Isabelle despatched a notable embassy to greet her uncle the Emperor, and at the same time to crave his sympathy and help. A very favourable reply came quickly back to Nancy, and with the returning Lorraine envoys travelled two Chamberlains of the Imperial Court, sent by the Emperor to escort René to Basel. Sigismund furthermore cited the Comte de Vaudémont to appear before him and state his case. A most patient hearing was granted by His Majesty to the arguments of the victorious Count, but on April 24 Sigismund ascended the imperial throne in the Cathedral of Basel, and there solemnly gave his judgment. He decreed that René was lawful Duke of Lorraine, that he should not be required to return to prison, and that further grace should be allowed for the payment of the ransom.

With scant reverence for the sacred edifice, and with much discourtesy to the Emperor and the dignitaries who sat with him as assessors,—the Papal Legate and the Patriarch of Constantinople,—Vaudémont indignantly refused to accept the imperial ruling, and demanded the immediate payment of the 20,000 saluts d’or or the prompt return of Duke René to Bracon. Duchess Isabelle, who had courageously accompanied her husband, fell upon her knees before their stern, irreconcilable enemy, and pleaded with him to extend knightly magnanimity towards his prisoner. No! Vaudémont would have the duchy or René’s money or his person. René, gently raising his loving spouse, led her from the scene, and then, tenderly embracing her, he returned to where he had left Vaudémont scowling. “See,” said he, “here I am: take me at once to Dijon.” Before leaving the Imperial Court the Emperor beckoned to him, and, directing him to kneel, formally invested him with the temporalities of the duchy of Lorraine, and upon Isabelle he bestowed with the Papal benediction the honour of the “Golden Rose.”

Torn from the bosom of his family once more, René bore his misfortune like a man, and Isabelle rose superior to her trouble. Their noble bearing gained further the respect and good-will of all the Sovereigns and peoples of Europe, whilst the spleen and meanness of Vaudémont rendered him odious everywhere. René submitted obediently to the newly-imposed discipline. He beguiled his time by adorning the walls and windows of his chamber with sketches and paintings. What a thousand pities it is that none of those treasures have been preserved! Alas! France has suffered more than any other land from the suicidal tendencies of her people. Over and over again national passion has swept away works of art and historical memorials. King René’s frescoes have, with the fortress of Bracon, wholly disappeared. Music, too, and poetry, formed for him consolations. He composed ballades, he sang songs, sacred and profane. He played the viol and zither, and so whiled away some of the tedium of his captivity. “Les Chroniques de Lorraine,” note that “il a sçu la musique, et marier la voix aulx doulx accents d’un luth, gémissant sous ses doigts.”[A]

At Bracon was the Duke of Burgundy’s splendid library, to which René was freely admitted. There he studied painstakingly classical works in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

Cut off as he was entirely from intercourse with his family, friends, and subjects, at times he gave way to melancholy, and regarded himself as unjustly treated by Providence. He craved to behold his children, and this longing was assuaged by the chivalrous consideration of the Duke of Burgundy, who permitted the little Princes Jean and Louis to visit their unhappy father in his prison.

II.

The years 1434 and 1435 were full of tragic happenings for René and Isabelle. Death claimed three important personages near of kin. All Lorraine mourned the saintly Duchess Margaret. She died in her devoted daughter’s arms during the feast of Pentecost, and they buried her beside her consort, Charles II., in the ducal tomb at St. George-by-the-Gate. Her quiet influence had been all for good, both upon her children’s account and upon the morals of the Court and nation. She could, as we have seen, act the heroine as well as the devotee. Isabelle missed her mother’s goodly counsels more than she could express in words. René’s greatest loss was undoubtedly his brother, Louis III., King of Sicily-Anjou and Naples. This bereavement wholly changed the position and prospects of the Bar-Lorraine ducal family; for Louis dying without surviving issue, all his honours, titles, and dominions, were inherited by his next brother, René.

This event, and what it meant for René, were the climax of his career. The proclamation of the new King was a tragedy and a travesty combined. The pathos of his position was emphatic. The news stunned him—powerless and wellnigh nerveless, hopeless and wellnigh demented. He had not regained his equanimity, when the mockery of his fate was borne still more cruelly upon him in the intelligence that reached him on February 2, 1435, in the Tour de Bar, of the demise of Queen Giovanna II., whose will named him her successor as King of Naples.

Louis died of fever at Cosenza, the capital of Calabria, on November 15, 1434, lamented by his enemies as well as by his friends. His devoted mother was not with him. She was broken-hearted at the news which reached her at Angers. Alas that so gallant a soldier-King should be cut off so suddenly and so prematurely in the first bloom of his manhood! Cast down with grief unspeakable and mute, his girl-wife—still a bride—Marguerite, consoled his last hours. No child had come to bless their union, and the palpitating passion of the honeymoon was naturally cooling. The stress, too, of martial movements separated all too soon and too frequently the bridal couple. Still, Queen Marguerite ministered tenderly to her sick spouse, and her love burst forth in undiminished fervency as she realized that death would so cruelly part them. Very nobly and unselfishly, Louis in his will,—very strangely, made exactly to the day a year before,—required all honour to be paid to his widow, for his sake as well as for her own, and left her the bulk of his private property—alas! greatly diminished by the expenses of his military campaigns. Moreover, he expressly directed that she should be free to go where she would,—if not to Anjou, then to her home again in Savoy,—and he besought her, “for the love she bore him, not to pine away in sadness, but to choose some good man and marry him, for the relief of nature and for the love of God.”

