“that the honor of her hand I cannot accept. I am her foe, and would
rather die than marry her.”
All the hot blood of her ancestors flamed in wrath as young Jacqueline
heard this reply of the rebel lord.
“Crush we these rebel curs, von Brederode,” she cried, pointing to the
banner of Arkell; “for by my father’s memory, they shall have neither
mercy nor life from me.”
Fast upon the curt refusal of the Lord of Arkell came his message of
defiance.
“Hear ye, Countess of Holland,” rang out the challenge of the herald
of Arkell, as his trumpet-blast sounded before the gate of the citadel,
“the free Lord of Arkell here giveth you word and warning that he will
fight against you on the morrow!”
And from the citadel came back this ringing reply, as the knight of
Leyenburg made answer for his sovereign lady:
“Hear ye, sir Herald, and answer thus to the rebel Lord of Arkell: ‘For
the purpose of fighting him came we here, and fight him we will, until
he and his rebels are beaten and dead.’ Long live our Sovereign Lady of
Holland!”
On the morrow, a murky December day, in the year 1417, the battle was
joined, as announced. On the low plain beyond the city, knights and
men-at-arms, archers and spearmen, closed in the shock of battle, and a
stubborn and bloody fight it was.
Seven times did the knights of Jacqueline, glittering in their steel
armor, clash into the rebel ranks; seven times were they driven back,
until, at last, the Lord of Arkell, with a fiery charge, forced them
against the very gates of the citadel. The brave von Brederode fell
pierced with wounds, and the day seemed lost, indeed, to the Lady of
Holland.
Then Jacqueline the Countess, seeing her cause in danger--like another
Joan of Arc, though she was indeed a younger and much more beautiful
girl general,--seized the lion-banner of her house, and, at the head
of her reserve troops, charged through the open gate straight into the
ranks of her victorious foes. There was neither mercy nor gentleness
in her heart then. As when she had cowed with a look Ajax, the lion,
so now, with defiance and wrath in her face, she dashed straight at the
foe.
Her disheartened knights rallied around her, and, following the
impetuous girl, they wielded axe and lance for the final struggle. The
result came quickly. The ponderous battle-axe of the knight of Leyenburg
crashed through the helmet of the Lord of Arkell, and as the brave young
leader fell to the ground, his panic-stricken followers turned and fled.
The troops of Jacqueline pursued them through the streets of Gorkum and
out into the open country, and the vengeance of the countess was sharp
and merciless.
But in the flush of victory wrath gave way to pity again, and the young
conqueror is reported to have said, sadly and in tears:
“Ah! I have won, and yet how have I lost!”
But the knights and nobles who followed her banner loudly praised her
valor and her fearlessness, and their highest and most knightly vow
thereafter was to swear “By the courage of our Princess.”
The brilliant victory of this girl of sixteen was not, however, to
accomplish her desires. Peace never came to her. Harassed by rebellion
at home, and persecuted by her relentless and perfidious uncles, Count
John of Bavaria, rightly called “the Pitiless,” and Duke Philip of
Burgundy, falsely called “the Good,” she, who had once been Crown
Princess of France and Lady of Holland, died at the early age of
thirty-six, stripped of all her titles and estates. It is, however,
pleasant to think that she was happy in the love of her husband, the
baron of the forests of the Duke of Burgundy, a plain Dutch gentleman,
Francis von Borselen, the lad who, years before, had furnished the gray
gabardine that had shielded Count William’s daughter from her father’s
lions.
The story of Jacqueline of Holland is one of the most romantic that has
come down to us from those romantic days of the knights. Happy only
in her earliest and latest years, she is, nevertheless, a bright and
attractive figure against the dark background of feudal tyranny and
crime. The story of her womanhood should indeed be told, if we would
study her life as a whole; but for us, who can in this paper deal only
with her romantic girlhood, her young life is to be taken as a type of
the stirring and extravagant days of chivalry.
And we cannot but think with sadness upon the power for good that she
might have been in her land of fogs and floods if, instead of being made
the tool of party hate and the ambitions of men, her frank and fearless
girl nature had been trained to gentle ways and charitable deeds.
To be “the most picturesque figure in the history of Holland,” as she
has been called, is distinction indeed; but higher still must surely be
that gentleness of character and nobility of soul that, in these days
of ours, may be acquired by every girl and boy who reads this romantic
story of the Countess Jacqueline, the fair young Lady of Holland.
