PICTURES OF THE OLD FRENCH COURT

AMBOISE.

Pictures of the
Old French Court

Jeanne de Bourbon
Isabeau de Bavière
Anne de Bretagne

By
Catherine Bearne

Author of
“Lives and Times of the Early Valois Queens”

ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD H. BEARNE FROM ANCIENT
PRINTS, ORIGINAL DRAWINGS, &c.

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
1900

PREFACE

In a former book I endeavoured, from information gathered out of the records of the first half of the fourteenth century, to give some idea of the court and social conditions of France at that time, and also of the first three Valois Queens, whose very existence appears unknown to the average English reader. This was no easy matter owing to the scarcity of details, which had to be carefully gleaned from amongst masses of histories and chronicles of battles, sieges, conspiracies, general councils, and other public events.

The present volume treats of the years between the latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, about which so much more information exists that I have found it necessary to abandon, for want of space, my intention of giving a short account of the courts of Marie d’Anjou and Charlotte de Savoie, wives of Charles VII. and Louis XI., who took very little part in public affairs; and to give a much shorter account of the reign of Anne de Bretagne.

Very little has been written about Isabeau de Bavière, and much less still concerning Jeanne de Bourbon, whereas a great deal is known of Anne de Bretagne, the history of whose life has more than once been related. To an interesting biography of her by Louisa Stuart Costello, and an invaluable one by Le Roux de Lincy I am much indebted. I have, as before, consulted many early chronicles, histories, and letters, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish, besides the works of various excellent modern writers, whose names I quote. Accuracy being of the greatest importance in books like these, I give, in reply to the observation of a critic, that the lines I quoted referring to the siege of Cassel are incorrect, the original of De Nangis:—

“In dicto vero castro, in regis et totius Francorum exercitus derisum et subsannationem, in quodam eminenti loco posuerant Flammingi quemdam gallum permaximum de tela tincta, dicentes: ‘Quando gallus iste cantabit, rex Cassellum capiet vi armorum.’ Unde et gallice in gallo scriptum erat:

‘Quand ce coq chanté aura,
Le Roy Cassel conquestera.’”[1]

I quoted these lines from the “Grandes Chroniques.”[2]

To another critic who says he has never heard of the “Grand dictionnaire de Morèry,” and suggests that no such book exists, I can only reply that I have it upon my shelves. It is in several folio volumes, was published at Paris 1699, and is quoted by various historians. It is sometimes spelt “Morèri.”

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PICTURES OF THE OLD FRENCH COURT

REIGN OF CHARLES V. AND JEANNE DE BOURBON

CHAPTER I
1332–1356

The House of Bourbon—Marriage of Pierre de Bourbon and Isabelle de Valois—Birth of their children—Betrothal of Jeanne to the Comte de Savoie—To the Dauphin Humbert—Her marriage with the heir of France—Character of Charles—Death of Philippe VI.—Coronation of King and Queen—Charles invested with Duchy of Normandy—Marriage of the Queen of Spain—Pedro el Cruel—Marriage of the Comtesse de Savoie—Death of the Duc de Bourbon at Poitiers.

The royal house of Bourbon descends from Saint Louis through his sixth son, Robert, Comte de Clermont and Sire de Bourbon. The pedigree is as follows:—

Saint Louis.
|
Robert de France, Comte de Clermont et Sire de Bourbon.
|
Louis I., Duc de Bourbon et Comte de Clermont.
|
+-----------------------+------------------------+
| | |
Pierre I., Duc de Bourbon. Jeanne, Jacques, Comte
| m. Charles V. de la Marche.
| |
Louis II., Duc de Bourbon. Louis, Comte
| de Vendôme.
| |
+------+-----------+------------------+ Jean II., Comte
| | | de Vendôme.
| | | |
Jean, Louis, Other François, Comte
Duc de Bourbon. Comte de Montpensier. daughters. de Vendôme.
| | |
| | Charles, Duc
| | de Vendôme.
| +------------------------+ |
+---------------------------+ | Antoine, Duc
| | | de Vendôme et
Charles I., Duc de Bourbon. Pierre II., | Roi de Navarre.
| Duc de Bourbon | |
Jean II., Duc de Bourbon. et | Henri IV.
| Sire de Beaujeu. |
LOUIS, COMTE DE CLERMONT. | |
| |
| |
| |
SUSANNE, DUCHESSE DE BOURBON, |
m. |
her cousin, Charles, Constable de Bourbon,
descended from LOUIS, COUNT DE MONTPENSIER.

{1335}

Jeanne de Bourbon was the great-granddaughter of Saint Louis. Her father was Pierre, Duc de Bourbon, and her mother Isabelle, one of the younger daughters of Charles, Comte de Valois.[3] Their eldest daughter, Jeanne, was born February 3, 1335, and within a year or so of each other their second daughter, Blanche, and their son Louis.[4] The other daughters were Bonne, Catherine, Marguérite, Isabelle (?), and Marie.[5]

The Duchesse de Bourbon being a half-sister of Philippe, and her husband one of his favourite companions, they spent most of their time and money also, at Paris, Vincennes, and the other royal palaces in the gay, brilliant days when first the Valois came to the throne.

Jeanne was born at Vincennes, and passed her childhood at that magnificent court over which she was so early chosen to reign. She was betrothed at six years old to Amadeo VI. (afterwards called the Green Count) of Savoy.[6] With the state and splendour that surrounded her earliest years were mingled those national calamities which had already begun to cast their shadow over the kingdom of France.

{1346}

The Hundred Years’ War had broken out soon after her birth. The disastrous sea-fight ending in the total destruction of the French navy, took place in 1338.

Taxes were high; there had been bad harvests, bringing famine and pestilence. France was already less prosperous than she had been under the Capétiens kings.

The terrors and troubles of the English war must have left a deep impression on the imagination of the gentle child, who seems to have been remarkable for her beauty and sweetness of disposition. She was between nine and ten years old at the time when the English host lay encamped near Paris, when gates and walls were strictly guarded and men were arming in haste, while fugitives poured into Paris all day, and the nights were illumined with flames of burning castles and villages. Her father was in the battle of Crécy, but returned in safety, and not long afterwards her little sister Bonne was married to the younger son of the Duc de Brabant. The Princess Joan, eldest daughter of the Duc de Normandie, was married on the same day to the elder son of the Duc de Brabant, by the desire of the King, who wrote orders that his granddaughter and niece should be ready on a certain day to meet the two boys who were to be their husbands. The ceremony took place, but both the boys died a little later of the plague. Joan afterwards became Queen of Navarre, and Bonne Countess of Savoy.

{1348}

The Duchesse de Bourbon and her children must have left Paris and returned to their home in the Bourbonnais, for the Duke wrote there from Paris on July 22, 1348, to announce to his eldest daughter, whose engagement to the Comte de Savoie had been broken off, that her uncle, Gui, Comte de Forez, had brought proposals of marriage for her from Humbert, Dauphin du Viennois, which he had accepted. But the plague was then raging all over the Lyonnais, so that it was out of the question to run the risk of travelling at that time. The Duke therefore induced the Dauphin to consent to the marriage being deferred for the present. Humbert was scarcely a suitable husband for Jeanne, who was then eleven years old, while he was a widower, whose only son had lost his life by falling from his arms out of a balcony, as he was playing with him. The shock of this accident and the loss of his heir had cast a gloom over the life of the Dauphin, and when a second time the Duc de Bourbon sought to delay the arrangements for the marriage, he replied that in that case he considered himself free from all engagements. The Duc de Bourbon, on hearing this, went to meet the Dauphin, and after an interview between the two princes the negotiations were resumed, in January, 1349, and the middle of February following was fixed upon for their fulfilment. But whether the desire to quit the world and seek the consolations of religion in the retirement of the cloister had already taken strong hold upon his mind, or whether the secret ambition and intrigues of the French court had any influence on the matter, it was suddenly given out that the Dauphin had decided to renounce the world and enter the order of St. Dominic, and had arranged for the immediate cession of his estates to the King’s grandson, Charles, eldest son of the Duke of Normandy. Humbert, the last prince of the house of La Tour du Pin, had already, by treaties passed in 1343 and 1344, promised the Viennois, afterwards known as Dauphiné, to Philippe, younger son of Philippe VI. Then the young Philippe had been made Duc d’Orléans instead, and the province was to go to Jean, but at last it was given to the heir of the Duke of Normandy, and from this time forth that province, with the title of Dauphin, was the inheritance of the eldest sons of France. To the Duc de Bourbon the King offered, instead of Humbert de la Tour du Pin, his own grandson, for a son-in-law; an exchange with which it is needless to say the Duke was well content. The treaty was signed at Lyon in July, 1349.

Jeanne de Bourbon

So Jeanne was, after all, to be Dauphine, but her husband, instead of a widower old enough to be her father, was to be a young prince of her own age and the future King of France.

{1350}

They were married at Vincennes in the following year, on the 8th of April, 1350, both of them being about thirteen or fourteen years old. Of course they were not strangers to each other, for they were cousins, and had both been brought up at the court of their grandfather and uncle in Paris, and at that ancient castle in the deep shade of the forest, where generations of the children of France[7] had been born, had played in childhood, grown to manhood or womanhood, ruled, loved, suffered and died. The love of the forest and of all beauty in nature and art lay deep in the heart of the young Dauphin, who in no way resembled his father or grandfather. That Philippe and Jean de Valois, the chivalrous King of Bohemia or the warlike Princes of Burgundy should have had such a descendant would surely have seemed impossible at that time and with those surroundings.

Charles had neither inherited the striking beauty nor the martial tastes of the Valois. He was a quiet, delicate lad, tall, pale, dark-eyed and rather timid. He cared very little for riding, and not at all for war and warlike pastimes, but delighted in study and literary pursuits. And he adored the Dauphine, whose bright beauty and charming character made her the idol of the court and country. The children had been attached to one another from the first, and as they grew older Charles, both as Dauphin and King, ever turned for sympathy, counsel, or consolation to Jeanne, whom he called “the light of his eyes and the sunshine of the kingdom.”

The plague had now abated, and people were beginning to recover from the fear and depression in which they had lately been living. The royal family had suffered severely. The Dauphin had lost his mother and grandmother; the two little princesses, sisters of himself and the Dauphine, were widows; the Queen of Navarre, whose daughter Blanche the King had just married, was also among the victims of the pestilence. However, for the present the plague was over, and those who had escaped now breathed freely and tried to console themselves in different ways for the calamities of the last two years. The Duke of Normandy was married just after his father to the widowed Comtesse d’Auvergne; there were fêtes again at court, and things seemed to be returning to their usual state. The death of Philippe VI. came as a sudden shock in the midst of the general rejoicing; but then followed the coronation of the new King and Queen, which was celebrated with great magnificence. On the same day the King knighted his two eldest sons, the Dauphin, and Louis, afterwards Duc d’Anjou, his brother Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, his stepson Philippe, Duc de Bourgogne, his cousins the Comtes d’Alençon and d’Etampes, and other young nobles. The King and Queen left Reims on Monday evening and journeyed by Laon, Soissons, and Senlis to Paris, which they entered in state on Sunday, the 17th October, after vespers. The town was encourtinée, or hung with costly stuffs, the artisans were dressed each in the costume of their own trade, the citizens of the town in costumes like each other, the Lombards who lived in the city all wore long parti-coloured silk robes, and on their heads tall, pointed hats, parti-coloured like their dresses. “And they followed after each other as was ordered, some on horseback and some on foot, and before them went those playing music, to meet the King, who entered Paris with great joy.”[8]

{1352}

The court remained at Paris till the feast of St. Martin in the winter, the time being spent partly in festivities and partly in business connected with parliament. On the accession of a new King all the judicial officers had to be re-invested[9] or they were désappointés; a word which became obsolete in French, was adopted by the English, and from them has been re-adopted by the French, but with a different signification.

“In 1352, on Monday the vigil of the Conception,” says the Monk of Saint Denis, “the King gave the duchy of Normandy to Monseigneur Charles, his eldest son, Dauphin de Vienne et Comte de Poitiers, and on the next day, Tuesday, the day of the feast of the Conception beforesaid, Monseigneur Charles did him homage for it, at the hostel of Maistre Martin de Mello, canon of Paris, of the cloister of Notre Dame.”

After which the Prince always called himself Duc de Normandie, greatly preferring the title to that of Dauphin.

The Dauphin and Dauphine lived chiefly at Vivier-en-Brie, a castle in the midst of the woods not far from Vincennes. This château had been given to the father of the Dauphin, now King, when he married his mother, Bonne de Luxembourg, by his grandfather, Philippe VI. Here the Dauphin afterwards founded a chantry or chapel with fourteen ecclesiastics to chant the offices and give opportunity to the officers who followed the court to perform their devotions.

Jean, who had been at war with the Spaniards, considering the constant strife which, with short intervals of imperfectly observed truce, was always going on between France and England, was naturally anxious to conclude a peace with the King of Spain, whose subjects were extremely desirous that he should marry a French princess. In 1352 a treaty was arranged between the two countries, in which this was one of the clauses; and it was decided that one of the daughters of the Duc de Bourbon should be selected. Nieces of the late King of France and sisters of the future Queen of that country, one of them would be a suitable wife for their young King. With some difficulty they induced him to consent, and a Spanish embassy was despatched to France to conclude the alliance.

The character of Pedro the Cruel was notorious, even for the lawless times in which he lived. His early friend the King of Navarre, though by no means scrupulous, afterwards abandoned his alliance in disgust; and although at this time he was not more than twenty years old, his crimes had already given him a reputation of which the Duc de Bourbon must have known quite well. But the King of France had set his heart upon this alliance, and had promised to give a dowry of three hundred thousand florins. Pedro was to settle various castles, towns, and estates upon the Princess, and the Duke, whose eldest daughter was to be Queen of France, was well contented to see the second Queen of Spain. For it was upon the Princess Blanche that the choice had fallen. As long as one of his girls wore the crown of Spain, the Duke did not care which it might be. He introduced the ambassador into the room where they all were, so that he might choose.[10] And as Blanche, the eldest next to the Dauphine of France, seemed to him the most beautiful, he fixed upon her; and the marriage took place during the summer of that year.

Various entries appear among the accounts of the royal expenses for splendid presents and rich dresses purchased “for the marriage of her Majesty the Queen of Spain.” Blanche, then about fourteen or fifteen years old, went to Valladolid to meet her husband. She is said by contemporary historians to have been beautiful, gentle, and attractive, notwithstanding which her fate was one of the most tragic that ever befel a woman sacrificed to political expediency. The destinies of the French princesses who have married Kings of Spain have always seemed tinged with melancholy and gloom. The intolerable rigour of that etiquette which reduced the lives of the Spanish queens to a dignified slavery, the cruelty of the national amusements, the jealous tyranny and bigotry of many of the kings, must surely have made these young girls look back with regret and longing to the gay court and “plaisant pays de France.” Even when, as in other cases, the King, however bigoted, morose, or relentless in general, was really fond of his wife, the life of a Queen of Spain can scarcely have been a very cheerful one.

But Blanche de Bourbon was more than usually unfortunate. Pedro, who came to the throne before he was sixteen, began by putting to death various Spanish nobles and gentlemen, and also Eleanor de Guzman, his late father’s mistress, by whom that King had had several sons, and for whom the Queen and her son, the present King, had been slighted and neglected. He also murdered two or three of his natural brothers, and it was by the hand of one of those who escaped from his power that he met the due reward of his crimes.

The Queen-mother had urged Pedro to revenge her wrongs and his own upon Eleanor de Guzman; but when he began not only to imitate but far to surpass the faults of his father, by taking a Jewess named Maria de Padilla for his mistress, deserting his young wife three days after their marriage and keeping her a prisoner, his mother offered the most strenuous opposition to his conduct and warmly espoused the cause of the young Queen, her daughter-in-law. It was of no avail, however. Blanche was doomed to wear out her youth in captivity, in one Spanish castle after another, while Pedro carried on intrigues with various women, but remained chiefly under the influence of Maria de Padilla.

{1355}

The cause of this iniquity has never been certainly known. Whether Pedro, having allowed himself to be persuaded into this marriage against his will, afterwards regretted it and took this way of revenging himself; whether he was, as it has been said actuated by an insane and perfectly groundless jealousy of his younger brother Don Federico, one of the sons of Eleanor de Guzman, whom he had sent to meet Blanche, and whom in a furious rage he stabbed to the heart; or whether it was simply owing to the baneful influence of his Jewish mistress, must remain doubtful. But the story of Blanche de Bourbon will always be considered one of the most pathetic tragedies which history records.

Her sisters were more fortunate. Bonne, the third daughter of the Duc de Bourbon, who had been married when almost a baby to the younger son of the Duc de Brabant and had shortly afterwards become a widow, was married in 1355 to Amadeo VI., Comte de Savoie, then about twenty-two years old. He had been betrothed to Jeanne de Bourgogne sister of the last Capétien Duke, Philippe de Navarre and then to Jeanne de Bourbon, now Dauphine elder sister of Bonne. At ten years old he had succeeded his father, Aimon,[11] brother of that Comte de Savoie who married Blanche de Bourgogne and left no heirs male. Amadeo VI. was one of the greatest princes of his day, both as warrior and statesman. Bonne de Bourbon, Comtesse de Savoie, was, says an ancient writer, “an ornament to her century, and her goodness caused her to be admired on all occasions.” The wedding was celebrated at Paris in August, and the young Countess set off for Savoy, where she reigned for many years in prosperity and honour. Her life was chequered with many sorrows and also beset by many difficulties, which she surmounted with courage and capacity. As Regent of Savoy during the latter part of her life, she was held in high esteem. She died in the Château de Mâcon in 1402.

{1356}

In September, 1356, came the disastrous battle of Poitiers. To Jeanne, as to everybody else in France, that must have been a time of fearful anxiety and suspense. Those nearest and dearest to her were with the army; and although the sight of the gallant host that followed the King in such splendid array to meet the enemy might well have filled the hearts of those they left behind with pride and confidence, there was still the remembrance of the time when Paris had waited in breathless expectation for news of Philippe de Valois and his chivalrous army while those who were not prisoners or scattered over the land lay dead on the field of Crécy.

And when tidings came of a defeat more terrible than the former—of the fall of the oriflamme, of the capture of the King and his youngest son by an enemy so inferior in numbers, Jeanne also heard of her father’s death on the field of battle.

Pierre, Duc de Bourbon, had died like a brave soldier by the side of the King, whom he shielded from the blows aimed at him. But he had disregarded the commands of the Church, issued at the persuasion of his creditors, that he should pay his debts, and was therefore considered as an excommunicated person, to whom no one dared give Christian burial without permission.

His son and successor, Louis II., undertook to satisfy all claims, and his body was then removed from the convent of the Jacobins at Poitiers, where it had been carried after the battle, to that of the same religious order at Paris.

There the Duc de Bourbon was buried near his father, and his lands and honours passed to his son, known to history as “the good Duke, Louis de Bourbon.”

CHAPTER II
1356–1358

France after the battle of Poitiers—The Jacquerie—The Marché de Meaux—The Comte de Foix and the Captal de Buch—Rescue of the Dauphine—Vengeance of the nobles.

The captivity of the King and the flight of the Queen, who took refuge with her two children in her son’s duchy of Burgundy, placed Charles and Jeanne at the head of the court and kingdom. The Dauphin, or, as he preferred to call himself, the Duc de Normandie, assumed the government, and, in consideration of his youth, a council was appointed to assist him. Confusion and dismay had taken possession of the country. The three estates were convoked to deliberate on the means to be adopted to provide the ransom of the King. They sat for a fortnight in the hôtel of the Frères Mineurs,[12] but Etienne Marcel, at the head of a strong party, demanded the redress of various grievances, and amongst others the immediate release of the King of Navarre, then imprisoned at Arleux. No conclusion, however, was arrived at; the estates were dissolved and Charles summoned the three estates of the Languedoc, or southern part of France, but without much more success.[13] In December he went to Metz to see his uncle, the son of the King of Bohemia, now the Emperor Charles IV., to take counsel with him; leaving his brother Louis lieutenant at Paris in his place.

{1357}

Charles IV. had been brought up in the court of Philippe de Valois; his sister, Bonne, had been the first wife of Jean, and he regarded the Valois family with strong affection. But he was too much like them to be of any use as an adviser, although he is said to have reproached his nephew with having, at this time of general distress, ordered for himself a new and splendid crown of gold. He, and probably the Duchesse de Normandie, spent Christmas with their uncle amidst a succession of fêtes, and returned to Paris towards the end of January to find the discontent of the people increased; which was not surprising, for there had been a still further depreciation of the coin of the realm; the seigneurs and knights who had been taken prisoners at Poitiers were returning in crowds to collect their ransoms, which were enormously heavy, and as the Jews and Lombards had been banished they could not borrow money on usury from them, as they might otherwise have done, so that there was no way of getting it but to wring it out of the peasants. As there was scarcely a family that had not at least one member a prisoner, a system of universal extortion was going on. They seized the property of their vassals and in many cases endeavoured, by imprisonment and other cruelty, to force them to give up any money they supposed them to have concealed,[14] in order that it might be sent to the English to buy back those, many of whom they did not at all wish to see.

And they were profoundly irritated by this new misfortune. At Crécy, at any rate, they grumbled, every one had fought bravely and done their best; no shadow of dishonour had rested on the lilies of France. The nobles might have been proud and extortionate, but in the hour of danger they did not flinch. They lay in heaps on the field of battle, and a life of extravagance and dissipation was redeemed by a hero’s death.

But now there were suspicions of panic; there had been confusion and mismanagement, and there appeared to be an extraordinary number of prisoners. The early flight of four out of the five young princes also displeased the people, who now began to despise the nobles whom hitherto they had only feared and hated. And whereas it had formerly been the custom for them to serve the King in time of war at their own cost and without pay, they had, in the reign of Philippe de Valois, begun to demand money while in the field, and the sums granted by Philippe had to be increased by Jean just at the time when they seemed to be least deserved.

The Hundred Years’ War between France and England in the fourteenth century was destructive to the prosperity and civilisation which, in spite of many drawbacks, had characterised the thirteenth. There could be no liberty while the country was full of armed bands led by powerful barons; agriculture was not likely to flourish in such a state of things as has been described; the nobles had no leisure to encourage or interest themselves in literary pursuits while their whole lives were spent in warfare. It was in the monasteries that learning was chiefly cultivated and protected, but many of those great religious establishments in the country, though always possessing some sort of fortification, had been sacked and burned by brigands, and others deserted by their inhabitants, who no longer found that security which the cloister had formerly afforded. The towns had become less free, and many of them had lost the liberties and privileges accorded them by the Capétiens Kings. For the Valois and their followers held the traders and unwarlike citizens in the deepest contempt, and so, as time went on, grew and strengthened a bitter hatred of the lower classes for those of gentle blood, making men the deadly enemies of their own countrymen and causing national calamities far more dreadful and disgraceful than any brought about by foreign invaders.

In other countries nobles and people, united in their sentiments and aspirations, developed in peaceful and harmonious progress to the accomplishment of their destinies;[15] whilst in France the deplorable separation that began in the fourteenth century caused the frightful excesses of the Jacquerie, and having produced the Reign of Terror in the days of our great-grandfathers and the Commune in our own, is still so fatal an injury to the power, stability, and prestige of the French nation.

{1358}

The first child of the Duke and Duchess of Normandy was born in September of this year (1357), a daughter, named Jeanne.

It was on the 28th of May, 1358,[16] that the Jacquerie, or rising of the peasants, broke out at the little town of Saint-Leu, where a number of labourers, joined by small tradesmen, artisans, and other persons of the lower classes, assembled in revolt; and having murdered nine gentlemen who happened to be in the town, spread themselves over the surrounding country, putting to death every man, woman, and child of good blood who came in their way, and plundering and burning the châteaux. They attacked the villages at each end of the forest of Ermenonville, and went to the castle of Beaumont-sur-Oise, where the Duchesse d’Orléans then was. Warned just in time of the approach of the murderers, she fled for her life, was out of the castle before they arrived and set it on fire, and escaped to Meaux, a town on the Marne, where the Duchess of Normandy, the Princess Isabelle de France and more than three hundred ladies had taken refuge, some having escaped in their nightdresses without having had time to dress themselves.

The rebellion spread rapidly over Picardy, Champagne, and the Ile-de-France, and the horrors of it have never been equalled in any Christian country. It was like a revolt of savages. Hordes of bloodthirsty miscreants went about burning castles, murdering and torturing men, women, and children. None who fell into their power might escape dishonour and death; any village refusing to join them was exposed to their vengeance.

A band of three thousand Jacques having just destroyed the Château de Poix, were marching on Aumale when they met a hundred and twenty Norman and Picards men-at-arms, led by Guillaume de Picquigny. The latter came forward to parley with them but was treacherously slain by one Jean Petit Cardaine. His followers fell upon the Jacques, killed two thousand of them, and put the remainder to flight. The Jacques had cause to repent of this murder, for Guillaume de Picquigny was a relation of that Jean de Picquigny who delivered the King of Navarre from Arleux. And Charles of Navarre, who was always ready to protect his friends and punish his enemies, took ample vengeance for his death. The Château d’Ermenonville belonged to Robert de Lorris, who had risen from humble life in the village from which he took his name. It is a mistaken notion that in the middle ages people could not and did not rise from the ranks to the highest social position. It was, of course, less frequent than in our own days, but in the fourteenth century there were hundreds of cases of the kind, both ecclesiastic and secular.[17]

Robert de Lorris was one of them. He was a great authority on French law, and a favourite both of Philippe de Valois and Jean, by whom he had been ennobled, made Chamberlain, Vicomte de Montreuil, and Seigneur d’Ermenonville. The Jacques besieged, took, and plundered the Château d’Ermenonville, and the chamberlain only saved his own life and those of his wife and children by renouncing his nobility and declaring himself one of the people.

The atrocities of the Jacquerie did not, fortunately, extend over the whole of France. An attempt was made to produce an insurrection at Caen by one Pierre de Montfort, who paraded the streets with the model of a plough in his hat, proclaiming himself a Jacque, and calling on the people to follow him. This, luckily for themselves, they had too much sense to do, and Pierre de Montfort was soon afterwards slain by three burghers whom he had insulted.[18]

The rebellion was worst about Amiens, Compiègne, Senlis, Beauvais, and Soissons. The Jacques made an attack upon Compiègne, but were repulsed by the inhabitants and some nobles who had taken refuge in the town. The atrocities committed all over that part of the country which was the scene of the revolt were too frightful to relate. Hundreds of castles were burnt, an immense amount of property destroyed, and numbers of men, women, and children tortured, dishonoured, and slain.

The leader of the Jacques, Guillaume Cale, is said to have disapproved of the most horrible of the excesses of his followers, but to have been unable to restrain them. And Etienne Marcel, with many of the bourgeois of his party, encouraged and gave assistance to these miscreants, though forbidding the murder of women and children, which of course he was powerless to prevent. But a letter of remission given subsequently to one Jaquin de Chennevières expressly declares that he had orders from the Prévôt to burn and destroy the châteaux of Beaumont-sur-Oise, Bethemont, Javerny, Montmorency, Enghien, Chaton, and all the houses and fortresses of the nobles between the Seine and the Oise, from Chaton to Beaumont.[19]

And whatever may be our opinion of the policy of the celebrated Prévôt des Marchands, the murder of the Marshals of Normandy and Champagne (which had already taken place in the presence of the Dauphin) and the assistance he rendered to these wretches are stains which neither good intentions nor expediency can excuse.

Jeanne meanwhile, and her companions, were in the most awful peril. The smaller bourgeoisie, as a rule, hated the gentlemen and sympathised with the Jacques. The Mayor of Meaux, Jean Soulas, was on their side. The gentlemen with them were few in number, the Jacques were coming, and the Duc de Normandie had, a short time before, taken sudden possession of the Marché de Meaux, to the great discontent of the inhabitants of that town. The Mayor had even had the insolence to say to the Comte de Joigny, whom the Duke had sent to perform this duty, that if he had known what he came for he should never have set foot in the place. Informed of this insubordination the Regent had reprimanded and fined the Mayor, which only increased his hostility. However, he and the principal officials and burghers had sworn to be faithful to the Regent, and not to allow anything to be done to injure him, and Charles had left Meaux some time in May, leaving his wife and the rest of the ladies in the Marché with a much smaller garrison to protect them than he would have done had he realised the treachery and disloyalty of Soulas and his friends. The Duc d’Orléans was there, the Bègue de Vilaine, the Sires de Trocy and Revel, Héron de Mail, Philippe d’Aulnoy, Regnaud d’Arcy, and Louis de Chambly called Le Borgne.

Scarcely had the Regent quitted Meaux when discord and strife broke out between the inhabitants, led by the Mayor, and the nobles shut up in the Marché. The exasperated bourgeois laid siege to the fortress and sent to Paris to ask for assistance, at the same time summoning all the peasants in the neighbourhood to join them in attacking the Marché.[20]

They were not slow in answering to the invitation. From all parts of the country round they came swarming to Meaux. The Prévôt des Marchands had responded to their appeal by sending Pierre Gilles, a grocer of Paris and one of the leaders of the insurrection, with a body of armed men from Paris to Meaux. He knew the Regent was absent and the garrison weak, and thought the Marché would fall into their hands by assault. Pierre Gilles and his troop burned all the châteaux on their way, and forced the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed to join them.

MEAUX.

The Mayor and burghers threw open the gates, and about nine thousand furious ruffians, armed with scythes, pitchforks, and knives, rushed into the town.

The towns people received them with open arms, supplied them with abundance of food and wine, which excited them to still greater ferocity, and joined in the tumult of fearful shouts and cries as the bloodthirsty savages swarmed through the streets looking up with murderous eyes to the towers and walls of the Marché.

Now the Marché de Meaux was on an island formed by the Marne, which flowed on one side of it, and a canal that went round it, coming out of the river on one side of the Marché and going back into it on the other. On the side of Meaux there was a bridge over the Marne from the Marché to the town, and on the opposite side of the Marché another bridge, across the canal to the other shore. Most fortunately, the Dauphin had recently caused the island to be strongly fortified, and his having done so now saved his wife and sister from a horrible death. All round the Marché were high strong walls and towers. Trees could be seen above the parapet inside, and the ground rose high in the middle. It was a strong place, but they were so few to defend it against the furious hordes outside. In it were the young Dauphine, the Princess Isabelle de France, daughter of the King, then about ten or eleven years old; Blanche de France, Duchesse d’Orléans, who had just escaped from Beaumont-sur-Oise; and, as was before said, at least three hundred women, girls, and children of the noblest families in France. The gates were closed, the walls guarded as well as could be done with their few defenders, but the position grew every moment more alarming. The streets were crowded to overflowing with these bloodthirsty wretches, and all down them were spread tables with bread, meat and wine for their refreshment. All over the town they were thronging and feasting, while their horrible cries and brutal threats rose to the ears of the besieged women and children who waited in terror and despair, all hope of deliverance seeming to be at an end.

The fortress was always attacked from the town side, and from this direction, when the Jacques had finished feasting, the assault would certainly come.

But the Marché was fortunately not surrounded by the town. On the other side, across the canal, lay the open country of Brie. And suddenly a troop of men in armour was seen approaching at full speed. It was Gaston, Comte de Foix, and Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch, two of the most famous soldiers in France, with about sixty lances, who rode under the gateway into the beleaguered fortress, and were received with acclamations by those within its walls. The troop was a small one, but a few tried soldiers under such leaders counted for more than hundreds of the rabble outside, and the Dauphine and her companions must have felt that they were saved.

Having no particular fighting to do just then, the two knights had employed their leisure in an expedition against some heathen tribes still to be found in Prussia; and on their way back, passing through Châlons, had heard of what was going on at Meaux and of the perilous position of the ladies shut up in the Marché. The Comte de Foix was brother-in-law of the King of Navarre; and the Captal de Buch, a Gascon gentleman, was a subject and follower of King Edward of England. Etienne Marcel, on the other hand, was a strong partisan of Charles of Navarre. But the project of the bourgeois prévôt to throw the wives and children of French gentlemen into the power of a mob of brutal savages was not likely to recommend itself to the two knights, who at once turned their horses’ heads towards Meaux, and pushed on with desperate haste to save the Marché before it fell. The white banner still floated from its walls,[21] but they were only just in time. The Jacques, having done feasting, now ranged themselves in order of battle, and in immense numbers, with frightful yells, pressed towards the Marché and began the attack. The shrieks of the terrified women and children mingled with the tumult outside,[22] but Jean de Grailly and Gaston de Foix ordered the gate on the side of the town to be thrown open. Then, raising the pennon of the Captal and the banners of Orléans and Foix, they rushed out and fell upon the enemy. Down to the bridge they rode, over which was thronging a multitude like ferocious wild beasts. But before the charge of the knights the Jacques went down in heaps; those behind them hesitated, then drew back and fled before the cavaliers, who pursued them with levelled lances and drawn swords through the streets of the town. Several of the nobles were killed, amongst others Louis de Chambly, called Le Borgne, but thousands of the Jacques were slain. Many of the citizens of Meaux were killed in the battle that raged all over the city; the rest were carried prisoners to the citadel. Jean Soulas, the traitorous mayor, was taken during the fighting and hanged when it was over. The nobles then set fire to the town, which was burning for a fortnight. The royal château, with many houses and churches, perished in the flames. Froissart says that seven thousand Jacques were killed. The inhabitants of Meaux, “for their detestable deed,” were declared guilty of high treason, and the town condemned to be and for ever remain uninhabited. The Regent, in consideration of the Dean and Chapter of Meaux, and at the petition of some other towns who interceded with him on behalf of the place, afterwards remitted this sentence. But the commune of Meaux was suppressed and united to the prévôté de Paris.[23]

Jeanne and her companions watched from the Marché the victory of their friends and the destruction of their enemies, and it must soon have been evident to them that their danger was at an end. The destruction of the Jacques on that day, June 9, 1358, arrested the course of the rebellion. The nobles scoured the country, putting to death all the Jacques they could find. Learning that some of them had taken refuge at Sens, they resolved to inflict on that city the same punishment as on Meaux, and for that purpose a party of them, on the 13th of June, presented themselves at the Paris gate of the town, demanding the keys in the name of the Regent. But the inhabitants had received notice beforehand of what was intended, and had taken measures accordingly. Therefore, when the nobles, having been admitted, and thinking themselves masters of the place, advanced with drawn swords and cries of “Ville gagnée! ville prise!” the citizens, and even those nobles who belonged to Sens, pushed down from the top of the street, which was very steep, carts with scythes fastened to the wheels which they had prepared for the purpose, while armed men issued from the houses, and women threw stones, lime, and boiling water from the windows, by which means some were killed and the rest escaped out of the city.

But the defeat at Meaux broke the head of the insurrection. From the terror, the slaughter, and the discouragement of that day the Jacques never recovered, and the finishing stroke was given by the King of Navarre, on whose support some of them had been foolish enough to reckon, because of his hostility to the King and Dauphin.

The gentlemen of Normandy and Picardy sent an invitation to Charles de Navarre, who was then at his castle at Longueville, to be their leader in this contest; he “who was the first gentleman in the world.”[24]

The King of Navarre was ready enough. He placed himself at the head of four hundred lances, and by the time he came up with the Jacques, near Clermont, his troop had increased to a thousand men, many of whom were English. The Jacques were put to flight with great slaughter, and their leader, Guillaume Cale, put to death. Some say that he was arrested by treachery; at any rate Charles of Navarre declared that the Jacques were furious wild beasts, with whom it was not possible to treat or make any terms. The Regent had been in arms ever since the insurrection had broken out, and the attack upon his wife rendered it more hateful to him.

The Jacquerie was soon at an end; it only lasted about a month, and when once the nobles had recovered from the surprise and shock of its outbreak, it was put down and punished with tremendous severity. Pierre Gilles was beheaded at the Halles on the 4th of August. He appears to have been a man of considerable wealth, and in the inventory of his merchandise was a large quantity of sugar in loaves and in powder from Cairo, or, as it was called, Babylon. It came chiefly from Egypt at that time.

That part of Champagne, Ile-de-France, and other districts which had been the scene of these atrocities of the Jacques, was so devastated with fire and sword that for some time it remained almost without inhabitants.[25] The towns and villages which had taken part in the Jacquerie were heavily fined, as may be seen by the records in the “Trésor des Chartes.” Chavanges, for instance, was fined a thousand gold florins.[26]

A note, tome vi. p. 117, of the “Grandes Chroniques de France,” M. Paulin Paris, makes the following remarks and gives the following quotation respecting the complicity of Etienne Marcel in the Jacquerie, and the fallacious hopes in which the rebels indulged with regard to the King of Navarre:—

“C’est que ces Marseillais du XIV^me siécle avoient été bien réellement soulevés par les anarchistes de Paris. Je demande la permission de citer à l’appui de cette opinion la précieuse chronique manuscrite conservée sous le No. 530, Supplément françois. A l’occasion de l’expédition du roi de Navarre contre les Jacques, on y lit: En ce temps assembla le roy de Navarre grans gens et ala vers Clermont-en-Beauvoisie, et en tuêrent plus de huit cens et fist copper la teste à leur cappitaine qui se vouloit tenir pour roy; et dient aucuns que les Jacques s’attendoient que le roy de Navarre leur deust aidier, pour l’alliance, qu’il avoit au prévost des marchans, par lequel prévost la Jacquerie s’esmeut, si comme on dit.”

CHAPTER III
1358–1361

Return of Charles and Jeanne to Paris—Marriage of Catherine de Bourbon to the Comte de Harcourt—The Céléstins—The Treaty of Bretigny—Marriage of Isabelle de France to Giovanni Visconti—Return of the King—Death of the children of the Dauphine—The plague—The Duchy of Burgundy.

The Duchess of Normandy and her friends were now free, after the horrible experience of the last few days. The enemy was destroyed, the revolt quelled, and the town, at which they could hardly have looked without shuddering, was half burnt down and deserted; for the inhabitants, who had so lately been raging and clamouring for their blood, were either slain or carried away prisoners. The Duchesse d’Orléans, after this second narrow escape within a few days, set off on her journey towards Paris, which was still in a disturbed state, and in the neighbourhood of which her mother, Queen Jeanne d’Evreux, was busy trying, as she repeatedly did, to patch up a peace between the Duke of Normandy and the King of Navarre, who, although he hated and put down the Jacquerie, was a friend and ally of Etienne Marcel and had a powerful party at Paris.

The Duchess of Normandy stayed on for a short time in the fortress of Meaux, waiting for her husband to join her.

On the 19th of July peace was concluded by the efforts of Queen Jeanne d’Evreux, assisted by the young Queen of Navarre, sister of the Duke of Normandy, the Archbishop of Beauvais, and two or three others. The interview took place at Charenton on the Seine, where the Dauphin caused a bridge of boats to be constructed for the occasion.

He then joined the Dauphine at Meaux. The danger in which Jeanne had been and the insult involved in the attack upon her had naturally enraged him against every one in any way connected with the revolt; but various letters of remission to those concerned in it, on several occasions granted to persons forced against their will to take part in it, were signed by him about this time. Meanwhile, reports of the diminishing strength of Etienne Marcel and his party kept arriving from Paris; with invitations to Charles to return and take possession of the capital.

At last came tidings of the death of the prévôt, struck down at night as he was in the act of changing the guard and placing the keys of Paris in the hands of the King of Navarre. His adherents were immediately scattered, imprisoned, or slain, and the royalists sent urgent entreaties to the Duke of Normandy, who lost no time in setting off for Paris, which he entered on the evening of Thursday, August 2nd, amidst the acclamations of the people and the illuminations and rejoicings prepared to welcome him.

The next day he sent a messenger to Jeanne with the news of this successful state of affairs, directing her to join him at Paris with the ladies of her court. When she arrived there she found the Duc de Normandie waiting for her at the Louvre, where they took up their abode and where for some time they lived in peace. The King was still a prisoner, and the Regent, freed from the constant enmity of Etienne Marcel, endeavoured to repair the misfortunes that had happened and to get the affairs of the State somewhat into order. The truce with England was soon to expire, but he made another treaty of peace with the King of Navarre, and contrived to win to his side the young Comte de Harcourt, Jean III., who, since the execution of his father by the King of France in the affair of Rouen, had been fighting against that country in the ranks of England and Navarre.

The Dauphin, however, succeeded in making friends with him, and although the precedent of Charles of Navarre was not very encouraging, he tried to attach the Comte de Harcourt to his interests by marrying him to Catherine, one of the Dauphine’s sisters. The wedding took place in October, at the Louvre.[27]

The favourite monastic order of Charles and Jeanne appears to have been that of the Céléstins. It will be remembered that Saint Louis brought from the Holy Land some Carmelites, sometimes called Barrés because of the striped robes or mantles they used at first to wear; and that in the reign of Philippe-le-Long they sold their monastery, or rather the ground on which it stood, to one Jacques Marcel, a citizen of Paris, reserving to themselves all building materials, carved stones, columns, woodwork, and tombs, with the bones of those buried therein; all to be transported by midsummer day to the new place which had been chosen for the larger and more convenient monastery which they now required.

But before they left their old home, the Carmelites, assisted by an agent of the Bishop, carefully pointed out to the new owner those parts which were consecrated ground, and Jacques Marcel, “who was a good man, and feared God,” built two chapels upon them, just at the entrance to the garden, and appointed and endowed two chaplains to serve them.

Jacques Marcel was buried in a tomb of black marble in one of these chapels, and the place went to his son, Garnier Marcel, in 1320.

Now there was a young man named Robert de Jussi, who had been a novice in the Céléstin monastery of St. Pierre, in the forest of Cuisse, not far from Compiègne. But after he had been there a year, his parents by their entreaties and importunity persuaded him to renounce the monastic life and return to the world. Philippe de Valois, who was then king, took a fancy to him, attracted by his talents, good sense, and piety. He chose him, while still very young, to be one of his secretaries; and so well did he serve the King and so great was the reputation he acquired at court for his judgment and conduct, that he remained Secretary of State and one of the most distinguished members of Council under Philippe de Valois, Jean, and Charles V., Dauphin. But his worldly success and prosperity did not make him forget the convent in the forest, the holy lessons and examples of the good fathers, and the peaceful days he had spent with them. He spoke of them to the Dauphin, who sent for some of them to come from their monastery to Paris in 1352, when Garnier Marcel presented them with the site of the old Carmelite monastery which had been bought by his father; where they established themselves. Charles both as Dauphin and King showed unvarying kindness and affection to this brotherhood, visiting the convent frequently, and conversing familiarly with the brethren. In this year (1358), seeing that they were in need of help, he granted them a purse of money from the Chancery of France, to be given yearly, and as a proof of his friendship carried the first to them himself, and distributed its contents with his own hands. He afterwards built them a church, and conferred upon them many other benefits.

A curious law made at this time, which in our own days many of us would gladly see re-established, was, that if a tailor or dressmaker spoilt a dress, either by cutting the material badly or by ignorance, so that by their fault it did not fit, they should pay to the owner of the said garment whatever was the value of it, and besides that should pay a fine of five solz, of which three should go to the King and two to the confraternity.[28]

{1359}

Also that if any one made a doublet to sell, and made it of bad or common thread or stuff, the doublet should be burnt, and the maker should pay six solz to the King and four to the confraternity.[29]

“On Sunday, the nineteenth day of May,” says the chronicler, “was made a convocation at Paris of the church, the nobles, and the fortified towns,[30] by letters of monseigneur the regent, to hear a certain treaty of peace which had been proposed in England between the Kings of France and of England. Which treaty had been brought to the regent by Monseigneur Guillaume de Meleun, Archbishop of Sens, by the Comte de Tanquarville, brother of the said Archbishop, by the Comte de Dampmartin, and by Messire Arnoul d’Odenham, Marshal of France, all prisoners of the English. On which day came few people, partly because they had not been told soon enough of the said convocation, and also because the roads were infested by the English and Navarrais, who held fortresses on every road by which one could go to Paris; and also because of the robbers who held French fortresses and were not much better than the English. And the whole kingdom was covered (semé) with them, so that one could not go about the country. The said English and Navarrais held the castle of Meleun, the island and all the town on the side towards Bièvre; and the part towards Brie was French. Item, they held la Ferté-Soubs-Juerre, Oysseri, Nogent-l’Artaut, and at least five or six fortresses on the river Marne; in Brie they held Becoisel and La Houssoie. In Mucien they held Juilly, Creil, and several other places on the river Oyse; on and about the Seine, Poissy, Meullent, Mante, Rais; and more than a hundred others in different parts, as well in Picardie as elsewhere. Which day of the nineteenth was continually put off in the expectation of more people until the following Saturday, the twenty-fifth day of the said month.

“On the which Saturday the said regent was at the palace on the marble staircase in the court; and there, in presence of all the people, he caused the treaty to be read by Maistre Guillaume des Dormares, advocate of the King in parliament, by the which treaty it appeared that the King of England asked for the duchy of Normandy, the duchy of Guienne, the city and castle of Saintes, with all the diocese and country; the cities of Agen, Tarbes, Pierregort, Limoges, Caours, with all the diocese and country; the counties of Bigorre, Poitiers, Anjou, and Maine; the city and castle of Tours, and all the diocese and country of Touraine; the counties of Boulogne, Guines, and Pontieu; the town of Monstrueil-sur-Mer and all the chastellenies; the town of Calais and all the land of Merq, without the King of England being, on account of the said lands, in any way subject either to the present King of France or to his successors, but only a neighbour. And besides, the said King of England desired to have the homage and sovereignty of the duchy of Brittany for ever, the same as the other lands before mentioned.

“Besides this he asked for four millions of escus de Philippe, with all the lands that he held in the kingdom of France, upon such condition that the King of France should make recompense of other lands to all those who had anything on the said lands, by alienation made by the Kings of France, or by those who claimed any rights transmitted by them, since the said lands and countries belonged to the Kings of France.

“And also required the said English to be put into possession of the towns and castles of Rouen, Caen, Vernon, Pont-de-l’Arche, Goulet, Gisors, Moliniaux, Arques, Gaillart, Vire, Boulogne, Monstrueil-sur-Mer, and la Rochelle; a hundred thousand pounds sterling and ten seigneurs for hostages on the first of August following. And this done, he would return the King of France to his kingdom and power, but in all manner a loyal prisoner until the above-named things were accomplished.

“Which treaty was very displeasing to the people of France (fu moult deplaisant). And after they had deliberated, they replied to the said regent that the said treaty was neither bearable nor possible (n’estoit passable né faisable); and therefore they ordered good war to be made upon the English.

{1360}

“Item. Sunday, the second day of June following, it was granted to the regent that the nobles should serve him for a month at their own expense, each according to his estate, without counting coming nor going. And that the impositions ordered should be paid by the fortified towns. The clergy offered to pay the said impositions; the town of Paris offered six hundred swords, three hundred archers, and a thousand brigands. And it was ordered that all those who were there should return to their towns, because they could not grant anything without speaking to their towns, and that they should send their answers on the Monday after Trinity. And afterwards several towns sent their answer: but because the flat country was all spoiled by the English and Navarrais enemies, and also by the garrisons of the French fortresses, the said fortified towns (bonnes villes) could not fulfil the number of twelve thousand swords (glaives) which had been granted him by the Langue d’oc.”[31]

The Duke and Duchess of Normandy had still no son, but another daughter, the Princess Bonne, had been born to them.

The war with England had gone on all the winter, but in the spring of 1360 new proposals of peace were made, and this time accepted. By the treaty signed at Bretigny, May 8, 1360, King Edward renounced his claim to the crown of France, and also to the duchy of Normandy and all the inheritance of the Plantagenets north of the Loire. But the King of France ceded to him, no longer as fiefs, but in absolute sovereignty, Poitou, Aquitaine, with all the arrière-fiefs appertaining to it from the Loire to the Pyrenees, and a ransom of three millions of écus d’or, to be paid in sums of four hundred thousand écus annually.

Six English knights were sent to Paris by King Edward, in presence of whom the Dauphin was to swear to the treaty in the most solemn manner. Therefore, when Mass was sung, after the Agnus Dei, Charles, who was then in the Hôtel de Sens, came out of his oratory and took the oath before the altar. Then, from a window of the Hôtel de Sens, peace was proclaimed by a sergeant-at-arms, “the regent went to Notre-Dame de Paris to return thanks for the said peace, and then they chanted the Te Deum, and rang the bells very solemnly.”[32]

King Edward is said to have been induced to make peace by a frightful storm which overtook his army near Chartres, killing six thousand horses and a thousand cavaliers, amongst whom were the heirs of Warwick and Morley. Thinking that the anger of God was roused against him because of the misery and devastation he was causing, he vowed to put an end to the war.

All over the country the news spread that peace was signed, and in spite of the hard conditions there was a general burst of rejoicing. In the villages and towns church bells rang, thanksgivings were offered, and festivities of all kinds went on everywhere; except in some of the towns and provinces transferred to England, who declared that they might yield homage to the English with their lips, but in their hearts never.

To the Princess Isabelle de France the return of the King can have been no subject of congratulation. She was his third daughter, her sisters being the Queen of Navarre and Marie, afterwards Duchesse de Bar. The fourth sister had taken the veil at Poissy, and died the year after in early childhood (1352).

In the deplorable state of the country, it was most difficult to obtain the money required to pay the first instalment of the King’s ransom. Galeazzo Visconti, Vicomte et Prince de Milan,[33] offered to give 600,000 florins in exchange for the Princess Isabelle, whom he was anxious to marry to his son, Giovanni. The Visconti were amongst the richest and most powerful of the princes of Italy. They ruled over Milan and the greater part of Lombardy. The two brothers, Galeazzo and Bernabo, chiefs of the family, were stained with countless crimes and cruelties. Of Giovanni nothing could be said, as he was only ten years old. The Princess Isabelle was not quite twelve, but she seems to have had her own ideas, and she hated this Italian marriage. It was no use. The Visconti were eager for the alliance of the King of France, and willing to pay for the honour. King Jean wanted the money, and had been ready to sign the utterly ruinous treaty at first proposed and sacrifice France to gain his own liberty; so that he was not likely to hesitate. The French people did not like the marriage, and there was a murmuring all over the country against the King for selling his own blood. But the preparations were hurried on, and the Princess was sent to Italy before the end of that summer, with a splendid cortège.

Villani gives an account of the magnificence of the entertainments given in her honour at the palaces of Galeazzo and Bernabo in Milan. He says she arrived in regal state, splendidly dressed, and received the homage of all before her marriage, but after that, notwithstanding her royal blood, she did reverence to Galeazzo and Bernabo and their wives,[34] the former of whom was a Princess of Savoy.[35]

The splendid fêtes went on for three days and nights in the stately beautiful Italian palaces, which so far surpass those of other lands. Every day there were banquets, where at the chief table dined a thousand guests, princes, ambassadors, nobles and representatives of the citizens. There were jousts in the cortile or courtyard of the palace of Galeazzo, ladies looking on from the windows and loggie.[36] The last fête was given by Bernabo.

Meanwhile the King of France, whose freedom had been bought in exchange for his daughter, had been conducted by the Black Prince to Calais, in the castle of which a great supper was given in his honour by King Edward, whose sons, with the Duke of Lancaster and the chief barons of England, served bareheaded at the table, and after two days spent at Boulogne in religious ceremonies and festivities King Edward embarked for England, and Jean prepared to return to Paris.

Besides the public misfortunes of this time, a great sorrow befel the Duke and Duchess of Normandy in the death of their two little daughters, Jeanne and Bonne, whom their mother had dedicated to God if the King returned. The historian says God apparently accepted the gift.[37] The eldest was about three years old. The former died October 21st at the abbey of St. Antoine des Champs, at Paris, where she had been placed in order to be dedicated to religion, and her little sister rather less than three weeks after her. They were both buried in the church of that abbey, where their effigies in white marble were placed, lying upon their black marble tomb. This grief was all the more bitter to Charles and Jeanne as these were their only children. The chronicler remarks of this event: “Item, on Thursday, the 11th November, were buried the two daughters of the Duke of Normandy, at St. Antoine, near Paris, and was present the said Duke at the funeral, very troubled, for he had no more children.”[38] Among those chosen to go to England with King Edward were Louis Duc d’Anjou and Jean Duc de Berry, second and third sons of the King, to whom their father had given these two duchies by way of compensation; Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, the King’s brother; Louis, Duc de Bourbon; Pierre d’Alençon and Jean, brother to the Comte d’Etampes, “tous des fleurs-de-lis,” says the monk of St. Denis.

{1361}

And in December, Jean made his entry into Paris with a pomp and parade rather unsuitable to the occasion and the manner of his return, and again began the usual succession of court festivities and amusements that formed the occupation of the Valois princes and those who surrounded them. As to the peasants, as soon as the peace of Bretigny was signed, they began to take courage and to work in the fields again. After a long cold winter the weather seemed to have cleared up, and they hoped for a good harvest, though the destruction of most of the barns and farm buildings had made it difficult to find places to store it in. The plague, too, was again increasing, not spreading regularly from south to north as it had done in 1348, but appearing irregularly here and there in places which had escaped before, especially in hilly and mountainous districts where the inhabitants had hoped they were safe from it. It attacked first the people who were already weakened from bad food and other hardships; next those who had been suffering, as so many were, from agitation, anxiety or sorrow; and then it began to attack those who were free from any such disadvantages. It spread all about, with the same symptoms as before and attended with the same disastrous consequences. Every one was, of course, dreadfully afraid of catching it, so that people shut themselves up, refusing to have communication with each other; there was no one to keep order or to do any work, and the great companies of brigands and disbanded soldiers were all over the country. There were fifteen thousand of them near Lyon alone. The King of England sent orders to those under his allegiance to desist from their depredations, but they would not obey him. The plague was very bad all the spring; seventeen thousand people died of it at Avignon, it was raging in London and was also at Paris, although not quite so violent there.

The Queen and her daughter, the Princess of Burgundy, had died of it in 1360, and now her son Philippe, the last Capétien Duke, fell a victim to the same scourge.

On hearing of the death of his stepson, Jean at once claimed the duchy. As has been already shown, the heirs male of Duke Robert II. were now extinct; the Comtesse de Savoie, his eldest daughter, had no heirs either; of the Duchess de Bar there could be no question, as she had not only renounced her claims on her marriage, but was the youngest daughter. It rested between the King of France, son of the third daughter, Jeanne, and the King of Navarre, grandson of the second daughter, Marguérite. To most people the claim of Charles of Navarre must appear incontestably the right one; but it is true that instances in favour of Jean’s pretensions were not uncommon in these days. At any rate he seized the duchy, and on the 23rd of December entered Dijon; took the oath, before the high altar of Saint Bénigne in presence of the chief officials of Burgundy, to observe the constitution and privileges of that state; and was careful to rest his claim to the succession, not on its having lapsed to the crown, but on the right of his mother, Jeanne de Bourgogne, speaking much of his grandfather, Duke Robert, whose heir he declared himself to be and whose laws and system of government he promised to follow.

