La cause étant de France recouvrer;
Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrer—
Close nonain ou bien dévot hermite.”
“Gentle Marie (Agnes), thou hast gained all honour,
Of France the new life thou wast inspirer;
But thou wast born to adorn the cloister,
Encloséd nun or dedicated sister.”
Marie and René d’Anjou and Charles de Ponthieu were educated together, and for four years or more were inseparable companions. The betrothal of Charles and Marie was effected at the Palace of the Louvre, December 18, 1413, in the presence of the King and Queen of France and of the King and Queen of Sicily-Anjou. Charles VI. was then still King of France, and fully in possession of his senses. His troubles, political and mental, ranged from 1417 to 1422, when he had become no more than nominal Sovereign, driven from place to place, crushed, depressed, and suffering. Until his malady became hopeless, he was noted for his nobility of endurance, his chivalry of deportment, and his unselfish devotion to his duty. His Don Quixotic sort of life, however, was a mixture of smiles and frowns—joys and sorrows. Such a wife and mother as Queen Isabeau proved herself to be was quite enough to shatter the patience and the peace of the most stolid of men. There was not a more unhappy family in all France than that of its principal Sovereign, nor a more miserable home than that of its King.
Still, there were not wanting human touches which paint the character of King Charles VI. in sympathetic colours. In the King’s room at the Castle of Blois is a superb piece of tapestry, among many others, embroidered with the “Story of the Seigneur and Châtelaine de Courrages.” The “Annales Français” recount the following narrative: “The Seigneur de Courrages was called upon by the Parliament of Paris to fight in the ‘Lists’ with a certain Knight, Jehan Le Gris, for the honour of his wife, the Dame de Courrages. During the absence of her spouse in the Holy Land, the fair châtelaine gave her favours to an urgent lover, the Seigneur Le Gris, and he made love to her, quite naturally, in return. King Charles VI. was presiding at a tournament, and he noted the presence of the lady in question, but was amazed at her effrontery; for she was seated, superbly attired, in her state chariot, in view of the whole assemblage, whereas the custom of the time should have found her upon her knees in her closet, praying for her good man. The King despatched a herald to the impudent hussy, with a message that ‘it is inconceivable that anyone lying under so grievous a reproach should assume herself to be innocent till such time as that innocence shall have been made apparent.’ The brazen dame was ordered at once to dismount from her carriage and retire to her manoir. She was unwilling to bow to the royal command, and, hearing of this, the King sent another messenger, who was instructed to conduct the fair and frail delinquent beneath a scaffold, where she was ordered to cry aloud to God for mercy, and to the King for clemency. In the issue of arms, luckily for her, fortune favoured her husband, who unhorsed his adversary, and, after pinning him to the ground with his sword, compelled him to confess the villainies he had committed with his wife. Then the unfortunate man was hurried off to the scaffold,—beneath which Dame de Courrages was humbly kneeling,—and there and then hung up by the neck by way of justification of his miserable sweetheart.” What happened to the frail woman the chronicler has failed to tell; probably the Seigneur de Courrages took his erring wife home and administered a well-deserved flagellation in the privacy of his bedchamber, and condemned her to a period of imprisonment in the family dungeon upon a spare diet of bread and water! Such was the wholesome discipline for marital infidelity in the days of chivalry!
The marriage of Charles, Count of Ponthieu, and Marie, Princess of Sicily-Anjou, was solemnized at St. Martin at Tours, January 15, 1422. It was a year of rejoicing in France, for on May Day her King by descent, Charles VI., and her King by conquest, Henry V., entered Paris riding side by side in a splendid triumph of peace. Charles’s reason had returned to him with the return of happier days, and although the spectre of Isabeau was beside him, he managed to retain his senses and his vigour until October 21, when death mercifully heralded a new reign and a new régime in Paris.