give in his adherence to the Antipope Clement. The Lord of Milan was
still in name an Urbanite; but he had suffered the Antipope Clement to
arrange the marriage of his daughter and to grant the dispensation that
made it lawful; and his wife Caterina was a devoted Clementine. Visconti
gives it to be understood that he will fight for Clement if it be made
worth his while. Meanwhile the king takes fire:—honest, practical,
religious, the idea of thus forcibly putting an end to heresy and schism
greatly commends itself to him. There were three Royal visits to Avignon
that year. The Antipope suggests to Charles VI. an Imperial Crown for a
second Charlemagne.[24] Froissart hears of the royal intention, “de
mener notre Saint Père à Rome,“ and on the 23rd of February, 1391, the
King signs a quittance of 2,000 francs, “pour nous aider à abiller et
mestre est estat pour aller en la compagnie d’icelui seigneur au voyage
qu’il a intencion de faire au païs de Lombardie.”
Footnote 24:
Clairambault. sceaux, vol. cxiii. p. 8821. See De Circourt, _op. cit._
But nothing can be done without the indispensable Visconti. What is his
plan? At first he holds back, loving by nature the attitude of suspense.
But in 1392 the moment came to decide. Armagnac at that moment was
invading Italy in defence of the rights of his sister Beatrice and the
elder branch of Visconti. He suffered defeat, indeed, and death at the
hands of Milan, but not before he had inflicted so severe a check upon
his victor that Giangaleazzo no longer saw his triumph clear. Nay,
unwelcome as the ghost of Banquo at the board of Macbeth, the pale
figures of the dead Armagnac, the once laughing Beatrice, the poisoned
Bernabò, intrude themselves between him and his end. Do not such sights
as these clamour for revenge?—and Armagnac and Beatrice have a living
brother; Bernabò Visconti has left a troop of sons. Milan may yet be
snatched from his grasp. He is not safe in Lombardy, and he would fain
be King of Italy. But how to obtain that crown? Already Armagnac has
forced him to restore Padua to the Carraresi. And Florence, the
irreconcileable enemy, is grouping round her a league of hostile states.
In August, 1392, Florence, Padua, Faenza, Ravenna—a little later the
Malatestas and Forli—are united against Visconti. He is not safe in
Milan till he wear the crown of Florence too.
Then he sends to the Pope and to the King of France and announces his
plan. How did the Lord of Milan hear of the secret Adrian project? Did
Anjou, passing through Pavia, drop a word? Did one of the many Angevines
sheltered in the house of Orleans, familiar with Asti and Milan, broach
the plan? We know not, but this was the scheme of Visconti: _Naples for
Anjou_; _Rome for the Frenchman Clement VII._; _Adria_, that is to say
the centre of Italy from Spoleto to Ferrara, and from Massa to Ancona,
_Adria for Orleans, the North for Visconti_. That is to say, Italy for
the father of Valentine and his allies.[25] As Walsingham tells us
Visconti secured for himself the double crown of Tuscany and Lombardy.
But in the very moment when the reluctant Pope (less hasty and less
egoistic now than at Sperlonga), had promised thus to alienate the
Church lands as the price of his restoration, a Divine Hand, as it must
have seemed, interposed to save the Church. On the 28th of August, 1394,
Pope and Cardinals had approved the Schedule of Orleans. A fortnight
later, on the 16th of September, suddenly, Clement VII. died at Avignon.
Footnote 25:
For all this question of the kingdom of Adria, too vast for this
incidental line, see the excellent paper of M. Paul Durrieu in the
“Revue des Questions Historiques” for July, 1880; also the scarce
volume of Champollion-Figeac, “Louis et Charles, Ducs d’Orléans,”
Paris, 1844; and especially the box of Manuscripts in the Paris
National Archives labelled Carton J. 495. I may also indicate an
interesting passage in Walsingham’s “Historia Anglicana,” vol. ii. p.
201, communicated to me by Comte Albert de Circourt, “Item Dominus
Papa significat Regi per prædictum nuncio, qualiter Rex Franciæ et
Antipapa pacta inierunt hinc inde: Videlicet quod idem Rex, per
fortitudinum Ducum (Burgundiæ et Turoniæ, poni faciat Antipapem in
Sedem Petri et Antipapa promisit Regem Imperio coronare, et Duci
Burgundiæ) magnalia et investiet Ducem Turoniæ de omnibus terris
ecclesiæ in partibus Italiæ, et _quendam alium_ coronare Regem Tusciæ
et Lombardiæ, et Ducem Andexaciæ (Andegaviæ) firmare in Regno
Siciliæ.” The passage in brackets exists only in the Brit. Mus. MS.
