SIEGE OF AUTAFORT—BERTRAN’S DEATH.
The manuscripts tell a curious story with regard to this treachery. The
reader will remember that at the beginning of the war Henry had entered
into a league with the King of Aragon. This king was Alfonso II., well
known as one of the most liberal protectors of the troubadours, who in
return lavished their praise upon him. Bertran de Born was on terms of
intimacy with him, and the manuscript tells us that ‘he was very glad
that King Alfonso was amongst the besieging army, for he was his most
especial friend.’ It appears that Castle Autafort was better provided
with meat and drink than the camp, for King Alfonso, on the ground of
their intimacy, asked Bertran for a supply of bread, wine, and meat.
This the troubadour generously granted, but in return asked another
favour, which was nothing less than that the King of Aragon should use
his authority to remove the besieging engines from a certain side of
the castle where the wall was rotten and would give way easily. Such a
demand implied the fullest confidence in him to whom it was made, and
this confidence unfortunately turned out to be misplaced. The King of
Aragon immediately betrayed the secret to Henry; the assault was directed
against the weak point of the defences, and the castle fell.
Such is the story as told by Bertran’s biographer, and, if true, it fully
accounts for the troubadour’s implacable hatred evinced by many poetic
onslaughts on the private and political character of Alfonso. But we
ought to hesitate in condemning on such doubtful evidence the conduct of
a king who by the all but unanimous testimony of contemporary writers was
a model of knightly virtues and wholly incapable of the base treachery
here laid to his charge.
However this may have been, Bertran’s castle was taken, and he a prisoner
in the hands of his bitterest enemies. But even in this extremity
Bertran’s genius did not forsake him, and it is on this occasion chiefly
that we catch a glimpse of that undauntable strength of character which,
combined with a keen insight into the secret springs of human impulse,
explains his extraordinary sway over men’s minds. I follow closely the
graphic account of the Provençal manuscript:—‘After the castle was taken
Sir Bertran, with all his people, was brought to the tent of King Henry.
And the King received him very ill, and said to him,
‘“Bertran, Bertran! you have boasted that never half of your sense would
be needful to you at any time, but know that now you stand in need of the
whole of it.”
‘“Sir,” replied Bertran, “it is true that I have said so, and I have
spoken the truth.”
‘And the King said, “Then now, it seems, you have lost your wits
altogether.”
‘“Sir,” said Bertran, “it is true that I have lost all my wits.”
‘“And how is that?” replied the King.
‘“Sir,” said Bertran, “the day that the valiant young Henry your son died
I lost sense and cunning and consciousness.”
‘And the King, when he heard Bertran’s words, wept for his son, and great
grief rose to his heart and to his eyes, and he could not constrain
himself, and fainted away from pain. And when he recovered himself he
called out to Bertran, and said, weeping,
‘“Sir Bertran! Sir Bertran! you are right and wise in saying that you
lost your sense for the sake of my son, for he loved you better than any
other man in the world; and for the love of him I release your person,
your lands, and your castle, and I will receive you to my grace and
favour, and I give you five hundred marks of silver for the damage you
have suffered at my hands.”
‘And Bertran fell at his feet, tendering him service and gratitude.’
We may feel inclined to look upon the substantial data of the closing
sentences with some amount of scepticism; but the consummate skill with
which Bertran at first excites the curiosity of the King, the way in
which he finally acts upon his feelings, all the more powerfully as his
own grief is true and powerful—all this is much beyond the invention of a
simple-minded Provençal scribe. These traits are too intrinsically real
for mere fiction; they are inherent in the nature of a strong man and
a great poet. It is also an undeniable fact that soon after the events
described, Bertran was again in possession of his castle, and that the
remonstrances of his unfortunate brother Constantine were treated with
scorn by both Richard and King Henry.
To the former Bertran now seems to have attached himself, and during
the incessant feuds in which the lion-hearted monarch subsequently
was involved with the King of France and his own unruly vassals the
troubadour seems to have remained faithful to him, barring always
such inclinations towards whoever might be the aggressive party,
which Bertran’s unbounded love of fighting made excusable. We possess
a _sirventes_ dated many years later in which the poet rejoices at
Richard’s release from the German prison, ‘because now again we shall see
walls destroyed and towers overthrown and our enemies in chains.’
But I must not detain the reader with further stories of feuds and
battles, of which most likely he has had already more than his fill.
It remains to add a few words with regard to another side of Bertran’s
life and poetry, his love affairs. These, it must be hoped, will form a
somewhat more harmonious conclusion to an account of a wild, reckless
career.
Bertran’s love-songs are not the emanations of a pure guileless heart,
such as the _canzos_ of Guillem de Cabestanh or Folquet of Marseilles.
Upon the whole one is glad to find that they are not and do not pretend
to be such; for a lover’s unselfish devotion could be nothing but
pretension in a man of his character. Bertran was, and appears even
in his _canzos_, a man of the world, to whom his love affairs are of
secondary importance. Yet these _canzos_ are not without passion, and not
seldom have a peculiar charm of simple grace, all the more delightful
because of its contrast with the warlike harshness of his ordinary
strains. What, for instance, can be more sweet and graceful than the
following stanza, which occurs at the beginning of one of Bertran’s
_sirventeses_?—
When the young blossoms of the spring appear
And paint the bushes pink and white and green,
Then in the sweetness of the nascent year
I clothe my song; at all times such has been
The wont of birds; and as a bird am I
Who love the fairest lady tenderly:
I dare to love her longing for love’s fruit,
But never dare to speak; my heart is mute.
