Produced by David Widger
MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE
MEMOIRS OF MARGUERITE DE VALOIS
MEMOIRS OF MARGUERITE DE VALOIS QUEEN OF NAVARRE
Being Historic Memoirs of the Courts of France and Navarre
BOOK III.
HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF VALOIS.
[Author unknown]
CHARLES, COMTE DE VALOIS, was the younger brother of Philip the Fair, and
therefore uncle of the three sovereigns lately dead. His eldest son
Philip had been appointed guardian to the Queen of Charles IV.; and when
it appeared that she had given birth to a daughter, and not a son, the
barons, joining with the notables of Paris and the, good towns met to
decide who was by right the heir to the throne, "for the twelve peers of
France said and say that the Crown of France is of such noble estate that
by no succession can it come to a woman nor to a woman's son," as
Froissart tells us. This being their view, the baby daughter of Charles
IV. was at once set aside; and the claim of Edward III. of England, if,
indeed, he ever made it, rested on Isabella of France, his mother, sister
of the three sovereigns. And if succession through a female had been
possible, then the daughters of those three kings had rights to be
reserved. It was, however, clear that the throne must go to a man, and
the crown was given to Philip of Valois, founder of a new house of
sovereigns.
The new monarch was a very formidable person. He had been a great feudal
lord, hot and vehement, after feudal fashion; but he was now to show that
he could be a severe master, a terrible king. He began his reign by
subduing the revolted Flemings on behalf of his cousin Louis of Flanders,
and having replaced him in his dignities, returned to Paris and there
held high state as King. And he clearly was a great sovereign; the
weakness of the late King had not seriously injured France; the new King
was the elect of the great lords, and they believed that his would be a
new feudal monarchy; they were in the glow of their revenge over the
Flemings for the days of Courtrai; his cousins reigned in Hungary and
Naples, his sisters were married to the greatest of the lords; the Queen
of Navarre was his cousin; even the youthful King of England did him
homage for Guienne and Ponthieu. The barons soon found out their
mistake. Philip VI., supported by the lawyers, struck them whenever he
gave them opening; he also dealt harshly with the traders, hampering them
and all but ruining them, till the country was alarmed and discontented.
On the other hand, young Edward of England had succeeded to a troubled
inheritance, and at the beginning was far weaker than his rival; his own
sagacity, and the advance of constitutional rights in England, soon
enabled him to repair the breaches in his kingdom, and to gather fresh
strength from the prosperity and good-will of a united people. While
France followed a more restricted policy, England threw open her ports to
all comers; trade grew in London as it waned in Paris; by his marriage
with Philippa of Hainault, Edward secured a noble queen, and with her the
happiness of his subjects and the all-important friendship of the Low
Countries. In 1336 the followers of Philip VI. persuaded Louis of
Flanders to arrest the English merchants then in Flanders; whereupon
Edward retaliated by stopping the export of wool, and Jacquemart van
Arteveldt of Ghent, then at the beginning of his power, persuaded the
Flemish cities to throw off all allegiance to their French-loving Count,
and to place themselves under the protection of Edward. In return Philip
VI. put himself in communication with the Scots, the hereditary foes of
England, and the great wars which were destined to last 116 years, and to
exhaust the strength of two strong nations, were now about to begin. They
brought brilliant and barren triumphs to England, and, like most wars,
were a wasteful and terrible mistake, which, if crowned with ultimate
success, might, by removing the centre of the kingdom into France, have
marred the future welfare of England, for the happy constitutional
development of the country could never have taken place with a sovereign
living at Paris, and French interests becoming ever more powerful.
Fortunately, therefore, while the war evoked by its brilliant successes
the national pride of Englishmen, by its eventual failure it was
prevented from inflicting permanent damage on England.
The war began in 1337 and ended in 1453; the epochs in it are the Treaty
of Bretigny in 1360, the Treaty of Troyes in 1422, the final expulsion of
the English in 1453.
The French King seems to have believed himself equal to the burdens of a
great war, and able to carry out the most far-reaching plans. The Pope
was entirely in his hands, and useful as a humble instrument to curb and
harass the Emperor. Philip had proved himself master of the Flemish,
and, with help of the King of Scotland, hoped so to embarrass Edward III.