The great inheritance of Burgundy was now broken up, for Artois and the County Palatine went to Marguérite, Countess dowager of Flanders, second daughter of Philippe-le-Long, Boulogne and Auvergne to the next heir of Guillaume XIII., while Flanders and Hainault remained the inheritance of the child Marguérite, widow of Philippe de Rouvre.

CHAPTER IV
1364–1367

King Jean returns to England—His death—Coronation of Charles V. and Jeanne de Bourbon—Murder of Blanche, Queen of Spain—The Céléstine Church—The Abbey of Chelles—The King’s library—Magnificence of the Court—Birth and death of the second Princess Jeanne.

Four years had passed away: years a little less unfortunate for France, as although Jean was still upon the throne and passed his time in travelling about his kingdom in search of amusement instead of giving serious attention to the affairs of the State, he allowed himself to be much influenced by the Dauphin. He ceased to meddle with the value of the coinage, he recalled the Jews and forbade private wars among the nobles. There was still peace between France and England, although English subjects were frequently to be found in the ranks of the Navarrais who were continually at war with the French.

The country was still in a disturbed state, and infested by troops of brigands who were always attacking the villages and châteaux. The Seigneur de Murs, a little castle near Corbeil, was outside his gates one day, when a party of drovers came up and complained that his servants had taken some pigs of theirs. The seigneur invited them to come inside the gates to see if they could identify any, but no sooner were they over the drawbridge than they threw off their disguise, blew a horn, drew their swords, and being joined by their companions who rushed out of a wood close by, they seized the seigneur, his wife and children, and taking possession of the castle, they made it for some time a centre from which they pillaged the whole countryside.

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By the death of the Queen, Jeanne, Duchesse de Normandie, was the head of the court and of society. She was extremely popular, and her beauty the admiration of every one. Froissart in his chronicles always speaks of her as “la belle Duchesse,” or “la bonne Duchesse.” And now the time was drawing near for her to ascend the throne.

The Duc d’Anjou, second son of the King, had broken his parole and returned to France. Jean, horrified at such a breach of honour and of the laws of chivalry, declared his resolution to return to England. Of the true reasons for this journey, which was strongly opposed by his ministers and friends, many different explanations have been given. Modern historians have in many cases adopted the well-known story of his reply that if truth and honour were banished from the earth, they ought still to find refuge on the lips and in the hearts of kings. M. Dulaure,[39] however, observes that this speech, which was that of Marcus Aurelius, does not belong to the fourteenth century, and has been ascribed by Paradin to François I., and by some other writer to the Emperor Charles V. And neither the writers of the “Grandes Chroniques de France,” De Nangis, nor Froissart, who were the most voluminous chroniclers of that time, make any mention of it. De Nangis says that he went to arrange for the ransom of his third son, the Duc de Berry, and his brother, the Duc d’Orléans. Froissart declares that he wished to see the King and Queen of England and to make excuses for the conduct of his second son. Others have attributed his persisting in this project to his love for some English lady, probably the Countess of Salisbury. M. Paulin Paris, in a note to his edition of the “Grandes Chroniques de France,” agrees with the explanation of De Nangis, and treats the idea of the English love affair as ridiculous and unlikely at the age of the King of France, who was forty-five. But this does not seem an unanswerable objection, considering the character and habits of Jean; especially if we look at the history of certain other kings at a much more advanced age—Henry IV. for instance.

But whatever might be his reasons, Jean left France according to the “Grandes Chroniques,” on Tuesday evening, January 3, 1364, embarking at Boulogne; and arrived at Dover on Thursday, whence after two or three days he pursued his way to London, was met by a great company of illustrious persons and lavishly entertained by King Edward and the English royal family, who assigned the Savoy Palace for his dwelling, where, after about three months passed in festivities and diversions of various kinds, he was taken ill and died.

The Dauphin was at Vernon, besieging his step-grandmother, Blanche de Navarre, when the news came of his father’s death. Towards her as well as his eldest sister Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, and his aunt, Jeanne d’Evreux, Charles was often placed in an attitude of hostility in which there was no personal animosity, but which arose from their relationship to and affection for his arch-enemy, the King of Navarre. Charles had no wish at all to injure or frighten his sister, of whom he was very fond, or his aunt, for whom he had the greatest respect, or his step-grandmother, who was also his cousin, and with whom he seems to have been on friendly terms when there was no particular quarrel going on about Charles of Navarre. Nevertheless this was not the first time he had been at open war with these ladies, or engaged in besieging one of their castles. He hastened to come to an arrangement with Queen Blanche, and leaving Bertrand du Guesclin in command of the troops that were actively opposing the Navarrais, he hastened to Paris, where the body of the late King was sent from England. “After the funeral at Saint-Denis,” says the chronicler, “Charles went out into a meadow of the cloister of the said church, and there, leaning against a fig tree in the said meadow, he received the homage of several peers and barons; after which he went to dinner, and spent that day and the next at Saint-Denis. And the following Thursday, the 9th May, departed the said King Charles to go to his coronation at Reims, which was to be on the day of the Trinity following.”

Nothing could be more solemn, stately, and imposing than the ceremonial used at the coronation of the Kings and Queens of France; and it must have made a strong impression upon the religious and cultivated minds of Charles and Jeanne. By the regulations made to a great extent by Louis le Jeune in 1179, and afterwards added to and confirmed by St. Louis, the King and Queen, on their arrival at Reims, the city consecrated by the baptism of the first Christian King of France and the coronation of so many generations of his successors, were met by a procession of the canons and other ecclesiastics of the cathedral, churches, and convents of the town. On Saturday, the day before the coronation, after complines, the church was committed to the care of guards appointed by the King, with those belonging there. Then the King, in the silence of the night, came to the church and remained alone in prayer and watching.

When matins rang, at the dawning of the day, the King’s guards were marshalled to keep the great entrance, the other doors being closed. Then matins were chanted, and after them prime. And then the King arrived and the coronation began.

On the spot where Clovis was baptised stands the church of St. Remy, second only to the cathedral in beauty and grandeur. In it was always kept the ampoulle of holy oil with which the Kings of France were anointed, and to which was attached the ancient legend of its having miraculously appeared, being brought down from heaven by a white dove at the baptism of Clovis. This tradition was then firmly believed, and the ampoulle was brought in solemn procession by the monks of St. Remy with cross and candles, carried with great reverence by the Abbot of that monastery under a silk canopy borne by four of the brotherhood. The Archbishop of Reims, with the bishops and canons, came to the door, when the Archbishop received it from the hand of the Abbot with a promise to restore it, and carried it to the altar accompanied by the Abbot and four monks. It was afterwards taken back to St. Remy.

Two thrones were placed in the middle of the cathedral, joining the choir. Around the highest, which was that of the King, were ranged the peers of France, and all those whose rank and office entitled them to such places.

The Archbishop girded on his sword, charging him to keep the army of God, and defend the Church and kingdom committed to him, with the blessing of God, by the virtue of the Holy Spirit and the help of Jesus Christ the invincible Conqueror. Then with prayers and benediction he was anointed with oil from the ampoulle, the ring placed on his finger, the sceptre and hand or rod of justice in his hands, and finally the Archbishop took the crown from the altar and placed it on his head, supported by the peers of France during the prayers and solemn benediction. When the King was crowned and seated on his throne, the Queen arrived at the cathedral. She prostrated herself before the altar and was raised from her knees by the bishops. After some prayers she was anointed, but with a different oil; a smaller sceptre, and a rod of justice like the King’s were given to her, and the ring placed on her finger with these words, “Take the ring of faith, the sign of the Holy Trinity by which thou mayest escape all heresy and malice, and by the virtue given to thee call heathen nations to the knowledge of the truth.”

And never could the benediction of the Archbishop have been more fully re-echoed in the hearts of all around him than when he placed the crown on the head of Jeanne de Bourbon, saying, “Take the crown of glory, honour, and felicity, that thou mayest shine with splendour and be crowned with joy immortal.”

The Queen was conducted to her throne by the barons who supported the crown, and surrounded by the ladies of highest rank; after which the King and Queen kneeling at the altar, received the Communion from the hands of the Archbishop, who at the conclusion of Mass took off their crowns and put smaller ones on their heads, and they proceeded to the palace with a drawn sword carried before them.[40]

They left Reims after their coronation, and on the 28th of May, Tuesday, entered Paris. The King made his entry at one o’clock, went to the church of Notre Dame and then to the palace, and “about the hour of nine” the Queen’s procession arrived at the gate. Her beauty and grace were the admiration of the multitudes that thronged to see her as she rode into Paris, the crown on her head, her dress covered with jewels and the trappings of her horse embroidered with gold. Philippe, Duc de Touraine, the King’s favourite brother, walked by her side holding the bridle of her horse. With her were the Princess Marie de France, afterwards Duchesse de Bar, the Duchesse d’Anjou and the Duchesse d’Orléans, by whose horses walked princes of the blood royal, the ladies of her court with a brilliant cortège of nobles, chevaliers, and guards, winding through the crowded, decorated streets to the Palais de la Cité.

Just after the King and Queen had entered Paris there arrived in triumph from the battlefield Bertrand du Guesclin. He had won a victory at Cocherel, and had brought not only the news of his success but the famous Captal de Buch, whom he had taken prisoner, to greet the King on the opening of his reign.

FRENCH NOBLE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

There was a great banquet next day at the palace, at which the Captal, who was placed on parole, dined with the King.[41] And much honour was shown to Sir Bertrand du Guesclin. After dinner there were jousts in the courtyard of the palace, at which the King of Cyprus and many of the greatest nobles jousted.

On Friday, the last day of May, the King invested his youngest brother, the Duc de Touraine, with the duchy of Burgundy. It had been promised to him by his father in remembrance of the day when, as a mere child, he stood alone by his side in the battle of Poitiers. He afterwards married the heiress of Flanders and Hainault.

The Duchess-dowager, mother of Jeanne, lived a good deal at court, and her brother Louis, Duc de Bourbon, was a great favourite with the King, who extended his affection for Jeanne to every one belonging to her. Louis de Bourbon was one of the best and noblest characters of his century. When a hostage in England, he made himself so beloved that he was allowed to go about wherever he chose, and even to return to France on parole. His estates were managed during his absence by his mother.

The youngest sister of the Queen, Marie de Bourbon, was a nun at Poissy, and for her also both Jeanne and Charles had much affection.

But a constant source of anxiety and grief to them all had been the unfortunate marriage of their sister Blanche, Queen of Spain, who lingered in captivity in one castle after another in spite of the indignation and remonstrances of the Spanish people, the French King, and the royal family her relations. At last came the news that she had been poisoned by Pedro el Cruel, and her death excited the horror and execration of France and Spain against her murderer. Blanche seems to have passed these years in saintly resignation to the will of God. Her brother the Duc de Bourbon and her brother-in-law the King of France did not suffer her death to remain unavenged.

Charles V. declared war upon Pedro, and sent French troops to Spain commanded by Bertrand du Guesclin, the Bègue de Vilaine, and other officers, and after a short time he paid for his crimes with the loss of his throne and his life.

One cannot help being struck by the extraordinary discrepancy in the accounts given of the Kings of France by ancient and modern writers. According to the former, they all appear to have been models of every virtue and talent under the sun; while if one reads the descriptions of some of the latter, especially of those who are republican in principles, one finds that, with the exception perhaps of Saint Louis, no King of France ever had any good qualities at all but courage, and that, while all the misfortunes that happened were entirely his fault, any success he might have in the management of his affairs and the government of his kingdom was either the result of accident or was due to somebody else.

Charles V., however, may be said to have done considerably more to deserve his name “le Sage” than Jean did to earn that of “le Bon.” In all respects different from his father and grandfather, he set himself to try to repair the ruin and distress in which the kingdom was plunged. He was, as Sismondi remarks, the first modern King of France. His effigy on the seals is seated in a chair, not mounted on horseback. It is characteristic of his life and habits. His government was the personal government of an intelligent, prudent, and honest King, occupied with the internal and external affairs of the State.[42] He found himself surrounded with dangers and difficulties. The country was so depopulated by plague and famine that in many parts the inhabitants were reduced to two-thirds and even one-third of their numbers in the beginning of the reign of his grandfather. The neighbouring countries were involved in civil wars and disturbances, into which it was difficult for France to escape being drawn. Italy was full of discord. Spain was divided between the factions of Pedro el Cruel and his brother, Enrique de Trastamare, who had risen against that tyrant to avenge the murders of his mother and brothers.

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Charles found no help in his own family. His eldest sister was married to his enemy the King of Navarre, to whom she was devoted. The Duc de Bar, who had just married Marie, the second sister, was likely to be more trouble than assistance; the Visconti had paid his father a large sum of money for the marriage of Isabelle, but were too far off to have anything to do with affairs in France. Of his brothers, the two elder ones had all the faults and scarcely any of the good qualities of the Valois. They were arrogant, rapacious, violent and cruel. The Duke of Burgundy was the best of them.

Charles had always been delicate, and people said he had been poisoned when he was young by the King of Navarre. It was one of those absurd accusations heaped upon Charles of Navarre by his enemies. He could have had no object in poisoning the Dauphin, for if he had died the crown would have passed, not to him, but to the Duc d’Anjou, and there were plenty of other princes of the house of Valois whose claims would have come before his. The Dukes of Berry and Orléans, the Alençon princes, and even the Duc de Bourbon, all stood before him in the line of succession.[43] But it is probable that the King firmly believed that he had been poisoned by his brother-in-law, and therefore was not likely to regard him with very friendly feelings.

