Women of Mediaeval France Part 7

The kind of life we have been describing, the was.h.i.+ng of hands, the plentiful food, the wine, the amus.e.m.e.nts, the rich costumes--all these are things belonging to the lady. The woman of the poorer cla.s.ses, the laboring woman, had no such comforts; lucky was she, indeed, if she had enough of coa.r.s.e food and coa.r.s.e clothing for herself and children. The mediaeval moralists noted the inequality of the cla.s.ses, and one of them compares the fare of the rich, which we have mentioned, with that of the poor: "There was not one among them, great or small, who did not have a fine appet.i.te for dry (black) bread, and garlic, and salt; nor did they eat anything else with these, neither mutton, nor beef, nor a bit of goose or young spring chicken. And after the meal they took up the basin with both hands, and drank water." Having attempted to give some idea of the life of a lady of the time, we may now turn to the life of Blanche de Castille, the first lady of France in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. For the first time we shall find a woman whose history will include a large part of the history of France during her period. As a late biographer, Elie Berger, _Histoire de Blanche de Castille_, says: "Her life, during a great part of the thirteenth century, is the life of France itself, the France to which she gave peace; her history is the history of the power of the throne, of the monarchy, outside of which there was then no France, no _patrie_."

CHAPTER V

BLANCHE DE CASTILLE AS REGENT OF FRANCE

IN a preceding chapter we saw how old Queen Eleanor was despatched into Spain to bring her granddaughter, Blanche de Castille, as a bride for Louis of France, and how Eleanor fell ill on the way, and handed over her charge to Elie de Malmort, Archbishop of Bordeaux. The child whom Eleanor was bringing back as a sacrifice to peace between John and Philippe Auguste was then but a little over twelve years of age. Blanche was born in the early part of the year 1188, at Palencia. Her father, a good man and a brave warrior, was Alphonso VIII., surnamed the n.o.ble, King of Castille; and her mother was Eleanor of England, daughter of Henry II. and Eleanor of Guienne. Fortunately, this latter lady seems to have inherited none of the bad traits of her mother and namesake; at least contemporary accounts call her "chaste, n.o.ble, and of good counsel." The family of the young Princess Blanche was large and of ill.u.s.trious connections. We need not note those of the direct Plantagenet line, which are sufficiently familiar, but on her father's side we may mention her eldest sister, Berengere, who, married to her cousin, the King of Leon, had been forced to separate from him in spite of their love, in spite of their children, in spite of important reasons of state. Queen Berengere was of a character, it appears, very much like that of her sister, and there was much love between the two. Another sister, but a year older than Blanche, married Alphonso of Portugal, whose brother was that Count Ferrand de Flandre defeated at Bouvines by Philippe Auguste and kept in captivity for many years. Of this sister a curious story is told.

It appears that, in the negotiations between John and Philippe Auguste, the name of the Princess of Castille who should become the wife of Prince Louis had not been specified. The King of Castille had two unmarried daughters, Urraque and Blanche. When the amba.s.sadors of France came, accompanied by Queen Eleanor, the two princesses were brought before them. They chose Urraque, as the elder and the more beautiful; but when they heard her name they protested that would never do, it was too hard for the people of France to learn to p.r.o.nounce; and so the choice fell upon Blanche.

After being conducted to Normandy, where was the court of her uncle, John, the little princess was married immediately. The treaty for whose ratification and observance she was a sort of pledge was signed on May 22, 1200. John ceded nearly all that Philippe could ask, and bestowed twenty thousand marks sterling upon the young husband. The next day the ceremony was performed at Portmort, on the right bank of the Seine, by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, in the presence of a great a.s.semblage of barons and ecclesiastics. The young prince and his bride could not be married on French soil by reason of the interdict then in force against his father for repudiating Ingeburge; hence the choice of Norman soil and of such an out of the way place. The prince, aged only twelve years and six months, proceeded with Blanche direct to Paris. There is no record of the usual festivities accompanying a royal marriage, despite the accounts of some modern historians, who claim that there were grand tourneys, and that Louis was wounded in one of them.