as to have no difficulty in eventually driving him to cede all his French
possessions. While he thought it his interest to wear out his antagonist
without any open fighting, it was Edward's interest to make vigorous and
striking war. France therefore stood on the defensive; England was
always the attacking party. On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany,
France had outposts which, if well defended, might long keep the English
power away from her vitals. Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and
raw, and threw these advantages away. In Flanders the repressive
commercial policy of the Count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the
opportunity, in the end of 1337, of sending the Earl of Derby, with a
strong fleet, to raise the blockade of Cadsand, and to open the Flemish
markets by a brilliant action, in which the French chivalry was found
powerless against the English yeoman-archers; and in 1338 Edward crossed
over to Antwerp to see what forward movement could be made. The other
frontier war was that of Brittany, which began a little later (1341). The
openings of the war were gloomy and wasteful, without glory. Edward did
not actually send defiance to Philip till 1339, when he proclaimed
himself King of France, and quartered the lilies of France on the royal
shield. The Flemish proved a very reed; and though the French army came
up to meet the English in the Vermando country, no fighting took place,
and the campaign of 1339 ended obscurely. Norman and Genoese ships
threatened the southern shores of England, landing at Southampton and in
the Isle of Wight unopposed. In 1340 Edward returned to Flanders; on his
way he attacked the French fleet which lay at Sluys, and utterly
destroyed it. The great victory of Sluys gave England for centuries the
mastery of the British channel. But, important as it was, it gave no
success to the land campaign. Edward wasted his strength on an
unsuccessful siege of Tournia, and, ill-supported by his Flemish allies,
could achieve nothing. The French King in this year seized on Guienne;
and from Scotland tidings came that Edinburgh castle, the strongest place
held by the English, had fallen into the hands of Douglas. Neither from
Flanders nor from Guienne could Edward hope to reach the heart of the
French power; a third inlet now presented itself in Brittany. On the
death of John III. of Brittany, in 1341, Jean de Montfort, his youngest
brother, claimed the great fief, against his niece Jeanne, daughter of
his elder brother Guy, Comte de Penthievre. He urged that the Salic law,
which had been recognised in the case of the crown, should also apply to
this great duchy, so nearly an independent sovereignty. Jeanne had been
married to Charles de Blois, whom John III. of Brittany had chosen as his
heir; Charles was also nephew of King Philip, who gladly espoused his
cause. Thereon Jean de Montfort appealed to Edward, and the two Kings
met in border strife in Brittany. The Bretons sided with John against
the influence of France. Both the claimants were made prisoners; the
ladies carried on a chivalric warfare, Jeanne de Montfort against Jeanne
de Blois, and all went favourably with the French party till Philip, with
a barbarity as foolish as it was scandalous, tempted the chief Breton
lords to Paris and beheaded them without trial. The war, suspended by a
truce, broke out again, and the English raised large forces and supplies,
meaning to attack on three sides at once,--from Flanders, Brittany, and
Guienne. The Flemish expedition came to nothing; for the people of Ghent
in 1345 murdered Jacques van Arteveldt as he was endeavouring to persuade
them to receive the Prince of Wales as their count, and Edward, on
learning this adverse news, returned to England. Thence, in July, 1346,
he sailed for Normandy, and, landing at La Hogue, overran with ease the
country up to Paris. He was not, however, strong enough to attack the
capital, for Philip lay with a large army watching him at St. Denis.
After a short hesitation Edward crossed the Seine at Poissy, and struck
northwards, closely followed by Philip. He got across the Somme safely,
and at Crecy in Ponthieu stood at bay to await the French. Though his
numbers were far less than theirs, he had a good position, and his men
were of good stuff; and when it came to battle, the defeat of the French
was crushing. Philip had to fall back with his shattered army; Edward
withdrew unmolested to Calais, which he took after a long siege in 1347.
Philip had been obliged to call up his son John from the south, where he
was observing the English under the Earl of Derby; thereupon the English
overran all the south, taking Poitiers and finding no opposition. Queen
Philippa of Hainault had also defeated and taken David of Scotland at
Neville's Cross.
The campaign of 1346-1347 was on all hands disastrous to King Philip. He
sued for and obtained a truce for ten months. These were the days of the
"black death," which raged in France from 1347 to 1349, and completed the
gloom of the country, vexed by an arbitrary and grasping monarch, by
unsuccessful war, and now by the black cloud of pestilence. In 1350 King
Philip died, leaving his crown to John of Normandy. He had added two
districts and a title to France: he bought Montpellier from James of
Aragon, and in 1349 also bought the territories of Humbert, Dauphin of
Vienne, who resigned the world under influence of the revived religion of
the time, a consequence of the plague, and became a Carmelite friar. The
fief and the title of Dauphin were granted to Charles, the King's
grandson, who was the first person who attached that title to the heir to
the French throne. Apart from these small advantages, the kingdom of
France had suffered terribly from the reign of the false and heartless
Philip VI. Nor was France destined to enjoy better things under John
"the Good," one of the worst sovereigns with whom she has been cursed. He
took as his model and example the chivalric John of Bohemia, who had been
one of the most extravagant and worthless of the princes of his time, and
had perished in his old age at Crecy. The first act of the new King was
to take from his kinsman, Charles "the Bad" of Navarre, Champagne and
other lands; and Charles went over to the English King. King John was
keen to fight; the States General gave him the means for carrying on war,
by establishing the odious "gabelle" on salt, and other imposts. John
hoped with his new army to drive the English completely out of the
country. Petty war began again on all the frontiers,--an abortive attack
on Calais, a guerilla warfare in Brittany, slight fighting also in
Guienne. Edward in 1335 landed at Calais, but was recalled to pacify
Scotland; Charles of Navarre and the Duke of Lancaster were on the Breton
border; the Black Prince sailed for Bordeaux. In 1356 he rode northward
with a small army to the Loire, and King John, hastily summoning all his
nobles and fief-holders, set out to meet him. Hereon the Black Prince,
whose forces were weak, began to retreat; but the French King outmarched
and intercepted him near Poitiers. He had the English completely in his
power, and with a little patience could have starved them into
submission; instead, he deemed it his chivalric duty to avenge Crecy in
arms, and the great battle of Poitiers was the result (19th September,
1356). The carnage and utter ruin of the French feudal army was quite
incredible; the dead seemed more than the whole army of the Black Prince;
the prisoners were too many to be held. The French army, bereft of
leaders, melted away, and the Black Prince rode triumphantly back to
Bordeaux with the captive King John and his brave little son in his
train. A two years' truce ensued; King John was carried over to London,
where he found a fellow in misfortune in David of Scotland, who had been
for eleven years a captive in English hands. The utter degradation of
the nobles, and the misery of the country, gave to the cities of France
an opportunity which one great man, Etienne Marcel, provost of the
traders at Paris, was not slow to grasp. He fortified the capital and
armed the citizens; the civic clergy made common cause with him; and when
the Dauphin Charles convoked the three Estates at Paris, it was soon seen
that the nobles had become completely discredited and powerless. It was
a moment in which a new life might have begun for France; in vain did the
noble order clamour for war and taxes,--they to do the war, with what
skill and success all men now knew, and the others to pay the taxes.
