X.
Actual war with Milan was averted; but the rumours against the King’s brother continued still in France.
On the 24th of March, 1403, Ives Gilemme, a priest; Demoiselle Marie de Blansy, Perrin Hémery, a locksmith, and Guillaume Floret, a clerk, were publicly burned for sorcery. And still the King was mad. Were those who bewitched him, the head of the State, to keep their immunity? There was such a crime as witchcraft, and people legally suffered for it. The King was bewitched: who was the wizard?
To this incessant question Burgundy ever helped to point the answer. Who was the person who profited most by the sickness of the King?
The Duke of Orleans had become very powerful. In January, 1393, an ordonnance had promised him the Regency in case of the death of the King.[[37]] His prestige, his wealth, his faction increased with every year. This young man who, in 1385, possessed no more than 12,000 livres a year, was Duke of Orleans (1391), Count of Valois and Count of Beaumont (1386), Count of Asti and Count of Vertus (1387), Count of Soissons (1391), Count of Blois (1391), Count of Dreux, Count of Angoulême (1394). In 1394 he was very nearly King of Adria. He was Count of Perigord in 1398. He was Seigneur of Savona (1394), Seigneur of Coucy (1391); he possessed both lands and castles in Hainault, at Pierrefonds, and at Ferté-Millon (1392). The Duchy of Luxembourg (1402), the Duchy of Aquitaine (1407) lay immediately before him.
The princes of Europe appealed to the Duke of Orleans as to an independent sovereign. The Duke of Guelders concluded a separate alliance with him (1401). The King of the Romans offered him for his son the heiress of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland (1397). Henry of Lancaster, an exile in Paris (1399), paid more court to him than to the King of France. And in 1405 the Venetians sent two secret ambassadors to Orleans, who in return despatched a certain Pierre de Scrovignes with private despatches to the Signory of Venice. Since 1401 the Venetians had never sent a message to the King. Burgundy began to fear that Orleans would induce the new Antipope at Avignon to depose Charles VI. in his own favour.
There is, I think, no evidence of such an intention, and yet the suspicions of Burgundy may not impossibly have been correct. In 1400 the Germans deposed their drunken Wenzel, in 1398 the English had deposed their incapable Richard. Why should not France depose a king continually lapsing into madness? In the year 1399 the king had six relapses. Orleans may have been no less ambitious than his sworn friend and brother, Henry of Lancaster, who had so lately conquered for himself the throne of England.
Orleans and Burgundy turn by turn usurped the direction of affairs. Vainly King and Queen and Court attempted to assuage their rivalry. On the 14th of June, 1401, the Queen of France (the King being mad), the King of Sicily, the Dukes of Berri and Bourbon, made a League “pour apaiser les Ducs d’Orlèans et de Bourgogne.”[[38]] In vain. The King himself was powerless, and could only bid his subjects—as in 1405 he bade the Bailly de Caux—to stand aside and take no part nor lot in the discord existing between the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy.[[39]] This impartiality was only apparent. The growing influence of Burgundy was dreaded by Berri and the Queen, no less than by Orleans himself. And in the winter of 1405, these three persons joined themselves together in an “Alliance défensive et réciproque, pour se maintenir au pouvoir.”[[40]] Thus, if Burgundy had the nation on his side, the authority of the Queen, the influence of Valentine (all-powerful with the King), was with Orleans. In 1404 Philip of Burgundy died, and his faction gained new vigour with the accession of his son, a man less temperate, less aristocratic than his father. The blood of his Flemish mother worked in the veins of the young man, restless, violent, demagogic as a burgher of Ghent. The young Duke of Burgundy had no woman to work for him; it was even rumoured that the portrait of his own wife hung in that locked chamber where Orleans kept the pictures of his mistresses. But Jean-sans-Peur did not need any feminine advocate. He was young, he was rich. In 1404 his father’s death bequeathed him Burgundy, next year his mother died and left him Flanders. A small ugly man, alert, blunt, brutal even, serving public interests to reach his own ends, Jean-sans-Peur of Burgundy was the hero of the people. “Brun et barbu et bien aimé,“ writes Burcarius.
Meanwhile the people groaned under the tyranny of Orleans. Jugum intollerabile plebis. And Orleans, sceptical and embittered, had no respect and no pity for the ignorant populace that reviled him, that menaced his virtuous wife, that mocked the death of his little child with cruel and insulting calumnies. The people to him were odious, or, at best, indifferent; a cup to drain, a fruit to squeeze and throw away the rind. In 1403 he laid upon them an impost of three hundred thousand crowns. Out of this he builded for himself two famous castles, Pierrefonds and Ferté-Millon, beautiful as the towers of heaven in a picture by Van Eyck.
In 1407, not content, he levied a new tax. The money thus gained enriched the State far less than him, and great personages accused him and the Queen of leaving no single florin to rattle in the empty treasury. When Orleans suggested the new impost, Jean-sans-Peur opposed him in the royal council: “I ask pity of the poor people. It is tyranny to aggravate their intolerable yoke.” Jean-sans-Peur declared that, in his domains at least, the impost should not be collected; rather would he forfeit the entire amount himself. Struck by this generosity, the young Duke of Brittany volunteered to postpone his wife’s dowry until the treasury was full again.
The tax was levied all the same. It was a war levy, and really necessary. Every man and woman in France was mulcted according to the value of his goods. In this way a vast sum was raised—twenty-seven millions. It was lodged in a tower of the Louvre. One night, when the town was quiet, Orleans, with a band of armed men, entered this tower and carried off at least two-thirds of the treasure.
When the people heard of it—the people who (the Monk assures us) had sold the straw of their beds to pay the levy—they prayed publicly in every town and hamlet: “Jesus Christ in heaven, send thou some one to deliver us from Orleans!”