In one so young as Blanche it is useless to look for the traits of the grown woman; we might conjecture much, but it would be in the light of after events. To those about her at this time Blanche seemed a beautiful girl, deserving of the flattering play upon words which her name suggested. She was _la princesse candide_ not only in looks but in conduct, and won the devoted love of her boy husband, who seems to have been himself of a lovable disposition. It was at his request that Hugh of Lincoln, at that time in great repute, visited Blanche, whom he found in tears and managed to console. But the times were troublous, and we may well suppose that there was little chance for the fostering of quiet domestic virtues when one had been forced to marry merely for reasons of state. It is rumored, though not positively confirmed, that the crafty King of France made use of his young daughter-in-law to solicit from King John another slice of Normandy, which John dared not refuse.

Whether this be true or not, it is at least certain that neither immediately nor ultimately did the marriage of Blanche de Castille help the English Plantagenets. For John quarrelled with Alphonso, Blanche's father, and the two were at war with intervals of truce, between 1204 and 1208, the subject of dispute being Gascony. Blanche naturally sided with her father rather than with her uncle, and when she bore heirs who might inherit the crown of France, made stronger by the accession of the Norman lands which had been taken from John and given to her husband, it is easy to see that her sympathies would be with her adopted country.

Blanche's first child a daughter, who lived but a short time, and whose name is not known was born in 1205. On September 9, 1209, she gave birth to a son, hailed as the heir to the crown, and named Philippe, in honor of his grandfather. But this child, too, lived only a few years, dying when between eight and nine. In the interval, on January 26, 1213, Blanche had borne twins, Alphonse and Jean, who did not live long. Other domestic joys and sorrows were coming to the young princess. Her father won a great victory over the Moors, at Las Navas de Tolosa, July 16, 1212, and her sister Berengere wrote her the glad news: "It is my pleasure to inform you of joyful news; thanks be to G.o.d, from whom all good comes, our king, our lord, our father has vanquished on the field of battle the Emir Almounmenim, by which, I think, he has won very great honor; for until this time it has never happened that a king of Morocco has been defeated in a pitched battle." Within two years after this the gallant Alphonso was dead, and one month later his wife Eleanor followed him to the tomb.

Father and mother had thus both been taken from Blanche, while she was far from them, in a strange land. But her new country was winning a hold upon her heart; in the war then waging between her Uncle John and her father-in-law, all her interests and all her affection were on the side of France. And now another son was born, on Saint Mark's day, April 25, 1215, at the royal residence of Poissy. The child was named Louis, and his birth seems to have created but little interest, as was natural, since the older brother, Philippe, was still living. But this child became the famous Saint Louis, and pious legends must needs gather around his birth and his infancy: it was at the special intervention of Saint Dominique, whose prayers Blanche had asked, that this son was born; then, at the time of his birth, the pious queen learned that, out of consideration for her, the bells of the church of Poissy had been silenced, so she had herself removed, though then in childbed. The piety of Blanche was sincere but never exaggerated; it is easy to see in such a legend the art of those who thought it fitting that a saint, even before birth, should allow nothing to interfere with the services of the church. In like manner Blanche's extreme jealousy in regard to her baby is a fiction that has been often repeated. Louis was given to a nurse, Marie la Picarde, and there is no truth in the story which represents Blanche as s.n.a.t.c.hing him from the breast of one of her ladies and forcing the infant to disgorge the milk of the stranger.

The little Louis was not two years old when the English barons, in revolt against John, called his father to their aid and promised him the throne of England, to which he had no claim except through Blanche.

Louis went to England, in spite of the anathemas of the Pope against all who dared oppose John. Successful at first against the English king, the French prince began to suffer serious reverses when the hated John was succeeded by his son, Henry, against whom the English barons had no just cause of complaint. Philippe Auguste had been from the beginning too politic to lend his son open a.s.sistance, or even to sanction his enterprise. The task of collecting and sending him reinforcements devolved upon Blanche. For the first time the full energy of her character is displayed. A chronicler, almost contemporary, records an alleged interview between her and Philippe Auguste, who, deaf to his son's entreaties for help, had declared that he would do nothing, and that he did not care to risk excommunication. "When Madame Blanche (it is by this t.i.tle that she is referred to even when queen) heard of this she came to the king and said: 'Would you let my lord, your son, perish thus in a strange land? Sire, for G.o.d's sake, remember that he is to reign after you; send him what he needs, at least the revenues of his own patrimony.' 'Certes,' said the king, 'I will do nothing, Blanche.'

'Nothing, sire?' 'No, truly.' 'In G.o.d's name, then,' replied Blanche, 'I know what I will do.' 'And what will you do?' 'By the holy Mother of G.o.d, I have beautiful children by my husband; I will put them in pledge, and well I know some who will lend me on their security.' Then she rushed madly from the king's presence; and he, when he saw her go, believed that she had spoken but the truth. He had her called back, and said to her: 'Blanche, I will give you of my treasure as much as you would have; do whatever you wish with it; but rest a.s.sured that I myself will send him nothing.' 'Sire,' said Madame Blanche, 'you say well.' And then the great treasure was given to her, and she sent it to her lord."

The details of this conversation may not be absolutely accurate, but the facts seem to have been correctly recorded. Blanche went to Calais and there established headquarters for collecting provisions, munitions, and a small army for her husband. She despatched an expedition to his aid, the army being under command of Robert de Courtenay, the fleet under that of the famous pirate and freebooter Eustache le Moine. But the fleet was destroyed by the English off Sandwich, August 24, 1217, and there was no other course open to Louis than to make the best terms he could with Henry III. and return to France. Blanche had displayed an energy that elicited the admiration of her contemporaries, but for the next few years she had no part in the larger events of history.

Domestic duties, domestic sorrows, indeed, must have absorbed a good deal of the energy of this devoted wife and mother. In September, 1216, her son Robert had been born. In 1218 she lost Philippe, her oldest son.

Three other children came in rapid succession: John (1219); Alphonse (1220); Philippe Dagobert (1222). Of these only Alphonse was destined to live to manhood. The anxious mother, having lost so many of her children, would make vows for their recovery when any of them fell ill.

Fearing that she might have forgotten to fulfil some of these vows, often made under stress of anguish, she sought and obtained from the Pope (1220) permission to perform charities in place of trying to fulfil her vows in all cases.

In her native land, too, there were events to claim her attention. Her brother, Henry, having been accidentally killed after a short reign, Queen Berengere was the next heiress; but she refused the crown for herself, placing it upon the head of her son, Ferdinand III., whom she continued to counsel and a.s.sist very much as Blanche was later to counsel her son. It is reported that the discontented subjects of Ferdinand offered the crown to Blanche. Whether this be true or not, she would never have taken sides against her sister Berengere.

On July 14, 1223, the great King Philippe Auguste died, and on August 6th Queen Blanche and King Louis VIII. were crowned with solemn ceremonial. The Abbot of Saint-Remi, escorted by two hundred knights, brought the sacred ampulla to the cathedral of Rheims, and the archbishop anointed the royal pair. The king's sword was borne in the procession by his half-brother, Philippe Hurepel, son of Agnes de Meranie and Philippe Auguste. There were great festivities, lasting eight days, and the new king and queen manumitted serfs and showed mercy upon prisoners and captives. Queen Blanche still remains in the background during the brief reign of Louis VIII.; but we may note that she used her influence to secure the liberation of Ferrand de Portugal, Count of Flanders, who had been in captivity since the battle of Bouvines. Released from prison in 1227, Ferrand lived to become one of Blanche's most steadfast and useful allies.

Louis VIII. died in November, 1226, leaving Blanche with eight children to care for; in addition to those already mentioned there were Isabelle, Etienne, and Charles, all born since the accession of Louis. The king, who had forced the submission of Languedoc during the expedition on which he died, made his barons swear to be true to his son Louis.

Realizing that his devoted wife could not reach him before his death, he provided as best he could for her. With perfect confidence in her, a confidence fully justified by the event, he declared that Prince Louis, his heir, as well as the whole kingdom and all the rest of his children should be under the tutelage of Queen Blanche until they came of age; to this important portion of the king's will some of the great barons and high church dignitaries were witnesses.

Blanche and her husband had loved each other tenderly and faithfully, and at first the widowed queen was looked upon with compa.s.sion. She was on her way to Louis's bedside, the younger children in a carriage and Prince Louis riding ahead, when she was met by the news of his death.

Her grief was pitiable; but her sense of duty toward her children and her realization of the difficulties and dangers of her position gave her courage. She was not the kind of woman to succ.u.mb under grief for the loss of a well-loved husband or anxiety at finding herself obliged to govern a kingdom whose king was yet a boy.

At first the old retainers of Louis were around her and faithful to her.

