Reign of John II.—Stephen Marcel, Provost of the
Merchants—Reign of Charles V.—Hugh Aubriot—Reign of
Charles VI.—Noviant—La Rivière—Peter des Essarts—John de
Montaigu—Contests of the factions at Paris—The Count of
Armagnac—The Burgundians obtain possession of Paris—Massacre
of the Armagnacs—Assassination of the duke of Burgundy—Reign
of Charles VII.—Paris in the hands of the English—Villiers
de l’Isle Adam—The English expelled from Paris—Reign of
Louis XI.—Anthony de Chabannes—The Count de Melun—Cardinal
de Balue—William d’Haraucour—Charles d’Armagnac—Louis de
Luxembourg—The Duke of Nemours and his children.
A mind tinctured with superstition, even though it were not of the
darkest hue, might be tempted to believe that a fatality pursued the
men by whom the Bastile was raised. It has been seen that the original
founder was the famous Stephen Marcel, Provost of the Merchants. Marcel,
though his character has uniformly been blackened by writers devoted
to absolute monarchy, seems to have been influenced, at least in the
greatest portion of his career, by truly patriotic motives. It is not
the object which he laboured to obtain, but some of the means which
he employed for its attainment, that merits censure. To confine the
royal authority within reasonable bounds, and to give the national
representatives their proper weight in the scale of government, were
the purposes which he sought to accomplish. The dangerous circumstances
in which the country was placed, and the heavy oppression under which
the people groaned, pointed out such a reform as being no less wise
than just. The time for attempting it was favourable; inasmuch as
the captivity of the king, and the presence of a victorious foreign
army, would, it was supposed, compel the dauphin, Charles, to look to
the States-General for the means of saving France from still greater
calamities. Yet, so strong was princely dislike to receiving aid from the
legitimate guardians of the public purse, that Charles preferred raising
supplies by the fraudulent and ruinous expedient of debasing the coin. In
that scheme he was fortunately defeated by the stubborn opposition of the
Provost.
The alliance formed by Marcel with Charles, surnamed the Bad, king
of Navarre, was, perhaps, an impolitic act; not so much because
the Navarrese monarch deserved the epithet given to him by French
historians—for we may doubt whether he was, in reality, much more
blame-worthy than his namesake, the dauphin, on whom the same historians
have lavished their praise—but because a junction with a man who was
exceedingly obnoxious to a large party in France was likely to give rise
to suspicions with respect to his principles and motives. It is probable,
however, that he was led to it, by a wish to have some stronger prop
to lean on than the fluctuating favour of the populace. The “varium
et mutabile semper,” by which Virgil, somewhat harshly, characterizes
the female sex, may, with less appearance of satire, be applied to the
multitude. This truth Marcel was doomed to learn by experience.
For nearly two years, the Provost, with more or less steadiness, kept his
footing on the tottering eminence to which he had risen. During that time
he was actively engaged in securing the French capital from external and
internal foes. He fortified and enlarged its circuit, supplied it with
arms and provisions, established a guard of citizens, which was night
and day on the watch, and barricaded the entrances of the streets by
ponderous chains, which were fastened to the houses: these chains were
the first barricades which were formed in Paris.
The capital was undoubtedly saved from pillage and devastation by the
provident care of Marcel. In spite, however, of his exertions, his
popularity waned; the minds of his fellow citizens were poisoned by
the arts and insinuations of the dauphin’s friends, and irritated by
his connection with the king of Navarre, whose troops were mercilessly
ravaging all the circumjacent country. While the Parisians were in this
ferment, the dauphin promised a general amnesty to them, on condition of
their giving up to him the Provost, and twelve other persons, whom he
should select. Fearing, probably, that this temptation would be too great
for them to resist, the Provost, in an evil hour, resolved to admit into
the city the troops of the king of Navarre. It is also said, though there
does not appear to be any proof of the fact, that he intended to make a
general massacre of the opposite party, and transfer the crown of France
to Charles the Bad. For this we have only the word of his enemies.
It was on the night of the 31st of July, 1358, that Marcel designed to
open the gates of Paris to the Navarrese soldiery. He was too late. At
noon, he went to the gate of the bastile of St. Denis, and ordered the
guard to deliver up the keys to Joceran de Mascon, the king of Navarre’s
treasurer. The guard refused to comply, and a loud altercation arose. The
noise brought to the place John Maillard, the commandant of the quarter.
Up to this moment, Maillard had been the zealous friend of Marcel, but
he now resolutely opposed the scheme of the latter. A violent quarrel
ensued between them, which ended by Maillard springing on horseback,
unfurling the banner of France, and summoning the citizens to assist him
in preventing the Provost from betraying the city to the English. The
summons speedily brought a throng around him. The friends of the dauphin,
likewise, did not let slip this opportunity of acting in his behalf. A
considerable body of men was collected by them, at the head of which were
placed two gentlemen, named Pepin des Essarts and John de Charny.
From the gate of St. Denis, meanwhile, Marcel proceeded on the same
errand to the other gates. He was not more successful than on his first
attempt; obedience was every where refused. As a last resource, he bent
his course to the bastile of St. Anthony. Here, again he was foiled.
His enemies were beforehand with him. The keys he did by some means
obtain, but they were useless. Maillard had already reached the scene of
action, with a numerous train of followers, and he was almost immediately
joined by the partisans of the dauphin. With the keys of the Bastile in
his hand, Marcel began to ascend the entrance ladder, striving at the
same time to keep off his assailants. A terrible cry now burst forth of
“Kill them! kill them! death to the Provost of the Merchants and his
accomplices!” Alarmed by the clamour, he attempted to save himself by
flight, but he was struck on the head with an axe, by de Charny, and he
fell at the foot of the Bastile, which he had himself built. His body
was immediately pierced with innumerable wounds by the infuriated crowd.
Giles Marcel, his nephew, and fifty-three others, the whole of the party
which had attended him, were either slain on the spot or thrown into
prison. Three days afterwards, the dauphin re-entered Paris, and began
to feed his revenge with blood.
By Hugh Aubriot the Bastile was advanced another step towards its
completion. Born at Dijon, of humble parents, Aubriot gained the favour
of Charles the fifth, and of his brother, the duke of Anjou, and was
appointed minister of finance. He was also raised to the dignified,
though troublesome and dangerous office of Provost of Paris. Charles
the fifth had a love of building, and he found in the Provost a man who
had talents and activity to carry his wishes into effect. Paris was
indebted to Aubriot for numerous works, which conduced to its safety,
ornament, and salubrity. He strengthened and added to the ramparts,
constructed sewers, which he was the first to introduce into the
capital, formed quays, rebuilt the Pont au Change, and built the Pont
St. Michel. In these labours he employed, at a fixed rate of payment,
all the mendicants, destitute persons, and disorderly characters of the
city; thus compelling them to earn that subsistence which they had been
in the habit of extorting or plundering from the citizens. The police
of the city was greatly improved by him in other respects. Among the
ordinances which he issued, for that purpose, was one which revived that
of Louis the ninth, relative to prostitutes. Paris was now overrun with
loose women; the ordinance enjoined them, under penalty of fine and
imprisonment, to reside only in certain places, which were specified, to
the number of nine.
The strict performance of his duty proved to be the ruin of Aubriot.
Among the worst nuisances of the capital were the scholars of the
University of Paris; they were addicted, among other things, to
drunkenness, libertinism, and robbery, and their insolence was still
more insufferable than their vices. Perpetual quarrels and contests, in
which they were almost always the aggressors, took place between these
votaries of learning and the citizens. The main cause of their excesses
being thus pushed beyond all bounds was the complete impunity which
they enjoyed. Fonder of its privileges than of morality and justice,
the University on all occasions strenuously resisted the efforts of the
magistrates to bring scholars to punishment. In more than one instance it
threw its protecting shield over plunderers and assassins, and pursued
with a deadly hatred those individuals who had dared to enforce the laws
against criminals. This crying abuse Aubriot determined to suppress. In
the prison of the Little Châtelet, which was built by him, he ordered
two strong and not over comfortable cells to be constructed, for the
reception of delinquent scholars. These he called his _clos Bruneau_ and
_rue de Fouaire_; the University schools being situated in places which
were so named. By this stinging joke, and by the vigorous measures of
Aubriot, the University was inexpiably offended. Regardless of its anger,
he, however, resolutely persisted in arresting and committing to prison
every student who ventured to transgress.