Marguerite buried Louis with the burial of a King, and built a monument to his memory in the cathedral, and she directed that the sword of Lancelot, the British knight whom Louis had unhorsed at tilt and slain, should be suspended over the royal burying-place. Then she speeded back to her father’s Court, not adventuring herself at Naples, where Queen Giovanna lay a-dying. Good and true wife that she was, she kept her sorrow silently and unaffectedly for twelve long years, and then she married another Louis—Louis IV., Duke of Bavaria. Short was again this second union, for after another two years’ widowhood she married, for a third time, Ulric VII., Count of Würtemberg, in 1452. At Stuttgart, after so many tragic changes, Queen-Duchess-Countess Marguerite settled down, and lived seventeen years in peace and happiness, drawing her last breath upon the very day of November, the 15th, which had witnessed the marriage vows of Louis III. and herself just thirty-six years before.

Duchess Isabelle de Lorraine, now Queen of Sicily-Anjou and Naples, with her accustomed promptitude, despatched a messenger to the King in prison, announcing her instant departure for Naples. She sapiently understood that her presence in Italy was essential if the crown of Naples was to rest securely upon her husband’s head. She would receive the allegiance of the Neapolitans in his name, and administer the government as his Lieutenant-General. On November 28 she left Nancy with her second son, Louis, Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson, and travelled post-haste into Provence. Again her presence kindled the most enthusiastic expressions of commiseration for the lot of the King and Count, and of devotion to his person and to herself. Men and money poured in upon her. She welcomed all, and accepted gratefully everybody’s contribution.

From Marseilles the Queen and her following sailed to Genoa, where the Doge and the nobles gave her a right royal reception, and volunteered help and amity. Thence to Milan the intrepid traveller took her way, where she gained over the Duke, and he made René’s cause his own. In Rome, Pope Eugenius IV. blessed her and her son, and conjured all the Italian States to lend their aid. Her arrival at Naples was so entirely unexpected by the Alfonsists that they were not only checkmated in their attempt on King René’s inheritance, but were thrown into a panic, from which they were unable to rally.

The Neapolitans of every grade and class welcomed their new Queen and her five great galleys, filled with the flower of Provence, Milan, and Genoa, with every manifestation of joy and loyalty. Her charms of person transported them, her intrepidity roused them, and her gracious words delighted them. The old love of Naples for the House of Anjou returned, and every adherent of the Spanish King was cast out. Queen Isabelle had very soon more serious work in hand than graciously acknowledging the salutations of the enthusiastic citizens. King Alfonso was at the gates of Naples with a strong force on land and sea. She in person assumed command of the loyal troops in the capital, appointed trusty commanders, and placed Naples in a good state of defence. Besieged rigorously by the Spanish army, the Queen directed sorties which were perfectly successful, and the enemy retreated to a more respectful distance. In one of these affrays, Dom Pedro, brother of the King of Aragon, was slain, and Queen Isabelle, with a spirit of chivalry worthy of a noble knight and a magnanimous Sovereign, offered his dead body royal sepulchral rites in the cathedral.

During Queen Isabelle’s absence from Lorraine, King René named their eldest son, Jean, now Duke of Calabria,—the traditional title of the heir to the throne of Naples,—as his Lieutenant-General in Barrois and Lorraine, child though he was, not yet ten years old. Nominally he was placed under the tutelage and guardianship of Queen Yolande, who made a progress to Nancy to assist in carrying out her son’s command, and to look after the two little “orphaned” girls, Yolande and Marguerite, her granddaughters. Most prudently she abstained, as might have been expected from her high-toned character, from interfering in any affairs of State in these two eastern duchies of her son’s dominions. Four high officials she selected to direct the policy of the palace and safeguard the crown, all men of proven probity and loyal disinterestedness, and to them she, by René’s wish, delegated the actual charge of the young Duke: Jehan de Fenestranger, Grand Marshal; Gerard de Harancourt, Seneschal; Jacques de Harancourt, Bailli or Mayor of Nancy; and Philippe de Lenoncourt, tutor to the young Princes.

Queen Yolande having seen all these matters settled, and having named Anne, Countess of Vaudémont, governante of the two young Princesses, she took her departure to Provence and Marseilles, there to await the course of events in Naples. The appointment of a Vaudémont must have struck most people as extraordinary. The Countess was mother of the implacable Count Antoine, and it was due to Queen Yolande’s remarkable foresightedness that she was chosen. She saw the perils ahead caused by the number and dispersion of the dominions of the crowns unfortunate King René had not yet put upon his head. It appeared to her that Naples and Sicily would be the chief appanage, and require the presence of the Sovereign almost continuously. Anjou and Provence might fall to the government of René’s second son, and then Bar and Lorraine would go to his daughters, perhaps upon their marriage. Vaudémont would never relax his efforts to gain Lorraine. Might not a matrimonial alliance between a son of his and a granddaughter of her own, thought the Queen, solve amicably and profitably a very vexed question?

