During the five-and-twenty years of his captivity Charles had not lost
in the esteem of his fellow-countrymen. For so young a man, the head of
so great a house and so numerous a party, to be taken prisoner as he
rode in the vanguard of France, and stereotyped for all men in this
heroic attitude, was to taste untimeously the honours of the grave. Of
him, as of the dead, it would be ungenerous to speak evil; what little
energy he had displayed would be remembered with piety, when all that he
had done amiss was courteously forgotten. As English folk looked for
Arthur; as Danes awaited the coming of Ogier; as Somersetshire peasants
or sergeants of the Old Guard expected the return of Monmouth or
Napoleon; the countrymen of Charles of Orleans looked over the straits
towards his English prison with desire and confidence. Events had so
fallen out while he was rhyming ballades, that he had become the type of
all that was most truly patriotic. The remnants of his old party had
been the chief defenders of the unity of France. His enemies of Burgundy
had been notoriously favourers and furtherers of English domination.
People forgot that his brother still lay by the heels for an unpatriotic
treaty with England, because Charles himself had been taken prisoner
patriotically fighting against it. That Henry V. had left special orders
against his liberation served to increase the wistful pity with which he
was regarded. And when, in defiance of all contemporary virtue, and
against express pledges, the English carried war into their prisoner's
fief, not only France, but all thinking men in Christendom, were roused
to indignation against the oppressors, and sympathy with the victim. It
was little wonder if he came to bulk somewhat largely in the imagination
of the best of those at home. Charles le Boutteillier, when (as the
story goes) he slew Clarence at Beauge, was only seeking an exchange for
Charles of Orleans.[40] It was one of Joan of Arc's declared intentions
to deliver the captive duke. If there was no other way, she meant to
cross the seas and bring him home by force. And she professed before her
judges a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans was beloved of God.[41]
Alas! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles returned to France.
He was nearly fifty years old. Many changes had been accomplished since,
at twenty-three, he was taken on the field of Agincourt. But of all
these he was profoundly ignorant, or had only heard of them in the
discoloured reports of Philip of Burgundy. He had the ideas of a former
generation, and sought to correct them by the scandal of a factious
party. With such qualifications he came back eager for the domination,
the pleasures, and the display that befitted his princely birth. A long
disuse of all political activity combined with the flatteries of his new
friends to fill him with an overweening conceit of his own capacity and
influence. If aught had gone wrong in his absence, it seemed quite
natural men should look to him for its redress. Was not King Arthur come
again?
The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic honours. He took his
guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of
his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same
atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he
went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married to Mary of
Cleves, at St. Omer. The marriage was celebrated with the usual pomp of
the Burgundian court; there were joustings, and illuminations, and
animals that spouted wine; and many nobles dined together, _comme en
brigade_, and were served abundantly with many rich and curious
dishes.[42] It must have reminded Charles not a little of his first
marriage at Compiegne; only then he was two years the junior of his
bride, and this time he was five-and-thirty years her senior. It will be
a fine question which marriage promises more: for a boy of fifteen to
lead off with a lass of seventeen, or a man of fifty to make a match of
it with a child of fifteen. But there was something bitter in both. The
lamentations of Isabella will not have been forgotten. As for Mary, she
took up with one Jaquet de la Lain, a sort of muscular Methody of the
period, with a huge appetite for tournaments, and a habit of confessing
himself the last thing before he went to bed.[43] With such a hero, the
young duchess's amours were most likely innocent; and in all other ways
she was a suitable partner for the duke, and well fitted to enter into
his pleasures.
When the festivities at Saint Omer had come to an end, Charles and his
wife set forth by Ghent and Tournay. The towns gave him offerings of
money as he passed through, to help in the payment of his ransom. From
all sides, ladies and gentlemen thronged to offer him their services;
some gave him their sons for pages, some archers for a bodyguard; and by
the time he reached Tournay, he had a following of 300 horse. Everywhere
he was received as though he had been the king of France.[44] If he did
not come to imagine himself something of the sort, he certainly forgot
the existence of any one with a better claim to the title. He conducted
himself on the hypothesis that Charles VII. was another Charles VI. He
signed with enthusiasm that treaty of Arras, which left France almost at
the discretion of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no further than
Bruges, where he entered into a private treaty with Philip; and it was
not until January 14, ten weeks after he disembarked in France, and
attended by a ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that he arrived in Paris and
offered to present himself before Charles VII. The King sent word that
he might come, if he would, with a small retinue, but not with his
present following; and the duke, who was mightily on his high horse
after all the ovations he had received, took the King's attitude amiss,
and turned aside into Touraine, to receive more welcome and more
presents, and be convoyed by torchlight into faithful cities.
And so you see here was King Arthur home again, and matters nowise
mended in consequence. The best we can say is, that this last stage of
Charles's public life was of no long duration. His confidence was soon
knocked out of him in the contact with others. He began to find he was
an earthen vessel among many vessels of brass; he began to be shrewdly
aware that he was no King Arthur. In 1442, at Limoges, he made himself
the spokesman of the malcontent nobility. The King showed himself
humiliatingly indifferent to his counsels, and humiliatingly generous
towards his necessities. And there, with some blushes, he may be said to
have taken farewell of the political stage. A feeble attempt on the
county of Asti is scarce worth the name of exception. Thenceforward let
Ambition wile whom she may into the turmoil of events, our duke will
walk cannily in his well-ordered garden, or sit by the fire to touch the
slender reed.[45]