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Jeanne nursed and consoled Charles in his frequent illnesses, and shared and sympathised with all his tastes.[44] Both were devoted to art and literature; Charles V. was the best educated and most learned prince of the fourteenth century. Almost the only existing letter written entirely by the hand of a Valois King of the direct line is by him. It is preserved at the Dépôt Central.[45] Jeanne’s love of books caused her to interest herself in the writings and translations of the time; she was also fond of poetry. Many Greek and Latin authors were now translated into French, and by the desire of the King and Queen, Nicolas d’Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux, made a translation of the whole of the Bible, which Charles took with him wherever he went, being in the habit of reading it all through every year. It was in two volumes.

On the 24th March, 1367, Charles laid the foundation stone of the new church of the Céléstins. Besides the church he gave them costly presents, amongst others a great cross of silver gilt. The Queen presented an image of the Virgin, also of silver gilt. The church was finished in 1370, and consecrated by the Archbishop of Sens. Charles lavished upon this church the most precious objects of art; chalices, missals, and ornaments of all descriptions; and especially magnificent were two chapels entirely hung with cloth of gold, one being covered with fleurs-de-lis, the other with suns and stars. The benefits and favours conferred by the King and Queen upon this convent were so great as to cause them to be considered as founders of it, and their statues were accordingly placed on the portal of the church. They spent 5,000 francs in building a dormitory, refectory, chapter-house and cloister.[46]

The hôtel St. Paul, where Charles and Jeanne afterwards lived, was most conveniently near the Céléstine convent. The courtiers, following their example, were always giving presents to this brotherhood. The King’s secretaries founded a confraternity in their church, and all belonged to it. The King exempted this order from all public contributions, even such as were generally paid by the clergy. They continued for several generations to enjoy such great favour and protection from the royal family that they appear to have rather presumed upon their privileges, for in time it grew into a byword, and in speaking of a conceited, arrogant person the exclamation “Voilà un fier Céléstin” became a common figure of speech.

The Céléstins, as time went on, became celebrated for the excellence of their cookery; there were especially certain omelettes for which they were much distinguished. But this was long after the time we are now considering.

One of the most fashionable convents for women was that of Chelles, near Paris. It had been founded by Clotilde, wife of Clovis I., and much enlarged by Ste. Bathilde, who dreamed that she saw a ladder raised before the altar of Our Lady, which touched Heaven, and by which she mounted in a cortège of angels. In consequence of this, the Abbey of Chelles bore as arms, a ladder between two fleurs-de-lis, those orders founded by Kings and Queens of France having the right to bear the lilies in their arms. The Abbesses of Chelles bore the greatest names in France, among them were Giselle, sister of Charlemagne, one of his daughters and numbers of widows, sisters, and daughters of kings.

But after a time this rich and distinguished establishment became also very worldly. Some monks built a monastery close to it, and the King had a palace on the other side of its walls. Scandals arose. The nuns got up late, went out hunting and conducted themselves much more after the fashion of the court than the cloister. They were on excellent terms with the brotherhood of the neighbouring monastery, who were mostly poor cadets of noble families. They gave parties and made confitures for these monks; and when Louis le Bègue carried off a nun of sixteen years old over the wall of his palace, his example was so much followed by his courtiers that nearly fifty nuns had eloped in a few months. The Bishop of Paris and Abbot of St. Victor went to preach and try to carry out reforms; but on their way back were attacked in the forest and the Abbot killed.[47] After Robert II. (996) the palace fell into ruins; but the evil reputation of the sisterhood went on long after. In 1358 they fled to Paris, but returned to their convent, which was besieged by the English. They escaped again with their Abbess, Alix le Passy, and were afterwards collected and reorganised by Jehanne la Forêt.

King Jean, who was not by any means a literary character, had only possessed twenty books, but Charles delighted in collecting them and arranged his library in a tower in the Louvre, which was called La Tour de la Librairie.[48] He collected nine hundred volumes, which in those days, before printing was used, made a considerable library. The catalogue of this library was made in 1378 by order of the King, and still exists.[49] It was in three rooms, occupying three floors of the tower, the windows of which had iron bars and a trellis of ironwork; with glass painted. The ceilings were of cypress wood and the walls panelled with richly carved oak. Thirty candles and a silver lamp burned all night in each room so that they might be available for study night and day.

In a manuscript, “Bibliothèque du Roy,” No. 7609, are found the names of the different instruments of music of the fourteenth century, among which can be recognised several that are still in use. Here are the names of some of the books contained in the library:—

“Dit de la Rose.”

“Le Livre de la Mutation de Fortune.”

“Le chemin de long estude” (translated from the Romance into French).

“La Cité des Dames.”

“Le Livre des trois vertus.”

“Le Livre des faits d’Armes et de Chevalrie divisé en quatres parties.”

“Le Traité de la Paix.”

“Le Corps de Policie.”

Charles V. and Jeanne possessed many beautiful books on parchment with exquisite miniatures and illustrations of the fourteenth century, books of hours and books of psalms, one of which had belonged to Saint Louis.

They commissioned Raôul de Presle to translate the “City of God,” by St. Augustine, and gave him 4,000 francs a year for doing it.[50]

Besides books and manuscripts, they had an immense collection of magnificent objects of art. Since the days of Louis, the taste for splendour and costly decoration had spread in all classes. Every now and then laws were made to check them, but as the nobles would not obey them and could not be forced to do so, they only acted as restraints on the bourgeoisie. And so the most important of all industrial arts had come to be that of the goldsmith.

It seems extraordinary, considering the impoverished condition of the finances and the dreadful state of affairs in general when they came to the throne, that the King and Queen should have been able to spend the sums they did upon buildings, books, treasures of art, and all cultivated and intellectual pursuits. But their wise and good management was so successful in altering the disastrous state of things caused by the follies and misfortunes of their predecessors, that they were able to spend money with royal magnificence upon the aims and objects they preferred.

Jeanne was clear-headed and sensible, and the economy and order she introduced into the royal household was considered an excellent example. She sold a quantity of costly plate to help pay the troops of Du Guesclin in 1369, and so contributed to the successful result of the war with England; after which they began to collect again.

LADY OF THE COURT.

But their daily life was surrounded by magnificence, as may be seen by a list made later on by order of the King, in which appear all sorts of precious and costly things. Statuettes of gold and silver, exquisite carvings in ivory, quantities of gold dishes, plates, candlesticks, basins, salt-cellars, drinking cups, knives and spoons; very few forks—there were only three at Vincennes, of which one belonged to the Queen. Jewels and precious stones in profusion, sets of hangings for rooms—that is to say portières; carpets, hangings, canopies, curtains for windows and beds, some of silk, others cloth of gold or velvet; one is mentioned as being entirely of cloth of gold, with a cross of red velvet embroidered with several coats of arms; another of green with stripes of gold. Spanish leather, richly embroidered cushions, costly tents to put over the Queen’s bath, called espreniers. One of these is described as being made of white satin, embroidered with roses and fleurs-de-lis; others were blazoned with the arms of France and Navarre.[51] Every now and then some curious little incident seems to give a touch of life and interest to this old list, such as a little gold barrel and chain with the arms of Burgundy, which the King always had with him and which had belonged to his grandmother, Jeanne de Bourgogne; the gold serpents on the salt-cellars with their tongues in the salt, which were supposed to reveal the presence of any poison that might have been put in; a crown à bassinet set with jewels, probably belonging to King Jean, who was in the habit of wearing a crown on his helmet in battle, regardless of the additional danger of proclaiming his rank; and in the midst of this catalogue of splendour “item, an old mattress all torn and the pillow the same, which had belonged to King Jean.” Two banners of France covered with fleurs-de-lis and bordered with pearls, to drive away the flies when the King was at table; dog-collars of velvet and silver, green game bags embroidered with pearls, inkstands, purses, whips, leather lanterns. The contents are given of some coffers or boxes the King always took about with him and of which he kept the keys. Amongst the rare cameos, jewels, gold chaplets, &c., was the holy stone to make women have children, and another stone which cured the gout.

Different things are mentioned as having belonged to Charlemagne and St. Louis. There were also gold basins to wash in, and gold vases to put the remains of repasts to give to the poor. Bas-reliefs of gold, generally of sacred subjects, and all the things belonging to the chapels, such as chalices, crucifixes, missals, crosses, statues, hangings, reliquaries, paternosters, &c., most costly and beautiful. An immense number of crowns and coronets seem to have belonged to the King, Queen, and Princesses, and jewelled girdles, clasps, and rings are also enumerated among their possessions.

Charles and Jeanne at the beginning of their reign lived chiefly at the Louvre and at Vincennes, where he ordered four of the inhabitants of the village of Montreuil to watch against poachers every night in the forest. At Vincennes had been born on June 7, 1366, “entre tierce et midi,” another daughter to the King and Queen. She was christened four days afterwards in the chapel there and named Jeanne, her god-parents being the Duc de Berry, the two Queens dowager, Jeanne d’Evreux and Blanche de Navarre, and Marguérite, Countess of Flanders and Artois. But the same ill-luck seemed to pursue the children of Charles and Jeanne as had followed those of Philippe de Valois and Jeanne de Bourgogne; for this little princess also died the following December, and was buried at St. Denis, leaving the King and Queen again childless.

CHAPTER V
1368–1373

Comet—Meeting of Parliament—Marriage of the Queen’s sister—The Louvre and its gardens—Christine de Pisan—The Dauphin—His christening—War—French victories—Prosperity of France—Hôtel St. Paul—Birth of Marie de France—Capture and liberation of the Queen’s mother—Bonne, Comtesse de Savoie—Birth of Louis and Isabelle de France—Louis, Duc de Bourbon.

A French historian assures us that in this, the year before the war began again, “the presage of it was seen in the heavens, that is to say in the Holy Week a comet between north and west with a long hairy tail stretching towards the east and red rays like a pyramid of fire.”[52]

The monks went preaching about in all the French provinces for the rights of Charles V.; in the English ones for Edward III.

“In this year the King and Queen sat in parliament on the vigil of the Ascension,” and Jeanne gave her advice and opinion, by special desire of the King, upon the important affairs then discussed. Whenever he was ill the secret despatches were all taken to her, and her seal carried the same authority as his own.[53]

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He had detached Armand d’Albret from the English cause and married him to Marguérite, one of the Queen’s sisters, to the indignation of the Black Prince, who spoke “moult rudement” about it.[54] As Armand d’Albret had before seized the castle of La Motte d’Epineul, it was made part of the dowry of the young princess, who often appears in descriptions of festivities at her sister’s court.

In 1371 she was godmother, with the Princess Jeanne, daughter of Philippe VI., to her niece, Marie de France. Her husband and son were killed at Azincourt, and, like her sister Bonne, Comtesse de Savoie, she undertook the guardianship of her grandson, Charles d’Albret, for whom in 1416 she obtained letters from Charles VI. admitting him to do homage for his lands though under fifteen years old.

Hitherto every King of France had held his court either in the palais de la Cité or the Louvre. Those who only know the Louvre as the magnificent Renaissance palace of François I. and Henri II., can perhaps hardly picture it as the most romantic royal castle that ever existed. The buildings formed an oblong court, with round towers at the angles and in the middle of the sides, while nearly in the centre of the court stood a massive round keep, and to the south and east were well defended gateways. All this was moated, and on the side towards the river were other walls and towers.[55] It was outside Paris until Charles included it within the walls. He altered the internal arrangements, heightening the rooms and also the towers, so that it was more beautiful than ever. It was he who built the long line of towers all along the river. They were of all sizes and shapes, and each had a captain of its own. The names of many of them are known from the registers in the Chambre des Comptes. The Tour du Fer-de-cheval, Tour de l’Orgueil, du Bois, de l’Ecluse, Jean de l’Etang, de l’Armoirie, de la Taillerie, de la grande Chapelle, la petite Chapelle, Grosse Tour du Louvre, Tour de la Librairie, and many others. The Grosse Tour, built by Philippe Auguste, was enormously thick and strong, and had a dungeon. The great portal was on the river, flanked with towers; the second entrance was narrow, with two towers, on which were sculptured the figures of Charles V. and Jeanne de Bourbon.

The rooms were large, low, with panels of wood; the windows narrow, barred with iron and filled with glass, on which were painted the arms of the person to whom the apartment belonged—King, Queen, enfants de France, princes of the blood, &c.

The apartment of the Queen was below that of the King, and exactly the same in size and disposition. Sauval remarks that the view of the river from the windows was very beautiful. The apartments of the King, the Queen, and each of their children had a chapel and gallery attached to it. In the apartment afterwards given to the Dauphin there was a clock, doubtless made by Jean de Vic, who about that time made one for the King, which was placed in the Tour du Palais and has been supposed to be the only one in Paris under Charles V.[56]

The great garden of the Louvre was very old: it had treilles or trellised walks from one end to the other, hedges, arbours, and grass. It was planted with roses and other flowers, herbs and vegetables. There were two smaller ones, called the King’s and Queen’s garden.[57]

The great garden went up to what is now the Rue St. Honoré, and was bounded by the city walls. To any one who is fond of flowers and gardening, it is most interesting to read the old bills and accounts preserved in different registers, and to see something of what these ancient gardens were like.

“Compte 1362, of Pierre Culdöë, lieutenant, and the noble Messire Jean de Damille, chevalier, chastelain of the castle of the Louvre, of the receipts, &c., for certain works which have been done in the gardens of the said Louvre, à la plaisance du Roy, nostre Seigneur, beginning in the month of May ‘362,’ and finishing in the month of March CCCLXIII.”

Then follow many interesting accounts, of which, however, it is impossible to give more than a few specimens. For instance, sums of money are paid to—

“Perin Durant, gardener, for having got many good herbs and planted the same in the said gardens of the Louvre in the month of March, 1362.”

“To Pierre Hubert, trellis-maker, for having fastened up the hedges round the said gardens in the month of February, and done up about half the said hedges which the wind had blown down; for wood, osier, and trouble.”[58]

“To Jean Baril, for having made a heap of earth (mound) with a summer-house of trellised wood on the top, with the arms of the King, Queen and nos seigneurs de France upon it, and having made a drawbridge to it in the month of March, 1362, for wood, osier, and trouble.”

