THE CITY OF THE DUKES
Of the thousand who pass through the town annually, on their way to
Switzerland or the Riviera, only a small percentage, probably, know
Dijon as the ancient capital of the Duchy of Burgundy; fewer still have
any conception of the vanished glories it stands for; or could name
the three commodities--if I may so describe them--and the principal
industry upon which the prosperity of the modern city is based.
From the early middle ages to the closing years of the Capetian Dukes,
from 1032 to 1364, the essential history of Burgundy is centred rather
round the religious communities of Cluny and Citeaux, than in the
ducal courts of Auxerre or of Dijon. But upon the advent in that year,
of the royal house of Valois, with Philippe le Hardi, the full light
of the most glorious, and by far the most highly coloured, period of
Burgundian history is turned upon the capital of the Duchy.
Yet the "bonne ville de Dijon," through which Duke Philip rode on
November 26th, 1364, on his way to the solemn function in the cathedral
of St. Bénigne, was no more than a second-rate city. Not only did it
lack the glories of the Ducal Palace and the Chartreuse de Champmol
that he himself was soon to found, but one would have missed the church
of St. Michel, the Palais de Justice, and many other hotels, palaces,
and churches, that, still standing, make the modern city one of the
most interesting in France. The Dijon of that day was a straggling town
of narrow, filthy, unpaved streets over whose projecting gables rose
the towers and spires of St. Bénigne, St. Philibert, Notre Dame, and
many another Church. In wet weather, the mud spurted from under horses'
hoofs upon the grimy walls of the houses on either side of the street,
and it is more than probable that the gorgeously attired courtiers of
Philip's procession arrived, splashed up to the knees, at the abbey.
Twenty years later, even, in 1388, the Duke was annoyed by the dirty
condition of the town, which was such that, in the rains of winter,
neither man nor horse could make progress without great difficulty.
Each inhabitant was consequently compelled to clean and level, at his
own cost, the portion of street on which his house fronted; and a new
pavement was then laid down, at an expense to the Duchy of two thousand
golden francs.[147]
But, before I tell of modern Dijon, I must say something of the first
of the four great Dukes of the house of Valois, who were to lead
Burgundy through its brief, meteoric career of greatness.[144]
Philip, brother of Charles V. of France, and uncle of his successor the
mad Charles VI., had deservedly won his title of "Hardi" at the battle
of Poictiers, as Froissart has told us. He was a bold, determined,
somewhat imprudent prince; kindly and good-natured, as is evident from
a glance at the statue upon his tomb; but proud, ambitious, and so
addicted to magnificence that he could leave to his son only debts and
the dukedom.[145] His clothing was wonderful to see, as we may judge by
some of the details that have come down to us. In 1391, when engaged
in treaty with the Duke of Lancaster, uncle of the King of England,
he had two coats made for him. One, of black velvet, was embroidered,
on the left sleeve and collar with a bunch of roses, upon which were
growing twenty-two blossoms, of rubies, or of a single sapphire,
surrounded with pearls; and rose-buds also of pearls. The buttonholes
were made with a running embroidery of broom, with the pods worked in
pearls and sapphires--a souvenir of the ancient order of the Cosse
(Broom-pod),[146] instituted by the Kings of France, and sometimes
bestowed by them as a reward for loyal service. One of the coats was
embroidered also with P and Y interlaced, while the other, of crimson
velvet, showed, on each side, a silver bear, outlined in sapphires and
rubies.[143]
These bears were more than characteristic of the extravagance of the
time; they were symbolical of the spirit that, possessing France in
the closing years of the thirteenth century, departed only before the
exorcisms of La Pucelle.
The wise and noble kings, Edward IV. of England, and Charles V. of
France, had given place to a dullard and a madman; and the people,
no less than the princes, had lost their reason. The feudal system
was passing, had passed; and no new political nor social order had as
yet developed in its place. Nobles of the day, looking back upon the
monkish régime and the early chivalry, could only ape and burlesque the
outward splendours of the movements whose inward spirit and ideals they
were wholly incapable of understanding. It seemed that God, even, to
borrow Luther's phrase, weary of the game, had thrown his cards upon
the table.
