THE MOTHER AND THE WIFE OF A SAINT
As the regency of Queen Blanche had begun without formality, so it
ceased insensibly. There was no set day upon which she formally
relinquished the reins to Louis; and so one can but determine an
approximate date. On April 25, 1234, Louis may be considered to have
attained his majority. Though we find the name of Blanche figuring in
royal acts after this date, it becomes less frequent: her share in the
government is growing less, though throughout her life she never ceased
to stand by her son and act with or advise him. At the very close of her
regency we find her once more the central figure with that unaccountable
person Thibaud de Champagne. It must be remembered that he was now King
of Navarre, a dignity which brought with it less of real power in France
than one might suppose; for the French and the Spanish dominions,
Champagne and Navarre, were separated. His elevation to the throne may
have momentarily turned the head of the poet-king; at any rate, he began
to show dissatisfaction and to demur about fulfilling some of the
conditions incident to the settlement of the claims of Alix de
Champagne. In defiance of his duty as a vassal he gave his daughter,
without the king's consent, to Jean le Roux, son of Pierre Mauclerc. He
formed alliances with Mauclerc and with others of the old league; the
hostile intent could not be mistaken. The king mobilized his forces and
went to meet those of Thibaud. As the latter had not had time to effect
a junction with his Breton allies, the royal forces were overwhelming,
and he was compelled to find some way out of his difficulty other than
fighting. Remembering that he had assumed the Cross, and was, therefore,
under the protection of the Church, he persuaded the Pope to enjoin
Louis from attacking him, declaring that his person and his lands were,
on account of his crusading vow, under the protection of the Church.
Even this intervention might not have saved him from severe punishment
at the hands of his incensed sovereign; but when he sent to make
submission and to ask mercy, Queen Blanche, to whom he especially
appealed, summoned him to her presence and promised to obtain fair terms
for him. The terms, indeed, were not hard, nor were the reproaches
unduly severe which Blanche is said to have made in her last interview
with Thibaud: "In God's name, Count Thibaud, you should not have taken
sides against us; you should have called to mind the great goodness of
my son, the king, when he came to your aid to protect your county and
your lands from all the barons of France, who would have burned
everything and reduced it to ashes." Then came the courteous reply of
the gallant and contrite Thibaud: "By my faith, madame, my heart and my
body and all my lands are yours; there is naught that could please you
that I would not do willingly; and never again, please God, will I go
against you or yours."
The romance of this scene, almost pathetic, is ruthlessly disturbed by
the scene that is said to have followed, yet we must tell of this also.
The young Prince Robert, always of a violent temper, took it upon him to
insult the vanquished King of Navarre. He had the tails of the latter's
horses cut off a--shameful insult to a knight--and as Thibaud was
leaving the palace Robert threw a soft cheese on his head. Thibaud
returned to Blanche indignant at the insult offered him despite her safe
conduct; and she was preparing to punish the offenders summarily when
she discovered that the ringleader was her own son.
During the ten or twelve years that now intervened before Blanche was
again to take the regency during Saint Louis's crusade, her role in
public life is of less importance; there will be a fact in history to
note here and there, but most of that which we shall say concerns the
woman, the mother, rather than the queen. Though eminently fitted in
intellect and temperament for exercising the powers of an active ruler,
Blanche never forgot that she was only the king's mother, and that she
held the royal power in trust for him. In all her acts--they were really
done on her own responsibility--she sought to associate the name of her
son, as if she would keep for him the honor. In that speech to Count
Thibaud she does not reproach him for ingratitude to her; it is, "you
should have called to mind the great goodness of my son, the king." Her
whole life was devoted to the service of this son, whom she loved with a
love painfully intense, cruelly jealous.
When she was left a widow, there was entrusted to her not merely the
ruling of a kingdom but the rearing of a large family of children. To
this latter task Blanche devoted herself with as much energy and as much
good sense as she displayed in larger affairs. She reared with
particular care the son who, though not the eldest, had become the heir
to the crown. She tried to make of him a good man. It was certainly not
her training or her example that taught him excessive devoutness; for,
though a good Christian, she was not a devotee. When he was a boy she
gave him over to the care of masters who were to instruct him in all
things. There was physical exercise and recreation as well as study; the
young prince was not even exempt from discipline: according to his own
testimony, one of his masters "sometimes beat him to teach him
discipline." His days were regularly portioned off into periods of work,
of play, and of religious devotion; in the midst of his teachers, most
of whom were Dominicans, the little prince led a very sober life. He was
of a quiet and docile disposition, and received instruction willingly
and readily, and became a man of considerable learning. From his youth
he manifested a tendency to extreme piety, going daily to church, where
he entered into the services with strange fervor; he sang no songs but
hymns, and led a pure and temperate life. It is said that a religious
fanatic, who had listened to some of the calumnies circulated against
the queen, one day came to her and rebuked her bitterly for encouraging
her son to live a life of licentiousness, in the society of concubines.
She corrected his mistaken impression, and said that if her son, whom
she loved better than any creature living, were sick unto death she
would not have him made whole by the commission of a mortal sin. Saint
Louis never forgot this saying of his mother's, which he was fond of
repeating to Joinville, and by which he sought to regulate his conduct.
Another of Blanche's children was of the same disposition as Saint Louis
in regard to religion. This was the Princess Isabelle, whom her mother
had trained as carefully as Louis. On one occasion, when the family was
going on a journey and there was much noise of preparation in the midst
of the packing, Isabelle covered herself up in the bedclothes in order
to pray undisturbed. One of the servants, occupied in packing, picked up
child and bedclothes together, and was about to put her with the rest of
the baggage, when she was discovered. Even as a child she would take no
part in games, and as a young girl shunned all the gayeties of the
court, devoting herself to study, to reading the Scriptures, and to
devotional and charitable works, leading a life of the utmost austerity.
It is pleasant to know that this timid, pious little lady was not forced
into a distasteful union and passed her days in the pursuits she liked
best.