While Charles the fifth lived, Aubriot remained safe; but the death of
his patron, and the weakness and confusion of a minority, laid him open
to the malice of his enemies. The University had sworn to accomplish
his ruin, and this oath it held sacred. In his public character he had
so deported himself as to be intangible; and, therefore, his private
life was ransacked to find matter for accusation. It was discovered, or
feigned, that he was too warm a lover of women, and, to give a darker
colour to this fault, it was added, that he had an especial predilection
for Jewesses. From this, by a curious process of logic, it was deduced
as an inference, that he was himself a Jew and a heretic; his accusers
not perceiving, or not choosing to perceive, that the one of these
conditions excluded the other. Their reasoning was akin to that which, in
the fable, the wolf uses to the lamb. Unluckily, too, for the Provost,
they resembled the wolf in other points; they had his savageness and his
ability to injure. The University and the clergy joined in a clamour
against him, and were supported by the duke of Berry, who was hostile to
the Burgundian party, to which Aubriot belonged.
Charged with impiety and heresy, Aubriot was brought to trial before
an ecclesiastical tribunal. With such prosecutors and such judges,
conviction was certain. To such a pitch did the University and the clergy
carry their animosity against him, that he would have been doomed to the
flames, had not his friends at court powerfully exerted their influence
to procure a milder sentence. But, though his life was spared, he was not
suffered to escape without feeling how venomous are the fangs of fanatics
and pedants. He was condemned to public exposure and penance, in presence
of the heads and scholars of the University, to ask pardon upon his
knees, and, with no other food than bread and water, to spend in strict
confinement the remnant of his days.
Aubriot was conveyed to the Bastile, to undergo the last part of his
sentence. In the course of a few months, probably because he was treated
with too much lenity in a state prison, he was removed to the bishop’s
prison, called Fort-l’Evêque, where he was thrown into one of those
dungeons which bore the significant name of oubliettes. There he might
have languished long, or perished quickly, but never have hoped for
deliverance, had not, in 1381, the intolerable oppression exercised
by the government given rise to the insurrection which, from the
circumstance of the revolters being armed with leaden malls, was called
the Maillotin. In want of a leader, the insurgents bethought them of Hugh
Aubriot; and it is not unlikely that, as he had suffered heavy wrongs,
they supposed he would espouse their cause with heart and soul. They
accordingly liberated him. Aubriot, however, was either too old, or too
prudent, to become the head of a revolt; he spoke his deliverers fair,
but, on the very evening that he was set free, he crossed the Seine, and
hastened to Burgundy, his native country, where he is believed to have
died in the following year.
While Charles the sixth was labouring under his first attack of insanity,
the political feuds and intrigues which distracted his court gave fresh
inhabitants to the Bastile. When, in 1392, the dukes of Burgundy and
Berry assumed the government, the overthrow of Clisson, the constable
of France, and prime minister, necessarily ensued, and in his fall was
involved the ministry he had formed. Three of the ministers, La Begue de
Villaine, Noviant, and La Rivière, were arrested; Montaigu, the fourth,
escaped to Avignon. La Begue, an aged man, who had served in the field
with honour under several kings, was soon released; Noviant and La
Rivière were reserved as scape goats, and were shut up in the Bastile.
Of Noviant nothing important is recorded. La Rivière had enjoyed, in the
highest degree, the confidence and friendship of Charles the fifth; so
much, indeed, did the monarch value him, that, by his express commands,
whenever his favourite died, the royal mausoleum of St. Denis was to be
the place of interment. At the accession of Charles the sixth, La Rivière
suffered a temporary eclipse; but he shone forth again when the young
monarch assumed the reins of government.
Noviant and La Rivière were now in the hands of their enemies, and had
little to hope; for they were rich enough to excite a hungering after
their spoils, and had been too long in possession of power not to be
loathed by their rivals. It is the curse and the shame of politics,
that they render men insensible to, or, which is still worse, incapable
of acknowledging, the merit really owned by those who differ from them
in views and principles. Thorough-going politicians are but too apt to
affirm what is false, or suppress what is true, provided it will injure
their opponents. It follows, as a natural consequence of this unworthy
feeling, that, though the two ministers fully vindicated themselves on
every article of impeachment, they had but small chance of escaping.
Their fate was deemed so inevitable that, more than once during the trial
the brute populace rushed to the place of execution, lured by the report
that the ministers were about to be brought to the scaffold. Luckily
for them, they had a protector, stronger than their innocence. This was
the young and lovely princess Jane, countess of Boulogne, the wife of
the duke of Berry. Her marriage with the duke had been brought about by
the influence of La Rivière, and this circumstance, together with the
minister’s estimable qualities, had secured for him her affection and
esteem. Her pleadings softened her husband, and thus prevented a deadly
sentence from being passed on the fallen statesmen. It is not to be
supposed, however, that they were allowed to go unscathed. To declare
them guiltless would have been a tacit confession of error, an act which
is not to be expected from weak and base minds; and, besides, hatred
could not consent to let loose its objects without previously making
them feel a touch of its fangs. The ministers, therefore, after having
been captives for twelve months, and in hourly dread of death, were only
condemned to confiscation of their property, and exile to a distance
from the court. With respect to the latter part of the sentence, they
might well have exclaimed, like Diogenes, “and we condemn you to remain
at court!” Charles, on his temporary return to sanity, restored their
estates, but they were not again employed. La Rivière died in 1400, and
was buried at St. Denis.
There was a moment when the Bastile seemed about to be converted to its
original purpose, that of a fortress for the defence of Paris. After
the duke of Burgundy had, in 1405, obtained possession of the king, the
dauphin, and the capital, preparations to recover Paris were made by the
beautiful but worthless queen Isabella, and her paramour, the duke of
Orleans. In consequence of this, the Burgundian prince placed garrisons
in the Bastile and the Louvre; and a report having been spread, that
there was a plot to carry off the dauphin, a chain was stretched across
the river, from the Bastile to the opposite bank, to prevent the passage
of vessels. It was on this occasion that, to win the good will of the
Parisians, the duke induced the king to restore to them the barricading
chains, of which they had been deprived in 1383, and which had ever since
been kept in the castle of Vincennes. The precautions were prudent, but
they were made useless, by a treaty between the hostile parties.
It has already been observed, that the office of Provost of Paris was no
less perilous than honourable. During the disturbed and disastrous reign
of Charles the sixth, there were as many as twenty-four provosts, and
there were few of them who did not find their dignity a burthen. Among
the most unfortunate of them was Peter des Essarts. He was one of the
French nobles who were sent to aid the Scotch in their contest with the
English; and, in 1402, he fell into the hands of the latter. After he was
ransomed he returned to France, and became a zealous partisan of John
the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy. The duke amply rewarded him for his
services. He successively obtained for him the posts of Provost of Paris,
grand butler, grand falconer, first lay president of the chamber of
accounts, supreme commissioner of woods and waters, and superintendant
of finance, and also the governments of Cherbourg, Montargis, and Nemours.
