at length broke his heart, are well known. Of all his sons, who were in
continual rebellion against him, Geoffrey was the most undutiful, and
the most formidable: he had all the pride of the Plantagenets,--all the
warlike accomplishments of his two elder brothers, Henry and Richard;
and was the only one who could compete with his father in talent,
eloquence, and dissimulation. No sooner was he the husband of Constance,
and in possession of the throne of Bretagne, than he openly opposed his
father; in other words, he maintained the honor and interests of his
wife and her unhappy country against the cruelties and oppression of the
English plunderers.[82] About three years after his marriage, he was
invited to Paris for the purpose of concluding a league, offensive and
defensive, with the French king: in this journey he was accompanied by
the Duchess Constance, and they were received and entertained with royal
magnificence. Geoffrey, who excelled in all chivalrous accomplishments,
distinguished himself in the tournaments which were celebrated on the
occasion; but unfortunately, after an encounter with a French knight,
celebrated for his prowess, he was accidentally flung from his horse,
and trampled to death in the lists before he could be extricated.
Constance, being now left a widow, returned to Bretagne, where her
barons rallied round her, and acknowledged her as their sovereign. The
Salique law did not prevail in Bretagne, and it appears that in those
times the power of a female to possess and transmit the rights of
sovereignty had been recognized in several instances; but Constance is
the first woman who exercised those rights in her own person. She had
one daughter, Elinor, born in the second year of her marriage, and a few
months after her husband's death she gave birth to a son. The States of
Bretagne were filled with exultation; they required that the infant
prince should not bear the name of his father,--a name which Constance,
in fond remembrance of her husband, would have bestowed on him--still
less that of his grandfather Henry; but that of Arthur, the redoubted
hero of their country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace.
Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends--the Arthur of the round
table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second
appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now,
with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young
Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their
oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings
which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, Henry II.,
demanded to have the possession and guardianship of his person; and on
the spirited refusal of Constance to yield her son into his power, he
invaded Bretagne with a large army, plundering, burning, devastating the
country as he advanced. He seized Rennes, the capital, and having by the
basest treachery obtained possession of the persons both of the young
duchess and her children, he married Constance forcibly to one of his
own favorite adherents, Randal de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, and
conferred on him the duchy of Bretagne, to be held as a fief of the
English crown.
The Earl of Chester, though a brave knight and one of the greatest
barons of England, had no pretensions to so high an alliance; nor did he
possess any qualities or personal accomplishments which might have
reconciled Constance to him as a husband. He was a man of diminutive
stature and mean appearance, but of haughty and ferocious manners, and
unbounded ambition.[83] In a conference between this Earl of Chester and
the Earl of Perche, in Lincoln cathedral, the latter taunted Randal with
his insignificant person, and called him contemptuously "_Dwarf_."
"Sayst thou so!" replied Randal; "I vow to God and our Lady, whose
church this is, that ere long I will seem to thee high as that steeple!"
He was as good as his word, when, on ascending the throne of Brittany,
the Earl of Perche became his vassal.
We cannot know what measures were used to force this degradation on the
reluctant and high-spirited Constance; it is only certain that she never
considered her marriage in the light of a sacred obligation, and that
she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which
could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she
was obliged to allow this detested husband the title of Duke of
Bretagne, and he administered the government without the slightest
reference to her will, even in form, till 1189, when Henry II. died,
execrating himself and his undutiful children. Whatever great and good
qualities this monarch may have possessed, his conduct in Bretagne was
uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavior of his sons may be
extenuated; for while he spent his life, and sacrificed his peace, and
violated every principle of honor and humanity to compass their
political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards
them, and set them a bad example in his own person.
The tidings of Henry's death had no sooner reached Bretagne than the
barons of that country rose with one accord against his government,
banished or massacred his officers, and, sanctioned by the Duchess
Constance, drove Randal de Blondeville and his followers from Bretagne;
he retired to his earldom of Chester, there to brood over his injuries,
and meditate vengeance.