His successor was less able; and the scheme of Adria was abandoned.
Valentine would never reign as Queen of Adria. Yet, as Duchess of Genoa,
she would be nearer home. Then in all manner of subtle and secret ways
Orleans and Visconti immediately manœuvred to secure the Ligurian
province. Armies in the field, diplomats in the Cabinet, worked for one
end alone. In November, 1394, Savona had submitted to Orleans. Now Genoa
must be gained. The young Duke had already a strong faction in his
favour. The Lomellini, Spinole, Flischi, figure in the rolls of Orleans’
army.[28] But, at the same time, they were intriguing with an
unsuspected enemy.[29] In August, 1395, the Doge of Genoa sent to Paris
offering to Charles himself the suzerainty of Genoa. There was in France
a strong current of popular opinion running in favour of Italian
colonization. Why should Orleans have Genoa?—asked the people. Why not
the King? Why not all of us? Why not France? The King, as we know, was
never a very solid creature. Honest, but feeble, he let himself be
dominated by the nearest influence. The Duke of Burgundy was in Paris,
and he, it is probable, persuaded Charles[26] to abandon his brother and
to accept the gift of the Doge. In October, Genoa was united to the
Crown of France. In December the King bought from Orleans his rights in
Savona and Genoa.[27] This was checkmate both to Orleans and Visconti.
Footnote 26:
“Arch. Nat.,” K K. 315.
Footnote 27:
“Arch. Nat.,” J. 497, No. 15. February, 1392, Lomellini, Flisco, and
other nobles of Genoa sign an instrument offering Genoa to the King of
France.
Footnote 28:
Paul Durrieu, “Le Royaume d’Adria.” See also an important passage,
“Religieux de St. Denis,” t. ii. p. 402.
Footnote 29:
“Arch. Nat.,” K. 54, No. 37. December 12, 1396: “Comme depuis que
nostre très-cher et très amé frère le Duc d’Orleans eut, pour les
causes et les concideracions qui le meurent, entrepriz d’avoir la
Seigneurie des cité, pays et territoire de Gennes. Et tant fait pour
venir à son entencion.... Savoir faisons que pour contenter et
deffraier nostre dit frère des trés-grans fraiz missions et despenses
par luy en plusieurs manières faiz et soustenuz ... nous avons avec
nostre dit frère traicté et accordé sur de et pour ces choses et leurs
dependances la somme de trois cents mile frans d’or pour une foiz.”
Burgundy and the Queen were triumphant. The Queen wrote to the
Florentines that affairs were going well, that her enemy and theirs was
fallen in disgrace, and on the 29th December the King joined the
Florentines against his late ally. For there was now great irritation in
France against Visconti, who, furious at the treachery which had
outwitted his plans for Genoa, played a double game with France. Signing
with one hand a fraternal alliance with King Charles,[30] with the other
he stirred up the Genoese to rebel against his yoke. But the Genoese
suspected his counsels, and revealed the whole intrigue to the Court of
Paris. Hence fury among the nobles, an ardent desire to punish the false
friend.[31] Hence among the populace the best will in the world to
believe the Duke of Milan a wizard and his daughter a witch, an infernal
spirit bringing death and madness upon the beloved King.
Footnote 30:
August 31, 1395. Lünig Codex Italiæ Diplomaticus, i. col. 421.
Footnote 31:
“Religieux de St. Denis,” ii. p. 436, _et. seq._
IX.
Thus the machinations of Milan served to exasperate the French. And the
indignity and insult offered to Valentine were as great a cause of
irritation to Visconti. He and his daughter, with their Lombard
indifference to superstition, could have nothing but contempt for the
panic of the French. “Et l’une des plus dolentes et courroucées qui y
fust, c’estoit la Duchesse d’Orleans,“ writes Juvenal des Ursins. Twice
or thrice the Duke of Milan sent his ambassadors to the King of France,
offering to find a knight to fight at outrance with any man who would
accuse Madame Valentine of any treason. So sore and angry were the
father and the brother-in-law of Valentine that there was a talk of a
Milanese invasion. Great counter preparations were made in France, and
the League was signed with the Florentines against Milan. The King,
being in good health then, went to Boulogne to celebrate the marriage of
his daughter Isabel, a child of seven, with Richard II. of England, a
man some years older than himself. Richard was very bitter against
Milan. He offered to send an English contingent to the King’s aid, if he
invaded Lombardy. He warned the King again and again against the spells
and sorceries of Lombardy; and he produced so strong an impression upon
the enfeebled mind of Charles, that on the 29th of October, as the two
kings were sitting together at dinner, the King of France perceiving
among the heralds one with the Serpent of Milan on his shield, had him
stripped of his arms, menaced with death, and chased out of the royal
presence. The Duke of Milan retaliated with the famous Investiture of
1396, which excludes the children of Valentine of Orleans from the
succession to Milan. With things at this pitch of hostility, war seemed
imminent, and the route was made out for the invasion of Lombardy. But
that war never took place. “And that journey,” says Froissart, “took
none effect; for the discomfiture of the battle before Nicopoly in
Turkey, and the death and the taking of the Lords of France. And also
they saw well that the Duke of Milan was in favour with the Great Turk,
Lamorabaquy; wherefore they durst not displease him, so let him alone.”
It became immediately necessary to make peace with Milan,[32] the one
power in Europe that could mediate with Turkey. The ambassadors of the
King, Burgundy, Orleans, and the Sultan, caused a continual come-and-go
in Milan. Visconti took his position of peace-maker in good part. In
March, 1397, he procured a third and less hostile investiture. The talk
of magic was hushed for a while, and Valentine returned in peace to
Court.
Footnote 32:
“Delaville Le Roulx. La France en Orient,“ vol. i. p. 290-304.
Yet now, perhaps, for the first time the French people, not
unjustifiably, might have heaped their odium on Valentine. For her
latest historian supports a theory suggested long ago by Froissart.[35]
While the French were projecting their invasion of Lombardy—while the
son of that Burgundy who had advised the King in the affair of Genoa was
leading against the Turks a French Crusade which might easily return
homewards _viâ_ Lombardy and Milan—Giangaleazzo, furious and humiliated,
sought any means of salvation and revenge. He, like many another
Italian, was in correspondence with the Turk; and an idea, successfully
practised by many another Italian,[34] may not unnaturally have
suggested itself to him. If France joined the Florentine League then
adieu for ever to the hopes of Visconti. And Burgundy, as he knew, was
in favour of Florence. And the son of Burgundy was captain of the French
army. Small hope here; yet, if the French army could be destroyed in
Turkey, Milan would be safe! Then the astute Visconti would smile to
think of his daughter in France. Valentine who wrote him everything—also
told him doubtless (as the author of Maistre Jehan de Meun tells us[33])
of the vain young aristocrats, ruined by free living and fine carousing,
who were starting on that terrible journey, thinking of nothing more
serious than the elegant spectacle of their departure:
“Mais que le partir soit joly
Vous ne regardez point la fin!”
Gay young gallants, unfit for privation, who, when they reach Palestine,
will be too weak to strike three strokes with the magnificent swords so
much too heavy for their hands.
“Les Sarrazins s’arment légier;
Sy c’est bon courage et fier.”
But the panoply of these splendid youths—these _gens de paraige_—was for
decoration rather than for battle. Valentine, the confidant of her
father—who in the long afternoons of exile would turn with the expansion
of relief to her one kinsman, her staunch protector—would tell him of
the weakness that underlay the glory of this martial going-off. She
would write to him the plan of campaign, the route decided on, the means
of attack and defence. She would inform him not only of the quality but
of the number of the army. And Giangaleazzo was aware that these details
transmitted to the Turks would ensure the disaster of the French, and
draw away the gathering storm that threatened to break on Milan.
Footnote 33:
_Vide_ “Jean sans Peur, Duc de Bourgogne, Lieutenant et
Procureur-général du Diable cès parties d’Occident,” par M. Paul
Durrieu, Paris, 1887.
Footnote 34:
For example Carlo Zeno in 1403, Gattilusio in 1399, each of whom
informed the Turks concerning the plan of campaign of a Christian
enemy.
Footnote 35:
“L’Apparicion de Maistre Jehan de Meun.” Bib. Nat. Fr. 811, No. 7203.
This is an illuminated manuscript in defence of Valentine of Orleans,
and dedicated to her.