“To Jean Caillon and Geffroy de Febon, gardeners, for their trouble in having planted sage, hyssop, lavender, strawberries, and several other herbs in the gardens of the said Louvre, for having dug the garden all round, put in herbs and seeds, renewed all the paths and grass plots (préaux) and taken away the weeds and rubbish.”

“To Jean Dudoy, gardener, for having ... taken away all the weeds, stones, and rubbish, and made several beds of sage, hyssop, lavender, balsam, strawberries, and violets, and planted bulbs of lilies, double red rose trees, and many other good herbs which he got.”

“To Sevestre Vallerin, the work of his arm (la peine de bras) for his trouble in having weeded the paths which go among the préaux (courts or grass plots), and the beds in which are the rose trees, strawberries, violets, sage, hyssop, lavender, balsam, parsley, and other good herbs: and also for having watered four summer-houses and a great square room to make the plants grow (pour faire venir les herbes).”

“To Etienne de la Groye, gardener, for having made in the said gardens certain trellises, arbours, and hedges all along the walls, inside.”[59]

We hear of some one being paid also for planting a pear tree, and lettuce is mentioned amongst the vegetables that mingled with the flowers growing in the quaint old garden. It must have been a strange place, with its stiff beds of roses, lavender, and sweet herbs, its formal paths and summer-houses, its long trellised walks under the huge, ancient walls, shadowed by a forest of frowning towers.

As the Queen’s apartments in the south wing of the château would not contain all the rooms required, some more were allotted to her looking west; and some to the King, who, out of consideration for the Queen, had given her the first floor and taken the second for himself. One of these was the bedroom of the King, and containing amongst other furniture one of two great beds, “pour le corps du Roy,” furnished by the courtepointier, Richard des Ourmes, at the price of twenty francs of gold each.

The King’s cabinet or study (estude) was lighted by one large window with painted glass, and four small ones, and hung with black drap de Caen. It had a high chair, a bench, a form (escabelle) and two bureaux. Green drapery was thrown over the furniture, and a high chimney with mantelpiece of stone warmed the room, which was most likely between his oratory and library. His chapel, or oratory, was vaulted, and heated by a stove in the winter.[60]

The furniture in the Louvre consisted of enormous cupboards, buffets, and heavy chairs or faudesteuils, all richly carved, illuminated, and sometimes decorated with gold and gems; benches, forms, settles, dossiers or seats with backs, covered with velvet, satin, or cloth of gold; an estendait, or kind of sofa is mentioned as being in one or two of the rooms; the walls were hung with tapestry, and there were plenty of carpets and cushions, some embroidered with pearls. Spanish leather was thrown on the floor in summer.[61]

The house linen seems to have been kept in chests in the bedrooms: a number of white silk sheets are described as being in a square box with two covers in the large window in the King’s room; and later in his palace called Beauté, in a gilded chest (coffre) in the room where the King slept, there were towels, tablecloths, and sheets of toile de Reims; also richly embroidered pillows, one of which had on it a knight, a lady, two fountains and two lions. There were couvertoers, or warm coverings for winter, and couvertures, or sheets of ornamental stuffs thrown over the beds in the day. One of these is mentioned as being of ermine, fastened to an old sheet of marramas, of which the King had caused a breadth to be cut off to make a chasuble.

The chimneys were of course high and open, with great fires on dogs (chenets) on the hearth. There exist bills for three chenets de fer for the Queen’s and other rooms, and for tongs, shovels, and tirtifeux. Also for bellows, “five new bellows carved and ornamented with gold.”

There are also bills from one Marie Lallemande, for blue and white stuff for the window curtains of the King’s and Queen’s bedchambers, and for eighteen feather beds with pillows; and from Jean de Verdelay and Colin de la Baste for six tables of walnut wood and a pair of trestles for the Queen’s rooms, and for the King’s large dining-room an oak bench with columns (un banc de chesne à coulombes) twenty feet long for the King’s larger table, with the daïs of the same length and three feet wide, and a dréçoir with a step round it in the same room (sale),[62] “et enfonsé le viez banc Sainct Louis, et une marche autour.”

The King was anxious to attract to his court any literary or talented persons that could be found, and being himself, like every one else of his day, a believer in astrology, he gladly welcomed a learned man and celebrated astrologer named Thomas de Pisan, a native of Bologna, who, delighted at his reception, sent for his wife and daughter and presented them at the Louvre, 1368. Charles took the whole family under his protection. He gave an income to the astrologer, and his daughter, the celebrated Christine de Pisan, was brought up at court as a demoiselle de qualité. Her father, seeing her talents, bestowed much care on her education. She was taught Latin and French, and not allowed to forget her native Italian; she also studied science and literature. At fifteen she was married to Etienne du Chastel, a young man of good birth and education, but small fortune, who was made one of the King’s secretaries. She became a distinguished writer, and is best known for her life of Charles V., written, after his death, at the command of the Duke of Burgundy. Her style is exceedingly pompous and fulsome, but some interesting details can be gained from her writings, and if they were not crammed with tiresome, prosy moral sentiments, and absurd flattery of the King, they might have been much more interesting and valuable still. After the death of Charles V., the prosperity of the family waned: her father lost most of his pay and died old and poor; her husband died 1402, and one of her sons died young. Her daughter became a nun at Poissy.

On the 16th of April, 1368, Lionel, Duke of Clarence second son of the King of England, passed through Paris on his way to Italy to marry the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti. The Dukes of Berry and Burgundy went to meet him at St. Denis and conducted him to the Louvre, where his room was “moult bien parée et aournée.” He dined and supped that day with the King, and the next day dined with the Queen “en l’ostel du roy près de Saint-Pol, là où elle estoit lors logiée et y fist-en très grant feste.”[63] After dinner when they had played and danced, the Princes returned to the Louvre, where Lionel stayed during the few days he was at Paris, being entertained by the different members of the French royal family. Lionel of England was a handsome and courageous Flemish giant, mild-tempered and amiable, possessing no great vigour of intellect.[64] Through his daughter married to Edmund Mortimer the line of York derived their claim to the English crown.

The King had a painted barge like a floating house, richly decorated inside and outside, in which he used to go up and down the Seine from the Louvre to his new and favourite palace of St. Paul,[65] which he had built chiefly while he was still regent.

Charles and Jeanne had now been married eighteen years, and had no children. They had never had a son, and their three daughters had all died, to their great grief. But on the 3rd of December, 1368, “on the first day of the Advent of our Lord, at the third hour after midnight, the Queen Jehanne, wife of King Charles, then King of France, had her first son in the ostel near St. Pol; and the moon was in the sign of the Virgin in the second phase of the said sign, and the moon was twenty-three days old. For the which birth the King and all the people in France had great joy, and not without cause, for until now the said King had had no male child. And the King gave thanks to God and the Virgin Mary. And that day he went to Notre Dame de Paris, and caused a beautiful mass to Our Lady to be sung before her image at the entrance of the choir; and the next day, Monday, he went to Saint Denis in France on pilgrimage, and he caused to be given away at Paris a great heap of florins, to the number of three thousand florins and more.”[66]

The child was christened on Wednesday, the 6th of December, and the chronicler thus describes the proceedings:—

“The Wednesday following, sixth day of December, in the year one thousand three hundred and sixty-eight aforesaid, the said son of the King was christened in the church of Saint-Pol of Paris, about the hour of prime, in the manner which follows. And the day before were made enclosures of wood in the street before the said church, and also inside the said church about the font, to take care that there should not be too great press of people.

“First: before the said child went two hundred varlés who carried two hundred torches, who all remained in the said street,[67] holding the said burning torches, except twenty-six who went inside. And after was Messire Hue de Chasteillon, seigneur de Dampierre, master of the crossbowmen, who carried a candle in his hand, and the Comte de Tanquarville, who carried a cup in which was the salt, and had a towel at his neck with which the said salt was covered. And after was the Queen, Jehanne d’Evreux, who carried the said child in her arms, and Monseigneur Charles, seigneur de Montmorenci, et Monseigneur Charles, comte de Dampmartin, were beside her; and thus they issued from the said hostel of the King of Saint-Pol, by the door which is the nearest to the church. And immediately after the said child, were the Duc d’Orléans, the King’s uncle, the Duc de Berry, the Duc de Bourbon, the Queen’s brother, and many other great seigneurs and ladies; Queen Blanche, the Duchesse d’Orléans, the Comtesse de Harcourt and the Dame de Lebret,[68] sisters of the Queen, who were well adorned with coronets and jewels.”[69]

The chronicler goes on to describe the christening, the cardinals, bishops, and abbots with mitres and crosiers, how the crowd was so great that the child had to be taken home by a back way and how the King gave away money in the coulture Ste. Katherine, where there was also such a crowd that several women were killed.

The Queen seems to have been ill a long time, for the chronicler says that there was a great fête when she recovered (releva de sa gésine) from her confinement, on the 4th February, and after the dinner a dance and other amusements, and the King gave his son the title of Dauphin du Viennois.

Charles had succeeded in getting rid of the Grande Compagnie led by the Archiprêtre, mentioned in the life of Jeanne de Boulogne, Bertrand du Guesclin having persuaded them to go with him to Spain, to fight against Pedro el Cruel, at the request of the King, who said: “If some one would lead ces gens-là against the miscreant and tyrant Pedro, who has killed our sister, let him do so whatever it costs me.”[70]

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THE BASTILLE.

The news of the defeat and death of Pedro was brought to Paris in the early summer, and the chronicler remarks, “and certainly many people thought that this had happened to the said Pierre because he was a very bad man and had wickedly and traitorously murdered his good, wedded wife, daughter of the Duc de Bourbon and sister of the Queen of France.” The inhabitants of Guyenne had revolted against the Black Prince, who had been taxing them too heavily; and the war with England had begun again, but this time it seemed to be going in favour of France. Fortress after fortress fell into French hands and on the 29th April, Abbeville surrendered to Hue de Châtillon.

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This and the next year passed prosperously for the kingdom. Bertrand du Guesclin, created Constable of France, was everywhere winning back towns, castles, and fortresses; the gallant Sir John Chandos was killed in Poitou, and by the end of 1370, Ponthieu, Périgord, Rouergue, Saintonge, Poitou, part of Limousin, and nearly all Guyenne had been won back. The rapid restoration of the kingdom was a marvel to every one. The hero du Guesclin was the idol of the nation; the Duc de Bourbon especially loved him because he had avenged his sister the Queen of Spain. The wise and firm government of the King brought prosperity and order into everything. His Court was magnificent, not with the wild and warlike revelry of Philippe and Jean de Valois, but with the refined and artistic luxury of a prince more cultivated than his time.

All round about Paris he restored and rebuilt the royal châteaux that had been destroyed by the English and Navarrais, taking care to fortify them at the same time. Melun, Creil, Montargis, amongst others, and St. Germain, which had been burnt by the soldiers of King Edward. He gave Paris a new bridge, walls, gates, and the Bastille, of which the first stone was laid by Aubriot, provost of Paris, in April, 1370. He had built two new royal residences, Beauté, a most delightful château at the end of the forest of Vincennes, and the hôtel de St. Paul at Paris, having taken a dislike to the Palais de la Cité, from the scenes of blood and terror that he had witnessed there. The Louvre was not large enough for the immense number of suites of apartments he wanted. Gradually it was used in his reign chiefly to entertain and lodge foreign princes. He bought several hôtels, gardens, and meadows and turned the whole into one huge palace, which, with its pleasure grounds, covered nearly all the space between the river, the rue St. Antoine, the rue St. Paul, and the Bastille. The hôtels de Sens, de Saint Maur, d’Etampes, hôtel de la Reine, and others.

The whole were surrounded with a high wall, enclosing, besides all these great hôtels which formed the palace, and were connected by twelve galleries, six meadows, eight gardens, and a number of courts. All the princes of the blood, great nobles and officers of the court had their apartments in this wonderful palace, which the King declared should for ever belong to the Crown, adding that he had there enjoyed many pleasures, endured and recovered from many illnesses, and therefore he regarded it with singular affection.

It was a curious mixture of luxury and simplicity, arm, feudal castle, and palace all in one.[71] The King delighted in the gardens and orchards and used to work in them with his own hands. Both he and Jeanne were also very fond of animals, and seem to have had an immense number of pets, for which there were enclosures and aviaries in all their palaces, but especially at their two favourite abodes, St. Paul and Beauté. They had lions and wild boars amongst other creatures, and numbers of birds. Besides the great aviaries at the Palais, the Louvre, St. Paul, and the other palaces, there were in every apartment in St. Paul bird-cages of wire painted green, and there is an account of a large octagon cage made at that palace[72] for the King’s parrot, which is called “la cage au pape-gaut du Roy.” There were numbers of fowls, pigeons, and peacocks, the wild boars were kept in a garden, the lions, of course, in dens, and there were rooms for the turtle doves and for the Queen’s dogs.

The description of the interior of this palace, or group of palaces, reads like a page out of the “Arabian Nights.” One large hôtel (one of three houses the King gave the Queen) was used for her horses, coches, and the grooms and people belonging to her stables. The conciergerie, lingerie, tapisserie, pâtisserie, pelleterie, fruiterie, lavandrie, saucisserie, panneterie, épicerie, taillerie, maison du four, jeux de paumes, garde-manger, celliers, caves, cuisines charbonnerie fauconnerie, &c., must have formed a little town in themselves. Silk, velvet, tapestry, Spanish leather, and cloth of gold covered the walls, floors, and seats. The furniture, massive and picturesque in form, was ornamented with rich carving, illumination, gold or gems. The beams of the ceiling were decorated with gold fleurs-de-lis. The rooms were heated with stoves (étuves) and huge fires on open hearths, with magnificent chimney pieces of stone sculptured often with colossal statues and figures of animals. The washing basins and all the dinner services, &c., used by the royal family were of gold or silver. All the numerous apartments of the different princes, princesses, and great personages had chapels, galleries, bath-rooms, &c., attached to them. The room of the King’s jewels was brilliant with gold, silver, and precious stones.