As provost of Paris, it fell to his lot to arrest a man whose rise had
been no less rapid than his own. His task was performed with a thorough
good will. Montaigu, whom we have seen flying to Avignon after the
downfall of Clisson, returned to the French capital when the storm was
blown over. There he became more than ever a favourite of the king, who
loaded him with honours, promoted his relations, and procured for his
son the hand of the constable d’Albret’s sister. Among the offices which
were lavished on Montaigu were those of finance minister and grand master
of the royal household. His riches were soon increased to an enormous
degree, and his pride to a still greater. To the duke of Burgundy he
had rendered himself peculiarly obnoxious, by thwarting his plans, and
being a determined adherent of the queen and the house of Orleans. The
Burgundian affected to be reconciled to him, but he did not the less
resolve upon his destruction. To accomplish the ruin of Montaigu, the
duke instituted an enquiry into the conduct of those who had managed
the finances; a species of enquiry which was always applauded by the
tax-burthened people. At the same time, he likewise procured for the
Parisians the restoration of various privileges, which had been taken
from them, as a punishment for the Maillotin insurrection. Having thus
fortified his popularity, he took advantage of the king being visited by
one of his fits of madness, to commence operations against Montaigu. The
favourite had been cautioned against his danger, and advised to fly from
it, but confiding in the support of the queen and the duke of Berry, he
was deaf to advice. He was arrested in the street by des Essarts, and
committed to the Little Châtelet. It strongly marks his insufferable
pride and insolence, that, when he was seized by the provost, he
exclaimed “Ribald! how hast thou the audacity to touch me.” This was the
arrogance of an upstart, for he was of humble birth. He was brought to
trial, with little attention to the forms or the spirit of justice, and,
after having been tortured, was condemned to lose his head; his property
was confiscated, but, instead of being appropriated to replenish the
treasury, it was divided among his enemies. The sentence was executed in
the autumn of 1409.
If ambition had not entirely banished prudence, the fate of Montaigu
might have taught des Essarts to reflect on the frail tenure by which,
in an age of faction, the most conspicuous partisans hold their fortunes
and their lives. Nor was he without a still more impressive warning. In
a moment of displeasure, the duke of Burgundy said to him, “Provost of
Paris, John de Montaigu was three-and-twenty years in getting his head
cut off, but verily you will not be three years about it:”—ominous words,
where the prophet had the power of bringing his prophecy to pass!
In 1410 the contending factions once more resumed their arms. By a rapid
march, the Burgundian prince made himself master of Paris, which he
garrisoned with eight thousand men. For the support of the troops, a
heavy tax was imposed upon the citizens. Des Essarts was charged with the
levying of this tax, and he is accused of having swelled his own coffers
with the largest share of the produce. By this onerous measure, the
popularity of the duke and the provost was materially diminished. In the
course of a few months, the duke deemed it prudent to conclude another
simular of a treaty; it was called the treaty of the Bicêtre, from the
place where it was negotiated, and by one of its articles he consented
that des Essarts should be removed from the provostship of Paris.
It seems impossible for the signers of such treaties to have put their
hands to them without being tempted to laugh in each other’s faces; the
compacts were notoriously intended to be broken on the first favourable
opportunity. Accordingly, but a few months elapsed, after the conclusion
of the peace, before the Burgundian and Orleanist parties were again in
arms, and vituperating each other in the most virulent language. Des
Essarts was re-established as provost of Paris; and, during the temporary
ascendancy of the Orleanists, his exertions to supply the city with
provisions gained for him, from the citizens, the flattering appellation
of the Father of the People. When, however, the Parisians ceased to be in
dread of having hungry bellies, they ceased to applaud him; and, in the
following year, he became an object of their hatred.
A sharp contest of a few months was terminated by another hollow truce,
under the name of a peace. By this time the Burgundian prince appears to
have been converted into a deadly enemy of des Essarts. Three causes are
assigned for this change. The provost is said to have in private charged
him with appropriating a large sum of the public money to his own use; to
have entered into correspondence with the Orleanist leaders, and warned
them that the duke designed to assassinate them; and likewise to have
formed, with the concurrence of the dauphin, a plan for rescuing that
prince and the king from the state of tutelage in which they were kept by
the Burgundian ruler. It is highly probable that, disgusted by the duke
having abandoned him in the treaty of the Bicêtre, he had really gone
over to the Orleanist faction. Any one of these causes was sufficient
to make his former patron resolve upon his ruin. There was also another
circumstance which wore a threatening aspect for des Essarts. The
States-General were now sitting at Paris, and in that assembly clamours
began to be heard against financial depredators, amongst whom the
multitude, so lately his adulators, did not hesitate to class him. To
elude the storm, which he saw approaching from more than one quarter,
he resigned his office of finance minister, in which he had succeeded
Montaigu; but he did not forget to secure an adequate compensation
for the sacrifice which he made. He then retired to his government of
Cherbourg.
The Burgundian was at this period in apparent amity with the dauphin;
nor had he, as yet, openly manifested his animosity against the provost.
The dauphin, was, however, at heart hostile to him, and impatient of his
yoke. It was, no doubt, with a view to having a firm hold of Paris, that
he resolved to become master of the Bastile; but to the duke the reason
which he assigned was, the mutinous disposition of the people, which
it was necessary to have the means of repressing. Imagining that the
provost was still trusted by the duke, he proposed to confide to him the
task of seizing upon the Bastile. The clear-sighted Burgundian at once
saw through the scheme, but he gave a willing consent to its execution;
for it would enable him to accomplish two objects, the getting of des
Essarts into his hands, and the gaining a complete triumph over the
dauphin himself. Des Essarts was consequently summoned from Cherbourg;
he accepted the commission; and he managed so well, that he secured the
Bastile, without the least opposition.
The provost was scarcely in possession of the fortress before the scene
changed. The Burgundian prince had skilfully laid a train, and a violent
explosion suddenly took place. A rumour was spread throughout Paris, that
the Orleanists, or Armagnacs, as they now began to be called, intended
to carry off the dauphin with his own consent, and that the provost
was at the head of the plot. A furious multitude, the leaders of which
were two of the duke’s attendants, immediately hurried to invest the
Bastile on all sides. It swelled every moment, till it consisted of not
fewer than twenty thousand armed men, all clamorous for the blood of des
Essarts, and determined to storm the castle, in order to satisfy their
rage. Another body, led by John de Troie, a surgeon, proceeded, at the
same time, to the dauphin’s palace, loaded him with insult, and arrested
several of his officers and friends, some of whom were murdered on their
way to prison.
The duke of Burgundy now came forward, apparently as a mediator. The
besiegers he induced to suspend their attack, by promising that their
object should be attained without force being used. He then tried his
eloquence on des Essarts. In the first interview he failed, in the second
he succeeded. By dint of representing to him that it was impossible to
restrain the people, and that, if they effected their entrance, which
they certainly would, the provost would be torn in pieces, he shook his
resolution of defending himself; and, by pledging his honour that no harm
should befall him, he finally prevailed on him to surrender.
Des Essarts would have done more wisely to brave death from the
sanguinary crowd, than to rely on the honour of an acknowledged assassin.
Ostensibly for the purpose of saving him from the violence of his
enemies, he was led to the prison of the Châtelet, where he seems to have
thought that all danger was at an end. He was speedily undeceived, by his
being brought to trial. In addition to various crimes charged against him
in his official capacity, he was accused of having caused the renewal of
the war between the princes after the treaty of Chartres, and of having
plotted to carry off from Paris the king, the queen, and the dauphin. He
was, of course, found guilty, and was condemned to lose his head, and to
have his remains suspended from the gibbet of Montfaucon. Four years
had not elapsed since the convicted Montaigu was conveyed by him to the
same spot. The sentence passed on des Essarts was executed on the first
of July 1413. He went to the scaffold with great courage; a circumstance
which his enemies attributed to his having flattered himself that the
people would rise and rescue him. If he entertained any such visionary
hopes, his long experience of the people must have been entirely lost
upon him.
The changes in the fortune of the two factions which desolated France
succeeded each other with an almost ludicrous rapidity; the party which
was triumphant on one day was prostrate on the morrow. We have just seen
the dauphin humbled by the duke of Burgundy; yet the same year did not
pass away before the dauphin and the Armagnacs gained the upper hand,
and the duke found it prudent to retire to his own dominions. That he
might keep a firm hold of the capital, the dauphin gave the command of
the Bastile to his uncle, prince Louis of Bavaria, appointed the duke
of Berry governor of Paris, gave the provostship to Tannegui du Châtel,
removed to the Bastile the chains used for barricading the streets, and
issued orders for the citizens to deliver up all kinds of arms.
