Women of Mediaeval France Part 13

Who was to pay for all the display in this entry of the queen? The citizens of Paris had fondly hoped that, what with their show of loyal joy and their presents,--aggregating some sixty thousand crowns in gold,--the king would be pleased to remit certain oppressive taxes. On the contrary, it was the citizens of Paris who were compelled to pay for all this fine foolery. Charles departed from Paris a few days after the conclusion of his fete, leaving behind him an increased tax and an ordinance prohibiting, under penalty of death, the use of certain silver coins of small value; this latter restriction, which was intended to favor the circulation of his new and debased coinage, inflicted peculiar hards.h.i.+ps upon the poor. Thus, Isabeau was already inflicting much misery upon the poor of that capital which had lavished so much upon her; and before we bestow our commiseration upon the miserable king in after days, it is well to remember the miseries of his subjects.

Life had been as yet but a dream for Charles and his queen; though France was rapidly going to ruin under their extravagant and heedless rule, could they not chase away care in revels surpa.s.sing any that France had yet seen? But the dream was soon to become a nightmare, the hideous nightmare of insanity, for this heedless monarch.

It was not until three years after the coronation of Isabeau that her unfortunate husband had the first attack of what was, unmistakably, insanity, though to any reasonable creature the behavior of the whole court would have seemed mad enough from the beginning. One of those acts of lawless private vengeance which were so soon to become dreadfully familiar in France first excited the king almost to the point of frenzy.

A certain Pierre de Craon, a n.o.ble who had already distinguished himself by robbing the late Duke of Anjou, was driven from Paris by the Duke of Orleans, to whose wife he had imprudently revealed some of the infidelities of her too licentious husband. He fled to Jean de Montfort, who persuaded him that the person chiefly responsible for his disgrace was the renowned Olivier de Clisson, Conetable of France. Secretly returning to Paris, Pierre de Craon lay in wait for the constable one night and fell upon him with a band of bravoes. The brave De Clisson was seriously wounded, and the villains fled, thinking him slain. Charles, who favored De Clisson, was furious at the outrage, and breathed vengeance against Craon. As Jean de Montfort const.i.tuted himself the defender of this wretch, and refused to deliver him up to justice, the lands belonging to Craon were devastated, his wife and children were driven forth, and war was declared upon Brittany.

The king had always had a pa.s.sionate love for the more theatrical side of war, and, as soon as the constable was able to ride, the king and his forces marched upon Brittany. We may pa.s.s over the earlier part of his campaign, taken up in aimless marches and as aimless parleying. On August 5, 1392, during a spell of intensely hot weather, Charles marched out of Mans. He had been suffering from a fever, was much weakened, and had for days been greatly hara.s.sed by the heat and the baffling of his delayed vengeance; he was moody, and "his spirits sore troubled and travailed," when, as he rode through the forest of Mans, there suddenly rushed to his horse's head a wild figure, half clothed, and manifestly mad. Seizing the king's bridle, the apparition exclaimed, with that strange earnestness so often noticeable in those whose reason is unbalanced: "Sir King, ride no further forward, for thou art betrayed."

The servants hastily drove away the poor madman, and sought to restore the king's peace of mind, more seriously disturbed than ever by a happening that might well have startled even a person in strong health.

On rode the cavalcade, out over the open plains, where a blazing sun beat full upon the king's head, protected only by a thin cap. Suddenly Charles started, checked his horse, drew his sword, and charged upon the pages who rode beside him, crying, as if in the heat of battle: "On, on!

down with these traitors!" Madly pursuing the pages, he put to flight even the Duke of Orleans, and was not overpowered and disarmed until he and his horse were quite exhausted.

He recognized none of those about him, and only physical weakness prevented him from becoming again a frantic lunatic. The poor weak brain, over-excited and worn-out by the long years of debauchery, was hopelessly overthrown; though sane at times, and even for considerable periods, Charles VI. was evermore incapable of ruling, being a mere helpless and unhappy tool in the hands of the heartless people who could win sufficient power to rule what was left of France.

