II.
If Louis’s matrimonial prospects were somewhat clouded by the extreme youth of his child-bride, the Queen was by no means discouraged in her policy of influential alliances. Her second son, René, who had won all hearts in Barrois, was actually married to Princess Isabelle of Lorraine in 1420, although she was no more than nine years old, and he but twelve. This match was, however, not wholly the work of Queen Yolande; her ideas, however, were those which impelled her uncle, Cardinal Louis de Bar, directly to ask the hand of the juvenile Princess.
The year before this precocious marriage the Cardinal had formally proclaimed René his heir to the duchy of Bar, and created him Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson. This action greatly displeased Arnould, Duke of Berg, whose wife was Marie de Bar, a sister of the Cardinal. She preferred claims to the succession as next of kin to her brother, and when she was refused, the Duke took up arms and advanced upon Bar-le-Duc. The movement failed, and young René saw the Duke’s dead body taken away for burial without emotion. The young Prince had been for nearly two years residing at his great-uncle’s castle, under his immediate care and instruction. Among the tutors chosen for his training were Maestre Jehan de Proviesey, a grammarian and Latinist, and Maestre Antoine de la Salle, poet and musician. Such instructors were de rigueur, of course, for the true development of a perfect gentleman and courtier. The latter master wrote a treatise entitled “Les quinze joyes de la mariage: instructions addressés aux jeunes hommes.” This he dedicated to his pupil, Prince René. Among the quaint aphorisms it contains, this must have caused more than a smile on the part of the young knight:
“Bon cheval, mauvais cheval, veut l’esperon;
Bonne femme, mauvaise femme, veut le baston!”
Perhaps the pith of the treatise is expressed in the neat quintet:
“Quattuor sunt que mulieres summe cupiunt,
A formis amari juvenibus,
Pottere fillis pluribus
Ornari preciosis vestibus
Et dominari pre ceteris in domibus.”
René’s time was, however, not wholly absorbed by his studies in school and Court, for he bestrode his warhorse like a man, and rode forth by his great-uncle’s side on punitive expeditions against recalcitrant vassals and against the incursions of freebooters, who under the designation of “Soudoyers” were devastating the duchy. It was said of the Cardinal: “Il savait au besoin porter ung bassinet pour mitre et pour croix d’or un tache d’acier!”
Directly Duke Robert died, and the succession fell to an ecclesiastic, the dissatisfied subjects of the Barrois crown considered it a favourable opportunity for throwing off their allegiance. Jean de Luxembourg, a cousin of the widowed Duchess Marie, and Robert de Sarrebouche,—at the extreme limits of the territories of the duchy,—were perhaps the most conspicuous for their infidelity. The Cardinal-Duke struck home at once, and both rebels surrendered. In the case of the latter, Prince René was put forward to receive his submission, on his great-uncle’s behalf. The “proud Sieur de Commercy,” as he was called, was compelled to kneel in the market-place of Commercy before the boy-knight, and, putting his great hands between the tender palms of his Prince, obliged to swear as vostre homme et vostre vassail! The Prince’s bearing in this his first military campaign was beyond all praise, and the Cardinal was delighted with his chivalry. The Duke of Lorraine sent to compliment him upon his courage, and his doting mother, Queen Yolande, held a ten-days festival at Angers, and rang all the church bells in honour of her son’s baptism of blood.
These exploits caused the youthful hero to carry himself proudly, and greatly increased his self-conceit. This latter development had an amusing and yet a very natural sequel. The Prince with his own hand, under the instruction of Maestre Jehan de Proviesey, wrote letters to all the leading men of Angers, Provence, Barrois, and Lorraine, in which he enlarged upon the boldness of his conduct; and inditing sententious maxims, he sought their approbation and good-will. The Cardinal-Duke doubtless smiled good-humouredly at these juvenile effusions, but at the same time he reconstituted the Barrois knightly “Ordre de la Fidélité,” which embraced as members all the young French Princes, and created René de Bar, as he was now called, first and principal Knight. The Prince henceforward wore the motto of his Order embroidered upon his berretta and chimere—“Tout Ung”—and chose it as his gage de guerre.