The duke of Burgundy appealed to the sword, but without success, and the
treaty of Arras, which was the result of his failure, relieved France
for awhile from his incursions and his intrigues. It was not till nearly
two years afterwards, when the battle of Agincourt had given a rude
shock to the French throne, that he re-appeared upon the scene. Under
his auspices, the Burgundian faction at Paris formed a conspiracy, for a
general massacre of the Armagnacs, in which the king himself was not to
be spared, should he venture to resist. It was detected at the critical
moment, and the Armagnacs avenged themselves by murders, proscriptions,
and excessive taxes, which alienated many of their friends, without
crushing their enemies.
The death of the dauphin Louis, speedily followed by that of his
brother and successor John, gave the dignity of dauphin to Charles, the
youngest son of the king. The duke of Burgundy had hoped to exercise an
influence over John, but he had only hostility to expect from Charles,
who, as far as a boy of fifteen could be any thing, was a partisan of
the Armagnacs. By war alone could any thing be gained, and he therefore
prepared to wage it. The gross impolicy of the opposite party gave him
manifold advantages. While the count of Armagnac, the constable, who was
the head of the reigning faction, goaded the people by forced loans,
enormous imposts, and severities against all whom he suspected, he and
the dauphin contrived also to exasperate the queen, by seizing her
treasures, casting, perhaps not undeservedly, a stain upon her character,
and banishing her to Tours. Driven to desperation by these injuries and
insults, she abjured her long-cherished hatred of the duke, and wrote
to him for succour. He gladly listened to the call, released her from
captivity, and escorted her to Chartres, where, in virtue of an obsolete
ordinance of the king, she assumed the title of regent, and created a
parliament, to counterbalance that of the capital. A preponderating
weight was thus thrown into the scale of the Burgundian prince. Nor did
he neglect to strengthen himself by conciliating the people; for, while
the count of Armagnac was daily irritating them by his extortions, the
duke held out to them a tempting lure, by proclaiming that all the towns
which opened their gates to him should be freed from taxes. Encouraged
by these circumstances, his partisans in the capital formed a plan for
admitting him into the city; but it was discovered and frustrated.
The return of our Henry the fifth to France, in 1417, and the progress
which he was making in Normandy, recalled to their senses most of the
leaders of the factions. The necessity of union being felt, negotiations
were opened. The queen, the dauphin, and the duke of Burgundy were
willing to come to terms; the principal article agreed on was, that the
queen and the duke should form a part of the royal council. But the count
of Armagnac would hear of no treaty that did not really leave in his
hands the whole power of the state; and he accordingly strained every
nerve, and was even guilty of the most revolting cruelty, to render
impossible an accommodation with the Burgundian leaders. He little dreamt
how soon he was to be precipitated from the pinnacle of greatness, and
trampled in the mire by the basest of the base.
Harassed and impoverished by tyranny and exaction within the walls, and
beset by foes beyond them, the Parisians were hungering for peace. They
were the more inveterate against Armagnac, because they were tantalized
by the object for which they longed being almost within their reach.
Peace had, in fact, been concluded at Montereau, and publicly announced
in Paris, and the count, seconded by de Marle, the chancellor, was the
sole obstacle to its being enjoyed. He was inflexible in his resistance.
To bring about a rupture of the treaty, he sent troops to attack two of
the Burgundian posts; seemingly struck with a judicial blindness, the
forerunner of his fall, he pushed to an unbearable length his arrogance,
extortion, and gloomy precautions; and he is said to have even meditated
a sweeping massacre of such of the citizens as were hostile to him,
and to have ordered leaden medals to be struck for distribution to his
partisans, that the murderers might distinguish them in the hour of
carnage. If the character of the man, and the spirit of those barbarous
times, were not in accordance with this sanguinary project, we might,
perhaps, imagine him to be unjustly charged with it; for, in all ages,
it has been the custom to blacken an overthrown tyrant, by loading him
with imaginary crimes. That, however, it was possible for persons of
the highest rank to tolerate, and probably to command, the cold-blooded
slaughter of their foes, was but too speedily proved.
Terrible as the multitude is when once moved, it is slow to be moved.
Mutual distrust, and the dread of failure, keep its component parts
from uniting, till some one, more daring than the rest, or provoked
into action by flagrant wrongs, assumes the lead, and gives to it the
principle of cohesion. It was a denial of justice which brought into
play the man who was wanting, to convert into open revolt the passive
disaffection of the citizens. The servant of an Armagnac noble having
grossly maltreated Perinet le Clerc, whose father, an ironmonger, was the
quartinier, or magistrate of his ward, Perinet applied to the provost
for redress. His application was contemptuously rejected, and he swore
to be revenged. In concert with some of his friends, he matured a plan
for admitting the Burgundian troops, and he opened a correspondence on
the subject with Villiers de l’Isle Adam, who commanded at Pontoise, for
the duke. The chance of success seemed so fair, that l’Isle Adam readily
agreed to risk a portion of his garrison in the attempt. The negotiation
was conducted with so much secrecy that not a breath of it transpired.
The plan was carried into effect on the night of the 28th of May, 1418.
Perinet was a man of ready resources, equally discreet and resolute, and
he omitted nothing that could tend to secure a triumph. By virtue of his
office, the father of Perinet held the keys of St. Germain’s gate, and
had the relieving of the guard there. On the appointed night, having
first contrived to place on guard many of his associates, Perinet stole
to his father’s bed-side, and, undiscovered, drew the keys from beneath
his pillow. L’Isle Adam was waiting near the gate with eight hundred men.
At two in the morning, it was opened by Perinet, who, as soon as the
troops had entered, locked the gate, and threw the keys over the walls,
that, retreat being impossible, the soldiers might be compelled to combat
with desperate valour. The adventurers proceeded in dead silence along
the streets till they reached the Little Châtelet, where they were joined
by several hundred armed citizens, who had been assembled to receive
them. The confederates now loudly raised the rallying cry of “Peace!
peace! Burgundy for ever!” and it was soon as loudly echoed from every
side. From all the streets crowds of citizens sallied forth, wearing on
their dress the St. Andrew’s cross, which was the distinguishing mark of
the Burgundian party. In a very short time, tens of thousands were in
arms.
Scattered over a large city, and taken by surprise, the Armagnacs could
make no resistance. Tannegui du Châtel, the governor of the Bastile,
had barely time to hurry to the dauphin’s abode, snatch him half awaked
from the couch, wrap him in the bedclothes, and convey him for safety to
the Bastile, whence, without delay, he removed him to Melun. While he
was thus occupied, a party of Burgundians marched to the king’s palace,
and compelled him to take horse, and put himself at their head. Other
parties spread themselves over the city, and slaughtered, or dragged to
prison, all the Armagnacs on whom they could lay their hands. Nobles,
warriors, ministers of state, bishops, abbots, magistrates, and the
humble followers who had moved at their beck, were indiscriminately
thrust into durance. The jails were speedily crowded till they could hold
no more, and it then became necessary to confine the captives in public
buildings and private houses. The constable, in the rags of a beggar, at
first eluded his pursuers, and found shelter in the dwelling of a poor
mason; but a threatening proclamation, against whoever should harbour an
Armagnac, terrified his host into betraying him.
The Bastile, and consequently the power of entering Paris, was yet held
by Tannegui du Châtel. In the hope of recovering the capital, before
preparations could be made for its defence, he hurried back from Melun,
along with other officers, among whom was Barbazan, who is honourably
distinguished in the French annals, as the irreproachable knight, and
the restorer of the kingdom and crown of France. At the head of a
large body of gendarmes, he, on the first of June, made a sally from
the Bastile, and advanced up St. Anthony’s-street, towards the palace,
with the intention of making himself master of the king’s person. The
king, however, had been removed, and Tannegui was soon encountered by
l’Isle Adam, who had gathered together some troops, and was every moment
reinforced by the citizens. A desperate contest took place, but the
Armagnac general was finally compelled to retreat, with the loss of four
hundred men. The corpses of the slain were ignominiously thrown into the
common sewer by the victors. Leaving a small garrison in the Bastile, he
retired with the remainder of his force, and distributed it among the
neighbouring fortresses of Corbeil, Meaux, and Melun. Two days after the
departure of Tannegui, the governor of the Bastile deemed it prudent to
capitulate.
Already irritated by Tannegui’s attempt, the partisans of the Burgundians
were excited almost to madness by a letter from the queen, in which she
declared that neither she nor the duke would return to Paris, till it
was purged of the Armagnacs. It has been truly remarked, that “such a
letter was, in reality, a decree of death.” That was the construction put
upon it by the Burgundian faction; and, unrestrained by any religious or
humane feeling, they promptly carried the sentence into effect. On the
morning of the 12th of June, a report being spread that the enemy were
attacking two of the gates, the citizens hastily assembled from every
quarter. “All issued from their houses,” says an old writer, “like swarms
of bees from various hives. Malls, hatchets, axes, clubs, poles shod with
iron points, swords, pikes, javelins, and halberts, were called into use
by the insurgent people.”
The signal of carnage was given by one Lambert, who harangued them,
and proposed to massacre the captives. His sanguinary suggestion was
instantly adopted by the brutal crowd, and they hurried to the numerous
prisons, uttering loud cries of “Kill those dogs! Kill those Armagnac
traitors!” A scene of horror ensued at which nature shudders. Some of the
victims were flung from the towers of the buildings upon the pikes of
the assassins, some were chopped down with hatchets, some were drowned,
and others were burned alive in their dungeons; their mangled remains
were exposed to every kind of indignity; and torrents of blood flowed
through the streets. From the jails the slaughter was extended to the
suspected inhabitants of houses, and was followed by pillage. The work of
murder and robbery was untiringly continued throughout the whole of the
night, and was recommenced in the morning, after the labourers in it had
refreshed themselves by a short repast.
Nineteen hundred of the Armagnacs are said to have fallen on this
terrible day. Nor did they alone suffer, for numbers of the Burgundian
party fell beneath the weapons of their private foes, who availed
themselves of this opportunity to gratify their revenge. After having
for three days been dragged through the streets by the mob, the naked
and disfigured corpse of the constable was conveyed out of Paris in the
scavengers’ cart, and thrown among the filth and ordure of the city
laystall. That no proof of their ferocity might be wanting, his murderers
cut a portion of his skin into the form of a scarf, and hung it round him
in ridicule of the white scarf which was the badge of his party.
A supplementary massacre, of equal extent, and attended by circumstances
equally atrocious, occurred shortly after, in which perished the
prisoners from the Bastile and Vincennes, and those who had been arrested
since the first slaughter. On this occasion, the captives in the Great
and Little Châtelet strove to defend themselves, by hurling down stones
and tiles on their enemies, but their resistance was soon overpowered,
and not one of them escaped.
These enormities—prefigurations of those which, nearly four centuries
later, were to be committed in the same city—were succeeded by riotous
rejoicings for the arrival of the queen and the duke, and by “one of
the finest religious processions that ever was seen.” But the wrath of
Heaven did not slumber long. “The joy of Paris,” says an old annalist,
“was speedily changed into mourning, for three months had not passed away
after this carnage, when so cruel a pestilence fell upon the city, that
it destroyed more than eighty thousand persons in three months. History
records, that this Perinet and his companions, after having squandered
all that they had gained by plunder, died miserably, not long enjoying
the fruits of their robberies; and that the greater part of the nobles
and gentlemen, who had acted with the murderers, were carried off by the
pestilence, except l’Isle Adam, who was reserved to be chastised by king
Henry of England, though it was on another account, as we shall relate
in the proper place. And was it not God who took vengeance for these
cruelties?”
In a little more than a year from this time, John the Fearless, himself
an assassin, fell by an assassin’s hand, at the conference of Montereau.
His life had been productive of great evils to France; his death brought
on it still greater. The murder of John gave birth to that coalition
between his successor Philip the Good, Henry the fifth of England, and
queen Isabella, which, for more than a quarter of a century, deluged the
kingdom with blood, and nearly wrested the sceptre from the ancient line
of monarchs. In 1420, Paris was delivered into the hands of the English,
and for sixteen years they retained possession of it; the Louvre, the
Bastile, and Vincennes, were their principal posts in the capital and its
immediate vicinity.
The only prisoner whom, during their domination, the English are recorded
to have confined in the Bastile, was the very man but for whose activity
and daring the capital would, perhaps, never have been in their power.
It was l’Isle Adam. This warrior, who was born about 1384, of an ancient
and noble family, was taken by the English, at Honfleur, in 1415. After
he recovered his liberty, he joined the party of John the Fearless, and
was made governor of Pontoise. We have seen by what means he gained Paris
for the Burgundian prince. That he was deeply implicated in the massacres
appears to be a melancholy truth; and all his talents and valour are
insufficient to cleanse his reputation from that damnable spot. For his
services he was rewarded, by the duke of Burgundy, with the rank of
marshal.
It is not clear in what manner l’Isle Adam incurred the displeasure of
our Henry the fifth, the regent of France. French writers ascribe the
circumstance to the pride and arrogance of the English sovereign, who
required the most abject homage from all his French courtiers. L’Isle
Adam, they tell us, having one day come into the royal presence in a
plain grey dress, the monarch sternly asked him whether that was a fit
dress for a marshal. “Dearest lord,” said the offender, “I had it made
to travel in from Sens to Paris;” and, while he spoke, he looked at
the king. “What!” exclaimed Henry, “do you dare to look a prince in the
face?” “Most dread lord,” answered the marshal, “it is the custom in
France; and if any one avoids looking at the person to whom he talks, he
is considered as a bad man and a traitor; therefore, in God’s name, do
not be offended.”—“Such is not our custom,” Henry sourly replied, and
here the dialogue ended. If this story be true, it speaks ill for the
policy, and worse for the disposition, of the victor of Agincourt.
A few days after this conversation is supposed to have occurred, L’Isle
Adam was committed to the Bastile, on the false and absurd charge of
meaning to betray Paris to the dauphin. About a thousand of the citizens
took up arms to rescue him, on his way to the fortress, but they were
put to flight by the small band of English archers, which was escorting
him to prison. L’Isle Adam, it is affirmed, would have passed from the
Bastile to the scaffold, had he not been saved by the remonstrances of
Philip the Good, and the death of Henry.
After the decease of Henry, L’Isle Adam rejoined the Burgundian standard,
and took so active and effective a part in the war, that, when the
order of the Golden Fleece was established, he was one of the first on
whom it was conferred. In 1437, he followed the duke of Burgundy into
Brabant, and on the 22nd of May, of that year, he was killed in a popular
insurrection, which took place at Bruges.
It was not till the 22nd of September, 1429, that any attempt was made to
disturb the English in their occupation of Paris. Flushed with its recent
successes, and hoping that the citizens would rise upon the garrison,
the army of Charles assaulted on that day the ramparts of the capital,
between the gates of St. Honoré and St. Denis. The assault, led by Joan
of Arc, continued for four hours; but the glorious heroine was severely
wounded through the thigh, and the assailants were compelled to retire.
For seven years after this attack, the English kept their ground in
Paris. But the English power in France was now daily crumbling into
dust. The Burgundian, their ally for several years, was become their
active enemy; the duke of Bedford, whose valour and skill so long upheld
a tottering cause, had sunk into the grave; town after town, willingly
or on compulsion, opened its gates to Charles; succours arrived seldom
and in scanty numbers; and frequent insurrections, in Normandy and other
quarters, compelled them to disseminate their troops, so that it became
impossible for them to take the field with a formidable army. At this
critical moment, Paris had only a feeble garrison of fifteen hundred men;
a force wholly inadequate to defend the place, even had the citizens
been far less disaffected than they really were. They were weary of
war, and, besides, prudence dissuaded them from persisting to oppose
a sovereign whose throne was evidently established on a solid basis.
Such being the state of things, Charles thought the time was come to
recover his capital. A negotiation was secretly opened with the citizens;
and, on condition of a general amnesty, they agreed to return to their
allegiance. On the night of the 13th of April, 1436, the king’s troops
were admitted into the city. Though he was taken by surprise, Willoughby,
the governor, a brave and intelligent officer, took such measures as
would have baffled his assailants, had he received any aid from the
Parisians. But not a hand was raised in his behalf, and he had no other
resource than a retreat to the Bastile, which he effected in good order.
An honourable capitulation, allowing him to retire with bag and baggage,
to Rouen, was offered to Willoughby, and, as he knew that resistance must
be unavailing, he wisely accepted an offer which he could not hope would
be repeated. Thus ended the sway of the English in Paris.
During the remainder of the reign of Charles VII., nothing more occurred
which belongs to this narrative. Abundant materials, are, however,
supplied by the iron sway of his son and successor, Louis XI. Historians,
in speaking of Louis XI., have charactered him, and with justice, as a
violator of all social duties, as being a “bad son, a bad husband, a bad
father, a bad brother, a bad kinsman, a bad friend, a bad neighbour,
a bad master, and a most dangerous enemy.” That, on attaining supreme
power, such a man should take heavy vengeance for injuries, real or
supposed, is in the natural order of things. Immediately on his accession
to the throne, Louis displaced from their offices all persons who had
rendered themselves obnoxious to him; and, in some instances, his revenge
was more signally manifested.
Among the most conspicuous of those who felt his anger was Anthony de
Chabannes, count of Dammartin. Chabannes had played an active part in the
long war between Charles VII. and the English, and, on various occasions
had done signal service. Like many other nobles of that period, he was,
however, possessed of far more courage than honourable principles. To
swell his coffers with plunder, he did not hesitate to put himself
at the head of the ferocious banditti known by the descriptive name
of _écorcheurs_, or flayers, with whom he ravaged the north-eastern
provinces of France, as far as the Swiss frontier. He quitted them in
1439, to marry a rich wife, after which he again entered into the king’s
service.
Chabannes, as is often the case with criminals, could more easily
commit crimes than bear to be told of them. The monarch having one day
laughingly greeted him by the title of king of the flayers, he angrily
replied, “I never flayed any but your enemies; and it appears to me
that you have derived more benefit from their skins than I have.” Not
satisfied with this retort, he further gratified his offended feelings by
prompting the dauphin to become the leader of the malecontents, in the
ephemeral civil war which is known as the war of the _Praguerie_.
After the Praguerie was over, Chabannes was again received into favour
by Charles, and he seems ever after to have remained faithful to him. He
even disclosed a conspiracy which the dauphin had formed, to deprive the
monarch of his crown and liberty. The dauphin, on being brought face to
face with him, hardily denied the fact, and gave him the lie. The conduct
of Chabannes, in this instance, was not undignified. “I know,” said he,
“the respect which is due to the son of my master; but the truth of my
deposition I am ready to maintain, by arms, against all those of the
dauphin’s household who will come forward to contradict it.” No one was
hardy enough to accept this challenge.
It is less creditable to Chabannes, that he presided over the commission
which was appointed to try, or rather to find guilty, the persecuted
Jacques Cœur, and that he contrived to obtain, at a shamefully inadequate
price, several of Cœur’s estates.
In 1455, Chabannes, by performing his duty to his sovereign, gave fresh
offence to the dauphin. Irritated at last by the political intrigues of
his son, and by his having persisted for ten years to absent himself from
the court, Charles determined to deprive him of the petty sovereignty of
Dauphiné, and to secure his person. Chabannes was chosen to carry this
determination into effect: and he acted with such vigour that, after
having prevailed on the duke of Savoy to refuse the prince an asylum, he
compelled him to seek shelter in the dominions of the duke of Burgundy.
Chabannes was, consequently, one of the earliest victims on the accession
of Louis to the throne. Deprived of his office of grand master of France,
he took flight, but he soon returned, and claimed a fair trial. The king
refused to admit the claim, and ordered him to quit the kingdom; an order
which he obeyed. While he was absent, his property was confiscated, and
he was summoned to appear, and answer the charges against him. Confiding
in his innocence, he complied with the summons; but he was found guilty
of high treason, and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to
banishment by Louis; who, however, changed his mind as to the punishment,
and shut him up in the Bastile.
In the Bastile Chabannes remained for four years. On the breaking out
of the war, the parties in which called their confederacy the League of
the Public Good, he contrived to escape; and, on his way to join the
malecontents, he made himself master of the towns of St. Fargeau and St.
Maurice. He was one of those who benefited by the treaty of Conflans,
which terminated this war. His sentence was annulled, and his estates
were restored to him.
It is a singular circumstance that, with respect to Chabannes, Louis
passed at once from the extreme of hatred and suspicion, to that of
kindness and confidence. He not only restored his estates, but he added
to their number. At a later date, when he instituted the order of St.
Michael, Chabannes was one of the first whom he nominated. Favours
conferred by a gloomy and unprincipled tyrant cast a doubt on the
character of the receiver, even when it has been hitherto unstained,
which was not the case with the new knight. The nomination gave occasion
to a severe sarcasm from the duke of Britanny. Louis having sent to him
the collar of the order, the duke declined it, assigning as a reason,
that “he did not choose to draw in the same collar with Chabannes.”
Chabannes was not ungrateful for the benefits bestowed on him. When,
strangely deviating from his accustomed wariness, Louis involved himself
in the dilemma which Sir Walter Scott has so admirably described in
Quentin Durward, Chabannes did him the most essential and opportune
service, and received his warmest thanks for it. He was afterwards
employed in various important expeditions, all of which he brought to a
successful issue. In his old age, he withdrew from the court, but, in
1485, Charles VIII. conferred on him the government of the Isle of France
and Paris. Chabannes did not long enjoy this new honour; he died in 1488.
The war, caused by the League of the Public Good, which restored liberty
and fortune to Chabannes, deprived his enemy, the count de Melun, not
only of both, but of life also. When we are told that Melun was so
addicted to pleasure, luxury and sloth, as to have acquired the name of
the Sardanapalus of his times, we can form no very flattering estimate
of his character. Yet he stood high in the good graces of Louis XI.,
and participated largely in the spoils of Chabannes. In his capacity
of governor of Paris and the Bastile, he was also entrusted with the
custody of that nobleman. It was not till after the battle of Montlhéri
that Louis began to suspect him. The monarch had, indeed, some excuse
for suspicion. Melun had at least been criminally negligent, in a post
which demanded the utmost vigilance. He had prevented a sally from the
city during the battle, which might have turned the scale in the king’s
favour, and he had been ignorant of, or winked at, a correspondence
carried on with the chiefs of the League by some of the disaffected
citizens. These indications of treachery were strengthened by two
circumstances; some of the cannon of the Bastile had been spiked, and the
gates of the fortress, on the side next the country, had been left open
while the besiegers were making an attack. The escape of Chabannes might
also afford a reason for doubting his keeper’s fidelity. Louis, however,
was, at this moment, too closely pressed by his numerous enemies to enter
into an investigation of the subject; and he, therefore, only dismissed
the governor.
Melun retired to his estates, and imagined that the storm was blown
over. He was mistaken. As soon as Louis had disembarrassed himself, he
instituted a rigid enquiry into the conduct of his disgraced favourite.
One of the most active in pushing it on was a man who was indebted to
the count for his rise in life; the cardinal Balue, of whom further
mention is about to be made. The result of the enquiry was, a charge of
having maintained a secret correspondence with the heads of the League,
especially with the duke of Britanny. Melun was in consequence arrested,
and conveyed to Chateau Galliard, in Normandy, by the provost Tristan
l’Hermite, of infamous memory.
The trial was commenced without delay, and, as he refused to confess to
any crime, he was put to the torture. With respect to his correspondence
with the chiefs of the League, he avowed it, but pleaded that it had
the king’s sanction. It is probable that this was really the case. Many
motives might have induced the king to allow of his officer corresponding
with the enemy. But Louis had now resolved upon the destruction of Melun;
and, as he never scrupled at falsehood when he had any point to gain by
it, he denied that he had given the permission. By adding that he had
long had cause to be dissatisfied with the prisoner, he gave a broad
hint as to what kind of verdict he desired. The judges, as in duty
bound, pronounced Melun guilty, and he was consigned to the scaffold. His
execution took place in 1468. Of his confiscated property, a considerable
portion was bestowed on Chabannes.
It is said, that the executioner having only wounded him at the first
stroke, Melun raised his head from the block, and declared, that he had
not deserved death, but that, since the king willed it, he was satisfied.
If this be true, we must own that tame submission to the injustice of a
despot was never more strikingly displayed.
Had Melun lived but a little longer, he might have triumphed in the
downfall and punishment of his ungrateful enemy, the cardinal, which
took place in 1469. John Balue, the person in question, born in Poitou
in 1421, was the son of either a miller or a tailor. He had, perhaps, as
many vices, and as few virtues, as any person upon record. Ingratitude,
in particular, seems to have been deeply rooted into the nature of this
unworthy prelate. Towards the bishops of Poictiers and Angers, who had
early patronized and confided in him, and the count de Melun, by whom
he was introduced to the monarch, he acted with unparalleled baseness.
His sovereign fared no better than his other benefactors. Louis XI. had
rapidly raised him to the highest offices in the state, and had loaded
him with ecclesiastical preferment, yet the traitor betrayed him.
While his power lasted, there was no department of the government with
which Balue did not interfere. This trait in the character of the
cardinal called forth a pleasant sarcasm from Chabannes, who could not
see with patience his own province invaded. Balue having one day reviewed
some regiments, Chabannes gravely requested the king’s permission to
visit the cardinal’s bishopric of Evreux, for the purpose of examining
clerical candidates, and conferring ordination on them. “What do you
mean?” said Louis. “Why, surely, sire,” replied Chabannes, “I am as fit
to ordain priests, as the bishop of Evreux is to review an army.”
It required, however, something more than a joke to shake the confidence
which the monarch placed in the cardinal. That something more was not
slow in coming. Since the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, it had been a
main object of Louis to dissociate his brother, the duke of Berry, from
his dangerous adviser the duke of Burgundy; and, as one means towards
effecting this, he strove hard to induce him to accept, as an appanage,
the duchy of Guienne and the government of Rochelle, instead of the
provinces of Champagne and Brie, which, by the treaty of Peronne, he had
been compelled to confirm to his brother. Louis was undoubtedly justified
in wishing to accomplish this object, as there was little chance that
peace would be preserved if the duke of Berry became an immediate
neighbour of the duke of Burgundy. Nor was the equivalent which the king
offered for Champagne and Brie an inadequate one, but much the contrary.
On this occasion, the king suffered the penalty to which all deceivers
are subjected, that of not being trusted. Could the duke of Berry have
put faith in his brother, he no doubt would have accepted Guienne.
It was with no less surprise than indignation that the king discovered,
by intercepted letters, that all his efforts, not only in this case but
in others, had been counteracted by the man on whom he most relied.
The cardinal, and his friend and agent William d’Haraucourt, bishop
of Verdun, were in close correspondence with his enemies. It was to
revenge himself for the king having failed in his promise, to procure
him a cardinal’s hat, that d’Haraucourt entered into the plot against
him. It would seem that nothing short of madness could have prompted
the cardinal to peril his liberty and fortune, perhaps his life, by his
treasonable proceeding. But here again the king was whipped by his own
vices. Balue perceived or imagined that his influence was declining, he
was convinced that it would wholly expire whenever his services were no
longer necessary to the monarch—Louis being, in his opinion, incapable
of personal attachment—and he therefore resolved to place him in such
a situation, by making the king’s foes formidable, that those services
should be always indispensable. On his being interrogated, he avowed,
with a shameless candour, that, for this purpose, he had betrayed the
secrets of the state to the Burgundian duke, encouraged the duke of Berry
to refuse the proposed exchange, advised the calamitous interview and
disgraceful treaty of Peronne, and recommended to Charles of Burgundy to
compel the king to accompany him on the expedition against the revolted
citizens of Liege.
There was treason enough here to forfeit a hundred heads, had they
grown on laic shoulders. But, as far as regarded the final penalty of
the law, their ecclesiastical character proved a shield to the cardinal
and his associate. The king desired the pope to nominate apostolical
commissioners to try the criminals; the pope, on the other hand,
contended that they must be judged by the consistory, and that the
decision of their fate must be left to him. A long negotiation ensued
between the spiritual and temporal sovereigns, and, as neither would
concede, the offenders were never brought to trial at all.
It cannot, however, be said that the cardinal and the bishop escaped
unscarred. If Louis could not take their lives, he could at least render
their lives a burthen, and this was a power which he was not backward
in exercising. In the province of Touraine, between twenty and thirty
miles to the southward of Tours, stood the castle of Loches, one of the
sepulchres in which Louis buried his living victims. It was there that,
at a later period, Ludovico Sforza lingered out the last years of his
existence. Loches was well provided with oubliettes, dungeons, chains of
enormous weight, facetiously called the king’s little daughters, iron
cages, and all other means of torturing the body and mind. Thither Balue
was sent, and there he passed eleven lonely years, in an iron cage, which
was only eight feet square. His fate resembled that of Perillus—for to
the cardinal himself is attributed the invention of these cages. Perhaps
the only praise which he ever deserved was gained at the castle of
Loches; the praise of having preserved his courage unshaken throughout
the whole of his tedious captivity. Balue was released in 1480, went to
Rome, where he was received with open arms, was sent as legate to France,
and died, in 1491, bishop of Albano, and legate of the March of Ancona.
His confederate, d’Haraucourt, was still more severely punished. The
Bastile was his place of confinement, and there a cage, of unusual
strength, was constructed in one of the towers, expressly for his abode.
The cage was formed of massy beams, bolted together with iron, occupied
nineteen carpenters for twenty days in framing it, and was so heavy, that
the vault, which was to support it, was obliged to be rebuilt in a more
substantial manner. Within its narrow and gloomy limits, d’Haraucourt was
immured for no less than fifteen years. It was not till after the death
of Louis the eleventh, that the prisoner was set at liberty. He died, at
a very advanced age, in the year 1500.
While d’Haraucourt was wasting away life in his cage, there was another
prisoner in the Bastile, who was enduring far worse misery, and was far
more worthy of compassion, because, though he was himself guiltless, he
suffered the penalty of another’s crimes. When, in 1473, the restless
and unprincipled John, count of Armagnac, was slain at Lectoure, by the
royal troops, his brother Charles, who had taken no part in the contest,
was arrested by order of Louis the eleventh, sent to the Concièrgerie,
and put to the torture. He was on the point of proving his innocence,
when he was removed to the Bastile, and secluded from all access of
friends. L’Huillier, the governor, treated him with a cold-blooded
barbarity which was worthy of a man who held office under Louis. There
was nothing that cruelty could suggest that was not practised on the
unfortunate Charles. The agonies of the captive were protracted for a
period of fourteen years, during all which time he inhabited a dreary
and noisome dungeon, in which water almost continually dropped upon him,
and he could not move without wading though slimy mud. He was liberated,
and his property was restored, by Charles the eighth. The boon, however,
came too late to be of any avail. His reason was shaken by what he had
undergone; he languished for a few years, and died in 1497.
Less compassion is due to the next inhabitant of the Bastile who appears
upon the scene. Faithful to no party, he fell regretted by none. Louis
de Luxembourg, count of St. Pol, who was born in 1418, succeeded to the
possessions of his father, when he was only fifteen. He did not receive
his moral education in schools where humanity and honour were to be
learned. His uncle and guardian, count de Ligni, was well qualified
to brutalise his youthful mind. It was de Ligni that basely sold the
heroine Joan of Arc to the English, for ten thousand livres. In one of
his campaigns he took his nephew with him, that the boy might kill some
of the prisoners, in order to accustom him to scenes of blood. Louis is
said to have proved an apt scholar, and to have taken delight in the
performance of his murderous task.
At his outset in life, St. Pol, like most of his family, was a warm
partisan of the English party. Circumstances, however, having compelled
him to visit the court of Charles the seventh, he met with so flattering
a reception that he deserted his party, and devoted himself to that
monarch. With the dauphin (who was afterwards Louis the eleventh)
he contracted as close a friendship as can subsist between two such
characters. St. Pol distinguished himself, in the service of his new
master, on various occasions, particularly at the sieges of the Norman
fortresses.
Though St. Pol had given up the English party, he did not break off his
old connection with the Burgundian prince. He fought for him against the
insurgent citizens of Ghent, and he even joined in the League of the
Public Good, as it was ludicrously styled, and led the vanguard of the
count de Charolais, at the battle of Montlhéri. At the peace of Conflans,
Louis, in the hope of winning him over from the Burgundian interest,
promoted him to be constable of France; and soon after, with the same
view, he gave him the hand of Mary of Savoy, the queen’s sister, and
granted him a wide extent of territory.
These favours did not produce the desired effect. St. Pol seems to have
had little gratitude in his nature; and, in this case, he perhaps thought
that there was none due for what was rather a bribe than a free gift. As
he imagined that his safety consisted in preventing a good understanding
between the king and the duke of Burgundy, he was constantly intriguing
to keep them at variance, and he alternately betrayed them. His intrigues
being discovered, the two princes, during one of their short periods of
amity, entered into a compact, by which they declared him their common
enemy. The duke of Burgundy promised, that if the constable fell into his
hands, he would surrender him to the king within eight days. For this he
was to be rewarded by the restoration of St. Quentin, Amiens, and other
towns on the Somme. This agreement was of course kept a profound secret.
What St. Pol had already done was sufficient to seal his fate; but
he roused the anger of Louis still farther, by an act of personal
disrespect, and by leaguing with Edward the fourth of England for the
invasion of France. It was not, however, till he had got rid of Edward
by a treaty, and had artfully contrived to irritate the duke of Burgundy
still more against St. Pol, that Louis seriously prepared for taking
vengeance on the offender. The negotiation between Edward and Louis had
already alarmed the constable, and, to conciliate the latter, he had
offered to attack the English. This offer Louis communicated to Edward,
who, indignant at the treachery of his recent confederate, sent the
letters which he had received from him to the French monarch. Louis
was thus furnished with decisive proofs. To the overtures of St. Pol
he replied in ambiguous words, the real meaning of which was soon made
evident: “I am overwhelmed by so many affairs,” said the Machiavelian
monarch, “that I have great need of a good head like yours to get through
them.”
The preparations of the king at length made St. Pol fully aware of his
danger. Hesitating as to the measure which in this emergency he ought
to adopt, he for a moment half resolved to stand on his defence; but
reflection on the superior resources of his enemy persuaded him that
he had no chance of success from arms. Yet, had he boldly appealed to
the sword, he might, perhaps, have saved his life, or at least have met
with an honourable death. He preferred throwing himself on the duke of
Burgundy, whom he tempted by offering him his strong towns, as the price
of protection. Louis demanded that he should be given up to him; and
after some qualms of conscience as to sacrificing a suppliant, who was
also his cousin, Charles of Burgundy complied with the demand. St. Pol
was conveyed to the Bastile. The French monarch gave him his choice,
either to make a full confession, or to be tried in the customary manner.
The latter alternative was chosen by the prisoner, who knew not that his
letters, to Edward and the duke of Burgundy, were in the king’s hands,
and therefore believed that there was not legal evidence to warrant
his conviction. His judges sentenced him to lose his head, and he was
executed on the 19th of December, 1475.
The last captive in the Bastile, during the reign of Louis the Eleventh,
or rather the last of whom any record remains—for there were doubtless
numbers of the nameless throng—was an Armagnac; a name which seems to
have been fatal to its owners. We have seen one Armagnac torn in pieces
by the populace, another treacherously slain after the surrender of his
stronghold, a third losing his reason in a dungeon, and we are now to
witness the leading of a fourth to the scaffold, under circumstances the
most horrible.
James of Armagnac, duke of Nemours, was the son of the Count de la
Marche, who was the governor of the youthful dauphin. When the pupil of
the count ascended the throne, he gave his cousin Louisa in marriage to
James of Armagnac, and conferred on him the dukedom of Nemours, with
all the rights and privileges of the peerage; an honour which had never
before been enjoyed by any other than princes of the royal family.
Nemours, nevertheless, joined the League of the Public Good. Louis, as we
have seen, was obliged to succumb to the League; and, by the consequent
peace of Conflans, James of Armagnac obtained the government of Paris and
the Isle of France.
Little more than three years elapsed before Nemours was again engaged
in intrigues against the monarch. But the time was gone by when revolt
could lead to promotion. Louis had strengthened his authority, and he
was not disposed to see it set at nought. He, however, pardoned him; but
it was on condition that any future offence should render him liable
to punishment for the past, and that he should then be deprived of his
privilege of peerage, and be tried as a private individual.
In the course of a few years Nemours once more, and finally, brought down
the wrath of the monarch on his head. He was accused of treason, and
Beaujeu was despatched to besiege him in the town of Carlat, to which
the duke had retired. Carlat was supposed to be impregnable, and it was
provisioned for two or three years. Nemours, nevertheless, surrendered
without resistance, on condition that his life should be spared; Beaujeu
guaranteed this condition, as did likewise Louis le Graville, lord of
Montaigu, and Bonfile le Juge, who enjoyed the royal confidence. The wife
of the duke, who was confined in child-bed, died of grief and terror, on
seeing her husband become a prisoner.
Nemours was conveyed, first, to Pierre-Encise, whence he was removed
to the Bastile; where he was subjected to the harshest usage. All his
supplications to the king, during two years’ abode in the Bastile, were
unavailing; or rather, indeed, seem to have tended to irritate him.
The duke had, undoubtedly, been a turbulent subject; but nothing can
palliate the infamy of the king’s conduct, after he had Nemours in his
power. It is difficult to account for the inveteracy of his hatred. There
was no conceivable violation of justice of which he was not guilty.
To have broken the pledge solemnly given by his general was little
compared with what followed. Such of the judges as seemed inclined to
show mercy were threatened and displaced; others were tempted by being
promised to share in the spoils of the prisoner; the place where the
court held its sittings was more than once arbitrarily changed; and the
decent formalities of the law, as well as its essential principles, were
contemptuously discarded. No wonder that Nemours was condemned to death.
But now a scene opens which casts all the rest into shade, and at which
nature shudders. Nothing was omitted that could render death terrible
to the duke. The chamber where he confessed to the priest was hung
with black; the horse which took him to execution was covered with a
housing of the same hue. He was already agonised by the thought that his
children, who were little more than infants, were reduced to beggary—but
this was not enough. A scaffold was expressly constructed for him to
suffer on, with wide openings between the planks, and underneath, clad
in white, their heads naked, and their hands bound, were placed his
children, that they might be drenched with their parent’s blood. It was
on the 4th of August, 1477, that this horrible tragedy was acted.
Did the brutal vindictiveness of the monarch end here? It did not. The
guiltless children, of whom the youngest was only five years old, were
taken back to the Bastile, and plunged into a loathsome dungeon, where
they had scarcely the power of moving. There they remained, for five
years, till the accession of Charles the eighth opened their prison door.
A part of the confiscated property of their father was subsequently
restored to them by Charles. The health of two of them was so broken that
they did not long survive. The youngest inherited the title of Nemours,
rose to be viceroy of Naples, and fell at the battle of Cerignoles, in
1503.