In the mean time, Richard I. ascended the English throne. Soon
afterwards he embarked on his celebrated expedition to the Holy Land,
having previously declared Prince Arthur, the only son of Constance,
heir to all his dominions.[84]
His absence, and that of many of her own turbulent barons and
encroaching neighbors, left to Constance and her harassed dominions a
short interval of profound peace. The historians of that period,
occupied by the warlike exploits of the French and English kings in
Palestine, make but little mention of the domestic events of Europe
during their absence; but it is no slight encomium on the character of
Constance, that Bretagne flourished under her government, and began to
recover from the effects of twenty years of desolating war. The seven
years during which she ruled as an independent sovereign, were not
marked by any events of importance; but in the year 1196 she caused her
son Arthur, then nine years of age, to be acknowledged Duke of Bretagne
by the States, and associated him with herself in all the acts of
government.
There was more of maternal fondness than policy in this measure, and it
cost her dear. Richard, that royal firebrand, had now returned to
England: by the intrigues and representations of Earl Randal, his
attention was turned to Bretagne. He expressed extreme indignation that
Constance should have proclaimed her son Duke of Bretagne, and her
partner in power, without his consent, he being the feudal lord and
natural guardian of the young prince. After some excuses and
representations on the part of Constance, he affected to be pacified,
and a friendly interview was appointed at Pontorson, on the frontiers of
Normandy.
We can hardly reconcile the cruel and perfidious scenes which follow
with those romantic and chivalrous associations which illustrate the
memory of Coeur-de-Lion--the friend of Blondel, and the antagonist of
Saladin. Constance, perfectly unsuspicious of the meditated treason,
accepted the invitation of her brother-in-law, and set out from Rennes
with a small but magnificent retinue to join him at Pontorson. On the
road, and within sight of the town, the Earl of Chester was posted with
a troop of Richard's soldiery, and while the Duchess prepared to enter
the gates, where she expected to be received with honor and welcome, he
suddenly rushed from his ambuscade, fell upon her and her suite, put the
latter to flight, and carried off Constance to the strong Castle of St.
Jaques de Beuvron, where he detained her a prisoner for eighteen months.
The chronicle does not tell us how Randal treated his unfortunate wife
during this long imprisonment. She was absolutely in his power; none of
her own people were suffered to approach her, and whatever might have
been his behavior towards her, one thing alone is certain, that so far
from softening her feelings towards _him_, it seems to have added
tenfold bitterness to her abhorrence and her scorn.
The barons of Bretagne sent the Bishop of Rennes to complain of this
violation of faith and justice, and to demand the restitution of the
Duchess. Richard meanly evaded and temporized: he engaged to restore
Constance to liberty on certain conditions; but this was merely to gain
time. When the stipulated terms were complied with, and the hostages
delivered, the Bretons sent a herald to the English king, to require him
to fulfil his part of the treaty, and restore their beloved Constance.
Richard replied with insolent defiance, refused to deliver up either the
hostages or Constance, and marched his army into the heart of the
country.
All that Bretagne had suffered previously was as nothing compared to
this terrible invasion; and all that the humane and peaceful government
of Constance had effected during seven years was at once annihilated.
The English barons and their savage and mercenary followers spread
themselves through the country, which they wasted with fire and sword.
The castles of those who ventured to defend themselves were razed to the
ground; the towns and villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched
inhabitants fled to the caves and forests; but not even there could they
find an asylum; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods
were set on fire, and hundreds either perished in the flames, or were
suffocated in the smoke.
Constance, meanwhile, could only weep in her captivity over the miseries
of her country, and tremble with all a mother's fears for the safety of
her son. She had placed Arthur under the care of William Desroches, the
seneschal of her palace, a man of mature age, of approved valor, and
devotedly attached to her family. This faithful servant threw himself,
with his young charge, into the fortress of Brest, where he for some
time defied the power of the English king.