Blanche's devotion to her son Louis was repaid by the greatest deference
and affection. Her ascendency over him lasted as long as she lived, and
was responsible, no doubt, for much unhappiness to his wife. Blanche's
love was full of jealousy; she would brook no rival; she must always be
first in the affections of her son. And one cannot deny that the great
queen was selfish even to the point of positive cruelty in her treatment
of Marguerite de Provence. A mere child when she came to the court of
France, Marguerite was made to feel that she was not to be first there,
though her position as the wife of Louis gave her a claim to first
place. She was not of masculine temperament, like Blanche, and she did
not seek even the show of power; but Blanche grudged her even the love
of her husband, though we have no evidence that Marguerite ever
reproached Saint Louis with excessive filial devotion or sought to
detach him from his mother. Many stories have come down to us of how
"the young queen" was treated by the one whom all France continued to
call "the Queen." From the testimony of those intimate with the habits
of the royal family come to us details of espionage, petty malice, and
cold-heartedness on the part of Blanche: we could not believe these
things if they came from less competent witnesses. They are not to the
credit of Blanche, for they show the worst side of her nature. The
confessor of Saint Louis says: "The queen mother displayed great
harshness and rudeness towards Queen Marguerite. She would not permit
the king to remain alone with his wife. When the king, with the two
queens, went in royal progress through France, Queen Blanche commonly
separated the king and the queen, and they were never lodged together.
It happened once that, at the manor of Pontoise, the king was lodged in
a room above the lodging of his wife. He had instructed the ushers in
the anteroom that, whenever he was with the queen and Queen Blanche
wished to enter his room or the queen's, they should whip the dogs to
make them bark; and when the king heard this he hid from his mother."
Imagine the King of France, the man whose peculiar piety won for him the
name of a saint, dodging about like a guilty urchin to keep his mother
from finding him in the company of his wife!
The honest old Sieur de Joinville, who feared not to tell his master
when he thought him in the wrong, tells us that on one occasion, when
Marguerite was very ill after the birth of a child, Louis came in to see
her, fearing she was in danger of death. Blanche came in, and Louis hid
himself behind the bed as well as he could, but she detected him. Taking
him by the hand, she said: "Come away, for you are doing no good here."
She led him out of the room. "When the queen saw that Queen Blanche was
separating her from her husband, she cried out with a loud voice: 'Alas!
will you let me see my husband neither in life nor in death?' And so
saying she fainted away so that they thought she was dead; and the king,
who thought so too, ran back to her and brought her out of her swoon."
There is nothing in these stories to the credit of Blanche or of her
saintly son.
Let us turn from this unpleasant picture to glance at some of the facts
in the domestic economy of the royal household. The expenditures of the
court were not great; the household was kept on a scale befitting its
rank, but there was no vain display. Besides the queen's children there
were always a number of dependents, ladies and gentlemen in waiting,
etc., and the expenses for the whole establishment were kept in a common
account.
Blanche de Castille loved her native land, which she never saw again
after she left it to become the wife of Louis VIII., and she kept up as
active relations as possible with her relatives, particularly with Queen
Berengere; but she had too much good sense to flood her court with
Spanish dependents and Spanish customs, and, therefore, we do not find a
great number of Spaniards occupying important posts in the court. A
certain number of her special attendants appear to have been Spaniards;
we may note a lady in waiting called Mincia, who is often mentioned in
the accounts, and who is granted money and horses for a journey into
Spain. Then there are two Spaniards to whom gifts of clothing and the
like are made at the time of the coronation of Queen Marguerite. But
these and other Spaniards whose names one can pick out belonged to the
personal suite of the queen, and had nothing to do with politics. There
was nothing like the incursion of foreigners which, the people
complained, Italianized France in the time of the Medicis.
Among the legitimate expenditures of the court, but rather surprising in
the household of a saint, are certain sums set down for the payment of
minstrels. Prince Robert of France loved to give presents to minstrels,
and when he was knighted, in 1237, more than two hundred and twenty
pounds went to the payment of these singers. The horses and their
furnishings form no small item in the expenses, since most of the
travelling had to be done on horseback, and a numerous retinue of
mounted attendants must be provided. Common pack horses were not costly,
but the easy-riding palfrey and the war horse ranged in price from
thirty to seventy-five pounds. There were carriages and other vehicles
also, though the carriages were few. The state of the roads, indeed,
often precluded their use; we find Blanche de Castille excusing herself
from going to Saint-Denis because the state of her health forbids her
going on horseback: the roads were probably impassable; or, perhaps, it
was in attempting this little journey that her carriage suffered the
damages recorded in a bill of repairs of 1234, when it seems the unlucky
vehicle needed new wheels. There was a carriage for _la jeune reine_
Marguerite, too, and a new one was purchased in 1239.
Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family,
Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in
charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle
Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing
than it has ever been since those days. During Blanche's regency the
kingdom had been repeatedly ravaged in the course of the wars of the
nobles, and there is record of famine, notably in the southwest of the
kingdom, where one chronicler asserts that in 1235 he saw a hundred
bodies buried in one day in a cemetery at Limoges. On their frequent
journeys throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be
done to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the
wayside in crowds. There were regular officers to allot the alms
properly, and considerable sums were distributed, usually at every stage
on the journey. At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of
money and of bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of
the Church. One special charity of Queen Blanche's deserves notice. When
a girl was to be married, one of the first questions was, and still is,
in France, what dower her parents could give with her; if the dower were
insufficient, the poor girl ran a serious risk of not being married at
all. Blanche often came to the aid of deserving girls so situated, and
her gifts were not confined to her immediate attendants and their
families; for example, a poor woman from Anet, a stranger to the court,
received one hundred sous parisis for the marriage of her daughter; and
while on her way back from Angers, Blanche met a young girl of Nogent,
to whom she gave fifteen pounds for her marriage.
Blanche had always been respectful in her attitude toward the Church,
and pious in her habit of life; but she was never servile in her
attitude toward churchmen, whom she would no more allow to interfere
with her rule than the greatest of the barons. The higher clergy, as a
body, were faithful to her; but, here and there, bishops and archbishops
arrogated to themselves powers not theirs, or refused to recognize the
rights of the crown, whereupon Blanche did not hesitate to join issue
with them. One celebrated case is that of the riots at Beauvais, in
1233, when, under Blanche's direction, Louis restored order and asserted
the royal power in spite of the objections of the bishop, and continued
to sustain the position taken, even after an interdict had been
proclaimed in Beauvais.
During the period between her two regencies, Blanche continued to reside
at the court; her jealousy of Marguerite would in part account for her
preferring this to retirement to some one of the chateaux belonging to
her private estate. At the time, it must be remembered, the queen of
Philippe Auguste, Ingeburge, was living in this way at Orleans. Queen
Blanche, indeed, enjoyed a considerable revenue from her estates, which
she generally intrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, the
financial agents of many a crowned head in Europe. Part of her estates
she administered in person. As a further occupation, she devoted herself
to various charities. In 1242 the famous abbey of Notre Dame, generally
known as Maubuisson, at Pontoise, was completed, thanks to the queen's
munificence and to her careful supervision. Maubuisson, with its many
dependencies, its beautiful gardens and buildings, became one of the
most splendid monastic institutions in France. It was frequently visited
and enriched with new gifts by its foundress and her son, and noble
ladies chose it as the place to take the veil. One of these ladies,
Countess Alix de Macon, became abbess of another convent, Notre Dame du
Lys, near Melun, founded by Blanche de Castille.