All the while that Queen Isabelle was holding Naples for her consort and keeping Alfonso of Aragon in check, nothing was neglected which might hasten the release of the royal captive. With commendable astuteness Isabelle made overtures to her namesake Isabelle, Duchess of Burgundy, and her efforts were seconded on the spot by Queen Yolande. Isabelle of Portugal was in disposition and tastes very much like the late lamented Duchess of Lorraine—much affected by religion, by charity, by pity. The separation of the King of Sicily-Anjou and Naples from his family, and the sorrows of his Queen, appealed to her womanly sympathy. She talked long and well to Duke Philippe, and at last succeeded in gaining his signature to a decree of pardon and an order of release for the distinguished captive. Under her persuasion the amount of the ransom was halved, and René’s liberty was unlimited.

King René of Sicily-Anjou and Naples was set free from durance vile at Bracon on November 25, 1436. No doubt this achievement was greatly due to the urgent pressure of all the Sovereigns of France, headed by King Charles VII.; indeed, the Duke of Burgundy had hardly any choice in the matter, for Arthur de Richemont, brother of the Duke of Brittany and Constable of France, who was the bearer of the united royal protest, gave him plainly to understand that the retention of René at Bracon would mean the immediate invasion and devastation of the duchy.

René went off at once to Nancy and Bar-le-Duc, there to be welcomed by his subjects and to thank personally his many warm friends and helpers. After embracing his children, he hurried on to Angers, where Queen Yolande greeted him tenderly and made him rest and refresh himself. She had been busy, as was her wont, in more matrimonial adventures, and now she broached the subject of the betrothal of the young Duke of Calabria, her eldest grandson. The bride she had chosen for him, with Queen Isabelle’s approval, was the Princess Marie, a daughter of the Duke of Bourbon, a little motherless girl who had been under her care for some time. She was a granddaughter of King John II. the Good, and niece and ward of the Duke of Burgundy, who dowered her with 50,000 écus d’or.

There was, however, not much time for King René to waste in festivities. He set off to thank King Charles, the Duke of Brittany, and all the other friendly Princes who had so greatly aided his deliverance. Then he hastened by water,—the usual method of quick transit,—down to his favourite Provence, where the transports of delight with which he was welcomed surpassed all former demonstrations. He wanted men and money,—and Provence was never backward in contributions for her Count,—for his next move was to be to Naples, to embrace his noble Queen and relieve her of her heavy responsibilities.

The usual course was taken by the royal galley. Genoa was the rendezvous, as of old. The Genoese gave their visitor a splendid reception. His romantic career had greatly affected them, and now that they beheld his gracious person their delight knew no bounds. Never had a royal visitor such an ovation in Liguria. The famous Tommaso Fregoso, the Doge, lodged him in the Ducal Palace, the streets were wreathed in spring greenery, and all the maids and matrons of the proud city combed out their rich brown, lustrous locks of hair, jauntily fixed their white lace veils with jewelled pins, and put on their best attire and massive chains of gold. At the entrance of the Piazza di San Lorenzo one hundred of the fairest of the fair scattered flowers before King René’s white steed of state, and six of the prettiest and the noblest were dedicated to his personal wish and disposition. This indeed was a Scriptural and a patriarchal custom, but always duly observed in decorous and sensuous Genoa. But again pleasure had to give way to business, and King René had the satisfaction of sailing out of that famous harbour followed by a goodly flotilla of fighting ships well found.

René was received at Naples tumultuously as lawful King and Sovereign. Mounted on a great black charger, crowned and habited in cloth of gold and covered with the royal mantle of state of crimson velvet and ermine, the sword of St. Januarius in his hand, he rode through people, flowers, banners, and huzzahs, right into the nave of the cathedral; there Queen Isabelle received her consort exultingly, and with him knelt lowly for the benediction of the Mass. That day marked an amazing contrast in the fortunes of two men—King René, the prisoner of Bracon, seated upon the ancient throne of Naples, and King Alfonso, the conqueror of Aragon, pacing uneasily his prison chamber at Milan!

The reunion of the royal couple was a happy thing indeed, so often parted had they been and so sadly. Isabelle had acted the part of a good woman and a faithful spouse despite splenetic insinuations to the contrary. Her position had been most trying in anxious times, and among ill-disposed aspirants for her favour. She knew intuitively who to trust of those that expressed themselves most devoted to her service, and no one ever was more zealously preoccupied with the interest of her friends than she. Now came the time to award honours to the faithful and the true, and King René deputed his Queen to bestow the royal favours. The first to profit by the new dispensation was, naturally, the widowed Queen Margaret, who after the burial of her consort, King Louis III., had sought refuge in Naples, under the sheltering wing of her royal sister-in-law. Still resplendent in her beauty and possessed of every youthful grace, the young Queen was the object of deep solicitude and affection.

The condition of the Two Sicilies was parlous; almost every commune was divided against itself on the subject of the succession to the throne, and almost daily were recorded deeds of cruelty and aggression, pointing to the outbreak of serious hostilities all over the dual kingdom. The blue and white ensign of Anjou and the red and yellow banner of Aragon were reared, not in friendly contest, but in deadly feud. Under these circumstances René judged it expedient for the Queen and their little son Louis to go back to France, and Queen Margaret refused to be separated from her sympathetic sister-in-law. It was a pang to both again so soon to part, but rulers of States are not like ordinary mortals; for public duties must take precedence of private interests. Isabelle’s brief rule at Naples had done wonders in the way of conciliation, and Étienne Pasquier did not exaggerate her virtues when he wrote: “Cette vraye Amazone, que dans un corps de femme portoit un cœur d’homme, fist tant d’actes généraux pendant la prisonment de son mari, que ceste pièce este enchassée en lettres d’or dedans les annales de Lorraine.” All Naples shed tears at their beloved Queen’s departure. Margaret they hardly knew, but the last Queen they had known, Giovanna, was hated quite as thoroughly as Isabelle was adored.