But notwithstanding the brave resistance of the nobles and people of
Bretagne, they were obliged to submit to the conditions imposed by
Richard. By a treaty concluded in 1198, of which the terms are not
exactly known, Constance was delivered from her captivity, though not
from her husband; but in the following year, when the death of Richard
had restored her to some degree of independence, the first use she made
of it was to _divorce herself_ from Randal. She took this step with her
usual precipitancy, not waiting for the sanction of the Pope, as was the
custom in those days; and soon afterwards she gave her hand to Guy,
Count de Thouars, a man of courage and integrity, who for some time
maintained the cause of his wife and her son against the power of
England. Arthur was now fourteen, and the legitimate heir of all the
dominions of his uncle Richard. Constance placed him under the
guardianship of the king of France, who knighted the young prince with
his own hand, and solemnly swore to defend his rights against his
usurping uncle John.
It is at this moment that the play of King John opens; and history is
followed as closely as the dramatic form would allow, to the death of
John. The real fate of poor Arthur, after he had been abandoned by the
French, and had fallen into the hands of his uncle, is now ascertained;
but according to the chronicle from which Shakspeare drew his materials,
he was killed in attempting to escape from the castle of Falaise.
Constance did not live to witness this consummation of her calamities;
within a few months after Arthur was taken prisoner, in 1201, she died
suddenly, before she had attained her thirty-ninth year; but the cause
of her death is not specified.
Her eldest daughter Elinor, the legitimate heiress of England, Normandy,
and Bretagne, died in captivity; having been kept a prisoner in Bristol
Castle from the age of fifteen. She was at that time so beautiful, that
she was called proverbially, "La belle Bretonne," and by the English the
"Fair Maid of Brittany." She, like her brother Arthur, was sacrificed to
the ambition of her uncles.
Of the two daughters of Constance by Guy de Thouars, the eldest, Alice,
became Duchess of Bretagne, and married the Count de Dreux, of the royal
blood of France. The sovereignty of Bretagne was transmitted through her
descendants in an uninterrupted line, till, by the marriage of the
celebrated Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIII. of France, her dominions
were forever united with the French monarchy.
In considering the real history of Constance, three things must strike
us as chiefly remarkable.
First, that she is not accused of any vice, or any act of injustice or
violence; and this praise, though poor and negative, should have its due
weight, considering the scanty records that remain of her troubled life,
and the period at which she lived--a period in which crimes of the
darkest dye were familiar occurrences. Her father, Conan, was considered
as a gentle and amiable prince--"gentle even to feebleness;" yet we are
told that on one occasion he acted over again the tragedy of Ugolino and
Ruggiero, when he shut up the Count de Dol, with his two sons and his
nephew, in a dungeon, and deliberately starved them to death; an event
recorded without any particular comment by the old chroniclers of
Bretagne. It also appears that, during those intervals when Constance
administered the government of her states with some degree of
independence, the country prospered under her sway, and that she
possessed at all times the love of her people and the respect of her
nobles.
Secondly, no imputation whatever has been cast on the honor of Constance
as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very
unceremonious style the levities of her great-grandmother Matilda, her
grandmother Bertha, her godmother Constance, and her mother-in-law
Elinor, treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance with uniform
respect.
Her third marriage, with Guy de Thouars, has been censured as impolitic,
but has also been defended; it can hardly, considering her age, and the
circumstances in which she was placed, be a just subject of reproach.
During her hated union with Randal de Blondeville, and the years passed
in a species of widowhood, she conducted herself with propriety: at
least I can find no reason to judge otherwise.
Lastly, we are struck by the fearless, determined spirit, amounting at
times to rashness, which Constance displayed on several occasions, when
left to the free exercise of her own power and will; yet we see how
frequently, with all this resolution and pride of temper, she became a
mere instrument in the hands of others, and a victim to the superior
craft or power of her enemies. The inference is unavoidable; there must
have existed in the mind of Constance, with all her noble and amiable
qualities, a deficiency somewhere, a want of firmness, a want of
judgment or wariness, and a total want of self-control.