The queen was no Blanche de Castille, able to rule a kingdom, and the king's uncle, Philippe de Bourgogne, was at first the real power in France. He was opposed by Isabeau de Baviere and her paramour and brother-in-law, Louis d'Orleans, brother of the king; and the history of the next few years is largely a record of shameless intrigues between these people to obtain control of the mad king, in whose name many an odious thing was done. The regency should, by rights, have devolved upon the king's eldest brother, Louis d'Orleans, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of Charles's madness; but the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri set him aside for "his too great youth." There might have been found some precedent for recognizing Isabeau as regent; but there is no evidence that she ever made any serious efforts to establish her claim; for she was content with that which the Duke of Burgundy was quite willing to allow her, viz., the squandering of money--not his money--in her pleasures. Isabeau was nominally a.s.sociated in the council that exercised the powers of regency, but she was really under the control of the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, whom the chroniclers call "a haughty and cruel woman."

With such care as the doctors of the period were likely to give him, there was not much hope of the permanent restoration of the king's reason. One learned physician, however, did have the correct idea as to the cause of Charles's malady and prescribed a moderate diet and a quiet life for him. Under this wise treatment Charles soon recovered as much reason as he had ever had; but the regimen imposed by the physician's orders was as distasteful to the king as it was to Isabeau. The queen, under pretext of furnis.h.i.+ng diversions for him, began again the wild life of debauchery which had been the prime cause of Charles's insanity.

It was at one of these festivals that occurred the famous "dance of savages" that so nearly deprived France of her mad king.

The chronicler of Saint-Denis says that "it was an evil custom of the time in many parts of France to indulge unreproved in all sorts of indecent follies at the marriage of a widow, and to a.s.sume with their extravagant masks and disguises the liberty of making all sorts of obscene remarks to the bride and bridegroom." It was at a sort of charivari held one night (January 29, 1393) in celebration of the marriage of one of Isabeau's German waiting women, a widow, that Hugues de Guisay, one of those panders to the follies of the rich and extravagant who plan their "amus.e.m.e.nts" for them, undertook to divert the mad king, the queen, and the whole court. He devised "six coats made of linen cloth covered with pitch and thereon flax like hair." Charles put on one of these, and he and his five satyr-like companions, much delighted with their resemblance to things of horrid form, pranced in among the other revellers. The five were linked together by a chain, the king, fortunately, being loose and preceding them. As the wretched Charles, in his disgraceful costume, was trying to fulfil the part of a satyr indeed by teasing and exchanging coa.r.s.e jests with the young d.u.c.h.ess of Berri, Louis d'Orleans came into the room. Wis.h.i.+ng to discover who it was so disguised--we refuse to credit the account which says he acted in mere heedless desire to see what would happen--he held a torch too near one of the tow-clad gallants. In an instant the whole five unhappy victims of folly were in a blaze. "Save the King! save the King!" cried one of them as he burned. Fortunately the d.u.c.h.ess of Berri, guessing that it was the king who stood by her, covered him with her cloak and prevented his costume from catching fire. Four of the others, whom not a soul in this gay a.s.semblage seems to have made serious attempts to rescue, were burned to death, one escaping by jumping into a large tub of water in the pantry. Among those who died was the wanton deviser of this foolish and dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt; and as his body was borne to the tomb through the streets of Paris the people cursed him and called out after him, as he had been wont to speak to the poor when it pleased him to amuse himself with them: "Bark, dog!"

Wonderful to relate, this scene of horror at the dance of savages does not appear to have occasioned an immediate relapse on the part of the king. Isabeau, who had manifested extreme terror and sympathy at the moment of her husband's peril, joined him in making virtuous resolutions to lead a more regular and sober life. But the love of pleasure was too firmly rooted; there were renewed debauches, and Charles became more violently mad than before, knowing neither his wife nor his children, and even denying his own ident.i.ty. And so it continued throughout his life: following the regimen of his doctors, Charles would have a lucid interval; then he chased the doctors from the palace and went back to debauchery and to madness. Astrologers were sent for to enlist the sidereal powers in his behalf; one astrologer brought a book which he affirmed the Lord had sent to Adam by the hand of an angel; what good it had done to Adam appeareth not, but it certainly did not relieve the king. Then there were two Austin friars (!) who made a draught of powdered pearls and enlisted all the forces of sorcery in the king's behalf; but the king did not recover, and the friars were handed over to the Inquisition, condemned, and decapitated.