Such is the significance of the bear upon Philip's mantle. Everywhere
ranged these strange and uncouth beasts. They grinned in long lines
from the eaves of the Churches; with a thousand other fantastic fancies
of disordered imaginations, they met the eye, at every turn, in
corridors of royal palaces, in the reception rooms of baronial halls.
Foul jests and foul shapes leered at the passer-by from the fringes of
a scarlet skirt. On a high dame's rustling sleeve, whose folds swept
the ground, were set the notes of a song; rich doublets blazed with
lewd figures, or with strange symbols, improper, if well understood.
Great ladies, wearing long horns upon their heads, jested with lords
whose pointed toes wriggled up into serpent shapes. Art, sanity,
religion were no longer at one. All the pure and natural ornament of
early Gothic work, filched from church and cathedral for the service of
base needs, flaunted, in horrible disguise, in houses of pleasure and
ill fame.[148]
Small wonder that distracted souls, searching in thick darkness for
guidance, for God, and not finding him in life, turned, at last, in
despair, to the great negations, Death and the Devil. God had failed
them; evil, at least, shall not fail them. In a frenzy of false joy
they danced the "danse des morts" in the cemeteries of Paris.[149]
[Illustration: ·AT THE CAFE·]
Their dear king Charles, even, so beloved of a mad people, was not
less mad than they. Save for occasional lucid intervals, he was a "fou
furieux."
"It was great pity, this malady of the king, which held him for long
seasons, and when he ate it was very gluttonously and wolfishly. And he
could not be persuaded to strip himself, and was full of lice, vermin,
and filth. And he had a little piece of iron that he put secretly close
to his flesh. Of which nothing was known. And it had rotted all his
poor flesh, and no-one durst go near him to remedy it.
"Nevertheless there was a physician who said that it must be remedied,
else was he in danger, and otherwise as it seemed to him, there was no
hope for the healing of the malady. And he advised that they should
bring ten or twelve companions disguised, who should be blackened, and
each one furnished beneath, lest he should wound them. And so it was
done and the companions entered very terrible to see, into his chamber.
When he saw them he was much astonished, and they drew nigh to him at
once: now there had been made ready all new clothing, shirt, tunic,
cloak, hose, boots, that they bore with them. They took hold of him,
he saying many words to them the while, then they stripped him and put
upon him the said things that they had brought. It was great pity to
see him, for his body was all eaten with lice and filth. And they found
on him the said piece of iron: every time that they would cleanse him,
it must needs be done in this said manner."[151]
Such was the France of the closing years of Philippe le Hardi's
rule--King and country lifting clasped hands, to say, with old Lear:
"Not mad, sweet Heaven, not mad!"
The condition of Burgundy, and especially of its great appanage
Flanders, which Duke Philip had inherited from his wife, though bad,
was not so serious as that of the country in general.
In Dijon there was comparative security--enough for the establishment,
under Philippe le Hardi, of a new era in Burgundian art. For Philip
had great ideas. He never forgot that he was brother to Charles V. of
France. Dijon, if not to rival Paris, should be at least a capital
worthy of its Valois Duke. This jouisseur raffiné must have architects,
sculptors, and painters; cunning embroiderers, too, and workers in
ivory. But above all, he must have goldsmiths. They came flocking
in from all Flanders. "On s'harnachoit d'orfavrerie" says Martial
d'Auvergne.[150] We have already seen the bear upon Philip's coat.
He began, in 1366, with the tower of a new castle--now the Tour de
Bar--to replace the ruined château of the Capetian Dukes; and followed
it, twelve years later, with a monastery, the Chartreuse de Champnol,
at the gates of Dijon, where he wished to house suitably his monks and
his tomb.
The Chartreuse de Champnol remained the burial place of the Ducal house
until the 16th century; but it has not survived to our day. Its close
connection with royal authority marked it out for the attentions of the
revolutionary mob. The site is now occupied by an "Asile des Aliénées"
as the French politely term a mad-house--a choice in which the cynic
may detect either a retort upon rampant democracy, or a sly allusion to
certain congenital failings of the House of Valois. There is little to
be seen in the Asile des Aliénées; but that little is so important that
we decided to go there. For, in the centre of the old cloister, was,
and is, Claus Sluter's world-famous sculpture--Le Puits des Prophètes.
[Illustration: ·MOSES·]
"Puits?" interrogated a sullen maid, laconically, as she opened to
us. We followed in silence. Truly the present home of the Well is
depressing, and I wish the authorities would remove it to a safe and
more cheerful spot in the precincts of the ducal palace.
But the work itself, though despoiled, by wind and rain, of the calvary
that crowned it, and though quite denuded of the gold and brilliant
colours with which it once blazed, remains one of the strongest and
most impressive pieces of sculpture in existence. Naturally, as one
would expect in the case of a work completed so early as the sixth year
of the fifteenth century, there are serious and obvious faults--for
instance, the figures are too short, the hands and feet generally too
small, and the drapery, in some points, badly handled--but all the
personalities are so striking, so individual, the whole is so strongly
grouped, that the effect is more than majestic. As M. Germain well
says: "Il y a un souffle épique dans ces figures." Stand for five
minutes before the stern, inflexible face of the law-giver; compare
that statue, mentally, with the Moses of Michael Angelo, to which alone
it is inferior, and you will begin to realize Claus Sluter's genius
as a sculptor of the human face and form. He broke away boldly from
primitive and conventional traditions, and went straight to nature,
to the men about him, for his types. These strong physiognomies and
massive forms are eminently Burgundian.[152]
In the portal of the chapel the guide will show you other, and
rather earlier work, generally attributed to Claus Sluter, namely,
five statues representing Philippe le Hardi and his wife Margaret of
Flanders, being presented to the Virgin by Saint Catherine and Saint
John. Four of them may well be from the chisel of the famous sculptor,
but I think, with M. Germain, that the figure of the Virgin is wrongly
attributed, chiefly for the reason that the proportions are much longer
than those of other Sluterian statues.
And what of the man whose genius was to exercise such influence upon
Burgundian art? Little is known of him. He remains an enigmatic,
mysterious figure, living for us only through his work, and that of the
school of which he was the inspiring force. He died in 1406, the same
year in which he had finished his Puits des Prophètes; leaving to his
nephew, Claus de Werve, the task of further realizing their new ideals
in sculpture.
Thus it came about that the second Claus--an artist not unworthy to
follow his uncle--was entrusted with the construction of the next
great Burgundian monument we have to consider, the tomb of Philippe
le Hardi, now in the great hall of the musée, once the "salle des
gardes" of the Ducal Palace. The commission had been given originally,
in 1384, to Jean de Marville, who died after completing the masonry
and the alabaster gallery. Claus Sluter made some progress with the
_pleurants_, but it was not completed until the end of 1410, when young
De Werve had been at work upon it for four years.
The masterpiece was received with universal acclamations. Jean sans
Peur, with a Valois' eye for the beautiful, recognised the merit of
his new imagier, and commissioned him forthwith to do his (the Duke's)
own tomb. Claus accepted the task, but was never able to get to work.
Money lacked; and the Duke of Burgundy was too deeply involved in
the political struggles of his time to give heed to such trifles as
financing the construction of a tomb, even though it were his own. So
poor Claus, filled with a glorious ideal that he was never able to see
realized in stone, wasted his life in waiting, waiting, until, in 1439,
death found him, poor and unknown, and laid him in an obscure tomb, not
of his own design, in the Chartreuse de Champnol. So fare they who hang
upon princes' favours.
[Illustration: ·PHILIPPVS·DVX·BVRGVNDIAE·
PHILIPPE LE BON.]