After such an opening the reader expects a love-song of tenderest
pathos. But no. After another stanza, Bertran suddenly changes his
mind. Perhaps the lady whom he silently adored did not understand or
appreciate his passion. ‘As without a lady’—he now exclaims—‘one cannot
make a love-song, I am going to sing a fresh and novel _sirventes_.’ And
forthwith he begins his ordinary strain of invective against a whole
catalogue of hostile barons.
Of the objects of Bertran’s passion—for we know of two, and there may
have been others of whom we do not know—the old manuscripts give us a
prolix account. We first hear of a Lady Maenz or Matilda of Montignac,
wife of Count Talairand (for as a matter of course she was married), and
sister to two other ladies celebrated by the troubadours for their beauty
and courteous demeanour. The Lady Maenz was wooed by many noble knights
and barons; and even three scions of royalty, the Princes Richard and
Geoffrey of England and King Alfonso of Aragon, are mentioned amongst
her suitors. But Bertran’s valour and fame as a poet gained the victory
in her heart over power and riches. Such at least is the account of the
old biography, founded, it seems, on a somewhat vague statement in one
of Bertran’s own poems, to the effect that his lady ‘refused Poitou, and
Tolosa, and Bretagne and Saragosa, but has given her love to the valorous
poor knight’—meaning of course himself.
Unfortunately the course of true love did not run smooth for long; the
blast of jealousy troubled its waters. Bertran had written a few songs in
praise of another lady, the wife of his friend the Viscount of Camborn.
Pure gallantry, he alleged, was the motive, but the Lady Maenz refused
to view the matter in this innocent light, and angrily discarded her
lover. Bertran was in despair; he knew, the manuscript says, ‘that he
could never regain her, or find another lady so beautiful, so good, so
gentle, and so learned.’ In this dilemma Bertran had recourse to the
following pretty conceit of gallantry. Whether he had heard the story of
the Athenian artist who, from the combined charms of the most beautiful
women, moulded the type of the Goddess of Love, seems doubtful; but the
coincidence of ideas between the troubadour and the antique sculptor
is striking. For Bertran de Born, the biographer tells us, went to the
most beautiful ladies of the country asking from each the loan of her
greatest charm (metaphorically it must be understood), and from these he
reconstructed the ideal type of his lost love. The poem in which this is
done is a model of grace and gallantry, flattering alike to the divers
ladies whose beauties are commemorated, and to the one who in her being
concentrates and surpasses the charms of all others.
But her heart was unmoved, and, in a fit of amorous despair we must
suppose, the troubadour now offered his services as knight and poet to
another lady, complaining at the same time bitterly of the cruelty of
his former love. His offer was not accepted, neither was it disdainfully
rejected. It would have been a breach of courtesy and good faith to
deprive a lady of her lover, and much as the Lady Tibors (this was the
name of Bertran’s new flame) may have been desirous of the praise of one
of the greatest troubadours of the time, she resisted the temptations
of vanity. Her answer to Bertran is a model of good sense; at the same
time it smacks a little of that technical pedantry with which the ladies
of Provence were wont to treat difficult cases of love. ‘Either,’ said
the Lady Tibors, ‘your quarrel is of a slight and temporary kind—and in
that case I will try to effect your peace with your lady; or else you
have been guilty of a serious offence towards her—and, if so, neither I
nor any good lady ought to accept your services. But in case I find on
inquiry that your lady has left you from fickleness and caprice, I shall
be honoured by your love.’ The first of these surmises fortunately turned
out to be true. By the interference of Lady Tibors the lovers’ quarrel
was settled, and in commemoration of the event Bertran was ordered to
write a song in which he declares his immutable love for Lady Maenz,
paying at the same time a grateful and graceful tribute to the kind
peacemaker.
This is all we hear of the beautiful Lady Maenz. But Bertran appears
presently as the passionate admirer of another lady, of much more exalted
rank. It must have been soon after his reconciliation with Count Richard
that the troubadour met in his camp the Count’s sister Mathilda, the
wife of the celebrated Duke Henry of Brunswick. The inflammable heart of
the poet caught fire at her beauty, and his enthusiastic praise seems to
have been received with much condescension. It tends to prove Bertran’s
importance that it was by Richard’s express desire that his sister showed
kindness to the troubadour, who, the manuscript adds, ‘was a renowned
man and valorous, and might be of great use to the Count.’ In the praise
of Mathilda Bertran wrote several beautiful _canzos_, one of which is
particularly remarkable for an allusion in the first line to so prosaic a
subject as dinner—the poem having been composed, it is said, one Sunday
when that meal failed to be forthcoming at the ill-provided camp.
In addition to these amorous entanglements Bertran was also married,
although neither he nor his biographer deigns to mention so unimportant a
personage as his wife. We know, however, that his children at Bertran’s
death came to a compromise with their uncle Constantine as to the
possession of Castle Autafort and its dependencies. One of his sons
inherited with his father’s name some of his father’s poetic talent and,
it appears, all his fierce passions. By this younger Bertran de Born, who
has sometimes been mistaken for the great poet, we possess a _sirventes_
against King John worthy of the paternal example. The luckless king
is mercilessly assaulted. The loss of his continental possessions is
attributed to cowardice and irresolution, and the king’s immoderate love
of the chase does not escape notice. The barons also come in for their
share of vituperation. In fact everything is done _more patrio_. Bertran
died at an advanced age, having entered a monastery not long before his
death.
Such was the not inappropriate close of a life passed in the wildest
turmoil of political strife. As a type of the warlike mediæval baron,
reckless and ruthless, Bertran stands unsurpassed in history or
literature. But we have seen that the refining and softening influences
of friendship, of love, of knightly courtesy, were not wholly absent from
his career.
Another consideration suggests itself. Would it not be worth while for
the authorities of the Record Office to secure a competent hand to glean
from the biography of this and other troubadours the many important and
hitherto totally neglected facts bearing on the continental policy of the
Plantagenets?