Clergy, however, and burghers resisted. The Estates parted, leaving what
power there was still in France in the hands of Etienne Marcel. He
strove in vain to reconcile Charles the Dauphin with Charles of Navarre,
who stood forward as a champion of the towns. Very reluctantly did
Marcel entrust his fortunes to such hands. With help of Lecocq, Bishop
of Laon, he called the Estates again together, and endeavoured to lay
down sound principles of government, which Charles the Dauphin was
compelled to accept. Paris, however, stood alone, and even there all
were not agreed. Marcel and Bishop Lecocq, seeing the critical state of
things, obtained the release of Charles of Navarre, then a prisoner. The
result was that ere long the Dauphin-regent was at open war with Navarre
and with Paris. The outbreak of the miserable peasantry, the Jacquerie,
who fought partly for revenge against the nobles, partly to help Paris,
darkened the time; they were repressed with savage bloodshed, and in 1358
the Dauphin's party in Paris assassinated the only great man France had
seen for long. With Etienne Marcel's death all hope of a constitutional
life died out from France; the Dauphin entered Paris and set his foot on
the conquered liberties of his country. Paris had stood almost alone;
civic strength is wanting in France; the towns but feebly supported
Marcel; they compelled the movement to lose its popular and general
character, and to become a first attempt to govern France from Paris
alone. After some insincere negotiations, and a fear of desultory
warfare, in which Edward III. traversed France without meeting with a
single foe to fight, peace was at last agreed to, at Bretigny, in May,
1360. By this act Edward III. renounced the French throne and gave up
all he claimed or held north of the Loire, while he was secured in the
lordship of the south and west, as well as that part of Northern Picardy
which included Calais, Guines, and Ponthieu. The treaty also fixed the
ransom to be paid by King John.
France was left smaller than she had been under Philip Augustus, yet she
received this treaty with infinite thankfulness; worn out with war and
weakness, any diminution of territory seemed better to her than a
continuance of her unbearable misfortunes. Under Charles, first as
Regent, then as King, she enjoyed an uneasy rest and peace for twenty
years.
King John, after returning for a brief space to France, went back into
his pleasant captivity in England, leaving his country to be ruled by the
Regent the Dauphin. In 1364 he died, and Charles V., "the Wise," became
King in name, as he had now been for some years in fact. This cold,
prudent, sickly prince, a scholar who laid the foundations of the great
library in Paris by placing 900 MSS. in three chambers in the Louvre, had
nothing to dazzle the ordinary eye; to the timid spirits of that age he
seemed to be a malevolent wizard, and his name of "Wise" had in it more
of fear than of love. He also is notable for two things: he reformed the
current coin, and recognised the real worth of Du Guesclin, the first
great leader of mercenaries in France, a grim fighting-man, hostile to
the show of feudal warfare, and herald of a new age of contests, in which
the feudal levies would fall into the background. The invention of
gunpowder in this century, the incapacity of the great lords, the rise of
free lances and mercenary troops, all told that a new era had arrived. It
was by the hand of Du Guesclin that Charles overcame his cousin and
namesake, Charles of Navarre, and compelled him to peace. On the other
hand, in the Breton war which followed just after, he was defeated by Sir
John Chandos and the partisans of Jean de Montfort, who made him
prisoner; the Treaty of Guerande, which followed, gave them the dukedom
of Brittany; and Charles V., unable to resist, was fair to receive the
new duke's homage, and to confirm him in the duchy. The King did not
rest till he had ransomed Du Guesclin from the hands of Chandos; he then
gave him commission to raise a paid army of freebooters, the scourge of
France, and to march with them to support, against the Black Prince, the
claims of Henry of Trastamare to the Crown of Castile. Successful at
first by help of the King of Aragon, he was made Constable of Spain at
the coronation of Henry at Burgos. Edward the Black Prince, however,
intervened, and at the battle of Najara (1367) Du Guesclin was again a
prisoner in English hands, and Henry lost his throne. Fever destroyed
the victorious host, and the Black Prince, withdrawing into Gascony,
carried with him the seeds of the disorder which shortened his days. Du
Guesclin soon got his liberty again; and Charles V., seeing how much his
great rival of England was weakened, determined at last on open war. He
allied himself with Henry of Trastamare, listened to the grievances of
the Aquitanians, summoned the Black Prince to appear and answer the
complaints. In 1369, Henry defeated Pedro, took him prisoner, and
murdered him in a brawl; thus perished the hopes of the English party in
the south. About the same time Charles V. sent open defiance and
declaration of war to England. Without delay, he surprised the English
in the north, recovering all Ponthieu at once; the national pride was