The management of her estates and the foundation of convents did not,
however, monopolize the queen's time and energies; she was always the
careful mother, looking out for the interests of her children, and
always the queen, ready to act or to decide promptly and firmly in the
affairs of the kingdom. She arranged the marriages of her sons, Robert
and Alphonse. The former married, in 1237, Mahaut, daughter of the Duke
of Brabant, and there were magnificent festivities at Compiegne in honor
of the event, the young prince being knighted and made Count of Artois.
Alphonse, betrothed to the daughter of Raymond of Toulouse, was married
in 1238. The next year Blanche provided a rich and most desirable bride
for her nephew, Alphonse de Portugal, who had been reared at the French
court. He married the widow of Philippe Hurepel, Mahaut de Boulogne, and
was a faithful vassal of France until he became King of Portugal in
1248. For each of these weddings Blanche saw that there was suitable
provision in the way of new and elegant clothes and entertainments in
keeping with the occasion.
[Illustration 5: BLANCHE OF CASTILLE, MOTHER OF SAINT LOUIS.
After the painting by Moreau de Tours.
Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family,
Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in
charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle
Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing
than it has ever been since those days. On their frequent journeys
throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be done to
alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the wayside.
At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of-money and of
bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of the Church.]
In the larger world, Louis IX. still sought the counsel of his mother:
"He sought her presence in his council, whenever he could have it with
profit or advantage." In judicial proceedings particularly, we still
find her acting in her sovereign capacity; and she continued to keep an
eye upon those who had formerly been the rebel barons, her name being
associated with that of Louis in various acts concerning the shifty
Pierre Mauclerc. For her unfortunate cousin, Raymond of Toulouse, she
still exerted her influence with the Pope to obtain some relief from the
obligation which he had been forced to assume of spending five years in
the Holy Land. It was at his mother's instance, too, that Louis IX.
bought from the young Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople those most holy
relics, the Crown of Thorns and the large portion of the true Cross, to
receive which Louis built the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle. The purchase
was really arranged as an excuse for contributing largely to the
depleted treasury of the Christian Empire of the East, whose emperor was
doubly related to Saint Louis through his father and through Blanche de
Castille. The Crown of Thorns, indeed, had been in pawn to Venice. Louis
and Blanche went to meet the sacred relic, which was escorted to its
resting place in Paris by great crowds singing hymns and displaying
every mark of the utmost reverence. For the piece of the Cross, bought
three years later, in 1241, the same elaborate ceremonial was observed;
and in the great procession which accompanied Saint Louis as he bore the
Cross on his shoulders through the streets of Paris walked Blanche and
Marguerite, barefooted.
When the Tartar hordes of Ghenghis Khan overran Poland and Hungary, the
whole of Christian Europe trembled with fear and horror. If these
barbarians could not be checked, and they continued to pour in
resistless floods over the land, what was to become of Christendom?
"What shall we do, my son?" cried Blanche; "what will become of us?"
"Fear not, mother," replied the brave king; "let us trust in Heaven."
And then he added that famous pun which all his biographers repeat: "If
these Tartars come upon us, either we shall send them back to Tartarus,
whence they came, or they will send us all to Heaven."
Out of this threatening of the Tartars grew a religious persecution, in
which Blanche took a part not discreditable to her. When things went
wrong in the Middle Ages, it was the fault of the weak and oppressed; if
it was not the witches, it was the Jews who had brought misfortune upon
the land, and who must be punished before God would be pleased again. In
this case it was the Jews, who were accused of lending aid to the
Tartars. The popular odium incurred by this accusation encouraged the
prosecution of an investigation, ordered by Pope Gregory IX., into the
doctrines of the Talmud. France appears to have been the only country
where the investigation was actually made. Several Jewish rabbis were
haled before the court, presided over by Blanche, to explain and answer
for their books. The fairness with which Blanche presided is indeed
remarkable when one remembers the severity of the common judicial
procedure of the time. The chief rabbi, Yehiel, appealed to her several
times against the injustice of being forced to answer certain questions,
and she sustained his plea. When Yehiel complained that, whatever the
court decided, he and his people could not be protected from the blind
rage of the populace, Blanche replied: "Say no more of that. We are
resolved to protect you, you and all your goods, and he who dares to
persecute you will be held a criminal." When he protested against taking
an oath demanded by his persecutors, because it was against his
conscience to swear, Blanche decided: "Since it is painful to him, and
since he has never taken an oath, do not insist upon it." She reproved
the Christian advocates, the learned doctors of the Church, for the
unseemly violence of their language, and sought in every way to maintain
some sort of impartiality, or at least of decency, in the trial. If she
had conducted the trial to the close, there might have been a different
sentence from that which condemned the Talmud and ordered it to be
committed to the flames.
It was through an agent of Blanche, apparently a burgess of Rochelle,
that Saint Louis obtained most valuable and timely information in regard
to the rebellious preparations of Hugues de Lusignan, Comte de la
Marche. This Hugues de Lusignan was the vassal of Alphonse, brother of
the king. He had always been inclined to revolt, and this inclination
was not lessened by the incitement of his wife, the haughty,
high-tempered Isabelle d'Angouleme, widow of King John of England. To
have started as Queen of England, on an equal footing with her
contemporary, Blanche de Castille, to have seen her miserable husband
gradually lose his rich possessions in France, and to find herself now
merely a countess and compelled to do homage to a son of her
rival,--this must have been the very wormwood of bitterness for
Isabelle. The secret agent of Queen Blanche writes a very elaborate
account of the conduct of Isabelle and Hugues in 1242.