The galley bearing back to Marseilles those whom he most loved had hardly passed beyond the horizon of the Bay of Naples when René took action. On September 22 an Anjou herald appeared in the camp of King Alfonso, and threw down King René’s bloodstained glove as a challenge, first to a personal encounter between the two Kings, and then to a combat à l’outrance between the two armies. On the part of Alfonso, who was on his way from his Milan prison, the challenge was accepted by his chief of the staff, who indicated the locality for the trials of chivalry and force,—the level country between Nola and Arienzo, at the foot of Vesuvius. Single combat was denied by Alfonso, and then René attacked his rival with all the forces at his command. Numerically again, as at the stricken field of Bulgneville, the Angevine army was much the stronger, for under René’s banner marched the Milan-Genoese contingent, with Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, at its head. René’s fleet, too, was at anchor in the bay, commanded by the intrepid Admiral Jehan de Beaufort, to act in conjunction with the land forces of his King. The Spanish army was better disciplined and better furnished with artillery, and King René once more had to bow to circumstances, and to look in vain for Fortune’s smile. His forces were cut in two and slaughtered right and left, and he himself wounded and all but captured, for he was not a leader to skulk behind his men: he led the van, and was ever in the thick of the fight. His appeal, “Anjou-Cecile! Amor Chevaliers!” was of no avail. He was beaten, and fled with only two knights, and shut himself in Castel Nuovo. A truce was signed, and the King of Naples went off to report his defeat at Rome, Florence, and Genoa.

King René was called from his grief over the tomb of his young son to Tours by Charles of France. To the French Court had come Ambassadors, with the Earl of Suffolk at their head, to treat for peace between the two conflicting kingdoms. The French King, with his usual lassitude, deputed to King René the conduct of the deliberations, which ended honourably for all parties concerned, in the guarantee of two years’ cessation of hostilities, with the acknowledgment of in statu quo. Nearer home, however, matters were not so stable; the state of the allied duchies was deplorable. So insecure were the roads in Lorraine,—infested by wandering bands of discontented peasantry and ill-affected townspeople,—that travelling was attended with the utmost danger. The higher the dignity of a wayfarer, the greater the eagerness to attack and pilfer. Queen Isabelle was herself the victim of a dastardly outrage. Journeying forth soon after her dear son Louis’s death, to pray at his grave at Pont-à-Mousson, her cortège was attacked by a party of marauders from Metz. They compelled her to leave her litter, with its cloth of gold curtains and luxurious cushions, and subjected her to rough treatment in spite of her protestations.

“You villains!” she cried, “you know perfectly who I am. How dare you offer this gross insult to your Sovereign! Begone, and let me pass. You shall richly pay for your temerity.” Jeers and offensive remarks greeted this haughty command. They cared nothing for Isabelle nor her consort; indeed, they were unrighteous allies of the Count of Vaudémont. The Duchess was stripped of her jewellery, her coffrets were rifled, and her servants beaten, and then the miscreants made off.

The Queen hastily returned to Nancy, and laid the matter before the Council, demanding satisfaction. “Unless you, my lords,” she said, “at once make a strong representation to the Governor of Metz, I will set off to Anjou, and bring the King back to recompense the miscreants.” All the chivalry of France was shocked at this amazing outrage, and King Charles, with Arthur de Richemont and a strong force, hurried into Lorraine from Dauphiné, determined to make an example of the gross behaviour of the Messins. The city barricaded her gates, sounded the tocsin, and prepared to resist, if might be, the united forces of France. The besieged held out for six months, flinging taunt on taunt against the King and Queen. At last it fell, and the price the rebels had to pay was onerous, besides the forfeiture of all their charters and privileges. A general amnesty was granted on February 27, 1445, in Barrois as well as in Lorraine. The Messins signalized their deliverance by offering to their liege Lord complete allegiance, together with 25,000 écus d’or enclosed in a splendid gold and enamelled vase.

René now for the first time in his thirty years of public service and command found himself in the possession of that rare blessing, Peace, and he prepared to celebrate it adequately. Isabelle, too, was only too thankful for the respite; her sorrows and anxieties had wellnigh broken her courageous heart. After she parted with her husband in the Bay of Naples, she landed at Marseilles, and made all haste to Angers, too late, indeed, to soothe the last moments of her noble mother-in-law, but drawn there by the tranquillity of Anjou. There she gave herself to the education of her two young daughters, to whom she was happily reunited—Marguerite just thirteen, and Yolande a year younger. René again joined his spouse, whom he loved so fondly, and in whose honour he had adopted a new royal motto and cipher, “Ardent Désir,” below a burning brasier. They gave themselves up to religious exercises, and led a calm and retired life—precious to them both after the alarums of the past. The world was still very young for them both—René no more than thirty-seven, and Isabelle two years his junior.