CATARINA OF VENICE: THE GIRL OF THE GRAND CANAL.
(Afterward known as Queen of Cyprus and “Daughter of the Republic.”)
A.D. 1466.
“Who is he? Why do you not know, Catarina mia? ‘T is his Most Puissant
Excellency, the mighty Lord of Lusignan, the runaway Heir of Jerusalem,
the beggar Prince of Cyprus, with more titles to his name--ho ho,
ho!--than he hath jackets to his back; and with more dodging than
ducats, so ‘t is said, when the time to pay for his lodging draweth
nigh. Holo, Messer Principino! Give you good-day, Lord of Lusignan! Ho,
below there here is tribute for you.”
And down upon the head of a certain sad-faced, seedy-looking young
fellow in the piazza, or square, beneath, descended a rattling shower of
bonbons, thrown by the hand of the speaker, a brown-faced Venetian lad
of sixteen.
But little Catarina Cornaro, just freed from the imprisonment of her
convent-school at Padua, felt her heart go out in pity towards this
homeless young prince, who just now seemed to be the butt for all the
riot and teasing of the boys of the Great Republic.
“Nay, nay, my Giorgio,” she said to her brother; “‘t is neither fair nor
wise so to beset one in dire distress. The good sisters of our school
have often told us that ‘t is better to be a beggar than a dullard; and
sure yon prince, as you do say he is, looketh to be no dolt. But ah, see
there!” she cried, leaning far over the gayly draped balcony; “see, he
can well use his fists, can he not! Nay, though, ‘t is a shame so
to beset him, say I. Why should our lads so misuse a stranger and a
prince?”
It was the Feast Day of St. Mark, one of the jolliest of the old-time
holidays of Venice, that wonderful City of the Sea, whose patron and
guardian St. Mark, the apostle, was supposed to be. Gondolas, rich with
draperies of every hue that completely concealed their frames of sombre
black, shot in and out, and up and down all the water-streets of the
beautiful city; while towering palace and humbler dwelling alike were
gay with gorgeous hangings and fluttering streamers.
In noticeable contrast with all the brilliant costumes and laughing
faces around him was the lad who just now seemed in so dire a strait.
He had paused to watch one of the passing pageants from the steps of the
Palazzo Cornaro, quite near the spot where, a century later, the famous
bridge known as the Rialto spanned the Street of the Nobles, or Grand
Canal--one of the most notable spots in the history of Venice the
Wonderful.
The lad was indeed a prince, the representative of a lordly house that
for more than five hundred years had been strong and powerful, first
as barons of France, and later as rulers of the Crusaders’ kingdom
of Jerusalem and the barbaric but wealthy island of Cyprus. But poor
Giacomo, or James, of Lusignan, royal prince though he was, had been
banished from his father’s court in Cyprus. He had dared rebel
against the authority of his step-mother, a cruel Greek princess from
Constantinople, who ruled her feeble old husband and persecuted her
spirited young step-son, the Prince Giacomo.
And so, with neither money nor friends to help him on, he had wandered
to Venice. But Venice in 1466, a rich, proud, and prosperous city, was
a very poor place for a lad who had neither friends nor money; for, of
course, the royal prince of a little island in the Mediterranean could
not so demean himself as to soil his hands with work!
So I imagine that young Prince Giacomo had any thing but a pleasant time
in Venice. On this particular Feast Day of St. Mark, I am certain that
he was having the most unpleasant of all his bitter experiences, as,
backed up against one of the columns of the Cornaro Palace, he found
himself surrounded by a crowd of thoughtless young Venetians, who were
teasing and bullying him to the full content of their brutal young
hearts.
The Italian temper is known to be both hot and hasty; but the temper of
oriental Cyprus is even more fiery, and so it was not surprising that,
in this most one-sided fray, the fun soon became fighting in earnest;
for anger begets anger.
All about the young prince was a tossing throng of restless and angry
boys, while the beleaguered lad, still standing at bay, flourished a
wicked-looking stiletto above his head and answered taunt with taunt.
At this instant the door of the Cornaro Palace opened quickly, and the
Prince Giacomo felt himself drawn bodily within; while a bright-faced
young girl with flashing eye and defiant air confronted his greatly
surprised tormentors.