She was politic enough to win the support of the only prince of the blood, Philippe, surnamed Hurepel, on account of the great mat of s.h.a.ggy hair he had inherited from his father, Philippe Auguste. Ferrand, Count of Flanders, was her friend, and she could rely upon the support of most of the clergy, and especially upon that of the papal legate, Romain Frangipani, Cardinal of Saint Angelo. Her surest allies, however, were the immediate servants of the crown: the chancellor, Guerin, who was unfortunately not to live long; Archambaud de Bourbon, Count Amaury de Montfort, the chamberlain, Barthelemy de Roye, and the n.o.ble constable, Mathieu de Montmorency. With the aid of such friends, Blanche began her duties as regent.

How long this regency was to last, how long it really did last, are matters not altogether easy to determine. In the first place, there were precedents, in the royal line as well as in feudal annals, for considering the age of majority as fourteen years; but there seems to have been authority equally as good for holding to the age of twenty-one. Louis was in his twelfth year when his father died. Blanche continued to act as regent for about ten years, and there was no protest based on the pretext that the young king should have been considered a major at fourteen years.

As soon as possible, Blanche had Louis crowned, a ceremony which did not imply that he was to be considered out of her tutelage, but which did give him a certain amount of prestige and consequent protection. The coronation, which took place on November 29, 1226, at Rheims, was but poorly attended by the n.o.bles. Already there was discontent, and the great house of Dreux, led by the crafty and unscrupulous Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was at the head of the disaffected. Count Thibaud de Champagne, son of Blanche's first cousin, would have come to the coronation, but Blanche ordered the gates of Rheims closed against him; for it was currently rumored, though the rumor was entirely without justification, that Louis VIII. had died very suddenly because of poison administered by Thibaud. But, with or without the presence of the great barons, Louis IX. was crowned, and Blanche made for herself and her son such friends as she could.

In England Henry III., always restive under the thought of the losses sustained by his father in France, was continually scheming to regain the lost territories. He formed alliances with some of the chief lords of Poitou, entered into negotiations for the hand of Yolande, daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, and made abortive, but nevertheless startling, preparations for a descent upon the coast of France. His allies among the discontented French n.o.bility took up arms, inspired in part by the jealous Isabelle d'Angouleme, who had been the queen of John Lackland and was now Countess of Marche. Blanche promptly summoned the ban royal to a.s.semble at Tours, whither she went with Louis in February, 1227.

Count Thibaud de Champagne had been in treaty with the rebels and was marching with his forces as if to join them in Poitou. Tradition says that he was diverted by a secret message from Blanche; at any rate, he suddenly turned in his march and came to Tours, did homage to the boy king, and was graciously received by the queen regent. The defection of Thibaud upset the plans of the rebels, who quarrelled among themselves.

Many of them came, one by one, to submit to Louis IX., and hostilities were suspended between the French and Richard of Cornwall, brother and representative of Henry III.

During the truce which followed, Blanche was enabled to prosecute the unfinished war in Languedoc against Raymond VII. of Toulouse and the Albigensian heretics. One is surprised to find that certain churches in France refused at first to grant the king subsidies to conduct this crusade, and that it was only by the vigorous measures of Cardinal Remain that they were at length compelled to yield.

The turbulent barons could not endure being governed by a woman. If Blanche had been a weak ruler the indignity of bearing her rule would have been atoned for by the laxity of that rule; but she was strong, and could control the barons, who accordingly hated her. Pierre Mauclerc and his party declared that France was not meant to be ruled by a foreign woman; they called her "Dame Hersent," like the she-wolf in the _Roman du Renart_; they circulated odious calumnies against her. The most noteworthy of these calumnies is that which connected her name with that of Thibaud de Champagne as an adulteress. They said that Blanche had been his paramour even during the life of her husband; nay, that she had connived at the murder of her husband, poisoned by Thibaud. They alleged that she was, moreover, secretly sending the royal treasure into Spain; that she was so vile that one lover did not suffice; that she had illicit relations with Cardinal Remain. It is needless to say that there is no foundation for these tales; they are the tax that a good woman paid for being at the same time great.

The malcontents plotted to separate the king from his mother, and determined to carry him off by force. Blanche and Louis were near Orleans when warned of the danger. Hastening toward Paris, they were forced to take refuge in the strong castle of Montlhery, for the rebels were a.s.sembled in force at Corbeil, between them and Paris. Blanche appealed to the citizens of Paris to safeguard the king's approach.

There could not have been a better testimonial to the popularity of the royal family and, incidentally, to the good government enjoyed under Blanche than the response made by these _bourgeois_. The militia of the surrounding country having been gathered in Paris, the combined forces of the city and country marched to Montlhery, deploying along the route.