Hearing that Hugues had received King Louis and his brother, Alphonse,
in her absence, Isabelle carried off part of her property and
established herself in Angouleme. For three days she refused to admit
her husband to her presence, and when he did appear she lashed him with
her tongue in furious fashion: "You miserable man, did you not see how
things went at Poitiers, when I had to dance attendance for three days
upon your King and your Queen? When at last I was admitted to their
presence, there sat the King on one side of the royal bed and the Queen
on the other.... They did not summon me; they did not offer me a seat,
and that on purpose to humiliate me before the court. There was I, like
a miserable, despised servant, standing up in front of them in the
crowd. Neither at my entry nor at my exit did they make any show of
rising, in mere contempt of me and of you, too, as you ought to have had
sense enough to see." After scenes of this kind in the bosom of his
family it is not surprising that the unfortunate Comte de la Marche
sought the more peaceful atmosphere of the camp, and engaged in a revolt
against his sovereign. Louis, however, had little difficulty in bringing
him to reason and obtaining another victory over England, whom the
rebels had enlisted on their side. "And it was no marvel," says
Joinville, writing of this campaign of Saint Louis's, "for he acted
according to the advice of the good mother who was with him."
One of the severest trials in the life of this _bonne mere_ was
approaching. Louis, always of a delicate constitution, had contracted a
fever during the campaign against the Comte de la Marche, and the
effects lingered with him until, at the close of 1244, he had a violent
recurrence of the attack, accompanied by dysentery. In spite of the
tender care of Blanche, his life was despaired of. He lost consciousness
and, says Joinville, to whom we shall leave the telling of the story,
"was in such extremity that one of the ladies watching by him wished to
draw the sheet over his face, and said that he was dead. And another
lady, who was on the other side of the bed, would not suffer it, but
said that there was still life in him. And as He heard the discussion
between these two ladies, Our Lord had compassion on him, and gave him
back his health. And as soon as he could speak he demanded that they
give him the Cross; and so it was done. Then the queen, his mother,
heard that the power of speech had returned to him, and she showed
therefore as great joy as she could. And when she knew that he had taken
the Cross, as he himself told her, she showed as great grief as if she
had seen him dead."
Blanche's grief was not without cause, for nothing short of the death of
this well-beloved son could have caused her the pain that she must
endure if he went on the crusade. Not only her age, but the knowledge
that he would wish her to stay behind and guard the kingdom for him,
precluded all thought of her accompanying him. It meant separation from
him on whom she had all her life lavished an affection little short of
idolatry. How bitterly must she have regretted encouraging that fervent
piety that now led to a sacrifice, in the name of his religion, of all
that the king, the son, the husband ought to hold most dear. At a time
when, under the persistent efforts of his grandfather, his father, and
his mother, the power of the crown had just begun to be firmly
established, Louis must reverse all this policy, or rather must make use
of it not to the profit of his kingdom but to that of fanatical
religious ideals. Blanche was too good a politician not to understand
this, and too sensible not to deplore it. Louis's duty lay in France; he
had everything to lose, nothing to gain, in a crusade; though Blanche
knew too well the relentless doggedness with which he would cling to
what he conceived to be his duty to God, nevertheless she pleaded with
him to give up the idea of going on the crusade.
The pleading of his mother and of his wife could not turn Saint Louis
from his design, nor was the advice of his councillors more effective.
For three years, however, other matters occupied his attention, though
the preparations for his holy war were not forgotten. When these
preparations began to be undertaken with more vigor a fresh attempt was
made to dissuade him. The Bishop of Paris one day said to him: "Do you
remember, sire, that when you received the cross, when you made suddenly
and without reflection so momentous a vow, you were weak and troubled in
spirit, which took from your words the weight of truth and
responsibility? Now is come the time to seek release from this
obligation. Our lord, the Pope, who knows the needs of your kingdom,
would gladly give you a dispensation from your vow." And then he pointed
out the peculiar danger of undertaking such an enterprise in the
existing disturbed state of Europe. Blanche was present, watching with
anxious countenance the effect of this subtle appeal. "My son, my son!"
she said, "remember how sweet it is to God to see a son obedient to his
mother; and never did mother give her child better counsel than I give
you. You have no need to trouble yourself about the Holy Land; if you
will but stay in your own land, which will prosper in your presence, we
shall be able to send thither more men and more money than if your
country were suffering and weakened by your absence." Louis listened
silently, thought earnestly a moment, and then replied: "You say that I
was not myself when I took the cross. Very well, since you so wish, I
lay it aside; I give it back to you." With his own hand he took the
sacred symbol from his shoulder and surrendered it to the bishop. Then,
while those present had hardly recovered from their delight and
astonishment, he spoke again: "Friends, now surely I am not lacking in
sense, I am not weak or troubled in spirit; I demand my cross again; He
Who knows all things knows that no food shall pass my lips until the
cross is placed once more on my shoulder."
There was no turning aside a man of such character; the preparations for
the crusade went on, and Saint Louis raised the Oriflamme at Saint-Denis
on June 12, 1248. We shall not tell of the crusade or of Louis's
characteristic conscientiousness in seeing, before he left, that
reparation was made for every act of injustice done in his kingdom, for
which purpose he sent out a commission charged with holding an inquest
in all parts of France. The inevitable day of separation came, the day
to which Blanche looked forward as the last upon which she would see her
son. She accompanied him for the first three or four days of his
journey, which lay through southern France to Aigues-Mortes, and at
Corbeil she received the regency, with power to act in the government
through what agents she pleased and in what way she pleased. The
guardianship of his children, too, Louis left to Blanche. At Cluni came
the scene of final separation; the grief of Blanche can be imagined, and
words would fail to help us to a realization of its intense sincerity.
Her premonition was well founded; she was not to live to see Louis
again.
Once more was Blanche de Castille regent of France, a heavy burden for
one who had lived a life of no easy indulgence and who was now sixty
years of age. Instead of peace and rest in her declining
years--perchance she had hoped to retire to her own convent of
Maubuisson--she must undertake the cares of government. Truly, Saint
Louis was sacrificing his mother for an ambition, albeit not a vain or
selfish ambition, and whatever service he may have rendered God by
killing some hundreds of Mohammedans in Egypt, there is no question
about the service Blanche was rendering to him and France.
To aid Blanche in her government, and also to collect an additional
force for the crusade, Louis had left in France his brother, Alphonse de
Poitiers, who was of real assistance to his mother. The other sons,
however, Robert d'Artois and Charles d'Anjou, had sailed with the
crusaders for Egypt. Blanche's first anxiety came from Henry III., who
chose this opportunity to make warlike preparations, after he had
refused to renew the truce with France, and who had been besieging Saint
Louis with preposterous demands for the restoration of his lost
provinces. But Henry contented himself with preparations, being perhaps
held in check by fear of the Church, which threatened an interdict on
all England if he ventured to attack France while the king was away
fighting in her behalf. Relieved of this anxiety, Blanche was free to
concentrate her efforts in procuring assistance for Saint Louis. But the
worldly-minded Pope Innocent IV. was so busily engaged in his contest
with the Emperor Frederick II. that he had little but prayers and
blessings to bestow upon the crusading king; while Frederick was either
unable or unwilling to contribute more than a mere pittance. At the
close of the summer of 1249, Alphonse de Poitiers embarked on his voyage
to lead to his brother the considerable army he had been able to
collect. This was a new separation for Blanche, and one that involved
her, almost at once, in the conduct of new and rather complex political
problems.