“Shame, shame upon you, boys of Venice,” she cried, “thus to ill-use a
stranger in your town! Is a score of such as you against one poor
lad the boasted chivalry of Venice? Eh via! the very fisher-lads of
Mendicoli could teach you better ways!”
Taken quite aback by this sudden apparition and these stinging words,
the boys dispersed with scarce an attempt to reply, and all the more
hastily because they spied, coming up the Grand Canal, the gorgeous
gondola of the Companions of the Stocking, an association of young men
under whose charge and supervision all the pageants and displays of old
Venice were given.
So the piazza was speedily cleared; and the Prince Giacomo, with many
words of thanks to his young and unknown deliverers, hurried from the
spot which had so nearly proved disastrous to him.
Changes came suddenly in those unsettled times. Within two years both
the Greek step-mother and the feeble old king were dead, and Prince
Giacomo, after a struggle for supremacy with his half-sister Carlotta,
became King of Cyprus.
Now Cyprus, though scarcely as large as the State of Connecticut, was a
very desirable possession, and one that Venice greatly coveted. Some of
her citizens owned land there, and among these was Marco Cornaro, father
of Catarina. And so it happened that, soon after the accession of King
Giacomo, Messer Andrea Cornaro, the uncle of Catarina, came to Cyprus to
inspect and improve the lands belonging to his brother Marco.
Venice, in those days was so great a power that the Venetian merchants
were highly esteemed in all the courts of Europe. And Uncle Andrea, who
had probably loaned the new king of Cyprus a goodly store of Venetian
ducats, became quite, friendly with the young monarch, and gave him much
sage advice.
One day--it seemed as if purely by accident, but those old Venetians
were both shrewd and far-seeing--Uncle Andrea, talking of the glories of
Venice, showed to King Giacomo a picture of his niece, Catarina Cornaro,
then a beautiful girl of fourteen.
King Giacomo came of a house that was quick to form friendships and
antipathies, loves and hates. He “fell violently in love with the
picture,”--so the story goes,--and expressed to Andrea Cornaro his
desire to see and know the original.
“That face seemeth strangely familiar, Messer Cornaro,” he said.
He held the portrait in his hands, and seemed struggling with an
uncertain memory. Suddenly his face lighted up, and he exclaimed
joyfully:
“So; I have it! Messer Cornaro, I know your niece.”
“You know her, sire?” echoed the surprised Uncle Andrea.
“Ay, that indeed I do,” said the king. “This is the same fair and brave
young maiden who delivered me from a rascal rout of boys on the Grand
Canal at Venice, on St. Mark’s Day, scarce two years ago.” And King
Giacomo smiled and bowed at the picture as if it were the living
Catarina instead of her simple portrait.
Here now was news for Uncle Andrea. And you may be sure he was too good
a Venetian and too loyal a Cornaro not to turn it to the best advantage.
So he stimulated the young king’s evident inclination as cunningly as
he was able. His niece Catarina, he assured the king, was as good as she
was beautiful, and as clever as she was both.
“But then,” he declared, “Venice hath many fair daughters, sire, whom
the king’s choice would honor, and Catarina is but a young maid yet.
Would it not be wiser, when you choose a queen, to select some older
donzella for your bride? Though it will, I can aver, be hard to choose
fairer.”
It is just such half-way opposition that renders nature like that of
this young monarch all the more determined. No! King Giacomo would have
Catarina, and Catarina only, for his bride and queen. Messer Cornaro
must secure her for him.
But shrewd Uncle Andrea still feared the jealousy of his
fellow-Venetians. Why should the house of Cornaro, they would demand,
be so openly preferred? And so, at his suggestion, an ambassador was
despatched to Venice soliciting an alliance with the Great Republic,
and asking from the senate the hand of some high-born maid of Venice in
marriage for his highness, the King of Cyprus. But you may be very sure
that the ambassador had special and secret instructions alike from King
Giacomo and from Uncle Andrea just how and whom to choose.
The ambassador came to Venice, and soon the senate issued its commands
that upon a certain day the noblest and fairest of the daughters of
Venice--one from each of the patrician families--should appear in the
great Council Hall of the Ducal Palace in order that the ambassador of
the King of Cyprus might select a fitting bride for his royal master. It
reads quite like one of the old fairy stories, does it not? Only in this
case the dragon who was to take away the fairest maiden as his tribute
was no monster, but the brave young king of a lovely island realm.
