IX.
Thus the machinations of Milan served to exasperate the French. And the indignity and insult offered to Valentine were as great a cause of irritation to Visconti. He and his daughter, with their Lombard indifference to superstition[superstition], could have nothing but contempt for the panic of the French. “Et l’une des plus dolentes et courroucées qui y fust, c’estoit la Duchesse d’Orleans,“ writes Juvenal des Ursins. Twice or thrice the Duke of Milan sent his ambassadors to the King of France, offering to find a knight to fight at outrance with any man who would accuse Madame Valentine of any treason. So sore and angry were the father and the brother-in-law of Valentine that there was a talk of a Milanese invasion. Great counter preparations were made in France, and the League was signed with the Florentines against Milan. The King, being in good health then, went to Boulogne to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Isabel, a child of seven, with Richard II. of England, a man some years older than himself. Richard was very bitter against Milan. He offered to send an English contingent to the King’s aid, if he invaded Lombardy. He warned the King again and again against the spells and sorceries of Lombardy; and he produced so strong an impression upon the enfeebled mind of Charles, that on the 29th of October, as the two kings were sitting together at dinner, the King of France perceiving among the heralds one with the Serpent of Milan on his shield, had him stripped of his arms, menaced with death, and chased out of the royal presence. The Duke of Milan retaliated with the famous Investiture of 1396, which excludes the children of Valentine of Orleans from the succession to Milan. With things at this pitch of hostility, war seemed imminent, and the route was made out for the invasion of Lombardy. But that war never took place. “And that journey,” says[says] Froissart, “took none effect; for the discomfiture of the battle before Nicopoly in Turkey, and the death and the taking of the Lords of France. And also they saw well that the Duke of Milan was in favour with the Great Turk, Lamorabaquy; wherefore they durst not displease him, so let him alone.” It became immediately necessary to make peace with Milan,[[32]] the one power in Europe that could mediate with Turkey. The ambassadors of the King, Burgundy, Orleans, and the Sultan, caused a continual come-and-go in Milan. Visconti took his position of peace-maker in good part. In March, 1397, he procured a third and less hostile investiture. The talk of magic was hushed for a while, and Valentine returned in peace to Court.
Yet now, perhaps, for the first time the French people, not unjustifiably, might have heaped their odium on Valentine. For her latest historian supports a theory suggested long ago by Froissart.[[35]] While the French were projecting their invasion of Lombardy—while the son of that Burgundy who had advised the King in the affair of Genoa was leading against the Turks a French Crusade which might easily return homewards viâ Lombardy and Milan—Giangaleazzo, furious and humiliated, sought any means of salvation and revenge. He, like many another Italian, was in correspondence with the Turk; and an idea, successfully practised by many another Italian,[[34]] may not unnaturally have suggested itself to him. If France joined the Florentine League then adieu for ever to the hopes of Visconti. And Burgundy, as he knew, was in favour of Florence. And the son of Burgundy was captain of the French army. Small hope here; yet, if the French army could be destroyed in Turkey, Milan would be safe! Then the astute Visconti would smile to think of his daughter in France. Valentine who wrote him everything—also told him doubtless (as the author of Maistre Jehan de Meun tells us[[33]]) of the vain young aristocrats, ruined by free living and fine carousing, who were starting on that terrible journey, thinking of nothing more serious than the elegant spectacle of their departure:
“Mais que le partir soit joly
Vous ne regardez point la fin!”
Gay young gallants, unfit for privation, who, when they reach Palestine, will be too weak to strike three strokes with the magnificent swords so much too heavy for their hands.
“Les Sarrazins s’arment légier;
Sy c’est bon courage et fier.”
But the panoply of these splendid youths—these gens de paraige—was for decoration rather than for battle. Valentine, the confidant of her father—who in the long afternoons of exile would turn with the expansion of relief to her one kinsman, her staunch protector—would tell him of the weakness that underlay the glory of this martial going-off. She would write to him the plan of campaign, the route decided on, the means of attack and defence. She would inform him not only of the quality but of the number of the army. And Giangaleazzo was aware that these details transmitted to the Turks would ensure the disaster of the French, and draw away the gathering storm that threatened to break on Milan.
The Duke of Milan was not scrupulous; he was “moult bien” in the friendship of the Turk. The Turk gained a singular acquaintance with the disposition of the French army. No need to dwell here on the terrible disaster of that unforgotten battle: the twelve to twenty thousand dead; the rare fugitives stealing homewards, dukes and barons, in the dress of beggar-men; the harder lot of those taken by the Turks, sold into slavery, or massacred in vengeance for the Faithful slain at Christian hands; of the heartsick waiting of the few—a very few, of the richest and noblest—set aside for ransom. One of these, Jacques de Heilly, was sent by the Sultan on parole to France, to inform the King of the disaster and to bring back the news of their intentions with respect to ransom. He was bidden to pass by Milan[[36]] in order to convey to Giangaleazzo Visconti the salutations of the Sultan. On Christmas night he arrived in Paris; the Court were feasting and dancing. In the prison of the Châtelet, hungry and cold, there were men who spent their Christmas in a dungeon for having spread false news, as it was said, of a great defeat in Turkey. But the tale of D’Heilly told, all that was changed: the prisoners were freed, the Court was in tears. The bells rang in all the churches for the dead. The universal thought was how to redeem the flower of France from a savage captivity. On the 20th of January, 1397, a French embassy was sent to Milan. A few days earlier Jacques de Heilly, laden with propitiatory gifts, had returned to the Sultan. Nothing was spoken of but mediation and reconciliation. And Valentine—so long the innocent scapegoat of her party—was recalled to favour in the very hour when all men might have suspected her as the involuntary origin of misery.