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: