From a Miniature by King René, in “Le Livre des Heures”
To face page 94
Isabelle, “the Pride of Lorraine,”—as she was acclaimed by her devoted subjects at the time of her betrothal,—was born at the Castle of Nancy, March 20, 1410. Her parents were Charles II., Duke of Lorraine, and his consort, Margaret of Bavaria. Charles himself was the eldest son of Jehan, Duke and Count of Lorraine, and Sophie, Princess of Würtemberg. Born in 1364, at Toul,—a free city of the German Empire and an ecclesiastical sovereign see,—Charles succeeded his father in 1392. Originally a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, Lorraine was erected a kingdom by the Emperor Lothair, who styled himself “King and Baron of Lothairland.” The first Prince to bear the ducal title was Adelebert, in 979, and that style descended unbroken through 500 years.
The Duchess Margaret was the second daughter of the Emperor Robert III., Duke and Baron of Bavaria. She married Charles II. in 1393. To them were born eight children, but, alas! Louis and Rodolphe died in infancy, Charles and Ferri before their majority, and Robert in 1419, unmarried, at twenty-two. Of their three daughters, Isabelle was the eldest. Marie became the wife of Enguerrand de Coucy, Baron of Champagne and Lord of Soissons, a lineal descendant of the founder, in the thirteenth century, of the famous Château de Coucy, the most complete feudal fortress ever built, whose proud motto may still be seen on the donjon wall:
“Roi je ne suis
Prince ni Comte aussi:
Je suis le Sire de Coucy.”
This union was childless. Catherine, the third daughter, in 1426 married James, Marquis of Baden, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Elector. She renounced all claims to Lorraine. Their only child was a daughter.
At the time of their marriage, Charles II. of Lorraine and Margaret of Bavaria were a model couple upon the principles of dissimilarity and contrast. The Duke, a soldier born, had made good his degree of knighthood ten years before, when, a mere stripling, he won his spurs fighting daringly by the side of his cousin, Philippe “le Hardi,” Duke of Burgundy. With him he went on a punitive expedition against the pirates of the Barbary coast. At Rosebach, and especially at the tremendous battle of Azincourt, he did prodigies of valour. In Flanders and in Germany his ensign led on victorious troops. Charles’s last military achievement was the rout of the Emperor Wenceslas under the very walls of Nancy. No warrior loved fighting more than the Duke of Lorraine. Slightly to alter the text, he was one of those war-lords whom Shakespeare, in his “seven ages of man,” says “sought reputation at the cannon’s mouth.” He yearned for the applause of gallant knights, both friends and foes; he yielded himself amorously to the smiles and embraces of the fair sex, and he revelled in the praise and adulation of poets and minstrels. His mailed fist was ever toying with his trusty sword and grappling the chafing-reins of his charger; his mailed foot was ever ready for the stirrup and to trample upon the head of a fallen foe.
At the same time he was a gay and polished courtier, one of the most accomplished Princes in Europe. Fond of literature and poetry, he studied daily his Latin copy of the “Commentaries of Julius Cæsar” and similar treatises. He had besides a taste for music, and was no mean exponent of the lute and guitar, and a friend of troubadours.