Louis de Bar had, however, other duties and pursuits to place before his favourite nephew. At the Court of Dijon resided two famous Flemish painters, brothers—Hubert and Jehan Van Eyck, pensioners of the enlightened Duke of Burgundy. By means of bribes and other influences brought to bear, they were induced to remove to Bar-le-Duc, and with them came Petrus Christus and other pupils. Keen patron of the arts and crafts, the Cardinal-Duke encouraged his principal courtiers and vassals to send their sons to them for instruction in the art of painting. The first pupil enrolled in Barrois upon the books of the Van Eycks was none other than Prince René, and no pupil showed greater talent and greater perseverance. His uncle once said to him: “René, if thou wast not destined to succeed me as Duke of Bar and leader of her armies, I would make of thee an artist.” In his veins, we must remember, ran Flemish blood,—his famous and talented ancestress, the Countess-Princess Iolande, came from Flanders,—and these excellent pigment masters appear to have stirred qualities in the young Prince which eventually proclaimed him the foremost royal artist in Europe.
The Cardinal also inculcated in his nephew the love and taste for objects of beauty. He was himself a proficient in the craft of goldsmithery, and, moreover, possessed a very magnificent collection of gold and silver work. Part of this had come to him from his mother, Duchess Marie of France, who took to Bar her share of her father’s treasures, the good King John. Of these, the Cardinal presented to Pope John XXIII. in 1414 a writing-table made of cedar, covered with plates of solid gold, and the superb gold chalice and paten which are still used in the Papal chapel at Rome at special Masses by His Holiness himself. Another precious goblet, mounted with sapphires and rubies, was bequeathed to the Cardinal’s sister, the Princess Bonne, Countess of Ligny.
A ROYAL REPAST, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
PROCESSION OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE
From “L’Album Historique de France”
To face page 80.
The ducal gardens at Bar-le-Duc were famous. The Cardinal sent to Italy for skilled gardeners, who reproduced something of the terrestrial glories of that favoured land. Tuscan sculptors and Venetian decorative painters followed in the wake of the gardeners, who not only designed architectural terraces with marble statues and garden-pavilions with painted ceilings, but also designed and minted medals and plaques of the Cardinal, Prince René, and other members of the family. Naturally, the young Hereditary Duke revelled in these graceful settings for the floral games and festive pastimes which made the Barrois Court, even in the absence of a reigning Duchess, the rendezvous of poets, gallants, and beauties. Here, too, the Prince’s natural love for music had full play; he became a poet and a troubadour “in little,” if not in “great.” In a very real kind of way René’s training in the arts of war and in the arts of peace was the very same which made a Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence and a Francesco Sforza at Milan.
Amid all these occupations, the Prince had few opportunities for visiting his birthplace, Angers, and his devoted mother there. Travelling was very insecure, and the Cardinal disparaged any expedition beyond the bounds of the duchy. Only one such visit is recorded, and that in 1422, when René took his absent brother’s place to give away his favourite sister Marie to Charles VII. of France, and then Queen Yolande once more embraced her son. On the other hand, the Prince was permitted by his uncle to vigorously assist King Charles against Louis de Châlons, Prince of Orange, who was devastating Dauphiné. In another direction the young warrior gained laurels also. Named protector of the city of Verdun, he destroyed the rebel castle of Renancourt and the fortresses of La Ferté, and hastened to the assistance of his kinsman, the Count of Ligny, at Baumont en Argonne. Guillaume de Flavy and Jehan de Mattaincourt surrendered, and René cleared the country of disaffected marauders and adventurers.
Charles V.’s speech at the siege of Metz one hundred years later might very well have fitted the youthful conqueror in Barrois: “Fortune is a woman: she favours only the young.”
Queen Yolande’s eldest son, Louis III., was meanwhile meeting with varying fortunes in Italy, but the slow progress of his campaign greatly chagrined his dauntless mother. She actually made up her mind to set out for Naples in person to try and turn the slow tide of victory into an overpowering flood; but Anjou was too closely invested by the English for the realization of her project. Here, however, the Queen had her militant opportunity, for at the bloody battle of Baugé,—between La Flèche and Saumur,—in 1421, the English were routed and so greatly disheartened that they evacuated all their strategic points within and around the duchy. That victory was gained directly by Queen Yolande, who commanded in person, sitting astride a great white charger, clothed in steel and silver mail. Some years later King René built an imposing castle upon the heights overlooking the field of battle in memory of his mother’s valour.