To say nothing of the art treasures of gold, jewels, and illuminations, what would not a lover of art and antiquity in our own day give for one of the long oak benches, for instance, ending in handles like those of baskets, carved all over with birds and animals, and mounted on many carved columns—especially for the one called “the old bench of St. Louis,” which stood in the King’s dining room at the Louvre.

It was in their favourite hôtel de St. Paul, or as it is called in old writings, St. Pol, that Charles and Jeanne principally lived, and here were born the Dauphin and all their younger children.

The birth of the Princess Marie took place on the 27th of February, 1370, and her godmothers were Jeanne, daughter of Philippe VI. and Queen Blanche, and the Dame d’Albret, sister of the Queen.

With the exception of Blanche, whom she never met again after her disastrous marriage with the King of Spain, Jeanne saw a great deal of her family, especially of her three youngest sisters, the Comtesse de Harcourt, the Dame d’Albret, and the Prieure de Poissy. Bonne, Comtesse de Savoie, was farther away in her beautiful southern home, and being the wife of a greater prince, had more of the occupations and cares of a government upon her hands. Bonne was brave, clever, sensible, and universally admired. Things went prosperously enough with her until, after she had been married about thirty years, in 1385 her husband, the Green Count, died of plague in Italy, where he had gone on some warlike expedition. She governed Savoy for her son Amadeo VII., the Red Count, whom she married to a daughter of the Duc de Berry. But the Red Count was killed out hunting in 1391. He left the guardianship of his son and the regency of Savoy to his mother, in whom he might well have the greatest reliance, instead of to his young widow who had neither the talents nor experience to fit her for such a trust, and who, he was quite sure would marry again, as she did. In spite of her opposition the Countess Bonne assumed the guardianship of her grandson Amadeo VIII. and the State. After he came of age she could not get her dowry properly paid, so she sent for her brother Louis, Duc de Bourbon, who came at once with a troop of soldiers and threatened to make war upon the Savoyards. Thereupon the dowry was paid without any further trouble. Bonne died at the Château de Mâcon, 1402. In 1372 the Duchess-dowager de Bourbon, mother of the Queen, was at the castle of Belle Perche, in the Bourbonnais, when one night it was surprised by three captains of brigands or free companies, who got in by scaling the walls. Louis de Bourbon assembled his vassals and friends and laid siege to the place where his mother was a prisoner. The Duchess managed to let him know that she was afraid of the things the engines threw in and the damage they caused, and that she wished him to blockade the castle. He did so accordingly, but the Earls of Cambridge and Pembroke arrived with a large force and carried off the Duchess and her ladies to a château in Limousin. She was soon afterwards exchanged for Simon Burke, a favourite of the Black Prince. She went to Clermont, a hunting château of her son, and in the forest close by she met her daughters coming to see her.[73] In a miniature representing their meeting the Queen advances wearing a dress covered with fleurs-de-lis and emblazoned with the arms of France and Bourbon, holding a bird, the sign of high rank and led by Jean de Bourbon, Comte de la Marche. Her little daughter Marie, bearing the same arms accompanies her, then come the young Duchess, wife of Louis, and the Queen’s sisters, Comtesses de Savoie and Harcourt, and Dame d’Albret. Each leads a dog with a long leash, two ladies follow, one carrying the train of the Duchesse de Bourbon. All the princesses have the arms of their husbands and of Bourbon emblazoned on their dresses, including the Duchess-dowager, Isabelle de Valois, who also wears a long widow’s veil.[74]

MEETING OF THE QUEEN AND HER MOTHER.

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Parti-coloured dresses were much worn then. The Queen’s second son, Louis, was born March, 1371. Bertrand du Guesclin was his godfather, and put a sword into his hand, praying God and Our Lady to make him a good knight. In July, 1373, was born her daughter Isabelle. The little Dauphin was her godfather and held her at the font; her grandmother, the Duchess Isabelle, was her godmother.

Louis de Bourbon had married in 1371 Anne, daughter of the Comte de Clermont et d’Auvergne. He was a good soldier, just, generous, and religious; his court was as magnificent as those of the Dukes of Burgundy and Orléans. When he returned from being a hostage in England he instituted an order of chivalry called the Ecu d’or. During the fête, after the ceremony, his Procureur-Général, Chavreau, presented to him a register of depredations committed on his lands during his captivity by divers lords, his vassals, most of whom were present, and were seized with consternation; but the Duke replied, “Chavreau, have you also the register of the services they have rendered me?” and without looking at it, threw it into the fire. It is said that when, after the capture of his mother, Anne, Duchesse de Bretagne, fell into his hands and exclaimed, “Ah, beau cousin! am I a prisoner?” he replied, “No, madame, we do not make war on ladies.” His subjects adored him, and when, many years afterwards, he died and his body was brought to Moulins to be buried, clergy and people thronged to accompany it wherever the funeral passed, with tears and lamentations.

CHAPTER VI
1373–1380

Illness of the Queen—Her recovery—Floods in Paris—Death of several princesses of the Royal Family—Bertrand du Guesclin—The Court of Charles V. and Jeanne de Bourbon—The peers of France—The King’s will—Betrothal of his daughters—Visit of the Emperor Charles IV.—The Emperor and the Duchess-dowager de Bourbon—Birth of the Princess Catherine—Death of the Queen—Of the Princess Isabelle—Grief of the King—His death.

The beds used at this time were enormous. If only six feet square they were considered very small and called couchettes, but when they were from eight feet and a half by seven and a half to twelve feet by eleven, they were supposed to be of a sufficient size and called couches. These beds were mounted on very wide steps covered with rich carpets, and were hung with exquisite and costly stuffs; alcoves, supposed to be so much later an invention, were then in use. The chronicler of the quatre premiers Valois relates that in 1373 the Queen was seized with a dangerous illness. She seems to have been delirious, as he goes on to say that she lost her bonne mémoire, that the King, qui moult l’aimoit, made many pilgrimages about it, and that by the mercy of God and Our Lady she recovered her good health and good senses. In spite of his delicate health Charles often made these pilgrimages to holy places, walking barefoot with the monks.

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In the early part of 1373 there were great floods, especially of the Seine, Marne, Yonne, Oise, and Loire. They lasted two months and were said to be the worst that had happened within living memory. The streets of Paris were full of water so that people had to go about in boats. From one gate to another the water flowed; it rose to the bridges and filled the lower rooms in the houses.

Several princesses of the French royal family had died within a short time—the Queen-dowager, Jeanne d’Evreux, of whose will and funeral an account was given in a former volume; Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, eldest sister of the King; the Princess Jeanne, daughter of Philippe VI. and Queen Blanche, who died on her way to Spain to marry the son of the King of Aragon. Also the old Prioress of Poissy, great aunt of the Queen, who was the Princess Marie de Clermont, daughter of Robert, Comte de Clermont, son of St. Louis. In early youth she had been betrothed to the Marquis de Montferrat. But she had set her heart on a monastic life, and she took the veil with the approval of her cousin Philippe le Bel, in the convent he had just founded at Poissy. She became Prioress, but having lost her sight she resigned that dignity, and died in May, 1372, at seventy-three years of age. It was, of course, afterwards that Marie de Bourbon, youngest sister of the Queen, was made Prioress of Poissy.

These were years of success and happiness for Charles and Jeanne. They had now four children, two of whom were sons. Prosperity was restored to their kingdom. The people trusted them, so that heavier taxes than those which caused riots under Jean and Charles VI. were paid without opposition by the subjects of Charles V., who knew that the affairs of the State were administered by able hands, and that the money so collected would be used for the defence and welfare of the country, not squandered on court pageants or unworthy favourites.

A truce was made with England, who had lost all the territories won from the late King, and restored to France by the wisdom of Charles le Sage and the valour of Bertrand du Guesclin.

Romance and poetry gather, as well they may, around the career of this heroic leader, the despised, neglected child of a poor Breton gentleman; who swept the English from his country, and died Constable of France, surrounded by his victorious troops, the keys of Châteauneuf-Randon, his last conquest, being laid upon his coffin. His father, a Breton noble, and his mother, who was proud and beautiful, considered their eldest son a disgrace to their family—for Bertrand was ugly, rough, and continually fighting and getting into mischief. Disliked and ill-treated at home he made his escape from his father’s château, and took refuge with an uncle and aunt, who received him with kindness, and with whom he remained. When he was sixteen or seventeen there was one day a wrestling match at Rennes, and being resolved to attend it he ran away from church, fought at the match and won the prize, but was so dreadfully hurt that he had to be carried back to the château of his uncle, where he was laid up for some time, during which his aunt, divided between her sorrow and uneasiness about his wounds and her anger at his disobedience, kept coming into his room, alternately reproaching and consoling him. Sometime afterwards there was a tourney at Rennes. Bertrand borrowed a horse and arms of his cousin and presented himself in the lists, challenging the first esquire who would break a lance with him. One of the bravest of the troop came forward, and was overthrown by him at the first shock. The next adversary who advanced was his own father. Recognising the arms of his house upon his father’s shield, Bertrand threw down his own, to the astonishment of all present, who attributed his doing so to fear. But he overthrew the next adversary and then raised his casque. His father embraced him, and his mother and aunt were filled with joy. His father then gave him everything he wanted for the outfit of a cavalier, and by his gallant deeds he soon rose to the height of fame. The story of his death in 1380, when besieging the castle of Châteauneuf-Randon in Gévaudan, as told by ancient chroniclers, is as follows: The Castle was to surrender the day after Du Guesclin died; Marshal de Sancerre summoned the Governor to give up the keys, but he answered that he had sworn to yield them only to Du Guesclin. Being told that he was dead, he replied, “Then I will lay them on his tomb.” The Marshal consented, the Governor, at the head of the garrison, issued from the castle, and passing through the ranks of the besieging army knelt before[75] the body of Du Guesclin and laid the keys on his coffin.

Before he died Du Guesclin charged his captains to remember that in whatever country they made war, women, children, the poor and les gens de l’église were not their enemies. He had all his life been good to the weak and the poor.

The King and Queen showed all honour and affection to Du Guesclin.

Louis de Harcourt had been one of the foremost captains in the English war, and now came to Paris with the King’s brothers. Charles had suspected him sometime before of being in love with the Queen, and had regarded him with jealousy and anger in consequence, but having become convinced that he had been mistaken and unreasonable, que sans raison il avoit eu cette folle suspicion, he received him moult agréablement et joyeusement.[76]

While there can be no doubt that the court of Charles V. and Jeanne de Bourbon was much more orderly and more intellectual than those of the two first Valois kings, it does not seem so certain that it was equally amusing. It was stately and magnificent; comfort, luxury, and civilisation had greatly increased; there were splendid banquets, balls, and other entertainments, but the accounts of the daily life there, which have come down to us from that time, especially those of Christine de Pisan, who lived among the scenes she describes, show a very different state of things from the brilliant, reckless lives of pleasure and gaiety led by all who belonged to the Court of France in the days of Philippe de Valois and his son Jean.

The King got up at six or seven o’clock in the morning, and when dressed his breviary was brought him and he went to his oratory to hear mass; after which he gave audience to anybody who wished to ask him anything. In these interviews he treated everybody who approached him with the greatest courtesy and kindness. On certain days he then went to the Council Chamber, and at ten o’clock he sat down to dinner, music going on all the time of that repast. When it was over he devoted two hours to interviews with foreign envoys, or with any one bringing news from the seat of war,[77] or of any other matters of importance in different parts of his kingdom. Then he went to lie down for an hour, and after that, one reads with a feeling of relief, that he allowed himself a little pleasure. Christine de Pisan takes care to explain that this was only in order that he might work better afterwards, but one may trust that this absurd suggestion was only an idea of her own, and that the mind of Charles was not so saturated with duty and dulness as she would imply. At any rate, he amused himself during this part of the day by looking at his books, jewels, and different collections, and talking with his friends. Perhaps the most intimate and the one he loved best was Jean de la Rivière. There is a note of a ring he gave him, with a ruby in it qui tient au violet.

Next, the King went to vespers and then out into his garden, where generally the Queen was with him, and where curious and beautiful things were often brought to them by the merchants. In winter he had different books read to him; stories from the Scriptures, philosophy, romances, &c., till supper, and during the rest of the evening he amused himself. Jeanne also had some one to read aloud to her while she was at dinner.

The King’s devotion to the Queen had never changed. From his boyish days at the court of his grandfather she had been the only woman he had ever loved. Without consulting her he would take no step of importance, and he cared for no pleasure she could not share. They lived, as Christine de Pisan says, en paix et en amour. Charles delighted in finding and giving her beautiful presents of jewels, curiosities, objects of art, or anything that he thought would please her.

Christine de Pisan describes with enthusiasm the way in which Jeanne held her court, the order and magnificence with which everything was arranged, whether in the daily life of her court and household, or in the splendid entertainments and ceremonies of state. She speaks of the beauty and dignity of Jeanne, as she appeared at these festivities, wearing her crown, her royal mantle of cloth of gold, or of silk covered with precious stones, and a girdle of jewels, accompanied by two or three queens (the two Queens-dowager, Jeanne and Blanche, and the Queen of Navarre), by her mother the Duchesse de Bourbon and by all the members of the royal family and court.

The peers of France in the time of Charles V. were as follows: Original peers ecclesiastical, called Clercs Ducs, i.e., the Archbishop of Reims and the Bishops of Laon and Langres; Clercs Comtes, i.e., the Bishops of Beauvais, Châlons, and Noyon.

Lay peers, i.e., Dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, and Aquitaine; Counts of Toulouse, Flanders, and Champagne.

But the King held in his hands the Counties of Toulouse and Champagne, and the following new ones had been created.