Scarcely a month after the departure of Alphonse de Poitiers, his
father-in-law, Count Raymond of Toulouse, died, leaving as his only heir
his daughter's husband. Blanche immediately took steps to secure to her
son the succession, even before she was requested to do so by a message
from him. Under the terms of the treaty of 1229, she took possession of
the estates of the count, and appointed commissioners to receive the
homage of the vassals on behalf of Alphonse.
Meanwhile, good news had come from Louis, who had landed in Egypt and
had taken Damietta. Frequent letters passed between the queen and her
son; but letters were slow in reaching their destination, and the queen
was still rejoicing over the good news when Saint Louis and his army
were in desperate plight. At last came the letter telling of the
disastrous battle of Mansourah,--a victory in name, but as costly in its
consequences as a defeat,--February 8, 1250, and of the death of the
impetuous Robert d'Artois. His army was reduced by disease and incessant
skirmishes with the infidels and Saint Louis himself fell sick. There
was no Blanche de Castille, no tender mother, no wife there to nurse him
back to health.
We have mentioned the wife of Saint Louis, and it may be as well to
complete here her part in this story. She had accompanied her husband on
the crusade, but had been left behind in Damietta with a strong garrison
when Louis marched on to Mansourah. When the king was captured by the
infidels, Marguerite lay ill in Damietta, hourly expecting the birth of
her child. When the first messengers came with the news of the captivity
of her husband she refused to believe them, and, it is said, had the
unfortunates hanged as the bearers of false news; but there was soon no
doubt that disaster had overtaken the Christian arms. Marguerite was
half crazed with pain and fear; even in her sleep she fancied that the
room was full of Saracens bent on killing her, and she would cry out
pitifully, "Help! help!" She made an old knight, over eighty years of
age, keep guard at the foot of her bed. Before the birth of her child
she called this old man to her, sending everyone else from the room, and
threw herself on her knees before him, begging him to grant her one boon
she would ask. "Sir knight," she said, "I enjoin you, by the faith you
have sworn to me, that, if the Saracens should take this town you will
cut off my head before they can capture me." And the good knight, with a
sternness characteristic of the age, replied that he would surely do as
she bid him, for he had already resolved to kill her rather than see her
become a Saracen captive.
A son was born to the queen; in memory of the misery of these days she
named him Jean Tristan. On the very day of the child's birth she learned
that the Genoese and Pisan sailors, and some of the garrison, were
preparing to abandon Damietta. It was a serious danger; for, the fleet
once gone, what chance of rescue, or even of return to France, was there
for the king and his army? In the midst of her pain Marguerite acted
with a promptitude and decision far greater than one could have hoped
for from the rather colorless, yielding woman who had so long submitted
to the domination of her mother-in-law. She sent for the ringleaders,
and besought them for God's sake not to imperil the safety of the king
and the whole army: "Have pity, at least, upon this poor woman, lying
here in pain, and wait but till she can get up again." Then, learning
that they had just cause of complaint in that they could not get food,
she took the responsibility of purchasing what provisions could be had
and of feeding the sailors at the king's expense. Her prompt action
saved the fleet for Louis. Even as it was, Damietta had to be evacuated,
as one of the conditions of his being released, and Queen Marguerite was
compelled to sail for Acre before she had entirely regained her health.
Once released and safe at Acre, Saint Louis was urged to return at once
to France, whither the dreadful news of his disaster had already gone to
distress Blanche de Castille; but he had left a large part of his
followers prisoners in the hands of the infidels, and under such
circumstances it was useless to urge this truly noble monarch to
consider his own wishes, or his own interests. He called a counsel of
his barons, and announced to them: "I have come to the conclusion that,
if I stay, my kingdom is in no danger of going to destruction, for
Madame the Queen has many men to defend it with." He had good reason to
rely upon _Madame la reine_, who had kept his heritage for him when he
could not have kept it for himself. Sending back to France his brothers,
Alphonse de Poitiers and Charles d'Anjou, Saint Louis lingered on in
Syria.
Blanche continued to rule France and to make every effort to succor her
son in his perilous position. The death of Frederick II., in December,
1250, gave a momentary hope of obtaining assistance from the empire or
from the Pope. But this hope was soon dashed, for Innocent IV. was bent
on continuing his quarrel with Frederick's successor, Conrad. Blanche,
moreover, was seriously ill in the early part of 1251 so ill that the
Pope wrote to discourage her from attempting to journey to Lyons to see
him. "Your life," he wrote, "is the safeguard of so many people that you
should use every endeavor and take every care to preserve or to recover
the health which means so much to all." With all the benedictions and
affectionate solicitude contained in this letter, the Pope was not
disposed to give material assistance to Saint Louis. On the contrary, he
ordered the preaching of a crusade, even in Brabant and Flanders,
against the Christian emperor who was his political rival, and promised
greater rewards to those who would engage in it than to those who were
fighting the infidels. Blanche called a council of her vassals, who
broke forth in violent wrath against the selfish and un-Christian
conduct of the head of the Church. No doubt Blanche shared their
resentment, and it is even reported that she ordered the confiscation of
the goods of those who ventured to engage in the Pope's crusade against
the emperor, saying: "Let those who are fighting for the Pope be
maintained by the Pope, and go to return no more."
While the affairs of the Church were in this state a new and dangerous
movement of the common people, a movement half religious in nature, came
to disturb France. A strange man, of wonderful eloquence, and exercising
a powerful influence upon the peasantry, made his appearance in northern
France. In a few weeks he had gathered veritable armies of the peasants,
the _pastoureaux_, as they were called, who marched about the country
after their mysterious leader, known only by the name of "the Master of
Hungary," proclaiming that they would go to the aid of their good king.
