The Queen’s judgment and resourcefulness eminently merited the grudging encomium of the wife of her husband’s fiercest rival, the Duchess of Burgundy. “I am always glad,” she said, “when it is a good woman who governs, for then all good men follow her!”
All this time,—a time fraught with infinite issues,—King Louis II. of Sicily-Anjou was in Italy, meeting in his campaign with varied fortune. He had all he could do to hold his own, but his presence at the head of his army was essential to ultimate success. Three times he entered Naples acclaimed as King, for Queen Giovanna II. had named him so. Three times he fled discomfited after victory, which he failed to follow up. He rarely returned to his French dominions, and really he had no necessity so to do on the score of administration, for his beloved and capable Lieutenant-General was perfectly able to keep everything in order and uphold his authority. At last the King of Sicily-Anjou and Naples returned to Angers a broken and an ailing man, to spend what time Providence would still grant him with his devoted noble wife.
Queen Yolande’s first great grief came to her in 1417, when her faithful husband was taken from her. Happily for them both, they were united at the deathbed—consoling and consoled. He was young to die—barely forty years of age—but ripe enough for the greedy grasp of Death. Louis II.’s fame was that of a “loyal Sovereign, a righteous man, a true spouse, and an affectionate father.”
CHAPTER III
YOLANDA D’ARRAGONA—“A GOOD MOTHER AND A GREAT QUEEN”—continued
I.
A royal corpse reposed upon the state tester bedstead within the great Hall of Audiences in the enceinte of the Castle of Angers, and a royal widow knelt humbly at a prie-dieu at his feet. It was late in the evening of that sweet April day,—half sun, half shower,—that the body of Louis II., King of Sicily, Naples, Jerusalem, and Anjou, was ceremonially displayed, flanked by huge yellow wax candles in chiselled sticks of Gerona brasswork. The tapestried walls of this chapelle ardente were covered with sable cloth sewn with silver lilies and hung with great garlands of yew. The head of the lamented Sovereign reposed upon a soft cushion of blue velvet, put there by the widow herself. Upon his breast, with its pectoral cross, was his favourite “Livre des Heures,” one of the famous treasures of the collection of King John the “Good,” his grandfather.
In her black velvet chapelle, with its close gauze veil concealing her beautiful hair, and attired in sombre black, unrelieved, the devotional figure, sorrowful and brave, was none other than “Good” Queen Yolande. Her right hand rested consolingly upon the shoulder of her eldest son, now Louis III., a well-grown stripling of fourteen. Around his neck his mother had but just hung the chain and medallion of sovereignty, taken tenderly from her dead spouse. Behind them knelt Prince René and Princess Marie, the fondest of playmates, weeping bitterly, poor children! The vast hall was filled with courtiers, soldiers, citizens, all manifesting signs of woe and regret. The royal obsequies were conducted magnificently, under the personal direction of the Queen, within the choir of the Cathedral of St. Maurice. Feuds of rival Sovereigns, operations against the foreign foe, quarrels of fault-finders, and the like, were all hushed in the presence of the King of Terrors. To Angers thronged royal guests and simple folk to pay their last tributes of respect and devotion. In state, King Charles VI. started to tender his homage to the dead, but, struck down with sudden illness at Orléans, he requested Queen Isabeau to take his place. Burial rites were not much in that giddy woman’s way, and her hard heart had no room for sympathy and condolence; so the “Scourge of France,” as she was called, gave Angers a wide berth.
The Angevine royal children were five in number, and Louis left besides a natural son,—Louis de Maine, Seigneur de Mezières,—and a natural daughter,—Blanche,—whom René, when he attained his father’s throne in 1434, married to the Sieur Pierre de Biège. The defunct King’s will appointed four simple knights,—his henchmen true,—executors: Pierre de Beauvais and Guy de Laval for Anjou, and Barthélèmy and Gabriel de Valorey for Provence, with Hardoyn de Bueil, Bishop of Angers, as moderator. The Queen-mother was constituted Regent of the kingdoms and dominions and guardian of the young King, whilst Prince René was commended, under his father’s will, to the charge of his great-uncle Louis, Cardinal and Duke de Bar, with the family title of Comte de Guise.