The Palace of the Doges--the Palazzo Ducale of old Venice--is familiar
to all who have ever seen a picture of the Square of St. Mark’s,
the best known spot in that famous City of the Sea. It is the low,
rectangular, richly decorated building with its long row of columns and
arcades that stand out so prominently in photograph and engraving. It
has seen many a splendid pageant, but it never witnessed a fairer sight
than when on a certain bright day of the year 1468 seventy-two of the
daughters of Venice, gorgeous in the rich costumes of that most lavish
city of a lavish age, gathered in the great Consiglio, or Council Hall.
Up the Scala d’Oro, or Golden Staircase, built only for the use of
the nobles, they came, escorted by the ducal guards, gleaming in their
richest uniforms. The great Council Hall was one mass of color; the
splendid dresses of the ladies, the scarlet robes of the senators and
high officials of the Republic, the imposing vestments of the old doge,
Cristofero Moro, as he sat in state upon his massive throne, and the
bewildering array of the seventy-two candidates for a king’s choice.
Seventy-two, I say, but in all that company of puffed and powdered,
coifed and combed young ladies, standing tall and uncomfortable on
their ridiculously high-heeled shoes, one alone was simply dressed
and apparently unaffected by the gorgeousness of her companions, the
seventy-second and youngest of them all.
She was a girl of fourteen. Face and form were equally beautiful, and
a mass of “dark gold hair” crowned her “queenly head.” While the other
girls appeared nervous or anxious, she seemed unconcerned, and her face
wore even a peculiar little smile, as if she were contrasting the poor
badgered young prince of St. Mark’s Day with the present King of Cyprus
hunting for a bride. “Eh via!” she said to herself, “‘t is almost as if
it were a revenge upon us for our former churlishness, that he thus now
puts us to shame.”
The ambassador of Cyprus, swarthy of face and stately in bearing,
entered the great hall. With him came his attendant retinue of Cypriote
nobles. Kneeling before the doge, the ambassador presented the petition
of his master, the King of Cyprus, seeking alliance and friendship with
Venice.
“And the better to secure this and the more firmly to cement it,
Eccellenza,” said the ambassador, “my lord and master the king doth
crave from your puissant state the hand, of some high-born damsel of the
Republic as that of his loving and acknowledged queen.”
The old doge waved his hand toward the fair and anxious seventy-two.
“Behold, noble sir,” he said, “the fairest and noblest of our maidens of
Venice. Let your eye seek among these a fitting bride for your lord, the
King of Cyprus, and it shall be our pleasure to give her to him in such
a manner as shall suit the power and dignity of the State of Venice.”
Courteous and stately still, but with a shrewd and critical eye, the
ambassador of Cyprus slowly passed from candidate to candidate, with
here a pleasant word and there a look of admiration; to this one a
honeyed compliment upon her beauty, to that one a bit of praise for her
elegance of dress.
How oddly this all sounds to us with our modern ideas of propriety and
good taste! It seems a sort of Prize Girl Show, does it not? Or, it is
like a competitive examination for a royal bride.
But, like too many such examinations, this one had already been settled
beforehand. The King had decided to whom the prize of his crown should
go, and so, at the proper time, the critical ambassador stopped before a
slight girl of fourteen, dressed in a robe of simple white.
“Donzella mia,” he said courteously, but in a low tone; “are not you
the daughter of Messer. Marco Cornaro, the noble merchant of the Via
Merceria?”
“I am, my lord,” the girl replied.
“My royal master greets you through me,” he said. “He recalls the day
when you did give him shelter, and he invites you to share with him the
throne of Cyprus. Shall this be as he wishes?”
And the girl, with a deep courtesy in acknowledgment of the stately
obeisance of the ambassador, said simply, “That shall be, my lord, as my
father and his Excellency shall say.”
The ambassador of Cyprus took the young girl’s hand, and, conducting
her through all that splendid company, presented her before the doge’s
throne.
“Excellency,” he said, “Cyprus hath made her choice. We present to you,
if so it shall please your grace, our future queen, this fair young
maid, Catarina, the daughter of the noble Marco Cornaro, merchant and
senator of the Republic.”
