soon to become a nightmare, the hideous nightmare of insanity, for this heedless monarch.
It was not until three years after the coronation of Isabeau that her unfortunate husband had the first attack of what was, unmistakably, insanity, though to any reasonable creature the behavior of the whole court would have seemed mad enough from the beginning. One of those acts of lawless private vengeance which were so soon to become dreadfully familiar in France first excited the king almost to the point of frenzy. A certain Pierre de Craon, a noble who had already distinguished himself by robbing the late Duke of Anjou, was driven from Paris by the Duke of Orléans, to whose wife he had imprudently revealed some of the infidelities of her too licentious husband. He fled to Jean de Montfort, who persuaded him that the person chiefly responsible for his disgrace was the renowned Olivier de Clisson, Conétable of France. Secretly returning to Paris, Pierre de Craon lay in wait for the constable one night and fell upon him with a band of bravoes. The brave De Clisson was seriously wounded, and the villains fled, thinking him slain. Charles, who favored De Clisson, was furious at the outrage, and breathed vengeance against Craon. As Jean de Montfort constituted himself the defender of this wretch, and refused to deliver him up to justice, the lands belonging to Craon were devastated, his wife and children were driven forth, and war was declared upon Brittany.
The king had always had a passionate love for the more theatrical side of war, and, as soon as the constable was able to ride, the king and his forces marched upon Brittany. We may pass over the earlier part of his campaign, taken up in aimless marches and as aimless parleying. On August 5, 1392, during a spell of intensely hot weather, Charles marched out of Mans. He had been suffering from a fever, was much weakened, and had for days been greatly harassed by the heat and the baffling of his delayed vengeance; he was moody, and "his spirits sore troubled and travailed," when, as he rode through the forest of Mans, there suddenly rushed to his horse's head a wild figure, half clothed, and manifestly mad. Seizing the king's bridle, the apparition exclaimed, with that strange earnestness so often noticeable in those whose reason is unbalanced: "Sir King, ride no further forward, for thou art betrayed." The servants hastily drove away the poor madman, and sought to restore the king's peace of mind, more seriously disturbed than ever by a happening that might well have startled even a person in strong health. On rode the cavalcade, out over the open plains, where a blazing sun beat full upon the king's head, protected only by a thin cap. Suddenly Charles started, checked his horse, drew his sword, and charged upon the pages who rode beside him, crying, as if in the heat of battle: "On, on! down with these traitors!" Madly pursuing the pages, he put to flight even the Duke of Orléans, and was not overpowered and disarmed until he and his horse were quite exhausted.
He recognized none of those about him, and only physical weakness prevented him from becoming again a frantic lunatic. The poor weak brain, over-excited and worn-out by the long years of debauchery, was hopelessly overthrown; though sane at times, and even for considerable periods, Charles VI. was evermore incapable of ruling, being a mere helpless and unhappy tool in the hands of the heartless people who could win sufficient power to rule what was left of France.
The queen was no Blanche de Castille, able to rule a kingdom, and the king's uncle, Philippe de Bourgogne, was at first the real power in France. He was opposed by Isabeau de Bavière and her paramour and brother-in-law, Louis d'Orléans, brother of the king; and the history of the next few years is largely a record of shameless intrigues between these people to obtain control of the mad king, in whose name many an odious thing was done. The regency should, by rights, have devolved upon the king's eldest brother, Louis d'Orléans, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of Charles's madness; but the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri set him aside for "his too great youth." There might have been found some precedent for recognizing Isabeau as regent; but there is no evidence that she ever made any serious efforts to establish her claim; for she was content with that which the Duke of Burgundy was quite willing to allow her, viz., the squandering of money--not his money--in her pleasures. Isabeau was nominally associated in the council that exercised the powers of regency, but she was really under the control of the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the chroniclers call "a haughty and cruel woman."
With such care as the doctors of the period were likely to give him, there was not much hope of the permanent restoration of the king's reason. One learned physician, however, did have the correct idea as to the cause of Charles's malady and prescribed a moderate diet and a quiet life for him. Under this wise treatment Charles soon recovered as much reason as he had ever had; but the regimen imposed by the physician's orders was as distasteful to the king as it was to Isabeau. The queen, under pretext of furnishing diversions for him, began again the wild life of debauchery which had been the prime cause of Charles's insanity. It was at one of these festivals that occurred the famous "dance of savages" that so nearly deprived France of her mad king.