Orleans smiled no less bitterly than when he had heard the public whisper accuse him of sorcery and devil-worship. He proclaimed that whosoever did not pay the taxes should be cast into prison; to prevent assassination, no man was to carry another knife than he used for his eating; a fourth of the provisions of the royal household was to be supplied daily, without payment, by the people of Paris. These provisions, as the people knew very well, did not go to feed or clothe their beloved King. He, in his palace, was as poor, as suffering as themselves. The Dauphin was no richer: “in penury and want,” says the Monk, “if such words may be used for so great a personage.” The insatiable Orleans, the avid little Queen, grasped and kept everything. “Jesus Christ in heaven,” prayed the people, “send some one to deliver us from the Duke of Orleans.”
Orleans should have listened. The air was full of warnings to tyrants. Richard and Wenzel had fallen miserably. The Duke of Milan had died of the plague; in six months his vast kingdom had fallen into ruins. Tyranny is, so often, a personal accident—a possession, not an inheritance. Was it worth while? The King himself added to the list of these monitions. In August, 1404, he married his eldest son to Burgundy’s daughter, his daughter to the son of Burgundy.
In the year 1405, on Ascension Day, the people found a voice. An Augustine monk, Jacques Legrand, preached then before the Court. The Queen, Valentine, and Orleans were present, but not the King. “O Queen! O Duke!” said the monk, “you are the curse and derision of your people. Do you not believe me? Go into the streets and hear them!
“Tua curia, Domina Venus solium occupans, thy court, O Queen! where Lady Venus fills the throne, thy Court, by day and night, is the scene of debauch and drunkenness. Dissolute dances do honour to the goddess. Frequent bathing enervates your bodies. Fringes to your sleeves, and long sleeves to your garments; yet are ye clothed upon with the sighs and tears of the poorest of your people. Your hearts are corrupt and your minds are all unmoved: Domina Venus solium occupat.”
There was a flutter of indignation in the Court. The monk’s sermon was reported to the King, but to the surprise of all, Charles answered that he was glad of it. On Whit-Sunday Legrand was commanded to preach again, and in the royal presence. The monk repeated his sermon, but with larger reference to a certain noble duke, “once good and dear, but hated now for his oppression and his vice.” The King left his chair and sat down face to face with the monk, listening earnestly, who can tell with what cruel suspicions, what resolutions for inquiry and reform, in his dim and altered mind. When the sermon was over, the King spoke to Legrand for some moments. He thanked him earnestly.
Charles was deeply impressed with the words of the Augustine friar. Struggling against continual relapses, he made a brave effort to do the best he could for his disordered kingdom. When Orleans asked for the government of Normandy, for the first time he was refused. Another day the poor King called the Dauphin to him. “How long, my lad, is it since your mother kissed you?”
“Three months,” the boy replied.
The King was much affected. His children were evidently pinched, neglected, uncared for. He called the boy’s nurse to him, and gave her a gold cup. “Look after my son when I am ill. If God grant me life I will reward you later.”
This was in July, 1405. Burgundy was absent on his own estates. The King wrote to him and implored him to return to Paris.
Orleans and the Queen were at St. Germains. They paid no heed to any warning. On the 13th of July there was a fearful storm; torrents of rain, eddies of wind. The Queen and Orleans were riding in the forest when they were overtaken by the tempest. The Duke took refuge in the Queen’s litter, but the frightened horses nearly drowned them in the Seine. The people declared that it was the judgment of heaven upon tyrants, and Orleans himself appeared impressed. He sent a herald to Paris, and proclaimed that whosoever of his creditors should come on Sunday next to the Hôtel de Behaigne should have his debt discharged in full. On Sunday the halls and anterooms of the ducal palace were crowded with eager burghers. Many, tired and anxious, had travelled from the provinces. The Duke’s stewards laughed in their face and shut the doors. This was the final touch to the exasperation of the people.
All this while Jean-sans-Peur was travelling to Paris. He came at the head of six thousand men-at-arms. The King was mad again, and could not support him; but none the less the Queen and Orleans feared an insurrection in Burgundy’s favour. They decided to flee secretly away into Luxembourg with the royal children. Valentine was with them; and they had got as far as Pouilly when the troops of Burgundy suddenly surrounded the litter of the Dauphin, some hours’ journey to the rear. The boy was delighted; he embraced his father-in-law, and was carried in triumph back to Paris. Isabel, with Valentine and Orleans, fled to the Castle of Melun. Civil war seemed eminent; but when the two armies were actually in the field, peace was arranged, and on the 15th of October the Queen and Orleans re-entered Paris.
Orleans had learned nothing by his lesson. He was more than ever arrogant, more than ever secure in his tyranny. Early in the next year his young son Charles was married to the King’s daughter Isabel, the widowed Queen of England, a girl of sixteen. In the first months of 1407 the King gave his brother the rich duchy of Aquitaine. Orleans began to think again of the governorship of Normandy. He was richer and stronger than the King.
And yet, if Valentine, if Orleans, had really read the future as the people thought they did, or had they even cared to read the present, they might well have paused. In that age the fate of tyrants was not prosperous. The King of England was a leper. The King of France was mad. The little Duke of Milan was mad also, with a furious Italian hemomania. The King of Scotland was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. There were two Popes, things for scorn and laughter, held in derision of all nations, and a song to the people all day long.
Already, in 1380, Miles de Dormans, Chancellor of France, had declared “A government has no force save in the obedience of the people, for kings only rule by the suffrage of their subjects: Nam et si centies negent, reges regnant suffragio populorum.”
The judgment of heaven, the liberties of man, seemed to conspire alike against the rule of tyrants.