Long after this Saint Louis used to tell Joinville of his triumphal entry: "He told me," says this chronicler, "that from Montlhery, the road was filled with men with arms and men without arms, up to the gates of Paris, and that all shouted and called upon the Lord to grant him long and happy life, and to guard and protect him against his enemies."

The n.o.bles were balked, and retired from Corbeil.

The barons, though temporarily disheartened, were by no means reduced to peaceful submission. England was still in a threatening att.i.tude; while the long and relentless war against the Albigenses was dragging on, with success now on this side, now on that. Blanche had need to fortify herself as wisely as she could. She sought the support of the bourgeois.

The citizens of Limoges and of Saint-Junien in the Limousin, in charters granted in 1228, swore fealty to the queen as well as to the king.

Cardinal Remain, at Blanche's instance, came back to France as legate; she found his advice, and the prestige of the papal authority, of material a.s.sistance. After some negotiation, the truce with England was renewed for a year, from July, 1228, to July, 1229.

Philippe Hurepel, who had been faithful for a time to the interests of his sister-in-law and her son, displayed discontent, and now went over to the side of the rebels. It is said that he even had an eye on the throne, and that the barons had some notion of trying to set up Enguerrand de Coucy as king that Coucy who was the head of the house with the famous motto:

"Je ne suis roi, ne due, ne prince, ne comte aussi: Je suis le sire de Coucy."

Before actual hostilities began, Blanche had required and received new oaths of fealty from the communes of the royal domain north of the Seine, as far as Flanders. Magistrates of Amiens, Compiegne, Laon, Peronne, and a host of other places, swore to defend the king, Queen Blanche, and her children. The barons had arranged that Pierre Mauclerc should begin hostilities, and that when Blanche summoned the feudal army to march against him each should come, but come with only two knights, which would make a force so small that Mauclerc would have nothing to fear. Once more Thibaud de Champagne came to the rescue. He gathered all the troops he could, and came with over three hundred knights, these being, when joined to the contingents from the loyal communes of the royal domain, enough to save Blanche. In January, 1229, Blanche marched into the domains of the refractory Mauclerc--who had refused to appear when summoned to the court--and laid siege to the strong castle of Belleme. In a few days, though the stronghold was considered impregnable, the garrison was forced to surrender. The actual military operations of this successful siege were conducted, of course, by Blanche's general, Jean Clement, the marshal of France; but she herself looked after the comfort of her army. It was intensely cold; she ordered the soldiers to build great bonfires in the camp, promising pay to those who would fetch fuel from the forests; by this means, men and horses were kept warm.

After the capitulation of the garrison of Belleme, Mauclerc's power was temporarily broken, and Blanche marched back to Paris with Louis, who had accompanied her. The barons had not received the support on which they had counted from Henry III., whose weakness and vacillation kept him from taking advantage of what would have been a splendid opportunity to weaken the power of France.

In her precarious situation Blanche needed the support of all cla.s.ses; it was now her misfortune to incur, for a time, the ill will of the students of the University of Paris. These students had, from long custom and by royal favor, been allowed all sorts of privileges and immunities, since the University added no little to the prestige of Paris. They were a turbulent set, frequently engaged in brawls with the citizens. On Shrove Monday, 1229, some students went to an inn at Saint-Marcel, outside Paris, where they ate and drank, and then engaged in a violent quarrel with the innkeeper when the bill was presented. The quarrel at first seemed rather comic; after a wordy battle they came to blows and pulling of hair, till the students were driven ignominiously from the field. But next day, February 27th, they returned in force, armed with sticks and stones, and even swords. In a spirit of undiscriminating revenge, they wrecked the first inn they came across and beat the people in the streets, women as well as men. Word was sent at once to the authorities of the University, who appealed to Queen Blanche through Cardinal Romain. The prefect of Paris, with his soldiers, was ordered to proceed to the scene of the rioting and restore order, which he did with rather too good a will, for in the process there was bloodshed; several students were killed, and the complaint was made that those whom the prefect and his men attacked were not the guilty ones. The authorities of the University were up in arms against the queen. As she declined to make the reparation they demanded--which would have left the students more lawless than ever for the future--teachers and students scattered, to Rheims, to Angers, to Orleans, and many returned to their native land. The concessions which Blanche then made could not bring back all who had gone away. Though her policy may have been mistakenly severe one can but grant that she had cause for being severe. All our sympathies are with the woman whom the students did not hesitate to vilify, reviving the calumny about the relations of Blanche and Cardinal Romain, who had given her able support in this affair. Such currency did this vile story gain that one chronicler tells us that the queen submitted to an examination to disprove it.