The chronicler of Saint-Denis says that "it was an evil custom of the time in many parts of France to indulge unreproved in all sorts of indecent follies at the marriage of a widow, and to assume with their extravagant masks and disguises the liberty of making all sorts of obscene remarks to the bride and bridegroom." It was at a sort of charivari held one night (January 29, 1393) in celebration of the marriage of one of Isabeau's German waiting women, a widow, that Hugues de Guisay, one of those panders to the follies of the rich and extravagant who plan their "amusements" for them, undertook to divert the mad king, the queen, and the whole court. He devised "six coats made of linen cloth covered with pitch and thereon flax like hair." Charles put on one of these, and he and his five satyr-like companions, much delighted with their resemblance to things of horrid form, pranced in among the other revellers. The five were linked together by a chain, the king, fortunately, being loose and preceding them. As the wretched Charles, in his disgraceful costume, was trying to fulfil the part of a satyr indeed by teasing and exchanging coarse jests with the young Duchess of Berri, Louis d'Orléans came into the room. Wishing to discover who it was so disguised--we refuse to credit the account which says he acted in mere heedless desire to see what would happen--he held a torch too near one of the tow-clad gallants. In an instant the whole five unhappy victims of folly were in a blaze. "Save the King! save the King!" cried one of them as he burned. Fortunately the Duchess of Berri, guessing that it was the king who stood by her, covered him with her cloak and prevented his costume from catching fire. Four of the others, whom not a soul in this gay assemblage seems to have made serious attempts to rescue, were burned to death, one escaping by jumping into a large tub of water in the pantry. Among those who died was the wanton deviser of this foolish and dangerous amusement; and as his body was borne to the tomb through the streets of Paris the people cursed him and called out after him, as he had been wont to speak to the poor when it pleased him to amuse himself with them: "Bark, dog!"
Wonderful to relate, this scene of horror at the dance of savages does not appear to have occasioned an immediate relapse on the part of the king. Isabeau, who had manifested extreme terror and sympathy at the moment of her husband's peril, joined him in making virtuous resolutions to lead a more regular and sober life. But the love of pleasure was too firmly rooted; there were renewed debauches, and Charles became more violently mad than before, knowing neither his wife nor his children, and even denying his own identity. And so it continued throughout his life: following the regimen of his doctors, Charles would have a lucid interval; then he chased the doctors from the palace and went back to debauchery and to madness. Astrologers were sent for to enlist the sidereal powers in his behalf; one astrologer brought a book which he affirmed the Lord had sent to Adam by the hand of an angel; what good it had done to Adam appeareth not, but it certainly did not relieve the king. Then there were two Austin friars (!) who made a draught of powdered pearls and enlisted all the forces of sorcery in the king's behalf; but the king did not recover, and the friars were handed over to the Inquisition, condemned, and decapitated.
Meanwhile any affection that Isabeau may have felt for her husband had passed away. She had found the Duke of Burgundy at last unendurably parsimonious; Louis d'Orléans was far more liberal with the money of the kingdom; besides, he was a handsome rake, whom all the women loved; it was inevitable that Isabeau should ally herself with the man who was willing not only to share her wanton pleasures but to squeeze out of the people the money required for them. The people, particularly the people of Paris, hated the Duke of Orléans because he was always imposing more taxes, and loved the Duke of Burgundy because he was politic enough to pretend to reduce taxes. It is therefore not surprising that we have so many accounts of the outrageous conduct of Isabeau de Bavière and Louis d'Orléans; for if the people are long-suffering, they yet do not forget.
In order to meet some part of the expenses incurred by the prodigality of the court, Louis d'Orléans and the queen, in 1405, imposed a new tax. The prisons were soon crowded with poor wretches who could not pay the impost even by selling all their belongings, to the very straw of their beds. While the queen amused herself the people cursed. Not knowing what could become of the great sums raised and squandered by the worthless pair, the people said that Isabeau sent cartloads of gold into Bavaria and that Louis wasted it in magnificent structures on his domain at Couci and at Pierrefonds.
The wild accusations of a maddened people, however, were not without excuse. This miserable wanton who was Queen of France left her husband, the poor, good-natured madman, and her children to the care of servants whose wages, in the midst of all this waste of the public money, she forgot to pay. The servants neglected both children and husband; the King of France was allowed to remain in filth and rags, covered with vermin that made repulsive sores upon him, while the little dauphin was but a half starved ragamuffin. One of the physicians discovered in what state Charles was: he had refused to bathe or to change his clothes for five months, and there was danger of his dying from sheer filth. Disguising some of his attendants in fearful costumes, the physician sent them into the mad king's den, where they terrified him into passivity and managed to bathe him, dress his sores, and change his clothes before the fit of terror passed away. When Charles next had a lucid interval he learned of the neglect of Isabeau, thanked those who had been more tender than his wife, and gave one lady, who had tried to care for the dauphin, a goblet of gold.