aroused; Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who had, through the prudent help of
Charles, lately won as a bride the heiress of Flanders, was stationed at
Rouen, to cover the western approach to Paris, with strict orders not to
fight; the Aquitanians were more than half French at heart. The record
of the war is as the smoke of a furnace. We see the reek of burnt and
plundered towns; there were no brilliant feats of arms; the Black Prince,
gloomy and sick, abandoned the struggle, and returned to England to die;
the new governor, the Earl of Pembroke, did not even succeed in landing:
he was attacked and defeated off Rochelle by Henry of Castile, his whole
fleet, with all its treasure and stores, taken or sunk, and he himself
was a prisoner in Henry's hands. Du Guesclin had already driven the
English out of the west into Brittany; he now overran Poitou, which
received him gladly; all the south seemed to be at his feet. The attempt
of Edward III. to relieve the little that remained to him in France
failed utterly, and by 1372 Poitou was finally lost to England. Charles
set himself to reduce Brittany with considerable success; a diversion
from Calais caused plentiful misery in the open country; but, as the
French again refused to fight, it did nothing to restore the English
cause. By 1375 England held nothing in France except Calais, Cherbourg,
Bayonne, and Bordeaux. Edward III., utterly worn out with war, agreed to
a truce, through intervention of the Pope; it was signed in 1375. In
1377, on its expiring, Charles, who in two years had sedulously improved
the state of France, renewed the war. By sea and land the English were
utterly overmatched, and by 1378 Charles was master of the situation on
all hands. Now, however, he pushed his advantages too far; and the cold
skill which had overthrown the English, was used in vain against the
Bretons, whose duchy he desired to absorb. Languedoc and Flanders also
revolted against him. France was heavily burdened with taxes, and the
future was dark and threatening. In the midst of these things, death
overtook the coldly calculating monarch in September, 1380.
Little had France to hope from the boy who was now called on to fill the
throne. Charles VI. was not twelve years old, a light-wined, handsome
boy, under the guardianship of the royal Dukes his uncles, who had no
principles except that of their own interest to guide them in bringing up
the King and ruling the people. Before Charles VI. had reached years of
discretion, he was involved by the French nobles in war against the
Flemish cities, which, under guidance of the great Philip van Arteveldt,
had overthrown the authority of the Count of Flanders. The French cities
showed ominous signs of being inclined to ally themselves with the civic
movement in the north. The men of Ghent came out to meet their French
foes, and at the battle of Roosebek (1382) were utterly defeated and
crushed. Philip van Arteveldt himself was slain. It was a great triumph
of the nobles over the cities; and Paris felt it when the King returned.
All movement there and in the other northern cities of France was
ruthlessly repressed; the noble reaction also overthrew the "new men" and
the lawyers, by whose means the late King had chiefly governed. Two years
later, the royal Dukes signed a truce with England, including Ghent in
it; and Louis de Male, Count of Flanders, having perished at the same
time, Marguerite his daughter, wife of Philip of Burgundy, succeeded to
his inheritance (1384.) Thus began the high fortunes of the House of
Burgundy, which at one time seemed to overshadow Emperor and King of
France. In 1385, another of the brothers, Louis, Duc d'Anjou, died, with
all his Italian ambitions unfulfilled. In 1386, Charles VI., under
guidance of his uncles, declared war on England, and exhausted all France
in preparations; the attempt proved the sorriest failure. The regency of
the Dukes became daily more unpopular, until in 1388 Charles dismissed
his two uncles, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri, and began to rule. For
a while all went much better; he recalled his father's friends and
advisers, lightened the burdens of the people, allowed the new ministers
free hand in making prudent government; and learning how bad had been the
state of the south under the Duc de Berri, deprived him of that command
in 1390. Men thought that the young King, if not good himself, was well
content to allow good men to govern in his name; at any, rate, the rule
of the selfish Dukes seemed to be over. Their bad influences, however,
still surrounded him; an attempt to assassinate Olivier de Clisson, the
Constable, was connected with their intrigues and those of the Duke of
Brittany; and in setting forth to punish the attempt on his favourite the
Constable, the unlucky young King, who had sapped his health by
debauchery, suddenly became mad. The Dukes of Burgundy and Berri at once
seized the reins and put aside his brother the young Duc d'Orleans. It
was the beginning of that great civil discord between Burgundy and
Orleans, the Burgundians and Armagnacs, which worked so much ill for
France in the earlier part of the next century. The rule of the uncles
was disastrous for France; no good government seemed even possible for
that unhappy land.
