Besides the public misfortunes of this time, a great sorrow befel the Duke and Duchess of Normandy in the death of their two little daughters, Jeanne and Bonne, whom their mother had dedicated to God if the King returned. The historian says God apparently accepted the gift.[37] The eldest was about three years old. The former died October 21st at the abbey of St. Antoine des Champs, at Paris, where she had been placed in order to be dedicated to religion, and her little sister rather less than three weeks after her. They were both buried in the church of that abbey, where their effigies in white marble were placed, lying upon their black marble tomb. This grief was all the more bitter to Charles and Jeanne as these were their only children. The chronicler remarks of this event: “Item, on Thursday, the 11th November, were buried the two daughters of the Duke of Normandy, at St. Antoine, near Paris, and was present the said Duke at the funeral, very troubled, for he had no more children.”[38] Among those chosen to go to England with King Edward were Louis Duc d’Anjou and Jean Duc de Berry, second and third sons of the King, to whom their father had given these two duchies by way of compensation; Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, the King’s brother; Louis, Duc de Bourbon; Pierre d’Alençon and Jean, brother to the Comte d’Etampes, “tous des fleurs-de-lis,” says the monk of St. Denis.
{1361}
And in December, Jean made his entry into Paris with a pomp and parade rather unsuitable to the occasion and the manner of his return, and again began the usual succession of court festivities and amusements that formed the occupation of the Valois princes and those who surrounded them. As to the peasants, as soon as the peace of Bretigny was signed, they began to take courage and to work in the fields again. After a long cold winter the weather seemed to have cleared up, and they hoped for a good harvest, though the destruction of most of the barns and farm buildings had made it difficult to find places to store it in. The plague, too, was again increasing, not spreading regularly from south to north as it had done in 1348, but appearing irregularly here and there in places which had escaped before, especially in hilly and mountainous districts where the inhabitants had hoped they were safe from it. It attacked first the people who were already weakened from bad food and other hardships; next those who had been suffering, as so many were, from agitation, anxiety or sorrow; and then it began to attack those who were free from any such disadvantages. It spread all about, with the same symptoms as before and attended with the same disastrous consequences. Every one was, of course, dreadfully afraid of catching it, so that people shut themselves up, refusing to have communication with each other; there was no one to keep order or to do any work, and the great companies of brigands and disbanded soldiers were all over the country. There were fifteen thousand of them near Lyon alone. The King of England sent orders to those under his allegiance to desist from their depredations, but they would not obey him. The plague was very bad all the spring; seventeen thousand people died of it at Avignon, it was raging in London and was also at Paris, although not quite so violent there.
The Queen and her daughter, the Princess of Burgundy, had died of it in 1360, and now her son Philippe, the last Capétien Duke, fell a victim to the same scourge.
On hearing of the death of his stepson, Jean at once claimed the duchy. As has been already shown, the heirs male of Duke Robert II. were now extinct; the Comtesse de Savoie, his eldest daughter, had no heirs either; of the Duchess de Bar there could be no question, as she had not only renounced her claims on her marriage, but was the youngest daughter. It rested between the King of France, son of the third daughter, Jeanne, and the King of Navarre, grandson of the second daughter, Marguérite. To most people the claim of Charles of Navarre must appear incontestably the right one; but it is true that instances in favour of Jean’s pretensions were not uncommon in these days. At any rate he seized the duchy, and on the 23rd of December entered Dijon; took the oath, before the high altar of Saint Bénigne in presence of the chief officials of Burgundy, to observe the constitution and privileges of that state; and was careful to rest his claim to the succession, not on its having lapsed to the crown, but on the right of his mother, Jeanne de Bourgogne, speaking much of his grandfather, Duke Robert, whose heir he declared himself to be and whose laws and system of government he promised to follow.
The great inheritance of Burgundy was now broken up, for Artois and the County Palatine went to Marguérite, Countess dowager of Flanders, second daughter of Philippe-le-Long, Boulogne and Auvergne to the next heir of Guillaume XIII., while Flanders and Hainault remained the inheritance of the child Marguérite, widow of Philippe de Rouvre.