Meanwhile any affection that Isabeau may have felt for her husband had pa.s.sed away. She had found the Duke of Burgundy at last unendurably parsimonious; Louis d'Orleans was far more liberal with the money of the kingdom; besides, he was a handsome rake, whom all the women loved; it was inevitable that Isabeau should ally herself with the man who was willing not only to share her wanton pleasures but to squeeze out of the people the money required for them. The people, particularly the people of Paris, hated the Duke of Orleans because he was always imposing more taxes, and loved the Duke of Burgundy because he was politic enough to pretend to reduce taxes. It is therefore not surprising that we have so many accounts of the outrageous conduct of Isabeau de Baviere and Louis d'Orleans; for if the people are long-suffering, they yet do not forget.

In order to meet some part of the expenses incurred by the prodigality of the court, Louis d'Orleans and the queen, in 1405, imposed a new tax.

The prisons were soon crowded with poor wretches who could not pay the impost even by selling all their belongings, to the very straw of their beds. While the queen amused herself the people cursed. Not knowing what could become of the great sums raised and squandered by the worthless pair, the people said that Isabeau sent cartloads of gold into Bavaria and that Louis wasted it in magnificent structures on his domain at Couci and at Pierrefonds.

The wild accusations of a maddened people, however, were not without excuse. This miserable wanton who was Queen of France left her husband, the poor, good-natured madman, and her children to the care of servants whose wages, in the midst of all this waste of the public money, she forgot to pay. The servants neglected both children and husband; the King of France was allowed to remain in filth and rags, covered with vermin that made repulsive sores upon him, while the little dauphin was but a half starved ragam.u.f.fin. One of the physicians discovered in what state Charles was: he had refused to bathe or to change his clothes for five months, and there was danger of his dying from sheer filth.

Disguising some of his attendants in fearful costumes, the physician sent them into the mad king's den, where they terrified him into pa.s.sivity and managed to bathe him, dress his sores, and change his clothes before the fit of terror pa.s.sed away. When Charles next had a lucid interval he learned of the neglect of Isabeau, thanked those who had been more tender than his wife, and gave one lady, who had tried to care for the dauphin, a goblet of gold.

The indignation of the people was great; all cla.s.ses united in abhorrence of this shameless wife and mother. An Austin friar, bolder than the rest, preached a sermon before Isabeau and openly reproved her wantonness: "At your court reigns dame Venus, and her waiting maids are Lechery and Gormandise." The queen and her idle and vicious courtiers wished him punished for his effrontery; but Charles, hearing what he had said, declared that he liked such sermons, sent for the preacher, listened with interest and attention to his recital of the woes of the kingdom, projected reforms--and went mad again.

While the fit of reform was on, Louis d'Orleans, terrified by a storm that had overtaken him and Isabeau in one of their pleasure-jaunts, vowed to repent and pay his debts. At these glad tidings over eight hundred creditors a.s.sembled; but the clouds rolled away, and with them went Louis's desire to be honest. He laughed at the creditors and gave secret orders to debase the coinage.

The poor king was just sane enough to realize that things were going wrong; he appealed for help to the Duke of Burgundy. The vigorous and pitiless Jean Sans Peur, who had succeeded Philippe le Hardi in Burgundy, came down upon Paris, and Isabeau fled with Orleans to Melun, abandoning Charles, but planning to carry off next day the royal children and those of the Duke of Burgundy. Jean de Bourgogne, however, overtook the children and brought them back to Paris, where he now (August, 1405) established himself in the Louvre.

So outrageous had been the spoliation under Isabeau and Louis that the Parisians welcomed Jean as a deliverer. The queen, under cover of a pretended right to appropriate goods for royal uses, had systematically not only taken the necessaries of life, provisions and the like, but had seized merchandise, jewels, money stored away by the owners, and furniture, plundering even the hospitals, and storing these stolen goods with the intention of selling them at auction. Greed was her predominating trait, and so we are not surprised to find her hatred of Jean Sans Peur increasing to the point of virulence when she was deprived of the opportunity of robbing unmolested. Unfortunately for her, Orleans was not a man of ability or energy sufficient to cope successfully with Jean de Bourgogne, and the struggle between the two dukes merely exhausted the resources of Orleans without seriously impairing those of his opponent. Isabeau, moreover, was not bloodthirsty; both her indolence and her interest impelled her to favor the peace between the two dukes which was brought about in the closing months of 1407.

