Marie was remarkable for rare beauty of person—pale, with perfect features; tall, with a graceful figure, and distinguished by her regal carriage.
In personal appearance Charles was unattractive: his figure was insignificant and ill-formed; his head was unduly large; he had large feet and hands, whilst his legs were short and bowed, and this caused an ungraceful gait; his face was sickly-looking and pock-marked, with a prominent nose, a wide and sensual mouth, and a heavy jaw; his eyes were small and somewhat crisscross; he had coarse dark hair and heavy eyebrows. If his destiny had not been a throne, he might just as well have found his career in a stable. With all these personal disadvantages, Charles was naturally warm-hearted and affectionate; he was possessed of a cool judgment, very affable and considerate, and, when roused, a very lion in the way. The marks of his evil mother’s influence never left him; the crushing of his natural inclinations and opportunities in childhood warped and unbalanced his mental calibre.
It was said scoffingly of him by those who were bereft of feeling: “Le Dauphin est un fou, fils d’un insensé et d’une prostituée.”[A] Jean Juvenal des Ursins perhaps went too far in the opposite direction, for in 1433 he wrote in his “Chronicle” concerning the King: “Sa vie est plaisante à Dieu; il n’y-a-en aucun vice.”[B]
[A] “The Dauphin is a poor fool, the son of a madman and a prostitute.”
[B] “His manner of life is pleasant to God; he has no vice.”
The first notice we find of the life of Marie d’Anjou, however, does not refer to her union with Charles VII., but her betrothal, when only five years old, to Jehan de Beaux, Prince of Taranto, her kinsman. He was the son of the Prince of Taranto who accompanied King Louis II., Marie’s father, on his romantic journey to Perpignan, in 1399, to welcome Princess Yolanda d’Arragona. Descended in direct line from Charles, first Duke of Anjou, younger brother of St. Louis IX., his grandfather was Philippe, second son of Charles III. and Marguerite of France. Through the last-named Princess a sad stain besmirched the shield of the silver lilies. Jehanne and Blanche de Luxembourg, daughters of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy, married respectively King Philippe the “Tall” and King Charles the “Fair” of France. Charged with witchcraft, they were imprisoned for life in the Château de Dourdan, where they were tonsured, scourged, and tortured—although they were the most beautiful and most highly cultured women of their day—together with their sister-in-law Marguerite, but she returned to her husband in 1314. Their terrible experiences were made traditional in the family, and, naturally, did not conduce to success in courtship.
No doubt the idea which fixed itself in the minds of Louis II. and Yolande with respect to this betrothal was the strengthening of the claims of Anjou, of the younger line, upon the crown of Naples, by the alliance of the two branches of the house. Why this arrangement was set aside, or when, it is hard to say. Some chroniclers aver that the young Prince was drowned at sea off Taranto; others, that he had different views; and, more likely than all, others attribute the renunciation to the action of Queen Yolande, who, directly she had obtained charge of the person of the young Dauphin Charles, determined a more brilliant match politically, if a less attractive one psychologically.
Possibly Queen Yolande hardly realized, at the date of that auspicious marriage, how its consummation would affect herself. High-toned as she was, and assertive of Anjou’s prestige, she could not know that Queen Isabeau’s absolute declension from rectitude would, by force of contrast alone, throw her own worthy aims into emphatic prominence. That marriage was the opening of the portals of imperial interest to the personal guidance of the strongest mind and will in France. She became actually the power on the throne, not behind it. Her hand directed the issues of life and death between the rival Powers—France and England. Yolande became at once the ruler of France and the dictator of her foreign policy. What has history to say about all this? Nothing, or next to nothing. Historians,—the most narrow-minded and most easily biassed of writers,—have not cared to trace and teach the ethics of the personality of this ruler of men and States.
The genesis of the paramount influence of women in the public and private life of France was undoubtedly in the reign of Charles VII. He was successively in the hands of Isabeau, his unworthy mother; of Yolande, his noble mother-in-law; of Marie, his much-enduring wife; and of Agnes Sorel, his inspiring mistress. Happily for him, he was withdrawn early from the immediate care of Queen Isabeau, but her intrigues later on brought out the latent bad elements of his character. What saving grace was his, was his through Yolande of Sicily-Anjou. His wife and his chief mistress were given him for two distinct purposes: Marie kept the wolf from the door and emboldened her faint-hearted spouse, whilst Agnes cheered his troubled spirit and impelled his motive-power. There is a quatrain of Francis I. which is interesting from the fact that his versification leaves it doubtful whether Marie or Agnes was actually his good genius: he names both in the first line:
“Gentille Marie (Agnès), plus d’honneur tu mérite,