The Duke of Milan was not scrupulous; he was “moult bien” in the
friendship of the Turk. The Turk gained a singular acquaintance with the
disposition of the French army. No need to dwell here on the terrible
disaster of that unforgotten battle: the twelve to twenty thousand dead;
the rare fugitives stealing homewards, dukes and barons, in the dress of
beggar-men; the harder lot of those taken by the Turks, sold into
slavery, or massacred in vengeance for the Faithful slain at Christian
hands; of the heartsick waiting of the few—a very few, of the richest
and noblest—set aside for ransom. One of these, Jacques de Heilly, was
sent by the Sultan on parole to France, to inform the King of the
disaster and to bring back the news of their intentions with respect to
ransom. He was bidden to pass by Milan[36] in order to convey to
Giangaleazzo Visconti the salutations of the Sultan. On Christmas night
he arrived in Paris; the Court were feasting and dancing. In the prison
of the Châtelet, hungry and cold, there were men who spent their
Christmas in a dungeon for having spread false news, as it was said, of
a great defeat in Turkey. But the tale of D’Heilly told, all that was
changed: the prisoners were freed, the Court was in tears. The bells
rang in all the churches for the dead. The universal thought was how to
redeem the flower of France from a savage captivity. On the 20th of
January, 1397, a French embassy was sent to Milan. A few days earlier
Jacques de Heilly, laden with propitiatory gifts, had returned to the
Sultan. Nothing was spoken of but mediation and reconciliation. And
Valentine—so long the innocent scapegoat of her party—was recalled to
favour in the very hour when all men might have suspected her as the
involuntary origin of misery.
Footnote 36:
“Delaville Le Roulx. La France en Orient,” Paris, 1886, vol. i. p.
291.
X.
Actual war with Milan was averted; but the rumours against the King’s
brother continued still in France.
On the 24th of March, 1403, Ives Gilemme, a priest; Demoiselle Marie de
Blansy, Perrin Hémery, a locksmith, and Guillaume Floret, a clerk, were
publicly burned for sorcery. And still the King was mad. Were those who
bewitched _him_, the head of the State, to keep their immunity? There
_was_ such a crime as witchcraft, and people legally suffered for it.
The King was bewitched: who was the wizard?
To this incessant question Burgundy ever helped to point the answer. Who
was the person who profited most by the sickness of the King?
The Duke of Orleans had become very powerful. In January, 1393, an
ordonnance had promised him the Regency in case of the death of the
King.[37] His prestige, his wealth, his faction increased with every
year. This young man who, in 1385, possessed no more than 12,000 livres
a year, was Duke of Orleans (1391), Count of Valois and Count of
Beaumont (1386), Count of Asti and Count of Vertus (1387), Count of
Soissons (1391), Count of Blois (1391), Count of Dreux, Count of
Angoulême (1394). In 1394 he was very nearly King of Adria. He was Count
of Perigord in 1398. He was Seigneur of Savona (1394), Seigneur of Coucy
(1391); he possessed both lands and castles in Hainault, at Pierrefonds,
and at Ferté-Millon (1392). The Duchy of Luxembourg (1402), the Duchy of
Aquitaine (1407) lay immediately before him.
Footnote 37:
“Ordonnances des rois de France,” t. vii. p. 535. The Duke of Orleans
was never Regent, despite the line of the Monk of St. Denis which
assures us that in 1402 the King made his brother Lieutenant-General
of the Kingdom. During the frequent relapses of Charles VI. the
kingdom was governed by a Council. There was no Regency before the
year 1415.
The princes of Europe appealed to the Duke of Orleans as to an
independent sovereign. The Duke of Guelders concluded a separate
alliance with him (1401). The King of the Romans offered him for his son
the heiress of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland (1397). Henry of Lancaster,
an exile in Paris (1399), paid more court to him than to the King of
France. And in 1405 the Venetians sent two secret ambassadors to
Orleans, who in return despatched a certain Pierre de Scrovignes with
private despatches to the Signory of Venice. Since 1401 the Venetians
had never sent a message to the King. Burgundy began to fear that
Orleans would induce the new Antipope at Avignon to depose Charles VI.
in his own favour.
There is, I think, no evidence of such an intention, and yet the
suspicions of Burgundy may not impossibly have been correct. In 1400 the
Germans deposed their drunken Wenzel, in 1398 the English had deposed
their incapable Richard. Why should not France depose a king continually
lapsing into madness? In the year 1399 the king had six relapses.
Orleans may have been no less ambitious than his sworn friend and
brother, Henry of Lancaster, who had so lately conquered for himself the
throne of England.
* * * * *
Orleans and Burgundy turn by turn usurped the direction of affairs.