At first they committed no damage, but, growing bolder and becoming
contaminated by a certain mixture of the more dangerous elements of the
population, they began to manifest a peculiar unfriendliness toward
priests, and soon passed to actual acts of violence. The Master of
Hungary arrogated to himself powers almost miraculous, and the people
believed in him. At Amiens, the first large town entered by the
Pastoureaux, people sought out this man and knelt before him as if he
had been a holy personage. But the priests circulated all sorts of
stories about him: he was a magician in league with the devil; he was an
apostate Christian, an infidel, nay, an emissary of the sultan of Egypt,
charged with delivering into the hands of the Saracens a host of
Christian prisoners. But, impostor or no impostor, the people had faith
in him, and it was in vain for the priests to repeat or to concoct tales
of his being an infidel: the very people of the most Christian nation in
Europe were sullenly murmuring against Christ Himself. When the begging
friars asked for alms the people snarled a refusal at them and, calling
the first poor person in sight, gave alms, saying: "Take that; in the
name of Mohammed, who is greater than Christ."
The Master of Hungary and his satellites, preaching against the clergy
and inciting to acts of violence, performing all the functions of
priests and even claiming to perform miracles, advanced with their
hordes of ignorant or vicious followers to Paris. What attitude would
Blanche take? She had always had a heart to feel for the woes of the
common people, and she well knew that the priests were not by any means
always the friends of the poor, for she was not so blinded by
religiosity as to think that the clerical habit alone could make a mere
man something more than a man. At this particular time, too, she had
reason to feel vexed with the clergy; was it not the Church itself that
was most niggardly of funds to carry on the war in defence of the holy
places? She was far too sensible a woman to look for any material help
from this rabble which vowed to go to the rescue of the good king; but
she was not disposed to interfere with them until she had definite proof
of their wrongdoing. One can but suspect that she did not credit all
that the priests reported to her of them; she herself had known and in
some ways liked Raymond of Toulouse, whom the priests made out an arch
fiend.
When the Pastoureaux approached Paris, therefore, she gave orders that
they should not be interfered with. Sending for the Master of Hungary,
she treated him with respect, asked him questions, and sent him back
with some presents. The man lost his head with vainglory at this
reception. Returning to his followers he announced that he had so
thoroughly enchanted the queen and her people that she would approve of
anything they did, and that they might kill priests with impunity. In
episcopal robes, the mitre on his head, he preached in the church of St.
Eustace. Riots were precipitated by his followers, and the vast army
moved on to the south, growing more and more outrageous every day.
Blanche saw that it was time to act; she had made a mistake in supposing
these people to be harmless, misguided peasants or religious
enthusiasts. Orders were given to pursue and exterminate them. Scattered
bands were overtaken here and there and dispersed, and the leaders were
summarily hanged. But the final catastrophe was to take place at or near
Bourges. The Pastoureaux having entered this town, engaged in looting
and rapine, and the royal officers, thinking to confine them in the
town, shut the gates; but the Pastoureaux broke these down, and poured
out of the town, pursued by the enraged citizens. They were overtaken
and brought to bay, and a veritable massacre, rather than a battle,
ensued, for most of the Pastoureaux were poorly armed. The Master of
Hungary was slain and torn in pieces, while his forces were dispersed.
In a few weeks the country was quiet again. Only a few of the
Pastoureaux really received the cross from those who had proper
authority to give it, and went to the aid of Saint Louis.
During these years we find Queen Blanche acting very frequently in a
judicial capacity, presiding over the court of Parliament and over the
council; she seems to have continued to take an active part in all the
affairs of her government. And, strange to say, we do not find the name
of any one counsellor exalted above the others, as a greater favorite or
as more relied on by the queen; she has her ministers, but so little
part do they seem to play that France is really ruled by the queen, not
by the ministers. We comment upon this because it is remarkable,
especially when we remember that, even with great kings, the names of
the ministers are not often utterly obscured.
The most interesting of the queen's activities at this time are those
connected with the Church; there are numberless little quarrels in which
she had to intervene and hold out for the rights of the crown, but the
two examples that follow will suffice to show the sort of thing with
which she had to contend. The clergy of France had accorded to Saint
Louis a tax of one-tenth on their property, in view' of his crusade.
Though this tax had been long due, the Abbey of Cluni, one of the
richest and one of the most favored by the royal family, allowed month
after month to elapse without making any move to pay. At length, in the
early part of 1252, while the abbot was away in England, the royal
bailli of Ma'am seized the chateau of Lourdon, belonging to the Abbey of
Cluni. There was a tremendous uproar in the clerical camp; the Pope
himself wrote to protest against this outrage upon the servants of God,
and demanded of Blanche the restitution of the sequestered chateau. At
the same time he instructed the Archbishop of Bourges to launch an
interdict against all those who continued to hold, to guard, or to
inhabit the chateau of Lourdon, with special exception of the queen and
her family. Blanche had not, it appears, given the bailli any orders
with regard to the collection of the tax, but, since he had acted, she
sustained him; there was no persuading her to return the property of the
abbey until the abbot had satisfied her just claims. The Pope and the
abbot were compelled to accept defeat for the present; but after Blanche
was dead a claim was made for indemnity, which we can only hope Saint
Louis did not grant.
Another instance in which Blanche intervened is even more to her credit,
since it was pure humanity, not the jealous safeguarding of the rights
of the crown, that moved her. The inhabitants of the villages of Orly,
Chatenay, and some others were serfs of the canons of Notre Dame. Being
unable to pay some tax imposed by their masters, the men of the
villages--we mean not a few, but _all_ the able-bodied men--were seized
and imprisoned in the chapter house. The horrors of the Black Hole of
Calcutta have been made familiar to all English readers; there are few
who realize that jails as horrible, and jailers as inhuman, were not
infrequent in many a period of the world's history. The condition of the
prisons of France when the courageous and devoted philanthropist John
Howard visited them, at the close of the eighteenth century, was such as
to beggar description: how much worse must have been a prison of the
thirteenth century! The unfortunate peasants, with insufficient food,
water, and air, were so crowded in the prison that several of them died.
