King René was called from his grief over the tomb of his young son to Tours by Charles of France. To the French Court had come Ambassadors, with the Earl of Suffolk at their head, to treat for peace between the two conflicting kingdoms. The French King, with his usual lassitude, deputed to King René the conduct of the deliberations, which ended honourably for all parties concerned, in the guarantee of two years’ cessation of hostilities, with the acknowledgment of in statu quo. Nearer home, however, matters were not so stable; the state of the allied duchies was deplorable. So insecure were the roads in Lorraine,—infested by wandering bands of discontented peasantry and ill-affected townspeople,—that travelling was attended with the utmost danger. The higher the dignity of a wayfarer, the greater the eagerness to attack and pilfer. Queen Isabelle was herself the victim of a dastardly outrage. Journeying forth soon after her dear son Louis’s death, to pray at his grave at Pont-à-Mousson, her cortège was attacked by a party of marauders from Metz. They compelled her to leave her litter, with its cloth of gold curtains and luxurious cushions, and subjected her to rough treatment in spite of her protestations.
“You villains!” she cried, “you know perfectly who I am. How dare you offer this gross insult to your Sovereign! Begone, and let me pass. You shall richly pay for your temerity.” Jeers and offensive remarks greeted this haughty command. They cared nothing for Isabelle nor her consort; indeed, they were unrighteous allies of the Count of Vaudémont. The Duchess was stripped of her jewellery, her coffrets were rifled, and her servants beaten, and then the miscreants made off.
The Queen hastily returned to Nancy, and laid the matter before the Council, demanding satisfaction. “Unless you, my lords,” she said, “at once make a strong representation to the Governor of Metz, I will set off to Anjou, and bring the King back to recompense the miscreants.” All the chivalry of France was shocked at this amazing outrage, and King Charles, with Arthur de Richemont and a strong force, hurried into Lorraine from Dauphiné, determined to make an example of the gross behaviour of the Messins. The city barricaded her gates, sounded the tocsin, and prepared to resist, if might be, the united forces of France. The besieged held out for six months, flinging taunt on taunt against the King and Queen. At last it fell, and the price the rebels had to pay was onerous, besides the forfeiture of all their charters and privileges. A general amnesty was granted on February 27, 1445, in Barrois as well as in Lorraine. The Messins signalized their deliverance by offering to their liege Lord complete allegiance, together with 25,000 écus d’or enclosed in a splendid gold and enamelled vase.
René now for the first time in his thirty years of public service and command found himself in the possession of that rare blessing, Peace, and he prepared to celebrate it adequately. Isabelle, too, was only too thankful for the respite; her sorrows and anxieties had wellnigh broken her courageous heart. After she parted with her husband in the Bay of Naples, she landed at Marseilles, and made all haste to Angers, too late, indeed, to soothe the last moments of her noble mother-in-law, but drawn there by the tranquillity of Anjou. There she gave herself to the education of her two young daughters, to whom she was happily reunited—Marguerite just thirteen, and Yolande a year younger. René again joined his spouse, whom he loved so fondly, and in whose honour he had adopted a new royal motto and cipher, “Ardent Désir,” below a burning brasier. They gave themselves up to religious exercises, and led a calm and retired life—precious to them both after the alarums of the past. The world was still very young for them both—René no more than thirty-seven, and Isabelle two years his junior.
The most delightful ingredient in their full cup of joy was the home-coming of their son and heir, Prince Jean, Duke of Calabria and Lieutenant-General of Barrois-Lorraine. During eleven strenuous years he and his devoted parents had rarely met. He had zealously, after their brave example, addressed himself to his public duties, and had won golden opinions from the loyal subjects of the throne. He was nearing his majority, and with him came his young wife Marie, whose marriage had been but lately accomplished. They were stepping bravely together along the marital way, which their grandparents and their parents had traversed, unscathed by scandal and beloved by all.
Great festivities were organized at Angers, Tarascon, and Nancy, to celebrate the general peace, and in particular the betrothal of Princess Marguerite d’Anjou. A magnificent tournament was held between Razilly and Chinon in the summer of 1446, which attracted all the most famous knights in France and beyond the frontiers and an immense crowd of spectators. One there was, and she one of the fairest of the fair, came riding beside her father, one of King René’s dearest friends, Count Guy de Laval; and the King for the first time set eyes upon lovely Jehanne, who was destined to mingle her destiny with his right on to his dying day. René caused “Le Châtel de Joyeuse Garde” to be built of wood richly adorned with paintings, tapestries, and garlands, and for forty days jousts and floral games engaged the attention of the gallant and beauteous company. A very singular and popular custom was inaugurated at the King’s suggestion. Four knights of proved probity crossed their lances in the roadway beyond the Castle of Chinon. Cavaliers, accompanied by their ladies fair, were made to fight their way through and carry safe their sweethearts. A faint heart lost his lady, a knight unhorsed his horse, and a victorious competitor his sash of knighthood, which was immediately tied to the crupper of his fair one’s palfrey. The King himself took his place in the “Lists” in black armour; his mantle was of black velvet sewn with silver lilies of Anjou, and his well-trained charger was black also. Queen Isabelle and her ladies occupied a flower-decked tribune, and with her was poor young Queen Marguerite and her son’s child-wife, Marie. They were the Queens of the Tournament, but the damosel Jehanne de Laval was “Queen of Beauty,” scarce thirteen years old.