The most delightful ingredient in their full cup of joy was the home-coming of their son and heir, Prince Jean, Duke of Calabria and Lieutenant-General of Barrois-Lorraine. During eleven strenuous years he and his devoted parents had rarely met. He had zealously, after their brave example, addressed himself to his public duties, and had won golden opinions from the loyal subjects of the throne. He was nearing his majority, and with him came his young wife Marie, whose marriage had been but lately accomplished. They were stepping bravely together along the marital way, which their grandparents and their parents had traversed, unscathed by scandal and beloved by all.

Great festivities were organized at Angers, Tarascon, and Nancy, to celebrate the general peace, and in particular the betrothal of Princess Marguerite d’Anjou. A magnificent tournament was held between Razilly and Chinon in the summer of 1446, which attracted all the most famous knights in France and beyond the frontiers and an immense crowd of spectators. One there was, and she one of the fairest of the fair, came riding beside her father, one of King René’s dearest friends, Count Guy de Laval; and the King for the first time set eyes upon lovely Jehanne, who was destined to mingle her destiny with his right on to his dying day. René caused “Le Châtel de Joyeuse Garde” to be built of wood richly adorned with paintings, tapestries, and garlands, and for forty days jousts and floral games engaged the attention of the gallant and beauteous company. A very singular and popular custom was inaugurated at the King’s suggestion. Four knights of proved probity crossed their lances in the roadway beyond the Castle of Chinon. Cavaliers, accompanied by their ladies fair, were made to fight their way through and carry safe their sweethearts. A faint heart lost his lady, a knight unhorsed his horse, and a victorious competitor his sash of knighthood, which was immediately tied to the crupper of his fair one’s palfrey. The King himself took his place in the “Lists” in black armour; his mantle was of black velvet sewn with silver lilies of Anjou, and his well-trained charger was black also. Queen Isabelle and her ladies occupied a flower-decked tribune, and with her was poor young Queen Marguerite and her son’s child-wife, Marie. They were the Queens of the Tournament, but the damosel Jehanne de Laval was “Queen of Beauty,” scarce thirteen years old.

Alas! a deadly “bolt shot out of the blue.” The Duchess of Calabria had but just risen from childbed; she was not strong enough to bear the excitement and the toil of such tumultuous gaiety, and upon the last day of the tournament she fainted in the royal tribune, and breathed out her brief life before she could be borne to couch. Thus into life’s sweetest joys comes sadly too often the relentless bitterness of sorrow. Faces which only a few short hours before were wreathed in smiles were furrowed with the ravages of grief ere the curfew sounded. The tournament ended in a “Triumph of the Black Buffaloes.” Happily, perhaps, the child died too, and both sweet bodies were consigned to one flower-decked grave in the chapel garden of the Castle of Saumur,—“la gentille et la bien assise,”—a paradise of fragrant trees and pleasant prospects.

Dire news, too, reached Angers from Provence. A winter of unparalleled inclemency was followed by a famine and a pest, which decimated people and domestic animals, and wrought havoc with the crops. René and Isabelle took boat once more for their southern province, and their “le bon roy,” as he was now called affectionately by his subjects, laid himself out to alleviate his people’s sufferings. Taxes were remitted, the poor fed and clothed, and farms restocked. “La bonté,” he said, “est la première grandeur des roys.” People noted the King’s grey hair—hair “white less by time than white through trouble,” as chroniclers have written. Trouble makes all the world akin: the King and Queen bore their people’s, and they humbly shared their rulers’ griefs.

The clouds cleared off that sunny land, and birds once more sang in the meadows, and men and maids were gay. Then it was Tarascon’s turn to celebrate the virtues of the Count and Countess of Provence. A Provençal tournament was a celebration ne plus ultra, and René made that of 1448 famous and unique by his institution of the knightly “Ordre du Croissant.” To be sure, it was established at Angers, whose warrior-patron, St. Maurice, was honoured as guardian and exemplar of chivalry, and in whose cathedral church the banners of the knights were hung. The King himself drew up the statutes of the Order. With characteristic and chivalrous modesty, he named, not himself First Master, but chose Guy de Laval for that honourable post. Conditions of membership were dictated by religion, courtesy, and charity, in harmony; only knights of goodly birth and unblemished reputation were eligible. They were enjoined to hear Mass daily and to recite the daily “Hours.” Fraternal love was to be exemplified in all dealings with their fellow-men at large. An impious oath or an indecent jest was never to pass their lips. Women and children were in a special sense committed to their care. The poor and ailing were to engage their best offices. Debts of every sort and gambling under every guise were absolutely forbidden. With respect to the fair sex, the code of rules had in golden letters the following order: “De ne mesdire des femmes de quelques estats quelles soient pour chose qui doibue d’advenir.” The knights first impanelled, having taken their oaths of obedience and accepted service, departed from Anjou, and made their rendezvous at the King’s Castle of Tarascon on August 11. René himself again entered the “Lists,” but champion honours were carried off by his son-in-law, Ferri de Vaudémont, and Louis de Beauvais; and the Queen-Countess Isabelle placed floral crowns upon their brows, a golden ring upon their right hands, and received a kiss of homage upon her still smooth and comely cheek.