News of the affair coming to Queen Blanche, she humbly prayed the canons
to release their victims, and said that she would investigate the
matter. The canons replied that it was none of her affair, that she
should not meddle with their serfs, "whom they could take and kill and
do such justice on as seemed good to them." To emphasize these rights
and to revenge themselves upon the talebearers who had reported to Queen
Blanche, they seized the wives and children of their prisoners, and
thrust them into the same overcrowded prison. The suffering was, of
course, intensified; many of the miserable wretches died. The historian
tells us that Blanche "felt great pity for the people, so tormented by
those whose duty it was to protect them." We do not need to be told
that; but Blanche was not of the milk-and-water kind that would have
wasted time in _faineant_ compassion when there was suffering which her
activity could relieve. She summoned a body of knights and citizens,
gave them arms, marched straight to the prison, and ordered the doors to
be broken down, herself striking the first blow, that all might see that
she was not afraid to assume the responsibility for the act. Nor did her
beneficent activity cease with the release of the prisoners; for she was
determined that there should be no repetition of such tyranny if she
could help it. She took the serfs under her special protection and
confiscated the goods of the chapter of Notre Dame, which she held until
such time as full satisfaction had been rendered. The serfs were
enfranchised in consideration of an annual tax. But so far was she from
wishing to wrong the canons, or even to interfere with their rights, if
they had any, that she ordered the bishops of Paris, Orleans, and
Auxerre to hold a special investigation to determine whether or not the
people of Orly had owed the tax. With a woman of her character the
canons vainly resorted to their favorite threat of excommunication. If
they had excommunicated her, she would, in the light of history at
least, have been given an absolution more purifying than any they could
offer.
For the common people the great queen had always a tender heart. It was
a rough and cruel age, especially for those in bondage. "And since this
Queen," says an anonymous chronicler, "had great pity for such as were
serfs, she ordered, in several places, that they be set free in
consideration of the payment of some other dues. This she did partly
because of the pity she felt for the girls in this condition, because
people would not marry them, and many of them went to ruin thereby."
The last days of Blanche de Castille were drawing to a close amid sad
and fruitless longing to see her son. Her health was failing; one after
another of those dear to her fell ill or passed away; the dearest of all
lingered in the Holy Land, leading a forlorn hope and deaf to the
entreaties of his mother that he would return. She was at Melun when, in
November, 1252, she became so ill that she hastened to return to Paris.
She put her affairs in order and left instructions that those whom she
had unwittingly wronged should be indemnified out of her private
fortune. All worldly thoughts were now put aside, and she summoned the
Bishop of Paris, took the Holy Communion, and was admitted, by the
prelate's decree, into the Cistercian order, becoming a nun of her Abbey
of Maubuisson. Clothed in the simple garments of the sisterhood, the
noble queen passed, not many days later, from the scene of her useful
labors, murmuring in her last moments the words of the prayer for those
in extremis: _Subvenite, saticti Dei_.
It was on November 26th or 27th, in her sixty-fourth year, that Blanche
died. Over her nun's habit they placed her royal robes, and on her head
the crown; thus clothed, and placed upon a bier ornamented with gold,
she was borne by her sons and the great nobles through the streets of
Paris to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The next day, after a mass for the
dead, the body was carried in procession to Maubuisson, where another
service was held. Here, in the choir of the chapel, the body of the
queen was buried, and a tomb, bearing her effigy in nun's habit, was
erected. The other convent founded by her wished to have the honor of
guarding her heart, which, in March of the following year, was taken to
Notre Dame du Lys by the abbess, Countess Alix de Macon.
Let us pause awhile by the tomb before we attempt to review the
character of Blanche de Castille; and meanwhile we may see how the news
of her death was received by Saint Louis. He was at Jaffa when, after a
long delay, the intelligence reached him. At the very first ominous
words of the papal legate who had come to break the tidings to him Saint
Louis gave way to uncontrollable emotion. Consolation was unavailing;
even the clergy seemed to realize that it would have been but an
impertinent aggravation; and for two days no one ventured to speak to
him. Then, rousing himself from the depths of his grief, he sent for
that best and sturdiest of his friends, the fearless, honest, blunt Sire
de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who leaves us an account of what
followed. When Joinville came into the presence, the king rose, and,
stretching out his arms to him, cried in simple grief: "Ah! Seneschal! I
have lost my mother!" Joinville replied: "Sire, I do not marvel at it,
for she had to die; but I do marvel that you, a wise man, should mourn
so deeply; you know that in the words of Wisdom it is said that,
whatever grief a man have at his heart, none of it should be seen in his
countenance; for he who does so (_i. e._, shows his grief) rejoices the
heart of his enemies and brings sorrow to his friends." As all
consolation would have been inadequate to the magnitude of the loss, we
do not know that anyone could have spoken better than Joinville. The
Seneschal continues: "Madame Marie de Vertus, a very good and pious
woman, came to tell me that Queen Marguerite, who had rejoined the king
a little before, was in great grief, and prayed me to go to her and
comfort her. When I arrived I saw that she was weeping, and I said to
her that he spoke truth who maintained that one ought not to believe
women; for she who is dead was the person in the world whom you most
hated, and yet you display such grief for her. And she told me that it
was not for the Queen that she wept, but for the suffering and the grief
of the King, and for her little daughter, now left in the care of men."
There is no quality more to be admired in one who attempts to write a
life of some great man or woman than fearless frankness; the passages we
have given are characteristic of the _Vie de Saint Louis_, by the Sire
de Joinville, whose straightforward bluntness of speech is an amusing
but also a valuable quality. We shall keep Joinville in mind while
concluding, in brief, the story of Saint Louis's return and of the
subsequent career of Marguerite.
More than a year of misery and futile battling intervened between the
time when the news of his mother's death reached Louis and the time when
he set sail for France. There was no hope of succor from Europe: there
was no Queen Blanche to husband the resources of France that her son
might continue his fight for the faith. On April 25, 1254, Saint Louis,
accompanied by Marguerite, their little son Jean Tristan, and the
remnant of the crusaders, embarked at Acre. The sea was rough, and when
they were off the coast of Cyprus the vessel bearing the royal family
ran on a sand bank. The nurses rushed frantically to arouse the queen,
and asked her what they should do with the children. Marguerite,
thinking all would be lost in the violence of the storm, said: "Neither
waken them nor move them; let them go to God in their sleep." Saint
Louis, urged to transfer himself and his family into another vessel,
refused to do so, resolving to take the risk with those who had to
remain and might be forced to land in Cyprus: "If I leave this vessel,
there are on it five hundred men, each one of whom loves his life as
much as I love mine, and who may have to stay in this island, and they
may never return to their own country. That is why I had rather place in
the hands of God my person, my wife, and my children, than cause such
great suffering to the many people in this ship."
Joinville narrates another accident during this voyage, one which will
recall the instructions for extinguishing one's candle given in a
previous chapter. It seems that one of the queen's ladies, having
undressed her, carelessly threw over the little iron lantern in which
the candle was burning an end of the cloth she had used to wrap up the
queen's head. The cloth caught fire, and in its turn set fire to the
bedding, which was all ablaze when the queen awoke. Jumping out of bed
_toute nue_, she seized the blazing stuff and threw it overboard, and
put out the little fire which had started in the wood of the bed. The
cry of fire arose, however, and Joinville tells us that he went to keep
the sailors quiet, and later asked Marguerite to go to the king, who had
been disturbed and excited by the noise.