An obscure strife went on until 1404, when Duke Philip of Burgundy died,
leaving his vast inheritance to John the Fearless, the deadly foe of
Louis d'Orleans. Paris was with him, as with his father before him; the
Duke entered the capital in 1405, and issued a popular proclamation
against the ill-government of the Queen-regent and Orleans. Much
profession of a desire for better things was made, with small results. So
things went on until 1407, when, after the Duc de Berri, who tried to
play the part of a mediator, had brought the two Princes together, the
Duc d'Orleans was foully assassinated by a Burgundian partisan. The Duke
of Burgundy, though he at first withdrew from Paris, speedily returned,
avowed the act, and was received with plaudits by the mob. For a few
years the strife continued, obscure and bad; a great league of French
princes and nobles was made to stem the success of the Burgundians; and
it was about this time that the Armagnac name became common. Paris,
however, dominated by the "Cabochians," the butchers' party, the party of
the "marrowbones and cleavers," and entirely devoted to the Burgundians,
enabled John the Fearless to hold his own in France; the King himself
seemed favourable to the same party. In 1412 the princes were obliged to
come to terms, and the Burgundian triumph seemed complete. In 1413 the
wheel went round, and we find the Armagnacs in Paris, rudely sweeping
away all the Cabochians with their professions of good civic rule. The
Duc de Berri was made captain of Paris, and for a while all went against
the Burgundians, until, in 1414, Duke John was fain to make the first
Peace of Arras, and to confess himself worsted in the strife. The young
Dauphin Louis took the nominal lead of the national party, and ruled
supreme in Paris in great ease and self-indulgence.
The year before, Henry V. had succeeded to the throne of England,--a
bright and vigorous young man, eager to be stirring in the world, brave
and fearless, with a stern grasp of things beneath all,--a very
sheet-anchor of firmness and determined character. Almost at the very
opening of his reign, the moment he had secured his throne, he began a
negotiation with France which boded no good. He offered to marry
Catharine, the King's third daughter, and therewith to renew the old
Treaty of Bretigny, if her dower were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, not without
a good sum of money. The French Court, on the other hand, offered him
her hand with Aquitaine and the money, an offer rejected instantly; and
Henry made ready for a rough wooing in arms. In 1415 he crossed to
Harfleur, and while parties still fought in France, after a long and
exhausting siege, took the place; thence he rode northward for Calais,
feeling his army too much reduced to attempt more. The Armagnacs, who
had gathered at Rouen, also pushed fast to the north, and having choice
of passage over the Somme, Amiens being in their hands, got before King
Henry, while he had to make a long round before he could get across that
stream. Consequently, when, on his way, he reached Azincourt, he found
the whole chivalry of France arrayed against him in his path. The great
battle of Azincourt followed, with frightful ruin and carnage of the
French. With a huge crowd of prisoners the young King passed on to
Calais, and thence to England. The Armagnacs' party lay buried in the
hasty graves of Azincourt; never had there been such slaughter of nobles.
Still, for three years they made head against their foes; till in 1418
the Duke of Burgundy's friends opened Paris's gates to his soldiers, and
for the time the Armagnacs seemed to be completely defeated; only the
Dauphin Charles made feeble war from Poitiers. Henry V. with a fresh
army had already made another descent on the Normandy coast; the Dukes of
Anjou, Brittany, and Burgundy made several and independent treaties with
him; and it seemed as though France had completely fallen in pieces.
Henry took Rouen, and although the common peril had somewhat silenced the
strife of faction, no steps were taken to meet him or check his course;
on the contrary, matters were made even more hopeless by the murder of
John, Duke of Burgundy, in 1419, even as he was kneeling and offering
reconciliation at the young Dauphin's feet. The young Duke, Philip, now
drew at once towards Henry, whom his father had apparently wished with
sincerity to check; Paris, too, was weary of the Armagnac struggle, and
desired to welcome Henry of England; the Queen of France also went over
to the Anglo-Burgundian side. The end of it was that on May 21,1420, was
signed the famous Treaty of Troyes, which secured the Crown of France to
Henry, by the exclusion of the Dauphin Charles, whenever poor mad Charles
VI., should cease to live. Meanwhile, Henry was made Regent of France,
promising to maintain all rights and privileges of the Parliament and
nobles, and to crush the Dauphin with his Armagnac friends, in token
whereof he was at once wedded to Catharine of France, and set forth to
quell the opposition of the provinces. By Christmas all France north of
the Loire was in English hands. All the lands to the south of the river
remained firmly fixed in their allegiance to the Dauphin and the
Armagnacs, and these began to feel themselves to be the true French
party, as opposed to the foreign rule of the English. For barely two
years that rule was carried on by Henry V. with inflexible justice, and
Northern France saw with amazement the presence of a real king, and an
orderly government. In 1422 King Henry died; a few weeks later Charles
VI. died also, and the face of affairs began to change, although, at the
first, Charles VII. the "Well-served," the lazy, listless prince, seemed
to have little heart for the perils and efforts of his position. He was
proclaimed King at Mehun, in Berri, for the true France for the time lay
on that side of the Loire, and the Regent Bedford, who took the reins at
Paris, was a vigorous and powerful prince, who was not likely to give way
to an idle dreamer. At the outset Charles suffered two defeats, at
Crevant in 1423, and at Verneuil in 1424, and things seemed to be come to
their worst. Yet he was prudent, conciliatory, and willing to wait; and
as the English power in France--that triangle of which the base was the
sea-line from Harfleur to Calais, and the apex Paris--was unnatural and
far from being really strong; and as the relations between Bedford and
Burgundy might not always be friendly, the man who could wait had many
chances in his favour. Before long, things began to mend; Charles wedded
Marie d'Anjou, and won over that great house to the French side; more and
more was he regarded as the nation's King; symptoms of a wish for
reconciliation with Burgundy appeared; the most vehement Armagnacs were
sent away from Court. Causes of disagreement also shook the friendship
between Burgundy and England.