The Queen’s warlike ardour, however, received a check, for Queen Marie, driven with King Charles before the all-conquering English, escaped to Bourges, and there begged her mother to hasten to her side. She needed, not a mailed woman’s fist, but the gentle hand of her good mother at her accouchement. Louis le Dauphin, her first-born, saw the light in the Archbishop’s Palace on July 3, 1423. Those days were dark indeed for France, but a brilliant star was about to rise above her eastern horizon. Towards the end of 1428 strange reports began to spread all over the stricken country concerning a simple village maiden in far-off Champagne, to whom, in the obscure village of Domremy, Divine visions had been vouchsafed. Her mission, it was stated, was nothing less than the deliverance of France and the coronation of King Charles at Reims.
Nowhere did the mysterious tidings create greater interest than among the members of the Royal Families and Courts of Sicily-Anjou and France. When the news of Jeanne d’Arc’s arrival with Duke René reached Angers, Queen Yolande set out at once for Chinon, that she might judge for herself of the girl and her mission. Very greatly struck was the Queen by the maid’s youth, comeliness, and innocence. Her simple manners and unaffected devotion convinced Yolande that she had no adventuress to deal with. She conversed freely with her, and her simple narrative and fearless courage determined her to take the maid under her direct patronage. When it was proposed to inquire formally into Jeanne’s character and mental bias, the Queen promptly allocated to herself that duty. She called to her assistance three ladies of her Court of good repute. Jehan Pasquerelle has quaintly recorded this plenary council of matrons: “Fust icelle Pucelle baillée à la Royne de Cecile, mère de la Royne, nostre souveraine, et à certaines dames d’estant avec elle, dont estoient les Dames de Gaucourt, de Fiennes, et de Trèves.” Another chronicler adds the name of Jeanne de Mortèmar, wife of the Chancellor, Robert le Maçon. Their verdict was a complete vindication of Jeanne’s honour and sincerity.
The tongue of slander had associated René and Jeanne in a liaison. The Court of Chinon was full of evil gossip, and the more ill-conditioned courtiers and hirelings, both men and women, revelled in compromising insinuations and coarse jests. Queen Yolande determined once and for all to put an end to these baseless and foul rumours. She knew her son too well to doubt his honour, and now she pledged herself to defend that of the village maid. Several of the offenders were dismissed the service of the King, and warned to hold their tongue, unless they wished for condign punishment.
History has done scant justice to Queen Yolande for the part she bore in the drama of Jeanne d’Arc. It was in a very great measure due to her that the maid’s mission was carried out. Whilst Charles was dallying with his idle associates and procrastinating in his military measures, Yolande played the man. Her intrepid counsels and fearless insistence were the levers which moved her son-in-law’s inertness. There is a story told that, when Queen Marie’s gentle chiding had failed to rouse her desponding consort, Queen Yolande appeared before him clothed in full armour, and demanded why the King of France skulked in his castle!
“See, Charles,” she said, “if you refuse to follow La Pucelle at once and do your duty to God and to your country, I will go forth as your lieutenant, and in person lead your army against the English. But shame to you to trust in a woman’s arm rather than your own! Rouse you like a man, and begone!”
This emphatic order fairly called out Charles’s manhood, roused, to be sure, by the mission of Jeanne d’Arc. Nothing excites a man more than a woman’s threats to take his place and do his work; and many women can be as good as their word, and one of these was Yolande of Sicily-Anjou-Aragon.
The noble patriotic Queen-mother, moreover, backed her stout words by actions firm. With that splendid unselfishness which marked her character, she raised a considerable sum of money by the sale of her jewellery and other precious possessions, and applied it, together with the substantial offerings of her devoted subjects, to the fitting out of a convoy of provisions and necessaries for the besieged garrison of Orléans. She also persuaded the University of Angers, which her late consort, Louis II., had founded in 1398, to vote a goodly sum of money towards the King’s expenses. Charles, stirred by the gentleness of Jeanne and the vigour of Yolande, was no longer despondent. The Queen thankfully noted his confidence in his mysterious guide from Domremy, but she remained at Chinon until she had seen him and his equipage take boat upon the Loire. His last words to his mother-in-law were: “Yes, now I am on my way to Reims with Jeanne, my oracle, my Queen—ma Royne blanche: tous pour Dieu et la France!” Yolande then quietly returned to her castle at Angers, and Anjou once more greeted the King’s guardian and the Lieutenant-General of his dominions.