When Jean sans Peur had expiated, at Montereau, the crime of which
I shall presently tell, his son, Philippe le Bon, had perforce to
look about him for another imagier to do the work. His choice fell,
unwisely, upon a Spaniard from Aragon, one Jean de la Huerta, an
unscrupulous rascal, who bolted from Dijon in 1455, taking with him
cash that he had not earned, and leaving behind him the tomb, void of
sculpture, except the angels and the tabernacles of the gallery. The
monument was completed, in 1466-1470, by his successor, Antoine le
Moiturier, of Avignon.
The revolutionary mob destroyed both monuments; but they were pieced
together again and restored; and there they stand, for all time let
us hope, worthily housed in that magnificent Salle des Gardes. There
is nothing in all Burgundy that so conveys, in one coup d'œil, the
magnificence of the Valois Dukes.
Philippe le Hardi, clothed in a white robe and a blue mantle lined
with ermine, lies, with folded hands, upon a slab of black marble.
Two angels with outspread wings hold the helmet over his cushioned
head, and his feet rest upon a lion's back. The form and face are
realistically done, even to the veins on the hands. But, so far, all
is conventional, traditional. It is when we look at the white-robed
figures beneath the sculptured tabernacles of the gallery, that we
recognise a new motif, dramatic realism, in the monumental art of the
period. Claus Sluter and his nephew had developed the individuality of
portraiture that made the success of the "Puits de Moïse." Their great
patron Duke was dead; and all Dijon had followed weeping in his funeral
procession. Claus reproduced that procession, perpetuated it in living
stone. They are all there--the high functionaries, the praying monks,
the plebeian, wiping his nose on his fingers, all done with a felicity
and truth unequalled in any sculpture that has come down to us. Here
is a hooded mourner comforted by a priest with finger on text, there
an obstinate one receiving exhortation; and an old bourgeois, chin in
hand, pondering the way of life. The attitudes alone are so significant
that, though the face be hidden, you do not wish to look beneath the
cowl. Resignation, despair, faith, argument; all are expressed in pose;
the figures behind the pillars are treated with as much sincerity as
those which are fully seen.[153] Look up from them to the figure above
their heads, and you will see at once that, while the angels have
only a decorative function, the _pleurants_ are both decorative and
dramatic.
[Illustration: ·CORNER OF THE TOMB OF PHILIPPE LE HARDI·]
And what of Jean San Peur's tomb, with which young Claus had dreamed
of outdoing his uncle? A glance will show that, as a whole, it is
greatly inferior to that of the father. The recumbent figure and the
decorative angels are equally well done; are, perhaps, even superior
in the matter of draperies, which were not Sluter's strong point; but
the alabaster gallery lacks the harmonious simplicity of the earlier
monument: the detail has been over-elaborated in the fashion of the
period, and in a not unnatural though ineffectual attempt to improve
upon a chef-d'œuvre. The _pleurants_ directly imitative of those of
Philip's tomb, are, without exception, less natural, less restrained,
and less felicitous. Yet, despite all these faults, the monument
remains a not unworthy companion of its predecessor.
Would we could say that Jean sans Peur himself was equally worthy of
the first Valois Duke. In that case the whole course of French history
might have been different and happier.
But the fact is that the Dukes' characters, ethically considered, are
of the same relative merit as are their tombs. The contrast between the
features of father and son is most striking. Philip has an open, almost
handsome face, with a noble, though very Jewish, nose, and a generous
mouth revealing kindliness and good intentions. Jean's head, on the
contrary, is ill-proportioned, flatter, with a weaker chin, and meaner
nose. The cheek-bones are too prominent, and the crafty mouth and eye,
and "disinheriting" expression, bid the student of physiognomy beware.