Nancy was the scene of the most magnificent gaieties Lorraine had ever beheld. The espousals of the Princess Marguerite and King Henry VI. were solemnized in the ancient Gothic church of St. Martin at Pont-à-Mousson by Louis d’Harcourt, Bishop of Toul. The King was represented by the gallant Earl of Suffolk, one of the most famous Knights in Europe. The ecclesiastical ceremony was rendered all the more auspicious by the joint nuptials of the Princess Yolande and Count Ferri de Vaudémont. All France,—Sovereigns, ladies, nobles, citizens,—thronged around the King and Queen; their congratulations were, however, restrained until the actualities of the Vaudémont marriage were revealed. To marry a dear child to the son of a man’s worst enemy appeared quixotic at the least, and few called to mind that strange clause in René’s charter of release from Bracon. The King was, as Duke Philippe of Burgundy had styled him, a man of his word; and if proof were wanted, then the appointment of the young bridegroom’s mother, the Countess, as governante of René’s daughters furnished it. Besides this, the presence of the Count himself at the marriage of his son exhibited not only the reconciliation of the two rivals for the throne of Lorraine, but emphasized the innate chivalry of both. To be sure, Antoine de Vaudémont was in ill-health, his fighting days were over, and he was searching for comfort and absolution before he faced his end; and, in truth, that end was nearer than he thought, for he died six months after he had given his blessing to Ferri and Yolande.

A pretty and characteristic story is told of the loves of Ferri and Yolande. King René was wishful that his daughter and future son-in-law should attain more mature age before the consummation of Count Antoine’s wishes concerning them. The young knight, “who was,” wrote Martial, “regarded among men and youths much as Helen of Troy was among her companions,”—a very handsome fellow,—chafed at delay, and, emboldened by the vows of his fiancée, one dark, windy night he with two trusty comrades broke into her boudoir, where she, ready for the signal, awaited her lover. Romeo carried his Juliet away to Clermont in Argonne, and held her till her father consented to their marriage. This story is contained in an old manuscript, the handiwork of Louis de Grasse, the Sire of Mas.

Splendid fêtes covering eight full days followed the Church ceremonies. The “Lists” were held in the Grande Place of Nancy, in the presence of the right worshipful company, headed by Kings Charles and René and Queens Isabelle, Marie, and Margaret. Quaintly Martial d’Auvergne wrote in “Les Vigiles de Charles VII.”:

All the châtelaines forsook their manoirs and took the field-marital in force. Mars had come in strength, Venus would join the fray, and victory was never doubtful. If comely, gallant, doughty knights fell not in deathly conflict in those “Lists” of love, their hearts were captured by fair vanquishers all the same.

describes those battle-fields of Cupid’s warfare!

The pageantry of the tournament over, the panoply of the encampment claimed the knightly company of Nancy, and a mighty cavalcade—ladies, too, in litter and on palfrey—ambled off serenely to the great wide plains of Champagne, where René and Charles reviewed at Châlons-sur-Marne the united armies of all the crowns. It was a sight which stirred all the best blood in France, and spoke to her Sovereigns and her statesmen of a new age, when the artifices of war should give place to the arts of peace. Alas! when human things appear to promise peace and joy, there ever comes over the scene the pall of Providence. War again broke out between France and England, but now the French held their own and more; and King René, revived in military ardour, led the victorious vanguard, and crowned his bays of triumph by new palms of peace.

Sad news came to him, however, when in Normandy, from his ancestral Angers. His devoted and dearly loved Queen, Isabelle, was laid low with illness. Stalking fever had crossed the castle moat and fixed its baneful touch upon the royal châtelaine. Do what she would,—and her will to the end was vigorous enough,—she could not shake off the deadly visitant. She felt that her end was approaching unrelentlessly, and with admirable piety the noble, high-toned Queen controlled her pains, and patiently prepared herself to face her last foe with courageous resignation. Her children were gathered by her bedside—Jean and Yolande in person, Marguerite in spirit, and perhaps Louis, too, from his tomb at Pont-à-Mousson. Quietly and prayerfully on February 28, 1453, she passed away to join her babes in Paradise, and “Black Angers” was plunged in deepest mourning.

The death of a great Queen deeply affects men and women everywhere. Isabelle’s name, like that of “good Queen Yolande,” had become a household word in Europe far and wide. Everywhere tokens of bereavement were displayed, and King René, the royal widower, hastening home too late to close his fond wife’s eyes in death, wrote in his tablets: “Since the life of my dear, dear wife has been cut off by death, my heart has lost its love, for she was the mainspring of my consolations.” In every one of his “Livres des Heures,” and in other books and places, the artist in the Sovereign painted and drew the features and the figure of his Queen.

Their married life,—chequered as it had been,—had been as happy as could be. Devoted to one another with a rare force of faithfulness which knew no flaw, René and Isabelle were examples for their generation. No stone has ever been cast at either of them. Nine children were born to them: four, Charles, René, Anne, and Isabelle, died in infancy; Nicholas, their third son, was a twin with Yolande, born in 1428; he had the title of Duke of Bar, but died before his majority. Good Queen Isabelle was buried in the Cathedral of Angers, where nearly forty years later René’s bones were laid beside her ashes, to mingle in the common decay till the last trump shall sound to wake the dead.

