AT THE COURT OF THE MAD KING
THAT France which had known queens good and bad, from Constance in the
tenth to Blanche of Castille in the thirteenth century, was delivered
over, toward the close of the fourteenth, to the hands of one of the
worst women in her history. The woes of France under the rule of the mad
King Charles VI. would have been enough to bear; but the Court of France
was led in a veritable saturnalia by the licentious Queen Isabeau de
Baviere. Once more, in Isabeau, we find a woman whose life-story cannot
be told without at the same time telling much of the history of France;
but it is not because the queen does anything good that we must tell of
the government of the kingdom during her ascendancy; she does nothing
but indulge her vulgar tastes for pleasure and debauchery, to satisfy
which she would pawn France itself.
In 1380, died the wise though unlovely Charles V., leaving the kingdom
temporarily free from the English and in just that nice state of balance
between recuperation and ruin when a little thing would suffice to turn
the scale either way. His son and heir was a boy of twelve, already
madly fond of pleasure, already filling his weak head with fantastic
tales of chivalry and romantic devotion to such sturdy warriors as Du
Guesclin, whom he could never hope to rival. His reign begins in a
dream--a dream of his meeting a fantastic flying hart, which he took for
his emblem. The dream goes on, in mad festivities encouraged by Philippe
le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, who had chief charge of the boy. This
Philippe--that same brave son of King John whom we see at Poitiers
fighting by his father's side--was a great man, though not lovable; he
was too acute a politician to be altogether admirable. In one of the
grand shows arranged for the boy king on the occasion of the double
marriage of the son and the daughter of Philippe de Bourgogne to the
daughter and the son of Duke Alberic of Bavaria, the Duchess of Brabant,
whom Froissart calls a woman "full of good counsel," suggested to the
king's uncles that it would be well to find a wife for the young king in
the same powerful family now allied to the house of Burgundy. Nothing
could have better suited the plans of Philippe de Bourgogne, who
accordingly sent portrait painters to reproduce the charms of the
respective candidates for the hand of the king, and from the portraits
selected Isabeau de Baviere, daughter of Etienne II. and a princess of
the great Italian family of Visconti.
The young Isabeau, whose portrait showed her to be the most beautiful of
the princesses to be chosen from, was brought into Brabant by her uncle,
under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint John of Amiens,
while the Duke of Burgundy at the same time found an excuse for
conducting Charles to Amiens, without giving him the slightest hint of
the purpose of the journey. Isabeau was presented to the king by the
Duchesses of Brabant and Bourgogne, and kneeled low before him, lifting
up her sweet girlish face to him in lieu of speaking in a tongue as yet
unknown to her. Then Charles took her by the hand, raised her and looked
at her pensively; "and in this look the sweet thought of love did enter
into his heart." After the ladies had withdrawn from the royal presence,
the Sire de la Riviere, an old minister of Charles V., asked the king:
"Sire, what think you of this young lady? shall she remain with us?" "By
my faith, yes," replied Charles, "we wish no other, for she pleases us."
There was no tarrying for elaborate ceremonies, fond as the king was of
them; Charles insisted on an immediate wedding. He and the young German
princess were married on July 17, 1385, four days after this first
interview. The bride was but fourteen, and the groom not quite
seventeen; it was one of those infamous child marriages of which the
history of Europe is too full.
Isabeau de Baviere was already of a slothful habit, to be roused only by
her love of amusement, to purchase which neither she nor her young
husband would spare anything. Luxury and wild extravagance in dress, in
entertainments, even in funerals, was characteristic of the age; the
whole kingdom gave itself up to extravagance and debauchery; existence
was one mad revel, with no thought of who should pay the piper; all must
dance and caper as if bitten by the tarantula. The very costumes are
wild: "Here (we see) men-women comically tricked out, and effeminately
trailing on the ground robes twelve ells long; there, others, whose
figures are distinctly defined by their short Bohemian jackets and tight
pantaloons, though with sleeves floating down to the ground; here,
men-beasts, embroidered all over with animals of every kind; there,
men-music, pricked all over with notes, from which one could sing before
or behind; while others placarded themselves with a scrawl of signs and
letters, which, no doubt, said nothing good.... Rational beings did not
hesitate to disguise themselves in the satanic, bestial shapes which
grin down upon us from the eaves of churches. Women wore horns on their
heads, men on their feet the peaks of their shoes were twisted up into
horns, griffins, serpents' tails. The women, above all, would have made
our spirits (of the age of Saint Louis) tremble; with their bosoms
exposed, they haughtily paraded high above the heads of the men their
gigantic hennin (the peaked and horned headdress) with its scaffolding
of horns, requiring them to turn sideways and stoop as often as they
went in or out of a room."
With all this outlandish fashion of dress the young queen was in perfect
accord; and the life of the court was one succession of brilliant
entertainments, wicked in their sensuality no less than in their waste
of the revenues of a kingdom already impoverished by long wars. During
the early years of her presence--we cannot call it her rule--in France,
Isabeau took no part in politics; neither did her husband, for that
matter, since he left the government in the hands of his uncles, chief
of whom was Philippe de Bourgogne. We shall therefore have little to
record at first beyond some of the more noteworthy of the doings at the
court.
The first of these, and one of the most scandalous, occurred in May,
1388; and the occasion which it was intended to celebrate merits some
attention from those who would appreciate the utter incapacity of
Charles VI. even at this period. To understand the circumstances we must
go back to the time when Charles V. lay dying, and his brother, Louis,
Duke of Anjou, waited in an adjoining room till the breath should be out
of the king's body. When the king was really dead, out came Louis to
seize upon the plate and other movables of value. Hearing that Charles
had concealed a considerable treasure in the walls of his palace at
Melun, and being unable to discover the hiding place, this affectionate
brother sent for the treasurer of the late king, and uttered the grim
threat: "You will find that money for me, or off goes your head." The
executioner was there with his ax--the treasure was found; and Louis
carried it off to squander it in prosecuting his claims to the throne of
Naples. Now he was dead, and his two sons were about to leave France to
continue the fight for Naples. So far from remembering with resentment
the enormous sums formerly stolen from him by this very family, Charles
VI. must needs squander more in a splendid show to celebrate the
knighting of the princes of Anjou.
