crazy. The reins of government fell once more into the hands of his
uncle Philip. (See House of Burgundy.) At the death of Philip a bitter
contest for the supremacy broke out between his son John-the-fearless
and Louis of Orleans, the king’s brother. This rivalry led to a
desultory civil war interrupted by truces and pacifications during one
of which, John-the-fearless thought to settle the dispute once for
all, by a touch of his fearlessness. He assassinated his rival in the
streets of Paris.
The stroke was to a great degree successful, and John duke of Burgundy
was the greatest man in the realm. But the faction of Orleans though
disorganised for the moment by the death of its chief, was not
extinguished. The young duke son of the murdered man, had taken for his
second wife the daughter of the count of Armagnac an energetic leader
who put himself at the head of the Orleansists, and even gave them his
name; and France was torn by the bloody strife between the Burgundians
and the Armagnacs.
It was this state of things that tempted Henry V. of England to revive
an absurd claim to the crown of France which had been trumped up as a
pretext for plunder, by his great grandfather Edward III. Henry invaded
France and won the battle of Agincourt. Both factions courted his
alliance, each being more anxious to wreak vengeance on the other than
to save their common country. Henry after some coquetting, sided with
the Burgundians who were the stronger of the two, and held the north
of France including the capital which they put into his hands. In that
city he afterwards married Catharine daughter of Charles and Isabella,
and was declared heir of the monarchy, in contempt of the rights of
Catharine’s young brother the dauphin Charles. The demented king and
his disreputable queen deserted the cause of their son and of France,
and went over to the English. The dauphin himself was rescued from the
clutches of his father and mother, by a bold stroke of Tanneguy du
Châtel an Armagnac noble who broke into the boy’s lodging one night,
snatched him out of bed, wrapped him up in his cloak, mounted his horse
with him, and made good his escape; and Charles lived to recover his
inheritance and more besides. The Armagnac faction thus became the
party of the dauphin, the party of the nation and of the independence
of France.
There were among the Burgundian barons some who remembered they were
Frenchmen and who fought reluctantly on the side of England. These
projected an interview between the dauphin and duke John, with a view
of reconciling their differences, and uniting their arms against the
common enemy. The meeting took place on the bridge of Montereau, and
John-the-fearless was struck dead at the feet of the young prince. Thus
did one foul murder avenge another murder equally foul committed twelve
years before.
Some English writers inform you that John-the-fearless was assassinated
by orders of the dauphin. Charles at that time was an indolent boy
of sixteen; and he probably was not allowed to know that such an act
was meditated. Indeed so impolitic was the murder that it is far from
certain that there was any premeditation about it. It is much more
likely that duke John fell a victim to a sudden outbreak of revenge on
the part of nobles he had long pursued.
His son and successor Philip was in his twenty-third year. He is called
in history Philip-the-good for reasons perhaps as satisfactory as in
the case of his great grandfather king John II. He was good tempered
however, and whenever his domestic servitors, his equerries and his
chamberlains came to talk with him about household matters he received
them affably instead of kicking them on the shins with his jack-boots
as his sire had done, and as was indeed the style in those days.
Philip had married Charles’s sister Michelle of France; but he eagerly
adopted the theory of his English counsellors, that Charles was the
assassin; and he went home and exclaimed O Michelle your brother has
murdered my father! The poor princess threw herself into his arms and
declared that his enemies were her enemies, and the tragedy worked no
breach between them.