Louis was ill; in mere kindness his cousin of Burgundy visited him, and a reconciliation was effected. As soon as Louis was recovered from his indisposition the two, accompanied by the old Duke de Berri, who was anxious to promote peace, heard ma.s.s and took communion together, swearing fraternal love for each other. This was on Sunday, November 27, 1407. On the next Wednesday evening Louis d' Orleans went as usual to sup with Isabeau at the Hotel Barbette, and was in particularly high spirits, attempting to divert the queen, who had been much distressed at the birth of a stillborn child, a love child, as people said. About eight o'clock in the evening, a message, apparently from the king, summoned Louis, and as he went in response to the summons, accompanied by but a few pages and servants, he was set upon and hacked to pieces in the streets of Paris by a gang of ruffians under one Raoul d'Octonville.

The a.s.sa.s.sins made good their escape before people knew what had happened. When the death of the king's brother was discovered, great was the consternation; for all knew that such a crime had not been committed by an obscure scoundrel, and the question was asked, what great man had hired the a.s.sa.s.sins? In a few days Jean de Bourgogne, in a mood between terror and impudent bravado, confessed that he was guilty of the foul murder of the man to whom he had so recently sworn amity in the sight of G.o.d. Fearing that even his rank could not sufficiently s.h.i.+eld him from punishment for this shedding of the blood royal, Jean fled from Paris to his own dominions.

The dead man had been neither a good brother nor a good prince; with all of those facile graces which might have made him lovable to all men and did make him fascinating to most women he had combined no sterling qualities. He was not cruel; that is the only relatively good trait--and even that but negative--that we can set over against his reckless frivolity and licentiousness, his shameless infidelity and disregard of oaths and the most sacred obligations. He was not mourned in Paris, which was shocked but not grieved at his death; he was not sincerely mourned by the infamous queen whom he had led away from her duty to her pitiful, insane husband; but he was mourned by the woman whom he had most deeply wronged--his wife.

This wife was the lovely Italian, Valentine Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan, who had married Louis in 1389 and was a sharer in the splendors of the gorgeous entry of Isabeau de Baviere into Paris. From the first she had just cause of complaint--and yet never complained--of the infidelity of a husband whom she loved with her whole heart, but whose love she could not retain. Froissart, who was no friend of hers, tells us a most curious and extraordinary story of one of Valentine's rivals, whom Louis had preferred to his wife as early as 1392. It appears that Louis d'Orleans had rashly confided the details of an amour to that Pierre de Craon whom we have mentioned before, and this knight revealed them to Valentine. The young d.u.c.h.ess sent at once for the lady to whom Louis was devoting himself: "Wilt thou do me wrong with my lord, my husband?" The woman was abashed, and in her confusion confessed her guilt. Then said Valentine: "Thus it is: I am informed that my lord loveth you, and you him, and the matter is so far gone between you that in such a place and at such a time he promised you a thousand crowns of gold to be his paramour; howbeit, you did refuse it as then, wherein you did wisely, and therefore I pardon you; but I charge you on your life that you commune nor talk no more with him, but suffer him to pa.s.s and hearken no more to his commanding." From the treatment he received at the next meeting with his lady-love, Louis discovered that something was amiss, and she finally told him of the interview with Valentine. Louis then went home to his wife, "and showed her more token of love than ever he did before," finally wheedling her into telling him who had been the talebearer. The sequel we know: how Craon was driven from court, and returned to attempt the a.s.sa.s.sination of De Clisson.

But if her husband did not love her, the king manifested a real and innocent affection for Valentine, his "dear sister," remembering her and asking for her when, in his madness, he knew no other. Yet even out of this there was to come evil for Valentine; for the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, fearing the growth of the Orleans influence over the king, spread evil reports about the innocent relations between Charles and Valentine.

Adding to these insinuations an accusation far more dangerous than that of adultery would have been in such a court, the Burgundians a.s.serted that the king's insanity was produced and continued by the power of witchcraft; and this accusation, fastened upon Valentine, obtained such credit that her husband had to remove her from court to a sort of exile in his own dominions. We find even worse accusations credited by the unsympathetic Froissart, who reports that she had unwittingly poisoned her own child in an attempt to poison the dauphin, for "this lady was of high mind, envious and covetous of the delights and state of this world.

Gladly she would have seen the Duke her husband attain to the crown of France, she had not cared how."