[Illustration: Pleurants from the Tomb of Philippe le Hardi]
Yet, stained though he was by one bloody crime, we shall judge wrongly
if we conceive as wholly bad this little chétif, crafty, inarticulate,
careful man, who, in days of unbridled luxury, dared to be seen,
like Louis XI., in mended clothes, and never risked large sums at
play.[154] He was a working prince--brave, intelligent, interested;
with his finger always upon the pulse of public opinion. A hardy
campaigner, he knew how to endure patiently hunger and thirst, heat
and cold, rains and winds; and he possessed the gift, inestimably
valuable in those days, of winning and holding the loyal devotion of
his immediate friends and servants.[155]
Looking at him, lying there robed, upon royal marble, one's mind
returns to the foul murder that for thirty years held France in misery,
and drenched her fair fields in blood--a deed that robbed the doer of
all happiness, and darkened the after years of his life with the shadow
of impending death, until a revenge, not less cowardly in conception,
nor less pregnant with calamity, loosed again civil war upon France,
and humbled the distracted country beneath a foreign dominion.
For some considerable time before the murder, hatred, bitter though
concealed, had existed between Jean sans Peur and Louis, Duc d'Orléans,
the brother of King Charles VI. Louis, himself a poet, was a pretty,
wayward, loose-living, irresponsible, and charming personality, gifted
with that fantastic grace of the early renaissance that is so pleasing
in his son, Charles d'Orléans, the singer of Blois. Louis, naturally,
was beloved of all ladies, and in spite of his faults--if not because
of them, since they were gracious ones--was liked, even by the priests
whom he cajoled, and by the commoners whom he oppressed.
The spirited youngster, with an eye upon his Burgundian rival, had
taken for his device a knotty cudgel and the words "Je l'envie" (I
defy). Jean sans Peur, knowing well at whom that shaft was aimed,
retorted by adopting for himself a plane, with the motto, "Je le Tiens"
(I hold it), thereby intimating his intention of planing down that
cudgel. None guessed how soon he would do so.
Though each prince wore his device openly, and displayed it broadcast
on robe, banner, and pennon, they were brought together, and there was
sworn reconciliation between the pair. On the 20th November, 1407, they
heard mass, and took the sacrament side by side. Two days later the
princes attended a great dinner given by the Duc de Berri. After the
feast they embraced, drank to each other, and again swore friendship.
The Queen, who was lodging at the time in a little hotel in the old
Rue du Temple, near the Porte Barbette, had recently given birth to a
still-born child. On November 23rd, the duke of Orleans, always on the
best of terms with his sister-in-law--popular rumour, indeed, made her
his mistress--came to offer his condolences, and supped with her in
that house. The gay meal was interrupted by the advent of a suborned
valet de chambre of the king, summoning the duke immediately to the
royal presence.
"Il a hâte de vous parler," said the messenger, "pour chose qui touche
grandement à vous et à lui."[156]
The Duke, nothing doubting, ordered his mule to be brought without
delay, and, though he had six hundred armed men in Paris, set out,
unaccompanied, except by two squires, mounted upon the same horse,
and four or five valets on foot carrying torches. It was about eight
o'clock in the evening; the night was overcast (assez brun), and the
street deserted. The Duke, dressed in a simple costume of black damask,
rode slowly down the old Rue du Temple, singing, and playing with his
glove. As he was passing before the house of the Maréchal de Rieux,
no more than a hundred paces distant from the Queen's apartments, a
company of about twenty armed men, in ambuscade behind a house called
L'Image Notre Dame, broke out upon the little party. The horse on which
were the two squires, startled by the noise, took fright, and galloped
away down the street. With cries of "À mort! à mort!" the assassins
fell upon the Duke, and one of them struck him a blow with an axe that
cut off his hand.
"What is this?" cried Louis. "Who are all these? I am the Duc
d'Orléans."
"'Tis you whom we want" (C'est ce que nous demandons) replied the
assailants. In a moment, a storm of blows, from sword, axe, and spiked
club, brought him down from his mule. He rose upon his knees, but,
before he could recover himself, his head was split open, and his
brains were streaming over the pavement. "And they turned him over and
over, and so terribly hammered him that he was soon dead and piteously
slain." A young page, who sought to defend his master, was likewise
struck down; another, grievously wounded, managed to escape into a
little shop in the Rue des Rosiers.