There cannot be a better summing up of her gifts, her graces and her virtues than in the words of the sententious life’s motto she herself composed, and wrote in golden letters upon parchment, and gave to each of her dear children:

CHAPTER V
JEANNE D’ARC—“LA PUCELLE,” “LA BLANCHE REINE DE FRANCE”

Sieur Jacques was, as peasant farmers went, a man of substance and well connected. He had saved a goodly sum of money, and owned, perhaps, the biggest flock of sheep in the country-side. Milch cows and fattening oxen grazed his wide meadows. He was a man of probity, and had served the ancestral office of Maire of Domremy for many a year. Mère Isabelle excelled in stitchery as well as in the rearing of poultry and the cultivation of her fair garden plot. When about to be delivered of her youngest child, she dreamed three times that she should bear a girl, and that she should become famous in her country’s history. The narrative goes on to say that many unusual circumstances attended her child’s nativity: a fierce thunderstorm shook the dwelling, and mysterious voices uttered the strange cry: “Aux secours! aux secours de la France!”

Jeanne, the little daughter, was duly christened by the curé, and from her mother’s womb she was a child of dedication—St. Catherine and St. Margaret were her spiritual sponsors. Precocious from her weaning, both in physical growth and mental development, she grew up a devotee at Mass and shrine. She sought solitude and silence, and declined to share her playmates’ games. Other children thought her odd, and old crones shook their heads and pitied Sieur Jacques and his worthy spouse. Jeanne’s favourite resort was a thicket near her parents’ home,—Le Bois Chènus it was called,—an oak-wood grove where her father’s pigs greedily sought for acorns. The Bois had, however, a weird repute; it had been, centuries before, a sacrificial site of heathen worship, and the village folk avoided it at night, for they said they saw strange figures under the trees and heard strange sounds,—in fact, the wood was haunted.

The girl swooned as soon as her ghostly visitor had vanished, and so was found, and borne to her couch by her brothers in alarm. In delirium for days and nights, she kept on repeating what the archangel had said, until, amid broken-hearted sobs, her grieving parents counted her as mad. All the gossips of the village and those from more distant homes shook their heads sadly, and said more fervently their Ave Marias. Jeanne was not mad, and after she had recovered her usual demeanour she related to her doubting father and mother and the good curé her mysterious story. The good priest proposed to exorcise the evil spirit which he was convinced was in her. Her father,—a matter-of-fact sort of man, and serious-minded, like all the peasant-folk of France,—thought a good thrashing was her deserts; her mother sided with her: she remembered the strange cry at her Jeanne’s birth. Jeanne heard all they had to say, and kept silence, her protestations only adding fuel to the fire of denunciation. She resumed her usual avocations, but daily sat to hear the “Voices,” as she called her ghostly visitants, and daily they repeated their strange instructions. She spent much time upon her knees in the church, and at last the curé, good man, gave heed to her infatuation. “If this be from God,” he said to himself, “no man may stay her.” He wondered, naturally, how this quiet and devout village girl could ever be the Divine instrument for the deliverance of France.

Jeanne’s simplicity and sincerity, her earnestness and good behaviour, however, gradually silenced unfriendly critics; and although most folk regarded her as mad, many believed her story and watched developments. The strange revelation of the maid of Domremy travelled far and wide, and brought many a neighbour and many a stranger to question her. Among the rest came Sieur Durand Laxaert, her mother’s uncle by marriage—a man of means, too, and well known the country round. He questioned Jeanne, he questioned her parents, he questioned the village curé, and then he went off and told the amazing story to his friend, Chevalier Robert de Baudricourt, the Captain of Vaucouleurs, a market-town in Champagne, not far from Domremy. The gallant Captain listened attentively, but when the story was completed he burst out laughing. “Why, man,” said he, “you and all of them are crazy! Just go back and box the child’s ears soundly; that’s the way to treat this sort of nonsense.”

The matter dropped so far as the Chevalier was concerned, but again, in the following January, Sieur Laxaert approached Baudricourt, and asked him to see his young niece. He consented, and Jeanne, wearing her coarse red homespun kirtle and heavy wooden shoes and her village girl’s coif, was introduced to the unbelieving Captain. He was dumbfounded by her appearance, for the lass was no village hoyden. Her figure was slender, her features refined; her great brown eyes,—staring into his face,—told only of simple faith and untarnished honour. Her voice was low and sweet, and there was a something eerie and incomprehensible about her which struck the good man, and made him feel uncomfortable. When he asked her what she wanted, she promptly replied: “I want to be led to the King of France.”

“My child,” de Baudricourt replied, “that I cannot do; but, if you wish, I will willingly take you to Nancy, and lead you to the Duke, your sovereign lord and mine. Prepare yourself at once for the journey.”

Amid the tears and protests of her parents and her friends Jeanne started, as she was, upon her eventful pilgrimage. At St. Nicholas de Pont,—a little town two leagues from Nancy,—she asked to be allowed to spend three hours in devotions in the church. When she reappeared, her face was wet with tears, and her long brown hair hung dishevelled over her shoulders. She did not seem to care. Her gaze was heavenward, and the only words she uttered were: “En avant!” With Sieur Laxaert was a comrade, a young man, Jehan de Novelonpont, better known as Jehan de Metz, of good birth and knightly carriage. He offered Jeanne his sword. She touched the hilt, and, smiling sadly, said: “Alas! young sir, that blade will be required erelong to slay thy country’s foes and God’s.” Thus they entered the capital of Lorraine.