The first real victory for France in the long war of the Albigenses came with the treaty of Paris, sometimes called the treaty of Meaux, April 12, 1229. It is, perhaps, fortunate for the reader's good opinion of Blanche that we omit to chronicle the horrors of this war, though most of those horrors were committed before she became ruler of France.

Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse, the head and front of the resistance in Provence, was Blanche's cousin, and she had always shown herself mindful of family ties, so that we may charitably suppose that she did the best she could for the ruined Raymond. We do not know that she a.s.sisted at his humiliation,--barefooted, and in his s.h.i.+rt, he was led to the door of Notre Dame and made to swear absolute submission to the Church--but we cannot go wrong in a.s.suming that some of the wise provisions of the treaty of Paris were of her suggesting. The provisions were very wise indeed, securing to the French crown almost everything that could be hoped; in our wildest moments of enthusiasm, however, we could not accuse Blanche of having tempered policy with mercy. As a summary of the situation, we may state that Raymond contracted to' surrender to Louis Beaucaire, Nimes, Carca.s.sonne, and Beziers, with other territories on the Mediterranean to the west of the Rhone; that Toulouse and its territory must revert to his daughter Jeanne, who was to be espoused by one of the brothers of Louis IX.; that the dominions remaining to him should also revert to Jeanne, in failure of other heirs of his body.

Failing heirs of Jeanne, the domains acquired as her dower were to revert to the crown of France. More complete ruin for Raymond could hardly have been compa.s.sed. It was the end of Provence both as a political and an artistic ent.i.ty.

We have alluded several times to the famous Thibaud IV., called _Le Chansonnier_, Count of Champagne. His relations with Blanche of Castille are matter both of history and of legend; it behooves us to try to sift the one from the other and to present some account of the loves of Blanche and Thibaud.

Thibaud's mother, Blanche de Navarre, Countess of Champagne, had to play a role not unlike that of her cousin Blanche de Castille; she acted as regent in the name of her son, and it was due to her good management that he was allowed to inherit his patrimony. This was surely an age of woman, with Berengere ruling in Castille, Queen Blanche in France, and another Blanche, of the same family, in Champagne. Thibaud was of a gallant temperament, priding himself upon his knightly accomplishments, but not less upon his talent as a poet; for he was one of those imitators of the troubadours whom we might almost cla.s.s with the troubadours themselves. Of his gifts as a poet we shall not speak here; in the histories of French literature will be found the record of many of his chansons. As a man, it is altogether probable that Thibaud did not suffer from an over-scrupulous conscience; we have knowledge of his acting in very bad faith on several occasions. But these manifestations of bad faith were almost always to the advantage of Blanche de Castille.

The rebel barons would enter into league with Thibaud, and he would agree to betray his queen, and would even consider seriously the question of marrying the daughter and heiress of Pierre Mauclerc. At the critical moment comes a missive, nominally from the boy king: "Sir Thibaud de Champagne, I have heard that you have promised to take to wife the daughter of the Count Pierre de Bretagne; I bid you, by all that you hold most dear in this kingdom, that you do not so. The reason, you know full well;... for never have I had one who wished me more ill than this same count." The impulsive Thibaud reads the note, and he and his knights turn aside to support the fair lady who was the real author of the missive. It was this sort of thing which made the barons hate and distrust Thibaud and which gave some color to the reports they industriously circulated, alleging that Blanche was the mistress of Thibaud. The latter had already been accused of poisoning Louis VIII.; it was now added that this crime had been connived at by his paramour, Blanche.

That Thibaud really loved Blanche, there can be no reasonable doubt. His amorous songs were probably inspired in part by this devotion to one whom he might well admire and love, the fair, and good, and great Queen Blanche, whom he could proudly claim as a cousin. In one of his songs he alludes to her, it seems to us, very distinctly:

"Trop est ce trouble, et s'aveis si cler nom."

(Troubled was your life, and yet your name so clear.) The chronicles of the time abound in allusions to Thibaud's pa.s.sion. It is said that, on one occasion, after a momentary revolt, he came to make his submission, and was severely reproached by the queen for his ingrat.i.tude. "Then the Count looked upon the Queen, who was so good and so beautiful, till her great beauty overcame him, and he stood all abashed. Then he answered her: 'By my faith, Madame, my heart and my body and all my lands are yours; there is naught that could please you that I would not do willingly; and never again, please G.o.d, will I go against you or yours.'

