A BESIEGED CASTLE IN FRANCE
From a Miniature, MS. Fourteenth Century, “Valeur Maxime” British Museum
To face page 184
The King and Queen made many progresses through their circumscribed dominions. The first was in the summer of 1423, when they made a state entry also into Angers, and heard Mass at the Cathedral of St. Maurice. They presented to the Chapter two superb pieces of tapestry, depicting the Old and New Testaments. The Queen’s brother, Louis III., was of course in Italy, but the Duke of Bar-Lorraine and the Duchess Isabelle were there supporting the Queen-mother Yolande in rendering gracious hospitalities; the citizens provided a mystery-play, and the Court a tournament. The royal couple were lodged in the castle, from the gateway of which Queen Marie addressed the assemblage of people: “Vos citoyens et habitans de la ville d’Angiers soyeant toujours loyaux et fidèles à vostre sovereyns, et aussi des beaulx amis vers la couronne de France, laquelle je porte moi même.”[A] Vociferous plaudits hailed this declamation, and both Queen Yolande and Duke René made patriotic addresses.
[A] “You noble citizens and good inhabitants of this worthy city of Angers were ever famous for loyalty and fidelity to your Sovereigns, and, moreover, the best of friends to the Crown of France, which you see I wear.”
Five years later Charles and Marie entered Anjou and took up their residence at Saumur, where the King received the homage of no less a fellow-Sovereign than the Duke of Brittany, this being due to the tactful policy of the Queen-mother. Charles also had a request to place before the loyal Angevines: he wanted money and men to carry on the ceaseless warfare against the English. In this he admirably succeeded, and through Duke René he gained help from Lorraine and Bar besides.
Marie, though the consort of a fugitive penniless King, had a suite worthy of herself and of her parentage and rank; the Queen-mother saw to that. Her Controller was Hardoin de Mailly, and her Master of Horse Jacques Odon de Maulevrier, a devoted friend of her brother, Duke René. The Queen’s four Dames d’Honneur were Catherine Bourgoing, Aimée de Beauvais, Philippe de la Rochefoucault, and Jeanne Sorel. Her Maids of Honour were Marie du Couldray, Jeanne de la Grosse, Catherine de Beauvais, Jeannett la Garrelle, Hervée Catherine de Montplaie, and Jehanne Biardelle, with three quite young girls whose Christian names alone have been preserved—Felize, Geffeline, and Jacquette—perhaps pet names.
Duke René, ever a liberal-minded and open-handed Prince, gave each of his sister’s ladies a robe of richest aigneaulx fur, with crimson satin lining, and twenty skins of martens for bordering their kirtle bodices. Each robe cost 16 florins (= £12), and was supplied by the Queen-mother’s furrier at Angers, one Martin Chebiton.
The immodest fashions set by Queen Isabeau and the ladies of her Court, and their outrageous modes of headgear, did not go unrebuked by the better sort of clergy. A very famous preaching friar, one Thomas Correcte, a Carmelite monk from Brittany, in particular inaugurated a crusade against feminine extravagances through the North of France and in Flanders during the second decade of the fifteenth century. He further strenuously denounced the dignified clergy who kept fashionable mistresses. He was welcomed heartily by the burghers of the towns through which he passed, and conducted to a special pulpit erected in the market-place, adorned with rich hangings and a gigantic crucifix. Guards of honour and musicians were at his service, and, in spite of opposition and natural predilections, the clergy fell into line with the popular fancy, and rang their bells on his arrival. His denunciations were quite in accord with the feelings of the people, but they incited the rougher element to take the law into their own hands. Squads of youths paraded the public thoroughfares in search of errant dames, and no sooner had their gaze alighted upon a lady of degree, coiffured à l’outrance, than a flight of stones, deftly aimed, quickly made havoc of her headgear. The popular cry, “Un hennin! un hennin! à bas les hennins!” produced a panic, so that the women dared hardly sally forth from their own doors. It was said that the friar personally organized these demonstrations, and even paid the lads to disenchant the fair sex by forcibly pulling down their hideous superstructures. At all events, women with dishevelled heads and disordered attire ran hither and thither helpless and defenceless. The worthy and enthusiastic evangelist had, however, an alternative fashion with which modest women might cover their heads and breasts. He prescribed the universal habit of wearing plain chapelles, the ordinary caps of peasant women. The raid, however, ceased to terrify the determined votaries of eccentricity in dress, and, as Monstrelet, the historian, pithily puts it, “Snails, when anybody passes near them, draw in their horns; but when the danger is past they put them forth again.” The hennin, so called by Friar Correcte, became still more gigantic and grotesque, although Queen Marie, backed by her good mother, Queen Yolande, made loud protests and refused their favours to transgressors.