But Philip thought of nothing but revenge. He sent an envoy to the
English king offering a formal alliance with him for the destruction
of the French monarchy. The _astonishing treaty_ as Hume calls it, by
which this prince of the blood royal of France declared himself the
enemy of his family, of his country and of that throne to which he was
so nearly related that in the chapter of chances he might become its
heir, is called the treaty of Troyes from Troyes in Champagne where it
was signed.[8]
It was about the time of this treaty that the English court was set
agog by the flirtation between Jaqueline and the duke of Gloucester,
and by the application they were making to both popes to open the
way to their marriage. Nothing could be more threatening to the House
of Burgundy than that an English prince should acquire Holland and
the other provinces that had fallen to Jaqueline; and duke Philip,
notwithstanding his alliance with Henry, interfered vigorously and
successfully to prevent pope Martin from annulling the previous
marriage of Jaqueline. When the annulment was finally obtained from
Benedict, Philip appealed to Henry himself to stop the espousals by his
royal authority. But Henry was quite willing his brother should win
so great a prize. There was to be sure, hazard in it; but he trusted
to his own address to keep Philip quiet, and allowed the marriage to
take place. Nor did he trust in vain. That gifted monarch had sounded
the depths and the shallows of his ally. He knew that Philip was the
most pig-headed of mortals; and that he would submit to still greater
humiliations rather than give up his schemes of vengeance.
Up to this time the arms of England had been successful; but they now
met with a reverse the consequences of which were far-reaching; though
English historians affect either to ignore the transaction, or to refer
to it as an affair of no importance. Henry had gone back to England,
leaving his victorious army under the command of his brother Thomas
duke of Clarence. Thomas could not forgive himself for not having been
at Agincourt on that day of glory; and he resolved to have an Agincourt
of his own. The French under the Marshal de Lafayette--an ancestor of
our own Lafayette--were in a strong position at Beaugé. A little way
off lay a body of Scotch under the earl of Buchan, ready to second the
French; but the English despised the Scotch even more than they did the
French, for they had beaten them oftener and at greater odds.[9]
Clarence did not hesitate to attack the French position. He was
received with steadiness; and at the critical moment Buchan and his
red-headed crew bore down upon the field. Clarence was slain, and his
army defeated.
Henry whose opinion of the disaster was different from that of the
English historians, flew back to France, and in the most obstinate of
all his campaigns, succeeded in winning back the ground that had been
lost. But that campaign which the defeat of Beaugé alone had rendered
necessary, was fatal to him. Worn out with care, fatigue and exposure
he lay dying at Vincennes.
He called to him his next brother John duke of Bedford, appointed
him regent of France, and enjoined upon him always to preserve the
friendship and alliance of the duke of Burgundy, as essential to the
conquest of the kingdom. He constituted his brother Humphrey regent
of England, and adjured him never to leave that island while the war
lasted. These two injunctions had the same drift, and showed what was
weighing upon Henry’s mind. He had been confident of his own power to
obviate the mischief threatened by the English marriage of Jaqueline,
but he was not sure his brothers would be equal to it; and the
apprehension was not ill founded.
The monarch died and was embalmed and sent to England. He was perhaps
the greatest of England’s kings. His chief faults were cruelty and
arrogance, and they both stood in his way. Assuming to be king of
France he regarded as a traitor worthy of death every Frenchman who
resisted him. This theory drove the French into that tenacious defence
of their towns which checked his progress; and at the same time his
haughty airs alienated the Burgundian nobles. Dare you look me in the
face when you speak to me? said he to L’isle Adam, Philip’s governor of
Paris. Sire, replied the Burgundian, there lives not the man that I
look not in the face when I speak to him.
A few weeks after Henry’s death, his poor crazy father-in-law Charles
VI. was laid beside his ancestors in the abbey of Saint Denis. Not a
single prince of the House of Valois followed him to his grave. Not a
single prince of any blood save the duke of Bedford alone who conducted
the obsequies. As they turned away from his tomb, the good monks of the
abbey who had sung the requiem, fell into a dispute with the servants
of the king’s household about the possession of some ornaments that had
been used in the funeral. From words they come to blows, and the battle
waxed so fierce that Bedford and his suite were fain to turn back and
strike right and left to quell the tumult.
Henry instead of naming one of his brothers guardian and governor of
his infant son now king, had conferred that office on his uncle the
bishop of Winchester.[10] That bishop is the Cardinal Beaufort of
Shakspeare; and we shall now call him by that name though pope Martin
had not yet sent him the red hat. These Beauforts were the natural
children of John of Gaunt and Catharine Swinford. In the reign of
Richard II. John’s nephew, they had been legitimated; but when John’s
son Henry usurped the throne, he was fearful of the ambition of his
half brothers and caused his parliament to modify the legitimation so
far as to exclude them from the throne. The exclusion was futile: the
line of Beaufort reigns over England at this present moment, while that
of Henry is extinct.