[Illustration: ·CORNER OF THE PLACE DES DUCS· ·DIJON·]
At that very hour, Jaquette, the wife of a poor cobbler, was in her
room, high above the street, awaiting her husband's return. While
taking in a garment that had been hanging out of the window to dry, she
saw a nobleman pass by on horseback, and, a moment after, while putting
her child to bed, she heard the shouts of "À mort! à mort!" She ran to
the window with her child in her arms, and, throwing open the casement
cried, "Au meurtre, au meurtre!" "Taisez-vous mauvaise femme!" cried
one who noticed her, and arrows rattled upon the wall of the house. A
moment later, all was over. A big man in a red chaperon drawn down over
his eyes, who seemed to be the leader, shouted, "Put out all lights,
and let us be off; he is dead!" Some sprang on to their horses which
were in waiting at the gates of the Maison Notre Dame, and with a last
blow or two at the lifeless body of the Duke, they made off, mounted
and on foot, crying, "Au feu! au feu!" in response to the cries of
"murder" raised by some of the Duke's men who had come upon the scene.
The assassins had set fire to the Maison Notre Dame. As they fled,
they threw down behind them iron traps to prevent pursuit, and coerced
terrified shopkeepers into extinguishing the lights in the shops along
their route. The Duke's men found their master in a pitiable plight.
The skull lay open in two places, the left hand was cut off, and the
right arm was almost severed. Beside the dead Duke, the young German
page, Jacob, lay gasping out his life.
"Ah! mon maître, ah! mon maître!" Il se complaignoit moult fort, come
s'il vouloit mourir.[157]
When it was known that the murdered body of young Louis of Orléans was
lying in the Hotel de Rieux, all Paris was in consternation. Death
veiled his faults from the people. They could see only his virtues. A
prince so gallant and debonair, to die so young! the pity of it! Women
and men, noble and base-born, wept for him, so foully slain. Did not
even his great rival of Burgundy echo their grief?[158]
"Never" was he heard to say, "was more wicked nor traitorous murder
committed nor executed in his kingdom."
At the solemn funeral in the Church of the Célestins, Jean sans Peur
was one of those who bore the pall.[159] He was to bear that pall for
the remainder of his life.[160] Of hundreds who watched him there,
clothed in deep mourning, and weeping bitterly,[161] how many guessed
the truth. Yet the truth was not long concealed. When the hue and cry
was raised, it soon became known that the assassins had fled towards
Rue Mauconseil, where was the Palace of the Duke of Burgundy; and the
Provost of Paris suggested that he could soon lay hands on his men,
were he permitted to search the hotels of the Princes. Then the Duke of
Burgundy's countenance was observed to pale. Drawing aside the Duke of
Berri and the King of Sicily, he whispered to them: "'Twas I, the Devil
tempted me." They shrank from him; the Duke of Berri burst into tears.
"I have lost both my nephews," he murmured.
[Illustration: Pleurant]
A few hours later the scene was changed. Pride had conquered remorse in
the heart of Jean sans Peur. Denied access to the Council, the murderer
mounted horse, and galloped ventre à terre, into Flanders, there to
steel his conscience against a deed which was to darken his shortened
days with the shadow of impending death, and for thirty years was to
drench the fields of France in the blood of her best.
The absent Duke entrusted to a certain learned doctor of Theology, Jean
Petit, the duty of whitewashing his master--a task less formidable than
it sounds to those unversed in the casuistry of the schools of that
day. To do Petit justice, he seems to have acquitted himself as well as
the obvious weakness of his case would permit.