That ceremony in which the young soldier of God swore to defend the
right, with all the solemn and impressive ritual that the Church could
devise to sanctify and dignify his act, was to be turned into a vile
debauch. In the ancient abbey of Saint-Denis, beside the tombs of the
great dead who had glorified France, were lodged "the Queen and a bevy
of illustrious ladies." Monastery or no monastery, the monks must harbor
these fair guests, whom all the rules of their order would have rigidly
excluded. Says the chronicle of a monk of Saint-Denis: "To gaze on their
exceeding beauty you would have said it was a meeting of the heathen
goddesses." And so they were, heathen goddesses, with a lawless Venus at
their head. But the festival, be it remembered, was a religious one; we
go "to hear mass every morning." The religious services over, the day
was given up to magnificent tourneys and rich banquets, and the nights
to balls, masked balls, "to hide blushes." For three days and three
nights was this revel maintained, the mad Bacchanals scrupling not to
defile even the most sacred places by their orgies, which the presence
of the king and queen rather encouraged than checked. It was the queen
herself, indeed, who loved all this. One does not wonder that people
began to whisper that she had already shown more than decorous affection
for her brother-in-law, the brilliant Louis d'Orleans; in the
_pervigilium Veneris_, the "wake of Venus," as they called the balls at
Saint-Denis, who could say what might have happened?
The king attained his majority; in a sudden fit of impatience, he threw
off the control of his uncles, till now the rulers of France, and set up
his own government. The royal princes had not been good governors; each
one was too intent upon his own interests to consider those of France;
and accordingly France hated them, and hoped for better things from the
young king and his sober government of humble counsellors. But Charles
needed excitement; in lieu of war there were fetes, upon which he
squandered money till the people groaned and the councillors trembled.
Any excuse was sufficient for holding a fete. Of a sudden, Charles and
Isabeau remembered that the queen had never been crowned and had never
made a royal entry into Paris. The city was ordered to make unexampled
preparations to receive Isabeau as queen; she had been living in Paris a
good part of the time during the four years since her marriage, but that
did not do away with the necessity for a formal introduction to the
capital of her dominions.
With his usual love of the spectacular, Froissart gives us an account,
covering many pages, of the reception of Isabeau. The Parisians dressed
themselves in gay costumes of scarlet, and green, and gold, each vying
with his neighbor and rivalling, as far as he dared, the gorgeousness of
the courtiers and nobles. The fountains ran wine and milk, the balconies
and windows were festooned with flowers and crowded with eager
spectators, while musicians played before the doors of many houses and
miracle plays were given on the street corners. On August 22nd, the
young queen, hailed at every step by the acclamations of the throngs in
the streets, and accompanied by a crowd of noble ladies borne in
sumptuous litters, passed from Saint-Denis to Paris. At the Porte
Saint-Denis there was a canopy representing "heaven, made full of stars,
and within it young children apparelled like angels," and an "image of
Our Lady herself," holding the infant Saviour. Two of the angels, let
down from heaven by ropes, placed a golden crown upon Isabeau's head,
singing: "Sweet lady amid the _fleur-de-lis_, are you not from heaven?"
"Then when the Queen and the ladies were passed by," having greatly
admired this "high heaven richly apparelled with the arms of France, the
device of the king," they proceeded along the street till they came to a
place where was a fountain, "which was covered over with a cloth of fine
azure, painted full of flower-de-luces of gold.... And out of this
fountain there issued in great streams spiced drinks and claret, and
about this fountain there were young maidens richly apparelled, with
rich chaplets on their heads, singing melodiously: great pleasure it was
to hear them. And they held in their hands cups and goblets of gold,
offering and giving to drink all such as passed by; and the Queen rested
there and regaled herself and regarded them, having great pleasure in
that device, and so did all other ladies and damosels that saw it."
Passing onward to where stood the Church of Saint James, "all the street
of Saint-Denis was covered over with cloths of silk and camlet, such
plenty as though such cloths should cost nothing. And I, Sir John
Froissart, author of this history, was present and saw all this and had
great wonder where such number of cloths of silk were gotten; there was
as great plenty as though they had been in Alexandria or Damascus; and
all the houses on both sides of the great street of Saint-Denis were
hanged with cloths of Arras of divers histories, the which was pleasure
to behold."
At the "bridge of Paris," hard by Notre-Dame, fresh wonders awaited the
queen. A master tumbler, from Genoa, "had tied a cord on the highest
house of the bridge of Saint-Michael over all the houses, and the other
end was tied on the highest tower in Our Lady's church. And as the Queen
passed by, and was in the street called Our Lady's street, because it
was late, this said master with two burning candles in his hands issued
out of a little stage that he had made on the height of Our Lady's
tower, and singing he went upon the cord all along the great street, so
that all saw him and had marvel how it might be." This tumbler, dressed
as an angel, gave another crown to Isabeau, and then mounting skyward
disappeared through a slit in the canopy over the bridge, as if he were
returning to heaven.
In the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Isabeau was crowned, saying, says
Froissart,--not without an equivocation of which he himself was
doubtless quite unconscious,--"what prayers she pleased." But the
festivities were not over; we have omitted many a detail given by
Froissart plays and dumb shows presenting indiscriminately the sacred
histories of Scripture and the legends of French heroes, castles full of
mock monsters, representations of the entire heavenly hierarchy and of
the dream which had suggested to Charles the emblem of the flying hart.
With gay balls at night and jousts and miracle plays by day, the
celebration was continued for several days. The merchants of Paris
presented to the queen and to Valentine Visconti, the new Duchess of
Orleans, most costly jewels, rich sets of plate, in gold and silver,
cups, and salvers, and dishes of gold, "whereat everyone marvelled
greatly," and the royal pair were greatly pleased.