Through good report and evil report the poor d.u.c.h.ess had lived on, loving her husband and leading a life at least far more regular than that of the court, though she possessed the Italian love of the artistic and the beautiful and was very extravagant. The king, now often idiotic when he was not raving, had been turned completely against her. To amuse and distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the Duke of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and mistress. To the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now succeeded Odette. She was little more than a child, but she became mistress as well as playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (_filia cujusdam mercatoris equorum_ daughter of a certain horse dealer), she wears in court history a name better than that she was born to, Odette de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the mad king, called her "la pet.i.te reine." She was happy, it seems, and kind to the king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than was quite pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in later years when Burgundy and England were leagued together, but is said to have used her influence over the king rather for France than for Burgundy. Of her we know little more than that she died about 1424, leaving a daughter whose legitimacy was recognized by Charles VII., and who was honorably married to a petty gentleman of Poitou.

When the handsome, elegant, but unfaithful Louis was murdered, Valentine was at Blois with her children; the eldest was but sixteen, old enough to feel the loss, but not old enough to avenge it. But Valentine determined to avenge her husband; her grief gave her energy. She came at once to Paris with her youngest son and her daughter-in-law, that Isabelle de France who was already a widow from the death of Richard II., and now affianced to the young Duke d'Orleans. The king, sane at the time, was inexpressibly shocked by the murder of his brother, and was moved to tears when Valentine came before him to demand justice upon the murderer. He promised to act, and probably really meant what he said, but his mind was not capable of sustained effort. Jean de Bourgogne was making active preparations for a descent upon Paris with a retinue so formidable in numbers as to be an army; and Valentine retired to Blois, to bide her time. Jean, hardly opposed by Isabeau or any of the few who might be supposed either to exercise some authority or to sympathize with the Orleans faction, came to Paris, boldly hired lawyers and quibbling theologians to justify the "death which he had inflicted upon the person of the Duke d'Orleans," and made the poor madman who was king issue letters patent declaring that he, the king, "took out of his heart all displeasure against his very dear and well-beloved cousin of Burgundy for having put out of the world his brother of Orleans."

Isabeau, who had shown herself utterly incapable of action in this crisis, remained at Melun until the arrogant and dangerous Duke of Burgundy had forced matters in this way and had been called away to repress a rebellion of Liege. Then she and her allies, with three thousand troops, entered Paris (August 26, 1408). Valentine came next day, and with her the young Charles d'Orleans, destined to become famous as one of France's sweetest poets, although kept a prisoner in England for twenty-five years. The king being once more incapacitated, it was decided that Isabeau should preside at the hearing of the formal complaint of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans. When the mourning widow and the youthful Duke of Orleans came before the council to demand a hearing, their plea was readily granted, for the menacing figure of Jean Sans Peur was no longer there to intimidate Isabeau and the friends of his victim. The next day, before the young Duke of Guyenne, who acted in the place of the king, the legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries employed by Valentine exerted themselves to exculpate Louis d'Orleans from the charges of sorcery and tyranny and to show that Jean de Bourgogne should be punished for the murder. The arguments of the Orleans advocates were far superior to the shallow, sophistical, utterly shameless harangues which had been delivered in defence of Jean. The legal advocate asked, on behalf of Valentine and her children, that Jean be compelled to come humbly to the Louvre and there to apologize to the king and to the widow and her children; that his houses in Paris be razed; that he be ordered to expend great sums in founding churches and convents, in expiation of his crime; and that he be banished beyond seas for twenty years, and, after his return, be not suffered to approach nearer than one hundred leagues to the queen and the Orleans princes.

But Valentine, though she prevailed on the queen and the princes of the council to agree to summon Jean de Bourgogne to trial before the Court of Parliament, was impotent to prosecute her cause. For Jean, after a ferocious suppression of the rebellious citizens of Liege, came boldly back to Paris, was received as a victor and a friend by the people of Paris, and so overawed the other members of the council that the Orleans sympathizers dared not even dream of prosecuting the trial of this unabashed murderer.

Valentine de Milan and her sons retired to Blois, fearing even further outrages from the triumphant Burgundians. Well might she now have justified the pathetic motto which she had a.s.sumed at her husband's tragic death: _Rien ne m'est plus, plus ne m'est rien,_--"There is nothing more for me, nothing matters more." This inscription, which she caused to be placed in the Franciscan Church at Blois, must have borne an added bitterness to her heart when she saw the selfish Isabeau making friends with the murderer of Louis. The wretched queen and the impotent members of the council were glad to make peace with Jean; they accepted his hospitality and cowered before him. Isabeau, caring nothing for the power of the crown, caring nothing for her husband or her children, caring indeed for but one thing, money, eagerly accepted that from the hands still red with the blood of the man she had loved.