The indignation of the people was great; all classes united in abhorrence of this shameless wife and mother. An Austin friar, bolder than the rest, preached a sermon before Isabeau and openly reproved her wantonness: "At your court reigns dame Venus, and her waiting maids are Lechery and Gormandise." The queen and her idle and vicious courtiers wished him punished for his effrontery; but Charles, hearing what he had said, declared that he liked such sermons, sent for the preacher, listened with interest and attention to his recital of the woes of the kingdom, projected reforms--and went mad again.
While the fit of reform was on, Louis d'Orléans, terrified by a storm that had overtaken him and Isabeau in one of their pleasure-jaunts, vowed to repent and pay his debts. At these glad tidings over eight hundred creditors assembled; but the clouds rolled away, and with them went Louis's desire to be honest. He laughed at the creditors and gave secret orders to debase the coinage.
The poor king was just sane enough to realize that things were going wrong; he appealed for help to the Duke of Burgundy. The vigorous and pitiless Jean Sans Peur, who had succeeded Philippe le Hardi in Burgundy, came down upon Paris, and Isabeau fled with Orléans to Melun, abandoning Charles, but planning to carry off next day the royal children and those of the Duke of Burgundy. Jean de Bourgogne, however, overtook the children and brought them back to Paris, where he now (August, 1405) established himself in the Louvre.
So outrageous had been the spoliation under Isabeau and Louis that the Parisians welcomed Jean as a deliverer. The queen, under cover of a pretended right to appropriate goods for royal uses, had systematically not only taken the necessaries of life, provisions and the like, but had seized merchandise, jewels, money stored away by the owners, and furniture, plundering even the hospitals, and storing these stolen goods with the intention of selling them at auction. Greed was her predominating trait, and so we are not surprised to find her hatred of Jean Sans Peur increasing to the point of virulence when she was deprived of the opportunity of robbing unmolested. Unfortunately for her, Orléans was not a man of ability or energy sufficient to cope successfully with Jean de Bourgogne, and the struggle between the two dukes merely exhausted the resources of Orléans without seriously impairing those of his opponent. Isabeau, moreover, was not bloodthirsty; both her indolence and her interest impelled her to favor the peace between the two dukes which was brought about in the closing months of 1407.
Louis was ill; in mere kindness his cousin of Burgundy visited him, and a reconciliation was effected. As soon as Louis was recovered from his indisposition the two, accompanied by the old Duke de Berri, who was anxious to promote peace, heard mass and took communion together, swearing fraternal love for each other. This was on Sunday, November 27, 1407. On the next Wednesday evening Louis d' Orléans went as usual to sup with Isabeau at the Hotel Barbette, and was in particularly high spirits, attempting to divert the queen, who had been much distressed at the birth of a stillborn child, a love child, as people said. About eight o'clock in the evening, a message, apparently from the king, summoned Louis, and as he went in response to the summons, accompanied by but a few pages and servants, he was set upon and hacked to pieces in the streets of Paris by a gang of ruffians under one Raoul d'Octonville.
The assassins made good their escape before people knew what had happened. When the death of the king's brother was discovered, great was the consternation; for all knew that such a crime had not been committed by an obscure scoundrel, and the question was asked, what great man had hired the assassins? In a few days Jean de Bourgogne, in a mood between terror and impudent bravado, confessed that he was guilty of the foul murder of the man to whom he had so recently sworn amity in the sight of God. Fearing that even his rank could not sufficiently shield him from punishment for this shedding of the blood royal, Jean fled from Paris to his own dominions.
The dead man had been neither a good brother nor a good prince; with all of those facile graces which might have made him lovable to all men and did make him fascinating to most women he had combined no sterling qualities. He was not cruel; that is the only relatively good trait--and even that but negative--that we can set over against his reckless frivolity and licentiousness, his shameless infidelity and disregard of oaths and the most sacred obligations. He was not mourned in Paris, which was shocked but not grieved at his death; he was not sincerely mourned by the infamous queen whom he had led away from her duty to her pitiful, insane husband; but he was mourned by the woman whom he had most deeply wronged--his wife.