Cardinal Beaufort possessed great abilities but an imperious temper. He
and his nephew of Gloucester Jaqueline’s husband were rivals, the one
being regent of the king, the other of the kingdom; and this rivalry
soon lapsed into a hatred so bitter that they sought only to destroy
each other.
The cardinal had raised six thousand men to reinforce Bedford, when
Gloucester, exercising his prerogative of regent, assumed the command
of them. Then in spite of Henry’s dying injunction that he should not
leave England, he took Jaqueline with him and at the head of those
troops, landed at Calais. Instead of going south to join Bedford as
he had promised, he marched east across the territories of the duke
of Burgundy without his permission, and entered upon the provinces of
Jaqueline. At their coming the war of the Codfish and the Fishhooks
broke out afresh. He and Jaqueline sided with the Fishhooks which gave
the Hooks a temporary superiority.
Philip behaved with signal imbecility. Instead of withdrawing his
contingent from France, and using it to drive Gloucester out, he
expostulated with Bedford concerning the invasion, and clamored for
the withdrawal of the English troops. Most gladly would Bedford have
withdrawn them, for he needed them himself; but Gloucester was not
subject to his authority, and would not listen to him. Philip at last
woke up to what everybody else saw, that he was in the predicament of
fighting for the English in France and against them in the Netherlands.
He levied a fresh army, took the command in person, and marched toward
Holland.
When Gloucester heard of these preparations, he wrote Philip a
wheedling letter saying that he had come to the continent solely in the
interest of Philip and of Philip’s dear double cousin Jaqueline; and
he called Heaven to witness to the purity of his intentions. Philip
told him he was a liar; Gloucester told Philip he was another. Philip
immediately challenged him to mortal combat, declaring that by the
help of God and of God’s Virgin Mother our Lady, he would convince him
of his error by running him through the body. Gloucester accepted the
challenge, vowing to put Philip to death in the name of God, of our
Lady and of Monseigneur Saint George. The duke of Bedford and cardinal
Beaufort interfered and persuaded these two blusterers to leave the
matter out to a council of doctors of law and theology at Paris. These
philosophers arrived at the verdict that the two challengers had come
out so even in the missives they had discharged at each other that
further duelling was superfluous; and so it ended.
Philip entered Holland at the head of his army. The Codfish joined him,
not that they preferred him to their lawful suzerain Jaqueline, but
because those worthless Fishhooks had adhered to the other side.
At this critical moment Gloucester went back to England, leaving
Jaqueline to see to her own affairs as best she might. He was called
home he said, by the untoward proceedings of his uncle the cardinal. He
sent to Jaqueline however, a reënforcement of three thousand men. The
two armies met at Browershaven where after a day of carnage in which
Englishman and Frenchman, Fleming and Burgundian, Codfish and Fishhook
fell indiscriminately, the star of Philip prevailed. He was not a
great general; but in the hour of combat he was an active and intrepid
soldier.
Not wholly crushed by this defeat, Jaqueline donned her armor and took
the field in person, and in more than one bloody conflict behaved with
the steadiness of a veteran. But there was no repairing the disaster
of Browershaven, and her fortunes sank. She wrote imploringly to
Gloucester to come back to her. One of her letters full of affection,
still exists. But they never met again. The good Humphrey had fallen in
with a handsome English girl named Eleanor Cobham, and had become more
intimate with her than comported with his duty to his Dutch wife.
Philip by the success of his arms and by this infidelity of Gloucester,
became master of the fate of Jaqueline. He prayed pope Martin to annul
her English marriage and to reinstate the one with the duke of Brabant.
Martin consented and put forth a bull accordingly; and as the English
marriage had been sanctioned and blessed by his Avignon rival, he let
fly at him an anathema so comprehensive that it is doubtful whether he
has yet been able, even after the lapse of five centuries, to dodge all
its provisions.