Who was to pay for all the display in this entry of the queen? The
citizens of Paris had fondly hoped that, what with their show of loyal
joy and their presents,--aggregating some sixty thousand crowns in
gold,--the king would be pleased to remit certain oppressive taxes. On
the contrary, it was the citizens of Paris who were compelled to pay for
all this fine foolery. Charles departed from Paris a few days after the
conclusion of his fete, leaving behind him an increased tax and an
ordinance prohibiting, under penalty of death, the use of certain silver
coins of small value; this latter restriction, which was intended to
favor the circulation of his new and debased coinage, inflicted peculiar
hardships upon the poor. Thus, Isabeau was already inflicting much
misery upon the poor of that capital which had lavished so much upon
her; and before we bestow our commiseration upon the miserable king in
after days, it is well to remember the miseries of his subjects.
Life had been as yet but a dream for Charles and his queen; though
France was rapidly going to ruin under their extravagant and heedless
rule, could they not chase away care in revels surpassing any that
France had yet seen? But the dream was soon to become a nightmare, the
hideous nightmare of insanity, for this heedless monarch.
It was not until three years after the coronation of Isabeau that her
unfortunate husband had the first attack of what was, unmistakably,
insanity, though to any reasonable creature the behavior of the whole
court would have seemed mad enough from the beginning. One of those acts
of lawless private vengeance which were so soon to become dreadfully
familiar in France first excited the king almost to the point of frenzy.
A certain Pierre de Craon, a noble who had already distinguished himself
by robbing the late Duke of Anjou, was driven from Paris by the Duke of
Orleans, to whose wife he had imprudently revealed some of the
infidelities of her too licentious husband. He fled to Jean de Montfort,
who persuaded him that the person chiefly responsible for his disgrace
was the renowned Olivier de Clisson, Conetable of France. Secretly
returning to Paris, Pierre de Craon lay in wait for the constable one
night and fell upon him with a band of bravoes. The brave De Clisson was
seriously wounded, and the villains fled, thinking him slain. Charles,
who favored De Clisson, was furious at the outrage, and breathed
vengeance against Craon. As Jean de Montfort constituted himself the
defender of this wretch, and refused to deliver him up to justice, the
lands belonging to Craon were devastated, his wife and children were
driven forth, and war was declared upon Brittany.
The king had always had a passionate love for the more theatrical side
of war, and, as soon as the constable was able to ride, the king and his
forces marched upon Brittany. We may pass over the earlier part of his
campaign, taken up in aimless marches and as aimless parleying. On
August 5, 1392, during a spell of intensely hot weather, Charles marched
out of Mans. He had been suffering from a fever, was much weakened, and
had for days been greatly harassed by the heat and the baffling of his
delayed vengeance; he was moody, and "his spirits sore troubled and
travailed," when, as he rode through the forest of Mans, there suddenly
rushed to his horse's head a wild figure, half clothed, and manifestly
mad. Seizing the king's bridle, the apparition exclaimed, with that
strange earnestness so often noticeable in those whose reason is
unbalanced: "Sir King, ride no further forward, for thou art betrayed."
The servants hastily drove away the poor madman, and sought to restore
the king's peace of mind, more seriously disturbed than ever by a
happening that might well have startled even a person in strong health.
On rode the cavalcade, out over the open plains, where a blazing sun
beat full upon the king's head, protected only by a thin cap. Suddenly
Charles started, checked his horse, drew his sword, and charged upon the
pages who rode beside him, crying, as if in the heat of battle: "On, on!
down with these traitors!" Madly pursuing the pages, he put to flight
even the Duke of Orleans, and was not overpowered and disarmed until he
and his horse were quite exhausted.
He recognized none of those about him, and only physical weakness
prevented him from becoming again a frantic lunatic. The poor weak
brain, over-excited and worn-out by the long years of debauchery, was
hopelessly overthrown; though sane at times, and even for considerable
periods, Charles VI. was evermore incapable of ruling, being a mere
helpless and unhappy tool in the hands of the heartless people who could
win sufficient power to rule what was left of France.
The queen was no Blanche de Castille, able to rule a kingdom, and the
king's uncle, Philippe de Bourgogne, was at first the real power in
France. He was opposed by Isabeau de Baviere and her paramour and
brother-in-law, Louis d'Orleans, brother of the king; and the history of
the next few years is largely a record of shameless intrigues between
these people to obtain control of the mad king, in whose name many an
odious thing was done. The regency should, by rights, have devolved upon
the king's eldest brother, Louis d'Orleans, who was twenty-one years of
age at the time of Charles's madness; but the Dukes of Burgundy and
Berri set him aside for "his too great youth." There might have been
found some precedent for recognizing Isabeau as regent; but there is no
evidence that she ever made any serious efforts to establish her claim;
for she was content with that which the Duke of Burgundy was quite
willing to allow her, viz., the squandering of money--not his money--in
her pleasures. Isabeau was nominally associated in the council that
exercised the powers of regency, but she was really under the control of
the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the chroniclers call "a haughty and cruel
woman."
With such care as the doctors of the period were likely to give him,
there was not much hope of the permanent restoration of the king's
reason. One learned physician, however, did have the correct idea as to
the cause of Charles's malady and prescribed a moderate diet and a quiet
life for him. Under this wise treatment Charles soon recovered as much
reason as he had ever had; but the regimen imposed by the physician's
orders was as distasteful to the king as it was to Isabeau. The queen,
under pretext of furnishing diversions for him, began again the wild
life of debauchery which had been the prime cause of Charles's insanity.
It was at one of these festivals that occurred the famous "dance of
savages" that so nearly deprived France of her mad king.