This wife was the lovely Italian, Valentine Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan, who had married Louis in 1389 and was a sharer in the splendors of the gorgeous entry of Isabeau de Bavière into Paris. From the first she had just cause of complaint--and yet never complained--of the infidelity of a husband whom she loved with her whole heart, but whose love she could not retain. Froissart, who was no friend of hers, tells us a most curious and extraordinary story of one of Valentine's rivals, whom Louis had preferred to his wife as early as 1392. It appears that Louis d'Orléans had rashly confided the details of an amour to that Pierre de Craon whom we have mentioned before, and this knight revealed them to Valentine. The young duchess sent at once for the lady to whom Louis was devoting himself: "Wilt thou do me wrong with my lord, my husband?" The woman was abashed, and in her confusion confessed her guilt. Then said Valentine: "Thus it is: I am informed that my lord loveth you, and you him, and the matter is so far gone between you that in such a place and at such a time he promised you a thousand crowns of gold to be his paramour; howbeit, you did refuse it as then, wherein you did wisely, and therefore I pardon you; but I charge you on your life that you commune nor talk no more with him, but suffer him to pass and hearken no more to his commanding." From the treatment he received at the next meeting with his lady-love, Louis discovered that something was amiss, and she finally told him of the interview with Valentine. Louis then went home to his wife, "and showed her more token of love than ever he did before," finally wheedling her into telling him who had been the talebearer. The sequel we know: how Craon was driven from court, and returned to attempt the assassination of De Clisson.
But if her husband did not love her, the king manifested a real and innocent affection for Valentine, his "dear sister," remembering her and asking for her when, in his madness, he knew no other. Yet even out of this there was to come evil for Valentine; for the Duchess of Burgundy, fearing the growth of the Orléans influence over the king, spread evil reports about the innocent relations between Charles and Valentine. Adding to these insinuations an accusation far more dangerous than that of adultery would have been in such a court, the Burgundians asserted that the king's insanity was produced and continued by the power of witchcraft; and this accusation, fastened upon Valentine, obtained such credit that her husband had to remove her from court to a sort of exile in his own dominions. We find even worse accusations credited by the unsympathetic Froissart, who reports that she had unwittingly poisoned her own child in an attempt to poison the dauphin, for "this lady was of high mind, envious and covetous of the delights and state of this world. Gladly she would have seen the Duke her husband attain to the crown of France, she had not cared how."
Through good report and evil report the poor duchess had lived on, loving her husband and leading a life at least far more regular than that of the court, though she possessed the Italian love of the artistic and the beautiful and was very extravagant. The king, now often idiotic when he was not raving, had been turned completely against her. To amuse and distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the Duke of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and mistress. To the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now succeeded Odette. She was little more than a child, but she became mistress as well as playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (filia cujusdam mercatoris equorum daughter of a certain horse dealer), she wears in court history a name better than that she was born to, Odette de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the mad king, called her "la petite reine." She was happy, it seems, and kind to the king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than was quite pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in later years when Burgundy and England were leagued together, but is said to have used her influence over the king rather for France than for Burgundy. Of her we know little more than that she died about 1424, leaving a daughter whose legitimacy was recognized by Charles VII., and who was honorably married to a petty gentleman of Poitou.
When the handsome, elegant, but unfaithful Louis was murdered, Valentine was at Blois with her children; the eldest was but sixteen, old enough to feel the loss, but not old enough to avenge it. But Valentine determined to avenge her husband; her grief gave her energy. She came at once to Paris with her youngest son and her daughter-in-law, that Isabelle de France who was already a widow from the death of Richard II., and now affianced to the young Duke d'Orléans. The king, sane at the time, was inexpressibly shocked by the murder of his brother, and was moved to tears when Valentine came before him to demand justice upon the murderer. He promised to act, and probably really meant what he said, but his mind was not capable of sustained effort. Jean de Bourgogne was making active preparations for a descent upon Paris with a retinue so formidable in numbers as to be an army; and Valentine retired to Blois, to bide her time. Jean, hardly opposed by Isabeau or any of the few who might be supposed either to exercise some authority or to sympathize with the Orléans faction, came to Paris, boldly hired lawyers and quibbling theologians to justify the "death which he had inflicted upon the person of the Duke d'Orléans," and made the poor madman who was king issue letters patent declaring that he, the king, "took out of his heart all displeasure against his very dear and well-beloved cousin of Burgundy for having put out of the world his brother of Orléans."