With her children about her, Valentine languished at Blois for a year.

She had sought out one of Louis's natural sons, for whom she manifested affection and who, she used to say, was her own by rights, and more fitted to avenge his father than any of the other children. Valentine was in this a good judge, for the spirited, ardent lad whom she loved for his father's sake was none other than Jean, Comte de Dunois, afterward famous among the martial heroes of France as "Le Batard d'Orleans." Valentine died on December 4, 1408, and well might they say that she had died of a broken heart; for the one great emotion of her life had been the pa.s.sionate devotion to one of the most despicable men that ever had a faithful wife--a devotion generous enough, indeed, to excuse even follies and infidelities.

It was well for Valentine that death came when it did, for it saved her from still further sorrows and humiliations. Four months after her death, her unhappy sons were led to Chartres to go through the forms of a solemn reconciliation with their father's murderer. The duke expressed his contrition for "the fact of the murder committed upon Louis d'Orleans, howbeit this was done for the good of the king and the kingdom, as he was ready to prove, if desired." With such insulting phrases the sons were compelled to be satisfied, and they were forced to swear, with tears that they could not restrain, to harbor no ill feelings against their dear cousin of Burgundy, for whom the king, the queen, and the princes of the blood all interceded.

In this shameful mockery of a peace, ratified in the great cathedral of Chartres, Isabeau de Baviere had acted for the Duke of Burgundy. She was soon to give still further proof of her heartlessness and ingrat.i.tude, when Jean de Bourgogne arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and executed Jean de Montaigu, superintendent of finances, who had been an old servant of the queen, who had even given her that splendid Hotel Barbette in which she had last supped with Louis d'Orleans, and who had drawn up the treaty of reconciliation between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans.

Isabeau might have interceded in his behalf, and did make some move to do so; but a promise that her son should share in the confiscated wealth of Montaigu was enough to purchase her consent to the latter's death.

Isabeau was at this time busying herself less and less about affairs of state; since she had leagued herself in secret with Jean de Bourgogne she had no cares but those attendant upon providing pleasures and amus.e.m.e.nts for herself. Her son, the dauphin, following in Isabeau's footsteps, was scandalizing all Paris by his orgies. At last, the people of Paris rose in one of their occasional sincere but futile attempts to reform the manners of a corrupt court. We shall not deal with the horrors of this outburst, one of the many little wavelets of popular indignation presaging, but presaging only to heedless revellers, the great tidal wave that was to envelop and bear down the just and the unjust alike some four hundred years later. The butchers and bakers and honest workingmen, led chiefly by a surgeon, Jean de Troyes, came by thousands to reform the morals of the dauphin. This miserable debauchee, as well as the rest of the court, trembled before them, and willingly conceded anything that could be asked. Even the poor mad king, whom the people loved and did not blame, had the white hood, emblem of the commune, placed upon his head, and smiled pitifully at his rough but well-meaning subjects. Forthwith, Isabeau equipped her head with a white hood, and so did all the court, the judges, and even the learned doctors of the University. But Isabeau's white hood was not wide enough to cover the scandalous horns of her headdress. Rising to the point of fury upon hearing that the dauphin, probably at the instigation of his mother, had been in communication with the Orleanist forces to induce them to march upon Paris, the Cabochiens, as the communists called themselves, in May, 1413, invaded the palace itself and arrested Louis de Baviere, the queen's brother, and as many as fifteen of the ladies of her suite probably such as had made themselves peculiarly conspicuous and offensive by the extravagance and the indecency of their costumes.

Isabeau wept, and pleaded vainly for a respite for her brother, then on the eve of his marriage; the stern moralists from the markets of Paris were inexorable and Louis went to jail unmarried, while Isabeau went to bed sick with childish fury.

For a moment turning our attention from the queen, let us advert to the political conditions in France. From the time of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Louis d' Orleans there had been civil war, with rare and brief intervals of peace, between the partisans of Burgundy and those of Orleans, now led by Bernard d'Armagnac, whose daughter Charles d'Orleans had married after the early death of his first wife, Isabelle de France. While civil war in itself would have caused misery and ruin enough, its horrors were enhanced by the crafty policy of Henry IV. of England, who, when he was not able to intervene in person, responded to the solicitations of first one party and then the other, and thus caused Armagnacs and Bourguignons to exhaust themselves in fruitless strife. It was the craft of Henry IV.

and the folly of France that prepared the way for Agincourt, that crus.h.i.+ng victory of the great Henry V., who in the presence of the overwhelming French army proclaimed, in Shakespeare's paraphrase of his words:

"We are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

G.o.d's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more!"