The decade had its consolations as well as its troubles, and among them Queen Yolande rejoiced at the births of vigorous grandchildren. To Queen Marie were born Princesses Jeanne and Yolande, as well as the Dauphin Louis; and to Duke René, Jean, Louis, Nicholas, Yolande, and Marguerite, in lawful wedlock. The Queen-mother, too, had satisfaction in the less disturbed state of Barrois and Lorraine, of receiving at Angers her son René and his fair young wife Isabelle. He had added to the bays of victory the palms of peace, and his fame as an administrator of justice and charity was already spread abroad.
The Cardinal-Duke Louis was ageing rapidly, and he executed his final testament whilst his nephew and niece were in Anjou. Everything was left to René, who had as much as he could do to get back to Bar-le-Duc in time to receive his uncle’s last blessing and close his eyes in death. The dying Prince was at the Abbey of Varennes when he breathed his last, on February 15, 1431. Duke René was at once proclaimed his successor, and the Estates of Barrois did their homage heartily. The career of the young Duke had been developed under the approving eyes of his uncle’s subjects, and his marriage with Isabelle de Lorraine had been immensely popular. The new reign opened, then, under the happiest auspices.
STREET SCENE IN AIX OF PROVENCE
FOREGROUND: MIRACLE OF ST. MAXIME
From a Painting by Nicholas Froment (1475-76). Aix Cathedral
To face page 86
René’s future being thus amply provided for,—his hand was also on the throne of Lorraine,—Queen Yolande turned her attention to the settlement in life of her younger children—Yolande, just eighteen, and Charles, two years younger. For her daughter, whose espousal three years before to Jehan, Comte d’Alençon, had not led to marriage, the Queen sought once more an alliance with the House of Bretagne. The Duke’s eldest son, François, Comte de Montfort, who had been first champion at the Angers tournament in 1417, was the chosen bridegroom. He, indeed, had seen and played with the Princess then, but she was a little child of five; their betrothal, however, had been considered, and only hindered by the military exigencies of the time. The Prince was in person as handsome as could be, and talented, but his character was not one that Queen Yolande looked for in a son-in-law. More addicted to warlike deeds and the free licence of a soldier’s calling, he had little taste for peaceful pursuits, and still less for the restrictions of family life. He was, like most Princes at the time, more or less of a débauché, and his fair fame was besmirched by sordid and licentious habits. Still, the Comte de Montfort stood for political advantages, and questions of character were counted of less importance. The royal nuptials were celebrated in due course at the Cathedral of St. Pierre at Nantes, the capital of Brittany, on July 1, 1431, in the presence of Queen Yolande and the Duke and Duchess of Barrois. Alas! once more marriage proved a failure, for the year following the home-coming of the Count and Countess he was slain in a foray with the English, leaving his childless young widow to bewail her ill-luck alone.
The marriage of Prince Charles d’Anjou was delayed many years, and his experience of the vicissitudes of Cupid’s thraldom was almost identical with that of King Louis III., his elder brother. Affianced in 1431, at the same time as his sister Yolande, to a daughter of Guy, Count of Laval, his brother René’s bosom friend, and one of Jeanne d’Arc’s preux cavaliers, another Yolande, he broke off the match because the infant Princess,—she but three years old,—was “so plain and weak.” “Besides, I will not wait twelve years for her.” He was himself just seventeen. The baby-fiancée’s mother was a Bretagne princess, Isabelle, a daughter of Queen Yolande’s great ally, Duke Jehan VI. The young Prince had in his mind another amour, perhaps hardly in his heart; but he had seen and admired, when assisting at the sacre of King Charles VII., his brother-in-law, at Reims, a Princess of Champagne, and, much against his mother’s wish, he bespoke her for his own. They were betrothed at the ancient castle of Coucy, near Soissons, in 1435. This match, too, came to nothing, for the fair fiancée, Catherine, perished in the flames of her boudoir curtains, set on fire by accident, and left her young Prince of twenty-one free to step along the uncertain path of courtship once more. Such were some of the ups and downs of the Queen of Sicily-Anjou and of her family.