What the seventy-one disappointed young ladies thought of the King’s
choice, or what they said about it when they were safely at home once
more, history does not record. But history does record the splendors
and display of the ceremonial with which the gray-haired old doge,
Cristofero Moro, in the great hall of the palace, surrounded by the
senators of the Republic and all the rank and power of the State of
Venice, formally adopted Catarina as a “daughter of the Republic.” Thus
to the dignity of her father’s house was added the majesty of the
great Republic. Her marriage portion was placed at one hundred thousand
ducats, and Cyprus was granted, on behalf of this “daughter of the
Republic,” the alliance and protection of Venice.
The ambassador of Cyprus standing before the altar of St. Mark’s as
the personal representative of his master, King Giacomo was married “by
proxy” to the young Venetian girl; while the doge, representing her new
father, the republic, gave her away in marriage, and Catarina Cornaro,
amid the blessings of the priests, the shouts of the people, and the
demonstrations of clashing music and waving banners, was solemnly
proclaimed Queen of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia.
But the gorgeous display, before which even the fabled wonders of the
“Arabian Nights” were but poor affairs, did not conclude here. Following
the splendors of the marriage ceremony and the wedding-feast, came the
pageant of departure. The Grand Canal was ablaze with gorgeous colors
and decorations. The broad water-steps of the Piazza of St. Mark was
soft with carpets of tapestry, and at the foot of the stairs floated
the most beautiful boat in the world, the Bucentaur or state gondola,
of Venice. Its high, carved prow and framework were one mass of golden
decorations. White statues of the saints, carved heads of the lion of
St. Mark, the doge’s cap, and the emblems of the Republic adorned
it throughout. Silken streamers of blue and scarlet floated from its
standards; and its sides were draped in velvet hangings of crimson and
royal purple. The long oars were scarlet and gold, and the rowers were
resplendent in suits of blue and silver. A great velvet-covered
throne stood on the upper deck, and at its right was a chair of state,
glistening with gold.
Down the tapestried stairway came the Doge of Venice, and, resting upon
his arm, in a white bridal dress covered with pearls, walked the girl
queen Catarina. Doge and daughter seated themselves upon their sumptuous
thrones, their glittering retinue filled the beautiful boat, the scarlet
oars dipped into the water; and then, with music playing, banners
streaming, and a grand escort of boats of every conceivable shape,
flashing in decoration and gorgeous in mingled colors, the bridal train
floated down the Grand Canal, on past the outlying islands, and between
the great fortresses to where, upon the broad Adriatic, the galleys were
waiting to take the new Queen to her island kingdom off the shores of
Greece. And there, in his queer old town of Famagusta, built with a
curious commingling of Saracen, Grecian, and Norman ideas, King Giacomo
met his bride.
So they were married, and for five happy years all went well with the
young King and Queen. Then came troubles. King Giacomo died suddenly
from a cold caught while hunting, so it was said; though some averred
that he had been poisoned, either by his half-sister Carlotta, with whom
he had contended for his throne, or by some mercenary of Venice, who
desired his realm for that voracious Republic.
But if this latter was the case, the voracious Republic of Venice was
not to find an easy prey. The young Queen Catarina proclaimed her baby
boy King of Cyprus, and defied the Great Republic. Venice, surprised
at this rebellion of its adopted “daughter,” dispatched embassy after
embassy to demand submission. But the young mother was brave and stood
boldly up for the rights of her son.
But he, too, died. Then Catarina, true to the memory of her husband
and her boy, strove to retain the throne intact. For years she ruled as
Queen of Cyprus, despite the threatenings of her home Republic and the
conspiracies of her enemies. Her one answer to the demands of Venice
was:
“Tell the Republic I have determined never to remarry. When I am dead,
the throne of Cyprus shall go to the State, my heir. But until that day
I am Queen of Cyprus!”
Then her brother Giorgio, the same who in earlier days had looked down
with her from the Cornaro Palace upon the outcast Prince of Cyprus, came
to her as ambassador of the Republic. His entreaties and his assurance
that, unless she complied with the senate’s demand, the protection of
Venice would be withdrawn, and the island kingdom left a prey to Saracen
pirates and African robbers, at last carried the day. Worn out with
long contending, fearful, not for herself but for her subjects of
Cyprus,--she yielded to the demands of the senate, and abdicated in
favor of the Republic.
Then she returned to Venice. The same wealth of display and ceremonial
that had attended her departure welcomed the return of this obedient
daughter of the Republic, now no longer a light-hearted young girl, but
a dethroned queen, a widowed and childless woman.