The chronicler of Saint-Denis says that "it was an evil custom of the
time in many parts of France to indulge unreproved in all sorts of
indecent follies at the marriage of a widow, and to assume with their
extravagant masks and disguises the liberty of making all sorts of
obscene remarks to the bride and bridegroom." It was at a sort of
charivari held one night (January 29, 1393) in celebration of the
marriage of one of Isabeau's German waiting women, a widow, that Hugues
de Guisay, one of those panders to the follies of the rich and
extravagant who plan their "amusements" for them, undertook to divert
the mad king, the queen, and the whole court. He devised "six coats made
of linen cloth covered with pitch and thereon flax like hair." Charles
put on one of these, and he and his five satyr-like companions, much
delighted with their resemblance to things of horrid form, pranced in
among the other revellers. The five were linked together by a chain, the
king, fortunately, being loose and preceding them. As the wretched
Charles, in his disgraceful costume, was trying to fulfil the part of a
satyr indeed by teasing and exchanging coarse jests with the young
Duchess of Berri, Louis d'Orleans came into the room. Wishing to
discover who it was so disguised--we refuse to credit the account which
says he acted in mere heedless desire to see what would happen--he held
a torch too near one of the tow-clad gallants. In an instant the whole
five unhappy victims of folly were in a blaze. "Save the King! save the
King!" cried one of them as he burned. Fortunately the Duchess of Berri,
guessing that it was the king who stood by her, covered him with her
cloak and prevented his costume from catching fire. Four of the others,
whom not a soul in this gay assemblage seems to have made serious
attempts to rescue, were burned to death, one escaping by jumping into a
large tub of water in the pantry. Among those who died was the wanton
deviser of this foolish and dangerous amusement; and as his body was
borne to the tomb through the streets of Paris the people cursed him and
called out after him, as he had been wont to speak to the poor when it
pleased him to amuse himself with them: "Bark, dog!"
Wonderful to relate, this scene of horror at the dance of savages does
not appear to have occasioned an immediate relapse on the part of the
king. Isabeau, who had manifested extreme terror and sympathy at the
moment of her husband's peril, joined him in making virtuous resolutions
to lead a more regular and sober life. But the love of pleasure was too
firmly rooted; there were renewed debauches, and Charles became more
violently mad than before, knowing neither his wife nor his children,
and even denying his own identity. And so it continued throughout his
life: following the regimen of his doctors, Charles would have a lucid
interval; then he chased the doctors from the palace and went back to
debauchery and to madness. Astrologers were sent for to enlist the
sidereal powers in his behalf; one astrologer brought a book which he
affirmed the Lord had sent to Adam by the hand of an angel; what good it
had done to Adam appeareth not, but it certainly did not relieve the
king. Then there were two Austin friars (!) who made a draught of
powdered pearls and enlisted all the forces of sorcery in the king's
behalf; but the king did not recover, and the friars were handed over to
the Inquisition, condemned, and decapitated.
Meanwhile any affection that Isabeau may have felt for her husband had
passed away. She had found the Duke of Burgundy at last unendurably
parsimonious; Louis d'Orleans was far more liberal with the money of the
kingdom; besides, he was a handsome rake, whom all the women loved; it
was inevitable that Isabeau should ally herself with the man who was
willing not only to share her wanton pleasures but to squeeze out of the
people the money required for them. The people, particularly the people
of Paris, hated the Duke of Orleans because he was always imposing more
taxes, and loved the Duke of Burgundy because he was politic enough to
pretend to reduce taxes. It is therefore not surprising that we have so
many accounts of the outrageous conduct of Isabeau de Baviere and Louis
d'Orleans; for if the people are long-suffering, they yet do not forget.
In order to meet some part of the expenses incurred by the prodigality
of the court, Louis d'Orleans and the queen, in 1405, imposed a new tax.
The prisons were soon crowded with poor wretches who could not pay the
impost even by selling all their belongings, to the very straw of their
beds. While the queen amused herself the people cursed. Not knowing what
could become of the great sums raised and squandered by the worthless
pair, the people said that Isabeau sent cartloads of gold into Bavaria
and that Louis wasted it in magnificent structures on his domain at
Couci and at Pierrefonds.
The wild accusations of a maddened people, however, were not without
excuse. This miserable wanton who was Queen of France left her husband,
the poor, good-natured madman, and her children to the care of servants
whose wages, in the midst of all this waste of the public money, she
forgot to pay. The servants neglected both children and husband; the
King of France was allowed to remain in filth and rags, covered with
vermin that made repulsive sores upon him, while the little dauphin was
but a half starved ragamuffin. One of the physicians discovered in what
state Charles was: he had refused to bathe or to change his clothes for
five months, and there was danger of his dying from sheer filth.
Disguising some of his attendants in fearful costumes, the physician
sent them into the mad king's den, where they terrified him into
passivity and managed to bathe him, dress his sores, and change his
clothes before the fit of terror passed away. When Charles next had a
lucid interval he learned of the neglect of Isabeau, thanked those who
had been more tender than his wife, and gave one lady, who had tried to
care for the dauphin, a goblet of gold.
The indignation of the people was great; all classes united in
abhorrence of this shameless wife and mother. An Austin friar, bolder
than the rest, preached a sermon before Isabeau and openly reproved her
wantonness: "At your court reigns dame Venus, and her waiting maids are
Lechery and Gormandise." The queen and her idle and vicious courtiers
wished him punished for his effrontery; but Charles, hearing what he had
said, declared that he liked such sermons, sent for the preacher,
listened with interest and attention to his recital of the woes of the
kingdom, projected reforms--and went mad again.
While the fit of reform was on, Louis d'Orleans, terrified by a storm
that had overtaken him and Isabeau in one of their pleasure-jaunts,
vowed to repent and pay his debts. At these glad tidings over eight
hundred creditors assembled; but the clouds rolled away, and with them
went Louis's desire to be honest. He laughed at the creditors and gave
secret orders to debase the coinage.
The poor king was just sane enough to realize that things were going
wrong; he appealed for help to the Duke of Burgundy. The vigorous and
pitiless Jean Sans Peur, who had succeeded Philippe le Hardi in
Burgundy, came down upon Paris, and Isabeau fled with Orleans to Melun,
abandoning Charles, but planning to carry off next day the royal
children and those of the Duke of Burgundy. Jean de Bourgogne, however,
overtook the children and brought them back to Paris, where he now
(August, 1405) established himself in the Louvre.
