CHAPTER VI
1400–1409
Courage of the young Queen of England—Death of the Dauphin—Birth of Catherine de France—Intrigues of Louis d’Orléans, and quarrels at court—Return of the Queen of England—Burgundians and Orléanists—Birth of Charles de France—Dreadful storms—Death of Burgundy—Illness of Duc de Berry—Conduct of Savoisy—Frère Jacques Legrand—The Princess Marie’s choice—Accident in the forest—The King and the Dauphin—Jean Sans-peur—King ill—Eclipse—Royal weddings—The great winter—Murder of Louis d’Orléans.
“The marriage of King Richard with Isabelle was unadvised, and so I declared when it was proposed,” said the Duke of Burgundy. “Since the English have imprisoned King Richard, they will assuredly put him to death, for they always hated him because he preferred peace to war.”[192]
His words were not long in being fulfilled. No one can doubt that it was by the order of Henry that Richard was secretly murdered, and thus came to an end the project of uniting the Valois and Plantagenets and closing by this alliance the Hundred Years’ War.
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The fate of Isabelle was of course what now occupied the royal family of France. Her father sent ambassadors to see her and demanded that she should immediately be sent back to France with all her dowry and possessions. Henry IV., on the other hand, was most anxious that she should marry his son, now Prince of Wales, who was, as he truly remarked, of a much more suitable age for her than Richard had been. But Isabelle would not hear of this plan. She had been extremely fond of King Richard, whose visits to her at Windsor or wherever she happened to be pursuing her studies under the care of her ladies had been her greatest pleasure and holidays, and she doubtless looked forward to the time when, free from every restraint, she would live and reign always with the handsome, magnificent hero of romance who treated her with affectionate kindness and unlimited indulgence. If, as Sainte-Marthe and other French historians say, and as seems certain, Isabelle was the eldest daughter of Charles VI. and was born in 1388, she could not at this time have been more than twelve years old, but she appears to have felt for King Richard the kind of romantic worship that very young girls occasionally feel for a man much older than themselves. At any rate, she took an extraordinarily prominent part in a conspiracy to restore Richard, tore the badge of Lancaster from the liveries of her household, issued a proclamation declaring that she did not recognise Henry as king, went with the barons of Richard’s party to Cirencester, and after his death vehemently refused to marry the Prince of Wales, asking only to be sent back to France to her father and mother; and a constant interchange of letters upon that subject went on between the royal families of France and England during the whole of this year.
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