The death of Charles II., Duke of Lorraine, on January 25, 1431, saw the reunion,—after a century or more apart,—of Bar and Lorraine under one Sovereign. Duke René and his Duchess Isabelle had resided more or less quietly for ten years at the Castle of Bar-le-Duc, and there the greater part of their family was born. Now they prepared to move to Nancy, but their way, which Duke Charles had, as he thought, secured, was barred, and René was called out to fight for his throne. Antoine, Comte de Vaudémont, Duke Charles’s eldest nephew, thrust the provisions of the Salic Law in the new Duke’s face, and drew his sword to enforce his action. Varied were the fortunes of the civil war, but at the Battle of Bulgneville Duke René was taken prisoner by Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, who supported his kinsman Vaudémont, and was kept in captivity for nearly three years. In vain Queen Yolande tried every expedient to set her son free. His captors required his absolute renunciation of the duchy of Lorraine, and would accept no compromise. Then came another crushing blow. Louis III., King of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, Duke of Anjou, and Count of Provence, died of fever at Cosenza, the capital of Calabria, on November 15, 1434, lamented alike by friend and foe. Queen Giovanna had in 1424 created him Duke of Calabria, but many attributed his death, indeed, to poison administered by order of the Queen. Never was there a more gentle nor a braver Prince—“l’escarboucle de gentilesse,” he was styled in the annals of chivalry. His devoted mother, of course, was not with him; she was broken-hearted at Marseilles. Cast down by grief unspeakable, the young Queen of Sicily-Anjou and Naples, Margherita, still a bride, was by his side to console his last hours. They had been married by proxy at Geneva,—not at Chambéry, as arranged,—years before, but had sworn to each other recently in the Cathedral of Cosenza. Alas! no son was left to succeed his father and cheer his mother’s heart; their only child, a little daughter, had survived her birth a short six weeks.
Queen Giovanna, in spite of her iniquity in seeking to foist upon René d’Anjou and Bar a child not his nor hers, in all probability, but so acknowledged, made no opposition to his proclamation as King of Naples or the Two Sicilies. What an exquisite piece of irony it was, to be sure—a King proclaimed when fast bound in prison, a crayon for a sceptre in his hand, his crown a drab berretta! Three devoted women, good and bad, supported the royal captive’s prerogatives—three Queens indeed: Yolande was for Anjou and Provence, Isabelle for Barrois and Lorraine, and Giovanna for Naples and Sicily; whilst a fourth, Queen Margherita, looked to the donjon of Dijon for clemency. It was said that a copy of King René’s proclamation was fixed upon the portal of his prison in insolent derision. “Sic transit gloria mundi” might well have been penned beneath it.
Upon King René’s succession to the throne of Sicily-Anjou, Queen Yolande continued to act as his Lieutenant-General for Anjou and Provence, and left negotiations for his release to the young Queen-Duchess Isabelle, who was very much more favourably placed, and near at hand to serve the royal prisoner’s interests. She spent most of her time in Anjou, but paid many visits to Marseilles, her favourite residence in Provence. She never crossed the Aragonese frontier; she could have done so only as Queen-regnant, which of course was impossible. However, she named her grandson Jean, Duke of Calabria, King René’s eldest son, as the heir to her ancestral claims.
The Queen-mother’s presence in Anjou was necessary in the interests of her daughter, Queen Marie of France, and she never relaxed her control of the policy of her royal son-in-law. At each accouchement of the French Queen her devoted mother assisted, and it was a long family of grandchildren she nursed upon her knee. Her succour in sickness, her stay in trouble, and her help in poverty, were immeasurably precious to the fugitive Sovereigns. In 1437 Queen Yolande had the felicity also of receiving her son René, after his release from durance vile, in the Castle of Tine, near Saumur, and with him came Queen Isabelle and her children,—Prince Jean, the eldest, being a fine lad of eleven. It was a season of universal rejoicing in Anjou, and the Queen-mother, laying aside her widow’s chapelle and veil, entered whole-heartedly into the festivities. The most cheering feature of the gaiety was due to the magnanimity of the Duke of Burgundy, who quite unexpectedly and unreservedly offered the crown of peace by proposing that Princess Marie, daughter of Charles I., Duke of Bourbon, his niece, should be affianced to the young Duke of Calabria. The ceremony of betrothal was duly celebrated in Angers Cathedral, the little bride being no more than seven years old. This was a great joy to the Queen-mother, and René and Isabelle were very happy, too.