Starting from the principal that it is "licit and meritorious to slay
a tyrant traitorous and disloyal to his king and sovereign lord," he
proceeded to show, to his own satisfaction, that the murder of the
"criminal" Duke of Orleans "was perpetrated for the very great good
of the king's person, and that of his children and all the kingdom,"
and held that the king should not only be pleased thereat, but should
pardon the Seigneur de Bourgogne, "and remunerate him in every way,
that is to say in love, honour, and riches, following the example of
remunerations made to Monseigneur Michael the Archangel and the valiant
man Phineas."
This extraordinary document, which, to the modern mind, is a jumble of
unconscious humour and deliberate blasphemy, aroused, not unnaturally,
"much murmuring within the town of Paris." The quarrel was taken up
far and wide, and soon all France was divided into two camps, the
Armagnacs,[162] known by the white scarf, and the Burgundians, whose
badge was the Cross of St. Andrew.
[Illustration: Ornament]
We have no space in which to follow here the varying fortunes of the
two parties. For long years, in town and country, they fought it out;
the children of the villages with fists, feet, stones, and sticks;
their elders in the towns, with sword, dagger, and club. In the autumn
of 1418 the Burgundians effected an entry into Paris, and the excited
mob commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of their opponents. Two
presidents of parliament, magistrates, bishops, even, fell. Sixteen
hundred persons perished in a day. They were slain in the prisons, they
were slain in the street. "Did you see your enemy passing on the other
side of the way, you had but to cry "À l'Armagnac" and he was dead." A
woman, about to become a mother, was ripped open; within her dead body,
as she lay in the street, the child could be seen to move. "Vois donc,"
said the canaille, "this little dog still stirs." But none durst take
the child. No Burgundian priest would baptise a little Armagnac. Why
should he save an enemy's brat from damnation?
"The children played with the corpses in the streets. The body of the
Constable and others lay for three days in the palace, a butt for the
jests of the passers by. Some of them remembered to take a strip of
skin from his back, so that he, too, might wear in death, the white
emblem of the living Armagnacs." At last the stench forced them to
throw all the debris into the tomberaux; thence, without priest or
prayer, into an open ditch in the pig-market.[163]
These closing years of the reign of the mad king,[164] from 1418 and on
to 1425, were the darkest in all the history of France. War, famine,
pestilence, three grim spectres, stalked over the land. Every evening
a starving crowd surged round the bake-houses of Paris. In all the
town were heard the piteous lamentations of little children crying:
"Je meurs de faim!" Upon a dung-heap, thirty boys and girls died of
hunger and cold. The dog-knacker was followed by the poor, who, as he
slew, devoured all, "chair et trippes."[165] Nor were things better
without the town. The fields, deserted by their normal labourers, were
re-peopled with wolves, that, scouring the country in great packs,
grew fat upon the corpses they scratched up. The people lived only in
the woods and the fortresses; the towns teemed with men at arms; all
culture was abandoned, except around the ramparts, within sight of the
sentry upon his tower. When the enemy appeared upon the horizon, the
sound of the tocsin moved man and beast, by a common instinct, to seek
shelter within the walls.[166] Hunger made brigands of all.
France was receiving at the hand of God full measure for all her sins.
The dead man's pall, that Jean sans Peur had been bearing through
twelve wretched years of misery and blood, were soon to cover his own
mangled body. Murder, as of old, was to breed murder. He who had taken
the sword, was to perish by it.
Several attempts, more or less futile, had been made to patch up a
reconciliation between the Duke of Burgundy and the Orleanist Dauphin,
a boy of sixteen years. In the autumn of the year 1419, a meeting was
arranged to be held in a long, wooden gallery, specially erected on the
bridge of Montereau, at the junction of the Seine and the Yonne.
Burgundy's fortunes at this time were at a low ebb, and the Dauphin's
principal counsellors thought the time had come to deal their enemy
a crushing blow. The rumour of their intention spread, and Jean was
warned many times of his danger; but he made light of it. In vain his
servants assured him that a plot was laid, that he was going to his
death. He would not listen. At the last moment, however, he seems to
have felt some compunction; for he delayed his coming so long that
Tanneguy du Chatel was sent to fetch him. The duke hesitated no more.