Alas! a deadly “bolt shot out of the blue.” The Duchess of Calabria had but just risen from childbed; she was not strong enough to bear the excitement and the toil of such tumultuous gaiety, and upon the last day of the tournament she fainted in the royal tribune, and breathed out her brief life before she could be borne to couch. Thus into life’s sweetest joys comes sadly too often the relentless bitterness of sorrow. Faces which only a few short hours before were wreathed in smiles were furrowed with the ravages of grief ere the curfew sounded. The tournament ended in a “Triumph of the Black Buffaloes.” Happily, perhaps, the child died too, and both sweet bodies were consigned to one flower-decked grave in the chapel garden of the Castle of Saumur,—“la gentille et la bien assise,”—a paradise of fragrant trees and pleasant prospects.
Dire news, too, reached Angers from Provence. A winter of unparalleled inclemency was followed by a famine and a pest, which decimated people and domestic animals, and wrought havoc with the crops. René and Isabelle took boat once more for their southern province, and their “le bon roy,” as he was now called affectionately by his subjects, laid himself out to alleviate his people’s sufferings. Taxes were remitted, the poor fed and clothed, and farms restocked. “La bonté,” he said, “est la première grandeur des roys.” People noted the King’s grey hair—hair “white less by time than white through trouble,” as chroniclers have written. Trouble makes all the world akin: the King and Queen bore their people’s, and they humbly shared their rulers’ griefs.
The clouds cleared off that sunny land, and birds once more sang in the meadows, and men and maids were gay. Then it was Tarascon’s turn to celebrate the virtues of the Count and Countess of Provence. A Provençal tournament was a celebration ne plus ultra, and René made that of 1448 famous and unique by his institution of the knightly “Ordre du Croissant.” To be sure, it was established at Angers, whose warrior-patron, St. Maurice, was honoured as guardian and exemplar of chivalry, and in whose cathedral church the banners of the knights were hung. The King himself drew up the statutes of the Order. With characteristic and chivalrous modesty, he named, not himself First Master, but chose Guy de Laval for that honourable post. Conditions of membership were dictated by religion, courtesy, and charity, in harmony; only knights of goodly birth and unblemished reputation were eligible. They were enjoined to hear Mass daily and to recite the daily “Hours.” Fraternal love was to be exemplified in all dealings with their fellow-men at large. An impious oath or an indecent jest was never to pass their lips. Women and children were in a special sense committed to their care. The poor and ailing were to engage their best offices. Debts of every sort and gambling under every guise were absolutely forbidden. With respect to the fair sex, the code of rules had in golden letters the following order: “De ne mesdire des femmes de quelques estats quelles soient pour chose qui doibue d’advenir.” The knights first impanelled, having taken their oaths of obedience and accepted service, departed from Anjou, and made their rendezvous at the King’s Castle of Tarascon on August 11. René himself again entered the “Lists,” but champion honours were carried off by his son-in-law, Ferri de Vaudémont, and Louis de Beauvais; and the Queen-Countess Isabelle placed floral crowns upon their brows, a golden ring upon their right hands, and received a kiss of homage upon her still smooth and comely cheek.
Nancy was the scene of the most magnificent gaieties Lorraine had ever beheld. The espousals of the Princess Marguerite and King Henry VI. were solemnized in the ancient Gothic church of St. Martin at Pont-à-Mousson by Louis d’Harcourt, Bishop of Toul. The King was represented by the gallant Earl of Suffolk, one of the most famous Knights in Europe. The ecclesiastical ceremony was rendered all the more auspicious by the joint nuptials of the Princess Yolande and Count Ferri de Vaudémont. All France,—Sovereigns, ladies, nobles, citizens,—thronged around the King and Queen; their congratulations were, however, restrained until the actualities of the Vaudémont marriage were revealed. To marry a dear child to the son of a man’s worst enemy appeared quixotic at the least, and few called to mind that strange clause in René’s charter of release from Bracon. The King was, as Duke Philippe of Burgundy had styled him, a man of his word; and if proof were wanted, then the appointment of the young bridegroom’s mother, the Countess, as governante of René’s daughters furnished it. Besides this, the presence of the Count himself at the marriage of his son exhibited not only the reconciliation of the two rivals for the throne of Lorraine, but emphasized the innate chivalry of both. To be sure, Antoine de Vaudémont was in ill-health, his fighting days were over, and he was searching for comfort and absolution before he faced his end; and, in truth, that end was nearer than he thought, for he died six months after he had given his blessing to Ferri and Yolande.