Again in 1440 the splendours of the Angevine Court were once more revived by the Queen-mother, when she welcomed right royally King Charles VII. and Queen Marie. It was by way of being a family gathering also, for King René and Queen Isabelle were of the party. It was a reunion remarkable in one way, as the introduction at Angers of the most lovely girl in France, in the suite of Queen Isabelle,—a girl destined to play a very important part in the private life of King Charles VII.,—Agnes Sorel. The Queen-mother was charmed with her lovely young visitor, and never made any opposition to her appointment as Maid of Honour to Queen Marie. These festivities, however, were the last in which Queen Yolande took part. The sorrows she was called upon to bear and the anxieties of the life she lived had their natural effect even upon such an ardent and vigorous constitution as hers. Gradually she retired altogether from public life, and in 1441 she took up her residence at Saumur. The castle was one of the strongest fortresses in France, and was one of the very few which held out successfully all through the Hundred Years’ War. Originally called La Tour du Tronc, Count Foulques Nerra, Count of Anjou, in the tenth century gave it the appearance and stability which it subsequently retained. Queen Yolande placed her suite within the castle precincts, but she herself, putting on an oblate’s habit, occupied for some time a house in the Faubourg des Ponts, where her privacy could be less easily disturbed. What remains,—and that, alas! is very little, of this habitation,—is still called La Maison de la Reine Cicile (Sicily). In this humble abode Yolanda d’Arragona, “the great Queen,” died quietly on December 14, 1443.
Whether King René was present to close his beloved mother’s eyes we know not, but it is significant of absence that the expense,—500 livres,—of the Queen’s obsequies was borne by her youngest son, Charles, Duke of Maine; indeed, it is almost certain that René was at Marseilles when he heard of his mother’s death. In one of his “Livres des Heures” he inscribed: “Le 14 Decembre de l’an 1443 trespassa au Château de Saumur Madame Yolande, fille de Roy d’Aragon et depuis mère de Roy René.” The funeral ceremonies were celebrated by the Archbishop of Tours, her private chaplain, not at Saumur, but at Angers, in the Cathedral of St. Maurice, to which her remains were conveyed by night two days after her death. Her grave was that of her consort’s, twenty-five years before,—in front of the high-altar,—but all trace of it has disappeared, and explorations have failed to reveal her burial casket.
It is eloquent of the irony of human affairs, that whereas no memorial, or even inscription, is left to record the virtues of the royal mother of Anjou, in the Church of Nôtre Dame de Nantilly at Saumur there is a memorial to Mère Théophaine la Magine, the devoted nurse of King René and Queen Marie, who died March 13, 1458. The original monument, erected by the King, presented his faithful domestic holding him and Marie in her arms. This has been destroyed, but an epitaph still remains:
“Cy gist la nourrice Théophaine
La Magine, qui ot grant paine
A nourrie de let en enfance
Marie d’Anjou, Royne de France,
Et après, son frère René, Duc d’Anjou.”
“Here lies good nurse Théophaine
La Magine, who at great pain
Foster-mother’d in infancy
Marie d’Anjou, Queen of France,
And then René, Duke of Anjou.”
The only existent memorials to King Louis II. and Queen Yolande are to be seen in a stained-glass window in the Cathedral of St. Julien at Le Mans, the capital of Maine, one of the richest and most beautiful specimens of fifteenth-century glass in Europe. The royal couple are upon their knees, attired in conventional costumes, and bare-headed. Their youngest son, Charles of Anjou and Maine, is buried near that splendid window, an interesting and curious circumstance in the happenings of Providence. He died in 1474. All Anjou and Provence bewailed their Queen, her virtues, her benevolence, her piety, her loyalty.
Yolande’s claim to the title with which she has been honoured, “a good mother and a great Queen,” needs no vindication. She was, in short, the most noble woman in all France during the first half of the fifteenth century.