Duke Charles received his strange visitor somewhat reluctantly. He was a man of shrewd common-sense, intolerant of superstition, and impatient of feminine assumptions—as his consort, Duchess Marguerite, learnt to her undoing. He asked curtly about her home and her occult powers, and jokingly invoked her aid in the cure of gout, to which he was martyr, and from which he was then suffering acutely. “This,” said he, “shall be the test of your pretensions to save France. Remove my pain, and I will take you to the King.” Jeanne shed tears, and, straightening out her rough woolsey skirt, she looked sadly up to heaven. At last she spoke: “Take me not, noble Duke, for a common jongleuse. First of all, noble Duke, I implore you to become reconciled to the Duchess, your wife; as for me, I am the unworthy instrument of God to set King Charles of France upon his throne and to scatter his enemies.” The Duke dismissed the maid with a wave of his hand. “Take her away,” he said; “be kind to her; maybe I will see her again shortly.” “Jeanne,” he added, “in a day or two you shall tell your tale before some noble lords.”

All over Lorraine and Barrois internecine war was rife; noble rose against noble, and yeoman and peasant joined the fray. The most serious was the rivalry of René, the young Duke of Bar, and Antoine, Count of Vaudémont, concerning the rights of succession to the dukedom of Lorraine. Metz, into which de Vaudémont had thrown himself, was invested by the Barrois troops, splendidly led by the boy-warrior—he was but twenty years of age. A messenger from Charles requested a truce, and invited both commanders to join him at Nancy to take counsel with their peers upon the strange claims of a shepherd-girl from Domremy. With Duke René rode a score of knights and nobles; Count Antoine was accompanied by a like company. Upon the morrow of their arrival at the capital, Duke Charles assembled them and others in the great courtyard of the castle, and sent for Jeanne, who, still attired in her peasant garb, knelt at his feet and kissed his hand. Then she surveyed the assembly furtively, as though prepared for insult or worse, and quietly repeated her strange story amid general scoffs and impatience. One noble knight alone gave serious heed,—René, Duke of Bar. Duke Charles taunted her with her inability to mount a horse, much more to lead an army.

“Jeanne,” said he, “thou hast never bestridden a charger, thou canst not bear a lance!”

“Sire,” she replied, “mount me, and see if I cannot both ride and hold my own.”

A quiet palfrey,—the property of Duchess Marguerite,—was led into the courtyard by its groom, but Jeanne refused to mount. “Give me,” she demanded, “the charger of that Prince yonder,” pointing to René of Sicily-Anjou and Bar. The Prince lifted her into the saddle, and his gentleness, reverence, and good looks, differentiated him from the rest of that knightly assemblage.

“What is thy name, brave Prince?” she asked.

“René de Bar,” he said.

“What!” the Maid replied, “the noble Duke of Bar, the gallant son of good Queen Yolande of Anjou. You shall be my escort into France.”

With that she laid firm hold of the heavy lance, offered by a young esquire, placed it correctly in stay, and smartly gathered up the reins. Saluting Dukes Charles and René, she drove the heels of her wooden shoes into the horse’s sides, and dashed round and round the courtyard, the lance in position, and then out into the open. Astonishment marked each noble countenance, and then loud applause greeted this quite unexpected display; it enlisted to her cause most of the spectators, who had meant to cry down the girl’s ineptitude, but now were perfectly ready to follow her. With difficulty Jeanne reined in her mount, and slowly cantered into the courtyard again. Saluting in correct knightly fashion the Duke, her Sovereign, and beckoning René once more to her side, she dismounted with his help, rendered up her lance, and fell at Charles’s feet.

The Duke gently raised the palpitating, girlish form, and aloud exclaimed: “May God grant the accomplishment of thy desires! I see thou hast both courage and intelligence.” Jeanne then turned to René, and, laying her trembling hand upon his arm, looked up innocently but intently with her great brown eyes, into his open, truthful face, and said: “You, my Prince, will help me, I am sure. There is none other here in whom I know I can put my whole trust. You are like the blessed Michael who speaks to me and strengthens me. You are a Christian knight; you will lead me into France.” The Maid’s partiality for René de Bar gave rise, unworthily, to evil gossip with respect to their mutual relations. She was attracted to him by the tales of the country-side. Domremy was so near to the scenes of his military achievements in Lorraine that news of him and his prowess affected greatly the younger folk. The fact that he was the husband of their Princess Isabelle, “the Pride of Lorraine,” greatly added to his local fame.

The noble company at the castle moved into the hall of audience, and there Jeanne laid before them fully all her loyal aims—heaven-directed, as she said. She told them, too, the story of the “Voices,” and craved their assistance in her enterprise. “We will traverse France together,” she exclaimed, “until we find King Charles. We will crown him at Reims, and we will then cast out our country’s enemies. Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret, will protect us and our homes!”

This amazing speech by a young country girl roused general enthusiasm, and the mysterious magic of her voice and manner disarmed all opposition. Each belted knight drew forth his steely blade, and, tossing it on high, swore to be her henchman. “Vive la nostre Royne! à bas les Anglois!” they cried aloud together. These acclamations hurtled stridently through gallery, way-ward, and postern, and away they flew in increased volume past the portcullis, till every citizen in Nancy and the labourers in the fields around joined in the ecstatic chorus: “Vive la nostre Royne Jeanne!” Rich and poor, noble and simple, and the children, too, pressed into the castle precincts to catch a sight of the humble yet brave messenger of God, and perchance to touch her person or her dress, seeking infection from the virtue and valour which possessed her. Jeanne’s reception and recognition at Nancy Castle attained the proportions of a Bretagne pardon. Church-bells clanged for her, priests blessed her, and relics of saints were exposed with the Blessed Sacrament on her behalf.