The event justified King Harry's boastful confidence: the chivalry of France found itself discredited, dead, or in captivity. And yet, even in the hour of France's distress, the indolent Isabeau could hardly be prevailed upon to take any action in behalf of her son, the dauphin, Louis de Guienne who, in fact, lived but a little over two months after Agincourt, and was succeeded by Jean de Touraine. In two years more (1417) Jean de Touraine was dead, poisoned, it was said, by Bernard d'Armagnac; the new dauphin, Charles, was a boy of but fourteen years.

This Charles, one of the most uncomfortably cold and contemptible personages in history, had been reared by the queen and the Armagnac party with sentiments of the bitterest hatred against the Burgundians.

Determined to win complete control of Charles, Bernard d'Armagnac sought to discredit Isabeau with her son and with the king. There was no difficulty in finding pretexts, for the sober-minded Juvenal des Ursins tells us that in the chateau of Vincennes, whither Isabeau had retired to revel more at ease, "many shameful things were done" by the queen and her troop of rakes and gaudily dressed ladies; but indecency in dress was not the only scandal that Bernard revealed to the king, who was at the time in better mental condition than for years.

As he rode back from the chateau one evening the king met Loys de Boisbourdon, whom he knew to be one of Isabeau's a.s.sociates. Suddenly suspicious and resolved to know the whole truth, Charles had him arrested and put to the question (_i.e._, tortured). Such horrors were revealed by this unlucky sharer of the queen's pleasures that Charles deemed them not fit for further circulation, and accordingly Loys de Boisbourdon carried his secrets with him into a sack, which was inscribed: _Laissez pa.s.ser la justice du roi_, "Make way for the justice of the king," and the waters of the Seine covered the sack and the sinner. The mad king's justice, of which we read with a certain joyful sympathy, was not ended, for he sent the queen and the d.u.c.h.ess of Bavaria to Blois, and later to Tours, where they were compelled to live under surveillance and in salutary simplicity. The dauphin seized some moneys belonging to Isabeau, who henceforth cherished the most unrelenting hatred for her own son, accusing him of being responsible for her exile. The real grief to her, we may feel sure, was the loss of her money.

From this time, we find Isabeau intriguing with the Duke of Burgundy. As Jean was marching upon Paris he came into the neighborhood of Tours. The pious Isabeau was suddenly filled with a desire to hear ma.s.s at a particular convent some distance outside the walls. While she was engaged in her devotions the troops of Burgundy, in ambush, surrounded the convent and "captured" Isabeau and her guardians. The queen and her ally, styling themselves governors of France, established a parliament at Amiens, sent out decrees by authority of the "council of the queen and the duke," and fought the dauphin on paper and in the field. When in June, 1418, the Parisians, provoked beyond endurance by the exactions and the arrogance of the Armagnac n.o.bles, ma.s.sacred every Armagnac that they could find, Isabeau stood too much in awe of these fierce men of the common people to enter Paris. Had she not seen their violence before, merely because she lived in luxury while they starved? She waited for the arrival of Jean de Bourgogne, and the two entered Paris together on July 14th. The dauphin, the sole hope of France, fled before the armies of his mother.

As early as May, 1419, the queen had been in negotiation with the English to disinherit her son, when the sudden death of Jean Sans Peur, who was a.s.sa.s.sinated at a conference with the dauphin in September, 1419, interrupted her plans; but she was determined at all hazards not to fall into the hands of her son. She wrote a letter of condolence to the widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, and promised the new duke, Philippe le Bon, to a.s.sist him in punis.h.i.+ng the dauphin. Philippe, like all this race of Burgundian dukes, was a man of action, a man of strong character, slightly more scrupulous than his father, and yet not entirely without inclination to sacrifice honor to policy. It is not to be wondered at that, justly indignant at the treacherous murder of his father, he should have sacrificed the interests of France to satisfy his resentment against the dauphin.