Vainly King and Queen and Court attempted to assuage their rivalry. On
the 14th of June, 1401, the Queen of France (the King being mad), the
King of Sicily, the Dukes of Berri and Bourbon, made a League “pour
apaiser les Ducs d’Orlèans et de Bourgogne.”[38] In vain. The King
himself was powerless, and could only bid his subjects—as in 1405 he
bade the Bailly de Caux—to stand aside and take no part nor lot in the
discord existing between the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy.[39] This
impartiality was only apparent. The growing influence of Burgundy was
dreaded by Berri and the Queen, no less than by Orleans himself. And in
the winter of 1405, these three persons joined themselves together in an
“Alliance défensive et réciproque, pour se maintenir au pouvoir.”[40]
Thus, if Burgundy had the nation on his side, the authority of the
Queen, the influence of Valentine (all-powerful with the King), was with
Orleans. In 1404 Philip of Burgundy died, and his faction gained new
vigour with the accession of his son, a man less temperate, less
aristocratic than his father. The blood of his Flemish mother worked in
the veins of the young man, restless, violent, demagogic as a burgher of
Ghent. The young Duke of Burgundy had no woman to work for him; it was
even rumoured that the portrait of his own wife hung in that locked
chamber where Orleans kept the pictures of his mistresses. But
Jean-sans-Peur did not need any feminine advocate. He was young, he was
rich. In 1404 his father’s death bequeathed him Burgundy, next year his
mother died and left him Flanders. A small ugly man, alert, blunt,
brutal even, serving public interests to reach his own ends,
Jean-sans-Peur of Burgundy was the hero of the people. “Brun et barbu et
bien aimé,“ writes Burcarius.
Footnote 38:
Arch. Nat. K. 55, No. 16, June 14, 1401.
Footnote 39:
Arch. Nat. K. 55, No. 39, Aug. 21, 1405.
Footnote 40:
Arch. Nat. K. 55, No. 36, Dec. 1, 1405.
Meanwhile the people groaned under the tyranny of Orleans. _Jugum
intollerabile plebis._ And Orleans, sceptical and embittered, had no
respect and no pity for the ignorant populace that reviled him, that
menaced his virtuous wife, that mocked the death of his little child
with cruel and insulting calumnies. The people to him were odious, or,
at best, indifferent; a cup to drain, a fruit to squeeze and throw away
the rind. In 1403 he laid upon them an impost of three hundred thousand
crowns. Out of this he builded for himself two famous castles,
Pierrefonds and Ferté-Millon, beautiful as the towers of heaven in a
picture by Van Eyck.
In 1407, not content, he levied a new tax. The money thus gained
enriched the State far less than him, and great personages accused him
and the Queen of leaving no single florin to rattle in the empty
treasury. When Orleans suggested the new impost, Jean-sans-Peur opposed
him in the royal council: “I ask pity of the poor people. It is tyranny
to aggravate their intolerable yoke.” Jean-sans-Peur declared that, in
_his_ domains at least, the impost should not be collected; rather would
he forfeit the entire amount himself. Struck by this generosity, the
young Duke of Brittany volunteered to postpone his wife’s dowry until
the treasury was full again.
The tax was levied all the same. It was a war levy, and really
necessary. Every man and woman in France was mulcted according to the
value of his goods. In this way a vast sum was raised—twenty-seven
millions. It was lodged in a tower of the Louvre. One night, when the
town was quiet, Orleans, with a band of armed men, entered this tower
and carried off at least two-thirds of the treasure.
When the people heard of it—the people who (the Monk assures us) had
sold the straw of their beds to pay the levy—they prayed publicly in
every town and hamlet: “Jesus Christ in heaven, send thou some one to
deliver us from Orleans!”
Orleans smiled no less bitterly than when he had heard the public
whisper accuse him of sorcery and devil-worship. He proclaimed that
whosoever did not pay the taxes should be cast into prison; to prevent
assassination, no man was to carry another knife than he used for his
eating; a fourth of the provisions of the royal household was to be
supplied daily, without payment, by the people of Paris. These
provisions, as the people knew very well, did not go to feed or clothe
their beloved King. He, in his palace, was as poor, as suffering as
themselves. The Dauphin was no richer: “in penury and want,” says the
Monk, “if such words may be used for so great a personage.” The
insatiable Orleans, the avid little Queen, grasped and kept everything.
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” prayed the people, “send some one to deliver
us from the Duke of Orleans.”
Orleans should have listened. The air was full of warnings to tyrants.
Richard and Wenzel had fallen miserably. The Duke of Milan had died of
the plague; in six months his vast kingdom had fallen into ruins.
Tyranny is, so often, a personal accident—a possession, not an
inheritance. Was it worth while? The King himself added to the list of
these monitions. In August, 1404, he married his eldest son to
Burgundy’s daughter, his daughter to the son of Burgundy.
In the year 1405, on Ascension Day, the people found a voice. An
Augustine monk, Jacques Legrand, preached then before the Court. The
Queen, Valentine, and Orleans were present, but not the King. “O Queen!
O Duke!” said the monk, “you are the curse and derision of your people.
Do you not believe me? Go into the streets and hear them!