Feeling the evils of inaction most, Bedford in 1428 decided on a forward
movement, and sent the Earl of Salisbury to the south. He first secured
his position on the north of the Loire, then, crossing that river, laid
siege to Orleans, the key to the south, and the last bulwark of the
national party. All efforts to vex or dislodge him failed; and the
attempt early in 1429 to stop the English supplies was completely
defeated at Bouvray; from the salt fish captured, the battle has taken
the name of "the Day of the Herrings." Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, was,
wounded; the Scots, the King's body-guard, on whom fell ever the grimmest
of the fighting, suffered terribly, and their leader was killed. All
went well for Bedford till it suited the Duke of Burgundy to withdraw
from his side, carrying with him a large part of the fighting power of
the besiegers. Things were already looking rather gloomy in the English
camp, when a new and unexpected rumour struck all hearts cold with fear.
A virgin, an Amazon, had been raised up as a deliverer for France, and
would soon be on them, armed with mysterious powers.
A young peasant girl, one Jeanne d'Arc, had been brought up in the
village of Domremy, hard by the Lorraine border. The district, always
French in feeling, had lately suffered much from Burgundian raids; and
this young damsel, brooding over the treatment of her village and her
country, and filled with that strange vision-power which is no rare
phenomenon in itself with young girls, came at last to believe with warm
and active faith in heavenly appearances and messages, all urging her to
deliver France and her King. From faith to action the bridge is short;
and ere long the young dreamer of seventeen set forth to work her
miracle. Her history is quite unique in the world; and though probably
France would ere many years have shaken off the English yoke, for its
strength was rapidly going, still to her is the credit of having proved
its weakness, and of having asserted the triumphant power of a great
belief. All gave way before her; Charles VII., persuaded doubtless by
his mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, who warmly espoused her cause,
listened readily to the maiden's voice; and as that voice urged only what
was noble and pure, she carried conviction as she went. In the end she
received the King's commission to undertake the relief of Orleans. Her
coming was fresh blood to the defence; a new spirit seemed to be poured
out on all her followers, and in like manner a deep dejection settled
down on the English. The blockade was forced, and, in eight days the
besiegers raised the siege and marched away. They withdrew to Jargeau,
where they were attacked and routed with great loss. A little later
Talbot himself, who had marched to help them, was also defeated and
taken. Then, compelling Charles to come out from his in glorious ease,
she carried him triumphantly with her to Rheims, where he was duly
crowned King, the Maid of Orldans standing by, and holding aloft the
royal standard. She would gladly have gone home to Domremy now, her
mission being accomplished; for she was entirely free from all ambitious
or secondary aims. But she was too great a power to be spared. Northern
France was still in English hands, and till the English were cast out her
work was not complete; so they made her stay, sweet child, to do the work
which, had there been any manliness in them, they ought to have found it
easy to achieve for themselves. The dread of her went before her,--a
pillar of cloud and darkness to the English, but light and hope to her
countrymen. Men believed that she was called of God to regenerate the
world, to destroy the Saracen at last, to bring in the millennial age.
Her statue was set up in the churches, and crowds prayed before her image
as before a popular saint.
The incapacity and ill-faith of those round the King gave the English
some time to recover themselves; Bedford and Burgundy drew together
again, and steps were taken to secure Paris. When, however, Jeanne,
weary of courtly delays, marched, contemptuous of the King, as far as St.
Denis, friends sprang up on every side. In Normandy, on the English line
of communications, four strong places were surprised; and Bedford, made
timid as to his supplies, fell back to Rouen, leaving only a small
garrison in Paris. Jeanne, ill-supported by the royal troops, failed in
her attack on the city walls, and was made prisoner by the Burgundians;
they handed her over to the English, and she was, after previous
indignities, and such treatment as chivalry alone could have dealt her,
condemned as a witch, and burnt as a relapsed heretic at Rouen in 1431.
Betrayed by the French Court, sold by the Burgundians, murdered by the
English, unrescued by the people of France which she so much loved,
Jeanne d'Arc died the martyr's death, a pious, simple soul, a heroine of
the purest metal. She saved her country, for the English power never
recovered from the shock. The churchmen who burnt her, the Frenchmen of
the unpatriotic party, would have been amazed could they have foreseen
that nearly 450 years afterwards, churchmen again would glorify her name
as the saint of the Church, in opposition to both the religious liberties
and the national feelings of her country.