The queen, the Duke of Burgundy, and the unhappy king, a mere tool in their hands, treated at once with Henry V. It was stipulated in the preliminaries that Henry should aid them and be aided by them in war upon the dauphin. The selfish mother who thus enlisted even foreigners in her war against her son was capable of yet worse things. It was agreed that Henry should marry Catherine de France, the youngest daughter of Isabeau, and should at once receive control of the entire kingdom, in consideration of the incapacity of Charles VI.

Isabeau de Baviere was merely a wanton, an idle, vain, shallow-hearted seeker after pleasure, utterly incapable of taking seriously her role as Queen of France. With such love as her heart was capable of feeling, she loved Catherine, while her mean nature could never forgive the son who was the heir of France. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find her signing and causing the king to sign a treaty which violated every principle of patriotism and honor. By the treaty signed at Troyes on May 21, 1420, Charles, Duke of Touraine, Dauphin of France, was disinherited; the very principles of the Salic law were set at naught; and the heritage of Charles was bestowed, not even upon one of his elder sisters, but upon that Catherine of France, the youngest child, now Queen of England, and, in failure of heirs of her body, upon her husband, Henry V. of England. The two nations were to be merged, each retaining its distinctive laws, but both were to be under the rule of English sovereigns, and Henry was to aid in restoring peace and in destroying "the rebels" under Charles, "called the Dauphin." One of the bribes paid to Isabeau for selling the kingdom of her son was a pension; for we find an ordinance of Henry, "heir and regent of France," granting to the queen the sum of two thousand francs per month.

Isabeau's enjoyment of her pension was not destined to be of long continuance. The brilliant Henry V. died on August 31, 1422; and less than two months later died Charles VI., _le bien aime_. During thirty of the forty-two years of his reign he had been incapacitated by madness or by idiocy, and in the intervals France had been worse misgoverned than ever before in her history; so that, with wars foreign and domestic and with the shameless extravagance of the court, the kingdom had been reduced to a deplorable state, scores dying in the streets of Paris of sheer hunger while the English king was spending his first triumphant winter in that city. For all these evils and miseries the people placed the blame where, in good truth, it belonged, on the queen and the royal princes. For the mad king there was nothing but a compa.s.sionate love, a tender sympathy; the people pitied this kindly unfortunate, abandoned by his wife, used as a tool by first one set of princes and then another.

At the funeral of Charles VI. not a single prince of France was present; the English Bedford conducted the whole sad affair. "As the body of the King was put in the sepulchre beside his predecessors, the heralds broke their rods and cast them into the grave... And then the Berri king-at-arms, accompanied by several heralds and pursuivants, cried out over the grave: 'May G.o.d have mercy upon the very n.o.ble and very excellent Prince Charles, sixth of the name, our lawful and sovereign lord!' And after this the aforesaid king-at-arms cried out: 'May G.o.d grant long life and prosperity to Henry, by the grace of G.o.d King of France and of England, our sovereign lord!' And then the heralds raised aloft their truncheons with the fleur-de-lis, crying: _'Vive le roi!

Vive le roi!'_ And some of those present answered _Noel_ (the ancient salutation to the King); but there were some who wept."

Thus the wretched Isabeau's work was, it seemed, complete, her son being a fugitive before the arms of the foreigner, while her infant grandson was King of France. From this time she disappears completely from the scene of action, drawing her meagre pension from the hands of the English, who treated her with deserved contempt, and cursed by all France for the memory of her evil deeds. We catch but a fleeting glimpse of her, living in obscurity at the royal palace of Saint-Pol. When on December 2, 1431, the young King Henry VI. made his solemn entry into his capital of Paris, the royal procession pa.s.sed by the windows of the palace, and the boy king, looking up, saw an old woman in faded finery, surrounded by a bevy of women attendants. They, told him it was his grand-mother, the frivolous and once beautiful Isabeau de Baviere, and he doffed his cap, while Isabeau bowed to him and turned aside to weep.

Did she weep from sincere contrition, or merely from regret of the departed luxury and extravagance of her life? She was not to live many years longer; but it was long enough to know that France had survived even her treachery and that her son was at peace with the Duke of Burgundy. So far from rejoicing, it is said that she died of regret that the treaty of Troyes had come to naught, her death occurring on September 24, 1435. She died with outward show of piety, and was buried as meanly, says a contemporary, as if she had been a humble _bourgeoise_, but four persons being present at the graveside.