We hear little more of Marguerite after this crusade. In spite of his
affection and respect for her, and in spite of his gratitude for her
conduct during his first crusade, Saint Louis did not think his wife
capable of playing the role of Blanche de Castille, to which some say
she unwisely aspired. When he was preparing for his second crusade, in
1270, he not only did not leave her the regency, although she was to
remain in France, but he took unusual care to regulate her expenditures
and to hedge about her prerogatives. He forbade her to receive any
presents for herself or her children, to meddle with the administration
of justice, or to choose any person for her service without the consent
of the council of regents. That his precautions were not altogether
without excuse, we see when we learn that Marguerite was already
thinking about securing her position, in case of her husband's death, by
making her son Philippe promise under oath that he would remain in
tutelage until he was thirty years of age; that he would take no
councillor without her approval; that he would inform her of all designs
hostile to her influence; that he would make no treaty with his uncle,
Charles d'Anjou; and that he would keep these engagements secret. The
young Philippe had himself absolved from his oath by the Pope. The
ambition of Marguerite, however, died with the husband whom she had
loved and whom all Europe mourned. The good King Louis is a figure so
heroic in some of its aspects that one must pause and take thought
before venturing on any criticism: his motives cannot be impugned, and
it were an ungrateful task to find fault with his deeds in any
particular.
Marguerite lived on long after her husband in the convent she had
founded in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, which she gave to the nuns in
perpetuity, reserving only a life interest for her daughter, Blanche. It
was here that she was living when she had the joy of hearing proclaimed
the canonization of Louis IX., the saintly King of France. This was just
before her death in 1295.
There are figures in history which have become woefully distorted in the
disfiguring mists of centuries, and others which have been not less
wronged by prejudice, partisanship, or conscious or unconscious
misrepresentation. These--at least some of these--have been in part
indemnified and set right before the world: Louis XI. in France, and his
contemporary Richard III. in England; Cleopatra, Catherine de Medici,
Mary of England, all these and a host of others, we are told now and
then, have been misunderstood by the world; nay, in this century of
universal charity, this century which is undertaking the task of
righting all the wrongs accumulated from the past, one can find
apologists for the enemy of mankind himself. The moral of this homily
is--it may be apparent to some of my readers--that if you are either
very good or very bad you get much talked about in history: there will
be some to defend you no matter how bad you are, and some to denounce
you no matter how good you are. But if you simply do your duty, without
fear and without advertisement, little will be said of you; history, at
least in traditions still partly ruling, does not dignify with the
epithet "great" the steady day-laborers who go about their task and
complete it in silence. This, I would imply, is partly the reason why
Blanche de Castille has never been heralded as great, and why her work
in the upbuilding of the French monarchy is taken as a matter of course,
and not praised like, for example, the more brilliant exploits of the
"Grande Monarque" who was to do so much to undermine the power of that
monarchy.
The fame of the mother is eclipsed by the peculiar glory of the son; but
would it not be fair to ask how much of the excellence of Louis the man,
how much of the glory of Louis the king, was due to Blanche de Castille?
It cannot be questioned that she found France in a condition most
perilous, threatened with the loss of all that two reigns had won for
the royal power. A glance at the history of her career will show that
she not only averted this danger, but that the crown was stronger when
she began to relinquish her authority than it had been under Louis VIII.
She reduced her rebellious vassals to submission; she more than held her
own against England; she ended the war against Raymond of Toulouse, and
reserved for France the control, immediate or ultimate, of the greater
part of his dominions; and these things she accomplished, not merely by
force, but by wise and patient policy. Louis IX. owed his crown to
Blanche's care as regent; it is not improbable that he owed her as much
during the years when he himself was on the throne and she but a
counsellor. History is silent on many points in this connection, but it
might be noted that it was through disregard of her earnest advice that
he entered on the crusade which resulted so disastrously. She knew that,
even if it had been successful from the point of view of the Church, it
could but be dangerous, perhaps even ruinous, for France. This is one
case in which we know Saint Louis rejected his mother's guidance, and
what came of it is matter of history; might there not be many another
act of his, more successful in its issue, for which the credit should go
to Blanche?
As a queen, Blanche de Castille was more than capable; it is only the
absence of great battles, great social, religious, and economic
movements, during her ascendency, that hinders our calling her, without
reservation, a great queen. When we look at Blanche the woman, we are
confronted with a like difficulty. Shall we say she was a saint? Her
son, the son whom she bore, whom she reared with unexampled care, whom
she watched over all her life, has been called a saint, and there is no
one to say him nay. Shall we say that the mother of a saint is, _ex
officio_, or even by courtesy, also a saint? We cannot claim sanctity
for Queen Blanche: there was in her a touch of the temper of her
grand-mother, Eleanor of Guienne of wicked memory, or mayhap a trace of
the Plantagenet. It is interesting to note that the best qualities of
the vigorous Henry II. tempered the woman's nature of this daughter of
Spain and gave her the stamina, the unconquerable spirit, which alone
could save her. This Plantagenet temper is under excellent control in
Queen Blanche; so excellent, indeed, that under some circumstances she
seems cold. She is not cold, she is cool, a very different thing; no
danger, no excitement, no sudden gust of resentment at an insult, can
make her lose her head and act rashly. She is a thorough politician,
making her feelings, her emotions, subservient to her will, and even, as
we have hinted, playing the lover for the sake of controlling an amorous
and uncertain vassal. Danger nerves her to action, and she acts with
promptitude and firmness. At the defects in her character we have
already hinted in part; the fundamental one, when we consider Blanche
the woman, was her love of power. Ambitious she was; and yet, when we
say this, we must not forget that she sought power not for herself, but
for her son. How quietly she relinquishes her authority, and how ready
she is, even when that authority is at its height, to tell Thibaud de
Champagne that he owes his preservation to "the great goodness of my
son, the King, who came to your aid"! But it was her jealousy of
Marguerite de Provence that was the great blemish on Blanche's
character. It was a meanness unworthy of a nature so generous and so
faithful; we can attempt no defence, we can only express regret. Her
personality exerted a powerful influence over those with whom she came
in contact, and from all the best men of her time she received due meed
of praise. Compare her with other women of her day, and there is none
who can be placed beside Blanche _la bonne reine_, or Blanche _la bonne
mere_.