So outrageous had been the spoliation under Isabeau and Louis that the
Parisians welcomed Jean as a deliverer. The queen, under cover of a
pretended right to appropriate goods for royal uses, had systematically
not only taken the necessaries of life, provisions and the like, but had
seized merchandise, jewels, money stored away by the owners, and
furniture, plundering even the hospitals, and storing these stolen goods
with the intention of selling them at auction. Greed was her
predominating trait, and so we are not surprised to find her hatred of
Jean Sans Peur increasing to the point of virulence when she was
deprived of the opportunity of robbing unmolested. Unfortunately for
her, Orleans was not a man of ability or energy sufficient to cope
successfully with Jean de Bourgogne, and the struggle between the two
dukes merely exhausted the resources of Orleans without seriously
impairing those of his opponent. Isabeau, moreover, was not
bloodthirsty; both her indolence and her interest impelled her to favor
the peace between the two dukes which was brought about in the closing
months of 1407.
Louis was ill; in mere kindness his cousin of Burgundy visited him, and
a reconciliation was effected. As soon as Louis was recovered from his
indisposition the two, accompanied by the old Duke de Berri, who was
anxious to promote peace, heard mass and took communion together,
swearing fraternal love for each other. This was on Sunday, November 27,
1407. On the next Wednesday evening Louis d' Orleans went as usual to
sup with Isabeau at the Hotel Barbette, and was in particularly high
spirits, attempting to divert the queen, who had been much distressed at
the birth of a stillborn child, a love child, as people said. About
eight o'clock in the evening, a message, apparently from the king,
summoned Louis, and as he went in response to the summons, accompanied
by but a few pages and servants, he was set upon and hacked to pieces in
the streets of Paris by a gang of ruffians under one Raoul d'Octonville.
The assassins made good their escape before people knew what had
happened. When the death of the king's brother was discovered, great was
the consternation; for all knew that such a crime had not been committed
by an obscure scoundrel, and the question was asked, what great man had
hired the assassins? In a few days Jean de Bourgogne, in a mood between
terror and impudent bravado, confessed that he was guilty of the foul
murder of the man to whom he had so recently sworn amity in the sight of
God. Fearing that even his rank could not sufficiently shield him from
punishment for this shedding of the blood royal, Jean fled from Paris to
his own dominions.
The dead man had been neither a good brother nor a good prince; with all
of those facile graces which might have made him lovable to all men and
did make him fascinating to most women he had combined no sterling
qualities. He was not cruel; that is the only relatively good trait--and
even that but negative--that we can set over against his reckless
frivolity and licentiousness, his shameless infidelity and disregard of
oaths and the most sacred obligations. He was not mourned in Paris,
which was shocked but not grieved at his death; he was not sincerely
mourned by the infamous queen whom he had led away from her duty to her
pitiful, insane husband; but he was mourned by the woman whom he had
most deeply wronged--his wife.
This wife was the lovely Italian, Valentine Visconti, daughter of the
Duke of Milan, who had married Louis in 1389 and was a sharer in the
splendors of the gorgeous entry of Isabeau de Baviere into Paris. From
the first she had just cause of complaint--and yet never complained--of
the infidelity of a husband whom she loved with her whole heart, but
whose love she could not retain. Froissart, who was no friend of hers,
tells us a most curious and extraordinary story of one of Valentine's
rivals, whom Louis had preferred to his wife as early as 1392. It
appears that Louis d'Orleans had rashly confided the details of an amour
to that Pierre de Craon whom we have mentioned before, and this knight
revealed them to Valentine. The young duchess sent at once for the lady
to whom Louis was devoting himself: "Wilt thou do me wrong with my lord,
my husband?" The woman was abashed, and in her confusion confessed her
guilt. Then said Valentine: "Thus it is: I am informed that my lord
loveth you, and you him, and the matter is so far gone between you that
in such a place and at such a time he promised you a thousand crowns of
gold to be his paramour; howbeit, you did refuse it as then, wherein you
did wisely, and therefore I pardon you; but I charge you on your life
that you commune nor talk no more with him, but suffer him to pass and
hearken no more to his commanding." From the treatment he received at
the next meeting with his lady-love, Louis discovered that something was
amiss, and she finally told him of the interview with Valentine. Louis
then went home to his wife, "and showed her more token of love than ever
he did before," finally wheedling her into telling him who had been the
talebearer. The sequel we know: how Craon was driven from court, and
returned to attempt the assassination of De Clisson.
But if her husband did not love her, the king manifested a real and
innocent affection for Valentine, his "dear sister," remembering her and
asking for her when, in his madness, he knew no other. Yet even out of
this there was to come evil for Valentine; for the Duchess of Burgundy,
fearing the growth of the Orleans influence over the king, spread evil
reports about the innocent relations between Charles and Valentine.
Adding to these insinuations an accusation far more dangerous than that
of adultery would have been in such a court, the Burgundians asserted
that the king's insanity was produced and continued by the power of
witchcraft; and this accusation, fastened upon Valentine, obtained such
credit that her husband had to remove her from court to a sort of exile
in his own dominions. We find even worse accusations credited by the
unsympathetic Froissart, who reports that she had unwittingly poisoned
her own child in an attempt to poison the dauphin, for "this lady was of
high mind, envious and covetous of the delights and state of this world.
Gladly she would have seen the Duke her husband attain to the crown of
France, she had not cared how."
Through good report and evil report the poor duchess had lived on,
loving her husband and leading a life at least far more regular than
that of the court, though she possessed the Italian love of the artistic
and the beautiful and was very extravagant. The king, now often idiotic
when he was not raving, had been turned completely against her. To amuse
and distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the
Duke of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and
mistress. To the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now
succeeded Odette. She was little more than a child, but she became
mistress as well as playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (_filia
cujusdam mercatoris equorum_ daughter of a certain horse dealer), she
wears in court history a name better than that she was born to, Odette
de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the mad king,
called her "la petite reine." She was happy, it seems, and kind to the
king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than was quite
pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in later years
when Burgundy and England were leagued together, but is said to have
used her influence over the king rather for France than for Burgundy. Of
her we know little more than that she died about 1424, leaving a
daughter whose legitimacy was recognized by Charles VII., and who was
honorably married to a petty gentleman of Poitou.