As there was reason to fear that Jaqueline still loved her truant
Humphrey, the bull in question decreed that if she again espoused him,
even after the death of Brabant, she would be guilty of adultery. This
at first seems illogical; but the Church is never illogical: admit her
premises and you are swept to her conclusions. Let us see: According
to the Church, if a woman marries again having a previous husband
living, she commits adultery. If Jaqueline after the death of Brabant,
should marry Gloucester, she would marry again, having a previous
husband living. If you should ask who that previous husband would be, I
answer the duke of Gloucester.
At all events, this syllogism was so convincing to Gloucester himself,
that like a submissive son of the Church, he turned round and married
his mistress Eleanor Cobham.
Nemesis followed up that marriage, and Jaqueline was avenged. A few
years later, the duchess Eleanor was arraigned for witchcraft and made
to do public penance at Saint Pauls. Humphrey was implicated in his
wife’s sorceries; but it would not answer to make a prince of the blood
do penance at Saint Pauls, so he was found one morning, dead in his bed.
As for his murderer, stop here O reader! turn to your Shakspeare, Henry
VI. part II. act III. scene III.; and stand at the bedside of the
dying cardinal--that scene of which Doctor Johnson says “the profound
can imagine nothing beyond”--that scene of which Schlegel says “it
is beyond praise; no other poet has ever drawn aside the curtain of
eternity in so awful a manner”--that scene which John Richard Green
says “is taken bodily from some older dramatist!”[11]
The annulment of Jaqueline’s English marriage, threw her back into the
arms of the duke of Brabant who however, did not long enjoy the wife
thus restored to him. He died, and his estates fell to his brother
Philip who died soon after, and so suddenly that Philip of Burgundy
who was, or rather claimed to be the next heir, was suspected of
having poisoned him. But the fifteenth century had fairly set in, and
knowledge had revived. Two intelligent surgeons cut open the dead
Philip, to see what ailed him, and found in his stomach an ulcer which
sufficiently explained his demise, so that Philip-the-good escaped
passing into history as a poisoner.
Jaqueline was reduced to extremities. Philip had cornered her up in
Zealand, and set to watch over her a lieutenant of his named Philip
Borssele who had risen in his service by his business talents.
Jaqueline the inheritor of some of the richest provinces in Europe,
was so straitened that she had not money enough to defray her
housekeeping. One day her mother had sent her a present of a span of
horses, and she could not find a single florin in her purse to give as
drink-money to the grooms who had brought them. One of her attendants
suggested to her to apply to Borssele who always had money to lend.
She spurned the thought of being beholden to that low-born myrmidon of
her hated cousin. But finally her necessities prevailed. She sent to
Borssele to borrow a small sum. He not only lent it to her but told
her he had more at her disposal. Jaqueline was mollified: we are all
mollified with a little money and the promise of more. She made up her
mind he was not a myrmidon after all but an honest fellow. She admitted
him to her presence. Borssele was handsome and graceful; and she did
not frown upon him. He took a pliant hour, and though he had never read
Othello, he told his tale of love as eloquently as the Moor. They were
privately married.
When Philip-the-good heard of this fresh escapade of his double cousin,
he flew into a towering passion--or at least, pretended to do so. He
stamped and stormed. That Jaqueline of Bavaria, duchess of Brabant,
daughter of Burgundy and of France, should stoop to the hand of Philip
Borssele! So he seized the bridegroom and shut him up in the castle of
Rupelmonde; and thus was Jaqueline deprived of her fourth husband.
But there is reason to believe that Philip-the-good was putting on
airs, and that he was secretly glad of the advantage which Jaqueline’s
imprudence had given him over her. She had never ceded her estates
to him by any formal act: he held them as a brigand holds his prey;
but now he brought her to surrender to him her whole patrimony as
the ransom of her husband. Borssele was set free, and in order to
raise him to a rank a little more commensurate with that of his
wife, Philip created him count of Ostravant, and conferred upon him
the collar of the Golden Fleece, an order of chivalry which Philip
himself had established as a rival to the English order of the Garter;
and he settled upon the newly married pair a part of the revenues
of Ostravant, so that his double cousin and cousin-in-law might not
starve.[12]
We know but little of the remaining years of Jaqueline’s life. We hope
they were more tranquil than those we have recounted. She died in 1436,
at the age of thirty-five, leaving no issue.