The war, after having greatly weakened the noblesse, and having caused
infinite sufferings to France, now drew towards a close; the Duke of
Burgundy at last agreed to abandon his English allies, and at a great
congress at Arras, in 1435, signed a treaty with Charles VII. by which
he solemnly came over to the French side. On condition that he should
get Auxerre and Macon, as well as the towns on and near the river Somme,
he was willing to recognise Charles as King of France. His price was
high, yet it was worth all that was given; for, after all, he was of the
French blood royal, and not a foreigner. The death of Bedford, which
took place about the same time, was almost a more terrible blow to the
fortunes of the English. Paris opened her gates to her King in April,
1436; the long war kept on with slight movements now and then for several
years.
The next year was marked by the meeting of the States General, and the
establishment, in principle at least, of a standing army. The Estates
petitioned the willing King that the system of finance in the realm
should be remodelled, and a permanent tax established for the support of
an army. Thus, it was thought, solidity would be given to the royal
power, and the long-standing curse of the freebooters and brigands
cleared away. No sooner was this done than the nobles began to chafe
under it; they scented in the air the coming troubles; they, took as
their head, poor innocents, the young Dauphin Louis, who was willing
enough to resist the concentration of power in royal hands. Their
champion of 1439, the leader of the "Praguerie," as this new league was
called, in imitation, it is said, of the Hussite movement at Prague, the
enthusiastic defender of noble privilege against the royal power, was the
man who afterwards, as Louis XI., was the destroyer of the noblesse on
behalf of royalty. Some of the nobles stood firmly by the King, and,
aided by them and by an army of paid soldiers serving under the new
conditions, Charles VII., no contemptible antagonist when once aroused,
attacked and overthrew the Praguerie; the cities and the country people
would have none of it; they preferred peace under a king's strong hand.
Louis was sent down to the east to govern Dauphiny; the lessons of the
civil war were not lost on Charles; he crushed the freebooters of
Champagne, drove the English out of Pontois in 1441, moved actively up
and down France, reducing anarchy, restoring order, resisting English
attacks. In the last he was loyally supported by the Dauphin, who was
glad to find a field for his restless temper. He repulsed the English at
Dieppe, and put down the Comte d'Armagnac in the south. During the two
years' truce with England which now followed, Charles VII. and Louis drew
off their free-lances eastward, and the Dauphin came into rude collision
with the Swiss not far from Basel, in 1444. Some sixteen hundred
mountaineers long and heroically withstood at St. Jacob the attack of
several thousand Frenchmen, fighting stubbornly till they all perished.
The King and Dauphin returned to Paris, having defended their
border-lands with credit, and having much reduced the numbers of the
lawless free-lances. The Dauphin, discontented again, was obliged once
more to withdraw into Dauphiny, where he governed prudently and with
activity. In 1449, the last scene of the Anglo-French war began. In that
year English adventurers landed on the Breton coast; the Duke called the
French King to his aid. Charles did not tarry this time; he broke the
truce with England; he sent Dunois into Normandy, and himself soon
followed. In both duchies, Brittany and Normandy, the French were
welcomed with delight: no love for England lingered in the west. Somerset
and Talbot failed to defend Rouen, and were driven from point to point,
till every stronghold was lost to them. Dunois then passed into Guienne,
and in a few-months Bayonne, the last stronghold of the English, fell
into his hands (1451). When Talbot was sent over to Bordeaux with five
thousand men to recover the south, the old English feeling revived, for
England was their best customer, and they had little in common with
France. It was, however, but a last flicker of the flame; in July, 1453,
at the siege of Castillon, the aged Talbot was slain and the war at once
came to an end; the south passed finally into the kingdom of France.
Normandy and Guienne were assimilated to France in taxation and army
organisation; and all that remained to England across the Channel was
Calais, with Havre and Guines Castle. Her foreign ambitions and
struggles over, England was left to consume herself in civil strife,
while France might rest and recover from the terrible sufferings she had
undergone. The state of the country had become utterly wretched.
With the end of the English wars new life began to gleam out on France;
the people grew more tranquil, finding that toil and thrift bore again
their wholesome fruits; Charles VII. did not fail in his duty, and took
his part in restoring quiet, order, and justice in the land.
The French Crown, though it had beaten back the English, was still
closely girt in with rival neighbours, the great dukes on every frontier.
All round the east and north lay the lands of Philip of Burgundy; to the
west was the Duke of Brittany, cherishing a jealous independence; the
royal Dukes, Berri, Bourbon, Anjou, are all so many potential sources of
danger and difficulty to the Crown. The conditions of the nobility are
altogether changed; the old barons have sunk into insignificance; the
struggle of the future will lie between the King's cousins and himself,
rather than with the older lords. A few non-royal princes, such as
Armagnac, or Saint-Pol, or Brittany, remain and will go down with the
others; the "new men" of the day, the bastard Dunois or the Constables Du
Guesclin and Clisson, grow to greater prominence; it is clear that the
old feudalism is giving place to a newer order, in which the aristocracy,
from the King's brothers downwards, will group themselves around the
throne, and begin the process which reaches its unhappy perfection under
Louis XIV.