When the handsome, elegant, but unfaithful Louis was murdered, Valentine
was at Blois with her children; the eldest was but sixteen, old enough
to feel the loss, but not old enough to avenge it. But Valentine
determined to avenge her husband; her grief gave her energy. She came at
once to Paris with her youngest son and her daughter-in-law, that
Isabelle de France who was already a widow from the death of Richard
II., and now affianced to the young Duke d'Orleans. The king, sane at
the time, was inexpressibly shocked by the murder of his brother, and
was moved to tears when Valentine came before him to demand justice upon
the murderer. He promised to act, and probably really meant what he
said, but his mind was not capable of sustained effort. Jean de
Bourgogne was making active preparations for a descent upon Paris with a
retinue so formidable in numbers as to be an army; and Valentine retired
to Blois, to bide her time. Jean, hardly opposed by Isabeau or any of
the few who might be supposed either to exercise some authority or to
sympathize with the Orleans faction, came to Paris, boldly hired lawyers
and quibbling theologians to justify the "death which he had inflicted
upon the person of the Duke d'Orleans," and made the poor madman who was
king issue letters patent declaring that he, the king, "took out of his
heart all displeasure against his very dear and well-beloved cousin of
Burgundy for having put out of the world his brother of Orleans."
Isabeau, who had shown herself utterly incapable of action in this
crisis, remained at Melun until the arrogant and dangerous Duke of
Burgundy had forced matters in this way and had been called away to
repress a rebellion of Liege. Then she and her allies, with three
thousand troops, entered Paris (August 26, 1408). Valentine came next
day, and with her the young Charles d'Orleans, destined to become famous
as one of France's sweetest poets, although kept a prisoner in England
for twenty-five years. The king being once more incapacitated, it was
decided that Isabeau should preside at the hearing of the formal
complaint of the Duchess of Orleans. When the mourning widow and the
youthful Duke of Orleans came before the council to demand a hearing,
their plea was readily granted, for the menacing figure of Jean Sans
Peur was no longer there to intimidate Isabeau and the friends of his
victim. The next day, before the young Duke of Guyenne, who acted in the
place of the king, the legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries employed by
Valentine exerted themselves to exculpate Louis d'Orleans from the
charges of sorcery and tyranny and to show that Jean de Bourgogne should
be punished for the murder. The arguments of the Orleans advocates were
far superior to the shallow, sophistical, utterly shameless harangues
which had been delivered in defence of Jean. The legal advocate asked,
on behalf of Valentine and her children, that Jean be compelled to come
humbly to the Louvre and there to apologize to the king and to the widow
and her children; that his houses in Paris be razed; that he be ordered
to expend great sums in founding churches and convents, in expiation of
his crime; and that he be banished beyond seas for twenty years, and,
after his return, be not suffered to approach nearer than one hundred
leagues to the queen and the Orleans princes.
But Valentine, though she prevailed on the queen and the princes of the
council to agree to summon Jean de Bourgogne to trial before the Court
of Parliament, was impotent to prosecute her cause. For Jean, after a
ferocious suppression of the rebellious citizens of Liege, came boldly
back to Paris, was received as a victor and a friend by the people of
Paris, and so overawed the other members of the council that the Orleans
sympathizers dared not even dream of prosecuting the trial of this
unabashed murderer.
Valentine de Milan and her sons retired to Blois, fearing even further
outrages from the triumphant Burgundians. Well might she now have
justified the pathetic motto which she had assumed at her husband's
tragic death: _Rien ne m'est plus, plus ne m'est rien,_--"There is
nothing more for me, nothing matters more." This inscription, which she
caused to be placed in the Franciscan Church at Blois, must have borne
an added bitterness to her heart when she saw the selfish Isabeau making
friends with the murderer of Louis. The wretched queen and the impotent
members of the council were glad to make peace with Jean; they accepted
his hospitality and cowered before him. Isabeau, caring nothing for the
power of the crown, caring nothing for her husband or her children,
caring indeed for but one thing, money, eagerly accepted that from the
hands still red with the blood of the man she had loved.
With her children about her, Valentine languished at Blois for a year.
She had sought out one of Louis's natural sons, for whom she manifested
affection and who, she used to say, was her own by rights, and more
fitted to avenge his father than any of the other children. Valentine
was in this a good judge, for the spirited, ardent lad whom she loved
for his father's sake was none other than Jean, Comte de Dunois,
afterward famous among the martial heroes of France as "Le Batard
d'Orleans." Valentine died on December 4, 1408, and well might they say
that she had died of a broken heart; for the one great emotion of her
life had been the passionate devotion to one of the most despicable men
that ever had a faithful wife--a devotion generous enough, indeed, to
excuse even follies and infidelities.
It was well for Valentine that death came when it did, for it saved her
from still further sorrows and humiliations. Four months after her
death, her unhappy sons were led to Chartres to go through the forms of
a solemn reconciliation with their father's murderer. The duke expressed
his contrition for "the fact of the murder committed upon Louis
d'Orleans, howbeit this was done for the good of the king and the
kingdom, as he was ready to prove, if desired." With such insulting
phrases the sons were compelled to be satisfied, and they were forced to
swear, with tears that they could not restrain, to harbor no ill
feelings against their dear cousin of Burgundy, for whom the king, the
queen, and the princes of the blood all interceded.
In this shameful mockery of a peace, ratified in the great cathedral of
Chartres, Isabeau de Baviere had acted for the Duke of Burgundy. She was
soon to give still further proof of her heartlessness and ingratitude,
when Jean de Bourgogne arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and executed Jean
de Montaigu, superintendent of finances, who had been an old servant of
the queen, who had even given her that splendid Hotel Barbette in which
she had last supped with Louis d'Orleans, and who had drawn up the
treaty of reconciliation between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans.
Isabeau might have interceded in his behalf, and did make some move to
do so; but a promise that her son should share in the confiscated wealth
of Montaigu was enough to purchase her consent to the latter's death.