The domains which she had inherited formed technically a part of the
Empire Holy and Roman; and at her death the emperor Sigismund claimed
that they had escheated to him. The claim was in accordance with feudal
law, but Philip was already in possession and was too powerful to be
dislodged. Thus did the provinces of Jaqueline go to swell the dominion
of the House of Burgundy--that house whose fate it was never to decline
after the manner of empires, but to grow in power and splendor under
each succeeding duke until the day when Charles-the-rash, son of
Philip, should stretch forth his hand to a regal diadem; and then the
storm came which swept away both duke and dominion.
* * * * *
The same year that Jaqueline of Bavaria married Philip Borssele,
Jaqueline of Luxembourg married the duke of Bedford.
But to introduce our second Jaqueline with due ceremony we must go back
ten years; and I promise not to be so long as that in fetching up the
arrears of my story.
After the death of Henry V. his brother of Bedford was at first
desirous to obey the injunction of the dying king, to keep on good
terms with the duke of Burgundy. There had been love passages, ardent
no doubt, but still diplomatic only between Bedford and Anne of
Burgundy Philip’s sister, a comely maiden of eighteen. Bedford pressed
his suit and was accepted, and Anne made him a good wife, at least in a
political sense, for her kind offices were often required to keep peace
between her arrogant husband and her obstinate brother.
Bedford was endowed with all the haughtiness of his brother Henry
without his genius; and he affected to treat Philip as his inferior
which he certainly was not. The House of Valois descended in direct
male line from Hugh Capet, had nothing to yield to the House of
Plantagenet whose highest male descent was from the counts of Anjou
vassals of the line of Capet. Besides, duke Philip was an hereditary
sovereign, while duke John of Bedford was only regent of a kingdom not
yet achieved, and not destined to be achieved.
On one occasion, in the presence of both English and Burgundian nobles,
Bedford so far forgot himself as to threaten that if his brother Philip
did not behave, he would send him to England to drink more beer than
he liked. This was a gross affront. Philip had been brought up on the
delicious wines of his native Burgundy; and he detested beer. But the
good duchess Anne interposed and persuaded her husband not to make her
brother drink beer, and peace was maintained.
After nine years of married life Anne died. This event might not
have dissolved the alliance between the two powers, had not Bedford
conducted himself with a wanton disregard to Philip’s sensibilities.
Among the vassals of the House of Burgundy the most illustrious was
a branch of that of Luxembourg; and the gentlemen of that house were
among the most ardent partisans of the English cause. It was John of
Luxembourg into whose hands the maid of Orleans had fallen after her
capture at Compiegne. John took her to his castle of Beaurevoir where
she was received with kindness by the ladies of his house, especially
by his young niece Jaqueline of Saint Pol, or of Luxembourg.
The high rank and eminent services of this family had brought them into
social relations with the regent Bedford; and Anne of Burgundy was
no sooner in her grave than he offered his hand to Jaqueline. And so
promptly did they dispatch the business that it might be said of that
as of another occasion well known to you, that the funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Jaqueline of Luxembourg was Philip’s vassal, and by feudal law, had no
right to marry without his consent, but he was not even consulted. This
disrespect to the memory of his dead sister, and contempt of his own
authority exhausted his patience. He had long had his head broken at
home over his English alliance. His eldest sister had married Arthur
of Brittany, count of Richmont, Constable of France. His next sister
was the wife of the count of Clermont afterwards duke of Bourbon. Both
these gentlemen were partisans of king Charles. Philip who as we have
said, was good-tempered, had kept on friendly terms with his sisters,
though their husbands would now and then burst into his territories and
lay them waste; and he now empowered those fighting brothers-in-law to
open negotiations in his name with the king.