Directly after the expulsion of the English, troubles began between King
Charles VII. and the Dauphin Louis; the latter could not brook a quiet
life in Dauphiny, and the King refused him that larger sphere in the
government of Normandy which he coveted. Against his father's will,
Louis married Charlotte of Savoy, daughter of his strongest neighbour in
Dauphiny; suspicion and bad feeling grew strong between father and son;
Louis was specially afraid of his father's counsellors; the King was
specially afraid of his son's craftiness and ambition. It came to an
open rupture, and Louis, in 1456, fled to the Court of Duke Philip of
Burgundy. There he lived at refuge at Geneppe, meddling a good deal in
Burgundian politics, and already opposing himself to his great rival,
Charles of Charolais, afterwards Charles the Bold, the last Duke of
Burgundy. Bickerings, under his bad influence, took place between King
and Duke; they never burst out into flame. So things went on
uncomfortably enough, till Charles VII. died in 1461 and the reign of
Louis XI. began.
Between father and son what contrast could be greater? Charles VII.,
"the Well-served," so easygoing, so open and free from guile; Louis XI.,
so shy of counsellors, so energetic and untiring, so close and guileful.
History does but apologise for Charles, and even when she fears and
dislikes Louis, she cannot forbear to wonder and admire. And yet Louis
enslaved his country, while Charles had seen it rescued from foreign
rule; Charles restored something of its prosperity, while Louis spent his
life in crushing its institutions and in destroying its elements of
independence. A great and terrible prince, Louis XI. failed in having
little or no constructive power; he was strong to throw down the older
society, he built little in its room. Most serious of all was his action
with respect to the district of the River Somme, at that time the
northern frontier of France. The towns there had been handed over to
Philip of Burgundy by the Treaty of Arras, with a stipulation that the
Crown might ransom them at any time, and this Louis succeeded in doing in
1463. The act was quite blameless and patriotic in itself, yet it was
exceedingly unwise, for it thoroughly alienated Charles the Bold, and led
to the wars of the earlier period of the reign. Lastly, as if he had not
done enough to offend the nobles, Louis in 1464 attacked their hunting
rights, touching them in their tenderest part. No wonder that this year
saw the formation of a great league against him, and the outbreak of a
dangerous civil war. The "League of the Public Weal" was nominally
headed by his own brother Charles, heir to the throne; it was joined by
Charles of Charolais, who had completely taken the command of affairs in
the Burgundian territories, his father the old duke being too feeble to
withstand him; the Dukes of Brittany, Nemours, Bourbon, John of Anjou,
Duke of Calabria, the Comte d'Armagnac, the aged Dunois, and a host of
other princes and nobles flocked in; and the King had scarcely any forces
at his back with which to withstand them. His plans for the campaign
against the league were admirable, though they were frustrated by the bad
faith of his captains, who mostly sympathised with this outbreak of the
feudal nobility. Louis himself marched southward to quell the Duc de
Bourbon and his friends, and returning from that task, only half done for
lack of time, he found that Charles of Charolais had passed by Paris,
which was faithful to the King, and was coming down southwards, intending
to join the Dukes of Berri and Brittany, who were on their way towards
the capital. The hostile armies met at Montleheri on the Orleans road;
and after a strange battle--minutely described by Commines--a battle in
which both sides ran away, and neither ventured at first to claim a
victory, the King withdrew to Corbeil, and then marched into Paris
(1465). There the armies of the league closed in on him; and after a
siege of several weeks, Louis, feeling disaffection all around him, and
doubtful how long Paris herself would bear for him the burdens of
blockade, signed the Peace of Conflans, which, to all appearances,
secured the complete victory to the noblesse, "each man carrying off his
piece." Instantly the contented princes broke up their half-starved
armies and went home, leaving Louis behind to plot and contrive against
them, a far wiser man, thanks to the lesson they had taught him. They
did not let him wait long for a chance. The Treaty of Conflans had given
the duchy of Normandy to the King's brother Charles; he speedily
quarrelled with his neighbour, the Duke of Brittany, and Louis came down
at once into Normandy, which threw itself into his arms, and the whole
work of the league was broken up. The Comte de Charolais, occupied with
revolts at Dinan and Liege, could not interfere, and presently his
father, the old Duke Philip, died (1467), leaving to him the vast
lordships of the House of Burgundy.
And now the "imperial dreamer," Charles the Bold, was brought into
immediate rivalry with that royal trickster, the "universal spider,"
Louis XI. Charles was by far the nobler spirit of the two: his vigour
and intelligence, his industry and wish to raise all around him to a
higher cultivation, his wise reforms at home, and attempts to render his
father's dissolute and careless rule into a well-ordered lordship, all
these things marked him out as the leading spirit of the time. His
territories were partly held under France, partly under the empire: the
Artois district, which also may be taken to include the Somme towns, the
county of Rhetel, the duchy of Bar, the duchy of Burgundy, with Auxerre
and Nevers, were feudally in France; the rest of his lands under the
empire. He had, therefore, interests and means of interference on either
hand; and it is clear that Charles set before himself two different lines
of policy, according as he looked one way or the other.