Isabeau was at this time busying herself less and less about affairs of
state; since she had leagued herself in secret with Jean de Bourgogne
she had no cares but those attendant upon providing pleasures and
amusements for herself. Her son, the dauphin, following in Isabeau's
footsteps, was scandalizing all Paris by his orgies. At last, the people
of Paris rose in one of their occasional sincere but futile attempts to
reform the manners of a corrupt court. We shall not deal with the
horrors of this outburst, one of the many little wavelets of popular
indignation presaging, but presaging only to heedless revellers, the
great tidal wave that was to envelop and bear down the just and the
unjust alike some four hundred years later. The butchers and bakers and
honest workingmen, led chiefly by a surgeon, Jean de Troyes, came by
thousands to reform the morals of the dauphin. This miserable debauchee,
as well as the rest of the court, trembled before them, and willingly
conceded anything that could be asked. Even the poor mad king, whom the
people loved and did not blame, had the white hood, emblem of the
commune, placed upon his head, and smiled pitifully at his rough but
well-meaning subjects. Forthwith, Isabeau equipped her head with a white
hood, and so did all the court, the judges, and even the learned doctors
of the University. But Isabeau's white hood was not wide enough to cover
the scandalous horns of her headdress. Rising to the point of fury upon
hearing that the dauphin, probably at the instigation of his mother, had
been in communication with the Orleanist forces to induce them to march
upon Paris, the Cabochiens, as the communists called themselves, in May,
1413, invaded the palace itself and arrested Louis de Baviere, the
queen's brother, and as many as fifteen of the ladies of her suite
probably such as had made themselves peculiarly conspicuous and
offensive by the extravagance and the indecency of their costumes.
Isabeau wept, and pleaded vainly for a respite for her brother, then on
the eve of his marriage; the stern moralists from the markets of Paris
were inexorable and Louis went to jail unmarried, while Isabeau went to
bed sick with childish fury.
For a moment turning our attention from the queen, let us advert to the
political conditions in France. From the time of the assassination of
Louis d' Orleans there had been civil war, with rare and brief intervals
of peace, between the partisans of Burgundy and those of Orleans, now
led by Bernard d'Armagnac, whose daughter Charles d'Orleans had married
after the early death of his first wife, Isabelle de France. While civil
war in itself would have caused misery and ruin enough, its horrors were
enhanced by the crafty policy of Henry IV. of England, who, when he was
not able to intervene in person, responded to the solicitations of first
one party and then the other, and thus caused Armagnacs and Bourguignons
to exhaust themselves in fruitless strife. It was the craft of Henry IV.
and the folly of France that prepared the way for Agincourt, that
crushing victory of the great Henry V., who in the presence of the
overwhelming French army proclaimed, in Shakespeare's paraphrase of his
words:
"We are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more!"
The event justified King Harry's boastful confidence: the chivalry of
France found itself discredited, dead, or in captivity. And yet, even in
the hour of France's distress, the indolent Isabeau could hardly be
prevailed upon to take any action in behalf of her son, the dauphin,
Louis de Guienne who, in fact, lived but a little over two months after
Agincourt, and was succeeded by Jean de Touraine. In two years more
(1417) Jean de Touraine was dead, poisoned, it was said, by Bernard
d'Armagnac; the new dauphin, Charles, was a boy of but fourteen years.
This Charles, one of the most uncomfortably cold and contemptible
personages in history, had been reared by the queen and the Armagnac
party with sentiments of the bitterest hatred against the Burgundians.
Determined to win complete control of Charles, Bernard d'Armagnac sought
to discredit Isabeau with her son and with the king. There was no
difficulty in finding pretexts, for the sober-minded Juvenal des Ursins
tells us that in the chateau of Vincennes, whither Isabeau had retired
to revel more at ease, "many shameful things were done" by the queen and
her troop of rakes and gaudily dressed ladies; but indecency in dress
was not the only scandal that Bernard revealed to the king, who was at
the time in better mental condition than for years.
As he rode back from the chateau one evening the king met Loys de
Boisbourdon, whom he knew to be one of Isabeau's associates. Suddenly
suspicious and resolved to know the whole truth, Charles had him
arrested and put to the question (_i.e._, tortured). Such horrors were
revealed by this unlucky sharer of the queen's pleasures that Charles
deemed them not fit for further circulation, and accordingly Loys de
Boisbourdon carried his secrets with him into a sack, which was
inscribed: _Laissez passer la justice du roi_, "Make way for the justice
of the king," and the waters of the Seine covered the sack and the
sinner. The mad king's justice, of which we read with a certain joyful
sympathy, was not ended, for he sent the queen and the duchess of
Bavaria to Blois, and later to Tours, where they were compelled to live
under surveillance and in salutary simplicity. The dauphin seized some
moneys belonging to Isabeau, who henceforth cherished the most
unrelenting hatred for her own son, accusing him of being responsible
for her exile. The real grief to her, we may feel sure, was the loss of
her money.
From this time, we find Isabeau intriguing with the Duke of Burgundy. As
Jean was marching upon Paris he came into the neighborhood of Tours. The
pious Isabeau was suddenly filled with a desire to hear mass at a
particular convent some distance outside the walls. While she was
engaged in her devotions the troops of Burgundy, in ambush, surrounded
the convent and "captured" Isabeau and her guardians. The queen and her
ally, styling themselves governors of France, established a parliament
at Amiens, sent out decrees by authority of the "council of the queen
and the duke," and fought the dauphin on paper and in the field. When in
June, 1418, the Parisians, provoked beyond endurance by the exactions
and the arrogance of the Armagnac nobles, massacred every Armagnac that
they could find, Isabeau stood too much in awe of these fierce men of
the common people to enter Paris. Had she not seen their violence
before, merely because she lived in luxury while they starved? She
waited for the arrival of Jean de Bourgogne, and the two entered Paris
together on July 14th. The dauphin, the sole hope of France, fled before
the armies of his mother.