And he departed all pensive, and often into his thoughts would come the memory of the sweet look, of the lovely countenance, of the queen. Then his heart was filled with sweet and loving thought. But when he remembered that she was so great a lady, and so good and pure that he could never win her love, his sweet thought of love turned into great sadness. And seeing that deep thought engenders melancholy, he was counselled by some wise men to take lessons in _biaus sons de viele et en douz chanz delitables_ (in sweet violin music and in soft and pleasing songs). And so he and Gace Brusle made between them the most beautiful, the most delightful, the most melodious songs ever heard, either in songs or in violin music. And he had them put in writing in the hall of his chateau at Provins and in that of Troyes; and they are called the songs of the King of Navarre."

The chronicler who tells us this a.s.signs the incident to the year 1236, when Blanche would have been forty-eight years of age. The date is obviously wrong, or rather the story of many years has been crowded into one. Thibaud's love for Blanche must have begun when she was young and really beautiful; one can hardly imagine a burning pa.s.sion conceived for a lady of middle age, the mother of twelve children. His devotion, then, dates from an earlier period; indeed, we find definite record of it in the calumnies circulated by the barons before 1230; and one chronicler tells us that, during the war of that year, when the barons were ravaging Champagne, Count Thibaud, dressed as a common stroller and accompanied by one companion as miserably attired as himself, went through the country to find out what his people were saying about him.

Everywhere he heard but ill of himself. "Then said the Count to his _ribaud_ (vagabond companion), 'Friend, I see full well that a penn'orth of bread would feed all my friends. I have none, indeed, I verily believe, not a one whom I can trust, save the Queen of France.' She was indeed his loyal friend, and well did she show that she did not hate him. By her the war was brought to an end, and all the land (Champagne) reconquered. Many tales do they tell of them, as of Iseut and Tristan."

The love of Thibaud was not to be doubted, but it is a delicate matter to determine how far his sentiments were reciprocated by Blanche. On the one hand, the party of the barons openly and violently accused her of adultery; on the other hand, we know that no evil woman could have reared Saint Louis and have been beloved and revered by him. If Blanche was a good and pure woman, as we firmly believe, we shall again have to disappoint the lovers of romance, for there must be some explanation other than the purely erotic for her conduct toward Thibaud de Champagne. Alas for the romance! the common-sense explanation is not far to seek, and not difficult of acceptance when we remember the whole career of this remarkable woman. Blanche de Castille was an astute politician; otherwise she would never have been able to maintain her position, with everything against her: the fact that she was a woman, the fact that she was a foreigner, alone comprise many difficulties. We do not know of a single instance in which she allowed her feelings--love, hate, family affection, mere feminine weakness--to sway her or interfere with the settled policy which she had determined upon for the good of her kingdom and of her children. Indeed, as we shall see later, one serious defect in her character was her inflexibility of purpose, her resolute suppression of the tenderer feelings. That she liked and perhaps admired the brilliant poet-knight who proclaimed his devotion to her in "songs the sweetest ever heard," we need not doubt; but she never responded to his ardent pa.s.sion. Surrounded by enemies domestic and enemies foreign, she took advantage of the romantic devotion of a poet to win the very effective support of one of the most powerful barons of France. Flattering Thibaud's vanity now and then,--it was no small thing to be reputed the lover of a queen,--she adroitly kept him in leash. As a sovereign, too, she was careful to retain his good will by services of the utmost value, nay, of imperative necessity.

The truce with England was to expire on July 22, 1229. Just at this time, when it might be supposed that the queen's energies would be required in defending or at least in watching the western frontier, threatened by Pierre Mauclerc and his English allies, the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Nevers prepared to invade Thibaud's country.

Marching into Champagne, they devastated the country and reduced Thibaud to a very precarious condition. The pretext of this war was, first, that Thibaud was a traitor and the a.s.sa.s.sin of Louis VIII.; secondly, that he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and that the real ruler of Champagne was Alix, Queen of Cyprus, granddaughter of Thibaud's uncle, Henry II. of Champagne. The claims were both, of course, preposterous, merely trumped up to hide the real motive of the attack, which was aimed at Blanche de Castille and through her at the power of the crown. Alix de Champagne, as the barons called her, was herself of illegitimate descent, a fact recognized by the Church itself.