* * * * *
In the play of King John, the three principal characters are the King,
Falconbridge, and Lady Constance. The first is drawn forcibly and
accurately from history: it reminds us of Titian's portrait of Caesar
Borgia, in which the hatefulness of the subject is redeemed by the
masterly skill of the artist,--the truth, and power, and wonderful
beauty of the execution. Falconbridge is the spirited creation of the
poet.[85] Constance is certainly an historical personage; but the form
which, when we meet it on the record of history, appears like a pale
indistinct shadow, half melted into its obscure background, starts
before us into a strange relief and palpable breathing reality upon the
page of Shakspeare.
Whenever we think of Constance, it is in her maternal character. All the
interest which she excites in the drama turns upon her situation as the
mother of Arthur. Every circumstance in which she is placed, every
sentiment she utters, has a reference to him, and she is represented
through the whole of the scenes in which she is engaged, as alternately
pleading for the rights, and trembling for the existence of her son.
The same may be said of the Merope. In the four tragedies of which her
story forms the subject,[86] we see her but in one point of view,
namely, as a mere impersonation of the maternal feeling. The poetry of
the situation is every thing, the character nothing. Interesting as she
is, take Merope out of the circumstances in which she is placed,--take
away her son, for whom she trembles from the first scene to the last,
and Merope in herself is nothing; she melts away into a name, to which
we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We
recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother; and
we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine
the statue of Niobe in a different attitude.
But while we contemplate the character of Constance, she assumes before
us an individuality perfectly distinct from the circumstances around
her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in
the most prominent point of view: but with Constance, as with a real
human being, the maternal affections are a powerful instinct, modified
by other faculties, sentiments, and impulses, making up the individual
character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted
for the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and
calls forth our sympathy and our tears; but we infer the rest of her
character from what we see, as certainly and as completely as if we had
known her whole course of life.
That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is
_power_--power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of
pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in
self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or
rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of
sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich
poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate.
Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding
its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the
woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to
desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of
sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, are all
most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based
upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion.
Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy
by sorrow and disappointment while neither from her towering pride, nor
her strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or
fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature,
that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace.
Stay for an answer to your embassy,
Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:
My Lord Chatillon may from England bring
That right in peace, which here we urge in war;
And then we shall repent each drop of blood,
That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed.
And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense
of injury, should afterwards exclaim,
War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war!
That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and
royal rights, and violent in defending them, is most natural; but I
cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance,
_ambition_--that is, the love of dominion for its own sake--is either a
strong motive or a strong feeling: it could hardly be so where the
natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree.
The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her
son is that of a fond mother and a proud-spirited woman, stung with the
sense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign,--by birth and right,
if not in fact: yet when bereaved of her son, grief not only "fills the
room up of her absent child," but seems to absorb every other faculty
and feeling--even pride and anger. It is true that she exults over him
as one whom nature and fortune had destined to be _great_, but in her
distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her "Pretty Arthur."
O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!
No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene:
it is grief only, a mother's heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and
nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere
with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have
thus addressed the cold, wily Cardinal:--
And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say,
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again:
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
As dim and merge as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never.
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more!
The bewildered pathos and poetry of this address could be natural in no
woman, who did not unite, like Constance, the most passionate
sensibility with the most vivid imagination.
It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one occasion, "ambitious
Constance;" but the epithet is rather the natural expression of Elinor's
own fear and hatred than really applicable.[87] Elinor, in whom age had
subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her
rival in power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son:
but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued
with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would
be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a _passion_.
In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal
affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole
character; it is the predominance of imagination. I do not mean in the
conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman
herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the
_excess_ of the ideal power, tinging all her affections, exalting all
her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both,
Constance can only be compared to Juliet.
In the first place, it is through the power of imagination that when
under the influence of excited temper, Constance is not a mere incensed
woman; nor does she, in the style of Volumnia, "lament in anger,
Juno-like," but rather like a sibyl in a fury. Her sarcasms come down
like thunderbolts. In her famous address to Austria--
O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
That bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! &c.
it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed
it in his face: every word seems to blister where it falls. In the
scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of
the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely
which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic,
and often in the most figurative expressions.
ELINOR.
Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?
CONSTANCE.
Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.
ELINOR.
Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,
That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!
CONSTANCE.