As early as May, 1419, the queen had been in negotiation with the
English to disinherit her son, when the sudden death of Jean Sans Peur,
who was assassinated at a conference with the dauphin in September,
1419, interrupted her plans; but she was determined at all hazards not
to fall into the hands of her son. She wrote a letter of condolence to
the widowed Duchess of Burgundy, and promised the new duke, Philippe le
Bon, to assist him in punishing the dauphin. Philippe, like all this
race of Burgundian dukes, was a man of action, a man of strong
character, slightly more scrupulous than his father, and yet not
entirely without inclination to sacrifice honor to policy. It is not to
be wondered at that, justly indignant at the treacherous murder of his
father, he should have sacrificed the interests of France to satisfy his
resentment against the dauphin.
The queen, the Duke of Burgundy, and the unhappy king, a mere tool in
their hands, treated at once with Henry V. It was stipulated in the
preliminaries that Henry should aid them and be aided by them in war
upon the dauphin. The selfish mother who thus enlisted even foreigners
in her war against her son was capable of yet worse things. It was
agreed that Henry should marry Catherine de France, the youngest
daughter of Isabeau, and should at once receive control of the entire
kingdom, in consideration of the incapacity of Charles VI.
Isabeau de Baviere was merely a wanton, an idle, vain, shallow-hearted
seeker after pleasure, utterly incapable of taking seriously her role as
Queen of France. With such love as her heart was capable of feeling, she
loved Catherine, while her mean nature could never forgive the son who
was the heir of France. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find her
signing and causing the king to sign a treaty which violated every
principle of patriotism and honor. By the treaty signed at Troyes on May
21, 1420, Charles, Duke of Touraine, Dauphin of France, was
disinherited; the very principles of the Salic law were set at naught;
and the heritage of Charles was bestowed, not even upon one of his elder
sisters, but upon that Catherine of France, the youngest child, now
Queen of England, and, in failure of heirs of her body, upon her
husband, Henry V. of England. The two nations were to be merged, each
retaining its distinctive laws, but both were to be under the rule of
English sovereigns, and Henry was to aid in restoring peace and in
destroying "the rebels" under Charles, "called the Dauphin." One of the
bribes paid to Isabeau for selling the kingdom of her son was a pension;
for we find an ordinance of Henry, "heir and regent of France," granting
to the queen the sum of two thousand francs per month.
Isabeau's enjoyment of her pension was not destined to be of long
continuance. The brilliant Henry V. died on August 31, 1422; and less
than two months later died Charles VI., _le bien aime_. During thirty of
the forty-two years of his reign he had been incapacitated by madness or
by idiocy, and in the intervals France had been worse misgoverned than
ever before in her history; so that, with wars foreign and domestic and
with the shameless extravagance of the court, the kingdom had been
reduced to a deplorable state, scores dying in the streets of Paris of
sheer hunger while the English king was spending his first triumphant
winter in that city. For all these evils and miseries the people placed
the blame where, in good truth, it belonged, on the queen and the royal
princes. For the mad king there was nothing but a compassionate love, a
tender sympathy; the people pitied this kindly unfortunate, abandoned by
his wife, used as a tool by first one set of princes and then another.
At the funeral of Charles VI. not a single prince of France was present;
the English Bedford conducted the whole sad affair. "As the body of the
King was put in the sepulchre beside his predecessors, the heralds broke
their rods and cast them into the grave... And then the Berri
king-at-arms, accompanied by several heralds and pursuivants, cried out
over the grave: 'May God have mercy upon the very noble and very
excellent Prince Charles, sixth of the name, our lawful and sovereign
lord!' And after this the aforesaid king-at-arms cried out: 'May God
grant long life and prosperity to Henry, by the grace of God King of
France and of England, our sovereign lord!' And then the heralds raised
aloft their truncheons with the fleur-de-lis, crying: _'Vive le roi!
Vive le roi!'_ And some of those present answered _Noel_ (the ancient
salutation to the King); but there were some who wept."
Thus the wretched Isabeau's work was, it seemed, complete, her son being
a fugitive before the arms of the foreigner, while her infant grandson
was King of France. From this time she disappears completely from the
scene of action, drawing her meagre pension from the hands of the
English, who treated her with deserved contempt, and cursed by all
France for the memory of her evil deeds. We catch but a fleeting glimpse
of her, living in obscurity at the royal palace of Saint-Pol. When on
December 2, 1431, the young King Henry VI. made his solemn entry into
his capital of Paris, the royal procession passed by the windows of the
palace, and the boy king, looking up, saw an old woman in faded finery,
surrounded by a bevy of women attendants. They, told him it was his
grand-mother, the frivolous and once beautiful Isabeau de Baviere, and
he doffed his cap, while Isabeau bowed to him and turned aside to weep.
Did she weep from sincere contrition, or merely from regret of the
departed luxury and extravagance of her life? She was not to live many
years longer; but it was long enough to know that France had survived
even her treachery and that her son was at peace with the Duke of
Burgundy. So far from rejoicing, it is said that she died of regret that
the treaty of Troyes had come to naught, her death occurring on
September 24, 1435. She died with outward show of piety, and was buried
as meanly, says a contemporary, as if she had been a humble
_bourgeoise_, but four persons being present at the graveside.
The very portraits of Isabeau de Baviere, and of other women of her
court, suggest sensuality. They are fat, and of the earth, earthy,
suggesting lives led in indolence and the pursuit of pleasures not of
the highest. As Michelet says, "Obesity is a characteristic of the
figures of this sensual epoch. See the statues at Saint Denys; those of
the fourteenth century are clearly portraits. See, in particular, the
statue of the Duke de Berri in the subterranean chapel of Bourges, with
the ignoble fat dog lying at his feet." As was the epoch, so was the
queen; she was not actively bad, except where interference with her
pleasures was threatened; she was merely a vain and utterly incapable
woman of low tastes and cold heart who was called upon to be Queen of
France in the most disastrous period of the history of that land. We
need not think her a second Fredegonde, as some historians have tried to
represent her; for her follies and her vices were such as to cause
abhorrence by their puerility or their bestiality rather than to stir
the deeper feelings of fear and hate excited by the greater among the
bad women of history.