"This is he in whom I trust," said he, and he laid his hand upon du
Chatel's shoulder.
The accounts of the final scene differ materially; the exact truth will
probably never be known. On coming into the Dauphin's presence, the
Duke removed his velvet cap, and kneeling, made a profound obeisance.
Hardly had he risen to his feet when a confused mêlée arose, and the
young Dauphin was led off to the Castle of Montereau. Meanwhile the
assassins had got to work. The first blow passed down the right side
of the Duke's face, and cut off the hand with which he sought to ward
off the stroke. The second pierced his heart, when, "with a sigh and a
movement of the loins," he fell. The abandoned body was buried by the
curé of Montereau in the town cemetery, where it was found, several
weeks after, clothed only in hose, doublet, and breeches. "A piteous
thing to see, and no man there could refrain from weeping."[167]
Thus the Duke of Orleans was avenged; but the act, as might have been
expected, only raised the fallen fortunes of the party it was intended
finally to destroy.
As it had been with his victim, so, in turn, it was with Jean. Death
expiated the murder, and veiled the murderer's faults. The many, who
had been lukewarm for Burgundy, returned to their allegiance again.
[Illustration: End of chapter XIII; Sword]
FOOTNOTES:
[143] De Barante, Tome II., pp. 69, 70.
[144] The four Dukes of the house of Valois were, Philip le Hardi,
1365-1404, Jean sans Peur, 1404-1419, Philip le Bon, 1419-1467,
and Charles le Téméraire, 1467-1476.
[145] I have heard Philip le Hardi described by a flippant American
as "Philip le Hard-up."
[146] Compare the devise of our Plantagenet Kings.
[147] The coats cost 2977 livres d'or, an enormous sum, bearing in
mind the purchasing power of money in those days. De Barante,
Tome II., p. 131.
[148] Michelet V. pp. 72-77.
[149] A lady well-known in Russian "revolutionary" circles, told me,
recently, of similar experiences in Russia to-day. Suicides
are so frequent as to excite little comment. Children, even,
have caught the contagion. "Life fails them--they turn to death."
[150] Juvénal des Ursins, quoted Michelet, Tome V., p. 183.
[151] A. Germain "Les Néerlandais en Bourgogne," p. 38, 39.
[152] The prophets are all commemorative of Christ, taken from the
Messianic texts. The costumes are supposed to be those of the
actors in the mystery plays of that time. Germain, p. 63.
[153] The figures have not been restored in their original order,
which is regrettable, as some of the processional effect is
thereby lost.
[154] Shakespeare makes him articulate enough in Henry V., Act V.,
scene 2. His economies were, perhaps, begotten of his father's
prodigalities, who bequeathed only debts and a dukedom.
[155] Kleinclausz "Histoire de la Bourgogne," p. 142. Also De Barante,
Tome IV., p. 466.
[156] "He is eager to speak with you on a matter that touches closely
both you and him."
[157] Michelet.
[158] For a contemporary account of the murder, see Monstrelet.
[159] The others were the King of Sicily and the Dukes of Bourbon and
Berri.
[160] Michelet.
[161] There is no reason to suppose that the tears were hypocritical.
Such display of emotion was in the spirit of the times; and
certainly no man had better cause than its author to regret the
murder.
[162] After Bernard d'Armagnac, brother-in-law of the young Duke of
Orleans.
[163] Michelet, Tome VI., pp. 55, 56.
[164] Charles VI. died in 1422, deeply mourned by the common people.
"Ah! très cher prince, jamais nous n'en aurons un si bon."
Journal du Bourgeois.
[165] Michelet, Tome VI., p. 114, "Flesh and entrails."
[166] Barante, Tome V., p. 204.
[167] Kleinclausz, p. 146.
[Illustration: Heading, chapter XIV; Dijon: Decorated windows of the
Maison Milsand]